#love is to say you are enough as you are

[softquietsteadylove]

Hi, I am missing the Mr. And Mrs. Lee AU >< this is a very angsty request. Maybe you can write the part of the confrontation scene but a little different. Thena trying to fulfill the mission even though she already fell in love with the mission (him), but Gil never reciprocated the attacks Thena inflicted to him because he would never lay a finger on her. Thena's mad at him for doing that, she's desperately shouting him to fight her back, but Gil just can't. And when Thena already had the perfect opportunity to kill him, Gil just said with no hesitation that she can do it and it's okay. But of course she didn't.

And we all know what happened next after that...scene, right? But what about we change it? I think having some soft at the same time emotional moment instead of spice after this angsty scene would be good. We'd love to see a lot of comfort, them just holding each other in their apartment that now has broken doors and walls with bullet holes in it.

THANK YOUUU SO MUCH, LOVELY!!!

The house is a disaster. It looks like an entire team of assassins has torn through the place, when really it's just a husband and wife. Well, a wife--Gil couldn't raise his hand even once after finding out it was her on the other end.

Thena stares at him, her hand shaking so much it rattles the weapon she has pointed at him.

His hands are still up, palms out to her. He isn't looking down the barrel at all, just up at her with those eyes he knows can make her melt. "It's okay, Sweetheart."

She glares at him. He doesn't get to call her that now. He should be thinking of her as the enemy. "Don't."

"It's okay," he repeats, and slides his eyes closed as if he's lying down for a nap after a few beers while watching the game. He lets out a slow sigh, and it sounds the same as when they're going to bed together after a long day apart. "You've got it. Take the shot."

She tries. She tries to make herself take the shot and fulfill the mission she's had for the last five years of her life. The mission she was told was a life or death situation, it never being more important for her to maintain her flawless success rate.

But the mission changed. Somewhere along the way, he wasn't only the Mission; he became just Gilgamesh. Gil was sweet, and charming, and friendly in a way she had almost never encountered in her life before him. Then Gil was a pretty good date. She was used to having to play any part necessary, be that the blushing virgin, the seductress, the cold bitch. But Gil was himself, and somehow he had tricked her into being herself too.

Now he's Gilgamesh Lee, and he's a great home cook, and he likes beer but he hates red wine, and he's handy with home repair but he can't identify the difference between paint shades to save his life. He's Gil, and he brings her flowers for her birthday, and he lets her drive because she gets carsick as a passenger. He's her husband of four years, and they've built an entire life together.

And she has burned it to the ground in a single night.

"Dammit!"

Gil watches as she tosses the weapon aside, and sinks to the floor. She curls right up, which is her go-to posture; it protects her, makes her feel more secure. She hugs her knees to her chest.

"Baby?"

"Don't," she practically whimpers into her lap, balled up like a child in the face of her life choices. This is pathetic; she's a top agent, one of the deadliest in Eternal Agencies. And here she is crying like a fool over her first love.

Gil sighs, moving over to her on what remains of their polished hardwood floors. "C'mere, hot stuff."

She should be trying to kill him. She should be fighting and clawing at him to regain the upper hand. Just because she decided she couldn't take the shot doesn't mean she can give up on the mission completely.

Gil lets her curl up on his lap, pressing her tears into his - dislocated, and then re-located - shoulder. He grunts, but bears it as he wraps his arms around her. "Easy, Sweetheart, I've got you."

Thena presses her face harder against him, muffling her agony as she wails into him. She hasn't cried like this in...maybe ever. Maybe she's never felt anything like this, but she supposes Gil has made a habit of unearthing feelings she thought she had cut out of herself.

He rubs her back, presses kisses to her temple. Their home is crumbling around them and he spent the last hour trying not to get assassinated by her, but now he's holding her as if she's had a bad dream after a thunderstorm.

Thena tries to build up her walls again. She tries to think about the house structure, how she can get away and regain the high ground on him. She tries to think about where she tossed that weapon, or which door frames still have her knives lodged in them.

But all she can think about his her husband, holding her in his arms, safe from anything and everything, including the omniscient reach of a man called Father. These are arms which held her after their fifth date, in an apartment she procured just so they could go somewhere after dinner. These are arms which held her against his side in a gondola, and then held her that same night after proposing. This embrace is the only place she has ever felt safe enough to truly banish her other thoughts from her mind and just be Thena.

Missus Thena Lee.

Gilgamesh whispers and coos in her ear as her sobbing subsides slowly. He holds her trembling form against him, offering all he can when they've already been worn to the bone by life and its complications. "Sweetheart?"

She groans into his shirt. "Stop calling me that."

She can hear the smile in his voice. "Why?"

She stays buried against him. She doesn't even want to look at the house, right now. "You want the full list?"

Gil chuckles, running his fingers through her hair. "You're still my wife, Thena. Nothing about tonight changes that."

Fuck. He always knows exactly what to say to make her want to throw herself to the ground and beg him to love her for just one more day.

"Nothing changes that," he repeats in a whisper as she clings to him so tightly her nails dig into him. "Unless you're about to ask for a divorce, in which case I change my mind about putting up a fight."

He also knows how to make her laugh at truly the worst times. "Gil, I'm serious."

"Yeah," he lifts his head and looks around them, "I'd say it's pretty serious, Honey-Bun."

Such cutesy pet names; she once tried to convince herself that they were off putting and that she hated them. It didn't last long. They're cliche and embarrassing and she loves each and every one of them.

Thena lifts her head too, unable to avoid looking at the massacre of their home. A few shreds of wood fall to the floor as if they're paid actors. "Really did a number on the place, hm?"

Gil shrugs as if she's asked if he knows what the weather will be tomorrow, "I'm sure I could make some progress in here if I took some time off work."

Thena thunks her head against his chest again. "Work."

"Sorry," he apologises and presses a kiss to the top of her head. "We don't have to think about that now."

They will sooner or later, though. Both of them will, given all that they've learned in the past 36 hours.

"We'll figure it out," he says so definitively.

Thena looks down at her tattered and shredded dress. She looks at Gil's ripped and burned suit. She sighs, "they're going to call a domestic disturbance on us."

"Yeah, I guess I wouldn't blame them," Gil murmurs, shaking out his jacket and letting the bullets that got caught in its reinforced lining clatter to the floor. He lays it over her shoulders. "You hungry?"

Thena lets out an even longer, even louder sigh. She feels like she could throw up. "Starving."

Gil groans as he hauls himself to his feet. "Fridge is a little beat up, but I'm pretty sure there are a few eggs left."

"Scrambled?" Thena looks up at him from her miserable quarry on the floor, "with cheese?"

He leans down to kiss her, letting her hand rest on his cheek no matter how much he has to twist his neck. "I know what you like."

"Thank you," she whispers, hoping to memorise every line and feature of his face in case the next 36 hours also go to shit. She listens to the sound of him prying open the dented fridge door, pulling out the eggs, finding a pan that doesn't have bullet dents in it. She loves listening to him cook. "Baby?"

"Yeah, Hon?"

Thena smiles to herself. He's right, they will figure it out, and he is her husband; nothing about tonight changes that. "I love you."

"I love you too, Thena."

[cubbyhole-for-flea-bee]

Macaque spent the whole season Big-Damn-Hero-ing and was NOT happy about it xD

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

zany to me how these um actually nihilists like to pretend that "um actually love/friendship/cooperation/kindness isn't real bc we evolved that way to benefit ourselves as a species..." um YES? that's also where tool use comes from? that's where cooking comes from? am i supposed to think social bonds & tool use & cooking aren't "real" because they evolved over time instead of appearing fully formed from the ether?

sorry u can't enjoy things. im a superior being twirling a fork in my bowl of delicious noodles whilst staring in adoration at the world

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[brainrotcharacters]

the easy grip on the knife. the leg over the seat. the hand over the other seat. the sassy "come get it" move. you know the bitch is smiling behind that mask even as he said the line.

[magnusbae]

To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:

A post in 2023:

A post in 2014:

A zoom out of the same post:

This is what a community looks like.

See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.

It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.

Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.

If you want more of something, reblog it.

[butterflyscribbles]

Swaddled🧣💛

[egophiliac]

I have SO many thoughts about everything and they are in no kind of order yet, so here's just some quick little bits in the meantime!

I am not normal about any of these characters!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[purrvaire]

they're so in love im gonna throw up real quick

[redysetdare]

enough stories about how someone learns to truely be happy through love. i want a story where someone is desperately seeking out love thinking it's the only way to be happy only for them to learn by the end that happiness is what they make of it and they don't need love at all to make it.

[soosoosoup]

Funk branch au

Au and branch design by @bbc-trolls

[stil-lindigo]

motherhood.

[thepeacefulgarden]

[chickenchirps27]

hello denizens of tumblr i come with humble offerings

they wish to romance you

[brainrotcharacters]

The moment Wade handed Mary Puppins to Logan and Logan had no protest beyond groaning, I knew