#I feel like it’s at this point that Eddie realizes there’s a good likelihood that he won’t make it out of this alive

[two-red-lungs]

I Can’t Hardly Stand It

BFF!Eddie/Fem!Reader NSFW

Summary: College guys, despite your best attempts, have been leaving you high and dry and desperate in the bedroom. Now, with you back in Hawkins for winter break? Let’s just say your six-foot-something best friend is looking like a real good way to relieve some of that long-standing sexual tension. 

That is, if you don’t ruin your friendship in the process. 

Word Count: 5.5k

How do you ask a friend to be more than a friend? To lift a foot and place it, however tentative and skittish over the well-established boundary? To enter into a realm of unknown, unfamiliar feelings that, in all likelihood, could destroy that friendship? Crumble it to dust? How the hell does one do that, exactly?

It was a question you had been turning over and over in your head for days, hoping that contemplating it enough would bring you a sudden enlightened answer. But nope. It was still the same agonizing question. You thought it, and in your mind you saw Eddie’s eyes. Big, brown, wet and wide. 

How do you ask your friend to fuck you?

When the idea first came to mind you discarded it like a deer stumbling away from a car on a highway. The thought was obscene. Way outta line. You and Eds… you went back years. Maybe a decade at this point. You and him in fifth grade, goofin’ it up out on the playground in the Indiana winter cold, play-fighting with sticks as swords. And now, him calling you once or twice a month: the connection long and expensive and only affordable if all you said was hi, how are you, that’s great, talk to you later. But NYU was your dream school. He knew that. He’d encouraged you to take the scholarship, to get the fuck out of the sleepy town that too often trapped people in little lives that went nowhere. 

And you did. You did it. Packed your shit and left, moved into a freshman dorm buzzing with excitement and academia and dirty laundry. It was fun. New York was big and loud and alive and full of cute boys to meet. Oh, meet them you did. Date after date, smiling faces, clumsy, heated kisses. 

That’s where the problem really was, see. 

You wanted it. The big sin. La petite mort. And without fucking fail, every single skinny-legged eighteen-nineteen-twenty year old you collapsed into bed with was baaaaad. Like, painfully, stupidly, unbelievably bad. Their breath stank or they sweat too much or they popped off like bottle rockets against your bare thigh after just a minute or two of naked squirming and sloppy makeouts. And that left you alone, buzzing with a deep, red hunger. Unfulfilled, day after day. Month after month. It made you realize you needed something more. Someone you could talk to, tell what to do, share information and words with without it feeling awkward or dictatorial or rude. Someone who wasn’t, by and large, a stranger. 

Your mind went to one person and now you just couldn’t fucking shake the idea. Kept seeing it in your head. Kept thinking what if.

The plane from JFK landed back in Indianapolis for winter break. Snow was high outside, brilliant diamond-white against cerulean sky, icicles trimming the roof over the pick-up zone in great crystal stalactites. Your breath was fog in the air. And, right on time, god bless him, the familiar brown-and-tan Chevy Nomad van came rolling up with tire chains that growled against the heavy ice. 

Your heart jumped directly from your chest into your mouth. Eddie rolled down the passenger window. 

“Lookin’ to hitchhike, hot stuff?” He was grinning ear-to-ear, brown eyes crinkling. Ever the comedian. When you muddled through the dirty snow and tugged on the locked handle a few times, that grin got bigger. “Gas, grass, or ass. Can��t let you ride for free.”

“You let me outta the cold right now, Munson, or I’ll have to resort to violence.”

“Oooh, scary. Fine. Get in here.”

 He’d driven three hours out to get you, through a small snowstorm and over miles of ice, and three hours back. Not a single complaint. Not a peep. No, instead, Eddie was all sunshine smiles and wicked, warm cackles, asking about your adventures in the city and pulling animated reactions. His rings winked in the cold winter light slanting through the van’s dirty windshield, and his hair was just slightly longer (and drier) than when you’d left four months ago. But he was the same old Eddie, really. Taller than you by a million miles. Soft, broad lips with a sprinkle of new-growing mustache. Bitten fingernails, long eyelashes. A voice like tire rubber and tobacco smoke, which he reeked of. 

Funny. It was easy to downplay how much you missed him when you were sequestered in the warrenous dorms at NYU. Now, with him a foot away, watching his veiny hands tap tap tap on the wheel to the rhythm of ‘Rattlehead’? There was heat in your bones. Lapping across your skin, over your cheeks when you glanced down at his narrow thighs, the way they flexed when he accelerated. You hadn’t considered the what if throughout the years of being friends with him. Now it wouldn’t leave your brain. Now that what if brought new thoughts. New need-soaked mental imagery. 

Christ, you were hopeless. A single thought about Eddie’s legs flitted through your mind and it brought that roaring wall of unfulfilled heat back with a vengeance. You needed a drink, or several. Or maybe a mallet to the head.

When the Hawkins town sign blew past on the frosted asphalt road to town and Eddie offered you a beer, you leapt at the chance. Especially when he’d enthused about his uncle already booking it to his shift at the plant by now. It wasn’t until you were stomping snow off your boots on his stoop in the late afternoon sun, walking into his shared trailer and getting hit by that unequivocally Eddie smell that you realized the error of your ways. Maybe, just maybe, hanging out alone with the guy you’d been sexually fixating on for weeks in the place you imagined him in the most at night, a hand between your thighs in the dark, wasn’t a good idea. 

Eddie popped the top off a heineken in the narrow kitchen and handed it to you. His fingers were icy from the winter chill, smooth against yours. You hid the way your hand jerked a bit by bringing the drink up to your mouth, not even bothering to set down your carry-on before taking a hefty pull. 

“Two more months and I can buy these babies on my own. Twenty-one, here I come.” He boasted warmly. His mane of hair shimmied and shook as he fought with the cap on his own bottle: it popped off, plinking against the cabinet before escaping to the linoleum ground, and he scurried after it. You got a long lecherous view of his broad, lithely muscled back under his tight Megadeth shirt before he stood up again, blowing hair away from his mouth. “Won’t even need to use the shitty fake ID ol’ Ricky had made for me.”

“It is pretty crappy.” You agreed. Your mouth was dry. God, you two were so alone right now.

“Yeah. I’m, like, genuinely surprised nobody’s called me on it yet.”

“Is Charles still manning the gas station? That guy’s ancient. He probably doesn’t have the energy to call the cops on you when you’re buying a six-pack.”

Eddie snickered and fuck, it was like liquid sunlight, all soft and good. Another thing you hadn’t realized you’d missed, its effects diminished over the phone. “That’s totally it. Hadn’t even crossed my mind.” He leaned on the counter and sipped his beer, looking down at you and tilting his head to the side. His hair followed like water. “Damn. I kinda missed you, Agatha Christie.”

You swallowed, hard. It was difficult to be under his gaze, now. Knowing the fantasies you’d had. Those brown eyes dredged up every sweaty, slick-fingered moment of imagination between your sheets. “You expect me to be surprised by that?” You replied with a plastered-on smile. “The six-hour commute and free beer kind of gave it away.”

He thunked a hand against his chest. “Foiled again. You see right through me. C’mon.” His beer bottle clinked on the fridge as he passed you, swaggering to him room like he was king of the world. “I got a new strain shipment and a ‘lil freebee along with it. You’re gonna dig it, for sure.” He turned around in his bedroom doorway with dramatic fury, a hand clutching each side. “Two words: Purple haze.”

“Lead the way, king ditchweed.”

“It’s not ditchweed!”

It wasn’t ditchweed. It was, in fact, a nice, smooth smoke. That’s what you elected to focus on, passing the blunt between you and Eddie on his bed, the window cracked just enough to circulate the air but not enough to turn his cramped, messy room into a freezer. 

He was leaned up against the headboard, all relaxed, that smile-crinkle under his eyes near-permanent. Eddie took the blunt from you and took a hit, exhaling through his nose: vapors curled up the sides of it and into his curtain of dark hair. 

You remembered your fantasy from a week ago, about the ball of that thick nose pressed hard against your clit while his broad, flat tongue punched deep into your— you cleared your throat and shifted around, working sensation back into your buzzing cross-faded limbs. 

Well, the sun's gone down, and you're uptown. And you're just out runnin' around: I can't hardly stand it, you're troublin' me! Lux Interior was whining, Elvis-esque, on the record lazily spinning on Eddie’s player. “Okay.” You conceded. “This is good.”

“The song, or the weed?” He brought up a sock-clad foot to deflect your attempt at hitting him, laughing. “What? New York mighta changed your taste in music. Mighta made you forget how good the Cramps were, and shit.”

“You know I was talking about the weed, dummy.” Soft, sentimental affection in your voice was as unmistakable as anything. You just couldn’t help it. Eddie smiled, pressing his lips together and looking away: your eyes drifted to the tendons in his long neck. Beautiful. You wondered how they’d feel under your tongue. 

“So. Tell me about the city boys.” He said after a few moments of comfortable silence. When you groaned and put your face in your hands he chortled. “Seriously! Are they cool? Do they do slam poetry? I bet they’ve got you just hooked, huh. Ridin’ the subway and shit.”

“We don’t have to talk about boys, Eds. I can’t imagine that’s entertaining for you.” 

The metalhead shrugged and took another drag. “Can you blame me for wanting to keep tabs on your bodice-ripping paperback escapades?” He cupped his face, mimicking a cherub. “That’s just how good of a friend I am.”

“Alright, alright! You ham.” You turned that what if over again in your mind. “It’s been. Weird. I’ve met a lot of guys, sure, but. I dunno. They’re not… great?”

“Define not-great. Do I need to kick someone’s ass?”

“How honest do you want me to be?”

“Uhh, mega-honest. Obviously.”

“Eddie, they’re shit in bed.”

Eddie exploded into a cacophony of coughs, thumping his chest and bending away from the headboard. Only when he was done, eyes watering, did he speak, giving a disbelieving shake of his head. “Wow, that was… honest.”

“Hey, you asked.” The ragged hem of your comfy travel shirt was looking really interesting right now. You chose to focus on it. “I’ve, uh. Been with a couple guys, now, and each time, they’re just…” You sucked on your teeth, trying to phrase it tactfully. “Selfish. Like I’m not even there. Like they don’t care at all about me. And I’m half the fucking equation in that— that goddamn horizontal tango, you know?”

“That sounds pretty frustrating.” Eddie, for once in his life, sounded serious. His voice was soft, like he cared. 

“Trust me, it is. I thought about calling it quits a couple of times, y’know? But I’m human! I got… wants. And needs, and stuff.” The silence after your words was deafening, and the record switched softly-playing tracks. The what if came back. And fuck it, you were a little high and a little tipsy and hey, if bringing this up ruined everything, you’d be on a plane to New York in a few days anyway. “You know how you used to, like… joke? When we were high? That it was just you and me, whining about being lonely, and we should just.” You struggled. “Help each other out. Let off steam.”

Eddie stared. And stared. His eyebrows lifted. For a moment you were worried he would be frozen for eternity. “Uh. Okay. I, hah.” A laugh of disbelief jumped out. He pinched his nose and shook his head. “Okay, uh. If I’m, uhh… misinterpreting this, feel free to, like, punch me. Just… full force. You, uh…” God, how many interjections could this man use? “You wanna. Have sex with me?”

“It’s so weird, I know.” Your words were a blurting, flushed, panicked tumble. You hadn’t really registered it until he said it out loud. “It’s so totally weird, and I shouldn’t have said anything, seriously, just forget it—”

“No, no.” He wetted his lips nervously, that pink tongue darting out. Eddie’s eyes were wide. “No, uh. It’s— I get it. We all, like. Get a little backed up sometimes, right? Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“God, you did not just say backed up—”

“You know what I mean!” He ran a hand down his pink-flushed face, hunched forward and cross-legged, close enough to touch. Close enough to feel his body heat. “Jesus. Jesus shitfuck.”

“Eds, let’s just pretend I didn’t say—”

“We could. We could do it.” He interjected. That tongue between his lips again, trapped, a little slice of wet, shining pink. “Um. I, uh. If it’s something you wanted to do.”

Your stupid betrayer heart was drumming double time, making your palms clammy and face red. “You don’t have to say yes because of me.”

“Hey. You’re a chick, and I’m a dude, and that’s like, basic biology 101 so… I wanna.” His gaze, skittish, like he was a timid fawn, met yours for a second and it was like steel against flintstone. It sent a zing up your spine. “It’d just be like… helpin’ each other out, and shit, right?”

“Yeah.” God, your mouth was dry. You hadn’t felt like this, shaking like a virgin, since you were sixteen. You’d laid yourself emotionally bare in front of him. Told him you needed to be touched. Loved. And he’d said yes. “Just helping.”

A beat of silence. Then another. Then another. Eddie leaned forward and then you were kissing.

It was a wet, searing thing. Like a current of electricity was passing between you, hot and bright and so, so unlike anything you’d felt at fucking NYU. He grunted against your mouth, leaning forward into you. Then there was a hand on your knee and god, fuck, fuck your life, that wasn’t supposed to feel good. That wasn’t supposed to feel like your skin was lighting up gold under his palm, and yet here you were. Illuminated by his touch like a celibate. 

“You gotta,” Eddie spoke in breaths, crowding you against the thin wall of the trailer, heat bleeding from his chest through his shirt, “tell me what you need, ‘kay? Promise?”

“More.” You replied immediately. You grabbed at him on instinct, getting a fistful of his shirt, tugging it up, up over his head: he moved with you immediately, pulling it off like it offended him, and oh. His nipples were dusky-dark pink, his pectorals small hills. The skullish demon head over his heart was staring you down. 

Eddie pressed a sloppy kiss with searing lips to your upper cheek, eyes centimeters from yours. Looking at you all gentle and needy. “Can I take your shirt off? Please, I wanna—” He swallowed and his adam’s apple bobbed. “Wanna see you.”

“Yeah.” Your voice trembled like an autumn leaf. “You can see me, Eds.”

His hands were so broad and firm. They rolled your shirt up over your head: Eddie hissed through his teeth. “God, fuck. Fuck me, man. Look at you.” That dark brown gaze was locked on your tits, the way your bra cupped them together. “Those New Yorkers have no idea what they’re missing, man.”

“Eddie.” You said softly. His gaze snapped back up to you, framed by dark curls of hair. “Touch me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can, uh. I can do that.” His lips parted as he touched you, hot palms traveling up your ribs, over your shoulders. He dipped his head, planting kiss to your collarbones: it was like you’d been shot, a slow, scalding heat spreading from that point. Eddie held one of your hips and slowly, ever so slowly, eased you onto your back. You knew he could see your jackrabbit heart racing in the veins on your neck, see the way your shallow breaths were so fucking fast. 

When you pawed between you two, sticking an arm against his burning-hot stomach to fumble with the fly of his jeans, he made a choked noise and grabbed your wrist. Eddie was breathing heavily against your face, holding himself over you with one arm braced by your head. “Wait, wait.” He took a deep breath. Hairs tickled your face. “Uh, just. Just wait.”

“I wanna touch to you too, Eds.”

He looked like the words falling from your lips were as good as head. “Jesus— not yet. Not— I don’t wanna end this too fast, and if you keep, haah—” another expletive when you pressed fingers blindly to his fly, down against his dick, “— doing that, that’s where we’re gonna end up.”

With a hum of frustration at being denied, you tilted your chin up in a demand for another kiss: he conceded without a fight, saliva-slick lips heady and addictive. You felt like you could kiss him forever, like this: the curtains drawn, early dusk darkening the room, his skin against yours sending frissons from your head to your toes. You pawed like an animal. Fingers clutching his back, feeling his shoulder blades move under his skin, his ribs expand and contract. 

When you brought a thigh out, knee bending to hook a leg around his narrow hips, he seemed to make up his mind. “Fuck, okay.” He broke the kiss again. “D’ya think— can I take your pants off?”

“Yeah. Yeah, god, Eddie, please.”

Like it was a goddamn race Eddie had your buttons undone and you were helping him shuffle your pants down and throwing them to the floor. He made another noise in the back of his throat and rested himself at your side, up on one elbow. Eddie put a hand on your sternum and slowly, agonizingly slowly, dragged it down. His face turned up to you every once in a while: checking in. Making sure you were still here with him. His fingers caught on the hem of your underwear for a second and you sucked in a breath, but he kept going. 

Feather-light pads landed on the lips of your pussy over your underwear. So light you could barely feel it. They traced up and down in slow, careful circles. Eddie looked almost hypnotized by the fact that he was even touching you: he watched his own hand like it was a magic show. 

“Tease.” You huffed out, bucking up slightly against his fingers. 

That crooked smile returned. “Nah.” He looked at you with affection. “Just tryin’ to make it good.” Those finger pads went up, up, up. Eddie tracked your expression, lips parting gently when your eyes bulged because oh, yep, that was your clit he’d caught for a second. He focused in on that little stiffening nub, snug under damp fabric, and the muscles in your stomach curled. “Ohhh, fuck. You like that, huh? Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You barely eked it out. “Feels nice.”

“Bet nobody gave her any attention at your college, huh?” His words hit you like thunderbolts, and you swore you felt yourself clench around nothing. Eddie’s tongue was trapped between his teeth again. He thumbed your clit round and round in circles. 

“Eds.” Your voice was a warning, desperate though it was. “More, c’mon.”

“Tell me what you need.” Maybe with someone else the words would have come out commanding, domineering. But Eddie was looking down at you with those big wet eyes like you’d hung the moon, like he’d do anything to please you, lips parted all rosebud-soft. 

“Get inside me. Please. Just— your fingers, put them in, please.”

Still laid out long beside you, his fingers crept underneath the hem of your underwear, rasping against your trimmed bush as he slowly pulled the fabric down, down, down, till it pooled around your knees. “Fuck.” He said again, intelligently. “Fuck. Fuck. Can’t believe you’re letting me do this.” A finger ran down the parting line of your folds as he spoke and you jerked like a woman possessed. “Can’t believe you’re letting me touch you, god.”

His finger hooked at your soft, sopping, willing entrance. “Wait.” You blurted. His veiny hand froze. “Two. Two, uh, fingers, Eds.”

“Okay, yeah. Okay.” His voice shook. And then those long, calloused, beautiful fucking fingers were delving into your flesh, just thick enough for a little stretch, a little delicious addictive burn: if you weren’t so hyper turned-on by the sight you’d be embarrassed about how absolutely sopping you were. 

Your walls fluttered around his fingers and he looked like he’d died and gone to heaven. “So warm.” Was all he got out unevenly. There was no warning before he was slowly and rhythmically fucking you with his fingers, the slick squelch loud as thunder. The sight of his broad hand disappearing between your gently parted thighs was... addictive. You held his forearm tight as he fingered you, your grip moving with each slow thrust. 

This was fantasy. This was perfect fucking gratification. Sweating nearly-naked on his messy duvet, surrounded by his quintessential smell, Eddie inches away from you all laid out with a tent in his jeans so hard it looked like it hurt. This was just like your daydreams. Better, even.

You let your head fall to the side, where he was laid out all long next to you. It rested against his chest. You could feel the hum of his hummingbird heart behind the flesh and bone. “Eddie...” the word was a breathy sigh, but it earned him dropping his head over yours, pressing a wild, wet kiss to the crown of your head, leaving his mouth there. He groaned into your hair when you squirmed, thighs shifting, clenching around his fingers. 

“Shit— sorry, hold on, thing is fuckin— killin’ me, hurts so bad.” He muttered hoarsely, pulling fingers from your heat to fumble with his fly. His digits were too slick to get a grip on the zipper and oh man if that didn’t do something for you. You reached across your stomach without a second thought and pulled it open, and hello.

Eddie was so hard it looked like it ached. The head of this fat cock peeked out from the top of his briefs, so red it was nearly purple. It was shiny, smeared with drooling precum that slicked up the turtleneck skin around it. 

You thumbed the shaft over the fabric. Eddie sounded like he’d been socked in the gut. “Ohhhhkay.” He wheezed out. You crept upwards, dragging down his underwear and popping his bobbing cock out. It twitched, kissing his hair-dusted abdomen for a moment. God. You’d never wanted anything in your mouth so badly. You bet he tasted good: like salt and skin and Eddie.

The noises he made when you cupped him, running a loose grip up and down his shaft in lazy pumps, should have been illegal. They made the soft, wanton and slick heat between your legs feel like a bonfire, like an ancient calling demanding you do what humans had been doing for centuries before you. 

You wanted to swallow him to the base. Wanted to stay there for eternity, feeling him throb under your fingers and feeling his fingers in you. But poor Eds was on a timer. And you wanted as much as you could get. 

“Eds...” You trailed off, looking at him, how he held himself coiled-up tight while you touched his dick, like he was focusing so hard on not cumming. His wide eyes glittered in the low light. You kissed him again: quick and messy. “Can we...”

“Yeah.” His reply came out as a squeak and he cleared his throat. “Yeah. Please.” 

“We need a condom.” 

“Right.”

He was off the bed like a shot, shaking the mattress, flinging open bedside table drawers like a mob croney coming to collect debt money. He rifled through their contents with extreme (almost desperate) prejudice. The prize was found: a shiny gold-foil-wrapped Trojan. Seeing him stand at the foot of the bed, framed between your knees in front of you, dick twitching in the air and foil between his teeth? That was a sight that was going to be burned into your mind for the rest of your life. 

Eddie tore open the condom with his teeth and spat out the corner. He fumbled to roll it on with shaking hands. “Shit.” He hissed, the condom springing off several times. It was like someone had set him to vibrate. 

Your hand closed over his bigger one. Slowly, together, you got the condom on: shiny and off-white on his cock. 

He was still huffing like a racehorse. You couldn’t blame him: your body was alight, all active like you’d run a marathon. You didn’t know what it was: it was never like this with other guys. Little touches didn’t set you on fire. Gentle, caring fingers didn’t make you gush. 

With Eddie’s help you laid flat onto your back once more and eased your hips to the edge of the mattress. He stood between them, thighs pressed against mattress cover. His hands were warm on your thighs: kneading them, drifting up and down a few times while he looked down at you, his chest patchy with blush. 

“You sure?” He asked. There was anxiety in his voice. This wasn’t just being handsy. This was all the way. 

“Yeah. ‘M sure.” When he let his cock rest on your pelvis, hefty and scalding, you swallowed hard. “It’s you, Eds. I trust you.”

Eddie bit down on his lower lip, hard, and lined himself up with you. It was only when the head of his cock nudged your slick entrance and your pussy clenched rhythmically in reply, in excited hopefulness, that you realized how true that statement was. 

That’s why this was taking you apart. Not because it was sex. Or good sex. Because it was Eddie. 

He pushed into you slow with a hand clamped down on each thigh and it was like seeing god. The breach was fat and full, heat on heat, no resistance. You both made noises. He fit you like a goddamn glove. 

Eddie swore, over and over, when he got up to the hilt. His eyes clenched shut, face screwed up, steeling himself against the overwhelming pleasure. And for you, that was agony.

“Eds, c’mon, please, please move.” You weren’t above begging. 

“Fuuuuuck me, man.” He groaned out all high and breathless, and then he was clenching his teeth and snapping forward, hips bumping against you so hard it made the fucking bed sway. He fucked you like he was trying to keep you, like he was trying to make this the best you’d ever had: he even canted his hips up, hunting for that spot inside you that he’d read made girls go mad. 

“So good, so wet, god, so good,” Eddie rambled like a lunatic, a drop of drool falling free from his red lips. “So fucking warm, huh, aren’t you? Yeah you are. So nice and warm, warm on my dick, fuck, love how fucking soaked you are.”

You were in heaven. No, somewhere better. Somewhere where sex wasn’t a sin and you were getting your guts rearranged by your best friend, the guy who knew you the best, who saw you, the real you. “Eddieeeee.” You almost couldn’t get it out, breath punched out of you so deliciously with each thrust. “My clit, Eds, touch it.”

He brought a hand to it instantly, fingers sliding through the wet where his cock spread you open and dragging it up in rough, wild circles around your clit. You could see all his dark-eyed focus was on you: fucking you, filling you, giving it to you exactly how you had needed it for so long. Taking care of you. 

Fuck, that thought was gonna make you cum.  

“More, please,” You begged, “so close, Eds, so—”

“God, fuck me man, you— you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to see you cum, oh my god.” Eddie spoke like he couldn’t stop himself, all disjointed and panting over the pornographic slap of his balls on your ass. “Wanted to see it for so long, please, please, lemme see it, lemme see you—”

His begging, his disclosure, his desperation— you went careening off the edge into the abyss while he rubbed frantically at your clit, and you swore your eyes rolled up into the back of your skull.

There it was. The thing you’d been craving, bone-deep, for months. 

The perfect orgasm. 

Drifting back to earth, you had a body made of melted butter. A body made of summer sun and amber. Pure contentment radiated through every single immaculate cell. 

Eddie was still fucking you. Short, uneven thrusts, sweat beads rolling down his chest, long, wild hair sticking to his face. His brows were down in focus, lost in sensation. You lifted two shaking legs and wrapped them around his waist, locking him into your snug cunt. He looked up at you in hazy, pleasure-drunk shock, and then you squeezed down on him as hard as you could. 

“Fuck!” Was all he barked out, and then he was doubling over, staggering forward against your hips, pelvis stuttering. Gripping your thighs like lifelines. He thrust once, twice, three times more, and then Eddie— your exhausted, beanstalk-tall, wild-child Eddie— collapsed on top of you, heavy as all hell. The crown of his head was right under your nose, and you could feel his ribs against yours. 

He couldn’t see you right now. You let yourself smile fondly, satedly, into his hair. 

Together you breathed raggedly, radiating body heat. The clock in the kitchen, past the ajar door, continued to tick. The silence was no longer charged: it was honest, relaxed. Fulfilled. 

“You’re so heavy.” You said eventually. 

“Thanks. I’ve been working out.” Eddie’s voice was muffled in your tits. After a time, though, he raised his head. Propped himself up a bit on his elbows over you. Spat hair out of his mouth. “So, uh.” His lips opened and closed like a fish, awkward and unsure. “Was that, um. Good for you, or...?”

“Of course it was good, Eddie. Obviously! Don’t ask stupid questions.” You replied with mock seriousness: an age-old bit you’d always done with him. A sign that hey, no camaraderie lost, right?

He played along, looking mock wounded. “Well, I didn’t want to assume. It’s not like it went on for an hour, or ended with a squirt, or—”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” You laughed. He was staring at you in that fond way again. The guitar pick on his necklace tickled your clavicle. “I mean... we have the rest of the night, right?”

He looked stunned. He blinked a few times. “I mean— yeah, like, if that’s something you want to—”

“I want to.”

Another blink. The tongue made its reappearance. “Okay. We can... okay. Yeah.” The slow grin began its climb onto his broad face. “We can totally do that. All-nighter.”

“Don’t get cocky.”

The Munson landline was a little ragged, but it worked. “Yeah, mom, I can’t wait to see you too.” You said into the phone tucked between your ear and bare shoulder as you leaned against the kitchenette counter, hand in a bag of chips. You watched Eddie fight a box of waffles for their delicious cargo and pop four into the toaster. “The snow’s just real bad right now. You know how it is. I’ll get in tomorrow, I swear.”

Eddie slowly shook his head, hands on his hips, hitting the disapproving church-mom pose. He mouthed for shame and wagged a finger. You threw a chip at him. It plunked ineffectually off his bare chest. 

“Love your too, mom. Yeah, I’ll sleep warmly tonight. Bye.”

“Oh, you’ll be sleepin’ warm, alright.” 

“I knew you were gonna say that!”

“How could you possibly know what I was gonna say?”

The two of you returned to amicability, trading jabs and scoffs and sparkling smiles: but in your mind, somewhere in the far back, you held on to what he’d divulged in the heat and fervor of the moment. That he’d wanted to see you cum. Wanted to see it for ages. 

He’d thought about you. Like you’d thought about him. You tucked that away for later. Now, though? Now you were laughing your ass off while Eddie juggled burning-hot waffles with his bare hands before dumping them onto a plate and flapping his singed palms about like a bird. 

So. How do you ask your friend to fuck you? Turns out, sometimes, you just ask.

[doubledyke]

What do you think would happen immediately after BPS? How would all the parents personaly react to their disappeared and returning children? The kids would really ever throw a party, or just have to fix all the wrecks and be grounded? And Edd and Eddy would even have a face-to-face good conversation about their adventure and what they learned?

I think Eddy would need a validation from Edd more than ever, and the fear they could have lost each other would let them even more attached.

i had detailed ass theories written out for each kid as to what lies they could tell their parents and what the likelihood was that they'd be believed, etc. and then i realized that it could all be solved with a simple phone call from one parent to another lmao. and lbr, the chances that someone's kid is gonna be gone all night and they're not gonna flip the fuck out are slim to none. outside of a couple exceptions of course. i felt like a moron so i didn't include it here. i guess i like to pick and choose when to adhere to cartoon logic 😂

anyway i do think the non-ed kids would get into trouble and be grounded for varying lengths of time. they might have just enough time to have a little kiki in the lane before heading home and getting dragged inside by the ear/bear hugged/further ignored.

one exception might be rolf, because i don't think it'd be entirely out of the norm for him to be gone all night on occasion. maybe he had an urban ranger camping trip that his nana forgot to tell his parents about, or had to chase down an escaped animal into the wee hours of the morning. he enters the house, clearly disheveled and sweating nervously, but probably gets nothing but a fine howdy do from everyone inside.

eddy would be grounded for a comically short period of time because he's a spoiled brat. a couple of days tops. it's really only an attempt by his parents to appease the angry mob. all the other parents know he's the little shit stirring ring leader and berate his guardians accordingly. regarding his absence, he tells them he and the boys rode out the storm in the van and that they were fine. he accepts his punishment because telling them what really happened means telling them he visited his brother and that WOULD get his ass in big trouble. legal stuff, you know. as far as any takeaway he might have... let's be real here, eddy's still the same ole eddy at this point. i don't think the full weight of what just happened has hit him quite yet. he's still reeling about being invited to kev's for jawbreakers and whatever else preteens who don't really like each other do for funsies. i do think that while he's spending aaaaaall that time alone (again, 2 days max), in between trying on outfits for that party at kevin's, the image of edd standing up to his brother does cross his mind. edd, the coward. edd the wimp, stood up to his tormentor. and got swiftly beaten into the ground for it. yet still ran over to make sure he was okay after ed essentially saved his life. ed the dolt. ed the idiot was the one to think of pulling out the pin (literally), and blasting his abuser with a face full of door. i think the guilt, shame and embarrassment would hit him hard, along with a lot of weird mushy stuff that he doesn't really know what to do with. so he doesn't do anything with it. not immediately anyway. but i've already talked about post bps eddy a bit so i'll leave it at that.

i've seen people say that edd's parents wouldn't even notice that he was gone overnight, because... so were they. and yall know i'm the #1 hater of edd's parents so of course i agree lol. if word gets back to them somehow though, i imagine them being very passive aggressive about it. shocking, i know. i feel like they'd go their usual route and punish him by not talking to him - as in not even leaving sticky notes around the house. except for one that says something along the lines of "dear eddward, you are not to leave the house today, as you are hereby grounded until further notice." along with a scroll of chores of course. but yeah they make him wait around and wonder when he'll be able to see his friends again. probably a good few weeks or so. i've always had the headcanon that eddy would be banned from edd's house and maybe this is when that happens as well. if word doesn't get back to them- which is more likely imo because they're so elusive that no one knows how to contact them - i think edd could likely have a bit of a meltdown over their indifference. not to mention the guilt he feels in either scenario. for starters, he feels like he simply must tell someone what he's just witnessed- especially as a future mandated reporter... nah i'm kidding but i do think he'd want to tell an adult what happened to his dearest friend. but he knows it would only compound eddy's grief. outside of that, there's the fact that he feels that he never received a comeuppance of his own. eddy got thrashed by his so-called "hero" in front of his peers, and if his previous punishments are any indication, ed is very likely enduring what can only be described as suburban confinement for the foreseeable future. he, on the other hand, has gotten away with a horrible deed, with more than a year's worth of horrible deeds without so much as a scowl from his parents. he has to fight tooth and nail to resist his compulsion to confess his wrong doing, directly this time. cuz the confessional he wrote at the beginning of this ordeal is still on his desk when he gets home. it's kind of like when people say "at least if you're angry, i know you care", but magnified 100x for his entire life. i think this is when the switch kinda flips for him and he has to come to terms with the fact that his parents are at best, extremely cold and aloof. and at worst, knowingly neglectful. either will be hard for him to accept of course, because he's got an image in his mind already of what "true" neglect looks like:

ed's going in the hole, man. it's the cliche where his parents fawn over sarah and are so thankful that she's okay and "you had us worried sick, missy". only to turn to their other child who was also missing for 24 hours and proceed with the finger wagging and reprimanding. i don't think sarah would rat him out though. in fact at this point she might even try to stick up for her now suddenly not so bad older brother. but to no avail. in fact, it makes his mom angrier - she must have hit her head if she's sticking up for her troublemaking brother. "you see, edward? your erratic behavior has finally landed your little sister in the hospital. hope it was worth it." as far as they're concerned, ed put sarah in grave danger by running away. he was a terrible influence, and for that he's gotta be made an example of... to himself? i'm gonna venture a guess here that dad'll be taking the stairs again. he also boards up the basement window. they take his tv, his tapes, his comics, and all his model making supplies. his mom wanted to take his gravy tub but dad insisted it was too much of a hassle. luckily for him though, they can't take that vivid imagination of his. he spends the next two weeks staring at the ceiling, coming up with a storyline for his own comic, which he starts working on as soon as his belongings are returned. it ends up being sooner than he anticipated. he was told it'd be a month, but his mom is sick of looking at the box of his crap in their bedroom closet, so he's off the hook early. lucky feller. next time he runs away though, he's making extra sure sarah doesn't follow.

obviously i think edd and eddy, really all three eds are going to be even closer than they were before their little excursion. but i think it takes time for eddy to mature enough to truly grasp how meaningful it all was. like he knows, but admitting it is corny af. edd is probably gonna be so preoccupied with deconstructing his relationship with his parents that he's a somewhat aloof for a period. there's also a rumbling within ed, especially after seeing sarah's attempt at defending him. i don't really know what conclusion he comes to except that if he wants even a chance at having a good relationship with his sister, he's gotta get the fuck out of there asap. i do think he'd start "running away" more often, possibly staying with eddward during his burgeoning rebellion, or from time to time, eddy. maybe even rolf. he might also sleep in the van when the weather allows. anything to be away from that hell hole. i wrote in my fic that he'd move out and live with may at age like, 17 i think? literally as soon as possible lol.

[on-maars]

Kaleidoscope

Another buddie fic cause I can’t get enough of these two dumb idiots.

Read it on AO3.

Eddie’s first thought is that he’s been buried alive. He moves his hands to the side but his knuckles hit the wood and that’s when he realizes he must be trapped in some kind of box. He tries to scream but the air around him is so thick and the sound of his voice is swallowed by the darkness surrounding him at all sides.

His heart beats hard against his chest, so hard Eddie feels like it will break through his rib-cage. His eyes shuttle back and forth, scanning his surroundings and trying to adjust to the dark. He kicks the wood again and again but the material doesn’t give way and his breathing becomes labored as sweat starts falling down his forehead.

He strikes the wood above his head and doesn’t stop until he can feel the material cracks under his fingers. Only then he uses his elbow and continues hitting until the whole thing breaks and he’s buried in sand.

Eddie closes his eyes and the next thing he knows he’s back in Afghanistan. He watches his friends die and he wants to reach forward, wants to get them out of harm’s way but that’s when the bullet hits him and pain radiates through his shoulder and he falls.

“ Firefighter is down! I repeat, firefighter is down!” He hears a voice shouting. Because he’s not in Afghanistan anymore. He’s in LA. In broad daylight.

And his lungs are filled with water.

Is he drowning?

“ Eddie! Eddie!”

It’s Buck’s voice, screaming his name over and over again, so loud it makes Eddie cry.

He tries to reach out to him but his hand slips and he loses him. The last thing Eddie sees is the bloodied face of his best-friend disappearing into the water.

Eddie wakes up with a start, gasping for air. His entire body is drenched in sweat, his hair sticking to his forehead and his heart pounding against his chest like a hammer. He runs his shaking hands through his hair and closes his eyes fiercely, trying to get rid of all these images invading his mind.

“You okay?” Bobby asks and Eddie jumps with surprise. His captain is leaning against the wall and watches him with a concerned expression plastered all over his face, his eyes shuttling back and forth as if performing an internal scan of Eddie’s mind.

“I’m fine.” He says, shakily. “Just another nightmare. But I’ll be alright, cap.”

It’s a lie. An easy lie. Eddie knows it. The kind of lies he has to tell to try and maintain a somehow strong image among the 118, the kind of lies he has to tell over and over again in the hope that, with time, he might believe it himself. Because truth be told, Eddie’s not so sure he can hold on much longer. Truth be told, he can slowly feel his shell crack, each nightmare spreading the fissures wider apart.

“Buck’s upstairs.” Bobby only answers. “If you need him.”

“I’m fine.” Eddie repeats without thinking. It became a reflex, something he says as easily as a tired ‘good morning’ in the early hours of the day.

“Who are you trying to convince, Eddie? Me or yourself?” Bobby asks, his eyebrows raised. “You know we only want to help. We only want to be there for you.”

“I’m f-”

“Yeah, we know.” Bobby says with a sigh. “You’re fine. If you’re not gonna be honest with me then at least be honest with him.” He adds and Eddie looks away, his fingers twitching uncontrollably.

“I… I can’t.” He says, biting his lower lip.

“He was with you that day, you know.” Bobby tells him. Eddie can notice a slight trace of blame in his voice. “What you both went through, it’s- no one’s expecting you to have it all together, Eddie. Especially not him.” He adds. “What are you so scared is going to happen if you start talking to him about it?”

“I’ll be- I'll be okay.” Eddie repeats, stubbornly. Because it’s the only thing he can bring himself to say. He darts his eyes towards his Captain for a few seconds and the expression of disappointment painted all over his face is enough to fill Eddie with guilt.

Bobby sighs and nods to himself, as if knowing there’s nothing he can say to encourage Eddie to finally open up. He places his right hand on the door handle, takes a small step forward but Eddie doesn’t let him the time to leave the room completely.

“He deserves better than to put up with all my shit, Bobby.” He says through gritted teeth, bending his fingers into a fist.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how he sees it, Eddie.” Bobby answers, taking a seat on the bunk next to him. His captain is watching him with so much attention it fills Eddie with unease, makes him want to run far, far away from this place.

“Yeah?” Eddie asks with a chuckle. “Well, too bad. I’m not letting him the chance to ruin his life for someone as messed up as me.” He adds, wiping his tears with the back of his hands.

“Because you don’t think he has issues of his own?” Bobby asks and Eddies shrugs his shoulders.

“Nothing to put up with.” Eddie clarifies, running his right hand through his sweaty hair once again.

“You only say that because you love him.” Bobby remarks and Eddie whirls his head around. “You don’t see his issues as something you have to put up with because you love him for who he is, no matter how much baggage he may be carrying with him.” He says. “Did you ever stop for one second to think that maybe he feels the same way about you?”

Eddie lowers his head down and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to answer to that, doesn’t know how to make sense of everything Bobby just said. He knows that, in all likelihood, his Captain might be right. Maybe that’s how Buck feels. Maybe he’s in for the long haul.

After all, every sign seems to point to that conclusion, whether it is the fact that Buck took care of Christopher without even being asked while he was fighting for his life in that hospital, or the three weeks he spent in their house helping him with his recovery, or even his break-up with Taylor strangely coinciding with his own separation with Ana, give or take a few days. The signs are here and they’re clear but something in Eddie still doubts. Something in him still hesitates.

That’s the moment Buck chooses to barge in the bunk room with a cheerful stride, smiling wildly.

That’s enough for Eddie’s lips to turn up at the edges. He can’t help it. Buck’s presence is like a ray of sunlight finally poking through the clouds after days of rain, it feels Eddie with so much love he’s afraid his heart might explode.

And Eddie’s aware of how that sounds, Hen and Chimney reminded him of how miserably cheesy he looks whenever his best-friend is around enough time to make sure of it, but Eddie doesn’t find it in him to care anymore. He’s irrevocably in love with his best-friend and maybe fighting it and trying to pretend otherwise only makes it worse.

Buck’s smile only lasts a second though. His eyes quickly fall on his best-friend and his entire face darkens.

“Eds? What’s going on? Are you okay?” He asks and rushes towards him.

“He’s okay.” Eddie can hear Bobby says. “But I think he could use some Buck time.” He adds, while getting to his feet. He squeezes Eddie’s shoulders and crosses the room, closing the door behind him. And Eddie’s grateful for the privacy but really there’s nothing more he wants but to follow Bobby out of this room and leave Buck alone.

“Another one of your nightmares?” Buck asks carefully, not sure whether to finally cross the line that seemed to have been erected between them ever since he left his flat. Eddie only nods but stays silent, the words still stuck in his throat. “The shooting again?”

Eddie nods again, not trusting himself to speak, not trusting himself to tell the truth, make him understand the true extent of his nightmares.

Not just the shooting.

Not just the shooting, Buck. The well, too. Afghanistan. The tsunami. Losing Christopher. Losing you.

Always losing you.

A silence slowly settles in the room, one person too scared to cross that invisible barrier, the other too afraid to speak. That, until Buck’s fingers tentatively reach out and brush past Eddie’s hand.

And Eddie? Eddie wants nothing more than to lean in on the touch but he does the only thing he seems to know how to do instead: He runs away. He gets up from the bed as if he’s been electrocuted by Buck's touch but his best-friend's voice stops him dead in his tracks.

“I wish you knew how to talk to me.” He says. His voice is filled with concern, and sorrow.

“I- I know how to talk to you.” Eddie says, his voice weak, overwhelmed with so many different emotions he doesn’t even know how to make sense of any of them.

“Then how come you never do, Eds?” Buck asks, his voice soft.

Eddie’s hands start shaking again. In fact, his whole body trembles but still, he says nothing.

“I don’t know what changed, Eddie.” His best-friend adds, but this time his tone is desperate, almost pleading. “I don’t know what to say to you anymore.”

“Maybe you don’t need to say anything.” Eddie finds himself saying, glancing at his best-friend who slowly looks up, his big blue eyes filled with worry staring back at him.

“Maybe.” His best-friend agrees. “But you run away even when I don’t.” He adds, smiling sadly at him.

Eddie’s throat is so tight he can barely breathe.

“I still have them too, you know.” Buck goes on and Eddie stays here, unable to move, let alone speak. “The nightmares.” He adds. “I still have them. And I don’t know what’s going on inside your head lately Diaz. I don’t know if it’s another one of your weird phases when you push everyone away because you feel like you’re strong enough to deal with everything on your own, or- or if it’s just a fucked up way for you to try and protect me from yourself but you don’t need to pretend with me, Eds.”

Eddie darts his eyes towards him and his best-friend is already looking at him dead in the eye, not blinking.

“Because I was there too, you know.” Buck adds. “I wasn’t the one who got shot but I was there, too.” He adds and something in his face just breaks. “So whatever you’re feeling, Eds, I- I get it. Trust me.”

Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes fiercely, sighing deeply as he lets himself fall on his bunk next to Buck. For a moment, neither of them say anything. Eddie only intertwines their fingers together and lets his thumb draws small patterns on Buck's palm.

“I never wanted you to leave.” He still admits after a few seconds, ignoring the way his best-friend whirls his head around, his eyebrows frowned in confusion. “I wanted you to stay.” He adds. “The first night I spent on my own, the only thing I wanted to do was to call you and beg you to come back.”

“Why didn’t you?” Buck asks. And it’s a simple question. A simple question that should come with an easy answer but once again, the words get stuck in Eddie’s throat and he can’t speak. “Why didn’t you call me?” Buck repeats and Eddie chuckles, lowering his eyes to the ground.

It’s only a few seconds later that the words finally come.

“Because you would’ve come.” Eddie breathes out. “And I couldn’t let you do that.”

“Why?” His best-friend asks, his hand squeezing Eddie’s thigh. “You think I can’t deal with your nightmares?” He teases and Eddie lets out a shaky laugh, nudging him playfully.

“I know you can.” He says and Buck’s smile is so soft Eddie has to look away. “I just don’t want you to.” He adds.

“So what, you think I don’t have issues on my own?” Buck answers, forcing him to look up by lifting his chin with his forefinger.

“Of course you do.” Eddie whispers, his eyes are still down. “So why would you want to add mine to your pile?”

Buck sighs and cradles his chin with his hands, his thumbs brushing along his cheeks until Eddie’s eyes stare back at him. Only then, he says:

“Because I’m in love with you.”

Eddie lets out a shaky breath and doesn’t look away even when Buck’s hand moves from his cheeks to the back of his neck to press a kiss to his forehead.

“And I… I guess there’s no way for me to talk you of it?” Eddie says and smiles when Buck only scoffs and taps him on the back of his head.

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Diaz.” He says. “This is non negotiable.” Buck’s eyes glance down at his lips and all it takes is a small nod from Eddie for Buck to capture his mouth in a gentle kiss.

“I might be in love with you too, Buckley.” Eddie says against his lips and manages to miss Buck’s nudge by moving his body a bit further to the left.

“Oh you might?’ Buck teases him and Eddie cradles his neck with his hand, bringing him closer to kiss him one more time.

“I am.” Eddie clarifies, his voice clear and steady. “I’m so in love with you I think it makes me look stupid, Evan.”

And when Buck wraps his arms around his back and buries his face in the crook of his neck, Eddie only smiles and rests his chin on his shoulder, thinking that as long as Evan Buckley is by his side, then he might be alright.  

[extasiswings]

Good morning, fellow clowns.  I had feelings about my own speculation re: the teased Buck and Christopher solo scene so...also on ao3.

When Buck first asks if he can watch Christopher when Eddie goes grocery shopping that week because he has something to discuss with him, he’s leaning against the kitchen counter while Eddie washes the dishes, his heart in his throat and hands shoved into his pockets in an attempt to project calm. For his part though, Eddie barely reacts. Or, more specifically, his brow furrows slightly as he glances over in confusion for a quick moment before turning back to his task.

“Of course,” Eddie replies. “Did you think I would say no? You spend almost as much time with him as I do—you don’t need to ask my permission to have a one-on-one conversation.”

He glances over again. “Unless you’re trying to rope him into pranking me again,” he adds. “I should probably put my foot down with that.”

Buck laughs quietly and shakes his head, feeling the knot of anxiety in his chest loosen. “No, nothing like that.”

He doesn’t offer anything more specific, but then, Eddie doesn’t ask either, just shrugs as he fits another plate into the drying rack.

“Then, yeah. Feel free. Saves me from having to ask anyone else anyway.”

And that’s it. The conversation shifts to the lighter topic of the likelihood that the man in the last call of the shift had been lying about how exactly he’d gotten stuck the way he had and it doesn’t come up again.

On Saturday, when Buck comes over again, the anxiety returns full force. And maybe it’s unreasonable because he knows that at the end of the day he’s not Christopher’s dad. He’s not Eddie. No matter what their relationship is like, Buck’s not a parent. But he feels that responsibility anyway, can still recall the crushing guilt of the lawsuit and being back in a grocery store—Do you even know how much Christopher misses you?—

He doesn’t want to repeat the same mistakes.

So, after a little while, he clears his throat and sits back in his chair across from where Chris is drawing at the kitchen table.

“Hey, buddy?”

Christopher doesn’t look up. “Yeah, Buck?”

“So, uh—you know how Maddie is having a baby?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Buck runs his hand through his hair, “I wanted to talk to you about that. Because babies are a lot of work and so she and Chim might need some help. And she’s my sister, so I want to be there for her if she needs it.”

The pencil stops scratching and Chris finally looks up. “When Aunt Sophia had the twins, Aunt Adri moved in with her for two months,” he says. “Like that?”

“Well, I don’t think I would move in,” Buck clarifies, some of the tension easing out of him. “But yeah. Kind of like that.”

“Okay.”

“So...so I might not be around here quite as much,” Buck adds, and then he’s pressing forward, leaning his elbows on the table as the dam breaks and words spill from his lips. “But I wanted—I just want you to know that you can call me whenever you want. And if you need me, I’ll come. I don’t—I know after the tsunami, I stopped coming around for awhile and I didn’t tell you first and that wasn’t fair. And I didn’t want to do that again, or make you think that you’ve done anything wrong or that I don’t care. Because I love you so much, okay? It’s just that Maddie might need me a little more for a few months.”

Christopher chews his lip for a minute as he considers that, and then nods.

“I can still call?”

“Every day if you want,” Buck assures. “And don’t let your dad say anything about you bothering me, because I promise it’s fine.”

“Okay.” Chris smiles. “I love you too, Buck. Can we have ice cream now?”

Buck laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

And that’s it. Or at least, Buck thinks that’s it. Until he’s halfway through his first cup of coffee the next morning only to be interrupted by knocking on the door.

Eddie walks in the minute Buck opens the door, looking like he’s hardly slept. His hair is messy like he’s been running his hands through it and he hasn’t shaved—there’s a strange energy to him that makes Buck’s eyebrows shoot up as he slowly closes the door behind him.

“Hey,” he says, drawing the word out. “Everything okay?”

Eddie stops pacing. Opens his mouth. Closes it.

“I talked to Christopher last night,” he replies finally. “He told me what you two talked about.”

Buck’s stomach twists. “You said it was okay,” he points out. “But if I overstepped—”

“That’s not it,” Eddie interrupts. But he doesn’t elaborate, which doesn’t exactly clarify anything.

“Then…?” Buck crosses his arms over his chest. “Not that I mind you coming over unexpectedly—you know that’s fine—but I’m not sure what’s going on here.”

“Look, I—” Eddie clears his throat. “I’m careful. About who I let into Christopher’s life. Because Shannon, she wanted...a revolving door. Always open so she would have an out when things got hard but the option to walk back into his life when she felt like being his mother. And that wasn’t fair. And I never wanted to put him in that position again.”

Buck’s brow furrows. “I know. I’m trying—that’s why I wanted to talk to him. So he would know I wasn’t leaving. That if he needs me, I’ll be there. Eddie, I know I fucked up with the lawsuit, but I’m not going to again—”

“I know that,” Eddie interrupts. He blows out a breath. “I know. But I still thought—I was going to talk to Chris, you know. About everything. I just assumed...that it was a parent thing.”

“I’m confused,” Buck says slowly. “Are you...mad at me?”

“No.” Eddie looks up at the ceiling and rakes a hand through his hair, messing it up even further. The laugh that follows has an edge of disbelief. “I’m in love with you.”

Buck feels almost like he’s been hit over the head with a frying pan. He can’t seem to make his mouth work, just blinks and stares. His throat is dry, his feet glued to the floor.

“What?” He croaks out.

Eddie’s throat works as he swallows and Buck can’t quite help himself from tracking the movement.

“Chris told me what you said, and it made me think—made me realize—look, I haven’t dated,” Eddie says. “You know I haven’t. And a lot of that was because of my own shit, but it was also because of Chris, because I was worried about being able to be a partner to someone and also worried about having a partner to parent with. But Chris and I talked last night and I realized that—that I’ve put you in that place in my life without even thinking about it. And that scared me, but also didn’t because you love him that much—”

“I do,” Buck replies. “I really do, Eddie—like he was mine.”

“That’s all I’ve wanted.” Eddie looks wrecked, like every word is being dragged out of him, like he can’t help it but isn’t sure whether he should be holding back instead. And Buck’s own heart clenches as he steps forward, wanting nothing more than to make that look go away.

“All I wanted was for someone to love him like that. For someone to stay.”

“I’ll stay,” Buck says, closing the distance. Eddie’s eyes search his face. His hands reach out, then fall, aborting the motion as if he’s not sure he’s allowed.

“I’ll stay,” he repeats, and he reaches out since Eddie won’t, his hand fitting smoothly around Eddie’s waist. “For Chris. And for you. It’s not—it’s not just you, Eddie. God, I’ve been in love with you—”

Eddie cuts him off with a kiss. His hands fist in the front of Buck’s shirt, clearly past whatever paralysis had frozen him before. He kisses like he’s drowning and Buck is a life preserver, and Buck kisses back with everything in him, pressing Eddie against the wall.

“I’ve been an idiot,” Eddie breathes out when they break apart. “I should have realized—”

Buck shakes his head. “You have Chris. You’ve always put him first and you should. Whatever this is with us—there’s no rush. If you need to walk out of here and pretend this never happened—”

“I don’t,” Eddie replies. “I don’t want to forget or pretend anything—I may not know what the fuck I’m doing, but I know I want you.”

Buck surges forward and kisses him again. “Okay. Okay, then—you have me. You have me.”

When Eddie smiles, it lights Buck up like sunlight.

[stormyoceansmain]

no literally... s5/5a pining!eddie era just makes sense. "just make sure you're following your heart, not christopher's", the shooting being focused only on eddie and buck, everything cutting out except for the two of them, them keeping their eyes on each other the whole time, framed like they're reaching for each other under the truck up until eddie passes out, the emotional parts of the shooting storyline going to buck instead of his gf, buck being the one to tell chris, ana stepping out of frame, buck staying with chris in the diaz house, all the very blatent bobby and athena parallels in the same damn episode, showing all the firefam's significant others' putting their vests on while buck puts his on alone in eddie's house, the likelihood of eddie literally asking for buck when he woke up in the hospital bc he's the first one ana called and he looks so happy to see him, the entire conversation about the will and buck just being the one to pick him up from the hospital at all... it's all insane. not to mention how it looks like ana is going for a kiss at the welcome home party (which... they've never even kissed on screen lmao) but eddie goes in for a cheek kiss like he does with his family members instead. also buck not chasing after taylor after they kissed and instead running right to eddie, and then having all of his attention on eddie and chris at the party...

and even earlier on in the season, eddie leaves his "nice" date with ana, comes home to buck and chris after having to "take a detour"... chris going to buck when he's upset. eddie getting jealous of buck and taylor teaming up. the fact that eddie only started dating ana bc bobby gave him the speech about moving on, and he thought it might be something good for christopher. she's nice, she's pretty, christopher knows her, she's the safest and easiest option, but is that really what he wants? isn't there someone out there that would be good for both him AND christopher? hm. and then buck only showing interest in dating once eddie and ana start their relationship? ok....

so... next stop eddie!pining. buck being the one who gets to end a relationship + figuring out what it is exactly that he wants OR buck and taylor mutual breakup bc they figure out they're better off as friends (bc... ~bisexual~ besties buck and taylor would be so good for me personally.). second half of the season mutual pining era and then something in the finale maybe? honestly, though, there's no way eddie and ana are going to last, esp after the conversation with carla. some people think they'll probably even start s5 having already broken up off screen. and who knows how long they'll do buck and taylor for tbh, but if the finale is any indication, i'd say we're going to get Something about how they're together but buck still spends the majority of his time with the diaz boys.

sorry this is so long ksdjfjkn. i've typed up like... 5 different versions of this and they're all ridiculous. anyway, i think they've officially started shooting for s5 today. bryan safi (josh) posted pics in costume on instagram. so you caught up literally just in time !!

WHEN I TELL YOU THIS MESSAGE HIT ME RIGHT IN THE SOLAR PLEXUS AND THEN PROCEEDED TO WIPE THE FLOOR WITH MY BODY.......... JUST HAVING EVERYTHING WRITTEN DOWN LIKE THIS, EVERY SINGLE INSANE DECISION THEY MADE IN SEASON 4 WHEN IT COMES TO BUDDIE..... ABSOLUTELY SHREDDED ME

wish i could write something coherent about this, but it literally MAKES SO MUCH SENSE TO HAVE PINING!EDDIE IN SEASON 5, because LOOK. LISTEN. why having eddie say that being with ana is easy, why having carla tell him to follow his heart, if they're just gonna make him end up with yet another woman??? ALSO the fact that they made sure to point out how buck is the one person who will always be in christopher's life, making him the best choice for eddie AND christopher

and since im a sucker for slow burn i would give ANYTHING for more eddie introspection in 5a, ending with eddie realizing his feelings for buck in the mid season finale, and then actual pining!eddie for all of 5b until SOMETHING happens in the finale (i feel like taylor is gonna be around for quite some time, so buck finding out about eddie's feelings in the finale would be [chef's kiss])

[the-blind-assassin-12]

The Jilted Tourist - 1

A/N: Hi friends! Just sneaking in here at an ungodly hour to drop off this first part of the first one of the title game winners! This one kicks off a three part prequel to everything that has happened for Benjamin and the It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like... and Too Good To Be True Reader, and it takes a look at what is essentially the beginning of the end for Benj and Julia. Benjamin’s just gotten some bad news and decides to get a drink to take the edge off. But his plans change when he bumps into someone who’s had an equally bad day, and one drink turns into a few more. 

Word Count: 4,187 

Warnings: drinking, swearing, pub stuff. 

Benjamin silenced his phone and sighed as its weight slid down into the bottom of his coat pocket. I know I shouldn’t be surprised… He used that hand to remove the glasses from the top of his head. Pinching one arm between his thumb and forefinger, he swung them down to comb the rest of his fingers through his hair. I guess… With a shove, he returned his glasses to his face, pushing them up the bridge of his nose as it wrinkled with a sniff. I guess I’m not. 

Heading towards the staircase, he tossed the small bouquet he was holding into a trash bin. Stupid. Though the weekend had been planned as a celebration of Benjamin finishing his first year of graduate school, he’d wanted to give her something as a way to thank her for her support, to show her that he cared, that he he was always thinking of her, even when his nose was in a book or he spent an entire evening writing a paper. As a way to show you that you were wrong. Recently, Julia had told him that he only ever gave her flowers when he was apologizing for something. But I’m sure this will turn into something I’ll have to apologize for. Maybe this time I’ll skip the flowers. 

He winced as he reached for the handrail and started climbing the stairs, immediately feeling guilty for being spiteful. That’s not helpful. If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure that flowers, no matter what the occasion, were helpful either. Though the last few weeks had been good ones, he and Julia spending a decent amount of time together on days when he didn’t have classes or study sessions, it gnawed at Benjamin that he had to mark time between arguments in such short increments. Maybe she feels like I only bring her flowers when she’s upset with me but… He reached the top of the staircase and suddenly the idea of going back to an empty hotel room felt like the last thing he wanted to do. Maybe it’s because she’s always upset with me.

A loud, raucous cheer went up then as he followed the foot traffic at the top of the stairs, passing a crowded sports bar packed with patrons wearing kits and scarves supporting Brentford. The team had been making a run at the Premier League, and suddenly everyone had been swept up in their underdog story, following along and becoming inadvertent fans. Not where I want to be right now. He continued on, passing small shops and cafes until he found another pub, this one much quieter and less crowded. There, that looks more my speed, just want to get a pint and-  

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a couple reuniting on the platform below, arms flying around one another. They look happy. He felt a half-hearted smile lift one cheek, but it fell as he found himself thinking that the likelihood of Julia greeting him with that much enthusiasm when she arrived in London tomorrow was slim. If she arrives tomorrow. He shook his head and turned away from the platform and back to the smaller, less populated bar. I need to get that pint. 

Stepping out of the bright light of Waterloo’s main terminal and through the arched doorway of the small, dimly lit pub, he blinked a few times to adjust to the lighting. It’s just one night that she’ll miss, we have the room all weekend. I shouldn’t let it… With another hefty sigh,  he unbuttoned his coat. He didn’t want to be upset that his wife had stood him up on the first night of their getaway. He wanted to believe that there was still some way to salvage the trip. She knows how important working towards this degree is to me, maybe tomorrow she’ll… But he was tired of breathing life into his hopes only to have them slashed and soured. We’ll see about tomorrow tomorrow. Glancing at the few people gathered around the bar rail, he chose to avoid the cluster of chatty looking middle aged men, instead finding a spot near a young woman sitting alone with her phone in one hand, the other wrapped around a nearly empty pint glass. She seemed the lesser of the two evils, and since Julia wasn’t there to create her own version of why he chose to sit where he did, he pulled out a stool that was two down from where she sat. 

The bartender shuffled over and raised an eyebrow, reaching for a mug from the shelf below the bar counter. “The Tyne Bank, please.” Benjamin indicated the tap handle of the beer he ordered as he sank into his chair. “Thanks mate,” he sighed as the drink appeared in front of him, pulling out his wallet to hand over his card. “Open a tab, would you?” Wordlessly, the balding, apathetic man took it and nodded, already turning away in the direction of the post he’d been leaning on prior to pouring Benjamin’s drink. Don’t know how long I’ll stay but… He pushed two fingers up under the left lens of his glasses, pressing them into his closed eyelid before rubbing them down and out from underneath. Damn it, Julia, this was-   

“Opening a tab at a commuter bar, huh?” He looked immediately in the direction of the woman two stools down, her slightly slurred accent hitting his ear. American. Her eyes were glued to the rim of her glass, watching her own pointer finger trace around the edge to create a high-pitched squeaking sound. “You must be having a day.” You could say that. She looked up, pulling her fingers from the glass so that she could wrap them around it to drain the contents. She was younger than he first thought, no more than 24 or 25 if he had to guess. She’s Leo’s age. 

He noticed that her eyes looked red and puffy when she swung them over to him, and not just from the alcohol. She’s been crying. He picked up his glass and nodded. “Suppose I have been.” Bringing his glass the rest of the way to his lips, he took a sip and let the coppery colored ale coat his tongue before swallowing it down. 

“Well then, you sir, have chosen the right seat because this end of the bar-” she flipped her hair over her shoulder in a dramatic fashion, like a matador might flourish their cape, and used the same finger she’d been tracing around her glass to point down at the wooden bartop. “Is for tying one on.” Lifting her hand from where she’d just pointed, she waved the bartender down to order another drink, the man huffing audibly at the fact that he had to move again. 

Benjamin set his glass down and cocked his head to the side as the bartender grumbled under his breath, something along the lines of ‘she couldn’tve ordered when this bloke did, of course she couldn’t.’ The young woman either didn’t hear him, or didn’t care, and Benjamin had a sneaking suspicion that it was the latter. Once he’d slid the woman her beverage, the bartender looked pointedly at Benjamin, even though he’d only taken one sip that hardly even cracked the foam. “I’m fine,” he assured the man, who was only getting less hospitable by the moment, before turning to face her. “Not trying to get too tanked up here, just,” he sighed as she picked up her glass, pausing before bringing it to her lips. Just what? What are you doing, Benjamin? And why are you talking to a stranger about it? He shook his head. “Just wanted to take the edge off.” 

“Well, that makes one of us.” She held her glass out and it took Benjamin a few seconds to realize that she was waiting for him to clink his against it. He blinked a few times before picking up his pint glass and tapping it to hers. “To me getting tanked up, and to you...well, not.” She blew out a breath in a sarcastic laugh, shaking her head.  

That was a terrible toast. His mind flashed back to the one he’d delivered at his and Julia’s wedding- how hard he’d worked on it, how he’d practiced in the mirror for days before rehearsing it the morning off, how he felt invincibly bolstered by the love that he had for the woman he was pouring his heart out to. Good toasts don’t guarantee anything though. 

“Cheers,” he responded as she took a large swig, her left hand combing her hair back out of her face as she drank. A falsely hearty sounding round of laughter rose from the opposite end of the long, straight rail, and even though it didn’t seem as though he would be granted the quiet drink he wanted, he was glad he had stayed away from whatever that was. “So,” he set his glass back down as he cleared his throat. “You had a-” 

Her phone started vibrating on the bartop next to her glass, and Benjamin couldn’t help but notice the contact photo when the screen lit up. “Shit.” She picked it up and fumbled with the buttons on the side, her fingers not completely in compliance with the task at hand. “Fuck you, Eddie,” she mumbled as it buzzed again in her palm before she slid the bar across the bottom of the screen to shut it down. 

Benjamin returned his eyes to his drink, trying to pretend that he hadn’t just seen a photo of the woman next to him laying a fat kiss to a smiling young man’s cheek and the name Edmund accompanied by a string of heart shaped emojis flash on her phone before she struggled to turn it off. I’ve got enough on my own plate to figure out, I should just finish this drink and head back to the ho-

“Damn it, sorry that was…” She reached behind her for the purse that was hanging on the back of her stool, grabbing the strap to pull it into her lap before jamming her phone into it. “Just my-” 

Benjamin leaned over the empty seat next to him. “It’s fine, you don’t have to-” 

She let go of her purse and slid from her stool onto the one next to it, leaving only one between them now. Oh, no, that’s… Benjamin straightened back up and seized his glass, but she didn’t come any closer, only reaching for her own glass to scoot it over in front of her new position. “No, I meant to turn the damn thing off anyway because I do not want to hear from him tonight...or…” she groaned into her pint. “Ever.” The last word echoed against the glass before she cut herself off by filling her mouth with liquid. 

So I guess I’m not the only one having trouble in paradise tonight. He frowned, looking down at his left hand and the wedding band he’d been so eager to earn. I love her, I know I do, but she… He closed his eyes and took a drink, swallowing slowly. Does she? Benjamin curled his hand into a fist, until his knuckles blocked his ring from view. Stop. Don’t...not here. He flattened his palm back, eyes still on the gold band around his third finger. Not now. 

“Oh, hey, you don’t have to worry about-” Huh? The woman laughed under her breath as she angled herself away from him. He looked up to see her motioning towards his flattened hand. “I saw you looking at your ring. You’re married.” She used one hand like a blade to cut a straight horizontal line through the air. “I get it, and anyway I’m not…” Her head shook from side to side, face tilting downwards as she picked up her glass again. She wasn’t kidding about...what did she say? Tying one on? “I’m not trying to flirt with you or anything I just-” Another little snort of laughter interrupted her sentence and she used the pause to take a drink. “Literally, just, broke up with one of you English assholes and I’m-” Benjamin raised one eyebrow, adjusting his glasses with a shove to the rim. “Shit, I don’t mean you’re an...ugh.” 

The laugh was out of his mouth before he had time to question where it came from. It was small, not enough to lift him out of what he was feeling, but it wasn’t forced. “You never know, I might be one.” She picked her head up and gave him a gracious smile. “And anyway, on behalf of all of us,” he gestured around the bar with his glass. “I’m sorry that things didn’t work out with your boyfriend.” 

Sighing, she let her shoulders drop as she sunk back into her stool. “Yeah, thanks.” Tilting her glass around, she swirled the half-empty contents, watching the foam cling to the sides and then run down them. “I’m sorry you’re having a shit day too.” 

“Yeah,” Benjamin looked down his nose into his glass. It didn’t start out terribly, it was actually… He blinked and downed the rest of his glass. “Thanks.” I should go. 

“I’m Jocelyn, by the way. Joss, really.” She spread her fingers to push her hair back before twisting to retrieve her purse again. Digging through, she pulled out a business card and handed it over. “Figure I should introduce myself, if we’re going to sit here drinking our woes away together.” 

Looking down at the square shaped card he read the purple print. Jocelyn Hall, Copyeditor, R.J. Tully & Associates. Huh, what are the odds? He set her card down and reached for his wallet, pulling out one of his own. “I started out as an editor, too. I’m only part-time because I’m back in school, but they have me writing copy now. Big move.” He rolled his eyes and handed over his own card. “I’m Benjamin.” Jocelyn read his card over before flicking it against her thumb. “It’s nice to meet you, Joss, though I wish it were under better circumstances for… well for either of us.” 

She laughed, turning to stuff his card in her purse before letting it swing back around the stool again. “It’s nice to meet you too, Benjamin.” When she turned back to him again, her eyes, though still puffy, looked less sad. Good. “But you know who’s having a worse night than either of us?” Well, we both had to turn off our phones because we’re avoiding people, so… She jerked her head in the direction of the bartender. “This guy really hates his job.” 

With that she stood on the rung below her stool and waved the bartender over. His humph and trudge illustrated what she’d just said, and Benjamin felt a small smile form. Joss swallowed what was left of her drink before the man had finished his long and arduous journey down to their end of the bar, then pointed at Benjamin’s empty glass. “Can I buy you another beer and tell you about my shitty day, Benjamin? Or you can tell me about yours, or,” she blew out a breath. “Or fuck, we can talk about copywriting if you really want, it’s just that I’m not…” She was speaking more quickly, her words tumbling out as the bartender finally reached them. “Not ready to go back to an empty hotel room just yet and-” 

“You want somethin’ girlie?” The man’s gruff voice cut her off as he leaned over the bar, his knobby knuckles gripping the curved edge. 

Benjamin’s palms were sweating and a warning jolt went through his stomach. What would Julia have to say about me accepting this drink? It was a rhetorical question to himself, and even though Jocelyn had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in him- and I’m not… I love my wife, I’m not interested in this woman- he knew that if Julia were there she’d be plenty busy making up her own version of things. But she’s not here. She chose not to be. He noticed Jocelyn’s face falling as she nodded, reaching again for her purse, and he narrowed his eyes. Piss it. “Yeah, set us up again would you, mate? On my tab.”  

Jocelyn smiled, letting go of her purse strap again, letting the small bag swing. “That was supposed to be on me.” I know. She leaned her elbow on the bar, setting her chin in her hand. “Thank you,” she said it as the bartender set her drink in front of her, though her eyes were on Benjamin. “For sticking around I mean, I just…” The gruff, wrinkled man passed Benjamin his ale before responding to the waves and calls of the men at the other end of the bar, grumbling as he headed in their direction. “I…” She pressed her lips together, running her fingers up and down the outside of her glass. 

“Hey,” Benjamin lifted his glass. I get it. “My most thrilling copywriting story is about the time I had to write nine thousand words on mattresses in twenty four hours,” Jocelyn blew air through her nostrils in a laugh as Benjamin took a drink. “But if you want I can try to remember which ones were rated best.” But that’s not what she wants to talk about, is it? “Unless you just want to...talk about your day.” 

She hummed, picking up her glass to take a sip. “I don’t want to,” she sighed and settled against the backrest of her stool, drawing one foot up to the seat so her shin was pressed to the edge of the bar rail. “But, I have been sitting here drinking for hours, and I have yet to say the words out loud.” Looking down into her drink, she took a breath before bringing her glass to her lips for another long swallow. “So,” she placed her glass back on the bartop and spread her arms wide, fingertips nearly brushing Benjamin’s shoulder. “Here goes. Today, I, Jocelyn Hall, boarded a plane in Washington D.C. and crossed the fucking Atlantic Ocean to visit my boyfriend in London, only to find him fucking some other woman.” Benjamin winced, sucking air through his teeth. That’s awful. Jocelyn took another big swig, clearing nearly half of her glass before Benjamin had had his second sip. “And you, Benjamin,” she pointed at him, finger swaying, “are the first person I’ve told. 

Damn. He recalled the way it had felt when Allie had delivered the double blow to his heart that not only did she not want to marry him, but that she’d fallen in love with someone else. That betrayal was unlike anything he’d ever felt prior, and he handled it about as well as Jocelyn was handling things. “That’s terrible, what a prick.” 

“You know, I never thought he was a prick.” Of course you didn’t, that’s why you were with him. “I thought he was,” she rolled her eyes and groaned at herself, one hand going to her head. “I thought Eddie was perfect.” She scoffed. “Stupid.” 

Benjamin shook his head. “It isn’t stupid to want to see the good in people.” He raised his eyebrows and brought his glass to his mouth. “Especially the person you’re with.” He let another mouthful of ale slide down his throat. Julia has so much good in her. I saw it right away, but now its… He sighed.

“All my friends told me this would happen,” she reasoned, wrapping both hands around the base of her glass, condensation dripping over her knuckles. “They all warned me, when Eddie and I met, and,” she tilted her head, eyes widening. “They were right.”    

   “They couldn’t have known- you, you couldn’t have known when you met him that things would turn out this way though.” He tried to console her with the fact that there was no real way to prepare for the unknown; that Jocelyn or her friends couldn’t have possibly foreseen that Eddie would cheat on her. That I couldn’t see that Julia would push me aside. He shook his head and rubbed on hand over the top of his hair. Change the subject. “How did, um… how did you two mee then?” Shit, she might not want to- “I mean, only if you want to tell me, it’s-”

“We met while we were both spending a semester abroad in Florence.” Another eye roll. “We both accidentally signed up for a class that we thought was Italian, but it was actually Italian Literature, taught entirely in a language that neither of us spoke and,” she gestured with one hand while the other held her glass. “Well, we were able to transfer out of it, but we hit it off and started spending time together. A lot of time, all our time. Looking back on it now I...well,” she tapped the nail of her pointer finger on her glass. “It happened too fast, got... “ she made a sudden swiping motion. “Swept up in it I guess.” 

Yeah, that tends to happen. He knew how easy it was to let the current carry you away once those first few feelings started swirling, especially when the circumstances were right. “Still, that doesn’t mean that you should have been able to predict that…”

“Our entire relationship was like a vacation, Benjamin, that should have been a clue. I mean,” she sniffed. “Weekend getaways in Vienna and Barcelona. Going here, seeing this, doing that.” She ticked her words off on her fingers. “Before the semester was even up we were already making plans to visit one another at home. He came over to the U.S. and stayed with me for ten days and it was great. It was a great ten days, but again, it wasn’t real life.”  

Like Julia and I. The thought made his mouth go dry but the beer he tried to drink only caused him to choke, coughing and covering his mouth with his hand. In the beginning of their relationship they’d holed themselves up in hotel rooms, ordering room service and visiting tourist sights. It was so easy. 

“But the crown jewel in this story,” Jocelyn smacked her palm down on the bartop causing Benjamin to snap his attention back to her. “Was me deciding to surprise Eddie by getting here three days earlier than we’d planned, and him deciding to surprise me by banging some redhead.” He frowned. Why do people cheat? I’ll never understand it. She sniffed again. “So, surprise. My friends were right, and I’m an idiot.” Her eyes were starting to shine again, and she snorted into her glass. “A drunk idiot.” 

“You’re not.” She looked at him incredulously. “An idiot, I mean.” You’re definitely drunk. He put his glass down and leaned his forearms on the bar. “You dove in, really gave it a go. Now this Eddie? He sounds like an idiot if you ask me.” He licked his lips and scrubbed one hand over his beard. “It’s not stupid to trust people or to...to fall for someone.” Am I trying to make her feel better or myself? He sighed. “It’s shitty. It’s a shitty thing that he did to you and I’m…” I’m an expert at shitty things happening so I know what I’m talking about. “I’m sorry that it happened to you.” 

Joss smiled sadly, but nodded and wiped her knuckle under her eye. “Thanks, Benjamin, that’s…” She let out a breath. “I appreciate you listening to me and trying to...just, thank you. It felt good to get that all off my chest I guess.” I’m sure. Since he married Julia he had been spending less and less time with friends like Bianca and Zach, and the few classmates he’d spoke with over the last year were no substitute, so he’d had no one to really talk to about the perceived problems in his marriage. He was glad that he was able to be a set of ears for Jocelyn to vent to. 

“You know, I am about as far away from sage council as you could probably get, but if it’ll make you feel better to talk about your shitty day, we can put the next round on my tab.” A few more patrons had shuffled in since he’d sat down that Benjamin hadn’t noticed until he’d looked up at Joss’ alcohol and emotion flushed face. I shouldn’t… But why shouldn’t I? He asked himself the question almost immediately, knowing fully that his only intention in talking to Jocelyn was conversation and possibly some mutual empathy, nothing more. 

He finished the rest of his drink and stood from his stool. “Alright,” he agreed. “But I’m going to step out for a smoke.” Joss made a scrunched face and he chuckled. “I know, bad habit, I’m trying to quit. But… yeah. Grab another round. I’ll be right back.” 

“Great,” she stood to flag down the bartender. “Misery loves company.”

.

.

.

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[orbemnews]

Can Journey Bans Actually Cease the Unfold of Coronavirus Variants? Specialists Are Skeptical LONDON — As nation after nation rushed this week to shut their borders with Britain, the strikes introduced again recollections of the best way the world reacted after the coronavirus first emerged broadly within the spring. Most of these preliminary journey prohibitions got here too late, put in place after the virus had already seeded itself in communities far and broad. This time, with nations attempting to cease the unfold of a brand new, probably extra contagious coronavirus variant recognized by Britain, it might even be too late. It’s not recognized how extensively the variant is already circulating, specialists say, and the bans threaten to trigger extra financial and emotional hardship as the toll wrought by the virus continues to develop. “It’s idiotic” was the blunt evaluation of Dr. Peter Kremsner, the director of Tübingen College Hospital in Germany. “If this mutant was solely on the island, solely then does it make sense to shut the borders to England, Scotland and Wales. But when it has unfold, then we’ve to fight the brand new mutant in every single place.” He famous that the scientific understanding of the mutation was restricted, and its risks unclear, and described as naïve the notion that the variant was not already spreading extensively outdoors Britain. Additionally, Britain has a number of the most refined genomic surveillance efforts on the earth, which allowed scientists there to find the variant when it might need gone unnoticed elsewhere, specialists mentioned. Dr. Hans Kluge, the World Well being Group’s regional director for Europe, mentioned that member states would attempt to provide you with a coherent method to any menace posed by the variant. In the mean time, he wrote on Twitter, “limiting journey to comprise unfold is prudent till we’ve higher data.” However he famous, “nobody is protected till everyone seems to be protected.” With rising requires the USA to affix the handfuls of countries imposing bans on journey from Britain, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s prime infectious illness skilled, urged warning, saying there was a very good likelihood the variant was already there. “I don’t suppose that that type of a draconian method is critical,” he mentioned on “PBS NewsHour” on Monday evening. “I feel we must always critically contemplate the potential for requiring testing of individuals earlier than they arrive from the U.Ok. right here.” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York mentioned that British Airways, Delta Air Strains and Virgin Atlantic had agreed to require a unfavorable coronavirus check outcome from passengers boarding flights from Britain to New York. Within the absence of federal motion, different state and native leaders referred to as for comparable measures earlier than the height vacation journey days. Many nations already require a unfavorable coronavirus check for entry, however slicing off all journey between nations is a extra fraught proposition. The European Fee, the European Union’s government department, urged members of the bloc to raise blanket bans on Britain so important journey can happen. However for the second, nations appear to desire setting their very own guidelines. Late Tuesday, France eased again on a border closing it introduced Sunday that had stranded greater than a thousand truck drivers. Now, it says, choose teams of individuals can cross the border if that they had been just lately examined for the virus. The scenario is convulsing a journey business already battered by the pandemic, forcing hundreds of thousands to vary their vacation plans and injecting a contemporary dose of hysteria on the finish of a bleak 12 months. On the identical time, a separate variant of the virus is inflicting concern because it spreads in South Africa. Not less than 5 nations — Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Turkey — have barred vacationers coming from South Africa. Sweden blocked journey from Denmark after experiences that the British variant had been detected there. And Saudi Arabia went even additional, suspending all worldwide air journey into the dominion for not less than every week. Up to date  Dec. 27, 2020, 1:48 p.m. ET The South Africa variant turned the topic of intense scientific analysis after docs there discovered that individuals contaminated with it carry a heightened viral load — the next focus of the virus of their higher respiratory tract. In lots of viral ailments, that is related to extra extreme signs. As a result of it isn’t recognized how extensively the 2 variants are spreading, it’s inconceivable to evaluate what results the makes an attempt to isolate Britain and South Africa can have on containing them. With its refined genomic surveillance efforts, Britain has sequenced about 150,000 coronavirus genomes in an effort to determine mutations. That’s about half of the world’s genomic knowledge concerning the virus, mentioned Sharon Peacock, the director of the Covid-19 Genomics U.Ok. Consortium and a professor of microbiology on the College of Cambridge. “In the event you’re going to seek out one thing wherever, you’re going to seek out it most likely right here first,” Professor Peacock mentioned. “If this happens in locations that don’t have any sequencing, you’re not going to seek out it in any respect,” she added, except they carried out different assessments which have proved helpful in figuring out the variant. In Wales, a rustic of three million individuals, geneticists have sequenced extra coronavirus genomes within the final week than scientists have examined throughout the whole pandemic in France, a rustic of 67 million, mentioned Thomas Connor, a professor who focuses on pathogen variation at Cardiff College. “It’s possible that comparable variants are popping up world wide,” he mentioned. “And there are variants which can be prone to be popping up elsewhere that are spreading regionally and which might be fully unregarded as a result of there’s no sequencing in place.” British officers have mentioned that the primary case of the variant now spreading extensively within the nation was detected in Kent, in southeastern England, on Sept. 20. By November, round 1 / 4 of instances in London — a world hub of commerce — concerned the brand new variant. Just some weeks later, the variant was estimated to be liable for practically two-thirds of instances in Higher London. That implies that by the point Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the nation on Saturday evening to announce extreme new lockdown measures for hundreds of thousands of individuals in and round London, the variant had been spreading for months. Officers in France and Germany acknowledged on Tuesday that the variant may already be circulating of their nations. The European Centre for Illness Prevention and Management mentioned a couple of instances with the brand new variant had been detected in Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands. And well being officers in Australia and Italy have reported instances in vacationers from Britain. Those that help the journey bans mentioned they may play a task in conserving instances of recent variants decrease. “Numbers matter,” Emma Hodcroft, a researcher on the College of Bern in Switzerland, wrote on Twitter. “The variety of individuals with the brand new variant in continental Europe is probably going nonetheless small: with testing, tracing, identification and restrictions, we would be capable to forestall them from passing the virus on.” If the variant does show to be considerably extra contagious than others in circulation and turns into extra widespread, it might complicate world vaccination efforts. Dr. Ugur Sahin, a co-founder of BioNTech, which, with Pfizer, developed the primary vaccine accredited within the West to fight the coronavirus, cautioned that it might be two weeks earlier than full outcomes from laboratory research would permit for a fuller understanding of how the mutations may alter the vaccine’s effectiveness. “We imagine that there is no such thing as a motive to be involved till we get the info,” he mentioned. If an tailored vaccine have been essential, it may very well be prepared inside six weeks, Dr. Sahin advised a information convention on Tuesday. However it might require extra approval from regulators, which might enhance the wait time, he mentioned. He additionally mentioned {that a} extra environment friendly virus would make it more durable to realize ranges of immunity wanted to finish the pandemic. “If the virus turns into extra environment friendly in infecting individuals,” he mentioned, “it would want even the next vaccination fee to make sure that regular life can proceed with out interruption.” Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin, and Benjamin Mueller from London. Supply hyperlink #Bans #coronavirus #experts #skeptical #Spread #Stop #Travel #Variants

[the-revisionist]

the tristan chord: chapter 18

xviii. long day’s journey into freak-out

one sunday morning

It is not daylight that awakens Gillian but awareness of time pressing in on her—a merciless internal alarm clock suffering a severe malfunction today because under normal circumstances she’d be on her feet for hours by now. The last step in surrendering to the conscious world is the most painful one: she opens her eyes to a blindingly bright bedroom. After so many days of pissing, sodding rain Mother Nature got cheeky and lo, here’s a sunny warm day worthy of a tropical beach confirmed with a blue-sky striptease courtesy of the fluttering curtain. 

Flat on her back, she squints at the ceiling’s white glare, wriggles a bit, and there it is: the delicious awareness of Caroline pressed against her. The day expands exponentially. She raises her head for confirmation and sees blonde hair and a lightly freckled arm draped over her waist, feels heavy hot breathing—miraculously, not snoring—against her upper arm. 

Everything would be perfect save for the mobile on the nightstand that starts ringing. While she patiently waits for it to go to voice mail, the reaction from Caroline is akin to poking a hibernating bear: She rumbles loudly and lunges wildly over Gillian—who, as a result, gets unceremoniously smacked in the face with a tit—seizes the offending phone, squints at it, stabs a button, and attempts plastering it onto Gillian’s face. As the phone slides off her cheek Gillian hears a tinny male voice chattering away who is, in all likelihood, Raff, while Caroline rolls away from her and with a lovely snorty growl falls back asleep. 

So much for the afterglow. Gillian bobbles the phone. Even with it closer to her ear she can’t hear Raff very well, and wonders if the old mobile is finally dying on her. The mere thought of its demise is actually quite liberating. Maybe she’ll decide not to get a new one. Maybe she will become the only farmer in Yorkshire not to own a mobile. Even Pete, who owns the farm closest to her and is so old that he calls Alan “lad,” has one. Then she realizes she’s holding the phone the wrong way around, with the hearing bit pointed past her chin.

Righting the phone, she plops right into a ranting, raving run-on sentence: “—and I’ve called Nev already and of course since it’s Sunday no one’s working but him and he can’t get out right away and on top o’ that everybody’s stuck in mud or broken down somewhere and I’m sorry, that’s the best I can do, so go on, have your bloody fit already, it’s all over but the shouting as they say, go on, go on.”

“What?” Gillian is still in blink-at-the-ceiling-oh-God-that-was-wonderful-last-night mode.

“Did you not hear what I just said? I drove the Land Rover into a ditch.”  

She winces. Such furious enunciation, such painful shouting. She continues blinking at the ceiling. Several long seconds disperse into the summer air as she tries to muster the appropriate amount of outrage but at the moment all she can think is, how did she make me come three times in a row?

“Oh,” she finally says.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Are you drunk?”

This time she manages to keep a grip on the mobile while yanking it away from her ear to avoid the worst of the shouting, although she does catch the bit about being drunk. “Knackered, is all,” she says. In a futile effort at waking up, she vigorously rubs her face. “You all right?”

The unexpected maternal concern waylays Raff’s fit. “I—yeah, I’m fine. And the Landy’s all right, really, not wrecked, just stuck in mud.”

“What happened?”

“Oh.” Raff drags the syllable through an elongated groan of frustration.

Gillian knows the sound well—this sad abbreviation of oh, I’ve done something stupid—it’s a family speciality, both the sound and the stupidity. Now she knows exactly what happened and sighs. “Took the shortcut to Harry’s, didn’t you?”

More shouting on his part, more wincing on hers: “Yes, I took the bloody short cut!”

Even in the best of weather, this infamous short cut to Harry’s house is a trial: a narrow, winding dirt road lined on one side with a fence older than Methuselah and on the other side with a wicked slope to a bog of indeterminate depth. Why no one thought to erect fencing on the bog side of the road is anyone’s guess and Gillian knows better than to put such a simple question begging logic to any denizens of the dale because she’d probably get in return some epic horseshit tale involving nubile shepherdesses, infidelity, murder, ghosts, curses, and whiskey.

“That bog is all mud now, and I couldn’t get her out. Needs towing, like I said.” Raff groans. “And don’t say I told you so, I know you did. Happy now?”

She turns toward Caroline, whose back rises and falls in slow, sleeping rhythm, and rediscovers the freckled map of the stars that she saw only in her mind’s eye the night before. The vault of heaven has cracked open and spilled these burnished stars along Caroline’s skin and her hands and mouth are desperate to navigate once more by these beloved stars. Her fingers hover just above skin, swooning over the coordinates of Cassiopeia again and again, the repetitive motion as necessary as a heartbeat.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling because no one can see. “I am happy.”

“Now you’re taking the piss,” Raff says angrily.  

“I’m not, honest.”

“Seriously, I feel shitty about it, I don’t need you messing me about on top of everything—”

“Raff. Hey.”

He groans again.

“It’s all right. Okay?”

This time a sigh.

“It’ll get sorted. So you called Nev?” Nevin was the knobhead who ran the nearest garage. He was also the first idiot Gillian slept with after Eddie died, begetting a long line of abysmal, regrettable sexual partners. He has since lost hair and gained a beer belly, so now she conveniently forgets whatever she saw in him other than desperate affirmation that she was still reasonably desirable to anyone. 

“Yeah.”

“Good. Then just sit tight till you hear from him. Don’t call him again, you start nagging him he’ll never show up.  Call me once he’s got it out. Okay?”

“Yeah, all right.” He sighs again. “I am really sorry.”

“Shit happens.” Another stellar moment of maternal comfort, Gillian thinks.

As if commenting on this universal truth, Caroline unleashes a completely unexpected and utterly savage peal of snoring.

“Sink clogged again?” Raff asks.

No, I’m in bed with my stepsister and we’ve spent the better part of last night shagging each other’s brains out. “Um, yeah. Just a bit. So I should—”

“Right. I’ll let you go.”

“Yeah. Oh, one more thing—”

“What?”

“Once it all sinks in I will probably string you up by the bollocks.”

“Aw, bless.” He chuckles sardonically. “Now there’s the mother I know and love.”

She rings off, tosses the phone in the general direction of the nightstand, and misses. It clatters to the floor. Caroline’s head lifts off the pillow as she mutters “Jesus” in a voice whiskey-sweet with sleep. In response Gillian places her lips against Cassiopeia and the sky shifts under her mouth, the stars dust her tongue. Caroline pushes against her and grabs her arm, pulling it across her waist as if it were a safety belt. As she clears her throat, her chest rumbles and Gillian tastes the raw vibrato of the body at work, a guttural song for an audience of one.

“Everything all right?” Caroline manages to ask. Her cheek, partially obscured with hair, is mottled pink and cream from sleep in Gillian’s rough, cheap bedsheets and she is still here, she has spent the night in this unholy bed in this cursed bedroom and this alone is so utterly unbelievable to Gillian that she is perched on the edge between great happiness and great ruin and it is no wonder that for want of anything she does not want to get up ever.

She kisses Caroline’s flushed cheek and sets out on a tour of the constellations along the shoulder and arm; the Big Dipper and Orion come easily to mind, touch, and tongue but as for others, well, she cannot recall them and so maps new constellations. My name on your skin and no one else will know, not even you.

“Perfect,” she says, over and over as she marks every kiss and freckle, an incantation that leads them both back to sleep.

An hour later she wakes up alone, the room brighter and warmer and the disorientation she feels suggests that last night and earlier this morning was some sort of prolonged, feverish erotic dream. But no—she sits up and sees a pile of Caroline’s clothes on the chair in the corner. She assumes that Caroline is in the shower, but does not hear the water pipes or any other sound of activity from the bathroom. Naturally this leads to a rather paramount concern: There is, potentially, a naked woman roaming her farm. Perhaps the ever-rational, science-loving headmistress has finally lost her mind. No one’s ever gone barmy from having sex with me before, Gillian thinks, but there’s a first time for everything.

Common sense prevails: Or maybe, just maybe, she’s put the kettle on. While naked. Which could be dangerous. Thinking that she may need to supervise this activity, Gillian gets up, throws on a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. She looks out the window—sunny and breezy with a chance of naked women in the forecast—and gnaws her lip while staring at a barnyard booby-trapped with sticky mud and dank puddles that cannot dry fast enough. What has happened here is new but not new, and she has no idea what to do or what to say. Well, she knows what not to do: Don’t say I love you, don’t pledge eternal fidelity or devotion because you know she won’t believe it because you’re just bloody old slapper anyway.

In her head Gillian’s more censorious lectures of self-recrimination and restraint are usually cast in her father’s voice so it’s slightly disturbing, to say the least, to sort-of hear him going on about how best to conduct a half-assed lesbian affair with her stepsister—half-assed because Caroline already has a girlfriend and she’s not sure how to handle that. Hell, Caroline doesn’t seem to know how to handle that. Maybe she needs to call what’s-her-face from Hebden Bridge to help her sort through this lesbian horseshit. There’s got to be a Dyke Handbook. There’s got to be a morning after. She rubs her brow. No, no thinking of melodramatic shit 1970s songs right now.

By this time she’s biting her fingernails again and automatically berates herself for it; this time the voice in her head sounds like Robbie, because her nail-biting was one of his pet peeves. As was her drinking, her cooking, the way she dressed—come to think of it, her very existence was his pet peeve.

This time, when she condemns herself for the hundredth time for marrying a man she did not love, it is in her own voice.

Then the creak of the bedroom door and Caroline is there—in a dressing gown nicked from the bathroom and holding a plate of fluffy golden scrambled eggs. Gillian wonders if she is dead. Or dreaming. The dressing gown is a tartan plaid of green and blue that Gillian had initially bought as a birthday gift for her father a few years ago until a series of ill-advised laundering attempts on his part shrank it; in her more paranoid moments she thinks he did this on purpose because maybe he didn’t like it but at any rate, this resulted in Gillian taking default possession of the gown. Even in its shrunken state it is still big on her, but she likes that. She likes it even more so on Caroline—it fits her well and reveals a pleasing bit of calf.

This unbelievable image of domesticity breathes life into a story she has told herself many times late at night when she was too tired to go on and too drunk to care: We live together. Our children are always underfoot. We work too much. When it gets hard we can barely manage to be civil. But at night you are home and tired and after dinner you pour yourself a glass of wine, you push back my hair and lay your hand on the back of my neck like you do and that means everything is all right. We’ll sit around and watch telly and you’ll bitch about your day and on Sunday mornings we’ll make love because Sunday is sacred and quiet and it feels like the end of the world and we can take our time, and I’ll fall asleep after and you’ll let me sleep in while you get up and make me coffee.

Then Caroline says, “It’s weird.”

The storybook closes and Gillian resists the urge to gnaw her fingernails again as she goes into a tailspin: Of course it’s weird, it shouldn’t have happened, you have someone new, someone better, you could not possibly feel anything real for me despite all your fine words and big ideas last night. She attempts leaning against the windowsill with the casual, worldly confidence befitting a woman of her age and experience but instead gets momentarily entangled with the curtain. “W-what’s weird?” she mutters, while furiously batting away the curtain.

“You’d think by now I’d know how you like your eggs,” Caroline says. “We’ve known each other long enough—well.” She shrugs apologetically, half-heartedly raises the plate. “Anyway, thought you might be hungry—”

“Oh,” Gillian says.

United in postcoital awkwardness, they stare at the plate.

Then Gillian grins stupidly and hugs herself, as if Caroline is offering her an engagement ring or an epic love poem she wrote with the blood of angels on the smoothest of antique vellum or, best yet, a purebred ewe. And it’s not as if Caroline hasn’t fed her God knows how many times before, but these incremental kindnesses fray the edges of so many incontrovertible memories that she can imagine an eventual softening, a dissolution of the rough fabric binding her to the past and blinding her to possibility.

Caroline, however, interprets the smile as commentary upon a dish that does not live up to her Le Cordon Bleu standards. “It’s not my best effort—” she says apologetically.

“No, no—I didn’t mean—thanks. It looks grand and I am hungry, really hungry. Thank you.” Gillian seizes the plate.

She is about to spear a yellow cloud of egg with a fork when Caroline asks, “So for the record, how do you like your eggs?”

In response it seems quite natural, more than natural, to reel Caroline closer by pulling at the knotted belt of the dressing gown so that she is close enough for blonde hair to brush Gillian’s cheek and that it is absolutely impossible not to kiss her. Repeatedly. “I like them scrambled,” she says between kisses. “Served to me in my bedroom.” One more. “By a beautiful, snotty bitch.”

“Well.” Caroline’s hands skim her hips and find anchor in the waistband of the pajamas, and she presses her face into Gillian’s neck. “Got it right on the first try, then.” There’s no response to this because no mere moan or gasp can completely convey the sweet shivery pleasure of a neck well nuzzled. “I made coffee,” Caroline murmurs in her ear. “Forgot you had the Chemex that Gary got you.”

“Y-you actually used that thing?”

“Yeah. Gave it a thorough washing first—it smelled suspiciously of Jagermeister.” She gives Gillian a wry look and a kiss on the cheek before darting out of the room.

Still convinced that a dream or an altered state of consciousness or being is responsible for all this, Gillian stands alone in the bedroom, blinking slowly. Then she shrugs and decides to just go with it, to enjoy both the food and this quasi-honeymoon bit of bliss for as long as it will play out. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she digs into the eggs—which are real and, of course, so perfect in taste and appearance that Gordon Ramsey would weep with joy. But when Caroline returns with only two mugs of coffee and no more food, she panics that she has made some sort of romantic faux pas: “Oh, shit.” She raises the plate. “We supposed to be sharing this?”

“Nope. All for you.”

“Did you eat anything?”

“Toast.”

“Toast?” Gillian scoffs.

“Yeah, I—oh, do you want toast?”

“No. God’s sake, sit down. Feel ridiculous, having you wait on me hand and foot in my own home.”

“Don’t be silly,” Caroline says. She settles in beside Gillian, reclining against the headboard, legs crossed at the ankle, and drinks her coffee. Strong sunlight catches the gold glint of fine, sparse stubble along her pale legs. After a moment she rests a hand on Gillian’s knee. There are a million things that need saying but for the moment this concert of silence reminds Gillian that there is no one else in the world with whom she can fully share her solitude.

Several satisfying minutes pass by, enough so that she welcomes casual conversation once again: “What was that phone call this morning?” Caroline asks.

Gillian takes a deep, calming breath. “My idiot son drove my Land Rover into a muddy bog.” She looks at Caroline, whose jaw drops with mute horror. “Now that’s something, when it leaves you speechless.”

“You’re being very calm. Did you sneak out, track him down, and kick his arse already without my knowing it?”

Gillian points at her with the fork. “I’ve always loved the way you think.”

“Where’d this happen?”

“Shit road out near Harry’s. First time I ever drove your mum out that way, she called it ‘the road leading to the end of civilization.’ Anyway, Raff says she’s just stuck in bog so we’re waiting get towed. Thanks to this fucking flood everyone is stuck somewhere, needing fixed, needing towed. And it’s Sunday to boot. So God knows when I’ll get her back.” Done with the eggs, she deposits the empty plate on the floor beside the bed.

“There anything I can do?”

Gillian straddles her and begins to undo the thick knot of the dressing gown, lays bare one shoulder. “Give you one guess.”

“Naked prayer circle?”

Her lips touch Caroline’s collarbone. “Aye, you’ll be hollering for Jesus when I’m done with you.” Then she gets distracted and discovers freckles heretofore uncharted. This constellation is shaped a bit like Andromeda. Lightly she traces them.

Head tilted back on the headboard, Caroline observes her lazily. “It’s like you’ve never slept with anyone who’s had freckles before.”

Christ. She noticed. Like a child about to touch a hot stove, Gillian pulls her hand away. “Oh. Sorry.”

Caroline gently seizes her hand, kisses her knuckles. “It doesn’t bother me, really. ” She smiles, almost shyly. “Just not used to it. No one’s ever made a fuss over them before.”

She wants to say, it’s like gold dust all over you but doesn’t because she thinks it sounds too twatty. Instead she parts the dressing gown further and lays bare the smooth plain leading from Caroline’s throat to her chest, her belly, to a hint of pubic hair.  “Almost a shame to take this off, though. Looks damn good on you.”

  “It smells like you.” These words, whispered against Gillian’s ear, bring on another shivery bout of pleasure enhanced by the sharp nip of her ear and the gentle violence of this is almost too much, the frightening line between pleasure and pain blurs. Of all the borderlines crisscrossing and dissecting her mind into fearful, feral fiefdoms, this one is the most dangerous and as such access is routinely denied, and has been for a long time. 

But now? She pins Caroline’s wrist against the headboard and kisses her rough, a way that they’ve both responded to well in the past—and she remembers the last time they were in this bedroom, which seemed very long ago but wasn’t. It was only the second or third time they’d fucked and right before Caroline had been very solemn and lovely and said, quite serious, something that no lover before or since has said to her: don’t ever let me do anything to you that you don’t like, that you don’t want. Despite that caution, Gillian could not override that innate need to provide pleasure at any length and satisfaction at any cost; fortunately Caroline was and remains an attentive and observant lover, knowing when to push the boundaries and when not to. Gillian attributes this to her scientific background—imagining that, as a chemist, she’s used to dealing with volatile, toxic substances.

Like me, Gillian thinks—a thought quickly banished as Caroline continues nibbling on her ear and murmurs, “Take off your shirt for me.”

She releases Caroline’s wrists and, too eager to make a show of it, quickly discards the shirt. “Anything else you want?”

Caroline admires her, clasps her waist, pulls her closer. Still smiling, but with that imperious glint in her eyes. “Anything I want?”

The familiar border crumbles. Gillian hesitates, then: “Yes.”

“Well, then. I’ll tell you what I want. What I really, really want—” She pauses, kisses Gillian’s neck gently, gently, then bites and sucks with enough intensity that they both know a mark will be left. 

Gillian sputters out a laugh. “Spice Girls reunion?”

  “Shit, that was not intentional,” Caroline groans. “That bloody song, it’s like one of those intestinal parasites you can never get rid of—” 

“Focus, Caz. Parasites are not sexy.” 

“Ah, right, right. Hang on.” She resumes with the neck-kissing while slowly, cautiously touching Gillian’s ribs, then the underside of her breast.  “Better?”

“Y-yeah.” That Gillian manages to say anything seems miraculous. She takes a deep breath. “Tell me—what you want.”

“I don’t know. It’s not sexy enough.”

“Come on now.”

   “Was just a random thought.” 

“Tell me.” 

  “You should move your books into the house. It’s damp in the barn and not good for them.”

  In a fit of laughter Gillian collapses, rolling off her and thus losing her topping advantage. 

Giggling, Caroline crows “ah-ha!” and drapes a log leg over her torso, pinning her down.

  “All right, you win. That was not sexy.” 

“Au contraire, winning is always an aphrodisiac for me.”

“Bloody figures.”   

“But books are sexy too.” She continues feasting on Gillian’s neck with the sybaritic intensity of a vampire toying with her food. “Almost as sexy as you.” She pulls back and studies Gillian’s body with eyes and touch, plucking at the waistband of her pajamas. “It would be nice to have them close by, wouldn’t it? In case you ever want to read in bed. Or, er, read in bed to me.”

  Confounded—and suspicious—Gillian blinks at her. “Why’d you want a stammering old pillock like me reading to you?”

“Because I like the sound of your voice,” Caroline replies, as if it’s glaringly obvious. 

“I’ll repeat the question, then.” 

  “Oh come on, you only stammer when you’re angry or worked up about something—well okay, that is like ninety percent of the time but still, you could stammer your way through the entirety of Shakespeare and I’d love every second of it.”

Gillian stares up at her and despite all evidence to the contrary remains fundamentally unconvinced that anyone with half a mind would find anything remotely attractive about her, let alone a cursed, much-loathed defect of speech. “All right. I’ll—I’ll build bookshelves, then. In the fall. Good project for when things slow down.” 

As usual Caroline is mystified by thrift. “You could just buy a bookcase.”

She rolls her eyes. “No.” Scrambling, she frees herself from Caroline’s leg and regains her status on top. She regards Caroline carefully, plotting her next move—where to begin, where to begin?—while Caroline plots of how to lure her further into the trap of capitalism.

  “I could buy you one,” Caroline offers. 

Gillian traces her torso, fingers strumming the soft, ridged plateau of her ribs. “No.”

“For your birthday.”

  God, Gillian thinks, the one time I want her to shut up. “No.” Determined, she lurches upward and kisses Caroline soundly.

It doesn’t work. “Christmas,” Caroline exhales after the kiss.

“No.” Time for serious diversionary tactics: the breasts. 

Ardently she kisses, sucks, teases, and then with her face pressed in the smooth plateau between caresses both breasts—and is both irritated and impressed when Caroline squeaks out, “Arbor Day.” 

Gillian continues on her merry way downward, confirming between kisses: “No.” 

Caroline pulls at her hair and writhes wildly underneath her. “Morrissey’s birthday,” she gasps. 

“Was in June,” Gillian points out. “Already past.”

  Her hands remain tangled with Gillian’s hair. “Stubborn bitch.”

“Isn’t he, though?” 

Caroline’s laugh is truncated by a sharp moan as Gillian’s mouth arrives at a particular erogenous zone: the crease between torso and thigh, the femoral artery running wild beneath her kiss. “Oh fuck—that feels good.” 

Her fingertips graze pubic hair, the back of her hand drags along the interior of Caroline’s thigh. “Give up?”

  “If I say yes, will you keep going?”

“Say yes, say no, say uncle.” She grins.

“You win, my lovely girl,” Caroline says.  

  She basks in the beauty of the moment, the woman before her. The curtain twists in the breeze as if a flag marking the moment of surrender, the distant sound of a lapwing calling peewit lazily winds through the warm thicket of summer air, and the rich boundless contours of Caroline’s body are reminiscent of odalisques seen in museums when she was a teen—the kind of paintings that brought about a revelatory unease in her—and she thinks she has never seen Caroline look so relaxed when naked, and beautiful, so beautiful. 

She dives in. The patience she cannot be bothered to extend to people or situations because they’re all too bloody complicated she finds instead in reading, working, fixing things, and making love. She remembers well how Caroline likes it—slow and easy, the teases, the feints, penetration at the right moment—it is a gift to be inside her, to taste her, to be penitent and powerful all at once.

Caroline’s fingers are flexing rhythmically as they push through her hair and press into her scalp. Her urgent touch falls away and her palms press against Gillian’s shoulders before her nails bite into Gillian’s skin. “Jesus,” she moans, then “oh God,” and Gillian half-expects to hear invocation of the Holy Ghost next but when she hears her own name in a reverential susurrus, she decides she’s beyond pleased to be included in this sacredly profane trifecta.

apres-midi du farmer 

After so much pleasure in so short a span of time, Caroline’s sense of duty has percolated with such fury that it spills into her subconscious and the list of things she has to prepare for in the coming week drops into her wakening mind with the fierce magnificence of an unexpected Beyonce song released on the internet.

She would sit up dramatically save for the fact that she is tangled up with Gillian, who is draped over her, dead asleep, and drooling on her breast. Her frantic efforts to grab Gillian’s mobile from the nightstand in order to check the time wake up her slumbering companion, however briefly: She makes a mewling noise and rolls off Caroline and onto a pillow. Finally Caroline snags the mobile, hits a button, and is informed by the greasy cracked screen that it is nearly 2:30 in the afternoon, 2:24 to be precise; this discovery leads her to utter an oath reserved for only the direst of emotional circumstances and crises:

“Jesus Fucking Christ on a Cadbury Egg Hunt!” 

Again Gillian makes a kittenish noise. 

Caroline nudges her. “It’s 2:30!”

This time Gillian makes an oh really? kind of hum.

  Sadly, Caroline realizes it is time for deployment of the always-effective headmistress roar: “Gillian!” 

Wide-eyed, Gillian bolts up with the ferocity of a reanimated zombie. “Shit,” she groans, then blinks at the mobile in Caroline’s hand. “Did Raff call about—”

“—no, he didn’t call about your fucking Landy!” Caroline says, even though (1) she has no idea if this is true, and (2) she understands on a profound, Bee Gees how-deep-is-your-love level the pure, unconditional devotion of a woman for her automobile. Nonetheless she leaps out of bed and pulls on the plaid dressing gown, which somehow ended up on the floor during the morning’s sexual shenanigans—oh yes, hastily shoved aside when she had pressed Gillian against the headboard and started fucking her and she can’t imagine how many scratches are on her back now as a result—no, she begs herself, don’t start thinking about that. “It’s two-thirty in the bloody sodding afternoon and I have things to do, I have a proposal to write, a budget to look at, teachers to interview for the fall, playdates and meetings, it’s a whole long list in my head, and, and—don’t you have things to do?” she marvels.

“Well,” Gillian says. “It’s all relative, really.” She rakes hair out of her face and smiles.

Philosophical naked women are a particular weakness for Caroline and she wants nothing more than to crawl back into that bed with that woman. Then she wants to slap herself straight into sense but instead reverts to what she does best, which is ranting: “Oh God, my mother has probably left a hundred messages on my mobile, Lawrence is stranded in Sheffield with Angus but who knows, maybe they’ve finally consummated their relationship, and it’s probably a miracle your father isn’t here or Raff or the goddamned Land Trust—I need to shower—” 

“Oh. Yeah.” Gillian makes a move to get out of bed. 

“No, Halifax succubus!” She thrusts an accusing finger at Gillian. “We are not showering together, I cannot risk shower sex with you.”

“‘Halifax succubus?’” Gillian muses aloud. Then, as Caroline stomps down the hallway and into the bathroom, shouts after her: “Should be able to shower when I want in my own house, y’know!” 

“Wash up in the sink!” Caroline yells just before she leaps into the shower and confronts the unpredictable water pressure, grimacing as bitterly cold water spikes her skin. 

  Which, about five minutes later, Gillian does. “My own bloody house,” she grumbles good-naturedly whilst at the sink.

  “You’re using up the hot water.”

Gillian cackles maniacally. “Damn right I am.” 

“I’m sorry, but you are a perpetual temptation and I am but a weak, mortal woman.”

“Don’t talk fancy at me. I get it, you’ve a list of things you want to do. Me, I’ve just a got a list of things I want to do to you in a shower.” 

Caroline’s resolve dwindles rapidly, going down the drain like the suds from the Jack Black True Volume Shampoo that she’s using and assumes is some sort of leftover from either Raff or Robbie’s testosterone toilette, but it appears to be the only shampoo in the stall. 

“Or a bath,” Gillian continues. “That’d be fun too.”

  “Next time, then.” A silence, as Caroline realizes she has committed to this happening again. While on some level that seemed obvious, this casual promise gives the last twenty-four hours or so substance, makes it all real. Despite the stinging shampoo in her eyes, she arches on the balls of her feet in happy anticipation of Gillian’s response. 

“Yeah,” Gillian replies softly. “All right.” Something clatters. “Oh, I um, have a toothbrush for you here. Gonna get dressed and put the kettle on.”

  Out of the shower Caroline attempts multitasking: While wrapped in a towel she waves Gillian’s ancient hairdryer at her wet hair while trying to brush her teeth with the never-used toothbrush. Then she gets seriously distracted by the thought of Gillian just randomly having a new toothbrush available for her use. Does she have a stockpile of toothbrushes available for sexual conquests? With the toothbrush lodged in her foaming mouth and the hairdryer spewing hot air at her head, she noses around the bathroom looking for a secret toothbrush supply, but the medicine cabinet only holds an alarming amount of plasters, gauze bandages and surgical tape, antiseptic creams, and antibacterial sprays all necessary to the life of a woman constantly surrounded by sharp and dangerous objects. Guiltily Caroline stares at herself in the mirror. She has toothpaste in her hair. 

About twenty minutes later she is mostly dressed and plowing through a second attempt at multitasking: trying to pull on socks while hopping down the hallway. Obviously Gillian has heard this irregular thumping from downstairs because when Caroline is on the steps—socks on, not hopping—she finds Gillian waiting at the bottom of the stairs, rocking back and forth as she does sometimes when nervous, holding a cup of tea and gazing up at Caroline as if she is some sort of adoring concierge.

  “Your mobile rang,” Gillian says.

  Gratefully Caroline takes the tea. “Why didn’t you answer it?” She wants to kick herself. She’s not your bloody personal assistant. She’s not Beverly.  “No. Um. Sorry. I meant, you could have answered it—if you wanted too.” 

This prompts a derisive snort. “You kidding? It was probably your mum.”

  “Probably.” She sips the tea and realizes she is as nervous as Gillian is. She is about to awkwardly go in for a kiss when Gillian darts away and mumbles that her mobile is in the kitchen. 

In the kitchen, she peruses her messages. Of course there are about eight voice mails from her mother, all variations upon the classic theme of where the eff are you? and what the hell is going on?  She girds her loins and calls. 

“What the eff are you doing out there?” is the first thing Celia says. “What the hell is going on?”

“Why Mum, I’d have never guessed it was you.” 

“We thought you’d be back by now. Is Gillian actually making you work?” Celia pauses before tendering the delicate inquiry in a shrill tone: “Are you handling sheep?” 

“No, everything’s fine, we’re all intact, and I have not laid a hand on a single sheep.”

  “Did she tell you what Raff did to the Land Rover?”

“Yes.” 

“Has she murdered him yet?” 

Caroline winces at the regrettable hyperbole. “No. How’s Flora?” 

“Oh, lovely as usual. She and Greg are in the garden right now looking at worms.”

“Worms,” Caroline says flatly. 

“Yes, apparently after the rains she found a few while playing and she is quite fascinated with them. Earlier today they discovered ladybugs and slugs. She’s putting them all in your Oxford travel mug. She’s been asking after you. We told her you were off saving the sheep from the flood.” Celia laughs.

  When Lawrence and William were younger, she had thought nothing of the occasional weekend trip that would take her away from them—the conferences, the supposedly romantic long weekends and adult-only vacations with her husband that, with time, usually ended up with them both drunk and arguing more often than not—so she does not expect the acute, palpable stab of guilt that radiates through her chest and leaves her standing senseless and numb and, once the call is over, staring at a black screen and thinking I should be there, I should be the one showing her bugs. Duty and expectation always came easy to her and she embraced it with fervor; it was a privilege to be entrusted to care for children, to run a household, a school. She could not love Flora any more than she already does, but the responsibility of this child is fraught with a meaning that has, over the past two years, nearly crippled Caroline with endless self-recrimination and doubt. 

She’s still staring at the phone when Gillian comes into the kitchen. When Gillian sees the expression on Caroline’s face she dials back her big, sweet grin and jams her hands into her pockets. “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah,” Caroline says perfunctorily. “It’s—” She shakes it off, smiles, and reports the only thing that matters: “Flora is collecting bugs in the garden.” 

“Got a curiosity about ’em, doesn’t she?” Gillian grabs an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and starts washing it. “Calam has this picture book—all drawings of animals and such. It has a few pictures of insects in it like a spider, a ladybug, and a caterpillar, and a butterfly—well, when Flora was here last, I showed her the book and after we’d looked through the whole thing she kept turning back to the insects—she really liked the caterpillar and the butterfly. I was trying to tell her that the caterpillar turns into the butterfly but I don’t think she was having any of that, kept looking at me like I was off my nut.”

  Helpless, Caroline glares at her. “You know my own child better than I do.”

  Gillian rolls her eyes, and to Caroline’s mild horror wipes the apple on the front of her jeans. “All recent developments, Caz. You know how kids are. One week they’re keen on one thing, next week it’s something completely different. You can’t notice everything.” She heads back to the living room and calls over her shoulder, “Come sit and finish your tea, yeah?”

  Instead of heeding the suggestion, she makes the mistake of checking email on the mobile and encounters several tedious messages about setting up and conducting interviews for the new teacher. Her stomach churns. Wandering into the living room, all thoughts of worms and caterpillars and teachers and interviews fly out of her head, for Gillian’s particular brand of rough but indisputably feminine sensuality is on full display: she sits in a sprawl on the couch, legs extended and feet bare, lazily chewing on a bite of the apple. It’s so undeniably erotic that she stops dead in her tracks. Then Gillian looks at her knowingly, lustily—o the mighty Caroline McKenzie-Dawson wishes she were an apple, doesn’t she?—and the conflagration of desire and emotion burns hotter and brighter.

“C’mere,” Gillian says around a mouthful of apple.

   Caroline shifts nervously. “No,” she blurts. 

A sardonic laugh. Gillian keeps eyeing her. “No?” 

Self-conscious, she looks away from Gillian’s beautiful eyes and feels as awkwardly on display as when she was nineteen years old and attending a lesbian and gay social at Oxford for the first time. 

  “I’ll let you have a bite of my apple,” Gillian singsongs. 

  Caroline laughs. “I seem to recall hearing a story like this a long time ago.” 

“If it’s the story I think you mean—don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted.”

Caroline crosses her arms. Usually she feels quite self-important and in charge when she does this, but in this moment the gesture feels more as if she is somehow barely holding herself together. “Be flattered. Very flattered.”

“So you’re just going to stand there like a numpty ’til you fall over.”

“Very likely, yes.” 

Humming, Gillian finishes the apple, rolls the well-gnawed core in a napkin, and places it on a side table. She leans back into the couch again and in this manner of voluptuous repose resembles a wild queen of the forest bored with both debauchery and duty and awaiting the one subject that will liven her mundane existence, and so softly issues a summons:  “Caroline.’

Well. Unable to resist the devil’s draw, Caroline fights off the almost imperceptible buckling of her knees and strides across the room.

  Gillian seems surprised by this as well; she is clearly not expecting to be boldly mounted, have her face cradled in Caroline’s hands, and to be kissed so senselessly that her eyes glaze over similar to when she has consumed three or more glasses of wine and prompting Caroline to silently congratulate herself on being a similar form of intoxicant. 

“Jesus,” Gillian exhales. 

The insistent pounding of blood in her veins drives her on. “When can I see you again?” 

Gillian’s eyelids flutter. “W-whenever you like.” Then, as if remembering something: “Wednesday.” 

Clearly Caroline has forgotten it too. “Wednesday?”

  “Yeah. Gonna be at your place anyway. Remember? Taking Dad for his checkup.” 

“Oh.  Right. You’re still—going to stay for dinner?”

“Of course. Unless you don’t want—”

“No. I want you to.” 

“We won’t have time to—”

“I know.” Caroline pauses. Her mouth moves, the words struggle to come out, but finally do: “It—it’s enough just to see you.”

  “Yeah?” Gillian’s pupils blossom, dots of ink from a divine fountain pen that drop a dark expanse into those amazing irises, and that stupidly prompts Caroline to think of some old song from the 80s—oh you’ve got green eyes oh you’ve got blue eyes oh you’ve got gray eyes—and God help her, she’s pushing Gillian down on the sofa and they’re at it again: Clothes discarded in a whirlwind of haste except for Gillian’s jeans, which are always a bit of an ordeal to pull off and seriously, she deserves another orgasm for accomplishing that task alone but instead she slips a hand between Gillian’s legs and cradles her cunt, possessed of great patience despite the nervy curl of her fingers and waiting for the single tremulous please whispered into her neck before entering her. She particularly likes to watch Gillian’s face at this moment: the tense lines around her mouth slackening into pleasure and eventually release. In the Mobius strip contortions of sex satiety becomes need and after she comes Caroline moves against her roughly, grinding against her thigh until the surprising intensity of the climax falls over her like a wave. 

Afterward she does not fall asleep so much as enter a drowsy fugue state while lying there on the couch and more or less on top of Gillian, who at some point managed to pull a quilt over them against a vigorous, chilly cross breeze; even in the summer, the farmhouse living room stays surprisingly cool. Silence here is different than at home, in Harrogate; silence here intensifies the smallest sound and the swish of the wind ruffling a newspaper reigns equally with tires on gravel, bleating sheep, a leaking faucet, and her own obvious comments: “It’s so peaceful here.” 

In response Gillian merely hums and strokes her hair, her glugging heartbeat providing a backbeat to the torch song of her blood, the muscles of her forearm twitch restlessly in the clasp of Caroline’s hand. 

“I have to go,” she finally says. 

  “I know.” Gillian says it clearly, strongly, as if she has been bracing herself for it in every action and breath since the moment they kissed the night before.

  Despite her reputation as someone operating on pure reckless impulse, Caroline knows that she mulls things over to the point of obsessiveness; perhaps that is why the execution and results of her decisions are less than ideal—classic overthinking, pummeling things in her mind to such an extent that no action seems ideal or even makes sense anymore. It would not surprise Caroline that in the aftermath of all this Gillian has been cogitating mightily all along—perhaps more than she does herself. Perhaps Gillian thinks that this is not the beginning of anything but merely a sex-saturated coda to what they had been before, because there is simply no way of going forward. So she could back out, save a scrap of dignity while rescuing Caroline from violating whatever vague code of ethics she lives by, a code at times impenetrable and incomprehensible to Gillian and seemingly bent by the arbitrary whim of a woman in constant conflict between desire and expectation.

“Can—can I say something?” Gillian begins, and Caroline finds it heartbreaking that she seeks permission to speak up in her own home.

She presses her face against Gillian’s sternum, the boombox that contains a very complicated heart, and tastes the sweet salt of sweat. She thinks of how, as a child, she would press her face against the stereo speakers in her father’s study, desperate to catch the warp and hiss and delicate strains of music, as if she wanted to taste the sound—and laughing in delight when an orchestra would rise up and knock her back on her arse. “Of course.”

As usual the mix of thoughts and desires that go through Gillian’s mind tumble out in poorly congealed fashion; Caroline likens it to following an elaborate recipe in a cookbook where the result turns out to be an edible yet spectacular mess that in no way resembles the glistening food porn photo in the book itself. It’s particularly true in this case, where she is obviously trying her damnedest to ensure not only Caroline’s happiness, but her own:  “I just wanted to say it’s, it’s okay. If you want to keep seeing her. Sacha, I mean. Yeah? I want you to be happy. And I’m happy being with you like this, spending time with you when we can. I want to be with you, and, and I don’t know what—what that could be like, you know? Well, yeah, maybe you don’t know yet either. But, I’ll, I’ll take what you’re willing to give.”

It is at this crucial, awkward, and somewhat inconvenient moment that Caroline finally remembers she already has a girlfriend.

to an evening star

On the drive home the evening sky is so spectacular that Caroline eschews sunglasses, boldly squinting westward into white and gold and pink and orange—she stops counting at seven different colors and thinks, if only the skeins of the sunset could be gathered and woven into one fantastic word that would adequately describe them. It is the time of day when one should be sitting somewhere with a drink or walking across the moors, in either instance the ideal being alone or with the right person. 

It would have been nice to fit in a walk with Gillian this time. In times past, whenever she visited the farm they made a habit of going for a walk together. The last time, however, seems a lifetime ago and she has since molted several skins of grief; it was about seven months after Kate died and not long after Gillian had married Robbie. For no reason in particular it had been a bad week and she had only gotten through it on diazepam-driven automatic pilot and wanted nothing less than enduring a family dinner at the farm. But Alan had twisted his ankle while gardening and so it was Caroline’s chauffeuring abilities and not her company that was desired. While straining at the effort of bare civilities, she avoided a nervous breakdown and got through the meal. Afterward, Gillian—rocking on heels, peering at Caroline from under bangs desperate for trimming—shyly mumbled a suggestion that they go for a walk, as if for all the world Caroline would refuse this mad idea when in fact she was seconds from collapsing under the chaos of the household and if she heard Robbie tell more banal police adventure about drunkards at the pub she would scream. 

She dreaded the possibility that Gillian might use the walk as an opportunity to bitch about Robbie and/or enumerate a list of recent shags. Instead Gillian prattled softly about the land, in that sweet low burr she used only with those closest to her. It was late autumn and late afternoon, with the sun hugging the horizon and shooting through the sparse clouds in a last blaze of glory, throwing shadows and gold on the dales and copses, the moss and hedgerows, the evergreen heather. They had taken a different path than times before, one Caroline was not familiar with, so Gillian would stop and point out things. Down a ways, she said, was the stream where she and her father used to fish when she was young. And there, that old broken fence along that bridleway—used to jump over it with ease. Probably break my neck now. 

On the way back they encountered Gillian’s closest neighbor, a wizened, gnarled old farmer named Pete and his sullen middle-aged son. While Gillian and Pete made impromptu arrangements to help each other at harvest, the son mercilessly appraised Caroline as if she were a ewe at a country fair—not quite top notch in his silent estimation, but she would do. 

Under normal circumstances she would have no problem summoning a few choice words cutting him down to size. But she was tired, tired of being mercilessly judged by any male idiot with an opinion, and she grew increasingly enraged. She glared at him, trembled, and her jaw tightened in a massive effort to not scream what the fuck do you think you’re looking at? Then, without breaking conversational stride, Gillian casually took her hand. She could breathe again; in fact, she released such a hoarse, shuddering breath that Pete gave her a concerned look. His son glanced down, caught sight of the clannish, protective gesture of her hand in Gillian’s, scowled, and turned away. 

Meanwhile Gillian laughed at Pete’s joking efforts to sell her an aging ewe. Then the men went one way and they went another. Gillian kept hold of her hand for a while, even gently swinging their arms back and forth as they walked in silence. Then she told Caroline that after Eddie died Pete, ever the dealmaker, had been mad keen to match her up with his unmarriageable son—complete eejit, she said. Makes Robbie look like Stephen Hawking. 

That made Caroline laugh. Few things made her laugh back then. Even now, it’s not as easy as it used to be. Now. She realizes that she has not had a proper panic attack about all this—resurrecting this affair, what it means, how it will play out—and so she pulls over abruptly on the side of the road, breathing heavily at the shock of the new and the old commingled together in this thing called life. Way to go, she thinks derisively, think about Prince—one of Kate’s favorite musicians—now of all times. She recalls how Kate had initially proposed painting the nursery a very lurid shade of lavender in honor of the Purple One; Caroline had to rely on a steady supply of ice cream and sexual favors to convince her otherwise. She chuckles aloud at that—and abruptly stops. She has arrived at the point she has dreaded for so long now, where memories of Kate were growing relatively painless because now she is strong enough to forsake the bad ones and hold dear to the good ones. For so long pain had been the only thing convincing her that she had loved, that it was real, and the void it would leave too terrible to contemplate. 

She stares at the sunset. The white edge of the multi-skeined sunset cedes to blue and the glint of the evening star. This morning she witnessed not the sunrise but the nascent blaze of bright heat from the open door in Gillian’s kitchen, standing there barefoot and in a dressing gown not her own, eating buttered toast with cunty fingers—all the perfections of English life distilled into one moment, as an always-obscure writer once posited. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, she had been content. She sighs and climbs back into the Jeep Cherokee. Hedonistic pursuit of another moment like that will have to wait.

  An hour later she pulls into the driveway of the house and is unsurprised when accosted by her mother and Alan the second she steps out of the vehicle.

“Well,” Celia declares, folding her arms. “We thought you’d gone native out there.” She nods at Caroline’s Wellies, which Caroline has retrieved from the back seat and are baptized with grime.

“You do realize Gillian lives in a house and is not some wandering gypsy around a campfire?”

“You’d never know by the way she acts sometimes,” Celia replies.

Rather than contradict this, Alan grumbles in agreement.

Caroline sighs. “What’d she do now?”

Poking at his mobile, Alan brings a series of Gillian’s terse texts on screen and, once read, resemble a form of cranky beatnik poetry:

Im ok just leave it hes an idiot fuck I want brandy snaps don’t lecture me old man christ

Alan rumbles, “Not one bit of relevant information!”

“Except the bit about the Brandy Snaps,” Celia observes helpfully. 

  “Like getting blood from stone!”  

“At least she didn’t call you a mad old dyke,” Caroline replies, recalling Gillian’s most infamous text to her, for which Caroline had to endure a drunken, stammering, nearly incoherent apology several months after the fact. By that time she had completely forgotten it and on recalling it once again, thought Gillian had deserved to call her far worse in light of the events that had transpired between them. Blame yourself as usual, Caroline thinks. When Alan pulls a face of pure despair—sometimes she thinks her mother’s melodramatic antics are a poor influence on him—she squeezes his arm affectionately. “Don’t worry so—she’s fine, really. And given everything that’s happened, the farm could be in far worse shape. She was in, um, good spirits when I left.” Now she longs for the camouflage of sunglasses because she’s fearful that the luscious glaze of her eyes and the rosy glow of her cheeks will somehow announce to Alan that she has spent the better portion of the past twenty-four hours fucking his daughter. 

Fortunately Alan moves on to the Land Rover Drama. “Land Rover’s out of the mud, at last. All she needs is cleaning up.” He chuckles, shakes his head. “Aye, poor Raff, that’ll keep him busy!” He kisses Caroline’s cheek and murmurs, “Well, anyhoo. Welcome back, love. See you at dinner.”

“Although God knows when that will be,” Celia mutters, as Alan heads back to the guesthouse.  “A lot has happened in a day,” she says to Caroline, and matches her daughter’s gait as they meander to the front door.

“Yes,” Caroline sighs happily—then, before the old woman could get suspicious, reforms it as a question: “Yes?”  

“Lawrence keeps going on about clown school.”

“Well, it may be the only chance he has, you know?”

“William broke up with his girlfriend.”

“Told him he should shave that bloody beard.”

“John called. He’s out of rehab but he’s still writing a memoir about you.”

“You think Meryl Streep would play me in the film? She’d love the challenge of a new accent.”

“I’ve saved the worst for last,” Celia says, and then intones grimly with her flair for the dramatic: “Greg is making tofu.”

“Oh shit,” Caroline wails. While Greg is a decent cook, his ambitions sometimes exceed his natural talents; she is still discovering bits of chocolate here and there stuck to countertops, appliances, and various crevices courtesy of this spring’s Great Souffle Debacle.

“He’s having woman trouble,” Celia says, as if this justified destruction of her kitchen.

She groans. Recently Greg had become enamored of a woman named Brigitte; on first glance she seemed as compelling and attractive as a Malibu Barbie still trapped inside the box. What nudged Caroline’s apathy into active dislike was this woman’s barely concealed consternation regarding Flora’s mere existence.

Speaking of whom, when Caroline opens the door Flora, like a tiny determined rugby player, rushes at her, crashing against her shins. She scoops the girl up into her arms. 

Flora’s default greeting these days is an enthusiastic “Hey!” with arms raised.  

“Hey yourself, sweetheart! I’ve missed you.” She notices that Flora is desperately trying to wipe tofu goop from her hands onto her orange hippo t-shirt. “God, why are your hands so white?”

Celia opens her mouth.

Caroline is one step ahead: “If you make any sort of racist comment right now I will smother you to death with tofu.”

“Everyone is so sensitive these days,” Celia complains. She shrugs dismissively. “Fine, I’m leaving. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.” She nods toward the kitchen. “He is like a woman and you like women, as we all know.” On that barbed note, she departs.

“Tofu,” Flora says, quite clearly.

On one hand, Caroline is disappointed not to hear her say mum—which she hasn’t done yet but Greg has assured her that Flora said it the other day while pointing at a picture of her; on another, she’s relieved that Flora has stopped saying shit. At least for now. 

The kitchen is indeed a wreck and Greg sits morosely at the table, surrounded by old cookbooks, soybeans soaking in a pot, and batches of tofu in various blob-like states and stages, as if he is Dr. Frankenstein brooding in his lab and flanked by brains in jars and convict corpses ready for reanimation. Her first thought is to snap a pic and text it to Gillian with a caption: The Tofu That Ate Harrogate. Over the past year, she has made a concerted effort not to treat him like complete shit; it seemed an easy enough goal to achieve once she became truly cognizant of the fact that while she may have lost a wife, he suffered a loss too: one of his oldest and closest friends, the woman who kept his confidences, offered him advice, and vetted his girlfriends. Clearly there is no replacing Kate. But she could do better in providing some sort of emotional support for him—although she fears her lack of diplomacy may rear its ugly head if he ever seeks an honest opinion of Brigitte. 

Caroline attempts to joke him out of it: “There’s really no need to out-lesbian me, you know.”

His pathetic attempt at a smile resembles the sad rallying look of a Labradoodle on a rainy day. 

“Right, then. What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m in love,” he says. 

Gently she juggles Flora, who squirms restlessly while smooshing tiny sticky tofu fists against her face. 

“Mum!” Flora barks, as if to say pay attention to me and not the nitwit who made tofu in your kitchen. 

  “Well.” Caroline grins ridiculously. The day could not possibly get any better. “It’s wonderful to be in love.”

  SOUNDTRACK: “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend),” Wilco—oh, but it’s long, like this chapter. “Temptation,” New Order  “Everything Hits at Once,” Spoon “Evening Star,” from Richard Wagner’s Tannhauser (Franz Liszt transcription) 

[valeriemperez]

There's another confusing part of this time loop. Savitar kills Iris. Barry creates time remnants and Savitar kills all but one. Savitar is trapped in the SF and the time remnant goes back in time to becomes Savitar in a parallel timeline. But the Savitar we're dealing with is the one that escaped the SF, so what happens to that remaining time remnant in the meantime?

Okay, lemme try to work this out even though I agree with you that it’s a glaring point of confusion right now. Tracy’s speed force prison is the end of the loop, methinks. No matter what, that’s how Savitar winds up. I know “our” Savitar was previously stuck in the speedforce, but that might have just been where Barry banished the time remnant to because he had nowhere else to go.

So my story is: Savitar kills Iris, Barry creates time remnants, Savitar kills all but one, Barry banishes that one remnant to the speed force, Tracy creates speedforce cannon, Barry traps Savitar in the prison. While the remnant is chilling in the speedforce, he’s spreading stories about Savitar throughout all of time with his psychological torture powers until Wally lets him out with the final piece of the stone? Then he gets out and it’s time to kill Iris to continue his journey to creation before winding up trapped for good?

I know that doesn’t match what we learned in 3.15 & 3.16, but it’s either that or Barry is going to realize in the finale that trapping Savitar in the speedforce is going to restart the loop. But either way, you’re right that there should definitely be a Savitar in the present and a Savitar in the future - just like Barry. It seems they were both in the Speedforce…

I doubt they’d have Barry timetravel to fix a death again since the entire point of FP was that he shouldn’t. And considering there is a funeral I don’t think he will. I agree, something doesn’t make sense in Savitar’s plan. He wants everything Barry ‘took’ from him back, but I he’s not really getting anything back this way. But I don’t think faking it is his plan. They’ve left too many clues that [redacted] is a wild card/unexpected element.

Exactly. As much as Barry would want to go back in time to fix it, we’ve already established that he’s not supposed to do that. Which would make for a rather unsatisfying conclusion to the story.

Yeah, Savitar’s plan is very ???, but I agree that [REDACTED] will be a surprise to almost everyone.

ep 9 and 21 have been proven to be big westallen episodes …how likely do you think the wedding will fall on one of these episodes next season?

9 seems too soon in any season for a wedding, but 21 seems too close to the finale without being the finale. HMM. I’m still gonna go with 75% likelihood!

Barry already knew about the canon and the plan behind the canon, so doubt him not seeing what the canon looks like would have made much of a difference.

But him wielding the canon and knowing how it works makes a difference in my opinion, because then Savitar knows how to avoid it etc.

So it’s possible that we’ll get a scene where Barry thinks that Iris is dead, then finds out that she is alive the next episode, THEN he sacrifices himself to the speed force. Talk about your emotional roller coaster. I’m not getting through these next couple episodes without crying. 

I’m crying just thinking about all these possibilities.

I wonder if the showrunners would really risk an Iris “death” cliffhanger with the potential backlash they might receive from ppl who aren’t aware of the spoilers like we are. Like they could have a real mess on their hands if they really make it seem like she’s dead at the end of the next episode. I think they should make it so that B thinks she’s gone but we see a post credit scene where she’s alive.

I really want us to find out she’s still alive in the coda of 3.22, that would be way more fun.

“That’s the thing about time travel. The more you do it, the less the rules apply to you”. I think Savitar was both right AND wrong with this quote. The Eddie/Thawne fiasco was a good example as Thawne should have been gone since Eddie was an ancestor. But there is also that quote: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I feel that the constant time travel Barry did, along with the massive damage from FP was Time’s way of fucking with him with this time loop that he’s in.

Right, the thing with Thawne is that he stopped existing after that point in time. Every Thawne we’ve seen since is younger than that one, so he hasn’t experienced his own death yet. And the Legends Thawne was a time remnant from Flashpoint, the moment that he killed Barry’s mom. 

But that’s also why Barry has to stop Savitar from existing before he kills Iris. If he waits until after, then Iris stays dead just like Nora did. And I agree that this is time punishing him, lol.

Another thing I noticed is that Barry seems to be wearing his shirt from the end of 3x21 in the clips of him talking to Joe and him in the time vault. And in the clip of Joe talking to him, Joe tells him what he saw in Savitar’s eyes, meaning he’s already seen him. (Whereas the breach room scene with Sav!Barry would be the day after.) So I wonder if Savitar shows up in the lab near the beginning of 3x22 (where he wears the Flash suit perhaps?) that’s when Joe sees him.

I didn’t notice that, but you’re right! The scene between Barry/Joe must take place earlier in 3.22 because his shirt remains the same. Which is weird because no one mentioned in 3.21 was Iris is dying in two days.

So that explains the the many different outfits Savibarry is wearing next episode(s), lol. We’ve seen him in the Flash suit, in the Savitar suit, and in his dusty jacket during the promos/stills.

[orbemnews]

Can Journey Bans Actually Cease the Unfold of Coronavirus Variants? Specialists Are Skeptical LONDON — As nation after nation rushed this week to shut their borders with Britain, the strikes introduced again recollections of the best way the world reacted after the coronavirus first emerged broadly within the spring. Most of these preliminary journey prohibitions got here too late, put in place after the virus had already seeded itself in communities far and broad. This time, with nations attempting to cease the unfold of a brand new, probably extra contagious coronavirus variant recognized by Britain, it might even be too late. It’s not recognized how extensively the variant is already circulating, specialists say, and the bans threaten to trigger extra financial and emotional hardship as the toll wrought by the virus continues to develop. “It’s idiotic” was the blunt evaluation of Dr. Peter Kremsner, the director of Tübingen College Hospital in Germany. “If this mutant was solely on the island, solely then does it make sense to shut the borders to England, Scotland and Wales. But when it has unfold, then we’ve to fight the brand new mutant in every single place.” He famous that the scientific understanding of the mutation was restricted, and its risks unclear, and described as naïve the notion that the variant was not already spreading extensively outdoors Britain. Additionally, Britain has a number of the most refined genomic surveillance efforts on the earth, which allowed scientists there to find the variant when it might need gone unnoticed elsewhere, specialists mentioned. Dr. Hans Kluge, the World Well being Group’s regional director for Europe, mentioned that member states would attempt to provide you with a coherent method to any menace posed by the variant. In the mean time, he wrote on Twitter, “limiting journey to comprise unfold is prudent till we’ve higher data.” However he famous, “nobody is protected till everyone seems to be protected.” With rising requires the USA to affix the handfuls of countries imposing bans on journey from Britain, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s prime infectious illness skilled, urged warning, saying there was a very good likelihood the variant was already there. “I don’t suppose that that type of a draconian method is critical,” he mentioned on “PBS NewsHour” on Monday evening. “I feel we must always critically contemplate the potential for requiring testing of individuals earlier than they arrive from the U.Ok. right here.” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York mentioned that British Airways, Delta Air Strains and Virgin Atlantic had agreed to require a unfavorable coronavirus check outcome from passengers boarding flights from Britain to New York. Within the absence of federal motion, different state and native leaders referred to as for comparable measures earlier than the height vacation journey days. Many nations already require a unfavorable coronavirus check for entry, however slicing off all journey between nations is a extra fraught proposition. The European Fee, the European Union’s government department, urged members of the bloc to raise blanket bans on Britain so important journey can happen. However for the second, nations appear to desire setting their very own guidelines. Late Tuesday, France eased again on a border closing it introduced Sunday that had stranded greater than a thousand truck drivers. Now, it says, choose teams of individuals can cross the border if that they had been just lately examined for the virus. The scenario is convulsing a journey business already battered by the pandemic, forcing hundreds of thousands to vary their vacation plans and injecting a contemporary dose of hysteria on the finish of a bleak 12 months. On the identical time, a separate variant of the virus is inflicting concern because it spreads in South Africa. Not less than 5 nations — Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and Turkey — have barred vacationers coming from South Africa. Sweden blocked journey from Denmark after experiences that the British variant had been detected there. And Saudi Arabia went even additional, suspending all worldwide air journey into the dominion for not less than every week. Up to date  Dec. 27, 2020, 1:48 p.m. ET The South Africa variant turned the topic of intense scientific analysis after docs there discovered that individuals contaminated with it carry a heightened viral load — the next focus of the virus of their higher respiratory tract. In lots of viral ailments, that is related to extra extreme signs. As a result of it isn’t recognized how extensively the 2 variants are spreading, it’s inconceivable to evaluate what results the makes an attempt to isolate Britain and South Africa can have on containing them. With its refined genomic surveillance efforts, Britain has sequenced about 150,000 coronavirus genomes in an effort to determine mutations. That’s about half of the world’s genomic knowledge concerning the virus, mentioned Sharon Peacock, the director of the Covid-19 Genomics U.Ok. Consortium and a professor of microbiology on the College of Cambridge. “In the event you’re going to seek out one thing wherever, you’re going to seek out it most likely right here first,” Professor Peacock mentioned. “If this happens in locations that don’t have any sequencing, you’re not going to seek out it in any respect,” she added, except they carried out different assessments which have proved helpful in figuring out the variant. In Wales, a rustic of three million individuals, geneticists have sequenced extra coronavirus genomes within the final week than scientists have examined throughout the whole pandemic in France, a rustic of 67 million, mentioned Thomas Connor, a professor who focuses on pathogen variation at Cardiff College. “It’s possible that comparable variants are popping up world wide,” he mentioned. “And there are variants which can be prone to be popping up elsewhere that are spreading regionally and which might be fully unregarded as a result of there’s no sequencing in place.” British officers have mentioned that the primary case of the variant now spreading extensively within the nation was detected in Kent, in southeastern England, on Sept. 20. By November, round 1 / 4 of instances in London — a world hub of commerce — concerned the brand new variant. Just some weeks later, the variant was estimated to be liable for practically two-thirds of instances in Higher London. That implies that by the point Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the nation on Saturday evening to announce extreme new lockdown measures for hundreds of thousands of individuals in and round London, the variant had been spreading for months. Officers in France and Germany acknowledged on Tuesday that the variant may already be circulating of their nations. The European Centre for Illness Prevention and Management mentioned a couple of instances with the brand new variant had been detected in Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands. And well being officers in Australia and Italy have reported instances in vacationers from Britain. Those that help the journey bans mentioned they may play a task in conserving instances of recent variants decrease. “Numbers matter,” Emma Hodcroft, a researcher on the College of Bern in Switzerland, wrote on Twitter. “The variety of individuals with the brand new variant in continental Europe is probably going nonetheless small: with testing, tracing, identification and restrictions, we would be capable to forestall them from passing the virus on.” If the variant does show to be considerably extra contagious than others in circulation and turns into extra widespread, it might complicate world vaccination efforts. Dr. Ugur Sahin, a co-founder of BioNTech, which, with Pfizer, developed the primary vaccine accredited within the West to fight the coronavirus, cautioned that it might be two weeks earlier than full outcomes from laboratory research would permit for a fuller understanding of how the mutations may alter the vaccine’s effectiveness. “We imagine that there is no such thing as a motive to be involved till we get the info,” he mentioned. If an tailored vaccine have been essential, it may very well be prepared inside six weeks, Dr. Sahin advised a information convention on Tuesday. However it might require extra approval from regulators, which might enhance the wait time, he mentioned. He additionally mentioned {that a} extra environment friendly virus would make it more durable to realize ranges of immunity wanted to finish the pandemic. “If the virus turns into extra environment friendly in infecting individuals,” he mentioned, “it would want even the next vaccination fee to make sure that regular life can proceed with out interruption.” Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin, and Benjamin Mueller from London. Supply hyperlink #Bans #coronavirus #experts #skeptical #Spread #Stop #Travel #Variants