So I Gather That There's Some Disagreement On The Internet Over Whether Dr. Frank Langdon Is An Evil

OP, thank you for seeing this and saying this.

Guess what, FRANK? The reason you can work so hard at being a doctor is because your wife gets up every time a kid is puking at 2 am and every morning 365 days a year to make then breakfast. She makes sure there's milk in the fridge, toilet paper in the bathroom, and clean underwear in your drawer. She sends your mother her favourite flowers for Mother's Day and writes your name on the card. And she probably quit her consulting job at McKinsey to do all that.

And that's why he actually doesn't deserve Mel. He doesn't understand or respect the woman he already has. Addiction? Yeah, whatever. Call me when he goes to rehab for being a sexist jerkoff.

honestly this is the only thing he deserves an ass beating for. everything else he can recover from

Slow Horses, S02E02 - From Upshott with Love

Why does no one write this?

River's mother suspecting he's into Diana Taverner... This gives me very, very interesting ideas...

(Lady Di would totally ruin him. Coercion and manipulation are sure to be involved.)

Jack Lowden as River Cartwright Slow Horses – S01E06

Can we fix it? No, we can't!

Due to Park budget restrictions, Lamb has tasked River with fulfilling a number of odd jobs around Slough House.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Slow Horses (TV), Slough House - Mick Herron Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sidonie "Sid" Baker/River Cartwright Characters: River Cartwright, Sidonie "Sid" Baker Additional Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, OCs (secondary characters), Co-workers to lovers, One Night Stands Summary:

Sid asks River to be her date to fool her friends into thinking she's moved on from a bad break up. In a surprise to no one who's ever read a romance novel, the only one she's fooling is herself.

(I think maybe you could consider this fluff if you're willing to overlook the teensy tiny ethical violation of banging someone you have under surveillance.)

All of this. I am so obsessed with imagining their relationship before the series starts.

Also, River is all about River in a lot of ways. And he's sad about Spider's death because it's not only the final death of what their *relationship* once was, it's also a symbol of him losing who *he* once was. Or who he thought he was going to be.

I think that the insane yearning and obsession they have for each other is driven a lot by how needy they both are for a certain kind of success and recognition. They recognize each other as fellow travellers. They also have those feelings you have when you have a crush on someone and it's kind of about how you think that person has something amazing about them that makes you want to bask in their aura but also you kind of resent them because you're envious of their sparkle.

The seething disdain they feel for each other after the Falling Out is a reflection of their disappointment in how the other has failed to live up to the (still nascent) image they projected and the grimy mirror that holds up to their own respective reflections.

Instead of Britain's most dangerous field asset, River is a fuck up who can't follow basic instructions (for his surveillance assignment - hence Stanstead/King's Cross). Instead of an astute political operative climbing the ranks and pulling strings behind the scenes, James is babysitting a bunch of filing cabinets and only gets trotted out when some woman with actual power needs a biddable warm body for her own purposes. They both suck and they hate looking at the other man and being reminded of the abjectness of failure, of falling short, of being so desperately close but so far. It's embarrassing watching the other one hanging from the cliff by his fingernails while he puts on a show like he's still climbing the mountain.

I think the saddest thing about their relationship is that these boys never even really knew each other. And they couldn't because they didn't even know themselves. They were too young and trying too desperately to outrun themselves and become perfect, unassailable, lovable.

They're both so deeply lonely. And then Spider dies and River is even more alone. They ended up hating each other but James also understood what it was like to live with that black hole in the centre of himself and there was a type of company in that, even after the love was gone.

river and spider are just such a tragedy to me. the way they both (in the books) are just. constantly wistfully thinking about Back When They Were Friends… and it’s about more than just their friendship in a lot of ways, it’s that Back Then was when they still had bright unbounded futures, back when they thought they’d wander straight into influential spots at the service and be bestest friends forever while they changed the world and got everything they ever wanted.

and like. the thing is, that is already gone. they’re never getting that back. even if they somehow put all their bitterness and history aside and became close again, it wouldn’t be the same as before… they’ll never get that youthful optimism that (in my head at least) defined their pre-series relationship back. that version of their friendship is gone forever already.

but then spider dies and, well. now it’s really really gone. now even the hope of a “different from before but close enough to what they had once” reunion is gone.

just. agh. this idea of like. that, that version of their relationship, the version that they miss, is already dead and buried before the series starts and there’s no getting it back. there’s already no getting it back. but they still keep hoping (or at least, river keeps hoping, though i think spider does too) that it somehow, against all rules of logic, WILL come back anyway. until spider dies and river has to face that that hope, while impossible before anyway, it now for real actually impossible impossible…

heartbreaking, man. they’re such a tragedy.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Slow Horses (TV), Slough House - Mick Herron Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: River Cartwright/Diana Taverner Characters: River Cartwright, Diana Taverner, James "Spider" Webb Summary:

Her friends are so jealous / You know how bad girls get / Sometimes it's not so easy / To be the teacher's pet

Cartwright catches Taverner's attention during training. HR violations ensue.

A random River collection.