#✎ . . VINCE WALKER — ❛❛ cool. ethereal. thermostat controlled. it's a/c by vince ❞ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pseudoneiiric · 2 years

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@deathwis / @e1dest asked:

it's late by the time he gets off, always pushing his hours until something else comes up ; or when the overtime pay ain't cuttin' it. at least that's how it used to be, how it mostly is, though he can't deny that there's other reasons now. ones tangled and knotted within the old ones, completely inseparable despite his worn but honest efforts. his hands are scratched by it, bitten and pinched rough in areas they weren't before 'cause of the damn split-end ropes he's been dealt with. but he can't do nothin' except endure it -- so that's what he does. quiet on the sites he's sent to and falling into simple rhythms : feeling the stretch of muscle in his arm that flexes with hammering, a sun that doesn't compare to arizona's beating on his back, with the rays soaking into the white of his shirt, and the occasional rustle of his tool belt when he's gotta twist a certain way to reach for something. it's things he's spent decades getting familiar with, yet the issue is that now there's a new beat trying to wiggle in where it don't belong. jamming into the middle and screwing everything up, disrupting any workflow. it's … kinda in his stomach, he thinks, this incessant pull. this ache that tumbles down his arched back. the sensation has even managed to shoot straight into his bad leg! tyler ain't stressed and he isn't cold, so having that already risky prone limb randomly hurt and seize up is stupid. feels that tightly stretched pain fresh in his heart too, like he's half a minute away from kneeling over. he hasn't exactly figured out what it is, though it's similar to something he's felt before, so he's got some notion.

the door opens easily enough, tyler making it in with little trouble ; the sharp flick of his wrist to turn the key practically routine at this point. there's still a pause between him slipping said brass key into his jean pocket, but the holt doesn't waste time on it. knows he'll get the hang of it eventually. so he enters the place ( his place ) with no greeting on his tongue, quick to toss his hard hat on the closest surface and make his way to the bedroom. blue eyes don't linger on the area like they normally do, having darted towards the hall the second he stepped foot within plaster-covered walls. every step makes him feel that smothering nothingness in his belly tenfold, growing -- or is it slowly easing? all he can really understand is that the presence expands more obviously inside, raking gently along acid lining and making his rib cage shudder. rocking bones within, making tyler's towering posture sway ever so slightly. it doesn't take long to stand before the bedroom, the door slightly ajar, a fact that still prods at his chest each time he's confronted with it. remembering all too well how it would be completely shut and locked and then … this happened. cheeks burn slightly at the drifting thought and he abruptly leaves it unfinished, foundation always laid but never furnished. settles to open the door with a gentle, short push of his dusted palm ; not stepping back when the wood nudges forth with no fanfare. there's no loud noise of it slamming against the barely dented wall that's built around it, no screeching creak of rusted hinges ( tyler regrets fixing that, it'd be easier to hear anyone comin' that way ) … it just opens. and leaves enough room for the younger to slip in, even when it begins swiveling back to its proper place.

he shouldn'ta come in yet. still needs to change clothes and shower so he doesn't drag any chippings, mulch, or anythin' else that's too jagged into layered carpet. but the second he arrives beside the bed that dumb heartache floats right into grasping fingers, rational mind hazed over with something that outweighs any logic or self-consciousness. the very strings slicing through his stomach guide him to hover close, situated right above vince like he's an inch away from the decision of whether to suffocate him or not. hand stopping right before a peaceful face, fingertips trembling with the force of that action, and tyler pinches his lips and sighs through his nose, the noise more of a huff because of it. he takes a stolen second to think of orange and beige blending together, how coarse fibers would brush against his skin, before he redirects his arm towards the other man's shoulder. molding it beneath his hand and his chest compressing with the sturdiness he finds there. greedy grip tightens, and then tyler gives vince a rough shake. “hey.”

there's a softness that pushes at the edges of his scruffy chin, eating away at the exhaustion that lives permanently on tyler's face. shadows intense eyes with a want that makes the corners smoother, bags ebbing. the second he gives vince another aggressive shake to wake him, however, that's all hidden behind wooden beams and concrete. expression hardening once again into a slightly irritated, tired look. when the same shade of blue meets his gaze, he grunts, pushing past the rush of uncomfortable fondness that leaps up his throat at the sight. “move over. that's my spot.” it wasn't up for debate that tyler would sleep on the side closest to the door. after all, one of them had to play it smart. yet as he ghosts in place he begins losing that nervous jitter in his body, and he doesn't gotta be a professor to know why. ears flare with the realization, a sudden shyness dipping into his slumping shoulders. as he waits for vince to come to, tyler awkwardly looks away, and his heart isn't any better for it ; not when it's stabbed with that ache again.

there’s a bone-deep exhaustion that follows vince most places, one he valiantly tries to ignore for the sake of getting out of bed most mornings. michelle was never exactly patient with that sort of thing, and he never could blame her for that. she married him wanting someone ... who could care for her. provide for her. start a family with her and be her companion. and vince tries his hardest to be those things, tries to ignore the viscous smear somewhere deep in his chest and settling murky in his belly that reminds him how much it takes out of him. how bad that accident at the airline had been for him. it doesn’t help that this very black spot had driven her out of the very same bed he’s sleeping in now, moved from sacramento to st. louis with only a couple scratches to show for it. he recalls waiting up at night, cozy in bed with reading glasses on as he pores over a romance novel michelle had been reading, one he’d been sneaking peeks at too when she was gone. he knows she probably wouldn’t have minded him borrowing it, reading it... but back then, he had always been testy around her, worrying about how he might fail her next. a suspicion that proved right, when he heard the keys in the door and he hastily turned the lamp off, placing the book back on the bedside table and his glasses somewhere nearby, holding his breath because he didn’t want her to know how worried he’d been. he could see the light click on behind his closed eyelids, hear her humming pleasantly, smell the wine and perfume on her.

staying up late for tyler, though vince doesn’t want to admit it, feels much the same. though he knows that tyler doesn’t have many options, what with him being one of america’s most famous fugitives, vince can’t shake the paranoid imaginings. tyler taking overtime so he can chat with one of his coworkers... a really tall, handsome guy, built and slender. vince squeezes his eyes shut and refocuses when the mystery man ends up looking like tyler’s twin, imagining instead someone a little older — tyler likes older, he thinks sourly — maybe a manager or something, someone that can bend him over the desk and make him choke on his own moans.

vince squeezes his eyes shut, tries to chase the thoughts away and tell himself tyler would never risk it. but he can’t help but turn the bedside lamp on, rolling onto the other side at the scattered clothes on the floor. mostly his own, since tyler’s always been neater than him. his gaze falls on the hamper, and he hesitates. is it... weird, to smell your boyfriend’s clothes because you're scared he’s having an affair even though he’s probably just working overtime? his toes flex, and he braces himself for his bare feet to touch carpet. goes to rifle in their stuff until he finds a shirt he likes, burying his nose in the fabric and taking in a long breath. it smells like him, earthy and reliable. vince can’t help but feel that longing lance up in him, and he wants to drop the shirt back in the hamper out of reflex, but he doesn’t. can’t. it takes him a while to be able to wrench it out of his hands, chiding himself all the while for the bad idea. way to make himself miss tyler more! making his mind whir and wander, wondering who could be smelling that woodsy scent on his boyfriend right now. with a beleaguered sigh, vince clambers back into bed and clicks the lamp off. tries to still his breathing enough to will himself to sleep.

next thing he knows, there’s a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. “huh?” murmurs vince, blearily looking up at the intruder. he doesn’t remember what’s going on for a solid minute, blinking until he can finally muster up a, “tyler?” there’s a warmth that blooms in his chest then, one hand fisting into the sheets like he’s imagining it’s tyler’s shoulder. “what time is it?” it’s only then that vince realizes what tyler’s asking of him, and he awkwardly shuffles back over to his side of the bed. still, his hand is poised over the covers, waiting for tyler to come on in so he can wrap both of them up.

#deathwis #e1dest #answered.#✎ . . VINCE WALKER — ❛❛ cool. ethereal. thermostat controlled. it's a/c by vince ❞#okay this isn't proofread but i was thinking a lot about late night v/ince and im like. this is what he's like! he's lonely #anyway i hope you enjoyed. batsmirk moment

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pseudoneiiric · 2 years

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i was talking the other day about how i should write a meta about how vince sees himself, and while i was taking the bus home today i was thinking about it. and it kind of hit me that vince is a really difficult character to nail down writing-wise. like i mentioned this in a voice note a while back, but vince just isn’t tropey. you can’t really assign him tropes and kind of write from that trope, because he doesn’t really fit any trope at all. he’s not entirely the self-sacrificing type, not entirely a doormat, not entirely a fighter, not entirely the fat loser, not entirely an athletic wrestler, not entirely an academic type... and so on. there’s just a lot of complexities to vince that make it hard to kind of get his voice down.

like, here’s an example. we can kind of see through vince’s dialogue that he doesn’t like himself very much. he feels insecure about his size, he doesn’t consider himself to be intelligent, and he pretty regularly hides or covers up his true feelings. but then he’s also calling himself a superhero around zoe, standing up for himself around jim, and really knowing to some degree who he is, what he wants, and what he values. i keep coming back to the constant dialogue around vince being a fighter; the lawyer in his dream says, so you do got a little fight left in you, jim always wants vince to fight back, and if vince tells michelle he’s going to sue the airline, she tells him she’s happy to see him fight for something again. like i think vince is a very passionate character when it all comes down to it. but this post isn’t really about who vince is, but rather who he thinks he is.

and that’s kind of complicated! i keep coming back to the line where jim’s like “you’d make a good shrink” and vince immediately shoots back with “more like a neurotic patient”. im like (lawyer voice) oh so you do got a little anxiety left in you. i just think a lot about how vince was bullied as a kid but he still has such amazing workplace relationships. does he even realize how many friends he has? like, i think that’s the real tragedy of vince, that he probably has a much better support system than he gives himself credit for. i think about how supportive michelle is once she realizes where her priorities are, and like... god, and we can’t forget that line where vince is like “how could you think you’d be better off without your family? without mine, i’d be...” like it’s about him defining himself by his family but still not being a total doormat! he’s not happy making all these sacrifices for them, but he’s not unhappy either. it says something that i can see him pushing michelle about bruce’s texts and i can also see him telling her that it doesn’t matter, that he doesn’t want to know, that if she says nothing happened, he doesn’t want to make problems that don’t exist. like vince is soooo fascinating to me because you really have to be immersed in his mindset to write him. it’s hard to write him if you don’t have your finger on his pulse, so to speak. and i know this is rambly and not very put together but the point is that there’s a lot of contradictions to vince’s character, but not in the same way that we see contradictions in lilian’s character, for example. it’s not really opposing things like how we see for lilian, it’s more that vince is really complicated while also being surprisingly simple.

i wish i could nail this down exactly but unfortunately i am way too tired! but i may return to this concept and continue rambling about it. there are just so many lines for vince that hit different and really make me think about him. the ones i mentioned above (“so you do got a little fight left in you”, “more like a neurotic patient”, “how could you think you’d be better off without your family? without mine, i’d be...”, “i have enough problems without making ones that don’t need to exist”), but then there are a whole ton more, like... when he’s talking to jay about why he didn’t pursue flight school, he mentions that once michelle and zoe came into his life, he just had a new dream and the old one fell to the wayside. which is so important to me! and “fuck you, sheriff” haunts me, alongside lines like “it’s a/c by vince” and “no fear. gonna be awesome”. and like, come on, you can’t say vince is passive and fearful when he tells dale to his face “keep it in the gene pool” like COME ON!!! this man is insane and i haven’t even talked about his complex about his intelligence and appearance. oh my god

#✎ . . VINCE WALKER — ❛❛ cool. ethereal. thermostat controlled. it's a/c by vince ❞#character study.#TLDR FOR HIS INTELLIGENCE AND APPEARANCE #he compares br/uce to like some celebrity or something #and he talks to m/ichelle being like 'oh am i just not smart enough' insinuating to ME that he doesn't feel v confident w his smarts #i think its so fascinating how the first thing he says to j/ay abt his childhood is like #'i was fat; my father was never around...' like it's about the order of priority #but he also doesn't really ruminate on his size all the time but it's like the first thing he jumps to in that situation #like i just think a lot about him ok

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