Hargrovetm - Tumblr Posts
🪐 — @hargrovetm sent a hc meme : HC + gio !
● giovanni’s maternal grandparents were anti-fascists who participated in direct coordinated actions against benito mussolini in the early 1940s, involving sabotaging supply lines & helping to print & distribute anti-fascist press. when he was a child, it was his grandfather who introduced gio to radical politics, & imbued him with his strong values of justice, equality, & freedom. other than his guitar, the stack of old pamphlets & resistance fliers that his grandfather gave him are gio’s most treasured possessions. ● in large part because of his strong values, gio hates bullies. at 6′5, gio is almost always the tallest person in the room, & while he doesn’t like to fight, he is not above using his size to frighten bullies into leaving more vulnerable people alone. his close friendship with brian walker is a classic example of this. ● gio’s family couldn’t afford to travel back & forth between italy & the united states very often, but they did save up enough to take one trip to visit his familial home when he was thirteen years old & his younger brother, damiano, was seven. they got to meet the extended di carlo family, & this trip is one of the best memories of gio’s life. ● gio is an incredibly hard worker & surprisingly good at saving up money for things he really wants. he worked three jobs at a time when he was fifteen years old & trying to save up for a guitar. his first guitar was a secondhand lime green kramer focus. his second guitar was a white fender super strat. his dream guitar is a cherry red les paul. ● gio’s Type is goths. the more goth the better. & this isn’t to say that he’s not capable of finding people of other styles attractive, because he definitely is, & he can also sometimes be surprised at who he’s attracted to. but as a rule, he tends to gravitate toward goths. he thinks the fact that they’re different & a little freaky is just the hottest thing.
🪐 — @hargrovetm sent a hc meme : HC + brian !
● brian walker does not remember his mother at all. he was seized from her by cps & put into foster care when he was only one year old, & as such, he has literally no memories of her. he also knows nothing about her, with no one around him while he was growing up who knew her personally that he could ask. although there are a lot of hard things in his life, the hardest part for brian will always be the not knowing how to find her, or what her situation was, or even the barest details of why she could not raise him herself. ● brian is... gross. & i don’t mean this in a hygiene way, i mean it in a “dirtbag boy” kind of way. as a foster kid who was shuffled around several homes in his youth, brian learned early on that saying the most shocking possible thing will lend him attention. & even negative attention is preferable to none. so as he grows, the habit sticks, & brian develops the tendency to loudly interject vulgar or crude comments into casual conversations where they do not belong. it’s not that he has poor social skills — he knows it makes people angry & uncomfortable. that’s the point of it. he really just wants to cause a reaction. ● brian gets four tattoos by the time he’s 18. he has a barbed wire around his right bicep (terribly cliche), a red herring fish on left pectoral, a headless skeleton holding a beer bottle on the back of his right shoulder, & a cluster of stars on his right hipbone. they don’t mean anything — though it could be argued that the red herring over his heart is subconsciously symbolic of the fact that for brian, if he appears to show real genuine vulnerability, you should be very concerned that it’s a distraction from the truth, because brian doesn’t show his real feelings to anyone. ● brian has an addictive personality & a genetic predisposition toward substance abuse. he has his first drink at age 13 : a pint of vodka which he stole from an older kid’s backpack at the foster home he was in at the time. in his teenage years he mostly drinks, with only occasional experimentation with drugs. but as he gets older — & in especially verses where the band he plays in actually becomes successful — brian experiments with uppers, & opiates. he doesn’t like weed; it’s not strong enough for him. ● the only person in the world who can tell brian what to do & he will listen to them is his best & only real friend, giovanni di carlo. & the only reason gio gets away with it is because gio was the only one who was there for him when brian ran away from his foster home & was living on the streets. for this reason, when gio is around, brian is much more tolerable because he knows gio prefers to be respectful, & gio’s opinion is one of the only ones that actually matters to him.
IT’S BEEN NEARLY THREE YEARS, but izzy still comes out to this beach almost every day around sunset. he’s long since lost hope of billy coming back here ( his darkest instincts have been reminding him that he might be dead since the sixth month without him ). so izzy tells himself that it’s not about him — it’s just that this is the only place he feels really relaxed. so he's not expecting it when he sees a familiar halo of blonde curls backlit by the sun, catches sight of a form he’d memorized years ago. & he's like a moth pulled into the light, finds himself walking across the sand as if in a trance until he's standing right in front of billy.
he looks different — the first thing that izzy notices is the raised scars that track across his forearms, a little lighter than the rest — & yet the same. there are the same eyes he remembers, the same smile, the same thick lashes, & the same laugh when izzy breaks the silence. & izzy feels the air he hadn't even realized he'd been holding in rush out of his lungs, permission given to breathe again.
❝ yeah, i fuckin' can. ❞ he says, giving a sharp laugh of his own. he wants to ask where have you been, & what really happened to you, & do you forgive me for letting you go, & did you miss me the way i missed you ? but izzy isn't sure that he can handle the answers to any of those just yet. so instead he goes with ❝ what took you so long ? ❞ & he wants to hug billy, wants to pull him in close & not let go. but there's someone else there with them, someone with a tall swoop of dark hair standing a way back, as if he doesn't want to interrupt them. but he's watching, & izzy suddenly feels his defenses rising, a dark cloud cast over their reunion. ❝ who's that ? ❞
i don't know whether to be pissed or be thrilled to see you again. — from izzy
billy doesn't know what to feel. the warmth of the ocean breeze hit his face a while ago. and. and it should be enough. it should be enough. but. it isn't. suddenly miles and miles of fucking distance feels like nothing because now it's nothing. and he cannot remember the last time he saw izzy. it feels so long ago. and he'd told steve, he'd said. that he didn't think izzy would be here. but there was no denying. the possibility was there. and he'd be honest because he's going on this fucking healing journey or some fucking shit. because getting your guts stabbed in all directions kinda tends to change your view on life. but it's not. it's not that. it's the fact that billy's feet can feel the sand between his two and izzy is there like he's been waiting since the day billy got dragged tooth and nailed to certain fucking death. it's. it's a lot. and billy is kinda glad izzy says something because billy could have in fact fucking fainted before being able to day anything. like. sorry i left without saying anything. and you had to know what happened. and you knew, we both know you knew. and i missed you. and i thought you weren't going to be here. and do you miss me?
but he just stands there and billy laughs, because life is fucking ridiculous and god has a thing against billy. like it's a given. he looks to a side, and sees the ocean. and he feels seventeen again. feels sixteen again. on the beach. "-come on man." he starts, like not a single day has passed since they have been here. his heart feels heavy almost. he doesn't know. but when has he ever known "i think you can be both." he smirks at him. like this isn't altering the way billy is breathing. like. like he isn't dying to hold him again. something is different about billy. he can't hide it. dying does that to you.
@musecraft
❝ COMPLICATED, ❞ izzy scoffs under his breath. it's not nearly a big enough word to fill three years of silence, & he shakes his head at the sheer inadequacy of the explanation. it's hard to believe that billy actually thought he wouldn't still be here, especially considering that it wasn’t izzy who had left in the first place. but there's something earnest & achey in his tone, voice stretched tight. & izzy has to remind himself that whatever really happened, he can be pretty certain that billy didn't want to go — he never would left his ocean willingly.
still, izzy can’t bring himself to look billy in the eyes, his gaze pushed off-center instinctually like when he’s been looking into the sun too long. & instead, he finds himself glaring at the boy behind them, now turned to face away as if he can tell that he's being stared down. he’s tall, good-looking, exactly billy's type, & far too pale to be a california native. ❝ steve, ❞ he repeats, the name leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. ❝ right. ❞ he doesn't need to hear any more to understand. in those years apart while izzy stayed in the same place, billy had moved on.
izzy has to force himself to meet those blue eyes again, to push through the way they almost singe his skin. ❝ ‘course i'm still fuckin' here, where else am i gonna go ? ❞ but he says it with a soft smile. it's a truce — at least for now — & it dawns on him suddenly that he doesn't even know where billy's been this whole time... or if he will be leaving again, going back to some new home with steve that izzy can't even begin to imagine. ❝ & you ? what are you doing back here, after all this time ? bringing your boyfriend to visit, is it ? ❞
what took you so long? the question lingers. sits heavy on his chest. because it's a good question, it's an honest question. and it's not like he wanted to take too long. it's moreso that he got his soul stolen from him. he got beaten and buried on the ground. he died and had to rebuild himself from the ground up. everything was against billy making it back to the sand. and if he was on his own, he. he wouldn't have made it. he knows this. he had given up on himself month number two out of cali. and he doesn't know if he can admit that to izzy. he can be honest.
"thought there wouldn't be anything left for me. besides the ocean." the end. that billy would die and he'd be one with the ocean he means but here you are and. how long have you been waiting. and he's being honest. he doesn't know if he likes it. "-i didn't think you would wait. things got, so so fucking complicated." billy can tell. it's been three years and izzy is here like he's been here for three years, and billy isn't alone. because hawkins was a shit hole but steve. steve wasn't shit, he was a goddamn lifeline and it would take forever to begin to explain how billy would be one with the goddamn ocean if steve had given up on him. but billy, billy can tell by the way izzy asks.
"-i'm telling you. things got complicated." feels his tongue heavy. like he won't be able to fucking explain and maybe he won't. he looks over his shoulder before looking at izzy. not apologetic. not sorry. because. there's nothing to be sorry about. things are never easy for billy and he doesn't know how to explain. "that's steve." and he tries to say it in a normal way. he knows it won't sound that way. "-honest to god izzy, i didn't think you would be here. i didn't think you'd want to see me again." like what happened was billy's fault. it feels like it is. and there's this fear that somehow this will crumble before billy can even think about it again.
