#im imagining a Designations Congruent With Things style narrative. what do you do after the war. who are you now . who are you in relation

[gayrfalcon]

You've got Arbiter/Chief hotel diplomacy fic up your sleeves???

well no i haven't written a single word because my skill and knowledge base are not suited to writing this hypothetical fic

but if i did it would go something like:

john-117 and thel 'vadam have met before as [reluctant? i literally have not consumed a halo in years] allies on the battlefield, united in the immediacy of their conflict. now, as symbols more than as men to their respective civilizations, they're required to attend the peace talks.

these kinds of negotiations tend to drag on, and they're both... not just soldiers but that's what they've known better than anything else. this doesn't look like progress. they meet by accident in a spub (space pub) one night, early in the morning. neither of them have been sleeping well. it's too quiet in their rooms and too loud in their heads. they don't have a conversation, exactly, the first time it happens. just share company.

the second or third, maybe just a joke or two, but they share the same sense of humor and that's enough to get them to open up. thel 'vadam was an exile, disgraced and expected to die usefully. john-117 was kidnapped from his home and made into a fighter. they should be enemies, by all accounts. but they barely remember how to be civilians of their own nations.

plus, they have the oldest subject in the book to bond over: making fun of their coworkers together.

so they talk again, the next time they meet in the spub. and then again, until it's a ritual they both share, that they look forward to.

they keep crossing paths at other times, too, and sometimes they just offer a wave but sometimes they stay and chat. it's not just about the peace talks anymore, they're sharing anecdotes from the before times. (they could, should, and perhaps must go on a fishing trip with each other.)

i honestly don't know how i'd escalate it - the sexual / romantic element of their relationship takes second fiddle to discovering how to be people for a while, i think. possibly they don't notice how much they mean to each other until they go their seperate ways. and then, of course, they find their way back to each other, go out drinking and. well. Well