#luke is very bad at keeping tabs on him and jess knows it

[rudeflower]

JESS ANGST SCHOOL ANGST COMPLEX TRAUMA ANGST

In Keg Max! Principal Merton tells Jess he has missed 31 days of school. Now that makes him a chronic truant for sure, it means he's missed more than 10% of the school year, the standard school year is 180 days. Let's say there's 10 days left in the school year.

That's a LOT of school to miss. Young people improbably here, do not miss that much school

But relative to what we're being told about Jess, it's a weirdly low number? Jess never goes to school!!!! He's working 10000 hours at Walmart instead of going to school no school never heard of him!

That means that Jess attended school 139 days. Most schools I've worked with define that as a certain number of hours attended, more than half the day. So even if he was skipping that's 139 days he went to more than half the day NOT GOOD AT ALL BUT

Even after he was eighteen (early in the school year) he still laced up his boots and showed up somewhere he hated at saw no point in going to WHY!!????

First of all this is actually a ridiculously overcommitted young person let's at least acknowledge that.

He works before school at Luke's, and he works in the evenings too, closing up at 11:30 in one episode. Not just filling coffee mugs anymore. By season 3 he's closing alone, keeping tabs on the delivery schedule and capable of (furiously) running the morning rush alone.

AND he's working 45 hours a week at Walmart doing physical work, AND (poorly) maintaining a romantic relationship, AND reading obsessively, AND YES GOING TO SCHOOL! Jess starts working at Walmart in November (if you treat the air date as the canon date with the show roughly does), combined with Luke's it's probably 60-65 hours a week and still went to school 139 days!

He's making ridiculous choices because he is a tiny little fool but also has a trauma soaked brain

Jess chooses to be maxed out every minute of his life because he cannot tolerate being unoccupied, like a lot of people with complex trauma (and ADHD and Autism and more all of which could apply to Jess but rn I am talking about complex trauma)

When someone is used to chaos in their environment they actually feel less safe when things are quiet and still. It leads to someone who needs to have their RAM at 100% every waking AND sleeping moment

So they work 65+ hours, go to school most days, and they

cannot relax without extreme stimulation AKA needing the music on to sleep

Walk while reading because walking and looking ahead isn't enough is not occupied enough need more occupied

and starts reading the second he's stops talking to someone or using his hands to do something else. Reading as default in any given second.

He reads compulsively, no matter how chaotic the environment.

Reading ALSO isn't enough must be annotating and analyzing too passive reading is NOT ENOUGH

So Jess would rather show up at school for 139 days where other people are moving around, where there are fights to get into and classes to move to and from, even after he's an adult and Luke wouldn't find out that he isn't showing up. He'll show up to a test just to be in the classroom, not to take it.

This is not mentioning what I'm too lazy to screencap, that he's always doing something. that especially when he's talking to Luke Jess is constantly and doing things with his hands constantly.

There's really only one time we see Jess sitting still doing almost nothing

But not really nothing because smoking really is something.

My dude needs to be as occupied as possible from the time he wakes up all the way up to and including when he falls asleep to stay occupied and all that he's got on hand is going to a school that says the pledge of allegiance in six different languages then he will go! It's 100%%% occupation or the horror of possibly relaxing and WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN

[youveneverbeenalone]

Inktober for Writers: Day 1- Searching (Darejones)

Kicking off a month of writing because I haven’t been able to do nearly enough of that lately. I am shooting for about 1,000 words a day. Hopefully, I’ll be able to maintain that pace. This is a standalone piece, not in keeping with the other Darejones fics I’ve written. Full work under the cut.

Day 1- Searching

Thunder cracks and the sky opens up to pour down on her mercilessly the moment she steps out of her apartment building. She curses the sky as the rain starts to soak her clothes, but she doesn’t turn around or go back inside. Her mind is made up: she’s thirsty and there’s no way she could stand to be alone in her apartment for a moment longer.

And anyway, she’s out of whiskey.

Pulling her jacket up to hold over her head in lieu of an umbrella (because who the hell just carries one around all the time, just in case?), she sets off toward her current favorite bar, a few blocks northeast of her apartment. She chose this particular bar because it’s empty enough that she can feel like she’s melting into the background, but just busy enough to not feel desperately lonely, like she’s the most pitiful customer. And by now, the bartender knows to open a tab and set her up in the corner booth with her own bottle of Jim Bean without any kind of verbal interaction the moment she walks in the door. It’s the most perfect place she’s found to drink, at least since Luke’s place b-

Her steps falter as the thought of his name makes her insides churn with a cocktail of negative emotions she isn’t interested in naming. She tries to shut that line of thought down and push it out of her mind as quickly as she can. The endeavor is partially successful, but still she finds that ends up feeling worse when the thoughts recede into nothingness. Like she’s feeling almost … hollow. Suddenly the idea of drinking alone all night in some dive bar sounds more daunting than appealing. But where else can she go?

She’s really not in the mood to face Trish right now, especially not dripping wet and feeling pathetic about the relationship she ruined with the only guy even close to being on her level when it comes to having gifts. She can already imagine the lecture about becoming a “prepared and mature adult” who carries an umbrella, and trying to find a “healthier” coping strategy than drinking the night away by herself in some dive bar. And anyway, Jessica thinks she remembers Trish mentioned having to go to some work function or party or something tonight. But she still needs somewhere to go.

She keeps walking as she tries to think of a solution, because she doesn’t know what else to do. But she is so intent on trying to come up with an idea that she is completely oblivious to the path on which her feet are taking while her mind is occupied. At least, until she reaches the apartment complex. Matt’s apartment complex, to be exact. She comes to a dead stop as she realizes where her path has taken her. And she has to force some slow, deep breaths to keep her anxiety from consuming her whole.

It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy spending time with him (as much as she enjoys anything these days, at least). She very much does. But that’s the problem. She enjoys spending time with him so much that she is starting to worry what that might mean for how she feels about him. They’d stayed in touch after he showed back up, beaten to hell but decidedly not dead. Since, they’ve worked with the others a few times to take down various big bads, and the two of them have referred clients to one another a few times over the last couple of months. But each time she sees him, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s looking into a mirror when she looks at him. As though she’s seeing a reflection of herself more clearly than she ever has.

Because he carries the same tension in his shoulders that she has to constantly remind herself to release, or else suffer the effects of the sore muscles that follow. And his head is on a swivel the same way that hers is, vigilantly scanning the environment, constantly on the lookout for disaster around the next turn. The semi-permanent furrow of his brow mirrors hers- a tell-tale sign of the internal struggles, the relentless ruminations and self-loathing that he must battle as often as she does. But the thing that really gives it away is the look in his eyes. Even though his gaze is technically blank, his sightless eyes not capable of making true contact with hers, she can read the expression she sees there. Because she’s intimately familiar with it; she sees it every time she looks in the mirror.

It’s a look of scrutiny. Of longing. Of searching.

But whenever she looks up at him and sees him wearing it, she can’t help but feel like she’s found something. And she’s seen the line of his flat mouth turn up into the slightest of smirks before, as though in some kind of recognition of this feeling that she share.

It’s the memory of that smile that convinces her to start moving again, across the street and to the door of his building. Once there, she steps inside the door, shaking off the most recent layer of rain, and shrugging back into her jacket. With a deep breath that she sucks in and holds for a moment, she starts up the stairs toward his apartment. She knows he knows she’s there, and part of her expects him to be waiting with the door open as she turns the final corner of the staircase. But he isn’t, so she hurries over to his door and exhales heavily as she knocks twice, in quick succession.

The amount of time it takes for him to come to the door is not out of the ordinary, but her heart begins to hammer and her foot starts to tap because it feels like years. And when the door swings open, she sighs in relief.

“Jess? To what do I owe the pleasure?” His voice seems puzzled, though she senses that he is still pleasantly surprised.

She shrugs and uses a bland, uninterested voice. “I was in the neighborhood and the weather decided to take a serious shit on me. So, I was hoping to wait it out here… if that’s cool.”

Her heart flutters as she sees a familiar smirk curl his lips.

“Sure, come on in.”

She looks at his face one last time as she walks past him and into the apartment. She can’t help but smirk back. Because maybe they have each found something. Or someone.

Though a part of her is unspeakably glad for this fact, she’s not prepared to do much of anything about it. So instead, she speaks over her shoulder at him as she continues down the entryway.

“Good. So, where’s your whiskey?”

He laughs softly at her as he follows her into the apartment. “Top of the fridge. Pour me one too? Glasses are in the cabinet directly to the left.”

She scoffs under her breath as she crosses toward the kitchen. “You’ve got a lot to learn about me, Murdock. Because I don’t need a glass.” She arrives in front of the fridge and reaches for the whiskey.

He pauses at the edge of the counter and shakes his head at her. “Oh, I know. The glass is for me so that I get some amount of whiskey before you drink the entire bottle.”

She bites the inside of her lip to keep from laughing at him as she pours his glass, because she’s becoming more comfortable with their situation much, much faster than she ever thought she would. But there’s no reason he needs to know that right now.

“Fast learner. Maybe you’re not as dumb as I thought.”

“Wow. Now, that is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She downs a generous swig and shrugs. “I’m feeling magnanimous today. But don’t count on that continuing.”

“I don’t know about that. I think I’m growing on you, Jones.”

“Don’t push your luck, Murdock.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

This time she can’t keep from smirking, even though she tries. Because this time, her face is a mirror image of his- an expression of relief and fledgling hope. And she lets herself feel that hope for a full five seconds before locking it away, to be dealt with later- much later, with a proper amount of distance between them. But as she knocks back another shot, she finds she doesn’t dread the thought of that as much as she might have months ago. Before they found each other on the crazy quest to take down the Hand. Before she even realized she was looking for someone. Someone who could understand her, accept her, and handle her. Someone like Matt Murdock.

Day 2