#and the fact that she (Like Riz) is Living While Goblin in elmville and the isolation that probably entailed

[bacchuschucklefuck]

assorted thoughts 1/when sklonda mentioned getting drinks with sandra lynn now and then I straight up cheered I was so scared for her social life being so overworked 2/straight up have no judgement on the whole ratgrinder situation on account of being a whole grown man. Im not getting into beef with fictional teenagers let them sort that out among themselves 3/sprak levefre

#not art #my oldest daughter with a grown sibling ass going I hope sklonda makes time to chill #she should be at the club. for free. they should pay her to be at the club #honestly its kind of a thing with riz too but thats more like. ok the thing is riz just fr loves mysteries #so tbh its more like if u yknow. love drawing and u draw for fun #and now u also draw for job. like I feel like thats the thing thats going on with riz #dude who playtests as a job and then goes home and plays more games. but with mysteries #but with sklonda it really feels like. its something shes Good at bc shes diligent and careful and has a moral spine #rather than something she actively enjoys. like her job is solidly her Job #so she immediately hits that alarm trigger in my brain seeing moms going about like #!!!⚠️⚠️STOP⚠️⚠️!! DO YOU HAVE A HOBBY ARE YOU CULTIVATING YOUR SOCIAL LIFE #and with her it fucking Got me too bc she just! doesnt seem to have the time to build that for herself #and the fact that she (Like Riz) is Living While Goblin in elmville and the isolation that probably entailed #like the empty nesting down the line would hit her like a baseball bat it would be Brutal #so genuinely knowing that she is casually hanging out with sandra lynn (and probably other parents in the group as well) #thats a whole piece of anxiety off my mind watching this show lmao. moms! #anyways sprak lefevre my beloved. actually I retract my vow of neutrality sprak's party better really like him and treat him right #or else. #he is prrrrrobably an artificer but personally itd be so funny if he isnt. what if hes a bard

[swarmkeepers]

okay but like i want kristen and riz to go get late night cortados together after spring break

riz is up working and is about to brew himself the third pot of coffee for the night when kristen’s like “do you wanna just take a field trip and get some actually good coffee though”

“i’m not gonna tell you to stop drinking coffee and go to sleep, riz, who do you think i am, jawbone? i’m just offering you some espresso. live a little.” 

and there isn’t really a big case he’s working on, not after the nightmare king, so riz grumbles a little but he says yes

it’s like 1am and kristen takes him to a janky musty 24-hour basement cafe near the elmville train station that tracker showed her. riz loves it instantly

it’s natural that riz loves the night, he’s a goblin and a rogue, but kristen’s coming into her own as a twilight domain cleric wielding the staff of doubt

just two very dangerous people who will literally see everything on the street before it sees them, walking down the street on an unstoppable quest for caffeine

riz drinks his tiny cup of cortado and is like “weird, it’s not acidic at all, is this even coffee” and kristen dumps half a can of condensed milk and cream into hers

they end up talking, because there’s something about good coffee and a friend in a basement cafe at 1am that makes you want to say things you wouldn’t say in daylight

(this got long; more feelings and shenanigans under the cut) 

kristen thinks, this is what cassandra means, the dark is full of secrets but they’re good secrets

do you ever think about how the two of them are now aligned with a celestial plane and what that would mean to riz, whose entire worldview is about work and love and things that are real and not believed (riz does not believe. riz thinks, and then he finds the things worth thinking about)

“how do you know?” riz asks “sometimes you don’t” kristen says

i think after this night and some secrets riz might take kristen to his dad’s grave sometime. now when he goes to the gravestone he knows his dad is listening, and there’s a difference in doing stuff bc it’s a comforting ritual and doing stuff bc it MEANS something. and kristen has a very practiced but also by now very innate sense of what is sacred and i think riz would appreciate that—she would know what to do at pok’s headstone (and also know when you need to break the sacred with the humorous)

and do you ever think about how kristen for all her sainthood is missing tracker and is missing her philosophy students, a little bit

thinking about a kristen who doesn’t call spirit guardians for a long time after the nightmare forest just because it’s so alien to think about what they might be

cleric homework is harder when your powers come from breaking an eight hundred fifty year old curse on a goddex who didn’t have a name for nearly a millennia but also kristen gets frustrated that this is what’s hard, this is what she’s dashing herself against now?

and riz, well, is very familiar with the fact that work is love is work, and that also sometimes work is just hard late nights

and is also chill with kristen spending a whole chunk of the summer just in a blanket burrito in his office heckling him weakly while he finishes up the reports for the nightmare king case (because both of them are the kind of people who just want another person in their space sometimes)

both of them seem like people who love the process (and the uncertainty, and the truth no matter how hard you have to work or how many gods you have to reject to find it) and therefore they thrive in the caffeinated late nights

(and don’t think about how for all the team rizten jokes both of them are people who care deeply about their friends under the jokes and i think “being 0 for 3″ would hurt)

riz thinks he failed kristen—she sacrificed herself to save him and he couldn’t get them out of the forest in time and she saved him again in the dusk moss ritual when he remembered what his friends have done for him and then he failed again, couldn’t get tracker with that tincture dart

riz is not usually anyone’s first choice to talk about feelings so when kristen starts being absurdly tactile and grabbing him into her blanket burrito it feels just a little like saint applebees’ forgiveness

they probably walk home (unafraid) from the cafe and end up sitting on the roof of riz’s office, because who’s gonna tell them to go to sleep

“wanna sneak up to the roof?” / “did you even have to ask?”

kristen probably almost impales herself on the corner of an AC unit or something - “aren’t humans supposed to have good dex?” / “guess i missed the memo while i was dying twice and creating two and a half gods” / “noted. i can’t pull you up though, so good luck”

they’re so overcaffeinated on 1am espressos they just stay up all night but it’s their native habitat and no one’s gonna stop them

tl;dr they’re FRIENDS they’re GOOD FRIENDS team rizten is now 1 for 4

#do you ever start a hc post and then it fully becomes a fic because yeah #fantasy high #kristen applebees #riz gukgak #sophomore year #to be clear this is in zero ways shippy they just enable each other's terrible caffeine habits #and whomp people #and talk about the kinds of things you can only talk about at 1am with one of your best friends #sola said #sola ficced