#arellanocest

gwen when finn gets stood up:

first of all, it probably would take a little bit of snooping for her to even know finn had a date, to say nothing of getting stood up. because i don't think finn would take the one-two punch of being rejected and effectively made an idiot of for trusting someone (especially after the basement. the fact that someone got him to take a chance on them at all after that is lowkey an act of god. fumbling the bag doesn't even begin to describe the level of fuckup this is)

but also. he's back way too early for it to have gone well. even if he wandered off somewhere to go sit for a bit to avoid exactly that kind of suspicion.

she's waiting up for him when he comes in the door. he comes in, headphones on, music up so loud she can hear the tinny reverb of it in his ears, and heads straight to his room. his eyes are red, but he isn't moving the way he does when he's stoned.

she's in the doorway before she can even blink, and he's on his bed, arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

"what happened?"

he takes off one headphone, studies her. "what."

"i asked what happened."

he puts his head back down. "fuck off"

"fat chance, you troublesome fucking asswad," she says, clambering onto the bed to lay in the barely-a-foot-wide space along finn's ribs. "now what the fuck happened."

and i still don't think he'd tell her right away, but she'd lean her head on him, in the space between his chest and his shoulder where her head fits best, where she can listen to his heart to fill the silence. and so she can hear it when he says, so quietly it's all but a whisper: "they weren't there. they were fucking with me."

and normally this is where she'd get mad. call them every name under the sun (and more, she's gotten really inventive lately), threaten comical amounts of violence on them. but she knows that isn't what he needs, or likes to think she does. so she just puts an arm over her stomach, like the touch will soothe the humiliation sitting like poison in his belly, and they lay like that until he turns onto his side and pulls her in. to keep her from falling off the bed, of course. not because he can only breathe easy enough to fall asleep once she's fully in his arms.

finn when gwen gets stood up:

oh, he is out for fucking blood.

from the minute she comes home, still in tears, angrily scrubbing off the little bit of makeup she has on (she fucking practiced for this asshole, he's gonna kill him), going on about how she hates him and all the uncomfortable dermatological disasters she's wishing on him, finn is already fantasizing about how the guy's jaw is gonna feel when he dislocates it.

but then he heads into the bathroom after her, where she's splashing water on her face, and she turns when she hears him and buries her face into the front of his shirt, still wet with tears and smelling like the soap she used to scrub the last bit of mascara off her lashes, and he can't think over the pain scraping the inside of his ribs. it seizes him up every time, seeing her cry, and his well thought-out plan of how to butcher her probably-ex-crush retreats into its basement cavern for now.

"god, i'm such a fucking idiot," she moans, muffled in his chest.

"no, you're not," he says, his brows scrunched in awkward sincerity.

and she cries harder, because that means a lot coming from him, and finn hugs her harder, tells her it's going to be okay. and he pulls her into his room to help her take off her dress (he's mad again for a minute because she wore a fucking dress for you, dick, you were special, she never does this for me anyone), and he doesn't let her stay stripped bare for long, he gives her one of his shirts that goes down past her knees. surrounding her, protecting her. because she's there, he can protect her, and he owes her that, owes her his life, even if he tries to act like he isn't wholly devoted to her.

they end up on the couch together, her curled up nearly in his lap, him holding her like he's trying to gather her all up in one arm. whatever is on television is irrelevant, he's tracking time by the tears that dew her lashes and fall sporadically, until she falls asleep and he carries her to bed, falling asleep at the end of it like an old dog keeping watch.

(he does, by the way, end up cracking that kid's orbital bone with the ease of one cracking a soda can open. because finn is finn and violence is how he was taught to show love in every stage of his life.)

ernesto when robin gets stood up

robin's anger and misery exhales from him like an atmosphere ernesto feels coming all the way up the street. he comes into the house with a purposeful stride, stops only to take his shoes off at the door with a particularly tense curse under his breath when he struggles at it. ernesto is on his feet in one breath and quietly following behind his brother's seething form, through the kitchen to the door of their bedroom, where he shoves the strap of his bag off over his head (he only carries that bag on capital-o outings), flops facedown onto the bed so hard the mattress bounces him in protest.

he's barely settled when his shoulders start to shake.

ernesto feels his chest tighten and tears prick at his own eyes, as he quietly lifts his brother's bag from where it was discarded, to put it somewhere safer. that's when he notices the corner of a thin piece of red cardstock poking out. he glances back at the bed, where robin is showing no signs of moving, and then tugs on the card to see it better. he frowns, his throat straining painfully when he sees the scooby-doo valentine taped to a box of conversation hearts.

and suddenly he remembers robin anxiously checking his bag before he left the house that morning.

he sits on the edge of the bed, puts a hand on his brother's back. it feels like his heart is ripping up the middle when he feels the miniature earthquakes of sobs vibrating his brother's ribs, and if it feels this bad for him, he can't imagine how bad it must feel for robin.

"should i go get mom?" he asks softly. robin shakes his head.

his voice is thick with tears, even after a few pauses to steady it. "it's bullshit," he sniffles. "it's fucking bullshit."

ernesto hums in agreement, lets his hand follow the contours of robin's back from shoulder to hip, sometimes rubbing, sometimes running the backs of his fingers in aimless patterns, until robin isn't crying anymore and is lying so still that anyone who didn't know him like ernesto did would assume he'd fallen asleep. it takes awhile, but eventually, his hand appears from somewhere under him to capture ernesto's fingers on one of his next passes over his shoulder and intertwine them with his.

he doesn't say it. and he doesn't have to. ernesto lays down with him, cheek pressed into his brother's shoulder blade, eyes wandering the shape of that bag and the little point of red he can still see poking through the opening, until the light fades from the window and they're called for dinner.

finn blake, who had the misfortune of coming down with a torturous case of strep throat the evening before, is gonna be walking in on one hell of a landmine that following monday.

robin when ernesto gets stood up

ernesto has been...off most of the evening. and it's bugging the hell out of robin.

he's barely eaten, which robin isn't the only one who noticed that, but he knows he's the only one who notices the way he breath catches and gets deliberately even when someone mentions a certain name. and how quickly he gets up from the table, does his own dishes, and practically melts into the shadows that lead to their bedroom door.

robin crouches down by the bed to be on level with the small heap under the covers. when he pulls the fabric up, ernesto's nose is already red and his eyes are glossy, lips trembling with the effort of holding it all in, and he won't look at him.

"hey," he says, gently. "nesto. what's all this about?"

he's quiet, but he's about to crack any minute. robin can tell, because he sees the minute tug at the corner of his little brother's mouth, sees the way he's folding in around his middle as if to protect everything that's soft and vulnerable.

c'mon, buddy. tell me where it hurts.

he's about to nudge again when ernesto finally, finally, takes a shaky little breath. "...i--" he shakes his head, covers his face with the sleeve of his sweater and starts to cry.

robin is quick to get up on the bed, pulling ernesto into his lap. it should be more awkward, he thinks, they're the same height, but it comes so easily, the way ernesto lays his head on his shoulder, warm droplets hitting his shirt and soaking in. "...i thought--...finn...he...i didn't...i just sat there. and then the movie was over and he still--wasn't there, so--!" he gave up on words with a sharp, hiccupping sob, and robin was so overcome with the ache it put in him that he put considering whether he was really gonna kick his best friend's ass firmly on hold.

"shhh..." he rocks, slowly, ernesto rocking with him by virtue of leaning all his weight on him, smoothing ernesto's hair back out of his face. "i'm so sorry, dude. it's okay. you can cry. just remember to breathe, okay?" he felt ernesto nod against his shoulder, and try a couple times to breathe in before succeeding.

they stayed like that for a long time, and it did feel like it was helping, as ernesto slowly went boneless in his arms, quiet and exhausted. but there was still this itch under robin's skin, something so innate and engrained in him that it couldn't have possibly been his need to pick a fight with finn in the moment, it blared intensely, rhythmically in his chest like a second heartbeat: make it better, make it better, make him better. and briefly he considered the idea of tipping ernesto's head back, pressing their lips together softly until some of the warmth of his skin soothed the new bruises on his brother's insides. but he blinked, and it was gone, leaving a dizzying sense that he'd somehow done something wrong.

BUT to take it a step further, the song that is like. really blurring the lines between platonic and romantic for these two, going into full blown can't-take-it-back feelings for each other is cherry waves - deftones. it's also a really good song for retroactive arellanocest that's ernesto looking back on his relationship with his brother and collapsing internally because he recognizes some things they did and felt for each other were almost certifiably not fuckin normal, but he misses all of it--all of it--so bad it threatens to pull him below ground to curl up in his brother's bones.