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[Well that was enlightening.

After watching that unfold, Gladion takes the laptop from his room to the balcony outside his room, and keeps refreshing through other conversations. I-should-justs rise and fall in his mind, along with a lot of other stray thoughts.

He doesn't intend to do anything about any of it, but noise from the living room prods him into considering the passage of time. He drops his laptop in his room on the way through towards the kitchen, and shuts the door closely behind him.]

[Emmet was getting butter and cheese from the fridge. Cupcake was following him around hoping that Emmet would give her something but he was being strong...for now.]

[He hummed to himself as he got the skillet out and started to warm it up. And let it sit there as he assembled a basic grilled cheese sandwich. Because right now it felt right to have a grilled cheese.]

[He has yet to notice Gladion coming inside.]

[A rather normal sight, all things told.

Gladion stands there against the door to his room for a moment, watching the doglet follow its trainer around. Then he rounds the corner towards the couch - and decides not to sit down right away, actually, because he realizes he hasn't tended the dracaena today. It's been a lot happier since being repotted, but the humidity here is a little low...

Goes to its spot by the window to fiddle with it.]

[Emmet finishes up making the sandwich quickly, after all, it is just a grilled cheese. He puts it on a napkin and turns to go to the living room.]

[He smiles when he sees Gladion.]

Do you want a sandwich?

...Nah. [In about an hour he will regret this decision. For now, he is sitting against the window, one vine loosely climbing up into the pot and around the plant's stem. They are mutually vibing.

Though, with a certain amount of pensiveness on Gladion's part. His ears are pinned out a little and he's looking up at the ceiling with one of those Looks on his face, where he's clearly been pacing the length of his cage (brain) for a little while, and intends to keep doing so until something works itself out.]

[Emmet cocks his head to the side and sits down on the couch. Cupcake tries to join him up there, but alas, she is too small to jump up there just yet.]

[Eventually, though, Emmet does break off a bit of the sandwich.]

Sit.

[The creature sits down.]

Good sit.

[And she is rewarded with the bit of sandwich.]

[Emmet looks over at Gladion and frowns a little.]

Solar for your thoughts?

[His ears twitch. It's a few seconds before he actually replies.]

I know that guy.

[As if there's any guarantee that Emmet will also have been letting That Post live in his head since it got Posted, and will have any clue what the fuck he's talking about.]

[Emmet, has not been letting it dwell. He considered it a misunderstanding that was cleared up despite him still being confused on some things. But then again, people, in general, confused him at times.]

What guy?

[Oh dammit.

Clunk goes the back of his head against the window.]

The turtle guy.

[The coolest turtle.]

Oh him? He and I occasionally talk on the network, yupyup.

[Yeah, he's seen them spar a few times. And he saw that, and winced, and almost went to go warn Emmet to stop, but remembered to calm the hell down and keep his nose out. Because sometimes, he sees a vicious fight with an unsalvagable aftermath when it's...

not that.

And sometimes he sees other kinds of conversations and he starts thinking and never gets anywhere with it besides going in circles over and over. And sometimes he wonders where the hell the disconnect is that makes certain things look so simple for other people when they're clearly not that simple at all, but then if he thinks of himself in that position, it's just...

PENSIVE SILENCE squinting a little harder, pressure visibly building.]

[Emmet takes another bite of his sandwich.]

You two hang out a lot?

[An Frown. The tension cracks a little to let it leak out.]

...We don't get along too well.

You don't? Well, sometimes people just don't have the same hitches.

Yeah. [Sans train metaphor, that's kind of what he keeps telling himself when it comes to Leo, and Nanami. But -

"Is there anyone around here you don't know?"

- what is it they say about the common denominator in all your bad relationships? Because it's clearly not them. He could sit around and sulk about how this is just, the unfairness of the world or his burden or something equally satisfying but stupid, or he could face the fact that he sort of does this to himself. But how does he even start to stop?

Gladion says none of this out loud. But man, you can see him gnawing on
something.]

He's had a rough life.

I don't know him well enough to agree or disagree. But that seems to be a theme here.

[Emmet polishes off the sandwich and moves to pick up Cupcake.]

Sometimes I think I'm the only one who didn't have something traumatic happen to them or something.

[Nail on the head.

Some of Gladion's tension dissipates with that first hurdle down, one of the clogs in his head undone. His vine starts to unwind from the dracaena, slithering back down to the floor and around his waist; his squinting eases, and he leans back properly against the window, and nods and shrugs in agreement.

Now comes the second hurdle.]

Pretty much everyone I know, yeah.

[Building up to it...it's fine...he's getting there...]

It's sad, yup. And this place only wants to compound the hurt with everything going on.

[He holds Cupcake in the air, she waggles her legs and tail as she gets to be eye level with Emmet.]

[So he needs to get better at dealing with it. And that means allowing help, and looking for it, and talking about it. Which means other people will talk about it, and if he becomes better at dealing with it then he shouldn't mind that.

But Mother is here.

Which is nothing compared to being dead back home.

He draws in a heavy breath through his nose, leaning forward again as if properly working up to something, now. Readying whatever it is he wants to say.

Whoof.]

...I know I have...problems. [And his throat just gums the fuck up after that from raw mortification and he kind of has to fight it to go somewhere with that! His ears slowly press back, about as far as they go.] And - the way that I - some people deal with theirs - right out in the open. It works.

[Emmet lets Gladion speak, and lets what Gladion said hang in the air for a moment.]

It does because you can't get back on the rails without help. I know some people think that asking for help is weak or whatever, but, really it's not.

I know, [he replies with a little difficulty, because he very, very much knows. And he feels stuck knowing, because when push comes to shove, he keeps - missing - the cue. It's something big that bowls him over, or it's something small he reacts to without thinking.

He just -

He can't admit to this. See, an object example. Gladion closes his mouth and sits there stiffly for a moment, recalibrating to the room and the lack of reasons for this to be such an enormous fucking issue.

How can he express...this? Other than as questions he already knows the answers to?]

...I. [Breathe. Which he does until one thing works itself free of the tangle, and it's not something he wants to admit to but. Well. Nothing is, and that's the problem.] I can't imagine doing that.

[Quite literally - the feeling of embarrassment is one thing, but he can't imagine what he would be like or look like if he did that, and he can't imagine it happening without consequences, and he takes it as a reason to continue on like he does, but is it just a failure of imagination?]

Ask for help?

[Emmet questioned to clarify.]

[Shakes his head.]

Putting it out in the open. [Hang on a sec. More than that, but he has to beat back the mortification to get there. Scoff. Floor glare.] ...Not being sensitive about it. If - if someone I knew did what the turtle did to his [dad.] housemate, [as in making his problems into this funny...thing,]

[and frankly he doesn't know how to end that sentence because uhhh. It would just. It would just be the end of the world okay? Also not helping is that Emmet is the first person he thinks of who might accidentally do that, after Leo-if-he-slipped-up-and-told-him, but another part of him isn't worried about Emmet doing that and doesn't want to accuse him?

Crosses his arms.]

But it works out for them.

[So he knows the answer to this whole problem, and is just stuck here whining about the effort involved. Is how it looks.]

Edited 2023-02-03 17:37 (UTC)

I guess it really depends on their relationship and temperaments with each other.

[He puts Cupcake down on the couch and she walks over to him and curls up in a small cream-colored ball next to him.]

And knowing what buttons can and can't be pushed. Which really only comes with time.

Yeah. That's how I try to - go about it. Just approach people with respect until you learn enough to figure out where you stand. [Worked with Silvally. There's something insufficient about it here and now, though.] It's...not Leonardo's MO - that's why we don't get along. I didn't know he had buttons to push until you ticked him off. [Vulnerabilities, sure, but things he wants to cover up aren't quite the same as a button.]

But - [scoff.] - if I didn't know better, I could blame it on people not having real problems. I'm not sensitive, I just - I just have it worse than you. [Voice low, exposed. This is a pretty deep dig into his own self-awareness, and it doesn't mortify him nearly as viscerally as other things but it is still embarrassing to say out loud.] But that's not how it works. Especially not here. [So what's his real excuse?]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, EMMET. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 018.07.154.55 * KUDARI** has joined 018.07.154.55

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