#there are so many little moments that add up | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

seitmai · 2 days ago

Text

Ahh many thoughts

“Non-existent,” he had replied with a sad shake of his head. “Same.”

Mood lol

You don’t know that Bob Floyd doesn’t require much to fall in love with you. That the paltry moments between physical encounters is plenty for love to flourish for him. That the handful of soft touches, the smiles, the little laughs…they are enough. The way you pat his cheek after you brush a chaste kiss there once you’re dressed and about to leave his place. The time you slid his glasses on his face, then kissed the tip of his nose.

🥹🥹🥹

(A therapist once posited that you’re this way because of your own childhood: the only child of two career Army parents. Your chaotic formative years—bouncing around the world, unable to set roots, sometimes even shifted from one parent to another due to conflicting deployments—left you with a wound, your therapist suggested. Disliking having a mirror held up to yourself, you just ghosted said therapist and never dug into that part of your internal makeup again).

Hahah the last sentence cracked me up 😂

You canvass the Hard Deck for a month. Take in all the fly boys and consider the fly girls too.

One has to make an informed decision 🤷🏻‍♀️

Not the sort of man you’d go for, usually. Quiet, reserved. Hardly ever drinks but gets in on the sing-alongs. Plays pool when someone needs an opponent. Is often the designated driver, and you smile when you see his bemused frustration when he steers a fellow Dagger, drunk and stumbling, out the door and safely home. He’s so stable and pulled-together. You bet he’s never cheated on a girl or stolen her car. Not your type at all.

This would exactly be the guy I go for hahah

He’s good-looking though, in a quiet way. Ditch the shitty Navy-issued glasses, muss up his hair a little, and he’d be downright handsome.

Facts

The third encounter is…wonderful. It’s like Bob was homing in on you, treating you like one of his weapon systems. Calibrating you. Figuring out what you like and doing more of that, seeing what you don’t respond to and never doing it again. Which makes it sound cold, how he figures you out, but Bob is so damned warm. Warm and sweet and considerate, and he grins at you and laughs with you, and it’d be so easy to fall for him—

Not the calibrating 🤭

He’s usually so secure in himself, but he has a small crisis of confidence. He wonders what he lacks—what makes him a good hook-up but not a good boyfriend? If he could just show you…if he could take you out on a proper date. Buy you flowers, buy you dinner, take you for a moonlit stroll along the beach. If he could cook for you, show you that he’s not that useless breed of man who can’t or won’t do homey tasks. If he could take care of you when you’re sick, be a sounding board when you rage…

He is desperate to be a fixture in her life 🥺

It never occurred to Bob before, but he adds it to his list of sexual acts: have you sit on his face and smother him with your pussy.

It's on his to do list 🤭

Bob generally lets you set the tone of your arrangement, but sometimes he has a moment of dominance that makes a wave of desire wash through you so strongly that your knees actually go weak.

🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️

Of course it was easy to catch feelings for him. He’s perfect, and right now he’s staring at you like he wants to eat you alive.

I mean how can one not?

He laughs, and he shifts his weight onto one arm so the other is free to reach down and grasp your waist. “If you kill me like that, I want how I died mentioned in my obituary, okay?”

Deal 🤝🏻

She smiles, snorts out a light laugh. “Yeah, the two of you are a real fucking vibe, Bob.” Phoenix nods. “Dislocated nose. Slight concussion. Embarrassed. Convinced she murdered you, until I set her straight.”

Haha I can't

“She knocked you out,” Hangman cuts in. “And broke your nose.” “You weren’t moving and there was blood everywhere,” Rooster adds. “She also gave you grade two whiplash,” Phoenix continues. “And it looks like you’ll be sporting a pair of gnarly black eyes by morning.”

And he is gonna wear them like a badge of honor knowing gave it to him 🤭🫡

“She has all these rules. To keep it clean. To keep feelings out, you know?” He lifts his hand again, drops it again—the best version of a shrug he can manage. “I have to think that injuries requiring ambulances is an unwritten rule too.”

This is so funny if he wasn't so defeated

“You ever tell her you wanted to revisit the rules, then?” “No.” Her smile widens. “You’re so fucking dumb, dude.”

Someone had to say it 🤷🏻‍♀️

“There’s a pool about you and Baby on Board.” He sips his own coffee, smiles at you. “I want to know if I’m out money or if I have a payday coming.” “You bet on us?” He holds up a hand. “Whoa. All the Daggers bet on you. It wasn’t just me.”

😂😂😂

“It doesn’t matter either way,” you finally answer. “I nearly killed the guy. Is there a pool on that?” Hangman laughs, and he settles in the chair near your bed. “You didn’t nearly kill him. You only lightly injured him. Then Bradley lightly injured you. It’s hilarious.”

This just such a silly situation but those two are so in love they see it in such a different way because they both think they destroyed everything 😂🥲

“If anything, Bob’s gonna have some light duty, but he can do some systems work on the ground.” The smile reappears on his face, and he slyly adds, “and his cred just skyrocketed.” A beat. “The quietest Dagger just got his face rearranged by pussy. He’ll never have to buy his own drink again as long as he lives.”

He's not wrong 😅🤷🏻‍♀️

He looks awful. He looks…well, he looks like he pulled the full weight of an adult woman onto his face, pussy-first.

🤭🤭🤭

But his smile…God, when he sees you, it’s just like Jake said: his poor, mangled face lights up, and his smile is so wide it looks like it might hurt. It hits you again, as it often does, how different he is from your usual type of man. That he loves to see you, is happy when he sees you, even injured. That he doesn’t need you around to fix his life, but he wants you around to just…be with you. Bob is no one that needs fixing; he just wants you there with him.

🥹🥹🥹

“You could make a claim against my insurance, I guess—” “Just a date,” he interrupts. “I just want one date with you.”

He's so cute 🥰

“Hmm.” He releases your hand but pats the space on his bed beside him. “I don’t know if I’d be comfortable making you miserable, honey.”

🥰🥹🥰🥹

“I’d like that.” He shifts a little in the bed, then adds, “maybe around the six-month mark, you could meet my family.” “Would they make me miserable?” you tease. “Oh, they’d make your life a living hell,” he teases back. “My dad would give you this whole disgusting speech about how he always wanted another daughter, my mom would drop hints about my grandma’s engagement ring being set aside for me—”

Awwww so happy for them 🥰

Would love to read about their miserable time with Bob's family if you ever feel up for it 🤗

First Time for Everything

(Bob Floyd x F!Reader)

CW: Angst (friends-with-benefits; idiots in love; talk of bad past relationships; injuries); smut (vague references to sex; oral sex gone awry); 18+ only.

Word Count: 5591

AN: This was requested by an anonymous person!

AN2: Usual caveat - not edited in any way. Likely grammar bugaboos, tense switches, etc.

Bob Floyd would have never thought he’d end up in a friends-with-benefits situation, but there’s a first time for everything.

You’re the one who drives the entire enterprise. A civilian who works at Top Gun, you’re no stranger to the stress of dealing with a multi-billion-dollar fleet of planes. You serve as a liaison between the Navy and the bevy of contractors who build and maintain the planes, and if Bob has to juggle a million complicated systems mid-flight, you have to juggle a million tricky relationships and contracts on the ground.

You put the question to him, late one night at the Hard Deck. Harvard and Yale had been leading a spirited conversation about dry spells, long distant relationships, juggling hook-ups. You and Bob sat there, listening but adding little. But after the other Daggers started to peel away one by one, you had turned to Bob and started asking about his love life.

“Non-existent,” he had replied with a sad shake of his head.

“Same.”

There was a beat of silence—you sipped at your drink; Bob cracked another peanut.

“Any prospects?” you asked.

Another shake of his head.

“Yeah, same here,” you replied.

Then there was another long stretch of silence, but this time you fixed Bob with a curious look. It lasted long enough for him to notice, for him to squirm in his seat—

“So, I have an idea, and you’re totally free to say ‘no,’” you started, and the rest was history.

-----

That was months ago. Bob has gotten to know you much better since then.

Much, much better.

He knows what you feel like. He knows what you taste like. He knows the place on your neck that makes you keen when he puts his mouth to it. He knows exactly where to press the tips of his fingers when they are inside you, where to find the spot that makes your pussy pulse with arousal, that makes your breathing stutter and your eyes roll back, that makes you moan out his name—

He knows how it sounds when you moan his name, and he knows how that affects him in turn, and he knows that he doesn’t know nearly enough about you.

He doesn’t know what you eat for breakfast or how you take your coffee or if you even drink coffee at all. He doesn’t know much about your family, little about your childhood, only a bit about your wants and likes and dislikes.

Because of the rules you laid out that night at the Hard Deck.

Hooking up, friends-with-benefits, you had explained, requires clear lines be drawn. Otherwise, it gets messy. Feelings develop. Misunderstandings happen. People get hurt, sometimes badly.

Your rules keep those lines clearly drawn. No spending the night. No dates beyond sex—no lunch dates or movie nights, no days at the beach together. You call each other and make plans to fuck, and then you part, and that keeps it neat. Clean.

There’s no way you can know it, because you don’t really know Bob either, but there’s no rule on earth you could put in place that would keep him from falling for you anyway. You work with numbers and contracts all day, so you believe in the power of words, in rules.

Which is why your rules turn out to be so important after all: because here he is, hopelessly, painfully in love while you only see him a safe place to release your sexual frustrations. He cannot imagine how much worse it would hurt if those lines didn’t exist.

*****

You have a chronic issue with men.

You pick the worst possible boyfriends. From high school until now, you seem to only attract cheaters, losers, and general assholes. Numerous boyfriends cheated on you. One stole your car. One stole your prescription sleeping pills and got arrested trying to sell them.

It’s not that you’re attracted to assholes, really. The whole bad-boy schtick bores you. It’s more that you like to fix things; you like to turn chaos into order. That trait serves you well at work, untangling all the intricate contracts and orders and rules between the Navy and their contractors.

That trait serves you less well in love, because people often can’t be fixed, at least not without wanting to be fixed. And anyway, the guys you date need deep fucking therapy, not a girlfriend with a fetish for setting order to the universe.

But the therapist did make you aware of your bad patterns with men, so you swear off relationships, which is easy enough.

You still have needs, though.

You canvass the Hard Deck for a month. Take in all the fly boys and consider the fly girls too. Profile them, watched how they acted when they think no one is watching. Watch them sober, watch them drunk. Watch to see which ones are handsy in an unwelcome way, and which ones remain respectful.

It’s Bob Floyd who catches your eye.

He’s good-looking though, in a quiet way. Ditch the shitty Navy-issued glasses, muss up his hair a little, and he’d be downright handsome.

Not the sort of man you’d go for, usually, but you aren’t looking for a boyfriend or a future husband. You just need a zero risk, reliable guy to get off with. It seems like a long shot because Bob is so quiet, but when you put the idea to him, he blinks…then asks you to clarify.

Then he agrees.

-----

That was months ago.

The arrangement works. It’s exactly what you were looking for. Bob Floyd is exactly what you thought he was: reliable, steady. He’s no broken man-child; he’s quiet but that belies a secure sort of masculinity that you’ve never really experienced before. He knows who he is and what he wants, and he isn’t swayed by anything. He’s solid.

He’s also surprising, in some ways.

To be crude about it, in looking for a friend-with-benefits, you needed only two things in a man: a clean bill of health and a hard dick. Bob is able to provide both (he hands you his test results from his latest physical, neatly folded in an envelope the first night you meet up).

He is also able to provide more than that. The first night is a little awkward, but only because you are near-strangers.

The second encounter is better.

It's been months, but for fucks sake, you’re falling for him. It’s embarrassing, because you gave him this tough-girl speech about rules and lines and not catching feelings, and he had nodded seriously and said he understood…and now here you are, the idiot who is catching feelings, who is realizing that maybe your type of man was wrong all along, that maybe who you needed was a reliable, steady man with warmth and blue eyes that swim a bit behind the lens of his thick glasses.

*****

It’s been months, and Bob always worries that this arrangement will end.

One of your rules had been that the arrangement stops the moment one of you find someone else, and Bob always worries that someone else will catch your eye. That you’ll find some man—you are surrounded by handsome, capable men every day, for heaven’s sake—that you find an appealing prospect. Someone you want to sleep with and be with.

Someone better than him.

Bob decides to do what he can, which is to just be the best lover he can be. To be the most considerate, most adventuresome, most giving man you’ve ever taken to bed. It’s all he can do anyway, so he might as well give it his best.

-----

Bob usually lets you lead. He lets you set the schedule, and for every five times you call to hook-up, he calls once.

The arrangement, such as it is, does work for him. For all the angst of his unrequited love for you, the hooking up does relax him. It helps him burn off extra energy, which helps him focus at work.

It also helps him explore things he has never tried before.

With you, Bob has played around with role play: tame scenarios where he gets to pretend that he’s a different person than he is. He has tried a variety of positions that have tested him in both strength and flexibility. If there’s a list of sexual acts, Bob feels like he’s steadily working through it with you.

There’s still one, though…

It’s Fritz who starts the conversation at the Hard Deck. You’re not there, but the guys all are, and the conversation drifts towards the usual locker room talk. Fritz kicks it off by talking about his latest girl. The guys egg him on for details. Bob grins around the rim of his glass, says little, but then Fritz says, “man, when she sits on my face and smothers me in that pussy, I could die happy.”

It never occurred to Bob before, but he adds it to his list of sexual acts: have you sit on his face and smother him with your pussy.

The idea takes hold so fiercely that Bob has to shift in his seat, suddenly warm at the thought of you sitting on him, his mouth on you. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, and he’s sending you a text before he even has a beat to rethink it.

Want to meet up tonight?

You reply within a minute.

Sure. Mine or yours?

Bob pauses and considers. He catches Rooster’s eye and tilts his head at him, gesturing to his roommate for a sidebar. Rooster comes over and stands beside Bob.

“What’s up?” Rooster asks.

“What are your plans for tonight?”

Rooster grins at the question. It’s not exactly a secret that you and Bob are hooking up, though you don’t publicize it either. Bob doesn’t know that his fellow Daggers have a betting pool about how the situation with you will resolve. He’s caught the sly grins between them sometimes and wondered at what they mean.

“You asking if the apartment will be empty?” Rooster asks. “Hell, Baby on Board. Keep it to your room. I don’t care what happens in the privacy of your own room.”

Bob can’t help the blush that heats his face. He shouldn’t be embarrassed, but sometime the two of you get lost in the moment, and more than once, Rooster has sidled up to Bob the day after and clapped him on the back, congratulated him on his prowess—

Rooster catches the man’s discomfort and elbows him in the side. “I was planning on finding myself some companionship for the night,” he finally says. “The place is all yours.”

Bob thanks him, then texts you.

My place?

Another beat before your answer comes. When?

Now.

*****

Bob generally lets you set the tone of your arrangement, but sometimes he has a moment of dominance that makes a wave of desire wash through you so strongly that your knees actually go weak.

Like his text. No softening his final message, just a simple, single word that holds a universe of promise.

Now.

“Yes, sir,” you murmur. You only take a minute to brush your teeth and slip into nicer lingerie, but then you get in your car and head over to his place.

He must have been waiting at the window, watching for you. You aren’t even halfway up the steps to his porch when the door swings open, and there he is.

Of course it was easy to catch feelings for him. He’s perfect, and right now he’s staring at you like he wants to eat you alive.

-----

“Explain it…again,” you manage to get out between kisses. “How does…it work?”

Bob raises himself, props himself on his forearms on either side of your head. His hair is mussed (perfect), and his glasses are on the bedside stand, so his blue eyes peer down at you.

“You sit on my face,” he replies simply.

You huff out a breath. “Sure, but….like, how? I weigh a lot—”

He shakes his head. “Not a problem for me, honey.”

“But I could hurt you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I could kill you.”

He laughs, and he shifts his weight onto one arm so the other is free to reach down and grasp your waist. “If you kill me like that, I want how I died mentioned in my obituary, okay?”

“Not funny!” You poke him in the side, and he laughs again.

“Seriously, Bob. I don’t want to hurt you,” you continue.

“You won’t. I promise. It’ll be fine. But I want to do this.” His smile fades, and he fixes you with a darker look that sends a bolt of lust right through your core. “Please.”

-----

The two of you, once you got over your initial awkwardness, usually move so well together. Perfectly coordinated, in sync.

This…is not that.

For the first time, the two of you aren’t working together. Bob can’t know it, but it’s not just a physical misalignment—there are hidden feelings at play. As you tentatively hover over where he lays on the bed, you feel suddenly exposed, like Bob might be able to see the feelings you’ve caught for him. It’s so intimate, you think, being so bared to him. You hold yourself back, shy, and Bob doesn’t understand the sudden reticence in you. He chalks it up to fear of hurting him.

And you can’t know it, but Bob absolutely loves how intimate it is, being so exposed to him. There are hidden feelings on his side too—how hard it hits him, that he’s never done this with another woman before, and how he cannot imagine doing it with another one after you. He’s ravenous for you, wants to possess you in every way he can, but when he tries to tug you closer to him, you chalk it up to general horniness and nothing more.

It is all misunderstanding, in the end. You hold yourself back, hover over his face. He grips your hips, tries to pull you to him. The two of you struggle against the other, not understanding what is really driving the other—

“Come on,” he growls. “Give it to me, honey.”

“Bob, I don’t—”

“I can take it.”

“But I—”

It happens in a split second. Bob tugs you down against him in the exact moment you try to get a better balance over him, and the force of his pulling you down is added to the full weight of you shifting, with a bit of gravity, and you hit Bob so hard.

There’s a sickening crack, like a chicken bone snapping. You look down at him, startled, and see his blue eyes widen in pain—shock—

You scramble off of him, call his name, but he doesn’t move, and then you see it.

Blood. There’s so much blood, all over his face, and you yell his name now, but he still doesn’t move—

You’ve killed him. You’ve murdered him, and you scream. You reach for your phone and fumble it, and your body just acts. You back away, your mind scrambling, and you think I need to stop the bleeding, so you think to go to the bathroom for a towel, but when you pivot quick on your heel and turn towards the closed door, it is already swinging inward, right at your face, hard, and there’s an explosion of pain behind your eyes.

Then everything goes dark, and you don’t wake until you’re in the ambulance.

*****

Bob wakes up to the paramedics sliding him onto the backboard, his head immobilized between two foam blocks. Rooster hovers at the perimeter, a worried look on his face.

“What—” Bob manages to croak out, but the room grows dim again, and he fades in and out until the hospital.

-----

He comes to and stays awake in a quiet hospital room. There’s the steady beep of a monitor somewhere behind and above him. When he tries to turn his head, though, he finds himself held in place by a brace.

“You’re awake finally.” The voice is familiar, and a moment later, Phoenix’s face swims into his peripherals.

“You scared us, Baby on Board.” Rooster, to the left of him.

“Who knew you had it in you?” The voice at the foot of the bed, the hint of smarm. Bob feels a hand on his ankle, jostling him lightly. “You dirty fucking freak.”

“Shut up, Bagman.” Phoenix glares at the cocky pilot, then turns back to Bob, her gaze softening. “How are you feeling?”

He considers his answer. He feels…rough.

He also notices that his Dagger teammates are there, but you are not. Which makes him feel worse.

Phoenix seems to read his thoughts. Something in his expression must give him away, because she leans in closer and sets a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“She’s still downstairs,” she says, low near his ear. “You got a room, but she’s still in the E.R. They haven’t released her yet.”

“E.R.?”

She smiles, snorts out a light laugh. “Yeah, the two of you are a real fucking vibe, Bob.”

Rooster steps closer to the bed and grins down at him. “You’re lucky I struck out at the Hard Deck. I come home, barely get my shoes off, when I hear a scream. I go running back to your room just in time to knock your girl out. She ran headfirst into the door when I opened it.” He claps his hands together. “Down like a bag of rocks.”

Bob’s heart rate picks up, and the monitor registers it. Phoenix glances at the machine and snorts again.

“She’s fine,” she assures him. “I’ve been bouncing between you and her. It’s just slammed down there, so she’s been waiting for the doctor to release her.”

“She’s okay then?”

Phoenix nods. “Dislocated nose. Slight concussion. Embarrassed. Convinced she murdered you, until I set her straight.”

Bob smiles despite himself. “She thought I was dead?”

“She knocked you out,” Hangman cuts in. “And broke your nose.”

“You weren’t moving and there was blood everywhere,” Rooster adds.

“She also gave you grade two whiplash,” Phoenix continues. “And it looks like you’ll be sporting a pair of gnarly black eyes by morning.”

“Wow.” Bob breathes out a reedy whistle. “And you’re sure she’s okay?”

Phoenix nods again.

Rooster and Hangman offer to go grab some coffee from the hospital cafeteria, leaving Bob and his partner alone. Phoenix drags a chair over and settles closer to him, and Bob feels his mood sour little by little.

“Are you okay?” Phoenix finally asks.

He lifts his hand, drops it back onto the bed. “I guess it’s ruined now.”

“What is?”

“Our…arrangement. Mine and hers.”

She tilts her head. “How so?”

Phoenix stares at him, but a smile starts to creep across her face. She shakes her head then, grips his shoulder again.

“Do you love her, Bobby?” The question is asked softly, kindly.

Bob forgets the brace for a second and tries to nod. “Yeah.”

“You ever tell her?”

“Against the rules.”

“You ever tell her you wanted to revisit the rules, then?”

“No.”

Her smile widens. “You’re so fucking dumb, dude.”

*****

Hangman’s the one who stops to check in on you. He has a paper cup of coffee in each hand, and he holds both up to you.

“Wasn’t sure what you liked. One is black, one is cream and sugar.”

“Cream and sugar, please.”

He walks over to your bed and hands it to you, then studies you. You know you must look like hell—your eyes red from the hysterical crying of thinking yourself a murderer. Your nose—not broken, only dislocated—swollen and tender. And the general misery of how badly everything has turned out.

“You like the little nerd, huh?”

You take a sip of the coffee and thank him for it.

You don’t answer his question.

Hangman sighs, leans against the wall. “It’s just that, if you do, I’d like to know. I have a lot riding on it.”

“Huh?”

“There’s a pool about you and Baby on Board.” He sips his own coffee, smiles at you. “I want to know if I’m out money or if I have a payday coming.”

“You bet on us?”

He holds up a hand. “Whoa. All the Daggers bet on you. It wasn’t just me.”

You shake your head. “I don’t understand.”

“Some of us bet that you’d end up together. Others bet that you wouldn’t. Not that hard to understand.”

You try to take a steadying breath through your nose, which is an effort with how swollen it is. You look away from him and fix your eyes on the open doorway of your room. You watch the nurses and doctors scurry back and forth, the gurneys of hurt and sick people.

“It doesn’t matter either way,” you finally answer. “I nearly killed the guy. Is there a pool on that?”

Hangman laughs, and he settles in the chair near your bed. “You didn’t nearly kill him. You only lightly injured him. Then Bradley lightly injured you. It’s hilarious.”

You can only wince at his word choice. It’s not funny at all. Miramar is a gossipy hive of rumor, and Bob’s injuries will put him out of commission for at least a while—

“Is this gonna hurt his career at Top Gun?” you ask Hangman. You glance over at him and catch the way his expression softens at the angst in your voice. “Did I just fuck up his life completely?”

He reaches out and grasps your hand for a moment, gives you a friendly squeeze before he releases you. “Shit happens. The Navy knows that.”

“Still…”

“Jesus,” you groan, and you cover your face with your hands while Hangman laughs, but a second later the doctor enters your room and tells you that you are being released.

Hangman doesn’t take the hint and leave. He watches you sign off on your discharge papers, sips his coffee. He hands you your shoes, and he helpfully holds out your coat so you can slide into it.

“That little nerd loves you, you know,” he says suddenly. “It’s obvious as hell, which is why I laid a big bet on it.”

“He does?” The surprise in your voice makes him chuckle, then shake his head.

“Probably hard to see it from where you’re sitting, but he does. His dumb face lights up the minute he sees you, and when you aren’t around, he’s like a lost puppy. So if you feel even an inkling of the same for him, just go upstairs and put him out of his misery, okay?”

It feels like grace you don’t deserve. You hurt Bob, even if you hadn’t meant to, and for Hangman to offer this sliver of hope you don’t think you deserve—

You can’t help the tears that spring to your eyes. Hangman doesn’t remark on them; he only stands by the doorway and waits for you.

“You’re a regular Cupid, Jake,” you offer.

“Nah.” He finishes off his coffee, crumples the cup, and tosses it in the nearby trash can. “I just want that fucking pool money.”

-----

The tears that threatened downstairs…they break free the moment you finally see him.

He looks awful. He looks…well, he looks like he pulled the full weight of an adult woman onto his face, pussy-first. His nose is swollen in a splint, he’s in a neck brace, and both eyes are so bruised that they can barely open beyond slits.

But his smile…

God, when he sees you, it’s just like Jake said: his poor, mangled face lights up, and his smile is so wide it looks like it might hurt. It hits you again, as it often does, how different he is from your usual type of man. That he loves to see you, is happy when he sees you, even injured. That he doesn’t need you around to fix his life, but he wants you around to just…be with you. Bob is no one that needs fixing; he just wants you there with him.

Phoenix and Rooster have the good sense to leave, ushering Hangman along with them. Bob, when he sees the tears coursing down your face, frowns and holds a hand out to you.

“I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s fine,” he repeats. You make your way over to him and take his hand, and maybe it is okay. He holds you tight, his big, warm palm enfolding yours—

“Are you okay?” he asks.

You shake your head. You’re not okay at all. You don’t know if Jake was lying, but you can’t lie to Bob anymore just as you can’t lie to yourself.

“I broke one of the rules,” you admit. You watch him, wary. You have the sense of how he might react, but you can’t know for sure. You just have to push through and say it. Put it out there.

“I broke a rule too,” he replies. He squeezes your hand.

“Yeah?” It comes out shaky, unsure.

“Yeah.”

“Which rule?”

He lifts your hand to his mouth and brushes a gentle kiss to the back of it. He’s so damned soft, and you blink against the fresh tears that threaten to spill over your face.

“It’s your own fault,” he grumbles, but he smiles when he says it. “If you didn’t want me falling for you, you shouldn’t have been so easy to fall for.”

You laugh, a nervous sound that nudges up against the wall of tears you’re struggling to hold back. “Even though I almost killed you?”

“I mean, you didn’t almost kill me, but you definitely owe me for all this.” He gestures with his free hand at his face.

“You could make a claim against my insurance, I guess—”

“Just a date,” he interrupts. “I just want one date with you.”

“That’s it?” The sick feeling in your stomach starts to recede, and it’s replaced by the fluttery feeling of promise, of something new and wonderful starting.

“Just once chance to show you how good it could be.” His expression is dead serious, and he squeezes your hand again. “Me and you. For real this time.”

“I, uh…” You clear your throat and glance at his bright blue gaze, then look away. You fix your eyes on where your hands are joined together. Your hand fits perfectly in his.

“I’ve only ever dated assholes,” you admit. Another glance at him to see how he takes in your words. “Guys who don’t have their shit together. It’s why I wanted the whole…arrangement with you. I’ve never been with a man who didn’t need, like, intensive therapy. Or the occasional law enforcement intervention.”

“First time for everything,” Bob replies mildly.

“What if…what if I don’t know how to be in a relationship unless…unless…” You trail off, not sure how to say it without it sounding completely terrible…but then, the reality of your dating life has been completely terrible anyway.

“You afraid you don’t know how to be in a relationship unless you’re miserable?” he asks gently.

“Maybe?”

“Hmm.” He releases your hand but pats the space on his bed beside him. “I don’t know if I’d be comfortable making you miserable, honey.”

You perch awkwardly on the sliver of bed available to you, but Bob reaches up and gets a hand on your shoulder, tugs you gently down towards him. It’s careful maneuvering—a stark difference to what got you here—but you eventually get comfortable beside him, your cheek against his shoulder, your temple against the hard molded plastic of his brace. His hand finds yours again, and he threads his fingers through yours.

“What if we started with that one date you owe me?” he offers. “And then maybe a second date. I’ll treat you the way you deserve to be treated, and you see how it feels to not be miserable.”

One date, maybe a second.

“I think I can handle that,” you reply.

“Then a third date, then another.”

You smile. “Okay.”

“Maybe around, say, the fifth date, you can spend the night. Let me make you pancakes in the morning. Fresh-squeezed orange juice.”

“Okay.”

“Then after maybe a month, you could keep some stuff at my place. Shampoo, extra clothes. So you’re comfortable.”

“I could take you to my favorite taco place,” you offer. “Over in Imperial County.”

“I’d like that.” He shifts a little in the bed, then adds, “maybe around the six-month mark, you could meet my family.”

“Would they make me miserable?” you tease.

“Oh, they’d make your life a living hell,” he teases back. “My dad would give you this whole disgusting speech about how he always wanted another daughter, my mom would drop hints about my grandma’s engagement ring being set aside for me—”

“They sound horrible,” you laugh.

“The worst.” He chuckles, and a long moment of silence stretches between you, but it’s comfortable. His warm hand in yours, the quiet beeping of the machines monitoring him, the steady sound of his breathing…the slightly whistling quality of your own breathing through your swollen nose.

“You know, I’ve never taken a girl home to meet my family before,” he says, and his voice is serious. “Never even considered it before.”

You lift your head a bit to look at him, and you see the thoughtful quality of his expression. You settle back against him.

“And you’re considering it with the girl who broke your neck, broke your nose, and shamed you in front of the United States Navy?”

He chuckles again. “You didn’t break my neck and I’m not in trouble with the Navy,” he says. “And yes, I’ve considered it. First time for everything.”

He doesn’t add anything else, and the drama of the evening starts to hit you. You feel your eyes getting heavy, start to doze off in the hospital bed with him. His verb tense choice, though—he has considered it, past tense, not is considering it, present tense—makes you wonder how long Bob might have been breaking that rule…

Bob doesn’t say anything else, but he thinks it: he never took a girl home to his family because he vowed to only ever do it once—with the girl he plans to marry.

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fitzjamesbulletwound · 2 days ago

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welcome to my jirv character study and thank you in advance for reading/commenting/liking/anything, if you interact with this at all i love you <3

i don’t want to spend too much time on an intro but what i will say is that overall, what i found so fascinating and tragic about jirv as a character is that throughout the story he and his actions are defined by what he denies about himself and how he subsequently closes himself off from others, and the tragedy of this being that once they abandon the ships he, like many of the other characters, begins to allow parts of himself to come to the surface that we haven’t seen before, and of course the saddest part of this is that for jirv it begins to happen only days, hours, minutes before his death. oh one note- i refer to him as “john” and “jirv” throughout most of this so hopefully that’s not confusing lol.

episode 1/first impressions- the first time we see jirv is in the chinese sniper story dinner scene and both in this first scene and the early episodes in general there’s a lot to be seen regarding his relationship with crozier in particular and of course just his general pattern of behavior and what it implies about his state of mind. at the dinner scene he appears prim, maybe a little uptight, a bit of that upper class-ness that i think is evident in a lot of the officers in the early eps. it’s also really interesting seeing how he reacts to crozier in this first scene- i do think that jirv’s relationship with crozier is similar to ned’s in the sense that he very much wants to please crozier but he is also somewhat derisive in his reactions to crozier’s more explosive moments. when he interrupts fitzjames at dinner jirv looks down in embarrassment and is clearly uncomfortable with crozier’s behavior.

this spills over into the ice talk scene where jirv again reacts in embarrassment to crozier borderline insulting franklin (“you nearly starved, not all of your men survived”)- he was listening to crozier with rapt attention but when he says this he instantly hangs his head in shame and you can see him fidgeting in the background.

and jirv’s overall depiction in this scene is so interesting to me because there’s a certain almost childlike innocence that characterizes him in his ep 1 scenes (i also have to add that there are quite a few songs on the davechella playlist that seem to explore and make reference to jirv’s childhood which i think is significant but anyway)- we make a lot of jokes about him basically not being allowed to sit at the grown up table but i wonder if the purpose of this was more to symbolize his isolation from the other men, including his fellow officers, due to his own issues of denial and repression; that is to say- denying parts of yourself also denies you the joy or even the routine comfort of human connection, of belonging. but another part of this characterization in the first ep is that it’s in such contrast to how we see jirv in his later and arguably most memorable scenes; in ep 1 i don’t have any other words for it- he’s cute! he looks innocent! and i think they meant for him to come across that way! but later on what we largely see is his anger and although i will make the argument that jirv uses anger to mask other more complicated (to him) emotions, it’s such a difference from what we see in the first ep. it’s almost a case too of meekness vs. righteousness in a religious sense as well- the two sides that we see of jirv at different moments in the story.

on to episode 2 and THE orlop scene. one of the first thing i noticed with this scene is how jirv’s greatcoat fits him- it makes him look almost like a priest and i just love how the costuming is used in the show to convey personality and mannerisms ahhhh.

this scene was also such a great study in jirv/ronan’s microexpressions and what they reveal about him- from this moment on, we can see that jirv spends a lot of time hiding fear with anger, and in this particular case using it to hide the paralyzing shock of knowledge- jirv knew exactly what he was hearing immediately and it froze him in place. what really surprised him here i think is that it was someone he knew- when billy comes out and jirv asks “what are you doing down here?” it is a rationalization- he KNOWS billy isn’t meant to be down there and he knows exactly what it is he was doing.

and jirv remains frozen in place to the point where he’s not even doing his nervous fingers compulsion that i noticed he does a lot in stressful circumstances (essentially rubbing his fingers together) and the look of absolute fear that comes across his face when he sees it’s hickey with billy- i’m skipping ahead (kinda) here but this makes me think of their (chronological) first scene, where you can tell that there is something that jirv recognizes in hickey- not just that something is off with him, but i do think that on their first meeting hickey really elicited some feelings in jirv that he wasn’t willing to confront and that that feeling lingered for the rest of the expedition. but back to the scene at hand- jirv can’t look at hickey and can’t take another step forward and can’t even address him directly in that moment and the only time he looks at him is when hickey’s back is turned. i think for jirv this whole scenario just really drove home something that was already in him, something he doesn’t allow himself to think of but that he is forced to contend with in this moment.

overall the scene of him catching billy and hickey shows the reaction of a man who knew immediately what he was walking into because it lives in his heart and in his body no matter how much he denies it, and he masks the fear of his own reaction with anger because the feelings that come up are ones he can’t acknowledge to himself; he can’t meet hickey’s eyes because to meet them would be to meet his own nature and confront everything that comes with that. and later once jirv has left when hickey says that he is a “man afraid of chaos” and refers to there being “worse things than being lashed”, he could be referring to jirv’s denial in both cases (i don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that hickey likely clocked jirv early on)

this is a very jirv/hickey heavy episode but the next significant jirv moment we get is the scene where hickey is drinking with crozier and jirv comes in to tell him about the lead parties returning- he certainly displays nervous body language when addressing crozier- slightly higher pitched voice, his nervous fingers thing he does- but i think what clearly has him the most freaked out here is hickey’s presence. i really thought about this because even in the context of what jirv just saw, he has no reason to fear hickey in the slightest; it was jirv that caught hickey, not the other way around, although to jirv i’m sure it may still feel that way. hickey poses no actual threat to him beyond the effect he has on him and hickey knows it; that’s why he smirks at jirv’s reaction. the only way this really makes sense to me is if jirv’s fear is due to his own internalized shit because truly what does he have to fear from hickey? what could hickey possibly threaten him with? if anything, hickey should be afraid of jirv telling crozier what he saw but he knows he won’t tell and he knows why i think. what could he do to john besides make him understand himself in ways he’s terrified of? and of course i mean that in the sense of what we know about hickey up to this point in the story and not yet knowing what he is capable of in later episodes. but this is all to say that jirv’s fear here is 100% due to his feelings about hickey and nothing else.

this scene is also another great example of him using anger to cover his apprehension- he forces himself to meet hickey’s eyes once crozier has walked away and the best way i can describe what happens is that there is a tension in that look. it’s one thing to be religious and angry and judgmental about sodomy on the ships but it’s another thing to be terrified of the mere presence of one single gay person, to say nothing of how hard it was for him to even look at him!

and on to episode 3! what i realized when watching this episode through the jirv lens is that in almost every scene we see him in leading up to his confrontation with hickey, it’s fairly evident that he is thinking of that very moment and how to go about it (i think what sent him over the edge was billy coming to him and everything that he told him) and that’s how i want to canonically prove that jirv was thinking of gay sex during the before breakfast crozier/lieutenants meeting scene when he’s just zoning out lol.

another thing i noticed about this scene is that it’s the first of a few where jirv is present when potential interactions with the netsilik people are being discussed. edward’s colonialist attitudes and assumptions about them that he expresses in this scene are foreshadowing for the reaction to the false story that hickey tells about jirv’s death, that ned and hodge both buy into in their grief for jirv but also in their racist views. that whole scene is actually foreshadowing for all 3 of them when jirv dies.

the next time we see jirv is when hickey sees billy go into his cabin. and the way he looks to hickey nervously not once but twice- this is i believe his nervousness and contemplation coming forward as he is still contemplating speaking to hickey, or at he very least thinking about what he walked in on.

and finally we do get the jirv/hickey confrontation scene- when jirv is walking down the little ramp to find hickey you can hear him take a big deep breath, definitely indicative of his nerves in going to speak to hickey. and again we see that he can’t make direct eye contact with hickey when hickey says he was hoping they’d meet. i also love the addition of the AB in the background saying “mind the grease sir” right after this- really speaks to the way john thinks of hickey in this moment- and of himself as well.

something i really thought about in this scene is jirv’s use of the term “devious seducer” and the more i thought about it the more it made me think… those words sound way less like something that billy would say vs sounding exactly like something that jirv would say, especially since his use of the term, regardless of who really said it, absolutely refers to how hickey makes him feel as much as it refers to what billy allegedly said about him.

jirv really is a deer in headlights when he finally brings himself to look at hickey and address him directly; even the way he says “please” is so pitiful and you can tell hickey is surprised that the conversation went beyond hickey thanking him for his help. the script notes that john is “usually a shy man” and that he “isn’t used to this kind of candor” but that this “may be the most courageous thing he’s ever done”- i think all of these are interesting in the context of what is being discussed as well given what we know about jirv’s sexuality and how he handles it- this wasn’t just difficult for him because he’s withdrawn, it was difficult for him because of the subject at hand specifically.

another phrasing of note here is when he tells hickey “though it benefitted you as a sin in itself i’m sure” because here jirv is basically accusing hickey not only of the “sin” of sodomy, but the sin of enjoying it. i can only imagine that when he has sexual thoughts or urges towards men jirv convinces himself that if he doesn’t like it, doesn’t indulge in it, doesn’t entertain it, then somehow it doesn’t “count”.

he takes a huge shaky breath before he says “how you pressed him into service” because this is the closest he’s come to picturing that and perhaps even imagining it for himself- he can barely get the words out. and when a few moments later he starts in with the whole “turn your wolf’s ear to me” speech, we can really see some actual anger coming out- i do think he is angry with hickey but more so i think he is angry with himself, made even more significant considering what i believe he was just thinking about. he is projecting like crazy in this entire scene; much like the future lashing, this whole chastisement is as much meant for jirv to himself as it is to hickey.

and in regards to the “watercolours” advice- to me, there has never been a doubt in my mind that he is speaking from experience here, that these are all methods he’s employed to avoid the temptations of his own mind; the way this part is shot is almost humorous, and not just because we can see hickey start to try not to laugh. it just feels like such a wink nudge to the audience as if to say “yeah clearly jirv has tried all of these because he’s had many instances of having these thoughts himself”. his breathing gets shallow again as he discusses it and he starts to lose that anger and become anxious and unable to meet hickey’s eyes again.

however, all that anger comes back when he says “your crisis is an opportunity for you to repair yourself”, which i think is such an excellent line because as the viewer, we KNOW that hickey is in no way having a crisis about his sexuality; he is not ashamed of himself at all and even the threat of punishment isn’t enough for him to consider not being who he is and doing what he wants. we do know though (partially through the power of jirvchella) that john IS and has been having a crisis about his sexuality and that again these words, this anger is more for himself than it is for hickey. and finally with this scene- i love the zoom out that shows how close they are as they speak, how there’s no one else around. despite his purpose jirv ends up sharing this intimate moment with hickey that is caged in suggestion and implication and really shows us how jirv feels about himself and what he keeps secret.

finally, this isn’t a jirv scene persay but i do find it interesting the way hickey and billy discuss him later, especially when billy refers to jirv “forgetting the whole thing as he assuredly wants to”- i think it makes sense that both billy and hickey would have at least suspicions about why jirv reacted to the whole situation the way he did and honestly who would know better than the two of them? not to mention all the times that hickey mentions watching jirv but that’s a whole other post in itself.

to episode 4! his first scene in this ep is when they’re discussing tuunbaq after finding strong and evans’s bodies and this is another instance of foreshadowing to jirv eventually meeting the netsilik family, not just because of what they’re discussing but because he’s the most calm and rational in the room regarding the potential involvement of the netsilik

there’s a lot going on when he says “perhaps it wouldn’t be a mystery to the indigenous people here”- he seems very nervous to speak (doing his little nervous hands thing he does) and his use of the term “indigenous” is in stark contrast to the slur and the anger that fitzjames displays a moment later. i do think this shows that jirv is capable of a higher empathy towards the netsilik people than some other characters are and to be honest i’m not interested at all in trying to determine “who’s the best native ally in the terror” because the true act of hubris that they are all committing is the colonial violence and destruction inherent in their quest in the first place. BUT i do think it’s worth examining and thinking about who displays the most respect for the native people and why and ultimately how that plays out for them. and i mean it didn’t stop jirv (or goodsir) from dying but i think it says a lot about his beliefs and his nature. due to his extreme religious beliefs i think it would’ve been easy to depict jirv as being dismissive of any cultural or religious beliefs of the netsilik but instead he openly suggests that they simply ask them about tuunbaq. i also think it’s interesting that he accepts the reality put before him that tuubaq is a supernatural force, especially considering his later “god doesn’t grant us ghosts” bullshit. another source of religious conflict for jirv.

i don’t really get why jirv stomps out of the room after crozier goes to his bunk to have his depression flashback but it does look like jirv may be a bit disturbed and frustrated by the implication of bringing silna in for questioning given how aggressive fitzjames was about it and i certainly don’t think that or what hickey did was what jirv intended when he said that they should ask the indigenous people about tuunbaq.

when all hell breaks loose and everyone is clamoring to get above deck in the hallway you can hear crozier say “irving, irving get in there (up there?) and help us” but jirv is frozen in fear; even before crozier yells at him he is shrinking against the wall and i think this comes down to a matter of experience or lack thereof that some of the officers, including jirv, seem to display in moments of peril (ned’s panic when tuunbaq attacks in ep 8, hodge not being able to make a rational decision when he discovers jirv has been killed, etc).

once he’s above deck with crozier though, jirv being scared does actually seem to turn to real anger once he assesses the situation. he repeats crozier’s order for everyone to get on their knees and walks forward with him but while he does appear to be genuinely mad at what has happened, i think it’s worth noting that jirv only seems comfortable with taking action when he’s following someone else’s example. he seems terrified to ever act on his own unless he really hypes himself up to do it (confronting hickey, scene with manson). he has an issue making his own choices based on his own gut feelings or readings of a situation and prefers to let others lead and set the tone which can again be linked back to the denial he carries within himself. he really is a man of inaction.

i also caught him staring at hickey shortly before crozier dismisses everyone and they pass close by one another but by that point jirv has averted his eyes once again

and okay what i want to say about the lashing scene up front is that i don’t think that jirv told crozier about hickey and billy- i think crozier’s use of the term “dirtiness” is 1) crozier being a prick because he’s mad and he wants to humiliate hickey and 2) more in line with a section if the articles that refers to “swearing, drunkenness, scandalous actions” etc and mentions “uncleanness” specifically; there’s a whole separate article that refers to sodomy and if that was part of what hickey was being punished for, i think crozier would’ve just said that. and this is to say that jirv won’t look at hickey when hickey glares at him here for the same reason he always can’t, although in this instance i do think there’s a degree of guilt there too. hickey is about to experience something horrible and jirv feels like it’s something that he himself deserves as well and i believe this is why he forces himself to watch hickey the entire time once the lashing properly starts. he is punishing himself as much as he is forcing himself to witness hickey’s punishment. it’s a private warning and internal lashing that he does to himself.

some details of this scene- there’s that one infamous pan to him, billy, and jop and i know we focus a lot on the jop flinch but jirv flinches pretty hard here too and unlike billy and jop he doesn’t look away even as his expression gets more and more disturbed (he’s displaying a lot of his typical signs of distress- wide eyes, mouth falling open). of every significant reaction we see to hickey’s lashing, jirv is the only one to not look away. the only time he does he is looking in shock at johnson as he delivers some of the heaviest blows toward the end of the lashing but right after he goes back to watching hickey.

and the final jirv scene of the episode is when he goes to see to crozier and like it’s not a super significant jirv scene but i just want to point out that the terror does storytelling with a lot of different small elements and one of them is footsteps- they are often used to convey mood and tone of specific characters and in this instance, jirv approaches the room slowly where usually we can see and hear him walking pretty briskly and i love how that conveys his mood in this moment post lashing.

but moving on to episode 5- he only has one really important scene in this ep besides being mostly in the background of some others and that’s the scene with manson. this scene shows a very different jirv than the one we’ve seen up to this point but i think there are a few reasons why this is the case. he acts flippant and borders on cruelty towards manson and i truthfully don’t want to defend his actions but i think that the reason he behaves this way is because in the story, he has just come off the whole ordeal of confronting hickey but ultimately choosing to spare him and billy and also the kidnapping of silna and the subsequent lashing of hickey; in jirv’s mind this all happened because he wasn’t hard enough on hickey in the beginning. he showed him too much mercy and what came next was a direct result of that. because despite his delivery i think that jirv truly thinks he is helping in both of these scenarios, both with manson and with hickey previously. i’m sure discipline and cruelty are things he privately uses to keep himself in line and besides that it’s classic christian logic- he didn’t do a good enough job at being god’s warrior and because of that bad things happened and people were punished. he’s trying to avoid the same outcome with manson, as misguided as all of his attempts are.

anyway details- i think in the beginning of the scene we are seeing some real anger from him but i do think this anger is largely aimed at himself, much like in the hickey confrontation scene. the apprehension doesn’t come through until he has to take a big deep breath before he says he’s going to order manson down the ladder in the smallest, meekest voice possible, almost like he’s convincing himself that he’ll do it rather than telling manson he will. he really steels himself to do this and i think it’s very telling that the 2 times we see him overcome his fear of candor to directly confront someone he is much more motivated by his faith than he is by his duty as a lieutenant.

jirv very cautiously puts his hand directly on manson’s which i think is sooo interesting considering how significant touching is in the terror, especially bare skin to bare skin but anyway- manson only pulls his hand back when jirv touches him, he doesn’t hit him or shove him at all. jirv is just so high strung and scared in this scene that he has a ridiculously high startle response

and then hickey shows up- jirv is already against the wall at this point and hickey doesn’t even look at him but jirv like.. there is no other way to describe this but he arches his back, tips his head back, his eyes even roll into the back of his head. it’s very… interesting to say the least lol (the word i really want to use is erotic but it could just be the hickeyirving demon in my head whispering to me). jirv’s eyes also widen with fear when he watches hickey talk to manson and i think this is partially because of how intimately they are behaving, something that of course would freak jirv out. he looks one more time before deciding to flee rather than continue to try to exert his authority in this situation and i think this just further solidifies the effect that hickey’s mere presence has on him. man it’s been impossible to write this without mentioning hickey a million times but it’s always relevant lol.

aaand that brings us to episode 6! i really like the opening scene with jirv at the meeting because we get a little glimpse into his role as an officer and also the way he clings to order and routines in order to feel in control (all an illusion of course given what we know about the tins). but i think we can also conclude that john has been privy to just how fucked they all are in regards to their rations for a while as he is the one in charge of keeping track of them.

i’m usually too busy laughing at hodge’s reaction when jirv mentions the christmas pudding they made but i noticed this time around that jirv gives him a pretty irritated look and i think this is because he’s trying to emphasize “hey we have almost none of this left and that’s kind of alarming”. jirv has had to shoulder the burden of keeping track of the tins for the entire expedition and i imagine that put quite a strain on him, especially when they started overwintering.

he starts doing his little nervous fingers when he’s telling fitzjames when they’ll run out of food ugh and when fitzjames kinda tells him off for mentioning the number of men i feel like he doesn’t understand that jirv KNOWS that between the dwindling rations and the lemon juice no longer protecting against scurvy, jirv fully knows that more people are likely to die regardless of whether tuunbaq is around or not

he does look genuinely grateful for the encouraging words from fitzjames a few minutes later though; he almost looks surprised but he still nods and it’s very similar to how he looks at crozier later during his speech at carnival. again i just think jirv is very much a follower and he greatly values reassurance from those in power.

on to carnivale itself- it’s so funny to me how shocked crozier and jop look when they realize who’s singing lol. just knowing what jirv is like normally and then seeing him like that is jarring in a pleasant way even for us as the viewer- and of course i can’t mention this scene without the note from the script: “he’s had too much to drink already, relaxing his defenses”. i don’t want to spend too much time on this because i feel like it’s been talked about enough but the symbolism of jirv, drunk and inhibitions lowered, singing a song about a popular area for gay cruising is very well done. it sounds heavy handed typed out like that but it really isn’t in the scene itself! it’s just nice to see him be a part of the group and be happy and have fun, things he usually cuts himself off from no doubt because of what he’s in denial about.

jirv removing his halo when crozier asks them to remove their masks- there has been so much said about the symbolism of this and one thing i want to add is that it goes hand in hand with his actions of drinking, letting loose, singing that specific song, etc in terms of removing the mask of his faith that he uses to lie to himself and deny himself the truth of who he is. the halo being his mask that he removes (along with the eventual loss of his wings in the fire) is such a great detail ahhh i love it

the third and final scene of encounters with the netsilik being mentioned while jirv is on screen is when we can see jirv listening with rapt attention to crozier as he tells the men that the netsilik are good people who will help them- this is the ultimate foreshadowing to what happens with him in the next episode

the fire- i’m not going to go blow by blow but of course we can see jirv a lot during the fire scene- when stanley is burning he’s shouting for help trying to get blankets brought forward to put out the fire, and he can be seen ushering people out when fitzjames tells everyone to move calmly to the ice. after this, most of the times i can find jirv in the crowd he has shut down and seems frozen in place at various points. towards the end of the fire sequence i lose him entirely until we see him running out without his wings. this is a stretch but i think that little scene of him pulling on his wing ropes may have been him trying to pull them off because the next time we see him he doesn’t have them on.

and going back to the symbolism of him losing his halo and his wings at carnival- not only does he lose them, he loses them in a fiery inferno… crazy.

and here we are at episode 7. i will say that i’m going to do some analysis of eps 8 and 9 as well because i think they’re important to jirv’s characterization and also a theory i have about something that may have happened in the aftermath of his death. buuuut let’s get into episode 7

idk if i’ll remember to put the link in but if not someone pointed out a few weeks ago that jirv can be seen watching the men, specifically the future mutineers, packing up the boats to prepare for the march south. this was so intriguing to me because there’s no way that didn’t look suspicious to him but again it’s likely that he was too afraid of hickey to intervene or get closer.

john giving the order “forward men” truly just makes me sick for so many reasons… he is sending them all forward to their deaths! of which his will be one of the first! and the catalyst for the ultimate breakdown of the entire camp! ugh!

anyway on to the jop promotion scene- i feel so bad for jirv in this moment because he’s essentially learning that despite the fact that he has done everything he can to weed out the rotten tins and keep track of their provisions, they have always been a source of danger and death for the men and we can really see his shock and despair here. and i’m sure he felt so much guilt for it as well even though of course there’s nothing he could have done and no way he could’ve known. we can also hear the anxiety in his voice when he asks crozier what they will do if they can’t find any game.

ahhh and the nedving thigh grab scene- i would be remiss not to involve this because i DO think that it’s further evidence of jirv’s gayness of course. jirv is disassociating, thinking of the implications of what they’ve just been told, and when ned puts his hand on him he fully jumps; his hands jerk from the table where they were resting. he makes brief eye contact with ned and then stares off into the distance. it also looks like he’s breathing heavier. not a ton of analysis i want to do here that i haven’t already but i think his reaction is proof enough that that touch affected him very deeply.

moving on though- jirv’s reaction to the jop promotion scene is almost as happy as ned’s- it’s similar in the sense that we never (excepting carnival) see him so happy and i think this is because leaving the ship opened him to connection and belonging and letting himself be a part of moments with other people. it really is so so tragic and devastating to me- in this episode jirv just really seems on the cusp of becoming, letting go, days, hours before his death. he is experiencing joy, even permitting hickey’s proximity in the upcoming scene (he doesn’t argue or seem too uncomfortable with hickey accompanying him and farr) which is an interesting departure from his previous attitude towards him. and of course his interaction with the netsilik family but now i’m getting ahead of myself.

so okay here we go- final scenes. i do think jirv suggests splitting up to cover more ground because he knows how dire the situation is and how desperately they need to find food

i’ve made a post about his before but there are two moments of halo imagery that get used with jirv after carnival and this is the first- when he’s checking their position the sun comes into focus right over his head, haloing his face in the exact spot where he’s going to die. ugh.

he does hesitate very slightly when he realizes hickey will be with him but he doesn’t fight it and he seems more resigned to it (comfortable may be too strong of a word at this point but it’s possible). given he has spent most of the story avoiding even looking at hickey i think this is an important detail

ugh the way he takes off his hat both as a sign of respect before he goes to speak to the netsilik family but also as another stripping of his rank, a reducing to just himself, just john. and he looks so young and vulnerable… the way he first introduces himself with his full name and title and then strips it down to “john… i’m john”. he immediately realizes he can identify himself as a friend and in a less formal way, he leaves that piece of him behind and shows his vulnerability and humanity in a plea for help but also for connection. he is braver here than he has ever been and i don’t think he even realizes it. both the first time and the last time he says “john” he is holding his hand to his chest right where hickey will stab him.

and it all continues to crumble away as he calls hickey and farr, but most significantly hickey, his “friends” there is such a desperation when he says “food?” and wow just. there are a lot of face journeys and expressions in this show that have stuck with me ever since i first saw them and jirv’s when he eats the seal meat offered to him is one of them- from the second it touches his lips he looks like he is holding back tears- the longing and gratitude in his eyes is so evident. this act of communion that he receives from a complete stranger, someone who he has no doubt been taught most of his life to hate and distrust, yet they offered him this simple gift, the kindness of feeding him without question. not only that but i think it’s significant that he’s offered a second piece as well, one that he takes. and when he thanks koveyook it’s in a tone that suggests he doesn’t believe that he deserves it but that he is thankful for it nonetheless

he very deliberately reaches out with his hand (the ungloved one!) to touch koveyook in gratitude- all other points of touch we’ve seen with jirv have been cast in a negative light besides him shaking jopson’s hand (god hand touching becomes sooooooooo interesting in ep 7 and beyond, fitzier, joplittle, this scene, etc but that’s a post for another time)- but touch averse (to me) jirv deliberately takes this action in gratitude

and then the telescope… the telescope. his most prized possession, showing how precious koveyook’s gift to him was that he was compelled to offer it in thanks. they weren’t demanding anything from him, he just wanted to give them something in return and he is delighted to do so

he doesn’t even have time to put his glove back on before he dies which becomes significant in a sec, bear with me here. okay let’s talk about jirv calling hickey’s name 3 times before hickey betrays him- it’s not quite the same dynamics as peter denying jesus but interesting nonetheless… jirv’s first “hickey” is angry, the second is inquisitive, the third is almost pleading… and given dave’s whole “he sees what he thinks might essentially be fucking and he turns forward to either stop it or touch it”- which of course implies i think that even jirv himself didn’t know which and wouldn’t have until he actually found himself in the situation if indeed that was what was actually happening- but that’s just one of the most subtle insane ways to show jirv’s queerness in the story. and god like he literally grabs his shoulder, not even aggressively, almost like… questioningly? and although it would’ve been easier for him to touch hickey’s shoulder with his gloved right hand, he specifically reaches out to him with his ungloved, bare left hand?? actually i just rewatched it and not only that but he touches his bare shoulder too. wow.

the utter fucking shock on jirv’s face when hickey stabs him and the way he looks up at him through his lashes and reaches one hand up between his legs after he’s fallen back and hickey’s crouching over him? is very crazy and i want to talk about how insanely erotic this scene is another time because that’s a whole thing in and of itself but yeah. (okay it’ll probably come up a little later in this paragraph but i digress). the way jirv struggles so hard to breathe just kills me. and the music- one of his happiest moments sickeningly twisted around his brutal death but also a callback to the inherent sexuality and gayness of the whole thing. jirv spends most of the show directly avoiding contact with hickey, not even eye contact, yet he dies with hickey directly in front of him, penetrating him, covering his mouth, and jirv holds his gaze the entire time. i feel like in a way this symbolically shows that jirv was facing whatever it was inside himself that hickey elicited in his final moments, mixed with the shock and rage that we can see in his face too. at first he leans forward, we can see the anger, then he lies back, accepting, accepting and then the next shot he heaves twice with his whole body trying to fight it but i think this is because this is the moment where hickey finally looks back at him where before he was looking away almost in impatience for it to all be over with. how many times i wonder did they picture each other in these exact positions in a sexual context, only to play it out finally in this moment as jirv dies underneath hickey (much like he might’ve felt like he was doing if he had ever acted on his urges).

and this flashback scene it is everything; it is truly everything to me. we can see in jirv’s face that he can sense almost like a gut feeling that there is something off about hickey but i also think that what he is reacting to the feelings within himself that arise- ugh his little nervous hands, the lower lip falling open as it does with him, the way he looks hickey up and down as hickey does too when jirv walks away- i’m sorry i know this is my solving magnum opus but there was an attraction there- however fucked up and in denial there absolutely was. like the way jirv just walks away without responding too- he was nervous! he didn’t know what to think! this whole expedition for him started and ended with what came to the surface for him with hickey and it’s so so devastating.

anyway rip my beautiful angel jirv i love you forever <3

but i do want to point out a few things from eps 8 and 9 that again i think are important to jirv as a character and his journey- namely the grief that ned and hodge feel for him and a few other things concerning the aftermath of his death:

ugh man… ned and hodge’s grief at jirv’s death gets harder to watch every time- in the tent hodge’s eyes are red from crying and it’s because he had to be the one to bring jirv’s body back, he saw everything that was done to him and he had to be the one to bring him to where he would rest. and edward is trying his best to keep it together for hodge, patting him on the shoulder and backing up his story but once he is out of george’s line of sight we can see him start to cry as well :( they loved him and of course they both blame themselves for what happened to him

okay a few notes about john’s body- in the script it mentions that he is partially scalped and that it looks like someone “got bored” or “lost interest” part way through doing it but what i fully realized here is that jirv’s scalping literally looks like a fucked up halo… and ugh his little cross around his neck.. he looks so tiny idk just like with the goodsir death scene in ep 10 there’s just something so awful about seeing them laid out naked like that when we spend the whole show seeing them bundled up and in uniform. a final stripping of rank and identity.

moving on, and these will be a little rapid fire because i’m mostly trying to document the final movements of jirv’s body and his clothing- the reason collins’ hands are shaking when he goes to the medical tent is because he can see jirv’s bloody clothes folded up on the table across from him - this is from the script: “as he applies the salve, collins’ hands tremble constantly. someone has folded and stacked up lt. irving’s clothes on a table there. collins can see a few knife cuts in the coat.” also jirv’s body is just there in the tent while bridgens and peglar talk about his scurvy.

jirv’s telescope is laying by the netsilik girl when silna goes to adjust her leg…… she was playing with it when she was murdered

i’ve made this post before on its own but it absolutely makes me sick how jirv didn’t even get to keep and take to the grave with him the final kindness that was ever done for him in his life because they had to cut upon his stomach and mutilate him further to learn the truth of his death. and to convince the men who are grieving him most that it was actually hickey that killed him.

when we can hear edward saying terror camp is clear from outside the medical tent, goodsir is finishing up sewing up john’s body again.

the wording when edward is reading out the charges against hickey and sol- when he calls the acts of sedition and mutinous designs “more pernicious” than the act of murdering jirv (and farr but this ain’t about him) it’s just so alarming- the suggestion that stirring up mutiny is worse than brutally murdering your fellow shipmates. i think this just makes the lack of proper mourning for jirv feel even worse

i believe the next time we see his body is when bridgens is trying to protect one of this patients in the medical tent- i don’t think we specifically see it brought out to be burnt with the men who are killed by tuunbaq but i do think that must have been what happened, idk what else they could’ve done at that point. but it makes me sad that we don’t know for certain

but anyway- tozer’s reaction to hearing about how jirv died and seeing the evidence against hickey- i’ll get more into this in my solving post but i think this was the beginning of the end of sol’s faith in hickey

and then at the end we have hickey going to the med tent first, presumably to look for goodsir which is where he finds jirv’s clothes, and takes his coat. i wonder if this was a crime of opportunity or if he was determined to take a trophy from his murder of jirv. i could see it going either way for hickey tbh.

okay and my final little theory i will leave you with- i posted this in the main tag a long time ago when i first got back on tumblr but i didn’t word it very well and i wasn’t very confident in my ability to articulate my thoughts but now y’all are going to hear me lol (that is if you made it this far): in the scene where hickey is talking to hodge about the tins and turning to cannibalism given what they know about them, we can see sol listening closely but not participating in the conversation. and then comes the moment where sol realizes that hickey is wearing jirv’s coat; when the wind blows he can see the stab marks. there isn’t anything said about jirv in this scene, nor his death, but obviously we can see sol starting to creep out of his denial that hickey lied to him and killed one of their fellow crew members. what i can’t stop thinking about though is the context of the conversation in which this discovery takes places- hickey is talking about eating human flesh to live now. the parts of jirv that were cut off- pieces of flesh, his fingers, etc… i really wonder if they were eaten by hickey. he was already thinking about cannibalism before the actual mutiny- he deliberately wanted to bring goodsir and diggle when they split from the group, so i don’t think it’s a huge stretch to believe that he would’ve done that to jirv’s body after mutilating him. and i just don’t think anything in the terror is a coincidence, so the fact that we see sol putting the pieces together of jirv’s death as hickey is talking about cannibalism seems too on the nose to ignore or at least consider but i would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this!

anyway if you made it to the end of this thank you for reading and for being insane about this stupid little gay freak with me <3 sol deep dive is incoming followed by solving i promise!!!!

#the terror #jirv #john irving #IT’S FINALLY DONE RRRAAHHHHH

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katrotica · 5 hours ago

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oh look! It's the perfection also known as Liya Silver! Yep, every so often I dive deep into my Liya archive and I just have the best time looking at so many pictures and having a hard time deciding which one to make into a poster. A little behind the curtain moment here: both girlcrush and katrotica have a "treasure box" of folders of girls for poster-making. They're not all on my computer, because they take up too much space, so I have an archive as well, but I do have a series of folders that never really goes into the archive. I do add a little green dot to them when I've put some new pics in there, so I know to focus on those. Liya's folder is kinda permanent green dot territory. The katrotica treasure box currently has 111 specific girl folders, 24 of them with the green dot. Girlcrush has 173 specific girl folders, 27 green dots currently. These are some stats about my blogs. Don't care about stats? No problem! There's a picture just up there of a very hot naked woman if that's more your thing ;)

#liya silver

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baffledandbewildered · 2 days ago

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“You can kill me,” Betty says, before she can talk herself out of it. Poll and Evi’s eyes light up, and she can’t bring herself to regret saying anything. They’re her… allies. They’ve been kind to her. She doesn’t lose anything by dying today - “You’ve got to give the heart back, and let me e-chest my stuff first,” she says hurriedly.

They both nod immediately, and Betty shakes her head fondly and goes to place her e-chest…

“You’ve gotta let me leave the corner, you know,” she adds.

Evi mumbles something that sounds like a half-hearted complaint, but steps back a little, letting Betty sort through her gear. She glances up where Mari is circling above them before taking off her armour.

“Right - okay, yeah, you can kill me,” she says again, a little nervous now - she doesn’t care about dying to people she cares about, but armourless at spawn is a terrifying thing.

Pollock grins, takes out his sword, and in less than a second she’s gone, the world lighting up in a brief flare of pain that calms the moment she respawns in her bed under the ocean.

For a moment, she lays there, giggling, hand clamped over her mouth from residual paranoia.

She was so scared of dying for so long. It’s good to be reminded that death doesn’t actually have to mean anything.

She grabs her gear and goes back to spawn, takes the heart Poll gives back to her with a laugh and presses it against her wrist, hissing a little as it settles into place alongside the others. For a moment, she’d worried she wouldn’t get it back - but they’re allies, and yes trust doesn’t come easy but their alliance is official and she doesn’t think either of the team would want to hurt her, despite the nagging voice in the back of her mind that reminds her that no one on this server is safe to be around.

She’s not sure she could call what she feels for Hamhams trust. It’s care, certainly - she’s not sure she wants to know how many hearts she’s given Evi4 over the last few weeks, and she’s tried her best to keep the both of them safe, to stand up for them - a flickering memory of sharing information and a plan with Evi crosses her mind, because messing with Hamhams is cruel and she doesn’t like it - but trust? Probably not. She knows it’s a risk to let someone kill her. She let them anyway.

Maybe that is a kind of trust. She wouldn’t let Chips kill her all those weeks ago, even with the promise of returning the heart. She doesn’t like dying.

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to think about it too much. If she starts thinking about alliances and allegiances and friends and enemies she’ll start to panic and she doesn’t want to go back to the frame of mind she was in a few weeks ago. She’s fine. She’s fine.

The next day finds her and Evi and Seri at spawn, and Seri dies to lava while Betty is still reeling from a couple of messages from Cogmented and suddenly Evi and Seri are arguing about a stolen elytra and she doesn’t know what to do. She tries to de-escalate, make Evi give it back because she knows that Nara would be well in his rights to kill for this and she doesn’t want to see another Evi4 death, not today, but she’s still shaken and confused and she’s never been the best of talking people out of things at the best of times.

And somehow things have spiralled even further, with Seri being chased halfway across the ocean and bitterly it feels almost like being a bodyguard again as she runs after the two of them, not sure who she wants to save.

Cog calls her a bad ally, her relationship with Hamhams a bad alliance. She can’t exactly blame him, or any of the others who echo that sentiment.

In the end, Seri dies, Evi4 dies, and she and Evi are left alone at spawn.

“Do you want to blow something up?” Betty offers.

“Yes!”

They settle on the hillside under Nara’s bar, next to the waterfall they built the other day when they were first experimenting with TNT minecarts and windcharges. Betty stains her hands with gunpowder as she crafts more, and the second explosion they make goes a little wrong and sends them both stumbling, blows a hole in something they didn’t mean to.

“No one has to know…” Evi says slowly. Their crown is a little crooked, knocked loose by the explosion, and Betty fixes it with a giggle and they go back to explosions. They call it date night, just for fun.

Eventually, they have to stop before they actually destroy something important, so they start building instead - there’s about 10 shulkers on the ground and so many different blocks but they somehow make it work, Evi sets herself on fire a couple of times and when she accidentally steps on a shrieker Betty yelps like she’d been shocked but it’s funny and it’s fun and - it helps, after the last few hours they’ve had.

Evi lets her rant about Cog, too, as they work - Betty feels bad but Evi claims not to mind, and the funny insults and comments help, a lot, and by the time they’re done with the build she can joke about being mischaracterised without feeling like she’s going to pass out. She thinks it hurt Evi too, being called a bad ally, because occasionally she mentions something about their “mutually beneficial alliance” and it sounds bitter. It’s petty, maybe, but she’s glad.

Eventually, they judge the build done, and sit together on the blackstone stairs watching the sunset. Usually, Betty turns her face away in those final minutes of day, but this time watching the golden glow fade in the distance doesn’t cause something to twist in her chest.

As they worked, earlier, Evi4 told her a secret, an important one, and the trust in that made Betty’s heart warm. She wants to give something back.

“I have a secret of my own,” she says, carefully keeping her eyes fixed on the horizon. “I’ll tell you it if you want. Not today, not here. But - I want you to know, I think.”

The next day, they meet at a stronghold - it’s not the most hidden location to disclose the most important secret of Betty’s life, not with the nether roof portal right next to them, but Evi4 wants an end-portal table and she’s not going to argue with that, even if the thought of being overheard makes her feel faint.

Betty’s been shaky all day, unable to concentrate on anything but the looming conversation - it won’t be the first time she’s said this story out loud, but it’s different today.

“Mmmm,” Evi4 says, looking around at the room. “You can talk while I decorate.”

So. Betty does. She paces as she speaks, shaking hands shoved in the pockets of her cardigan, and she doesn’t look at Evi unless Evi makes some strange comment but that helps, a lot. Poll shows up 20 minutes late to the conversation, signs a hello, and she has to restart the story for him, but by that point the panic is… lessened. Still there, simmering in her chest, but it’s manageable. And HamHams are easy to talk to - apart from when Evi decides it’s a funny bit to say “Hi Cogmented” every time she mentions his name - it makes her flinch each time, heart rate spiking briefly, but it also makes her laugh. They make her laugh a lot, honestly, Poll at one point waving for her attention then signing something that she sends her on a tangent for a good few minutes.

She needs that, really. It’s - scary, talking about this, the guilt a stabbing pain in her chest as she speaks.

Hamhams don’t try to tell her it’s not her fault. Instead, when Betty explains why, Evi, who’s been staring silently for the last few minutes, yells “BAD DECISION!”

And… he’s right. It was a bad decision. And despite the fear choking her, her shaking hands, it feels good not to be immediately dismissed. To have her mistakes recognised, and for it not to matter.

It was a bad decision. And they don’t care.

She lets Evi kill her, when they leave the meeting room. Being Evi4, they decide to punch her to death, but the entire time they’re both laughing and Betty can’t really find it in herself to care, even as she respawns in a deepslate room with faded bruises on her skin.

Once again, they meet at spawn, and she gets the heart back. This time it’s through Evi grabbing her hand and pressing the heart against her palm, then not letting go and using the hold to drag Betty towards the hole to bedrock and make her jump in after him.

Hamhams have the oddest ability to make the scariest situations… not. It was the same when they first spoke about allying. The conversation itself wasn’t difficult, really, but watching Poll hide his hands from her so he can sign something privately to Evi was nerve-wracking after the day she’d had so far - but within minutes she was laughing again at something he said. It’s nice.

Betty has a date with Ace the day after… the conversation. Date night 2, to use the official name, the not-at-all-flimsy cover story. Betty’s been on a lot of dates this week, and it makes her giggle when she thinks of it.

Evi4 shows up midway through, invisible, to hand Betty three stacks of gold blocks with a hurried promise that they’re not stolen, then disappears again, but not without showing them his new armour - stolen from Cogmented, because Evi had killed it only a few hours ago - that was an awesome thing to wake up to.

A little while later Evi finds them again, and there’s a strange look in their eyes when they look between Betty and Ace. It doesn’t feel threatening, just… thinking. Betty wants to know what they’re thinking - it’s weird, standing between the two people she’s - really, they should have a talk about labels at some point.

She finds out what Evi4 was thinking the next day. They’re just - talking, gossiping if she’s honest, and Evi is complaining about Void - “He told me to kill Ace cause Ace had an elytra after I - failed the first mace kill,” she says.

Betty freezes. Ace. “What the fuck?” she says. “What the fuck?”

“I thought about it… very briefly! But you and Ace are lovely sooo.”

“Thank you,” Betty says quietly, automatically, mind whirring. Her hands itch to grab her e-chest, look through the shulker full of books and flowers and all the other things Ace gave her - she knows the words off by heart, so she stops herself, but god it still hurts. “I - what.”

“Mhmm.”

“Can I - tell - someone? I - fuck, I don’t -”

“Only if they don’t tell…”

“Ah, alright, okay - I won’t, I just - I’m - that’s - I don’t - is this to try and break us up? Like - what the fuck -”

“What is wrongggg with himmmmm oh my god,” Evi groans.

Betty laughs shakily. She doesn’t speak for a little while more, then - “I just - can I talk to him about this?”

“Do whatever you want forever BettyIsBaffled,” Evi4 says, and it’s so reminiscent of another person who Betty misses so much that she flinches.

“Okay. Okay. I will.”

They part ways, and Betty gives in to the urge to sort through her e-chest, taking out a single allium and holding it gently in her hands. She doesn’t particularly want to look at the books - the most recent one still stings, slightly, and even though she knows things are better now she doesn’t want to think about the Gameshow and all that happened after.

The Gameshow. She puts the flower down before her shaking hands can crush it, then pulls another book out of her e-chest, this one unsigned. She doesn’t need to read this one, either, really, but she flicks through the pages anyway.

Void’s hurt Evi too - they deserve a win. Betty needs to stop feeling so conflicted.

So now she grabs her communicator and types out a message for Evi4.

I’ve thought of a really funny idea. Do you wanna try get Void with the mace when I speak to him later?

Of course, it isn’t that simple. He agrees to the location Betty and Evi had decided on earlier in the day, but plants rose bushes around him as they talk - the mace now won’t work, there’s so many panicked messages in Betty’s communicator and then an offer: Yo I’ve got TNT minecarts?

Betty doesn’t even think before responding. Do it.

Void claims he didn’t mean anything by the Ace comment. She believes them, and it does make guilt twist a little in her chest but that’s a familiar feeling by now and she swallows it down, tries to keep them talking because Evi needs a little more time for this to work -

In the end, she dies mid-sentence, the phantom sound of the explosion still ringing in her ears as she respawns. She can’t breathe for a long long moment, all the air in her lungs gone, then she gasps and the world comes back to her. It - worked? It worked. She laughs, giddy.

Oh she is fucked, but - it worked! They did it.

She messages Evi immediately: Are you safe?

Evi says he is, so Betty digs herself down to bedrock and decides she can wait here for a little bit. There’s no point being stupid. Consequences will come sooner or later, and she can happily wait for that.

Except… she doesn’t exactly get the chance. Evi4 dies, and their spawn point is public so moments later she’s receiving messages about Pathogen at their spawn point - Betty doesn’t even know why the entire bloody megateam is involved in this. It seems overkill but hey that’s the Pathogen way at this point…

Fuck she doesn’t know what to do especially when Evi dies, and again and Betty’s frantically messaging them trying to work out a way to get them out of spawn because Betty’s fine dying again if it means Evi is okay but Evi either doesn’t answer or answers with nonsense or “Don’t ever come back to spawn” at one point and Betty’s awful at ignoring order’s but she can’t just stay here.

If she’s honest, Betty’s pretty close to a panic attack now, pacing back and forth in the tiny stone room she’s carved out with her now-close-to-breaking pickaxe, vision blurred with tears she won’t allow to fall - she doesn’t know if they’ll let Evi go if she goes back and if she dies she won’t be able to help at all but she doesn’t know what to do -

In the end, she doesn’t have to choose. Nara comes and picks her up from her cave beneath the ocean, escorts her back to spawn, and Evi’s there, alive, and she runs over to them immediately. Evi4 is - he looks a little battered, bloody, his dress is torn but he’s alive and that’s what matters.

“I’m sorry - for getting you killed,” Betty says immediately. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t even worry, bro,” Evi says, then dramatically, a little clumsily, kisses her on the cheek, giggling.

Betty laughs weakly. It’s - well. That’s Evi4, really.

She’s suddenly so so aware of the soot stains on her clothes, the throbbing half-healed burns across the left side of her body. There’s deepslate dust under her nails, and it looks almost like the gunpowder from when she built the TNT minecarts for their first date - she tears her mind away from that thought before the shaking can start again. She’s so tired.

“Can we leave?” she begs.

They end up going to the drowned farm. Betty sits on the side, tapping her fingers anxiously against the wood as they wait for drowneds to spawn - Evi needs hearts, after all.

Evi4, who has died twice, who had offered to take the blame for this fully - it’s purposeful kindness. It’s not something Betty’s used to - she usually grows to care through circumstance, shared experiences, but Evi is trying. From the secrets shared with no expectation of anything in return, to the care for the things Betty built, to unspoken apologies, to self-sacrifice -

She thinks she trusts them. It’s taken her a while to realise.

The sun’s setting now, and the gold light reflects off Evi’s crown as they wander randomly around the platform, fishing rod in hand - the next thing Betty knows there’s a fishing hook tangled in her hair and she’s being tugged forwards, laughing, complaining, until Evi puts the fishing rod down with a giggle and pushes her towards the drowneds. Betty doesn’t even think about the sunset as she kills the monsters and rifles through the chests for shells, holding them out with a smile that is brightly echoed.

Yeah. She trusts them.

#divorcesteal #this is longest dismp fic ive written #by like 2k words #oh my god #some of the dialogue is lifted straight from discord dms and i find that funny #awesome awesome week

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