#there is no control here

[aerodaltonimperial]

‘Why can’t you let me in. What are you so afraid of.’ ?

(sigh. you know that happened here. i can't control any of my word counts lol. WELP.)

He’d once read that after a car accident, injuries could take days to be felt, because endorphins are natural painkillers and adrenaline masks the soft tissue damage. He thinks it’s much the same when he walks off the ring with the FTW belt, leaving Lee Moriarty on his hands and knees, heart pounding against his ears. Hook’s aware that he just got the shit beat out of him, but his blood’s still singing and the nerves beneath his skin aren’t registering much yet. If his fingers clutch the damn belt harder than they need to, it’s only because he thought he was going to have it ripped out of his hands when his vision had gotten blurry, painted red around the edges.

He’s desperate to get out from backstage. The eight minutes in the ring had felt like a lifetime; the only pain points he’s aware of already are the ache building in his left elbow and the sting along his back. He knows, logically, that means both injuries are severe enough to push past all the inhibitors. It’s not a good thing.

Hook needs to get out, get one of the cars back to the hotel so he can lick his wounds in peace, and whatever deity observes AEW is clearly mocking him, because he runs smack into Ricky Starks. Objectively, the man looks terrible—he’s been a wreck since August, since the stable dissolved and Hobbs turned on him. But now, with blood smeared across his temple, he looks even worse.

“Hook,” he says, and Hook absolutely cannot deal with this right now. He doesn’t even reply, just tries to push through, only he’s misjudged how banged up his shoulders are and smacking into Ricky’s chest sends a wave of pain down his arm.

Ricky reaches out, quick as a wink, grabbing Hook’s bicep with one hand. “Hook, you’re a fucking mess.”

Hook only pauses because he’s surprised that Ricky is touching him; Ricky knows better. Ricky doesn’t usually do that without a warning.

“Hey, kid, listen.” Ricky’s hold tightens. Fuck. That stings. “He did a number on you out there. You need to have someone look it over, make sure you’re okay.”

“Let go,” Hook says, a challenge. Tries to rip his arm free and can’t, because every single muscle in his body has stopped responding to his commands.

“No, listen to me. This isn’t a sport you do alone. You think you can, but you can’t. Someone has to be in your corner afterwards.”

If Hook doesn’t escape soon, he’s going to lose it backstage with a hundred cameras surrounding him. He knows it’s coming; the fire’s leaving his limbs, fleeing and leaving a gaping hole behind. He knows what’s coming to fill in all that empty space.

“Fuck. Off,” he hisses.

“Hook, I’m serious.” Ricky leans in, doesn’t get the hint. “I’m not saying it has to be me. You need a support;  you need someone after a fight like this. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”

Sheer panic provides the burst of strength that Hook needs to break free, spinning out from beneath Ricky’s hand. His temples have started to throb, in time with his heart. He needs to get his shit out of the locker room and find one of the cars they’ve always got on stand-by for the post-match runs. He spins, leaving Ricky standing there with one arm outstretched; it’s not even like Hook dislikes the guy, but he cannot be here anymore. His left arm has started to burn and the pain is making its way up through his shoulder. Once the full onslaught hits, he’s going to…well.

“Hook!” Ricky calls, but Hook’s already in a half-sprint, and with the bang-up Ricky got backstage earlier, there’s no way he’ll be able to keep up.

Grab your shit, get out. Don’t stop for anything.

+++

The adrenaline crash hits him ten minutes after he’s made it back to his hotel room. If it wasn’t so overwhelming, Hook might have been proud of his ability to gauge the time needed, but as it stands, he ends up on the grimy carpet that he has just enough brainpower to hope has been recently cleaned when the pain slams into him all at once, a deluge.

His whole left arm is on fire. The burn, centered in his elbow, extends all the way up through his neck and rattles the teeth on the left side of his mouth. His back might as well have had coals raked down across it for how bad the sting has settled into his skin, and his right hand might be broken from where Moriarty jammed his fingers apart. There’s copper at the back of his tongue he can’t swallow down. Hook mashes his face into the carpet fibers and tries to bite back the scream, because there’s no way the walls will disguise that sort of noise.

He needs to ice his arm, his back—fuck, he needs to ice everything. He tries to push himself up and almost immediately his left arm goes out. At least the carpet swallows the resulting exclamation of anguish.

There’s no way he can ice his left elbow with only one hand. He might be able to get to his back, but twisting to attempt to reach with his good arm reveals the futility of that particular thought process. Fuck.

Hook manages to get himself up on his knees using only his right arm, left cradled close to his chest as best he can. If he just sleeps on it, he isn’t sure he’ll wake up with any feeling left at all. And if he can’t feel his arm, he can’t wrestle, and if he can’t wrestle—

There’s a knock at the door.

Hook squeezes his eyes shut, misery lodged in his throat. He freezes, hoping whoever it is will go away if he pretends he isn’t inside, that the room is deserted. A moment passes, and then another knock.

“It’s Danhausen,” comes the voice from the other side, quiet and muffled behind the wood. “Hook?”

“No,” Hook says. He isn’t sure it’s loud enough for Danhausen to even hear him.

“Hook, open the door.”

He can’t. Hook’s fingers curl against the carpet, nails tearing up little tufts of fuzz. 

“Danhausen knows you’re in there.”

“Go away,” Hook tries.

“Hook.” Danhausen’s voice, even from so far away, sounds…different. There’s a lower quality to it that Hook hasn’t heard before, almost like he’s dropped some of the act. “Why can’t you let Danhausen in?”

A second, and then, as an addition, even quieter: “What is Hook afraid of? It’s just me.”

If pressed, Hook wouldn’t be able to explain what came over him, what finally pushed him to stagger up to his feet and stumble towards the door. The onslaught of pain, probably, and the fact that he’s light-headed with how poorly his entire body is. He’s a half-step away from passing out as his brain struggles to deal with the overload. Or maybe it’s just that he actually does, somewhere, somehow, want to be anything other than alone.

His right hand smacks into the door knob before he gets his aim right, pulling it open. Danhausen’s holding a bucket of ice in both hands. There’s something off about the paint on his face: the black shapes are elongated, just off enough to be noticeable. But it doesn’t really matter. Hook slumps against the wall and winces, because even that was agonizing, all bruising contact.

Danhausen opens his mouth as though he’s going to say something, and then changes his mind. He slips in through the opening and closes the door behind him, setting the ice bucket down on the weathered television stand. “Hook needs to shower.”

Hook needs to fucking die. He closes his eyes as his whole body shakes against the wall. “Can’t.”

“Hook can simply—oh.” Something scrapes, plastic against plastic. “Your elbow.”

Warmth presses lightly, gently, against Hook’s side, the one that wasn’t smacked repeatedly. Danhausen’s hand curls there. “Come with me.”

If Hook was in a better state, not dragged halfway to hell and back, he’d fight it. He would. Instead, he lets himself be led into the narrow hotel bathroom. Danhausen turns the water on and wiggles his fingers beneath the spray to check the temperature. He’s, ridiculously, still in his black jacket, the one with the red embroidery and the bizarre teeth decals.

He turns back to Hook. His mouth is a thin, unhappy stripe of black. “Strip.”

“What?” Hook manages, chest constricting.

Danhausen motions with one hand, impatient. “Yes, yes, leave your shorts on, it’s fine, just take the rest off.”

Hook can’t even get his damn shirt off by himself. The fabric catches on his shoulder, the one he can’t move, and he has to bite down on his lip to keep from crying out. Danhausen has to help tug it free. Then Hook sits on the edge of the shower with his legs in the tub, and allows Danhausen to sort of nudge him forward so he’s leaning in, face down.

At first, he’s so fucking panicked he can’t move, not even when Danhausen grabs the shower coil and pulls the sprayhead out to wet Hook’s hair over the bath. He’s never had anyone do this before, never, and the nerves spark up and down his exposed skin, summoning goosebumps. But when Danhausen starts working shampoo into his hair, kneading at Hook’s scalp, his whole body sort of…slumps, giving in. It’s unbearably gentle. It’s nice. It’s emotion that sticks between Hook’s teeth, saccharine sweet.

Moriarty had gotten his hands in Hook’s hair, too, jerked his head back when he tried to pull the strands free. Danhausen’s ministrations help to soothe the burn left behind.

“Danhausen saw the match,” comes the statement from over his shoulder as Hook’s closed his eyes again to keep the rinse out of his eyes. “Hook did very well.”

“I almost lost,” Hook grits out. A bit of shampoo catches in the corner of his lips, bitter.

Danhausen hums a little. “But you didn’t.” Then he taps Hook’s shoulders. “Done. Hook should dry off. Can you handle the rest from here?”

“Yeah.” He’s got an extra pair of shorts peeking out from his duffel, just outside the bathroom door. He’s pretty sure he can do that with one arm.

Danhausen leaves while Hook changes into the new pair. Hook can hear him moving around beyond the bathroom, rummaging through a bit and moving the ice bucket. He thinks it ought to feel stranger to have Danhausen in his hotel room, only it doesn’t, because it’s just Danhausen. Ever since Hook let the man in, it’s just been…easy. A familiar sort of weird that’s strangely comfortable.

Hook stares at his reflection in the mirror—hair plastered to his forehead, skin pinking where the blood vessels will bruise—for only a moment. It’s a little hard to look at the aftermath.

He really did almost lose.

Hook exits the bathroom, leaving behind the bit of fog gathered on the glass to find Danhausen sitting on the bed. He’s got the ice bucket and a roll of Ace bandage he must have fished out of Hook’s duffel. He gestures for the space left open on the duvet in front of his legs. “Come, come.”

There isn’t much else Hook can do but oblige, gingerly lowering himself onto the mattress.

Danhausen moves for his arm first, which makes sense; it’s the worst of his injuries. Hook hisses, wrenches his face away when Danhausen slowly extends it. The pain is enough to sting the corners of his eyes, hot. He’s embarrassed when the tears track their way down his face to drip off his jaw, but he doesn’t pull his arm away. Danhausen wraps the ice in towels, and then secures the towels with the bandages. By the time he’s done, Hook can’t move the damn thing if he’d wanted to.

His fingers slide across Hook’s shoulders to the spot where Moriarty got his elbow in several times, a quick succession. When his fingertips hit the edge of the damage, Hook groans. Danhausen’s hand stills where it is.

Then he gathers more ice from the bucket, dripping water across the bed, and Hook’s whole body clenches up when the shock of cold hits his skin. He trembles against the ice Danhausen’s holding against his back.

“Hook will bruise,” Danhausen comments, voice low. His free hand traces a gentle loop up to Hook’s shoulder. “But I think this will help keep the worst away, no?”

“It hurts,” Hook admits through clenched teeth.

“Yes, I expect so. That Moriarty fellow was good. No match for Hook in the end, of course, but good.”

Hook waits. When nothing else follows, and Danhausen’s free hand remains where it is, featherlight contact, he thinks he’s steady enough to ask. “Why did you come here?”

“Hook had a rough fight,” Danhausen says. “The doctors should have looked at this, but it’s—”

“No, why did you come here?”

Quiet descends over them. Hook’s breathing is quick from the cold pressed against him and the aftershocks of the flight or fight response retreating; he can hear Danhausen’s breathing behind him, slower. More controlled.

“Danhausen got a call,” he replies, slowly. “From Ricky Starks.”

Hook’s mouth goes dry. “What?”

“Well, yes, Ricky Starks did not have Danhausen’s number at first. He sent a message to Danhausen’s friend Trent, who then contacted Danhausen’s friend Orange to obtain it. And then he called.”

Hook braces for the wave of humiliation, and ends up feeling…warmth. Relief. Gratitude. He’s grateful, so much so that if he were standing, he might double over, so grateful to the man he pushed away who still found a way to look after him. Grateful, despite it all, that Ricky still cares.

Grateful that Ricky knew enough to understand that Hook can’t let most people in, but that Danhausen could never be described as “most people,” grateful that he would go through so much just to contact him.

Hook’s gone silent, and Danhausen’s fingers on his back have gone still. “And…you came,” Hook says.

“Of course Danhausen came.”

“But, last week, who…” Hook swallows. His tongue’s three sizes too big. He can’t finish the question.

Danhausen understands anyway. “Danhausen’s friends Chuck and Trent helped to make sure Danhausen was all right last week.”

“Oh.”

The ice shifts, sliding a little up to Hook’s shoulder blade. Then Danhausen’s free hand moves up to Hook’s neck, his thumb dragging a gentle trail up towards his hair. “Danhausen is not upset. Trent and Chuck are good friends, of course.”

“But,” Hook prompts, even though he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to hear the rest.

“Danhausen would have preferred Hook be there.”

“I’ll do it next time,” Hook promises, voice raspy. With his right hand, the only arm he can move anymore with the makeshift splint on the other, he reaches up, finds Danhausen’s fingers. Tangles them together. Maybe he squeezes too hard. 

He leans back, enough to trap both Danhausen’s other hand and the ice pack between them. This thing between them, it’s something; he knows it’s going to be something, but he’s in such a shit state and he can’t chase it down with every muscle in his body screaming. He hopes Danhausen gets that, he’s desperate for him to understand, that yes, yes, but not now, just not now—

Danhausen shifts forward, his chin on Hook’s shoulder, pointy enough to sting a little. Then he exhales, the echo rattling through Hook’s back, and his mouth turns down, makes contact. The ghost of a kiss skates over Hook’s skin.

“Danhausen doesn’t wish to leave,” he starts, and Hook’s pretty sure he knows what’s going to follow, “but there are…things I need to do.”

“Things,” Hook repeats.

“It’s complicated.” Cryptic. “Will Hook be all right?”

“Yes. You don’t have to stay.”

He wonders if this has to do with the off-ness of his face paint and the weird video from a few weeks ago. Eventually, Danhausen will tell him…probably.

Danhausen pulls back, finally letting up with the ice. Hook’s back is numb, thoroughly so, and that’s probably as good as he’ll get tonight. Danhausen slides away so he’s half off the bed, though one hand remains on Hook’s arm. “Hook ought to take something.”

“Many somethings,” Hook says, and sighs. He’s got a full bottle of ibuprofen in his bag.

Danhausen moves to leave. Hook grabs his fingers before he can fully slip away.

“Thank you,” he says, low. Almost a whisper. Almost too quiet to hear.

Danhausen smiles, one corner higher than the other, the unfamiliar lines of black crinkling. “Hook is most welcome.”

Hook doesn’t want to let go, but he does. Danhausen offers him one last smile, half a grimace, and leaves. He forgets the ice bucket.

Hook collapses back against the pillows. He’s got just enough strength to crawl beneath the blankets, and that’s where his reserve ends. His eyes close. 

That’s the thing about keeping everyone else at a distance—you get the chance to sleep, to keep ignorance to the rest of the world, to things like backstage feuds and grainy, black and white videos with metal spikes.

[lavenderrpages]

my canon characters pinterest. someone tell me not to add n.orma b.ates... like ...pls stop me.

[zanmor]

We are well beyond canary in the coalmine warning levels with the way trans people and particularly trans women are treated on this site.

Maybe you've heard the metaphor of allowing wolves and sheep to share the same space, welcoming everyone. You end up with just wolves because allowing them in that space makes it unsafe for any sheep. Or the story about how a nazi goes into a dive bar and is refused service. The bartender then explains to someone else at the bar that if you serve them once they tell their friends and before you know it you're the nazi bar they all go to and normal customers don't feel safe.

Terfs and other bigots are seeing these targeted harassment campaigns succeed against trans women and rejoicing. They see Tumblr ban them and officially stand by those decisions as endorsement for their harassment. It's a sign to bigots across the internet that Tumblr is a good place for them.

And what's more is that a lot of us probably don't realize just how much trans women contribute to Tumblr. The women banned recently were sources of site-wide memes and posts I wasn't even aware originated from them.any years old memes and references can be traced back to trans women on this site.

How many of these folks have to be removed before this is no longer a site you want to be a part of it? Sure you cultivate your own experience, but you can't follow or interact with people who aren't here. And if I wanted to interact with the nazis and terfs I'd go to reddit.

I encourage everyone to reblog this. Trans women shouldn't have to be the only ones speaking out against the bigotry they're experiencing. They shouldn't be the only ones risking their blogs being nuked by staff. We have to stand with them.

[bigfatbreak]

they both got bonked for being silly.

[pisstorymuseum]

rare fiddauthor happiness moment

[hinamie]

sry i have chronic only draws megumi disorder the doctor said it's terminal :/

[starridge]

yeah

[psicheanima]

The house always wins

[unrelatedsideblog]

bleping doodles idk

[siltyriver]

I am such a slut for Danny having supernatural strength and being able to kill someone with a single slap because he’s used to fighting ghosts who are built Sturdy (and literally can’t die, that is very helpful in a sparing partner) so he has to learn such meticulous control when he moves to Gotham where he starts regularly getting into scuffles with humans who think he’s an easy target (he looks like he has the sturdiness of a wet newspaper) and the whole time he’s more stressed about not drawing the Bats attention by being too good or accidentally killing someone so he has to walk that fine line of acting like a scrawny loser and dipping out at his first chance without being clocked as a meta.

Danny, laying on the ground and getting kicked repeatedly by a thug: *tries to angle himself so the guy can kick out a knot in his back*

Danny: *deadpan* oh, ow, stop that hurts, oof

Robin, watching from the rooftop and recognizing the dramatics from the Supers: father there is a meta

Batman, also watching and having flashbacks to Clark’s earlier days: *so so tired and already mentally getting the adoption paperwork ready*

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm not going back to Gusu with you.

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[lilybug-02]

Hesitate or Perish.

Bug Fact: Dragonflies have a hunting success rate of 95%, higher than any other animal observed in the world.

First || Prev // Next

Masterpost

[catmask]

if you ask me. being a good storyteller and love are inherently entwined. you cannot tell a good story without loving the people in it and loving those you tell it to. because to tell a good story is to understand it and its impact. to love is to understand how something moves through others and how to deliver it the way it would be best received. and how to breath life into something that did not exist before. storytelling is an act of creation sure but i do believe in all creation, there is love too. that there must be

[icantdothistodaybruh]

ref

[da-janela-lateral]

Dia dos namorados? Today!? NO!!!! Post aro Tsubomi right now