on richburn-- richard getting to see himself through eyes that aren't the greek class; to them he was strange and fascinating, but what if he's more normal to cloke? cloke who through college was around normal, slightly crazy people doing drugs with no great delusion of grandeur or ancient weight on their consciousness. richard who compared to them was normal, if a bit more depressed.
cloke breaks through all the hazy fantastical feelings of hampden and shows richard himself as he really is, & exposes the fantasy of the greek class as well
(richard doesn't deal with things any better at 30 and they have dubiously-emotion-resolving sex about it)
Hello. YES. I absolutely adore exploring what the other characters view him as, and I love the idea of them both thinking back on their Hampden days and talking about the vast difference between their experiences. Cloke saying he probably spent too much time partying and getting high and while he didn’t necessarily regret it because it was just who he was at that point in his life, and it’s not like he still doesn’t enjoy getting high, he wishes he could remember certain memories and people more. Perhaps also meaning the time he spent with Richard. Richard talking about how bright those days were until the anxiety and depression and fucked up body hit him like a train.
Cloke talking about times he spent out and having (if reckless and maybe a bit dangerous) fun with Judy and Jud and Tracy and the party’s they went to. Cloke talking about the different good and bad Profs he had, the spots in town so many people would hang around, the school events and how, maybe a little unlike Richard, he felt it touching how many people cared when Bunny died, how it brought people together to mourn a human life who had been his friend for years even if they didn’t know him that well.
Richard feeling like his experience was so entirely different and voicing that, but then Cloke pulls out a picture Richard didn’t entirely remember taking with him, Richard, Judy, Tracy, and some other unknown faces having fun in someone’s dorm, Judy clearly having made Richard try on one of the costumes she was working on (because otherwise he wouldn’t be wearing that ridiculous hat) and everyone smiling, making stupid decisions but living. He points to it, says that Richard may have been in a different world for a lot of his time at Hampden, but that he wasn’t entirely a stranger.
Richard asking why he still has a picture focusing on mainly the two of them nearly ten years later.
Richard getting hit with it all, that his life wasn’t the story he was writing but it was real, and it was not regular in any definition of the word, but that that was Hampden too. Not just what haunted him, what he wrote down. Hampden was also a place where he, occasionally, had what might be considered a slightly more ‘normal’ college experience. He sees what it could’ve been if he hadn’t pushed to study with Julian. He regrets it all and he regrets none of it.
AND THEY THEY FUCK NASTY. Augh yes anon I love this ask so much, also this is slightly if not inspired by what I’m working on for Sleepy Eyes and Bored Smiles so I WILL be using this as inspiration as I go further, I love this ask it’s sooooo good anon <3