508 Followers, 302 Following, 32 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from MPL-WU (@mplworkersunited)
If you can follow our union IG ā and we reach 1000 followersāthen we can go live!!!
Also it would really encourage the 300 hundred of us library workers who are in the fight to organize a public sector city division in Memphis ā which hasnāt been done in decades!!!
Boosting this post -- this is our not-yet-elected union. We're public sector workers for the city, and we have a supermajority. We're demanding our city listen to us. One way is through the social pressure of our community here in Memphis, but also worldwide. Memphis has been invaded by federal agencies sent here to torment our underserved and immigrant populations, and the libraries are some of the last places those people find resources, feel safe, or get help. Following our library workers' IG is small, but it all adds up.
I've had a couple of curious messages about my work on FanFic.net
I have not been on FF.net for many, many years under Polly Lynn or under Hunsdon (a name I used for a brief time in a futile attempt to get some peace). If someone is writing there under those names, well . . . no clue what to do about it, except to reiterate: 'Tis not I.
āMaybe thereās more going on than just a tryst.ā
āRichard Castle, Overkill (2 x 23)
Demming is not her boyfriend. Tom is notĀ . . . Tom Demming is not her boyfriend. For one thing, she is a grown woman, and grown women donāt have boyfriends. They have . . . guys they are . . . seeingāguys whom they donāt know what to call. And if theyāre grown women who are also cops, they doubly donāt know what to call them, because thereās the name thing and thereās the label thing.Ā
The name thing is bad enough. For her, itās bad enough. For himāTom. Demming. Whatever.āit doesnāt seem so bad. He calls her Kate with no trouble at all. Over coffee, itās Kate. When heās handing her into the cab theyāre sharing, itās Kate. When he kisses her outside the glass door to the lobby of her building, itās Goodnight, Kate.Ā
It makes her jump every time.Ā
She is Katie to her dad, to her overbearing aunts and uncles and cousins. She isāas sheās only just recently been remindedāBex to the people who knew her before, to the people who mostly bought the act and thought she was cool back in the day. She was, for all too brief a time, Kate to her mom, who at least made the effort in the early days of the most insufferable version of Bex, when she decided she would never again answer Katie. And now she is Kate to Demming. Tom. Tom Demming, who is not her boyfriend.Ā
To his credit, he calls her Beckett, too. Because heās a cop. Heās a colleague. He has expertise that just happens to have been relevant to a few of her most recent cases, and that expertise extends to knowing that sheās Beckett at work. When itās at the board and not over coffee. When heās holding the door from the precinct lobby out on to the street, and not handing her into the cab theyāre sharingāitās Beckett then.Ā
Itās probably not worthy of a gold star, the fact that he knows what to call her and when and where to call her by one name or the other. Itās probably not worthy of comment, except that she doesnāt know what to call him. Or, rather, she does. Itās obvious, and even if it werenāt, she has his example to follow, doesnāt she? She knows the what, where, and when of what she should call him, but it doesnāt come easily.Ā
The tip of her tongue touches the roof of her mouth to make the T in Tom, but it hesitates. It backpedals to a D, and sheās caught up in a Detective Demming spiral at the most inappropriate moments. Or she stalls out entirely, trailing off into something along the lines of oh, you. She tries to make a joke of itāthe fact that she trips over what name to call him every single time. He tries to take it that way, but it has to be obvious that neither of his names comes easily to her.Ā
And the issue of labels is worse. He doesnāt call her his girlfriend. Actually, she does not know this for a fact. But she is of the opinion that he had better fucking not be calling her his girlfriend. She is also of the opinion, if she is being honest with herself (she is not sure that being honest with herself is on the table when it comes to any of this), that the way the very thought of him calling her his girlfriend pegs her rage meter is . . . notable. It is possibly not entirely explained by the fact that she is a grown woman and a cop and she is not anyoneās girl-anything.Ā
It is possibly entirely explained by Richard Castle and the conclusions he is oh-so-sorry to have jumped to. Despite her stammeringāregardless of the wandering tip of her tongue when it comes to calling another man by his name (any of his names)āRichard Castle is almost certainly the one wholly responsible for the spike in her blood pressure as her mind manufactures scenarios in which Tom DemmingāDetective Not Boyfriendāmight be casually referring to her using the G-word.Ā
Demming is a Robbery detective, and a good one at that. Demming has a professional network almost entirely different from her own. Demming has perspective on cases thatās different from her own, but rooted in training and actual investigative experienceānot wild speculation and a disdain for logic, unlike some people she could (much more easily) name.Ā
Detective Demming is the man sheās called in to consult of late, and how dare Castle question that? How dare he imply that she would everāeverāinvent lines of investigation, just so that she could see the guy she happens to be . . .Ā seeing? That guyāwhatever anyone wants to call himāis not the guy who gets to write on the murder board. Heās not the guy who gets to tag in on her interrogations. Ā
Heās the guy whoās been showing up for coffee, who holds doors and hails cabs, who kisses her on the stoop outside her lobby, because they are not at the Why donāt you come up? stage. Not at her place, anyway. Not yet. Or maybe not ever.Ā
She doesnāt know.Ā She doesnāt have to know what to call him or when to invite him up.Ā (If ever.)
And itās none of hisāof Richard Castleāsābusiness.Ā
A/N: She soooo wants to deny that Demming is her boyfriend.
āI donāt see it going anywhere.ā
āRichard Castle, Food to Die For (2 x 22)
There are times when heād like to be a liar. This probably does not exactly set him apart from the masses. Who is out there walking around, drawing breath and sighing it back out again who hasnāt wished theyād been a liar at one time or another? Who hasnāt had a friend solicit reactions a truly hideous new outfit and desperately tried to sell a sincere Itās fantastic! only to have their own stupid, truth-telling face nuke the little white lie from orbit?Ā Doesnāt heāday in and day outāsit across the table from self-tattling morons whoād like nothing more than to lie their way right out of the interrogation room? He might beāhe clearly isāin bad company, but he would very much like to be a liar right now.Ā
Beckett didnāt seem to mind.
His mother thinks heās lying. His daughter probably would think he was lying if she had any attention to spare. And itās not even that he wants to be lying. It should be a lie. Thatās the agony of it.Ā
She should mind. Thatās the way of things. This whole Richard Castle: Moral Support for Hire gambit should be one in a long line of his fool-proof plans to get her goatāto make her mind.Ā
But she doesnāt mind. Itās not a problem. Heās telling the truth, and heās not even getting credit for it. Not from his mother, who is pursing her lips and shaking her head as she sourly reminds him that he should be getting ready for his date.
He doesnāt want credit, though, not in this instance, and certainly not for this truth. He wants to be the rogue his mother thinks he isāthe one his daughter would think he is, if she werenāt, herself, so torn between duty and desire. He wants to be the Hamptons, the seductive allure of fun in the sun that makes Beckett forget all about the microscope-requiring AP exam that is Tom Demming. But heās not the Hamptons. Or Beckett is not tempted by the beach. Or something.Ā
Itās a cavalcade of lousy metaphors, so he doffs his gloves and goggles. He extracts a spare watch from somewhere and he picks out a shirt in a color that she likes on him. Or a week ago heād have said it was a color she liked on him, but apparently heās no judge at all of what Kate Beckett likes or doesnāt like. That is the only explanation for the fact that sheāll be toting her microscope and slides all over town tonight, completely unperturbed by the thought that he will be out on the town, raconteuring his way through the celebrity chef world with one of her high school gang. Ā
Thereās a moment when she bursts on the five-star dinner scene that he thinks sheās come to make a liar out of him. He very nearly chokes on whatever it is heās eating at the moment and weakly, hopefully demands to know: Beckett, what are you doing here?Ā
He has the answer. Heād happily write it for her. Heād set her up with anything from cue cards to index cards to a state-of-the-art teleprompter, if sheād only read the lines with conviction: Iām here for you. Iām here because I couldnāt stand the thought of this. Iām here because it is a problem, and I do mind.Ā
But that isnāt the answer, of course. She is not interested in cue cards, index cards, or his writing services in any medium. She is not there for him or because she minds or itās a problem. Sheās there for case-related purposes, because the only struggle for her is the one between duty and more duty.Ā
He tries to work himself up to play the part everyone expectsāthe one she expects. He makes a respectable showing of it. He whines at length about the food of which she has cruelly deprived him and her good friend Madison. He accuses her of being uncivilized. He has another nanosecondās worth of a thrill when she bans him from the interrogation. He parses the words giggling over the risotto with our suspect up, down, and sideways, searching for vindicationāfor the indisputable evidence that heās been a liar after all, but it isnāt there.Ā
Sheās hissing, red-faced, and thoroughly embarrassed by Madisonās Castle baby fantasy, but itās . . . generic embarrassment. Or worse, itās embarrassment for his sakeāthat heād play a role in such an outlandish fantasy, or maybe that heāll get the wrong idea? Sheās avoidant when he tries to get her goat with a reprise of the Castle baby fantasy, but itās . . . impersonal. She wants to get on with the case and back to her date with duty. There isnāt a shred of evidence that she hopped in the Fun Police Wagon andĀ drove it down to Rocco DiSpiritoās place because sheās bothered by the fact that he was out with Madison.Ā
He wonders how itās come to this. He wonders when, because he could have sworn that she minded when he had his ten-second fling with Ellie Monroe, when he was on the radar of Bachelorette Number 3. He would have laid money on it being a problem when Rina scrawled her digits across his palm, when Lee Waxman wanted to trade favors, and when Meredith and the Crazy-Sex Train blew through town. Heās positive that she has minded virtually every woman who has so much as given him a second glance over the last year or so.Ā
But Madison? She doesnāt mind. Itās not a problem, because she, herself, has āSomethingā.Ā
Thatās the truth and heād so muchĀ rather be a liar.Ā
A/N: Oof. This was ornery; and I didn't think this was the lie that would drive the story. Blegh.
