Norman

Brendan Park was not someone who cowered or stuttered or who knew what nervous felt like. He was someone who spent his days reattaching limbs and fixing bones and healing people in OR rooms faced with more blood than most people want to see in a lifetime. He was someone who was always in control and he didn’t know what being out of control felt like. 

            Until you. 

            Until the first time he saw you at his gym, running on a treadmill, doing nothing but running, headphones on, gaze fixed straight ahead, jaw tight, the line rigid. And in that moment, Brendan “the Shark” Park was a goner. 

            Because he had never seen anything like you before. 

            You were there, at the gym, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, running on the treadmill for three hours before dipping into the change room, grabbing your bag and leaving. Not even looking back, just disappearing. 

            He didn’t know your name, didn’t know what you did for a living, all he knew about you really was that you were gorgeous and perfect and something about you made him nervous. Made his heart race and his palms sweat and it was really damn inconvenient—not because wanting you was bad, but because you making his palms sweat really made it hard to lift weights safely. 

            He didn’t know you, but he wanted to. Desperately. 

            And that…that was something new too. Because Brendan Park was not someone who wanted to know people. He was the person who went into the bar, picked up some guy, slept with him and never called him again. 

            He was a man of one-night stands, of sex without the strings attached—but you, and your relentless pace, your disappearance and fixed gaze that never fell on him, made him want more. Made him want you and not for one night. 

            He wanted something that would last.

            He wanted you to be someone who lasted. 

            He just didn’t know why. 

***

            “The ED needs a consult, Dr. Park,” Nurse Ava calls out and he turns, hand underneath the sanitizer, the foam landing on his hand, bubbles popping in strange sensations on his skin. 

            “I’m clocking out,” he tells her, tone that same one he always uses, the one that is dark and in control and terrifies the interns, meaning that they don’t fuck up on the job. The tone that earned him the nickname of “Shark”. 

            “It’s a strange one,” she says, stepping out from behind the desk, arms crossing and one eyebrow rising. “You’ve been requested specifically, Park. And I’ll remind you that you may be the surgeon in this floor, but I am the charge nurse and I am telling you to go.” Park smiles once at her, that easy smile that wins him the Friday night hook-ups that disappear from his bed as soon as they’re both spent, the easy smile that doesn’t faze Ava. 

            “I’m going!” he replies, the smile shifting into the one that is Ava’s alone, the one that grew when the two of them began working together back when Park was an intern himself and she was a beginner nurse, latching onto each other as friends, needing that person that could pull them out from the job. 

            “I know,” she says, before spinning on her heel and heading over to a cluster of nurses, whispering and gossiping, harsh voice ringing out, telling them to get back to work, phones away and that the hospital wasn’t high school while Park slipped away, hitting the button for the elevator, crossing his arms and tapping his foot impatiently. 

            He didn’t like the ED, didn’t like the disrespect of the interns down there, people so faced with trauma that they forgot the rules of decency and teaching. He didn’t like the danger of the patients. He didn’t like dealing with the patients when they were awake in his consult room, let alone when they were screaming and writhing in pain from—most of the time—an injury that they could have avoided if they’d thought their actions through. 

            He didn’t like the ED because it was chaos and he liked order. He liked things neat and tidy, fitting into their boxes. He liked to be in charge and in the ED, no one, not really was in charge. 

            But he did his job, stepping into the elevator, going down to the floor that was chaos incarnate, the handover beginning as day shift switched to night shift, the day shift staff clocking out yet remaining because no one in this department had a good idea of work life balance. 

            “Park!” Lena calls out, lifting her hand in a frantic wave, red phone held to her ear, the receiver muffled by her hand. “Trauma 2!” He nods at her, arms crossed as he walks down the hall, dodging the endless stream of doctors and patients and nurses until he reaches the sliding door of the trauma room, stepping in and surveying the scene. 

            He stops short when he sees you. 

            You stand there by the patient, hands gloved and body filling out black scrubs, the mark of an ED doctor, the blue sterile gloves no longer sterile but marked by blood and Brendan can feel his heart speed up even when he thinks it should be stopping from the shock. 

            “Dr. Park,” Abbot calls out, his voice shocking Brendan from his stupor, the stupor of seeing you, the runner, the enigma, the crush and the dream here, in his hospital. Like you’ve been here all along, so close. “Glad you could join us.”

            “What’s the case, Abbot?” he asks, voice an imitation of his normal strength, normal tone, a façade truly because he feels like the earth has moved beneath his feet seeing you here. 

            “Care to explain, Dr. Handzo?” Abbot calls out and Brendan watches as you shift, lifting your head from the patient, eyes unfocused, mind on the case before you, yet settling on him nonetheless and Brendan can feel his heart drop at your attention. 

            He wondered what it would feel like to your eyes on him and now he knows. It feels good, too good. He doesn’t think eye contact has ever felt this good before and he wants nothing more than to hold to your gaze forever. 

            “Meet Gage Cramer, fifteen-year-old male who was hanging out with his friends at the bike park, practicing trick flips. Got knocked down on his jump and his friend miscalculated his at the same time, his bike landing and crushing Gage’s leg. Shattered femur, knee is still intact though,” Brendan hears you say, hears your voice for the first time, that slow even cadence and he’s gone even more than before. 

            But he ignores it—or tries to—stepping into the room, attention becoming that of “The Shark” eyes on the case even as his body heats at its proximity to you, his body so keenly aware of you that it makes him insane because he doesn’t even know you. 

            But god does he want to. 

            He looks down at the boy, the boy who is crying silently, tears sliding his face while his jaw is gritted with stoic determination not to show how much it hurts, not to show the world that he is vulnerable. A boy learning what the world wants of a man, not what is actually needed. 

            Brendan remembers those days, back when he felt the need to shut down who he was. Shut down the part of him that didn’t like girls, didn’t like the way it felt to be with them. He remembers how much he hated himself for so long, thinking he was a freak, a deviant. Not worth it. 

            He remembers how hard it was to come to terms with who he was. Who he liked. What he needed. He remembers and a part of him knows that that is why he has the issues he does, issues that something in you bypasses, changes. Rearranges. Which is why he resolves to stay, to catch you after this case, to ask you on a date. To not hesitate anymore.

            But for now, he surveys the scene, the damaged leg and exposed bone, the bits of muscle tissue and blood and the knee, miraculously untouched. And he knows that this poor kid has a hell of a life ahead of him, one where he learns what it’s like to not be normal. 

            “I’ll book an OR, get him in for amputation. Nothing here is salvageable, but it’ll be below the knee, not the worst,” he says, the right of his body warm and rigid from its closeness to you as he turns away, turns to Abbot who nods, saying nothing, merely turning back to his people, to his patient. Park forgotten. 

            But not by you. 

            You couldn’t forget Park the Shark if you fucking tried and you have tried. He sticks in your head like a burr and has since that day he walked into your gym, attention flicking to you on the treadmill, the person forever running from everything. 

            You thought it was nothing, but even fixing your gaze ahead and biting your jaw didn’t change anything, didn’t alter it in any way, instead your peripherals picked up on his every movement, every flex of his frankly impossible arms. And after weeks of that, you resolved yourself to one truth:

            You have a crush on Dr. Brendan Park. 

            And so, you are utterly screwed. 

            Moreso when he shows up in your trauma room, during handoff to the Night Shift, “Nightcrawlers” as Abbot says. Being on the night shift is supposed to mean that you never have to interact with him, that he’ll never be coming in because he’s a good enough surgeon—the best really—to not work nights. 

            That wasn’t why you chose night shifts though; in fact, you were on night shifts long before Brendan Park walked into your gym. 

            No, you chose nights because you like the dark, like the feeling of hiding because you’ve been living in a world that hasn’t wanted to see you anyways. Hasn’t wanted to acknowledge you, preferring to hide you away and ignore the fact that you exist at all. Ignore your presence, pretend you aren’t real. 

            So, nights suited you just fine. 

            “Anyone wanna take this fine young man up to the OR?” Abbot calls out as you pull off your gloves, dropping them in the disposal, simply shaking your head before ducking out the sliding door, back into the chaos of the Pitt. 

            “Not me,” you call out just before the doors slide closed and you’re back in the chaos so completely, the world of the night crawlers. 

            “Kid, you look like hell,” Lena calls out and you turn to her, flashing a grin and a thumbs-up as you walk towards the desk, leaning on it on your forearms while she types away at the computer, handing a clipboard to another nurse behind her without even looking away. 

            “That’s such an amazing compliment, Lens,” you tell her, reaching one hand down and grabbing your water bottle from where you leave it beside Lena’s, Shen’s second cup of Dunkins waiting there too. “But aside from how beautiful you think I am, what’s up?”

            “Kid,” she says, looking up and sighing, a smile curving on her face as she shakes her head, reaching out to ruffle your hair, “get to work. And don’t call me Lens! I am your mother and I deserve respect!” Her last sentence echoes after you as you dart off, glancing up at the patient board and snagging an iPad as Ellis comes up behind you, her arm closing around your shoulder. 

            “Heard you were in the Shark Attack room,” she says, voice low as she guides you from the chaos of the Pitt towards the stairwell, pushing one of the doors with her hip, still guiding you by your shoulder. 

            “What’s it to you, Ellis?” you reply, crossing your arms, the iPad tucked awkwardly under your elbow, pressing against your ribs, one eyebrow arching as she lets go of you, stepping into view, that gleeful look on her face. 

            “You survived being in the room with the man you have the hots for?” she asks you and you roll your eyes at her, shifting on your feet, nerves running through you as you remember the way that Park had looked at you, the way his eyes had focused on you, looking like for all the world he felt something too. 

            Before he turned to the case like the Shark everyone calls him. 

            “Yes, I survived. Alert the media,” you answer, your tone sardonic, voice acidic. 

            “When are you going to get over your crush?” she asks you, eyes flitting from you to the ED, where the chaos all of you Night Crawlers live on thrives, the adrenaline and caffeine and insanity. 

            “When he stops going to my gym,” you tell her and she turns back to you, eyebrows nearly at her hairline as her hands migrate to her hips, one leg kicking out as she assesses you. 

            “Him using your gym is the problem?” she asks you, pushing you to the side, out of sight of the windows when she catches a glimpse of Abbot emerging from the Trauma room, lips pressed in a thin and angry line. 

            “Yes,” you hiss at her, “because I go and I’m running, just practicing my endurance and he shows up looking insanely fucking hot, lifting weights and flexing his Greek god muscles, making me all hot and bothered. So! When he stops going to my gym and looking all fucking hot, I’ll stop having a crush.” Ellis, your best friend since med school, looks at you then with such abject pity as she shakes her head, eyes reflecting idiot back at you. 

            “Just change your gym days,” she says and you can feel that pit in your chest, just drop to your stomach, Occam’s Razor suddenly right in front of you. 

            “Shut up!” you hiss, pushing past her and back into the ED, back into the chaos where EMTs rush in, a woman convulsing on the gurney, mouth frothing. You walk over, but you feel Ellis pushing past you at a run, heading to the gurney and taking your patient, your trauma. 

            Of fucking course she did, you think as you turn back to the patient rooms, iPad under your arm as you assess the board, Lena watching you with shrewd eyes. It wasn’t your ideal job working with your mother, but she’s always been there, accepting you before you knew how to accept yourself. 

            So, it’s okay. 

            Even if she may micromanage you to ensure you stay healthy. 

            (Read: she babies you.)

            “You should try Room 3,” Lena calls out to you as she bustles around, darting towards Matteo, urgency in her step betraying the fact that he must have messed up on something paperwork related. 

            “Why Room 3?” you call out, the memory of Park’s eyes and the focus of his eyes on you still burning in your mind as your mom glances back over her shoulder at you, exasperation in her eyes. 

            “Palliative care,” she answers and in those two sentences you know—your case. It’s a family trait, really, the need to care for those who struggle to care for themselves, protecting them and advocating for them. The hand in the dark for them to hold when they see the last of the light. 

            And that’s why you approach Room 3, taking deep and calming breaths, expunging Park from your mind, focusing on the goal before you, the one of the patient, the one of the dying. 

            “Hey!” you hear Park call out and all your calming exercises go out the window because god, his voice is unfairly hot and he should not be allowed to just yell out like that. “Hey, Handzo, you got a minute?”

            “I’m actually about to check on a patient, Dr. Park,” you reply, turning around, summoning as much calm as you can, knowing that something is bound to snap in you if you have to keep interacting with him. “Can it wait?”

            “It’ll just take a minute,” he tells you and you sigh, but nod once, tucking the iPad under your arm as you follow him back towards the stairwell you just vacated with Ellis—who is currently looking at you with wide eyes, telegraphing What the FUCK?!

            “What is it, Dr. Park?” you ask him, when the metal door closes behind you. You know that if Abbot catches wind of you constantly ducking out that you’re gonna get a talking too—never yelling, that’s Robby’s style, but still. You’ll get an I’m disappointed in you, son. Thought you were better than that. Which, honestly, is just worse. You would take the yelling any day over it. 

            “I was just wondering,” he begins and you take notice of the fact that he’s out of his scrubs, dressed in a tight black t-shirt, stretched so thin across his broad chest that it should be illegal and jeans with a leather jacket thrown over the whole ensemble, looking way too hot. “…if you’d like to get coffee?”

            “Like, with…you?” you ask him, unable to hide the incredulousness of your tone, of your mood, the incredulity growing as he looks at you, a smile growing on his face as he bites his lip in an unconscious way, his eyes flicking up and down your body, the room suddenly far too hot and if you weren’t in front of him right now, you would totally be pulling on your collar and complaining of the heat. 

            “Yeah,” he says, tone soft but pleasant. Pleased. “With me.”

            “Yes…I mean,” you pause, coughing just slightly trying to conceal your eagerness and failing horribly, “I would like to get coffee with you…” you pause, blinking once, trying to reorient yourself in this moment, this frankly impossible moment. “It is a date right?”

            “Yeah, it’s a date.”

***

            Your shift was exhausting and painful and emotional which is pretty much par with every night shift you’ve worked, yet somehow it was worse. Lexis, a twelve-year-old palliative care patient, Room 3, passed away just at the end of your shift, her mom unable to remain, work calling, money needed to pay the exorbitant bills of care. 

            You were the one who held her hand as she passed, crying silent tears for this girl that hadn’t gotten to live. She knew hospital rooms from the time she was five, remission for a singular year before the cancer came back worse than before, worse than anyone expected of osteosarcoma. 

            You were the last one she saw, the last one she spoke too and if you hadn’t been trained, you would have broken down as that sweet little girl whispered thank you and you replied with always and it won’t hurt anymore and I’ll make sure your mom’s okay. Things she needed to hear, things you needed to say, yet somehow it’s not enough. 

            It’s never enough. 

            Not even knowing that she went peacefully, in no pain, with a smile because of you. Because she’s gone and she deserved a long life and it’s just not fair. Who the fuck decides who lives and dies because it just isn’t fair. 

            For every thousand patients that you save, there’s always one you can’t. 

            And it’s that one that will haunt you forever. 

            You remember every single one, their names and their ages and their last words. You can’t help it. Call it self-torture, call it lack of compartmentalization, call it whatever you want. In this line of work, it means you care. 

            And that’s what you hold fast to as you dart out the doors, your mom sighing and walking over to her Volvo, the safest car and you head off towards your truck, your vintage, lovingly restored 1956 Chevy in metallic purple. The truck you’d always wanted, the truck you had. 

            “You always drive an antique?” you hear someone call out and a part of you thinks it’s Park but it’s been a killer of a shift and you just don’t know. You don’t really know anything. “Hey, Handzo? You okay?” And then Park is in front of you, hands on your shoulders, his touch searing your skin, giving you new sensations, more than just tiredness and sadness and pain. And you want these new sensations; you don’t just want the numbness that you live in. 

            The numbness where your skin feels like it doesn’t sit right on your bones. 

            The numbness where you don’t feel real, where you feel like you can just fade away. 

            The ED takes something from you. A little bit more each time you’re there, another little piece of you and the theft is so small that you don’t notice it at first until suddenly you don’t feel like you used to. And then you’re numb, just chasing highs and more adrenaline. And then you’re like Shen, just doing more to feel that adrenaline, that rush. And then you’re like Ellis, leaning into the numbness, taking the small joys in the idiocy that gets people in the ER. And then you’re like Robby, yelling at people because you’re so close to cracking and there’s no other way to communicate, to say I need help. And then you’re like Abbot, unable to stand the quiet and the stillness, seeking more danger, more risk. 

            It’s the cost of the job. 

            It’s the cost of the Pitt. 

            You save people and destroy yourself, a little bit at a time. The Pitt is a doctor’s form of a devil. Do what you’ve always wanted to do and save so many lives…the cost?

            Only all your feelings. 

            But in the touch of Park’s hands on your shoulders, you feel more than just the numbness. You feel alive, and you haven’t really felt alive in a long time. 

            “Do you wanna fuck me?” you ask him instead of answering, your eyes on him and you can see the change in his eyes, the dilation of his pupils, the bob of his Adam’s apple and you can feel the slight twitch in his palms. 

            “We haven’t even gone on a date yet, pup,” he says and maybe it’s the nickname or maybe it’s the way he doesn’t answer your question, but you place your hand on the side of his face, a tender gesture, just toeing the line, never crossing it. 

            “Is that necessary?”

            He answers you by pressing you against the side of your truck, pressing his lips to yours, those lips that feel as soft as you’d imagined, as perfect and plush and he tastes like coffee and vanilla and strawberry ChapStick and desire. He tastes like everything you want and you feel his one hand on your waist, fingers digging into the planes of your stomach, one finger digging into the groove between stomach and hipbone, that pulling of the skin away. His touch sears, his other hand cupping your face as his tongue strokes into your mouth, sensuous and torturous and more than enough and not enough at the same time. 

            Your hands fist into the lapels of his jacket, pulling him closer to you, his body entirely pressing against you, so much that you can feel every hard line of his body pressing against yours, every inch of definition, your hands sliding from his jacket to the hem of his shirt, slipping under, hands pressing against his abs, tracing the shape, his body growing harder and harder under your touch, muscles twitching at every pass of your cold hands on his over-heated skin. 

            And then he pulls back, pupils dilated so much that his eyes look like the bottomlessness of the ocean, the dark waters where danger and desire lurk, his chests rising and falling violently, mouth just slightly open. 

            “I didn’t even think you’d noticed me,” he whispers, voice breathy and cracking, husky. “All those times in the gym, my palms so sweaty from the sight of you,” the way he says you steals your breath away, said with such desire and fervour, “and your unfair sexiness, I never thought you knew I existed. You always looked straight ahead. When you said yes to coffee…I was surprised so much.”

            “I looked straight ahead,” you tell him, leaning forwards to press a kiss to his jawline, the sharpest point where the jaw falls under the ear, “because otherwise I would just be watching you. I had a crush on you from the first moment you did a bicep curl, watching yourself in the mirror not for the aesthetics but to watch your form, critiquing yourself on the next curl. I had to take a very cold shower that day.” And then Brendan’s hands shift from your waist and your face to your ass, palming it and causing you to gasp, the sound choked. 

            “You don’t need a cold shower this time,” he whispers, eyes so pupil-blown that they’re black, “cause I’ll take care of you.”

***

            Which leads to now and the feeling of his hands on every inch of your body, tracing every line and plane and swell and dip, lips and fingers and tongue. The feeling of him in you and the way he hits that spot every time, a spot you didn’t even know existed really inside of you until now, your body hard and coiled, his hands soothing, back pressed against yours, hands on your hips, your hands braced on the wall as his lips find your neck. 

            He kisses and sucks at the skin, working it between his teeth, leaving marks behind, the feeling of his teeth causing everything to feel hot and hard and tense and for that coil to wind tighter inside of you. It’s so much and yet not enough. 

            It’s so much and yet not enough every time he rocks into you, his hands stroking every inch of you, lips trailing down your back, the press of his lips against your skin muffling the sound of his cries as he thrusts into you while your cries aren’t muffled, shattering through your room. 

            As he moves in and out, you feel alive. You feel warm and hot and hard and so close and alive. And you haven’t felt alive in so long. 

            “Just—hold on!” Brendan cries, his grip tightening on your body, teeth sinking into the muscle of your shoulder. 

            “Can’t—hold much! Longer,” you reply, words hard, mind fuzzy from the fucking you’ve been getting from the Greek god behind you. 

            “So close,” he murmurs, teeth still pressing into your skin, his words vibrating through your over-heated skin. And then he slams into you again and the two of you come undone, him into the condom and you into his hand and then he’s pulling out, his touch pulling away from your body and you can’t really think straight and so Brendan guides you to your bathroom, flipping the shower on and taking care of you, washing every inch of you as you just cling to him, his body the only thing keeping you upright. 

            “That was…” you pause, drawing in a deep breath as he shuts the shower off, grabbing a towel and helping you dry your body, tucking the towel around your hips while he dries himself, “fucking amazing.”

            “I take it coffee’s gonna wait,” he says as he disappears out of the bathroom, ducking out and grabbing you boxers and a t-shirt, helping you step into them and guiding you back towards your bed, your room set for your daytime hibernation. “Can I borrow some clothes?”

            “If they’ll fit,” you answer and you can hear him chuckle as you slide beneath your covers, groaning at the softness of the mattress against you. “And yeah, I’m…exhausted. I’m sorry, Brendan…I just needed to feel something.” He turns around, dressed in an old band shirt of yours that you don’t even remember buying that fits tight on him—which to him means it fits. 

            “I’m not complaining,” he tells you, climbing into the bed beside you, pulling you against him, your head falling on his chest, his arms around you and yours on him. “I just got to fuck the man I’ve been pining after for months. You think I’m upset about that?”

            “You wanted to date and I just…jumped your bones,” you reply, tone tired yet sardonic and he lets out a chuckle in response, tucking you even tighter against him, a wholeness and completeness in his chest for the first time. 

            “As long as this isn’t for one night,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to the top of your head, “then we’re fine.”

            “Do you know that song?” you ask him. “The one by Shawn Mendes that goes like,” and here you sing a little, your voice cracking but you don’t care, “sunrise with you on my chest/no blinds in the place where I live/Daybreak open your eyes/’Cause this was only ever meant to be for one night?”

            “Fallin’ All in You,” he says, “yeah I know it.”

            “While, here’s I think it should go: Daybreak open your eyes/’Cause this was never meant to be for one night. I want the long haul, Brendan. If you do?” And you can feel his body relax, breaths less constricted and the way he relaxes against you and into you. 

            “Yeah, I do. I really, really do.”

***

Epilogue

            A year. One year since that horrible shift, the one where you were numb and Brendan made you feel something, made you feel alive when you hadn’t felt alive in so long. Felt so numb to the world. 

            One year now of feeling alive and happy and loved. One year of smiling, rearranging. You ended up switching to days, the constant coming and going and not sleeping beside Bren just not right. You wanted to be on his schedule and in him, with him, you didn’t feel the need to hide anymore, to hide at night, to hide like the world wanted you to hide. 

            One year of living a life. 

            And now, looking down at your hand, at the simple platinum band, you can’t believe your luck. The simple band wasn’t really so simple, rather it was engraved with a Celtic knot pattern, This is the long haul engraved on the inside of the band, the words Brendan told you when you woke up that evening to him sitting at your table with pancakes and coffee that he’d made for you himself. 

            “God,” Lena says, her eyes lining with tears, “my little baby boy is getting married!” And then she’s hugging you as she cries, sobbing because she’s been there for every moment, every heartbreak and betrayal. And now she gets the happy moments. “Does this mean I’ll have grandchildren? Are you and Brendan going to adopt?” 

            “Mom!” you groan, pulling back from her embrace and wiping her tears away, smiling softly at her. “Let’s just focus on right now, okay? I have to get through the wedding with the bulking Groomzilla before I think about adoption, okay.”

            “He’s really bulking?”

            “Oh yeah. Says he has to compete with my unfair sexiness and the only way he can do that is if he bulks.”

            “Well, I don’t think you’re complaining,” she says and you can’t help but laugh, catching a glimpse of your fiancé in his purple scrubs walking towards you with a Dunkins coffee cup in his hand for you. 

            “I am most definitely not.”

            No, you really aren’t because you got the life you always wanted. You fell all in him and he fell all in you. 

Now, cis white women getting content made for them is OBVIOUSLY not the issue here. People write for their personal interests, and there is nothing wrong with that. We all know this, and we all enjoy a fun story with our favorite characters centering around us.

The main issue here is the mentioned women not tagging their content properly, refusing to tag their content properly, straight up lying in the tags or not tagging things at all.

Trans men, nonbinary people, trans women, gay men, disabled people, fat people, intersex people and many people of color or non-american readers are constantly left out of fandom space and forgotten entirely. I've seen hundreds of complaints about it, and it needs to be spoken about more. While I'm on specifically talking about the fanfiction part of it, it is a VISIBLE issue in every fandom space you could possibly partake in. I don't even need to explain to you the rampant racism and transphobia in the cosplay community.

And the fix is extremely easy! TAG YOUR THINGS PROPERLY. It is the easiest, simplest form of allyship one could do for the community, and it goes miles. However, a lot of you seem to not understand how to, even if your heart is in the right place.

How to tag your fanfiction for the general audience:

- Specify the gender of the reader. This goes MUCH farther than just what pronouns are used. I've read WAY too many fanfics that tell me it is gender neutral, only to be hit with nicknames like "princess", or to be told the intended reader loves dresses and wears a bra.

- In tags or a prior description, mention every nickname used for the reader and every possibly gendered descriptor. It's really not difficult, and doesn't take too long.

- If necessary, mention what style of clothes the reader is specified to wear. And if this applies as well, specify any highlighted personality traits you gave the reader.

- Specify the body of the reader. This also goes much farther than gender. "Afab" and "amab" don't exactly cut it. Many people are triggered by certain words connected to genitals, so specify what words are used for those as well! Also, if you are trying to write a gender neutral body, PLEASE specify whether it is entirely gender neutral or something is implied. Many say it is gender neutral, and then explain how the reader's body self lubricates, or even has a clitoris. Please do better than that.

- For the love of God, do not automatically feminize the "GN afab" reader you wrote without a warning, and PLEASE MENTION if breasts are even spoken of, let alone used for smut reasons. And do NOT refer to someone's body as having "fem" or "male" genitalia. just say vagina or penis, please.

- Specify what body type you had in mind. Many fat or even slightly chubby individuals need to look for fanfiction that specifically caters to them, because "neutral body reader" writers, tend to not make it neutral. If you have any specifics on whatever you have written for the body mentioned, do tag it!

- Specify what sort of skin tone or hair texture is mentioned, if at all. Many POC complain that they read neutral fiction just to find straight hair, pale skin, light eyes, and blushing faces to be mentioned. If any color of the body is mentioned at all, or anything is implied, do say so! This also can go for specific things you may not think about, like how long it takes hair to dry, how easy it is to brush, hairstyles and other things of the sort.

It may seem like a bit of a list, but this is really the LEAST you can do for your community. We are consistently forgotten and ignored anywhere we go, and the simple things like this truly mean a lot.

- If there is an implied location, or anything to imply a place of origin, it's best to be on the safe side and mention that if it feels important.

- Please tag if you put the reader through, or mention a past traumatic event. Casually putting the reader character through things like an abusive ex, abusive parents, bad home or work life, or something like a car accident can be highly triggering. tag your scenes thoroughly! This also applies to putting the reader insert through something like sexist comments, unwanted touching of any kind, and similarly negative situations.

I cannot tell you the amount of times I've turned to fanfiction as an outlet and an escape, as many others have, just to be jumpscared by my favorite characters misgendering me. It's truly a miserable experience knowing no place is actually welcoming to me, or in the very least accommodating for people who aren't like them. This post is NOT meant to shame or send harassment to those who are forgetful, but ignorance is never a good thing to uphold. No one is asking you to write for an audience you don't want to, we just want to KNOW who you are writing for. Assuming an entire space is all one demographic is never, ever a good thing.

If you need help writing for a demographic you don't fully understand, just ask people who are a part of it how they would! Look at how other writers write and tag their content, and listen to anyone if they have necessary critiques. I wish you all happy writing! :]

Maeker did not understand why you were here. Why a Stark heir was brought to King’s Landing, especially one such as you who were loud and brash and full of laughter. It made no sense why you were here, before him, around him, your energy everywhere. The previously silent halls now rung with laughter and teasing, your voice echoing around the Keep even when you weren’t in the room. 

            It drove him to insanity. 

            It drove him to insanity the way you commanded attention and loyalty, the way you could have people laughing with you just by laughing yourself. It drove him to insanity, that you, a boy of no more than twenty could command more loyalty than he, a man of thirty-five. He wanted to know what was so special about you, what made you this force. This miracle in human flesh because knowing it might give him peace. 

            Peace where you had only given him chaos and insanity.

            Peace, something he had not known since you arrived. 

            Peace…

***

            “Come on, up you get,” Maeker hears you say, your voice bouncing off the stone walls of the Keep, echoing around to him, the pitch and tone grating on his nerves. 

            “No,” he hears Daeron mumble, words slurring and voice thick. “Don’ wanna.”

            “I don’t really care, brother,” you say and he can hear you pulling him up to his feet, hauling him up, your footsteps strong and sure, accompanied by the stumbling and muttering and cursing of his son, the drunkard yet dear boy. The oldest haunted by dreams of what are not and yet will be. 

            “Wanna…sleep,” he hears his son mumble, accompanied by a curse falling from your lips. He cannot see you, but he can imagine it. He delights in it truly, this first crack in the armour of the perfect, bubbly heir to Winterfell. The boy made of ice, strong and cold and utterly unstoppable, a force of nature. One that’s never seen in the Keep. 

            “You have to help me out, Daeron. I can’t get you to your rooms without your help, come on. Don’t do this.” You sound pained and Maeker can feel a strange twinge deep inside of himself, one of kinship, shared burdens—because it sounds like you understand caring for someone who doesn’t want the help you need to provide. 

            It’s why he rounds the corner—or it’s what he tells himself at least—stopping before the two of you, sighing and shaking his head at the sight. His oldest son slumped against the wall, your arm hooked round his waist, the other holding his arm over your shoulder, anchoring him to you, attempting to leverage him up and out, but he’s not going. 

            “Idiot boy,” he hisses, stepping past you not even sparing a glance for you, his attention focused on his son, not you, never you. Because you did not belong. “Get up!” He loops his arm around his son’s other side, his arm brushing yours, electricity tingling around the space of contact, his teeth gritting at the feeling so familiar yet foreign at the same time. He takes his son’s other arm, looping it around his shoulders and pulling him up and away from the wall, from the empty bottle of wine tipped on its side. From his never-ending nightmares. 

            “Thanks,” you tell him and all he does is grunt in response, hauling his son and you along with him. You struggle to keep up with his aggressive strides and Maeker notices. He doesn’t want to notice. He doesn’t want to notice anything about you because you are nothing but a nuisance, yet he does all the same. He notices the way you always pass by the windows, watching the gardens as if seeing green and growth and spring is truly that foreign to you. 

            He notices the way you duck around the corners, always watching over your shoulder before disappearing into the library. He notices the way you always wear grey, never white as if being a boy means you cannot wear white, the colour of a maiden. As if being a boy doesn’t make you one of a sort. 

            He notices you. 

            And he would do anything not to. Because you are a nuisance, someone who doesn’t belong in the Keep. 

            Or at least, that’s what he tells himself. 

            “Wine,” mumbles Daeron, his voice drawing Maeker back to here and now, away from the image of you, haloed by the sun coming in through the window, half in shadow, half in light, a living nightmare with the promise of a dream.

            “I think you’ve had enough, my friend,” you tell him, voice carrying through the halls boisterously, loudly. Like everything with you—too much. 

            “He is your prince,” Maeker counters, voice stern and rigid, unyielding. Yet he can hear something underneath his own voice, something strange, a tremor. Something that makes no sense with who he is, the power that he has. 

            “And a prince is a title; a friend is a person and a term of endearment. One does not contradict the other—do you imply that a prince cannot also occupy the role of a friend, Your Grace?” you counter and Maeker stops. Just stops in the hallway, his head cocking to the side just slightly. 

            “What did you say, boy?” he asks you and he turns to look at you, taking in the stern set of your jaw, the bob of your Adam’s apple as you face him, straightening. 

            “I corrected your notion of the words. A title given by birthright does not negate the occupation of a role such as friend, Your Grace,” you answer, lifting your chin in a stupid defiant move and he sneers, his upper lip curling, preparing to bite back a retort but you continue, “and it’s my lord, not boy. I have a title myself as the son of Lord Stark, as his heir. That entitles me to some respect, Your Grace.”

            And he had no response, simply a grunt as he turned away, the sight of your eyes, burning with fire lingering in his mind. Lingering in a way that was strange and infuriating at the same time.  

            And it left him with a question, a query: What was it you were doing here?

***

            You have grown bolder and more annoying, spending more time with Daeron, keeping the wine from his grip, laughing with Aegon and Daeron, joking and laughing and teasing. Not even Aerion no longer griped about your presence, no longer viewed you as an outsider, annoyed by your antics. 

            Now, everyone but he was alright with you. 

            “What is the Stark boy even doing here, brother?!” he cries now, his hands flying at his sides, dramatic motions necessitated by the antics of the court. The antics you helped to create. “He speaks with knowledge in some moments, yet acts like a fool all the others! He has no place here! He’s a nuisance!”

            “Why is it that his presence bothers you so, brother?” Baelor asks, his tone calm and even, his eyes still focused on upon the trade agreements before him, quill held aloft in his hand as he prepares to sign, dipping it into the deep red ink pot. “Because from where I stand, you rarely interact with the lordling. He should not cause you this much distress.”

            “He is a fool and he is teaching my Aegon to be the same!” Maeker cries, frustration overwhelming, remembering the sight of you with his youngest, tender and caring and teasing. Teaching him something, the words of wolves and falcons and hunts arcing up to his ears from your whispered conversation, your eyes alight in a way that made that strange yet foreign feeling erupt within him again. 

            Because you interacted with his sons like you cared. 

            “He is no fool, Maeker,” Baelor says now, his voice a sigh as he looks up, face tired as he looks at his youngest brother, the one hot-headed and bullish and prone to hating before loving. “He is a genius. Lord Stark wanted him to have access to our archives, our records and knowledge. He has some…I believe he called it a hypothesis surrounding dragons and the eggs and their fossilization. He views it as a problem and he loves to solve them.”

            “Then why does he act like an idiot?” Maeker folds his arms across his chest, leaning back against the stone wall, kicking one foot out before him, awaiting his brother’s reply, eyebrows arched. 

            “Because he doesn’t want people to know. You and I both know that the Northern folk are not always the most…accepting. And he is just, truly a delightful character who loves to laugh. Can you fault him? Look at his family,” Baelor says, standing from his desk, mismatched eyes narrowing on his brother, one eyebrow rising, a mimic of Maeker’s own expression. 

            “He’s far too close to my children,” he complains and Baelor comes to stand before him, his hands coming to rest on his brother’s shoulders. 

            “Why do you care?” The words are pointed and aimed at something that Maeker doesn’t want to admit, the thing that he’s wondered ever since he noticed you watching the spring, haloed by the light of the sun. 

            “He is a fool,” he remarks, but the protest falls short even to his own ears and Baelor shakes his head, stepping back from his brother and turning on his heel, back to his desk. 

            “No,” Baelor says, his back still to Maeker, gaze finding the window, the sight of you playing with Rhae and Egg beyond it, a sight that reminds him of Dyanna. “Do you remember the first time you met Dyanna?” 

            “Not clearly,” Maeker says, brow knitting together in confusion as he walks towards his brother, clasping his hands behind his back. “I remember she wore a Dayne purple dress and…was gorgeous as always.” His voice is soft and reverent as he thinks back on his late wife, the woman who had been his everything, who gave him everything. Including her life. 

            “You don’t remember then,” Baelor says, his tone light and expression nostalgic as he remembers, mind clearer than his younger brother’s. “You were both children and you glared at her and called her stupid and walked off. For the entirety of her time with us, you insulted her constantly and complained about her to me nonstop. You found fault where we all found perfection and when it was time for her to leave, you got angry. You didn’t want her to go because you realized that you hated her because you loved her and you didn’t want to love anyone. And all she did when you confessed…all she did was look at you and said I always knew.”

            “What does that have to do with anything, brother?!” Maeker feels that familiar mix of anger and grief at the mention of his Dyanna, the love of his life. The one who was his only, the one made for him at the Seven’s decree. 

            “I think you know, Maeker,” Baelor says, turning to his brother and placing a hand upon his shoulder, patting him once and then walking off, out the door to the rest of the Keep, leaving Maeker alone in his office, alone yet not because he looks out the window and he sees you. 

            He sees you, a boy of two and twenty, picking up his son and placing him on your shoulders, running through the gardens, his daughters laughing at your antics. Their faces no doubt filled with joy. 

            With love. 

            Everyone here in the Red Keep loves you. Everyone except him. 

            But when he turns and leaves his brother’s office, turning down the stone hallway, hallways that always seem to ring with the absence of his Dyanna, without her soft and delicate nature, her calming ways and stubborn strength, he wonders. Now, he wonders if he truly does hate you. 

            He wonders if he’s noticed everything about you from the colours in which you dress, to the way you creep to the library hoping no one will notice, to the way you stare at spring and summer as if they are beasts of a wonderous nature, one which you have never seen before. A strange and wonderous thing. 

            And Maeker realizes as he walks the long walk back to his chambers, that you, a boy who acts like a fool with the mind of a saviour, are a strange and wonderous thing. 

            And that he’s never really hated you at all. 

            But he also realizes that he can never love you. He would like to curse the rules, tell them to fuck off but he cannot and just because he cares for you, doesn’t mean that you do him. 

            Why would you after all?

            He’s a man. An older one at that. And you are a boy, one with the potential for true love. A real love, one that causes a wedding and children. 

            You are a boy, deserving of your own Dyanna. 

            And after all, what boy would love a man? That’s strange and wrong and impossible. He knows that he should not love you after all, not entertain these thoughts and yet he cannot seem to stop. 

            Because his brother is right. 

            As always. 

***

            “Your Grace?” you call out, voice questioning and quiet, yet it carries through the library, a lack of the loudness it usually has, the loudness that he complained about to Baelor, the one he’s griped about to himself yet also the one he misses now. He misses it because the loudness is you and he knows now that he does not hate you.

            That he never did. 

            “My lord,” he answers, inclining his head as he approaches you where you sit at a long wooden table, scarred with marks from daggers and fire and men’s anger. “I’ve come to study with you, if you will have me.”

            “Of course, Your Grace!” you cry, pulling out the chair beside you, moving two leatherbound tomes before him. “Actually, you have wonderful timing because I could use your help. You see, dragons began to dwindle in size, correct? And then we see fossilization of the eggs that your family has now, yes? Well, perhaps…” All Maeker does is listen, nodding as you speak because even though you ask questions, you do not expect an answer. 

            And Maeker is conflicted, a bundle of confusion inside of himself because of you. Because of himself. 

            Because of the impossibility of what he feels for you.

            So, all he does is listen.

***

            It becomes an everyday occurrence, you talking at him, flipping through pages rapidly, pointing things out to him and speaking in rapid-fire. It becomes a habit, something unconscious and needed and normal. 

            And Maeker begins to resign himself to the truth. That he spoke true when he said he would take no other wife, that he would love no other woman. 

            He just loves a man. 

            He just loves you. 

***

            “You’re late,” he calls out as you slip into the library, walking quickly to the table, sinking into your chair beside him. “I’ve been waiting, boy.” You do not balk at the name like you used to, finding that it’s a term of endearment now, the prince now having accepted you. 

            Even if it’s not in the way in which you wish. 

            Because you know what you like and it is not the fairer sex. No, it never has been. It’s an essential part of your being that you are a man who likes men. It is not something that can change, nor do you want it to, it is who you are but falling is always hard. 

            It’s hard because you don’t know if you will ever find peace, if you will ever be the one to find someone who likes you for real. For you and not the leverage they can gain over Lord Stark. 

            You want a man who wants you. 

            And right now, you have fallen hard for Prince Maeker Targaryen. Someone known for his love of Dyanna Dayne, the love that consumes all of someone. Everything they have. Everything they will ever have. 

            Even if he were like you, there would never be room for you. 

            Or so you think.

            “I had to escort Prince Daeron home. They found him in another brothel and he would not leave unless I assisted him,” you answer, pulling one of the texts to you, but his hand on yours stops the track of pulling the book to you. His touch would always stop you. 

            “Thank you,” he says, tone quiet, but not weak. Strong, impossibly so. And you cannot help the way your expression changes at his touch, turning lovesick like a fool, skin tingling at the contact while your heart melts and surges at the same time in your chest. You curse the foolish thing, but it helps not. 

            “I would do anything for you, Your Grace,” you whisper and when you see his eyes widen, flare, you regret your words, biting your tongue now, hoping that he didn’t notice, that he didn’t see anything underneath it but a devoted subject, sworn to the throne. The throne of which his family controls. 

            “Anything?” he asks you and you nod, mouth growing dry as you watch his eyes shift, the ice inside of them shattering, revealing insecurity as strong as the ones inside of you. 

            “Anything.” He shifts in his seat to face you properly, both hands coming to rest on yours, anchoring yours to the table while your skin burns at the contact. 

            “I vowed after my wife died,” he begins, face growing solemn and light at the same time, eyes unfocused as if he can see her, Dyanna. His precious love of all. “I vowed to never take another wife, to never love another woman because I couldn’t. She was my everything. She was everything.” His tone is fierce and strong and you can feel your heart sinking but then it surges when his eyes clear and focus upon you, the expression upon his face, that of something changed. Like a man forever altered. “And I meant those words. I mean those words. But I have found it in my heart to love another.”

            “Who, Your Grace?” you ask, hope choking you. Impossible hope. 

            “Someone who arrived in the Keep carrying ice on the air. Someone loud and boisterous in effort to hide their true nature, the nature of intelligence, wiser than any Maester. Someone who cares for people even when they do not care back. Someone born to a family of ice yet as warm as any fire.” You know then at his words that it is you, yet you want his confirmation. 

            You want to hear him say it. 

            “They sound like quite the miracle, Your Grace,” you say and he smiles then at you, a smile that tells you he knows what you are playing at. 

            “They are. You are. I need to know…would you…?” he trails off, unsure of how to ask you if you feel what he feels. If you are like him. 

            And you answer him in the only way you can. You lean forwards and press your lips to his, an open-mouthed kiss that catches him off-guard but not for long because soon he returns it, his tongue darting into your mouth, stroking yours in ways you didn’t know could feel so good, in ways that have the two of you gasping into each other’s mouths, his hands finding your waist, grounding himself in the firmness of your body, the solid structure of your body, the flatness and the planes of muscle, honed by the mandatory swordcraft of any son of Stark. 

            Your hands drift in different directions, one twining in the short silver strands of his hair, pulling gently as your mouth continues to move against his, your other hand drifting to his waist, fingers digging in just slightly to his back. As if reminding yourself that this is real. 

            That he is real. 

            “This may well ruin us both, my heart,” he whispers, pulling back from the kiss, his lips swollen from the force of the kiss, of your lips on his. And you know it, but you could not care because he has called you my heart. 

            “I don’t care,” you whisper, pulling him back to you, your face just inches from his, “do you?”

            In answer, he kisses you again. 

            And again. 

***

            It was not easy your love. It was not easy when he had your chambers moved to ones near his and people asked questions. It was not easy when young Aegon saw you and his father kissing in a way that “women kiss men”. It was not easy when the family found out. 

            But in other ways, it was easy. It was easy because he never expected you to be anyone you weren’t. He didn’t expect you to act like a woman because you aren’t one. You never will be and never want to be. He didn’t want you to be anyone but the boy whom he had thought he hated when in fact he loved. 

            And it was easy in other ways because Baelor had always known. Had been accepting of. Had finally had it with the family, telling them to just shut up and letting your rooms join Maeker’s. 

            It wasn’t easy and yet it was. 

            It was easy because it was love. And love is never easy but it always is worth it. Which makes it easy in the long run because loving someone that you’re meant to love is truly the easiest thing in the world and you had been rewarded. 

            You found the one who loved you. 

            “When did you know you loved me?” Maeker asks you now, his arms tight around you, the two of you lying on your backs, eyes trained on the ceiling where you insisted on painting a giant star chart. 

            “I knew when you first rolled your eyes at me because you were the first to never try to impress me for my father’s loyalty,” you answer and in reply, you can feel the scruff of his beard on your left temple as he presses a kiss to the top of your head. 

            “Sometimes,” he muses, “I cannot believe that our love is real. That it’s something that exists. It’s so strange.”

            “Yes, it is,” you answer, snuggling back in his arms, your head coming to rest on his bare chest. “But there is no explanation for a love such as this. It’s real and strong and that is all that matters.”

            “Yes. You’re right, my love. As always.” And then the two of you slip back into sleep, the one fact reverberating between the two of you—there is no explanation for a love such as this. 

            And there doesn’t need to be. 

            It is love.