“Good morning, sunshine!” Gerry chirped as Michael stumbled into their kitchen.
“Don’t call me that,” Michael grumbled back, too achingly tired to accept a new pet name. He did, however, accept a kiss and an extra-large mug of coffee from Gerry. “How are you so fucking perky?”
“I’ve been up for a while,” he explained, which also explained the mess of dishes and flour across the counters and a warm smell wafting from the oven. Gerry himself had a streak of flour across his cheeks, and a very eager look in his eye. “Couldn’t go back to sleep, so I just got up.” He paused, a grin breaking like the sunrise on his face. “Your hair…it’s very uplifted today, isn’t it?”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Michael agreed with a long sigh, sinking down in a slump at the table. He could feel his curls disorderly half-piled on his head, a horribly tangled mass he couldn’t bear the face yet. He took a long sip of his syrupy-sweet warm coffee and groaned heavily. “You’ve missed your calling as a barista.”
Gerry snorted, coming around the counter to stand behind his chair. “I would make a terrible barista,” he said, sinking his fingers into Michael’s curls and beginning to card through them. “Someone would get mad at me and ask for my manager, and I’d just tell them to go fuck themselves.”
“Guess I’ll keep you and your skills all to myself,” Michael gloated, eyes falling shut and leaning back into Gerry’s touch. His bad morning mood was melting away, thanks to the coffee and his incredibly sweet boyfriend. Gerry was much kinder to his hair than he was, gently detangling the curls, separating sections and finger-combing through them while humming to himself. Michael knew he’d learned these techniques from watching him, and found himself hopelessly touched. Gerry really was the sweetest.
By the time he’d finished his drink Gerry had loosely braided his hair back, and was rubbing his hands along his back soothingly. “Thank you, my love,” Michael murmured, eyes still closed. “I’m sorry I’m so grumpy in the morning.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Gerry assured him, looping his arms around his shoulders and hugging him from behind. “I don’t expect you to be sunshine all the time. That’s too much for anyone, even you.” He pulled back to press a kiss just above his ear. “I still love you, no matter how you are.”
“I love you too,” Michael sighed, his bad mood melting away like fog on a warm summer morning. It was nice to have Gerry’s words and affection even when he was in a mood. Even better when his mood could be lifted by said words and affection.
The oven timer went off, and Gerry pulled away with one last kiss, drifting into the kitchen to remove the deliciously fragrant scones. “Do you want another coffee?” he asked over his shoulder.
I know he’s kind of a polarizing character, but I have to say, Elias Bouchard truly is Iconic. When you hear the twist of “the boring middle manager was actually secretly an evil eldritch monster the whole time!” you sort of assume that the boring middle manager persona was just a facade, but no, he really does seem to just enjoy dull administrative work. He’s both exactly as boring as he seems on the surface and profoundly fucked up in ways you couldn’t imagine. He’s practically omniscient and playing 4-D chess with everyone, but he responds to even slight hiccups in his elaborate scheme with acts of extreme violence. He beats an old man to death with a metal pipe and when someone brings it up later he goes, “Yeah I may have overreacted there.” His employees are constantly trying to murder him. He broke out of prison just so he could give a dramatic monologue. He had a weird gay thing going on with seemingly every man he met in the past 200 years. He loves scheduling.
Jon and Gerry!! My eyes are BURNING from drawing that in the dark at full screen luminosity at 4am but now I’m free since that WIP was waiting for months to be finished
It tickles me that Elias seems infinitely more approachable than Lena, like if I needed the afternoon off for a doctor’s appointment I know who I’d rather be asking even if he is a eldritch all-seeing murder manager who says terrifying things like “my door is always open”.
I hate the “open floor plan” that everyone is obsessed with in houses now. I want nooks and crannies and bizarre floor plans. I don’t need to be able to see what someone is doing on the other side of the house. I want places to hide and lurk and dwell in the shadows. I am the beast who awaits in the labyrinth
Open floor plans are a relic of post-war “we can consume as much as we want with no consequences” optimism. You know why old houses are full of doors and corridors and such? Because you can trap heat in just the rooms you are using, and not have to heat the whole house (likely sending it up through your high, barely-insulated, exposed-rafter ceiling in the process).
Consign open plan housing to the dustbin along with gas guzzling boat cars and other relics of the pre-oil-crisis era. Go green, go labyrinthine. With doors.
writing kepcobi fanfic the way i see them is so fucking hilarious to me because i usually write from jacobi’s perspective. and to literally any other person kepler is either reprehensible, annoying, barely tolerable, or just straight up goofy silly. but to my fucked up jacobi with all his misplaced loyalty and his complexes, he’s like a mythical being. a terrible ruler on a twisted bloody pedestal at which jacobi worships like a dog. and it’s so goddamn funny
