Made a lil thing while listening to this playlist, been getting into these type of songs more recently (blame it on my Lupin iii addiction coming back) •
They laid near the window nook, feeling quite exposed if not for the blanket of raindrops covering the glass. Head relaxed on it, the pressure felt like a little massage for the brain. Knees held together up to their chest, being their own blanket… Music accompanied their mind, trying to compartmentalise their thoughts, make it tidy. But the more they unpacked the more they stopped to see how well kept it was. Who knows? could be handy later.
They usually didn’t like slow songs like this, it just further empathised how full the place felt.
This would be easier with company, but that wasn’t an option right now.
For now, we just had to take it slow and easy. (not really steady, commitment to consistency is too much for them)
Finally they decided what to dwell on, as the voices sang slowly, silky?.. No, velvety. The lyrics were about love, they usually avoided those songs, but romantic love might not be far from the love they expressed maybe.
Romantic that it was earnest and embarrassingly desperate. Friendship others would call it, but this guy always had a hard time with what the feeling is supposed to be. Romance is intimate, intense, passionate. Friendship was casual, friendly. What a limitation of what these feelings could be, all of the above felt ideal. Whatever people say what these feelings can be, They just knew they wanted to be like the things they watched.
Friends staying in the same home, always sticking together despite their conflicts. Playful and Mischievous domesticity. Maybe even the occasional touch of those rivalries, opposite views of the world, but somehow they were attracted to each other. Exciting. Riveting. Yet somehow had an assumed intimate understanding of one another.
This was really sappy, not everyone would understand this need and even if they did, they won’t just let them be their partner for life.
A sigh is all they can muster, ‘I’ll just have to handle this on my own’, they thought. They let their body relax and sink, warm comfy velvet cushions underneath them as they closed their eyes… Maybe that didn’t seem so bad.
I have been obsessing about @skippyin's Lost in New York AU. So much so that I made a short 1-hour writing dump about Luigi trying to find and rescue Bowser Junior from Brooklyn. Thought I'd share!
(Definitely not head-cannoning Luigi as Junior's surrogate second parent. Dear god what has the Bowuigi done to me 🥲).
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Luigi was sweating. It was that cold, clammy sweat that clung to the skin and made him feel sick. Or was that just the sinking feeling in his gut, screaming at him that something was irreparably wrong?
He didn’t have the precious seconds to waste on determining which.
“Junior!” The young koopaling’s name launched from his lips, only to be drowned out by cars rolling down the overpass overhead. It was so loud – too loud. Nothing like the plumber’s peaceful life in the Mushroom Kingdom.
But Luigi came back for a purpose – da Dio he would accomplish it.
“Junior!”
He was going to bring the kid back. Kicking and screaming – most likely – but he’d get Junior out of here and back to his father, regardless of the young prince’s desires. An uncharacteristic confidence had overtaken the plumber. Luigi’s resolve was unshaken as he trekked through his old hometown, scouring the shadows which wrapped the streets in the ephemeral glow of dusk.
Luigi paid no mind to the rickety old apartment complex at the edge of the block, where he and Mario had made many a house call, back in a time when he had called this foreign place home. He didn’t think about the greasy pizza place on the corner where two broke bachelors could find a cheap meal; the old high school a couple streets down hardly registered.
“Junior!” No, the only thought in Luigi’s mind was to find the little koopaling. Find him quickly, before he was lost entirely, disappearing into the big city; find him fast, before anything else could happen.
…
…
…
But by the time he did, it was already too late.
Luigi had nearly passed the alleyway when he heard it. Sniffling. The earnest attempt of a child holding back his tears. The human leaped to attention as his eyes tracked the sound to their source, spotting a figure curled up in a black hoodie.
“Junior!” Luigi scrambled into the alley, to the aid of the young koopaling. The sniveling and shaking body hardly seemed to notice him; bright red eyes bristling with tears as Junior tried to bury his face into his sleeves. Acting on instinct, the plumber reached out to comfort the child, only for Junior to flinch away from him.
Luigi retreated his hand. With a frown etched across his face, he carefully looked over the young prince. He didn’t look injured, per se, but there was certainly plenty of evidence to some sort of scrap: the backpack he was wearing to cover his shell looked battered, with a few spikes poking out from its holes. His yellow shorts were stained with dirt at the knees. And…
…and his signature paintbrush lay, snapped in two, at the koopaling’s feet.
“Aye…” Luigi’s heart shattered in his chest. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of laughter, coming from a group of teenagers. But all the plumber’s focus was on the young child in front of him. “Mio bambino…” Unable to touch the crying koopaling, Luigi’s own vision began to fog.
“Can we just…” Junior spoke between sobs as his little act began to burst. “I don’t like it here,” he cried loudly. Luigi could do nothing but watch as the tears flowed freely down the prince’s face, the koopaling clamping his jaw tight to hold back anymore cries.
There it was.
There was the Brooklyn Luigi remembered.
The city that chewed up and spat out its inhabitants; that made people feel small and powerless. Just because it could. Just because it wanted to.
The Brooklyn Luigi had never wanted to return to.
The Brooklyn Luigi had so desperately wanted to keep Junior safe from.
“Sì mio figlio,” he extended his arms out to the young prince; Junior leaped into the plumber’s embrace as the tears continued to pour. A wet snout smeared against his overalls as Luigi picked up the turtle-shelled child to hold in his arms, hardly noticing the sharp spikes scratching against his wrists through the fabric of the bag.
“Let’s go home.”