#thewolfthatwrites

thank you so much for reading Hands of Clay! 

As to  your questions, we will finally see Bucky and Tony go at it in the next chapter (I was going to have that earlier, but I need to get Steve and Bucky to an, ahem, deeper understanding, before I put Bucky in front of Tony Stark - at which point they’ll talk about the arm and about Steve and Clint and all that good stuff. 

Whatever else happens with Skye and Maria, they are going to become total business bros (Bucky too) and with Skye’s mad computer skills, Winterhill & Partners becomes one of the most sought-after security consulting firms in the tri-state area :D

Oh man, I’ve had a couple of teacher au ideas. 

Let’s see, first, I never really came up with a plot for this, but about 2 years ago I assigned subjects to everyone via discord group chat (thank you discord for preserving my random thoughts, I just have to search 4 group/individual chats and 5 servers and hope I remember an exact word that I used and haven’t used a lot since)

Dex- Ag and shop teacher  Nursey- English Lardo- Art Shitty- Math Ransom- Science and Health Holster- Band Director and non sport p.e. Coach Bitty- Home Ec Jack- History Chowder- computer science and technology Tango- Foreign Languages Whiskey- Athletic coach Ford- drama and librarian. Coaches Hall and Murray- Principal and Asst Principal. 

I don’t think I ever developed a plot for it. But earlier this year (I think?) I saw a prompt that was similar to this with the kids trying to get the teachers together because they ship it. the prompt I saw suggested a fake dating scenario, but what I think would be FABULOUS is if it’s an established relationship. But the kids don’t know. The other faculty don’t know. 

Dex is super serious and straight-laced. Machines in shop can kill you. Welding can kill you. The animals that they raise and show can kill you. Floral Design...probably won’t kill you but there are knives and shears and stuff and you can very badly hurt yourself. Especially if you’re Nursey. So, he’s kind and he’s fair and he really cares about his students learning. But first and foremost always, he cares about people not getting hurt. Shop safety is his number one priority. 

High School English, on the other hand, has very little in the way of things that can kill you, other than emotionally and intellectually as you try to figure out why the state school board requires so many dead white guys be studied and haven’t they heard of diverse voices?

While Nursey is very much a “flirt wherever and whenever” kind of guy, Dex is very much a “We are at *work* this is a *school* there are children working with *fire*, perhaps it’s not the best time.” kind of guy (even though he would never say no to a Nursey cuddle outside of school hours and off of school grounds because he quite likes them, it’s just that they have jobs to do). 

So, Nursey might not be able to flirt physically, Dex can’t stop him from flirting...coyly. (Please remember at this point that Nursey is Bad at flirting.) So, at least once a week, at some point, (rarely the same class twice in a row), one of the students will mention that one of the tools that are supposed to be on their station is missing. There’s no reason for these things to go missing. There are maintenance workers who are insured and trained to do any kind of work around the school that’s necessary. There are channels, there are request forms. Which means that every time it happens, Dex looks at this little teenaged person and says “Go to Mr. Nurse’s room and get it.”

At first, Nursey just handed over the item with a grin and message to thank Mr. Poindexter for the loan. But then he felt like it wasn’t getting enough of a reaction really? So, he started claiming that he didn’t have the item in question and honestly it was defamation of character to even suggest that he had, and if Mr. Poindexter felt so strongly about his guilt, then Mr. Poindexter should come down and retrieve the item himself, were it to be found in the English class room at all. 

But like, ok, Dex isn’t leaving a number of teenagers without fully developed impulse control and fear of things that can kill them alone in a room with a bunch of things that can kill them. Shop safety, remember? 

But Dex has a lot of cousins. Dex knows how to play this game. Dex knows how to scheme and plan. So he starts telling his students that they have to infiltrate Mr. Nurse’s classroom, through stealth or misdirection, find the tool and retrieve it. So apparently, now taking a shop or ag class means you are potentially also training to be a spy. Still a practical skill, it works.

And the students love it, and Nursey’s students do too, though, they are split between supporting the spy students from Dex’s class and feeling loyalty to Nursey and being willing to rat the kids out if they see them being stealthy. And between all that, they also try to get both of them off topic and to talk about each other and make super teenage level subtle hints about how they’d be good together. and Nursey’s probably trying to use this to enhance their story telling skills and critical thinking skills. 

It turns out, I need a read more. Thank you.

Ok. Listen. Dex doesn’t *do* art. Because art doesn’t pay the bills unless you are being funded by family or get really lucky and some rich person decides to spend $4M on your “infantile scribbling” (he’s looking at you Cy Twombly). So, he doesn’t, ok? He has a nice, normal, completely acceptable, rent paying job helping artists build their giant weird contemporary post modernism takes on the world or whatever. (He has had some art history, he rather likes Trompe l'oeil and can get behind some of the abstract stuff from the first half of the 20th century but then it all gets kind of overwrought, in his opinion.) 

So, he works for a gallery and helps with art installation and repairs and stuff. And also he maintains their website and it pays the bills. (Do Lardo and Shitty own the gallery? Almost certainly)

But the thing is, pottery isn’t art for the sake of art. It’s not just expensive stuff to look pretty. Ok, some of it is, and some rich people pay way too much for it. But you can make usable things with pottery. Bowls and cups and vases and plates and stuff. And usable stuff means it’s not wasting money and time if he allows himself to do it, right? Plus, he did a little bit of pottery in art class in high school and liked it, so he wouldn’t mind making stuff again.

One of his uncles has a thrift shop, or junk shop or something similar, because he has an uncle for every occasion. So, this uncle happens to get an old pottery wheel that’s busted, but he lets Dex have it for free and Dex doesn’t have a motor to put on it and make a motorized pottery wheel, but well, a kick wheel has more control anyway, right? So he sets up his kick wheel and he asks Lardo if he can add in on her bulk order to get some clay at cheaper prices because that’s how you do when you know someone who does that and you don’t have a lot of spare cash. and she’s just like “Ch’yeah bro. Here, I have some remaining stuff that’s not enough for me to work with right now, but you can mess around with it.” and Dex is Dex, so he still gives her some money for it, but anyway.  

Then Lardo’s like “if you’re gonna use a wheel, I bet you could do asmr videos and link them to the gallery page. I think you should do that.” And Dex is like well, is this part of his job now? But Lardo says it’s just a suggestion and he doesn’t have to link it to the page, but she does think that if he’s trying for a lil side hustle then he could probably get followers from putting them online. 

So he researches asmr videos and figures that he can do it without showing his face, which is like the very top requirement that he has, so that’s good. and like, he thinks maybe he should add a sound component, so he kind of sings quietly with his super deep bass voice while he makes his stuff and it starts out just re-exploring the basics, making sure he has that down. but then he gets fancier with it and keeps honing his techniques. ~ Now, at the same time, Shitty’s still friends with Nursey from Andover, so they see him fairly regularly, but not like every day. And Nursey is a writer and he’s doing his writing thing, but sometimes words don’t word right because words are secretly evil. So when that happens, he really likes to watch some asmr videos to allow his brain to sort through things until the words get their shit together. 

Paint mixing is cool. Glitter stuff is interesting. But what he really likes is watching something be made. Wood turning would probably be right up his alley, but, what he stumbles upon is a channel full of videos of this guy singing real soft and doing pottery. It’s immediately his favorite. 

The first one he watches is not the first one that was made. The first one he watches, the guy is calm and sure of himself with deft fingers and smooth motions. But what gets him to “like and subscribe” and pretty much forget about all the other asmr channels, is when he goes back and watches the first video that was uploaded and the guy’s singing is kind of hesitant and his motions aren’t as sure of themselves. The result is still a really nice, if much simpler, piece, but he wants to see how this guy went from hesitant and self conscious to confident and sure. 

So he binges all the available content and he starts watching the new ones as soon as they are uploaded (which is pretty frequently, so another point in guy’s favor). And it’s a couple of weeks after he’s started watching all this guy’s videos when the guy has another one where he’s just wearing an apron and some sweats or shorts or something. It’s not the first time that it’s been clear that dude’s topless under the apron. But this time, at one point, dude lifts the bottom of the apron up to like wipe his face or something, Nursey’s guessing here, but anyway, holy shit. Dude has deft fingers, that deep beautiful singing voice, and abs like that? It’s like he was built just to make Nursey’s brain turn to mush. 

And then a few days later, he’s hanging out with Shitty and Lardo and he gets a notification on his phone that there’s a new video and he kind of wants to leave early to go watch it, but that’s not chill. and Lardo’s like “what notification did you get that’s got you so unChill?” and Nursey’s like “actually, it’s completely the opposite. it’s an asmr thing, so it’s precisely for chill.” And Shitty bugs him until he shows them which asmr thing and Lardo is just like connecting so many dots. 

~ So, here’s the thing. Dex and Nursey know each other. Like, not super well. But they have mutual friends/coworkers in common, Nursey’s been to the gallery, they’ve met. And Dex might not have had the best first impression of Nursey because when Shitty introduces someone as “My old classmate from prep school who is a freelance novelist” well, it sounds a whole lot like old money in a hipster suit. Which... isn’t far off from what Nursey is. but it’s not ALL Nursey is and it takes a while to learn the nuances of a person. 

It definitely didn’t help that the first time they met was at an exhibit opening and everyone was being fancy and Dex was uncomfortable anyway. 

And they don’t hang out together a lot. Like, Dex and Lardo are friendly and pretty close, but she’s still technically his boss, so he’s pretty sure she’s just being polite when she asks him to join them for stuff, but sometimes he does if he’s sure he won’t be intruding. So, over the time that Dex has worked there and known them and been friendly, he’s gotten to know Nursey and see past the influence of his dad and past the faux Chill that Nursey uses to hide the fact that he’s Extra TM, and start to get a glimpse of what really makes Nursey tick, how smart he is, and how he wants to be able to change things, and just peeling through some of the oniony layers. And he’s interested. He’s intrigued. Nursey’s hot, but plenty of people are hot, so it’s not that, it’s more. Dex would like to get to know all the way down to the core. But like. how? They’re on the edges of each other’s circles. 

So, he’s pretty much just figured he’s here for the unrequited pining and if as he learns about Nursey he also starts making fancier and more elegant pottery because it’s things he thinks Nursey would like? Well, that’s between him and the clay, isn’t it?

~ And here’s the other thing, Nursey’s obsessed with pottery wheel guy, sure, but like, some of that is to distract him from the minor, teeny tiny, it’s nothing really, just ask, he’ll tell you. Crush that he has on the guy who works at Lardo’s gallery. Like, dude’s quiet, and at first he thought he was uptight and a jerk, but they spent more time around each other after that because of mutual friends and guy started seeming less aloof. 

Like, dude can crack jokes and chirp. Some killer chirps out of the side of his mouth where only the two of them can hear, always when it would be completely unseemly to burst out laughing, so Nursey’s trying not to break a rib holding it in. 

And Nursey kind of likes unwrapping new layers of this dude and finding out more. It’s like one of those gag presents where someone puts 500 layers of wrapping paper on the same gift to make you really work for it, but a) so far all the layers have been pretty interesting and b) he’s pretty sure the gift in the middle is gonna be awesome, too. 

Problem, he’s like 95% sure that dude is straight and if not, at least not interested in him. so, yeah, better to focus on the unachievable crush on a faceless ripped dude making pottery than his friend’s coworker. 

~ Now, Shitty is pretty oblivious. I think that we can all agree on that. But Lardo makes up where everyone else in the cast lacks in observational skills. So she’s pieced this all together. But what Lardo is not, is a matchmaker. She’s perfectly content to just sip her coffee and watch this all play out. 

At first. 

But then they are both clearly *never* going to do anything about this situation. She tries to feel out Dex, but he’s just like “Seriously, Lards? I’m your employee. The *help*.” And Lardo’s like “Bro, harsh. You’re my *friend*.” But Dex is like “Yeah, I think of you as a friend too, but still. I’m your employee. That’s going to affect things. Like, you control my continued ability to pay my rent.” 

and like, ok, Lardo understands that feel. She knows how power imbalance from money feels like, and like, Dex has taken steps to learn about Vietnamese culture and feminism and stuff to try to be more respectful to her and honestly, she can’t really imagine running the gallery without him. Like sure, other people could probably do the work, but they wouldn’t be her friend. They wouldn’t be Dex. (wow, this is kind of turning into a lot of Lardo & Dex friendship plot)

So, Lardo sits down with Shitty and business lawyers and contract lawyers and they figure out a way to offer something to Dex that he might actually accept. Basically, making him a partner in the gallery so that he’s not an employee, but an integral part, but not like giving him a bunch of money with that because he’d balk immediately if he didn’t think he’d earned it. Like, he’s got a little bit of equity (sweat equity) to make him official an owner. (I’m going to go with the gallery is set up as a LLC or S-Corp and therefore transfer of ownership is possible without dissolving the business and reforming as would be required with sole-proprietorship or partnership. sorry, accounting aside). 

So, ANYWAY. Dex doesn’t have to worry about at-will employment anymore and can feel like his friends are his friends and not just his employers. and it’s going to take some getting used to but that’s ok. But then Lardo suspiciously invited Nursey over to the gallery the same day she told Dex about the situation, so she fills Nursey in and then kind of pushes him towards Dex and is like “Great, You two should go out and celebrate. Shitty and I will...not be there.” and she grabs Shitty and leaves before they can argue about it.  

and Dex is blushing because of course and he’s like “You don’t have to, it’s chill.” and Nursey’s like “No, Actually, I’d like that. It would be chill to go celebrate with you.” and they go out and have dinner and some drinks and they’re talking and having a good time and both trying to convince themselves that it’s all just friendly on the part of the other.