#god this is so stupid but also i would get to decide everyone's Derby Day hats. which is the opposite of stupid it's GREAT | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theawkwardterrier · 3 years

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How about 14 + 21, dealer's choice pairing?

On This Thanksgiving Day

Prompt: Stuck together for a long period of time/“They’re wrong about you.”

Summary: Sloan’s first time meeting Don’s family doesn’t go particularly well. (The dialogue came to me in Thomas Sadoski’s voice, so I guess the dealer wanted Don/Sloan for you, Sarah.)

“Apparently we don’t have very good luck on trips together,” Sloan says, although not precisely to him. She’s facing out the window, as if she can see anything other than pitch blackness - as if there would be anything to see, even in the daylight. They hadn’t made it much past Derby-Shelton when the train had broken down; he’d guess that if they could see more than darkness and their own reflections, they’d mostly be staring out at Naugatuck State Forest.

Which might offer a distraction to make things a bit less awkward, but not by much.

“I’m not exactly in a hurry to get anywhere this time,” he says, trying for humor. “Luckily there isn’t much urgent news to report on Thanksgiving.”

“There isn’t always much urgent news to report on May 1 of any given year.”

“Well, sometimes we just get lucky.”

She turns toward him then. Her hair, which she had taken down from whatever fancy style it had been pinned up in earlier, swings forward, briefly obscuring her face. “Is that how you feel? Lucky?”

“I feel lucky with you every day,” he says truthfully. He can’t tell if she believes him. Either way, she does not smile, although after the day they’ve had, he wouldn’t really expect her to.

It had been an easy decision to ask Sloan to come home with him. Her parents retired to Arizona the previous January, and if it already didn’t make much sense for her to fly across the country for barely a weekend, they had told her months ago that her brothers would be at their in-laws, they had no plans on cooking, and they were booked for mixed doubles with the Drummers on Friday.

Don’s family, by contrast, would all be gathering back at his childhood home, a quick couple of hours on the Metro-North. He and Sloan had been dating for over a year now. It would have made sense to ask her even if she wasn’t facing down a holiday weekend of takeout and economics journals alone in her apartment (regardless of the fact that she had set aside a few of the “best issues” to enjoy).

He knew it was a mistake from the moment they walked in the door.

Despite his mother’s thanks, it was clear that she thought the bottle of wine Sloan had picked out was pretentious, and she eyed the sheath dress Sloan wore, with its gray, black, and white geometric design, as if deciding precisely how excessively formal it was for a small family gathering. Don, having seen Sloan’s closet, could have told her that this was one of the more informal options, at least not counting workout clothes or lingerie, but started in on small talk instead before offering Sloan a tour of the house.

Those few moments of watching her smile at the pictures of him hanging along the hallway - round in a Christmas sweater at age three, a gawky, grinning advertisement for the necessity of orthodontia at twelve, only slightly less gawky and slightly more grinning in his high school graduation photo - and hearing her tease about what embarrassing poster had once been taped in the large, discolored place above his bed...it still wasn’t quite enough to get him through the rest of the day.

Sloan didn’t watch whatever show his mom and sister and sister-in-law were going back and forth about, and she had little interest in entertaining the brigade of Keefer kids roaming around. She furrowed her brow as she sat next to Don in the family room and tried to get him to explain all the minutiae of football even as the others were trying to watch the Eagles. She was perfectly polite, asking questions of everyone and telling them about her family, her work, her interests when asked, but it was obvious from the glances traded around the table that the others noticed the slight hitch to her cadence and the way she didn’t always laugh at the jokes being told, and that it mattered to them.

As they dug into turkey and Mom’s excellent stuffing and terrible sweet potato pie, his dad (who clearly didn’t think the wine pretentious, or at least not enough to be a problem) started talking about how all he saw on the news these days was these protests, and of course it was a shame when things went wrong, but cops were just trying to protect themselves and didn’t need to be lectured by those who didn’t know what it was like on the ground day to day - he had friends who were cops, and they were just trying to do right and get home to their families, and was it any wonder they had to react like they did, considering the damage being done out in the streets? Don, who had tried and eventually learned to bite his tongue when it came to this conversation, placed a hand on Sloan’s knee, but she went ahead anyway, citing statistics and studies and historical precedent, all while the others looked at her as if she was exactly the kind of person by whom they didn’t want to be lectured.

Still, they might have been able to push through, except that Don’s brother cornered him on the way back from the bathroom and asked...well, Don’s blocked out the exact wording, but the implication was that he wondered if the pictures he’d seen of Sloan online did her justice.

After Don had punched Rich, sticking around for Black Friday brunch and leftovers didn’t seem to be in the cards.

“I can be a little bit of an acquired taste,” Sloan says, leaning forward and resting her forearms on her thighs. “I know that might be shocking, considering how charming I am—”

“Exactly the word I’d use.”

She throws him a glare for the dry tone, but he’s glad for it; it makes her look a bit more like herself. “So, I’m used to not always being liked. But they...I was really not liked back there.”

“They’re wrong about you.” The carriage is empty except for them - luckily for those who don’t want to be trapped on a broken down train, the middle of the evening on Thanksgiving doesn’t seem an especially popular time to travel into the city - and they had been able to take seats facing each other. He leans toward her, but does not take her hand. “Hey. They’re wrong about you. You know that, right? Sure, you’re single-minded, a little bit weird, a frequent pain in my ass—”

“I have yet to hear the part about them being wrong.”

“—but you’re also kind and loyal and wildly ethical and the smartest person I know and pretty solidly better than I deserve. And I just happen to be related to a bunch of assholes who can’t recognize that.”

Her knee bumps against his. “I imagine Christmas is going to be a pain when you have to spend time with a bunch of assholes.”

“Christmas was already a pain for that and many other reasons,” he says. “And honestly, maybe I won’t go back for it. Maybe I won’t go back next Thanksgiving either.”

She doesn’t look at him like he’s crazy. Instead, her face folds into concentration, as if she is trying to figure out a puzzle. Slowly she says, “I don’t know that you can just give up on your family because of the one time that they weren’t nice to your girlfriend.”

“They’ve never been nice to my girlfriends because, again, they’re assholes.” He settles against his seatback and makes sure she is looking at him before he says, “I’ll probably end up seeing them again because I’m not quite lucky enough in life to avoid it. But when I have the choice, I want to spend as much time as I can with the family that taught me to be better than them. So maybe next year we’ll rope Mac and Will into eating dry turkey with us - or hey, he can probably swing for some that actually tastes good.”

“You know that Mac will make us say things that we’re thankful for, and she and Will are going to get into an argument about the legacy of Thanksgiving even though they essentially agree with each other.”

“Well, maybe we’ll cook—” Her eyebrow raise is sharp and perfect as always. “Okay, we’ll get takeout together. Because I swear to God, Sloan, sitting around having popcorn shrimp with you sounds like a much better time than anything involving my mother’s pecan pie.”

“I was actually looking forward to the pie,” she says a little longingly, but she moves to sit in the seat beside him and lean her head on his shoulder, not even startling as the PA system crackles to overly loud life.

“Sorry, folks, we’re going to have to go dark here for a sec as we try to get things back online, but we hope to have you on your way shortly.”

“Hey,” Don says in the moment before the lights go out. “You know that I’m thankful for this, don’t you? Just getting to be here with you.”

“No one’s thankful for a train breakdown, Don,” she says, voice sounding as if she’s shaking her head at him. And he can feel the stupid smile coming over his face anyway as the overheads power off, leaving them with only the eerie emergency lighting. Who knows how long they’ll have to sit here like this considering the amount of faith he has in the MTA? He rests his head on top of Sloan’s. He can wait. They’ll get home together eventually.

#The Newsroom #Newsroom fic #Sloan Sabbith #Don Keefer #Don/Sloan #eh #lavellenchanted

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makemyskinyoursanctuary · 7 years

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Peach. I’ve never had something stop world completely in it’s tracks before. I’ve never lost someone so close to me. Tom LaClaire you will never understand how much I’m going to miss you, how I miss you and how much I’ve missed you since things for you got rough. I don’t know who I’d be if I never met you. There’s so many parts of me that wouldn’t exist without our friendship. I’ve never had to deal with something this unbearablle. Somehow in elementary school we crossed paths. I think it was because of pop warner. We discovered that we lived seven houses apart on the same street our entire lives, but because I lived on the even side and you lived on the odd, I went to Jefferson and you went to General Herkimer. It wasn’t until middle school that we became close and eventually inseparable. We walked to and from school together, watited before homeroom together, ate lunch together, had all our classes together, grew up together and figured out our place in the world little by little together. I remember when we decided we were punk/skaters, back when I still wore boy clothes, frizzy hair and glasses. We only cared about listening to better music and not being a poser. We were pretty much losers looking back, but I wouldn’t change it. We always have our “most musical” superlative picture in the 8th grade yearbook to remind us about how fashion forward we weren't with our jelly bands, safety pins and dickies. I think that was the same year Option One came to be. Why on earth did you think covering Enya was going to make that band famous? Let’s also not forget Chance Clothing. Designed mostly in our Math A class. Which also happens to be where we decided my name would be way cooler if I spelled it with 2 ms. You spelled your name Tomm for a week until you gave up because you kept forgetting. The same summer we came up with The Frozen skate team and Sweet Stuff skateboards-Plain Turkey forever. Everyday we would load that god forsaken skate box on to the shopping cart we took from Price Chopper and go down to the Eckards parking lot and skate until we had to be home for dinner. You taught me how to ollie and kick flip there. I never said thank you for not giving up on me. When we started high school we sat on the bus everyday. This is when music really started to mean more than anything to us. We used to sharpie Senses Fail lyrics onto the seats of the bus and then for whatever reason melt the seats with a lighter. Yet another thing we did that I’ll never understand. I wish you were here. I wish you were in front of me laughing at the millions of memories we share. I wish you came to see Senses Fail and Silverstein with me like we talked about a couple months ago. You know once everyone learned to drive and got their own cars friendships shifted, but not ours. I don’t think we ever grew out of being weirdos either because when we got our matching Cavaliers after you sold that clunky Dodge Spirit, we switched your white bumper with my black one to make our cars look like pandas. I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car you haven’t worked on. I don’t think I have a single memory of high school that doesn’t involve you or even after high school. Even though you went away and I stayed at MV, we saw each other. We didn't bail on our friendship. You would just show up at my moms door step and ask if i’d make you plain white rice. Eventually we moved out of our parents houses but nothing changed then either. I think we just got our first shitty kitchen tattoos and went to the mall less. I even ended up moving into your apartment above the cafe with the STUPID chalkboard wall that became the bane of my existance. About a year into living in that building things began to very slowly change. We went to Space 26 when it was still awesome. Carved pumpkins and went to see Circa/Anthony Green a bunch. You got engaged and did roller derby. We came up with that idea for the Sticks and Stones promos and I did FX make up on you then you sent pictures convincing people you were in a car accident. I think I could sit up for year straight and just replay memories over the past 15 - 20 years. It wasn’t until I moved away that we really lost touch. I think that’s mostly my fault for secluding myself from a lot of things. But even then we could still rely on each other. I don’t know how you didn’t get sick of me sending you videos or sound clips of weird noises that would come out of my cars. It broke my heart when we last talked a few months ago. I knew I could still turn to you but it was the first time I felt like you couldn’t let yourself lean on me. You wouldn’t let me in. I’ll never get the chance to tell you how much I loved you again or how amazing I thought you were. I’ll never get to laugh about all the dumb trouble we got in. Like when you convinced me to go to see Borat the day after I got my wisdom teeth out (you actually walked down to visit me after the surgery) and drove the car over the random fallen bush ripping off the Brad Lonero’s bumper or when we decided it was a good idea to skateboard inside JFK and then convinced a bunch of the guys to jump in the erie canal in man thongs. Life was much simpler then. I don’t know how to say goodbye you. There’s always going to be a hole in my heart. I love you Thomas Peach LaClaire. Thanks for being in my life. Thanks for shaping who I am today. Rest easy until I get there. I wrote this almost a year ago. Today I heard Senses Fail and instantly every shit feeling came rushing back. I miss you. I'll never regret anything more in my entire life than not speaking up louder. You were better than heroine. You were better than meth. You were better than coke. You just couldn't see it. I feel like drugs are consuming everything in an arms length. I can't even drink without feeling guilty anymore. You'd laugh at how prude I've become. I think about the way you'd laugh more than anything else about you.

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