tim and bernard who break up and it's nothing big, no one cheated or anything. it's just their lifestyles didn't work out well together. tim cannot give up vigilantism currently and bear cannot handle the level of danger tim puts himself in. and on the other hand, tim cannot handle the fact that bear chooses to run into danger as an emt bc he already worries about everything but now he has to worry if he'll find his boyfriend convulsing from fear gas in a random alley but also bear who felt the life drain out of darla cannot stand the thought of not helping people and runs headfirst into dangerous situation after dangerous situation hoping that every person he saves can somehow make up for the fact that he could not save darla.
(he very pointedly does not think about the fact that there was nothing he could do because if he thinks about that, he'll spiral until they have to lock him in arkham too)
and so they break up but they were tim & bernard in high school and when they started dating they balanced out the worst of each other and they became tim&bernard. and everyone who knows them, knows that they're better together but they cant be together, they refuse actually because they cannot lose another person to the violence of gotham and by the time they figure out that they cant work together as long as the other is an emt or vigilante, it's too late for both them. they've already left too many pieces of themselves in each other.
tim still knows what bear means when he says "tim" in that exasperated voice. tim still goes boneless when he hears bear say "baby" in that firm tone. bear can still read tim like a book. he still knows the right way to massage tim's neck so that tim can go to sleep. everyone at the first responders gala knows not to bother ceo drake-wayne and senior emt dowd when they're talking.
(and if they're standing a little too close to each other than what is normal, who are they to judge? everyone knows that dowd and drake-wayne have history)
and if everyone on the night shift has caught red robin with his head tucked into the crook of emt dowd's neck as emt dowd runs a soothing hand up and down the vigilante's back, well then, they just quietly back away.
(after all, dowd's one of like, five, emts that can get the bats to receive medical treatment so if turning a blind eye to whatever the fuck they have going on is what allows them to give back to their heroes, then the night shift will do it every time)
and of course, tim and bear are practical people. they loved (love) each other sure, but when your lives are fundamentally incompatible, well, you cant get too stuck on the what-ifs, that's for sure. and so they do find love with other people and yeah, maybe it's not what they expected love to be when they first fell in love with each other. it's not the bubbly, stomach-swoopy, cant stop grinning, feeling that permeated tim&bernard's early days or the i Know you/you Know me that was their middle or the quiet despair that was their end but it is contentment. and in a life with as many losses as theirs, contentment is something they hold dearly
and they're happy! truly! but sometimes, at galas when they're making each other snort champagne out their noses or in darkened alleyways when their clothes are both stained with blood or at rallies for stricter gun regulations in gotham where they both sit too close to each other, fingers enclosed around each other in a death grip, when the presenters inevitably bring up grieves
(worst school shooting in gotham in decades, there's blood on their hands and blood in their mouths and darla is dead in between both of them and there is a chasm so wide that they are screaming to get their voices across and she will always be dead and maybe this had always been the problem that she is dead and there is no coming back from that and that there is blood on their hands and blood in their mouth and blood on their han-)
but sometimes, most especially on opposite sides of the street, as life pulls them in different directions, just sometimes, they see each other and just for a second, nothing too long, the flap of a hummingbird's wings, the time it takes to blink, an electron's orbital, they look at each other and for the briefest moment, blue on brown, a barely noticeable stutter in their steps, the space between heartbeats, because this is all they will give themselves because they do not dwell on what-ifs or what-could-have-beens, or what-should-have-beens, or delusions of a softer world, their eyes meet and they think to themselves, god, in another life, i would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with him.
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i saw deadpool and wolverine yesterday and i have never felt more like walt disney; ie, him seeing to kill a mockingbird and lamenting he will never make a movie like that, because he had, by that point, already built an empire around children's entertainment
bc i have spent so much time learning to draw girls and horses, that i- a gay man, having seen content that so connects with a deeper part of myself (being a gay man, angry), am frustrated i can't draw a man to save my life LMAO
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Andrew and Neil on the amazing race
They were signed up the same season that they start playing on the same team to 'rehab their rivalry' to the public. Kevin saying it's a bad idea is 90% of why they agreed to it.
(Maybe the Moriyamas are willing to cut Neil some monetary slack % if he wins and gives all the money to one of Ichirou's charities also so they're determined to do that. Still, it's mostly Kevin saying it's stupid that makes them agree.)
The FBI are freaking out that Neil's running all over the entire world but also Browning cannot deny that Andrew and Neil have excellent on-camera chemistry.
They get orange as their team color and Andrew bemoans it because he thought he was done having to look at this particular eye-searing color but Neil vibrates with excitement.
Andrew is unbeatable at any and all trivia questions challenges, Neil can, will and has eaten anything.
There is one leg where the reward for coming in first is a delicious vegetarian meal and Neil intentionally gets them in second place because he will eat bull testicle no problem but will not eat that. Andrew's mild irritation over this is absolutely edited to look like a huge fight since it's the literal only inter-personal drama the team has the entire season. They absolutely start shit with other teams and do ZERO alliances and just continue to whiz right through the competition without any.
Andrew drives and can whiz through any technically difficult challenge, Neil gets them through any and all direction related issues through his foreign language abilities and also for some of the countries he's like "oh that's like two streets over. It's ice cream in the front and weapons shop in the back." He says this shit to the camera and no one knows if he's joking (he's not).
Andrew curls up in Neil's lap on quite a few flights just because he's having a bad time with that. Neil always just starts saying / doing things that just cannot be shown on TV to protect his privacy.
If Neil has to close his eyes and Andrew takes him by the hand as they go through a house of mirrors labyrinth challenge then no one says anything about it.
They win by a landslide the host comes up, "So how do you feel about Neil now?" Andrew just looks at Neil, "I hate every inch of him." he says and they walk off hand in hand to the great confusion of literally everyone.
Edit: Thanks @the-inner-musings-of-a-worm for the idea once again!
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