#deep talks

part 9 a/n: deep emo hours hit different when the stars are out and high loosens you up. we’re getting vulnerable, y’all wc: 1.4k cw: soft-drug use

It’s a random Thursday in mid-November when Hollis texts you at 9:47 p.m.:

hollis: roof? got a new cart + parents gone till sunday you: gimme 15

You’re already walking down the hallway before you even finish reading the second text. Hoodie zipped, beanie yanked low, waiting for the elevator doors to open. when you are outside, you quickly grab your bike, and then you’re gone, pedaling so hard your thighs burn by the time you hit the rich side of town. Wind whips your face raw, streetlights strobing across your vision, playlist blasting in one AirPod.

You bike there so fast your legs hurt.

By the time you roll up to his gate you’re sweaty despite the cold, lungs burning, cheeks wind-burned and stinging. You punch in 0713 with frozen fingers, coast down the driveway, and prop your bike against the garage wall like you’ve done a dozen times now. The spare key is still under the ugly ceramic frog. You let yourself in with the quiet satisfaction of someone who doesn’t have to text “here” anymore.

He’s already upstairs when you push the rooftop door open.

Same setup as always: fire pit glowing low, string lights on the warm-white setting, one blanket thrown over the big sectional, speaker playing some lo-fi playlist he stole from you last week. The city glitters below like it always does, but tonight there’s a bite in the air that makes the heat from the pit feel necessary instead of aesthetic.

Hollis is slouched deep in the corner of the couch, hood up, legs stretched out, spinning a pen between his fingers. He looks up when he hears the door and that lazy half-smile appears automatically.

“Took you long enough, shorty.”

“Traffic,” you lie, kicking the door shut behind you. You’ve smoked with him enough now that your tolerance is respectable; no more rookie cough, no dizzy spins. Just the slow, syrupy calm that settles in your bones the second the cart hits your lungs.

He pats the cushion next to him. You drop down, close enough that your thighs press together under the blanket he immediately pulls over both of you. The routine is comfortable: shoes off, legs tucked up, shoulders touching, cart passed back and forth without ceremony.

First rip is harsh—some sativa-heavy strain that tastes like pine and lemon peel. You blow the cloud toward the sky and watch it disappear into the dark.

“Rough day?” he asks, reading your silence the way only he can now.

You shrug, take another hit. “Just… the usual. Mom picked up another double tomorrow, apartment looks like a bomb went off, Lucki ate an entire sock and then threw it up on my bed. I’m tired of feeling like I’m holding everything together with duct tape and prayers.”

He hums, low, passes the cart back. His fingers brush yours longer than strictly necessary. “You don’t have to hold it together all the time, you know.”

You laugh, but it’s thin. “Easy for you to say. Your house literally cleans itself.”

He snorts, but there’s no real humor in it. “Yeah, and it feels like a museum nobody lives in.” He leans his head back against the cushion, eyes on the stars you can barely see through light pollution. “Maid came today. Whole place smells like lemon polish and fake pine. I walked in and almost started crying because it smelled like nothing. Like, actually nothing. No dog, no food, no you.”

The last part slips out quiet, almost embarrassed. He clears his throat like he didn’t mean to say it that loud.

You go still. The cart burns forgotten between your fingers.

He keeps going, voice softer now, the weed making him honest the way only weed can. “I hate how quiet it is when they’re gone. Like… I’ll put on music and it still feels loud because it’s echoing off all the wrong walls. I keep thinking if I leave one dish in the sink it’ll prove someone actually lives here, you know? But then the maid just washes it and it’s gone again.”

You pass the cart back without hitting it. “I’d kill for quiet sometimes,” you admit. “My place is the opposite: always something breaking, always someone yelling in the hallway, always dishes, always dog hair. I spend half my life trying to make it look like we’ve got our shit together so mom doesn’t come home to chaos on top of being exhausted. But it never stays clean for more than five minutes. Feels like I’m failing at the one thing I’m supposed to be good at.”

He turns his head, eyes glassy but sharp. “You’re not failing. You’re keeping a whole life running on your own. That’s not failing, that’s fucking heroic.”

You swallow hard. The high makes everything feel closer: the heat from the fire pit licking at your cheeks, the weight of the blanket, the press of his shoulder against yours. You can smell the weed on both your clothes now, mixed with cold night air and whatever detergent his maid uses.

“I just… I get scared,” you whisper. “Like if I stop moving, stop cleaning, stop pretending everything’s fine, it’ll all fall apart and I won’t be able to put it back together. Mom’ll burn out, Lucki’ll get taken away because we can’t afford the vet, I’ll turn into this mess of a person who can’t even keep a two-bedroom apartment livable. And I’m so fucking tired of being scared all the time.”

Your voice cracks on the last word. You didn’t mean to dump it all out like that, but the words just keep coming, slow and heavy like smoke.

Hollis is quiet for a long beat. Then he shifts, turns his whole body toward you, one arm sliding along the back of the couch so you’re half-tucked under it.

“Hey.” His voice is rough, gentle. “Look at me.”

You do. His face is close, firelight flickering gold across his cheekbones, eyes soft and a little bloodshot.

“You’re allowed to be tired. You’re allowed to let shit be messy. You don’t have to carry everything by yourself.” He hesitates, then adds, quieter, “You’ve got me now, yeah?”

Something in your chest cracks open, warm and aching. You nod, throat too tight for words.

He keeps going, like the floodgates are open for him too. “I used to think if I just made enough beats, got enough plays, filled the house with people, I wouldn’t notice how empty it is. But it never worked. Brianna was… noise. Parties were noise. None of it stuck. Then you started sitting at my table, stealing my fries, sending me pictures of Lucki snoring at 3 a.m., and suddenly the quiet didn’t feel like drowning anymore.”

He laughs softly, self-conscious. “Sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”

“It doesn’t,” you say quickly. “It’s not stupid.”

You shift closer until your forehead almost touches his shoulder. The blanket has slipped down; he pulls it back up over both of you without looking, tucking it around your sides like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“I like your messy,” he murmurs. “Dog hair on my hoodie, dishes in your sink, your terrible pancakes. Makes me feel like I’m somewhere real.”

You huff a wet laugh. “My pancakes are a hate crime.”

“Exactly. Real.”

Silence settles again, but it’s soft now. Comfortable. You tip your head back against the cushion and stare up at the string lights. He does the same. Your pinkies find each other under the blanket, hook together like they’ve done it a thousand times.

After a while he says, voice sleepy-rough, “You ever think we’re just… two kids trying to make our houses feel less like waiting rooms?”

You smile, small and real. “All the time.”

He squeezes your pinky once. “Then let’s keep making them feel like homes. Together. Messy pancakes and all.”

You stay up there until the cart is cashed and the fire pit auto-shuts off and your fingers are numb from cold except where they’re tangled with his. When you finally go inside, he doesn’t even ask if you’re staying; just leads you to the guest room you’ve crashed in three times already, tosses you one of his hoodies because “you’re swimming in the last one.”

You fall asleep with the rooftop still in your lungs and his voice in your head:

You’ve got me now, yeah?

So, following up on my recent post about Xeno during the 5 years of separation... I know I might catch some hate for this, but I really need to get this off my chest. I’ve hesitated for a very long time to write this post, debating back and forth whether I should even share these thoughts, but I need to do it anyway.

Just to be absolutely clear: even though I am a massive Stan simp, I deeply love Xeno as a character and I adore their dynamic from the bottom of my heart. (Also this has nothing to do with me being biased toward Stan. If the roles were reversed and Xeno was the one left behind like this, I would be saying the exact same thing.) But... honestly? I have to confess that to this day, I still don't fully understand Xeno's motives during that time. That’s actually the whole reason why I wrote "The Knight’s Retribution".

When you compare their actions, the contrast is heartbreaking. Stanley hunted after Xeno for 100 days straight—even though he knew Senku wouldn't physically harm Xeno—and did everything in his power to get him back. Stan literally surrendered his entire existence to Xeno’s cause when he let himself be petrified that second time. So why did Xeno just accept everything so passively after he was revived?

1. Why did he even allow Senku’s people to hide Stan’s statue in the first place? He could have put his foot down. He could have said, "Without Stan, I am not cooperating with your plan," and chose to be petrified again. Why didn’t he use his leverage? Why didn't he tell them: "Stan is my knight, he follows my word explicitly. If I join you, he will too. Therefore, he poses no threat."? Besides, Stan and Xeno weren't the only antagonists Senku's crew had to deal with, and those other guys were certainly no saints either compared to them. So why was Stanley the only one treated like an absolute 'monster' that needed to be locked away?

2. Why did he do absolutely nothing to search for Stan’s statue? How could he be so sure Senku’s crew wouldn't do something to Stan’s statue? As we know, Stan and Xeno weren't the only antagonists Senku had to deal with... And yes, I am fully aware that Xeno didn't know where they hid the statue. But if I were in his shoes, that wouldn’t have stopped me from going on occasional "exploration trips" with the sole purpose of at least locating him.

3. What would Xeno have done if Ryusui hadn't voluntarily stepped down from his spot as an astronaut? No one else from the Kingdom of Science would have willingly suggested reviving Stan. When would Stan have been brought back then? More importantly, would he have ever been revived while Xeno was still alive? What if Xeno had reached old age, or worse, passed away by the time they finally decided to pull Stan out of his stone prison? I know Stan sacrificed himself for Xeno’s ideologies and "dreams". But for someone who literally spent 100 days chasing after his partner (be it a childhood friend or something more), who gave up his entire self-identity for someone else and built his whole existence around them... you'd think Stan would have suffered tremendously if that had happened, right? In my opinion, Xeno gambled incredibly high by just "hoping" or waiting for an opportunity where the Kingdom of Science would finally need Stan's skills.

4. When Stan safely returned from space and landed back on the Perseus—where was Xeno? Senku’s entire inner circle was right there to welcome him and Kohaku back. If I had been in Xeno’s position, I would have wanted to hold my "partner" immediately, just being incredibly relieved that all three of them made it back safe, sound, and healthy to the Stone World.

These are exactly the questions that drove me to write my story, and they still haunt me now. Yes, I know Xeno is a deeply rational man. I know Stan is a "shoot now, ask later" type of guy. But sometimes, I truly get the impression that Stan clings to Xeno much more than the other way around.

Again, I love StanXeno, but in this specific regard, I just cannot comprehend Xeno. This isn't meant to be an attack on his character, I just genuinely can't wrap my head around it. Of course, everyone sees this differently, and I admit I am very emotionally driven—just like Stan. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard for me to understand Xeno's mindset here...

And honestly? It kind of annoys me (and at the same time, it doesn't) that I didn't include this one final question in my fic when Stan and Xeno finally talk: "What would you have done if we had never seen each other again in this lifetime?"

April was something else, post break up. The deep talks with your friends are the ones that heal you the most.

to be understood

not in passing, not halfway, but deeply.

like someone tracing the edges of who you are

and seeing the shape of you clearly.

to be looked at and known,

not for what you show,

but for what you try to hide.

there's something sacred in that.

a kind of love that feels less like being chosen

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