#ev x helen x jeanie

[bcolfanfic]

could we hear more about side b poly ev/helen/jean

ohohoh you sure can!!!

el dorado is side a and the lil helen jamie scene i posted is referencing some stuff happening when helen was staying with her after nash died and croz cheated. but ah. side b.

- croz ): god. my heart. sweet boy. you shoulda called someone. your girl and your beautiful kids needed you ):

- after the funeral ev and helen more or less move jeanie and the kids into their house

- it’s supposed to be temporary, they just don’t want her to be her alone. her family and croz’s folks are both unsupportive. their kids get along and *they* love her so. it’ll be good. temporarily. (:

- except they play real fast and loose with temporary and 6 months go by and she’s still there and sleeping in their bed more frequently and nothing *happens* but her being in there safe with them just makes sense.

- side b helen and jeanie have the same history they do in side a so i think shit happens between them first. and it’s not something anyone really blinks much about. they’re best friends. it was comforting when it was helen with the dead husband. ev certainly doesn’t care.

- but ev. ev ev ev. ev, who has more or less been parenting the crosby kids the last almost year. ev, who holds little baby simon and prays that he remembers his dad’s face. ev who sits up with jj and rebecca when they can’t sleep and tells them stories about croz and sleeps on the floor when april is scared of the dark.

- ev who hasn’t ever been hesitant to kiss jeanie on the head when she’s having a bad day with everything and tell her she’s a good mom. tell her that croz would be so proud of her and that /he’s/ proud of her.

- of course she falls in love with him. who wouldn’t.

- but realizing that obviously scares the shit out of her and there’s a whole lot of projection bickering for a minute.

- snaps at him for disciplining rebecca telling him she’s not /his/ child and that maybe he’s getting his role here confused. but he kinda snaps back and is like if the kids are under my roof, i’m gonna do what croz would when they’re acting out. you’re welcome to leave if you don’t like it!

- he’s projecting from a place of Feeling things too <\3

- jeanie snaps back all ohhh so you’re kicking me out, i’m so sorry for interrupting your PERFECT little life with your wife. you two can get back to what you were doing then and i’ll go.

- starts getting choked up which breaks ev’s heart because he’s like ): i don’t want you to leave if you don’t want to leave. but you’ve been at my throat lately and you gotta be honest about where this is coming from. if you live here, we communicate like adults.

- and she gets spooked and bolts upstairs <\3

- helen coming back from the store just in time to hear the bedroom door slam: 😁😄😀😧 ?????

- is immediately ev what did you do and he’s like ???!? throws his hands up all hell if i know! (you do know ev lmao you also need to communicate)

this is getting long but i can continue in another post if ppl are interested !

[bcolfanfic]

PLEASE CONTINUE THE SIDE B POLY HCS IM BEGGING !! i’m obsessed with them your honour, they’re all the lomls

gonna pick up literally right where we left off. they’re the lomls too <3

- obvious helen goes right upstairs to check on her. breaks her heart when she realizes that a) the room she took off into was the master bedroom and b) the poor girl is hysterical.

- jeanie has been bottling up all these new feelings for so long and that fight with ev just made it allllll boil over.

- misses croz so much it makes her physically ache. would do anything anything anything for him to be alive and to have their old life back. still wakes up screaming imagining him alone and scared in the fucking woods when he did what he did.

- baby simon was little but not so little that he wasn’t so horribly confused when daddy was just gone. poor little love. for a while he sobbed himself sick when ev held him because yeah he was tall with facial hair but. he wasn’t daddy. wasn’t the tall guy with facial hair that was just holding him a week ago, where’d he go??? when’s he coming back???

- but going back isn’t possible. croz as dead as dead and she’s been living with ev and helen and all their kids and helen loves her to death that was never a question. but now when she looks at ev she sees something different that makes her feel ill with guilt. and even feeling ill about it doesn’t make it go away <\3

- helen gets her at least calmed down out of hysterical panic attack mode. sitting so close to her she’s almost in her lap wiping her face with a tissue herself being so gentle begging her to talk to her.

- “really wish i could read your mind but i’ll be honest, i can’t. which means you gotta tell me what’s going on, hm?”

- jeanie is still just so quiet and sniffly and i mean very fucking fair because where do you even start.

- finally says something to the effect of “helen i can’t be here, it’s not- it’s not fair to you ev is okay with us but i can’t steal your husband. don’t think being in this house is doing anything but making everyone confused,”

- helen knows what she means but kinda plays dumb for a second and is like. do you mean the kids or do you mean you? still all gentle soft voice tucking her hair behind her ear.

- helen and ev have had a few very small conversations about everything but. ev has been cagey about it bc he doesn’t really know what to do with all this either. good thing they both have helen <3

- jeanie just kinda looks at her all sad and says she doesn’t know.

- “doesn’t have to be confusing if we don’t make it confusing” vs “hel you’re being ridiculous, ‘s not- it’s not right we can’t- it’s bad enough that you and me- it wouldn’t work the way you’re thinking it would.”

- but ughaaaa. helen just looks at her with those big eyes that made nash, ev and jeanie love her so much. no one has the heart to say no to that face.

- don’t know if we don’t try, we can try at least can’t we? doesn’t mean we have to keep trying if it’s not working,

- jeanie and ev table talking about everything the two/three of them until the next day but. jeanie ends up in bed with them at night anyways. let’s helen really kiss her in front of ev (ev never wanted to freak her out before so outside of just like casual smooch here and there during the day he stayed out of what her and helen did alone) for the first time. let’s helen make her feel good and let’s ev stroke her hair and kiss her forehead telling her she looks so pretty like this and well. that’s how the ‘trying’ of it all’ starts.

[bcolfanfic]

i find the dynamic between jeanie and ev so interesting in side b, were they close before she moved in with them or was it a slow gradual process as she became apart of his and helen’s life

i think i’ve said before that there’s parts of the croz fic i want to go back and rewrite to line up with where i ended up taking some of these headcanons. one of those parts being that the crosbys in my mind live in new york at that point, not iowa. where ev/helen also moved from west virginia not long before they had sawyer. so helen and jeanie and ev and croz saw a looottt of each other since they lived close by.

helen and jeanie didn’t ever truly revisit what happened between them during the war** while croz was still around. but it wasn’t a secret either and no one particularly gave it a lot of thought. ev had a lot of respect for jeanie. thought she was a good mom, a good wife to croz and a really good friend to helen. would tell her she looked pretty when the girls were going out together or when they were going on double dates. and she’d tell him he looked nice too but not anything past that. jeanie had a lot of respect for him too, especially bc she was close with helen before she got with him. he makes her best friend happy and that means everythinggg to her. sometimes when the four of them were tipsy she’d knock his shoulder, grab the back of his arm and affectionately bug him. but helen would do the same thing with croz and that was just normal for their dynamic.

ev always had a soft spot for her for all the above reasons ^ and then when she’s moved in with them when all their lives have been turned upside the soft spot just. grows. a lot. he feels like having any hesitancy to comfort her when she’s having a moment and helen is busy would just be wrong. which makes a lot of those little lines blur quickly. he watches her breathing when it’s one of the nights (before the Big line is crossed) that she crashes out in bed with them and just. feels like he owes it to his friend to make sure she’s okay and taken care of. in a way those feelings are even more intense than they were w/ helen when they first got together. bc he knew nash yeah. but croz was his best friend.

ev a) has a big heart and b) is a mama’s boy that has so much respect/admiration for the women in his life that it knocks him out. both of those parts of him combined with everything going on make him developing feelings for her somewhat inevitable.

**like in side a- helen went to stay with her when nash died and not long after that is when all the shit with croz cheating happened. there was something said in passing by jeanie about how maybe being with a woman would be easier and…it led to some experimenting while jeanie wasn’t sure if she was going to ask for a divorce or not. when she decided she was going to stay with him it ended completely amicably. and like i said it’s not something they revisit till post-croz passing when emotions are running so high again.

[bcolfanfic]

"baby simon was little but not so little that he wasn’t so horribly confused when daddy was just gone. poor little love. for a while he sobbed himself sick when ev held him because yeah he was tall with facial hair but. he wasn’t daddy. wasn’t the tall guy with facial hair that was just holding him a week ago, where’d he go??? when’s he coming back???"

oh my god this is so heartbreaking ): poor little love is right. and it breaks my heart for croz as well because he must have been hurting so deeply to leave his family like that. would love to hear more about the crosby kids in this side b and the parenting side of things with jeanie being with ev and helen.

putting my answer to this below a read more line since i ended up talking about croz/his suicide in the first paragraph. nothing graphic, just heavy emotional talk.

side b croz makes my heart ache. he was hurting so much, and the little part of him that could still be rational at the end did feel horrible about leaving his family. it's a terribly unfortunate truth that these decisions *aren't* rational. he did try so so hard to keep his shit together and stay for jeanie and the kids. there wasn't a second that he didn't love them more than anything. not one </3

poor sweet kids. the stuff with baby simon is so heartbreaking because he knows croz is /gone/ but he's still too little to even understand "daddy died" so he's just. confused. april is old enough to know he died but too little to understand that it's truly permanent. which is frustrating to rebecca and jj because they *do* understand more fully that he isn't coming back. and it's hard for them that they can't make april understand that. always a lot of yelling and crying between the three of them when sweet little april asks one of the grown-ups if he's coming back today </3

blakely kid wise it's just wyatt and sawyer for a while. wyatt is around jj's age and knows that before ev he had a dad that isn't alive anymore. very earnestly tries to make jj feel better by talking about that and it doesn't really land when they're little kids but the understanding does bond them more when they're older. sawyer lovess jeanie. was already such a mama's boy with helen and now there's two of them?!?! always makes jeanie smile on the hard days how much that sweet little guy adores her. sawyer is the perfect combination of the best of ev and helen, and it shows.

when ev and helen do eventually have their third kiddo that's a girl rebecca is nottt happy. gets real upset telling everyone she doesn't understand why they need a girl when they have her and april. sweet baby. she loves ev and helen so much and loves their little family life as unconventional as it is. takes some time for her to get it in that sweet little head that her nor april is being replaced by the new baby girl.

it's not the easiest situation in the world to navigate as they truly start a life together that isn't just surviving in the aftermath of croz passing. a whole lot of people don't get it and even ev's folks that are the most supportive parents on earth are a bit ??? when he finally has to fill them in. the other guys are as understanding as they can be about it and supportive even if they don't fully get it either. "growth" for jamie is keeping his stupid wise crack about ev ~collecting widows~ to himself and benny. he misses croz terribly and knows ev is a good guy. and when the shock wears off with ev's folks they're as loving and kind towards jeanie and the crosby kiddos as they rightfully deserve. jeanie is a sweetheart, it's impossible for any parental unit with hearts to not wanna love and watch out for her.

they all love each other. that counts for something <3

[bcolfanfic]

bored and spent like an hour and a half on this lmao that’s my girl though <3

[bcolfanfic]

I'm very intrigued with the whole Ev X Helen relationship you're putting together. The description of her abusive relationship between (I'm guessing) Nash and Ev is eye-opening -- looking forward to future installments about Ev and Helen.

yes nash predates fuckface! it’s talked about in her background HCs that are somewhere in my ev x helen tag but they grew up together in that little west va town and were high school sweethearts. got married very very young, had wyatt and wyatt was just shy of a year old when nash was killed overseas. i still have to nail down the war timeline w/ everything. but there’s still a pretty big chunk of time between that, and the war being over/ev getting sent to west va/helen getting involved with fuckface when wyatt is a toddler.

i’m working on a longer post about her life right after nash died, but tldr she took wyatt and went and stayed with jeanie & the crosby kiddos for a while immediately after. her best friend in the whole wide world <3 met her bc they were in a unit spouses fb group and started talking bc they both had little babies.