#old men being terrified of gross girl stuff

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 23rd July

Hmmm. In some ways we've got two sides of the same coin this week. Of course, the coin is just "men being terrible", and one side of it makes for a much more appealing song than the other. Still, there's definitely a thread running through these songs, with two different men who need dumping, pronto!

Living Doll - Cliff Richard (peaked at Number 1)

Of the two songs, this week, this is by far the better known. It's Cliff's first ever Number 1, it hung around for a whopping 15 weeks, and I'd say even nowadays a fair few people could hum a bar or two for it, or at least name it as a Cliff hit. It's not the first one you'd think of, you know, but it's there, in the public consciousness, nonetheless.

Unfortunately, compared to a lot of his previous non-Number 1 hits, it's pretty toothless, without any of the bite of, say, Mean Streak. The Shadows are credited (though they're still technically going by "the Drifters") but they've been given precious little to do, and it shows - there's none of the sharpness or edge that previous Cliff hits have, just a sea of rather nondescript strumming, which Cliff sings along with gamely, but already sounding very much like he's on autopilot. I think he's going for a hangdog sort of country-esque delivery, perhaps, except it mostly just comes off a bit bored. The pace is slower than usual, for Cliff, too, which doesn't help matters - it makes the song feel slow and mushy, but it never quite slows down enough to work as a ballad, either. It just ambles along a bit pointlessly, you know?

Of course, this could be salvaged, if the lyrics were good. But instead, the song sets its sights firmly on "creepy", with lyrics about how he's got myself a cryin', talkin', / Sleepin', walkin', livin' doll. This was apparently inspired by an ad the songwriter saw in the newspaper for a toy doll for children that could "kneel, walk, sit and sing". But that doesn't really make it less icky - especially when we get to the lines inviting you to take a look at her hair, it's real / And if you don't believe what I say, just feel. And then we stray from "kind of gross, as a metaphor" to "straight up serial killer stuff" as he sings about how he's gonna lock her up in a trunk / So no big hunk hunk can steal her away from me. Which is genuinely one of the most terrifying lines we've heard in this project so far. You're going to lock your girl up in a trunk for fear of other men stealing her? You were literally asking them to feel her up, just one line ago, Cliff! Neither of these are okay things to be doing or saying!

It's objectification at its most literal, a song about treating your girl like a literal toy made for your pleasure, with no mention of her having anything resembling agency or choice in the matter. She's a prop, no more, no less - in many ways, it's the same kind of trope that Aqua will play with a full 38 years later in the song Barbie Girl, except at least there's a bit of irony and a bit of playfulness, there. You get the impression that Cliff means it, here - or at least that he doesn't see anything wrong with it. Like I said, gross.

It was written for a film, Serious Charge, so I guess you have got the old "oh, but it's the character singing, not Cliff" defence, for whatever that's worth. He apparently plays a pretty minor role in it, though - it was his screen debut, and by all accounts a decent but not hugely well-known film, kind of melodramatic. It's notable, though, since we've not really seen British singers stars doing films, before. Sure, your Elvises and your Frank Sinatras have crossed over into film. But British artists haven't, until now. A trend that's going to continue? Or just another way that Cliff's trying to emulate his American peers? I guess we'll see if other British artists follow suit, or if it's just going to be Cliff making the leap to the silver screen...

Ugh, I'm still listening, and it gets creepier every listen. Let's hope the next song has something more fun in store...

Lipstick On Your Collar - Connie Francis (3)

Okay, if you've read any of my other posts on Connie, you will know that I love her. She's seriously been one of my favourite discoveries so far, with her sass and her youthful energy. She's had a few minor missteps - notably, I haven't enjoyed many of her slower songs - but give her an upbeat, angry song, and Connie really can do no wrong, in my books. And this? This song might just be Connie at her most bitingly accusatory. It's like if Who's Crying Now were just a little bit more vicious in its takedown of its addressee, and I am here for it.

It's a story song, which are always fun, and the setting for this one is just deliciously dated, as Connie picks the story up when you left me all alone at the record hop / Told me you were goin' out for a soda pop. Immediately I'm transported to a wholesome 1950s diner, lots of teens ordering milkshakes and putting dimes into the jukebox and drinking coca cola through bendy straws. Except all is not well with Connie and her date, as she notes how you were gone for quite a while, half an hour or more. And just what did Connie spot? Lipstick on your collar told a tale on you / Lipstick on your collr said you were untrue. So, Connie's man's been cheating. Except it gets worse, as he tries to convince her it's hers - a stupid move, since it's the wrong colour. And then, the vindication and the betrayal as who walked in but Mary Jane, lipstick all a mess / Were you smoochin' my best friend? Guess the answer's yes!

Through all this drama, Connie manages to sound suitably pissed off, but also like she's kind of revelling in revealing all the juicy, salacious details, detective style, catching her man out in a bare-faced lie, before finally gearing up for a big, public dumping: bet your bottom dollar, you and I are through. Yeouch! It's messy, and it's trashy, but there's something pettily satisfying in it all, the way Connie completely takes her man apart, with a sort of catty side-swipe at Mary Jane, that shameless tramp (!) It's very reality TV, very gossipy, and I'm not ashamed to say that I could eat it up with a spoon. I just enjoy the way it unfolds, and how utterly un-heartbroken Connie sounds. She's just done with this dude, and you know, I can't even blame her. What a cad!

It also helps that it's a pretty catchy number, and well made. Connie can still sing, you know, and I'd even say that the guitar solo here, despite very much not being the point of the song, works better than Cliff's did. It's pacy, and it's got a lot of energy. what's not to like?

Like I said, two songs, two men being just the worst. Except while Connie's man of the moment is clearly meant to be a bit of a melt, Cliff seems to have stumbled into it accidentally. I try to give songs from the 1950s a bit of a pass, because if I objected every time there was some sort of outdated sentiment, I'd be having a lot less fun with this project. But even for the 1950s, something about "my girlfriend's a literal doll, and I'm gonna let you touch her hair, then lock her in a trunk" is a step too far. Plus it's got none of the verve of Connie's song, which only compounds the issue. Give me the trashy drama, any day.

Favourite song of the bunch: Lipstick On Your Collar

[detectivejigsawpines]

An Awkward Period...of Life

Mabel has her first period.

This will not end well.

“Okay, okay, best two out of three.”  Stan curled one of his hands into a fist, resting it on his other outstretched palm.

“Grunkle Stan?” Mabel’s slightly quivery voice called from the bathroom, “Did you get them yet?”

“Not yet, sweetie!” he called back, before turning back to face his brother.  “Ready?”

Ford nodded, and held up his own fist.  “On three.”

In unison, they lifted their fists and pounded them three times, before lowering them with the hands curled into different shapes.

“Ha, rock beats scissors!” Stan said triumphantly.

“Don’t get excited, we still have to play one more round.”

“Okay, okay.  One, two, three!”

There was a long pause, before Ford said, “...How about three out of five?”

“Nope, too late, you’re goin’ to the store!”  Stan spun Ford around, and began shoving him towards the front door.

“Stanley!  I’m just a scientist, I can’t-”

“Ya gotta do it for Mabel.”

“Then why don’t you buy them?!”  Ford’s boots were doing their best to dig into the floor.

“Like you said, you’re a scientist, so you’ll be better at figuring out which ones she needs.”

“What about Dipper?  We should send him instead!”  Ford grabbed the doorframe just as they reached it, all six fingers digging in for dear life.

“Ya think I didn’t think of that already?  He made himself scarce as soon as he heard Mabel yelling about having blood on her sheets.”

Ford sighed wistfully.  “He truly is a brilliant young man.”

“I know, right.”  Stan began trying ineffectively to pry Ford’s hands loose from the doorway.

He was caught off guard, however, by Ford abruptly turning and putting him in a headlock.  “You know what, Stanley, change of plans: how about you go?!”

A meaty elbow was driven into his stomach.  “Never!!!!”

The struggle was interrupted when they heard a voice from behind them ask, “Uh…do I even wanna know?”

Wendy, clearly there to help run the gift shop while Melody was out of town, was standing in the living room, giving the old men a very confused stare.

Stan and Ford looked at each other, before Stan cleared his throat and pulled free from Ford’s grasp.

“Um.  We were just-um-”

Ford chimed in.  “Mabel has just experienced her first…um-” the tips of his ears turned scarlet- “and one of us needs to go to the store and buy her-”

Wendy rolled her eyes, and pulled a pink and green package out of her backpack.  “Say no more, dudes.  Where is she?”

“Bathroom.”

As coolly as you please, Wendy went over and knocked.  “Mabel?  It’s me.  Can I come in?”

A slightly tearful voice answered, “Uh-huh.”

She stepped inside and closed the door behind her; a minute later there was the sound of running water, and the r-r-r-rip of a packet being opened.

Stan and Ford looked at each other, and then retreated to the safety of the couch.

*****

After a while Wendy came out, and went upstairs, coming back with some of Mabel’s clothes; another minute passed before the door finally opened all the way, and Mabel came out, looking at them with embarrassment and carrying her previous clothes in the crook of her arm.

Stan winced.  “...You doing okay, pumpkin?”

She nodded.  “Uh-huh.”  Then she brightened.  “Guess this means I can start wearing my ‘I’m a Woman Now!’ sweater!”

Ford made a sound like he was choking on air.

Wendy just laughed and ruffled her hair.  “Way to own it, kid.  Since this is your first time, the flow-” both men squirmed uncomfortably- “shouldn’t be too bad, but if you start cramping just get some ibuprofen and a heating pad, and if you decide you wanna try tampons instead, let me know.”

“Okay!  Thanks Wendy, you’re the best!”  And after a quick hug, Mabel skipped off towards the laundry room.

Stan was pretty sure he heard Wendy mutter as she finally headed for the gift shop, “Men are such babies.”

****

Sorry if feels a little out of character for Mabel to be uncomfortable instead of excited about this; my reasoning is that the first time is an uncomfortable experience for anyone, especially someone who's afraid of growing up now that she knows how much of a bed of roses it isn't.

The fact that she's surrounded by men who are panicking about it does not help.

[golbrocklovely]

I feel like every girl knows that Colby isn't interested, they just want to see it for themselves or have this disillusion that he's gonna get changed if they have sex once or several times

Tbh i don't buy the first relationship story anymore, how he can't get over it. It's just an excuse to not open himself up anymore to any girl until a certain point. Just admit it straight away and stop with that story cuz I'm tired of it and no one's gonna keep believing that u still think about that certain person so much that u can't move on with ur life

i honestly think it's the mindset of "i can fix him" which i think a lot of women feel like is something they can do to "broken" men. when in reality, you don't exist to fix ppl. you are not a therapist. it's not your job.

take it from someone who's thought like that before lol

and as for his past love/ex gf, this is all gonna be speculation bc he honestly never talks about what fully happened but here's what i believe happened: i think he's not hung up on the girl, i think he's hung up on the things he did in the relationship, or what happened to him. the couple times he's talked about his past relationship, he goes heavy on the fact that he was too clingy, and he was the one that would fall apart when plans were cancelled. he always makes it seem like he did too much, and she didn't seem to do anything wrong. it was always a him problem. i think what happened is he fell madly in love with this girl, and she just… didn't love him the same way he loved her. and bc the love wasn't reciprocated, he ended up looking desperate and clingy and over-protective when in reality, he was just in love with someone that didn't love him back the same way. sure, maybe he did take things too far. that's perfectly possible and probably also true. but i think he's embarrassed by how he acted in the relationship, but not bc he actually had gross behaviors, so to speak. i think he's more embarrassed for maybe not realizing how not interested she was in him, or how he was giving 90% to her 10%.

i mean, he literally has said he doesn't want to fall for someone like that ever again unless it's his wife. that means he was basically ready to marry this girl, which is insane to me for a number of reasons.

for example: colby clearly cares about appearances (both literal and general), i mean that's why he hates looking back at old videos. but you would think that if looking back at old videos makes him cringe, he would a) stop doing that and/or b) moving forward, not act in a way that makes him uncomfortable, right? instead he doesn't do that. he continues the cycle. and not that that's a bad thing, but either way he loses if he doesn't change. he either has to learn to pretend to be someone he's not, or learn to not get embarrassed by stuff like that. both take time and internal work, and one is clearly the better option than the other. and i think that goes for his past relationship.

i don't think he really started to get over the relationship OR work on himself until 2019; which i think is why that was the most depressing year for him. i mean, that's when we got the balcony tweets, that's when he talked about staying on his couch for days on end, ect. and god knows there are a ton of layers to who he is as a person that maybe need to be addressed on top of the relationship issues he has.

and now, he goes for girls that are already very interested in him, that way he doesn't have to worry about them ever falling out of "love" for him. and then on top of that, he has one foot in the door, one foot in the grave. so, in the very rare occurrence they do stop being into him, he's already gone to begin with. forever ago, i saved this one post he liked on insta that was a tweet of his: you can't miss what you forget with a meme attached that said "scared of ppl leaving you? leave them first". and i think that perfectly describes colby. he's terrified of not being wanted (again) so he only goes after girls that want him more than he wants them. that way he can leave if things get weird, and on top of that, he doesn't have to commit in the first place bc it wasn't that serious to begin with. does he do this on purpose? i don't think so, or i don't think he fully realizes what he's doing when he messes with girls that might fall for him. i also don't think it's his intention to make a girl fall for him, i think that just kinda happens naturally.

slight side tangent, but i've always felt that ppl who rely heavily on casual hook-ups and flings and never settle down are most likely hurting from something in their past and try to use sex to fix it, or at the very least to number the feeling of it. not saying that's every person that likes a casual relationship. do whatever makes you happy. but, why are you doing it? is it bc of the lack of commitment or being scared of it? is it bc you don't think you deserve a loving, full-body relationship? just some food for thought.

and as for colby, i think to some degree he sees the casual hook-up life easier for him. he gets to stay emotionally detached, and he gets to have fun too. it's a win win. but… i don't think in the long run for him it's gonna be. but that's how i think.

again, totally not shaming those that like hook-ups and what not. as long as you're healthy and safe about it, do it. i don't judge. i'm just more stating what i've observed over the years. but if you disagree, totally fine. god knows i'm probably not right lol

[hazel2468]

Okay you know what? No.

I am a tired queer who has been in fandom and art-sharing and lit sharing spaces for the last 15 years of my life. More than half of it. And I am fucking TIRED. (Under a cut cuz this got long but FUCK I am tired of this).

I understand that it’s at the discretion of each individual site to allow and not allow things. That’s fine. I understand that people may be uncomfortable with certain content allowed on certain sites. That is also fine.

What I am NOT fine with is a site that proclaims to be trying to make a “safe space for users” banning certain content because enough fandom puritans whined about it and brow-beat them into doing so.

Now, before anyone decides to get on my ass (I am too tired for your bullshit), my stuff is pretty damn tame. I keep the art I post tame. I don’t draw extreme fetish art- it’s not something I’m into. So take your stupid ass accusations and shove them, I don’t have time.

When a site proclaims to be a space built for users and creators. And then decides to ban a certain kind of content- content that is not illegal (so not real images of people or anything like that) but is “icky”... That tells me that this is a site I cannot trust.

I cannot trust that this site will always deem my work- my really rather tame adult works- as “good” enough to stay on the site. Whenever a site decides to ban something because it is “icky” or they personally find that thing morally objectionable, I am fucking catapulted back to what happened to Fanfiction dot net. And what happened here on tumblr. And what I have watched happen all over the internet for the last ten or so years.

Shit is being sanitized. Content is being removed because it’s “icky” or people think it’s “wrong”. And you may well feel that way, and you know what? That’s FINE. But to say that because you think something is morally objectionable or gross it shouldn’t be allowed at all ever?

I don’t trust that. And I don’t trust you. Because that kind of rhetoric NEVER stays put where you think it will. It never stays put on the “gross kink porn” that you want it to. It moves, it seeps into the cracks, it slowly covers everything else. And it is NEVER you that decides what it touches. It is ALWAYS people in power who want to silence marginalized voices. When they decided to ban adult NSFW content on FF.net, it was about getting rid of “obscene” content. So, of course, a bunch of queer works got hit. Gone. On tumblr, the push to ban “obscene content” and porn? Queer creators got hit. And the porn bots are still fucking here.

I am a twenty-seven year old queer Jew. I have spent my entire fucking life being told that my existence is dangerous and corrupting. I remember vividly someone who told their kid to stay away from my father, because he is a Jewish man, and Jewish men “all hunt children and young girls”. I remember vividly being ten, and watching my uncle tell my mother that she shouldn’t allow me to attend my day camp, because one of my counselors was a lesbian and “lesbians show porn to kids and corrupt them.” I remember so fucking vividly telling someone I thought was a friend that I was bisexual, and him telling me that I was a “fucking pedophile” because all queer people are and that I should “stay away from the kids”.

To put it simply- I do not trust anything that is proclaimed to “protect the children”. I do not trust ANYTHING that proclaims to “remove the obscene”, because it is NOT us who decides what is and is not obscene. It is never us. It is ALWAYS people who want to silence us, people who look at a father picking his daughter up from school, people who look at a counselor at camp patching a skinned knee, people who look at a terrified girl coming out, and see predators in our mere existence. I have so much more trust for people who are into “weird” shit who mind their damn business than I do for people who seek out art and literature and creators who make said “weird” shit to yell at them and tell them they are corrupting children or corrupting people or being “immoral” and therefore evil.

[djemsostylist]

Of Queens and Trash

Here’s the thing. SCK has been on a downward trend since 13. The breakup was long, getting together again was tiring, the amnesia plot was poorly handled and the mess that came following his recovery was, well, a mess. The necessary break for covid gave us a chance for a fresh start for Edser. All the bad stuff in the past, and a focus in the last episodes of them being able to finally fulfill all the promises they had not been able to. After all, this was a story that, at its core, was about two people who met and fell in love and who, no matter what, chose to be together. Invisible handcuffs. And with the return of the OG writer, it seemed we might finally get that. After 39 episodes of angst and only 7(?) of real togetherness, surely it was time? Forget the pain of the past, and start with Edser navigating their world together.

And then the trailer dropped. And all of a sudden, all the people who had spent months eviscerating Serkan for behaving badly in the 30s were celebrating this new plot, the “great angst” and Eda “being a Queen.”

For me, I can’t get over the hiding of the child. It's a hardline deal breaker. I don’t think it matters who writes it, I think it's an awful plotline. No matter how "good" the trailer looks or moments seem, I will remember that I was watching a show about two people who loved each other and never wanted to be apart, about a man who learned how to open his heart, and this ruined it all.

Now, I think it's worth noting that my hard line, in this particular case, is in response to Edser, if that makes sense. I’m not hardline, “if this is in a story I’m not watching”. If it works for the characters and story because that is the type of story being told, then fine.

I don't subscribe to the woke feminism brand of "all women are Queens and all men are Trash" which seems to be a trend of late (and not just in fandom). I think people are people and people are generally imperfect but also trying. I don’t think women, simply by virtue of carrying a child, get full say in what happens to the child, regardless of the father’s wishes. I'm not fond of a “hiding a kid storyline”, and while I get the whole "my body my choice" style of arguing, it took two people to make the baby. Two people get a say in what happens. I get you are growing the kid, but you didn't spontaneously conceive.

For me, Edser being apart and/or hiding a kid is a hardline. It doesn't fit with the characters as I know them and it doesn't fit with the storyline. And look--I hated the amnesia plot. I thought there were a literal million ways this could have been done better, but it's what we got. So for everyone suddenly defending this new plot, despite it making about as much sense as Eda getting married to make Serkan remember her, then that means everything goes. No blaming writers or ignoring canon...everything has context and meaning now. And since “it's realistic” is also a common refrain, then fine. Let’s go realistic.

Imagine being in a plane crash. You wake up, you have clear physical/mental blocks. For someone who likes to be in control, that's terrifying. You have a ring on your finger with a woman's name you don't know, and an entire year missing. You call the one person you know will come (since your parents and friends are useless) and she comes and tells you a story that jives. You can't remember shit and you keep getting flashes and your hands won't work, so you take what she tells you, because why would you have any reason to doubt? It’s not like you can remember anyway, and trying to remember hurts.

You finally go back home, and you recognize nothing about your own life. Friends, family...everything is different. Your mom is out, your dad is gone, your best friends are married. You don't even live in the same house, you have people working in your company you don’t know--even your dog is gone. And then you have a hysterical woman throwing pictures in your face of a man you don't recognize and your brain is still foggy and all your friends and family seem to be shrugging their shoulders at you.

You're terrified and alone and all you get is some vagueness about an epic love story and too much emotion and all you want to do is hide. From everything. Plus your heart is doing this thing every time the girl is near and you think you might be dying maybe and remember how your brother died?

So, the girl kisses you, you literally feel like you might be dying, and it's like naw. Fuck this. I'm getting back an ounce of control. So you propose to Selin. I mean you don’t love her and you barely want her but at least she is the same. At least she hasn’t changed, and at least she doesn’t stare at you with the weight of a million expectations that everyone else does. At least she doesn’t look at you and hope to see a man you can’t ever remember being.

But then the girl everyone claims is your soulmate is suddenly engaged to another man, and spends every moment after that claiming she hates you, she is over you, she is better off/happier without you, doesn't need you.

So it's like, okay, what is the truth. Your brain isn't helping, your friends aren't helping, she isn't helping. So you lash out, you close off, because really, what else is left. Your life isn’t your life, your mind isn’t your mind, you can’t even figure out what’s real and what isn’t. And she’s getting married and you want to die but she’s getting married and surely if she loved you she wouldn’t be doing this?

And then you get your memories back. Finally. Everything comes flooding back ,and it's a lot. You cope in shitty ways, you don't respond well, etc. You’ve returned from the dead twice, and everything feels just slightly off, but maybe you can make this work. At least you have her. After a few days, you’re feeling like your old self. You've got your memories, your girl, the possibility of the future you had snatched twice, and then BOOM. She rejects you, out of nowhere.

Won't talk, won't communicate, you have no idea what the fuck is happening. She’s crying and sad but also not leaving but also not staying and your brain can’t quite work things out but all you can do is promise that you love her, only her, always her, forever. Surely she must know that by now, right?

And then she tells you about the baby. You can't remember the sex of course, but then you find out it probably happened while your brain was fucked, and you barely have time to process this before oh yeah the love of your life is leaving you bc she would rather you raise a baby with your rapist. And suddenly you might be dying, again.

But you stop her. You stop her and even though she says she didn’t come back for you, why else would she have stayed? So, you finally get her back, she tattoos you on her finger and maybe just maybe everything will be fine when BOOM. Cancer. You aren't even over the other shit, and you have a fucking tumor. You are 30 years old, you've survived a plane crash, amnesia, and now you have a tumor. How many times can a person die?

And so you don’t cope well. You withdraw, you back away. Your brother died when he was young, you know what that does to a person. You know what it did to your family. You have this fear that curls around your heart that says “but what if she becomes my mother.” And she goes. She leaves and she takes your heart and your child (that you don’t even know about) and it’s like...fuck. Again. Because everyone leaves you, eventually. And somehow, it’s always your fault.

So, what I'm saying is, Eda endured a lot, sure. She was hurt. Their breakup in 14 was hard and I’m not denying that (although there is another post I could write about how since Eda never actually uses her words to tell him how she feels he can, perhaps, be understood in assuming that breaking up after barely being together would hurt but also that she would move on and live her life happily without him. Which I guess season 2 proves…) Losing Serkan to an accident/amnesia was hard, looking at the body of the man she loves but not seeing the man she loves must have been agony. But Serkan was fucking wrecked. So instead of choosing to write a plot where they both get to heal, where they both get to explore their pain and work through it together, we get Serkan who reverted to being a robot to cope with massive trauma and PTSD, and essentially is abandoned by everyone, again.

I guess what I'm saying is, if staying with him and supporting him when he was dealing with trauma was too much for her, then fine.That is very true for some people, and it’s certainly realistic. But I don't really think that jives with Eda and her character, and while it isn't a trauma competition, I'd still think Serkan comes out a winner here. Eda lost her parents, which was awful. She lost him, but she got him back. Twice. His trauma is losing his brother, being abandoned by his parents, a plane crash, amnesia, emotional manipulation/abuse and cancer. And then he gets punished by having his daughter taken away from him because he was having a hard time coping. Keeping a kid a secret isn't "protecting the child" it's punishing the father.

Tl;dr The direction they have taken the characters is gross for both mains, but if people are trying to justify Eda keeping his child from him because “he deserves it” or “she did what was best for her” then I think we maybe haven’t been watching the same show. Even if he said “I don’t want kids,” saying that to a hypothetical child is very different then being told “a baby is very much our reality.” Because that's the crux right? It's not that he decided he just didn't want to be a father ever, he's scared of having a family and losing them or of them losing him. And then she made that very fear be realized. Which is tragic and quite the opposite of what his life partner needed to do in that situation.

Bitte.

Thanks to @lolo-deli for the proofread and the final lines, you are the best. And for putting up with my uncontrollable ranting about this for days.

[emachinescat]

I've decided to watch MacGyver from the beginning (again), and I'm live tweeting the experience with every tweet tagged with #savemacgyver. I thought it would be fun to share my collected thoughts from the episodes on here as well.

My Thoughts on S1E2, "Metal Saw"

Seriously love the music in this show!

THE FREAKING BELT GRAB. You can tell they've done this kind of thing before.

I always love it when Jack and Mac have heart-to-hearts in the middle of super intense, dangerous situations. Like... it's sweet, but time and place, guys?

"Hi, I'm Jack." Nervous Jack is bebby.

Ew, sweat. Like, I know it's "realism" to have sweat stains on clothes in situations like these, but that's one bit of realism I can always do without. Gross.

Is that a bit of PTSD I'm seeing with Mac there on the couch? That's a kind of realism I can always get behind.

Riley finding Mac and Boze in that compromising position will never not be funny. "But he was on top." I love Riley more every episode.

Riley is a really good liar from day one.

I love the joke about ex-cons benefiting from being in relationships with stable people (i.e., fake boyfriend Bozer), then the immediate cut to Bozer with his whole arm inside the vending machine. Great stuff.

Love the Riley and Bozer bonding... right up until the cringe-tastic "Slide me your digits."

"Soon, I'm gonna woo you the same way Romeo would have wooed Juliet if they had Snapchat back in the Renaissance." Bozer and his surprisingly accurate pickup lines. The Renaissance did in fact start in Italy around the 14th century, when R&J is thought to take place.

I love all this psychoanalyzing of Mac. "Adapting is his survival mechanism." Also I'm living for Jack sticking up for Mac to Patti.

"This place has been searched by everybody and their dog." Is this a Texas thing or an old guy saying? Either way it's great.

Nothing beats the early days of Mac and Jack. Nothing. I wish we had gotten more interactions where Jack has to parent Mac: "Stop touching that. Look at me." ❤️❤️❤️

Jack so concerned about Mac and putting on the kid gloves = everything I could have ever asked for and more.

Jack has such a big heart. Poor guy, the look on his face when he sees that the reporter is actually Sarah...

Paperclip sculptures: When I first started watching the show, I thought they were lame. Now I miss them so much. Does that mean I've gotten lamer or that they were always cool and I was always lame?

"Closest time I ever came to coming home in a box." Oof. This line hits different now, and not in a good way.

I just love how Jack is this big tough ex-Delta who is so open about his emotions, particularly with Mac. And the way Mac reassures him... Their bromance is top-tier.

"Oh, like when they invented fire!" Another zinger.

Mac grabbing that giant cigar right out of that dude's mouth 😂😂😂

Love some good fight-scene Mac whump! 👏👏👏 And bar fights are always a blast!

Riley with the car door - such a boss. "What? You told me to stay in the car, and I did."

I've seen some people say they don't like S1 Mac's hair. I kind of dig it, to be honest. He looks like he's 5, but I love it.

Mac has made a lot of DIY cutting torches in his time, but they never get less impressive.

Jack trusting Mac to save Sarah while he keeps watch is just *chef's kiss*!

These early episodes have so many MacGyverisms. One right after the other. It's awesome.

I've never been a big fan of the dark either, Mac.

The first scene with Mac and Sarah is so beautifully tense and whumpy (he way he scrabbles for purchase, gasps for breath, that hitch in his voice as he tries to squeak out Jack's name) that I had to rewind and watch it again.

The hopeful disbelief in her voice: "Jack Dalton came for me?"

Sarah can kick some serious ass. I can see why Jack likes her. Too bad she's about to lead him on the rest of the episode, while actually having a fiance...

Sarah: *leans out of car, shooting her weapon with deadly, terrifying precision* Riley: I agree, this woman should not have kids. 😂 Everything that comes out of Riley's mouth is gold.

Riley asleep in the back of the car while Mac sits quietly and Jack and Sarah have a sweet moment is like mom and dad with the kids in the backseat. Except mom has a fiance and hasn't told dad yet, even though she's had ample opportunity.

Because seriously, Sarah. It's not that hard to tell him the truth. Giving him those big eyes and flirting with him, thinking he has a chance is just cruel. I have never liked her character, and this is why.

Mac and Jack giggling about Jack's crush on Sarah like middle-school girls is life.

"You're just gonna have to let that go." Man, I love their relationship.

Gosh, the scene where they find Luis always hurts so badly. These early episodes did not play around.

"There isn't always time to beg some suit back home for permission to do what's right." I'm not a fan of Sarah, but I love this line. Also, this is pretty much the synopsis of the whole show.

Riley's hair used to be so LONG! 😍

The loyalty of these three! And I love the OG trio so much.

This sleazy guy in the computer place makes my skin crawl.

Love how Patti's like, "Mac will be back by then." Not Jack, not Riley. Just Mac. Can we say teacher's pet? I actually lowkey love this though.

"Who is this guy?" Much like Doctor Who's "It's bigger on the inside," I never get tired of people being equally amazed and confused at the stuff Mac can do.

I've never been the biggest car chase junkie, but Barrios jumping over the car using that log in the road is pretty dope.

Sarah's rage is chilling. And Jack talking her down breaks me every time.

Again, I love the loyalty of our team. Everyone sticks up for each other, ending with Mac's totally unbelievable but still somehow 100% genuine "It was me. I forced them." TOO good.

First mention of Oversight this early. Just thinking about who it is that doesn't like unsanctioned ops just makes me 😤 I wonder if the writers knew who OS was at this point or if it was a later development.

I do wish we could have gotten more conspiratorial, approving Patti. She's so much better than expressionless, bland Patti.

The way Sarah never told Jack about her fiance Jeff (who is in fact a cinnamon roll but still a discount Jack) pisses me off. "I tried to tell you." Yeah, right. It's not that hard to say, "Yo, I'm in a relationship."

Jack NEVER should have found out about Jeff the way he did. There's no excuse.

It's not okay, Jack. She did you wrong. You didn't deserve that. Stand up for yourself, man. Gosh, he's so broken here, and I hate it.

"At least we have each other... Don't look at me. I know how weird it sounded." THESE TWO I SWEAR 🤣🤣🤣

Poor Mac. I do love how we get his obsessive tendencies so early in the show, and how they keep coming back, even as late as season 5. As someone with clinically diagnosed OCD, this makes me feel seen and I love being able to relate to my favorite character.

Love the found family antics at the end. Riley and Bozer making dinner while Mac and Jack play basketball? Perfection.

Lol, Bozer calling Riley a "caramel goddess" has such Schmidt/Cece vibes from New Girl, and I dig it!

Ew. More sweat. I know some people find sweaty men attractive, but that is NOT my vibe. I prefer my men clean and freshly laundered.

The way Riley glances back over her shoulder at them as she walks away, as if to make sure they're really there, that this is actually real!!!

"That's not even... that's true, actually. That's sad." Jack 🤣 Also, "I'm hungry." Big mood.

As a Grandpa Harry stan from the OG show, I eat up any mention of him in the new one. I just wish we'd gotten more of that wonderful man in the reboot. Still, I'll take what I can get!

I'd honestly forgotten how much I enjoy this episode! So solid, full of bromance, found family, and lots of good-natured bickering. Can't wait to watch the next one, hopefully tomorrow! In the meantime, please keep fighting for our show! Together we can #savemacgyver!

If anyone wants to join me in my re-watching and tweeting adventure, please do! It's my way to take about an hour a day in my busy, busy life to commit to the #savemacgyver movement. (And to enjoy my favorite show yet again!) If you do tweet as you watch, make sure to tag EVERY tweet with ONLY #savemacgyver so we can keep that hashtag trending! :)

Thanks for letting me share my (numerous) thoughts on this episode. This was really fun, and I hope it's something you all enjoy, too. I'd love to know what you all think of the episode in the comments! ❤️

[acloudofsparklingdust]

hi

I was also raised 7th day Adventist and I’m a closeted lesbian. I don’t hate my religion..because I personally didn’t have a bad experience with it in my childhood, but it clashes a lot with my beliefs and well parts of my identity. I’m feeling a bit helpless because this religion has been a big part of my life, a lot of strong women I look up to in my life are sda, and my local sda community is very wholesome. And by now you can sense my reluctance in letting it go. I’ve been coping by thinking I should find a gay-friendly sda church once I move out.. if I ever get married. What’s your journey been like? 🪴

Hey! I don't meet a lot of sda online, it's interesting to hear a different perspective. I'm gonna go into everything, bc my experiences with sda really shaped me, and yeah, it's been a wild, not so fun ride.

Basically I was baptized catholic as an infant, but my family isn't practicing catholic. My mom is very religious, and wanted me to have a good education... In Brazil, we have very poor public education in primary and secondary school, and the best schools are the private ones... Which are also religious schools. So I wound up studying in a sda school from kindergarten to highschool graduation.

So from a young age (4 yo) I was raised on my school's religious beliefs. I was really involved, and my childhood best friend was also sda, she lived a couple floors down from me and we'd hang out often, and her family would bring me to church on Saturdays (there was a sda church across the street from the apartments we lived in). I was the staple Christian child, I prayed every night and every morning, apart from all the prayer at school ofc. At 8yo they did a talk at school about the importance of baptism, and I asked my parents to allow me to be baptized as sda. My mom surprisingly didn't want me to be baptized again, not so young, but my dad said I should do what I wanted, so I was baptized again at the school's church. Literally the school had an auditorium for our weekly religion-related classes, which we called "chapel", and was basically like going to church – but mandatory, as it was during school time. This specific school also had a church built on the side, so yeah.

During my early childhood through preteen years I had no issues with the school's teachings and sda ideology. It was all I had ever known, my family encouraged religion and we'd also sometimes (rarely) go to catholic church. I honestly didn't even realize people could not believe in god until I was 12/13.

I had never really heard much about being gay, or being anti gay during primary school - I may have forgotten having ever heard it from teachers. I only heard about homophobia from peers, and so I knew that being gay was a bad, evil, gross thing.

When I was around 11/12 we moved to a smaller town, and I started at a smaller Adventist school. I was the only one in my small newly found friend group who was baptized, and moving was very traumatic for me, so I started becoming less active in church. I became severely depressed because of the move and other stuff at home, and turned to the internet for a distraction.

I first heard about atheism from a youtuber, and he was known for his controversial takes (he's pretty nasty, it's only gotten worse with time but anyway). I guess a mixture of depression, becoming a teen, having my rebellious phase, I started researching into it.

My religion teacher (we had "religion" classes, but they should really have been called "7th Day Adventism classes") was much harsher than the one I had at my first school. This was around the time that Twilight was a big deal, and I read those books sooo many times for comfort, I got into Harry Potter etc. Not long after I moved to this school, we had a religion class about how Harry Potter was inspired by the devil. My books were often confiscated during class, even if I had already finished my assignments and was reading quietly, even if they were just on my desk. Being super depressed and introverted, with very few friends, books were my refuge. Having the teachers look down on them and literally say they were devilish and evil really started to shift my view of the religion. I knew these were good books, I loved them. So how could they be evil?

I have a very strong memory of praying and praying once and begging Jesus and god to help me, to give me a sign, because I was terrified of losing my religion, of losing god. All I had learned my whole life was that god is good, god is love etc. How come god wasn't helping me, my family, through some of the worst times? How come I was alone?

At around 12/13 my cousin came out to me as bi, and soon after another cousin came out as gay. I barely fully understood what that meant, and the internet was again where I researched about it. I realized I liked girls at the time, but I never understood you could even be married to a woman, as a woman. Even though I knew I liked and was attracted to girls, I never let myself think too much on it. The school was pretty obvious about how marriage is between a man and a woman, our "sex talk" was a class with our religion teacher. Bio talk was split, the boys left the room so we could learn about female anatomy and stuff, and then the boys had the room, etc. Our religious teacher was very adamant about how one shouldn't have sex before marriage, and marriage was between a man and a woman so...

Honestly the basework they laid was to erase homosexuality. I didn't even grasp that I could be anything but attracted to girls, I didn't realize I could do anything about it.

And then in highschool, I guess bc we were old enough, they finally started being outspoken about their hatred of gay people. There would be snide comments from the Portuguese/Lit teacher, a disgusting talk from the History teacher about how gay men's sexual activity leads to anal incontinence, the Religion teacher saying it was wrong, comparing it to criminality, the school's vice principal giving us a lecture and making sure to hammer in the worst thing anyone could turn out to be was homosexual.

At this point I thought I was okay with my same sex attraction, I thought these things weren't getting under my skin. But then I learned about being trans, and I came to the conclusion that since I was into girls, I couldn't be a woman. I identified as trans from around 15-19. That was internalized misogyny and homophobia, that was me actually letting all the snide little comments settle deep in me, and shape who I was.

Anyway, at around 14 I was done. School was teaching us that bastard kids aren't blessed by god (me and my siblings are all "bastards" as my parents were never married). They told us couples who lived together and we're never married were not blessed by god, and implied they were bound to have issues for their sin.

I was a teenager living in a broken home, my father was emotionally abusive to me and my mother, and honestly at the end of the day I had to choose if I wanted to believe in a god who was supposedly love itself, yet didn't protect me and my young siblings and my mom... Or not believe in god at all.

Leaving the church and coming to terms with not believing in god was one of the toughest times in my life. My depression was in the gutter, I was self harming, I was struggling. I remember thinking of my cousins, whom I was very close with growing up, and knowing they were good people, so how could god not love then? I remember thinking of myself, of all I had done for the church, for god, and wondering how could god not accept me.

For me, the church was poison. I only saw hypocrisy, I saw people who judged each other, who cared more about their own concepts of right and wrong than being mindful of others. I saw my teachers who preached being kind, but ridiculed and laughed at other religions and those who believed them. When I was questioning religion, I always had sooo many questions for my religion teacher and so often she just told me that some questions were too big for us to understand, that only god could fully comprehend himself.

I'm proud to have come out the other side, but I won't lie. The community that church represents does seem so lovely and welcoming. I wanted to be a part of something, and church offered that.

But at the end of the day, there's no space for me, a lesbian, in there. They don't believe gay marriage is okay, they don't condone our "lifestyle". They think this is a choice we're making, and a bad one at that.

The childhood friend I mentioned earlier, who I used to go to church with, actually came out as a lesbian a couple years ago as well. Her sda family is giving her a really hard time. She's left the church, last I heard.

Honestly, my advice would be to find other community. Find community with other lesbians, people who can accept you unconditionally, who can offer you support without small print. That's what I'm trying to do.

I personally am against christianity for a lot of other reasons besides my very negative experiences. Maybe that's not you, and in that case I guess finding a church that is LGB friendly can be the answer. I couldn't judge anyone for choosing to stay, because like I said I really understand how nice it can feel, how it's like you belong in this community, how it can feel like the church is family.

But I really suggest deep soulsearching, because in my experience all they ever did for me was suck all my energy, all my devotion, and spit me out when I was never going to be the heterosexual good girl they expected me to be.

Sorry for the super long answer, I hope this helps some? If you wanna talk more in private you can hit me up through DMs, I'm very willing to listen and talk about it.

[jenniferdiazisatransgirl]

My Journey

Hey everyone, As you will likely know by now I am a trans woman and I live in the UK where lately trans people have been under significant scrutiny by the press, government and groups claiming to be acting in the name of feminism.

One of the arguments used when not directly attacking trans people, is that the medical institutions that help us in the UK fast track us through transition, even the NHS and I know so many trans people in this country that I can say without a shadow of a doubt this is not true. This includes a significant number who have been under the care of Tavistock and Portman, the under 18s service which was recently banned from giving its patients hormone blockers without the approval of the courts.

But anyway, I’m gonna share my story and how lengthy the process actually is and I will warn ahead of time this deals with suicidal ideation, gatekeeping, mental health, etc. So proceed with caution. This will also be a long post.

September/October 2008

I can’t remember which month but it was just before my 16th birthday, my Dad encouraged me to go to my GP regarding my gender dysphoria. I lived with my transphobic Mum at the time and had to go behind her back which was terrifying to say the least. I saw a doctor called Dr Moulsher and explained everything I was going through and his response was, “I don’t think the NHS funds any of this.” He was very ignorant on trans issues but it actually fortunately worked out in my favour, I got lucky, I know, but he just wanted me off of his hands.

I explained in Sheffield there was a GIC (gender identity clinic) operated by the NHS known as Porterbrook and he was just like, “Oh right. Well I’m more than happy to refer you but they likely won’t see you till you are 18.”

He asked me some questions, wrote up a detailed report and put in the referral to “get the ball rolling” as he worded it.

I was terrified at the time of the referral letter going to my home address though and he was like, “Well it needs to be sent somewhere.” So he agreed to send it to my grandparents address.

Later That Year

About a month or so later a letter arrived at my grandparents saying I had been accepted onto Porterbrook’s waiting list, explaining it is substantially long, that they wouldn’t be able to see me till I’m 18, etc. Your typical boiler plate stuff. Also as I understand it they don’t typical accept referrals for under 18s so I got lucky there. I remember getting so excited when I got my letter though, that I took it into school to show all of my friends.

Back then it was a requirement that I have a mental health assessment while on the waiting list though. So I returned to Dr Moulsher who I had become rather comfortable with and had made him my regular GP. He made a referral to the local mental health clinic and that was that.

January/February 2009

A letter came in the post asking me to ring to book at appointment at the local mental health clinic. I couldn’t ring from home cos my Mum would overhear and she was spying on me a lot at the time due to really being against the fact I’m trans. My school - which was a Catholic school shockingly enough - had already decided my home environment had become so toxic that I needed removing from my Mum’s care. They would be a process that wouldn’t be completed till June 2010 but yeah, it had got that bad. Anyway, I ended up asking the school receptionist if I could ring on their phone to book the appointment. That was booked for February.

The appointment was a weird one to say the least. The doctor asked me a quite a lot of questions but these are the ones that stuck out.

So with this first one, I am going to preface with that as far as I am aware, I am white and of white ancestry for all the generations I know of. However I do have remarkably curly hair that left to its own devices grows into an afro (or at least what looks like an afro). So the first set of questions that stood out; Dr: What’s your mother’s ethnicity? Me: White British.

Dr: Sorry, did you say Afro-Caribbean? Me: No. White British. Dr: And your father’s ethnicity? Me: White British. Dr: Sorry, was that Afro-Caribbean?

Me: Nope. White British.

Not really sure how you can get Afro-Caribbean and White British verbally mixed up but he seemed very adamant at least one of my parents must be Afro-Caribbean.

He then later goes;

Dr: Do you have a partner?

Me: Yes.

Dr: Are they male or female?

Me: I have a girlfriend.

Dr: Then you can’t be trans. You can’t be trans if you like girls.

Me: What about lesbians?

Dr: That’s beside the point.

Shockingly, in the end he agreed with my GP’s assessment that I am trans but Jesus, as you can probably guess from above that mental health assessment was a minefield of weird.

24th October 2010

In June 2010, I was finally removed from my Mum’s care at the age of 17 and placed in supported housing and on the date about I got a phone call from Porterbrook GIC on my 18th birthday no less, inviting me to my first appointment in November.

22nd June 2012

I legally changed my name and title by deed poll to Miss Lily Nichole Robinson.

22nd October 2012

I’d now been at Porterbrook for almost 2 years, had lots of appointments, most of which repeated the same mundane questions and it had started to feel like nothing was ever going to change. I had become increasingly depressed and suicidal and I had decided that if nothing had changed by my 20th birthday I was going to take my own life. I did not want to enter my 20s still living my life as a man. I didn’t want to lose another year of my life.

I remember this date exactly, not because I marked it in my calendar but because Taylor Swift’s album “Red” came out that morning. Despite everything, I was dancing along to 22 that morning while ironing some clothes, before I headed off to Porterbrook. I didn’t really feel like it mattered, I was going to kill myself 2 days later but I figured what is the harm in going through the motions one last time.

I sat there, trying not to let on how miserable I was, didn’t see the point in letting them in on how I was feeling. Nothing would change.

I remember being asked some really gross questions that day though. I got asked if I masturbated and I just declined answering. When challenged I was just like, “I maybe trans and I may hate that equipment but I’m a human being. I still have sexual urges. What do you think the answer is.”

The appointment though, shockingly ended with them telling me they were going to put me on hormones. I was gonna get my estrogen. It was enough to give me a reason to keep on living.

But just bare in mind how close I got to taking my own life there. 2 days away from my 20th birthday. Also it took almost 2 years for them to say they’d be placing me on hormones.

January/February 2013

In January, I had my bloods taken to get a baseline and I was told about options for storing gametes. I did decide to consider this but in the end it ended up being too costly for me at the time. So in February, on a day it was snowing I got the train and was adamant the snow was not stopping me getting to Porterbrook and I had an appointment with the head clinician, Dr Kevin Wylie.

He oddly listed all the testosterone blocker options to me with side effects and risks and all the estradiol options to me with side effects and risks. In the end I chose Cyproterone Acetate for my blocker and Estradiol Valerate pills for my hormones.

50mg per day of Cyproterone Acetate and 2mg per day of Estradiol Valerate. I was ecstatic and took them both the second I got on the bus 😊

May 2013

Slightly unrelated to the medical process but just 3 months in and my mental health had improved drastically. Since I was removed from my Mum’s care I had become a bit of a shut in. I didn’t have any friends, my anxiety was through the roof, I was insanely depressed and I just avoided everything and everyone, only leaving my house for work. Hormones changed that though, I just felt so much happier and I also remember that Spring just being like really vividly aware of the colours of all the flowers and plant life for like the first time in my life. I actually wanted to go out and social and make friends and there was a local LGBT youth group for 18-25 year olds that I decided to join and I started to have and social life again. And by September 2013 I started university and soon came getting drunk with the LGBT Liberation Group at the various socials. I was happy and finally starting to feel like myself.

2013 - 2016

Porterbrook became very gatekeepy in the final stage of my transition. They didn’t like how I dressed. Apparently girls wear dresses while I preferred jeans, t-shirts and hoodies. I didn’t like wearing make-up. I wasn’t the 1950s image of a girl that Porterbrook seemed to expect. I actually have a trans guy friend who around the same time had been told he couldn’t start on testosterone unless he cut his hair short, cos apparently men don’t have long hair.

It pissed me off to no end because I transitioned to be me, not to be a performance of how the world thinks a woman should be. I refused to give ground on how I dressed, etc but in the end I ended up telling a few white lies to get past the final level of gatekeeping. And I can’t remember most of this dates as they happened while uni was going on in the background. But eventually Porterbrook gave me the go ahead for surgery, about 6 months later I had my second opinion and then I was referred for surgery.

January 2016

I had my pre-surgery assessment at Nuffield Health Brighton and I was told if I wanted I could have my surgery as early as March 2016. Due to university though, this proved a bit too soon and the date was pushed to June 2016.

22nd June 2016

The day before the EU Referendum I had my gender reassignment surgery. I don’t actually remember feeling all that ecstatic after the surgery. There was lot of pain and I was on a lot of drugs. But a friend, Rosie, who I hadn’t seen since high school lived in the area and she was at my bedside when I woke up. I was in hospital a week and had 3 months of recovery ahead of me.

Post Surgery 2016

Having surgery had been great, things finally felt right. My entire body felt right for once but I had tunnel visioned my life towards surgery and put a lot of stuff on the back burner and had some major post-surgery depression so I sort counselling at my university to get through these issues and once that was sorted I felt a lot more stable in myself and like nothing was in my way.

October 2016

I put in my application for my Gender Recognition Certificate only for it to get rejected because they did not like the assessment from Porterbrook GIC and Dr Wylie who wrote the assessments was off on leave. Me and a nurse had to sit down and look through my medical record to find a medical report they might accept and we finally found one. However they wouldn’t say what was wrong with the original which made Porterbrook kinda stumped on what was wrong.

February 2017

I received my Gender Recognition Certificate and my new Birth Certificate.

March 2017

I was discharged from Porterbrook GIC.

For those who are under the impression gender reassignment is a fast process it isn’t, it took me 8 years and 6 months start to finish, from initially seeing my GP at 15 to finally being discharged from Porterbrook GIC at the age of 24. It is a long ass process with a shit tone of gatekeeping and honestly going through the process as it stands isn’t something I’d wish on my worst enemy. When I was discharged from Porterbrook GIC in 2017 my first thought was, “I’m free. I’m finally in control of my own life.” As up until that point, I felt I had no autonomy and that my life and happiness was in the hands of doctors. It was miserable.

But there it is.

[frostedfaves]

To Build A Home (6)

Masterlist

Pairing: Rosa Diaz x fem!reader

Summary: Rosa spent years building a friendship, relationship, and eventually a marriage and home with you. This tale follows your journey together up until her sudden murder. Now that you’ve tracked down her killer before anyone else, will you do the right thing and send him to prison or take care of him yourself?

Warnings: brief mentions of a bomb threat, robbery, and alcohol use, poorly written detective work, Jake and Amy ignored on their own wedding day (I’m still so sorry faves)

A/N: this part doesn’t feature as much Rosa and wife interaction as the previous parts because I needed to set the scene for something that will come back later ;) but I hope you still enjoy it! feedback appreciated as always

Previous chapter here

-

Your eyes roamed around the small store after passing the crime scene tape, assessing a surprising lack of damage for a robbery. You didn’t expect the place to be trashed, but there was barely a sign of a struggle or anything taken in a hurry.

“Hi there.”

You turned to face a white man in his possible fifties, at least from what you could tell with the graying strands of hair and incoming wrinkles around the eyes. A hint of a smile was directed your way as he stretched out his hand.

“You must be the detective the cops told me was coming. I’m Mark Collins, the owner of this place.”

“Detective Y/N Diaz,” you introduced yourself before pulling out of the handshake. “So you said you were robbed. What happened?”

He quickly explained to you the events that took place, starting with firing an employee the night before and leading into his return this afternoon.

“I had a feeling Thomas would retaliate and I would’ve been prepared for him, but my sister brought her daughter by this morning and they’re both terrified of guns, so I hid it in the back. I have a license for it, by the way,” he added when your brows raised at him.

“Do you mind if we take a look at your security footage?” 

You followed him into his office, watching as the same situation he described to you played out on camera. You sighed a bit when the armed man shouted his reason for taking the money, feeling that Mark owed it to him to help pay his rent since he didn’t give him time to find income elsewhere. Although you’ve felt the pain of suddenly losing your job before, it didn’t justify you or anyone taking money from someone else.

“Alright, I’m going to need a copy of that footage downloaded. I’ll come back for it later. I’m also going to need the address you have on file for Thomas so I can pay him a little visit.”

-

Twenty minutes later you pulled into a parking spot just down the block from the apartment building of your suspect. You’d just taken off your seatbelt after cutting the engine when your phone rang, a smile appearing on your features at the sight of your wife’s name and picture.

“Hey, baby,” you greeted cheerily as you locked the car doors again. “How’s the wedding day craziness going?”

“Even crazier than expected,” she told you with a sigh. “You’re not on your way yet, are you?”

“No, why?”

“Someone called in a bomb threat on the rec center, so that’s getting checked out while Jake, Amy and Charles try to figure out who did it. I’m waiting for Terry to call back the driver of the car that he left Amy’s veil in.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, so you weren’t kidding when you said ‘crazier than expected’.”

“I was not.” She chuckled along with you for a second. “So where are you?”

“I’m currently outside of where my suspect may or may not be. On the security footage you can hear him say he stole the money for rent since he doesn’t have a backup job but…” You let out a sigh of your own. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m giving him too much intelligence credit, but if I robbed the store I just got fired from, I wouldn’t go back to the address I gave my manager. Still going to give it a shot anyway.”

“Okay, well I won’t keep you on the phone much longer. Driver’s pulling up anyway. Be safe, and I love you.”

“Love you too, Rosa. See you later.”

You made your way up to the apartment quite easily as the lock on the secured door was broken. A knock went unanswered for several seconds. A second knock brought you face to face with a woman much younger than Mark.

“Detective Y/N Diaz,” you introduced yourself as you held up your badge for her to see. 

“Jessica Moore,” she offered. “What’s this about?”

“I’m looking for Thomas Moore. Is he here?”

“He was, but you just missed him by about an hour.” She shrugged. “Tommy was sleeping on the couch for a while because his girlfriend kicked him out. He was only gone maybe half an hour before he came back saying he was headed home, packed up his stuff and left.”

“Do you know where this girlfriend lives?”

“No, sorry. I don’t even know her name! Every time I ask about her, he just tells me I’m asking too many questions, as if he doesn’t try to interrogate every guy I’ve been on a date with,” she grumbled off to the side with her arms crossed.

“I know the feeling,” you told her and she turned back to you with a hopeful smile.

“You have brothers too?”

“Nope, just familiar with men and their double standards.” You pulled a business card from your jacket pocket and gave it to her. “Call me if he shows up, and thanks for your cooperation.”

-

After gathering all the evidence you needed from the crime scene, you’d arrived at the precinct just in time to see Holt cleaning up what used to be a cake version of the Nakatomi Plaza. You had your questions, but you simply saved them for a moment when you weren’t completely focused on your case. Every single moment of the day, every conversation that didn’t come from the computer where you were studying surveillance footage was ignored.

“Yep, Terry fumbled the task. But we got you a bouquet.”

Your ears couldn’t help but tune in at the sound of Rosa’s voice, this moment being the first time you’d heard her in a few hours. Still, you couldn’t bring yourself to pull away from your work until her hands gently landed on your shoulders, effectively melting the tension from them.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” You turned in your chair with a smile, which instantly fell as you caught sight of Amy in a wedding dress. “Please tell me I didn’t accidentally work through the wedding.”

“Jake, Amy, let’s go downstairs. It’s wedding time!” Charles addressed the pair with a proud grin and Rosa gave your shoulder a teasing nudge.

“Looks like you’re just in time. Come on.”

-

“But I do have some bad news. There’s a bomb at this wedding as well.”

“What?” The frown on Jake’s face matched yours, both of you confused by Amy’s calm demeanor.

“Your butt. Your butt is the bomb. There will be no survivors.”

“I love you so much. You’re my dream girl.”

Your laugh at the adorably childish pair was cut short when you realized Rosa was staring at you. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just missed you today.” She threw her right arm around your shoulders, gently pulling you in to lean against her and dropping a kiss on your hairline.

“I missed you too.” Your left hand grabbed hers, locking your fingers together in her lap, both of you smiling at the reciprocated skin-to-ring contact. Satisfied with the physical touch, you both turned your attention back to your nearly married best friends, brows raised as you watched a robot from the bomb squad bring the rings down the aisle.

-

You thanked Rosa as she placed two drinks on the table, sliding into the booth next to you and this time wrapping her left arm around you. You slipped your fingers through hers once more as they dangled over your shoulder, extending your thanks in the form of a quick kiss on the cheek.

“So how did it go earlier? I’m guessing by the way you were buried in your case that your suspect wasn’t stupid.”

“No, he wasn’t,” you sighed. “I found his sister, who told me that he’d left some time before I got there to go back home to his girlfriend. I can’t find any evidence of him having a girlfriend, but I have to wait until Monday to get a search warrant for the apartment. So I won’t know whether or not the sister was lying until then.”

“Well when you do find him, which I know you will, don’t forget to call me. I love watching my woman take down bad guys.” She winked and you laughed so hard you nearly snorted.

“What about you? How’d you end up with a shower curtain and flowers instead of a veil?” you asked after settling down, keeping your eyes on her as you sipped your drink.

“The customer after us knocked the dry cleaning bag out of the car when he left and we found it soaked in urine because, you know, New York streets are gross like that.” 

She shuddered, her look of disgust shifting into adoration when you held her glass and straw up to her lips. As you returned it to the table, you caught sight of Jake and Amy gazing at each other like no one else existed within the walls of the bar.

“I’m so happy for them. I can’t believe our best friends are married.”

“I can,” she responded as she shifted even closer to you, her eyes landing on the pair. “They’re the perfect example of the ‘opposites attract’ concept. They’re going to grow old together.”

“It’s funny that you say that, because they think the same thing about us.”

She turned back to you, that specially reserved smile back on her lips as she took in your appearance. Using the arm around you, she guided your own lips close enough to leave a kiss on them that was far too short for your liking. She settled back into the booth again and picked up her drink, her eyes never once leaving yours.

“Let’s prove them right, then.”

-

Tags: @gaulty74 @creepingwolfberry @rosadiazswifey @milkfromhell @xetherealbeautyx @jay-is-groovy @marie-03

[gayregis]

oh dandelion is such a weird case tbh. like all the sleazy shit he does is entirely unnecessary imo but people have latched onto the womanizing and all as such a huge important part of is character that no one seems to really question it? and in part due to mistranslations its treated by fans as a whole as way less harmful than it is? idk but honestly its part of why i just think hes gay now bc his canon sexuality is a mess nd basically every non-platonic interaction he has with a woman is gross

(this is part 2 ig? sorry shdjs) for example idk how it looks in the translations but in the original like. one of the very first things dandelion talks about is how he groped one of nenneke's students, and the bit with the brothel in eternal flame is. really awful when you look at it esp with the (horribly constructed but still) race dynamics in-universe, when he talks about "being able to afford a half-elf or maybe even a full-blooded elf" like idk its just. Bad and i think ppl gloss over it

(okay i started writing this part of the response before i got part 2): yes, it seems to me like a lot of him is based on this trope of the slovenly womanizer bastard-sort, but sapkowski does nothing to invert that part of the trope, lol. he disproved being a coward, because he was brave to follow geralt into brokilon/stand up for geralt’s life in dol blathanna/etc. he disproved being an idiot, because he makes intelligent observations sometimes. he disproves being selfish, because he is very caring for geralt and others. but he does nothing to disprove womanizing/misogyny, perhaps except for how he treats essi as his little sister, and for how he is appropriate with shani and also good to ciri. also i suppose in something ends, something begins he has female friends who he does not act disgusting to.

(this is considering part 2 as well): YES. there are so many little stupid fucking moments that drive me insane. such as that one, i already mentioned the rape joke to yennefer in limits of the possible/bounds of reason, the comment he made about she-elves in eternal flame was disgusting, all of his stupidity when he first met milva (commenting on her body, and also making a comment about how zerikkanian women cut off one of their breasts to shoot better, even though this is refuted by milva). how he says in lady of the lake that women don’t need money, since they don’t drink or gamble (in the presence of milva, who has drunken in his presence, and angouleme, for whom gambling is part of her backstory). also commenting on how he finds philippa scary and that he categorizes women into “fuckable” and “nonfuckable” basically. i think his comments towards yennefer in a little sacrifice are maybe the least horrible (just saying that she is old and isn’t a ‘normal woman’ because she is artifically young due to being a sorceress) but is still annoying.

i feel like the concept of brothel-going in general is supposedly “of the setting/time” and is normalized in their society but is taboo and mildly alarming to at least some in a modern audience,

i think it is also partially due to sapkowski normalizing the brothel-culture in-universe, and also (on the translators ends, too?) to be keen i guess to use terms like “whore”, like i think he calls toruviel in edge of the world something like “stupid whore,” which, if it came out of a man’s mouth today, hopefully he would be strangled.

the thing that is annoying is that he is a “good character,” he is literally the best friend of the main character, and is meant to represent that best-friend role. so his actions and sayings aren’t intended to villify him, but to be amusing, so it is assumed that the audience would find all of this amusing, which it’s not.

i think he can have this part of his personality (not misogyny, lol, but the “womanizing” as it relates to “being a dumbass”) without being so horrible, for example when vespula kicks him out of the house in eternal flame, i find this funny because he is obviously in the wrong, and he is experiencing punishment for it. additionally, things like repeating urban legends that zerrikanian women cut off their right breast in order to shoot better, to which milva ridicules him. or when he in his ballad sung that yennefer had a heart like a diamond that was unfeeling, and yennefer addresses this with him, and he shuts up and tries to steer the conversation elsewhere because it is obvious that he is terrified of her wrath...  it demonstrates that he is foolish and stupid, and is in the wrong, and can be made fun of. he did or said something (largely inconsequential, not violent or horrific) which was stupid, and is being ridiculed for it both in- and -out- of universe.

when he is in a position of power over the women however, saying derogatory things that men reading might agree with, that aren’t ever contested in-universe, then we have a problem. saying things like referring to women as whores, or trying to get a ‘full blooded she-elf’ at a brothel, or saying that he divides women into the fuckable and non-fuckable: these are never contested, he is never shamed for them, no one ever recieve retribution for them, and additionally, they are of a more violent and disgusting nature.

i feel like i treat geralt, yennefer, and dandelion all the same way overall. they each do and say some pretty messed-up things (geralt has sex with two barely 18-year old girls, yennefer smugly threatens to basically sexually assault geralt and was intending to mind-control a man into sex at belletyn (magic equivalent of a roofie; rape; what triss did to geralt), and dandelion espouses all of the misogynistic bullshit above). i like their characters but i simply cut this stuff out when i think about them because it adds nothing to them, only discomfort and disgust. it’s not intended to show “grey morality,” rather personal fallibility, and they are already fallible outside of such grossness. whether this affects if i headcanon dandelion as gay or bi i don’t know; i feel like it would be nice to rewrite some of his relationships with women to be more equal and less shitty (like how anna henrietta had an abusive husband beforehand and dandelion is not a violent man so ig it is nice to think she had some emotional love life with him around), but i also totally understand your perspective of just “there’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s just throw away the whole suitcase” haha. either way i think his [romantic] relationships with women are not very interesting at all, and i would rather focus on his platonic friendships with women, like milva, and/or mentorship/siblingship with essi. 

[whirlybirbs]

⋆    —–   CARHOP COOL, 3 and a 1/2.

summary: it’s time for a two day vacation to the beach, aka lake tippecanoe. pairing: steve harrington x reader, au!post season three word count: 1.8k, mostly world building a/n: have some good ol’ establishing-the-au fic! and billy! and steve’s mom! things are gonna get a little freaky up at the lake. here’s a filler chapter. 

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Steve’s driveway is crowded.

Tippecanoe, two hours North from Hawkins, was home to the Harrington family’s lakehouse. His mom had asked, earlier in the summer, if Steve would be willing to ride up and make sure everything was alright between rentals -- she’d cheerily added, “Go up for a day or two. Bring Dustin, Robin, whoever -- you kids need a vacation after everything that happened, y’know?”

(Janine Harrington had, in recent weeks, become infinitely closer with her son -- when men in suits had brought a bloodied Steve home that night in early July, priding him as a hero, a lot of things changed. He’d opened up about everything in the days following, spurring Janine to reach out to Mrs. Wheeler and Mrs. Henderson and Mrs. Byers and even Hopper, whom her husband couldn’t stand, with kind words and promises that their children were allowed over anytime -- they were bound together now, by Government NDA’s.

It was a nice change, though, between her and Steve -- there was a lot more trust now.)

His mom is chatting happily with Mrs. Byers by the mailbox as Will grabs his towel and cooler, loading the stuff into the Wheeler family hatchback. Nancy unlocks it for him between chatting with Jonathan. Mike helps, grin turning upwards as Dustin arrives with Lucas on his heels, bikes dropped by the mailbox as the boys laugh and launch into one another’s arm.

“Vacation, baby!”

Steve, carrying his own towel over his shoulder, laughs when Dustin finally calls out, sneakers pounding across the hot asphalt of the Harrington home’s driveway.

They both meet half-way.

“Steve!” he gets a toothless grin, “It’s vacay time!”

“Oh, you know --” the handshake is quick, calculated, and well-practiced, “We’re gonna get our tan on --”

The roar of a Camaro startles the group from their laughter.

Billy Hargrove rolls around the cul-de-sac, pulling up behind the Byer’s car and the mailbox before promptly cutting the engine and the Judas Priest track.

Max, with dueling, flaming red braids, hops from the front seat with a beaming smile.

The boys give a victorious cry.

“Zoomer!”

Billy’s slow to exit the car, aviators perched on his nose. The Def Leppard shirt’s sleeves has been chopped off, really hammering home the whole ‘suns out, guns out’ motto the lifeguard seems to be living by this summer. 

After the Battle of Starcourt, a lot of things changed. 

The biggest change, though, seemed to be in Billy Hargrove -- post Mind Flayer, he’d been exposed to the world the Upside Down created, the world his sister and everyone else had been living in for the last year; he’d come out of the haze, out of the flayed, and cried into Max and Eleven’s arms, nothing but apologies on his mouth in the wake of the destruction.

Steve remembers seeing him in the back of one of the ambulances, holding Max’s hand, talking. 

Not fighting, not screaming, not... being Billy.

Steve and Billy shared a look, then. Truce was what it meant. 

At first, Billy tried to pretend the whole ‘Mind Flayer’ thing never happened. 

But pretending didn’t get rid of the nightmares. And soon, Billy Hargrove was knocking on Will Byer’s door mid-D&D game looking for help, for someone to talk to.

The apology had come a few days later.

Billy had strolled up the Family Video, scaring the shit out of Steve, before offering his hand and a genuine apology. Robin watched on, a bit slack-jawed.

“I was a fucking asshole,” the blonde said slowly, “I’m sorry, man.”

Steve blinked at his hand.

After a moment, he shook it.

“It’s cool, dude,” Steve said before he could stop himself, “You didn’t know.”

“Doesn’t excuse the fact I was a dick, though.”

A look of surprise fleeted across Steve’s face. “Fair.”

Billy smiled, then, different from every other time he’d seen it. It wasn’t for show. It was... real. When Billy left, Robin had made a sound of pure shock before asking what the hell that was about.

“He beat the shit out of me,” Steve said, watching him drive away, “Tried to beat up Lucas, all while we were being hunted by Demogorgans... Just, y’know, was a genuine shit-bag.”

“Seems like he’s changed.”

“No kidding.”

“Trauma,” Robin chirps as she moves to sort the VHS’s, “is a hell of a thing.”

The malice that was there before the Fourth of July is gone. Instead, Billy smiles as he hauls Max’s cooler from the trunk of the navy sports car, offering Lucas a causal knuckle-touch before clapping Steve on the back.

“Hey man.”

“Hey Billy,” Steve chirps, “Nice outfit.”

“It’s hot out, alright,” he battles back, clearly amused, “I gotta work on my tan.”

“You coming with?” Steve asks, lips pulled into a smirk as he crosses his arms and shifts from foot to foot. His white converse are stark against the dark driveway, “We’ve got room.”

“Naw,” Billy breathes, crossing his arms, “I gotta shift at the pool -- thanks for the invite, though.”

“Yeah,” Steve shrugs, “It’s cool -- You’re one of the gang now.”

Billy’s lips quirk. Steve can tell that means something to him. Another clap on the back. Billy begins heading to his car, calling out to Max as he does. 

“See ya, kid -- be safe, alright?” he waves his finger across the group, “All a’ you.”

She gives her brother a grin. “’Kay, loser.”

“‘Kay, brat,” he snaps his gum, shoots her a smile, and falls into the driver’s seat.

As Billy leaves, the familiar rumble of Chief Hopper’s Blazer arrives to the drop-off point. Jim makes the small-talk quick, thank god, he’s terrifying, citing that he’s late for work and Mrs. Johnson has already called the station three times about her cat getting out, but makes a point to shake Steve’s hand as he leaves, telling him to look out for El.

Eleven has her dad’s pair of aviators on and an old baseball cap. She’s grinning.

“Vacation,” she says.

Steve’s got his hands on his hips, eyeing the growing party, when Dustin speaks.

“Hey,” he says slowly, looking around, “Where’s your girlfriend?”

Steve stammers. “She’s not --”

“Robin?” Mike asks, confused.

“No, not Robin --” Steve makes a face. “That’s gross.”

“Ohhhh,” says Lucas, pointing, “The one with the hair.”

Will makes a face of genuine frustration. “With the hair?”

“Real specific, Lucas,” jabs Max.

“Y’know,” he waves his hands, “Roll-o girl!”

The group exhales “oooohhhhh” at once. Steve’s face is in his hands. 

He’s just glad Nancy didn’t over the conversation -- she’s too busy with Jonathan, chatting with his mom and saying good-bye. 

(Though things were fine between them, it was still awkward -- the break-up was a one-sided-sort-of-rough, especially with the Jonathan being thrown into the mix. But, Nancy was happy and that was really all Steve cared about -- she was nice and smart and kind and she deserved to be happy especially after everything, and despite the wound it had created in Steve’s chest, he couldn’t hold the break-up against her. 

That was a weird time... things were weird. Things sometimes are still weird, but to her credit, she still treats him like a good friend and he tries to do the same. Just... sometimes it’a a lot. Especially when Jonathan is around.

Steve just opts to keep a polite distance, y’know?)

“Can I just say, one,” Steve raises a finger, “She is not my girlfriend --”

“But, you like her, right?” says Dustin, completely serious, “She’s cool, she’s cute, she can rollerblade, all great traits in a girlfriend --”

Steve narrows his eyes, finger still in the air. “I’m talking right now, Dustin, okay, I’m talking.”

“Right, sorry.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he repeats, hissing, “And two --”

Steve doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because the blaring of Duran Duran’s Girls on Film fills the entire neighborhood as you pull into the cul-de-sac. Robin is in the passenger’s seat, sunglasses pulled down her nose as she dances and mouths the words into her suntan lotion. You’re driving, snorting at her moves as you park the car and pop the trunk, mimicking Robin as you get out of the car -- you can barely do it you’re laughing so hard.

The cabbage patch dance move has never looked worse. You don’t really care. 

Mostly because you see Steve and he’s grinning. You wave. He mirrors.

“She is cute,” says Max, leaning against Lucas and watching the exchange, “Your girlfriend’s cute, Harrington.”

“Shut up, Max.”

She mimics a zipping motion over her lips with her hand as Steve strides by. She tosses the imaginary key.

You move to cut the engine, spurring Robin to move up the driveway with a smile -- she’s quick to greet Steve’s mom with a hug. 

You’re quickly swept into a handshake by the older woman in question.

She looks like Steve -- they have the smile doe-eyes and dark hair, same nose and same excited demeanor -- and you can’t say you’re surprised when you give her your name and she sweeps you in a hug. 

“It’s so good to finally meet you,” she says warmly, “Steve’s told me so much about you!”

You’ve seen Janine Harrington around before at baseball games and after-school functions. Back then, though, you were dodging any interaction you could with her son. Now, you’re excited to him idle up beside his mom with a grin. He rocks back on his heels. 

“Ready?”

You nod. Robin pats your back, holding onto your arm before turning on her text-book parent charm. “Mrs. Harrington, is it alright if she drives, as well? We figured it might be better than all packing into Nancy’s car -- safer, too.”

“Of course,” she says with a smile, “Steve knows the way, he’s been going up there with us since he was a little baby --”

“Yep,” he chirps, cutting that off quick, “I’ll just, uh, I’ll ride with you -- Nancy can follow us.”

“Cool kid mobile, assemble,” Robin calls out, breaking from Steve, yourself and his mom, “We call Dustin!”

“Drive safe,” Mrs. Harrington offers as the group splits into the separate hatchbacks, “Call when you get there!”

“Alright, mom!”

“Bye, Mrs. Harrington!”

Robin shoves Steve into the passenger side of your car, winking, as you clamber into the driver’s seat. Robin happily sits between Dustin and Will, mirroring Steve as she drops her sunglasses down from her hair. 

The other car, quickly named The Couples Car, holds the rest of the party -- Lucas, Max, Mike, Eleven, Jonathan and Nancy.

It’s 10am by the time you all hit the road, ready for a night over at Tippecanoe.

Steve nudges your elbow.

You blink over at him.

“Radio?”

“Hit it, Harrington.”

GIRLS ON FILM!

[spiltscribbles]

Quiet Things

Alex doesn’t get jealous.

It’s just not a thing that he does, has never thought it worth while. For a majority of his life he was too busy with school and Lacrosse and plotting out his eventual path to the presidency, to ever even fathom caring too terribly if the girl he was seeing was flirting with some other guy, or was being flirted with. Besides, it’s not his place to get all angry about it. If she liked him more than Alex, well he  had no right to interfere in  that, there’s something called free fucking will. 

“Nah, ’S because you’re too obsessed with yourself,” Nora had told him three weeks after their first break up in that somewhat snide tone of voice that she can pull out as effortlessly as her future professor monotone. 

“Slanderous,” Alex had sniffed before taking a huge ass bite out his burrito— thank God that Chipotle’s a national commodity now, which means they could stuff themselves silly before the second national debate . 

“Accurate my friend,” Nora had retorted with a clucking of her tongue, stealing his side order of chips and  queso while Alex was to busy glaring a hole through the glossy photograph of Prince Henry of Wales that’s the front cover of Vogue Italiano’s newest spread.   “You’ll always love yourself most.”

“Well yeah babe, I’m the only one who could appreciate me in all the right ways.”

“The only one who can stand you for longer than an hour you mean?”

Alex had pouted, teasingly, and Nora had laughed, adoringly, and neither of them really took it to heart. It was a bit of a quirk, his self absorption that is. Nora and June had noted it fondly for an eon, it wasn’t some new revelation.

Though What was n entirely new revelation was how only a few short years later, Alex fell head first for the fucking pretentious— not actually pretentious— prince of Wales, realizing he was definitely bisexual all along, and being forcefully outted by the old fuck trying to oust his mother from the oval office before her destined eight years are up. All in that order. 

God have times changed.

Alex supposes that it’s only right that amidst all of that, he also changed along the way, that he found a guy— a literal Prince amongst men— that makes his heart thud out an uneven staccato with every glance. Someone who makes it so Alex’s ADHD wired brain goes still, goes hyper focussed on him. On Henry’s pretty pale eyes and lovely thin lips and the way one corner of his mouth tugs upwards before the other every time he smiles. He found a guy who he chooses every day to spend his forever with, the first person that makes his knees go weak and the first person that Alex admits is  probably his only match. Found the guy he loves more than any other— His person, the one he’d give up the world to be with. The guy who makes his analytical mind shut off in favor for the idea that in all probability soulmates can exist…? And if so, Henry’s more than probably his.

All this to say, Alex now gets it when June— his delightfully neurotic sister— starts asking him a thousand times over if she looks okay in whichever dress she’s got on after she sees an Instagram post with Pez, forever adventuring a new part of the world, tagging a different girl, or when Nora doesn’t realize she’s being flirted with at her new internship at the Brookings Institute by another grad student. “Just cause I fuck dudes now doesn’t mean I suddenly get what’s trendy~” “You’re fucking one dude and only one dude.” “I think you just proved my point?”) 

Suddenly Alex wishes June were here, even in all her craziness, at least then he could have an honest analysis on what’s playing out right in front of him, in the middle of fucking douchebag Phillip’s birthday party. Just there, out in public, right next to the table holding up the thirty four thousand dollar cake. And oh! Look! The fucking gross ass  prick just snuck a finger to lick off some of the frosting!

Desecrating stupidly expensive desserts is there thing damn it!

The aforementioned prick is all high cheekbones and long lashes and such big brown eyes. He’s Hassan Nair, “Call me Haz.” No Alex will fucking not, thank you very much.

The prick, as Alex will be referring to him here forth, is the son of some Dubai business magnate, worth probable billions and is so sickeningly pretty that Alex would feel bad if he wasn’t dating the literal prettiest man alive, he’s kinda accustomed  with  not being exactly the hottest guy in a room.  But fucking prick boy must concede the point if the way he’s been gazing down at henry since this shindig has begun is anything to go by, and Jesus Christ, is it actually fair that he’s like half a foot taller than Alex too! No it’s not! None of this is fair! 

Alright, okay. This is not cool. Alex should not be just lurking in the shadows like some sort of Twilight love interest, gazing hopelessly at Henry and letting this totally new and totally unwelcome feeling— a bit envious, a lot inferior, and just slightly worried— be eating him hole. He’s fucking Alex Claremont Diaz. He’s the son of the American President! He’s going to an amazing law school! He’s hot and smart and fun damn it. And Henry chose him! Henry chose him when he first plunged down to kiss him, this edge of frantic, the night of that New Year’s party. Henry chose him when they stood hand in hand facing the crowds with their chins tipped high and their love holding strong. Henry chose him when he bought that Brownstone in New York and adopted a dog with Alex’s name as the co owner. 

Truly? Who is Hassan Nair in the face of all of that?

Alex watches him wink at Henry for the third time in the past five minutes and he sees red.

God damn it the prick does look like a One Direction stand-in, doesn’t he?

Fully intending to just find Beatrice  and bitch about Hassan fucking Nair to her, Alex swigs down his Bellini, but stutters still when Henry pivots around, his ever alert eyes softening once catching on him. 

Damn it, Alex is a weak, weak man.

“Lost you in the crowds?” Henry asks in greeting once Alex saddles up to them, slinging an arm around Henry’s waste in a way that Alex prays comes off nonchalant.

“Didn’t wanna just intrude,” Alex corrects, brow kinked playfully. “I’m not so gauche.”

Henry rolls his eyes heavenwards, but Alex knows he’s reluctantly charmed when that ghost of a smile passes across his lips.

“You once dragged me out from a conversation I was having with President Macron because you wanted to compete over who could catch the most bugs.”

“Hey! They were fireflies not just bugs you ass!” Alex charges, fully indignant now. “And you’re only pissy because my jar was like a thousand times brighter than yours!”

“You started for like a quarter of an hour longer,” Henry says airily, pale head tilted, imperious. 

“Excuses don’t become you sweet cheeks.” Alex informs him, positively gleeful over the dusting of red that comes over his elegant features.

“Ahem,” the prick interrupts with a cough, eyes skewering Alex. “I don’t think we’ve met?”

“We have,” Alex corrects with a thin lipped smile. “At Phillip’s wedding— Erm ah before the incident.”

“I don’t recall,” the prick just shrugs, turning his full attention back to Henry, and yikes Alex has to give him props, he’s definitely mastered the cold dismissal thing down pat. “Henry we should grab lunch soon, it’s been ages since we’ve caught up.”

Did this guy just ask out Henry right in front of Alex? What the actual fuck?

“Of course,” Henry says in that blithe, detached sounding way he does whenever he’s trying to be polite and doesn’t know how to react. Fuck is Alex so happy he knows how to decipher his different moods. “But I reckon Alex and i best get going, we promised a friend that we’d meet them for dinner.”

The prick’s bright eyes dim and he just nods. “I’ll call you?”

“Sure,” Henry grabs for Alex’s hand and it’s the best fucking feeling in the world.

.-

“Didn’t know we promised any such thing your highness?” Alex goads as they slip into the rental car, Amy and Shaan in a separate one tracking them back to the castle.

“I needed an excuse Alexander, and I never claimed to be above fibbing if it means I get to escape social situations,” Henry intones, lying back with his eyes shut. Sometimes Alex has to catch his breath when looking at him, sometimes forgets just how stunning he is. 

With a swallow, Alex forces his eyes back on the road and wills himself to sound normal.

“He seemed nice?”

Henry’s lip quirks and fuck, apparently he’s just as easy to read.

“You hated him.”

“Did not.”

“Did so.”

“I did not!”

“Lying doesn’t become you sweet cheeks,” Henry parrots in a nasally voice that Alex refuses to call an imitation of him.

“He looks like a privileged prick,” Alex finally admits, feels his heart swell at the casual way Henry clamps a hand against his thigh, squeezing lightly.

“I reckon you thought the same of me not too long ago,” Henry prods.

“Oh I definitely still do babe,” Alex snorts, winces slightly when Henry moves to pinch his side instead. “Ouch.”

“You’re rude.”

“I love you,” Alex soothes, picks up Henry’s hand and kisses the tops of his fingers dotingly. “’s Why I was so annoyed by his flirting with you so blatantly.”

Henry stiffens slightly before relaxing, flickers his gaze to Alex’s profile meaningfully. “He was not flirting.”

Alex scoffs.

“He was literally undressing you with his eyes the entire night!”

“We’re old friends,” Henry says weakly, pillar going pale. And Alex suddenly remembers what Henry had told him over a year ago now. That his first time was with one of Philip’s old school friends when he was only seventeen. That they were both firmly in the closet and understood how to keep things quiet. That Henry appreciates it for what it was but was still so confused and terrified  and lonely in the aftermath. 

And oh, it makes sudden sense now.

He wonders what different sorts of expressions must be playing across his face at this moment because Henry’s just goes sad, presses closer to him. 

“I think you’re my first love,” he says, and Alex can read the words that go unspoken that hug around the non sequitur. 

“Me too,” he assures him.

Henry nods, soft and slow, before he presses a kiss to the hinge of Alex’s jaw, the corner of his mouth, lands on the hollow of his cheek. “From the first moment Alex Claremont Diaz,” he says in the same voice he had right before their first kiss. “I knew you were it, no matter how hopeless it seemed or how much you evidently hated me. I new you were it.”

It’s Alex’s turn to flush, tries tempting down his smile.

“Shut the fuck up you dork.”

“You’re so witty and quick and too smart for your own good,” Henry just continues on, adjusts himself so that he’s got a better look at him.

“So help me.”

 “You are so beautiful and bright, like a supernova, you know that?”

“Henry I swear to God I will kick your princely ass out and make you walk.”

Henry shakes his head with a tsk, tsk. “Such pretty lips and such a dirty mouth.” 

“Now you’re sounding like a porno,” Alex laughs.

“Shall I move onto complimenting your ass or would that be too explicit for your mild sensibilities?” Henry asks, mock owlish.

“I literally despise you,” Alex groans before pulling over on the side of the road and kissing him senseless.

He’s not sure how much time passes but is forced to move off him when Amy and Shaan begin beeping their horns in a crass cacophony of sound.

“Promise to help you with the tent downstairs once we get to bed,” Henry guffaws, and in turn Alex just repeats the fact that he utterly hates him with as much feeling as he could muster, goofy grin splitting his face in half all the while.

.-

Two weeks later they see the prick at one of Beatrice’s charity luncheons, and Henry doesn’t take his hand out of Alex’s back pocket the entire afternoon.

It’s fucking fantastic. 

[the-dead-skwad]

Winchester X Dean Winchester X Reader. Part 1

This is part 1 of a short little story I thought of. Please let me know what you think of it. No warnings just some small swearing. 

You 

It had been roughly 16 years you had been living and protecting your small town. A small community where everyone understood what was out there and what could come for them. Everyone stuck together and made sure no demons, ghosts or any kind of monster got in. The dirt was infused with salt, every door mat had a demon trap under them, every window was alt lined, every house was armed and connected. It was difficult sometimes. People in the town did die, accidents, old age. Occasionally leaving their spirit behind. But of course that was solved with a salt and burn. Most residents of Winchester ask to be cremated. It had been two years since the last issue and that was a simple ghost lady who didn't want to cross over without her cat. Safe to say you weren't all that keen on cat murder but you gotta do what you gotta do. 

The hard desk wasn't at all comfy on your head, you moved your face to the side just staring at your half empty coffee mug. Your eyes started to shut slowly when "MOM!" Jolted awake by your daughter Athena. 

"I swear to god Athena, I was having a nap." 

"What? On your desk? Sure... Anyway, the radios going off!" 

You leapt out of your seat "Oh shit!" The radio was used for any weird sightings or happenings in the area. 

"Y/N! Are you there? Y/N!"  The radio screamed from the front room. 

You nearly went straight over the coffee table getting to it "Go ahead sheriff!" 

"Y/N we found him. Motel just outside of town. It's deffo him."  

Your heart fell out of your ass. After all these years it couldn't possibly be him. You had no idea what to do. "Thank you sheriff, I'll go check it out." 

"Be careful."

You leant against the table. You couldn't hear anything from the pounding in your heart. 

"Mom?" She sounded worried "Is it really him?" 

"I'm not sure sweetheart." You walked over to her and pulled her in for a big hug. Kissing her on the top over her head, you sighed "We'll go and have a look. Go pack a bag and we'll head out." 

"Guns?"

"Oh 100%"

-- You filled the car and set off. It had been a while since you had been on a hunt of any kind. You always wanted to be there for Athena her whole life. You weren't going to go off risking your life with a child at home. Even though you may not go out, you always made sure you and her were fit and fully trained for any situation. 

Pulling up into the motel parking lot you saw it, the impala. There's no way it could be anyone else. You didn't bother shutting the music off as you stopped the car. You turned to Athena "Sweety I want you to stay in the car. Just for now. I'll asses the situation first. Momma got some shit to sort out." 

"But can I still meet him?" 

"Of course baby." You kissed her on the top of her head and stepped out the car. You took the shotgun from the trunk and walked to the center of the parking lock. "I got some balls to rip off." You said to yourself. 

Gun in hand you were filled with anger. "DEAN WINCHESTER!" You yelled as you cocked the gun. 

--

Dean 

It had been a long trip. Dean looked over at his brother in the passenger seat, mouth wide open, snoring his ass off. He smiled to himself as he noticed the truck up head was towing a car. Speeding up slightly just so the towing car was directly in front of them. "OH MY GOD! SAMMY WAKE UP!" 

Sam nearly leapt out of the seat, he saw the car facing them and screamed at the top of his lungs. Dean nearly swerved he was laughing so hard. Sam looked over at him with a scowl. "Come on dude.. I'm exhausted. Jerk!" 

"Oh come on. Lighten up Sammy. If I don't get to sleep, you don't." 

"Lighten up?" Sam scoffed "I almost had a heart attack." 

"Don't be such a baby." He nodded up the road "There's a motel up here. We'll stay there tonight." 

"Fine." Sam folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the window again. 

They pulled up into the parking lot. It was the same old dusty motel like they always stayed in. No doubt this was a place for murderers and crack heads. Sam grabbed his bag from the back seat "Dude I'm so awake now. I hate you." Dean gave him a right cheeky smile as always. They dumped all their shit into the seedy room and pulled out a map. "So," Dean looked over it "We are here, the haunting is two towns over." 

"Whats the situation again?" 

"Two girls been murdered whilst in bed with their boyfriends. Both men have said they got woken from something tickling their foot and then they turned over to find their girlfriends dead." 

"So they didn't wake up while they were being murdered?" 

"Nope, apparently it looks like they have just dropped dead with no cause what so ever and they said when they first woke the room was absolutely freezing."

"Even though its the middle of summer." 

"Exactly!" Dean said with his mouth half full of burger, making Sam give him a look of disgust. "Hey look at this!" He pointed down at the map. 

Sam leaned over to look at where hes was pointing "Winchester?" 

"The town next door..." He made a small laugh "Hows about we get some sleep, grab some breakfast in this little Winchester place and go interview the boyfriends." 

"Perfect!" Sam said as he started to get his bed stuff together.

-- Dean 

Dean woke to the sun blasting through the curtains they forgot to close the night before. "Ugh.." He looked over at the clock "Dude!" He threw a sock at Sam to wake him.

"Uh!" Sam snapped form his sleep "What?"

"Looks like we're going for lunch not breakfast." He nodded to the clock. 

"Oh fuck" Sam groaned as he rubbed his eyes. 

They both got up and got ready. Dean let the radio play just to wake them up properly. Sam nipped out and got some gross gas station coffee for the both. Just as they were both about to leave for Winchester they heard a car screech into the parking lot. Thinking nothing at first they got the map off the table.

 "DEAN WINCHESTER!" A female voice boomed through the room. He turned and look at Sam terrified. 

"Someone wants you dude."

"Not funny." Dean pulled back the weird net cover on the curtain. He took two steps back, looking like he'd seen a ghost. 

"Who is it?" 

"Oh shit..." Dean was frozen "Its my wife....."

[entwinedmoon]

John Torrington: Reflections

(Previous posts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

Today, January 1, 2020, is the 174th anniversary of John Torrington’s death. Him dying on New Year’s Day must have dampened whatever celebrations the crew were most likely enjoying, a dark day in a quite literally dark month, as the sun would not return for some time. He would have been buried in that endless night, during a snowstorm (a layer of snow was still preserved on top of his coffin), the first death in what had so far been a successful expedition. A death so soon may have worried the crew, but since it was due to an illness he’d brought with him, it may have just been considered a fluke. They may not have been concerned, still thinking they would make it through and discover the last piece of the Northwest Passage. If they had succeeded, Torrington would have been a minor footnote in the history of a triumphant journey, his grave a small curiosity for anyone who may pass by. But no one made it home from the Franklin Expedition, and Torrington is now seen as an early warning sign of the tragedy awaiting the rest of the men.

Why is it that, after all these years, anyone still talks about Torrington? What is the fascination with him and the other men buried on Beechey? I know what draws me to his story, and while I can’t speak for everyone, I think there are at least some people who share the same reasons.

So what intrigues me about John Torrington? Why did I write this series, spanning eleven blog posts and over 25,000 words (that’s half a book!), about a 174-years-dead Victorian sailor, spending my spare time researching and dedicating long hours to studying his life and death?

In trying to pin down just what fascinates me about Torrington, I went through some of my old writing, and I found this little snippet from an essay I never finished. It was written almost ten years ago, on January 13, 2010:

It was all John Torrington’s fault. I couldn’t sleep because of that frozen grimace, mouth and eyes both slightly open—eyes, intact, seriously, staring back at me. He just stares, cold, frozen, dead. I’m not likely to go on a polar expedition any time soon and possibly die from lead-tainted food or whatever killed him, but it’s not that idea that frightens me. He stares at me in the night, in the corners, in the reflections in the moonlit mirror on my closet door, in the folds of the dirty laundry on the floor, he’s there, staring at me. Going to the bathroom at night is the worst, walking through the dark hallway, knowing he’s following me, just behind me, out of sight, but still manages to jump ahead to stare at me in the split second before the bathroom light comes on, inches from my face in the thick darkness, but then he runs and hides again in the shadows of the hall, lurking, waiting to follow me back to my room.

Sometimes it’s Otzi or Jaunita or Ida Girl or Cherchen Man. Never King Tut or Ramses II for some reason though. But John has always stood above the rest, just the memory of a picture haunting me.

As you can see, I had a slightly different attitude toward Torrington back then. To explain this, let me start from the beginning.

When I was about seven or eight, my older brother brought home a copy of Buried in Ice from school, where he was learning about the Franklin Expedition. He of course shared the pictures in the book with me and my older sister because he thought they were creepy and that’s what you do when you’re a kid, you share creepy stuff to try to scare your siblings. I’m in my early thirties now, so the memory has faded over the years, but there’s still a lot that stands out even now. I remember eating a particular type of corn chip that to this day I associate the flavor of with lead poisoning. My brother told me about how the brains of the three mummies had turned into a yellow liquid—something we thought was gross but also cool for some reason. I remember that there was no way to just flip the book over to cover up the picture of Torrington on the front cover because—oh goodie—there was a picture of him on the back too. My brother and I commented on the golden color of Torrington’s discolored skin (I don’t know why we thought “golden” instead of yellow—it sounds more poetic to call it “golden” but that was certainly not our intention). I also remember that later, after my brother had returned the book to school but we were still haunted by the images, we couldn’t recall the names of Hartnell and Braine, so we called them Big Head and Snarl Face instead. But we remembered the name Torrington, probably because he was featured more prominently in the book. And due to that prominence, Torrington was the one I would think of when lying in bed at night, watching shadows in the closet morph into monsters.

To try to combat my fear, I used a trick I’d learned where I turn the scary thing into something ridiculous (this was before Harry Potter was published, but it’s the same theory as how to fight a Boggart). I put the three mummies into a long-running story that I’d made up in my head—and I made them undead idiots. Like zombie versions of Beavis and Butthead. Yeah, I did that. I made them weird funny sidekicks in my story, but it didn’t really stop me being afraid when I saw pictures of them again.

Remarkably, despite being terrified of Torrington, I became obsessed with mummies as a kid, an obsession that continues to this day. I would marvel over pictures of Tollund Man, Ötzi, and the Qilakitsoq mummies of Greenland.

But not John Torrington.

Whenever I would flip through a book about mummies, if I encountered a picture of Torrington, I would slam my hand over the page to cover it. I would be creeped out by other mummies, but it was never to the same level as it was with Torrington. And yet, I would still be compelled to peek, even after covering the page. I would regret it immediately, but there was something that made me want to look, even though looking at him was the last thing I wanted to do.

Over the years, Torrington would find his way into a few more stories of mine, in some form or another. In college, I wrote a short story for a fiction writing class where the picture of Torrington on the cover of Frozen in Time started talking to a young woman, representing her repressed thoughts and fears (he cracked a lot of jokes in that one). At that point in time, however, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to read Frozen in Time. I had bought a copy a while ago—the 2004 revised edition—and when it arrived from Amazon I flipped through it, telling myself that I was an adult and I loved mummies and I could bravely face the pictures of these boogeymen from my childhood.

That last part turned out to be incorrect. Several weeks of being too afraid to turn off the light at night ensued. I wouldn’t read the book for another eight or nine years.

But eventually I did read it, multiple times in fact, and I’m no longer terrified of pictures of Torrington, or Hartnell and Braine. That all started a little less than two years ago.

It began with another story idea I had that incorporated Torrington, one I have yet to write. I thought I should do some research into him first if I was going to include him. Around the same time, The Terror was airing on AMC. The exact timeline is a little hazy for me, because the story idea actually first came to me at the end of 2017, but The Terror first aired in March 2018. I can’t remember if I had the idea to add Torrington to my story before I started watching The Terror or not, but I think it was before.

Once I started researching Torrington and the Franklin Expedition, I quickly became obsessed. I had poked around Franklin research before, but my fear of Torrington would always hold me back. I would peer through my fingers at pictures and facts, but I could never do more than that. But now I was hooked.

My childhood nightmares were there at first, just out of the corner of my eye, but my research started to shift those in strange ways. I had always seen Torrington as this ancient, towering monster, but then I discovered that he was only twenty when he died and stood at only five-foot-four. I’m older than him. I’m taller than him. His desiccated body weighed less than ninety pounds, which I definitely weigh more than. Basically, if he came charging out of the closet, I could take him.

But what really drew me in was realizing that we knew so little about him. I could look at a picture of his face, frozen in time, but I couldn’t reach back into the past to ask him about himself. I’ve known about him almost my whole life, with him skulking in a corner of my brain, stepping out of the shadows every now and then, but I didn’t really know who he was as a person. The Franklin Expedition can drive people mad with the mystery of what happened to the men after they entered the Arctic, but suddenly I became obsessed with knowing what had happened before the expedition. Who was John Torrington? Who was this guy that has occupied my dreams and nightmares, who has taken up a permanent residence in my mind ever since I first laid eyes on him? Who was this young man who has somehow been a part of my life for so long, but whom I know so little about?

I know I’m not the only one who has been asking these questions, or who has been living with the Franklin ice mummies in their heads. I’ve met some amazing people online who are just as obsessed, if not more so. Thanks to this series, I’ve had people contact me about their own interest in Torrington and the Beechey Boys and how they understand my love for them.

Many times before, I’ve attempted to put in words just what draws me to mummies. In 2011 I even started a long-since-abandoned blog about mummies called Digging the Dead, where I tried to explain my interest. But I’m going to try my best now to pin down what has compelled me to study Torrington, and why he keeps popping up in my life.

I think part of the appeal of Torrington—and Hartnell and Braine—is the shockingly alive appearance of their preserved bodies, with some morbid curiosity over their undead vibe thrown in. The preservation of a body, preventing the natural process of decay, is fascinating. It’s a type of immortality, although one the mummy doesn’t get to enjoy. Torrington looks like he could get up and walk around—possibly in a zombie-like way, but still. He looks more like a real person than some mummies, like bog bodies that became too twisted by the weight of the peat or desert mummies that have a freeze-dried appearance. But a large part of the fascination with Torrington, and mummies in general, is that it’s like touching a piece of the past. When we see their pictures, we’re looking at something that is from a time long gone, but they seem so very present, so tangible in the here and now. They are time travelers, in a way, and this is our way of reaching out to them across the years.

And with the mystery of the Franklin Expedition, Torrington, Hartnell, and Braine add an extra layer of intrigue as well as reminding us that there were more than just officers on board. We have pictures of Franklin, Crozier, Fitzjames, and many of the lieutenants and mates, but the ordinary sailors and marines didn’t have the luxury of having their pictures taken. What they looked like has been lost to time, but the preserved remains of Torrington and the Beechey Boys literally puts a human face on the ordinary men of the expedition, the ones who never wrote memoirs or had journals that were preserved for posterity. Men who have been largely forgotten by history, who don’t get the same reverence we give the captains, who don’t get memorials or landmarks in their names. When thinking of the men of the Franklin Expedition setting sail for their destiny, it’s easy to see Torrington on deck—alive, his striped shirt billowing in the wind as they sail toward Lancaster Sound—and to imagine that these were working ships, fully manned with ordinary people who led regular lives and had dreams of what they would do when they returned home to double pay and the fame of having helped discover the Northwest Passage.

But on January 1, 1846, those dreams winked out for one of those men. On this day, I think not about how well Torrington’s body has defied time and decomposition, but about who sat with him as he passed. Was he alone? Did he have friends on the crew? And what of his family back home? Did they toast him and his journey, not knowing that he was gone?

Who said a prayer for John Torrington 174 years ago?

If it’s not too late, I think I’ll say one for him today.

<<Back

Torrington Series Masterlist

[genderfreezone]

Do you like the Evil Within 2?

Yeah! Certainly not as much as the first one (i was not immune to being sad they left out fan favorites Jojo and Ruvik's Cube)

The rest of this post is me rambling about things i didnt like about the game, and then things i did like (most of my issues are how they treat the female characters tbh)

Its missing kind of the action-noir-gone-horrifically-wrong feel of the first game. The scare factor also suffers bc our player character has been through this before, hes a veteran at dealing with this crazy shit, it doesnt phase him anymore and by extension it doesnt phase the player. They really like tripled down on the Evil Corporation thing and both the intrigue and horror suffer for it.

This game did not drink its respect women juice (the first one didnt really either, case in point: Everything About Kidman) Sebastian is surrounded by 5+ female characters and only 2 of them survive (and one of them is his 7 year old daughter hes spent the whole game trying to rescue... and yet they never bothered to give her any kind of characterization or agency. A highly empathetic and supernaturally powerful little girl in a monster-infested hellscape?? HELLO???? Lily really had the potential to be the most interesting, sympathetic, and complex character--especially as she slowly lost her innocence--in the WHOLE GAME, but she was just sort of relegated to Plot Device McGuffin) The rest of the female supporting cast are killed off for Sebastian's Man Pain. In fact, THIS ENTIRE GAME IS CENTERED AROUND SEBASTIAN'S MAN PAIN. Torrez is a walking stereotype, shes literally just Vasquez from Aliens. Hoffman was the most likeable and believeable, except when it Turns Out She Was In Love With Liam Or Whatever (psst, guess what, i dont care. Also O'neal was kind of a dick anyway? I dont care x2)

And you know who i SUPER dont care about? Bland-White-Bread-And-Mayo-Sandwich Myra. Where's the no-nonsense firecracker of a police lieutenant Sebastian married? Not here, thats for sure. Her entire personality is "mother" and "worries about stressed-out husband". We got more characterization of Myra in seb's jornals from the first game, where she never even made a physical appearance! Horror media does this SO MUCH, women are either A. Sexy Lamp B. Hurts Men (Sexily) C. Mother or D. Innocent Virgin. It sucks. Do better.

The story lacked the "digging up old buried memories" and "theres more to this than meets the eye" of the first game. It felt too...... Straightforward. Everyone told Sebastian the truth. EVERYTHING WAS EXACTLY WHAT IT SEEMED. It all felt too simple, too easy, like there SHOULDVE been something else beneath the surface. And yet there wasnt. (I watched markipliers playthrough and i loved his theory that Kidman was actually Lily. It had such potential. Kidman's entire resume for the police station was fabricated, who's to say the rest of her past wasnt fabricated as well? It would retcon a lot of stuff and like 80% of her backstory from the DLC, but you know games like this arent above retconning important shit, and at least it wouldve been sacrificed for something with actual intrigue. Maybe it wouldnt even retcon anything! Consider: tiny Lily is taken by Evil Corporation and dropped off in a non-nurturing environment that would lead her to become the kind of person who would willingly join & work for an organization like Mobius. At least wouldve been a nice excuse for why Kidman and Lilys face models looked so similar... other than... yknow.... "WomEN ARe hArD tO DRaWwwwwee")

Okay okay ive been ranting for long enough. It probably makes it sound like i kinda hate this game, but i dont! It certainly doesnt hold the same place in my heart as the first one (which i still have very glaring issues with lmao Kidman deserved WAAAAAAY better), but i do like it! It brings back salty, grizzled, tsundere Sebastian Castinellos. It brings back spooky monsters that kill you dead. It brings back having a fun theatrical over-the-top villain who takes himself a litte too seriously.

I love Stefano. Probably not in the way some other fans do, but i love him as a ridiculous theatrical over-the-top villain. He sucks! And i love that he sucks! I love him BECAUSE he sucks! Hes terrible and exaggerated and completely up his own ass and ITS GREAT. He isnt as ACTUALLY THREATENING as Ruvik was (even in his bad assassin's creed cosplay. I could go on and on and on about why Ruvik is simultaneously a ridiculous AND frightening antagonist and how much i love it but uh..... maybe later) but hes such a FUN villain! Hes the kind of pretentious art snob shitheel i cannot STAND irl, but in this game i LOVE to HATE him. Hes just SO over-the-top you kinda wonder if he actually subscribes to the pretentiousness he spouts, or if hes just being Exceptionally Extra.

The other villains? Theodore was.... forgettable. His monsters were forgettable. (Its like how i completely forgot that Frank Manera was a character in Whistleblower for like... 5 years lmao i guess this game also kinda followed that "having multiple named/characterized antagonists in one game" thing that Outlast did) Myra, i just didnt care. Her final design was kinda cool, i liked the red clusters of insect eyes. Her monsters werent really gross enough to be memorable. The only reson theyre gross at all is bc they kinda look like theyre made of semen. (I checked the wiki and apparently Myra's white goo is "psychoplasm" and her monsters lost 99% of their gross factor. I just dont care.) The Administrator literally just looked like a 3D human model of Maxwell from dont starve, and i have to laugh every time i see him. Hes not terribly threatening, all he does is threaten characters to work faster and doesnt actually follow through on those threats. He doesnt even make fun threats like HABIT or anything. He thinks hes so powerful and ominous that his mere presence will frighten the player but hes just kinda all bark and no bite. Hes The Big Bad Company Man so you know hes gonna get whats coming to him, and you know Kidmans gonna be the one to do it to him, so hes not even that much of a threat. Hes whatever.

Stefano definitely got all of the coolest monsters. Many Arms Buzzsaw Lady was terrifying and i love her. And OBSCURA was just *Chef's Kiss* Anima was cool, she kinda looked like a mix of Laura and Samara. The Harbingers were neat, but really only bc ive got a thing for gas masks. The rest of the monsters werent really unique or weighty/threatening enough to be memorable. Now the first game is a fucking TREASURE TROVE of unique monsters *muah* you got Sadist, Sentinel, Keeper, Amalgam, Heresy, Laura, Shigyo, the Twins, Alter Egos, and im probably forgetting some!! But holy FUCK!!!!! And if we're includong the DLC?? MOTHER FUCKING SHADE. SPOTLIGHT LADY. LIGHT WOMAN.  SEXY LEGS.  Whatever you call her, i fucking love her. Her design is so simple. Helmet. Sheet. Legs. Her voice? Unnerving as hell. Love it. (Also i just personally love the diving helmet. Also like you know how a lot of games have a spotlight mechanic where you have to avoid the light and if it lands on you, you're fucked? LET'S MAKE AN ENTIRE MONSTER OUT OF THAT. She's PERFECT.) Oh and also those weird crawling exploding dudes. They made gross sounds and it was great. (Tbh Keepers still probably my favorite, if only for horny reasons)

TATIANA HOW HAVE I NOT FUCKING TALKED ABOUT TATIANA. Shes like the ONE female character that i fucking LOVE in the sequel. I love how they finally gave her a personality, and that personality is literally just "fuck you, Sebastian" Oh GOD its great shes SO FUNNY. I just.... god i love Tatiana lmao. I love how she makes you kinda uncomfortable too, like she knows something, but she wont tell you bc youre stupid. I didn't like the kind of "all-knowing guide" thing they did to try and make her creepy (like she's a "guide" but then also turns around and is like "no i wont tell you what you need to know bc you """have to discover it on your own""" or whatever") it serves no purpose since she never gave you any actual information, and it didn't succeed in making her creepier, all it did was frustrate me. She was at her creepiest when she IMPLIED she was doing something behind the scenes or knew something you didn't know and then didn't elaborate (not REFUSING to elaborate, just... stopping talking and leaving the statement to hang in the air, like the "getting her nails done" and "its been a long time, detective" and the "now what makes you say that" from the first game) and she was at her funniest when she was interacting with Sebastian from the sidelines, her snide little comments and sarcastic clapping cracked me the fuck up. Tatiana not treating Sebastian seriously was a fantastic touch for a game that otherwise would probably take itself so seriously it would double back around to being silly. Without Tatiana, it would've been just another male-centric gun-toting "survival horror" game, and for the most part, it was just that. She was definitely a much-needed source of slightly derisive comedy and a definite high-point for me, even if they didn't so a great job of making her creepy or fulfilling her "purpose."

Oh I also really love the COLORS in TEW2. The first game fell into the trap of having the colors be totally washed out that a lot of horror stuff does, but it also kind of worked for it. Especially with the color pallette of our main villain and how the whole thing was His World. The saturation of the colors in the second game is a breath of fresh air and gorgeous to look at, and you can even see the color motifs of the game change with each new villain: the game starts out with Stephano has lots of blues and purples and dark reds, when Theodore takes over we get bright orange and yellow contrasted with black and brown, and in the climax with Myra the game goes back to having washed out colors and white (and with her villain design? Let's face it: they were kinda just trying to do Ruvik again) We did get portions that were still kind of wahed out whites and greens and greys, but it wasnt the ENTIRE game, even the big blood-and-brains splatterhouse sections of the first game kinda had their colors weirdly muted for that "Horror Aethetic."

In conclusion, i do like the evil within 2, but i also had a lot of problems with it. And i complain about these problems because i like the game and know it couldve done better, tried harder, and been a LOT more than it was (the wasted character potential is my real overarching pet peeve, probably becuase i loved the characters in the first game, and character development is kind of my whole jam) . But all in all, it was still a fun monster-zombie romp with at least one entertaining villain and fun-to-look-at designs and environments. It wasn't character or horror or even REALLY story driven in the way I know it COULDVE been, but i still had a fun time and enjoyed myself.

[hollymartinswrites]

Chapters: 10/? Fandom: IT - Stephen King, IT (Movies - Muschietti) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh Characters: Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier, Ben Hanscom, Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough, Mike Hanlon, Original Child Character(s) Additional Tags: Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Domestic, Light Angst, Family Feels, Childhood Trauma, Adoption, Kid Fic, Adopted Children, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Marriage, Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier Are Parents, Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Catholicism, Richie Tozier Has Issues, Extended Tozier Family, Medical Examinations, Stephen King References, The Shining References, Doctor Sleep References

Summary:

Eddie and Richie embark on the most terrifying experience of all—parenthood. Or, the author desperately needed a domestic, family fix-it for Richie and Eddie and it turned into a much longer, angstier exploration than I expected.

Chapter X: Richie and Eddie are taught a valuable lesson by their eldest daughter.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Eddie was silent for a long moment and Richie worried he was about to call the whole thing off when he suddenly nodded once. Richie exhaled a shaking breath.

“Okay,” he said and dialed the number on his phone. It rang several times, both men holding their breath, until a generic voicemail message began speaking. “Shit.”

Richie hung up.

“That’s definitely the right number?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah. Should we try again later?”

Eddie shrugged.

“You could leave a message, I guess,” he muttered. “I still feel weird about this. Maybe we should do a background check on this guy.”

“We’re not inviting him to our house, Eds.”

“Yeah, but people can find things pretty easily nowadays.” Eddie sighed. “Has Tess mentioned anything to you about this...shine thing lately?”

Richie shook his head.

“She’s been pretty normal,” he said. “She did cry the other day when you left for work but I think that’s because she didn’t sleep well the night before.”

Eddie ran a hand through his hair.

“And why’s it called a shine?” he muttered to himself. “What the hell does that mean?”

Richie shrugged.

“Sounds cooler than just saying, I have weirdass powers I can’t explain,” he offered.

Eddie sighed and shook his head.

“Let’s wait a while and then we’ll try calling him again,” he said. He made as if to leave the room when he paused suddenly. He turned back to his husband. “The other day, when you had her show me her...shine...she said she didn’t want to because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Do you know why she said that?”

Richie frowned and shook his head.

“I figured it was just because you’re her favorite,” he admitted.

“Shut up, she doesn’t have a favorite,” Eddie replied tiredly. “You gotta get that shit out of your head.”

“I know, I know, I’m just kidding,” Richie said, sounding like he was definitely not kidding.

Eddie leaned down and kissed him gently.

“You’re too old to let your self-confidence be dictated by a four-year-old,” he murmured.

“Hey, I accept the fact that I’m second-choice, Eds.”

“Well, you’re first choice for me, dipshit.”

Richie wanted to crack a joke about technically being his second what with Myra being there first but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and enjoyed Eddie’s kisses.

Laundry was one of the few chores that Richie actually enjoyed. Aside from the occasional pukefest (he had learned early into parenthood that kids apparently can only puke in the messiest, Regan-in-The-Exorcist-style manner), it wasn’t that gross, and it was therapeutic to see a full hamper emptied and neatly folded clothes on the bed, ready to be put away. Plus, the smell of freshly done laundry was one of the best smells in the world and he could always convince one of the girls to help him with folding—so long as he put the TV on as they did so.

He was carrying a bag of freshly done laundry down the hall, wondering if Tess would let him choose what to watch as they folded when he heard hushed voices from her room. He paused. Now, little kids did tend to speak aloud to themselves, especially when playing, but this sounded...different.

He gently placed the bag of laundry on the floor and took a tentative step closer to Tess’s door, which was slightly ajar. Concentrating, he could just make out Tess’s young voice, speaking excitedly to no one. Holding his breath, Richie took another quiet step closer and listened carefully.

“I know,” Tess said happily, “I saw. And I’m getting better at it.”

Richie frowned. No one was responding and unless someone had managed to break in and not set off their house alarms, he and his daughter were alone in the house. And Tess, like Lydia, always provided multiple voices when playing alone with their dolls. Now, she fell silent, as if listening to a response only she could hear.

“I know,” she repeated, “thank you. I’m doing so good.” She suddenly laughed. “That’s silly, Abra!”

Breathless and with his heart pounding, Richie rushed towards the door and abruptly pushed it open. Tess jumped, startled.

“Tess?” he asked, breathlessly.

She suddenly looked around her room and pouted.

“Papa, you made Abracadabra go away!” she exclaimed sadly.

“I did?” Richie said, gazing around himself. Her room looked the same as always. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she shrugged. She lifted her coloring book and showed him the page she was working on. “Like it?”

“Yeah, great job,” he offered gently. He sat beside her on her bed and tried to decide how best to ask. “So...you were just talking to Abracadabra?”

“Uh-huh,” Tess replied, stretching out on her bed and flipping to a fresh page to color.

“What did...what did you guys talk about?” he asked casually.

She shrugged.

“Stuff.”

“What kinda stuff?”

“Ummm,” she said, “school and my shine and stuff.”

Richie nodded. Tess reached up to him with a crayon. He smiled, warmed by her natural kindness, and took it, leaning over to color with her. They were both silent for a while, content to merely color the page. Richie swallowed before continuing, “So, um, what does Abracadabra look like?”

“Like a girl,” Tess replied, selecting another crayon.

“A girl like you? Your age, I mean?”

She shook her head.

“No, bigger,” she said.

“Like Lydia?”

“No, bigger, I think.”

“A grown-up?”

Tess furrowed her little face before shaking her head again.

“Okay,” Richie said. “And she’s nice to you?”

“Oh yeah,” Tess replied, smiling, “she’s my friend.”

“Good, that’s good,” Richie replied. He fell silent and watched his daughter color happily. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

She nodded.

“Yep.”

“Hey,” he said gently and, with his free hand, tenderly lifted her chin so her eyes met his, “I mean it. You never have to be afraid to tell me or you Dad anything. We love you no matter what.”

“I know,” Tess replied, a mildly confused look on her face.

Richie gazed at her for a long moment before nodding.

“Alright, good,” he said. “You wanna help me fold the laundry?”

“Can we watch Wizard of Oz, too?”

Richie huffed a laugh.

“Yeah, kiddo, come on.”

Richie placed the last folded washcloth on the towering pile of laundry and leaned back. He reached down and reclined in his seat, once again grateful that he had convinced Eddie to spring for the reclining couch last year (though Eddie had insisted they were for old people). Once he was comfortable, he lifted his arm and Tess snuggled up against him, her arm thrown around his middle.

She sighed happily.

“You good, kid?” Richie asked.

“Uh-huh,” she said. She squeezed her arm around him. “I like this.”

“I like this, too,” Richie replied, his heart overflowing with love. She’s finally warming up to me, he thought.

“Yeah,” Tess said. “This is comfy. You’re soft.”

That startled a laugh out of Richie.

“I’m soft?” he repeated, glancing down at his daughter.

“Yeah,” she said. “I like it. Makes you comfy.”

Richie grinned.

“So I shouldn’t try to lose weight and get muscles?” he asked playfully.

Tess looked up at him, frowning.

“No way,” she said quickly.

Richie laughed and leaned down to kiss his daughter on the top of her curls.

“I love you, kiddo,” he said gently.

“Love you, too,” she replied, then brought her finger to her lips. “Shh.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, you’re right,” Richie said and turned back to the TV, where Glinda was singing. Richie wondered how many times he had watched this movie since adopting Tess but figured it was a lost cause. Well, at least it was better than most of the crap they call family films today.

Dorothy and the Scarecrow had only just met the Tin Man when the front door opened.

“We’re home,” Eddie called.

“In here,” Richie replied. Tess cuddled in closer against him.

Both Eddie and Lydia entered the living room, Lydia rushing ahead and breathless.

“Papa, I—ugh, this movie again?” she groaned.

“Tess helped me with the laundry so she got to pick what to watch,” Richie explained.

Lydia rolled her eyes. “We watch this movie all the time,” she pointed out.

“Lyds, I thought you were going to tell everyone what you got today at gymnastics,” Eddie said, trying to get her back on track.

“What’d you get?” Richie asked.

“Shh!” Tess hushed.

Lydia pouted as she glared at her sister. Richie sighed and picked up the remote, pausing the movie.

“Hey!” Tess exclaimed.

“Your sister has something to tell us,” Eddie said, raising an eyebrow at Tess, which only resulted in her pouting, too. “Go on, Lyds.”

Lydia, still a slight frown on her face, opened her rainbow tote bag and pulled out a colorful piece of paper. She held it out for her father and sister to see.

“What’s this?” Richie asked, leaning over as he read it.

“Says I’m the best listener,” Lydia mumbled, no longer excited.

“And most improved,” Eddie said.

“Hey, that’s great, kiddo,” Richie said happily. “You’re gonna be the next Simone Biles. Or even better than her. Not that it’s a competition or anything but...you know.”

Lydia smiled shyly and shrugged.

“Can we put the movie back on now?” Tess asked.

“How about you say congrats to your sister first?” Eddie offered.

She turned towards her sister.

“Congrats, movie now please,” she said quickly.

Lydia’s smiled disappeared. She turned towards Eddie.

“I told you she wouldn’t care,” she exclaimed. “No one cares!”

“Hang on, sweetheart, we all care,” Eddie said, reaching out towards her.

“Yeah, that’s awesome,” Richie insisted. “Tess is just being fussy.”

“Am not,” Tess shot back, annoyed at the insinuation.

“No, she’s being a brat,” Lydia declared.

“Lydia,” Eddie said firmly, “that was unnecessary. Your sister isn’t a brat. Apologize.”

“No,” she replied, suddenly sounding very near tears. “It’s not fair. She is so a brat because you guys love her more than you love me!”

Both men blinked at her in shock and Lydia clearly took their silence as confirmation because she continued, “You only care about Tess and her stupid shine thing. It’s just not fair! I’m special, too!”

“Of course, you are—”

“And she is so a brat, a big one!”

“Am not!” Tess insisted, now thoroughly riled up.

“Are so,” Lydia replied. She pointed at her sister, curled up against Richie. “You’re a big brat and Daddy only loves you because of your shine. That’s it!”

Tess instantly burst into tears, hiding her face against her father’s shirt and wailing. Lydia blinked and, before either of her fathers even had the chance to catch up to what just happened, ran out of the room, down the hall, and slammed the door of her bedroom closed.

Richie and Eddie stared at one another.

Over Tess’s head, Richie mouthed the words, “What the fuck?”

“Okay, so how do we handle this?” Eddie asked, his hands flying as he paced around the living room.

“How am I supposed to know?” Richie asked.

“You have sisters,” Eddie pointed out. “Wait, call your sister. See how she deals with shit like this with her kids.”

Richie sighed and glanced down at their youngest daughter, asleep on the couch. After a thoroughly intense crying session, only calmed down by both her fathers assuring her she was not a brat and they loved her equally and deeply, Tess had done the helpful thing and passed out. Frankly, Richie thought that most of the world’s problems could be solved by naps but they still had a pissed off Lydia to deal with and she was not one for naps.

“I think we need to talk to her together,” he offered.

“And say what to her?”

“I don’t know, that we love her?”

Eddie paused and ran a hand through his hair.

“I think we need to punish her for flying off the handle like that,” he said.

“Well, Tess kinda was being a brat,” Richie observed, wincing when Eddie shot him a disdainful look. “But yeah, okay, name-calling is a punishable offense.”

Eddie sighed, his shoulders slumped.

“Maybe if we can just get them to apologize to one another,” he murmured.

“Perfect, no punishments necessary,” Richie said, standing from the couch, careful to not disturb his sleeping daughter. “Come on, we’re in this together.”

“What, right now?” Eddie asked, wide-eyed.

“No, let’s keep our daughter in her room for a week, see how it goes,” Richie replied. “Yes, right now. Don’t be a baby.”

“Hey, no name-calling,” Eddie shot back. “She clearly learned that behavior from you.”

“Yeah, like you’ve never called me names,” Richie said, rolling his eyes. “You barely call me Richie.”

Eddie looked as if he was about to reply but thought better of it. He merely scowled as he followed his husband down the hall. After a moment’s hesitation, Richie knocked on Lydia’s bedroom door.

“Lyds, we’re gonna come in, okay?” he said gently. “We gotta talk.”

“I don’t wanna,” came the muffled reply.

“Well, that’s too bad,” Richie sighed. “We’re coming in.”

“But it’s my room!”

Richie couldn’t help it. He smiled.

“I tried that line with my parents many times,” he said as he twisted the doorknob. “It didn’t work in the 80s and it won’t work now.”

He opened the door and he and Eddie gazed at their daughter, sitting on her bed with a tear-stained face. Her arms crossed over her chest and her bag and its contents spilled across the floor. Richie felt oddly small in front of her angry, disappointed stare. Luckily, Eddie—already familiar with staring angrily and disappointedly—stepped up to the plate.

“Lydia,” he said gently, slowly walking towards her, “I know you were hurt but you can’t call your sister a brat.”

Lydia huffed and looked away.

“Look, she was wrong, too, and once she wakes up, we’re going to talk to her,” he said quickly, “but she’s still just a little kid. She doesn’t always know better.”

“That’s not fair,” Lydia muttered.

“I know,” Richie replied, rubbing his neck as he remembered his own tear-filled arguments with his sisters growing up. “I have a big and a little sister. Growing up, nothing seemed fair.”

Lydia glanced at him but quickly looked away, tightening her arms across her chest. Richie stepped towards her and sat beside her on the bed.

“Look, kid, it’s not easy being the older sister, I get that,” he offered. “And I know this family has been a bit...focused on Tess for the last few months but that’s just because we need to make sure you’re both safe and healthy. Not because we love one of you more.”

Lydia wiped at her eyes and sniffed.

“But sometimes,” she whimpered, “sometimes it’s like you guys don’t even know I’m here.”

Richie had had his heart broken several times in his life and each time he had thought it was the worst feeling in the world. Now, as he gazed at his daughter wiping away her tears, he knew all those other times had been bullshit. He fell silent, unable to put his troubled thoughts into words.

“Lydia, you’re our first born,” Eddie said, crouching down in front of her. “You think we’d ever overlook or forget you? Do you know how important you are to us? To this family?” Lydia hesitated before shrugging. “Your dad, sister, and I would be lost without you,” Eddie stated firmly, taking her hand.

Richie stared at the two of them, awed. Maybe it wasn’t Bill who had the way with words.

Lydia sniffed again and smiled softly.

“So we’re sorry if we ever made you feel that way,” Eddie continued. “But you need to say you’re sorry to your sister, too. And we’ll make sure she apologizes to you, too.”

“Okay,” Lydia sighed. “‘M sorry.”

Eddie stood and leaned down to kiss her on her forehead.

“Clean up your bag and come into the kitchen for lunch,” he said. “Rich, wanna help me?”

Richie blinked, stood, and followed his husband out to the kitchen.

“You handled that like a fucking champ today.”

Eddie glanced up as he tapped at his tablet.

“What?” he murmured.

“With Tess and Lydia,” Richie clarified, putting away their laundry in their drawers. “You knew just want to say to Lyds. I fucking froze.”

“You didn’t freeze,” Eddie replied. “You were good with her, too.”

Richie shrugged.

“I looked at her and just couldn’t...couldn’t find the words,” he sighed. “It was like looking at myself as a kid and I couldn’t even say anything.”

“Richie,” Eddie said, lowering his tablet and gazing at his husband, “you did good. You’re too hard on yourself.”

“I don’t know,” Riche mumbled. He looked over at Eddie and smiled gently. “Remember how nervous you were back when we first started looking into adoption? Look at you now. Fucking father of the year.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and smiled.

“You’re overreacting,” he said, shaking his head. After a few moments’ silence, he glanced up at Richie. “What are you staring at?”

“You, dipshit,” Richie replied, grinning.

“I thought we said no name-calling,” Eddie shot back, a smirk on his face.

“For the girls, yes,” Richie answered, walking over towards Eddie. He took his husband’s face in his hands and kissed him deeply. Eddie moaned softly against his lips and Richie was just about to move his hands to his waist when something started buzzing. “Fuck, is that your phone or mine?”

“Yours,” Eddie sighed. “Over on the bureau.”

“Ugh.”

Richie got up and hurried across the room.

“Whoever it is, tell them it’s after 9pm and we don’t take calls now,” Eddie said.

Richie grasped the phone and lifted it, his stomach clenching when he saw the unsaved New Hampshire number on the screen. He stared at it as it buzzed in his hand.

“Who is it?” Eddie asked.

Richie looked up at his husband, his hair disheveled and his face so sweet and inviting.

“No one,” Richie replied and placed the phone back down before returning to Eddie.