[Small stones aligned on a river that splits their shared hopes and dreams, separated by a current that doesn't allow them to pass, just not yet. Just frustratingly beyond reach of the next jump, but they can see it on the other side. Calm nights of snuggling in bed and dreaming about what's for lunch tomorrow instead of worrying if they're going to wake up in a city on fire, or travels by metro to the next place he's been dying to show Dave instead of plummeting down into the unknown via glass sphere cannons. A ramen shop here, a smaller step closer to that happiness of giving up being the hero and giving in to them being... themselves. Yeah, Ryuji might have been lined up to punch god in the face, might have had to carry a Davesport backpack through a paralysis spell, or might have had to break a glass snowglobe encasing an entire town. But that's not really what excites him. He's had 2 years of bulking into the hero roll, and Dave's had... well, a lot longer than that. If anything, he wants to hang Reaper up by the mantle and forget it even exists and the longer they continue working for the Bureau of Balance, the more he desperately clings to whatever that next stepping stone looks like.
Today, it's a ramen shop.
Well, a ramen shop and a brief, butterfly shuffle of wings against his arm, and it's always just amazing how much Dave can center him by one little gesture. Suffice it to say that Dave's had the most impact in his life than any other person has in all of his own existence. He hungrily accepts the affection like it's never quite enough, and he has to remember that he can't be too greedy for it all the time. Or maybe he can, but there's ramen and ginger to eat and holy shit, that's a lot of ginger, pal.]
Mmn. You're the best player 2 anyone could ask for.
[And when he returns to his own bowl, he's lifting it up to forgo that goddamn spoon- take out the middle man in this delivery service and save on shipping costs. It's going right down his throat, too hot or not. It's... just amazing. He can't pace himself; he's always been awful at not indulging himself.
With a satisfied hum of approval, he sets it down, a tired sort of lean backwards to accompany the valiant effort it took to vore half the broth in about a second, and watches the coziness of the room mingle with the warmth in his tummy. This is about as happy as Ryuji gets. Maybe in their year+ of knowing each other, it slinks upward into the top five.]
Yeah. And the best places are never the super fancy types'a joints where you have white tablecloths and all that shit. It's always these tiny mom and pop shops that barely have more than a table or two and they've makin' the shit for like, 50 years. [He looks up at the chef and smiles in his usually rowdy fashion.] No offense, sir. I know there's like a 0% chance you know how long I've wanted a good bowl of ramen, but I gotta say, this is one of the best bowls I've ever had.
[Cue confusion on the person behind the bar's face. There are other places out there that serve noodles in broth like this? The world feels so much bigger when you don't have a smartphone with thousands of zelp reviews to guide your gastrodesires. The good brotsunes over there snicker.]
I wonder if there are any, like. Places like this back on Earth. I mean, port towns and all. They're kind neat, aren't they?
[he thinks he's so goddamn funny, leaning forward on an elbow, cheek properly smushed in his hand as he watches with equal blends of amusement and just straight up fondness as Ryuji puts competitive eaters to shame with his ramen vore. that's a maneuver that's been perfected over the years; he can tell. it's not that he isn't interested in his ginger ramen, it's just that he's so fucking enamored with Ryuji, watching him enjoy himself in his element of baffling the owner of this mom-and-pop establishment, that it's a bit tough to focus on anything else.]
[god, what he wouldn't give to finally ditch his own hero cape, too — he's only been trying to do that for the past four years. but, sitting here, knowing he could invoke a mini winning-the-lottery event for Ryuji just by buying him dinner, by letting him indulge on something he's been missing for a while, there's something else, too. it's more like ... he's trying harder to shove aside that terror he's going to fuck up, something that he's struggled with for so long; willingly pulling the cape back on, because even if he's been kind of slacking on the training front, it's impossible to imagine that he wouldn't fly right into the thick of the fray if Ryuji needed him to. straight up fly at the final boss if it were necessary. because there's a river to a happy ending that still needs forging. stones to traverse. as long as they can have brief moments like this, as long as they've got each other's sides to return to, Dave is willing to keep fighting.]
[catching himself, the way he's kind of smiling at his own thoughts, he wonders when exactly he was even rewired to be this sappy. not that it matters. not that he minds. he just still sort of surprises himself with it.]
But yeah, I'd guess so. Houston's pretty close to the coast, but not right there on the gulf. But there are probably port towns, even if the only thing they're shipping nowadays is giant fuckoff cruises.
[Dave finally remembers he has a bowl of ramen and deftly nudges some excess ginger away so he can eat.]
Y'know my friend Jade? She used to live on this huge jungle island in the middle of the Atlantic.
[It's one of those moments where someone is just smiling at you and you notice it, but you're chill enough with it that it just gets a little on the contagious side and a guy like Ryuji who knows you can't smile and eat ramen without a red lobster bib is stuck there feeling stupidly happy over the sight of it.
And he has to take a moment to pull into the reality of the moment, because he can't let this one slide.]
You're such a dork.
[He embraces it, though. Hey, he was the one a few minutes ago idealizing old ramen shops back home and thinking about the Future again. The one where they fuck off to do their own thing for about as long as eternity lets them. Don't think for a second, though, that he doesn't see Dave pushing away the ginger.
He looks like he needs some more in there, honestly, so he reaches over to pull the container closer. Not threateningly. Suggestively? Yeah, that sounds about right.
Cruises, huh? Ryuji's ever only been on one and the service was awful. And the ship kind of burnt down. And he was a mouse for a while?
He should tell Dave about the time he was a mouse.]
Sounds kinda reclusive. Or at least one helluva way to live quietly. Hey. How the hell do you get food delivered out to the middle of the Atlantic? What if you want milk, do you gotta, like, import the cow and then squeeze it outta it?
[Ryuji's imagining what life in basically Stardew Valley would look like. But that's his minor attention deficit inclination and he has to reel back to the part where Dave was talking about Jade to begin with.]
[it's said with all the inflection of someone who's been scandalized, of someone tilted over being called a dork, but with none of the sharpness. it's not even, like. proto-scandalized. it's pretty much the tone of someone getting called out, and acknowledging it, in that roundabout way he defaults to when telling a joke.]
[his eyes are following Ryuji's hands, though, as he appears to be inching forward to add a little more ginger to the mix. — a lot more ginger. Dave's never had ramen like this before, but he has learned over his many years of sampling burritos that it is possible to use too much cheese. ginger's probably no different.]
[this seems a bit perilous.]
I think she grew most of her food, like. Farmvilling it up before Farmville was cool. [Dave, Farmville was never cool.]
Dunno about milk, though. I sent her stuff occasionally, but it always took fuckin' forever to get to her.
[this kind of brings up some rotten memories. the way they'd argued before everything went to utter, glitchy shit. the whole grimbark shtick. the way Jade became a living (dead) Wizard of Oz reference.]
[but if Ryuji can have faith that he's going to give Ann Takamaki back the money he owes her, then ... he can at least try to have faith that there will eventually something more than a dead timeline at the point he left behind.]
You'd probably get a kick out of her, though. Really fucking funny, and good with a guitar.
[He's really, really lucky that Dave manages to mention something that's so old in terms of internet morphology that he has no idea what's going on. Want to feel old? Ryuji was about 8 when that game came out.]
What the hell is farmville? Is it like a neopet?
[That's about as close to a dunk that he's going to get, and it's not even that intentional. But he does know one thing. Neopets were never cool. He's onto you, Dave. He can smell a bad internet meme a mile away.]
Well... yeah, that makes sense. Can't really get to an island in the middle of nowhere. That postman must'a been so goddamn tilt delivering a boatload of spam mail to an island out in the sea.
[Can you even imagine how many credit card offers from Discover were probably waiting for her once she turned 18? The thought of that alone is enough to give this narrator the shivers.
But it's true. Ryuji has faith that on the other end of this, both their sets of friends are going to have to end up meeting. Who's to say it's impossible? They were both plucked out of their respective stories and flung into a space station. He's given up believing anything is truly impossible, and that's not even covering the fact that he once beat a literal painting that spat black gooey shit at everyone and tried to set them on fire.
Yeah.]
Maybe I'll ask her to teach me some chords. I've always wanted to be that really sappy asshole who ends up serenading the love of his life with a guitar. I know it kinda leads to douchebag status, but as far as sappy romance movies go, that one seems actually kinda cool.
You seriously don't know what Farmville is? It's like. A vine, but instead of recording memes for the internet you're growing actual vines. On a computer.
On Facebook.
[ ]
I don't care if you're a douchebag though, I wanna hear what you come up with. Actually — now that you've got me thinking about it, I should write a rap.
[The look that he gives Dave is obviously one of "what's a Facebook?"
He opens his mouth to correct him when he figures out what he was incorrectly calling it. But that would kind of ruin the mood, wouldn't it? He can almost sense Dave's rage at the thought of hearing "Headstory," so he keeps it in. That's rough for a Sakamoto. Blurting out the first thing that comes to his mind is practically an olympic knitting sport in this lineage.]
Like what? Right now? You're gonna lay down the sick beats and I'll give you the chorus?
[This is a recipe for fuckin' DISASTER.
Not to mention Dave is up in here with his MUSIC(lightning bolt emoji)BAND tshirt, trying to infiltrate the cool kid lingo of the zeitgeist.]
Can you even handle these acoustics? Man, I don't think you're ready.
[but Dave, coolkid as he never was, is unperturbed by what sounds like a little bit of smack talk.]
See, you say shit like that and I've got no choice but to read it as a challenge. A dead simple one, honestly, I've got all kinda words to describe you.
[Yeah, it's kind of a towel throw down challenge, only enunciated by the way he slams the empty bowl of ramen down on the fine oak counter. This kid must really fucking love this food. And he does. Lyrabar must be protected so that they can spend their downtime coming here and chowing down on all the noods.
And he's heard Dave rap before. It's kind of hard to miss when your boyfriend is living on the Hope filled fever dreams of Obama dropping the sickest beat of Chicago inspired rap this side of the world has ever heard. Yeah, he's seen some of the good stuff first hand. And yet- as much of a challenge as it is, as the bowl is pushed aside, the pure admiration in his eyes is a sort of palpable, excitably puppy state.
Dave Strider never ceases to amaze him.]
Hey. If you're the Lennon of rap, does that make me the Yoko Ono of rock & roll?
[He's so dumb.]
But yeah, I'd like to hear some of that. All of that, actually. That thing right there.
[Dave seems to think on both of those thoughts for a few seconds, before he blurts out something that's .... well, it's kind of dumb. but it's sincere all the same, with a tiny bit of fluster dropped on in as a garnish.]
Kinda. 'Cept you're better looking than Yoko Ono.
[they're getting really good at this sort of thing, having had nearly a year to perfect the way they talk about each other, but apparently Dave is still a bit weak to how he instinctively chooses to describe Ryuji. ears mildly steaming, he opts to stuff his mouth with some ramen and let that sentence he just said hang there for a little while.]
You gotta give me some time to put something together, though. I'm not saying I can't get into a sick flow on a whim if the situation demands — I'm just sayin' if I'm gonna let you hear all that, it needs more than a few seconds' worth of thought.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Today, it's a ramen shop.
Well, a ramen shop and a brief, butterfly shuffle of wings against his arm, and it's always just amazing how much Dave can center him by one little gesture. Suffice it to say that Dave's had the most impact in his life than any other person has in all of his own existence. He hungrily accepts the affection like it's never quite enough, and he has to remember that he can't be too greedy for it all the time. Or maybe he can, but there's ramen and ginger to eat and holy shit, that's a lot of ginger, pal.]
Mmn. You're the best player 2 anyone could ask for.
[And when he returns to his own bowl, he's lifting it up to forgo that goddamn spoon- take out the middle man in this delivery service and save on shipping costs. It's going right down his throat, too hot or not. It's... just amazing. He can't pace himself; he's always been awful at not indulging himself.
With a satisfied hum of approval, he sets it down, a tired sort of lean backwards to accompany the valiant effort it took to vore half the broth in about a second, and watches the coziness of the room mingle with the warmth in his tummy. This is about as happy as Ryuji gets. Maybe in their year+ of knowing each other, it slinks upward into the top five.]
Yeah. And the best places are never the super fancy types'a joints where you have white tablecloths and all that shit. It's always these tiny mom and pop shops that barely have more than a table or two and they've makin' the shit for like, 50 years. [He looks up at the chef and smiles in his usually rowdy fashion.] No offense, sir. I know there's like a 0% chance you know how long I've wanted a good bowl of ramen, but I gotta say, this is one of the best bowls I've ever had.
[Cue confusion on the person behind the bar's face. There are other places out there that serve noodles in broth like this? The world feels so much bigger when you don't have a smartphone with thousands of zelp reviews to guide your gastrodesires. The good brotsunes over there snicker.]
I wonder if there are any, like. Places like this back on Earth. I mean, port towns and all. They're kind neat, aren't they?
no subject
[he thinks he's so goddamn funny, leaning forward on an elbow, cheek properly smushed in his hand as he watches with equal blends of amusement and just straight up fondness as Ryuji puts competitive eaters to shame with his ramen vore. that's a maneuver that's been perfected over the years; he can tell. it's not that he isn't interested in his ginger ramen, it's just that he's so fucking enamored with Ryuji, watching him enjoy himself in his element of baffling the owner of this mom-and-pop establishment, that it's a bit tough to focus on anything else.]
[god, what he wouldn't give to finally ditch his own hero cape, too — he's only been trying to do that for the past four years. but, sitting here, knowing he could invoke a mini winning-the-lottery event for Ryuji just by buying him dinner, by letting him indulge on something he's been missing for a while, there's something else, too. it's more like ... he's trying harder to shove aside that terror he's going to fuck up, something that he's struggled with for so long; willingly pulling the cape back on, because even if he's been kind of slacking on the training front, it's impossible to imagine that he wouldn't fly right into the thick of the fray if Ryuji needed him to. straight up fly at the final boss if it were necessary. because there's a river to a happy ending that still needs forging. stones to traverse. as long as they can have brief moments like this, as long as they've got each other's sides to return to, Dave is willing to keep fighting.]
[catching himself, the way he's kind of smiling at his own thoughts, he wonders when exactly he was even rewired to be this sappy. not that it matters. not that he minds. he just still sort of surprises himself with it.]
But yeah, I'd guess so. Houston's pretty close to the coast, but not right there on the gulf. But there are probably port towns, even if the only thing they're shipping nowadays is giant fuckoff cruises.
[Dave finally remembers he has a bowl of ramen and deftly nudges some excess ginger away so he can eat.]
Y'know my friend Jade? She used to live on this huge jungle island in the middle of the Atlantic.
no subject
And he has to take a moment to pull into the reality of the moment, because he can't let this one slide.]
You're such a dork.
[He embraces it, though. Hey, he was the one a few minutes ago idealizing old ramen shops back home and thinking about the Future again. The one where they fuck off to do their own thing for about as long as eternity lets them. Don't think for a second, though, that he doesn't see Dave pushing away the ginger.
He looks like he needs some more in there, honestly, so he reaches over to pull the container closer. Not threateningly. Suggestively? Yeah, that sounds about right.
Cruises, huh? Ryuji's ever only been on one and the service was awful. And the ship kind of burnt down. And he was a mouse for a while?
He should tell Dave about the time he was a mouse.]
Sounds kinda reclusive. Or at least one helluva way to live quietly. Hey. How the hell do you get food delivered out to the middle of the Atlantic? What if you want milk, do you gotta, like, import the cow and then squeeze it outta it?
[Ryuji's imagining what life in basically Stardew Valley would look like. But that's his minor attention deficit inclination and he has to reel back to the part where Dave was talking about Jade to begin with.]
I hope I get to meet her too, one day.
no subject
[it's said with all the inflection of someone who's been scandalized, of someone tilted over being called a dork, but with none of the sharpness. it's not even, like. proto-scandalized. it's pretty much the tone of someone getting called out, and acknowledging it, in that roundabout way he defaults to when telling a joke.]
[his eyes are following Ryuji's hands, though, as he appears to be inching forward to add a little more ginger to the mix. — a lot more ginger. Dave's never had ramen like this before, but he has learned over his many years of sampling burritos that it is possible to use too much cheese. ginger's probably no different.]
[this seems a bit perilous.]
I think she grew most of her food, like. Farmvilling it up before Farmville was cool. [Dave, Farmville was never cool.]
Dunno about milk, though. I sent her stuff occasionally, but it always took fuckin' forever to get to her.
[this kind of brings up some rotten memories. the way they'd argued before everything went to utter, glitchy shit. the whole grimbark shtick. the way Jade became a living (dead) Wizard of Oz reference.]
[but if Ryuji can have faith that he's going to give Ann Takamaki back the money he owes her, then ... he can at least try to have faith that there will eventually something more than a dead timeline at the point he left behind.]
You'd probably get a kick out of her, though. Really fucking funny, and good with a guitar.
no subject
What the hell is farmville? Is it like a neopet?
[That's about as close to a dunk that he's going to get, and it's not even that intentional. But he does know one thing. Neopets were never cool. He's onto you, Dave. He can smell a bad internet meme a mile away.]
Well... yeah, that makes sense. Can't really get to an island in the middle of nowhere. That postman must'a been so goddamn tilt delivering a boatload of spam mail to an island out in the sea.
[Can you even imagine how many credit card offers from Discover were probably waiting for her once she turned 18? The thought of that alone is enough to give this narrator the shivers.
But it's true. Ryuji has faith that on the other end of this, both their sets of friends are going to have to end up meeting. Who's to say it's impossible? They were both plucked out of their respective stories and flung into a space station. He's given up believing anything is truly impossible, and that's not even covering the fact that he once beat a literal painting that spat black gooey shit at everyone and tried to set them on fire.
Yeah.]
Maybe I'll ask her to teach me some chords. I've always wanted to be that really sappy asshole who ends up serenading the love of his life with a guitar. I know it kinda leads to douchebag status, but as far as sappy romance movies go, that one seems actually kinda cool.
no subject
On Facebook.
[
I don't care if you're a douchebag though, I wanna hear what you come up with. Actually — now that you've got me thinking about it, I should write a rap.
no subject
He opens his mouth to correct him when he figures out what he was incorrectly calling it. But that would kind of ruin the mood, wouldn't it? He can almost sense Dave's rage at the thought of hearing "Headstory," so he keeps it in. That's rough for a Sakamoto. Blurting out the first thing that comes to his mind is practically an olympic knitting sport in this lineage.]
Like what? Right now? You're gonna lay down the sick beats and I'll give you the chorus?
[This is a recipe for fuckin' DISASTER.
Not to mention Dave is up in here with his MUSIC(lightning bolt emoji)BAND tshirt, trying to infiltrate the cool kid lingo of the zeitgeist.]
Can you even handle these acoustics? Man, I don't think you're ready.
no subject
[HEADSTORY!!!!!!]
[that was probably the right move, Ryuji.]
[but Dave, coolkid as he never was, is unperturbed by what sounds like a little bit of smack talk.]
See, you say shit like that and I've got no choice but to read it as a challenge. A dead simple one, honestly, I've got all kinda words to describe you.
Some of 'em even rhyme.
icon game is eleVATED
And he's heard Dave rap before. It's kind of hard to miss when your boyfriend is living on the Hope filled fever dreams of Obama dropping the sickest beat of Chicago inspired rap this side of the world has ever heard. Yeah, he's seen some of the good stuff first hand. And yet- as much of a challenge as it is, as the bowl is pushed aside, the pure admiration in his eyes is a sort of palpable, excitably puppy state.
Dave Strider never ceases to amaze him.]
Hey. If you're the Lennon of rap, does that make me the Yoko Ono of rock & roll?
[He's so dumb.]
But yeah, I'd like to hear some of that. All of that, actually. That thing right there.
RIGHT
Kinda. 'Cept you're better looking than Yoko Ono.
[they're getting really good at this sort of thing, having had nearly a year to perfect the way they talk about each other, but apparently Dave is still a bit weak to how he instinctively chooses to describe Ryuji. ears mildly steaming, he opts to stuff his mouth with some ramen and let that sentence he just said hang there for a little while.]
You gotta give me some time to put something together, though. I'm not saying I can't get into a sick flow on a whim if the situation demands — I'm just sayin' if I'm gonna let you hear all that, it needs more than a few seconds' worth of thought.