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breadvidence · 11 months ago

Text

DAMMIT I.VI

On AO3

SUMMARY: Two suicidal old men with moral scrupulosity in a three-legged potato sack race towards domesticity. Dallas 2014/Brick crossover, all adaptation decisions arbitrary.

Note: Plotting out the coming arc was like playing Oregon Trail and not enough romantic tension with Javert was the equivalent of underinvesting in oxen at the start of the game, Jean Valjean kept dying. I cannot express how many dead JVJs are behind the level of drama in this chapter. I would like to note, also, that the only person more upset about Valjean being invested in Javert than Valjean is myself, the writer, who now feels we have strayed well off the paths of canonical content into fannish heresies. So it goes. Content warnings: homophobia, racism, suicidal ideation.

⁂

Cosette looks at her Papa and thinks, with an ache in her heart unique to the adult child of the broken parent, Not today. Even two, three years ago, she thinks—how unmindful she could have been! Now he tries to buy her a new vanity and she steers him to a makeup set instead. He alludes to finances only to redirect when she tries to make a conversation of it. They were supposed to have lunch, his obligations have run late, they are at the Southlake apartment—oh, the Cedar Hill house, he hasn’t been back—the garden—?—well, there’s always the farmer’s market—he has to go out soon. He loves her; what did she need to tell him—? I don’t know what you mean, Papa, I only wanted to see you. Which is only half untrue, and she has always been a better liar than him, but this time he smiles, and it’s the expression she got the one time she came back from a freshman party unsteady on her feet—an acquaintance drove her home—and replied to the question, Did you, perhaps, indulge—? with no, Papa.

No, Papa.

Ah, fuck, thinks Cosette Fauchelevent.

Once, during the hour he allows her, he glances at his phone when it chimes. The chime itself is a surprise, given how very few social contacts he maintains who would be casual enough to text; that he actually diverted his attention from her, even for a moment—she’s fascinated, with a trace of shameful affront, and beside it a bloom of hope. “Papa,” she exclaims, “next we’ll be putting our phones on the dinner table. You’re becoming a modern man at last.”

He laughs—blushes! “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

She nudges him with her knee; they are on the couch—she’s gotten them that far, to sitting down, to stretch the amount of time he’ll allow. “Papa, nobody thinks it’s rude to check a text, anymore. I promise. Are you waiting for something in particular?”

“I received a call earlier,” he says, in that slow thoughtful tone he uses when he’s deciding how to mince the truth into such little pieces that it becomes very close to lies, “that was a bit concerning, but I was assured it didn’t need my immediate attention. I thought perhaps the caller might’ve changed his mind.”

Since she was ten and another girl at the convent asked Why don’t you have a mama? there has been an idiotic part of Cosette that feared and wished that her Papa would find a wife; now, alert to that blush, and perhaps with romance too much on her mind given her own life, she is disappointed by that his—then, considering, with a bit more worldliness than she’d had as a preteen and no little impact from Marius’ queer friends, she asks in a tone of all innocence, “Is this about the business you mentioned? Or someone at church? Or do you have a—friend—you’re particularly concerned about?”

“No, no, none of those.” His brow pinches. “I suppose you might call it a matter of charity.” This does not satisfy him, he allows, “Well, a friend, yes.” He smooths himself out, looks at her with the sweetness, the devotion, that brings her home to him, when Marius has asked more than once, Do you think you should let him alone, when he so obviously wants to be? “My dear, can you explain to an uneducated old man, one more time, how you intend to measure information access for your patient population?”

⁂

He pauses at the door, surprised that Javert has turned music up enough to be heard in the hall, even with all his neighbors out, if one is to judge by the lack of vehicles in front of the apartment building. He discerns a lyric, And he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known—and is that the man’s voice, briefly clearer as he crosses the apartment, softly accompanying a lovesong written for a woman’s part? It’s incongruous, and even mired in anxiety he pauses a moment, but—no, he’s being foolish; he hears how the emphasis falls on the lines and He walks with me, and He talks with me, then places the tune. Gospel. He lingers a moment, putting his face in order—it is a very sentimental song regardless, and still a little incongruous, and he thinks if he weren’t so—yes, admit it—out of sorts, he might venture to tease Javert about this. He has developed a taste, shamefully, for the sight of color in the other man’s cheeks.

He knocks, surprised by the irritability in Javert’s shouted reply—a minute. Lord, let them not both be in their own kind of bad mood. It will surprise him, if Javert shows the backbone necessary to be in a temper for being put off yesterday, and then he wonders guiltily if it is gauche to apply the metaphor to someone with a literally broken spine. He tells himself: stop. There has been too much thinking of Marius in the last twenty-four hours of his life, and that’s not Javert’s fault.

There’s the noise of the deadbolt, the lock, the chain being undone, and Javert opens the door sharply—looks surprised. He’s in a bleach-stained shirt and loose shorts that show lean thick-haired thigh well above the knee, bare-footed—he’s as fussy about no shoes in his home as Jean Valjean is about his own, but this may be the first time he’s seen him without socks, pale long toes and nails trimmed down to the quick.

“You were expecting me?” Jean Valjean asks.

“Yes. In three hours. No, come in, you’re here anyway.” There’s a rough edge to his voice. “Don’t mind the mess.”

There isn’t a mess; there are three spray bottles of cleaner on the counter that divides the kitchen from the living area, aligned precisely with each other, and two stacks of rags—the ones on the left dirty, but folded. Jean Valjean wonders if this sort of thing even occurs to Javert to mention to his therapist. He pauses; a police uniform is laid out on the couch, the lines in the trousers so crisp he suspects it’s been newly ironed.

“Ah,” Javert says, and the embarrassment in that one noise could drown a man. “I was—I don’t know what do with it,” Javert says, staring at the garments. “It seems wrong to keep it, but worse to throw it away.”

There are more chevrons than when last Jean Valjean saw him in uniform, at a funeral in Montreuil. It is exactingly kept. The smell of bleach stings in his nose. “I don’t suppose you can donate it.”

“To what, a costume shop? Anyway, it’s tailored.”

“Maybe you can pick off the—decorations, or whatever they’re called—and wear it as a suit?”

Javert looks doubtful. “Maybe. I’m going to put this up. Take a seat, would you?”

Jean Valjean does not, in fact, take a seat. He contemplates leaving as Javert fusses around the apartment, notes that he acquires socks along the way, seeing him stumble, once, mismanaging the cane. The man seems fine, despite the call, and can surely be left to himself a little longer; long enough for Jean Valjean to gather himself, at least. He thinks, suddenly: I’ve come here for consolation, haven’t I? This is a surprise to him. He takes a step back towards the door, the stag hearing the horns after it has put its hooves into the meadow grass, but it is too late; Javert has finished neatening what’s already neat, and, brushing fretfully at a wet spot on the hem of his shirt, he’s circled back around to the entryway.

Well, this isn’t a social visit only—it’s a wellness check. Javert had sounded extremely aggressive and a little afraid, over the phone, but Cosette had insisted on the afternoon visit, and though her tone had been as sweet and cheerful as ever—oh, it’s unfair to her, that he’d spent that night pacing, afraid that she had some news to tell him, berating himself for not providing what she wanted, berating himself for his eagerness to see her, numbering what a young woman in her position might feel she needed to tell her papa in person only, then committing himself to the idea that she was simply tired of his absence, then asking himself whether with her friends and the Fall term starting and Marius if he should be so prideful as to think she was missing him.

“Valjean,” Javert says, and tilts down a bit to catch his eye. “I realize this is your line, but do you need to sit down?”

Jean Valjean smiles at him and says, “No, no, I’m fine. What did you have to tell me? You seemed very anxious.”

“Yes, horribly,” he says, with—as predicted—no sign that it bothers him that he was left with that, alone, overnight. “Really, I’m sorry I was so, ah. Maybe I got too used to you going along with—whatever. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.” Blunt, plain, like it isn’t odd at all. “But, listen. Take this however you want: you look like shit. When was the last time you ate? Slept?”

He thinks of Cosette exclaiming, Papa, you’ve lost weight! He almost protested to her: but Javert has been feeding me such rich meals—once a week, in any case. Twice, sometimes. But he cannot explain the man to his daughter anymore than he can expose his daughter to the man. He shakes it off. “I’m fine. What—”

“Is your kid all right?” The concern is not really for Cosette, but for Jean Valjean, which is a sin.

“She is very well.” She shines like the sun, and it pains him that concern for him dimmed that light; he bought her something nice off of Amazon, he cannot recall what. He looks into this harsh, unwelcoming face, this man who has confided so much in him, and he means to ask, would you perhaps listen, but he says, “I know you wanted to tell me something.”

“It can wait a little longer. I can tell there’s a problem, Valjean.” He speaks with—exasperation? Exasperation would make sense. “Why don’t you tell me?”

He never much cared for the confessional, feeling in speaking his sins he could not help but tie them up with his worries, making a terrible imposition upon God, and on the priest who was trapped to hear also. He would stop up all the breath in his body before he uttered a complaint to his daughter. He cannot recall anyone except the Lord and Cosette having ever asked to hear his problems. It is a temptation—but a petty one, like a sweet, something he would not purchase for himself but would accept as a gift. Besides, Javert is looking at him all pricked ears and blazing eyes, such that he thinks an answer will be akin to tossing the man a treat, a little satisfaction of a chase ending in a catch. “Well, if you’re asking—my daughter—” The name Cosette is too vulnerable to speak, in his presence. “—made a, a bit of a fuss, about talking in person. And then she didn’t say anything of great consequence. Well, of course we spoke about the semester starting, her thesis, all of that’s quite important, but—you understand me. I’m.” He stares off to the side, at the beige wall, and feels a lurch of hot discomfort over the fact that this man is too patient to interrupt even a long silence. “I’m concerned about what she didn’t say. About what could be going on that she doesn’t feel comfortable sharing.”

Javert, after another moment, says, “Okay. So, what’s the worst possibility? She’s not sick? Well, do you think she’s pregnant?”

Jean Valjean slumps further. “She’s unmarried.”

“Ah, I see. Call it family tradition. If she’s not even showing yet there’s still time for a shotgun wedding. Then everyone pretends it’s an eight-pound preemie and no sin’s been committed.” He pats him on the shoulder. “Where I come from, we call it a success so long as the mama’s over sixteen and knows exactly who the daddy is.”

Jean Valjean puts his face in his hands.

“Anyway, you like children. I have seen with my own eyes how you coo over infants. Once grandbaby’s here you’ll forget you were feeling—whatever you’re currently feeling.” He sounds increasingly nervous.

“I don’t think she’s pregnant,” Jean Valjean clarifies. It had occurred to him, in a stroke of profound horror and—yes—a little bit of excitement over the thought of a baby; he had asked himself, Did the nuns and the state of Texas let her and her career down with abstinence-only education?, then, after some staring into the dark, determined that he would set aside that possibility as being—too much. “She’s a good girl—and, more than that, a smart one.”

“Mmhm,” says Javert, evidently determining that those waters are too deep. “Give a man a hint, then, what the hell?”

“I think she might be engaged. Or, if not yet, then—in the near future.”

“Huh,” says Javert.

Jean Valjean looks at him, exhausted and mournful and not expecting a scrap of sympathy.

Nothing gentle, no—he’s narrow-eyed, jaw tense. “He bad to her? I can’t say he struck me as terribly impressive, but he got Jones pretty good at the riot. Well! Shit. It’ll be awkward, but I can still get him arrested.”

For a terrible moment, Jean Valjean considers it, ’til it strikes him how stupid it would be to have gone through all the trouble in June only to have Javert dirty his hands for him in September. “By all signs, he’s very sweet.” He turns his face away, breathes out deeply.

Javert mutters something under his breath that sounds rather like a sincere prayer, Show me mercy, o Lord. Aloud, he says, “C’mon, it’s going to keep me awake not being able to puzzle this out. If she’s—probably—not pregnant and that twit treats her all right, why do you look like you’re in the bus back to Memorial?”

“That’s tasteless,” Jean Valjean replies. Considers using the reference as an excuse to be hurt, and leave. But he is very tired, and the night has been very long, and Javert is being as close to kind as he comes, which is to say, he is showing an interest. He imagines saying, I have been very upset about my daughter leaving the state for medical school. One might say I have not been coping well. The final scrap of importance I felt I held is being taken from me by Marius fucking Pontmercy. He ventures, not quite looking the other man in the eye, “In any case, have I mentioned,” and stalls out. Tries, “Well, regardless, she’s leaving for medical school.”

“You must be very proud.” The tone manages to be incredibly fake without being dishonest—it’s rote, socially appropriate pap, reminiscent of his behavior in Montreuil when they’d been cornered into public functions together. Javert goes so far as to touch his shoulder, lightly, like he meant it to be a congratulatory clasp and realized halfway through that it was not appropriate.

“Yes,” Jean Valjean replies, and decides the sense of freedom in voicing his troubles has begun to be outweighed by the discomfort of being the focus of the conversation. The sweet he’s been gifted has made him feel sickish. He gently removes Javert’s hand from his shoulder. “Please, let’s move on.” Has he ever regretted something as much as removing that hand? Well—yes—several things; he’s had a very regrettable life. Regardless, he’s quite sad about it. Would it be odd to take Javert’s hand back and—yes, it would. He cocks an eyebrow, trying for the level of bemusement he felt when he first heard the spy-novel nonsense that was not over the phone. “You had something to say that you needed to discuss in person? Tell me, please.”

“Oh. You didn’t answer my—well, okay. Yes. Courfeyrac knows who you are,” he says. “Well—no, excuse me, that’s a stupid way to put it. He knows Ultime Fauchelevent was at the riot, or in any case that Cosette Fauchelvent’s father was.”

Jean Valjean tilts his head.

“He’s one of Marius’ friends,” Javert goes on. “If you don’t recognize the name. I gather you think the pack of those little bastards are a risk, since you’ve been hiding from them. I don’t understand. I am, in fact, very confused. Further, it took me a minute to parse, but if I’m not mistaken, they think you’ve brutalized me, and that you’ve threatened me into silence.” He pauses, a moment. “No one follows the local news anymore. You know, there was a little article—not a long one; I don’t remember it, they must’ve caught me during one of the solid haloperidol highs, but evidently I refused an interview. An article about an attempted suicide, a member of the police—they included my name, and a statement from Gisquet. In any case, this gang doesn’t know I threw myself off a bridge, and consequently you’re taking the rap for working me over, with these ‘Amis’. Combeferre approached me at the courthouse—a coincidence, that we were both there—I have his number, I can text him, tell him you’re an innocent. Innocent adjacent. Didn’t fuck me up, anyway. Physically. That seemed like his main concern, but I didn’t want to reach out until we’d talked it over. Sound like a plan?”

“No,” says Jean Valjean.

“To be clear,” Javert goes on, “I don’t blame you for—what? No?”

Where did one of Marius’ friend see him, prior to the riot? His withdrawal means nothing, if they can already connect the man at the riot to Cosette’s father.

“Valjean.” Javert’s tone is brisk.

He has hidden himself, but he has never run. The idea exhausts him.

“I’m certain the wall isn’t that interesting. Valjean.” His tone falters. “Valjean? —Jean?” Even more hesitant, he tries, “Fauchelevent?”

“That’s not my name,” he replies, and doesn’t recognize his own voice, it’s so harsh.

“I know,” Javert says, then with a dawning of reciprocal concern, “Do they?”

“No, it’s not that,” Jean Valjean says, distracted.

He’s back to that initial emotion, that perhaps-exasperation. “Okay. What’s the threat?”

How can he explain to this man, this maniac with his compulsive noise, his self-deceptive honesty that must be spoken, his self-destructiveness, his pridefulness and his flaunting of shame, his constant raucous living, what it means to want to be nothing? Javert knows what it is to want Hell—he demonstrates that quite clearly—but can he comprehend desire for the grave? Jean Valjean has not so clearly seen it for himself, until that moment, how his fingers have brushed that final privacy again and again, only for the dirt to fall away, and his hands thrust out into the open air, his body’s desperation to breathe greater than his soul’s need for rest. He cannot wish for death, which would be to steal from God, but—fuck, can he be forgiven a little wistfulness? There will be fuss. Praise? Curiosity. Investigation. Revelations. He shudders. And Cosette, his Cosette, can she not simply fly free of him? Yes, her freedom is so close. He looks at his own hand, half-raised, and does not know what he intended to do with it. It seems best to leave, and he thinks he says as much, but when Javert takes him by the shoulder and leads him to the couch, he complies.

Javert moves to crouch in front of him, but in his haste loses his balance, and falls heavily forward onto one knee. They blink at each other—Jean Valjean’s hands have come up to brace his shoulders, kind reflex and not wanting that much man sprawled in his lap. Javert takes those hands from his shoulder, presses them between his palms, and chafes them gently. It’s clumsier than the fall.

Jean Valjean feeds on the warmth of the touch ’til he realizes the pleasure of it and jerks away. If he stands, he is going to knee Javert in the face. He is certain his body language says he wants to—stand, not do him violence—but he finds he cannot actually voice the need. He shudders and puts his face in his hands, taken by fear of what it shows.

“They aren’t certain,” Javert says, “that it’s you. Marius—I don’t know if he’s covering consciously, or what. Maybe you can tell me. In any case, Combeferre said that he denied it’s you who was at the riot. I’m—I don’t know. I don’t see why you’re losing your mind over this, sir, but you’ve looked sad and solemn for the last ten minutes without saying a word, and it’s, if I may say so, quite God damned unsettling.”

“Ah,” says Jean Valjean.

He says, “It’s my business if I want to tell them you didn’t do me any physical harm. Seems to me like that’ll take the pressure off. Yeah?”

“No,” Jean Valjean groans.

Javert, slowly, leans his forehead against his fist. The gesture does not entirely hide his face, which is expressive of a great combat. He breathes out. “All right. Still seems like my problem, to me, but—fine. You’re saying they shouldn’t know? For you, I’ll—well. Not speaking ain’t as much as it could be. So. Next steps. I’m making a suggestion.”

He thinks, I do not want a rotisserie chicken or a book or the nice merlot or to answer a moral quandary or your compliance. Except he needs the compliance, doesn’t he? And he does—want. Not any of those things, but something else on offer. He knows he wants. He is here in part because of wanting, and God and his own long practice of self-denial and the worst parts of the man in front of him have not stopped him from seeking it. It horrifies him, this realization.

“I’m gross—I need a shower. You? Take a fucking nap, Valjean. Actually—” He reaches out and pinches the back of his hand, a little shock of discomfort. “—yeah, look at yourself, elastic as a frozen rubber band. I’m getting you a glass of water. Will you stay here?”

He looks down at the skin that has remained peeked on his hand, puzzled. He remembers, sudden and vivid and bizarre, his sister looking at her own cracked knuckles and saying wryly, A woman shows her age in her hands first. He passes as being born in ’61, but does it show when he reaches to touch that he is a liar, that—?

Javert comes back with the water and a blanket and a scowl that shows every year of his life and a few more besides. Jean Valjean thinks of rough men telling girls you’re prettier when you smile and almost laughs, because—good grief, no. He drinks what he is given and tucks into himself when urged here’s a cushion for your head—legs up—oh, uh, you want your shoes off?—no need to give me a stern look, I wasn’t going to touch your feet, Christ. The blanket is a rough woven thing, so faded he cannot quite tell what the original pattern was—dark blue swathes gone grayish, yellow blots to ivory. He pulls it up to his chin, and pushes the world away.

⁂

Jean Valjean wakes to a terrible crick in his spine and the sense that it is too late to run. He has not woken someplace other than one of his three bedrooms in years, and he lay still, feeling his own panicked breath stirring the hair of his forearm where it is tucked close to his face. His eyes do not see—he gathers himself—he looks, and of course there is Javert, in one of the kitchen chairs with his feet up on the other, a cushion stolen from the couch to elevate them, the iPad propped on a pillow in his lap, expression neutral as their gazes meet. The other man looks away first; whatever is in Jean Valjean’s face must be terrible. The room is dim, but not dark; outside the windows the sky is ruddy with sunset, and the lights over the stove and in the entryway are switched on.

“I,” he says, “am mortified.”

“You didn’t even get cuddles out of it,” Javert mutters, and puts the iPad on the table. Louder, he says, “I didn’t want to disturb you by knocking around in the kitchen, cooking. We can order something in, or I’ve got leftovers, if you won’t think too badly of my hospitality.”

“I can go,” Jean Valjean says.

“You can, but I made caldo de albóndigas for the first day of Fall, and it’s not so bad reheated. Or there’s this Thai place down the street—they make this noodle dish, I mispronounce it so badly they don’t understand me every time, and I have to describe it. At this point, I assume they’re just messing with the gringo, or whatever Asians call white people.” He tilts his head. “Chill out. You’ve seen me with one oar in the water. Utterly fucked, drugged up, ready to die, in pieces. Let it be, Valjean. I wouldn’t have known to put you down for a nap if you hadn’t done the same for me. If you need it to be about tit for tat, let’s call it even. So. Soup or Thai?”

“You could’ve eaten without me,” Jean Valjean replies, still feeling strange, and gets nothing but a steady look for his protest. Because it seems quicker, he says, “Soup, if you like.”

“All right,” Javert says, and levers himself to his feet with a muffled groan of pain. “If you want to close your eyes again, I’ll give you a shake when it’s ready.”

He chooses to lean against the counter, instead, and watches as Javert retrieves two tupperware from the freezer and sets out a pot on the stove—would he have used the microwave, were he the only one eating the meal? He does not ask. He is thoughtful, and a little calmer, a little more aware of the floor beneath his—dear God, did he never take off his shoes? He slinks back to the entryway, toes them off, agog that Javert let him put his sneakers on the couch. It is humbling to know the man’s fixation on him is stronger than that on cleanliness. Their conversation before his—oh, the indignity—his nap feels more distant than the hours that have elapsed. He clears his throat and asks, “Does it bother you very much, that they think I overpowered you?”

“Right back into it, huh? We could talk about anything else. The weather. When will this heat break. I’d make that a conversation, for you.”

Jean Valjean is, if somewhat confused, also touched, and it gives him the strength to shrug and say, “No, let’s put the thing to rest.”

He’s surprised. “All right. No, I can’t be bothered by the fact that you’d whip my ass in a fight. Facts are facts, proved a few times over.” He prods at blocks of frozen soup, looks at him from the corner of his eye—there’s something obscure, there. “Or do you mean—? That’s not what you mean, is it. Jesus. All right—sure, I’m bothered. I think that’s obvious.”

“Yes,” Jean Valjean says.

“Well, if my being bothered bothers you—but I’ve promised already. I’ll keep my mouth shut. Texts unsent. Whatever.” The soup does not deserve to be stabbed like that.

They are quiet a while. Jean Valjean allows, “I didn’t whip your ass.”

“Not recently,” Javert drawls.

Jean Valjean ignores this. “I suppose there’s no actual harm in those young men being aware of that fact.”

“Oh.” He’s shocked—as if he didn’t think he actually had the right of it. Will the poor meatballs remain in one piece? “I could, if I wanted to make them aware, text Combeferre the news article about, ah—not saying I saved the link, or anything, but I’m sure I can Google it.”

“That seems a dramatic way to go about things.”

“Yes,” Javert says, with satisfaction. “I could add nobody pushed me, to make it perfectly clear.”

How embarrassing, that a few hours’ sleep has made him far less inclined to telling Javert what to do, and now he’s caught: his previous demands, his current difference in opinion from his past self. “Indeed.” Pity the food, definitely in more pieces than it began. What shall he say? You may? That seems altogether too blunt. He makes an abortive little noise. “In that case—” His teeth close on his lip, short of chewing.

“Hush. I’ll text him. Yeah?” He casts a look over his shoulder—a softness around the mouth, a—

“Yes.”

Javert catches his eye, brow furrowed. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, Javert.”

He is gentler, stirring.

“We have to get to the end of September,” Jean Valjean says; and, to the other man’s inquiring look, adds, “For the heat to break.”

“Yeah, and how about all this rain,” he replies, with a trace of humor. “But—I don’t know, Valjean, that might be all the small talk I can manage. —Your glass is there on the side table. You know where the water pitcher is at. You don’t want to undo all that work you’ve put in, eh?”

“The—work.”

“You know, skin care.” He casts a look over his shoulder, eyebrow raised, mockery. “Or is it just good genetics?”

He snorts, amused because he doesn’t know what else to be, and because he has learned that people lose interest if you respond softly, a little chuckle, a little smile—it doesn’t encourage the joke to go further, in the way being offended does, or laughing in earnest. Besides, he’d rather this teasing than the despair and awe that yet lurk beneath that familiarity; Javert, when a touch bold, does amuse him. He goes to get the glass, because hydration is a reasonable suggestion, for all it galls him that this man might be more reasonable than him—ah, if he thinks too closely on it, he might be troubled by the implications.

Javert turns from the pot, as he enters the kitchen, and says, “Hey.” Then he leans into his space and puts his arms around his shoulders, gives a quick rough pat on his back, promptly releases him. It is an objectively bad hug, stiff and awkward and too abrupt.

Jean Valjean tells himself, be normal, gets his water, and flees back to his place on the other side of the counter. His heart aches. He ventures to ask about the soup recipe—it’s not from family, but it predates the internet, Javert isn’t sure, it’s passable, he wouldn’t have made it specifically for company but here they are. It’s ready, in any case—no, he can set the table, get on—

Most of the way through the meal, Jean Valjean looks into his caldo de albódingas, which is—not bad, and was probably good, fresh. He blurts, “Are you Hispanic?”

“Mistake any Wonder Bread for wheat recently?” he asks, too glib. He adds, grudgingly, “What, you want another Javert is a sad bitch story?”

“I don’t think you’re a bitch,” Jean Valjean replies, solemn. Lying, a little. Then: “Yes.”

Javert takes a bite of soup with a resentful air that is completely put-on—it’s meant to be funny. When he’s swallowed, he says, “Mama guessed at who my daddy was, but she wasn’t a great guesser.” He pauses. “Or she was, and the question wasn’t paternity, but gullibility—after all, Papá Hernandez paid child support until he was deported.” He grimaces. “Not a bad man, looking back on it, aside from being an illegal. Anyway, I ran around with all the—” He looks at Jean Valjean, visibly decides against using another slur. “—Hispanic kids, my cousins, and got underfoot in the kitchen with, ah, the matriarch. Mrs. Hernandez. I guess I spent more time with her, really. The other kids didn’t like me. Fair of them. I was a little asshole.”

Jean Valjean would bet a fair percentage of his fortune that Javert once called that woman abuela, and still calls her that, in his heart. “Have you kept in contact with any of them?”

“I’d have to report them,” he says, startled. “Or—I don’t know. No, to answer your question. Anyway, food you eat when you’re a little kid, you never stop wanting, right?”

He thinks of curries and fried seafood cakes he would have to look up the name of, but remembers as almost painfully salty, flavorful. “Sure.” He blurts, suddenly unsure whether Javert has in fact been a first name this entire time, “So you’re not a Hernandez?”

He snorts. “Never, no. She had enough dignity not to name me for him, at least, though he’s on the birth certificate.”

What’s your—no, it’s been either several months or thirty years, depending on how you count their acquaintance, and either way he absolutely cannot ask. He should’ve looked more closely at Javert’s mail.

Javert squints at him. “You feeling all right, over there?”

Disagreeably, the question forces him to an answer. Jean Valjean meets his gaze steadily with the intent to lie, thinking it would not even be that deep a falsehood; has he not slept, and drunk, and eaten? But he averts his eyes before speaking, contemplating the darkness falling outside; it’s not the latest he’s ever been in this apartment, but he feels the turning of the year, the shortening of days. He has ever been a man who could seize upon an opportunity; he sees this one, and forgets the virtue of temperance, an impulse a little like the steps that led him to a sinner’s wealthiness. Then, it was animal fear of hunger that drove him, the stupid beast in the man not knowing that there was such thing as enough of a resource. It is a poverty not of the wallet but of some other thing that makes the beast speak through him, now, as he says, “I am, I suppose, still a little tired.”

“You look rough as hell,” Javert agrees.

He looks back at him, weary, and shame-facedly aware of his own weakness. Only, is it all his fault? Javert has bloodied his claws not through the chase but having set a trap baited with his need; once Jean Valjean swallowed it down, he had seized upon him with this intimacy. It is tactical when Jean Valjean says, keeping his tone even, “I should leave soon—I don’t want to be too tired behind the wheel.”

“You sure you’re fine to drive now?” Javert asks, sincere.

He ought to say, simply, yes, which would be the truth—but they are so close to where he wants them to be, and here’s the hunger growing in him, like crops planted in Fall, the fields rank with the manure of his griefs, and he tangles himself in the thought of transferring sprouts into soil, the promise in each little splay of leaves. And he thinks—it’s crucial—he’s not alone, with his foolish cabbages and bush beans and potatoes of wanting, though damned if he knows what Javert expects from it; he surely doesn’t know. “I,” he says, with complete honesty, “am worried.”

“I can drive you home, then,” Javert says.

“Ah—”

“It’s fine.”

Shit. Delicately, Jean Valjean says, “That seems like so much trouble.”

“If you’re worried, you shouldn’t drive, and you’ve played taxi for me enough times, I ought to reciprocate. I’ll wash dishes and we can go.”

As Javert does so, Jean Valjean puts his face in his hands. He cannot believe he has tried to acquire something for himself, that he has sought comfort, and been foiled by—what? An inability to put it in words, and the other party’s failure to catch a hint. The touch on his shoulder startles him; he says into his palms, “Javert. Driving seems like so much trouble. Could I…?” And looks up with what he hopes is a blatant stare.

“Why’re you—?” Javert stutters to a halt, catches his breath; surprise turns to a look of heat and intensity, gaze raking over him. “Could you what, Valjean?”

Jean Valjean’s hands fist in his lap, certain that his meaning has been mistaken and not kindly. He ought to have expected this, he has been strange, he has been too much outside society and forgotten how men are supposed to behave. Afraid not so much of the physical violence he senses as the consequences of it, he balances the question of hurt pride and bruised flesh against the inevitable hysterics should he let Javert injure him. Lord help him, this isn’t a fight he wants to win or lose, and it’s not one he meant to start. He says, in a tone of perfect calm, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give the wrong impression.”

The intensity eases, and Javert looks merely like a man asked to do difficult arithmetic without pen and paper. He puts some space between them. “You can have whatever you want,” he says, irritable, “but—I know this is going to take a mighty effort—you’re going to have to say it plainly.”

He stares at him, helpless. He does not mean to glance towards the bedroom.

He does not, after all, have to say it plain. With the slow deliberation of a man putting his feet on the trapdoor of the gallows, Javert says, “I’ve thought many times about the night I spent in your bed. Have you?”

“No,” lies Jean Valjean, pushed too far—by himself, mostly.

Javert receives this blow direct, without flinching.

“I’m thinking of it now,” Jean Valjean says, because his pity is greater even than his shyness.

Javert closes his eyes, breathes out. “I don’t understand you—or what a wrong impression is, in this instance. And don’t think I can’t see there’s something under that fucking calm of yours. What’s new? Well, if you stay overnight, I can promise not to get fresh.”

He wets his lips, uncertain. He thinks an honest man would have avoided a near-miss of homophobic violence and viciously taxing a friend’s patience by saying, simply, I know it is not normal but I want to be—platonically, please do not lose your shit—held and I think you will indulge me. Maybe he should’ve gone for another hug. He thinks the soup has only done so much for his ability to think in a straight line, and is embarrassed. What he manages is, “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“You’re trouble,” Javert complains. Then, “I don’t mean that. Fuck. Okay.” He gives him another bewildered look. “It’s not even nine o’ clock.”

It is a little surreal, coming off the emotional pitch down to a few hands of German whist. Javert accuses him of cheating, and gives a surprised, nervous wrack of laughter over the answer not this time. He makes popcorn for them without asking, then digs herbal tea out of the back of his cupboard with a noise of triumph. It is stale, but appreciated.

Javert, as it turns out, has several extra toothbrushes, which he excuses with a mutter about a discount sale and it being reasonable to replace them often. He digs a second pillow out of the closet, offers up a pair of drawstring shorts and a t-shirt that can’t possibly have ever fit him across the shoulders. After a considering look, he comes to bed bare-chested. They settle in the dark, and Jean Valjean’s nerves are alight with the anticipation of waking with another body close to his; it is somewhat counterproductive. He does not expect that Javert will turn and put a hand on his waist, not the least excuse of sleep between them.

He weighs whether this is likely to proceed in a direction he wants it to, and holds his peace.

Javert sighs, and with a forthrightness that has in it the steady forward plod of a beast of burden, carrying the weight of honesty for both of them, “You didn’t take me up on that promise, earlier.” His palm slides heavy and warm across Jean Valjean’s stomach as he moves to take the drawstring in his fingers and toys with it. “Is this what you want from me?”

He takes him by the wrist.

“I don’t,” Javert says, calm—solemn, even—, “expect reciprocation.”

Jean Valjean rolls onto his back, pushing the other man away as he does so; Javert props up on an elbow and peers down at him, the light from the hall catching in his eyes strangely. It is an unsettling reminder that his night vision is good, and that he can probably see the worry on Jean Valjean’s face. He says, “You seemed angry, earlier, at the implication.”

“That,” Javert says dryly, “was not anger.”

It occurs to him, for the first time, to doubt Javert’s sexual orientation, but—he’d been so terrible about women, in Montreuil, in such a distinctive way, and he’s been frank about his own homophobia. No. His mind lurches to offers received, many years ago, from vulnerable men who wanted a strong one’s protection. The breath shudders out of him, and he says, as much to reassure himself, “We are not like two prisoners, who would—for lack of other—no, I don’t expect that from you.”

Javert snorts. “I don’t know about you, but I absolutely have other options. Don’t insult me, please, in my own bed. You wanted to be here. I am trying to figure out why, because I would like to…” For the first time, he falters. When his voice picks up again, it’s brusque, almost unkind. “I wouldn’t have come on to you if I didn’t think you were soliciting it. I know you’re not a fag. It’s no difference to me one way or the other.” He puts his hand, heavy, in the center of Jean Valjean’s chest. “You know, for one night in June, we were even—no, don’t mistake me, as a man you are so far above me that you are—”

“No,” Jean Valjean says.

“—but you don’t want to hear that. I mean you’d done your favor, and I’d done mine. Service for service. We could’ve been quit of each other. I sure as Hell tried to make it happen.” He moves; an uncomfortable shift of the legs; it is just pain of the body, not of the mind; it is clear from his tone that nothing about this bothers him. “God alone knows how those scales will ever balance again. Well! Here we are, you sublime wretch. What I lack in sensitivity I make up for in perception, and I’m not blind to the fact that you’re as much one the other. I know a very little about what the world has taken from you; well, you can have whatever you want from me, blessed poor satisfaction though that is. So—”

He puts his palm against Javert’s mouth, because he is sure that there is nothing he can say that will stop him. He presses his lips to it in what is unmistakably a kiss, and Jean Valjean flinches away—but only so far as to settle his hand, light and nervous, on the other man’s shoulder.

“Hush,” says Javert, as if it has not been him who has been rambling. “I’ve put thought into this.” He cocks his head. “I would ask your opinion, if I thought you’d give me an honest response.”

Jean Valjean clutches his shoulder, and mumbles, “I expect nothing from you.”

“How terrible, to get something unexpected,” he says, with sincere sympathy. His thumb strokes in a firm arc. “Want to provide a little guidance so we don’t have to suffer the mutual embarrassment of me trying to put my hand on your cock yet again?”

It is absurd, given the places he has been and the people he has walked among, for him to blush. It is purely out of self-defense that he says, “Lay down. Facing away, please.”

Javert complies, of course.

Jean Valjean pulls the sheets over them and presses against his back, bare skin warm under his cheek. He feels too bold, with his hips against Javert’s backside, arm over his ribs, but he supposes Javert’s predilection for leaps has pushed them past that edge.

It is ten minutes later when Javert observes, “You’re bad at this.”

Jean Valjean, who has been shifting uncomfortably trying to understand what one is meant to do with one’s bottom arm while cuddling, nonetheless makes a wounded noise.

“None of your women ever let you snug up? Shame on them. Too frisky with your dick against a nice ass, is that it?” His shoulders shake with a laugh. “Oh, I can feel that blush. Want to swap?”

He considers peevishly asking about moral certitude versus what is evidently a storied life of being in bed with other people, but he is too fucking tired to start another fraught conversation. He turns over.

Javert keeps more distance between them than he wants, but his arm is a comforting weight. Conversational, he asks, “In that little prison scenario you were imagining I was absolutely the bitch, wasn’t I?”

“Javert,” he protests.

“Rude as hell, Valjean.” He laughs—a second time, in such a short while. “See if I let you have the nicer pillow next time.”

⁂

The deformed mooncalf of an affection is growing up into a fucking bull. He expected it to die, as monsters are supposed to do. It would be helpful were Jean Valjean less God damned weird, a quality he feels he is in a good position to assess, being himself outside the usual bounds; he feels rather like Pluto might, if it glanced out away from the sun and saw a planet in an even more distant orbit than itself. The evening after they’ve crawled into bed with each other a second time, and neither of them with much excuse, Valjean texts him an inane observation about the planting season, a clear reassurance that he will not be bolting. They will see each other again next week. Javert is uncertain what they are doing, but they clearly intend to continue with it. He is committed that the third time Jean Valjean invites him to bed he won’t mistake it for a proposition, but refuses to be ashamed over his confusion thus far. There are cockteases and then there’s this behavior.

He wonders if a hookup would take the edge off, but it’s too much trouble to pursue, and he has the faint sense it wouldn’t be as helpful as he’d expect, anyway.

#dammit #fanfic (mine)

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newty · 8 months ago

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so like obvs my prev thought dump is neither complete or well expressed but my response to stewart clarke saying that the devs told him no homophobia is p much 'well that is neither complete or well expressed in the game either' JEBRVHDJE

i think its of considerable importance that they made that decision tho. shows progress. but it could have been executed better by actually imagining what a society would require to not have homophobia, instead of just poof! magic! its gone.

i know that the end goal a lot of ppl see when they think of 'full inclusion' is complete normalcy/lack of fuss/just Happening to be queer, but imo thats a trap that breeds complacency and maintains the society we have now instead of seeing one outside of (deep breath) the white christocentric capitalist heteronormative one we live in.

basically queer normalcy does not and will not ever look like heterosexual normalcy.

ffxvi's position also speaks a lot to an ignorance of what homophobia is, why it exists, and how ppl experience it. the game literally has scapegoating the Other as its primary plot. gender divides everything from the written role of a character, their occupation, their conflict, the violence inflicted on them, and their screen time. marriage is a legally and religiously binding contract between families for blood and money and influence, which binds society to an inheritance structure that immediately disadvantages queer relationships from higher strata. i could go on

so like! i see the vision. i think it is a half baked vision and i have elected to take the evil side and talk abt the stuff they did not put on their plates. terence start running bc when i catch u--

anyway thinking abt homophobia in valisthea

which means thinking abt sex-related misogyny in valisthea. bc imo there is way too much sexual violence against women and focus on women as sexual figures w sexual drama in this game for it to not bleed over into how it feels abt two men kissing (not gonna go into a lesbian reading bc it exits my scope)

like. anabella only being a vessel for children, benedikta using sex to control titan/feel loved by barny but also being threatened w rape twice(?) by men, jill awakening shiva when she's almost raped by a man + other rosarian girls are raped, the constant winkwink sexy references w isabella, the offscreen women moaning in the oriflamme brothel, sylvester killing his wife n mistress after they outlived any sexual service to him, barny's mom referenced in an easily interpretable sexual manner, etc etc

simultaneously the narrative does its best to present the veil as a morally neutral institution w benefits to the function of northreach. the discussion between the male sex worker and the male guard was deliberately placed, too, and gives an interesting view into affection and money. theres a couple more men in veil garb that arent presented as out of place.

which is all failed by rest of the worldbuilding imo. only male customers visit the veil. sex is still regarded as a sneaky taboo subject. every country has a male monarch and occupations are firmly divided by gender. the primary hinge of benedikta's relationship w hugo is the fact that hugo feels in charge, which helps culturally ascribe dominance as a masculine trait.

if women are so widely regarded as unequal on sexual terms (and, relatedly, on societal terms), certain expectations must also exist on the male side.

we dont really see much tension in the male characters performing masculinity--other than the huge unnatural vibes sleipnir gives off by mincing around--but we do see barny kneel before ultima in a rly sexually charged scene. his subservience is presented as an unexpected weak facet of his character, where he's desperate and obliging and uncertain. it's a private scene that works off its own uncanniness, so it functions a little bit more as a narrative piece than a societal mirror. but I don't think that removes it from the discussion, and i think its odd character is a stark contrast to the clarity we're given in dion and terence's kiss scene.

a sort of clarity, i guess. dion and terence talk abt power dynamics in class instead of sexual role or gender. there's still the words 'master' and 'servant' pinned on the wall w like 3 different undertones, so its easy to unravel that into different understandings of their relationship to class, duty, and romantic/sexual identity. i dont think its productive to split hairs abt who tops, but i think its reasonable to interpret that they feel secure in w/e service they give to the other. this is in spite of the societal understanding that dominance is inherently masculine and correct, and that subservience is feminine and not as acceptable.

i know enough abt queer history to know that the security & fulfillment i interpret them as having is simultaneously as rare as it is common depending on where you look. no matter what one does in the private sphere, the public view will influence it, and it's determined by the case who will feel negatively or positively abt themselves bc of it.

ultimately i see valisthea in the respect of a society that views queerness as undesirable but not smth ur gonna be burned at the stake for. im also fully operating under my own preference for queer narratives that labor under external & internal homophobic conflicts. it's fully supportable to decide that valisthea lacks homophobia as well, and its not less like wish fulfillment to have it that way or the other.

#man. flashbacks to the imperialism in the anti-imperialist ffxiv expac lol #yall its Not That Simple #and i think that Its Very Interesting to analyze why ppl are presecuted in order to Stop Persecuting them #which they obvs also thought was interesting #when it wasnt abt women or gay ppl #SORRRRYYYYYYYY #brihamut's mercy

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joyandthephantoms · 3 years ago

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if love’s elastic, then were we born to test its reach?

2k, T, Flynn & Luke

Warnings: discussions of homophobia, swearing

Summary: Flynn and Luke sit in a car and talk about their moms.

ao3 link

It's not an official rule, it's not on purpose, and honestly, it's not very convenient, but Flynn is the only person capable of calling the weekly Julie and the Phantoms band meetings to order. The others try, sometimes, but no one else's efforts to curb the giggles and social time and say, "hey, okay, we have work to do" ever seem to have much effect.

Today, Flynn kicks it off by bursting through the door, announcing, “I’m going to kill my mother,” and then plunking herself down on the couch next to Julie and reaching for the calendar on the table.

“You good?” Reggie asks. There’s a tiny hint of a smirk on her face, but it’s overshadowed by concern, like she can’t quite tell if Flynn’s going for laughter or sympathy and she’s trying to cover all her bases.

"I'm fine," Flynn says. "Can we get started?"

They do, but Flynn is completely off her game, and she's sure everyone can tell. They drop off sentences halfway through the point they were trying to make; they don't process a single word of Bobby's budget review; Julie has to wave them back from zoning out two separate times. She just can't get her brain to stick to anything with her blood boiling like this.

Luke is the one who breaks the tension, after Flynn forgets half of her own carefully crafted, years-old color coding system. “Okay, Flynn and I are taking a break,” he declares.

She eyes him skeptically, but Luke just says, “Come on, let’s go,” and pulls her up off the couch. “We’re gonna go for a quick drive,” he tells everyone else. “Don’t release any albums without us.”

“No promises!” Julie and Reggie chorus. Alex just gives them a thumbs-up, and Bobby tosses his keys over to Luke, who catches them and blows a kiss at him before he pushes Flynn out the door.

“We’re in the middle of a meeting,” Flynn says as she slides into the passenger’s seat.

“You’re in the middle of something more important,” Luke answers easily. “What’s up with your mom?”

“It’s not even like, a big thing,” Flynn says. “I just got stuck on something stupid she said.”

“You don’t get mad over nothing, though.”

“Ugh, I know. Like, I’m right, it’s just so annoying that I have to be the one affected by it. I just wanna know that she’s wrong and move on with my day, you know?”

“Yeah,” Luke says, and when Flynn lets the sound of the engine and the movement of the car fill the silence instead of her voice, he prompts, “So what was it that she said?”

“She’s mad that I think she’s homophobic? Which I didn’t even say to her face, she just assumes I’m saying it behind her back, which I am, but if she didn’t want me doing that she could have tried not being homophobic, right?”

“Definitely. Dude, didn’t she try to take your library card for reading too much queer stuff?”

“Yep!” Flynn confirms. “And for like, a year after I came out to her she made a point to let me know how uncomfortable every single rainbow accessory made her, and one of my dad’s brothers is gay too and she still doesn’t want us spending the night at his place and we never talk about that, and it’s just . . . okay, obviously I’m mad about those things, but it’s whatever, I just can’t stand that she gets to do all that and then turn around and tell me that the problem is me calling homophobia what it is.”

“Jesus.”

“Like, why the fuck does she get to make it my fault?”

"She doesn't," Luke says emphatically. He rolls to a stop at a light and turns to face her. "That's total bullshit and she has no right to make you feel bad for being right, you don't ever deserve that. Flynn, you're like, the coolest, most caring person I know, she's insane if she thinks you calling out her shit makes that less true."

The sheer earnestness is almost enough to make Flynn cry, and they should give him a real response, but . . . "The light's green."

"Shit, yeah," Luke says, eyes back on the road. "We're having a moment, okay?" he hollers at the cars honking behind them. "Assholes."

Flynn shakes their head. "It's like they don't know we're the main characters."

Luke grins, and they're quiet for a minute (or, Flynn is quiet; Luke is still muttering curses as he drives—less like he's mad and more like it's simply a requirement to keep the car moving). He pulls into a McDonald's parking lot and kills the engine, and Flynn says, "It is a little bit my fault, though."

Luke tenses, and before he can go on another trademarked validation rant, she adds, "I didn't do anything wrong. It's just . . . I can tell she's trying, right? Like, she has tried to have real conversations with me about queer stuff, and I don't think she can blame me for not being excited about that after she kept telling me how much she was 'really struggling with the whole rainbow thing,' but I also still get that it hurts when I brush her off. And it's not just with this; like, I know she's trying to be emotionally available in general, and I'm not engaging with that, and there's no way to not feel a little bit shitty about that."

"Yeah," Luke says. "Yeah, I definitely get that." He twists a ring around on his finger, slides it off and then right back on. “It's like . . . I'm glad I'm talking to my mom again, you know? I love her, and she knows I love her, and I can go and talk to her instead of hiding in the bushes, and I get to include her in the parts of my life I want her in, and, like, I actually feel like our relationship is good , and that's—I mean, I don't know if I ever thought we were gonna have that, especially after I left."

"Right," Flynn says. It's practically illegal for a friend to let Luke Patterson talk about his mom without offering some kind of physical comfort, but he won't want to keep his hands still long enough to hold hers, and hugging or leaning up against him are tricky in the car, so she settles for resting a hand on his knee.

He catches their eye for half a second before continuing, "But I think she thinks it's gonna keep getting better? Like, she's happy that we're talking again because she thinks it means we're on a path to getting closer, and I don't know if I can do that. I don't . . . I don't think I want to do that. Which I guess means I'm gonna be disappointing her for the whole rest of our lives." Luke ducks his head and pushes a hand back through his hair, a little self-conscious. "Was that . . . did I get it right, is that what you're feeling? Or did I go on the wrong kind of tangent?"

"No, you pretty much nailed it." Flynn sighs. “I love my mom, and I know I came into this with ‘I’m gonna kill her,’ but I really do think things are mostly good, and there are a lot of things she does right, it’s just that every time we try to actually talk, it ends up like this. So then I feel like we have too many fundamental differences for things to ever be better, and she feels like I’m not trying, and we never get anywhere, and it sucks .”

“Yeah,” Luke says.

Flynn pulls his hand over to her lap and fidgets with his bracelets as they speak. “I get why she’s hurt, and I get that some of the choices I’ve made have been hard for her, but I don’t know what to do, because like . . . I don’t know, it’s easy to be in favor of the idea of having hard conversations with the people you love, but then all the actual conversations we have are this bullshit” —Flynn waves their free hand meaninglessly; Luke seems to get the idea anyway— “so either I talk to her, and we both get upset about it, or I don’t, and she’s still upset, and there aren’t any better options when just existing as ourselves around each other hurts, so I just . . . exist a little less around her. And that hurts too.”

“Fuck,” Luke breathes. “Dude, come here.” They’ve given up on respecting the limitations the car puts on cuddling, then. Flynn isn't complaining. She clambers over to sit in Luke's lap, back against his window, side wedged against the steering wheel.

“I don’t think she gets that she pushed me away in the first place," she tells Luke. "She either doesn’t know what she did, or she doesn’t think my reaction is fair, and either way, neither of us think we’ve done anything wrong, so all she’s ever gonna see is how I keep rejecting her. That’s always what her story’s gonna be.”

“I know,” Luke says. “It sucks, and she’s wrong, and you deserve better than that, okay?”

“Okay,” Flynn echoes, noncommittal. They usually don’t have any trouble knowing their worth and knowing how they deserve to be treated, but mom stuff has a way of getting to them, of dragging every insecurity up with claws. Luke gets that better than anyone, though.

“I’m serious, she’s so lucky to have you. You know that, right? God, I never tried this hard to understand my mom’s side of things back when I lived with her.”

“Eh, mine doesn’t scream at me,” Flynn shrugs. “I think it balances out.”

“That’s fair,” Luke says. He sort of half lifts her up for a second so he can shift his legs, then adds, “They’re about even as far as having no way to win with them, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, like, all of our fights about music were like that; she’d get mad that I was doing too much band stuff and then she’d get mad that I didn’t want to tell her anything, and I think I always thought that if the band got far enough, she’d see it was all worth it? But every time we got closer to that it just freaked her out more.”

This isn’t new information to Flynn, she had the gist of that conflict already, but it’s nice to hear it again in a context that lets them know that Luke gets what they’re dealing with, and anyway, sometimes listening is less about learning anything new and more about just letting your friend say what they need to say.

“And I just spent a lot of time swinging back and forth between trying to hide everything from my parents and trying to throw it all in their faces,” Luke says, “because if they were going to be like that anyway, like, what was the point? Why not blow everything up? Maybe it would at least make them see how much it mattered to me, you know?”

“Yeah,” Flynn says, because that’s really the only thing to say. Like, yeah. Yeah . Exactly. Fuck.

"I dunno," Luke says, "we're better about the music thing than we used to be; I think she knows she can't push it too hard, but now she keeps getting on me to bring Bobby over for dinner like I don't know how that's gonna go."

Flynn raises their eyebrows. "Yikes."

"I know," Luke groans. "But I don't really have better options here, either, because if they don't see me, like, bring him to family stuff and go on real dates and gush about him all the time, both of my parents are gonna think that it's not serious, or that I'm wrong about my feelings, or that I'm not doing this relationship the right way, but then if they do see any of that, they're just gonna be weird and tense and judgey and I hate it."

"It's so stupid," Flynn says.

"So stupid," Luke agrees. "You ever think about how many problems we just wouldn't have if our parents knew how to chill out?"

"Alllll the time," Flynn sighs. "But hey, gotta give them props for keeping all those therapists in business."

Luke snorts, and Flynn decides they're officially out of serious mode now, so she says, "Okay, I love you, but I am not loving this steering wheel right now, I'm gonna—" She pushes off of Luke and does a little half-tumble, half-crawl back over to the passenger seat. "There."

Luke reaches for the keys, but he pauses, checks, "Did you get everything you needed? I didn't mean to take over or anything."

Flynn grins. "I was asking for it, we all know you win at mommy issues."

Luke sticks his tongue out at her. "Shut up."

"Seriously, you're good," Flynn assures him. They don't know how to say everything they mean to—that Luke putting words to his feelings was a gift to them, saved them the time and frustration of having to sort through everything on their own. That he's really good at this, at handing people pieces of his heart that reflect things in themselves that were hard to nail down. He can get avoidant about his feelings, and Flynn can't blame him, but when he makes the space to stumble through them honestly, he always hits something real.

Flynn tells him, "I feel better," and gives his hand a squeeze, and hopes that says enough.

#julie and the phantoms #my writing #jatp fic #flynn taylor

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gascon-en-exil · 2 years ago

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I'll admit I've never been interested in GoT books or the show, thus I'm not too interested in HotD either. But what issues do you think these shows (and books too) had re: portraying gay characters and treating them poorly in the narrative?

Given your opinions on House of the Dragon's handling of Laenor and Joffery's relationship, what do you think of Game of Thrones' queer content?

Combining these as they're similar.

I'll start out by saying that I've never read anything by GRRM, so my comments here are only reflective of the TV adaptations. From all that I have seen I know that GRRM has a history of defending the presence of certain elements in his work - including homophobia, women getting married very young, and sexual violence toward women - as something appropriate for the time period that he's depicting (or a fantasy equivalent thereof). Your mileage will definitely vary as to whether you think that defense holds up, but he does seem to be sticking to his guns judging by what we've seen of HotD which is adapted from a novel published only four years ago - well into the time where GoT had garnered major acclaim but also criticism for how it handles such subjects. I went into GoT knowing that it's the sort of media property where almost everyone is terrible and also almost everyone dies, and that that there's a bleakness to the storytelling that it's never about finding someone to root for or hoping that your favorite characters will get happy endings so much as enjoying the carnage as it goes down.

As for specifics, I think the first season and a half of GoT does a decently good job at developing Loras and Renly's relationship, and even gives them two intimate scenes which certainly stand out in the earlier seasons' abundant use of female nudity. Then Renly is killed off, more or less exactly as he is in the book as I understand it, and from that point on fans seem divided on whether Loras eventually taking a new lover in the show was a good thing or not. Personally I regard that choice more positively, because it doesn't enshrine gay relationships as purer and more romantic than straight ones (in a way that coincidentally prevents the need to show a gay relationship anymore), but I understand why book readers especially take issue with that. What I'm less fond of is how Loras and Olyvar become the victims of Cersei's new puritanical allies the Faith Militant in season 5, and how the discomfort of his trial (which sees both him and his sister imprisoned while Olyvar...vanishes from the plot) is overshadowed because it's in the same episode where Sansa is raped, an infamously horrible and despised moment. By that point I've pretty much checked out of GoT's gay content, content instead to follow Cersei through her repeated highs and lows as she continues to do entertainingly terrible things and reap the consequences of her actions in entertaining ways.

Those aren't the only queer characters in the show; Oberyn is a bisexual delight for his single season and gets to enjoy himself onscreen with both women and men, and there's like two scenes where Yara being a lesbian is referenced, but it's all very sparse and hard to get invested in when everyone keeps dying. I continue to be amused however by the not-really-serious implication in the show's final shots that Jon and Tormund are a couple going north with their pet direwolf and their Free Folk family, and how Jonmund shippers take this in stride as perhaps the only people to have anything nice to say about the last episode. That's more of fandom taking subtext and running with it though, and while that's certainly very fun in its own right it's not quite the same thing.

So far HotD looks to be much the same: gay content, when it exists, is light and not developed well, and the show loves its dramatic deaths too much for me to bother getting attached to any but the most significant characters who I know are going to be around for a while thanks to wikis and such. If you're looking for fantasy with gay content specifically, I would not recommend either show; their entertainment value lies elsewhere, and if there are occasionally gay people in them that's more of a minor perk.

#House of the Dragon #HotD #Game of Thrones #GoT

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folkgirlhero · 4 years ago

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Coffee and Cigarettes

A Gerry Keay and Agnes Montague fic ft: platonic queer friendships and emotional support

Rated T (CW from mild internalized homophobia)

Read on ao3

She was already there when Gerry turned the corner, perched on a ledge that borders the rowhouse next door to their coffee shop, legs crossed at the ankles and swinging impatiently like a little kid.

“You know, you’re pushing 60,” he called out, grinning. “Surprised you haven’t learned some patience in your old age.”

She turned her beautiful face towards him, long auburn hair shining in the sunlight, and stuck out her tongue. Gerry hoisted himself up next to her and offered her a cigarette, lighting them both.

“So your girlfriend tried to kill me on Friday,” Gerry offered. He always wants to get Agnes to ask “which one?” and she never will—one of the many games he plays that he knows he’ll never win. She just blew out a stream of smoke and waited.

Gerry sighed. “It was Jude.”

“Doesn’t seem like it quite took,” Agnes commented, looking him over. Aside from some singed hair, she’s right.

“Hasn’t so far,” Gerry agreed.

Agnes leaned against him, threading her arm through his and nestling her head into his shoulder. He felt her warm exhales against his neck as they sat in silence, smoking and thinking.

It’s hard not to feel protective of Agnes, for all that she’s older than his mother and basically a god. It doesn’t help that she looks like a lost teenager, in her little mod dresses and Mary Janes, as if fashion stopped moving when she stopped aging. Add to that the fact that she’ll suddenly open her mouth and say the saddest thing you’ve ever heard. Like,

“You’re the only one who I can touch like a person. Everyone else, it’s just…” She trailed off, unwilling to put words to the reverent caresses of those who love her like a god and the agony she unwillingly inflicted on anyone foolish enough to see her as mortal. And then Gertrude. The complex tangle of pain and love that make up any interaction with Gertrude.

Gerry lifted his head from hers, untangling a strand of her flaming hair that was twisted in his eyebrow piercing, so he could look at her. She gave him her signature half-smile, a little upturn of the left side of her mouth that feels more like a tick than an expression.

“I know,” he said, trying to keep the pity that he knows he would despise, were he in her position, out of his voice. And he does know, without her having to say it.

He leaned his head back on hers and they sat together, quiet, watching the sun dip low over the treetops and houses, glowing orange streaks painting the sky.

***

Gerry was early this time. By a few hours. It had been an exhausting night that included a stab wound from a Slaughter avatar, 8 stitches in A&E, and a full hour of bullshit from Mary for losing the book. He had fallen into bed for a few hours of fitful sleep before his alarm went off to get him out of the house before Mary got up to continue her tirade.

And he’d had nowhere else to go. So here he was, at their coffee shop, curled up in the sofa against the far wall, on his third cup in two hours and picking listlessly at a scone.

Agnes practically waltzed in at 10:00 on the nose, wearing a daisy print dress and a straw hat, smelling of the sunshine that was making Gerry’s red-rimmed eyes water. She dropped her bag and plopped next to him, tipping her movie star sunglasses down her nose to look him over.

“You look terrible,” she said brightly, slinging one arm around his shoulders and pulling him in to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Another one?”

He nodded grimly and her other hand plucked his empty mug from the table in front of them, sweeping away to the counter and taking her warmth and sunshine with her.

Gerry pushed through the haze of misery that surrounded him like the cloud of dirt that followed Pigpen around in the Peanuts cartoons to watch Agnes flirt with the barista. She was honest to god twirling her hair as the other woman blushed over their drinks. She had been watching a lot of romantic comedies lately, he knew, and it wasn’t unusual for her to get caught up in a sort of extended daydream that she enacted with the rest of the world.

What was unusual was for her to seem so happy doing it.

She left the bar with a little twirl, mug in each hand, and sat down next to Gerry again.

“D’you want to talk about it?” she asked, passing him the coffee that was sure to push him from awake to jittery.

Gerry thought about it, then said, “Nah. Tell me something nice instead.”

So she did.

***

In October, shivering on the sidewalk café tables that were just this side of too chilly, both of them were resolutely determined to enjoy the changing leaves and the scent of burning firewood wafting through the air. Instead of going inside, they pushed their chairs together and curled up under a blanket, watching busy Londonites bustle up and down the street.

“I don’t think I can kiss men,” Agnes said out of nowhere, sipping her coffee.

“You kiss me all the time.”

“No, properly, I mean.”

“I don’t want to kiss you “properly,” Agnes. You’re like a million years old. And it’d be weird.”

“No, I don’t mean you. I mean human men. I think I could probably kiss you, but yes, you’re right, it would be weird.”

“Leaving aside the fact that I am human men, okay, agreed, no kissing. You’re bringing it up why?”

Agnes shifted uneasily next to him and when she speaks, her voice is soft. “I didn’t want to hurt him. Jack, I mean. I didn’t really care about him, but I never wanted that. I just thought…” She hesitates.

“Thought what?” He leveled his voice to match hers, quiet and neutral.

“Well. It’s what girls do, right? Find a nice man who looks at them like they are special, but not that special, still attainable. Go on dates with him, kiss him, wait for him to love you like you’re a person. Isn’t that right?”

Her brow was furrowed and her dark eyes were wide, looking at Gerry as if the question wasn’t rhetorical, as if he held the answers of humanity, as if he was something more than a fuck-up twenty-year-old who barely knew what it meant to be a person himself. Wasn’t like he’d had a ton of examples.

“Some of them do,” he reminded her. This was not the first conversation they’d had where he’d tried to unpack her compulsory heteronormativity. You’d think as both a minor fear deity and a lesbian, she’d be above such things, but her bizarre life had ended up with her tying up wanting men as a part of being human. They were working on it.

Meanwhile, Agnes had warmed to her topic. “And when I let him kiss me, I thought, this is it, this will make me a real girl. Like a sort of fairy tale. And I know it was cruel, I mean, I “know” in the way that you know that 2 and 2 is 4 or that London is the capital of England. It didn’t feel cruel, to kiss him right there in front of Jude and everyone, or to kiss him because I wanted out.”

“I think that’s the most human thing there is.” Gerry commented. “Wanting out.”

She gave him a rare real smile, eyes warm and crinkling a bit.

“A human desire that’s enough to make one embrace the monstrous?” She raised their entwined hands to look pointedly at his tattoos, still healing and glowing red at her touch.

Gerry shrugged. “Whatever works.”

She nudged him with her shoulder. He nudged back.

“Okay, okay. Yes, it is. God, her face when I came home with them. You should have seen it.” He grinned at the memory, eyes gazing off into the distance, faking nostalgia for a couple weeks ago. Well, mostly faking. He had felt more powerful then than he had in ages.

“Lesser men would have dropped dead from it,” she offers, smile in her voice.

“Well, you know, us Keays are made of sterner stuff. As she never hesitates to remind me.”

“So did it work? Will it get you out?” Her tone was hard to place. Hopeful, but with a thread of fear. He turned to look at her.

“Nothing will get me out. I know that well enough.” He sighed. “All I can do is get a little more control, carve out something that’s just mine.”

“And the Eye lets you have that?”

“Not exactly. There’s a line I have to walk, to keep it at bay I mean.” Gerry shrugged again. “I can’t do it forever. Dunno that I’ll live long enough for it to matter either way. But it makes a difference right now.”

Agnes made a hum of disapproval and Gerry chuckled at it.

“Not even you will live forever, you know?”

“Perish the thought,” she said, making a face. “But you deserve more than that.”

“Maybe. Maybe we both do.”

This was enough, though. A warm blanket and a hot drink on a cool night with some who loved and understood you like you wanted to be loved and understood.

#gerard keay #agnes motague #TMA fic #tma #My fic #tmagerryweek2021

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uswnt-owns-this-homo · 4 years ago

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Let a Bitch Hit You- Julie Ertz x Reader

AN: Here’s my attempt at a protective JJ, hope I did it justice!

TW: Homophobia, mentions of drugs/alcohol, cursing of course, homophobic slurs and language

You take a deep breath as the ref blows the starting whistle, the Courage kicking the ball back to their defense, signalling the start of the game. You try to follow the ball as much as possible, taking care to stay in position and wait for opportunities and passes to come your way. You can’t help but to think of the circumstances as your teammate, and long term girlfriend, Julie Johnson, gets the ball, and passes it quickly, opening up space and helping the Red Star’s attack.

The significance of the game is not lost on you, your first one against your prior team. Jaelene Hinkle, one of the most openly homophobic people in the league, had pushed you towards your transfer, though you and Julie were already discussing a request at a later time. After her and Ashlyn’s epic twitter battle, Jaelene had lashed out slightly, demanding that you, as the “resident queer on the team’’, get dressed for games and practices in a different area, so that she “could change without being leered at”.

The rest of the team, minus your national teammates, had just let her go along with it, not defending you or telling her she was wrong. This, along with direct statements to you about your sexuality, including, but not limited to: constantly telling you you’re going to hell and sinning, pelting balls at you during practice, and, during team bonding events, conveniently forgetting to invite you, leaving you disconnected with the rest of the team, had led to the situation at hand.

Your former teammates, bar the national team members, attack you mercilessly. They go for cheap moves, like holding your jersey during corner kicks, and performing late slide tackles, obviously targeting your notoriously weak ankles and knees. Throughout the game, Julie’s frown has become more prominent, her play more sharp, focused on getting the win over the people, or more accurately, the person, who contributed to her girlfriend's small fall down the rabbit hole.

Instead of discussing the transfer, and the events behind it, with a professional, you had turned to alcohol, and over the counter medications, drinking booze and then taking benadryl, or cough syrup, and sleeping for days. You had kept up your facade of your usual happy, energized, rival to Sonnett in memes personality, up until you had moved in with Julie in Chicago. She had quickly noticed your actions, taking count of the vodka and medicine bottles, and had pushed you to see a therapist, resulting in your sobriety of now 4 months.

Hinkle makes the mistake of going in for a late slide tackle, clipping your already sore ankle. You turn to her and she sneers, winking at you. You slowly get up, rolling your eyes as the ref allows play to continue.

Julie has been slightly more aggressive when facing Hinkle, and some people have noticed, mainly you, and of course the target herself, especially after a particularly hard run in was made for the ball.

“Hey, Johnson, how about you clean up your play? This is the third time you’ve shoved me, getting sloppy there, homo?”

The look on your girlfriend’s face says it all, and all you can do is run to put a hand on her shoulder, trying to keep her from retaliating.

“Aw, look, dyke is trying to stop big bad Julie from starting something she can’t finish. How’s the cough syrup binge going, Y/N? Still sober, or have you fucked that up as well?”

You just blankly stare at her, feeling old urges resurface, trying to stay in the present, as well as keep Julie from getting carded.

“You know, I think you transferred because you know I’m right, and you can’t face the fact that you sin everyday, and don’t like that your sickness is brought to light, isn’t that right, Y/N?”

Julie shakes you off, stomping forward and shoving Hinkle, causing you to follow, holding her back slightly, your team, and the opposition coming together in a large huddle, Alyssa grabbing Julie and holding her back..

“Alyssa, please. No, Y/N, she can’t talk to you like that! I mean, the league has done jack shit to her for harassing you, or for poor sportsmanship, or any of the other numerous things she’s done. Jesus, you tried to kill yourself! And what does she get? Absolutely nothing!”

Jaelene seems to falter for a moment, before her face turns in a sneer.

“Poor Y/N, can’t take any criticism, what’d you do, try to get away from it?”

Julie finally breaks out of your and Alyasa’s grip, lunging at Hinkle, landing a solid punch to her jaw. The ref comes running, putting her hands on both players. Julie is still attempting to reach Hinkle, and laughs at the red card she’s shown.

“Oh yeah, fucking let the one who’s caused severe emotional and mental harm to my girlfriend get off scott free!”

Coach calls her over and she rolls her eyes, giving you a quick kiss on the forehead, glaring at Hinkle when she fake gags.

You’ve had enough, officially snapped, gone off the metaphorical rails of tolerance of douchbaggery.

“You know, you can insult me, make me want to cease living, but you have no right to be disgusted. Any god I know would be appalled at how you’ve treated my community, and I know you don’t go to heaven just on the merit of being a homophobic christian. Ash was right, you have no place on the national team… You wouldn’t fit,”

You shove her backwards, taking your yellow card with a grin. Play resumes relatively quickly, and your whole team goes forward into the second half with a renewed passion, compensating for Julie’s red. You lose yourself in the game, giving it your absolute all, and laying yourself out on every possible play. You manage to score 3 goals, one which could have been defended by Hinkle.

The whistle blows and your team rushes you, picking you up, hugging you, and cheering. You all head back to the locker room and you spot Julie, staring at her phone, a blank stare on her face. You sit beside her, putting your arm around her shoulders and pulling her into a hug.

“Thank you, so much. For defending me, for fighting for me, even though I really missed my favorite ball feeder,”

Julie cracks a smile and shrugs.

You pull her in for a short kiss, trying to convey all of your love for her. You all walk out of the locker room, bags and bus buddies in tow. Julie holds your hand as you walk to the bus, rubbing a thumb over it as you stare blankly ahead of you, thinking back on your whole experience with Jaelene. Julie wraps her arms around you as you both get onto the bus, finding your usual seat beside Alyssa, who smiles worriedly at you. You take a deep breath and look at Julie.

“I just, I thought transferring would give me peace, but she’s still there, the thoughts, they’re still there. Just. Why is it such a big deal to her? I’m just living my life, trying to be happy, and she constantly made me feel, hell, sometimes still makes me feel, worthless, and I know therapy helped, but still, sometimes, like tonight’s game, brings it all back,”

Julie gets a look on her face, as does Uncle Naeher. They look at each other and nod slightly, brows furrowed.

“Come on Alyssa, Y/N, sit here, we’ll be back in a second,”

You curl up in the seat, listening to Julie talk to Alyssa’s seat mate, and one of your friends on the team, Sam Kerr.

“Look, me and Alyssa have to go do something, we’ll catch an Uber to our place afterwards, could you do me a huge solid, look after Y/N for me? Make sure she stays talking, doesn’t zone out too much?”

Sam nods and Julie sighs, turns to you, and kisses you on the forehead.

Okay, love, I’m gonna go, sort things out. I’ll be back in a bit, before you go to bed, okay?”

You numbly nod, heart racing.

She quickly turns to Sam, nods, and goes to get off the not yet started bus. Coach looks at her and Alyssa, and they talk for a few seconds before he waves them on, glancing back at you. Sam moves to sit beside you, and you curl up to her side, silently wishing it was Julie.

You’ve made it back to the hotel, eyes red from your crying on the way back. You carry your bag to your room, Sam walking you to it and giving you a hug as you walk inside. You put your things down, taking care to organize it so you don’t have to deal with it later. You turn the coffee maker on, set it to hot water, and start to run it, putting a tea bag in and leaving it to brew while you shower. You get your sweats and long sleeve t-shirt, taking out your toiletries and turning the water on cold, hoping the chill will help pull you out of your funk. You hop in and sit under the water, shivering slightly, but unwilling to turn it warmer.

You must sit there for an hour, slowly numbing even more from the cold water. You vaguely hear the room’s door open, Julie setting down her bag and putting her keys on the desk.

“Y/N? Babe?”

You want to turn your head, say something, go lay and curl up in your girlfriend’s arms, let her reassure you, but the motivation doesn’t come. So, you sit and numbly watch, shivering and lips turning blue, as Julie comes in the bathroom, looks to you, and immediately rushes into the shower, clothes on and forehead cut, eye black.

“I’m so sorry. I should’ve been here, stayed with you, I just. She did this to you, without really trying, I couldn’t just let that happen,”

You just shrug and hug her, trying to get warm, regretting your tactic for pulling yourself out of your mind.

“Okay, we need to get you warm. I saw your tea, you can have that, and then we can lay down and watch that documentary you heard about from Rose?”

You nod, watching her turn water to warm, and strip, leaving her soaked clothes on the bathroom floor. Julie slowly washes your hair, conditions it, and takes a cloth to your slowly warming body, every touch and prod gentle and full of love. She keeps you under the warm spray for a while, holding you and rocking slightly.

“Okay, now which one of my hoodies do you want? We have the Santa Clara U or the Red Stars one, and some sweats, and some fuzzy socks are in your near future,”

You smile.

“You wore the Red Stars one more recently, so that one,”

A small blush runs across her cheeks, her usual confident demeanour gone.

“I’ll see what I can do, charmer. Ready to get out, get bundled, and get cuddled?”

She goes about shutting off the water, looking down to nod at you, and then stands up, you still cradled to her chest. You have a moment of realization.

“If I ask nicely, will you avoid putting clothing on?”

She sputters and turns tomato red.

“I- what? No, clothes are going on so I can properly warm you up, no more sly passes! I’m trying to take care of you, short stuff,”

You glower, sigh, and wrap your arms around her neck, waiting for her to put you down.

“Okay, look, tonight may have gotten to me, just a bit, but even all wacked out, I know somethings wrong. What happened to your face, and where’s Uncle?”

She sighs and starts to towel you off.

“Fine, The Giant and I went to have a chat with Hinkle, and I had her record it. I simply started talking with Hinkle, trying to reason and help her to understand things a little better, and then she hit me, and I didn’t hit back, and then she hit me some more,so now we’re hoping that we can send this to the big people in charge and maybe she’ll get suspended or in trouble or something. Alyssa is back with Sammy trying to stay away from conflict for the rest of her life. She did tell me to tell you to come down tomorrow if you needed some tips for dealing with the whole situation. Honestly think it’s the most she’s spoken this season,”

You hug her and wrap the towel around her shoulders before smacking her gently in the leg.

“No more inciting violence in the hopes that you fuck with people who have ‘wronged me’ or whatever it is you said that one time, got it? Also, you need ice, but I will say I love a girl with a black eye,”

You walk off into the main part of the room, ruffling through Julie’s bag to find her sweatshirt, lifting it over your head with a triumphant croon.

“Aw yeah, the epic girlfriend hoodie, let’s go!”

Julie chuckles and walks out, coming up behind you and grabbing her SCU hoodie, pulling it on and winking.

“So that next time you want a sweatshirt, you can have a freshly me scented one,”

You roll your eyes and grab a pair of training shorts, pulling them on and grabbing your tea, laying back carefully on the bed.

“Okay, coral documentary, snuggles, and then sleep,”

Julie nods and gets in bed, pulling you close and grabbing the laptop beside the bed and opening up Netflix.

“Sounds like a pretty amazing night to me, shorty, let’s watch us some ocean stuff,”

Needless to say you’re crying by the end of the documentary. Julie jerks awake, her soft snoring abruptly ceasing.

“What? What happened, who hurt you, I’ll let em’ punch me, get their ass suuspeendedd,”

You chuckle, still crying slightly.

“Nobody, babe, just, he loves coral! And it’s disappearing, and he’s sad and all emotional and now I’m all emotional!”

You sniff a few times and shut the computer, quickly putting it on the bedside table.

“Please don’t let anyone hit you again, Juls, pretty please,”

She sleepily grunts and mumbles.

“Man, sometimes you just let a bitch hit you, ya’ know. Gotta get the w somehow, cause I sure didn’t get it during the game,”

You laugh and wrap her arms tighter around you, knowing it’s going to be a bit of a long road ahead, but certain that the whole situation will pan out, and that you have Julie by your side through all of it.

#julie johnston x reader #julie ertz x reader #julie ertz #uswnt imagine #julie ertz imagine

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kevinbirthday · 5 years ago

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Critically analyzing The All For The Game series

While this may seem like a hit piece on the books I will say that I absolutely adore the books beyond even my own comprehension. I own multiple pieces of fan merch of characters created by Nora and this series got me through incredibly tough times. I enjoy being critical of the media I enjoy so this is in no way meant to hate on Nora or drive you away from reading the books. The series will forever have a special place in my heart I am just a cynical person lol.

The all for the game series really is amazing, though there is subpar writing and glaring plot holes at times. Nora took lots of ideas I’ve never really seen in any other YA novel and ran with them, hell she even had a queer couple that didn’t exist solely for queer bait. I just feel like Nora had lots of ideas and there were so many concepts and half-baked notions of what should happen that not all of them were executed correctly.

I also think her putting out the extra content that contradicts the books multiple times was a poor choice. Yes, it’s great to get questions answered about things but I think if you have to constantly go back in and explain why something happend or when, then you should have spent more time on the books development. I have strong opinions when it comes to the extra content. Part of me believes it shouldn’t exist past answering a few questions about the books, not 300 paragraphs of random reiterations of the storyline and extra side stories that contradict canon.

I think a lot of the series was based on contrived plot points and driven by too many plot devices to make the story seem like a linear progression to me. The readers of this should also read the books on their own and form their own opinions on the book. Nora doesn’t alway do things incorrectly and I will never claim she’s a terrible writer on the basis that she self published the entire series. The books were never professionally polished and I think that is part of what gives this series so much charm. Suspension of belief is needed to read this series and it does inspire feelings of “What the actual hell. Did that just happen?!” Which honestly just shows the creativity of the series and proves that you can write a book full of morally grey characters and it be successful. As stated earlier I give Nora props for never making the main characters queer relationship be the entire focus of their exsistance. She did drop the ball on that when writing Nicky Hemmick’s character.

I also believe that while Nora was amazingly creative with this series, she created a whole new sport and badass characters for Pete’s sake that’s talent. I also Nora didn’t handle many things correctly or with the tact needed to pull certain things off.

Andrew and his whole meds situation paints medication and mental illness in an extremely poor light. I think she just wanted to throw something in to cover all her bases instead of researching pills. I agree it’s not far fetched to say that Andreil never say I love you in terms of vocalizing the words to each other because of the fact that they have their own private version of the words.

What I do find extremely far fetched is that Andrew never ‘heals’. Andrew Minyard goes to therapy even after the mandatory sessions are finished. Andrew agreed to go to joint therapy sessions with his brother to work their issues out! Tell me this man is not healing. Andrew will never not have bipolar disorder because it’s not something to be cured and he most definitely has C-PTSD after all he’s gone through. Those things can’t be cured but they can be managed by having a support system, going to therapy, and talking though issues within your family system. What is Andrew Minyard doing? Exactly that. He’s managing his symptoms which is part of healing, sure he’ll never be ‘normal’ but he’s healing as a person. The mindset that someone will never heal bc of their csa and mental health issues are ‘too bad’ is literally the worst mindset to have and is so damaging!

I also understand that you have to call on some suspension of belief when it comes to Andrew’s sentencing after he protected Nicky during the fight at Eden’s, but the only case I’ve ever personally seen someone be forced to take mind altering medication after a fight and not be sent to a psych ward was in the case of a combative schizophrenic and hurt someone and the person they attacked pressed charges. I find the whole Andrew on medication ordeal both infuriating and incredibly confusing.

Another confusing thing to me is the entire characterizaton of Nicky Hemmick. Can we all agree that it was incredibly uncomfortable? He was written as an extremely stereotypical gay man with rapey ‘undertones’. Who am I kidding with undertones he shoved drugs down Neil’s throat with his tounge and can’t take no as an answer. This being said, I do love Nicky’s character. I just don’t think that someone who was subjected to conversion therapy no matter if they had some to help them work through their internalized homophobia, would act so flamboyantly during the 2000’s. There were still commercials about not calling people gay as a insult, Paris Hilton had to tell people to use the word stupid instead. He was also one of the only explicitly stated characters as being a person of color and while I’d never say that Nora had racist intent behind that writing him as an extremely predatory gay man always rubbed me in an uncomfortable way.

At least he had some semblance of a back story though, due to Mr. Unreliable Narrator Neil Josten it felt like some characters were there just to prove that character’s besides the monsters, a few of the upperclassmen, and riko existed. Riko’s villain status seemed like it was something to make more of an immediate threat to Neil than Nathan. We had to have some reason for Kevin to be with the foxes and to go to a team so ranked down other than just Wymack being his father. What was Riko really there for other than to tell Neil that the Moriyama’s think he’s their property and then get shot in the head? I also think his death was just to wrap things up neatly and provide closure to the reader that all the ‘bad guys’ are gone. Evermore mostly served to further Neil and Andrew’s relationship and to provide extra drama. Nathan was too out of site out of mind to provide any suspense or drama for the readers. Riko was more of a plot device than a character in my personal opinion. We also only have the bare bones of almost all of the upperclassmen’s back stories. All we really know about the upperclassmen is that Dan used to be a stripper and her stage name was Hennessy, Matt’s dad sucked and he was an addict in the past and Andrew was the reason he went to rehab, Renee was in a gang and is a reborn Christian, Allison had an ed and was disowned and who cares about Seth because he was just killed to bring the foxes together. Was the team so dysfunctional Nora had to kill a man to get them to work together? I feel like his death could have been avoided and was completely meaningless. I enjoyed the the books but at times it was a complete information overload and I can’t even imagine how Neil felt in the situation when I as a reader will never had to deal with that firsthand.

#aftg #all for the game #tfc #andrew minyard #the foxhole court #neil josten #andreil #aaron minyard #palmetto state foxes #aftg analysis #aftg textpost #aftg shitpost #all for the game hc

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dgcatanisiri · 3 years ago

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The thing it always always ALWAYS comes back to is the fact that it’s no one source that is responsible for the lack nor capable of fixing it. It’s all a bunch of issues in society proper and the industry culture. Videos games will always be written from the perspective of straight people, and almost inevitably straight men. Film is from the perspective of the male gaze. The world we lives in will assume straight until proven otherwise.

And because straight is “the default,” it is what gets catered to, with any claim to the contrary, any attempt to say “hey, what about [queer identity]?” these big chains can argue “not worth the time/effort/money!” Because pure numbers say that’s a valid excuse. Because they can make more money just accepting homophobia than pushing against it. Because pushing against it is “risky,” and, well, we can’t push people too much for something they’re “not ready” for.

Even when people on the chain WANT to do more, offer more... They’ll get pushback. Like, I legit, 100% believe that sacrificing bi!Jaal on the release of Mass Effect Andromeda was part of a fight to keep Suvi a lesbian - we KNOW that it was a fight to keep her from being made bisexual, I buy that the ground of “one of two bisexual men” was given in order to keep the lesbian representation. It’s a shitty situation and a shitty choice that shouldn’t have been forced in, but I damn well believe it happened.

Or with Voltron - I do not give a damn about the dumpster fire that fandom is, I guarantee that Adam being killed off was part of the terms that they had to agree to just to get it to air, get a gay relationship in a cartoon that is primarily oriented to children. Look at all the fights that creators in Legend of Korra, Adventure Time, Steven Universe, She-Ra, etc. have had to go through - and remember that it’s NOT the same thing for gay guys in action-adventure series, that there has NOT been that kind of breakthrough in M/M relationships and portrayals, and yes, this IS a different track to run through, because, put simply, lesbian representation is not the same thing as gay male representation. Similar, yes, and there’s an umbrella they’re both under, but they’re not the same - as much as you’ll find a queer person who celebrates any win under the queer umbrella, they will still have that wish that there was also a win for their SPECIFIC identity.

This is the inherent flaw of grouping so many identities under the same umbrella - we all rely on each other, sure, but at the same time, just because it’s a queer win, that doesn’t make it a win for every individual letter under that umbrella. It’s not always your mirror you’re seeing, and as much as you can be happy that others get their representation, human beings will always have that egotistical part that goes ‘well what about MY needs?”

I’ll also guarantee that there was an active play for Shiro/Keith (like, LOOK at their interactions and tell me that there isn’t SOME kind of significant bond being established that is outright groundwork for a relationship) and THAT had the kibosh put on it as well - that the active choice on the part of some executive, be it Netflix or other producers was that Shiro could be gay, but they could not have two gay lead characters, and that’s why Shiro marrying random extra happened.

Because I don’t think that it’s actively bigotry that drives these kinds of choices. It IS homophobia, implicit homophobia, the kind that says it isn’t worth fighting for or dealing with the inevitable headaches when the conservatives get in an uproar. No, it’s simply that... They don’t want to deal with that headache. They know it’s going to create blowback from the idiots, and while they understand that those people aren’t really worth endorsing, it’s just a lot to deal with so how about instead we NOT?

Because to them, it’s all hypothetical. It’s all an intellectual exercise. It’s a headache to deal with these people who aren’t really worth listening to, but we still depend on their money to turn a profit and keep our jobs, so it’s just easier not to rock the boat.

Meanwhile to the queer people they are denying representation, it’s our LIVES. It’s our mirrors. And often, that is the difference between life or death. That’s not exaggeration. If you never see yourself reflected in your media, if you only ever see yourself in the secondary roles, never the hero... It damages you.

Like, I’ve reached a point where, if for no other reason than sheer spite, I intend to keep kicking. But... It does wear on me. It gets me down. To know that even the scraps that I find are the result of long, drawn out fights that started with the full meal - and then, because the scraps exist, I KNOW there’s some pencil-pusher going over the results of everything related to this content by whatever metrics they have, just LOOKING to use the scraps as justification for why the numbers came up short and that’s why they won’t include more scraps again.

And this just. keeps. happening. It’s every time that the representation COULD be there, every time it’s SORT OF there, but clearly grudging, every time that the only reason we get queer representation is because the developers don’t want to bother with the coding to lock off certain romances by gender, not because it’s cared about, every time that the developers and creators have to go to the people who pushed for this and say “I’m sorry, but I lost the fight, and if we don’t cut it, they will.”

It doesn’t change. We’re about a decade and a half from Jade Empire, the game that gave me so much JOY in being able to play a gay male character in a video game and see a gay man as the hero. We’re about a decade out from Korrasami. And what are we really getting as different? Okay, video game characters don’t have their sexualities so blatantly hidden - I don’t have to turn down every female love interest in order to get the male love interests to even ask if I’m interested. Okay, we’ve seen the progression of Korrasami to Bubbleline to Ruby/Sapphire to Lumity, but these are still moments that basically cause the network to pull the plug.

Y’know, sure, I’m still going because of spite. But that’s beyond cold comfort when it comes to how I look at the amount of books, movies, TV shows, and video games and still don’t see myself in there.

#another angry queer rant #dg rants #dg gets pissed

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flowerfan2 · 4 years ago

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Everything You’re Looking For

David/Patrick, 2000 words, A03

S05e06 coda

In the days after what Patrick thinks of as the Ken incident, Patrick finds himself hyperaware every time a guy around his age comes into the store. It’s bordering on ridiculous, but each time Patrick approaches one of them with what he steadily maintains is his usual cheerful greeting, he can’t help but wonder what they see when they look at him. Is he now giving off some kind of gay vibe?

Adding to the insanity of this preoccupation is the fact that Patrick still, for the most part, has no idea whether any particular guy he looks at is queer. He’s actually pretty sure that making that judgment based upon a guy’s appearance is incorrect, and yet he doesn’t have the time to banter with everyone he meets for a few weeks to find out whether their eyes linger on his lips when he calls out their sloppy mouth, so he’s not sure how to discover if there might be an attraction between them.

It’s not as if he wants there to be an attraction between them – he doesn’t want to be with anyone other than David, that was never really in doubt, and now it’s firmly established. But he just can’t help considering what people think when they meet him. If Ken had seen something in Patrick that told him “yeah, he might be open to this” does that mean that Patrick has changed? In his whole life, before meeting David, no guy has ever hit on him. Something must have changed.

Of course it might also be that Ken saw Patrick interacting with David, or looking at David, or existing near David… Patrick thinks he’s pretty obvious, at least now, when it comes to his attachment to his boyfriend. Stevie has gone so far as to describe him as “besotted,” at least when she was high. On the other hand, if it was clear that Patrick was in a relationship, why would Ken have asked for his number?

It’s confusing, and distracting. Desperate to get his mind off the topic, Patrick tells David that he’s going to hide out in the back room for the afternoon and work on the books. David seems fine with this – he’s got no reason not to be – and so Patrick sits himself down with his laptop and proceeds to stare unseeingly at a half-finished profit and loss statement until his eyes start to cross.

Patrick wonders if this would all make more sense if he knew any other queer people their age besides David. He thinks that’s part of why David wanted him to experience a date with Ken. Having someone to talk to seems like it might help. But the last thing he wants is to make David think he wants to meet other gay guys because there’s something lacking in his relationship with David – there isn’t. David is gorgeous and impossible and everything Patrick had never known he wanted. Patrick can’t imagine being more deeply in love than he is with David, and in his heart of hearts, he doesn’t see that ever changing.

But Patrick is, for lack of a better word, curious. He’s never been a gay man in any environment other than Schitt’s Creek; no one knew he was gay until he became David Rose’s boyfriend. (His parents still don’t know, but he pushes that thought away – it’s a problem for another day).

He finds himself poking around online, looking at LGBTQ+ community center websites. There’s one not too far away with a wide range of programming, including groups that center around identity, advocacy, mental health, and the arts. There’s even a book club. Patrick tries to imagine showing up to a meeting with a dozen other queer people. He’s not sure how it would feel.

A few more searches bring him to an online chat group. He meanders about for a while, reading threads on coming out, and religion, and the challenges of being gay in a small town. He finds one that seems friendly, and without letting himself think too hard about it, he posts.

I haven’t been out for long, even to myself. I’m pretty happy hanging out with my boyfriend and his - he rapidly backspaces, deleting “his” and changing it to “our” - our most likely straight friends, but should I be making an effort to meet more queer people?

Patrick forces himself to tab away from the chat group and spend some time entering data on vendors into a spreadsheet. It’s easy work, though, and not nearly distracting enough. He doesn’t know why he thinks random people who have nothing better to do than screw around online are going to have anything valuable to say, but he’s still dying to know if he’ll get any responses.

Finally five o-clock rolls around, and he joins David out in the store to get ready to close up. David’s in a good mood, humming and strutting around the display tables with a broom that is serving more as a prop than a cleaning device, and Patrick forgets all about his post. They pick up a pizza on their way home, and waste time faux arguing about whether they’re going to go to Ray’s house next weekend for game night (they will, in the end, but David needs to get in a good rant first to feel like he’s being heard).

Alexis stops by for a few minutes, and she teases David for a while about a haircut he once got while drunk – in her opinion it was even worse than the one Jocelyn got at the casino. Patrick thinks Alexis is lonely now that David spends most nights out of the motel. He doesn’t mind her lingering in their space as if she has a right to be there. It’s nice, really, feeling like he’s part of David’s family, and he doesn’t like the idea of Alexis feeling alone.

David kicks Alexis out around ten, and they get changed into sleep pants and t-shirts and climb into bed. Patrick grabs his laptop and David smirks at him, finding a magazine and tucking himself close against Patrick’s side. It’s not weird for them to read for a while before going to sleep, even if it means that they don’t mess around every night. Patrick tips his head and kisses David’s forehead. He always felt guilty if he told Rachel he wasn’t in the mood, but it doesn’t work that way with David. David doesn’t have any doubts about the fact that Patrick finds him sexy. They’ve played with this often enough, David cranking Patrick up just with a sultry smile and a finger trailing along his skin in just the right place. But tonight, at least for now, Patrick has other things on his mind.

Bracing himself for disappointment, Patrick goes back to the chat. There are a number of replies to his post, and he bites his lip as he reads them. There’s a good smattering of “don’t worry, there’s no way to do it wrong” responses which are nice enough, but he’s already had David’s voice in his head telling him that. There’s one comment about how he should ask himself why this has occurred to him now, and if someone in the friend group is making him uncomfortable (no one is). Another tells him to consider whether this is a situation of internalized homophobia or if he feels safer with straight people than gay people (he doesn’t think that’s it). Another asks him if maybe he’s just not that into group activities, which is off the mark but makes him chuckle.

The response that resonates the most, though, that makes his shoulders relax and his nervous finger tapping subside, is this one: Do what feels comfortable for you now, and stay open to other possibilities. There’s no rule that you have to pick one way to be queer and stay that way forever. Maybe next year you’ll decide to express your sexuality in different ways, or feel the need to meet more people. If you are fortunate enough to have a few good friends, and someone who loves you, you’re doing just fine.

Patrick breathes deeply, thinking this through. It feels right. David stirs next to him.

“Ready to go to sleep, or is there still a spreadsheet that needs your attention?”

Patrick hesitates for a moment, and then turns his laptop towards David, who props himself up on an elbow to read the screen.

“I was considering an LGBTQ book club,” Patrick says, as lightly as he can. “Or maybe a bowling league.”

“Ugh, please. I know you’re just saying that to torment me. Who came up with an activity that requires you to wear unsanitary shoes?”

“I think they’re cute.”

“You do not.” David scrolls up to see Patrick’s original post, his eyes flickering over to Patrick’s face and back to the screen. “I was in a queer book club for a while. Mostly because Adrien’s caterer had a Cordon Blu trained pastry chef on staff. Those chouquettes…” David lets out a little groan of appreciation.

“Did you like it? The book club, I mean, I know you liked the pastry.”

David slings his arms around Patrick’s neck and looks at him steadily. “Patrick, I ran art galleries in New York City. I lived in Chelsea. I didn’t need a book club to find my people.”

Patrick feels silly for a minute, remembering again how very different David’s life has been from his.

“But it was fun, on occasion. When does it meet?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t get that far. I wasn’t seriously considering it.” Patrick pulls away from David, needing just a little less eye contact. He slides down on the bed, and David follows, tucking his head on Patrick’s shoulder.

“Well, let me know if you change your mind. I’ve exhausted all the reading material at the motel. I wouldn’t want to risk our relationship by taking any more of those quizzes.”

Patrick’s brain trips over this for a minute. “You’d want to come with me?”

David turns to him, and it’s clear that he understands that this conversation is more than just Patrick trying to decide what to do with his Sunday nights. “I’d like to. There’s a definite dearth of non-straights in Schitt’s Creek. But not if it’s something you wanted to do for yourself. That would also be fine.”

It dawns on Patrick that maybe David could use more gay friends too, or pan, or just friends in general that aren’t his sister or Stevie. And he imagines going to a queer group with David at his side, David’s arm in a fuzzy sweater wrapped around his own, David’s chin tucked over his shoulder. He likes the idea.

Patrick turns and kisses David, his mouth lingering on his lips. “I think that’d be good,” he says against David’s cheek. “If we both went.”

David hums his agreement and kisses Patrick back, heating it up, his hands roaming around Patrick’s body in the way that never fails to turn him on. Things fall away from Patrick for a while after that, as they strip off their clothes and press close, David’s naked body grinding hot against his under the sheets.

“I wondered about it too,” David says later, after they’ve caught their breath and nestled back together, sweat cooling on their skin. “How Ken knew right away.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmm. I thought maybe he saw the way I looked at you.”

Patrick can’t believe there’s enough energy left in his body to blush, but he knows he’s doing it. He rubs his nose in David’s hair. “Yeah? How do you look at me?”

David laughs softly, digging his chin into Patrick’s shoulder. “Alexis says besotted. And she’s right.”

Patrick holds David tighter and kisses him again. “The feeling’s mutual, babe.” It’s love that’s changed him, Patrick thinks, as he drifts off to sleep. And it’s changed David, too. It’s shining out of them so brightly, it’s no wonder people can see it.

#David Rose #Patrick Brewer #Schitt's Creek #Schitt's Creek fic #S05e06

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a-stitch-in-time-and-space · 5 years ago

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Queers in Space (DS9 Edition) Part 1 (Seasons 1-midway season 5)

Continuation to Queers in Space (TNG)

Benjamin Sisko: Similar to Picard's Captain-Gender, Sisko is Dad (some characters, like Julian, might occasionally look at him and think Daddy, mainly when he's being Righteous). He’s very caught up in caring about everything and is just happy he’s got such a large family (although he wishes there were more babies he could dote on). What he otherwise really loves is getting pegged by beautiful women.

Kasidy Yates: Speaking of women who peg... She uses she/her pronouns and “woman” but her relationship to gender is like... not relevant. Not needed. Whatever. Call me whatever and I'll respond to it. And she's pan. She's been in space for long enough to have realised that attraction is attraction. Chaotic bench, I love her.

Jake Sisko: he's a burgeoning bisexual, Byron is his literary inspiration and he's the only man on DS9 who's pretty consistently half-well-dressed (you cannot change my mind about this). He and Nog have tested kissing. Mayhaps they may try out more in future.

Kira Nerys: Her lesbianism was so powerful that she was barely allowed to interact with other women (mirror!Kira may have been a bad bisexual trope, but she was also far closer to the truth). Not just a lesbian, but stompin' about in her butch boots and padded shoulders for the first half of the series, damn! All those guys she keeps dating are her beards.

Jadzia Dax: Omnisexual, poly, genderqueer babe - the poly part is why I cannot fully ship her with Worf, even though I love that she’s with a partner she can spar with (in ahem multiple ways). The whole point of trill is to experience life to the fullest and Jadzia takes that brief very seriously (that is canon!). At heart she's also very romantic. The fact that she and Nerys don't seem to have any storylines together is homophobia.

Julian Bashir: Trans, queer, dork. He canonically comes aboard knowing nothing about himself or the universe, he's just here to learn and have a good time and be an idealistic hero and accidentally fall in love with both his best friend and a lizard spyman and we're here cheering that wonderful foot-fetishist on like proud parents (Benjamin has literally sat him down to give him his blessing, but also express his confusion about his tastes).

Elim Garak: Blessed by the mouth of Andy Robinson himself, omnisexual and into Julian and down to clown and generally just a chaotic energy of fun and murder and sex, in whatever order. I read a thing about Cardassians choosing gender through specific make-up and the blue mark on the forehead, and they're all intersex and honestly Yes This! Garak opted out. He dresses like the genderqueer slut icon he is.

Miles O'Brien: I could go 50 different places with him. At first I wrote him off as a straight cis guy, but then as DS9 went on I became less sure... for one, there's Julian and the poly marriage with Keiko and Nerys. For two... it'd be fun if he were gendershrug. “I'm an engineer, I haven't got time to think about that” - does this open up the possibility that in the future all humans choose their own gender? I mean, the federation is supposed to be a form of minor utopia, so yes, and Miles just never got around to it and never will.

Keiko O'Brien: My poly, pan queen. I didn't see her and Nerys coming at aaaall and may I just say I am thrilled. It's what she deserves. She has two hands and a large heart (and a large bed too). She's a lady, but by now I've entirely decided that cis just doesn't exist at that point in the future. Gender is A Choice and she liked the sound of woman and like with everything else she liked the sound of, she grabbed it with both hands and went “mine” (she did that with Miles and Nerys as well).

Worf (Part 2): Ds9 is when Worf got more interesting to me. He was fine on TNG, but here, my word. Both the worst and the best. Okay, yes, he's very monogamous, I will relent. But also he's got a much bigger bi energy going for him, which I celebrate. On that note, if Garak isn't his type, what kinda person is? I'm assuming he's just not into Cardassians as a rule, because of their culture-biases. He likes a partner who'll punch him in the face before propositioning with all their cards on the table. What he needs is to get pegged.

Odo: Ace and aro. He’s full of love. In order to mimic “solids” he tries to make sense of his emotions from their perspectives and so comes to the conclusion that he definitely isn’t allowed to love Quark and definitely ought to be in romantic love with Nerys, but once he understands himself better, he doesn’t feel such a need to limit himself. He has unlimited hands you guys!!!! (sometimes he has no hands, but that doesn’t limit him either). He’s tried out various body shapes, and he likes the sound of “man.” He can’t place his finger on why, and honestly he doesn’t have to. It’s his identity. Hope he realises how loved he is.

Quark: He thought he was your average straight man on the station, but ds9 has a way of bringing out your true colours and it turns out he’s in love with an occasional bucket of goo. He expresses this by snarking at aforementioned goo-man. This isn’t even me, this is just... canon facts. Ferengi have strong binary genders. Quark is a man, but he’s later not-so-secretly sympathetic towards people who veer away from binary gender, such as...

Rom: Is “not having the lobes for business” code for being trans-femme? Kinda feeling it is. In a way it’s harder to be trans-masc, simply because afab people in Ferengi culture have a much harder time escaping the home planet in order to explore themselves, and Rom will eventually launch a campaign for equality for trans Ferengi (what is “trans” in Ferengi?) Also he’s more ace than he realises. He has urges (that one episode... definitely proved that), but they’re not directed at anyone. He likes being loved. Surprisingly sex doesn’t play as big a role in that as he might’ve thought it would.

Nog: "Doesn’t have the lobes for business” but is kinda chill about gender. Probably due to having grown up amongst other humanoids. Especially come starfleet academy he fully embraces gender and sexuality definitions as being “eh” to him. It’s not his interest, so he doesn’t define it. That being said, he’s also somewhere along the bi/pan spectrum.

Leeta: Pan-ace. She likes a certain amount of attention, and she has strong sensual attraction and she doesn’t mind sex, but as long as she’s loving and loved, she’s happy. After dumping Julian (like they both deserve), she gets a bunch of sugar-parents, who pay her school for her. It’s like hunger games out there, with how every one of them tries to impress her the most. She likes the attention and she loves studying, she can do it all. Be a bombshell and a smart cookie.

Gul Dukat: His gender and sexuality are “idiot clown-man.”

#ds9 #benjamin sisko #kira nerys #julian bashir #jadzia dax #elim garak #jake sisko #kasidy yates #miles o'brien #keiko o'brien #quark #odo #nog #gul dukat #worf #I haven't watched all of it but I couldn't wait #writing

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lyricwritesprose · 5 years ago

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My Good Omens Fic Masterpost For Those Stuck At Home

Pretty much what it says on the tin. The only thing I can offer during this crisis is fic to take people’s minds off things, so here’s some fic to take people’s minds off things. Please consider giving it a reblog and not just a like so that lots of people will see it.

The Thing About Apple Cottage

Easily my most popular story. Features married Ineffable Husbands in a cottage near the sea and a child who finds refuge in their cottage. Has transphobia, but also a happy ending. The Path From Fire To Snow

Read the fic that inspired this one first. Crowley has a trauma dream, and Aziraphale helps. This fic is part of the #ButterOmens project on Tumblr, meaning that it’s available for remixes, art, etc. I particularly love the chain that this particular fic inspired. Includes trauma angst, but is ultimately very hopeful and soft. Divinity

Mature and highly shippy Aziraphale/Crowley! Aziraphale perceives love, including being able to taste the love of cooking that people put into his food. Crowley perceives want. Aziraphale has a clever idea. Light angst, much fluff. Also part of #ButterOmens, so if anyone wants to remix it, do art, or anything of that sort, feel free! I have to admit, I would be very interested to know how an experienced NSFW writer would make of this general concept.

Going Fast

A night-at-Crowley’s-flat fic. Features no sex and an arguably asexual Crowley, who isn’t opposed to sex and is deeply in love with Aziraphale, but isn’t sure exactly what attraction is or how it works. Light angst, mostly fluff.

An Entirely Effable Game Of Aziraphale’s Devising

Fluffy drabble. Aziraphale asks a question. Crowley, for somewhat good reason, panics.

Disposable

The Disposable Demon comes to Aziraphale and Crowley while seeking a better life for themself. Features a good deal of angst, mostly stemming from the Disposable Demon’s awful life, but ultimately a happy ending. Also may count as xenofiction, since the Disposable Demon’s multi-body deal is really weird.

The Dove, the Serpent, and an Awful Lot of Water

One possible take on what Crowley got up to during the Flood. Doesn’t really fit with my other historicals. Less angst than you’d expect given the subject matter.

Series underneath the cut.

Charity Commission Fics

Not a formal series, because I want to avoid AO3′s rules about money for fic. The money for these commissions went to various organizations that fight for the rights of children on the US border, mostly RAICES.

“Being Seen” Crowley plays with gender; Aziraphale struggles with ideas about remaining inconspicuous. Contains some brief offscreen Islamophobia, with karmic or at least Crowley-ic comeuppance. “Book of Stairs” A Doctor Who crossover featuring Aziraphale and Charley Pollard. I feel like the two universes don’t fit together at all, but the characters played off each other beautifully.

Tales of the Them Series

Basically a number of stories that document the Ineffable Husbands interacting with Adam and the Them (and also Newt, Anathema, and Adam’s parents). Angst level: fairly low. Everybody has some trauma from the Apocalypse, but they’re all dealing with it. Might be continued at some point when I come up with a good story for Brian. The stories are:

“Godfathers” in which Anathema talks Aziraphale and Crowley into talking to Adam “More Fun With Fire” in which Crowley trolls Newt “Sharing the Stars” in which Wensley gradually gets used to the supernatural in general and Crowley in particular. Has a spin-off, “Hanging the Stars.” “Finding William” in which Adam’s parents find out—twice. It’s the only fic in the fandom that I know of with this particular plot. It’s also partially Adam’s narration and partially letters. “Ophidiophobia” Pepper has a phobia. Considering the company she keeps these days, it’s a problem. “Tartan” Why does Aziraphale keep putting tartan on things?

Warlock Dowling’s Not Entirely Normal Life

So far, only two stories, both of them about Warlock and the Ineffable Husbands. I am actively looking for ideas for more stories in this series. Fluff level: high.

“Happy Belated Birthday” in which Crowley has a nightmare about Warlock “What’s in a Name” Warlock joins some boys in a half-drunken attempted demon summoning, and (naturally) gets Crowley.

Myth-taken

Various outsiders encounter Aziraphale and/or Crowley and mistake them for various beings from myth, legend, literature and pop culture. Many feature some pretty heavy topics, such as Islamophobia, homophobia, and even suicide. There’s not a single unhappy ending in the bunch, however. Continued whenever I think of a new myth to riff on, or a new take on something I’ve done before.

“Lair of the Elder Gay” A very queer Dungeons and Dragons group try to make sense of Mr. Fell. Contains an Islamophobic attack, shut down quickly. “On Gender And Snakes” A Tumblr post about a young person trying to figure out an odd encounter at the opera. Features that same young person trying to work through gender things. They are not out of the closet to their parents. “The Phantom of the Motorways” An old police officer briefs a rookie on an infuriating and untouchable black car. Pure humor. “Strength” A boy went to Pride, and his homophobic father followed him there. Violence is going to ensue, and a fussy old-fashioned gay man surely can’t help with that . . . can he? Includes some pretty heavy subjects like homophobia, and also trauma to a hand. “Soul of Soho” A young bi man has a supernatural encounter while trying to save the life of his boyfriend. Full of lots of heavy themes, including suicide, but ultimately has a happy ending.

Scatterings of History

Unfinished series that will be available both in chronological order and publication order. Various historical stories featuring Aziraphale and Crowley. The tone varies greatly. Will definitely be continued, since this series is meant to be more of a story arc than some of my others.

“Blades and Healing” Aziraphale saves Crowley in ancient Sumer, and has a crisis. Angsty as anything. Contains war flashbacks and violence. ”The Man In The Moon Came Tumbling Down” Camelot fic, with a discussion between Aziraphale and Merlin. Only light angst by itself, but some callbacks to “Blades and Healing.” “A Maiden, a Dragon, and a Unicorn, Roughly Speaking” A maiden is sacrificed to a dragon, and rescued by a unicorn—only the maiden mostly isn’t, the dragon is a very tired snake who doesn’t want to eat anyone, and the unicorn is a certain angel’s way of remaining anonymous. Very lighthearted. “Not All Right” Aziraphale shares his war trauma with a traumatized soldier during World War One. Angsty.

Damaged

Stories that focus on Aziraphale’s trauma (although the second one has a lot about how Anathema’s life was messed up as well). Angsty, with some heavy themes of fear, but still contains some humor. Both happy or at least hopeful endings. May be continued if I think of more stories that fit.

“Damaged” Madame Tracy tries to help Aziraphale, but has to get past the fact that he really wants her to go away, and he’s willing to weaponize the uncanny valley to make it happen. ”Hospitality” Anathema really shouldn’t use second sight on Aziraphale and Crowley.

#good omens #good omens fic #aziraphale/crowley #fic list #hope this helps some people cope

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huphilpuffs · 5 years ago

Text

the scariest part (is letting go)

summary: Dan’s journey with sexuality continues long after he meets Phil. word count: 8.7k rating: g warnings: food mentions, homophobia, depression a/n: Written for @phandomficfests pride flash fest (no I clearly don’t know what “flash fest” means). Huge thanks goes to @insectbah for beta’ing this for me at the last moment.

ao3 link

“I feel gay.”

Dan says it into the darkness of Phil’s bedroom. His gaze has been locked on the window for far too long now, watching the faintest fall of snowflakes outside. His fingers are laced through Phil’s, his whole body bare, back pressed to Phil’s chest. He can feel the rise and fall of Phil’s ribs against his spine, and tries to enjoy the warm puffs of breath against the back of his neck.

He had for a while, in the first moments after Phil slipped out of him, cleaned them both up, and slid into bed behind him. When his head was still fuzzy with all the happy post-orgasm feelings that could fit inside him. When his heart was still racing to the beat of him falling in love.

It’s been a while now. Dan’s not even sure if Phil’s still awake.

He’s not sure he wants him to be.

Dan’s bum still feels loose and a little achy. It’s felt that way before, just one time with a boy he’d met in a club just after he’d turned eighteen, but everything else feels different this time.

Phil is different. He’s Dan’s proper boyfriend . They’re going to wake up next to each other in the morning, lanky limbs all tangled together and giddy smiles meeting in sloppy morning breath kisses. Dan already knows he’s gonna love it then, when he has Phil’s smile to remind him that it’s okay.

Right now, though, he just has a dark sky and an even darker mind, an ache in his ass and a possessive palm pressed against his stomach.

Phil’s thumb swipes gently at where Dan’s ribs jut out.

“I don’t know if you mean that in a good or bad way,” he says, voice sleepy.

It’s just enough to have Dan remembering he’s never actually used that word with Phil before. On formsprings it had been I’m bi , and on Skype it had been yeah, I, uh, like boys too . In person, the press of their lips and the quiet confessions of long-known crushes says enough.

Here, everything feels like it’s edging on too much. Phil’s tired and Dan probably should be too. It’s not time to delve into everything that’s churning angrily in his chest, clouding the parts of him that could probably burst with joy if he let them.

Dan swallows, squeezing Phil’s hand gently. “Neither do I.”

The heaviness between his ribs says otherwise, but Dan knows it’ll fade by the time he falls asleep.

---

Phil asks about it one time.

They’re sitting side by side in Phil’s flat, scrolling through the comments on their latest videos. Dan must move when he reads one, because Phil’s gaze flicks from his computer screen, up to catch Dan’s. Their knees bump together on the cushions. Dan almost wants to close his laptop and forget he even read the stupid thing.

It’s not like he hasn’t gotten similar comments before. There’s no reason why this particular one would make his insides bristle.

But a half smile quirks at the corner of Phil’s mouth. “What’d you read?” he says, and Dan decides he’s been running from this conversation for long enough.

He points to the screen and watches too closely as Phil scans the comment quickly.

“You don’t like that word, do you?”

Dan’s chest goes tight. Part of him wants to ask how Phil can tell, but it’s hardly the first time it’s shown up. There’s been friends who use it because they’re both boys, dating, and it’s easier than any alternative. YouTube comments where it appears again and again and again.

Voices in the back of Dan’s mind that only appear when he’s particularly disinterested in dealing with the echoes of sexuality crises past.

Of course Phil’s noticed. Phil notices a lot of things no one else seems to. He’s just not really the type to ask.

Except today, apparently. Dan should have kept the damn comment to himself.

“Not really,” he says.

Phil nods, mouth pinched into a thoughtful line. “Can I ask why?”

Dan shrugs, sorta because he doesn’t want Phil to ask but mostly because he doesn’t know how to put it all into words, not yet. It sounds silly when he simplifies it, but his brain seems to short circuit whenever he tries to delve too deep.

“Just like, bullies from back at school and stuff,” he says. “It brings back memories.”

“Oh,” says Phil. “Yeah, I get that.”

Dan doesn’t really doubt that he does. Phil’s tall and skinny and nerdy just like he is. He’s pretty much just as queer as Dan is. He grew up in 1990s England with people probably a lot like the one’s Dan was surrounded by. Dan knows he was, because Phil’s told him about it in snippets when the topic of school has come up.

But part of him still thinks the memories don’t linger as hauntingly for Phil as they do for him.

He hums, and mumbles a quiet “Yeah,” and hopes it’s enough.

---

Sometimes he doesn’t mind.

It’s always in the privacy of their own home, away from prying eyes. Something will happen, like Phil poking his finger into Dan’s side to tickle him, and next thing Dan knows they’re pressed together and giggling and catching each other’s mouths in clumsy kisses. It reminds Dan of the first few months, when long weeks of Skype calls built up to giddy, clingy meetings when he could hardly let Phil go.

Today, Phil tugged Dan into his lap because he was losing so badly at their round of Mario Kart he deemed the game no longer worth it. Dan knows he would have won anyway, so he settles for letting Phil pepper kisses to his face, crinkled with joy.

He slides his fingers into Phil’s hair and pulls him into a kiss, quick and fleeting and happy.

“You’re distracting me,” he hisses, but it gets lost in a giggle and the loop of Mario Kart music as neither of them finish the race.

Phil giggles against his cheek, drops a kiss there that’s a little too wet.

Dan laughs, too. He clings to his boyfriend and lets himself feel like he’s eighteen again, floating in a bubble of the Manchester Eye far, far up in the sky.

And when the thought – this is so gay – drifts into his mind, fleeting and fluttery, he just pulls Phil back to him and kisses him again.

---

Outside the privacy of his own home, his own head, it’s different.

Plastered across every corner of the internet that he’s learned to occupy, it’s so, so, so different.

He slams his laptop shut, because he can’t bear to read it anymore. It already seems plastered in the back of his mind, flashing behind his eyes in the sans serif fonts of every website he dared to open. He presses the heel of his palms against his face and hopes, so very desperately, that it’ll make it go away.

It doesn’t.

His chest goes tight. He hugs his knees to make the ache there go away, pressing harsh breaths into the dip between his knees.

That’s how Phil finds him, curled up in a ball in bed, smearing tears and snot against his trousers and Dan doesn’t care. He can’t care. Everything else going on takes up every ounce of his ability to care.

Phil’s hand lands on his back. His lips land in Dan’s hair, messy and curly cause he couldn’t be bothered to fix it this morning.

“You’re okay,” he whispers, over and over and over again. “You’re gonna be okay, okay?”

Dan’s chest buckles. The breath he tries to take is scratchy like denim. “They know , Phil.”

“I know,” says Phil.

Dan chokes on a cry. “My family doesn’t even know yet.”

“I know.”

Fingers trip down his spine, as though Phil’s starting to feel helpless too.

Dan peeks out from between his knees. His eyes feel swollen. His whole face feels gross and sticky. His whole body feels broken.

“They’re calling me gay,” he whispers.

Phil combs his fingers through his hair and says, just as hopelessly, “I know.”

---

“I can’t do it,” says Dan. “I’m not ready.”

They’re sitting at the table now, but Dan’s knees are still hugged to his chest, his breaths still coming too harsh, too fast. He stares at the stickers stuck on the back of Phil’s laptop, every cheerful splash of colour, and tries to tell himself it’s okay, it’s a normal day, he can calm down, as though he doesn’t know exactly what’s lighting up the screen.

There’s probably hundreds of little messages they haven’t addressed.

Dan still hasn’t braved his mentions, not since the first glance sent his mind whirling back to darkness he thought he’d left behind.

Phil looks up from the screen. His brows are furrowed, his whole face drawn. “Okay,” he says. “Then we’ll lie.”

Dan feels himself frown, his weight sinking heavier onto his knees. He feels like a little kid again when he says, “That sounds bad.”

All of this is making him feel like a little kid again, running away from the slightest implication that he could be gay . Except now there’s a voice in the back of his mind reminding him that he’s going to go to bed and cling to his boyfriend in just a few hours. And there’s countless other voices, long since erased from his life, hissing the word like an insult, over and over and over again.

“You’re not ready,” says Phil. “That’s what matters most.”

He closes his laptop on a million unanswered questions, and reaches over to rest a hand on Dan’s knee.

---

The panic doesn’t fade.

Phil’s been taking the video off the internet for months now. Questions are slowly fading from Dan’s social medias. His parents never found out, never asked, never suspected. People from his past didn’t pop out of his memories to repeat all the terrible things they used to say, but with proof this time.

It should have faded.

But Dan’s mind still hisses at every message. His chest still goes tight when his gaze catches the word on his screen. His hands shake as he answers. He keeps them off camera so the viewers can’t see.

Sometimes, in the middle of a liveshow, he can’t keep his mouth shut.

The questions that linger feel like accusations. Feel like the jeer of gay like an insult. Feel like the taunts of bullies in secondary school hallways.

And the pressure in his chest, quickening his heart rate and stealing his breath, feels too much like the endless need to prove his own heterosexuality that he thought he’d given up on.

He closes his laptop when the liveshow ends, shoves it aside like it insulted him. Part of him feels like it does.

From across the lounge, Phil doesn’t say anything.

---

“Does it bother you?” Dan asks one day.

Phil looks up from his computer, brows furrowed, confused. It makes sense. Dan sometimes forgets that the thoughts swirling in the back of his mind aren’t always spoken out loud. He tries, and fails, to remember that the same topics don’t haunt Phil the way they haunt him.

“Does what?”

He shrugs. “The fact that I don’t like, like, the word –” Dan swallows against the anxious knot in his stomach “– gay .”

Phil frowns, the way he does when he realizes Dan’s thinking about something far deeper than the situation requires. It’s a face Dan’s pretty sure he’s too familiar with. He should probably stop contemplating his entire life when he’s supposed to be watching cat videos on YouTube.

He so very wishes it was that easy.

“Should I be bothered?”

“I dunno,” says Dan. “I just – You know I’m, like, sure I like boys, right?”

The corner of Phil’s mouth quirks up slightly, eyes narrowing with the faintest hint of teasing. “I feel like I have ample evidence you like boys, Dan.”

He rolls his eyes, a silent laugh slipping past the weight in his chest. “Whatever,” he says. “You know what I mean. Like, you know I’m sure about us, right? It’s just that word.”

Phil’s gaze softens, smile faltering. His foot loops over Dan’s, a quiet comfort. “I know,” he says. “You have trauma related to that word. You not liking it has nothing to do with me.”

He sounds so sure when he says it.

Dan just nods and mumbles a quiet, “Okay. Good.”

The word trauma bounces around in his head long after he’s turned back to his computer.

---

They don’t tell the BBC.

Dan ignores the anxious part of him reminding him that a little while ago, he might have. That was before.

Today, he sits in a room with high up execs who wear suits and have big desks that make them look important. He holds a pen in his hand and signs his name on a contract for something he never thought would happen. He agrees to be half of a best friend duo, and that’s all.

The person sitting across the desk smiles at them. Dan’s worked with her before. He wonders, just for a moment, and then another, and another, and another, if she knows. He doesn’t need to tell people for them to find out. Not anymore.

The thought makes him nauseous.

“We’ll see you guys again soon,” she says. “I’ll email you if we need anything else on our end between now and then.”

Phil nods. Dan does too, just a second too late.

They leave like best friends, with waves and laughs and a practiced amount of distance between them.

Dan pretends he doesn’t know they’re going to get home and celebrate with pizza and cheap wine and sex.

---sid

Sometimes, it gets lost in a dreary jumble of everything that weighs, dark and heavy, on his mind.

There's insecurity about his own creativity, staring at the stream of things he’s made, none of which seem quite good enough. There’s relationships that leave him feeling unsteady, vaguely unwelcome. There’s parts of his past that make him feel like a failure, like the law degree he never finished.

And there’s every other little bit of apathetic sadness that Dan’s never been able to explain, but remains an ever-present burden weighing down on his heart.

He thought this was supposed to go away when you stop being a teenager.

So much was supposed to go away when he finally reached adulthood.

He rolls onto his side, stares at the cup of coffee Phil left for him so long ago it’s probably gone cold by now, and wishes all of it would just go away.

---

They write a book.

Well, they’re writing a book. It’s still a work in progress.

They hunch over their laptops, fingers splayed on their keyboards, and tell stories Dan’s pretty sure have almost all been heard before, in some capacity. Phil laughs at Dan’s typos, and Dan laughs at Phil’s weird adjective choices, and it’s hard work in the easiest way.

Most of the time, anyway.

Some days they get to segments where the whole story has never been told.

One day, Dan starts writing about school. His finger aimless taps a series of Gs into a blank document. His brain goes numb. They stay up into the wee hours of the morning that day, and yet Dan comes away with barely any words. Phil ends up with a lot more, and yet he hardly seems to care.

He swipes Dan’s laptop away and draws him in. Outside, the sky is dark and the ground is lit up with the infinite expanse of London lights. Dan feels like the inside of his mind might match, all his ideas buried under a few pitch black thoughts.

“Writer’s block?” says Phil.

“Something like that.”

“Wanna talk it out?”

Dan shrugs. “School just has a lot of stuff I’m not ready to talk about,” he says. “Like, well, you know.”

“Then don’t talk about it,” says Phil. “I’m not.”

He makes it sound so easy. Phil makes a lot of things sound easy. Dan wishes his brain worked like that.

Instead, it’s chanting old songs about him being gay that classmates used to sing on the bus. It’s repeating the way the word used to be hissed in his ears. It’s remembering all the nights in secondary school Dan spent wishing he was straight.

“Okay,” he says.

He spends the rest of the night trying to figure out how to make his stories feel authentic while leaving them so incomplete.

---

The first time he goes to therapy, every unspoken truth feels like it’s on display.

He’s buried himself in a hoodie, as though that will hide the tense line of his shoulders, the defensive cross of his arms over his chest. The man sitting across from him has his legs crossed and a confident smile and Dan feels the juxtaposition acutely.

After introducing himself as Eric, the first thing his therapist says is “Tell me a bit about yourself.”

Dan feels his every insecurity press painfully against his ribs.

“I, uh, I’m twenty-three,” he says. “I make YouTube videos for a living. And I have a radio show with the BBC. And – You’re, like, sworn to secrecy, right?”

“Unless I think you’re a threat to yourself or others.”

Dan nods. He already knew that. “Okay, then I’m also, like, writing a book right now. it should be published within the year.”

His therapist smiles, all polite and professional. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah,” says Dan. He nods again, just to make his body feel less awkward.

There’s a pause. Dan’s not sure if he’s supposed to speak or wait for more questions. It probably doesn’t matter. If he asked, Eric would probably say something about doing whatever makes him most comfortable.

Nothing makes him comfortable, though. That’s kind of the problem.

Eric speaks first. “What about relationships? Family? Friends?”

“Uh,” says Dan. “My family lives in Wokingham. I have a few good friends, but I’m, like, a total introvert.”

He looks down, tugging at the strings of his hoodie. There’s more, right at the tip of Dan’s tongue. His therapist is waiting for more. And he can’t tell anyone anything. It shouldn’t matter.

Dan could say: And I have a boyfriend. His name’s Phil. We’ve been together for five years and live together and work together. He’s my best friend.

What he actually says is “And I live with my best friend, Phil.”

---

Putting their relationship on display is always hard.

Part of Dan has gotten used to it. Joint ventures make up most of his career by now and most of him really loves it that way. Working with Phil is easy. Having fun with him is easy.

Setting up a camera in their spare room and filming themselves playing video games is so very easy.

Making them suitable for the internet is the hard part.

Dan’s mouse hovers over a clip. He plays it back over and over and over again, until the exact intonation of his own voice lingers vividly in his mind. Phil makes a joke and Dan laughs too loudly, stares too fondly. It’s a break from their rehearsed back and forth, from the voices they’ve learned to put on for the radio that have since translated onto YouTube.

It’s not that bad. Gay-adjacent perhaps, but not unlike all of Phil’s other innuendos.

In the clip, Dan’s eyes crinkle and his voice goes squeaky and Phil leans in towards him like he would if they were playing a game in the lounge without a camera filming their every move.

It makes Dan want to keep it that way, to wrap their whole public lives up and keep what’s between him and Phil just theirs.

Part of him wants to leave it there, though, just to show off how good they are together. Maybe he would, if there weren’t a thousand comments of years past being whispered at the back of his mind.

He right clicks, and cuts that bit out.

---

When he tells his therapist, it’s hardly even on purpose.

He’s talking about his relationship with his parents, because apparently that has a long term impact on one’s mental well-being, when he says, “I like boys.”

And then “Phil’s actually my boyfriend.”

And finally “My parents don’t know.”

Eric smiles, like he does when he thinks they’ve reached something important. “Thanks for telling me,” he says. “Is this a new relationship?”

Dan laughs quietly. “Not exactly,” he says. “It’s been, like, five years now.”

“Oh,” says Eric. He’s chuckling, too. It puts Dan’s mind at ease a little bit. “Well, why don’t you tell me a bit about your relationship with Phil, then?”

Dan does. Because out of all of this, his relationship with Phil is the one thing he’s always been proud of.

---

The panic fades with time.

Dan notices it one day when he’s reading comments on a gaming video. One of them calls them gay, and Dan’s brain doesn’t instantly seize up into a tense mess of every terrible memory he has related to the word.

He just laughs.

Phil looks up from his own computer. “You know the rules,” he says. “If you find a funny animal video you need to share.”

“Too bad I didn’t find a funny animal video then,” says Dan, smiling at Phil’s responding pout. “Just reading the comments on the latest video.”

“Oh? Anything interesting?”

Dan shrugs. There isn’t really, not that he’s found. The one comment his gaze keeps tracing is hardly original, buried in a sea of similar ones spanning the entirety of their careers. Still, he highlights it with his cursor and hands his laptop over.

Phil will understand why Dan’s chest feels all bubbly with something quite not happy, but definitely better than everything that preceded it.

He reads the comment. When he looks back at Dan, it’s with a smile.

---

Their boundaries shift.

Well, Dan’s do. Phil’s might have always been here, just waiting for Dan to catch up, open up. Sometimes, Dan wants to ask, wants to know if he’s been the one holding Phil to strict limits, but he knows it would only serve to upset himself.

Phil’s always been understanding of Dan’s anxieties. He figured out how to keep this part of their lives a secret. He sits back and smiles as Dan slowly lets it be more public again.

More jokes make it into gaming videos. More little anecdotes make it into the book. They write fanfiction about themselves and giggle about it, sanity lost to the time of night when everything is hilarious. They write a song, one that’s not quite about themselves but feels like it is every time their eyes lock over that one lyric Dan would have cut just a little while ago.

The release date is on the horizon. There’s a whole tour after that. They’ve voiced characters for Disney and they’re making an app and still have a whole world of YouTube to keep up with.

Dan watches the video they just edited one last time before posting.

If he pays attention, he can tell that his voice has gone less flat and his shoulders less tense since they first started filming together again.

He smiles.

---

“You’re going on tour soon, aren’t you?” says his therapist.

Dan smiles. He doesn’t wear baggy hoodies to his appointments anymore, doesn’t feel the need to bury himself in the chair. Today, though, he shoves his hands into his pockets and hopes it’s not too obvious that talking about his own success makes him just a little uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” he says. “First show’s October 8th, the same day as the book launch.”

“Sounds like an eventful day,” says Eric. “Does it make you nervous?”

Dan chuckles. “No shit it does.”

“Anything in particular you’re anxious about?” asks Eric.

Dan presses back against the cushions. Questions like that are the one thing that still make his pulse pick up, his stomach twist as his mind rifles through every possible answer. It’s the type of open-ended vulnerability Dan doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to.

His hands curl into fists in his pockets. “It’s going to be the most closely I’ve interacted with my fans since, you know, shit went down a few years ago,” he says. “I’m kinda scared I’m not ready.”

Eric nods, the way he does when he’s found something to talk about that appointment.

Dan swallows, and tries to untangle his thoughts before he needs to utter them out loud.

---

The first person to hand him a rainbow flag at a meet and greet is a girl who comes up to his shoulders.

Her hands are shaking and she’s wearing a smile, and she presses it into his open palm with a quiet request that they sign it, then take a picture with it. Phil smiles, in the way he always does when meeting a fan. He asks if she’s excited for the show, and Dan only listens to the peppiness of her response.

He stares at the flag in his hand. The lighting in the room makes the bright colours reflect against his skin.

It’s thrilling.

It’s really not what he needs to be focusing on right now.

He looks up. The girl is smiling at them. “Your videos made a real difference in my life,” she says. “They helped me through a rough time.”

Dan feels his smile widen. His fingers tighten around the fabric in his hand. He wonders if she knows.

Wonders why the thought doesn’t terrify him anymore.

“I know the feeling,” he says. It makes her eyes gleam brighter.

Something like pride flares in Dan’s chest. He holds the flag and watches as both he and Phil write their names on it.

---

His family comes to the London show. Phil’s family does too.

They all meet up afterwards, sipping champagne in the privacy of Dan and Phil’s flat. His nan talks about how proud she is. His mum talks to Phil like he’s Dan’s best friend and business partner. From across the lounge, Kath smiles at Dan like he’s her son, too.

It makes his chest ache. Guilt weighs heavy on his mind. He does the rest of his glass in one sip and ignores the way his grandad laughs at him for it.

A few hours ago, he was kissing Phil good luck. He was holding a rainbow flag in his hand and listening to a fan talk about how they just recently came out. He was being wished good luck, child by Phil’s mum.

“Anyone want something to eat?” he says. It’s too loud, too obvious.

Phil jumps from his seat. “I’ll help.”

Nigel smiles. “Whatever you have would be lovely,” he says.

Dan nods. He stumbles over to the kitchen. Away from prying eyes, he lets his weight sink forward onto the countertop, head dipped. It feels heavy now, with all the thoughts running circles around it.

Phil’s hand lands on his back. His voice is low when he says, “Are you okay?”

Dan shrugs. Phil knows him well enough to know it means no.

---

Tour consumes their lives that year.

It’s rehearsal, then show, then travel overnight to another rehearsal and another show. It’s late nights on the bus and early mornings in theaters. It’s meeting countless new people and taking thousands and photos and hearing stories that make everything seem more worth it than it ever has before.

It’s a rush.

Dan feels it, a thrill in his bones, a continuous buzz of adrenaline at his temples, just enough to make everything else fade away.

There are moments that real life comes rushing back. The skit about who gets the double bed leaves his stomach feeling tight, long after both he and Phil have set their things down around the room. Sometimes there’s a photo taken for DAPGO that feels just a little too real to share. Some nights, signing rainbow flags edges on too much.

Most days, though, he settles into bed with Phil after the show, mind energized and body exhausted, and feels nothing but contentment.

---

They’re home for a little bit in the summer, after America but before Australia.

It feels different. Dan feels different. At the appointment when he first got back to London, Eric suggested it might be because interacting with his audience in a new way has shifted his perspective on what he does. It makes sense.

YouTube feels different, when Dan sits down to make a new video.

Two months since he did this last, he sits down at his desk with a pen and a brain full of muddled thoughts. He scribbles them down and crosses them out and refreshes the tab he has open just to see which videos show up this time. His subscription box is filled with tag videos.

Normally, it might make Dan laugh.

Today, he scribbles diss track at the top of the page and starts writing.

He sends it to Phil afterwards, an attachment in an email that just says does this sound okay?

His chest is tight. There are parts in there – well, just the one, really – that he wouldn’t have said before TATINOF. He kind of wants to go and delete it. His fingers just tap idly against the desk instead. He thinks of holding rainbow flags in his hands and hearing stories of people coming out and he knows this isn’t that, but it feels like a step.

It is a step. It’s a fucking huge step, wedged precariously between jokes and twisted to fit his branding.

His phone vibrates. Phil’s response is a text, not an email.

It just reads Yeet!

The normalcy of it makes Dan feel a little more okay.

---

Another huge step is standing on a stage together, accepting Phil’s solo award together.

Dan fumbles through awkward jokes, even though he feels his smile stretched wide, feels his chest burst with pride. They walk off stage together, sip champagne at a party afterwards until Dan’s brain’s gone a little foggy and his heart very much soft and he and Phil are sliding into a car together, still in matching sparkly suits.

He plucks at Phil’s fingers the entire drive back to the flat, and tries not to think about how it makes him feel eighteen again.

“That was a gesture,” he says. “Like, a proper sappy gesture.”

Phil’s hand flips under his. Their fingers thread together. There’s a driver just a few feet away and Dan doesn’t much care if he notices anything.

“Was it okay?” says Phil. “I should’ve asked first. Didn’t think I’d win, though.”

“You deserve it.”

Phil laughs, bumping their knees together. “Of course Phil trash number one would think that.”

Any other day, Dan might have laughed, or let out a squeak knowing full well it’s a nickname he gave himself. Phil’s voice would be less soft. Dan wouldn’t be resting his head on Phil’s shoulder in the back of a car with a stranger, genuinely feeling like the universe might rip in half if he didn’t have this, didn’t have Phil.

Maybe his drunken brain is a little dramatic, but Dan got to share this today, in their own safe, goofy little way. And maybe it’s the alcohol, but it feels a lot like exhilaration rushing through his veins.

He squeezes Phil’s hand and mumbles, “I love you.”

---

Tour ends in December.

A few weeks before that, Phil sits across from Dan on the sofa and declares, “We need a new project.”

Dan doesn’t ask why. He knows it’s for his own benefit more than anything. They’ve talked about it before, during long drives between cities, long nights in bed. Phil knows the way projects make energy vibrate under Dan’s skin, the way it forces everything else out of his mind, just for a little while.

He knows the way Dan can crash afterwards.

“Have anything in mind?”

“I was thinking gaming videos,” says Phil, because of course he has a plan. Phil’s brain is far more business minded than Dan’s is, always figuring out their next step forward. “People like them, and they’re fun to make, right?”

“Right,” says Dan. “Like our own vlogmas?”

Phil smiles. “Well, more like gamingmas.”

“Sounds lit,” says Dan.

He knows in the coming days they’ll plan it out more, decide on an upload schedule and collect a shortlist of games they can play. Phil will try to film a bunch in advance because it’s less stressful that way. Dan will probably edit them, because he’s used to it, and Phil will make thumbnails and it’ll be a new little routine to figure out.

Now, though, he just says, “Can I recommend something else?”

Phil hums.

“Can we use it to, like, lower our boundaries?” says Dan. “Be more authentically us or whatever?”

Part of him feels like the point is belied by planning it in advance, but they’ve planned every step in advance for so long that undoing everything they’ve built up needs to be intentional too. Dan needs it to be intentional.

“Are you ready for that?” says Phil.

Dan shrugs one shoulder. “Reckon I am.”

He’s pretty sure Phil is, too.

---

“I want to come out.”

He’s sitting in therapy again, tugging at the sleeves of his jumper. Eric’s the first person he’s told. Even Phil doesn’t really know. Part of Dan’s not sure he knows for certain. The thought makes his heart race and his brain a little crazy.

But keeping it a secret is starting to feel like a burden, far greater than the alternative.

Eric smiles, nods. “Now?”

“Sorta,” says Dan. “But I have all this –” he waves his hand in the air, tries to make the word sound lighter “– trauma.”

“You do,” says Eric. “So, what are we going to do about it?”

---

Dan sits down in front of his bedroom mirror.

Phil’s downstairs, grumbling at the Xbox because he keeps losing his game. Dan can just barely hear it from where he’s sitting, but it’s comforting, familiar when Dan’s brain feels all muddled and messy and confused.

This was Eric’s idea, something about acclimating himself to hearing the words in new contexts, happier contexts, safe contexts.

It still doesn’t feel safe. He’s sitting in his own home, in PJs and slippers with his hair looking an absolute disaster, and still the word tastes bitter in his mouth. Still, it feels like something he shouldn’t say, shouldn’t even think of saying when it’s not spur of the moment and gleeful and proud.

His fingernails dig into his thighs.

“I like boys,” he says, because that’s always been the safest.

His chest buckles around an exhale. He drags his hands up his legs, staring down at the drag of his pyjamas against his skin. His duvet is soft underneath him. There’s dirty laundry piled up on the floor. There’s photos of a life, happy and shared, littered across the room.

Dan takes a breath. He catches his own gaze in the mirror and says, “I’m gay.”

---

“You’re being more open,” says Phil one day.

They’re lying on the sofa, passing the PlayStation controller back and forth. The words distract Dan just long enough to send him falling into a pit. He hands the controller over, but Phil just sets it down on his lap without playing, leaving the game’s music to play on loop through the lounge.

He rests his hand on Dan’s head, running his fingers through strands of hair that have been left curly at the end.

“It’s on purpose, isn’t it?” he asks.

Dan hums. “Yeah. Feels right.”

Phil’s thumb sweeps across his temple. “It does,” he says. “I like seeing more of the real you.”

“That’s just cause you’re, like, in love with me, sap.”

He feels the rumble of Phil’s laugh, and finds himself matching it, chuckling at the ceiling to the tunes of their favourite pastime.

Phil tugs at a curl. “Yeah, well, let me be proud of you, rat,” he says.

---

“I’m gay.”

He says it to Phil one day when they’re lying in bed, naked and sated and quietly content. There’s a hand on his back and under his own he can feel the steady beat of Phil’s heart, the silent rise and fall of his chest around each breath.

It’s been long weeks of effort. He’s gotten used to hearing it in his own voice, to seeing the way his mouth moves around the words in the mirror. They don’t make his heart ache the same way, don’t make him think of dark days spent sitting alone to avoid what other people had to say.

Telling Phil was Eric’s idea, the logical next step, the one person who cannot possibly be surprised or afronted by Dan’s queerness.

The one person who almost knows what those words mean to Dan.

His response is a kiss dropped to the top of Dan’s head, the protective splay of his fingers across Dan’s ribs.

“I know,” he says, voice soft with so many things, lilted with just a hint of teasing.

Somehow, that’s exactly what Dan needed from him.

---

The idea of a second tour starts off fleeting, and slowly becomes concrete.

It starts with missing the road, and the shows, and seeing their fans. They talk about it in fragments, in split second ideas for segments that never made it into TATINOF, that they might not even have considered for TATINOF. It goes unspoken that they’re different now. It hasn’t even been a year, but they’ve grown so very much.

One day, Dan says, “If we ever do another tour, it’s gonna be more honest, just Dan and Phil, not Dan and Phil. ”

The idea sticks.

---

“Have you seen this Dream Daddy game?”

Phil looks up from his computer. “You mean the one literally every straight gamer is playing right now?”

Dan laughs, moving his mouse from the jacksepticeye video it was hovering over. “Yeah, that one,” he says. “Looks funny, don’t you think?”

Phil shrugs. “Suppose so,” he says. “Why? You gonna buy it?”

“I was thinking we could play it on the gaming channel.”

That gets Phil’s attention. His hand falls from the keyboard and his eyes go wide and Dan would laugh if his insides didn’t suddenly feel all squirmy.

“You want to make a video?” says Phil. “But that’s, like, proper queer.”

“I know.” Dan shrugs, awkward and tense. “I think it could be fun. Besides, if all the straight guys are playing it, why can’t we?”

Phil agrees. They buy the game and sit down to film a video. The nerves come only when the red record light on their camera is shining above the screen of the PC, and Dan’s hand is on the mouse, waiting to start.

“We don’t have to do this if we don’t want to, you know,” says Phil. It’s his quiet, not-for-the-camera voice.

Dan matches it when he says, “No, I want to if you do.”

They start the game and never finish it.

Dan’s proud of them anyway.

---

His hands are shaking when he hits upload on Daniel and Depression.

He closes the tab the second it’s posted, slams his laptop shut, and turns off notifications on his phone. Even though he knows he’s going to be miserable at it, he picks up the PlayStation remote and tries to play a game with Phil. That’s always been the best distraction.

The video isn’t long. He only manages a few deaths before curiosity gets the best of him and he’s picking his phone back up.

What he finds is lovely, an endless stream of support that makes his whole body go warm. Tears sting in his eyes. His lips quiver around a smile.

It’s the most open he’s ever been with his audience.

It’s the most at home he’s felt among them in years.

---

He tells Bryony next.

It’s game night at their flat, one last time before 2017 switches to 2018 and Dan and Phil’s lives go wild with last minute tour preparation. Heartthrob is laid out across the table. There’s a tiny pencil in Dan’s hand and a wine glass in front of him and happy laughter rumbling in his chest.

His brain reminds him on repeat that this would be a great time to do it.

He watches Bry flip one of the cards over. It’s their third round of the night. The card she lays down on the table is of a guy with high cheekbones and light eyes, someone Phil would definitely label Dan’s type.

His chest goes tight. He swallows, then chokes out: “God, I’m gay.”

It’s awkward and stilted. Phil giggles against the rim of his wine glass, a little tipsy by now. Bryony definitely knows him well enough to know he wouldn’t normally say it.

She stares at him for a moment, eyes gleaming.

“Well, guess we know who Dan’s choosing.”

She laughs. Phil does too. Dan can’t help but join in.

---

“How are you feeling?” asks Eric.

Dan smiles. He actually means it today when he says, “Good.”

“Is there anything you want to talk about today?”

There’s a lot he probably should talk about. He and Phil are considering buying a house again. There’s another tour on the horizon. His friend group just shifted. His whole career feels like it’s in a perpetual state of shifting. There’s so many things running around in Dan’s mind.

None of them are as sad or apathetic or anxious as they used to be.

He crosses his legs in the seat and rests his hands on his legs and says, “I think I might be ready to come out this year.”

---

“So, we’re actually going to make Dab and Evan gay?”

They’re sitting in front of the gaming PC. The camera’s still not on, though it will be in a few moments. They’ve had this conversation before, after last time they filmed, last time they planned videos, lying in bed one night and discussing the future of the gaming channel.

“I think the fans would actually revolt if we didn’t, Phil,” he says.

It’s not the only reason. Phil knows it’s not the only reason, but this one makes him laugh and that’s exactly what Dan wanted.

“Right, of course,” he says. “Can’t have that, now can we?”

“Of course not,” says Dan. He reaches up, resting his finger over the record button. “Now, ready to initiate the gay love story of the century?”

Phil smiles, the crinkly kind that always precedes a joke. “I thought we did that in 2009,” he says.

Dan rolls his eyes and makes the stupid goose honk noise he always does when Phil says something like that. Phil copies him and then bursts into laughter.

He’s laughing, too, when he hits record. He’ll just cut this bit out later.

---

Dan starts scripting the video in March.

Well, there’s been fragments of it littered across his harddrive and notebooks for years, but this is the first time he sits down and truly decides he’s going to write a coming out video. He has three months to do it and years of thinking about it supporting him and it feels like enough.

It feels like so, so much.

He sits there for a few hours. When he walks away, the document’s still blank.

---

There are a few specific videos that make Dan realize how much he’s changed.

Giving The People What They Want is one of them.

He watches it back after editing, hand hovering over the mouse to cut out any stray frames that might have made it through the process. Phil’s sitting next to him, hunched forward and gaze locked on the screen. He’s smiling before the true content of the video has even started.

Dan is too.

It’s different from anything they’ve made before. Dan of five years ago would find it absolutely mind boggling to watch. Dan of today knows that’s something he should very much be proud of.

There’s gay jokes, and talk about their future, and the type of YouTube challenge usually reserved for couples. The first video they ever made together is in it.

It makes Dan’s heart ache to know he can actually acknowledge that day again.

“Looks great,” says Phil when the video’s done. “I think they’ll like it.”

“They better. We’re giving the people what they want, Phil.” He laughs. “And we have, like, a shit ton of tour tickets to sell.”

Phil bumps their knees together under the desk. “Hush,” he says. “You know that’s not the only reason this is important.”

Dan does.

It feels just as significant that the thought doesn’t terrify him.

---

“I want to post the video in June,” he says.

Phil doesn’t need to ask what the video is. It’s been a little part of their conversations since the year started.

He just yelps at the TV as a green shell narrowly misses his car and then turns to Dan and asks, “For pride month?”

“Yeah.” Dan rounds a corner. He’s losing part of his lead to the computer, but it doesn’t matter. “Seems fitting, don’t you think?”

Phil nods, then squeaks at the game. “Yeah, for sure.”

They’re quiet then, until they finish the race. Dan manages to salvage his victory and Phil just barely edges around the Koopa Troopa to finish in second. He tosses the remote down on the sofa cushion as the podium sequence comes up on screen and turns to Dan instead.

“Are you sure you want to do it during tour?” he asks. “People are going to ask about it.”

Dan shrugs. “I just want to do it.”

Phil rests his hand on Dan’s leg and squeezes his ankle gently. “But?”

Dan swallows. Sometimes he wishes Phil wasn’t so good at hearing all the things Dan doesn’t say. “That means I need to tell my family before June,” he says.

He wonders when that became the scariest part. Maybe it always was.

---

Interactive Introverts is a lot like TATINOF.

There’s a car and a set and rehearsals followed by shows followed by travel. It’s busy, positively hectic, but Dan loves it. He’s always loved it.

They sign more rainbow flags and hear more stories. They’re more open and honest. Their Instagrams are filled with snapshots of their actual lives and it should be weird but it isn’t.

Dan didn’t expect to like that part, but he does.

---

His family comes to the London show again.

They come back to the flat afterwards. Dan could tell them then, over champagne and celebration. He’s settled into the sofa next to Phil, with his mum across the room and his grandparents nearby and he could so easily just be like, hey I’ve been meaning to tell you guys that I’m gay.

Except it’s not that easy.

His mum is smiling. His nan is talking about how proud she is. Dan’s whole world feels bubbly with post-show excitement that won’t crash for another few hours.

He could say it, but he doesn’t.

---

They leave the UK at the end of May.

Dan leaves his last chance to tell them behind.

He and Phil curl up in their own bed the day before flying to the Netherlands and part of him, a big, overwhelming part of him, wants to cry. Instead, he just stares at the wall, the endlessly shifting shades of black that have kept him company through even darker nights, and lets Phil hold him.

“I couldn’t do it,” he says into the silence. “I want to but I – I don’t know how. ”

Phil’s arms clutch tighter around his middle. It should be a day of celebration. It should be one last night having sex in their own bed before bouncing around hotel rooms and bunks for months on end. Instead, it’s the brush of Phil’s lips against the round of his shoulder, reassurances spoken in a whisper.

“You don’t have to tell them if you’re not ready,” says Phil.

Dan wants to say I am ready.

He thought he was. Obviously he was wrong.

---

June goes by and he doesn’t upload the video.

It’s not even made, not fully scripted, and yet there’s still something bitter that twists in his stomach when June 30th bleeds into July 1st while they’re in the Middle-of-Fucking-Nowhere, USA. He squeezes into Phil’s bunk that night, too big bodies squished into a too small bed, and watches whatever stupid animal video Phil’s watching.

His brain doesn’t have the energy to do much else.

July goes by and he still doesn't upload. Then August. Then September.

He can blame the tour for those months. They’re still busy, still traveling the world and that’s reason enough to not have time to sit down and make something he’s willing to put out.

Then October passes, and November.

December comes and they don’t do gamingmas. They end Dan vs. Phil and leave the Sims on a high note. Just in case, Phil says when they plan things out.

“It won’t be forever,” says Dan. “I just need to, like, actually live my truth.”

Phil smiles. He reaches out and rests his hand on Dan’s cheek. “I know,” he says. “You will.”

---

Step one is actually coming out to his parents this time.

It’s also the hardest step. Dan’s had months to finish writing the rest of the video, to figure out what he wants to with it, but he knows it can’t be finished until he does this. As distant as their relationships may sometimes be, he refuses to come out to his family at the same time as a million strangers on the internet.

Hence, well, step one.

He tries. A lot. Sometimes it feels like after TATINOF, when the guilt of not having told them yet outweighs his ability to say a word about it. Other times, it feels like after Interactive Introverts, when everyone seems happy and saying anything feels like it would ruin that.

Step one is a failure the first time, and the second, and the third.

May comes around again. This time last year, the anticipation faded into disappointment and Dan’s progress seemed to crumble as he prepared to step onto a plane to the rest of Europe.

This year, he sits down with his laptop and tells Phil, “I’m just gonna email them.”

“Your coming out?”

Dan nods. He hopes he looks more certain about it than he feels.

Phil smiles. “Okay,” he says. “Let me know if you need anything.”

---

Dan cries that night.

Happy tears. Overwhelmed tears. The very best kind of tears that leave his head feeling happy and his chest feeling light and his whole world brighter than it was that morning. He has emails from his family saved forever, and his boyfriend’s arms wrapped around him, and every time he thinks he feels steady again, another wave comes.

His eyes burn. He doesn’t care.

His family knows . And they still love him.

It’s everything little Dan would have wanted.

---

He films the video in a studio with an actual background and fancy lights.

It’s still his camera that sits on the tripod. It’s still Phil who sits behind the camera, with a proud smile on his face and the script Dan wrote clutched between his hands. It’s a jacket he’s worn many times before draped over his shoulders and the curls he finally embraced resting atop his head and that’s exactly what Dan wanted.

He feels like himself.

He stares into a lens and says, “I’m gay,” and feels more like himself than he has in a very, very long time.

---

He posts the video in June.

His hands are shaking and his heart is racing and he stays on his computer just long enough to watch the internet freak out about the title before closing his laptop and setting it aside. Phil drapes an arm over his shoulder and holds him close. They throw on an episode of The Office . Dan’s pretty sure neither of them watch it.

On the coffee table, his phone chimes with texts from friends and family. His Twitter notifications are probably beyond crazy. It’ll be a while before he ventures into the YouTube comment section.

For now, he just sits in his own home, smiling, and gives himself time to be proud.

That’s what he’s fought for most, after all.

#phan #phanfic #phanfiction #callie writes words #this is 100% a work of fiction #if you feel it's invasive please don't read #as someone who's struggled with my own sexuality I just wanted to explore this

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