So this is gonna sound random but I got recommended a youtube vid of this football press conference and the coach who was listening to the translator was like (OUT LOUD) 'wow this guy's got an erotic voice' and now all i can think about is some alternate universe where Beth only got to know Rio through his voice first (phone sex operator? Still crime but he only calls by phone rather than in person?) HELP I'm overwhelmed by all the possibilities of in-depth voice descriptions!
Um, this sounds like the best sort of random??
Okay okay okay, bear with me, but I’m thinking historical au. I’m thinking it’s the early 1950s and Beth’s a switchboard operator in a loveless marriage with Dean. Rio’s a WWII veteran, struggling to pull his life back together after the war. He had been stationed out in the Philippines which a quick Google tells me is where many Latino men were stationed during the war, and was injured in a way that makes it hard for him to easily find work after the fact.
Rhea has recently left him, and he’s struggling and ends up working in a few shady dealings to get himself on his feet, but he has to make A Lot of Calls - to Rhea and Marcus, to new business associates, and everyone at the switchboards knows his voice, because um, his voice is p great.
Beth knows it through other people - likes it - but doesn’t exactly think much of it. She mostly just likes working, being out of the house, away from Dean, the kids now all in school, but one day she’s Rio’s operator, and they have a brief joke and something startles awake in her not because his voice is sexy (although, y’know, part of that), but maybe just because he asks about her day, and Beth can’t remember the last time Dean did that.
Maybe after that she gets him a lot, and they develop a sort of repertoire with each other in the brief moments before she patches his calls, and maybe Beth starts to know this schedule - knows that every second day he calls his ex-wife at 4 to talk to his son, knows that every Sunday after church he calls his mother three towns over, knows that he has meetings with some of these guys on Tuesdays at 10 or Thursdays at 12 - and maybe she starts to feel prickly with energy at those times, eyes fixed on the little lights of the switchboard so that she can make sure it’s her that answers, not Ruby or Mary Pat or Phoebe, and - -
And then maybe she overhears him - accidentally of course - talking about a criminal! act! and well - -
Maybe then she inserts herself into it, haha.













