history, huh?

I personally hate any kind morality thought policing. I'm not Catholic or religious and I do not feel guilty over my thoughts. You are not an inherently evil person because you saw two athletes in an interview and went "Hmmm...... what if...." The Feds are not going to come banging down your door because you wrote about one band member dicking down the other and sent it to your friend.

Wondering about other people's lives is very human. Being nosy about their personal lives is very normal. People have been writing fiction about other people's lives since the dawn of time. Some people even manage to write New York Times Bestselling Books that are "historical fiction" or "alternate reality." It does not make you inherently bad to be curious about the details of someone's personal life. That's being human. Being nosy is kind of fun.

The problem, however, comes with the ways in which people engage with it, and involve the real people in this. Harassing an musician's real girlfriend because it doesn't fit into the RPF ship. Showing up at real sporting events holding signs about how certain teammates should kiss. Trying to get actors to sign art of them fucking their coworker. Flooding social media with comments using the celebrity's full name and speculation. There's a line, there's a fourth wall, and there's fandom etiquette.

I hate the question of "Is RPF ethical" because it feels like morality thought policing. Post your fics on locked accounts, censor someone's name when you tweet about it, blow up your groupchat with hundreds of "DID YOU SEE THE WAY THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER??" texts. It's not inherently evil to wonder what other people are doing when they're out of the spotlight. Kill the cop in your mind.

She noticed it immediately.

Of course she did. Even when she promised herself that today would be different, she would be normal and remember that Frank—Dr. Langdon—was married, with two kids, and her best friend, and she shouldn’t be cataloging every detail about him. 

It didn’t help anyone that Mel could tell, within 30 seconds of seeing him, what kind of mood he was in. If he had pinched his back the night before. If he had time to get his cold brew before work.

She’d look in the mirror before work and remind herself to be normal.

Then again, if she was more normal about him, she wouldn’t have immediately noticed the glaring lack of a gold band on his left ring finger or the lightness in his steps or even the way his smile seemed easier. 

*

If he was being completely honest, Frank hadn’t wanted to come. 

He knew that the invitation to Whitaker and Santos’ New Years Eve party was mostly out of pity; he was standing at the Hub, staring at the board (trying not to cherry-pick, but it was so slow, and if he had another patient with chest pains that turned out to just be an anxiety attack…) when Santos told Emma, “you have to at least stop by—pretty much everyone who isn’t working already said they’d come.”

Then her eyes slid to Frank, an uncomfortable curl in her lip, “You too, I guess.”

his name is manny rutinel and he’s an environmental attorney, a first responder, a microbiologist, and a current state representative