I said this in the tags of my reblog, but apparently I have Feelings about it, so what the hell, lets make it a post. I know everyone’s talking about Eric cheating on Adam, and his reaction to Adam saying it wasn’t what he wanted when they were about to have sex. And those were both things that attributed to my not shipping Adam/Eric anymore. But honestly, they were just nails in the coffin for me. This, right here? This is what killed the ship.
Devoid of all other context, it’s just such an… I don’t want to say cruel, but ungenerous? cold? reaction from Eric. This mocking disbelief that Adam, who is his boyfriend, and who he supposedly loves, could ever write poetry. And okay, yeah, we all know Adam doesn’t have the reputation as the smartest, most sensitive guy around, but he’s also been making such huge strides in working on himself and you would think Eric would be the first person to notice. To entertain the possibility that hey, maybe Adam has some previously unseen depth.
And like I said, that’s devoid of all other context. With context, we know that, after Adam realizes Eric liked poetry, the first thing he does is goes and reads a poetry book (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda):
And then he writes some poetry himself! And not only that, but he asks Rahim, Eric’s ex, who he’s been actively jealous of this season, for help. And does all of that simply because Eric likes poetry.
And this is the poem he ends up writing!
I never knew I had a heart
Till you said you kissed a boy
I haven’t met
Then I knew I had a heart
Because I thought it might stop
And when I thought
My heart might stop beating
I realized it had always been there
But it didn’t know how to feel
Until I thought about losing you
I knew we wouldn’t last forever
I was waiting for this day
But I hope we can fix things
And if we can’t
I will always thank you
For showing me I have a heart
With all of that in mind, Eric’s reaction to the idea of Adam writing him poetry just becomes this flashing neon sign that Eric never actually saw Adam for who he really is—or even thought there was much of anything to see bellow the surface. So yeah. That’s what killed the ship for me.
(And like I said in the tags, not to turn this into an Adam/Rahim thing—although seriously, hello ship I never saw coming, but have enthusiastically boarded now—all of this does make Rahim’s “You’re not as unremarkable as I thought.” even more notable to me.)
(And not that this is a competition of who treated the other one worse, but just in case, yeah, Adam used to bully Eric. And if Eric had decided that was too big of a problem to have a relationship with Adam, that would be one thing. But he didn’t. Eric decided to forgive Adam for his past behaviour and start a relationship with him. And at that point, for me, the only thing that matters is the current behaviour of the people in the relationship. Just because Adam used to treat Eric badly does not change or excuse the fact that, even ignoring the cheating, wow did Eric not cover himself in glory here.)
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