#the fact that I am in a radio co. shirt typing this makes it even more parasocial

[iffeelscouldkill]

say what we wanna do, make it all come true (chapter 1)

A/N: It is! My fic for the Fiction Podcast Big Bang @podcastbigbang! I am a bit terrified to be posting this after working on it for so long! Also this is in the running for the Longest TSCOSI Fic I’ve Written So Far (not sure if it’s the longest because I don’t remember where my wordcount is up to for Adjusting, but like... it’s long, guys). This is Chapter 1 of 3, and the remaining chapters will be posted weekly!

You can read this on AO3 where the formatting is honestly much better, but here it is on Tumblr anyway. Also, please check out the FANTASTIC artwork made for this fic by the wonderful @bluereadingdolphin and @demonic-kitkats, who are my artists for this fic and their artwork is so good, you guys, I’m in love and they did such a phenomenal job with the honestly pretty vague info they got from me 😂 

bluereadingdolphin’s piece

demonic-kitkat’s piece (from Chapter 2!)

Please give them all the love!

Content warnings: There is a relatively brief physical altercation described in this chapter, but it isn’t graphic or bloody.

Also, I play a little fast and loose with POV in this; the first section is told from Sana’s perspective, the rest from Arkady’s.

---

“Hello and welcome back to Radio Indie, Folk and Techno, also known as RIFT, where we play all the bands that matter outside of the mainstream! I’m Piper Tanaka, and I’m your co-host for this programme! I’m joined as usual by the lovely Kestrel Colvin, with Reina Sakamachi in the booth! Now – where were we?”

“You were introducing our guests for this next section,” Kestrel replied in a slightly despairing tone.

“Right! Indie fans, I am joined today by two members of the fabulous up-and-coming indie band Rumor! With me in the studio are frontwoman and lead guitarist Sana Tripathi—”

“Hey! It’s a pleasure to be here.”

“—and bad girl bassist Arkady Patel.”

“Bad girl?” Arkady repeated, sounding halfway between taken aback and annoyed. Kestrel just shook her head.

“Ignore her. She’s got a thing for a certain… aesthetic.”

Next to Arkady, Sana was doing an incredibly poor job of hiding her laughter. “It’s the combat boots,” she whispered to Arkady.

“These are practical,” Arkady told her in a tone that suggested they’d had this conversation a few times. Sana said nothing, but straightened back up with a smirk.

“Sana — or should I call you ‘Captain’?” Piper began playfully. Sana grimaced.

“In hindsight, it was a poor choice to share that nickname in an interview.”

“You know, I think it suits you,” said Piper. “There’s something commanding about your aura. Sana, you and the band — which I understand you and Arkady originally started as a duo a few years ago—”

“That’s right,” Sana confirmed.

“You’ve always had a dedicated and loyal following, even from your early days — and we’re proud to have been playing your music here on this station for almost as long — but I think it’s fair to say the past few months have seen that rocket to a whole new level,” Piper said. “You got signed to a record label belonging to the mysterious but notoriously discerning Red Gregor, are working on your second album, and played a major gig at the CUI stadium just a few weeks ago. And we are definitely going to talk later about what went down at that gig, which is already the stuff of online legend — but first I want to backtrack a little, because I think the moment that everything started happening for you was when you added a new member to your band. In the middle of a gig, if the rumours are true. Can you tell us how that happened?”

Sana and Arkady exchanged a sidelong glance, and Arkady gave Sana a tiny nod. Sana took a deep breath, and began to tell the story.

---

“Jeeter, for the last time, put the keytar away,” Arkady said irritably as she and Sana entered the draughty, abandoned warehouse that the band was using as their current rehearsal space. The acoustics were pretty weird, probably due to all the broken windows, but it was otherwise hard to beat a free place to rehearse — especially a free place with no asshole neighbours who would yell at them to turn it down and threaten to call the cops.

Admittedly, it was in kind of a rough area, but Arkady had only needed to knock someone unconscious with her bass once.

In retaliation, Brian played another bright riff on his beloved instrument, accompanied by some jazzy keyboard chords from Krejjh. The two had been jamming together before Arkady and Sana arrived. “Dude, c’mon, can’t you hear how good this sounds?” Brian wheedled. “How many other indie bands do you know that have a keytar?”

“None. For good reason,” Arkady said, unzipping her case and slinging her bass around her neck. Sana, unpacking the sound equipment, smiled in fond amusement at their well-worn argument.

“It would give us such a great edge! Totally unique. And Krejjh and I have so many ideas that would sound great with both instruments—”

“Okay, Jeeter,” Arkady interrupted him, twiddling one of her tuning pegs. “You can play the keytar. Just as soon as you find us someone else who can play the drums.” She stooped to plug her bass into the portable amplifier that Sana had just unpacked. “Or are you planning to grow an extra pair of hands so you can play both at once?”

“Oooh! No, I should have an extra pair of hands!” Krejjh immediately (and predictably) enthused. “Then I’d sound four times as awesome! Four hands, all rockin’ out!”

“I think you mean ‘twice as awesome’,” Sana told them, as Brian reluctantly put away his keytar and picked up his neglected drumsticks.

“With me, twice the hands equals four times the awesome,” Krejjh replied with irrefutable logic. Brian laughed and held up a hand.

“Dude, high five.”

Sana waited for the two of them to finish their congratulatory high-five before she called the band to order. “Okay, guys — remember that we’re only a few days out from our gig at the IGR Corp function, so we need to have our crowd-pleasers up to standard.”

Arkady immediately wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, corporates. Why are we taking money from them again?”

“Because we need to pay for rent and food,” Sana said, bluntly. “And they’re giving us a lot for it. I know none of us love playing corporate gigs—”

“Understatement.”

“—but we are living a hand to mouth existence at this point, and if I can guarantee our survival as a band by relieving some corporates of their excess funds, then I’m going to do just that,” Sana continued. She waited a beat, and then added, “Also, we’re gonna let them get really drunk and then start playing our best anti-capitalist anthems, and see how long it takes for them to notice.”

Arkady broke into a shit-eating grin. “That’s more like it.” Krejjh cheered, and Brian did a little run-down on his drumkit, hitting each of the drums in turn.

“All right, let’s start with ‘Fear for the Storm’? One, two, three, four…” Sana started strumming the intro on her guitar, joined after a few beats by Krejjh’s melody on the keyboard.

“So long, can’t dodge the dawn, red light shines on and on and on and on and on…”

---

Arkady had been on edge ever since the band set foot in the agonisingly hipster office complex — excuse me, ‘headquarters’ — belonging to IGR Corp.

It wasn’t just the fact that these guys were extremely corporate corporates, or that the whole place radiated an almost aggressively minimalist aesthetic, or that the walls were covered in bullshit, chipper slogans that were all fancy ways of saying, ‘Work should be your existence – if isn’t, you’re dead to us’ — although those things sure as hell didn’t help, reminding her of the absolute worst parts of every soul-sucking corporate job she’d worked before Sana mercifully re-entered her life and suggested they form a band.

No, there was just this weird vibe, like everyone was super on edge and trying to hide it — the higher-ups were stone-faced, muttering into earpieces or barking orders at underlings, who scurried, terrified, to carry out their wishes. And everyone else, from the tech types in plain white T-shirts and jeans to the smartly-dressed sales reps in suits, looked like they were there on pain of death. Wasn’t this supposed to be a party?

The atmosphere didn’t go unnoticed by the other band members. “Kind of a weird feel to this place,” Jeeter remarked as he unpacked his drumkit on the raised platform at the front of the ‘rec center’ where they would be performing. Normally, setting up was a noisy, clumsy affair, with the band elbowing each other, tripping over wires, and getting in each other’s way in the tiny space they were afforded in bars and nightclubs. Here, the platform that would be their makeshift stage was huge and extremely visible — but everyone was completely ignoring them. There was also very little background noise for a room packed with people, and the band found themselves speaking in hushed murmurs, almost tiptoeing around. “You’d think there would be a bit more… chatter?”

“Maybe the alcohol just isn’t flowing yet,” Sana speculated, but she sounded uneasy as she looked out over the tense crowd. Even Krejjh, with their signature hot pink, heart-shaped sunglasses perched on top of their dyed-lavender hair, dressed in a clashing, flamboyant jumble of clothes and accessories, seemed subdued.

Arkady plugged in her bass with a burst of static, and deliberately played a loud riff. Brian startled and dropped his drumstick, but not a single member of the sea of blandly-dressed IGR Corp employees flinched.

Weird.

The sound equipment was all set up, sound check performed and instruments tuned by half past, but the set wasn’t due to start until o’clock. Normally, Arkady would be making a beeline for the bar, but she didn’t really feel like rubbing shoulders with any of these weird drones. She found herself reflexively checking the exits, mentally charting their fastest route out of there in case something really fucked up started going down. Sana half-jokingly called it paranoia; Arkady called it long, hard experience.

It was on one of her scans of the room that she noticed the woman with the septum piercing. Arkady chalked it up to professional interest — as a kid, she’d picked up some extra money working as an assistant in a tattoo and piercing shop, The Landing. She’d first met Sana there when the other woman came in on several occasions to have work done on an amazingly intricate floral sleeve tattoo — her own design. Later, Sana had led a campaign to save The Landing from being shut down over a bunch of bullshit health code violations so that the billionaire Cresswin family — who owned the property — could sell it off to a shitty corporation.

The campaign hadn’t worked, and there was now a high rise office block where Arkady’s home from home had once stood. But Arkady had never forgotten Sana.

Anyway, it was definitely the woman’s piercing and not anything else about her appearance that caught Arkady’s attention first. But then she noticed that there was something off about her body language and the way she was moving — something that Arkady recognised. She wasn’t scurrying about in a panic or affecting bored disinterest; her eyes were flickering around the room, carefully monitoring the comings and goings of the other employees while seeming not to do so. There were little devices studded around the room that Arkady had clocked as security cameras the moment they entered (it was the kind of thing she made a habit of noticing), and she saw the woman glancing up at them.

She was dressed like an employee – white blouse, dark rinse blue jeans – so why was she acting like she was casing the joint? Of course, Arkady reasoned, the outfit could easily have been chosen to blend in. It didn’t necessarily mean she worked there.

“Seen something interesting, ‘Kady?” Sana asked playfully. Arkady didn’t startle, but it was a near thing; she’d been so focused on watching this woman.

Unfortunately, Sana saw where she’d been looking. “You know, we’ve still got close to half an hour before we start our first set,” she said. “You can go and mingle.”

“I’m not here to socialise,” Arkady said witheringly. “Least of all with corporate drones.” She tore her eyes away from the woman to meet Sana’s amused look.

“I’m just saying, you seemed pretty absorbed there…” Sana said, and Arkady rolled her eyes, determined not to respond to her best friend’s teasing. She glanced back at the spot where the woman had been standing and found it empty.

A second later, Arkady had found her again, weaving through the crowd with her head ducked down. She was taking an odd route across the room that Arkady realised must have been calculated to avoid the security cameras. Occasionally she disappeared, behind people or objects (like a huge, obviously fake ficus plant), but it wasn’t hard for Arkady to spot her again. Clearly there was some kind of purpose to what she was doing, but the woman wasn’t a professional.

There was an elevator against the far wall, and as Arkady watched, the doors opened and a small group of people in suits – latecomers to the party – walked out of it. The woman mingled with them briefly, and then disappeared inside the elevator. The doors closed.

Well, that had been a way to kill five minutes, but now Arkady was stuck with nothing to do again. Krejjh and Jeeter had pulled out a pack of cards, and were playing one of their weird games on top of Krejjh’s keyboard. Arkady turned to Sana, about to make another comment about how much this place creeped her out, when she caught sight of the other person moving across the room.

Judging by the expensive suit, they were a higher-up, and were taking none of the precautions the woman had when making their way across the room, which suggested that they were confident about being allowed to do whatever it was they were doing. And to Arkady, it looked an awful lot like they were following the woman she’d seen. Based on the way the suit jacket fell, she’d also bet even money that they were armed.

Sure enough, the suit called the elevator, and disappeared into it a second later. Arkady swore under her breath.

It was none of her goddamn business whether a person she didn’t even know might be in danger, Arkady told herself. She was here to play music, not to get in the middle of whatever might be going down at this godawful corporation. Which again, was none of her business anyway.

Her resolve lasted all of ten seconds.

“I’m going to get a drink,” she told Sana, and placed her bass onto its stand.

“Oooh! Bring me a cocktail – no, a mocktail!” Krejjh said. Sana just looked at her quizzically.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Arkady nodded briefly. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and jumped down off the platform.

She wasn’t under any illusions that Sana wouldn’t notice where she was going, and just hoped that her best friend would trust her to be back in time for the set. She slipped through the crowd, following the same path that the woman had taken to avoid the watchful eyes of the security cameras.

This worked right up until she entered the elevator, where sure enough, a security camera was embedded into the top corner. How had this woman planned to avoid getting caught?

Arkady pulled out her smartphone, and began to quickly and expertly worm her way into the closed network that IGR Corp was using for its security systems. After just a few moments, she’d managed to identify the IP address that the lift camera was using, and wow, whoever had set up this system was either incredibly lazy or was trying to lay out a welcome mat for hackers. They hadn’t bothered to change the default access password.

Arkady wound back the last few minutes of recorded video, and watched as the woman with the septum piercing pressed the button for the top floor. Arkady did the same, and as the elevator moved upwards, she introduced a glitch that would cause the security camera to loop footage of an empty elevator instead of showing who was actually inside. Then she worked to edit out the archive footage of the woman riding up in the elevator, and of herself getting in.

If it turned out that there was nothing weird going on here after all, well, she’d had some fun exploiting the corporates’ shitty security system.

But Arkady was pretty sure there was something weird going on.

The elevator came to a silent stop, and Arkady silently thanked the deities she didn’t really believe in for the fact that this place was too hipster to have an elevator that made a noise when it arrived at the right floor. The doors slid open, and Arkady immediately spotted another security camera on exiting the elevator. God, these corporates were paranoid. But apparently not paranoid enough to pay their security person to do their job properly.

Annoyingly, the security cameras for this floor seemed to be on a separate network, and Arkady started another hack as she crept down the corridor, straining her ears for the sounds of a confrontation. Further down, she saw an office door swinging open, as if someone had gone through it in a hurry. Arkady approached it, being careful to stay out of sight of the doorway. Closer to, she could hear a voice coming from inside – the suit’s, if she had to guess.

“…sure CEO Golding-Frederick will be very interested to hear just what you’re doing in her office, Ms. Liu.”

“Seiders, I can explain,” the woman – Liu – replied, her voice high with tension. “Project ADVANCE – it’s not what we’ve been told. The company is using it to-”

“What the company may or may not be doing with Project ADVANCE is not your concern,” Seiders said smoothly, over her, “and is a long way above your pay grade. But I’d be very interested to learn where you got your information from.”

“Do you know what’s going on at this company?” Liu demanded, outraged. “And that’s – you have no problems with what they’re doing?”

The closed network for the top floor of the building was much less of a pushover than the elevator, and Arkady kept half of her attention on the conversation inside the room as she worked to find a flaw in the system. Finally, she made it in, and began trying different password combinations for the camera in the hallway.

“It’s not my job to ask questions, Ms. Liu,” Seiders had been saying. “Neither is it yours. And if you value your job – not to mention the safety and security of your loved ones – you’ll step away from that computer, and go back downstairs to the party.”

“Are you threatening me? Are you threatening my family?” Liu demanded. “No, I’m not going to stay silent about this. Someone has to take a stand against what this company is doing. And if anything happens to me, that’ll only raise more questions.”

“We’re very good at making those questions go away,” said Seiders, and Arkady heard Liu suck in a breath. She moved so that she could see inside the room and shit, that was a gun. Arkady rapidly began calculating her angle of attack. “Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to Connors from Engineering?”

“That’s not – you can’t just make a person disappear,” Liu said, desperately. “I – I have insurance! Documents that I’ve sent to a friend of mine. If I don’t check in with them in two hours, they’re going to send them to a journalist contact, and it’ll be all over the press in the morning.”

Arkady could hear the lie in her voice so clearly, and she knew Seiders could, too. “If you had enough evidence to be worth a damn, you wouldn’t have broken into this office,” they replied. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Step away from the-”

Arkady slammed into the room, deliberately making as much noise as she could to draw Seiders’ attention. She took two, three steps towards them and grabbed their gun hand, forcing it down and towards the floor. She managed to hook one arm around their throat, pulling back and applying pressure. Seiders choked, struggling and jerking against Arkady’s grip. With the hand that was holding their gun hand, Arkady twisted and pulled their fingers open, causing the weapon to drop to the floor.

“Liu, grab the gun!” Arkady ordered. She saw the other woman yank something out of the computer that looked like a flash drive, stowing it inside her blouse. She dove for the gun at the same time that Seiders managed to thrust an elbow back, driving it into Arkady’s midsection.

All the air left Arkady’s lungs and as she struggled to draw a breath in, Seiders took advantage of her loosened grip to twist free. They grappled with Liu for the gun, but Liu succeeded in kicking it away, where it spun underneath a nearby cabinet. Then Arkady was on Seiders again, jumping onto their back and choking them.

She heard the sound of running footsteps, and someone else burst into the room. Arkady didn’t get a chance to see who it was before Seiders slammed their head back, knocking into Arkady’s and making bright white lights explode across her vision. She dropped to the floor and staggered, trying to clear her head.

She heard an oof and a thud, and blinked rapidly, sure that she would open her eyes to see Seiders bearing down on Liu – or worse, standing over her unconscious body.

Instead, she was greeted with the sight of Seiders crumpling like a sack of potatoes as Sana flexed her fist, having delivered a powerful uppercut that knocked them out cold.

Silence reigned for a few seconds, broken only by Liu’s sharp, panicked breaths. Rubbing her head, Arkady said, “Hey, Sana.”

“The next time you decide to go off on a rescue mission,” Sana said, wryly, “you could at least tell me where you’re going.” She frowned as she took in Arkady’s dishevelled state. “Is your head all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Arkady. She was more concerned with Liu, who looked like she might be on the verge of a panic attack. “Hey, uh, it’s okay. We took care of them.”

“Who-” Liu managed, taking deep breaths in and out, clearly trying to steady her breathing. “Who are you?”

Sana smiled at her, warm and reassuring. “My name is Sana Tripathi, and this is Arkady Patel. We’re-”

There was a noise that sounded not unlike a herd of elephants storming down the corridor, and Arkady closed her eyes. She had a bad feeling she knew what was about to happen. Sure enough, in the next second Krejjh and Jeeter clattered through the door in all their clashing multicoloured glory: Jeeter in his signature loud paid shirt and those stupid khakis, and Krejjh with their… everything. Most of the clattering was coming from Krejjh’s many bangles.

“Cap’n Tripathi!” Krejjh said. “We’re here to assist you with – oh my god, are they dead?” They stared at the unconscious form of Seiders on the floor.

“They’re not dead, they’re just unconscious,” Arkady said, irritated. “Did you two really take off without anyone to watch the equipment?”

Sana turned back to Liu like nothing had happened. “We’re the band,” she finished succinctly. “I’m the guitarist and lead singer, Arkady here plays the bass, and Krejjh and Brian are our keyboardist and drummer.” She indicated each of them in turn. Jeeter waved, and Krejjh saluted for some reason. “And who are you?”

Liu blinked at her. “You… you just saved my life, and you don’t even know who I am?” she said. “Why would you do that?”

“For one thing, because you’d probably be dead if we hadn’t,” Arkady said. “You’re welcome for that, by the way.” She pulled out the phone to finish the hack on the security cameras that she’d started before she entered the room.

“I – no, I know that. I’m not ungrateful,” Liu said, sounding a little stung. “I’m just a little… in shock. My name is Violet Liu,” she added to Sana. “I, uh, work in IGR Corp’s neuroresearch division.”

“Good to meet you, Violet Liu,” Sana said, sounding like they were old friends catching up at the bar instead of total strangers talking to each other over an unconscious body. “’Kady, are you erasing the security footage?”

Arkady nodded.

“Good; Brian and I will carry our friend here,” Sana indicated Seiders with her foot, “into the hallway. I think I noticed a closet there we can hide them in.”

“Uh… are you guys really the band?” Liu asked, as Sana and Jeeter – who was much stronger than he looked – bent down to pick up Seiders. “You seem very…” She struggled to find the right words. “…good at this.”

“We have some unorthodox skillsets,” Sana said, beaming and dimpling at her. “We don’t normally make a habit of rescuing people in the middle of a gig, but Arkady has a soft spot for damsels in distress.”

Arkady fumbled her phone, and nearly dropped it. “Sana,” she hissed, mortified. Sana, who was already partway out of the door, winked and disappeared into the hallway.

After a moment, Arkady realised that she and Liu were the only ones in the room, Krejjh evidently having decided to go along and supervise, or something. She refocused her attention on the hack she was carrying out; she’d managed to hack the hallway security camera, and was erasing the footage from that, but she still needed to do the one in the office.

“Uh…” Liu awkwardly broke the silence. “Is there anything that you need me to…”

“Is anyone likely to be monitoring the security cameras in real-time?” Arkady asked her. The question came out sounding a little harsher than she’d intended, but it was hard to be diplomatic when she was focused on trying to break into a security system. Also, it was a little annoying that Liu apparently hadn’t thought about security cameras beyond the ones on the ground floor.

“N-no, the system is all automated,” Liu replied. Well, that was something, at least. “I, uh, I do have a virus that I was planning to use on the security system that would corrupt the footage. I just needed to find an access point.”

Fine, so there had been a plan of sorts. “This is quicker,” Arkady told her. “And the way I’m doing it, it won’t be so obvious that someone has tampered with the footage.”

“Thank you for that,” Liu said, quietly. “And thank you for – I mean, you don’t even know me, but you came up here to help me. Why?”

Arkady shrugged, keeping her shoulders hunched and avoiding Liu’s gaze. “You looked like you were in trouble,” she said shortly. And that was the office camera done. Arkady resisted the urge to change the password to something rude, and withdrew from the network. “And I don’t like corporations. What were you trying to do, blow the whistle on them or something?”

“Um, I-”

Before she could explain, Sana poked her head back into the room. “Arkady, are you done? Because I don’t think we should be hanging around up here.”

“I’m done,” Arkady said with a nod, pocketing her phone. The two of them joined Sana, Krejjh and Jeeter in the hallway.

“We need a plan to get Violet back downstairs and out of the building without her being seen,” Sana said quickly. “’Kady, do you think you two can make it out in fifteen minutes?”

Arkady huffed. “I can hack the security cams, but I can’t actually make us invisible,” she pointed out. “People are gonna notice us. If we waited until you guys started the set, then we might have a better chance, while everyone’s attention is on the band.”

“Listen – it’s not that I don’t really appreciate the help,” Liu cut in. Her face was set, like she was preparing to go to the gallows. “But none of this needs to be your problem. It’s my mess, and I can get myself out of it. You guys should go and start your set.”

“Oh, pshaw!” said Krejjh. “We’re not just gonna leave you to the bears!”

Jeeter smiled. “To the wolves,” he corrected Krejjh.

“Are y’sure? Because bears can be pretty terrifying.”

“We’re not about to abandon you now,” Sana said to Liu, gently. “Between the five of us, I’m sure we can figure out a pretty good plan.”

“Can’t we just pretend to be loading something into the truck?” Jeeter suggested. “And Violet can help us? We could give her a band jacket – make her look like she’s with us-”

“It’s too bad you don’t play!” Krejjh said to Violet. “We could add you into the set. The ultimate entourage!”

“Uh…” Violet said (at the same time as Arkady said, “Camouflage.”) “I mean, I do play something? But you guys already have a drummer.”

“Wait, you’re a drummer?” Jeeter said delightedly, as Krejjh straightened up so fast that Arkady thought they’d pull a muscle. Even Sana looked interested. “Are you good?”

“Have you ever played with a band before?” added Sana.

Liu smiled and shrugged awkwardly. “Well, drums aren’t really a solo instrument, so yeah. I used to jam with some friends in high school, and played some underground rock concerts in college. I was never really with a band – we just sort of used to form collectives based on who was around and wanted to play. It was fun, though.”

She’d avoided answering the question about how good she was, Arkady noticed, which probably meant she was good and was being modest about it. Goddamn it.

“So if, hypothetically speaking,” Sana said, “you joined a set without having rehearsed any of the music beforehand, would you be able to figure out a drum part?”

“Okay, hold on,” said Arkady, before Violet could respond. “Don’t you think IGR Corp is going to notice that one of their employees has just… joined the band?”

“We’ll swear up and down that it isn’t her,” Jeeter said. “And even if someone figures it out, what are they gonna do about it in front of everyone?”

“But wait, what about you?” Liu asked Jeeter. “Wouldn’t I be putting you out of a role in the band?”

“Nah,” Jeeter said happily. “I brought my keytar!”

“Oh my god,” Arkady groaned. She could tell when she was fighting a losing battle, but it didn’t stop her from making one last, token protest. “This is going to sound really goddamn weird.”

Sana grinned at her. “Well, you wanted to annoy some corporates,” she pointed out. “What better way to do it?”

---

The problem was, the new line-up didn’t sound weird at all.

It sounded good.

Liu, hastily disguised with an old band jacket and a spare pare of Krejjh’s sunglasses, fitted in with their set like she’d been rehearsing with them for weeks – months even. They did a quick sound check, Jeeter looking far too delighted as he amped up his keytar. Sana gave her usual cheerful introduction into the microphone, introducing the band as Renegade, the name they adopted for corporate gigs (Arkady was even more glad of it now, since it would make them harder to track down later). After a lukewarm reception from the assembled employees (none of whom seemed to notice, or care, that the band had grown an extra member), they launched into their first number, a reimagined cover of ‘What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor’.

It started off with Sana singing alone, before Krejjh joined in, their voices singing in close harmony, and then Arkady and finally Jeeter, the harmonies becoming increasingly layered as they went. The addition of the keytar made the song sound futuristic, almost the kind of thing you could imagine crews of space explorers singing together as they made their way into the unknown.

Liu picked up the beat easily, and as the song unfolded Arkady suddenly realised she could hear a fifth strand to the harmony, weaving in and out of the other voices, soft but distinctive: Liu was singing.

They moved on from the conventional crowd-pleasing openers to a more eclectic mix of songs, including some punk and anarchist numbers. Each time, Arkady was sure that the choice was going to throw Liu off, but she adapted smoothly to each one, altering her style to fit the vibe of the song. In one of the louder, heavier songs she even threw in an impromptu drum solo that had Krejjh whooping at the keyboard and Sana laughing as she riffed on her guitar.

Sana threw Arkady a look as the song ended, and there was a light in her eyes that Arkady knew far, far too well. It was the same light that Arkady had seen when Sana tracked her down at her latest deadbeat job and persuaded her to quit and start playing music with her; the same light that she’d had when they met Brian and Krejjh a year later and Sana had decided to turn their duo into a band.

Sana wanted Liu to join Rumor. And Arkady couldn’t even think of a good argument against it, apart from the fact that they barely knew anything about the woman other than that she could play the drums. And that she was a corporate, which Arkady thought was important not to lose sight of, even if Liu wasn’t on the greatest terms with her employer any more.

Speaking of which. Arkady was on high alert throughout the whole set, constantly scanning the crowd for signs of trouble, anyone who might be looking too closely at Liu or showed signs of moving towards the elevator. As they’d been setting up, Liu had told them that Seiders was middle management: someone who outranked her, but not someone who held a position of particular influence within the company or had the ear of the CEO. Someone who had ambitions above their station. It didn’t mean no-one would notice them missing, of course; but it meant that they might be someone who, for instance, would go after a rogue employee without notifying their superior, hoping to reap all of the credit.

The band moved into their final number, ‘Landers Never Stand Down’ – one of Sana and Arkady’s early compositions, whose lyrics Sana had written as a tribute to The Landing, and her and Arkady’s shared history. Normally, Arkady would object to wasting it on a corporate audience, but tonight, it felt like the right kind of ‘fuck you’.

“Landers never stand down,

Landers never bow,

Landers never stand down,

We don’t know how…”

They wound up the song in their usual fashion, repeating the chorus and getting fiercer and more defiant with each repetition, before ending in a final blaze of guitar chords.

“Thank you, everyone, you’ve been a wonder to perform for!” Sana said into the microphone as the chords faded away. She said the same thing at the end of every gig, but it had never felt more like a colossal understatement. “We’ve been Renegade, and we hope you have a great night!”

There was a small scattering of applause. Sana beamed out into the audience again, and then turned away from the microphone, sliding the power to ‘off’. “Well, that was-”

“Attention, all IGR Corp employees,” came a voice over the loudspeaker system. Sana froze, and Liu, who’d been leaning over to say something to Krejjh, paled visibly. “Please stay where you are. We will be carrying out a routine attendance check. Please do not exit the building.”

“Attendance check?” Arkady repeated.

“It’s a standard employee procedure,” Liu explained. “To make sure everyone’s… accounted for at corporate functions. Supposedly they’re optional, but it looks really bad if you’re not there and you don’t have a reason.”

“Do we think there’s a chance this is linked to…” Sana gestured towards the elevator. Liu shrugged helplessly.

“It could be, but even if it’s not, they’re gonna discover that Seiders is missing pretty quickly. And that I’m… unaccounted for.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jeeter, reassuringly. “We’ll figure out a way to get you out before that happens.”

“Dashing escapes are our speciality!” Krejjh contributed. This was true; the band hadn’t always played at the most above-the-board venues, and there’d been more than a few times they’d needed to get the hell out of Dodge before things got ugly. Well, uglier.

Sana nodded. “For now, just keep packing down, like nothing’s wrong,” she said.

As Krejjh packed down their keyboard and Jeeter helped Liu to disassemble the drumkit, Arkady said to Sana, “I’ll go with Liu, and we can sneak out a back entrance-”

Sana shook her head. “It’ll be more suspicious if we’re not seen leaving as a group.”

“We’ll just say we’re going to the bathroom,” Arkady said. “We’re allowed to do that, aren’t we?”

Sana started to reply, but then stopped, squinting at something on the other side of the room. Arkady tried to follow her gaze, but couldn’t see what she was looking at. “What is it?”

“I thought I saw…” Sana shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s try the front way first, and if they won’t let us leave, we’ll get creative.”

Unsurprisingly, when they carried the first load of equipment over to the rec room entrance, two stoic-looking IGR employees blocked their path, bouncer-style. Arkady eyed one of them, pretty sure she could take her in a one-to-one fight.

“Sorry, we can’t let you leave while an attendance check is ongoing,” said the employee, with a bland detachment. “Company policy.”

“It should only take about an hour,” the other added. “You can enjoy the free refreshments while you wait.”

An hour? Even if they hadn’t had a very pressing reason to get the hell out of there, Arkady would have been looking for the nearest fire escape to break out of. They were just supposed to cool their heels at IGR headquarters for an hour?

“Can we not at least load our equipment into the van in the meantime?” Sana asked reasonably. “This is a very heavy amplifier…” She made a show of struggling with the amp she’d been lifting with ease a few seconds ago, and Arkady suppressed a snort.

One of the corporates had opened their mouth, looking like they were about to object, when a friendly voice spoke from behind them. “Is there a problem here?”

They all turned to look at the person who’d spoken, and Arkady carefully masked her surprise: the tall, dark-skinned man dressed in an expensive-looking suit jacket, T-shirt and jeans combination was none other than Red Gregor, a close friend of Campbell’s. They’d met him once or twice, but what was he doing here?

“Who are you?” asked Corporate One, audibly unimpressed.

“Theodore Gregor; I’m the band’s executive producer,” Gregor introduced himself smoothly, handing Corporate Two a business card. Their eyes widened at whatever was written on it. “My clients have another engagement to get to tonight, so you can understand why it’s very important they be allowed to leave promptly. Additionally, their contract stipulates that they’re only obliged to perform for your company until-” he made a show of checking a gold watch, “-nine-thirty P.M., after which time we’ll need to bill you for every additional half-hour. Will your supervisors be signing off on the additional expenses?”

Corporates One and Two were visibly thrown by the torrent of information. Krejjh made a noise that was hastily stifled, while Arkady did her best to look bored and important.

“I… no, let me just contact my superior to get you the all-clear,” said Corporate One, reluctantly. “Johnson will help you to load your equipment into your…” She eyed the band’s battered van, visibly out of place in the parking lot full of sleek cars. “…vehicle.”

“Great!” Sana said brightly, handing the amplifier to Corporate Two, who took it and staggered slightly. As Corporate One spoke into a walkie-talkie, Sana and Red Gregor strode quickly ahead, the rest of the band trailing behind. Arkady lengthened her steps to catch up with them so that she could hear their quiet exchange.

“…doing here? Did Campbell send you?” Sana was asking Red Gregor.

“In a manner of speaking,” Red Gregor said. “He talks about you so much, I wanted to come and hear what all the fuss was about. Love the new line-up – you guys sound completely different to when I last heard you play.”

“It’s kind of a new thing,” Sana admitted. “New as of… today. I can fill you in, it’s just a long story.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Red Gregor said, and Arkady remembered that she’d liked him, the couple of times that they’d met. She could see why he and Campbell were good friends. “But let’s focus on getting you out of here. I’m guessing you need an exit?”

“And fast,” Sana agreed.

“Well, fast’s your speciality,” Red Gregor said with a grin. Sana smiled back at him, and Arkady wondered if Red was basing this off stories from Campbell, or if he and Sana knew each other better than Arkady had realised. It was a strange thought to have in the middle of everything.

Sana unlocked the van and slid open the back door. While Krejjh, Jeeter and Liu loaded their items into the trunk, overseen by Corporate Two, Red Gregor pretended to help Arkady and Sana with their instruments.

“So what now?” Arkady asked Sana. “I think I can probably take Johnson.”

“Arkady, you’ve already been in one fight today,” Sana said, disapproving.

“What’s your point?”

“I have a more bloodless suggestion,” Red Gregor said. “You’ve got a few pieces of equipment left in the venue, right? I’ll go back inside with Johnson to ‘collect’ them, say we’re going to check their supervisor has given you the go-ahead, and you guys make a break for it. I’ll bring the equipment in my car and meet you at the dive bar, half a mile down the road.”

“Are you sure you’ll be able to get away? What happens when they realise we’re gone?” Sana asked.

“I’ll come up with something,” Red Gregor assured her. “Just focus on getting yourselves out of here.”

He walked over to Johnson, who was slightly bemusedly watching Jeeter and Liu (who were clearly stalling for time) rearrange pieces of the drumkit in the trunk, and took him by the arm, steering him back towards the building and talking rapidly all the while.

“As soon as they’re out of sight, everyone needs to get in the van quickly,” Sana instructed. “And hang onto something. Okay? Now!”

Krejjh slammed the trunk of the van shut and everyone piled into the back without a word of protest. Arkady jumped into the front as Sana slid into the driver’s seat, reversing out of the parking space like a shot and executing an alarming hairpin turn to get them onto the road. Liu cried out in alarm, not used to Sana’s driving, and Arkady hung grimly onto the handle on the inside of her door.

“Everyone okay back there?” Sana asked, peering into the rearview mirror.

Arkady looked back to see Jeeter and Krejjh scrambling to put on their seatbelts, each of them having thrown an arm over Liu to keep her in place. “Oops, sorry, I forgot we don’t have a seatbelt for the middle!” Sana said cheerfully as they thudded over a speedbump. Liu closed her eyes. “There’s normally only four of us.”

“It’s not far to where we’re going, right, Captain?” asked Jeeter.

“Just a half mile down the road,” said Sana. “Red Gregor’s going to meet us there with the rest of the equipment, as soon as he can get away.”

“What was he doing at the gig? Did Campbell tell him where we were?”

“I think so. He said that he wanted to come and hear us play,” Arkady said, watching buildings blur past on either side of them. “I guess it was lucky he did.”

“We would’ve figured something out,” Krejjh said confidently.

“Uh, who’s Campbell?” Liu asked, cautiously opening her eyes again.

“He’s our… manager? Kinda?” Krejjh replied. “He doesn’t tell us what to do or anything, but he has a lot of contacts, so he gets us most of our gigs.”

“Contacts in the music industry? Or contacts in like… events venues, bars and clubs?”

“Yes,” Krejjh said helpfully.

“He just has a lot of contacts,” Jeeter said with a smile. Arkady smirked at Liu’s look of consternation.

“Tonight’s gig did not come through Campbell,” said Sana, spotting the dive bar Red Gregor had specified and indicating to turn off the road. “We got it through an agency, Fowleys. I guess that’ll teach us not to go outside Campbell’s network.”

“Hey, it worked out!” Krejjh said. “We got a new drummer out of the deal.”

“Well, for tonight, at least,” Sana said, now reversing into a parking space. “I gotta say, Violet, the way you fitted in with our sound? That was amazing. Our set sounded better than I could’ve imagined.”

Liu blushed. “They were great songs,” she demurred, as the van came to a stop.

“Too bad it was wasted on IGR Corp,” Arkady remarked, undoing her seat belt as they all climbed out of the van.

They got a table in the corner of the dive bar, which was pretty full and made it easy to blend in. As Sana went to get them all drinks, Krejjh and Jeeter started up some kind of nonsensical word game. Arkady and Liu glanced at each other occasionally, but otherwise sat in awkward silence.

Finally, Arkady asked something that had been on her mind since she intervened in the confrontation between Liu and Seiders, though it had taken a back seat to more pressing concerns. “What was it you were trying to get from that computer, anyway?”

“Sorry?” Liu asked, looking away from Krejjh and Jeeter, where she’d been listening in on the game with a slightly baffled expression.

“In the CEO’s office,” Arkady clarified. “I saw you take a flash drive out of the computer. What were you trying to get?”

“Oh,” Liu said, drawing out the little drive from inside her blouse. “Yeah, I was… trying to copy some files onto it. I’m not sure how much I got, though – I had to pull it out before the transfer was complete, and I think they’re encrypted.”

“What kind of files are they?” Arkady asked, thinking that she could probably break the encryption in an afternoon. Maybe less.

Liu hesitated, and Arkady narrowed her eyes. “You’re not still trying to protect your company, are you? In case you don’t remember-”

“No, no,” Liu said quickly. “I just – I’m not sure if it would be safe to tell you. Safe for you,” she added. “Right now, you have plausible deniability if anyone questions you. You genuinely don’t know what’s on this flash drive. So maybe it would be better to keep it that way.”

Arkady was a little bit pacified by that, but still – “Considering I’ve already aided and abetted you, I think that ship has sailed,” she pointed out. “No-one is going to believe I did it without having any idea what you were up to. Which I’m fine with,” she added, as a guilt-stricken look crossed Liu’s face. “I made a choice to help you, and so did the others. But I may as well know what the stakes are.”

“Yeah, that’s… fair,” admitted Liu. Next to her, Krejjh was doing a fairly poor job of pretending not to listen in. “They’re blueprints. My company – the company – has been developing… do you know what IGR Corp does? What kind of a company it is?”

“Some kind of a tech company?” Arkady said. She vaguely remembered Sana saying something about that when they got the gig. She hadn’t really been paying attention to the details.

Liu nodded. “Smart technology – specifically, smart home technology. We produce – I mean, they produce things like smart security systems, smart doorbells, systems that can detect when someone has a medical emergency. Systems that are designed to help keep people safe.”

Arkady had to work to keep from grimacing. She wasn’t sure that being monitored by a computer 24/7 fitted everyone’s definition of ‘safety’, but maybe Liu had never had cause to doubt that the people with power had her best interests at heart. Lucky her.

“But then,” Liu went on, her voice bitter, “I found out that the latest product we were developing – the one that was supposed to make everyone’s lives so much easier, so much better – is being created as a surveillance device. To eavesdrop on people and send their data back to the company. And I know that a lot of smart devices have audio capabilities, but – this was hardwired in. Impossible to disable. And this weird, secretive new division of the company has been set up to process the data.”

“What are they gonna do with it?” Arkady asked.

“Who knows,” Liu said. “They could be collecting it for the government, but – I think it’s more likely they’re just planning to sell it on to the highest bidder.”

Arkady’s eyes narrowed, and she wished that Sana had brought the drinks already so that she’d have something to down.

“You know,” Liu said, her voice suddenly much softer. “I, uh. I still haven’t thanked you properly for, uh, well-”

“O-kay!” came Sana’s voice, loudly, as she finally arrived at their table carrying a small tray laden with glasses. “Sorry for the delay, guys, there was a heck of a crowd up at the bar. Also, the bartender was really interested in talking to me while he pulled these drinks.” She made a wry expression, her dimple deepening in one cheek. “Cheer up, ‘Kady, I’ve got your favourite-” She slid a pint glass of raspberry ale in front of Arkady.

“Thanks,” Arkady mumbled, not looking at Liu.

Red Gregor arrived not long after, having apparently evaded IGR Corp by pretending that he was going outside to look for the band, and then driving off with the equipment before anyone realised what was happening. Sana passed him a drink from the tray; no-one asked how she already knew his preferred drink order.

“So look,” said Arkady, after they’d done some small talk and toasted to a successful getaway (Sana’s idea, of course). “Not that we didn’t appreciate the save earlier – you had pretty good timing – but why’d you go to all the trouble of coming to an IGR Corp function just to hear us play? How did you even get in?”

“I know a lot of people,” Red Gregor said mysteriously, with a fluid shrug. “As for why I came – you probably don’t know this, but I’ve been getting into the music biz lately.”

Arkady tried to remember what ‘biz’ Red Gregor had been in before, and couldn’t. He was one of those people who seemed to do a bit of everything.

“That’s awesome!” said Krejjh, looking delighted. “Are you going to start a band? Or manage one?”

Red Gregor smiled. “Actually, neither. I’m starting a record label,” he said. “And I want to sign you guys to it.”

Liu choked on her drink; Jeeter said, “Wow, really?” and even Sana looked taken aback. Clearly this hadn’t been the answer she was expecting.

“Us?” she said, as if Gregor could have meant anyone else. “As in…” She gestured around the table, including Liu.

Red Gregor nodded. “Look, your new sound is like nothing I’ve ever heard from a band before,” he said. “Campbell has always spoken highly of you guys, and I really liked your originals the last time I heard you perform. But with this new line-up? I think you could become really big. If that’s something that you want, of course.”

Sana sat back in her chair, looking thoughtful, while Krejjh looked practically ready to vibrate out of theirs with excitement. “That would be a pretty big step for us,” she said. “Not that we wouldn’t love – more exposure, better opportunities-”

“Gigs in legal venues?” put in Jeeter.

“More above-the-board performances,” agreed Sana. “But we’ve only played once with this new line-up. We don’t know for sure if we can replicate that – and I mean, we’d be asking Violet to just drop everything and join us full-time-”

Red Gregor held up his hands. “Like I said, it’s completely up to you,” he said. “I’m not here to pressure you into something you’re not ready for. But don���t underestimate yourselves. I wouldn’t be offering if I didn’t have faith in you guys.”

Sana looked around the table, taking in the mixture of expressions, ranging from Krejjh’s eagerness to Liu’s uncertainty to Arkady’s… Arkady didn’t know what her face was doing. “We’ll have to put it to a vote,” she said, predictably. “And if any of you need more time to think this over-”

“I’m in!” Krejjh said instantly. “We rocked tonight! I want to keep on rocking that hard. And we should totally record an album.”

Jeeter smiled fondly. “I’m on board with anything that will let me keep playing the keytar,” he admitted. “And I thought we sounded pretty awesome, as well.”

Sana looked at Liu. “Violet, you’re the one who this would be the biggest change for,” she said. “The rest of us are already playing in a band full-time. Well, with the odd side gig,” she added, because yeah, they did not yet make enough money from performing to cover the bills. “You barely know us, and you’re not under any obligation to stick around – or to switch careers.”

Liu gave a slightly broken laugh. “Well, I don’t really think I can go back to my old one,” she said. “That option evaporated as soon as one of my colleagues pulled a gun on me. Not… sure I’ve really had time to process that yet.”

Sana nodded. “If it’s too soon-”

“But no amount of processing is going to make my situation any different,” Liu went on. “I could try to get another job in my field, but… IGR Corp is a pretty well-known company. Word’s going to get around that I’m untrustworthy, especially if they put it about that I tried to steal corporate secrets.”

“They can’t do that,” Sana said immediately. “I used to do some union work; whistleblowing is a protected activity, and it’s against the law for them to blacklist you – to make it more difficult for you to obtain future employment.”

Liu smiled slightly. “I don’t think IGR Corp are too concerned with breaking the law,” she pointed out. “I appreciate it, but… this isn’t my first experience with a hostile work environment.”

Okay, so maybe Arkady should take back her earlier thought about Liu never having had cause to distrust the people in power.

“Besides, I haven’t even blown the whistle on them yet – I’m not sure if the information I have is worth anything,” Liu said, a little grimly. “And anyway… I think it’s time for a clean slate. So, if you’ll have me… I’m in.”

Which just left Arkady. She could see how pleased Sana was that Liu was willing to join the band full-time, even though she was trying to hide it. Krejjh and Jeeter, too, were excited – and not just at the prospect of getting better gigs and earning more money (though that was a very appealing prospect).

The fact was, Red Gregor was right – they’d sounded like a completely new band during their performance. Arkady had always liked their stuff (of course she did; she’d even co-written some of it) but the new sound gave it a flair she hadn’t even realised it had been missing. As much as she couldn’t help thinking of the dozens of ways this could go wrong, she wanted them to keep sounding like that. She wanted to see what else they could do.

“‘Kady?” asked Sana.

Arkady took a deep breath. “Sure. Let’s do this.”

#TSCOSI #Podcast Big Bang 2021 #The Strange Case of Starship Iris #Vikady #Arkady Patel #Violet Liu #Brian Jeeter #Krejjh #Red Gregor #who turned into a surprisingly key character for this fic which is fun #I'm kind of inventing his personality from wholecloth but I like him #the background Sana/Campbell/Red Gregor sort of came out of nowhere and I just went with it #love me some OT3 vibes!

[scoopsohboy]

I Got You Babe || Platonic Richie x Beverly

A/N: This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction in YEARS and my first time ever writing “It” fanfiction. I have a BIG series in mind based in the universe of this fic but, I knew I needed to get this piece written down first. This whole series is inspired by this moodboard post created by asthmaticeddie. Go check it out, Kay is so talented and lovely! My fic would likely be Eddie POV, so I would never get to actually write this scene! So I’m doing it anyway! 

Summary: Richie gets into a fight at a party. Bev has to pick up the pieces. 

Warnings: Mentions of violence, blood and spit, slight internalized homophobia. Angst that becomes fluff.  

Word Count: 1508

Richie had fucked up.

That much was painfully obvious to on-lookers who watched Bev as she escorted him from the party. She flashed her brightest smile whilst moving her newfound responsibility by the collar of his Hawaiian shirt through the throngs of people. Her cheeks were a stark red, a harmonious gradient from her cherry lips to her fiery locks.

She shot a quick look back to where her friends stood, mere feet away from the incident. Eddie and Ben were watching the pair storm away, concern plastered all over their faces. Meanwhile, Bill, Stan, and Mike clearly had a handle on damage control, talking Bowers and Co. down from rushing at Richie. Who, by the way, was just asking to get choke-slammed through a coffee table at this point. The punch across the face was an appropriate escalation.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer!" Richie shouts bitterly, before throwing his empty beer can in their general direction. Bev picks up her pace and tightens her grip.

Despite how it feels as if this crowded college party is never ending, the pair finally make it to the front door. Somehow, Stan had managed to follow the pair through the crowd and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. It didn't fix anything but, the gesture reminded her to inhale, in addition to exhaling. Imagine that. Richie opted to sit on the front porch while he waited for his roommate.

"He's messy tonight," Beverly grumbles, running her hands across her face and up into her hair.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Stanley observes, head cocked, eyes following Richie as he begins to spit excess blood and saliva onto the ground, "He looks normal enough to me," this elicits a soft, tired chuckle from Beverly and Stan cracks a smile, "Seriously, though, do you want any help with him?"

"No, no, Stan the Man, you're good. He's just gonna make it his goal to bother you the entire time anyway."

"Fair," he pulls Bev into a side hug, as they stand in the doorway, watching Richie hock a glob of blood and spit on the pavement once again, "And hey, if you make it through the night, tomorrow we'll get breakfast on me." She hummed her appreciation of his proposal, giving his side one last squeeze before stepping into the threshold of Trashmouth Wrangling.

"Bevvie!" Richie cheered as she stormed past him and towards the car, "We should stop at the store!" He caught up to her within two strides, trying to hold her hand.

“No,” Beverly declared, knowing she was already in for a long night. Richie pouted, before spitting yet again, “Stop it. Get in the car."

Spit.

"Don’t spit again, Richie!"

Spit.

"I swear to God! Stop! Spitting!”

Spit.

She hit her much taller friend on the back of his curly haired head, as he laughed against the cool October night. Upon impact, Richie’s glasses slid down the bridge of his nose, as crooked as the smile playing on his lips. He leaned clumsily against his friend’s dingy Ford Freestyle, the freezing touch of the vehicle cooling him down. His intoxicated laugh had echoed off into whatever residential neighborhood the pair had found themselves in this time. He looked off down the street, expectantly, as if he was waiting for someone to return his drunken call. The quirking edges of his smile faltered as he turned to beam down at the angry redhead. Her perfectly and intentionally sculpted brows arched at his childish display, “You done?”

He smiles wider, full of teeth. He spits on the pavement again before spiraling into hysterical laughter. He had no spit or blood left in his mouth at this point. Just defiance. Beverly extends both of her hands forward and shoves her friend, “How fucking old are you?!” her cry is shrill as she goes to get in the driver’s seat. Richie, knowing that he’s already pushing his luck, gets in the passenger’s seat unprompted. He even buckles his seat belt without a glare required. He leans far back in his seat, “Old enough,” 

“Can you not quote Superbad at me right now? I don’t even know how to get out this fucking neighborhood!" Beverly begs, fiddling with the GPS her aunt had gifted her before the semester had begun.

"Are you mad at me?" Richie asks.

"Yeah, Rich, I'm fucking pissed," the engine revs alive as they pull away from the curb.

"Why? I held on to your hair tie all night, like you asked," he holds his wrist out dramatically, providing evidence. The redhead rolls her eyes, softening slightly. Slightly.

"I'm mad because you couldn't just let that piece of shit have the last word. Just this once!" Bev lectures, "Everything was going fine! We managed to pull Mike out of the library for one Friday night! Ben was socializing while he got us drinks!"

"Bill was going to makeout with you," Richie quips.

"You know what, Trashmouth, maybe he was!"

"He was not. Too nervous,"

"Ah! Irrelevant!" Beverly's face had done this lovely little trick it does when dealing with intoxicated Tozier, where it fluctuates from pale to bright pink to the brink of purple, rinse and repeat, "You did enough showing off for Eddie before Bowers showed up. This didn't do you any favors. I don't think beaten to a pulp is exactly his type,"

This struck a nerve.

Richie fell silent in his seat, suddenly very intrigued by the rolling foliage that whipped passed the window. His hands gripped the sides of his seat, fingers picking at the torn upholstery there. Bev didn't push it; she would remember to yell at him for that later. She glanced over at the lanky man every few minutes, looking smaller every time she did so. His busted lip was pursed into a thin line and his posture was frail, hunched. His chest rose and fell rapidly, the only part of him that was active.

Bev broke the silence, "He's probably worried about you, ya know."

"Why would he be?"

"Rich. I'm your roommate. I'm your friend. Do you think I don't have eyes?" A whine escaped from his lips and he shut his eyes tight at the realization that his secret wasn't much of a secret anymore. She gave her friend a wry smile that was practically audible, as she reached her hand across the center console to hold his, "Or a functioning gaydar?"

The duo laugh at this, Richie letting out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, "Please," he begged, "never use that term," despite how it had alleviated tension between them, it built up a bubble inside him, how quickly this new "quirk" about him gave her the ability to shove him into a box. Bev nods. Richie begins to fiddle with the radio. Despite being drunk off his ass, he was still too sober to be having this conversation.

"Richie...it's not like anyone of us Losers would judge you. Eddie's out and proud-"

"And that's good for Eddie," he cuts her off, wanting to change this conversation as rapidly as he's flipping the channels.

"I just...don't see why you don't just come out and go for it? I have no idea if he likes you back...you're a little polarizing like that. But what is the harm in trying?" Bev wonders, genuine support and a longing to understand in her voice.

"I don't know if there's anything for me to come out as," Richie admits, leaving the radio alone, "I mean...I think Eddie's great. Well...probably more than great. Definitely more than great," he ignores the giggles that emit from Bev, "But...am I really...gay? I couldn't tell you. I've made out with Stan's sister enough back home-" he cuts himself off to respond to Bev's scandalous expression, "you don't know shit-" she throws her head back and laughs, "that there's no way I can't like girls. Do I even need to come out? What does that even mean? Can't I just date who I want? Can't I just make out with who I want at a gross college party, no questions asked?"

Bev shrugs in response, her attitude towards Richie having made a complete 180 since their car ride began, "You got me there," she pulls his hand up to her mouth and let's a kiss linger there until the red light turns green, "We're almost home, Richie, just relax. We can keep talking about this and cuddle on the couch. Or not. Either way, this stays between you and me, bub,"

"What a fuckin' sap," he playfully teases, before turning the volume dial on the radio nearly all the way up. Through the speakers of this behemoth of a car twangs the familiar, funky chords of Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe". The two share a look. A look of love and exhaustion and understanding...of the fact that they were about to scream-sing this song until the very last note. This song was a promise. Melodramatic and disco-based. But a promise nonetheless.

#it #it chapter two #the losers club #richie tozier #beverly marsh #college au #eddie kaspbrak #reddie #stanley uris #stan uris #mike hanlon #ben hanscom #billverly #it chapter one #it fandom #it fanfiction #it chapter 2 #it chapter 1 #reddie fic #friendship fic #fluff fic #angst fic

[gotboredwrote]

Chapter 10: There’s Only One Bed

[[The American Publicist // JRD]]

Pairing: John Richard Deacon x Reader Word Count: 5.9K Style: Multi-Chapter Warnings: Swearing, sexual themes (no smut, just daydreams) Summary: Y/N was just hired to become a co-manager and publicist for the band Queen. The boys had never travelled abroad, so meeting an American was . . . intriguing, to say the least. Permanent Author’s Note: To clarify, I write because I get bored. Nothing is meant to be professional in any way, nor is meant to offend, cause anxiety, cause anger, cause sadness, or promote disagreement among readers in any sort of (semi)permanent way. A/N: WE LOVE A GOOD ‘THERE’S ONLY ONE BED’ TROPE IN THIS HOUSE. Also, is this story even coherent anymore? Like, I have spaced out writing this so much that I can’t even keep track of my writing style.

Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter // Masterpost

~

[previously…]

John led you up the short flight of steps to the upper level of his house, and nonchalantly opened the door to his room. It did not even register in his head that he brought you to his bedroom until he walked about halfway into the room. Then he stopped dead in his tracks.

“Y/N. I just realized something.”

“What is it, John? You’re as pale as you were in front of the sharks.”

“I… I only have one bed in this house.”

~

John’s words echoed through your body like mad. One bed? In any other situation, you would have said one of two things right away. One would be whatever, we can just share, no big deal. The other being that you would just stay on the couch. Except this time, you were hesitant to respond at all. While John did have a comfy-looking couch, there was a part of you that wanted to share his bed. It terrified you, both the concept of it and the fact that there was a part of you that wanted to, but you could not bring yourself to respond in either of your normal ways in that moment. Maybe it had something to do with the look on John’s face that you could not read. Fear? Shock? Lust? Love? You could not place it. You settled on a sentence that gave you both time to calm down.

“That’s alright. For now, let’s just do everything else that we were going to do, and then when the time comes, we will figure out what to do, okay? First, I want to throw my pajamas on so I’m more comfortable, so if you could point me in the direction of your bathroom, I would sincerely appreciate it, Deaky.”

“Sure… it’s right next door on the right.”

With that, John grabbed pajamas for himself, changed in the downstairs bathroom, and starting getting out some options for dinner. Meanwhile, you were in the bathroom putting on the clothes you had brought with you to sleep in, and you were starting to regret your choices. You picked out a shirt from one of the American bands you had worked for in the past, and a pair of baby blue and white-striped shorts. If sharing a bed with John was in your future, wearing this small amount of clothes surely was not going to help either of your situations. You quietly made your way downstairs and into his kitchen, where you noticed there was a bunch of dinner options lined up but no sight of John himself. You looked around a little bit, and as soon as you turned completely around to see if he was in his living room, he plopped himself in the center of the doorway, adequately scaring you.

“John! Gosh…”

“Sorry, love, didn’t hear you come downstairs.”

“It’s okay. What’s… all this?” You gestured behind you to all the food laying out on his countertops.

“It’s everything I figured we could choose for dinner. I know you said you wanted to cook together, so these are all the options I had without running to the store. I can completely run to the store if you don’t like anything you see here, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

There were almost ten different options laid out in front of you, and if you took some ingredients from other things, you could probably bump that list up to twenty. The one thing that caught your eye was the jar of homemade vodka sauce and homemade pasta towards the end of the lineup, with which was placed some basil that looked freshly picked. Behind it was some ingredients to make a salad with homemade dressing. John could see you eying it, so he chimed in.

“Vodka pasta and salad, it is, love. Help me put the other stuff away right quick?”

“Of course, Deaks.”

The two of you spend the next five minutes putting away everything else John had gotten out as options, a calm starting to spread through the air again. Less tension, more comfortable silences and small conversations. Once everything was put away, the two of you began working on cooking the pasta and making the salad and it’s dressing. John put the water on for the pasta and he knew that a certain amount of salt was going to be necessary for the homemade noodles to cook properly. You simply set up a pot with water in it and placed another pot on top of it to act as a warmer for the sauce, that way it did not burn. John was carefully watching the pasta, and starting to mix together the greens for the salad, while he gave you the list of the ingredients for the dressing. You slowly started putting them together in a large mixing bowl, and then John pulled out an electronic mixer.

“This way you can keep watching the other stuff and the dressing will get mixed thoroughly.”

You smiled as a way of saying “thanks,” and continued to dance around his kitchen. You two had put a radio on before you started anything. He was just moving around like a normal person would, while each time you moved to a new section of the kitchen, you made sure to shimmy or shake your way there, earning a chuckle from John each time. He made sure to chuckle, because if he did not cover it up, those laughs would quickly become groans at the sight of your hips in those shorts. You both were at the stove working on your respective portions of the pasta, and he made his way over to the fridge to grab drinks for both of you. You turned around to check on the salad dressing, and it was as if you were in a movie. At the exact moment your body completely turned around, the mixer shorted and the whisk came flying out of the bowl, knocking the bowl in your direction, covering you with the dressing. John never turned around faster and his face grew crimson. He felt so badly, and he could not even get words to form because he felt like it was his fault. He watched you as you turned around, and he really saw the damage that was done. Your shorts and shirt were ruined, and you had some dressing splattering your face. You made eye contact with him, and licked a little bit of the dressing up that had landed on your lips. John did not even have time to consider your motion sexy, which he otherwise would have, because you had gotten him to laugh first.

“Well – at least the dressing tastes good!”

You and John were cackling with each other at this point, the absurdity of the whole situation sinking in. You were clearly not mad at all, not at the situation, not at him. You did not even seem upset that your clothes were ruined, you acted like it happened all the time.

“So… I did not bring a second set of pajamas, and I’m not really keen on sleeping in the clothes I wore all day. Got any suggestions, Deaks?”

“I mean, you could borrow one of my shirts? They should be big enough for you to be comfortable. If you want… unless it would make you uncomfortable, you could borrow some shorts or boxers, too.”

“Honestly, a tee shirt sounds great, John. Thank you.”

“Mhm.” With that, John made his way up to his bedroom, you close behind, and found an older tee shirt of his that was clearly worn, big, loose, and smelled like him. You noticed that last bit when you put it on. It was a simple tee shirt that had an emblem on the breast for the soccer team from his hometown.

“Didn’t take you as the sports type, Deaky,” you said as you made your way down from the bathroom upstairs. John looked at you dumbfounded at first, because the shirt fell just where it does in all the movies and television shows and book she had read where the girl borrows the guys clothes. Just below your ass. He was not complaining.

“Well, I’m not, really. Just figured since they’re my hometown, it’s appropriate, y’know?”

“Sure do! That’s how I am with football, sorry American football, back home. I do like the sport, actually, but I only root for one team because they’re closest to where I grew up.”

“Right. Well, I do have a bottle of dressing in the fridge, and everything else is done, so are you ready for dinner?”

“Starving.”

~

John set the kitchen table up so you two would be facing each other while you ate. You two had been chatting over nothing while you each grabbed a plate of food, and John grabbed you a glass of ice water so you would not have to keep walking back and forth. He wanted to make sure you felt like the guest, and plus, he did not want you to spill something all over yourself again. You sat down and proceeded to start eating, and as soon as you took the first bite of your pasta, an innocent meaning but not-so-innocent sounding moan came from you at the delicious taste. John could not help but think that you were beginning to become a walking cliché at this point, considering the way you were dressed. At first, he scolded himself for going along with the cliché, but then he realized two things; one being that he straight up did not care because he was in your presence and that was all that mattered to him. The other being that if the clichés continued, there was a good chance he knew where the night would end up, and he was not opposed to things ending that way. John had been eating without really paying attention, and he did not notice that a little bit of the vodka sauce had made its way to the corner of his mouth. He would not have even noticed it if it was not for you chuckling in his direction.

“Did I do something funny?”

“No, Johnny, you just have a little bit of sauce on your face.”

“Oh… that’s embarrassing.” John attempted to wipe it away without really knowing where it was. “Did I get it?”

“No, silly. Here, let me…”

Cliché number four; first there only being one bed, then you wearing his shirt, then the moan from food, and now this. Your hand reached across the small kitchen table and your thumb came up to gentle swipe away the food on his face. He immediately thought about the possibility of cliché five, which would be you eating the sauce from his face instead of wiping it on a napkin, and his face was burning when you did exactly that. Except you reacted a little differently after the fact. Instead of giggling and looking down at your food shyly like you knew your act was not innocent, you simply beamed up at him with a dorky smile that melted his heart. He simply smiled back at you with his own dorky smile, gap teeth and all, and you two continued to eat. Once you two felt nourished, cleanup was quiet and relaxing, John offering to do all the dishes real fast while you went and picked out your favorite movie. You tried to protest, but John reminded you that you were his guest and you had a more important job in picking a movie to watch. John made his way over to the sink with as many dishes he could carry, but he could not carry all of them. You decided to bring the last few over to him just to see his reaction, and when he grinned and rolled his eyes at your persistence, you beamed at him again and proceeded to hug him around his back. You could not really explain it, at least not to yourself, but when you felt his all of his torso muscles clench, you shot out the first explanation that came to mind.

“…just my way of saying thanks for putting up with me. Especially with my… issue.”

John’s hands were already wet from the sink, so since he could not properly hug you, he leaned back into your front and nuzzled his head into yours. He could hear and feel your breath hitch at first, and slowly release.

“I‘ve never have to put up with you, all the time we spend together is my favorite time. And you haven’t had an episode since that first day. Sure, you’ve had moments, but nothing near as bad. I honestly sometimes forget that you even have OCD.”

You still had not let him go. You were calm, feeling his deep, slow breaths against your body. You could tell he was not lying to you. Ever since your diagnosis, certain people who had become aware of your situation had decided to avoid you, not wanting to be around if something triggered you. Most days you were fine, and none of the boys cared if you got the sudden urge to fix something in the studio that was not right. They also never touched your binders without your permission, realizing there was a method to your madness. The people who mattered most to you never paid you any mind, realizing that sometimes you just need to help with something. There was nothing else to it.

“Sometimes I forget, too… but, only when I’m with you, John.”

With that you unlatched yourself from him and made your way into his living room, face burning up at the small confession you made. You sincerely hoped that did not come across as you admitting that when you are with John, you are just so infatuated with him and all that he does that something that would otherwise bother you and cause a panic attack could be ignored. That was clearly what you meant, and if you would have seen John after you walked away, your fear would have been confirmed. His face was beet red, and he knew it was not from the heat of the water. John had finished the dishes and calmed his breathing before walking into the living room, where he expected you to be sitting on his couch. He found you on the floor with the entirety of the box of movies he owned sprawled out on the floor in piles.

“Love, we just had a conversation about how you’ve been good with this. What’s going on?”

John had plopped himself down on the floor next to you and nuzzled his head into your shoulder, completely with the intent of just making you feel calmer again. He felt how your breathing was calm when you were holding him, so he figured that the contact would help again. He was partially correct. He could feel the tenseness in your shoulder dissipate when his head made contact with you, but your face was still scrunched up in concern and thought.

“I know, and I promise I’m okay.” You softly smiled down at him, face heating up when you realized how close your faces really were at this point. You turned your head back to face the movies. John kept his attention on your face. “I just saw this box and my body lurched. I just need… to fix it. Are you mad? I can put it back.”

“Nonsense. Go ahead and finish it, I like watching you work.”

“Okay.”

All the while keeping his head on your shoulder, he watched as you moved the VHS tapes into certain piles, clearly knowing what it was your body needed you to do, it just remained unspoken. John even played a game with himself while he was watching.

“Release date and alphabetical.”

“W-what?” John speaking caught you off guard.

“That’s the piles. Release date and alphabetical by title. Right?”

He had been attempting to guess what the rhyme and reason to your piles was. Something told him that if he could guess it, it would make you feel less like a crazy person for feeling the need to do this. He was right.

“Um, yeah, actually.” You were smiling ear to ear, not being able to contain the joy you were feeling at him understanding you and clearly not judging your actions. You never looked at him, but he was beaming up at you only a way a person in love with you could have looked at you, and his eyes were scanning each part of your face, thinking to himself how beautiful you were. Focused, relaxed, happy, sad. No matter what, he felt you were beautiful.

You had finished up the last couple movies, and while you were working, you kept a mental note of where you put the one you wanted to watch, completely forgetting about the movies you brought, because one of John’s caught your eye. Most people would have asked you why you did not pull the movie out and put it aside while you were working, but John understood. He knew that it would make you feel better to do things the way you wanted first, and then go back and pick out the movie. You went to the correct pile and pulled out your choice, handing it to John.

“This one? Really? I’m kind of surprised.”

“Never seen it, and who doesn’t love a good Hitchcock film?”

“Works for me, love. I’ll pop it in and we can get comfy.”

John made his way to his television and began to set the movie up. You, meanwhile, plopped down on the couch and grabbed a blanket for John. You were hoping that you could get him to lay like he did in the studio that one day so you could play with his hair. You really were not too fond of horror movies, so having something to latch onto in a moment of fear would be really helpful to you.

The opening credits for Rear Window came across the screen, and you had managed to convince John to sit somewhat like he did that one day. He noticed you were also cold, so he said that you two could share the blanket, and he would just lean against your side and shoulder. That way you would have access to both the blanket and him. His comments made you flush red, and a blush creeped up his cheeks as well, but it did not stop either of you from sitting in that position, completely pressed up to one another. You were watching and enjoying the film, running your hands through John’s hair. At one point in the movie, during a wordless part, he spoke quietly to you.

“Thinking of cutting it soon.”

“What? Your hair?”

“Yes. I would keep it long enough so you could still play with it, but just made it shorter to make it easier for me in the long run. Would you be opposed?”

“Johnny, you look handsome now, and would look handsome then, too. I support whichever choice you make. I can even come to the barber shop with you for support.”

“Would you?”

“Of course, love. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

With that, the two of you watched the remainder of the movie in silence, both reveling in the fact that you just admitted something else to John that was extremely personal. To any outsider, there would be groans of frustration coming from their mouths at how close you two were skating to just admitting your feelings. But no one could understand how hard the situation was. Neither John nor yourself knew how much longer you would be in England still, and neither of you wanted to start something that you knew would have to end eventually, despite the desperation you two felt for one another, emotionally and physically. Before either of you knew it, the film was over, and the moment of dread was back upon you both. Sleeping arrangements. The two of you silently made your way up to John’s bedroom, the first time the whole evening that the quietness between you two was deafening. Neither of you wanted to admit that you wanted to share the bed. Despite all that you two had done with each other, for each other, and even thinking back to that night when you thought about one another, something about sharing a bed felt far too intimate for people who were not dating. You were trying to come up with some kind of excuse to share the bed when John nervously blurted out his idea.

“You take the bed. I’ll take the couch.”

“Nonsense, John.” Your newfound confidence striking both of you as odd. “We were practically laying together watching the movie. What would be the difference between this and that, especially considering we’ll be sleeping most of the time?”

You surprised yourself with the logic that came from you, and John looked just as surprised. It was not that you were not smart, clearly, it was just that the logic seemed so simple that neither of you could believe that you had not thought of it earlier. You both stood there for a minute, neither wanting to confirm the choice aloud, until you both said “okay” simultaneously, earning a laugh.

“I’ll go use the bathroom right quick, and then you can go in after me. I can warm the bed for you, love.”

“Sounds good, Deaks. I’ll be waiting.”

With that, John made his way into the bathroom. His heart rate quickened the minute he shut the door behind him, realizing the choice he made. He would be sharing a bed with you. He would be sharing a bed with you. He needed to calm himself down, thinking that you would find him pathetic if he came out looking like a wreak. He did all that he needed to do before bed, and made his way out from the bedroom to find you looking at his dresser. He had a bunch of family photos out on the dresser and you were just fondly looking at them. Despite all the time you had spent with the lads, none of them had introduced you to their families. He felt it only appropriate to be the first, even if it was though pictures. Maybe one day you would get to meet them in real life, if life had a way of working out.

“The one you’re looking at now is my dear sister, Julie. Next to her are our parents. You will also see a smattering of pictures of my grandparents on either side, and aunts and uncles.”

You were startled immensely by John speaking, despite the soft tone of his voice. You dropped almost everything that you would be taking into the bathroom, and John simply laughed.

“You could help me pick my stuff up, man.”

“Sorry, love.” He was just smiling at you. Clearly, he was not sorry, but he helped you anyway.

“Your family is beautiful. Everyone looks so loving. Is everyone in the Deacon family like you?”

“When you say like me-”

“Perfect. Gentle, sweet, kind. Cares about everyone that crosses their path.”

John was taken aback by your words, his hand gripping tighter on your hairbrush that he had not handed back to you yet. He was not sure if you realized what all you said about him and his family, but he was just too dumbfounded to even speak. You had said such nice things about him, and he was shocked that you had not tried to take it back or even appeared shocked.

“I think so, yeah.”

You looked back at him with slightly lidded eyes, and you took your hairbrush from his hands and made your way to the bathroom and put all your stuff down. As you were closing the door, you leaned back into the bedroom and whispered to John.

“I expect the bed to be warm when I come out. You promised.” And shut the door.

John never ran to his bed quicker. You walked out of the bathroom about fifteen minutes later, looking ethereal in John’s eyes. The light from the moon outside coupled with the soft yellow glow of his lamps casting a hue on your skin that was ravishing. You decided to just leave all your stuff in the bathroom because you would need it in the morning, and you noticed John had been laying on your side of the bed. When he saw you walk out, he got out from under the covers, crawled to his side, and held the blankets up for you to get under.

“Your side is warm now, and I can just stay on top of the covers.”

“First of all, we aren’t quite ready to get into bed. I think you’re forgetting Roger’s request, love.” John remembered that he had to take a polaroid of you. “Second of all, you will not be spending the entire night on top of the covers. You will be sleeping normally under them. Plus, you don’t run the risk of suffocating me if you roll in your sleep and trap me.”

You smiled sweetly at him, and John would have returned it if he was not too overwhelmed by the prospect of taking a photo of you. He knew it was nothing, and he would only take two; one of just you and one of both of you. But for some reason it got his heart to race. He made his way over to the cabinet where he kept his polaroid camera, and made sure it had film in it. He walked back over to the foot of his bed, and swallowed hard.

“You’re the cameraman and I’m your model, John. How do you want me?”

He cursed under his breath because how the hell could you innocently ask him a question like that? While sitting in his bed? In his clothes? After saying all those nice things about him? And that goddamn necklace framing the upper part of your chest? He had to hold back to refrain from telling you the true answer to your question – underneath him, eyes screwed shut in pleasure while making the prettiest sounds he knew only you could make for him. He would have his hands interlocked with yours, digging deep into the bed, sliding upward toward the headboard in an effort to keep himself above you and to remain as close to you as physically possible. He would be breathing open-mouthed kisses and moans into your neck, making it a point to put at least four or five dark marks in the crease between your neck and shoulders, just to let the band and everyone who saw you know who you belong to. Except he could not tell you that, so he simply said…

“Cross-legged, and smiling.”

“That works for me, Johnny!”

With that, you crawled to the center of his bed and plopped down, crossing your legs. He stood far enough back so you could clearly see that it was his bed, but so you were still in focus. Your knees were off the bed about half a foot high, and you had your hands interlocked and resting on your ankles where they crossed. The necklace loosely hanging off your neck, glinting in the moonlight, and your head tilted ever so slightly to the side. You had plastered that dorky smile from earlier onto your face again, and John knew you were ready for him to snap the photo. And he did. He pulled the photo from the camera, placed it on the dresser, and turned back to you where you were still sitting in the same spot at before.

“How about we take one together? While that one develops?”

“Ooh, I love that idea! Get your butt over here!”

With that, John plopped down onto his bed right next to you, and you changed positions so you were sitting side saddle, leaning into him. Your arms came around his waist, and the arm that was not holding the camera came to wrap around your waist. You nuzzled your face into John’s chest, and he leaned his head down onto yours. Snap.

“Oh, I cannot wait to see how these turn out! You’re such a good photographer, Johnny.”

“You haven’t even seen the pictures, yet, how could you possibly know that?”

“I just know. You’re good at everything.”

The reality set in that the two of you were sitting on his bed, pressed into each other. Both of your hearts started to race. He pulled away lightly so as to say he was going to grab the other polaroid and put his camera away, and you understood. When he made it back to the bed with the now developed photos, you both were thrilled with how they turned out.

“John! They’re amazing! Could I have the one of both of us?”

“Of course, love. What do you want me to do with the one of just you? I could… hold onto it, if you’d like.”

“Yeah. Yeah, do that. That sounds good.”

The two of you looked at the photos a little while longer, and then John proceeded to place them on his dresser. He knew exactly where that photo of you was going. Right in the middle of the photos of his family members. Because you were family to him. The two of you crawled back into bed, you making your way under the sheet while John made his way to his side, stopping before actually getting into bed. You looked at him with an expression that simply said ‘really?’ and lifted the sheet so he would get his ass into bed with you. He did, and immediately you felt warm all over. The two of you initially laid directly on your backs staring up at the ceiling. When you both realized that neither of you were comfortable like that, you simultaneously turned over and faced each other, so close to one another that your noses almost brushed against each other. For once, John broke the silence with a question.

“Um… I don’t really share beds with people that much, but… I think you can tell from our movie night and other times that I’m… I like to cuddle. And I really like it when you play with my hair. Could I…”

“Yes, John.” You lifted your arm, inviting him to press himself against you. He scooted into your front, his head resting on your upper chest, so as not to risk making you uncomfortable and to give you perfect access to the hair on his head. He also nervously snaked his arm around your waist and pressed his legs into yours. You threw all nerves out the window and allowed him to snake his legs between yours, the two of you a tangled mess now. And it was the most comfortable you two had ever been. The two of you sat like that for a good ten minutes before you spoke up.

“John, what are we doing?”

“Hmm? What—”

“Laying like his. Always spending time together. Why are we ignoring what is clearly there?”

“I’m not sure what you mean?”

“Do you really think the boys sent us on our travels today without them suspecting something?”

“I guess you have a point.” John wriggled his way up so his face was right next yours, close enough where you could feel his breath and he could feel yours. Fast and short. His arms still around you, legs still tangled. The hand you were using to run through his hair was now on his face, lightly stroking.

“Y/N… I know neither of us are stupid. We both… feel. It’s human. And I also know that both of us know that we don’t know when you’re leaving. But something I don’t think you know is that I have been trying for weeks to come up with some excuse to get you to stay here longer because… because I can’t imagine doing… doing life without you. It would be too painful for me to continue life knowing that you exist and that you aren’t a part of mine. I think… while we have the time, we need to spend it together. Like… as a couple.”

You were staring blankly at him, trying to wrap your mind around the fact that John Deacon did return your feelings.

“I don’t care that we have a finite amount of time left. I need you. In ways that I have never really needed another human before. I…”

“John, if you say what I think you’re about to say, that would be enough to get me to stay.”

“I’m in love with you, Y/N. And you have no idea how good it feels to say that.”

“You have no idea how good it feels to hear that.”

“Wh… why?”

“Really? You have to ask?”

“Nothing feels real right now, except your legs between mine, honestly.”

“You’re so silly, John Deacon. And I’m in love with you, too.”

The two of you exchanged dorky smiles, before the anxiety creeped back into John’s expression.

“Can… I kiss you?”

“You never had to ask.”

It started slow and unsure, despite the exchange of words that were just spoken. But it felt natural. It felt right. John’s soft lips against your slightly softer and plumper ones. You started to move and breath in sync with one another. With each passing moment, the kiss got deeper and deeper. John started to go into overdrive realizing that his fantasy from earlier could come true, so he used something to his advantage. His legs were on the bottom of the tangle, so he used them to flip you onto your back, attempting to not break the kiss. At the end he did, and he noticed that you were breathing heavy, eyes wide but glossed over, pupils blown out of proportion. He grabbed your hands and made his way back to your mouth, this time lightly using his teeth to graze and tug at your bottom lip, letting a small groan pass through him, hoping he could coax some noise out of you. He was successful, and the small sounds he imagined earlier were now actually leaving your mouth, and he felt like he was in heaven. He could not believe this was real, and despite the fact that it was crazy cliché, he made a small mental note to thank the boys for their plan on Monday. It worked like a charm. John’s mouth had now made it to your neck, and he was lightly nipping at your skin, as if asking for permission to move downward and get more into it. The whines that left your mouth every time he lifted from your skin were all the confirmation he needed, and he proceeded to continue with the next part of his fantasy. Except he did not leave four or five dark spots. He left over twenty. All down your neck. And chest. And stomach. And thighs.

#fanfiction #fanfic #bohemian rhapsody #borhap #70s #80s #john deacon #john richard deacon #queen #freddie mercury #roger taylor #brian may #jim beach #jim miami beach #miami beach #john deacon x reader #john richard deacon x reader #american #british #record label #publicist #the american publicist #misfire #ocd #obsessive compulsive disorder #mental health #you're my best friend

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86) Jeremy Corbyn would make a fine prime minister.                                                 (Irony: a type of usually humorous expression in which you say the opposite of what you intend.)

If it doesn't look like a duck - not remotely - but  it quacks like a duck and it acts like a duck, is it a duck?

Let’s face it. If it didn’t come with the traditional webbed feet and beak, you’d have serious  difficulty in accepting it was a duck even if laid perfect duck eggs and towed a line of  pretty little ducklings along behind it. And that, I believe, is one of the principal reasons why, despite the well founded charges of anti-Semitism made against Jeremy Corbyn, and all the attention they have received, he still seems to sail serenely on.

What makes it so hard for so many  to  believe that Corbyn is an anti-Semite is that it seems counter-intuitive. One may think he is completely misguided but his quiet reasonableness and ‘beard and sandals’ appearance and his do-gooder earnestness and his bloody allotment always make him seem so well intentioned. How could such a man be an anti-Semite? Has he not been fighting racism and equality all his life?

Tough to see beyond that. And yet, if you were a foreign power - the Islamic Republic of  Iran for instance - who thought it would be useful to get a virulent anti-Israeli  and anti-Semite into office here, rather than put him in a brown shirt and jackboots, would you not  produce someone just like Jezza? What better disguise would there be?

I am not actually suggesting he is an Iranian agent - although he’d been doing a damn good job if he were -  but I am saying, just to thoroughly mix my animal metaphors,  that it is very possible to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing if the disguise is good enough.

Labour, the party that cares, doesn’t.

As I say, that’s one of the reasons that the sainted Jezza has got clean away with such outrageous, blatantly anti-Semitic behaviour.

Oh - you don’t think it’s  really been all that bad? You don’t? 

That’s another reason.

And the rest of the current Labour leadership seems to agree.

I, and most other Jews too, I believe, have reached the depressing conclusion, that, frankly, they don't give a shit about anti-Semitism. (I am sure  it is has not escaped Seumas Milne, Labour’s Director of Strategy,  that with only 300,000 Jews in the country and, at a guess, a quarter of those children, we really don’t count electorally.) 

That would certainly explain the official Labour  response to any of these charges, which has been to lock His Corbyness away in a closet and  to send out attack dogs like Chris Williamson MP  and Owen Jones to rubbish the people speaking out, to flatly avoid answering any direct questions, and to repeat the mantra that Corbyn has always been a man of peace, and couldn't possibly be anti-Semitic.

L: Our Dear leader, man of peace.              R:ChrisWilliamson MP, piece of work.                                  

Probably futile but...

It has reached the point where one feels it almost pointless to try to explain why, amongst Jews, there is such profound distrust of Corbyn and why they simply do not accept his blandishments. But I will try one more time by dealing with the most grievous example of the profound offence he has given.

He has been caught on film saying that the Zionists in the room, despite perhaps having lived in Britain all their lives, did not understand English irony and needed a history lesson. 

As he will perfectly well have known, Zionists are overwhelmingly Jews. To argue, as he has, that he didn't know they were Jews or that he was using the term in the political sense  - whatever the hell that means -  may be enough for Ken  and Seumus  but it won't wash with me or 99% of British Jews.

To say that we don’t understand something ‘English’ clearly implies that we Jews, no matter how deep are roots here, are not fully English - that we don't quite get what it is to be English. It is one of the oldest tropes about Jews and it is was unambiguous anti-Semitism.

And let’s not pretend, as Shami Chakrarbarti did the other day on Radio 4, that these remarks were taken out of context. Utter bollocks. The Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition said exactly what he was reported to have said. And he clearly meant to say it. There was nothing in the ‘context’ that made the slightest difference to the meaning. Here is the film of his entire speech.  Judge for yourself. 

(Click on the link below but since the sound quality is poor, click also on the subtitle symbol. That’s the litte square with ‘cc’ on it, on the bottom right.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xf1hwfo2W0

This time it’s personal

I feel I cannot adequately convey just how angry I am about this. 

It wouldn’t make a jot of difference if my parents had been recent immigrants but, as it happens, I have ancestors who were in this country ten generations back. 

While Jeremy’s father was not in the Army, Navy or RAF in the second world war - but doing a Pike in the Home Guard - my father (older than his) spent six years as a private in the Eighth Army in Egypt, Italy and Greece. And he felt obliged to change his name. Jerome Abraham Phillips had to become Jerome Arthur Phillips because of the fear of anti-Semitism. (Anti-Semitism in the British Army that is.)

How fucking dare Jeremy Corby accuse me - because he was, by association, accusing me - of not being fully English.

Jeremy Corbyn’s father served in Dad’s Army at the age of 24

Despite a lack of irony my father was allowed to serve in the Eighth Army.

Enter an establishment Jew

For the ex-chief rabbi, Lord Sacks   to have intervened when this video came to light and charge Corbyn with being an anti-Semite  was a very, very big deal. It was unprecedented.  Rightly or wrongly, Sacks is the  Jew most venerated by the British media and the establishment.  ( As if to prove the point  he is currently hosting a Radio 4 series on Morality.) Yet his words have been dismissed by the Labour leadership out of hand. The fact that he unwisely  mentioned Enoch Powell in the same breath gave them an excuse to blithely shrug off the substance of his complaint.

But let's, for a moment, take Corbyn at his word, and assume he is so insensitive he didn't realise what the effect his words would have. What has his  response been? To apologise? To meet with Lord Sacks? Or to make up completely unbelievable explanations and then avoid the press and cameras himself and send out his emissaries with their pugnacious, unyielding messages of denial. 

What if it hadn’t been about Jews?

If he had made similar remarks about any other minority  group he would have been forced to resign immediately. Imagine if he said that those who advocate  the wearing of a burka  might have been born in this country, but didn’t understand English irony or know English history. 

Those who advocate wearing a burka may not  necessarily be  Muslims, but almost certainly are, in the way that Zionists are almost certainly Jews. It would certainly be something you might  expect  the leader of the English Defence League to say, but the leader of the Labour Party?  Do you honestly think Corbyn would still be in a job if he’d said something so Islamaphobic?  

But Jews don't matter to Labour. That is the message that Corbyn and his supporters have sent us.

Don’t just blame poor Jeremy

Jezza  and his acolytes are not alone amongst public figures on the Left in their supposedly unwitting ant-Semitism. Steve Bell, the cartoonist in the Guardian is another culprit. In two recent cartoons he has been profoundly offensive. He has been accused of anti-Semitism before so he can’t make the excuse that he couldn’t have known the risk he was running. Here’s the first.

What can this mean but that the people caricatured are not sincere in their complaints about Labour anti-Semitism?  One of those ‘sanctimonious humbugs’ (front row L) is clearly Lord Sacks and another, also in the front row, is Margaret Hodge, the MP and Jewess (to use a nice, old fashioned term) who called Corby an anti-Semite to his face. 

And here’s his other recent intended witticism on the subject. 

What can this mean but that these Labour grandees led by Margaret Hodge, who,  since she is holding the weapon is implicitly the executioner in chief, are being wholly unreasonable in asking Corbyn to apologise and recant? 

I was frankly shocked when I saw these cartoons, and probably should have complained but I didn’t. Shocked perhaps but not all that surprised. Katherine Viner, the editor, is the co-author of the 2009 play, ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’, which a writer in The Spectator called  an ‘unapologetically pro-Palestinian drama’.

I wouldn’t accuse her of being anti-Semitic but neither can we expect the Guardian under her stewardship to be entirely even handed on the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian situation. 

Which brings me on to the subject of anti-Zionism. And anti-Semitism. And why the two so closely intertwined as to be effectively indistinguishable.

Zionists v Anti-Zionists

To  be a Zionist is to believe that Israel should be a homeland for Jews.  And that is all it means. It does not mean you  support  the policies of Netanyahu and his government. Not the annexation of East Jerusalem. Not the building of settlements on the West Bank. Not the ridiculously provocative, recently passed, ‘nation state’ law. I, and almost all the Jews I speak to, are vehemently  opposed to all of these things, 

But I, like most Jews, am a Zionist. (Some, a very few, aren’t, but then again, too few to mention.)

So what is an anti-Zionist?  Clearly someone who takes the opposite view; who does not believe that Israel should be a homeland for Jews. That the Israeli state should cease to exist. An anti-Zionist hopes that that one day, we would wake up and find Israel was no longer there. 

In such an eventuality, if you weren’t a Jew you might be a bit concerned, even alarmed,  but you’d get over it.

For me, it is a simply terrifying prospect. Quite literally, an existential threat to my own life  and that of my daughter. I don’t want to rehearse all the arguments why that is the case here, because I’ve been through them all in a previous post. https://bloggerblagger.tumblr.com/post/143854734827/62-anti-zionism-anti-semitism-an-expert-explains (If you have the stamina click on the link and go back and read it.)

But the bottom line is this: anti-Zionism is  plainly inimical to the interests of Jews, as hostile as crude old fashioned ‘you’re not really English’ anti-Semitism. 

A history lesson for Jeremy.

There are always different versions of history.

It is said that the winners write the history and while I can’t help but admire Hamas’, Hizbollah’s and Al Fatah’s pretty successful attempts to buck the trend, I do feel the need to point out a few things in Corbyn Minor’s textbook that are factually incorrect.

1) Israel is not, as  anti-Zionists insist on calling it, an ‘apartheid state’. I lived in  South Africa at the height of apartheid so I  have the advantage of some direct experience. The 21% of Israeli citizens - those living in Israel proper - who are Israeli Arabs or Israeli Palestinians or just plain Palestinians (however they prefer to self identify) have the full rights of citizenship. They can vote, stand for parliament (the Knesset) own property, demonstrate against the government. None of these rights were available to non-whites (as they were officially called in South Africa) under apartheid - which was the doctrine of separate development. 

That is not to say that there is no racism amongst Israelis and Jews generally. Sickening bigotry can be found  in every country, amongst every ethnic group. Jews have no claim to be any better. Why should they be expected to be?

Today I heard an astonishing story which both proves that there is sometimes, official racism in Israel and, simultaneously and seemingly impossibly, that there  isn’t.

A friend of mine working in London, a Muslim with a family home in Nazareth,  who self identifies as an Israeli Arab, travels frequently between London and Tel Aviv. Whenever he goes through Tel Aviv airport, despite having been through all the security checks that every  passenger does, he  is asked to do more.  As soon as he hands in his passport, it flags that he is an Arab and he has to go off to have all the contents of his luggage checked piece by piece. What is that but racial profiling and what is racial profiling but racism?

But here’s the twist. In order to satisfy Israeli legal requirements that this is not racial profiling, whoever is unfortunate enough to be standing next to him in the queue is dragged off to suffer exactly the same irritating bullshit. The last time it happened it was a black hatted, ultra orthodox Hassidic Jew. 

Apartheid? Not exactly.

2) Is it often said that Israel flouts UN resolutions, most notably ‘242′, passed half a century  ago, which calls on Israel to withdraw behind the 1967 borders. But there’s another part to that resolution which its critics conveniently ignore. Namely, that in return, all parties should recognise the right of every country in the region - including Israel - to exist in peace and security. So far, after 50 years, only four out of twenty two Arab countries have done so.

As for the other 64 UN resolutions, do you think it is possible that at least some of them have been passed because there are 50 Muslim majority countries and most, if not all, routinely vote against Israel on any and every issue?

3) Which brings me to Gaza. We constantly hear of the Israeli blockade. But it isn’t just an Israeli blockade. It is, at the western end,  also an Egyptian blockade. Have you ever heard Corbyn Minor mention that? Perhaps he was sleeping through that part of the lesson, 

Gaza was territory taken in 1967 in the Six Day War by Israel and voluntarily given up to Palestinian sovereignty - as Sinai was earlier given back to Egypt - and that involved the forcible removal of thousands of Israelis who, wisely or not, had made their homes there. 

Within months the people of Gaza had rewarded Israel for this act of peace by electing an Hamas government which was, and still is, sworn to the elimination of Israel. If they were to recognise Israel’s right to exist, then Netanyahu would have lost his best excuse for maintaining the blockade and not actively pursuing peace. They could shoot his fox tomorrow but they prefer to fire rockets. 

It’s true that they wouldn’t get everything they want in a negotiated peace settlement but nobody ever does. It takes two to make peace on earth Jeremy, and they have to want it more than eternity in  paradise. 

Exactly who are the real racists here?

Then we have the charge that the very concept of Israel as a Jewish homeland is  inherently racist; that it was when it was created in 1948, and that it still is. 

It’s a point. As least, it is in the precisely the same way that Pakistan was always inherently racist and still is. Pakistan, created just a year earlier than Israel, came into being  for the specific reason of being a nation for Muslims and is still the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. 

There are differences of course. In Israel all religions are free to practise exactly as they wish, people are not murdered for blasphemy, and LGBTQI (and whatever else)  rights are fully respected.

it is different too from the Islamic Republic of Iran where the religious minority, the Baha’ai are not permitted to  go to university and where gays are hung from cranes.

In fact, Islam is the official state religion in many countries, of which more than a few discriminate against other religions and where anything but heterosexual sex is illegal. 

In Egypt a bill was recently introduced to outlaw atheism. That would put it in line with the thirteen countries where atheism is punishable by death: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Why is it that Corbyn and his gang are so obsessed with Israel and never seem to notice the racism of others? Isn’t the act of charging one nation with racism while ignoring all the others, racism in itself?

We, in the United Kingdom, shouldn’t feel too superior by the way. We have a state religion and all others are discriminated against. The Church of England is the Established Church and followers of any other religion, even other Christians,  are proscribed by law from landing the top job in the country. No Muslim, no Jew, no Hindu, no Roman Catholic, and I believe, not even a Presbyterian  can be our Head of State.

Even post apartheid South Africa is racist. It was openly discussed in the South African press that  the mixed race  Trevor Manuel, the much praised Minister of Finance in the noughties could never be President because he wasn’t black enough.

Trevor Manuel. Not black enough to be South African President

It would, of course, be marvellous if group identity - tribalism if you will - was outmoded and eliminated and  ‘content of character’ was the only thing that mattered. But the truth is that almost every country in the world is dominated by one ethno-religious group or another. And it doesn’t seem remotely likely that any of them would tolerate the  possibility of  their ongoing majority  being challenged.

About 5-10% of the UK’s electorate are Muslims. Can you imagine the reaction if they became 25%, never mind a majority? And would it not be the same in France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, the US and in most of the countries in the non-Muslim world. 

And Jeremy, ask your Mexican wife what she thinks the reaction in Mexico would be if the hegemony of Roman Catholics was ever under threat.

Calling a Jew a Jew

No Jew would ever argue that there isn’t anti-Semitism on  the political right. Or indeed anywhere in British society. There is always a low level buzz, probably not picked up by by the antennae of non-Jews, but  Nazi death camps, Russian pogroms, Spanish inquisitions  and yes, English expulsions (oddly enough, Corby, we really do know our history) have left   Jews super attuned to anti-Semitism  and it is always there in the background for us.

I will give you one simple example of endemic anti-Semitism  that flies so low below most people’s radar that even Jews unwittingly accept it. It is the use of the word ‘Jew’.  

How often do you hear even the most ardent supporter of Jews refer to us by the actual word? Christians can be referred to as Christians and Muslims as Muslims, Hindus as Hindus, Janes as Janes, but Jews are never called Jews. They must be referred to as ’Jewish people’. Why? To soften the effect. Because the word Jew is still, after all these years, somehow, unconsciously perhaps, regarded as pejorative.

To be a Christian is to be kind, to be generous, to be virtuous. To be a Jew is to be tight, to be clever - too clever by half - to be cunning, to be manipulative, sneaky. So even our friends and usually, even  we ourselves- would rather say we are Jewish.

To call us Jews is deemed to be too strong, too brutal,  too, too, too… well, Jewish.

Outing myself

Another example: whenever I meet new people who are not Jewish, I let them know almost immediately that I am, and I know that I am not alone in doing this. The purpose is to try to ensure that no careless remark - no Jewish joke about money, no casual mention of ‘front wheelers’ - is going to be made in my presence. Because I don’t want to be put in the position of either cravenly saying nothing, or calling them out and then feeling I’m responsible for  the embarrassment, the awkward silence that would follow. 

And yet it still happens, and shamefully, more often than not, I follow the example of another well known Jew, and turn the other cheek.

I know that these remarks are not made out of any deliberate attempt to give offence, but the moment you draw attention to someone’s otherness you take the risk that you will. So I try to draw any potential sting by identifying  my otherness before you can. 

Who could possibly have been the inspiration for these posters?

On Wednesday September 5th 2018  these posters were flyposted over other advertisements at several different locations across London. Less than 24 hours after the infamous meeting of the Labour Party National Executive meeting at which, late in the afternoon, it was finally agreed to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in full, along with the caveat that ‘it will not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of the Palestinians.’ (Quite why they did this is a mystery to me as there is nothing in the IHRA definition to prevent either.) 

That wasn’t enough for JC though. He wanted to include a clause that said, “it should not be considered antisemitic to describe, Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact, or to support another settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict”

This suggestion was apparently defeated, but why exactly was Corbyn pressing a case for this, when he knew that, had it been adopted,  it was bound to pour a tanker of oil on the flames of the dispute between the Labour Party and the Jewish community? 

Why should he want to appear the most antagonistic and unyielding member  of this now very left wing, Momentum-heavy body? 

How and why  was the news of this leaked when all the phones were supposedly taken off all the participants on the way in? 

And how was it that these posters could suddenly have appeared, pushing the very same specious bollocks that Corbyn has been trying to get adopted the evening before?

They were obviously  professionally designed, printed and posted in what must have been a highly coordinated operation  involving a number of people with different skill sets. And all in less than 24 hours. Really?

Here’s a conspiracy theory for you:  the people who did the poster - the London Palestine Action group apparently - had advance warning of what their guru was going to say and had the posters ready to go. It  was Jeremy himself or one of his acolytes who sprung the leak. And it was all part of the same orchestrated publicity campaign.

Yes, I grant you, it seems pretty fanciful. Why would the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition risk getting involved in such a crazy scheme? if it were exposed wouldn’t even he be seriously, even fatally, damaged politically?

Crazy perhaps, but  I have a very nearly  plausible answer: Corbyn is a  lifelong idealogical purist.  A ceaseless campaigner for anti-establishment causes. A zealot. A rebel to the marrow of his bones. Would he really mind if he crashed and burned and became a hero and a martyr? Wouldn’t that be more attractive to a chap like him than having to deal with the quotidian mundanity of having to  read the boring contents of dispatch boxes  and deal with Sir Humphrey? 

Even if he didn’t have anything directly to with those posters, the timing tells you he was, at the very least,  the inspiration. 

And for all the reasons I have outlined here, those posters were unarguably anti-Semitic.

And Jeremy Corbyn is a duck.

[kidsviral-blog]

The Father-Son Story Of The Two Michael Sams

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/the-father-son-story-of-the-two-michael-sams/

The Father-Son Story Of The Two Michael Sams

Michael Sam Jr. doesn’t talk to his father, who has been caricatured in the press as an anti-gay man who abandoned his family. But there’s a lot more to the story.

In a yellow-walled room in a Texas nursing home this July, a man in a wheelchair watched a flat-screen TV. He saw Michael Sam Jr. kiss his boyfriend and hug his small team of supporters — agents, coaches, and Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown. The first out gay player drafted into the National Football League strode to the stage to receive ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Award, an honor previously bestowed on Muhammad Ali, Pat Tillman, and Nelson Mandela. It was the climax of a star-studded evening in Los Angeles meant to announce Michael Jr.’s arrival as a national icon.

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Michael Sam accepts the Arthur Ashe Courage Award onstage during the 2014 ESPY Awards in Los Angeles. Michael Buckner / Getty Images For ESPYS

Michael Jr. thanked his agents, his publicist, the couple who welcomed him into their home in high school, supporters from the University of Missouri, and top officials with the St. Louis Rams, the team that had drafted him only two months earlier.

Finally, he gave a brief nod to his roots. “To my mother, a single mother who somehow raised eight kids. I love you dearly.”

Back in his cramped room at the nursing home, Michael Sam Sr. picked up his battered, flip-style phone and found his son’s number. He left a message.

“So that’s what you’re going to do?” he recalled telling his son. “After all I’ve done for you?”

Since Michael Jr. publicly announced he was gay in February — just days after he let his father know by text message — Michael Sr. has been vilified in the press. In the New York Times, Michael Sr. came off as a callous homophobe when he said, “I don’t want my grandkids raised in that kind of environment. … I’m old school. I’m a man-and-a-woman type of guy.” When the ESPN documentary declared that Michael Sr. had “abandoned the family” and left his mother to raise Michael Jr. and his seven siblings on her own, Michael Sr. seemed the archetype of the intolerant and absent black father.

In none of these accounts did Michael Jr. come to his father’s defense. “I’m closer to my friends than I am to my family,” Michael Jr. told the Times.

But the father-son story of Michael Sr. and Michael Jr. is more than a conflict over whether Michael Sr. loved and supported his son. It’s the tale of man who’s been reduced to a caricature but whose actual life was shaped by the loss of child after child, some to death and some to crime. The rift between Michael Sr. and his youngest son started long before Michael Jr. came out and stems in no small part from those family tragedies.

Of course, those losses shaped Michael Jr. too, but he isn’t saying how. Through his agent and publicist, he declined numerous requests for an interview. But it’s not hard to see how, in order to succeed and perhaps just to survive, he might blame his father, fairly or not, for what happened to his family.

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Joel Anderson/BuzzFeed

Michael Sr. spends most of his days at the DeSoto Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, about 15 miles southwest of Dallas. His electric hospital-style bed and almost all of his few belongings — a mini-fridge and a rolling dinner tray, mostly — are crammed into a corner of the room he shares with another patient. He locks his drawers because someone has been stealing his snacks.

He gets around in a wheelchair, having lost his ability to walk almost three years ago. He wears a gold chain around his broad neck, which bears a deep and long surgical scar that runs from the bottom of his hairline to somewhere past the neckline of his white undershirt. It’s not clear he knows exactly what ailment has left him in a wheelchair. “I have a hole in my neck,” he said. “But I ain’t gonna die in this motherfucker. I’m getting out of here.”

At 55, he’s one of the youngest and most vibrant residents at the nursing home. He has a paunch and false teeth, but he still possesses the thickly muscled shoulders and arms of someone nicknamed “Hammer,” a handle he got on the football field and in the streets. His hands still make large fists; kicking ass was a family pastime.

“Maaaannnn, I used to hit hard,” he said. “I taught all my sons to play football.”

He often rolls his wheelchair to a shaded patio, where he goes through Kool cigarettes like some people do cups of coffee. He banters with almost everyone. Especially the women. “Better quit bending that ass over like that,” he tells one of the women staffers, a smile creasing his fleshy face. The woman smiles back. If she or other women staffers are offended by his behavior, they don’t show it. At least a couple jokingly call him their boyfriend.

His phone rings throughout the day, bearing calls from his children or friends named ”Frank Tha Cook” or “Little Leroy.” The conversations usually cover his health, upcoming casino trips to Louisiana, and football, particularly the Cowboys, his favorite team since he was a boy.

One person who doesn’t call is Michael Jr., who kept his distance as he ascended to fame and more recently when he tumbled out of big-time football.

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Michael Sam in 2013 playing for the University of Missouri. Joe Robbins / Getty Images

After Michael Jr. publicly came out in February, even President Obama praised the announcement. On May 10, the St. Louis Rams drafted him, generating more praise. But despite the fact that he had been a star at the University of Missouri, where he became Co-Defensive Player of the Year in the powerful Southeastern Conference, he was chosen late. Only seven players were selected after him. He performed well during training camp and the preseason — but was still cut from the final roster on Aug. 30, touching off a debate about whether homophobia played a role in his release. The Cowboys signed him three days later to their practice squad, then dropped him on Oct. 21. He is now a free agent.

For the nearly two months that Michael Jr. was with the Cowboys, he lived a half hour away from his father. It was the closest they’ve lived to each other in about 15 years. A family friend, Sean Woods, hoped it would finally bring the men together. “Now,” he said, Michael Jr. “has to deal with his daddy.”

Yet the Michaels have exchanged only a few text messages and haven’t spoken a word to each other, a quiet that has now lasted at least several months with no end in sight. Michael Sr. has mostly kept up with the vicissitudes of his son’s career through updates on ESPN and phone calls from friends and family members.

Shortly after Michael Jr. was released from the Cowboys’ practice squad, Michael Sr. sent a text to BuzzFeed News: “Hey they cut Mike.” Asked if he’d heard from his son recently, Michael Sr. texted back that Michael Jr. “wouldn’t say a word to me honer [sic] thy father.”

“It’s like he was looking for an excuse to separate from us,” Michael Sr. said. “Now we’re just letting him have his limelight. We’re tired of begging him to stay in the family.”

On the room’s walls, Michael Sr. has pinned Father’s Day cards, a corkboard with a calendar and pictures of his family, and, over his bed, a lengthy poem about angels. On a special spot on the wall — right over his flat-screen TV — are two pictures of Michael Jr. in his University of Missouri football uniform. Pointing at the pictures, Michael Sr. said he knew from the start that Michael Jr. would be special.

“That boy, he had some big nuts,” Michael Sr. said. “He was big when he was born. That boy had some big-ass balls.”

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Paul Moseley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram / MCT

Wesley Sam, Michael Sr.’s father, was also pretty ballsy. In 1947, he was living in Opelousas, Louisiana, when he heard on the radio about what’s generally considered the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history, an explosion at the Monsanto plant near Galveston, Texas. He headed right to the scene, figuring he could get work there.

He loaded cotton at the Galveston wharves for a few months before landing a job at the Monsanto plant. Yes, it had blown up, killing nearly 600 people, but he could make more money there than a black man could expect almost anywhere else.

He married Alberta, a fellow Opelousas native who spoke Creole, little English, and who couldn’t read or write. With their 10 children, they moved into a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home at 1732 Thompson St. in La Marque: Wesley and Alberta had a bedroom, the girls had one, and the boys had the room at the back of the house. “I had a white boy type of life at home,” Michael Sr. said. “There wasn’t nothing I couldn’t have wanted and gotten.”

Alberta died at 46 following “a brief illness,” according to her obituary in the La Marque Times. Wesley Sam was a loving man, a capable cook, and obsessive about cleanliness — he would dust off his car every day, his surviving children said. But he wasn’t quite up to the challenge of corralling all of those children. Who could? Instead he set his example through his work ethic, putting in a full day at Monsanto then mowing lawns with his sons in the evening. They’d do 18 yards a day, Wednesday through Sunday.

“My dad was a workaholic before anyone called it that,” Michael Sr. said. “He’d think you were sorry if you didn’t have that work mentality in you.”

Michael Sr.’s siblings went off to college, joined the military, and found middle-class jobs. His sister Geraldine would become La Marque’s first black mayor.

Michael Sr., meanwhile, dropped out of school over the protests of his father but earned a GED. He wasn’t much of a student anyway, and finding work in the area was a cinch for anyone who didn’t mind getting a few smudges on their shirt. He worked in construction, at a chemical plant, and as a crane operator and a forklift operator.

Away from work, Michael Sr. and his brothers drank, chased women, and kept up the family tradition of fisticuffs. “We’d be out in the front yard fighting,” Michael Sr. said, grinning at the memory. “Real fighting. Not no slapboxing.”

One night in 1978, Michael Sr. met a woman named JoAnn Turner at a local nightclub. “She was fine and good-looking,” Michael Sr. said. “And I walked her out.”

Little more than a year later, JoAnn gave birth to a boy they named Russell. A year later, they had daughter Chanel. Julian was born in June 1982. They were young and in love, with three kids and jobs that paid middle-class wages. It didn’t take long for Michael Sr. to settle into life as a family man, or long for it to be destroyed.

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Photograph by Dylan Hollingsworth for BuzzFeed

Here’s a news brief from the Associated Press on Sept. 23, 1982, with a dateline from Texas City: “The body of Chanel Roshaun Sam was found Monday night in about eight feet of water near a pier on which she had been playing. Her parents and neighbors searched for three hours before finding the body.” The little girl, 2 years old, had apparently drowned.

After several days of grief, and desperate to rescue JoAnn from her despair, Michael Sr. suggested they go to the courthouse. And so, six days after their daughter died, they were married.

“I felt like she needed some support,” Michael Sr. said. “It was the right thing to do, to bring something positive from it.”

It wasn’t enough. JoAnn turned to religion and became a Jehovah’s Witness. Her conversion deepened the fissure in her marriage, because Michael Sr. was raised as a Baptist and felt his wife’s new religion was too restrictive. She insisted the family not celebrate Christmas. “I celebrated it,” he said. “But she didn’t celebrate it with me. I still bought the kids gifts.” (JoAnn didn’t respond to requests for an interview.)

Michael Sr. found his solace shooting dice. On Friday and Saturday evenings, he would take his paycheck to a little wooden shack in Texas City and gamble away the family’s money. JoAnn suspected the absences were because of another woman, Michael Sr. said. But a mutual friend of the couple gave her the scoop. In Michael Sr.’s version of the story, the woman told JoAnn that “he ain’t screwing none of us” but was just gambling.

One Friday night, Michael Sr. recalled, he won $700 and left the shack with two friends on an impromptu trip to Boy’s Town in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, an infamous red-light district just across the Texas border. He didn’t bother calling JoAnn to tell her that he was leaving town.

“Weren’t no cell phones back then, and I didn’t stop and spend the 25 cents to call,” he said. When he returned Sunday, “she bitched at my ass. But it was pretty funny. I had a blast.”

The marriage continued to spiral, though Joshua was born in 1984 and Christopher in 1985. Michael Sr. finally filed for divorce in February 1986. A brief attempt at reconciliation resulted in the birth of Michelle in 1987. But the divorce was granted in 1988.

JoAnn was awarded primary parental responsibilities. Michael Sr. would have access to the children two weekends each month, and they divided up the holidays.

Michael Sr. was also ordered to pay JoAnn $250 each month for child support. Within a few months, JoAnn returned to court to complain that Michael Sr. wasn’t meeting his obligation. Thus started a four-year battle over child support. Michael Sr. was charged with contempt of court at least 10 times stemming from his failure to pay, according to court records. Twice he was sent to county jail.

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The District Clerk’s Office of Galveston County

“It was because I was running around and spending money and shooting dice,” Michael Sr. said. JoAnn “needed more money, and I was doing the very minimum. I should’ve been doing more.”

Typical of their on-again, off-again relationship, JoAnn gave birth in 1990 to Michael Jr. — right in the middle of their child support dispute — and the next year to Ashley, the eighth and last child they would have together. “Man, I had some phases with JoAnn,” Michael Sr. said.

In July 1992, JoAnn went to court to sign off on an agreement to release Michael Sr. from county jail and to clarify the terms of the support payments. At that point, according to court documents, Michael Sr. was behind nearly $4,000 in payments.

During the Christmas holidays that year, Michael Sr. said, JoAnn made a surprise visit to his house. “She wore one of those Mormon dresses — she knows that I like dresses,” he said, laughing. This time, he said, she demanded more than a night together.

On May 3, 1993, Michael Sr. and JoAnn went to the county courthouse once again — to get remarried.

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Photograph by Dylan Hollingsworth for BuzzFeed

Michael Sr. took no small pride in raising sons who were every bit the hell-raiser that he was. People around the neighborhood called him a man’s man. “My dad didn’t take no shit off nobody, and I didn’t take no shit off nobody,” Michael Sr. said. “I wasn’t a bad guy. But I was a ‘I’ll kick your ass’ kind of guy.”

“All of his kids were muscular and some bad dudes,” said Charles Sam, Michael Sr.’s brother.

The toughest of the bunch was also the oldest: Russell. As a freshman, he was pegged as a future football star at La Marque High School. Michael Sr. fondly remembers how Russell would walk around the neighborhood, “always ready to slap a motherfucker.”

But, he said, “I kept telling him to get out of that gang shit.”

Here’s a clipping from the Galveston County Daily News. It reports that on Feb. 27, 1995, Russell was sent home early from La Marque High School for “creating a disturbance.” A school administrator allowed Russell to walk home since his mother couldn’t leave work to pick him up.

Instead of heading straight home, the newspaper said, Russell stopped at a house about a half mile from the school. He was breaking into the back door when the homeowner fired at him three times through a metal door. Russell was clutching a screwdriver when his body was found. No charges were filed against the homeowner (who was also black).

The anger welled up within Michael Sr., who casually knew the man who had killed his son. There weren’t many strangers on that side of town. Michael Sr. got himself a handgun. “I was going to kill him,” Michael Sr. said. “I was going to go over there and end him. But my daddy saved me. He wouldn’t let me go over there.”

His father saved him. But Michael Sr. couldn’t save his own sons.

At 5 feet 4 inches and 125 pounds, second-oldest son Julian had an unusually slight build for a Sam boy. He went by the nickname “Ice Pick.” But he had a left arm that was made for pitching. “That boy could throw,” Michael Sr. said. “He used to strike Russell out all the time. Those were the funnest days.”

But, Michael Sr. said, “he wanted his own money” and begged his father to let him work. Michael Sr. eventually gave in, and Julian took a job with a local cable company.

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The Daily News

Here’s another headline from The Daily News, this one from Oct. 22, 1998: “La Marque mother looks for clues into son’s disappearance.”

Julian was last seen outside La Marque’s high school football stadium, where he had gone to buy tickets to the homecoming game. JoAnn told the newspaper, “What has me afraid is that he had just gotten paid, and had $200 on him.”

“I should just not have let him work,” Michael Sr. told BuzzFeed News. “I should have let him throw that ball. He would’ve been a left-handed pitcher.”

Julian hasn’t been seen since that homecoming game, and 16 years later the police maintain his disappearance is still an open case.

When Michael Jr. was born, his parents were scarred by the drowning of their daughter and were feuding over child support. When he was 5, his oldest brother was gunned down. When he was 8, his second-oldest brother vanished.

His remaining brothers, Josh and Chris, tormented him constantly. “His brothers picked on him,” said Michael Sr., who also grew up as the youngest brother in his family. “I’d have to go in there and tell them to quit that shit and leave him alone.” Michael Jr. told Outsports he was a “punching bag” for his older brothers.

Josh was also showing a precocious ability to find trouble in the streets of La Marque. “No one had reached 18 yet,” Michael Sr. said of his children. “I didn’t think [Josh] was going to reach it either.”

Michael Sr. and JoAnn decided that Hitchcock, a town only four miles away, might do them all some good.

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Population 7,000, Hitchcock was founded in 1873 as a railroad station between Houston and Galveston. Today, it’s a quiet two-stoplight town that sits along a state highway. By most socioeconomic markers — home ownership, median income, residents with college degrees (just 8.2%) — Hitchcock ranks below the Texas average.

The Sams settled into a well-kept rose-colored wood-frame house that sat along the railroad tracks and unkempt ditches on the black side of town. It seemed isolated enough from the troubles that La Marque had visited upon their family, but it wasn’t.

La Marque police reopened the investigation into Julian’s disappearance after getting reports that people had seen him in the area. “We think he left on his own free will and we feel strongly he is alive,” the police chief told the Texas City Sun in October 2000.

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An age-progressed photo of Julian Sam. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children / Via missingkids.com

JoAnn told the Sun that she also believed he was still alive. “He was at that age of rebellion,” she said, suggesting he had run away from home. She told the newspaper that she wanted him to come home or at least call someone in the family to let them know he was OK.

In grief, Michael Sr. had quit his job at the post office. “I had always had a steady job, but I couldn’t handle it no more,” he said. “I felt closed in. Just thinking of it.” He found work as a crane operator but was laid off soon after. He got a job working for a local pipe company and was let go again. Finally, in the fall of 1999, a family friend told him he should consider truck driving. Michael Sr. went to school in Dallas, and four months later was on the road, coming back to Hitchcock when he could, mostly on weekends.

“It was a steady job,” he said, and one that answered a deeper need: “I had to get away. I wanted to get away.”

The marriage crumbled. Michael Sr. and JoAnn remain legally married but haven’t lived as a couple since he moved to Dallas in 2000.

Michael Jr. was 10 when his father started his life on the road. With JoAnn working late hours and taking extra shifts to provide for the children, Michael Jr.’s older brothers had their run of the house — and the streets. “It was bad,” Michael Jr. said in an ESPN documentary about his life. “I’m a kid and I’m seeing some hardcore drugs in my house. My mother didn’t know about it. If I told her anything, my brothers said they would kill me.”

Craig Smith, one of his high school football coaches, saw it for himself. “Sometimes I’d drive over to pick him up and honk the horn and one of his brothers would come out to see if I wanted to buy” drugs, he told a crowd at the school’s annual football reunion dinner in late July.

The criminal records of Michael Jr.’s brothers support these accounts: Josh has been arrested more than 40 times, including four convictions for drug possession, and Chris has tallied nearly 20 arrests.

In April, Chris was sentenced to 30 years in state prison for breaking into a woman’s home, choking her into unconsciousness twice, then using her credit card at a nearby restaurant. Josh was put in the Galveston County Jail in July on a minor offense and was released last month.

“I got caught up in them streets,” Josh admitted during a June interview with BuzzFeed News, a rare evening this year when he wasn’t locked up.

Little of this came as a surprise to family members. Cousins remember being warned to keep their distance. “We knew it wasn’t the ideal upbringing,” said Joseph Sam, a nephew of Michael Sr. “They were always in trouble.”

With his childhood saturated with grief and his older brothers descending into crime, Michael Jr. would have had to be a saint not to look for someone to blame. Conveniently, his father was already blaming himself.

Out on the road, far away from home, Michael Sr. remained tormented by the loss of his boys. Teaching them toughness had backfired; he’d armed them with tools for survival in one world that wouldn’t work in almost any other.

“Life was going to be tough on them,” he said. “Your skin had to be tougher than the others. But I also wanted them to make the right decisions.”

Somewhere in these years, Michael Sr. began to lose the last of his sons — not to death or crime, but to rejection.

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Courtesy of Robert Dohman

On his first day of third grade, in a new town and new school, Michael Jr. was seated next to a chubby, snowy-haired boy. Michael Jr. wasn’t saying much to his new seatmate. The silence went on for so long and got so awkward that eventually the boy spoke up.

“I told the teacher that I didn’t want to sit next to him because he was too quiet,” said Robert Dohman. “He turns around and goes, ‘Hey, blondie boy, I’m not quiet!’ And that’s the way me and Michael get along now.”

Michael Jr. was voted “friendliest” by his sixth-grade classmates and elected homecoming king in eighth grade. His popularity was a testament to his ability to navigate the unspoken color line of a small Southern town; most of his close friends were white.

“My grandma,” said Dohman, “was very old-school and wasn’t into all that racial mixing. But when I had Michael over, he’d always be the first one to come over and give everybody a hug. Even her. He really changed the way my grandmother looked at black people. She would even smile when he came around.”

Michael Sr. said he saw little of the outgoing side of his son, saying he was quiet at home. But coaches and teachers remember him as a precociously self-assured teenager who could start a conversation with anyone. After football games, Michael Jr. was known for going into the bleachers — uniform and pads still on — to introduce himself to parents.

Michael could “talk to a group of 15-year-olds and then set there and talk to a group of 55-year-olds and not feel out of place either,” said Smith, now head football coach at Hitchcock. “I just never had a student that could just go and talk to a group of people. He would make friends all the time.”

Even in what was ostensibly enemy territory. Smith recalled a track meet at Danbury, a nearby town that is 90% white, less than 1% black, and had developed a reputation for being unfriendly to minorities. Except, apparently, Michael Jr.

“I can remember some Danbury parents cheering and rooting for Michael running the 100-meter” dash, Coach Smith said. “You just didn’t see that, if you know anything about Danbury.”

Maybe the biggest benefit of playing sports is that it kept Michael Jr. away from his brothers. The coaches, who also worked as teachers in the district, knew all about Josh and Chris: Their obvious athleticism had never proven to be worth the trouble. But Michael Jr. was charting a path different from the men in his family. Michael Jr. greeted people with hugs, not fists. He was going to be the first to graduate.

“Michael was a good kid,” Michael Sr. said. “He said he didn’t want to be like his brothers.” Left unsaid was that Michael Jr. clearly felt the same about his father.

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Courtesy of Robert Dohman

On fall Friday nights, Michael Sr. said he would find a seat somewhere in Hitchcock’s football stadium, away from the crowd and sometimes with his father, Wesley. After nearly 30 years as a father, he said, he could finally engage in the autumn ritual familiar across Texas.

“I didn’t miss [any] home game his senior year,” Michael Sr. insisted.

There isn’t anyone who can corroborate his perfect attendance. Family and friends say they’re sure he went to some games but don’t know about all of them. The coaches at Hitchcock High can remember seeing or, rather, hearing, Michael Sr. only once in four years: a game in Michael Jr.’s sophomore year.

“I heard this guy yelling at Michael and I turned to Michael and asked him, ‘Who the hell is that guy?’” Smith recalled. “Michael said it was his father. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen him.”

Those stadiums can be hubs of activity on Friday nights, and coaches are notoriously focused on the events unfolding well away from the stands. It would be easy to miss someone on game night, right?

“Let me say this in a nice way,” Smith said. “I didn’t know him, and I know a lot of people in town. I can look up in those stands and know who’s there.”

Michael Sr. said he didn’t make it a priority to spend any time with the parents of Michael Jr.’s friends or the alums and other regulars who would show up at school events — most of them white. “I never did know them,” Michael Sr. said. “And I never tried to go out of my way.”

Michael Sr. said he took a job with a trucking company based out of Ada, Oklahoma, so that he could arrive in Hitchcock by the start of kickoff Friday night. He assumed his son appreciated what he considered a significant sacrifice of time and money; coming back to Texas without a load meant he wouldn’t get paid for the drive home.

It wasn’t until earlier this year, when media outlets began saying that he had abandoned his son, that Michael Sr. learned he was being phased out of the story of his son’s childhood. He never thought all those years on the road would mean that he wasn’t there.

“Michael’s family was the city of Hitchcock,” said Dohman, Michael Jr.’s childhood friend.

Told what Dohman said, Michael Sr. looked straight ahead, the anger washing over him. Sitting on that patio at the nursing home, he was, for a few moments, that angry Sam boy ready to fight.

“The city of Hitchcock didn’t buy his goddamn clothes, a roof over his head, or the bed that he slept in,” Michael Sr. said. “The city of Hitchcock can kiss my ass.” He paused. “I should have kept those gas receipts.”

Of course, Michael Sr. never thought he would need them. He also never thought the family of a high school teammate — a white one — would get so much credit.

Once Michael Jr. revealed in February his plans to become the NFL’s first out gay player, the two media outlets with which his publicists coordinated the announcement wrote this:

The New York Times: Sam found a comfortable place off the field as well, in large part because of Ethan Purl, a classmate and the son of Ron Purl, the president of the local branch of Prosperity Bank. Ron’s wife, Candy, made sure their house was part recreation center and part counseling hub for their children and their friends. By Sam’s senior year, he had his own bedroom in the Purls’ house, along with chores like cleaning the pool and carrying the grocery bags. “I look at our house as a kind of safe haven,” said Ron Purl, who keeps a photograph of Sam in his Missouri football uniform in his office. “He is just another son. If he did something wrong, he got yelled at just like the others did.”

ESPN: The relationship started when Candy Purl, Ronnie’s wife, invited Michael to dinner during his freshman year of high school. Ronnie, a man with a personality much bigger than he is, discovered a kid he didn’t recognize and demanded to know, “And who are you?”

“Without skipping a beat, my brother replied, ‘I’m Michael Alan Sam Jr.!,’” said Ethan Purl, Ronnie’s son. “And after that, he never left.”

“That’s a bunch of shit,” Michael Sr. said. Sure, he said, his son went to the Purls’ on weekends, but “Michael lived at home to the day he graduated.”

“He lived with the rest of us,” agreed Michael Jr.’s sister Michelle.

“The Purls only helped [him] in [his] senior year,” his aunt Geraldine said. “If the Purls were really good people, they’d tell Michael that he was wrong. That he should acknowledge his mother and daddy.”

After a brief phone conversation in which he said he didn’t have time to speak, Ethan Purl did not return repeated phone calls. Ronnie Purl declined a number of interview requests. “Without Michael’s approval I will not be able to speak with you,” he said in an email. “Being in banking, I am very aware of privacy issues.”

Michael Sr. said he met the Purls at least once, when he accompanied Michael Jr. on one of his visits over there.

“I just wanted to see where Michael was going, to make sure where he was going was the right environment,” Michael Sr. said.

In fact, Michael Sr. liked that his youngest son had white friends. He was convinced his association with them might mean better grades, a high school diploma, and maybe even college — the chance at success that his other sons never had.

“He wasn’t messing with the black guys trying to sell drugs and doing drugs — I thought that was a good thing,” Michael Sr. said. “As long as he wasn’t doing nothing crazy, wasn’t in no cult, I was all right with it.”

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A yearbook page shows Michael Sam during his high school days in Hitchcock, Texas. Scott Dalton/The New York Times/REDUX

When Michael Jr. was at the University of Missouri, Michael Sr. began noticing some changes in his son, he recalled. There was that road trip from Dallas to Houston with Michael Jr. and one of his college friends, Vito Cammisano, a member of the men’s swim team. What struck Michael Sr. was his son’s taste in music.

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Michael Sam with his boyfriend, Vito Cammisano. Michael Buckner / Getty Images For ESPYS)

“He knew all of them white songs,” Michael Sr. said. “He knew country, Taylor Swift, all that stuff. I’m like, What brother knows all of them white songs? That tripped me out.”

On another one of Michael Jr.’s trips home with Vito, Michael Sr. noticed their relationship seemed much closer than a simple friendship. How else to explain Vito coming home for the holidays? Michael Sr. waited until they returned to Missouri to broach his suspicions to his wife. “I told JoAnn, ‘You know, Mike ain’t bring his girlfriend but he brought this dude. That’s kinda funny,’” Michael Sr. said. “But she swore up and down” that he wasn’t gay. “I kept asking Mike was this boy funny? ‘No, Daddy, no. Ain’t nothing wrong with Vito,’ he’d say.”

“He didn’t act gay then either,” Michael Sr. said of Vito.

But during a visit to Missouri for one of Michael Jr.’s games last fall, Michael Sr. became certain about Vito.

“I shook that boy’s hand, and that boy’s hand felt like a woman’s,” Michael Sr. said. “And the boy looked different. I told my brother that that boy right there is gay.”

When they went out for dinner later that night, Michael Jr. showed them a picture of a woman he said he was dating; Michael Jr.’s Instagram account has lots of pictures of him in college posing with young women.

“I still had some suspicions,” Michael Sr. said. But other family members “didn’t wanna believe it. I had intuition about that boy.”

That intuition was finally confirmed this year. On Feb. 4, Michael Sr.’s birthday, he received a text message from his son. “I could tell his PR guy wrote that message because Mike don’t talk like that,” Michael Sr. said. “It was some bullshit. ‘I wanted to inform you that I’m gay.’”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” Michael Sr. remembered texting Michael Jr. in response. “He texted me back, ‘Happy birthday.’ So I went out and got drunk.”

Five months later, in his room at the nursing home watching the red carpet show before his son would receive the Arthur Ashe Award, Michael Sr. grew wildly upset. He started calling and texting family members and friends.

With Vito at his side, Michael Jr. had been asked what was the most difficult part of coming out. He told the interviewer that it was telling his friends. Michael Sr. was incensed.

“If it was so hard to tell his friends, why didn’t he tell us first?” Michael Sr. said. “It was harder for him to tell us.”

And it probably was. One recent afternoon, Michael Sr.’s brother Charles asked if Michael Jr. might go back to women. Michael Sr. responded, “Women don’t really want to mess with you after doing all that gay shit.”

Michael Sr. is never going to be the spokesman for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. He’s not thrilled about his son’s sexual orientation. But he also hasn’t disowned his son. He never says his son is going to hell. He doesn’t talk about trying to cure him or make him straight. In his own rough-hewn, coarse way, Michael Sr. has accepted that his son is gay. “I love my son,” he said, “and I don’t care about what he do.”

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Michael Buckner / Getty Images For ESPYS

The family rift that the ESPY Awards exposed to a national audience had been there, deep and wide, for a while.

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Will Ebner L.G. Patterson / AP Photo

Seven months earlier, in December 2013, Michael Jr. came to Houston as one of the nominees for the Rotary Lombardi Award, which is awarded to the best college lineman or linebacker. Instead of asking his family to attend as guests, he invited the family of Missouri football teammate Will Ebner.

“We found out Will and I were going to be part of his family representing him,” said Elaine Ebner, mother of Will Ebner. “If someone else had come from his family, I would have wanted them to be center stage. I know my place. Mainly, I just wanted to be whatever he wanted me to be.”

Michael Jr.’s aunt Geraldine managed to score tickets from a friend who was a member of the Rotary Club. She also sat in the area designated for family. “When I got there, [Michael Jr.] was glad to see me. It’s always good to have family there,” she said.

Days later, Michael Jr. graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in parks, recreation, and tourism. Everyone in the family — except Josh and Chris, who were both in jail — made the 600-mile road trip from Texas to celebrate the first of JoAnn’s and Michael Sr.’s children to graduate from college.

To commemorate the occasion, Michael Jr. posted a picture on Instagram of himself in a cap and gown, a wide smile on his face and an elbow comfortably resting on the mantle of a fireplace. “It’s been a long time coming,” read his caption. He was alone in the photo and made no mention of anyone else being there — in that or any of his other public social media posts from the time.

Later in December, during the week of the Cotton Bowl in Dallas — Michael Jr.’s final college game — Michael Sr. said his son borrowed his car and spent all of his time with Vito and teammates. Michael Sr. also said his son lied to him about the location of the team hotel and then didn’t call him, or return any of his calls, for the rest of the week.

“I had to call him to get him to bring me my car back,” Michael Sr. said. “I kept calling and calling. He didn’t bring the car until the last day, and the game was the next day. He didn’t talk to me or nothing.”

In May, on the weekend of the NFL draft, Michael Jr.’s family was conspicuously absent when TV cameras followed him around at his agent’s home in San Diego. He declined an offer from his father’s family members to attend a draft party they wanted to host in Dallas, his aunt Geraldine and Michael Sr. said. Instead, he spent the weekend in California with Vito, some friends, and his agents.

“If he’s so ashamed of us,” Geraldine remembers one of his sisters telling her, “why doesn’t he just change his name?”

The day the Rams drafted him — when he was so happy that he kissed Vito and smeared his face with celebratory cake — might end up being the pinnacle of Michael Jr.’s NFL career. Now, cut from his second team, he is learning something his father learned long ago: Life can take what you want most.

Since 2000, Outsports noted, every single Defensive Player of the Year from the five major college football conferences made it onto an NFL team — except Michael Sam Jr. And it’s not that he played poorly in preseason. Far from it. He totaled 11 tackles and three sacks, a figure that left him tied for fourth in the league. His bold announcement of his sexuality, which garnered him glamorous accolades, may have also destroyed his football career.

Disappointment and loss are feelings Michael Sr. knows well, of course, so the two Michaels have more in common now than they may have ever had. And yet Michael Jr. doesn’t come to his father — or anyone in his family — for comfort. He keeps his distance.

To Michael Sr., sitting in his wheelchair or taking a drag on one of his Kools, that distance can feel like death. He doesn’t want to lose another son.

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Photograph by Dylan Hollingsworth for BuzzFeed

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/joelanderson/the-two-michael-sams

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