"that's your autistic special interest?"

when the issue of her working after the baby is born comes up, it's just "oh, you're Poppy li; you're always working, haha." meanwhile she's been on this whole journey of realizing that her incessant need to work comes from a place of brokenness and pain. (this is something that she and Ian have in common, although he doesn't realize this about himself, either.) Poppy doesn't want to be that person anymore, so it hurts her deeply when Ian says that about her—and says it in such a lighthearted way, almost like it's a joke. he sees what's on the surface—that she's always been working—but doesn't realize that she's been in pain this whole time. (and maybe part of that is on Poppy! because as much as she criticizes Ian's inability to be vulnerable, imo, she's worse than he is.)

“Sisyphus is a slur,” Shannon said skeptically. “Well, don’t say it again! Anyway, it’s like that dude, just rolling that bolder up the hill—every day, day after day. He gets it to the top, and then next day rolls around, and he starts all over again,” Ian said. “Tell you what, though—you find the right boulder, the right hill? It’s a killer workout. I keep meaning to give it a try.” “Well, you let me know when you work that out. I’ll come along and watch, maybe bring a book of Greek mythology for some light reading.” “Yeah, okay,” Ian said, nodding. “Weird.” Typically, watching beefy dudes in workout gear perform herculean athletic feats left Ian a baffling mixture of horny and motivated to work out himself, but Shannon? Shannon wanted to read the Orestia or something. He wondered whether that meant a request to dress in historically accurate ancient Greek garments was forthcoming. For anyone else, that would be a hard no. Well—A hard maybe, depending on how hot they were. But a definite, Why the fuck would you want to do that in bed? Admittedly, he had done far stranger things in bed. Ian had been considering using his leave of absence to design and sew a version of the toga he’d been wearing in his dream—the one that inspired Elysium. He already had an impressive broadsword, courtesy of his latest Warrior Within Day. If that’s what it took to get Shannon off, he could flip through his own collection of books on Greek mythology and— It hit him at once, through the haze of weed still lingering over his mind. “Sisyphus! I get that now. That’s funny,” Ian said. “Yeah? You really hitting that shit hard, huh,” Shannon said, nodding toward his ashtray. “Eh.”

[...]