When Bill and Nancy adopted Brian, they also grudgingly agreed to foster a teenaged boy named Holden Ford.
Now, Bill Tench solves murders, ignores his own deep-rooted traumas, and-- maybe-- learns to be a father.
A massive gen/case fic on AO3.
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Deleted Scenes
References
Music
OCs
Fanart
Inspirations
I'm re-reading for the 3th time "Who Composed Your Beauties" (Mostly because I always do it after re-watching the whole series, which I do if I feel overwhelmed. Your fic is literally my third season at this point!!)
I know that writing, especially of this quality and length, takes time. I have waited for fics chapters on other occasions for years, and I will do it happily again for this fic. It means a lot to me.
But I wanted to check that you were still interested in it, and also show that people are still interacting with that series, at least I do! It is one of my classics™.
Fr, I love it, I really want to see them become a family, know what happened to Holden's mom, etc. I hope I will one day!
Don't give up, hope you are having a great life!!!
Att: A Fan!
Wow, thank you so much! This is high praise indeed!
I am definitely still interested in it, but Life gets in the way, and there being no more canon content makes it a bit of a harder slog. It's good to know there's still people interested in it, but we'll have to see if I get the time and headspace to return to it. I hope so! I do still think about mini-Holden quite often. ;____;
I read through WCYB pretty quick over the last couple weeks and one thing that kept standing out was how good you were at writing a teenage character (especially considering Holden is an adult in the show). Like he makes really (re: Really) dumb, impulsive decisions sometimes, but we totally see how he didn't think about all the consequences yet. And even aside from his personal trauma, his emotional outbursts are also understandable just from the standpoint of teen moodiness. Idk where I was going with this, just that Holden is really well written and I dont guess I realized how rarely I see an honestly written teenager in fiction lol <3
Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it! He is such a dumb baby, I definitely don't see that changing as a teenager, haha.
yoooo i just devoured WCYB and am so glad you're writing a sequel. is the sequel going to follow the Atlanta arc at all? will bill end up distanced from the family because of the case? will something terrible happen in Nancy's real estate listing in this fic too? will holden be holdening? ooooooh im excited.
It's still 1977 in WCYB so it won't be going into Atlanta et al... but Holden will most definitely be Holdening lol.
OMG I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW. I saw that you posted the first chapter of the second part just now, and oh gosh it made me happy. I am very very excited for what is to come, missed that little family a lot even tho it wasn't that long since i read it. hope you are well :)))
Thank you so much! I hope I can keep up with the rest in a timely manner, haha. <3
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Holden Ford & Bill Tench, Bill Tench/Nancy Tench, Wendy Carr & Bill Tench
Characters: Holden Ford, Bill Tench, Nancy Tench, Brian Tench, Wendy Carr, Debbie Mitford, Tanya Clifton (Mindhunter), Original Characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Adoption, Holden is a foster kid, Murder Mystery, Canon-Typical Violence, Period Typical Attitudes, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Foster Care, Slow Build
Series: Part 2 of Who Composed Your Beauties
Summary:
When Bill and Nancy adopted Brian, they also grudgingly agreed to foster a teenaged boy named Holden Ford. Now, Bill Tench solves murders, ignores his own deep-rooted traumas, and-- maybe-- learns to be a father.
just finished "who composed your beauties" and this is just gold, i mean, i'm an orfan now, i lived for this work for the past days and now i have no purpose in life. I love the little family you created with holden, bill, nancy and brian and its just *cheff kiss*. i also love the interactions between holden and wendy, honestly, she is a queen. hope you don't give up on this series. hope you are well! bye :)
Thank you so much!! It made my day to get this comment. I miss the story terribly and really hope I can start posting it again soon, life just keeps getting in the way. I know it's been forever, but I promise I haven't given up! And Wendy is definitely a queen, haha. <3!
I wrote this scene fairly early-ish, when I was about three or four chapters in. It was basically just a free-writing thing to explore the characters more, and ultimately wasn’t usable. It takes place sometime after Holden’s dumb undercover sting. Bill takes Holden out for ice cream to bury the hatchet.
I wanted to explore Holden’s issues with school, but I hadn’t exactly figured out what his fatalist attitude was all about yet. (It’s been a struggle to reconcile the canonical Holden, who I’m sure got straight As [he wasn’t a teacher’s pet because the teachers found him too annoying], to this struggling foster kid who “doesn’t care” about school.) After I wrote this, I got a bit closer to figuring out why Holden was doing so poorly in school.
This was also initially slotted into my outline as “Some light fluffy thing to show Bill and Holden understanding each other.” While they did come to understand each other more after Holden’s dumb undercover stunt, there really wasn’t any good time in the fic for Bill to do something as frivolous as take Holden for ice cream, lol. And it became clear that they needed a REAL family talk. So the spirit of “Bill takes Holden for ice cream” ended up being used in the dinner with Debbie chapter.
Anyway, this little chapter is basically all them talking about Holden’s plans to drop out of high school.
(Going into tenth grade, Holden has to do an art and a language. Or, he can pick whether to stay in academics or go vocational. If he goes vocation he doesn’t have to do an art or language. He’ll effectively drop out. He wouldn’t get a high school diploma, but he’ll have an apprenticeship.
And he’s behind in all his classes. He talks to Bill about it because he doesn’t talk to the counsellors about it. They think he’s dumb, who cares. He doesn’t talk to Miss Wong about it. He’s behind in math and if he wants to stay on course he has to do summer school. So he’s thinking about welding. He’s been doing it in shop class and he’s good at it.)
“Mr. Moretti says I’m good at it because I’m focused and I take it seriously. And he says there’s good money in welding. I could work in Norfolk, do welding for the Navy.”
“Why not just join the Navy?” asked Bill.
“I don’t want to join the Navy,” Holden huffed. “I want to be a welder.”
“I’m just saying, you could be a welder in the Navy.”
Holden folded his napkin neatly and placed it on his lap. “I don’t think I would do very well cooped up on a ship. I would probably get myself killed because I’d annoy everyone.”
Bill frowned. “Well, I’d never dissuade anyone from honest work, and welding’s as honest as anything else. But I don’t think that’s a reason to drop out of high school.”
“But what’s the point?” Holden looked up at him, eyes big, mouth turned down. “My grades aren’t good enough to get me a scholarship. They might not even be good enough to get me into college. And even if they were, I’d probably just fail because I couldn’t handle it.”
Bill scowled. “What are you talking about?”
Holden picked up his spoon and pushed ice cream around the bowl. “I can’t open my mouth in class without someone making fun of me, or getting pissed off. I can’t even pass my stupid driving test.” His shoulders hunched up, and his voice shook a little. “Mr. Moretti thinks I could get a good job as a welder. No one’s ever said something like that about me before.”
Bill scoffed. “I think you could do just fine at college. And hell, Nancy thinks you hung the damn moon.”
“No offence Bill, but you and Nancy don’t know me very well.” Holden kept pushing his spoon around.
Bill leaned back and crossed his arms. “Fine, Holden. Like I said, honest work is honest work. I think welding is a great choice, if it’s really what you want to do. But tell me this. How long do you think you can do it for?”
Holden looked up at him, brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”
“I mean it’s hard work, physically. You don’t think your back or knees will start to go? How long do you think you can weld for? Until your thirties? Your forties?” Bill lit a cigarette. “What I’m asking is, have you ever met an old welder?”
Holden looked thoughtful. “I guess… if I took care of myself, I think I could do it until my forties.”
“Okay. So you’re forty. And your back and knees are shit, and you can’t work anymore. And who knows what the world looks like by then. There might not even be a United States for all we know.”
“Maybe I’ll be dead by then,” Holden mumbled.
Jesus Christ, thought Bill. You are not scaring me off that easily, kid. “You might be,” he said. “But let’s plan for a world where you’re not. You’re alive, and forty, and you can’t work, and the Soviet Union has taken over. And they say, from each according to their abilities, and what exactly are your abilities?”
Holden’s brow furrowed, and he looked away, and his lips moved, like he’d just heard some life-changing prophecy. From each according to his abilities, he seemed to say to himself.
“Well?” prodded Bill.
Holden’s attention snapped back. “I don’t know, Bill. I don’t know what my abilities ar— would be in this hypothetical Soviet takeover you’re imagining.” He pouted and stared down at his plate. “I guess I could teach welding.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
Holden still wouldn’t look at him. “A community college,” he said quietly. “Or a high school.”
“Well, you’d need a teaching certificate for that,” said Bill.
“So?”
“So that means college.”
Holden shook his head. “Then I’d go to college then. I’ll have saved up some money.”
“You need a high school diploma for that.”
“Then I’ll get my GED.”
“When you’re forty.”
Holden scowled. “What’s wrong with that?”
Bill shrugged. “It’s harder to learn when you’re older. That’s why kids go to school, and not adults.”
“And it’s why so many adults are such assholes,” Holden muttered under his breath, staring at his plate.
Bill snorted.
“If I get good enough at welding, I could get a master qualification and have apprentices,” said Holden. “Then I could keep teaching them.”
“Sure, apprentices.” Bill ashed his cigarette. “That means you’d be running your own business, and you’d need clerical and administrative skills for that.”
“I thought we were Communists in this scenario.”
Bill snorted again. “It’s just not one scenario. Reagan could somehow become President, and you’ll end up in a libertarian nightmare where your entire life is one giant business transaction.”
Holden was pouting again. “People run their own businesses without being educated. It happens all the time.”
“Yeah, fair enough,” Bill conceded. “The American dream, it’s a wonderful thing. But Holden, you have to imagine it would be easier with a high school diploma under your belt.”
Holden’s shoulders went up. He kept staring at his plate, and his breath was coming faster. “There’s a nursing aide course. I could do that instead.”
Bill leaned back. “What?”
“It’s the same thing, I wouldn’t have to graduate,” Holden said hurriedly. “Then I could start working next year and save money, and then finish high school later on and go to nursing school.”
“Do you… want to be a nurse?” asked Bill.
Holden shrugged, his head still bowed. “Nancy liked it,” he said, his voice shaky. “And I think it would be less, like, physically demanding.”
Bill took a long drag. “Nancy liked it because she’s very nurturing. That’s her natural ability. Is it yours?”
Holden didn’t answer.
“And I’m not sure about the physically demanding part,” said Bill. “You should check with her about that. She certainly complained about her back often enough.”
“Do you think men shouldn’t be nurses, Bill?”
Bill laughed. “Kid, at my age, I can’t tell you how many times I wished the nurse in the room wasn’t a pretty young woman. So, no, I don’t give a shit about men being nurses.” He took another long drag off his cigarette and regarded Holden. “What’s this about, Holden? You went from not finishing high school to finishing it in a few years. It sounds like you want to finish it, so what’s the problem? I know summer school sucks, but it’s only the mornings, and you always get up early, anyway.”
Holden was hugging himself, and making himself very small. Bill realized he was trembling.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
Holden took a shaky breath. “I just… I wanted to work this summer.”
“You can still work a little. And we’ll give you pocket money.”
Holden shook his head. “I need money to move out next year, and I don’t think I’ll be able to finish high school on my own. I just thought it would be better if I was done before I moved out.”
(Holden cries. Bill tries to comfort him)
“You don't want me to stay,” sniffled Holden. “I fucked up.”
"Well, yeah," said Bill, weakly. "But you're sixteen. It happens. Holden, I took you out for ice cream. Is it not obvious that I forgive you?"
"No," Holden whined.
"Well… why not?"
Holden averted his gaze. His voice was very quiet. "Because you never said it."
“Holden,” Bill said, gently. “Do you always assume the worst?”
Holden wiped at his eyes. “Yeah. Don’t you? All that— ‘when you’re forty and you can’t work anymore.’ That’s assuming the worst.”
Bill was quiet for a while. “I plan for the worst. It’s a little different.” He thought of Nancy and her secret medications. He wasn’t even that good at planning for the worst, evidently.
He tousled Holden’s hair. He was coming to learn that part of fatherhood was lying, so he tried not to let it get to him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 28/28
Fandom: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Holden Ford & Bill Tench, Bill Tench/Nancy Tench, Wendy Carr & Bill Tench
Characters: Holden Ford, Bill Tench, Nancy Tench, Wendy Carr, Brian Tench, Art Spencer (Mindhunter), Jim Barney (Mindhunter), Gregg Smith, Debbie Mitford, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Adoption, Holden is a foster kid, Murder Mystery, Canon-Typical Violence, Period Typical Attitudes, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, After-effects of sexual abuse, Panic Attacks, Case Fic, referenced miscarriage, Stillbirth, Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Foster Care, Slow Build, Domestic Violence
Series: Part 1 of Who Composed Your Beauties
Summary:
When Bill and Nancy adopted Brian, they also grudgingly agreed to foster a teenaged boy named Holden Ford. Now, Bill Tench solves murders, ignores his own deep-rooted traumas, and– maybe– learns to be a father.
It has been a year since I published the first chapter of this fic. It’s far and away the most ambitious thing I’ve written, but also somehow the most popular??? I’m so grateful to all my readers and cheerleaders!
I am excited to share the next part of the series when it’s ready. I know it’s been a wait and it will be more of a wait, but it’s definitely in the works! I had no idea when I started writing and posting this story that anybody would care, let alone that I’d get the support that I have gotten. <3
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