#idk guys i want to be an occupational therapist w a peds specialty and sometimes it comes out in my writing lol

[thefactsofthematter]

may i ask about olympic sprace and baby jack :)

-asper @loving-jack-kelly

you may!! @loving-jack-kelly

for olympic sprace, the plot of the eventual fic is still v much under construction, but i can share a couple fun snippets! i’ve written some parallel flashbacks to long before they met— they’ll either open the fic to set the scene, or be sprinkled in later on! here’s a peek:

"This isn't an option, Anthony Edward." His mom is using the voice now: the one that means he needs to smarten up if he knows what's good for him. "You can't just skip the first day of school, and I have to get to work. Get a move on, please."

and

"Sean, if you don't get your ass in the van in the next two minutes, I'm taking away your iPod for a week! Let's go!"

also! another fun detail is that i realized poor spot having a first name like sean in québec means that literally everyone mistakes it for jean bc it sounds ridiculously similar. he gives up on correcting people at a very young age, since even he can hardly hear the difference— he ends up doing the very french thing of tacking on his middle name and going by jean-patrick for a long time, until his gymnastics team gives him his nickname! when race meets him, it takes literal months to get to the bottom of wtf this kid’s name actually is lol

onto baby jack!! ah, the au that makes it very clear i took a bunch of child development classes in college when i minored in psych <3

for reference, here’s the already existing fic in this universe— i have another coming fairly soon i think, and many more thoughts about where things could go from there! at one point someone asked if crutchie and race might make an appearance, which is such a fun idea that i 100% want to explore eventually.

for now, the next little instalment is jack and medda focused again, and it’s once again a little heartbreaking but very sweet— it looks at 5 year-old jack a couple months after moving in with medda. he’s starting to process what happened to him in the group home he used to live in (a parallel to the refuge), and i’ve found it really really interesting to write this kind of thing from a child’s perspective! it’s so sad, but he’s so sweet and medda is so good to him.

here’s a little bit:

"I'm playing," he breathes, so quiet he can hardly hear it.

Her eyebrows go up a little, and she smiles.

"Yeah? What kind of game?"

Jack swallows some of his fear.

"Hiding. From a spider."

"A hiding game," Medda echoes. "Okay. Did you see a real spider somewhere that you're hiding from, or is it just pretend?"

"Pretend." Jack pauses. He feels the need to explain a little further. "It's really big."

Medda nods.

"A really big spider, huh? Sounds like kind of a scary game. What does the spider do?"