#ur words!!!! good!!!!!!

[tatretot]

hellooo danandphilgames buddies!! happy belated 10 year (more like 5 but shhh) anniversary :-)

[inkskinned]

you get used to it, but it's tiring, because they need you to understand your own life as a series of goalposts. what college are you going to, what's your major going to be, whatcha gonna do with that, oh where will you settle down, when can i expect grandkids.

for the longest time my goals have been so blurry that they track into each other, their undefined edges slipping quietly back into the soft night. today i want to be a writer; tomorrow i will want to be a doctor, later i will wish i took that law school free ride. how the fuck do people just know what they want to do with their life?

where do you want to be in five years? i want to be alive; which is a huge step for me. ten years ago i would have said i want to be asleep and meant i hope that i'm dead by then.

but i want a yellow kitchen and a stand mixer. i want a garden and a fruit tree (cherry, if i can make that happen) and a big yard for my dogs to play in. i want to come home and read poetry out loud to someone and have them close their eyes to listen. i want a summer watergun fight. i want to make snowmen. i want to be the house to go to for halloween. i want my life to settle around me in a softness, for it to lay down gently. if i am very, very, very lucky, i want to travel; finally go someplace overseas.

of course i don't know what i want to be doing professionally. what i actually want to be doing is curling up beside my dog, settling in to read. i want to be making myself a cup of good coffee.

i can't answer the other questions. whenever people asked me what do you want to be when you grow up, i used to say i hope i'm happy.

i hope i'm still kind, five years from now. i hope i never get jaded and mean. i hope i have stayed in therapy. what do you picture yourself doing? when will you actually be an adult about this? why are you so afraid of being ambitious?

am i not ambitious? the other day i rearranged my furniture which doesn't quite fit into my apartment. i watered my plants. i'm going to try to propagate a cherry seed. my five year goal is to spend more time laughing. to lie down in a patch of sunwarm moss. to relax for a minute. to close my eyes and think oh thank god. this is why i stayed. this is finally it.

[slavhew]

jakey + dirkjake sandwiched between my organic chem notes. a poem in there somewhere

[p4nishers]

crowley, drunk off his ass: and i was yk just some fucked up soul born in cold and rain but he was my fucking sunlight or whatever

hozier, frantically writing on a napkin: HHHMMMM TELL ME MORE

[ryllen]

x

[brighteuphony]

@kohnnors-blog

@thatsalamanderguy

YES. COME TO THE DARK SIDE. (We bully hot men here :))

[mosspapi]

Able-bodied people remember the existence of words such as debilitating, incapacitating, draining, all-consuming, overwhelming, destructive, drastic, limiting, disruptive, excruciating, etc. instead of using a fucking slur challenge: difficulty level impossible

[anachronistic-falsehood]

love watching cellbit and hearing nothing but spanish and portuguese and then suddenly you hear him yell "OH FUCK" it's my favourite thing

[ardate]

Every Boromir hater makes my enormous love for him grow stronger. Sorry you couldn't understand him, I get him tho and we're holding hands and the whole of Gondor is laughing at you

[matramancer]

"in your embrace" | Hoshina x reader

Synopsis: You were so used to the harshness of the battlefield that the silence in your room left you distraught. Hoshina felt the same.

Tags: angst with fluff, comfort, reader and hoshina are heavily implied to have PTSD, gn! reader

You were used to a loud, fast paced life. One where your gun was in hand’s reach, where all you knew was to shoot, reload, and repeat.

It was what made the silence so jarring sometimes.

You were by no means alone–you could feel Soshiro’s presence beside you in the dark, his fatigued body finally settling in at around 2 am tonight, now spread out on the cold sheets of your bed.

Maybe it was the lull of the air conditioner, or the pitter patter of the rain outside, but something about how mundane it all was pushed your eyes to drift, and soon, you found yourself staring at the still body of your lover.

You stared, and then studied. Your excitable, nimble boyfriend on the field had retired himself into the soft sheets and fluffy pillows of your shared bed, and you briefly recount how they didn’t come with the bed initially. It was a chilly winter Saturday where Hoshina had enough of the plain sheets and opted to change them into cozier bedware, taking note of how much more you hogged the pillows and leaned into his warmth compared to the previous seasons. As advantageous as it was for Soshiro to be able to open his arms and warm you up each and every time a chill ran down your body, he’d prefer a more comfortable and practical solution for you.

“Can’t always count on me to heat up the bed all the time,” he joked in his usual elated tone, the warm covers and pillows the two of you finally settled on snug in your shopping cart.

Tease as he might, it struck a chord in how it was a reminder of the reality of your relationship sometimes. Hoshina Soshiro loves you, but he might not be able to be there on his side of the bed all of the time. And you’re the same.

 You love Hoshina Soshiro, but you’re soldiers first and foremost. Spending a calm night on your bed was a luxury of its own. One day it could be his or your last day, and neither of you would know. Then you’d have to face the empty side the other left.

…

The thought of a cold bed scares you.

You hated it. You hated the familiar feeling that snaked itself into your chest, that same feeling when you saw your lover sprawled out in front of you on his deathbed, the splotches of his blood that seeped into your suit as you carried him to the medics burning a hole in your skin. When you didn’t want to let go, and fought against Captain Ashiro’s strong grip as every part of your body burned.

Breathe in, breathe out.

The screams of the other cadets telling you to stand down fell on deaf ears as rounds and rounds of shots flew out of your gun. When you weren’t satisfied with the firepower, your hands violently threw your gun to a barely breathing yoju, letting out a strangled cry as you ran headfirst to the crowd with your special weapon.

“Stand down! That’s an order!” You ignored Ashiro’s blaring voice in your comms, blasting the heads of kaiju open as you cleared a path to the daikaiju. 

“Her suit’s overheating!”

“Okonogi, force a shut down!”

Seeing the daikaiju enter your vision, you braced yourself with your weapon as you forced your body to withstand maximum combat power. As your grip tightened, you let out a large cry, as if to challenge the daikaiju standing in your way.

“AAAAAH—“

“(Y/N)!” Gasping, you blink as your vision returns to the dark blue color of your dim bedroom. Your body wasn’t lit aflame, nor were you covered in any actual blood, but the sensation still felt like you were there. Like that battle when Soshiro…

“Shhh…” pale, strong hands gripped yours tightly, the squeeze bringing you out of your thoughts. Soshiro. He was warm. He was alive. Without realizing it, tears formed in your eyes.

Soshiro’s entire being encircled yours, with his arms on top of yours, slowly guiding them away, including your dominant hand at the side of your waist. 

You realized slowly that your index finger was itching to get into position, to pull a trigger. That your muscles were so tense. That it felt like you donned on your battlesuit already.

Soshiro was a very patient man, and in times like this, you were grateful. “Breathe in, breathe out,” he starts, intertwining his hands with yours once your fingers slowly uncurl. He attempts to remind you of the present. The soft sheets, your bare skin on his, his hair that tickled the area around your ear.

“You can put away your gun, it’s ok. It’s ok,” he repeats, heart stinging at how you were still quite shaky. “I’m here love.”

Finally, you gasp out the breath you didn’t even realize you were holding. “Soshiro–“ as you turn around to face him, he’s already enveloping you in a hug. “I…”

“Yeah… I get it.” He hugs you close. “I’m scared of losing you too.”

This scenario that the two of you were in was indeed unfortunately, a repeat occurrence for the both of you. Where the memories got too tough, where the other side of being in this line of work shows its ugly sides.

It happens to Soshiro too. Got especially worse when it was your turn to be the one on death’s door, the sound of your bones crunching fresh in his mind. It made him sick—how he couldn’t move fast enough, how he couldn’t wield a gun and help you from afar. 

It was like a cruel mockery of his existence, ripping apart his psyche. He’d probably be down the far end if you didn’t make it. But you’re here now, and so was he. It was a rare night where the two of you were in bed together, no alarms or overwork present. Just the two of you and nothing else.

After a while, your initial panic subsides, though the drumming of your heartbeat is still at large. Soshiro furrows his brows, tracing the surgical scars on your bare body. His touch grounds you, pulling your head out of the raging waters in your mind. 

You realize that Soshiro has the exact same expression you had when you were having these thoughts. Messy mops of purple hair, lips downturned, eyes crinkled as he sits deep in thought. A far cry of the jovial vice captain of the 3rd Division, but nevertheless, the love of your life.

“What’s in your mind?” He asks first, noticing your piercing gaze on him.

You quip back. “What’s in yours?”

With that, Soshiro lets out a sigh, the slight bitterness of it not going unnoticed. He’s fixated on the marred skin, weighing the thoughts in his head before opening his mouth. “That day..I thought I lost you.” He starts, his throaty voice hoarse yet soft. “I felt like if I left your hospital bed for even a second, you could have died a-and–” your fingers dart to his face as he sucks a breath, tracing soothing circles on him. A habit of yours he always favored.  “I wouldn’t have been there. I’d be all alone. I can’t go back.”

It’s Soshiro’s turn to sink into your figure, and you take all of him. You envelop yourself in him, prove to him that both of your existences are real. That the pounding of his heart is happening in front of you, that the shift of your diaphragm wasn’t part of his imagination. “We took turns, huh?” You joked, nuzzling into him. “Had to balance the scales somehow.”

He immediately mock-hits your back a couple times, letting out a sound of disapproval as his grip got harder. Oh, if the world ever knew that your dearest Vice Captain was akin to such a clingy cat. “Don’t say that.”

You hum an apology, nuzzling into him harder as you start to get tangled back into the sheets. This was nice, you think. Although you and Hoshina went way back, nights like these were sparse and few in the Defense Force. You’ve slept together many, many times in many many senses, but an uninterrupted early night where you could just bare your hearts out to each other? You might get greedy if this were to happen more often.

The gears in your head shifted a little as Soshiro and you now lay side by side, and even through the darkness of the room, you can see the outline of his sword sheaths and your gun. Something that chained you to the battlefield no matter where you went. 

Would there be a day where you could put down the weapons? Where the only sight you’ll see of them would be his twin swords as a decorative centerpiece in your living room, where the remnants of your days in the field manifested as picture frames and vintage, displayed awards.

It’d be a good life–retiring one day. 

“(Y/N),” The call of your name brings you back to Soshiro, whose fingers are now tracing your jaw. “Are you getting tired again?”

You smile softly. Not just at the sight of Soshiro, so intimately in bed with you, staring at you with so much love in his eyes it was infectious–but at the prospect of how this could be your reality one day, with an older, aged Soshiro not at an apartment near the base, but in his private residence back home. 

Perhaps you’d spend the rest of your life fighting–hell, it might even end at the battlefield still, but if there was even a 0.001% chance that the life you were living now promised that reality with Hoshina Soshiro, then you’d crawl through both heaven and hell for it.

So, ditching the answer to his initial question, you hunch forward and seal his lips with a soft kiss, and like clockwork, Soshiro’s lips melded with yours. “I love you, Soshiro.”

At the sound of this, Soshiro’s face blossoms into a love so soft, it was like when he saw you in your wedding dress for the first time. “I love you, Hoshina (Y/N).”

Sounding absolutely delighted with that, you finally rend yourself to slumber.

And as he holds your sleeping figure close, tracing the ring on your finger, he thinks to himself that he’ll someday give you the life the both of you deserved. One where you’ll definitely grow old together.

[spicyvampire]

WANDEE GOODDAY (2024) EP. 10 // EP. 11

[luxaofhesperides]

Surprise husbands + "How are you real?" ; requested by @vehan-tikkun-olam-and-stuff!

They may not have planned to get married, or even wanted it all too much at the beginning, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to treat each other right. It was rough going, with both of them coming out of relationships and having secret identities, but time had softened the hurt feelings and allowed them to actually get to know each other.

And Danny, Duke has discovered, is a really good husband. 

Neither of them ever saw themselves as married at 20, but sometimes life throws horrible curses at you and the embodiment of balance and life and death swoops in to save your life. Via marriage. 

His life is weird, okay? Duke has made his peace with it.

The thing is, if they had met naturally and started off as friends, Duke could see himself falling for Danny and asking him to marry him in a far off future. Instead, they’re doing everything backwards: married, then going on dates to know each other, and finally feeling close enough to be friends. 

It helps that Danny does his best to communicate and that helps Duke find the words he needs as well. 

He’s sweet, too, so kind and doting and affectionate. Like a really lovable cat, honestly. Duke’s never been cuddled so much in his life and he’s loving every minute of it. 

He… might be falling in love with his husband. What a revelation.

“Duke?” 

He blinks, looking up from his half-empty plate, pulled out of his thoughts suddenly. Tim and Dick stare at him, concerned, and he realizes he’s missed the entire conversation because he was so preoccupied thinking about Danny. In his defense, it was their one year anniversary the night before and Danny had kissed him for the first time after a date night spent playing video games and talking shit about their respective rogues. 

Tim snaps a finger in front of his face, and Duke startles. He got distracted by his Danny Thoughts again.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“You okay? You’ve been out of it all day,” Dick says, clearly concerned.

“Oh, uh, yeah, it’s all good. Just… adjusting.”

“To what? Did something happen?”

Duke shrugs, scooping up another forkful of pasta to shove in his mouth. “Yeah, I… this is going to sound kind of stupid, but I think I’m in love with my husband.”

Tim, taking an ill-timed drink, chokes and spits out his Zesti. Dick springs back, trying to get out of the spray zone but doesn’t move far, shocked still by Duke’s words.

“Oh, yeah,” Duke realizes, “I didn’t tell you guys, did I?”

“You’re married?!” Tim shrieks as Dick clutches at his chest, eyes wide.

“You didn’t tell me?” Dick asks, offended.

“Seriously? That’s what you focus on?”

Duke smiles as they begin to bicker. They do it constantly, but this time it’s halfhearted, as if they’re just going through the motions of something familiar to distract themselves from the bomb he’s dropped on them.

In all fairness, Duke did forget that he didn’t tell them that he’s married to Danny. He’s also only mentioned Danny once or twice and heavily implied that Danny was just a classmate at GCU. And then forgot that he didn’t tell them, assuming that they’d figure it out eventually being Batman trained detectives, after all.

Well. 

Oops.

Clearly that is not the case. Duke hurries to finish his pasta before Tim and Dick finish their joint freak out and get their senses back together enough to interrogate him. He can’t escape it, but he refuses to have this discussion with an empty stomach. 

He just barely manages to scrape the last mouthful off the plate when his fork is being yanked out of his hands. Tim and Dick close in on him, standing to either side of him, trapping him in place, and look at him with knife-sharp smiles.

Here we go, Duke thinks tiredly, and resigns himself to clearing up this misunderstanding.

Somehow, he manages to explain the situation (I got cursed, he saved my life, we ended up married because magic is bullshit, he treats me so well) and Tim and Dick both agree to not hunt down Danny to show him the wrath of older brothers on one condition: Danny has to join them for a family dinner.

“Don’t worry, we’ll catch everyone up on your… situation,” Dick says, pulling on his jacket to head out. Tim is already on his phone, no doubt telling someone already. 

“Great,” Duke says, unenthused. “You’ll also be answering all the questions because I’m not in the mood. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to figure out a day that works for all of us, and then I’m going to kick my husband’s ass in Mario Cart.”

He walks out the door, grinning as he hears them scramble after him, then twists the ring on his finger (not a wedding ring, but a magic portal making gift) and steps into the portal. It closes quietly behind him, leaving him in Danny’s lair, a comfortable, spacious house with high ceilings and little bits of his personality scattered about. There are soft rugs with geometric patterns on them, star maps on the wall, stained glass windows that throw colors across the floor, and a giant couch and pillow pit in the living room.

Danny’s asleep in it, curled up and looking completely at peace. Duke toes off his shoes and carefully makes his way over, footsteps silent so he doesn’t wake him up, all plans of Mario Cart fading away instantly.

Danny doesn’t get much sleep, with the stress of school and an internship and ghost fights to worry about. It’s why his lair is so quiet and comfortable; it’s what he needs, and he doesn’t let anyone else in without invitation, rare as it is.

Duke is allowed to waltz right in thanks to the ring Danny gave him. It never stops making him feel overwhelmed by how much trust Danny puts in him to allow him unlimited access to what is his only true sanctuary, letting his lair be a place of safety and respite for Duke as well. 

He crawls into the pillow pit, There’s no way to do this without waking Danny up since he can’t fly, so he isn’t surprised to see Danny blink his eyes open, still looking soft and content. He smiles when he sees Duke, reaching a hand out to him that Duke gladly takes, bringing it up to his mouth to kiss his palm.

Sitting up, Danny tilts his head up in a silent request. Duke happily obliges, still reeling over the fact that he’s allowed to do this! He can kiss his husband whenever he wants! 

Yeah, he’s going to be riding that high for a while.

“Hey,” Danny murmurs, sleepy and quietly pleased to see him.

“Hi honey,” Duke returns fondly, “Have a nice nap?”

Danny nods, leaning into Duke and closing his eyes again. “Mhm. How long are you staying? I wanna cuddle.”

“I got nothing going on today. I’m all yours, baby.”

“C’mon,” Danny tries to tug him down. Duke goes slowly, covering Danny’s body with his own, but holds himself with one hand before he blankets his husband completely.

“Wait. There’s something we need to talk about.”

Immediately, the sleepy haze is fading from Danny’s eyes, leaving him alert. “What’s up? Is something wrong?”

“Not really? You know how we agreed to keep our marriage a secret until we weren’t in danger anymore and all those cultists and sorcerers were taken care of?”

“...Yes?”

“Well.” Duke sucks in a breath and offers a bashful smile. “Guess who forgot to tell people we were married after that whole mess was dealt with?”

The nervousness clears from Danny’s gaze as he stares up at Duke with incredulous amusement. “No. No way.”

“Yeah. Kinda dropped a bomb on them and they started freaking out over me being married. Anyways, they want you to come to dinner?”

“When?”

Duke leans back, sitting on his heels. “Let me check.” He pulls out his phone and sends a quick text to the group chat asking for a day they could have a family meal to meet his husband.

His phone is bombarded with texts and calls immediately until Barbara, bless her entire soul, forcibly mutes all of them and puts in a poll with a few dates, setting the poll to close in 24 hours.

“Okay, well, they’re deciding now, but probably soon.”

Danny nods. “Alright. I know these aren’t normal circumstances at all, but I’m so excited to meet the Bats.”

“You do not mean that after hearing all my stories about them.”

“No, I do!” Danny laughs, surging up to wrap his arms around Duke and pull him back down to lay among the giant pillows with him. “They sound nice!”

“The Bats sound nice?!” Duke repeats in horror. “Did you hit your head?”

“They do sound nice! You talk about them so fondly, and yeah they have problems and are dysfunctional, but they’re heroes. Of course they have problems. Even with all their baggage, they’re kind. And you clearly love them, so I do too.”

It’s hard to resist the urge to hug Danny tight enough to make him squeak while peppering his face with kisses, so Duke doesn’t. He just goes and does it, because he’s allowed to shower his husband (!) with affection (!!!) as much as he pleases.

“How are you real?” he says against the corner of Danny’s lips. “How are you so perfect! To me specifically! Honey, if we weren’t already married, I’d be going down on one knee right now.”

“I mean, you still can. We never got a proper wedding either. Think if we offer them a chance to help plan our wedding, they’ll forgive us for secretly being married for so long?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Duke says. He’s already giddy, just imagining what their wedding will look like, what song they’ll play for their first dance, where they’ll have the ceremony… He should create a Pinterest account to start putting ideas together. 

Later, though. He wants to woo Danny properly and take him on so many dates.

Dates which include dinner with the Waynes and Wayne-adjacents, apparently.

“You sure you’re okay with meeting them over dinner?” he asks, just to be sure. He knows how intense they can be, even when pretending to be normal civilians. It took him years to get used to them, himself, and he doesn’t want to push Danny into doing something he’s not ready to do.

Danny cups Duke’s face in his hands and gives him a quick, reassuring kiss. “I’m sure. If nothing else, it’ll be fun to see how long it takes for them to realize I’m not fully human.”

“I really am glad it’s you.”

“Yeah, me too. I’d choose you all over again if given the choice.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Duke laughs, wrapping an arm around Danny’s waist.

“Can we nap now? Now that you’re here and holding me, it’s taking everything I’ve got to stay awake.”

“Yeah, we can nap now.” Duke settles into the pillows, Danny cradled in his arms and closes his eyes to bask in the quiet easiness of it all. 

He really couldn’t ask for a better husband, unexpected as he was. The others will see that too, once they meet him. It’s impossible to not love Danny once you meet him; Duke knows this all too well.

He loves his husband.

And his husband loves him back.

Duke is fully prepared to keep making that choice for the rest of his life.

[izzyspussy]

the fact that they made it illegal to make ads louder than programs on tv in 2010 but haven't updated it to apply the same regulation to streaming. who do i have to call.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Riz has counted four casseroles this week alone. Five, if one goes by the method of cooking, but Yelen's scary when she's crossed, and calling her burek by its proper name is important to her, so Riz does her the courtesy and doesn't include it in his mental tally.

He holds the tupperware over his head to keep it out if the way as he takes careful steps over the piles of notes in his path. The dockman case just closed, relevant documentations handed over to relevant personnels, evidences dealt with as needed; all he has lying around now is just record of the process and traces of himself thinking through it. Unsurprisingly they still haven't invented a surface more convenient for people under five feet who like to pace to put pieces of paper on than the ground.

Actual records go into the case folder with the other documents. Anything else with at least one side still blank is going to the school kids in the block - they chew through an astounding amount of paper just learning arithmetic. The rest is for the recycling basket.

Later. It's his mandated lunch break right now.

Riz sits down in front of the corner file cabinet. In an office often overrun with papers and strings and sometimes even thumbtacks, he's never really managed to clutter up this exact square of surface like every other ones. Ever since the bottom drawer rattled for no discernible reason a day long past, his eyes have always just kinda decided to slide across the space without acknowledging it.

It's years out, now. Riz doesn't know why he thought it such a big deal anymore, back then. He wasn't scared, he doesn't think. Not anymore. Maybe just uncomfortable with the idea that certain things persist despite all efforts to change.

He opens the tupperware. Dame Carabelle's experiment greets him with enough spice in the aroma alone to knock out a small mammal. When he chopped the vegetables for this casserole he couldn't really imagine the eventual heft of it, evident even through just these few ladles' worth, maybe weighing heavier for being still warm. His folk eat more through the smell and the textures and the aftertastes than the taste itself. His folk's meal is really the cooking rather than the eating. The eating is the meal's end.

"Hey," he tells the file cabinet's bottom drawer. "Um."

It's the anniversary. Riz doesn't know the exact date of his dad's death; nobody currently alive does. He and Mom both use the date of the funeral, though as he moved out to Bastion and then got more directly involved with Interplanar he hasn't really been going to Dad's grave as much. Doesn't seem like very efficient use of his time, catching a train or borrowing a car or spending a whole spell slot on going somewhere he knows Dad isn't at. They're sorta coworkers now. They talk on and off every other week between missions. When he goes now, it's just to clean up the place, keeping the landmark tidy and respectable.

Without that work to mark the date he doesn't really know what it serves anymore. But he still remembers it. Still takes note, absently or not, when it comes around.

There's not really a good way to tell the drawer that. Riz looks for another way to start the... conversation, hopefully. The question at play, he'd guess, is why he's doing this. He's been pretty content ignoring all the rattlings and the knocks from inside and the times it sits slightly ajar without him ever opening it himself; hell, he still uses the three drawers on top of it. Space is fucking precious in Bastion.

Precious enough to finally fix this damn drawer so he gets his turn to use it? Riz asks himself. Is that what we're getting to? Then he dismisses the thought - he didn't manage to fix it the times he actually tried, let alone-- now. When he doesn't really care that much to.

That's probably a good place to start. "'s fine if you keep being in there, turns out," Riz says.

The lunch hours are quiet in the block, sleepy and bright with the brief window of sunlight that manages to break through roof overhangs and extended balconies and laundry lines and climbing vines. Riz's work isn't loud here (the loud parts happen away from his office, if everything goes right), but the fragment of early summer heat reflected in the steady warmth his meal still carries compels him to lower his voice even more. It makes the words feel intimate, in a way he's never been familiar with - if he says something he just says it. He doesn't whisper. If he gives his friends something, he gives it open-palm. He's found out, along the way, that people usually don't think of rituals and courtesies the way he does.

Small voice for a diminished monster. "You know why I think so?" Riz asks. "Because almost two decades ago you kidnapped me and almost killed me, and now you rattle a drawer in my office."

It doesn't sound as much like a taunt as Riz wanted it to; the drawer has made a lot of noises again this morning when he checked the calendar, and he was definitely annoyed at it. Now, though, facing it like this after cooking the whole morning with more grandparents and peers from the block than he can count on both hands to cater for a tenant union meeting, he thinks the annoyance has morphed. Changed shape.

It has the shades of something like pity. Riz is not prone to pity, and especially not at these kinda matters. It's slightly maddening that he coheres perfectly outside of this one spot. That he commands his spaces, except for a drawer.

He puts the tupperware onto the floor between himself and the cabinet. "I know we're aware it's the anniversary," he says at the drawer. "You do this every year. You make a ruckus every time I decide to go do my job instead of mooching off my friends' aircon, and every time I get an invitation to some stupid social thing I want to turn down, and every time one of the old people tries to introduce me to a child or a nibling, because being a bachelor over thirty is weird," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "I have three fucking jobs. I love doing my fucking jobs. I'm forcing funds into infrastructures. You're never leaving, are you."

The drawer vibrates lightly. It's a very, very mild acknowledgement, considering the history of reactions Riz has gotten from this thing. Riz thinks it's emanating joyous agreement, or satisfaction.

It only sharpens the pity. Riz doesn't like that, but it's how it is. That's, ultimately, the lesson he's been taught over and over and over again, just by existing as himself, turned every which way by space after space that don't see him eye-to-eye: it's not like he'd quit living over any of it. It's not like any of it can sand off these fundamental pieces of him.

He's outgrown a lot of things, he's found out. Again, and again, and again. A childhood home, a yearly trip, a monster.

"'s probably scary for you, huh?" He asks. "Because I left."

He thinks he hears joints creak that sound like you did. Probably the way a scorned lover would say it, in a movie or a yellowback. He has no more connection to the idea than he did as a kid. Less, because it doesn't even scare him.

"That's what it is, right? That it's the anniversary, and I'll never be like Dad." He raises a knee from the floor, pulls it back closer to him. Slings an arm over it. "You love to remind me. The thing is, Dad also left. He loved Mom and he loved me, and none of us wanted it to happen, but it still did. Because love does fuckall to make anyone stay on its own."

He's long past being bitter about it. It's just the facts. Once upon a time he looked into the future and the specter of his friends' happily-ever-after casted lightless, fathomless shadow over him. Love, marriage, that kind of devotion, to a fifteen-year-old with more solved cases than friends seemed so eternal. Final.

But you can only watch your friends build up apps' worth of jilted lovers for so long before getting over it.

"You know what I learned?" Riz tells the drawer. "Love doesn't make anyone stay. Project management does."

He stands up, and picks up the tupperware of Dame Carabelle's casserole, that he helped make, that he helped share with a block's worth of neighbors and members of a community he's at home with, and goes sit at his desk to eat. "Last chance to get any," he drops an offer over his shoulder as he walks away.

He doesn't eat all of his share in one go. What he's spared he leaves on the desk when going outside for a smoke break. Baron looks the exact same as when he saw them last, when he catches a glimpse; they haven't grown at all. They aren't there when he comes back inside, but the leftover has gone days-old cold, like someone's sucked the future out of it.

[llitchilitchi]

submitting my paper tonight and then I'm off for a week, so:

for every like on this post I'll add 5 words to my WIP. 10 for every reblog. count stops when I return on Saturday next week.

[codgod]

i feel like i see ppl mischaracterise mariana a lot too but then i also don’t feel like i know his character well enough to articulate in what way lol

like i read. a lot of slimeriana fics. and in some of them his behaviour just feels ? off ? from what i expect it to be but idk how LOL