I am so very late posting this but LOOK @wordsintimeandspace made a special second copy of their Vesta Season One transcript binding and it is SO BEAUTIFUL. Look at these fonts!!! It’s so impressive! I’m so honoured that they’d make this in the first place and I get to keep it forever 😭💙
OK I know I agonized about this one but NO REALLY THANK YOU IT WAS GREAT <3! It was a GREAT exercise for writing in so many ways for me! Also I know the prompt "Maybe you should sit down" sort of implies getting bad news or something more than what popped into my brain, but this is what popped IMMEDIATELY into my brain so I went with it 83 Also again this is my first JonTim so be gentle with me uwu! Honestly it's my first time writing Tim in general for longer than one sentence so there's that too jfhlsajf XT Anyway enjoy!
Jon would have infinitely preferred to think of his bungled little excursion as a calculated risk that the whims of capricious probability had simply decided he had lost on that particular doomed occasion. What it truly was, however, was an infinitely predictable culmination of skipping his physio stretches for three mornings in a row, deciding a quick jaunt into the stacks to hunt for a statement to cross reference with the one he had been working on all morning did not, in fact, require the aid of his cane, and several cups of black tea on an empty stomach with their resultant caffeine jitters that had left him splayed and wobbling like a newborn fawn with one hand anchoring him in a vice grip to the handle of a file drawer. His bad leg ached in that special way it did that he knew all too well could be catastrophic if he moved it even slightly wrong, and set him back significantly on his physio progress. That oft repeated foible would also attract the ire and derision of literally every single person who knew him, never mind the physical therapists at the clinic, and he was very much not prepared to deal with that on top of everything else.
Lucky for him he wasn’t even supposed to be back at the institute in the first place, so no one would be looking for him, and he was reasonably assured that he would have plenty of time to figure out how to escape unscathed, or at least enough to hide a suspicious limp for a day or two. Unlucky for him, probability it seemed, also liked to double down.
“Alright there, boss man?”
Tim’s jovial voice echoed through the file cabinets like the worst song on the juke at the pub out of all of the hundreds of better selections just as Jon was preparing to gingerly move his spasmodic leg. He sighed and closed his eyes bitterly.
“Oh, yes, just fine, just dangling precariously from this file cabinet to try out a new stretch, it’s called the ‘mind your own business’,” he growled.
Tim chuckled, the echoes of it raising pinprick hackles of irritation on the back of Jon’s neck as he emerged from the shadows, hands on his hips and wry, crooked grin on his scarred face.
“Maybe you should sit down.”
“And pray tell where, Timothy?” Jon snapped in a low growl.
Tim made a low whistle.
“Yikes! Busting out the -othy today? You must be in a bad way.”
“You think so? Whatever gave you that brilliant idea?” Jon drawled, rolling his eyes, “Are you going to stand there gawking and making me feel even more like an invalid or are you going to deign to render me aid?”
“I think I can spare a moment, just for you,” came the predictably smug retort, “What exactly would you like me to do?”
“I just need to sit a moment and massage it out, so fetching a chair from somewhere ought to suffice.”
Tim pondered the request as he strolled to Jon’s side, chewing his lower lip pensively.
“Well, I could do that for you, but seeing as you’re not actually supposed to be here yet I am a little concerned that dragging a chair randomly down to the archives would attract… unwanted attention? You know Martin would have a conniption.”
Sighing heavily, Jon pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses.
“Good point.”
“How about my lap then?” Tim continued without missing a beat.
Jon choked on his own tongue as the tips of his ears burned like cinders.
“TIM! Is this really, truly, and honestly the appropriate moment to be… making a pass at me?”
Unfazed, Tim pressed a dramatic hand over his heart.
“Jon, I’m wounded! Ordinarily I’d be deeply offended you’d think my flirting skills so inelegant and crass, but I was actually being sincere this time.”
A dark brow slid skeptically, pointedly up Jon’s forehead.
“Beg pardon, but how could that possibly have ever, in any situation, been construed as sincere?”
“Well, we’ve determined a chair is too risky, the floor isn’t going to do you any favors, and I know you won’t let me carry you back to your office, so I won’t even bother to ask, so where does that leave us, hmmm? Plus, if you recall, I had much the same physio you did, I know the massages and the stretches, I can have you patched up and out of here in no time,” Tim elaborated, counting off on his fingers.
Jon hated it when anyone other than him was making the most sense in the conversation, and he gnashed his teeth and growled his begrudging acquiescence.
“…Fine.”
“Brilliant. Alright to touch?” Tim asked brightly, hands hovering a respectful few inches from Jon’s hand and shoulders.
Eyes narrowing to smoldering brown slits, the last embers of a dying fire, Jon made him wait a few moments for the wordless nod of approval.
“Okay, just taking your hand there, my other hand’s got your other arm, and easy does it…”
With surprising finesse and gentleness, Tim took Jon’s hand and eased him onto the ground with him and into his lap, taking great care to keep his seized-up leg straight and comfortable. Jon melded against his assistant, looping his arms loosely around Tim’s waist while he tipped his head against his shoulder and let his twisted-up bones and sinew go slack against the radiantly warm aegis of him. His shirt was screamingly loud and his hair was freshly pink and he always smelled crisp and free and wild, like a sea breeze on a sun-soaked twilight. Jon liked the way he smelled, and the self-assured posture of his broad shoulders and the heartening solidness of a body meant to be shirtless as often as possible holding him so secure in the humming powerlines of his care. Just to be touched was a visceral melody of nerve endings and synapses, to be touched by him was a blinding symphony of electric light and sound perfectly in tune to the aria of his core where so few dared to go.
“Not so awful right?” Tim teased, squeezing his affected knee with care.
“Get on with it, Stoker,” Jon murmured languidly into the crook of his neck.
“Ohoh, last name now. I’m on real thin ice, aren’t I?” he chortled in reply, pads of his fingers feeling out the ridge of a patella and skating down his calf.
Jon winced, opening one eye to glance guiltily up at the ever-chipper mien of Tim.
“I-“ he stuttered, his protest melting into a sigh, “No, you’re not. I’m sorry. You’re being helpful and I’m being an ass.”
“Mmm, that’s a smidge hyperbolic. You’re being snappish because you got caught being naughty, and you’re in pain, and you also got caught being in pain, which is probably the worst offense out of all of them.”
“I suppose…” Jon conceded, closing his eye and letting his body go slack again.
“Okay to roll your cuff up? Or would you prefer trouser leg down?”
“You can roll it up, I don’t mind.”
Tim promptly, neatly, folded the cuff of Jon’s trousers up only to just above the knee, baring the cratered mares of his leg. His fingers felt them out, felt the places where the worms bored holes in him that had forgotten which way to mend and pulled and tugged in a confused riot of fibrous muscle and scar tissue, and rolled through them with slow, deliberate tenderness. Jon hissed softly in pain, but Tim’s fingers knew the weft and trail of his muscles, and he squeezed and massaged and tilled them with expert care. Unhurriedly, painstakingly, Jon’s knee unlocked, and it bowed gratefully outward with the sigh of relief into a Hawaiian print collar.
“You’re allowed to hurt you know,” Tim whispered at length, fingers just stroking idly now.
“Everyone’s allowed to hurt,” Jon replied automatically, “It’s only that those of us who can bear it have the duty to do so for those who can’t.”
Tim chewed his lip in the wake of that, weighing his feelings against his words carefully.
“And what god decides who is who?”
Only silence from the clinging, boneless and wounded creature in his lap.
“I’m just saying. I was right there with you, the same thing happened to me, so maybe share a little of this one, hmm?” he tried again, nudging at Jon’s temple with the tip of his nose, letting the silvered chestnut hairs tickle.
The strings of Jon’s body wound taut again around Tim’s fingers still tracing blind patterns on his shin, and he glanced up, daring to ensnare his irises only for a moment.
“I’ll try.”
A soft, breathless laugh whisked past Tim’s lips as he shook his head fondly.
“I guess that’s the best I’m going to get out of the high and mighty head archivist,” he huffed, “But I’ll take it. Now, where can I kiss it all better for you?”
It took Jon a full cycle of pouting, scowling, and digging vengeful fingers into Tim’s back before he could conjure an answer.
“Forehead, please.”
“You got it.”
Jon ducked his head to receive Tim’s lips pressed against his creased brow, and while he knew he bore a burden too great to be carried away with velvet kisses and frank words, for a moment at least he could feel just a bit lighter.
Warm and sunny because I’m a plant (I could never understand you winter lovers out there)
43. hoodie, leather jacket, cardigan, jean jacket or bomber jacket?
Okay, this is a very TRICKY one because it’s like the ultimate gay type guide and I literally CANNOT CHOOSE HSGFGFSDD
I’m gonna go with a mix of hoodie+jean jacket because it’s one of my fav combinations and it is, indeed, very gay
61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?
oof, another hard one. That’s literally an ocean of possibilities!!! Wish I was lucid enough to remember something from some prominent author, but I think How to Train your Dragon is pretty timeless and very touching:
“Why didn’t you kill him [the dragon]?”
“I wouldn't kill him because he looked as frightened as I was. I looked at him and I saw myself”
I got more cards! Thank you @thedoctorofsteel @perfectlyrose for the cards and thank you @wordsintimeandspace for the card/fic!! I sat on my couch totally giddy and ignoring my cat 😏😏😏