#declan chives

Declán &/ Zoë in RENT

yells at the other for leaving wet towels on the bed: Declán gets a little snippy about it, if never really to the point of outright yelling.  He likes to be quiet with her, and she prefers the genuineness of him moderating his voice as a sign of affection. 

whines when the other forgets what they wanted after going grocery shopping: Zoë likes to sigh about it, although she’s also pretty deeply entrenched in their budget so she’s never really surprised by how Declán chooses to edit their shopping on the fly. She does the exact same thing when she’s the one shopping, after all.

leaves five half drank bottles of water in their room:  Neither of them. How dare you. 

initiates a quickie while at somewhere they shouldn’t: Declán is more likely to initiate ‘now is the time when I cling around you like a human blanket’ and Zoë is more likely to initiate ‘let me kiss every inch of your face very very carefully for the next five minutes.’ Anything beyond that is either spontaneously mutual or doesn’t happen.

surprises the other with their favorite fast food for dinner:  Zoë, because she’s more likely to take a wandering route home to clear her head and decide on a whim that they really need to just have takeaway tonight so they can just sit after dinner instead of washing dishes.

is massively hungover after celebrating their anniversary:  Neither of them.  When they’re doing things for themselves, they never drink heavily enough to actually get hungover.

argues for double stuffed Oreos over regular:  Zoë, although it’s always less of an argument and her definitively saying ‘this is what we’re getting.’ It’s one of the first purely selfish luxuries she allows herself after they decide to leave.

buys $200 worth of baby things after finding out they’re expecting:  Neither of them, although Zoë absolutely has the less utilitarian tastes between them. (Also I’m sorry the idea of them expecting a baby together might actually kill me completely.)

insists that they each get their own popcorn at the cinema: Declán, because that way they can divide up paying properly. They pay for their own tickets and they pay for their own popcorn and they don’t owe each other anything in the goddamn world.

Darren/Isobel in H/V

yells at the other for leaving wet towels on the bed:  Isobel. Honestly, Darren. Honestly. Just why. It’s so unnecessary. It’s so within the bounds of being a normal grown-up person who can take care of himself.

whines when the other forgets what they wanted after going grocery shopping: Darren. He feels very strongly that he deserves Poptarts sometimes, and that ice cream doesn’t need to be fat-free organic yoghurt-based things.

leaves five half drank bottles of water in their room: Darren, although not so much in their room as in his workshop. He also loses plates and coffee mugs and shirts with some regularity.  Isobel despairs largely because it’s usually on her to get it picked up.

initiates a quickie while at somewhere they shouldn’t: Darren, but only by a slim margin. Isobel is probably 48% of the time to Darren’s 52%. 

surprises the other with their favorite fast food for dinner: Isobel.  She knows Darren has a soft spot for the sort of fast food Julien used to let them have when he and Eileen were little, and that he’s mostly in situations these days where it’s considered gauche. She arranges it every now and then when they have stay-in dates. (It also means she doesn’t feel guilty about picking the movies and subjecting Darren to rom-coms whenever she’s in the mood for them.)

is massively hungover after celebrating their anniversary: Darren. By a pretty wide margin compared to the quickie thing. He’s not particularly good at moderation, which Isobel understands is a double-edged sword.

argues for double stuffed Oreos over regular: Darren. He likes making quadruple stuffed Oreos. Why must everyone stifle his creative genius. 

buys $200 worth of baby things after finding out they’re expecting:  Both of them. Darren goes for the most technologically amazing stuff; Isobel goes for the classiest stuff. Together they equip the hell out of their nursery. (Assuming Isobel sticks around and tells him, that is.) 

insists that they each get their own popcorn at the cinema: Isobel, because Darren Eicheln is a wonderful man and a pretty spectacular boyfriend but he will eat all the popcorn 10 minutes into the movie and that’s just ridiculous.

1. What is their worst fear?

He absolutely hates himself for it, but his actual worst fear is losing Matthew. He knows that it should be something happening to Margie, but it isn’t. It’s Matthew. It’s Matthew leaving or Matthew dying or Matthew getting taken away from him so that they lose this Whatever it is they have and he’s all alone again.

If he sits and intellectualizes it, Mattie could probably help him intellectualize the fact that he grew up in a very specific microculture where the idea of losing a child before the age of 10 was a considered very normal, whereas the idea of falling in love had always been held out as something almost impossible to obtain. But why would he intellectualize it when he can hate himself for it? 

6. What is something that they really regret?

He regrets being such a disappointment to Iollan at the eleventh hour. His whole life was made up of all these sacrifices and all this tamping stuff down so that he could get to the top of the Staff and make his family proud, and then he takes this abrupt left turn where he does’t get married and pop out his contribution to the next generation of Chives but instead takes up with this Outsider to raise a little girl who doesn’t even really have much birthright to the Xi family. It’s not really that he regrets making Mattie and Margie his life so much as he regrets it had to be such a traumatic decision for his father.

10. How does your OC react when they’re embarrassed?

He just completely shuts down. It takes a lot to get him embarrassed, but every now and then Matthew catches him like. caring. And then he just shuts everything down and goes quiet and stops responding. 

11. Birthday!

Other people occasionally throw birthday parties for him and/or make public acknowledgement of it. Matthew tries to get him into the ‘we will celebrate your birthday because I love you’ mode at home, but it doesn’t actually catch on until Margie is old enough to demand that he has a birthday too just like the rest of their family.