#his childhood set him up for failure

[impuls1veworm]

Toji seems like an arrogant, playboy type, but in reality he’d be such a good husband to you. Once this man has truly fallen for you, you’re never getting out of his grasp, not that you’d want to anyway. He’s yours mind, body, and soul. You could jokingly ask to paint his nails and he’d plop down beside you holding his hand out.

You mentioned in passing this one purse you want? It’s on your bed waiting for you a week later. You’re not sure how he got it and you don’t think you want to know.

Not to say there won’t be rocky moments, but Toji makes sure the two of you sit and work it out before the night ends. Happiness wasn’t something he experienced often when he was younger, so now that he has a chance to experience it everyday, he’s not letting it go.

[exhuastedpigeon]

Personally, I hope Eddie gets a whole Eddie Begins Again episode that starts with him in confession/at the church talking to The Hot Priest™ about his childhood and we get a flashback to little preteen Eddie and his best friend and Eddie clearly has a crush but doesn't understand it.

Back in present day we see Eddie talking with the team about crushes because Denny has one and Hen talks about her first crush being on her best friend in middle school. Bobby's was on a girl from camp. Chim's was on a celebrity. Buck's was on his kindergarten teacher. Eddie hesitates and says his was on his best friend too and everyone looks at him sympathetically because Eddie has said Shannon was his best friend before.

Then we get a flashback of him meeting Shannon and being smitten with her, but we also see him and Best Friend having a sleepover and we see Eddie's face get a little pinched (you know the look) when best friend talks about his crush on a girl and then Eddie puts on that mask we see him wear all the time and starts talking about Shannon because he is infatuated with her and it's easier to focus on that than on how he feels for Best Friend.

Then we get more talk with the priest and maybe with Bobby and maybe even a call with Chris where Chris asks who best friend was because he found Eddie's old yearbook and they looked really close in the baseball team candid pictures.

We get a flashback to Eddie at Church and the priest talking about how gay people go to hell because it's a sin. Then after church in the basement eating donuts Eddie overhears his mom and another mom talking about how sad it is that Donna Lopez's son is a queer.

Another call, this one at an engagement party for two women. Eddie is again extremely competent and Buck slaps him on the shoulder with a laugh and says something about Eddie not having to worry about being hit on at a lesbian engagement party.

Eddie flashes back again this time to enlisting and telling best friend before he tells Shannon. Then we get a moment where Eddie is really close with a few guys in the Army. Then we get him and Shannon fighting between tours and Eddie going to best friends house to find that he's there with his new fiance and Eddie laughs and says he's there to congratulate them. He cries in the car outside his house and it's clear he doesn't understand why he's so upset - is it that he's overwhelmed with life? Is it that he and Shannon are fighting? Is it that he feels like a failure? Is it because best friend is engaged? Is it all of it?

We get a call at a gay wedding them (because it's all very on the nose) and Eddie is competent as always. He gets a guys number and then we flash back to Eddie's first time out in L.A. where a guy hit on him and Eddie turned him down by saying he was married.

Back in present day he and Buck are drinking beers at Buck's loft and Eddie has the same soft look he always has when he looks at Buck, but then we see him tense for a moment like he's realized something. When he leaves he goes back to the church and finally tells Hot Priest™ the thing that Eddie buried so deep that it took decades to uncover - He thinks God hates him and bad things happen to him because he's had thoughts about men. He's loved men. He loved Shannon, he always will love Shannon, but she's the only woman he ever loved, but he's loved more than one man.

Hot Priest (who is still catholic) says that God doesn't hate anyone and God doesn't punish people for thoughts and that having those thoughts isn't a sin, but acting on them would be.

Eddie shuts down for a second and then we see a flashback to Eddie meeting Karen and wine nights with Hen and Karen. We see him bitching at Josh but fondly. We see Buck Buck Buck everywhere, bathed in golden light. Eddie stands up and thanks the priest, but says he doesn't think he'll be back.

As he walks out of the church it's Eddie's turn to be bathed in golden light of the setting sun. His phone rings and it's Chris telling him he wants to come home. Eddie smiles and the episode ends with him shaving off the moustache and booking a flight to Texas. He's got a kid to reunite with and then he's got some stuff to talk to Buck and Bobby and Hen and maybe even Chim about.

[ddarker-dreams]

what would make the husband rotation genuinely mad and would they act when theyre mad?? bad vibes for everyone

upsetting chrollo is an arduous endeavor.

he values control, whether it be over himself or others. creating the troupe would've been impossible if he was easily agitated. ironically, by muting his emotions for so long, he's set himself up for failure. when they do escape the fortress he built to contain them, they're wild. their repression drained any civility chrollo pretends to have.

regarding what it takes to get to this point... a third party revealing his criminal affiliations to you would do the trick. especially if the evidence they provide is irrefutable. chrollo isn't naïve, he's always been aware of the possibility. it'd be different if your efforts unmasked his identity. sure, he wouldn't be ecstatic, but he'd feel a hint of pride over your sleuthing capabilities. he almost considers it your right, in a weird way.

this sentiment doesn't extend to another's interference. they've inserted themselves into your relationship and warped your opinion of him. it's a violation, an intrusion. chrollo comes off as unusually detached when this information reaches him. he would've preferred you confront him, so he could control the narrative and do immediate damage control. with that plan dashed, his anger will simmer, until it can scald the one who tainted your perfectly fine relationship.

gojo satoru wants to be the center of your universe.

he's selfish, he isn't content with anything less than you in your entirety. he wants to be your partner, your best friend, your rival and confidant. he's cool with your friends and family (wow thanks gojo), since he knows that ultimately, you're both close in a way few can understand. shoko tells him at point blank that he's overdependent on you. he's aware, he just doesn't care to fix it. he's shameless enough to admit it as much without remorse.

for this reason, should someone capable of exerting influence over you stumble onto the scene, he would not be happy. megumi (kid or teen) remarks that he gets this 'creepy look', like he's pretending to be human. if he released a mere tendril of the cursed energy writhing inside him, it'd be enough to render most sorcerers comatose. his vibes become that abominable.

whether it be a former mentor, childhood friend, or some other role he can't fulfill for you himself — he wants to create as much distance between them and you as possible. fortunately for him, simply being himself is enough to repel most people. gojo inserts himself into your conversations until this person catches the hint. after knowing him for so long, you've grown immune to his questionable boundary crossing. he'll keep at it until they're scared off.

scaramouche gets angry with you for making him fall in love.

had his chest cavity not been empty, he would've clawed his heart out to avoid this harrowing feeling. the timidity, the vulnerability, oh, how he loathes it; loathes you for the spell you've placed him under! this resentment is, in truth, mostly directed at himself. shouldn't he have learned his lesson by now? how many times must he be chewed up and spit out before he stops wandering into the maw of emotional connection? he resolves himself to kill this... whatever it is you both share, before he's dragged through disappointment once again. he'll work himself up into a frenzy, all righteous anger and crackling bitterness—

—then your eyes light up at the sight of him, his name a warm exclamation on your tongue. in an instant, he's pacified, like he'd undergone a lobotomy. what a lovesick fool he is. you won't even let him fester in his negativity, you keep flitting about, earning his undivided attention. it's embarrassing how giddy he is around you (though he hides it beneath snark and condescension). when the interaction ends, he's left torn on what to do. all he knows is that he's running out of excuses to make this your fault.

blade's fury could slice through stars if you were ever hurt.

his mara is voracious until he returns every ounce of your pain tenfold. it's a scene from hell; rivers of blood, shredded limbs, piles of corpses tall enough to be mistaken for towers. in the heat of battle, he occasionally forgets where he is or why he's even doing this. then, all it takes is his mind's eye flashing the image of your face contorted in pain for his mania to blaze anew. you're precious. kind, warm, bestowing care upon him that he hadn't experienced in centuries. annihilation awaited anyone or anything that threatened you. he thinks death is too good for them, but it's the punishment he delivers best.

this explosive rage isn't finite. once his sword is deprived of living prey, he's forced to endure silence. entropy. an all-pervasive thought that you'd be better off with another. he never understood why you blessed him of all people with your affection. upon wiping his weapon clean, his reflection greets him. he scarcely looks human. drenched in viscera, eyes bloodshot and crazed. is this the man you love? what would you think, if you could see him now?

he almost wishes the fury would return. it's preferable to the hollowness he now faces.

[nightcolorz]

always thinking about the development of abed and Brittas dynamic. Pov ur Britta and ur starting community collage and u meet a visibly autistic guy in ur Spanish one class and when ur introduced to him u can’t help but think of ur older brother who works with autistic kids and u wonder if ur capable of making positive change in someone’s life the way he does or if ur always going to fuck everything up like everyone says u do, and u befriend this autistic guy in ur Spanish class who realize as u soon become close friends rlly needs a type of daily support that he isn’t and has never been accommodated with and ur like wow, sad, what if I can be the support he needs, and obviously you can’t, bcus ur one person and also u know nothing about autism and also this random man from ur Spanish one class has an acute mission to push u into emotional despair bcus ur earnest desire to help him bcus of ur personal internal conflict combined with ur huge amount of ignorance reminds him of his mother and he wants to consciously emulate his relationship with her with u so that he can use footage of u to make a shitty art film about his childhood trauma and that’s when u realize that u aren’t ur brother and also are stupid asf to think that u can be like ur brother for ur adult friend who is low key having some form of psychotic episode but even still you’ve grown to love this autistic Man U met at ur Spanish one class and it breaks ur heart everyday that u will never be enough to meet his neglected emotional needs so u decide to become a psychology major so that maybe one day u will be adequate enough to do this right, bcus rlly u have a lot of unaddressed existential terror that the world is a cruel unjust place that u are too insignificant to do anything about and it fills the hole in ur heart a little to feel like u are making an impact in at least one vulnerable persons life, but ultimately ur an ignorant and self centered collage student and ur autistic friend from Spanish one loves to remind u that u are not enough and ur attempts to help him will only ever backfire or register to him as infantilizing condescension and as u try to therapize ur adult friend u become the one getting therapied as he turns every attempt of urs on its head so that now u are the one being confronted by ur own psychological problems which eventually come to a head when he comforts u about ur own failure while he’s having a hallucinatory psychotic episode prompted by his mom giving up on him where he tells u in song form that you are “broken” bcus u desperately want to help people but u lack the tools to make any positive change and u cry a whole lot about this bcus from now forward u are forced to reckon with the reality that u are not qualified to fix ur disabled friend bcus ur a psychology student in collage and he has autism and psychosis and childhood trauma and all u can rlly do about that is be a good friend and an adult about it and also accept that ur disabled friend is just as much of a person and an adult as you are and u cant violate his autonomy by using him as a tool for ur own self betterment and now u don’t use ur baby voice on him quite as much bcus you’ve learned that ur friend is going to psychologically torture the shit out of u if u try to be his mom so instead u set ur sights on being his collage friend who he can talk shit with and such and everyone’s just going to try their best

Then pov ur abed and ur like lol. Britta is Talking to me Like im five. What if I stop talking to her to emulate my childhood speech delay so that she’s forced to deal with the burden my mom did and she leaves me like everyone else does so I can make a movie about it. Oops she’s still here. Well, her romantic subplots would make rlly good sitcom storylines in the tv show that is my life. 🍜🍜🍜🍜🍜coolcoll

[steviewashere]

Take Up Space

Rating: Teen and Up CW: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse (it is minor, but the themes are there), Implied/Referenced Child Neglect Pairings: Steve Harrington & Steve Harrington's Parents, Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson Tags: Post-Canon, Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst With a Happy Ending, Established Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington Has Bad Parents, Steve Harrington's Father Being an Asshole, Steve Harrington Wants to Be Loved, Steve Harrington Feels Like a Burden, Eddie Munson is a Sweetheart, Eddie Munson Comforts Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson Loves Steve Harrington, Steve Moves in With Eddie & Wayne, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, And Gets One

🫂—————🫂 Couldn’t even say it.

Didn’t want to look him in the eyes and just say it.

Steve’s been holding on. He has. Hands to the ground, fingers in the soil, gravel under his nails. Been holding fast to his parents. Claw marks on his mom’s calves and a ring of teeth on his dad’s neck. Fighting for purchase against everything his parents want him to be; the words they have to say when he’s behind his bedroom door and feigning sleep. When he’s ear against the wood, teeth in his bottom lip, holding back cries—“How does our kid get a fucking D in math class? We’re business people!”

He’ll always be absurd to his parents.

To his mom, he is the long lost love of her life. He is the flower nearly wilted in her palms, plucked fresh from the grass, tufts of petals blowing behind her. The thing she always wanted; that she gave name to; that she thought she needed. She knew his name before anything else. Said it her self, holding the remnants of her childhood doll—“I named him Steven,” she had told him, “a mighty little lion with a great, big roar. I held him close every night, just as I will do with you, my little lion.” He was born small, premature, wrinkled and crying. He was placed upon her chest the same way a bouquet is laid on a casket—with love and loss, grieving just begun. It didn’t take long for her to change. For her voice to grow sharp and loud and angry. Disappointed, too.

Just a disappointment to them, that’s what he was. Didn’t win the championships? Disappointment. Got third in the second grade spelling bee? Disappointment. Barely graduated high school? Dis-a-fucking-ppointment.

It was shown in the way he never met his dad’s expectations. Ruler slaps on the wrists, wooden spoon to his bottom, the time out corner. Sometimes, he’d drop his homework on “accident”, to explain why he didn’t have it. Why they couldn’t see the big, fat, red F on his assignments, scrawled dark and heavy, circled with that perfect penmanship his teachers always had—always had for the failures in class. He’d have to get his report cards signed, but he’d forge them. He’d have conferences, but he’d always “forget” to invite his parents.

And it was better when they’d leave for business trips. Always too long, over staying their welcome in out-of-state hotels, in foreign countries they’d never be built for. It was better because he didn’t have to explain. It was better because he could get away with being human. He could show up tired to school, could get a bad grade and feel relief, could fuck up big time on a test and have no repercussions (especially if he went home and deleted voicemails from their answering machine), and he could graduate by the skin of his teeth. Take up the extracurriculars, do the bare minimum, not have to try so hard to be somebody he isn’t.

Of course he didn’t make it into college, not with his skill set. Of course he didn’t try again—not because he didn’t care, but because he simply couldn’t. Of course he worked dead-end retail full time; it’s all his parents could think to do with him—it gave him time away from home for eight hours or more, so it was a win for everybody.

But underneath all of that—beneath the scoldings and the physical punishments and the hot spit in his face—there were absent words, too. Absent gestures.

Steve doesn’t remember the last time he embraced his parents. Doesn’t remember the last time he heard ‘I love you.’ Doesn’t remember the sweetness of growing up. It was all tainted, taken from him, buried under the soil—the soil he grips to, nose deep in it, sniffing for where the bones have been buried.

He’s twenty now. None of it should matter. It shouldn’t matter at all that he can’t get those three words out of his parents’ mouth. Or that he can’t gauge the weight of arms on his shoulders, arms that aren’t his friends, arms that aren’t the ex-chief of police. Yet, of course it all does.

Nearly six months after Vecna, after the earthquake, after he helped save the world like some vigilante superhero, his parents finally come home. They come home with overflowing suitcases and permanent scowls, stomping and clicking through the front door, keys heavy in a bowl, jackets hung firmly, and his name on their tongue: “Steven!”

They come home with a medical bill in their hands. Thousands of dollars “down the drain.”

And Steve greets them with a neck scar visible above the collar of his current blue henley. His hair down to his shoulders, bangs itching to stab his eyeballs. With thin white lines on his knuckles. A gritted smile on his sullen, tired, pasty face.

“What is this?” His dad had hissed, flicking his right wrist, the paper wrinkled and noisy in his hand. “Thousands! You’ve cost us thousands of dollars!”

“I had surgery,” Steve tried to explain—voice meek, small, already timid—“got mauled by some…vicious and frightened dogs during the earthquake that happened. Guess that’s what happens when you try and help out.” He gave a nervous chuckle and stepped side to side. Buy that, he internally plead, just buy it and berate me and we can move on with our day.

His mom didn’t say anything in this. Face hard-set, painted lips flat, eyes sharp. She was unclasping the earrings hanging heavy from her earlobes, fisting them in her palms, bending down to pick up the stilettos she stepped out of, and then she evaded the conversation. Just went up the steps like a ghost, barely making a sound, simply gliding. He wanted her to come back, to stop this, to stand up for him—wanted what they had when he was really little, when she cared. When she held him close. When she promised.

His dad scoffed. “And you didn’t use your own insurance?”

“I don’t…I thought that I was still on the family plan?”

Steve was then leveled with a stare. A familiar stare. One that conveys exactly what his dad won’t say yet, “Disappointment.” His dad sighed. “Well, you aren’t. Which you would know if you listened”—

“Nobody told me! How am I supposed to”—

“Don’t talk back, Steven. You shouldn’t have to be told everything.” The paper had been thrusted forward, right into Steve’s chest. He gripped for it before it fell to the ground—where his heart has already been mushed into the hardwood. His dad stepped around him, around his heart, retreating towards the dining room and kitchen, fiddling with the band of his watch. “Have you found a job yet? Any college acceptance letters? An apartment?”

He huffed and followed. Bitter, “No. I’ve been recovering from surgery. Physical therapy, a couple skin grafts, my antibiotics…I told you about it over the phone the last time you cared to even call and check in on me.” Immediately, Steve had bit his tongue. Too much, too fast.

The Stare.

“That’s no way to talk to people, Steven.”

“But I”—

“When did you become so uncouth?” His dad scoffed a humorless laugh and drifted towards the kitchen sink.

The kitchen had always been too big for just the two of them. Spacious, many cabinets, the best of the best in terms of appliances. Not a single stain on the countertop. No cracks in the tiles. All of it clean, seemingly unused. Maintained to be picture perfect.

Just as Steve had been most of his life.

His dad continued on, “You’re supposed to be in college right now. Making something of yourself. Instead you’re—what—standing in the kitchen, holding a medical bill you cost me because you were trying to save dogs? Dogs, Steven? You could be doing something with your life! Could be going to school to become a doctor like that Hagan boy. Whatever happened to Thomas anyway?”

Steve stayed silent, still biting his tongue—his dad already knew about Tommy. Small in the doorway. Hunched in and looking at the ground, bile risen in his throat, the scars on his back and sides aching.

“But”—a sigh—“nope. Saving dogs. What are we going to do with you? Should’ve sent you to military school like Robert Kelly’s kid, I heard he’s doing great these days. You’ve always been defiant, though, so I’m sure that gig would’ve been drilled straight into the ground.”

The sink turned on, his dad had washed his hands. Wiped away the residual weight of the medical bill from his palms. A medical bill that he never bothered to ask about before. Just like the other ones. Like the other concussions. The fights that put the family name at risk. The bruises and blood that ruined poor Steve’s reputation.

If only he knew the truth.

His dad went to say something else, but instead—

“Why don’t you care?” Steve bit, “you never cared. This isn’t the first bill. Why does it even matter how much you have to spend? You’re my dad; you’re supposed to care about me.”

A different stare this time. Squinted eyes. Furrowed eyebrows.

Are you challenging me, is what this one said, are you doubting me?

“When you’re saving dogs? Why should I bother, Steven?”

“Because I’m your son! Because I—I need your help! It shouldn’t matter what I’ve been doing. It should matter that I almost died.”

He rolled his eyes. “Died,” his dad muttered—a soft, bewildered echo. “Stop being so”—

“Why don’t you just love me? Why won’t you love me just as I am? I need you to care. I need you to…to treat me like I’m your kid. Not some friend. Or some business partner. Your son. But you…you don’t love me?” He shifted again, side to side, boiling and ashamed and ready to puddle into the fine porcelain of the tiles. “You don’t love me enough to call and ask why you need to pay a medical bill. You didn’t bother to even know an ounce.

“It’s like that every time with you. All those stupid concussions. You didn’t want to take me to the hospital. Didn’t want to pay it off. Worried about your stupid last name. About the family image. I almost die and all you care about is the fact my life is costing you money.

“Money is more important than me, that’s all you’ve shown.”

Another scoff. “Don’t be so”—

“Ridiculous? Unreasonable? Dramatic? Stupid?

“Why are you so incapable of loving me? That’s all I want! For you and mom to…to hold me and tell me that you love me! But you…you only care when I cost you money! Why can’t you care?! I want you to—I want you to be my dad! What’s so wrong with that? With loving me? Why am I such a hard person to love? Why can’t I just…just be enough for you?!”

Finally fallen silent, Steve stood still in the kitchen’s entryway. A world between worlds. Tired, heaving, stomach turning. Palms sweating, wetting the dumb bill that ruined this all.

It remained silent. With his dad looking at him.

Those hazel eyes and his square jaw. The same face Steve sees staring back at him in the mirror. And yet his own isn’t enough to love.

There is nothing.

And so he kept standing, empty, words dead to the floor, heart by the front door. He took a deep breath through his nose, remembered the path to his get-away bag—a bag he packed in sophomore year of high school, after a terrible basketball game, when he was slapped on the back of the head for failing to make the winning shot. It has a new toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, emergency cash, hygiene products, a new wardrobe that coincides with his current size, and all his important documents—nothing of his family’s. He had what he needed packed in his closet.

So, he left. Chose to go. Before his dad had the chance.

Let the possibilities die in the air. What could’ve been if there wasn’t so much space and so many expectations between them.

Who knew saving the world would be the ending of your own?

Who knew love was such a price to pay?

——— Now, he finds himself parked outside of Eddie’s. The backpack in the passenger seat. Leaves it for now, unsure if he’ll be wanted. But he knocks on the door regardless.

There’s a moment where there’s nothing.

Him and the blackness of the trailer park. The rustle of grass in the gentle, autumn breeze. People chattering a few doors down, over cigarettes it smells like. Max’s own bedroom light is out, most likely asleep right now. Chain link fence glinting with the very little moonlight that’s there. Fresh weeds on the outskirts, born from the rain.

Serenity around his turmoil. A constant anger still stewing, bubbling, steaming within him.

What if Eddie can’t handle him right now?

What if he has to crawl through Robin’s window, leave her with words, run for the hills?

What if…what if…what if?

“Steve?” Eddie calls softly, sing-song like he’s tried already.

He whips back around from where he’d been looking out at the grass. Shuffling. “Oh, hey, Eds. Sorry—I—Just…Can I come in, please?”

Eddie steps aside for him. Lets him in without words. Until, “You’re shaking, sweetheart. Is everythin’ alright?”

“Hm? Yeah…yeah, yeah…I think that I—Think I just moved out of my parents’ house?”

A soft, surprised sound behind him. The click of the door closing. “Yeah, you think?” Gentle.

Everything is gentle here.

The amber light in the living room. Rows of hats. Shelves of mugs. Family pictures proud on the fridge, next to yellowed drawings in crayon, all hung up with goofy Garfield magnets. There’s an open box of Honeycomb on the table, a fresh bowl poured. A carton of milk turned so that the missing persons report could be read.

When he was younger, Steve imagined being on one of those panels. What it would be like. To have gone missing. Not a note or a clue or a peep. To have his parents care enough to find him. Now, though…now it feels like they wouldn’t even bat an eye. Maybe it would’ve been the same back then, too.

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs, “he got mad about a medical bill for that surgery I had. And I just…god, it’s embarrassing.” He lets out a humorless chuckle, too similar to his dad’s—a sound he will always recognize as that, from his father’s chest. Horrid and wretched. Something rotten in him, too, it seems. “I asked him why he doesn’t…doesn’t care about me. Why he doesn’t love me. I mean…who does that?” Steve makes eye contact with Eddie, who must’ve gotten closer, stepped right in front of him. With very little courage, the last dredges of it in his veins, he speaks, “They let me live in their house, eat their food, use their shit. Was that wrong of me? Am I…am I stupid for asking?”

Eddie inhales hard and deep. “Oh, Steve,” he breathes.

“It had to be, right? Of course my parents love me. They’re my parents!”

“Steve, that’s”—

“I get it, y’know. I get that it’s hard to love me. I know that, you know. But I don’t…the way he looked at me, Eddie, I knew he knew that too. I don’t think they—Why am I such a hard person to love? Is it me? Is it something wrong with me?”

He’s unsure if that was rhetorical, if he really wanted that answer. But as it is, he’s aware of the ache in his head, the burn between his eyebrows, the need and want to pinch the bridge of his nose. The tears that rise—ones that won’t fall, not without his permission. Without permission at all.

Instead of an answer, at least not right away, Eddie envelops him with languid movements and a warm body. Heavy arms on his aching back, hands pressing firm to his taut muscles, rubbing up and down his rigid spine. There’s breaths and words and kisses murmured against his eardrum. A chest rising and falling against his own. Tickling hair.

And instead of protesting, Steve clings back hard. Harder than he’s ever held anything.

Digging fingers into a t-shirt—the soil. Not wanting to let go. Never wanting to let go. Not when he’s finally getting part of what he wanted, to just be held. Maybe not by his parents, the real dream, but at least it’s something.

Somewhere in it all, in their mess of limbs and their mingled pulses, Steve cries—giving that allowance. Sobbing big, aching, roaring hiccups into the soft spots of Eddie’s neck. Wet breaths and wetter tears. Letting go until he has nothing left to give—and then some. His head is aching already, eyebrows pinching, eyes heavy on his already too heavy face.

He’s tired.

More tired than he thinks he’s ever been.

This must be the adrenaline crash. Makes him realize all the ways he’s hurting. His back and his legs and his fingers. His head and his teeth. His heart. And here he is, screaming all of his pain into the gentle parts of Eddie, where he’s offered and where he’s swaddled.

“Shhh,” Eddie’s whispering, “shh, Stevie, you gotta calm down a little for me. Just a little, I’ve gotcha.” They’re moving somewhere. Shoes scraping and dragging against carpet. Set down on a soft cushion—the couch, then—with words still murmured in his ear. “I’ve gotcha,” Eddie says, “he doesn’t deserve you, sweetheart. I’ve gotcha…I’ve gotcha.”

“Why can’t—I don’t—Love”—he stops himself with a wet, spraying cough-gag onto Eddie’s warm skin.

Hands press into his shoulder blades, dragging firmly down his spine. And then fingers at the ends of his hair, a thumb pressing into the knobs of his neck. Eddie sways them back and forth gently. “You’re gonna choke,” Eddie murmurs, “take a deep breath, baby. Just one breath for me, that’s all.” He obliges, inhaling hard through his nose, trying to release it as slow as possible through his mouth—not incredibly, but just enough. “Good,” Eddie says, “good job. You can cry, sweetheart, but you gotta keep breathing good for me.”

Again, he does what Eddie tells him to do. Wetting his skin more with each deep breath he blows out. And when he’s just a shivering, hiccuping mess in Eddie’s arms, he finally allows himself to relax—to loosen.

Eddie presses a kiss to his left temple. Then he pulls away just enough so they can see each other’s faces. He swipes the hair out of Steve’s face, gentle with every touch he gives. “You’re gonna stay here with me, alright?”

“What about”—

“Wayne’ll understand, I promise. I’ll grab your stuff. I want you to just sit right here, okay? And when I come back in, we’ll just relax for the rest of the night.”

“I’m tired.”

“Then we’ll just go to bed, okay?” Eddie kisses his temple again. He pulls himself off of Steve and gets off of the couch with a, “I’ll be right back.”

Steve only nods at Eddie’s back, now slumped into the couch.

Disappointment rings loud in his head. At least he didn’t let his parents say it this time. But once it’s ingrained in him, he knows the way it should sound. Dripping with ire—red and loud and bass boosted from his dad’s mouth. And yet he doesn’t know what ‘I love you’ sounds like coming from either of them; or at least he doesn’t remember.

He’s gone and unloaded himself here. Not that he intended for that to happen.

There wasn’t really a plan when he drove over to Forest Hills. Maybe the naked branches of one. He’d come over, tell Eddie what happened, maybe get so overworked that he started to cry, and then he’d slip out without another word. Just get back in his car, leave a note or something for Robin, and evade Hawkins all together. Though, now that he’s out of that house, maybe his parents will finally take the initiative on getting out of this town. It’s something they always wanted, something they always threatened they’d do if Steve didn’t shape up. Now would be the time, he supposes, now that he’s left with the last crumbs of his dignity.

A few minutes later, still stuck to the back of the couch, Eddie comes in through the front door. That one backpack in his grip. Fingers tight on one strap, looking at it with confusion.

“Is this all of your stuff?”

He shrugs. “My go bag.”

“Go bag,” Eddie echoes.

“Yeah, I’ve had it packed since sophomore year. Just in case, y’know.”

Eddie inhales in that slow way he does. “Yeah,” he whispers, “yeah, I get that.” He hefts the bag up and down. “It’s just…just really light, sweetheart. Are you sure you have everything you need?”

He nods resolutely. “Stuff can be replaced. It’s fine.”

The couch dips beside him. His eyes drifting from his lap, up to where Eddie’s looking directly at him. That backpack between his feet—limp and folding in on itself from how empty it is. There’s a question on the tip of Eddie’s tongue. Hesitantly, “What was your plan, sweetheart?”

He shrugs again. “See if I could spend the night here and then…I don’t know? Figure it out as I go, I guess. Didn’t wanna be a burden or anything.”

“You’re not a burden,” Eddie states firmly, “you are never a burden to me or anybody else in our friend group.”

“But”—

Eddie lays his hand on his forearm, squeezing him tight. “I want you to stay right here with me. I want you to eat my food and sleep in my bed and take up space, you got that?”

Steve sniffles. Wetly, “Are you sure? I can get a hotel or some”—

“Stay here.” Eddie squeezes his forearm again. His eyes bounce between Steve’s own. Then, he murmurs, “I love you”—which is the first time he’s said it—“and I hate your parents with the most sincere hate I could send a person. But you…you, Steve, are worth loving and caring for. No matter what.”

“But what if you grow tired of me? I mean…my parents, they”—

“No matter what. Steve, I will always care and love and respect you as a human being even if our relationship fails—for some reason, which I can’t even think of a reason, so we’ll be okay.” Eddie hefts the backpack in his other hand, still light and still collapsing in on itself. “Now, how ‘bout we get ourselves to bed?”

Steve swallows, darts his eyes over Eddie’s face. Nods once, the last of his tears rescinding. “I’m so tired, Eds.” But it sounds like more than that. The weight of those words falling off his tongue, the hollowness of his mouth all that he has left afterwards.

Eddie frowns lightly. His hand goes up to Steve’s face, cupping his cheek gently, wiping his thumb under his left eye. “I know, baby,” he murmurs, “I know.” He sniffs himself, something small, but that’s when Steve notices that Eddie’s eyes are wet, too. “I wish I knew how to completely fix everything for you. I’m sorry your parents won’t be your parents.” Then, he stands up from the couch, hand out for Steve to grasp—which he does. “Let’s go to bed, sweetheart. We’ll talk more about this when we’re rested up.”

In the bedroom, Eddie sits Steve’s bag on his dresser. Rifles through it and tutting the entire time he does. Steve probably could’ve packed some pajamas in there, but it’s fine. It’s fine because it needs to be fine. Instead of making some retort, Eddie easily grabs Steve a set of pajamas—some fleece red pants and a white t-shirt—and hands them off.

They change in silence. He brushes his teeth alongside Eddie’s, placing his own toothbrush in the same cup. Even as awful as this day has been, the sight of their toothbrushes together makes him a little giddy—something in him warm.

Once under the covers, Eddie drags Steve into him. An arm wrapped around his shoulders, chin to the top of his head, stroking fingers up and down his spine, connecting the dots of the many moles on his back. Treating him with the same love and reverence as always, as if nothing in their lives has changed. The normal is…nice in the aftermath.

“Eds?”

“Hm?”

“I love you, too,” Steve whispers, “thank you for this.” He shuffles in closer, probably too close. Arms bent awkwardly, legs tangled in one another, his cheek pressed flush with Eddie’s chest. His heart is beating strong and hard, Steve turns his head to kiss it. “I’ll figure out a way to make it up”—

“Nope,” Eddie mows over, voice soft, yet firm, “not doing that. No making up that needs to be done.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Okay, fine,” he sighs, relenting. “You’ll regret saying that once you realize how messy I am.”

Eddie snorts. “Have you met me? Think we’ll be a-okay. Go to sleep.”

Steve drags his lips over Eddie’s chest one more time, blowing a raspberry against his skin. Laughing when Eddie squawks.

“Go to sleep, sweetheart.”

“Fine…fine, I’ll go to sleep. I love you, Eds.”

“Love you, too.” He squeezes Steve’s shoulders. “We’ll talk more in the morning, okay? But you’re safe here—take up space.”

Tonight doesn’t fix everything. But…but he can learn to be loud. With Eddie guiding him, that shouldn’t be much of a problem at all. Not at all.

🫂—————🫂

[harringtonstilinski]

Call It What You Want - Steve Harrington

Author: @harringtonstilinski​ Characters: Steve Harrington x Henderson!Reader Word Count: 3,080 Warnings: fluff, squint hard for angst, ignore the fact that eddie has risen from the dead, lol Requested: no | yes; i hope it meets your expectations, @stevesxyellowxsweater!! came from this prompt list Smut: no | yes; A/N: Hi, friends! So, this hellsite decided to delete/eat the original fic of this. If you like this, please do not hesitate to reblog and give some feedback, whether it be in the reblogs, comments, or my inbox. As always, read at your own risk and enjoy 😊

Steve Harrington. Your childhood best friend turned… acquaintance? Hell, you don’t even know anymore. You two used to be inseparable before he became King Steve, then your friendship went to shit… or at least you think it did.

When he started spending less and less time with you over the course of high school, your mind couldn’t help but go to the worst case scenarios. He didn’t want to be your friend anymore, he didn’t like you as a friend anymore, he was in the popular crowd while you weren’t so that made him not like you, Tommy H. and Carol, and many more.

Everything came to a head during both of your Senior year. You had asked him to hang out a couple of days after he and Nancy broke up, just wanting to cheer up your best friend. When he ditched you for a whole ass month, you decided to quit trying.

It was now summer of ‘86, just a couple of months after the earthquake. You were volunteering at the high school gym, or makeshift shelter, when you spotten him, folding clothes.

You tried to avert your eyes when he looked up and over, feeling eyes on his figure, but you couldn’t. Lost in those hazel eyes that you were once your favorite things to look at.

He pulled his lips together in a tight smile, nodding his head once at you before looking back down at the shirt in his hands, finishing the fold he started on it.

“Why don’t you just, I don’t know, talk to him?” Robin said, effectively scaring you.

After jumping ten feet from your skin, you placed a hand over your heart, bending at the waist ever so slightly, resting your free hand on the table in front of you. “Holy shit, don’t do that again.”

“Look, I know it’s been years since you guys have talked, but–”

“If you tell me it’ll benefit us both in the long run again, I’m gonna take these suspenders and snap them on your tits,” you interrupted, eyebrow raised.

Robin held her hands up, looking down slightly as she said, “Okay, fair enough. But seriously, though? Just saying hey and catching up wouldn’t hurt anyone. Especially Dustin.”

You looked over at your little brother, watching as he continued to hand people cups of water and blankets, his leg having long been healed from his fall back into the Upside Down. Sighing, you whispered, “I know,” before looking back at Robin. “I know he’s already lost Eddie. He can’t lose Steve, too.”

“Even though it feels that way,” your brother said, setting his tray down next to you.

Wrapping your arm around his shoulders, you sighed. “You haven’t.”

“He’s always going on dates.”

Brows furrowed, you replied, “He’s always gone on dates. His asshole of a father always told him that if he wasn’t settled down by a certain age then he was considered a failure in his eyes. Which he isn’t… nor will he ever be.”

Dustin and Robin looked at each other behind your head, both of them raising their eyebrows in unison at your words, realization hitting them both. You had a crush on Steve. 

And of course, your shithead of a little brother looked back at you with a devilish smile after watching Steve take a few steps towards you. “Well, here’s your chance to get that date you’ve always wanted.”

Looking at him confused, you asked, “What are you–” before being interrupted by both him and Robin saying, “Bye!,” walking away as Steve approached the table.

You looked from Dustin to Robin as the two of them walked away, mouth ajar before bringing your bottom lip between your teeth and looking in front of you. A small smile appeared on your face, seeing that playful smile that Steve always gave.

“Hey, loser,” he said.

Releasing your lip, you scrunched your eyebrows, greeting him with, “Buttface.”

A chuckle came from his mouth, his head bending forward as his chin became parallel with his collarbone. When he brought his head back up, you saw nothing but amusement in his eyes as he said, “Buttface? Really?”

Crossing your arms, you retorted, “Well, you are. You fucking ditched me.”

All amusement left his eyes at your words, fear and anxiety crashing into yours. “Oh, my god. Steve, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say it. I just slipped out–”

“It’s okay,” he said, stopping your words. Nodding, he added, “I mean, I did deserve it. I was an asshole and I’m majorly sorry for that.”

Smiling a little to yourself, you tilted your head and quietly asked, “Did just say majorly? What is this? 1982?”

He looked at you confused, but laughed nonetheless. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

Going back to messing around with the items in front of you at the table, you said, “You were always one for trends. Still are, apparently.”

“What do you mean?”

Gesturing to his clothes, you eyed his outfit before locking eyes with him again. “Need I say more?”

“What about the hair?”

“Still on trend with that. It’s your best attribute. I predict, though, in about… twenty or so years, you’re gonna cut it short.”

Leaning his hands on the table, he asked, “Will I still look good?” “Of course,” you chuckled. “You always have. Even when we were kids and your parents made you get those… oh, what are they called?” You thought for a moment before gasping. “Oh, my god! It was a bowl–”

“You finish that sentence and I’ll make sure everyone sees your haircut from the late 70’s.”

With wide eyes, you said, “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Don’t try me, princess.”

You narrowed your eyes at the nickname he used to call you when the two of you were kids. You loved it until you reached high school when Carol started calling you princess to get under your skin.

He started using it in a derogatory way after that just to please his friends, which pissed you off to no end. Steve would end up going home after school or hanging out with Tommy H and Carol, regretting the words he’d said to you.

That’s when you both made the conscious decisions, separately, to stop hanging out. When you two walked across the stage at graduation, you cheered and clapped for each other, spotting each other in the crowd and giving each other a small smile.

Realizing what he’d called you, his eyes went wide with shock. “Sweetheart, I am so sorry.”

Waving him off, you looked down. “It’s okay, Steve. I’m over it.”

“Clearly not with the way you just looked at me.”

“And how was that?” you asked, looking from the blanket you were moving into Steve’s eyes.

With a small smile, he replied, “Like you wanted to kill me.”

“Oh, my god. Just ask her out!” Dustin said, walking behind Steve.

Your eyes went wide, not believing that just happened, but… Steve apparently believed it because not five seconds after Dustin had disappeared, he asked, “Would you? Go on a date with me?”

Flabbergasted, you opened and closed your mouth like a fish out of water, your brain going a million miles an hour as you tried to come up with an answer as an arm came around your shoulders, ultimately halting your train of thought.

“Of course she’d love to, dingus,” Robin said. You could hear the smile behind her words… and see it as you turned your head to face her.

“Robin,” you quietly hissed.

“Oh, shush,” she whispered. “You know you want to.”

You knew, deep down in your heart you knew you wanted to go on that date with one Steve Harrington. You had always wished that he would ask you, but alas… he never did. Always asking out the popular girls, the girls on the cheerleading team or dance team. And it always broke your heart.

This time, though, was different. It was you he was asking, not some other girl that only wanted to get into his pants… or he into theirs.

Sighing, you closed your eyes for a moment before gathering your thoughts and nodding your head. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Yeah, okay, what?” Robin said, the smile evident on her face.

“Yes, Steve, I’ll go on a date with you.”

~~~

Two weeks had gone by before you were standing in front of your vanity mirror, looking over your outfit.

“Hey, female - holy shit.”

You turned and spotted Eddie standing at your doorway, a cassette tape in his hands that he nearly dropped. Chuckling, you said, “Hey, Eddie. What’cha got there?”

“Uhh,” he said, looking from you to the cassette. Looking up with a devilish smile on his face, he played with it, before tilting his head and scrunching his nose. “Maybe it’s that album you’ve been looking for.”

Scrunching your brows in thought, you wracked your brain trying to think of what album he could be talking about until it hit you with a gasp. “Def Leppard’s Pyromania?”

Pointing at you with the cassette, Eddie smiled and said, “The very one.”

Squealing happily, you ran and jumped into your best friend's arms, hugging him tightly around his neck before releasing him, hands cupping his cheeks. “Thank you, Ed.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” He gave you another quick hug before adding, “Oh, by the way. You look beautiful. You’re gonna knock Harrington’s socks off.”

Chuckling, you said, “Thanks, Eddie.” At the sound of Steve’s laugh, your body tensed the slightest bit, your best friend noticing.

“Hey,” Eddie said, voice gentle. “It’s gonna be okay. Don’t worry. If he tries anything, just let me know and I’ll kick his ass.”

“In what? D&D?”

He was silent for a moment, his eyes going the tiniest bit wide before he nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah, you got me there.”

You laughed as you turned to put the cassette on your vanity, giving yourself one more look over before exiting your room, purse on your shoulder. When you spotted Steve standing at the door with Dustin, laughing, your heart leapt into your throat. Steve looked damn good, and you knew tonight wouldn’t end without the two of you making things official… after talking everything out.

When Dustin looked at you, his smile never faded. “Well, here she is. The lady of the hour.”

“Oh, shut up,” you said, giving him a side hug as Steve chuckled.

He opened the door for you, escorting you out, Dustin, your mom and Eddie wishing the two of you a good night.

“Ten bucks they end up together,” Dustin says.

“I’ll up you ten and say they’ll do more than just ‘get together’,” Eddie replied.

With a disgusted look on his face, Dustin looked up to his mentor, saying, “That’s my sister, you gross ass.”

~~~

The car ride to the movies was silent, but comfortable. The film choice for the night was The Karate Kid Part II. Your main reason for seeing it?; Ralph Macchio.

Max had told you if you didn’t see it that she’d hunt you down and murder you in your sleep. An empty threat from the redhead, but nevertheless, you told that you’d see it, a smile spreading across her face at your words.

Once the movie was over and you voiced that you were starving, Steve drove the two of you to Benny’s, home of the best burgers and fries in Hawkins. As soon as you two walked into the diner, the waitress smiled to herself, already getting her notepad and pen out, writing down yours and Steve’s orders.

She waited on the two of you during your Freshman and Sophomore years of high school before Steve became King Steve. Gloria, the waitress, had always wondered where you were when Steve would come in with Tommy H and Carol. Steve had explained that the two of you weren’t really hanging out anymore, which made her sad, so seeing the both of you at the diner together, made her smile.

The both of you took your normal booth in the middle along the wall of windows. You turned your head to the right, looking out at the cars passing by on the road. Sighing, you felt content before looking back at Steve, whose eyes had been on you the whole time.

Steve was immensely happy that you had decided to go on this date with him. He always felt bad at the treatment you got from him, and always wanted to make it up to you in the best way possible. This was the best thing he thought of. Doing what you’d always used to do; movie and then burgers at Benny’s.

“What?” you asked, reaching up to touch your cheek. “Do I have something on my face?”

Chuckling, Steve looked down at the table before looking around the diner, eyeing Gloria, giving her a nod, a small smile on his face as he did, your eyes watching his movements.

Turning your head to look towards Gloria, your face lit up with happiness, the seasoned waitress walking over with her tray resting on her hand, bringing the two of your food.

“Oh, my goodness,” she smiled. “Look at how grown you two have gotten. I was wondering when you two were gonna come walking back in here together.”

Your face flushed as Steve’s eyes widening the slightest bit at her words. She always rooted for the two of you. After Gloria had set your drinks in front of you, she smiled and said that she’d be right back with a special treat for you and Steve.

Shrugging, you picked up your burger after topping it with your condiments and veggies of choice that were on your plate, you took the first bite, eyes practically rolling into the back of your head. “Oh, my god. I forgot how good these burgers were.”

With furrowed brows, Steve picked up a fry and asked, “When was the last time you were here?” before popping it into his mouth.

“The last time we both were here,” you said, after swallowing your bite, going back in for another.

Steve hummed to himself, taking a bite of his cheeseburger, having topped it with his toppings of choice. 

About half way through your meal, Gloria set your favorite milkshakes in front of you, a big smile spreading on your face after she walked away. Using the spoon that was in the cup, you brought a spoonful of the thick milkshake to your mouth, quietly moaning with an eye roll at the flavors hitting your taste buds.

Pointing to the shake with the spoon, you said with a mouthful, “The best damn shakes in Hawkins.”

“The best damn shakes in all of Indiana!” Steve exclaimed, holding his own spoon out with some of his shake on it.

Scooping another spoonful, you ‘clinked’ your spoons together, laughing at the silliness of it all. You had missed it, though, and so had Steve. Once your laughter had died down and you were finished with your meals, Steve had tried to pay, Gloria insisting that it was on the house, courtesy of Benny himself.

The drive back to your house was quiet again, but comfortable. Steve had his hands on the steering wheel and gear shift, respectfully, while yours was in your lap. All the words you wanted to say were a mess in your head, every thought that was tumbling around in your head caused you to lose track of time… and where you were.

A hand on your shoulder brought you back, your head turning towards Steve. “I’m sorry, what?”

He chuckled, his hand never leaving your shoulder. “I said, we’re here and asked if you were okay.”

“Oh,” you said, sheepishly. “Yeah. Got lost in thought, I guess.”

“What were you thinking about?” 

Shaking your head, you looked down and whispered, “It’s nothing.”

Putting his hand on yours and gaining your attention, Steve said, “Hey. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

All you could do for the next ten seconds was look into those hazel eyes you used to get lost in before you leaned forward, resting your forehead against his, closing your eyes and sighing. Steve sighed and closed his eyes, as well, bringing his hand from yours to cup your cheek.

“I’ve missed you, Stevie,” you whispered. You felt him stiffen just slightly, your opening and head lifting from his for just a moment before he brought your forehead back to his. “I’m sorry. I know you hate being called that.”

This time, it was Steve who lifted his head to look at you, his hand never moving from your cheek. “You’re the only one that gets to call me that, ya’know? Always have been, always will.”

A small smile spread on your lips, Steve’s hand moving slightly back towards your neck, his thumb rubbing at the top of your jawline near your ear. “Don’t hate me for this,” he whispered.

“What are you–” you started, but your words were cut off by Steve’s lips on yours. You were a little shocked, to say the least, but you kissed him back regardless. It wasn’t a hungry kiss. It was more of one that was testing the waters

With lips slowly moving in sync, you couldn’t help but feel happy that his lips were actually on yours. You hated to admit it to yourself, but you’ve always wondered what it would feel like to have Steve’s lips on yours, and now that they are… you couldn’t get enough.

You wanted to keep kissing him until your lips were red, swollen, numb, the whole nine yards. All you wanted was Steve, and now… you think you have him.

When you both pulled away, breathless, you rested your foreheads against each other’s, simultaneously. As you caught your breath, you smiled, a soft chuckle making its way from your lips.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, a smile on his face as well.

Rolling your head to the right a little, you bit your bottom lip before lifting your head and looking at those hazel eyes you’ve always loved. “I just can’t believe that happened.”

Moving his hand back to your cheek, Steve smiled that smile you hadn’t seen in years. “Well, you better believe it… because I plan on doing that more.”

“I’m counting on it, Stevie.”

Steve chuckled while shaking his head, bringing your lips back to his with a smile on both of your faces.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N 2:  hi, friends! let me know what you thought about! again, please do not hesitate to reblog and give some feedback, whether it be in the reblogs, comments, or my inbox.

Additional Notes: 

~~~

Forever / Everything Taglist: @stiles-o-dylan24 @stixnstripesworld @fandom-princess-forevermore @quanticobae @mischiefandi @kellyashcroft @lauren-novak

Steve Harrington Taglist: @madaboutjoe​

If you’re tagged and didn’t want to be, please let me know.

Italics wouldn’t let me tag!

~~~

*Please don’t post my writing anywhere else without my consent. The author of this work will always and forever be @harringtonstilinski​.

All characters, story lines, and plot aside from y/n and her storyline & plot, are all of the work of The Duffer Brothers.

*These works contain material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited.

No part of these works may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

Posted on March 22, 2024

[dontbesoweirdkira]

Platonic..Yan! Bruce Wayne w/ new robin darling

warnings: Dysfunctional family dynamics, manipulation, emotional abuse, narcissism, delusion, kidnapping ect. I used experiences from my own family dynamics. My own father pinned me against my other siblings and did similar things so i guess this is personal lolll. Maybe others can relate too? Not romanticizing!!! but i do think yan! father Bruce would be mental like this.

Anyone going through parents like this, just know you're not alone. You can escape eventually. I did, so will you.

Masterlist

Requests? Always open

Yandere Bruce Wayne is a self righteous prick with an intense savior complex. So much entitlement for just one man Bruce, being dissatisfied with his current children's rebellion, needed someone new to traumatize. That someone is you. He noticed you instantly. A shy kid he encountered at one of his charity events. How "naive" and "dumb" his new batchild was. You're weak...and lonely...you're a helpless soul in need of saving. You're a perfect subject to wipe clean and reshape into his new robin.

According to him at least.

Your siblings can see just how distorted and plain wrong his 'love' for you is. He had the same kind for them too. They are all way too familiar with his process.

First he bombards you with praise. You're such a smart and amazing kid! So strong too. He's never seen anything like it.

Then isolation..Maybe you'd like to live with him and his other children for a little bit? It's a perfect, fun life here and he can dump so much money into your future in exchange for a few months of training. Its all temporary, you'll be back to mommy and daddy in no time.

Yeah lies.

He keeps you longer than the agreed time while giving your parents bullshit answers as to why they can't contact you. He tells them it could breach security if they call you but they keep on pushing back. He tries to pay them off and threatens them which ends up in them going to court to fight for you. The whole time he was making a case of child neglect and completely screwed them over. They lose custody and you're his to keep. He keeps this on the down low and ensures this won't hit the airwaves. Naturally, you ask him about going home. You never did get those weekends with your parents that he promised...and wasn't this only supposed to be up to six months?? It's almost been a year now. Why haven't you received a call? A text?...nothing? This is starting to make you get a knot in your stomach. *deep sigh*

Sorrows. Prayers.

Next is the re-programing/gaslighting. Your family was perfectly fine. More than loving and providing for you, you had a happy nuclear family..maybe a little unconventional in some ways but it was fine. You missed them dearly, you didn't understand why they suddenly are absent? Why did they just leave you here? Why couldn't you leave this place? Bruce is so twisted and his power he holds enables this false reality that he lives in. He projects his childhood and fragments of the other kids lives onto you. He'd drill it into you for hours that they never loved you, they begged him for money in exchange for you. They didn't care for the responsibility of you and were overjoyed by this way out. Though truthfully this was for the best anyways...they were dysfunctional and dangerous. They were setting you up for failure and your new dad just had to step in.... Can't you see? The memories you had of them were all false. You was living in a dream. Sorry to tell you, but it's probably best to not think too hard on it and embrace this new life of yours...it's meant for you. Are you being a brat and not accepting what he's telling you? How dare you declare him a liar. He's not the one who abandoned you. He saved you and he'd be a horrible parent if he let you go back to those criminals! Be grateful for what he's given you.

Manipulation, fear tactics and torture are all used to keep you in check when you ask about your family or try to escape because you know something is wrong. He runs you into mental circles until you're confused and disoriented

This is your new family now. He is your new dad now. You don't need them. You're his daughter and only his. Get in line, Robin.

Yandere Bruce whose next step in the plan is to play favorites with you over the other batkids in order to gain your trust. It's to give you an untruthful version of what life is actually like here when you're his robin. He purposefully spends more time with you, allowing you to fully get your way and defends you in bickers between the other kids. Sometimes he'll even pin you against each other if that works. You don't know better though. You think your siblings are bitter because you're better than they ever were at your age. But never being enough for Bruce eventually gets to you.

You're his shiny, new golden child in the making. He will perfect you. Your mind will be cleansed of all that filth in the world you've seen. Forget all you know for what he will teach you. What he's failed to perfect with the others, he'll accomplish with you.

Uh oh...you're starting to displease Batman. Don't worry...this is the second to last step. He steadily shows disapproval and acts like there's something wrong with you. Maybe he was wrong about you? Maybe you aren't meant to be great like the others because you are barely average right now. Just look at how scarred you are after one night on patrol...worse than Jason on his first night. You'll become dependent on his approval like the rest but you cannot seem to escape the look of disappointment from his face. The scoldings only seems to worsen.

He then comes around, but patronizing this time...coddling you with every step. The way you perform is showing him you aren't able to do anything for yourself. You're weak again. You're nothing but you're lucky to still be in his care because there's still a chance. He can fix you but it's going to take a lot of work. Can his new robin endure it or should he kick you out and leave you to the wolves? He knows the answer you'll choose as you're desperate for his fatherly love. He'll break you then rebuild you and break you some more until you're exactly who he wants you to be.

Coming after the greats means you're expected to excel past them....quickly. Don't embarrass him or he'll get another.

[hardlyinteresting]

To Have and To Hold

Jake Seresin x Reader

Jake comes home

Warnings: The reader is referred to as she/her, with no physical description, (please let me know if you'd like me to tag anything please), I grew up in an Army household so some of my Navy knowledge may be slightly off base (no pun intended) Word count: 1.8K

The floorboards creak with the weight of his footsteps still. there's a strange comfort in the sounds of this old house settling; the hum of the refrigerator downstairs, the quiet slide of his socks across wood floors. If he listens carefully, he can hear the whistle of the wind blowing past the window he meant to reseal all those months ago. The reminder of another missed task weighs heavy in his heart; a failure to provide a safe, warm home. It's the little things that matter most, his mama's voice reminds him, but it's the little things he so often misses-- always overlooked with the prayer that he won't be made a liar when he says he'll do it later. 

Time plays him for a fool. At 35 he rushes to make sure he meets the milestones he set out for himself, steadfast and resilient in his resolve to do more-- to be more. He breaks records, and sets precedents. But, he struggles to relax. Breathing doesn't come easy to him when it's not through his aviator's mask. In for seven, out for five. He counts the seconds of his inhales and exhales grounding himself in the moment. 

He does his best to hold tight to the moments he has here, But still, it never seems to be enough. like sand through an hourglass it all seems to slip away from him; these new found days of domestic bliss escape through his fingers like the memories of his childhood back in Texas. He wonders if one day he might be afforded the chance to pick up all the pieces and fit them together in some semblance of a “normal” life. He worries about his time away from home, what he's missed, and worse yet what he stands to miss if this life is taken from him too soon. 

Tonight marks the end of a six month separation, and tomorrow morning the count down to his next inevitable departure will begin. Always running out of time. It never used to bother him, it exhilarated him even, time blasting by in a blink of an eye. Back when he was younger, back when he had nothing to lose, and no idea what he stood to gain by sticking around. Now he worries about the quality of the lock on the front door, he thinks about restaining the floor downstairs and fixing up the kitchen. Domestic life snuck up on him. Slowly but surely his house became a home. Sun-baked bricks and weather-worn siding, with a shade of green paint he's been told matches his eyes. Four walls and roof that keep the outside world at bay. 

Down the hall in their bedroom, he Expects to find his wife sleeping, waiting in dreams for him to come home to her. It's the part of his job he struggles with the most now. It's so hard to leave this life they've built now that part of him is forever tethered to the earth. 

“I worry sometimes that I'm holding you back,” she confessed one night, “your job is hard enough as it is…I don't want to make it harder for you”. He hadn't been able to find the words to tell her how wrong she was.How could he describe the ways she had changed him? 

The need to return home to her never leaves him stunted in the sky, it fuels him. Long gone are the days where he fought just to be seen; she sees him. He's quick up there, tens of thousands of feet above the ground, he's calm and he's brilliant. His colleagues can call him cocky all they want, but his confidence is founded on his proven ability, and sometimes it's necessary to show off a little bit even if it's just so he can have another story to tell his sweetheart when he gets home. He imagines himself writing her name in the sky, carving her likeness in the clouds, a blazing trail racing home to her. 

So many of his earlier years had been spent playing the field too afraid to commit, too afraid to be loved. Adaptability, while necessary for his job, had never been his strong suit. A tiny part of him deep in the back of his mind always left the hair at the back of his neck on end when faced with change.

He had struggled in school, not academically, but socially and learned to over compensate to make up for his discomfort. The navy had given him the structure he had craved, a way to make his bed and fold his clothes, instructions that weren't open to interpretation. Living on his own allowed him to follow the same schedule and practices as he did on base.  In a split second, his life on the line, he never hesitates, but sustained change to his daily life left him nauseated. Welcoming another person into his life, and into his home had pushed him past the edges of where he believed his comfort laid, but forced him to confide in a support system outside of routine. 

Over the course of a few weeks her belongings joined his, sprinkled through out the house like a treasures to be found. Without a word she had taken care to intermix her books with the few of his own on the shelf, sorting them by alphabetical order just as he'd been doing for years. His anxiety slowly waned as his darling girl continued to prove she understood him better than anyone else ever had. 

“Do you prefer flying at dusk or dawn?” She had asked a few weeks after she moved in. curled up on their sofa, her head tucked under his chin, college football playing on the tv, she traced invisible shapes across his chest. “I don't have a preference, sweetheart. I just like flying,” his response felt half-baked, but it was the honest-to-good truth. 

“But if you had to pick?” she persisted. He weighed his answer before giving it to her, “if I had to pick, it would be dusk. There’s a moment, if you're up at the right time where you can see the night sky blending into the sunset…the sky is a gray-blue and you can see the sun at the horizon and the little pinpricks of stars”. 

“It sounds beautiful,” her smile was soft and genuine when she cupped his cheek to make sure he was looking at her. A habit of hers, not letting him hide away from the softer parts of himself, she seemed to so easily pull out. “It is”.

That weekend he’d spent 72 hours on base and returned home on Monday evening to the faintest smell of fresh paint. In the low evening light, it took him a moment to figure it out, standing puzzled in the middle of the living room, still dressed in his service khakis trying to identify the source of the smell. “You’re home!” she’d grinned coming down the stairs, her jeans and t-shirt splattered with gray. It’s then he noticed with his darling girl looking so proud of herself, the walls of the living room coated in a soft heather blue-grey, no longer just a coat of contractor-grade white reflecting the shade of twilight through the windows. Flicking on the light he watched her grow nervous as he felt his brow furrow processing the unexpected change. “Do you like it?” she asked. 

“It’s perfect, baby,” he promised pulling her close and kissing her thoroughly, “It’s beautiful”. 

A few months later he came home from work to find his shower gel and shampoo had both been replaced by a new set. Confused and with no other option, he chose to use them, deciding he liked the smell of eucalyptus and mint much more than he'd liked sport: for men anyway. 

“Baby, what happened to my shower gel?” 

“You were complaining about how dry your skin has been”.

“Hmm,” the consideration to change his routine to better himself hadn't occurred to him before she moved in. 

More recently he'd come home from a night out with the squadron, and woken up under a Forest green duvet, a jarring difference to the burgundy plaid cover he'd owned for years. Momentary panic filled his chest. Like a sharp, sudden plunge into cold water he'd gasped his eyes scanning the room to confirm his location. The familiar scent of her perfume, the sound of the ocean breeze, assured him he was in fact in their room. In the dark when he'd come home, colour of the duvet hadn't been noticeable and he found himself mildly embarrassed by how badly it startled him. Her hand reaching out for him, stretching across the sheets to touch him lured him back to a flat position letting her snuggle herself right up against his side. It was then he noticed that the weight of the blanket was the same as before, and it was just as plush as it had always been. Her on going respect for his comfort continued to leave him floored. A memory of her texting him to ask his favourite colour (green) filled his mind and left him drifting back to sleep with a smile on his face. 

Secretly, he'd begun to look forward to the tiny changes she brought into his life and into the house. The littlest reminders of their strengthening bond, their lives stitching together in more tangible and visible ways. The Navy had taught him to think literally, latteral thinking developed and honed to reach conclusions and make decisions quickly and effectively, but the metaphor of their lives blending like the presence of her belongings along side his own, and freshly painted walls is not lost on him. 

Tonight the house is quiet as it often is when he returns so late. He knows if she knew what day he was set to come back home she would've done her best to stay awake for him, dozing off on the sofa with the living room curtains wide open, hoping to catch the sight of his headlights pulling into the driveway. It's thoughts of her safe and waiting for him that have pulled him through this latest deployment, so he does his best not to disturb her sleep as he makes his way to her. Like a silent sirens call an unspeakable force drags him through the house. His boots are left by the door, laces tucked in. His bag is heavy in his hand, more than just its physical weight tugging at him, and he's glad to be able to put it down by the bedroom door. 

“Welcome home,” she whispers stirring from her sleep as he slips beneath the sheets, freshly showered. 

[embarrasingmf]

₊˚ෆ | awakening | S.B (4)

SUMMARY: After the fight with Homelander, Ben patches up your injury and realizes how differently he treats you compared to the others.

WORD COUNT: 858.

WARNINGS: s3 spoilers. set after s3 but ben didn’t get put under again, the boys just failed to stop homelander, general fluff towards the end, swearing, very little dialogue; mostly just ben’s thoughts :)

A/N: IM SO SORRY TO THE TWO PEOPLE WHO R ON THE TAGLIST I’VE BEEN SUPER BUSY W/ COLLEGE AND WORK LATELY SO I HAVENT BEEN ABLE TO WORK ON THE SERIES :((

part one! | part two! | part three!

The fight with Homelander was… brutal, to say the least.

You had to take some Temp-V just so you wouldn’t be fucking lasered in half by the blonde man baby that was the leader of The Seven.

Even towards the end, you had sustained a small injury somehow. But it wasn’t life threatening, just very fucking annoying to move around considering you had to limp since said injury was on your thigh.

—————————————————————————

Ben was absolutely seething on the ride back from the Seven tower, he felt like some kind of failure; it reminded him of his childhood. Ben was Butcher’s last resort to defeat Homelander and he failed.

Ben snapped at anyone that tried to reassure him it was okay and that they “always had a second chance.” Except you.

He actually gave you a weak smile when you tried to reassure him. But for the others? He snapped at them to shut the fuck up before he punched their teeth in.

When you guys got back, Frenchie was the first one to notice the crimson red stain seeping through your pants.

Ben immediately dragged you over and sat you down on the raggedy couch that was in the office building.

Considering there weren’t really any rooms that allowed privacy in the building, Ben just decided to tear a small hole near the wound that way you wouldn’t be uncomfortable considering how close the wound was to an intimate part of your body.

Ben carefully grabbed some alcohol that he had grabbed earlier to drown out his anger, but it had luckily came in handy in another way now.

You winced aloud as the burning scotch hit your wound, causing it to bubble up a bit before going back to oozing out the familiar crimson liquid.

Ben — to his own surprise — asked Kimiko to grab him some bandages and gauze that he was sure Butcher had lying around this dump so he could patch you up fully.

While Kimiko swiftly left to get supplies for your injury, Ben was left with his own thoughts.

He looked up at you, noticing how the shitty lighting of the building somehow highlighted your features. Ben found himself entranced, like he could just stare at you for hours on end.

He quickly shook it off, not wanting you to get suspicious of him and his staring. But the thought lingered in his mind.

Ben started to realize that he treated you so much more differently than the others. He treated you kindly.

Hell, he didn’t even do that with Payback back before they betrayed him. Now that he thinks about it; he also never yelled at you.

While he might’ve done so in the beginning, you warmed up to him somewhat quickly and he yelled at you less and less.

You were also allowed to call him Ben. And while Butcher said it too, he always got annoyed and made some vulgar comment about it. But with you, he didn’t do any of that. He actually let you call him by his first name.

Ben didn’t call you any mean nicknames, either. He just called you by your name and threw in some pet names every now and then, but not enough to make you annoyed. Besides, they were mostly used to make lighthearted jabs in your direction.

Ben didn’t even realize that Kimiko was trying to hand him the supplies until your voice piped up.

“Ben. Kimiko’s tryin’ to give you the supplies.” You grunted, glancing down at the gash on your thigh that was slowly starting to stain your jeans and skin even more.

Shaking his head, Ben quickly grabbed the supplies before mumbling, “yeah, sorry.”

Ben meticulously placed the gauze pad over the gash and then placed a firm pressure, ignoring the small pang of guilt that hit him as you groaned at the sudden burst of pain.

Once he placed a firm pressure, Ben carefully wrapped the bandages around your thigh.

After he finished, Ben pulled away, patting your other — and obviously uninjured — thigh before getting up.

“There, all done sweetheart.” He said with a smug grin, obviously proud of his okay-ish medical skills that he just provided for you.

Ben plopped down on the couch next to you, staring lazily at the ceiling.

“Thanks for patching me up.” He heard your quiet appreciation and he patted your shoulder affectionately.

You slowly leaned to the side and placed your head against his shoulder, closing your eyes with a tired sigh.

Ben didnt push you away like he would with anyone else, he instead wrapped an arm around your shoulders and gently pulled you closer against his side.

Ben found himself caught in his thoughts again: did he feel something more with you?

He didn’t think it could be true, he didn’t even truly love Crimson Countess; that was all just some shitty PR stunt for more money and recognition.

But this wasn’t the 80s, this wasn’t some PR stunt that Vought cooked up for money and possibly more movies or merch.

There was no way he was in love with you.. was there?

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taglist! : @mostlymarvelgirl @anu-piyakya97

[jaylver]

NO COMPETITION SERIES

— a series of 3 hockey boys and an aussie footballer trying to win over the love of their lives

PAIRINGS: enhypen!hyung line x reader

GENRE: college sports au, romance, angst, humour

STATUS: completed

NOTES: set in the same au, but some of the timelines are different!

© jaylver 2023

WIN ONE WIN ME — L.HS

SYNOPSIS: who knew being angry and impulsive can get the captain of the hockey team to notice you? cussing them out when they were losing wasn't the best idea, but it definitely made lee heeseung's head turn, leading to him making a deal with you to win a game in order to get your number. but that wasn't enough for him, he was determined to make you his.

READ HERE

HOW YOU GET THE GIRL — P.JS

SYNOPSIS: Beach parties are supposedly fun and exciting, aren’t they? Wrong. Experiencing college parties is rare for you, but you decided to give this one a go after your best friend’s constant pleas. Things were alright until everything turned sour when trouble found you and eventually you were roped into a fight alongside the campus’ famous hockey playboy. As if that wasn’t enough, the devil himself conjured up an idea that you found yourself being entangled in. It was all fun and games up until confusion arose, feelings being confessed and played, in the end, Jay had to learn how to get the girl, his girl.

READ HERE

MIDNIGHT RAIN (BACK TO YOU) — S.JY

SYNOPSIS: You declared to the world that this summer will be yours. Ever since you’ve left home to chase your dream further in Europe, you never dared to look back, leaving your friends and family along with the precious memories there, including your silent love for your closest friend. Years passed, you were making a name for yourself and chasing that fame, settling in perfectly fine and eventually moved on with life. All was well until the transfer window came, announcing a new addition to the men’s first team, who also happened to be your childhood best friend, Jake Sim. Summer in Spain wouldn’t be what it is without experiencing lots of rekindling, heartbreaks, fallout but also a shot at love.

READ HERE

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE — P.SH

SYNOPSIS: Having a one night stand wasn’t your forte, but with the help of adrenaline, and most definitely not alcohol, you managed to rope yourself into one. Worst part of all was the fact that you didn’t even know his name! The only distinguishable part of him was his blinding white hair. You figured you will never see him again after, but you were so wrong. Your friend practically set you up for failure after convincing you to take her place on a blind date to try and drive the guy away, only for it to be the one you slept with, who also happened to be your mother’s best friend’s son that you met right before that. 

READ HERE

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( © jaylver all rights reserved. do NOT copy, plagiarise or edit my work and repost whatsoever. once discovered will be exposed and blacklisted. )

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( taglist CLOSED!!! : @1800-beomgyu @yawnzshit @shinrjj @skzenhalove @taekwondoes @lalalalawon @ce1ight @enhacqke @winteringdream @strvlveera @rikisly @rikakhai @renchai @sievenderz @fariylixie0915 @enhastolemyheart @ckline35 @eulris @yenqa @jayfrvr @tobiosbbyghorl @liikno @vizstars @kells5595 @addictedtohobi )

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[mirohlayo]

just a little blurb before writing my next lando fic

word count : 823

-

You are comfortably seated on Lando's soft sofa in his apartment. He invited you to spend the evening at his place, like almost every evening since it has become a habit for both of you. You've been friends since childhood, so obviously he took pleasure in inviting you to sleep at his place every night, and cook your dinner together at the same time. And then watch a few films and series on your big TV.

Like now. Titanic plays before your eyes, while you devour the film as if it were the first time you watched it. Even if in reality you have already discovered this film hundreds of times. However, you have always liked this love story and you have always wanted to experience these same feelings in real life.

Love. You loved love. You know that love is found everywhere, in moments of success or when you are in the presence of your family and friends. You were aware of that. No, you were talking about love. Romance, soft touches filled with innocence, eager looks, passionate kisses, tenderness in every action.

This is the love you dream of so much. Being able to confide in yourself without being judged, finding comfort in this person, maybe even feeling at home in their arms. Love is like a waking dream for you, and you wanted to feel all of that from a young age. After all, you were lulled by the love stories of young princesses and their prince charming.

You were so lost daydreaming about these ideas about love that you didn't notice Lando approaching you. “What’s got you thinking like that?” He smirks as he places a tray filled with sweets and fruit on the small table in front of you, accompanied by two glasses of water. “Nothing, I’m just thinking about how I still haven’t experienced perfect love.” You focus on the movie again while Lando comes to sit next to you.

“The one you’ve dreamed of since you were little?” A hint of obviousness lurks in his voice as he taps his laps to invite you to lay your head on them. "Precisely. I don't even remember when was the last time I went on a date" Lando sighs softly, running one of his hands through your hair. You make yourself comfortable in his embrace. “Oh, seeing how those guys were I understand why you stopped.”

He was right. All the men you met on your dates were beyond terrible. Not one to catch up with the other. Between the one who only alluded to sex, the one who only spoke about himself, or even the one who made the most sexist and problematic comments in the world. No doubt about it, all your dates have been failures.

And when you came home completely tired from these dates, Lando was always there to comfort you and keep you company. Deep down, he was happy. He was relieved that those men hadn't stolen your heart, because he hoped he was the only one who did. But he will never admit it to you. Well, unless he has the courage to do it.

As you actively watch the film, you can't help but admire the romance between the two characters. It's so... beautiful. "You know Lan, I'm a lover of love". Your sentence had come out softly from your mouth, and your eyes were still scanning the screen intensively. It's like you're whispering to yourself.

He lowers his head to look at you. Maybe it was at that moment that he realized that this would probably be his last chance. "Good. Because I'm filled with so much love". A silence settled. You didn't really understand the meaning of his sentence, so you just didn't react at first. But when the click came, you slowly got up to face him.

“What?” You don't really know what to say, if those words he said are what you think. If he really insinuated it in that sense, the meaning you would so much like it to be. "I'm filled with so, so much love sweetheart. Just for you". A soft smile appears on his face, while his gaze is simply tender when he sets his eyes on you. You can even swear you can see hearts forming there.

You stifle a small laugh, your heart beating at the speed of light. “So you mean I can be in love with you?” He ended up laughing stupidly, almost kissing you right then and there. “Of course, baby. That’s all I ask for.” And finally, it's you who ends up placing your lips on his, in one of those passionate kisses that you dreamed of so much.

And with Lando by your side, it seems right. Finally, you will be able to experience this romantic love story that you wanted so much, because you have the most perfect prince to offer you everything you dream of.

[catherinetheprincessofwales]

James Middleton: Kate, William and the dog that saved my life. The younger brother of the Princess of Wales was so depressed he came close to killing himself. Then Ella, his faithful cocker spaniel, stepped in — and even found him a wife. He tells Matt Rudd about his ‘waste of money’ education, family therapy and the help Prince William gave him. The Sunday Times, 22 Sep 2024.

I’m in a cottage on a farm with the brother of the Princess of Wales and his eyes are filling with tears. He has a cocker spaniel called Luna on his lap and I have a cocker spaniel called Inka on my lap. Both dogs are looking anxiously at their owner as he tries to tell me about the death of their mother, Ella. It could be a bit awkward when a man you’ve only just met starts getting very emotional about a dog that died nearly two years ago. Instead it’s the moment I realise James Middleton isn’t exaggerating. A dog really did save his life.

On a winter’s night in late 2017, Middleton climbed a ladder to the roof above his parents’ flat in Chelsea and contemplated suicide. Overwhelmed by feelings of failure, he had decided that the labour of living was no longer worth the effort. As his thoughts spiralled, it was only the sight of Ella, watching him carefully through the skylight, that gave him pause. How could he leave her, he wondered.

Over weeks and months Middleton had isolated himself from family and friends, ignoring increasingly desperate phone calls and texts. When his sister Pippa came to the door, he would hide in his room. When he tried to go to work, he got as far as the car park and then drove home again.

“I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t sleep, I was constantly agitated,” he says. “If I sat down I had to stand up again immediately. I couldn’t eat because I felt constantly as if I were about to throw up. What was most challenging was that I couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong. It wasn’t living, it was just existing in this awful state of anxiety.”

As his mental health crisis deepened, it was only Ella and the routine of looking after her that kept him going. “I was never alone in a time when I felt very lonely,” he says, stroking Inka’s ears. “I’m surprised there weren’t marks on the carpet from the laps I was doing, but she would sort of get in the way. It was a silent interruption, but for a fraction of a second it would stop the spiralling. “Something was taking over my mind, but not knowing what it was made it very difficult to talk about. And I didn’t feel as though I had a right to be depressed because I’ve had everything, because I am privileged.”

We are meeting today, I should mention, at Bucklebury Farm Park, a genteel sheep-petting outfit plus farm shop (excellent organic pesto) at the more desirable end of Berkshire. It is owned by his sister Pippa Matthews née Middleton and her hedgie husband, James, who is, among other things, the next laird of Glen Affric. Carole and Michael Middleton, parents to James, Pippa and Catherine, live in a manor house a stone’s throw away and Middleton’s own farm, which he bought from the parents of a prep school friend mid-pandemic, is a mile over there. It’s quite the empire.

Now married to the French financier Alizée Thevenet and father to 11-month-old Inigo, Middleton is happy to talk about his annus horribilis and his dog-assisted recovery. He does so at book-length in Meet Ella: The Dog Who Saved My Life. But it’s a good question: what does someone born into such wealth and privilege have to be depressed about?

The roots of his 2017 crisis can be found, like most roots of crises, in childhood. Born in 1987, the same year his mother set up the mail-order company Party Pieces, he followed his two older sisters to Marlborough. If the prestigious boarding school demanded academic excellence and his parents expected it, both were to be disappointed. Diagnosed with dyslexia then, and with attention deficit disorder when he finally sought help in 2017, he struggled where his sisters had excelled.

“School is about comparing yourself to others,” he says, recalling how he would avoid friends phoning to compare exam results in the summer holidays. “I didn’t feel despair when I failed because it happened so often, but I was embarrassed. I felt let down because I didn’t think that those results properly represented me.”

In the early chapters of the book he charts his struggles with expectation — his mother is frequently in tears, his father just as frequently exasperated. Even without VAT, it must have taken a large chunk of the trust fund established by Michael’s grandmother, the heiress Olive Middleton, to put his son through Marlborough. When that son had to spend a gap year retaking his A-level chemistry four times, a “humiliating record” for the school, he tells him his education was “a waste of money”.

Although today Middleton studiously avoids criticising his school or his beloved parents — he learnt valuable survival skills at Marlborough, he tells me, and “Mum and Dad just wanted the best for me” — the pressure was clearly intense. He sought escape from that pressure in nature and in dogs. “I was an outcast … alienated from my classmates,” he writes. “But dogs never judged me. Mum asked repeatedly if I wanted to bring friends home to stay at weekends. But truthfully all I wanted to do was to see Tilly.”

Tilly was the family’s golden retriever, but from an early age Middleton was desperate for his own dog. His parents, on the other hand, continued to be desperate for him to succeed. And so, after that long summer of resits, he squeaked into Edinburgh University, choosing criminology, environmental studies and geography modules because he was “pretty certain they would all be multiple choice”. They weren’t, of course, and he failed his first-year exams. More crying from Mum, more exasperation from Dad, more solace from a dog, this time his own.

“For all my reservations, I shall be eternally grateful for the time I spent in Edinburgh because it is thanks to Ben, a university friend, that I find my adored dog Ella,” he writes, introducing us to the dog that saved his life. Despite his best efforts, puppies and student life are not compatible, and when he was banned from bringing Ella to lectures he finally abandoned his studies. “I knew that if I left university I’d be responsible for that decision,” he says. “It was a big step, but I had Ella with me, as my companion and my responsibility.”

Middleton’s story is not exactly Angela’s Ashes. When he announces that he is ditching his degree to become an entrepreneur in London, he is cut off, he tells us, from the Bank of Mum and Dad, but he can still move in with his sisters at the family’s flat in Chelsea. His uncle Gary Goldsmith, he of Celebrity Big Brother 2024 notoriety, is also on hand to invest in his cake kit start-up. Nobody in this story is going to find themselves on the street.

But cynics desist! Don’t underestimate the impact of parental expectation, nor of not conforming to the traditional model of success. Middleton, anxious and increasingly socially uncomfortable, had left his friends in Edinburgh and washed up in London with his dog.

“She was my shield,” he says. “Through her I could enjoy things. I could take her for a walk and see what she was seeing. I process a lot of things in my mind and that can be overwhelming, but she helped me open my eyes and realise everything was OK.”

There are, I’m sure, many advantages to being royal adjacent, but when his sister Catherine started dating Prince William in 2004, Middleton found the level of media interest “shocking”. A young man who used his dog as an excuse to leave parties early was not equipped for the spotlight, for stepping out of the flat into a sea of flashing cameras.

“I’d never seen a royal wedding,” he says, rather sweetly. “There hadn’t been one in my lifetime. Not a big one anyway. I wasn’t aware of the scale or the global interest. I just felt privileged that my sister was asking me to do it, and it meant something to her. I wanted to make sure I did it.”

His description of the intense amount of practice he put in to the reading is like a potted version of The King’s Speech — he stutters, he stumbles, he takes lessons with the voice coach Anthony Gordon Lennox, he reads nervously and then more confidently to an audience of one dog ­— Ella, of course — in Chelsea Old Church. And then it’s the big day. “Really, the build-up to Catherine’s wedding was no different to Pippa’s or other friends’ weddings,” he says, unbelievably. Just the family, 1,900 guests, Her Majesty, an archbishop and a few world leaders. Watching the recording back today, there’s no hint of nerves — Middleton, 24 at the time, gives a bravura performance. Afterwards an American production company wrote to ask if he’d like to star in his own film — their opening offer was $1 million.

“They even ventured,” he writes wryly, “that members of my wider family might like to take part.” Middleton is not unaware of how everything is distorted by his proximity to royalty.

On the surface the next few years of Middleton’s life read like a Hello! magazine special — parties, holidays on Mustique, holidays in the Alps, a blossoming relationship with a glamorous older woman (the actress Donna Air, about whom his parents were hesitant because of the eight-year age gap), weekends at Sandringham (“Did you get my message, James?” the Queen asked the first time he visited. “Ella is welcome to stay in your room.”) But then came the night of despair in pyjamas on a Chelsea rooftop. Long sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy followed with a psychiatrist who was happy for Ella to attend too. She was, Middleton says, the only reason he kept going.

In December 2017, his mental health still fragile, he left London without telling anyone and holed up in a remote cottage in the Lake District. While his family grew frantic with worry, much to his irritation (“I’m a grown man”), he describes three days of elemental existence — fetching firewood and water, heating soup, walking Ella and her two pups. For the first time in a year he enjoyed a deep sleep and, in front of the fire after a wild swim with his dogs, he felt fleetingly happy.

“Dogs are amazing,” he says and all five of the dogs in the cottage with us — three spaniels and two beautiful golden retrievers — look delighted. “They do just sense things. Ella had been with me in every therapy session, she was always with me. I think we can learn from dogs. They’re not thinking about yesterday or tomorrow. They’re not even thinking about the next couple of hours. They’re thinking about right now. I’m here, they’re here, in the moment.”

As Middleton’s recovery continued, he says his sisters understood — they both had friends who had depression — but his parents struggled. “They were uncomfortable with the fact that I’d been labelled ‘clinically depressed’,” he writes. “To people of their generation, I can understand why it was concerning. Society was only just starting to break through the stigma.”

The solution, in the end, was to invite the family to the therapy sessions. “I felt guilty because I knew they were worried,” he says. “They felt guilty because it’s really hard if you’re not able to help the people you love the most. I was finally understanding how I felt but I got nervous trying to translate that to my family without the help of an interpreter. When they came into the sessions they had the opportunity to ask questions that I couldn’t necessarily answer.”

In the 13 years since Catherine’s wedding Middleton’s hair has receded a little, but he now has a beard for balance — a little twirl of his moustaches and he could be a not-too-distant cousin of Tsar Nicholas II. He probably is — this generation of Middletons is not the first to hang out with royalty. He looks less bright and bushy-tailed than he did in 2011, but that might be fatherhood or the weekend with friends he has just returned from in Norfolk. Or it might simply be the passing of enough eventful years.

Whatever it is, he tells me he is now happy, which, given the depths of his depression, he still finds extraordinary. His idea of what constitutes success has changed — he is no longer motivated by money but by the things in life about which he is passionate. He doesn’t even like the word entrepreneur any more.

Having stepped away from Boomf, a marshmallow delivery company (Boomf is the sound a marshmallow makes falling from a letterbox), he started James & Ella, a “premium freeze-dried raw dog food” company in 2020. He clearly finds it easier to be passionate about dogs than marshmallows. But it’s in his personal life that the change has been most dramatic.

“I remember sitting in the therapist’s chair with Ella’s head on my lap, wondering how long it was going to take to get better,” he says. “But within a year I had met my future wife. And we’re now here with an 11-month-old son, living on a farm with six dogs. If someone had told me that would happen, I’d have been annoyed. It would have just seemed so ridiculous.”

He met Thevenet, 34, at a members club in South Kensington, west London, in 2018. Ella, having actively disapproved of several previous girlfriends, broke the ice by going over to her table. They married in the south of France in 2021 (a Hello! magazine world exclusive, naturally) and Ella was a flower girl. And everyone lived happily ever after.

Except, alas, the dog. It is one of life’s cruelties that man’s best friend has a much shorter life expectancy than man. Just asking Middleton about the death of Ella, early one Saturday in January 2023, makes him emotional. Despite being given two weeks to live the previous September, she had made it through Christmas, perhaps buoyed by the thought of one final week in the Alps. Of course Middleton was with her when she took her last breath at 3am. The whole family, including William and Catherine, gathered in his parents’ garden for what sounds like an extensive memorial on the Sunday.

“Saying goodbye to Ella was not just saying goodbye to her as a dog,” Middleton says. “It was everything I’d been through with her. She had arrived just as I was starting out in my twenties and she was leaving as I’d finally figured things out in my mid-thirties. She put me on the right path and I didn’t want another day from her. I didn’t want another hour. I would have loved it but I didn’t need it. “She was sent to me before I even knew I needed her, but she chose me. She was able to transform my life better than any human could have done and then she put me in the capable hands of someone and together we’re now raising our own family.”

Eight days after Ella was buried in her favourite sheepskin, Alizée interrupted Middleton’s mourning to announce that she was pregnant. He is convinced Ella knew and that her death was a kind of passing of the torch. His son, Inigo, was born last autumn. “I hope there’s an Ella who will find Inigo, if there’s a time in his life when he needs it,” he says, as one of the golden retrievers has a long stretch.

If you’re not a dog person, you might find this cosmic canine intervention a bit much. Whether Ella was the ultimate therapist or a very effective placebo, it worked for Middleton. His sisters’ families are also fully invested in the joys of cocker spaniels — Pippa has one of Ella’s sons and Catherine, whose announcement of the end of her chemotherapy treatment comes a few days after this interview, now has one of Ella’s granddaughters — no corgis to date. Middleton himself now regards his mental health crisis as a blessing. “Although I would never wish it on anybody and I would never want to go through it again, I’m pleased it happened. It was an opportunity to recalibrate and to re-evaluate what matters.” Happiness, he says, is what matters. Happiness and lots of dogs. Meet Ella: The Dog Who Saved My Life by James Middleton (Radar £22). 

[randomfoggytiger]

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XXV): The Mulder-Scully Family, a Convergence of Fate and Freewill

Philes, we have arrived at the last part of the Scully Family series-- and what better way to end this than on a victorious high note?

A SYZYGY

Scully's journey to motherhood is complicated. In The Jersey Devil, she hasn't seriously considered children because she doesn't have a serious relationship. In Home, she draws pointed parallels between her mothering considerations and Mulder's genetic makeup (post here.) In Detour, she brings Mulder a celebratory cheese platter (assuming he'd taken the case to get out of the conference with her.) In Dreamland I, she longingly rambles about other people living normal lives with their houses and children and dogs. In Milagro, she uses Padgett as a means to grab Mulder's attention (posts here.) In The Unnatural, she brings tofutti rice dreamsicles, flirts about her partner's childhood, and happily joins him for a very early or very late birthday gift. (I posit that after The Unnatural, she runs to her doctor in hopes of discovering some slim chance to become pregnant; and this kicks off the IVF arc-- to be discussed below.) She and Mulder keep the family planning book in his office after their attempts fail (as glimpsed in Amor Fati and Brand X.) And she finds out she's pregnant right after her partner has been abducted by aliens.

That's not the full tangle of the IVF and William arc, though-- lest we forget who she was trying to have a baby with... and that Mulder has consistently refused to consider "a normal life" (and parenthood) each time the potential stared him in the face.

The Jersey Devil sets him up in direct opposition to "a normal life", Home shows him reinforcing that decision quite clearly (video here), and Detour and Emily double and triple down. Yet... he wants to be the father of Scully's baby during the IVF arc ("The-the answer is yes.") And he knows William is his-- "What we feared were the possibilities. The truth we both know"-- and is proud of that fact (in spite of the PTSD and drama at play, post here.) When, and why, did he change?

And because this is The X-Files, the tangle doesn't end there. In the previous part here I explored the failed convergence of fate and freewill in the birth, life, and death of one Emily Sim-- all in all, a failure to launch for Scully’s dreams of motherhood, normalcy, and partnership. In the wake of her daughter’s death and the loss of the X-Files, Mulder and Scully are forced to reassess the parameters of their relationship: Mulder has to confess (in his own way) to the nature of his reliance on and feelings for Scully, or lose her forever (Fight the Future); and Scully has to work through her self-doubts and trust to whatever lies between them (The End-Fight the Future.) Therefore, when Season 6 begins with a below-the-belt punch to both, they squabble and feel hurt (The Beginning) but ultimately magnetize back together (Drive.) Repeatedly (One Son-Agua Mala; Milagro-The Unnatural; Field Trip-Biogenesis.) It’s a push-and-pull, back-and-forth, give-a-little-get-a-little routine they settle into, allowing both the space to breathe, to test some boundaries, and to draw back and regroup whenever they so choose. This contributes to the buoyancy and low-stakes struggle of their personal relationship, especially compared to the world-ending tribulations (or professional bug bears) that dog them day in and day out. There are personal struggles of course-- massive ones-- but nothing that does not glue itself back together as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Still, there's one last key component in the Emily Sim, IVF, and William arc. Fate and freewill carry a huge, huge role in Mulder and Scully's work: particularly, the ways both view their work. @nachosncheezies put it quite succinctly: "That Mulder looooves free will, but especially when confronted with the big things he tends to falter - Samantha might have been taken by men based on his parents' choice; Scully's continued presence on the Files and beside him is a choice (and the horrors she suffers are not an inescapable Fate caused by her proximity to him, but something she chooses to endure and continue to risk, because she values the rewards). That Scully wants very much to believe that there's a greater power guiding things, but gets so shook when directly confronted with the notion that God might indeed have more control than she or the people around her." It's how Mulder chooses to view his work (telling Scully “I don’t think this is about justice, Scully. I think it's about fate" in Paper Clip); and how Scully chooses to view not just the work ("I need something to put my back up against"), but her choices and Mulder's choices and life's good and bad, gruesome and beautiful realities. Fate and freewill themselves are constantly locked in battle, weaving themselves into the narrative before getting snagged against each other and having to be unpicked. This is mainly due to the markedly inconsistent writing; but it's there, on purpose, to serve as the show's backdrop.

And under the fate vs. freewill heading, there is one last snarl we need to take into consideration: Melissa Scully and the impact of her legacy on Scully's personal journey. It's Melissa who encourages her sister to "follow your heart, and it'll take you where you're supposed to go" in A Christmas Carol; it's Melissa who speaks for her sister in One Breath, it's Melissa who tells her sister Mulder is still alive and warns her she's "shut off from her own intuition" in The Blessing Way, it's Melissa who died in her sister's stead, it's Melissa who leads her sister to her daughter from the afterlife, and it's Melissa's influence that leads her sister to her own voice and conscience in all things. Melissa acts as the bridge between Fate and Freewill: the heart is destined for something, someplace, somewhere; but you must choose to listen to and follow it to find where you're supposed to go. As @deathsbestgirl put it (post here), "but missy's presence is still felt, her influence on scully outlives her. scully is always trying to reach melissa, to feel her. melissa is always guiding her, and as scully moves further on her path (with mulder), allows herself to learn more about what happened during her abduction/because of her abduction (something melissa wanted her to do shortly before her death), like with emily and the red & the black...every step brings her close to melissa."

So: when do these ideas-- Scully's journey, Mulder's journey, the battle of Fate and freewill, and Melissa Scully's legacy-- culminate and begin to manifest in the Scully Family Series?

The answer: the IVF arc.

THE STARS ALIGN… AND FALTER

Where does the IVF arc fall? That can be debated until the end of time; but for me personally, the only math that maths adds up to a late Season 6 timeline (post here)-- right in the midst of rule breaking and negotiations; and right after Mulder’s perspective begins to shift, allowing him to see the possibility of “life on this planet.” 

Scully’s second attempt at motherhood quickly devolves into the same pattern as the first. Struck one day with the urge to retest her fertility (after a very early or very late birthday present, I suggest), she rushes off to a (seemingly last minute) medical checkup. Scully books an appointment without telling her partner (despite her hopes immediately revolving around him when she gets a positive second opinion-- which means, he was on her mind when she booked the first one, as well.) Further, when Scully returns to the FBI, dispirited, she attempts to deflect his inquiries after Mulder catches up with her in the elevator. But he won’t let this go; and she sighs, admits she’d been at the doctor’s office, then drops into silence. 

“Don’t make me guess,” Mulder quips, afraid it’s cancer. 

Skipping over Per Manum’s dialogue gaffe-- one which contradicts Emily’s timeline-- we arrive at the revelation: “I am not yet ready to accept I won’t have children,” she admits. 

Mulder begins to walk away, but gives in to his conscience, turning back to explain, “Scully, there’s, um, there’s something I haven’t told you-- and I hope you would forgive me and understand why I kept it from you.”

Tense and confused, Scully asks, “What?”

“During my investigation into your illness, I found out why you were barren. Your ova were taken from you and stored in a government lab.”

And while this, too, could fall into showbible blunder, Scully’s next line salvages it: “What? You found them?” puts the stress on 'found', implying her shock comes from his discovery more so than the details he’s sharing. 

“I-I took them directly to a specialist who would… tell me if they were okay,” he replies, softly, head down and unable to meet her eyes: because they weren’t okay. Scully is too distraught to make this connection, yet. 

“I… I don’t believe this--” 

“Scully, you were deathly ill and I… I couldn’t bear to give you another piece of bad news.” Mulder finally looks up, ashamed but sincere. 

Devastated, she’s pulled up short. “Is that what it was, it was bad news?” 

He nods, blinks, maintains eye contact as he slowly explains, “The doctor said that the ova weren’t viable.”

Immediately, Scully distances herself from this pain, punching the elevator button and insisting, “I want a second opinion.” 

Mulder, knowing what his partner’s doing, tries to stop her-- physically reaching out to block the doors from closing-- but gives in when Scully flinches, then shoots him a pleading look: if she doesn’t collect herself alone, she will fall apart. Giving in (what else can he do? his actions have hurt her deeply), he lets her go. 

Scully’s quest for family is once again stymied by the Consortium; and she is spared, once again, from the traumas of tampered motherhood. 

After an undetermined time later, Dr. Parenti joins her in the waiting room with good-- for him-- news: “Ms. Scully, I’ve got a good report for you. I’ve looked at the ova you’ve given me and consulted with some of my colleagues; we all feel that, with the proper approach, it might be successful.”

And that’s the insidious, despicable underbelly to the IVF arc: Dr. Parenti spoke with his colleagues about one Dana Scully-- i.e. he, the Consortium plant, knew exactly who she was and exactly what this vial of ova meant. 

And he, Dr. Parenti, was likely going to use her ova and her womb for his benefit; and if he and his colleagues felt generous, he'd grow her real, replacement child in a tube somewhere to swap with at birth (like he did with Kathy McCready.)

Now: could Scully have had a perfectly normal IVF pregnancy, a one-in-a-million shot that wasn’t tampered or interfered with?

Put bluntly, no:

Dr. Parenti’s clinic was an extension of the arm of the Syndicate, either carrying out his own experiments with their permission or carrying out a niche of their experiments for them. 

The Consortium crumbled in One Son, but vestiges remained-- carrying out CSM’s directives in En Ami and Requiem, and leaving their research facilities scattered, here and there, undetected. 

Parenti worked out of one of these research facilities; and, whatever his "research" had been before the Syndicate’s collapse, it couldn’t have been much different than it is when Scully and Doggett investigated him in S8. 

Further, even if Scully came to his clinic sometime before or after One Son, his purposes were already set in place; and like Scanlon and Calderon, he could, in all probability, take the evidence and disappear into thin air if detected. Meaning, he is ruthless and one-track minded. 

Meaning, Scully’s chances-- which were nil because of the ova’s unviability-- were most certainly tampered with: either to produce another half-formed alien child-- which he might swap with a test tube baby with varying degrees of health-- or to sabotage any chance of success. And, unfortunately, if he wanted to do the latter, he would simply have said there was no chance of success, at all. 

As much as the IVF arc appeals to me, the fact that Parenti walked into the room with a malicious glint in his eye, declared there to be a chance after he consulted with his colleagues, and knew full well who those were and how Scully factored into their equation… there is no way, shape, or form that Scully’s pregnancy would have avoided trauma of some sort: miscarriage; induced labor, perhaps unconscious C-section, and a baby swap; or death. 

Unaware of these odds, Scully collapses in a chair; and before she can process this news completely, Dr. Parenti begins to pressure her for a now, now, now timeline: the odds would be better the sooner they started. Another hint at his greedy machinations. 

“We can start right away?” she asks, stunned-- and, again, her pattern kicks in: hurry, hurry, hurry; don’t think; this is the right thing to do; run; go, go, go. 

“Well, you’d need a father,” the doctor advises; but Scully’s face falls at ‘anonymous donor’, her eyebrows pinching and her eyes dropping at the realization that she’s going to have to ask Mulder to be that donor. Of course she is; and that certainty makes her immediately uncertain of his reaction. “Unless you have someone in mind?”

“Yeah. I, uh….” The music drops, uneasy. “I just have to figure out how to ask him.” 

Mulder’s acceptance, Scully’s reaction; and Mulder’s comfort, and Scully’s tears I’ve already been recorded here; but it bears repeating for this analysis, if in brief. 

We aren’t shown the moment Scully asks for Mulder’s help; but we are shown his shiny eyes and shy eagerness, her anxious timidity and teary delight when he accepts. Mulder comes through that door ready to have a part of that “more” his partner is seeking-- in short, to be a father. Scully mistakes his breathless premise as rejection, and reveals (with her down-turned eyes and crestfallen, “I should have known” expression) that she doubted he’d ever accept this request; or, more accurately, doubted he’d want to change their partnership. It’s part and parcel-- she believes-- of the one step forward, two steps back jig they’ve been doing recently; but it also hits her in the pain point that his turn-aside in Emily (“Are you two the parents?”) created.  

“Th-the answer is yes,” he assures, poking at her arm; and her face transforms into varying stages of overwhelmed delight, unable to believe he wants this, now, with her-- that he wants to share this with her-- quite literally wants to take part in this with her.

And, I believe, both know what this truly means: that Mulder is signing on to be an active father. Despite turning aside from Emily Sim, he did his utmost to protect and save her. That was a responsibility he was thrust into, and one he didn’t turn away from... but one he chose to keep distance from, as well. There is no distance here: “the answer is yes”, after all. 

Again, I shall briefly touch on the moment they receive devastating news (and, again, the post is linked above.) 

Mulder is napping on Scully’s couch, waiting for her return from her appointment. She isn’t surprised, necessarily, to see him there; and he makes no bones about the fact he “must have dozed off” as time crawled by. Seeing her sad face, hearing her defeated, “I guess it was too much to hope for”, he gathers her up in his arms, comforts his partner during her wailing, “This was my last chance!”, and promises her, “Never give up on a miracle.” Mulder has learned to believe in this possibility, and he doesn’t want to let that belief go. 

Already, we see the blurred lines of their partnership: 

After her request and his acceptance, Mulder greets Scully at her apartment-- a marked change in routine from their usual meeting spot (his apartment or the basement.) 

Mulder is just as anxious and excited as she is at the possibility of success. 

And though her “last chance” has failed, he refuses to let the idea of her having a child and achieving her dreams go-- they came this close, he assumes, on the rarest of chances. What’s to say they won’t again? 

Scully, meanwhile, has her own tells: 

She is not (too) surprised to find Mulder in her apartment, despite both of them meeting (more often than not) at his place. 

She clings to him and cries on his shoulder-- the third time in their partnership (Irresistible, Fight the Future, Per Manum.) 

Not only does she cling to him and cry openly, she does so in stark contrast to her previously closed-off emotions (in Emily, and in the beginning of Per Manum’s flashbacks.)

She almost kisses his forehead-- a callback to her authoritative claim in Fight the Future; and one she does not repeat until she reaffirms that claim in Amor Fati-- but ducks at the last second, and vaguely lands on his cheek. 

She allows herself to be consumed by his soothing hug.

In conclusion: neither person was denying what this was to them-- a chance at their own form of a normal life, a bit of hers and a bit of his all blended together in one perfect, successful last chance. But, alas, that was not to be. (And, considering Dr. Parenti’s intentions, that was a good thing.) 

A second attempt; but the first joint failure. 

A “NORMAL LIFE” DEFEATS FATE

And here we reach the grand conclusion of the question of freewill versus fate. 

As previously discussed, Mulder views his quest in righteous terms-- Fate-- to bear up under it; while Scully decisively argues her position in factual terms-- Freewill-- to make sense of it.

“This child was not meant to be,” he warns about Emily; and “Don’t give up on a miracle”, he encourages after the IVF: both statements are lacking perspective and personal agency.

“I don’t see what choice I have," she responds about the adoption; and “I guess it was too much to hope for," she mourns after the IVF: both statements are laced with insecurity and defeat. 

The lingerings of these resolutions are resolved in Amor Fati and all things, respectively. Mulder solidifies his “life on this planet” after being dragged into the bowels of “another life, another world.” It is Conscience, personified by Scully, who confronts his weakness, calling him a coward and leaving him to make an active choice of his own freewill. Mulder chooses to leave behind bigger aspirations, higher callings, greater, inactive purpose to open his eyes to the true world-- the truth-- and cling to her: an integration of freewill. She is, he realizes, his touchstone. Scully solidifies her decision to stay with Mulder-- not the files, not the work, not their romantic relationship-- after being given a chance to take another path. And it is Conscience, personified by the running woman-- revealed to be Mulder-- who confronts Scully’s self doubt and directionless spiral, leading her one step at a time to her own resolution and peace. Scully chooses to let go of her doubt and indecision, trusting in her instincts to guide her: an integration of fate. He is, she realizes, where she belongs.

Both of these journeys finally sync up in all things: Scully tells Mulder about talking to God and falls asleep, Mulder rambles about paths not taken and tucks a blanket around her. And Scully of her own freewill joins Mulder in bed; and together they create their own miracle-- a sprinkle of fate and a boatload of personal choice. 

William, then, is a perfect combination: not because he is an alien super soldier or a divine proof of God or a result of the corrupt, freewill actions of other forces or "the key to everything" fated into existence through White Buffalo prophecy to save the world (@deathsbestgirl thoughts and post here), but because he is human. Normal. A miracle because he is not at all what anyone except Scully and Mulder expected him to be.

“We feared the possibilities,” Mulder acknowledges while holding his days-old son. “The truth we both know.” 

“Which is what?” Scully asks-- also one guided by definitives. 

And he gives her one-- a kiss-- to mark this new chapter of their lives. 

What is that new chapter, you wonder? 

In Requiem, Mulder and Scully miss sign after sign of her pregnancy, fearing she is suffering from close proximity to an abductee ship. She shuffles to his hotel room, sick and weak; and he tucks her up and whispers, “There has to be an end, Scully.” 

Mulder is a man of half-sentences and vague meanings: there has to be an end for Scully, for all she’s sacrificed.

“I want you to go home”, he admits.

“Oh, Mulder, I’m fine,” she whispers; but it’s not the full truth. 

"No, no, I've been thinking about it: looking at you today holding that baby... knowing everything that's been taken away from you. The chance for motherhood--" Scully's face scrunches in pain: she can't pretend this wound has healed, "--and your health and that baby. I think that... y'know, maybe they're right." Mulder speaks gently, contemplatively: and though this moment is focusing on Scully's losses, there is more going on-- particularly in Mulder himself.

"Who's right?" Scully asks, waveringly.

"The FBI," he answers plainly, sorrow and realization blending together."

Scully doesn't respond, brows wrinkling in confusion.

"Maybe what they say is true-- but for all the wrong reasons. It's the personal costs that are too high."

Scully doesn't respond, again: more importantly, she doesn't deny. And although she doesn't agree-- although she's stuck in worried limbo, afraid for her health, stumbling over the fact of her infertility-- she seems to be considering his words, or the intent behind them. Even more importantly, Scully doesn't know what Mulder's point is: that she resign? That they resign together? Is he turning over a new leaf just when she's learned to accept her choices and his ways for what they are?

Like Elegy, both are “afraid of the same thing”: that the final toll of this quest will consume Scully. (Just as they "feared the possibilities" in Existence.) She tries to escape this sense of doom by working, by nearly fighting her partner to go back to Bellefleur when Krycek and Marita show up dangling special intelligence. Mulder, however, is tired of loss, tired of years and years without closure. He floats the idea of leaving, for her sake; and doesn’t push it farther. But it’s on his mind, her health and her happiness; and her health and her happiness, he ruminates with mature clarity, might not be sold in bulk at the FBI. On the flip side, Mulder doesn’t float the solid idea of him leaving, too: he hasn’t let go: he's yet to make a decisive choice to leave (ala Vienen.)  

Mulder returns to Bellefleur; and Mulder is abducted right before Scully finds out she’s pregnant. 

There’s a deeper dive to be had regarding Mulder’s rewritten demise in Requiem and second rewritten death in Three Words. Be that as it may, Mulder is forced onto the alien spaceship; Mulder is tortured for long months against his will; and Mulder is “killed” and buried before he can learn about the existence of his child. Here, again, is the Fate conundrum: Mulder's "fated" quest lays claim to him now that he begins to contemplate another path. As for Scully, she decides to fight-- and fight hard-- to get her partner back, railing against Kersh’s edicts, throwing water in Doggett’s face, asserting her authority over extraterrestrial life, and leading the charge in her own efforts to locate the spaceship.

She almost loses her baby, three times, due to the stress and drive of her choices; yet, Mulder still “dies”-- Fate, it seems, has won. But Mulder is alive (through Skinner's choice); and her hard work pays off when he blinks awake. 

In short: Mulder and Scully beat the machinations of Fate-- he outlasted the torture and death intended for him; and she fought back against others’ intent for her partner, the files, and their child.

A brief note on Scully’s Season 8 pregnancy: in A Christmas Carol, Emily, and Per Manum, we see her throwing caution to the wind to grasp after second chances, unwittingly falling into traps in a vain attempt to capture happiness. In Requiem, Within, Without, and Roadrunners, however, she's pivoted priorities, ruthlessly upping the ante to reclaim her partner, thrusting herself into dangerous situations without first taking the baby’s life into account. It's the same, though inverted, psychological underpinnings: desperation, motivation, and determination. She had to face motherhood alone with Emily Sim; and she was able to face the IVF failure with Mulder’s support. But carrying Mulder’s baby to term and raising it, alone, is another thing; and one she is aware comes with a predetermined end date on the files. Scully justifies the risks and peril-- at first-- in Mulder’s name. Scully bandies about the country trying to keep the files going in her partner's stead, for his return; but the truth is, she is using the files to escape from her reality. And as she finds out in Alone, Scully’s also unable to let the files go-- which surprises her (even though she'd previously refused to let them go during the three months her partner was buried. Perhaps Scully's self-awareness was out to pasture, as often happens when she's buried under stress and grief, e.g. Beyond the Sea, Irresistible, Memento Mori, Elegy, etc.)

This proves a few things: 

As much as Scully proclaims she “wants to settle down, have something approaching a normal life”, and as much as Mulder insists she should go (Fight the Future, Requiem), Scully can’t or won’t leave until it feels right. “Follow your heart, and it’ll take you where you’re supposed to go,” Melissa told her, once (post here); and she was completely correct about her sister. 

As much as Scully committed to leaving the FBI for Emily or the IVF’s sake, she wasn’t ready either time; and was pushing that thought away with countdown clocks and ticking time bombs. 

Scully chose to stay on the files for the entirety (or most) of her pregnancy; and drifted back on maternity leave, conflicted. Saving Doggett’s life one last time and meeting Agent Leyla Harrison assured her that there will always be more believers to take up the cause. She is convinced her decision to leave was the right one, and lets that part of her life go in good conscience.  

It's Three Words, and Mulder is alive! All, however, is not smooth sailing. He is alive but withdrawn, riddled with wounds and PTSD; and Scully is confused and hurt, riddled with guilt and expectations. 

Three Words unfolds, and they get through it together; Empedocles unfolds, and Mulder begins to embrace his role as ‘the father’; Vienen unfolds, and Scully is vexed that her partner ran off to a potential death without remembering his child; Vienen resolves, and Mulder quits; Alone unfolds, and Scully is drawn back to her work while Mulder keeps drawing her away from it; Alone resolves, and both have relaxed into their role as X-Files retirees and impending parents. Mulder chooses to leave, and has taken steps to solidify that choice; Scully realizes she hadn't let go, and makes with her transition.

Yet, we have the madness of Essence and Existence.

The question-- for Mulder at least-- of Fate or Freewill hasn’t been sufficiently settled: in Essence’s opener, he ponders, "But has our ingenuity rendered the miracle into a simple trick? In the artifice of replicating life can we become the creator? Then what of the soul? Can it too be replicated? Does it live in this matter we call DNA? Or is its placement the opposite of artifice, capable only by God? How did this child come to be? What set its heart beating? Is it the product of a union? Or the work of a divine hand, an unanswered prayer, a true miracle? Or is it a wonder of technology, the intervention of other hands? What do I tell this child about to be born? What do I tell Scully? What do I tell myself?" Scully, predictably, doesn’t want to entertain more doubts or heartbreak after her previous scares; and has stuck her head decidedly in the sand (i.e. The Blessing Way, Memento Mori, etc.) That child is his, he knows (post here); but Fate, he feels, has played cruel tricks before. There are already two metaphorical graves for Scully’s children; and another one either grown from a tube or destroyed with Calderon’s abominable experiments. 

The show boils the entirety of (then) canon down to its essential themes: the truth they both know, but the possibilities they fear; Mulder wants to believe, and Scully's afraid to believe.

As previously mentioned, Mulder is caught up in doubts, then conspiracies; and he flails around for answers. When he rushes to her apartment and tries to help her pack, Scully becomes more and more heated at his non-answers.

"No, just stop! Can you tell me what's wrong? Is it something to do with my baby?'

"No," he assures gently, "your, your baby is fine." Then his gravitas shifts, and he adds hurriedly, "It's you who's in danger now, Scully."

"From who? Mulder, from what?"

"I don't know--" that's not enough for Scully, nor her anxiety, "--I'm not sure. I'm not sure about anything. I just know I got to get you out of here."

Finally, she yells, “Look, Mulder, look, I can't take this! I can't live like this—as, as the object of some unending X-File.”

Mulder, pushed to his extremis, finally tells her what she needed to hear for most of their partnership and especially after her pregnancy, his death, and his resurrection: “This isn't about the X-Files, Scully. It is only about you. Now, you are going to have this baby and I'm going to do everything I can to protect it.”

These two statements speak volumes: Scully and Mulder have both chosen to put the files behind them.

Why is this so important? Because for the first time in each pit stop towards parenthood-- towards expanding the Scully family, if you will-- this baby and its safety is not an x-file for Mulder, is not another life that wasn’t meant to exist; and this baby is not an x-file for Scully, is not tied to a traumatic, stolen moment from her past. She wants one area of her life to be free from conspiracy and collusion; and he wants the baby (and Scully) to be safe, once and for all.

We’ll keep Existence brief because its nonsensical, illogical, and frankly stupid writing decisions could be studied as a “How Not To” guide. After sending Scully away due to his fears (and relapse into a Freeze response, post here), Mulder comes to his senses and flies out to Georgia, arriving too late to prevent any real danger and missing the birth of his child. Scully, meanwhile, gives up; and allows herself to be schlepped away to the middle of nowhere, giving birth before an audience of unfeeling monsters. Suffice to say, despite multiple factions breathing down their necks and insisting this child is a proof of God or a weapon for or against the planet, William’s birth confirms that he is, indeed, a normal child: a plot twist to Fate and the creatures who attempted to play god. 

If we tune down the unnecessary noise, one key detail sticks out: Scully did not know the sex of her baby. When trying to barter for her baby's life, a mother will do anything to humanize her child to its threat. That action is one with the highest chance of success-- and a medical doctor trained in the FBI would know this. In fact, we've seen Scully use this technique before (ex. in Monday with Bernard.) Yet, she doesn't: she pleads for "my baby" and "please don't let them take it." 'It' is the clearest sign of her ignorance (and was purposefully written that way, I believe-- a two-fold "What is the sex?" and "Will the baby be taken before Scully herself knows?" dose of climax anxiety.)

But does this theory hold up under closer scrutiny?

We know Scully is shown the sex in Per Manum, but that is revealed to be a false result intended to deceive her. There was so much confusion afterward about real babies and alien babies that it was a mess to sort through; and Scully switched doctors, regardless, to ensure her safety.

She likely didn’t want to know anything more after this point, refusing to acknowledge that something might be wrong. This is in line with many, many other examples of her almost blind avoidance when confronted with a truth she doesn't want to face.

When Mulder mentions the connections to Parenti’s clinic in Essence, she tries to shut the conversation down; and when he replies, "That's-that's all I'm trying to do. Just make sure nothing happens to you; that this baby you're carrying is born without any surprises”, she stares him down angrily-- further proof Scully won't entertain these thoughts willingly.

“What we feared were the possibilities,” Mulder confirms in Existence: Scully had those fears, too. Avoiding the sex would be a way to put her fingers in her ears and experience a “normal”, profoundly uninteresting last two trimesters-- “Didn't you have to wait with us?” she tells Maggie. 

An that brings me to another interesting note: her behavior is not dissimilar to Bill Scully setting up shop in an exact replica of his childhood home, trying to copy and paste those traditions for his own family-- which included decorating the nursery in his sisters’ “old” room. In other words: he was recreating Melissa’s past (their past) without referring to her death, just as Scully is escaping fearful possibilities by recreating a the ignorance of the nostalgic past. “You keep things so bottled up,” Maggie worries (post here); and she is deadly accurate. 

Back at Scully’s apartment [x] days later, Mulder arrives; and, for the first time that we see in the series, opens her door with his own key (post here.) 

This is incredibly significant. It cannot be overstated. Scully’s own mother hired a baby nurse to assist her daughter because Scully’s privacy is so finely tuned that Maggie knew she wouldn’t want guests over. Mulder himself only ever dropped in after a knock at the door, even after his resurrection. And, although he had things of his at her place (in all things, @unremarkablehouse and @touchstoneaf's post here) and she had things at his (in Orison, post here), the two hadn’t solidified their cohabitation. Until now, when he waltzes in, greets her guests comfortably, and strolls in to meet and hold his son. And Scully looks up, smiles blissfully, and hands their child over. 

Mulder is enamored, is in awe of his baby; and that look of bliss and wonder is everything Scully could have hoped for.

“William,” she names, after Mulder's father-- a man who bucked the Consortium as much as he could (post here), who gave up and gave in (post here), and who decided, of his own freewill, to own up to his mistakes at the last (post here.)

In short: a shot at Fate. 

After laughing at her partner's shot at Skinner, Scully questions, "I don't understand, Mulder-- they came to take him from us-- why they didn't."

“I don't quite understand that, either. Except that maybe he isn't what they thought he was.” Another shot at Fate. “That doesn't make him any less of a miracle, though, does it?” A third shot at Fate. 

Encouraged, she smiles. It slips as she admits, "When I became pregnant, I feared the truth." More evidence of her head sticking firmly in the sand. "About how. And why. And I know that you feared it, too."

Mulder has an answer already-- he's given this thought since William's birth. "I think what we feared were the possibilities. The truth we both know."

“Which is what?” she asks; and he leans forward and shows her: the final blow. 

Fate is soundly defeated: Mulder, the boy who lost his sister, who set aside a life to find the Truth, has found happiness away from it-- has chosen his own truth. Scully, the woman who chose then doubted her choices, has obtained peace-- has chosen to leave the files after finding her truths, too.

Not only is this ending the culmination of their journey to parenthood, but it also resolves their character arcs: life on this planet, something resembling a normal life, and a manifestation of a bond and willpower stronger than death. 

Last but not least, it also encapsulates the journey’s of each of their family’s legacy-- and on a more personal level, the culmination of their sister’s legacies: Samantha Mulder’s gifted closure (post here) and Melissa Scully’s intuitive guidance (posts here, here, here, and here.)

(But what if William had been inexplicably magical? What if he had had alien powers; or was a creation for and fulfillment of higher purposes? What if he was, in short, the key to everything? 

Then Fate would have won the debate: William was the key to everything; and would be hunted down or chased until evil is defeated, or he saves the world. As Mulder and Scully conclude in The Truth's ending speech:

“I want to believe… that if we listen to what’s speaking, they can give us the power to save ourselves.”

“Then we believe the same thing.” 

In other words, Fate is predetermined; and humanity will be destroyed if they don't listen to and heed its warnings and thunderings. Which would effectively destroy eight years of build-up and resolution: Fate as a tempered option, Freewill as a vehicle for growth and change, Conscience as the deciding factor. It would destroy Mulder and Scully's individual and mutual arcs, their son's conception and birth, their sisters' losses and legacies, their families' virtues and faults, failures and victories. In short: it would be a complete mess.)

CONCLUSION

And that brings us to the conclusion of the Scully Family In-Depth series! 

Thanks for reading!

Enjoy~

[lurkingshan]

Japanese QL Corner

In which I cling to the last vestiges of two of my favorite shows of the year, write a eulogy for one of the most disappointing, and rejoice over the entry of a new fav. These shows are available for weekly streaming on Gaga unless otherwise noted.

Mr. Mitsuya's Planned Feeding

Farewell to a wonderful show. @isaksbestpillow has posted all seven episodes as of last week, so if you've been waiting for a binge, now is your chance. I already said a lot about why I loved this one, so I'll just use this space to urge you again to watch! This show is a goddamn delight.

Takara's Treasure

The main narrative ended last week, but this week we got a sweet little epilogue and one more visit with Takara and Taishin. I enjoyed the brief glimpse into their near future and getting to see Taishin turn 20 with his very first fuzzy navel, though I was a bit sad we got a repeat of the finale's themes rather than treading new ground for their relationship (I could not have cared less about the fujoshi writing RPF). This was a lovely show and I will miss these characters.

Happy of the End

CWs: Assault, child abandonment, child molestation, childhood sexual slavery, dubcon (including between the main characters), human trafficking, rape, sexual coercion and exploitation, suicidal ideation/possible attempt, unsafe S&M practices, violence

A very rough week for this show in terms of the content--please mind the triggers above because these are explicit depictions and it can be hard to stomach. I am waiting to see where this show is going with its themes before I make a final judgment, but watching the fourth episode in particular, some parts felt like crossing the line into gratuitous trauma porn that provided little additional illumination. We'll see how it shakes out in the end, but please take care with this one. I continue to find the characters and relationship dynamics compelling, and I am invested in Haoren and Chihiro's attempt to have a relationship despite the metric ton of baggage they are shouldering between them. Neither is equipped to even have any idea what a healthy relationship looks like, but they see something in each other and they want to try. That tiny bit of hopeful but likely doomed thinking may be all we have to cling to in this story.

I Hear the Sunspot

Sigh. I am sad about what this show could have been. For me, the finale definitely did not succeed at sticking the landing and making the last six weeks of wheel spinning feel worth it, and this show is going down as one of the big disappointments of the year for me. As you know if you've been keeping up with this weekly post, I loved the first half of this show, and Taichi's original characterization, so much. And I don't understand what happened here. The second half has felt like a completely different, confused, demonstrably worse show. Taichi hasn't felt like himself in weeks, the plots with Maya and the job at Sign were poorly grounded, inconsistently executed, and offered little pay off either thematically or in terms of character development, and the romance writing was a complete failure. It was actually painful to see Kohei run after Taichi and confess to him again, and the directing and editing of that sequence was so muddled that I had no idea what I was supposed to understand about Taichi's emotional journey or why this was the moment he was suddenly able to reciprocate. After all that brooding and his big speech about communication, he did not communicate much of anything to Kohei in the end. And I'm supposed to be content with leaving them here? Deeply unsatisfying on just about every level.

I understand from @twig-tea that while the story followed the beats of the manga's first two volumes at a high level, this production chose to remove many of the contextual details that actually made sense of the characters' behavior. It also seems they didn't understand they were setting up character arcs that did not get resolved until a later volume the show will not cover, thus ensuring the story would end at the wrong place. Just a baffling set of adaptation choices, and so much wasted potential. It's a shame.

Love is Like a Poison

But at least we have a new favorite coming in hot a week sooner than expected! I absolutely loved this first episode, in which we meet Shiba, our cold-hearted lawyer with delusions of grandeur and a sexually charged fixation on his house plants, and Haruto, our flirty scammer who has his number. This show is really well written and packed a ton of story, comedy, and deep characterization into its first episode. It's a promising start! For now it’s only available grey outside of Japan; I am hoping it will get picked up for proper international distribution soon.

Tagging @bengiyo to add this week's anime update.

[srngrque]

reporting live

trent alexander arnold x fem!reader. fluff. Trent who was rather interested in the reporter than the actual report he had to give.

Time was ticking on a thin thread for you as your supervisor might call you within five minutes if you do not interview, at least, one player of liverpool. You have been in the reporting field for at least seven months and you now also have juniors yet for you to move like an amateur was hurting your pride.

You are social issues reporter, going around different cities, and write an interesting jaw-dropping report then, call it a day. Sport reporting was not your forte, it is almost like . . fork found in your backpack. Simply out of place. The million dollar question ringing in your head was why were you here in Anfield Stadium at the first place but you face-palmed yourself on accepting to cover for your senior who was in her maternity leave. You had always hated whenever you had to cover for a reporter doing sports. No particular reasoning, just childhood trauma.

You saw all the liverpool footballer players walking out from the dressing room after a hot win. You crossed path with the tall, charismatic dutch leader of liverpool to the small growing liverpool superstar Endo but you had your goal set on the biggest prize, the player with a fresh trim, and his headphone on as every reporter tried catching his attention.

Trent Alexander Arnold, the star of Anfield and liverpool. Your supervisor might as well, move you to the Sports section if you got to interview Trent; you were not looking forward to that but a lady has bills to pay. You sighed as you had to save your job before it slipped away from your grip.

Just one interview, anyway. What is the harm? You held the sleeve of his tracker suit lightly, you needed this, you needed a bang.

"Great win in Anfield, innit? Please let us know about how are you feeling about the win?" You asked reaching your microphone out to the man. His gaze froze, so did his feet in front of you. It could be the audacity to block his way toward the team bus or the glitch of mischievousness in his eyes that flickered on your red hue cheeks.

Trent chuckled as he moved slightly forward removing his headphone, your eyes set on the man completely compelled from the bridge of his nose, deep doe eyes to his captivating smile. Everything about the man was setting you up for a failure, realizing how much of a bad idea this was.

"Yeah, yeah it is great team win but to become the last scorer for the win is a different achievement, so I am proud and happy." Trent answered, his eyes never leaving yours for a minute. His heavy scouser accent oozed out every word as Trent kept his smile intact.

His eyes glanced at you, noting the rose hue on your cheeks, one hand slightly shaking to hold onto the microphone and the other holding onto the notebook. "Come here, love. Let me hold that for you." He mumbled gripping on the microphone as your fingers brushed on his and you were secretly praying to every god that was staring upon you to not show your slight jump after the touch.

"Okay so-" You paused, clearly out of the atmosphere as you were in no place to check out players nor drool out your delusional ideas when you have a very angry supervisor waiting on the clock and an impatient cameraman behind you. "Yeah, I cannot lie, you . . you were great in the field." You complimented him quickly but you were not lying about it. With the long passes, and all the chances Trent created for the team; anyone can tell he was born to become a football player who succeeds with legacy.

"You were watching?" Trent asked raising his eyebrows in question. Utterly confused, you paused to flip your notebook to look at the man in front of you. With the silent eye contact, your neck burnt hot. You nodded sternly, a thin smile on your face. "Of course, I was watching, I mean, I am a reporter, can't be missing out on the main point of the whole show."

Trent kissed his teeth, he smirked, "So, tell me more. How was I on the field? Did you like what you see?" He winked at your direction. Your mind went blank, in what position does he have to be to flirt openly with a camera panning on his face? The burning hot sensation on your back came straight up and your heart beating fast was not helping to form words, "Like . . like I said, you were great. You are the star of liverpool after all." You sweetly smiled.

Trent had the cheeky smile on his face, his eyes lingering on your lips before glancing upward to your eyes. He knew what he was doing to you moving closer to the barrier between the reporters and the players.

You cleared your throat. "You are also the player of the match." You trailed off; Trent leaned closer. Call it the stadium being loud for him to not hear you clearly or he simply wanted to be close to you, to mesmerize the small moles on your face, to engulf himself on your warm scent.

"Are you excited for your next big game against Manchester City?" You inquired. All the back and forth staring and silence with Trent will not colour your supervisor impressed at all. You need to interview someone else that will not . . leave you speechless in minutes.

"Well it depends, to be very honest with you. Will you be in the next game?" Trent further pestered.

You furrowed your eyebrows in slight annoyance at the player for making everything about you while the whole fanbase would want to know more about him.

The cameraman behind you almost dropped his equipment taken back by the question. You did not know . . how to respond to the player who was attacking you with his doe eyes. Nervously, you laughed, "I cannot be certain about that. Are you and your team ready? It is one of the anticipated game of the season." You diverted his topic back to what you needed at the first place.

Trent stared at you without responding to your question, you quickly started shaking your leg anxiously as your eyes lingered at almost all the players leaving to go back to the training ground from the stadium. Your chances were blowing every second Trent silent in front of you.

During this period, you started considering finding other jobs, as you started making mental notes. With thoughts looming around your head, you did not come to realize Trent walked a few steps toward you, nibbling on his bottom teeth. He removed the microphone away from his lips, coming forward for a conversation that is sealed between you and the liverpool player.

You flinched at his hot breathe hitting your skin, as he gently held onto your forearm to keep you in position knowing you will move away from his contact.

You coughed away from his grip. "Have a great day then. We cannot wait till what magic liverpool can bring to Anfield once again."

"And you too, have a great day but i did not quite catch your name." He inquired with his wicked smirk playing on his face. He wants me gone, jobless. Clearly, with zero intention to support my penniless lifestyle.

You smiled, "If you do goal against Manchester City, I will let you know."

"Should we seal the deal with a kiss then, perhaps?"

[hollowed-theory-hall]

during the childhood Tom Riddle uses wandless magic on purpose not just randomly but then due to laws(?) to go to school get a wand and obsession about them especially during ii war like dude it's not only not normal its strange even for you

why don't abandon the wand and develop wandless magic? is he stupid or dark magic need a channel to not hurt the wizard? or it's jkr?

Hello 👋

I think Tom's obsession with wands started earlier than that. When he first saw Dumbledore use his wand to set his wardrobe on fire:

Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. “Where can I get one of them?”

(HBP, 310)

The first thing Tom wants to know (once he gets over his shock and rage), as you can see is: "where can I get one?"

Tom grew up with basically nothing to his name and no power. His focus on power and magic is due to that. He wishes to have power over his own life and over others since he never had it. This is what pushes him to use his magic wandlessly as a child and steal things. It's part of his need to be in control.

The thing is, as talented and capable as Tom is, a wand symbolizes power, control, and freedom for him from the moment he lays his eyes on a wand. It's more than just a tool, it's a symbol of what it is to be a wizard, at least for Tom.

Even if he doesn't need it, a wand for him is what symbolizes the Wizarding World and magic. He actually treats his own yaw wand very similar to how Harry treats his holly wand:

He had spilled his own blood more times than he could count; he had lost all the bones in his right arm once; this journey had already given him scars to his chest and forearm to join those on his hand and forehead, but never, until this moment, had he felt himself to be fatally weakened, vulnerable, and naked, as though the best part of his magical power had been torn from him. He knew exactly what Hermione would say if he expressed any of this: The wand is only as good as the wizard. But she was wrong, his case was different. She had not felt the wand spin like the needle of a compass and shoot golden flames at his enemy. He had lost the protection of the twin cores, and only now that it was gone did he realize how much he had been counting upon it.

(DH, 303)

Even if Harry could cast with another wand, his feels special, different, an extension of himself.

And Voldemort feels the same about his yaw wand:

Lucius Malfoy made an involuntary movement; for a fraction of a second, it seemed he expected to receive Voldemort’s want in exchange for his own. The gesture was not missed by Voldemort, whose eyes widened maliciously. “Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand?”

(DH, 13)

“The Dark Lord,” said Ollivander in hushed and frightened tones, “had always been happy with the wand I made him—yes, phoenix feather, thirteen-and-a-half inches—until he discovered the connection of the twin cores. Now he seeks another, more powerful wand, as the only way to conquer yours.”

(DH, 424)

Even when he uses another wand, he seems to keep the yaw wand with him. I believe he is very sentimental about it, just as he is sentimental about other items and locations. His yaw wand is an extension of him. It's one of the first things that were his. That were bought new for him and no one else used them before.

As much as Harry's wand was a novelty for him in Philosopher's Stone, so it was for Tom. They both think of their wands as a symbol of magic and freedom of all that the Wizarding World gave them, even if both could cast wandlessly or with another wand.

I think Voldemort is so obsessed with killing Harry using magic while wielding a wand in a proper duel because he wants to kill Harry the proper way. If he wanted to just kill him he could, but it was never about killing Harry, it was about rectifying his failure. And to do that he must succeed to do exactly what he failed to do before. So he must kill Harry fairly when they are both armed with wands, otherwise, it wouldn't prove to him his own superiority. Hence once he realizes his own wand won't cut it, he seeks another wand.

I think, that in the forest, when Harry came to die, Voldemort was scared of his survival, I mentioned it already, but I also think he was somewhat surprised and disappointed Harry didn't fight back. Because the death wasn't "proper". It hadn't gone down the way Tom imagined it would, and he felt empty since he achieved what he was so focused on, and it was underwhelming. And then he was stuck with a government he didn't want anything to do with. Like, I don't think he was particularly thinking ahead about all of this.

I think, given time, he would've just faked his own death or found some other excuse to leave since he doesn't really care for the ministry or his Death Eaters, but I digress.

TL;DR

It's not about the magic of the wand, Voldemort is capable without it, it's about sentimentality and the right way to kill Harry (because killing him without both of them being armed with wands, just won't be right).