l o v e r .

“why do you care so much raph? why is it that if i’m a few hours late coming home from work i’m suddenly a villain? that i’ve made you worry, that i could be dead, that i’ve run off, shouldn’t i be allowed to do what i want ever once in a while without you knowing where i am? are you really not capable of eating dinner on your own? you’re being suffocating.” he sighs, running his hands through his hair. “of course i did it because i loved you raphael.” there’s anger in his now, raphael’s last words stung. love was a challenging thing for edward, and after everything he couldn’t stand the accusation that it had all been a ruse. that he had just been tricking raphael into a romance so he could show how good he was, pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. edward didn’t need anyone’s love to feel complete. “how could you even say that. do you really after all this time still not believe that i’m here because of love? because i don’t know what else i can do to convince you at this point.”

.

everything about this is useless. talking to eddie doesn’t even feel like a brick wall, it feels like an echo chamber, both of them repeating the same things back to each other in synchronized loops. so raph doesn’t tell eddie for the third time how reasonable it is for raph to hope for a text, or how the basic tenets of a relationship aren’t supposed to feel suffocating. he just goes, “fuck, ed, i don’t know. i’ll try to be better at that,” and stands up, grabbing ed’s empty dinner plate and putting it in the sink just to have a reason not to look at his boyfriend. 

he runs water over the plate (the water coming out a little too hot, but he barely has the capacity to react to the sting of it) as ed keeps talking, and he just tells himself don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry over and over like a fucking mantra. because no, he won’t cry, he will not be something that eddie gets to pity, something pathetic that eddie has to keep around out of necessity. “you could tell me something about our future,” raph says softly. it’s not a sad softness, though - it’s frustrated, it’s resigned, it’s bitter. “you could reassure me that i’m not a plaything that’s happened to last a little past its usual expiration date. you could at least pretend that there exists a reality in which you want to spend the rest of your life with me.”

it’s really fucking cold. it’s below freezing outside, flakes of snow just-barely starting to fall before raph could make it in, but there’s still a bitter chill to the air indoors. raph thought it would ease away once he got under the covers, but he shivers lightly still - maybe from the cold, or maybe from the nerves accumulating in him after everything that transpired that night.

It’s really fucking late, too. or early, depending on how you viewed the 4:36 am time blinking harshly on the clock next to the bed. he’s slept for an hour, maybe an hour and a half, but other than that it’s been lying awake. tossing and turning, trying and failing not to think about ed lying on the couch just outside. he remembers a time when the cold in the apartment would’ve been a distant problem, resolved by the warmth of being held in eddie’s arms, resolved by the heat of ed’s mouth pressed against the nook of his neck.

he gives up on sleep at 4:37, decides instead to brew a cup of tea, if only just to have something in his hands to keep him warm. however, as he leaves the bedroom and heads for the kitchen, he finds that he’s not the only one awake. ed’s sitting up on the couch, looking like he’s about to put his legs back into his pants if not for raph’s interruption. “oh, uh,” he stutters. “sorry, my bad, don’t let me interrupt your early-morning getaway. i think if i go left towards the kitchen and you go right towards the door we’ll probably only have ten seconds total eye contact. or, if you need, i’ll just go back to bed and pretend this was all a fever dream - it could be a very ‘i saw mommy kissing santa claus’ moment.”

@raphaelbrcoks​ / your unrequited love for life will surely —

by god, if tommy’s never been more protective of a coat in his life. the matching ones with aster? also precious. but this task he was given, from the raphael they were sworn to protect — he’d given aster a little murmur of raph’s okay, i think, in effort to assuage so much of the tiniest a smidgen of her worries (and his own) that he could, before taking her (and these grandiosely tasked items) upstairs for the evening. 

in the morning, he sends a text: aster’s picking up breakfast. whaddya want? 

there’s not much wiggle room, there. raph isn’t getting no, if tommy has to fetch a spare key to raph’s apartment and deliver it to bed himself. raph is proving his existence, his alive-li-hood, and he’s getting food out of the endeavor. 

“hey,” eloquent, as always, upon first sight of the smaller. “come in, red just left. last time i went i picked up the totally wrong order, so now i’m on takeout probation. mornin’.” 

.

what does he want for breakfast? absolutely nothing, his heart says, but his stomach and mind are both quick to remind him that he could use some carbs to soak up last night’s alcohol, so he texts back: like, a bagel? but none of that pumpernickel or asiago nonsense, we’re not trying to win any accolades here. 

when he shows up, he finds that it’s tommy answering aster’s door, which in itself is still an adjustment for him (though, he supposes the real shock will be the day tommy manages to get a home that’s actually his). but his explanation checks out, so he ducks around tommy to head into the apartment, plopping on the couch. “i’m kind of impressed by how normal you guys are being this morning. like i think i genuinely forgot that takeout is still an option, and everything didn’t just stop on account of - i don’t even know, me being upset about something stupid?” he shrugs, nods towards tommy. “did you guys ever end up seeing that sunrise?”

@raphaelbrcoks· 

after a long morning at the gym, in an attempt to clear his head, murphy headed home. he was unsettled, his mind racing with all the things that had happened in the past couple of days. he had been so excited for sophia’s upcoming doctor’s appointment that week- the chance of them getting to know what they were having was in the cards- and his games that week were home games, so he didn’t have to facetime in, only experiencing the smallest bit of her visit. but now, everything had a kind of grey tinge, an overlay- like clouds or curtains with some morning light peaking through. he was still excited and happy about soph and their baby, but his heart ached too. a dull pain that murphy refused to focus on fully. and seeing raph as he headed up the stairs only added to that ache, “raph… uh, hey…” he wasn’t sure what to say. he hadn’t seen the other since the party, “how’re you holdin’ up? i’m really sorry the other night went so bad…” it wasn’t murphy’s fault it had taken a turn, but he still felt for raphael. the night had been pretty damn rough on him. 

he feels like his and murph’s relationship at this point is just one awkward encounter after another. quite frankly, raph feels a little bad about it, that so much bad has happened to him this last month that murph and him can’t even be happy about the baby news, it just has to be murph going ‘sorry for...’ and ‘i heard about...’ and ‘how are you doing with...?’. this conversation, of course, is no exception. “hey man, looking very sweaty. just come back from a good gym sess? you, uh, show that ice who’s boss?” he attempts to say it with a smile, but it probably ends up looking forced, not unlike the raph discord emoji. “i am, you know. doing my thing. waking up each morning, performing activities, going to bed at some point after said activities, rinsing and repeating. i mean really, if it goes any better i’m going to have to start a self-help book and give really groundbreaking advice like ‘you can’t lay around in bed for the entire day and try to pinpoint where it all went wrong on weekdays, but weekends are free reign’.”

he knows that eventually, in some capacity, one day, somehow he will have to talk to robin again. and there’s plenty of things he wants to vocalize. for example: you are the ugly way i feel about los angeles or thinking about the way we used to love makes me sick now or you were never quite good for me, but fuck, this is a new low. of course, he has no intention of saying any of that, but he does want answers. 

so he waits a few days, then sends a quick text: ‘entrance to central park tomorrow, 7 am. wear sneakers.’ he doesn’t answer any of robin’s follow-up texts, but he’s standing at the northern gate at 6:59 in running gear expectantly. robin shows up at 7:03. “here is the deal,” he says before robin can utter a word. “you are not entitled to my time, my conversation, or my friendship. but after four years, i do think i deserve the whole, unadultered truth. so you’re going to come run with me, i’m going to ask you questions, you’re going to answer them, and when i’m done asking, you’re done talking. that’s all this is.” he releases his leg from where he was holding it in a warmup stretch. “make sense?”

it’s clear that they’re about to spiral into a fight. eddie considers just standing up and walking away now, but he’s too far in for an easy exit now. but eddie’s no good in fights. he’s stubborn and prideful and he’s never stuck around long enough to get to the fighting stage with anyone else. for all his practice arguing the emotional mess he had gotten himself into had his head spinning. “yeah ‘your property’, you’re act like i belong to you, like you own me.” he huffs, “that’s not fair. just because i have a life i suddenly don’t care about what you want? raphael i’ve done it all for you. i’ve done the boyfriend thing, the moving in together thing, the meeting the parents thing, all of it. can you not let me go out with my friends who cares if it’s a wednesday or i didn’t tell you exactly where i was? how much more can you possibly want from me? what else? do you want me to go on find my friends for you? or better yet an ankle monitor! what is it? what’s next?”

he hates the way eddie’s words almost make him feel bad. he’s right, raph thinks for a second, look at what he’s done for you, how much more do you want? selfish, selfish, selfish. he pushes that voice in his head down. it’s what kept him with robin for so long, and with so many others in that long list of lovers that never gave him quite what he deserved. but he’s tired of that - of making himself quieter, softer, easier to swallow. “you know what, eddie? you’re right. god forbid somebody cares that you’re not lying dead somewhere and wants you to be home on time so we can do something utterly insidious, like eat dinner together or have anything beyond a surface-level conversation. you’re living in some real rusty shackles there, call the aclu.” he can’t foresee where this conversation is going, it feels like they’re just running circles around each other. raph just doesn’t know what to do with them anymore, with all this love and nowhere to put it. “so is that it, then? you give me the basic tenets of commitment and i’m not allowed to ask for anything else from here on out? i thought you did all of that because you loved me, not because - fuck, i don’t know, you’re just checking off boxes until you accumulate enough gold stars to get to hold them against me.”

“oh, good,” the next line on the script of things to say. he pushed his food around with his fork, focusing his energy on trying not to chew too loud in their tense silence. whatever easy synchronicity had existed with them before had disappeared. their conversation felt stilted, as if someone had missed have a beat two measures ago. now he was here, going through the motions, refusing to admit defeat. but the grating dissonance between them stung like a bitch. but then raphael was going of script, asking him questions he didn’t feel like dealing with, trying to clean out the mess that was left between them. and having to own up to his sins felt so much worse than just ignoring them. he pushes his dish away and looks up at him across the counter. “i told you i didn’t think you’d mind, i wanted to grab an after work drinks with my friends that’s not a crime.” he’s frustrated now. he feels like he’s being accused and raphael won’t even meet his eyes to do it. “you seem to be under the misconception that i’m your property, i’m allowed to go out with friends raphael.”

eddie gives him that lame-ass excuse again about thinking raph wouldn’t mind, and it’s such obvious bullshit - but at the same time, he’s exhausted, and he’s ready for this to be another night where raph accepts less than what he deserves and they share a bed like nothing’s off. but then eddie doesn’t stop, says ‘misconception that i’m your property’, and suddenly raph doesn’t mind getting a little uncomfortable tonight. in that moment, he refuses to keep letting ed’s body under their sheets without his heart ever following them into the room. “my property?” raph repeats incredulously. “i never said you couldn’t go out with friends. i asked you why you didn’t text me about it and why you suddenly feel the need to party on a wednesday night when you know i'm home waiting for you. but i guess i actually don’t need you to resolve those concerns for me, because it’s becoming fairly obvious that the answer is ‘well, raph, as a matter of fact, i just don’t give a fuck about your feelings or concerns’.”

before their breakup, raph had actually really enjoyed having a shared friend group with his boyfriend. he liked having their separate spheres (raph’s more artistic friends as opposed to ed’s finance bro friends), but then also having that venn diagram converge for their little bennington bunch. now, however, it all felt a little too incestuous, and rather than figure out where he stood with everyone now he just tried his best to avoid them. and he was doing a mighty good job at it - avoiding all their usual hangout spots, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, leaving the street a little earlier and staying at the office a little later - but despite the best of his abilities, he still manages to run into murph in the lobby to their building a few days after the split. 

he contemplates not saying anything, but figures that that would perhaps be more awkward than anything that could leave his mouth, so he opts for a half-there smile and a little wave. “hey, man,” he greets gingerly. “what’s up with you?”

considering how many relationships he’s torn through, you’d think that raph would have mastered the art of breaking up by now. and maybe he has, but this one feels so different, so much worse, and maybe it’s because he had such high hopes that it would actually last. stupid, stupid, stupid boy. so he’s somewhere in the middle of a spiral, and his heart hurts so bad he’s actually a tad concerned he should be seeking medical help. he thinks the least eddie could do is show up at their door again so raph can slam it in his face, but when ed left he really left, so much so that raph hasn’t even heard about what he’s been up to since they exchanged their last words. 

not that it matters. he shouldn’t be thinking about what eddie’s up to, he should be zoning in on the now.

the ‘now’ in question is raph lying face-up on the counter, which he doesn’t totally remember ending up on. he wants to break all the dishes in the kitchen (except for the really nice ones he got at that local open-air art gallery) just to do something with his hands, but he can’t even muster that, so he just stares at the ceiling as tracy chapman’s ‘fast car’ plays on repeat. at first he thought ‘fast car’ was just a really long song, which it is, but about three plays later he realized it was stuck on repeat on his spotify. but changing the song would mean moving, and that also doesn’t seem like the best strategy here, so he just lets the song play itself to death. there are clementine peels on the left side of his face and a half-filled handle of fireball on the right side, which together have made up the majority of his meals for the day. it’s not quite the breakfast of champions, but in this moment, he’s just trying to cope. his head whips over as he hears the door handle turn and open, and his heart skips a beat as he thinks it’s eddie coming back to fight for them - but no, just robin. “oh. hey.” his voice is hoarse, probably a combination of dehydration and the four times he’s cried on the counter today. “what are you doing here?”

he isn’t immune to the guilt. in fact, it’s becoming a quite prominent presence in their relationship for him. burdened with guilt because he works too much or drinks too much or can’t love raphael in the way that he’s meant to be loved ( without inhibition ). some days he isn’t sure if it’s his guilt or a guilt that’s been assigned to him, but it always seems to be there. he loathes the feeling. it sobers him up quickly, that feeling of guilt, the dread of walking into a room and knowing that something’s wrong. it was the exact feeling he had been trying to avoid, staying out, clouding his regret with alcohol, staying away. but in the way that all things tend to go, avoiding it and drowning it only managed to make it sting more when you finally had to face it. he hadn’t drank that much, enough to let him ignore his phone and smell like gin and numb the sense of guilt that was gnawing at his soul. and it was enough to make him miss the signs when he walked in the door. raph was waiting for him, and there was food in the oven, and he should have been home hours ago.

“oh good thanks babe.” he responds, voice quieter than it should be. he feels like a kid grabbing the food from the oven, like he’s been caught doing something wrong and has to stand in front of the class and repent for his sins. ‘edward seong is afraid of commitment’ a hundred times on the unforgiving chalk board. he pops a piece of tofu in his mouth, trying to chew it in a way that’s not totally humiliating in their tense silence. when had their silences gone from comfortable to anything but. he wasn’t sure the exact date, but at some point a shift had occurred. maybe it was thanksgiving, or maybe it was something else entirely. either way, what had once been a comforting certainty in their quiet moments had been snuffed out by everything they were leaving unsaid. he gives raphael a halfhearted smile and nods at his bowl of food, “it’s good.”

“oh i just went to grab a drink with some work friends, i didn’t think you’d mind” eddie comments casually, although it’s very clear that raph minded. he doesn’t bother with the i missed you too. maybe he did, he’s not sure. he thinks he misses the raph from the summer. love seemed like a simpler thing to handle back then, not that it ever came easily to ed. maybe it was the holidays that made people desperate for big commitments, or maybe they had just exhausted the ability to ignore their deeply incompatible world views. still, the look on raph’s face made edward’s heart ache more than just a little. unsure of where to go from here, he tried to just fall into normalcy, going through the motions of the questions couples were supposed to ask. “so, how was your day ?”

.

he’s never been comfortable in silences. there’s a reason his mouth never stops moving, a reason his brain never stops ticking along with it, and it’s because he’s profoundly mortified at the thought of sitting wordlessly for too long. this occasion is no different as eddie thanks him briefly and then moves around without saying anything else. raph feels like a ghost, like ed’s strategy here is to pretend raph’s not there long enough that raph eventually just fades away. and eddie would like that, raph thinks. only having to keep a boyfriend around while he’s easy, and then as soon as he brings up the future, poof, their living room gets to be a graveyard, a cemetery, a morgue while eddie stands around and dabs a tissue to his eye and goes, ‘what a shame, this one had such potential’.

when the silence is broken, raph wishes it hadn’t been. i didn’t think you’d mind. liar. at least, raph hopes eddie is lying. if he’s not then he’s just naive in a way that’s almost insulting, and he thinks that may be worse. he finds a stray pen on the counter and twirls it just so he has something else to focus on, just so he doesn’t have to look at eddie with contempt in his eyes (actually, that’s not quite right - as much as he wants to be angry right now, he worries that he’s too weak for that right now, worries he may be better suited to muster a tear than a glare, and he hates that about himself). he keeps his focus on the pen, spinning it from finger to finger methodically, and he thinks about butterflies, how they change gradually from something dull to something beautiful. this, maybe, is that in reverse, their love rotting instead of blossoming. 

he only looks up from his hand when he’s prompted with a question. “my day was fine,” he says curtly. to an outsider, they would sound like perfect strangers exchanging streetside small talk. his eyes go back to the pen - twirling, twirling, twirling, making circles around his knuckles and fingers. “why didn’t you call to tell me you were gonna be out late?” he asks then, not looking up. “and since when do you stay out so late on a random wednesday?”

@raphaelbrcoks·

eddie would never say that he had given up on his relationship, but ever since their return from waitsfield all signs indicated so. the scent of tabacco on his breath without regard for it’s ability to turn raph’s stomach, later nights at the office and out of the office without any concern for coming home, and the diligent avoidance of all the serious conversations raph seemed hell bent on having ever since they came back. it wasn’t that he wanted to end their relationship with a swift departure, he had grown comfortable in their arrangement, but edward no longer feltlike putting the work in. after all, hadn’t he already changed so much ? suddenly there was an angry little piece of resentment in him every time he had to pretend to be the perfect boyfriend. so it wasn’t entirely surprising for him to finally stumble home at ten pm on a weeknight far more wasted than any ‘after work drinks’ should leave someone. “babe is there any food ? i’m starved.”

.

he can’t be sure, but he thinks they’re fighting. thinks they have been fighting for a while now, since eddie refused to put up any struggle for them at waitsfield, and thinks maybe raph’s losing. or maybe they both are. in any case, this feels like the worst kind of deja vu - which is to say, he’s been in enough relationships to know how it feels when they end. but he’s trying to stay calm, trying to remind himself that eddie is The One and this is just a hiccup. he doesn’t say anything about them needing space, doesn’t even let them sleep in different rooms because that’s what people do when they aren’t in love anymore. and of course they’re still in love. of course they are.

so he sits in the kitchen at ten past ten and he’s alone. well, not completely - michael barbaro plays softly from his phone as he leans on the counter, telling raph about today’s story as raph’s eyelids droop. he came home early with the intent of cooking an exciting new dish and picking up some good alcohol for them to share, hoping a night in together would give them the chance to talk a bit. but ed’s nowhere to be found and not answering any of raph’s texts, and so here raph sits, waiting. 

michael informs him that today’s episode of the daily has ended, and raph is about to look for something else to fill his time when he hears the doorknob turn. he whips his head suddenly, heartbeat speeding up at the thought of eddie coming home. it’s pathetic - he’s practically a yappy little golden retriever. when ed steps in, raph isn’t sure which smell to wrinkle his nose at first, the tobacco or the liquor. someone’s clearly had an eventful wednesday night. “hi, yeah, there’s um - i tried my hand at making spicy peanut tofu, it’s being kept warm in the oven. i also picked up that wine you like,” he nods to the bottle at the end of the counter. “but maybe it’s best if we save it for tomorrow.” he looks over ed, trying to calculate how many drinks it must have taken to get him like this. “what’ve you been up to? i missed you, i didn’t know you’d be out so late tonight.”

edward seong was the kind of person who always had about twenty different things racing through his mind at a time. the intricacies of the nasdaq, the status of various international elections, the last five texts his mother sent him, the fall of the ottoman empire, the scent of raphael’s hair, how many days his father had left on his jail sentence, the exact amount of steps to the nearest corner store so he could throw away his mango scented juul and buy a pack of cigarettes ( 1457 steps total ). but somehow in the pressing softness of the early morning ( or late night depending on how you divided things up ) he had the grace of focusing on fewer things. like how the air felt thicker and his chest would rise and fall with an aching slowness, or the feeling of raphs leg pressed against his while his voice outlined a ridiculous argument about ayn rand, or how the tenor of that voice seemed to be a little bit different when it was just the two of them and a little bit different when he hadn’t slept, and it felt like something that belonged entirely to them. and to own something so intangible so entirely felt sickly sweet and suffocating to him all at once. 

he let raph take the joint with ease, allowing the others argument hang delicately in the air while his eyes just followed the rise of his chest and the smoke leaving his lips. “first of all i’m right,” a self satisfied smirk on his lips as he takes another sip of his beer. “second, you know i’ll never admit to being wrong about something, and if i ever do say that i’m wrong i’m almost certainly under duress and you should be very very concerned about me. a very nice try on your part though.” he could feel the cool metal of the fire escape through the fabric of his sweat pants and was grateful that raph had forced him into a fleece before they came outside. “so what are the main points of this treaty, outline them for me. because if your planning to leave me in economic ruin i just don’t think that’s a good idea. but i would very much like to hear your good news, and i’d also like to know why you’ve been holding onto it all night. and also for future reference if it’s the kind of news that gives me the opportunity to buy you flowers or vegan cupcakes or a bottle of dom please let me know while all the good shops are still open.” his fingers brushing against raphs as he brings the joint back over to his own lips for a deep inhale. “so ?”

.

“first of all, you’re insufferable and wrong. second of all, you look hot enough with that little ‘i’ve been right all my life’ smile on your stupid face that i’ll let it slide even if you are, as i’ve pointed out previously, a winning combination of insufferable and wrong.” raphael’s grinning as he says it, no real malice in any of the bickering they tend to get into. in fact, the truth is that he loves this - loves having someone that can keep up with every place his mind goes, loves the fact that raph’s million words are finally being heard by someone only for eddie to turn around and say ‘well, actually’. raph’s been in love one-too many times, and so he has a sense about what works and what doesn’t and god, eddie really works. this love they share is the kind of artwork raph always wanted to paint. 

he goes in for another long inhale and exhale of the joint in his hand, coughing a bit as some of the smoke gets caught in his lung, before handing it back to eddie. “‘leave eddie in economic ruin.’ that’s a good one, absolutely getting added to the list. i’ll put it right above ‘no movies directed by martin scorsese for a month’ and right below ‘painting our bathroom walls green, if the lease allows for it’. or -” he leans in, pressing a kiss to eddie’s lips until he’s breathless, before leaning back out. “yeah, i think that’ll clear you of all charges.” he crosses his legs and stretches back on his palms, getting comfortable. “i didn’t want to tell you until it was quasi-certain - which, to be clear, is still not completely the case - and i definitely didn’t need it to be met with gifts or wine or anything equally ridiculous. but the news is that, in theory, i’m getting my own video game within the next two years.” he doesn’t let it sit in the air for more than a moment before he’s following it up with quick justifications. “i mean, the phrase my own is a little far, because nothing in media is just someone’s own and obviously there’s going to be a dozen or so people animating it and storyboarding it and producing it with me. and even then it’s not like certain certain that i get it, beause i’m a first-time creator and this is more of them throwing me a bone and asking me to present them with my best work and then maybe, maybe it actually becomes something. honestly it’s dumb for me to even get your hopes up, or my hopes up, because more likely i give them a skeleton of a project and they go ‘eh, this probably makes us no money’, which brings me back to the isssues i take with ayn rand’s objectivism. so like yes, technically the reason i’ve been working overtime is because technically there is a video game out there that is technically all my own that is technically getting created to be distributed in 2022, but actually i doubt anything comes out of it once anybody gets a hold of it that’s in charge of financing or distributing or just, thinking that things are good.” after rambling breathlessly, he finally exhales all at once, then meets eddie’s gaze with a tentative smile. “but there it is, the news.”

It’s too late to have stayed up this long, but too early to have woken up already, and so Raph basks in the purgatory that is the tender hour of 4:08 AM with an exhausted fondness. It’s not an altogether unfamiliar scene - Eddie is notoriously a restless insomniac, and though Raph needs sleep too much to give it up entirely for his beloved boyfriend, he’s not entirely opposed to staying up a bit when he doesn’t have work the next day. Ergo, this particular Friday night, up past their bedtime and passing a joint lazily between them on the fire escape as they sip on an expensive IPA and Trader Joe’s sparkling wine respectively. They had started the night making the kind of pleasant small talk that normal couples do (ie: how was your day? / what are we eating for dinner tomorrow? / will you pretty please go to the farmer’s market with me over the weekend?), but it had eventually shifted its way into their usual light bickering. A casual mention of the Ayn Rand section of Eddie’s bookshelf lead from one thing to another, and suddenly they were engaged in a not-so casual banter about Rand’s theory of objectivism for upwards of half an hour. 

“Hey, not fair, of course I agree that creativity fuels society,” he responded to Eddie’s latest point. “But Rand makes it seems like capitalism is the only thing that gets us there when it’s like, honestly counterproductive if you ask me. She writes Anthem to create this dystopia without the free market and she goes ‘Look, individuality, the ability to invent, it all gets lost!’, but that is so absurd. In reality it’s capitalism that’s holding us back from genuine creation. I mean, have you watched a Hallmark movie recently? That’s a rhetorical question, I know you haven’t watched a Hallmark movie recently, I hope you haven’t watched a Hallmark movie recently, but if you had you would know that it’s just like, the same plot about a Christmas tree and a small town and the vaguely sexist sentiment of women giving up their corporate jobs to stay at home and bake cookies. Hallmark movies are just a microcosm of the way that art based on profit as opposed to art based on a genuine desire to make fulfilling art kills creativity. And now I’m upset that you got me heated enough to use the word microcosm unironically. Pass me that.” He plucks the joint from Eddie’s fingertips and takes a deep inhale, blowing it upwards in a concentrated puff. He takes a sip from his TJ’s can before fixating his gaze back on Eddie, accompanying it with a playful grin. “If you admit that I’m right I’ll reward you with some good news. Or if you’re not willing to admit that I’m right but still want the news then we can work on drafting a compromise. I think we could give the Treaty of Versailles a run for its money if we wanted to, but the Armistice of Mudros would be a bit trickier to outdo. They really had their verbiage down in 1918.”

it was damn near impossible for eddie to keep his eyes off raphael at the best of times, there were countless times when they were out with their friends someone would catch him staring ( even before they put an official label on their relationship, but that’s beside the point ), but in this moment he didn’t have a shot in hell of looking away. he was desperate to read raphael’s expression, know his thoughts, understand what was going on in his mind. “but it does feel good,” his words are quiet. he feels like a kid again. guilty and small and like the biggest disappointment in the world. but this was raph and by some miracle he hadn’t given up on eddie yet. even if there was a burning part of him that wished raph would just leave. realize who he was, that he would inevitably break his heart. he wished that raphael would figure it out and run for the hills before it all went down in flames. but eddie is eddie, and he doesn’t want to talk about the flaws in his life, and especially in their relationship. instead he wants to change the subject. divert the attention from what’s really going on so he can pull off the trick while no one is watching and wow the audience. “oh yeah ? what is it you’re signing ? signing a lease on me or something ?”

to his credit raphael wasn’t easy to distract. in fact, he was pretty stubborn with the after school special lesson that he was trying to teach. so he doubled down on his method of persuasion, ignoring how much it made his split lip sting. his head moved to a bit of skin he knew would be covered by a shirt so he could leave a mark. a soft moan against raphs skin at his praise, a tell me what else i’m good at already lined up on his tongue when he felt raphs fingers pulling him away. his eyes looked up at raph, trying to focus on his words with all his might. “okay, deal. you can pick out any self help book you want, okay ? i’ll read it cover to cover, i swear. i’ll read it five times if that’s what you want. i’ll read it a hundred times. okay ?  just please, please, let me give you the birthday present you actually deserve, and then we can smoke a joint and deal with my fucked up face and go to sleep.”

the apartment had the distinct feeling of dust after rain, like the storm is over and raphael just had to sit here and wait for the air to settle again. but he knew this wasn’t actually an enduring peace, rather an intermission, a waiting game until the next time raph had to confront an aspect of his relationship he didn’t like to think about. for now, though, he shoved eddie’s anger issues in a corner with all the other things, too anxious to examine it any more than he had to (and maybe in his dreams that night the anger would sit there, a tangible little demon, smoking a cigarette and eating an apple down to its core, smirking at the fact that raph thought it was going away that easily). it was okay, they were okay, if they were happy now there was no need to antagonize over the future.

“i’ll settle for a single cover-to-cover reading, maybe a little socratic seminar afterwards to really hammer in what you learned.” this was how raph dealt with it - the bruises, the split lip, the blood - by making jokes about it until it wasn’t an issue anymore. he wouldn’t be scared of something that he could laugh at the face of. so he went back to how they were, pulling eddie close as raph wrapped a hand in his hair to pull on it gently. he remembered back before they were anything real, when raph would still sometimes lose sleep just thinking about eddie’s mouth, the curve of his smile, the pink of his tongue, how he convinced himself that just to kiss it would be enough. perhaps that was what he had convinced himself of now, too, as he leaned in and met eddie’s lips halfway. “the rest of that sounds very promising. but we stop for ice if anything hurts, okay? and we should find the bed, the countertop probably isn’t the best surface for open wounds.”

“he’s usually a pretty fast learner, but with emotions? not so much.” murphy laughed, a fond smile on his lips as he talked about his best friend, “like, ya know, a fish ridin’ a bike or something, slow-going but… he actually figures it out?” he shrugged, the metaphor got a little lost, but the sentiment was hopefully still there and translatable for raphael. he nodded as raph continued, glad to hear that he and edward were alright- no matter the circumstances, “i mean… sometimes crazy stuff can bring you together.” his smile faded slightly at the mention of robin saying something to raph, he wished the filmmaker could just keep eddie’s name out of his mouth sometimes, like, damn, “robin’s just pissed off that he lost the fight,” murphy tried to reassure the other, “you know him, he just talks and talks and hope that it makes sense.” of course, it never really did to murphy, but he was sure raph could understand some of the stuff robin spewed. raph was one of the smartest people he knew, “i get that ed and robin are, like, opposites- like scrooge mcduck and goofy’s son max’s friend, bobby- but you and ed are really great together. sophia wouldn’t’ve set you up if she didn’t think so and you know frankie wouldn’t let it go if she didn’t think you two made a good couple… you two makin’ it work made me hopeful after me and soph’s breakup. just that, ya know, stuff can be overcome and all that.” he shrugged again, “stop me if literally none of this is helpful.” 

as raph moved the conversation his relationship (?) instead, he ducked his head slightly, yet another shrug rolling off of his shoulders, “i mean… i don’t know what to say? i just- i’m in love with her still. that’s really it.” it was easier to just be honest. plus, he’d told eddie about his ever-present feelings awhile ago, he assumed raphael probably knew already, “still don’t know what we are, but i like being with her.” he could get all sappy and muse on and on about how it made him feel even just being in the same room as soph, but he’d spare raph that tooth-rotting fluff and save that for his poetry notebook. 

raph wasn’t far behind murphy with his own laughter, once again beyond amused at the way murph’s mind managed to conjure up sentences. “what the fuck do you mean, slow-going? when have you ever seen a fish go ‘you know, glub, this bike riding stuff is tough, glub glub, but once you get a grasp of the aerodynamics it’s really not that bad’. the best i can give you is like, a dog or a raccoon on a bike, but that is still a stretch.” but with that being said, raph knew there was a lot of truth to what murphy was putting down. he and eddie did work - better, in fact, than raph would have ever expected when they first started seeing each other - and as of the status quo there was no reason for that not to continue.

the only issue was - “i don’t think robin was totally wrong, though.” he said it quietly, without any real vigor, so unlike raph’s usual dialect. he hadn’t planned on hampering on the robin stuff, not wanting to give yet another person a reason to knock him out, but with murph here and ready to chat raph couldn’t deny that he needed to talk it through with someone. “when he said that he didn’t get it, you know, why me and eddie were together, it didn’t even sound like it was coming from a place of malice towards eddie. if anything it was with malice towards me, like i was this cruel thing for going out with eddie to fuel some savior complex i have. and it just, you know, it made me think. and i didn’t like where my mind went. like everything i’ve been through with eddie in the last year has been out of my own self-interest.” he felt a lump grow in his throat and, though he willed them away, a few tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. “god dammit, sorry, i hate crying in front of people,” he said as he wiped them away with the back of his hand. “i mean, i think it’s important to cry, especially for men and our history of emotional suppression, but it’s just so awkward to do it while others watch, like when people are singing happy birthday and you just sit there with nothing to do. jesus.” he sniffled a bit, trying to stop any more tears from flowing, but a few more still made their through. “sorry, i was going to brush off all the eddie stuff and give you some really stellar sophia advice, but i’m just a smidge distracted. give it a hot minute, i’ll be back to love guru status in no time.”