*inhales* okay listen up. I understand all the discourse about Ncuti Vs Thasmin first gay doctor, but as for the Character "The Doctor", they are all gay. If one is gay, they are all the same character, so they're all gay. But if you're talking about on screen gay relationships, which most people are, then:
"I was better off a coward"
This was the first ever kiss the Doctor had on the TV show onscreen with Anyone, and it was with a guy!!! Acknowledge this, in 2005, how big this was. How big this still is. The UK only got gay marriage legalised in 2013, with that only coming into affect in 2014.
9 years before the first English gay wedding, we had a gay kiss between the Doctor and a companion. They had flirted before then, and this was a Thing™. This was the Doctor's first ever TV show on screen kiss. Recognise this. Celebrate this, and how far we've come, and that it started here.
I won't forget one line of this, not one day, I swear.
Don't forget this.
Edit: this says it better than I said it throughout this whole post lol
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Let’s Talk About Feelings
(1316 words)
The first thing that Etho finds out is that day and night pass too quickly.
Etho has never been a man running out of time. To his left, currently sharpening the back edge of his diamond axe, is a man who has. Right now, for Etho, the passage of time is not only a visual sensation, it’s a physical one. He feels it in the way his body tires, the way he moves, the way everything takes less time than he’s expecting. Even sitting here, the dull da-dump of his heart is enough to mark the seconds of his life passing. He drinks from his canteen. He swallows. He loops his pickaxe over his head, the weight settling on his back, and stands. Tango’s eyes flick up to him. He doesn’t look as tired as Etho feels.
There is no downtime. There is only time wasted.
“Ready, T?” Etho asks. Tango smiles, a mouth full of sharp teeth, and nods.
“Sure, E,” he says, standing with a sway. “Let’s do it.”
It’s a quick trip down into the mine from the top of the base. The two part system works surprisingly well—there’s a modest looking home on top, ugly, as per usual, and the real stuff happens below. Wheat, sugarcane, two cows, at long last, and the mineshaft down to pools of lava and dark, cool tunnels. Tango follows beside Etho down the two-wide staircase, humming to himself.
“I can’t believe it took us that long to get two cows,” Tango grumbles, glancing back up the staircase. Etho huffs, trying to laugh, but finds that his tiredness just sort of pushes the air from his lungs, rather than do anything important. “Our ranchin’ skills have plummeted, man.”
Etho hums, shaking his head. He can feel a soft heat radiating out from Tango’s shoulder every time it brushes his.
“That’s too bad,” he starts. “Thought we had a rancher on our hands.”
Tango laughs, though it peters into something a little hollow.
“Mm, I wish. Wasn’t me, though. ‘M notorious for gettin’ things killed, you know that.”
Etho knows Tango well enough to place the validity of his sentence. Not even just here, either. Wardens to cows, mob farms to personal, accidental deaths. Etho laughs, finally warbling out a complete one, until Tango knocks into his shoulder. He shoves back. They rebound back and forth for several steps, until Etho nearly loses his footing and Tango clamps a hand around his wrist. He doesn’t let go, though, and Etho drags him along. They stand together at the landing for a moment, a handful of tunnels branching off from the sides. Etho glances down one, tilting his head in the direction of the torchlight. Tango nods. There’s a cave further down that opens up into a ravine, one Etho knows more diamonds have to be in. He can feel it, like an itch under his skin.
Tango’s sentence says something he doesn’t voice out loud, though. Etho tugs on his arm. Tango makes a questioning noise.
“You doin’ alright? Not seein’ him?”
Tango furrows his eyebrows. His features are obscured, half by lack of light, and half as the torchlight warps when they step into the next room, and the cave walls open up. Tango waves the torch around, passing it off to Etho.
“Yeah,” Tango starts. “‘S fine. Hate that Joel’s rubbin’ off on him, but…glad he has someone.”
“Mm,” Etho agrees. “Last time I checked it was Joel and Grian.”
Tango squawks.
“Ugh! I just—oh, no…”
Etho frowns a little as they stand in the center of the room.
“What d’you mean, “oh no”?”
“You threatened to kill Joel! I can’t not back you on that.”
“You’re gonna stick yourself in another messy situation, T,” Etho says. He climbs down the lip of another crevasse, sliding part of the way. He offers his hand to Tango, who worms down, bumping into him.
“‘M gonna try not to,” Tango grumbles. Etho can see his tail flicking back and forth. “‘S long as you don’t do somethin’ stupid.”
“Hey, no promises, man.” Etho doffs his pickaxe, placing the torch in the center of the room. Here, it lights up the space, stretching outward with a yellow halo. The places it can’t reach go grey with dark. He turns a slow circle as Tango tracks the ceiling. Nothing yet.
“Speakin’ of people,” Tango starts. Etho feels his limbs go cold, a static electricity pooling in the pit of his stomach.
“Mm…” he starts, but Tango beats him to the punch.
“You talked to him any more?”
Etho shakes his head.
“No, no, I haven’t. There’s not really a point, I think.”
“I mean, you two were partners…” Tango continues. Etho shakes his head.
“We shouldn’t be partners in things like these, it always goes south.”
Tango shrugs.
“Suppose so…” he agrees. Something about his tone suggests that he doesn’t really agree, but he’s giving Etho the chance to explain if he wants to, and the space to stay quiet if it’s more than he’d be willing to share. Etho worries the inside of his cheek. Then, he takes a swing with his pickaxe and breaks into the rockface.
Between the clunk of the pickaxe and the shnk of his armor as he swings, he hears Tango start in the opposite direction, tossing a question over his shoulder.
“You don’t miss him?”
Etho’s stomach folds over itself. Part of him begs to turn and ask his friend what he could possibly mean by that, what it could imply, but the words seem sad. They seem expectant on something. On Etho, maybe, to refute the claim, to prove to Tango that he does, to give Tango the peace of mind, maybe. Maybe Tango’s scared, Etho thinks, of the possibility that Bdubs comes back with vengeance, rather than anything else. Were they not all indirectly both advocates and victims of Bdubs’ death? He realizes, after a moment, that he’s been leaning on his pickaxe, staring at a chunk of iron in the ground. He drops to his knees after a moment, prying the block up.
“Etho?” Tango asks.
Oh. Etho hadn’t said anything, had he?
“No,” Etho says. “Let’s keep digging.”
He thinks he hears Tango sigh. It doesn’t sound frustrated. It just sounds tired.
“Sure thing, E,” Tango says. Etho swings his pickaxe into the rock and watches it crumble at his feet. He isn’t thinking about a night in the middle of nowhere around a soup pot. A night in a fort half built cradling cups in his hands. A life forked over by the man behind him that wasn’t Etho’s to negotiate. A night outside of a base that isn’t is, calling Bdubs’ name like he was forbidden to step inside. A clock in Bdubs’ hands he never made. A happy marriage Etho wasn’t part of.
Part of him thought going home would fix it. It didn’t. He still never saw him. They were better, they weren’t leaving, but there was still a distance. And it doesn’t matter—clearly, it doesn’t, because otherwise Etho would be lamenting about a man who can’t love him in a dangerous place because he has to keep every feeling for himself just in case they get used against him. He can’t even be mad. It’s a trait Bdubs picked up from him.
He isn’t thinking about that, though. He’s thinking about a fireplace in a basement. And he’s thinking about dinner and tea in a half-built base in the jungle. And he’s thinking about a color palette getting commented on. And he’s thinking about anything but the idea that he might just have to kill him this time. He doesn’t have much of a choice, does he?
“I think I found diamond,” Etho says. His voice echoes until Tango hums.
“None for me, yet.”
Etho keeps digging.
There’s no room to talk about feelings.
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