#miko lorea

[strawhattery]

[His feelings for him] were an oil spill; he’d let them overflow and now there wasn’t a damn place in the ocean that wouldn’t catch fire if he dropped a match.

-  maggie stiefvater, the raven king

this isn’t a raven cycle request, i just fucking love that quote whoops.

miko moved to town three years ago and has broken his own heart eight times since. he’s a funny thing, miko -- as cruel as he is kind, and he is exceptionally kind. he’s the sort of person who can spot a person from across a crowded room and think i want to know what it would be like to be in love with him, and without hesitating he’ll approach them. and for a while, he will love them. and then, eventually, he’ll start to realize their flaws. and it takes almost no time at all for realization to twist into obsession, and that obsession eventually sours the entire relationship for him. it can take anywhere between a few weeks to a few months -- but in the end, he leaves every man he’s ever wanted. but i mean it when i say he breaks his own heart. it’s never an easy thing for him, even though he’s always the one to break things off. he always wants it to work, but he doesn’t want to work to make it work -- he just wants it to be easy because his parents always made it seem so easy. so he’s cried himself to sleep, moped around his apartment, gone days at a time in mourning of what-could-have-been for one boy after the next. then, soon enough (too soon), he goes out looking for the next person to love.

it’s a vicious cycle, and boyd has been there for just about every round of it. boyd was the first neighbor miko met in his historic seafront apartment, and though they are wildly different people they hit it off as friends and now the two of them share a social circle of nearly a dozen thirty-somethings who adore each other, but boyd and miko have been especially close because they live next door to one another.

theirs is a strange dynamic -- they bicker and argue a lot, mostly because boyd is grounded and down-to-earth and tends to see miko as being miko’s own worst enemy in love (he’s absolutely right) while miko thinks boyd would have a lot better luck in his own love life if he weren’t so damn judgmental all the time (he’s also absolutely right). they exhaust each other. they know exactly how to push one another’s buttons. miko doesn’t try to charm boyd, and boyd sure as shit doesn’t try to make himself something he isn’t to meet miko’s bullshit standards. they are perpetually at an impasse, and somehow that’s worked for them and their friendship over the years.

so when does all of that become want? i guess that’s for us to decide. when the site opens, miko’s going to be fresh off a breakup and in the throes of his own melodrama, so i figure we’ll pick up from there. the crux of their relationship is that miko thinks grand gestures and a fairytale romance are the right way to have a “perfect” relationship while boyd doesn’t believe in a perfect relationship -- he believes in loving someone enough you want to work to make it work day after day after day, and he believes in all different types of gestures, not just big ones. when miko wants to throw in the towel and quit and leave, boyd wants to fight and make it work.

i used the name boyd here because i would love someone to use boyd holbrook for this request, but i’m open to other recommendations between the ages of 30 and 40. if you’re interested, please message me or hit me up on discord at astronemesis#1712

[strawhattery]

mikolaus “miko” lorea. 31. sous chef.  historic seafront. jon kortajarena.

miko's a romantic. you’ll find that this is both the best and worst thing about him. he is adoring and tender and attentive and nurturing and quick with a smile and a gentle touch. he is also moody and needy and prone to holding people to unrealistic standards. his work is his passion -- enough so that he moved away from los angeles (and his massive, tight-knit family) to accept a sous chef position in saint royale three years ago. he's planted roots here, and i'd love to have lots of friends, neighbors, coworkers, and lovers for him!

[strawhattery]

outside, the day burns.

the single broad window at the end of miko’s living room was opened hours ago to let the sea breeze in, and it brought with it the sticky heat of the day. sometime before noon he finds himself stretched over the edge of the sill, admiring the way the heat blurs the streets down below. it’s rare that he has the luxury to be lazy, but every so often he makes the time and indulges like a sleepy house cat, napping and snacking and pacing about his apartment aimlessly. any other day and he might have taken the fire escape down and crossed the street and waited in line for a flat white at the breakfast bar across the street. today, he folds his arms on the window pane and rests his cheek on his wrist and watches. there’s a rhythm to living in the city. every city has its own heartbeat, its own circulatory system, and after three years of living in saint royale, miko finds himself still struggling to feel in sync. los angeles is still home in a way that he feels in the marrow of his bones. everything in los angeles had looked like it had been coated in a fine and persistent layer of grime – the metro area large and sprawling and especially beige. under the hot midday sun, everything in saint royale’s historic seafront district is washed out, the sky the only saturated thing for miles and miles. here, miko feels as smudged and blurry as the asphalt down below. the city surges with life as people make their way in and out of shops and bistros and parking garages, and, alone in his apartment, miko allows himself to wallow in his homesickness. one day, he thinks, he’ll get used to the way this place makes him feel. today isn’t the day, but maybe tomorrow. maybe the day after. or maybe he’ll eventually grow so used to feeling unsatisfied that he’ll forget what it was like to be filled to the brim with belonging. for now, he draws away from his window and continues to pack emilio’s things.