Would really love to hear about the angsty marcotobias fic if you're interested in sharing. 👀

Oh gosh, I feel like I'd have to actually write it for it to make sense because like 80% of it is subtext, but here's some rambling in that general direction.

I'm chiefly interested in the ways in which Marco & Tobias are actually incredibly similar -- their senses of humor, their attractions, their complete direspect for authority, and most importantly how they both lowkey hate themselves but insist on survival anyway, largely out of spite -- but how they treat their similarity as, like, a cautionary tale rather than the basis for a healthy connection that it could be.

Like, Tobias disappearing into the woods and giving up on everybody is exactly the kind of behavior that Marco finds incredibly triggering, having lived through it with his dad. Marco would never walk away from his remaining loved ones like that, especially in the post-war world where he's charged himself with being the public face of the Animorphs because somebody has to. But there is absolutely a part of him that wants to give up and disappear; ya boi is tired.

Meanwhile, I think Tobias sees Marco's devotion to Jake and refusal to abandon him even after how Rachel died (which Tobias blames Jake for) as a version of the hero worship complex Tobias used to have about Jake -- like, I think Tobias sees Marco as being too devoted to Jake to see "the truth" about him, and he pities that in Marco. But at the same time, Tobias envies Marco's close personal connections, and I think on some level he knows that the only way to get to that place would be to work through his anger at Jake to get to his anger at Rachel, and he just can't bring himself to do that. It's easier to stay mad.

And then there's the question of Rachel herself, whom they were both deeply invested in trying to keep alive at the end of the war. Like, we see this explicitly from Tobias, with his "just be Rachel" and constant emotional check-ins with her, but I don't think Marco gets enough credit for his active role in keeping her literally alive. Dude bodily removed her from battles, at risk to his own life, and I just refuse to believe that's not something Marco & Tobias talked about, given how much time they spent together in Ax's scoop during that period of time between Marco's fake death & the move to the valley. Rachel is both a mutual love and a mutual failure for them (and that level of mutual devotion to a third person gives my polyamorous ass A Lot of Feelings).

Basically I think there's a lot of respect and love between Tobias and Marco, but they can't get to it because it would require each of them to deal with Rachel-related guilt and confront parts of themselves that they don't want to acknowledge.

...so I want to get them high on Marco's fancy penthouse balcony and make them kiss about it