Hi, I would love to read some Monty/Miller where one continously fails to ask the other out, that would be really awesome :)
Jasper’s take is, of course, that Monty should just suck it up and ask, because that is Jasper’s dating philosophy: you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Which is, of course, completely true, but Monty doesn’t find that a motivation in the same way Jasper does.
“It’s not like this isn’t good,” he tells Jasper, after what feels like the thousandth round of I like him/so tell him that. “You’re coming at it from a different perspective.”
“Yeah,” says Jasper. “A competent one.”
“You ask out girls at, like, dances and in the dining hall,” Monty goes on, ignoring him. “You’re in a low-risk, high-reward position. If girls turn you down, you just have to deal with a rejection.”
“Which sucks,” says Jasper.
“But you don’t have emotional investment!”
“This sounds a lot like a friendzone thing.”
“It does not,” says Monty, scowling. “If there is such a thing as a friendzone, and the jury is still out, I’m already there! And I like it there. It’s a good place. The problem isn’t getting knocked into the friendzone, it’s getting knocked out of it. I don’t want to make it weird.”
“Look, dude, I say this with love, but if you never make it weird, you’re never going to make it work.” He pauses. “Wow, that was deep. I should put that on an inspirational poster or something, right?”
“I think making it weird should never be your goal in dating. Like–there’s a fine line between making it weird and making it gross and uncomfortable. And you’ve definitely crossed it once or twice.”
That sobers him up. “I know. I’ve been a dick before. But you’ve learned from my mistakes! And you know Nate pretty well now, right? That means you know how to talk to him. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Just, like–hey, you want to get dinner sometime?”
“Just like that,” Monty repeats, dubious.
“What you’re afraid of,” says Jasper, with a disconcerting amount of wisdom, “is Nate finding out that you have a giant fucking thing for him. And that’s legit! It’s really weird to tell someone you’re, like, in love with them. It’s zero to sixty in no time flat, and that’s weird. But dinner isn’t I think about marrying you someday. It’s just dinner! It’s not a big deal.”
“Huh,” says Monty. “That’s actually good advice.”
“Dude, don’t act so surprised. I think about dating literally all the time. Look, just try, okay?”
“Try,” Monty agrees. “I can try.”
It feels like a very minimal commitment. Like Jasper said, he’s not asking Nate to marry him or anything. All he’s doing is agreeing to maybe attempt to ask the guy he likes out on a date. He’s not even saying he’ll do it, just that he’ll try to do it.
It’s not a big deal.
*
“Hey, do you want to get dinner?” he mutters, in the shower. “Hey, do you want to get dinner? No, fuck, too vague. If I just say dinner it’s like, let’s go to the dining hall. Hey, do you want to go out to dinner? That’s probably better. But he might still think–”
“Wanna fuck,” supplies someone, apparently on their way into the other stall. “Direct and to the point, dude. Don’t overthink it.”
He doesn’t recognize the voice, but it’s still valid feedback.
“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll try that one out.”
“Good luck, bro. You’re gonna nail this. And then nail this.”
Monty sticks his head under the faucet, washing the shampoo out of his hair. It seems awfully optimistic, but the support is nice.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m working on it.”
*
Monty sees Nate three times a week this semester, which is less than last semester, but it’s better interaction. Last semester, Monty was helping out on a play Nate was in, which meant that they saw each other a lot, but didn’t actually get to interact. Now, they’re in the same lit class, which is a lot better. Not only do they have the regular class time, but neither of them has other friends in the class, which means they talk about assignments and homework, and on Wednesday and Friday they don’t have other things to do after class, so they’ll often grab lunch together. When they’re at parties together, they hang out, and Nate’s friend Bellamy and Raven’s friend Clarke are working on their own flirtation, which means that they end up at parties together a lot.
Like Jasper said, at this point, Monty knows him pretty well, but Monty’s right too. There’s an easiness to their current relationship that Monty doesn’t want to jeopardize that with feelings.
Ideally, there would just be some kind of easy slide into dating, but at heart, he knows that Jasper is right. At some point, if he wants to make out with Nate Miller, he’s going to have to do something drastic, like mention it.
For now, though, he takes the seat next to Nate in class on Friday and says, “Hey, any exciting weekend plans?”
“You going to tell Raven so she can tell Clarke?”
“Sorry, am I not supposed to? Are you not trying to set them up?”
“Not trying, just not getting in the way. But we don’t actually have any plans. I was going to ask you if you had anything going on that we could piggyback on.”
“Not so far.” It’s a good opportunity, so he says, “We could probably come up with something, right? Like, how hard can it be to make two people who are obviously into each other hang out?”
“You’d be amazed,” says Nate. “You like bowling?”
“Bowling?”
He shrugs. “I haven’t been in a while. Bellamy’s stupid competitive, so is Clarke, I assume Raven’s down.” The pause feels deliberate. “Does she have a boyfriend?”
“No.” He wets his lips. “Are you interested? I thought Bellamy said–”
“Oh, yeah, no, I’m gay. She’s all yours.”
“Not that either,” says Monty. “I mean, she’s not mine. And I don’t want her to be mine. She’s awesome, don’t get me wrong, but–Raven is currently single and unattached and I don’t want her attached to me. It sounds like I’m protesting too much now, right?”
“Definitely like something is happening,” says Nate, amused.
In theory, this is a good time to say something like, I’m not into her, I’m into you. In practice, he says, “My best friend Jasper had a thing for her freshman year and she shot him down, and then we found out she had a secret boyfriend no one knew about who cheated on her with Clarke and now I just kind of try to make no assumptions about her love life and distance myself from it as much as humanly possible.”
“Wow. That’s–something.”
“Anyway, yeah. Everyone’s single, why?”
“Just trying to figure out if we should be doing additional matchmaking.”
“I think probably not. If we bring Jasper too, that’s pretty normal, right? Six people going bowling. Bellamy and Clarke aren’t going to notice we’re setting them up.”
Nate rolls his eyes. “I’m pretty sure it would take an actual physical blow to the head to get them to notice, yeah. But that would be fun. Do you have my number?”
“No.”
“Okay, let’s do that after class. We can figure out a time to meet.”
“Cool,” says Monty, trying not to look too giddy. It’s not an actual date, obviously. But it’s a lot better than he was expecting.
*
Me: Want to come bowling tonight?Say yes
Jasper: If I don’t show up will it just be you and Nate?
Me: NoYou and Raven can heckle as me and Clarke fail to flirt
Jasper: Yeah, that’s not newYou should at least find a girl who wants to date me so I can heckle with herLike you heckle with NateThat’s called being a friend
Me: I’ll pay for your shoes
Jasper: Good enough
*
The interaction sets the new, somewhat disconcerting template for their interactions over the next few weeks. Monty keeps coming up with vague plans to ask Nate out, and then, before he can, Nate will ask if he and his friends have plans, and it inevitably morphs into a group outing. Which is, obviously, better than nothing, but it’s still not really what he’s trying to do. For the most part, he can take comfort in the fact that Clarke and Bellamy aren’t dating either, so it’s not like he’s alone in his incompetence, but that only helps so much. And he feels as if it might help, for them to get it together first. Then dating would become a conversation starter, and maybe he’d be better prepared for it than he was when it was about his hypothetical interest in Raven.
Anything is possible.
Instead, the next time it comes up, they’re at a party, and Jasper is actually being mildly successful at hitting on a girl, which is enough to disconcert everyone. No offense to Jasper, but Monty’s not actually sure if this has ever happened before.
Nate apparently has the same question.
“What’s his success rate look like?”
“Who, Jasper?”
“Yeah. I feel like every time we’re out, he’s flirting with someone new.”
“That’s about right, yeah.” Monty takes a sip of his drink. “He says you miss all the shots you don’t take, so if you like someone, you should let them know. He did a lot of pining in high school, I think it convinced him that life is short and he should just—“ He waves vaguely. “Find out and move on.”
“So he gets shot down every time he goes out?”
“Pretty much. But he’s not that invested. It’s a real improvement, honestly. He was kind of a capital-n nice guy in high school. Now he’s a flirt and he’s happy. Sometimes he gets laid, sometimes he doesn’t, but he’s started to think of every rejection as a learning experience.”
“Huh.” He shakes his head, laughing. “Yeah, no. I can’t imagine that.”
“Yeah, me neither. I’m definitely a crusher. As in I get crushes, not some weird slang I just made up that describes my dating technique.”
Nate snorts. “Thanks for clearing that up.” He nudges Monty with his elbow. “So, you have a crush?”
So that was a massive miscalculation, because now he’s said that, and Nate knows it, which means that Jasper’s method will not work, because if Monty ever asks him out, he’ll know Monty has a crush on him. It can no longer be casual.
Any time he can upload his consciousness into an unfeeling cyborg body, he definitely will. He’s so ready.
“I just get crushes,” he splutters. “Sometimes.”
Nate smirks. “Uh huh. Definitely not hiding anything right now.”
“Definitely not,” he agrees. “What about you?”
“Crusher,” says Nate. “Not that I can’t flirt, but—I never end up in relationships unless I already like the guy, you know?”
“I never end up in relationships no matter what,” says Monty. “But I know in theory, yes. That is how I assume I’d be, if I ever dated anyone.”
“You’ll have to let me know when you find out,” he says.
Monty takes another very long drink and tries not to panic. “Yeah. I’ll keep you posted.”
*
If he were a competent human, Monty would probably leverage Jasper starting to date the girl from the party into the same kind of conversation he was planning to try to have about Clarke and Bellamy potentially dating, but since he fucked up and told Miller he get crushes and has crushes and everything is terrible, he doesn’t really know what to do.
“Ask. Him. Out,” says Jasper. “I don’t even care at this point, just, like–do it. You guys have been flirting for weeks, he likes you, he keeps coming up with excuses to see you. Who cares if he knows you’re into him? You want that. Because then you’d have a boyfriend. I’m just saying.”
“Feedback accepted. I’ll stop complaining to you and just suffer alone.”
“Or ask him out.”
“Yeah, I like mine better. I’m going to stick with that.”
Jasper shakes his head. “Have fun dying alone.”
“Can’t wait.”
*
On Friday, Raven has plans and Jasper has a date, which means that it’s just Monty, Nate, Clarke, and Bellamy, watching a movie in Nate and Bellamy’s room. If Jasper knew about it, he’d tell Monty that this is a double date and golden opportunity for Monty to make a move, but since he’s still not telling Jasper about these things anymore, he’s suffering alone.
Still, when Nate opens the door and there’s no one else there, Monty is very tempted to call in some backup.
“Am I early?” he asks, frowning.
“Uh, no.” Nate rubs the back of his neck. “Bellamy and Clarke ditched us.”
“Oh my god, are they actually dating? Is that happening?”
“They’re, uh–they’re actually trying to set us up,” he admits. “At least, that’s the story Bellamy gave Clarke. We had a bet going.”
Monty blinks a few times. “A bet?”
“Which of us managed to make a move first. So Bellamy won and set me up at the same time, which is, like, next level. That’s probably the most competent thing he’s ever done.” He rubs the back of his neck, clearly flustered. “You can leave,” he adds. “If you’re not interested in a date.”
He’s still trying to recover; it’s not going great. “Wait, what?”
“I like you,” says Nate. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to ask you out for weeks, but I didn’t–”
“You kept wanting to hang out as a group!” says Monty. “I was going to try to ask you out but then every time you wanted to do something with everyone and I didn’t want you to think I didn’t want to hang out so–”
Nate’s laughing, which Monty’s never actually seen before, and that’s awesome. And it is kind of funny.
“So do you want to get pizza and watch a movie and maybe make out?”
“Honestly, at this point, I kind of want to start with making out and go from there. No offense.”
“None taken,” says Nate, and pulls him in.
*
Me: You might have had a point about open communicationTalking definitely works as a first step to dating
Jasper: I keep telling you, I’m a geniusCongrats, right?
Hi I've seen some of your asks where you talk about the fight between Steve/Bucky and Tony and you always say that they left Tony with a powered down suit and no way off the island. I'm kinda confused (I've only seen the movie once cause I didn't enjoy it) but didn't Tony come to the island in a plane? Would that not be his way off the island? OR did you mean that from Steve's perspective he didn't know there would be another way for Tony to get out of there? Sorry just has me a bit confused...
He drops out of a auto-piloted helicopter in his suit, T’Challa arrives on a jet, as do Bucky and Steve. With no power source, he more than likely couldn’t reconnect and call back the helicopter. The helicopter flies away, and Tony has an injured arm and no explained way of disassembling his suit without having to lift the weight of the suit (even JARVIS has to use the last of his power to disassemble the suit in IM3, and Tony then physically drags it through the snow).
Edit: but also Steve has no idea how Tony gets there or back.
marvelousbadger replied to your post “so from what i have heard, the mulan remake will not include captain...”
wasn't that what it was like in the original story? I thought I remembered reading that Disney were actually the ones who changed it from the original...
not only are you missing the point of the post, which is about the erasure of a character many see as being bisexual and replacing it with heteronormativity and a disgusting message that men will only fall in love with you once they know you have boobs. but also this is disney making live action remakes of disney animations, most of the other remakes are staying true to the disney animations instead of the original stories so why shouldn’t mulan be the same.
