Preferment

[tree_and_leaf]

What I think is still the only Rev. fic on the internet. I do hope it hasn't turned into secretly a woobie! Archdeacon, though...

Title: Preferment.
Characters: The Archdeacon. His Blackberry.
Summary: .

Robert was sitting in a taxi and about to check whether the new Bishop of Sherwood had been announced, when he realized that he actually didn’t want to know.

It would undoubtedly be someone he knew, that went almost without saying. Quite possibly someone he was at college with, it was his generation’s turn. He could certainly name a number of likely candidates.

He wasn’t one of them. Obviously. He probably wasn’t going any further.

The reason why was just as obvious.

His Blackberry buzzed. New text. “Meeting running over won’t have time to get to waitrose have booked table at La Gaffe @ 8. OK? x.”

He could be a bishop still, probably. He was qualified, he was intelligent and competent and decisive, which put him ahead of quite a few of the diocesans, never mind the suffragans – Christ, if there was ever a perfect example of the Peter principle at work it was the House of Bishops. The average bishop today was a middle management type with predictable and boring pretensions and a predictable and boring wife. Or unmarried, with a predictable and boring devotion to a predictable and boring mother. The wife was off the cards, but he could make himself acceptable, it had been done before and he’d been discreet enough to get away with it (he wasn’t going to let the press and the evos turn him into the new Jeffrey). He could do it. They’d both said long ago that they wouldn’t get in each other’s way.

A press release from Southwell diocese had hit “Thinking Anglicans”, his Blackberry informed him. David Horrobin. Complete non-entity. Big on Fresh Expressions, but he’d never heard him say or do an interesting thing.

He could be a bishop, he thought. He’d be a good one. Better than most of the current crop. And the church needed strong, intelligent leadership, no-one could deny it, it needed someone who understood the way the world worked and could talk to it in a way it understood. Horrobin hadn’t had an original thought in his life, he couldn’t even make a Church Times book review interesting.

He could do the job, though. He could. Would it make him happy? What did that matter? It would be satisfying, and he could do a good job. Practically his duty… No, that was going too far. His duty was here, keeping the deanery in order. And if this was all there was?

He’d only have to give up one thing, after all, and they’d talked about how it might be necessary… Oh, it wasn’t fair, but he’d known it wouldn’t be, he’d made that choice a long time ago, and now the only choice he got was how he was to live with it.

He didn’t know the answer to that any more.

His Blackberry buzzed again. “8 OK?”

He sighed. “Yes, great. See you then.” He paused, his free hand brushing absentmindedly over his cross. Then he typed, “Love you. R”, and hit “send”.

Comments

[em_h]

Yay! Archdeacon fic! This is nearly as much my Christmas wish as Protest Chaplain fic, and has cheered up an otherwise somewhat dismal day. Thank you!

[tree_and_leaf]

Very glad it has cheered you up!

The Great Masters, they were never wrong...

[legionseagle]

And in other news

Did you know the actor who plays Alex in "Rev" has just been given a BIFA for Tyrannosaur<//a??

Re: The Great Masters, they were never wrong...

[tree_and_leaf]

I didn't! But she's an excellent actor, so well deserved.

[naraht]

Fantastic.

[tree_and_leaf]

Thank you! The Archdeacon's in an unhappy situation (the partner is word-of-God canon and apparently is going to appear at some point, and anyone can tell he wants to be a bishop), which possible explains some of his aggression to the (straight, married) Adam.

[ankaret]

I wouldn't have thought it was possible to make me sympathise with the Archdeacon, but you have managed it. Lovely.

[tree_and_leaf]

I have a strong suspicion that I have an inner Archdeacon (in the same way that when I was teaching I could sense the existence of an inner Snape), but I don't think he should be allowed to see daylight often. Though he is a brilliant character.

And that's a great compliment!

[em_h]

My inner Archdeacon is only just barely kept inner, I think. In fact, one of my standing jokes about my long-term career plans involves being Jesse's archdeacon once he becomes a bishop, as he inevitably will. But I have not even the slightest wish to be a bishop, luckily for the church.

One of the nicest touches is that they've never needed to *verbalize* Robert's wish to be a bishop; he just keeps wearing that episcopal purple scarf all over the place...

[tree_and_leaf]

And the cross...

I bet he has purple socks, too.

[nineveh_uk]

I rather like the Archdeacon. Unfortunately, my attempts to watch Rev fail because I can't stand Adam! I am not sure whether this says more about me or the writers.

[serriadh]

I liked Adam to begin with, but he's starting to grate very slightly this series. I wonder if there's a limit to how long they can string out "well meaning but hapless" without irritating me. And he's useless to his wife.

[el_staplador]

I couldn't finish watching the most recent episode, I was cringing so much. (Happens a lot with me and sitcoms, I'll admit, but the Archdeacon doesn't make me cringe!)

[serriadh]

I couldn't watch a lot of the drugs one, but this week's was much less cringey for me!

[tree_and_leaf]

I found them cringey in different ways. The drugs one hit my embarrassment squick a bit (it was still very funny), but last week's was painful because Adam was being so petulant and immature and generally really not behaving as a priest should... which is probably what makes it salutary watching for clergy and ordinands, but I did spend quite a lot of it yelling at the telly.

[serriadh]

Yes. Adam being petulant and immature isn't exactly cringey, for me, it just makes me dislike him.

[tree_and_leaf]

I finished watching it - and in fact Adam did manage to pull himself together and behave like a good priest - but he does have a tendency to a painful combination of wetness and petulance...

[serriadh]

painful combination of wetness and petulance
That's spot-on. And it's a certain sort of "hapless male" characterisation that particularly gets my goat, which is unfortunate.

[tree_and_leaf]

Adam would irritate me to death in real life, and I do occasionally end up shouting at the television (and I think Alex deserves better!), but I can recognise a lot of the situations he finds himself in, which makes up for it.

But the Archdeacon's much more fun, even if he is a bit evil...

[tree_and_leaf]

Having thought about it further, I think it's because the writers, in trying to make Adam human and approachable and in some sense an everyman, despite his belief and his esoteric line of work, have fallen back on the rather lazy common characterisation of the modern British male as a bit crap and a bit (or a lot) immature. It irritates me too.

The Archdeacon, on the other hand, is allowed to be a grown up, even if at times rather a nasty one. (I suppose he's basically the Magnificent Bastard trope, but it's a much less annoying one).

[el_staplador]

Archdeacon <3

[tree_and_leaf]

Thank you!

[el_staplador]

Post it to queerlygen?

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, that's an idea, I hadn't thought of that...