#this is more second-draft stuff bc i need to get everything mapped out in general more but i'm rereading/editing this like. mmm. i could

[ichorblossoms]

first wip wednesday of the year yee. haw

yaaaay violence. a bit. i want to write more action-y scenes but i haven't figured out. the Context so i'm sitting here with like. two and a half actually-written scenes and a desire to write more. anyways

this is half-edited first draft stuff like usual. early p1 scene that might be subject to some changes as all this stuff is. i'm trying to figure out. just a reminder the stuff [in brackets] is like. comic panel shit but you gotta use your imagination until i draw pictures about it

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[P3- Grimm POV, they/them for Grimm, he/him for Yarrow]

One of them dismounted from their horse with a heavy noise, this person clinked as they walked a few yards to the entrance and instead of barging right in, had the decency to knock on the closed bulkhead door with a lazy, “Hullo?”

“Gimme a sec,” Grimm called and stood, looking to Yarrow and nodding, hoping he understood how it meant act normal, but be ready for a fight. 

The afternoon sun was bright, Grimm squinted as they looked out into the desert. 

[shot of the two bounty hunters from grimm’s view. the man's at the door, the girl is closer to their horses]

“Y’all need directions or somethin’?”

“Nah, just passing through, this looked like a good place to take a breather,” The taller man with the mustache said nonchalantly.

Grimm had heard that one before, “There’s a shady riverbed over that way ‘bout a mile,” they pointed to the northwest, not actually lying, “Y’all can get some peace and quiet over there. Lots of shade, too.”

“This place seems plenty big for two more people. We’ll only be half an hour or so before we saddle back up and ride out.”

No one with a lick of common sense would try to stay with strangers in the middle of the desert unless they were looking for trouble. Either you’re new at this, or just plain stupid.

“Ya seem awfully insistent, I promise this place ain’t any better.”

“We’re—we’re tired, we’ve been riding since before the sun came up.”

Bullshit. Grimm had seen their two horses, “Alright, leave your guns at the door though.”

To Grimm’s surprise, the man complied, shucking the shotgun off his back and propping it up against the closed door. He called back to his partner, a girl in her early twenties, from the looks of it, “Come in when you’re finished with the horses, and bring in my bag!

“Gotta keep the young ones in their place, y’know?” He gave a grimy smile at that, the man had ten or so years on Yarrow and them. As he crossed the threshold, the man betrayed none of the relief a weary traveler would have after being out in the sun for hours, winter or not. Grimm was ready for a fight.

And a fight they received.

Grimm noticed the tendon twitch in the man’s neck a split second before he lunged.

[Grimm steps back just far enough for the guy to overshoot. Knocks away his hand, then re-enters to elbow his face]

The crunch of cartilage echoed out in the near-empty metal shipping container. The man staggered, clutching his now-bleeding nose, all the time Grimm needed to bring a knee to his stomach.

He went down heavily, the air knocked out of him but not the lights. 

Yarrow came up from behind Grimm and delivered a kick to the man’s side for good measure, making him curl in on himself even further.

Grimm turned to him, “Stay—”

[Yarrow snarls at the man, mandibles open and terrifying and furious. Then looks to Grimm, bewildered and only half-snarling]

Horrifying, then, beautiful.

Another moment passed, the man’s pathetic gasping filling the silence. He made a move and Grimm noticed the glint of something in their periphery.

They immediately brought their heel down heavy on the man’s thigh, deadlegging him before reaching down and snatching the pocket knife out of his boot. Saw that from a mile away—

Yarrow shouted something in time for Grimm to look up.

[the outlaw’s companion points a gun at the two of them. Yarrow grabbed Grimm’s gun from where it was sitting and has it trained on the companion.]

Yarrow shot first, without a breath’s hesitation. The bullet missed the girl, but was enough to make her drop the bag she was holding and the gun. Oh you’re really new at this.

“Run, and you’ll keep your life,” Yarrow’s voice was unlike anything Grimm had ever heard out of his mouth, stripped of every bit of warmth down to unforgiving bedrock, simultaneously Yarrow and not.

For what she was worth, the girl booked it, leaving the gun on the ground. It hadn’t gone off when they dropped it. Kid must’ve been too scared to even load it.

“You’re a better shot with this,” Yarrow handed the gun to Grimm, before turning his attention to the man on the floor, who had partially re-learned how to fill his lungs with air. The blood pouring from his nose made him sputter all over the floor. He glared at the two of them. Grimm glared back, aimed the gun at his head.

Yarrow spoke again before Grimm could pull the trigger, “Why are you here?”

Another glare. The man’s face had begun swelling, turning an ugly purple, and Grimm only felt a cold satisfaction. Yarrow's not injured, that’s all that mattered.

“Can you tie him up?” Yarrow didn’t look away from the man gasping on the ground. Are you struggling with this? Does it hurt you to be on the other end of it?

Halfway to grabbing the rope from their supplies it occurred to them how Yarrow didn’t say “please,” how he wasn’t commanding Grimm, but genuinely asking them. The answer was yes either way.

The man began thrashing weakly as Grimm approached. Give up already. If Yarrow hadn’t wanted to talk, his brains would’ve been splattered out in the desert by now.

They started with his legs, binding his feet together. Yarrow, probably trying to find some way to help Grimm without being in the way, put one of his heels in the back of the man’s knee. Not very threatening, but not the dumbest thing he could have done.

Yarrow stood after the man’s legs were bound, watching as Grimm moved to his arms. They firmly held one of his wrists behind his back when he slipped out and tried to roll over.

[Yarrow crunches the man’s fingers below his boot. He cries out in pain once more. Yarrow looks menacing.]

[skinks]

HELLO. DO YOU HAVE ANY SPARE DILFWORTH/MAGGIE HEADCANONS 🥺 (love your writing more than life btw)

HELLO, thank you so much! Oh boy it’s difficult to come up with more stuff for characters you’re really only extrapolating a couple of pages about, but I like a challenge so here are some to build on the other big Maggie/Dilfworth post I made:

- so after the Airplane Incident they’re so engrossed in talking at the baggage claim about everything from music to shitty first jobs that Went misses his bag going around the carousel three times. In his defence Maggie’s laugh is a breathless, staccato sound like a xylophone of breezes and she runs one hand over the back of her head to grip the ends of her own dark hair every time she does, so who can blame him for trying to be his absolute funniest in between grinning like a man who’s won the lottery. Also in his defence, Maggie doesn’t leave after she’s collected hers (they both go to grab it from the carousel at the same time and kinda stare at each other, then at their touching hands. Went licks his lips a couple times and says “Sorry, don’t uh. Don’t misunderstand, I was only trying to steal it,” which makes her laugh again) and Maggie doesn’t leave because she’s busy hinting she’d like him to come visit her on campus some time, maybe next weekend? They exchange their landlines and she says “See you then, Doctor Dentist,” because there’s something about his nonthreatening calmness that makes her feel very bold in trying to ruffle it up.

- their first date is to the movies, because it’s 1971 and what else are you gonna do

- Went has the best poker face she’s ever seen, and she’d already been teasing him about being a dentist so when he asks her what snacks she’d like, she replies with a long list of the sugariest kinds they have. But he only whistles low and raises his eyebrows, sauntering off to the concession stand before she can reel him back. They eat all of it between them, and Went spends the whole movie muttering scathing put-downs about the poor choices the characters keep making and it’s the first time Maggie hasn’t ever cared about being shushed by the people in front of her

- also also also he picked her up in his car (and she’d also teased him about how she’s sure he could only drive a convertible bc he’s so tall and leggy that anything else would leave his knees up by his ears, but it’s not a convertible. It does have a sun-roof though, and after the movie they go driving, as Young People do in 1971 I guess and he’s like “Sorry the roof doesn’t fold down, I know you’d look great doing the whole Audrey Hepburn thing,” and Maggie just eyeballs him as she slides the sun-roof back. Then she’s standing on the bench seat and whooping, sticking her torso out of the roof like it’s a carnival ride and Went’s like 💕😬💕 as he holds her steady with one arm (over her dress, it’s the first date) for her dear, dear life

- I love the idea that Maggie likes sci-fi, for some reason. She loves Star Trek TOS, loves the music, wants to try and obtain a theremin for her thesis project. The first gift Went ever gives her is a signed copy of The Left Hand of Darkness when she takes him to an Ursula LeGuin talk at her college, and Maggie kisses the daylights out of him against a tree right there in the quad

- Went likes fishing and baseball and photography and fuckin... comedy records and he definitely got bullied at school for being a skinny nerd. Doesn’t have too many friends given that he’s moved cities and is generally kinda quiet, but Maggie’s friends like him. More importantly, Maggie likes him a lot, likes the endless antelope stretch of his legs when he props them up on any surface available, the lean lines around his mouth, likes how the veins on the backs of his hands form warm diamonds around the indents of his knuckles, likes that when she says “oh damn, is it raining?” rhetorically in the car at the first few drops, he rolls his window down and sticks his hand out into the wet and says “yes, Maggie, it’s raining. Wipers or no wipers, what’ll it be?” She likes to be the person he trusts enough to be silly and wry and sincere with. She likes to buy him records based purely on the cover art alone, she likes introducing him to classical music and she likes to drive his car so he can look at the maps and stick his head out the roof, and she likes that the wind makes him look like a cartoon blown up with dynamite, because he’s somehow always just in need of a haircut, and she is so, so scared he will be ensnared by the draft now that he’s left academia, as it has ensnared so many of her other friends.

- She makes fun of it, but she likes his name, “I like that Tozier has a z in it, of all things,” she says once. “I don’t know, it’s unusual. I never heard of a Tozier before.” And Went says, “Last of my kind. Like Tigger, in fact. You’re lucky you ever caught me in the wild,” as he very studiously and ineptly investigates her electric keyboard. She calls him Went most of the time, Legs when she’s particularly hot for him, but they do also have a lot of Wentworthy/Unwentworthy jokes.

- the first time they have sex is because they’re six dates deep and Went has yet to hear her sing.

- they’re lying top to toe in Went’s bed while they’re both studying (Went might be practicing dentistry now but he still has paperwork and journals to read) and he’s tapping her crossed ankle along to something she’s humming. “What’s that song? Maggie?”

“Hmm?”

“Will you sing it for me?”

“Oh, no,” she says, covering her face with her book. “No, it’s just some rock song, ignore me. I’m being disruptive to the study environment.”

Went waggles his eyebrows, examining the whole bare sweep of her legs. “That’s for sure. C’mon, you’re minoring in vocal studies, aren’t I going to hear you eventually?”

“Nope,” Maggie grins, and enjoys how warm his hand feels cupping the sleek of her calf muscle. “I’m shy.”

“The Maggie Avery I know isn’t shy, unless I’ve been wooing an impostor for the last nine weeks.”

She laughs and flutters inside, like her whole body is filled with whirling pillowfight feathers at the thought of being wooed, being courted, being allowed to exist as an interesting person and not just a skirt to be chased. At the fact that he knows how long it’s been and that he counts it in weeks, because even though they telephone a bunch, they can still only see each other at the weekends. Yeah, Carole King said it best. He makes her feel like a natural woman, alright.

“Wooing me.” She sets her book aside. “That’s what you’ve been up to?”

“Yes,” he nods, sitting up to mirror her, cross-legged. “Wooing.”

“Wentwooing,” she says, biting her lip. These games always prick up the hairs on the back of her neck.

“Damn straight,” he says, and oh, those dishy lines are breaking in lean waves around his smiling mouth. She’s a total lost cause for them. “Wooing was one of my very first Scout badges, actually.”

“Oh, so you’ve had practice?” She leans away in faux-disinterest, and her breathing picks up from somewhere deep in her body as he sways forward into the gap, like he’s charmed. She’s very aware of her heartbeat in odd places, pinking her bare heels pressed to the sheets under her knees, loud in the scoop of her clavicle. “I’m not the first to be subjected to a little Wentwooing, then, huh.”

“Not the first, no,” he allows, mild and reasonable as ever. No wonder he did well in medical school. She knows she’s not the first girlfriend, of course, just as he knows about her last ex and the others, and that’s the wonderful thing about him. He doesn’t act like other twenty-two year old boys she knows, he’s a grownup about it all. “But... I’d really dig it if you were the last. Maggie.”

She can’t stop smiling at the way he says it. Casual, contemplative, the look of a man who has cast his line and is happy to wait. It’s belied by the sound of him compulsively cracking his knuckles and the bones in his long bare feet. They’d both thrown on comfortable clothes after coming in from the rainstorm, and Maggie never knew it was possible to feel so at ease alone in a man’s room, a man’s apartment, a man’s spare boxers and faded varsity rowing tee the only things between that same man and her pretty underwear.

“I’d dig that too, Legs,” she says, and tucks her hair behind her ear to kiss him. He untucks it again and kisses her back with a heated mmph, touching her hip and her hair at once. Very light touches, but there’s something about them that makes her feel like he’s got her wrapped up completely. She swirls her arms around the back of his neck and deepens the kiss, as deep as she can manage with the way their knees are obstructive, and at the dragging quiet click of spit, Maggie finds she wouldn’t mind if he touched her firm and wanting all over, sometime soon.

She pulls back to see him flushed, his glasses kinda screwy. He makes a low sound, a sort of cross between a sigh of satisfaction and a groan of regret that their mouths aren’t still moving together. Both of his hands fall to her crossed legs, and he patters fingertips to her skin.

“I got that badge in Boy Scouts too,” he says breathlessly, after a second or five.

“No wonder you’re so good at it,” Maggie says, and raises three fingers in a salute. “Lots of practice around the campfire, hm?”

“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” he chortles, saluting her back. “It’s a testament to your feminine wiles I’m even interested, what with my restricted training.” He gestures at her breasts. “We never covered those.”

“Liar, you had them pretty well covered last week,” Maggie teases, her inner thighs burning as she shifts at the memory, the back row of the Aladdin Theater, her tongue in his mouth and his big, gentle hands up her shirt.

“Earned my badge.”

“Well and truly.”

“We should get to work on uncovering them, then,” Went replies, tugging softly at the hem of his shirt she’s wearing, but his eyes don’t stray from her face.

“Wentworth!” She shoves at his hand, laughing again. She has a paper on syncopation due on Friday and a performance to prep for the end-of-semester recital, but she couldn’t care less right now. Lord, she’s so happy. What if it’s love, she thinks giddily, what if I love him, and he loves me. What then?

He dodges her play-slaps to take off his glasses because he only needs them for reading, and it’s just another layer falling away from between them. He’s not Doctor Tozier, he’s not that fucking geek, in the sullen-drunk words of her project partner Jack at a party last month, he’s just... Went. Just a man, as she is a woman. He’s cute and he’s acerbically funny and he makes her feel like they’re partners in some kind of crime, even though neither of them have so much as a speeding ticket. Maggie comes to a decision.

“Alright. I’ll sing the song for you,” she says, climbing off the bed.

“Wait, really?”

“Yes, I actually—oh, here it is.” She rummages in her bookbag and produces the 7” single from its cardboard sleeve. “I bought it on Tuesday and forgot all about it, I was going to show you earlier. Such a dunce.”

“Don’t talk about my girlfriend like that,” Went says, shuffling back on his crossed legs to sit against the headboard. He looks genuinely eager. “She’s finally singing for me, don’t knock her confidence. Though, I guess we’re not getting any more studying done. Duncehood looms for the both of us.”

Maggie straightens up from the record player and unclips her hair until it falls in a dark torrent around her face. She shakes it out, feeling the strength of her voice build in her chest, feeling like she’s on fire from the glare of a stage spotlight. Getting into the mindset of a song is an important part of performance. “Would you rather study? We can study if you like.”

“No, no,” Went says evenly. His face is pink again and his eyes are very dark, watching her. “I think I’d much rather do this.”

So Maggie sings. The record cranks to a crescendo on the choruses like a runaway train and Maggie loses herself in it, closing her eyes and dancing. She’s an elegant dancer to classical music and an awkward one to rock and roll. Went is even worse, the pair of them clunking their bodies together at parties like a game of marbles because it’s funny that way, it’s funnier with two. But she tries not to feel silly, because she knows her voice is good. People tell her so. She knows it’s so, and she’s proud of her very own instrument nestled in the nave of her throat, and she wonders why it had been such a nerve-wracking prospect to let Went hear her sing. Perhaps it’s because she holds it so dear. She doesn’t know when his opinion became so important to her, but it is. The sound thunders up easily from her chest, controlled and so fluid she can almost visualize it leaving her lips like a stream, so controlled she can let the control a little loose whenever she wants to wail along with Marc Bolan, like the only rockstar in an oversized preppy shirt, get it on, bang a gong, get it on.

The record scratches to a close but she doesn’t feel finished, there’s still breath left in her yet. She segues easily into one of Went’s horribly cutting and clever comedy records, so she has an excuse for her face burning. It’s not because she can’t open her eyes and see his reaction, it’s because she’s singing about smut, of course. Every brush of the hems of his borrowed shorts against the ticklish backs of her legs, is felt. Her hair is thick and warm and her scalp is starting to sweat with all her uninhibited bouncing. Eventually she gives up and collapses to the bed, giggling and breathless. She buries her face into the covers feeling more ridiculous than she normally does in the vicinity of his generally impassive nature. He’s stable, somehow without being boring. It keeps her on her toes at least, that damnable poker face; she actually takes great delight in the way she finds herself coming further and further out of her shell, just to try and call his bluff.

“Gosh, I hope your neighbors like T-Rex,” she mumbles. She’s crouched with her knees and hands huddled under her, waiting for her fearsome blush to subside. Waiting for him to say something. She’s aware of his quiet presence at the headboard, just as she is so suddenly aware of the way his soft tee is riding up her hunched form, exposing her lower back to the fresh night air. “I’m—I should send them all an apology note for disturbing their Saturday evenings.”

“You should be charging them for the privilege,” Went croaks.

Maggie looks up at him, sharply. He stares back, still cross-legged with his hands stuffed down into his lap and a dazed expression on his face. She kneels towards him, feeling the residual magic of the music spark powerful deep through her body, between her legs. “You think I’ll pass vocal performance?”

“Jesus Christ, Maggie,” he says, unfolding his endless legs so she can straddle them. His hands are restless against her hips, moved from where they’d been hiding the thick line in his shorts. “And all this time I thought you’d been hiding the terrible secret that you’re actually a bad singer.”

She laughs against his neck. “Oh really?”

“Yeah, just awful. I figured you must be a banshee or something.”

“You did not, don’t joke!”

“I never joke,” he grins. He kisses her harder than before, restless hands squeezing at her ribcage, her thighs, just below the hemlines. Maggie presses her hips forward and grips fiercely at his ropy upper arms, gasping. “I’m deadly serious, that was—you’re a knockout at everything, it’s hardly fair.”

“Went.”

“Mags, I’m obliged to tell you I have one hell of a crush on you.”

“Went.”

“I can’t believe you’re my girlfriend,” he says, and Maggie’s stomach flips at the rare note of bemused, painful sincerity in his voice.

“Went, you can uncover them now,” she says, and shimmery heat floods between her thighs as he ruts upwards, abruptly.

“Sorry,” he pants, “what?”

“Take my shirt off, please. And I have a crush on you too, you dunce.”

He does as she asks of him and says, “Jesus Christ,” again, and a whole lot of other curse words and sweet things and silly nonsense that makes her laugh more than she’s ever laughed doing this with someone, and afterwards his hair looks the way it does when it’s his turn to stick his head out of the sun-roof.

He rolls off to collapse beside her. As soon as they catch their breath he says, “I’m gonna bring you breakfast in bed. Right now.”

“It’s 11pm!” Maggie wheezes, watching him stagger naked from the bedroom. The sight of his narrow waist flaring up into broad, bony shoulders is unbearable, now that she knows how it all feels between her legs and rippling under her hands. It makes her voracious for more. She aches wonderfully in all the right places, just like a good callisthenic stretch should.

It was quite a stretch, she thinks, and shivers, turning her head to breathe into the sweaty tangle of her own loose hair spilled across the pillow.

“Eleven is technically almost morning, isn’t it,” he calls back, clattering in the kitchen. “Plus you’ll need the energy, because we’re doing that again immediately. If you want to, of course,” he adds hastily.

“Of course,” Maggie snorts. Her cheeks ache too, from happiness. “We’ve got badges to earn.”

- anyway

- Her mom likes him too because he’s a dentist, Margaret, but her dad thinks he’s a hippie with a fake diploma because he still has sideburns lmfao. Went’s parents like Maggie, but it’s a lot to do with how she tries so hard to make them like her. She’s like, shaking by the end of day 1 of her first meeting with them like “I just don’t ever want you to have to choose,” and Went (absentmindedly fiddling with an old toy robot, they’re staying in his childhood bedroom) is like “Don’t worry, I’d choose you any time. I mean, I’d have to kill them but I’m sure they’d understand,” and Maggie’s like “I’m serious!” and Went turns to her and says, “So am I, Mags,” and then wraps all his long stick insect limbs around her refusing to let go until she’s laughing again

- He’s also very neat, he does all his own ironing so his work tunics are just right. More than once Maggie and her two roommates come back to the apartment during weekends to find him standing in socks and boxers and ironing piles and piles of everyone’s laundry, and he refuses to believe Maggie that this is weird. She thinks back to her old boyfriends who could barely flush a toilet and thinks hm, maybe it’s not so weird

- for the first few years of living together after they get married they can’t choose sides of the bed. Like, it changes all the time. “This is intimate anarchy,” Maggie says, after their tenth night in a row of switching. “I’m sure this is what the Summer of Love was all about.”

“Oh, I thought it was about cunnilingus,” Went says brightly, slotting a bookmark into his copy of Jaws and turning off the side lamp. “My mistake. Goodnight, love.”

“Wait!”

- Went comes into the delivery room after Richie’s born, looking more shaken than Maggie herself, ashen and stressed. “I could hear you screaming from out there,” he whispers, kissing her forehead and jerking his thumb back over his shoulder, bloodshot eyes locked on the swaddled bundle on her chest. “Darling. Oh, Maggie.”

“We’re alright now,” she says, hoarse. “I was just letting him know however loud he is, he gets it from his mother.”

“Him?” Went bleats, his eyes so wide. He still only needs his glasses for reading. “He? It’s a boy—we have a—”

“A son, yes,” Maggie says, and wipes at her cheeks. She’s had quite enough fluids on her face for one night, thank you. “Here, take him away from me before I lose my temper with him again.”

She nearly starts crying again when she sees how tiny the baby—Richard, that’s right, they’d decided on Richard for a boy—how tiny he looks in Went’s big, capable hands. They manage not to wake him in the transfer and Wentworth cradles him against his collar for a moment, looking lost. Then he seems to come back to himself, shooting Maggie one of his big, crinkly grins (and God, she’s still a lost cause) as he addresses the consequence of their actions.

“Did you do this?” Went whispers into the blue folds of blanket, pointing one free finger at Maggie. “Look what you’ve done to my wife. How dare you. She looks terrible.”

“Shut up,” Maggie laughs, as quietly as she can.

“She looks terrible and more wonderful than ever,” Went continues in the baby’s ear. “Is this your doing? We’ll make a good team, I think. Between the two of us she doesn’t stand a chance, by thirty-five she’ll be too beautiful to look at and then she might get some peace and quiet.”

“You’re delirious from the thin atmosphere, Legs,” she says. “Give him back, if you drop him from up there he’s done for.”

“I won’t drop him,” Went insists, “you had him for nine months, let me have a turn.” He holds onto Richard while she sleeps, but not before she grabs at his arm and sobs thank you for him, Went, thank you, and Went cries a little too and says what are you thanking me for, I’d get a participation trophy at most, which makes her laugh and say, if anyone deserves a trophy for their participation technique it’s you, and then she falls asleep before she hears his reply.

- they play so much rock and roll for Richie, Maggie makes up her own songs for him and sings to him all the time. Maggie only had older sisters, and Went was an only child so neither of them have very much experience with babies, but Maggie’s friendships with Andrea Uris and Sharon Denbrough from the neighborhood and from book club help a lot, they all seem to have wound up having their firsts in the space of a few months. She values language too much to baby talk Richie, and Went would be clueless as to how to begin, so pretty often she finds him deep in conversation about politics or baseball with Richie babbling in his high chair.

- as I said before, I hc that Maggie speaks maybe French and Italian, and Went finds it incredibly sexy. He can’t reply, of course, he just babbles along in Richie’s ridiculous Voices, it’s basically the Swedish Chef but French or Italian. He calls her Marguerite if it’s French, and Margarita in Italian (“That’s Spanish!” Maggie hoots, stroking his hair back at both temples where it’s frosting to silver already, and clasping her hands around the back of his head. “What do margaritas have to do with Italy?”

“Not Margarita,” Went says. He traces a line between all the pretty moles on her chest, sweeping down between her breasts to the one just beside her navel, the soft little rise of belly that sits in the cup of her iliac crest. That spot always flicks her hips forward with ticklish heat, and if they’re not careful then Richie might end up with a baby sibling Maggie’s not quite ready for yet. “Margherita, like the pizza. You’re cheesy, sweetheart.”)

- both of them smoked but Maggie gave it up when she got pregnant, and now Went doesn’t smoke inside the house. He of course gives it up for good after he gets cancer of the larynx in his late 50s when Richie is 30, which makes Richie quit too

- they love their son and just want him to be HAPPY even if they’re sometimes misguided about what would make him happy, but hey, so is Richie