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Koby ([personal profile] kobes) wrote2024-06-09 04:14 pm

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koby




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holyposition: (deeeeep breath)

[personal profile] holyposition 2025-01-14 09:19 pm (UTC)(link)
[ And vent he does, about anything and everything, in the petty, furious way that freshly hurt people do, turning every small inconvenience or imperfection into a major grievance. Aemond not liking his chest hair was a red flag and he should have stopped the whole thing then, the only reason he’s not monogamous right now is to use this place to figure out who he is and what he wants and who he is is an idiot, apparently – so on, and so forth, past his first glass and deep into his second by the time he stops to take a breath and feels Koby before he feels him, pressing in on him with the love and comfort they’ve long shared.

Tim takes a deep, slow breath, teeth clenched. He doesn’t want to cry, that boy doesn't deserve his tears, but Koby’s right. He is hurt, just like everyone said he would be, after he assured everyone that everything would be just fine. He was hurt, disregarded, taken for granted. It tears at wounds he thought were healing, pops the stitches so his guts can spill all over Koby’s floor once again.

He downs the rest of the glass and sets it down on the table, shaking his head. ]


I’d deserve it.

[ Even if it’s cruel. Maybe he needs that bruise to press on, in case he ever tries something so stupid again. ]

I’m scared I messed up everything.

[ With Alicent. With Aemond maybe, showing too much softness, forcing him to recoil. He could have spent those awful days of grieving with Hawk, or with Koby, who would welcome his presence and take comfort from it. Would have, could have, should have. ]
holyposition: (don't talk to strangers)

[personal profile] holyposition 2025-01-15 05:14 pm (UTC)(link)
[ He couldn’t turn it off, even if he tried. Maybe in this one instance, for this one person, Tim can admit that he alone can’t offer him redemption, that no amount of patience and grace is going to save him if he doesn’t want it for himself. You can lead a dragon to water, but you can’t make him drink. He'll see the best in him, locked up with a key he doesn’t have.

These things happen. How weak would he be, to let this taint his relationship with anyone else, to blind him to the good in other people? To let some spoiled prince hold that kind of power over him? Aemond’s already said he doesn’t want it anymore. ]


I know. [ Downing what’s left in his glass, and setting it empty on the bedside table. ] And well put. You’re smart. My favorite nerd in the world.

[ Smiling, even as he sniffles and wipes at his eyes. Small blessings, that he’d left his glasses at Alicent’s when she roughed him up, so they’re not fogging up now. Perhaps he’s starting to feel it now, how quickly he’s taken those drinks to the dome. ]

I don’t want to cry. I want to throw things.

[ He won’t do it in Koby’s room, but. Let the record show. ]

You too. [ reaching for a bottle to fill up Koby’s glass. ] It’s pathetic if I’m drinking alone.
holyposition: (water u doin)

[personal profile] holyposition 2025-01-20 09:59 pm (UTC)(link)
[ His lip wobbles as he nods – Koby's right. Tim has all those things in him, and nobody sees it or acknowledges it because he chooses kindness anyway. It’s what drew him to Aemond to begin with, that he saw it and appreciated it, that he didn’t think he had to be just one thing or another – at least at first. As time went on and things got hard, he started underestimating him too, until his regard for him fell so low, and so quickly, that he could be dismissed and taken out with the trash.

Koby’s disregarded in the same way, he thinks. It's good to have that understanding, to feel known in their shared grievances, but it also means he doesn’t seek his affirmation, at least not in this. In the crying, complaining, what Quentin lovingly referred to as fussing hen behavior, yes. Koby is perfect. ]


It has? [ that almost never means anything good. Especially here, no news is good news. Tim looks down into his own glass, embarrassed. He didn’t even ask Koby how his day was, he just started ranting and raving. Selfish. ] What’s going on?
holyposition: (lips pursed. very pursed.)

[personal profile] holyposition 2025-01-23 06:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh.

[ Oh. Tim deflates, the anger in his dissipating with that long exhale, and finally stops. He stops the pacing and the ranting, goes quiet and still except to sit down next to Koby and put his arm around his shoulders. ]

I’m so sorry, Koby. [ Quietly, guiltily. On and on about his own self-inflicted wounds, when there’s a higher power in charge of this place, taking people away on a whim with no foreshadowing, nothing anyone could have done to avoid this outcome. The departures have yet to hit him too closely, but there’s an awareness in the back of his mind that it could happen, that he could wake up one day and be without Hawk, without Koby or Quentin or any of the other people that make this place bearable. ] I know what they mean to you.

[ Luffy especially. ]

Are they gonna be okay?

[ Back home, or in their final, God-given resting place. A question he’s not sure will ever be answered to his satisfaction. ]
holyposition: (so heartfelt all singing)

[personal profile] holyposition 2025-01-28 07:57 pm (UTC)(link)
[ every day, two ideas wage war within him, that this is some version of purgatory that none could have predicted, and their actions here will determine where they end up when they mysteriously disappear, or that they will eventually go home, and remember all that happened while they were here. Nothing else makes sense, nothing else is bearable. To go home exactly where he’d left off, fleeing from Hawk to join the military, with no idea how evil this war will get or that things can and will be better, it isn’t something that he can accept. Werewolves and vampires and dragons and witches, sure, the meaninglessness of anything but those two options would gut him worse than any monster. Tim has to be sure, has to have that faith.

He knows that Koby feels differently. ]


You always say that. As if you don’t have a choice. But you always have a choice. 

[ He used to say the same thing to a certain prince who doesn't deserve the tears shed over him today. Maybe Koby will actually listen. ]

The Marines can't make you hate good people. I know you, and I don't even think you can.
holyposition: (you can't hold me AND make me sad)

[personal profile] holyposition 2025-01-30 04:30 pm (UTC)(link)
It’s like... [ Tim sighs, taking another drink from his glass, noticing the edges of the world start to blur and in no mood to fight it. ] It’s like all those history books we’ve been reading, right? No one person can force change, even the leaders. Abraham Lincoln had help. You’ll find yours and I’ll find mine. People know when things are wrong, they just need someone to give them the hope to do something about it.

[ An optimism he didn’t always have, or couldn’t apply to his own troubles. The inherent goodness of other people has always been clear to him, but his own? He tried and tried, but it took years to see the forces holding him down as something that even could be struggled against, rather than a natural consequence of his own wrongness. He accepted his lot in life of loneliness and perversion, until he met Hawk, and then accepted that as something he would always have to hide. This place has shown him otherwise. Not just in the history books where he can track the changes, but seeing so many people step up and offer help to complete strangers from other worlds when everything around them is difficult, confusing, or dangerous. How can it not give him hope?

Tim lays his free hand on Koby's head, stroking his fingers through pink hair, the shell of his ear. ]


Maybe it’s the opposite. We all sin, it doesn’t make us evil. Good people aren’t perfect and bad people weren’t always that way.
holyposition: (God loves you)

[personal profile] holyposition 2025-02-03 04:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you.

[ Though it almost sounds like a testament to his stubbornness, it sounds nice. Heartening, that to some people (good people, who are capable of love and reliable enough to lean on) would see him not like the dirt under their shoe, but like the sun. Ever-present, nearly inconceivable in the size of his warmth, a comfort to stretch out under after the cold. It’s how he wants to be, the sort of presence that he’s honored to offer.

To be the sun, one must believe in life. Why dedicate oneself to sustaining it, otherwise? ]


I don’t think so. They were all kids once. They were all innocent until they chose not to be. They could choose again, if they wanted.

[ Will they? Unlikely, even he’s not so optimistic as to believe that Alvida will wake up tomorrow morning and decide to live a clean, honest life. But she could. Come to God with pure contrition, and He will offer his redemption. ]
holyposition: (missed one hehe)

[personal profile] holyposition 2025-02-04 05:27 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Tim is quiet, thoughtful for a moment, before he presses a kiss to the pink crown of Koby’s head and untangles himself just enough to reach again for the bottle. He tops them both off, and puts it back down on the table with a thud, louder than he means it to be in his tipsy clumsiness. ]

I think... [ He thinks. Drinks. ] God always forgives, if you’re really sorry. But I’m not God. And you’re not God. We’re just men. I don’t have to forgive Aemond.

[ A figure closer to his heart and mind nowadays than McCarthy, and in some ways, less redeemable. His goals were noble, once. He'd done dark things to get there, and started weaponizing and jeopardizing the mission for his own gain, but there was something worthwhile in it, when he began. What is Aemond doing, besides jerking around anyone willing to throw him a rope? ]

And you don’t have to forgive Alvida. Doesn’t mean you’re not a good guy.