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[shipmuffs]

Thomas Hart - Yellowjackets OC

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Witty. Protective. Romantic.

"I've never needed anyone like I need her right now. Laura Lee's gone. Jackie's gone. I killed them both. My life is hanging by a thread. And right when I thought everything could be okay, when I thought I had something beautiful and real... It dies. It dies, and I'm not even there to see it. I can't stop thinking about it. How much of it was real? How much did I just... Make up? I don't know if I can be with her anymore, but I know I can't be without her. Fuck, Mari. I love Shauna. I really do. But she'll be the end of me."

Doomed from the start.

† 9th February 1979 - ??? December 1997 †

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Background Info

Face claim is Thomas Mann, known for Project X, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and dating Courtney Eaton! Go watch Parachute, they're both amazing in it.

Thomas lives with an overbearing father and a depressed mother; unfortunately, he tends to take more from the former. He has an older sister, Sheryl, who moved out after a heated argument with their father about her shitty, inappropriately older boyfriend.

Thomas tended to be something of a chatterbox in his younger years, but a few key incidents of being called ‘annoying’ rendered him somewhat quiet by the time he was a teenager, with a pathological need to only speak when he has something worth saying. He's a great listener and does so more than he does talk, which can be strange to some and a dream for others.

When he does speak, much of what he says takes the form of well-meaning advice, quips about the people and events around him, sarcastic humour, or infodumping about any number of books he's read. The last tends to be reserved for those who appreciate it, namely Shauna, for whom discussion of the written word is one of the select things he offers in a bestie that Jackie doesn't. Her tastes for literature and non-fiction tends to clash with his for Stephen King and Dean Koontz, but that only further fuels their arguments.

Thanks to his mother's depression (something he saw all the signs for but never knew to put together) and the incident with his sister, Thomas has an impulsive urge to be protective of the women in his life. It's something he doesn't exactly know how to turn off, to the point where it can become patronizing or possessive, but he has enough sense that it mostly manifests as excellent advice-giving. In normalcy, anyway. In the wilderness is another story...

Paradoxically, for a man who’s helped out so many relationships, he's never had one himself. He's not completely without experience, but to most outside observers, the closest he's had to a having a girlfriend is being Jackie's lapdog.

Main Relationships

🎉 Jackie 💖 As his first big crush and just about the coolest, nicest girl he's ever known, Thomas is utterly enamored with Jackie and can hardly believe she's one of his best friends. First meeting her and Shauna at a house party, he earned her friendship with a display of emotional intelligence that helped fix a spat between her and Jeff. Kept closer than almost anyone yet held frustratingly at arm's length, he and his other best friend knew that feeling of far-away longing all too well. That longing would mutate into something terrible in the wilderness, making him and Shauna take out their frustrations on their shared bestie in ways she could hardly comprehend. By the time he realised his mistake, she's already dead. He keeps a gold ribbon from her personal collection in her memory, eventually tying up his hair with it when it grows long.

💔 Shauna🔪 When it comes to best friends, Shauna makes so much more sense. Their shared artsy tastes and dry, sometimes edgy humor made them a natural pair. Despite obvious attraction, their mutual love for Jackie always kept them apart, too in love with their friend to go anywhere with each other. But as Jackie breaks down in the wilderness, Thomas and Shauna find a new closeness that feeds each other's worst behaviours until something horrible happens. After Jackie's death and winter comes, he doubles down on Shauna in his grief, swearing to look after her in her misery and care for Jeff's baby. A strange, fucked up romance brews... Until Shauna buries the baby alone, and he realises their love was immensely one-sided. Shauna still loves Jackie, and her affection for him is merely the leftover dregs. He stays with her out of obligation until the summer, when a brutal argument finally ends them for good. Or does it? Even as they both see other people, the immeasurable bond between them can't stay ignored for long...

🎀 Laura Lee 🧸 Luckily for Thomas, and his mental health, not all of his relationships are so chaotic. A simple friendship is all he has with Laura Lee, dating back to when he first met her at Sunday School when they were only five years old. Despite him not staying long and them not reconnecting until high school, Thomas and her have a very cutesy bond that's as straightforward as it is ironclad. They playfully refer to each other as husband and wife, a throwback to a story from their childhoods about how they'd start and end every Sunday with a hug, and bicker incessantly in between 'just like a married couple' according to their parents. Her death, something he tried to prevent, utterly shatters him and contributes to his unstable emotional state.

🧨 Mari 😡 Thomas never expected resident class clown and occasional team punching bag Mari to ever be more than a nuisance, especially when Shauna became one of her frequent targets. But as the two are picked as backup hunters, the long time spent alone together begins to unearth new facets of her that Thomas never knew existed. While they don't get much farther than a begrudging acquaintanceship in the winter, his breakup with Shauna and her trauma at the hands of Ben and the trial lead to an oddly wholesome couple. But what started as a rebound, and became a relationship, can only end in regret...

Story Overview

Season 1

As a member of the then recently formed WHS AV Club, Thomas was enlisted by the school to take photos of the Yellowjackets soccer team. Those pictures in the awards cabinet? That's him! This job, combined with his existing friendships with Jackie, Shauna and Laura Lee, led to him getting to know the team better, even being invited out with them on Jackie's insistence. Later on he began filming some of their more important games, which naturally led to him accompanying the Yellowjackets on their trip to Seattle for the nationals.

After the crash, the relationship between Thomas, Jackie and Shauna deepened as much as it was strained. During both leisure time and chores, it wasn’t uncommon to see Jackie and Shauna, or Thomas and Shauna, or Jackie and Thomas, even moreso than all three were together. Thomas tended to spend more time around the cabin with Jackie, often helping out with her chores. She began to lean on him more and more, growing more physically affectionate as well as turning to him increasingly during problems or conversations - even ones that she previously would have defaulted to Shauna for.

Despite this growing closeness, tender moments with Jackie became a frustrating back and forth game for the increasingly lovesick Thomas. He knew Jackie wore her heart on her sleeve, but her closeness was weighing heavy on his crush. He would eventually confess to feeling ‘used’ by her to Shauna, who surprised him by admitting the same. From that moment, a subtle but sizable shift began to ripple through the trio. Thomas and Shauna began spending more and more time together, trying to take away the power Jackie had over them. Jackie was, naturally, entirely unaware of this ‘power’ and any attempts to wrest it from her, only leading to moments of seemingly random exclusion or dismissal from her two best friends.

Conversely, most of Thomas' time spent with Shauna was away from the camp. They liked their alone time, and for once it wasn’t because they were hiding it from Jackie; they would openly return from the forest or the lake where she could see, which prompted either excitement or empty-eyed stares from their friend, depending on her mood. Sitting by the lakeside, trekking down to the river or sitting on the roots of some of the most enormous trees the forest had to offer, Shauna and Thomas tended to be less physically close but more emotionally open. He was a good listener, giving Shauna an avenue to vent thoughts and feelings she otherwise tried her best to hide around the rest of the team, particularly Jackie.

Thomas fought desperately for Laura Lee to abandon her insane plans to fly the plane to safety, even barring her from the door of the plane in a last ditch effort to dissuade her. The enthusiasm of the other Yellowjackets and her gentle reassurance was enough to make him fold, and he let her pass. He would never forgive himself for not fighting harder.

Thomas found out about Shauna's baby at the same time Jackie did, but it wasn't until well after Laura Lee's death that he, still stricken with guilt and mourning, finally confronted her for the truth. He was aghast to find out it was Jeff's, but kept the secret from Jackie regardless, most concerned for Shauna's wellbeing.

At the Doomcoming, it was Thomas that Jackie chose to take back to the cabin. When the rest of the Yellowjackets came looking for the two of them, she hid him upstairs and lied about his whereabouts. Still wanting to teach Jackie a lesson, they locked her in the cabin and proceeded with the sacrifice with Travis.

When Jackie and Shauna had their explosive fight over the reveal of Shauna sleeping with Jeff, a grieving Thomas, still reeling from the intense emotions of the previous night, took Shauna's side. He accused Jackie of being neglectful of their feelings, insisting that he never wanted something as meaningless as a rebound with her. He stood firm by Shauna's side as Jackie left the cabin, assuring Shauna that everything would work itself out.

The next morning, while Shauna wailed herself into manic exhaustion, Thomas could only stare in stunned silence. The extent of his misery was only seen later that afternoon, when Nat found him out in the snow, sobbing into a frozen tree.

Season 2

Desperate to not make the same mistake twice, Thomas doubled down on looking out for Shauna, even when she rarely reciprocated it. He refused to venture down to the meat shed himself, but fiercely defended Shauna spending as much time down there as she did. He even stood up for her when it was discovered what she was doing to Jackie's body, though he was clearly shaken by it. Nevertheless, Thomas and Shauna made out all through the feast, their emotions running hot and bodies running wild.

At Shauna's baby shower, Thomas made the excited announcement that he and Shauna were together, and that he promised to look after not just her, but the baby as well. The child may have been Jeff's, he said, but he would treat it like it was his own. None of this had been talked about with Shauna prior, and the surprise was noticed by more than one Yellowjacket. Shauna still went with it, thanking him for being there for her. His obsessiveness over her multiplied tenfold after that, with copious amounts of care, protection and PDA following Shauna all through her pregnancy.

Despite Lottie trying to draw him over to her side, inviting him to her prayer sessions and assuring him that the wilderness had plans for all of them, he remained staunchly against the growing spiritualism in the cabin. While his rationalist mind was being tested by some of the extraordinary coincidences happening around him, Shauna staunchly objecting to them decided his opinion for him. If Shauna wasn't culty, neither was Thomas.

The peak of their relationship came, ironically, during one of their darkest moments. Shauna's birth was a horrific few hours, through which Thomas did everything he could to calm her. He angrily yelled at many of the Yellowjackets as they began to pray with Lottie, the woman who had already been speaking to a strange ownership of the baby. Shauna's gratitude for him shone through her pain, but in the end, it wasn't enough.

In the wake of the death of 'their' baby, Thomas tried to be there for Shauna, but her catatonic headspace and a hard talking to from Tai made him give her some space. The first time he let her out of his sight, something happened that shocked him to his core: Shauna buried the baby out in the snow, on her own, in a place he didn't know. His image of their relationship was shattered as he realised Shauna had never reciprocated what he had assumed she felt for him. He sunk into an even deeper depression, questioning what parts of his relationship with Shauna were real and which had been wishful thinking.

Sometime later, with Travis sticking by Javi and Nat trying to hold the cabin together, Thomas and Mari went hunting in their stead. Mari lightly teased him in her usual manner, having picked up on the stormy air between him and Shauna. When he reacted harshly, she defended herself by reluctantly admitting she was concerned for him, and that sticking with Shauna wasn't going to go well. He spurned her advice, desperately venting to her about how much he needed Shauna. The pair spent the rest of the hunt in silence.

Despite this perceived betrayal, Thomas kept his feelings from Shauna and continued to stay by her side. With Lottie's spiritual influence growing stronger in the cabin, he would stick to his word and keep himself seperate from it, if only so Shauna had someone she could trust wasn't going crazy.

The wilderness still finds a way to get to him. He visited the meat shed for the first time and had a vision of Jackie, who told him that he had to let the wilderness into his heart, or else he was just 'a scared little boy hallucinating in the woods'. The memory came back to him during the Nat's hunt, when he tried to listen to the woods to guide the Yellowjackets to her whereabouts. After the hunt went catastrophically wrong, Thomas was resigned to staying by Shauna's side as she butchered Javi.

This season needs a major update... Rewatching soon!

Season 3

Thomas stayed with Shauna all the way until the beginning of summer, still caring for her too much to leave her. The morning after the Summer Solstice Festival, where Shauna had been confined to their hut, Thomas went on a walk down to the lake on his own. When he returned, a paranoid Shauna accused him of going down there to visit Laura Lee, an act dangerously close to the wilderness worship Shauna was railing against. The two fought, with both Laura Lee and Jackie's names being thrown about and Thomas confessing to the feelings that had plagued him in the winter. Before the argument could get too heated, he finally gathered his things and left. Without a clear place to go, he ended up bunking in with Mari and Akilah, which would later become his permanent hut.

Unbeknownst to Thomas, he made an appearance in Shauna, Akilah and Van’s cave visions. When they hallucinated themselves in the classroom, Thomas sat among the students but was focused on schoolwork. When the other students disappeared as Jackie attacked Shauna, Thomas stopped writing but did not help or even acknowledge her.

Thomas went into Ben's trial being unsure about how the cabin fire might have started, and neutral on the idea of it being Ben, but his pleas won him over and he voted not guilty, even after Shauna threatened many of the other Yellowjackets into switching their votes. While he managed to get in between Shauna and Melissa, spooking her out of stopping Gen from abstaining, Shauna's turned votes won out.

That night, after Shauna and Melissa disfigured Ben, Shauna made a public show out of taking her new girlfriend back into her hut, even making eye contact with Thomas before she disappeared inside. Angered, Thomas asked Mari if she wanted to join him in 'a completely emotionless rebound that’s going to piss a bunch of people off'. After he confirmed one of them was Shauna, the two headed off into the woods together.

To the surprise of everyone, the two of them included, Thomas and Mari made a great couple. She had been shaken badly by the ordeal with Ben, both the kidnapping and his near execution, things Thomas helped her through. By the time she was back to her usual energetic self,  the two had formed a strangely symbiotic relationship. Thomas was something of a guiding hand for Mari, keeping her out of trouble while encouraging her antics when they were more appropriate and less inflammatory. At the same time being with the brazenly bratty Mari was something of a chore had Thomas acting alert and responsible at all times… A feeling he’d always had with Shauna, and that he’d come to oddly miss without her. His plan to make Shauna jealous never really came to fruition, at least as far as he knew, but he no longer cared.

On the night that the froggers discovered the Yellowjackets' camp, Thomas stayed behind to help Melissa, knowing that Mari, Gen and Robin weren't going to be much help. Melissa was initially shocked to see him helping and calming her, but the pain of Kodiak's crossbow bolt melted any bad blood between the two. By the time the chasing Yellowjackets returned to camp, Melissa's wound had been covered with strips of his torn shirt, and both her and Thomas just stared at Shauna with Gen and Mari clutching them.

Other Relationships

💀 Nat 💉 Thomas and Nat got off on the wrong foot, both before and after the crash. A case of thoughtfulness mistaken for flirting ended with a sour taste for Thomas left in Nat's mouth, which wasn't helped by him always taking Jackie's side when Nat and her got into arguments around the cabin. That being said, neither of these spats really mattered. By the winter, Thomas saw Nat as the glue holding the cabin together that she was, and Nat had seen more than enough of how much he truly cared for and wanted to help the Yellowjackets. Nat's might as a leader is only further proven as she leads the team into the summer, something he respects and recognises her for.

🦌 Lottie 🙏 In another life, Lottie might have been a girl Thomas admired the same way he did Jackie. Instead, every passing month in the wilderness makes him resent her more. He sees her rituals as barbaric and her proselytizing as useless, and as her influence among the team spreads, so does his need to prove to Shauna that he's nothing like her. There's only one thing he dislikes more than Lottie… And it's how right she is. Thomas can't ignore the coincidences, can't look away from the truth, and as his mind continues to slip, Lottie's way looks more and more attractive.

🤠 Melissa 💢 Melissa held the proud title of ‘the girl with the hat Gen is always yapping to’ for multiple years before she exploded into the forefront of his life. Despite turning out to be an even brattier version of his callous and sadistic ex-girlfriend, Thomas mostly feels pity for her, somewhat proudly believing that only he knows how to handle Shauna. He keeps an eye out for her, taking what opportunities he can to help her out, though to say he has no resentment for her relationship with Shauna would be a lie.

🤭 Gen 📣 When she's not with Melissa, Gen and Mari would often team up for their peacocking and mocking, something Thomas has been on the receiving end of more than once. Unlike Mari, who one can fluster enough to make it worth shooting back, Gen’s venomous personality is something Thomas usually tries to just not deal with.

🤡 Misty 👓 Misty plays a frustrating back and forth game with Thomas. As equipment manager she often crossed paths with him before games and on the sidelines, meaning by the time they landed in the wilderness he had least had a passing interest in her wellbeing. She's continually strained said goodwill with her antics and forced proximity to the point where while Thomas pities her for the way she's treated, he wouldn't complain too much if she disappeared one day.

🤝 Taissa 🥾 Thomas doesn't have much of a relationship at all with Taissa, but their shared concern for Shauna in her lowest moments has led them to find occasional support in each other. It's partially thanks to each other that they could stay strong in the face of Shauna's pregnancy and birth, and such a boon is not so easily forgotten.

🎬 Van 🐺 Thomas and Van don't have anything going on between them deeper than surface level, but similar humour and tastes for trashy media means the two of them have had plenty of good times together. If there's anyone he can trust to relax around, especially with Laura Lee gone, it's Van.

🐇 Akilah 💐 Akilah is another girl that mostly escaped Thomas’ notice throughout school and even through the first year in the wilderness, but as she began to take a more active role around camp he grew to appreciate her contributions. He doesn't go out of his way to interact with her, especially once Lottie starts circling her, but he'll at least keep an eye out from afar.

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An already too lengthy overview of Thomas as he's currently written, Season 3 still obviously a work in progress as the season goes on. There's a lot more squirreled away elsewhere but this hits most of the major story beats. Hope you enjoyed and thank you for reading!