#t1gerlilly

Maybe you haven’t known any pretty boys from Texas, but I have. In general, they’ve shared a couple of common traits:

* A truly amusing amount of cheerful and completely unearned confidence

* A tendency to rely on religion to confirm whatever they already think

* Masculinity that is as vividly displayed and fragile as a soap bubble

They’ve also usually had their heads stuffed with racism and/or misogyny. To the point where it’s like background noise to them. Like, even if they’ve unlearned it in their personal relationships, they have a tendency to look past it to focus on other things because, in their head, that’s just how the world works.

They usually also have some undisclosed trauma from being molested or assaulted that comes out as homophobia and/or anger management issues (with bonus points if they’re Catholic).

Generally, with Texas boys (and I will call them that, because they’re so damn fragile) I assume they’ll look like an angel and behave like an ass.

So Ryan doesn’t surprise me. Especially given his language processing difficulties and the likelihood of TBI from his time as a fighter. I just don’t pay much attention to what he says.

“Uh. Hey Mom.” Buck says.

Standing by the open bay doors, Eddie tilts his head toward the sunshine, and raises his eyebrows in a silent question.

Buck nods.

“I can’t talk long. I’m headed out…”

Buck runs his hand through his hair, listening.

“With Eddie”

Buck’s eyes search out Eddie and he flashes him a smile so sweet that Eddie draws in a breath at the sight of it.

“We’re going couch shopping.”

Eddie can’t make out the words, but the shrill tone comes through loud and clear as Buck winces and holds the phone away from his ear.

Buck waits until his mother pauses for breath to say “Uh.. about that…it was a great couch. I loved it …Really.”

Eddie watches as Buck rubs his hand on the back of his neck and then jerks his head to see Chimney laughing beside him.

“He really is a terrible liar.” Chimney says, eyes still crinkled with mirth. Eddie’s mouth quirks, but he doesn’t say anything, turning his eyes back to Buck.

“I have to replace it. Eddie and I were …uh…wrestling, and we broke it.”

“How? Uh. I’m a big guy, you know. And Eddie….” Buck draws in a breath. “He’s definitely a big guy. And we were being very…athletic. And the couch was weak and now it is very, very broken.” Buck looks up from the floor and meets Eddie’s eyes, his own darkened with a memory.

“That’s nice of you, mom, but you don’t have to look up the model number - I think we need something sturdier. Something that can take a pounding.”

Chimney stares at Eddie, who swallows as his face flushes, though he keeps his expression stoic.

“On the floor? No…well, rugburn for one…”

Eddie bites the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. He doesn’t look at Chimney directly, who is still staring at him, but now with a puzzled expression. He’s pretty sure he’ll lose it if he does.

“Mom! We’re not ‘in the habit’ of wrestling. We’d never done it before. But…” Buck coughed, then grinned “definitely planning on doing it again.”

Buck looks up, pale eyelashes shining in the LA sun, and his gaze catches on Eddie’s, who quietly smolders at him.

He breathes out. “Definitely doing it again. But we need a couch for that. So I’ve gotta go buy one. Ok? “

Buck’s eyebrows furrow and then relax.

“Thanks mom. Talk soon….And Mom? Eddie and I are dating. Ok. Bye. Love you! Bye!”

With a quick sigh he swings around and heads toward Eddie.

Eddie arches an eyebrow “Wrestling, Buck?”

“I couldn’t tell her what we were actually doing.” he says.

“Athletic?” he asks, eyes twinkling.

“Oh yeah. Practically acrobatic.” Buck says with satisfaction.

“What if she asks to see your wrestling moves?” Eddie asks, bumping his shoulder as they walk into into the late afternoon heat.”

“I’ve got moves.” Buck says.

“I know you do.” Eddie says, indulgent.

“You think you can take me?” Buck challenges, eyes narrowing, bouncing as he walks.

“You know I can.” Eddie says equably, insufferably smug.

They both laugh.

Then Buck says “I bet you’d look sexy in a Mexican wrestler’s mask and nothing else…”

“Eddie. I don’t understand. Hen said you’re moving... to El Paso.”

Eddie won’t meet his eyes. “Yeah.” 

“But what about Chris...what about the 118?” 

“Buck...”

“You said we wouldn’t drift apart.” Buck waited, but Eddie just stared at him, all sad brown eyes.

“I don’t understand Eddie. Why would you do this?”

Eddie looked up. “I just.. need to do this, Buck. Abuela’s getting older and you’re dating. If something happens to me..”

“Eddie - I’ll be there for Chris. You know that. We’re family, right?”

Eddie looked at him, tears bright in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.

“So why Eddie? Do you think I’m going to do something reckless? Is it because I died? Do you think you can’t count on me?” Buck asked, a wounded look on his face.

“You think that of me? Oh right. I don’t ‘see you’ the way that Natalie does.” Eddie’s anger poured out of him. 

“Then what is it? Explain it to me.” Buck demanded.

“You don’t want to know.”

“I want to know, Eddie. Tell me.”

Eddie’s chin jutted and his chest heaved. “Fine. You want to know?” He took a step towards Buck. Buck said nothing, returned his stare steadily.  Eddie took another step, inside Buck’s guard, close enough that he could hear him breathing, waiting for Buck to move away. They were eye to eye now, lip to lip. Eddie’s eyes fastened on Buck’s plump red lips, mesmerized. Then Buck swallowed and Eddie looked up, to see Buck’s worried blue eyes.

“It’s... I... I love you Buck. I love you and you can’t love me back. And it makes me so damn lonely. It makes me hurt...all...over. I can’t do it anymore.”

Buck’s mouth opened, stunned into silence. Eddie had spoken so softly he had strained to hear it. He could still barely comprehend it.

Eddie stepped back, a weary sadness in his eyes. 

“I didn’t want to tell you . I can’t help it. I tried. Ever since the shooting... I knew then. But I thought, it was just nearly dying. It was just...I made so many excuses Buck. But when you died. That’s when I knew. There’s no getting around it. I’m in love with you. I love you Buck. I can’t stop loving you.”

Buck still didn’t say anything. But he edged closer.

“Buck?”

Buck prowled closer, a wicked smile on his face. 

“Oh, That so?”

Eddie, slightly alarmed, stood his ground. 

“Yeah. That’s so.” 

“Well then, Diaz. Prove it.”

*                     *                     *                        

A half hour later Hen pounded on the supply closet door.

“Are you two done with inventory yet?”

“Um... Hngggh”  Hen was incredulous. “What are you two doing in there? Come on out here. I need to restock.” 

“Nothing!” “We’ll be right out.”

The door swung wide, revealing two slightly sweaty, thoroughly disheveled firefighters, with kiss-reddened lips and.. beard burn.

“Well. I guess you’re both coming out after all.”

“Funny, Hen” Buck said, rolling his eyes.

So... this is my theory on what happens in the storm in the season premiere. Buck gets a low voltage shock and requires CPR, which Eddie is there to give him. A little bit like this....

Foreword I gave this a highfalutin’ title, because I hoped it might catch your eye, dear reader. But the truth is, the most important word in the title is ‘unraveling’, because it talks about time. And my perspective isn’t about deep analysis or brilliant insight. It’s mostly just a perspective of time. As I get older, I sometimes wonder that no one mentions things that were common place knowledge years ago. Little facts that can turn your view of a character on his head. Or at least, give him more depth.  Which is what I hope this might do. Lestat Today Most of the commentary I’ve read paints Lestat as a villain. A privileged, hedonistic predator who pursues Louis to play with him, fully cognizant of the power imbalance between them, as vampire to human, rich to poor man, white to black man, and deliberate in his choice, as it is likely to allow him to avoid consequences. None of that is wrong. But.... A Word About the Author You’ll have to forgive me, dear reader, for taking a moment out of my argument to gossip with you over a little fandom history. I’m not sure how many people know about Anne Rice. A deeply religious woman, with a penchant for suing fanfic authors. Seriously. She was well known for going after fic writers and a serious reason why the fandom for her work was far smaller and more anemic than the popularity of her novels  would suggest. Because of her litigious nature, she had a significant impact on fan creators across multiple fandoms and mediums. It’s because of authors like her that people used to have to put disclaimers before anything they wrote. Happily, those dark days are over. But it’s a major reason why I think there may be less fandom history for people to discover. Because people reacted to her behavior by...just not talking about her. She died two years ago, so that’s not a worry anymore, in case you were wondering. But there is one more thing that it’s important for you to know, before I go back to trying to make a point. It’s that this very Christian woman, from New Orleans, had a son. One she loved very, very much, and worried over, and worked with on several novels. Christopher Rice is a contemporary of mine, being about two years younger than I am. Oh yes, one more thing. Her son is gay.  Lestat As He Was When Anne Rice set out to write her novel, she was grieving her children. Most critics focus on the death of her five year old daughter to leukemia, the previous year, and the character of Claudia is seen as a stand in for her. Yet, they ignore the protagonist of the book, Louis, who stands in loco parentis to Claudia, her brother in blood, if not by blood. Louis, the troubled innocent, struggling but upright... until he meets Lestat.  For GenXers, who grew up under the shadow of AIDS, Interview with a Vampire is a familiar kind of social conditioning. When I was growing up, the only time you saw gay people on TV or in the movies, was in tragedy or horror. Usually, you were introduced to a sympathetic character, one who, once revealed as gay (and it was almost always gay, not lesbian) started on a long an torturous journey towards insanity and/or death. The not terribly subtle lesson being that while gay people might SEEM like nice, normal people, they were destined for the worst possible fate and would drag you down if you let them. Many of these depictions featured AIDS, but not all. Take the 1980 movie “Cruisin “ for a horrendously farcical take on the genre, elevated from shlock only by the talents of Al Pacino, who was ahead of his time in his bravery (yes, it was very brave at the time) in taking the lead and his empathy and humanity in his role. This kind of performance is why people think he’d be great in Goncharov. Only this movie is full gay. No subtext necessary.  Despite this, I suspect most folks today would be horrified by the homophobia in the film - though they may not realize that ANY depiction of gay culture was a huge anomaly, and that the tacked on social judgement clearly intended to allow it to be seen at all. But MOST depictions had horror and judgement woven through them. Many were smugly righteous and pleased with the death of the protagonist and considered it fitting. (This legacy of this kind of thing is why so many people my age and older get really worked up about negative representation now - we were subjected to a glut of it in childhood, and many of us were traumatized by it.)

What most people don’t seem to understand is that people with the kind of money that Musk have - they never lose.  The system is set up to make sure they don’t. Right now people are mocking him and decrying his leadership - later I expect think pieces about his ‘evolution’ and ‘genius’. Because things won’t end poorly for him. No matter what.

Why do I say that?

Well, look at his history and what he’s doing now. Musk’s main ability as an entrepreneur is to take something other people poured love and devotion into, hype it up, and then get out while the getting is good. He did that at paypal. And honestly - I think he’s getting ready to do that with Tesla. They’ve run into significant problems, bad press, and lawsuits. He’s not the kind that sticks it out.  From what I can tell, he loaded Twitter up with excess debt as part of the deal. It was already operating of a loss of over a billion a year. If you assume his only goal is to make money - what’s the quickest way to get Twitter out of a bad financial position. Oh, yeah. Bankruptcy. After bankruptcy, you have to be a profitable company. How do you do that? Cut costs and increase revenue. Now assume that you’re an amoral asshole who’s perfectly happy to get into bed with the Russians and Saudis to allow them a platform for political propaganda (you can use the Chinese to persuade the public that you’re ‘cracking down’ on this kind of thing without actually doing anything). From that perspective it makes sense. Cut costs to the bone, go into bankruptcy, rebuild the company with people who are happy to sell consumer data, promote hate speech, and interfere with elections. I mean, subscription money, if you can get it, is a more predictable income stream than advertising. And Twitter, despite it’s defects, has unparalleled network effects, far outsized of it’s actual user base. Inertia will keep many people on the platform for quite a while. And if you don’t care whose money you take - well, there’s a living in that - as long as you have no morals or care for your fellow human beings.