#handler todd: a dumbass

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Tell me pretty pretty please with spiders on top…what is nice kind sensitive generous mr Todd afraid of?🥺🙏any ghosts in his past? Does he ever wake up in the night convinced there’s someone in his house? What’s his pain tolerance?⭐️‼️💜

Handler Todd? He'd be afraid of something happening to his kids (he has a daughter a few years younger than Peter and an even younger son) or his wife. He's scared of heights.

No real ghosts. He signed up with WRU for the benefits and pay package, and he worked maintenance for WRU before taking the assessment to be a handler, and did maintenance at a high school before that. No skeletons in the closet. He kept his head down and did his job, but WRU was offering such good pay - and amazing health insurance - he just couldn't turn it down.

He has a decent pain tolerance, but not great.

He sometimes has nightmares that people have broken into the house through his kids' bedrooms windows, yes.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Todd why did you become a handler? Also what's the worst thing you've seen, subjectively

"My, uh, my wife was pregnant, and I'd lost a job, and they offered health insurance starting from 30 days... I didn't really care about pets. I figured, job's a job. And mostly it was. I stuck it out for a while. Four years? But that was... You know. It got... I just wasn't cut out for it. As for the worst thing..." Todd swallows, eyes going slightly distant. "Hated watching them make bonded pairs the most. That level of forced codependency... just hard for me. And the, uh, the underagers. Those are... rough."

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Handler Todd: what is in the handler group chat I must know

"Ugh. Gross shit. I was only in it to keep up appearances. They notice if you're not a 'team player'. Some of the stuff they'd share, though... was, was just... Yeah. Mostly I didn't look."

[ashintheairlikesnow]

26 for anyone please?

CW: Whump involving a minor (character is 16). No actual whump happens in this, it is pure caretaking. Box Boy setting.

"All right, kiddo." Todd dropped down into an easy, effortless crouch, head tilted. "Show me."

The boy swallowed, and leaned slowly over, pushing up a bit of dark brown hair, shaggily overgrown, to show a red bump on the side of his forehead.

Todd whistled, long and low, reaching out to graze fingertips in a circle around it. The boy whimpered, a little, but didn't pull away. "That's gonna end up quite the goose egg."

"It, um. It hurts," The boy said, softly. "Pretty bad."

"Yeah, I don't doubt it. How's you get it this time?"

The boy looked away, then, off to the side. Todd snorted and reached out, taking his chin in his finger and thumb and turning it back, forcing the pretty brown eyes to meet his own.

"Nope, not getting away that easy. Tell me what happened."

"I, um. He was... Um." The boy's face reddened, and his hands worked nervously, worrying the hem of his oversized trainee shirt. "This handler was gonna take another one - the handler - into a room, but he's not-... designated... So I... um... I..."

His voice trailed off and Todd sighed, feeling a hint of a headache starting up again. Why WRU broke the law like this, he didn't know. The boy and all the others were more resilient for being young, not less.

"I... kicked him in the balls."

That was not what Todd expected to hear. He sat back on his heels, reaching out with both hands to take the boy's face and meet his gaze. "I'm sorry, what?"

The boy's eyes welled up with angry tears. "I kicked Handler Manning in the balls. So he shoved my head into a wall. That's um. What happened. He left the other one alone, then, though..."

The boy tilted his head, looking up searching. Todd knows what he wants to see - pride. Affection. They're still kids, in the end. He tries to give them a little kindness and he ends up some kind of surrogate father.

"Kiddo..." Todd sighed, and watched the boy wilt at the obvious disappointment. "What have I said about sticking your neck out for other trainees?"

The boy looked down at the floor. "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I, I know I shouldn't-"

"Yeah, you do know. You promised me you wouldn't keep doing this, 435689. Was that promise a lie?"

"N-no!" The boy's eyes jerked back up, panicked, and he grabbed onto Todd's hands with his own. The boy's fingers were freezing. "No, it wasn't, I swear!"

Todd squeezed his small hands and then rubbed them between his own, helping them to warm, however briefly.

"I care about you, kiddo. But no trainee is worth taking a blow to the head over."

Still.

He was kind of happy to hear it'd been that smarmy fuck Connor Manning.

"I... I know, sir. I'll be good."

God, kiddo. If only you even could be.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

48 for Todd and Trainee!Peter (seems I just can't get my heart torn out often enough)

“Kiddo, every time you pull something like this, you’re not the only one who gets punished. You know that, right?”

The boy tilted brown eyes slowly up to meet the older man’s concern, feeling the pull of bandages that covered his torso. They’d even given him painkillers for his rib, and he could feel the odd woozy way the edges of the world had gone fuzzy and soft. “I just wanted to help,” He whispered.

“I know,” Todd said, stepping closer, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing a little over the bone that stuck out at the top of the rounded curve. The boy smiled, a little, and closed his eyes. “But when you pull these stunts, you get punished... and so does the boy you think you’re helping. You’re not helping anybody, do you get that?”

The boy opens his eyes, eyebrows knitting together. “But I can’t... just watch everything be terrible all the time, right?”

“It won’t be terrible forever. You’ll go home, eventually.”

Home is where your owner lives and never another place

“I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“No one else has to, kiddo, I promise. Just go along to get along, and you don’t get in trouble and neither does anyone else. Okay? Can you promise you’ll stop trying to stick up for other people?”

The boy’s lips trembled as Todd leaned in close, ran a hand through his hair. It felt so good. It felt right, because this was what he was... it was all he was, anyway. And Todd was right.

“Kiddo, you get so many people hurt - or almost hurt - with all these heroics. I just want you to stop. I care about you.”

His heart twisted, at the words. He wanted someone to care about him, so much. He looked up at Todd, moved his left hand to grip onto the hand that still held his shoulder. He nodded, slowly. “I... I understand. I care ab, about you, too...”

Todd leaned in closely, cupped the boy’s face in his hand. “Can you promise me no one else has to get hurt?”

Stop trying to do the good thing, the right thing. Stop trying to help anyone else. 

The boy swallowed, hard. 

Why did you make me be the liar for you?

“I promise, Handler Todd.”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Jokes on you! I already hate Todd!

*whispers* bet I can make you hate him even more