#fic: touch-starved river dissertation

[tenderhooked]

touch starved river dissertation and stalker frank please owo owo owo i love this i love your work forever and your examinations of touch starvation always hit the exact spot

GAAAAAAAAV WAUUGH I LOVE YOUUUUU WEEPS. as always so much of my writing and these fics is all down to you and your own writing mwah mwah <3

i got another ask about stalker frank so i'm gonna consolidate that into another post, which means :) i'm gonna yap about touch starved river dissertation this whole post :)

so! touch starved river dissertation. in many ways, exactly what it says on the tin: touch-starved river is real and true to me, and i wanna talk about it. so. this fic kicks off with river in hospital after being shot by a bullet that was meant for lamb and river jumped in front of. louisa's there, and she. she just grabs river's hand, when he wakes up, and the gentle warmth of her touch awakens something inside of him that has maybe always existed but that he's never had reason to let surface. it's like. he just craves love, and affection, and now he has a friend who is maybe possibly willing to give that to him. but he can't ask, because that would be shameful, and he doesn't deserve to have that love anyway. so. that's the first part of this fic!

the second. and the uh. the one that somehow hurts me even MORE. is the lamb of it all. because after river is released from hospital, lamb is there to pick him up. and as they're driving home, things take a severe turn and lamb essentially just. well. he's furious because river took a bullet meant for him and that scares the shit out of him, and in order to "protect" river he:

“Don’t fucking sir me,” Lamb spits, and River stiffens. Spine straight. Eyes forward. Perfect little soldier. “Before you turned up on the doorstep, do you know how many agents I had to carpool from hospital, or—or, or, here’s a tricky one, how many of them bled out in the street alone because their colleague couldn’t get it through his thick skull that unless he’s behind a desk the rest of his days he’ll keep getting them killed? Zero, Cartwright. Fucking zero. D’you know why?” River’s jaw works, and he means what he says next to be flat and hard and just as vicious as Lamb is being, but instead it’s strangled and tiny, like the dying squeak of a mouse caught in a trap. “N-no.” “Well, they all got it, didn’t they? They learned to keep their heads down and mouths shut. Yet you, you seem incapable of obeying orders, and you’ve dragged the rest of us right down with you and those mistakes you keep lugging around behind you like… yeah, like corpses. They’re infecting us. You’re infecting us, Cartwright, and I’ve got to get rid of rot when I see it. Health inspections, they’re fucking brutal this time of year.” “Are you—are you firing me?” “Christ, no. I haven’t the time. ’Sides, this is about teaching you a lesson. You’re gonna sit at your desk, day in and day out, regretting every moment that you didn’t quit back when you had the chance, until you’re blue in the face and too angry to care about being the fucking hero. Then… well.” In his periphery, River can tell that Lamb is staring at him, now, only he can’t figure out what the expression is. He can’t look. He doesn’t want to know. “Then, we can reconsider the termination of your employment.”

and this conversation kicks off the second prong of this fic, which is that lamb is grappling with like. the sudden realization that he cares about river, that he loves river like a son, and that he came this close to losing the idiot kid because he let their relationship go further than it was supposed to. so, to lamb, the obvious solution is to cut river out of his life entirely. unfortunately (spoiler) this uh. doesn't work so well!!!! and it comes to a head with the touch-starvation of it all in suuuuuch a massive terrible way for river and i'm just. HOUGH. VERY THRILLED ABOUT IT HEHEHEHEHE.

[tenderhooked]

Prompt: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

tagged by @abubblingcandle thank u darling!!

these are in no particular order bc i'm Lazy LMAO, and they have thee most unhinged not-titles at the moment, but, without further ado, here they are:

slow foal

river sick fic

touch-starved river dissertation

river & louisa THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTINGGGG

louisa whump <3

shirley & her dog & a post-s4 slough house

drugged river expresses an Emotion

camcorder kidnapping

stalker frank

tagging with absolutely no pressure: @antitheticaally @jamiesfootball, @philcoulsonismyhero @altschmerzes @iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid @asteria-argo @bartonbones mwah mwah <3