Tom Hauser

only_good_teacher @ 2026-01-21T06:35:00

2026-01-21T11:37:44Z

When Tom wakes up, blankets pulled up to pile thickly around his ears, it takes a moment to remember why he’s on the daybed in the office and not the objectively more comfortable mattress in his bedroom. Blinking blearily, it comes back slowly, filling in like watercolor, and he groans out a soft laugh as he pulls the blankets over his head completely, hiding from the embarrassment of being his younger self. He indulges in that for only a moment before throwing them down.

“Oh, Daniel,” he murmurs.

He sits up and stretches, then climbs out of bed and pokes his head out of the office.

It’s early yet, early enough that Daniel shouldn’t be awake, so Tom pads softly through the apartment. His glasses are still on the bookshelf where he’d left them on that first day, and he chuckles softly as he pulls them on. The living room comes into crisp focus and he continues on into the bedroom, climbing into his side of the bed and cuddling up close to Daniel. He presses a warm kiss to his shoulder and hugs him around the middle, sighing contentedly.

“I’m back,” he murmurs — quietly, because while it strikes him as likely that Daniel woke up the moment Tom entered the room, there’s a chance he hadn’t and if that’s the case then Tom doesn’t want to wake him. But even in sleep, the words, his voice, might be comforting. “And I love you.”

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only_good_teacher @ 2026-01-16T04:31:00

2026-01-16T09:36:19Z

The world is warm and quiet as he drifts back to consciousness. His arm is slung over Henri's waist, and Henri's arm is curled under his neck in a sleepy hug, and for the first time in a long time, Tommy feels like he's somewhere he could belong.

He murmurs something in French, turning his head to kiss Henri's shoulder, but realizes as he rouses that the smell of the room is different.

Tommy distinctly remembers Henri's cologne, mingling with the oil he uses in his beard to make something heady and musky that had driven Tommy wild the night before. That's completely gone now, not even faded into the pillows or clinging to Tommy's skin. He blinks awake. Even without his glasses, he can see the room is wrong, too. Instead of tall, narrow windows with gauzy curtains, there's a broad wall with art hanging on it, and a huge walk-in closet. There's a dog on the bed. Henri doesn't have a dog.

Tommy's eyes settle on the man laying beside him.

That. That is not Henri.

With a yelp that very nearly borders on a shriek, Tommy flails backward, away from the strange, notably older man in the bed beside him. He scrambles back so quickly that he fails to keep track of the mattress — a second later, the surface gives way and Tommy topples to the floor with a thud and an oof.

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only_good_teacher @ 2026-01-08T09:45:00

2026-01-08T14:46:20Z

“Mr. Hauser?”

Gwen Blake steps into Tom’s classroom on Thursday morning before class, and he smiles at her. She’s looking a little tired, but visibly no worse for the wear, and he’s relieved to see that she seems to be okay.

“Miss Blake! Please, come in. How can I help you?”

“I was hoping to ask… I’m sure you heard about all the sh, um, the stuff with the lodge.”

“I did,” he confirms. “That sounds very harrowing. I gather from your absences that you were involved; are you doing alright? Settling back in at home okay?”

“Yeah, it’s great,” she says. “I really missed my bed. It gets hard to sleep with that many people in one spot, and…” She turns her gaze away, and Tom thinks for a moment that she must be remembering something specific, to get that hollow-eyed look on her face. He’d heard about the creatures wandering the city, though he had blessedly not seen any himself. He hopes she hadn’t been terrorized by any of them while she was up there. He hoped nobody had been.

“Gwen?”

She lifts her eyes to him and smiles a little tightly. “I’m just really glad to be back in the city,” she says.

“Of course,” he says, leaning against his desk. “I’m sure it’s a huge relief, being back in a space that’s yours. I understand you recently returned to us here in Darrow? It must have been just as hard, readjusting—”

“No offense, Mr. Hauser, but I’m not here to get my head shrunk,” Gwen interjects. “Yeah, I’m fresh off the boat, whatever, I just. I came to ask about a homework extension? On the assignments from the last three days.”

“Oh!” Tom says, charmed in spite of himself by her candor. And then her actual question registers, and Tom says, “Ah, I see. I imagine you must have a backlog of assignments in all of your classes.”

“Yeah,” she says. “And it sucks. It really sucks, because that’s three days of homework for every class, plus all of the homework I’m going to have tonight and tomorrow night, and I’ve hardly slept in, like, a fucking week, and if you could give me an extension then I could work on all of this shit over the weekend instead of trying to get it all done during the week on top of everything else.”

She doesn’t rant in quite the way that Robin Buckley does — then again, nobody rants in quite the way that Robin Buckley does — but it’s clear to Tom despite that that Gwen Blake is having a rough time. This might even go deeper than the week she spent snowed in at the lodge. She’s only been his student for a few weeks, but she’s always been so quiet, keeping her head down and doing her assignments. This… Tom hesitates to consider it an outburst, since she hadn’t raised her voice, but an outburst is undoubtedly what it still was. This outburst strikes him as uncharacteristic of the girl he’s been coming to know.

“Gwen, have a seat,” he says, gesturing to one of the desks. She looks at it, then sighs softly and sits, her bag thunking to the floor at her feet.

“I’m sorry,” she starts, and he holds up a hand. She stops, looking at her hands.

“I know you’ve been through a lot, this past week,” he says. “I’ve been very worried, about all of the people who were trapped up there, and I’m glad to know that you’ve all made it back down unscathed.” He hesitates for a moment. “That being said, I can’t give you an extension.”

Her eyes snap up to him and she says, “What? Mr. Hauser!”

“I can’t give you an extension because you don’t have any missed assignments,” he says.

“...I don’t?”

“I suppose it would be more accurate to say, I’m waiving the assignments you missed,” Tom clarifies. Gwen looks like she isn’t sure she’s hearing him right, so he explains, “You’ve been a hard worker in my class, Gwen, and I know I could trust you to hand them in if I gave you that extension, but I can’t imagine expecting you to do a week’s worth of homework in only a few days after enduring what must have been the worst week of your life. So I’ve decided to waive the three assignments, for you and any other student of mine who was up there.”

Gwen leans back in her seat, staring up at him. It seems less a matter of whether she thinks she can believe him and more that she’s trying to determine if this is all going to be okay.

“Are you allowed to do that?” she asks.

He shrugs. “That’s not yours to worry about,” he says. Then he adds, “It’s three assignments. It won’t impact your ability to test, and if it removes a little bit of pressure from you, then all the better in my opinion.”

Students are beginning to mill in the hallway, lockers slamming open and closed. The warning bell will ring any moment and they both know it. Gwen stands and shoulders her bag so she can go to homeroom.

“Well… thanks, Mr. Hauser. That’s…” Her eyes widen and she huffs out a surprised laugh. “That’s really helpful.”

“I’m glad, Miss Blake,” he says, walking with her to the classroom door.

“And… to be honest? This wasn’t the worst week of my life. I don’t think this would even rank top five.” She gives him a wan smile, then ducks out of the classroom with a “See you in third.”

Tom stares after her, a worried, pensive frown on his face.

He’s still thinking about that later. I don’t think this would even rank top five. More and more, it seems he’s meeting people whose lives are tumultuous enough that spending a week snowed in with strangers isn’t one of their ‘top five worst experiences.’ Tom doesn’t know what to do with that, other than what he’s always done: offer them an ear, a shoulder if they need it, and try to help them feel not alone.

And there’s someone else he can do that for, too. Daniel hasn’t exactly had an easy week, himself, and while Tom suspects he also wouldn’t rank this within his top five, he knows he could probably use a pick-me-up. On his way home, he stops at a flower vendor, their shop warm and bright against the chilly January afternoon. He steps out with a bouquet of daisies. It had taken some convincing to stop the vendor from dressing the bouquet up with lilies and baby’s breath and green sprigs of filler, but when he looks at the daisies in his hand, he can’t help but smile a little, hoping the surprise will be a pleasant one.

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everyone's a critic, apparently

2025-03-19T23:32:43Z

“I'm telling you, that wasn't me,” Tom repeats for the third time. His patience is starting to fray and he knows it's starting to be audible in his tone.

This restaurant owner spotted Tom walking down the sidewalk, and has evidently decided that Tom is some food critic who had written some scathing review of the cuisine served here. Tom has assured him that he is not, but the man refuses to believe him.

“I'm a school teacher,” Tom explains.

“You're a fuckin’ liar, Man, I saw you sitting in my restaurant, plain as day!”

“You're mistaken.”

“I'm not! I'm not fuckin’ stupid, Man.”

Tom bites down a sigh and resists the impulse to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Look, I'm sure your food is delicious,” he says, “but I have never set foot inside your establishment.”

“I just want to know why you said those things!” the man demands. “Just tell me and I'll leave you alone!”

Tom does sigh, this time.

“Look,” he says sternly. “I didn't write anything. I am a school teacher, not a food critic. And if I were, don't you think it's a little unwise to accost me in such a manner? Don't you think this could negatively impact a food critic's opinion?”

“... Are you threatening me?” the man asks now, and Tom sighs again.

“No, of course I'm not, because I am not a food critic.”

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only_good_teacher @ 2021-12-21T13:32:00

2021-12-21T20:29:15Z

Dec 23, 2021

For the second time in a year, Tom is getting ready to leave the classroom he's come to think of as 'his,' never to see it again. The difference — he hopes, anyway — is that he won't be stepping into yet another strange city when he leaves the classroom. But as he packs up the few things he'd begun storing here, his heart still feels heavy. It's been nearly four months, and he's grown very fond of the students, engaged with them in the same ways he had in Hawkins.

He'd even, to his own surprise, finally shown up to a few of the 'Queer Club' meetings that Stevie had invited him to. After weeks of hemming and hawing, and more than a few false starts towards the art room, he'd finally made his way through the doors and stood off to the side, leaning against one of the empty tables and listening to their stories with no small amount of relief and joy.

They'd given him a little rainbow flag lapel pin on his first visit, and he's wearing it on his lapel, now, though it had taken a couple of weeks to work up the courage for that, too.

This school, in the short time he'd been here, has really helped him come into his own, and that makes it all the more difficult to sling his messenger bag over his shoulder and grab the partially-full box of things.

The phone on the wall by the door rings, and he hesitates. For a moment, he flashes back to Hawkins High, answering "Room 107!" and hearing that modulated voice on the other end, plaguing him with threats. He glances at the clock above it. Twelve forty-five. None of the students should even be in the building at this point, so he steps up to the phone and lifts it of the receiver.

"Mrs. Hildebrand's room; this is Mr. Hauser speaking."

"Tom! Glad I caught you." The voice on the other end is the superintendent, Carla Del Río, and Tom frowns.

"Just barely," he says. "I was on my way out the door. How can I help you, Carla?"

Five minutes later, he hangs the phone back up and stares at it, feeling a little stunned.

He's been invited back. One of the three junior year English teachers, an older man named Brassington whom Tom has only met a few times in the few months he's been here (but whom he'd heard students refer to as 'The Brass,' like a warning), is retiring at the end of the school year, and Tom's been invited to fill the position. Not as a substitute: permanently.

Of course he'd accepted. He hadn't even had to think about it, though Carla had been kind enough to let him if he needed to. Further, she'd spoken to some peers at Barton. Apparently, they're hiring adjuncts for the spring term, which starts in just a few weeks, and she'd sent his name along so he wouldn't be out of work for as long.

He laughs a little, still staring at the phone.

The walk to Dimera seems quicker than usual, but it's still nearly one-thirty when he steps through the door to drop off his things. The apartment feels too still. He wants to celebrate, dammit! He navigates to the music app on his phone that Robin had shown him how to use, and plays something catchy, upbeat, and familiar as he changes. Then he pulls his coat on and sends out a text, the simple message belying his excitement.

Drinks? My treat.

Then he heads back out, sliding his phone into his coat pocket beside his wallet and key.

[ Hauser got a new job! Sorta! He's excited and wants to celebrate; if he knows your pup doesn't drink, or if your name is Robin Buckley, his text will read 'Coffee? My treat.' instead. Meet him at the bar, pub, or cafe of your choice! He looks happier and more relaxed, and his jacket has a small pride flag on the left lapel. Timed to Dec 23rd, any time after 2pm. ]

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