man oh man

we're not gonna pretend that this isn't about me. the point is that it's about me. what you don't understand is /ref - the combination of BPD attachment issues and unassailable gender envy both directed at a singular old person who gives roughly one iota about you is a hell of a drug. we even call it a depressant AND a stimulant, aka irish coffee. snile

He tried not to be ornery, tried to grow himself up a stretch and see how it suited him. He tried to stand tall as he'd been born and own it, even though they weren't only soldiers, anymore. He tried to take into his own, now the worlds had settled. But he still griped. What was a Lanz, after all, without a gripe?

Lanz hated, actually, to just throw everything into the general lot of "because of the Flame Clocks" and the fact they were no more. To be able to just handwave away all the new sensations and emotions that assaulted his brain was his usual style, yeah, but it irked.

(Just now, did it irk, or had he always been ignoring it, or had he learned something, or had he been changed, somehow someway? Had he become...thoughtful and mature? Never what he'd thought himself built for, that.)

This feeling...this was different, and it was different from regular Flame Clock different.

It was a mudder of a lot more embarrassing, for one thing. It was utterly and completely inexpressible, even for a guy as tight-lipped as he who'd managed yet to make some friends.

It was many-faceted, double-plumed. It came from out of sparkin' nowhere and it went absolutely snuffin' nowhere at all.

Taking that one thing into consideration, Lanz had gathered together Fiona, Sena and Mio to be his ever-wise counsel, since asking his two podmates or - queens forbid - Taion was so far out of the question it wasn't even funny.

"Right, now you can't make fun of me for this, got it? I'm takin' a risk here as it is."

The three girls look back at him, then over at each other, and sort-of solemnly swear to it. Not that Lanz is an adrenaline junkie, but if he thinks it's a risk, then it's a risk.

The photo is of a familiar friendly Moebius member from the side, grinning all crooked teeth down at Tallow and Mikaela as he converses with them about cannons, and fodder, and fire and smoke.

Sena frowns, trying to figure out what exactly Lanz is at risk of if not simply ridicule for having the photo in the first place - it's a bit poorly composed, and blurry as if he'd swiftly shut his eye on the iris camera for fear of being caught.

"The cap'n?" Fiona cocks her head to one side. "Hmmm..." If you liked salty old seadogs, one supposes. And that is what Lanz is implying, isn't?

His face, creased at the corners, looks guilty and flushed all at once.

"Are you trying to say..." Mio gathers her words. "You've got a crush on Captain Triton?"

The flush turns to murder, then just as quickly flashes over to despair. Oh, poor Lanz...

It's not pity, from his three mates. Actually, it's just confusion. What does this even mean?

Perhaps they just don't understand it because of their own respective tastes - Fiona and Sena in girls (and of those, ones the same size as them, ones that probably aren't particularly hairy), Mio in feminine types of men.

"I'm sorry we can't help, Lanz," Sena says, with all the truest apology she can muster. There really isn't a thing she can do about this, is there?

"I know, I know," mutters Lanz. "Just my rotten luck." And it would be him that has it, instead of Sena, because she's happy-go-lucky, or she pretends to be, and she's committed to all her friends her own age. Lanz, the outcast, too tall but still not quite big enough.

Now it's Fiona's turn to find some consternation. "Well, I wouldn't call the cap'n rotten. Maybe a bit unfortunate, at times, but not rotten."

Lanz's head rolls back, shoulders and larynx both a-protest. "Yeah, Fiona. That's it, right there."

Of course they wouldn't get it - they're girls. It's a guy thing, Lanz feels. Something about the way Triton moves so effortlessly through the world (and yeah, maybe his bones don't work so good as they used to, and his knees are going and he hurts his bum if he sits too long, but so what?), and wears the cape like it belongs to him instead of like it's a party costume, and grins with the crooks in his teeth and the crows in his eyes.

The way he makes Fiona and all of Colony Mu feel loved and seen by the very nature of his presence, like a great big jolly roger.

"I hope you won't feel too badly about it, Lanz," Mio says, instead of trying to impress that he shouldn't feel bad about it, not because she thinks he should, but because she knows he will, and does.

"You won't tell anyone?"

"Swear to it, Lan-Lan."

Yeah, right.

So Lanz has braved the precipice of peer review. So he's gulped the gap and shown his friends his most incriminating hang-up: an old guy with a big, big smile. Maybe the worst part about it is that he knows Triton cares about him, generally, but it's still...awkward? He still feels like a silly little lad, instead of a matey worthy of all the fine captain's respect.

He continues wailing to himself, silently, about wanting to have hairy legs and a nautical bearing, while Sena and Fiona try their best to comfort, but Mio has to run on home, and when she does, her mother happens to apprehend something of the pensive nature in her kit today.

"Somethin' bit your tongue, Mi?"

Mio frowns. She sort of swore she wouldn't tell, right? And what would be the point?

But Mio is her mother's daughter, and she tells the queen of her world everything. Everything.

Even about how Lanz has an irrevocable burning crush on an old man.

Of course, Nia slips out a fang when she hears - Mio gets frightened she's going to laugh, poke fun. But instead, her mother replies, with a great portent of gravity, "Listen. You wanna talk about old men?"

Then she goes to the kitchen cupboard above the junk drawer and rustles in a little chest of knick-knacks for a torn, faded piece of paper nestled at the bottom.

Mio waits patiently, certain Nia's somehow procured a picture of Cap'n Triton from way back when. That would sort of justify it for Lanz, right? And they could all laugh about it together and maybe tease the jolly pirate instead, about his long-lost good looks that he himself surely can't even remember.

That's not what it is, though. When Nia returns to the island counter, she slides across it a photo of a man Mio's never seen before, dark-haired and bright-eyed and throwing a glance at the camera that only experts could ever have caught, surely.

"He's like a lesbian to me," Nia says, by way of explanation. This doesn't help Mio at all.

"But, Mam...who is that?"

Nia bites her lip, shakes her head, begins to shake herself with breathy laughter. Mio almost begins to grow cross at the grand joke that she's not been let in on. Why on earth so funny?

But finally, Nia provides: "That...is your great-uncle Cole."

Oh, it won't help Lanz at all, at all at all. Great Uncle Cole has nothing going on his face except for maybe the scar, for those that appreciate such things.

"And this other man?"

Nia nods, appraising. "His Driver, so I'm told." She flips over the card, and there pasted to the back is an identically framed and posed shot of what looks to be a skinnier, saggier version of Triton, but with a similar beard and crest of silver-gray hair. After Mio's had just enough time to inspect, Nia carefully prises the two halves apart, revealing a date scrawled on the back.

What, some four-hundred-odd years ago? And if Cole is five hundred, or thereabouts, then would that be...yeah, about right.

"You tell your Lanz his time's a-comin', alright, my sweet Mi?"

Completely unhelpful, Mio knows, and quite trite, but as she lets her mother ruffle the hair around her ears, she starts scheming to ask some similar questions of the Empress Melia, and see what truths lie to that side of the world.

Of course, she's taking those twin photos with her. They're too good not to show - and, y'know, Mam didn't say not to...?

Some studying material, too. See what Lanz is on about, with these old men of his. Well, man. But now he's got one or two more to see.

what i am going to do is lanz gathers mio sena fiona and says listen you can't make fun of me. look at this old guy. and fiona goes the cap'n? hmmm. and mio tells her mom about it and nia says listen you wanna talk about old men. look at this photo (minochi). he's like a lesbian to me. meanwhile lanz is wailing about wanting to have hairy legs