are we listening to gay hcs about the thing? because i have only one ship in that movie and i want it to be heard. (summary/tldr at the end)
this is kind of like the debate between frodo and sam where a true platonic friendship is shown between men and they both have this deep sense of trust and platonic love for each other and you almost don’t want to touch it because of how well it was done. but also they should have kissed.
i think that the relationship between macready and fuchs was like that. before mac was ever the head of the outpost fuchs pulled him aside to discuss with only him blair’s findings on the dog and splitface. he had known the danger they posed to him and his fellow men, that the thing singles out each victim and will only reveal itself when alone, and that both confirmed things were still alive.
fuchs is a very smart man and distances himself from any others who may be infected, but places his trust in macready. this could be for the same reason that he is elected the leader toward the mid point of the film, just that they trust his judgment and cool demeanor as a vet, but that doesn’t excuse fuchs literally going out into the snowcat alone with macready where he’s at his most vulnerable. you wouldn’t just bet your life on something like that if you didn’t know for absolute certain he was human.
i think its most likely that the two have a history together, in the platonic sense at the very least, and fuchs knows and trusts macready the most. which is where i fall into the pit of gayness.
fuchs may not trust macready at all.
fuchs may launch himself into these one on ones with mac because he would rather confide in an old friend rather than someone else who may well be a thing, but also because he would rather die at the hands of macready/thing than live in uncertainty that his one confidant could be working against him. this works in tandem with what theories have sprung up about his death.
after fuchs and macready have their chat on blair’s notes a second time in fuchs’ study, he goes out to investigate a silhouette. from there to his point of death there’s no evidence of the circumstances of his death other than his charred remains.
i don’t doubt a thing could maneuver a flare but also who has been using the firepower the whole movie? the outpost. then nauls (i believe is who makes the suggestion) and mac both theorize that fuchs was the one with the flare, with different outcomes (“maybe he tried to burn it” “maybe he burned himself before it could get to him”).
now this part is gonna get funky because i’ve heard this theory before but it doesn’t add up just right.
the prominent theory for fuchs’ death is that he found macready’s torn up clothes (establishing that he is probably a thing) and then burned himself alive. fuchs was found right outside the outpost. the jacket was stuffed into the furnace in macready’s shack. odd. until you add the narrative.
macready’s jacket was found with burn marks. (its implied) no one has been in macready’s shack for several days. no one has used the furnace in several days. fuchs found macready’s jacket after stumbling outside, wherever the thing may have planted it. after finding out that his closest friend on the base, the one who the entire outpost trusted to lead them and who he trusted with the knowledge on how to prevent assimilations, was one of them, he couldn’t handle it. he didn’t want to live with his mistakes in a world of paranoia and uncertainty, and wanted to die a man. he set himself on fire with the coat still in hand, but quickly tossed it away so it could be found by someone else to serve justice to the thing that killed macready, thus the burns on the coat.
(summary tidbit)
YOU SEE HOW THAT SOUNDS??? fuchs only ever entrusted macready with new information that could then be passed down to the rest of the outpost, spent at least two scenes in a place alone with him, then burned himself alive when he found out mac was (maybe) a thing. and i didn’t even have to TOUCH the way that the movie is a metaphor for the AIDS crisis to prove how gay they were.
i need to write a fic from a gay fuchs perspective because i have a lot more subtleties i want to add to his character and i think that would go hard. make ME go hard if you know what i’m sayin
tl;dr- macready x fuchs was real y’all are just focused on the big twizzler monster too much to notice