seen from Angola
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from Côte d’Ivoire
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
chris/mika
They Are It. they're not even a ship to me for real, they're just the gay old marrieds raising a buncha kids somewhere in new york and sometimes they play a silly little sport. i'm never going to get over chris crying because of how proud he was of mika and how sad he was for losing. they're what got me into hockey properly after two failed attempts so. idk, thanks & fuck them & thanks again, i guess.
16 (j/k i know the answer), for real 7
you better, and i'm right & i should say it 😘
7. what animal do you look forward to seeing when you visit an aquarium?
i love otters! if there are otters, catch me looking real stupid and adoring cause why are they so cute and small and fluffy and noisy and perfectly shaped for cuddles? they're so meant to be adored. i wanna see some otters, man.
patron saint of boys with sad sea eyes
oh. oh. i certainly do love them most, and think it ridiculous that i cannot protect them!
hot pink all the way (also i am just like mentally adding demon brain in parentheses after brain rot)
our demon brains at all times
9. When baking chocolate chip cookies (but substitute while making pasta) spadino/aureliano)
(also @szkot-pielgrzym who sent me the exact same prompt! the three of us sharing a single braincell? you love to see it.)
aureliano feels the light falling across his face for a split second before the desperate ache starts up in side, his arm, manages to fling the uninjured one across his face with a groan. he turns gingerly, glances at the bedside table: there’s a tall glass of water and a small saucer with pills waiting invitingly for him. there’s an asymmetrical curl upward to his mouth as he moves upright enough to swallow them all down, chug the entire glass of water. for a second, he closes his eyes again, lets himself float on the softness of the blanket tucked around him, the lingering scent of spadino’s cologne masking the sharpness of alcohol from when he’d changed his bandages earlier, the steady rhythm of his own breath filling his lungs and exh-
the crash jolts him awake, followed by spadino’s harsh curse, has him reaching for the gun with his right arm. the wounded appendage screams in agony, but the weapon fits into palm, easy and simple and right. he’s racing down the short hallway and into the open kitchen, gun raised and ready, but all he sees is spadino frowning down at the shattered pieces of a mug, then up at him. his eyes widen when he takes him in.
“what happened?” aureliano asks through his grimace, the pain in his arm radiating in waves.
“sorry to wake you, but i don’t think it’s worth shooting me,” spadino mumbles before taking a step in his direction.
aureliano lowers the gun, but doesn’t move otherwise, waiting.
spadino pads around him, towards the broom in the corner and the little dust pan to clean up after himself. the exhaustion barrels into his chest and aureliano sways for a second on his feet, hand coming down on the countertop harder than he anticipated. it’s excruciating, every muscle and bone jostling together like discordant instruments in protest as he shoves himself to sit on the countertop, head falling back against the cabinet door.
he watches the small, neat movements of spadino gathering the shards, the careful way he checks for small invisible chips that will inevitably get caught underfoot later.
this is the quietest it’s ever been between the two of them. aureliano does not disturb the silence, memorizes instead the small hairs at the back of his neck. only when spadino is straightening does he realize he’s still staring, glances away sharply. it’s a strange, particular gravity that forces his gaze back though.
spadino looks over as he washes his hands, meets his eyes.
“think you can manage some food?”
aureliano nods, though he’s not sure of that answer. still, it gives them another reason to be here, in this place, sharing this moment.
“what kind of pasta are you making today?” there’s a taunt underneath the words, and spadino wouldn’t be spadino if he didn’t effortlessly flick him off. he’s still smiling when he reaches up to grab some dry rigatoni from a cupboard near aureliano.
“better than whatever trash you made in cinaglia’s pad,” he snarks. aureliano’s stuck on the raw, scraped skin on his knuckles so it takes a beat before he remembers he should speak.
“an artist is only as good as his tools. michelangelo couldn’t have painted the whole ceiling with a single pencil.”
spadino’s eyebrows climb new heights when he looks in his direction.
"one day you’ll have to make me the sistine chapel of pasta, so i can keep from calling you a liar.”
aureliano’s smirk is enough of a reply. the open package is in his hand, but spadino’s eyes skitter along the bandage over the bullet wound on aureliano’s arm, then his side where the sweater’s hiding it, then back up to his face. he looks guilty, a child caught doing something he imagines he will be punished for.
“i’m fine,” aureliano announces, feigning authority in this place where he has none. “though i might die of starvation at this rate.”
“you should be quieter, or the owner spadino’s restaurant’s going to kick you out,” spadino mutters, finally pouring the pasta in the salted boiling water. he stirs, stares into the pot, half-afraid to look anywhere else.
“doesn’t taking two bullets for you mean a lifetime of free meals at spadino’s?”
spadino’s head swivels sharply, like he’s seeing a ghost, like aureliano shoved his head against the fire and he’s burning with it.
“aurelia,” spadino whispers, and it’s half a warning, and perhaps he should’ve listened to sibilla’s words then, and he should listen to them now, but anything he’s ever gotten worth having was against the odds.
aureliano’s not sure what does it: another roiling curl of exhaustion that threatens to flatten or the curl of spadino’s ear. the shape of him that aureliano could recognize in the darkness of that yard, half-blurred afterward while the family doctor had managed to sneak him in after he’d gotten shot. the memory of looking at him in the moment before he’d decided, and being convinced that he would never again be able to see it. never even have known what it was like to touch.
“look at me,” he demands, his voice harsh with need.
spadino doesn’t, hands clutching at the marble countertop like it’s the only thing keeping his body tethered to this moment.
“come on, don’t be a coward. look at me.” he wonders if it’s the insult or the way the words arrive unsteadily, but they do the trick. aureliano wonders how many people have seen the way spadino’s eyes look golden sometimes in the early morning light. he thinks perhaps he could kill them all for knowing before he did.
“ti voglio bene, spadi,” he says, soft and sweet. spadino nods and moves like he’s going back to the pasta, earns an “ao,” from aureliano.
“ti amo, albe,” he adds, and it feels easy and simple and right.
Please I need to know the Primo/Majid Thesis I’ve finished Trust and I’m not ready to deal with it OR my feelings about Wolf
it is...
it’s about two people who already share a language of violence, but different dialects: primo who waits and plans and takes out his prey from a distance, and majid who has a gun tucked but pummels a man with his bare fists because it’s the only time he can feel something that he controls. primo who revels in his fluency, and majid who is reluctant to speak it, but he knows it nonetheless.
it’s about majid who understands what made a man like primo drop his head silently when don salvatore slapped him, and primo knowing how it felt when majid’s father told him the wrong son had been taken from him. it’s about primo saying no coffee no chat, how primo’s mind spins a thousand miles a minute and he has no one to tell his jokes to. no one who would laugh freely when he grinned all wide, shark teeth fully on display. but majid would. it’s about majid being taken care, about someone seeing every single one of his muscles, and thinking, ah but the strongest one is his heart. it’s about primo looking at him in the right light and understanding that whatever vulnerability majid has left is precious, and worthy of protecting.
it’s about two men longing for belonging, a soft place to land, and the realization that if you have never had something, it is hard to make. you don’t know the shape of it, you don’t know what it’s supposed to look like: but you build it between you two anyway. it’s primo tipping majid onto the sheets and majid looking at him with those liquid eyes of him, and knowing that primo would never let him get away with saying “i feel nothing.” it’s majid catching primo’s eyes across a dinner table at leonardo’s house and being able to read through the sea glass to the truth of him. it’s about two men fumbling to discover what else they might do with their hands.
primo who transforms calabria into his own empire, and offers whatever piece of it majid wants to him. it’s about majid building his own gym: a place where the bell rings and the fight stops. the security of that. about how this place that smells of the sea and lemon trees and ancient bricks feels no more foreign than the drab grayness he left behind. it’s about primo being charmed by a souvenir the first time they go away somewhere together, and buying it because he has a home, because he can decorate it however he pleases. it’s about leonardo and regina adopting majid as one of their own, and majid having the money to offer to fly his mom and brother out. just to visit. just for a few days to pretend that life can be kind.
sure, “a child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort,” but if you didn’t die, then what else is there? there is this. there is two men scrabbling together their jagged fragments of tenderness and humanity until it forms the shape of love.
20. things you said that i wasn’t meant to hear, Daniele/Ale
“have you decided yet?” fran takes to asking daniele at inopportune times. the first time ale overhears, it’s in the middle of the locker room after training. the second it’s asked, daniele looks stricken, kicks fran right in the shin, hard enough that it’s audible.
“decided what?” ale wonders aloud, finishes doing up his laces, sits up straight.
fran glances at daniele sharply, then back at ale, and something of his harshness falls away. he hates when they do that, talk between them like they have a language he can’t translate. he shrugs, moves to grab his bag and stand.
“where we’re going to lunch,” daniele mumbles to the floor, but even then, ale knows how he lies, and more importantly, when.
“alright,” he replies, clipped. he feels the touch before he sees it, but it’s whisper soft against his throat, nearly startles him. but daniele fixes his collar and then smooths it down, trying to brush away all the wrinkles.
“enjoy lunch,” he manages, glad to be leaving the silence to balloon in his absence.
-
“have you decided yet?” he overhears fran demand once on the frecciarossa home after a rough loss, like he’s trying to spit the words out, like they’re bitter in his mouth.
“fuck off,” daniele snaps back gruffly, and there’s a faint rustling, a thump, which means that they’re either fighting back there or trading sloppy handjobs. no one on the train would be surprised by either, but ale’s head is too heavy to pick up and turn, so he leaves it where it is.
20 minutes later, as he’s drifting into sleep, he think he hears a soft, “stop asking, checco,” but he’s not sure. in the dream that night, daniele takes alessandro’s hand and leads him into the sea. right before he drowns, daniele smiles at him.
-
“have you decided yet?” ale asks him when they’re drunk and happy on daniele’s hideously tacky couch, the coffee table littered with empty beer bottles that frame the sonogram. daniele makes this disapproving amused sound, smacks at ale’s shoulder harder than he probably means.
his face is close when he tips it over on the pillow, glances up at ale. his eyes are always softer than they mean to be, and it makes ale want to touch, so he does. brushes the tips of his fingers over the contours of his cheek where his drunkenly blushing skin peeks through.
“it was decided long before he asked,” daniele confesses, blinks, then back at the black and white photo on the table.
“it’s always going to be,” and he tapers off because it’s too much to contain in such a small word. but ale touches his mouth, and he can very nearly feel the soft sound of home.
-
“have you decided yet?” daniele taunts, swinging his arm around fran’s shoulder as the latter stares at himself in the mirror. ale leans a hip against the edge, glad he doesn’t have to dress up for fran’s contract renewal, glad he doesn’t have to pretend not to cry in front of everyone.
in the mirror, totti meets daniele’s eyes, and sticks up his middle finger.
in the mirror, daniele beams serenely at ale, and ale watches himself laugh.
for the shipping meme - lore/steph, pls
-falls asleep on the couchlore, because steph has fewer qualms about crawling right into lore’s bed and cuddling up with his pupper leo while he’s waiting for lore to get home.
-makes friends with the neighborslore. steph is the more outgoing of the two, sure, but leave it to lorenzo to carry on a 45 minute conversation with the neighbor about how exactly to knead the ravioli dough. part of why steph’s gotten so comfortable making himself comfortable waiting for lore in bed.
