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lupismaris · 2 years

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The Opening Act of Spring- a Black Sails Fic. Chapter 1.

The Silverflinthamilton modern au that I’ve been drawing for over a year (where Flint owns a gay bar) is being written! Set five-ish years after a modern canon which will be somewhat told through flashbacks and exposition.

(Chapter one of idk how many but until more is written it’s going to live entirely on tumblr. )

Somewhere in the Village, Silver was counting Rolex and Cartier wristwatches, drop diamond earrings, plated gold layered necklaces, and birkins that were made to look well worn. He was counting, and noting the clear bell-like tone of the glass ware as it clinked together- crystal, the real stuff with the faintest etchings, but understated enough to look like it belonged in an effortless rooftop lounge. He didn’t usually enjoy rooftops, the only way out was the elevator unless he wanted to make an outfit change and that was usually too much work, and most rooftops only had one reserved for the restaurant, bar, or lounge. It was poor design for emergencies, poorer still for anyone looking to make a clean exit.

“Oh, enough already.”

Silver blinked and the room around him hummed loudly, violently, back to life, the carefully selected sounds of glassware and certain voices drowned out by a wave of noise.

Rackham sat across the small marble topped table, dressed neatly in a silk shirt that was unbuttoned nearly to the navel, tight high wasted trousers that made him seem even taller than he already was, and an assortment of jewelry that Silver knew half belonged to his sister. The exasperated look on his face, and the amusement that couldn’t be hidden behind his rose tinted glasses, made Silver smile.

“Sorry. Old habits.”

“I didn’t invite you here specifically for a job. This is called drinks, aperitif even- its what normal people do,” Rackham waved a hand and Silver watched the way his gold bangles caught the soft light of the room, accented further by the late afternoon sun. “No need to case the joint, cause if you get caught lifting anything worth less than 20k I’m not covering for you.”

Silver rolled his eyes. “As if I’d settle for anything less than that. You know me better, Jack.”

“Well I’d like to think so but your last few jobs have me a trifle concerned, sweetums.”

Their second round of drinks were delivered, Rackham flashing the waiter a smile and placing an order for an assortment of small plates. Silver wasn’t particularly hungry, not that he had eaten, it was more that the sudden summons to Manhattan had gone from generally positive to somewhat suspicious, once Rackham had started suggesting things that weren’t entirely business. And that suspicious feeling left his stomach a little too uneasy for overpriced appetizers with colorful garnishes.

But Rackham seemed unbothered by the tension in Silver’s shoulders.

“Is this a critique then? I thought I was being invited as a glorified house guest. At least that’s how my sister makes it sound. Not like I’m much good in your fashion designer games now am I?” He asked, taking up his glass. “Unless you want to truss me up like a prized poodle in whatever your newest designs are.”

“I can hear the note of condescension and it is unappreciated you fuck. Honest business is honest business and your sister and I happen to be doing very well for ourselves, thank you very much. Two of our designs are in this room alone,” Rackham said, and while his posture remained relaxed and unbothered, the knife like edge to his words made Silver smile brightly.

“Oh don’t twist up your thong, if you’re going to insult my skill it’s only fair I take a dig at yours don’t you think?”

“No. Because my skill has rogue fashion studios in Paris and now Manhattan,” Rackham says flatly. “That are giving the design houses a legitimate challenge and strong arming our way into fashion week. You, sir, are back to swindling old men for their investment portfolios or old women for their opera jewels. Things you have long since out grown.”

The noise of the room shifted again, as Silver sat back in his seat and scowled. “So this is a critique.”

“Would you prefer round one of an intervention?”

“Not really.”

Rackham sighed and set his drink down, propping his elbows on the table. “Look- you are, without risk of inflating your ego, the smartest man I know. I hate it, believe me. And you are wasting your time and talent on jobs that are going to get you caught. Your sister knows this. I know this. Even Chaz knows this-”

“Oh for fucks sake-”

“Ah let me finish- It’s been what, five years now? Six? Since the big one- since the glory that was our shared retirement.” Rackham spread his hands wide as if that simple gesture could, somehow by some miracle, encompass everything that had happened in the short, harrowing year that lead up to their so called retirement. “And you have not managed to retire.”

“No- no that’s not true. I did retire. I did. And it was awful. Okay?” Silver argued. “It was the worst fucking thing I’ve ever done. I mean my god you think people actually enjoy just laying around on a beach all day? I just-”

“You didn’t have to actually retire you idiot but you were supposed to find something else to do other than this-” Rackham waved at Silver, again as if the simple gesture could encompass everything that was his current state. “You could have done just about anything, conned your way into, I dunno, vineyard ownership, art collecting, travel writing solely for the sake of writing, writing bad romance novels for sexless married straight people, romance novels for the queers, literally anything-”

“I tried- and it was all just-” Silver sighed, giving up on an answer and instead sipping his whiskey cocktail. It was easier than trying to explain the fact that somehow, in that short, impossible year, he’d finally become someone real, someone tangible, and now he couldn’t be anyone else. And that at least, by being a con man, he was staying true to himself in the one way he knew how.

Rackham sat back in his seat again and pushed his glasses up on his head, tussling his carefully mismanaged curly mullet. “I know. Its not easy, finding a new life to lead. It took all of us time to find the people we were before it all happened. To find the people we wanted to be in the ashes the were left behind. I can… only imagine it’s much harder for you.”

Wasn’t that a laughable notion. A truth of course, Silver conceded, but a laughable one.

Everyone had lost something that year, you don’t go into a con of that level without taking risks. You don’t challenge men of that stature, companies of that wealth, collections of that value, without putting everything you value on the line.

But everyone else had walked away with something, someone. Some semblance of themselves.

Everyone but Silver.

“Your letter had said this was about a job,” Silver said finally. A letter. An actual letter too, on nice paper with a letter head and a wax seal and everything because Rackham was, if nothing else, authentic to the core and spared no detail, even in gently bribing a friend, nae, colleague, into what was starting to feel a little bit like a trap, though Silver couldn’t put his finger on why. “Does Max know about it?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t summon her brother without consulting her first. I like my dick well enough were it is thanks.”

“What Job?”

Rackham smiled and shook his head. “That’s not what this is. This is aperitif, drinks, catching up, remember?”

“We don’t do that, Jack.”

“We never had the opportunity.”

“Hardly have to start now.”

“I disagree.” He tilted his head. “By the way, what name is it you’re using these days.”

Ah.

That was why it was starting to feel like a trap.

The amusement had faded from Rackham’s eyes. He was watching Silver like a Cat, the way he used to in the Islands all those years ago, when he was hoping to catch Silver’s tell, catch his bluff. The faintest, thoughtless smile hung at the corners of his lips, accented by his curled mustache.

Silver held his gaze and said nothing.

“Mmm. That’s what I thought.”

“Jack-”

“Still using the name he gave you.”

Rackham’s smile grew as he sipped his drink, something golden like sunlight as it swirled around it’s coupe glass. Silver fought for calm, keeping his face impassive as he watching Rackham scan the room like any diner would.

“I chose the name, thank you.”

“Oh pish posh, you chose it, he chose it, tomato, tomahto. We all know the truth, Silver.”

Rackham fixed him with a hard look, arm hooked over the back of his chair and a cold light in his eyes.

“He’s the one who pinned you with that name like the tag on a fucking corpse. You’ve worn a hundred names in this life and the last, and whats it matter now? Oh nothing, just that your own personal god gave meaning to the empty promises you made the day you tried to rob him blind.”

There was a knife on the table. Sharp. Cerated. But that would be more than the moment deserved, even if the curdled taste on Silvers tongue demanded a bitter iron accompaniment. He could get up and walk away, that was the civil thing to do, and they were now civil people, feral things made clean and tame in the eyes of the well mannered world, or so his sister would remind him every so often during their calls.

But the hard look in Rackham’s eyes softened and he set aside his drink, reaching across the table for Silver’s hand. Silver stared at it for a moment before reaching to take it.

“You’re not the only one sour about the fact you got stuck. I’m just sorry yours…”

“Went up in smoke?” Silver offered with a tired smile.

Rackham laughed softly. “Well yes, but then faking one’s death is a pretty clean way out of the game. It was kind of you, offering him such a way out, when he didn’t deserve it.”

The uneasy feeling that had twisted Silver’s stomach up into knots was starting to reach his chest, twisting and churning it like the old sea before a storm. Silver pulled his hand away and sipped his drink, giving the waiter a moment to drop off the small plates Rackham had ordered.

The lounge, with the reflections in the glass of nearby buildings, felt a bit untethered to Silver, crowded and empty depending on where you looked, people coming and going in large groups and small. The decor was clean and simple, well placed greenery taking the place of abstract art, and two art deco inspired bars placed at opposite ends of the rooftop to give a sense of wide open space. Among the movement and the noise, it was easy to feel like one’s eyes were playing tricks, and with his nerves on edge, Silver felt like he was seeing ghosts in the corner of his eyes. He knew it was just the conversation, summoning them, that he wasn’t seeing old allies and enemies amongst the Manhattan socialites on a Tuesday evening.

He knew Rackham wouldn’t risk him like that.

Didn’t he?

“That isn’t fair to him,” Silver said once the waiter had left, Rackham glancing up from his plate. “To Flint-”

The rest quietly disappeared, exchanged to the Spanish government for a very lucrative payout (was it the total value? No but near enough that everyone would land on their feet, made sweeter by what they cleared out from Woodes’ investments), which then of course had been divided up into the appropriate accounts via wire so that, ideally, no one would ever have to see each other ever again.

The mention of the name alone shifted the air in the room, only for Silver of course No one else had any reason to notice the delicate way he uttered the single syllable. He wasn’t even sure if he was still using the name these days.

Their names had never fully gone public, during The Con. Sure they’d all been in the Islands, engaged in various events and jobs for The Guthrie Shipping Company, now out of business permanently, but records were lost, names smudged, burned, deleted, hard-drives wiped, the usual clean up that needs to be done after a dozen deaths, a minor workers rebellion, and the disappearance of 5 million in Spanish gold.

A portion of the gold had been seized on a private flight out of Nassau, in the luggage of one Woodes Rogers, who even five years later was still claiming he was framed, despite a plethora of evidence linking him and other English investors to various aspects of the Con.

It had after all been a very hectic year, a bit of time apart was in order.

They were meant to scatter.

Except Max and Anne and Jack and Charles, the Rangers as they had affectionately become known, who wandered off to Europe, to rusticate in Italy if Silver remembered correctly. Of course they were destined to stay together, the world now their oyster to bend to their mighty wills, and Silver was, truly, glad for them. No one quite deserved a soft and joyful ending, free of blood and non-consenting bondage, quite like his sister and her lover, and her lover’s men. Italy had become France, once the plan for their “Rogue Fashion House” as Jack called it, had come to fruition. Max and Jack each worked on the designs, Jack tailored them almost entirely himself and Max acted as head model. It was art for Art’s sake, they didn’t need the money (They’d swindled a few wealthy tourists and retirees on their Italian tour, and they were comfortable), they just wanted the magazines frothing at the bit, club kids and fashion week hipsters wearing their designs instead of Dior.

To disrupt and irritate and make their name stick. A bit of glory all their own.

Silver could support that.

Rackham tilted his head, toothpick from one of the plates between his teeth. “Don’t do that. Don’t go giving the man grace when you already gave him a miracle. Christ above Silver I’ll start wondering about that bleeding old heart of yours next.”

Silver smiled wryly. “Nothing to worry about there. That’s cold and hollow and tired. And done with, thank you very much.”

“Oh is that so?”

“Yes. I don’t have it in me and I’d like it if you’d just left it alone, I can smell the meddling,” Silver warned him, “I’m not interested. If I was I’d have gone to London and looked him up.”

“London?” Rackham frowned.

“Yeah. London. Or I dunno, maybe he went to Scotland, he’d probably be much happier up that way. He could go on for hours about how much he hated England but with-” Silver shook his head. The ghost was in the corner of his eye again, not quite the man he once knew but unnerving all the same.

His Flint had worn his hair short near the end, shaved clean cut in a military style with a haunted, gaunt look to his face. Still handsome, still the kind of man to hold the room’s attention and breath in the palm of his hand without so much as a spoken word, all he needed was a look. But the darkness that had come to live inside them both had graced Flint’s shoulders like a mantle, well worn, well loved, regal in it’s weight and grief and echoing in every facet of his body.

Silver cleared his throat. “With his husband being alive I’m sure he’d want to go home, pick up the pieces of their old lives and everything. I figured they made their way back to the UK once he broke him out of the hospital. I let him. That’s why it’s not fair, to say he didn’t deserve such a way out,” he clarified, as Rackham listened. “He didn’t- I was supposed to meet him. Once he’d found his husband and gotten him safely home.”

“… you chose not to.”

“It was never formally arranged.” Silver shrugged and sipped his drink. The whiskey had lost it’s flavor, only the burn remained. “When I showed him the file, all the evidence that his husband was alive in that facility, after all these years- he didn’t wait to make a plan, Jack. He left. That night with what few essentials he could pack and a kiss goodbye.”

There was a look in Rackham’s eye now, as Silver explained, that seemed almost pitying. There were few things Silver hated as much as pity.

“He left for one airport. I left for another. By the time he was in Austria I was on my way to New Zealand with a new phone number that only Max had and everything else burned and scrapped completely. Put the little I had into secured storage.”

Rackham sighed. “Fucking hell, John.”

“It was for the best.”

“Oh is that what you’ve been telling yourself?”

“Fuck you-”

“Yes yes, fuck me, you’re a good enough lay. The point stands, you made a choice, again. And you’re living with the fallout. Well maybe not living.”

“I am. And I’d like to keep doing that if it’s all the same to you.”

Rackham shook his head. “It’s not. And it’s not to your sister. We both came to the decision to call you and ask you here, not just for a job, which there is one I promise though that will be discussed once we are all together. So you have to stay long enough for that to happen no matter how sick of me you get,” he smiled sweetly and Silver considered the risks of punching him. Fighting Anne later was never worth it. Throwing a drink? No that came with public reaction. “Look I can see you debating your exit and whether or not you can subtly fillet me with that knife, but before you do, can I please just say my piece and then it will rest, for good, and I’ll not bring it up again?”

Silver held his gaze for a moment, looking for a tell, a bluff, anything.

The trouble was Rackham was as good a card shark as Silver.

There was nothing.

“Fine.”

“Thank you.” Rackham picked up his drink again and sat back in his seat, sipping at it as he looked Silver over for a moment. “Now. I am grateful that you told me your side of things in a very adorable attempt to try and, for whatever reason be it delirium or lingering feelings, give some grace to Flint and the fact that while you have been drifting aimlessly from con to con and mark to mark, he and his impeccably well dressed trophy husband have been living out their quaint little fairy tail.”

“Is this going to be a long final piece?”

“Hush. Now where was I-”

“The fairy tale.” Silver gritted out.

The ghost was sitting in the corner of his right eye now. Sitting there by the bar, not fluttering in and out, just sitting. It wasn’t Flint, just a man with similar red hair, longer of course, heavier built, but the fucked up wiring in Silver’s fucked up brain so desperately wanted it to be a ghost, so desperately wanted it to be Flint. Not for any good reason.

They had nothing to say to each other.

“Yes the fairy tale. You’ve gone to the ends of the proverbial earth because you, god forbid, fell in love with the worst possible man you could have fallen in love with, and we’ve forgiven you for that, and you give him this miracle, yes? You do this because you love him. You give him the impossible, his husband, who was dead. And instead of living out this fairy tale with him and his husband who, if I may, is a specimen, you commit yourself to a-” Rackham paused for a moment, sipping his drink as he mulled over the words.

“Life of my own?”

Rackham scoffed. “A mockery of one but fine, a life of your own, without even having a conversation. Fine. I’d be a bit allergic to such a conversation too but what I don’t understand, is why that bastard, with all the shit he’s done in his life, get’s the fairy tale.”

“Because he does. And that’s how it needed to be. If he didn’t things wouldn’t have ended. You know that, Jack.” Silver finished his drink. “The con would have gone on for ever, the gold would have become another treasure, another smugglers business to bring down, another union uprising, you know it would have gone on-”

“And so you bring him down with his Achilles heel and condemn yourself to purgatory. How noble for a man who claimed to never have morals.”

“Your point, Jack. If you please.”

“The point is, I have two reasons for you being back in Manhattan. The first is a very selfish cause, the job. The second,” Rackham waved a hand with a easy smile, “let’s call a spiteful settling of the scales.”

“The fuck are you talking about-”

The ghost.

The ghost in the corner of his eye.

Silver felt his blood run cold and his heart drop, a lead weight into the pit of his empty stomach. He sat, still as a man possibly could with fear clawing it’s way up his throat like a caged animal desperate for air.

Rackham watched him, carefully, sipping his cocktail. “Do you know why I picked this spot? It’s a new place, just opened a couple weeks ago and still very precious, hard to get a table. The dream of a whiz kid from the Bronx so I’m told, incredibly talented, next to no formal training, just a devotion and ambition. And of course,” a tilt of the head towards the bar, “the right sympathetic ear with a very sexy bank account. Takes a bit of digging online to find the investors, they prefer privacy, not to overshadow the stars they patron-”

“Jack-” Silver’s voice barely registered over the echoing noise of the lounge.

The ghost was moving, greeting someone at the bar, someone in a chef’s coat.

“But if you do go digging, if it interested you, you’d find one Lord Thomas Hamilton,” Rackham said looking Silver over. “He’s a devoted patron of well deserving cases it seems. Especially now that he’s got his old man’s money on top of whatever share Flint still has in the vault.”

There was a knife in his hand. Silver didn’t remember reaching for it, the cerated dinner knife clutched in a white knuckle grip so that the blade was parallel with his wrist, sharp edge outward. But holding it, solid and real and sure, was a comfort all the same. Even if the ghost was just some man with red hair.

The room felt impossibly small, suffocating, the sound muted save for Rackham’s voice. His hands rested on his lap, knife in the right, the left clutching tightly at his left knee, that ached with an old, vengeful pain.

“They’re not in the UK, Silver. They spent six months there I think, long enough to get the paperwork resolved for the inheritance and make sure the Lady Barlow was comfortable situated in her new digs. She’s doing well by the way. But once Thomas Hamilton was cleared from the hospital? Flint brought him back to New York far as I can tell, before finding a quiet spot up in New England for a time to weather the worst of it. But they tell me it was only a year or so before they were settling down in the City properly.”

“They- they Tell you?” Silver forced himself to ask.

Rackham nodded. “Considering Flint hunted us down the moment he realized you’d flown the fucking coop?Yeah. They tell us quite a bit these days. We kept our mouths shut in the beginning, other than to tell him you were alive. Had a feeling if we didn’t do that he’d topple back into the old ways over night, but what can you do hmm? Anyway, He let it go once the trail went cold. You did the job rather neatly, for what it’s worth.”

The terror, the grief, or whatever feelings Silver was forced to withstand in that moment must have shown on his face. Rackham sighed, and sipped his drink, his smile soft and indulgent around the rim of his coupe glass.

“What was that you were saying before? Your heart being cold and hollow? Sounds a bit like that grave you should have put him in when you had the chance, don’t you think?” he asked softly. “Before love snared you like the rest of us?”

Again the ghost was moving in the corner of his vision, talking to the person in the chef’s coat, shaking his hand, turning away from the bar to face the room- cold icy panic filled Silver to the core. Everything left unsaid, every goodbye rehearsed in hotel bathrooms at 3 in the morning, every broken apology, every canceled phone call from burner cells and hotel lobby phones- everything began to echo through his mind with the urgency of a siren.

And the grief.

Oh the grief.

He felt like he was drown all over again.

“He hasn’t spotted you yet,” Rackham said, confirming the fear. “But he’s close. He’s scanned the room twice, glanced this way with a curious look but I think that’s cause of me. He won’t acknowledge me in public without his husband though. In truth, I wasn’t sure he’d be here tonight but it was as good a chance as any.”

“Jack please-” Silver was willing to beg. He’d never begged before, but this seemed like a good enough reason to start.

“You have a clear path to the exit and the elevator, with what should be enough cover once the kitchen door opens. I’ve been watching them, they have a rhythm.” He pulled a card out from his wallet and passed it to Silver. “I know you have a room but this is the hotel suite your Sister booked for you. It’s closer to us but not so much so that he’ll find you with that irritatingly smart brain of his.”

Silver took the card and pocketed it. He’d only arrived the night before, checked in to a little boutique hotel by Grand Central to keep his head down. But whatever Max had planned was what he’d do, he was too worried about Flint right now to argue with her, and she had probably planned for this anyhow.

“Take a deep breath and count to ten,” Rackham said firmly. “On ten, get up and walk calmly for the exit. Calmly, do you understand me?”

Silver nodded.

“If he follows you I’ll do what I can to slow him down. He’s not going to catch you. I promise you John.”

Silver knew Rackham’s word was good.

All tricks and lies and charm aside, he knew that to be true.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

“From 10. Starting now.”

Silver inhaled all the way to five and exhaled from five to ten, at which point he smiled and thanked Jack for the drinks, made a quick excuse about having to run. He got up from the table, placing the knife back with the rest of the silverware, and made sure to turn his back to the bar. Rackham grabbed his hand briefly, giving it a quick squeeze.

“Run, Rabbit,” Rackham said with a wink, and Silver made for the exit.

They timed it well enough, Silver headed for the door just as a wave of orders came out from the kitchen. The floor was confused for a moment, a chaotic dances of servers in white aprons and newly arriving diners trying to get to their tables and other patrons flagging someone down for their bill. Silver did his best to weave in and out of the various moving bodies, keeping his head down and eyes on the door, wondering to himself if this was how Orpheus had felt in that fateful challenge.

Fuck if that wasn’t proof he was still in hell over it all, ruined to the day he finally died by the secret romantic that Flint had been. There he was terrified of facing Flint again for the first time in over five years and he was thinking of Orpheus and Eurydice.

What a joke.

Just a few more tables to clear, and the hostess stand, and then Silver would be free, able to disappear around the corner and into the crowds of millions below, reveling in the springtime evening. He’d be free, he told himself, as he carefully sidestepped around a waitress who nearly dropped a tray on him.

“God I’m sorry sir, you good?” the waitress asked as she steadied herself, already taking a few steps away.

“I’m alright, I’m alright,” Silver assured her, only to find himself looking back at Rackham, and in turn, the bar where his ghost had been standing.

His ghost who was staring right at him, as if he too was looking a dead man in the eye.

Flint was wearing white.

It was Flint, of course, a bit older. He’d grown his hair back, it was falling in loose waves across his shoulders even with the more pronounced widows peak. There was more gray in it now, bright streaks of it along the temples and woven into it like starlight, combed into his beard and mustache that he still wore thick and well groomed the way he had when Silver had kissed him goodbye. Silver’s skin prickled with the phantom touch of it, the way it had felt to be kissed by him, the tickle of his beard along his skin. He’d filled out at long last it was easy to see even at this distance, his soft barrel chested torso, broad shoulders no longer weighed down with an impossible weight. He was dressed in simple, elegant clothes- a cleanly pressed button down and well fitted suit pants, leather loafers, a bit of jewelry that caught the light, all subtle and understated the way he always had been.

But what nearly broken Silver, what nearly kept his feet from moving and let him be caught? The silliest thing of all really.

Silver could hardly remember a time the man wore anything that wasn’t a mourning color.

He heard Rackham’s voice, a loud overly smarmy greeting as he moved to join Flint at the bar and intercept him before he could catch up to Silver and that served to force Silver’s feet to start moving again. He didn’t wait to watch as Flint no doubt shoved his way past Rackham, with whatever niceties or lack there of he could muster in his anger. He cleared the hostess stand and rounded the corner, nearly sprinting as best as he could on his prosthetic for the elevators as everything he’d fought to keep down for so many years tore its way back up his throat. He had to wonder what scars it would leave, whether it would match the rest of his collection.

“Silver!” came Flint’s voice from behind him. “Will you- Silver stop!”

A moment of divine providence, the elevator was waiting. A kind couple, clearly on a date, held the doors for him and Silver slipped inside with a bright smile and a sweet note of thanks. He pressed himself against the back wall and took a slow breath.

“Sir? Elevator?” the couple asked, still holding the door.

Silver lifted his head to see Flint standing there on the other side of the open door, arms limp at his sides.

His hands were shaking.

“No,” Flint said with a polite smile, “No sorry I realize I forgot my phone, I’ll get the next one, thank you.” He bowed his head and backed away so the doors could close, the couple turning to each other to continue their conversation.

It took a moment for the doors to chime and close, and all the while they waited, Silver was pinned under the fierce, familiar deep sea gaze he’d come to love. He could only hope his own expression was empty, impassive maybe, cold, quiet, anything besides what he was actually feeling. He was a con man for fucks sake he should be able to manage in moments like this.

But Flint looked the way he had the day they said goodbye, without knowing it was going to be goodbye. The day he’d learned that Thomas was alive, and had been all those long years, kept from him just out of reach. Haunted, with a new kind of rage brewing beneath the surface of the sea.

And Silver felt himself beginning the grieving processes all over again as the doors closed and his Captain disappeared from view.

#opening act of spring bs mdau fic #jamie's fic #black sails fic #silverflinthamilton #john silver #james flint #thomas hamilton #jack rackham #sat down and wrote 5k+ of words in one sitting lmao i hope you like it #my eyes hurt and my brain goes brr but im not manic so thats a plus #we'll pick at chapter 2 tomorrow

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denimbex1986 · 2 months

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'Forty-something Adam ( Andrew Scott ) has become lonely. He spends his life in a flat in London, in an almost empty block of flats, where he tries to write a TV script based on his parents, who died in a car accident just before he turned 12.

The work is tiring. It will mostly be weed and bad TV. One evening, Harry ( Paul Mescal ) shows up at his door, with a fake booze in his fist. Harry has felt that Adam has been watching him. Should they maybe …, is Adam possibly …, is there any chance that the two of them … ?

Adam closes the door, with a smile that is both resigned and hopeful. Harry is significantly younger, apparently quite out and about, and besides: Adam is and will remain alone .

The next day, Adam takes the train to the streets of his childhood, looking for inspiration for the script work. Once there, he enters an advanced daydream: Mom ( Claire Foy ) and Dad ( Jamie Bell ) are in their old house, the age they were when he lost them (younger than he is now).

They will of course like to hear about how their boy has fared after he moved to big, scary London.

Author, you say? Something so great! They knew there was going to be something from him! What Adam struggles to tell them is that he is gay. He never made it then, and he doesn't dare now. He is afraid of what these 1980s people will think.

"Isn't it a very lonely life?", asks his mother when he returns a few days later, having gathered courage. The son tells her that fortunately "everything" is different in 2024, 30 years later.

He fails to add that - yes, he is very lonely. Has been that way all his adult life.

The combination of the "visits" to the childhood home, the conversations with parents and continued attention from the ongoing Harry (as well as, for that matter, a ketamine trip ), brings about a kind of spring break in Harry, both creatively and emotionally.

The man is coming out of the shell of grief he has so carefully built around himself. At the same time, he is put in a bind: How much should he allow himself to think about the unchanging past? Is he so obsessed with the theoretical thought exercises of the irrevocable that he is unable to live in the present?

"All Of Us Strangers" is first and foremost an insanely well -acted film. By Foy , as the mother who is afraid that her son's homosexuality was "her fault". Of the versatile Bell as the more understanding father. By Mescal, who has used the "Normal People" success in the best possible way: to choose good roles in interesting films .

Most of all, it is a showcase for Scott, who can often be seen in theater and TV ( among others as Terje Rød-Larsen ), but could benefit from more work in "proper" films.

Scott's ability to hold two or more thoughts in his head at the same time, and convey them to us via the most subtle facial expressions, is formidable. He is never one thing. Always a reliable, volatile combination.

With its magical realism, exemplary acting and sober aesthetic, "All Of Us Strangers" is a fancy romantic tearjerker for people who are actually above romantic tearjerkers. A "ghost story" for people who rise above ghost stories.

A perhaps rather elegant and delicious story about post-traumatic stress, detachment and the healing potential of love. With an ambiguous dispute at the end.

It is a film that I suspect is not quite as good as I currently imagine it to be. "All Of Us Strangers" is undeniably successful. It also has its sentimental, swarming weaknesses.'

#Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal #Claire Foy #Jamie Bell #All of Us Strangers #Terje Rød-Larsen #Oslo #Normal People

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cyberwizardsblog · 3 months

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Why gay marriages won't work in India

Recently supreme court gave its judgment about same sex marriage case declining the request to change the spacial marriage act to facilitate the same sex marriage.

Although I think judgment was unfair to struggle of all the people involved specially women and trans folks

I didn't include gays in that list because being a gay myself, I have noticed several trends in gays of India that makes them unsuitable for marriage.

First thing first there are broad general trends in homosexual men in India

1. Tops are looking for easy release without caring for bottoms pleasure. I have met several tops who says they are pure tops meaning they don't kiss, suck. I have met tops who don't even like touching asshole while wanting to do anal sex.

2. Most tops are married men or going to marry a girl or don't even comprehend the idea of marrying another man.

3. Most bottoms are poor, looking for sugar daddy or jobs/money.

4. Place of doing the deed is big problem for everyone. Even if someone has place, they don't want to do that at their place due mess created during sex or stigma attached to sex or due to society.

5. People says that they are looking for love but actually they are looking someone who can shower his love on them while they were free to fuck someone else/ recently described as situationship.

6. Obviously there is division based on economic status, caste and religion. Gays who are in higher echelon don't care about lower status people despite being in same boat.

7. Then there are several organisations who works for welfare of LGBT people. Although there are some good people and organisations, most of the organisation are full of English speaking woke people who can't comprehend the complexities of India society. Their donors are ultra elite people who just wants to feel good about themselves and brag to their western countries friends without actually making any changes in society of India.

These are personal experiences based on several people I have met. Obviously tops don't share their feelings being toxic males. Its mostly bottoms who are bearing the brunt of highly patriarchal toxic society. Although they are better then lesbians due to patriarchy.

So coming to the point of marriage, there are few points I would like to share, why it won't work for most gays in India

1. Internal homophobia- People who claim to be home sexual behave in the same manner as a toxic male would behave with women. Like anytime harrasment or any bottom.

2. While most tops wants bottoms to do the all the work that are assigned to women in traditional households but doesn't want to support financially, physically or mentally as normal men do to their wives. Tops wants a bottom to submit to their whims and fancies without taking care of their well being.

3. Poverty is big problem to have a place of their own. In traditional marriage women move to groom's parents home, but since most of LGBT aren't accepted by their families, moving in with parent's home is out of question. So where to go after marriage

A. Renting a place for same sex couple in homophobic country like India is nightmare.

B. Most young aren't rich enough to afford home of their own.

4. Everyone need social security. Society function because people are interdependent and help each other during hard times. But with gays there is no society, most people live secluded life, without interacting with other gays or being friends with each other. Either fuck or we don't know each other attitude of gays make them loneliest people.

In India caste, religion or geographical identities works because people support their common identities, even if they don't no each other personally.

For example if two same caste people met in government offices they will help each other but gays won't do the same. They will probably avoid each other due various reasons.

It is this attitude of Indian gays that makes them pathetic creatures on Earth. All of them want to have live like Western countries gays but they aren't ready for struggle that people of those countries have faced. People of western countries have faced brutal murders, conversion therepy, state repression but became victorious because they have each other. Now they are powerful because rich support the cause of poor. They support each other through various means. ( Shopping from gay shopkeeper, to selecting gays for jobs to providing support of mental, financial, social nature to people who are asking for help).

So there is no concept of social gay. Gay who are brand to cater to for business or government aren't exists in India. Marriage is a social institution. It can't work in alone. So if there is no society for gays, of gays marriage for same sex won't work as they do for heterosexuals.

#same sex marriage #india #gay marriage #lost judgment #lgbtqia #social justice #ngoindia #economic disparities #narendra modi

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aoitrinity · 3 years

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Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it.

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in.

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length.

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages.

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money.

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments.

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve.

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

#supernatural season 15 #spn finale #speculation #destiel #destielgate #the ending was not the ending #fuck the cw #trust the story #we were robbed

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ayamturd · 3 years

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bisexual│mcyt hc

warnings: small mentions of hate, fluff

prompt: (requested 1 & 2) “Hello uh I saw one of your posts about the dream smp reacting to you coming out so I was wondering if you haven't already done it can you do dream smp reacting to you coming out as bisexual?”

“Hello yamturd so I was wondering if maybe you could do tubbo, Tommy and Ranboo reacting to reader coming out as bisexual or lesbian if you haven't already done it :)”

pairings: irl platonic! dream, ranboo, tommy and tubbo ; c!technoblade

a/n: if i offend or misinterpret anything in this hc, please feel free to message and correct me otherwise. i will always try to correct or delete this post if asked so <33

sending my love to all those who identify as bisexual <33

wc: (1.5k) - m.list

dream -

considering his prideful personality sometimes, you probably wanted to play with his ego and drop subtle hints

not anything too obvious, but enough to make him kick himself when he realizes

though it was admittedly difficult since he plays into the dnf ship so much that he thinks you’re also joking more than half the time

imagine you two were in a voice call one evening and randomly discussing the recent fanon and what would be funny to turn into canon (to mess with the fandom)

you’ve been recently shipped with two other content creators, both of opposing female and male gender, separately and together

“Honestly, I wouldn’t mind hitting that.” “Which one?” “Both.”

He’d laugh, but you didn’t.

“Wait, you’re serious? You actually identify as…?” “Bisexual. Yeah, I’m pretty sure anyway.” “Y/n, that’s amazing.”

takes pride in the fact that you trust him, but would feign being upset that you messed with him for as long as you did

be jokingly offended if he found out someone knew before him

“Wait…” “Yes?” “You told Bad??” “Yeah, he was one of the first.” “W— Why??”

It was your turn to laugh while he gawked in disbelief.

“It’s Bad! Of course I told him.” “… Fair enough.”

hate is a given, and he’ll always be there to support and defend you

he’ll always ask your permission before taking any action, however, because he respects you too much and knows you can fight your own battles

dream is someone will show relentless support, whether that be through words or moral support, he’ll always be there for you

c!technoblade -

i honestly feel like you never officially came out to techno

as you began to recognize yourself as bisexual, you slowly expressed yourself around him more openly to the point where he unconsciously knew

it’d probably would have hit him in the most random moment after months of assuming he knew

imagine you’re in the midst of battle when techno paused entirely with wide eyes

“Y/n!” “What!?” “Are you gay??”

you would tease him when discussing your love life in one-sided conversations with him; him basically choosing to ignore you when you talk to him

“Honestly, Techno, how could you not want to hit that?” “Please, just stop.”

(i’ve written this before but will stand by this that) he truly doesn’t care for your sexuality

you’re a friend, someone he trusts and relies on, he doesn’t need to consider who you’re attracted to since he sees you for your skills and friendship

the only, and only time he is mindful of your sexuality depends on others unnecessary comments about it

the smp is a known judgement free land, but there will always be someone with ignorant opinions that he is always quick to shut down (or kill)

nothing much can be said besides the fact that you’ll always be y/n to him: a loyal friend and someone he would fight the world for

ranboo -

oh sweet ranboo, dear ranboo

considering how openly supportive and kind he naturally is, you didn’t question the idea of telling him

i’d like to imagine that unlike most where you planned or waited to tell, the moment you knew, he would know soon after

imagine you called him before he began his lore stream to hype him up

you both were talking about more mundane things to calm his nerves as people joined when you brought it up

“Oh actually, before you start, I wanted to tell you something.” “Sure, what is it?” “Well, I— I’m Bisexual.” “…You’re tELLING ME THIS WHEN I’M ABOUT TO START MY STREAM??” “Y/n! I’m so happy for you, that’s amazing!”

he’s incredibly patient concerning how you wanted others to know or when you were ready to be completely out

similar to c!techno with the same beliefs you’re still y/n, and nothing has changed besides you coming out as yourself

he’s your go to when days are rough, because he knows how to help you understand you’re still loved as the same y/n and nothing less

“Hey, hey, listen to me. I love you, y/n. We all do, and you’ll never be alone when things get rough, alright?” (love /p)

knows how to silently deal with hate in his chat unless it becomes evident enough to address it (doesn’t want to bring attention to meaningless words until it becomes serious)

ranboo’s your rock and makes show that he’ll never believe anything other than that you deserve love

tommyinnit -

as someone who took pride in defending the LGBTQ+ community, you had no hesitation when coming out to tommy

if any, your reluctance would come from accepting yourself to the point to be open with other people

it’s not as if he didn’t accept you, he could never imagine doing so in the slightest, but he probably wouldn’t know what to say initially

imagine you both were in the midst of playing bedwars together in a recording for a video

he had been busy gathering emeralds while you remained at the base, and the comforting silence gave you the confidence to blindly address it

“Hey Tommy?” “What, y/n? I’m in the middle of something right now.” “Oh, um, I’m pretty sure I’m bisexual.” “…” “…Tommy?” “…” “T— Tommy?”

it’d be dead quiet for a few seconds before you heard the noise of him rustling in realization

“Wait wait wait, you’re serious? You’re bisexual?” “Haha yeah, yeah, I am.” “WHA—!”

he was happy for you, to say the least

tommy loves to joke, and one he loved to make would be your attraction to both genders

you like women? pog!

you like men? a shame, honestly

if you were publicly out, his favorite bit would be to include you in his obnoxious swooning

imagine he was streaming while talking about his love for women

“Boys, honestly, the ladies just can’t resist me.”

The ding of discord notified you entering the call, the sound of your laughter immediately coming through.

“I agree, Tommy, I definitely agree.” “Y/n! You are attracted to women, and I am also attracted to women. You can agree women are amazing, yes?” “I can, Tommy. Women are indeed amazing.” “Good lad!” “Tommy, you do realize I’m not only attracted to w—” “Shush, we don’t speak of that.”

he showed his support by normalizing your sexuality, his acceptance quick and easily integrated into your lives

(this is getting long but—) tommy was well aware he lacked some knowledge when being in the LGBTQ+ community, but openly voiced his ignorance as a sign of awareness itself

he was always quick to correct either himself or others, he refused to accept slander of any type in his streams

would probably try to keep it light heartedly, but scold nonetheless

tommy was your figurative cheerleader, always there to include and uplift you, whether that be through the smallest gestures or loudest cheers

tubbo -

poor tubbo

since he wasn’t the most careful with secrets, you probably withheld telling him till you were ready for most to know

this isn’t to deter anything of not trusting him, he’s still supportive and loving tubbo that wouldn’t dare do anything purposeful against you

if anything, you might have forgotten that he didn’t know when you were casually taking about it within a group

imagine you and Ranboo were trying to get him to sleep one early morning but gave up

you started talking about personal stuff and the topic of your love life came up, specifically the attraction to someone of the same gender

“I don’t know, Ranboo, I mean, I think I like them but at the same time I’m not sure.” “That’s fai—” “Wait, y/n. You’re gay??” “Bisexual, actually.” “WaAA—”

his very sleep deprived state was extremely happy and emotional for you

he’s like the little duckling with a knife, like he loves you completely but will try to hurt anyone that offends you

like tommy, he has no personal knowledge when being in the LGBTQ+ community but will solely learn for your sake

whether you’re younger or not, tubbo never fails to remind you that he looks up to you

he gives his all and won’t hesitate to provide in any way he can if needed

“You matter,” he’ll always say, “you’re important and no one else’s opinion matter.”

is proud to be your friend and expresses his platonic love in full, for you’re you and are so brave to be yourself despite all

choosing not to tag my usual taglist just cause its a headcanon with a specific request <33 (huge ty to @basilly and @inniterhq though for the advice/motivation to finish this)

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spaceorphan18 · 2 years

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99 Perspectives on a Single Love Story #99

A/N: The Story of Kurt and Blaine told through the eyes of everyone else but them. Each chapter is a different perspective in the ongoing tale of their love story.

I started something like this a while back - and now I’m taking the idea and really running with it. Each chapter is a ficlet of a different character at a different point in Kurt and Blaine’s life - documenting their love story. This starts in Audition, and each chapter will be paired with a different episode until reaching Dreams Come True.

[Ao3]

***

Sue Sylvester (Dreams Come True)

“It’s been over ten years now since I started on this journey. I was much younger then - in my late twenties, and naïve about how much of a magnetic pull this story would have on me. Oh, I know you think I’m a bitter old pill, but my heart isn’t completely made of stone. Even I succumbed to the saccharine sappiness of this beautiful and ridiculous love story. Did I know then that I would become obsessed with what the historians will deem one of the most provocative and inspiring love stories? Did I know then that I’d end up spending a large part of my time to the utter secret devotion to these two young men? Did I know then that I’d slave away creating the most perfect shrine for them? Let me tell you this - I did not know then. But I have no regrets now.

“And I get it. What’s so appealing you ask? Kurt Hummel, my dear, sweet Porcelain, was just your stereotypical gay kid with a creepy crush on his would-be brother and a rocky, yet overly sentimental relationship with his dad that would make most Hallmark movies seem like Pulp Fiction. And true, Blaine Anderson seemed like an over eager puppy with too much product in his hair and a personality that seemed to change year after year. I never expected such outwardly annoying people to captivate me. And yet, they did…

“You see, one day, my drones were on their normal routine course after hours at McKinley, and what they caught on tape shook me to my core. What they captured was a moment - an expression of love between two men on an empty stage that was so earnest, so innocent, so mind boggling simple in its sweetness that my cold, dead heart felt something stir. There’s magic here, I thought when I watched that tape. And I spent all of my time - the time that I hadn’t set aside to win Cheerio champions or take down Will Schuester or plot my epic take down of Principal Figgins - to make sure that they had a happily ever after.

“It’s true, their love story hasn’t been perfect. Did they really have to break up twice? Blaine sticking his lighthouse up someone else just did not seem like good character development to me. And there’s no way Porcelain would ditch his one true love once they found their scarcely decorated and much too unbelievably expensive for college students home in New York. And also true that I may have had a hand in manipulating and shaping their story to move in the direction I wanted to go. But even if they would deny it themselves, I don’t think any of us could escape the inevitable merging of these two young men into one - welding themselves together to become the juggernaut that is Klaine.

“Klaine, Klaine, Klaine… It’s a hypnotizing sound if you say it enough times in your head, is it not?

“Oh, so even now, even after the union of their souls, I revel in their love. I’ve been to all the performances of over indulgent takes on classic plays with questionably gender swapped roles that they’ve landed themselves in these days. And I was there the day that Rachel Berry pushed out of her vagina their curly haired, blue-eyed perfect baby girl, who impossibly looks like both of them, and will undoubtedly end up penniless in a thankless fine arts career. And now that they’ve put that restraining order on me, I may no longer be able to share that love as closely as I once did - but their love story will forever live on in the hearts of all of us.”

Sue Sylvester leans back in her beach chair, looking out at the sunrise on the ocean. Ah, the dawn of a new day, she thinks as she sips a Piña Colada out of a coconut. It’s a bit muggy and warm out, and the breeze is getting sand everywhere, but at least she doesn’t need to stay in Florida for that long.

“I don’t understand why you’re telling me all of this.” Sitting beside her on the beach is a very grumpy and unappreciative Ken Tanaka. “You’re the Vice President of the United States, and you’ve just wasted hours of your time, pulling me out of my peaceful retirement at an ungodly hour in the morning just to update me on a student I had over a decade ago, and his boyfriend?”

“Husband…”

“You’re insane, Sue Sylvester. I hate to break it to you - but nobody cares. I’d rather hear about those two cheerleaders who used to make out for all the football players.”

“Well, then.” Sue gets up, promptly throwing the Piña Colada in Ken Tanaka’s face - making him stupidly gape like a fish as the coconut drops into the sand. She then adjusts her tracksuit, brushes the sand off her pants, and takes out a pair of sunglasses, putting them on as she signals for her secret servicemen. Clearly, she is done here. “I suppose it’s all just a matter of perspective.”

#99 perspectives #s.o. writes things #I can't believe we're done guys!#thank you to everyone whose gone on this journey with me!#I feel like I shouldn't post on a Friday - but I'll probably post a complete version of this on Sunday #and i'm toying with the version of doing an annotated version - but that will be later

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 3 years

Text

I decided to watch the Walker pilot so you don’t have to. #1

I don’t know why I’m doing this, but I’m doing this and the more I put it off the less I’ll want to do this. So. Let’s start.

The fist thing we see is Jared Padalecki, em Walker, driving. He’s vaguely smiling and there’s the sun behind him. He seems happy. He’s driving a truck, for some reason my mind goes to Twilight. I’d rather watch that. At least there are vampires (not dressed like clowns) there. Anyway. Walker is meeting someone. He’s meeting his wife! “Look at you!” she says. The camera makes us look at him. He looks like this

I am unsure whether we’re supposed to see this as sexy or cool. It looks frankly ridiculous. I don’t know if I’m just not American enough to appreciate the aesthetic of this. But I didn’t go through 15 seasons of Americana-in-British-Columbia for nothing. If a character appeared like this on Supernatural, it wouldn’t be presented seriously. It would be played for a chuckle or in a light-hearted way at least. Not even Dean Winchester would find this hot.

The Padaleckis tell something to each other. Apparently he needs to go home with the kids and his parents because it’s game night. My mind immediately goes to Game Night the episode and I am sad now. But Walker lifts my mood in its own weird way. He doesn’t know the rules because every time she tells him the rules, he blacks out. I would make a fun quip about this, but the truth is that I relate to him a lot right now because I blacked out during the entire scene. I’m not sure what they said other than the game thing because I wrote it here. I already forgot the rest.

Anyway. What we’re supposed to get from this scene that they’re Very In Love (see that soft warm light?), and that he’s anxious because he’s not great at being a father because he’s shit at games apparently, but his wife is like ~don’t worry so much~ because she’s a kind, understanding wife. He tells her to be safe, because the Texan countryside is dangerous or something. She needs to stay on a route he approved for some reason. Is she traveling with supersoldier serum in her car? Is Hydra going to murder her? [cue the Marvel snipers shooting me to death because they don’t want Marvel to be associated to this]

Later, everyone is having fun playing fake monopoly, but Walker (whose mannerism is just Jared, he’s not even trying) is apparently too stupid to understand a game for kids. Plot twist, this is anti-cop propaganda because it says cops are dumb.

“Et tu Brute” Jared says when the kids point out he broke a rule so they get an extra turn. I thought I was safe from hearing Jared speak Latin! I thought I was safe! I am never safe!

Emily (Gen) suddenly texts him “SOS. Answer” which is OMINOUS! Oh my god! Aren’t you feeling the tension. The rest of the family keeps playing fake monopoly. Someone throws dice. Are we supposed to go “oh! The dice are ~symbolic because someone’s playing dice with her life” or have I been watching too much good tv.

She is running somewhere in the countryside, wearing a white shirt (is this the cowboy lady equivalent of the Wife Nightgown?). She says something is not right. He’s worried. Then he hears gunshot and her scream. He does the Alarmed Jared face, presses lips together and does a Upset Jared face.

Then he goes out, tries to call her again, and again, does a Jared Upset Sniff--

Oh! We actually see her! She’s alive, but she’s been shot in the stomach. Her white shirt is definitely the cowboy lady equivalent of the Wife Nightgown! Ah the blood coming from the stomach! How terrible! Her phone is ringing but she cannot reach it. She is definitely alive right now, though. She’s breathing heavily because of the wound, which is breathing, which is the opposite of being dead.

He decides that she’s dead, and lets out the already infamous manly scream of anguish.

It would be sad if it wasn’t that literally one second ago we saw her wounded but alive. Her turning out alive in the season finale or so will shock everyone. Nobody will have seen it coming. Who wrote this? They should have just shown the ringing phone and her bloody hand/side, making the audience assume she was dead, instead of showing her breathing. Now the audience is gonna assume she didn’t actually die, and wonder “why didn’t he call someone or went looking for her” but apparently Jared’s characters have forgotten that, like, ambulances are a thing. Jared’s manly screams of anguish are more important than common sense.

I’m not going to say anything about the manly scream of anguish. I’m not going to say anything about the manly scream of anguish. I’m n

We’re just 4 minutes in, guys. Why am I doing this?

Eleven months later, says the screen.

It’s night, outside a house. The son is waiting for him. The daughter doesn’t think he’s coming. On the porch there are two men, one is his brother and one is apparently his former partner, now new boss. He’s dressed like you’d expect a normal person to be dressed in a casual Texan night, hat and tie and all. If you are law enforcement in Texas and don’t wear a cowboy hat at any moment, you will be executed. That’s what the death penalty in Texas is for.

Somebody arrives, but to the kids’ disappointment is some dude whose function is to tell us the men’s names. The brother is Liam, the cop dude I forgot.

Walker is being sad on the back of his truck and drinking alcohol, which is the only way television can express a man having trauma. Holy shit - he reminisces of his wife like this is some emotional Lord of the Rings scene in a place where Elves live except this is not the Lord of the Rings and is just ridiculous, look

She’s seen running towards the gazebo, then she turns

This is exactly shot like the scene where Arwen has a vision of her son. Flowy hair and all. I cannot take this seriously.

He smiles sadly. Then a cop car arrives.

Mexican Lady Cop(TM), whose function in the story is to be a Mexican Lady Cop(TM) asks for his licence since he’s drinking alcohol in a public place.

“You ask so nicely” drunk Walker says. Ew. “Yeah, they train the girls special” Oh! Can you see? She is the Feminist Icon who Takes No Shit from the Dude! I’m so excited. I am slowly losing the will to live.

She drives him home on the police car. His legs don’t fit. At least this is realistic.

He does exposition in the car, including “I needed to visit a ghost instead”. There-there was no need to say it. What’s the demographic they’re aiming for? Five year olds? Do they have to spell everything out loud?

“It’s been a while since I had an actual conversation” he says, which supposedly explains why he’s making awkward exposition, but it’s just bad writing. At least they acknowledge it’s bad writing.

She figures he’s law enforcement coming back from an undercover mission from some drunken ramble he makes. This is worse than the Sherlock phone cable port thing.

She says she just got promoted from state trooper, ehe she will work with him wink wink nudge nudge. Is she going to be a cop-buddy-character slash love interest except when they’re almost about to realize they’re into each other, his wife comes back and draa~ama? I can already see it.

He goes home, makes some Jared grunts, and falls asleep on the couch.

Next morning, he goes out and jogs to where he left the truck. He puts on a cowboy hat which is supposed to be an artistic shot.

I’m slowly dying. He makes some Jared Deep Breaths, at least this made me laugh.

Wait, he’s now wearing a black hat. He’s in mourning, see? What.

He drives to his father’s ranch. His father is Super Not Impressed. It’s awkward. They took about horses. Mitch Pileggi is thinking that at least the other show was more exciting and there was Jensen Ackles in it.

He gets into his parents’ house and the dogs run to him, he does the Jared Dog Chuckle. He hugs his mom. He hugs his son - “August, my boy!” he says, like a normal person his age says.

He hugs his brother and they joke-wrestle and he says “I’m still the big brother” and did I mention I’m dying inside. I just can tell this is SUPPOSED to be reminiscent of Dean and Sam’s first meeting at Stanford in the pilot except Jared is the big brother now. Ew.

We learn that the brother is a DA and gay. All pilots suffer from Forced Exposition Syndrome but it’s like this isn’t even trying.

He goes to work and hugs (very manly hug of course) his friend-now-boss, who is called James. James asks him if he’s good and he’s like yeah I’m good, which our I’m Fine Lie Moment #1. Some things never change.

Enter the case of the week - a cop offered roadside assistance but he was assaulted. We’re already starting with a “Oh No Poor Cop :( Someone Doesn’t Like Cops And Gets Violent” plot. Yay.

Ta-da! Mexican Lady Cop appears, cowboy hat and all. James says she’s Walker’s new partner. My heart cries while Walker says “figured you’d be a guy” and she replies “so did my mom”. The feminism is so strong :’) She’s such a strong female character :’) I’m so happy :’)

Then Walker makes such a quintessential Jared thing with his mouth that I need to stop this here and take a break.

It’s been 13 minutes. So much still to go. I’m bored. Why am I doing this.

#cw's jared: legit texan #marghe watches walker for some darned reason

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spencerspecifics · 3 years

Note

HI HI HI PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WRITE MOREID AT PRIDE AND SOME PINING AND SPENCER THINKS DEREK IS STRAIGHT BUT HE ISN'T AND THEY KIIIITTTTTHHHHH

I absolutely love your energy fuck yes!! I’m so sorry this took forever, ive got school, work and some other personal things happening so I appreciate your patience!

No TW, B u t, a creep hits on Spencer at pride, so if that is upsetting please note that! Thanks :)

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Pride

———————————————————————

Garcia had been pestering Spencer about going to pride for the past week now, and it was slowly driving him insane.

He used almost every excuse he could think of. When he first turned her down, he had simply said, “Sorry, I’m going to be busy that week.” And of course, Garcia being Garcia, she stole his calendar to see what he was busy with (spoiler alert: he had nothing. Except a reminder to go grocery shopping, and email some professors and research scientists back).

So, she persisted, and he came up with a dozen more excuses; “I was considering flying out to see my mom”, “The local museum has a new interactive archeology exhibit for adults, and I want to learn more about ancient structures”, “I have to do a presentation on thermodynamics”.

None of those excuses work, as she sniffed out every lie, “Spencer, you hate flying to Vegas last minute, that archaeology exhibit has been open for months, and your calendar is empty!”

So with her persistence, and legitimate bullying, Spencer found himself finally agreeing. “Fine, but come over to my apartment before we leave so you can help me.” After all, he wasn’t really familiar with pride parades, and what the scene was like there. He was going to be a fish out of water, he already knew that for certain.

True to her word, Garcia showed up an hour before the pride parade was set to start, carrying a coffee in each hand- how she possibly knocked on his apartment door, Spencer didn’t know.

“I brought you a pick me up, that way you have no excuse to be in a bad mood!” She spoke in her signature sing song voice as Spencer let her inside, she barreled in like a hurricane. God, Spencer wasn’t ready for this.

“Thanks..” Spencer decided to reply with that lame response, and not with what he was actually thinking. He took the coffee from her wordlessly as she stepped in further, going to sit down on his couch.

“You excited?” Garcia asked as she set her cup down on his cluttered coffee table. Reid just shrugged, “I don’t know. I don’t do great with crowds.”

“But you do great with disarming murderers?” “You know that’s different-” Spencer said, doing his best to argue, “Reid it is literally not. Both are anxiety inducing, but one is life or death, and it’s not pride. So you can do this.”

Spencer sighed, resigning himself to not arguing with Garcia. Because she was right, though at times her arguments sounded wild. He just had to get over this anxiety and show up at pride, he could do this, right?

Wrong. So, very, wrong. They had left his apartment with thirty minutes to spare, deciding to walk over to where pride was being held- as it was only a few blocks away in a public park.

And as soon as they got there, Spencer wanted out. There were so many people, more than he estimated (and his estimations were usually spot on.), and there was just chaos everywhere. Music, dancing, shouting, singing, drag queens running around happily. Spencer wasn’t sure what to do. He was out of his element.

Garcia seemed to sense that, though, as she dragged Spencer over to some stalls that sold pride flags, pins, and other miscellaneous pride related things.

“C’mon Reid, why don’t you look around and find something you like?” She offered up, something for him to do- something for him to stay busy with. He could do that. Spencer nodded simply, Garcia stayed by his side- looking at pride related wear for herself.

Spencer ended up deciding on a small pin that simply said; “love all”, planning to stick it on his messenger bag strap. Garcia bought a pin as well, but hers just had her pronouns on them; “she/her/hers”.

Looking at all the pride apparel was a good distraction for Spencer, he felt a lot more calmer now- though that didn’t stop him from feeling like he stuck out like a sore thumb. He’s just not familiar with this world, and it’s awkward to suddenly be in the middle of it.

Spencer was in the middle of looking at another booth that sold flags, possibly considering buying himself a small one to stick in his pencil cup at work, because Garcia left him to go compliment a drag queen- when a voice broke through.

“Hey, pretty boy!”

That was a voice all too familiar, what on earth was Morgan doing here? Spencer looked up at him as he made his way towards him. “Hey,” Spencer spoke awkwardly. Not sure what to say.

Spencer was gay. He was fine with admitting he was gay, but he hadn’t really told the team. He thought they figured it out on their own. And they probably had, but still, having his coworker see him at a pride event- it was anxiety inducing.

“What’re- what’re you doing here?” Spencer asked, stumbling over his words as he dropped the small flag he was holding back onto the vendors table.

“Oh, well I’m on the local PFLAG committee. I’m just here to hand out flyers and stuff. But I’m glad to see you’re here, I’m guessing Garcia’s here too?” He asked Spencer casually, as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on Spencer.

He was on the PFLAG committee? Why? To help queer people, obviously, but that had to mean he was gay or something- Spencer couldn’t stop his mind from coming up with every possible answer to why Derek was on the committee.

Spencer just nodded in response, he moved himself back from the vendors table to get out of the way, so other customers could look at the flags being sold.

“Yeah, she’s- there.” Reid pointed her out, as if on cue she came out of the thick crowd that had started to gather back up, the parade portion of pride had concluded by now, and people were coming over to the vendors section.

“Hey, Babygirl!” Derek called over to her, and Garcia somehow lit up with a smile brighter than the one she was wearing before, “Well, hey!” She responded enthusiastically, walking up swiftly to give Derek a quick embrace, which he happily returned.

“I wasn’t sure how long you were staying for, but I’m glad I caught you!” Garcia started rambling to Derek, about how the drag queen she met was so nice; “Her name was Mysteria Hysteria. Isn’t that genius?”.

Spencer just stepped back from them both, not sure what to do, not sure if he fully belonged. Pride was a nice event, it was. But the longer he stood around, the more he felt like he should be leaving. Everyone was laughing and smiling, everyone was just happy. And Spencer couldn’t stop racking his brain. In the beginning, he couldn’t stop thinking because of his anxiety, but now he was searching his brain for a reason why Derek was here and what it meant.

Of course, a stupid large portion of Spencer’s mind went to “maybe Morgan likes men”, and then an even larger and stupider portion of his mind had the absurdity to think; “maybe he’s interested in me”. Which Spencer did not even want to remotely entertain, because if he fell down that rabbit hole, he’d never climb back out.

Because yes, he did like Derek. He liked him a lot, the start for his liking towards the man was innocuous enough- which is why it was a problem for Spencer. He didn’t realized he liked Morgan until it was too late. And now he had been battling these feelings for years. Spencer wasn’t ever going to act on them, he just had to live with them- which he had been doing, which he has been content with. But this new information, about Morgan being here, being part of PFLAG- it was going to make Reid’s mind implode in on itself.

Reid decided the best thing was to say; “I’m gonna get some water, I’ll be back.” To which Derek and Garcia both nodded to, and Spencer was off, away from the vendors stand and the only two people he knew at pride.

And while that was a good thing, it was simultaneously not so good. Because now he was alone, overwhelmed, and thinking too much. And now he had a task to do, find himself some water.

That task seemed to be more difficult than anticipated, as the prides layout was a confusing maze, spencer had to pass in front of a group of drag queens in order to get to the food trucks that were on site- but he eventually got there.

He walked up to the first food truck he saw, it didn’t matter what they sold, he wasn’t getting it.

“What can I get for you?” The cashier asked him, “Just a water, please.” He ordered, the cashier nodded and pulled a bottle out from a cooler that was nearby within the truck, handing it over to spencer as they told him his total, a dollar twenty five. Spencer paid quickly, stepping back and away from the food truck, as he wasn’t sure where else to go now. He didn’t want to go back towards Derek or Garcia, he honestly wanted to go home.

He just needed a minute, some space and time to breathe and relax. He was stressing himself out. And about what? Nothing of goddamn importance, just a stupid crush he had been living with for a while now.

Spencer had been leaning against the back the food truck for not long, only a couple of minutes as he was absorbed in thought as he fiddled with the cap on the water bottle.

He was doing his best to follow the grounding techniques he had learned, something to help him calm down, when suddenly- a stranger emerged out of the crowd.

“Hey there, handsome.” The man said confidently as he strode up to introduce himself Spencer. Spencer looked up to meet his eyes, the man in question was a fine looking guy, chiseled jawline, long shoulder length hair, a bit of facial stubble. He was handsome. “Hello,” Spencer answered hollowly in response. In an ordinary situation, he would try and seem more lively- but he wasn’t in a normal situation, not at all.

The anxiety of attending pride was stress enough on its own, but now knowing the guy he had been drooling over for years was here- and worked as a PFLAG volunteer? It was enough to make him lose his mind.

The man didn’t seem to notice Spencer’s empty response, however, as he answered suavely in response; “I couldn’t help but notice you from across the way. I’m Fabian,” Thankfully, the man- Fabian, didn’t stick his hand out for a handshake, instead casually pushing his hair back a bit.

“I’m Spencer,” Reid replied simply, knowing it was best to ride this odd social interaction out, rather than try and fight it. “That’s a lovely name,” Fabian complimented, “Is this your first time at pride, Spencer?” He asked him casually, taking a step forward, closer to Spencer. He was all too confident for Spencer, he too comfortable with invading Spencer’s space. If Spencer could’ve, he would’ve stepped back.

“Uh, yeah. My friend dragged me along.” Reid explained, twisting the bottle cap back onto his half empty water bottle. Fabian nodded, “Your boyfriend didn’t take you?” Fabian asked him. That was a leading question, Spencer had alarm bells ringing in his head the second he heard it. “No. He- um- he met up with us here.” Spencer replied unconvincingly, Fabian obviously did not believe a word he said.

“Well,” Fabian took another step forward, practically blocking Reid in against the back of the food truck, leaning in farther to whisper in Spencer’s ear; “I don’t see him around. So, why don’t you and I get out of here? Hm?”

Spencer wasn’t sure of what to do. He wanted to kick this guy in the crotch and just book it, but he wasn’t sure if his FBI status would protect him in this scenario. He wasn’t sure what could protect him in this scenario.

“Pretty boy! There you are!” A saving grace broke through, and suddenly Fabian was stepping back, and Morgan was walking up.

Thank god, thank fucking god, that’s all Spencer could manage to think as Derek came to stand beside him. “Hey, babe.” Spencer said, cringing at his voice, at what he just said. But that feeling only lasted for a moment as Fabian was still standing right there, staring them both down now.

Spencer could only throw his wish in the sky and hope Derek caught it coming down, ‘please catch along to why I’m calling you babe’ Reid was trying to say.

And Derek caught it, “Hey, baby, was worried about you. Who’s your friend?” He said in his smooth voice, a voice Spencer couldn’t forget. He especially couldn’t forget now, being called ‘baby’ was something Spencer especially could not forget.

“I’m Fabian, you’re Spencer’s boyfriend?” Fabian asked, as if them both calling each other ‘babe’ counted for nothing. “Yeah, I’m Derek.” Morgan responded simply, sliding his hand around Spencer’s waist as if to prove a point. Fabian just nodded, looking between Spencer and Derek one last time before talking; “Well, it was nice to meet you, I’ve gotta get going. See you.”

And then, he was off, fast walking away from Derek and Reid, escaping the terrible situation he had created. Fabian quickly disappeared into the thick crowd, and by then Spencer had his hand squeezing his water bottle all too tightly- as evident by the terrible crunch sound it made. He was too anxious to let go.

“Hey, are you okay?” Derek asked him softly, pulling his hand away from Spencer’s waist. “Can we find somewhere else- can we go sit down?” Spencer asked him quickly. Reid didn’t want to talk about it right this second, right where it had happened. He wanted to leave, he wanted to leave pride and never come back.

Derek didn’t ask a single follow up question as he led Reid away from the food trucks, taking him back towards the vendors stands, and then a bit further back, into the normal-not-so-pride-parade-filled park area. Somewhere less stressful, less scary.

“What did that guy want?” Derek asked Spencer casually as they made their way towards a bench that was sat under a large oak tree. Spencer didn’t speak right away, instead he waited until they were seated to start talking.

“He was trying to flirt, but then he wanted me to leave with him.” Spencer explained as he took a deep breath in, just being away from all the loud sounds and sights was helping him calm down. Derek rubbed Spencer’s back in slow, circular motions as Spencer kept talking.

“He was a classic example of a narcissistic personality, it just made me so uncomfortable- he invaded my space.”

“He was a creep, Reid. Simple as that,” Derek kept rubbing Spencer’s back slowly, Spencer nodded. “I know. Sorry, it shook me up.” Spencer attempted to apologized, and Derek was immediately having none of that.

“Reid, no. Don’t apologize for that, don’t you dare. He was a creep, I’m sorry you got caught up with him. It’s okay if you’re shaken up. We can stay here until you feel up to going back, or we can leave. But I’m not leaving you.”

And so they sat for a good amount of time on that park bench, at one point Derek stopped rubbing Spencer’s back, instead just keeping his arm stretched out against the back of the bench and against Spencer’s back. Spencer loved it, but he knew if he thought about it for too long he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking. That was his biggest problem, he couldn’t stop thinking.

He had to know, he decided, he couldn’t just wonder why Derek was on the committee for PFLAG. He wanted to know, he had to.

“Derek?” He spoke up softly, sounds of laughing and shouting and music were still heard in the distance, but they were safe from the sounds under the tree. “Mhm?” Derek hummed in response, looking up at the aforementioned tree that was providing shade for them.

His eyes were tracing the way the branches curved and bent around each other, it was something he did to pass the time. Spencer thought he was extraordinary for it, Derek loved to see where things went; he was curious- after all these years, and all the bad they had seen together, Derek still loved to search and find the beauty.

“Why are you on the PFLAG committee ?” Spencer asked him, it was thankfully an innocuous enough ask to not draw too much of Derek profilings side out to pry apart his question. Derek shrugged, and was quiet for a second before responding, “I know what it’s like to be a scared kid, unsure of his identity. If I can help someone through that, that’s all that matters. Same reason I’m in the BAU, to help people.”

Spencer stayed quiet, Derek’s reason was so sincere and so sweet and kind- and only driving him to think further. Was Derek still unsure of his identity? Was he an ally? Why did he have to make Spencer swoon so hard without even trying?

“So, you’re just an ally?” Spencer approached Derek carefully with that question, not wanting to impose or be rude- but just feign simple curiosity, praying Derek wasn’t using his profiling skills right now to decode Spencer’s fake motive.

Derek didn’t notice, thankfully, as he chuckled lowly in response; “No, pretty boy, I’m bisexual. I don’t really tell the team, but it’s not confidential information. Plus, Garcia found Grindr on my phone. Can’t hide anything from that girl.”

Spencer nodded, mumbling something in response about how Garcia had hacked his email to make sure he was free for pride. And then, the two fell into silence again. But it didn’t last for long, because Derek wanted to know just as much, why was Spencer here?

“What about you, Reid?” Derek asked him cautiously, the way you approach a puppy you find on the side of the road. Calm and slow, trying to get him to trust him bit by bit. “What about me?” Spencer asked, not wanting to answer anything about himself unless Derek was specific.

“Are you an ally?” Morgan asked him, leaving the question open ended. Spencer could say as little or as much as he wanted. This is how you get him to open up, Derek knew that for a fact. “Um.. yeah, I mean- who isn’t? I just- I have to be. I’m.. gay.” Spencer admitted all too awkwardly, not at all in a normal fashion. But nothing about Spencer was in normal fashion.

Derek nodded slowly, not responding as he stared back up, tracing his eyes over the tree branches yet again.

A few hours had passed, Spencer and Derek eventually left their peaceful bench under the large oak tree, and instead moved back towards the parking lot.

“Garcia’s got a ride home already- I think she got that drag queen to get her home.” Derek explained as they approached his truck, Spencer nodded as he followed Derek. “Anyways,” Derek continued speaking, “I can give you a ride home. Let’s get going.”

“You don’t have to-“ Spencer started, Derek immediately shut him down. “I want to, c’mon. It’s late, you’re tired. I know you are. Let me take you home.” Spencer just nodded in agreement, he couldn’t argue with Derek, even if he did try. Morgan was a stubborn man.

So, Spencer followed Derek into his truck, and they sat in comfortable silence as they started on their journey back to Spencer’s safe space, his apartment.

By the time Derek pulled his truck into the apartments parking lot, Spencer knew something was just the slightest bit wrong. Derek had barely spoken for the entire ride, and usually he loves to say something, to make Spencer smile or laugh, or even just nod and mumble in agreement. But he had done none of that on the way to Spencers.

“Are you alright?” Spencer asked, turning to face Derek as he put the vehicle in park. Derek didn’t meet his eyes, staring at the steering wheel instead as he spoke; “Yeah. Sorry. I’m just thinking.”

“About what?” Spencer pried, absentmindedly unbuckling his seatbelt as he spoke, “About today.” Derek said, not explaining further. “Was today bad?”

Derek shook his head, “No. It started weird, it’s ending pretty good, though. But I’m gonna regret today forever if I don’t do something right now.”

Now, Spencer was confused. Not sure at all what Derek could be talking about, “What do you mean?” He asked, voice quieter than before.

Derek said nothing as he unbuckled his own seatbelt, turning to face Spencer as well, and then he leaned in- closer than they had ever been before. Their noses were almost touching, and Spencer didn’t move. Instead, he watched Derek’s eyes expectantly.

Then, Derek broke through, they were no longer intersecting each other’s personal space- now they were fully destroying each other’s atmospheres. Derek’s lips were on Spencer’s, a chaste, soft, quick kiss- something Spencer would have wanted to go for a lot longer. But then, he pulled away just as fast.

“...That’s what I meant..” He mumbled after a second, looking back towards the steering wheel, looking away from Spencer- and more importantly, not seeing the smile on Spencer’s face.

Spencer couldn’t help it. He knew it was terrible to be smiling right now- he should jump and say something to fix what was happening. But he had to smile, he couldn’t believe that had actually just happened, his brain was still computing and re-circuiting, trying to savor the memory and not forget how Derek’s lips felt against his.

Spencer dragged himself out of his own head quickly, though. He did all he could think of to do in the moment, get Derek back. “Morgan.” Spencer said, tugging on Derek’s sleeve as he did so, forcing him to look back at Spencer and meet his eyes again.

But Spencer didn’t say anything, and he didn’t give Derek the chance to speak, either. Instead, he leant forward, pressing his lips against Derek’s. This is all he had wanted to know for the longest time, and now he had it.

Maybe pride wasn’t so bad after all, you just have to be with the right people for it to work out.

———————————————————————

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burnedbyshoto · 4 years

Text

peeping tom(mina)

— Mina finds a peephole in her room that looks directly into your room and discovers a sight that slightly rocks her entire life.

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pairing: ashido mina x fem!reader

warning: 18+, smut, voyeur!mina, mutual masturbation, vibrator, dildos, finger fucking, cursing, peephole, lesbianism

word count: 2,815

a/n: sorry its a day late!!!! have some pervy roommate mina rn and some abo shiggy in about a few hours!!!!

kinktober day 11 main kink: voyeurism | kinktober masterlist

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Mina has a dirty secret.

And just thinking about it makes her shy, and she has never been a shy girl.

Since she could fully understand what sex was, she had always been someone who was incredibly sex-positive. Mina was also a full-body worshiper, someone who found everyone’s bodies hot and attractive. It never really surprised anyone when they found this out. She was always the type to point out how that person’s ass looked hot in jeans, or how that shirt made that person’s boobs look full, soft, and luscious. She held back at absolutely nothing, making sure to let everyone know her opinion on how and why she currently found them attractive.

So the ones she would eventually bring to bed were also unsurprised by the enthusiasm she held when she kissed down their bodies, fingers massaging every piece of skin and muscle as she moaned praises. To Mina, bodies were a temple, and when she was visiting, she was going to make sure you knew how fascinating she thought it to be.

Even now, at twenty-two, she never hated pointing out what she thought to be positive about people’s bodies. It was almost second nature.

“Can you please tell me why your legs look hot as fuck in those sweats?!” Mina practically screamed, dramatically fanning herself when you walked into the kitchen.

It was Saturday night, and Mina found herself in her apartment, blinds are drawn open, blankets were strewn around the living room, and hot homemade food sizzling on the stove. You were her roommate, and you’ve been her roommate for about seven months now. Both of you had met in a college class, being paired up multiple times for a few projects in the year had created an unlikely friendship that resulted in a roommate contract because you were moving to Tokyo after graduation, and hey! So was Mina!

You snorted by the stove, flipping the sweet crepes you had been making for the both of you in the pan. Turning your head to look at Mina, you playfully winked at her, posing your body in faux-seductive ways while you dipped your head back.

“What can I say, the sweats of a heartbroken ex always look hotter on a champions fat ass.”

Mina laughed loudly, her hands bringing her sweet rosé to her lips, taking a long, deep drink of the alcoholic beverage. “I can’t believe you keep your exes clothes! I burn all of mine,” Mina states as if the two of you hadn’t already had this conversation a thousand times.

“I don’t think you can talk!” you scoff, spatula in hand, flipping the light sweet into a roll. “You’re the one who goes and buys actual metals for every successive man you fuck! And you have sooo many metals!”

Also, something that had been repeated a million times, and yet never failed to get either one of you two in some laughing flush.

“I do have so many metals,” Mina sighs, the grin on her face bright and proud while you walk over, crepes in hand. Thanking you for the food, Mina waited for you to settle down next to her before resuming the movie the two of you had decided to watch. “I promise, y/n, if you just look a guy in the eye and tell him you like his shoulders and his thighs, you’ll get him in bed in a blink of an eye.”

You hum, taking a chug of the rosé straight from the bottle, releasing it with a small pop that made Mina’s eyes rest on your swollen, wet lips.

“Yeah, no. You see, I’m not really interested in that sort of stuff,” you admit, taking a bite from the crepe as the movie slowly becomes background noise.

“You haven’t dated anyone since high school,” Mina more than points out, tugging at the indeed high school logoed sweatpants. “That was like, four years ago, and you don’t sleep around?! What is it? You waiting for the Prince of some unknown country to come and wed you without you realizing he’s a prince? I mean, you can totally do that, especially with that hot bod of yours, but I know all the princes our age, none of them are even remotely hot!”

Mina watched as your eyes dropped to your food, the smile on your face small, maybe a bit... sad?

“It’s not that,” you shrugged, your eyes moving to lock on Mina. “Mina, I’m gay.”

What?

Processing Data…

Data Processed. Please Continue.

“WHAT?!”

A shit-eating grin spread on your face, and you nodded, taking another gulp of the rosé and shoving more crepe in your mouth.

“YOU’RE TELLING ME YOU ALLOWED ME TO HAVE HETEROSEXUAL SEX WITH YOU IN THE APARTMENT AND DIDN’T TELL ME?!” Mina shrieked, suddenly mortified with her actions as her fingers clenched her curly pink hair. “WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE MEN I TRIED HOOKING YOU UP WITH?! I mean, I know you didn’t fuck any of them, which ended up all fine because I would have cried if Kiri, Denki, or Sero stopped showing up.”

“Mina!” you laughed.

“I can’t believe you allowed me to force men on you; I’m so sorry, sweetie!”

Mina froze when your warm fingers suddenly grabbed onto hers, pulling her cold palms near your chest as your slightly glazed with alcohol eyes took her in.

“Listen, Mina, I’ll say this once, and I’ll repeat this. I didn’t tell you because I don’t care to share my sexuality. Not only that but all those men you introduced me to almost made me wish I was straight! Almost, but they’re a bit too…” Mina watched you trail off, your hammering heart a gentle smooth on her fingers.

“Stupid?” Mina tried, and you laughed as you nodded.

“Yeah, stupid.”

Mina gulped, her head nodding while you finally let go of her hands and sighed.

“Don’t be weird about it, Pinky,” you muse, shoving your shoulder against her. “I won’t hit on ya.”

Mina scoffed, clearly offended, “I think you should, though, my body is hot, and my kisses are just as good.”

It was said in jest, and Mina’s heart fluttered at the way you laughed with her in good spirits. That was normal, right?

Eventually, the contents of the rosé disappeared between the two of you, the movie long done, and the crepes sitting warm and sweet in your stomachs. Mina smiled brightly as she waved at you a simple goodnight as she needed to reorganize her snacks cabinet. Hearing the small click of your room door, Mina slumped against the counter, a weird feeling in her brain at the sudden revelation from you.

It didn’t make you any different in her eyes, she wasn’t a bigot, but there was something different.

Something new.

The cabinet wasn’t fixed up at all, Mina’s attention span forbidding her from reorganizing the cabinet until she turned off the lights and dragged her feet back into her room, conveniently located directly next to yours.

The apartment layout was weird.

Instead of a typical hallway separating the two rooms, it was a single, thin wall.

Now, Mina would categorize herself as many things, but dramatic was never one of them. But the way she had slammed her door in an attempt to clear the muggy storm of her thoughts might have been dramatic of her. Maybe a bit too dramatic.

A loud tear came from the right side of her room, and Mina gasped loudly as the shelf showcasing her plethora of medals for all her sexual conquests tore the wall as it fell off. Stupid heavy bitch! Racing over to the wall, Mina frantically grabbed at the tearing cheap wallpaper, her eyes wide with worry as she tried to fix the shelf to no avail.

“M-Mina, are you okay?” a gasped breath came from the direct another side of the wall.

“It’s all good!” Mina laughed loudly, her heart pounding because she was going to confess what was going on the second you asked again, as you usually do. But the only thing that followed was the roaring of her blood and heart as she stared at the wall.

Weird.

Mina didn’t dwell on it for too long, her hands throwing the medals off the shelf and onto the bed as she picked at the wall. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

She grazed the center of the wall and watched in horror as the wall crumbled at the touch, and she bit her tongue to keep from hysterically sobbing as a hole opened up from your room to hers. All things considered, it wasn’t a big hole, no bigger than the diameter of her pinky, but it was still a hole in the wall.

Despite the crack in the wall, Mina swore or prayed that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Pressing to the hole, she peered in and froze immediately.

There weren’t many things in the world that made Mina freeze, but this was one of them. Her eye pressed to the wall saw that you were on the bed. Your sweats dropped around your ankles, shirt bunched above your breasts so that your fingers twisted and pulled at your nipples. The other hand held a vibrator to your clit.

Your face was scrunched up, the low hum of the vibrator suddenly piercing through the small crack in the wall, alerting Mina of a straight fire that erupted between her thighs as she watched you fuck yourself. The arch of your back when you come off the mattress makes her thighs rub together, and how your lips part in what she knows to be the most delicious moan, she’s ever managed to hear.

Mina isn’t sure when you stop masturbating that night, or even more importantly: when her panties became as fucking wet as they are.

She manages to put the shelf back onto the wall, her face absolutely red as she turns off the lights, ashamed to even go to the bathroom despite the discomfort of the slick between her folds. She dreams of having your mouth between her legs that night.

It doesn’t stop there, Mina’s ashamed to admit.

As a matter of fact, she’s probably obsessed.

She definitely didn’t keep her ear to the wall, desperately waiting to hear the low hum of the vibrator through the wall. She definitely didn’t pull the still broken shelf from the wall to peer through that crack to watch as you fucked yourself. She definitely does not, and she means, does not rub her fingers against her clit as she watches you.

But what was she currently doing when she heard the all too familiar consistent humming of one of your plenty of vibrators? She was stumbling off her bed, throwing the shelf off the wall, and using the crack in the wall to stare into your room. Except as she now unashamedly moved her fingers into her swats, fingertips grazing her already humming clit, she froze at the new sight she saw.

Typically, when you masturbated, you would lay along your bed. Your body laid out flat from the side for Mina to see. She never actually saw the slick of your cunt, or the way your pretty cunt would look like as you fucked yourself against a dildo. But today? Oh god, today was different.

You were propped up against the wall, your legs pressed open for Mina to see in all your glory. Your slicked, pretty pussy revealed for her eyes, and your head leaning against the wall as she watched.

Mina moaned as her fingers began to rub her clit, the already fluttering, simmering sensation radiating from her bundle of nerves too tight, too demanding to ignore. She circled her clit as your fingers dipped into your core, and she bit her lower lip at the refined look of elation that wiped over your face.

Your fingers moved in and out of your cunt, and Mina was hooked on the very exact angle your fingers were going in. Her mind wandering as she imagined that it was her in there with you. That it was her holding her fingers to your cunt, and not just fantasizes that drove her insane. Mina gasped as suddenly the dormant warmth in her legs sparked into a growing fire that made her legs shake and had her resting her forehead upon the wall.

Her eyes struggled to open when your feet kicked up off the mattress, toes curled to the balls of your feet as you keened loudly. A whimper left her lips at the way you moaned, the soft, beautiful sounds making Mina sink an impatient hand in her core.

She fucked herself, her eyes fluttering, lips gasping for air as she pressing her warm fingers against her even warmer walls. Mina gasped your name, her eyes trying to focus on that wall, and was absolutely frozen at the sight she saw next.

You were holding a double ended dildo to your cunt, fucking your sopping wet cunt that Mina swore she could hear from her room. The vibrator was still on your clit, and Mina snapped her hips further, stronger into her scissoring fingers. It felt like you were teasing her with the toy as if you knew she was watching in and were teasing and testing her limits. Mina could feel herself shoving that dildo as far up her cunt as she could get it, her hands holding on to your beautiful thighs and bringing you in so that your slick cunts could grind against each other, fuck each other properly. If her brain wasn’t so muddled, she wouldn’t be thinking you were looking at her right now through the peephole, and she wouldn’t be thinking about the million different ways she’d fuck you given the opportunity. She wondered if you had a strap. Would you wear it if her fantasies were to ever come true? Would she?

Mina couldn’t dwell on the secrets she wished to know because suddenly, you let out one of the loudest, most lewd moans Mina had ever heard emitted from your swollen lips. The slick of her heat and the wet of her essence easily letting her fingers glide about her clenching walls with practiced, well-known ease. You gasped, your eyes fluttering to the back of your head as your hand holding the dildo became more frantic, sloppier, before stopping altogether, and although you had reached an orgasm — Mina swore she saw god.

Your orgasmic euphoric face was unlike anything Mina had ever seen.

The flustered, quiet pleasure reeking from every small line in your face, the way your mouth dropped just enough so that your pink tongue was on full display, the way you fought between biting down on your lip or letting yourself moan in your high. But it was the way your eyes crossed that sent Mina’s forehead slamming against her fist on the wall, muting the way Mina felt her walls clench wildly and tightly around her curled, lithe fingers.

She breathed in her descent, her cheeks burning with the same and bliss she always felt after orgasming. It wasn’t fair she came so soon watching you fuck yourself, especially as she knew she typically took so long in bed with men to make cum.

“Do you want to try it out?” your voice slipped into the room, and Mina froze, her blood suddenly turning ice cold. Her eyes snapped back to the dirty peephole to see that you were, in fact, staring into the hole, hand sliding the dildo into your cunt still, still willing and ready to go more round. “It gets a little lonely putting on a show for you night after night, Mina, and for you to never come and collect your prize.”

Mina swallowed, her eyes blinking owlishly at the way you shifted forward, turning so that your ass was in the air, knees, and chest on the mattress.

You knew.

“Come and collect your prize, please.”

“Y-Yes!”

Mina learned two things that night.

One: she especially and equally enjoyed having listless amounts of body worship mantra on her skin. The feeling of wet lips and hot breathes with things she was so used to giving made her cum around your pretty little fingers much more than she’d ever thought possible.

Two: you had known after the first night that she had caught you masturbating. Apparently, Mina was much louder than she thought herself to be, and when whining your name — she doesn’t remember even speaking — you had known and did all you could to finally getting your impulsive roommate to fuck you.

Oh, and I guess there is one more thing too!

Three: Mina had the absolute hots for you and was going to take you out for a proper date, tomorrow.

#mina x reader #mina smut #bnha #bnha x reader #mha #bbs kinktober 2020

1K notes · View notes

trini-trin-trin · 3 years

Text

Sharing this from a FB group that I am in. I was very moved by the article and felt affinity with the experiences shared. A really sweet read.

Here is the article if you don't want to click on the link (I know it is a little long, but well worth your time to read!):

The letter I received ten years ago was unsigned and bore no return address. Clearly its author did not expect, much less want, a reply. A message in a bottle, from no one to no one, that letter still remains the most bizarre form of communication. It asks nothing but to be read, promises nothing but to share a few facts and feelings, and, seeing that it must have been dashed off on a lined yellow sheet that seemed hastily torn out of a pad of paper, the author would not be surprised if, after skimming through it, the recipient decided to crumple and lob it into the closest dust bin.

The letter is one page long. One page is enough. The handwriting is uneven, perhaps because the author had lost the habit of writing in longhand and preferred the keyboard. But his grammar is perfect. The man knew what he was doing. I assume he was writing the note by hand because he didn’t want traces of it on his laptop, or because he knew he was never going to send it as an email and risk a reply. Now that I think of it, he probably didn’t care if it even reached its recipient, a local Bay Area reporter who had mentioned my novel about two young men who fall in love one summer in Italy in the mid-1980s. The reporter eventually forwarded it to me, minus its envelope with the postmark. It took no time to see that all the author of the letter was looking for was a chance to blurt out the words he couldn’t dare breathe elsewhere.

My book had spoken to him. His letter spoke to me.

So here it is: dated April 16, 2008.

I came upon Mr. Aciman’s book while on a business trip back East. Not the type of book I am normally able to read, so I bought a copy for the flight home. I think I’m glad I did.

You see, I was Elio. I was 18 and my Oliver was 22. Though the time and place were different, the feelings were remarkably the same. From believing that you are the only person who has these feelings, to the whole “he loves me – he loves me not” scenario, Mr. Aciman got it right. I was particularly impressed with the attention he gave to the morning after Elio’s and Oliver’s first encounter. The guilt, the loathing, the fear. I felt it too much. I had to put the book down for a while.

But in the end I was able to finish the book before we landed at SFO. Which was good, because I couldn’t take the book home. Unlike Elio it was I who married and had children. My Oliver died from AIDS in 1995. I’m still living a parallel life. My name is not important. His name was Dwight.

Instead, I kept the letter. I kept it for ten years.

What moved me was not just its sobering matter-of-factness or its hint of downplayed sorrow, but the associations it provoked in my mind. It reminded me of those short, clipped messages to loved ones, written by people about to be shipped off to the death camps who knew they’d never be heard from again. There is a chilling immediacy about their hurriedly scribbled notes that say everything there is to say in the fewest possible words — there wasn’t enough time for more, no smarmy pieties, no hand-wringing, no treacly hugs and kisses before the tragic end. It also made me think of the moving phone messages left by those who finally realized they were not going to make it out alive from the Twin Towers and that only their family’s answering machine was going to take their call.

“My name is not important,” he writes, almost as an apology for remaining anonymous; yet the author drops quite a number of hints about himself — hints he likely knows will stir his reader’s wistful curiosity to know what made him write the letter in the first place, what he hoped to accomplish, and if writing did indeed help. The letter itself allows us to see that he travels for business. We also sense that he probably lives in the Bay Area and that he travels not infrequently to the East Coast, since, as he writes, he is “back” in the East. And we know one thing more: that he simply needed to come out and tell someone that a man called Dwight had been his lover when the two were young. The rest is a cloud. We’ll never know more. Writing has served its purpose. We write, it seems, to reach out to others. Whether we know them or not doesn’t matter. We write to put out into the real world something extremely private within us, to make real what often feels unreal and ever so elusive about ourselves. We write to give a shape to what would otherwise remain amorphous. This is as true about authors as about those who want to correspond with them. Over the years, many have written to me either after reading or seeing Call Me by Your Name. Some tried to meet me; others confided things they’d never told anyone; and some even managed to call me at the office and, on speaking about my novel, would eventually apologize before bursting out crying. Some were in jail; some were barely adolescents, others old enough to look back at loves seven decades past; and some were priests locked in silence and secrecy. Many were closeted, others totally out; some were widows who felt a resurgence of hope if only by reading about the loves of two young men called Elio and Oliver in Italy; some were very young girls eager to meet their long-awaited Oliver; and some recalled former gay lovers whom they’d occasionally bump into years later but who’d never acknowledge what they’d once shared and done together when both were schoolmates and neither was married. All were keenly aware of living a parallel life. In that parallel life things are as they perhaps should be. Elio and Oliver still live together. And no one has secrets there.

Unlike Dwight’s lover, everyone who took the time to write to me did not withhold their names, but all had, at one point or another, withheld something very primal. They withheld it from themselves, from a relative, from a friend, a classmate, or colleague, or from a beloved who would never have guessed what troubled longings seethed below their averted gaze whenever they crossed paths.

Some readers wrote to tell me they felt that my novel had changed them, and given them new insights into themselves; some felt it was urging them finally to turn a new leaf in their lives. But some couldn’t go so far and, despite their perfect command of language, confessed lacking the words to explain why they were so moved by my novel or why they felt an unresolved longing for things they’d never considered or desired before. They were experiencing an upwell of emotions and of ungraspable might-have-beens that were asking to be reckoned with because they seemed more real than life itself, a sense of themselves that beckoned from an opposite bank they’d never known was there and whose potential loss now was a source of inconsolable grief. Hence their tears, their regrets, and the overpowering sense of being lost in their own lives.

And yet, they said, theirs were not tears of sorrow. They were tears of recognition, as though the novel itself were a mirror for readers to watch their own emotions laid bare before them. These responses made me aware that Call Me by Your Name does not call attention to anything readers didn’t already know, nor does it bring new truths or revelations; all it does is shed new light on things that were long familiar but that they never took the time to consider. It would be so tempting to say that they are reminded of their forgotten first loves; the truth is that all loves, even those that occur late in life, are first loves. There is always fear, shame, reluctance, and not a tiny dose of spite. Desire is agony.

Everyone who’s read Call Me by Your Name understands not only the struggle both to speak and hold back their truth but also the shame that comes whenever we want something from someone. Desire is always cagey, always secretive — we’ll tell everyone we know about the person we crave to hold naked in our arms, but the very last one to know this will be the person we crave. Same-sex desire is even more guarded and watchful, especially in those who are just discovering their sexuality. Awkwardness and desire are strange bedfellows at a young age, but shame and inexperience are just as paralyzing as fear when we watch them tussling with the urge to be bold. You’re torn between the raw horniness that makes you dream scenes you hope to forget as soon as you’re up and the scenes you pray you’ll dream again and again — if dreams are all you’ll have. Silence and solitude exact a cost that leaves us emotionally wrecked. At some point we need to speak.

So “is it better to speak or die?” asks Elio, the narrator of Call Me by Your Name, quoting words penned by the sixteenth-century Marguerite de Navarre in her collection of tales known as The Heptameron. Marguerite was the sister of King Francis I and the grandmother of Henry IV, himself the grandfather of Louis XIV, hence she was plenty familiar with court intrigue, gossip, and the risks of opening up to someone who may not welcome what’s in our heart and could easily make us pay for it. Not everyone who has written to me has dared to speak their hearts to those they loved. Some have sought silence — slow, lingering droplets of quiet desperation taken every night before bedtime until they realize they’ve been dead and didn’t even know it. Many have written to me with the feeling of having missed their chance when someone tethered his rowboat to their jetty and simply asked them to jump in. “Some sentence or thought on almost every page,” writes a reader, “triggers tears and knots my throat and chest. Tears well up in my eyes on the subway, at my computer at work, walking down the street. Perhaps I am weeping in part because I know that at my age there is virtually no possibility of experiencing anything remotely comparable to what Elio experiences with Oliver.” Someone else writes, “Reading Call Me by Your Name made me feel a love I never had.” A happily married 50-plus colleague took me aside and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this much in love in my whole life.” “I'm 23,” tweeted someone else, “and have never felt such love, until I read Call Me by Your Name. I feel like I lived it.” “Elio and I are essentially the same age,” writes a teenage girl. “I have never really experienced his environment of the Italian summer…My experiences have only taken place halfway between nature and smog, however I have felt the same tension, fear, guilt and overwhelming love that you express perfectly through both Elio and Oliver…Finding myself in Elio was something I never expected and I’m positive that I won’t experience anything quite like it ever again. The first girl I ever loved remains…the only girl I have ever loved and though everything she and I shared…lives now as a secret between two friends.” “I finished reading Call Me by Your Name a couple of days ago,” writes someone else, “and wanted to let you know how much it affected me. It felt like a narration of my thoughts that I had systematically buried long ago.” And finally this from a 72-year-old: “I was fascinated by the idea of parallel lives where would I have been if I had gone with him, where would I be if I traveled alone? Maybe the point is just what do I do with the gift you have given me during the remainder of my life.”

There are at least 500 more such letters and emails.

Some find themselves weeping at the end of the film or the novel, not for what happened long ago or for what did not and might never happen in their own lives but for what has yet to happen, for the terrifying moment when they too will soon have to decide whether to speak or die. This from an 18-year-old: “[Your novel] gives me hope that one day I will meet someone whom I desire so badly that I’ll actually find it in me to make a move, the way Oliver is that someone for Elio. Maybe my Oliver will also turn out to be someone that I realize I love as well as desire.” She was crying for a week, as was this 15-year-old young man: “I stopped reading…because I didn’t want [the book] to end, didn’t want the wounds that you caused me to close, I didn’t want to overcome, for some reason that I have yet to find out. I wanted to stay a wreck, emotionally and mentally fragile….My mother handed me tissues because she had never seen me cry like this. I had finished your book and ‘moved’ is too weak a word to express what your book had done to me. Here a week later and it is literally all I can think about, not my midterms coming up, but…Elio and Oliver and if it is better to speak or die. You answered questions I didn’t even think I had.”

Indeed, the whole novel seems to enable the outing of all manner of feelings, feelings from Elio’s relentless inward journey and obsessive self-examination that readers are invited to identify with. Through Elio’s unfettered introspection they too feel exposed and sliced open like a crustacean without a slough, now forced to look at itself in the mirror. No wonder they are moved. The mask that is torn off their faces is not just the mask that conceals same-sex desires from themselves and from others. Rather, it is the realization, through Elio’s voice, of what they truly feel, who they truly are, what they fear, what bears their signature, and what coy little shenanigans they go through to read others and hope to reach them. Some identified with some effusive sentences in my novel so much that they had them tattooed on their bodies. They even attach photos of these tattoos. People have also tattooed peaches on themselves!

But what moves most people — and this is as true now as it was when the novel first came out — is the father’s speech. Here he not only tells his son to nurse the flame and “don’t snuff it out” after his son’s lover has left Italy, but that he too, the father, envies his son’s relationship with a male lover. This speech tears away the last vestige of a veil between reader and truth and is a moving tribute to the irreducible honesty between father and son.

Most readers have written to me about the scene because the father’s speech rekindles the very difficult moment when they decided to come out to their parents — or, as is often the case with people 60, or 70 or older, it reminds them of the conversation they wished they’d had but never did have with their parents. This is the loss no one forgets and from which no one recovers after seeing Call Me by Your Name. It bears the very essence of that precious and life-defining might-have-been moment that never happened and never will.

Here is the speech:

“Look…[y]ou had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their sons land on their feet soon enough. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything — what a waste!...

“… {L]et me say one more thing. It will clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then all those versions in between. But there’s only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”

I received the anonymous letter sometime in early May 2008. At the time, I was staying at my parents’, because my father was suffering from throat and mouth cancer and was already in hospice care. He had refused radiation and chemotherapy, so I knew his days were numbered; though morphine was clouding his mind, he was still lucid enough to bandy a few quips about a host of subjects. He had stopped eating and drinking water because swallowing had become very painful. One afternoon while I was stealing a nap, the phone rang. A reporter I’d met in California had just received a letter, which she wanted to share with me. I told her to read it over the phone. After she’d read it I asked if she felt she could mail it to me. I wanted to show it to my father, I said, and explained he was dying. She felt for me. We talked about my father for a while. I told her I was trying to make it up to him these days, and that he too had been exceptionally easy to be with. How was it growing up with him? she asked. Tense, I replied. Always is, she added. Then the conversation ended, and she promised to mail the letter soon.

After hanging up, I got out of bed and went in to see him. Over the past few days, I had made a point of reading to him, which he liked a great deal, especially now that he was having difficulty focusing. But rather than read to him the memoirs of Chateaubriand, one of his favorite authors, and feeling buoyed by the letter I’d been read on the phone, I asked if he’d like me to read from the French translation of Call Me by Your Name, the galleys of which I had just received from Paris that very morning. Why not, since you wrote it, he said. He was proud of me. So I began to read from the very beginning, and soon enough I knew I was opening up a subject neither he nor I had ever broached before. But I knew he knew what I was reading and why I was reading it to him. This made me happy. Perhaps it made him happy as well. I’ll never know.

That evening, after the rest of us had dinner, he asked if I could continue reading from my novel. I was nervous about arriving at the father’s speech because I didn’t know how he’d react to it, though he was the kind of father who would have given that very same speech himself. But the speech was two hundred pages away still, and that would have taken many, many days. Perhaps I should skip some parts, I thought. But no, I wanted to read him the whole book. My father didn’t last long enough to hear the father’s speech. And when the letter finally arrived from California, he was already gone. His name was Henri, he was 93 years old, and he inspired everything I’ve written.

#andre aciman #CMBYK Book #call me by your name #cmbyn #elio x oliver

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