#failedcrown01.

for added dramatic effect, butcher gives @failedcrown an extended once-over before opening the door to his apartment fully, a silent invitation inside. when he kicks the door closed, he fingers at the hospital bracelet he hasn't had the time to cut off his wrist and, for a moment, wonders if she can smell it on him--the tumor, the death.

either way, it doesn't make much difference. though it seems as though both of them may be headed toward the same whimper of an end rather than the bang he'd long believed he was destined for, all things considered.

if he were to allow himself a moment to introspect on whatever it is he's feeling--now and at any given moment--he thinks he'd be relieved to see her.

" - don't."

annie's pouring two heaping glasses of the fruitiest and shittiest white wine she could find at the closest bodega. the type of stuff that'd earned a raised brow from ashley. even before its alterations--courtesy of fucking homelander--the starlight uniform had felt like an ill-fitting costume, since her first night with the seven and even before then, maybe. she's glad to be out of it now, especially, dressed in a hoodie and jeans and worn vans.

her feet make soft padding noises across the carpeted floor of her suite--her floor, really, considering her suite at vought tower consists of the entire sixty-third floor--to the sofa where maeve sits. she sits beside her, arm brushing against her own.

she offers maeve one of the glasses.

it doesn’t fit. 

but it’s important to her. and it’s important to do things that are important for the people that are important. and, apparently, what’s important to maeve is showing him the bumfuck potato farms she was raised around and the hicks who work on them.

he likes to think he’s a new yorker ---- it’s ironic, the homelander has no homeland, no hometown, but it’s fun because he gets to decide whatever he wants to be true and then it is, because no one can question him. 

those city roots run deep. he’s not used to this, the quiet and peace. the farm maeve had chosen for them to stop for coffee smells like sweet hay, and no one recognizes them. it makes his stomach turn.