"I wrote a eulogy for my best friend last week. Then I read it to him. At the pub. On a Tuesday."
He was alive, holding a pint, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have.
I'm Mick. I'm 70. The man across the table was Barry. Seventy-two. Best mate for 46 years. Met on a building site in 1979. He dropped a plank on my foot. I called him something unrepeatable. He bought me a pint after the shift. Haven't gone a week without talking since.
Three months ago we went to a funeral. Bloke we'd worked with. Cancer. The eulogies were beautiful - people saying what he meant to them, things they'd clearly never said to his face. And all I could think was, he can't hear any of this.
Every beautiful sentence. Every "he changed my life." Said to a room of crying people and a box of wood.
I turned to Barry. Whispered, "What a waste."
Drove home. Couldn't sleep. Because I realised, if Barry died tomorrow, I'd stand up and say extraordinary things about this man. Things I've never said in 46 years. And he'd be in the box, missing all of it.
So I wrote them down. Took a week. Harder than expected - not finding the words, but admitting I had them.
Rang him. "Tuesday. The Crown. Need to read you something."
"Have you joined a book club?"
"Just come."
Same corner table. Pint of bitter. Crisps. I pulled out the paper. He saw my hands shake.
"Mick. What's this?"
"Your eulogy. I'm reading it now because I'm not wasting it on a day you can't hear it."
"Have you gone mad?"
"Probably. Shut up and listen."
I read it. In a pub. To a man very much alive and very much uncomfortable.
I told him about the plank and how it was the best injury of my life. About the night he drove forty minutes in rain to help change a tyre. About how he rang every day for three months after my divorce and never once asked "Are you alright?" - just talked about football and weather, because he knew I didn't need a question. I needed a voice.
I told him he was the funniest man I'd ever known and his jokes were terrible and both things were true. That he'd been a better father than he thinks. That his wife's a saint and he knows it. That I'd have been a worse man without him.
He didn't look at me. Stared at his pint. Jaw tight. Doing that thing men do when the feelings arrive and they'd rather swallow glass than show it.
When I finished, long silence. Then he picked up his pint, took a sip, and said,
"You're paying for the next round. And the one after."
That was his answer. Perfect. Because Barry doesn't say "I love you too." He says "you're buying."
But in the car park, he hugged me. Not the quick back-pat. A real one. Thirty seconds. Neither let go first.
And he said quietly into my shoulder, "Don't read that again at the real one. I want new material."
Who would you write a eulogy for - while they're still here?
Don't wait. The flowers can't hear. The box doesn't laugh. Say it now. At the pub. Over a bad cup of tea. You'll feel ridiculous.
They'll look uncomfortable. It'll be the most important thing you've ever done.
Read them the speech while they can still hug you in the car park.”
I love "i would kill for you" ship dynamics but what about "i would stop killing" ship dynamic??
I would lay down my sword for you. I would change my nature and go against everything i've known. I would resist the easy way out of solving my problems. I would give up the adrenaline of battle to stay by your side and make tea instead. I'm not sure I know who I am without a weapon in my hand because I've had to fight for so long but for you I'm willing to try and figure this out.
It must be hard. To put down your weapon that's protected you for so long. It's allowed you to stay alive it's kept you from getting hurt--physically and mentally. Because you've never had to worry about a real relationship if you think you'll be dead at the next battle. And you feel naked without it and it feels like you're ripping off an extension of yourself. Are you even whole without it? Are you worthy of being loved if you can't prove it by risking your life? And yet they've found someone who's asking them for something much harder than dying in battle on their behalf. They've found someone who wants them to live. And that's much more terrifying.
my most toxic trait is i fucking love work gossip. i play neutral not to be the bigger person or take the high road but to hear slander and hearsay from every side. two coworkers complained about each other to me in the same afternoon and i nearly blacked out from the rush
HELLO july 4 has me thinking about jack being sensitive to fireworks due to his military service, and robby comforting him or stepping in to support him when the explosion sounds start. do you have any headcanons about this? or know of any fics w this premise? <3
so my headcanon for this goes a little bit against the grain. i was actually talking at length about this to @alethialia last week but the stars didn’t align for either of us to write it, so allow me to present to you now
FOURTH OF JULY: JACK’S FAVORITE HOLIDAY
look, we don’t know any hard facts regarding jack’s time in the service, but i think it’s pretty safe to assume that he’s been out for at least ten years, probably more like fifteen. i more often than not headcanon him enlisting at 18, and if we go off of hatosy’s age, that would most likely have him enlisting in ‘94. say he does the medic thing for a few years and then decides to goes back to school and become a doctor, you can still have him getting a few tours in by the mid-00s
that would have been TWENTY years ago.
my point is that while i can maybe buy a jack who doesn’t like fireworks, i personally find it hard to believe that the jack we see in the present day has such strong and unmanaged PTSD symptoms that he’s having a full-on breakdown over it. maybe he did twenty years ago, but i think it does a disservice to the character we see on screen and the clear amount of work that he’s put in to himself to have him be that much of a wreck about it. but ymmv, you do you and all that.
and not to be all I Have Veteran Friends, but i know the EXACT fic i would write about him on the fourth of july, and it is as follows:
jack always takes fourth of july off. the fourth of july is sacred. the fourth of july is the one day he and all his army buddies get together for the tried and true american tradition of blowing shit up.
robby usually works a double on the fourth so jack can have it all off, and everyone knows this. cue everyone misunderstanding why jack takes it off, and being So Sympathetic when he gets called in to help with day shift for [reasons].
he’s SO goddamn grumpy about it, but he’s grumpy because he should be tits out poolside right now. he’s grumpy because he has incredibly expensive steaks in the fridge that he should be eating. he should be manning the grill right now. his grillmaster skills are the stuff of LEGEND. he should not be at work on this auspicious day.
(robby always works the fourth because he Cannot hang out with jack’s friends at jack’s barbecue. any other day, they’re great guys. but he does Not want to witness what OSHA violations are going to take place. he will have an aneurysm, no matter how many times jack says trust me, i’m a doctor or it’s fine, it’s just steve, he’s a demolitions expert. like, that’s exactly why he has concerns, jack.)
so jack is working, and he’s not in the best mood, and now we have THE most absurd comedy of errors. he starts going on a rant about fireworks in the daytime, and it’s not about the noise, it’s about how that’s a FLAGRANT waste of explosive firepower because you can’t even see them? he wants to see that shit spark, baby.
(one of my favorite things to imagine is that jack spends the lead up to the fourth going “you know what next week is?” to robby with Very Serious Eyes, and everyone thinks it’s because he’s being vigilant and prepared, and it’s not wrong, but really he’s just preparing robby for the fact that he’s about to blow hundreds of dollars in the meat department. he’s a little twitchy because he’s HYPE.)
maybe there’s a situation that gets him a little angry, makes him start breathing a little heavily. maybe one of his buddies texts him a photo of steve touching the steak in the fridge that is specifically labeled DO NOT TOUCH - THAT MEANS YOU STEVE. maybe one of the ducklings thinks he’s having an episode and starts furtively googling how to deal with fireworks related PTSD and then starts trying to guide an increasingly confused jack through box breaths about it.
mel would show him her lava lamp app, and jack would not get it. “kid, in my day, those things were real?”
someone asks if he’s fine and he snaps that he’s NOT fine, because he’s here when he should be chugging beers and setting off roman candles, but he doesn’t get the chance to finish that sentence because someone starts coding and he has to go run and deal with that.
robby at some point finds out about the misunderstanding, and because he likes to cause problems on purpose, gently encourages all of the ducklings. when jack finally buys a clue about why the fuck everyone is being so weird to him today he’s SO exasperated. threatens robby with some kind of punishment. see if he gets any of jack’s meat, later.
(there’s a spinoff to this fic where brad comes to visit one year and jack goes into a TIZZY about making sure he can show up the marines and live up to his reputation, because Winning At BBQ is definitely something normal to want and possible to achievable, even when brad is like why are you trying to out-brisket a jew? i knew you were an officer, but damn because fortunately for jack, HE KNOWS A GUY. anyway, robby spends an entire month eating brisket. he’s never yearned for a fresh vegetable so badly in his life.)
anyway i have no idea how this story ends. jack ends up making out with robby in the call room to turn him all red as part of his punishment, and robby is like “this doesn’t feel very much like a punishment” but then he has to go back out into the ED looking Like That so jack’s all have fun with that, bye!
jack manages to makes it home right in time for nightfall and right in time to blow some shit up, everyone lives happily ever after, the end.
when i was a tiny baby queer (aka a 24-year-old), i went to my first pride festival probably three months after i kicked ex-gay therapy to the curb and came out to my parents. being the people they are, my parents came with me. they weren’t really sure about this whole gay thing, but they loved me and wanted me to be safe and happy and wanted to be involved in what was important to me, so they came along. (i also think my mother still might have thought i might get drugged or murdered or beaten by a protester of which there were plenty.)
anyway i wanted a memento of my first pride, you know, and this one vendor was selling keyrings, and i liked it, so i bought one. do you remember those italian charm bracelets that were all the rage like 10-15 years ago? it was a keychain like that, and it had a rainbow rooster, a rainbow cat, and then just a rainbow, and so I bought it.
i run into my mom a couple of vendors over and she goes oh you bought something? what’d you get? so i showed her, and i was like, “I’m not sure why it’s a rooster and a cat. Seems kind of random. But I liked the rainbows.”
and my mom, who was some form of minister’s wife for most of my childhood and teenagerhood, stares at me like she thinks i’m joking.
“What?” i say.
“…it’s a cock and a pussy, Jules,” she says flatly, and that is the story of how i died at the age of 24 while attending my first pride festival.
When my mother forgets a word, she is the queen of coming up with new words. Words that would take a third National Treasure movie to fully decipher. I was talking to her yesterday, and she said this: “You know the time for los jibbities is coming up. You must be so excited!” Oh, is it time for los jibbities already? I must have missed it on my calendar. Are we celebrating something? “Of course! We should all be celebrating, shouldn’t we?” OK, so los jibbities is a happy thing. It’s not like something is giving you the heebie-jeebies, which would have been my one and only guess. “Los heebie-jeebies? Now you’re making things up...and this is my show.” You’re right. The time for los jibbities is coming up. Is this a season? “Yes, the season for love. The season for pride.” OK, los jibbities. “Yeah, sound it out.” Los…jibbities. LGBTs! “Sí, mira cuz you’re gay!” “You couldn’t just say pride season? You couldn’t just… *laughs*
I hope Rian Johnson gets to make as many Benoit Blanc movies as there are Agatha Christie adaptations and more. I hope Daniel Craig gets to play the dapper, enigmatic, theater gay detective Benoit Blanc until he physically can't act anymore. And I hope that role far overshadows playing James Bond for years as his artistic legacy.
Johnson is the first writer in a long time to understand that the the serial detective archetype is a trickster spirit who takes power from the violently corrupt, and gives it to a common person who has passed his tests to prove they're good of heart and would use those resources to improve the world.
Rabbot head-cannon — leaving notes for each other.
Okay so I was thinking, because of the nature of their shifts, Robby and Jack probably rely on text or leaving each other notes to communicate, especially when their sleep schedules are exact opposites. For things not as urgent, they probably prefer the analog way of writing things down.
For Jack, I’m picturing him writing on post-it notes and sticking them on the fridge, on their bedroom door, etc., for Robby to find when he wakes up. He probably has a stack of post-its on his night stand to write things down before he heads off for his shift.
For Robby though, he’s grabbing whatever pieces of paper he could find to scribble on, not caring what shapes or form they are in, as long as he can get the messages across. He would be putting pieces of tape on them so that he can slap these notes on random surfaces in their home for Jack to come across, a gift of pleasant surprises.
Please enjoy the notes situation I pictured in my head haha. 🫶🏼 They are so precious!!!
The great thing about huge declarations is that the most times you're ever going to have to deliver on them is ONCE. And even that is vanishingly unlikely. The dishes happen every day. My feet hurt now. The kids need a lift to piano lessons every week. The grenade is hypothetical.
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