thinking about how eiji's a pole vaulter and how ash talks about eiji "flying" and how eiji's associated with bird imagery and how eiji's free (unlike ash) and how eiji comes in on a plane and leaves on a plane and how ash cannot fly, ash cannot be free, how nyc is ash's prison, and how ash is the leopard who dies climbing the mountain, unable to live at such elevation, how he was trying to reach the sky and be free but was always stuck to the earth, how he chose to die instead of climbing back down, how he chose to die where he could see the sky and hope and freedom almost like a bird with eiji's letter right in front of him rather than letting everything go wrong and ruin it once again, how eiji's a failed pole vaulter anyway, how a bad fall ruined his career and grounded him (physically and emotionally), how it took flying to america and meeting ash and needing to save him and skip for him to try flying again, how he landed hard and harsh and still the thought of that escape compelled ash to protect eiji at all costs because if he could fly that means something to him, even if he doesn't think he can fly, how eiji is the manifestation of his hope and how when he breaks and asks eiji to stay with him a while he folds himself over his legs and weighs him down and traps him and grounds him, how ash fights like hell to keep eiji alive not because he thinks he can be like him (hopeful, flying, innocent), but because he makes him forget the gravity of his situation, and so he can see eiji fly again. how he wants to see him escape. how eiji is a bird and ash is a wildcat and how ash never once saw eiji as prey. how eiji never saw ash as a predator. how it is eiji's naivete that first endears ash to him, how it is his freedom and flight and removal from darkness and his ability to leave that darkness that really roots eiji in ash's blood as something essential to him keeping on living in this hell of nyc. how it is that distance from the violence and that hope for the future that ash chooses to surround himself in as he dies. how ash dies in a dream because he feels more than anything that he can't fly like eiji, that he can never leave. how his violence is a part of him and will be forever, how it weighs him down. how he wants to enjoy the view from the mountainside rather than looking up from the ground below. as if they can both fly. as if he is with him up there and not grounded. eye-to-eye with what he can't have, seeing eiji's homeland: the sky. how he dies trying to reach the top because he couldn't take retreating and trying again. how ash, tired and tired and tired and convinced it will go on forever if he crawls back down the mountain, chooses to close his life deluged in eiji, in eiji's insistence that they can fly together, in eiji's hope for him and for them, in eiji's beautiful dream. how ash dies without trying to realize that dream. how ash, in dying, destroys it.
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The click of the Zippo opening and closing is almost hypnotic, lulling Steve into that familiar satisfaction of just the right noise at just the right frequency as he watches Robin’s wrist flicking the lighter open and closed, her arms stretched above her like she’s trying to touch the ceiling. Steve’s hands are gently swaying next to hers, in the nonexistent breeze of his bedroom.
It’s one of their weird private moments; where they get to have everything being just right that would get them questioning and judgemental glances from everyone else. The tingling sensation in their arms as the blood flows down and away from their hands, leaving them heavy and floaty in a way that never fails to ground them. But there’s also a safety to this moment, a security that they just get to have this without judgment.
Just the flick of the lighter and not a word spoken for over half an hour now.
Sometimes Robin laments, How am I supposed to ever find a girlfriend when this is my version of quality time? This is just weird. I’m weird.
Maybe, but it’s fun, Steve had said once, staring at the veins in his hands while a large water bottle was balancing on his forehead.
She had sighed and snatched the water bottle from his face to plant it on hers, admitting, It is fun.
“Do you ever wonder if there’s like…” Robin interrupts their silence, the Zippo never faltering, Steve’s eyes still fixed on it like all the answers to the questions of the universe lie somewhere in the peeling black foil.
“Hm?”
“Like, a point?”
“A point?” Steve asks, still following the lighter with his eyes, even as Robin stops flicking it open and closed and starts playing with the spark wheel and stone. There’s no flame yet, though, and it looks like she’s just stroking it almost reverently.
“Yeah, like a reason that we’re still, like, doing things.”
Steve frowns, lowering one of his arms to feel the blood flowing back into his hand, the sensation warm and familiar. Like a reminder. There’s blood in your body. You’re alive.
Is there a point, though?
“No,” he says eventually.
“No?”
“No. I don’t think there’s one. We just are. Not like we can stop.”
“Well, we could,” she says, and in one second there’s nothing, just words hanging in the air. The next, there’s a flame coming from the lighter as Robin presses hard and fast enough on the spark wheel. It stays there, the little flame.
We could.
Steve says nothing, just watches the flame as the blood gets drained from his right arm once more.
“Sometimes I wanna burn down your house. And your car, too. I watch you die in there sometimes.”
“Huh?”
“Your car. Sometimes it’s just; there’s these thoughts. Or, like, scenarios, and they’re super duper real in my head, and I have to remind myself they’re not. Just makes me wanna drench it all in gasoline and just… boom.”
“Boom,” Steve says, and it’s not the reaction that he should be giving, not the reaction of a sane person — but then, sane people don’t play with their lighters in bed or listen to their best friend’s arsonist tendencies. Sane people don’t see what Steve Harrington see, they don’t do what he does. What he had to do. When what he should have done was fail some tests, drink some beers and kiss some girls.
Is there a point?
“I promise when I get a new car, I’m gonna burn this one with you, yeah?”
“Deal,” Robin says, and the little flame dies. The steady click is back, and Steve smiles a little.
“And the house.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The clicking stops, and before he knows it, Robin’s body is wrapped around his, her head resting on his chest.
“I think that makes for a good point, though,” she says eventually, and Steve perks up.
“Cuddles?”
“You.”
“Me? Isn’t that a little stupid? And scary? Like, choosing a person to be the point in general.”
She shrugs against him, reaching up to hold his hand and link their fingers in the air above them.
“Maybe, but I think most points are either stupid or scary. It’s why people talk about it so often without ever, like, really saying something. I think you can be my stupid, scary point, Steve Harrington.”
Swaying their linked hands gently above them, Steve smiles. “Then I think that makes you my stupid, scary point, Robin Buckley.”
“Deal,” she says again, and there’s less of a threat about it this time.
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36 year old KRS taking all his savings and buying a farm in a town in the middle of nowhere.
His line of work was a dangerous one, being a bodyguard for high-profile clients
After a job where KRS was blinded in one eye, he took the compensation money and his savings and quit.
His idea was to buy a small, nice house in a town far from the city. But LSH and CJS convinced him that he should buy a couple of acres and make it a farm. Their argument was something about how he should keep himself busy with something to avoid getting into trouble.
Bullshit. If you ask him. But they made him promise that after a three-hour session of them yapping, he only managed to convince them to buy something smaller. There is still a lot of space for only one person (for now)
They made him promise that once they retire, he would give them a room at the farm. KRS sometimes wonders why they tend to ask obvious questions.
The land was acquired at a low price due to its condition: weeds everywhere, rocks, and a two-story old wooden house with leaks.
He wouldn't have bought it if it weren't for the fact that the previous owner had told him he had completely redone the plumbing and wiring a few years earlier.
The only thing Roksoo carried with him when he arrived at his new residence was a bag with clothes and another with his few precious belongings: books, a coffee machine that his coworkers gave him for his birthday, and his pillow.
The moment he set foot on his new property, Roksoo kind of regretted it all because of the work the property needed. He was aware of the condition of the house when he moved in, but for some reason he thought it would be easy. Never again.
He blames LSH and CJS for putting ideas in his head about moving to a farm; this wasn't his idea about living like a slacker. He could do nothing but sigh and enter the house.
The first step creaked as he walked on it; he avoided stepping on the second one, which was obviously rotten. The board on the third and final step creaked and broke. KRS cursed and fell into the hole. He had scratches all over his calf when he managed to get his leg out of the hole.
KRS wondered if he should have been less stingy when it came to shelling out money to buy the property. It's not like he couldn't afford it; he wasn't as rich as he would have liked to be, but he wasn't lacking either.
There was nothing he could do now, so he simply sighed again and opened the creaking door. A cloud of dust made him cough and step back.
KRS mentally thanks the previous owner, who was kind enough to leave him his old tools in the shed. He left his bags on the floor and went to look for a broom to clean the interior to make it minimally habitable for the night.
Sexy Ahjussy activities. Imagine a tall, buff, black-haired middle-aged man with an eye scar🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🦅🦅🦅
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