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From the musings of @dorsetti @make-a-desert-call-it-peace @tellerficraz and everyone else involed with this crazy strange fandom based on the hit BBC/HBO show that finished airing a month ago Half Mannnn

Featuring: Joe Bird as Baird Pallister

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Baird was always a sweet kid, with full cheeks and eyes too big to be denied anything from his mother. Mona Pallister didn’t come from much, and she managed to fuck up her life in every way she could imagine. She sat through interview after interview watching the manager scan through her meager resume and land on the near six-year gap of unemployment. She tried to tell them it wasn’t technically unemployment, she had been managing her husband’s affairs. 

And your children? They’d ask. 

Yes, of course. She’d reply, her hand on her pregnant belly. It wasn’t technically a lie. She was going to be raising them. Or just one. 

The manager would politely decline a followup interview. 

She finally found a job, a grocer, run by an elderly woman, having taken over the business since her husband passed away. The two bonded, Mona with her new baby, and the elder widow, with her newly single and very free life. 

They talked about all the things they weren’t allowed to do, when they were with their husbands, they told Baird he wasn’t going to be like them. That they would all be free, together. 

Mona managed the store as Baird grew up between its shelves. She sold the large house that Ruben had painstakingly built for them, she just couldn’t look at it any more, didn’t want to think of him.

She accepted the generous gift from Niall’s estate, it wasn’t enough to survive on, but it helped pay off the numerous loans Ruben had taken out without her knowing over the years, and after selling the house, they had enough to be comfortable, her and Baird living together in a two bedroom walk-up, a bike-ride’s distance from the grocery she managed, impressively she might say. 

Baird liked watching the people coming in and out of the grocery every day after school, he was most fascinated by the strangers, people that he hadn’t seen before, who didn’t know him, and he didn’t know them. He was fascinated by them, by their stories, he wanted to know everything about them. He was curious, they would say. Baird always thought that was a good thing, but sometimes it sounded like an insult. 

He read the paper every morning, shortly after it was delivered to the grocer. Baird liked to listen to the stories of the ‘good old days’ when papers were delivered to homes by hand, and not everyone was always on their dang devices.

Baird was embarrassed to say it, the older he got the more his ears flushed when he thought about it, but he knew it was true. His best friend was his mum. Sure, he had friends at school, but they felt more distant, like how he imagined how people spoke about co-workers. They were thrown together by chance, not by choice. He could tell his mother anything, and he knew she wouldn’t judge him for it. It was them against the world. It always had been. It was all he ever knew. 

Mona and the Grocer Widow would comment about how smart their young boy was and how quickly he was becoming a man. He would brush them off and rush to school on his bike, ready to arrive long before the morning bell, he had to prepare to give the morning announcements over the schools internal broadcasting televisions. It wasn’t fancy, like some of the posh schools with their “Av Rooms” and their “Media Labs”, it was an old camera, hooked up to an old computer, that streamed out their announcements to every room in the school equipped with an old television, propped up in the corner, or mounted on the ceiling. 

He didn’t care that no one watched it. He had pride in his work. And his mother was proud when she was called in before the headmaster to speak about Baird’s behavior. He was too radical, pushing too many “hot button issues” as they’d call it. She didn’t care. She loved her little trouble maker. He only made good trouble.

Sometime before he finished Sixth Form, he had broken a huge story. (I don’t have a specific idea so PLEASE SHARE IDEAS) Baird uncovered come corruption in the local government, he had exposed a plot by the school administration to cover something up, it was a big deal. He was in the newspapers he read every morning.

And then they showed up. 

The BBC wanted to interview him and his school partners about their work, they said they were impressed and expected to see great things from them in the future. The reporter even joked, as they were packing up, that they would get the kids the footage, so they could be sure to include them in their university applications. 

(It would be cute if he got a free-ride to Oxford, but I don’t know how Casper would also get there with his half-ass attitude BUT Edinburgh seems like the perfect place to get a full-ride plus some for a comfortable experience)

Baird worried about leaving his mother, not that he was worried about her safety, or his safety, he just worried. They had never been apart before, and he worried he wouldn’t measure up against real talent.

Mona reminded her son that he had real talent. She even joked that she’d start dating, join those social media apps as she called them. It had been so long, she was sure she still had what it takes. At that, Baird was finally ready to hang up the phone and meet his new flatmates for freshers. 

“Their names? Baba, you won’t know them! I don’t know one of them is called Baird Pallendrone or something, Baba I’ve got to go!” Casper answered, digging through his overturned suitcase for the socks he needed for the night out. 

“Pallister?” his grandfather asked, more like a correction. 

“Yeah, Baba, I think—“

“The boy from the news?!”

“Baba, what? What news?” 

“Oh nothing, nothing to worry about, Beta! He was a teenage sleuth from Scotland, your Nani is calling me, I’ll talk to you later, son, goodbye!” 

Casper knew something was wrong when he heard the dial tone because he had never had his grandfather hurry off the phone so quickly in his life. 

“Your quote was so good! You have to let me publish it in The Student,” Baird begged on behalf of their uni’s paper.

“My mum would freak,” Casper countered, his hands behind his head as they lay together on their dorm issue bed. 

“I don’t have to quote you directly, I can use a pseudonym? I could call you Ghost?” Baird offered.

“I little too ‘on the nose,’ Bard,” Casper mockingly said his name in a thick American accent. 

Baird took in a deep breath, thinking, looking up at the stars. 

“Have you ever seen Peter Pan?” 

“Probably.”

“Oh come on, it was me mum and I’s favorite one to watch. She’d say she was Wendy and I was her lost boy,” he wished he hadn’t said that. It was a little too personal. “Anyway, my favorite was the little fox one, he was the oldest and the tallest of the Lost Boys, besides Peter, of course…I had a costume and everything.” Why could he just not shut up, he wanted to die. “Anyway…Slightly, his name was Slightly. That’s what I could call you? In the paper?” 

Casper looked at Baird, really looked at him. 

“This is important to you, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Of course, what you said matters.” 

There was a long pause. Casper had seen every doctor and specialist and medicine man in the country, and that was the first time he believed someone when they said that to him.

“Slightly? I think I can live with that.”

“What’s his name?” Mona asked, her mouth open in excitement over the phone.

“Slightly,” Baird offered. 

“Slightly? Where’s he from with a name like that?” 

“Here Mum, he’s from here, its just what I call him, but I really…think I might…” 

“Oh! I’m so happy for you, son. I told you, you would find your people there! Oh, someone’s just come in with a shipment of frozen, I’ve got to go! Text me updates!” She knew her son wouldn’t text, she had to force him to have a phone, he preferred to write things by hand, talk over the phone, be a real man. She had raised him good. 

Mona had taken off early at the grocer, she needed to make tonight special. It was the first time her son was bringing someone over, and it was time to go all out to show how cool of a mom she was. She wasn’t going to be against her son bringing home a man, not to mention that Casper had mentioned he was quite posh, she wasn’t going to let him down and cut any corners. The roast smelled delicious, she had added apples and everything. She had made the potatoes by hand, nothing was too good for her perfect son. 

She had forgotten to put the kettle down when the door finally rang, she was halfway there when she realized she was holding onto the hot, boiling pot. It was too late now, she couldn’t stand it, she was ready to see her boy after this long time, the longest time they had ever spent apart. 

She opened the door and was greeted by her son, her perfect boy and his perfect eyes. She loved him just as much as she did when she first met him, swaddled at the hospital and just finished crying. 

And then…she saw him, Niall Kennedy, looking back at her, from another boy’s face.

She didn’t notice the boiling water scolding her leg as the pot clanged to the floor.

authors note: *screams and sets everything on fire* AHHHHHHH so yeah Casper is either going to call Baird Palindrome because its cute OR Paladin, because Casper did a lot of DND in therapy and its his favorite class because he's BASIC