my brain is fried i'm so overtired I've cried spontaneously at least once a day for the past three days will you please help a girl out with a soft cozy wholesome movie recc please and thank you
I’m so sorry my dear!! I dug to the depths of a bunch of old tag games and my film tag and this is what I came up with!
when I’m strung out I tend to gravitate to movies that will make me happy-cry so this list will at moments tend in that direction. I tried to sort by what was available to stream now, and the sub-lists are in no particular order
if you have amazon prime (the basic package):
Penelope (2006). highly recommend, a funny little modern fairy tale about a lonely young girl searching for a way to break her curse. this one heals something in my heart
Stardust. also highly recommend! a chaotic fairy tale about true love and what a person would do for it.
Street Gang. the Sesame Street documentary. sometimes people are good and they’re trying to make the world a better place and they’re doing it with their friends.
How To Train Your Dragon. it’s a perfectly executed film and the score and animation is gorgeous. (also available on netflix)
if you have netflix:
Feel the Beat. a dance flick about a seemingly cold-hearted ambitious young woman becoming a dance teacher in her hometown
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. so so so rewatchable.
She’s the Man. the funniest movie on this list and possibly of all time. I have never shown this movie to a person who didn’t end up loving it. it’s Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at boarding school as a soccer movie
if you have tubi?? you might not need a membership I don’t know how tubi works??
The Music Man. some of the best costumes and choreography my favorite age of movie musicals had to offer. a con man comes to a small Iowa town and starts to want to believe in the beautiful lie he’s selling.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. this movie was written by Roald Dahl and it is buck wild. widowed inventor and his two children buy a broken down racing car and?? hijinks and musical numbers ensue
if you have disney plus:
Princess Diaries (1&2). we know them, we love them.
Sky High. if you haven’t seen this, I highly recommend it because it is silly fun but it understands the genre it’s playing with.
Newsies (1992). scrappy newsboys form a union, sing songs, punch each other, ???, profit
Holes. the single best adapted book to film ever? the cast commentary is also hilarious
Rodgers and Hammerstein Cinderella (1997). absolutely delightful. Whitney Houston as the godmother! Jason Alexander as the butler! Brandy as Cinderella! Bernadette Peters as the stepmother!
if you feel up for a trip to the library, things to look for:
The Hundred Foot Journey. I only saw this one once but it’s about a family who opens up an Indian restaurant across from a Michelin-starred French restaurant and it’s gorgeous
A League of Their Own (1992). sisters! best friends! married women and their disreputable drunk coach friends!
The Secret Garden (1993). highly recommend! this one fixes me down to my bones.
This Beautiful Fantastic. also highly recommend! a woman who’s afraid of the world falls in love with it.
Secondhand Lions. also highly recommend!! a boy gets dropped off with his great-uncles for the summer, hears possibly made-up stories of their wild and adventurous youth
August Rush. a young musical prodigy searches for his parents.
Sense and Sensibility (1995). if you need Austen energy, this is the one.
Cinderella (2015). this movie is so gentle and so lovely.
Little Women (1994). life is gonna be hard and sad but it’s gonna be beautiful and the love will endure!!!
I hope this helps and I hope you feel better! ❤️❤️
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okay i’m not actively suicidal but it is literally impossible for me to list anything material for me to look forward to
i don’t have job security
i don’t have any/many job prospects
i have no meaningful social life because my friends all gather in person without me--i’m the only reason we’re not playing dnd in person, except for the fact that one of them is sometimes in virginia for her masters degree.
this pandemic isn’t going to end any time soon, and it’s WHY i have no job security or prospects.
i’m in a state where i’ll probably be able to sort of hold out a little bit longer against the STEEP decline into fascism here
we’ve started looking into immigrating to canada (and elsewhere, but mainly canada, bc $$$) and like. if we don’t get rejected bc of the cost to health care, it’s going to be IMPOSSIBLE unless i get a decent fucking job for at least a year. bc i’m not sure that the job i’ve had for 5 years even COUNTS to them.
so our only “hope” is for me to immigrate as a fucking refugee from this fucking piece of shit country.
but at that point it’s also like.
really, how long and far can we run???
i WANT to help. but i am not meant for direct action. i WANT to help people but i CAN’T because I DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING MONEY OR SKILLS THAT CAN HELP.
I DO NOT HAVE AND AM NOT PART OF A COMMUNITY.
and quite frankly i don’t want to be???
i can’t handle the social aspects, it’s all WAY too much. it’s too much for me to handle, and i’ve only gotten worse at it.
i hate being beholden to so many people. it adds a constant strain and stress on my life. how do i know this? merely having a handful of people counting on me to do things and be on time during school and with a particular friend group.
i can’t even handle that.
i don’t have any skills outside of what i went to school for--and i can’t do THAT because of the pandemic.
i’m TRYING to get jobs. i’ve applied to an editorial internship, and i HIGHLY doubt i’ll get it.
then i have to apply to another one.
and then i have to INVEST MY OWN FUCKING MONEY into equipment to start doing voice over acting and stuff.
but that ALSO requires networking to some degree, facing a lot of rejection, and dealing with making like. nO FUCKING MONEY. FOR A LONG TIME.
i won’t see a return on my investment in equipment for a LOOOOOOONG TIME.
and then!!! how and when and where do i get an agent?! like fuck this.
i see a good portion of the world descending into fascism and violence. i know i’m not supposed to feel hopeless.
but all of the avenues to combat that hopelessness....aren’t accessible to me. they just aren’t.
i keep trying to find ways to feel joy or hope or even a will to live and they’re so few and far between and so hard to come by, and they’re so short lived.
i don’t have the energy or wherewithal to do things anymore. i have personal projects i’m trying to work on and they just tire me out so fast.
i WANTED to take this really amazing shakespeare course! by this really impressive guy! and then it got canceled. and then he’s just. not posted about doing it again. even though he was going to.
and so i’m just. tired.
because the ONE THING i could do previously was donate money where it was needed.
and now i’ve been LOSING money since march, because my boss at this job that i will lose come the end of september refused to let me work from home, and is refusing to let us work more than 6 hrs/week for the summer.
that doesn’t even cover my therapy.
that literally is too on the fucking nose even for me. like come on.
it doesn’t even feel worth crying about.
i’m sort of just. steadfastly thinking ahead and being like. okay what will be the last straw for me. what do i need to make it past that. what hope do i possibly have for the future.
i’m 27 and i’ve never even dated anyone.
i talked w my longest friend just the other day, and she....has this whole incredible life. and my update was...i’m depressed, i have no life, barely any friends, no job prospects, and i’ve been in a giant fit about my job since march. all my hopes for other opportunities keep falling through, and there’s nothing i can do to fix it. i don’t have marketable skills or training, so i can’t get into competitive job markets/fields. i’m stuck. i’m depressed. i haven’t left the house and it’s obvious because of how pale i’ve gotten and how much weight i’ve gained (the latter of which i don’t care that much about).
and it was just. depressing. and SHE’S the one whose dad has cancer! and I WAS THE FUCKING DOWNER. SOMEHOW.
her dad will be okay, etc., that’s like--even anonymously, i’m not going to share details. obviously we talked about him. i’m sending her and her parents a homemade gift basket at the end of next month.
i just. don’t see a point anymore. no amount of “you don’t need to contribute to society to deserve to live” could have possibly prepared me for this.
no hope, no prospects, no guaranteed future, no community, no life, no friends, no anything.
two degrees and i have nothing in terms of moving my life forward.
i’m grateful i have what i do.
but i look ahead and i’m kind of just. numb and grim. idk how much longer i can cope like this. i’d like to live. i’d like to have something to live for. it’s all pretty superficial and obligatory at this point. and i’ll keep going. but there’s nothing that can fix how this feels, or even remotely fix my situation.
and it’s just never been this crushing and immobilizing and emptying before.
there’s not enough to fill me back up enough so that it’s not so noticeable. i’m trying so hard to not think about it so much but i really can’t manage it for long.
we watched some good tv and i laughed and was engaged and that felt good!
and then i opened my laptop for 5 minutes and it was gone. just remembering what’s going on. just remembering it all.
and my friends are. busy and pulling away. i barely talk to them. i don’t. i don’t talk to anyone. i’m utterly alone. and i don’t have a way to make new friends and connections because i refuse to get covid.
whatever i felt in high school--middle school, actually--probably felt like a lot.
but i don’t think. i’ve yet felt such empty hopelessness as this. and i’m just really trying hard to not look at it directly.
it’s infuriating to have worked so hard on myself, to feel like i’ve grown and matured and learned things, and. to get this in return.
none of it mattered. or maybe it only mattered bc now i’m managing to live through this. but for what. why does it fucking matter. it doesn’t. and i’m just tired.
all i can think of as a positive is like. the students i help at work.
and if that’s it, that’s all there is....what’s the fucking point.
i know there isn’t one, but that ~radical~ nihilism isn’t helpful right now. because the point is to find and create your own meaning, right?
well that’s what i was doing. and now i’m struggling to find/make it. all the stuff i’ve worked on has all been pretty thoroughly stripped away from me.
my education, my social life, my job and career goals, my forward momentum, all of it.
i’ve been buying dice and plushies with my limited funds because i need to have something to look forward to (them arriving in the mail) and to have new things that provide joy in tiny ways.
because i just. what else is there. whatever.
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Schools teach Shakespeare poorly and here’s why
Honestly it gets on my nerves how the school system handles Shakespeare, and it’s because of its poor handling of Shakespeare that so many people hate his plays and view them as boring or uninteresting.
I’ve acted in Shakespeare plays for about six years now and after spending just one unit in school on Romeo and Juliet, the reason why people hate Shakespeare becomes so much more understandable. I learned Shakespeare’s plays, his rhyming scheme and scansion through putting on productions of the shows, and that’s how Shakespeare should be taught.
Shakespeare’s works aren’t meant to be read by anyone other than the actors putting on the show. It isn’t supposed to be enjoyed like that. Shakespeare is at its best when it’s being watched or it’s being performed. His plays are scripts for a reason. Scripts are the groundwork for a performance and when schools assign endless reading of his plays, they essentially feed their students the bare bones of Shakespeare.
Acting is what makes the show come alive. In my most recent production, I remember cold-reading Love’s Labors Lost and being so confused about the story and how this could ever be considered a comedy. By performance day, we were up onstage loving every bit of the story, and the audience, who knew as much as the cast had on our first day with the scripts, was laughing at the jokes we initially didn’t get the first time. Acting is what conveys Shakespearean text and the witty lines that are much harder to understand today, but the actor’s choices onstage (be it actions, tone of voice or movement) are there to explain it all.
Shakespeare is at its most relatable and enjoyable when it’s being performed, and that was how things were always intended to be. Making students read these scripts as if they were textbooks is a one-way fast track to making a class confused, frustrated, and hating these plays.
TLDR: Shakespeare and acting are inseparable, and schools need to stop ignoring that fact if they want their students to actually care about these plays.
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Sapphic Audio-Drama List
So I heard about @sapphic-podcast-fanwork-week (running August 1st-7th 2021) a while back but cut it a little close making this list! There's an incredible, wonderful amount of (brilliant, engaging, wholesome) sapphic content out there in podcasts, but you may not all know about it!!
Here's a list of some of my favourite major canonical couples and trios from pods I've heard. I'll give a quick summary, then touch on each pair/trio, and points of interest (how important they each are to the story, when they get together, if they get a happy ending, if their specific orientation is known, characters of colour, trans and nb characters, etc). I'll try not to get too spoilery in the summaries, but the character sections might give some stuff away.
(Also a little disclaimer, I'm aroace, and a little oblivious to what information might be important to people here: if you have questions or want me to add more details, please let me know! It might be valuable to other people too, so you're doing everyone a big favour.)
Alice Isn't Dead: Horror, road trip, weird fiction. A truck driver travels America searching for her missing wife, telling stories of the strange and supernatural encounters she has along the way. The podcast that got me back into podcasts, I owe it a lot. Crisp soundwork, great acting, creative stories and worldbuilding. It's complete.
Alice and Keesha: The lead and her missing wife. Some of the most gorgeous musings on love and old stories between these two. Apart for most of the story, but they get a happy ending.
Archive 81: Horror (cosmic, body), weird fiction, mystery. A young archivist is hired to digitize a series of strange housing records from the 90s, in a remote outpost. He has a bad time. Heads up that from S2 (E11) this one gets more intense (you may need to check the content warnings), and that each season has a bit of a different genre/vibe. Good queer rep, stunning soundwork and music, interesting characters. The fact my blog name comes from this podcast probably suggests how much I like it. Currently on hiatus.
Melody and Alexa: Also sometimes affectionately called "Sorcerer Wives" this sweet lesbian couple features one of season 1's leads, Melody, and her girlfriend, and later wife, Alexa. They become minor characters after S1, but get an interesting and ideallic happy ending I am very fond of. One of S3's leads is heavily implied to be mspec as well.
Arden: Comedy, mystery, "true" crime. A fictional, amusing podcast taking the form of a true crime series, with each season based off a couple shakespeare plays. The hosts (an ex-detective and a radio journalist) both have equally chaotic but very different energies which make for a fun dynamic. It does also cover and address some occasionally intense and serious topics, so it's not pure comedy. Currently on hiatus.
Bea and Brenda: a lesbian and bi couple, these two leads start off with a bit of a rivalry, become friends, and get together near the end of season 2.
Elixir: Romance, urban fantasy. A lesbian romance set during a fantasy version of the American prohibition, between an apothecar/bar owner, and the daughter of prominent council members. Still airing new episodes.
Elsie and Vera: The two leads, this story is very much focused on them and their romance. The relationship isn’t rapid but not slow to get started either. The story is still ongoing, but I’ll be surprised if they don’t get a happy ending.
Dining in the Void: Sci-fi, horror, mystery. Think Cluedo, but queer and in space. Guests aboard a space station are trapped into playing a serious of stange games by an unknown host. I am admittedly a bit behind on this one, but I adored the amazing worldbuilding, horror-mystery energy, and dynamics of season 1.
Katie Belle and Waverly: Demi wlw, these two start as strangers and get together somewhere near the end of S1.
Haunted House Flippers: Comedy, horror. A couple inherits an apparently haunted house and decides to fix it up. This one's interesting because it feels a bit het-couple Adam Sandler movie at first but becomes an increasingly more charming story about a bi buff metalhead forensic scientist and her tiny well-meaning idiot ghosthunter husband who are both weird and very supportive of eachother.
Opal and Juniper: Okay, admittedly these two have only featured in a couple episodes so far, but they’re incredibly fun and sweet, and interracial elderly wlw couples are in short supply. They constantly talk each-other up, wear matching outfits, have a wholesome witchy vibe (and a possibly immortal demon rooster), and really look out for their neighbours.
Hello from the Hallowoods: Horror, supernatural. Exciting and character-driven horror podcast that follows many people (in varying degrees of human, and alive) in their journeys in a strange land, and as they cross paths. Amazing lore and worldbuilding, both tragedy and tender moments, delightful narration and writing, highly recommended.
Riot and Clara: Young and reckless, in love from the start but torn from eachother, still searching... Both are major characters.
Bern and Violet: An older married couple we meet early on, leaders and respected in their community. The old, comfortable couple dynamic. Both are fairly major characters.
InkWyrm: Sci-fi, comedy, romance. Slow burn lesbian sci-fi romcom. Mella, the new AI caretaker for intergalactic fashion magazine InkWyrm, finds herself the new assistant to it's editor as well. Worth noting the recording quality of early episodes, and some of the SFX, are a bit rough, though it improves later (start with episode 1 (redux)). The writing quality is top notch and super funny from the start, though. The show is finished!
Annie and Mella: Oh it’s a comically slow burn for these two. Annie is a bi trans woman and Mella a cis lesbian, and they absolutely do not get along to begin with. A happy ending for both.
Love & Luck: Romance, slice of life, touch of urban fantasy. Queer Australian romance told in voicemails, it had me in love with the leads only a few short episodes in. Set in modern-day Melbourne, it features real community places and events. It also addresses real life issues faced by the queer community, so it has it's stressful moments, but is for the most part super wholesome, and gives off such a beautiful community vibe. I want a Best of Luck bar in my own city, dammit. Oh, and there's magic! Currently on hiatus.
Storm, Helen and Mira: it takes a while to meet these three, but they quickly become frequent voices on the podcast once they do. Storm is a suave butch lesbian and she quickly starts dating Helen, a shy, sweetheart trans woman, and Mira, a peppy and energetic cis woman. Helen and Mira aren’t dating, but they are best friends. It’s all so incredibly sweet.
Mabel: Mystery, horror, romance. Anna is hired as a live-in carer for an aging client and tries to get in contact with her grand-daughter, leaving a series of increasingly less professional voicemails about stranger happenings, which are apparently being recieved but never responded to. Slow transition to poetic, body-horror filled fairy romance. Currently on hiatus.
Anna and Mabel: The two leads! Both Latina, I'm fairly sure. They slowly fall for each other over the course of the show, for a strange but poetic and dedicated dynamic.
Midnight Radio: Romance, supernatural. A love story about an old-time radio host and the correspondence she starts with an odd listener who has moved back into the small town they both grew up in. Really gentle and beautiful, cleanly made, well written and acted. The show is complete!
Sybil and Amelia: Two leads. They slowly fall in love over the course of the show. Wistful, open ended story, but trust me, it's an enchanting one.
Mirrors: Sci-fi, mystery, supernatural. Audio journals of 3 women in various time periods who seem to share little in common, bar the strange inhuman, ghostly figures they have started seeing. Love the setup and mystery for this one, the worldbuilding, how distinct yet connected everything is. Show is complete!
Karin and Sierra: Sierra is one of the three leads, and her wife, Karin is pretty major too. They know and support each other really well, which I really appreciate. Happy ending.
Moonbase Theta Out: Sci-fi. Logs, updates, and messages from Moonbase Theta as they prepare for station shutdown and return to Earth, but not everything may be as it appears on the surface. Interesting cast of characters, this show gladly delivers both wholesome and emotionally devastating content, and it's good fun to watch the situation reveal itself. Show is on hiatus.
Nessa and her partners: Nessa is a poly, pan, aro woman with a number of long-term female partners and kids. She's part of the main cast in S2, and we hear from at least one partner in a bonus episode. As well as Nessa, many of the other female cast are wlw. Sad ending for Nessa, unfortunately.
Palimpsest (Season 2): Supernatural, horror, mystery, romance. Each season of Palimpsest is a different story, so you don’t have to listen to all of them if you don’t want. Season 2 follows a young woman looking to find some independence from her family in a new job, to which she ends up as a personal maid to a supposed fairy princess in a house full of imprisoned fae.
Seoirse and Ellen: The two central characters Season 2. To talk about them more gives the story away, but it seems to be a happy ending.
The Beacon Podcast: Urban fantasy/superpowers. Anxious university student Bee discovers she has fire powers and starts a podcast to try and find others like her. Chaos ensues when she discovers she's not the only odd thing on campus. Funny and endearing series with a wonderful cast of characters and some of my favourite friendship dynamics. The university setting is a great pick and I'm very hungry for more lore. On hiatus right now.
Bee and Fox: Bee is a lesbian ace woman, and Fox a mysterious online friend. A slow romance. There's also hints of another building romance in this one between a certain charming butch lesbian and sensible bi room-mate.
The Far Meridian: Weird Fiction, magical realism. An agoraphobic young woman wakes up to find her lighthouse home appears somewhere new each day. She takes this as an opportunity to search for her missing brother and takes a journey of self discovery along the way. One of my absolute favourites, cleanly made, charming and strange and whimsical in the way picture books are. Casually queer, clean soundwork, delightful friendships. On hiatus right now.
Peri and Ruth: The lead and her bi childhood crush. They're a couple by S2 end. Incredibly sweet and I melt a little whenever Ruth, an astrophysicist, calls Peri "Starshine".
The Lost Cat Podcast: Horror (soft, cosmic), supernatural. A man loses parts of himself, befriends strange entities, and drinks a lot of wine while looking for his cat. I love the optimistic outlook of humanity, the creativity, the willingness to let the podcast be silly and a little cliché (always in the most satisfying way) at times. Oh, and there's musical features. It's on hiatus right now.
Morpin and Bojana: Minor/recurring characters from s2 onward, their relationship is subtle but very sweet.
Lisica and Cyraliene: Badass vigilante lady is smitten with charming vampire leader. Lisica appears in S2 as a major character but is the lead of S4. Flirting through swords and combat banter, declarations of love, and falling in love with how cool the other one is. Great fun.
The Magnus Archives: Horror. Easily the most popular podcast on this list, The Magnus Archives is a horror podcast which takes a look into the strange statements given to The Magnus Institute, an organization which investigates strange happenings, and follows the new archivist as he tries to make sense of it. Well written podcast, it is delightful to see all the seemingly unrelated stories connect up over time. The show is finished.
Georgie and Melanie: Introduced as friends, but a couple by S4. Georgie is mentioned offhand from S1 by Melanie, but becomes a major character with her introduction in S3, Melanie starts as a minor character but becomes more major by end of S2. Happy ending.
The Night Post: Supernatural, mystery. After his husband goes missing, Milo is conscripted to take his place as a courier. But nights delivering the mail in and around his city are filled with unexplained strangeness even the other couriers, Val and Clementine, can't anticipate, and while looking for his husband, they find far more and far stranger. Really well made, acted, written, full of more mystery and intrigue than I can hope to do justice to here. And it's very queer. Currently on hiatus.
Clementine and Magpie: Okay, Clem and Magpie aren't actually together any more, but I'm a softie for this podcast, 2/3 leads are wlw, and it's interesting seeing the results of Clem's break-up. Plus I'm pretty sure there's another romance in the works for dear Clementine.
The Pasithea Powder: Sci-fi (space), adventure, conspiracy, mystery. Two old friends, one a captain recovering the war that tore her planet apart, the other imprisoned for her involvement in the creation and subsequent destruction of a memory altering drug, are reconnected when another political prisoner involved in these events is seen walking free. Full of mystery and conspiracy.
Sophie and Jane: The two leads! Start as somewhat estranged old friends, relationship starts mid-S2.
The Penumbra Podcast (Juno Steel): Sci-fi, mystery, noir, action. Noir-style adventures of a detective on future Mars. An exciting, hilarious, and exceedingly queer podcast, it is well made and a lot of fun.
Buddy and Vespa: Major characters in S3, each leading a pair of episodes, and introduced as minor ones in S2. Notable trans party. Start as old loves and are married by S3 end. Incredibly sweet and dedicated.
The Penumbra Podcast (Second Citadel): High fantasy, adventure. The proudest knights in all the second citadel go on various quests to prove themselves and protect the kingdom. Amusing and exciting, well put together.
Sir Caroline and Quanyii: Lesbian knight and her genderfluid witch partner. Major/recurring characters, revealed to be married at the end of S2. Very fun serious and silly dynamic.
The Sheridan Tapes: Horror, mystery. In 2018, famous horror writer Anna Sheridan went missing and left behind a collection of strange tapes. Listen along as a homicide detective goes through them to try figure out what happened to her, and winds up deeper into strangeness than he could've anticipated. Really fun horror-mystery with lots of great stories and engaging twists.
Anna and Maria: Anna shares the spotlight as a lead initially, and Maria becomes a major character soon after her initial introduction. Anna is missing, so obviously not a great time for Maria, but they are such a sweet and interesting pair.
The Strange Case of Starship Iris: Violet Liu is the last surviving crew member of the Starship Iris, after the rest are killed in a shuttle explosion. After being picked up by a passing ship, she's thrown into a high-stakes adventure, and quickly has to come to terms with who she can actually trust. Fantastic show with a fun cast and delicious found family. Great music, sound-work, writing, characters, and a very clever framing device. I think it's on a brief hiatus?
Violet and Arkady: Two lead characters, one of whom is grey-ace. East and South Asian respectively, if my memory works. They hit it off in episode 1, and their romance slowly develops through S1 and becomes more solid (officially girlfriends) in S2. Really fun relation between well meaning, but complex characters.
Within the Wires (Season 1, Season 2): Alternate history, speculative fiction, relationships, bit of medical horror in S1. Each season tells a different story, S1 is a series of unsetting meditation-style tapes from a mysterious facility. S2 is a collection of audio tour tapes from a museum, made by the now missing artist's long time friend and partner. Unique and creative, cleanly made.
Claudia and Roimata: A deeply complex romance between a sapphic Māori woman and a West African mspec polyam woman. They only feature in S2, and while they are the two central characters, it has a tragic ending for one of them.
Hester and Oletta: The two central characters of S1, this is a strange relationship, but it's so clear how much Hester loves her counterpart. A happy ending.
Unwell: Supernatural, mystery. A woman moves to a small town to take care of her aging mother in a supposedly haunted house. The town itself is hardly free off odd happenings. Fantastic cast of characters, really well made, paced, highly recommended.
Marisol and Lily: Lily, a black woman, is one of the show's leads, and Marisol, a Latina woman, is a pretty major character as well. It doesn't take long for them to start dating, and they have such a fun and flirty dynamic.
This is by no means a complete list, and if I missed out any of your favourites, I encourage you to add them on!
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so you're missing a plot
over the course of my 3+ years on writeblr and some time on writing twitter, i’ve noticed that a lot of people can come up with characters and worldbuilding, but then get stuck on creating a compelling plot around those characters. so, here are a few tips that have helped me, and that i hope will help you too!
note: this will apply mostly to fantasy and sci fi, since that's what i write and what tends to have more plot-heavy storylines.
these are also all my opinions! you don’t have to listen to any of this—all of these are tips that i’ve used in my own experience, and what works for me won’t necessarily work for you.
tone
this is one of the first things you want to decide. even within the same genre, you’re going to have a lot of variety in tone and atmosphere. the kind of plot that works for a fun fantasy adventure romp might feel odd and out of place for a darker fantasy with an emphasis on political intrigue. to figure out what kind of tone works best for your wip in particular, you want to look back at your characters. writing is a massive investment of time and energy, so you want to go in a direction that’s actually interesting to you. this is the very first step, and will help you decide what direction you end up going, and will most importantly give you a hint towards what ending will best suit the story you’re trying to tell. if you go with a more lighthearted tone, then suddenly having a tragic ending won’t make any sense since it’s the equivalent of a bait-and-switch. the same applies for having a darker tone—a happily ever after where everyone lives and gets therapy won’t necessarily fit.
worldbuilding
worldbuilding is important of course, but it doesn’t need to be completely developed before you start coming up with a plot. in fact, you should try to avoid dumping all of your time into worldbuilding, and instead get the basics down before moving onto the plot. i’m sorry to say it, but you’re not tolkien. you will never be tolkien, and you don’t have to aspire to be like him either. you don’t want to write yourself into a plothole because something in your worldbuilding ends up conflicting with the story, so generally it’s good to have a little bit of wiggle room. sometimes you also run into a situation where the plot itself inspires an important piece of worldbuilding that makes the story richer and more interesting. your worldbuilding is there to enrich your plot and inform your character motivations, not the other way around. however, you do want to establish any rules your world has before getting into the plot, since breaking them can itself become a driving factor in characters and their arcs. this is especially common in fantasy, where a frequent premise lies in the fact that everybody can’t use magic while the protagonist can, or the other way around. this isn’t a plot quite yet, but it can be a good starting point.
character driven vs. plot driven
you will also need to decide the main focus of your story. character-driven writing is common in literary fiction and shorter works, and it’s focused specifically on the internal conflict within characters, as well as their thoughts and personal arcs. few external events are going to happen in character-driven stories, which tend towards more towards slice-of-life where not much really happens but you’re still invested due to the characters. plot-driven writing puts emphasis on (you guessed it!) the plot, and this is a lot more common for longer works. the two can and do certainly overlap, but most works tend to lean a bit more one way or the other, and you can determine this by asking whether you’re more interested in the characters as people or in what happens to them.
motivation
so now that you have an idea of the direction you want to go, how do you actually come up with your plot? no matter if your story is character driven or plot driven, you still need compelling characters, and one way to find your plot is to look at their motivations. every one of your characters should have something they want to achieve or to obtain. your character’s want is going to be their main driving motivation. something is wrong in their life—if it wasn’t, then you wouldn’t be writing this story—and they think that obtaining what they want will fix it. this can be a macguffin-style quest for an object/place/person, the desire to climb the social ladder, solving the mystery behind a disappearance, etc. at this point, i would recommend taking a look at media with similar character motivations to yours and dissecting them to see what works and what doesn’t. you want to be genre-savvy and know what tropes are common to the type of story you’re telling.
gay is not a plot
repeat after me. gay is not a plot. gay is not a plot. gay is not a plot. there should be something to your wip’s plot other than “they’re gay, what more do you need?” (see this post). a romance isn’t going to be interesting if the characters aren’t interesting on their own, and that requires them to actually have their own motivations which (see motivation) themselves create the basis for a plot! in that same vein, having representation shouldn’t function as your plot or your primary selling point. representation should be a given, and making that the only descriptor for your work essentially boils down your characters to just their marginalization.
retellings
i know retellings of fairytales, myths, and shakespeare’s plays have gotten really popular, especially as of late. retellings are a great starting point since they already give you a base off which to work with, and instead of having to come up with all of your concepts from scratch, it becomes a question of putting your own spin on them. these tend to require some knowledge of the genre and common tropes, which you should have regardless of whether you’re writing a retelling or not. here, instead of having characters and a world first and a plot second, you’re working backwards from an existing work to reinterpret the characters and world surrounding a common plot. the important thing to note is that just because you have a starting point doesn’t mean that your work is done—i’d recommend researching other variations of the story you’re retelling and cataloguing similarities and differences, what works and what doesn’t, and moving things around/restructuring them depending on the changes you yourself want to make in your retelling.
prompts
i actually wouldn’t recommend relying on generators and prompt lists for your plots, since they tend to be extremely vague and difficult to get invested in, since you weren’t the one to come up with them. prompts can be really good for sparking inspiration, though, and once you get an idea for a few scenes, you can build off of them to figure out what circumstances lead to each one and what the pivot points are. prompts are a useful tool, but shouldn’t be used as the basis for your entire story.
final thoughts
if you’re here that means you’ve made it to the end of this behemoth of a post, and hopefully something here was helpful! at this point you should be able to find a premise, but it’s important to note that a premise is not a plot. here is where the real work begins—interweaving your characters and worldbuilding with your storyline, figuring out if there are any holes in your cast or if there are a few darlings you need to cryogenically freeze for now. you don’t need to fill in all of your plotholes; that’s a problem for when you actually have a draft down and more material to work with. for now, focus on creating a storyline that’s interesting to you. most importantly, don’t try to force it. you don’t want to treat a plot as a trope checklist, but instead let it come naturally so it actually fits the story your characters are made to tell.
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optics.
Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader
a joyful future fic
a/n: this was so much fun. as always, let me know what you think. especially if you’re on the tag list, reblogs and comments go a long way in making content creators feel loved and keeps us going!
words: 1.05k
warnings: language, innuendo, suburban drama
summary: “o, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / it is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock / the meat it feeds on.” ― william shakespeare, othello. au!september 2012
masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | ajf faq | taglist | what do you want to see next?
You keep your eyes on Jack as he sprints from one end of the soccer pitch to the other, ignoring the other eyes on the sidelines. You refused to buy into the whole “soccer mom” stereotype about the other parents on Jack’s team, but that will broke fast.
“You’re the coach’s girlfriend, right?” One of the moms, a tall, statuesque blond around Aaron’s age, approaches you from the side.
You shift your gaze to Aaron, rocking from one side to the other, bent over with his hands on his knees, watching and calling out to the boys on the field. A little smile crosses your face. “Yeah.”
“Oh. Great. That’s great.” She sounds… almost excited, and you squint at her.
Before you can say anything, she walks away.
Weird.
While you watch, a couple of the moms approach Aaron, one after the other, including the woman who spoke to you. You pick up the happenings quickly after that, realizing they’re all trying to sus you out as their competition.
Un-fucking-believable.
He hardly spares them a passing glance, but you can’t kick the burning metal taste in the back of your mouth.
You can’t hear what they say, but the whispers and the stares are enough for you as it is.
Jack’s team, of course, wins the game, but you’re more than a little subdued as the three of you get back into the car.
Aaron reaches across the console and slips his fingers between yours. “You okay?”
“Mhm.” You glance over at him. “Yep.”
He spends another second looking at you, a peculiar little frown on his face. There’s a moment where you’re sure he’s going to say something, but Jack interrupts you with a McDonalds request.
You take the opportunity and turn around, tweaking his cap. “Only if I get to steal your fries.”
One side of his mouth lifts. “Deal.”
+++
Later in the afternoon, Aaron corners you in the kitchen while Jack plays his video game in the living room. It’s like that kid is made of energy and attention.
“What’s going on with you today?” He leans against the counter, crossing his arms.
You slice apples with care, preparing them for Jack when he comes back in -
You check the clock.
- eight minutes.
“I’m fine, Aaron.”
“No.” He shakes his head and pushes off the fake granite. “Not buyin’ it.” Crossing the kitchen, he drags his fingers along your hip before settling behind you. “Wanna tell me?”
You sigh and put down the paring knife, setting it beside the plate.
Aaron, in a move that almost makes you laugh, moves it out of arm’s length without a word.
“It’s stupid.”
You can feel him shake his head. “Your feelings aren’t stupid.”
“It’s just -” You cut yourself off with a huff, heat rising in your cheeks as you realize what you’re about to articulate. “The women. It’s the women - the moms - on the soccer team.”
Aaron lets you go and rests his backside on the counter beside you, his arms crossed. “Did somebody say something to you?”
With that tone, you almost wish someone tried you today. He’s in full-protection mode. It’s cute.
“No, no.” You chew on your lower lip for a second. “It’s - They. Ugh.” You drop your head. “I know they’re all just gaming for a shot at you and it really - It really pisses me off, actually.”
He’s quiet, knowing there’s more to your rant.
“I mean, one of them came up to me and asked me if I was your girlfriend and she looked so pleased when I said yes and I’m sitting here with a proverbial fucking egg on my face with nothing to say and no ground to stand on because the optics are terrible -”
“Whoa.” Aaron stops you. “Optics?”
You scoff. “Oh come on. Me, maybe thirty. You - Well. You. And Jack. And I’m sure they all know we work together. And I look like the fucking flavor of the week come in to steal the hottest fucking commodity in the league -”
Aaron’s forehead crinkles and he takes you by the hands, gently tugging you in front of him. “Slow down. Take a breath.”
You take exactly one breath, in and out sharp through your nose.
“Good.” His brown eyes scour your face for a moment before returning to meet your flinty gaze. “I have a couple of questions.” He dips at his knees and pulls you forward by the belt loops, a dimple threatening at his cheek. “May I approach the bench?”
The heat in your chest cools just a touch, and you offer him a wry smile. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Have you ever known me to talk about work at all with people I don’t know?”
You shake your head.
“Have you ever known me to have a ‘flavor of the month’ hanging off my arm?”
You shake your head.
“Have you ever known me to respond to any comments regarding my age or yours, even and especially when it arises in critique?”
You shake your head.
“Have you ever known me to look at anyone - ever - that isn’t you?”
You shake your head. “I told you it was stupid.”
He laughs and pulls you into his chest, wrapping his arms around your shoulders. “I love you so much, you know that?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Aaron kisses the side of your head. “Good.”
He leans back to look at you, the back of his fingers brushing against your cheekbone. “And no forty-something, suburban soccer mom could ever be as interesting, as fun, or have as much integrity…” He pokes the center of your chest, soft and playful. “...As you.”
That makes you smile, and you turn back toward the plate, throwing some carrots next to the apples. “Fuck off, Hotch. You’re getting corny in your old age.”
“Corny? I could swear you said something else…” He places his hands on your waist and presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to your neck. “But maybe I was mistaken.”
“Maybe I did. With your hearing, you may never know.”
+++
tagging: @avengersbau @ambicaos @angelsbabey @arganfics @averyhotchner @bwbatta @capricorngf @cevanswhre @crazyshannonigans @criminalsmarts @deagibs @forgottenword @genevievedarcygranger @hotchsflower @hotchslatte @hurricanejjareau @joanofarkansass @kelstark @prentisswrites @little-blue-fishie @lotties-journey-abroad @mandylove1000 @missdowntonabbey @mrs-dr-reid @pan-pride-12 @popped-weasels @quillvine @qvid-pro-qvo @reidingmelodies @reids-mismatchedsocks @roses-and-grasses @shesbiochem4 @ssahotchnerr @ssaic-jareau @ssareidbby @starsandasteroids @stxrrywildflower @sunflowersandotherthings @sunshine-em @teamhappyme @this-broken-band-girl @ughitsbaby @unicorn-bitch @venusbarnes @violet-amxthyst @word-scribbless @writefasttalkevenfaster @zizzlekwum @iconicc @avatarkorraswife @mooneylupinblack @ssworldofsw @nuvoleincielo @kaemarie23 @violentvulgarvolatile @abschaffer2 @ellyhotchner @rousethemouse @baumarvel @reidtomestyles @dreamsonthewall @jhiddles03 @willlemonheadsupremacy @infinity1321 @messyhairday-me @itsalwaysb33nyou @finnologys @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @hothothotchner @happyvol7 @ssa-holmes @mac99martin @ssahotchner99 @triangularroses @vagabond-ing
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Books Bring People Together
Summary: A frustrated and stuck Kaminari comes to you for help, and it somehow blooms into something else along the way.
TW: I made Kaminari ADHD, so I'm sorry if there's anything wrong, I went off what my ADHD friends do and what a medical site told me. I myself am not ADHD, so again, I apologize if there's anything wrong with this. Small swears, and Mineta, which should be a warning in and of itself.
A/N: I have had this half-baked idea stuck in my head for months and I wanted it out, so I am giving you all this!
"Hey, um, (Y/L/N), can I ask you something?" Kaminari asked, sliding into the chair across from you at the common room table.
"Sure, what's up?" you asked, setting your pencil down on the paragraph you were reading.
"Um, this is kind of embarrassing," Kaminari admitted. "But, um, I'm having a really hard time with English right now, and I know that you're right behind Bakugou in grades."
"Where are you going with this Kaminari?" you asked, crossing your arms in front of your chest.
You had heard things about Kaminari, and after meeting Mineta and knowing that Kaminari hung around with him, you didn't have the best impression of him. You had just been placed in Class 2-A, and so far you had mostly hung around with what the other students were calling the 'Dekusquad'.
"I need someone to tutor me," he admitted. "Normally English isn't all that hard for me, but Shakespeare is whack and I don't understand half of it."
"You want me," you started, "to tutor you. Why not ask Bakugou? Isn't he your friend?"
"Yeah, but . . . Bakugou has . . . harsh methods, and I need someone who won't treat me like an idiot," Kaminari confessed.
"Alright," you relented. "Why don't we get started now? Do you have anything going on?"
"No, this takes precedent," Kaminari said, rushing to grab his things.
"Alright, here's my question for you," you said when he propped his book open. "Why don't you understand?" You saw the look on his face change and you winced. "Sorry, sometimes I have a hard time controlling the tone of my voice. Let me rephrase that question." You paused for a moment, thinking of the right words before you said, "What about this don't you understand? What's the one thing about this that trips you up?"
"The formatting for one thing," Kaminari grumbled. "Why the hell is printed like that?"
You chuckled, brushing hair out of your face. You had thought the same thing the first time you had read Shakespeare.
"Alright, how about you just read, and then you can ask me any questions while I work on my own stuff, alright?"
"That sounds like it might work," he admitted.
"If that doesn't work, feel free to let me know," you told him. "This is about what helps you remember the material better."
"No, like I said, normally this is really easy for me," Kaminari said. "Let's try it."
"Alright, and remember, if you have any questions, I'm right here."
"Thanks (Y/L/N)," he mumbled.
"Of course, I wouldn't be much of a hero if I couldn't help people, right?" you mused, smiling at him.
"R-Right!" he chirped, grinning back at you.
You both worked in silence for a little bit before Kaminari leaned back in his chair, rubbing at him eyes.
"You okay?" you asked.
"Yeah, sorry, I'm ADHD, so sitting still and trying to read this is a little hard," he confessed. "And I might be dyslexic, I've never been tested but sometimes reading is hard for me."
You frowned, biting the inside of your lip, running the situation through your head.
"What if I read it to you?" you asked, looking up from your chemistry homework.
"How? It's a play," Kaminari said.
"I used to be in a drama club in middle school," you told him. "It's set up like a script, or if we don't have the energy to act it out, it's not hard to pretend that it's a regular story."
Kaminari stared at you for a moment before he nodded.
"Yeah, yeah I think that might work a little bit better than me staring at the same paragraph for fifteen minutes without actually reading anything."
"What part are you on?" you asked Kaminari, moving to glance over his shoulder at the page.
"Portia is trying to convince Brutus to tell her what's going on in her house. I think."
"Oh, I adore this part," you muttered, mostly to yourself. "Alright, what has you stuck?"
"This part. 'I grant I am a woman; but withal A woman well-reputed,
Cato's daughter. Think you I am no stronger than my sex, Being so father'd and so husbanded? Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose 'em: I have made strong proof of my constancy, Giving myself a voluntary wound Here, in the thigh: can I bear that with patience.
And not my husband's secrets?' I don't entirely understand what she's saying."
Wow, English must've been his thing, he didn't mess up a single word, and he was able to read it fairly fluently, everything considered. It might have taken him a little longer than normal, but he had nailed it.
"Okay, so she's basically telling Brutus that she won't tell his secrets if he tells her what's going on, it doesn't matter if she's a woman or not."
"What was with the voluntary wound thing?"
"So, it depends. Sometimes, in plays, the women playing Portia will have a fake knife and stab themselves in the thigh, other times they pretend to slice themselves, depends on the director," you told him. "She basically cut herself on the thigh and said, 'If I can handle this I can handle whatever's going on inside your head.' Do you understand?"
"Yeah, but damn, this woman is a badass," Kaminari said, staring down at the pages."
"Right? Some people read that as psychotic, but it's Shakespeare," you told him, "everything in Shakespeare is psychotic to some extent."
"That's fair. Thank you for explaining that to me," he said.
"Of course, that is why you came to me," you replied, laying a hand on his shoulder for a moment before you moved back to your seat.
Kaminari, despite the things you had heard, was actually quite intelligent, it just took him a little longer to get the answer sometimes.
"Thank you so much for helping me," Kaminari murmured. "You were super helpful."
"Of course, I actually enjoyed helping you," you told him. "And if you need any more help, please, let me know."
"I will, thank you so much (Y/L/N)," Kaminari repeated.
"Have a good night Kaminari," you told him.
"You too!" he chirped before he headed up to his room.
You sat down at the table again, staring at the chemical formula in front of you.
So, if zinc only had one charge, positive two, and it was combined with thiosulfate, that meant that there shouldn't be the need for two of the zinc atoms, they would make the charge neutral.
You wrote the answer down, checking the textbook to make sure you were right. Polyatomic ions were a little more complicated than monoatomic ions.
There were only a few more questions, and then you could go to bed too, and you just hoped that there were no trick questions.
You were the last one in the common room, as usual, despite assuring Iida that you were right behind him when he went to bed an hour ago.
"Alright (Y/F/N), time for some good sleep," you muttered, shutting your book and gathering your supplies.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You had been tutoring Kaminari for about six weeks, and he was definitely smarter than people gave him credit for. Sometimes he just needed a few minutes to think, or he needed something explained to him in a different way than everyone else.
Sero had been joining your little tutoring sessions too, and you had started doing them in Sero's room, since there were things Kaminari could mess with while he studied, and it was an environment where he didn't feel the need to prove himself.
"Hey, (Y/L/N), can you help me with this problem?" Sero asked, waving you over.
"Of course, what are we working on?" you inquired.
"Polyatomic ions, again," Sero said. "I need this extra credit."
"Alright, which one are you stuck on?"
"How do I figure out which Roman numeral goes here? Gold has multiple charges."
"You work backwards," you told him. "When you look at the formula, you need to figure out what charge dihydrogen phosphate has."
You gestured to the chemical formula.
"It has a negative one charge. Right?" Sero inquired, checking the list of common ions that the teacher had given them at the beginning of the unit.
"Right, and you have three of those ions, right?"
"Yeah, because there's a subscripted three outside the parentheses."
"So you have three of those, which means that those three together have a negative three charge."
"Right."
"So now you just have to figure out which gold variant has the right charge to cancel that one out."
"Well, there's only one gold atom, so it's gold three right?"
"Bingo, you got it."
"Oh, that makes it so much easier than what I was doing," he muttered, erasing the math he had been doing, writing down the way you had just shown him.
"(Y/L/N), can you come read through this essay for me?" Kaminari asked. "I think it's okay, but I need another eye on this."
"Sure, hand it over," you told him, taking the papers that he had handed to you.
You grabbed one of your signature blue pens and uncapped it, ready to mark anything you thought he could do better.
There wasn't as much as you were expecting. While Kaminari had a hard time interpreting things, once he understood, he was golden. He had a way with words, you noticed as you scanned through the paper he needed to hand in next class. You assumed that it gave him time to think about the right phrasing of things.
Other than a few grammatical and spelling errors, the paper was well written, and there was nothing major that needed fixing.
"Good job Kami, this is really good," you told him, ruffling his hair lightly.
He responded well to physical affection and praise, you had also noticed, and he made it easy.
Once you got past the typical shield he threw up, he was a nice guy with insecurities, just like everyone else.
He chuckled, leaning into your hand.
You noticed that the others didn't touch Kaminari as much as you did, despite having known him for much longer. They were worried about getting shocked, Sero had told you.
"Why though? He's never shocked me," you had told him.
"He can't control it sometimes, it builds up in his body and it needs an out."
"Well, that still no reason to stop touching him," you had mused. "If he shocks me he shocks me, it's really no big deal."
Kaminari had only shocked you once, during a thunderstorm when there had been a lot of lightning outside. He had gotten excited about getting a 90 on one of his tests, and had hugged you, giving you a slight shock.
He had apologized profusely, but you had waved his apologies off.
"It's okay Kaminari," you told him. "It happens to all of us sometimes."
You were finding yourself thinking about him more than you should've. You had become good friends with both him and Sero, and the other students had started coming to you when they had a question, but Kaminari was a little different.
It had started out with the flirty comments, but slowly those had turned into real compliments. He had been keeping Mineta away from you more and more, and he had even started laying off the perving with the grape rat.
He was a good guy, he really was, despite the playboy attitude. He was sweet, and he was just like every other person in the world.
"Thanks for tutoring us both," Kaminari said as the session was coming to a close.
"Yeah, you're really saving our asses," Sero agreed.
"Of course, come to me any time," you told them both, smiling as you made to head back to your own room.
"Hey, um, (Y/L/N), can I ask you something?" Kaminari asked.
"Sure. You know how much I love questions," you teased, smiling at him. Then you noticed his expression. "Kami?"
"Will . . . will you-" he chuckled awkwardly, messing with the seam of his pant leg. "Can you read something to me?"
"Yeah, of course," you said. "What is it?"
He handed you the book, and you smiled.
"My dad used to read this to me when I was little. I think that's why I love books so much," you admitted. "That was before . . . well, it doesn't matter now. Come on, we can head down to the common room if you want. Or your room, it doesn't really matter to me."
You had visited Kaminari's room on more than one occasion to return things to him, he tended to be a little forgetful, and he had often left things with you.
Despite the fact that everything you had learned about society told you that you should avoid being alone in a room with a boy, you trusted Kaminari enough to be alone in a room with him.
"I really like to read too," he confessed. "But sometimes my brain doesn't like to let me do it."
"I understand, it's okay," you told him, touching his arm lightly. "Are you sure that you'll be able to sit still long enough for me to get through any of it?"
Kaminari, after spending so much time with you over the last few weeks, had figured out how your voice worked, and he rarely got offended by your tone of voice anymore, which you were thankful for.
"Yeah, I like the sound of your voice, it helps calm me down. I think I might pay attention more if you read it to me."
"Alright, sure, let's go," you said, holding the book to your chest.
You knew this book like the back of your hand, and you had a feeling that Kaminari was telling the truth when he said he would be able to pay attention.
Kaminari followed you into the common room of the dorms, trailing just slightly behind, but he was in front of you the moment Mineta tried to get to you.
It amazed you how fast he could move sometimes, when he really wanted to.
"Get lost Mineta," you said. "I have nothing to say to you."
Mineta opened his mouth but a raised brow from Kaminari had him shutting it and heading to his own room so he could think his pervy thoughts in peace.
"I can't believe I was ever friends with that perv," Kaminari whispered. "I think I owe a lot of the girls apologies."
Kaminari glanced over his shoulder, and you smiled at him, linking your hands together.
You were proud of him, he had really grown lately, and you were glad that he was seeing how uncomfortable he had made the girls.
"I'm proud of you," you told him, and he beamed.
He responded well to praise, and being told that he had done a good job.
"Come on, we'll have to go to bed soon if we don't want Iida to lecture us again," you said, sitting down on one of the couches.
Kaminari sat down next to you, leaning his head on your shoulder as your propped the book open.
You didn't mind the fact that Kaminari was a little clingy, the contact was nice, and he always radiated warmth, though whether that was his normal body temperature or he ran hot because of his quirk, you didn't know.
You started the book off, barely having to look at the words as you read, changing your voice as necessary, stopping every once in a while to explain a word to Kaminari that he didn't understand, or to answer a question that he had.
It was nice, spending time with him like this, simply because he wanted to, not because he was going to fail a subject.
Somehow he had ended up with his head on your thighs, and you had one hand buried in his hair, brushing it away from his face, your fingers carding through it softly.
He was making a content noise in the back of his throat, and you smiled down at him, finishing up a chapter.
"Do you want to go to bed?" you asked softly, not wanting to disturb him too much, he had enough trouble sleeping as it was.
He hummed softly, leaning into your hands, and you smiled down at him softly.
You had never been one for crushes, they had seemed pointless, and there had never been a person who had caught your attention like this.
You had thought about it, of course, what it would be like to be in a relationship, but you had never thought that you would have to worry about it.
Well now you were worrying about it.
That nameless, faceless person that had been with you in those daydreams was starting to look frighteningly like Kaminari.
You had panicked when it had first started happening, until you realized that it would probably fade. You had had a friend in middle school who had a new crush every week, and you had assumed that it would fade with time.
It hadn't. That uneasiness that had popped up around him slowly melted into a nice warmth whenever he was close. You had started to stop worrying about whether he would like this, or hate that, and had started to show your true colors.
He had seemed to like you even more when you had started doing that, and you were glad.
But the only bad thing was that now you were noticing other things. His hands lingered a little longer than necessary when he helped you during training, his smile always seemed brighter when you made him laugh. His eyes always seemed to follow you around the common room, and he sometimes appeared at your side when you walked in.
You weren't sure if you just overthinking things or if he might like you back.
But this wasn't a simple crush anymore. You weren't sure what it was. It was a little too early to be love (even though it was just a rush of chemicals in the brain meant for human survival), but it was way past a simple crush.
Was there another step between a crush and love? Was this going to end with your heart breaking? Was there even a chance that he might like you back?
These were things that you kept in the back of your mind until you were alone in your room. Worrying about them in his presence made him worry about you, and you didn't want him to worry about you if he didn't need to.
"Kami, seriously, you need to go to bed."
"If I do, so do you," he told you, making you chuckle.
"I'll go to bed if you will. You are in my lap after all," you teased, pulling your hands away.
"That's fair," he murmured, stifling a yawn.
"Go to bed Kami," you whispered, standing up as soon as your legs were free.
They had fallen asleep a while ago, but you hadn't had the heart to move him.
"Alright," he mumbled, stumbling towards his dorm room.
You smiled softly, heading for yours.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You weren't sure what woke you up hours later. Maybe it was the three glasses of water you had drank before bed, or maybe it was the fact that your brain hated you almost as much as Kaminari's hated him.
You stretched, pulling a hoodie on over the tank top and shorts that you had gone to bed in, heading for the common room.
You weren't going back to bed any time soon, so you might as well get some studying done with a nice cup of tea or something.
You were almost surprised to see Kaminari sitting at the common room table with his books out.
"Denki? What are you doing?" you mumbled, wandering over.
"(Y/L/N)? What are you doing up?"
"I could ask you the same thing," you murmured, plopping into the seat next to him.
"Couldn't sleep, my brain went into overdrive the minute I tried to fall asleep."
"I at least got a good four or five hours in," you replied. "But it's Friday night, I should be sleeping in."
"What woke you up?" he asked, laying a hand on your thigh.
Kaminari, you had noticed, liked having his hands on you.
Not in the perverted way you had expected though. He liked having a hand on your thigh or on the small of your back. He liked an arm around your shoulders or his arm linked with yours when you all took class outings. He liked being close to you.
"No idea. It might've been a nightmare," you admitted. "I remember faint flashes, but it might've been something else."
"Are you going to be able to go back to bed?"
"Nah, I'll be up for a good while," you told him, leaning into his shoulder.
"Anything I can do to help?" he asked.
"Can you just . . . talk to me?" you inquired. "I like listening to you talk about things. Calms me down."
"What do you want to know about?"
"Anything. Everything. You."
"Did you know that I have a cat named Marshmellow?"
"What? No," you said, perking up a little bit. You had always been an animal person.
"Yeah. He's the spawn of the devil, but I didn't know that when I named him. All white, pretty blue eyes. Pure fucking evil," Kaminari told you, taking his phone out to show you a photo.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah, he absolutely despises me," Kaminari said, handing his phone over to you. "Loves my sister though, so he isn't a complete psychopath."
"He's a cat, can animals even be psychopaths?" you asked, moving your seat closer to his.
"No idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if he is," Kaminari said, chuckling.
"You're right, he is pretty," you murmured, flipping through the photos quickly.
Kaminari hummed, but when you glanced up he was looking at you.
He had that look on his face, the look that he sometimes got when he looked at you. It was one of the reasons you wondered if he liked you or not. He looked like he was in pain when gave you that look.
"Denki?" you inquired softly.
"Hmm?"
"Why are you looking at me like that? Like you're in pain? Like you're hurt?" you asked.
You didn't like the way your voice sounded. That little hint of insecurity snuck in, your voice had that clogged sound it got when you tried not to cry.
You weren't sure whether you could handle his response to that, but you needed to know if being around you caused him pain. You needed to know if there was any chance that he hated being in your presence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Kaminari's POV)
Pain, huh?
Yeah, this was definitely pain, seeing her like this, swaddled in a hoodie he had left in her room accidently a week ago, covering her shorts, making her legs look a mile long.
He had tried to ignore it, tried to ignore the feeling in his chest every time he looked at her, tried to ignore the blatant male pride that came with seeing her draped in his hoodie, but he was only human after all.
Denki, after spending so much time with a girl that didn't tend to pull her punches, he knew how uncomfortable he had made the girls with all of his comments. He now knew how it made them feel when he said some of the things he had.
Denki never wanted her or any of the other girls to feel like that again, and he wanted to ignore some of the things that were running through his head, but she was making it hard when she looked at him like that, when she said his name the way that she just had.
"Denks?" she asked softly, moving to get a better look at his face.
Denki had never had a crush, not a real one anyway. He had had his eyes on Jirou first year, but that had been fleeting.
He was flirty, it was just his nature, but this feeling whenever he looked at her . . . that was completely new on him.
"Denki, are you okay?" she asked, putting her hands on his face lightly, making him look at her.
"Do you have any idea what you do to me?" Denki asked, placing his hands over hers. "I wasn't sure whether you felt the same way and I didn't want to mess anything up."
"Denki? What are you saying?" she asked, eyes bright with hope as she looked at him, running her thumb over his cheek softly, almost absentmindedly.
"I like you, (Y/F/N), I like you a lot, and this isn't some . . . three A.M. spur of the moment confession, but . . . it kind of is. The point is that you're smart, and all kinds of gorgeous, and there's so many things about you I wish I could list, but words aren't my thing, and I know that I'm rambling, but I really can't stop 'cause I'm terrified of what your response is gonna be and I don't want to fuck anything up and-"
"Denki," she cut in, smiling at him the way she did when she was fondly exasperated with him. "You have nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing. I like you too."
"Why?"
Even Denki was surprised by the amount of confusion in his own voice.
"Because you're a dork," she stated. "Because you're smart, even if people don't always see it right away. Because you want to be a hero, because you like to make a difference. Because in the end, you're a good guy, when you get past the playboy attitude and shitty pickup lines. Because you're cute and all kinds of soft. Because apparently I have a thing for hyperactive morons with screwed up hair."
"Rude," he muttered, but she smiled at him even wider, and he knew that it was worth it.
"Am I wrong?" she asked softly, swinging her legs around to get closer to him.
"No, but that doesn't mean that I'm happy about it," he mumbled, pouting slightly.
She gave a small giggle, something that rarely happened, and Denki smiled, wide and unburdened.
"So, what do you say about going on a date?" he asked, tucking her hair behind her ear to get a better look at his face.
"I think that's the smartest thing you've ever said to me," she teased.
Denki pouted again and she touched his nose lightly, making it crinkle in response.
"That wasn't a no," she told him, wrapping her arms around his neck softly.
"You know, this looks good on you," he whispered, touching the hem of the hoodie carefully. "And it looks very familiar."
"It does?" She pulled away to look down at it and her eyes went wide. "I didn't even know it was yours. I just threw it on on my way down here. When did you even . . . .?"
"I left in there like a week ago," Denki informed her. "I thought you had just kept it."
"I didn't know it was in there," she admitted. "But I'm not sorry that I'm in it, it's very comfortable."
"We can share custody," he murmured.
"We'll have to," she agreed. "I don't think I can deal with never wearing this again. You actually have good taste in hoodies."
"Why are you so surprised by this?" he asked.
"Because most of the time your style seems all over the place," she replied. "But that's not a bad thing. It makes you unique."
"Normal is overrated."
"A normal sleep schedule is not," she said, standing up. She grabbed his hands, pulling him to his feet. "Come on, we can chill in my room if you want to."
"You aren't nervous about having me in there?" Denki asked.
"No, because I know that if you try anything I can knock you on your ass. I also trust you," she told him, linking their fingers together softly. "Is this okay?"
"More than okay," he breathed, stepping close enough to brush their shoulders together.
He could get used to this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Your POV)
It was a rare day when you and Denki got a day off together. Being heroes was tiring, and schedules were always weird, so when you both got a day off together, you always spent them together.
"You're up early," Denki murmured, slipping in behind you from where you were sitting on the window seat of your apartment.
He wrapped his arms around your waist, burying his face in your neck.
"The baby woke me up," you said.
Said baby padded into the roof, tail high in the air, a smug look on that cute furry face as he jumped up onto the seat, curling up in your lap.
"Marshmellow, don't lay on my book," you muttered, pulling the book out.
"Told you, he's fuckin' evil," Denki murmured, kissing your shoulder lightly.
His shirt was slipping off your shoulder, and Denki treated uncovered skin like a target, regardless.
"How long have you been up?" he asked.
"Only an hour or two, and you looked so peaceful, I felt bad waking you up. I know that you've been getting more action than I have these last few weeks," you murmured, taking one of his hands, kissing his palms softly, leaning back into his warmth.
"I love you," Denki hummed.
"I love you too Denks," you told him.
"Read to me?" he requested, and you smiled.
"Always," you replied, finding your spot in your book again.
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Hi MM/Bee! I'm a recent college graduate. I always worked hard in school and I matured a lot at college, but I'm realizing how low my self-esteem is. I'm obsessing over the things I haven't done/accomplished, scholarships I never applied for, my body image, my high school days, "not being as successful as my high school class", an old crush who I never talked to (who is already super successful), and some days I feel like I messed up my life beyond repair. How do I work on self-love? Thank you!
For starters, I think it’s important for you to know that you aren’t the only person feeling this way. I get similar questions all the time, often from people who aren’t even out of their 20s yet. It isn’t even remotely true that you need to achieve wild success by age 25 or you’ve wasted your life, but I can understand why so many people feel that way.
Our culture is dangerously obsessed with productivity, youth and achievement, to the point that it is actively making all of our lives miserable. It’s not hard to understand where people get this idea that they’re failing in life if they aren’t a 20-something well-travelled millionaire - that is the message our culture throws in our faces all the time - and it’s so unbelievably untrue. We compile “top 30 under 30″ lists, celebrate incredibly young performers and entertainers, and hold up extremely high-achieving lifestyles as something that every one of us needs to be striving for, but we don’t - there is no timeline for “success”, there is no one true definition of success, and people will take wildly different paths in life to arrive at the same set of goals. What you think of as your failure is not actually your failure - it’s a cultural failure that so many of us fall victim to.
I think it’s also important to remember that you haven’t messed up your life beyond repair: you’ve barely started your life yet. Your college years are supposed to be a time of growing and maturing, and that maturation doesn’t end the moment you cross the stage - you’re going to continue to learn and change and grow throughout your lifespan. And growth means you are always going to mess some stuff up - that’s how we grow. All of us have to make mistakes in this life, and all of us have to prioritize rest sometimes; there are always going to be tests we don’t do so great on, social situations we flub, scholarships we don’t apply for, crushes we don’t confess to, deadlines we miss, relationships we let fall apart and goals we don’t achieve. Nobody speedruns life with 100% completion. And that’s okay. Those missteps and mistakes are what teach us to do better next time, or they give us the time to rest and gather energy for the next goal we want to work toward.
Of course, learning to accept yourself and let go of cultural conditioning is easier said than done. For many of us, it’s a lifelong journey, if not the overarching theme of our lives. I wish there was a simple way to achieve it. I do, however, have some tips that can help you get there:
Unplug from productivity and self-improvement culture. Going online and seeing “Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine, here’s how to maximize your quarantine time” and “here’s how I became a millionaire by age 22″ is not actually that motivating - in all likelihood, it’ll just make you feel bad about yourself. The internet is an absolute firehose of content about how you can do more, achieve more, squeeze more out of your day, and it’s completely overwhelming; honestly, most of us feel better when we stop pointing that firehose straight at our own face. It’s easier to believe that you are enough when you stop consuming content that tells you that you aren’t. Self-improvement culture looks positive on the surface, but we aren’t actually making ourselves better people by obsessing over our work and productivity - we’re just making ourselves miserable.
Ask yourself “who benefits from making me feel bad about myself?” It’s not a coincidence that we’ve built a culture obsessed with youth and productivity - that culture is making a lot of people very, very rich. Whenever you can be convinced that you aren’t thin enough, not pretty enough, not good enough, you can be convinced to run out and buy things that might fix the problem. That’s how we ended up with a $10 billion dollar self-improvement industry and a $532 billion dollar beauty industry. Content people are harder to sell to. Of course, knowing that people are profiting off your insecurities doesn’t magically make the insecurities go away - but it’s important to start thinking critically and asking yourself “where do my insecurities come from? Is there really something wrong with me, or is someone profiting from making people like me feel this way?”
Do things that make you happy, just for the sake of doing them. Paint a picture. Plant a garden. Learn to play the mandolin. Read cheesy romance novels. Find some things that you enjoy doing just for you - things that you don’t need to maximize, monetize or optimize. You don’t even need to be good at them. If you enjoy doing it, have at it. So many of us are encouraged to suck the joy out of our hobbies by turning them into a “side hustle” or another regimented form of self-improvement. Find some activities that just make your life better and do them, just for the sake of doing them.
Examine the role of social media in your life. Most of us don’t post a complete, unedited view of our lives on social media - we just post the highlights and keep the tough stuff - the rejections, the times we got ghosted, the bad hair days - to ourselves. And even if you know that cognitively, it still sucks to log onto social media when you’re having a “blah” week and find yourself bombarded with other people’s engagement announcements, med school acceptances, wedding pictures and photos of the new homes people just bought. Social media forces you to compare your “average” to everyone else’s “best”, all the time. And the numbers don’t help - social media lets you do an exact comparison of how many followers and likes you have compared to someone else, and seeing someone get more positive feedback than you can sting. Working on self-love means taking a hard look at the impact social media is having on your self-esteem. How much of your time do you spend on social media? How do you feel after you use social media? Are you following accounts that make you feel better about yourself, or worse? Do you ever feel bad about the number of likes or followers you have? Do you feel like your time on social media is wasted? Do you follow accounts that make you feel better about yourself, or worse? Stepping away from social media for your mental health is an important move for some people - you can still be happy for your friends and loved ones while acknowledging that it’s not good for you to have their achievements broadcast to you 24/7.
Surround yourself with good, supportive people. If you find that your circle of friends tends to diminish each other’s achievements, be overly critical of each other or go out of their way to one-up each other, that’s probably not a circle of friends that’s going to be good for you in the long run. Find people who are genuinely happy for you, and make you feel supported and loved for who you are. If that means you need to branch out of your current social circles, that’s okay - you can find great friends in surprising places, and it’s worth the initial awkwardness of getting to know a new person.
Challenge your definition of “success”. Success does not have to look like a high-paying job and a giant house and expensive cars and 2.5 honour roll children. It certainly can look that way, if you feel that those are meaningful goals for you, but it doesn’t have to look that way. A doctor is not necessarily “more successful” than a poet, and a lawyer is not necessarily “more successful” than a stay-at-home parent. The only person who gets to define what a “successful” life looks like is you. It takes time to unlearn the social conditioning that “money and prestige = success”, but it can be done. Success looks different for all of us.
Set goals that are personally meaningful to you. It’s important for all of us to think critically about what we want, and it’s even more important to think critically about why we want it. Do we want that degree program or that accomplishment or that job because it aligns with our interests? To impress others? To prove someone wrong? Or because we feel like we’re supposed to want it? Try to focus your energy on the goals that you want, that are personally meaningful to you. If that’s law school, great. If that’s selling homemade jam at the farmer’s market, that is equally great.
Remember that success does not have a deadline. I know this is very hard to believe in your early twenties, but your dreams do not shrivel up and blow away the day you turn 30. Life doesn’t end when your 20s are over. You haven’t missed your shot, and you don’t have to figure everything out right now. Growth and achievement are lifelong journeys - people find their dream jobs, accomplish their goals, finish degrees and meet the love of their life in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. The best book I read this year was “Where the Crawdads Sing” a novel that spent 32 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It also happened to be the author’s first novel, and it came out when she was sixty-nine years old. Your dreams do not have an expiration date.
Capture the joy and positivity in your life. I think one of the most important ways to feel better about your life is to spend more time focusing on all the good things in your life, rather than focusing on all the ways you could be better. Rather than fixating on whether you could have applied for more scholarships or turned that B+ into an A-, spend more time reflecting on the happy memories you have of your time in college. Again, this isn’t something that will happen overnight - it’s a learned skill that you need to consciously work on. Interrupt yourself when you are starting to fixate on things you could have done better, and make yourself list out three things you enjoyed about college. Connect with old college friends you haven’t heard from in a while. Try to take more notice of good things in your life as they happen to you - take more pictures, keep a journal, make collages, start a scrapbook, keep a box of momentos. You don’t need to have a perfect life to be happy; it’s okay to work on being happy with the life you have.
Best of luck to you!
MM
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Consolation
Title: Consolation
Summary: Takes place after “Putting Others First”, in which Roman sinks into his room and doesn’t leave for a while. Logan is the only one not preoccupied enough to come and lure him out, but in this he has to face emotions he’s been putting on the backburner for a long time.
Pairings: Romantic Logince, background platonic Moxiety
Warnings: Crying, self-doubt, insecurity, negative thinking
Rating: General Audiences
Genres: Fluff, Hurt/comfort (with a happy ending)
Word count: 2,500
A/N: Here we are, at last! I had cranked out the last couple paragraphs of this fic just an hour ago, and I’m very excited. This had gone from a little Logince comfort drabble to a fic of 2,500 words (exactly, though I didn’t do that on purpose). I hope anyone who sees this enjoys it, and everyone who’s been waiting for it likes it even more, after all this suspense. Taglist will be at the end, under the cut.
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Logan was at a loss. The aftermath of Janus’ name reveal left all the sides shaken and fragile. Especially Roman. Logan wanted to help, he wanted to be able to tell Roman with certainty that he will be okay, that everything will be alright. Logan needed to be able to look Roman in the eyes and know that the words that came out of his mouth are truths.
But he can’t. So, Logan focused on the problems he could solve. He endeavoured to keep Thomas in working order, though on the inside he may be struggling. Virgil seemed to have taken a backseat, focused on watching over Patton. The most he’d seen of the anxious side was weekly updates and reports on Patton’s condition, how he was feeling, which Logan appreciated greatly. He needed all the positive data he could get.
As the logical side, Logan was somewhat attuned with the other sides’ reasoning and thought process. He needed this information to be accurate in order to know how Thomas works, how he functions. He knew how the other sides try to solve problems, how they understand things. When something or someone throws a wrench in the system it’s one of the few things that affected Logan physically.
In the aftermath after Roman sank out Logan had migraines for weeks. Roman’s flawed logic- his flawed perception of himself- is the one thing that has caused Logan the most physical pain. Roman’s view of himself shifted so drastically to the negative end that Logan felt… sorry? For him?
He felt… he- he felt. Roman made him feel. What did he feel, exactly? Empathy? It was true that Roman’s emotional pain gave Logan physical pain, but the shared anguish went further than that. Logan knew what it’s like to feel wrong, to feel unheard. He related to Roman. He knew what he’s going through.
Their opinions may differ, but Roman still needed consolation. Logan won’t further his belief that Janus is the villain, but Roman doesn’t need a scolding or a lecture, skewed though his viewpoint of Janus may be. He needed someone to listen to him, someone to comfort him.
Logan was aware that he’s no optimal candidate for the matter, not the first choice for consolation (nor the second). He does not possess the endless cuddles and comfort food of Patton, nor does he have the quiet understanding and listening ears of Virgil. His only way of reassuring the prince is through data, probabilities, and chances. Inadequate. Unsatisfactory. Definitely not enough.
Logan made a plan. A plan to make Roman feel better. A plan to get Roman to open his door, something he hadn’t done in two weeks. He gathered things he believed he would need in order to cheer Roman up: the Sherlock screenplay Roman had gifted him at Christmastime, Logan’s book of Shakespeare’s plays (Hamlet being pre-marked with a red sticky-note, in case Roman is feeling increasingly dramatic and macabre), his journal for note-taking, vocab cards, and his laptop- which has a playlist compilation full of ‘cute’ animal videos at the ready. All of this was needed for Logan to get up the courage to knock on Roman’s door. He felt as if he’s putting on an armour of sorts. Preparing himself for battle.
It’s quite funny- the logical side needs bravery and courage to step outside his area of expertise and comfort the prince of the group.
May 17th, 2020. 1830 hours. Attempt #1: Prologue.
Roman has not left his corner of the mindscape for 16 days, 6 hours, and 28 minutes. Virgil has just given an update on Patton’s condition, which is thus: Patton’s “room” has slightly lessened in its intensity of upsetting emotions. The picture frames’ rate of showing unfavourable memories has decreased. Patton has not cried yet today. The Dark Sides, Remus and Janus, seem to be keeping on the “down-low”. Thomas has not had any intrusive dreams in many days. Virgil has been too preoccupied in keeping tabs on Patton to give him anxiety over much.
Thomas’ motivation has gone down. His restlessness has gone up. Roman’s unconscious contributions to Thomas’ everyday life have gone down significantly. Thomas has stopped daydreaming. He has stopped thinking about the future, what he has to do tomorrow. He is becoming forgetful and apathetic.
As the logical side, there is only so much I can do to keep Thomas in working order without help from the others, that much I can admit. I have put off trying to help Roman in case things only become worse, but the stakes are too high at this point. Action must be taken. I will record the results of this 1st attempt later.
Logan steeled himself, books tucked under his arm. He took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
Around nine at night, he wrote down the results. Roman had been unresponsive to polite requests for entry, knocking, attempts to start a conversation, small-talk, even a referencing desire to build a snowman. He had not responded to propositions of reading from plays or poetry, or any of his favourite literature. In summary, it was almost like speaking to a “brick-wall” (almost, because the door to Roman’s room was made of mahogany).
“Really? Things must be bad,” was Virgil’s response as Logan recounted the events to him later that evening. It was late, almost time for Logan to get some shut-eye after organizing Thomas’ duties for tomorrow. Logan had entered the kitchen hoping that Thomas would get a good night’s sleep so he could have the highest level of productivity the next day, but judging by the Monster Energy drink resting in Virgil’s hands he supposed that was not the case.
“It is certainly concerning. I tried… if not everything, at least a substantial amount of options.”
“Yeah, and if Roman doesn’t answer to a Disney reference… I’m worried about him. Do you want... me to try?” he said, fidgeting. Logan realized he looked uncomfortable with the idea. Virgil must felt a little guilty for not showing up at all during the argument.
“No, I believe that more attempts should be made. To wear him down, in a way. I’m planning to try again tomorrow.”
“Same Bat Time, same Bat Place?”
“An interesting way of putting it, but that’s the idea.” Logan rubbed his eyes and began making a list of all his tasks once he returned to his room.
“Alright. I’m gonna go see Thomas.” Virgil said, getting ready to sink out.
“I assumed you were. And Virgil?”
He popped back up. “Yeah?”
“Please at least try to motivate him a bit, if through fear? I don’t want to deal with a gloomy, unproductive Thomas tomorrow.”
“You got it. I won’t screw him up too much. ‘Night, Lo.”
“Good-night, Virgil.” He was alone.
“Roman?” Logan knocked once more. “Roman, would you be open to company? I wish to speak with you.”
Nothing. He sighed, pushing his journal farther into his pants pocket. He decided to come with substantially less things this time around. To come as he is.
“I’m not entertaining visitors or guests at the present. Please come back another time, thank you,” came a weak and muffled response.
The sound of Roman’s voice gave Logan an ache in his heart which he didn’t want to name. He ignored it, for the moment.
“I just want to speak with you. You’ve been decidedly quiet these past few weeks. Your input, both in-person and in Thomas’ subconscious has dropped a considerable amount. As far as I am aware you have not made your presence known to me or any of the other sides in over two weeks.”
Silence was his response. Facts were getting Logan nowhere. Logan sighed, struggling with himself. Did he tell Roman what he thought in simple terms, what he was trying to say through his data? How could he bare himself to Roman’s listening ears, let himself be known?
“In all honesty, Roman, I’m- I’m…” He took a breath. “I’m worried about you.” He said this in a rush, letting it all out in one breath. Like a Band-aid, as Virgil had stated. The silence that still followed both frightened him and spurred him on.
“Roman, I- I haven’t spoken to you in weeks. I’m afraid of what will happen if you stay isolated for much longer. You’re a necessary part of Thomas’ life, for me to have things to maintain and keep in order. But more than that, more than duties of mine, I mis- I’m… finding your absence upsetting.”
Logan faintly realised his hands had begun to shake, and he clenched them.
“You… mean a lot to m- the Mindscape, to Patton, to Virgil… to everyone. No one means you harm. We need your input on discussions, and revel in your ideas and thoughts. We... miss you.”
Just gotta rip it off.
“I- I miss you, Roman.” Logan shut his eyes, forcing out the idea that he had become emotional enough to begin producing tears. Logic does not cry. “We bicker sometimes and both of us are wrong on occasion, but I would rather have arguments with you than nothing without.”
“Seeing your vibrance and excitement in brainstorming, your happiness in Disney movies and romances, watching your brilliance when creating plays and stories and… being you, I- I find myself… swept up- metaphorically, of course- in every emotion you give off when you’re around me. Seeing you productive and happy gives me more of a reason to work to the best of my ability.”
“It’s… it would be difficult for me to ever say these things in the hearing of the other sides, but… I miss the feelings you bring me when you are around. It is something greater than a job well done, Crofters, or puzzles and murder mysteries being solved.”
“The emotions I feel when you are around are something more than a simple pleasure in watching, in the aesthetical enjoyment of seeing things fall into place. When I’m with you, I feel… spurred into action.”
“Roman, I- I can’t… I can’t bear your absence any longer. I’m worried about you, but more than that, I’m worried that should you keep to yourself, I’ll never… I- I won’t…” Logan swept aside a few tears that had run down his face. His throat ached so much that he feared he wouldn’t be able to get any more words out. The words he spoke next came out in a hoarse whisper.
“Without you I’m afraid I’ll never feel anything again.”
A shuddered gasp tore itself from Logan’s throat as he took his first proper breath in a few minutes. Tears slicked their way down his face freely now. This was, Logan supposed, because such a long drought of emotion had rendered him virtually unable to control any that did overcome him.
“However,” Logan began once more after a few more minutes of silence, his voice quieter now. If anyone else had heard it, they might have said he sounded ashamed. “Should you wish to remain alone for… whatever period of time, I won’t stop you. Asking you to open your door for my sake is extremely selfish of me. I’m… I’m sorry, Roman.”
Logan took one more breath before turning around to leave. He had no idea what the effects of his speech would be, and that scared him. He was in an entirely new territory. This was an unprecedented event, with no similar experiences to compare it to. He had ‘boldly gone where no man had gone before’, so to say.
Logan was so wrapped in his own panic, for that is what it was, he almost missed the imperceptible click of Roman’s door opening as he walked away. Every muscle in Logan’s body tensed, and he prepared for angry words and scathing insults. Logan would face it, however. He turned around, and was met with a sight for some very sore eyes.
Roman held open his door an infinitesimal amount, peering through the crack. Through the small open space Logan could see the prince out of his usual outfit, the beautiful swath of his hair, and one very tearful eye. Logan opened his mouth without knowing what would come out, but the air was knocked out of him.
Roman flung the door open wide and his socked feet ate up the steps between them as he flung his arms around Logan, the force of his embrace almost tipping Logan over. An embarrassing ‘oof’ escaped him at the impact and his hands went up to grip the back of Roman’s jumper after only a second of hesitation.
Logan’s mind filled incredibly fast with all sorts of information: the scent of Roman’s hair, the warmth of his body, how Roman buried his head in Logan’s neck and the slight wetness that came from tears. The way Roman’s nose jutted into his neck, the almost imperceptible touch of Roman’s lips on his shirt collar. Logan’s body betrayed him in an audible catch of his breath as Roman clung to him harder.
“Roman, I-” Logan began in a faint whisper, but Roman only shushed him and tightened his grip, rocking them from side to side ever so slightly.
They stayed like that for Galileo knows how long when the prince peeled himself from Logan. Roman looked upon Logan with eyes so bright from unshed tears Logan would have believed there were stars in them.
“You never said anything. Not a word.”
Their conversation was as hushed as could be, the Mindscape and the world beyond it ceasing to exist and zooming in on the two of them, in this moment.
“I’m not good with words. When it comes to talking about feelings, I mean. You know this.”
“Don’t lie, Specs. That was one of the most eloquent and beautiful things I’ve ever heard.”
Logan scrambled to find a breath within him as Roman smiled up at him. For one of the few times in his life, he found himself with nothing to say.
“It was moving, and heartfelt-” Roman continued, taking Logan’s hand and stepping back, towards his room. He paused in his motions and looked at Logan once more.
“-and it was incredibly romantic.” He said softly.
“I’m- I’m glad.” came Logan’s strangled reply. Roman smiled at him again and led him into his room. There they would sit and talk for hours, and Logan would hold Roman to his chest. They would confess to things bothering them and their hopes, dreams, and fears for the future. It would grow late, and Logan would give in and begin to card his hands through Roman’s hair as the prince drifted off to sleep.
There, in the black-blue of the sky of Roman’s window, scattered with stars and the slanting rays of the moon, Logan would look down upon the prince’s sleeping head and realize, though he had first doubted his abilities, he had been enough. Enough for Roman and for himself. He had been enough.
________________________________________________________________
Taglist:
@count-woe-laf @psychedelicships
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bright lights, bright lives // javid
SMALL TOWN AU PART: One
A/N: AHHHH IT’S HERE IT’S HERE !! THE FIRST INSTALLMENT !!! AHHH !!
tag list: @angstyfangirl32 @orestes-fasted @angelslibrary @yahfancyclamwiththepurlinside @tarantulas4davey (if you’d like to be added to the list, send me an ask!)
Read On AO3!
***
The lights in the arena are blinding, casting harsh shadows on the dirt below. It’s intoxicating. The heat, the adrenaline, the anticipation- it’s addicting, captivating, and this right here, right here in this arena, is something special.
Special as he unloads the trailer. Special as he gets ready in the stalls. Special as he waits eagerly at the railing, watching his competitor make the traditional cloverleaf pattern in the dirt.
Everything moves in slow motion, and he feels his heart pound deep in his chest. He straightens his shoulders as the rider goes past him, heading to the stables again, and then, he’s moving toward the gate. And then, he takes a glance up at the crowd, taking in the faces and the excitement.
And then, the ‘go’ signal sounds through the speakers, and everything picks up the pace.
Jack Kelly is barely aware of pulling the reins and giving Dolly’s underside a gentle nudge, and then they’re off. The roar of the crowd is deafening as they go through the tight turns, the continuous loops around three barrels in the middle of the arena, and Jack is smiling- he’s smiling so wide it hurts, because this is where he belongs. Where he wants to be.
Here, under the blinding arena lights, at the best local rodeo in the state, with his favorite horse and a crowd cheering his name.
It feels like hours have passed by the time he reaches the finish line, and a loud blow horn sounds, signaling the end of his ride. Jack is panting now, watching the judges table with wide eyes, watching the timekeeper write down four little numbers- and then it’s announced.
“Jack Kelly’s time is: fourteen-point-three-two seconds.”
The crowd erupts into an uproarious applause. Jack lets out a breathless laugh as he watches his score be written on the blackboard, and covers his mouth with his hand. He hasn’t had a time that good since last summer- most of his times this year have been in the fifteen-to-seventeen second range- and knowing that they still have a long rodeo season ahead of them… It’s hard not to focus on the prospect of potential wins, but Jack gives himself a few moments to bask in the attention before coming back down to Earth.
There are still racers waiting for their turn, Jack reminds himself. You haven’t won yet. Don’t get cocky.
Regardless, Jack keeps his head held high as he drops off of Dolly and begins walking her back to his trailer. He rubs her side all the while, smiling wide. “I knew ya had it in ya, girl,” He whispers once he’s away from everyone else, and runs his hand along her back.
Jack’s quick to tie her reins to a post just behind the trailer. He drops the gate carefully, and walks up inside to check on her feed and water situation. Once he pours her some more water into the trough and adds some more hay to the feed container, he walks back out of the trailer- though he stops in his tracks when he sees someone standing next to Dolly.
A certain someone, with curled red hair, settled over her shoulders perfectly, with a black western hat seated snugly on the crown of her head. Someone wearing tight Wranglers, with a studded belt and a white button down with purple accents tucked into the jeans. Someone with dusty boots and a stare that could make even the strongest man weak in the knees.
“‘Scuse me, ma’am, I’m gonna need ya to step away from the horse,” Jack says with a smirk, leaning against the edge of the trailer. “What are you doin’ back here? Shouldn’t ya be gettin’ ready?”
Katherine makes eye contact with him, and flashes a grin. “There’s still six riders ahead of me. I just wanted to congratulate you on your race, Kelly.”
“Mhm. Sure.”
“Besides, I wanted to see what you look like before I wreck your time.”
“There she is! Atta girl,” Jack grins wide and laughs, then walks forward with open arms. “C’mere, Kath, give me a hug. I’ve missed ya, smartass.”
Katherine hurries toward Jack with a megawatt grin, squeezing him hard around the torso. “I’ve missed you too, Jack. We need to get together sometime!” Katherine huffs as she pulls away. “I’ll be around for a while, but we’re leaving again soon. I have a few races down in Texas that I'll be going to. You up for dinner at Cattleman’s this week?”
“When am I ever not up for dinner at Cattleman's?" Jack shakes his head. “I'm good any day this week.”
“Good,” Katherine smiles. She leans up and gives Jack a kiss on the cheek- an affectionate gesture. “Hey, I need to go get ready, but I'll talk to ya in a bit, okay?” She says with a smile, backing up. “I'll text you. Bye, Dolly,” Katherine gives the horse one more stroke along her side, then nods toward Jack. “Bye, Jackie.”
“Good luck out there! Give Shakespeare some love for me!” Jack calls after her while she walks away, then shakes his head with a grin as he walks toward Dolly. He unties the reins, leads her onto the trailer, and works on getting the saddle off.
Part of him wishes he had help, but… No, he has himself. He can do this. He’s been doing this since he first learned how to pull a trailer. It’s fine.
Fine, Jack remembers, as he sighs and hangs the saddle on the hook. He stays in there for a few more minutes, checking her over while humming to himself. There’s a lot left to do, and he still has to drive home, but eventually, Jack leaves Dolly safe in the trailer and goes out to walk around the booths set up outside the arena.
The rodeo is in full swing, and the energy is buzzing all around him. There are people lined up to get food at the concession stands, countless others milling from boutique booth to boutique booth, and kids playing in the dirt down under the stands. As he walks through the crowd, he hears bits and pieces of conversations- one little kid is going to be mutton busting, according to his enthusiastic comment to his buddy; a teenage girl has a crush on one of the bull riders; a mother and father plan to leave early so their children aren’t out too late.
It’s domestic. It’s a community. It’s a family that Jack is proud to be a part of.
Jack finally comes to a stop at the end of the concession stand’s line. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and squints to see the menu; it’s all typical food, like pulled pork sandwiches, loaded hot dogs, and burgers that rival even the best sit down restaurants. The sign says that the proceeds are going to a local 4H and FFA chapters, too, so… that’s better than getting something shitty at McDonald’s for a higher price, right?
Right.
Jack is still weighing his options when he hears a small voice from behind him ask, “Are you Jack Kelly?”
Blinking, Jack turns around, and he’s met with a young boy. He can’t be any older than ten, Jack notes. He has brown eyes, freckles, curly hair, and a crooked smile- he seems to be missing one of his front teeth as well. He’s wearing a cowboy hat, too; it looks a little cheap, which Jack can appreciate. He remembers how proud he was of his first one, too, even if he did get it from the dollar store.
“That’s me,” Jack responds with a smile, then tilts his head. “What’s your name?”
“My name’s Les!” The kid responds with an enthusiastic smile. “Les Jacobs! I watched you, earlier- you’re really cool!”
And, oh, if that doesn’t make Jack’s heart burst. He kneels down so he can look up at the kid- Les- while he talks. “Well, thanks! That means a lot. Y’know what?”
“What?”
“You seem pretty cool, too.”
The kid’s face lights up. His smile gets impossibly wide, and he giggles- an airy sound that makes Jack chuckle. “Really? You think so?” Jack nods, and Les bounces on his toes. “Can I get a picture with you?”
“‘Course ya can,” Jack affirms with a laugh. “Do ya got a phone?”
“I got a brother!” Les exclaims, and not even a second later, he’s gone. Jack watches him as he races through the crowd, and he grabs the hand of someone standing off to the side- a tall someone, Jack notes. A tall someone with dark hair and light skin that rivals Jack’s own dark tan. A tall someone with a piercing gaze that makes Jack take in a deep breath when they lock eyes.
He looks calm and collected, until Les starts running and pulls the older boy behind him. There’s a flash of panic on his face and, suddenly, his cold expression is gone. Instead, he seems to be scolding the boy, but he quickly calms down as they approach Jack.
“David, take a picture! Please?” Les asks, and the older boy- David, presumably- raises a brow.
“Did you ask for a picture first?” He asks, giving Les a look, and Jack steps forward.
It takes him a second to find the words, feeling a bit thrown off by the boy’s voice, but he soon nods and clears his throat. “I don’t mind if you don’t,” He says easily, and even goes as far as to put his hand on Les’ shoulder. “It’s alright. He’s a good kid.”
“He’s a menace,” David replies, though he’s grinning- until he winces when Les punches his arm. “Ow! Okay, don’t hit the one with the phone.”
“You deserved it!”
“I think that statement is incorrect,” David deadpans, then gestures for Les to get closer to Jack. “Let’s do this,” He grins, then pulls out his phone.
Jack squats down again and throws his arm over the younger boy’s shoulder. Before they take the photo, though, Jack reaches up and takes off his hat. He then hands it to Les, who looks at him with wide eyes. After nodding, Les races to put the hat on. It’s a little big and a little lopsided, but his smile is worth it.
With that, Jack looks over at the camera and shoots his best smile, as well as giving a little thumbs up. He doesn’t move until David puts the phone back in his pocket. He stands and looks down at Les, who is holding out his hat. After a split second decision, Jack says, “Keep it. It’s yours, bud.”
Les blinks, then looks down at the hat in his hands. “Wait- Really?”
“Yep,” Jack says with a grin, popping the 'p'. “Keep it! You deserve it, little guy. Like I said, you're cool."
“You’re awesome!” Les yells, jumping up and down. He then puts the hat on, looks at David, and says, “I’m gonna go show Smalls!”
With that, the boy runs off, leaving Jack in a fit of laughter. He smiles wide and shakes his head, then turns to face David. “Your brother’s sweet,” He says with a grin, taking a step forward. After a moment, he holds his hand out to shake. “Jack Kelly. It’s nice to meet ya.”
David stares at his hand for a moment, then grins and shakes it. “David Jacobs,” He replies, and bites his lip as he pulls his hand away. “Thanks for that hat. Les isn't going to shut up about that for a while," David laghs softly, and Jack does, too, giving a small shrug of his shoulders. David looks over Jack for a moment, head to toe, then clears his throat. "You, uh… You were really good out there.”
“Thank you,” Jack says with a smile, then rubs his arm. “Are you from around here? I ain’t seen ya before.”
“We just moved here,” David nods. “A few weeks ago. Uh, like… the first week of summer.”
Jack nods and clicks his tongue. “Nice, nice. I’ll make sure to remember that, Davey,” He responds nonchalantly, the nickname rolling off of his tongue. He can’t help it; giving nicknames is his thing, and it’s a thing he’s good at.
“Davey?” David repeats with a chuckle, and crosses his arm. “That was quick. Not unpleasant, though.”
“Well,” Jack starts, and looks David up and down. He’s pretty cute- for a guy, that is. Not that Jack is interested, because Jack doesn’t like guys, not like that, but… “Meetin’ you has been a very pleasant experience so far. I ain’t complaining,” Jack smirks, and shoots David a wink. He’s about to speak again until he hears a name call over the loudspeaker, and he quickly straightens up. “Shit-- Hey, I gotta go, my friend’s ‘boutta go into the ring, but-- I’ll see ya around, okay?”
David nods, and Jack gulps when he sees him smile. God, that smile… It’s nice, and Jack hopes he can see it again. “I-- Yeah! Yeah, I’ll see you around,” David responds quickly. “Uh- Good luck with the, um, scoring stuff! I hope you did well.”
“Thanks,” Jack says with a laugh, then points his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m gonna… I gotta go, but--”
“Yeah, that’s-"
“Yeah- Okay, uh-”
“Sorry, I- Bye!”
“Bye,” Jack says with a breathless little laugh, and he stands there for just a few more seconds, holding David’s gaze, before he nods and takes off running back toward the arena, all thoughts of getting food flying out of his mind. He reaches the guard rail just as the signal goes off, and even climbs onto the first rung of the railing to cheer Katherine on. She’s going fast- really fast- and Jack can see that cocky smirk on her face. She knows she’s good, and Jack is undeniably proud of her.
But, even so, he can’t help but laugh when the timekeeper calls out her official time. Fifteen seconds.
Jack: one. Katherine: zero.
This will be fun to bicker over at dinner.
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“you should lie down”
So I wrote this prompt once already with canon Spencer and the team...
...but since it was prompted a second time, I thought I would fill it with little baby boarding school Spencer!
(you can prompt me with anything from this list, or anything you want!)
things I’ve written | boarding school AU tag | my ff.net | my AO3
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Hotch frowned. Spencer’s books were spread across the library table, his backpack was propped up on a chair, and the papers were covered in his scribbled handwriting...but Spencer was nowhere to be found.
“Spencer?” he said tentatively.
“...down here.”
Hotch frowned and looked under the table. Spencer sat cross-legged in the small space, surrounded by books, his chin resting in his hand. “We didn’t see you at lunch,” he said.
Spencer drummed his fingertips against his cheek. “Wasn’t hungry.”
Hotch crouched down, frustration mounting his chest. “We’ve been worried,” he said. “No one’s seen you or heard from you in hours.” Spencer raised and lowered one shoulder in an apathetic shrug. “Morgan’s been looking for you all over campus. Penelope and JJ are worried.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been worried. After what happened we-”
He stopped. Spencer slammed a book shut and threw it down. “I can’t do it!” he said.
Hotch blinked. “Can’t do what?” he asked.
“Any of it!” Spencer burst out. “I need to write this stupid English paper and none of it makes sense!”
Hotch rocked back on his heels. “Take a deep breath,” he said. “You’re a genius, Spencer. You’ll be fine.”
“Sure, whatever,” he snapped.
“You’ve been running yourself into the ground,” Hotch said. “When’s the last time you actually got some sleep?”
“Some times when I sneeze, my eyes close,” Spencer said flatly.
Hotch sighed. “If you stop and take a break for a second, things will be easier,” he said.
“It should already be easy!” Spencer shouted, thumping his fists against his thighs. “Why is it so hard?”
“Hey, hey, calm down,” Hotch said, his voice coming out more stern than he meant. “That’s enough.” Spencer knocked a pile of books aside and scooted away from Hotch, drawing his knees up to his chest. “Cut it out! Stop having a temper tantrum.”
He didn’t notice Alex approach until she was standing next to him, the toe of her heeled mary jane tapping lightly against the floor. “Hey, Hotch?” she said. “Any reason you’re having a shouting match with a table?”
He looked up at her, fighting back the sudden surge of embarrassment. “Spencer’s...in a mood,” he said.
Alex surveyed the chaotic mess. “I didn’t even know he was here,” she said. She knelt down beside him to look under the table. “Hey. What’s going on?”
Spencer slunk down further, crossing his arms and tilting his chin to his chest. “Nothing,” he said.
Alex raised an eyebrow at Hotch. “Dad, you want to fill in here?”
“He skipped lunch and no one’s seen him all afternoon,” he explained. “We’ve been looking for him everywhere. And now he’s freaking out over an English paper, of all things.”
“Ah,” she said. “I’ve been there before. You hit that overload point, didn’t you?” Spencer shrugged. “You’re overwhelmed and the easy stuff suddenly feels really hard.”
“It should be easy,” Spencer mumbled. “I don’t know why I can’t do it.”
“You can, just not right now,” Alex said. “You should lie down. Get some rest, and something to eat, and James and I can help you with your paper tomorrow.”
“I need to do it now,” Spencer insisted.
“It’s the same one Penelope and JJ are working on, right, the Shakespeare paper?” Hotch said. “It’s not due till Monday. You have plenty of time.”
Spencer crossed his arms tighter. “I need to do it now,” he repeated, tight through his teeth, and he dropped his head forward, refusing to look at them.
“Spencer, this is childish,” Hotch said. “You need to calm down and think-”
Alex placed her hand on his arm. “Of course he’s being childish, he’s ten,” she said gently. “Hold on for a second.” He stopped and exhaled slowly.
Alex crawled under the table with Spencer, tucking her legs underneath her and smoothing out her skirt. After a moment she tapped his arm, and when he looked up, his eyes suspiciously wet, she started signing to him.
Hotch watched her, fascinated. Alex was a genius with languages; she and Rossi often had conversations in Italian, and she and Emily could speak to each other easily in French and Spanish too (sometimes Russian, but Emily’s Russian wasn’t as strong). Spencer had been enthralled by their secret conversations from the start and begged for them to teach him, so it was no surprise that he wanted Alex to start teaching him ASL when she started to learn.
There was a long pause before Spencer responded to Alex, his fingers hesitant. Hotch couldn’t understand what they were saying to each other but he could sense the need for privacy, so he stood up and started silently cleaning up the books, papers, and pens sprawled across the table.
Spencer hadn’t been himself lately. Not since the day a few weeks earlier when they found him chained to the goalpost. He hadn’t said much about it, which Hotch understood. Things like that didn’t heal overnight. But he didn’t know what to do to help, either.
Alex pulled herself out from under the table, her dark hair loose and staticky around her face. “Is he okay?” Hotch asked quietly.
“Just give him a second,” she said. She pulled the narrow navy ribbon out of her hair, smoothed back the sides, and retied it. “I’m going to close up the library. Don’t leave without me, okay?”
“Sure,” he said.
He piled the reference books into neat stacks and put Spencer’s things back into his messenger bag, the new one they’d chipped in to buy when his old backpack was ruined. The clip of the buckles seemed too loud in the silence.
Spencer crawled out from under the table and stood up. “Hey,” Hotch said, trying to keep his voice gentle. “You okay?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. He tucked in his rumpled uniform shirt and straightened his cardigan. “I’m sorry for...for freaking out.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “I know we’ve avoided talking about it, but...we all know you’re trying to work through a lot of shit. It’s okay.” Spencer’s mouth pressed together in a kind of half smile, his big hazel eyes a little too bright.
“All right, you ready to go?” Alex said as she tugged her blazer on and fastened the gold buttons. “I know that technically I’m not allowed in Lincoln House on a school night, but...if I’m escorted by an RA I should be able to get in.”
Hotch rolled his eyes. “Fine, I’ll sneak you in,” he said. He slung the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”
He cleared his throat as Alex took off her keys lanyard and locked the library doors. “So...Morgan says you’ve been watching a documentary on the Romanovs,” he said. “Want to tell me about it?”
Spencer’s eyes lit up. Hotch bit back a grin as he started talking a mile a minute. Truthfully, he only had a vague idea of what the kid was talking about, but if he was cheered up, then he was happy.
It was starting to snow a little, dusting their hair and their shoulders as they walked outside to make the trek to the dorm. Hotch regretted not wearing his coat; it hadn’t been that cold earlier in the day, but the sun had long since gone down.
It was warmer in the dorm, Spencer’s energy seemed to flag as they climbed the stairs to the seventh floor, his rapid chatting slowing down. That wasn’t too much of a surprise- Morgan had told him that the kid was barely sleeping at night, and they’d all noticed he hadn’t been eating much lately.
Spencer unlocked his door; Hotch reached around him to flip on the lights. “Morgan’s probably at dinner with everybody else,” he said. “I’ll text him and the girls, let them know we found you.”
“I’ll text James and David and see if they’ll bring back dinner for us,” Alex said. She touched Spencer’s shoulder lightly. “Go put your pajamas on, okay?”
Hotch waited until Spencer was out of the room. “What did you two talk about?” he asked.
She sighed as she finished typing the text message and hit send. “He’s stressed,” she said. “A lot more stressed than any ten-year-old ought to be. And…”
“And what?”
“He’s scared,” she confessed quietly. “That part he didn’t say, but...it’s written all over him.”
Hotch took Spencer’s messenger bag off his shoulder and set it down on his desk chair. “He needs to open up more,” he said. “We can help him better if he would just talk to us.”
“It’s not that simple, Hotchner,” she said. “You can’t force him to behave the way you want, just because it makes things easier for you. You have to meet him where he is.”
Hotch fiddled with the strap of Spencer’s bag. He was suddenly reminded of his own memories, his own father, and he pushed the thought away. “You’re right,” he said, a little too firmly. “I’ll try...differently.”
Spencer walked back in and dropped his uniform in the laundry hamper. “I know I was talking about the Romanov miniseries, but I do you want to watch it with me?” he asked hopefully.
“Absolutely,” Alex said. She sat down on Spencer’s bed. “And James is going to drop off dinner. That sound good?”
He picked up the television remote and climbed up on the bed beside her. “You know, multiple women have claimed to be Anastasia Romanov, but no one’s claimed to be Alexei?” he said.
“Oh, but that makes sense,” Alex said. “All it would take was a blood test and they’d know.”
“Why’s that?” Hotch asked.
“Because of the hemophilia,” Spencer said, as if it was painfully obvious. He turned on the TV. “Just watch, you’ll see.” He paused. “Do you want to stay and watch it with us?”
“Sure,” he said. He pulled the chair away from Spencer’s desk and sat down. “Why not?” He wasn’t terribly interested in the subject, but if it made the kid happy, he’d watch it.
“Come on, lie down,” Alex said as the documentary started to play. Instead, Spencer crawled onto her lap, curling up against her. It was funny- Spencer hated to be touched by strangers, had even become notorious for spouting off germ statistics if someone tried to shake his hand, but he always seemed so happy and enthusiastic when someone from their group wanted to hug him.
Maybe, Hotch thought, he feels safest with us.
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i adore this au have more theatre club hcs (first post is here) bc i don’t have the energy to write an actual fic (though i might do it later when i have more time and less emotional fatigue, ironically i’m exhausted because i’m doing a show rn):
tamaki loves musicals. like he LOVES them. he can sing for days— his only weakness is his dancing. they do “bye bye birdie” and he gets cast as conrad but hikaru nearly kills him because he just can’t get the steps and conrad’s “whole THING is the DANCING, tamaki!!!!”
that being said, when he sings “honestly sincere” half of the audience nearly passes out. (“Oh, baby! Oh, honey! Hug me! Suffer!”)
more on bye bye birdie: hikaru is albert, haruhi is rose, honey is the brother (sry i forget his name lmao), renge is the mom, kaoru is the dad (kaoru singing “kids these days” is the funniest fucking thing i’m sorry), mori is hugo idk who kim or everyone else is fuck i forgot how big this cast is
hikaru and kaoru once propose that they do “cats,” but they couldn’t get the rights
in addition to shows, they also do a coffee shop cabaret yearly
tamaki always comes out with a show stopping song (one time he sings “being alive,” and, though kyoya will never admit it, the rendition makes him cry)
kyoya and mori do a scene from a shakespeare show together (they’re both unsure of themselves when it comes to acting, so they choose each other to do the scene with bc they both think, though they can’t compare to haruhi or renge’s acting, that at the very least they can be better than the other)
haruhi refuses to participate if they don’t have to, so kyoya ropes them into organizing and running all the tech shit (which is incredibly overwhelming, but they manage, somehow)
i think i said this in the last post, but mori does the lighting design for the all the shows, and he’s absolutely brilliant at it, but his real specialty is stage fighting
when they do “romeo and juliet” he gets cast as tybalt solely on the basis of his skill with a sword (kaoru is mercutio, because he’s both a dramatic homosexual and the only one who can keep up with mori)
tamaki allows himself to explore his gender via theatre— it’s a safe way to dress up and wear makeup and fuck around with gender norms without making a big deal of it
he starts requesting female roles on the dl (since they still only have one woman and an afab nonbinary person)— it comes as a surprise to everyone except kyoya, who was directing the first show that tamaki got the lead female role in, and somehow knew exactly what tamaki needed (yet again we see the top notch director/sm pair working together without question or confusion)
the show was “romeo and juliet” (like i talked about before) and tamaki played juliet to haruhi’s romeo (it came as a shock to the rest of the school when the cast list went up, and tamaki was super nervous about it, but the hosts were all really supportive even when the rest of the school was a lil apprehensive)
he absolutely killed it as juliet (pun intended)
sorry this turned into tamaki gender exploration hcs back tO THEATRE
their show schedule is intense for high schoolers: a musical in the early fall and late spring, a one act in the winter just before break, and a full length play to celebrate the start of the spring semester
each show performs for a friday and a weekend, and then closes— tickets are hot commodities
they spend about two months rehearsing for each show; and kyoya holds them to a very strict rehearsal schedule— miss a rehearsal for anything less than literal death, and you’ll have to face his wrath
most of them don’t really plan on going into theatre professionally, but they have a lot of fun while in high school
kyoya likes being sm because it helps with his organizational skills, which he’ll def be using as ceo for whatever business he ends up running into new heights
honey just has fun with it— chika thinks it’s a waste of time, but honey likes to make the argument that he practices martial arts via stage fighting (unfortunately, the haninozuka method is strictly banned from the stage— they use non-lethal methods only, thank you very much)
haruhi ends up actually really liking theatre, and they spend their free time finding new plays to read, and end up proposing a few of them for their one act show in the winter
kaoru secretly starts writing his own plays, just for fun (when the other hosts find out, they want to produce the shows, but he refuses)
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Hi Betts, hoping for your guidance if you have the time. No pressure really. But my course will be focusing quite a bit on Shakespeare for the rest of this year. Do you have any advice for someone who isn’t really a writer on how to understand Shakespeare better? Have you read much of it? How did you tackle understanding the language? Is it just reading a lot more of it and looking up words? I struggle getting through one play, but is it just pushing through it? Resources you found helpful?
i feel like i’ve been waiting my whole life for this question.
i’m feral for shakespeare. i have a hamlet tattoo. i have an unfortunate number of monologues memorized on the off-chance someone at some point goes “hey does anyone know any good monologues?” and i can be all “TO BE OR FUCKING NOT TO BE, BITCHES” or “ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH DEAR FRIENDS, ONCE FUCKING MORE.” i have an actual literal lecture on how richard ii is a greedy glamazon bitch, and an outline for an article on how lady macbeth can teach us everything we need to know about sympathy in fiction.
like many people, high school made me despise shakespeare. i can’t tell if it was the simple coercion of being forced to read things, period, or that we were made to treat everything so seriously, and expected to understand the use of language as if it were like anything else we were reading.
then when i was 23ish, i got obsessed with doctor who, which led me to david tennant’s filmography, and david tennant happens to have done really a lot of shakespeare. when i geared up to watch his hamlet, however, i thought, i want to read this first, so i can see how different it is from my perception of it.
cue me surreptitiously scrolling through the wikisource version of hamlet while pretending to listen to conference calls at work. i think that helped, making it something i wasn’t allowed to do. it made reading feel like an indulgence.
free of the constraints of “i’m going to have to write a five-paragraph essay about this when i’m done,” i began to read very casually, only trying to understand what was going on and not trying to find any profound meaning in it.
in doing that, i realized i was actually doing it correctly. these are plays, meant to be performed on a stage, to entertain, immerse, and evoke feeling. you’re supposed to be sad at the end of tragedies and happy at the end of comedies. however, reading the plays is a far different experience than watching them, and in many ways more of a challenge.
you can’t read a play, especially a shakespeare play, like a book. prose and poetry both lend themselves to crafting intentional images. the entire thing exists to be and only be read. but plays and scripts are just one piece of a much larger puzzle, involving directors and actors and costume designers and set designers. bringing a play to life is a team effort. when you’re reading, you’re only seeing the skeleton of the story. it’s like reading a guidebook for a vacation destination. you can get the gist of it but only truly know a place by going there.
you can’t read shakespeare as a reader. you have to read as a director. you have to envision each actor, and after every line, decide where they are standing on stage, how they deliver their line, and what happens between each line. shakespeare gives almost no stage direction, so you have a lot of creative license in interpretation.
another thing to remember is that shakespeare is first and foremost a rhetorician. he wanted his words to be memorable and beautiful, to persuade and delight. if he wanted to be understood simply, he would have written simply. but instead, he uses 17 lines where 1 would have sufficed. it’s helpful, after every line, to consciously ask yourself, “what has just been said?” and very often the answer is simple. a yes or a no, i agree or disagree, or even sometimes banal statements.
consider hamlet’s “to be or not to be.” he goes on and on and on, but he’s really just being the “guess i’ll just die” meme. in the comedies, shakespeare often uses this effect as a joke. one character will go on and on, and another character gives a simple and curt and blunt reply, and depending on the delivery, it’s hilarious.
you’re not supposed to love hamlet, or richard ii, or macbeth, or any other character. the tragedies are train wrecks that make you go “i get why you’re doing this but you need to Stop.” the comedies are similar, in that the characters sometimes make you go “you are being so fucking stupid.” it’s the sense of irony, the “i know what’s right in this situation but you don’t” that creates a huge amount of engagement. we’re always bracing ourselves for what comes next.
so here’s how i recommend reading shakespeare:
pick a play, and pick a version or two to watch afterward. here’s a really great list of productions. personally, i’d stick to ones where you’re familiar with the actors, which heightens the engagement.
before you start reading, consciously cast each character, using actors you really like. or, instead of actors, you can cast your favorite characters as if they were in an AU version of your current fandom. reading shakespeare as fanfic is a speedy way of ensuring your emotional investment.
pull up the wikipedia plot summary of the play to have on hand while you read. every few pages or so, line your reading up with the summary to make sure you’ve caught onto what’s been happening.
as you read, direct the actors you’ve chosen. how do they deliver the line? sometimes this takes a few tries. you can’t let your eyes move left to right across the page and just expect to miraculously understand it as if it were prose. you have to puzzle it out.
if you’re really stuck on something, pull up the spark notes version. there’s no shame in that. if you compare with spark notes enough, you begin to get a sense of the language and begin to need it less and less.
when you’re done, order a pizza, pour a glass of wine, and watch your chosen production version. delight in already understanding what’s happening, figure out where you might have been wrong or confused, and revel in the places you were right.
watch another production and see how your version, the last version, and this version all differ.
if you get all the way to this point and you’re not utterly in love, i don’t know what to tell you. i think i watched wyndham theater’s much ado over a hundred times. rsc’s hamlet probably just as much. i have yet to watch or read a single play i didn’t at least appreciate. i’m one of the few people who even enjoys titus andronicus.
shakespeare takes a lot of energy, but it’s worth it. once you get a feel for the strings he pulls and how he pulls them, it’s like opening a door to a whole other world. you see clips of phrases from this play or that, understand subtle references, and see how his influence exists in nearly everything. you can use his characters and plots and dynamics in all your own work. you can reach backward to see his own influences in greek plays, and forward to see his influences throughout all of literature. it’s amazing, not just who he was, but how his plays are still both so beautiful and so human.
i’ve skipped over rhetoric, craft, the sonnets, and a few other things that i really enjoy about shakespeare, but those are probably topics for another time. if you’re looking for somewhere to start, i highly recommend much ado about nothing, particularly the wyndham 2009 production with david tennant and catherine tate which is genuinely one of the funniest things i’ve ever watched. it’s fun to compare it to the 1994 kenneth branaugh film and then rage against whedon’s 2013 travesty.
best of luck in your shakespearean pursuit!
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The Definitive Ranking of Richard Armitage’s Acting Roles, Rated Exclusively by How Hot I Find Him In Screengrabs
Richard Armitage. As a diehard Thorin Oakenshield fan I certainly have a complicated relationship with him, mainly because I can never decide if I find him inherently hot or not. On the one hand, I’m a hardcore Thorinfucker. On the other hand my gay ass sees a headshot of Mr. Armitage and I’m just like, “Oh, no thank you.” So in order to set myself to rights, I have gone through Mr. Armitage’s IMDB and done a definitive ranking of all his 44 screen roles on there, based completely and arbitrarily on how hot I find him in screenshots. (Thank you to all the hardcore Armitage Fuckers who keep wordpress blogs with screengrabs of his various cameos and bit parts; my respect for you cannot be put into words.) I haven’t seen like 90% of these properties, and I didn’t bother to research them, so these are mainly just gut first impressions. I hope this helps anyone else out there who as confused by him as I am. Enjoy ?
44. Father Quart in The Seville Communion/The Man From Rome (2020) — ??/10
I don’t think this movie is out yet? Idk I haven’t been able to find any stills of him, let alone much information about the movie itself. It’s listed on his IMDB though! And apparently he’s playing a priest...which could be extremely 👁️👁️ if done correctly.
43. Unnamed Naboo Fighter Pilot in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) — 1/10
OH SWEETIE NO!!!!! This physically pains me to say this, because I unironically love this terrible movie with my whole heart, but unlike a yung Kiera Knightley’s role (pictured front and center) as Padmé’s loyal body double Sabé, this is probably a cameo that we would all like to forget about. The only thing Richard has to offer is this unfortunate turtle-faced realness. This helmet does him no favors.
42. Man in Pub in Boon (1992) — 2/10
As far as I know this is Richard’s first acting credit on IMDB, and he for sure is working the background extra energy. Go on girl give us nothing! He does have a decent backside though, and it’s better than looking at unfortunate turtle face, so I give this one a 2.
41. Paul Andrews in Between the Sheets (2003) — 2/10
I can’t really articulate why, but I absolutely despise every screenshot I see of Richard Armitage in this role. He is completely unhot, and not even in a way I can laugh at. He takes no advantage of his assets, he has no charisma, no magnetism, no nothing. This is Richard Armitage at his most white bread rando, in a way that makes me actively dislike him. Pbbbbttth. Bad. Throw this whole thing away.
40. Craig Parker in Casualty (2001) — 2/10
I don’t know, it’s like the perfect storm of the gelled 2001 hair, the terrible quarter? eighth? zip sweater, and overall, er, skeezy vibes that he gives off that makes him particularly unhot in this role. Perhaps not as reprehensible as Unhot Paul, but still. I think the sheer boringness of this has to count for something. Blech.
39. Dr. Tom Steele in Doctors (2001) — 2.5/10
He honestly looks like a villain in an early season of Alias, which... well. Quentin Tarantino was cast as a bit-part villain in Alias season one, so take that as you will. But at least he’s compelling here, which is why he gets half a point over Unhot Paul.
38. Steven in Frozen (2005) — 3/10
Get some rest, tall child! You can’t keep burning the candle at both ends! Also short haircuts do nothing for you, Richard. Styled like this, they just serve to make you look sort of like a sleaze.
37. Peter Macduff in ShakespeaRe-Told (2005) — 3/10
He honestly looks like he could be a guest star in Friends in this one, where he’s a guy named Jason who Ross meets in Central Perk where they find they have a lot in common. Ross introduces Jason to Monica and they really hit it off, but it all comes crashing down because while Jason is sensitive and writes poetry, he also thinks that the Earth is flat. The rest of the episode is trying to get rid of Jason while he becomes increasingly obsessed with Monica, and Ross cannot quite let go trying to prove to Jason that the world is round. Anyway. Macduff Flat Earth Jason isn’t quite as unhot as Unhot Paul, but he’s pretty much on the same level as Tired Steven.
36. Phillip Durrant in Marple (2007) — 3/10
Something about him in this image really makes me want to punch him in the face. It’s huge Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3 energy.
35. Young Claude Monet in The Impressionists (2006) — 3.5/10
I’M LOSING MY FUCKING MIND THE FIRST THING THAT COMES TO MIND IS !!! CARNIVAL BARKER !!!!! STEP RIGHT UP TO SEE THE WORST GOATEE IN HISTORY !!! I was actually going to give Yung Claude a 2 but the more I look at this terrible beard the more impressed I am with the boldness of this look, so I had to bump it up to 3.5. Idk. Just look at this. It’s incredible, especially knowing what kind of beard Armitage can grow himself !!!!!!!!
34. Heinz Kruger in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) — 3.5/10
This is definitely the best looking he’s been so far in this list, but he’s a Nazi in this one, which makes him unsexy on principle. But do I feel a little something when he gets pinned to the ground by jacked Chris Evans with the above look on his face right before he swallows his cyanide pill? Can neither confirm nor deny. They are also truly playing into his inherently sinister bone structure, so I can respect that.
33. Percy Courtney in Miss Marie Lloyd (2007) — 4/10
Even including Yung Claude and Nazi Heinz, I think Nothing Percy is probably the weakest of Richard’s period looks, mostly because he looks like, well, nothing. He certainly doesn’t pull off that top hat like he does in North and South, and the secret to that might be the lack of sideburns. In this one he just sort of reminds me of the asshole fiance in Titanic.
32. Philip Turner in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2005) — 4/10
He’s really giving off bargain bin Hugh Jackman as Wolverine vibes here, if Logan’s energy was more “murderer in a Hallmark channel mystery” than “superhero.” Though, given what sort of show this is, that may be the point! Idk, this isn’t the worst. At least he has a decent haircut in this one. Still, I feel absolutely nothing when I look at him. He’s simply royalty-free stock music given human form.
31. Dr. Alec Track in The Golden Hour (2005) — 4.5/10
I could see how this conceivably be sexy in this role, but to be honest, he’s still nothing to me, sorry. He gets some extra points because he obviously worked out for this role and the hard nips through a white undershirt is a commendable look. I whole-heartedly respect Doctor Alec’s thottitude.
30. Daryl in Staged (1999) — 4.5/10
Speaking of thottitude!!!!! This is one cream-faced business boy that I can certainly get into! He looks like the love interest in a pre-Hayes code homoerotic thriller from the early 1930s. I’m sure that’s just because of the lighting and general staging of this production, but hm... demure. Love it.
29. Capt. Ian Macalwain in Ultimate Force (2003) — 4.5/10
Well, he looks like a character from M*A*S*H but with no charisma, or like an extra in The Great Escape who snitches on Steve McQueen to the Nazis. Also in half the pictures I find of him from this he’s wearing this terrible beret, which I know he can pull off because of a role that ranks much higher on this list. Whoever styles this man really needs to pay attention to what sort of headgear they put on him.
28. Epiphanes in Cleopatra (1999) — 5/10
Speaking of headgear, you know what?? He doesn’t look awful here. A solid 5, perfectly acceptable. I think the helmet does a lot to accentuate the sharpness of his face in this extremely bit part, though the eyeliner definitely also helps as well.
27. John Mulligan in Moving On (2009) — 5/10
Mr. Armitage’s characters can really have potential when a production’s stylist allows him to wear scruff (IN A WAY THAT LOOKS NATURAL, LOOKING AT YOU YUNG CLAUDE). However, as it is with John Mulligan in Moving On here, he just sort of looks like a rando? They’re not playing into the inherent angularity of his face, which for me makes it sort of confusing regarding what sort of emotion I’m supposed to feel while looking at him. As it is, I’m just like, “Yup, that sure is a regular human man, right there.”
26. Smug Man at Party in This Year’s Love (1999) — 5/10
This is the face of a man who less smug and is more DRUNK OUT OF HIS MIND !!!! Idk. He’s cute here, I’ll admit. That’s all I have to say about it.
25. John Standring in Sparkhouse (2002) — 5.5/10
I enjoy the bold choice of giving him wavy hair in this one, but I’m not sure he quite pulls it off. It doesn’t look bad, per se, just... he looks completely nonthreatening. Which I guess could be someone’s thing, but not mine. He honestly looks like a knock-off Will Graham, sans dogs and trauma.
24. Gary in Into the Storm (2014) — 5.5/10
I think the thing that really gets me is that this character’s name is Gary. Who on God’s green Earth looks at Richard Armitage and goes, “Ah yes, you do look like a Gary” ??? I don’t think I know of a single non-American Gary, especially since the name Gary only got popularized after Gary Cooper renamed himself after his hometown of Gary, Indiana!!!! It wasn’t really a name for human men before that!!!! I want to live in the alternate universe where Frank Cooper was originally from Albuquerque and named himself Albuquerque Cooper and this character is named as such. Gary. Really.
23. King Oleron in Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) — 5.5/10
I truly hate how much his facial expressions in these stills remind me of Thorin, considering how bad he looks otherwise. Like his face his fine, I guess, especially since this is the first instance of his full beard. I’m charmed despite myself! Take me to wonderland, O King.
22. Adam Price in The Stranger (2020) — 5.5/10
For as compelling as people call this series, Richard here isn’t very much so imo. But despite my utter lack of interest, he doesn’t look bad per se. He just sort of has that stubbly white man blandness that colors a lot of his more recent roles. Like, at least his bad mid-2000′s styling had character. This is just the visual representation of a vague handwave.
21. Harry Kennedy in The Vicar of Dibley (2006) — 6/10
Gosh... floppy hair, cute sweaters... he also seems to be smiling a lot in this one, which is nice! The only thing I have to complain about is that he looks very much like if Bradley Cooper and Hugh Jackman circa Kate and Leopold had a baby, which may not necessarily be too much of a bad thing, but I can’t unsee it.
20. Sgt. John Porter in Strike Back (2010) — 6/10
Ah, back to poorly suited haircuts. At least he’s a little bit gritter and grimier than we’ve seen so far, and I will say Richard Armitage does look good covered in dirt, as we will see later on. Also he’s got biceps in this one, which, hell yeah.
19. Ricky Deeming in Inspector George Gently (2007) — 6/10
I’M HAVING THE HARDEST TIME RIGHT NOW RANKING THIS ONE BC OF THIS INCREDIBLE LITTLE WHITE SCARF-RIDING LEATHERS COMBO!!! WHICH ABSOLUTE GENIUS DECIDED THIS!!!! EVERY SCREENSHOT OF HIM IN HIS EPISODE HAS THIS!!! Part of me just wants to give Stylish Ricky a big fat 10 because I’m gay and adore the sheer audacity of this look, but I still have to be fair and rank his overall aura accordingly. I think he’s a handsome extremely gay-coded motorcycle lad in this one, but he doesn’t exactly rev my engine, so to speak.
18. Lucas North in Spooks (2008) — 6/10
The tattoos really spice this one up. Luke could have been plagued by the problems inherent in Regular Mulligan’s Moving On styling, but this guy has an edge to him. He has a good haircut and 5′ o’clock shadow, which is something I’ve figured out is integral to Armitage Hotness. I feel like if I got to know this character I could possibly find him sexy.
17. Raymond de Merville in Pilgrimage (2017) — 6.5/10
Speaking of bad haircuts, this one is his undoing. This is almost the perfect balance between full beard and short haircut, which is the only way a short haircut works on this man, but they ruined it with this one! They gave him a bad bowl fade, which completely undoes any inherent sexiness that comes with being a knight. Not even the fact that he’s covered in dirt can turn me on at this point, ugh. Guy of Gisbourne he is not!!!
16. Tom Calahan in Brain on Fire (2016) — 6.5/10
Oh hell yes, WELCUM 2 DA DILF ZONE!!! I’m not super duper thrilled with the looks I’ve seen from this movie, but he seems scruffy and comfy in a way that is slightly refreshing for ol’ Richard. This is certainly the best of his normie looks so far. I’m just sad it took them 24 years to figure out how to style him properly for sympathetic roles in a contemporary setting.
15. James in My Zoe (2019) — 6.5/10
It’s another DILF look, slightly edgier than Comfy Tom but none of that sexy tired energy that we’ll see from Ocean’s 8. I don’t know !! Jimmy here doesn’t exactly thrill me, I think I prefer Tom’s flannels to this sharp bomber jacket/white t shirt combo seen here. Oh well! I am extremely 👀 👀 👀 👀 👀 that he can just casually palm that soccer ball like that.
14. John Thornton in North & South (2004) — 7/10
Alright. I’m sorry. I just don’t find him that hot in this role. Like yeah, he’s got the scruff and the sideburns that work to his advantage, and the setting does make this character inherently sexy, but in some screenshots he screams too much of an aforementioned Kate and Leopold (the best Meg Ryan movie, imo) era Hugh Jackman to me. And if I was particularly into that, I would just watch Kate and Leopold again. I will admit, however, that this rating could be subject to change if I actually took the time to watch this show.
13. Chop in Urban and the Shed Crew (2015) — 7/10
...I’M??? INTO IT??? He’s dirty and scruffy but also has kind eyes.... I feel like this is knock off Will Graham who has blossomed into his own. His run down, grime-covered own. He’s back edging into Bradley Cooper territory, but somehow it works for him in this one. Like, I’m 89% sure it’s the DILF vibes I’ve been getting from the other screengrabs I’ve seen of this role, and this particular flavor of DILF is way sexier than Jimmy or Comfy Tom.
12. Francis Dolarhyde in Hannibal (2015) — 7/10
His Caesar cut doesn’t bother me quite so much in this, probably because he is pretty explicitly playing a villain in a series that doesn’t have any basis in reality. A villain who is ripped, and who can effortlessly throw real Will Graham around. Armitage uses his inherent sinisterness to great effect as the Red Dragon, which is good actually! I think a lot of how hot he is in any particular role really depends on whether the styling allows him to play to his strengths...idk! I’m not usually a huge fan of clean shaven Armitage, but it works for Frank here.
11. Daniel Miller in Berlin Station (2016) — 7/10
As much as I adore this particular look (beard + fade + green army jacket), I have to compromise and give Danny a 7/10 because it seems like the first season they styled him in usual stubbly white man blandness. I’d say screengrabs from s1 are a solid 6, while this might be an 8, so the average is a 7. That’s all I have to say about this!
10. Claude Becker in Ocean’s 8 (2018) — 7.5/10
!!!!! I love him in this role, I about had a conniption in the theater because I absolutely was not expecting him!! He looks perfectly ruffled and scruffy, edgier than either Comfy Tom or Jimmy, which I’m very into. That plus his two borzois (objectively the best looking dogs on the planet) really put Old Claude over the top for me. Thank you, thank you Hollywood stylists for finally figuring out what to do with him for roles as a Normal Man.
9. Richard Hall in The Lodge (2019) — 7.5/10
I don’t know anything about this movie, but it seems pretty spooky, which I’m into. I think Richard is well suited for this sort of horror/thriller role, where his angular features can play into the overall vibe rather than some hapless stylist trying to work around them. He looks like another cozy DILF here but with a bite to him, like someone who would do anything to protect his brood. I mean, he’s teaching this child to shoot! But idk, he also has the potential for Jack Nicholson in The Shining energy, which I also could be....hm... into. Idk. Is this on Netflix??
8. Lee in Cold Feet (2003) — 7.5/10
FUN!!! FLIRTY!!!! OTTER VIBES!!!!! I LOVE THIS, he seems so goofy here, and Armitage doesn’t usually pull off goofy that well! I’ve giggled at literally every screenshot I could find from the four episodes he was in this show, he seems like a real himbo. I’m a huge fan, even if it comes at the cost of dehydration abs.
7. William Chatford in Malice Aforethought (2005) — 7.5/10
Hoo hoo HOO DO NOT JUDGE ME!!!!!!! Maybe it’s just because I’ve been watching the new season of The Alienist and the new dark and gritty HBO reboot of Perry Mason back to back, but sue me, I love the bold choice they made with giving him a pencil moustache here. He looks like a hot Howard Hughes; if cream-faced business boy Daryl from Staged is the young ingenue in the pre-Hayes Code thriller I cast him in, Bill here is the sexy antagonist. I desperately want to hear a perfect Transatlantic accent coming out out of that mouth. This look fucks and I’m sticking to that no matter what.
6. Trevor Belmont in Castlevania (2017) — 8/10
Ah, yes, speaking of king himbos... do me a favor and look me right in the eye and tell me that you wouldn’t fuck Trevor Belmont. You can’t, can you?????? At least 80% of Richard Armitage’s inherent hotness stems from his voice, and you can’t tell me there isn’t anything sexier than thinking about letting that guy loose in a recording studio and letting him say fuck. Look, Trevor may be drawn that way, but it’s the absolute stupidity coming out of his mouth in that sweet baritone that makes me want to be raw-dogged by 100% pure Romanian beef.
5. Dr. Scott White in Sleepwalker (2017) — 8/10
Much like I had intimated when talking about Hot Danny in Berlin Station, this is Peak contemporary normie Richard Armitage styling. I honestly think The Hobbit either awakened something in him, or casting directors finally figured out he looks way good with a full beard. His crew cut even works with his whole look, which is a miracle!!!! I think he should be contractually obligated to have a full beard in all of his future roles, but that’s just me.
4. Guy of Gisbourne in Robin Hood (2006) — 8.5/10
I honestly can’t believe I’m ranking Guy so far up here, but honestly, THIS RULES!!!!!! THIS FUCKS!!!!!!!!! Which is incredible due to Guy’s lack of beard, but I’m weirdly okay with it? Like sure, he looks like he’d probably call me a slur in front of his shitty friends, but he also looks like he could tenderly pound me into the mattress in a way that would have me questioning my commitment to the “no emotions” clause of our clandestine no-strings-attached sex agreement. Anyway. Guy of Gisbourne if you see this im free thursday night. please message me back if you’re free thursday night when i am fr
3. Angus in Macbeth (1999) — 8.5/10
HHHNGHGNHNGHGN HE’S SO HOT.....!!! HE’S SO HOT!!!!! Leather jacket!!! Scruff!! Dirt!!!! Flattering beret!!!!! He’s so hot, and the worst part about this is that this was filmed in NINETEEN NINETY NINE!!!!!!!!!!!! Which means we could have always had this, had stylists and makeup artists PLAYED TO HIS STRENGTHS!!!!! He’s so hot I’m getting legitimately angry. Without scruff and dirt this man is nothing. N o t h i n g.
2. John Proctor in The Crucible (2014) — 9/10
Look, I know I have a type. But... this guy is just so hot, Daniel Day Lewis please step aside!!!! Contemporary theater historians describe John Proctor as a “strong beast of a man,” and... hhhHHOOOGH HELL YEAH!!! HELL !!!! YEAH !!!!! Like, his dick got almost his entire Puritan village, including himself, accused of witchcraft and like, looking at this guy, I kind of get it. I would probably go to war over the raw animal beauty of this horrible dirty, greasy man. Sue me, I confess. I saw Goody Osburn with the devil.
1. Thorin II Oakenshield in The Hobbit Trilogy — 9.5/10
Come on. You knew it was going to be this guy. Look at my icon for christ’s sake. I am completely biased, I cannot look at his pictures objectively. Anyway. Thank you so much for reading, this was a very stupid list.
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you held your pride like you should have held me
by @searchingforstarss for @irondad-is-cannon-bitch, written for the @friendly-neighborhood-exchange - i took your argument prompt, added in a little whump and here we are! i hope you enjoy this <3
rating: teen
relationships: peter parker & tony stark, peter parker & tony stark & james rhodes
characters: peter parker, tony stark, james rhodes, bruce banner
summary: “I had to take the risk!” Peter snaps. “I saved your life.”
Tony’s stare hardens. “Yeah, and nearly ended your goddamn own. This isn’t a trade-off. It wasn’t your call to make.”
You would have done the same thing to protect me,” Peter points out. Tony just seethes at the statement.
“I don’t care about what you think I would have done. You are not me. And I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself."
or, as the timer ticked down, Peter knew his only option was to take things into his own hands. He just didn’t expect Tony to be mad at him for saving his life.
read on ao3
“What’s our game plan for tonight?”
“Our what?”
“Our game plan.”
“Kid, I don’t think I’ve ever had a game plan in my life,” Tony says as he tips blueberries into the blender. “I kind of just… do.”
He looks up towards where Peter is perched on the benchtop, letting himself be distracted for a moment. Almost the entire punnet of blueberries ends up in the blender and he curses, reaching in to scoop a handful back out.
“I was talking to FRIDAY earlier-”
“Oh, were you now?”
Peter nods his head, completely ignoring Tony’s snark. He’s learned to let it all roll off his back by now. “Yeah, she was telling me all about the guys we’re going after and well, I was thinking that since I’ve seen Chitauri tech up close and all - not that you haven’t, with the whole New York thing-” Peter cuts his ramblings off, stopping short when he realises that was probably the wrong thing to bring up. Tony’s leaning up against the bench, watching him carefully. His face remains carefully schooled, but Peter’s quick enough to catch the slight wince that flashes across his face for a second. The two of them don’t really talk about New York. That day was distressing enough for Peter, being separated from May and Ben in the midst of the panic, let alone for Tony who flew a literal nuke through a hole in space. “I, uh, anyway,” Peter resumes awkwardly, “what I mean is since I’ve seen what they do with the weapons, surely that means I should go in first and scope out the-”
Tony turns around. “No.”
Before Peter can open his mouth to speak again, Tony switches the blender on, the room filling with noise.
Okay. Rude.
“What do you mean, no?” Peter asks as soon as Tony turns the blender off again. Tony turns to him, a tired expression settled into the lines on his face like he’s been expecting this argument.
“When I said you could come along, I meant to get a feel for what’s going on. Get a little bit of field experience under your belt. But from a distance. I don’t want you in the middle of anything.”
Peter tries to school his features into a neutral expression and not let them fall into the petulant frown he can feel coming on. “How is it field experience if I’m stuck outside the whole time?”
Tony’s been hesitant about letting Peter come along on these types of things, so when he finally agreed to let Peter tag along with him and Rhodey to bust an illegal Chitauri weapons ring, this wasn’t exactly what he was expecting. He can be useful, he knows he can - especially since he’s seen these weapons up close, he knows what they can do.
“You gotta learn teamwork, kid. We always need someone out there watching our six.”
Tony turns to get a couple of glasses out of the cabinet above him. Peter slips off the counter and steps closer to him. “But I can do more than that! I'm practically an Avenger!”
“An honorary one at most, maybe. More like the team mascot.”
Peter frowns. “You did offer me a place on the team, you know, just in case you forgot.”
Tony tenses almost imperceptibly. “Yes, we are forgetting. That was irresponsible of me and I’ve since retracted said offer. My terms are that once you finish high school, then we’ll talk Avengers. You know this, Pete.”
Peter sighs. He knows that Tony worries. The older man is still meticulous about making sure he picks up Peter’s every phone call and insisting that he pops into the tower to check-in after each patrol (okay, maybe that one only came about after Peter tried to hide a broken arm for a couple of days but he really did have it all handled), even though it’s almost been a year since Toomes.
They’re closer now. Peter always thought the closer they got the more trust Tony would have in him.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m not qualified to save the world until high school has provided me with the necessary skills, like reciting the entirety of Shakespeare’s discography and knowing how to list everything in my backpack in Spanish, got it,” Peter grumbles.
“Did you just refer to Shakespeare’s plays as his discography?” Tony looks incredulous, his eyes widening almost comically, but Peter just groans again, tipping his head back in frustration.
“Of course that’s all you got from that. I was trying to show you that high school is pointless in the grand scheme of things, Mister Stark. I could be useful! You know I could.”
“It’s the principle of the thing, Pete. You finish school, get the piece of paper and let me take at least a dozen photos of you wearing one of those stupid-looking graduation caps. That’s my price for putting in a good word for you with the Avengers.”
“You basically are the Avengers.”
“I’m sure the others would be very offended to hear you say that.”
Peter shrugs, unbothered. Tony takes a moment to turn around and divide the smoothie up between the two glasses before speaking again. “Look, I’m going to be totally honest with you right now, okay Pete? This is something that Rhodey and I are doing for SHIELD, and-”
“You can’t not let me come,” Peter interjects. It’s taken him months of wheedling to convince Tony that he’s finally ready for the big stuff. Peter twists a few fingers into the fabric of his hoodie, suddenly nervous that Tony might change his mind completely.
Tony sighs. “I’m not going back on my word. I just don’t want you involved with SHIELD before you have to be. Which means for a little while, you’ve just gotta lay low and watch and learn. I need you to trust me on this one.”
Peter knows that it’s time to drop it as soon as he sees the pleading look on Tony’s face - pleading with Peter to just listen to him. He gives Tony a small smile. Tonight, he’ll just have to try and show Tony that he can be useful. That he can listen to directions. That he’s worth keeping around.
“Plus, if I let you get hurt May will probably kick my ass all the way from, where is she with her college buddies this weekend? Ohio?”
“Oregon, Mister Stark,” Peter corrects.
“Exactly. That’s what I meant. Now drink up,” Tony says, pressing a smoothie into Peter’s hands. All the purple from the blueberries has been lost in amongst the green from the spinach and kale that Tony undoubtedly shoved in there when Peter wasn’t looking. It’s disappointingly healthy-looking. “Oh, don’t look at it like that,” Tony chastises good-naturedly. “You need your energy for tonight.”
“I’m not even doing anything but sitting there.”
“You’re gonna keep an eye out. That’s an important job, kiddo. Real high stakes.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Just count your blessings it’s not a school night, otherwise your ass would be doing nothing apart from sitting at home.”
“Have I ever told you that you’re the lamest person on the planet?”
---
“And you’re both totally sure you don’t want me to come in with you?”
Tony shoots Peter a sharp glance. Peter thinks he hears Rhodey stifling a laugh.
“We’re sure,” Tony says firmly.
Night has fallen to give them a cover of darkness as they stand in front of the warehouse. In Peter’s opinion, he’s not sure it looks particularly like a dangerous criminal hideout. This whole place looks like nothing more than a regular old warehouse district, the type that you would never look twice at when driving by on the highway.
“We shouldn’t be any longer than half an hour, kid,” Tony promises. He eyes the run-down looking side door they’re standing in front of. “All we have to do is get the weapons out of here, and I don’t think we have a whole lot of security to contend with.”
As if proving his point, he takes aim at the rusty lock and chain over the door and blasts it with his repulsor. The whole thing unravels and falls to the ground with a dull clunk.
“I was right. As usual.”
Rhodey rolls his eyes, but his military instincts keep his eyes trained firmly on the door, watching in case something - or rather, someone - that they’re not expecting comes to greet them. Tony, on the other hand, is much more relaxed.
He turns to face Peter, “You know what to do?” he asks.
“Yep. Watch the perimeter. Tell you straight away if I see anything sketchy,” Peter answers, repeating what Tony drilled into him on the way here.
“And?” Tony prompts. Peter groans.
“Stay out of trouble.”
“That’s right,” Tony nods, satisfied. “We’ll see you soon.”
“Be careful,” Peter says after them, “and good luck!”
Tony shoots him a cocky grin. “Always, kid. And keep your luck, I don’t need it. Never have. I’m Tony St-”
“Get your ass in here, Tony,” Rhodey calls over his shoulder, voice echoing from where he’s already disappeared into the warehouse. Tony’s smile widens and he turns away from Peter, ducking through the doorway.
Peter watches them as they disappear into the darkness of the building. The door creaks shut slowly behind them, and for a split second, he considers following after them. They won’t notice, especially if he’s as quiet as possible. Plus, if he manages to take down a few of the arms dealers then Tony could never be mad at him for not listening. It would be awesome.
He lets himself revel in the glory of his daydream for a moment longer before he shakes himself out of it. He’s being stupid. He knows what his mission is. It’s to keep watch - nothing else.
He shoots a web up towards the roof of the building before he can change his mind and swings himself up.
---
Peter tries his hardest to patrol diligently for the first thirty minutes.
He paces the roof back and forth, watching out for any suspicious activity, but the warehouse district remains empty. The most exciting thing he sees is a racoon walking along the fence line. He jumps to alert at one point as a metallic sound catches in the wind and echoes through the night, but it just turns out to be a stray soda can being blown across the concrete.
A small part of him almost hopes that a nefarious looking figure slinks out of the shadows and tries to take their raid down just so that he can do something. How is he ever going to impress Tony if all he can say he’s done is hang out on a rooftop and watch cars go past on the Long Island Expressway?
---
After forty-five minutes, it all starts to get a bit dull. He’s not sure what’s taking Tony and Rhodey so long.
He tried to count the cars whizzing by on the expressway briefly, but all the bright lights gave him a headache after a while. He practised a few of the new web-shooter combinations that he and Tony dreamt up last week, and then once there’s webbing sprayed across a section of the roof he spends a good ten minutes with solvent trying to dissolve it all just to give him something else to do.
Now, he’s resorted to having Karen help him practice for his Spanish quiz on Friday just to pass the time.
“How would you describe your family, Peter?” Karen asks him. Peter kicks at a bit of gravel mindlessly as he walks along the roofline, thinking.
“Uh,” Peter pauses, “Mi familia es pequeña. Mi tia se llama May. Mi tía es muy… amable? La quiero mucho.”
“That’s right, Peter,” Karen praises, but he’s startled out of his practice by his comms crackling to life in his ear for the first time tonight.
“Peter?” It’s not just Tony checking in like Peter guessed it might be, but Rhodey instead. His voice is tense and Peter’s on alert immediately. “Come in, Peter. Are you still outside? We-”
“Of course I’m still here, ” Peter rushes out, almost offended that they thought he might ditch. “I’m on the roof. What’s happening?”
“We need you to get down here.”
Peter pauses. Is this a trick? Some kind of test? They told him to stay out here, to keep watch. But Tony wouldn’t do this to him, surely?
“But, Mister Stark said-”
“Tony is not in a position to be calling the shots right now,” Rhodey says firmly.
“Is he-”
“Peter. Please,” Rhodey says, more steel in his voice than Peter has ever heard from the man. “Just get in here.”
Okay. No more questions.
He can do that.
“Got it.”
Peter vaults off the roof, jogging around to where he vaguely remembers the entrance being. Anxiety buzzes through him. Tony is not in a position to be calling the shots right now. What does that even mean? Peter’s brain runs away from him before he can help it. What if Tony’s been hurt? Images of him lying on the ground, bleeding and broken, flash through his mind but he tries to shove them down as he heads inside.
The warehouse is just a series of vast empty rooms, high ceiling and rickety walls which don’t look very structurally sound. Peter makes his way through a few of them, each one just as deserted as the last. He can hear hushed voices though, Tony and Rhodey, so he follows the sound.
They’re arguing, Peter realises when he steps into the room. They’re backed into a corner, neither of them looking in his direction. Rhodey’s back is turned and Peter can only just catch a glimpse of Tony from over his shoulder. He looks like he’s standing upright, which instantly lays some of Peter’s anxieties to rest.
“I’ll burn you if I repulsor it off,” Rhodey hisses. “Just wait for Peter to get here.”
“Oh, don’t get me started on that. Peter shouldn’t even be here in the first place, you know he’s safer outside where-”
“He was on the roof, Tony. He would have been just as screwed as you and me.”
“Uh, hey, guys?” Peter says cautiously. As he makes his presence known, he sees Tony’s eyes whip up towards him, face paling significantly at the sight of him. “What’s going on?”
Peter isn’t exactly sure what he was expecting to find when he was called in - but as Rhodey sidesteps slightly, finally giving Peter a proper view of Tony, he realises it definitely wasn’t the Iron Man suit in a heap of metal on the floor, and Tony handcuffed to a drainpipe.
What the fuck?
He hurries over to their sides, trying not to feel sick at the sight of the thick metal clamped around Tony’s left wrist. He can’t stop staring at it though. For someone who apparently never needs a game plan, Peter’s pretty sure this wasn’t how Tony intended the night to go.
“How did this happen?” Peter blurts out before he can stop himself.
“That’s not important right now. You can’t be here.” Tony turns to Rhodey. “I told you, he can’t be here. I need you out of here, Peter, please.” The panic in Tony’s voice sends an uncomfortable shiver down Peter’s spine, despite how dramatic it feels. He’s not that incapable - he’ll be fine.
“Is anyone still here? Do you need me to go after anyone? Who chained you up? How did they even do that to the suit? What-”
“Peter,” Tony cuts him off sharply.
“You can't just expect me to walk in here and be totally cool with the fact that the suit is smashed up and you're chained to a wall,” Peter stresses, voice pitching slightly higher with confusion and maybe just a little bit of hysteria.
Tony huffs out a frustrated sigh. “Look, there a few of the guys running this place were still hanging around when we got in here. I split off from Rhodey and they caught up with me before I could even get a goddamn look at what sort of operation they’ve got going on. They told me to get out of the suit-”
“And you did?” Peter interrupts Tony incredulously, looking towards Tony. He never parts with his suits on missions like these, never.
“They had weapons - all their Chitauri shit would have fried the suit in a second - in fact it did,” Tony snaps, gesturing with his single unchained hand to the pile of charred metal. “It’s not exactly like I had a choice. And then they chained me up here while they made a getaway with all the illegal weapons we were supposed to be getting out of their hands.” Tony’s face crumples into one of defeat. “There you go. You’ve had your story. It's time for you to run along and put yourself to bed. Rhodey and I have got this handled, trust me.”
“Yeah, except you left out the part about the present our charming friends left us,” Rhodey deadpans. “We’re wasting time here, Tony. We just need Peter to give it a crack and then we’re out of here.”
God, there are so many things for Peter to unpack right there in that sentence. He focuses on the first thing that caught his attention, that makes foreboding simmer in his gut. “A present?”
Peter follows Rhodey’s eyes towards the centre of the room, noticing something that he hadn’t seen when he first walked in. It looks like a hunk of metal at first glance, a mess of wires snaking across the surface. It’s emitting an uneasy blue glow with Peter instantly recognises as Chitauri, the timer strapped to it flashing in the same hue.
It’s a bomb.
Tony’s earlier panic suddenly seems a lot less like dramatics and more so grounded in a situation that, in Peter’s mind, has grown very serious very quickly. He watches the numbers tick down.
3:03… 3:02… 3:01
Three minutes.
“Can’t we just... move it?” Peter asks. The suggestion sounds sort of stupid even to him because surely that would have been the first thing they thought of - but three minutes is more than enough time to get it far away enough that when it detonates, none of them will be in the hot zone.
Rhodey shakes his head grimly. “There’s no way to tell whether it’s rigged to blow if it’s moved. It’s not worth the risk.”
“What do you need me to do then?” Peter asks, suddenly hyper-aware that their time is dwindling with every second that ticks by.
“He doesn’t need to do anything,” Tony growls. “I told you, just repulsor them.”
“I’ll burn your damn hand off, Tony. I’m not doing that.” Rhodey turns to address Peter. “We just need you to try and pull the cuffs off. I couldn’t get it, but with your strength, if you can get them off then we’ll all be home free.”
No pressure then.
“I do not need Peter’s help, I need him to get the hell out of here,” Tony repeats. He sounds more frantic now but Peter just ignores him. Tony’s insane if he thinks he’s going to leave him here, cuffed in a room with an active bomb.
“Tony, you’re literally chained to a drainpipe. I don’t think we have any other options,” Rhodey says, before addressing Pete
“So I’m just your last resort? Jeez, thanks for the confidence boost guys, means a lot,” Peter mutters, joke falling flat as he takes a few steps closer to Tony, Rhodey moving out of the way to let him. Up close, Tony doesn’t look too banged up, or like he even put up a fight at all. The only sign of struggle at all is a pale bruise, just beginning to bloom underneath his right eye.
Two minutes.
Peter wraps one hand around Tony’s wrist - stomach twisting at the sight of blood from how furiously he’s been trying to get himself free - and the other around the chain of the cuffs. Tony eyes him warily. The only thing Peter can hear from this close up is Tony’s unsteady heartbeat and erratic breathing.
He yanks at the chain not yet quite daring to use his full strength out of fear of hurting Tony. It’s not enough. The cuffs don’t budge.
Peter tightens his grip on the metal. He pulls again, harder this time.
Still nothing.
“Tell me if I hurt you, okay?” Peter instructs Tony.
“You hurting me is the least of my worries right now,” Tony forces out.
Gritting his teeth, Peter channels as much of his strength into his arms as he can and he pulls and pulls and pulls.
Nothing. The chains don't budge or give even just a little. Peter’s not strong enough.
The realisation hits him like a freight train. He can’t do it.
“Vibranium,” Tony mutters darkly, “of fucking course.” The only metal Peter wouldn't be able to pull apart with his bare hands. Tony yanks at the cuffs as Peter steps back, guilty, embarrassed. The chain rattles against the metal of the pipe, echoing around the room.
There’s silence for a moment.
The resolve on Tony’s face breaks. He looks defeated, shaking his head to himself. He knows what’s coming for him. “I need you two to go. Now. Please. I’ll be fine, I promise.”
“We’re not leaving you.”
“Rhodey. James,” Tony’s voice is desperate now, pleading. “I need you to take Peter and go.”
The timer ticks over again.
One minute.
Peter makes a decision. The only one there is left to make.
Even in the suit, he knows that Rhodey can’t move as quickly as him, and Tony, well, he can’t move anywhere at the moment. It has to be him.
As Tony continues to plead with Rhodey, Peter makes a few tentative steps towards the device, holding his breath - Rhodey’s words echoing in his head. There’s no way to tell whether it’s rigged to blow if it’s moved.
Two more steps closer. The timer continues, numbers flashing threateningly up at Peter. Fifty-one seconds. Fifty-one seconds left of all the rest of their lives if he doesn’t act now.
Peter’s hands are shaking as painstakingly slowly, he leans down to place a hand on the outside of the device. It’s hot to the touch, but the timer just continues counting down. Nothing happens. Tentatively still, he scoops the device up towards his chest. It doesn’t explode.
He’s got a bomb in his arms. His heart thunders against his ribcage.
“Just shoot the cuffs with it, you complete-”
“Uh, I think I’ve got a better idea,” Peter offers, “turns out it doesn’t explode if you move it.” Both Tony and Rhodey’s eyes widen, turning towards him. “I’ll see you guys in a minute.”
“Peter Benjamin Parker,” Tony gasps. “Don’t you dare. Put that down. Right now.” His voice shakes with pure fear in a way that cuts right to Peter’s core. He yanks against the cuffs again, this time in Peter’s direction.
The metal of the bomb is growing hotter in Peter’s arms. He shakes his head.
“Peter,” Tony grits out, "no, no, no." He’s shaking uncontrollably now - whether from fear or anger, Peter’s not sure - as he turns to Rhodey. “What the fuck are you doing, just standing there? Get that thing off him.”
Forty seconds.
Peter’s eyes widen. Without a second more hesitation, he turns on his heel.
There’s an anguished yell from behind him, the distinct rattling of metal Peter’s gotten so used to over the past few minutes. He wants so desperately to turn around and tell Tony that it’s okay, that he knows what he’s doing, that he’s just trying to protect him.
But he doesn't have time.
He sprints.
Peter was always the slowest kid in class at elementary school. His asthma never helped - all the times that he was doubled up after running a couple of laps of the track didn’t exactly earn him many status points.
Since the bite, that’s never been a problem. Now Peter has to play down his abilities in gym class. He doesn’t play them down right now though. He can’t afford to. His legs move rapidly beneath him as he weaves through the rooms he distantly remembers coming through on his way in here, feet pounding against the concrete.
He’s outside now. Night air fills his lungs as he gasps for air, desperate for enough oxygen to sustain him at this pace.
He needs to keep going.
Warehouses, ones that he distantly hopes are unused, blur past him. He’s not far away enough yet. He knows what damage these weapons can do, he’s seen them with his own eyes. Tony isn’t in the suit. He doesn’t want him to be hurt.
He’s got to do this.
He doesn’t know how much damage this thing will do when it goes off. He needs to keep running. Peter pushes harder, further.
Twelve seconds.
He slams to a halt in the middle of what looks like an empty parking lot. Maybe companies used to keep trucks here. If they still do, they won’t for much longer anyway. Not as Peter lowers the bomb down onto the ground just as carefully as he picked it up. Six seconds flashes up at him.
He turns and runs.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
The countdown in Peter’s head finishes. He’s early. For a split second, there’s silence. Blissful silence.
Then, it's shattered by the inevitable arriving with a sharp bang from behind him, piercing through the night air. It’s a horrifying, deafening sound, one that’s punctuated with the sound of splintering metal shooting outwards through the air. The heat from the vivid orange flames that dart up into the sky engulfs him.
The force hits him not even a split-second later. It knocks all the air out of his lungs, throwing him through the air.
The warehouse he can see in the distance, hazy through all the smoke and debris, is still intact.
If Mister Stark is okay then all of this is worth it - he’d do it a million times over.
He’s unconscious before he can even hit the ground.
---
“-Peter? Kid? You have to hang on, buddy. You think you can do that for me?”
A voice. It floats vaguely around Peter’s periphery but his ears are ringing and he can’t work out what they’re saying. He thinks maybe he recognises the voice. He tries to turn himself towards it but his whole body screams in protest at the movement.
It hurts. Everywhere hurts.
“God. No, no, no, don’t do this to me. Peter. Peter. I need you to stay with me, please.”
The voice sounds upset. There’s a hand holding his. He thinks he can feel it but he can’t squeeze back. He doesn’t have control of his body.
He’s in pain.
Everything is on fire.
He doesn’t want to stay. Not here. He slips back into the darkness.
There’s no agony in the darkness.
---
Peter’s head is throbbing when he wakes again, every muscle in his body aching. He cracks his eyes open to try and figure out where he is, what’s happening, but the bright light that slips through his eyelids feels like it’s burning straight into his skull. He whines, burrowing into the pillows behind him as though that will allow him to escape it.
His head is pounding. Why is it pounding?
He lets his eyes slip shut again to alleviate some of the relentless pain and tries to sort through his muddled thoughts. He casts his mind back as far as he can.
The illegal weapons ring. The warehouse.
The drain pipe. The vibranium cuffs.
The decimated Iron Man suit.
The bomb.
Mister Stark.
Mister Stark.
Peter shoves himself upright suddenly, his ribs protesting and sending a sharp jolt of pain through his chest. Instinctively, he sucks in a gasp of air, but all that does is exacerbate the pain more. He’s hardly concentrating on that, though.
He’s in the MedBay, he realises. He recognises the white-washed rooms and sterile scent like the back of his hand by now.
Tony. He needs to find Tony.
His eyes dart around until they land on a blurry figure propped in a chair at his bedside. He blinks a few more times, his eyes finally adjusting to the light.
Relief. Some of Peter's panic eases. It’s Tony.
It’s not an uncommon sight, Tony at his bedside. It’s almost concerning, maybe, the fact that Peter wakes up in these situations so often that he’s no longer fazed by it. What is unusual is the fact that Tony isn’t looking at Peter. His eyes are glazed over slightly, focused down on where he’s picking at the corner of a stark white bandage on his wrist - his left wrist, the one that had been cuffed, Peter realises in his hazy mind. The image of Tony chained to that drain pipe, skin bloodied from the way he’d been yanking at those cuffs, works its way to the front of his mind and burns itself there.
“M’ster Stark?” Peter struggles to raise his voice to anything above a rasp. At the sound, Tony looks up, snapping out of whatever daze he was in. His expression is impassive, but there’s something brewing behind it that Peter can’t quite work out.
“You’re awake,” he says simply. There’s no fussing. No rearranging of the pillows, or gentle one-armed hugs or are you okay?’s
He just reaches for the call button on the bedside table instead.
Peter’s still struggling to connect himself with reality, but the feeling that something isn’t right floods through him. He’s slightly less blinded by the sharp ache of pain now, so when he Peter looks at Tony, he sees things he didn’t notice before. He sees how tightly hunched his shoulders are, the deep lines in his face - only exacerbated by the harsh overhead lighting, eyebrows furrowed, drawn into a scowl.
But he’s okay. He’s breathing.
He’s alive.
Peter opens his mouth to say something - what exactly, he’s not sure - but he’s cut off by a voice that disappointingly, isn’t Tony’s.
Peter and Tony glance up at the same time to see Bruce passing through the doorway and crossing the room to Peter’s bedside. “Good to see you awake, Peter.” Bruce places a gentle hand on Peter’s shoulder, and Peter realises that he’s still hovering at the same awkward angle he had been when he shot up to look for Tony. He lets Bruce push him back towards the pillows behind him. A tiny breath of relief puffs past his lips when the pressure is taken off his aching chest. “You gave all of us a pretty nasty scare.”
All of us. That must include Tony as well, who has returned to resolutely not looking at Peter.
“I, uh, I didn’t mean to,” Peter croaks out. His throat is horribly dry, but Bruce seems to be prepared because he pushes a glass of water into his hands. Peter grips it carefully, trying his best not to let his hands shake - with what he’s not sure. Anxiety? Pain? Leftover adrenaline? He tucks the straw in-between his lips and takes a sip just to try and alleviate some of the awkwardness he feels, not saying a word and pretending not to see the probing looks Bruce is sending Tony’s way.
“It’s okay. I’ve learnt to expect the unexpected when it comes to you, Peter,” Bruce tells him. Peter watches warily at the way Bruce’s eyes flit between him and Tony. He feels like there’s something unspoken going on that he hasn’t been let in on.
“How long have I been out for?” Peter asks, suddenly noticing the light filtering in through the darkened windows.
“About fourteen hours,” Bruce tells him. “It gave your healing a chance to give everything a good crack. It’s three-thirty on Saturday afternoon.”
Peter swallows. The last he remembers clearly is the panic etched so deeply onto Tony’s face as he sprinted from that warehouse, bomb cradled in his arms. Everything after that is a bit of a blur, a haze of freezing night air and the darkened sky above him and then fire, the reverberation of the bang, being tosses backwards like he weighed nothing - like he was nothing. That’s what people are to those kinds of weapons. Destructible. Nothing.
Peter couldn’t have let it go off anywhere near Tony. That was never even an option.
“Mister Stark, I really wasn’t trying to-”
Tony shakes his head, the movement sharp and jerky. “Just let Bruce do his job, Peter.” Peter barely recognises the tone. It’s not warm, or smooth and reassuring, the one that he’s gradually taken on as he spends more and more time at Peter’s side. This is cold and impersonal, the type of tone that makes a shiver run down Peter’s spine involuntarily. He hates it immediately.
Bruce shoots Tony a confused look, “It’s okay, I can focus just fine with you jabbering on. I’m used to dealing with the two of you.”
Tony doesn’t budge, just giving another shake of his head. “We’ll talk afterwards,” Tony says, letting himself sink back into the chair again instead of sitting ramrod straight. The movement is less relieved and more defeated. Exhausted. Worn down.
Bruce looks taken aback for a second before he regains his composure and focuses his attention back on Peter. “Are you in any pain?” he asks, feeling around Peter’s ribs. He’s gentle, but Peter flinches back anyway as he brushes over a particularly tender spot.
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter sees Tony’s eyes dart up to fix on him at the movement. Concern flashes across his face but it’s gone as quickly as it came. By the time Peter can turn his head to catch Tony’s eye properly, the man is staring out the window, stony expression set back in place.
The knot of discomfort in Peter’s stomach grows.
“I see your healing hasn’t quite gotten the whole way there yet,” Bruce hums. “You broke five of your ribs,” he explains when he sees Peter’s thinly-veiled quizzical look. “A few second-degree burns on your arms. You’ve got a pretty nasty head wound as well, but with a few stitches, it will be as good as new in no time. You’re lucky that’s all it is. It looks like you took a pretty big hit when you landed.”
Peter winces, noticing for the first time the thick white bandages covering his upper arms. He’s used to this, listening to Bruce reel off a laundry list of injuries that he’s had to tend to for him. But this seems bad - even for him. He reaches up for the back of his head, feeling around. His fingertips brush over the stitches and he hisses before Bruce can wrap a hand around his wrist gently to tug him away.
“Is it bad?” he mumbles.
Tony scoffs almost inaudibly at the question. Bruce just gives him a softened smile. “Nothing a few days in bed won’t let your healing take care of.”
“A few days? But I feel-”
“Don’t argue with him,” Tony mutters, speaking up again.
That’s more than enough to shut Peter up. He bites down on his bottom lip, chewing on it anxiously as Bruce bustles around Peter for a few more minutes. He gives Peter another dose of pain meds when even shifting against the pillows makes the angry aching in his ribs flare-up, makes sure that he’s got enough liquids to keep him hydrated and checks all of his vitals once more.
“Are you going to be okay if I leave you to it?” Bruce asks once he’s finished. He’s looking directly at Peter but before Peter can even open his mouth to answer, Tony nods stiffly. “We’re fine.”
Bruce glances back at Peter, conflicted, but Peter keeps his mouth shut. He needs to grow a pair and just explain himself to Tony.
As Bruce closes the door behind him, Peter realises all of a sudden that he actually would have quite liked Bruce to stay. Especially as Tony turns to him properly for the first time since Peter’s woken up. His face is still set firmly, emotionless, but there’s a new fury that’s been let loose, burning behind his eyes.
Peter can only hold eye-contact for a few moments before he ducks his eyes away. Neither of them speaks for a minute.
“Care to tell me what the hell you were thinking?” Tony asks lowly.
Peter looks up again cautiously. “The bomb... I, I had to get it out of there.”
“And you had to do that by running out of there with it like a football?”
“I didn’t mean to get hurt, or get in the way, I promise,” Peter rushes out quickly, trying to make Tony understand. “But you were stuck and that thing was going to go off and I know I’m faster than Rhodey in the suit, it had to be me, it had to.” Peter watches as Tony sucks in a sharp breath at his words. “I was just trying to be helpful.”
“Trying to be helpful?” Tony repeats incredulously. “Is it lost on you how completely reckless you were? I don’t give a damn about what you were trying to do, not when your own actions end with you in a hospital bed,” Tony growls. “Do you know that Rhodey had to be the one to come out and find you splayed out on the concrete like a fucking ragdoll after the bomb you were carrying imploded in your arms? Or that I had to sit there, holding your hand wondering if you were about to die on me in the back of a medevac, of all places? Does any of that even matter to you?” Tony stops and sighs, burying his head in his hands for the briefest of moments. Peter wonders what he’s trying to conceal. “God, Peter. I just wish you’d put the tiniest bit of value on your own fucking life for once.”
“Of course it matters. I care about my own life” - just maybe not more than yours. Maybe I’d rather die protecting you than live with the guilt of not being able to save you - “and I was careful, I promise.”
“I don’t care how careful you were, Peter. My problem is with the fact that you picked up the damn thing in the first place. It’s the first rule of bomb safety. You don’t touch it. Ever.”
“I was never taught bomb safety,” Peter mutters, for no real reason apart from the small spark of satisfaction of talking back. He can feel his hackles rising a little as he’s dismissed so carelessly. He was just trying to help. That thing would have blown Tony to pieces.
“You shouldn’t need a fucking SHIELD standard bomb safety course to know not to pick up an active bomb and run with it. What if the bomb had gone off when you picked it up, huh? How did you know that wasn’t going to happen? Then all of us would have been done for. Even if we’d somehow survived the blast, the building would have collapsed on us. Did you think of any of this?” Tony accuses as if he thinks that in that moment, Peter had room for any other thoughts in his mind apart from the constant chant of, keep Mister Stark safe, keep Mister Stark safe, keep Mister Stark safe.
“I had to take that risk!” Peter snaps, voice raised as he loses his cool slightly. “I saved your life.”
Tony’s stare hardens. “Yeah, and nearly ended your goddamn own. This isn’t a trade-off. It wasn’t your call to make.”
“You would have done the same thing to protect me,” Peter points out. Tony just seethes at the statement, shoving his chair out backwards to stand, suddenly towering taller over Peter.
“I don’t give a flying fuck about what you think I would have done. You are not me.” Tony paces, back and forth at the foot of Peter’s bed, releasing some sort of frustrated tension that’s emanating off of him. “I let you come along because I thought I could trust you to listen to me, Peter.”
I thought I could trust you.
The words hit Peter harder than anything else. Tony can trust him. He wasn’t purposefully trying to go against orders. He was trying to save his life.
“You would have died,” Peter says, the words soft as he struggles to force them out. All his anger has disappeared now, replaced with the memory of fear pulsing through him as he remembers what went down in the warehouse. Tony would without a doubt been blown apart if someone hadn’t gotten that bomb out of there. He really, really doesn’t want to think about that. “I don’t know what I would have done if you-”
Tony shakes his head, dismissing Peter’s weak attempt at building bridges between them before he could really even say what he needs to. The movement is sharp enough that Peter’s mouth snaps shut, words dying on his tongue.
“You’re a kid, Peter, Tony thunders, the word kid flying out of his mouth with more vitriol than Peter has ever heard it from him. He’s used to the word escaping Tony’s lips when they’re pulled in a warm smile, reserved just for him. It’s not like that today. It’s the furthest away it could possibly get. “I don’t need your help. I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself. I thought you’d be able to work that out for yourself but apparently I have to spell a few things out for you. You’re not an Avenger. I just want you to survive goddamn high school - and it seems like even that’s too much to ask of you.”
Peter can feel tears burning in his eyes but he blinks them away desperately, willing himself to not let them spill down his cheeks. He’s already being spoken to like a child, he doesn’t need to give Tony any more reason to believe that he’s nothing more than that.
“I think you’re being a bit harsh, Tony,” a new voice says firmly.
Tony, clearly having been so engrossed in his tirade, jerks around to face the door. Rhodey is standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. Tony’s scowl just deepens.
“Shut it, Rhodes,” Tony snaps. “If he can handle a live bomb then I think he can handle hearing the truth.”
“You’re not going to do this. Not right now. Peter’s hurt.”
A ghost of something unreadable crosses Tony’s face. A tiny bit of the fight eeks out of his posture and his shoulders slump. His voice still has the same hard edge to it though, as he says, “I’m very aware of that, funnily enough.”
Rhodey steps forward and wraps a firm hand around Tony’s elbow, despite the protests, and all but hauls him from the room. He halts in the doorway and turns around for a second. Peter eyes him hesitantly. “It’s good to see you awake, Peter,” he says. It’s solemn but genuine.
Peter nods. He doesn’t know what to say. He’s run out of words. The two of them disappear out the door, leaving Peter alone.
Peter thinks he’d rather have just stayed asleep. At least this way the ache of his bones wouldn’t be competing with the void of regret growing inside of him.
He was just trying to protect Tony - but now all Tony sees him as is an incapable kid, and worse than that, someone that he can’t even trust.
---
The room stays empty all afternoon.
Maybe a little naively, Peter keeps waiting for Tony to reappear.
He doesn’t.
The closest he gets to any affection is from Bruce, who gives him a comforting squeeze on the shoulder as he ups his dose of painkillers before he goes to sleep.
Tony doesn’t come in to say goodnight either. FRIDAY tells him that Tony is still awake. She asks Peter if he’d like her to tell Tony that he’s asking for him.
Peter shakes his head, curling up under the blankets. “I, uh, no, no thank you, FRIDAY. I’m okay. Totally fine.”
He goes to sleep trying to believe his own words.
---
By the next morning, Peter’s head has stopped giving him grief completely, and according to Bruce, the stitches have dissolved. The burns are on their way to healing as well. The pain in his ribs is the only thing he’s really still contending with but he’s still not allowed to leave the MedBay.
Bruce hangs around for a while, listening to Peter’s weak arguments about how he feels great and how he’s sure that he’ll be totally fine if Bruce would just discharge him to go home. Tony must have told Bruce that May is away for the weekend because that particular request gets shot down extremely quickly.
After all, Peter knows Bruce doesn’t believe a single word that he’s saying, and isn't even considering his arguments for a second - but he’s indulging him anyway. It’s his way of keeping him company, at least for a little while, without making Peter feel pitied. It’s nice.
Especially since it’s the only human contact he gets for the morning - if you don’t count FRIDAY. He spends the rest of the morning scrolling aimlessly through his phone, chatting to her. Peter thinks maybe he can count her as human contact. She’s always felt real enough to him anyway, such a source of comfort in times like these that it almost feels like an insult to think of her as any less.
By the time the afternoon rolls around, Peter tells himself that he hasn’t just spent the entire morning tentatively hoping for a visit from Tony.
He was stupid to even think about it. Of course, he was never going to show. Peter learnt that yesterday.
---
A few hours later, as Peter’s making his way down his Instagram feed for what feels like the hundredth time today to try and keep his mind off everything, there’s a voice in the doorway.
“Hey, kid.”
Peter’s head shoots up at the familiar words, hope blooming in his chest for a moment before his eyes meet the person’s in the doorway. Rhodey. The hope withers and dies.
He forces his lips into what feels like the barest shadow of a smile. He doesn’t know why he thought it might be Tony. Of course it isn’t him.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Unlike yesterday, where he appeared briefly to all but haul Tony out of the room, Rhodey appears to be intent on staying this time. He crosses from the doorway to Peter’s bedside and sinks into the chair that Tony had been occupying yesterday.
“How’re you doing?” he asks once he’s settled, watching Peter carefully like he’s trying to pick up on any tells. Peter attempts a smile again. If this was Tony he might be worried about his poor acting skills giving him away, but it’s not. As much as he likes Rhodey, he doesn’t know him like Tony.
(Not many people know him like Tony.)
Peter shrugs. His ribs have been aching all morning and he’s got a splitting headache that just won’t leave. It’s probably too much phone time. Tony would tell him to put it away and let his eyes rest if he was here.
“M’fine.”
“Did you sleep okay?”
As Peter shrugs again in answer, Rhodey seems to cotton on to the fact that Peter doesn’t feel much like talking about his ailments, so he changes his tack. Peter’s grateful - it means he doesn’t have to think too much about his own issues. He’s sick of feeling sorry for himself.
So they talk about nothing for a little while. Rhodey’s last deployment that Peter hasn’t caught up on. How Peter’s doing at school. What he’s been working on in the lab.
But eventually, Peter just can’t help himself. He chews on his lip for a second, before he bites the bullet and just hopes the answer isn’t something that he doesn’t want to hear. “I, uh, do you think Mister Stark might come down today? I get he’s probably super busy and, y’know, mad at me, but I just thought… maybe...”
Peter knows what the answer is going to be as soon as Rhodey’s facial expression folds into one of distinct regret. “Tony’s a little busy today, Pete,” he says, before pausing. Peter can tell he’s thinking on his feet, trying to cover for his friend. Peter curls further into the blankets he’s lying under. “He had a few meetings come up. You know how it is.”
That’s exactly the problem. Peter does know how it is - and it’s not like this, whatever this is. Tony will drop anything business-related in a second to take care of the people he loves. That’s who he is, Peter’s discovered, after months of texts and dropping by and late nights in the lab, chipping away at his walls.
Peter doesn’t know which is worse. Tony telling Rhodey to lie to him about where he is, or Tony actually deciding that meetings are higher on his priority list than Peter as he lies alone in the MedBay.
He hates me. He hates me. He hates me.
Rhodey obviously sees the look on his face that Peter’s trying so hard to hide because he sighs. “I’m sorry, I’m sure he’d be down here as soon as possible if he could.”
Liar. He wouldn’t. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near me.
“He hates me now, doesn’t he?” Peter asks, voice small and resigned. He doesn’t want to hear the answer, not really. Not when he’s pretty much already accepted that he knows what it will be.
Rhodey’s eyes widen. He flounders for a second, looking lost. Peter’s once again reminded that he’s not Tony. Kid doesn’t sound the same when he says it. He doesn’t know how to settle Peter when anxiety wraps itself around his chest, all-consuming. He doesn’t know that a hand run through Peter’s hair will make him go soft and that if you scratch right behind his ear he’ll lean into the touch automatically.
Tony knows all these things.
“Absolutely not, he doesn’t hate you,” Rhodey says, finding his voice. “He’s just busy, I-”
“I know you’re bullshitting,” Peter mumbles. He knows it’s rude. He knows he shouldn’t talk like that to Rhodey - Rhodey’s just trying to help, he’s here, which is more than anyone else. But he’s tired and sore and frustrated and god, he just wants someone here to love him. “He hates me. He does. Otherwise he'd be here."
“Tony could never hate you, Peter,” Rhodey says. “I’ll talk to him, okay? He’s just having a tough time.”
"All I was trying to do was help. He didn’t have the suit. Otherwise, he was going to… he could have…” Peter trails off, the words lodging themselves in his throat.
Rhodey doesn't seem to have an answer for this. He knows as well as Peter does what would have happened if Peter hadn't gotten that bomb out of there. The two of them fall into quiet.
Even still, Rhodey doesn’t budge from his bedside for an hour or so after that. It’s company, it’s something, but it’s not the same.
Peter will take what he can get.
---
May phones that night when he’s alone, again. The room is swathed in darkness, lit only by the glow of the TV. There’s an old rerun of Jeopardy! playing that he isn’t watching.
Peter shifts in bed, trying to make himself more comfortable as he answers her call. His chest aches as he props himself further up the pillows. Bruce has told him it’s totally normal to expect some discomfort as they heal but it’s been getting steadily worse all throughout the afternoon - maybe speaking to Rhodey took it out of him more than he thought. In the back of his mind, he reminds himself to call Bruce down for another dose of painkillers before he goes to sleep tonight.
He has FRIDAY put May on speakerphone. This way, her voice echoes around the room, filling the empty space that’s been threatening to suffocate him all evening.
He tries to ask her how her trip is going, but apparently, she’s not so interested in pleasantries tonight.
“You want to tell me why I had to wait for a call from Colonel Rhodes to let me know that my nephew is in hospital?”
Peter swallows. “Technically it’s just the MedBay,” he offers weakly.
May makes a slightly unimpressed sound at his answer. “Peter,” she says, “I’m serious. You can’t just, not tell me these things.”
“I dunno,” Peter says, shrugging even though she can’t see him. “I was going to eventually, I promise.”
(He does know why he didn’t tell her. She’s having a nice getaway with her friends. She doesn’t get many of those, not with Peter around. He doesn’t want to get in anyone else's way this weekend.)
“Is Tony okay? I was so worried about you I didn’t even think to ask, which I feel terrible about but-”
“He’s fine,” Peter interjects. “Totally fine. It was, uh, mainly just me.”
“Is he with you? Can I speak to him?”
Peter casts an eye around the room, almost like he’s looking for the man that he knows isn’t here - it just feels like he should be. Peter lying in the MedBay alone feels wrong. “He’s not, actually. Not right now.”
“He has been though, right?” May asks, though there’s no worry in her tone. She says it like a given. Like there’s nowhere else Tony would be rather than at Peter’s side, especially when she can’t be there herself. She trusts Tony to look after him.
He wonders whether she would understand that Tony can’t stand to be around him if he told her what happened.
“Yeah, he has been…” he says, hoping the uncertainty in his voice doesn’t give him away.
“Good. I'm looking forward to seeing both of you. I’ve booked the first flight home, I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”
Peter shoots upright, ribs twinging. “No, no,” he rushes out, suddenly feeling extremely guilty. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Oh hush,” May tuts, “I want to, don’t be silly.”
Peter opens his mouth to refute her again but he finds that he can’t. He wants her here. Now more than ever.
May keeps talking and Peter lies back and closes his eyes. If he tries hard enough, he can almost pretend that he’s lying sprawled out on the couch back in their apartment and May’s just in the kitchen, somewhere nearby where she could step over and give him a hug as soon as he broke and admitted that, god, he really needs one right now.
Only almost, though. Because the room still smells sterile rather than of May’s favourite cedarwood reed diffuser and the sheets underneath him are soft, too soft, so unlike the worn, slightly scratchy fabric of their own couch.
He lets himself drift off pretending anyway, clinging to the daydream of comfort.
---
By the time Peter’s let May’s voice lull him into a deep sleep, he’s completely forgotten that he didn’t call Bruce in for any more painkillers.
---
It’s dark when Peter wakes next, and he can barely breathe.
He has no idea what the time is. He can barely remember where he is.
All he knows is pain.
It burns from deep inside his chest, emanating everywhere, cutting right down to his bones. His breathing is coming in heavy, painful pants and every gulp of air he sucks in sends a jolt of pain through his ribs. He doesn’t know what’s going on - he’s still stuck in a half-asleep daze but he feels like he’s dying.
It hurts. It hurts. Everything hurts.
He screws his eyes shut. It wasn’t like he was seeing much anyway, his vision blurred with tears and the room spinning dangerously around him.
Someone whimpers. It’s whiny sounding, like a wounded animal. Peter hates it. He tucks his knees to his chest - more pain - and buries his head in his knees to try and block out the sound. It doesn’t work.
A few minutes later, still curled up in the same cramped position, still lost inside his world of pain, Peter’s hazy mind comes to the conclusion that it’s him whimpering.
Pathetic. Pathetic.
He needs his pain meds. He needs something to numb this, to numb everything. In the back of his mind, he distantly remembers that he needed to ask Bruce for more. He doesn’t think he did. Or at least, he doesn’t remember the man ever coming to administer them.
It’s your own fault, Peter.
Something else to add to the list.
He twists in agony as another strike of pain hits, his ribs flaring up again. He could ask FRIDAY to get Bruce for him. He knows that she’d wake him up. But he doesn’t want to disturb him. If he needed his meds he should have remembered to ask at a reasonable hour.
You’re already in everyone’s way. Mister Stark hates you. Bruce has been having to deal with you all the time.
Stop being a baby.
Mister Stark doesn’t want a kid on the team.
Prove it to them. Show them that you can be strong.
He tucks his limbs closer to his chest, curling up tighter. Everything hurts, and he can feel tears starting to burn in his eyes. He feels a few hot tears drip down his cheeks before he can contain them and he shifts a hand up to wipe them away.
“F-FRIDAY?” Peter starts, quietly. He stumbles over the word, voice hitching.
“Yes, Peter?” FRIDAY replies. Her voice is soothing, and Peter wants to lean into its familiarity.
"I..." Peter falls silent. He doesn’t know what he’s asking. He just wants.
---
Peter's not sure how much time has passed when he hears footfall outside his door. He thinks maybe he’s imagining it. The pain is ebbing now, rising and falling like the tide, returning every so often just to crash over him and drown him in it.
The door creaks open, a sliver of light falling across the room. Peter’s breath chokes in his throat
I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine.
Don’t make a sound. Don’t be a bother.
Don’t get in the way.
“Peter?”
That’s his name, spoken in such an unsure way and shielded behind a cold demeanour. Peter immediately knows exactly who it is. His breathing ratchets up because oh god, it’s Tony and he sounds exactly the same way as he did last time they spoke. Peter’s meant to be showing that he’s strong, that he’s capable. And yet here he is hyperventilating and trembling in pain under the covers. He stays as still as he can, eyes screwed shut. Maybe if he lies here for long enough, Tony might leave.
He doesn’t want Tony to leave - not really. But there must be some mistake. Tony can’t mean to be here. If he meant to be here, surely he would have been a whole lot earlier.
“Do you need something? FRIDAY said you were in pain.”
Oh. He doesn’t even mean to be here. FRIDAY called him down. Peter doesn’t remember asking FRIDAY to fetch him.
“Peter?” Tony questions when he doesn’t reply, voice now less hostile and laced with confusion.
Peter doesn't know what he needs. But he knows he wants someone to stay.
“H’rts,” Peter mumbles before he can stop himself. “Please make it stop.”
And then before he can stop himself, he’s crying, embarrassing loud, ugly sobs because he’s so sore and so lonely and Tony is just there, only a few feet away and yet he feels so impossibly far away. He wants someone to hold his hand and push the strands of sweat-soaked hair off his forehead. He wants someone to tell him he’s going to be okay because right now all he knows is pain, burning through his veins, and he can’t see the way out.
He wants May. He wants Tony.
He wants someone to hold him.
Quiet footsteps tread towards his bedside. Peter doesn’t dare open his eyes.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Tony soothes, and the way he speaks so gently only makes Peter sob harder. It’s hard to breathe with the lump in his throat and crushing ache of his ribs. He gasps out without realising it, and then tries to quieten himself. Tony’s still there though. He hasn't left. Peter feels him lower a warm hand down onto his back, rubbing in circles gently.
“Shh. Breathe, Pete, you just gotta breathe. Do you think you could do that for me?”
Why is he being so nice? Suddenly, Peter wonders if he deserves it. He can’t even remember if he apologised to Tony.
“‘m sorry, I tried not to get in the way but it hurts,” Peter whines. He sounds pathetic but he can’t help it. “I can’t breathe. M’ster Stark, make it stop, make it stop, please.”
“You need to talk to me, buddy. What hurts?” Tony asks. His voice is quiet and reassuring. Peter likes this Tony better than angry Tony. He lets his eyes slip closed. “No, no, I need you to look at me. Just for a second, okay?”
Look at him? At Tony? Peter can do that, he thinks. He blinks his eyes open, eyelids heavy. He wants to close them again so badly, but Tony’s got this concerned look drawn all over his face while he’s looking at him, which Peter’s so confused about. The last time he saw Tony, the man had looked like he thought Peter was the worst person on the planet. Like he hated him.
Tony grabs the medicine chart off the clipboard above Peters’ bed and Peter watches through tear-blurred vision as he scans his eyes over it. “That'll do it. Your ribs are probably throwing a fit since you haven’t had any meds since midday, Pete, that was well over twelve hours ago” - Peter tries to do the math to figure out what time it is, what ungodly hour he’s dragged Tony out of bed to run around after his sorry ass, but his brain is too addled to figure it out - “didn’t Bruce dose you up before bed?” Tony asks. He knows the answer. He has the chart in front of him. Bruce is meticulous, he never forgets to tick these things off.
Peter gives a pitiful shake of his head, a barely noticeable movement. “M’fault. Didn’t ask.”
Tony sighs, biting down on his lip like he wants to get into it but he knows he can’t. Peter’s glad. He doesn’t have the energy for any of this. He feels like his brain is still trying to play catch up. Every time he blinks, Tony is still there when he opens his eyes, standing in front of him, concern pulling his face down in a frown.
“Well, I’m gonna dose you up now.”
“The good stuff?” Peter mumbles, turning his face into the pillow to try and hide a wince as another wave of pain arrives, lapping at his toes before surging forward to wash over him. Tony doesn’t miss it, and his movements grow hurried as he fumbles to pull out a dose of Peter’s pain meds.
His fingers are gentle as he takes Peter’s arm in his grip to keep it steady. Peter didn’t realise how badly he was still trembling - from the panic or pain he’s not sure. Tony slips the syringe into the IV catheter and plunges down slowly. Peter watches him lazily, eyes cracked open. He’s seen Tony do this so many times, hell, he’s even seen the man do it to himself. He trusts him.
“Yeah, bud, the real good stuff.”
The familiar sensation wraps Peter in its hold not long after. He lets his eyes flutter closed, but tries to blink them open again when he hears a voice above him. “Yeah, there we go… no, shhh, close your eyes.”
Peter does as he’s told because the voice is gentle and he trusts it. He doesn’t think it would lead him astray.
“There we go. Nice work, kiddo.”
The room floats away, but there’s a pressure against his scalp, a hand running through his hair, grounding him to reality. It’s nice. A much nicer reality than the one he was trapped before. That seems like such a long time ago. Maybe Peter dreamt it?
“‘m sorry I didn’t listen,” Peter mumbles out. He turns, pressing his face into the palm of Tony’s hand like a starved animal seeking out the barest scraps of physical attention. Tony curls his fingers gently, blunt nails scratching against the tufts of hair around Peter’s ear.
“You’re okay, bud, you’re okay. We can talk later when you’re not so loopy. Just try and get some sleep.”
Talk… later? What if Tony leaves again? What if there is no later? Peter wants to talk now. Ben always used to tell him that you should never go to bed angry and he and Tony have broken that rule the last two nights now - he doesn’t want to do it again. But whenever he tries to open his mouth, his tongue feels too heavy to force out any of the right words.
“Sleep?” Peter slurs out quietly.
Tony nods. “Yeah, all you need right now is a good night’s sleep. I’ll be right here in the morning,” he says, words soft and genuine. Peter believes them - but he makes sure anyway.
“Right h’re?”
Tony nods again, settling further into the chair he’s sitting in as if to physically demonstrate to Peter exactly what he’s saying. “I promise.”
That’s good enough for Peter. Sleep does sound pretty good, on second thought. There’s a floaty feeling flowing through Peter now, dissipating the pain. He’s comfy, and the weight of Tony’s hand against his cheek where he’s still scratching at his hair feels so nice. He rolls over, trapping Tony’s hand there between the pillow and his cheek. He can’t leave now, even if he wants to.
---
Hours later, Peter only remembers a few things from the night before when he surfaces from his sleep, memories blurring together in the back of his mind.
Burning pain and then nothing. Someone by his bedside maybe? A hand in his hair. A quiet voice.
Close your eyes, you’re okay.
Peter knows that voice. It sounds so achingly familiar, even as it echoes through his thoughts.
You’re okay, buddy. You’re okay.
Peter rolls over onto his side at the sound of an exhale from beside him, the smallest of yawns like someone trying their best to be quiet. It’s Tony, he realises, the comforting words whispering through his mind suddenly making much more sense. He clearly managed to get his hand free from underneath Peter’s cheek last night but he’s still here anyway, in the chair by his bedside, the one that’s remained largely unoccupied over the last couple of days. He’s dressed in an old t-shirt and faded jeans - Peter dreads to think what important lab work he pulled the man away from last night.
“Hey, bud” Tony mumbles. His voice is rough with sleep and he stretches his arms out above his head, poorly hiding a wince as he does.
A rush of shame floods Peter almost immediately. He can’t believe that Tony had to spend the night down here last night just because he kicked up a fuss about a little bit of pain.
He stares stupidly for a moment, willing the words to work their way out of his exhausted brain but he doesn’t know what to say. Tony shouldn’t be here. He probably doesn’t want to be here.
“You can go,” is the first thing that works its way free from Peter’s mouth. Tony raises his eyebrows.
“Good morning to you too,” Tony says, looking equal parts bemused and a little taken aback by Peter’s greeting. “Am I allowed to at least ask you how you’re feeling before you kick me out?
“I’m not kicking you out,” Peter mutters, the slightest bit defensive. He doesn’t know why Tony would think that he’s the one that wants him gone. He’d love Tony to stay - he’d have loved Tony to stay the second he woke up in the MedBay and they had their blowout. But it’s not about him. He doesn’t want Tony to stay if he doesn’t want to. He’s just making it easier for him - he’s made it abundantly clear that spending time with Peter isn’t exactly at the top of his priorities list, after all. “I, just, uh, I’m sorry you had to come down here. I don’t really remember much from last night.”
“That doesn’t exactly surprise me, you were pretty out of it,” Tony says easily. He shifts in his seat, but he seems to be making himself more comfortable than preparing to get up out of it and walk out the door again. The longer he sticks around the more it’s going to hurt when he leaves.
“I know you're mad at me and I know you don’t really want to be here. You can go, I won’t mind or be offended or anything, I promise,” Peter says, words catching as he says them because of their mistruth. He does mind. He does want Tony here.
But not if he doesn’t want to be.
“I think this means we need to talk about the other day, huh?” Tony says simply. Peter’s brows furrow together in confusion. He wonders if Tony is expecting an apology. He didn’t exactly give him one the other day - didn’t think that saving someone’s life warranted an apology. But obviously he went wrong somewhere along the way because if he hadn’t, maybe Tony might have stuck around.
“I’m sorry, Mister Stark,” he starts, a little nervous. He doesn’t know what he’s expected to say. What do you say to make someone want to stay? “I promise I wasn’t trying to not listen, or put any of us in a dangerous situation, or-”
“You don’t need to do the apologies, kid,” Tony says with a wave of his hand and a strained expression on his face as he listens to Peter’s words. Peter snaps his mouth shut.
“But I really am sorry,” Peter tries again after a beat of silence that Tony doesn’t fill. “I was just trying to protect you, that’s all. You were trapped and the whole place was going to blow and I couldn’t let anything happen to you… I couldn’t.” Peter watches Tony’s face carefully - he’s struggling to read his mix of emotions. “I’m only apologising for not thinking it through. I’m not apologising for trying to protect you,” Peter finishes determinedly. He won’t say he’s sorry for trying to save Tony’s life. Never. He’d do it over and over again in a heartbeat.
“That there, Pete, that’s the problem,” Tony says. He scrubs a hand down the side of his face roughly. “I can’t handle the idea of you protecting me, it’s-”
Peter frowns, a tiny stab of betrayal shooting through his chest. Despite the last few days, somewhere deep down still, he really thought that Tony still believed in him, at least a little bit. Maybe that was stupid of him.
“You let me come to Germany and let me loose against Captain America and the Winter Solider and now suddenly you don’t even trust me to protect you against a few guys with guns and explosives? I handled it, Mister Stark, and I know you think what I did was stupid and reckless, but I handled it.”
Tony shakes his head. “You’ve got a couple of things a little twisted, not that I can exactly blame you, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly the other day,” - he huffs humourlessly. Peter thinks there might be regret in his eyes. “I know what you can do - I’ve known that since before I even really knew you. You’re capable of dealing with what you did the other day, you showed us that.”
“So what’s changed?” Peter asks. He knows he should keep the edge of frustration out of his voice but he can’t. If Tony really trusts him as much as he claims to then why won’t he just accept that Peter is capable of so much more? “Why did you freak out the other day?”
“What’s changed is that now I do really know you.”
Peter’s confused. This whole conversation feels like a roller-coaster of emotions that he’s a little too tired and dozy from the residual drugs pumping through his system to process. “I… what?”
“Now I know you,” Tony repeats. “When I took you to Germany, I didn’t know any more than Spider-Man, really. But you’re still a kid behind the mask, buddy-” Peter scowls weakly, “-and I know you’re gonna tell me that you’re not a kid and all that, but you are and I know you’d guard my life with your own if you’re given the chance and I trust you but that right there? That’s the damn problem.”
“The problem?” Peter repeats incredulously. He’s grown up watching movies and reading comic books under the bed covers with a torch after his bedtime, enamoured with the idea of the action hero choosing to do the right thing - even at the expense of themselves. He’s always thought that laying your life on the line for someone is the most selfless thing you can do for someone and that’s what Tony’s upset about?
“It’s… oh, I don’t know,” Tony mutters. He pauses, thinking for a second. “I was the one who screwed that mission up in the first place. I let my guard down and those idiots got a hold of me. My bad-”
“That wasn’t on you,” Peter says firmly. At this point, it’s becoming unclear who’s trying to comfort who.
“Uh, uh, I’m not done,” Tony chastises. “I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you. And not just because your Aunt would skin me alive. I’ve, uh, I’ve grown kind of fond of you, kid, I don’t know if you can tell. And the idea of anything happening to you - anything at all, let alone something happening because of me doesn’t sit particularly well.”
Oh.
Oh.
That makes more sense than Peter was expecting. He suddenly feels bad about even rising to the challenge of Tony’s argument in the first place. He knows that Tony tries to cover up the way he feels with a mask of sarcasm and sharp words - Peter just never thought that he’d be on the receiving end.
“I didn’t know I scared you,” Peter says softly. “I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Tony admonishes with a half-hearted scoff. “I don’t think I’d go that far.”
“Sure,” Peter says conspiratorially. He shifts closer to the edge of the bed, closer to Tony. Tony brings an arm up to rest on top of the bed, brushing against Peter’s leg under the covers. It’s nice - the sort of grounding they both need right now. The sort of contact they’ve both been sorely missing.
“Okay, so maybe I was a little worried,” Tony concedes. “I’ve never really been one for kids, never thought I would be. But with you, I just, I don’t want you to grow up too soon. And if I know you half as well as I think I do, then I know that you won’t be hanging up that suit for a long time. Just do both of us a favour and stick to giving old ladies directions for a while, maybe? You’ve got all the time in the world for all the traumatising, hardcore stuff, I promise you.”
“So… you're saying I should skip the traumatising stuff and just stick to traumatising you instead?”
“You’re already doing a pretty damn good job of that, kid.”
---
“May’s on her way from the airport,” Peter says distractedly, later that day as he types out a reply to her text.
Tony is still by Peter’s bedside, his legs kicked up on the bed as he scrolls through his StarkPad. Peter looks up when Tony doesn’t reply. “Hey, Mister Stark?”
“Huh?”
“May’s on her way. Happy just picked her up.”
“Okay, good.”
“What’re you working on?” Peter asks, abandoning his phone as he wonders what’s got Tony so distracted.
“Just going through Rhodey’s report on the other day. Adding in the details, trying to make myself sound cooler, all that good stuff.”
Peter laughs. “Can I help?”
“Pete-”
“You said you trust me!
“Well, this is paperwork, it’s boring-”
“I want to learn! I could help!”
Tony lets out a long-winded sigh. “You really like to make me suffer, don’t you?” He turns fully towards Peter and raises his eyebrows expectantly. “So, hit me then. What’s your take on how the other day went down?”
Peter looks up towards Tony, the beginnings of a grin tugging at his lips.
“Well, I saved the day for starters, it’s really important that you put that in there.”
Tony’s face twists in conflict for a second before it smooths out again. He gives Peter a smile, tired and a little worn but genuine all the same - “yeah, yeah. Sure, kid. We’ll work it in.”
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