#tahitiwoke

[romanva]

it only goes as far as we need it to. @tahitiwoke

scenes from a marriage (2021) / plantain, anna akhmatova / scenes from a marriage (2021) / black bear (2020) / naomi and ely's no kiss list, david levithan / altered carbon (2018) / transit (2018) / around town, the kooks / darling, zach bryan / the americans (2013) / isaac grünewald / night, ferdinand hodler / the americans (2013)

[halechief]

@tahitiwoke.

the evening has rounded the bend of midway, the nature of the celebration having become something well - watered, now, for lack of a better term. champagne abounds, plied often and eagerly to most of the lips in attendance - maybe even his own, if she had to guess. claire approaches from behind him, and cannot help but feel a little bit of satisfaction in the act of watching his gaze track the room, searching for something, and she finds that she’d very much like to think it was her. she settles a hand at his shoulder innocently enough, bending slightly at the waist so that he might better hear her over the conversation, and the band. 

❝  phillip . . . could i trouble you for a dance? ❞

[newsworth]

𝐈 𝐀𝐌 𝐒𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐅𝐈𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐄𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀 𝐁𝐀𝐃 𝐌𝐀𝐍.   aesthetic post for :   @tahitiwoke. 

[brutlist]

     "     𝐧𝐨 𝐧𝐨 , 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 .     "     he says as he settles back .     “     i wanna see how long it takes for you to come up with something .      “ 

@tahitiwoke​ // sc

[fakedsciences-a]

@tahitiwoke said: i’d never hurt you. i do need you to participate though. that’s fair, right?

She thinks about —

Juniper lowers her gaze, feels sick and small and strange. She is not used to feeling this way; she is healthy and tall and super, super well-adjusted, all things considered. Right? Right? So this feeling here, right now, it must be a total freaking anomaly.

— Harris, how he looks when he —

"I understand."

— her father, Dr. Hayes, always crouching down to meet her eye level, always prepared to say something sterile and stern —

There is a strange buzzing in her head, a ringing in her ears. It sounds like the machines from back home. Home home — the one Harris and Burns destroyed, the one where her parents died. (She spoke about it —their death — so casually with Phil, typed the message like it was nothing. Maybe it is nothing. Maybe she can pretend it was a car crash and Lila was just a baby, we're so lucky she survived, and nothing else happened.)

"But I'd never hurt anyone." Not ever again. "I can't hurt anyone. Is that really so unfair, to want for me? To want for everyone else? — Please, give me back my phone."

[mknbrd]

Five times + cameras (CCTV. Polaroids. Phone etc)

one.

the ct machine they'd rigged up is loud. bobbi doesn't mind it — it drowns out her thoughts, the guilt, the wave of nausea rolling over her every time she looks at him for too long. she'd insisted upon it, because sure, she had the maps, the scans, the surgery plans, all of it, but she refuses to trust it any more than she has to.

she doesn't watch his face over the monitor. she really can't bring herself to do it. she'd helped put him here, and, at best, there's a not-insubstantial chance that she'll kill him on the table, too — fifteen point five percent chance of mortality in cases of emergency neurosurgery, she'd told natasha, and that had been in cases where the people performing surgeries had trained for that kind of thing. bobbi had taught herself over the course of weeks on cadavers, and youtube videos, and anything else she'd been able to get her hands on.

the computer beeps at her when the scans start to pull up on her screen, and yeah, if they pull this off, bobbi'll consider putting in for the lottery. she blinks at the scans over her coffee, once, twice, and then turns her head to watch the bed slide out. he's too still. she keeps waiting for him to roll off the bed and ask her to wear adult shoes to work, or ask to see her tits, or whatever. not this. this isn't right.

but then, the ct machine isn't making noise anymore, and the wave of guilt-related nausea comes back, and bobbi turns her whole body away from the setup to puke into a trash can.

two.

natasha is driving, and bobbi's grin is a little sex-drunken when she picks up the phone to dial. " hi phillip, i need you to pull the cctv footage from the saks fifth in midtown, discreetly — . . . because i asked nicely . . . when the video footage of your wife getting fingered in a luxury stores goes live on the nightly news, you'll really only have yourself to blame that you didn't grab it and take it home for yourself . . . that's what i thought. goodbye, phillip. "

three.

he tells her that she went too early over comms — agent nineteen, what the fuck was that ? — and bobbi rolls her eyes back into her skull as she wipes up her bloody nose and steps over a body. " don't tell me i was the only one to catch the height on that bag swinging, boss, " bobbi says, bending down on her heels to reach for the duffel in question. " we got bad intel. whole deal was a setup. " she doesn't need to open it to know it's empty, but she does it anyways, just for the satisfaction of being able to show the camera hidden in her eye glasses that it is. sure, she's a bit of a cowboy, bit of a wild card. a blunt force object, as she's been termed. but reckless — stupid ? hardly.

" am i done here ? " bobbi asks when she gets to her feet, hands scrubbed down the tops of her aching thighs. " these heels are killing me, and i'm fucking starving. "

there's a long sigh down her earpiece — yeah. we'll figure this out tomorrow — and by the time she gets back to her hotel room, there's room service and a bottle of tylenol waiting for her inside.

four.

you're late, he says, like she's not well aware of the time. bobbi rolls her eyes, mutters something along the lines of is there nothing you can do on your own ? and drops into the nearest chair like either one of them is really going to pay more attention than necessary in a meeting full of department heads and secretaries that hate them.

" what, you want a doctor's note ? " bobbi asks sarcastically, to which the corner of phil's mouth twitches. she can't help appointments running long, nor is she going to apologize for the twenty minute puke fest she'd had between the ob's office and the capitol. instead, she reaches into her pocket, pulls out a pair of sonogram scans and passes them both over the corner of the table. " before i forget, your wife said you have to put one on the fridge and make sure one gets into her office. "

five.

he's stopped pouting as much when she puts him through the ct machine. maybe it's because he's resigned himself to the fact that it's happening whether he likes it or not — she'd shouted at him once, i'm not a fucking neurosurgeon phil, excuse me for being careful, and that had put an end to that argument — maybe it's because he likes her better after several months of back-and-forth awkward bonding. whatever it is, she's fine with it, just waits until he lays himself down — she's proud, even though she won't say it — and calmly runs the machine.

and the x-rays come up as usual, and the guilt's subsided a bit. bobbi hits the button that rolls the bed out from the machine and waits for the scans to show up. they do, like clockwork, and they look better than what she'd have otherwise expected. still, bobbi leans over the microphone, and tells him bad news — his broca's area has shrunk to make room for his massive fucking ego — and he flips her off from the side of the bed, and they both grin at each other.

[illwriteatragedy]

@tahitiwoke​. 

          there are five,  almost six months until roman finds enough courage to go and see him. 

          there are still the regular updates.  natasha is good about them;  a progress chart of where he should be at all these points,  which he seems to be meeting just fine.  it was good;  of course he was happy that it was going well,  but there was still an itch in the back of his head he could not get rid of since the beginning.  (  was he sorry?  had he changed?  was he going to get better in those kinds of ways?  ) 

          enough time has passed for him to see,  enough time for him to sit on it.  for him to walk out the door when shilah and josephine are busy,  and for him to take the bike up to the rehab center and to finally,  finally look his father in the face since that night.  

          “  hi.  “  

[withbeastsarc]

There’s nobody who enjoys killing phil coulson more then Sam herself

[thirtean]

somebody named milton has been with us the whole time ?  i don’t think so. i think i would’ve noticed if a guy named milton’s been with us. it’s not a very common name.

" the kid who's been bringing you coffee for the last three weeks, milton ? " jesus christ. and she'd thought the last time barton had been concussed and thought he was still married was bad. sharon curls her hand in her pocket, resists the patronizing urge to ask how many fingers she's holding up. " go home, phil. reports can wait until tomorrow. "

[romanva]

why did you wish me milder ?  would you have me false to my nature ?  rather say I play the man I am.      for @tahitiwoke

[halechief]

@tahitiwoke from here.

the house i grew up in cost about as much as your parents’ fucking pool. 

there’s something about it that stings, something that smarts of my bitchy rich girl in a way that suddenly makes her bristle, a joke he’s made before that she’d conceded for what it was, even if there are moments when it slithers through the back of her brain and reminds her that the judgement never washes off, that the lingering stain of dallas debutante will never unstick, and will always mean :  whatever you make of yourself, whatever you are, they’ll never see it as deserved. it’s a thought that only the privileged have the luxury of thinking, and she knows that it’s base to entertain it - to bemoan the curses of a charmed life.  

❝  it must be very easy for you to sit there and guess at what you think i do or don’t care about, or what you think strikes me as important or not important. like everyone else, you see what you want to see, and then tell yourself you’re above the diminishing conclusions drawn by other people, just because you hesitate to say them aloud, most times. ❞  she isn’t looking at him, the corner of her lip taken between her teeth as she glances around the residency, feeling a distinct sense of narrowing to the space, like there’s really no escaping the constant back and forth, the constant questioning as to her reasoning, the dramatization of the days events, the posturing on the hill brought into the very last portion of relative privacy she still can reach, and before it can sour into something as solid as resentment, she pushes it from her mind.  ❝  and while i’d hate to challenge your perception of me as the kind of self absorbed person that believes education is a privilege and not a right, or something made more valuable by scarcity, that is not the case. ❞  that was her mother’s thinking. the self righteous feeling of entitlement to a better life because of something as accidental as birth. claire has always been aware of the discrepancies in opportunity, the wealth of undeserving people that were allowed to succeed not on their own merit but on money, not their own but inherited.  yet there are realities she must contend with at the level that she serves. it’s not just about what she wants or what she thinks, its how to achieve it without being forced into undue concessions, held in the pocket of someone else for her efforts. 

❝ they were not tossed out, we rescheduled. the money doesn’t come from nowhere. i don’t know what you think i’m doing all day, maybe drawing up swimming pool designs or . . . looking up mansions along the eastern coast? but the reality is i’m down in the dirt with everyone else, and i am sorry if the particular listing of my priorities is not in line with yours, but i am crossing the bridges i am able to cross when i am able to cross them. it took over two years to reallocate enough funds to fully restore the FEMA budget, and still figure out how to keep the jobs market afloat. i don’t like the situation any more than you do. regardless of whatever it is that you think. ❞  cleaning, failing. sorting messes. it never ends, not even in the quiet of her own home. 

[newsworth]

     @halechief said:  grip.  also mentions @tahitiwoke. 

among the many lessons that chris learned from his father,  the ones he likes to pretend he absorbed from somewhere else,   is that if he dedicated too much time to considering the roads he left untravelled then he would never get very far down the ones he chose instead.  the haunting clatter of his regrets are not chains he wears willingly.   if they,   like many other things in his life that are ultimately left up to claire,  were subject to another’s will besides their own then he would happily take them off tomorrow.   or here,  right in front of her,  just as he begins the shedding process of his certainty and ego with every measured step she takes towards him until they’ve met near the center of her bedroom.  actually,   he never would have allowed them to follow him into her home in the first place.

this lesson is not enough to protect chris from what else he knows :   the repercussions of what he’s done do not need air as he and claire do in order to survive.  whatever vacuum coulson has created in order to hide them away will never fully manage to suffocate their echoes into total silence,  will never truly rob them of their capacity to alter the course of a history that she has fought harder to keep under her own hand than most people have ever for fought anything in their entire lives.

reading claire became less of a challenge with the more practice chris had at it over the years that they’ve known one another.   in this moment it’s difficult for him to tell what she see’s when she looks at him,  his hair damply stuck to his forehead and his skin almost painfully tender after his pointless effort to become clean in a way he never will be again.  

a well preserved harvard sweatshirt had been waiting for him atop a pair of sweats that he didn’t know from where he recognized them,  arranged neatly on a stool in her bathroom.  a black wash rag looked starkly out of place among all the overwhelmingly white tile so that when he washed the blood stains off of himself,  they wouldn’t stick so conspicuously inside the threads.  that’s how chris knew she had no intention of punishing him. 

“  how are you feeling?  “  she asks him.  the way her fingers come together looks like she’s trying to use them to fold the discomfort in the air into the smallest version of itself that it can become.  

“  better.  “ 

“  good.  “

"  thank you.  for,  “   the aged inside of the sweatshirt chafes his arms as he raises his hand to acknowledge its collar.   before she dismisses his thanks,  claire’s eyes float over his shoulder where chris knows phil leans against the wall.   that’s enough for chris to understand the leap he’d made in his observation of their private exchange in the darkened hallway was not a particularly significant one.   that when he’d watched from the seclusion of the doorway,  her hand may have ended with a gentle,  barely there brush of their fingers together,   but it had started in phil’s hair.

that she’s placed him in phil’s sweatshirt after absolving him with the same cleanse of lavender strain that she wears on her own skin every day.  they might be standing here,  chris and claire,  wondering if the image of him before her might reflect a younger phil coulson,  much younger than chris is now,  who also had to come to terms with the terrible things he would have to do in order to protect the people he loved.  

“  we’re going to make this go away.  “   she promises.   when it causes him to flinch,  she goes on to say:   “  it’s already done.  nothing is going to happen to you.  “

“  i don’t care what happens to me,   claire.  not to me.  “   his voice is weak under the weight of his own sincerity,  feeling incapable of using his honesty,  the quality that earned him such a unique position at her table,  as anything other than a weapon that would bring about more ruin than he ever thought himself capable of.  the truth would never be satisfied enough to leave only a single victim,  and there is nothing on earth that chris can do with the purest part of himself that would protect her from a death of a different kind,   one he created in trying to protect her from another.  

“  you can’t say that to me.   i care.  i care very much.  “   the boiling turmoil behind his brow cools against her own when her hands rise to frame his face.   his struggle is not what it was when phil had taken him by the jaw,   a moment that had aged by a week but only amounted to mere hours past when measured by the hands of a clock.   the conviction in her fingers offers him no allowance to his own motion,  no dignity of turning away from the look in her eye so that he could turn towards phil and maybe find a different one.   one filled with more of the disappointment he feels he deserves.   “  i could not be more grateful to you,   christopher.  “  

one of her hands retreats to meet his at his side,  where their littlest fingers curl into a promise,  a time honored juncture of theirs.

“  but you are never to do anything like that again.  “

[sanityclaws]

@tahitiwoke​ said, “so what are you? a two-bit con artist?”

     “ we’ve been trying to figure that out ,   actually. “  he’s too concerned with idly acquainting himself with some of the more novelty items on christopher’s desk ,   so he just absorbs the impact of coulson’s tone ,   allows it to make him chuckle.

     there’s a picture of christopher with the president ,  one he’s never seen before.  a rare photograph that obviously wasn’t taken at a distance by some exploitative photographer who might confuse himself as a fellow member of christopher’s beloved industry. 

     “ boyfriend feels a little juvenile.  partner is ... “  he places the photograph back where he found it ,   careful to position it slightly off its original position ,  so that christopher will know that it’s been touched.  “ a little formal in my opinion.  what do you think?  or are you referring to my work with the ngo? “ 

[brutlist]

     "     𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧' , 𝐠𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 .     "     heugh chirps out from under the thwack of the overhead copter’s racket , squinting against the whirl of loose dirt and the miscellaneous earth matter kicked up in the turbulent upset as he makes his way off the landing , and towards the hanger . in his large hand he holds a binder , hefty and neatly bound for the trip     ---     officiary , much to heugh’s appreciation . bent out of shape isn’t much of his sort of undertone .       this is going to be brief , and that’s just the way he likes it . hopefully phil’s of a similar aptitude .    “     hope you ain’t got nowhere to be for the next two hours .     “

@tahitiwoke​ // sc

[mknbrd]

❛ of course i’m here. where else would i be? ❜

" dunno. plotting world domination ? congressional hearing ? fucking your secretary ? " the words come out as a bite, and bobbi can't even bring herself to apologize for it. she doesn't even bother lifting her head off of the awful hospital visitor's lounge armrest or pull back the hood of her sweatshirt to greet him. not that she's sure she could if she wanted to — the oxy she'd been given for her ribs is starting to wear off, and she's discovering one hell of a crick in the back of her neck that's going to make turning her head to the left a bitch for the next several days.

getting kicked through a window by a member of the wrecking crew will do that to a person. and if that had been the worst of it, she wouldn't care, would just grit her teeth and move on, but they're on hour three of trying to put clint's torso back together, and bobbi can't bring herself to go home. she can't even really bring herself to leave the lobby, just keeps getting up and hobbling to the vending machine, buys an overpriced phone charger in the gift shop when her phone starts to die, and sets up shop.

bobbi waits until he takes the seat across the table from her couch — he doesn't get her couch, because her ankle gets priority, and nurse gallager had been serious about rice-ing the ankle if she was going to hang around. and even then, bobbi's not sure she could handle being in close physical proximity to anyone without turning into a blubbering mess. then, her neck turns a fraction of an inch. he looks uncomfortable, on edge, even with the tie loose and the jacket lost. " he took three rounds to the torso, " she says slowly, like it's a struggle to get the words out. " one was a through and through. second hit his liver, and they're gonna have to take part of that out. third — "

bobbi pauses, has to work her jaw around in her mouth when the wave of nausea rolls up hard in her throat. " lower right lung. they're trying to repair the damage, but based on how long they've been in there, i'm thinking they're taking part of that out, too. unless he's — y'know. "

sure, she doesn't like clint right now. she's not sure she ever will again. but he still manages to wriggle his stupid way into her ribcage, settle in her bone marrow and make her feel helpless, enraged, terrified, anytime he's hurt. so, even years later, this tone of conversation is not new to either of them. phil shows up because he cares, bobbi just about bites his head off and doesn't mean it, and then she offers an array of snack foods in lieu of an actual apology. so bobbi just shakes it out, tries not to think about the worst case scenario, and gestures to the array of junk food on the coffee table. " dinner is skittles and cheez-its. oreos are mine. "

[illwriteatragedy]

I Am going to say five times kissed BC lil bby Roman and forehead kisses???

first.

phil coulson talks, and roman bragin listens. he will not speak unless something is directed to him, and he will not elaborate on anything further, testing the limits of phil's patience. he watches. and he waits. and he listens, because he has always been good at that, even in the midst of violence and chaos.

but phil does not get angry with him. he does not call him stupid, and he does not raise his hand when roman refuses to look at him, does not make a scene when he crosses his arms and doesn't answer his questions.

the first few days go like this. roman waits, expectant that it will come, but it never does. his guard is lowered, his hopes wavering into dangerous territory ( that maybe someone can be like this, after all. ) when phil places the covers over him that night, and presses a kiss to his hair, he calls to him before he leaves the room, voice small.

" goodnight, phil. " it is the first time he has said anything to him without being asked, first.

second.

he has a knack for languages. it is what phil has told him, what the other agent he that is tutoring him has said, but --

" i have to hurt people? " there is hesitation there. phil stands opposite of him, dressed in his gym clothes. they have been training together for months now, building up his strength, working on his body. martial arts was next. they would see which form would fit him best, but mma was where they would start.

you have to be able to defend yourself, no matter the cost. phil circles him as he speaks, forcing roman to spin his head to watch him. there will be people who want to take your life because of who you are. whether it be where you came from, whether it be because of shield, whether it be because of me --

phil stands in front of him now, and crouches down on one knee. he brushes the hair from his face and looks him in the eye. i will always have your back. but you need to survive, roman. that means hurting people. even killing them. do you understand?

there is a heavy gravity here that roman can feel, a pressure that separates his head from his heart. but phil looks at him with such intensity that roman can only nod. " i understand. " phil nods too, kisses his hair, and sends him flat on the floor.

third.

roman sits on the counter so he can see better. this time, he is the one who asks questions, leaning with his palms pressed on the marble. " do you think i'll get tall? " he asks after a barrage of cooking questions, still much shorter than phil's 6'5 height.

phil laughs, ruffles his curls up, nearly knocking him over. twelve is the perfect age for a growth spurt, he says, you've got a foot since eleven.

" a foot is nothing. " roman complains, watching the sauce thicken in the pan. " if you were my real dad i would have -- " he stops, clamps his mouth shut, the tips of his ears turning red. the kitchen goes quiet for a moment. in the other room, he can hear carol move around, painfully aware.

the fire on the pan is turned off. phil turns to him, leans against the counter. before he can say anything, roman is the one who speaks first. " i know -- you're my handler. not my dad. " he exits the kitchen in a hurry, going to his room.

( they have dinner that night. carol keeps looking at phil, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn't. when he goes to bed, he can feel phil sit on the side of the bed, but his back is turned -- the gentle kiss to his hair is ignored, and they both say nothing about it the next morning. )

fourth.

they're at a baseball game. the soda tastes wrong.

that's not right. it's the sharp metallic taste of blood. but -- there's the sun, and it's shining --

that's not right either. it's the fluorescent light fixture overhead. he has to focus, he just has to focus ---

but everything for just a minute is warm, and he's happy, and it might just be better if he stayed this way --

roman !

they're shining lights in his eyes. he can feel his body being moved, can hear them discussing what to do next. it all sounds jumbled in wrong. but amidst it all, he can hear one voice better than the rest, because he knows that voice --

you don't understand, that's my boy, you need to let me --

he realizes, with sudden jolting clarity, that he is in the hospital. a shock of pain rushes through him, tears forming in the corner of his eyes. through whatever they have shoved in his mouth, he tries to speak, voice weak. " i want my dad. " he manages to spit out whatever is in there. " i want my dad -- i want my dad -- "

everything after that is a blur. he knows that phil got to him, that he held his face, that they were able to do what they needed to do after he saw them. that he fell into a coma for a few days after to heal. that they both didn't talk about that, either, because it seemed they were always going to be good at not saying the things they needed to say.

fifth.

he is twenty-two, almost twenty-three, when he tells phil that he met a girl. roman only blushes when phil asks if she's blonde, and laughs when he says yes.

that's my boy, phil says, arm around his shoulder, a kiss to his temple, roman only three inches shorter now, that height he had always wanted to be. just like your old man.