#and in the process working through both their traumas and jamie's

[sighonaraa]

ik it's been eighty four years since i talked abt the football kiddos au but i am Rotating a Scene in my brain............ . . .............

ough. esteemed professional reporter trent crimm of the independent helps babie jamie write a card for Big Brother roy and in the process teaches jamie about dyslexia .. . and in the process gets jamie to begin to understand that what he's always been told is stupidity is actually a learning disability .... . ... ...

[jamiesfootball]

What are your thoughts on Ted? Is it good he went home?

These are two separate answers but I'm gonna try to combine them into one thought bubble (bear with me).

My short answer regarding Ted's ending is that you can't create a fully fleshed out character for 2-3 seasons and then in the final hour decide he was Mary Poppins all along. The Mary Poppins is meant to be strange, not-quite of normal ilk. She's the static character who leads the change in others, the one who inspires. You don't usually see the inner thoughts and workings of a static character.

From the very first time the audience meets Ted, we understand that this is not a static character because he is literally one of our starting POVs. We see his uncertainty about flying across the globe to go teach a sport he doesn't understand. We see him turning to Beard for reassurance. We see him stick his hand out where it isn't wanted while he tries to find common ground with people in a new country. We see the beginnings of a panic attack at the press conference.

That is is episode one. He is not a static character. He is not a strange and unusual person impossible to understand. He is inspiring, yes, but that is because of his humanity- his kindness.

He is not a Mary Poppins.

Ted is at his most interesting when he is a complicated, struggling, but ultimately kind man who tries his best to show genuine empathy and compassion towards others. The fact that this same trait doubles as a flaw is equally intriguing.

Ted can reassure Sam that Jamie won't be coming back, or Ted can reach out to Jamie when he's struggling and ask him to come back. Both are acts of kindness. He can not do both.

Ted can show Rebecca empathy and understanding for her trying to sabotage Richmond, but it ties his hands on being honest to Jamie about why he was sent away in the first place.

In trying to balance kindness, Ted struggles to be direct. He struggles to come right out and tell people how he's feeling about situations. Despite encouraging other people to talk about their feelings, he dances around his own and avoids awkward confrontations. I think that is the flaw that Ted most needed to explore. At the same time, I hesitate to say he could have learned too much given how he was struggling to process his own trauma with his dad and how it effected his relationships with those around him. (Put a pin here, I'll be back for it in a later.)

Pivoting back to Ted's purpose in the narrative, unfortunately as the show ran through season three, it became too near-sighted on The Message and in turn lost sight of making sure the characters had fulfilling interactions with each other. This especially becomes apparent when it comes to Ted, whose motto in season one is 'be curious not judgemental.' I maintain that season three was a low point for Ted emotionally, and if I were to assign a reason in-universe as to why Ted seemed so off from his usual self, it would be that in his depression, he no longer had the energy to realize he wasn't being curious. One indication of this would be how many times Ted casts assumptions on people in season three, compared to his hey-do-you-think conversational openers from earlier seasons. Some examples would include:

-never trying to figure out what makes Zava tick (this is a big one to me. I think season one Ted would have been all over trying to crack Zava like a nut)

-assuming he already knows why Jamie is upset about Zava joining the team and brushing it off

-assuming that Dr Jacob would propose + assuming that Michelle would say yes instead of trying to ferret out whether

-his assumptions about Henry being bullied (the knee-jerk reaction as a parent to protect your kid is understandable, the lack of delving into the situation and why it happened are more what I mean here)

-his whole conversation with Jamie about his dad. Other people in more succinct words have pointed out how it feels like he fully projected what he needed to hear onto Jamie's situation, and I think that's fairly accurate. This was not a 'talk to me and tell me what's going on so I can better understand how i need to help you' conversation. This was a 'oh that's whats going on? how about you do this? that work? alright then' talk.

So the finale struts back around and Ted has made a decision. He's going home. And it's meant to feel like closure. They play the Cat Stevens song and it's supposed to feel like Ted has finally made a step in the right direction (which is certainly one take on those lyrics but I digress). He's going back home. He's going to be with his son. He's letting go of the damage his father leaving did to him. He's giving up on something and he's finally okay with that. He left Richmond better than he found it and that's what matters.

Everyone else can cry but he's not crying. He's finally with Henry again.

So here's my two cents. And this is definitely just my opinion but-

THAT'S FUCKING STUPID.

Because the only way that Henry OR Richmond exists is in a false dichotomy wherein the two cannot possibly coincide, despite the fact that there are MANY KIDS' SHOWS ABOUT CHILDREN MOVING TO NEW LOCATIONS EVEN NEW COUNTRIES because that is a NORMAL THING THAT HAPPENS IN THE NORMAL WORLD ALL THE TIME.

Like holy shit that is. That is just the plot of a Disney channel show. 'My dad the football coach moved to england to coach the other football.' That is just the plot of a Disney channel original movie with a $300 budget that magically gets a sequel. Is that what I'm supposed to say 'oh no, that could never happen' over? Because I"m already watching a TV show. You can put a show in another show- I'm fine with that.

Remember that pin above? Time to pull it out. Because you know what would have been a more narratively satisfying conclusion?

If Ted had actually asked Henry and Michelle if they'd liked to move to London to be closer to him. If he had actually expressed his fucking need to have both his Kansas family and his Richmond family close to him. Maybe they would have said no, maybe they would have said yes, but you know what? It would have at least opened the door to the discussion about what Ted might need as a person moving forward, whichever way the chips fell. At least he would have done the one thing we didn't see him do all show:

Ask for something for himself. Because he wants it. Not for the good of his family, or the team, or anyone else. Just for Ted.

I am not saying his son isn't the most important thing in his life. I am saying as a goddamn adult person, you can NOT mold your life around your kids. You can't. Full stop. It is not healthy. You put your kid's needs above your own, but as a parent your needs have to come second. You have to take care of your own emotional health so that you have the bandwidth to give them support. You have to set the example of what healthy boundaries and taking care of yourself looks like.

Could Ted make new social connections back in Kansas? Well that's the thing isn't it- season one Ted could have. Easily. Season three Ted? The one who's checked out and looks tired all the time and isn't even following his own motto anymore and didn't even cry like he'd miss his friends when he was leaving? I'm not sure about that Ted. I'm worried about that Ted. I'm worried he's going to put himself in a situation where for the next 9 years of his life his only priority is going to be keeping Henry happy by giving Henry the attention he never got from his own father. And after that? Henry's an adult. Henry has to go live his own life.

And Henry's going to be able to tell, by the way, if his dad is struggling. Whatever Ted's emotional health is like, Henry is going to pick up on it. This isn't a one way road. Kids notice.

Ted untangled himself enough to admit that what he wants is to be close to Henry. I commend that. But then he decided that there was only one way to do that, and he didn't look any further than that. The narrative didn't look any further than that. For a show that itself raises the topic of mental health, it feels tone-deaf to pretend that Ted moving away from his entire support group is a happy ending. He doesn't even have Beard!

So to summarize: what do I think about Ted? I think he's a fascinating character. I think he has a genuine kindness to him that is rare. I think he is flawed, and a little bent up on the inside, and he's got a lot of issues to work through. And I think the show did him a disservice by painting him going back to Kansas as a sign that everything was going to be okay.

[dreamsndmadness]

WOO HOO!! The long-awaited Paul POV!!

Ok so, I absolutely loved it! The progression of Paul's feelings towards Feyd feel so natural and are so well done, I especially loved how Paul's intellectualizing of Feyd as a puzzle both helped their relationship progress and also allowed him to cope with the trauma. And of course, no writing from Paul Atreides perspective would be complete without him being a total mommas boy lol. His relationship with his mother is genuinely heartwarming. Every time they would interact it was so clear how well they BOTH understood each other, the scene where Paul talks about his confusing sexual feelings towards Feyd and she tells him he has nothing to be ashamed of was so well done and emotionally destroying!!! I love their relationship sm <33.

also, THE DREAM SEQUENCES!!! I had ALOT of thoughts about those, especially the first two and last one. I took those to be showing how Pauls future changes as a result of his relationship with Feyd. While the first one showed his past, the second and last dream sequence showed how Pauls future has changed from the one we know and love from the movies/book to the one where he has a family with Feyd. Also, yay Duncan is alive!! and so is Jamis!!!(speaking of the Fremen, do you think you'll ever deal with how their fate has changed with Paul being presumably out of the picture?). I'm also very much in anticipation of the scene where Paul can't move, which I assume was either him giving birth, or the Bene Gesserit coming to retrieve their Kwisatz Haderach which is an interpretation I'm fonder of. The one that hurt the most was the Feyd one, obviously. I felt so bad for poor baby Feyd all alone in the dark, especially after seeing his relationship with Rabban. I interpreted Rabban's hostility as jealousy at Feyd being the Barons favorite (the Baron grabbed Feyds hand, not his) and also a hint to their future brotherly dynamic. I was a little more confused about Feyds relationship with food in that scene. I THINK that the scene was showing how the Baron used food/his general guardianship over Feyd to abuse and control him and Feyd trying to work his way around it by tiptoeing around the topic of food and then quickly trying to grab some without interference (Feyd tries to make the Baron think he isn't hungry and when the Baron stops him from getting the bread he gives it to him himself to remind him who controls him, also Feyd literally biting the hand that feeds him was great lol)

There's other thoughts I had but I didn't want to make this ask longer than it is! As always thank you for your hard work and amazing writing! ʕ̢̣̣̣̣̩̩̩·͡˔·ོɁ̡̣̣̣̣̩̩̩̩✧

Yay!! I’m glad the progression felt natural. I didn’t want to downplay Paul’s genuine fear towards Feyd, but I also wanted there to be those seeds of attraction and affection. Yes! Good old Paul, intellectualizing everything to help him cope 😔.

Paul and Jessica. Such a fascinating dynamic. I looooved writing them. They love each other so much and are able to read each other with such accuracy. Paul is so interesting because truly he never had friendships with people his own age. And his main “friends” were his parents. Like I think he probably grew up extremely fast and didn’t have much of a childhood (in an extremely different way than Feyd. As for Feyd I think he simultaneously never was allowed to be a child and never grew out of childhood. It’s complicated. So much arrested development there).

Yes, they love spending time together and are able to communicate very openly. It’s a huge help and comfort for Paul to have his mother there in a place where he is feeling intensely vulnerable. And while he might not feel comfortable discussing the mechanics of sex with his mother (totally understandable), he values and respects her advice and input. And he’s able to talk through and process his emotions in a way Feyd is not. (Which, sneak peak, the next few chapters are going to dive deeper into that communication gap between them/emotional maturity gap).

Side note: it has been really interesting and rewarding to dig into this relationship between Paul and Feyd. But also Jessica and Paul. And in the coming stories Jessica and Feyd will spend some more time together which should be fun to write. Really just character in general is so fun to dissect and write about. Love it.

Yes!!! The dream sequences. I had so much fun writing those. When I started writing, I actually wrote the first and last one simultaneously because that was always going to be the direction of Paul’s journey in the chapter: from the past and loss and sadness to the future and hope. Yes! Duncan and Jamis are alive! As this universe progresses, we are going to find out what happened to a lot of the Atreides Household. I also am going to touch on the Fremen. However, it’s going to be a smaller part of this story. Also yes to the future changing as a result of his deepening relationship with Feyd.

The no movement scene 😶. We are going to see that scene come to fruition in this fic.

Ah yes. The Feyd dream sequence. So hard to think about. But so important. Because it is vital to understanding him, for us as a reader and for Paul to start contextualizing their interactions so far and how their relationship will be going forward. He is a deeply wounded character which does not excuse his actions but does help us understand them.

His relationship with Rabban, much like his relationship with the baron, is extremely layered and complicated. I will be diving into it deeper in the sequel fic. I wish we got to see more of them in the film, but I liked seeing what we got. It’s such a small moment in the movie, but when they look at each other during the scene with the emperor, it says so much. Like they could understand what the other was thinking and kinda communicate through that look. Even though there is clear hostility in their relationship, there is still a connection.

In my fic, your interpretation is very accurate. There is a layer of jealousy there as Feyd is certainly the favorite. It seems pretty clear that Feyd is the smarter of the two (although I like what Austen said about Feyd and how he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, because I think that’s also true). But I also think (very sadly) Feyd is younger when the Baron gets “custody” of them. Rabban is a lot older and grown up and able to fend for himself, where Feyd isn’t.

The food thing!!! I’m so glad you brought it up because I have been wanting to talk about it. I have this whole headcanon about Feyd and his relationship to food. What the Baron is doing is certainly a form of abuse and control. My headcanon is that he controlled Feyd’s eating. Yes, I think as a way of demonstrating his power over him and forcing dependence and also dehumanizing him. But I also think he has a thing about Feyd’s weight. The Baron is an obese man who indulges constantly in gluttony of many kinds. But, he seems to be attracted to thin/waifish boys. I think the Baron controlled Feyd’s weight/appearance for as long as possible for his own purposes. I’ve been laying it in there since the beginning, but Feyd has an odd relationship to food and his body. He’s very conscious of his weight and fat and wants to keep his muscle mass, but not gain fat. He’s also a little weird about eating. And when the Baron comes, we see him lose his appetite and then vomit essentially nothing because he hadn’t eaten all day.

I guess I kinda started this headcanon when I noticed how little body fat Austen had in the movie and how he talked about gaining a lot of muscle for the role. And then I started thinking about the Barons canon tastes. And then I started thinking about how Feyd might have purposely started cultivating bigger muscles as a means of protection… anyway. Um. Maybe that’s too much info lol. But I have so many head canons and theories about both Feyd and Paul. I think Feyd is an extremely damaged and messed up person and it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to untangle that…

As always, thank you for your insightful questions ☺️. I love answering them and getting to talk more about Feydpaul.

[antitheticallyargumentative]

Hi! I would very much love to hear the entire long rant about Ted and Jamie’s relationship!

I love you for indulging me.

A little disclaimer that I in no way hate Ted. I love him. He has good intentions. He's just a flawed human with a lot of his own baggage that hinders him from actually being able to objectively see Jamie's situation for what it is. And that leads to him offering shit advice. He seriously fucked up when it came to Jamie, (in my opinion), even if his heart was in the right place. So here we go.

TW- mentions of mental health issues, canonical suicide, and abuse and trauma

The way I see it, there are several things happening here. 1) Ted sees Jamie as a surrogate son-figure, because he misses his own son and Jamie is a little bit wayward and lacking his own father-figure, and that activates Ted's savior-complex-I-can-fix-him ways. 2) Ted sees Jamie as a little part of himself- his own inner child. The sixteen year old boy who brutally lost his own dad and never worked through the grief. 3) Jamie sees Ted, at least a bit, as a form of father figure, in the way that he both wants his approval and is innately distrustful of him. (Mind games.)

The problem then lies in the fact that Jamie is not truly either of these things that Ted sees him as, and Ted cannot be a healthy male figure for Jamie because he has too much of his own shit to work through, first. And Jamie also has his own.

I think that, at his core, Jamie wants to be a good person. His time at Richmond has seen him growing into one, and in his head I think he at least partially equates that to Ted's influence. So he wants to stay in Ted's good graces, because like he's said he never got a lot of support from older male figures, and that's clearly something he craves. He wants Ted's approval, but there's also the fact that Ted has left him during confrontations with his dad twice, and in Jamie's eyes, sent him away to Manchester City right after he started trying. Need for approval paired with feeling like he's walking a very fragile line and can't quite trust anything about his relationship with Ted to stay safe.

Ted holds onto a desperate need to fix things. When you see someone hurt themselves, or lose them to mental illness, it's traumatic. It makes you wonder if you could have, should have, done more. Seen it coming. If you could have stopped it. Ted said to Dr. Sharon that “I wasn’t ever gonna let anyone get by me without understanding that they might be hurting inside.” So now he walks through life trying to make sure everybody stays OK, except for himself. And you can't do that. It's not healthy. So when he sees Jamie, this twenty-something-year-old kid with a fucked up relationship with his dad, Ted can't see it clearly. He's so caught up in his own father-related trauma that he projects that onto Jamie. He gives Jamie the advice that he means for himself. Ted needs to forgive his father, so that he can process the grief and the trauma and move forward. Ted needs to give that to himself. But that is incredibly dangerous advice to give someone who's father is clearly shown to be emotionally and physically abusive.

Ted and Jamie both have a lot of father-related trauma. But their situations are not at all applicable to each other, it's just that Ted can't see that because he hasn't worked through any of his own issues. Which leads to complicated relationships and shitty, dangerous advice. There we go.

Woo! That was long.

[denimbex1986]

'Time isn't a physical thing yet writer/director Andrew Haigh somehow weaves the mercurial essence of it into every single frame that makes up his fifth feature, All of Us Strangers (sixth if you count Looking: The Movie). In doing so, Haigh imbues the film with an ethereal quality that's just a step or two outside of our so-called objective reality.

But actually, that's what life can often be like as a queer person. In childhood, other kids often know you're different before you do, as if they've glimpsed your future first-hand, and for those who suppress their queerness growing up, it often takes years longer to come into your own.

Even then, once you've finally found some degree of healing, past traumas can pull you back in time just like that, transforming you once again into a younger, damaged version of yourself. (It doesn't help that coming out is a lifelong process, as if you're stuck in a not-so-funny '80s time-loop movie.)

In All of Us Strangers, a gay forty-something man named Adam is literally pulled back to these traumas when he meets his dead parents as they were, all those years ago before an accident took them away.

In coming out to these time-displaced figures – who both bring with them the baggage of AIDS-fuelled '80s hysteria – Andrew Scott's character almost becomes a child himself again, and in Haigh's real childhood home, no less.

Through adapting Taichi Yamada's novel Strangers (a book that's also a product of the '80s), Haigh bridges the gap between not just his past self and the present, but also two different eras of gay men through the intergenerational love story that unfolds between Adam and Harry (Paul Mescal), a younger man who accompanies him on this journey of healing.

Digital Spy caught up with Andrew Haigh to discuss coming-out scenes of a very different kind and the importance of crafting "a love letter to queer people of a certain generation". Along the way, we also talked the hidden significance of that sex scene and why casting Jamie Bell and Claire Foy was such a gamble.

All of Us Strangers plays so much with time – like most of your work does – and that feels intrinsically queer to me. As queer people, we don't always follow a traditional timeline, so I wondered if you could share how the film's shifting of time relates to the queerness that's integral to this story?

It's so interesting, because I feel like as a queer person, time is somehow different. As you say, your life seems to go on a different trajectory, and you don't have the sort of markers that other people have, although that is changing. I do think for younger queer people, it is a slightly different experience.

So I think it's just inherent in me as a person that I see time slightly differently, which is why it's always so interesting for me to play around with the idea of time.

All of my films, whether it's been Weekend, which is an obsession with 48 hours of someone's life, or 45 Years where something from the past has come back and disrupted the present, it just... I'm just so interested in the nature of time.

Casting Jamie Bell and Claire Foy as Andrew Scott's parents, even though they're actually younger than him, is such an interesting idea to play around with, both visually and emotionally. But were you ever apprehensive or worried that this approach might fall short or not work in the way you hoped it would?

Yeah, I was really worried about it [laughs]. I thought if that doesn't work, the film is terrible. People might laugh at it and be like, "This is just so stupid". The film works on an emotional level and I need that to be believable and real.

But then, weirdly, the minute I started filming with them, my fears went away, because I could see that it was working in the moment. And I could see that it was working emotionally.

Jamie and Claire do an incredible job at feeling like they are Andrew's parents. And he does feel like he is their child. So the nature of how they look sort of becomes irrelevant. Then I thought a lot about how, of course, that makes sense.

If we think about our parents in our minds, we don't necessarily think about what they look like now, if they're still around. We think about how they used to be. It's the same with anybody in our lives. You can think of a friend that you may not have been in contact with for 20-30 years. In your mind, they're exactly like they were back then. I think that is just the nature of our memory and how that works, so it does make sense for the film.

That moment when Adam gets into bed with his parents could have been particularly hard to pull off, but it works so beautifully within the context of the narrative.

I mean it could be ridiculous. He's wearing pyjamas that don't fit, and he's trying to get into bed with his parents. It could be absolutely ridiculous. But I think it speaks to this idea... Think about those pyjamas.

We all understand the desire to want to go back and feel that comfort sometimes that we felt as a child, but of course, it doesn't fit anymore. They're too tight and he isn't a child. He is an adult. But within all of us, we still have that element of being a child within our adult bodies, not just as children but our parents are the same. Everybody is the same. The child is always trapped within us.

That element really comes to the fore in the film's two coming out scenes when Adam reveals himself to parents who are technically younger than him. We've seen so many coming out stories over the years, but we've never seen anything like this before. Why do you think these two scenes have resonated in particular with so many fans of the film?

I mean, there's a number of things. People are always like, "Oh, we don't need more coming-out scenes. We've done all the coming-out scenes," but I think a lot of us, as queer people and gay people, are still affected by that, that feeling of having to come out and how terrifying, how horrendous that was for so many of us and the fear of having to say something to our parents, and they may reject us for that.

It was a very, very traumatic event for lots and lots of people, especially back in the '80s.

What this is about, in many ways, it's not just that he's coming out to his parents, but he's being reminded of how he used to feel back then. Because the parents reaction is how everybody felt about gay people back in the '80s. Or how most people felt. That was a very difficult time.

I wanted it to be sort of generous as well, even to the parents, because they lived in a period of time where they were just fed stories and lies, essentially, and fears about gay people. So I didn't want to vilify the parents either because that's the culture they lived in at the time.

It's so rare still to see the experiences of gay men Adam's age explored like this. Why would you say it's important that the stories of gay men who lived through the AIDS crisis continued to be centred this way on screen?

I think it's a really important generation for me as a queer storyteller. I wanted to say something about that generation, and it is a very specific generation. It is a generation of people who grew up as AIDS was decimating communities.

As young queer people in that time, we grew up surrounded by the idea that our sexuality was completely linked to death. I think it's very easy to forget how traumatic and horrendous that was, and that we are still living with the ramifications of that and the shame that went along with that.

The way that people treated us made us feel ashamed. It's not that we were inherently shameful because we were gay, but we were made to feel shamed. That has been a struggle that a lot of us have had to work through into our 40s and 50s and people into their 60s are still dealing with that, so I think it's a really important thing.

And also just to remind people that yes the world has changed, thank God, and everyone seems to have forgotten what it was like back then, but we haven't forgotten, even on an unconscious level. We can remember.

I always wanted it to be a love letter to queer people of a certain generation to say, "You know what? I know that it's still painful to think back at that time, and it is still painful. And I want us to realise that it's still painful and it's okay to to appreciate that sometimes."

I was born in the mid '80s, so I wasn't an adult during the height of the AIDS crisis, but I absolutely felt the ramifications of it still into the '90s and beyond, this idea that being gay is instantly connected to fear and death.

Yeah, the '90s wasn't a Golden Age either. Even into the late '90s, I remember there were debates going on in the House of Commons where people would still be saying that what we were doing was sinful and wrong and that we were gonna go to hell.

This is in the '90s. This is not the 1970s or 1980s. So I think that living in the '80s and '90s was not an easy time for queer people, definitely.

That sex scene early on where Harry licks cum off Adam's chest really struck me, because any kind of contact with bodily fluids like this would have once been horrifying to Adam. Did you consciously include this scene in relation to Adam's shame and him overcoming it?

Absolutely. That's the point of that shot to me. I think there's probably lots and lots of people who will not truly understand that at all. Of course, you will understand it because you understand it from a personal standpoint.

There are two gay people of a different generation and one has no fear in that moment of what he's doing. The other one is still resistant to that. That's years of something within his body telling him to be resistant. And he overcomes it because of course, you can overcome it. Lots of people do overcome that fear and shame and that is the point.

In that moment, there was a little bit of resistance, but the intimacy and the compassion of Harry in that moment allows him to overcome a sort of embedded fear.

Some people see the ending as very uplifting and hopeful while others find it sad. Obviously, tragic endings are embedded in the history of queer cinema, so did you feel pressure to try and avoid tropes like 'Bury Your Gays'?

I understand there was that trope. It's often the trope actually gets said more than the reality of that being an actual reality. It's like "Oh, you're gonna kill off all the gays" but actually, that's not always what happens.

There is a way in which this film could have ended on a very optimistic, joyful note. To me, that would have been a little bit simplistic in terms of what the story is trying to unpick and understand, which is about the actual nature, the essence of love, and what is important within that.

I also think that sometimes when you're telling queer stories, I want to dig a little bit deeper into the pain, into the reality of things. There you can get closer to the truth and I think that is important.

Let's go back to the '80s. A lot of people, a lot of gay, queer people, lost their partners young and lost a lot of people that were very, very important to them. But as that also happened, what I found so profoundly beautiful is, it sort of highlighted the idea of love in itself as being some kind of saviour and that it can save you and the importance of that love. After all, loss is still so fundamentally important.

Looking back, is there a particular example of queer TV or film that really resonated with a younger version of yourself?

It's a tricky one. I feel like in the end, it was probably watching Beautiful Thing, that Hettie Macdonald film.

I remember I was working in a cinema, the National Film Theatre, and it was the gay and lesbian film festival, I think, or it was a special screening of Beautiful Thing. There is a gay film, actually, that's very, very joyous. It's got so much joy in it. It ends on a really uplifting, joyful note.

I just remember sitting at the back as an usher, seeing that film, and I wasn't even out at that point. I was still in the closet. And I remember feeling like, "Ah, okay, there's a possibility out there for me". I remember loving that moment. It was both emotional and cathartic and joyous.

I still love that film. I watch that film now when they're running through the woods and The Mamas and the Papas are playing and they kiss against the tree. It's so beautiful. I adore it. So even though my films don't often end on moments of pure joy, I still like moments of pure joy [laughs].'

[comfort-person]

Request: hi!! This is probably super weird but can you do more Jamie/ Henry/ Vecna/ Jamie characters.. like Jace too as well maybe? Idk if that’s your vibe but I’d adore it if you wrote more Jamie stuff pls! Tysm lovieee, have a good day!

A/N: thank you for the request!! Not weird at all lovely! I fucking love writing Jamie characters like AH so I’ll totally try doing some more, although I can’t promise that the characterisation will be great but hey ho. I hope this is okay! I’m attempting to not recycle ideas over and over so here’s a better version of something I’ve tried to write before… but shorter? Sorry LMAO, I’ve had like no motivation to write lately so that’s why it’s died down a lot… but… I hope this works? Much love, Amber xx

Trigger warnings: mention of blood, bodies, kinda fucked up things… it’s the laboratory we’re talking about so I’m sure you know how fucked up that place it… but still- just a warning- read at your own discretion!

“Come,”

The man’s voice echoed through the tunnels, slender fingers wrapped around your wrist as he practically dragged you with him. How did you get into this situation? Well… it was a lot to process. A massacre had occurred in Hawkins Laboratory. The few remaining doctors, and some orderlies, dressed in white scurried around- yelling at each other, whereas armed guards were searching the premise for the two escapees: Henry creel and Y/n Y/l/n or as everyone else knew you: 001 and 002. Two very dangerous individuals who were capable of mass murder. “One… we’re in danger.” Your shaky voice whispered out to him and his eyes flicked down to you, eyes dangerous pools of blue. The eyes that held so much trauma- hurt… absolute agony. Both of you had known such pain and it wasn’t fair. On either of you. Brenner had inflicted an impossibly cruel amount of pain onto you both… and to think he promised to take care of you. What a lie.

“Where are we supposed to-“ the man abruptly stopped, turning to look at you, you nearly plummeting straight into his chest but his large hands resting upon your shoulders forced you to come to an abrupt stop “two, do you trust me?” He stared deeply into your eyes his brows slightly furrowed but in the subtlest of ways the crease between both brows proving his concern for the situation but he wasn’t scared. He wasn’t worried. He was determined to get you both out of there… Brenner had stolen your lives away from you… ripping it away in such a cruel manner. Brainwashing you all. But that came to a stop now… Brenner wouldn’t be able to do that ever again. Or so henry hoped. You gawked at him unable to quite process his words “two I need an answer. Verbal. Do. You. Trust… me?” His eyes were intimidating, like a wild animal awaiting to pounce on its prey… but he just wanted to make sure he had made the right decision on you. Slowly your head began to nod, before a soft “yes.” Left your lips and the smallest and most subtlest of smiles tugged at his lips, the corners of his mouth quirking up, before he nodded “good.”

And then the both of your were off, once again, sprinting down the similar corridors. Over and over again. They were never ending… his long legs practically made it impossible for you to keep up, his grip on you tight so much so it stung slightly but it had nothing but good intentions: he wasn’t letting you fall behind. “We’re nearly there y/n. Nearly there.” The blonde assured and you nodded not uttering a word for your lungs were trying to focus on breathing all until that fear that once remained hidden started to creep up little by little, voices shouting, you made a split decision that you certainly regretted- you took a glance over your shoulder seeing about six guards, flashlights flicking up and down from how they were running and your eyes instantly widened in fear, your breath catching in your throat “come! We need to leave! Come!” Henry’s voice wavered slightly as he raised his voice at you, and you began sprinting, the guards yelling your names… or well- names was a joke- more like numbers. Because to them you were both nothing more than stupid numbers… how pathetically stupid. His breathing was heavy as he ran with you, his hand now on the middle of your back, forcing you to run faster- run in front of him so nothing could happen to you. It wasn’t something he showed often but it was care. Some type of care.

You both ran for your lives, running and running until eventually you both tumbled out of two double doors that lead to the darkness outside. The air was cold and winter-y, smelling of freshly fallen rain. “C’mon. We can’t stop.” He urged and you nodded immediately rushing in the direction of the woods that surrounded the laboratory. You wanted to try and take everything in but you physically couldn’t… it was all so much… your eyes were wide. Like a deer caught in headlights, you didn’t know how the hell to react. But then your eyes scanned along the grass and to multiple body bags that held one or more children… your stomach churned… they were already clearing out the bodies? Tears gleamed in your eyes and your breath hitched. Why did you care for them still? After all this time? You wished you knew… but you didn’t… it was uselessly pathetic. Your fearful eyes stared at the bodies of the lifeless children “two, we need to go.” His voice growled out clearly trying to stay quiet but you were stuck in a trance… they were only kids… they didn’t deserve it… Henry was desperate to leave but he also attempted to see why you were so effected. Sure it was traumatic… but they shouldn’t of mattered to you. He saw how they corrupted you. How they hurt you…. Why did you even give a damn? None of your tears should’ve been shed over them. You didn’t care for them, no, the care was simply all in your head. Nothing more nothing less. “They’re dead….” Your voice was strained, full of agony, “I know. Don’t look. They don’t matter.” His tone disregarded your emotions, there wasn’t any point in getting emotionally attached to dead people… they were gone. Time couldn’t be rewound. “Two,” his voice for your attention and you looked at him “you trust me… right?” There was that question again, even if he didn’t realise it, he was manipulating you. Manipulating you into going with him… into not caring. It was cruel. But he was saving you. He had saved you. He wasn’t letting you screw this up…

“I-“ “I know you do, 002. That’s why we’re leaving. Now. Come on.” He demanded guards shouting becoming clear and he nudged you forward as the two of you began rushing into the woods “where are we going to go?” You asked quietly but he didn’t respond, he just stayed quiet as you both tore through the woods attempting to find safety but safety didn’t exist. Safety was within the laboratory but Henry and you knew that wasn’t the truth… sure it had been beaten into your weary minds each and every day, suffering dark torture daily, but you both knew better than to trust the cruel man. Was this the beginning of the end? Was this finally when the pain would stop? You hoped so… and so the two fugitives walked for miles. Walking for minutes. Minutes that slowly turned into hours… and soon enough the darkness began to fade, the hue of the sunlight gleaming in the empty lifeless sky…. No birds flew… no nothing… it was simply a blue sky which reflected Henry’s eyes perfectly, his eyes were no longer a raging storm no…. His eyes were calm, empty, numb, peaceful… maybe his pain would stop now? But he knew that not to be true… they could pray and hope that everything would work out in the end but realistically it wouldn’t… because of one simple factor: two broken people couldn’t fix each other. If anything they made each other bleed further and that wasn’t good… but he had chosen to take you. To allow you to have freedom. Why he had spared your life he wasn’t sure… maybe it was for his own needs. Maybe he was greedy. Power hungry. Maybe he did want that power he never had. But now he had all the power in the world. He saw the courage in you. How capable you were. He wanted to use that… maybe it was ill intention but strength of two “freaks” so to speak was unmatchable. He wanted Brenner dead as much as you wanted him dead… and you both would kill him. Maybe not today… or tomorrow… or next week… but whenever it would happen it would be worth it.

—

Soon enough your legs were burning, your chest too, your lungs practically grasping on for dear life. “We’ve got to be careful. Cautious. Understood?” You nodded, following after him, as the both of you entered a rundown motel. It didn’t seem to be occupied at all. In fact it was completely empty. No one on the front desk… he had hit the jackpot but all at the same time that doubt haunted you both. What if it was nothing but a trap? You watched him grab a random key “second floor.” He muttered, and you nodded, you didn’t know why he had chosen the second floor but he did. He was being tactical. Clever… if they came searching they’d searching bottom to top. It would give you and Henry time to form an escape plan.

You wandered silently with him, until eventually coming to the room, watching him open the door- holding it open for you. There were two separate beds, small and tiny, but you didn’t care. You situated yourself on one of the beds before you laid down knowing you had to be rested… no words were spoken for a while. There wasn’t much to talk about. Sure you were overthinking and so was he but neither of you saw a reason to share that… “henry?” You muttered out… you didn’t hear any response yet you felt his piercing gaze on you, he was awaiting your next words, watching you “why didn’t you kill me?” The man was slightly taken aback by your words but his face barely flinched as he soon answered calmly “because you have potential.” Those words although good made your heart sink as you began to overthink his words… he hadn’t killed you simply because of your potential… your potential in killing. He knew what you could do… he wanted to see how much stronger you could get… but it left a bad taste in your mouth… was he using you? Was that it? He only made you leave with him just so he could use you? You stared at him eyes full of questions yet no question left your lips, instead a simple “okay” fell from your mouth before you turned over, back facing him and he found himself just staring at your back… the silence was comfortable yet a tension lingered in the air, like a thick thunder cloud… but you saw your worth. You were a number… simple… you were only still breathing just so you could be used… how dehumanising…

Part two coming soon x

Excuse how lame that ending was, it’s 2:26 in the morning and I need to be up at 5 so just take this… I hope it’s okay ahhaha, thank you for the request! Love you all x

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

Now that The Hedgehog's Dilemma is officially complete and posted, it's time for some housekeeping! List of sections under the read more because it turned out very long:

the sappy bit where I say thank you

overview of part 2, aka the fluffy sequel

side stories in the same universe (you can make a request!)

tagging, updates, and extremely tentative timeline

Also: to the person who sent a rose to my inbox a few days ago — I do accept them and you'll be getting the inaugural rose snippet for the sequel!

1: The Sappy Bit Where I Say Thank You

As I've alluded to before, writing THD was a new experience in a lot of ways: it's my first and (currently) only fanfic, but also the first time I've written a character study or anything with such a focus on hurt/comfort and interpersonal relationships. It's also the first time I've written something that has a real audience — I come from the wilds of writing plotty fantasy/sci-fi original fic — and posting something that I knew would probably get some kind of reception was both exciting and terrifying. I appreciate everyone who has read, kudos'd, commented on, sent asks about, or otherwise interacted with the fic so much; you've all been lovely and I hope you enjoyed reading THD as much as I enjoyed writing it.

2: Flightless Birds (aka the Fluffy Sequel)

Flightless Birds, the second fic in the series Symbiosis, is set during the off-season between season 1 and season 2. Here's an overview of the main character arcs/plot threads (no spoilers for chapter 6):

Jamie: our boy is going through it slightly less than in part 1! With the James Tartt Sr. situation resolved, he spends the fic processing his trauma without the looming specter of his father's reappearance, which basically takes the form of 1) therapy, 2) looking after Roy post-injury, 3) extensive platonic cuddling (fun fact: I hadn't really written any cuddling scenes before THD and am not at all a cuddler in real life, so hopefully those bits are like. at least somewhat plausible), and 4) visiting his mom and Simon.

Roy: our boy is going through it slightly more than in part 1! (sorry, Roy) Like in canon, he's recovering physically from his knee injury and processing the end of his career, which is not great for those underlying self-worth issues. In addition to experiencing the mortifying ordeal of letting himself be cared for, he's also experiencing the mortifying (and for him, more upsetting) ordeal of not being able to care for others the way he wants to — the worst of his physical recovery coincides with the point where Jamie's very shaken and vulnerable from the events of chapter 6, and he basically has to contend with the fact that he not only needs to expand his own support network but that he can't be the entirety of Jamie's support network.

Keeley: our girl has been upgraded to main character! She moves in with Roy — and by extension, Jamie — and, as the only one of the three who's not freshly injured and/or traumatized, initially ends up with a lot of the caretaking work. This is a problem because a) Keeley needs her space and has trouble expressing her needs at the best of times, and b) doesn't strike me as someone who has a particular inclination towards what I guess I'd call protracted caretaking — she can be really good at comforting people in the moment, but I think she panics a bit when it's a more serious situation that she doesn't know how to solve (like with Jamie's depressive spiral in 3x11) and prefers relationships — both romantic and platonic — where there's a decent degree of autonomy: everyone likes spending time together, but they can all also do their own thing. This is part of the catalyst for the aforementioned expanding of support networks.

A note on relationships: Roy and Keeley are technically dating but I'm very aromantic and have like. sub-zero interest in or knowledge of how to write romantic relationships, so in a reverse-shipper move, I'm going to write it as platonic. Whether or not the fact that I've hit everyone with the aro beam will be discussed in-text remains to be seen.

3: Side Stories

There are some POVs and events that happened off-screen and/or during the time skips that didn't make it into THD for a variety of reasons. I have vague plans to turn some of these into fics, such as: Ted's POV of the first couple of chapters before he became a main character; Nate's extremely complex feelings about the intersection of his and Jamie's trauma, his relationship with Ted, and the evolution of AFC Richmond that I couldn't figure out how to include in the main fic without making the whole thing feel a bit unfocused; and Jamie's probationary period with the team during the time skip between chapters 2 and 3. If there's anything you'd like me to write about in this universe, feel free to make a request!

4: Tagging, Updates, and Timeline

Posts about the series, including the individual fics, will be tagged as series: symbiosis (I am planning to go through my THD posts to add this tag, but no promises as to when that will happen)

Posts about individual fics will be tagged as fic: title; e.g. fic: the hedgehog's dilemma or fic: flightless birds

Timeline: I'm going to plot out all of part 2 before I start writing, which probably won't take a hugely long time. However, November is a bit of a busy month and I'm going to be fiddling around with different strategies for working on multiple fics at once — I'm excited to get started on part 2 but I also miss working on my original fiction project — so it might be a bit of a wait before I get that done. (If anyone has advice or techniques for doing this, send it my way! (only if you feel like it, of course))

Updates: I'll continue posting writing updates when I have them, and of course I'm always happy to answer asks or otherwise chat with people about the fic (or anything else)

[mariemariemaria]

OH MAN DONT GET ME STARTED ON NATE AND REDEMPTION. i so badly want nate to be redeemed!!! i was all for jamie being redeemed. all of season 1 i was wondering when and how it was going to happen. and then in the last ep of season 1 when he makes the extra pass for the win against richmond it was such a bittersweet moment because like HE IS CHANGING BUT RICHMOND LOST. but it gives you hope! and then jamie finally got that redemption in season 2 and i was so happy for it. and all through season 2 watching nate just getting lower and meaner and angrier was so rough but in the time between season 2 and season 3 i have been anticipating a nate redemption. and once season 3 trailers came out and more people started talking about predictions i heard so many people say shit about how much they hate nate and how they DONT WANT a redemption for him?? like i started feeling like i was the only one REALLY HOPING for nate’s redemption. which SHOCKED me because isn’t this whole show about kindness??? and forgiveness and all those warm fuzzy feelings? we got a rebecca redemption and a jamie redemption and so WHY would we not get a nate redemption?? it makes no sense to me and it frustrates me to no end. part of what made his descent so painful to watch was because he was so endearing in season 1. and i want to see him become a better person! i want all of them to become better people!! SO DOES TED. once again, isn’t that like. part of the point of the show. it’s not about soccer and the winning and losing (except when it sometimes is) it’s about the characters and their relationships and lives and overcoming hardship and trauma and getting better? anyway thanks for letting me take over your inbox for all that. i just saw your post and had to agree and RANT.

I agree with you about EVERYTHING. Watching Jamie be redeemed (though I do think he still needs to apologise to Nate) was brilliant and it was so emotional to watch that process, especially as it was revealed that his behaviour was largely due to his abusive father. Him working through that toxic relationship and getting support from team members like Roy, Higgins and Ted was so imporant to his development, and I am sure that this season we will also see Nate stand up to his father and start defining himself outside of what other people think of him.

I am honestly still shocked when I see people hating on Nate so much, and saying that he is beyond redemption. I have no idea how someone could watch the show and think that, because to me it's very obvious that there will be a Nate redemption arc. I mean, series 1 ended with Rebecca being forgiven so quickly by Ted that it pleasantly surprised me; Higgins was forgiven by Rebecca; Keeley forgave Rebecca (and Nate); as you said Jamie has been improving throughout both seasons, as have the other members of the team. Though I think we need to remember that while it's great that Jamie, Colin, Isaac and everyone else have been evolving as people, they still bullied Nate and never apologised. And the other players watched and let it happen; Roy only intervened when Ted "manipulated" him into it, and he was the Team Captain! I'm not hating on them here, I like them all, but this all contributed to Nate's insecurities and subsequent actions. I mean, can you imagine working with people like that for God knows how many years, making a hell of a lot less money than them, and then seeing them all go on their own ~personal journeys~ and not apologising to you once??

Nate has so many unresolved issues, to do with his father, with the players, and the misunderstanding around the picture he gifted to Ted. I understand not liking him, because betraying Ted like that was nasty, but that doesn't mean he is beyond redemption. I mean, Trent Crimm didn't have to write that article just because he was given the power to, but he did face the consequences of his actions and seems to have been forgiven. Ted definitely wants to talk to Nate, and wants to forgive him, and I don't think Nate really understands that. I think he wants to feel powerful, and to make people know how much power he has over them, because he was so belittled and disempowered for so long. He's going to be a very unpopular coach at West Ham, even if they are successful in the League (which they may not be, seeing as loyalty and compassion are important in teambuilding, and Nate also doesn't explain to players what they did wrong, instead just calling them stupid).

Also I'm lowkey nervous for him. If West Ham don't do well Rupert will turn on him so fast. Perhaps Rebecca will play an important role here, seeing as she clearly still hasn't fully recovered from her relationship with Rupert? (I wonder if Rebecca will forgive Rubert this season, not because he deserves it or is seeking forgiveness, but in order to allow herself to truly move on and be happy?) I also think/hope Jamie will be integral to Nate's redemption, seeing as he's partly responsible for his fall in the first place.

So yeah you are most definitely not alone in your Nate appreciation. There's a a good few people who like him as a character and believe he will be redeemed. That's what the show is all about.

[lauralot89]

so I saw Halloween Ends and what absolute shit

spoilers of course

so you’d think the final installment of the Halloween franchise would be about Laurie and Michael squaring off, right?  like that would make sense and be the driving force of the plot and not the last ten minutes of the movie?

if I were John Carpenter, I simply would not waste ninety percent of my screen time on Wannabe Michael Myers, who doesn’t even become the new Michael Myers to tease a new franchise with him and Allison or some shit, he just kills himself to fuck with Laurie in the most pointless way

so for some reason in this movie, everyone blames Laurie for the people Michael has killed, saying she “taunted” him or some shit, when a) she was a teenager doing absolutely nothing in Halloween 1978 and b) Halloween Kills established that Michael wasn’t even after her in the 2018 continuity, he only came near her because the doctor DROVE HIM THERE TO PROVOKE A CONFRONTATION

like, maybe if this were right after the events of Halloween Ends and Allison was still coping with her parents’ deaths having just happened, her being such a bitch to Laurie might have worked, but here it’s completely ridiculous.  like Allison has a scene where she screams at Laurie about being obsessed with death, when in the years since Halloween Kills, Laurie has moved out of her fortress house into a suburb and STARTED FUCKING CELEBRATING HALLOWEEN, SHE’S MOVED ON SO MUCH, WHAT THE FUCK

also Halloween Kills was completely pointless to this whole trilogy, the only thing it did that matters is kill Judy Greer, all that Evil Dies Tonight bullshit had no impact on anything and neither did the shit about Michael’s sister’s window, because the Myers house has been demolished offscreen between movies

so this guy accidentally kills a child he’s babysitting the year after Halloween Kills and becomes an outcast and Allison falls in love with him for some reason but then he, a grown adult man, gets beat up and pushed off a bridge by MARCHING BAND HIGH SCHOOLERS, THE LEAST THREATENING GROUP KNOWN TO HUMANITY, and ends up in a storm drain where Michael lives now I guess and Michael looks into his eyes and that transfers the Murderousness to him but I guess not the invulnerability, it’s so bad.  It’s SO BAD.

so then he somehow overpowers MICHAEL FUCKING MYERS and takes his mask and murders some people and it’s stupid and I don’t care, I came here for Michael, what is this shit

and Allison, who has been through numerous traumas, sees nothing at all off-putting about this guy who jumps to violence at the drop of a hat and keeps saying ominous shit, and plans to run away with him, and he shows up at Laurie’s house to kill Laurie because Jamie Lee Curtis has EVIL DETECTION POWERS, and then Allison is about to come in so he slits his own throat so Allison will think Laurie murdered him and hate her except that plot lasts for half a second and then Allison just gets over it and is like “you were right about him” with absolutely no proof

and like, Laurie slits Michael’s throat?  and then he starts to choke her while he’s bleeding out, and it’s played like they’re both going to die even though once he passes out/dies, he’d just let go, but no, Allison has to save her

and then they fucking STRAP MICHAEL’S CORPSE TO THE ROOF OF THEIR CAR AND LEAD A FUCKING PROCESSION THROUGH TOWN UNTIL THEY SHRED HIS BODY IN A JUNKYARD’S GIANT INDUSTRIAL GRINDER THING

IT’S SO BAD

IT’S SO BAD

also stop giving Jamie Lee Curtis atrocious fucking wigs, just let her have short hair like H20 did, I beg you

also also they didn’t even bother to give the lady playing the dead kid’s mom a new outfit for her scene that’s supposed to be years later, she still had finger waves in her hair and was clearly wearing her Halloween costume with a jacket over it, or are we supposed to believe she did a Miss Havisham and never took the costume off

[angstysebfan]

The Past Can Break You - 3

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

AU: Avengers

Summary: You and Bucky have been dating for aa few years. As far as you’re concerned he is the one. But what happens when a blast from the actual past shows up?

A/N: Ive seen a lot stories of Bucky getting his first love from the 40′s back. And I’ve always wondered... what would happen if he was dating someone already? Reader is from this time. Not proofread.

Warning: 

--

Bucky tried for several hours to try and get you to open the door. You ignored him, not wanting to see him because you were so angry with him. He promised he would change and make more time for you, and then he leaves you in the middle of sex for her! Dot is his priority, as far as you’re concerned. You roll your eyes as you think about the “trauma” she had. You know she is using their past to manipulate him, and he is being stupid and letting her. Well now he must face the consequences for his actions. 

You stare up at the ceiling of your old room as you again, for the millionth time, hear the knock and pleads of your boyfriend from the other side of the door. “Please, baby. Open up. I’ll let you scream at me, you can even hit me. I know I deserve it. Just let me see you, please,” he begs.

God this is getting pathetic, you thought. You sigh and figure it’s time to give him an earful and some food for thought. You walk over to the door and unlock it, before opening it to reveal Bucky looking disheveled. He still has no shirt on, just his sweats from last night.

“What could you possibly want me to say to you, Bucky? You obviously made your choice in this. You are allowing Dot to manipulate you to keep you away from me. She wants you back, and it’s completely obvious. You say you want to prioritize me, but you prioritized her! I’ve tried to be calm and understanding to what she is going though, but enough is enough!” you yell, causing Bucky to flinch.

He opens his mouth to speak but you continue, “Ever since she found out that we are dating, she has made it her sole mission to separate us. Do you even care that your actions are killing me? Do you even care that I have cried myself to sleep so many times at night that I forgot how to fall asleep without crying? Do you even care that you are shattering my heart with your actions?!” you yell as tears fall down your face.

Bucky now has tears falling as well as he takes in your words. He didn’t realize just how bad he had made the situation. He needed to fix this. He couldn’t lose you. You were the best thing that has ever happened to him, and he can’t believe that has been so stupid. He walks up and wraps his arms around you, allowing you to cry in his chest. He buries his face in your neck and cries also.

You don’t know how long you have been standing in your doorway crying, but after some time you pull away. Bucky looks at you with sad eyes, “Tell me it’s not too late for me to fix this. I-I don’t want to lose you,” he says in a raspy voice.

You sigh and look down, “I think I need some time to think about things. You need to figure out where your priorities lie. I’ll stay in here for a bit until I’m ready and then we can talk, okay?” you ask.

It breaks your heart to see the distraught nature of Bucky’s face at your words, but you need him to understand how his actions have made you feel. He nods and quickly pulls you into a hug and then slots his lips on yours in a heated kiss. When you pull away he looks you dead in the eyes, “I’m going to make this right. I am going to show you that you, and you alone are what I want and need. That you are my top priority. I promise,” he says.

As he turns and walks away, you can’t help but say, “Don’t make promises you might not be able to keep.”

Bucky stops and looks at you sadly. He really messed up. He finally turns away and walks back to your shared room, that he will now live in alone. When he closes the door he slides down to the ground and openly sobs. How could he be so stupid. How could he not see what was happening. Now he might lose the love of his life because of his past. 

--

Dot is sitting in her room, feeling rather victorious. She overheard your argument with Bucky, and knows that now that you are separating yourself from Bucky, she will have a better chance to win him back. She sighs at the thought of having her love back with her. She was surprised that he didn’t take her back immediately, as she was his first love. Yes, ok so it was like 80 years ago, but I mean the fact that they were both together after all this time, must be fate.

Suddenly her door opens and shows the man she has been thinking about. Dot looks up and smiles, “Hey Jamie! What’s wrong?” she asks, deciding to pretend she is innocent and knows nothing. Always worked with guys. So easy.

“We need to talk, now,” Bucky says, anger evident in his voice. 

Dot’s smile disappears. She figured he would be upset, but not angry, and not at her. “What’s going on?” she asks with a furrow of her brow.

“This is over, Dot. Whatever you are trying to do, it’s done. I know you are dealing with a lot, but you need to start figuring it out for yourself. I am done putting you before Y/N,” he says.

Dot can’t help but roll your eyes. “Oh is she upset with you again Jamie? I mean I understand being slightly threatened by our past, but she obviously doesn’t trust you. If she can’t trust you, then she isn’t good enough for you. Maybe it’s time for you to cut your loses and return to me,” Dot said.

“She has every reason to be upset! I’ve neglected her! I just want to know... are those panic attacks that you have even real,” he asks.

Dot feigns being offended, “How dare you! Of course they are! Look at all I have gone through! I volunteer for something back in the 40′s and wake up in 2020′s. There is a lot of thoughts and feelings I feel and I don’t know how to process them! Is she saying I am lying?”

“I am saying you are lying. You always seem fine when we are together, but the moment I go to my girlfriend you start freaking out. You are trying to keep me away from her,” Bucky says, his voice raising.

“I feel comfortable with you, Jamie! I love you! Of course I feel better when you are near! It’s not my fault you tried to move on! But tell me this, if you don’t love me like you did, and you love her, why then did you constantly leave your girl for me? You obviously are still in love with me! So dump the girl and let’s be together!” Dot yelled.

“You’re crazy! Seriously you are delusional! You use me being a good friend and a gentleman against me to separate me from the woman that I truly love. Well it stops now! You need to get your ass in gear because it will take me nothing to turn you out of the compound to fend for yourself. If Steve and I can make it work, so can you. And your trauma is nothing compared to what we have gone through. So get yourself together and figure your life out. I am done playing these games with you!” Bucky says before leaving Dot’s room.

Dot sat there stunned at the last outburst. If Bucky thinks that she will go down without a fight to the death for him, then he doesn’t know her at all. Dot always gets what Dot wants. No matter the cost.

--

Bucky knocked on Natasha’s door, trying to calm himself down from his conversation with Dot. Nat opened the door and immediately tried to close it, “Nat please! I need your help,” Bucky begged.

She rolled her eyes and allowed him in. He sat there and told her everything about what happened last night, and this morning with Y/N and Dot. Natasha smacked him upside the head at least 4 times for being dumb. When he was done explaining everything he looked sadly at Natasha, “So will you help me? I have a plan that will allow Y/N the time she asked to think, while also showing her that she is my priority. She is the love of my life. Please?” Bucky begged.

Nat knew how much you and Bucky loved each other. She knew how happy you both were, so she agreed to help. Bucky laid out the plan to Nat and they both agreed to set it in motion. Bucky felt better already. He told off Dot, got your best friend to help him, and now all he needed was to win you back. He hoped he wasn’t too late.

--

Chapter 2 / Chapter 4

Dot is trouble! What plans does he have up her sleeve? Will the reader forgive Bucky? Does he deserve it? 🤷🏻‍♀️Feedback is appreciated!

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[sweetminx]

Hi all! Thank you for bearing with me and being patient! Today I finally get to release the much anticipated Chapter 3 of Ghost Of Haddonfield and I'm really excited for feedback on it. I had a lot of fun working on this chapter and I hope you gain as much enjoyment out of reading it too! Chapter 4 should release some time in the next couple of weeks hopefully, sooner if I've got the energy.

Things are heating up in Smith's Grove for our sweet nurse who finds herself in a bit of a pickle, Jed makes a decision, and our beloved White Masked Phsycopath Killer finally makes his debut.

Again, a quick warning that this chapter is a bit gruesome as there's some mild blood and knifeplay so just keep it in mind if you've got a weak stomach some of the details might not be for you.

Universe/Fandom: Halloween 1978 (Non-RZ) Rating: Mature/Adult. Minors keep your distance. Chapters: 3/? Chapter Triggers/Warnings: Strong language, Strong depictions of violence/gore, death, Angst, knifeplay, blood-play/consumption. Overall themes: Tension, Drama, Slow burn, Abuse, Strong Language, Past trauma, Manipulation, Strong depictions of Violence/Gore, Phsycological/ Physical trauma, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Mental Illness, Murder, Romance, Angst, Loss, Death, Comfort, Mild humour, Romance, Friendship, Fluff, Smut, Stockholm Syndrome, Non-con themes, Knifeplay, Stalking, Marking, Obsessive/Posessive behaviour, Choking, Explicit Sexual content. Reader details: Female, first-person perspective. Characters: Female reader, Michael Myers (Non-RZ), Samuel Loomis, Laurie Strode, Jed Perkins (Non-canon OC), Jamie Harris (Non-canon OC), Parker Reed (Non-canon OC), Josh Hewit (Non-canon OC), Erin White (Non-canon OC)

Ghost Of Haddonfield: Chapter three

Blurred. Everything is blurred and feels as if the world is moving in ultra slow motion, that kind of drunk haze one tends to experience when waking up from anesthesia. How voices sound so muffled and the brain has such difficulty with processing your consciousness that you forget you’re even listening to someone talk and simply staring half lidded into the abyss, at obscure gray and white padded squares everywhere your dazed eyes follow and noting how the bright fluorescent tubes of light stung your eyes, causing you to grimace and squeeze them shut over and over again. It wasn’t the light that caused the discomfort however, but more so the throbbing ache throughout the entirety of your skull, the sort that could probably stop a bull elephant in its tracks. It’s impossible to focus your eyes on anything when your head repeatedly lolls side to side as though being weighed down by an invisible force. Then the sound of something familiar, light, sweet and jingly echoes into your ears while everything else remains to be drowned out by the beat of your heart in a rhythm so bizarre you can’t tell if it’s slowing or speeding up, perhaps both.

A figure comes into view, his features blurry and indistinguishable as he crouches down to your pathetic state slumped up against a wall, now becoming aware of the dull throb in your shoulders from your arms being cuffed above your head to something you can't turn far enough to see. It offers a light metallic rattle when you fidget and shows no sign of weakness for every time you tug at them in weak, groggy frustration. Breaking out of the cursed things in such a state was going to be as successful as a fish walking on land and then proceeding to climb a tree. You blink in rapid succession, hoping that it might help break through the clouded fog in your eyes, but it’s useless and just as futile as your attempts to move.

The figure lets out a hoarse sigh, mimicking a movement that looks identical to a disappointed shake of the head. He stares at you in silence for what feels like an eternity, calculating, assessing, no...Reflecting. Reflecting on his actions and putting thoughtful consideration into the conflicting concept of what he was doing, was indeed the right decision or not. You can hear him audibly swallow, the clear indication that even he still wasn’t truly certain. Somewhere in your mind, in its hazy state, you know who it is.

“It’s not personal, darlin’...”

If it were a game of ‘Guess who?’ then you undoubtedly would’ve won. There’s absolutely no mistaking that voice. That accent. Why? Because nobody else in the entirety of Smith’s Grove has that sickly sweet Texan tone when they know they’ve done something wrong and are trying to play it off.

“Look, I like you, girl. But ‘round here, bein’ kind or nice will get you hurt or killed,” Jed adds, “And if you want my honest opinion, I dunno how the hell you ain’t dead yet. You ever wondered what happened to that other pretty lookin’ gal who tended to Michael before you got the job? Sweet lil thing, but dafter than my dead grandaddy, God rest his soul. Everyone knows, but nobody talks ‘bout it. I watched Michael, I was on duty that day. She thought she had somethin’ with that monster. A connection,” he snorts obnoxiously, “She thought he was like any other patient off the fuckin’ ward dumbed down by all those meds. Dumb girl told me that she was fine to go in by ‘erself to do her daily duties. D’ya know how many minutes it took her to finish it? None, ‘cause before I got the chance to tell the stupid broad not to go in, she’d already had her fuckin’ neck broken. Stupid is, stupid does. You don’t get to exist within these walls bein’ nice nor complacent.”

The blanket of fog over your mind is persistent, Jed’s voice sounds vaguely muffled and yet you still somehow understand every single word he utters. Just another reason to add to your list of many on why you despise the bastard. You always suspected something sinister had happened that unsurprisingly involved Michael. It’s one of those topics that either nobody shuts up about or nobody dares to open their mouths about, there’s no inbetween. You blink again, desperate for the cursed dizziness to pass quickly. Jed brings his hand to your face and pats it firmly before taking your chin between his coarse thumb and fingers to jerk it gently.

“Come on Sunshine, stay with me. We ain’t done yet,” he coos in a tone as sweet and sickly as Black treacle. It was revolting. He was revolting.

Your brain is on autopilot and running off your hatred for the sick bastard and whatever it was that he had planned. Before you can fully register if you want to actually go through with the thought bouncing so vigorously in your head, it’s too late and your body has already decided for you. Slowly gathering a wad of saliva on your tongue, you spit at him. Jed’s face is aligned magnificently with your own, hitting him in the dead centre of his smug, ugly mug. Part of you wanted to laugh, another part of you wanted to do it again just to see the utter look of astonishment and part of you didn’t even realise you were capable of doing such a disgusting act, although one could easily argue that it was very much deserved on his behalf.

Jed flinches in response as the wad of saliva collides with him, baring his teeth and growling like a feral animal and seething silently as his eye twitches obscurely. There’s little time for you to brace yourself against the cruel backhand that strikes you across the face so viciously it snaps your head to the side like whiplash and causes the metal bindings to jingle loudly from the brutal jolt, only worsening your already bleary state. The flesh throbs and burns fiercely, undoubtedly having split the plush, angelic canvas of skin in a couple of places. He pulls away from you, swiping away the spit on his face quickly, muttering the words “Vile bitch,” as he stands up. Sure the slap stings, but knowing you aren't in control of yourself or the situation is the greater cause for concern.

“You coward...” You growl through gritted teeth, “Your selfishness knows no bounds. Was this your plan the whole time? Or was it only when you realised you’d pissed the wrong guy off?” Seeing through clear vision was an impossible task, but your mouth seemed to have a mind of its own today, working almost pristinely if it weren’t for the fact the words sort of stumbled and slurred from your lips like a drunken partygoer.

Jed snorts and shakes his head dismissively, looking down upon your miserable state as though you were just mere dirt from his boots.“Funny considerin that you’re pissin’ the wrong guy off right now Sweetheart. I’d say fuck around ‘n find out but I think we’re way past that stage, don’tcha think?”

"Fuck. You."

He tuts and crosses his arms like a disappointed parent, "You got a dirty mouth on you, Sunshine. I'd put that thing to good damn use if it weren't for our less than friendly guest," Jed utters as a wicked and vile grin spreads across his face to bare his faintly yellowed teeth which were visible even through obscured vision. "Well, I'll be goin' now. Make a lil noise for me, Sweets, so I can hear that pretty voice one more time before that freak gets here."

You fidget in the restraints, wincing as the metal digs cruelly into your wrists that so very tightly bound you like a useless animal in a cage. It wasn't the splitting headache, nor the deep gashes in your face, or even how the cuffs dug into your delicate skin that concerned you. It was the idea that you were facing certain death when Michael inevitably returned. There's no ifs or buts about the situation.

He will return, and you're the bait.

"Sadistic bastard. What the fuck is wrong with you?!" You scream at Jed who has his back turned to you and is lingering near the open cell door quietly. The warm streams return in all of their cursed glory, trickling over the throbbing cut across your cheekbone and wetting the wound with a mix of fresh red blood and warm salted liquid that stung as tiny rivers of blood infused tears cascade so very gently down the canvas of bruised flesh.

He turns his head to the side in the slightest so only the corner of his eyes are visible, but they glint with such intensity under the fluorescent lights. Although you can't see two feet in front of you, you swear down that just for a split second there's a hint of remorse that flashes within his expression, or perhaps it's just wishful thinking. "We all go a little crazy sometimes, Sweets. I'm no more insane than anyone else in this madhouse...Just like you." Jed lets out a breathy exhale before finally stepping out of the cell and pushing the heavy door wide open, sending a cool chill dancing over the exposed skin of your arms, neck and legs.

Clearing his throat obnoxiously and tapping the door with the baton that previously clung snuggly to his utility belt; the loud clinks echoing and bouncing off every wall in the ward. "Michael..." He hums in a falsely sweet tone, "You've had your fun, boy, now it's time to go back into your comfy lil cell. I've always been good t'ya!" He pauses, waiting as though listening for a sign of the wandering inmate. "Y'know, that Doctor Loomis won't be too awfully pleased t'hear of this incident, but if you come back now I can put in a good word for ya!"

Jed waits, waits for a sign, whatever it may be. But nothing happens. Nobody comes. Michael would never fall for such false promises because he's not mentally incapable. He doesn't lack common sense. He's not naive. To even comprehend that he might've begun to believe such blatant Manipulation was laughable if not incredibly insulting.

The frustration brewing within Jed soon becomes evident from his impatient stance and irritated huffing and pacing; the pad of his heavy boots finally beginning to stray further and further away from you.

A pained grunt leaves your lips as you lean forward to reach out for him not to go, not to leave you here alone in this small, cold prison of a cell, but forgetting that you're still bound. The footsteps grow distant until only that of your shallow breaths and the clinks of your cuffs are the only sounds to grace your ears that throb with the rapid beat of your heart.

Silence. Stagnant, bitter silence is what greeted those boring dove painted walls. Not a scream, nor a cry, no movement and not even the sound of a pin hitting the cold tiled floor. If it weren't for the feral pain in the back of your head, one might've considered the silence blissful, but it was steadily building into a blinding ache that would surely bring about unconsciousness. The ache is simultaneously sharp yet dull, as if some lazy sadist is standing right behind you, only applying enough pressure to become edging; like a bus on the edge of a cliff, lolling back and forth in the wind ready to tip and plummet off that cliff of unconsciousness but swaying back towards consciousness over and over again and only made the time pass like centuries and the silence all the more torturous.

It could arguably have been considered a blessing, if death was to come then at least it would come when your body didn't have the energy to remain awake whilst it happened. But fate isn't that kind. Not today. Hell, it's been outright cruel over the past couple of weeks. It's a constant state of limbo with no end in sight.

Your eyes are growing heavier and heavier by the second, like each and every lash is weighted down by some invisible force. And finally, darkness comes like the thick velvet curtains of a theatre, but your eyes still remain open for those final few moments of consciousness. How long has it been? How much time has passed? It's impossible to make sense of time when almost all human perception is plucked from your grasp. There's no sound, no sight and the pungent, coppery bitterness that drowns out any other sense of smell or taste is the only thing to exist, the only comfort of being alive.

It wasn't the darkness from your eyes closing but rather that of the power going out, swallowing you in a cold, black void that no amount of squinting would allow you to see through. If silence and darkness were a lethal weapon then there's no doubt you would've been long dead by now, but maybe it's just a slower and more torturous way of doing things. Get the heart rate up and the blood flowing, set off every alarm in the mind and watch the magic happen in slow yet steady succession as the mind begins to break and then eventually...

You become the insane one.

"Have I gone mad already?" You whisper from within the darkness, unsure if your mind is beginning to play tricks or whether you truly are hearing the pad of approaching footsteps. Reluctantly, you hold your breath and listen; listen to those footsteps growing louder and ever closer. They're real. So very real that you don't know whether to scream, cry or laugh.

Was it Jed returning to unbind you? No, no he's much too selfish and cowardly to double back on that decision. Jamie perhaps? Maybe he hadn't fallen for Jed's lies, so he ventured in to see for himself that you're, to an extent, alive and well. Or it could just be a wandering patient.

A wandering patient.

And then it dawns on you. Help isn't coming. Jed isn't coming. Jamie isn't coming. The footsteps pause, stopping directly in front of the wide open cell. You know someone's there by the sound of their soft, steady breathing. Whoever it is must surely know you're there, you don't need vision to feel a set of eyes focused so very tentatively on you; unmoving, unspeaking, unfeeling. The slow pad of heavy footfalls resume, whoever it is has entered the cell and once again stopped, right in front of you. It was a man, blankly obvious from how heavy the footsteps were; his controlled breaths replacing the surrounding room where no other sound dared to be, not even the tremble of your own breath nor the warm beads of tears trickling down each cheek and falling against bloodied fabric and cracked ceramic floor tiles.

The scent of metallic copper hangs heavy in the air, growing even stronger the longer the mysterious person lingered beside you. Whoever it is must undoubtedly be drenched in blood for the scent to become so sickeningly thick like smog; the pounding of your head and the growing urge to vomit was taking hold again, teetering somewhere along that cliff of consciousness once more. Before your body can fully commit to the idea of sweet rest, the realisation of cool fingertips brushing over the flesh of your hands and wrists tears you away from any other thoughts. You freeze, utterly fear stricken.

He grazes over the numb and pale skin, tracing along the cruel metal binders before tugging on them as though judging their integrity. The hand leaves the cuffs and travels down your raised arms to the flesh of your perfectly exposed neck and throat in a long, steady line that is calculated yet unhurried before finally dragging his nails up to your chin and clasping around it firmly; tilting your head up ever so slowly. Pulling away from the grasp is futile, wincing as he squeezes your chin between their fingers tightly for a brief moment, as if to offer a warning.

There's nothing discernible through the blanket of pitch black, though you already know his gaze is fixed purely on you, examining you in the manner a predator might to it's pitiful prey before delivering the killing bite. You're already in his claws with nowhere to run, no use in screaming, no hope in wasting breath with useless begging. You can't see his face, but you know who it is. You've known who it was the second he started walking down that corridor. Accepting it is the impossible part. Now, you're staring death straight in the face, and almost undoubtedly gazing directly into those cold and emotionless yet somehow judgemental eyes as black as a midnight eclipse.

Sometimes, predators are known to play with their food before killing and eventually devouring them. Call it sport, call it boredom, call it sick pleasure, call it what you will. You may not be dead yet, but it's only a matter of time before the Wolf's stomach begins to growl and the beast begins to yearn for blood, so call it the end of the line.

Breath. You can feel the warmth beating across the bridge of your nose and tear stained cheeks in a slow, steady rhythm. He must be so very close. But still your eyes cannot find a face, as though he were simply a ghost; Very much there yet simultaneously hidden in blankets of velvety black shadows. He wants to see you, but you mustn't see him.

The thumb that squeezes your chin loosens, drifting upwards to your plush and trembling lower lip with a slowness that prickles your skin and sends bitter shivers throughout your body like venom. You can’t move. You don’t want to, you dare not to. One small, wordless warning was more than enough. The rough, calloused thumb glides over the split flesh, ever so gently toying with it through morbid fascination, or perhaps an emotion you can’t fully comprehend in the moment. Dragging the pad of his thumb down the gash one last time, he retracts his hand completely, watching as the barely visible shape vanishes back into the veil of shadow. It returns after a moment, settling on your numb wrists and faintly dampening a small spot on the skin where his oddly wet thumb rests and leaves a moist trail as he drags it back up to the metal bindings. Now wasn’t the time to be questioning such minor things however. A harsh tug is felt, then a loud click and your wrists fall free as the cuffs hit the ground with a loud clatter. You can't feel much past your elbows but the sudden movement is more than enough to startle you.

The skin is completely cold and numb, prickling violently from the sensation of pins and needles with each flex of the finger or twist of the wrist. It takes a moment to fully register how fast you’d recoiled after being freed; the heavy wave of relief washing over you but not quite engulfing you. But the relief is short lived when the unmistakable point of something sharp begins to prod into the delicate flesh of your throat, stilling your body in an instant as the blood in your veins runs cold once more. It lingers briefly, as if kissing the skin with it’s malicious cool metal before travelling across to your shoulder, over the bicep, through the inner elbow and finally stopping on the palm of your hand which faces upwards and rests against your thigh.

Calloused fingers emerge from the darkness again, coiling around your wrist and lifting it up still flush with the tip of what you presumed was a knife. ‘Don’t move. Don’t cry. Don’t scream.’ you chant silently from within the confinements of your mind, the only words keeping you from snapping and likely the only actions keeping you alive. His grasp holds you steady as he angles it flush against the cruel, sharp metal that slowly pushes into the flesh not yet hard enough to break skin with the force alone, until he slides it down the centre with an agonising and precise slowness where you can feel the cold metal cut into you like a hot blade against butter. Fresh, warm blood trickles from the long slash wound, pooling in the centre and dribbling onto the floor when he rotates your hand sideways.

It stings, no, it fucking burns.

You flinch as something hot and wet glides across the bleeding wound, almost yanking your hand away in protest but his grasp on you is far stronger than anticipated and only squeezes your wrist with such aggression that you were sure would form bruises. His breaths beat warmly over the gash, only heightening your urge to squirm beneath the sickening sensations. Gritty stubble and soft lips meld against the bloodied skin, not quite lapping at it in the manner a starved hound might, but closer in likeness to savouring the moment in slow rhythm to gratify a long buried yet incredibly morbid pleasure as though he may never gain the opportunity again.

Confusion simply doesn't cut it. Nausea doesn't even come remotely close to what you're feeling. Too many signals and alarm bells are ringing in your head to make sense of any of it and every nerve in your body is being set alight not just by one indescribable emotion but by so very many that it's making your head spin. Nothing feels real yet everything hurts. The searing burn of the knife cutting through your hand with ease, the touch of devious lips to comfort, the scratch of coarse stubble to edge, the lapping of a tongue to taste every thought and emotion in your being. All of these things remain a silent reminder that you're alive because he allows you to be, he can snuff out your precious, insignificant life in an instant and all you'll be is another blood stain, another corpse to add to his ever growing list. Nothing more, nothing less.

Finally, it stops. The warmth of his tongue vanishes and his lips press a longing and strangely delicate kiss to the wound, still wet with fresh saliva. Michael pulls away from your palm and releases your wrist from his bruising grasp, allowing you to retract it back against the safety and comfort of your chest to hold it firmly against the fabric in hopes to ease the bleeding. 

Something rustles in front of you quietly as if he's readjusting something, then a pair of strong, clothed arms slip under your frame and haul you off the cold tiled floor effortlessly, as if you were nothing more than a bag of feathers within his clutch. One arm hooks under your knees whilst the other supports your back and still holds the knife tightly between curled fingers. Muscle memory wastes no time in telling your brain to throw startled arms around whatever they could grasp onto, finding them swiftly clinging to broad, fabric covered shoulders in mere seconds. He doesn't wait around, making a quick exit from the cold cell and leaves it completely empty, barren of life for one final time. 

The corridors and hallways remain engulfed in haunting, inky black shadows that swallow everything in its path but it doesn't slow him down. Michael doesn't need sight to see where he's going, for he's walked amongst these halls countless times throughout the years, enough to burn it into one's memory so it remains as clear as day. There's no sound other than that of the heavy footfalls of his own boots pacing against bloody tiled floors and the muffled breaths from behind a ghostly white latex mask that conceals all signs of a living, breathing being on the other side. 

A cold breeze washes over your arms, shivering against Michael's broad chest that smelled so strongly of blood, musk and antiseptic. You lift your heavy head from his shoulder, bleary eyed and on the verge of unconsciousness for what felt like the millionth time that night. You blink, squeezing your eyes shut several over. Fresh air; you're outside and freed from that hellish purgatory. Crystalline droplets of icy rain begin to fall like joyful tears from God himself and drench your skin in light, wet kisses that cut through the blanket of velvety dark skies dotted with glimmering pearlescent stars whilst an overhead full moon caresses your skin in it's angelic glow that seemingly shifts between crisp white and baby blue. It's as though you'd been transported away from Hell's cruel confinements and placed at Heaven's wide open gates in a matter of moments. 

Michael sets you down on the hard concrete ground, but your legs are too weak to hold your body and instantly cave in and send you cascading onto your knees. The ground collides with your legs and scratches them, offering fresh grazing to the previously untouched skin. But the pain is insignificant. Everything feels insignificant at the moment. You feel so very numb but so very alive that all you can bear to do is exist; in the sound of cold rain droplets plummeting against your skin and the concrete like listening to the tick of a clock that goes on for minutes and passes like centuries. Each drop sits on your skin like a puddle that will never leave, perfectly formed, perfectly cold. You feel the water steal body heat just a tiny bit at a time, drenching everything it touches and sticking the bloodied white dress and locks of silken hair to your skin. Tears don't fall and speaking feels like a sin. When you finally break away from the near trance-like state to gaze around for Michael, he's gone. Nowhere to be seen. He simply vanished into the darkness of night as if he were merely a ghost. 

The blaring of sirens and the flashing of vivid red and blue distant ambulance and police lights become louder by the second. Haddonfield never believed that they'd have to worry ever again about such horrific tragedies such as the one that struck the quaint little town so many years ago. But somehow history will always have a tendency to repeat itself no matter what one may do or how many precautions one might take. So many mistake Michael's silence for stupidity; vacant of any underlying thought processing with the only thing even remotely rattling around in there being murder on the mind. How very wrong they are, how the ones supposedly in control were in fact the naive ones to begin with. Evil comes in many shapes, sizes and forms. This time fate decided that it would grow within one being. These people believe that they have all the answers, when in fact they couldn't be further from the truth if they tried. Evil needs no reason, and it cannot be contained no matter how many cages you lock it within, no matter how loud you scream at it, no matter how much you try to rid the world of it and kill it. 

Evil doesn't die, and now it's free again.

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[scapegrace74-blog]

New Ways of Turning into Stone, Chapter 5

A/N  Sorry for the long break between chapters.  As some of you might have seen from my Tumblr blog, I’ve been off on vacation these past two weeks.  Plus, when I felt the urge to write, it was my new Vaquero AU that kept calling to me (21,000 words and counting!), rather than this fic.  Which is probably a good argument for why I don’t like to post WIPs.  In any event, here is the next chapter some of you have been asking for, entitled Third Appointment.  Be careful what you wish for.  Angst ahead, plus a trigger warning for infertility trauma, miscarriage.

The first four chapters are available on my AO3 page.

The Thursday after her impromptu encounter with Jamie and his niece at the Royal Hospital for Children, Claire woke with a strange twisting pain in her gut.  Skipping breakfast, she was halfway to her office before she diagnosed herself with an acute case of nerves, the kind that sprouted between her lungs and ribcage like a vestigial organ whose sole purpose was to unsettle her.

She wasn’t in the habit of meeting patients outside of the clinical confines of her practice, but it was more than that.  Jamie had caught her in a moment of weakness, with both her personal and professional armour missing.  What he might have seen and how he could have interpreted it had occupied her thoughts ever since.

Eating lunch was out of the question.  By the time two o’clock approached, her insides were a buzzing hornets’ nest of anxiety, her palms clammy with sweat.  A half-empty bottle of Xanax called to her from the bottom of her purse.  Before she could weigh the implications of taking one at work on an empty stomach, Jamie’s familiar knock intervened.

She could tell as soon as he entered that Maggie hadn’t needed a transfusion that week.  His russet curls shone like garnets in the midday sun and his uncanny eyes glittered like sapphires.  Still, he avoided looking directly her way as he settled into his usual chair, and she wondered if the overlap of their personal and professional lives had left him feeling unnerved as well.

“No wheat grass smoothie,” he commented, his gaze running over her desk.

“No, I didn’t have time for lunch today.”  It was a blatant falsehood, since she’d spent her lunch hour picking her cuticles until they bled, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Ye should eat more, Sassen..., Doctor Beauchamp.  Ye canna help anyone else if ye’re no’ properly nourished.”  She caught the slip, and for some reason it angered her.

“Is this your attempt to negotiate a reduction in your fees, Jamie?  Dietary advice in return for counselling?  Because if so, I’m afraid I don’t bill on the barter system,” she snapped, despising her churlish tone.

Jamie’s eyes narrowed, then dimmed.  Message received, he sat up straighter in the armchair and crossed a foot over his knee, assuming a position of poised and detached calm that had no doubt served him well during business negotiations.  She regrouped by pretending to glance at her journal for the notes from their previous session, although the space next to his name was accusingly blank.

Boundaries thus defined, the session went surprising well.  Jamie spoke of his relief that Maggie’s latest round of chemotherapy was over, allowing her to return home and to some semblance of a regular life for a child of six.  Claire coaxed him gently towards the topic of his overwhelming guilt for abandoning his family when he was most needed.  Jamie processed pain through the recounting of stories, coming to terms with his self-decreed transgression by weaving together the tale of those he loved and pointing to the holes his absence had caused.

As his resonant voice spun its web of words, Claire became aware of an underlying hum.  At first it was subtle, like the mumble of traffic from a far-off motorway.  But as their hour together ticked by, it grew in strength until she could no longer ignore the buzz that pressed against her from all directions.

“... saw that it was really Jenny and Ian who I was... Claire?  Doctor Beauchamp, are ye well?”  Jamie was watching her with concern, and she realized she’d been shaking her head, trying to dislodge the omnipresent hum.

“Yes, I’m... yes.  Sorry.  Just a funny noise that’s...  Please, continue.”  When Jamie didn’t immediately pick up the thread of his narrative, she tried again.  “You were saying something about Jenny and Ian?”

Instead of continuing his previous thought, Jamie picked that moment to broach the topic she’d desperately hoped he would avoid.

“I hope ye’re no’ upset about the other day, at the hospital.  I didna mean tae impose or tae... o’erstep the bounds of our relationship.  No’ that we have a relationship, mind,” he hastened to add.  “Only a professional one.  But when I saw ye, I couldna resist introducing ye tae wee Maggie.  I hadna told ye about her yet, and I thought...”

“Jamie, it’s fine,” she cut in, halting his rambling explanation.  “She’s a lovely girl.  They all are.  It’s only that, I’m sort of...”

“Ye’re verra good with them.  Children, that is.  Ye’ll make a fine mother one day.”

All the oxygen left the room at once.  Her heart beat so hard there was a bruised feeling behind her sternum.   Launching to her feet, Claire stumbled blindly away from her desk.  She wanted to run, to scream, but her vision was a narrow chasm and a now-deafening throb filled her ears.  She only made it a few steps before her knees buckled and the carpet floated upwards to meet her.

“Ifrinn!”  Jamie leapt to her side, catching her by the shoulders before her head could hit the floor.  He lowered them both carefully to the ground, resting her body against his lap.  “Sassenach?  Claire?  Can ye hear me?  Do I need tae call an ambulance?”  The words reached her from very far away, but the threat of medical intervention acted like a dose of smelling salts.

“No,” she groaned, the room spinning around her like a kaleidoscope.  “No hospital.  I just... need to eat,” she grasped at the most innocuous explanation for her current state.

Without dislodging her, Jamie stretched his long arm and brought back the small basket of miniature muffins that were the day’s offering from Geillis.  With surprising dexterity, he peeled away the paper one-handed and broke apart a bite-sized morsel, holding it gently against her lips.  Realizing that her dignity couldn’t get any more battered, Claire opened her mouth and allowed Jamie to feed her.  After only a few bites, the buzzing disappeared and she was able to sit up on her own.

“Thank you,” she murmured, afraid to look into his eyes for fear of the pity she knew she’d see there.  “You were right. I  should have eaten lunch, I guess.”

“Claire.”  Jamie made a prose poem of the single syllable of her name.  She looked up at him through her lashes, stunned to find him looking back, not with pity, but with something akin to adoration.  “Mo nighean donn,” he ran a tender hand through her loosened curls.  “Ye need tae care more for yerself.”

“I will.  I’ll try.”  And when she said it to him, she really meant it.  Jamie made the impossible seem probable.

They stared at one another, shoulder to shoulder on the floor of her office.  She couldn’t think of anything else to say, but nor did she move.  Her gaze flitted over his face, noticing a vestige of boyish freckles across the bridge of his nose, a mole hidden in the harvest stubble on his cheek.  Jamie was performing a parallel inventory, eyes finally coming to rest at the level of her mouth.

“Ye’ve got a wee crumb, jus’ there.”  Unconscious, her tongue swept out, triggering a predatory response, twin blue laser beams narrowing on the target she had just painted on her lower lip.

“I... I’d verra much like tae kiss ye, Claire.  May I?”

An amputated moan was all she could manage in response, but Jamie must have understood its meaning.  He bent his head until only a whisper separated them.  The air crackled, sending that extra organ plummeting towards her hollow womb.  Clenching her eyes shut in defeat, she closed the infinitesimal gap until they met in an effervescent caress of lip and tongue.

Cold washed over her skin, bathing her in gooseflesh.  Jamie tasted like he looked; a banquet of fresh, volatile flavours that called to mind a picnic in a meadow, a spray of sea foam, the warmth of hearth and home.  She could feel him trembling against her, his moist breath rushing against her cheek in shallow pants.  For a score of heartbeats, Claire was the happiest she had ever been.  Then, reality crashed down around her.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered, pulling away.  “I... this can’t... I’m sorry.”

Jamie leaned back with a mixture of longing and resignation.  She hated adding herself to his list of regrets, but it was for the best.

“I’m your doctor, Jamie.  This isn’t right.”

“Aye, I ken.  I should apologize, but I canna seem tae find it in me tae repent.”

Jamie stood, reaching down to help Claire up as well.  As soon as it was apparent she was able to stand on her own, he dropped her hand as though it burned.  The line between his brows deepened, and she could see the question forming before he gave it voice.

“What if ye werena my doctor?  Would it be right then?”

“That’s neither here nor there, because I am, Jamie.  A relationship between patient and doctor of a romantic nature is ethically off-limits.”

Jamie nodded, apparently accepting her explanation at face value. Her heartbeat calmed.  He moved slowly, gathering his coat and starting to leave.  

“But what if ye weren’t?” he said, facing the door.  “If we’d met at the hospital, or out on the town?”

“I...” she stammered, searching desperately for any answer except for the truth.  “No, Jamie,” she said at last, watching as she destroyed his last bastion of hope.  “I’m sorry.  I just don’t feel that way about you.”

Nodding abruptly, Jamie let himself out of the office.  She listened to his low murmuring voice through the door as he spoke to Geillis, heard him make an appointment for the following week, then the loud snap of the main door closing.  Only then did she allow herself to collapse once more to the floor, angry sobs overtaking her.

***

“Are ye out of yer fuckin’ mind?” Geillis inquired with her usual brutal eloquence.

With the help of a Xanax, Claire had managed to see her last two patients of the day, and only needed to navigate the shoals of her office manager’s ire before she could go home and fully medicate herself into a dreamless sleep.

“Jes so we’re clear, ye want me tae write a letter terminating your services as a doctor an’ suggesting suitable alternative providers?  An’ ye want me tae send this letter, over email, tae Jamie Fraser?”

“That’s right.”  She had determined that icy calm was the best antidote to this conversation, which was fortuitous, since she felt numb all over.

“An’ what reason am I tae give fer this abrupt conclusion tae yer association wi’ Mr. Fraser?”

“I don’t owe him an explanation.  Only sufficient notice and an opportunity to seek counselling elsewhere,” she said, feigning reasonableness.

Pushed past her limits, Geillis rose from behind her desk, a tiny tempest of moral indignation.

“Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp, ye are a good friend, a fine doctor an’ a fair employer.  But I swear by the Almighty that if ye dinna drop the façade and tell me wha’ is going on I am going tae smack ye until yer ears ring!”

There was a certain relief in knowing that Geillis wouldn’t take no for an answer.  And unlike Jamie, she knew where Claire lived and would not let her rest until the truth came out.

“He kissed me.  Or rather, I kissed him.  And I liked it!  That’s why, Geillis.”

Her friend’s shoulders sagged, all righteousness gone in an instant.  She reached around Claire’s frame and held her in a bone-crushing one-sided hug.

“Och, hen.  An’ ye figured ye could deal wi’ those pesky feelings by jes, what? firing him as yer patient?”  

“I can’t deal with this right now, Geillis.  I can’t feel the way he makes me feel.  And this practice is all that I have left.  There’s no way I can risk losing it just for an affair that won’t even last the summer.”

She didn’t need to elaborate on her reasons for that dire prediction.  Geillis knew them as well as anyone.

“He’s an intelligent man, Claire. He’s gonna ken something is up.  Moreover, he’s a good man.  He deserves tae hear the truth.”

Shaking her head sadly, Claire walked towards the door.  Just before exiting, she called back softly to her friend.

“Geillis?  Make sure to include Dr. Rafferty’s name on the list of referrals.  I think they’d be a good match.

***

Monday morning dawned with little promise for the fledgling week.  Moving robotically through her weekend routine, Claire thought frequently of chickens.  How their bodies kept moving once their heads were lopped off, nerves and muscle and bone continuing to function for a time despite the fatal blow.

The elevator chimed its arrival on her floor.  As the doors slide open, Jamie was the first thing she saw.  He loomed by her still-locked office, a sun-topped thundercloud gripping a sheet of printer paper.

She’d worn her best black suit and a pair of chunky heels that brought her closer to his height.  Perhaps, on some subconscious level, she’d anticipated this confrontation.  Perversely, she relished it.  Vitriol and deceit didn’t suit her, but it was preferable to feeling absolutely nothing.

“Do ye mind tellin’ me,” Jamie began before she’d even set foot in the hallway, “jus’ what this is about, Claire?” He brandished the paper like a wanted poster.

“I would think it was self-explanatory, actually.  I’m terminating our professional relationship,” she huffed, golden eyes coming to life for the first time since Thursday.

“Via email.  Sent tae me by Miss Duncan, because ye dinna have the guts tae do it yerself.  Christ, Sassenach, even my ninth grade sweetheart didna dump me so cruelly!”

“I’m not your sweetheart!” she burst out, a flood of emotion cresting with her rising anger.  “Don’t call me that!  I was your doctor, Jamie, and now I’m nothing to you.  Nothing.  Just go.  Please.  Just go,” she finished weakly and without any hope that he’d listen.

“All this jus’ because I kissed you?” Jamie persevered.  At her stubborn silence, he continued, “Nah, I dinna think so.  Ye’re many things, Claire, but a coward isna one of them.”

She found this hysterically funny, since a coward was the only role she played to perfection.  She didn’t have time to laugh, however, because Jamie was suddenly standing much closer, forcing her to lift her chin to meet his stormy eyes.

“Nah,” he continued smoothly, a big cat alerted to the smell of its prey.  “If ye’d objected tae the kiss, ye would have told me so.  Read me the riot act or kneed me in the bawls.  I think ye’re scared, Doctor Beauchamp.  I think that kiss terrified ye, because ye realized ye liked it.  Somethin’ ye couldna  plan for in yer wee journal, right there under yer nose.  Bet it made yer heart beat so fast. So fast, jus’ like it is now.”

Jamie’s hand rested gently over the placket of her suit jacket, where he could surely feel the trip hammering of her pulse.

“Please,” she begged.  “Don’t.  I can’t...”

“Can’t what, Sassenach?” he whispered back, goading her.

The truth hung on her lips, and the toll of the past few days meant that she no longer had the strength to stop it from spilling forth.

“Can’t have children.  Ever.  I tried, for years.  Fourteen miscarriages, fourteen lost chances.  And seeing you with those children last week.  I know it’s presumptive, but I could never deny you that chance, Jamie.  That’s why I can’t see you anymore.”

She was looking down, watching the buttons of his shirt rise and fall with his agitated breath, but as she finished speaking, their movement ceased.  Chancing a glance upward, she was stunned by the fury that had overtaken his expression. 

Jamie opened and closed his mouth several times before he managed to speak in a gritty growl.

“Mutation of the RUNX1 gene tha’ causes leukemia.  I was tested, along wi’ Jenny an’ Ian, after Maggie was diagnosed.  I have a fifty percent chance of passing it along tae my children.  An’ since I canna stand the thought of ano’er bairn havin’ tae suffer as Maggie has, as soon as I got the test results, I went out an’ had a vasectomy.”

Claire recoiled as though she’d been slapped, a high pitched whine in her ears.

“Ye’re no’ the only one who’s hurting, Claire!” Jamie continued, voice dashing against the rocks of her name.  “We’re no’ meant tae suffer alone.  Ye, of all people, should ken that.”

Stunned in the silence following the thunderclap of his revelation, she couldn’t find the words to express her sorrow, her outrage, and her crippling shame.  By the time the power of speech returned, Jamie was gone. 

[denimbex1986]

'Time isn't a physical thing yet writer/director Andrew Haigh somehow weaves the mercurial essence of it into every single frame that makes up his fifth feature, All of Us Strangers (sixth if you count Looking: The Movie). In doing so, Haigh imbues the film with an ethereal quality that's just a step or two outside of our so-called objective reality.

But actually, that's what life can often be like as a queer person. In childhood, other kids often know you're different before you do, as if they've glimpsed your future first-hand, and for those who suppress their queerness growing up, it often takes years longer to come into your own.

Even then, once you've finally found some degree of healing, past traumas can pull you back in time just like that, transforming you once again into a younger, damaged version of yourself. (It doesn't help that coming out is a lifelong process, as if you're stuck in a not-so-funny '80s time-loop movie.)

In All of Us Strangers, a gay forty-something man named Adam is literally pulled back to these traumas when he meets his dead parents as they were, all those years ago before an accident took them away.

In coming out to these time-displaced figures – who both bring with them the baggage of AIDS-fuelled '80s hysteria – Andrew Scott's character almost becomes a child himself again, and in Haigh's real childhood home, no less.

Through adapting Taichi Yamada's novel Strangers (a book that's also a product of the '80s), Haigh bridges the gap between not just his past self and the present, but also two different eras of gay men through the intergenerational love story that unfolds between Adam and Harry (Paul Mescal), a younger man who accompanies him on this journey of healing.

Digital Spy caught up with Andrew Haigh to discuss coming-out scenes of a very different kind and the importance of crafting "a love letter to queer people of a certain generation". Along the way, we also talked the hidden significance of that sex scene and why casting Jamie Bell and Claire Foy was such a gamble.

All of Us Strangers plays so much with time – like most of your work does – and that feels intrinsically queer to me. As queer people, we don't always follow a traditional timeline, so I wondered if you could share how the film's shifting of time relates to the queerness that's integral to this story?

It's so interesting, because I feel like as a queer person, time is somehow different. As you say, your life seems to go on a different trajectory, and you don't have the sort of markers that other people have, although that is changing. I do think for younger queer people, it is a slightly different experience.

So I think it's just inherent in me as a person that I see time slightly differently, which is why it's always so interesting for me to play around with the idea of time.

All of my films, whether it's been Weekend, which is an obsession with 48 hours of someone's life, or 45 Years where something from the past has come back and disrupted the present, it just... I'm just so interested in the nature of time.

Casting Jamie Bell and Claire Foy as Andrew Scott's parents, even though they're actually younger than him, is such an interesting idea to play around with, both visually and emotionally. But were you ever apprehensive or worried that this approach might fall short or not work in the way you hoped it would?

Yeah, I was really worried about it [laughs]. I thought if that doesn't work, the film is terrible. People might laugh at it and be like, "This is just so stupid". The film works on an emotional level and I need that to be believable and real.

But then, weirdly, the minute I started filming with them, my fears went away, because I could see that it was working in the moment. And I could see that it was working emotionally.

Jamie and Claire do an incredible job at feeling like they are Andrew's parents. And he does feel like he is their child. So the nature of how they look sort of becomes irrelevant. Then I thought a lot about how, of course, that makes sense.

If we think about our parents in our minds, we don't necessarily think about what they look like now, if they're still around. We think about how they used to be. It's the same with anybody in our lives. You can think of a friend that you may not have been in contact with for 20-30 years. In your mind, they're exactly like they were back then. I think that is just the nature of our memory and how that works, so it does make sense for the film.

That moment when Adam gets into bed with his parents could have been particularly hard to pull off, but it works so beautifully within the context of the narrative.

I mean it could be ridiculous. He's wearing pyjamas that don't fit, and he's trying to get into bed with his parents. It could be absolutely ridiculous. But I think it speaks to this idea... Think about those pyjamas.

We all understand the desire to want to go back and feel that comfort sometimes that we felt as a child, but of course, it doesn't fit anymore. They're too tight and he isn't a child. He is an adult. But within all of us, we still have that element of being a child within our adult bodies, not just as children but our parents are the same. Everybody is the same. The child is always trapped within us.

That element really comes to the fore in the film's two coming out scenes when Adam reveals himself to parents who are technically younger than him. We've seen so many coming out stories over the years, but we've never seen anything like this before. Why do you think these two scenes have resonated in particular with so many fans of the film?

I mean, there's a number of things. People are always like, "Oh, we don't need more coming-out scenes. We've done all the coming-out scenes," but I think a lot of us, as queer people and gay people, are still affected by that, that feeling of having to come out and how terrifying, how horrendous that was for so many of us and the fear of having to say something to our parents, and they may reject us for that.

It was a very, very traumatic event for lots and lots of people, especially back in the '80s.

What this is about, in many ways, it's not just that he's coming out to his parents, but he's being reminded of how he used to feel back then. Because the parents reaction is how everybody felt about gay people back in the '80s. Or how most people felt. That was a very difficult time.

I wanted it to be sort of generous as well, even to the parents, because they lived in a period of time where they were just fed stories and lies, essentially, and fears about gay people. So I didn't want to vilify the parents either because that's the culture they lived in at the time.

It's so rare still to see the experiences of gay men Adam's age explored like this. Why would you say it's important that the stories of gay men who lived through the AIDS crisis continued to be centred this way on screen?

I think it's a really important generation for me as a queer storyteller. I wanted to say something about that generation, and it is a very specific generation. It is a generation of people who grew up as AIDS was decimating communities.

As young queer people in that time, we grew up surrounded by the idea that our sexuality was completely linked to death. I think it's very easy to forget how traumatic and horrendous that was, and that we are still living with the ramifications of that and the shame that went along with that.

The way that people treated us made us feel ashamed. It's not that we were inherently shameful because we were gay, but we were made to feel shamed. That has been a struggle that a lot of us have had to work through into our 40s and 50s and people into their 60s are still dealing with that, so I think it's a really important thing.

And also just to remind people that yes the world has changed, thank God, and everyone seems to have forgotten what it was like back then, but we haven't forgotten, even on an unconscious level. We can remember.

I always wanted it to be a love letter to queer people of a certain generation to say, "You know what? I know that it's still painful to think back at that time, and it is still painful. And I want us to realise that it's still painful and it's okay to to appreciate that sometimes."

I was born in the mid '80s, so I wasn't an adult during the height of the AIDS crisis, but I absolutely felt the ramifications of it still into the '90s and beyond, this idea that being gay is instantly connected to fear and death.

Yeah, the '90s wasn't a Golden Age either. Even into the late '90s, I remember there were debates going on in the House of Commons where people would still be saying that what we were doing was sinful and wrong and that we were gonna go to hell.

This is in the '90s. This is not the 1970s or 1980s. So I think that living in the '80s and '90s was not an easy time for queer people, definitely.

That sex scene early on where Harry licks cum off Adam's chest really struck me, because any kind of contact with bodily fluids like this would have once been horrifying to Adam. Did you consciously include this scene in relation to Adam's shame and him overcoming it?

Absolutely. That's the point of that shot to me. I think there's probably lots and lots of people who will not truly understand that at all. Of course, you will understand it because you understand it from a personal standpoint.

There are two gay people of a different generation and one has no fear in that moment of what he's doing. The other one is still resistant to that. That's years of something within his body telling him to be resistant. And he overcomes it because of course, you can overcome it. Lots of people do overcome that fear and shame and that is the point.

In that moment, there was a little bit of resistance, but the intimacy and the compassion of Harry in that moment allows him to overcome a sort of embedded fear.

Some people see the ending as very uplifting and hopeful while others find it sad. Obviously, tragic endings are embedded in the history of queer cinema, so did you feel pressure to try and avoid tropes like 'Bury Your Gays'?

I understand there was that trope. It's often the trope actually gets said more than the reality of that being an actual reality. It's like "Oh, you're gonna kill off all the gays" but actually, that's not always what happens.

There is a way in which this film could have ended on a very optimistic, joyful note. To me, that would have been a little bit simplistic in terms of what the story is trying to unpick and understand, which is about the actual nature, the essence of love, and what is important within that.

I also think that sometimes when you're telling queer stories, I want to dig a little bit deeper into the pain, into the reality of things. There you can get closer to the truth and I think that is important.

Let's go back to the '80s. A lot of people, a lot of gay, queer people, lost their partners young and lost a lot of people that were very, very important to them. But as that also happened, what I found so profoundly beautiful is, it sort of highlighted the idea of love in itself as being some kind of saviour and that it can save you and the importance of that love. After all, loss is still so fundamentally important.

Looking back, is there a particular example of queer TV or film that really resonated with a younger version of yourself?

It's a tricky one. I feel like in the end, it was probably watching Beautiful Thing, that Hettie Macdonald film.

I remember I was working in a cinema, the National Film Theatre, and it was the gay and lesbian film festival, I think, or it was a special screening of Beautiful Thing. There is a gay film, actually, that's very, very joyous. It's got so much joy in it. It ends on a really uplifting, joyful note.

I just remember sitting at the back as an usher, seeing that film, and I wasn't even out at that point. I was still in the closet. And I remember feeling like, "Ah, okay, there's a possibility out there for me". I remember loving that moment. It was both emotional and cathartic and joyous.

I still love that film. I watch that film now when they're running through the woods and The Mamas and the Papas are playing and they kiss against the tree. It's so beautiful. I adore it. So even though my films don't often end on moments of pure joy, I still like moments of pure joy [laughs].'

[ashintheairlikesnow]

The Get Ready Game

CW: Young children of rescued whumpee, referenced past child abuse, referenced past emotional abuse. CW for child’s trauma response/PTSD, Overcompetent Emotional and Logistical Support Oldest Daughter X 100, unhealthy coping mechanisms

@comfy-whumpee‘s Jax Gallagher successfully saved his children (and himself) from Savannah Marcoset. But Izzy, now nearly seven, remembers her mother very well still, and knows that if her father doesn’t yet feel safe, she shouldn’t either.

So she makes a plan.

---

Izzy finds her brother playing blocks in the living room, half-heartedly building a tower while his eyes are on the cartoon show playing on the telly. She glances side to side - Dad's at therapy, only left a little bit ago. There's ages of time before he comes back, and he’ll be all in his head and distracted but probably he’ll want to lay down, so if she wants to do this, she’d better do it while he’s gone.

“Jamie?”

“Hm?” Her brother doesn’t look away from the show, but he kind of tilts his head in her direction. He’s younger than she is, only four and can’t read yet. But he doesn’t have to, she can do the reading for them both. She reads at a high level, her teacher says. Izzy practices every single night, she’s the best reader in class. 

She has to be.

“Where’s Grandpa, d’you know?”

Jamie points to the side. “In the, um, in the kitchen-”

“Sssshhhh! Quiet, don’t let him hear I asked.” Izzy puts out both hands, and now she has her brother’s interest. He loves having secrets with her, special kids-only things. It’s why this works, why she can teach him what they need to do, just in case, without him running off to tell Dad or Grandpa right away. 

She goes quiet, listening. She can hear Alfie’s voice, low, murmuring. He stays home on the days her dad has to go to therapy, so Jax can go and then come back and lay down in his room without having to worry. 

Grandpa will be talking, probably with some tea in hand, and he won’t overhear them. It’s perfect timing. Dad at therapy and Grandpa on the phone, maybe for a long time. 

“Hey, Jamie,” Izzy says, keeping her voice carefully casual. “You want to play Get Ready with me?”

Her little brother brightens. Izzy isn’t the best at his kind of play, rough-housing or throwing things around, playing Daddy-and-Baby with the big soft dolls he’s given all sorts of odd names to. Izzy doesn’t like playing baby-holding games, and besides that she doesn’t like how loud he is about it. She’s too quiet, too prone to sitting very still or whisper-talking her way through pretend games about princesses that Jamie doesn’t find interesting at all.

But this game… this game, he likes. 

He knows it’s important, even if he doesn’t know why. He knows his big sister is trusting him with big important things, and not being irritated by him or pushing him away. James scrambles up onto his feet, accidentally kicking his little tower of blocks over in the process. Both of them freeze at the crash.

Alfie’s voice rumbles through from the kitchen. “You all right in there, Jamie?”

“I’m good! I just knocked over my blocks, is all! Can I watch one more show?” Jamie pitches his voice just right, and Izzy’s proud of him. He’s learning all the tricks, and he’s doing it without having to be scared first, without it having to be something he has to learn. 

“All right, one more,” Alfie calls back, and Jamie grins, giving Izzy an exaggerated finger over his lips. Izzy grins right back, one of her top teeth growing in still, one of the bottom ones flat out missing entirely, she only lost that one three days ago, wiggling it in class until it came right out. The two of them move out of the room and down the hallway, almost tip-toeing in their bare feet, listening to Alfie’s voice, on high alert for him to make his goodbyes. 

They make it back to the bedroom Izzy still shares with her father - two twin beds lined up in there, and Alfie’s been talking about moving to get Izzy her own room, but Izzy never feels safer than waking up from a nightmare to still be able to hear her father’s gentle, deep breathing nearby. Jax’s bed has dark blue blankets and Izzy’s has a deep purple fuzzy one, plus special sheets she picked out herself with unicorns on them.

“Okay, Jamie,” Izzy says in her stage whisper. Her brother’s eyes lock on hers, hazel-brown like they all have, but Jamie has Jax’s hair color and Izzy’s short, spiky hair is the same deep chocolate brown as her mother’s, reminders she can’t escape, only try to cut off short enough that she can’t see it. “How does Get Ready start?”

Jamie’s smile widens further. He knows this one right away. “We meet in the hallway outside your room,” He says, very seriously. “Then… we come in here and find the Get Ready bag,” He answers, eyes already shifting to the closet, where it was the last time they played.

“Nope, not there.” Jamie looks at her, confused. “It’s okay, Dad did something in the closet last week so I moved the bag, just in case. I don’t think he found it, though, I hid it really well. Can you think of where I might hide it now?” She lilts her voice, slightly sing-song, like her teachers do at school. 

Jamie looks slowly around the room, taking in every detail - the window with the curtains pulled to make it dim, the two beds with the table between them, a lamp. Dresser messy on top with things tossed there - receipts, interesting rocks that Izzy has found and kept and given to her father. Then he nods, firmly, to himself more than her, and points under her bed. “It’s there.”

“Are you sure?” Izzy asks, still in teacher-voice.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because… because, because you would want to get it fast if you woke up, and you can roll under your bed for hiding from Mom,” Jamie explains. He sounds very earnest, and Izzy smiles at him to reward him giving it so much thought.

“Go look and see if you’re right.”

Jamie walks over to her bed and drops down onto his hands and knees, looking underneath. He pulls out a stuffed-full old, raggedy-looking adult-sized backpack, a faded gray that might once have been black, some old band patches and button badges still stuck around the outside. “I was right! I was right, Izzy, I found our get-ready bag!”

His voice is too loud, and Izzy shushes him quickly, closing the still-open bedroom door. Grandpa won’t like it, they’re not really supposed to close doors to shut out grown-ups, but this is too important. “Good job, Jamie!” She says in a high sotto-voice. “You are right. So, if I wake you up and I say, we have to get ready, what do we do?”

“We grab our Get Ready bag,” Jamie answers, all seriousness, patting the top of the bag gently with one small hand. “And we hide, inside the back of the closet in the big box. Then, when it’s safe, we go outside.”

“Right. How can we go outside if Mom is in the living room, though?”

Jamie’s eyes go to the window, and he points. “We go out the window,” He answers, and when she nods, he gets a little braver and adds on. “There’s-... fire escape, out there. Like stairs made of metal. We climb down with our bag. You know how to unlock the window.”

“Good. Right, I do.” She’d had to work out the trick to the window over days when no one was around her, fiddling and messing and making her fingers ache until one day, she’d managed it just right. Child proof my butt, she’d thought, but then she knew she wasn’t as child-y as everyone else her age seemed to be. 

Everyone else didn’t have to be ready for what would happen if their mother came back. Everyone else didn’t still dream about their father begging their mother to stop. Everyone else couldn’t still remember, a little bit, screaming-

Well. 

Everyone else might not have a Get Ready bag, or play this game, but she did. And when it happened, she’d be ready. Even though she knows the grown-ups wouldn’t want her to do this, they’ll be glad when it’s time, when she does what her dad would do in her place and takes James and runs. He’ll understand, if she has to, and he’ll be proud of her for being ready. He will. 

She just can’t tell him ahead of time. 

Izzy drops down into a crouch and hugs James tight. His hair smells like strawberry kids’ shampoo, just like hers does, and he’s very warm and his hands are always sticky, even when he hasn’t been touching any sticky things. “You remember very well, Jamie. Do you remember what’s in our Get Ready bag?”

She pulls back, and Jamie presses his lips together in deep thought, tapping on his chin in an overexaggerated ‘thinking’ expression. “Toothbrushes,” He says, finally. “Mine has Wally Lizard on it.”

“And?” 

“And toothpaste, the kid toothpaste.”

She’d spent weeks and weeks getting enough - putting a little extra in a baggie every night, so that her dad and grandpa wouldn’t know she was taking more than she needed. There was enough now for she and James to last a while. “Perfect. What else?”

“Ummmmm…” He trails off, sitting on the floor and thinking about it. “There’s pull-up nappies, for me for sleeping, and underpants for both of us, and pants and shirts and Franken-puppy and Unicorn, and the black-and-white bear from the zoo-”

“Paulie Panda,” Izzy corrects.

“Paulie Panda. And also Monkey George. Um um um um there are juice boxes, and Monster Munch, and Jaffa cakes, and that thing with the nuts in I don’t like, and chocolate biscuits… Aaaaand books, and…” He stops and frowns. “I don’t remember what else.”

“No, that’s good, that’s better than last time. You’re doing great.” He puffs out his chest a little in pride, and Izzy smiles, settling down to sit with him, the two of them tucked in the space between the twin beds. “There’s also hair-combs, and some shampoo and soap in a bag I nicked from the shop.”

Jamie’s eyes widen, big as saucers. “You didn’t. That is taking, Izzy-bella, and taking without paying is wrong.”

“I gave them money for it,” Izzy says, dismissive, ignoring the prickle of guilt inside her chest, too hot and sharp not to feel at least a little. “I put some of Dad’s money on the counter when nobody was looking the next day. It wasn’t really nicking, I just didn’t want him to see me get it and have to explain. But also in the bag is… this.” She digs into a front pocket and pulls out a bunch of index cards scrawled with careful child’s handwriting, numbers and letters she had spent hours and hours on. “Do you remember what these are?”

Jamie looks down at them, cocking his head, then looks up and shakes it, side to side. His hair is longer than hers is. 

“These,” Izzy says, “are the most important thing of all. These are our numbers. I’ve got about three where I remember them without even having to look, but I’ll get the rest, too. The first card has Grandpa’s phone number, and Dad’s, and it has Nana’s and Auntie Poppy and Auntie Georgia’s, too. Plus the number for Nana’s favorite shop, because her friend works there and her friend could help us get to her if she isn't home. For starters, I’ll say one that you know. We know that if-... that if Mom comes back, Grandpa will probably get-...” She takes a deep breath, tells herself to act more like a grown-up, forces down the panic and fear and worry in her chest, pictures it curled into a ball and thrown in the back of her closet to gather dust. I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid. “Grandpa could get hurt and not be able to help us. So, what do we do when we get out on the street or run away from here?”

“We, um, we find grown-ups, and we… we ask them to call 9-9-9, and tell them our names and our dad’s name, and we say, our dad is in danger and needs help. Then we tell them Nana’s name, or anybody else’s.”

“Good. Really good. What do we do if she gets us and takes us back to America?”

James swallows - this part scares him, just a little. He doesn’t remember America, not really. He was only a baby. And he remembers it being a fun place for a holiday, from the trial. But he knows Izzy is scared of America, scared enough to wake up at night crying because she dreamed about going back, and so he is, too. “We find a phone,” He says, very soft and very slow. “And we push the numbers 9, 1, 1. And that will go to people who will help us in America.”

“Good, good job, Jamie. What do we say when they pick up?” They’ve rehearsed this, over and over again. It’s the most important part of the Get Ready game. 

“I say… ‘my name is James Timothy Gallagher, and I have been ab-... abd… I have been kidnapped.’”

“Perfect. And if it were me, I would say, ‘My name is Isabella Nicole Gallagher, and I have been abducted. I am six and three quarters years old and my brother James is with me and he is four, and we are English.’ Then what?”

“We say, um, we say our… our dad is Jackson Gallagher and he has been kidnapped too, probably, and he needs help. And Savannah M-... Mark-set-”

“Marcoset,” Izzy says quietly, sounding out each syllable for him.

“Mar-co-set… is who took him. Then… we wait for help to come.”

Izzy nods, and she rifles through the flashcards, scanning over the names and places and numbers she has carefully, painstakingly, been writing down while casually asking the librarian question after question. How to call emergency services in England, America, Canada, France, Russia, and the country Georgia. Her information, to hand to people, so she won’t have to repeat herself, is copied on six cards. 

Under the flashcards, a photo of she and her dad and James that Grandpa took, at the park. It’s a photo where her dad is smiling, and he doesn’t look scared or upset or closed-off. Just happy, with them. It’s the photo she wants to have to show the police officers who she has to hope will help them. 

It’s the photo she’ll have if…

“What do we do,” She asks, and her voice is thinner, trembles just a little. “What do we do if she takes him away and we get left behind?” 

James crawls over to her in a flash and holds on, putting his arms around her waist and tucking his head under her chin. His hair tickles under her jaw. “We go all by ourselves,” He answers, in his high voice. “You and me, Izzy and Jamie. We go by ourselves, and we go find Nana.”

“Right.” Izzy closes her eyes against a rush of heat, of tears. “I-I have a card-” Her voice catches and she clears her throat. “Dusty in here,” She says, hoarsely - her grandpa says that sometimes when he’s pretending he’s not teary - and forces her racing heart to calm. Stop it. If Dad is gone, you have to be the grown-up, then. When she finally speaks, she manages to keep her voice slow, and even. No sign of her fears at all. “I have a card with Nana’s whole name and address on it, and which buses we take to see her. We can-... we can do it ourselves, all by ourselves. I know we can. But-... you have to be very good and quiet, so we don’t make anyone look at us and the bad guys can’t find us.”

“So Mom can’t find us,” Jamie whispers.

She nods, chin moving against his hair. “Right. We have to go very fast, and be very very quiet, so Mom can’t find us. But with our Get Ready bag, we have everything we need, if Dad-... if dad can’t help us. Okay, last question for our game and then we’ll be done. Do we tell Dad or Grandpa about Get Ready?”

“No.” Jamie answers right away, immediate. He knows this one. “Because, because they… might tell Mom about it.”

“Right. Even if they don’t want to tell her, she might be super mean and hurt them lots to make them. She used to hurt Dad until he would tell her things she wanted to hear, before, and she’ll be even madder now. But… if we don’t tell them about Get Ready, then they can’t tell her, right? So we can go find Nana before Mom does, and if Mom gets to Nana before we can, we have food and everything for a few days until the police officers help us.” Izzy holds him tightly, resting her chin against his hair. “I’ll take care of you, James. I promise, I won’t ever let her hurt you.”

“Dad won’t let her hurt us neither,” Jamie answers, but he likes the cuddles, and he doesn’t pull away. Izzy doesn’t hold him very often. 

“No, I know. I know he won’t. But… if he can’t stop her…” Izzy sets her jaw, closes her eyes against the memory of the bright red spots layered over older scars around her father’s neck when his big black necklace first came off. “If he can’t… I can. I just have to be very strong, and very smart, smarter than she is even. I have to be smarter than all the bad grownups.”

“And I have to be quiet and brave.”

“Right. And you’ll be very good at it. I know you will.” She squeezes him, so tightly both of them ache, and then pulls back and away, shoving the backpack back into its hiding spot, opening the bedroom door. The two of them get back to the living room just as their grandpa’s phone call finishes in the kitchen, and by the time he comes back in to ask them what they want for snacktime, James is back building his tower of blocks, and Izzy pretends she’s been on the couch with her chapter book the whole time, sitting open in her lap.

She doesn’t realize she opened it upside down until her grandpa’s gone back in the kitchen to get their snacks ready, and she flushes, embarrassed at the stupid mistake.

Still, she’s… she’s pretty sure he didn’t notice.

Every time they play, James remembers a little more without her having to tell him. Maybe… when their mom comes for them… Izzy can save Jamie - and then get help to save her father. 

And he'll be proud of her.

He will.

----

@astrobly @finder-of-rings @burtlederp @wildfaewhump @whumpiary @whump-tr0pes @moose-teeth @orchidscript @sableflynn @pretty-face-breaker @raigash @vickytokio @eatyourdamnpears

[formulatrash]

I think Alan jones is right 🤷‍♀️ Daniel sounds like some rookie, why was he so rattled by the replays? None of the other drivers said anything about it why the hell is he having a tantrum? It obviously got to him bc he had a terrible restart and got eaten up by the pack behind him, I know we love babying the drivers but thats weak. And whether we like it or not people want to see that stuff

I debated whether to post this because to me you’re very wrong but actually I think it’s good to think about these things. And to try to see it from your perspective, maybe because so many people seem to think this way.

It’s really difficult, as someone who’s sort of - oh, this is wank but like - speaking from inside racing, cus I watched the Bahrain GP from a media centre surrounded by team personnel, not to get incredibly angry at this. So I’ve sat on it for like a week to calm down and think how to discuss this properly because it would be too easy to get emotional. I do get there is a gap in perception, here.

Just because other drivers didn’t speak up about it doesn’t mean that they felt unaffected by the footage being replayed over and over. Attitudes like Alan Jones’ are what makes them suppress things they have every right to speak out on, professionally. They absolutely should have the right to agree whether footage of their or their peers bodies being mangled and broken is used again and again or at the very least, we should all accord them the respect to listen to their opinions about it and invite them to talk about it more. 

When Grand Prix racing was first on TV they’d show drivers burning to death in their cars while the race carried on around them; we obviously don’t think that’s right anymore, both the callousness to the drivers’ lives and to broadcast someone dying violently for the sake of sport but at the time, it was viewed as part of the character. The TV camera doesn’t have any inherent ethics, it’s just a lens but what we choose to frame in it is important. 

The viewer has a passive role in what you’re shown; you can’t select it. If it’s on the broadcast, there’s an inherent assumption that it’s ok to be on the broadcast, that this is a good or interesting thing to see. I don’t know if Liberty being an American company, where crashes are replayed a lot, lot more is a factor here but it felt very unlike modern F1 to replay it so many times.

The way that we portray the drivers and the role we give them in being able to decide that and consent to it (or to terms that they broadly agree to) should be empathetic. Because then it doesn’t come across as cheap repetition, that encourages every armchair FIA safety expert to come out with their own nonsense version of events - I understand car safety structures a lot better than twitteruser471 who reckons if Romain was a better driver he would have simply been able to not be on fire and I would never attempt to hazard a guess about what happened in a crash without proper information and data.

People are curious about things - I think it would have been best to have shown it once, after it was clear Romain was ok and then to work on preparing analysis, have a statement and timeline of events and what we know happened with it ready for the end of the Grand Prix. Knowing what happened lets people process something, endless speculation is a route to panic and well, literally trauma. 

The drivers are filmed as part of competing in F1 but the idea that that gives the broadcasters the right to show whatever they like without needing to justify it is wrong and part of the culture that gets bandied about that they should be willing to endure anything to be in the sport. Yes, being an F1 driver is a privilege but that shouldn’t come parcelled with signing away the right of FOM to traumatise your mum.

Let’s be clear on one thing: Romain survived that crash but until the FIA investigation is concluded, we don’t know whether that was because you could have expected him to or a total fluke. Safety systems such as the halo did their job but the crash itself was unexpected, unprecedented, none of the systems on the car were designed to work in those circumstances, they just - thank god - managed to add up into a series of tiny bits of luck that did. What you see in that accident isn’t someone dying but a few millimetres of change it it could be; it is a deadly-high-speed impact, it is a deadly hot fire, it is the absolute limits of what the survival cell and halo can bear and try to protect the driver inside.

That can seem difficult to understand because he got out. But getting out and it being fine are very different things. Every crash is dangerous, freak things can happen at relatively low speeds and without anything apparently dramatic - like Billy Monger and Jamie Caroline’s British F4 crash. 

Romain’s crash is a deadly one. What you are watching on the replay is a tiny, sliver-thin chance that a man lived or at least, wasn’t horribly, critically wounded. I’m not saying that to be dramatic or to over-exaggerate it: a 53g crash through an Armco barrier, with a fuel fire, just is that serious.

Lewis has spoken often about just how dangerous F1 is - and how little people realise it still is - and Lando and a couple of the others have spoken about how scared their families are when they go racing. Replaying something so, so, so close to being deadly to the point of, as Daniel identified, amusement, is tasteless to the people that worry about them - including themselves - and reductive of the risks.

I guess if you don’t know anyone who races cars you could view it as a video game perspective. It’s ok, Romain got out, we passed that level and now it doesn’t matter. For a lot of people, though, what you see every time is all the ways he doesn’t. Because that was an unbelievably close one - Romain himself has talked about believing he was accepting death as he sat in the burning cockpit.

The interview, afterwards, that most got to me was Guenther Steiner. He’s a hard man, who’s been in racing a long time and is performatively aggressive, unsympathetic, in many ways the stereotype of what a brutally pragmatic team boss has to be. He stood there on Sky last Thursday shaking and stutteringly incoherent, five days after the accident, not able to look at the footage - because he nearly lost his driver. 

Every single one of Romain’s team was watching that footage as it was forcibly looped over the screens in the paddock and pit lane. Yes, you are glad he got out - of course, that’s the most important thing - but knowing that he did doesn’t make replaying that and seeing how small the margin by which he did really was any less upsetting.

If watching the crash means nothing to you, it doesn’t mean that the people who are affected by it are weak. Everyone has a different understanding of things - you can not care what you’re watching or even think that it would be acceptable to watch a driver die but for the vast majority of people in the sport, neither of those things are considered ok.

[isitgintimeyet]

Just A Friend

AO3

Previous

Thanks for all the support. 

Thanks to @wickedgoodbooks for the beta

I’m on holiday next week so the  next chapter may be slightly delayed, but for now here’s...

Chapter 9: From Siblings to Safety Net

Jamie leads the way through the car park. I tread gingerly, the combination of unaccustomed high heels and uneven ground—a potentially lethal combination. He turns and notices my dilemma.

“Here,” he holds out his arm for me. I smile and gratefully take hold of his forearm until we reach the comparative safety of the marquee.

Once inside, Jamie pauses and looks around, trying to find his sister. I look around too, not that I know what his sister looks like, but I’m assuming, based on her brother, that she’ll be pretty easy to spot in the crowd.

The room is full with a steady stream of people moving swiftly towards the bar and rather less swiftly back to their tables carefully balancing bottles and glasses. I spot, through a break in the procession, Rupert sitting at a table talking to a petite brunette, who I assume is his wife Morag.

“Look,” I nudge Jamie and point towards the table. “It’s Rupert and—“

“Aye, so it is.” And he deftly negotiates our way through the maze of alcohol carrying individuals to the table.

Rupert and his wife stand up as we approach and he greets us enthusiastically, patting Jamie on the back and kissing my cheek.

“Nice tae see ye again,” he says, smiling.

“Good to see you too, Rupert.”

Jamie envelopes Morag in a huge bear hug. Is this the usual greeting for Rupert’s wife? I glance at Rupert but he’s totally unperturbed by this display of affection.

Eventually, Jamie stands up straight. “Claire, I’d like ye tae meet ma sister, Jenny. Jenny, this is ma friend, Claire.”

The intimate bear hug makes more sense now to me.

Jenny holds out her hand.“Nice tae meet ye Claire.” She smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“And you too, Jenny. Jamie has told me so much about you and your family. And those photos that you took, wow, they’re amazing.” I can hear myself talking over enthusiastically and force myself to shut up. It’s a habit I have when I’m nervous.

Physically, Jamie and Jenny couldn’t be less alike. With his curly red hair and tall stature, Jamie is some sort of Viking throwback, whereas Jenny’s straight brunette locks and petite, delicate features give her a fragile, almost doll-like quality. I feel like an Amazon standing next to her. As she continues to talk to her brother, berating him for his last minute appearance, I rack my brains. She reminds me of someone, but I can’t for the life of me think who.

Then it dawns on me. When I was a junior doctor working in Trauma and Orthopaedics, the matron there was a brunette too, whose air of fragility belied a rock hard will and determination. Her wards were run with military precision and, without ever raising her voice, it was clear that her command was absolute. She never shouted, she never belittled, but somehow everyone, even the consultants, knew exactly who was in charge. I get exactly the same feeling with Jenny.

A noise behind me rouses me from my contemplation and a large tray of drinks is placed on the table.

“Ian, man, did ye get me a drink?” Jamie laughs.

“But of course, and,” Ian turns to me. “I presume ye’re Claire. I took the liberty and got ye a gin and tonic—double, jes’ in case that was yer tipple. But it’s nae bother if ye dinna want it. I can go and get ye something else. I’m sure I can think of someone who will drink it.”  He nods his head towards his wife and mimics drinking with his hand

“Cheek of the man.” Jenny playfully slaps his hand down and smiles. This time the smile lights up her whole face.

“No, gin and tonic is great, thanks very much,” I accept the glass gratefully and take a sip. Well, maybe a little bit more than a sip, but it is much needed.

“Seeing as yer man there canna be bothered wi’ the introductions, I’ll have tae do it maself. I’m Ian, Jenny’s husband and it’s a pleasure tae meet ye,” His introduction is full of real warmth.

“I was jes’ getting ‘round tae it,” Jamie says mock defensively and grabs a pint from the tray. “Anyhow, sláinte, everyone. Here’s tae a good night.”

**********

During dinner, I sit between Ian and Jamie who has Jenny on his other side. Ian is an absolute delight. He listens to my stories with genuine interest, laughing in all the right places and regaling Morag and me with tales of his son’s antics (‘Wee Jamie, jes’ as mischievous as his uncle ever was’).

Once dinner is over, Jamie and Ian spot an acquaintance on another table and excuse themselves. Jenny shuffles over onto Jamie’s newly vacated chair.

“Havin’ a good time are ye, Claire?”

“Oh yes, thank you. Ian has been telling us about your children. They sound like real characters. Just adorable.” And here I am, back to my nervous over enthusiasm. Just like that matron years ago, Jenny has the ability to do this to me.

Jenny gives a tight little smile that doesn’t linger. “Can I be honest wi’ ye Claire?”

My heart sinks. When someone says that, it’s never good. I mean, they never follow that statement with ‘your hair looks lovely’ or ‘the way you handled that developmental dysplasia of the hip was excellent.’ It’s always a criticism. Although I’m not too sure what I’ve done for Jenny to feel the need for such honesty, but I’m guessing it involves Jamie in some way.

“I ken Jamie invited ye tae come tonight as friends, before he met Kelly,” she continues. “But could ye no’ have stood aside and let him bring her as a date? He said he’d already asked ye when I mentioned it to him. But if ye’re just friends ye could have.”

I don’t know what to say. What can I say that doesn’t cast Jamie in a bad light with his sister? Jenny clearly wants there to be something between him and Kelly, which, based on what Jamie’s told me, just isn’t going to happen, no matter how much Jenny pushes. And I’m somewhere in the middle of this.

Jenny looks at me and I don’t think I have to speak. My glass face is doing the work for me. “Ah, I see.”

I spy Jamie making his way back to our table. He hesitates slightly as Jenny’s steely gaze falls on him, before continuing.

Jenny shuffles back to her chair, and pats the now vacant seat between us. He sits down and glances at us both.

“Have ye got something tae tell me, bràthair?” Jenny begins.

“About what?”

“About why ye told me ye’d already asked Claire when I mentioned asking Kelly?”

Jamie turns to me, as Jenny carries on talking. “Claire didna say a word about it. She didna have tae.”

I smile apologetically at him, but say nothing and take a swig of wine. This is between Jamie and Jenny. I’m keeping well out of this.

He sighs. “Jenny, ye wouldna let it lie. Ye kept telling me I should invite Kelly. On and on ye were. I had tae do it.”

“Ye said the date wi’ Kelly was good.”

“If ye think back, what I actually said was that the food at the restaurant was good. I didna say the date was good. That wasna good. We had a nice meal, then we shook hands and said goodbye. I made no promises tae see her again.”

“But Kelly—“

“Jenny, it isna going tae happen no matter how much ye mither. Ye dinna always ken what’s best fer me even though ye think ye do.”

I feel a hand on my arm and turn to find Ian sitting next to me once more. He jerks his head towards Jamie and Jenny. “I find it easier tae jes’ let them get on wi’ it themselves. This is what they’re like, wi’ the bickering. They’ll sort it out, they always do. That’s brothers and sisters fer ye.”

That familiar pang hits me for a brief moment. Of course, I don’t know what it’s like, this familial bickering or teasing, safe in the knowledge that you’ll always have their love. And then it passes.

“I suppose you’re used to it by now?”

“After twenty five years, I guess so. They were jes’ the same as children. See?” Ian points to my other side. I turn to find Jenny tenderly patting Jamie’s hand.

“Sae, Claire,” Jenny leans across Jamie to talk to me. “I see ye’re still drinking that horse piss. What say we send Jamie tae get us all some real drinks? I take it ye like whisky?”

Jenny smiles, and this time it’s genuine.

************

After that brief sibling squabble has been sorted, the evening can only get better… I think. Actually, it does improve. The combination of good whisky and a friendlier Jenny, and I begin to really enjoy myself.

The disco has started and the dance floor is filling up, mainly with groups of women while the men sit on the sidelines only venturing up once copious amounts of alcohol have been consumed and the DJ starts to play the classics— ‘YMCA’, ‘Night Fever’ and ‘Dancing Queen’.

We stay at our table, chatting, our voices becoming louder as the dance floor fills and the dancers begin to sing along to some of the songs. The singing rises to a crescendo for the choruses then rapidly quietening at the lesser known verse lyrics.

“D’ye no’ want tae dance? Jamie asks, a bit reluctantly, it seems.

“No, I’m enjoying myself here,” I reply and watch the relieved expression appear on his face.

“Unless, of course, you do,” I add teasingly.

“It’s no’ really ma thing. I’m no’ much of a dancer. Rupert and Morag enjoy it though.”

We watch for a moment as Rupert tries out some John Travolta moves. I pick up my glass and notice that it’s empty. That seems to be happening a lot tonight.

“I’ll go and get some more drinks,” I announce to the table.

“Let me,” Ian jumps in.

“No, you’ve bought more than enough. I’ll get these. Same again?”

Everyone nods and passes me their empty glasses. Jamie makes to get up, but I shake my head. “I’ve got this. Relax.”

I weave my way through the tables and lean at the end of the bar, money in hand waiting to catch the eye of one of the bartenders. Judging by the size of some of the orders being placed, I resign myself to being stuck here for some time.

A man squeezes next to me, mirroring my position— elbows on the bar, ten pound note in hand. “Snap!” He laughs. “D’ye think we’ll be served before last orders?”

I smile politely and shake my head, all while trying to breathe through my mouth. Even at this stage of the evening, his aftershave is overpowering, applied with all the finesse of a fifteen year old boy. I try to edge away from him a bit, although I do risk disappearing from the bartenders’ line of sight. He shifts a little closer to me which makes me a bit uncomfortable. It might be perfectly innocent, he might just be moving to try and get served quicker. I don’t really want to challenge him if all he’s trying to do is catch the bartender’s eye.

“I’ve no’ seen ye ‘round the club afore,” I catch him glancing at my ringless left hand. “Are ye here with friends or…?”

“Friends.” I mumble, trying to make it clear I don’t want to start a conversation and I turn my head away from him.

I feel a slight touch on the skin of my upper arm. Whether deliberate or accidental, that combined with his closeness, makes me feel even more uneasy .Instinctively I take a step back and my heel lands on someone’s foot.

A familiar voice whispers in my ear. “Oof, Sassenach, yer shoes are lethal,” and an arm snakes over my shoulder, pulling me towards his body.

In a louder voice, clearly aimed at the pest next to me, Jamie continues. “Ach, love, thanks for saving ma place at the bar. Tell ye what, sweetheart, now I’m here ye can go and sit down and I’ll get the drinks.”

He gives me a slight peck as I smile at him gratefully and make a quick exit. Walking back to the table, I can still feel the roughness of his stubble against my cheek. I stop myself reaching up to touch my face, and shove my hand into my pocket instead.

I sit down next to Jenny. “Jamie’s getting the drinks in.”

“Aye, he thought ye needed tae be rescued from that wee dickhead at the bar.”

“Yes, a timely intervention. Your brother’s a good pal.”

“Aye, he says ye’re good friends.” Jenny stares at me, as if searching for something deeper that I’m hiding.

“Yes, that’s it. Good friends.” I answer, confident that my face will tell the same story.