#Queer people are too used to being shoved to the side or seen in a one sided romance | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silverslipstream · 16 days

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the big ventbowski

CW: POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING TOPICS

The war in my head between 'are you straight and you've just co-opted a queer label because you get along better with the people more commonly found in queer communities and you identify with the culture' or 'are you still deep in internalised self-doubt due to low self-esteem, lack of experience and a significant absence of a stable queer community in every place you've ever lived?' is still raging on in my head.

God, sometimes (right now?) I feel terrible writing the word 'queer'. For me, it's the most comfortable label and way of expressing myself, but what if it's not my word to feel comfortable about? What if it's not describing me at all? What if this is all a placebo effect caused by a few misinterpreted chemical signs and my hopeless romanticism? Why can't I just fucking know?

I feel eighteen and conflicted all over again. I often say I was in denial for a very long time before I came out, and honestly I think I've never not been in denial about it. That hurts to say. Especially after I did the whole rigmarole of coming out as bisexual, crying to friends, putting up with homophobic attitudes and parental disapproval - it can't all be for nothing, right? It just can't.

It probably helps that I've had very little experience in the romantic sense. I was never going to be seen as a desirable person in school - too geeky, too disabled, too quiet. The most I elicited was a strange kind of mascot-like, objectifying sympathy from the popular girls, which was pretty gross. Especially when their boyfriends were the ones calling me things like cripple and retard, mocking the way I walked, shoving me in the stairwells, tripping me to every kind of ground they could find.

Even now, I don't get a lot of attention. I hate myself for phrasing it that way - it makes me feel pathetic, needy, desperate - but that's the easiest term to use. When out with my straight guy friends, I'm invisible, the smallest, skinniest, quietest. I feel like a wafer-thin slice of cake prised gingerly from the platter - different enough to be seen as other but not different enough that the difference itself is seen to matter. When they make a crack about me being 'gay' or 'liking men', I laugh, but I bite back the retort on my tongue.

I'm bisexual, you know this.

So what, mate? Isn't that just gay with extra steps? Or are you saying that 'cos you can't pull women anyway? Are you that desperate?

Am I?

On the other hand, I don't often 'go out' socialising with my queer friends, but sometimes even just being around them I feel so... fake. They're much more safe in their identities, secured within their respective labels' communities. The loneliness of being the only queer cis guy in my friend group hits me again and again, and then the subsequent guilt whips right back. Your friends are wonderful! They like you! You like them! Stop being ungrateful for the people you already have! But I can't shake the sense that I'm this generic indecisive cis guy spattered across their star-trails, like biting into an M&M and feeling your teeth crunch on a hidden piece of tinfoil.

Our area is pretty conservative in a country gradually sliding to the right side of the political compass. There's very little LGBTQ+ representation or community spots. Our university has a LGBTQ+ society, but it's very small, underexposed and chronically ignored by the student union and the university themselves. I look at all the other universities online, see their bustling queer communities, and feel oddly cheated. That should be me, I think in my head. University was supposed to be this place of uncoupling from my old self. I love my current friends, of course I do. It's just... I wish it was easier to meet more queer people in my area, to have more LGBTQ+ friendships that aren't determined by the landmine-dotted social islands of dating apps or tempered by the expectations of romantic and sexual relationships. To have someone else who understands what it's like to be the quiet geeky cis guy who sits on the fence of the straight/queer divide, yet you can't tell which way he's gonna fall.

It's not like I don't cultivate my own distinctive image: far from it. I wear glasses and turtlenecks, collared shirts, blue jeans and brown boots where the sole flaps precariously off the front. I've built that image piece by piece over the last couple of years, and independent of my sexuality and identity, I love that for myself. I think I have style, I'm recognizable, I like the way I look. This would've been an alien concept three years or so ago, where I hated my acne, my awkward limbs, the hard angles of my damaged muscles and crooked bones (but let's save the internalised ableism for another day, shall we?)

But the self-doubt creeps in, those thoughts that weed their way through saying things like people like you can't be pretty and who are you trying to fool? Maybe I'm trying to fool myself.

It doesn't help that the pittance of romantic experiences I do have are mostly negative. My first kiss was non-consensual: I was drunk, they were not, and they slowly but surely steered the entire night into a kiss I'd never asked for, manipulating me into something I'd never wanted. I can still remember their hand in my hair, holding the back of my head as I tried to pull away. Afterwards, they smiled, kissed me again on the cheek, like it was something we shared, something I'd wanted. I just felt sick and lost and so, so confused.

The first time I took a girl home, it was November of my first year in uni. She was a friend of a friend, who'd come up to drink and go clubbing with us. This time, the attraction was mutual - I still remember her shy eyes, her darting glances at me over the rim of a glass, the whisper of her voice in my ear asking if I wanted to go to the smoking area. After the club, we went back to my flat. I kissed her while Billy Joel sang 'Vienna' with my room bathed in half-light from the bathroom's fluorescent strips, and for a mesmerising, teetering second, it was everything. I remember thinking, it can't be this easy, not to want, not to be wanted.

Short answer: it wasn't. That's another story for another day, but suffice it to say after two months, I lost my main group of friends and was left almost totally alone, clinging to counselling like a punctured liferaft in the middle of the endless Pacific.

After that came a long drought of anything romantic, occasionally sprinkled with a flirty stranger or overly aggressive guy who thought 'being queer too' was all the consent he needed.

Then I met a boy.

It was through Hinge, because of course it was. He was shy, quiet, had dyed red hair, perpetually nervous. On our first date, it took him an hour just to compliment me, and when I gave a compliment back he looked at me like I'd just thrown a stick of dynamite at his head. He took me to buy my bisexual flag water bottle (one of the two pieces of outwardly LGBTQ+ paraphernalia I own) and that was it. We dated again, and again. He bought me birthday presents and wrapped my scarf around both of our necks. Around the lake where my late grandfather used to fish, he told me (face redder than his hair) that he wanted to kiss me. I was bowled over. We didn't kiss until our next date: drinking schnapps in the harsh fluorescent lighting of my university kitchen, I noticed his gaze lingering on my lips every time I lowered my cup.

I know what you want, I thought, I've watched so many films, read so many novels that frame this exact moment in time. So I asked him if he'd kiss me, and he did. I felt nothing.

How? How? Granted, it wasn't the world's best kiss (he approached my lips with all the finesse of a train crash) but I liked this guy, didn't I? Sure he had his flaws and things that made me hesitate, but that surely didn't outweigh the butterflies I'd had while texting him, the way I loved to fluster him and make him smile, his red hair and freckles and shyness? It should've been the Heartstopper gateway of my life, or at least the first major step of my burgeoning bisexual arc. Instead, this particular rollercoaster flew off the rails and straight into freefall.

That was five months ago. We kissed a few more times and he improved, but I could never shake that hollowness. We broke up three days before Valentine's, because I freaked out at the idea of doing romantic shit with a guy who I was so indecisive about. I kept telling myself it was for the best, that his red flags had been valid, and I couldn't afford to let the rose-tinted glasses of 'first same-sex relationship' blur them out. But was that really why, or was it just the realisation that kissing a man had done nothing for me, that I was straight and had been lying to myself the whole time?

Since I broke up with him, I've been so lost. Am I bisexual? Straight? Does the -sexual part of the label even apply to me? Am I asexual? I removed the part where I stated I was bisexual from my Tumblr pinned post months ago, so am I kicking myself back into the closet, or is the closet just a shape I scrawled on the wall behind me in crayon, a jagged attempt to belong to something, to share an experience with someone?

I can't answer these questions. That's the worst part. I want to be loved and to be in love, to find that person I'm waiting for.

But how will I know what they look like, how they might identify? How do I know I won't completely overlook them because of the labels I set for myself and the turmoil in my mind?

How will I know that I deserve them?

#vent post #sexuality #sexuality crisis #questioning sexuality #sexuality confusion #queer #queer community #lgbtq #bisexual #queer impostor syndrome??? is that a thing #honestly I'm getting nervous just TAGGING this #wondering if I'm appropriating these labels with my issues #maybe nobody will read this #and I wouldn't expect them to #but I'm just so scared

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doyouthinkimenjoyingthis · 7 months

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Golden Girls

I get across on this: "I get it that you're both gay and you love each other but you don't need to show it or be loud about it."

Here's the thing. People, straight people, gets a partner. They hold hands, PDA all that shit practically making everyone knows you are lovey dovey in love. Make bold statements. Make these ridiculous grand proposals. Foil the newsfeeds of you getting married.

But gay people can't have that?

And they would say, "I accept gays but...."

I know immediately whatever comes out to that is already homophobic.

I always used to hear, "It's okay to be gay just don't ...

- have sex

- turn into woman or man-- dress like the opposite

- don't be too loud

- don't be you

People don't understand that the point of being gay has started at thinking of loving the wrong one but it's the right one. The point of being gay is being frustrated that we can't be with the person we love. So are we just going to be gay and it stays that way?

And we should be content by your acceptance?

We don't care about being 'accepted'. At this point we are tired. During pride months, we stomp on the streets to protest our rights to love and love and laugh like those corny fb posts.

But they don't get that. Because people are shallow and are not willing to understand that but we are forced to understand that despite red flags-- a whole fucking flag pole in which they are willing to wave it, they will still stay with that person.

Incomprehensible really.

One time I heard a priest say: "If we will accept gay marriage, the next thing we will be accepting being married to animals, things, own relatives."

Or worst yet is the belief that gay people corrupts the young or convert them.

Growing up, I can't even count how many gay shows or movies or in literature I have seen and read (I had but it's not the point). These straightness in media shoved into my throat and up my asshole didnt make me straight.

I see this that they call us evil but they are actually the one thinking of the nastiest most unhinged and probably unthinkable thoughts to justify. Those never even came across our minds. Gays are no angels but what about a lot of us who don't care we just want to be with the people we love and care?

But no.

One time, I woke ahead of Hollmae. She's been sleeping here for days now. My first thought-- my very first thought is old age. The night before, we talked about going away. Since the legalization of same sex marriage in America, Canada and---side track-- did you know in Spain, it became legal in 2005?

2005!

Other countries were late!

The funniest thing is that Spain brought us Christianity, aye? (Forgive my sudden penchant for UK almost old English, Game of thrones and Sherlock Holmes fanaticism at the moment)

They brought it in PH and I've learned from Hollmae that precolonial times, Filipinos have queers.

So, off course, Christianity being Christianity, queerdom has been demonized. And now, we are strongly homophobic, less accepting country. We couldn't even secure rights and protection from discrimination.

But Spain got it. The fuuuuuck.

Going back, we were talking about that last night, researching.

But I know the reason why-- our families don't really accept is especially hers. They really believed I corrupted their only daughter.

I wondered what if one day, there's no progress at all? The clock will turn back and we will be once again oppressed, stripped of our rights, persecuted, thrown away?

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bewoken · 7 months

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tdlr: my white family doesn’t understand race, racism, and it’s nuances and they make it my problem.

so, as a black person that has lived with the white side of my family my whole life, i can say that it is exhausting. i lived my whole life with a ‘color blind’ family who still said racial slurs and made race jokes but it was never about black people so it ok to them.

that’s a big reason as to why i never said anything when people at school would say racist things to me. i thought it was normal because of the things my white family said about asian or latino people or anyone who wasn’t white.

i never got that talk about how basically the whole world is going to hate me because of my skin and my hair so i didn’t know what racism was until someone called me a co*n in middle school. so i went home and looked up what it meant and i saw that it was a slur. a racial slur said to me because i’m black.

i was 12-13 when i first realized people said things to me at school or gave me looks in public, not because of normal bullying or whatever, but because i was black.

and now that i’m older and lost all my friends because i wouldn’t let them say the n-word and have learned more about racism and discrimination and that them uncomfortable.

my white family doesn’t understand. they don’t get that i can’t just pretend racism doesn’t exist. they don’t get why i tell them off for saying something racist or why i stopped being friends with certain people. because for them, it’s just politics. they can forget politics at the door because so much of it isn’t going to affect them. their lives aren’t being debated every other day live poc and queer people’s are.

they don’t talk about certain things infront of me anymore because they know i’ll disagree. it’s all small talk and surface level conversations and that’s how it’s going to be.

there was a time when i was guilted into apologizing to my one grandma for something she did to me. she made me uncomfortable by shoving her hand into my hair while my back was turned and i was sitting in the floor but i had to apologize to her. she got upset that i told her to not touch my hair without asking me first and i did say because im black.

i used to let people do whatever they wanted when i was in school because i didn’t want to be seen as the angry black girl that can’t take a joke. but now i’m proudly that angry black person who can’t take a joke because those weren’t jokes. it was you doing something to make your friends laugh and i was the butt of it. im not letting people touch me without my permission anymore but apparently that was too much for her to handle.

even my 14 year old white cousin tried to her why i didn’t want her touching my hair but grams cried to her about it anyways. and she wouldn’t look me in the eyes for the rest of the day.

then she want crying to my aunt, who i live with and she came down hard on me, guilting me into apologizing.

i apologized but i really just told her that i’m sorry she felt that way but i set a boundary and i hoped she could respect that. she never replied back to that message but she’s great at making people feel bad for her.

there was also the time that i wanted to go see wakanda forever with my black brother, just us so we could get a little bit of some black culture in our majority white community and my aunt flipped. not at me, but to my brother. she told him that it was racist and that i can’t want to be apart of their lives and not want to share my culture with them. but she had no problem with us going to see sm: no way home without anyone else.

we had a talk after that, about why i wanted to see the movie with just my brother but she didn’t get it. she kept trying to tell me that we keep all of the racial differences out of the house and whatever, but off course she has the privilege to say that. she isn’t the one going on social media and seeing people that look like her getting beat and raped and killed just for looking like her.

it’s so hard trying to explain these things to people who will never understand. especially those who don’t want to understand.

#racisim #race #white people #discrimination #politics

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lil-smutier · 2 years

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• My Type with MatsuSaku •

“Hey Doll?”

You let out a non-committal hum, not lifting your gaze from your phone to look at your boyfriend just yet. “Wanna come and meet Hajime-san with me? He’s probably at the gym with his team now though.” You hummed again, lifting your eyes and pretending to consider it, - although you had almost instantly agreed inwardly - “Is Makki coming with us?”

It was an inside joke between the three of you, having been the closest out of the rest of the third years in your last years at Aoba Johsai; you and Makki had always stuck together like glue on paper. Issei would always poke fun at you, saying that you loved Makki more than him, feigning hurt when you would teasingly agree to his claims sometimes. But, you both knew it was a joke, after all, it wasn’t just you and Makki that were close, he too had his fair share of questionably queer moments with his pink-haired companion too.

“Yeah, the dumbass is heading along too, says that he hasn’t seen us in awhile either.” Your boyfriend chuckled, nodding at you as he spoke, watching you carefully as you did the same subconsciously, “‘Kay, I’ll come too then, it wouldn’t be nice of me to let Makki miss me would it ‘Sei?” you giggle quietly as his head drops into his hands, swaying from side to side. “No,” he sighs dramatically, reaching over from where he was sitting to ruffle your hair, “I guess not.”

“Hey __________ !” Short spikes of dark hair poke into your vision as Iwa’s warm smile greets you, the man stood tall and cocky ( as usual, you mused ) , spreading his arms into an invitation as you were engulfed in a hug, followed by Makki and Mattsun respectively.

The four of you chatted away during his break, the squeaks and thumps of volleyball shoes and balls alike being spiked hard onto the courts of practicing players echoing around you, filling in any awkward silences. You weren’t quite sure when you zoned out, but you remembered tugging on Mattsun’s sleeve to let him know you were heading off to explore a bit, “Take Makki with you.” he offered, playfully shoving his best friend towards you, nearly causing the both of you to topple over.

“What?? Why do I have to follow the midget around??” You heard him groan, elbowing him in the side in retaliation ( it wasn’t like you took any real offence to that ).

“‘Cause I’m talking to Hajime-san right now, and I trust you that you won’t lose my midget.” “Oh what the fuck Mattsun!” You complained, no fire behind your words as the other three broke out into hysterics, “Alright alright,” Makki complied, reaching to put his hands on your shoulders, pushing you forwards from the back, “onwards, midget!!” you knew that you didn’t have to raise your middle fingers higher than your shoulder level for him to see it, hearing the snicker behind you.

You stood with your strawberry-blonde best friend by the centre court, catching up on lost time while you just mindlessly stared around. It was actually super cool actually being here, in the orange courts; you remembered hearing stories of it through Oikawa and Iwa alike, both sharing photos, videos, and hundreds of self stories about the place and people.

One player caught your attention though, that player being the one and only Sakusa Kiyoomi.

You didn’t really know what it was about him that drew you in. At first, you assumed that it was the striking resemblance he bore to your lovely Matsukawa, but then again, you weren’t the type of person who swooned by just looks…were you? A rather loud, goading laugh jolted you out of your daydream. Oh shit. Were you staring??

“Didn’t realise our Princess has a type hm?” Makki smirked when his eyes met where you were looking, - borderline drooling at the sheer height and commanding expression of the man on the court - “I don’t,” you shrugged, “don’t know what makes you say that Hiro.” he just gave you another laugh, eyes slanting with a dangerous glint in them that made you uneasy, “Alright then, you don’t have a type.”

Huh.

You grumble to yourself, Makki’s never that easy-

“You don’t have a type, totally. It’s not like you wanna talk to him anyways right?” Ah, there it is. “You’re a dick yknow?” You whine, knowing that he was right; but being too stubborn to admit it, “You love me for it.” he laughed gleefully, the sense of victory already giving him a rush. Rolling your eyes, you nod almost reluctantly, “I do, okay Mr.Dick, what do you want?” sly eyes glare at yours, and you watch in almost downright horror as he tilts his head back to where Mattsun and Hajime are standing, still - gloriously - chatting away.

“Tell Mattsun.”

“Fuck, no.”

“Okay~ then you can forget about talki—“

“…Wait—“

“Hm?”

Oh how you fucking hated Hanamaki sometimes. “What do you get out of this?” You ask cautiously, you meant it when you said that Hiro wasn’t that easy; nor was he ever generous in any sense of the word ( but hey, what’re friends for? ). Checking once more that your boyfriend isn’t paying attention, Makki walks over to you, leaning by your temple so he can whisper in your ear: “Oh Princess, your misery is enough for me.”

“Fuck off!” You laugh, nudging him away with little strength; he pulls back, snickering away as well, hands tucked behind his head while he heads back to Issei and company.

“One shot Princess! Clock’s ticking~”

You swear you could feel Makki’s gaze burning into your soul at this point. It has grown from early afternoon to nearly a late evening when Iwaizumi had gathered the players around for their final rounds of stretching. ‘Clock’s ticking~’ Makki’s voice taunted in your head, jabbing you in the sides and pulling at your earlobes as you began to fidget, nervous about letting your boyfriend know about your interesting discovery.

“Doll?”

Jumping out of your skin, you turn to face Mattsun, his stare soothing, yet alarming at the same time while he looked at you in concern. “Are you okay? You’re not feeling feverish are you? You’re a bit red.” Not trusting your voice, you shook your head slightly, sneaking a glance at your asshole of a best friend tapping his wrist behind the brunette. “Then what’s wrong Doll? Don’t lie to me, I know you.”

“It-It’s…promise you won’t be angry…?”

Immediately, the look softened, him leaning down to place a chaste kiss on your forehead, “Oh my precious Doll, of course I won’t be. I promise.” he confirmed, holding your cheek in one palm, smiling welcoming when you nuzzled into it.

“I…might…uhm, I might…..haveacrushonsakusa…?”

The last part of your sentence came out so quietly, and quickly, that Mattsun had almost not heard it. He gently pulled you away from the group - and Makki thankfully - excusing the both of you from the gym before cornering you on the outside wall.

“A crush? On Sakusa-san?”

You nod timidly, a furious red staining your cheeks as your eyes welled up with tears, “Words, Doll.” “I…yes.” You whisper, sinking into that sweet, sweet space by just his voice, suddenly snapping back into your normal headspace when you remember where you both are, “You promised you wouldn’t be angry!” it was accusatory, and hey, Mattsun wouldn’t complain on it; he did say that he wouldn’t be, and he wasn’t. Far from it in fact.

He was interested, you had never hinted on the fact before, despite having known about the male’s existence for a good amount of time now. A deep rumble left his chest as he shook his head deliberately slow. “Oh Doll, I’m not angry at you, sweet thing.”

That incident had been nearly a month ago.

Sakusa panted slightly, chest raising and falling while he took a swig of his water, squeezing the bottle away from his mouth. His gaze traced your petite figure, you had been coming around more often now, he noticed; he had assumed you were Hanamaki-san’s girlfriend at first, after seeing you follow him around and tease each other the first time, but now that it was only Matsukawa-san that brought you over, he stood corrected.

He wasn’t complaining though. You were oddly cute, always tripping over your feet when you stumbled by him, or how you’d flush and turn away with a tiny, rapid shake of your head whenever your eyes met his, as if you were trying to clear your thoughts. Kiyoomi didn’t personally come up to talk to you though, he didn’t suppose he had any reason to. You were taken, and your behaviour could just be passed off as general shyness.

However, when you literally face-planted right in front of him one day, it wasn’t like he could just ignore you— he wasn’t a monster. Kneeling down without his knee touching the floor, he spoke, “Are you okay?” a small smile reached his lips when he saw your cheeks flush, quickly pushing yourself up and off the floor before dusting yourself off. He raised an eyebrow when you tried reaching out a hand to help him up, yanking it back when you seemed to remember that he didn’t like physical touch much ( a common misunderstanding, he mused ).

“I-I’m fine!! I’m so sorry… Sakusa-san.”

The spiker offered you a curt nod, stare rising to watch your boyfriend from the other end of the court. He supposed Iwaizumi-san had left for some reason, leaving the middle blocker to rake his eyes over your messy form. It almost made Kiyoomi want to pat you down and tidy you up.

Almost.

The former Ace couldn’t really tell what it was about that look. It appeared suggestive, but he didn’t want to jump in on something he wasn’t directly asked about either. That was until, Mattsun had called out to him during his cool-down stretches. “Sakusa-san, are you free after this?”

A light wrinkle creased the spiker’s forehead, scrunching his eyebrows and moles closer together as he reached for his toes from a standing position, “If it’s about today Matsukawa-san, I apologise, I did not mean to seem like I was flirting with your girlfriend.” a self-satisfied smile grew on the latter’s face when he heard the reason that the younger had posed. He snorted under his breath, “Well, it’s somewhat about today; but what I meant by that was, would you like to go out to a cafe nearby with me?” Mattsun couldn’t help the laugh that slipped free at how fast Kiyoomi’s head whipped around at his odd request.

“I’m sorry?”

“Would you like to come out to a nearby cafe with me? I wanna talk to you about something.”

Sakusa had a bad feeling about this… but then again, he was never the type of person to leave things unfinished.

The cafe was actually pretty nice, it was secluded and not too crowded either. A cup of green tea sat in front of both of them while Mattsun brought the other up-to-date about why they were there in the first place, Kiyoomi nodding every now and then, “Are you sure about this? Did you ask her?” “Sakusa. She’s my girlfriend, if anyone, I think I’m pretty confident that I know her needs better than she does sometimes.” Issei challenged, sensing the unspoken questions riddling his companion’s mind.

“Okay, any hard limits or restrictions?”

“Ohohoho~ seems that you know more about this than I assumed Sakusa-san.”

Sakusa felt another twitch in his eyebrow as he drummed his fingers on the table impatiently, “What I do in my free time is none of your business Matsukawa-san. I just simply want to help out with whatever you and __________ have going on.” the funeral worker made a sound similar to a quiet wolf-whistle before speaking again, “Sure, it’s only that, not that you think she’s attractive in anyyyy sort of way either.” he smiled victoriously when Sakusa seemed to choke on air.

“…I- “ He started, “I suppose she’s cute as well.” the younger watched as the latter leant back in his seat with a satisfied smile, “There it is~” he sing-songed lowly, letting the truth settle down a bit and giving Sakusa some time to actually absorb whatever was just said to him, “Is 8PM tomorrow fine with you?” it wasn’t too late, the spiker supposed, sparing him a polite nod before they discussed the details of the night.

You weren’t surprised when Mattsun didn’t come back for dinner today, - he told you that he was working the later shifts at the funeral home since someone else called in sick - what did surprise you was that when he came back, you heard two sets of footsteps.

Not expecting guests, you threw on a silk kimono to cover your shorts and tank top ( it wasn’t exactly a revealing outfit, but you still wanted to look presentable, just in case. ) and headed out into the living room to greet the guest and your boyfriend. Momentarily, you froze when you saw who that guest was, but quickly recovered, assuming that he had a fair reason as to why he was here. “Okaeri ‘Sei, and…” your voice trailed slightly when you turned to face the other man, tone barely a squeak.

“Hello, Sakusa-san.”

“Ojama shimasu, ___________.” He responded, giving you a small wave as he looked down at you. You hadn’t even realised you were staring until Issei cleared his throat. “Doll? Be good and listen to what we have to say first alright?” That phrase might not mean much to the ravenette standing in the middle of your living room, but he watched as your gaze seemed to fog over, becoming hazy with compliance. It appeared that Matsukawa had you more well-trained than he originally thought.

“okay.” A small nod accompanied your airy voice, the word slipping out with ease as you headed over to the couch, plopping down and getting comfy while the men did the same on either side of you. “I’m sure you already might have an idea of where this is going?” The elder notes, searching your movements for any sort of hesitation before going on, “I want you to tell us if there’s anything you don’t like, or that you’re unsure of before we begin, okay?” your little palms clenched on top of your thighs, head hanging low when an inaudible sentence filtered through your haze.

“Hm?” Sakusa interjected, mostly out of impulse more than anything else.

“Words Doll. We’re not moving from this spot until you say it.”

“I…don’t mind anything….you guys can do anything—“ Even though your voice was cracking badly, you managed to squeeze the words out of your throat with enough effort, head whipping up when twin groans met your ears. The two males looked at each other for a quiet moment, silently deciding what they would do to you; such a sweet, obedient little thing. It almost worried them, how eager you were to slip into your headspace and give in, but if it did truly scare them, they didn’t tell you verbally.

What happened after was sort of a blur.

There weren’t really anymore coherent thoughts in your head at the moment, leaving you floating in an excited high as the two men in front of you stripped down to their undergarments. You were already naked, sat with your knees touching the soft mattress below them, hands tucked in between plush thighs as you resisted the urge to rub against yourself; Issei wouldn’t like that.

Allowing yourself to be moved, you watched curiously while they adjusted you so you were settled on Mattsun’s lap, back to his chest while Kiyoomi sat a couple centimetres away from you, at the foot of the bed. A shudder ran down your spine when you felt your lover’s lips brush your ear, “Before we begin, I still have something to ask you Doll.” he taunted darkly, tracing a large palm up your chest, until it grasped at your throat in a firm, steady grip, goosebumps left in its wake.

Blearily, you ‘hmm-ed’, still floating happily in your own thoughts ( or lack thereof ), “Would you like to tell us why you have a little crush on Kiyoomi-kun?” the words were condescending. A sharp knife stabbed into the fog of peace you had nestled in, causing you to squirm, desperate to get out of Mattsun’s grasp; to no avail however, as he slipped his other arm around your waist, effectively caging you in; the hand once pinching at your adam’s apple now circling painfully slow around your clit.

“I expect an answer Doll.”

Daring, your eyes open ( when had you squeezed them shut? You didn’t even notice ) and you look at Sakusa for help, but the man seems completely unaffected, save for his breathing getting heavier. He raises an eyebrow at you mockingly, “If you want to cum, I suggest you answer him Little One.” you whine at that, high and needy as you continue to struggle, Issei holding you captive and laughing darkly. Eventually your captor feels you sag in his arms, a shaky sigh leaving your lips as you mumble out: “…might have a type…”

Makki can go fuck himself. You thought distantly, about 99% of you was sure that he had somehow ratted you out to your boyfriend.

“Hm? What was that?”

“I-“ You take a deep breath in, eyes falling shut at the onslaught to your poor clit, “might have a tyPE!~”

“Good girl.”

Just then, you feel Issei’s fingers speed up, the circles becoming more and more frantic as he pushes you over the edge in quick succession, leaving you trembling weakly in his warmth; small hands pushing reluctantly at his forearms, “nooooo~” you slur, already yanked back into your headspace with the sudden praise and pleasure.

Dark irises land on each other, the brunette smirking when he noticed the tent being pitched in the other’s briefs. “You can touch her Kiyoomi, I’m sure the little slut wouldn’t mind. Do you?” It took you a moment to realise he was talking to you, but when you shook your head, another whimper being dragged out of your throat; the ravenette groaned, glaring at Mattsun before shuffling closer to place a chaste kiss on your lips, “Sweet girl,” he muttered, mostly to himself, “you’re sensitive aren’t you?” he chuckled at your moaned response, nimble fingers reaching down to slip into your warm cunt, already wet and throbbing for them.

Sakusa watched in amusement as you sucked in two of his fingers at once, knowing that although his weren’t as thick as Matsukawa’s, they weren’t very thin either. He pumped them in and out leisurely, humming acknowledgements to your little cries and laughing as you tried to hump both his hand and Issei’s erection below you. You felt dizzy. On one hand, Issei was spewing filth after filth to you, degrading his little whore with dirty promises about how much they were going to fill you up - “Until you’re forced to keep us in there, like the good little cockwhore you are.” - and on the other, Kiyoomi praised you continuously, clean hand in your hair, gently stroking through the sweaty tangles as he cooed at you - “You’re gonna be a good little girl for us, aren’t you? Our precious little doll?”.

The room smelt of sex, tears and drool running down your face as you succumbed to whatever torture they both were afflicting on you currently. A keen ripped out of your voice box when you came a second time, three fingers shoving themselves deep in your bullied cunt instead of pulling out, feeling you clench around them unsteadily. A whispered ‘fuck’ left the spiker’s lips, making the other laugh, “She’s tight isn’t she?” he grinned, teeth baring as he placed a deceptively calming kiss atop your head.

“I’m feeling generous tonight… so, do you want her cunt, or her ass Kiyoomi-kun?”

To the middle blocker, he didn’t really mind, you were his after all; it wasn’t like he couldn’t get you again next time. To the Ace however, it was a hard bet. He would be lying if he didn’t catch a glimpse of your bouncy little ass whenever you so happened to fall in front of him, he couldn’t help it, you almost always wore flare skirts that swung by your lower hips whenever you walked, one can only have so much self control when you kept on tripping and slipping at his feet. On the contrary…

“I want her cunt.”

Well damn, that was pretty quick, Issei laughed to himself, he figured that once Sakusa had gotten a taste of what he was in for; the male would’ve immediately dived in. Turns out, he was right. As you writhed between them, Mattsun began to prep your ass, carefully working his fingers into you while you continued to whine out for both of them, clenching around Kiyoomi’s fingers in the process.

“…omi~” You whimpered out, teary eyes searching for the ravenette in front of you with outstretched hands, “Hmm? What is it Little One?” he replied gently, leaning in so you could pull him in for another kiss. Although you weren’t really mentally there, you and Mattsun had fucked like rabbits enough for your muscle memory to register when he decided you were ready. As Sakusa distracted you with kisses and gentle strokes on your head, you whimpered quietly when you felt Issei began to push in, swearing breathily at the tightness and warmth.

The three of you sat still for a moment, dazed and drunk on endorphins and pleasure. You hadn’t even really noticed the spiker lifting you up gently before dropping you back down on his cock as well. A loud moan tumbled out of you, the sound garbled and whiny as you began to bounce in between them, rocking back and forth to give yourself more and more and more.

“pleasepleaseplease—!”

Both boys didn’t know what you were begging for, but they sure as hell were gonna give it to you, whatever it was. They picked up the pace, falling into a rough rhythm while you continued to shake and tremble from the pleasure. Cusses and lewd promises filled your ears, promises about how they were gonna fill you up, about how they weren’t gonna let you run away making you cry out again and again.

And then, it was too much. You could’ve sworn you nearly blacked out, vision speckled with bursts of colours and black dots as you came a third time, drenching both of their laps along with your thighs. It all went pretty muddled after that, distantly, you remember feeling warmth in your lower belly and behind; the feeling soothing your shivering body as the men pulled out of you carefully, their own cocks still twitching at the force of their orgasms.

When they came to, you had already fallen asleep; chest rising and falling evenly, a soft, ragged sore coming out of you while your thighs shook subconsciously. “Holy fuck.” Matsukawa huffed, the laugh raw and full of surprise, he wasn’t sure he had ever cum that hard before. His eyes met Kiyoomi’s, who nodded with a satisfied grin on his face, curls stuck to his forehead from sweat, “‘Holy fuck’ indeed.” he turned to look at you, “Do you guys always fuck until she passes out?” another hearty laugh, “Hell no, she’d kill me. But I’m not sure how long she’s had this little crush on you, though.”

“Oh?”

A silent challenge was bestowed upon the room.

“I might have an idea of how we can find out.”

#sakusa kiyoomi #sakusa smut #sakusa kiyoomi x reader #kiyoomi smut #kiyoomi #omi omi #mattsun smut #mattsun #matsukawa issei #matsukawa x reader #matsukawa smut #issei smut #Spotify

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thebibliosphere · 3 years

Note

So I'm currently unemployed because I got fired for taking too much sick leave (it was legally sketchy blah blah blah but in the end I just can't work and take care of myself and investigate my mystery health problems at the same time). So I've been spending more time writing!

I really admire your writing and loved Hunger Pangs. I'm looking forward to the poly elements developing and I'm wondering if you have any advice for writing about poly. I've made one of my projects a snarky take on "write what you know" ... Apparently what I know is southern gothic meets Pacific northwest gothic, chronic illness pandemic surrealism, and falling back-asswards into threesomes.

I know this is a very open-ended question and I don't expect an answer, I'm just curious about it if you have the energy. As a writer, trying to write honestly / realistically about polyamory/enm, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what's different about portraying monogamy or nonmonogamy in books, romance or erotica or otherwise.

I'm trying to read examples but it's hard to find examples that fit the niche I'm looking at. Excuse me if this question is nonsense, it's the cluster headaches.

I'm sorry to hear you've been dealing with all that and solidarity on the cluster headaches. But I'm glad you're finding an outlet through writing! And I hope you're happy with an open-ended ramble in response because oh boy, there's a lot I could talk about and I could probably do a better job of answering this sort of thing with more specific questions, but let's see where we end up.

There's definitely a big difference between writing polyamory/ENM (ethical non-monogamy) and what people often expect from monogamous love stories.

Just even from a purely sales and marketing standpoint, the moment you write anything polyamorous (or even just straight up LGBTQIA+ without the ENM) you're going to get considered closer to being erotica/obscene than hetero romances. It's an unfair bias, but it's one that exists in our society. But also the Amazon algorithm and their shitty, shitty human censors. Especially the ones that work the weekends. (Talking to you, Carlos 🖕.)

So not only do you start out hyper-aware that you're writing something that is highly stigmatized or fetishized (at least I'm hyper-aware) but that you are also writing for a niche market that is starving for positive content because the content that exists is either limited, not what they want, or is problematic in some fashion i.e. highly stigmatized or fetishy. And even then, the wants, desires, and expectations of the community you're writing for are complex and wildly varied and hard to fit into an easy formula.

When writing monogamous love stories, there is a set expectation that’s really hard to fuck up once you know it. X person meets Y. Attraction happens, followed by some sort of minor conflict/resolution. Other plot may happen. A greater catalyst involving personal growth for both parties (hopefully) happens. Follow the equation to its ultimate resolution and achieve Happily Ever After.

But writing ENM is... a lot more difficult, if only because of the pure scope of possibilities. You could try to follow the same equation and shove three (or more) people into it, but it rarely works well. Usually because if you’re doing it right, you won’t have enough room in a single character arc to allow for enough growth, and if ENM requires anything in abundance, it’s room to grow.

And this post is huge so I’m going to put the rest under a cut :)

There's also a common refrain in certain online polyam/ENM circles that triads and throuples are overrepresented in media and they may be right to some extent. Personally, I believe the issue isn't that triads and throuples are overrepresented, but that there is such minuscule positive rep of ethical non-monogamy in general, that the few tiny instances we have of triads in media make it seem like it's "everywhere" when in actuality, it's still quite rare and the media we do have often veers into Unicorn Hunter fetish porn. Which is its own problematic thing. And just to be clear, I’m not including this part to dissuade you from writing "falling back-asswards into threesomes." If anything, I need more of it and would hook it directly into my brain if I could. I'm just throwing it out there into the void in the hope that someone will take the thought and run with it, lol.

I’d love to see more polyfidelitous rep in fiction, just as much as I’d like to see more relationship anarchy too. More diversity in fiction is always good.

Another thing that differs in writing ENM romance vs conventional monogamy is the feeling like you need to justify yourself. There's a lot of pressure to be as healthy and non-problematic as possible because you are being held to a higher standard of criticism. Both from people from without the ENM communities, and from the people within. Granted, some people don't give a shit and just want to read some fantastic porn (valid) but there are those who will cheerfully read Fifty Shades of Bullshit and call it "spicy" and "romantic," then turn around and call the most tooth-rottingly-sweet-fluff about a queer platonic polycule heresy. That's just the way the world works.

(Pro-tip for author life in general: never read your own reviews; that way madness lies. I glimpsed one the other day that tagged Hunger Pangs as “ethical cheating” and just about had an aneurism.)

And while that feeling of needing to justify yourself comes from a valid place of being excluded from the table of socially accepted norms, it can also be to the detriment of both the story and the subject matter at hand. I've seen some authors bend so far over backward to avoid being problematic in their portrayal of ENM, they end up being problematic for entirely different reasons. Usually because they give such a skewed, rose-tinted perspective of how things work, it ends up coming off as well... a bit culty and obnoxious tbh.

“Look how enlightened we are, freed from the trappings of monogamy and jealousy! We’re all so honest and perfect and happy!”

Yeah, uhu, sure Jan. Except here’s the thing, not all jealousy is bad. How you act on it can be, but jealousy itself is an important tool in the junk drawer that is the range of human emotion. It can clue us in to when we’re feeling sad or neglected, which in turn means we should figure out why we’re feeling those things. Sometimes it’s because brains are just like that and anxiety is a thing. Other times it’s because our needs are actually being neglected and we are in an unhealthy situation we need to remedy. You gotta put the work in to figure it out. Which is the same as any style of relationship, whether it’s mono, polyam or whatever flavor of ENM you subscribe to* And sometimes you just gotta be messy, because that’s how humans are. Being afraid to show that mess makes it a dishonest portrayal, and it also robs you of some great cannon fodder for character development.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to my current pet peeve in how certain writers take monogamous ideals and apply them to ENM, sometimes without even realizing it. The “Find the Right Person and Settle Down” trope.

Often, in this case, ENM or polyamory is treated as a phase. Something you mature out of with age or until you meet “The One(tm).” This is, of course, an attempt to follow the mono style formula expected in most romances. And while it might appeal to many readers, it’s uh, actually quite insulting.

To give an example, I am currently seeing this a lot in the Witcher fandom.

Fanon Netflix!Jaskier is everyone's favorite ethical slut until he meets Geralt then woops, wouldn’t you know, he just needed to find The One(tm). Suddenly, all his other sexual and romantic exploits or attractions mean nothing to him. Let's watch as he throws away a core aspect of his personality in favor of a man.

Yeah... that sure showed those societal norms...

If I were being generous, I’d say it’s a poor attempt at showing New Relationship Euphoria and how wrapped up people can become in new relationships. But honestly, it’s monogamous bias eking its way in to validate how special and unique the relationship is. Because sometimes people really can’t think of any other way to show how important and valid a relationship is without defining it in terms of exclusivity. Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how ENM works for a lot of people and invalidates a lot of loving, serious and long-term relationships.

This is not to say that some polyam/poly-leaning people can't be happy in monogamous relationships! I am! (I consider myself ambiamorous. I'm happy with either monogamy or polyamory, it really just depends on the relationship(s) I’m in.) But I also don't regard my relationship with a mono partner as "settling down" or "growing up." It's just a choice I made to be with a person I love, and it's a valid one. Just like choosing to never close yourself off to multiple relationships is valid. And I wish more people realized that, or rather, I wish the people writing these things knew that :P

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. I hope this collection of incoherent thoughts actually makes some sense and might be useful.

----

*A good resource book that doesn't pull any punches in this regard is Polysecure by Jessica Fern. It's a wonderfully insightful read that explores the messier side of consensual non-monogamy, especially with how it can be affected by trauma or inter-relationship conflicts. But it also shows how to take better steps toward healthy, ethical non-monogamy (a far better job than More Than Two**) and conflict resolution, making it a valuable resource both for someone who is a part of this relationship style***, but also for writers on the outside looking in who might have a very simple or misguided idea of what conflict within polyam/ENM relationships might look like, vs traditional monogamous ones.

** The author of More Than Two has been accused of multiple accounts of abuse within the polyamorous community, with many of his coauthors having spoken out about the gaslighting and emotional and psychological damage they experienced while in a relationship with him. A lot of their stories are documented here: https://www.itrippedonthepolystair.com/ (warning: it is not light material and deals with issues of abuse, gaslighting, and a whole other plethora of Yikes.) While some people still find More Than Two helpful reading, there are now, thankfully, much, much better resources out there.

*** Some people consider polyam/ENM to be part of their identity or orientation, while others view it as a relationship style.It largely depends on the individual.

#long post #writing #ethical non-monogamy #relationship styles #relationship models in fiction #also that kindle link is an affiliate link #because fuck giving amazon free recs

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yikesharringrove · 3 years

Text

We’re Us

A little commishy for my bxtch @thinger-strang.

Read on Ao3

This shit is SOFT

“Dustin, we all saw that fireball hit you,” Will said accusatorily, gesturing to the red bean bag on the ground at Dustin’s feet.

“Okay, first of all, you’re supposed to call a pause of play before using my real name,” Dustin said, all in one breath. “And second of all, the fireball only hit my lute, therefore I sustained no physical damage.” Dustin gestured to the cereal box that was taped to a jump rope, slung over his shoulder like it was a prized instrument.

“No, it didn’t. We all saw it hit your shoulder. You’d lose that arm at least, and take probably, like, fifty damage points.” Lucas pretended to aim a bow and arrow at Dustin while he spoke.

Dustin was getting dangerously close to huffy territory.

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll take the stupid damage points. Can we resume play yet?”

Everyone nodded, and they fell right back into battle.

It wasn’t often they took the game off the DnD board, but the weather was perfect, summer beginning to make itself known a little earlier than usual, giving them April days that were clear and perfect and made for the best LARP sessions known to Indiana.

Will aimed a fireball at Max, and launched it right as she darted out of the way. It sailed past her, missing her left hand by less than an inch, and she laughed wildly, raising her pool noodle sword and aiming blow after blow at him.

The bean bag hit the fence and went spiraling awkwardly into the small alley between the house and the old wooden fence

It was Will’s last fireball, and he hurried to retrieve any he could reach, dodging as best as he could around Max’s wild sword-wielding.

She tended to wallop them as hard as she could, somehow knocking the wind out of them with her soft excuse for a sword.

Will scrambled to pick up his bean bag from the overgrown grass and curling weeds, catching his breath quickly in the alley where he couldn’t be seen.

And then a sound drew his attention away from the battle.

It was a soft sound. He wouldn’t have heard it if the rest of the party had been so quietly focused on battling one another less than twenty feet away.

But he did hear it, and his head whipped around to find the source of it.

Steve and Billy.

Against the house.

Kissing.

It was like time stood still.

Like Will had been hit by one of Mage El’s freezing bombs.

Steve had Billy pushed up against the side of the house, their bodies pressed flush together.

Steve was clearly propping up Billy with his body, Billy’s mobility cane, the one he had let them cover in stickers, was laying forgotten on the ground.

Billy’s arms were wrapped around Steve’s shoulders, his hands curled in the fabric of Steve’s t-shirt. Steve had his arms wrapped around Billy’s waist, half holding him close, half not letting him fall without his cane.

They were kissing like they were trying to devour one another, and Will realized that the sound he had heard was a moan.

It wasn’t like seeing Lucas and Max kiss, or Mike or El, or even Nancy and Jonathan.

Seeing Billy and Steve,

Will knew he shouldn’t be seeing them.

He knew this was wrong, and people said two boys kissing was foul and bad.

But this didn’t look anything but, well, loving.

The way Steve was making sure Billy didn’t fall while they kissed, the way sometimes they would pull back and smile, their faces never moving more than a few inches away from one another.

One of Billy’s rough hands left its place clawed in Steve’s t-shirt, reaching forward to brush one thumb clumsily down his cheek.

They pulled back from one another, smiling stupidly, still staring into each other’s eyes.

Billy brushed his thumb down Steve’s cheek again, and Steve moved like he was nuzzling into the touch, turning his head to the right, pressing a kiss to Billy’s rough, scarred palm.

It made Will feel like he was floating in space with nothing keeping him down.

Steve pressed a kiss to Billy’s cheek, then his nose, then his other cheek, and Billy’s cheeks flushed and he giggled, a sound that was so foreign to Billy Hargrove it almost made Will rub his eyes to make sure he was seeing the right person.

And Billy smiled, so calmly and easily.

It made his whole face change. He looked like a completely different person.

And Will realized, he’s never actually seen Billy smile like this.

The only times he’d come close, we tight tiny things that never reached his eyes and were dropped within a second or two.

This was a genuine smile, full of genuine happiness, and god -

They’re in love.

They’re two boys, and they’re standing right in front of Will and they’re in love.

They went back to kissing, moving their heads slowly side to side, their mouths opening and closing and Will was so aware of having never kissed anyone before.

“Will, seriously! I’ve been yelling for you-”

Mike stopped talking the second he rounded the house.

He was stalk still, his mouth hanging open like a dead fish at what he saw.

Will’s heart was thundering against his ribcage, and he tried to push Mike back towards the game, pleading quietly at him to move.

And then the rest of the group was joining them. Faces mirroring Mike’s dead fish expression as they stared, open-mouthed, at Steve and Billy.

Will had his back to them, but in the quiet, he could hear. He could hear the soft sounds and the moans, and even the giggles that made his face go hot and his stomach do a whole gymnastics routine inside of him.

Will was staring at each of his friends in turn, pleading with them to just turn right around, and continue on with play as nothing had ever interrupted their battle.

Like they haven’t just stumbled on a huge and dangerous secret.

He went as far as to push Lucas, gently shoving him backward saying go! Go! Under his breath.

The last thing he needed was for Steve and Billy to notice them here. To realize what they had seen. What they know.

And then-

“What the fuck?”

Billy and Steve broke apart, looking towards the entrance of the alley, and seeing all six of the party, staring at them.

Max had been the one to speak, and she was looking at Billy oddly, almost like she didn’t know who he was.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She asked, her voice quavering slightly.

Billy looked like he wanted to ground to swallow him right up.

Steve scrambled for the forgotten cane, keeping one hand on Billy’s elbow as he crouched down.

The movement made Will’s stomach flop over.

It was practiced.

Once Billy was standing on his own with the cane, Steve approached the kids calmly, his hands raised up like they were all wild animals that might attack at any moment.

“Look, I know how this looks, and you guys can’t-”

“It looks like, you guys were making out .” Dustin’s tone was hollow, and he looked as struck dumb as the rest of them.

“I know, and I mean, yeah. We were, but you need to listen -”

“Steve.”

Steve whipped right around when he heard the murmur.

Billy was standing slumped over against the house, one scarred, shaking hand covering his face, the other clutched so tightly to his cane his knuckles were white.

“Bill, I’m here, okay? I’m not going anywhere. You’re okay.” Steve rushed to Billy’s side, holding onto his elbow again, brushing his fingers softly through Billy’s short hair, winding his fingers through the wild curls that were just long enough to form. “I’ll deal with this. It’s okay. They’re not going to tell.” Steve glared at the kids when he said that, as if daring them to argue.

Billy kinda, fell forward, leaning against Steve once again, his face going into Steve’s neck.

Steve didn’t react, still brushing his fingers through sandy blond curls.

“You all know what could happen to us if people found out?”

Nobody answered him.

Truth is, they did know.

They knew the stories about young men being beaten nearly to death. Being run out of town or put in the hospital over nothing but a rumor.

Being gay wasn’t something that was tolerated in Hawkins.

Hell, Will himself has been pushed around and called queer as long as he could remember.

Even by his own father.

“We won’t tell anyone.” Will felt like how Billy looked. Like he was shaking apart right in front of them. “I promise. We won’t. Not anyone.” He could barely get the words out. It was like his jaw had locked up with the rest of his bones.

He thinks it would kill him if anything happened to Billy and Steve over this. They needed to keep them safe.

He needed to keep them safe.

“Yeah. I promise,” El parroted. Steve beamed at them.

Will knew El had been very confused the first time she heard about Ryan Anderson, the high school sophomore that had been humiliated and beaten so badly his family had to leave town six years ago.

She didn’t understand how a boy that liked to kiss other boys was something that merited violence.

Hopper had surprised them all by saying that it didn’t, but some people felt like it did.

Who you kiss doesn’t matter as much as who you are. If you’re a good person, it’s all just extra fodder. But some people like to they’re better than anyone that’s different than they are.

El had called those people bad and that was the end of it.

“Billy, I won’t tell.” Max didn’t take her eyes off Billy while she spoke. “I swear. I’ll never tell anyone. Not even mom.”

Billy’s hand flexed on the handle of the cane, and his knees gave a wobble. Steve kept him upright, leaning over to murmur into his ear.

Will could just barely make out the words I’ve got you.

“I promise, too.” Dustin’s cereal box/lute was forgotten on the grass at his feet. “The party protects each other. It’s one of our laws.”

“Yeah, we stick together. This isn’t different.” Max gave Lucas a watery smile when he spoke up in turn.

Mike was quiet.

It was well-known how much he disliked both Steve and Billy.

All of the kids had some trouble trusting Billy after everything that had happened last summer. Billy didn’t seem to blame them. He kept to himself, even when he moved from his cold room in the military hospital into the Byers’ spare bedroom seven months ago, he was like a ghost moving through the house.

Only Steve could make him come out of his shell in those early days. Only Steve could make Billy join them for dinner and movie nights, take slow walks around the yard with his walker, and later with his cane. Only Steve could make Billy’s shoulders relax from their defensive position up around his ears, and now, it was finally dawning on everyone why.

The kids mostly left him alone, only Max and El bridging the gap and actually speaking to him. Max had been determined to see Billy through his recovery, glaring at him and watching like a ginger hawk while he did his physical therapy, practicing his grip and moving buttons from one bowl to another.

El would sometimes talk to Billy in a hushed voice. She would get him on his own and hush words like Papa and Mama and bad and Billy would have to retreat to his bedroom for slowly decreasing amounts of time.

Nobody but Joyce and Hopper knew what she saw in Billy’s head. They were just informed that he wouldn't be returning home after his two-month stint in the military hospital. Max hard clenched her jaw and nodded jerkily and nobody dared ask any further questions.

He and Will traded a lot of good mornings and tended to generally avoid eye contact when they came across one another in the house.

But none of them hated him, they were just a little weary.

Mike, on the other hand, had some unexplained vendetta against both Billy and Steve and Will found himself willing Mike to be kind in this moment. To not see this as some power over them, or something.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Dustin’s right. We protect each other.”

Steve gave them a smile that was so dazzling and bright, it almost gave off its own light.

His eyes were shining and he gave a watery laugh.

“They really meant it when they said children are the future.”

“Who said?” El asked him.

“I don’t know, actually. Just people, I guess.” Steve shrugged, jostling Billy who was still nestled in his shoulder. “Look, seriously guys, thank you. I can’t even imagine how I would’ve felt if-nevermind.” He cut himself off quickly, shaking his head. “It just means a lot. To both of us.” Steve smiled at them one last time, this time much softer and thoughtful. “You’re good kids.”

Nobody said anything else. They didn’t know what to say to Steve.

“I came back here to get my fireballs. I, uh, I got ‘em.”

Everyone looked back at Will, and, almost like they were coming out of a trance, began picking their makeshift weapons back off the grass, and chattering idly as they went back to the yard in order to continue their battle.

Will lingered for a second, looking over his shoulder at Steve and Billy, who were still wound together.

They were talking softly, and Will was pleased to see Billy lift his head back up, still looking pale and nervous, but smiling at Steve.

He leaned back down and planted a kiss on Steve’s neck, right above the edge of his t-shirt.

Will felt his face go hot, and tugged himself away, going back to the game.

It wasn’t until well after dinner, when everyone else had gone home, that they spoke about it again.

Will. Will! Do you copy? Over.

The static rasping of Mike’s voice through the walkie-talkie was coming from under Will’s bed where he had stashed it.

He quickly turned down the volume dial on the side before answering.

“Yeah, Mike. I copy. Over.”

“We need to talk about today,” Mike said through the walkie. “I mean, did you have any idea? Over.”

“No. I didn’t,” Will said, truthfully. Finding out had made a lot of things clunk into place, but that doesn’t mean Will knew. “Over.”

“It’s just, neither of them seem the type. You know? Over.”

Something about that statement didn’t sit too right with Will.

Before he could respond another voice crackled through the channel.

“This is gold leader joining the conversation to let Mike know he’s being a dick. Over.”

Will laughed. Trust Dustin to listen in on the conversation and come forward to defend Steve.

“Lucas, do you copy, too? Over.” Will waited a moment after he asked.

“Yeah, I copy. I wanted to hear what you all were saying first. I don’t really know what to think about all this. Over.”

“I don’t think there’s much to think about. Steve seems happy. Billy too, I guess. Over,” said Dustin.

Will’s heart swelled with a pride he didn’t quite understand at Dustin’s words.

Outside in the hall, the phone rang.

Will heard his mom scramble to pick it up, calling softly down the hall for Billy, and the unmistakable thumping of Billy and his cane coming to take the call.

He heard his mom scrape a chair over for him and retreat to her room, giving him some privacy.

“It’s just scary, you know? Like, something really bad could happen to them if anyone else found out.” Will thought for a second. “You think anyone else knows? Over.”

“Robin. She was making comments to Steve a few days ago about his secret relationship and I kept asking him about it until he punched me in the arm. She knows. Over.”

“I’m just confused,” Mike sighed down the line. “Steve dated my sister for like, a year. And Billy is always disgusting and flirting with my mom. Or at least, he would do that. You know, before. Over.”

“Yeah, that’s just Billy being Billy,” Max chimed in.

“You have to say over when you’re finished. Over.”

“ Fine, dickheads. Over.”

“That makes sense, but Steve and Nancy doesn’t. Over.”

“Lucas, it doesn’t have to make sense. David Bowie says he likes guys and girls. Billy has, like, three different magazines where he says that. Over.”

“Max is right. We don’t have to understand any of this. They seem happy, and good together, and that doesn’t really concern us. Over.” Will was hoping he could speed through the rest of this conversation. He could hear Billy in the hall, shifting and murmuring something Will couldn’t make out but was dying to overhear.

He had a feeling he knew who was calling.

“But, now it does concern us. We know. And as we’ve previously established, the more people that know, the more danger they could be in. Over .” Dustin almost sounded as though he might cry.

“Then, we can’t talk about it. Not unless we know for a fact that we aren’t going to be overheard. And maybe we should give them codenames. Only call them something like Han and Leia when there’s a chance of someone listening in. Over.”

“I like Lucas’s codename idea, but I’d rather die than call them Han and Leia. Over.”

“Okay, Mike, it was the first thing that came into my head! What, you think you have a better idea? Over.”

“I don’t know. Harold and Maude? Over.”

“That’s stupid, Mike. Clearly, they’re Bert and Ernie. Over.”

Will snorted at Max’s suggestion. He heard Billy coughing wildly in the hall. He listened carefully to him until it died down and he knew it wasn’t a bad one.

“I think we’ve come to an agreement. If we need further discussion, codenames: Bert and Ernie. Okay, my mom wants me to spend time with her tonight. So this is gold leader, signing off. Over and out.”

“I’m going too. Over and out,” Mike said.

“Over and out,” said El, not surprising any of them that she was listening in. She did that a lot. Simply listen to her own walkie, and when asked why she didn’t say anything would shrug and go nothing to add. They only asked that she sign off so that they knew she got whatever information they had discussed.

Everyone followed with their own sign-offs, and Will twisted the top knob on his walkie, shutting it off.

There was a moment of silence out in the hall, and then three beats on Will’s door.

He found Billy on the other side, slumped in the chair under the phone, his cheeks going red.

“Can’t get up,” he grunted. “Can’t reach the hook.”

Will didn’t say anything, nodding quickly and avoiding eye contact as he took the phone, placing it carefully back on the hook.

Billy got stuck in chairs fairly often.

His core muscles had been slashed up worse than anything else, and sometimes he just needed a good pull up.

Will took hold of his wrist, leaning his body weight backward to yank Billy to standing.

Billy kept his weight heavily on his cane, patting Will once on the upper arm in thanks.

“You guys know Steve has one of your little walkie-talkies, right?”

“ What ?”

Will genuinely didn’t know that.

“Dustin gave him one. I don’t know when, but he’s got it.”

“So, uh, so he heard. Everything.”

“And relayed it all to me through an embarrassing amount of tears, by the sounds of it.”

But Will could see that Billy’s eyes were brighter than usual in the dark, and suddenly Will remembered that there had been a wet spot on Billy’s sleeve.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I mean, well, you’re good kids. All of you.” Billy patted him on the shoulder again. “I was shitting myself out there when you found us. Thought for sure one a’ yous would go squealing.”

“Maybe we would’ve. Before.”

“Never thought I’d be grateful for nearly being turned inside-out.”

“And I never thought I’d be grateful for being found dead in the water, but here we are.”

“Yeah, shit’s pretty weird if you stop and think about it for a few minutes. Near-death experiences really put your sexuality in perspective.”

“Is that why you two started dating? Perspective?”

Billy huffed a breath, looking up towards the ceiling. He coughed twice, and Will could pretty much hear his lungs rattle and crackle.

“Yeah. ‘S why we started dating. Both of us kinda realized there’s no sense in feeling like shit about the things that can actually make you feel not like shit.”

“So, you’re in love? Both of you?”

Billy’s cheeks were flooded with color, the deep red spreading all the way back to the tips of his ears.

“I think so. We’re both a little too fucked in the head to say it, but,” he shrugged lamely, not bothering to finish his thought, and looking anywhere but at Will.

He gets it, though.

Fucked up parents make for fucked up kids.

Will considered himself the luckiest person on Earth, and any kinda parallel universe, that he had his mom to stop, and later heal, all the damage his dad had caused.

“Well, I’m glad that you have it. Both of you. I mean, we saw you guys. And after everything, it's good that you’re happy.” And Will meant it.

Even before last summer, he had never seen Billy look the way he did when he was kissing Steve. Look that calm, and relaxed, and that goddamn happy. It really meant something.

Especially to Will.

Because he had never thought of someone looking that happy when they kissed someone else.

He had never thought of a boy looking that happy when he kissed another boy.

Billy surveyed Will for a moment, still leaning heavily on his cane in the hallway.

Will had the suspicion that Billy could see right through him.

“He came to visit me a lot when I was in the hospital. Steve, I mean. I don’t know why he did. It’s not like we were friends or anything. But one of those days, when I was barely awake he started talking about everything that happened those couple days.” Billy shifted closer to the wall, bracing himself with one hand as he lowered himself back into the chair. “The Russians. I don’t know what he’s told you kids, but it wasn’t pretty.”

“He hasn’t said anything. I mean, we all saw how he looked after, so we figured maybe he got in a fight.”

Billy chewed on his bottom lip.

“Look, you gotta swear not to tell any of the others this, but, uh, it was a bit more than a fight.”

Billy was giving him a meaningful look and something churned around in Will’s stomach.

“Torture?”

Billy gave a tiny, shaky nod.

“He started talking about it. Said after that, he started thinkin’ about shit different. Said he thought he was gonna die down there and that nothing would change without him. It was heavy, and I was mostly feeling the same way, and I think that’s why he told me. Knew that I could get it. After that he kept visiting, and I noticed that I didn’t hurt as much when he was there. Or maybe I did, but having him there, squinting at the t.v. ‘cause he can’t see worth a’ shit, or making some stupid comment about a nurse on the floor just made it easier. He makes a lotta shit easier.”

“I think that’s what it should be like. I don’t think love should make things harder.” Will thought of his mom and dad, and how different she acted with Hopper.

Like she didn’t hurt as much when he was there.

“It was hard in the beginning. I mean, before we got together. I thought that he didn’t feel the same way, you know? That I was just being an idiot, feeling like that for my best friend. But then he told me. He’s always been a lot braver than people give him credit for. Anyway, he told me, and it should’ve been fucking terrifying. And I was scared of people finding out. Still am, but it’s like, even if we get run outta town, and everyone we care about turns against us, it’ll be fine because we’re not just me an’ him, we’re us .”

Billy blinked quickly, almost as if he was surprised by his own words.

They clanged around in Will’s head.

We’re not just me an’ him, we’re us.

“You don’t have to be scared, though. I mean, of people finding out. Of turning against you both. We won’t let that happen. Not about something like this.”

Billy gave him a weak smile.

“I guess it makes sense. I mean, you all took me in after killing half the town. Tracks that you wouldn’t throw me out for. Being gay.”

“There are worse things to be than gay.”

“Psycho killer not one of them?”

Will gave Billy as unimpressed of a stare as he could muster.

“That wasn’t you. You forget, I know what it was like to have him controlling me. I know what it’s like to not do anything to stop him, even when you are fighting with everything you’ve got. I nearly killed my mom. I even might have, if I’d been stronger. You fought against him, and in the end, you won. I never could’ve done that.”

Billy just stared at the wall slightly above Will’s left shoulder.

“I killed people, too. When he had me. Led a whole group of people right into a trap. And it still scares me what he did. But I know that it wasn’t me that did it. It wasn’t you that did any of that, Billy.”

“I tell myself that. Hell, Steve tells me that about every five minutes. Just hard to watch yourself doing that awful shit and not be able to tell your body to knock it off.”

Will didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t.

Billy was right. It was a nightmare watching yourself hurt people around you, feeling like you were in the backseat, screaming at yourself to stop.

But Billy had done what Will couldn’t’ve.

Right at that last moment, he stood up to the thing controlling his every move.

Stood up to that horrific flesh monster, adn died rather than let it kill El.

El, who he didn’t even know.

And then Billy’s bedroom door down the hall opened slowly, and Steve poked his head into the hall, swearing under his breath when he saw someone in the hall with Billy and trying to duck out of sight, knocking the back of his head into the doorframe and swearing again.

Billy laughed, a low wheezy laugh that ended in a short coughing fit.

“Real fuckin’ subtle, Harrington,” he choked out.

The door opened once more and Steve stepped out into the hallway, trying to look casual.

“I didn’t realize it was you there, Will. How’s it goin’?”

Billy laughed again, and gestured for Steve to come and help him stand up.

Steve did so quickly, smiling warmly at Billy when he had righted him on his feet, and keeping hold of Billy’s arm.

“Why are you sneakin’ in my window like some kinda perv?”

“Because I wanted to talk. I have a lot of emotions today.” Steve turned to address Will. “You kids are gonna be the death of me. And I mean that in the nicest way I possibly can.”

“Yeah, well. You guys are family.” Will shrugged, feeling very awkward when both Steve and Billy. Looked as though their eyes were overbright. Will panicked, trying to think of an exit strategy before he saw either of them cry.

He had seen them both in too many intimate moments today.

“Um, I’m pretty tired, so I think I’m gonna go to bed. Let me know if you need, uh, help tomorrow. You know, heading of my mom or anything.”

Will turned on his heel and slipped back into his own bedroom.

“Alright, Bert. It’s been a long day and I’m gonna need some help getting into bed. My legs have gone totally stiff.”

“Oh, in no way am I Bert! I’m totally Ernie. You’re Bert. Think about it: you’re surly, and rude, and-”

“Gonna dump you if you don’t shut up and help me go to bed.”

“Spoken like a true Bert.”

#the big schmoop #yikes writes #steve harrington #billy hargrove #harringrove #i thinkg this was for #harringrove for palestine #but i really can't remember #idk merlin donated some money somehweere and i wrote this 💕

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

Note

For Vampire Chris! What if he and Jake went to a museum and came across some of Tooley's paintings? And Chris has a panic attack! We would finally get some Jake comfort. And maybe Chris would reveal more horrible things that Tooley had done to him.

CW: Discussion of death, blood, vampire whumpee, caretaker and whumpee

The sun sets early in the winter, and it's the only reason they can make this work.

Chris is barely awake even so, sipping from a coffee cup Jake filled with the contents of one of his blood packs, hoping he doesn't trip and spill and lead to Jake having some very awkward, panicked explanations to make to anyone nearby.

He'd slept in the truck Jake borrowed from Nat most of the way over here, curled in the passenger seat. He looks for all the world like any high schooler who stayed up too late the night before, dragged out by his family, forced to go learn when all he wants is rest.

Chris is draped in a hooded sweatshirt pulled on over his head, hair mussed from sleeping in the closet in the little nest-bed he made for himself in there. It sticks out like stray from beneath the hood he's pulled up, coppery strands occasionally covering his eyes and making him shove them out of the way with a snort that has no right to be as adorable as it is, considering the monster who makes the sound.

Not a monster, no. Not really.

Or his monster, anyway, the same way his mother is his mother. Jake is starting to understand the little vampire - more than three times his own age - has chosen him for family now.

The sweater he wears is kind of a joke, actually. Jake bought it weeks ago from a website that puts the covers of books on clothes, and it's an old cover image from Dracula.

Jake thought it was funny, anyway. Nat was less amused. Chris only smiled and said something about being happy the hairy palms thing isn't true.

The air is chilly, and Jake shivers a little as they head in from the parking lot across a small sidewalk next to a park and toward the museum itself, but of course Chris doesn't even notice. He seems to be enjoying it, the way it blows around his hair as they make their way slowly up the steps and past the row of Grecian-style columns that mark the entrance.

Jake has to visit for one of his classes, an extra-credit something-or-other, and Chris had asked to go along with him.

Jake had been hesitant, but seeing the way the vampire's green eyes sparkle as he moves around in public like any other person, well... he feels like he made the right choice to bring him along now.

"Finish up your drink, you can't take anything in once we pay and get past the lobby," Jake says, and Chris nods, gulping the last of the blood as fast as he can as they push through wide double-doors. Jake tries not to imagine how it must feel, swallowing thick congealing cooled blood. Someone's life, someone's heartbeat, down your throat...

Really, is he that much different? Jake has eaten a dozen cows' worth of beef in his life.

Does Chris see them all as just livestock? He doesn't act like it, but then, there are people who treat pigs or cows like pets and not like food...

His stomach flips a little and he forces himself to look around, up at the chandelier at the high ceiling, the heavy wooden desk they have to walk to off to the side to get their tickets. To stop trying to understand if Chris is a sort of stray they've adopted, or if he's a higher-level predator living with prey.

Once Chris drops the cup into a trash can, Jake throwing a couple wadded-up tissues on top so no one can accidentally see the smear of red around the edge of the lid, they buy their tickets, and wind their way through and past the little velvet ropes that mark off the entrance.

The museum opens before them into a grand hall, with paintings the size of two-story buildings on either side, permanent installations in the museum. Commissioned for its opening, sometime back in the 70's.

Jake picks up a brochure so they know which way to go - LGBTQ+ Art in Pre-War America is the temporary exhibit he's here to see, traveling work that is usually housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

"Oh, nice, it's on the first floor. Looks like you go through a couple of 'specialty' rooms, just showing off stuff from the in-house collection. Sounds cool, right?"

Chris, looking from side to side at the gigantic paintings that hang on the walls in the opening hall, hums softly, a tuneless constant sound. He doesn't answer Jake's question. He hums often, and Jake barely notices any longer, but there's something edged to it, now. As if just being around the paintings is making him nervous.

"Okay, little man, let's go over here." He touches Chris's arm, lightly, through the thick fabric of his sweater. The vampire looks over at him, smiling with his lips pressed together to hide his teeth from any potential prying eyes.

He follows easily, but he sticks closer to Jake than he normally does, and his eyes are constantly roving. They move through an exhibit of Pre-Colombian pottery first, on their way to the room in the back where the temporary showcase is.

Jake watches Chris's fingers twitch with the urge to touch, to learn by feeling the bumps and ridges in the ancient clay, and how he holds back as best he can. His urge to lift the clear protective plastic boxes right off the pottery so he can get at it is nearly physically painful.

Jake pretends not to see it when Chris's fingers trail along a column, settling for the white-painted rectangle the pottery is balanced on, taking in the rough texture smoothed by the matte paint.

"Did you ever meet anyone like you that was old enough to have made stuff like this?" Jake asks, stopping in front of a water jug in the shape of a man playing a flute with a dog at his feet. The dog wears a carved smile marked with disturbingly human-looking teeth. The paint it must have been covered in is worn by time, leaving the reddish-brown of the clay behind, with the faintest streaks of white still in the crevices.

"No," Chris replies, tilting his head, making direct eye contact with the statue in a way he never quite can do with any real person. Not comfortably, anyway. Jake has seen him force it and shudder afterwards, overwhelmed. When he'd asked about it, Chris had said he never liked looking at anyone's eyes, even before, when he was alive. It's too much, was all he would say. It's always too much. "None, um, none of us live that long."

"Why not?" They're alone in the room. It's the only reason Jake feels safe asking.

Chris's tongue runs over the sharpening bumps of his growing-in fangs, pressing against them, easing the itch and the ache of their return. After a second, he pulls a plastic bat on a cord from inside his sweater and puts the bat into his mouth, chewing on it idly, jaw working. "I, I, I don't know. That's just what what what my, my, my pack told me."

"I thought vampires lived in covens."

"No." Chris doesn't elaborate on this one. He can be weirdly secretive about how he lived before he came to Nat's, before he was pulled out of a basement, a living drug for a wealthy asshole.

Secretive, or just forgetting whatever wasn't essential.

He moves away to another pedestal, a shard broken off of a larger vessel, marked with a deep white and intense black angular design. He hums again, and Jake takes the hint and leaves him alone.

They spend several more minutes looking over the pottery before they head through a second room full of what must just be the favorite pieces of museum employees, as there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason, and each little card with the name of the piece and its maker has a paper next to it with a note on why each employee loves this piece in particular. Chris lingers around older things, a woven tapestry from medieval England, landscapes from the 19th century. He stares for a while at a painting called The Country Path by Joseph Poole Addy, a pale watercolor of winter trees with bare branches breaking the line of sky and a woman bundled in a coat carrying a basket down an equally colorless road.

Chris's humming getting louder, and he rocks a little, forward and back, his eyes moving again and again through the lines of the painting.

Jake wonders what it is about this one specifically that catches Chris like that, and when the vampire finally moves on he checks the employee's statement. Joseph Poole Addy, Irish painter in the 19th and 20th centuries, blah blah, something something countryside... Jake frowns, and glances over at Chris, who isn't looking back. He's moved on to something else.

Jake decides to ask him later.

They make it to the exhibit they're here to see, and Jake whistles under his breath as he enters. There are vibrant, saturated paintings lining the walls, a couple of large sculptures on the floor that still are taller than he is, a few smaller ones on pedestals. The work is mostly figurative, although there's some early abstraction there, a hint of the contemporary push to take even figurative work out of simply being an echo of a real life thing.

Chris looks at a sculpture, his head cocked so far to the side it looks almost birdlike, not quite human. Jake thinks his own neck would ache for days if he tried to do that. "Must've been, um, later," He mumbles to himself.

Jake files that away in his mental list of things to talk to Chris about later.

He walks slowly along the line of paintings. The whole point of being here is that he's supposed to pick a specific piece and write a short essay about it and the artist who made it, prove he saw it in person.

The class itself is about how to encourage better outcomes for healthcare in marginalized populations - but if she's giving out extra-credit for looking at queer art, well, Jake is happy to spend an hour in a museum.

After his dismal performance on the last test, he could use whatever credit he can get. Besides, the exhibit is actually kind of cool with that in mind. Every one of these artists was in some way outside of the sort of het ideal, and Jake smiles a little as he catches the heaviness of a look between two men seated across a table from one another, looks over the clasped hands of women, sitting with everything from shoulder to hip touching, who are listed as 'friends visiting the riverbank'.

Art that celebrates, hidden in plain sight. Art that rebels by sliding details in under the surface where only those looking for them will find them.

Each piece has another little paper, although this just has details about the artist and their work, what they were known for. He can use it as a jumping-off point for his paper, anyway.

"You, you, you finished her," Chris whispers, standing in front of a sculpture of a woman with her head thrown back as if in uproarious laughter, a woman with curls expertly carved so that her hair seems to have been there before the stone it's made of somehow. "I wonder if she, um, if if if she saw it."

"What'd you say, Chris?" Jake blinks, pulled out of his own internal reverie.

"Nothing," Chris responds, and walks slowly around the statue. The woman's smile is a shining light in the room. No one could carve like that without being at least a little in love with the subject.

Jake wanders away and then comes to an abrupt stop before a large painting, probably taller than Chris is. The background is near-total darkness with only a suggestion of stone, a single beam of light shining down to illuminate the central figure.

A naked boy clothed only in scraps of torn cloth that only emphasize his nakedness everywhere else is crouched in terror. His knees are bent and his feet are on the floor, one hand holding his weight with fingers slightly curled, his spine bent and arched as if he is caught in the midst of turning to look up to find the direction of the light. His other hand is thrown out, as if trying to ward off an attack.

He bleeds from a dozen or more places, the blood curving perfectly around his form, giving it extra weight and heft that makes it seem like he'll step out of the canvas, grab Jake, and shake him.

Jake's heart starts to race as he stares.

There are bones littering the ground around the thin, wasted boy, not bleached but sort of yellowed, marked with little notches as if cut with a knife. There might still be bits of skin attached to some of them, a hint of muscle. The detail makes Jake sick, but his panic, that comes from something else entirely. Just behind the panicked boy there is a body, as if just fallen, the eyes still open in the final terrified throes of death. The body's fingers are still dug into the dirt floor as if the dead man had been trying to pull himself somewhere, to escape.

A skull watches with eerie cheer from one corner of the painting, a few teeth missing and knocked out from its garish grin.

Barely visible, a thin wash of grayish-white, there is a pale, gnarled hand near the bottom reaching out from the background as if to grab the boy's ankle and drag him into the darkness.

Count Ugolino's Last Son, oils, 1932, reads the little plaque beside the painting. Its faint brassy shine glints in the carefully calibrated light. Edward Tooley, 1907 - 1936.

Jake swallows, but the lump in his throat doesn't budge, and he swallows again. And again. He can't take his eyes off the boy's painted hair, a dirtied copper, strawberry-blond badly in need of a wash. The wide green eyes with their terror writ large and clear, painted with lovingly perfect detail.

The boy in the painting is the perfect identical twin of the vampire who is still staring at the sculpture on the other side of the room. The fear in his face is so expertly done as to seem more photographic than painted in oil. The blood that drips to the ground follows his anatomy with absolute perfection. The bones are not bleached by they so often are in paintings, no, these...

These...

Jake holds his phone up and takes a photo, and then another of the little plaque.

"Chris." His voice cracks and Jake clears his throat. His heart is still pounding. "Chris, come look at this."

"Yes, Jake," Chris answers, sounding a little faint, and then he seems to simply appear at Jake's elbow, the teenage boy who has seen two world wars and a half-dozen smaller, stupider ones.

He goes still at Jake's side when he looks up. Jake looks over, just slightly, glancing sidelong to see a look of something like... wistfulness on the vampire boy's face.

"Tooley," He breathes. His hand goes up, and out, and he would have touched the canvas if Jake hadn't reached out and grabbed on to stop him. Chris jumps a little and turns to meet Jake's gaze. His eyes are pink-tinged in the whites, as if he's holding back tears. "Is, is, is he famous?"

"I guess. He's... he's here, isn't he?"

"He always wanted to, um, to to to to be famous." Chris's eyes move over the details, but it's not with surprise, it's with easy familiarity. He's seen this painting before.

He's been this painting before.

"That's you, isn't it?" Jake asks in a hushed voice. "Like, that was really you."

Chris looks away again, a faint flush in his cheeks. He's full enough of blood for it to happen, and you'd never know he isn't alive if you didn't already. "Yes," He whispers, and wipes at the corner of his eye with one hand. "That, that, that's me."

"Were you his model?" Jake blinks, looking back over the painted twin of the vampire beside him. The fear in the boy's face, woven in with a kind of awful resignation. It's all so perfectly rendered.

"Yes. Sort, um. Sort of. He, he, he kept me in a room." Chris exhales, slowly, and his eyes shift over to the paper with the little bit of biographical information on it. Edward Tooley's early works focused on landscapes or retreads of common historical subjects, only to find greater excellence and focus when he began to paint, again and again, the same figure - a representation of the darkness of the human soul - he stated appeared to him and demanded to be portrayed... art historians believe Tooley was driven by the demons of the Great War that had taken his family from him one by one to seek out uncomfortable subjects that force viewers to see the damage humans do to one another...

Chris's nose wrinkles as he reads, his lips moving slightly with the words as he takes them in. "I never did that. Never, um, wanted to be painted. Also, um this, um. He was... wasn't... he wasn't... wasn't like the paper says."

Jake looks over, reads it himself. Gregarious, sociable, popular with the libertine art crowd... he frowns. "What part is wrong?"

"This." Chris points, this at least he can safely make contact with, and presses the pad of his finger under a sentence that reads took inspiration from the ugly side of the city hidden under its shining lights. "He, he, he he didn't care about anyone in the city. He thought everyone who, who who who who-who wasn't him was, um, was stupid."

"What did he care about?" Jake imagines telling his professor that instead of an essay, he's going to bring in a vampire who literally knew one of the artists in person. How she might react.

Probably call the cops and report an unsecured vampire loose on the streets. But maybe she'd listen to what Chris had to say first.

"Blood," Chris says, softly. His voice is getting lower and lower, until it's barely more than a whisper. "Pain. Fear. Being... being the the the the last person who, who saw someone. He, he, he, he liked to lay them out and paint them, liked me to, to, to... arrange them for him."

Jake's eyes go unwillingly back to the dead body behind the scared boy in the painting. The grasping fingers, the open eyes that look sightless, lifeless, at nothing at all. When he looks, he can see - more suggestion than made clear - that the body's throat is torn open, as if by an animal's teeth.

Now, only now that he's looking for it, does he realize there is the slightest hint of red tears on the cheeks of the painted boy, a sheen of pink on his teeth where he begs for mercy from the grasping singular hand coming out of the dark.

His stomach flips again. "Chris, are you saying-"

"His, his, his name was Ben." Chris nods at the dead body in the painting. "I asked. Before..." He gestures, a little vaguely. "That."

Jake feels a sudden, wild urge to look up missing persons cases from New York City in 1932. See if there's anyone named Ben on there. He knows without having to do so that there definitely will be.

"What happened to him... after?"

"I don't know. I, I, I was never let out when Tooley was gone. I... wonder how, how, how many of me there are." Chris looks up at the echo of his own face, his head tilting again. His lips tremble, just a little, and then part to show the hint of white teeth wet with pinkish saliva. "On walls, in houses, in... in places like, um. Like this. How many there are... is, is, is, is that what I still look like?"

Jake clears his throat again, looks down at his feet. This feels, suddenly, like he's walked in on someone looking down at his own dead body in a funeral home. Interrupting a moment so immensely private it shouldn't even exist.

"Yeah," he says, a little gruffly. "Yeah, that's it. More or less. Except I hope I scare you less than that. Also you wear a lot more clothes with us."

Chris laughs - it's a huff of sound, barely-there. Then he turns away from himself. "We, we, we can't see ourselves, in mirrors," He says, and he's got the little plastic bat back in his hand, rubbing his thumb over the carved silicone. "But I have mirrors everywhere. On these walls."

He goes suddenly terribly still. He isn't breathing.

He doesn't have to, but the realization that he isn't even pretending is a jolt of awareness of exactly how dead Chris is. He leaves the exhibit, and Jake is left to scramble after him, struggling to catch up to someone he should be able to easily outrun.

He breaks into a flat run when they get outside the double-doors, jumps the steps three at a time with grace, and runs across the grass and towards the stand of trees halfway across the park. Even Jake, who works out four days a week, is breathing hard and has a hitch in his rib by the time he catches up.

He finds Chris curled up under a tree in the evening dark, the stars starting to twinkle overhead as the sun finally allows them a clear night sky to shine in.

Jake drops to his knees, ignoring the damp that seeps into his jeans from soil that still hasn't dried since yesterday's rains, and he leans over, putting a warm hand to either side of the vampire's face.

Chris looks up, his eyes glinting like a cat's briefly in the dark, and there are trails down his cheeks, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl that is anything but angry.

No, this is grief.

This is loss.

Jake knows the feeling.

"Talk to me," Jake says softly. "Tell me what it was like, what it's been like for you. Tell me about the life you've lived before I knew you."

"It, it, it hurt," Chris whispers, and his own hands cover Jake's. They're the same temperature as the air around them, and Jake shivers a little. It's almost a chill. "Every time. I, I, I try not to kill, Jake, I try so hard, but but but he would keep me so hungry and I couldn't-... stop..."

Jake thinks about the robbers Chris killed - for him, to save him from them - and how he'd locked himself in the closet afterward. Had he cried like this, over taking lives even when in defense?

"The museum thing said this guy Tooley died in 1936. He was only, what, twenty-nine? Did... did you-"

"Yes." Chris's voice is thick but it's not quite with regret. "I was hungry. He, he he he he didn't bring food. I was so hungry... then I was, um, was alone for a while... then, then, then, then then then I was taken for, for, for the, um, the trade, for my v-venom, and..."

"Got it. I got it, Chris. It's okay," Jake says, softly. "It's going to be okay. You're with us, now. And we'll never, ever make you hurt someone that way. We'll never make you go hungry. We'll never hurt you or use you."

Chris ducks his head, rocking forward until it knocks into Jake's shoulder, and Jake slides his arms around the vampire's shoulders, listening to his soft, muffled sobs, wondering how red his shirt will be stained by the time the vampire's tears have been cried out.

The same mouth that tore out the throat of a dead body that lays in a painting on the wall is so close to his neck it would take less than an inch for him to bite down. Even without fangs, he could lock his jaw and break the skin.

The same dangerous monster that has killed likely dozens to stay alive, the same stalking predator that has been the last sight of far too many, cries in his arms. Just a teenage boy who has been lonely, and terrified, and hurt for too long.

A teenager... and a monster that hunts prey after dark. Jake tightens his arms around Chris, holds him tighter.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter how long he's been alive, not really.

He's just Chris.

That matters more.

@mylifeisonthebookshelf @insaneinthepaingame @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @newandfiguringitout @astrobly @endless-whump @pretty-face-breaker @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @doveotions @boxboysandotherwhump @oops-its-whump @cubeswhump @whump-tr0pes @downriver914 @whumptywhumpdump @whumpiary @orchidscript @nonsensical-whump @outofangband @what-a-whump

#whump #vampire whump #vampire whumpee #blood tw #recovering whumpee #caretaker and whumpee #nonhuman whumpee #immortal whumpee #vampire #vampirism #vampire fiction #horror fiction #original fiction #whump writing #chris the strawberry blond romantic #vampire chris au #past torture

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spencers-renaissance · 3 years

Text

you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy

Summary: Spencer's gay. He joins the BAU and befriends the team, but it is 2003. It's a secret he has to keep. He just didn't expect it to be this hard.

Tags: gay!spencer, coming out, hurt/comfort, insecure!spencer, misunderstandings, angst with a happy ending, dad hotch, protective!hotch, protective!derek, childhood trauma TW: one instance of explicit homophobia, but it is referenced a lot, as is Spencer's internalised homophobia at the start of this fic. A shit ton of heteronormativity but tbh that's just canon lol

Pairing: Spencer Reid/OMC, Spencer Reid & Derek Morgan, Spencer Reid & Aaron Hotchner, The BAU Team & Spencer Reid

Word Count: 6k

Masterlist // Read on AO3

Consider this my contribution to pride month 😌 I've waited so long to post it and I'm so glad I'm finally doing it because it's definitely one of my all time favourites <3 Gideon is here somewhere but just like with all my early season fics he's not really part of the plot I combined my moreid and gen taglists bc it was hard to know the audience for this, but just ignore it if you're not interested!

you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn’t do, because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore. — richard siken, a primer for the small weird loves

Spencer has only told one person in his whole life.

His mother guessed. For as long as he can remember, she’s used gender neutral pronouns when talking about his future partner, read him all the gay literature she could find, promised him that he’s perfect just the way he is.

The trouble is that Spencer only believes her until the first grade, when Ryan Sampson shoves him over in the playground and calls him gay. His mom had only ever used that term in a sweet, loving way, taking care to associate such words with positivity, as long as his dad wasn’t around to hear. When that word comes out of Ryan Sampson’s mouth, it is not said with sweetness and love; it is said with venom, and Spencer learns quickly that his mom is wrong. He is not perfect just the way he is.

And so, he keeps it a secret. When his mom notices him getting uncomfortable at the mention of future partners, she stops bringing it up, though she refuses to give up the diverse education she provides for him outside of school. His dad tells him that one day he’ll be a strapping young man and marry a nice girl in a church, and Spencer nods along. He ignores the way his stomach turns with anxiety at the thought. Ignores the screaming match his parents have that night. Ignores the fact that it started because Diana chipped in with ‘or boy’.

He’s in high school by the time he’s twelve, and the only part he’s grateful for is the absence of pressure to get a girlfriend. His dad’s out of the picture now, and Spencer tries not to let himself think that maybe if he wasn’t like this he might have stayed. Diana’s so out of it most days that she doesn’t remember what she noticed about him when he was a child, only recalling the last few years of shoving himself so far back in the closet he can hardly see the door anymore.

It feels like he’s lost his last ally.

(He hates that a small part of him feels relieved she doesn’t remember; that he almost feels assured by the fact that the last person to know who he really is has forgotten. There is only this version of Spencer Reid now. No other exists.)

He makes the mistake during his second undergraduate degree. He’s just turned eighteen but he is already a doctor and, fortunately, this alienates him from most of his peers, but someone manages to slide past his defences. Ethan Miller is twenty, in the second year of his (first) undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering, and he’s nice. Spencer doesn’t have a lot of experience with friendship, but they get on well and Ethan makes him laugh. For the first time, he feels comfortable in the presence of anyone other than his mother.

They slip into an easy friendship: waiting for each other after class — Spencer back in the undergraduate buildings now he has his first PhD under his belt — and going out for ice cream and pizza and Thai food. Ethan goes to parties while Spencer studies, and then they reconvene to watch Doctor Who and play cards.

For almost a year, Spencer keeps his secret carefully locked up, hidden behind the mask he’s perfected after so many years. Even though he’s eighteen, nearly nineteen now, he doesn’t try and explore that side of himself. No, that’s far too risky. He doesn’t try and pretend any other way either, he just stays silent and lets people’s assumptions lie for him, but he can’t help the longing that claws up his throat when he locks eyes with a passing guy on campus. One time, he’d seen two men kiss on a bench in the city, and he’d run back to his dorm and had a panic attack. Why couldn’t he have that?

The feelings don’t stop, and he doesn’t know how to make them. He hates that he isn’t normal, but still longs for the touch of a man, the feeling of being wrapped up in strong arms, of being kissed by dry, chapped lips, and falling asleep to a heartbeat approximately 11% slower than that of a woman’s.

It’s a constant battle inside him, emotions raging, and he struggles to control it, suppress it, tame it.

He pays a sorry price.

Ethan makes him feel comfortable, and that turns out to be a detriment. He relaxes around the other boy: he tells him about growing up as a pre-teen in a high school, about how a child feels living 260 miles away from home, even about his mother’s illness.

And one day, it slips out. They’re on the beach, lying on towels as they look up at the blue sky, talking about what their futures will look like: Ethan will be a successful chemical engineer in Berlin, and Spencer will work for the FBI, profiling serial killers.

“You’ll have to marry a German girl,” he tells Ethan. “It’ll be tough to convince an American girl to move all the way to Germany as soon as you graduate.”

“Yeah, and what about you? You’ll be off fighting crime around the country, not much of a life for a family.”

“Oh, I imagine my husband will be the type to—”

“Husband?”

Spencer freezes. It shocks him as much as it shocks Ethan. He doesn’t even pay much attention to Ethan’s disgusted face and his outraged tirade. He hears slurs and insults, hears him say that he can’t believe Spencer tricked him like this, that he was probably waiting to make a move on him, that he was never to look in Ethan’s direction again, but Spencer is frozen in time.

He’s never allowed him to think much about what his personal life might look like in the future, but he’d said ‘husband’ on instinct, without thinking, and it’s clearly something he actually wants. Ethan’s words sting, but the moment brings about a realisation Spencer is thankful for; it instigates a journey of self-discovery and self-expression, of the joy of living as your true self.

He loses his first and only friend, but he gains something much more valuable. He visits gay bars — nervously sipping a non-alcoholic drink in the corner at first, before soon becoming confident enough to respond to the men who sidle up to him and ask for his name. He lets go and dances the night away, sometimes going home with one of the many dance partners he acquires during the night, sometimes heading back to his own dorm happily alone.

Makeup and dresses and skirts and heels make their way into his wardrobe, and he befriends girls and drag queens and other gay men who encourage him to be exactly the way he is. And the best part is, he never has to come out to any of them. All of them know, and that’s good enough for everyone.

The fun comes to a sad sort of slow, however, when he joins the BAU. Everyone knows law enforcement’s relationship with the LGBT community is less than adequate — Spencer’s seen it with his own eyes: butch lesbians and men in dresses getting roughed up by angry police officers for ‘lewd behaviour’ or ‘drunkenness’ when they’re just being themselves. It’s not safe for him to tell anyone, so he doesn’t.

He still goes out with his friends when he’s in town and wears makeup and dresses and crop tops when he’s at home, but presents as rigidly straight Dr Spencer Reid to his team at the BAU.

The hardest part about it is that he loves his team. He’s known Gideon for years — and he wouldn’t be surprised if he suspects something after coming over to his house unannounced one night, only to have a man other than Spencer open the door — but he settles into a comforting dynamic with Hotch. He can’t help but see him as something of a father figure, and he knows Hotch has a soft spot for him, always looking out for him and taking him under his wing without a moment’s hesitation.

Elle, JJ, and Penelope all take a shine to him, too, teasing him without a hint of malice in their tones, only the kind of playful kindness that reminds him of his mother. He forms a special bond with Penelope and they spend hours watching Doctor Who together and geeking out on all the areas their interests overlap, and the comfort he feels with her matches the comfort he’s found with his new group of queer friends.

(She doesn’t hold a candle to Ethan, he decides one night, after he’d cried at a movie she’d made him watch and she felt so bad she made him hot chocolate and jam toast and cuddled him until he felt better.)

Derek becomes a brother to him. He puts him in a headlock at least once a day — which Spencer has been reliably informed by multiple sources is a very brotherly thing to do — and teases him relentlessly, while simultaneously being fiercely protective of him. Enough so, that Spencer sometimes wonders if he even has Hotch beat in that department.

He loves his team and his team loves him. It should be simple. It is still 2003.

He comes in one morning late for a briefing, his shirt buttoned wrong and his hair is a mess, and he’s fairly sure that his attempt to cover the hickey at the base of his neck with concealer has been ultimately unsuccessful. It’s obvious why he’s late. Gideon is too engrossed in the case file to notice, but Hotch raises an eyebrow, an amused look on his face as everyone else immediately takes to teasing him.

“Who’s the lucky lady, pretty boy?”

Elle raises an eyebrow to match Derek’s shit-eating grin, “Someone definitely got some strange last night.”

“When do we get to meet her, Spence?” JJ asks, smirking as he takes a seat.

He’s bright red — as if he needed to look any more debauched — and Spencer tries to ignore the hurt that seizes his chest at the reminder of his need to stay quiet. This team respects him, and he can’t throw that away just because Spencer gets too comfortable.

God, he wishes Penelope was here.

“None of your business,” he mutters, trying to keep his tone light. He fails.

Naturally, Hotch notices and swiftly moves the briefing on, and Spencer keeps his gaze locked on the case file, not missing the absence of a reprimand from his superior. He’s constantly thankful for the older man, but in this moment, he wishes he could hug him.

(A voice that sounds dangerously close to Ethan’s rises up and taunts him in his ear: he wouldn’t want a dirty homo like you anywhere near him—)

Derek doesn’t let up on the case, continuing to bug him about the special lady in his life. He does concede that it could’ve been a one night stand, which is one front he’s right on, but a couple more concessions are necessary before Derek comes close to the truth of last night.

Eventually, Derek stops, and Spencer notes that the cessation of comments comes suspiciously close to the last time Derek and Hotch were alone together. He doesn’t have it in him to feel angry at Hotch for stepping in when he had it handled; doesn’t have the energy to act as though his pride is wounded, because really, neither of those things are true, and he doesn’t need to add another item to ‘Spencer Reid’s List of Things He Pretends to Be.’

The situation is forgotten, and time moves on.

Things change when he finds his first proper boyfriend. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the giddying rush of emotions it turns out to be, and Spencer spends his days smiling as he daydreams his time away.

His name is Oscar Wilkins, a History professor at Georgetown University, and Spencer falls quickly in love with him. Ever since their mutual friend had introduced them at a gay bar one evening, they’d spent all their free time together. He’s kind and gentle and understanding of Spencer’s hectic and unpredictable job, and he finally has the chance to experience everything he quietly and shamefully longed for as a teenager.

The only downside is the silent breaking of Spencer’s heart that the most important people in his life can’t meet his boyfriend. He longs to show Oscar off, to hold hands in front of his team, lean up to press a tender kiss to Oscar’s lips. He wants to put a framed picture of the two of them at the Washington Monument on his desk to remind him of why he needs to get through the hard days; he doesn’t want to have to sneak out of the hotel room he shares with Derek to whisper hushed, loving goodnights over the phone.

But he’s too scared. Too cowardly.

It’s different being who he is with his gay group of friends littered with wlws and drag queens and other gay and bisexual guys. They understand.

But Derek and Hotch are two extremely masculine, alpha men: Derek’s a ladies’ man and Hotch is married to a woman he met in college with a baby on the way and both have a strong and dominant energy that still sometimes manages to intimidate Spencer even after all these years. And Elle and JJ are lovely — some of his closest friends, really — but sometimes they remind him a little too much of the mean girls he went to high school with.

The hardest person to keep his secret from, though, is Penelope. She’s his best friend and he desperately wants to give her all of him, but he’s so scared. He’s lost a best friend to this secret before, and even though he’s certain she’d be fine with it, what if she accidentally let it slip to Derek? What if Hotch found out and didn’t see him in the same light anymore? What if the girls started teasing him? What if Gideon didn’t want to mentor him anymore?

The fear paralyses him. And it’s a cycle he doesn’t know how to break.

Fear, though, doesn't stop everyone from noticing his daydreaming, his dopey smile when he checks his messages, his urgency to get home where he would’ve stayed until the small hours of the morning before. As excellent as he is at hiding his sexuality, he’s fucking terrible at hiding the fact that he’s in love: it was easy enough to pretend he was straight, but hiding something this all-consuming is an impossible ask.

Derek comes over to perch on the edge of his desk one afternoon, sighing as he sits down. “Pretty boy, this is getting ridiculous,” he says, snatching Spencer’s attention away from his phone. “You’ve been grinning like an idiot for the last twenty minutes as you’ve texted Future Mrs Reid. When are we going to meet her?”

(He hates the new nickname the team has given his mystery significant other, although Oscar had found it hilarious. “It’s funny because when we get married, we’ll hardly be able to tell,” he’d argued through his laughter. “Neither of us will change our name because of our academic profiles, and we’ll both still be ‘Dr’. Our wedding rings will be the only indicator.”

Spencer hadn’t argued back, because he’d been too tongue-tied and flushed pink at Oscar’s use of ‘when’ in regards to their hypothetical nuptials. It was only made bearable by Oscar kissing him gently and tucking him under his arm, not embarrassing him any further as Spencer had sort of anticipated, warmth settling over his chest at the thought of their future together.)

“You won’t,” he replies, perhaps a little too curtly.

Derek starts at that, clearly not expecting it. He definitely should’ve tried to play it off as a joke. “What— should I be offended, pretty boy?”

You wouldn’t call me that if you knew who I really am.

“That’s up to you, Derek,” he says calmly, although he still can’t meet his eyes, “but you won’t meet the ‘Future Mrs Reid, so I think it would probably be best if you left it alone.”

“Damn,” Derek mutters under his breath, clearly pissed off and probably more hurt than Spencer ever intended. “Suit yourself.”

And with that, he gets up and leaves his desk. Spencer’s only solace is the text message he sees on his phone when he picks it back up: I love you so much. You know that, right?

The light-hearted ridicule comes to an abrupt halt after the incident with Derek, and it’s clear that he had been the biggest contributor to the teasing. He’s thankful that the jokes have stopped, but he wishes desperately that it didn’t come with the growing distance between him and his team. Loneliness takes the place of his previous irritated anxiety, and he isn’t sure what’s worse.

It all comes to a head at the end of a case in Michigan. They’re stuck in the lounge of the small inn they’d stayed in the last few days, a snowstorm having blocked them in and grounded the jet, although Gideon had long since retreated to his room. The fire’s going and they’re the only guests around, so it’s cosy enough, but Spencer can’t help but feel sick at the idea of another night away from home.

It’s only been two weeks since he’d snapped at Derek, but the chasm between him and the team is only widening with each passing day. He knows it’s not a case of ‘pick a side’, but the team’s morale relies on light-hearted banter and teasing, and him not being a part of that anymore has only brewed awkwardness. Everyone’s trying to give him space when space is the last thing he wants.

Oscar’s keeping him company over the phone at least, but it’s not quite enough to quell the loneliness swimming around his stomach, and the 'discrete' sideways looks he gets from the team only make him feel worse.

“At least it’s nice and toasty in here,” JJ sighs as she takes a sip of the hot chocolate the kindly inn owner had made for them all.

Elle hums in agreement. “There are worse places to be grounded.”

“I dunno, man, I just wanna get home,” Derek says, not taking his eyes off the fire. Spencer can’t help but agree.

“Oh, come on,” Hotch muses, considerably more jovial now the case is over, “we’re here, and that’s not going to change any time soon. We should make the most of it.”

“It’s at least nice to be somewhere sort-of Christmassy now it’s December,” Elle points out. “We could be stuck in a dingy police station like we probably will be next week.”

“Ooh, I noticed that Jemimah and Kiran started planning the Christmas party last week,” JJ says, smiling at them. “I offered my help, but they seem to have it covered.”

Hotch raises an eyebrow“That’s probably a good thing. You don’t need more work on your plate.”

“Not gonna argue with that,” she murmurs, smiling as she brings her mug to her lips again.

Spencer doesn’t miss that Derek is still stewing on the opposite side of the room.

“Are you looking forward to the Christmas party, Spencer? Will you come?” Hotch asks, clearly trying to rope him into the conversation, which he appreciates. He’s been making a lot of effort with him the past few weeks, and it’s just about the only thing that’s getting him through each day.

Before he can reply, though, Derek erupts from the other side of the room; an already pissed-off man being pushed over the edge. “He won’t even let us meet his fucking girlfriend, Hotch, he’s not gonna want to come to the Christmas party!” he yells, throwing his hands in the air as he glares at Spencer with a stormy expression raging across his face.

Suddenly, Spencer can’t stay silent anymore, and his retort shocks himself just as much as it does everyone else. “I don’t have a girlfriend!”

It might be the loudest he’s ever shouted in his whole life. He’s always been quiet and restrained, the type to state his feelings as calmly as possible no matter how he’s feeling on the inside. Even in the biggest fight he’s had with Oscar, his voice was barely loud enough to qualify as a shout.

There’s a brief stunned silence, but Derek quickly slices his way through it, voice raising to meet Spencer’s fiery emotion, fierce and loud. “Oh, don’t even go there, Reid, you’re really gonna try and argue that? You’re gonna lie about her as well as not let us meet her? What a boyfriend you are.”

“I don’t! I don’t have a girlfriend!” he repeats, voice catching this time as tears rise unbidden to the backs of his eyes and all the emotions of the journey he’s taken with his sexuality over the years flood him in a wave of intensity he’s not prepared for.

“You’re fucking lying—!”

“I have a boyfriend!” he yells. “Alright? I have a boyfriend. I’m gay.”

The anger and emotion quickly dissipates, and he’s left standing alone in front of the team he’s put so much effort into hiding this from, watching shock spell out across everyone’s expressions. He’s never felt smaller than he does in that moment, and he quickly grabs his phone before running upstairs to his room, locking the door behind him.

“Oh God, Oscar, I fucked up so bad,” he cries over the phone as soon as his boyfriend picks up.

“Hey, hey, breathe, baby,” Oscar says gently, but Spencer can hear the anxious concern in his voice, “it’s gonna be okay, I promise. I’m here. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“I just— Oh God, I just told the team.” A new wave of horror rolls over him as he realises what he’s done. Times might be changing, but it’s still only 2006, and he doesn’t know each and every nuance of his team members’ political positions and, fuck, he hates that his existence is a fucking political position.

Oscar’s been so understanding of his reluctance to not tell the team, even though Spencer’s met pretty much everyone in his life. He isn’t sure what he’s done to earn such a gracious and understanding boyfriend, but he’s not about to question it.

“Baby, I know it’s scary, and I know you’re really worked up right now,” he counsels, voice soft and reassuring, using the nickname he knows Spencer loves the most to make him feel as safe as he can from 700 miles away, “but it’s probably not as bad as you think. From what you’ve told me about the team, they love you so much, and even in the case that in the past they've had some issue with gay people, I can't imagine they’d ever actually think of you any differently when it comes down to it, Spencer.”

He’s crying too hard to reply, and Oscar understands immediately, gently transitioning into a story about his day that slowly starts to calm him down, and by the time he’s wrapping it up, his tears are starting to subside.

“Thank you, Ozzy,” he whispers into the phone, lifting himself up off the floor and making his way to sit on the bed instead.

“You know I’d do anything for you, sweetheart,” he murmurs warmly. “Do you want me to stay on the phone for a bit?”

“Yes please,” he whispers again, holding it as close to himself as possible, drawing all the comfort he can from his boyfriend’s voice.

He lies there listening to Oscar’s voice and trying not to think about the disaster downstairs for a good ten minutes before there’s a tap at the door.

“Oz, there’s someone here,” he says, voice panicked.

“I think you should probably speak to them, baby,” he urges. “I’ll stay on the phone with you while you do, if you like?”

“Please.” He gets up from the bed gingerly, keeping his phone tightly gripped in his right hand as he slowly unlocks the door with his left, revealing Hotch on the other side.

“Hey, Spencer. Do you mind if I come in?”

He’s riddled with nerves, but Hotch is smiling warmly, and he’s never said a harsh word to Spencer, so he steps aside and lets him into his room.

Hotch quickly notices the phone in his hand, visibly still on a call. “Is that your boyfriend?”

Spencer nods.

“Do you mind if I talk to him?”

His brows knit in confusion and his lips part slightly in surprise, but it’s all he can do to hand the phone over, watching Hotch carefully.

“Hi, Spencer tells me this is his boyfriend?” Hotch inquires politely into the phone, his tone still warm. “I’m Hotch, Spencer’s boss.”

He can vaguely hear Oscar speaking on the other end of the line, and he worries slightly that Oscar will somehow give away the familial feelings he holds for Hotch, but the conversation doesn’t last long enough for the anxiety to really take over.

“Everything’s fine here, I just want to have a conversation with Spencer, so is it alright if we hang up and I talk to him alone for a minute? He can call you straight back afterwards.” After a brief pause in which Oscar says something, Hotch looks back up at him. “Are you okay with that, Spencer?”

He nods hesitantly, and Hotch says a quick goodbye to Oscar before surging forwards and wrapping Spencer in a hug. It catches him off guard, but he doesn’t waste any time in burying his face into Hotch’s neck and soaking in the comfort and warmth that always radiates from his father figure.

“Come on,” Hotch says softly as they pull away a good minute or so later, “let’s sit down, shall we?”

“You’re not mad?” Spencer can’t help but ask, the question burning his tongue as anxiety — however quietened from Hotch’s hug — still swims around in his stomach.

“There are many things that could make me mad, Spencer,” he says earnestly, “but this is not one of them. I would never be angry at you for being who you are, okay? I might… I might be overstepping here, and if I am, then tell me and I’ll back off, but I’ve always seen you as a mentee, and over the years that’s developed— well, I see you more as a son these days. And part of that is wanting to protect and support you no matter what you do or say or who you are.”

Spencer wastes no time in diving back in for a hug, clinging onto Hotch for dear life as he hugs back, rubbing his back gently.

“I’m so sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell us sooner, Spencer,” he says in a voice soft with affection and regret. “But I’m so glad you’ve told us now.”

He only presses closer at that, tears springing back to his eyes. “I didn’t want to lose you.” He knows what he’s implying, and even in a roundabout way, he’s glad he’s telling Hotch.

“Oh, Spence,” he sighs sadly, “you couldn’t do a single thing to lose me. I’m in it for the long haul.”

“Really?” he asks, hating how insecure he sounds.

“Really,” Hotch promises, pulling away as Spencer does. “Now, you have a whole team of agents downstairs who are feeling very sorry for themselves and really want to see you.”

Nausea rolls in his stomach and panic springs back up as he looks at Hotch, desperate for some sort of grounding. “Are they angry at me? Do they hate me now?”

“No one hates you, Spencer,” he says firmly. “I promise you that. Everyone just wishes that they’d made you feel more welcome and comfortable. We all hate that you felt you had to lock up something so integral to who you are, and we can’t help but feel we played a part in it.”

“No,” he protests — the last thing he wants is family blaming themselves when it has nothing to do with them, “it’s not your fault, it’s just…”

Hotch nods. “I understand, it’s okay. Now, do you want to go down and see them? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it might help ease your mind to see that they really don’t hate you.”

Spencer pauses, taking a moment to think. “Can I see Derek first?”

“Of course,” Hotch says understandingly, and the comforting smile that crosses his face makes Spencer feel safe and taken care of. “I’ll send him up?”

Spencer nods and Hotch hugs him once more before leaving the room almost reluctantly. He wastes no time in picking up his phone and sending a text to Oscar. You were right. Hotch is fine. He’s just sending Derek up before I go and see the team but he says that no one’s angry and I think I believe him. Thank you, Oscar. I love you.

Not even half a minute goes past before his phone lights up with a text back. I’m so glad, baby. Call me later, okay? I want to make sure you’re okay before I go to bed. I love you more.

Before Spencer can argue that actually, he is the one more in love with the other, a hesitant knock sounds on his door. Nerves suddenly flip his stomach, and he clenches and unclenches his fists a couple of times before forcing himself to cross the room, revealing a very worried and regretful-looking Derek.

“Oh, pretty boy,” he says sadly, before crushing Spencer in a warm and tender hug. Immediately, he relaxes into the arms of one of his best friends, and relief courses through his blood at Derek’s reaction. “I am so sorry that I ever made you feel like you couldn’t tell me that you were gay or had a boyfriend. That’s completely on me. I don’t care who you love, Spencer, I just want you to be happy, okay? And if this guy makes you happy, then that’s fine by me. But if he ever lays a hand on you or—”

“Derek, Derek,” he laughs, “it’s fine I get it. Thank you, though, I’m… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier and for snapping at you in the bullpen that time…”

“I understand, Spence,” he promises. “It’s in the past, okay? And I’m sorry for pushing so hard. I mean, I’d love to meet him but if you don’t feel comfortable or you don’t want to, that’s fine, too. It’s your life, man.”

“No, I… I think I want you guys to meet him. It’s been so hard to keep him away from the people I consider my family, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe after Christmas, we can all have dinner or something.”

Spencer smiles shyly. “Well, Oscar’s a great cook, so I reckon we could work something out.”

Derek grins, throwing an arm around his shoulders as he immediately jumps back into teasing him as they make their way to the door to go downstairs and see the rest of the team. “Ooh, lover boy’s got him a chef, hey? What else does this Oscar have going for him?”

Spencer chatters eagerly about his boyfriend to Derek, barely skipping a beat when he joins everyone downstairs, his friends taking his cues and joining in with the conversation seamlessly. He’s had enough fuss for one night, and the warmth and understanding on everyone’s faces tells him everything he needs to know.

“Do you have any pictures of him?” JJ asks, raising an eyebrow with eager expectancy as they all settle back into their seats by the fire, a warm and unbelievably happy feeling settling in Spencer’s stomach.

He blushes, digging out his phone from his pocket and unlocking it. “More than a few, I think.”

He finds the most recent picture of his boyfriend — a candid shot of him cooking in the kitchen, spatula aloft, and a huge grin on his face — and hands the phone around.

“Oh wow, you like them buff, huh, pretty boy?” Derek teases as soon as he gets his hands on it, and Spencer’s stomach twists in a sudden bout of fear, expecting to see some hesitancy or even disgust on his friend’s face. What if he thinks that Spencer has a crush on him? What if he’s uncomfortable around him now?

But if Derek’s having any of those thoughts, they don’t show on his face. He’s smiling widely and openly, all the pent-up anxiety and frustration borne from hurt gone from his body language, and he looks completely comfortable sat next to Spencer, his arm stretched out behind him on the back of the sofa.

They sit happily around the fire for a couple of hours, settling into a happy, intimate familiarity Spencer hadn’t realised was missing when he was hiding something so integral to his being from his family, and he’s still smiling when they finally part ways to head to bed, the clock ticking closer and closer to 1 am.

He gets ready for bed quickly, brushing his teeth and throwing on the top he’d stolen from Oscar the first time he’d stayed at his place; a welcome change from his worn and wrinkled suit. As soon as his teeth are brushed and the lights are all off except for his bedside lamp, he pulls out his phone, knowing there’s one more thing he has to do before he goes to sleep.

“Spencer?” Penelope’s voice sounds down the line, clearly concerned. “It’s almost 2 am here, are you okay?”

“I’m gay,” he says, getting straight to the point. The main reason he ever kept it from her was because of his fear of it accidentally getting out to the team rather than fear over her reaction. After all, multiple of his drag queen friends are also hers.

“Oh my God,” she says in that small voice she uses when she’s not actually talking to you, before finally actually replying to me. “Spencer, I’m so happy you told me!”

He doesn’t miss her choice of words, or the way she says them and he tilts his head suspiciously. “You already knew, didn’t you?”

She sighs. “Yeah. I’m sorry, a couple of months ago I saw a text from Oscar on your phone when you went to the bathroom during one of our Doctor Who marathons, and it wasn’t hard to figure out the relationship.”

“And… wait, you’re not mad at me for not telling you sooner?”

“Spencer! Of course not. I was waiting for you to be comfortable enough to share it with me. I felt awful that I knew without your consent but I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to catch you off guard or make you feel uncomfortable. It’s fine that you waited, baby genius, I’m just so happy you told me now. What finally gave you the courage?”

“Well, it might have slipped out in front of the team this evening,” he admits sheepishly, “and the only reason I never told you was because I was scared that it would slip out somehow — accidentally, of course, I didn’t think you’d tell anyone on purpose — and now everyone knows. It’s been killing me not to tell you, Penelope, it really has because I love you so much and you’re my best friend and I trust you with my life, it’s just…”

“Whoa, slow down, Spence,” she laughs fondly, “you don’t have to explain yourself to me, I understand. But I’m glad you finally told everyone and you can be yourself completely with us, now. We all love you no matter what, you know that right?”

“I do now.”

“Good. You should get some sleep, baby boy, it’s late and you’ve had an emotional evening.”

Spencer smiles. “Yeah, I know. You should, too, Pen. I’ll see you when we can finally make it home, okay? Love you.”

“Love you, too, 187,” she says softly, and Spencer can hear the smile in her voice. “Goodnight.”

As soon as he hangs up, he settles down into the bed, turning off the light and pulling the duvet up over his shoulders before dialling one more number.

“Hey, baby,” Oscar says, voice as gentle and caring as it always is, although thicker with tiredness now. “I take it everything went okay?”

“Yeah,” Spencer murmurs, already feeling tired as the safety he always feels at the sound of Oscar’s voice settles into the fibres of his being. “It went so well. I can’t wait for you to meet everyone.”

“I can’t wait either, sweetheart. Are you in bed now?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Can you talk to me as I fall asleep?”

“Anything for you, Spence,” he says softly, before transitioning seamlessly into a story about the professors on campus, and his gentle comfort and the knowledge of the unconditional love his family has for him finally lulls Spencer into the best sleep he’s had in weeks.

taglist : @criminalmindsvibez @moreidstrobed @suburban--gothic @strippersenseii @takeyourleap-of-faith @negativefouriq @makaylajadewrites @iamrenstark @livrere-blue @hotchseyebrows @reidology @i-like-buttons @spencerspecifics @bau-gremlin @hotchedyke @tobias-hankel @goobzoop @marsjareau @garcias-bitch @oliverbrnch @physics-magic @sbeno22 @temily @enbyspencer @im-autistic @anxious-enby @kuolonsyoja @reidreids (add yourself to my taglist via this form!!)

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kindofwriter · 3 years

Text

I know Alex just intended Wilde’s robes to be ‘gay Shakespeare costume’ but I really love the idea of them being almost like ‘robes of unapologetically being yourself.’ Robes of ‘I’m not afraid to be queer, I’m not afraid to be Irish, I have bardic inspiration and I’m better than you.’ Because even if it means absolutely nothing in RQG universe, I’d like to think that’s a meaningful visual to real people.

Also, hypothetical RQG TV show where Wilde’s VA speaks fluent Irish and all his bardic castings are in Gaeilge? I want that.

Anyway, transcript under the cut:

SEASON 5, EPISODE 204

As the party enter the main room they find the table laid with a mediocre breakfast, however at each place setting there is also a parcel, wrapped in brown paper and with a note card laid on top. WILDE, already sat at the table, has clearly already opened his parcel, then hastily stuffed it back into the wrapping to appear polite. He turns to grin excitedly at HAMID, who shoots him a quizzical look.

WILDE: I think it's our lucky day!

HAMID: Oh?

AZU: Huh?

CEL: Ooh!

HAMID: Well, that's exciting!

CEL: Is that like a thing that we, uh, that, like, we, like- Are all the presents for, for, for us? Uh, do we-

ZOLF steps past HAMID, impatient rather than aggressive. He squeezes WILDE once on the shoulder, then takes a seat beside him. The rest of the party clearly take this as their cues to begin to sit at the parcels with their own name cards.

WILDE: It turns out that Augusta does actually have a role here, beyond just annoyance, which is quartermaster. So, Barret may have been sent out to fetch some things... for us?

HAMID: Oh!

ZOLF: Right.

HAMID: So, not 100% useless, that's nice! C-c-can we open them now?

WILDE shrugs - how should he know? - then makes a gesture of 'yeah, go for it' to the table.

AZU (BEAMING): Let's all open them together!

HAMID: How exciting!

HAMID leans slightly across the table, as if he's about to say something to SKRAAK, but they're already tearing into their present. From his package he removes a sturdy leather belt, studded, and buckled, with adamantine. They immediately put it on.

WILDE takes this to mean it's alright for him to re-open his own gift. He hurriedly shoves off the paper and pulls out a set of glimmering robes. They're an iridescence white, complete with a ruffle around the neck, and entirely covered in shimmering rainbow script. The text shifts, in a way that clearly marks it out as magical.Everyone pauses for a moment to look at WILDE, whose grin could split his face. It's been a while since they've seen him this happy.

HAMID: Oh, Oscar, those are magnificent!

ZOLF (WITH A SMALL, SOFT GRIN): You are gonna look ridiculous, Wilde.

WILDE beams smugly down at ZOLF.

WILDE: I am going to look magnificent.

WILDE shakes the robes out, and a miasma of illusory glitter hits ZOLF in the face. ZOLF scowls dramatically at a laughing WILDE.

Still unfolding the robes, WILDE turns his attention to AZU, whose parcel is by far the largest. She is carefully unfolding it, grinning face barely visible about the huge package. Inside is a golden agile breast plate. As it shimmers in the light it becomes apparent that it is covered in the same kind of shifting magical scrawl as WILDE's robe.

Attached is a note that AZU reads aloud. Despite being busy with their own gifts, everyone turns as she does.

AZU: Whatever you do, don't use this inside.

This receives a round of curious looks from the table. HAMID and CEL lean in to get a better look at the armour.

AZU reaches out to turn the breast plate over in her hands, and as she does the text starts to fill in. Beginning at her hands, the shifting text slowly begins to run through with glowing pink, until the plate is more pink than gold. It's as bright as AZU's armour was on Hades' plane. The pink begins to settle, and as it does the magic text stops shifting. With a soft hum, it settles into Arabic scripture: the fundamental teachings of Aphrodite.

AZU beams with delight.

AZU: Ooh! Do you think- Do you think that don't use it means don't wear it? Or do you think I sh- could put it on but I can't get hit?

HAMID: Oh, it probably has some sort of, um, y'know, activation, like, similar to casting a spell inlaid into it, but I think wearing it you- It won't be a problem.

CEL frowns.

CEL: Yeah, like, um, I'm just, I-I'm a little concerned, it reminds me a little of, um, some of the, the symbols, uh, one learns when, uh, learning, uh, how to, to transmogrify ones shape. So I would just, think maybe, uh-

CEL inspects the armour, head cocked slightly to one side.

CEL: Maybe, uh, a triangle? Or, um, or a square? Maybe a platypus? I-I'm not exactly sure.

HAMID opens his mouth as if to refute them, but then decides to drop it. AZU carefully takes her hands off the armour - it remains pink.

HAMID, next to AZU, unwraps a long metal pole. As soon as he retrieves it from the wrapping paper gold lines begin to emanate from his hand and down the pole. They curl and flicker like flames.

Something alights in HAMID's eyes as he holds it. His hand that clutches the pole begins to sharpen and elongate, twisting into a clawed grasp. The once single point of his ears is now three, giving the impression of a reptilian ruffle. No one, not even HAMID, seems to notice.

CEL unwraps a pair of diamond lenses. They're scuffed around the edges, dusted with the debris of whatever they've been hacked out of.

CEL immediately pulls their alchemists goggles from their head, slips the lenses out, and inserts the new ones. At first it seems as though they won't fit, but as CEL begins to apply pressure they resize and slide in with ease.

ZOLF has been very carefully unwrapping his package - unknotting the string and unfolding the paper. Folded at the centre of his parcel is a thick, smoothly woven, grey cloak.

WILDE watches with curiosity as ZOLF reaches out to touch the fabric. Instantly a small smile toys at the corner of his lips. He glances across the table, making eye contact with HAMID, and widens the smile to a grin. HAMID, though taken off guard, smiles back with slightly sharpened teeth. ZOLF has turned back to the cape before he can notice.

Everyone is now chatting, inaudibly, absorbed in their gifts. CEL and SKRAAK are excitedly showing off their new accessories to each other, AZU runs her fingers over the text on her armour, ZOLF gently unfolds his cloak, WILDE has now donned his robes and is leaning back languidly in his chair. The text has stopped shifting, and has now settled as Gaeilge scripture - WILDE's 'inspire courage' performance, scrawled across his robes in rainbow ink. HAMID looks around at all of them, unable to contain his excitement at seeing all of his friends so happy.

WILDE: Well, it's nice to be appreciated again for a change-

A brief pause and a glance at ZOLF, as if he's expecting a gentle elbow to the ribs, but none comes. ZOLF is too busy smoothing out the cloak, preparing to put it on.

WILDE: Don't know about all of you.

Finally looking away from his gift, ZOLF notices that WILDE's hair is caught in his ruffle. He stands and swings the cloak quickly over his shoulders. Then, with a frustrated grunt of 'c'mere,' he shuffles behind WILDE's seat and begins to gently extract his hair from his collar. He murmurs something inaudible to WILDE, though we assume it's something nice, as it swaps WILDE's smug smile for a genuine one.

HAMID watches, grin now spreading far past the confines of his mouth. All sounds of the room begin to fade out. CEL laughs without sound. AZU pays a silent compliment to SKRAAK. WILDE tips his head back to say something to ZOLF.

Then, with a pained hiss, HAMID collapses forward, clawed hands gripping the edge of the table.

Suddenly the room is LOUD. Cries of 'Hamid!' 'What's wrong?' 'You alright?'

WILDE grips ZOLF's hand to his shoulder, now sitting bolt upright. SKRAAK is already looking round for an enemy. AZU reaches out to place a hand on HAMID's back, but as she does so the fabric of his suit begins to writhe. Two small holes are torn as brassy talons claw their way out of HAMID's back. These are quickly followed by the unfurling of immense, brass dragon's wings.

Breathing heavily, HAMID straightens again, glancing behind him. Everyone else is in utter shock.

HAMID (SOFT, SURPRISED, THOUGH NOT AT ALL DISAPPOINTED): Oh!

#rqg #the rusty quill gaming podcast #zolf smith #azu rqg #hamid saleh haroun al tahan #cel sidebottom #skraak #oscar wilde rqg #zoscar #i just had thoughts ok #ok #so many #i just wanna make tv shows #you know this about me by now

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dotthings · 3 years

Text

The gaslighting needs to stop. Systemic power imbalanced in the tv industry are real. Network interference is real. Erasure and unkindness towards marginalized characters is real.

I’m more on the canon analysis end of things personally, but I assure you the fans trying to figure out WTF happened here and account for stuff that objectively, even the people more skeptical acknowledge is weird and points back towards network interference, try to debunk their own theories. They are telling you that, they are transparent about their information, if you don’t feel like playing detailed murder wall, then don’t, but to deny there is a very very real power imbalance behind the scenes that hurt marginalized characters and fans, and hurt the story, is toxic. Stop it.

Things like the Spanish dub and people who have worked on the show coming out of the woodwork to support Destiel should be a clue. Latin America believes it’s a mutually requited love story, canon confirmed from both sides, because that is what aired on a big tv network there. And watch out for that US-centric thinking that somehow thinks this doesn’t count. (Also plot twist: the US is the restrictive market. Wake up).

My wheelhouse is more canon analysis so I’m going to say now that the gaslighting about canon, about aired canon, about confirmed canon, about implied canon, seems to me a whole lot of toxic detached-from-reality hand waving so hard to still, STILL!!--try to deny the validity of Destiel. I’m glad some of y’all think this is merely hilarious, and after not showing up and not being supportive and not sticking your neck out at all to protect Destiel shippers from bullying, you came back just to eat the popcorn because it amuses you and I’m supposed to think that’s pro-Destiel supportive or something, or it’s people who have no horse in the race who just want fandom entertainment so everything’s a joke while they reinforce the exact attitudes that let this kind of systemic oppression perpetuate and get away with erasing marginalized voices in the tv industry, in fandom, in stories. Nice work, people. Your holier-than-thou attitude is real convincing.

Then there’s the people trying to convince everyone it’s convincing to play false equivalency cha-cha and as if people only see this as canon due to a) 1 slash joke b) they stared at each other that one time c) drapes. Because old school fans are so proud that in their day, nobody wanted their queer ships to be canon and Destiel is just like *insert whatever slash ship of the past that had about 1/10th of the loud textual material and canon development Destiel has*. You want to try to argue against the epic nature of the text on Dean and Cas, hey give it your all, but it’s not going to hold up. If I started listing off the immensity, things that are textual plot points, it would be a 3,000 word essay. Stop playing false equivalency. Stop trying to artificially yank this back into the past because you can’t handle the textual validity of Destiel.

Deal with the fact that this is not an easily classifiable situation.

Even if in the end the same old systemic crap stifled its full due, and that’s the part that is tiresome, Dean and Cas deserve better than have their actual canon content demeaned.

After the story we have seen. After 12 seasons of deep-dive development. After Cas was finally openly confirmed as queer, and in love with Dean, in the final season, 2 episodes from the end, and Misha echoed it, and from Dean’s side, because full confirmation on Dean’s side is being held down, Jensen protected a romantic reading, protected people’s right to see Dean as in love with Cas not having a chance to speak his heart. Protected the right to that reading within the ambiguity that he knows is as far as the canon was able to take it. After the ship became canon confirmed as at least unrequited love story. Whether Jensen ships it or not, he has been very loudly and openly protective of fan readings and has been very openly excited about 15.18 and the handprint, he knows this is a great story and he’s been openly excited about how excited and joyful fans were about that episode.

But what we have seen on our screens, what the story told us, transcends the muzzles placed on it. What we have seen is a mutually requited love story. We already saw in action how Dean loves Cas. We are left with, in the end, the silencing of Dean Winchester. Gosh I wonder why the silencing of Dean Winchester. Why was it necessary. Why was he not even permitted to speak at all, to anyone, to confide about how he even felt about Cas’s love confession. Why did Jensen have to do the heavy lifting to meta it for us. Why did Cas have to be left fully out of the series finale on a show he was so key on for 12 seasons, as a 3rd lead. Why is that? Because the only thing the creative team would ever be allowed to do by corporate is friendzone it and they didn’t want to friendzone it.

So we are cursed with ambiguity from Dean’s side. And if the series finale had done better by Dean’s story, including his death, and by Cas’s story (instead of shoving him out of sight), if it hadn’t erased Eileen and Saileen, if it hadn’t failed Sam’s story, if it hadn’t been a regressive, awkward mess, most shippers would have accepted ambiguity if Dean and Cas has been given at least the respect of a reunion, if Dean had at least been given the chance to partially speak even if it couldn’t be removed from ambiguity. But the system was too scared of it. It had to be held down and muffled hard.

It was yanked out of the story artificially in ways that don’t match Destiel’s narrative importance before the series finale and don’t match 12 seasons of storytelling. It’s artificial. It is a silencing. And it shows.

That sudden silence was a scream.

"The writers” were for it. “The writers” wanted to tell that story even if network interference prevented it. Some of us were gaslighted and smeared and bashed just for pointing it out, and we turned out to be right.

DESTIEL IS CANON. And the parts where fans still have to rely on interpretation for have ample, AMPLE, story evidence and external evidence--that has nothing to do with deeper dive murder walls, it has to do with support shown, and confirmed information--all point to a mutually reciprocated love story.

How many more times do shippers have to be proven right before people stop this. I was bullied for several seasons just for saying Destiel was a purposefully crafted a valid textual reading, by my own lane. For asserting it was a love story designed to dodge under network radar. I was bullied for years before that by antis, who didn’t like seeing people love this ship too much, who didn’t like that I refused to get down on my knees and label myself as delusional just for seeing it, for refusing to bow down and say “it’s only about 2 brothers so I am wrong to say Destiel matters too.”

The unkindness in this fandom over all this continues to be overwhelming. Get your shit together. You worship your favorite actors and then they show you up every time by being kinder and more open and understanding than fans manage to be. Jensen and Misha are showing you how to roll and people are ignoring it in favor of continuing to try to silence and demean Destiel shippers.

For Destiel shippers, don’t let all this gaslighting and shaming nonsense and the systemic corporate nonsense that wants Destiel silenced knock you off from your reading of canon. It was valid. It was real. Thanks to the magic of bleedback effect, now it was always textual, the subtextual has been transformed retroactively, and it’s from both Dean and Cas’s end. If you still feel doubt on Dean’s side, because we didn’t get the same loud explicit confirmation, go back to the text itself. If you believed it already for Cas, if Cas’s confession to Dean only validated what you already knew, why can’t you see it for Dean, because it’s already there.

#Jensen Ackles #Misha Collins #Destiel #The 15 Year Show #Castiel #Dean Winchester #i'm not burying this behind a wank tag #i need people to pay attention and not dismiss it as mere 'fandom drama' please

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unbridgeabledistances · 3 years

Note

prompt: domestic gallavich/being intimate in a nonsexualway bc there’s like 3 weeks til the next episode 😐

your wish is my command, anon!<3 i decided to tie this into next ep bc i simply cannot HANDLE mickey’s outfit/big gay metamorphosis & i needed to create the scene that inspired it so i wrote this

a one-shot bridging 11x06 and 11x07 in which ian and mickey talk about “gay friends,” ripped jeans, and do a bit of processing along the way

tw for brief mention of homophobia/abuse (bc terry lol)

“How come we don’t have any, like, gay friends?”

Ian looked up from where he was laying on the ground, breathing heavily after a series of push-ups, a nightly routine that he was trying to keep intact even though he and Mickey were practically driving the entire circumference of Chicago every day to make weed deliveries from dawn til dusk, leaving them both exhausted. It had been a week since all the shit with Terry, and a month or so since he and Mickey had started the security gig; while months ago their evenings would be spent sitting side by side on the bed in a brittle silence while Ian read or scratched in his notebook and Mickey played games on his phone blasting at full volume in the pajamas he’d been wearing all day, these days the evenings in their bedroom were softer and warmer— like they were settling into the space together, like they were both on the same team instead of constantly clashing and butting heads while trapped in a too-small space. These days, after having dinner in the clamor of the crowded kitchen, he and Mickey would head upstairs and change out of their uniforms, and Ian would work out while Mickey mostly just lounged on the bed, sometimes making commentary and watching him bob up and down with a pensive smirk or scrolling through his phone.

But tonight, Mickey was quiet— his eyes flickered to the curves and edges of Ian’s torso every now and then as Ian broke a sweat, but otherwise he wasn’t playfully poking and prodding like usual.

Mickey had been a lot quieter in general this week, after all the stuff with Terry— Ian knew seeing the source of all of Mickey’s trauma in a wheelchair immobile from the neck down, the most vulnerable Terry could have been, felt worse than someone repeatedly twisting a knife in Mickey’s abdomen. But beyond the initial shock and the almost-murder and lugging him up the stairs, having Terry in a wheelchair twenty feet away did something deeper to Mickey. This whole situation shifted something solid that had been lodged in the pit of Mickey’s stomach for years— Ian could see it, and he fucking hated it. He hated Mickey’s glassy contemplative eyes as he looked out the car window while they drove to a new dropoff location, lost in his head when he thought Ian wasn’t looking. He hated the tightly wound tension between Mickey’s shoulder blades as he slept, curled into himself and twisted in the comforter, facing away from Ian on the other side of the bed. He hated the tight smiles Mickey gave him as he made some offhand joke about Terry when they could hear him cursing and shrieking through the open front windows, smiles that were trying to prove something outwardly but showed the barbed pain stinging at Mickey’s insides. Ian poured out what he could in soft touches, in skims of fingertips at the breakfast table and in an arm over Mickey’s waist while they slept; but he could only give as much as Mickey would take, and for most of the week Mickey had shut everyone out with iron walls.

Ian couldn’t imagine what was stirring in Mickey’s mind; he’d seen some of Mickey’s trauma firsthand, sure, and some of the stories about Terry came slipping through the cracks when Mickey’s guard was down— mostly on those late nights when they both couldn’t sleep and Mickey whispered into the crook of Ian’s neck as they were curled into each other, cradled in the dark silence of their bedroom. But Ian knew there was deeper shit that he hadn’t heard about, and he could see the constant fear of Mickey’s adolescence hanging heavy around his neck all these years later. But Mickey didn’t need anyone to push his walls down— Ian knew he’d open up when he was ready.

Which is why this random question, the most direct statement Mickey had really made to him all week, caught Ian off guard. He sat up, folding his arms over his legs and staring up at where Mickey was slouching on the bed, propped up by a pillow he’d shoved between his back and the wall. “Gay friends?” he asked, more than a little confused.

Mickey cleared his throat. “Yeah, gay friends, y’know. Like all your youth center queers that came to the wedding or whatever.” He suddenly looked down and picked at a fraying thread on his shirt sleeve, not meeting Ian’s eyes.

Ian raised an eyebrow in curiosity. This was random, sure, but Mickey wouldn’t have brought it up if something wasn’t weighing on him, bubbling up after all the events of this week.

“I don’t know— I guess since the pandemic and stuff, I haven’t really kept in touch with Geneva or any of those guys who came to our wedding. We only really talked after I got out of prison because of all the Gay Jesus publicity bullshit, but after you got out I wasn’t really thinking about that as much.”

Mickey blew out a breath, so quietly Ian barely noticed it. Ian stood, wiping his sweaty forehead and plopping down on the bed next to Mickey, folding his legs so their knees were almost touching— but still giving him space, still letting him breathe.

“Why’re you asking?”

“Don’t know, really. Just thinkin’.” Mickey picked at his shirt sleeve again, then flickered his gaze up to meet Ian’s eyes, two clear pools of glassy blue. “Thinkin’ about what life could’ve been like. If I wasn’t scared shitless of who I was for so long.”

Ian felt something twist in his gut, the same queasy pang of pain that always resurfaced whenever he saw Mickey like this, whenever he was reminded of all the unspeakable agony that Terry had put him through.

“It’s fucked up that you didn’t get to be who you were for so long, Mick,” he breathed, knowing that statement didn’t cover the amount of things that were fucked up about this situation.

Mickey ran his teeth over his bottom lip, like he was concentrating. “Yeah.”

Ian let them sit there for a second. It seemed like Mickey wanted to say more, but something in him was frozen solid. After a moment, Ian tried to break the tension.

“Hey, for the record, I’ve had lots of gay friends and you aren’t missing much. There’s lots of PC bullshit that’s important but took me fucking forever to learn— and even then, I never really felt like I totally belonged.” He gently nudged Mickey’s ribcage. “I guess that’s why I forgot about everyone, between work and getting to be with you all the time— I’d rather eat pizza in the mall food court with you than go to some boujee fucking café with the youth center people any day.”

The corner of Mickey’s mouth ticked upwards slightly. “Yeah. Guess you’re right.” His fingers went slack around the threads on his shirtsleeve he’d been picking at. “You don’t… miss it though? Bein’ around people who’re like us?”

Ian paused for a moment, imagining the youth center crew in the same room as Mickey— it would be fucking comical, like people speaking two different languages, like astronauts trying to communicate with aliens on Mars through gestures and confused looks. But that was just because Mickey didn’t know how to speak that language— he’d been kept shrouded in an abusive household with daily death threats for years, and then stowed away in prison where he didn’t have the chance to go to fucking brunches and clubs and education events like Ian could. Ian got the chance to learn all that shit— it wasn’t Mickey’s fault that he never did, and if it was anyone’s, it was all Terry’s.

Ian’s eyes flickered to Mickey’s face— he looked vulnerable and split open, like he was drifting away in all the possibilities of what could have been. When he answered, Ian spoke softly, carefully.

“I mean… I guess I do. There were nice parts of going out with people, or even those after-parties back when I used to work at the club. There’s something nice about being with your people, where you can make jokes about stuff or talk about deep shit and everyone’s on the same page. It’s hard to find that around here.” Ian tentatively crawled his hand over the blanket, letting it rest on Mickey’s knee. “S’there anything else going on?”

Mickey raised his thumb to his mouth, biting at a hangnail contemplatively. “Dunno, man. Just thinking. How it might be nice, to have friends like us. I used to be scared of hangin’ with other queers, but I think that was just some deep bullshit with Terry.” He looked up to meet Ian’s eyes. “It’d be nice to stop… hating that part of myself, or whatever.”

Ian smiled, reaching to intertwine his fingers with Mickey’s and tracing a pattern with the thumb that was free from their grasp on Mickey’s inner thigh, a soft touch of validation that Ian hoped would soak into Mickey’s skin.

“I think so too.” Ian watched the corner of Mickey’s mouth curve upwards. “I can definitely hit up some of the people I used to hang with, and see if they wanna get coffee or something? With the two of us? Only if you want.”

Mickey nodded— then chuckled a breathy laugh, like he was relieved. “Fuck it. Yeah.”

Ian couldn’t help it; Mickey looked so fucking sweet and so relieved that he had to press a kiss to the top of his head. Mickey squirmed underneath him, bristling like a cat that didn’t want to be pet like he did with most of Ian’s soft touches— but Ian just grinned and doubled down, pressing another slower peck onto Mickey’s temple. Mickey blew out a slow breath.

“Don’t know what I’d fuckin’ wear to a brunch with a bunch of Northside do-gooder gays,” he said after a moment, his voice wavering so slightly that no one except Ian would have noticed.

Ian rolled his eyes fondly, giving Mickey’s hand a quick pulse of a squeeze. “Mickey, are you kidding? Wear whatever the fuck you want. You don’t need to change yourself, that’s kind of the whole point.”

“Yeah. Fuck. Guess it is.” Mickey was quiet for a moment, but still chewing on his bottom lip, like he was building the courage to say something more. Ian could tell— he let the comfortable silence hang between them, knowing that Mickey would break it when he was ready.

“D’you think it’d be stupid if I, like, tried to… jazz up my look a bit?” He darted his eyes nervously to Ian’s face, down to their clasped hands, and then back to the covers again. “Like, uh— I don’t know. Maybe wore some shit that didn’t have holes in it. With patterns, or whatever.”

Ian felt his face split into a grin. Patterns, or whatever— god, he loved his dumbass husband so fucking much. He pressed another kiss to Mickey’s cheek— this time Mickey didn’t flinch away, his only resistance a forced roll of his eyes.

“Mick, I don’t think that’s stupid at all. I think you should dress however makes you feel good.”

“’Kay.” Mickey pursed his lips, like he was still hesitant. Ian rubbed his thumb over the back of Mickey’s hand, their fingers still clasped and hanging limply in Mickey’s lap. The silence was hanging again, and Ian could still feel the tight waves of anxiety bouncing off of Mickey. He took in a breath.

“I could… help you, y’know. If you wanted to dress a certain way. At the very least I could gas you up and tell you how hot you look.” Ian paused, smirking and running his eyes over Mickey’s torso. “But I could also help you pick shit out, or whatever. We could order some stuff online.”

Mickey looked up at him, his eyes oddly relieved and open in a way they hadn’t been in days. “Yeah?”

Ian softly smiled. “Yeah. Only if you want to. You’re you, and you don’t have to pretend to be anyone else. I love the way you look— hell, it drives me crazy, Mick. But— if you feel like you aren’t dressing the way that makes you feel the best, or like you’re putting on an act for other people and you don’t want to anymore— then we can figure this out.”

This time it was Mickey that initiated affection, lifting their clasped hands and pressing a quick ghost of a kiss to Ian’s wrist. Ian smiled in acknowledgement, then playfully raised his eyebrows. “You wanna look online now? I’m done working out and more than happy to help you gay up your look.”

Mickey unclasped their hands, playfully shoving Ian squarely in the chest. “Fuck you.” Then, in an uncharacteristic move from the way Mickey had been flinching away from his touches all week, Mickey leaned in closer to Ian’s chest, nestling his back on Ian’s sternum and reaching for his phone that was discarded on the blanket beside him. “Alright, hot stuff. Where’re we fucking shopping?”

Ian grinned and snapped the waistband of Mickey’s sweatpants playfully, shuffling underneath him and getting comfortable.

“’Kay, let me think. I used to order a bunch of shirts and stuff from Primark when I was going out with the youth center people. They have good denim, too.”

Mickey’s bottom lip was caught between his teeth again while he listened. He hesitated for a moment, his thumb hovering over the phone’s keyboard— then, in an automatic movement, he quickly shoved his phone into Ian’s hand, cheerfully wriggling back into Ian’s chest. Ian smirked and unlocked the phone, happy to take the reins— online shopping for fashion was clearly lightyears out of Mickey’s comfort zone.

Ian navigated over to the Primark homepage, plastered with torsos of toned models wearing striped button ups and ripped jeans. His thumb pressed down onto the “denim” tab, and he started to slowly scroll through the rows of options, holding the phone so Mickey could see.

“I don’t know what you really want, but they’ve got pretty cheap pants and shit that’re good quality…” Ian let his voice trail off, speaking softly to where Mickey was lying on his chest in a voice that he knew was tickling the shell of Mickey’s ear. Mickey almost seemed… nervous, or at the very least paralyzed by the wealth of options. He raised his thumb to his mouth, anxiously biting the hangnail again.

“I guess those ripped ones don’t look too bad.”

Ian clicked on the picture Mickey was referring to. They were black jeans, a dark wash and skinny cut, with patches ripped on both knees. Ian felt something well in his chest, probably an overreaction to a pair of jeans— but these jeans were perfect for Mickey. They weren’t too much, weren’t overly fashionable, but they still felt more clean-cut than the baggy pants Mickey usually threw on. These jeans were badass, and totally aligned with Mickey’s don’t-fuck-with-me vibe, but they were deliberate. Stylish. Like they were saying here the fuck I am.

“Yeah?” Ian knew Mickey could tell he was smiling from his voice.

Mickey smirked, craning his neck and turning to look up at Ian. “Yeah. Think I can pull ‘em off?”

Ian pressed his lips together. “Fuck yeah. You’re gonna look so good.”

Mickey just gave a satisfied smile, and nestled back against Ian’s chest again. “Let’s get ‘em, then.”

#i hope u enjoy!<3 #also im sorry I’ve been so mia in regards to prompts #my mom’s been in the hospital all week and it’s just been a very tough and draining time #but writing this brought me so so much joy!#gallavich #gallavich fic #shameless #shameless fic #ian x mickey #ian gallagher #mickey milkovich #shameless season 11

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