Drowning In The Shower

Does this child need a stepfather?👀

A surgeon who swears up and down he doesn’t want kids but folds as soon as he sees one perhaps?

Someone who’s absolutely not normal about Carter despite pretending he can’t stand him?

happy pride month from the emergency room! [Ignore that pride month is nearly halfway over, and i'm only posting this now]

carter seeing that same kid when he sees dr benton come out from the surgical locker room. it was reese.

carter babysitting for peter on his day off because romano was still giving peter horrible schedules and he couldn’t find a babysitter who signed.

carter spending more and more time at the benton household, because reese felt safe there and john didn’t want to bring the boy to the cold hallways of the mansion- though he could show him the stables. reese liked horses.

carter seeing peter come home from work, tired and accomplished and so happy to see his son and john couldn’t for the life of him understand what was happening.

his father never looked happy to see him.

but peter benton was a good man. and reese was a great kid - he was even doing multiplication now.

maybe the issue was with john? yeah. that had to be it.

and carter should go, it’s not his place, not his home, not his family - and yet peter is ladling the soup john made into three, not two bowls

„c’mon carter, set the table before it gets cold”

„sure”

he should go.

benton performing surgery on carter:

He is so very tender-hearted and has such a hard exterior in part BECAUSE he is so naturally very caring, and he has to make so many conscious choices to deny that part of himself or risk losing his reputation, risk losing time, etc

And especially as a young boy and then a young man and then just a man, the way his Blackness makes people in many ways automatically assume he's going to be hard or hypermasculine when like

Of basically all the male and some female surgeons in ER barring maybe Dr Dubenko, who is in many ways leans into being pretty and apparently reading up on feminist literature when not harassing female colleagues, he engages the least in like. Posturing

He doesn't do big bro stuff, he doesn't do big gestures to affirm what a big man he is or to assert his authority, he never needs to engage in any of Romano's nonsense

The worst we see is in his treatment of poor Gant, and as cruel as he was, it was very clearly out of his own like, internalised traumas and anxieties about how to manage and cope with anti-Blackness within the workplace

And then w his relationships he is just so tender and so thoughtful and so loving. The way he transitioned from wanting to Fix Reese to getting him as many resources as a Deaf child as he could

The manufactured drama w Roger pissed me off bc it was so drawn out, but the way they coparent made me so happy, and also like, how much Peter is always ready to Take Care of someone, obvs Carla a lot of the time

But when he works w kids and he tries to make them laugh or calm them and they think he's cringe? Or when he hired out a fucking sexy car, filled it with hay bales, and dressed up as SHAFT to make Elizabeth's Halloween special?

And obvs his tenderness with Carter makes me. So deranged. I adore Carter's relationship with Kem but Benton/Carter is my second favourite ship for him just bc like.

Peter can be so fucking soft for Carter, and I think in many ways Carter like. In a relationship would very eagerly affirm Peter's vulnerabilities, just bc he is so desperate to please but also GIVE BACK to him, and I love the idea of Peter getting that

So many of his relationships he automatically takes on a caregiving role, and I think part of what I enjoy about like. The discipline inherent to their initial relationship of trainer and intern is that John learns most of all independence and self-reliance from Peter

And I think that if they later became involved more intimately, they'd be able to build a more equal dynamic where by definition like. Peter is not just looking after John, but there's more of a negotiation of partnership w equal caring roles