Dropping in to say I think about “pink flamingoes in the pool” literally so much it’s So good and the part that always knocks me over is the line where Jack told 14 year old Quinn he doesn’t have any friends. This little thread of friendlessness here literally kills me.
“He was always the first to make friends when they moved; he’d start getting sleepover invites and group chat invitations from his teammates, like, two weeks into the school year. Quinn would usually make his first friend around Hanukkah
There were a couple of years before Jack really understood what words could do where he said shit that will probably be lodged in Quinn’s brain forever; a particularly tectonic That’s why you don’t have any friends and you have to hang out with mine when Quinn was fourteen still shifts on him sometimes, still opens up some chasm inside himself that he can get lost in, if he isn’t careful.”
Like OW! Absolutely perfectly painful. It stands out to me so much even among all the more adult and immediate things happening for the characters. It hits so hard! The childishness of sibling relationships. Things from the past/mean things said years ago can stick to us so vividly because that sibling relationship is so much more closely linked to childhood… lodged in his brain forever!
The feeling of loneliness comes across so perfectly here as well:
“Luke’s face goes blurry; he must be on another app. It’s kind of funny, the idea that Quinn could’ve come out to him and Luke would have been busy maintaining his Snap streaks.”
There’s something so lonely about this moment and Luke doesn’t even KNOW..
I really love this fic I’ve reread it several times!! Losing my mind about That’s why you don’t have any friends….youre such a good writer!
And if I told you the loneliness and friendlessness and sibling stuff and these three specific passages are also my favorite parts about pink flamingos??? The way something you hear when you're 14 will just stick in your ribs and inform how you think about yourself and what you think everyone else can see when they look at you…whew!! Thank you thank you, I’m so glad you enjoyed. Reading this back and I have written a novel in response but this ask is like exactly what I love about this fic so :-/ had to do it to em.
A little silly backstory is that Quinn and Jack in this fic are completely inspired by my mom and her sister, and the “that’s why you don’t have any friends” line is a direct rip from their lives (don’t tell them!!) They are super super close but had this insane monthlong fight during covid because my mom (via zoom naturally) was like “why would you say [thing Jack said] to me when we were kids? it completely fucked me up.” and my aunt was like “I’m sorry but straight up I do not remember saying that.” And I believe her. I really do think she would have owned it if she remembered. So my mom had, in the 40+ years since this happened, constructed this idea of herself as a friendless loser and made numerous real adult choices based on that understanding of herself, and the foundation was just something stupid a 12-year-old said to her and never thought about again. Which of course is so fucking understandable and real and painful and human.
Like Jack has literally no memory of saying this to Quinn. And I think he would be defensive at first, but then mortified and deeply apologetic in the long arc of time, if Quinn were to bring it up and explain how much it fucked him up. Did not realize as a smartmouthed 12-year-old that he was traumatizing his brother, there just weren’t enough Wii remotes for all his friends to play MarioKart at his bday party and later he bought Quinn a thing of his favorite candy and assumed they were cool and never thought about it again. I also think the “when you give Jack a card he plays it” thing is Quinn’s outdated understanding of Jack, and probably in reference to something that happened, at the very latest, in 2015. Like Quinn has this idea that Jack and Jim are allies, probably left over from their teenage years, and Adult Jack is like, I do not know how to make this clearer to you: YOU are my ally. Our dad is kind of a controlling psycho and I have your back.
I wanted to write Quinn and Jack with all these ancient hurts that bleed into their present relationship. Like Jack genuinely wants, more than anything in the world in the night timeline, for his brother to hang out with what he rightfully believes are their shared friends and let his hair down and stop talking like Jordan Peterson and get laid! And somewhere in there, let Jack in on what has so obviously been eating away at him all summer.
And I think Quinn being closeted also has a lot to do with his loneliness. IMO you can't ever be truly at ease with someone when you are hiding a huge secret about the core of yourself from them. And I think both Jack and Luke have learned not to push, not to get too deep with Quinn, not to ask questions he doesn't want to answer, because he’ll withdraw or he’ll lash out. Luke is better at this, generally uses distance as a survival strategy to decompress from his deep intense family and their deep intense feelings. Like imo there are people Luke would push during the Snapchat conversation, but Quinn isn’t one of them, because Luke has learned (the hard way) that there are things Quinn doesn’t want to talk about, and sex and dating is one of those things. Okay, great. Luke will keep the peace and won’t pry. You do not have to tell him twice.
Whereas Jack especially is super perceptive, can sense that Quinn keeps him at arms' length, is lying to him, was really hurting [the summer after Brady’s engagement, but Jack didn’t make that connection] and wouldn't tell him why. And he really resents that Quinn lies and deflects and withdraws, and will sometimes push at Quinn, try to get the truth out by getting a rise. But for someone who is painfully transparent in so many ways, in my mind this Quinn is pretty masterful at shutting down, shutting him out, deflecting. I think for Jack the scene in the kitchen is this building relief/catharsis of Oh, he’s actually being honest with me? Is trusting me with something?? And then Quinn gets in too deep, flails with his “it’s team stuff” and Jack’s heart sinks, but he also knows that it’s just going to make it worse if he tries to push Quinn, so he’s like for sure, man. It’s team stuff. 🙄
