honestly and horribly lol the most toxic possible dynamic is the one that is closest to reality? like both of them married w kids but also living in each other's pockets and deeply wretchedly in love w each other and barely acknowledging it to themselves and certainly not acknowledging it to each other except through allllll of whatever is happening between them all the time.
and TRULY for me the core of it is that josh does not have it in him to be unfaithful.. like for all his loose cannon reputation he is very loyal and steady and has a very strong sense of duty and genuinely does try so hard to be a good person and like. DOES want badly to be a good dad and a good husband. and like. he HAS been w his wife since high school and has never really thought abt anything other than life w her, even when he met jalen in college and felt something for him that he's never really felt for anyone else and didn't really know how to make sense out of it.. still doesn't. (also for josh i think the christianity of it all does play a not insignificant role but that's another post.) ANYWAY. it WAS easier after college, when he didn't have to see jalen all the time, bc as much as josh tries to have his priorities straight it's like he can't help himself around jalen and he ends up spending more time w jalen than he does w his family and he will always answer the phone when jalen calls no matter what's happening at home and he will ALWAYS say yes to whatever jalen wants even when it pisses his wife off... he's just helpless around him. torn between conflicting loyalties and it IS destroying him and his marriage. bc his wife DOES know even though they've never talked abt it and it's killing her. and it's killing josh.
and JALEN..... honestly i don't think jalen is as conflicted abt the whole thing as josh is. i can't remember who said it first but it IS true that jalen is just waiting for josh to blink and then jalen will cheat on his wife without a second thought. SORRY but it is true. jalen who is a deeply deeply deeply jealous person (VENUS IN CANCERRRR) is constantly like. testing josh by asking him to do things that are completely unreasonable ("spend your birthday w me instead of w your family" "call me back" (it's 2am) "come to dinner w me" (it's josh's anniversary) etc etc) just to prove to himself that josh will pick him. and josh usually does even though he feels so bad abt it and like. does not have an explanation for his wife when she's like why do you always go w whatever he wants. why do you need to talk to him constantly. why can't you just tell him you're busy. why do you always say yes to everything he asks for. and they both know the answer but neither of them is ever going to say it.
anyway this doesn't make sense but really i think it comes down to: josh wants to be a Good Man and feels like hopelessly caught between his family and jalen, who will push that button constantly in an effort to make himself feel less insecure. both of them hurting SO much and hurting each OTHER so much and hurting their FAMILIES so much and neither of them know how to make it stop.
CASEYS SCARED EOD!!!!!!!!! It’s so solid since the baby came. He never talks abt his person life but.,,, everyone can see the wedding ring. Everyone has a huge crush
casey stoner the very private resting bitch face agency project manager with a reputation for supporting especially anxious junior account executives is soooo special to me.
caseys hard stop at 5:15 pm aest is the stuff of legends for new hires, until they try to schedule a last minute ‘quick question!’ meeting and he ghosts the shit out them. he has a baby coming! that no one knows about but his point still stands, he’s been laying the groundwork for a while.
things casey’s coworkers know about him:
he’s married, you can see his shiny gold wedding ring from space and through their shitty lenovo thinkpad cameras on teams. who he’s married to? no idea
casey is the brains of the project management department and account leads enter a bidding war the second any of his billable time frees up. he refuses to get promoted into management.
no one has ever seen any of casey’s home/office other than the aforementioned dark as hell background. annie on the paid advertising team swears she once heard someone speaking italian in the background, but no one ever listens to the paid team anyways.
his partner has a massive french bulldog that adores casey and casey tolerates
it’s not easy to spot, but he has a deep and abiding disdain for new business pitching
last week, casey told hr and his boss he’ll be going on paternity leave in three months. his boss hung up on teams and had to box breathe through his panic at the thought of 24 weeks without casey. casey was doing the same thing in his office.
casey only comes into the office for executive face time or annual townhalls. he commutes on a motorcycle
one thing about me is that i’m probably not gonna read much genre fiction. i always read a handful of romance novels, and i did read a fair bit of mystery/thriller this year too, but the numbers pale in comparison to all the general adult fiction. only one book in my top 10 from the year is truly genre, i’m a litfic bitch to my core. i absolutely loved THE IDIOT by elif batuman
16. what is the most over-hyped book you read this year?
ALL FOURS by miranda july, which i am going to spoil now, so stop reading if you care:
when i initially finished it i had mixed feelings, and it felt at first very affirming to read a story that was ultimately about the joy and safety of being post-menopausal, but the more i thought about it, the more i didn’t like it. i care so little about a story about a woman who holds a lot of internalized misogynistic beliefs about women and sexuality and menopause and then crashes out when it becomes her reality. if you’re 46 years old and you haven’t done any work (especially as a queer woman???????) to even begin to unlearn the societal conditioning that (a) a woman’s worth is dependent on her fertility and the sexuality therein or (b) women in menopause are past their prime and quite literally dried up with nothing to look forward to i am so utterly disinterested, even if the point is that she does the work and builds the life she wants and gets there in the end. like, jesus christ, i don’t care to come along with you on your journey of like, ohhhh there’s more to life than being able to bear children and this isn’t going to actually impact my ability to desire anything if i don’t want it to. like, ultimately, why is any of this my problem and who did this book serve
anyway. i also read SHOOT YOUR SHOT by lexi lafleur brown, and… well. this wasn’t actually over-hyped (the author hyping their own book does not technically count), and i expected it to be bad, but it was so much worse than i had even begun to imagine or, quite frankly, would’ve been capable of imagining, but that’s an entire post of its own
If you want to say More abt galex and pacific rim…….. I’m listening
babe tbh I’m no thoughts head empty atm but a million years ago I did start a galex version of pacific rim 2 so ENJOY!!!
Alex knows that George will be at Moyulan before they land.
About half an hour before they land, admittedly, but that’s fine. That’s no problem. There’s nothing Alex needs more than half an hour to prepare for, especially not sodding George Yes-Sir-No-Sir-Blimey-Sir Russell.
Alex jigs his knees in tandem, full of energy that has nowhere to go in the cabin of the transport shuttle. He puts his hands on his thighs to make it stop, clears his throat; crosses and uncrosses his legs, starts to bounce them again. Across from him Yuki is doing an equally terrible job of looking nonchalant, surreptitiously craning his neck to peer out the transport window at the Chinese coastline. He catches Alex watching him and immediately scowls, sticking out his chin in what he must imagine is a real tough-guy look.
“What?” he snaps, crossing his arms.
“Nothing, mate,” Alex says airly, raising his hands in surrender.
“What?” Yuki repeats, sneering.
Alex stays quiet, makes a show of zipping his lips, eyebrows high as he looks back towards the window. Yuki rises to the bait, striking out with one leg to try and kick Alex in the shin. His attack lands about a foot and a half short and he huffs indignantly.
“Fuck you, guy,” he mutters. Alex tries not to laugh.
“Prepare for landing,” the pilot’s voice crackles out over the intercom, heavy with static. Yuki immediately whips his head around to look out the window again, eager to catch a glimpse of the shatterdome. Alex can’t blame him. The hulking compound sits flush along the coastline, bathed in sunlight and crawling with activity. Alex doesn’t look for too long, busies himself with checking his bootlaces, but it’s like Yuki can’t look away, his expression caught amusingly between his usual anarchistic scowl and childish excitement.
“Command, this is troop transport designation India-Golf-Niner-Niner requesting clearance to land, over,” the static says again over the intercom. Alex can’t hear Moyulan’s response but the pilots both laugh - a scratchy, aggravating sound. He curls his toes in his boots, releases; keeps his face blank.
“Roger that,” the co-pilot says, sounding smug. “Prison shuttle inbound.”
Alex rolls his eyes. Yuki fixes him with a look and mutters, “This is all your fault,” as the transport shuttle swings down onto the shatterdome’s flight deck. The arc of it causes Alex’s stomach to drop out; he feels cold all over despite the humidity. Yuki leaps up as soon as the engines shut off, flinging his harness off and grabbing his backpack.
“I don’t know why they make me come here anyway,” Yuki snarls, eyeing off the tailgate like there might be a firing squad on the other side. “Fucking stupid.”
Alex is barely listening, tense all over as the hold shudders open, a sharp wind whipping in off the sea. Moyulan’s flight deck is teeming; the smell of jet fuel and open ocean so strong and familiar that it holds him back for a moment, like the ghost of Helmut Marko might suddenly appear in full regalia to chastise him. He strangles it quickly, shaking his head and striding out of the belly of the transport with as much of a swagger as he can muster.
He spares Yuki a glance. “You built and piloted your own jaeger,” Alex reminds him. “That’s not stupid.”
Yuki hustles along a half-step behind him, scowling. “How come they’re not making me a ranger then, huh? You didn’t build a jager, you just fuck around selling shitty scrap parts. You should be the cadet, I’m way smarter than you.”
“Mate, you absolutely are,” Alex says, clapping Yuki on the shoulder. Yuki shakes him off, makes an aggrieved sound as he skitters away. “Just bad luck for me, I guess.”
From off to their left a low, mechanical growl ripples out across the flight deck; they both look around, instinctively defensive.
The jaeger is enormous, red and black with bright yellow warpaint. The sun strikes it at such an angle that it looks like a freshly fired flare, shining and violent as it rolls its shoulders back and stands to its full height.
“Prospect Stallion,” Yuki says, face slack with awe. The jaeger strides past them, its joints humming with momentum. “Fucking shit man.”
He says it with such reverence that for a brief moment Alex gets caught up in it too, head tilted all the way back like he might be able to see up into the connpod. It doesn’t last; Yuki almost immediately notices an inbound carrier that’s hauling his little single-occupant scrap jaeger and goes ballistic.
“Gomi!!” he calls out to it like it’s a lost pet. Pilotless, it lands flat on its face when the transport cables disengage; Alex tunes Yuki out as he starts shouting threats across the deck, waving his arms around like a lunatic and switching to Japanese when English fails to adequately convey his displeasure.
“Crikey,” George says from behind and Alex does an admirable job of suppressing a flinch, squares up his shoulders before he turns. “Alexander. I almost didn’t believe it when I heard you were inbound.”
He walks up slowly, weight balanced cautiously like Alex is some kind of wild dog that he might have to subdue. He looks good, which is really fucking annoying - his hair is clipped to regulation, short back and sides, but there’s stubble incongruous and rough along his jaw. His white PPDC-issued shirt clings to him in a way that seems decidedly not regulation, showing off his broad shoulders and hard, trim waist. He looks tired maybe, but Alex hardly knows him well enough anymore to tell.
“Alright, Georgie,” Alex nods.
“It’s Ranger Russell,” George says cooly, tags bouncing on his chest. His face is military-blank.
Alex scoffs, indignation prickling hot over his skin. “Are you for real?”
“We’re on a military base,” George says. “I’d imagine you still remember how that works, Ranger Albon.”
“Right,” Alex says, mouth tight, crossing his arms over his chest. “Of course.”
“You’re Tsunoda, I imagine,” George says louder, raising his eyebrows at Yuki.
“Yeah, what?” Yuki says, turning around like a thundercloud.
“You’re with me, quick as you can,” George says and it’s only then, as he turns, that Alex sees the scarring on his arm.
The lines are geometric, precise: the fault lines of a pilot suit, carved into George’s skin. Alex had seen the fight, had seen Edgebreaker rip Striker’s arm clean off her body - everyone had - but something about seeing it in front of him, shiny and raw against familiar flesh, makes him feel sick.
George is rattling off meeting times and instructions; Yuki has a flat, stubborn look on his face that suggests he might be purposefully forgetting everything George says.
I hope you are enjoying the coming of summer and your long long days so much!!! Do you ever go to pride??? What would be the activity in Finland you would force the blorbo of your choice to do? (You are not present for this activity.)
To my sheepish embarrassment, I HAVENT ever gone to a pride event because a) I've usually been out in the archipelago as they take place or b) I haven't been in the same city as my gay friends and I'm too shy to go alone!!! I am considering going this year though, I think I may have an unprecedented opportunity to go
Blorbo of Choice, any blorbo really (right now I have Hawkeye of MASH on my mind) I would make them chop wood and light a fire. Valtteri Bottas, real Finnish Man (TM) DID actually chop wood on that one DTS episode, but I truly believe the measure of a man (gn) is taken by how he composes himself as he makes the painstaking effort of making fire catch in stacked firewood. Yes I will allow him matches; it does not necessarily make it easier
not to be dramatic but you created the online nba rpf scene #to #me so how could i not love you for that? i love how funny you are but once again ESPECIALLY when it comes to basketball things i love that you let me reply to your posts and make them about demar/kyle. i love how kind and thoughtful and real you are! you truly have a way of getting people into fandoms like you would not believe, i think that's a testament to how easily you can pull stories and emotions. it's not easy at all and you are so amazing at it i am constantly in awe!
i will think of you when the inevitable position of doctor overseeing nba pregnancies becomes available. the golden state warriors have u to thank for making steph/klay gay so they could win all those championships. obscure and niche sports pairings.... u invented them. muah!
mutuals send me a 💌 and i'll tell u one thing i love about u and one thing i associate with u!
The heat has been beating down so intensely the entire city has shifted back two gears into a slower tempo of living for the week - the temperature is expected to go down again after the weekend, but for now, people are lazing around in parks, work tasks forgotten and responsibilities shirked. There was a vague idea at one point to kick a ball around during lunch break and then be responsible adults but instead, Alex and George have skipped all of their afternoon lectures in lieu of lying in the shadow of a giant oak.
George is in love with Alex, Alex knows, has known for almost a year now; he’s not exactly subtle about it, all the wide-eyed looks when he thinks Alex won’t notice, the flush that goes down to his chest when Alex throws an arm around him when Lando makes them pose endlessly for group photos, but so far, he’s never said anything about it. Alex is going to miss this, after George confesses and Alex will have to tell him he doesn’t feel the same, has enjoyed George’s friendship more than he expected, beforehand.
The dry grass tickles Alex’s neck as he lazily watches George, sprawled out next to him, turn his head to say something, then get up on one elbow.
“You have -“ he says and leans over. Suddenly, he’s so close, his crisp light blue shirt with grass stains at the elbows shifting against Alex’s sweat-damp tee, his handsome, angular face an inch away from Alex’s - mouth open a fraction, lips shiny with spit, or sweat, or maybe just shiny, period. George’s hand slides into Alex’s hair and Alex shivers, even in the sweltering heat.
“Aha,” George says, rolls back and shows Alex the grasshopper he’s just picked from his hair. “Got him.”
Alex lowers his hand from where he’d raised it instinctively, had almost put it on George’s waist. His mouth is dry.
“Thanks,” he says. If George notices his voice sounds off, he doesn’t show it.
