It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over
So, this is a bit different from what I usually write, and I'm not 100% thrilled w how it turned out, but there were enough decent parts that I figured I'd share it with y'all and let you be the judge of that? Anyway, the next one will probably be smth a lot more lighthearted, so look forward to that
Summary- After a long time of being apart, you and Tom reunite, but what should have been a pleasant evening turns into a fight when Tom's exhaustion and frustration causes his personal demons to make an appearance. Very loosely tied to "All or Nothing at All."
TW- Arguing, references to and a very brief instance of abuse. Hurt/comfort, light angst.
It was the middle of October and Tom and Y/N had been married for about six months. As an A-list actor and up-and-coming production designer, respectively, they both had very full, often differing schedules. But though one or the other of them could be in another state or country for weeks at a time, when the both of them were back at the Colorado house, the two of them had begun to develop an agreeable routine. The current moment was such a time that they would both be in town for a couple of weeks.
Y/N, who usually returned home earlier than Tom, got the house to herself for a couple of days. Although she enjoyed the peace, often with some jazz records, a book, and/or a cup of tea, she also looked forward to when he got home. Whoever was the first one home would put dinner together, so, in addition to decompressing with her records and reading, Y/N had done some cooking.
The dishes sat in the oven where they would remain ready to eat until Tom arrived. The autumnal weather that evening was also ideal, and in addition to having several of the house windows open, Y/N envisioned her and Tom sitting on the back patio together afterwards, enjoying the yellow birch trees, the sway of the grass fields, and the distant mountains that could be seen through the clear air.
The familiar notification chimed on the security system, signaling that Tom had just entered through the home’s gates. Reaching a stopping point in her book, Y/N rose from her seat in one of the living room’s cognac-colored armchairs and adjusted her hair. It had been almost a month since they’d seen each other face-to-face, the longest they’d been apart since being married, and the excitement she felt was on-par with when they had first dated. She wanted to look perfect and for everything in the house to be perfect, and she would have to restrain herself from tackling him as soon as he came in the door.
After his car had traveled the winding path to the garage, Y/N finally heard footsteps on the porch and the creak of the front door. Jogging across the front hallway to meet him, she threw her arms around him before he had a chance to drop his bags.
“It’s been a minute,” she murmured, standing on her toes to reach the spot where his neck met his shoulder. Pressing her face to it, she grinned, inhaling his scent. She felt his arms circle her midsection after he managed to set his luggage down, and he gave her a peck on the cheek.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he sighed, extricating himself from her hold and heading toward the kitchen. A bit disoriented by his lackluster greeting, but figuring he was tired from his trip, she followed.
Removing the baseball cap he wore and tossing it onto the wood countertop, he leaned against the kitchen island on his elbows and rested his head in his hands. Y/N lingered in the entryway, eyebrows furrowed, but maintaining her smile.
“How was your flight?”
“It was fine.” He did not elaborate, and instead turned to rummage through a couple of the kitchen cabinets.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, I just have a headache.” His tone was flat as he threw open the kitchen medicine cabinet and the cabinet of cups and glasses with a surprising amount of force, nearly slamming them shut after he retrieved the small plastic bottle of painkillers and a water glass. Y/N flinched, crossing into the room and standing across from Tom at the island.
“Are you sure?” she pressed, cocking her head to the side and fixing him with an intense, concerned stare.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he responded tartly, kneading his forehead.
"Dinner's in the oven,” Y/N changed the subject, hoping this information would enthuse him.
“I’m not hungry right now,” he said without looking at her, and she began to sense that something was really wrong.
“Okay, well, if you want any later, I can fix you a plate,” she murmured.
“Okay.” He paused, still leaning against the counter, looking out the window into the backyard instead of at her. “Thanks.”
“So, tell me about the negotiations; how did it go? Did you settle on a contract?” she referenced his recent efforts to get cast in an upcoming movie.
“If you really wanna know, it ended up being a complete waste of time. I don’t really wanna talk about it.”
“What do you mean? What happened?” She disregarded his increasingly hostile tone.
“I didn’t get the part, what do you think happened?” he snapped, his voice rising in volume. His jaw clenched as she rounded the island until she stood beside and slightly behind him.
“Tom, I’m sorry. I know that was really important to you.”
“No, you don’t know, you have no idea. After all this time, it’s still like nobody takes me seriously, as a serious actor. I’m just so tired of…”
She leaned in closer. “-Hey, look at me. It’s their loss.”
“...And then, the second I walk in the door you’re, like, interrogating me-”
Y/N reached for his glass of water and placed a hand on his shoulder blade. “-Why don’t we just sit on the patio, and…”
“I… just, you know what, just leave me alone, okay? Damn it!”
Tom roughly shrugged Y/N’s hand off of his back as he turned to leave the room, accidentally elbowing her hard in the process. Her other arm, shooting out to catch herself as she flew back, knocked the glass of water from the counter to the floor, where it shattered.
“Oh, God…” he muttered, the heels of his hands pressed to his forehead as he shook his head. Immediately, his anger dissipated, replaced with horror. It was a few seconds before he dared to meet Y/N’s gaze. She stood completely motionless, her face drained of color. “Fuck, Y/N, that got out of hand. I am so sorry…” He took a step toward her and reached for her, and she recoiled.
“Don’t touch me!” she cried, as tears spilled from her eyes, although a moment later she collapsed into his chest, sobbing.
As he held her and stroked her hair, tears welled up in Tom’s own throat. He knew he would never forget the frightened way Y/N had looked at him; it made him feel physically ill. No matter how much he tried, all his life, to repress the part of him that was like his father, it had surfaced to hurt an undeserving person, the person he’d least wanted to hurt in the world. He wanted to disappear; to walk into the ocean, step in front of a car, or at least for her to hit him back or something; do anything except to just stand there and cry.
“You said… that in our house… there would be no hitting or yelling,” she sobbed into his sweater. “You promised. You said that you never wanted to be anyt-thing like your dad and that the... all of that would end w-with us.”
They sank down to a spot on the floor, Y/N still cradled in Tom’s arms, away from the spilled water and glass. In a soft voice, he replied:
“I did. I’m so sorry. I did promise you that. Every time I do something he would have done or say something he would have said it makes me sick. I’m not proud of it. At all. All I’ve ever wanted to do is protect you and make you feel safe, and instead I’ve fucked up so bad… and now you’ll always be afraid of me…” Tom fell silent and closed his eyes as he choked up.
He was shocked when he felt Y/N cup one side of his face with her hand, brushing her lips against the other.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over as she shifted into a crouched position between his legs, grasping his face between both her hands. She appeared to be studying him.
“Hey, I’m not giving up on you just yet. You’re not getting away that easy,” she murmured, with the faintest of smirks. She took his hands, gazing thoughtfully down at them. “You are not your father. Even though you still have things to work through, you’re already a better man than he ever was. Because your father was never sorry, was he? He never tried, he never even wanted to try to be different.”
“I will get this under control; I won't lose you,” Tom said decisively. “He is not going to define who I am.”
“I know, we don’t run away from our problems now, right?” Y/N mused, recalling one of their past conversations.
“I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll take classes, read books- I’ll take up meditation or- or mindfulness…” Y/N chuckled quietly and nodded, wiping her reddened eyes with her sleeve as he continued. “I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive me, or if I even deserve it-”
She cut him off with a delicate kiss. When they broke apart, he stared at her, bewildered, and she shrugged. “I forgive you. I’m still upset right now, but I forgive you. And I’m sorry for trying to push you to talk when you weren’t ready. But we will start again tomorrow morning, and we will go on.”
As Tom and Y/N picked up the broken pieces of glass together and soaked up the water, the birds sang through the open living room windows. The sun fell lower in the sky, its beams pervading the whole kitchen and covering its occupants in gold. After the mess had been cleaned, Y/N stepped into the bathroom to wash her face and collect her thoughts. When she emerged, Tom was in the still in the kitchen, but he held a mug of tea in each hand.
“How about we start again right now?” he suggested, gesturing to the back door that led to the patio. One could tell by looking at the sky that a gorgeous sunset was approaching.
She walked up to him wordlessly, taking one of the mugs from him and glancing at the lovely scene beyond the door. “Okay,” she murmured, and his uncertain expression transformed into one of relief.
They walked, an arm around each other, out to the half-moon arrangement of Adirondack chairs, squinting against the sunlight. Tom noted how Y/N seemed to glow golden in its path and he knew that he had to make this work.
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This is so random but I’ve been thinking about my family a lot (while watching succession too) and I can’t relate to being fuck me rich but my god I can relate to a four piece sibling family who canNOT express affection for shit
I mean there’s four of us and none of us hug. One time my brother called me a bitch and then randomly lifted me off the ground in a hug and that was his version of Sorry and honestly I preferred that over an actual apology. My sister likes to verbally apologize because she’ll feel bad until she does and I’ve told her countless times that I’d rather die.
One time I ran to my sisters in the rain, crying my head off over something and she didn’t know how to comfort me because none of us know how to comfort each other. But we still have ways?? Like if we see something that we know each other will like, we buy it. We make crafts for each other, we share tv shows and music.
My family jokes that I’m the least emotional of all of them (when I ironically cry so much) they used to call me Red Foreman (from that 70s show) because of my total lack of outward emotion. It’s hurt me before, this image they have of me being a mean person who can’t express myself enough. Now I realize that I’m actually doing better these days.
And that I’m not a product of a lack of emotion at all but rather a product of anger.
I think I’m the only person in my family who has never punched a hole in a wall. The one time I tried, I almost broke my hand. It didn’t feel good. It didn’t help because hurting other things, hurting other people didn’t help me. So I stuck to hurting myself, physically or mentally.
Because I was and am a product of anger but when you watch that anger get cast around to other people, sometimes you don’t want to continue to do that. Especially when people think you’re mean. Especially when you’re not particularly maternal and you have to spend years with people accusing you of being cold and hating kids and not being nice enough to people or not smiling enough or not saying the right things, always saying the wrong things. You’re too rude, you’re too brash, don’t cry in front of people but if you do, make sure they know it’s for the right reasons.
All this to say, I love my family. I do. But there’s skeletons on top of skeletons in barely closed closets and I don’t even want to dig into those graves and try to unearth half the shit that has happened or been done. Because my mom once looked at me and said “Please, don’t break my heart.” And so I shut my mouth and didn’t say anything else.
I’m a product of anger and that’s fine. I don’t have to be angry anymore. Letting go of my anger for my family is helping me, I think. Talking about it is helping. Realizing that I don’t have to be anything that anyone else wants me to be is helping.
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Rory Culkin,cis man,he/him) have you seen AVERY MOORE running around palmetto bay? rumor has it they’re from the CLASS OF 2008, making them 34 years old. they were known as the EMO KID in high school. it seems they’re still FRIENDLY and KIND but can also be HOT-HEADED and TOO BLUNT. they can usually be seen working a MUSIC PRODUCER at HIS HOME STUDIO or spending their free time PLAYING THE GUITAR supposedly, they’ve come to palmetto bay for A FRESH START. on the night of the murder, they were supposedly ON HIS WAY TO PLAY GUITAR ON HIS FRIEND’S BAND but who knows if that’s true or not.
Avery was raised by his 2 dads ever since he was a baby, he never met his mother and he is a result of a one night stand his dad had before he met his partner (Nate), Avery’s mom felt she couldn’t care for him so one day she showed up at his dad’s home and left baby Avery with them. Nor Avery or his dads ever heard of the woman ever again.
Music has always been in Avery’s life as his dad (Axel) used to be a singer, however after he met his partner and Avery come into his life, he quit his musical career and become a teacher, however, he’d still play small shows around town and/or at the bars and pubs and sometimes,
Avery’s dad, Nate would take him to see the shows, one night Avery got uspet, he was young and really wanted to get on stage to be with his dad, he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowd to, noticing his son crying, Axel took him over to the stage with him and that’s when Avery fell even more in love with music
In highshcool Avery was seen as the weird emo kid, which lead to bullying, which lead to Avery lashing out against the bullies, causing him to get in trouble for fighting, and facing impulse control and anger issues.
His dads did their best to help him deal with this issue, helping him trough his feelings and teaching him how to put his anger into his music.
Avery decided to study music, and as he wasn’t as ”hungry for the stage” as his dad, he decided to still be industry but not sing. So he become a producer, though he still play’s guitar in a friend’s band from time to time.
Avery is: Friendly, polite, he can be a bit of a smart ass, and he can ramble non-stop, he is usually a very chill person, but if he’s pushed, he can def lash out.
Possible connections : Other musicians he plays with, old friends from school, former bullies, anyone from his mother's side of the family as he never knew any of them. (And I'm opened to ideas!)
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