NO TEARFUL GOODBYES

#*tom loftis #widow's bay spoilers #again we are in the writer's room. and we have been and will be #rel. tom beverly

the w.idow’s bay finale released last night and i noticed this wild parallel between two completely unconnected careers. @printedblues tombev real

thecindercrow

Widow's Bay 1.09 - Emergency Shelter

#we dont have to talk about it i'm normal #about it #*tom loftis

the takeaway bag lasts in beverly’s hand for a grand total of four seconds before he sits it down on the doorstep, from which position it can peer disappointedly up at them, its handles drooping like the ears of an animal. he places both hands on tom’s chest and hums shortly, having swallowed it all, and having really only liked the last bit.

in the same moment he’s rolling forward and upward to kiss him, willow opens the door dressed for bed, excepting a pair of outdoor shoes. bev stops what he’s doing and hastily withdraws, and for an instant their roles are traded: her the parent, him the child.

“i thought something had happened.” it’s about 10:30. tom’s car is in the driveway. the fretful apple doesn’t fall far from the fretful tree. “i was going to— fuck it.” she waves them off and turns back inside, toeing her shoes off in the foyer. “good night. phone us next time?”

following a hurried apology and his own good wishes, beverly tips forehead-first into tom’s chest and heaves a sigh. then, without pulling back, he bends his knees—face sliding down the front of him—until he’s low enough to collect their bag of food from the ground.

“and a sandwich for you?” he plucks unhappily at tom’s upper layer on his way in. “and more comfortable clothes?”

#widwer #widwer: tom beverly 1 #tom threads #he got sleepy

for a moment he stands on the porch holding beverly's head. pressing his forehead against his sternum. appropriately carved out ridges in the body of it where, tom finds, he can hide many things, and a soon-to-be husband among them. "she's great," he says, and that's that.

they go in. they get undressed. inside the house with their house voices and their house clothes. and the best seat in the house: bedside, above covers. layers and layers of napkins between them. the hood of tom's green sweatshirt crumples around his neck like a travel pillow neckline where he sits leaned back against the headboard, barely awake between pinches of salt and french fries to his mouth. practically the only thing kathy bagged that's edible. onions on the baked potato. a gruesome display.

"so rate your slow walk." moonlit as it wasn't. he's melting into the mattress now that the day is finally coming to a close. "rate your dinner in bed."

rate the chances of it all going down exacty like this on some other night. rate the upcoming lifetime spent together. speaking of,

"i'm glad you're not leaving me."

pattiwagon

she doesn’t wobble, but she does consciously reduce herself to a new voice, recognizing the severity of tom’s overload and accepting, with some degree of detachment, that a drawn-out tantrum is unlikely to cut through. “it could put him off,” she mumbles, as if she can’t tolerate the idea of him resting assured.

flower girl? no. he means arrangements. is scent a choice factor? because that’s the only thing she can picture herself committing to: smelling them, smiling at the florist, and leaving by accident without declaring a preference. then she can’t go back. she’ll need to outsource.

and what if they’re wrong? they’ll forget immediately if they’re right, remember forever if they’re wrong. ‘patricia was in charge of the flowers,’ they’ll say. ‘we didn’t know that chrysanthemums meant death.’

“how many cake tastings will there be?” her chin drops once, then again a little further, as it occurs to her that tom probably doesn’t know. “and for the food. are you trying all of the locals?”

#pattiwagon #pattiwagon: tom patricia 1 #tom threads #i literrrralllyyyyyy am obsessed with her

he doesn't like the way she's thinking. slowly his hands melt from his face to go palm-up on his desk. his knuckles thud soft against the desk mat.

"ho-how many? tastings? are there more than one? we do-we do it once. do you mean how many cakes? i-i don't know, a million. once. and then we decide. but!" one hand points: there's that look on her. he has to catch it. she's threatening to inflate and make this more of a patricia-thing than it needs to be. god, why is it always the finger and the hand with this one? "no. no. bev is on that, the-the food. he knows my. particularities. okay, look. table cards. ta-table cards. can you do that? if you're so worried about the guests. let them sit. wouldn't it be so nice to let-let them sit?"

he scrambles for a pen that still works. it takes two or three tries. bending over her torn note page, he screws the top to ready it and peeks up at her through his lashes. trying out a new, funny voice,

"can i put ya down for tables?"

for all of his irritable chat, bev makes, perhaps, a surprisingly good listener. he'd been dreadful when he was younger—not because he was dis- or un-interested, but because he'd devoted his youth to the effort of making himself littler, and in his budding adulthood sought the opposite. his first husband taught him to find a balance.

strange to think of them in numbers now. the 1 and the 1.5.

"what a miserable thought," he says in the end, without a hint of misery in it. tom has talked for so long that they've gone residential, the lights fewer and the house within jogging distance.

sometimes he wishes he could reverse their sizes, shave a little extra off tom, and carry him to his destination. the least he can do is transport his hand, which feels adhered to his own by time and sweat.

"don't go in." he won't be upset if tom declines. not quite so easy for the mayor, though certainly not impossible. "i won't go in." given the island's sparse coverage in the medical field, it's a challenge for him, too; thus a proposal with weight. "shall i be doctor? you need reading glasses."

it's like they're trudging in the footsteps of another, more peaceful walk. but he's starting to have some hope for it, in this lifetime. one day. he doesn't feel any less tied up, and there's the wind rushing them home, beating loose screws down the road lengthwise: but he does feel lighter. suddenly far away from everything, it's almost tempting to accept beverly's offer. it's almost within reach.

almost. "hah, yeah. don't go in? do you know what will happen if i don't go in? all-all that stuff i just told you? yeah, take all of that, add actual fire to it. and rats. and-and some freak traffic jam 'round the driftwood. invasion of the pot holes." he makes a quick exchange: their takeaway bag for both of his hands back, to reach into his pocket for the house keys. he doesn't have to avoid eye contact for bev to know the truth: that he's needed down there at town hall, and that he likes to be needed. "and my eyes are fine. that's what they would've—told me—anyway."

on the second floor there's a light on. it bleeds out into the humidity like an object from deep space, corona-like. tom leans his head back and squints one eye looking up. maybe he does need corrective lenses.

"if we go in real quiet we won't have to share."

#rel. tom beverly #we know exactly what we're doing

ok @widwer

pattiwagon

no sympathy for the rosemary dilemma. in fact—in fact, why shouldn't rosemary be there? has tom not taken into consideration that rosemary will never drop the subject if she is not there? never mind that they're vaguely allied against her. she should probably be there.

her arms unfold and fall to her sides. even when she's confrontational, it suits patricia better to assume an unnatural idle: legs strong against the ground like she wants to kick through, and her upper half unbound, ready to be jolted into animation like a rag doll.

"and i'm the millionth, tom?" her hair swings across the tops of her shoulders as she gesticulates, starting with the whiteboard. "i don't remember seeing 'propose to beverly' on your list but you didn't forget to do that." she thins her lips by pressing them together and nods, briefly but emphatically, at her own as-yet-unmade point. "i see what's important. do you see what's important? because, you know, a wedding without guests. he might find that off-putting."

steelier still, "like a—" it takes her a beat to find the word. "portent."

#pattiwagon #pattiwagon: tom patricia 1 #tom threads #quick give her a task. if she idles she'll bring them all down

for that beat, he feels as though a fly is ready to come down and settle on his eyeball. biting at the tail end of her bestowed curse, "you're invited! okay? you-you're invited. please come. i'd love— sorry. i'm so sorry. of course. you're invited."

he's jittery because she has a point. about the forgetting, and about the guests. before he can think it through, he pushes all his need for agency into his pointer finger and goes click. the webpage on his screen starts to reload. great. that's all three minutes lost. throwing his hands into the air behind his head like he can somehow grab the past mid-air and bring it present—this movement, too, he aborts mid-term—he crash lands his face into his hands over the desk.

through his fingers like a muzzle, "i'd appreciate it if you didn't call my upcoming wedding off-putting, patricia. i mean, clearly that-that's some bad omen in itself. look. listen. why don't you—wuh-would you like to be in charge of flowers?"

pattiwagon

@printedblues.

she stares at him for too long before speaking. in fairness, though, he stares back. only tom does it with expectation. tom does it with his eyebrows dancing on the end of marionette strings.

“beverly called.” not the office. her.

with one heavy, graceless step, she’s closed a good portion of the remaining distance between herself and tom’s desk, though she still has to stretch and lean to smack her page of handwritten notes atop it.

“i guess you weren’t going to invite me to your engagement party.” the paper reads: beverly (or other englishman?) beverly says tom forgot. “he did.” her eyebrows can go up, too, even if it means she’ll also be crossing her arms. “so. i’d like you to explain that.”

#my wife my life #pattiwagon #pattiwagon: tom patricia 1 #tom threads

the options are between the internet browser's spinning blue loading wheel and patricia's unblinking blue-greys. to start he flickers back and forth. but in that sense, patricia is unfortunately magnetic. tom holds his breath while waiting for what's coming: no longer does he trust her particular sense of urgency. she might be looking for another round about the brushed steel bottom of the community kitchen sink.

so much so that he's about ready to defend the slime. but whatever defenses he's loaded up falter immediately.

"wh—"

he finger-dances the note closer. what other englishmen. he's going to get him for this.

"oh please. that's. you-you're obviously invited. come on." she doesn't look impressed. "do you see patricia engagement party as a reminder on the board behind me? no. and. you know why? because if i make a-a point to invite you here, i'll have to invite," his voice lowers to a stage whisper, "rosemary. and-and you know what happens then? the whole wedding's off. because then i'll have to drown myself. in the ocean. —you don't think i have a million things to do?"

by the time tom has stumbled his way into the full realization, beverly has wound up a grin, self-satisfied and toothy and bright. it’s almost enough to make him feel bad for feeling good, which he supposes is something they’ll have to reckon with in their marriage. the pair of them bound by grief they didn’t share, growing on but not always in one another, like vines along the brickwork of a house.

“of course i fucking am.” he’d really been enjoying the lecture. wishes he’d got to hear him stutter to the end of the word.

he loves him a bit dumbly when he laughs; can feel himself going slack each time as he watches him, wishing there were a physical button he could press that would trigger it again.

“although i am curious,” he begins, recalling the times he’s regarded people of the bay with near-contempt. “what would happen if you were to start throwing it around. you’d know better than anyone that there are some cunts about. speaking of.”

a street lamp hits him wrong when he lifts his head to look at him, forcing him to narrow one eye against it. the lip corner and nostril of the corresponding side rise and wrinkle with it.

“your day?”

what would happen. a great tidal wave is what. just pull the bath plug on the whole island. there'd be no shortage of people to— no. nonono. tom stammers a few going-nowheres. takes a few moments to readjust. beverly looks tired, but beautiful. flushed white and angel-like under the lights.

before starting back on the walk, he lets go of his hand just so he can pick up again with a new sort of gentleness. that has to be it. vengeance is over. they are back on the same side.

"don't even get me started," then he starts. a quick account follows: the day grows and expands before their eyes like a slideshow imprinted on the streetlamp halos. evan dragging his feet in the morning; paper jam in the printer so severe he had dale on stand-by with a fire extinguisher; people suddenly filing through the front door in droves like migratory birds to dispute seven-dollar parking tickets. "oh-oh, and now vandalism, thanks for that." then the eye appointment. "they said they had no such name on file. i said, i-i know i'm on file, you know me, it's tom. i'm the mayor."

by the end he's almost winded. but emptied out, serene. at one point it's just beverly holding onto him and he is floating. this is what he's always looking for, coming home.

"you know what's the best part, beverly?" the sarcasm molts into an almost-sweetness in his voice. it's the secret language the two of them speak best together. "we get to do it aaa-ll again tomorrow."

wordfather

(flirting) you're beautiful btw. im going to piss you off on purpose

#rel. tom beverly

he laughs, more tom-like than bev-like, pitched higher and cut shorter than it is naturally, usually. he sounds more like him than he had done whilst trying to sound like him.

"certainly fucking not." they hadn't reached out for any serious reason, the caller, and perhaps in part because of that hadn't bought beverly's impression for a second. his mouth was full when he picked up, which he'd hoped, for a shameful spiteful moment, would make tom look bad.

that's when he remembered the appointment, chewing on the limp lettuce of his sandwich and hoping to lose him the favor of a citizen. at once he'd realized he hadn't been slighted, and if anything he'd squandered his own chances of intercepting him midday, when he could instead have accepted the offer of early lunch with the medical staff. might have seen tom there.

at least he'd stammered believably, with his speech made staccato by guilt.

"it was a vandalism complaint. weren't lost, it was the sign for their own fucking street. phoned with a view from their front window." he readies up the voice. just for him. "and i said, 'you know you could, uh, clean it up yourself.'" it's all over the place. too bostonian but then, somehow, not bostonian enough. "they caught me out, if you can imagine that. they called me an impostor so i called them a cunt."

this is light! conversation. warming. heartwarming. they're making their way back. tom swinging their hands back and forth in the air between their bodies trying not to spiral with the mental image of any-old-one perching on his desk when he's not there. is a man's rolodex not sacred anymore? is anything? but there's a certain charm, too. focus on that. focus on beverly's sandwich crumbs, how he'll find them caught under the wheels of his chair and think of him for days. any little port window in a storm.

he laughs at the attempted american accent: it bubbles up his throat and settles in the jawbone where he can quickly bite it down to cut it short. he's trying hard not to lose it. between the day that he's had and the guilt that he's feeling, he can sense it building. he won't let it. just go home and eat your god damn baked potato, tom. but here it builds. the pressure. the skin of his neck tightens over muscle tensing. hold it. hold it hard.

ah. it slips out of his grasp.

"bev, hah. i-i know the punch of that kinda rings different where you're from, here it-it's really very. i. you-you can't go calling people c—ah—" he finally hears himself. stopping dead in his tracks, it hits him then. "you're fucking with me!"

limitedseries

Widow's Bay— “Welcome to Widow's Bay!” (1.01)

#*tom loftis

he's glad to be outside of it—escaped the wandering eye, the spit-in-your-dish closing kitchen, the atmosphere that went stale after 15 minutes with no tom in it, to say nothing of the hour and a half that followed. though he's already said something of the hour and a half that followed.

"i am," he tells him, meaning 'pissed.' then he reviews in his mind the ramble that succeeds it, as though tom is building a piano with his words and it's beverly's job to strike each one, each key, starting at the top. "i was."

he will ask about his day, as soon as he feels less like one of its casualties.

"doesn't matter." someone needed stitches, which always puts a sort of glee in him; he catches himself on his way to a full smile about it, which he turns too early, too obviously, in tom's direction. "i did—"

it isn't his intention to make him feel guiltier than he does already. it's a harmless anecdote that slots in neatly amongst the numerous other 'can't fucking win's. "i stopped by with lunch but you weren't in." the optometrist, he'd remembered late. "ate your portion at your desk. and, er—took a... call." in anger, implied. because you left me to double-lunch alone. "i can't do your voice, is the trouble."

he swears a lamppost flickers and dies as they pass under it. it's back a second later. he's just blinking his eyes, hard reset. "you-you did what?"

shuffling the pieces around in his head: pawn to e4, beverly to the hallway of his office. ruth? he almost asks out loud like she's trailing behind them to confirm or deny. oh, gone, right. when he met her in the doorway coming in this morning, that must have been her wrapping it up. for the week, probably, we'll see tomorrow.

so the island is a bunch of missed connections. tom leans his head back as they walk, looks at the black-on-black telephone lines mapping their road out overhead. loose and reliable. "strangely i'm not too upset at that." i deserve it, even. "you know what? i-i won't even ask who it was. that's yours now. you can keep it. you can have ruth's salary, too. sounds like you've done more work for me today than she has in weeks."

unspoken, but thought: did you try my phone just to check it works? but he won't ask that either. oh, this old thing? he reminds himself he's done looking for excuses—though he's a magician with those things, the never-ending rope—but his hand holding bev's feels jittery with want to smooth things over. his thumb keeps going over his knuckle again and again, like he can make it shine. he's sweating and they're barely up the hill. okay, darling, i gave you permission to me mad at me, that doesn't mean you actually have to do it.

with his tone forced several octaves higher, "but you know now i'm going to have to ask to hear the voice."

“all right.” it’s the bacon that sends him over the edge; that ridiculous, silent-comedy expression that has the responsibility of telegraphing everything yet has nothing of note to telegraph. he pats the back of his hand. “it’s all right. i’ll settle with—wayne. you bag the spuds if kathy circles back before i do.”

because his objective is so clear cut, and the rewards so sweet, beverly nearly leaves him without quite seeing him. a pivot on his heel and a swift departure that give no indication of his having missed tom, which is a resolute truth despite his hand in the date going pear-shaped.

he malfunctions, almost, as he’s stood by his chair half-turned away: stuttering partial steps forward and back, all before he’s whipped around, ducking into tom’s airspace. he sets his attention-hating and community-mistrusting wariness aside and kisses him to say hello, chuck,

i am fucking happy you’re alive.

“it’ll be a slow walk, pet.” you owe me the romance. wouldn’t object to it being moonlit, either. “and dinner in bed, after that.”

wallet already out to save him seconds in the forthcoming exchange, he chances one last show of affection by briefly touching tom’s hair, and then walks purposefully—borderline goose-steppily—deeper into the restaurant in search of the ferryman.

#widwer #widwer: tom beverly 1 #tom threads #the island actually just got truman show on dvd

gravel crackles underfoot over the few yards of non-asphalted road up from the parking lot. the salty whale turns its lights off almost immediately after shutting the door on them. miracle work all around. god bless the underpaid and overworked. tom walks with one hand around beverly's and another in a plastic noose of a to-go bag. kathy did bring another spud—to her credit—also some other stuff he didn't get a good look at. fries? green beans? really sickly looking. they're covered in unnamed red sauce and staining the container. the slow walk might awaken his appetite or do the complete opposite, but he'll roll that dice when he gets there.

nice night, though. all things considered. he breathes for the first time today. the air feels loaded—incredible how an island this far from any mainland can still smell like smog—he watches for the aforementioned rain. someone would, truman show-like, push it forward if he showed sign of enjoying himself without.

not quite moonlit: fog rolling in.

"you can be pissed at me," he says, breaking the silence, "i-i would be. i know last time i said it would be a one-time thing and now i've gone and made it a two-timer. just fucking awful, isn't it? fool me once. but i mean it. third time is-is not the charm. tomorrow, first thing, i'll—" make a list. "but you don't want to hear about that. you don't want to hear it."

huff, puff. and blow it all.

"tell me about your day. please?"

meglomanic

she touches him, now, more than she used to. something about her opened when she sliced into him, forced them closer — it feels inevitable, in hindsight. what is the point of creating space, when there has been nothing but her own skin between the two of them?

she's always been the limiting factor.

clara reaches for him in the dark, catching his hand.

admist the shadows, she can almost pretend nothing happened. but she doesn't sleep with her back to him, anymore.

"maybe you're right. do you prefer it this way?"