hello hello may i request to hear some of your katesethaaron thoughts i am considering writing about them and u are the authority to me lmao
orpheus!!! yes you may omg ok SO why they work is because of what they have in common. and it’s not necessarily that they have a lot in common, but the things they do share are some of the things that are most important to each of them (also this is gonna neglect kateaaron a bit because there’s already plenty there but trust that It Is There)
also potential trigger warnings for addiction and eating disorder stuff while i remember
seth and aaron have the most obvious common denominators: histories with addiction, sibling relationships that are perpetually bleeding wounds but also just the guy who took your fucking sandwich, getting angry and hostile and lashing out, refusing to accept good things because it could be a trick, homophobia learned from an intolerant upbringing that they don’t really mean, recreational homophobia learned from the annoying fucking gay people they know that they sometimes mean, being told they’d never be anything and believing it, gaming, hating on kevin, refusing to get involved in neil-andrew-kevin bullshit yet still somehow being the most affected, it goes on. seth and aaron make sense to each other. when aaron doesn’t sleep and he stares too long at dan’s bottle of antidepressants, and when seth’s hand twitches and he snaps at people, they recognise it. and there’s something there, in not having someone try to fix it for you or demand anything of you, but to know exactly what’s happening and how you feel, and share the feeling so it isn’t all trapped inside of only you.
seth also likes to cook. not in the way kevin cooks now he’s learning, with “measuring ingredients” and “preheat oven” bullshit, but with throwing shit in a pan and seeing what happens. and honestly it tends to be pretty good. there have been some flops (SIGNIFICANT FLOPS rip matt boyd and the 22-hour food poisoning incident) but seth likes to be able to make stuff for himself and see what he can do. his favourite is a disposable barbecue in the summer, grill on, burgers, whatever his brother shot in the yard, hot sauce that makes you cry, alabama shit. aaron can’t really cook, nor does he particularly want to, he doesn’t care, doesn’t have the time, and he mostly eats dry cereal anyway and that’s usually fine. he sits up at the table to read from his textbook while seth cooks, and eventually he’s paying far more attention to the way seth is gleefully tossing shit about and seasoning everything to hell and back than he is to anything biochem related. katelyn starts joining them, and she chats to seth while he cooks. she likes to cook as well, in a slightly more technical way but they both agree that anyone who follows the amount of garlic the recipe tells you doesn’t deserve to live. it’s less about the cooking and more about the time they get to spend with each other, and how they’re making each other feel better for it: aaron is no longer in huge vitamin deficit and feeling useless for not caring enough to fix it, he also now has allotted time to go over his reading for class. katelyn has two people who care and actually want to hear about her day, her recipes, her classes. seth feels needed, in that he’s able to look after these two when they won’t look after themselves (because katelyn is more put together than the other two but girl is still premed she’s snacking on energy drinks and fistfuls of raisins), and he has two people who are taking him seriously and actively appreciating something he’s doing and something he’s good at.
what katelyn and seth have in common is kind of the fundamental principle of each of their identities as they try to get better and be better. with katelyn’s cheerleading and seth’s rule-by-violence sibling hierarchy, they both come from a world where you have to care what everybody thinks because if you deviate and do your own thing, you will be eaten alive for it. and they both chose to do their own thing. katelyn, who spent her high school years in the fucking TRENCHES of cheerleader psychological warfare, with everyone pointing out every flaw in each other, every uneven line of eyeliner, every unflattering outfit, every “omg HOW are you still hungry?”, every interaction with a boy making you somehow both a stupid virgin and a reckless slut, every houseparty, every smirk at weird kids, every groupchat that’s identical to the main chat but without one person, every lie and rumour and eating disorder bait, katelyn survived all of it. and she won’t pretend she didn’t participate, she feels horrible about some of the things she was part of at school even if she personally didn’t do any of the really bad stuff. but toeing those lines and following those rules to win a game like that just wasn’t worth it, and so she stopped. she dated the weird short guy who was rude to everyone, and she loved him more than anything. she wore those butterfly hairclips and sparkly jeans that emily said made her look like her mom picked her outfit, and she loved it. she ate the pastries, had sweat marks in public in the summer, didn’t religiously shave her legs every day, spoke to weird kids, did her homework, listened to the shitty bands, and she was better for it.
Seth struggled constantly at home and at psu to do his own thing, because that meant exposing a weak spot and putting yourself in a position where you have to trust the people around you not to shoot. seth had wanted so badly for the team to work, for wymack to be right, but he didn’t want to be the one to trust it first and make that move, because if it failed he’d always been the one to take the punches for it. his relationships with his family were better now, but in the crucible of an adolescent household of nightmares, fistfights, and pills, it had been quite difficult. and the way to survive had been not to care, not to stand out and make things worse for everyone, not to admit that something matters to you. and when seth woke up from the coma to find the foxes working together, not necessarily getting along, but everybody committing to open-hearted sincerity, he cursed himself for not trusting it and decided that he had to start. and it was excruciating. but one of the first times he met katelyn, she was wearing a lime green denim jacket and absolutely going to town on a box of jam doughnuts (she’d offered him one, and he’d taken it before she changed her mind but the rate she’d been plowing through them he did think he might lose a hand) sitting under one of the trees by fox tower waiting for aaron. she’d looked ridiculous in the jacket, and seth had said “nice jacket” in the least mean way he could manage. and she’d said no the hell it is not, but i like it and i’m going to wear it. and it had been a long day for her, and she hadn’t spoken to anyone, and it all came out at seth, who nibbled quietly on his doughnut. aaron got there before he had a chance to respond, but seth remembered and noted katelyn as a person worth listening to and a person he could learn something from. incidentally, katelyn happened to be over the next time seth really, properly wanted to lash out. he was at the point of snapping kevin’s neck when he balled his fist up and stalked out of the room, walked to aaron’s room and collapsed on the ground next to katelyn, who looked confused. seth asked if he could have one of her butterfly hairclips, and it clicked for her what was happening. aaron was still confused as fuck, but they seemed to be getting on and he was closer with seth these days so sure what the hell.
seth still wears that butterfly hair clip, he tried to give it back that day when he went back to his room but katelyn told him to keep it. he put it in the next morning, and the next, and nobody commented, but the more time he spent with both aaron and katelyn, the less he would have cared about it anyway.
basically seth gordon lifeline is stored in these mfs
but pls lmk if you do end up writing anything i would love to read it!! <3333
