#arc: first time tom gets the diagnosis of cancer

[slidersimp]

for the ficlet requests, maybe ice and mav first learning asl?

i love your mav service dog series so so much 😭 your hard work definitely pays off with it ❤️

Omg okay I love this request so much but I must warn you it turned super long for a little ficlet and got so fucking angsty I nearly cried. But thank you so so much I'm so glad you like the series!! I need to go write some Mav and Ice cuddling with Tess and Piper to heal me from the emotional damage that was writing this fic my god.

This is about 3,000 words so I might end up posting it on AO3 as well as here, so that's fun! I love feeling like a productive human being. Anyways! Please enjoy! Send me ficlet requests with ideas for fluff that I can write to make me (and hopefully you too) feel better after you read this!

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Seeing Pete “Maverick” Mitchell committed to an institution was, quite frankly, terrifying.

Ice had known him for a long time. Maverick wasn’t in the Navy because he supported the military. He didn’t go to college because he appreciated academia. He hadn’t dreamed and planned for him and Ice to get married because he believed in the legal system that would bind them together. Pete Mitchell—Pete Kazansky-Mitchell—cared about people. Pete Mitchell joined the Navy because of his father. He went to college as a means to an end, and because it was what his mother would have wanted for him. He married Tom because he cared about Tom. For him, nothing was about the institutions he lived under, so when he suddenly committed himself their community college classes like a man who’d fight to the death to defend a city college, Tom knew the reason was not because he’d taken a shining to academia. The reality was much worse.

They’d enrolled in a class in American Sign Language a month or so after Ice’s cancer diagnosis, after it had become apparent that Tom might not make it out of the trial with his voice intact. They didn’t acknowledge the fact that Tom might not make it out of the trial, period. That was too large to acknowledge, the prospect too terrifying. If the instability of their lives had taught them anything, it was that they could control only what was in their hands, and fight as he might, Tom’s life wasn’t as in hand as he’d have liked, so they controlled other things. They went to their classes. Twice a week, in the evenings after they got off work or treatments, they’d duck home for a quick dinner and drive to to the college for their class. Sometimes Tom would have to meet Pete there, running late with this national security crisis or that cancer treatment. Regardless, they'd make it to the college for their class and they’d fit themselves into an arc of students, their professor standing in the center teaching them to communicate without their voices. 

Sign language was something Tom might have found interesting if he’d had the ability to learn it on his own, without necessity driving his pursuit of the class. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that luxury. Every time Tom entered the silent classroom, he felt his skin crawl. He’d lived his life, built his career in screaming fighter jets. He felt at home speaking over a radio, singing with Pete in their home, telling his husband he loved him with his own voice. He would be able to communicate even if he lost his voice—when he lost his voice, as his doctors were beginning to say—but the knowledge that he would have to lose it in the first place was debilitating. He looked at Pete signing beside him, the most vibrant, bold man he’d ever met suddenly subdued and silenced, and he could think of nothing else.

For the first time in his entire life, Tom was failing a class, and it was a class he was going to need to exist and communicate in the very near future. 

Pete, however, had the highest grade in the class. 

He practiced constantly, signing to himself, signing to the professor after the class dispersed, studying online in his free time, in his breaks at work, whenever he could manage. He was practically a teacher’s pet. He’d raise his hand at every opportunity, answering questions or participating in dialogues with full sentences when the rest of the class could only manage broken fragments. Tom knew Pete could achieve whatever he put his mind to, but he’d never seen him throw himself into something like this, but Tom knew why. 

The knowledge seemed to make it worse.

Tom spent every class distracted. Trying to learn, but caught in the brutal understanding that he had to learn. He felt the pressure and he tried to respond to it with grace, as he always did, but he couldn’t manage it. Stress drew him thin. He hadn’t relinquished all of his duties at work—it seemed he’d climbed high enough in the ranks that nothing short of death, not even retirement would get everything off his plate—and the additional stressor hung over him more than it ever had. He sat in class and wondered about national security, his eyes glazing over as his professor instructed the class. He wondered how he’d participate in the collect calls he had with the other admirals without his voice. How could someone even interpret for him if he didn’t know the language they would interpret? Pete’s elbow would nudge his as he signed to the professor and Tom would snap back into reality, witnessing his husband’s skill in stark contrast to his own ineptitude. The contrast was starting to breed resentment. 

He knew Pete’s skill could be explained as well as his failing could be. They were both stressed, their stress finding different outlets. In Pete, he channeled his emotion into focus, picking something he could control and grabbing onto it with everything that he could. Tom’s battle was more physical, but mentally it left him drained, and his mind decided to check out, to swerve into damage control and hunker down in everything that he already knew, to hold tight and not let go. It made logical sense that he was having trouble learning, but he couldn’t help the frustration he felt at the sight of Pete signing so skillfully. Their instructor had learned of their situation early on, but one of their classmates had suggested he and Pete practice together after Tom had admitted his own struggles with learning the language—a well meaning, reasonable suggestion—and Tom had nearly snapped at her. He didn’t want to practice ASL, at least not with Pete. He didn’t want to sign with him—though he did, whenever Pete wanted to—and he was constantly asking Pete to speak to him, to speak for the two of them as it became harder and harder for Tom to voice his own words. He didn’t want an ounce of Pete’s silence.

Still, he was trying to be graceful. He was trying to adapt, trying to be flexible, to learn and change as he had always done. Every life lesson he’d endured had taught him that message, but Tom found it harder now than ever.

“Tom.” 

Pete caught his attention as he stood at the kitchen counter, a glass of water in his hand. He’d been still for the past five minutes, sipping slowly, while Pete had been rushing to and from their bedroom frantically changing out of his uniform. Work had run late, they'd made it home later than usual and were both forgoing dinner in favor of getting to their class. Or at least, that was the plan.

“What are you doing?” Pete asked him, threading his belt into his jeans. “Go get changed, we’re already going to be late.” 

He made one handed signs as he spoke, running his thumb up over his chest, waving his hand down with his arm lifted out to his side, pointing away from them, towards their bedroom. Clothes. Late. Go.

He’d been signing like that for weeks now. Tom wondered if he even knew he was still doing it.

He set his glass on the counter. He was still in full uniform, the stars on his shoulders felt like lead weights, but there was still something known in them. Changing into civilian clothes, sitting silently beside Pete as he drove to the college—because Pete would insist he was driving—was so terribly unknown, so awful and foreign and different, that Tom was standing at the kitchen counter with a glass of water in his hands and stars on his shoulders knowing full well he was making them late. He felt like a child, and yet his feet wouldn’t move.

“Tom.” Pete said again. His voice was stronger. Tom wondered when he’d stop using it around him entirely, when he decide that it was crueler to speak to Tom when he couldn’t speak back, and he’d sign instead, because Tom was supposed to know how to sign back. He didn’t want Pete to be silent.

“I’m tired.” His voice was already rough and gravelly. He knew the sign for ‘tired,’ he’d place his fingertips on his chest and let his wrists fall down towards his chest as if pulled down by exhaustion. Pete would have made the sign but Tom kept his hand around his water glass, his other hand resting on the counter. “Go without me.”

“Tom, I’m not–” Pete broke off with a frown, moving towards him when Tom suddenly picked up his glass and turned from the counter. He brought his glass to the sink but didn’t look back. If he didn’t look back, he couldn’t see Pete’s signs.

“I’m not going to go without you.”

He made it to Tom’s side, setting his hand on his arm. Tom could see him out of the corner of his eye, watching him, imploring him to look back. He knew without looking that Pete’s face was filled with concern, open and honest and kind. He wanted to scream, but he knew he couldn’t. Even ignoring propriety, he couldn’t imagine the pain screaming might cause him. Just the thought of it felt like it could render him silent months earlier than he might be able to hold onto his voice.

“Then let’s not go.” He could feel Pete’s thumb tracing one of the bars on his sleeve through the fabric of his jacket, and he looked down, unable to help watching him.

“Tom.” His name again, soft and kind but imploring in the same way. Pete’s hand tightened on his arm. It was as good as begging Tom to look at him but still he didn’t turn.

“Look.” Pete swallowed loud enough that Tom could hear it. “It’ll be fine if we’re late, Scott will understand. Just go change and then we can go. We’ll come straight home afterwards, you don’t have work tomorrow so you can sleep in for as long as you want.”

The flow of reasoning off his tongue was nearly enough to make him turn, but he didn’t. He felt his eyes slip closed at the hint of pleading in Pete’s voice, like getting them out the door was something he needed. 

“Come on, Tom.” He pressed, his voice soft. “I know we’re not doing this for grades but you have to at least pass. They’re not going to let you move up if you don’t—”

“Stop.” He pulled Pete’s hand off his arm, prying his hand away with trembling fingers. “Please, just–”

“Tom–” When he finally turned to look at his husband, Pete’s eyes were wide with concern, fear swimming in the green, fear for Tom, for whatever mess was living in his head.

“Pete.” Now it felt like he was begging, but for what, he had no idea. Pete was right, he needed to go to this class, he needed to pass, but what did he want, now at this moment? Pete couldn’t take away his cancer, he couldn’t make him better, he couldn’t take away the exhaustion and pain hanging over his entire being. 

Pete’s hand reached up to cup his face, his eyes softening. Maybe it was at the sight of Tom’s face, the fact that he was looking at him now, maybe it was because there were tears welling in Tom’s eyes and Pete could actually see the problem rather than fumbling around in the dark, but the fear faded from Pete’s eyes.

“Talk to me, sweetheart.” He whispered, his free hand settling on Tom’s hip. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

There was so much love in his voice. Pete never failed to show him how much he loved him. He’d been doing it publicly only for a few years now, since he and Tom devoted countless hours to helping drive Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell into the ground, but he’d been doing it privately long before then. He kissed it into his skin, murmured it into Tom’s ears, promised it to him just with a moment of eye contact, a word over the radio that no one would suspect but Tom would know. Pete had been telling Tom he loved him since wingman had stopped meaning friend and started meaning family.

Tears spilled over Tom’s eyes and he suddenly felt like a failure. He could count the number of times he’d cried in uniform on one hand and most of them came from pain or panic. Watching Ron hang limp in his chute after he’d passed out from pain wrecking his shoulder on the canopy during an ejection. Tom had thought he died. Hazy moments of half-consciousness when he was dragged from his own plane after smoke started to fill his lungs, panic the only sensation he could feel. Showing up in a hospital sleep deprived, drowning in stress and being told he couldn’t even see Pete because of a records mix up that left Tom unable to prove his power of attorney to the partner he’d taken for life.

“I don’t want to stop talking to you.” He croaked, tears and pain making his voice rough. “I want to be able to talk to you.”

Pete’s features softened, sympathy in his eyes but also pain, sadness for what Tom was losing and what Pete would be losing as well. He stepped a little closer, wrapping an arm around Tom and guiding Tom’s head down onto his shoulder.

“I know.” He whispered.

“I don’t want—I don’t want you to stop talking, either.” He croaked. He pressed his tears into Pete’s neck, shivering at the feeling of Pete’s fingers brushing through the hair at the base of his skull. When would he lose that, too? “I love your voice, Pete. I don’t want you to stop talking to me just because I can’t talk back.”

“I’ll talk whenever you want me to.” Pete promised, but Tom kept going.

“You’re not quiet, Pete. And I–” he broke off with a gasp, his tears rapidly starting to push towards sobs, but he had to keep going. He was desperate to keep speaking. It felt like if he couldn’t speak now, he’d never have the opportunity to speak ever again. “I hate seeing you in those classes, I hate seeing you silent. You talk more than anyone I’ve ever met, I can’t lose that. Not like I’m losing everything else.”

The truth was almost too brutal for him to bear, and maybe it was for Pete, too, because he stepped back from Tom slowly. He took his hand instead, leading him from the kitchen and into the living room, where he guided Tom to sit on the couch. He nudged his legs apart and moved to stand between them, guiding Tom close and cradling his head against his body. Tom felt his hands curl into Pete’s clothes, holding onto him tight as a sob wracked through his body.

“I want to be able to tell you that I love you.” Tom rasped. They’d only just gotten married a few months before his diagnosis. They hadn’t even had a wedding anniversary yet. “I can’t lose that.”

“Tom.” Pete pushed him back by his shoulders enough to cradle his face again, lifting his chin until Tom was looking at him. “You will always be able to tell me that you love me.” His voice was firm, offering no room for argument. “I don’t care if you whisper it. I don’t care if you mouth the words. I don’t care if you sign it or type it out or use morse code or fucking flags, you will always have a way to tell me that you love me. And I will love you no matter what way you decide to tell me.”

Tom couldn’t hold his gaze. He pulled his face from Pete’s hands, hiding his face in the fabric of Pete’s shirt. He couldn’t stop his tears, but Pete didn’t seem to mind, holding him close even as he cried splotches into Pete’s shirt. 

“I love you.” He croaked through his tears. His arms wrapped tight around Pete’s waist and he held him close. “I love you so much.”

Pete pressed a kiss into his hair. “I love you, too.”

He held him until Tom stopped crying, until his tears dried but he breathed in ragged little gasps. He slipped Tom’s uniform jacket from his shoulders and tossed it onto a chair nearby, then guided him to lie down, laying on the couch with him. They lay together until Tom’s breathing had calmed, and Pete rested his hand on Tom’s chest, his thumb, pointer finger, and pinky extended. I love you. 

Tom picked up his hand, curling his fingers back in. He kissed them each individually, pressing his lips to Pete’s knuckles, then his palm, and the back of his hand. 

“It’s not really about me being quiet, is it?” He asked quietly, and Tom shook his head, tears threatening to well in his eyes just at the admission.

Pete pressed a kiss to his cheek. 

“I love you, Tom.” He murmured. “And I know this is hard. Probably the hardest thing we’ve ever faced, but we’ll go through it together. I’m going to be here for you, no matter what.”

Tom let his breath out in a slow, measured exhale. When he felt like he wasn’t going to burst into tears again, he pressed a sign into Pete’s chest, his thumb, index finger, and pinky extended. I love you. 

((p.s. shoutout to my asl professor Scott (sign name an S fist tapped on the chest) whom I’ve name dropped as icemav’s professor. Love you, Scott. What a fun guy.))

[pollyna]

arc: the first diagnosis of cancer.

The number is still the same but the last time Pete used it Bradley was barley eighteen and he still called them uncles. He doesn't know if his hands are shaking because of what the doctor has just said or for the fear no one is going to answer this particular call. Tom is sleeping next to him, the hospital bed big enough to fit one of them comfortably left alone both of them, and he prays for this to not be the end. He doesn't even like to pray but this time Goose can't be their saving graces.

The phones rings seven times before a preregistrated voice announces This is Bradley, leave a message, I will call you back eventually. Pete has to count back from ten before saying something impulsive that's going to make the situation only worst. Bradley it's uncle Pete, I'm calling to let you know that uncle Tom is in the hospital because- he has cancer. It would mean the world to him, us, if you could come and visit. I hope you're doing well. I love you. He barley stopped talking when the service cuts the registration. Tom moves a little, snuggling in his chest, Baby Goose? ha asked and his voice is heavy with sleep and all the meds they gave him in the past three days. He's coming babe, he's coming he answers kissing his husband's forehead before closing his eyes, hoping that, when he'll wake up, Bradley will be there or at least gave them an answer.

[safflowerseason]

(Part 3) 4) also, re: season 7 so far, and keep in mind I’m two episodes in, I don’t even recognise Dan, and to a lesser extent Amy, anymore. I don’t even feel I’m watching Veep anymore, not as it was set out for the first four seasons. Is Mandel known to be the devil or something? What in the frack was this vision of the characters meant to be - ‘evolved’? Or does he just hate them? 5) I hated what he did to the Selina and Amy relationship too. Does Mandel hate women? Is this a known thing?

These are all questions that we’ve been batting around on here since the finale aired in May (which is when I got on Tumblr, incidentally, because I had to take my Veep feelings somewhere.) To a certain degree, there’s never going to be a solid, black-and-white answer to any of them, really. You can read everything David Mandel ever said in public about his vision for Veep, you can close-read what the actors say on press tours…but it’s just not the same as being in the room. And certainly, it’s worth pointing out that all shows evolve, and they gain and lose fans through those changes. No show ends the exactly the same as when it started (although…some shows manage this evolution better than others.) 

So, now that I’ve gotten my neutral disclaimer out of the way, I can get on with the fun ranting. 

4) Dan is absolutely unrecognizable in S7 from how he appears even at the end of S6, barring little flashes here and there. While Amy’s general arc holds together slightly better than Dan’s, she still suffers from some major out of character moments in 7.02, as we all were just discussing recently. (Dan’s arc just makes no sense.) 7.02 is just rough on all counts. Unless you’re an avid Selina/Tom shipper in which case you probably got something out of it. 

Also—and this is a general pet peeve of mine, as a California native—the episode is supposd to take place in Colorado and yet was so clearly filmed in Southern California (they posted a ton of pictures from the ranch where they filmed). Like, there are parts of California that resemble Colorado, but you have to go a little further than Malibu to get there. (I have the same beef with Parks and Rec. It’s so obviously not Indiana.) 

Mostly, what it all boils down to is bad writing. I don’t care if Mandel thought Dan and Amy would never work as a couple. That’s fine. That’s a legitimate opinion. Run your show the way you want, dude. What I do care about is bad writing. It is bad writing when in 7.01, Amy seems intent on having the baby without Dan, and then in 7.02, suddenly Amy wants to pitch Dan a white-picket fences vision of domestic stability that neither of them have ever been particularly interested in. Sex-Psychopath Dan is bad writing because it completely contradicts everything we know about the character even taking S6 into consideration. The Dan we see in S7 would have slept with Leigh Patterson in S4 just because she was young and there and he is apparently a sex-addict, hahahaha, when of course S4 Dan would never be caught dead in the sexual proximity of a nineteen year old he theoretically works with. And yes, of course, characters can change. But you have to show that change, which they do not. 

As for whether Mandel is the devil, (lol)…I think he was just very intent on doing the version of the show he saw in his head, and did not feel very obligated to try and replicate the show that Armando Iannucci had built. He had a completely different sensibility as an artist. I wrote a longer post somewhere on my blog about the differences in their approaches, if you’re interested, but ultimately I think what happened is that two very different universes got mashed together. Mandel didn’t hate the characters…he just thought they were all monsters and that was the point.

Also, two things happened the show couldn’t get away from, for obvious reasons: Trump was elected and the show was on an extended hiatus for 2017 and most of 2018 due to JLD’s cancer diagnosis. In the interim, all of America watched the government begin to melt in real time on Twitter. As a result, David Mandel rebooted the original ending for the show, in order to better capture this new moment in American politics (how effectively he did so is obviously up for debate.) The creative team and the cast were all fairly open about how dramatically Trumpian politics shaped their approach to the final season. So basically Trump is the short-answer reason to why a ton of plot threads get dropped between S6 and S7. I am 99% percent sure that the original plan was for Amy to have the baby before the hiatus and the resulting reboot. (Although at the same time, I do not think Dan and Amy would have gotten a very satisfying ending under Mandel. He also posted some pre-reboot snippets of the original outline for the finale, which have hinted that quite a few things did not change…for example, it seems that BKD was always doomed to be a one-episode plot device designed to get everyone back on Selina’s team, which is stupid.)

5) As for Mandel’s writing of female characters, I feel more comfortable speaking definitively here because in this case, it doesn’t matter what they were thinking in the room, but how it came across on the page and on the screen. Mandel obviously would say he doesn’t hate women, but he’s seems like one of those “liberal” white guys who has a lot of sh*t to work through regarding his own assumptions about women and femininity. He turned Selina into this misogynistic sociopath who abuses every woman in her sight with extremely gendered language, and he consistently punished Amy the character explicitly for not being hot enough or quiet enough or acquiescent enough for a woman. Like, the show always made fun of Mike for being dumb. It did not always make fun of Amy for being ugly and old. Moreover, Mandel/the show basically implies that Amy is a failure as a woman because she’s not maternal and also old and ugly, so she never got to be a mother and she never got to be with the man she truly loved. (sorry, Bill.) (Um, also, the audience has eyes? Anna Chlumsky is neither old nor ugly.)

I find it plausible that Amy and Selina’s relationship deteriorates over time…there is a subtle professional Dan/Amy/Selina triangle at work in S1-S4, and as Amy gets older and starts to figure out what she really wants from her life (and if Dan were the one she was trying to figure it out with), I don’t think Iannucci-Selina would react very well to it. (She would never be as openly abusive as S7 Selina, but I can’t imagine she’d be thrilled if Amy got pregnant just in time for her reelection campaign.) The show also makes it clear that Selina has an extremely complicated relationship with women and feminism, not to mention the fact that Amy herself is not particularly confident in her own body. 

However…there were lots of ways to explore those complex character fault-lines without Selina abusing Amy constantly. She tries to sell her to Leon! Part of it is a complete lack of nuance and part of it is just plain old sexism. 

Veep and the sexism of its later years has also been a pretty big discussion topic within the Veep Tumblr community, and you’ll definitely find posts on it if you poke around more closely (my blog, and also @thebookofmaev has written a lot about it as well.)