#1. question

he hasn’t yet left, so uri stares through his window to stain the image of kenny’s truck in the driveway into his vision. 

a fly settles on the window frame, too, & refuses to stir – even if uri taps the glass.

uri is accustomed to the shape of kenny’s truck in the driveway. he does a good job of remembering the stains & streaks that color its body. nowadays, the truck is collecting rust despite the amount of care kenny gives it on late evenings with gentle cloth & a beer nearby. the truck has been on the brink of breaking down a million times, & it certainly will never die. 

kenny loves his truck for its tenacity. historically, he has loved things that have lasted longer than they should have – on uri’s more cynical days, it makes him wonder where, exactly, that puts him. 

the threat of an end strangles the pair of them, anyway – but it leaves uri overconfident. kenny is about to leave him, but uri is too much of a scar to stay gone. he believes in fate, & he knows that kenny does too. for this, uri holds himself responsible – he taps a funeral march against his knees & drums his fingers one by one against his flesh. 

though he’s firm in his touch, he’s never been the type of person to leave a bruise. it makes him feel like floating, knowing he’s so harmless. 

harmlessness is a hard thing to confine. he knows too much about one life, & he’s made it bleed into this life  – he’s been called volatile for it, but that has never been terrible. so he drums his fingers harder. though one life is since passed, the residue of it must be like some of poison spilled into water — once uri had been a king. kenny had been loyal to him, & then he had seen that turned against him. 

uri knows what kenny had seen. he saw it, in another life. most of the time, nowadays, they refrain from saying it outright. 

uri stares at the truck in the driveway. he wills it into another week’s existence. kenny’s truck will always have a home with him. even if they have only known each other for a few years in this life, he is cemented into everything — uri can smell him on the fucking couch cushions, so there’s nothing but this.

to block out the searing daylight from the driveway, uri closes his eyes. he imagines himself as water, & he sees black & blue where he used to see sand & stars. it makes him nostalgic in a dangerous way. volatile.

in a past life, sand & stars were the staple of his deified state – it’s easy to miss that sweet-tempting rush of nearly being at the edge of everything, the way he was when being in the paths could tempt him to omniscience. 

when uri imagines that life & almost omniscience, he thinks he might have left kenny first. by accident, of course – or on purpose. uri imagines that he must have died, & that he must have been deified. 

kenny will never shake himself of that old grief, & sometimes it means that he tries to cut the ties early. 

but as it stands: he is thirty-eight & terrified of aging. he spends mornings staring at a crack in his bathroom mirror & then pushing his fingers alongside the lines at his cheeks, trying to decide if they’re real or if he was just meant to be afraid. the way that he is, he’s not too confident that he isn’t making things up. 

kenny slams the door when as he throws his bag in his truck. he’s too comfortable in the home, though it is barely even belongs to uri. it had been gifted to him as a bribe to keep the black sheep away. uri mostly accepts the payment, because he thinks that his separate from his dynasty – & because he hasn’t the attention for logistics & business that his brother does.

there are some days, though, that uri sits in at board meanings – just to be nuisance. 

the front door slams a second time, & it makes uri smile. 

kenny is the type of man that could escape a warzone with a few scratches & the clothes on his back & still make himself a home, even if he weren’t happy in it. he can whittle himself into barebones & call it enough, if need be. if kenny really iteded to leave, he wouldn’t make more than one exit. 

two slammed doors means luxury. 

kenny proves the fact too, when he barrels past uri to the backdoor. he’s compulsive sometimes, about making sure that uri has propane before he leaves.

even if kenny can survive a thunderstorm, he’s scared of mortality - if only because of uri. he tries to equip uri for the worst & for every emergency, as though it could keep them alive together for longer. 

uri gives him this & thinks of it as a gift.

on his warpath outside, kenny bangs his head on a porch light hung too-low, the way he does every time he goes out back. uri listens to him swear, & the familiarity is reason enough for him to step in front of the back door for when kenny comes in – satisfied that he’s equipped uri well enough until his return.

he stops when he sees uri & ducks his head, boyish in the way he usually is with uri. kenny taps his boots against the rug at the door & tries to be civilized – he always thinks too highly of uri that way. 

in another life - one without titles or expectations - i would have chosen you, kenny says [ sent by @mindsafe ] as though he could make it a farewell.

uri reaches out to pinch kenny’s shirtsleeve between his thumb & forefinger. he hears the farewell truly, & he understands it as the first time or the sixteenth time or the thirtieth time that kenny will choose him. 

kenny is leaving him. he will come back, & they will have the same fights back again. 

but in the end - they are fated, & there is no use wasting fated time. 

he comes from neighborhood songs where everyone knew everyone’s neighbor, where everyone knew what day the cabbage in the market would start to get soft, where everyone looked the other way. he comes from pocketknives used like a greeting & streetgames with the blaring afternoon sun promising that one day he’d be immune to heat.

some days, he thinks he does pretty well with heat. most days of the week, he wears the same three-piece. he likes his suit. he doesn’t mind that it’s starting to be threadworn, that he’s darned a patch at the knees three times, & that he always looks much the same. 

when he first purchased the suit, it felt like a declaration: here is my best self. the declaration made him efficient & guaranteed that he would hold himself accountable for everything he has set himself out to do. 

he wants to be a doctor, & he will. here is his best self.

it’s only recently that the suit has felt like more than that. he’s been accustomed to people who wear power that’s too big for thesm – & he associates that often with politicians. they’re the ones that are prone to speaking like a circus, & now he’s been made a part of that. even if he had made his approach to politics like a layman & posed in front of cameras with crude layman’s speak – he had won a position. his prize is responsibility & civic duty, sort of. every day since feels a little more like he’s sitting in a costume shop, trying to dress himself a little bit more like a man of importance. 

it makes him his suit feel a little like a monkey suit for the first time. his tie feels too tight at his neck, & leorio scrapes at it — 

the noose never feels loosened. 

mostly, the noose feels even tighter as soon as leorio recognizes kurapika in the same space. they look like they’re in a monkey suit, too, but they wear it more smoothly. 

they present themselves as a professional. 

it’s only natural that leorio dresses himself up in indignation & make himself a professional too – though his act only makes him feel in the costume shop all over again. he’s too big for his britches & slighted & seeing grief like a shadow at every corner, but at least he’s here.

in the past few weeks, he & kurapika have made small talk, & it mostly just leaves canyons. most of it has amounted to the addition of a whole lot of shit, & kurapika finally asserts: ‘ i’m not sure what it is that you want from me ‘ as though that were the finishing blow. [ sent by @incertion : i'm not sure what it is that you want from me ]

it may as well be. leorio can’t help but be offended by it. 

leorio leans back in his seat at a lonely conference room table. his suit scrunches at his sides, & he recognizes too much of kurapika – & still thinks he might be looking at a stranger. 

‘ what do you want me to say? ‘ he demands & blusters enough that he he has to pause to push his glasses up the rim of his nose. 

he wants for kurapika to say sorry, wants for him to regret his absence, wants kurapika to have been a monumental moment in his life.

‘ i want you to care for the living, too. that’s all. & be okay with it. because you know, it’s an okay thing to do. ‘ 

farlan likes the idea of simple things, picturesque. he’s never been one for white-picket fences or anything like that, but he has always liked the idea of outdoor spaces – an herb garden that he’d never manage to keep alive, a guaranteed parking space, a short commute in the morning. 

just like that, farlan has always wanted to set up a home at the center of the world where he can experience just a little of everything, where he can try to taste it too. 

maybe he’ll get there one day. as it stands, his commute is short – but it’s because he’s living in a city basement unit with slivers of daylight that come through a barred window. 

it makes him feel a bit like a rat, if he were honest – but there are worse things to be than something that is enduring. 

but besides that, he likes what he has – it’s a different kind of picturesque to be able to ride the subway at the same time of day & wonder if he might be able to recognize any of the faces cemented into the same schedule as he. 

usually, they are strangers to him anyway – but he salutes the ones that he does recognize, & they pretend that he doesn’t exist. even so, they all know one another, in some way, without ever having spoken. 

isabel also makes life a bit picturesque, too. 

she’s always grabbing pieces of the outside world like that & then dragging it into the home front. sometimes, isabel presents the homefront through a barrage of texted messages. 

she has days where her phone goes broke, & she’s silent – & then days where delights in discovering too many recipes, jokes, & videos that she sends in rapid succession to farlan’s own phone & to levi’s too. levi gives a diplomatic ‘thumbs up’ to her messages.  he’s always been soft with her.

sometimes, isabel points out the world by collected trinkets & decorations that she brings back to the basement unit. if farlan is a rat, then she is something sweeter - though she still burrows, still makes her lair. otherwise, there wouldn’t be papermached flowers in the window or a crocheted blanket on the couch, likely stolen & riddled with holes. there’s something picturesque in this. 

levi fits into it like a sore thumb, mostly. as far as farlan can tell, he’s never wanted something shinier or better or bigger – & he doesn’t make a habit of dragging the outside world in. 

in the kitchen together, farlan presses himself against levi’s back & slides his fingers into the fronts of his pockets as they stand together in the kitchen – in those moments, farlan thinks that even as a sore thumb, levi could probably settle here forever. he’s picturesque, too, even if he is not properly a rat. 

farlan is not so sweet to let it stay, so he presses his fingers to levi’s cheek to provoke him. levi doesn’t take the bait – doesn’t bite. he looks at farlan, deadpan & fond – goddamn. that was smooth. [ sent by @charlatansaints : goddamn. that was smooth ]

farlan snorts. if levi really had wanted to sell the show, he should have thrown a wolf whistle in there – he’s sure that levi can whistle, probably.

still, farlan throws his hands up in mock surrender & backs up enough that he can situate himself on the kitchen to watch levi, who really does fit in well to everything. he cuts celery & carrot, & he keeps his fingers clean.

farlan does a pretty good job of keeping his fingers clean too. it’s probably one of the reasons that levi likes him, farlan thinks – because he knows that levi likes him well, even if farlan chastises him for being too soft with isabel. 

in fairness, levi chastises him too. he struggles sometimes to find the right words to tell farlan off because a part of him wants to call farlan a cynic - but levi’s a cynic too, just wanting for something better for farlan & for isabel. 

it makes levi difficult company sometimes. farlan smiles at him anyway & freezes him in time here before shrugging. ‘ look, i get it. this place is yours as much as it is mine & isabel’s – but you do split your time. between here & between your mom’s place. so i don’t know . . . it’s not the end of the world to lose the place. we’re not grandfathered in, & we knew they were going to sell the building eventually – ‘ 

the letter from the morning was fated, probably, because a rat’s nest always gets upset at some point & turns its inhabitants into a hive. 

the building’s sale is a point of anger, & the landlord had always been sour company because he decorated himself in pride turn rancid. but just because he’s angry doesn’t mean that he’ll agree to be sad. so he swings his feet & kicks at the kitchen cupboards & counts the moments where he can.

the problem with the type of picturesque that comes with white-picket fences & sweetly spiced spaces is that they’re too permanent, too fixed. they’re nice to dream about, but this type of picturesque that can be packed up & resettled – it’s a dream harder to kill. 

with armin, familiarity comes through sideways touches – moments where eren leans heavy against armin’s side to see if he might be able to make armin crumble. it comes with elbows to the side to make sure armin’s awake, pinches to the cheek when he thinks armin is starting to spiral.

armin always used to make a home in his chest for catastrophes. even if the catastrophes never came to fruition, armin always readied himself with a prediction of everything that could go wrong, every moment that he could be less, every crack in the status quo. 

predicting catastrophes made him a terrible soldier, at the start. it made him freeze once in combat, & eren had almost died because of it with no body left behind. armin will remember that forever, he thinks - eren’s face had been painted with blood, & his eyes were not afraid enough.

but he can’t remember more from that day – if he could hear other soldiers’ shouts or the smell of blood. that battle was only the first of many, & after a while, everything would always sound like shouting, would always smell metallic. 

catastrophizing no longer had its use. 

then, after shiganshina, everything smelled like smoke. armin had been charred, & then he had been chosen for life. 

in the aftermath, eren is still familiar – but his familiarity changes shape until it’s scratched along the edges, frantic & rough with worry. there were a couple of weeks that eren hovered somewhere beside armin like a second shadow’s personal guard – then, in the weeks that followed, familiarity came with shoving at his chest in jest just so that he can almost feel armin’s heartbeat. 

when eren had almost died that first time, he should have been more scared – & now, he’s scared. armin understands because eren is always prone to chasing himself into the offense when he’s scared.

armin understands because he is scared, too. he hadn’t been scared when he almost died – when he managed a victory over the colossal, when everything went hot, when it hurt to take a breath.

he had been scared when he had survived, not quite a martyr & with a thrum of new life at the nape of his neck. it’s the heart of a colossal god – but it’s also the remains of a boy that never quite let himself be known. bertholdt hoover is somewhere not-quite-dead, bound against armin’s soul.

neither he nor eren want to address the fact outright, or the price that armin had been willing to pay before he stole his inheritance. 

in the midst of things unsaid & rough familiarities, armin thinks sometimes that eren is looking at him for the first time & seeing the sweet deceptions of which he’s capable. 

in fairness, armin feels like he’s looking at himself for the first time too. he’s been standing uncertain in his skin recently – pinching at himself to see his own sustenance. if he is truly someone of value, then he should be able to carry himself tall. 

so he rolls his shoulders back when he looks at himself in the mirror – his shoulders have been aching & all of him has been aching. as though he had been wrung out to dry, & as though he will never be wholly himself again.

this is a fact.

if he can make himself stand broader & taller, then maybe there’s some leadership in him - maybe he’s colossal.

of course, he is colossal, regardless. & he can’t tell eren trusts him more after the bloodshed at shiganshina or if he trusts him less. even if they are familiar, even if there is nothing but their familiarity. 

armin is healed now, & he’s no longer catastrophizing – he promises himself that much, & then he cuts his hair to make himself into a new man. armin had always been hesitant to change it – because it would be nice if some things stayed the same.

even so, eren had nodded his approval as soon as he saw the change, & he had said something along the lines of ‘much better - ‘ as though he hadn’t been guilty of endorsing the style of hair for years. armin had smacked him upside the head for that & then distracted himself tugging at strand of hair at the back of eren’s neck.

eren’s hair has started to get longer, too. change builds on change. 

absently, armin offers to cut it – a familiar thing that still places eren at the center of the world. the closeness of it must shock eren into motion, because he knocks armin’s hand aside & steps back enough that armin can see his eyes - green & properly afraid.

something lurches heavy at the pit of armin’s stomach. he & eren have been on a tightrope truce of things unsaid. of course it would snap. 

for everything great that eren is, he has never been good at upholding the peace. 

so eren asks him now, so casually:  it seems like i am always freaking you out. & it’s not what armin expected. he bites his tongue & doesn’t catastrophize.  [ sent by @charlatansaints : it seems like i am always freaking you out. ]

‘ you don’t look at me the same as you did before, ‘ armin manages to say, fumbling into an answer. 

he’s never been sharp-tongued or smooth-tongued, but he’s always been good at getting people to believe him – & he believes what he’s saying, too.

sometimes, they can see it, too – the visioned versions of themselves standing too tall. 

there was a world once,  where zeke had made himself into a god & made others into ants. there was a world, too, where erwin had climbed mountains only meant for the damned.

that world is not this one. 

here they study each other, settling into their mid-thirties without crows feet wrinkling their eyes. 

erwin had never been good at smiling naturally, even as a child – & zeke has never spoken enough of himself for erwin to be able to speak on his behalf. 

it makes the pair of them cold & reptilian. erwin drinks his coffee black. zeke stirs in a packet of sweetener, though he says that he doesn’t care for artificial things. 

they roll their shoulders again & bluster more with polite laughter & then fade into nothing. 

the two of them . . . they don’t talk to one another like people. they speak like politicians, & they want to enjoy the process more than they do. 

& then time twists into its natural turn. 

though they look at each other as though they had once been to war, they are still modern men with hair that strays from its style by the end of the day. they spend too many hours trying to wheedle teenagers into topical interests – & then pretending not to notice when the youth subsequently fell asleep in class or else balanced their phones on the cushion of their thighs beneath vandalized desks. 

so sometimes, there is commiseration at the end of the day when they leave the school parking lots with papers to-be-graded tucked into their shoulder bags. their eyes narrow at each other, & they nod at one another – saving debate for a time when they aren’t quite so dishevelled. 

they work like this for years, & each sequential semester comes like an accident. 

it comes like resignation that works like a finger trap, when they’re eventually forced to shake hands under the shared agreement to co-sponsor the debate team. erwin had previously sponsored the team with an english teacher eager for retirement – &  she has made her departure to the south, leaving zeke in her stead.

they still look at each other coldly or else too warmly.

they shake hands & never promise to trust one another.

still, shared work breeds familiarity. 

erwin comes closer to being able to list zeke’s behaviors, being able to predict the inconsequential ways in which zeke will try to fill conversational spaces without saying anything of himself. he starts to anticipate the way the ways the way that zeke will reuse teabags, will slip into german just to show off, will leave his glasses smudged & scandalous until the last given moment.

none of this knowledge is particularly personal.

they become personal anyway. 

first, it happens through a shared cigarette after hours. then, it escalates to a shared meal to discuss shared duties.

then it escalates more, because they refuse to talk to one another like people. they refuse to be friends in full, & they refuse to be enemies. 

the only remaining option is that they remain close.

so they do, & they look for evidence against one another all the while. 

erwin remembers pacing once in zeke’s apartment with his hands clasped behind his back, pursuing for signals of life. there had been no family photos on open display – though zeke had mentioned his mother a few times before.

so erwin had been intrusive. as though the question, he asked ‘ are you close with your family, at all? ‘

then they carried on & kept becoming personal. 

proximity interrupts itself & crosses no man’s land until the pair of them grow familiar with the weight of the other’s legs in their lap, as they work together in the evening & pretend to be relaxed. 

without invitation & without permission, zeke has since learned much of erwin – he knows that erwin hums when zeke squeezes his calf in his lap, knows that erwin smiles when he’s about to disagree, knows that erwin checks his email when watching television & resents it. 

zeke has learned that erwin is prone to headaches sometimes, & that he’s prone to ignoring them. it amuses zeke enough that the sound trickles into his voice when he asks erwin now : shall i lie with you for a while?  [ sent by @warche1f : shall i lie with you for a while? ]

it’s a fair question, because they’ve laid together before. erwin’s arm had fallen across zeke’s chest like the bracket of an accusation, & it had been alien enough that they had chosen to lay together again.

for now, erwin pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers. everything feels like the brink of battle, & it makes him want to laugh. 

‘ feel free, ‘ he says with an armed invitation. he waves a hand to the space beside him & his pile of paper on the bed. he pretends that he had kicked off his shoes before ever laying flat. but his head does ache, & so he has been put on display.

he hums to dispel the ways he has been exposed and hums a joke he thinks zeke will agree with. ‘ you might make my head ache worse, ‘ he concedes. 

a joke is only well-made if its audience does not feel as though it were made at their expense. 

erwin has acquainted himself with charisma, so he cushions it all & makes for confusing warfare. ‘ still, you do make it restful. ‘ 

it could be a lie. 

but they’ve never spoken to one another like people do. they don’t quite see one another as people do. 

& it is a simple thing, because they do not see themselves as people do either.

when children run during training, their steps barely leave a trace. they churn no dust. their efforts are fruitless.

tom often forgets the training program. it does not come to him even as an intrusive thought. 

he is forced to remember the program sometimes when the workday commutes bring him past the training field. then, potential is pointed out to him with the droning accompaniment of recited statistics. tom hums appropriately & turns himself into ksaver & pretends to listen. 

the candidates recommended to him might are factory produced, factory churned, & not desperate enough. 

of course, there are runts of the pack, too. nothing is guaranteed to them. 

ksaver watches a boy smaller than the rest struggle to finish his drill. he might be desperate enough. 

children probably should be spared this sort of thing – the pedestal, the inheritance. 

but it is too late for them.

tom scratches at his jaw, needing a fresh shave. 

he likes children, though he understands very little of childhood. liberio has changed drastically, even in the past twenty years. it has become worse, it has become better.

in that time, tom pretended to be someone he wasn’t & stepped onto a pedestal. 

it turned out that there wasn’t much difference between the versions of himself from before & after – but he did start to become accustomed to war, to bloodshed, to becoming the battering ram for a nation.

someone will have to follow him – someone who also thinks that others should be spared the whole ordeal. 

even so, tom often forgets the training program.

he remembers the desperate, though – he remembers it well enough to consider himself kind when he plays ball with a lonely boy in the alleyway. he considers himself kind later, too, when he tells the boy that he will have to save himself. 

the boy is orphaned when his parents are consequently damned to paradis. the boy is deemed loyal & naive.

poor thing. 

then the boy trusts him. tom remembers his own son’s muddied blood – marleyan & eldian mixed together. 

the boy trusts him too much.

he is not factory made, because his desperation makes him too eager. it makes him pitiful sometimes, a nuisance too. 

tom tells him things that he believes, & the boy agrees.

so it comes to the point: tom ksaver names zeke jaeger his successor.

the government gives its heavy nod of allowance, & it is announced to the public. 

there is a celebration feast afterwards – decorated with the flash of a newspaper’s camera & perfumed with hor d’eurves. 

ksaver keeps his hand at zeke’s shoulder. it’s an absentminded gesture,  an easy one to make.

they’re granted ten minutes of quiet as the business of a party lulls. zeke looks up at him & has some kind of sauce at the corner of his mouth.

tom gestures to it, & zeke misses the point. instead, not for the first time, he confides in tom.  i want a bigger life, he says. [ sent by @warche1f : i want a bigger life. ] his honesty & hope is a little repulsive. 

tom blinks. a wave of grief comes over him, & he feels sorry for the boy. 

he doesn’t feel sorry enough.

even so, he uses a napkin to scrub at the side of the boy’s mouth. 

‘ no, you don’t, ‘ he tells him. his voice is a little too gruff. he likes children, though he understands very little of childhood.

in the aftermath, he has to clean his eyeglasses.