inquisitor max trevelyan (housetrevelyan) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-01-12 15:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | ₴ inactive: max trevelyan, ₴ inactive: richie tozier (2) |
That hadn’t been the intention - in his mind, he’d managed fondant-piped murals on the walls and perfect stables with hay of spun sugar, and a throne made out of-- marzipan? Was that do-able? But in actuality, the Inquisitor found himself holding up an unwieldy chunk of gingerbread ceiling as it detached from its flying buttress, icing running everywhere, buttress almost literally flying at this point, as Richie came in, responding to his all-caps text of “HELP I MADE A GRAVE ERROR”.
Max was having a great time. “Everything’s on fire!” he announced cheerily and he attempted to wedge the gingerbread wall back into the little groove of icing he’d created. Dear Andraste, he hoped Richie wouldn’t mind a bit of silliness - this wasn’t getting eaten by monsters or leaping off of cliffsides, but Max had never minded domestic nonsense, given that he had gotten so little of it.
The day Richie (Richie, the guy they called Trashmouth, who told jokes for a living) minded a bit of silliness - well, just assume he’d been compromised. At first he kind of panicked when he got Max’s text though because HELP I MADE A GRAVE ERROR could mean a lot of things, including him potentially realizing the grave error was deciding to date Richie. Therefore, he got a bit more details as he put on jeans and a sweater, a leather jacket thrown over that and then when it was revealed they were talking about gingerbread castles? Big fucking phew.
He used the waypoints to get to Skyhold, arriving and heading for the kitchen - in the castle the kitchen was huge, unlike anything he’d ever seen before. More than one fireplace, stone oven built into the wall, lit by the fires and burning oil lamps; there was electricity now too, but still, the obvious medieval vibe was apparent. Already he felt warmth drench him down to his toes because flames blazed cheerily - almost as cheery as the mage with an obvious gingerbread problem.
“Here, let me just - “ he chuckled, emptying the grocery bag he brought, having stuffed some emergency supplies in there. “Melt these,” he advised, handing Max a package of gummy bears. “We can use them as glue. I’ll hold your whole life together here,” he said, trying to reattach the gingerbread ceiling. His backup plan was honestly using the plastic t-rex action figure and placing it by the rubble.
Creative solution, right? Everyone would be jealous. “Honey, have you ever built a gingerbread house before?”
“What, like it’s hard?” Max had absolutely watched Legally Blonde a few days before, why did you ask? As Richie swooped in to help, Max gingerly removed his fingers from the icing quagmire, gave Richie a quick kiss behind his ear, and rinsed them off in the sink, using hot water to get the bulk of it off so that he wouldn’t get it all over the counters, the gummy bears, Richie…
Max grabbed the gummy bears in question, their weird texture mostly familiar to him by now, and dumped them in a heat proof bowl. Most might hear “melt these” and pop them over the stovetop, but Max just summoned fire in a slow, steady heat until they resembled a bowl of goo and passed them back under Richie’s nose. Observing the castle from this angle, he had to admit, things were looking pretty dire.
“I may have committed a slight miscalculation of my abilities,” he admitted, but despite the acknowledgement Max didn’t appear to be terribly chastened. “It’s a mess, but it’s my baby, so I have to consider it a work in progress. How do we use this slop again?”
That was totally a Legally Blonde reference and Richie was totally proud. Elle Woods was great but she had nothing on Max, who was completely vivacious and beautiful and Richie really, really liked him - which was why he figured he had to bring up the situation regarding Eddie eventually, especially since he now knew why Eddie was acting so weird. Also their younger alternate universe selves had dated, but still, those people weren’t them and Richie didn’t want to follow the path of a version of himself he didn’t even recognize. It was strange and prickly and he wanted this instead, a person he could jump off a cliff with but also do stupid domestic shit with, pulling out all the stops to rescue a lost gingerbread cause. Maybe even grocery shopping together, or doing laundry; he’d never had those things before with anyone.
“With a chopstick,” he said, presenting the wooden sticks that had come with an order of pho he’d gotten the other night - they’d put an extra set in his takeout bag, so, he figured they’d come in handy eventually. Like right now - he dipped a chopstick into the melted gummy bear mess (of course Max just summoned fire, it remained ever-so-hot in both the literal sense and the sudden boner sense), spreading it over the edges of the rapidly falling apart castle. “We can try caramel too, as glue, but I don’t know - we may have to just eat your baby in pieces.” Richie would do his best though. For Max.
Max remembered chopsticks - or rather he mentioned a sudden and specific obsession with watching Richie’s hands wielding chopsticks so deftly against a feast of unfamiliar-yet-delicious Chinese food one evening that he had recommended. Competence was apparently a turn-on; it had been a whole thing. So he let Richie do his thing with the gummy bear goo and attempted to do his part to support the parts that needed support, staying out of the other man’s way.
“That’s a brilliant idea,” he said, because it was, even if it didn’t work, but for now, the castle seemed to be grumbling into place, much like the real one had under Cullen, Cassandra and Josephine’s watchful eye. “I think it’s keeping things from slipping… for now, anyhow. This may have to be the quickest and most slipshod unveiling of anything ever.” Which was fine. Max was only making this to thank the residents of Skyhold for making this an easy role to step into. “The point is deliciousness, not beauty. We can’t all have both. Like you do dear.” Max flashed a smile upon using the stupid line, because he liked stupid lines, and then realized with a yelp that the stables were beginning to give as well.
Awww. Such a sweet compliment, and was that a blush on Richie’s five o’clock shadowed face? He didn’t always tend to believe that he had both deliciousness and beauty, given that his self-esteem was often in the shitter, but coming from Max? Maybe he’d at least try to believe it.
He jumped when the stables started to cave in, and Max had a yell about it - though it was kind of cute, admittedly. “Here, I’ve got it,” he laughed, spreading more gummy goo on the stable edges to try to seal the roof to the walls. It...sort of worked? However, he was running out of gummy goo and they’d have to try caramel next. Luckily, he came prepared and had a bag of soft chewy candies on their workspace as well.
“Sorry, honey - I think the horses have suffered a crappy fate,” he said, turning toward Max and planting a kiss on him. Richie was fond of that - a kiss for every time he'd held himself back in life from feeling like this, a kiss for every wasted moment in the past that wouldn't be wasted now. Every kiss was different, but he thought each happened to be perfect for what it was. They didn’t have to be deep enough for dental work either, not all the time - even the slightest press of their lips stood for so much emotion that oftentimes he didn’t have words for it.
His fingers twitched a little, letting go from where he’d been holding the stables together. “Can I, um...talk to you about something?” This Trashmouth asked ever-so-nervously.
Max’s face was screwed up to the right as he refused to give in to the stable massacre unfolding before his very eyes… but was distracted enough by the kiss that he let the little alcove where Blackwall had liked the whittle collapse unto itself, flicking his gaze back to Richie fondly, enjoying the melodrama. “Not everything can be saved,” he said gravely, and gave the sinking sidewall a gentle tap with the tip of his finger as it folded into itself.
But there was a thing suddenly fluttering to life between them; he knew it before Richie asked the question. It didn’t matter that Max wasn’t from Richie’s world; the word ‘talk’ was a loaded one in any scenario, and as much fun as he was having committing culinary sins, something about Richie’s twitchiness made him focus entirely back on the other man, looking over his shoulder as he turned on Skyhold’s delightful plumbing to get the water back to hot.
“Of course,” he said mildly, indicating with a shrug that Richie join him by the sink. Diplomacy had thankfully been something he wasn’t terrible at; Max tended to approach controversy with an even keel, despite how loose he ran his personal life. “Come over here and I’ll scrub the gummy creatures off, and you can tell me what’s on your mind.”
Richie was a little taller than his favorite mage (he was a little taller than most people, let's be real - fuckin' giant he was), but that didn't stop him from slipping his arms around Max and ducking a bit to smoosh his face against the man's shoulder, in the space between there and his neck. Just for a minute, because it pushed Richie's glasses sharply against his nose, but he needed the minute - everything felt like it was pressing on him, like he was laying beneath a board and someone kept dropping stones on top. It didn't have anything to do with Max and everything to do with him finally getting the courage to come out to his best friend and...not getting the reaction he expected.
"Eddie - the guy from my world who just showed up? He was the first person I ever loved. I was sure of it and it was like...heady, you know? The rush of it. After I left Derry I spent years looking for that missing thing even though I couldn't remember what it was, I couldn't remember Eddie or how I felt beside him," Richie said, scooting around to lean against the sink, next to Max. "But it was childish, I think. And after everything like, what happened in the sewers and losing him, it's...over." He smiled softly, the edge of pain there - maybe nerves too; he wasn't sure how Max would take it, but he needed to say it. "For me, it's over. And it could never be the same as this."
Max had never particularly assigned any value to “if you’re tall, you can never be little spoon”, and so ran his thumb over the back of Richie’s neck as he listened. Comfort was comfort, and Richie clearly had a lot spinning through his head. Better out than in, whether it was poison, Sera’s cooking, or stress.
After a moment, when he was certain that Richie had said a part of what he intended to say and that the beat between words would last, Max replied: “It’s not childish to be conflicted about mourning what might have been, Richie.” And he felt that, truly. Max wasn’t a jealous person, his anxiety more typically directed inward than outward - would he disappoint his friends rather than would they disappoint him - and the notion of building a thought into a Something was familiar to him. “That doesn’t mean that it’s comparable to what you’ve already experienced, and what you have now, but…” he smiled, calmly, unbothered, “I don’t need the reassurance. It’s not a typical thing, seeing someone you loved return from the dead. I don’t require a healthy and straightforward coping here, because…” he shrugged demonstratively, “who could have predicted this? What I’m more concerned about is your friendship not suffering. You were friends for ages.”
Richie really wanted to be the little spoon right now, figuratively. God, did he ever - and he didn’t care that Max only had one arm. He was warm and cuddly regardless, and Richie was such a slut for snuggles that he didn’t think he could be with anyone who didn’t like that sort of closeness. He had to think of what to say - his heart was doing this weird pounding thing, like it was gonna run away from him and leave him stranded, a hollowed out toy made of plastic.
But it didn’t. Just went really fast, maybe fluttered a little when he realized Max wasn’t going anywhere. That was okay. More than okay.
“We’ll work it out, me and Eddie,” he promised. Richie didn’t want their friendship to suffer either - he didn’t love Eddie, not like that, not anymore, but he was still one of the most important people in Richie’s life. Especially now that he was back from the dead - all of the Losers were like that for him, spokes on a wheel, and the thing without a name that they had battled (IT) the center of it all. Maybe a couple of the spokes broke off but that wheel was just as strong as it always had been. “I just - wanted to be honest with you. I always will be, even when it’s hard. Even, um - “
He poked at the gingerbread that was now kind of soggy, from being cleaned of gummy bear goop. “Even when you suck at making gingerbread castles.”
Max had inclined his head toward Richie, resting his chin at the nape of the other man’s neck, because what he lacked in verbal comfort he knew how to make up for physically - a comfort that abruptly went away as Richie’s snark regarding the quality of his attempted Christmas decoration registered, and he narrowed his eyes. “Some honesty is better kept to yourself,” he said primly, although it was obvious he wasn’t actually mad. “I think gingerbread Skyhold’s got real character, despite the trauma. What doesn’t kill us makes us stranger, after all.”
It was applicable to more than just gingerbread houses, which was the point. Max rested his arm at Richie’s waist, musing that a good quarter of his castle seemed as if it was getting eaten by actual quicksand. “Tell me as much or as little as you want about what’s going on, and I’ll act accordingly. I’ve been keeping my distance from him - I didn’t want to be the stupid awkward aggressive boyfriend, cluelessly making things worse. You let me know if that’s time to change, love, and I’ll follow your lead.” He paused, and kissed the corner of Richie’s mouth. “...especially if it’s over a cliff. What do you say we try to salvage what we’ve got of this and call it modern art?”
“Mmmhmm,” Richie hummed, his hands at Max’s cheeks, keeping him in place as he went on a bit of a romantic jag about it - by kissing him, feeling light as a white velvet cloud, and he didn’t really want to stop. He was an adult (sometimes), he could handle things - and at some point he was sure Max wouldn’t have to keep avoiding Eddie. So he wasn’t going to worry much about it - mostly he was just tickled at the term boyfriend because he hadn’t ever really had one of those before.
It was pretty awesome. Awesome in a different way than this gingerbread wreckage happened to be. Maybe Max was just destined to be better at making sure an actual castle ran smoothly as opposed to one you could eat.
He broke apart only to reach for the plastic t-rex action figure, placing it artfully by the rubble. “There, how’s that?” he asked. “That was my backup plan.” It looked pretty modern art to him - the King (or Queen) of the Dinosaurs, surveying their domain and rubble after stepping on the castle. “Now we can like, go to your room and eat the pieces and...take your pants off.”
He wasn’t subtle. At all.
Max gazed down at the tiny red dragon (it was a dragon, wasn’t it? Mostly…) and had to agree it added that certain je ne sais quoi to the overall effect of the dilapidated Skyhold sinking into the primordial icing ooze. “You know,” he mulled, “you really do have the best ideas on how to salvage even the most disastrous moments.”
He swiped a large chunk of gingerbread roof from the top of the mess. “Which is to say… let’s go objectify one another.” Max raised his eyebrows, raised his wand to leave a note: “SORRY FOR EVERYTHING - WILL CLEAN UP ASAP. MAX” for anyone who might wander by, and gestured to Richie with a tilt of his chin.
Richie grinned, full of delight, one of those smiles that crinkled his eyes at the corners and was all squinty half-moons. “I gotta have some talents,” he pointed out, since he wasn’t like this amazing mage (he couldn’t throw fire, which he was kind of disappointed about), he wasn’t a warrior, wasn’t really someone who could do something illegal and fun like pick locks. Mostly he was just an entertainer with squishy innards and had pretty decent aim with either a rock or a hatchet, so. Cleaning up gingerbread messes and making the best out of a disaster moment was just par the course.
Maybe there was deeper meaning to that, how he could turn a metaphorical frown upside down. He hoped to turn many of Max’s frowns upside down for a long while, anyway.
He hooked his fingers in the front of his boyfriend’s (awww, heeeeh, high school blushing commences) pants, tugging him close. Those pants were gonna be tossed across the room, maybe landing on a light fixture. “I’m already objectifying you. Ten out of ten - maybe we’ll even turn the dial to eleven, hot stuff.” With this face Max had? Oh yeah, there was no question about that.
“I think you have lots of talents,” Max protested, and although it was a sincere statement, it might have sounded innocent had he not been extremely handsy at the time. “Some hidden, others-- less so--”
All right, well, he was delighted that he didn’t have Mother Giselle skulking along the shadows to see and judge. A less-populated Skyhold really was a magical thing sometimes. “C’mon,” he said, turning his head to fit against the side of Richie’s neck, lips against his ear: “I won’t even make you leave on the Christmas carols while we do it.” Because of course Max had been enjoying Christmas carols in his room prior to the gingerbread fiasco. This was truly the gift that just kept on giving.
With a laugh, he tugged his bespectacled boyfriend up the stairs and away from prying eyes.