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applesap-fics · 1 year

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FABril day 4 - Chores, part one

1, 2, 3

T, 2357 words, Bruno/Agustín, Bruno & Mirabel.

Mirabel starts living with Bruno for a little while. She’s curious about why he left. Then she finds out a little more.

He almost slips off his cane when he sees his niece on the opposite side of the doorway.

It’s not that he’s surprised that she’s here. It’s just that Bruno isn’t quite prepared for how different she looks. The last time they saw each other she was a child.

It is as if he’s closed the door on her one day and a moment later opened it up again, replacing her with an older version of herself. She looks eerily, and beautifully, like her mother.

For a moment that image lasts, complete with gray hairs and wrinkles under her eyes and dressed in blue instead of the colorful attire she’s actually wearing.

Then Bruno clenches his eyes shut and opens them again, and there she stands as she really is: fifteen, bright-eyed and nervous, wearing a hesitant smile on her face like she expects her uncle to change his mind, turn her right around and send her back home.

“Hey, Mirabel,” he croaks a bit awkwardly. He regains his posture, trying for nonchalant as he leans on his cane. “There you are, huh? Wow, you’re- you’ve gotten so big! I mean- not like that! It’s just…it’s been a while, and you’re all grown.”

Before he knows it, she’s enveloped him in a tight hug.

One day Julieta called him up out of the blue and asked him if it wouldn’t be a good idea if Mirabel came to live with him for a little while, at least for the summer.

In her fashion she was polite, slightly accusatory like their mother, and thus easily refusable.

“And what does Ma think of me taking care of Mirabel?” He asked her, knowing fully well his mother doesn’t speak of him and likely avoided the combined topic of “Bruno” and “responsibility” alltogether. The other end of the line stayed silent. “That’s what I thought.”

“You’re both stubborn, you know? It’s the both of you.”

He left years ago for a good reason. The idea to ask him to…to take care of someone, of Mirabel, seems an absurd initiative. From his capricious mental health to living situation to sending Mirabel off to go live with her estranged uncle, there’s too much to take into consideration.

But Julieta’s, his, and his mother’s conviction didn’t matter.

One week after he hung up on Julieta, he received a long letter from Agustín. About how his daughter isn’t quite finding her way at home and how he wonders if maybe the city won’t treat her and her wild imagination better than the stifling reclusiveness of their village, just like it had for Bruno. That sending Mirabel away isn’t done out of any malice or foreboding. If Bruno would please reconsider having her, because there’s no one he trusts more to be kind and understanding than him.

The letter is two sides long. The words are gentle, but steadfast, and clearly written against the opinion of the family that Agustín usually follows to avoid conflict. Bruno smells the love he has for his daughter in every brave sentence, and all of them together form an elaborate composition. It’s like music in Casita’s courtyard. It’s familiar and his heart aches.

Bruno read it over and over before he finally sent him a letter of his own.

“How was your trip? Too long, right? It’s always way too long for me.” Though this wasn’t the only reason he rarely met up with his sisters.

“Oh, yeah. I wish I could’ve brought my sewing machine, but, yeah…Too heavy. It was either that or my accordion.” She shrugs her shoulders which he now sees carry an instrument bag, not a backpack.

He gives her his sympathy. Agustín not just mentioned she’s creative, he boasted it, and Bruno believes it immediately when he looks at her embroidered orange jacket and blue skirt filled with little sewing doodles.

It makes Mirabel a bright uncanny spot in Bruno’s humble home. As she walks through his apartment, she takes in every bit of clutter with worried eyes. Even with his bad back, Bruno didn’t think he had gotten that bad with the upkeep of his home, but he’s getting embarrassed now, thinking what she must’ve expected before the trip. Certainly not stacks of telenovela scripts and books covering unaddressed letters he’s never sent.

It’s a far cry from the colorful Casita she’s left behind, which is big enough to house a dozen family members and about as talkative. He always keeps the radio on to fill the silence and to keep his house full of romantic love songs. It helps him write.

Mirabel is still holding on to her duffle bag and keeps the bag over her shoulder as if her stuff will get swallowed up once she puts it down.

“Sorry for the mess,” he says as he gives her a little tour - his apartment, though decent, isn’t all that big, but he has space for her. He gestures to unload her stuff. “I tried cleaning out the office a little - that’s your room!”

“My own room?” She asks peculiarly as he opens the door for her.

“Of course! What, did you think your cruel tío was gonna let you sleep on the couch?” he asks amusedly.

She shrugs abashedly. “No. I guess? I dunno. I share a room with Antonio, so…I’m not used to it.”

Inside sits the spare cot he’s prepared for her and a desk he’s mostly cleared of his writing and accounting. On the walls he’s hung up drawings to give the room a bit more life. Rats in period clothes, boats on voyages, little doodles he’s made while brainstorming ideas for his stories. He feels silly about them now, realizing she’s not that much of a kid anymore.

“I hung these up for you. To lighten the place up a little-heh.” He rubs his elbow, unsure. “But you can make your own or take them down if you don’t like them.”

Mirabel smiles.

“No, Tío. Thank you.”

“So, a couple of things,” tío Bruno begins.

They’re eating the sancocho de pollo Mirabel brought from home, which is apparently Bruno’s favorite. He started humming and whistling the moment she pulled out the container. His cane lies forgotten by the front door. He only needed it to breach the distance between his front door and the lobby to let her in. She hadn’t expected he needed one - neither Mamá or tío Bruno (they had a brief conversation on the phone) had mentioned it.

“Curfew, of course. Ehh, be home before nine if you go out. The errand boy comes here on Mondays with groceries and/or medicine - ask for the receipt and don’t let him hustle you too much. Avoid talking to the handsome boy from the next block over: he’s a loverboy. Joselito I think his name is. I know the city can be very exciting and boys may seem very fun now that you’re at that age, but you’ll get in trouble if you go looking for danger of his kind, trust me!…Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned him at all. Ay, you’re probably thinking of running away with him now!”

He throws his hands up and clutches his hair.

She stares at him, reeling a bit at his rambling. “Uhh.”

“Anyway,” he perks up, dramatics forgotten, “there’s a lot of clubs and activities, so there’s always something fun for you to do while you’re here. And you could come to the theater with me! I’m sure you’d love it. It’s small but has a lot of heart.”

“That sounds great.” It was the reason she wanted to come to the city. She wanted to find her place.

He beams. “But don’t let me slow you down from whatcha wanna do, okay? I’m boring anyway and I can’t always go very far.”

This remark reminds her to ask; she thought he was an architect or construction worker or something in that vein, but he told her he quit that profession to take up writing, which landed him a job at one of the local theaters. She wonders if he had to quit that first job because of his injury.

“So,” she says, stirring against the corn cob, “what actually happened to your back?”

“My back?” His expression turns sullen, his spoon resting in the sancocho. “Oh, something awful.”

He doesn’t elaborate and she immediately regrets asking. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

He nods gravely.

There’s so much more she wants to ask him, but most of those questions are about the family, which require a kind of perilousness she doesn’t want to drag him into just yet.

“Uhm, so,” she tries. “What’s with all the letters?”

He looks surprised. “You saw those?”

“Yeah, they’re everywhere.” All tucked tight between other manuscripts and his books, but odd and noticeable enough.

He rubs his neck. “Ehh…I don’t wanna talk about it. They just kind of appear.”

“What? What does that mean?” she asks confused, but he again doesn’t elaborate. And after an awkward moment of silence, she gives up, “Okay.” They eat their stew in silence before she tries again. “Papi said that before he even met Mamá, you and he were friends?”

“Oh.” Surprisingly, even this catches him off-guard. He looks up at that, gaze distant for a moment, eyebrows pinched. It takes a second for him to reply, scratching the scruff of his neck. “Oh, sure,” he says and goes back to slurping his soup, not looking up.

“Got any funny stories from back in the day?”

He makes a strangled sound and shrugs, back to eating.

“Oookay. Good talk.”

Despite his evasiveness when it comes to family talk, tío Bruno loves to talk. About his interests, his hobbies - of which he has a lot.

It makes her fond somehow, to hear how he also thinks the random pitter-patter sounds that can sometimes be heard outside the building are pixies, just like Abuela and tía Pepa do. “Poor things,” he says, smiling. “The rats like to eat them.” Mirabel has never actually seen one before and doesn’t quite believe in them, but hearing that they persist even in the city makes her think the older generation is onto something.

Tío Bruno has so many pecularities it’s hard to list them all, from nervous ticks to his superstitions. He burns sage and avoids stepping on cracks. Every morning he does a cleansing ritual alongside taking his anti-epilepsy pills. He keeps an upside-down broom in all the rooms to keep out bad spirits (also handy for sweeping up the salt and sugar he spills a prolific amount of) and he holds his breath when he walks through every doorway, not just the one that leads outside.

He also swoons at music and always seems to have romance on his mind. He does spontaneous dances when he listens to the radio or when he’s playing some cuban bolero on his gramophone, which is such a classic item it makes it seem as though he’s stuck in time, only adding to that romanticism. Bruno loves writing and reading and tells her he can waste days watching reruns of telenovela’s he’s already seen.

“Ah…so much can happen in a life. It’s easy to forget when you’ve got a bad back and never go anywhere. That’s why it’s important to throw in crazy stuff. You gotta remember the love exists between the cracks.”

She’s been curious about him for a long time. It is as though her own life falls into place now, Bruno the missing piece of the puzzle, a branch she was never allowed close to. It’s good to meet the person he really is instead of hearing half-finished stories from her cousins and sisters who knew him only a tiny bit better. A hard line of separation forced by a ten year old wall.

She has a vague understanding of why he left. He lost his way in the family, one way or another. Stir-crazy, tío Félix told her. Thought he was bad for the family, suicidal, and too cooped up in the village. Not to mention volatile. Made the whole house mad.

“He was…sensitive,” Papá said with a far-off look in his eyes that seemed far too fraught on her dad’s face of all people.

Selfish reasons, according to Abuela, but from what Mirabel gathers those ‘selfish reasons’ boil down to ‘leaving’, which seems a bit paradoxical.

“Tío.”

It’s the end of the first night. She’s crawled up on the couch with him, leaning into his shoulder as if they’ve always done this together, drowsy from the telenovela they watched that she wasn’t all that into after a long day. “Why did you leave?”

His shoulders clench up. “Oh, that’s- I wasn’t really…that’s not important.”

“How can it not be important?”

“Okay, I guess it’s important.”

Once again, as she’s coming to expect of him, he doesn’t elaborate. Or maybe he can’t answer because he’s always so nervous and not used to having his bothersome niece here, asking questions.

He’s tense even as she leans against him, but he assured her that he’s just like that and that it’s okay to touch him and it doesn’t mean she’s imposing on him or anything. She did feel like she was imposing a little. She’s felt that way the moment her dad said she could go.

“But…I don’t get why you never really came back. I get leaving for a little while - I know Abuela and Isabela drive me crazy sometimes and always make me feel like I’m too awkward and that I’m only getting in their way, and now that I’m here I feel like I can”- She lets out a heavy puff of breath, heart straining -“breathe, finally. But I love them, and I already miss them.”

His mouth opens and closes, looking like he wants to answer, but keeps catching himself before words can spill. His chest heaves unevenly, like he’s getting worked up, and then puffing out his frustration again. But his face reads solemn, not angry at the thought of his family.

Mirabel already hugs him by the time he finally says something.

“Kid, I miss you guys plenty.”

-tbc

#encanto #mirabel madrigal #bruno madrigal #fabshipping #encanto fanfics #im expecting the parts without bruno/gus to get more attention lol ehh yeah its probably readable even if youre not into that ship #enjoy either way #splitting this up bc uhmm its looking to be at least 8k and thats too large for easy tumblr fic reading #imho #fabril

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circuitcircus · 15 days

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in defense of kabumisu……..

addressing things I see people say about why kabru being shipped w mithrun is ‘bad’ or why their canon relationship ‘doesn’t mean anything’ while also clearing up misconceptions of the characters some fans have

listen it keeps popping up and I just gotta do this or my brain will melt (if you don’t see it around then god I wish that were me) there’s an age gap!- erm there’s also an age gap in farcille (ily), the most popular ship in the series...also chilchuck looks like a kid but a lot of fans recognize him as a dilf because of his relative age, so there should be no age gap discourse among adult characters because it feels so conditional tbh

kabru taking care of mithrun is racist!- marcille likes to take care of others as well. is that sexist, or just an aspect of her character?

kabru isn’t treated like a servant, waiting on mithrun hand and foot…I mean he gives mithrun a foot massage but no one told him to do all that lmfao

he's also not the only one to care for mithrun. pattadol is shown to worry for him and milsril was the one to start taking care mithrun in the first place after he…...y’know. speaking of which-

they probably met when kabru was a kid!- neither of them showed signs of recognizing each other the entire time mithrun was introduced nor when they were together. and im pretty sure KABRU of all people would show some kind of recognition if they'd met before. it's kabru!!! the people person!!! mr. "i-noted-down-50+-characters-in-this-dude's-backstory-for-fun-and-actually-enjoy-social-gatherings"

you would think some kind of memory would come back to him especially after hearing mithrun’s backstory if milsril had even told kabru about him as a kid. but nope. it’s just fan speculation unless there's a side comic suggesting otherwise that i haven't seen

mithrun doesn't care about kabru, his shapeshift double looked like shit!- it's obviously because of mithrun's (then) lack of desires that it looked like that, but they really grow on each other

i think it's safe to assume it'd look more like kabru after they spent so much time together (also laios can barely even remember kabru's name..also saw his face multiple times and didn’t recognize him when they talked for the first time)

mithrun is racist!- he’s actually the least likely character to be racist since he lost his desires and that includes a desire for superiority over others. he even calls his past self out on that part of himself. the other elves in that side comic were being just as racist to shorter lived races but just didn’t use ‘outdated slurs’

(unfortunately literally every main character in dunmeshi is at least a lil prejudiced, but I believe it’s worldbuilding and a sign of the times rather than a reason ryoko kui is giving to hate each character)

taking care of others is a pain in the ass!- saying this as a reason kabru and mithrun shouldn't be together is basically saying disabled people shouldn't be allowed to have romantic relationships because they're a "burden"...if someone is actually willing to put in the work, then let them be.

that's not even all of their relationship, mithrun is the fighter of their duo and kabru would've been killed by the shapeshifter or something if he'd fallen down the hole on his own since he sucks at fighting monsters. mithrun helps collect ingredients for cooking every time, too (barometz fruits and griffin egg). he pulls his weight and then some!! i feel like people forget that part of mithrun a lot somehow.

+senshi literally cooks for everyone all time. it's kind of an important aspect of the narrative.

+also, while it is a popular fan thing I see around that kabru handfeeds mithrun, he literally never does lol this is mithrun using his own hands to eat:

also here we have him washing his own body

just saying because people like to treat mithrun like a baby even though the narrative respects him as a capable adult who also has special needs because of an accident. he’s captain for a reason

kabru hates taking care of mithrun!- not exactly, he was initially surprised and put off but got used to it quickly. i’m sure he’s grateful for all the times mithrun saved him from a monster and teleported them out of danger as well

he even starts doing “unnecessary” things for mithrun’s comfort and safety like when mithrun pushes himself too hard fighting, even after his mission to take care of him was complete when the canaries came back

here is even kabru resting while mithrun keeps watch (mithrun let him sleep for 5 hours before waking him up from the nightmare earlier, too):

there's nothing more to their relationship!- they actually have had a very tight and consistent dynamic since they met and they incite the most change within each other by the end. kabru is the one who inspires mithrun to create new desires so he doesn't waste away, and mithrun is the first person we see kabru being genuine with and it leads him to be more honest with others by the end instead of tiptoeing around everyone all the time (that mask was also the reason some ppl initially disliked kabru…)

kabru’s relationship with mithrun is honestly so important for his character and vice versa, but it’s often disregarded because of one over exaggerated aspect of it (an aspect that isn’t even the first way they interact with each other) or because people want to just straight up ignore it for some reason 🥲🥲

kui dedicates many panels to them that don't particularly serve the narrative as a whole in order to demonstrate this and i think that's pretty significant

you're taking this too seriously!- as if i'm the first person in the world to be crazy about a ship or the characters 😭 i love analyzing text and it's upsetting to see them mischaracterized when kui lays out the characters so clearly and deliberately

also they end up touching each other like all the time and have the kind of canon validation most ppl can only dream of lol i feel so insane look at this:

and this is just when they're first getting to know each other cuz there's a fuckload more

kinda hard to explain how i don't actually need them to get married or whatever but i'd die on this hill for them and i enjoy their dynamic immensely

haha you thought you were reading ship discourse but it was actually a character analysis 🤪🤪🤪

also don’t somehow take this to mean I think anyone has to ship them, I just need everyone to understand these accusations kind of don’t make sense especially when they can also apply to other pairs or characters

bonus kabru just looking at mithrun:

#dungeon meshi #kabumisu #kabru of utaya #mithrun #dungeon meshi spoilers #i'd rather be able to enjoy their dynamic without feeling like i have to explain it but i keep seeing the same takes i cant do this anym-#i feel like i advocate for kabumisu so much because i see so many people mischaracterizing kabru to make l4bru work like how they want #by saying he’s obsessed w laios because he thinks he’s hot..but he was curious about his autistic behavior and eventually thought his lack #of malice would make laios the best candidate for becoming dungeon lord to prevent another utaya tragedy. tho eventually he doubts that #not that i care that he's shipped with laius. i just want ppl to see kabru for who he IS bc some still think hes nothing but a shady bicth #i think that's best shown through his dynamic with mithrun (other than his own words of course) so i want ppl to acknowledge it properly #like idk if I can trust popular fan interpretations of the characters or relationships anymore after the shit with toshiro bro 💀💀#not trying to attach kabru’s entire being to mithrun or anything either just..saying #hm i feel like the way i worded all of this will make some ppl mad. not my intention but whoops #anyways has anyone drawn ship art of senshi and mithrun yet? anyone?

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