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stillwatcr · 5 years ago

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i’m a lazy bastard and didn’t want to make multiple posts, so you get this massive post. some important links: their long form bios (x), their connection page (x), and for funsies, the pinterest board i’ve made (x). all are wips and i’ll improve/change things as we go! buckle up, y’all are going on a feels ride with my boys. trigger warnings are contained at the beginning of each of their intros. if you make it to the end, i’ll give you a hug.

( oliver jackson-cohen, cis male, he/him, muse 39 ) i saw benjamin goldman at the docks doing sketches of the boats. it’s good to see them, i heard they’ve been living in redwater for his entire life making a living as a lumberyard worker. did you know their birthday just passed ? that makes them 33 years old and a pisces, which makes sense to me considering they’re shy and tolerant. i heard they’re thinking about becoming a full time artist. i hope it works out.

tw: death

the youngest in a family of immigrants, benjamin was the only child born in the us. this sense of displacement has been in his bones since he was born, never quite comfortable wherever he is.

his family came to washington to work in the lumber industry. it was a hard adjustment but his father was enchanted with the lush forests he saw in a postcard when they landed in america. while the reality didn’t match the dream, the goldmans didn’t have the money to go anywhere else.

benjamin has never known anywhere else, growing up and living in the logging camps around petersen’s. while one might think he would be comfortable in the forest, benjamin had a terrifying experience with the forest when he was just a young boy.

benjamin wandered away from the camp while playing and became lost at age 8. he wandered through the forest; crying, running from any noise in fear of bears, and sleeping under fallen tree limbs. His ordeal lasted for 14 days. he was picked up on the other side of the island by a passing charcoal burner, and returned to overjoyed parents, but the damage was already done. he had a deep set fear of being lost in the forest, and never wanted to go into it alone again.

while the incident made him fearful and withdrawn, it connected benjamin with his inner mind, and made him an astute observer of the world. in his recovery, one of the secretaries from the mill gifted him a pencil set and benjamin learned how to draw. it’s always been a secret love of his, but he hardly shows any of his sketches to anyone.

when war came calling, benjamin was called on, quite against his will. he would have been content to live and die in the woods of redwater, but uncle sam had other plans. benjamin was drafted into the us army and to his surprise, became quite versatile with a rifle, owing to him growing up hunting.

while overseas, he ran into one of the most charismatic members of his platoon, jack adler. benjamin was surprised when one night, jack revealed he was from redwater, benjamin’s hometown. they struck up a conversation, and became fast friends. jack enjoyed his sketches and encouraged him to become an artist after the war, and benjamin let himself dream that it was possible.

of course, every soldier has a tragedy and jack adler became benjamin’s. jack was killed, and benjamin was the one to hold him through it. he was the one to remove jack’s identification tag and his family’s letter, the one to write peggy, the little sister jack talked about on the nights he missed home.

benjamin escaped the war unscathed (though is anyone ever really unscathed?) and came home to redwater, to resume his position as a lumberyard worker. now benjamin is helping the company define its border, and he’s trying to find his own again. benjamin is trying to come back to himself.

( tom payne, agender, he/him, muse 41 ) i saw peter lamb at roger’s diner getting a bite to eat. it’s good to see them, i heard they’ve been living in redwater for their entire life making a living as a manger at langberg’s. did you know their birthday just passed ? that makes them 37 years old and a virgo, which makes sense to me considering they’re critical and loyal. i heard they’re thinking about becoming a lawyer. i hope it works out.

tw: implied abuse, death mention.

peter lamb was the only child of a happy couple of redwater. his father and mother had grown up in redwater and lived there their entire lives and as far as they were concerned, so would their son. they saw themselves as being on the brink of being legacies, and their son would be the start of it.

peter was raised like he was a king of his household. they spoiled him, and told him to reach for the stars. yet somehow, peter didn’t let it go to his head. peter would say it was because he saw how a doctor saved his mother’s life when she was in a car crash with him at age 10 (the event made him want to become a doctor), but he knew deep down it was because he was inescapably lonely.

peter had no siblings, no close friends, and he felt different. he didn’t see himself in the casual violence and anger expressed by his father, nor in the soft surrenders of his mother, he didn’t feel like either of them. and when he played with the children on his street, he thought each one of them felt like him, because how couldn’t they? if he was the only one to feel like this... peter couldn’t stand the thought of that, so he ignored it.

when peter was 15, he got a part time job as a clerk in langberg’s, in the men’s department. it was there that peter fully realized he was different. other men didn’t look at each other like he looked at them, they were confident and knew their masculine side. peter didn’t feel like he had one, like he was entirely separate from gender. he wrote about it in a doeskin journal his mother got him, and hid it behind the baseboard, never to talk about what he felt.

?????

he worked again in langberg’s, this time as the department manager. but it was the nuremberg trials, the proceedings that laid the blame somewhere, that gave peter the inspiration to follow again. peter knew he wanted to be a lawyer, to hold criminals to account and help victims seek justice. now the big question is just how to get there?

( sebastian stan, cis male, he/him, muse 1 ) i saw abraham hartley at the uptown waterfront doing net repairs for his fishing boat. it’s good to see them, i heard they’ve been living in redwater for his entire life making a living as a fisherman. did you know their birthday just passed ? that makes them 37 years old and a cancer, which makes sense to me considering they’re insecure and sympathetic. i heard they’re thinking about starting a family. i hope it works out.

tw: alcoholism, child abuse, death, death during birth

abraham was born to a family already a memory. his father was half out the door always, his mother trying to disappear, the house almost slipping out of their grasp every week. abraham never knew plenty, only knew less.

and then, against the odds, a baby. but then elijah came screaming into the world and his mother did her great disappearing act for good. four year old abraham was left hollow eyed in the corner of the room, holding a bloodied infant, and his father gone to a bar to drink, his mother cooling on the table. that less had finally turned into loss.

his father turned his back on elijah and abraham had to beg from door to door to get milk, had to take his father’s boots off when he collapsed on the floor every night. abraham had always thought he had taken after his mother more, but as it turned out, he had to become her. he had to take care of her husband and her child, and became the heart of the hartleys.

and yet when it counted the most, that heart failed him. a murmur, a murmuring heart, held him back from the jaws of war, and from following his brother to the great battlefield. but abraham had his own battlefield to contend with at home, taking care of his father, whose hard drinking had caught up with him. he had to take over their fishing boat, had to get up before the sun to set out on the water.

and while abraham had his own fears and struggles to deal with at home, he worried about his brother, unable to protect him like he always had. he feared the war board coming to his door, being handed a folded flag. but it never came, and ve day did, and he could breathe a sigh of relief.

and then scarce a week later, his father died. abraham had no money, not even for a potter’s grave, so he stole out of his house one night and wrapped his father in a length of canvas, rocks in the lining. his father slipped into the sound, and abraham felt a burden lift. he could move on now, no longer be that frightened little boy in the corner of the room.

and eventually, eli came back. he stole into their house like a stranger and when abraham looks at him, he can scarcely see the boy he raised. he’s not sure if they can ever get to be what they were but he’ll be here for whatever they are now.

#redwaterintro

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