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iris-writesx · 2 years ago

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we could leave the christmas lights up ‘til january | stede x ed x izzy

read it here or read it on ao3 <3

this was supposed to be the fic that introduced the au, so if you like just pretend this one came first. though, none of the fics in the au necessarily have to be read in order, it will just be a bunch of one shots for this idea!!

but i’ve only written fluff once for this fandom and not even this trio, so it’s overdue. i feel like this fic is a bit meh but it’s definitely more to provide some context for the au. i spent so long working on all of their backstories im actually pretty proud of them akdjwjr

off note and it doesn’t matter but i started the bbc show “uncle” that con o’neill is in (yes i watched it for him) and it’s actually really good and i am SO in love with val <3

but enjoy!! please tell me what you think / what you’d like to see for this au :)

title is from “lover” by taylor swift x

2.2k words — modern day au, domestic fluff, christmas, ed suffers from chronic pain

more from this au; and now i see daylight

༶•┈┈୨♡୧┈┈•༶

Ed was fucking tired.

It was almost eight o’clock by the time that he finally pulled into the driveway, and all he planned on doing was having a shower, and going to bed. He didn’t even fancy his dinner, which he knew Stede would've kept in the fridge ready for him to heat up.

He didn’t like Fridays. Fridays were the only day that Izzy and Stede got out of work a good couple of hours before Ed did, and he didn’t like being left out on their time together.

But he was home now. He could just… relax.

It didn’t help that his knee had been killing him all day, which, he would admit, was his fault. He had woken up a lot later than he should have, and in his rush to get ready and leave the house he had forgotten to put on his knee brace. Which basically fucked his leg for the whole day, considering his work was all pretty manual.

Ed had been working at the garage for coming up three years, and he loved it. He loved the fact that he was always bustling about doing something, something that kept his mind and hands occupied. It had taken some time to fall into the flow of his work schedule, but he had and he was so thankful for that.

It had been Izzy who had originally gotten him the job. At the time, Izzy had also worked there. It was the first thing that he had helped him with after Ed had gotten out of rehab.

Of course, Izzy didn’t work there anymore; after he’d lost his leg, there was no chance of him filling his post back up there. But Stede had been kind enough to offer him a job in the little café tucked away in his library.

Ed didn’t mind working without either of his partners there. It just meant that seeing them again after work was even more exciting, something he looked forwards to every day he was apart from them.

His eyes screwed, wincing as he turned to get out of the car. He didn’t even bother grabbing his bag, in his urge to just relax. He could sort that shit out in the morning. Ed was just looking forwards to his warm house, his partners, and some peace and quiet.

…which, he realised when he opened the door, he would not be getting just yet.

The first thing he heard was Stede’s rambling. Stede, bless him, did ramble all the time, granted. But it was one of those do as I say rambles, one he usually ended up using on Ed actually.

Though, for once, it wasn’t directed at him, but at Izzy.

“…be half an hour max and we can do the rest tomorrow, or I can just do it all myself tonight. What do you think, the red? Or the green? I do have more of the green but the red goes better with the gold-”

“Jesus Christ.” Izzy sounded as wiped out as Ed felt.

Ed shrugged his coat from his shoulders, and kicked his shoes off on the rug that Stede had put out now that the wetter weather was more common than not. The warmth of the house was like heaven, and he took a moment to just stand there, leant against the wall as Stede carried on his rambling in the living room.

The colder weather was never favourable, his knee always hurt worse in the cold even with the brace. But without it? He doubted he’d be able to be on his feet for too long the next day, but luckily it was Saturday, which they all had off of work.

Thank fuck.

After he realised that he had been stood there for too long, Ed finally made his way from the hallway into the living room and- just stopped in the doorway. Staring.

“What the fuck is all this?”

Pretty much the entire floor space was covered with different Christmas decorations — ornaments, tinsel, fairy lights, the lot. In the middle of it all knelt on the floor, unsurprisingly, was Stede. He had a rope of tinsel in one hand, the other dug into a box which seemed to just contain more of the shit.

Izzy was tucked up in his armchair by the fireplace, and seemed to be pointedly ignoring the mess around him, as he had his phone in his hand and a blanket draped over his lap.

“Ed!” Stede whipped his head around and smiled, like a fucking holiday bomb hadn’t been deployed in their living room. “I didn’t hear you come in, I’m a little preoccupied. What colour do you like best? Izzy isn’t being helpful in the slightest.”

Izzy scoffed. “Told you to toss it all, didn't I?”

“Oh don’t be such a Scrooge, Israel.”

Ed was still stood in the doorway, blinking at the room in front of him. He knew that Stede was fond of traditions and holidays — he had been awfully skilled at decorating the house for Halloween, had actually scared a good few kids with the fuckery he put outside the house. But they hadn’t really talked much about Christmas.

It was the first of December for fuck sake.

“Ed?” Stede put the box down and got to his feet, frowning a little.

“I think he’s in a state of shock.” Was all Izzy supplied, clearly just to jest Stede.

“I just…” Ed waved his hand around, unsure what to say. “Didn’t remember our house being so glittery.”

Stede stepped over the decorations laid out on the floor to greet Ed in the doorway, leant in to plant a kiss on his lips, and for a moment the decorations didn’t matter because he was home and didn’t want to be anywhere else. He mumbled a hello to Stede, kissed him again, and once Stede had returned to his spot on the floor Ed finally walked into the room, crossed over to Izzy’s chair to lean down and greet him with a kiss too.

“I’d go back out if I were you.” Izzy nodded towards the door once Ed had perched himself on the armrest of his chair, and looked up to see Stede glaring playfully.

“I’d take a lot less time doing it all if you helped.”

Izzy pulled the blanket off of his lap, and reached down to fumble with his prosthetic, and after a moment he took it off, careless as he let it drop to the floor. “Can’t help.”

Ed snorted a laugh, though Stede’s expression was very unamused. “You can’t use that to get out of everything.”

“Yes I can.”

Stede was pouting, and looked over at Ed, gesturing to the decorations around him. “You don’t think this is all pointless, do you?”

“Never said it was pointless.” Izzy mumbled from his side.

Ed let his gaze drift over the decorations again. Nowhere that he had ever lived had ever decorated so heavily for Christmas. When he was a kid his mother would put up a tree and some stockings, but that was it. When he and Izzy had been roommates out of school, they’d never really bothered with much either, just a shitty little plastic tree until they went back to their families for the holidays.

But Ed knew that Stede had led a very different life up until the point that they had met. His life had always been lavish, always had the expenses to celebrate holidays however he wanted. He had no doubt that the decorations over their living room floor were nothing compared to where he had lived with his parents, or with Mary before them — it wasn’t like their house had the room for it all — but it was still more than Ed or Izzy had ever had.

Ed didn’t hate Christmas, not at all. He held fond memories of his mother from that time, secret santas with Izzy (that, granted, he’d had to basically force Izzy to take part in), and more recently, the first Christmas that they had all been together for.

But this would be their first Christmas living together.

“It’s not pointless, mate, no,” Ed shook his head, leant down to lift up a little ornament of an angel into his hands. It was delicate and pretty, and nothing like he and Izzy would’ve owned before they had known and loved Stede. “S’just… y’know, we’ve never really seen the point in decorating the place for Christmas.”

“Really?” Stede had his mouth open, shocked, like Ed had just said something scandalous. “Never? But it’s so- it’s so lovely, Ed, Izzy, it’s such a pretty time of year.”

Ed just gave a little shrug. “The decor and shit has never been so important I guess.”

“Right, then,” Stede nodded, and he had that look on his face — his stubborn look, the look he got when he was about to do something that neither Izzy or Ed would be able to stop once it was in motions. “It’s settled. You two are going to have a real Christmas, done properly.”

His determination made Ed smile, and how could he say no to that? That much passion and stubbornness and- fuck, he just loved Stede so much.

Loved both of them so much.

“Sure thing, love,” Ed nodded, smiled. “But how about we stick a pin in it until tomorrow, yeah? ‘Cause I’m fucked, and just really wanna go to bed-” he moved to stand from the arm of Izzy’s armchair, but he moved in a way that sent shooting pain from his knee and throughout his leg, and immediately cut himself off, gritted out a “fuck” as he stood still.

Izzy had long since zoned out of the previous conversation, had been reading some news articles on his phone like the old man he was, but Ed immediately felt his hand on his back. “Edward?”

“What’s wrong, love?” Stede was insisting, too, and Ed looked up and watched as he scrambled to his feet to get to where Ed was stood.

“Nothing, nothing,” Ed waved them off, inhaled deeply to recompose himself. Sometimes he forgot how much his knee actually did hurt, the pain took the breath from his lungs sometimes. “Just forgot to wear my brace today- ow, what the fuck?” He turned to scowl at Izzy when he had smacked his waist.

“Fucking idiot,” Izzy grumbled, though Ed could see the worry in his eyes. “How much did that brace cost? Too much for you to forget to wear it.”

“Is your knee okay?” Stede was fluttering at his side, frowning. “How bad is it? Do you need any help?”

Ed shook his head. “I’m all good, just a little tender. Will be worse off tomorrow.”

If anything that just made Stede’s frown worse. “Why don’t we go and take a shower so we can get in bed, hm?” He offered, lightly held Ed’s arm with his hands. “I was going to shower anyways, Izzy said he wouldn’t kiss me until I got all of this glitter off of me.”

“I won’t,” came Izzy’s voice whilst Ed laughed. “That shit pisses me off, and now it’s all over our carpet.”

“He’s just being a grump, it’s past his bedtime,” Ed grinned, pretended to ignore the swat he got to his hip as he pulled Stede in with his arm around his shoulders, briefly kissed him on the mouth. “We can shower then sleep,” he told Stede, before he looked back at Izzy. “Will you be joining us, darling?”

Izzy certainly had a point about the glitter, because Ed glanced down at his hands and could see that his skin was dotted with red and golden flecks. He looked back at Izzy with a smile, hands outstretched to cup his face.

“Ed- no-” Izzy leaned as far back in his chair as he could, held his hands up to try and shove Ed’s away. “Edward-”

Ed was far too entertained, and leaned far enough in to cup Izzy’s face despite his protests, laughed against his mouth as he kissed him, before he leaned back to see him.

His beard was glittery.

“Oh don’t you look fabulous, darling.” Stede beamed from beside them.

But Izzy was just glaring at Ed, didn’t look the slightest bit entertained.

“Well, now you have to join us,” Ed beamed, still laughing as he leaned away, tapped Izzy’s cheek once more. And though being leaned down had twinged his knee a little more, the pain was sharper in his joint, it was definitely worth it. “Coming, love?”

“Go fuck yourself.” Izzy grumbled, but despite himself he still leaned down to grab his prosthetic, started putting it back on so he could head to the shower with them.

Stede went upstairs to get the water running and between leaning on Izzy to get to the bathroom whilst his knee was playing up, and listening to the sound of Stede’s humming from the bathroom, he couldn’t have felt more at home.

༶•┈┈୨♡୧┈┈•༶

comments would mean the world <3 requests are open!

#our flag means death #our flag means death fanfic #ofmd #ofmd fanfic #blackbeard ofmd #ofmd stede #ofmd izzy #blackbeard x stede #edward teach #edward teach x stede bonnet #our flag means fanfic #stede bonnet #izzy hands #stede bonnet x edward teach x izzy hands #stede bonnet x izzy hands #edward teach x izzy hands #steddyhands

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yaoi-hate-machine · 1 year ago

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murder your memory by title fight but it’s murder your Mommy

my mom is so fucking weird and ironically often very spot on about our relationship when she’s trying to joke with me

on wednesday, she used the tortellini i had bought to make pasta salad as basically my only lunch for the week bc she didn’t plan anything to take to her friend’s house. this made me Really mad bc 1. she didn’t ask me 2. i spend a lot of time and energy meal planning 3. i have a Lot of anxiety abt food bc ED recovery + ARFID + autism + lifelong food insecurity and 4. it takes me a Lot of energy just to pick up an online order and put it away

so i ended up having to go to one store, find out they’re out of stock, and go to Another store, which took Hours. the next day, i started making the pasta salad, realized that she had used the entire bottle of dressing i had bought for it, and nearly had a meltdown over it in the kitchen. she came to “comfort” me and said she’d go to the store to get more the next day. she joked “i’m really screwing you over this week, huh?” to which Past evan would have comforted and reassured her. but Present evan just went 😬 which like Good for him tbh bc this Did very much fuck up my week

anyway this morning the cycle continues, she’s trying to be all buddy buddy and get my reassurance while also trying to get me to feel bad for her. again, jokingly, she comes into the kitchen saying “did you peel the rest of the eggs for me? if you loved me, you would peel the eggs for me” laughing with her head on my shoulder, as if she doesn’t Always weaponize shame against people to do things for her. reminds me of a time she jokingly told me i was “gaslighting” her which like. girl if i’m gaslighting you’re a nuclear fucking bomb

and then she made sure to complain to me about going to the store Two days in a row (bc she Chose to go yesterday to buy eggs?) which is like. Ok cool 👍 i go to two stores in one day every week bc i’m the only one who buys groceries, and then had to go to two stores Again two days later bc you used my food 👍 That’s Awesome 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

anyway thank god for therapy and people talking abt manipulative emotionally abusive narcissistic parents (and i use the term narcissistic to describe a self centered quality of her actions and thought patterns, Not to hypothesize that she has NPD) bc i’m now able to Choose not to reassure or comfort her when she’s being “i’m surely the worst person alive but i won’t straight up apologize” and “Woe is me i have suffered more than jesus christ, pls pity me or i will Die”

#ventnote #can someone with a normal emotionally healthy and aware mom pls have her adopt me thx

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georgi-girl · 4 months ago

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Retelling Jesus Christ Superstar

Part Three

+++

Fade in: Khan, Whiplash, and three priests Rasputin, Jafar, and Mozenwrath all sit at a wooden table.

RASPUTIN AS PRIEST ONE

Good Caiaphas, the council waits for you.

The Pharisees and priests are here for you.

KHAN AS CAIAPHAS

Ah gentlemen, you know why we are here.

We've not much time, and quite a problem here

MOB (outside)

Hosanna! Superstar!

WHIPLASH AS ANNAS

Listen to that howling mob of blockheads in the street!

A trick or two with lepers, and the whole town's on its feet.

ALL (inside)

He is dangerous!

MOB (outside)

Jesus Christ Superstar!

ALL (inside)

He is dangerous!

MOB (outside)

Tell us that you're who they say you are.

JAFAR AS PRIEST TWO

The man is in town right now to whip up some support.

MOZENWRATH AS PRIEST THREE

A rabble rousing mission that I think we must abort.

ALL (inside)

He is dangerous!

MOB (outside)

Jesus Christ Superstar!

ALL (inside)

He is dangerous!

JAFAR AS PRIEST TWO

Look Caiaphas, they're right outside our yard.

MOZENWRATH AS PRIEST THREE

Quick Caiaphas, go call the Roman guard.

KHAN AS CAIAPHAS

No, wait!

We need a more permanent solution to our problem.

WHIPLASH AS ANNAS

What then to do about Jesus of Nazareth?

Miracle wonderman, hero of fools.

MOZENWRATH AS PRIEST THREE

No riots, no army, no fighting, no slogans.

KHAN AS CAIAPHAS

One thing I'll say for him -- Jesus is cool.

WHIPLASH AS ANNAS

We dare not leave him to his own devices.

His half-witted fans will get out of control.

PRIESTS

But how can we stop him?

His glamour increases

By leaps every moment; he's top of the poll.

KHAN AS CAIAPHAS

I see bad things arising.

The crowd crown him king; which the Romans would ban.

I see blood and destruction,

Our elimination because of one man.

Blood and destruction because of one man.

ALL (inside)

Because, because, because of one man.

KHAN AS CAIAPHAS

Our elimination because of one man.

ALL (inside)

Because, because, because of one, 'cause of one, 'cause of one man.

MOZENRATH AS PRIEST THREE

What then to do about this Jesus-mania?

WHIPLASH AS ANNAS

Now how do we deal with a carpenter king?

PRIESTS

Where do we start with a man who is bigger

Than John was when John did his baptism thing?

KHAN AS CAIAPHAS

Fools, you have no perception!

The stakes we are gambling are frighteningly high!

We must crush him completely,

So like John before him, this Jesus must die.

For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die.

ALL (inside)

Must die, must die, this Jesus must die.

KHAN AS CAIAPHAS

So like John before him, this Jesus must die.

ALL (inside)

Must die, must die, this Jesus must, Jesus must, Jesus must

DIEEEEE!!!!!!

+++

Outside, Moses is carried into town by a crowd of happy trolls waving palm branches. The Apostles follow after him.

CROWD

Hosanna

Hey Sanna Sanna Sanna Hosanna

Hey Sanna Hosanna

Hey JC, JC won't you smile at me?

Sanna Hosanna

Hey Superstar

KHAN AS CAIAPHAS

Tell the rabble to be quiet, we anticipate a riot.

This common crowd, is much too loud.

Tell the mob who sing your song that they are fools and they are wrong.

They are a curse. They should disperse.

CROWD

Hosanna

Hey Sanna Sanna Sanna Hosanna

Hey Sanna Hosanna

Hey JC, JC you're alright by me

Sanna Hosanna

Hey Superstar

MOSES AS JESUS:

Why waste your breath moaning at the crowd?

Nothing can be done to stop the shouting.

If every tongue were stilled

The noise would still continue.

The rocks and stone themselves would start to sing:

CROWD AND JESUS

Hosanna

Hey Sanna Sanna Sanna Hosanna

Hey Sanna Hosanna

CROWD (alone)

Hey JC, JC won't you fight for me?

Sanna Hosanna Hey Superstar

MOSES AS JESUS:

Sing me your songs,

But not for me alone.

Sing out for yourselves,

For you are bless-ed.

There is not one of you

Who can not win the kingdom.

The slow, the suffering,

The quick, the dead.

CROWD and JESUS

Hosanna

Hey Sanna Sanna Sanna Hosanna

Hey Sanna Hosanna

CROWD (alone)

Hey JC, JC won't you die for me?

Sanna Hosanna Hey Superstar

+++

Aladdin and the Looney Tunes start a riot and fight off some Roman guards. Then when Moses shows up, they all start dancing and worshiping him.

CROWD

Christ you know I love you.

Did you see I waved?

I believe in you and God

So tell me that I'm saved.

Christ you know I love you.

Did you see I waved?

I believe in you and God

So tell me that I'm saved.

Jesus I am with you.

Touch me, touch me, Jesus.

Jesus I am on your side.

Kiss me, kiss me, Jesus.

ALADDIN AS SIMON ZEALOTES

Christ, what more do you need to convince you

That you've made it, and you're easily as strong

As the filth from Rome who rape our country,

And who've terrorized our people for so long.

CROWD

Jesus I am with you.

Touch me, touch me, Jesus.

Jesus I am on your side.

Kiss me, kiss me, Jesus.

Christ you know I love you.

Did you see I waved?

I believe in you and God,

So tell me that I'm saved.

Christ you know I love you.

Did you see I waved?

I believe in you and God,

So tell me that I'm saved.

Christ you know I love you.

Did you see I waved?

I believe in you and God,

So tell me that I'm saved.

Christ you know I love you.

Did you see I waved?

I believe in you and God,

So tell me that I'm saved.

Jesus I am with you.

Touch me, touch me, Jesus.

Jesus I am on your side.

Kiss me, kiss me, Jesus.

ALADDIN AS SIMON ZEALOTES

There must be over fifty thousand

Screaming love and more for you.

And everyone of fifty thousand

Would do whatever you asked them to.

Keep them yelling their devotion,

But add a touch of hate at Rome.

You will rise to a greater power.

We will win ourselves a home.

Aladdin dances between Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

You'll get the power and the glory

For ever and ever and ever

You'll get the power and the glory

For ever and ever and ever

You'll get the power and the glory

For ever and ever and ever

You'll get the power and the glory

For ever and ever and ever

Forever Amen! Amen! Amen!

The crowd finishes by striking a big pose. Moses shakes his head with a sad smile.

MOSES AS JESUS:

Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand,

Nor the Romans, nor the Jews,

Nor Judas, nor the twelve

Nor the priests, nor the scribes,

Nor doomed Jerusalem itself

Understand what power is,

Understand what glory is,

Understand at all,

Understand at all.

If you knew all that I knew, my poor Jerusalem,

You'd see the truth, but you close your eyes.

But you close your eyes.

While you live, your troubles are many, poor Jerusalem.

To conquer death, you only have to die.

You only have to die.

He walks away. The crowd watches him leave with confused looks on thor faces.

Lola Bunny:

Wait, what?

+++

Boris Badkoff dances a slow tango in a fancy chamber with his wife Natasha.

BORIS AS PILITE

I dreamed I met a Galilean;

A most amazing man.

He had that look you very rarely find:

The haunting, hunted kind.

I asked him to say what had happened,

How it all began.

I asked again, he never said a word.

As if he hadn't heard.

And next, the room was full of wild and angry men.

They seemed to hate this man.

They fell on him, and then

Disappeared again.

Then I saw thousands of millions

Crying for this man.

And then I heard them mentioning my name,

And leaving me the blame.

#movie recast #musical retelling #jesus christ superstar

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sublimecatgalaxy · 3 years ago

Note

hey babes, I really hope you feel better love, you deserve to be happy 🥺🥰

I did have a request but, by no means do you have to write it now of course, you can write it when you feel ready whether that be a few days or weeks, however long you need.

I was wondering if you could write something fluff for Eddie Munson where he says that he loves you for the first time? I just think it would be adorable 🥺

I hope you feel better soon <33

Thank you for the well wishes sweetheart. It's still really rough over here, suffering with my OCD right now, I can barely function.

But this request made me genuinely happy, so thank you. You're the best❤️

A/n: I will be updating my masterlist within the next few days, sorry that I'm behind with it, there's just a lot going on, y'all know this haha.

Eddie has always been terrible at keeping secrets.

He always has been the one to tell on himself the minute he tries to keep something from someone who's close to him- like me. He's given up every surprise party he's ever tried to throw me, every major present he's wanted to give me- anything, the man is terrible at keeping secrets.

He gets this look on his face; gentle blushing, pouting lips, furrowed brows, almost resembling that of a toddler who just did something wrong and the parents have yet to find out what it is.

And Eddie, the poor guy, has that exact same look on his face now.

We've known each other for years, friends for most of them but our relationship took a turn for the better and now we've been happily together for nine months. It's a real relationship, something different than all of the flings and hookups we've all experienced. I think that him and I both know it's serious and that we more than appreciate the fact that we're both what each other needs.

"Spit it out, Eds, you look like you're gonna explode." I giggle, catching him off guard as his eyes bulge, his lips parting in silent shock that I actually called him out on his staring. He stutters for a moment, hands waving around as he tries to fumble for something to say.

"You know I hate it when you do that. When you can just tell I'm thinking about something." He huffs, flopping down beside me on the bed, his chin craning up to meet my gaze. He looks so soft and boyish, gentle, and his hand reaches up to brush against my cheek.

"Well, you think a little too hard, babe. I can tell, there's typically smoke- ow!" I giggle, thumping back against the mattress as Eddie whacks me with the nearest pillow. "Fine, fine- I deserved that. But tell me, c'mon." I nudge him with a bright smile, watching an embarrassed one take over his expression, his eyes shyly looking away from me.

"I just," he pauses, biting nervously at his lip, "this is stupid, I don't know why I'm so nervous, fuck-"

"Tell me, Eddie, Jesus H Christ-"

"I love you." He replies simply, my smile only widening at his truly obvious words. We've said it a million times, sure, but not in the way that I know he means it. He means it in the 'I'm in love with you' way, not the friendly 'I love you' way but it doesn't scare me.

It scares him though. I can tell by the wide, doe-like eyes and the nervous fidgeting of his fingers, he's nervous beyond belief. So I just reach out and place my hand on his cheek and lean down to press a simple kiss to his lips before whispering.

"I love you too, you silly idiot."

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- Taglist: @bubblebuttwade @rafelover2405 @leslienjazzy @sorceresss @grxnde-dwt @alex–awesome–22 @bunnietoof @niyamar1e @serialghost @plantlungs @geniusohn @akaliltimmytim @lilaalouuxx @xshariex @elliotsbeigeguitar @elle4404 @lelieja @srhxpci @joselyn001 @taysirene @spinkspanther @thedivineuphoria @peter-maximoffs @tsukishimawhore @poohkie90 @szlaco @distantsighs @nstyles4299 @wolflover384 @givemefoodandlovesstuff @vane28282 @yeswhatever33 @amirrahfranson @vvaalleennttiinna @f-mu @yaspillz @jeyramarie @skylievin@abbybarnes17 @jointherebellion215 @visiondaddy @steezysimfinds @its-ya-gay-boi-luigi

@crunchytoenailsyum@glizzymcguirex @beth123lg @melovesmut @rafecameronswhore @ariianelle @write-from-the-heart @vampviolets@haylee-e@popehaywardssecretgf @honee-chai-tea @lokiandbuckywife @smoke-and-fire @officiallyunofficialperson@heyaitsklaudia@rosepetalsparks @bluetreecloud20 @scenesofobx @double-shot-of-tequila @1dluver13xx @colbysbrocks @iamasimpingh0e @smoke-and-fire386 @loveshineslikethesky @id-3-kbro @diorsitgirl @errorfound101-allideasburnedout @neverwillknowme18 @ellyskey @taylors-folk @loversjoy @myaloveee @thyris-is @lagataprrr @aaaaslaaaan @minjix @luvrosee @storytellingwitht

#eddie #eddie x reader #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #stranger things #stranger things fic

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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The Protestant Virgin Mary: Limitations on Mary’s Influence

“Protestants generally described Mary as an ordinary mother not just in her childbearing but in her relationship to Jesus; and occasionally this could inspire praise. For example, some Protestants had kind words for the Virgin Mary’s intervention at Cana, because they could interpret her actions there as being appropriately feminine. Edouart praised ‘the amiable thoughtfulness exhibited by her at that time in her quick-sightedness and eagerness to have removed a difficulty which might have caused their friends not a little distress and embarrassment’.

Dobney agreed that ‘her behaviour was altogether worthy of the true woman. The delicately sympathising endeavour to spare her humble friends the mortification of finding their supply fail before the festivities were ended led her to draw the attention of Christ to the circumstance.’ However, even when Protestants described the Virgin Mary as a woman properly fulfilling her domestic duties, they did not believe that her maternal authority extended into Jesus’ public life. Her maternal authority ended at the wedding at Cana where, Dobney declared, Jesus ‘intimated that the time was come when maternal influence over him must cease’.

However, the Protestant Mary did not always gracefully relinquish her maternal authority. She ‘assum[ed] too much authority over him’ and attempted to interfere in his mission, forcing Jesus to notify her more than once of the termination of her maternal authority. He did so, they said, by repeatedly addressing her as ‘Woman’ rather than ‘Mother’, an address the evangelical clergyman William Thomas Maudson described as, ‘to say the least, politely distant’ and Miller as ‘cold’.

Protestants also believed, as did Maudson, that Jesus condemned his mother’s behaviour with a ‘harsh and unduteous’ response to her at the Temple and by responding ‘with apparent indifference and contempt’ when Mary tried to interrupt his preaching. In sum, as Francis Merewether, the Anglican clergyman and opponent of both Roman Catholicism and disestablishment, said: ‘The Virgin Mother received more than once from the lips of her blessed Son, during his earthly ministry, words savouring strongly of reproof.’ (Although the disciples were equally liable to the criticism that they misunderstood Jesus’ mission, Protestant authors did not dilute their criticism of the Virgin Mary by pointing out that there was evidence that others close to Jesus did not fully understand his mission.)

Nevertheless, she refused to acknowledge the severed connection and followed Jesus to the foot of the cross. There, according to Charles Thomas Longley, Archbishop of York (and subsequently of Canterbury), ‘bowed down by a weight of grief such as no daughter of Eve ever bore before or since’, her presence multiplied her son’s sufferings: ‘Jesus has thus to bear not His own sufferings only, but hers as well, and seems, as it were, to be dying a double death.’

Michael Wheeler locates ‘Christ’s “hard sayings” to his mother which challenge the ideal of the Holy Family as a model for Christians to follow’ in the twentieth century, but in fact Victorian Protestants’ interpretations of Jesus’ words meant that these ‘hard sayings’ were well-established by the mid-nineteenth century. The Protestant Mary was no model mother, but a woman grasping to remain in her son’s life when she should have gracefully relinquished him to the public world. Deprived of an earthly role, the Protestant Mary was also denied a role in heaven.

The Anglican cleric William Ford Vance, who defended the Protestant identity of the Established Church, was horrified to think that Roman Catholics ‘entreat her to exercise her influence and authority over God, as a mother over her son, that he may save your souls: “Jure matris, imperâ Redemptori”: By the right of a mother, command the Redeemer!!!’ Nor did Protestants consider Mary to be the mother of all Christians. Jesus assigned Mary to John’s care, Sinclair said, only because she was ‘a mere woman ... unable even to succour herself’.

The Protestant Virgin Mary, having been defined as an impediment to Jesus’ work, was thus described as an ordinary woman who had no expansive sphere of influence. ‘A.B.’, a correspondent to the anti-Roman Catholic Church and state gazette who had been greatly impressed by a lecture John Cumming had given in Scarborough in 1853 condemning the Virgin Mary’s position in the Roman Catholic Church, was convinced that ‘it requires a large extension of faith to reconcile the superior homage to the Virgin Mary, as our Mediatrix and presiding Deity, with the woman who doubted or denied the perfectibility of her Son’s mind’.

Protestants were confident that they were guided not just by Mary’s behaviour as recorded in the gospels, but by Jesus’ wishes as well. Deploring the ‘Romanist feelings’ expressed by the woman who praised Mary’s breasts and womb, Edouart declared that Jesus, ‘so far from giving encouragement to such feelings ... at once checked them’. Jesus did so, taught Maudson, in order ‘to lessen the closeness, and destroy the distinction of that earthly relationship, which has been made the very ground of the especial reverence that is rendered to the Virgin’.

In the mid-nineteenth century, a chorus of Protestants agreed with Vance that Jesus had wanted ‘to avoid every thing likely to excite a feeling of undue veneration for her [Mary] in the minds of his disciples’. Protestants also claimed to be following Mary’s wishes. Cumming declared that ‘if the now glorified and happy Virgin could come down to earth, she would call on you to silence for ever the idolatrous accents [of] Ave Maria, and teach you to breathe in language, heartfelt and believing – Abba – Father!’

The Protestant Mary was, then, a model of female self-denial; when Protestants described her as humiliated when she tried to seize a public role, they could also have been warning women against self-aggrandisement. Because they did not believe that Mary’s behaviour made her worthy of devotion, Protestants rejected all forms of Marian devotion, including the scriptural first half of the Hail Mary and prayers using that invocation, such as the Stella Maris.

Protestants as various as Dobney, Edouart, and Tyler found the King James Bible’s more restrained (and, scholars now agree, more accurate) translation of the angelic greeting – ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured’ – to be more acceptable than the Catholic ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’. They particularly disliked the Rosary – derided by the Congregationalist weekly the British banner as the mindless counting of beads ‘by the million’ – on the grounds that it devoted more attention to Mary than to God.

Seymour made obvious the underlying criticism that the Rosary represented a challenge to God when he described uneducated Italians ignoring the priest, Christ’s representative, in order to say the Rosary during Mass. This view of the Rosary appeared in fiction also. In Eliot’s Romola, the Rosary is associated with Tessa, the charmingly ignorant peasant who is assiduous in her Marian devotions (although she sometimes falls asleep while saying the Rosary), but who knows so little of church ritual that she does not realise her marriage to Tito is a sham.

The discomfort with the older mother, apparent when Mary was discussed, was evident elsewhere in Victorian culture. It shaped descriptions of Queen Victoria, who was perhaps the best-known overbearing mother of the age. As a result both of her disappointment in Bertie, the future Edward VII, and of her reluctance to share power (which was also manifested in her treatment of Albert during the early years of their marriage), Queen Victoria gave her son no real responsibilities.

While Bertie’s penchant for drinking, gambling, and womanising may have justified this treatment, Victoria’s subjects blamed lack of responsibility for his extended adolescence: ‘Kept in childhood beyond his time’, the future Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone lamented, ‘he is allowed to make that childhood what it should never be in a Prince, or anyone else, namely wanton.’ In 1867 Walter Bagehot described Bertie as ‘an unemployed youth’, while the radical politician Charles Bradlaugh’s pamphlet George, the Prince of Wales, with recent contrasts and coincidences, likened Bertie to George IV, whose lengthy wait for the throne had been notoriously dissolute.

Bertie was unfortunately unable to imitate the example of Lord Lufton, one of the heroes of Framley parsonage. Lufton acknowledged that he loved and esteemed his mother, but asserted that ‘nevertheless, I cannot allow her to lead me in all things. Were I to do so, I should cease to be a man.’ Victoria’s popularity revived at her Golden and Diamond Jubilees, in 1887 and 1897, by which time her subjects perceived her as a benevolent grandmotherly figure with limited power.

Discomfort with older mothers was practically a staple of Victorian literature. Although nineteenth-century novels often deliver the message that young women were on the path to becoming mothers, they are generally marked by the absence of parents, especially mothers. Main characters – including Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, and Becky Sharp – are often orphans. Pairs of orphans are also common: in Charles Dickens’s Great expectations, Pip and Estella are brought up by unsatisfactory surrogate mothers; in Eliot’s Adam Bede the cousins Hetty Poyser and Dinah Morris are more fortunate in their choice of guardians.

A significant number of mothers – including those of David Copperfield’s two wives, and of Little Em’ly, Lucy Deane, Philip Wakem, and Mary Barton – either are dead prior to start of the story of their offspring or die during its course. Mrs May is killed in an accident brought about by her husband’s careless driving early in Charlotte Yonge’s The daisy chain, although the memory of her hovers around her husband and children like a guiding spirit. The high mortality rate of mothers is remarkable, given that almost all the heroines are progressing towards what they represented, the supposedly universal goal of women – motherhood.

…A motherless heroine perhaps offered novelists greater dramatic possibilities and was certainly not a demographic oddity. In 1841 the life expectancy was 41.18 years for women and 40.19 years for men. Sheila Ryan Johanson argues that Peter Uhlenberg’s conclusion that in nineteenth-century America ‘only exceptional women managed to live out the “typical” life cycle, which included living long enough to marry, having children and surviving jointly with a husband until the last child married and grandchildren began arriving’, can also be applied to England.

Nevertheless, the near-total elimination of parental figures, especially mothers, in these works that both shaped and reflected mainstream Victorian culture requires an explanation beyond the demands of realism or drama. These missing women suggest that the same culture which exalted mothers also worried that mothers who did exercise the influence they were urged to have would never allow their children – especially their sons – to become independent.

Canonical novels achieve their status by representing a culture’s concerns and assumptions. Other popular works equally demonstrate a discomfort with the older mother. In fact, the absent mother was a characteristic of all genres, Carolyn Dever argues: ‘To write a life, in the Victorian period, is to write the story of the loss of the mother. In fiction and biography, autobiography and poetry, the organisational logic of lived experience extends, not from the moment of birth, but from the instant of that primal loss.’

That an author did not need to dispatch the mother but only to ignore her is evident in Mrs Ellis’s well-known advice manual The mothers of England. When Mrs Ellis does broach the topic of mothers and their grown children, she suggests that mothers and their adult sons continue the close relationship that was formed in childhood, and even that a woman act as a surrogate mother to other young men: ‘in the character of the matron of a family, all young men who are brought within the sphere of her influence, ought to feel that, to a certain extent, they have a mother’.

Although Mrs Ellis seems to extend a mother’s role beyond the childhood of her offspring, she actually limits any power a mother might exercise by assuming throughout this book (as she does in her other works) that women are inferior to men, including their grown sons. Female equality is, she asserts, ‘opposed at once to nature and religion, to philosophy and common sense’. Though apparently exalting a mother’s status, both in the eyes of society and in the hearts of her children, Mrs Ellis actually restricts women to the domestic sphere, where they exercise only influence, which is more easily ignored than is power.”

- Carol Engelhardt Herringer, “The Protestant Virgin Mary.” in Victorians and the Virgin Mary: Religion and Gender in England 1830-1885

#religion #christian #victorian #english #history #carol engelhardt herringer #victorians and the virgin mary

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sodomygf · 4 years ago

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got tagged by @degenerate-perturbation to talk about Women and i was like man. i never remember shit off the top of my head. then i wrote down some women on a sticky note and managed to sort it all out. not really a list of my top ten favorites as much as a list of Girls I Enjoy. Women I Appreciate.

1. Sera - Dragon Age. sera my beloved. she’s my absolute favorite dragon age character and the fact that a fringe group of weirdos are so insistent upon hating her only makes me love her more. she’s adorable and i think about her constantly. singlehandedly makes inquisition my favorite game. i’m down that bad.

2. Meg - Hades. HOT. i liked meg from the moment i saw her and i will fully admit that a huge part of it is me finding her attractive. i also just really like her and zagreus’s dynamic. i like these two exes feeling out their relationship after one comes to grow into himself as a person.

3. Sumi & Chizuru - Rent-a-Girlfriend. since these two are from the same trashy anime i figured i’d just slap them down here together. on a personal level, i really like sumi because her design and personality are soooo cute. and she’s super sweet. on a meta level i like chizuru because she really is the only option for that simp boy we’re all meant to project on. she’s literally the perfect girl. i adore her.

4. Risa Koizumi - Lovely Complex. mostly on here because lovely complex is my comfort show. risa is peak dumbass representation and i like her so much. i think about her and otani all the time. also i just like that lovely complex is an anime that frames risa as more of a pursuer than a passive figure in her love story. it’s nice.

5. Haru - Beastars. this rabbit FUCKS and there’s nothing you can do about it. i think haru being like, canonically promiscuous and into that because of the power it gives her as a #short queen made me experience some sort of Gender. and also just surprised me because i figured it would be a bev marsh situation (another Woman i like who did not happen to make the list) but it wasn’t! what a legend. i have a whole playlist about her, actually.

6. Sabran & Ead - Priory of the Orange Tree. love this book. these lesbians made me so insane. the tenderness of That One Scene that lives in my head rent free... man.

7. Kazusa - O Maidens in Your Savage Season. all the girls in the series are good but i personally projected onto kazusa. i also projected on hongo, but in a sort of negative way. when women have self image issues my brain is like wow.... relateable.

8. Eleanor Shellstrop - The Good Place. i’ve been meaning to rewatch the good place forever because i just really love the whole show. eleanor is one of those characters who really charms me with humor and her growth as a person makes me kind of emotional. and since i’m talking about her i guess it’s pertinent to say. i really really love chidi, so she probably would’ve gotten the spot due to chidi proximity regardless.

9. Maru - Stardew Valley. this science girl is so underrated. we’ve been married for 2 years and have 2 children on my main save, and i thank yoba for this every day. she’s so sweet and smart and charming.

10. Entrapta - She Ra. i like women who are smarter than me. entrapta is my favorite character in the whole show because of that and her questionable morals. i love a queen who will do anything in the pursuit of knowledge.

11. Violet - Violet Evergarden. bonus because i haven’t really stopped thinking about this sad sad girl since i started watching the show with ed. we’re not at the end yet but honestly it’s got so much in it that i like and violet is part of that. her slowly growing to recognize and understand her own feelings (and suffering) moved me, a curmudgeonly little guy. also i think she is an allegory for jesus christ.

honorable mention.

Daisy Tonner - The Magnus Archives. everyone has to have their fucking hot takes on the cops from the magnus archives and it’s like can you people shut up. saw a long ass post about if it’s moral to write daisy as butch or femme and as a certified black person who does not like cops i wish you people would stop being so performatively woke about this podcast and i hope the fact that it’s officially ended will help you all heal from terminally online disease. also i always pictured her being really hot. i love a morally objectionable fake woman.

talk about women or Else. (there is no else. just if you want to rant about girls i guess) @weredilf, @hyperactiveadhd, @co27, @tazwikia, kathryn if you’re reading this it won’t let me tag you’re blog but you’re also included. begone.

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kat-trash · 5 years ago

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I made my girlfriend watch all the twilight movies in two days and this is what she thought. Notes written live by me while watching the movies and the discussion after word. Many times was the movie paused to give better insight to what was written or explained in the novels that’s lacking from the movies, and general debates on smeyer’s intention or consistency with details and powers of vampires. Side notes are in pink and are me

Twilight

Are we having a Bambi intro, seriously

Bella has no personality dude, this ruined her (kristen’s) career

No Phoenician has ever been like that, no one from Phoenix misses Phoenix. (We are from Phoenix)

Volley ball scene: um is she high? Why does she look stoned while playing volleyball?

Yelling what the fuck over the bio class scene

You can tell Rob didn’t give a shit during the onion bio scene

Bella Italian dinner scene. “I can read every mind but yours” looks back at me knowingly and butt wiggles. “Also he is such a creep”

Meadow scene, ask me the most basic question, “2+2” what do we eat? “Ooohhhh”

Clair de lune?! You might as well sprinkle parmesan in her hair and call her a snack.

Hysterical drunk laughing

James fight- OH MY GOD, STOP WITH ALL THE GODDAMN CANTED SHOTS NOTHING IS FUCKING WEIRD ABOUT THIS SCENE!!!!

This is the last scene?! We get this happily ending that transitions to some fucking weird ass scene of Victoria that becomes the credits? What the fuck?

NEW MOON

You won’t love me when I look like your grandma “you don’t know what I like!!”

After the goodbye scene- oh god what a terrible scene

She’s just gonna wander around the forest until night and sob on the floor?

Wolves show up, “oh yeah obviously”

Is the rest of this movie Bella just sitting around and sad? Honestly that’s better because we saw too much of them together in the first movie. What a boring montage, this is the lowest effort they could’ve done. Well just swap out the window shot and use title cards.

Nightmares- this just sounds like she’s in childbirth, this doesn’t make any sense.

Stop biting your fucking lip, you’re gonna tear it off

Oh my god, she doesn’t want to listen to music because it reminds her of him? “I remember that he used to breathe air”

Wolf fight- wow this is actually good CG

Cliff diving- I love that every time Bella wants to be reckless she must immediately suffer the consequences of her actions

There’s a vampire, I can smell it. “Yeah, no shit, he’s a fucking wolf”

Jacob and Ed in the clearing over Bella- we’ll see who’s dick wins out in the end

I love that smeyer thinks that Bella has the power because she’s forcing the boys to choose, like she just has all the power in her pussy 😹

The proposal- that’s the end?! Jesus Christ, I’d be so angry if I saw this in theaters. I was about to say that new moon did way better than the first one and then they ended the movie like that.

ECLIPSE - a day later

——-I forgot to live write this so I started during the final fight scene, but....Most of the movie is arguing about how Alice’s powers work and their limits and that they’re basically just present when Smeyer deems them to be and don’t work when smeyer doesn’t want to think about them (which isn’t wholly incorrect but the movie have far less explanation than the books on powers and Alice’s abilities as a human)

Also that Jacob is clearly a terrible and giltripping manipulative man, and Edward is a mostly decent just good boyfriend that isn’t trying to force Bella to go his way, though has these dumb immature jealous moments like kissing Bella for a little too long before letting Jacob bring her on to the Rez.

Groaning that Bella cannot just explain platonic love to Jacob after the fight in Jacobs room.

The ending of this movie is the same as the previous one, this is exactly how new moon ended.

Honestly though the cold ones feel more like stone golems rather than people.

BREAKING DAWN P1

Opening sweeping shot- Looks like a Harry Potter movie, “this is where twilight gets serious”

Renee getting the invitation is cute

The heel walking shot with Alice has a weird green screen backdrop on Bella, it’s obvious. Doesn’t look very good, and the frame rate must be different or something, oh it’s distracting and bad. This movie has to be shot on site otherwise it’s so obvious.

Ed’s confession of killing murderers - “this man’s will power is ridiculous” “like he justifies his bloodlust by specifically going after murderers and rapists”

“Rob and Kristen do a great job in this movie. Emmet’s interruption isn’t awful looking and doesn’t make sense to their brother relationship

Wedding vision- the dress code is so weird. “No shit, you’re let of something way bigger” “ugh the blood on her hand” they made it look really good visually but this scene is fucking asinine

The actual wedding- “this is weird, it’s like Melania trump designed this. Just white”

“This is a weird moment, so strange.”

Was the kiss scene intentionally uncomfortable?

Emmet’s toast “oh no, weird awkward”

Jessica’s toast “no to all of that”

Charlie’s toast ‘starts clapping ironically at on the I’m a cop line’

“All the toasts after awful and they just want us to sit through all of this? Ugh”

The Jacob, kind is my middle name line- “More like jealous is my middle name” lol

Driving away from the wedding. “This is a good scene, it’s 50/50 in these movies but this is really good and the music choice is good”

Getting food out of the fridge- “is she pregnant already?! He’s got some potent fucking dick”

Kaure touching Bella’s stomach, “on no you’re fucked bitch” Kaure says death, “I fucking called it” this is some Death stranding bullshit

It’s baffling that we’re supposed to like Jacob

Bell’s pregnancy and cracked rib scene, debating over smeyers abortion beliefs and how little Sense the whole pregnancy thing and everyone’s reactions to it, make.

Edward wearing blue button up shirt “why does he have the sexiest shirt from H&M on right now?”

Jacob realizing the cullens would die for Bella “Yeah no the cullens are family, you fucking asshole” “other people are people too” 😹😹

Rolls eyes at EJ, Renesme “that’s fucking dumb” Ed talks over Jacob thinking it’s weird “did Ed just cuck him out of answering that question if it’s weird?”

Post birth “Jesus fucking Christ. She should be dead though they just tore out her stomach”

Jacob readying to kill Eddie and saying he deserve to live with Bella’s Death “what the hell, like dude?!”

——-Btw Camille Constantly refers to the vampires as rock people after learning that they crumble like stone statues. And continues to do this most of the movies.

Realizing Jacob imprinted on the baby screaming “OH NO!” “This is a meet cute” “that was him and this baby falling in love”

The montage of Bella’s life “this is so fucking odd” “what the fuck was the point of that?”

Side note: Upon learning that vampires see UV light, “do they like raves a lot or is it light blinding to vampires?” “When does that even come up? Why is it in the book, what the fuck?”

BREAKING DAWN P2

I love that Volturi were just uninvolved for like two books and now they’re back in time to cause problems for the cullens.

“Oh they have super vision, great.”

“Them running in the forest looks really bad, it’s just fucking bizarre” some the barren screen shots are not good, I can’t believe they sent this.

Seeing reneseme “Aaahhhh” “it’s not real, no, it’s not reall it’s a deep fake, it’s a deep fake”

Immediately says exactly how reneseme ages and will lock at a certain age so Jacob is just a pedo forever. “This is awful”

Bella hitting Jacob “this is great”

You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness minster “that’s perfectly written for Kristen Stewart like? also I thought reneseme was bad, Nessie is worse”

Jacob seeing Charlie “oh no Jacob’s dumb. This is terrible” she had to change. “Oh Christ, this is so dumb”

Jacob stripping/Charlie saying som out your clothes on “this is the gayest shit, what the fuck” (he’s bi)

When Jacob says Bella wished she was cool enough to turn into an animal “Jacob what the fuck? Jesus fucking Christ”

All the cool/interesting stuff happens in this movie dude

Edwards speech to the group of vamps “this is why rob will make a good Batman, this is a Batman speech”

Every time we see renesme emile groans or says ew

Jacob complaining about bloodsuckers “quit being racist” like dude come on

The battlefield group shot before voltiri arrive. “They have like little squads”

“Aro is so creepy, I love it. He’s having fun” “his creepy little smile like oooh a baby”

Mimicking aro’s weird cackle

Jacob growling at aro “You’re a dummy wolf and I’m goddamn Dracula” and other dog related mocking

More lines referring to Aro only as Dracula

Fight begins “this is so insane, it’s ridiculous” late on “I did not think this is where this was going, I’ll be honest”

Tanya ripping a man’s head off by the mouth “the fucking metal”

Realizing the battle is an Alice vision “that’s pretty sick actually, oh wow”

Volturi rushing out of the field: laughing “why the fuck would they walk normally anyway, I was waiting for this”

Alice’s vision of Renesme, Jacob, Ed and Bella on the beach- “yeah that’s reassuring but still never call me dad 😹” “actually just don’t date my daughter”

HOW WAS THE EXPERIENCE? 1-10 scale

“Whiplash”

“I had some prior knowledge but I didn’t realize that this was all mainly in the last part of breaking dawn, and I don’t expect to like Kristen and Robert’s chemistry on screen and that Edward is actually a good boyfriend and that Jacob is pretty much a mess like the whole time.” “There’s just a lot of badness overall”

End cap

There was many hours of long discussions on what smeyer was thinking and that Twilight is essentially a Mormon woman’s self insert fic of a teen girl meeting a vampire boyfriend and fulfilling some strange pregnancy Fetish/fantasy and going on to have her regular Mormon married with kids happy ending lol. This was a wild ride over two days and my face hurt from laughing, but she ultimately enjoyed watching the movies with me and wanted to know if this was what I wanted when we decided to watch them together. It was!

#twilight #twilight rewatch #smeyer #react #gf reacts #gf watched twilight for the first time #og twilight book fan shows gf the movies #updated bc my gf is trans!

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chaostheoryy · 6 years ago

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Flashes of You (A Reddie One-shot)

Summary: Richie’s childhood comes to him in flashes. It isn’t until he travels back to Derry, Maine and sees Eddie Kaspbrak that any of them start to make sense.

Word count: 2,185

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Language

A/N: This is my first time writing for Reddie and I’ve been in the It fandom for approximately 96 hours so forgive me if my characterizations are off.

For two decades, Richie’s childhood came to him in white hot flashes. He couldn’t fully recall a single event or a single friend’s name but he would see details and hear sounds so clear that he couldn’t understand why everything else surrounding these points on the road map of his mind was fuzzy.

The flashes would come at random. Sometimes he’d be going through the mundane moments of life like showering or eating. Other times the flashes would come to him in the middle of a gig. One moment he was setting up the punchline and the next he was staring at a massive statue of Paul Bunyan.

None of the flashes made sense and yet he knew they were somehow all connected: a crimson “V” scribbled over a sloppy “S”, an underground hammock, a pink polo, a fanny pack full of medicine bottles, the letter “E” carved into a wooden plank.

And oh God, the laugh. Every so often his ears would ring with the sound of a boy’s laughter — a sound so pure and contagious that he couldn’t help but smile every time he heard it. He didn’t know who it was that laugh belonged to, but he never wanted it to stop. He didn’t tell jokes for the fame or the money. He became a trash mouth comedian for that laugh.

***

When Richie got the call from Mike, his stomach flipped. Flashes bombarded him like lighting bolts striking the ocean. Blood, lifeless bodies, a red balloon, a condemned home surrounded by weeds. It wasn’t clear as to what these flashes meant, but Richie couldn’t deny that he was afraid. There was a reason he couldn’t remember his childhood. Something terrible happened in Derry, Maine and, frankly, he didn’t want to know what it was.

After throwing up and downing a couple of drinks to burn away the taste of his own bile, he made it out on stage for his comedy special. He was a mess, stumbling over his bits and forgetting the punchline to his opening joke. A man shouted “you suck” from the audience but Richie just smiled. That soft laughter of the boy was ringing in his ears again.

He wasn’t going to Derry tomorrow to follow through on some cryptic oath he couldn’t even remember making. He was going to Derry for that laugh.

***

The moment Richie stepped through the doors of the Chinese restaurant with Beverly and Ben, he locked eyes with a stranger across the foyer. His hair was slicked back, his brow creased with incessant worry. A small smile tugged ever so slightly at the corner of the stranger’s mouth and suddenly Richie felt like he couldn’t breathe.

Eddie.

The flashes started again, only this time with a wider scope: the crimson “V” scribbled over the “S” on Eddie’s arm cast, the underground hammock where Eddie draped himself over Richie and knocked his glasses off with his toes, the pink polo that Eddie loved to wear whenever he needed to convince his mom to let him hang out with the Losers, the fanny pack hooked around Eddie’s waist that held every stupid pill his dipshit doctor had prescribed to him, and the letter “E” carved beside Richie’s own initial on the kissing bridge.

Richie’s stomach flipped and a lump formed in his throat. Eddie Kaspbrak was the first person he had ever loved and it took him two decades to even remember that.

“Fuck me,” he muttered under his breath before following Beverly and Ben to the table. How he was going to get through this, he honestly couldn’t say.

***

Dinner somehow went even worse than Richie expected from a bunch of friends-turned-strangers getting together for the first time in twenty plus years. The food was great and the conversations were surprisingly lively up until the point Mike brought up the murderous clown from their childhood. All of a sudden the table started rattling and the bowl of fortune cookies turned into a smorgasbord of nightmares. Richie’s own cookie mutated into an eyeball with tentacles and attempted to crawl across the table toward him like a zombie. He couldn’t recall a time in his entire life where he had been more disgusted.

Amidst all the chaos, he kept his eyes on Eddie. The man was terrified, trembling in the corner as a cookie with the wing of a bat fluttered around and shrieked at him. The attack brought back more memories of his childhood, moments where he had done everything he could to protect and comfort Eddie — drawing Eddie’s eyes from the horrors of Pennywise’s illusions, pushing Eddie behind him to keep him out of harm’s way, firmly grasping Eddie’s shoulder whenever he was afraid to remind him that he wasn’t alone.

When the illusion stopped and the dust settled, Richie bolted from the restaurant as fast as he could. He couldn’t stay and face the facts. If he stayed, he was going to die. And, on top of that, he would be forced to come to terms with the ugly ass truth that was his feelings for Eddie. Being closeted for his entire life was one thing. Finding out that the man he had unknowingly been in love with for nearly thirty years was married to somebody else was a whole other level of suffering.

Standing in the parking lot, Richie was surprised to find Eddie at his side. Eddie wanted out just as badly as him and, frankly, Richie was relieved. If Eddie ran away just like him, they would both survive. The idea of going back to the life where he no longer knew who Eddie was sucked. But a life of oblivious wandering and shitty stand-up was better than a life where Eddie was murdered by a psychotic, shapeshifting clown.

Mike tried with every ounce of his being to convince them to stay and defeat Pennywise together but their will to live was stronger. Richie hopped in his Mustang and headed back to the inn with Eddie hot on his trail.

***

Neither Richie nor Eddie said anything to one another when they got back to the Derry Town House. They simply bolted up the stairs to their respective rooms and started packing. Having brought nothing more than a small carry-on sized duffle bag, Richie finished gathering his belongings before Eddie had even managed to lay his clothes out on the bed.

“What’re you moving in?” Richie teased when he peeked his head into Eddie’s room and saw the two open suitcases on the floor. “Look at all this shit.”

Eddie frowned. “Fuck off. I didn’t even know what the hell I was doing coming to Derry so how was I supposed to know what to bring?”

“I only own like two shirts. Guess I’m not in any position to judge.”

Richie eyed the pile of clothes and was drawn to a vaguely familiar shade of pink. A soft smile yanked at the corner of his mouth.

“Your style hasn’t changed much has it, Eds?”

Eddie followed his gaze to the pink polo laying by the foot of the bed. “Myra hates any outfit that’s not a suit and tie,” Eddie said as he continued folding his collection of dress pants.

“Well, somebody needs to pull the stick out of her ass ‘cause that shirt is bitchin’, man.”

Richie’s heart nearly soared when Eddie laughed. That was it, the whole reason Richie came back.

A long silence blanketed the room as Richie watched Eddie work. Twenty-seven years later and Eddie was still as precise as can be, making sure every article of clothing was folded into the same dimensions before he put them in the suitcase. Things had to be as perfect and clean as possible. At least, that’s what Eddie’s mom had taught him.

“Jesus Christ, would you pick up the pace? I’m gonna pass a fucking kidney stone before you finish packing,” Richie quipped to break the silence.

Eddie threw him a look. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, dickwad?”

“Not until Tuesday night when your mom and I meet up for our weekly date night at Olive Garden.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie snapped despite the amused gleam in his eye.

“I’m serious, Spaghetti. You better not cock-block me on my date or I swear to God I’m shoving those unlimited breadsticks up your ass.”

Eddie stopped all of a sudden, the shirt in his grasp hanging limply in wait to be folded. The expression on his face was almost impossible to read. Richie felt his chest tighten.

“Eds? You alright?” Richie asked hesitantly. “Look, if the mom jokes are too much, I can ease off-“

“No it’s fine. It’s just that no one’s ever...” Eddie’s thought trailed off. “How much do you remember? About our childhood?”

Richie adjusted the shoulder strap of his bag and shrugged. “Not much. Bits and pieces used to come back in flashes but I couldn’t even figure out what the hell they all meant until I got here. It’s like some fucked up jigsaw puzzle that my brain’s still trying to put together.”

Eddie laid the shirt in his hands down on the bed and leaned against the wooden post. “It doesn’t make any sense, man. How can we be best friends for years and then suddenly forget everything about each other once we separate? You don’t just-“ Eddie swallowed. The worry lines on his brow were even deeper than before. “I saw you on TV — one of your comedy specials. I looked right at you and, even though I had never heard your name before I just got this feeling like...Like I knew you.”

Richie felt like his throat was going to collapse in on itself. If Eddie had gone through the same things he had, what kind of flashes had come to him over the years? What pieces of Richie Tozier had stuck in his brain?

“Did you finish the special?”

“God no. It was terrible. I don’t know who the dipshit is that writes your jokes but he fucking sucks.”

Richie grinned from ear to ear. “I’m firing him the second I get back to New York.”

Eddie returned his smile with one of his own. “Good. You’re ten times funnier than any of the shit he writes anyway.”

Richie’s breath hitched. “Holy shit, Eds.”

“What?” Eddie’s eyes grew wide with concern.

“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever complimented me,” Richie joked, stepping toward Eddie with his arms outstretched, “Come here you little Smurf. I always knew you secretly cared about me.”

“Fuck that. I take it back!” Eddie tried to slink out of the way but Richie scooped him into his arms and crushed his entire body in a bear hug.

Eddie groaned as Richie squeezed him. “You’re gonna give me an asthma attack.”

“You don’t even have asthma, fuckhead.”

Eddie went still in his grasp, his squirming ceasing without warning. He was quiet for a long moment. Richie swallowed and eased his hold, worried he had squeezed too hard and hurt Eddie. But instead of slipping out of the hug when the vice of Richie’s arms loosened, Eddie reached up and clutched at Richie’s jacket, hugging him back. Richie’s heart skipped a beat.

“I missed you,” Eddie mumbled lowly, “Even though I didn’t know it, I fucking missed you.”

Richie felt breathless. His eyes burned, threatening to form tears he never planned on shedding. He tightened his arms around Eddie again.

“You’re such a sap,” he murmured, “It’s a miracle you got a woman to marry your wussy ass.”

Eddie slammed the toe of his shoe into Richie’s shin just hard enough to really make him feel it. “Fuck you.”

Richie smiled despite the pain ringing in his leg. “Fuck you too, Eds.”

They hugged each other tightly for a good thirty seconds before Richie pried himself away. “Would you finish packing your shit so we can get the hell out of here?”

Eddie stumbled backward. “Fuck. Yeah. Gimme like ten minutes and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“I’ll head down there now and make sure our psycho friends don’t summon the devil and get themselves murdered.”

“Good idea.”

Richie headed for the door only to pause in the doorframe when Eddie called his name. “What’s up?”

Eddie smirked, a familiar mischievous gleam in his eye that Richie had grown all too familiar with as a kid. “I probably should’ve told you this years ago but I fucked your mom.”

Richie rolled his eyes and flipped Eddie off. “Hurry up, asshole,” he grumbled before stepping out into the hall and leaving Eddie to finish packing.

As he made his way toward the staircase, Richie felt his chest swell with joy. Eddie had missed him just as much as he missed Eddie and, now that they were back together, they were joking with the same ease as they did when they were younger.

His entire adult life, Richie had wondered why he’d never fallen in love with anyone and now he understood why: Eddie Kaspbrak held his heart. Always had and always would.

***

Tagging: @justauthoring, @beepbeepstiney, @atownofeggs

#Tumblr changed it’s text format so I’m sorry for the long post #I couldn’t find the Read More tab???#Yikes #Hope y’all enjoy this though #Reddie #Richie/Eddie #Richie Tozier #Eddie Kaspbrak #It Fanfiction #It (2017)#It Chapter Two #Reddie Fanfiction #My fic #It (2019)

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4birds-of-a-feather · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 27 - Wonder whose arms will hold you good and tight (when it’s exactly twelve o’clock that night) [part 2]

Birds Of a Feather

(In the previous chapters: Layla and some of the guys are trying to prepare a decent New Year’s Eve party, while Eddie and Sara went to watch the final installment of The Godfather saga; an attempt of Ed to become closer to Sara failed miserably)

“Ok, so, I have a ball” Sara was still shaken when she got home and it took her awhile to steady her hand and insert her key correctly into the lock. But what she heard Layla say from the living room, as soon as she pushed the door open, managed to break the bubble of numbness she fell into after the movie. “Alright, go on” Mike prompted Layla to continue as he was sitting right in front of her on the couch, together with the other friends who were forming a sort of semicircle around the girl. “I’ll give it to you, then I’ll give it to you, then to you, and you…” she went on with the game Sara knew too well, addressing the guys one by one “Then I’ll give it to you, Sara, hi!” Everybody in the room turned to greet Sara briefly, only to focus back on Layla a moment later. “Then I’ll pass it to Mike again, then to Stone. Who’s got the ball?” the girl concluded and asked. “SARA!” Mike shouted animatedly. “Hi to you too, Cready. I see you’re already in overdrive despite the early hour” Sara smirked as she hung her jacket and approached the group. “I’m very happy you’re here Miss Fancini but… I wasn’t talking to you, that was my answer to Layla’s game. And I bet I’m right, am I not?” Mike talked gently to her, then turned to question Layla with almost crazy eyes. “No, it’s actually Chris who has the ball” the girl shrugged. “CHRIS?! How can it be Chris? You didn’t even look at him!” Jeff complained from his seat. “It’s Chris, sorry guys. Wanna try again?” “No, thanks, I’m already tired of this and I guess I’m not the only one, am I right guys?” Stone tried to stop the game, not because he was actually bored, but more to prevent the mess his bandmates were gonna make until they’d find the solution. “OVER MY DEAD BODY!” Mike blurted out. “Nobody’s leaving until we guess the right answer” Jeff added. “You mean until I guess the answer” the guitarist pointed out. “Yeah that’s exactly what I meant: until I guess the correct answer, ha!” Ament retorted. <Fuck, this is gonna be rich…> Stone thought as he sipped his beer and enjoyed the show. “Shall I do it again then or not?” Layla chimed in during the verbal fight and everybody nodded yes. “Right. Now… as y’all know by now, I have a ball” she added with a devilish smile. “Oh Jesus” “Shut up Stone! Go on, babe” Jeff yelled and the girl was almost surprised the bass player was using an endearment term to call her instead of the usual Four Eyes or other funny nicknames. <He’s probably being kind only to get some hints> she soon realized. “I pass the ball to Matt, then I give it to you” Layla pointed at Sara and then at different guys in the room and in the end she asked again who had the ball. “Is it Jeff?” Chris tried to guess out of the blue. “Yes, Chris, it’s Jeff! Good job! But why?” the girl pointed at Cornell who suddenly had all eyes on him. “YOU! HOW DID YOU DO IT?!” Mike yelled at the singer who wasn’t really aware of being at the center of the attention in that moment. “I don’t know, I thought… maybe alf… alp… you know the letters, as they go…” Chris hardly mumbled something. “ALPHABETICAL ORDER! IS IT? I KNOW IT IS! AM I RIGHT?” Jeff basically stole Cornell’s answer since he wasn’t in his own mind. “No, that’s not the right answer” Layla shook her head no but Jeff insisted. “What? Of course it’s the alphabet! You said it was Chris, then me” “Did you forget I was the one who had the ball on the first round?” Stone added with an annoyed voice “Then it was Matt, then me again. What kind of alphabet do they teach in Montana?” “Oh right…” Jeff sulked then squinted as if he was trying to concentrate more on the possible solution. “You’re following an order anyway, are you?” Matt asks. <The first question of the evening with some sense, thank God> Layla sighed internally. “No, that’s the point, I’m not following any specific order” she replied but someone misunderstood the answer. “ARE YOU TELLING ME YOU’VE BEEN MAKING FUN OF US FOR AN HOUR AND YOU’RE JUST CALLING PEOPLE RANDOMLY?!” Mike stood up but Sara pulled him down on the couch. “Hey, just relax! That’s not what she meant” she admonished him. “I only meant I’m not following an order but THERE IS a reason why I’m calling people. The reason is that… they’ve got the ball” Layla explained calmly and Mike’s face finally turned back to its natural color. “So it’s because of something we got…” the guitarist nodded but ignored something that someone else was ready to point out. “… And how did you know what she really meant, Sara?” Stone asked right when someone rang the doorbell. “Right! How did you fucking know?” Ament growled and all of a sudden Sara was the focus of the whole attention. “Well, that’s because I was the one who taught her this game” she candidly replied, reaching into a bowl of chips. “WHAT?” Mike gasped and the doorbell rang again. “Err, isn’t anybody going to answer the door?” Layla said, timidly standing up. “Lemme do this, so I can put an end to this stupid cross-examination” her best friend was quicker than her, and went to the front door munching. “Oh, it’s you” she dead-panned, taking a step to the right to let Eddie enter the apartment. “Yeah, I-I just took a walk” he said, stepping inside “Where’s everybody?” “In the living room, wasting time without getting anything done” she shrugged and made her way to the other room, with the guy right behind her. “Hey, it’s Eddie!” Mike enthusiastically greeted him, then patted the space beside him “C’mere, buddy, our dear Layla has been entertaining us with the most mind-blowing game that mankind could ever experience!” “Is that so?” the singer smiled at the girl, then plopped himself where his bandmate had pointed. “It is, indeed!” Cornell chimed in, then looked in Sara’s direction “And her friend, here – what was your name again, darling?” “I can’t believe this… you’re so full of shit, Chris” she snorted, stuffing again her face with other chips “Audrey Hepburn, that’s how people call me” “I can see why, the two of you could practically be sisters!” he retorted, sipping some beer for the umpteenth time “Anyway, as I was saying, miss Hepburn here has confessed to be the one who taught miss Layla this trick of the mind, so we’re gonna extort the solution from her!” “... Over my dead body” “Nobody’s gonna reveal anything to anyone, you’re all gonna play honestly and ask questions and find the solution using reasoning and deduction” Layla tried to have the guys focus on the game. “In that case I think you’d better go and buy an inflatable number 2 balloon because we’ll most likely be still here one year from now without knowing the solution” Stone said, making Layla laugh. <Why is she laughing? Does she think I’m joking?> “Haha, come on! It’s easy! Ok, Eddie you probably don’t know but… I have a ball!” “Alright” Eddie tried to concentrate, especially because he didn’t want to make a poor figure with the girl. “I give it to you first” “Ok” “Then I’ll give it to Mike, then back to you, then back to Mike once again. Then I’ll pass it to Sara, then back to you. Who’s got the ball?” “Uhm… I got the ball” “Yes! Why?” “WHAT?” Jeff yelled. “Beginner’s luck” Mike mumbled between gritted teeth. “Because.. I was the last one to get it?” Eddie tried to guess. “Pfffft! As if it was that easy!” the bass player snorted and had a sudden revelation “Wait, it’s because he arrived last! You’re following the order in which we arrived, right?” “Nuh-uh, I’m following no specific order, I told you! And Eddie’s answer was only 50% correct anyway” Layla went on and dropped another hint. “What do you mean?” this time it was Stone that asked, taking it personally: he pretended he didn’t care but he felt he HAD to find the solution. “Somebody else has got the ball too” El shrugged and the guys went nuts. “WHAT THE HELL??” Mike cried. “... Two balls?” Jeff followed. “Balls usually come in pairs anyway” Chris joked and the room went silent for a couple of seconds before everyone burst out laughing. “Hahaha, you idiot! By the way, Eddie and Chris both have the ball” “Sara, please, put an end to this. Can’t you see we’re suffering?” Matt chimed in, still in stitches. <Weeeell, if YOU ask me, I can’t say no> Sara pondered and it was like her roommate could read her mind. “… NO FUCKING WAY” she hissed and in that instant Sara knew that, since the F word was pronounced, hell could start any minute now. “I don’t wanna know the answer, I wanna play! Try me again” Eddie clapped his hands and winked at Layla. <If I had an actual ball, by now I’d have squeezed it until it exploded…> the girl thought as she went back to being her usual smiley self, trying to act nonchalant. “That's because you’ve just arrived! We’ve been racking our brains over this fucking ball for an hour!” Ament complained, then turned around and, unexpectedly, offered his best puppy eyes to someone else “Ok, Sara, what do you want to spill the beans?” “Cough, cough! I have a ball!” Layla ignored the comments and started it all over, while the other girl gestured zipping up her own lips. “Please!” the bass player pleaded once more, and Sara turned her face just in time – apparently, the puppy eyes were working better than her expectations suggested. “I’ll give it to Mike, then to Matt, then I’ll give it to you, Sara, then I’ll keep it to myself.” the other girl continued, adding another new element “Now, who’s got the ball?” “Now I can see: balls are brain cells going lost during this game” Stone joked but was immediately shushed by everyone. “Is it… Mike?” Eddie tried. “No! It’s Matt and Stone” “... Jesus Christ” Mike face-palmed, letting himself fall on the floor. “And nooow, Sara and I are gonna give you all a moment to ponder” Layla stood up and literally pulled up her friend from the couch and dragged her away from the living room. “El, I don’t know what’s happening to me but I’m starting to pity them. The caveman even begged me! Maybe I should give them the solution…” Sara remarked, still surprised by how low Jeff could stoop to have the solution. <Pity, sure… and Matt’s charming smile has got nothing to do with it, right?> Layla thought as she pushed her friend even more away from the gang’s protests. “C’mon, you don’t have to stay here and tell ‘em the answer!” she exclaimed, while the other girl rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m not partaking in this madn-” “Run along, you have to get changed and ready for the party! There’s no time to waste by dawdling here!” she took Sara by the shoulders and dragged her until they were in front of Jeff’s ex-room “I’m sorry but for the hair and make-up this time you’re kinda on your own, I have to supervise the preparations” “Great loss, now I’m actually offended” the younger girl dead-panned and then faked a noble, detached voice “You’re free to go, servant” “Your Grace is so full of understanding, I shall never thank you enough!” Layla laughed and quickly went back to the living room, afraid of how many different kinds of damage could be awaiting for her, while Sara finally opened the door in front of her. “Nice try, El” she smirked, eyeing the jumpsuit that was lying on her bed “It would be a real shame if somebody were to completely ignore your innocent suggestion…” The girl caressed the velvety texture of the clothing and simultaneously went for one of the dresser’s drawer handles, pulling it towards her without looking at it, but it was apparently stuck. “Oh, fuckin’ great… That asshole obviously couldn’t check if the room was falling to pieces before chivalrously lending it to me” she muttered, trying again with more strength; once again, the drawer didn’t budge. “This is ridiculous – whatever, just lemme grab something quick from the closet so El won’t feel the urge to bug m-” While she was pulling, Sara heard a faint metallic sound, so she looked better and finally found the bitter truth: the closet and every single drawer inside her room had been sealed up with a plethora of lockets. “What in tHE FLYING FUCK IS GOING ON HERE??? EEEEEEEEEL!” she roared, running away from that living nightmare and demanding immediate explanations from her so-called best friend.

“I can’t see why you’re making a fuss about this? You love that jumpsuit, don’t you?” Layla was rubbing her temples as she tried to stay calm and talk to her friend through the door, which had been locked by Sara from the inside. <I should have made the room keys disappear, how could I forget?> “Yeah, I love it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to wear it!” “It’s lovely and looks great on you and I didn’t buy it for you to keep it in your closet forever! I wanna see my present finally put into good use” That seemed to shut Sara up, leaving her with her mouth open but no words coming out of it. “And I bet everybody’s gonna love it, especially the guys!” Layla added, making the worst mistake. “... OH YEAH, THAT WILL SURELY BE THE MAIN REASON FOR ME TO WEAR IT” her best friend regained consciousness “PLEASING GUYS IS MY MISSION IN LIFE” she roared back, while Layla tried to convince her to lower her voice. “Shhhhhh fuck, I was almost there!” the girl cursed at herself for talking too much and went back grasping at straws “Who said anything about pleasing anyone? I just meant that they’ll appreciate your party outfit and won’t make any unpleasant remarks about it. Plus they’re mostly drunk, what they say makes no sense anyway, so who cares? And since when do you care about men’s opinion? A bunch of guys now stop you from doing what you like or wearing what you want?” “THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY GODD-wait a minute, it actually makes sense” “Of course it does! Come on, get out of that room, please” Layla insisted, pleased with herself for pushing Sara’s right buttons. “... I don’t know, it seems like a stupid thing to do; after all, it’s you who wants me to wear the jumpsuit, not me” “Jesus…” Sara’s friend rolled her eyes “Right, since you don’t wanna wear it, don’t do it. But remember I’ve got all the keys so I’m really curious about what your alternative choice of clothes will be in the end” “My pajamas would work too, you know?” Layla wanted to smash her own head against the wall or against the door so she could open it and put an end to this, when she finally came up with something. “Alright, put your pjs on… Wait, that’s not a bad idea at all! Let’s all put pajamas and turn this into a slumber New Year’s Eve party! Sara, you’re a genius” “... I didn’t think you would have agreed with my idea, but-” “I’m gonna go and tell the others! I heard Jeff sleeps in the nude, did you know that?” “YOU HEARD WHAT?!”

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

“There she is! Where have you been? We were talking about you!” Matt waved to a girl who was slowly pushing her way through the crowd, and the whole group of people near him turned around to see who was coming. “All good things, I hope” “If you’re dressed like that? Always, Sara” the drummer winked at her, then threw his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer to him; needless to say, the girl blushed to the roots of her hair. “Is that a jumpsuit with the zodiac?!” she heard a loud gasp and turned in the direction of another girl, shorter than her and clinging to her boyfriend’s arm, whose eyes were literally shining. “Yep, it is” “That is so gorgeous! Can I come closer to better see it?” “Yeah, no problem” “Oh my God, you’re an angel! Thank you!” the other girl almost squealed in excitement, then jumped in front of her and began to study her garment “This is real velvet, I can’t believe it! Where did you find this gem?!” “I think it’s that shop in Pike Place… Vintage Clothing?” “... the place where Xana used to work” the girl had turned to face again her boyfriend and share a knowing look with him, then refocused on her “I doubt I’ll ever find something as cool as this, but thanks for the tip” She offered her a genuine smile and her hand to shake: “I’m Demri, by the way, and this is my boyfriend Layne” “I was the one who told ‘em to come, hope it’s alright!” Chris chimed in, giving a nudge to the Alice In Chains singer. “You did the right thing, Cornell; they’re cool enough to hang with us losers” Sara grinned, then waved back at Layne “Hiya to you as well, stranger; how are your bandmates doing?” “Oh, Jerry is with a girlfriend of his and Sean and Mike went to do a tour of some of the hundreds of parties that this city has to offer – but I wonder how Mike will react when I tell him that I went to the same party that you attended” the guy smirked at her “Did he come to visit you at your workplace?” “Nope, thank God” “Fear not: he will… soon” “He’s gonna get me fired! Please, can’t you come with him so you can keep him at bay? Pretty please” “Hey, it’s not my fault if he doesn’t understand a single thing when you’re nearby… his brain short-circuits” “So you’re the one who has poor Mike wrapped around her finger! I can see why” Demri joined them again, giving the girl a little nudge “If it helps any, he seems pretty serious about it – I, for once, have never seen him acting like that before” “I don’t know, I’m not that keen on trusting men… seems like a waste of time” Sara shrugged, then followed Layla with her gaze: she was talking with Stone and Ed and seemed really invested in drinking what was inside her glass.

“Can I get one more try?” Eddie pleaded Layla, who was chatting and drinking with him and Stone in the middle of the living room among the party guests. “No, you can’t” Gossard answered in her place, officially because he was fed up with the game, but actually because he wanted to be the one to guess the solution right. “Sure you can! But, as I said, I’ll tell the solution after midnight” the girl replied sipping her sangria through a straw. “Alright, alright eheh, no pressure, I swear” Eddie put his hands out laughing and his guitarist friend rolled his eyes so hard for a moment he thought his retinas detached. <No pressure? Tsk, that’s your problem, man. What about putting a little pressure on this girl for a change?> “Ok so I have a ball, then I-” Layla started but was soon interrupted by a stranger’s voice behind her back. “Who’s got a bong?” Stone didn’t need to look up to the person who spoke to know who it was and a smile appeared on his face. “Hey Lukin! I thought you’d never come” Gossard patted his friend on his back. “Uhm, now that’s not something I hear that often... too bad you’re not a girl, Stoney.” Matt replied and finally noticed the other two people looking at him with the same perplexed expression on their face “Hi, so where’s this bong of yours? I��m ready” Layla laughed as the guy clapped his hands once and then rubbed them together. “She said ball, not bong, you asshole!” Stone explained barely holding his laughter. “Yeah, right, hehe, it’s a game, you know? Anyway, I’m Layla, nice to meet you” she stretched her hand out and he looked at it suspiciously before shaking it. “Nice to meet you too. But you shouldn’t play with people’s feeling and promise bongs that are not actually there. That’s not nice at all” “Oh, sorry�� well, I’m sure somebody brought something to smoke, don’t worry” Layla was almost apologizing for doing nothing and that made both Eddie and Stone laugh. “Who needs bongs? We can always make a pipe out of a can, do you remember?” Stone said referring to older times. “Yeah, and that’s when we came up with the motto Who needs a bong when you have coke?” Lukin explained, suddenly serious, as he was a teacher talking to his students. “Smoking through a coke can? Isn’t it dangerous, with the chemicals and everything?” the girl retorted. “Chemicals are not as dangerous as Matt Lukin” Stone remarked while Eddie introduced himself too. “Nothing’s as dangerous as Matt Lukin!” another guy came up from out of nowhere and put his hands on Stone and Matt’s shoulders, then his attention focused on the girl in the small circle “Layla?? Hiiiiii!” The color drained from the girl’s face once she recognized the guy’s face. “Steve! Hi!” she faked an excessively big smile and both Eddie and Stone, although for different reasons, noticed something was off. “Wait, do you know each other?” Stone asked confused. “Well, either they do or they’re champs at Guess my name” Lukin pointed out. “Huh… well, yeah, I know her, she’s the girl who works at Scarecrow Video” “THAT ONE?? OUCH!” Matt almost yelled, only until Steve squeezed his shoulder very hard. “Yeah, and I know him as a customer, ehehehe” Layla went on. <... And as the guy who asked me out and I had to turn down> Layla told herself as she thought about Steve coming to the shop and striking up a conversation with an excuse to get to know her. She didn’t understand he was flirting with her – not even the fact he used to come over to the shop ever so often opened her eyes. The fact he started to rent at least a couple of movies every day gave her a sneaky suspicion. “And how do you know each other? I’m Eddie, by the way” Vedder tried to make his handshake as firm as he could. “Steve” “Yeah, I’m good at Guess My Name too” Eddie continued. “The new singer, huh? Well, Stone and I used to be in the same band. Did you tell them about Green River or is it a taboo topic?” Turner joked trying not to make it too obvious that he was drooling all over Layla. When he asked her out and she turned him down, he didn’t take it too well. He knew she had a boyfriend, she didn’t miss a chance to casually drop his name during their conversations. <But he wasn’t in Seattle after all… I mean, he was in a different city, in a different state… he was in fuckin’ Massachusetts! Why waste your time and your youth with a long distance relationship?> “Oh yeah, you told me you were in a band! But I think it was a different band, or I didn’t get the name right maybe” Layla chewed on her lower lip trying to remember the band name he had told her. “I told you about Mudhoney, that is my current band” “MUDHONEY! That’s it, yeah, now I remember!” “Well, now I’m in Mudhoney with this guy over here and another couple of guys, who are not at the party” <Thank God!> Stone thought, picturing a fist fight between Mark Arm and Sara as very likely. “He said that guy over here because he doesn’t remember my name anymore” Lukin said shrugging. “He remembered hers though… and she remembered his, he must be a regular customer, right?” Vedder realized his comment was out of place the moment he said it but it was too late. “Yeah, sort of… not now though, I mean, not as much as I used to” Steve answered. “Oh, and why?” “Well-” Turner started to speak but Layla interrupted him out of the blue. “I’ve never tried with a coke can but once I smoked pot through a carrot” the girl gave her statement and Matt’s attention focused on her right away. “What?” “And once I got high with a snorkeling mask too” “WHAT??” Stone and Eddie yelled at the same time, as they probably found the second option weirder than the first one for some reason. “I like your attitude. Can I become a regular too?” Lukin suggested, then turned towards Steve “Ehm, can I? I’ve got no bad intentions, I swear” This exchange didn’t go unnoticed to Stone and most of all to Eddie, so Layla had to come up with another diversion. She started jumping and waving around her arms like the wings of an eagle, apparently wanting to get everybody’s attention. “HEY GUYS! WHO WANTS TO PLAY A GAME?”

“Another one?” Jeff walked up to Layla and then acknowledged the rest of the group “Hey, hi guys!” “Yeah, we haven’t even finished the first one yet!” Stone complained. “Oh but I wasn’t thinking about a riddle, I meant something different, like a group game” the girl explained trying to ignore both Steve staring at her and Eddie staring at Steve. <Is this some kind of weird Mexican stand-off or something?> Layla asked herself in disbelief. “Make it a drinking game and I’m in” Lukin gladly accepted. “I had no doubt about it” Steve laughed. “MAKE IT STRIP POKER AND I’M IN TOO!” Mike yelled as he appeared out of thin air, coming back from one of his frequent trips to the bathroom. “Cready, I swear to fuckin’ God, if I hear you babblin’ one more time about this heckin’ strip poker, you can bet your sweet ass I’m gonna tie you up to a chair and force you to listen to Barry Manilow non-stop until your brain oozes out of your nose like fuckin’ pudding, understood?!” Sara had just stomped in their direction, making her opinion about the guitarist’s suggestion crystal clear. “... you’re no fun, Sara” McCready gave her his signature puppy eyes, along with a big pout, but the girl replied with a punch on his arm. “Yeah, in fact I’m not joking at all: you know I can do it and I will, so don’t tempt me” “Sara Fancini? Is that you? I can’t believe it” Steve chimed in and finally Sara turned around and registered his face. “... Well, I’ll be damned! Steve Turner!” she replied surprised. “If we were playing the drinking version of Guess the Name as I’ve been suggesting for hours, I’d be already drunk now” Lukin mirrored Mike’s pouting face while a bunch of guests had stopped to see what was happening. “You know her too. Wow. Are you a regular at Easy Street Records too?” Eddie narrowed his eyes at Turner as he addressed him. “I’ve known this guy for longer than six years, what do you mean ‘a regular’? A regular loser? A regular pain in the ass? Oh wait, you’re not in Jeff’s band anymore, so you might stand a chance in life, after all” Sara smirked and couldn’t help catching a glimpse of Ament’s angry face when she said that. “I haven’t seen you for a while though, I didn’t remember you being so harsh” Steve pointed out with a smile. “... You tell me” Jeff remarked through fake coughing. “Oh right, you were in their band and Sara knew you back then” Eddie finally joined the dots. “Earth calls Eddie, Earth calls Eddie. Good morning Eddie, glad you’re finally back with us” Stone joked prompting an awkward and embarrassed look from the singer. “And where does this bullying against Jeff come from? I honestly remember you were getting along so we-” Steve insisted, dredging up the past, but he was promptly interrupted by Sara. “DID I HEAR SOMEONE SUGGESTING ‘NEVER HAVE I EVER’?? LET’S DO IT” “Someone who? I didn’t hear anything” Mike pointed out as he looked around. “Also because we’re not at a sixth grade party?” Gossard added but Layla immediately loved the idea and ignored him. “Yeah! That’s exactly what I was thinking about: a nice group game. I’m in!” “My idea of group games is a tad different but… ok, as long as it’s about people drinking and falling down on the floor I’m in” Lukin shrugged and joined in as other guests did. “It can involve drinking?! COUNT ME IN” McCready chimed in again, going near Lukin and sharing a high five with him.

#Eddie Vedder #Jeff Ament #Pearl Jam #Eddie Vedder fanfiction #Pearl Jam fanfiction #grunge fanfiction #Jeff Ament fanfiction #Birds of a Feather #chapters

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eddie-boii · 6 years ago

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Never Let You Go (part 5/14)

Fic info: Both Eddie and Stan live because I do what I want. Multichapter.

Rating: Teen and up (may change). Language.

Pairings: Reddie, Benverly.

Ao3 link: here

Summary: The Losers prepare for a wedding. The aftermath of that party...

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14

Richie awoke the next morning with a hangover far less jarring than he was expecting. His head still pounded and his dry mouth still tasted like shit, but he could move without wanting to die so that was something. The phenomenon was confusing until he remembered waking up in the middle of the night to find water and aspirin placed neatly on his bedside table. At the time, he hadn’t put any thought into how it had gotten there, but now he wondered who it might have been.

After several minutes spent building up the will to leave his cozy cocoon, he managed to extract Beverly’s arm from around his waist, shivering at the sudden lack of warmth, and stepped out of bed, instantly tripping over his tangled sheets and face planting the floor.

“Shut up,” he grunted when Beverly giggled. Of course she had to wake up in time to see that.

He picked himself up and made his way to the en suite bathroom on muscle memory alone since he couldn’t see shit without his glasses, then splashed water on his face and brushed his teeth for long enough to make Eddie proud, if only to remove the gross taste from his mouth.

He made his way back into his bedroom after freshening up, shoved his glasses back on and retrieved his phone from the pocket of his discarded jeans before crawling back into his still-warm bed beside a dozing Beverly.

“Wake up, asshole,” he said, poking Beverly’s cheek. “If I have to be awake and suffering, so do you.”

Beverly groaned and made to swat his hand away, but completely missed and smacked him in the face instead. She snorted at his ensuing yelp, even while sputtering out a quick, “Sorry, sweetie.” Then she made her way to the bathroom as Richie checked his messages.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered as ‘127 unread messages’ flashed up on the screen on The Losers’ group chat. He scanned the last few messages, which was hard since most contained atrocious typos from his drunken friends.

[1:52 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: Delete that fucking video Stan I swear to god.

[1:52 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: If Richie sees it I’m gonna kill you.

[1:55 am] Not-so-flat Stanley: Nahd bro sfucking makae me

[1:57 am] Flowerpot man #1: Wesll pute it isn a aslideshiow for youre vegas wedsing

[1:58 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: Your typing is fucking awful.

[1:58 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: I have blackmail videos too you know.

[1:58 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: I’ll send them to your wives don’t think I won’t.

[2:01 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: Get back here assholes!!

[2:01 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: Stanley!!!!! Bill!!!

[2:02 am] Mikey Mouse: They passed out :(

[2:02 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: They better hope they stay in a fucking coma.

[7:43 am] Flowerpot man #2: Guys what the hell happened last night???

“What the fuck?” Richie mumbled to himself, scrolling back up on his phone, but Stan must have actually deleted whatever video they were talking about, the evidence that it was there at all shown only by a jarring gap in the flow of conversation. From:

[12:32 am] Queen B: Omg are yuo seeing the ass on thsi stripper??

[12:34 am] Flowerpot man #1: Evrn juicer thsn Stan’s

[12:34 am] Mikey Mouse: Impsosible

To:

[1:13 am] Not-so-flat Stanley: Miskde yuo owes mae 30 buskcs1!!!1

[1:14 am] Flowerpot man #1: lol gay

[1:14 am] Mikey Mouse: Doesdn’t count!!!!!

[1:16 am] Queen B: Has to be mutual Stanley!

[1:17 am] Not-so-flat Stanley: Eds waas cleasrldy into it!!!!!!!!!

“Bev,” Richie called, frowning at his phone with growing dread. “Mind reminding me what the fuck happened last night?”

Beverly appeared in the bathroom doorway, toothbrush still in her mouth. “I don’t know, usual drunken shit?” she said, though the words were hard to make out through her mouthful of toothpaste. She spat the toothpaste into the sink and rinsed, then returned to leaning against the door. “I remember playing truth or dare, and we stole your glasses, and then…” Her eyes widened suddenly. “Oh shit.”

“What?” said Richie wearily, kind of dreading the answer but needing to know anyway.

“Okay, honey, promise you won’t freak out…”

“That is the number one way to freak someone out,” said Richie, beginning to freak out. “What the fuck did I do? Did I post a dick pic on twitter? Am I going to be on the news?”

“No, no, no, nothing like that,” said Beverly. She moved to sit on the bed beside Richie and took his hand reassuringly. “Everything that happened is just between The Losers. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Well, do you remember trying to stick your tongue down the throat of anyone who got within an inch of you?”

“Oh god,” said Richie, but honestly he’d expected worse. He’d always been kind of a ‘friendly’ drunk. “Is that all? Please tell me that’s all.”

“Well,” said Beverly, “do you also remember that the reason you tried to kiss anyone in sight was because you didn’t have your glasses on and you thought… Well, you thought we were Eds.”

Richie stared at her. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no.” He groaned and ran his hands down his face, his unshaven stubble scratching at his palms. “Are you sure? Coz, uh, maybe I just thought you were all Eddie’s mom.” He tried for a light-hearted grin but it came out as more of a shaky grimace.

“Oh, you made it quite clear, babe,” said Bev. “You screamed ‘Eddie’ at us right before. Mike would like to know if you’re colourblind.”

Richie buried his face in his hands and let out an even longer groan than before. “So everyone knows?”

“That you’ve got it bad for Eds? Yep.”

“Does Eddie know?”

Beverly scoffed at that. “God, no. He’s as dense as you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Nothing,” said Bev, avoiding eye contact.

Richie groaned some more, then something occurred to him as his gut filled with growing horror. The missing video... “Wait, fuck, Bev, did I kiss Eddie?”

Beverly didn’t answer right away. She was gnawing at her lip, her eyes looking anywhere but at Richie. “Well, yeah, but I doubt he thought it meant anything. I mean, you’d already made out with everyone else by that point. And- Oh fuck, there’s something else, babe.”

Richie stared at her. How could this possibly get any worse? “What?”

“Well, I didn’t hear everything coz I was in the hallway, but, um, you might have told Eddie you loved him-”

“What?!”

“He was making sure you got to bed okay and-” Richie had leapt up at this pointing and was frantically pacing the room while Bev remained on the bed, her arms waving around frantically as she tried to explain. “I think he just thought you meant in a friendly way! He still doesn’t know anything, I promise!”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s Eddie!” said Beverly as if this settled matters. “He doesn’t know shit. If he didn’t know back when we were kids, he’s not gonna figure it out now.”

“He-” Richie stopped pacing abruptly and turned to look at Beverly who clamped both hands over her mouth as though she’d only just realised what she’d said. “You- you knew I liked him when we were kids?”

Beverly slowly lowered her hands from her mouth, her expression apologetic. “Oh, babe, everyone knew.”

“Everyone?!”

“Well not Eddie,” said Beverly. “Listen, honey, this really isn’t as bad as you think. I mean, I think he likes you too.”

“Yeah right,” Richie scoffed. “Have you seen me?”

Beverly got off the bed and grasped both of Richie’s hands in hers, squeezing them as she looked up at him, her expression sincere and a little stern. “Honey, you are a fucking amazing, wonderful person, and also a weirdly good kisser, and if Eddie doesn’t see that, he doesn’t deserve you. But for the record, I’m pretty sure I’ve caught him checking out your ass.”

“When Stan’s ass is right there?” said Richie. “Damn, he must like me.”

“He does!” Beverly insisted. “Now grow some balls and ask him out! Preferably before the wedding or Stan and I will lose that bet we have against Mike and Bill.”

“You guys are betting on us?!”

“Just a little,” Bev grinned apologetically, then leaned up and kissed Richie on the tip of his nose. “Now don’t tell Mike or Bill you know about it or they’ll say I’m cheating.”

“You are all horrible friends,” said Richie, but he grinned back at her anyway, then retrieved his phone off the bed as Bev went to finish getting washed up. He contemplated his friends’ dumb messages for a minute, then sent one of his own:

[11:43 am] Little King Trashmouth: Sorry about last night Eduardo the resemblance between you and your mom is just too strong (~￣³￣)~

He didn’t have to wait long for replies:

[11:44 am] Eduardo Spaguardo: That is so not fucking funny

[11:45 am] Flowerpot man #1: Where do you keeping finding those faces???

[11:45 am] Flowerpot man #2: Seriously guys what the hell happened????????

Richie smiled down at his phone then shut it off for the time being. There was no way Eddie liked him, so matter what Beverly insisted, but Richie was just glad he hadn’t screwed things up. As long as they were still friends, as long as Richie still made ‘your mom’ jokes and Eddie still got mad at him for it, everything would be okay. And, hey, if Beverly was right, if Eddie did really like him like that, then maybe he’d let his guard down just a little, stop hiding behind so many jokes, let Eddie find his way through the gaps if he wanted to try.

Whatever happened, happened, and Richie was okay with that.

Previous Next

#it chapter 2 #reddie #benverly #the losers club #richie tozier #beverly marsh #eddie kaspbrak #fic #fanfic #writing #fix it fic #fluff #EB writes

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tactfulgnostalgic · 7 years ago

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how to never stop being totally not okay: a guide to emotional repression for idiots in love with other idiots (by dirk strider)

alternatively titled: baby, are you existential dread? cuz you make me deeply uncomfortable in ways i don’t care to think about (the john egbert life story)

Summary: How Dirk Strider stole a car, learned to drive, and got a boyfriend (in that order).

(a late birthday dirkjohn road trip fic for my friend lou @vanillacorpse @centercharter! happy birthday, lou!)

1. When he asks you whether you stole it, say no.

“Please tell me you did not steal that,” says John.

“Why does that matter.”

“Because it matters! And because when Terezi asks me about it later, I need plausible deniability. Tell me you did not steal this vehicle.”

“I . . . did not steal this vehicle.”

“Okay. Now, are you saying that because it’s true or because I told you to?”

“What happened to plausible deniability?”

“Never mind.”

From behind the wheel of a glossy, scarlet, brand spanking new Maserati, Dirk Strider says, “Look, are you coming or not?”

From the front porch of his house, dressed in pajamas and sandals, and holding a duffle bag slung over one shoulder, John Egbert says, “Yeah, I’m coming.”

At four o’clock in the morning, the neighborhood is quiet and dark. The trees rustle in a gentle breeze. A cat prowls along the sidewalk, its first and second eyes a luminous yellow, its third and fourth a vivid green. Down the street, a light is on in Jane’s kitchen, and through the curtains, someone is moving around. Maybe it’s her dad, downstairs for a nightcap. Or maybe it’s Jane. She’s taken up late night baking recently. The last time Dirk checked, the melatonin was working, though, so it’s probably her dad, after all.

You’re a god, now, technically,” John gripes. He slams the door shut with a force that has Dirk opening his mouth to complain about treating the car better, until he remembers that he stole this thing off the display room floor an hour ago, and also that he doesn’t really give a rat’s ass what happens to it. “You can just make infinite money. Or alchemize a car. Or ask them for it, they’d probably give it to you. Why do you need to steal.”

John has this habit, Dirk’s noticed, of asking questions that aren’t questions, questions that are more an opportunity for the other person to prove John wrong than honest inquiries about things John doesn’t know. For example, this one.

“You’re also a god,” Dirk points out. “You live in an apartment the size of my garage. Why not buy a castle? Why not build one?”

“That’s not even, like, slightly the same thing, dude.”

“How so.”

“For one thing, I don’t -- you know what, no. It’s too early for this. Start driving before I change my mind.”

“If you don’t want to come,” Dirk begins uncertainly, and John groans.

“Drive.”

“Okay.”

It started with a midnight text.

Dirk doesn’t exactly know why John hangs out with him. He doesn’t. It makes sense for John to hang out with Roxy, because of . . . shenanigans in their past that nobody really talks about. And with Jake and Jane, well, they’re literally genetic family, so they probably have a lot of shit to talk about. And of course he’d keep in touch with his friends from his session. That doesn’t require an explanation. But there’s not much that Dirk has to offer John, except a whole fistful of absolutely no personal connection. Their first conversation took place in the aftermath of a dying universe, except Dirk doesn’t remember that. So their first conversation was . . . hours after the Game, Dirk guesses. Or maybe earlier than that. He doesn’t remember their first words. It was probably something inane along the lines of “Sup, bro,” or “Nice one.” Dirk probably said something stupid. John probably gave him a weird look and then left him alone. Statistically speaking, that would be how it went.

But somewhere along the line neither of them knowing each other turned into an advantage instead of a reason to avoid each other. Sometimes, when half of your social circle was related to you and the other half had dated you or one of your relatives in the recent past, it was refreshing to hang out a total fucking stranger, for a change.

So when John said, “I need to get out of this fucking town,” what Dirk said was not “Sounds rough, I’ll text Jade,” but instead, “I can get us a car by Friday.”

And instead of saying, “Um, okay, that’s kind of weird, I was just talking about a hypothetical,” John said, “Sweet. Come by my place as soon as you have it,” because he’s the kind of guy that says things like that. Dirk wishes he were the kind of guy who said things like that.

Granted, John does look a little bit like Jake, which is weird sometimes. He looks enough like Jake that Dirk has commented on it, once, in one of his habitual fits of saying dumb shit without thinking about, which that happen to him, sometimes, because his life is hell and existence is suffering. But John, after blinking in surprise, only laughed. “Haha, that’s kind of weird,” he said. “Didn’t you guys used to date?”

“Um,” said Dirk.

“Yeah,” said Dirk.

“I mean, kind of,” said Dirk.

“We broke up,” said Dirk.

“Whack,” John had said indifferently, and returned to ruthlessly beating Dirk’s ass in Mario Kart.

And because Dirk doesn’t know how to have nice things without fucking them irrevocably, he may or may not be a little bit in love with the guy. So he’s got that going for him.

John’s house is in what would be called northern California, if things like the United States government still existed, and if any of the people who created and shaped the global civilization had ever been to California. Upon Dave’s request, every principality and township in the continental U.S. had been subtitled Striderville, with various numerical identifiers to differentiate them. Austin was Striderville No. 1. New York was Striderville No. 7. Minneapolis was Striderville No. 666, for reasons that were unclear to everyone except Dave Strider, who when asked would only grimly profess, “It knows what it fucking did.”

Sacramento (Striderville No. 148) fades in their rearview as they soar across the freeway. Dirk, who has been getting this far on intuitive knowledge and gumption, takes the opportunity to admit, “I don’t actually know how to drive.”

It takes a moment for this fact to register.

“What do you mean,” John says slowly, “you don’t know how to drive?”

“It means what it means. I never learned.”

“What the fuck do you mean you never learned how to drive.”

“I mean that I grew up in the middle of the fucking ocean, Egbert, where was I supposed to get a car?”

“You’re driving right now!”

“Yeah, I mean, the operating part isn’t hard. It’s the lane stuff that makes it all complicated. Like, when to turn and shit. Actually, I think I memorized an old Texas driver’s ed manual once. Does that count?”

“No!”

“No need to get worked up about it,” Dirk mutters.

“Oh, my God,” John says, face in his hands. “I’m going to die. I’m going to die and it’s going to be because of you.”

“That’s a little dramatic.”

“It’s really not.”

“Have we crashed yet?”

“Let me drive,” John orders. “Pull over.”

Dirk really should let John drive. It’s the responsible choice. It’s the reasonable choice. It’s the choice that anybody with a lick of common sense to scrap together in their entire body would make.

Obviously, Dirk says, “No.”

“Do you even know what a stop sign is?”

“No, but if I employ a little bit of deductive reasoning, I bet I have a great guess.”

“What’s the first thing you do at a four-way?”

“Make sure everyone’s got a safeword.”

“Dirk, shut up, Jesus Christ. I bet you’ve never even had sex,” John says irritably, as they sail over the city limits.

Trying desperately not to actually sound wounded, Dirk says, “That’s a little below the belt, don’t you think.”

“How would you know? You’ve never gotten below the belt, have you?”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It does if you’re not a virgin.”

“I’m not -- this conversation is ridiculous.”

“Virgin says what?”

“You’re bullying me. I’m being bullied, right now, by my own friend.”

“I get what Jane means,” John says, thoughtfully. “This really is therapeutic.”

“What? Making fun of me?”

“Yeah,” he says placidly. “Really good for the blood pressure. Hey, do you mind if I take a nap real quick?”

Dirk does a double take. “What happened to me not driving?” he asks suspiciously.

“Eh,” John says, waving it off, tipping his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes. “Don’t worry about it. You’re doing fine.”

“Wait. Do you know how to drive?”

A tiny smile tugs at one corner of John’s mouth.

“Your session started when you were thirteen,” Dirk exclaims. “You wouldn’t have had time to learn.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You didn’t even care about it, did you.” The accusation is flat.

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmno.”

“You were just fucking with me.”

“Uh-huh.”

Dirk considers this.

“You’re a jackass.”

“Yep,” John says happily, and tosses his feet up on the dash.

2. Don’t let him pick the music.

“I get to pick the music,” John decides, apropos of nothing, around 6:30, when they’re in the middle of southern California (Striderville No. 83-195). The sun is just dawning behind them, a blinding pinprick of white against the asphalt in the rearview. It casts sharp rays of orange light through the back windshield, lighting their faces in warm colors, bathing the cab in yellow and the road in front of them in shadows that seem to stretch on for miles.

“What? No, you don’t. I’m the driver. Driver picks the music.”

“Driver has to keep his hands on the steering wheel. Driver can’t stop me.”

“I’ll pull this car over, so help me God.”

“No, you won’t,” John says cheerfully, reaching for the radio.

“Wait,” says Dirk, panicking. “Don’t --”

“WHEN I WAS A YOUNG MAN--”

John wheezes.

“--MY FATHER TOOK ME INTO THE CITY, TO SEE A MARCHING BAND--”

“Listen,” Dirk says, speeding up. “Listen, right, okay, listen, it was in the car when I stole it--”

“HE SAID, ‘SON, WHEN YOU GROW UP, WILL YOU BE--”

John hoots. He shrieks. He cackles, slapping the dashboard of the car like he wants to beat the dust out of it.

“It’s a good record, okay, fuck, I mean, like, it’s not the worst thing--”

“THE SAVIOR OF THE BROKEN, THE BEATEN, AND THE DAMNED?”

“I’m texting Roxy,” says John, wrestling his phone out of his bag. This terrifies Dirk so badly that he actually takes a hand off the wheel to make a mad grab for it, and the car swerves, careening towards the shoulder.

“HE SAID, ‘WILL YOU DEFEAT THEM?’”

“You can’t do that,” Dirk says, his tone hovering two octaves above where it should be. “Listen, she doesn’t need to know about this--”

“Roxy would murder me if she found out about this and realized I hadn’t told her, dude, are you kidding me? Look, it’s an ethical obligation, if anything--”

“YOUR DEMONS? AND ALL THE NONBELIEVERS? THE PLANS THAT THEY HAVE MADE?”

“John,” Dirk says. “John. John. Listen to me, John.”

The shutter of the Apple camera closing, artificial and tinny, ricochets throughout the car like gunfire.

There is a long moment of silence, then, where the only sound is Gerard Way’s indecipherable howling.

“BECAUSE SOMEDAY, I’LL LEAVE YOU, A PHANTOM TO LEAD YOU IN THE SUMMER, TO JOIN THE BLACK PARADE.”

John and Dirk regard each other frostily.

“Give it to me,” Dirk orders, vaulting over the seat divider, and John yells, seizing the steering wheel: “DUDE, THE ROAD,” while also holding the phone as far away from Dirk’s grasp as his considerable armspan can possibly reach.

The car cuts a wild path across the interstate, zigzagging freely between the four lanes as if the lane dividers were more suggestions than rules, at one point almost turning a complete 180 and cruising back the way it came. Black skid marks sear the road under the tires when John wedges himself far enough into the driver’s seat to slam on the brake, and Dirk tries to take advantage of the opportunity to grip John’s wrist and pry his fingers off the phone.

“This is for your own good,” John grits out. “Roxy -- has the right -- to know --”

“Egbert, so help me God.”

“That’s also me, dumbass, and I’m not helping you--”

“I’ll give you anything you want.”

John pauses, the car slowing to a cool forty miles per hour, and says, “Anything?”

From where he sits, perched on the divider between seats like a gangly bird of prey, clinging to John’s outstretched hand like a kitten dangling over a waterfall, Dirk vows, “Anything.”

John grins, and lets go of the phone.

Dirk shuffles into the passenger’s seat, rolls down the window, and flings the offending device out into the street.

“Aw, man,” John complains, watching it bounce and roll away in the mirror. “I had a lot of music on that thing.”

“I’ll buy you another phone. I’ll buy you ten phones.”

“What the fuck am I gonna do with ten phones?”

“I dunno, dude, they’re your phones.”

John shakes his head. “Anyway,” he said. “You said anything.”

The man hasn’t stopped grinning since Dirk agreed. It is a truly unsettling sight.

“I don’t kiss. Aside from that--”

“Oh, man, literally fuck OFF--”

Dirk turns off the radio, which had metamorphosed into the song’s iconic caterwaul of guitars. “A deal’s a deal. What do you want from me?”

John says, “Can you read that exit sign for me?”

Dirk looks up and squints.

“You can take the dumb glasses off. That might help.”

Dirk does not, and so he doesn’t read what the exit sign says until John is steering them steadfastly towards it.

“No,” he says.

“You said anything.”

“I take it back. You know what, you can use my phone to text Roxy yourself. Strike me down for my arrogance. Smite me. Ruin me. Post nudes on my Facebook account. I don’t even have nudes. I’ll take some so you can post them. Just put my ass on blast. Or do you want to decapitate me? That’s very in, nowadays.”

John cackles, again.

The Maserati sails under the exit sign for the Wet N’ Wild Slippery Funtimes Happy Place Water Park, and Dirk Strider, neither for the first time nor the last, contemplates climbing out the window.

3. Do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, go to the waterpark.

Dirk is hot, wet, and covered in skin-tight clothing, and none of it in the fun way. He views this series of information to be a remarkably concise way of summating his life.

John strolls ahead. The bastard is barely wet. Somehow, the water always seemed to avoid him, migrating away from his form as if swayed from its course by his own ineffable good temper, and when he did get dunked, he could summon a gust of wind to dry himself off with all the effort it took to snap his fingers.

The Heir of Breath is such a useful classpect that sometimes it makes Dirk want to scream. Of course it would be Egbert who got the powers that served some fruitful day-to-day purpose.

He floats along instead of walking, like John, because unlike John, Dirk doesn’t derive pleasure from doing things the boring and painful way. Dirk spends most of his time off the ground, actually, even if it’s only by a few inches. It saves him the effort of having to walk.

“You look like a drowned cat,” John says, not unsympathetically.

“You’ve never fucking seen a drowned cat.”

“How do you know? I’ve seen a lot of shit. Maybe a drowned cat was part of it.”

“You know,” Dirk suggests, “if you really feel that bad, you could help me out. By doing things like . . . oh, I don’t know. Drying me off.”

“There were towels at the store,” John says innocently. “You could’ve -- hey, whoa, whoa. You gonna just climb into your luxury sports vehicle like that?”

Dirk, sopping wet and dripping onto the pavement, stops with his handle on the car door and gives John a dead-eyed stare.

“Just saying,” John says, raising his hands. “That’s leather upholstery. You get that wet, it’s gonna stink.”

“John,” Dirk says very quietly. “If you want me to dry off. You could summon the wind. To do exactly that.”

John presses his lips together tightly, brow furrowed in thought. “Hmm,” he said. “You know, I could do that, couldn’t I?”

“Yes.” Dirk resists the urge to vault over the hood of the car and throttle the man he is currently in love with. “You could.”

John summons a small tornado in the palm of his hand. “It’s really just so convenient,” he says blandly. “Don’t you think, Dirk?”

“It certainly would be,” Dirk says, grinding his teeth.

“Of course, I’d only ever do it with your permission. I wouldn’t use my powers on anybody without their consent, first.”

“Consider this,” Dirk grits out, “my full and enthusiastic consent.”

“Really?” John arches an eyebrow. “You’d just let me do that, Dirk? Wow. That’s a lot of trust you have in me. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just dry me off, asshole.”

John leans on the hood of the Maserati, arms folded, one ankle balanced on his knee. He grins, flashing thirty-two glossy white teeth, and the breeze stirs his hair just so, tousling it with a rakish charm. When Dirk looks at him, something twists in his chest. It feels hot and uncomfortable, and he doesn’t not like it, exactly.

Then he gets whisked into the air by a gust of wind, wrenched up like a ragdoll on the breeze.

As he soars through the air, one brief, fury-infused thought flashes through Dirk Strider’s mind:

He knows what he’s doing, the little shit.

Then this thought is swallowed by Dirk remembering that he can fly, and catching himself before he faceplants into solid concrete. Getting uppercut by the manifestation of the wind itself is bad enough. Eating shit in front of the guy you’re going on a roadtrip across America to impress would add insult to injury, really.

He staggers to his feet and trudges back to where John stands, bent over on his knees, still heaving with his last paroxysms of laughter.

“Granted unthinkable fucking cosmic powers,” Dirk seethes, “uses them like this. Oh, sure, that’s a great way to spend your time. Not like there’s anything more useful you could be doing with them. I’m sure that’s what you got them for. Tossing me around like a limp sack of nickels, that’s the real reason you got to be a fucking airbender.”

“Heh,” John says, straightening up, “yeah. I’m pretty great.”

But the smile he offers is smaller than it could be, and the laugh has gone out of his eyes, and Dirk is struck with a sudden pang of regret. This is chased by a needle-sharp jolt of self-hatred, because he knows what he did, and if he’d thought for half a fucking second before he spoke, he wouldn’t have said it.

They don’t talk about the Game.

4. Don’t think about the past.

Four months after Sburb ended, half of their friends still woke up screaming.

The other half didn’t, but that was because they hardly fucking spoke at all in the first place. Jade once went for a whole week without saying a word out loud to another human being. Jake fucked off into the woods for almost a month and didn’t take his phone with him, leaving everybody to wonder whether or not he’d wound up dead at the bottom of a waterfall somewhere until he came back. Roxy started coding again, but intensely, obsessively, staying up until ugly hours of the morning staring at lines upon lines of unforgiving binary, surrounded by empty cans of Redbull and wearing bags under her eyes. The Lalondes mourned lost mothers and walked quickly past bars, and Dave still couldn’t look Dirk in the eye without flinching, and they were all of them a little uncomfortable with each other, a little too aware of how like much everyone resembled some lost parent or dead guardian. Jane had her dad, but Dirk knew it wasn’t the same. There were some things so painful it became an act of trauma to speak it out loud.

Dirk remembers a lot of things, from that initial period of settlement, when they were learning how to be people instead of gods.

He remembers Jane turning up on his doorstep with a sleeping bag and a pillow, exhausted, tear tracks under her eyes, asking to sleep over because she couldn’t spend another night in the same house where she’d lived under threat of attack for thirteen years and six months. He remembers getting her settled on the couch in his living room, awkwardly trying to make her take the bed, and her refusing stubbornly because she “didn’t want to inconvenience him any more than she already had.” He remembers having a panic attack and locking himself in the bathroom before calling Roxy, demanding answers, demanding her to tell him what to do, how to deal with this, why anybody thought he was the person to go to for help--

He remembers Roxy turning up half an hour later with her own sleeping bag, and Jake in tow. Jake and Dirk hadn’t spoken in God knows how long, then, but it didn’t matter, because Jane was crying in a sleeping bag on his couch and that meant not a single other fact in the whole fucking world mattered one goddamn whit.

Dirk wonders who John went to, when he woke up screaming. If he woke up screaming.

He remembers that John doesn’t just come from a different universe than everyone else in the world, than Dirk and his friends. John comes from a different timeline. John’s friends have had two years, from their perspective, to learn how to be without him.

If Dirk were a braver person, he’d ask what that felt like.

If Dirk were a much braver person, he’d ask whether it felt good.

Instead, Dirk says, “Do you want to get food?”

John says, “Yeah, that’d be okay, I guess.”

It’s the closest any of them get to an epilogue.

5. Do NOT ask whether or not your midnight McDonald’s run is a date. (But if you do, like, be cool about it.)

They roll up to the McDonald’s around 11:30. Dirk is all for getting drive-thru and hitting the freeway again, but John wants to stretch his legs. They’ve been driving for close to eight hours, at this point, and nothing about the road is even remotely familiar. Dirk’s stopped keeping track of which turns they take, which exits, which back roads. They’re trying to get lost, and they’re well on their way.

John gets three hamburgers and eats two without stopping for breath. Dirk orders a carton of fries and a vanilla milkshake, which John makes fun of him for, but Dirk had accepted this eventuality beforehand.

The red leather of the booth they sit in is sticky, and there are stains on the table. Dirk counts the number of health code violations to distract himself from wondering whether or not this qualifies as a date, because it doesn’t, probably, and even if it did, that didn’t make it mean anything, or at least that didn’t make it mean anything to John. When he finishes health code violations, he starts on the ceiling tiles.

John steals one of his fries, and he’s a millisecond too late to bat his hand away.

“You should get something else,” John says, through a mouthful of fry. “You get crabby when you’re hungry.”

“I’m always crabby.”

“Then fuckin’ eat something, dude, that’s what I’m saying.”

Dirk nudges his glasses up his nose and takes a sip of milkshake. “I don’t require anything else,” he says, instead of answering.

“Whatever,” John mutters under his breath, in a way that makes clear how weird he finds this response, and redirects his attention to his third burger.

Dirk fidgets with his straw. The grease has pooled at the bottom of his french fry carton. It glistens under the fluorescents. John’s hair is lanky from not having been washed in two days, and there’s a smudge on the lense of one of his glasses. Dirk watches him stuff a third of a burger in his mouth.

“Hey, so,” says Dirk, before the part of his brain in charge of not saying astonishingly embarrassing shit catches up to his mouth. “Is this, like, a date?”

John pauses, chews, and then swallows.

“Um,” he says. “Do you want it to be a date?”

Dirk panics. This is the worst possible thing that John could have said. Not only is it not an answer, but it is the kind of non-answer which lobs the ball directly into Dirk’s court, making Dirk the one in charge of making the first move, and oh, this is awful. This is really, incredibly, exquisitely bad.

“I don’t know.”

John lifts an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

“I meant -- yeah,” Dirk says weakly.

“Wait, so you do?”

“Do what?”

“Want this to be a date.”

“What did I say?”

“Are you really this bad at this,” John says, grinning, “or do you have to, like, try?”

“Hey, fuck off,” Dirk says, overwhelmed by relief at the change of subject. “Between the two of us, only one has actually dated.”

“You don’t know that,” John says, offended. “For all you know, I was hooking up with Dave sprite twenty-four sev, on that ship.”

“Davesprite has higher standards than that.”

“But you don’t?”

“John, we’ve established that mocking my taste is low-hanging fruit, in terms of comedy,” Dirk says. “It’s like writing a film school dissertation on Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I mean, you could, but where’s the sophistication? Where’s the talent?”

“Heh,” John chuckles. “Low-hanging fruit.”

“Oh, I get it. It’s funny because I’m gay.”

“So am I, asshole. I get to make that joke.”

“Oh, I don’t dispute that you get to. I’m baffled that you want to, however.”

“Screw you, I’m hilarious.”

“It is apparent in every element of your personality that you enjoyed Nic Cage movies as a child.”

“And it’s apparent in every element of yours that your favorite book is Fight Club. Your point?”

Dirk splutters, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what a Fight Club is.”

“Please. I bet you creamed your jeans when you read the part about glycerin.” John takes another bite of his hamburger, smug.

“I don’t have to take this from the guy who uses the phrase ‘cream your jeans’ in casual conversation.”

“I am almost one hundred per cent certain that you have said worse.”

Throughout the course of the conversation, the restaurant has been gradually growing quieter. Not that there are a lot of people there in the first place, of course, but the two or three other groups making midnight junk food runs have fallen into a lull, and the quiet bickering from Dirk and John’s table carries easily. As Dirk gives the room a glance, he notices that the trolls at the table next to them have become completely silent, and they’re both staring.

“Hey,” says the troll to the left, a short greenblood with corkscrew horns. Their eyes grow wide as they lean closer to get a better look. “Hey -- hey, aren’t you John Egbert?”

John stiffens. It’s barely noticeable. He keeps his eyes on his tray.

“Nah,” he says, forcefully bright. “Just got one of those faces, I guess.”

“No, you are,” says the troll, with an aura of revelation. “Hey, Niroxi, look! It’s John Egbert!”

“Hey, back off,” Dirk warns them, but they’re already getting up, craning their necks to try and get a gander at John’s darkening face.

“Are you -- holy shit, I can’t believe this -- what are you doing here?”

“Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” John says, voice strained.

“Are you here to check up on the government? We thought you’d gone off the map! Are Dave and Rose with you? Oh, shit, is Karkat here?”

“Jade says fuck you, too,” Dirk mumbles, and John shoots him a wry look.

“That would be so cool, if Karkat was here! Are he and Dave still a thing? I heard that Dave was dating Jane now, is that true?”

“No,” Dirk exclaims, repulsed. “What on earth--”

Niroxi groans. “You’re being so cringey,” she tells her friend, plaintively. Then, to John, almost shy: “But, like, for real? Are they here, though?”

John struggles to muster a smile. “Nah,” he says. “Just me and Dirk.”

“Dirk?” Her eyes flit to Dirk, who chafes under the attention. She brightens. “Oh,” she says. “Is Jake here, too?”

Dirk’s stomach takes a swan dive deep enough to bury it in the earth’s molten core.

“Nope,” he manages. “Nah, he, uh. I don’t know where Jake is.”

“Really? Told you,” Niroxi tells her friend matter-of-factly.

“You didn’t tell me shit. They’re on a break, it doesn’t--”

“Yeah? Like you’d know. You get your information from the Alternian Weekly.”

“It’s a good site!”

“The Alternian Weekly predicted that Kanaya and Rose would get divorced.”

“And the jury’s still out on that! Didn’t you see the photos? Rose wasn’t wearing her wedding ring at Target last week.”

“You can’t see her hand in the photo, that doesn’t mean anything--”

“And Kanaya and Terezi have been pretty chummy, lately, don’t you think?”

“Like Terezi would ever be into someone that wasn’t John,” Niroxi says, rolling her eyes, and John cringes. Dirk wonders how Terezi would react to that, if she were here. She’d probably laugh. Then she’d punch them.

Dirk isn’t great at doing either. So he does what he can.

“Come on,” Dirk says, standing up.

John tries to ignore the frenzied whispering of the table next to them. “You haven’t finished,” he says, in the carefully moderated tone of someone just barely keeping a lid on their shit.

“I have unless I want to be shitting water tomorrow. Come on.”

“You are literally so fucking gross,” John says gratefully, shoving back his chair.

They’re walking when they leave the McDonald’s. By the time the Maserati is in view, they’re runnin.

Dirk guns the engine as they leave, putting a family of goggling carapacians in their rearview.

6. Keep driving, and don’t talk about it.

They make it two towns over without saying a word. John picks the music, but after two songs, he turns it off, perhaps more comfortable with silence than the obnoxious country-pop blend that local radio stations seem to prefer.

Dirk, meanwhile, wages war with himself.

If it were Dirk, he wouldn’t want to talk about it.

On the other hand, it’s not Dirk, and John might want to talk about it.

On the other other hand, it would be excruciatingly awkward to talk about it, and being drop-kicked into that nuanced kind of social entanglement might actually kill Dirk on the spot. His heart would go into cardiac arrest and he’d die at the wheel. And then who would be driving the car? Nobody, that’s who. He’d die a Heroic Death, trying to get John Egbert to open up about his fucking feelings.

On the other other other hand, Dirk’s been informed that talking about things is healthier than not talking about it. So there’s that.

On the fourth other hand, Dirk’s not really familiar with the general concept of a healthy coping mechanism, and if John asked him for advice, he would have exactly jack shit to offer.

As it turns out, this debate is meaningless, because it’s John who speaks first.

“I was kind of immature back there,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “Sorry.”

“What?” Dirk stares ahead owlishly.

“Immature,” John repeats. “I shouldn’t have bailed like that. They were just kids.”

They soar past twin rows of wheat fields. A small town appears on the horizon.

“We’re just kids,” Dirk says, attempting to sound reasonable.

John snorts.

The town grows closer. It unveils the silhouettes of wide, boxy warehouses and tall, peeling billboards.

“We are,” Dirk says, frowning.

“Uh-huh,” John says. “Okay.”

“Why do you think we’re not?”

“I hate to break it to you, my guy, but whatever you think passes for ‘regular kid,’ we ain’t it.”

“I don’t mean that we’re perfectly normal,” Dirk argues, uncertain of why his voice is rising all of a sudden, “but we’re still . . . you don’t have to take that kind of treatment.”

“Yeah, I do,” John said, and his voice is centuries old. His voice has cracks, crumbling pillars, smooth facets weathered silken by time. His voice is age itself. His voice is the ghost of a dead universe, and it echoes, hollow as the cavity of an open grave.

“You don’t,” Dirk says, and his voice is small, petulant.

“I’m their god. I can’t just tell them to fuck off.”

“Sure you can,” Dirk says sharply. “It’s easy. It goes like this: ‘I’m on a date. Fuck off.’”

“I’m not going to be a dick to them.”

“They were being dicks to you.”

“They’re kids,” John cries. “How do you not -- I made their universe! Me and Jade and Rose and -- what the fuck am I supposed to do?”

“Not let them walk all over you!”

“I’m not -- I don’t --”

“You deserve to get to be normal,” Dirk insisted, and he’s never sure of anything in his life, except for this. Except for the lone, simple, absolutely unshakeable fact that John get to be a kid, if he wants. He doesn’t even know why he’s so angry about it, but he is. “You are. You sure as fuck didn’t get to be, back in -- back when you were younger. But now--”

“Yeah,” John says bitingly. “Normal. Yeah, sure, Dirk.”

“Normal enough.”

“Normal enough? What the fuck does that mean? Normal enough.”

“Even underneath all the Game bullshit.”

It’s the first time either of them have mentioned it. Ever, in Dirk’s case.

Dirk says, “You still get to be normal.”

Because Dirk can’t be. Dirk can’t and won’t and will never be normal, not with how his brain works, not with what he’s seen. Dirk was born in a dead world, a world underwater, and he was raised to survive in a universe that doesn’t exist anymore, and everything about him reflects that fact. There’s no hope, for him. He can’t be the person this universe expects him to be, the person who could live in this universe, and that’s fine. Dirk’s made his peace with that.

But John can be. And it makes Dirk unfathomably fucking angry, to think that maybe, after all, he can’t. Maybe the one of them -- the only one who could, the only one who might, after everything that happened, be capable; the one who wasn’t dating an alien or raised by an alien empress or or fused with a primordial deity in the form of a dog -- couldn’t have a normal life, after all. Maybe none of them got to go back. Maybe all of them were out of place.

That was the bitch about winning, in retrospect. It wasn’t game over. It was a new game.

“Pull over,” John says suddenly.

The briskness of this command startles Dirk, makes him swerve. “What,” he says. “No. Why?”

“Do it.”

“Why?”

“Do it.”

Dirk hangs a left in the nearest intersection and pulls them into a sparsely populated parking lot, sitting beside a giant vacated warehouse. The street is empty. The only cars there are old, probably out of use, maybe even abandoned.

John takes deep breaths.

“Normal,” he says acidly.

“Yeah.” Dirk says it stoutly, emphatically. “You know. Normal.”

John lifts his hands, and every car in the parking lot rises into the air.

The sound of two dozen vehicles groaning and clattering off the ground, in conjunction with the shriek of the gale necessary to lift them, deafens. It choruses. It howls. The cars rise and hover at ten feet, most of them, with the lighter ones drifting higher and the heavier sitting at seven or eight feet each. The wind tears through the flypaper and rubbish littering the parking lot, tossing it up in small cyclones of whirling trash. It makes the trees writhe. It shakes the Maserati, but doesn’t touch it, doesn’t lift it; they sit in the eye of the storm.

Above, storm clouds start to circle and congeal. The wispy tufts of cirrus that had been drifting over the horizon blacken as if someone tipped over an inkpot in a bed of cotton. Flickers of lightning fork down to the east.

The lines of John’s muscles are rigid. A tic in his jaw is the only sign this is costing him any effort at all.

After a minute, the storm starts to calm. The cars lower gradually to the ground, settling gently in the same places they were. The wind quiets, and then Dirk can hear himself think again. John lowers his hands, hesitant, and then puts them in his lap.

But in a way, it’s much worse, now, with everything still. There’s room for the silence to move in again.

Dirk says, “Shit’s up and fucked, huh.”

John laughs wetly. “Shit’s up and fucked,” he confirms.

“I mean,” Dirk says, “you get to pull that kind of wizardly fuckery at the drop of the hat, and here I am over here, fuckin’ Prince of Heart bullshit. What am I supposed to do? Therapize you to fuckin’ death? Fuckin’ Captain Planet-ass bullshit. ‘Heart.’ Jade gets to play pinball with planets, Dave’s over here Groundhog Daying it every time he fucks up, who the fuck even knows what Jake can do, it sure as fuck ain’t Jake, and Roxy can just make shit. Make it! I mean, fuck the Law of Conservation of Matter, am I right? Let’s let her just magick stuff out of thin fuckin’ -- oh, the blond one? Oh, oh, that one? Yeah, toss him, fuckin’, uhhhhh, I dunno, what’s left -- Heart. Prince of Heart, yeah that sounds good. The one that destroys shit, that’s cool, right? What can he do? Shit, man, like, feel really bad about himself, probably? Be depressed? Yeah, that works, great. Cool. We’ve got Witch of Space, Knight of Time, Page of Hope, Heir of Breath, and Depression Man. Dope. Now there’s a lineup I can get behind. Put a ‘case closed’ stamp on that motherfucker, we’re ready to run a session.”

John cracks a smile.

“Gimme a goddamn refund,” Dirk huffs, “that’s all I gotta say. You see how that troll chick didn’t even fucking recognize me? I am the fucking -- I’m not even important enough to get recognized at a McDonald’s. You know that if Roxy had seen that, she’d have eviscerated me on the spot. ‘Prince of Heart.’ Eat my ass, Jesus Christ.”

John giggles. It’s kind of stifled by the lump in his throat.

They look at each other.

John reaches across the armrest and gently punches him in the shoulder. By John’s standards, it’s practically a caress.

In a movie, this would be the part where Dirk kissed him, and John would kiss him back, and everything would be okay.

But Dirk doesn’t kiss him. Instead, he looks out the driver’s window, so that when John cries, he can do it in privacy.

By and by, John clears his throat and scrubs a hand across his face. “Um,” he says. “So I think I broke some guy’s Chevy. We should probably get going.”

“Yeah.” Dirk shifts the car into drive, and the engine thrums. “Where to?”

“I dunno. You wanna head east?”

“That’s fine with me.”

“I heard there was some cool tourist shit out -- hey,” says John, squinting across the street. “Is that an arcade?”

7. Get him the shitty bunny rabbit.

John breaks the lock on the arcade with ease. It’s abandoned, with white sheets tossed over most of the bulky, box-shaped consoles and dust lining the whole place in a thin film, but when Dirk steals some tokens from behind the counter and slots one into the nearest machine, the lights fire up just fine. They fuck around for a little bit with Dance Dance Revolution -- John beats Dirk eight games to one, and that one was when Dirk dared him to do all the moves with one foot -- and then burn tokens on Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. John has to teach Dirk how to play Frogger. Dirk is so bad at it that John wonders aloud whether Dirk actually derives some sick pleasure from killing frogs. John skunks Dirk blind at skee ball, but then Dirk gets him back by climbing up and removing the grate over the holes, and then they spend the rest of the hour lobbing skee balls overhand at the target without much regard for the score.

After an hour or two, they get bored of this, and pass a claw grab machine holding a pile of decaying plushes. Atop the pile sits an abomination in the form of a rabbit. The thing looks like what would happen if you asked someone who’d never seen a rabbit before to design one, except the only reference you gave them was the transcript of a Looney Tunes cartoon. The bulbous, uncanny-valley proportions of the head emphasize the oblong pear shape of the body, and the tail is a limp tuft of stringy cotton. The ears are tattered and the fur on them is clumped and tufted. The animal itself is a weird shade of bluish grey that probably came from using cheap dye for the fur. Beady black eyes glint from either side of a button nose, imbued with a legitimately chilling malevolence.

“That is the ugliest piece of shit bunny I have ever seen in my life,” John breathes, his nose against the glass. “I need it.”

Dirk wanders over, his hands in his pockets. “They’re rigged, you know,” he says. “The machines. You can’t win them.”

“Dude. Dude. Look at me. Look at me, though? I don’t care. I need it.”

“We can buy you a bunny rabbit, if you want one.”

“No, you misunderstand. I don’t want any rabbit. I want that rabbit. Specifically.”

“. . . Okay.”

John wastes somewhere between forty and fifty tokens trying to get the claw machine to give him the bunny. He gets close to success several times, often getting so far as to actually grab the bunny within the prongs of the thing’s obstinately clumsy claw, before it slips out in the millisecond before being deposited in the box. Dirk watches John cycle through the five stages of grief not once, not twice, but every single time this happens, and then watches John recover and try again with unflagging determination. It would be endearing if it were not also making Dirk feel slightly deranged, just watching it.

Finally, John runs out of tokens, and steps back from the machine with a mournful look. “It’s hopeless,” he said.

“Oh, no. If only there were someone who could have told you that.”

“It’s not my fault! I got so close!”

“I know.”

“Guess I’ll just have to do without it,” John mutters. He hangs his head with exaggerated despair. “No bunny rabbit for me.”

He ruins the effect by sneaking a glance up at Dirk.

Dirk heaves a long, put-upon sigh, and draws a token out of his pocket.

“Yes!” John pumps the air, giving Dirk space to assume control of the joystick. “Oh, man, if you nail this, I’ll owe you forever. I’ll even stop making fun of your tattoo. Actually, I take that back. I’ll stop making fun of your hair. Tattoo’s still fair game.”

“The longer you keep talking, the less likely I am to try.”

John ignores this. “You gotta wait for the right moment,” he advises. “It likes to stall sometimes, so you have to jigger it to work. And the joystick is sticky in the lower right corner, so you can’t use it. But aside from that, you should be okay.”

Dirk slips the token into the slot. It chugs for a moment, waiting, and then the screen brightens, the claw stirring.

John is right about the stalling and the sticky patch on the control pad. Dirk wastes three tries on the damn thing before getting aggravated.

“Cool,” he says thinly. “Cool cool cool. Hey, Egbert, do you have any particular qualms about how you get the damn rabbit?”

“Uh,” says John, “no?”

“Good.”

Dirk decaptchalogues Lil Seb into the palm of his hand. The small robot’s red eyes glaze as he boots up.

“You see that rabbit?” he asks it.

Lil Seb directs his attention to the glass, and nods. If he is offended by this obvious caricature of one of his kin, he does not show it. That’s the great part about Lil Seb. He’s a chill motherfucker.

“Get it for me,” Dirk orders, and then slides Lil Seb through the flap at the bottom machine, into the pickup trough where prizes fall for collection.

John lifts his eyebrows. “I think that’s cheating,” he says, but he doesn’t sound upset about it.

Lil Seb climbs up the chute into the main prize pit easily, scaling the mountain of plushies like a man on a mission to the peak of goddamn Everest. He seizes the ugly rabbit by the ears and hauls it down with him, leaping neatly into the prize chute and tumbling back into the trough with a clatter. Dirk reaches in and pulls out both bunnies, captchaloguing the metal one and keeping the much sought-after abomination.

“There,” he says, with more satisfaction than he’s proud of.

He holds out the prize.John beams at him like he’s offering John the damn Genesis Frog, face warm, eyes sparkling. Dirk’s fingers dig into the bunny, frozen, and his breath stalls a little bit.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

They both turn. A burly, balding man stands in the door of the arcade, a ring of keys in his hand, frozen in the act of opening the door.

A katana falls out of Dirk’s sylladex, on instinct.

“I’m gonna call the police,” the owner snarls, but before he can continue, John lets out a long groan, squares his shoulders, and with a snap of his wrist, flings two thousand newtons of raw windspeed directly into the owner’s face.

The sudden gale inside the arcade sends the man sailing out the door, flying backwards until he tumbles to a halt a hundred feet from the building. He’s still moving when he hits the ground, stirring, but clearly incapacitated. The Breeze tears the inside of the room apart, sending papers scattering in a flurry of white and lifting the dust into tiny whorls. Wind rakes through Dirk’s hair and ruffles his clothes. Blue lights snap and spark over John’s frame, especially his fist, and even as the tiny storm is calming, his eyes have a vivid, uncanny brightness.

They’re not human eyes. Not anymore.

Dirk looks down at the bunny in his hands. He wonders if he could pull the man’s soul out, if he tried. His powers aren’t the kind of thing you can do on a whim.

“C’mon,” John says. “Let’s get out of here.”

When they leave the arcade, the man is still struggling to pick himself up off the street. He shouts after them when he notices them going:

“What the fuck are you?”

Out of spite, John flicks his fingers at him. The wind blast shoots a nearby trash bin clear off its foundations and hurtling directly at the owner. Whatever the man’s next words were going to be are muffled by the sound of him taking a full trash can straight to the mouth.

“Hot,” says Dirk, and John snorts.

They make it out of range of the arcade. The Mississippi runs alongside the town, its thunderous rush dwarfing the sounds of the city and the road the nearer they draw to it. As they’re walking away, Dirk hands the bunny to John.

“Here,” he says, holding out the tiny plush. “This is for you.”

“Thanks,” says John, sounding almost genuinely surprised, and then lifts it high above his head, reenacting the Lion King. “I’m going to call him Liv Tyler.”

“Isn’t Liv a girl’s name.”

“Open your mind, Dirk, jeez. We live in the twenty-fifth century.”

“Just saying.”

“Just saying what?”

“You already have a kid called Liv Tyler. Gonna give your son a complex, using the same name twice.”

“I take it back. His name is Dirk Strider The Killjoy, Who Hates Fun And Also Happiness.”

“Junior.”

“Junior,” John agrees, and tosses an arm around Dirk’s shoulders. “Thanks.”

They wander down to the river, where the sandy bank is littered with old beer bottles and plastic wrappers and the remnants of picnics past. In between the reeds, they find a hollow where the grass has been flattened and sit down in it. The evening slips into twilight peacefully, drawing long shadows on the grass, and the trees form black inkstains against the ochre sky. The river turns the color of fire, reflecting the horizon.

John says, “This is kind of, like, beautiful and shit, dude.”

Dirk says, “Did you know that the sky is that color because of air pollution?”

“Yeah, I did. Do you have any other slogans from Hot Topic to share with the class?”

“I don’t know what Hot Topic is.”

“That is honestly more tragic than, like, literally any other part of our lives.”

Dirk finds a piece of copper wire in the rubbish on the bank and starts twisting it into knots. John lies back on his hands, the bunny perched safely in his lap, and sighs with contentment.

“It was really cool when you wasted that guy,” Dirk says, for lack of anything better.

“Yeah? Thanks, man. Guy was being a dick.”

“Agreed. To be fair, we were trespassing.”

“Trespassing shrespassing,” John snorts. “This whole universe comes from some frog Jade found in her backyard. Everything in it is her property, technically, and so also my property, by genetics, technically.”

“You are the legal genius this generation needs. Somewhere, Terezi is weeping tears of joy.”

“You think I don’t know? I didn’t play the Ace Attorney series seventeen times for nothing.”

“Oh, man. I had no idea I was sitting next to an Ace Attorney master.”

“I know. It’s overwhelming. You can take a minute, if you need it.”

“You really are brains, brawn, and beauty of this relationship, Egbert,” Dirk deadpans. “Such a great burden for one man to bear.”

“Yeah, well, someone has to pull your weight, don’t they?”

Dirk bites down on a smile.

John leans over, close enough that Dirk’s breath fogs the lenses of his glasses, sealing a coat of white over those enormous, ridiculous, ocean blue eyes. John isn’t touching Dirk, but he’s not touching him in a way that almost feels like touching, in how obvious it is, in how it makes clear that they could be touching, if Dirk tried, if John tried, if either of them tried.

They’re breathing the same air, sharing the oxygen that lives in the half-inch of space between their lips, when Dirk says, “Wait,” and John pulls back, his expression all twisted up and fearful like he thinks he’s gotten everything about this wrong, and Dirk panics a little bit.

“It’s not you,” he says (shouts). “It’s just -- it’s not -- I don’t not want -- I don’t -- I do, but I can’t just -- and not --”

“Dirk --”

“I wish I wasn’t like this,” Dirk says (whispers). “I wish I wasn’t fucking like this.”

John’s expression clears. “It’s okay,” he says gently. “We don’t have to, uh. If you don’t . . .”

“I do want to.”

John tilts his head. “Um,” he says. “Okay.”

He wants an explanation, of course he does, and the thing is that Dirk wants to give it to him. He really, really wants to give it to him. But he can’t.

John seems to realize this, because he scoots back, putting a good foot of space between them. With John farther away, it’s easier for Dirk to focus. It’s easier for him to think.

He opens his mouth, and he waits for the words to come.

8. When he tries to kiss you, tell him about your ex.

“Do you ever feel,” starts Dirk, and stops.

“Maybe I just,” starts Dirk, and stops.

“Sometimes,” starts Dirk, and stops.

The river flows past, wide and deep and fast enough to kill you before you realized you were drowning. Dirk lived on a tower with an ocean beneath his bedroom window and on some days he’d sit on the ledge, his feet eighty meters from oblivion, his face against the wind, thinking about what would happen if he leaned forward and let go. Sometimes it would take hours to convince himself he’d even hit the water -- that he wouldn’t just drift up into the sky, like a piece of flypaper borne on the back of the wind, and find another world waiting for him beyond the ceiling of stars.

“I have a hole,” he says.

John smirks. Dirk ignores him.

“It’s a hole in -- in the thing that keeps you together. Whatever that is. The thing that Roxy and Jane and Jake all have. I don’t know what you call it. It’s the thing that keeps the parts of a person together. Take Roxy, for example. Roxy doesn’t have to worry about whether or not whatever she does is going to be in character for Roxy, because Roxy’s the one who’s doing it. She doesn’t have to worry about whether or not she’s acting like a person, because she already knows she’s a person, so whatever she does is something a person would do. Or Jane, she -- Jane doesn’t have to think about why she’s doing something. Jane just does things because she does them. She doesn’t worry about doing something because she’s manipulated herself into doing it, or because she’s manipulated someone else into manipulating her into doing it, or because an elaborate configuration of circumstances conspired to create the specific conditions under which she would do it. She just fucking does it. And Jake -- Jake just does shit, too, he doesn’t need a rhyme or reason for it, he’s just him. They’re all people. They’ve got personalities and ideas and thoughts and they’re people, regular people, and they’re not perfect people, sure, but they’re people. And each one of them is held together by something. They’ve got a set of things that they believe in, or things that they are, or things that they do, and those things are them. I don’t . . . have that.

“I’ve got a hole in the thing that holds me together. And sometimes, I’ll just be doing shit, and I’ll think about that hole. And I’ll think about how much of me is just shit I do because other people like it when I do it, or because I think doing it will make other people like me, or because I’ve tricked myself into thinking I like it when I really don’t, assuming that I’m capable of liking anything at all. And when I was dating Jake, that was all I could think about, all the time, even when it was good, assuming it was ever fucking good for either of us -- ‘what if this isn’t real, what if you’ve dreamed this all up because you think you’re supposed to have a boyfriend, what if you don’t like him at all, what if he doesn’t like you, what if you’ve made yourself the kind of person Jake English likes instead of whatever the fuck you actually are.’ And when I think about you, I get the same kind of worries, like -- what if I like you so much I started being the kind of person I thought you’d like? What if the only reason you like me is because I tried so hard to be liked? I’d say that I was worried you didn’t like the real me, but that isn’t it. I don’t think the ‘real me’ exists, really. That’s the problem.

“So I guess what I’m saying is I’m not a person. Sometimes I act like a person and talk like a person and think like a person, but I’ve got a hole in the thing that’s supposed to hold people together, and I can’t sew it back up again. I’m not who you think I am. I’m a copy of a person that’s really good at making other people think it’s real.”

The river runs by, and he wants to be like the water. He wants to keep going and going and going, without cause or expectation of pause, until he hits something bigger than he is, and gets absorbed into it. Dirk has never wanted anything so much as not to exist -- not to die, but not to exist. It’s a quieter thing.

John says, “You are really kind of dumb, dude.”

Dirk’s neck hurts from how fast his head snaps around. “What?”

“I mean,” John amends, “that sucks, but you’re not, like, the only person who ever felt like they were faking it. And no offense, but you couldn’t manipulate your way out of a paper bag. I don’t think I like you because you’ve pulled some nefarious supervillain kind of shit, you know?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dirk says, frustrated.

“No, yeah, I get what you meant. And I wanna make it obvious that, like, I don’t . . . not care? I do. It’s shitty, and it sounds like you could use some good counseling. But dude, I’m not looking for your hand in marriage, here. I just wanna eat chips and watch shitty movies and make out sometimes, and also maybe do more than that, if you’re into it. Or not, if you’re not into it. Cards on the table, I didn’t actually think I’d get this far.” John laughs a little. “The fact that you get so worked up about being like . . . the real you, or whatever? It makes me think I probably know exactly who you are after all.”

“Which is what?” Dirk can barely breathe.

“An idiot,” John says, with conviction. “But an idiot that I want to make out with, so I guess that makes me even more of an idiot, really.”

“Who’s more the fool,” Dirk quips, still dazed. “The fool, or the fool who wants to do butt stuff with him?”

“Oh my God, shut up. I’m never kissing you, actually. Ever.”

“That’s not true,” Dirk counters, with a feeble spark of confidence. “You said you wanted to make out with me.”

“That was before you talked about sex as ‘butt stuff.’ I’m taking it back. R.I.P., my libido. You had a good run, old buddy.”

“What’s wrong with butt stuff?”

“Stop saying that! Stop saying butt stuff!”

“Does it bother you?”

“Yes! I -- you are literally so aggravating.”

“You like it,” Dirk says, hazarding a guess.

“Asshole,” John grumbles. “You owe me, like, five makeouts for that alone.”

“I can do that,” Dirk agrees, now thoroughly bemused. Absolutely nothing in this conversation has gone the way he thought it would. He’s not unhappy about it.

“Five makeouts and my pick of movies.”

“Six makeouts, and I’ll drive the rest of the way.”

“Fine. But no more SBAHJ.”

“Shake on it,” Dirk says stoically, offering his hand.

John rolls his eyes and says, “Nerd,” before leaning in to kiss him.

This time, Dirk doesn’t pull away. The river runs by, and he doesn’t want to be anything but the creature living in Dirk Strider’s skin, anything but the person that John Egbert is kissing. It’s a new feeling. He likes it. He thinks he could live like this for a while.

#dirkjohn #dirk strider #john egbert #go wish lou a belated happy birthday! <3

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anneboleyns · 7 years ago

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also no one asked (ok well someone asked me like a week ago on curiouscat but) but here are my hopes n dreams for the downton abbey movie:

1) it will never happen but i want a romance storyline for thomas lol, the whole shebang: meet cute, random misunderstandings/obstacles, obstacle(s) is/are overcome, happy ending and a motherfucking KISS, honestly we have edith/bertie, mary/matthew, mary/henry, carson/hughes, andy/daisy, isobel/merton, anna/bates, all following this pattern and i WANT IT. i know it’s different with a movie and he can’t get the episodes-long arcs those couples got, but they could pull smth off. i think if it happened to be jimmy or phillip that would be nice but obviously not gonna happen as neither ed or charlie are included in the cast lol, and also like i said since for a movie it would have to be a condensed plot it’s probably for the best it won’t be jimmy bec that storyline would deserve much more nuance, sensitivity, care, and explanation than the limited screentime available in a single film could give

2) not to be a bitch but i want michael gregson to be alive sdfhdsiukhsdfiusdfkdsf like can you IMAGINE, jesus it would be so frustrating but so satisfying bec of course that would happen to edith lmaoooooooo also i want marigold to meet him??? idk i adore edith and bertie but i really liked michael. like picture edith and bertie and marigold sitting in their drawing room in their castle having tea and there’s a fire and it’s cute and cozy and then their butler comes in like “there’s a man downstairs m’lady, insisting on seeing you” and edith going “let him in Jives” (or whatever the butlers name is) and she looks at bertie and says “i wonder what on earth this is about” and the door opens and it’s MICHAEL GREGSON and we see edith’s shocked face and then it cuts to like, violet and isobel arguing about violet’s cook’s views on sheep farming or something

3) can tom branson be happy jesus christ like, his entire storyline has always revolved around other ppl, he always felt like a side character in his own plots ?????????? and then he’s just a vehicle for mary’s happiness or robert’s success or downton’s issues for mary/robert/tom to solve, so rarely is it ever about HIM and HIS happiness, even with bunting that was about riling robert up so it was something for him and cora to argue about and so daisy could get an education. i just want him to get some attention i love one (1) irish socialist (bonus points if the movie opens with him burning the Abbey down while holding bundles of marxist literature)

4) mary and barrow’s relationship in the movie should mirror robert and carson’s relationship throughout the series.... likewise george and barrow should mirror mary and carson’s...... like. carson isn’t butler anymore. and carson was In Strum Mental in the running of that household, not an episode goes by without robert or cora or mary or someone talking to carson, and barrow is butler now, his role, literally, needs to be bigger, and his relationship with the upstairs crew should be more clearly defined and featured. u can’t change my mind. also he’s so fucking adorable with george and sybbie. slightly related: i want thomas to mention sybil, anna said herself he knew her better than any of the downstairs crew and esp bec he’s close with sybil’s daughter i want that MENTIONED. thomas being Soft and Fond ??? sign me tf up

5) i can’t stand carson or robert and if they both make it thru the movie alive ima be pissed. they function in the narrative as ties to the pre-wwi world and it’s past time one or both of those misogynist fuckwads are dispensed with. like any time one of them is onscreen i’m just Die Die Die Die DIe. i HATE

6) i really want scenes of george, sybbie, and marigold together. they are the next generation of crawleys and i want them to kind of be together, the 3 of them, as a group, the way edith, mary, and sybil were in the first season. we had The Crawley Sisters as a group, now it’s time for The Crawley Cousins. i want all 3 of them to have their own personalities and teasing of each other the way mary edith sybil did. i know they’re only children and the movie only takes place 2 yrs after the s6 finale so they’re still very young, but it’s enough to lay the groundwork and plant suggestions abt how the 3 of them’s relationship will be. it would be adorable and satisyfing

7) now u all know i adore thomas and i want him to be happy and i really am thrilled he’s developed and isn’t just the one-dimensional antagonist he was in season 1, i’m happy he’s allowed himself to become a bit softer and has a found family that he finally feels at home with. WITH THAT SAID........... there is next to no tension among the downstairs characters anymore. we need someone to come in, rustle some feathers, have hideous hair ringlets..... if you’ve guessed Sarah O’Brien u’ve guessed right. now listen i know she’s awful but i think it could be great. imagine her waltzing in and basically being like s1 thomas, just snarking at everything. i bet she’d be all saccharine and fake like “so thomas you’re butler now that’s sooooo nice!!! and look at the bates’ baby, i’m soooo happy for you!!!” and no one believes her and she’s just sneaking around causing trouble. she’d probably get into it w baxter bec she’s so soft and nice, but when obrien tries to fuck w molesley or thomas baxter becomes this image:

i can also imagine obrien being really nasty with andy and daisy bec they’re so young and cute and obrien.... isn’t, and barrow gets fed up and comes in like “SO SARAH, YOU DROPPED ANY SOAP LATELY?” and she goes pale and shuts up after that idfghdfiuhdyf

8) i want richard carlisle to come back bec iain glen is a fox. no other reason

9) i want madeleine allsopp to come back bec after the shannara chronicles i miss poppy drayton’s face on my screen. no other reason

10) omg i almost forgot, i want baby bates to be friendly with the upstairs children and i want baby bates to love thomas just like the other kids do, it would be great bec bates and thomas still hate each other but they would both love that kid and it would be super cute. i’ve also always loved thomas’ weird lil relationship w anna, like they’re not FRIENDS but i feel like there’s potential between the 2 of them to be friends. thomas noticed first when anna was bruised after her attack and asked what happened, anna noticed when thomas was sick during the conversion therapy s5 plotline and kept asking him if he was ok and telling him to rest. them in the hallway together after sybil died. thomas saying “no anna’s not an enemy. but she’s incorruptible so we have nothing in common” to edna. so i feel since he’s so good with kids and they seem to love him, it would make sense for the bates baby to be the same, and it would alter the bates/anna/thomas dynamic in a possibly interesting and satisfying way

11) I Want Anna Bates To Be Happy And Laugh And Smile And Also Have Her Hair Down. I Am Tired Of Watching Anna Bates Suffer. If Fellowes Hurts Any More Hair On Her Head I Will Burn ITV Studios Down Just Test Me Julian.

#downton abbey #thomas barrow #anna bates #mary crawley #tom branson #tp #this is so fucking long no one will read this dsifhduskfhsd

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whysthatsofuckingfunnydickwad · 7 years ago

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( or on a more angsty note, doctor!richie having to face eddie who's just been rushed to the ER after a car accident or a severe asthma attack or something?? )

Twice The Man That I’ll Ever Be

They had returned to Derry. They had returned to Derry and Richie Tozier couldn’t remember why.For what?Clipboard in hand and his confusion pressing his mind Richie shook his head and his dark hair, streaked with thin lines of silver, fell around his aging face. He reached into his pocket and looked down at his phone to see a message from Stan and a message from Ben.

Stan The Man8:47Sharing a cab with Eddie. He’ll be home before 9.

Hunky Haystack8:26Auntie Bev, Maggie, and Francis passed out watching Moana - are the girls okay to spend the night?

Dr. Trashmouth 9:01Kiss all three of my girls goodnight for me.

Smiling, Richie put his phone back into the pocket of his white jacket and continued with his rounds. The only sounds coming from heart monitors and the soft television show that Mrs. Torrence always fell asleep to.Richie just couldn’t wait to be home, feeling as though he hadn’t really been home in weeks.“Dr. Tozier,” a young resident practically screamed while running into the ward off of the elevator. Her eyes were wide and her hands and purple scrubs were covered in blood. When Richie turned to look at her, he didn’t see a professional, he saw a scared young woman with eyes filled with remorse. “It’s your husband.”

“The cab driver is fine, he’s getting checked over now,” a nurse in pink scrubs said. Richie silently thanked her for her choice to pretend that this was a normal emergency, pretending she didn’t know Richie’s chest was aching and his breath was coming in erratic puffs. Pretending that the man missing his arm wasn’t the father of Richie’s children, pretending the man unconscious on the table, bleeding from a gash on his forehead and the cuts on his arms wasn’t Richie’s best friend. “Patient one,” she started, and Richie didn’t miss how she didn’t use his name, “has a severed right arm from just above the elbow and is suffering from respiratory distress.”Eddie left his inhaler in Derry. They had returned to Derry. They had returned to Derry and this is battery acid you slime. Why had they returned to Derry?“Are you with us, Dr. Tozier?” Taking a deep breath, Richie nodded and gave a weak confirmation. “Okay, patient two, Stanley Uris, has fainted from shock and has a possible concussion. They’re sending him for a scan now. His arms have suffered several deep lacerations as well.”Richie marched over to Eddie’s bedside and began making assessments. An air mask had been placed over Eddie’s mouth and his brown eyes were wild with fear and pain. His face was red with strain and blood and his breath was coming in short, uneven wheezes that sputtered in his chest. “I-I need salbutamol,” Richie stuttered in an almost whisper before raising his voice, “I need salbutamol and a spacer. Once he’s stable I want him on a pump, I want the pump before the IV, and, Jesus Christ, we need to stop the-” When Richie looked down at Eddie’s arm, burn marks surrounded the closed wound. “-bleeding." Richie pushed his glasses up the bridge of his narrow nose and looked up at the nurse. It’s cauterized.” Richie's gaze shifted to Eddie’s eyes and suddenly felt salt water flow down his pale cheeks. They returned to Derry. They returned to Derry and you know I…I…“We need to sedate him, Dr. T,” the nurse from before said gently. She was holding a large needle in her hand and had Eddie’s remaining arm pinned down. Richie nodded and stroked Eddie’s face, whispering adoring words to his husband before his eyes shut and he was unconscious.Looking up at the room around him, Richie felt as if the world was moving in slow motion; nurses looked dazed as they moved, voices sounded distant and soft. They returned to Derry and Beverly help me stop the bleeding.Before he knew it, Richie had a new inhaler in his hand for Eddie and his breathing was rendered stable.Richie stroked the pale skin of Eddie’s face, as soft and beautiful as ever, while they waited for someone to come and take the next steps in fixing Eddie up.Bev, give me your lighter. Ben hand me your belt.Richie, I don’t-NOW, BEVERLY.“The fire from the crash seems to have cauterized the wound,” the doctor said, nodding upon inspection. “Your husband is one lucky man.”Richie continued to stare down at Eddie, brows furrowed and tears of frustration in his eyes. Eddie has already been hooked up to a pump, a tube in his mouth and taped to his face. “Where is the arm?”The doctor stared at Richie for a moment, her eyes turned glassy, and then she walked away.As Eddie no longer needed a pulmonary specialist in the room, Richie was told this his husband would be in good hands from here on out.Richie looked in the room and watched as his coworkers removed the burnt flesh from Eddie’s arm and Richie, who has spent years of his life growing accustomed to all the sights and smells an emergency room could bring, upchucked his dinner into the nearest trash can for the first time in twenty years. “Richie,” one of his coworkers said, “Take a break, I know telling you to go home is useless, but take a break.” Tears cascading down Richie’s face, glasses pushed and tangled into his curly locks, with the taste of bile in his mouth the aging man nodded and started walking towards the stairs.

Kill IT!Bill! I’m coming for ya buddy.Richie? Richie?!This is battery acid you slime.Oh my god! Eddie!Ed’s? Ed’s!Richie.. you know I..

When Bill Denbrough and Mike Hanlon found Richie he was hunched over on his knees outside of his car, his hands were covering his ears and he was yelling through his sobs. Running up to the crumpled man, Bill noticed a cigarette that had fallen beside Richie, it was still burning and was almost to the filter.Mike bent down and tried to pry Richie’s hands from his ears, “Rich.”“NO! No, Mike,” Richie said reaching for Mike and gripping his shirt collar with white knuckles. “Mike, we killed it, it’s gone! IT’S GONE, MIKE! IT has to be gone!”Richie was hyperventilating and Mike brushed his hands through Richie’s scraggly curls and pulled the shorter man to his chest, trying to sooth his crying and to bring Richie down from this panic attack.There weren’t many times, even in the distant past, that Mike or even Bill had seen Richie like this. The people most qualified to handle Richie in this state were up stairs bleeding or missing an arm. “IT’s gone, Mike. Tell me we killed it.”Bill bent down and picked up Richie’s pack of cigarettes and his lighter, bringing a paper stick of tobacco to his lips and lighting it, puffing until the tip was a fiery red. Somehow, his nightmares were making a lot more sense.

When Richie brought Eddie home, it was two weeks later and Maggie and Francis had been spending almost every day and night with Beverly and Ben at the Hanscom house with their son Will and baby Arlene. The group decided that it would be best for the girls to be away from Eddie and Richie while they adjusted to Eddie’s lost arm, practised his physiotherapy, and learned to cope with how different Eddie’s life would be.It took three days for Eddie to say anything at all, and when he did he couldn’t get a sentence out before Richie burst into a blubbering mess on Eddie’s hospital room floor. I don’t regret it.Part of Richie believed that Eddie must’ve still been loopy when he said it, but some deeply buried part of Richie’s mind was telling him that Eddie was fully aware of what he said, that everything that’s happened would always lead back to Derry.The night Eddie was to return home, uncle Bill offered to take the girls for the night to give Eddie and Richie an extra evening to prepare for facing their girls. It was an added bonus that having the company of his nieces would be good for Stan in his recovery, which was significantly less drastic than Eddie’s (a blood transfusion and some OJ can go a long way).

When Eddie and Richie discussed Eddie coming home, Richie never predicted that Eddie would feel uncomfortable. Earlier in the week Mike and Beverly had taken the liberty of putting a two-step stepping stool in most rooms of the Tozier-Kaspbrak house and purchasing as many one-handed gadgets as they could think of. Looking at the pile of stuff the pair had purchased, Eddie’s stomach twisted and he walked towards the liquor cabinet to pour himself a drink. A strong one. In the time it took Richie to collect his thoughts, Eddie had downed two doubles and was pouring himself a glass of red-wine. “This doesn’t make me weak,” Eddie muttered into his glass, though Richie could tell his words were intended to hold some amount of venom at his family quote-unquote babying him, they held nothing but Eddie’s overflowing fear. “This doesn’t change me.”When Eddie put his glass down to look up at Richie there were tears in his bright brown eyes, a look of defeat on his face.“Of course it doesn’t,” Richie says, his tongue felt dry and heavy in his mouth, the same reaction as always to whenever he sees Eddie cry. “This doesn’t change how strong you are. How strong you’ve always been. We were - what, twelve when that Henry Bowers kid broke your arm and you laughed? You laughed, Ed’s. Like a straight up psycho. I was 14 and I couldn’t even watch you have an asthma attack without crying.” Richie had marched over to his husband and took his soft hand between Richie’s calloused ones, bringing the pale and delicate skin to his lips. Resting his forehead against Eddie’s, Richie watched as the shorter man continued to cry softly. “I know we don’t buy into the trope of being manly, but if we did, Ed’s, you’re twice the man that I’ll ever be. Even if you only have half as many arms.”Eddie giggled against a sob and Richie brought a hand up to wipe at his husbands freckled cheeks. “But what about the girls, Rich? We have two girls and I can’t even hold them at the same time anymore,” Eddie’s eyes screwed shut and he buried his face in Richie’s neck. “I won’t be able to hold my babies.”Richie let out a breathy laugh, “Are you kidding, Ed’s? Our girls love you. They adore you. You’re their father and nothing will ever change that. They’re strong kids, Ed’s, give them the opportunity and I don’t doubt that they’d have the combined strength to hang off of you like the monkeys they are.”Eddie pulled his face from Richie’s neck, his skin blotchy and stained with streaks of tears, the shorter man smiled, “You always know what to say, Rich.”Richie laughed and leaned forward to kiss his husband, “I’ve had a good 30 years of practise.”And he’d have a lot more time beyond that, too.

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pamphletstoinspire · 7 years ago

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Gospel Reading and Commentary for December 17th - Third Monday of Advent - Roman Catholic -Matthew: 1: 1 - 17

Ver. 1. The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.

Jerome, Ez, i. 5. Hier. Prolog. in Com. in Matt.: ‘The face of a man’ (in Ezekiel’s vision) signifies Matthew, who accordingly opens his Gospel with the human genealogy of Christ.

Rabanus: By this exordium he shews that it is the birth of Christ according to the flesh that he has undertaken to narrate.

Pseudo-Chrys., Hom. in Matt., Hom. i: Matthew wrote for the Jews, and in Hebrew [ed. note: It seems to be the general witness of antiquity that there was a Hebrew copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel, whether written before or after the Greek. This Hebrew copy was interpolated by the Ebionites.]; to them it was unnecessary to explain the divinity which they recognized; but necessary to unfold the mystery of the Incarnation. John wrote in Greek for the Gentiles who knew nothing of a Son of God. They required therefore to be told first, that the Son of God was God, then that this Deity was incarnate.

Rabanus: Though the genealogy occupies only a small part of the volume, he yet begins thus, “The book of the generation.” For it is the manner of the Hebrews to name their books from that with which they open; as Genesis.

Gloss. Ordinaria: The full expression would be “This is the book of the generation;” but this is a usual ellipse; e.g. “The vision of Isaiah,” for, ‘This is the vision.’

“Generation,” he says in the singular number, though there be many here given in succession, as it is for the sake of the one generation of Christ that the rest are here introduced.

Chrys., Hom. in Matt., Hom. ii: Or he therefore entitles it, “The book of the generation,” because this is the sum of the whole dispensation, the root of all its blessings; viz. [p. 10] that God become man; for this once effected, all other things followed of course.

Rabanus: He says, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ,” because he knew it was written, ‘The book of the generation of Adam.’ He begins thus then, that he may oppose book to book, the new Adam to the old Adam, for by the one were all things restored which had been corrupted by the other.

Jerome, Hier. Comm. in Matt., ch. 1: We read in Isaiah, “Who shall declare His generation?” [Isa 53:8] But it does not follow that the Evangelist contradicts the Prophet, or undertakes what he declares impossible; for Isaiah is speaking of the generation of the Divine nature; St. Matthew of the incarnation of the human.

Chrys.: And do not consider this genealogy a small thing to hear: for truly it is a marvellous thing that God should descend to be born of a woman, and to have as His ancestors David and Abraham.

Remigius: Though any affirm that the prophet (Isaiah) does speak of His human generation, we need not answer to his enquiry, “Who shall declare it?” - “No man;” but, “Very few;” because Matthew and Luke have.

Rabanus: By saying, “of Jesus Christ,” he expresses both the kingly and priestly office to be in Him, for Jesus, who first bore this name, was after Moses, the first who was leader of the children of Israel; and Aaron, anointed by the mystical ointment, was the first priest under the Law.

Hilary, Quaest. Nov. et Vet. Test. q. 40: What God conferred on those, who, by the anointing of oil were consecrated as kings or priests, this the Holy Spirit conferred on the Man Christ; adding moreover a purification. The Holy Spirit cleansed that which taken of the Virgin Mary was exalted into the Body of the Saviour, and this is that anointing of the Body of the Saviour’s flesh whence He was called Christ.

[ed. note: This passage is from a work commonly ascribed to Hilary the Deacon. The Fathers bear out its doctrine; e.g. “Since the flesh is not holy in itself, therefore it was sanctified even in Christ, the Word which dwelt in it, through the Holy Ghost, sanctifying His own Temple, and changing it into the energy of His own Nature. For therefore is Christ’s Body understood to be both holy and hallowing, as being made a Temple of the Word united to it bodily, as Paul says.” Cyril Alex. lib. v. in Joann. p. 992.

In like manner, Gregory of Nazianzus speaks of “The Father of the True and really Anointed (Christ), whom He has anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows, anointing the manhood with the Godhead, so as to make both one.” Orat. 5. fin]

Because the impious craft of the Jews denied that Jesus was born of the seed of David, he adds, “The son of David, the son of Abraham.” [p. 11]

Chrys.: But why would it not have been enough to name one of them, David alone, or Abraham alone? Because the promise had been made to both of Christ to be born of their seed. To Abraham, “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” [Gen 22:18] To David, “Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy seat.” [Ps 137:11]

He therefore calls Christ the Son of both, to shew that in Him was fulfilled the promise to both. Also because Christ was to have three dignities; King, Prophet, Priest; but Abraham was prophet and priest; priest, as God says to him in Genesis, “Take an heifer;” [Gen 15:9] Prophet, as the Lord said to Abimelech concerning him, “He is a prophet, and shall pray for thee.” [Gen 20:7] David was king and prophet, but not priest.

Thus He is expressly called the son of both, that the threefold dignity of His forefathers might be recognized by hereditary right in Christ.

Ambrose, in Luc. iii: He therefore names specially two authors of His birth - one who received the promise concerning the kindreds of the people, the other who obtained the oracle concerning the generation of Christ; and though he is later in order of succession is yet first named, inasmuch as it is greater to have received the promise concerning Christ than concerning the Church, which is through Christ; for greater is He who saves than that which is saved.

Jerome: The order of the names is inverted, but of necessity; for had he written Abraham first, and David afterwards, he would have to repeat Abraham again to preserve the series of the genealogy.

Pseudo-Chrys.: Another reason is that royal dignity is above natural, though Abraham was first in time, yet David is honour.

Gloss.: But since from this title it appears that the whole book is concerning Jesus Christ, it is necessary first to know what we must think concerning Him; for so shall be better explained what this book relates of Him.

Aug., de Haer, et 10: Cerinthus then and Ebion made Jesus Christ only man; Paul of Samosata, following them, asserted Christ not to have had an existence from eternity, but to have begun to be from His birth of the Virgin Mary; he also thought Him nothing more than man. This heresy was afterwards confirmed by Photinus.

Pseudo-Athan., Vigil. Tapsens. (Athan. Ed. Ben., vol ii, p. 646): The Apostle John, seeing long before by the Holy Spirit this man’s madness, rouses him from his deep sleep of error by the preaching of his voice, saying, “In the beginning was the [p. 12] Word.” [John 1:1]

He therefore, who in the beginning was with God, could not in this last time take the beginning of His being from man. He says further, (let Photinus hear his words,) “Father, glorify Me with that glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” [John 17:5]

Aug., de Haeres. 19: The error of Nestorius was, that he taught that a man only was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom the Word of God received not into Unity of person and inseparable fellowship; a doctrine which Catholic ears could not endure.

Cyril of Alexandria, Ep. i. ad Monachos Egypti.: Saith the Apostle of the Only-begotten, “Who being in the form of God, thought it no robbery to be equal with God.” [Phil 2:6]

Who then is this who is in the form of God? or how emptied He Himself, and humbled Himself to the likeness of man? If the abovementioned heretics dividing Christ into two parts, i.e. the Man and the Word, affirm that it was the Man that was emptied of glory, they must first shew what form and equality with the Father are understood to be, and did exist, which might suffer any manner of emptying.

But there is no creature, in its own proper nature, equal with the Father; how then can any creature be said to be emptied? or from what eminence to descend to become man? Or how can he be understood to have taken upon Him, as though He had not at first, the form of a servant?

But, they say, the Word being equal with the Father dwelt in Man born of a woman, and this is the emptying. I hear the Son truly saying to the Holy Apostles, “If any man love Me, he will keep My saying, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” [John 14:23]

Hear how He saith that He and the Father will dwell in them that love Him. Do you then suppose that we shall grant that He is there emptied of His glory, and has taken upon Him the form of a servant, when He makes His abode in the hearts of them that love Him? Or the Holy Spirit, does He fulfil an assumption of human flesh when He dwells in our hearts?

Isidore, Epist. lib. iv. 166: But not to mention all arguments, let us bring forward that one to which all arguments point, that, for one who was God to assume a lowly guise both has an obvious use, and is an adaptation and in nothing contradicts the course of nature. But for one who is man to speak things divine and supernatural is the highest presumption; for though a king may [p. 13] humble himself a common soldier may not take on him the state of an emperor. So, if He were God made man, all lowly things have place; but if mere man, high things have none.

Aug., de Haeres. 41: Sabellius they say was a disciple of Noctus, who taught that the same Christ was one and the same Father and Holy Spirit.

Pseudo-Athan., Vigil. Tapsens. (ibid. p. 644): The audaciousness of this most insane error I will curb by the authority of the heavenly testimonies, and demonstrate the distinct personality of the proper substance of the Son. I shall not produce things which are liable to be explained away as agreeable to the assumption of human nature; but shall offer such passages as all will allow to be decisive in proof of His divine nature.

In Genesis we find God saying, “Let Us make man in Our own Image.” By this plural number shewing, that there was some other person to whom He spoke. Had He been one, He would have been said to have made Him in His own Image, but there is another; and He is said to have made man in the Image of that other.

Gloss.: Other denied the reality of Christ’s human nature. Valentinus said that Christ sent from the Father, carried about a spiritual or celestial body, and took nothing of the Virgin, but passed through her as through a channel, taking nothing of her flesh. But we do not therefore believe Him to have been born of the Virgin, because by no other means He could have truly lived in the flesh, and appeared among men; but because it is so written in the Scripture, which if we believe not we cannot either be Christians, or be saved.

But even a body taken of spiritual, or ethereal, or clayey substance, had He willed to change into the true and very quality of human flesh, who will deny His power to do this? The Manichaeans said that the Lord Jesus Christ was a phantasm, and could not be born of the womb of a woman. But if the body of Christ was a phantasm, He was a deceiver, and if a deceiver, then He was not the truth. But Christ is the Truth; therefore His Body was not a phantasm.

Gloss.: And as the opening both of this Gospel, and of that according to Luke, manifestly proves Christ’s birth of a woman, and hence His real humanity, they reject the beginning of both these Gospels.

Aug., cont. Faust, ii, 1: Faustus affirms, that “the Gospel both begins, and begins to be so called, from the preaching of [p. 14] Christ, in which He no where affirms Himself to have been born of men. [ed. note: The Ebionites, as well as the Manichees, rejected the beginning of St. Matthew, vid. Epiphan. II arr. xxx. 23. And the Marcionites the beginning of St. Luke. Epiph. Haer. xlii, 11. But what exact portion they rejected is doubtful.]

Nay, so far is this genealogy from being part of the Gospel, that the writer does not venture so to entitle it; beginning, ‘The book of the generation,’ not ‘The book of the Gospel.’ Mark again, who cared not to write of the generation, but only of the preaching of the Son of God, which is properly The Gospel, begins thus accordingly, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” Thus then, all that we read in Matthew before the words, “Jesus began to preach the Gospel of the kingdom,” [Matt 4:!4] is a part of the genealogy, not of the Gospel. I therefore betook myself to Mark and John, with whose prefaces I had good reason to be satisfied, as they introduce neither David, nor Mary, nor Joseph.”

To which Augustine replies, What will he say then to the Apostle’s words, “Remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ of the seed of David according to my Gospel.” [2 Tim 2:8] But the Gospel of the Apostle Paul was likewise that of the other Apostles, and of all the faithful, as he says, “Whether I, or they, thus have we preached the Gospel.”

Aug., de Haer., 49: The Arians will not have the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be of one and the same substance, nature, and existence; but that the Son is a creature of the Father, and Holy Spirit a creature of a creature, i.e. created by the Son; further, they think that Christ took the flesh without a soul.

But John declares the Son to be not only God, but even of the same substance as the Father; [margin note: ref Id. de Trin. i. 6] for when he had said, “The Word was God,” he added, “all things were made by Him;” whence it is clear that He was not made by Whom all things were made; and if not made, then not created; and therefore of one substance with the Father, for all that is not of one substance with the Father is creature.

I know not what benefit the person of the Mediator has conferred upon us, if He redeemed not our better part, but took upon Him our flesh only, which without the soul cannot have consciousness of the benefit. But if Christ came to save that which had perished, [p. 15] the whole man had perished, and therefore needs a Saviour; Christ then in coming saves the whole man, taking on Him both soul and body.

How too do they answer innumerable objections from the Gospel Scriptures, in which the Lord speaks so many things manifestly contrary to them? as is that, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death,” [Matt 26:38] and, “I have power to lay down My life;” [John 10:18] and many more things of the like kind.

Should they say that He spoke thus in parables, we have at hand proofs from the Evangelists themselves, who in relating His actions, bear witness as to the reality of His body, so of His soul, by mention of passions which cannot be without a soul; as when they say, “Jesus wondered, was angry,” and others of like kind.

The Apollinarians also as the Arians affirmed that Christ had taken the human flesh without the soul [margin note: Id. de Haeres. 55]. But overthrown on this point by the weight of Scripture proof, they then said that part which is the rational soul of man was wanting to the soul of Christ, and that its place was filled by the Word itself.

But if it be so, then we must believe that the Word of God took on Him the nature of some brute with a human shape and appearance. But even concerning the nature of Christ’s body, there are some who have so far swerved from the right faith, as to say, that the flesh and the Word were of one and the same substance, most perversely insisting on that expression, The Word was made flesh; which they interpret that some portion of the Word was changed into flesh, not that He took to Him flesh of the flesh of the Virgin.

[ed. note: Some of the Apollinarians thus hold. vid. Nyssen. vol. ii, p. 694. A.Theodor. Eranist. p. 174. ed. Schulz. The same doctrine was afterwards ascribed to the Eutychians, vid. Vigil. Taps. in Eutych. iv. Theod. Haer. iv. 13]

Cyril, Ep. ad Joan. Antioch. tom. 6, Ep. 107: We account those persons mad who have suspected that so much as the shadow of change could take place in the nature of the Divine Word; it abides what it ever was, neither is nor can be changed.

Leo, Epist. 59, ad Const.: We do not speak of Christ as man in such a sort as to allow that any thing was wanting to Him, which it is certain pertains to human nature, whether soul, or rational mind, or flesh, and flesh such as was taken of the Woman, not gained by a change or conversion of the Word into flesh.

These three several errors, that thrice false heresy of the Apollinarists has brought forward. Eutyches also chose out this third dogma of Apollinaris, which denying [p. 16] the verity of the human body and soul, maintained that our Lord Jesus Christ was wholly and entirely of one nature, as though the Divine Word had changed itself into flesh and soul, and as though the conception, birth, growth, and such like, had been undergone by that Divine Essence, which was incapable of any such changes with the very and true flesh; for such as is the nature of the Only-begotten, such is the nature of the Father, and such is the nature of the Holy Ghost, both impassible and eternal.

But if to avoid being driven to the conclusion that the Godhead could feel suffering and death, he departs from the corruption of Apollinaris, and should still dare to affirm the nature of the incarnate Word, that is of the Word and the flesh, to be the same, he clearly falls into the insane notions of Manichaeus and Marcion, and believes that the Lord Jesus Christ did all His actions with a false appearance, that His body was not a human body, but a phantasm, which imposed on the eyes of the beholders.

But what Eutyches ventured [margin note: Id. Ep. 35 ad Julian] to pronounce as an episcopal decision, that in Christ before His incarnation were two natures, but after His incarnation only one, it behoved that he should have been urgently pressed to give the reason of this his belief.

I suppose that in using such language he supposed the soul which the Saviour took, to have had its abode in heaven before it was born of the Virgin Mary [ed. note, e: This opinion, which involves Nestorianism, the opposite error to Eutychianism or Monophysitism, is imputed to Eutyches by Flavian, ap. Leon. Ep. xxii. 3. Ephraem, Antioch, ap Phot. p. 805. Leont. de Sectis 7 init].

This Catholic hearts and ears endure not, for that the Lord when He came down from heaven shewed nothing of the condition of human nature, nor did He take on Him any soul that had existed before, nor any flesh that was not taken of the flesh of His mother. Thus what was justly condemned in Origen [ed. note, f: Vid. Origen in Joan. t. i. n. 37. t. xx. n. 17. Patriarch. ii. 6. n. 4. ix. Cels. i. 32, 33], must needs be rebuked in Eutyches, to wit, that our souls before they were placed in our bodies had actions not only wonderful but various.

Remig: These heresies therefore the Apostles overthrow in the opening of their Gospels, as Matthew in relating how He derived His descent from the kings of the Jews proves Him to have been truly man and to have had true flesh.

Likewise Luke, when he [p. 17] describes the priestly stock and person; Mark when he says, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God;” and John when he says, “In the beginning was the Word;” both shew Him to have been before all ages God, with God the Father.

2. Abraham began Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren.

Aug., de Con. Evan., ii, 1: Matthew, by beginning with Christ’s genealogy, shews that he has undertaken to relate Christ’s birth according to the flesh. But Luke, as rather describing Him as a Priest for the atonement of sin, gives Christ’s genealogy not in the beginning of his Gospel, but at His baptism, when John bare that testimony, “Lo, He that taketh away the sins of the world.” [John 1:29]

In the genealogy of Matthew is figured to us the taking on Him of our sins by the Lord Christ: in the genealogy of Luke, the taking away of our sins by the same; hence Matthew gives them in a descending, Luke in an ascending, series. But Matthew, describing Christ’s human generation in descending order, begins his enumeration with Abraham.

Ambrose, in Luc. cap. 3. lib. iii. n. 7,8: For Abraham was the first who deserved the witness of faith; “He believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” It behoved therefore that he should be set forth as the first in the line of descent, who was the first to deserve the promise of the restoration of the Church, “In thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” And it is again brought to a period in David, for that Jesus should be called his Son; hence to him is preserved the privilege, that from him should come the beginning of the Lord’s genealogy.

Chrys., Hom. iii, and Aug. City of God, 15, 15: Matthew then, desiring to preserve in memory the lineage of the Lord’s humanity through the succession of His parents, begins with Abraham, saying, “Abraham begat Isaac.” Why does he not mention Ismael, his first-born? And again, “Isaac began Jacob;” why does he not speak of Esau his first-born? Because through them he could not have come down to David.

Gloss.: Yet he names all the brethren of Judah with him in the lineage. Ismael and Esau had not remained in the worship of the true God; but the brethren of Judah were reckoned in God’s people. [p. 18]

Chrys., Hom. iii: Or, he names all the twelve Patriarchs that he may lower that pride which is drawn from a line of noble ancestry. For many of these were born of maidservants, and yet were Patriarchs and heads of tribes.

Gloss: But Judah is the only one mentioned by name, and that because the Lord was descended from him only. But in each of the Patriarchs we must note not their history only, but the allegorical and moral meaning to be drawn from them; allegory, in seeing whom each of the Fathers foreshewed; moral instruction in that through each one of the Fathers some virtue may be edified in us either through the signification of his name, or through his example.

[ed. note: Origen considered that there were three senses of Scripture, the literal or historical, the moral, and the mystical or spiritual, corresponding to the three parts of man, body, and soul, and spirit. Hom. in Lev. ii, 5, de Princio iv, p. 168. By the moral sense is meant, as the name implies, a practical application of the text; by mystical one which interprets it of the invisible and the spiritual world.]

Abraham is in many respects a figure of Christ, and chiefly in his name, which is interpreted the Father of many nations, and Christ is Father of many believers. Abraham moreover went out from his own kindred, and abode in a strange land; in like manner Christ, leaving the Jewish nation, went by His preachers throughout the Gentiles.

Pseudo-Chys.: Isaac is interpreted, ‘laughter,’ but the laughter of the saints is not the foolish convulsion of the lips, but the rational joy of the heart, which was the mystery of Christ. For as he was granted to his parents in their extreme age to their great joy, that it might be known that he was not the child of nature, but of grace, thus Christ also in this last time came of a Jewish mother to be the joy of the whole earth; the one of a virgin, the other of a woman past the age, both contrary to the expectation of nature.

Remig.: Jacob is interpreted, ‘supplanter,’ and it is said of Christ, “Thou hast cast down beneath Me them that rose up against Me.” [Ps 18:43]

Pseudo-Chrys.: Our Jacob in like manner begot the twelve Apostles in the Spirit, not in the flesh; in word, not in blood. Judah is interpreted, ‘confessor,’ for he was a type of Christ who was to be the confessor of His Father, as He spake, “I confess to Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”

Gloss: Morally; Abraham signifies to us the virtue of faith in Christ, as an example himself, as it [p. 19] is said of him, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto Him for righteousness.” Isaac may represent hope; for Isaac is interpreted, ‘laughter,’ as he was the joy of his parents; and hope is our joy, making us to hope for eternal blessings and to joy in them. “Abraham begat Isaac,” and faith begets hope. Jacob signifies, ‘love,’ for love embraces two lives; active in the love of our neighbour, contemplative in the love of God; the active is signified by Leah, the contemplative by Rachel. For Leah is interpreted ‘labouring,’ [ed. note, h: Leah full of labour, Jerom. de nomin. Hebr. from לאה, to weary one’s self.] for she is active in labour; Rachel ‘having seen the beginning,’ [ed. note, i: Rachel, in ewe, (as Gen. xxxi, 38, &c.) Jerom. ibid. who also gives the interpretation in the text, from ראה and חלל (החלה beginning.] because by the contemplative, the beginning, that is God, is seen. Jacob is born of two parents, as love is born of faith and hope; for what we believe, we both hope for and love.

3-6. And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; and Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; and Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; and Jesse begat David the king.

Gloss: Passing over the other sons of Jacob, the Evangelist follows the family of Judah, saying, “But Judah begat Phares and Zara of Thamar.”

Augustine, City of God, 15, 15: Neither was Judah himself first-born, nor of these two sons was either his first-born; he had already had three before them. So that he keeps in that line of descent, by which he shall arrive at David, and from him whither he purposed.

Jerome: It should be noted, that none of the holy women are taken into the Saviour’s genealogy, but rather such as Scripture has condemned, that He who came for sinners being born of sinners might so put away the sins of all; thus Ruth the Moabitess follows among the rest.

Ambrose, in Luc. 3: But Luke has avoided the mention of these, that he might set forth the series of the priestly race immaculate. But the plan of St. Matthew did not exclude the [p. 20] righteousness of natural reason; for when he wrote in his Gospel, that He who should take on Him the sins of all, was born in the flesh, was subject to wrongs and pain, he did not think it any detraction from His holiness that He did not refuse the further humiliation of a sinful parentage.

Nor, again, would it shame the Church to be gathered from among sinners, when the Lord Himself was born of sinners; and, lastly, that the benefits of redemption might have their beginning with His own forefathers: and that none might imagine that a stain in their blood was any hindrance to virtue, nor again any pride themselves insolently on nobility of birth.

Chrys.: Besides this, it shews that all are equally liable to sin; for here is Thamar accusing Judah of incest, and David begat Solomon with a woman with whom he had committed adultery. But if the Law was not fulfilled by these great ones, neither could it be by their less great posterity, and so all have sinned, and the presence of Christ is become necessary.

Ambrose: Observe that Matthew does not name both without a meaning; for though the object of his writing only required the mention of Phares, yet in the twins a mystery is signified; namely, the double life of the nations, one by the Law, the other by Faith.

Pseudo-Chys.: By Zarah is denoted the people of the Jews, which first appeared in the light of faith, coming out of the dark womb of the world, and was therefore marked with the scarlet thread of the circumciser, for all supposed that they were to be God’s people; but the Law was set before their face as it had been a wall or hedge. Thus the Jews were hindered by the Law, but in the times of Christ’s coming the hedge of the Law was broken down that was between Jews and Gentiles, as the Apostle speaks, “Breaking down the middle wall of partition;” [Eph 2:14] and thus it fell out that the Gentiles, who were signified by Phares, as soon as the Law was broken through by Christ’s commandments, first entered into the faith, and after followed the Jews.

Gloss: Judah begat Phares and Zarah before he went into Egypt, whither they both accompanied their father. In Egypt, “Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; Aram begat Aminadab; Aminadab begat Naasson;” and then Moses led them out of Egypt. Naasson was head of the tribe of Judah under Moses in the desert, where he begat Salmon; and this Salmon it was who, as prince of the tribe [p. 21] of Judah, entered the land of promise with Joshua.

Pseudo-Chrys.: But as we believe that the names of these Fathers were given for some special reason under the providence of God, it follows, but “Naasson begat Salmon.” This Salmon after his father’s death entered the promised land with Joshua as prince of the tribe of Judah. He took a wife of the name of Rahab. This Rahab is said to have been that Rahab the harlot of Jericho who entertained the spies of the children of Israel, and hid them safely. For Salmon being noble among the children of Israel, inasmuch as he was of the tribe of Judah, and son of the prince thereof, beheld Rahab so ennobled through her great faith, that she was worthy whom he should take to wife. Salmon is interpreted ‘receive a vessel,’ [ed. note: שלמון. Probably as if from מאן Ch. a vessel; perhaps נשא למאן] perhaps as if invited in God’s providence by his very name to receive Rahab a vessel of election.

Gloss: This Salmon in the promised land begat Booz of this Rahab. Booz begat Obeth of Ruth.

Pseudo-Chrys.: How Booz took to wife a Moabitess whose name was Ruth, I thought it needless to tell, seeing the Scripture concerning them is open to all. We need but say thus much, that Ruth married Booz for the reward of her faith, for that she had cast off the gods of her forefathers, and had chosen the living God. And Booz received her to wife for reward of his faith, that from such sanctified wedlock might be descended a kingly race.

Ambrose: But how did Ruth who was an alien marry a man that was a Jew? and wherefore in Christ’s genealogy did His Evangelist so much as mention a union, which in the eye of the law was bastard? Thus the Saviour’s birth of a parentage not admitted by the law appears to us monstrous, until we attend to that declaration of the Apostle, “The Law was not given for the righteous, but for the unrighteous.” [1 Tim 1:9]

For this woman who was an alien, a Moabitess, a nation with whom the Mosaic Law forbad all intermarriage, and shut them totally out of the Church, how did she enter into the Church, unless that she were holy and unstained in her life above the Law? Therefore she was exempt from this restriction of the Law, and deserved to be numbered in the Lord’s lineage, chosen from the kindred of her mind, not of her body.

To us she is a great example, for [p. 22] that in her was prefigured the entrance into the Lord’s Church of all of us who are gathered out of the Gentiles.

Jerome: Ruth the Moabitess fulfils the prophecy of Isaiah, “Send forth, O Lord, the Lamb that shall rule over the earth, out of the rock of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Sion.” [Isa 16:1]

Gloss: Jesse, the father of David, has two names, being more frequently called Isai. But the Prophet says, “There shall come a rod from the stem of Jesse;” [Isa 11:1] therefore to shew that this prophecy was fulfilled in Mary and Christ, the Evangelist puts Jesse.

Remig.: It is asked, why this epithet King is thus given by the holy Evangelist to David alone? Because he was the first king in the tribe of Judah. Christ Himself is Phares ‘the divider,’ as it is written, “Thou shalt divide the sheep from the goats;” [Matt 25:33] He is Zaram [ed. note, l: זרח; in Zech. 6:12, it is זרח], ‘the east,’ “Lo the man, the east is His name;” [Zech 6:12]; He is Esrom [ed. note, m: חצרון, as if from חץ, and so Jerome.], ‘an arrow,’ “He hath set me as a polished shaft.” [Isa 49:2]

Raban.: Or following another interpretation, according to the abundance of grace, and the width of love. He is Aram the chosen [ed. note, n: רם to be lofty, vid. infr. p.23], according to that, “Behold my Servant whom I have chosen.” [Isa 42:1] He is Aminadab, that is ‘willing,’ [ed. note, o: עמי נדב My people is willing, - Jerome; comp. עמך נדבת, Ps 110:3], in that He says, “I will freely sacrifice to Thee.” [Isa 54:6] Also He is Naasson [ed. note, p: נחשן, from נחש to augur from serpents, and so Jerome], i.e. ‘augury,’ as He knows the past, the present, and the future; or, ‘like a serpent,’ according to that, “Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.” [John 3:14] He is Salmon [ed. note, q: And so Jerome], i.e. ‘the feeleth,’ as He said, “I feel that power is gone forth out of me.” [Luke 8:46]

Gloss: Christ Himself espouses Rahab, i.e. the Gentile Church; for Rahab [ed. note, : רחב, to be wide or broad. (רהב might רעב hunger)] is interpreted either ‘hunger’ or ‘breadth’ or ‘might;’ for the Church of the Gentiles hungers and thirsts after righteousness, and converts philosophers and kings by the might of her doctrine. Ruth is interpreted either ‘seeing’ or ‘hastening’ [ed. note, s: And so Jerome, from ראה, and perhaps רוץ for the second.], and denotes the Church which in purity of heart sees God, and hastens to the prize of the heavenly call.

Remig. Christ is also Booz [ed. note, t: And so Jerome; perhaps בעז =بعز activity; here, as if בעז “with might.”], because He is strength, for, [p. 23] “When I am lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me.” [John 12:32] He is Obeth, ‘a servant’ [ed. note, u: עובד Obed, and so Jerome], for “the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” [Matt 20:28] He is Jesse, or ‘burnt’ [ed. note, x: As if from אש], for, “I am come to send fire on earth.” [Luke 12:49] He is David [ed. note, y: And so Jerome], ‘mighty in arm,’ for, “the Lord is great and powerful;” [Ps 24:8] ‘desirable,’ for, “He shall come, the Desire of all nations;” [Hag 2:7] ‘beautiful to behold,’ according to that, “Beautiful in form before the sons of men.” [Ps. 45:3]

Gloss: Let us now see what virtues they be which these fathers edify in us; for faith, hope, and charity are the foundation of all virtues; those that follow are like additions over and above them. Judah is interpreted ‘confession,’ of which there are two kinds, confession of faith, and of sin. If then, after we be endowed with the three forementioned virtues, we sin, confession not of faith only but of sin is needful for us.

Phares is interpreted, ‘division,’ Zamar ‘the east,’ and Thamar, ‘bitterness.’ [ed note, z: תמרורים bitterness, from מרר Jer. 31:15, Hos 12:15] Thus confession begets separation from vice, the rise of virtue, and the bitterness of repentance.

After Phares follows Esron, ‘an arrow,’ for when one is separated from vice and secular pursuits, he should become a dart wherewith to slay by preaching the vices of others.

Aram is interpreted ‘elect’ or ‘lofty’ [ed. note, a: Lofty from רום], for as soon as one is detached from this world, and profiteth for another, he must needs be held to be elect of God, famous amongst men, high in virtue.

Naasson is ‘augury,’ but this augury is of heaven, not of earth. It is that of which Joseph boasted when he said, “Ye have taken away the cup of my Lord, wherewith He is wont to divine.” [Gen 44:5] The cup is the divine Scripture wherein is the draught of wisdom; by this the wise man divines, since in it he sees things future, that is, heavenly things.

Next is Salomon [ed. note, b: שלם peace, and so Jerome], ‘that perceiveth,’ for he who studies divine Scripture becomes perceiving, that is, he discerns by the taste of reason, good from bad, sweet from bitter.

Next is Booz, that is, ‘brave,’ for who is well taught in Scripture becomes brave to endure all adversity.

Pseudo-Chrys.: This brave one is the son of Rahab, that is, of the Church; for Rahab signifies ‘breadth’ or ‘spread out,’ for because the [p. 24] Church of the Gentiles was called from all quarters of the earth, it is called, ‘breadth.’

Gloss: Then follows Obeth, i.e. ‘servitude,’ for which none is fit but he who is strong; and this servitude is begotten of Ruth, that is ‘haste,’ for it behoves a slave to be quick, not slow.

Pseudo-Chrys.: They who look to wealth and not temper, to beauty and not faith, and require in a wife such endowments as are required in harlots, will not beget sons obedient to their parents or to God, but rebellious to both; that their children may be punishment of their ungodly wedlock. Obeth begat Jesse, that is, ‘refreshment,’ for whoever is subject to God and his parents, begets such children as prove his ‘refreshment.’

Gloss: Or Jesse may be interpreted, ‘incense.’ [ed. note: See p. 29, note i] For if we serve God in love and fear, there will be a devotion in the heart, which in the heat and desire of the heart offers the sweetest incense to God. But when one is become a fit servant, and a sacrifice of incense to God, it follows that he becomes David (ie. ‘of a strong hand’), who fought mightily against his enemies, and made the Idumeans tributary.

In like manner ought he to subdue carnal men to God by teaching and example.

6-8. David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias; and Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; and Asa begat Josaphat.

The Evangelist has now finished the first fourteen generations, and is come to the second, which consists of royal personages, and therefore beginning with David, who was the first king in the tribe of Judah, he calls him “David the king.”

Aug., de Cons. Evan., ii, 4: Since in Matthew’s genealogy is shewed forth the taking on Him by Christ of our sins, therefore he descends from David to Solomon, in whose mother David had sinned. Luke ascends to David through Nathan, for through Nathan the prophet of God punished David’s sin; because Luke’s genealogy is to shew the putting away of our sins.

Aug., Lib. Retract., ii, 16: That [p. 25] is it, must be said, through a prophet of the same name, for it was not Nathan the son of David who reproved him, but a prophet of the same name.

Remig.: Let us enquire why Matthew does not mention Bathsheba by name as he does the other women. Because the others, though deserving of much blame, were yet commendable for many virtues. But Bathsheba was not only consenting in the adultery, but in the murder of her husband, hence her name is not introduced in the Lord’s genealogy.

Gloss: Besides, he does not name Bathsheba, that, by naming Urias, he may recall to memory that great wickedness which she was guilty of towards him.

Ambrose: But the holy David is the more excellent in this, that he confessed himself to be but man, and neglected not to wash out with the tears of repentance the sin of which he had been guilty, in so taking away Urias’ wife. Herein shewing us that none ought to trust in his own strength, for we have a mighty adversary whom we cannot overcome without God’s aid. And you will commonly observe very heavy sins befalling to the share of illustrious men, that they may not from their other excellent virtues be thought more than men, but that you may see that as men they yield to temptation.

Pseudo-Chrys.: Solomon is interpreted, ‘peace-maker,’ because having subdued all the nations round about, and made them tributary, he had a peaceful reign. Roboam in interpreted, ‘by a multitude of people,’ for multitude is the mother of sedition; for where many are joined in a crime, that is commonly unpunishable. But a limit in numbers is the mistress of good order.

8-11. And Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias; and Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias; and Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias; and Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon.

Jerome: In the fourth book of Kings we read, that Ochozias was the son of Joram. On his death, Josabeth, sister of [p. 26] Ochozias and daughter of Joram, took Joash, her brother’s son, and preserved him from the slaughter of the royal seed by Athalias. To Joash succeeded his son Amasias; after him his son Azarias, who is called Ozias; after him his son Joatham. Thus you see according to historical truth there were three intervening kings, who are omitted by the Evangelist. Joram, moveover, begot not Ozias, but Ochozias, and the rest as we have related.

But because it was the purpose of the Evangelist to make each of the three periods consist of fourteen generations, and because Joram had connected himself with Jezebel’s most impious race, therefore his posterity to the third generation is omitted in tracing the lineage of the holy birth.

Hilary: Thus the stain of the Gentile alliance being purged, the royal race is again taken up in the fourth following generation.

Pseudo-Chrys.: What the Holy Spirit testified through the Prophet, saying, that He would cut off every male from the house of Ahab, and Jezebel, that Jehu the son of Nausi fulfilled, and received the promise that his children to the fourth generation should sit on the throne of Israel. As great a blessing then as was given upon the house of Ahab, so great a curse was given on the house of Joram, because of the wicked daughter of Ahab and Jazebel, that his sons to the fourth generation should be cut out of the number of the Kings.

Thus his sin descended on his posterity as it had been written, “I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” [Ex 20:5] Thus see how dangerous it is to marry with the seed of the ungodly.

Aug., Hilsr. Amast. V. et N. Test. q. 85: Or, Ochozias, Joash, and Amasias, were excluded from the number, because their wickedness was continuous and without interval. For Solomon was suffered to hold the kingdom for his father’s deserts, Roboam for his son’s.

But these three doing evil successively were excluded. This then is an example how a race is cut off when wickedness is shewn therein in perpetual succession.

“And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias.”

Gloss: This Ezekias was he to whom, when he had no children, it was said, “Set thy house in order, for thou shalt die.” [Isa 38:1] He wept, not from desire of longer life, for he knew that Solomon had thereby pleased God, that he had not [p. 27] asked length of days; but he wept, for he feared that God’s promise should not be fulfilled, when himself, being in the line of David of whom Christ should come, was without children.

“And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias.”

Pseudo-Chrys.: But the order in the Book of Kings is different [2 Ki 23], thus namely; Josias begot Eliakim, afterwards called Joakim; Joakim begot Jechonias. But Joakim is not reckoned among the Kings in the genealogy, because God’s people had not set him on the throne, but Pharoah by his might. For if it were just that only for their intermixture with the race of Ahab, three kings should be shut out of the number in the genealogy, was it not just that Joakim should be likewise shut out, whom Pharaoh had set up as king by hostile force? And thus Jechonias, who is the son of Joakim, and the grandson of Josiah, is reckoned among the kings as the son of Josiah, in place of his father who is omitted.

Jerome: Otherwise, we may consider the first Jeconias to be the same as Joakim, and the second to be the son not the father, the one being spelt with k and m, the second by ch and n. This distinction has been confounded both by Greeks and Latins, by the fault of writers and the lapse of time.

Ambrose, in Luc., cap. 2: That there were two kings of the name of Joakim, is clear from the Book of Kings. “And Joakim slept with his fathers, and Joachim his son reigned in his stead.” [2 Ki 24:6] This son is the same whom Jeremiah calls Jeconias. And rightly did St. Matthew purpose to differ from the Prophet, because he sought to shew therein the great abundance of the Lord’s mercies. For the Lord did not seek among men nobility of race, but suitably chose to be born of captives and of sinners, as He came to preach remission of sin to the captives. The Evangelist therefore did not conceal either of these; but rather shewed them both, inasmuch as both were called Jeconias.

Remig.: But it may be asked, why the Evangelist says they were born in the carrying away, when they were born before the carrying away. He says this because they were born for this purpose, that they should be led captive, from the dominion of the whole nation, for their own and others’ sins. And because God foreknew that they were [p. 28] to be carried away captive, therefore he says, they were born in the carrying away to Babylon.

But of those whom the holy Evangelist places together in the Lord’s genealogy, it should be known, that they were alike in good or ill fame. Judas and his brethren were notable for good, in like manner Phares and Zara, Jechonias and his brethren, were notable for evil.

Gloss: Mystically, David is Christ, who overcame Golias, that is, the Devil. Urias, i.e. God is my light, is the Devil who says, “I will be like the Highest.” [Isa 14:14] To Him the Church was married, when Christ on the Throne of the majesty of His Father loved her, and having made her beautiful, united her to Himself in wedlock.

Or Urias is the Jewish nation who through the Law boasted of their light. From them Christ took away the Law, having taught it to speak of Himself.

Bersabee is ‘the well of satiety,’ that is, the abundance of spiritual grace.

Remig.: Bersabee is interpreted, ‘the seventh well,’ or, ‘the well of the oath’ [ed. note, c: באר שבע the well of the oath, the origin of the name is given, Gen 21:28-31. “satiety” as if from שבע], by which is signified the grant of baptism, in which is given the gift of the sevenfold Spirit, and the oath against the Devil is made.

Christ is also Solomon, i.e. the peaceful, according to that of the Apostle, “He is our peace.” [Eph 2:14]

Roboam [ed. note, d: So Jerome, from רחב; or the foolishness of the people, Ecclus. 47. 23] is, ‘the breadth of the people,’ according to that, “Many shall come from the East and from the West.”

Raban.: Or; ‘the might of the people,’ because he quickly converts the people to the faith.

Remig.: He is also Abias, that is, ‘the Lord Father,’ according to that, “One is your Father who is in heaven.” [Matt 23:9] And again, “Ye call me Master and Lord.” [John 13:13]

He is also Asa [ed. note, e: So Jerome; as if from נשה=נסה; but אסא means a physician], that is, ‘lifting up,’ according to that, “Who taketh away the sins of the world.” [John 1:29]

He is also Josaphat, that is, ‘judging,’ for, “The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son.” [John 5:22]

He is also Joram, that is, ‘lofty,’ according to that, “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven.” [John 3:13]

He is also Ozias, that is, ‘the Lord’s strength,’ for “The Lord is my strength and my praise.” [Ps 118:14]

He is also Jotham [ed. note, f: And so Jerome, from תמם], that is, ‘completed,’ or ‘perfected,’ for “Christ is the end of [p. 29] the Law.” [Rom 10:4]

He is also Ahaz [ed. note, g: אחז to seize or hold, and so Jerome.], that is, ‘turning,’ according to that, “Be ye turned to Me.” [Zech 1:3]

Raban.: Or, ‘embracing,’ because, “None knoweth the Father but the Son.” [Matt 11:27]

Remig.: His is also Ezekias, that is, ‘the strong Lord,’ or, ‘the Lord shall comfort;’ according to that, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” [John 16:33]

He is also Manasses, that is, ‘forgetful,’ or, ‘forgotten,’ according to that, “I will not remember your sins any more.” [Ezek 28]

He is also Aaron [ed note, h: A strong mountain; Jerome. It has no Hebrew root.], that is, ‘faithful,’ according to that, “The Lord is faithful in all His words.” [Ps 145:17]

He is also Josias, that is, ‘the incense of the Lord,’ [ed. note, i: A sacrifice to the Lord, - Jerome; from אשה fire in the ritual service, or incense, Lev 24:7], as, “And being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly.” [Luke 22:44]

Raban.: And that incense signifies prayer, the Psalmist witnesses, saying, “Let my prayer come up as incense before Thee.” [Ps 141:2] Or, ‘The salvation of the Lord,’ according to that, “My salvation is for ever.” [Isa 55]

Remig.: He is Jechonias [ed. note, k: יכניהו “the Lord establisheth,” also “prepareth.”], that is, ‘preparing,’ or ‘the Lord’s preparation,’ according to that, “If I shall depart, I will also prepare a place for you.” [John 14:3]

Gloss: Morally; After David follows Solomon, which is interpreted, ‘peaceful.’ For one then becomes peaceful, when unlawful motions being composed, and being as it were already set in the everlasting rest, he serves God, and turns others to Him.

Then follows Roboam, that is, ‘the breadth of the people.’ For when there is no longer any thing to overcome within himself, it behoves a man to look abroad to others, and to draw with him the people of God to heavenly things.

Next is Abias, that is, ‘the Lord Father,’ for these things premised, He may proclaim Himself the Son of God, and then He will be Asa, that is, ‘raising up,’ and will ascend to His Father from virtue to virtue: and He will become Josaphat, that is, ‘judging,’ for He will judge others, and will be judged of none.

Thus he becomes Joram, that is, ‘lofty,’ as it were dwelling on high; and is made Oziah, that is, ‘the strong One of the Lord,’ as attributing all his strength to God, and persevering in his path.

Then follows Jotham, that is, ‘perfect,’ for he groweth daily for greater perfection. And thus he becomes Ahaz, that is, ‘embracing,’ for by obedience knowledge is increased according [p. 30] to that, “They have proclaimed the worship of the Lord, and have understood His doings.”

Then follows Ezekias, that is, ‘the Lord is strong,’ because he understands that God is strong, and so turning to His love, he becomes Manassas, ‘forgetful,’ because he gives up as forgotten all worldly things; and is made thereby Amon, that is, ‘faithful,’ for whoso despises all temporal things, defrauds no man of his goods. Thus he is made Josias, that is, ‘in certain hope of the Lord’s salvation;’ for Josias in intepreted ‘the salvation of the Lord.’

12-15. And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel; and Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor; and Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; and Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob.

Pseudo-Chrys.: After the carrying away, he sets Jeconiah again, as now become a private person.

Ambrose: Of whom Jeremiah speaks. “Write this man dethroned; for there shall not spring of his seed one sitting on the throne of David.” [Jer 22:30]

How is this said of the Prophet, that none of the seed of Jeconias should reign? For if Christ reigned, and Christ was of the seed of Jeconiah, then has the Prophet spoken falsely. But it is not there declared that there shall be none of the seed of Jeconiah, and so Christ is of his seed; and that Christ did reign, is not in contradiction to the prophecy; for He did not reign with worldly honours, as He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” [John 18:36]

Pseudo-Chrys.: Concerning Salathiel [ed. note, l: This Gloss. from Pseudo-Chrys. is not found in Nicolai’s edition.], we have read nothing either good or bad, but we suppose him to have been a holy man, and in the captivity to have constantly besought God in behalf of afflicted Israel, and that hence he was named, Salathiel, ‘the petition of God.’ [ed. note, m: שאלתי אל “I have asked of God.”]

“Salathiel begot Zorobabel,” which is interpreted, ‘flowing postponed,’ or, ‘of the confusion,’ or here, ‘the doctor of Babylon.’ [ed. note, n (p.31): The teacher of Babylon; Jerome; perhaps from זר “crown;” זרב Ch. flowed, poured away,” Syr. “contracted, bound;” hence another of the meanings in the text.]

I have read, but know not [p. 31] whether it be true, that both the priestly line and the royal line were united in Zorobabel; and that it was through him that the children of Israel returned into their own country. For that in a disputation held between three, of whom Zorobabel was one, each defending his own opinion, Zorobabel’s sentence, that Truth was the strongest thing, prevailed; and that for this Darius granted him that the children of Israel should return to their country; and therefore after this providence of God, he was rightly called Zorobabel, ‘the doctor of Babylon.’ For what doctrine greater than to shew that Truth is the mistress of all things?

Gloss: But this seems to contradict the genealogy which is read in Chronicles. For there it is said, that Jeconias begot Salathiel and Phadaias, and Phadaias begot Zorobabel, and Zorobabel Mosollah, Ananias, and Solomith their sister. [1 Chron 3:17] But we know that many parts of the Chronicles have been corrupted by time, and error of transcribers. Hence come many and controverted questions of genealogies which the Apostle bids us avoid. [1 Tim 1:4]

Or it may be said, that Salathiel and Phadaias are the same man under two different names. Or that Salathiel and Phadaias were brothers, and both had sons of the same name, and that the writer of the history followed the genealogy of Zorobabel, the son of Salathiel. From Abiud down to Joseph, no history is found in the Chronicles; but we read that the Hebrews had many other annals, which were called the Words of the Days, of which much was burned by Herod, who was a foreigner, in order to confound the descent of the royal line.

And perhaps Joseph had read in them the names of his ancestors, or knew them from some other source. And thus the Evangelist could learn the succession of this genealogy. It should be noted, that the first Jeconiah is called the resurrection of the Lord, the second, the preparation of the Lord. Both are very applicable to the Lord Christ, who declares, “I am the resurrection, and the life;” [John 11:25] and, “I go to prepare a place for you.” [John 14:2]

Salathiel, i.e. ‘the Lord is my petition,’ is suitable to Him who said, “Holy Father, keep them whom Thou hast given Me.” [John 17:11]

Remig.: He is also Zorobabel, [p. 32] that is, ‘the master of confusion,’ according to that, “Your Master eateth with publicans and sinners.” [Matt 9:11]

He is Abiud, that is, ‘He is my Father,’ according to that, “I and the Father are One.” [John 10:30]

He is also Eliacim [ed. note: So Jerome, אל יקים “God will raise up”], that is, ‘God the Reviver,’ according to that, “I will revive him again in the last day.” [John 6:54]

He is also Azor, that is, ‘aided,’ according of that, “He who sent Me is with Me.” [John 8:29]

He is also Sadoch, that is, ‘the just,’, or, ‘the justified,’ according to that, “He was delivered, the just for the unjust.” [1 Pet 3:18]

He is also Achim, that is, ‘my brother is He,’ according to that, “Whoso doeth the will of My Father, he is My brother.” [Matt 12:50]

He is also Eliud, that is, ‘He is my God,’ according to that, “My Lord, and my God.” [John 20:28]

Gloss: He is also Eleazar, i.e. ‘God is my helper,’ as in the seventeenth Psalm, “My God, my helper.”

He is also Mathan, that is, ‘giving,’ or, ‘given,’ for, “He gave gifts for men;” [Eph 4:8] and, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son.” [John 3:16]

Remig.: He is also Jacob, ‘that supplanteth,’ for not only hath He supplanted the Devil, but hath given His power to His faithful people; as, “Behold I have given you power to tread upon serpents.” [Luke 10:19]

He is also Joseph, that is, ‘adding,’ according to that, “I came that they might have life, and that they might have it abundantly.”

Raban.: But let us see what moral signification these names contain. After Jeconias, which means ‘the preparation of the Lord,’ follows Salathiel, i.e. ‘God is my petition,’ for he who is rightly prepared, prays not but of God.

Again, he becomes Zorobabel, ‘the master of Babylon,’ that is, of the men of the earth, whom he makes to know concerning God, that He is their Father, which is signified in Abiud.

Then that people rise again from their vices, whence follows Eliacim, ‘the resurrection;’ and thence rise to good works, which is Azor, and becomes Sadoch, i.e. ‘righteous;’ and then they are taught the love of their neighbour. He is my brother, which is signified in Achim; and through love to God he says of Him, ‘My God,’ which Eliud signifies.

Then follows Eleazar, i.e. ‘God is my helper;’ he recognizes God as his helper. But whereto he tends is shewn in Matthan, which is interpreted ‘gift,’ or ‘giving;’ for he looks to God as his benefactor; and as he wrestled with and overcame his vices [p. 33] in the beginning, so he does in the end of life, which belongs to Jacob, and thus he reaches Joseph, that is, ‘The increase of virtues.’

16. And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Gloss: In the last place, after all the patriarchs, he sets down Joseph the husband of Mary, for whose sake all the rest are introduced, saying, “But Jacob begot Joseph.”

Jerome: This passage is objected to us by the Emperor Julian in his Discrepancy of the Evangelists. Matthew calls Joseph the son of Jacob, Luke makes him the son of Heli. He did not know the Scripture manner, one was his father by nature, the other by law. For we know that God commanded by Moses, that if a brother or near kinsman died without children, another should take his wife, to raise up seed to his brother or kinsman. [Deut 25]

But of this matter Africanus the chronologist [ed. note: In his Epist. ad Aristidem, vid. Reuth Reliqu. vol. ii, p. 114. Africanus], and Eusebius of Caesarea, have disputed more fully.

Euseb., Hist. Eccles. i, 7: For Matthan and Melchi at different periods had each a son by one and the same wife Jesca. Matthan, who traced through Solomon, first had her, and died leaving one son, Jacob by name. As the Law forbade not a widow, either dismissed from her husband, or after the death of her husband, to be married to another, so Melchi, who traced through Matthan, being of the same tribe but of another race, took this widow to his wife, and begat Heli his son.

Thus shall we find Jacob and Heli, though of a different race, yet by the same mother, to have been brethren. One of whom, namely Jacob, after Heli his brother was deceased without issue, married his wife, and begat on her the third, Joseph, by nature indeed and reason his own son. Whereupon also it is written, “And Jacob begat Joseph.” But by the Law, he was the son of Heli; for Jacob, being his brother, raised up seed to him.

Thus the genealogy, both as recited by Matthew, and by Luke, stands right and true; Matthew saying, “And Jacob begot Joseph;” Luke saying, “Which was the son, as it was supposed, (for he adds this withal,) of Joseph, [p. 34] which was the son of Heli, which was the son of Melchi.”

Nor could he have more significantly or properly expressed that way of generation according to the Law, which was made by a certain adoption that had respect to the dead, carefully leaving out the word “begetting” throughout even to the end.

Augustine, de Cons. Evan., ii, 2: He is more properly called his son, by whom he was adopted, than had he been said to have been begotten of him of whose flesh he was not born. Wherefore Matthew, in saying, “Abraham begot Isaac,” and continuing the same phrase throughout down to “Jacob begot Joseph,” sufficiently declares that he gives the father according to the order of nature, so as that we must hold Joseph to have been begotten, not adopted, by Jacob. Though even if Luke had used the word, “begotten,” we need not have thought it any serious objection; for it is not absurd to say of an adopted son that he is begotten, not after the flesh, but by affection.

Euseb.: Neither does this lack good authority; nor has it been suddenly devised by us for this purpose. For the kinsmen of our Saviour according to the flesh, either out of desire to shew forth this their so great nobility of stock, or simply for the truth’s sake, have delivered it unto us.

Aug., de Cons. Evan., ii, 4: And suitably does Luke, who relates Christ’s ancestry not in the opening of his Gospel, but at his baptism, follow the line of adoption, as thus more clearly pointing Him out as the Priest that should make atonement for sin. For by adoption we are made the sons of God, by believing in the Son of God. But by the descent according to the flesh which Matthew follows, we rather see that the Son of God was for us made man.

Luke sufficiently shews that he called Joseph the son of Heli, because he was adopted by Heli, by his calling Adam the son of God, which he was by grace, as he was set in Paradise, though he lost it afterwards by sinning.

Chrys., Hom. 4: Having gone through all the ancestry, and ended in Joseph, he adds, “The husband of Mary,” thereby declaring that is was for her sake that he was included in the genealogy.

Jerome: When you hear this word, “husband,” do not straight bethink you of wedlock, but remember the Scripture manner, which calls persons only betrothed husband and wife.

Gennadius, de Eccles. Dog., 2: The Son of God was born of human flesh, that is of Mary, and not by man after the way of nature, as Ebion says; and accordingly it is significantly [p. 35] added, “Of her Jesus was born.”

Aug., De Haeres, ii: This is said against Valentinus, who taught that Christ took nothing of the Virgin Mary, but passed through her as through a channel or pipe.

Wherefore it pleased Him to take flesh of the womb of a woman, is known in His own secret counsels; whether that He might confer honour on both sexes alike, by taking the form of a man, and being born of a woman, or from some other reason which I would not hastily pronounce on.

Hilary, Quaest. Nov. et Vet. Test. q. 49: What God conveyed by the anointing of oil to those who were anointed to be kings, this the Holy Spirit conveyed upon the man Christ, adding thereto the expiation; wherefore when born He was called Christ; and thus it proceeds, “who is called Christ.”

Aug., de Cons. Evan., ii, 1: It was not lawful that he should think to separate himself from Mary for this, that she brought forth Christ as yet a Virgin. And herein may the faithful gather, that if they be married, and preserve strict continence on both sides, yet may their wedlock hold with union of love only, without carnal; for here they see that it is possible that a son be born without carnal embrace.

Aug., de Nupt. et Concup., i, 11: In Christ’s parents was accomplished every good benefit of marriage, fidelity, progeny, and a sacrament. The progeny we see in the Lord Himself; fidelity, for there was no adultery; sacrament, for there was no divorce.

Jerome: The attentive reader may ask, Seeing Joseph was not the father of the Lord and Saviour, how does his genealogy traced down to him in order pertain to the Lord? We will answer, first, that it is not the practice of Scripture to follow the female line in its genealogies; secondly, that Joseph and Mary were of the same tribe, and that he was thence compelled to take her to wife as a kinsman, and they were enrolled together at Bethlehem, as being come of one stock.

Augustine: Also, the line of descent ought to be brought down to Joseph, that in wedlock no wron

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