#<- the name of the series

[thetomorrowshow]

when you had nothing to say

CHAPTER 3

uhhh if this is the first one you see it's a fic in which the world where the evolutionists all started on descended into war. after fighting in the war for several years, they fled to evo together. this fic is a 5+1 about 5 times that someone found out Jimmy was Deaf and 1 time he was accommodated :)

cw: internalized ableism

~

Jimmy wakes up in bed, gasping for stolen breath.

He’s still shaking from that death, his heart beating too fast. How had that—he’d thought it would be safe to touch, he hadn’t thought—

He checks his communicator.

Ren and Skizz down, too.

How much of an idiot—?

Jimmy messages an apology into chat, tries to shake off the feeling of exploding. It’s one of his least favorite ways to die, getting blown into bits all over the place. Even on worlds like these, where they respawn. He hates tnt.

Jimmy sits on his bed for too long, probably, just trying to catch his breath after such an intense end. He didn’t like that. Holy moly, he didn’t like that at all.

Get up, he tells himself. Come on, get up, go do something.

He doesn’t.

It’s too overwhelming, is all. He’s fine, he’s fine, he just needs a minute to sort himself out before he can bear to leave this room. He needs a minute to gather his thoughts, blown apart by the explosion just like his body—

A minute grows into two, into three, into. . . .

He isn’t sure how long he sits there, but soon enough, his door opens, and Scott, Grian, and Scar file in.

Jimmy straightens, trying to look like he hadn’t just been staring into space, limbs trembling and mind flashing through with memories. They don’t seem to notice, judging by the lack of anything but gleeful pity on their faces. Good.

Grian’s mouth moves, his voice muffled and near-silent. Jimmy frowns—he hadn’t even realized his hearing aids weren’t on. He clicks on the power on the left piece, then the right—but the right one pops painfully and he hisses, turning it back off.

He takes it out, turns it this way and that. It looks okay—he turns it on in his hand and it sparks once, but otherwise seems fine.

Jimmy carefully fits the hearing aid back in his ear, then looks up. All three of his friends are watching him, and Grian raises his eyebrows.

“All good?” he asks, but Jimmy doesn’t hear it.

He clicks off the left one again, panic sprouting in his chest. They can’t be broken. They can’t, they just can’t, he can’t afford another pair—

Turning the left one back on doesn’t do anything, though. Turning off and on the right one doesn’t do anything but make it spark again.

“My hearing aids are broken,” he manages, his throat tightening. “I—I don’t have spares. The explosion—”

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening! He’s been exploded loads of times, why did this one break his hearing aids?

Grian’s shoulders slump; Scott won’t stop staring at his ears. Grian takes his communicator out of his pocket, types out a message. A moment later, Jimmy’s own communicator vibrates on his hip.

Sorry, I don’t remember any sign. Do you need to drop out of the game?

“I can keep playing,” he says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I’ve been deaf for a long time, I—I know how to deal with it. I just . . . being able to hear is helpful.”

Grian fixes him with a sympathetic expression. Scar wheels himself over, squeezes Jimmy’s hand.

“You’ve got this,” he says. “All you . . . okay?”

“I missed most of that.”

Scar just squeezes his hand again.

When Grian and Scar leave, Grian with promises to help pay for a new pair, Scott comes over to Jimmy’s bed and sits beside him, typing out a message on his communicator.

I didn’t know that you’re deaf.

“I don’t really hide it,” says Jimmy. “I don’t go around shouting about it, but it isn’t a secret.”

Why didn’t you tell me?

Absentmindedly, to help gather his thoughts in a quiet world, Jimmy starts to sign as he speaks. “Never came up, I guess. I just assume people already know—but now that I think about it—”

He considers it for a moment.

“Um, now you know,” he counts off his fingers. “Grian, Scar, Martyn, BigB. I think that’s it, though.”

Had he really told so few people?

It isn’t quite the truth, really, that it never came up. There were plenty of opportunities over the past weeks to talk about his hearing loss, to explain why sometimes he asked Scott to repeat himself multiple times, or why he usually didn’t hear calls of his name.

He avoided it, though, even if he didn’t have a real reason to. Did he need a reason to not give others a weakness to exploit? Did he need a reason to let others know this truly vulnerable part of himself?

It explains your lisp.

“I have a lisp?” Jimmy exclaims. Grian had always told him he was perfectly understandable, and Martyn didn’t say anything, and nobody else has ever seemed to realize that he was deaf.

It’s not bad, you just kind of over-do the s sound.

He never even knew. That’s so—that’s so weird! He’s had a lisp, apparently, and no one told him.

“That’s so weird,” he says, fidgeting a bit with the torn hem of his shirt. “But—erm, I’ll probably be a pretty useless ally, now. Sorry, you’re on your own.”

He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to be alone in this, when he can’t hear a thing in a world full of hearing people. It’s lonely, so dreadfully lonely, and it always has been. He doesn’t want to go back to that. He never wanted to.

He refuses to drag Scott down any more than he already has, though.

“You can use my house as storage, or something,” Jimmy says, though he still can’t quite find it within himself to get up. “I’ll be out of here by the end of the day.”

Maybe Scar and Grian will take him in? To use as bait, if nothing else. Grian knows how to be a good friend, anyhow—he’s been in circles where people just have no clue how to treat a Deaf person and just end up ignoring them. Grian’s heard Jimmy rant about far too many times to let it happen. Otherwise, he’d prefer being on his own.

Scott taps him on the arm, and Jimmy pulls himself out of his thoughts of the desert and isolation to look at his communicator, held in front of his face.

What are you talking about?

Jimmy doesn’t have an answer for that. He thought it was pretty clear.

He shrugs. Scott types something else out.

You’re staying. You’re my flower husband, I’m not just going to leave you.

Oh.

Jimmy doesn’t expect help. He doesn’t expect that everyone should be forced to work to make things easier for him, when it’s already fine for everybody else. They shouldn’t have to make exceptions just for him.

But Scott . . . Scott doesn’t care?

Scott’s already sitting beside Jimmy, but now he wraps his arm around him, presses gently on his shoulder until Jimmy lets his head fall onto Scott’s chest. It’s—it’s—

It’s warm, is what it is. Warm, and a little bit gritty with dirt but soft, and Scott smells like sweat and gunpowder and flowers, and his chest is vibrating under Jimmy’s temple as he speaks, and Jimmy. . . .

It’s really nice after the shellshock of the explosion, is all. Jimmy doesn’t think he can be blamed when a tear slips from the corner of his eye.

Scott lets him sit there as long as he likes, and it’s just really nice. He finds stability, he thinks, so that his weakest parts can stitch themselves together again after the disaster of today.

Geez, he can’t believe he died twice. . . .

“Guess we’d better get to work,” Jimmy finally says, after what is definitely way too much time of hugging Scott. “Erm, I can lip read all right? But I need you right in front of me and talking loudly. Otherwise, you can just message me.”

Scott lets Jimmy sit up, then helps him to stand, taking his hands in his own. Looking Jimmy square in the face, he speaks, loud enough that Jimmy can match some of the quiet sounds to the movements of his mouth.

“We’ve got this.”

Jimmy tries (and fails) to suppress his smile. “Yeah, we do,” he agrees. “We’ve got this.”

[yuttikkele]

hey gamers I’ve started watching star trek does anyone else see the romantic tension between captain kirk and mr. spock

[jojaxcola]

dads trash talk at the egg festival

[duskmite]

anyone else, regardless of the billie piper of it all, really fucking upset that ncuti gatwa isn't the doctor anymore

he was SUCH a good one. SO good. we had nowhere NEAR enough time with him with two short ass series.

[catmask]

SNAPDEX REPORT: WEEK 1

actually, i guess nows as good a time as any. heres all my pokemon warmups from the past 9 days! i wonder how long i can keep going

[orions-aether]

eastern european haunted emily axford pc, transfem daughter of libertarians ally beardsley pc, spot on pub representation grizzled old british lady siobhan thompson pc, nasty old gun guy zac oyama pc, posh boy brian murphy pc, famous explorer with a book series that really falls off lou wilson pc we're fucking eating this season my god

[starcrossedandstupid]

This is what true love is. Just btw

[feyresdandelion]

“remember Peeta can camouflage himself because he’s a baker” said with a mocking tone makes me so mad because they completely misunderstand why he’s able to camouflage and why decorating cakes is mentioned in that context. Peeta was poor, a different kind of poor from the seam, but poor nonetheless. he didn’t have money for paints nor canvases. he is an artist, he creates, he uses his paintings after the first hunger games as his therapy. he loves painting, so he used whatever was available to him to show his artist soul. he was able to decorate cakes and pastries as if they were canvases because they were going to gain a profit from it, but I’m certain that in his free time he probably used the elements to draw and paint, these being water and mud and flowers and whatever he could find. plus he received official training the days before the games.

please learn how to read, stop skimming through pages to fulfil your yearly quota of books read.

[aphel1on]

i have such a love for characters who descend into madness or villainy out of deep, deep empathy. characters who fundamentally cannot cope with the cruel realities they find themselves in and blow up about it in spectacular fashion. fallen angel type characters with tears of outrage in their eyes. characters who break before they bend, and break so badly they splatter blood all over their noble ideals. every variation on it gets me so good

[motherofplatypus]

[yeoldenews]

Yet another selection of some of the better names I've come across in Regency era newspapers recently.

[thirdtimed]

missing her

[mayonaizs]

2 losers begging for sugarcane

[syneester]

favorite duo this season

[150en]

Co op harvesting Creaking hearts was the coolest thing ever, it felt like a totally different game.