Chapter Text
Happy belated one year fandom-versary to me! I’ve been writing TRC since late July of 2020, and boy has it been a doozy. Thank you to everyone who has been reading, commenting, encouraging, bookmarking, and kudo-ing, even the horny ones who keep reading the q-tip porn, making it my most-read TRC fic by about 100 hits. You've been a great support, and I'm hoping to make this my second-ever actually-completed multi-chaptered work.
This section will include some cultural and economic notes that may help you understand the environment the characters have found themselves in. You would not believe the amount of research I’ve done for this. I would like to thank OutHistory.Org for the excellent notes regarding Las Vegas’ queer history. If you skip down to the bulleted list, you can see some details on the trigger warnings for this series, though some of them will not be in this first part. If you want to avoid spoilers and do not have triggers to look out for, then skip them.
If you live out where I do, you could probably identify a ton of things here that mark where they’re both living as (a walkable version of) Vegas. A lot of stuff here (Robertos at odd hours, idly playing the machines at the bar more because they’re there than anything else, being a big city small-town, the casual rampant drug use in the community) is just what life is like out here, especially concerning the stimulant abuse in the hospitality industry. Fai’s case is pretty mild, all things considered.
A little bit of cultural history: Nevada’s anti-sodomy law was repealed in 1993, just before Fai reached adulthood. This was the first state legislature in the US to repeal the law without a court order. As the state has a very heavy Mormon presence, there was a lot of opposition at the time, but supporters arguing that the bill represented freedom and that the government had no business regulating what happened privately and consensually in people’s homes gave the final push that eventually won the appeal. In 1996, it became illegal to discriminate against sexual orientation for employment, and 1997 marked the first gay pride parade in Las Vegas.
In 2000, Question 7 to ban gay marriage won with just short of 70% support. The question appeared and won again in 2002, and so the constitution was amended to ban same sex marriage. This would not be corrected until 2014 when the amendment was struck down in the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, which legalized same-sex marriage, and in 2017, the gendered language in the state constitution regarding marriage was neutralized, which explicitly legalized same-sex marriage in state law. In 2003, the first openly gay official was elected party secretary to the Democratic party. Starting in the 2010s, legal protections and recognitions for LGBTQ started picking up pace, culminating in the generally permissive state we find ourselves in today.
In general, the Las Vegas Metro Area and Reno/Sparks are safe spots for LGBTQ while the rural areas remain ambivalent. Las Vegas, especially, with a very large entertainment industry, has benefitted from a vibrant community and general acceptance.
This story starts April 23 of 2021. Nevada is still recovering from a record high unemployment rate of 22% during the pandemic; Las Vegas itself reached 33%. Las Vegas in particular is continuing to suffer from travel shutdowns and negative press following civil unrest the summer prior. Bars have been reopened at a reduced capacity, and masks are still technically required when one is not drinking, but the mandate is in truth not closely followed. Vaccinations became available for the general population at the beginning of the month, but many people who had already decided to vaccinate got around the restrictions by registering with clinics, which (hoping not to waste any doses) were vaccinating adults of any population if there were available doses at the end of the day, regardless of whether the population group was technically supposed to be vaccinated or not, and had been doing so since mid February at the latest.
Mask guidelines remain controlled by the state, which follows the CDC recommendations, but most other public health orders are restored to the counties in May. Clark County, in which Las Vegas is contained, is suffering from severe economic hardship and loosens up regulations significantly almost immediately, with all restrictions being lifted by the beginning of June. The metro area of Las Vegas becomes a hotspot for the virus, but as the regulations have been transferred away from Governor Sisolak (who had focused on proactive viral response) to Mayor Goodman (whose prime concern is for economic recovery), capacity remains the same.
Several casinos and entertainment projects that had long been staples in the industry have shut down permanently, along with many locally owned businesses, particularly bars and restaurants. Projections place full economic recovery of Las Vegas between 2022 and 2024.
Fai, working at a pharmacy, has spent the entire pandemic as a front-line worker, and has been dealing with the stress of such, but has not needed to fear losing employment. As construction was deemed an essential service, Kurogane also had job security, but as material prices surge and contracts for new projects drop 50% going into summer 2021, the future for his work is a little uncertain.
I did take some liberties with some specifics, such as certain manufacturers being affected by strikes that have not happened in reality, for the sake of the plot. There are widespread logistics issues and strikes that have been affecting supplies and pricing in various markets, but the specific strike I listed in chapter 4 has not happened in the US to my knowledge at this time.
Specifically triggering things:
- Mental illness - anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, manic episode with psychotic traits, audio/visual hallucinations, discussion of a parent’s past mental illness and loss to suicide, suicide ideation, the results of self-harm (physical), sex as self-harm.
- Drug use - cannabis (smoking and edibles), alcohol use, unnamed stimulant use, discussion of substance abuse during childhood, use of psychedelic mushrooms, discussion of one character spiking drinks.
- Inappropriate attraction from a teenager focused on an adult from the teenager’s point of view. The adult is apparently not aware. It is not acted on. (Mentioned briefly in conversation, I don’t have any teenagers in this story).
- Inappropriate attraction between two teenagers of a significant age gap. It does not get graphic, but the circumstances are described. The character as an adult realizes the consent and age issues in hindsight.
- In the same discussion as above, we also have mention of growing up gay during the AIDs epidemic. Again, there is no detail.
- Consent issues - inability to properly consent due to intoxication is a theme throughout, also the significant age gap listed above, discussion of spiking drinks for sexual assault purposes, sex as a form of self-harm.
- Death - the loss of a parent as listed above, as well as a death from a car accident and one from being shoved down the stairs. All of these happen before the story and are not described in detail. A terrible character does get killed later on, but it's a rather Disney death, and (let's face it) we see a lot worse in canon.
- Emotionally abusive situations. The boys are pretty toxic in their own ways, but they get better.
If any of the above are concerning and you need more detail on the subject before you know if you want to read the story, please contact me at [email protected].