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rwby-encrusted-blog · 2 years

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If I may take some time from your day, there is a very big problem I would Like to address.

Minimalism and Modernism working in tandem.

Because oH my fucking god it's so fucking bland. It's nice every now and then, but oh my god if I see one more goddamn "home makeover" that turns a beautiful rustic building into a Black White Brushed Steel and Dark Gray hellscape I am going to commit a crime.

WHERES THE PERSONALITY!

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THERE"S CLUTTER? THE KNICK KNACKS?

If you say you are gonna stick them anywhere than the fuckoing shelves/bedside tables or dressers or wardrobes Im kicking your ass.

What about the fucking novelty magnets you get on trips at gas stations and landmarks? Cause I know you aren't gonna ruin the "colors palette" of your kitchen - which by the way will look 1000% worse the second dust settles - by sticking them on your Fridge!

My Dad has a beautiful, powerful, large set of speakers, each one weighs about 200 pounds and are a pain in the ass to move, but they really are beautiful, Clear varnish, dark, wood grain bodies, and they sound incredible.

When (hopefully a long time from now) My dad passes, if whoever gets those speakers decides to sell them for something new I'm, kicking their ass.

My dresser is one I've had since I was literally a couple years old, and it has some stickers on it. Old coffee shop stickers, some stickers from City festivals and the like, and someone suggested I get a new one. I asked them why and they said it was old and kind of cluttered, so obviously i responded with "Well it still works, and I don't mind it" But RIGHT NOW i'm like "Actually it looks great. I like the stickers. Infdact I like the stickers so much I 'm gonna plaster Everything IN stickers! TOO MANY STICKERS IM GONNA MAKE COMBUSTIBLE STICKERS AND BURN YOUR GODDAMN HOUSE DOWN"

FUCK MINIMALISM. REJECT MODERNITY.

I STAND WITH THE GAUCHE AND THE GAUDY. I STAND WITH THE RUSTIC AND OLD FASHIONED.

GIVE LAMPS WITH ETCHING AND WEIRD RIMS ON THE GLASS.

GIVE ME YOUR BRUSHED NICKEL AND THE ANTIQUE BRASS. I'LL TAKE THAT PEPPER MILL WITHTHE BENT HANDLE, IT STILL FUCKING WORKS!

IF THERE ARE A MILLION PEOPLE AGAINST MINIMALISM i AMWITH THEM.

IF THERE ARE A HUNDRED PEOPLE AGAINST MINIMALISM I STAND WITH THEM

IF THERE IS ONE MINIMALISM HATER I AM AGAINST THE WORLD.

IF THERE ARE NO MINIMALISM HATERS LEFT IAM FUCKING DEAD.

I. CANNOT. STAND. THE DIRECTION FUCKING 'INTERIOR DESIGN' IS GOOING.

YEAH, like i'm gonna fucking kill anything that makes my house appealing to look like every other schmuck on the block. how about you find something you enjoy other than conformity or i'm gonna fill your house with salt from my little pinch bowl i got from a friend's mom that was gonna throw it away, because I plan on driving the fucking demons of blandness from your home.

If you present your house like it's a clean dish to serve food you bet your fucking ass i'm gonna salt and season it.

PLease. Just throw some color and personality in some way other than false flowers or fake fruit.

A purple blanket. Photos in a portrait you picked up at a garage sale.

please.

make your house a home by making a mess in it.

but make it your mess. make it your home.

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hobisfavoritespritecan · 1 year

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FUCK YOUR LIFE'S PERCEPTION

TYLER DURDEN X READER

⚠️Warnings: swearing ⚠️

Just a short drabble. Tyler tells you he cares about you. That's about it.

Tyler's cigarette smoke rose up from the end of his cancer stick and drifted up towards the ceiling of the non-ventilated room. The green paint was peeling in tremendous amounts and the stains from water damage were evident. The smoke curled in cylindrical spirals and kissed the chipping paint almost as if inviting it to fall to the floorboards below; which conveniently, were also subject to the same damage from the water above.

You laid in silence next to him, watching the sights from above and playing with the hem of your shitty Goodwill shirt that had been unraveling due to hasty scissor cuts you'd made the night before upon realizing it was longer in length than you'd originally wanted it. You were both in desperate need of a shower and while not bathing might've fit the aesthetic of Paper Street, it did not go over well anywhere else.

Motioning towards his pocket, Tyler silently offers you one of the cigarettes he has. The container itself only held two of them while the rest of the semi empty box has a couple of bloodied tissues stuffed into it's crevices and a haiku from you which read:

"Tyler, that bitch boy, God I love that man to death, shut the fuck up please." You had given it to him for his birthday and was quite proud of it to say the least. He looked at it, laughed, and then stuffed it into the very same pocket he had just withdrawn it from. The smoke was fading now, trying desperately on a fight against the house to find an open window or a vent to no avail.

Taking a cigarette for yourself, you allow him to light it. The drag was long and slow and you felt your lungs fill up with what you presumed would eventually kill you.

"A lot on your mind?" The leather jacket-clad man asked with a twinge of a smile, growing fond of your company over the past few weeks. Ever since he'd offered his services to you at Lou's while you were working, you'd grown attached to him. The night you guys fucked and laid in bed afterwards talking about how soap was the yardstick of civilization and how there should be more methods of shaving for women, you knew you couldn't just be fuck buddies. Your emotions with Tyler ran deep.

"Yeah, something like that." You said, blowing the smoke out and watching it meet the rest of the clouded air above. It was soothing in a way. Almost as comforting as a hug if you liked them.

"Wanna go for a walk?" He asked, knowing that was your favorite past time when you had plaguing thoughts. Sighing at his perfectness, you agree by getting up from the magazines you had plopped yourself down on on the floor. Placing your hands behind your back, you lean back and crack it with a satisfied hum escaping your lips. Tyler joins you and picks up his red tinted glasses on preparation for the outside.

"How'd you know?" You ask, walking out towards the door leading to the kitchen and eventually to the mud puddle infested streets of the lower income street you resided on with your boyfriend.

"Know what? That you were angry?" He asked smugly, walking after you with that confident manly sort of walk that only pricks seem to have.

"Yeah." You said, shivering once your foot stepped out the door. The shit shirt (as you referred to it as) was only making matters worse considering how thin the material was.

Upon your sudden fixation with the cold, your boyfriend took off his leather jacket and placed it over your shoulders in an attempt at comforting you. It wasn't entirely warm, but it would do.

"I feel like life is just getting worse. Everything is a downward spiral and we're all just inevitably spiraling with it. There's nothing to live for. We're all consumed by the media that tells us to kill ourselves. Nothing is right." You eventually admitted to Tyler who was preparing another cigarette from his pocket. Grinning, it seemed as though he liked your response considering how he didn't have to pry the information out of you.

"You sure you don't just need a shower?" He asked, walking alongside you purposely going through all the puddles accompanying the sidewalk you were on. He was strange like that. You were sure there was a poetic meaning to it as there always seems to be, but you didn't feel like figuring it out in this moment.

"Well, that too. But I'm serious, Tyler. Everything is shitting on everything else."

"I agree with you. The world is chaotic and terrible and beyond redemption. Humans redeeming themselves? Forget about it."

"Exactly. It's just-"

"-but there are some good things."

You stopped in your tracks. Did Tyler just contradict his every statement? He's always rambling on about the terrors of the world the unfortunateness of the human condition. It's always the media that's cynical. Down with the patriarchy. Everything sucks. Why was he disagreeing with you now?

"What do you mean by good things?" You asked, genuinely curious by his change in demeanor.

"I say fuck your life's perception. You're entirely right about everything. The world is beyond saving. People are dying everyday and the rich get away with murder. We're slaves to the television. But- there are some things worth living for."

Curious, you give Tyler that look which reads "what are you going on about?" In an urge for him to continue. The puddles stopped the closer and closer you guys made it to town and his shoes eventually stopped making the rubbery squeaking noises of clothing material hitting water. Gravel replaced the mud and Tyler started to kick the stray rocks beneath his feet.

"Like what?" You ask.

"Like soap. Literature. Arson. Bagel Bites. You." He says, matter of fact as if he didn't have to think of the answer at all. He was such a a badass, seeing the world for the way it was; grimy and worthless. He taught life lessons to the space monkeys he kept in the basement of Paper Street. There was no special little snowflake attitude about him. He was solely the most interesting and intelligent human being. From the way he wore his clothes to the way he treated everyone else. The way he smoked and the way he preferred baths over showers. He was always the first to willingly touch the city subway railings not caring if he got sick. He blew shit up for fun. And now he was telling you that you were something good about his life, something that he valued so little.

"You- you mean it?"You ask, reaching for his hand now that the sidewalk was level.

"About what I said in regards to Bagel Bites?" He joked with a knowing smile. "Of course."

"No, asshole. About me."

"Oh," he pretended to think for a moment, "yes."

#fanfiction #tyler durden #first rule of fight club #fight club #brad pitt imagine #brad pitt fanfic #brad pitt x reader #brad pitt #edward norton #david fincher #movies #hobisfavoritespritecan

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theherdofturtles · 6 months

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Fandom: Hetalia Prompt: Lost or Stranded Rating: T Word Count: 2,824 Pacific war, Alfred dies on a beach and everything sucks afterwards. Especially when he discovers his nation powers are slightly fuzzed. @badthingshappenbingo

There was a certain point of nausea where the world hazed, spun, and faded while whispering to you ‘vanish’ while all you could do was wait, wondering if your stomach would contract, your head would toss over, and your guts would spill out.

It was around these same points when the black in your vision would become a thickened static, when the noise of the cotton should've been stronger than ever, but instead it was softening, and you began to think, 'finally, the misery is starting to pass.'

At that point, you realise you don't have the energy to spill your guts, and that that's fine, because pretty soon, you won't need your body, anyway. You won't need organs, guts, or even a thought process with which you could consider that absence.

It was the perverse peace of dying, which was strangely distressing in a distant space of the mind. The process itched the whole way through, as if the brain knew it should be uncomfortable, but the body couldn't care. Especially when you were dying alone and tried your best to not die that way.

Death liked to soothe the dying this way.

The mind faded, forgetting the aspects which made one who they were, while the body lost the ability to express its killing agony. Memories, smiles, blunders, all alike were stolen by the bonehand of death.

Alfred wasn't dying in so bad a spot, though. That helped a lot, really.

The colours he saw.... red like silk... the finest, reddish brown ruby red you could imagine, painting the sand like strawberry patches but stinking like a steel factory.

It was oddly beautiful and nostalgic when his brain couldn't make sense of it anymore. Alfred had always had both a foot in nature and another in the cult of the machine. Both appeared to be with him to his hazy head.

This might've been, at one point, not too long ago, the most glazed pain he'd ever lived through... and now?

Nah.

Dying was always spacey. Alfred had died many times before, even if he tried not to die on principle. Usually his consciousness turned into a liquid soup, then a sponge came and soaked the mess up, and then there was a heavy feeling above his head as if he himself were floating away.

The heavy weight would sit, tethered, before he lost all abilities to recount anything.

Nothing would exist, and Alfred couldn't comprehend nothingness.

The next second his eyes would blink open.

Alfred blinked.

It took longer for the rest of him to catch up with his body.

His body... ugh... it felt sticky, and he felt disgusting for it, and disoriented. So so disoriented. The whole beach was wobbling against gravity.

Alfred groaned.

Sand... he felt wet sand... his body was stuck to the sand as the world wobbled. Coral-ground, sharp, chunky sand. The little grains uncomfortably dug into his skin under his soaked uniform as the wet, rough, white shell-crushed beach, the kind that had dried again but retained shape like a sandcastle, snugged cozily around his body as if he were a rock on the beach.

His fingers flexed and broke the encrusted castle hugging them. Alfred it was a heavy water-logged effort. Each finger refused to raise, his arms refused harder— felt like fighting Gs. He struggled to lift his dead hands to his blurred line of sight, only to see the pink little leathery tips were wrinkled like prunes and his calluses were peeling.

Drats... he'd dehydrated already.

Alfred was going to lose his guts to the beach all over again.

He pushed himself to his elbows against the slowing wobble of the world.

He slosh-tilted once. He felt like collapsing back into the watery earth and decomposing like everyone else.

"Wow..." he muttered.

The ocean rolled several feet away but it looked alien, smoothly lapping towards him to where it almost ate his boots. Those waves broke crystal splashes over the Island's coral barriers a bit further off, making prisms of red, blue, pink, orange, like opal seaspray as they crashed in a soft lull.

It was a peaceful sound and sight... after the wobbling balanced into solid ground.

Palm trees swayed tiredly. Their tall, long leaves hung down over his head. A few coconuts washed with the tide... a few corpses did the same.

Oh yeah...

Alfred swiveled around quickly—too quick— the world spun again. His vision slid nauseatingly until locking into place.

Then he could see the damage.

Dried, black-red colours crusted the beach in wild syrup splotches several feet from him. Eleven or so burnt bodies populated the sand.

Yeah... Alfred recalled this. He grimaced and shuddered.

A Betty had come four hundred feet to harass them, and then...

Silver flash— a crack— swift—

Holy heck...

This far out?

Ground troops...? Had there been ground troops? Was Alfred losing his mind? Or did he remember that right?

Holy heck, that attack had hurt!

Alfred was somewhere in Vanekore? Vany-kero? Vanikoro?

Never mind?

Not home. Not even close to home.

On an enemy occupied island?

Alfred had been left on an enemy occupied island.

Goddamn.

Very very bad.

Alfred stumbled to his feet, scrambling like a newborn deer. His legs didn't support him and he crawled and shook like an idiot— his head spun the whole while because motion really hated him right now.

Reorientation after death sucked, being in Asia sucked harder. Alfred wished he could crush Japan's face and skip this screwed game of violent island hide-and-seek.

His scrambling recalled to him Arthur's one and only piece of advice before the European wars. Being at Britain's 'death-bed' so short ago during the first Great War had been the first time in Alfred's short isolationist life dying outside of the Americas:

"Dying away from home causes undue complications. Especially on enemy territory. Don't die."

Helpful, but Alfred had just broken the rules today.

Where was his handbook for that?

Alfred didn't even know what that warning entailed!

He needed backup, and he needed it asap. That, or extraction, because Alfred refused to stay on this cursed island. He'd get his head chopped off or captured and tortured and nope, no, never.

Some poor lifeless guy on this beach was bound to have a radio unfried by jungle heat. Alfred stumbled to splashing, boots soaking into the red tinted waves. The seafoam clung to the cloth of his uniform trousers, the bloated corpses stuck in the sand, and Alfred began to dizzily search the driest gore-crusted pockets with grit teeth and a grimace.

The grey flesh was cold on his fingers. Cold, like packaged meat, but undrained and messy and stiff and crusty in places and weeping in others and Alfred really was going to toss his head over and spill whatever sorry army ration he'd last chewed on out onto the beach right here and now.

The constant churning and clenching in his re-stitching gut failed to follow his threat and Alfred felt worse for it.

One soldier's eye was oozing in the heat, watery, as the other half of his head was an unrecognisable burnt mess. The remaining face had the effect of giving him a twisted, nearly sadistic version of a wink.

Alfred decided he didn't need a radio.

And Alfred also didn't have anything in his stomach to add to the beach which hadn't already been added, either.

He staggered into the jungle tree line. He didn't make it far before sliding down a palm trunk... and then he didn't have the energy to stand back onto his feet.

Wow, he was so incredibly screwed.

The pre-death nausea had decided returning would help him immensely at this terrible moment.... which, it was wrong. It was a bad moment to be nauseous and miserable, and his body was acting like his enemy by inflicting him with it.

Alfred hoped this was squeamishness and not a nefarious side-effect of dying in enemy territory. Usually he was back on his feet decently by now after dying, he'd gotten pretty good at this whole experience.

What would happen, anyway, due to dying in enemy territory?

He didn't feel different... at least... not that he thought he did. Nausea... but that might be corpse land churning his gut, or infected mosquitoes chewing him to pieces.

Alfred focused on feeling his feet, wiggling the pins and needles away, then he moved a slow progress through the rest of his body until reaching his nose. He rubbed his salt-sand crusted nose and... his skin was sunburnt. Alfred slumped. His already sweating body and the mixing, disgusting saltiness from the ocean made him feel further like a dumpster bin.

All limbs were accounted for. Alfred was in one whole gross sweaty body. Unlike a normal man.

And Alfred was fine aside from sunburns.

'Don't die, it'll cause undue complications,' like we'll have to waste time finding you, or it'd be too much paperwork.

Alfred huffed and frowned sourly.

Nothing was wrong with him.... right?

Nothing could be wrong with him. He was always great.

Alfred sat on the beach for another thirty minutes, wasting time checking himself, re-checking himself, and trying to locate any possible complication.

None.

Thanks for the scare, Arthur.

Alfred shook his head.

Imperialist prick... Arthur was such a piece of work. Even dying, he was causing Alfred issues and stepping all over his toes. Arthur would kill himself stretching his army too thin, and kill himself again refusing to move his navy away from his already fallen 'interests,' and then kill himself again for the hell of it while trying to force Alfred to help him with the doomed colonial waste.

England's stuffy dying fingers were clogging up the whole Pacific effort.

And there he was, giving Alfred dumb advice to scare his socks off.

Alfred hugged his still salt-moist body closer, leaning over himself to help rub blood circulation back into his still tingly limbs.

Dying really sucked.

He remained under the gentle, giant palm leaves until the sun began lowering, dipping to drown into blue lazuli waves. The sun lit the whole ocean in molten gold.

Then the mosquitoes began to cloud thick as raindrops in the evening heat.

Alfred couldn't see them to swat them, but they buzzed a relatively thick desperate swarm so that every time he tried to swat, he killed at least one, and, shucks, he'd just regenerated, so his immune system was restarting and vulnerable and he was going to catch malaria a second miserable time.

Alfred groaned again.

Where on earth were his guys? Someone should've backtracked to find him before nightfall. They knew which island they'd dropped him on, right?

This was a closer island, one which was meant to be safe-ish to home and an easy in-out mission.

Maybe he should 'locate' his people with his strange nation powers to see where they were.

He didn't want to... not that much... but he might have no other choice.

Enemy territory wasn't a great place to camp.

Alfred uneasily watched the last of the sun vanish. The sliver of gold dipped finally to swim beneath the burnt-orange waves, and then the sky quickly turned a star scattered deep purple.

He didn't use his nation powers often. Or... he tried to avoid his invasive ones.

They were odd, borderline mystical, and he didn't understand them. The nation powers he did invoke were the ones that he instinctively used, or the powers which were so easy to use that he didn't have to focus on trying them, or they didn't bother anybody.

That which could be solved or understood by his own brain and by others implied solutions. Hard, solvable solutions. A well-trodden path which men understood.

Mystery stuff implied crossed fingers and some whispered wishes in unknown languages while hoping for the best. Stupid stuff. Usually a party trick for antics. Things which failed or flew with barely a string of correlation.

He wasn't comfortable with not knowing how a thing worked, and Alfred didn't know how he himself worked. It meant he was different from everyone else. And screw whoever wished to be unique... being unique sucked once you realized it meant never relating to anyone ever again.

How the hell did one interact with people who didn't know what it felt like to die? Over and over again? To live so long, to be so many things, that you couldn't be anything at all anymore.

But Alfred needed to know where his people were... so Alfred had to do the weird searching thing countries did which wasn't understood on any level.

He didn't like that.

He really didn't like that.

It was moments like this in which he was upset with how ridiculously small his species' population was and the complete lack of information circulating on their kind. No one had studied their existence in depth. None of his predecessors had written any helpful guides.

Reluctantly, Alfred briefly held his breath, sighed, and closed his eyes.

He imagined expanding into some thingy thing where he was more secure. His body should fade into the background of his thoughts, his existence should be larger than his body. His existence should be near, it should be... ah... it was... um...

Where... was he...?

Alfred puzzled over himself for a second. The 'secure' thingy thing wasn't where he expected it to be. He didn't know where it was at all, actually.

He knew it was somewhere. It was usually right there.

But it wasn't.

He reached further until his heart began to beat noticeably. Nothing?

Where on earth was he?

Alfred's hands went to the soft ground to brace himself and his heart spazzed further.

Oh my josh he was lost... actually lost!

LOST lost.

He was lost. He, himself, was nowhere to be found. He wasn't where he could usually find himself. He didn't know which way was him.

He was lost!

"Ah ha ha, wow, I feel weird," Alfred said to the dark shapes, all gently swaying in the thick, jungle island forest, impartial to him. "This is what normal people feel like?!" He tried to console himself by imagining humans feeling lost this way, that it was normal, but he didn't know if this actually was what humans felt like when they got lost. He had a slight intuition that it wasn't, but damn, he'd never been lost before.

Alfred always felt the exact space he occupied in the world, constantly orienting himself through his land.

This couldn't be...?

Maybe it was how humans felt lost?

But, well, humans usually did pretty well navigating the world without the fancy nation powers Alfred had.

Humans could find his land. They could find other lands, decently. They got into ships and sailed off in directions and knew exactly where he was when they returned. They used stars and landmarks and latitudes instead of weird powers.

Alfred dumbly turned his head to the stars.

The small white specks twinkled back at him from their blue-black bed. No secrets whispered back. No enlightenment struck. No recognition-flood of relief washed over him.

The stars were impassive and secretive as ever.

Their little pretentious cold eyes watched him uncaringly as he suffered his particular elated panic. He wanted to get up there and show them who was boss... he really, really wanted to know what they looked like face to face.

Suddenly he wished he'd listened to England when the bastard had tried to explain the navigational advantages of star charts to him. Suddenly he thought himself stupid for not listening.

The best he could do for himself was wait. And hide. Which was such a helpless set of options.

Alfred sighed and slumped even further down his chosen tree-trunk until he was laying flat on the ground.

Damn... being human... it wasn't as exciting as he thought.

He closed his eyes and kept them tightly shut while trying to dispel his sense of lost-ness until the drum-beat of dehydration began to pulse under his lids. The low roar of the ocean and the low roar of his thoughts, the low roar of his soon aching head, pressed light and worsening on his freshly regenerated body.

He felt too close to dead again. His body was grossly lethargic.

And the dead men on the beach... he thought of their blank eyes. Their names which had slipped from his tongue, their faces which were missing as he himself was missing; it was all strange, because these little details were the ones which his kind processed so easily. Alfred wondered if he'd relied too much on his ability to just know names and had failed to actually memorise them.

Or was his forgetting more weird stuff happening to his powers?

Alfred drifted into hazy thoughts before he could think about his unknown place in the universe any longer.

He didn't sleep too well as the night passed. The lonely moon was a bright eye, glimmering against the crests of wave-water, cutting shadows. The jungle was alive with the rustle of insects riding the seabreeze. And Alfred was lost for the first time in his life.

He fell in and out of an unsettled rest all the night.

#hetalia headcanon #hetalia fanfiction #aph america #Hetalia America whump

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burstanddecay · 1 year

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petals in a storm

And if you asked me to, if you asked me, I would lose it all.

Pairing: Benny Miller x (OC) F!Reader Summary: Benny tries to tell you something by sharing a ritual that's a daily occurance for him. If that doesn't work, he's got another trick up his sleeve. Wordcount: 3.2K Contains/Warning: Angst, (passive) suicide ideations, existential dread/crisis talk, mental health issues. A/N: I'm not a boxer, nor am I into MMA. I tried to do as much research as was needed, but things might've slipped through the cracks or been stretched to fit the narrative. Part three of Cold Is The Night

The fluorescent lights make a slight humming noise as they flicker to life, speckles of dust floating through the air as Benny holds the door open for you. You cautiously enter, hesitant as you wait for him to take the lead, not sure what to make of the situation or what to do with yourself.

“C’mon,” he gently says as he places a hand in the middle of your back, putting pressure there as he guides you forward. “We gotta grab some stuff, and I’m gonna find you a shirt. You’ll get hot in the sweater.”

You look down at the sweater you’re wearing, at your jeans and the boots, shuffling your feet across the vinyl floor. He sees you look and gives a soft smile.

“The jeans are fine for what we’re gonna do. We’ll take off our shoes, it’s better to feel the floor.”

His voice is firm, not giving you any room for questions or protests, but is kind beneath it. You haven’t heard him use it before, but immediately know where to place it: he started teaching a self defence class for women a while ago. A big shift from his usual crowd of personal training and beating the lights out of fully grown men, but it seems to suit him, the way he lights up when he talks about it speaking volumes.

His hand disappears from your back as he walks past you, around a corner, disappearing out of sight. You’re not sure if you’re supposed to follow or not, so you take two small steps forward, looking around you as you do.

You’ve heard him talk about this place before, but for some reason you never had a reason to be here. He never explicitly stated he didn’t want you here, it just never happened, causing a wave of guilt to crash against you as you take in your surroundings.

“I just realised you’ve never been here before,” he calls out, his voice somewhat muffled by distance and faint rummaging. “Which y’know. Kinda weird.” His voice becomes clearer as he turns back around the corner, a shirt in his hands. “Since you’ve been in most places in my life. Here.”

You take the shirt from his hands, immediately recognising it when you catch a glimpse of the print on the front. You’ve seen him wear it before—just not in a while. He mostly stopped wearing it after he came back from South America, favouring other shirts and button ups over this one.

He rarely speaks of the trip. None of them do, the haunted looks and lack of Tom in their midst speaking volumes. It’s gotten better over time, but time heals all wounds is a fucking lie. You know that, Benny knows that, Will, Frankie, Santiago all know that.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Time is a trickster god and you better pray it’s on your side during your lifetime.

“Thank you,” you say. “I was just thinking the same, actually.”

“Just need to grab some other stuff and I’ll show you where we’re going. Put the shirt on, I’ll be right back.”

He turns around and disappears around a corner, leaving you alone with the shirt in your hands. You carefully place it on a nearby table, peeling your sweater off before pulling the shirt over your head. It’s littered with holes along the hemline, the fabric softened and faded by time. The corners of your mouth tick up as you gently run your hands over the fabric, chest full of something you can’t quite place.

“Looking good,” Benny pipes up behind you. “That shirt always looked better on you than it ever did on me.”

You roll your eyes at the statement. It’s a very Benny thing to throw compliments around: it comes as naturally as breathing to him, something you envy at times. You turn around to face him, finding him leaned against a support beam, arms crossed as he watches you with a half smile.

“C’mon. I’ll show you around another time.” He jerks his head to the side, to a room just outside your view. “We’ve got stuff to do.”

Anxiety gnaws at you as you follow him across the room, through the door he holds open for you. You look around as you enter, taking in the wall-to-wall mirrors on one side, the wooden bar stretching across its length, the loose bits of equipment placed in various nooks and corners.

“This used to be a ballet studio,” Benny explains from behind you, closing the door behind him and pulling his boots off. “They moved into a bigger space, so we put the mats down, but left the mirrors.” He shifts his weight on his socked feet, looking at you in the mirror. He seems anxious, which in turn makes you anxious. A part of you revels in the sensation: where most feelings no longer really seem to exist, this is something you can feel.

“C’mere,” he says, lowering himself into a kneeling position, patting the mat in front of him. “Come sit with me.”

You take a breath, kicking your boots off and leaving them next to Benny’s before sinking down to the floor in front of him.

It’s intimate in a way that’s both familiar and unfamiliar: it’s not like you haven’t been this close to him before, but at the same time, you really haven’t.

You haven’t let him close in ways that mattered.

“We said five minutes at a time,” he says. “We’ve made it through…” he moves his hand where it rests on his knee, looking at the watch on his left wrist. “At least ten of those since we left the bar.”

You want to tell him it’s easier to make it through those minutes when you’re not alone, when there’s other people’s voices to fill the growing void, other people’s joy, giddiness, frustrations. You want to say it feels as if something is flooding your bloodstream and slowly numbing your senses, leaving you to navigate the world by depending on others.

You want to say that the only thing making you feel even slightly alive is him, but you can’t do that to him. You can’t burden him with that, with keeping another person upright.

He fought his battles. The mental ones, the physical ones and everything in between: he already fought his war.

He doesn’t deserve to fight someone else’s, too. Not again.

So, you say nothing.

Instead, you pick at your cuticles, ignoring the sting as you pull at the already raw skin with your fingernails.

“So,” Benny starts, producing a handful of fabric from his pocket, letting it slide through his hands. “Normally when you box, you wrap your hands.” He reaches out, holding an upturned palm stretched out in front you. “Or you wear gloves, but I prefer wrapping. May I?”

You nod silently and place your hand in his, the callouses on his palm oddly comforting against your soft skin. He turns your hand, so that your palm faces up, the movement gentle, as if he’d break something if he wasn’t careful enough.

“Our hands are made up of dozens of tiny bones, essentially just held together by some flesh and tendons,” he continues, placing the strap in your palm before he starts wrapping it around your hand. “And sure, you can just throw a punch, but it puts a lot of stress on those bones. When you don’t know better, you’d think that the wrapping is there to protect your knuckles, right? Because that’s what we see in media. Bloody knuckles, held up in front of our faces.”

“I can do this all day,” you mumble under your breath, the imagine of pre-serum Steve Rogers immediately jumping to mind.

“Right,” he smiles. “The truth is, we have to protect our hands by allowing the impact of that punch to be better distributed,” he explains, wrapping the fabric back and forth between your fingers, essentially creating a glove out of a single strap of fabric. “That single punch puts a lot of stress on just the top bones, the ones that stick out the most,” his fingers lightly tap your knuckles. “Which we don’t want. That causes tears in the bone at the first punch, if you throw it hard enough.”

His touch is featherlight as he continuous to wrap the fabric around your hand, weaving it through your fingers with ease. It goes automatically, as if it’s as easy as brushing your teeth. You suppose it is, to him. It’s something he does most days, after all.

He finishes up the first hand and opens and closes his fingers as a way of saying to hand over your other hand, which you wordlessly do.

You know better than to just see this as wrapping your hands. You know damn well what he’s trying to say.

“We don’t just want to protect the knuckles, we want to protect the full hand, all those little bones. We want to make sure we don’t wreck ourselves trying to come out on top. So instead, we make sure there is something keeping those loose things tightly together and allow them to weather the circumstances they’re being put through. Because when the knuckles are bloody, when that surface is cracked, you already know you’ve done damage that beyond a quick fix. When in reality, it’s… mostly preventable.”

He finishes wrapping your second hand, and motions for your other hand, turning both of them back and forth to check his work.

“Do you do this every game?” you ask softly, admiring how quick and efficient he was with something that you would’ve redone at least three times.

He nods in reply. “Every game, most practises.”

“But…” you start, letting the sentence die off when you don’t know how to word your thoughts.

“But?” he asks, letting go of your hands.

“Isn’t a thing that by continuously breaking the bone, you strengthen it?”

He lets out a low sigh, leaning back on his heels. “Well, no. You just… stop feeling it eventually. There’s debates of whether or not breaking bones repeatedly improves bone density, but I think it’s bullshit, personally.” He smirks, the first time since leaving the bar that there isn’t a hint of sadness woven into his features.

The sight of it breaks your heart, echoing the sentiment that seems to engrain itself deeper and deeper into your heart with each passing moment: Ben Miller doesn’t deserve your mess.

“I don’t think we should have to continuously break ourselves to come out better in the end.”

And there it is. Laid out in front you, word for word. He doesn’t look at you, instead leaving the words to float in the air as he wraps his own hands, the movement much faster and less deliberate.

He doesn’t push, not for an answer, not for a reaction, but instead finished up his own wraps and shifts in his position.

“Copy me.”

You don’t question him, not sure if you’re afraid of what will follow if you do or if you just don’t have the mental capacity to do so. He continues to stretch, the movements reminiscent of yoga poses, almost cat-like in their fluidity.

The silence between you is neither here nor there, and the minutes pass evenly as your muscles protest slightly at the stretches they’re being exposed to. Across from you, Benny seems to be wrapping up the warm-up, and he returns to his initial position, sat on his knees, before rising completely off the ground and reaching his hand out towards you.

You take it and let him pull you off the ground, resisting the urge to dust down your jeans, and shift on your feet as you wait for him to make the next move. This is his territory: you’re not sure what’s expected of you.

The answer catches you off guard.

“Hit me.”

“Wha— I… No?” you frown, eyeing the blond stood a mere two steps away from you. The light in this room is bright and unkind, the kind that reminds you of frustrated tears over jeans that wouldn’t come up over your thighs even though they’re a size bigger than you’d normally wear. You’ve avoiding looking at the mirrors because of it, but looking at Benny, it highlights all the things that burrowed their way into your heart. The golden hue of his hair, the way his moustache never quite fills in above his cupid’s bow, the fact that his lashes are two tints darker than his hair.

“C’mon,” he urges. He holds up one hand, tapping it with the other. “Right there. With all you’ve got.”

“I’m not going to hit you!” you whisper-shout in return, as if it was the most outrageous thing he could’ve suggested. It was, in a way. You just expected a punching bag. The unalive, hanging-from-the-ceiling-on-a-chain kind. Not a living, breathing one.

He cracks a smile, and lowers his hands, taking a step forward and grabbing your wrists. You eye him with suspicion but let him move your arms until they’re in the position he wanted them. Elbows tucked to your sides, knuckles facing the sky. His hands move to your hips, and you fight the kneejerk reaction of shying away from his hands there, instead biting your cheek as he puts pressure to get you to move.

It takes him a few seconds to position you, but he seems content when he takes a step back.

“Thumbs go over your knuckles, never tucked inside.”

“I know. I’m—” You bite back the I’m not stupid that’s threatening to come out, not wanting to be rude. “I know,” you repeat quietly.

“Good. Now hit me.”

You drop your hands. “I’m not going to hit you!”

“Hit me.”

“No.”

“Hit me.”

Your jaw ticks as you meet his unfaltering gaze. “I don’t want to hit you.”

He shrugs. “Don’t care. Hit me.”

“I’m not going to hit you, Benny.”

“Why not? It’s not like I don’t get punched on a weekly basis.”

“Because I don’t want to.” Hurt you, your brain finishes. Too bad it’s too late for that.

“You won’t.”

You stiffen. Did you say that out loud?

“You won’t say it, but I know you’re thinking it. You won’t hurt me.”

You feel the corners of your mouth turn downwards, in a way that got you the comparison to Florence Pugh more than once already. You hate it when that happens: not so much the comparison, but rather what followed when you actually felt that movement on your face when it wasn’t on purpose. It meant the stinging feeling in your nose wasn’t far off, the tightening of your jaw and wet feeling of tears threatening to fall lurking not far behind it.

At that point, it takes a mild breeze for the dam to fully burst.

“You’re not gonna hurt me.”

“No.” The word comes out tight, already a brisk sound on its own but now amplified by the fight going on in your head. You stagger a step backwards, your chest rising and falling faster than it should. “I don’t—I’m not—”

“Look at me.”

You feverishly shake your head, avoiding his gaze at all costs as you roughly paw at your face, getting rid of the tears that made their way down without your permission.

“Peach, look at me.”

You take another step back backwards, putting distance between yourself and Benny, forcing yourself to take a deep breath. It ends up rattling through your chest, shaky in a way that reminds you of how it felt to cry when you were a kid.

You vaguely hear him call your name again, but it gets drowned out by the feeling crowding your chest. You both feel infinitely small and like you could burst out of your skin at the same time.

“Maisie.”

It’s like your struck by lightning, tearstained eyes immediately snapping to the man stood a few feet away.

He hasn’t called you by your actual name in years. Not even in letters you exchanged when he was deployed, or when he introduced you to Santi, Frankie, or even Will. Not even the one year he took you home to celebrate Christmas with his family.

He hasn’t used your name, your actual name in at least seven years, and by doing so, it feels like he shattered the windows, blew straight through the walls you put up.

By using your name, he took away the one barrier you had managed to maintain when everything else crumbled apart around you.

As you’re bolted to the floor, he closes the distance between you, his movements slow and deliberate as if you’re a deer he’s trying not to startle.

“I know,” he says, the calluses on his palm rough against your cheek as he holds your head between his hands, forcing you to look at him. “I know you think this is yours to bear, but I am here.” It comes out fierce, heated without any anger behind it. “I am here, and I want to carry it with you.”

You open your mouth to protest, shaking your head as much as his grip allows it, but he gives a gentle squeeze.

“I have the space to carry some of that burden, and I will do anything, and I mean anything, so you won’t buckle under it.” His jaw is tense and his eyes glisten in the fluorescent light. “Anything.”

“I can’t ask that,” you whisper, wrapping your fingers around his wrists.

“You’re not asking. And even if you were, I’d—I’d run into a fucking burning building. I’d run through a wildfire, I would sit with you through the night, I would hold you when it all becomes too much. I’d fight your inner demons with my bare fucking hands, I just need you to let me.”

For a moment, just a moment, time stops.

“Please.”

The word comes out broken, small, as if this was the most pain he has ever been exposed to.

You don’t have it in you to fight it anymore. It tumbles out before you can stop yourself.

“I’m not scared of dying, and that scares me so much I don’t know how to breathe some days. It just seems like an option that’s there, like getting a coffee or reading a book, and it terrifies me. There are days that’s all I feel like is waiting in the future, but I can’t put you through that, because I love you. I can’t make you give a eulogy at yet another funeral, and the reason why is wholly selfish, too, because I love you, and I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you. I know you don’t—”

“You don’t get to decide for me.”

You open and close your mouth, panic flooding your system as you realise what you just said.

“You’re right. I don’t want to bury you, I don’t want to give a eulogy at your funeral. I don’t want to do those things, because I want to live a life with you. I don’t want that to end before it even got a chance to start. So for the love of fucking god, Maisie, let me hold it. Let me carry that burden with you.”

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