Red Hot Ghouls 14 part 2/2
Masterpost
Danny had kind of ignored the most important part of that initial message. Crud. Of course the poor bastard wanted to know about the progress on their spiritual separation. Danny cringed. He typed fast to send a new message before Jason could ask again.
It did not come out easily. He wrote and deleted two drafts before he groaned aloud. “I am not prepared to tell him that the options so far are either to marry and divorce me or to get his ass banished from the ghost dimension.” Danny spent a moment pitying himself. “I just have to say the truth.”
Cringe. Cringe so hard.
I have two possible solutions but they both suck really hard. :/ Suck so hard you’d be shook. The suckage would change your life.
Jason sent back ellipses. It belatedly occurred to Danny that it might have looked like he was making a blowjob joke. He put the phone back on his chest and stared at the ceiling for a while, wondering why he was this way.
“Jason didn’t see that,” Danny told himself. “Jason is a professional. A professional something. I don't know what.”
He wanted to believe it so badly that he just decided not to be mortified. Danny lifted the burner phone back up and painstakingly assembled a shrug emoji from symbols.
Honestly they’re such bad options that I don’t even wanna tell you. Can we change the subject? : (
Jason sent back a series of laughing and crying emojis and then, Fine. Let’s talk about all the other stuff we have in common.
Danny pursed his lips. “...Do we have anything in common?” It wasn’t like he knew much about the guy, but he presumed Jason kept himself busy with some boring adult job, building muscle, and biking around looking hot. Danny crossed his legs at the knee and tried not to think of what a twig he looked like in comparison to Jason. He didn’t feel bad about it, honestly. Danny was too busy to make fitness a part of his personality and he had nothing to prove.
I’m illiterate, he settled on as a response. They definitely did not have a love of literature in common. What else did people do? I uh…. Watched a movie two years back.
Any good?
T’was shit, Danny admitted. Hm. He frowned. “I’m not sure where to take this conversation,” he said aloud.
I’m so hungry. Just got off work and I’m trying to decide what to do.
“Oh, I can do something with that.” Danny felt better. Yeah me too, I would kill for an enchilada. He tried to send a ghost emoji and groaned when he remembered that this was a shitty burner phone with no keyboard downloaded and apparently no access to the app store. Jason had already responded by the time that he gave up.
Ghosts eat Mexican food?
They would if they have human zone money, Danny sent back morosely. Oh no, it wasn’t fun anymore. Ya boy can’t pay in the tears of the damned anywhere on this plane of existence smh. His stomach growled with obnoxious timing. He groaned. The last thing he’d eaten had been that sandwich with Jazz. He could cook… He really should cook.
Ugh. Effort.
Danny tried to motivate himself up to the kitchen. “It’s four steps,” he said aloud, trying to be encouraging. “I can make it.”
Ah. No. That was actually kind of depressing. He lived in a shoebox with a monthly grocery budget that was just pitiful.
Haha ur broke, Jason sent, because he was a massive bitch. Danny felt a lot better about flipping him off. But then Jason followed it up with an obviously insincere, I’d get you enchiladas if you were in Gotham. Sucks to suck.
Danny sensed weakness to exploit.
“You’re going to regret that,” Danny grimly promised, and hit the call button.
Jason picked up on the second ring, sounding confused and electronic. “Hey?”
“I can be in Gotham for enchiladas,” Danny threatened. His stomach growled again. “You feeling brave? Huh? Huh?” He punched a finger at the air in accusation. “I’m not scared of you or your dank gargoyles, leatherboy.”
There was a weird mechanical sound. Maybe a snort? A laugh? “I’ll send you a GPS point, if you’re there in ten I’ll buy you all you can eat.”
Danny went still like the predator he was. “Bring your life savings.” He hit the end call button and launched himself off the couch to go stuff his feet into his shoes. He let his apartment door slam shut behind him carelessly. He’d made it to the ground level before the pin point landed.
“Fuck, it’s even in my neighborhood.” Danny laughed, flush with petty victory. He looked left, right, and went invisible before he went ghost. There was no one around at this late hour to see him drop off the visible spectrum.
67 notes
·
View notes
okay wait if you don’t mind me asking why don’t you like incorrect quotes?
anon, i swear this was not meant to be this long
my reasons are 100% subjective. over the years, i've dabbled in several different fandoms. and i find that the same incorrect quote format is used to describe relationships between characters in different series that i find to not be alike at all. for example, i've seen multiple of the same incorrect quote formats used for both percabeth and sokeefe, when i don't find the relationships to be that similar to one another at all. it's just that people see one dimension of sophie and annabeth (let's say smart) and one dimension of percy and keefe (let's say funny) and then the entire incorrect quote becomes about that. i find sokeefe and percabeth to be two entirely different relationships with few things in common (which i've talked about), but the incorrect quotes flatten them to those qualities only and i don't like that.
the sokeefe-percabeth thing is just an example, by the way, one i picked because i feel most people i'm talking to would understand it, but i've also seen the same incorrect quote formats used to describe relationships like jurdan or kanej . . . and if you've read tfota or soc you know how drastically dissimilar jurdan or kanej are to either sokeefe or percabeth (and each other). and i find that these indirect comparisons drawn between relationships like this flattens certain characters quite a bit. this is how we get stuff like "sokeefe is basically kotlc percabeth" and stuff like that.
then, once a character has been given a "role" (i use the term loosely) they have to occupy all the aspects that come with that "role". so then they're only allowed to be that "role" in the incorrect quote, even if the quote requires them to say/do things they would never say/do, because they've been slated into that role based on that one aspect. take this quote for example:
keefe has been slated into the role of "one that has a crush on sophie" for the purposes of this particular quote. but keefe doesn't ramble like this. he doesn't like his dad and would never discuss a crush on sophie with him (but this one i'm not that mad about since you could as easily change cassius to ro or something). he doesn't use exaggerated metaphors to describe things and he doesn't speak in purple prose. he does a pretty good job hiding his crush and would never inadvertently reveal it like this. do you see what i mean? because of the fact that the format requires him to be "one with a crush on sophie", he now has to fulfill all the other aspects the format requires, even though they don't apply to him. and it no longer feels like keefe. it flattens him down to this one aspect.
i feel like this flattening aspect of incorrect quotes does have a (very small, sort of indirect) effect on the way characters are perceived in fanon. and i don't like it? it's very weird to me. so i prefer to stay away from it. (best examples i can think of are cardan and kaz, who are both morally gray, but lots of incorrect quotes portray them as hopelessly in love with their love interests or malewives, and while that's true, them being slated into that role for the purpose of the incorrect quote often makes them out to be the kind that would doodle hearts around names in notebooks or blush or be in that sort of cutesy-teenager-with-a-crush kind of romance. and . . . uh . . . yeah, they love jude and inej, but that's like. not at all what either relationship is like. it's just not.)
also some incorrect quotes are so desperate to slate characters into certain "roles", as i call them, that they forsake crucial aspects of the character in the process, or actively make them do/say things that go against something that is a core aspect of that character. and i don't like the way the quote is willing to misinterpret something so crucial to the character for the sake of the incorrect quote exemplifying something much less important like "the funny one" or "the one with a crush on ___".
incorrect quotes also have a tendency to portray what a character actually wants to do, rather than how they would realistically behave, given the circumstances. take this quote (and ignore the weird anti-sophitz-ness for the moment, i'm trying to make a point):
in canon, it's kind of a point that sophie "isn't aware" of her crush on keefe, so to speak. she knows she has a crush on fitz. she may subconsciously want to kiss keefe, but remember, she thinks she likes fitz. so this incorrect quote just frustrates me because that's not what sophie would do!!!!!!! she would kiss fitz. actually, she would get all nervous and blushy and try to worm her way out of it. and if this is a post-stellarlune quote, and she knows she likes keefe, she wouldn't address fitz directly like that??? she would trying so hard not to look at fitz because omg omg omg i have to kiss my new boyfriend in front of my old boyfriend who appears to still not be over me. like the quote requires you to change fundamental aspects of sophie's personality/behavior to buy it. my analysis brain can't handle that. my problem is that i can't enjoy the quote for the quote, because my brain is always instead picking apart how un-character the incorrect quote feels.
having said all of that, i fully understand that anyone who likes incorrect quotes or engages with them frequently knows all this. i don't think you all are stupid. obviously keefe would never say something like that first example i showed in canon. that's understood! the point is to make fun of his crush on sophie. i get it. it's all in good fun. i just prefer not to engage with incorrect quotes because the flattening aspect makes me personally want to scream that the character would never do or say that, because at this point the character doesn't even feel like the character, so what even is the point of the quote anymore??? and then i get stuck in a loop.
and like i said in my original tags, i would never want to completely get rid of incorrect quotes. they're easy to make, fun, easily digestable, and in general sort of a safe way to get started in fandoms. they're the safety net of fandoms, and i think they really are crucial for smaller/more obscure fandoms where nobody wants to do hardcore analysis stuff but people still want to talk about their favorite media. so i think, for the purposes they fulfill, they're alright.
47 notes
·
View notes
Make Me Write ask answered
162 📖 for @inell!
---
When they arrive at the fire station, Eddie is indeed in rough shape. Scratched, damp, and wearing a heating blanket.
“Buck, why is my dad dressed like a baked potato?” Chris asks nervously when he sees him.
Eddie is sitting in the back of an ambulance, looking a little sleepy. The other paramedic - the one that isn’t Chimney - is talking to him.
“It’s keeping him warm,” Buck explains. “Why don’t you go see him? That’ll make him even warmer.”
“DAD!” Chris calls out, heeding Buck’s advice. He picks up his pace a little in Eddie’s direction.
“CHRISTOPHER!” Eddie calls back once he sees him. He hops out of the ambulance, dropping the warming blanket, and runs across the engine bay floor towards his son. When he reaches him, he scoops him up into the biggest, tightest, most loving hug Buck has ever seen. Buck honestly feels a little choked up, watching it.
He doesn’t want to intrude on their moment, so he hangs back, holding onto Christopher’s backpack. After a minute of this hug, of Eddie speaking quietly to his son, he finally looks in Buck’s direction. He sets Christopher down, strides over to where Buck is, and hugs him too. Just quick, with a clap on the back, but it’s still a hug. It catches Buck off-guard a little.
“Thank you,” Eddie says emphatically. “Thank you so much for taking care of him.”
“No problem, really,” Buck says when Eddie pulls away. “Chris kept me in line. Made sure I knew the right answers to American history. Really he did me a favor.”
Eddie’s smile in response is practically glowing. “I owe you one, man.”
“Hey, don’t mention it. Just glad you’re okay.” Buck says. “Is Carla good? I couldn’t reach her either.”
Eddie nods. “Her dad isn’t well. She was visiting him today.”
“Oh,” Buck replies. “That’s… That’s too bad.”
Eddie takes a deep breath. “Listen, man, can I buy you a beer sometime? As a thank you?”
Buck… Well, for some reason, even though it’s totally not necessary, Buck really likes the sound of that.
“Yeah,” Buck nods. “Yeah, that’d be great. My number should be in your phone from when I tried to call you.”
“Perfect,” Eddie smiles.
x.
It’s way too much fun.
Buck meets Eddie at a sports bar. They grab beers. Watch a game. It’s probably the most fun Buck’s had in a while. Without work or a kid in between them, they connect as just people. And it turns out, they connect pretty well. They have a similar sense or humor and like a lot of the same things. Eddie listens when Buck goes on accidental tangents about subjects he finds interesting. Buck is genuinely delighted with stories about Christopher. They just sort of… Mesh?
By the end of the night, they’re making plans to hang out again, and Buck’s stomach can’t quite shake a fluttery, swooping feeling. Something that he’s only really felt before… Well, on dates.
Which is strange for Buck because, well… Eddie is a man? And Buck didn’t know that another man could make him feel that way.
Which probably means… Something.
xi.
Buck and Eddie manage to hang out two more times by themselves, and once with Christopher, even, before the world shuts down. And Buck goes from the exciting thrill of a new friend/maybe crush to working alone in an empty library, filling online orders, and putting them in sterile pickup areas, with nothing at all to look forward to.
It’s awful. It’s depressing. Buck genuinely struggles to get out of bed in the morning for the entire month of April.
His sister is pregnant, and she can’t even stay with Chimney because of the risk. She’s alone. Buck’s alone. Everyone is boxed off from each other.
They keep in contact. Eddie and Buck. Text. Social media. Buck does a few virtual homework help sessions with Chris out of working hours. But it’s weird. It’s like they almost had a friendship or something, and it just kind of gets stalled.
All the nothingness means Buck has time. On and off work. He has nothing but time. It reminds him of the early years of his undergrad, where the coursework wasn’t challenging or interesting enough to keep his mind busy. He’d had to find ways to fill the time. Partying. Drinking. Sex. Working out. Those had been his options, then. Apart from working out, he doesn’t want to replicate the rest in a global pandemic. Which means Buck is left with way more hours to fill than even in undergrad.
And he’s a librarian. So… One of the things he does to avoid going crazy? He reads. He researches. He learns. And one of the things he starts going all in on learning about? Human sexuality and attraction. Because the distance from Eddie doesn’t make Buck stop thinking about him. Doesn’t quell the curiosity, the thinking. The excitement each time a notification from Eddie lights up his phone. So Buck researches, and he tries to figure himself out.
So, in the middle of a pandemic, where everyone is quarantined, and Buck is completely alone, he discovers he’s bisexual. Stellar timing. Really great work. Had he uncovered this little tidbit of identity earlier in his life? Maybe he’d be quarantining with a boyfriend or a husband or something cool like that. Since he’s historically fumbled all the women in his life. Who is he kidding? He’ll probably be the same with dudes. But until proven otherwise, he imagines he’ll be very smooth.
So. Bisexual. Alone in his studio apartment. Living through an unprecedented global emergency. Kind of thirsting over a man he won’t be able to see for months, and who he doesn’t even know is queer, so probably has no chance with.
Buck is frustrated.
He learns to cook. He buys a variety of plants. Tries and fails to learn to draw. Impulse adopts a cat; a Burmese he renames Begonia. Her previous name was Princess and to be honest she is way too relaxed for that designation.
Nothing makes the sense of restlessness building in his chest go away.
xii.
It’s late summer by the time he and Eddie can hang out again. At a distance. Outside, on a hike. Masks on if they get any closer. Eddie has a higher chance of infection on his job, and Buck wants to be safe.
They fall back into their easy pattern of conversation and humor. It’s like whatever paused between them at the beginning of the year picks right back up without any issue. And Buck is relieved. Relieved and excited. Like they’re pointed towards a direction he hasn’t seen before, but is desperate to discover.
Buck tells Eddie all about the ever-changing library policies regarding the virus. Eddie tells Buck about childcare struggles.
“With Carla caring for her dad full time, and my Abuela back in Texas, it’s been insane,” he admits.
“And no aftercare programs at the library,” Buck says.
“Or anywhere,” Eddie says.
“Man, that’s rough. I’m sorry.”
“It’s… Well, single parenting is never easy. But global catastrophe certainly adds to it.”
“Hey, if-if I can help…” Buck offers, a little aimlessly.
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “Is the library open to visitors yet?”
“Well, no,” Buck admits. “Soon, hopefully? But I mean, I can ask the head librarian - Janine - if he can, uh, sneak in. Masked up, of course.”
“I mean, if he could. That’d be really helpful. He could do class from there, right?” Eddie asks. ”Only if it wouldn’t put you out!”
18 notes
·
View notes