~So my ultra-futuristic, utopian endgame vision for Tevan led to this fic (This is officially the second fic I wrote, but the first one I am posting anywhere.) Hope you enjoy, please comment and RB if you like!~
Math Troubles
Summary: On his day off, Buck steps in to help out his and Tommy's teenage daughter with her math assignment, while Tommy is out on duty. Unfortunately, Buck turns out to be more trouble than help, and Tommy has to intervene over the phone.
----
"Dad," Spencer sighed in utter exasperation. "I think your help is taking me longer to do my math homework than if I were to do it on my own!"
"But sweetheart, it's taking longer because you aren't following the exact steps I'm showing you," Buck said adamantly, refusing to admit defeat. The father-daughter pair was sitting on the bed in Spencer's room, with the thirteen-year-old's books and stationery items scattered all around them.
"No. I'm calling Papa right now. Only he can save me from this--- this situation," insisted Spencer. She promptly video-called Tommy despite Buck's protests, desperately hoping he would answer. Meanwhile, Buck ruffled the pages of her Geometry textbook in search of some solid proof to back up his argument. Luckily for Spencer, Tommy's warm and scrunchy smile beamed through her phone's screen in a few seconds. "Hey Spence, my love. What's up?" he asked her.
"When are you going to be home, Papa? I need your help with my math homework, especially with this geometry assignment," Spencer replied, a pleading expression on her face.
"Sorry darling. My shift is on for another six hours at least, so I won't be home until later in the evening. I thought Dad was going to help you out since he is off-duty today?" Tommy enquired with a raised eyebrow.
"There. Thank you, Tommy!" Buck interrupted the conversation, rotating the phone in Spencer's hand horizontally so that Tommy could see them both. "That is exactly what I am doing, but our stubborn daughter refuses to solve the math problems per my methods. She says only you can save her from this situation, because apparently I can't. How humiliating is that!" Buck complained.
"I understand, Evan," Tommy gave Buck a mock-apologetic cluck, trying hard to stifle his laugh. He was well aware that math proficiency was his husband's biggest weak point-turned-self-esteem issue.
"C'mon Dad, you're just over-reacting," Spencer rolled her eyes at Buck. "I love you, but you need to accept that you are terrible at math!" she tried to soothe the burn with an extra sweet smile.
Tommy burst out laughing at Spencer's remark, but immediately pursed his lips when Buck shot him an angry look through the screen.
"No, I'm not!" Buck retorted, turning his attention away from the phone towards their daughter. "Spence. I agree I wasn't always the greatest at the subject, but haven't I told you the story of how I became a mathematical genius after getting struck by lightning?"
"Yes Dad, you have, about a million times. I know that legend by heart, but the genius part is hard to believe when you keep asking me to use the Pythagoras theorem on an oblique triangle!" Spencer justified her stance.
"Well, you won't even try using it before shooting me down like that!" Buck groaned. At that, Tommy felt an instant need to intervene before this Buckley-Kinard family conversation took a more hilarious turn, else his coworkers at the station would think he was going crazy from how hard he was laughing.
"Evan, my sweet, sweet husband," Tommy let out a deep sigh, still unable to get over how adorable, dorky, stubborn, and unintentionally funny Buck could be even after fifteen years of marriage. "You cannot use the Pythagoras theorem on an oblique triangle. It is simply not possible. You know why? Because it doesn't have any damn right angle in it!" he tried to reason.
"What now? The theorem doesn't apply to non-right angled triangles?" Buck gasped in shock.
"You see? Papa knows!" Spencer gave Tommy a thumbs up and a wide victory grin. "That's why I said only he can save me in this situation!" she said, looking at Buck. "Because your knowledge of basic geometric concepts itself seems questionable to me, sorry not sorry, Dad!"
"So you think your Papa is better than me at math? In spite of my lightning-induced mathematical super-abilities? Well, he can't be any better at math than I am!" Buck declared obstinately.
"Hey! Now that's a controversial thing to say. I'm a formally-licensed pilot — it's literally a prerequisite for my job to have good math skills!" Tommy cut in. "Have you maybe considered that your lightning thing was a limited-period offer from the Gods? I mean, poor Pythagoras must be rolling in his grave right now because of you, Evan," Tommy sniggered.
"What a snob!" Buck cried, looking flushed with embarrassment. "Remember, you won't be able to hide behind the phone screen when you face me at home tonight, Tommy!" he added in a stern voice, and then dramatically moved out of the view of the front camera lens.
"Spence darling, what trouble have you got me into with your Dad? I'm going to have to stop at a florist's shop on the way back home now," Tommy exclaimed, shaking his head.
"Tell him that only flowers is not going to cut it. He needs to get a big box of chocolates too, or else he won't be allowed into the house tonight," Buck nudged Spencer to convey the message, but Tommy had heard it loud and clear.
"Yes Evan. Flowers and chocolates it is!" Tommy responded, hiding a chuckle. "Well, I am going to hang up now. Before I can say anything more to piss him off," Tommy whispered to Spencer and winked. "Bye darling, see you later!"
"B-bye Papa, love you!" Spencer blew Tommy a kiss and then put her phone away after the call ended. Looking at Buck's expression, she snorted and got into a wild fit of laughter, so much that her belly hurt. And despite his pseudo-attempts at pretending to be upset over this roast session of his math skills, Buck burst out laughing too, alongside his daughter.
Good at math or not, Spencer knew she had the sweetest, funniest, and the most loving dads in the whole wide world, and she was the luckiest girl ever to have them both.
------
37 notes
·
View notes
at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
you create because you're greedy.
18K notes
·
View notes