#unless blitz really fucks something up in the next few episodes
Text
Unpopular opinion he’s talking to Stella in this scene
#I just don’t think he’d ever have this kinda hatred in his eyes for blitz#unless blitz really fucks something up in the next few episodes#I don’t think Stolas would have a reason to say this to him#I think it’s Stella and this scene is purposefully supposed to be misleading#helluba boss#stolas#stolitz#blitzo#helluva boss trailer#hellaverse#helluva blitzo#helluva boss blitz#blitzo x stolas
259 notes
·
View notes
Text
Jabbed
This is the Exes and Oohs ficlet for my ‘HB episodes with Blitzpreg’ fic!
Summary: Blitz gets something jabbed into him by Chaz. Twice, in fact.
Warning: This one gets a bit closer to the line between M/E but in a sort of ‘describing the sex scene with Chaz from the side’ way. I didn’t think it was enough to bump up the rating for the whole fic, but just a head’s up.
Ao3 link
“Deal.”
It was an impulse. He was horny and stressed and should be able to get the guy knocked out without arousing- heh- too much suspicion. A few rounds was nothing, even with the baby strapped to his gut like a concrete block- he wasn’t a little bitch.
(The look with raised eyebrows Crimson had given him for a fraction of a second when they stepped off the helicopter before smothering it in phony charm had made him grit his teeth, though, and he could feel the judgment linger through the next hour, especially when he avoided the wine. Somehow, he doubted the men in the ‘family’ let themselves get knocked up.)
Chaz treated his plumper-than-usual ass with the same respect usually given to unattended bags of rice at the grocery store, with the bonus of digging his claws into the tender flesh just to get a better grip and drawing blood in the process. Blitz liked pain, but not when the top wasn’t fucking him up on purpose, that was just sloppy as shit, and he liked to think he was better than that.
He had to brace himself on his elbows and knees, baby hanging heavy, and the usage of ‘sweetheart’ and ‘bitch’ got him growling and gripping the sheets, especially when Chaz cooed out how hot he looked ‘bred all full like that, y’know?’ One green hand moved down to caress the swell of his stomach, and his tail wrapped around the wrist with a snarl vibrating from his chest.
“Eyes on the hole, sharkbait.”
Chaz had just shrugged at that and resumed pounding Blitz’s ass. He’d insisted that his dick made its own lube to go along with the slight moisture on his skin, which was mostly bullshit as far as Blitz could tell, but he did make enough to not tear, or at least not any worse than he was used to from fucks like this one that thought with their dicks first and their hearts last.
It wasn’t good, needless to say. Not the worst he’d had, but leagues from the best. Lying not-so-little prick, there was no way this had been what had captured both of their hearts unless he had to pencil in ‘be sorry for their pathetic sex lives pre-each other’ on his calendar.
Chaz conked out with a snore like a chainsaw when they were done, and Blitz, legs pulled up to protect his belly, took a few moments to glance back before using as much ginger grace as he could to not creak the floor as he slipped off the bed, tugging on the coat lined with bones and rummaging around in the pockets. His hadn’t really fit properly lately anyway, and it was the least the guy could do.
M+M had deserved way better than that dipshit, and he was getting to the bottom of this.
______
He nearly gagged at the stench of body spray and booze as he opened the door to the car, but whether it was pregnancy sensitivity or it was just that awful was up for debate. (The former, probably- he’d endured some truly heinous stenches in his time, and Moxxie complained about his own use of body spray more than any man really should. It kept him smelling sporty, that was all that mattered.)
Bills, bills, fast food wrappers, candy, more bills… Blitz could feel the squirt squirm as he rummaged, and one hand drifted down to rub them in reassurance.
“Yeah, daddy smells bullshit too,” he muttered, swinging around to the trunk. Garbage, clothes- Jaws was living out of his car, no doubt about it, and the note of a ‘mastur plan’ dug up and smelling like wet sock all but confirmed it. Blitz might have felt bad for Moxxie’s dad for his chain getting yanked if he hadn’t gotten such skeevy vibes off the guy. (He also would have admired the balls on Chaz for trying to pull this off on a mob boss if said balls hadn’t been pounding against his vulnerable flesh not even an hour prior and proved themselves unworthy.) His hand curled around the note. “That’s-”
Something jabbed into his neck, the plunger depressing with a sickening pop as he was shoved forward, and everything went black with a heavy THUD in a matter of microseconds.
Fuckboy the wonder tuna might have said something from outside Blitz’s sudden metal coffin, but Blitz was too busy trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened, head swirling as he attempted to retain his bearings with a squirm while every beat of his heart pumped the poison further through his veins.
It was dark. It smelled awful and his throat spasmed like he was going to puke, and he could handle just about any drug you could shove at him in normal circumstances… but.
But.
But babies were weak, useless little lumps that couldn’t handle just about anything, and he curled up around himself as if he could protect it from his own body.
No, no, nononono, he had to… had to… he pawed and kicked, but his limbs were floppy as noodles with no real power behind them in an alarmingly quick span of time after he’d been injected. (It had just been seconds, right?) His belly weighed him down like a cannonball as he whimpered, heat pulsing from his neck. Sweat slicked his body and his temperature ratcheted up double-time- although it could be the tiny space he was crammed into. Whatever that shit he’d been jabbed with was, it was potent, but maybe he was just weak.
He fucked up. He fucked up, he fucked up, he fucked up, he had fucked things and that’d gone tits up, he should have just broken in after the fucker passed out or something, but hindsight was 20/20 and right now he was batting a 0 considering the only thing visible was the faint green of the fluorescent lights and the Greed sky through a small hole in the trunk and he’d gotten drugged with Satan-knew-what while pregnant.
This was bad. This was bad. He needed to warn Moxxie, warn Millie, get out and find something to make sure the baby wasn’t dying inside of him as they gave a weak little wriggle, but all he could feel was his hot, moist breath echoing back on itself, making his cheeks even sweatier.
“Heyyy, baby, Daddy’s here, Daddy’ll… Daddy’ll figure… something out…” He swallowed, his hands cupped over his middle as he gave another kick towards the hole in the metal, but it just vibrated the space around him before the green faded into thick bloody black and everything disappeared into nothingness.
1 note
·
View note
Text
hiatus on certain types of meta
Man. That unfortunate feeling when there’s a meta you otherwise like from someone that you *really* like that decided to include the whole “it’s subtext because I don’t see anybody talking about it” rather than “it’s not subtext because almost this entire discussion point is verbalized text”, and that’s SAD because JFC otherwise the post was so good.
I’m going to have to do some notification clearing.
It saddens me to see people that are usually extremely critical redefining things just because they didn’t find an article being like SURPRISE HE BI instead of assuming the GA *aren’t* primarily slackjawed neanderthals five to ten years behind your presumable galaxy brain, or waiting on signals explicitly for fandom. Fandom outlets will remain as cowardly and two faced and clickbait as ever, and big outlets... like... unless they’re told to market that shit by PR (which would be like EW level shit--presuming of course this was a corporate level decision and not a “we can slip it through” choice, in which case, it’d never hit PR), has it occurred to y’all that the rest of the world been knew? Aren’t out there waiting for an argument point? Arguing woke shit at large? Have antis in their ear to parade it around in front of for personal validation?
If waiting to see a reporter talk about it WAS the goalpost... are we going with the soap opera reporter’s dark moment in the romance acknowledgement and it being a standard fare breakup with us not knowing if they’d get back together, but that “dEaN wAsnT cAnONicAlLy bI”? ...what about TVG? There were some others -- was it Variety? Or Ew? I don’t remember, there were several acknowledgements so close together by big outlets I can’t even remember if it was a Variety mention or EW, because one did a highkey and one did a lowkey acknowledgment at the same time. Those don’t count? Didn’t count then. For ... reasons. Okie dokie. But this one. This one we’ll run disqualifiers on if *this* one we find an article about. The world addresses it as Been Knew and then we’re surprised nobody throws Dean a blowout headliner party without corporate asking them to exploitatively market it, possibly because they weren’t alerted.
But people aren’t looking for qualifiers. They’re looking for disqualifiers, as if to PROVE THEMSELVES WRONG!!111ONE! And they’re not even finding disqualifiers, they’re just assuming the empty space is a disqualifier, even if that space wasn’t empty only a few episodes ago, about the same thing. This is what we call drilling down LGBT content instead of raising it up. And it’s EXTREMELY fucking sad that people that know better about what “text” is, realistically, have been bloodied into such submission that they’ll just complicitly do it.
Neverminding that... it doesn’t change that text is text even if people aren’t announcing that text. That’s what we call low-visibility text. Low-visibility text is still text. Something not being overt or widely understood does not turn it into another thing. If the show aired Cas saying “I like potato pie” and everyone went deaf to that specific line, it doesn’t change the fact that Cas in the text said he likes fucking potato pie. It’s not subtext if somebody had earplugs in. That isn’t how that works.
Sigh.
Either way I’m not gonna be party to circulating that sort of nonsense, which is going to make the next several weeks of fandom extremely not good for me, but cest la vie, I’ll deal with it. Even if it means essentially boycotting blogs I regularly browse until the topic passes.Though depending on how long it persists I may have to make some hard choices and just drop some follows and engagements. There’s a few blogs I would hate to have to block for being party to this kind of LGBT cinema history damaging deletion so I can only hope it passes and drops dead.
God, fuck, that’s so FUCKING disappointing to see. Like OOH who made this post oh FOUND it it’s one of my favorite bloggers and--
...*closes blog* So anyway.
I’ll probably be avoiding even my usual meta for reasons. Unless something so loudly hermetic blitzes off in 15.8, and I mean LOUDLY hermetic, I don’t think I’ll be writing my normal subject matter or engaging in my normal circuit until this conversation is dead and buried. If I start again at all.
General meta will still continue, but there’s traffic that comes with the topic I’d rather not be party to right now.
But yes. Yes, it is that important to me. Yes, media history is that important to me. Yes, LGBT issues are that important to me. And no, I won’t surrender all of that history just to meekly cow to the local pressure or just accept it in the air around me.
I hope others do the same self care. And, frankly, LGBT-battle-care, if there is such a thing. To me, at least, decades of battles are not worth throwing to the side to get pretty gifs or lit assessments any more than it is for winning fights with trolls on the internet. I’m willing to set aside talking about my literal religion in one of my few opportunities to do so because realistically, far greater people have bled and even died for this fight, and teaching Jung in mass can wait. I guess if anybody REALLY wants to hear said hermetic shit, they can DM me or I might move it over to pillowfort to avoid the associated traffic.
Inserting apologetics is far less flattering than people think.
But most of all, people, stand for something. If people can deal with being pelted with bricks and set on fire and whatever other horrible shit has happened to the LGBT community, you can deal with a few grumpy challengers that want to throw those bricks and flames right now. And if you don’t?
Well, I probably don’t want to be around that kind of “LGBT content discussion” anyway.
But I promise all of you that not a single fight has ever been won by the LGBT community simply rolling over and accepting that there's a different rulebook or dictionary for the gays. We owned our camp, and our pride, and we won by not accepting differential treatment in our disfavor. We fucking stood. And I'm waiting for the 2019 community to remember that.
If you think anyone that struggled or died in the peak of this fight would be honored at modern lgbt people being first hand and even voluntarily complicit in shoving the community back behind special rules that hurt them and only them that came out of thin air, in that imposed deficit, i really do not fucking know what to tell you.
And if that sentiment struck a cord with a single soul, then think about it.
28 notes
·
View notes
Text
you're out on the bottomless sea
Summary: All Jessica wanted was some pizza rolls, but first she had to peel a drug-addled teen idol off the floor. (or: everything good Trish ever learned, she learned from Jessica.)
Read at AO3.
Jessica trudged through the door, boots dragging and bookbag crashing against the marble floor of the foyer. Dorothy would've scolded her about making scuff marks, but sadly, what she didn't see wouldn't hurt her. It was Friday and time to toss off the week's bullshit, so she made a beeline for the kitchen with a hankering for some inexplicably delicious cardboard flavored junk food. At least that was the plan. But of course, bullshit was inescapable in the Walker home, and as she passed by the sitting room, she saw something that forced to stop in her tracks.
She sighed dramatically. Maybe next time, Totino’s. As much as pizza rolls of questionable nutritional value called to her, she figured she should probably do something about the busted up, glassy eyed child star slumped by the couch.
Again.
It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence lately, and it pissed Jessica off each and every time. Not so much at Trish. They had reached something of a truce, a friendship even. They weren't some twee secret sharing bosom buddies kind of shit or whatever, but what they had was still… nice. It was good to have a friend. Jessica had always hung out with a small group of other social outcasts, but they were never tight, and they got all weird when she came back to school after the accident. She and Trish hadn’t known each other before that and had only gone to the same school in the barest sense of the word. Trish was usually away filming or doing publicity, and they ran in entirely different social circles when she was actually there. Jessica had assumed she was some stuck up, empty-headed, spoiled rich kid with an oversized ego and probably a cocaine habit to match.
But as it turned out, it wasn't as easy for her to hate on a spoiled rich kid when the kid was doing all the work and when she was living in the kid’s house benefiting from the money. And mercifully, Trish herself turned out to be different than Jessica expected. She wasn’t entirely wrong with her first impression: Trish was more than capable of being a snarky, sneering brat, and while she didn’t really mess around with illegal drugs, she was never far from a pill bottle, but she was also cool and whip smart and funny and good-hearted. And her taste in music was actually pretty decent, all explosive angry girl rock, not the mind-numbing bubblegum pop Jessica had anticipated. Really, nothing about Trish was as bad as she anticipated. And honestly, who was she to pass judgement on an occasional streak of bitchery? She wasn’t that lacking in self-awareness. She'd have to hate herself too. Or, you know... hate herself even more than she already did. Whatever the case, she liked Trish, and it was hard to be angry at her.
Her mother was another matter altogether. Dorothy Walker was a dangerous whack job and a nightmare to live with. Jessica was able to get by mostly unscathed because Dorothy just... didn't give a shit about her, and she was honestly glad for it, even though she knew it definitely wasn't how adoptions were supposed to go. Trish, meanwhile, was always directly in her path of destruction. Getting slammed into a wall by a superpowered teenage freak might have spooked Dorothy, but apparently nothing could stop her from being a calculating, child abusing assclown. Jessica could threaten and intimidate, but she couldn’t be there every time Dorothy was near Trish, and the woman had her own leverage now that she knew of Jessica’s powers. The fact of the matter was, Jessica was an orphan kid with nothing to her name, and Dorothy was rich, powerful, and well-lawyered. She only had so many options available to her while living under the Walker roof.
And two of those options right now were A.) eating some goddamn pizza rolls or B.) peeling Trish off the floor. As always, option B won out. But she didn't have to be nice about it, so she stomped into the room, bent down, and roughly shook Trish’s leg. “Hey! You alive?”
It took a moment, but Trish turned her head in Jessica’s general direction and grinned. The bloody nose and busted lip colored her teeth red, and her sunken, glazed eyes stood out even more against her ashen complexion. It was kind of creepy. Like Night of the Living Dead creepy. Jessica pulled back her hand, ready to throw a punch in case Trish had suddenly developed a more carnivorous diet.
Her brains appeared safe, as Trish finally slurred out, “Oh, hey, it’s Jessie. Real nice to see you, Jessie. Where’ve yoooou been all day?”
Jessica inwardly cringed at the nickname. That was a Dorothy thing. Trish didn’t use it unless she was being a condescending ass and trying to pick a fight. “At school.”
“Oh, yeah, school. Like the normal kids do.” Trish looked contemplative for a moment. “But then why were you there? Shouldn’t you be in the ‘gifted’ program?”
Trish giggled at her own stupid joke, and Jessica rolled her eyes. She grabbed Trish’s arm and hoisted her off the floor, maybe a little more harshly than strictly necessary. She lurched forward into Jessica, unable to keep her feet about her, and Jessica shoved her onto the sofa. She crashed back into the cushion, still giggling.
Jessica sneered. “You look like shit. Maybe I should take pictures, send ‘em to the tabloids. How much do you think they’d pay to get proof that perfect Patsy Walker is just another drug-addled fuck up of a child star?”
Trish’s eyes turned hard, or as hard as her strung out state would allow, which was pretty unimpressive, frankly. A fly could knock her ass over right now, and she was a scrawny thing even on a good day. “Fuck off, Jessica,” she growled, but her baby bird voice just further undermined any intimidation factor. It was honestly just sad.
And ugh, okay, fiiiiine. Maybe what she said was kind of low. She thought all the anger was for Dorothy, but maybe she was kind of angry at Trish too. Not for the bleeding on the carpet, obviously, but more the part where she was blitzed out of her fucking mind, and Jessica was the one left dealing with it again. Though she knew the drug habit wasn’t exactly Trish’s fault either, and that just made her feel more guilty for being a dick to her when she was in her "most vulnerable state" or whatever psychological mumbo jumbo a shrink would've called it.
As they'd gotten closer, Jessica had gotten the low-down on the pills, and in an utterly unsurprising turn of events, Dorothy's negligent parenting featured heavily. Basically, Trish once had a panic attack on set when she was 13, so Dorothy took her to the doctor, and she was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication. Pretty standard and what you might expect from a decent parent, right? Of course, when it happened a few more times, Dorothy took her back and made the doctor up the dosage to eleven. By that point, Trish was practically a zombie on set, and that just wasn’t acceptable either. So then came Adderall in an attempt to offset the effect of the benzo, which was insane but also classic Dorothy, and hey, as it turned out you could get more work out of a girl that was hyped on speed, and it just snowballed from there.
Trish told Jessica she resisted at first, said she hated the way the meds made her feel. But as it almost always did, Dorothy's browbeating and bullying prevailed. Now Trish took them willingly, gratefully even. And too damn often, in Jessica's opinion. It wasn't as bad when Dorothy was off schmoozing with producers and ignoring them for days on end, but if the mom-ster spent any time hovering on set or at home, Trish would start popping pills, which led to fucks ups, which led to more abuse from Dorothy, which led to more pill popping until Trish could barely string a sentence together or was bouncing off the walls. It was a fucked up cycle, and it was getting worse. She'd come home one too many times to find Trish slumped at the kitchen table or, like, flying around the room talking a mile a minute and waving a bleeding hand because she hadn't realized how hard she was holding a glass.
It was becoming a problem. Like, the kind of capital P problem that would result in a Very Special Episode in some 80s sitcom, and it was not something Jessica was equipped to deal with. She could absolutely see the appeal of being barely conscious when Dorothy Walker was breathing down your neck, but she dreaded the possibility of finding the least annoying person she knew dead on the floor from an overdose. And maybe she took her fear out on Trish sometimes, and maybe that wasn’t fair, but maybe it also wasn't fair that she had to worry about her friend dying like that.
Whatever it was, being mean to Trish always made her feel like a creep, so she sighed, resigned to her fate. “Stay here. I’m gonna get something to clean you up with.” She went to the bathroom and grabbed a few wash clothes, wetting them in the sink. Then she grabbed the first aid kit. She looked longingly at the kitchen as she passed it on her way back.
Trish hadn’t moved at all.
Jessica sat beside her and brought the washcloth up to her chin slowly. She jerked away, apparently surprised even though Jessica had telegraphed her intention. She brushed her fingers through Trish's hair a little to ease her, then held the back of her head and brought her face to the cloth, gently wiping at the dried blood. It didn’t look as bad with the blood gone, but it wasn’t great either. No broken nose, but her left eye was already beginning to bruise, and the lip would take a few days to heal.
“Isn't there some rule about hitting you in the face or something? Or is your mom trying to change the theme song? 'I wanna be your abuse poster child’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it."
There was a long silence, and Jessica worried she might have pushed too far. Trish had a dark sense of humor that could rival her own, but it had to be the right moment. And maybe the right moment wasn’t just after getting her face smashed by her shitty mom. Or maybe it was, because Trish smirked and let out a chuckle.
"Haven’t you heard? Bruised is the new black. She’s just making sure I stay up to date with the latest fads.” The smirk dropped, and she ran a tentative tongue across the cut on her swollen lip. “Anyway, we wrapped for the season, and I don't have any public engagements coming up for now. So." She gestured to her face.
“What about school?”
Trish shrugged. “She’ll just keep me out for a few days if it’s not healed enough by Monday. The school doesn’t really know the filming schedule, and it’s not like they’ll ask the set tutor. Besides, makeup does wonders.”
That was true enough. Trish had an assortment of methods to hide the bruises, though they weren’t usually so obviously placed as her face. A little concealer here and there, bracelets, sleeves, scarves. Jesus, scarves ga-freaking-lore. People probably thought it was some trendy statement piece, and "gosh, that Patsy Walker is just so fashionable, isn't she?" but really Dorothy just liked a go for the neck.
She wasn't as subtle as she liked to pretend either. People knew. They had to. Sometimes they added to it, like the crapass producers that nodded along to Dorothy's sniping comments about the rail thin starlet standing to lose a few more pounds. Everyone else just let it happen. The doctors that prescribed enough medication to down a grizzly bear, let alone a tiny teenage girl. The directors that waved off Dorothy's cloying "please excuse us" smiles and pretended not to hear the yelling through the office door. The actors that saw their co-star flinch every time her mother walked on set. The make up artists and costumers that covered the bruises. The set tutors that didn’t even argue when Dorothy cut lessons shorter and shorter. Hell, even the craft table workers that watched her smack a cupcake out of Trish's hand and shove a handful of celery at her. Not a word from any of them.
Then there were the agents and publicists, working double time to cover it up and keep it quiet, making sure the Patsy brand and origins stayed shiny and wholesome, the American Dream at work. Such humble beginnings, just a little girl and her mom, poor but hardworking, rising to fame and fortune with a little luck. A great American success story, and a girl who could be you.
Trish didn't want their help, didn't want anyone saving her, but Jessica didn't know how they all stood by and pretended to ignore it. She guessed that was how the entertainment industry had always worked, its golden legacy, abuse or at least a blind eye to it for the sake of one more dollar. Most of them likely didn't care at all. And the ones who did were probably too scared to speak out for fear they would conjure the all-powerful, fire-breathing industry lawyers that would force them out of their jobs, destroy their reputation, and leave them with nothing. Money grubbing or apathy or self-preservation, whatever the reason, they all relied on the It's Patsy cash cow and didn't dare disturb the unspoken balance.
How did you fight a system so full of structured indifference and greed and self-protection? Jessica figured you didn't fight it. You just tried to escape it with whatever scraps of yourself you could carry with you. She knew Trish had the strength to make it out, but she worried more and more each day what would be left of her when she did.
“Where did Mommy Dearest get to anyway?” she asked.
Trish inspected her nails, appearing completely disinterested. “Passed out drunk by the pool? Tormenting some producer’s beleaguered assistant? Giving blowjobs to the entirety of the Teen Choice Awards voting panel? I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
Jessica almost smiled. “Can’t we dig up some evidence against her or something? Tax evasion? Embezzlement? I mean, she’s done worse, but sometimes you gotta catch them with the smaller stuff. Like Capone, ya know?”
Trish made a mock scandalized face. "C'mon, Jess, don’t talk about her that way. When Mom's not smacking me around, piling me with pills, shoving my own fingers down my throat, pimping me out, hoarding my money, or adopting kids for publicity and then ignoring their existence, she's…” Jessica raised a questioning eyebrow and Trish smirked, continuing, “...still a total hellspawn incapable of human empathy or feeling."
Jessica laughed. “Truer words.”
If her coherence and vocabulary were anything to go by, Trish was sobering up, which was good as far as Jessica was concerned. Apparently not so much as far as Trish was concerned, since she was stretching an arm to the end table where her pill bottles were scattered.
"Hey." Jessica reached out and stopped her, knowing it was probably going to provoke a fight but not giving a shit. "Don’t."
“Don’t what?” Trish snapped.
“I think you’ve had enough already. What do you even need them for? She’s not here.” But I'm here, she wanted to say. Stay here with me.
Trish scoffed, shaking her head. "God, what do you even care, Jess? What difference does it make to you?"
Of course, she just had to be right about it starting a fight, and now bitter, belligerent Trish was in full action. Always a pleasure, that one. Hadn't they just been cracking jokes and laughing? Things always turned on a dime in this house. But shit, Jessica could be snotty too. “Because then I have to clean up the mess.”
Trish rolled her eyes. “Oh, come off it. You don’t have to do anything. You could just skulk around your room, stick on some headphones, ignore it all. But you don’t. You've never been able to keep your nose out of it." Jessica was still holding Trish's arm, could feel the tension, see her fist clinched tightly. Her nails weren't long, but it was enough to leave little red moon crescents on her palm. She did it often, and Jessica knew it had to sting. Which was probably the point.
"What's all this about? What do you really want?” Trish asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Goddamn, now she was acting paranoid. This was quickly escalating into uncharted territory. Jessica shrugged a shoulder, trying to remain casual, but she was becoming increasingly agitated herself. "I don’t know. Aren't we supposed to be family now or whatever? Isn’t that what family does for each other?"
"Family?" Trish sneered. "What do you even know about family?"
Okay. Okay, then. It was just a day of low blows, wasn't it? Trish was usually careful not to mention Jessica’s family unless Jessica brought it up first. Which was basically never. For a damn good reason. Seriously. Shit. Just... shit. It wasn't... what the fuck? It felt like her head was collapsing in on itself and her skin was was trying to peel itself off, and okay, yeah, casual was out the window now, it flew the nest and got swiped out of the sky by a feral cat.
Trish made to push her off but she held tight. Held hard. Harder than she intended or realized. She wasn't there, and she didn't know. Trish gasped in pain, and Jessica quickly let go, coming back to reality. But now she had a different reason to want to throw herself in a hole and collapse the dirt around her. Red marks were already forming on Trish's wrist, as if she needed more bruises. Except this time it was Jessica that caused them. What was wrong with her? Why did she always fuck everything up? Why did she always cause the most harm to the people she loved?
"Oh, God, I'm sorry. I didn't--"
Trish laughed sharply, like acid burning through concrete, and it made Jessica feel even sicker. If they were already filled up with this ugly bitterness and self-loathing, how would there ever be room left in them for anything else?
"Why apologize?" Trish asked. "I'll probably just think it's from Mom in the morning anyway. Well, assuming you don’t flush my pills or something, since you’re suddenly so concerned about it."
Jessica felt a surge of anger, but it wasn't at herself this time. Fuck guilt. This wasn't her fault. This wasn't even about her. She was just trying to do the decent thing, and she was getting crucified for it, getting her dead family thrown in her face. It was so goddamn typical. She tried to keep her voice even and measured, and she just barely managed to grit out, “I’m just trying to help you.”
“Well, I never asked for your help," Trish snapped. "Just leave me alone already!”
“God, would you shut up!” Jessica shouted, jumping to her feet and just done, done with all the bullshit, the self-pitying destruction. It was selfish. So fucking selfish.
Trish flinched and hunched in on herself, obviously anticipating some withering verbal assault or a raised hand. Usually Jessica would've felt terrible for causing a reaction like that, for making Trish feel unsafe, but this time it just spurred her anger further. She prowled the floor. “Has that stupid wig cut off circulation to your brain? What don't you get about this? Is it really so crazy that I’m tired of finding you passed out? That I’m worried one day you won’t wake up? That I hate that nothing I do seems to help? Well, excuse me if that's too goddamned pushy for you! I don't give a shit. I'm not going sit around with my thumb up my ass while you kill yourself.”
Trish looked at her, wide-eyed, taken aback by the outburst. And a little guilty. Good. Maybe she was finally getting through that thick fucking skull. She came to a stop in front of Trish, calmer. “You know what? I think I get some of it now. This snotty tantrum of yours. I bet you don’t even know how to deal with this, do you?”
Trish took a troubled breathe. "With what?" she asked, voice barely audible.
“Someone caring about you. You asked what I know about family? Well, I know a whole lot more than you, asshole. My parents loved me unconditionally even when I was being a whiny shit. And my brother was an obnoxious little dweeb, but I would've done anything for him. Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean I don’t remember what it’s like to have a family and be loved, okay?"
Trish looked absolutely fucking miserable now. She opened her mouth to make excuses, to apologize, to something, but Jessica didn't care. She wasn't finished. "You're the one who doesn't know anything about family, all right? You don't know anything about being loved or loving someone. You don't know shit. You’re used to people wanting something from you."
Trish couldn't even look at her now. She was doing everything possible to sink further into the couch, make herself small and weightless, just dissolve herself right out of existence. But Jessica wasn't going to let her, not now and not ever.
“Look at me, please." Trish didn't move, so she grabbed her shoulders and shook them a little. Finally, Trish turned her head up to meet Jessica's eyes, and shit, she was crying, she'd never seen her cry before. But there was no walking this back now, so she pressed on. "Listen. I like you for you, and I don’t want anything from you except to be your friend, okay?"
Trish just looked at her, tears rolling down her cheeks, jaw clenched tight, and body trembling lightly. But there was hope in her eyes, like she couldn't believe what Jessica was offering but so badly wanted it. Jessica brought her hand up to wipe away a tear with her thumb. "Okay?" she repeated, gently. She didn't really know where this well of tenderness was coming from, when she'd become capable of it, but it seemed to work. After a long moment, Trish nodded. She raised her hands, one pulling Jessica's away to grasp it and the other wiping at her face.
Touching Trish like this, holding her hand, Jessica realized it was the most physical contact she'd had in awhile. Dorothy almost never touched her, except for photo ops, and that had decreased as public interest in the adoption waned… and after Jessica slammed her into the wall. She was fine with it, preferred it even. She didn't need to be touched. Did she miss the feeling of her mother running fingers through her hair or rubbing her back? Her dad kissing her forehead or playfully tugging at her ear? Or even her brother's arms around her neck, choking the life out of her during a begged for piggyback ride? Of course, she missed it, but that wasn't her life anymore. It wasn't fair, but she just had to accept it. Maternal affection from Dorothy Walker left a lot to be desired anyway. She touched Trish all the time. Shoving and prodding and squeezing and pulling. Dorothy hugged her sometimes, if there were cameras around or to use as a subtle warning gesture in public, arm across a shoulder and nails digging in hard enough to leave marks under her shirt.
She thought maybe Trish could use a real hug. She thought maybe she could too.
Before she could have second thoughts about it, Jessica sighed and sat back on the couch alongside Trish. "This is going to be awkward, but I'm going to hug you now, okay?"
Trish blinked at her, eyes still red. “Ummm... how about you don’t do that?”
Jessica went for it anyway.
She was right. It was awkward. She didn't really remember how to hug. Last her parents were alive, she'd been the epitome of disinterested, disgruntled teenager, giving half-hearted pats on the back or dodging hugs entirely because they were lame. She regretted it now, wishing more than anything she could take her parents and her brother in her arms again. But hindsight didn't mean much, except to help her appreciate what was in front of her, so she put all of that feeling into holding the person in her arms now. She felt hesitant hands on her back, and then finally arms coming round her sides, squeezing hard, desperately.
They stayed like that for a long minute, until she felt Trish wince. She pulled back, worried she hurt her again.
"It's okay." Trish waved a hand dismissively, but her other hand went to her side. Knowing she wasn't going to be able to brush it past Jessica so easily, she added, "It wasn't you."
Jessica knocked the hand out of the way and went for the hem of Trish's shirt. Ignoring her protests, she lifted it up and found a bruise across her ribs. Unlike a few yellowish marks littering her back, this one was red, fresh. It was going to look brutal in a few days and would definitely hurt like hell. Jessica once again found herself caught between violent anger and weary resignation, the most popular emotional exports of the Walker household. But Trish didn't need her rage and righteous indignation, especially not right now, so she settled for a scoff instead.
"Christ, man, did she hit you with a chair?"
Trish grinned wryly, a little blood left on her teeth. "What is this, the WWE? Nah, it's more like..." she paused and poshed-up her accent into a snooty English cadence, "Ms. Walker with a Nickelodeon blimp in the library."
"How is Clue better than the WWE?" asked Jessica, skeptically.
Trish turned up her nose. "It's more classy."
Jessica chuckled, relieved they were back to joking. All this talking about feelings shit, having to actually verbalize what she felt in her blood and her bones, it was way past her comfort zone, and it was freaking exhausting. But snark she could do. "Maybe one day we’ll get lucky and find Dorothy hanging from the studio rafters with the Patsy wig around her neck."
Trish smacked at Jessica's leg in excitement. “Oh! Or come home to find her tragically crushed beneath a Teen Choice Awards surfboard.”
They broke out into laughter and started coming up with the wildest, most outlandish, and comical death scenarios they could imagine. Maybe it was messed up to joke about Dorothy dying, and maybe they were sick fucks for even thinking it. Or maybe it was just the best way to deal with all the shit. Gallows humor, right? Catharsis. It felt good to laugh, and it made everything feel a little less hopeless, like things didn't always have to be this way.
Eventually, their laughter turned to wheezing giggles and finally contented sighs. In their hysterics, they'd ended up pressed close, shoulder to shoulder, legs twisted together. Trish grabbed her hand again with both of her own, holding it so carefully and gently, as if she was some rare, precious thing, and maybe that was exactly what she was to Trish.
"Hey, Jess? Earlier... you said you feel like nothing you do helps. But that's not true. Just you being here and like... actually caring about what happens to me? It makes a difference. I know there's finally somebody on my side. Is that what family's supposed to feel like?"
Yeah, that was it. Jessica squeezed her hands back, knowing that would be answer enough. Then she cleared her throat and asked, “Want me to get the Saran Wrap?”
Trish smiled, her head dropping to the side and resting on Jessica’s shoulder. “In a little while.”
#jessica jones#trish walker#trishica#marvel's jessica jones#ayyy i tried my hand at some fic#warning: content may contain bratty teenagers#teen trish is a self-destructive trainwreck and teen jess the long-suffering supportive friend#trish learned about love and family from jessica and i have feelings#also dorothy walker can choke#just fyi the trishica of it all is pretty ambiguous#i just love their relationship in every kind of way#so i leave room for everything#fic#relationship: the stuff that'll last forever#relationship: snake habitat
91 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Updated/Revised List of Rip Hunter’s Angst and/or Trauma on Legends of Tomorrow
So, a while back, I made a list of all of the horrible/traumatic shit that has happened (or has been established to have happened) to Rip Hunter on Legends of Tomorrow. Because, honestly even for the lead on a CW show, this is a little ridiculous.
I’ve been updating that list via reblogs, but that’s getting a bit cumbersome, and I wanted to refine a few of the entries anyway.
So, here we go, an episode by episode list of angst or traumatic events (updated as of 2x14, Moonlight):
1x01/1x02 - The Pilot
1. Rip Hunter starts off this series with a sledgehammer of angst in the form of his dead wife and child. We also see that his family home is the site of the second London Blitz in an Apocalyptic future. I possibly could space these events into separate entries. But honestly, this list will be long enough without that.
2. Rip has also been cast loose by the organization to whom he has devoted his life, an organization that apparently thinks that sending assassins to stop a grieving widower is more appropriate than sending a grief counselor.
3. Rip Hunter has recruited a team of people who he cannot remotely control or keep in line. And sadly, one of them dies, because he recruited him. Rip is devastated enough by this to scrap his own plan to get Savage to reclaim his body.
1x03 - Blood Ties
4. We learn that Rip made a previous attempt to go back in time to stop Vandal Savage, and hesitated. A failure which haunts him to this day.
5. During the course of fighting Savage, Rip slips and gives Vandal Miranda and Jonas’s names.
6. There is an implication at least that some of Rip’s experiences as a Time Master were unpleasant (” I've seen men of steel die and dark knights fall, and even then I accomplished my mission no matter what.”)
1x04 - White Knights
7. Rip meets up with his former mentor, Zaman Druce, a man that he respects and trusts considerably, who seems to be offering a reasonable deal. Instead, it turns out to be an ambush.
1x05 - Failsafe
8. Gideon’s records indicate that, with Martin’s capture, the Russians will unlock Firestorm and weaponize it for an invasion. Rip asks Sara to be ready to kill Martin to save the world, if there is no other choice. (It didn’t happen, but he still has to live with making that order)
1x06 - Star City 2046
I don’t think there is any specific angst in this episode.
1x07 - Marooned
9. We see more of Rip’s backstory with Miranda, and their treatment from the Time Masters when discovered, including fairly horrific public humiliation and Miranda's resignation.
10. We get Eve Baxter’s reaction and rejection of Rip’s help. Both personally humiliating and even worse as a representation of the Time Masters and his old colleagues/family.
11. We get the fight with Mick Rory, where Rip, after some provocation, says some inexcusable things, providing Mick with the trigger to betray the group.
1x08 - Night of the Hawk/1x09 Left Behind
There really isn’t any specific angst in these two episodes to add to the list. Unless you count Rip’s old bosses turning Mick into Chronos...
1x10 - Progeny
12. Going by Rip’s scene with Mick in the brig, he does seem to have some self-blame for Mick’s predicament. As we see from the way he tries to take the blame and divert Mick’s anger onto himself.
13. The Per Degaton blunder - in which Rip chooses not to kill the dictator that will murder 1/4 of the world’s population, and in the process, speeds up the event.
1x11 - Magnificent Eight
14. We learn, in this episode, that at some point in his career, a younger Rip Hunter befriended Jonah Hex and engaged in some heroism. However, he ultimately chose his career over love heroics, and left the town of Calvert to its fate. A decision that clearly haunts him to present day, and makes him quite unwilling to face his old ...friend.
1x12 - Last Refuge
15. Early backstory angst! Rip Hunter was once a starving five year old street thief. And while we have no details about that time, it was apparently bad enough that he grew the instinct to stab any adult that threatens him.
(In my first draft of this list, I noted that they’d probably given him this angst so he has something to suffer about when his family angst was finally resolved. I HAD NO IDEA what was to come.)
16. We learn that the Time Masters recruit their members as children. Which means that they aren’t just Rip’s bosses, they’re also the people who raised him. Getting raised by a creepy time cult that forbids attachment totally counts for this list.
17. We also have guilt over the risks to both his crew’s loved ones and the extreme danger of the Omega Protocol, and this ridiculous temporary solution. Which leads into a much riskier decision.
1x13 - Leviathan
18. In this episode, we get that lovely revelation that Rip didn’t just watch his family die once. He actually tried to save them, only to watch them die “countless” times.
19. Savage has set up a situation where Kendra, the only one who can kill him, has to choose between killing him and saving Carter. Rip protests, but then accepts her decision, even though it removed his one guaranteed chance to save his family.
1x14 - River of Time
20. In the flashback, we learn more about what happened when Rip failed to kill Vandal Savage. He was captured, starved, and implicitly tortured. (”Ramses’s men inform me that still you refuse to speak...”). It’s not clear how long he was there, but it was definitely an unpleasant experience.
21. Rip makes increasingly bad decisions trying to get the Waverider to Vanishing Point, culminating in putting Jax in a very deadly situation. His self-loathing after is palpable.
22. And then of course, Rip finally gets Savage to the Time Masters, proof in hand, only for that lovely, final betrayal.
1x15 - Destiny
23. Rip learns that not only are the Time Masters working with Savage, they DELIBERATELY sent him after Miranda and Jonas, in order to set their plans in motion.
24. The death of Leonard Snart, which Rip takes so badly, that he tries to abandon the entire crew in the next episode.
1x16 - Legendary
25. Rip achieves his goal of killing Vandal Savage, but fails at saving his wife and child. It’s not quite a pyrrhic victory, but it’s still fucking depressing, almost culminating with suicide by sun.
2x01 - Out of Time
26. This is subtle, but Rip spends most of the episode looking anxious and perturbed. Like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. As we saw from his goodbye message (which, as we see in Raiders, he had to have recorded much earlier), he definitely expected to have to flee. From the look on his face in the flashback in JSA, he may well have realized what happened to Rex.
2x02 - JSA to 2x08 - Chicago Way
Rip isn’t in these episodes (except a tag scene and flashback.) So no angst. A few secrets, like the armory and tape. But no suffering. Yet.
2x09 - Raiders of the Lost Art
27. We learn exactly what happened after the nuclear blast in Out of Time: Rip Hunter, in an attempt to hide a piece of the Spear of Destiny, undergoes “temporal electrocution” obliterating his identity and memories.
28. “Phil Gasmer”, film student, is attacked out of the blue by the Legion of Doom. He has no idea what’s happening or why. In the process, he loses his script and film. He also has terrible hair.
29. “Phil Gasmer” is arrested without any clear charge or cause. He is kept in an interrogation room, with no visible access to a telephone or an attorney.
30. “Phil Gasmer” is kidnapped by people straight out of his script (pretending to be his psychiatrist!), informed that his life is a lie, and insulting him to his face. And then, in an attempt to save them, he is kidnapped.
2x10 - Legion of Doom
31. “Phil Gasmer” is tortured for an undisclosed amount of time, by two expert torturers. He loses a tooth and is forced to wear a terrible purple suit as well.
32. Eobard Thawne gets access to Rip’s mind and makes alterations.
2x11 - Turncoat
33. Well, look, if you don’t think Rip isn’t going to be torturing himself for years about this entire episode? You don’t know Rip Hunter.
2x12 - Camelot
34. There are more things that Rip is likely to torture himself for, including the murder of Doctor Mid-Nite, the dead knights that he’s mind controlled, Galahad. He also got abandoned and left to die by Damien Darhk.
2x13 - Land of the Lost
35. Yet more guilt (this time for overriding Gideon and crashing the ship). We also learn what the inside of Rip Hunter’s mind looks like: with the last bit of his own, true identity, imprisoned, hurt and terrorized by evil version of his friends.
36. The team uses a machine that Rip himself thinks is too barbaric and violating to use, in order to go into his mind. I doubt Rip will complain, as it had the desired results, but well, two mind-rapes make a right, I suppose.
(I considered adding the Gideon thing, but well, let’s see where that goes.)
2x14 - Moonshot
37. Rip, having left an amiable Commander Steel in 1965, is greeted promptly by a punch to the face, and a cold shoulder from someone he seemed to think of as a friend.
38. Rip is also dealing with the changes to the team since he was gone, and is at a loss regarding his role going forward.
39. Rip’s proposed solution (opening the hatch) worked to save the ship. However, Commander Steel sacrificed his life to do it. More angst. Yay.
--
39 incidents. In 30 episodes. He wasn’t IN SEVEN OF THOSE EPISODES..
And what are the odds that an episode called “Doomworld” will go remotely well for him?
At this point, I can’t bring myself to ask for a beach episode, because I think it would end with a shark biting off his foot.
48 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
sigma7
Chasing the Rabbit
delininnotu
Wise Photographer Tricks
elastikgirl
Elastik
kelsey-the-punk
Love For Evereything
trueloveculture
iSpiritdrummer