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Ram Easthallow (bifoliate) wrote in heureuxlake,
@ 2024-07-20 21:18:00

Entry tags:

Δ complete, Δ threads, → joe russo, → ram easthallow, → rick allen, ∞ 2000: 07, ◦ community center

RP: Ram and Joe's first date
Who: Ram Easthallow, Joe Russo, bonus cameo from Rick Allen.
What: First date!
When: Saturday 17th July.
Where: Chez Monosyllables, then Heureux Lake Community Center, then back again.
Warnings: NSFW (Sex).
Completion Status: Complete.

Sip and paint or not, Ram was obviously going to dress up for his first date with Joe. At some point fairly soon, he was going to run out of clothes Joe hadn't seen, but for this special occasion he'd found a dark shirt splashed with bright aqua leaves. He'd been to his barber, meaning his hair was short enough that he could get away without quiffing it up. But was that better? Pot of all natural hair clay in hand, Ram stared at the bathroom mirror, eyebrows drawn down in his concentrated attempt to make a decision. Except, there was no way he could go with 'both' for this.

After entirely too long waiting for inspiration or fate to provide him with an answer, he drifted across the landing to the door of Rick's bedroom. It was an extremely familiar and yet different sensation. Not so very long ago, Ram had semi-regularly appeared at Rick's door offering blowjobs when he happened to be bored, but not since Joe. The door was ajar, so Ram pushed it further open to stand where Rick could see the full (if incomplete) effect. "Hair like this, or up?"

Whether he wanted to admit it or not, Rick was brooding. He'd been in a less than pleasant mood for nearly twenty-four hours, any calm or peace that had come from the talk he'd had with Lysette melting away with the messages from his father. The threat had been made clear, and he knew better than to think the demon was bluffing. Would he really go as far as he'd said? Rick didn't think so. As powerful as his father thought he was, this little community had so much more. He just had to figure out how to tap into it, how to unite everyone without ostracising himself in the process.

A part of him had thought about just walking away. Because was it worth it to stick around? If he left, it could lure the demon away, but that would just be bringing the threat to someone else's door, and he couldn't abide that, either. Pulled from his musing when his bedroom door opened, the smile Rick gave his housemate was both warm and more muted than he might usually give Ram. He adored the little mote, though, even if he had never gotten around to taking him to bed before he'd gone and found himself True Love™️. He really couldn't begrudge him for it, though. Love looked good on the vibrant young man.

And that, Rick realized, was why he was staying, why he would stand up to his father and fight for the people that were quickly becoming his community in a way he'd never really integrated anywhere before. Sliding off his bed, Rick padded over barefoot and wearing just his boxers, utterly unselfconscious. Grabbing the top of the open door, Rick leaned against it, his lips stretching in a slow smirk. "My, my, don't you look so pretty," he said, wiggling his eyebrows at the other man. "But hmm, like this is good," he said decisively, reaching out to ruffle Ram's hair playfully.

The smile Ram returned was just as warm, but certainly not muted at all. As usual, the compliment brought a rosy warmth into his cheeks, dark lashes sweeping down to contrast against the flush. He vividly remembered Rick looking down at him, murmuring about how pretty Ram was with lips wrapped around Rick's cock. His stomach gave an interested lurch south, but an equally vivid memory played out simultaneously: Joe unconsciously voicing how pretty Ram would be for him. Ram knew who his prettiness was for tonight, and he looked up to meet Rick's eyes with an unapologetic, unrepentant smirk. "Gotta look my best for my first date with Joe," he explained.

Laughingly, he tried (and mostly failed) to bat Rick's hand away from its ruffling. Sex-tousled was not the look he was going for! Not until later, when it had been Joe's fingers raking through his hair. "You entertaining at home tonight?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at Rick's bare everything (or nearly everything). It was unusual for Rick not to be either working or out on a Saturday evening.

"But of course," Rick returned with a soft chuckle. He certainly approved of the path Ram and Joe had taken so far, and not just because of the jolts he'd enjoyed from being in the same house as them. But he'd stayed away, given his housemate the space to enjoy the new budding relationship without him meddling.

Raising an eyebrow at the question, Rick debated deflecting it entirely, but he just didn't have it in him to be that disingenuous. "Nah, I'm brooding tonight. Clearly I've spent too much time around Cris," he joked. He had absolutely no intention of telling Ram about the threat of his father, not right before a date.

As his own joke indicated, Rick was not the brooding housemate, and Ram narrowed his eyes up at him for a moment. However, the benefit of being the baby of the house (by over a century, not that Ram knew that for sure) was that he was thoroughly not responsible for anyone's emotional needs but his own. "Okay," he accepted, "but don't brood too long. If you're still in a funk on Monday, I'm coming to kick you out of it."

Just because he wasn't responsible for it, didn't mean Ram didn't want to help.

Some of the shadows in Rick's eyes relaxed a bit at Ram's response. "Deal," he agreed easily. If he was still in a funk come Monday, he would want someone to come kick his ass. His grin morphed into a somewhat mischievous smirk. "Go on now, go finish getting prettied up for your hunky soldier!" he insisted, shooing him with his free hand, and not only because he really enjoyed the view of Ram walking away.

It was an order Ram was only too happy to follow, butterflies crowding the space within his ribs as he thought of Joe coming to pick him up. Ram hadn't been on a date since high school, and though there were no nerves about whether it would go well, there was still a giddiness that made him feel practically teenage again. He fixed his hair, then headed out to the garden with his pruning shears. After first confiding all of his excitement to the flowers, he'd picked the one he intended for Joe and carried it back to the house with him to get a vase ready for the flowers Joe had promised him.

His humming - a bizarre medley that was one third London Fire, one third Rat Pack and one third Morwen's garden song of summer - was interrupted by the doorbell. Palming the flower so it wasn't immediately visible, Ram was grinning even before he opened the door.

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bifoliate
2024-07-25 07:23 pm UTC (link)

Ram couldn't fully explain his surprise to himself, let alone to Joe. He spent a few minutes trying to line words up in his brain that came close, but as kept happening to him lately, everything he could think of was more an image than a sentence. "I just can't get over... you. It's been a month, but it still feels as magical as it did the first night." The joy and wonder in Ram's expression made it clear it wasn't a complaint. He had no idea whether it was going to keep feeling like this forever, but he was happy to enjoy every minute of it, just as Joe had said. "What's your favourite animated movie, then?" he asked, after nodding to confirm that the one he was thinking of was also. A good pick for two artists, he couldn't help but think.

Joe's respect and admiration for working animals shone through in every word, and Ram suddenly had a memory of one of his childhood friend enthusing to him about retired police horses. "That's a thing we could do," he suggested. "Go see retired working horses. I don't know about riding them, but petting them and feeding them bits of apple?" At least, that was what he remembered his friend telling him. As disinclined as Ram was towards research, he would definitely look up places they could go if it would bring more of that light into Joe's eyes.

With a smile that was both amused and rueful, Ram offered, "Sorry. I could have saved that for when you weren't painting." His response to the raised eyebrows was a slight shrug. "There's not really an explanation for why." Not a good one, anyway. Did that mean Ram should've been happy to offer to change it? Maybe, but he was a little selfishly glad that Joe wasn't asking him to. "You'll love Jani," he promised easily. "She promised to protect me from a dragon, how could you not?" What Joe and Eric would make of each other, on the other hand, Ram had no idea.

"I won't ask what your type is. Was? Before me, I mean. But only because we're on a date." Ram truly did want to know everything about Joe, but it could wait. He chuckled. "I'm so telling him you called him mysterious. He worries we think it's rude, that he doesn't spend more time socialising. I've told him it's not!" Maybe hearing 'mysterious' rather than 'rude' from someone who hadn't even met him might help Cris realise it wasn't a bad thing.

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notalongtime
2024-07-25 08:22 pm UTC (link)

Magical was really the only word for it. Sometimes Joe thought he could still feel that first nearly-chaste kiss on his lips and that incredible, dawning sensation that something vast and uncharted had just opened up in front of him. He wasn't used to the future having positive possibilities for him. Ram's joy was reflected in his own expression and Joe shook his head, amazed by what the universe had given him. "See, that's a hard one," he said, not letting himself get lost in the golden glow of Ram's smile. "There's kind of two? Robin Hood. And the second one is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I know it's only partly animated but that's why it's so good." Animation was just so tied to childhood memories that it took Joe back to a less complicated time when the only curses he knew about were bad words his mom would scold him for using.

As Joe added more shadows to his painting, mostly failing to capture the evening light, he wondered if there was ever any chance that Ram would ever fall afoul of a dragon.

"You can ask." Ram already knew that he was the first man Joe had even kissed, so Joe knew he had to be curious. "You're my type." He couldn't really look at Ram as he spoke, though, eyes fixed on his canvas. "And women. So I don't really know what that makes me." Joe glanced at Ram, his faith that fate moved people to where they were supposed to be unwavering. Perhaps that was one reason why he had been so open to everything this new relationship had to offer. "You can tell him whatever you want," Joe said, amused. He didn't think Ram's housemate was all that interested in meeting Ram's boyfriend.

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bifoliate
2024-07-25 09:25 pm UTC (link)

Watching the mirrored amazement in Joe's expression, Ram decided words were overrated, convinced he could feel what Joe felt just by looking at him. Maybe it was just that they were feeling the same things, or maybe there was some deeper magic at play. Either way, Ram reached out to brush his fingers against the spot where Joe's temporary tattoo had been, trusting that the touch said everything. When Joe said there were two, Ram laughed. "Then we'll just have to watch both when it's your turn, obviously. I agree about Roger Rabbit. It's got the same kind of magic as Dorothy stepping out of her sepia house." Which was, Glinda or not, Ram's favourite moment of that movie.

Ram was all ready to clarify what he'd meant by the question he hadn't asked, except then Joe said he didn't know what it made him, and that seemed more significant than Ram's pointless (if genuine) curiosity about whether the women Joe liked had anything in common. Instead of blurting the first thing that came to mind, Ram managed to slow down enough to phrase the same concept more thoughtfully. "Does it need to make you anything?" Thinking back to his conversation with Fina, he found a way to put it a little more clearly. "I guess I mean... do you want there to be a word for it?" Words were important to Fina. They weren't particularly important to Ram, but maybe that was because he'd been lucky and there already existed a nice easy word for liking both men and women.

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notalongtime
2024-07-25 10:24 pm UTC (link)

Joe picked up some white paint, sighing lightly. "I don't know," he admitted with a wry smile. "Still working through my thoughts about that. There could be the perfect word out there somewhere and I just haven't heard it yet." Ram was out and proud while he was second-guessing himself about word choices when he talked to other people about Ram, even when those other people were his past lives. Maybe this was a little deep for their first date but Joe felt safe enough with Ram to even bring it up in the first place. "But I do know one thing it makes me. It — you make me very happy." He was sure Ram had no cause to doubt that but Joe wanted to say it anyway.

He peeked over at Ram's painting. "Okay, yours is a lot more creative than mine." Joe had just painted a view of the lake that he could see but Ram had created his own colorful world view, a contrast between their two approaches that was far too amusing. "You know," he teased, "you should make art for a living."

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bifoliate
2024-07-25 10:55 pm UTC (link)

"I'm not sure there are perfect words when it comes to us." If there were, Ram was certainly failing to find them, resorting to rambling and imagery. Of course, then he remembered the way Joe's voice had sounded calling him gattino and he had to rapidly reconsider that statement. "You've found three perfect nicknames for me, so if anyone's going to find the perfect word, it might have to be you." Ram had yet to find even one nickname that felt right for his Joe. Even so, he pursed his lips, willing to try. "Heteramsexual?" He was definitely teasing, because if Joe didn't like 'Jam', he couldn't imagine that would work for him. Letting his expression grow more serious, he thought about the Kinsey scale, but if Ram couldn't remember how high the numbers went up to, and whether zero was straight or gay, nobody Joe might need to talk to about it was going to have a clue. "It's a number, not a word, but '99.9 per cent straight'? I'll be your 0.1 exception."

The serious expression vanished from his eyes, melting into adoration as Joe said Ram made him happy. He knew, but hearing it out loud made kissing Joe absolutely imperative. Ram's free hand stole up to cup Joe's jaw, drawing him in for a chaste kiss that left Ram smiling against Joe's lips again. "I don't mind whether you have a word for it," he said. If Joe wanted a word, then they would find one, but purely for himself, Ram had no preference. "To me, you're just Joe. I know you're not hiding me. If you want to just let people see us together and draw their own conclusions -" He shrugged.

Ram laughed, accepting even the completely non-physical compliment with slightly pink cheeks. "I do have my muse sitting right here," he pointed out, thumb smoothing over Joe's jaw a final time before he pulled away. He'd been sketching and colouring the images Joe filled his head with for a month now, but he didn't seem to be running out. He looked critically at the painting, somewhat lopsided from the fact that Ram hadn't wanted to move away from Joe. "You can have it," he offered. "It's supposed to be what you'd see if you were lying looking up a the sky." Chuckling, he added, "In a garden where the gardener only planted things on the right."

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notalongtime
2024-07-26 01:15 pm UTC (link)

"You are absolutely my exception," Joe agreed, having already decided that for himself. Maybe Ram was right and there didn't need to be any kind of coming out to distinguish what he was or wasn't. People would probably make assumptions either way, though it was hard for him to even guess what sort of reaction his family might have to this relationship. He couldn't imagine outright opposition or being disowned but there were sure to be questions and some disapproval, maybe lamentations about grandchildren. Joe would cross that bridge when he came to it and he intended to take the long route getting there.

Joe grinned at the thought of being Ram's muse. "I'd love to keep it," he said warmly, not caring a jot if the composition was lopsided or perfectly symmetrical. "I feel like I've made the lake look like a muddy pond." His rendition of the lake didn't quite capture the real colors, everything almost sepia toned despite not using any particularly warm paints.

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bifoliate
2024-07-26 03:06 pm UTC (link)

Ram's smile was warm and without reservation. "I like that." Some people might find it unsettling, might not trust it if they were the only person of their gender that their partner was attracted to, but Ram was used to being an exception to rules. A human, with just a little bit of magic, a witch's son, though only by adoption. Little in his life was completely standard, so why should his relationship be? If Joe had wanted to explore things with other men, Ram had been prepared to help support that. If Ram was Joe's exception then all that exploration would just have to happen between the two of them, and Ram couldn't imagine he'd get tired of that anytime soon. Or anytime ever.

Shaking his head, Ram 'tssk'ed his tongue against his teeth. "It's not muddy," he objected, well aware that he was just as biased when it came to Joe's art as he was when it came to Joe's everything else. "It's golden, like something magical is just about to happen. Or just has." Either way, Ram liked the warmth of it, which reminded him of minor chords, but in a good way. "You just need a little shooting star, or something, to really seal the effect," he teased. They hadn't done much sipping with their painting, too caught up in talking to each other, but glancing at the temporary bar, Ram didn't feel terribly inclined to go line up to fix that. "Is it too early to suggest that if we're nearly done, you could start thinking about taking me home?" Ram asked, raising an eyebrow. This was supposed to be Joe's date, after all, it shouldn't just be about what Ram wanted.

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notalongtime
2024-07-26 07:03 pm UTC (link)

Golden. That was exactly how Ram made Joe feel, as if it was ichor that was flowing in his veins and not a curse. "A shooting star..." Joe tipped his head, trying to see if he could picture it the way that Ram envisioned. "Yeah, that could work." He reached for a smaller brush, dipping it into the white paint. Joe's touch was light as he stroked it across the canvas, a bright streak across the painted sky.

He looked at Ram, lips twitching as he tried not to smirk. It never ceased to amaze him how much Ram wanted to be with him, a soldier who still felt like such a beginner at all this. "You know, I think I did promise something about a goodnight kiss," he joked, knowing very well tonight's date wouldn't end with just a kiss. "I don't mind heading out soon." He gestured at Ram's painting. "Unless you want to finish the rest of your garden?" Joe knew that he had just given Ram a choice - staying or leaving - but this was one time that both wasn't an option.

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bifoliate
2024-07-26 07:54 pm UTC (link)

Watching Joe implement his suggestion, Ram felt as if something in his heart unlocked, reminding him of their agreement that they'd been broken open that first night. "It's perfect." Their paintings were very different, Ram's all bright sunshine and rainbow butterflies, Joe's golden and enchanted, but as with so many things, Ram loved both those feelings. "We should definitely get a picture of them together before we separate them." He assumed, since he was giving his to Joe, Joe might give his to Ram so they could each still have a memento.

"It was heavily implied," Ram agreed, nodding seriously as if without that implication he wouldn't dream of expecting kisses. He looked at his painting, tipping his head and smiling a little crookedly. He'd never been a perfectionist when it came to art he did for fun. (Art he did for work was different, because that was going on someone's body permanently.) "No, I think I kind of like it. You'll look at it and always remember that I couldn't tear myself away from you to go finish the other side." Ram supposed he could just have turned the canvas upside down and worked on it that way, but when the choice was between painting or going home with Joe, was it really surprising he found it very easy to pick?

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