#<- not making sense bc this is just a glimpse of an ongoing argument that i am having on another plain of reality

[agroupofcrows]

i am so normal about this

[caesurabywriting]

do you have a drabble or headcanon of your otp: fooling the world & each other becoming engaged? pretty please. c: i'm curious.

because you said please + i’ll take any excuse to talk about them, i’m obligated to answer this. honestly i have way too many headcanons but i’m going to try and be concise and coherent here (+ huge apologies for how long this is anyway, but these two are hella complicated and i’m way too Extra for their angst)headcanons:

- they only get engaged because she claims she’s pregnant (spoiler alert: she’s not, but she’s relying on the fact that she can get pregnant soon after/in a close enough window for it to be true) - she uses that excuse to get his attention bc he seemed to be getting more and more distant and passive re: their relationship and she wanted to have a way to lock him down even if she has to heavily manipulate the situation to get her way. she’s like a milder form of amy dunne.- she’s also the poster child for abandonment and trust issues because her parents were awful, but it’s what brought them ~together~ in the first place. his ex-gf, viv, was her best friend. they all lived together in NYC, along w tom’s own bestie, for six years ( which is what #manhattan memoirs is about ) before viv one day abruptly moved out without an explanation, dropping contact with them both, abandoning their perfect unit of four. up until that point tom and tessa barely tolerated each other + had an ongoing banter thing going on. she had a short fuse and he loved to light it at any chance he got. antagonizing her was his favorite hobby. later on, they proceeded to ‘bond’ over angry and angsty hate sex to avoid being sad over her viv’s departure. but then feelings were caught. oops. anyways…- she’s a ~first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby~ kind of person, and he knows this. having a baby without being married first would be a huge deal breaker for her. if he declined stepping up to ask her to marry him there would be no baby and she’d tell him to leave (in theory, but between you and me i don’t think she could and would have come up with something more dramatic to get his undying attention)- it was very non romantic and went down more like a business deal discussion. she presented a serious ultimatum that needed addressing. she sprung it on him. essentially, pre-proposing his proposal. there was no ring or down-on-one-knee business. it was very much a highly staked version of ‘should i stay or should i go?’- she went out by herself after the ‘proposal’ and chose her own ring and everything. anything he chose would have been complained about and returned- he wanted/wants to propose again in a more romantic and thoughtful way because even though he’s pretty neutral about marriage, he sees it’s important to her and she deserves the best of things. alas, time kept ticking by and it seemed like he’d lost his shot, so he kept such plans to himself and lets her resent him a little extra for his apparent lack of involvement, as usual.i do not have a full drabble composed ( yet - but i probably will one day even though it will ruin my life ), but i do have various fragmented flashback/extracts from actual replies/past threads that may or may not make sense out of context but, regardless, i’ve collected them below if you’re interested on a glimpse of things somewhat engagement-related:

1. Their tables had done more than shift, they had been flipped and spun out. The undeniable truth tightly wrapped around his reality, pinning him transfixed in place. For better or for worse, those two lines had seen Tom’s uncontrolled fishtailing hitched onto a finite track. A duo of one dimensional pink had the power to change everything. Tom blinked over dilated pupils, his sentimental conscience sucker punched by a one-two hit of remorse and disquietude. It was all still etched into him like the grooves of a record, designed to be played on repeat at his masochistic leisure — Tessa presenting herself empty handed after already discarding the evidence, bearing the news with clutched hands and a penetrating gaze. Her voice, poised and decisively urgent: ’Stay.’ They were standing in the same room for the first time in three days. He’d avoided the sheen of her dark hair for the floorboards, ‘That’s not all you’re asking.’ His timbre noticeably wavered in comparison to hers. Like a whip, Tessa’s voice cut across with a warning flatline: ‘No. It’s what we are.’ Her eyes, calculating, soften magnanimously the moment he looks up, ‘You know your answer, don’t you, Thomas?’ 2. Her reveal had been a surprise. Admittedly, he was the only one to blame for that belief, his sense of awareness not particularly careful nor attentive during the time between an office shift ending and them falling from a fight into a bed together. In all it’s ‘A one time thing. We’re not doing this again,’ ( gradually switched out for ‘make it a one more time thing,’ ) glory. What had only ever been meant to be a secondary arrangement, intended to fill space, to pass time. The most beneficial way to end a combative argument. It was an exhausting interlude that matched the tone of his routine, wearing him down until he was nothing but fine grains. He had been confused, torn, and collectable.3. No celebratory graduation ceremony marked their progression as they impassively watched their shared temperature rise from ‘fling’ to ‘fiancé’, endlessly fluctuating between offensively heated and dishearteningly tepid throughout. Their anniversaries as somber as the sticker announcing it on the square of calendar. That catalyzing moment of history turned away from very deliberately. There were no sweet heart-eyed how did you two meet narratives to supply. Just Mr. Type-B and Ms. Type-A, two heartbroken kids susceptible to distraction. Amusing themselves until it became real. Maybe it did. Or maybe it was harmless and it was pure paranoia making it seem like a neon sign blinked above his head in an infinite line of alarmed exclamation marks.4. Wreckage was imminent no matter which way the pieces aligned. Home ( now ) was sleeplessly staring at a ceiling, deliberating in the dark and into the glow of the morning. Most of all, an internal pleading line of looped thought: Oh, God, let today be a normal day. Let him be normally nervous, unhesitating, and spontaneously happy. Let him not squint as Tessa walked away, the disheveled shadow of dark hair thrown down her back strongly evoking of another’s in poor lighting. Familiar shades of umber and taupe clashing with the lesser known notes of sangria and mint on her breath, the scent of rose in her hair. Tessa, an intended sojourn; a breathing space. An operating lightbulb to illuminate the dreary darkness of a vicissitude neither wanted to admit they were blind in trying to navigate. No one was ever prepared for a demotion into the limited edition status of another’s life when, viewed in the other direction, they’d presumably been branded essential. But it had happened, and Tessa was the only tangible reason not to go too far off an precipice that led to no tomorrow. Pulling at hands smudged with paint instead of cigarette ash in a desperate attempt at capsizing the insurmountable detritus of past imprints drifting throughout his system. Taking the brunt of all frustration, tremor, and every emotion banned from expression. Aggressively sidelining the only language he wanted to feel, touch, and listen to. Relearning a different one. Everything that had been absentminded and easy now requiring vigilance and humorless behavior. Yet as exhausting as all her short tempered glares and cavilling was, it had also been her strict accountability and interception between him and acts of stupidity that kept him together.5. She was a person to whom his surrendering murmur of ‘I love you’ often had the bitter aftertaste of something over-steeped. His palliative precursor, a promising commitment not to be cowardly, invitingly interchangeable with other prosperous phrases of three: I am here. I am staying. We are family. The woman who’d engaged in an unrequested initiative, yanking the dusty rug out from beneath their at-risk stale situation and pulling them into dazzling sunlight. He couldn’t have said no if he’d wanted to. He was prepared to try — faking it until it was true — just as he shouldered everything else. Maybe saying yes to Tessa, and in turn something that scared him, had been the gateway drug.6. There were many shouldn’t-ridden clauses, both spoken and not, between the two of them. Tessa and Thomas. One of the very first in-depth conversations they’d had ended with a shouldn’t. The first time he hadn’t felt the need to crack a prolonged, tensely held, silence with something deprecating. Instead, tentatively entering the humid air, a plea and a concern all in one: We shouldn’t do this, it’s too soon. Then, only two days later: we shouldn’t stop, I can’t do this alone. And the rest fell into natural order, the reoccurring theme of expectations fallen short: He shouldn’t come home so late. She shouldn’t have to ask twice. We shouldn’t talk about that. The clarity of her voice in his head was almost identical to a certain other someone’s. A different inflection, a different time — but just the same; a damning memory able to be plucked from the recesses of his mind at the most inconvenient of moments. Tessa’s censorious commentary was never far behind. He’d been consumed by it in slowly advancing increments for nearly ten years. In the beginning, a day-to-day routine of merely pretending he was listening to her as he dotingly observed the accompanying figure that she’d arrived with. More recently, her unimpressed narration wove through the fabric of any of the romantic or couple-y things they tried to do. Tom, begrudgingly following her into the overcrowded abyss of whatever public outing she’d pre-arranged, always far too absentminded, staying alert for all the wrong reasons. Looking down to check on even the slightest vibration of his phone — a problem? A meeting? A respite? — whilst completely avoiding having to provide any input on Tessa’s newly favorite subject ( it rhymed with bedding ). Their verbal tennis matches, a ceaseless tit-for-tat game of passive aggression, could run steady laps around everything else they did. It was almost an entity of it’s own. There was Tom, there was Tessa, and there was that low pressure that hung in the atmosphere whenever they entered into the same room as if someone had made tasteless a joke at a funeral. The one beam of hope through it all was the fact that, admitted to or not, they knew each other too well. Despite what they withheld from one another — even though, if presented the same card drawn during a Rorschach Test she’d see the shape of a book where he’d see a pint of beer — they could never return to being strangers. Getting to know her had been a muffled process, a slowly sinking feeling. The diluting of a strongly flavored concentrate with hot water. Three parts scathing to one part cordial. Mild enough to eventually be widely palatable as opposed to the too-potent original double dose; the sort of thing that appealed to rush-seeking junkies and hyperactive children and those who fell somewhere in between.