Tumgik
#divorced from all meaning
short666bread · 9 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
throwback to when all my most indulgent friends lived at the same address as me
31 notes · View notes
martianbugsbunny · 9 months
Text
One of the greatest acting decisions of all time was James McAvoy's decision that Professor Charles Xavier, leader of the X-Men, world's foremost expert on mutants, respected and renowned man of science, should walk around for four movies with the biggest, saddest, wettest puppydog eyes you've ever seen
908 notes · View notes
tequiilasunriise · 6 months
Text
bitches really be out here publicly divorcing as if they weren’t in a secret relationship
239 notes · View notes
pocketramblr · 4 months
Note
Absolutely love your writing for all the AU/5 headcanons asks. Can I ask: AU where Rei cheats on Endeavor with All Might? It happens after AM's injury, so she doesn't recognize him, and he ofc doesn't know that she's married in the first place, much less to whom
you make this very difficult for me by giving me a window of 6 and half years for them to have an affair and for every single moment of that window, Rei is institutionalized. how am i supposed to get them to meet, much less take their clothes off. ok. think. there are other fic writers who specialize in this kind of thing, surely. what would they do....
1- ok so. The fire alarm at the hospital goes off. Rei doesn't know if it's a drill or not, but she's been there for seven years and generally does not need a lot of support during something like this like other patients do, so the nurses wave her out and she stands around outside a bit waiting for the fire alarm to stop and them to go back in. (It isn't a drill, they wouldn't have evacuated everyone if it was, but Rei is on the other side of the building and facing away from seeing any smoke) (This smoke is from a villain attack that All Might is taking care of, though he's only got seconds left of his power to use that day. he quickly rushes off, deflating and stumbling out on the other side of the hospital. Where Rei is.)
2- Rei is like "huh that guy doesnt seem to be in good shape" and kinda waves attention at him, and a nurse who's passing out water to patients and keeping an eye on the road gives Toshinori some too, getting more concerned when he dazedly answers that he's All Might and coughs up blood, but the nurse figures he's concussed since he smells of smoke and must have been closer to the fight, and is just reeling from being able to see the number one hero in person. Then they get distracted and wave Toshi to wait nearby, where Rei offers to chill his water and asks if he's alright, if he breathed in any smoke.
3- They chat and then go back into the hospital as it's un-evacuated together, Rei hanging out in the lobby where he sits as the hospital staff focus on getting everyone else back to their rooms. It pays to be low priority sometimes. Eventually she tells him her name is Rei and that she's in room K18, if he ever wants to visit or call. She doesn't get to talk to anyone except doctors, family visitors, or other paitients, and most of them don't stay nearly as long as she does. It's been seven years, and she's very lonely. Toshinori is lonely too, and when he's out of time for a day and feeling useless with nothing to do, he likes to talk to a friend.
4- Rei has been in the hospital for eight years when it gets physical. At that point, Toshinori knows a bit about her family. She has kids, mentions visits from a son and daughter, and then quietly mentioned when her son turned seventeen- her daughter's already twenty. She's been there for so much of their lives. He asks if she's married, and she admits she isn't sure how to file for divorce in a hospital like she is, if she even can, if she wants to because she'd lose custody, if it matters when she's not raising them anyway. He doesn't ask much more, knows there is a dead child and a baby she says isn't safe with her there. Toshinori never called Nana 'mom' to her face while she was alive, and had a reason for it, and has a similar reason for not asking more, not asking for the other names when he gets Fuyumi and Natsuo's. Yes, the doctors and nurses all know Rei has a boyfriend who visits. they don't say anything. who would they even tell, anyway. I debated the humor of reusing the bit from candlelight shoto that Toshi and Rei could have a kid with a fire quirk, but yeah here? Rei ain't getting pregnant, absolutely not.
5- When Natsuo turns eighteen, Rei does actually file for divorce, or at least tries to get the ball rolling on that. Toshinori's trusted her that her marriage is over in all but name, but he's more at ease with it ended fully. Fuyumi is crushed but burying it all deep inside. Natsuo is like 'what are you talking about. divorce is the most normal possible outcome here.' But anyway, Rei also begins to bring up being discharged- something she never bothered with earlier, when it seemed like she'd never be able to go home while Shoto was there, and never would want to go back anyway. (Her parents are absolutely not an option either so where would she go once discharged? the hospital was her only security.) Toshinori then tells her at this point about his diagnosis, that he's supposed to be terminal, in a way. He doesn't have a lot of time he can give her. Rei says that's ok, she'll take what she can get. She moves in. Fuyumi still goes out to eat with her once a week, though Rei doesn't say she's moved in with a boyfriend, just says she's in a safe place and it's not Fuyumi's job to worry about it, please, let her do that, relax, be her daughter instead of a mother. Natsuo adds her to his cellphone plan and gets her one. Rei doesn't tell Toshinori her ex's identity. Toshinori doesn't tell her about OfA, though she does know he's mentoring a student for heroics and is very proud of him. (Toshinori is a secretary at Might Tower, he's a great mentor. Oh huh, he got a job position at UA at the same time as All Might, she wonders if they carpool.)
+1- OK THE REVEAL so the reveal is. Toshinori gets home from the SF. And Rei almost knocks him out by the door, eyes wide and panicked, asking if he's ok, if Shoto's ok. Toshinori is like "... young todoroki? yeah he's alright? i know his fight with young bakugo looked bad but- Rei???" And that's when it all clicks for him, he's having dozens of horrible realizations at once, all while Rei weeps over her youngest. Toshinori's been a hero for a very, very long time. He's felt hopeless, before. But even then, he's known what needs to be done, he just isn't able to do it. But now? he's at a complete loss with no idea what he should do.
142 notes · View notes
cryptiduni · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media
“white mourning.”
#‘‘A white mourning. A modern death. Divorce or something similar. All you can do is put more distance between you & him. make him smaller.’’#jean is a very easy character to hate if you know nothing about him. & you know what they say. easy target doesn’t make for a good practice#judit literally compares harry to intellectually disabled man yet you don’t see ppl hating her because she is outwardly nice.#she’s polite yes but she doesn’t care as much as jean cares for harry#he is not perfect. he is mean. but loyal. if he truly didn't care he wouldn't hab come back to martinaise & coulda just reported harry’s as#he put up with du bois’ bullshit for years and built a toxic (totally straight) relationship with him yet always comes back.#he says he will leave you in the village to die but please understand harry isn't exactly a great person. especially pre-bender hdb.#planned a make up joke & put on a wig for hdb even tho he wasn’t the who started the whole fiasco#you can hate him all you want for leaving harry before & during tribunal but how could he have foreseen all this bullshit would have happen#his second leaving is kinda bullshit writing but#jv is dealing with his own demons too. clinical depression. partner almost died. job is shit. case spiraling out control#i do not blame the DE staff either. sometimes shit just happens. not everything needs a grand explanation.#but it definitely coulda been handled better. but i understand. resources were sparse.#i relate to ​jv. as someone with temper issues & attention problems i have to remove myself from the scene or i'll say shit i'd regret late#my man is having the worst week of his life. leave him alone.#kim is great but have u heard of a man who thinks he's old when he is only 30 & luvs horses & his commie boyfriend that he's divorcin' soon#disco elysium#de fanart#jean vicquemare#disco elysium fanart#jean heron vicquemare#jean posting#illustration#de#artists on tumblr#my art#I WANTED TO DRAW THIS FOR MONTHSSS YOU COULDN'T IMAGINE. HE LITERALLY HAUNTED ME IN MY SLEEP!!!#i love him normal amount. very healthy. much feelings#my little maiu maiu
214 notes · View notes
clowndensation · 11 months
Text
there’s a question to be asked i think about to what extent “getting out” can be conflated with “being saved” in this show, and what freedom actually means to any of these characters.
like you can argue that shiv saved ken by voting against him on gojo, but what if your intent behind saving someone is to inflict a worse punishment than if you’d just left them trapped? can a child weaned on poison survive on milk, or are you just sentencing them to a death by inches, starved of the only thing they know? and if you save someone specifically because you know that being saved is the worst thing that can happen to them, is that kindness or cruelty? at what point does a good thing become a malicious act?
and you can say that roman is finally free, but what exactly is he free from? the company? his father? does unlocking a cage mean saving a dog, or are you allowing him out on the street knowing there’s a kill shelter nearby? if the driving anxiety behind roman is that he’s an idiot and a failure—that he’ll never amount to anything, and trying will only lead to pain—and he’s finally cut loose once all of those anxieties have crystallized into cold hard fact in his mind, what has he actually escaped from? if the cage is in your mind, is it even possible for somebody else to unlock it?
the fundamental truth of a tragedy is that even being saved can be a death sentence, if the characters are incapable of escaping the thing doing them the most harm (themselves and their childhoods)
#'what about shiv' if i think about shiv i'm going to kill myself. she needs her own post. there's too much there to get into.#anyways seeing a tremendous amount of At Least Roman Is Free <3 tags that have me going. right. for sure. free from what?#because it's certainly not the intense amount of self disgust that has driven him in circles this entire time.#i fear he may feel the weight of alienation on his soul for the rest of his life. and he won't even try to alleviate it anymore.#and ALSO the idea that shiv went out of her way to save kendall as an act of like. altruism. like it was a sacrifice on her part#which i feel is a very toothless perspective on shiv and the psychological torment that's been weighing on her essentially since birth#like her choice in regards to gojo is one of the meatiest most harrowing bits of character work i've ever seen#and while of course there was love inside that action (because nothing these characters do is entirely divorced from love)#i don't think it was necessarily a kind or forgiving or sacrificial love#like this was an intense vitriolic snapping from a dog that has been kicked by her dad all her life.#and who absolutely refuses to accept that from her brother (because that would mean acknowledging that kendall takes the mantle of Dad-#and that she's subservient to him. which is the one thing she absolutely will never do#because it's a level of degradation that's finally a step too far)#anyways. um. insane season that i still can't look at directly or i'll perish on the spot.#succession
239 notes · View notes
Text
i do think izzy's "the only retirement we get is death" line is so funny because like the thing he's most famous for is being a b list villain in one of the most popular children's books of all time where he gets killed by a preteen. so like yes, the only retirement in store for him is death, but on the other hand, he can never actually die (or never stop dying depending on how you look at it) because he's been immortalized in one of the most well known and most adaptated fictional works of all time
104 notes · View notes
jadegr8 · 3 months
Text
The thing I love so much about Good Omens at the moment is the fact that we can be so sure they will eventually have a happy ending and that their relationship was not only implied but actually visible to everybody. Probably I've just been contaminated by queer stories with tragic turns and those where a relationship was only implied but could've been interpreted otherwise with only few arguments but I feel so safe in this fandom knowing everything will be okay in the end and that just feels so fucking good.
53 notes · View notes
b4kuch1n · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media
the legends speak of it as a kind of enthrallment: the life ended by the tiger is tied to the tiger. in this way there is a line of souls following the beast, for no reason except to show that they were killed. that they could be saved - if only the beast would die [...] in the dark of the wood you see it walk, shadow to shadow, followed by loss after loss after loss, a tail trailing seemingly into the deep death of night [...]
353 notes · View notes
craycraybluejay · 29 days
Text
yes i am an adult male who loves high school dramas this is because i literally never experienced normal coming of age drama like ever and am disconnected from the collective experience of having a relatable peer group forever hope that helps
#i JUST want to experience high school#without like. my whole shitty life thing having gone on#i want to go to high school and have stupid drama and sexuality crises and worries about grades#not... That#i never had that im never going to have that#can i get (one) permission to go a little crazy if i survive into a university#fuck everyone befriend and be-enemy everyone get all up in peoples stupid mind numbingly low stakes drama#i want that sweet golden experience where the worst thing ill ever fear is annoying my classmates#or accidentally spilling something on someone at a dance#i deserve it i deserve to have had a childhood and a young adulthood and a life#i deserve to have dealt with unserious issues to prepare me for bigger ones#rather than serious danger that leaves me permanently severed from normal people and life#and makes me incapable of reacting proportionally or finding it in me to care about less serious problems#like yes it sucks your mom is going to miss college graduation#but i thank my lucky stars that you are not dying or being abused or starved or beaten or exploited#i literally dont know how to take things seriously a lot of the time like im not able to even if i try#because to me the mildest real problem is someone purposefully isolating you and ruining your health#the MILDEST#i try to care ab simple stuff i really do i just CANT#and it sucks so much trying to be a good friend and kind feeling like i cant do enough#the loud thought 'i wish that hapoened to me/i wish i worried about that/i wish the people i love only had that as a problem'#i get so envious. like thank fucking god your parents divorced like normal adults when it should be over#thank fucking god that 'friend' cut you off when they were actively insulting you and betraying your trust#thank the fucking universe that shitty partner dumped you before you fkn hurt yourself over them#yk?#and its a 'mean/cold' way to think about it but i just dont have the capacity to think or feel the little picture#i can imagine my friends subjected to such horror even tho i dont want to
18 notes · View notes
waywardted · 11 months
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Believing in rom-communism is all about believing that everything is going to work out in the end... Now, it may not work out how you think it will, or how you hope it does, but, believe me, it will all work out.
#ted lasso spoilers#ted lasso#otp: you liven up the place#mine#m*ne: lasso#i like don't want to tag this with anything i'm having a thought exercise lmao#this is the tip of the iceberg for real i really do think it's their movie#and on an emotional level i'm devastated by this and on an intellectual level i'm just. fascinated#if we take the end as endgamey (though i'm partial to hannah canon ha)#within that endgame the universe gives her a consolation prize of a ted#and i don’t even think that’s my biased reading like his name means the same thing he also is from another country is also divorced also has#a child who evidently can be moved around more easily maybe cause she’s younger and amsterdam is closer#plus all the other similarities we’d talked about after amsterdam#and all the little moments that fatefully lead rebecca to this moment are moments with ted#ted walks away from her and she walks out the door to find this man again#it wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t need to say goodbye to her soulmate#with all of that idk it seems like they added this man not just as love interest but so that he'd be specifically#filling the void ted left in her life and in their romcom#to invoke sleepless in seattle like that when there is a very clear fated soulmate relationship at play#and then to give the ending to another character#like no shade to matthijs he's a fine man but#it just seems intentionally to say the hero of this story has to leave#so 'god's gift' is this substitute#is it the 'it just doesn't happen twice'?? is ted like the maggie of this situation???#is it 'the dream of someone else' which kinda seems like hannah's reading??#you can't always get what you want (the romcom ending the way you think it's going to) but you get what you need (them ending up with their#respective families and possibilities for the future)???#it's just that isn't it. just a completely heartbreaking realization of ted's romcommunsim speech#it's bananas and on purpose and i'm in pain
93 notes · View notes
hiis-theme · 3 months
Text
somewhere out there is an alternate timeline where toby was correct and people actually did hate spamton. could you imagine that. i have to imagine we wouldn't have gotten the spamton sweepstakes in that case which is crazy to think about given how much lore that gave us-
#puppy rambles#deltarune#spamton#my favorite part of the spamton sweepstakes is the part of the q&a where spamton implied he and jevil are divorced#are all the secret bosses in a polycule you think. we need to add to this deranged relationship#diversity win! all the people who were driven insane by being told their world is just a game are in a polyamorous relationship <3#i like to think gaster made a discord for all of them. just like ''hey. sorry for telling you your world's fake. here's a discord. good by'#i don't even care about the secret bosses super much but they still amuse me greatly. even if there's only two of them rn-#spamton is so hilarious. idk why everyone is so obsessed with him but it makes him even funnier to me#also his text in brackets is fun to write. it's also hard to write but you can do so much with it#since it's taken from various places on the internet you can just reference memes#... i mean the one problem is that it'd probably have to be memes from the time period deltarune's in#so like. early 2000's or 2010's#but the valentines don't regard that and reference more recent memes so who knows really#maybe deltarune's actually meant to be in modern times. i mean you could fully convince me#that noelle just likes old internet-style websites and stuff dfskljfdsdfjksfkjlsfkj-#(i mean some of the meme references are up to interpretation)#(but the two definite ones are the war thunder forums leaking military documents and also the hotel mario intro)#(and at the very least the former is a newer thing)#(there's also seemingly references to the ''let me in'' meme and the foam shower images from the april fool's newsletter last year)#(idk where the fuck else ''insulating foam'' would be taken from-)#i hope spamton just randomly contributes to conversations sometimes if you have the dealmaker equipped#i logically doubt it but it'd be extremely hilarious#i'm now imagining equipping the dealmaker to noelle. who was not there for either spamton encounter#''um. kris why's there a voice in my head telling me to be a big shot?'' ''don't worry about it''#alternatively if you just get the dealmaker from the hole in castle town cuz you have another file with it#... can you do that in chapter 2 files. if so then can you technically have the dealmaker while not having met spamton-#''player why is there a voice in my head telling me to be a big shot'' ''don't worry about it''#''i'm sparing you from having an existential crisis later-''
21 notes · View notes
chrysopoeias · 1 year
Text
Hawkeye’s tattoo makes me unhinged
What was the point of it, really? Her dad knew he was dying and wanted to write his research down, but what was he thinking? He probably was not, but really, what was Riza supposed to do with it? Was she supposed to just keep it to herself her whole life and die alone with it? But her dad believed alchemy is for the people. What’s the point then of never sharing his research?
Did he expect her to go travel around and find other alchemists that agreed with his worldview to teach it too? Lots of alchemists would probably love to wield it. But it’s in such an awkward place. And no way she would want to become some unknown alchemist lab rat and/or get taken advantage of. 
She cannot use it for herself.
Was it specifically for Mustang? Betting on that he would feel obligated to both protect his research and her after she had taught him? Berthold wanted to teach Roy flame alchemy himself anyway and basically hands her over to him in his dying breath... 
She wanted to be free, free from alchemy, to be her own person. But she never was and never really can be free. Her father handed their universe’s nuclear launch codes to a child and expected her to be responsible with it. Even if she ‘consented’ to the tattoo, she should not have been in that position. Yet she takes responsibility for all of it and blames herself for all the consequences. 
She always goes on about choices, but she did not have a choice in this. Maybe she thinks she did. Maybe she does not see that those who did bad things to her made choices too.
Her life revolves around flame alchemy and its consequences. It’s her responsibility for releasing it onto the world after all. Everything Mustang does with it is her fault in her eyes. His kill count is mentally added to her own. She describes flame alchemy as ‘driving good men to madness’. Perhaps thinking ultimately she drives good men to madness. Both her dad for not being able to connect or 'save' him by being a good daughter. And Mustang for teaching him the very thing that made her father that way.
Flame alchemy is her responsibility to her. That is on top of all the other terrible things she has done herself. fuck.
127 notes · View notes
sulatni-flerida11 · 3 months
Text
Tumblr media
been rewatching cleo's limited life and decided to draw the clockers on my journal :D
22 notes · View notes
facetsofthecloset · 5 months
Text
i'm sure it's been said but i feel like both Raxtus and Ronodin can be argued as "the only gay kid in the family and consequently shunned/rejected" and it's like. so weird bc Mull is so Mormon he'd probably rather eat his shorts than even acknowledge the possible existence of gays but
i mean. Raxtus literally has a fairy form. he's a fairy dragon.
Ronodin was just emo lol
and they both get so thoroughly rejected and sidelined by their families their whole lives and it turns Raxtus into an awkward but basically decent guy who runs back to the approval of his family once he's performed masculinity/violence enough to be accepted, only to then realize that he's basically just being used and still not fully trusted/accepted and having to betray them to save his real friends
(who sadly are probably actually homophobic but that's ok bc they're not dragon-phobic so that works out for him)
while Ronodin's like "fuck it. chaos and murder then!" and can you really blame him? he spent his entire life trying to conform to the "right" (in this case, Light) way of life, started spending time with the outgroup and learned to question things, then was told he was "too corrupt" to remain in his home
like. the symbolism is right there.
it's so funny, because sure Raxtus isn't a bad guy, but Ronodin definitely is and he pretty much gets sent to a type of hell at the end of Dragonwatch
and while Raxtus gets kind of a happy ending, like, him becoming an effective killer in a war and being accepted by his dad for being Good At Murder in the first Fablehaven series is presented as a happy ending. if Celebrant didn't wind up being the main villain for Dragonwatch, that probably would've been the end of it! gay kid learns how to soldier and is finally accepted by his homophobic family bc he's finally aggressive enough for them to love him
(i mean i have MANY issues with Celebrant being the main villain later and the reasons he's framed as bad but like. that's a separate rant lol)
the queer reading is right there. but also it's very bad and you can tell completely unintentional. or at the very least highly repressed. idk man i don't look into Mull as a personal individual bc i doubt i'll like what i see and i don't care that much but Dragonwatch was SO MUCH MORE MORMON than Fablehaven already was and it's so weird, seeing the fingerprints of it all over.
i feel like he either has a new editor or he's been doing this for long enough and sold enough books that he has the clout to veto changes made by editors or SOMETHING, bc i feel like? he's gotten worse?? and more unfiltered?? that or something happened and he's like. even more religious than before or something idk
like fablehaven was just kinda generic/bland fantasy with some fun ideas for magic items/powers/one sentence character premises, with just a hint of sus Mormon ideology, and then Dragonwatch just went. Full Mormon.
but then there's somehow even more weirdly queer shit. like. he's repressing so hard he's approaching queer from the other side??
idk man i wish this deeply mediocre man's writing wasn't a formative piece of middle school reading, leading to me still giving more of a shit than i really should over questionable children's literature now
34 notes · View notes
softquietsteadylove · 27 days
Note
Hey could I ask for a Thenamesh human au were Thena is raising her little sisters (Sersi and Sprite) after their parents die and Gilgamesh is her co-worker who finds her having a mini breakdown and comforts her? Kinda slow burn-ish and no smut if possible
"Sorry!"
Thena pressed even harder on her eyebrows, sure she would get bruises from it. Maybe then she might actually get medical clearance for time off. "It's fine."
"I didn't mean-"
"It's fine!" she snapped at him again, shifting to swipe at the corners of her eyes and wipe the tears onto her fingertips and then on the sleeves of her cardigan. "I was just...looking for something."
But all she heard was the door shutting gently.
Thena sighed, picking her head up and looking around the shelves. All that was in here was extra paper and printer ink. "Gil, I'm fine."
Gil was sweet, if a little too sweet. He went out of his way for people, which their firm really discouraged. But he was going into family law, which was easy to tell from the 'everything' about him.
"Yeah, I just, uh," she heard him shuffle around before finally turning to glare at him. Her glower was usually strong enough to scare away anyone else. He pointed at the shelf of toner. "Printer."
She closed her eyes, feeling the throbbing in her head from her coffee and the twitch in her eyes from her need for sleep. But they had a lot of contracts to examine, and Sersi was in the middle of the soccer season, which meant she didn't even get home until 6, which pushed dinner to 7 and that said nothing about homework and getting Sprite to bed at a decent hour.
"Um," Gilgamesh gulped, tugging at the suit he was wearing. It was standard attire for the firm, of course, but she always imagined he had a hard time finding suits to really fit him. Perhaps he needed shirts and Jackets in one fitting and trousers in a smaller one. "How was Sersi's game?"
She whipped her head up at him, and she must have looked ready for murder by the way he flinched. "What?"
He went stiff as a board, practically pressing his back to the door. "S-Sersi--your sister, you said she had a soccer game on friday. H-How did it go...if that's okay."
Right, friday; she had rushed home from work, still with half a day's work to complete, picked up Sprite, gotten her not to gripe all through grocery shopping, bundled her up for Sersi's game, which was a loss, and it was a hard loss, and Sersi got a few scrapes and bruises, so then they were both a little cranky for the start of the weekend, and of course that meant she didn't actually get any work done-
"Thena?"
She blinked, feeling as if she had gone somewhere else entirely. This was getting ridiculous. She just needed coffee, she reasoned. Even more coffee. She shook her head.
"Hey," he whispered, not moving from the door to let her out, despite her moving closer. "Are you okay? I know you're...I know you've got a lot on your plate."
A lot on her plate? She had that already with this job and the beginnings of her career. Her student debt alone would be more than a full plate.
That was before handling a joint funeral, and counselling for her sisters, and getting them back to school, and a full year of them not being themselves. And then, when they finally seem to be getting better, both of them start having the worst time with school in their lives.
Or maybe their mother was just better at dealing with it than Thena could say for herself. And while their father wasn't exactly her favourite person, let alone parent, her first year of filing her taxes with two dependants was enough for her to look into a decent accountant for this year.
"Listen, I know you've got this under control," Gil continued, visibly worried about saying the wrong thing. "I know you're tougher than I could ever imagine."
She really didn't know about that.
"But if you need--I mean, if you ever want a hand with anything, or even just logistics, or carpooling or something," he suggested, losing confidence with every new idea. His massive shoulders drooped and he gave her those big, sad puppy dog eyes that always got him the best desk and the best cases and the best lunch, "just let me know, y'know?"
Thena gulped. Heat rose up in her as the horror of her tears resurfaced. She was done crying. It was the middle of the work day. She didn't have time for this. This had never been an issue before.
Can we have lasagne?
Just that simple text from Sprite had set her off. Because Sprite loved lasagne--she loved their mother's lasagne. And for an entire year Sprite couldn't even stand hearing the word, let alone the sight of it. And to have her ask for it, when they all knew that Thena was somehow the worst cook of all three of them.
Gil blinked as Thena dropped her head, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her hand over her eyebrows again. His hands hovered around her, never crossing the last few inches of boundary she held.
Thena was just as shocked as she leaned froward and her forehead met something firm. But she couldn't choke it all back, a squeak escaping her as her tears dropped to the musty old storage closet carpet below.
"Hey," he whispered soothingly. Of course the bastard was great at comforting people too. Why wouldn't he be? Why wouldn't he be so completely perfect? "It'll be okay."
She usually hated when people spoke so certainly. Because what did they know? What assurance did they have? But Gil meant well. He only ever meant well. Her breathing slowed and she realised she was truly letting him embrace her. What an unfortunate turn this had taken. But he was warm, and he smelled nice. And it felt nice when he rubbed her back.
Gil let her pull away, not making a grand affair out of the whole thing. He brushed away a few more tears of hers, "you okay?"
She nodded. She was far, far from it. But she could probably get through the rest of the work day without humiliating herself further. Her throat felt dry as a bone. "Thank you."
Gil tilted his head at her. He did give off the first impression that he would be some meathead, into his own looks and loud and brash and hypermasculine. But he was kind, he was considerate of others and his good nature only made him more sensitive to those around him. "I mean it, Thena, if there's anything you need at all."
He was one of only a few who even knew about her sisters. She didn't really go around announcing her past, and she wasn't one for keeping precious personal keepsakes on her desk either. But Gil had once seen her phone light up with a notification and asked who the girls on her lockscreen were.
And as much as she could have told him to mind his own business - and he would have, knowing him - it seemed worse to ignore it. So she had told him about her sisters, and how she had basically acquired them as children, as far as the state was concerned.
The biggest advantage to Gilgamesh knowing about her duties outside the office was that he was her biggest defender whenever she couldn't make events outside of work. Of course a lot of deals happened out of the office as well as in, and being able to seal those deals came with the job. But Gil always had an excuse ready for her when she couldn't join them for drinks after work, or make a round of golf or two on sunday morning.
He smiled as she finally picked her head up. "There she is."
She chose to ignore that. She sniffled, dabbing at her eyes again. If anyone asked her if she was okay once she stepped out of this closet, she might commit an act worthy of termination. "Thanks."
"Any time," he shrugged. He still didn't leave. "I saw you get up from your desk. I thought-"
Silence came over him, perhaps at the admission that he had all but followed her here. Any other coworker and she would have her keys in her hand and a knife with his car's name on it. But only Gilgamesh could say something like that and have it be just as innocent as he meant it.
"Sorry," he concluded, having discouraged himself yet again. He blushed.
She truly was a bitch of epic proportions to inspire this level of fear from the sweetest man alive, she gathered. Usually that wasn't a problem, of course, but just this once: it was undeserved. "That's nice of you, Gil."
That seemed to surprise him even more than walking in on her crying in the closet.
She finally reached for the doorknob, and Gil nearly leapt out of her way. She headed back to her desk, with the same papers in hand as when she had first gone in. At least at her desk, she could take a breath. Her computer was still open on emails, she set the papers beside her.
Of course
She replied to Sprite, although if she got more texts she was just going to tell her not to text in class.
If her sister wanted lasagne, then she would find a way to make it happen. Affection was not her most polished skill, but love needed no polishing. If her baby sister wanted lasagne, she would have it.
If only she weren't a horrendously bad cook.
Sersi was decent, but she only ever let her help when Sersi herself seemed eager to do so, and that was usually on weekends. And Ajak was an excellent cook. Her handwritten recipes alone would not help Thena actually produce the promised product.
Thena picked up her phone again. She scrolled until she could select the contact in her phone. Perhaps it was silly to text him when his desk was in sight of hers. She was just in a closet with the man. But she selected his name and typed.
Can you make lasagne?
11 notes · View notes