[attr="class","samjermain"]Memo was busy putting up leftovers from his cooking-spree fueled day. All tupperwares were promptly stuck with tape and labeled in sharpie with contents and the date, to avoid anything coming remotely close to a past-due date.

Alex blew in the door like a galeforce wind and there was no time for Memo to even say hello, honey, welcome home before his boyfriend was slamming something down on the island and yelling, obviously upset.

Memo snapped the lid on another tupperware of french onion soup and cocked his head to look down at the paper masked by the spread of Alex’s hand. Ah, yes. That paper.

Their conversation was going to be a repeat of the one earlier while annalise henderson was here, though most likely with more expletives.

“Well, sweetheart,” Memo said, aiming for something comfortably in the middle of an explanation and a platitude, “they’re not wrong. The rift is dangerous.” He made a mental note that Alex wasn’t yelling at him, he was just yelling because he was worried. “But I don’t think they’re going to shut us off from the rest of the region.”

It wasn’t like Fortree was an island, to be walled off and excised, severed, and abandoned. But still, Memo had wished people would have listened to him, way back when this shit was announced. People like ollie morales , and even inconsequential cogs in the same damn machine as him, like paxton concordas and Calliope Marks, whose first instincts had been nut up or shut up and but what about Petalburg?

All of his concerns and warnings had been brushed aside and fallen on deaf ears. And now there was this. A giant hole in fucking spacetime lighting up downtown Fortree like a macabre Christmas display.

Had he given in too quickly? Had he not argued enough?

Alex’s concerns about running out of supplies snap him out of his thoughts.

“The dome is gone and we’re not cut off from the rest of the world, anymore,” he says, hoping to alleviate some of his boyfriend’s stress, “so I think things will be okay, if a bit tricky.”

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“Try telling that to the others who tried leaving the city to go to Lilycove but got blocked and were sent back inside,” he grumbled a few moments later.

Djin, he wanted to destroy something to keep his hands busy. This was just. Incredibly stupid.

“How can you be so calm even after all that’s happened, Frog?” he asked his better half a few moments later. “How can you not be worried about—about the big existential rift in the area that’s causing most of the local population to lock themselves away in their homes out of fear?”

And pray tell, what was the rest of the government doing? Were they going to be just ignored like this?

“Plus I’m pretty sure I’m on her shit list if I dare try to ask for help on behalf of Fortree again,” he added with another grumbling noise.

“I think she made certain of that.”

---

this happens sometime after Anna’s visit. Good luck calming him down, Frog.

[attr="class","samjermain"]Memo frowns. “This is the first I’ve heard of that.” Which was bad in a number of ways: it meant, somewhere, there was a hitch in the information line. Someone wasn’t telling him something-- or maybe, the failure was his, and he wasn’t listening. “Where did you learn that?”

Alex was wringing the air with his hands as though he could strangle Dahlia right then and there. Memo cranked the hot water on the kitchen sink and pumped soap into his palm, waiting until the stream was blistering so he could scrub his hands clean-- clean of his own disappointment, his errors.

“I’m calm because I have to be,” he says, voice measured, talking over his shoulder. He shakes the water from his ruddy fingers and dries them on a kitchen towel. Words cannot espresso how much you bean to me, it reads.

“Of course I’m worried,” he says, and his voice catches a bit, then, because it hurts. It hurts, to be accused of not caring. It hurts to be wrapped up in the same crowd as Dahlia, in Alex’s mind, like one big, foul, sushi roll. “But acting rashly isn’t going to solve anything. And it would be even more damaging, to incite people to panic. As you said, they’re already afraid.”

He reaches out and takes Alex’s hands, cold against his freshly-scrubbed skin, squeezing his fingers before meshing their palms and twining them together. When he speaks next, he's once again in control, if slightly shaky:

“I’m planning on talking to Dahlia.” I was just taking a breather, he doesn't say. But he should've known better. He's Ranger Captain of Fortree, and there's a big, festering, open wound in her gut. He doesn't get to take breathers.

“I’ll petition her for help. But, shit list or not, storming the palace and screaming at her isn’t going to work.”

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“You know. Ethan. Claire. Jack. They keep me updated with the local gossip—especially Claire—they’re like, some of the few people to be actually out and about ever since the thing into another world appeared right where it did,” he continued with a sigh.

“Even they’re at a loss. I told them to wait for the official statement, but they’re… they’re helping me with keeping most of the locals in the know. Jack even does grocery runs for the lil’ ol’ ladies who live at the retirement home on the opposite side of the city,” he added a few moments later.

The moment he mentioned that he was going to talk to her, though, he visibly balked.

“I… I think it’s better you did the talking, rather than me,” he managed to say after he’d unstuck his throat a minute or so later.

“I might just sharpen a knife on her and go to town if I was the one who talked to her…” he trailed off, letting out a minuscule little sigh before returning the gentle pressure he could feel—the contrast of the warmness to his own cold fingers.

After letting some quiet pass between them, he looked at his better half.

And couldn’t find the words to say, so he just ended up looking at him quietly, feeling the seething pressure in the back of his head gradually recede the longer he stayed around the other. He was… he was ready to snap, really.

---

this happens sometime after Anna’s visit. Good luck calming him down, Frog.

[attr="class","samjermain"]Ah, yes, the Sanctuary employees. Memo masked a frown by looking down and away, making a mental note to have a conversation with them. Alex’s plate was already so very full. He didn’t need to be inundated with more stress-inducing gossip.

“Most of the Rangers are wrapped up in patrolling the rift, making sure nothing comes out and no one goes in,” he said, “but I can find someone to help do more supply runs.” He doesn’t mention that someone would most likely just be himself.

“I know, sweetheart,” he says, as the admission draws a laugh out of him. “That’s why I’m going to talk to her. Don’t worry.” He would do this. He could bear these burdens. He would bear them. For Alex.

He senses the lingering anger and sees the tension in his eyes, his jaw; he draws him in, pulling Alex’s arms behind him to seal at the small of his back, resting his cheek and head against his chest.

“Fortree is going to be okay.” Because this was bigger than just the both of them. This was their city.

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“I… I have never felt the urge to actually fucking murder someone until today, y-you know,” he admitted quietly as he felt his hands wrap around his boyfriend who’d literally come in like a nesting doll, wrapping himself up in his own embrace.

“Like… there are days that I get upset about this shit, and then there are those days I want to strangle someone fucking shitless. It’s like… you know, rough.”

Eventually, he would mellow in the other’s hold, feeling his own racing heartbeat slow down and return to a somewhat normal pace. The angry bite was still in his voice, though.

“I’ve thought of… a great many things. So many. You know that saying about those who smile the most have the nastiest tempers?”

He would allow him time to answer.

---

this happens sometime after Anna’s visit. Good luck calming him down, Frog.

[attr="class","samjermain"]“Somehow, sweetheart,” he said, his laugh warm in the evening air, “I doubt that.”

Alex had a temper. Memo’d learned this by now. It was, until recently, a rare creature, that only emerged when the conditions were properly shit. The thought made him frown. It meant that things had been properly shit for quite some time now.

But still, Memo sincerely doubted this would be the first time Alex’d rage had been so powerful he’d imagined manslaughter.

“Mm,” he hummed, the giddiness at feeling his boyfriend calm-- physically feeling him put his hackles down as Memo held him-- making him slightly dizzy. “I know, babe. I know.”

He pulled back and flicked him gently at the apex of his chest.

“Don’t do anything you’ll go to prison for, okay?”

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“They said, those who smile the most have the most terrifying tempers… and that’s apparently true with me.”

There was this watery look on his face as the hackles retracted—for now. For the moment.

“However if anyone does anything bad to the people I care about, I will not hesitate to lash back. You should know that, too, since you’re one of the few people I completely care about—my sestras aside of course.”

He then returned the booping gesture with a light forehead flick.

“You think you’ll have a better time talking to her compared to me?”

---

this happens sometime after Anna’s visit. Good luck calming him down, Frog.

[attr="class","samjermain"]“Yes, yes, I know. You’re not all warm and soft edges.” There was just the tiniest bit of chiding, there, because for all his proclamations at anger and rage, Alex would always be Alex, to him. Tough but delicate, capable of surviving on his own but undeniably worth protecting. “You don’t need to convince me, love.”

He wrinkled his nose in a fake pout, resting his temple in the center of Alex’s chest and sighing.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I have to try.”

There were a lot of things he had to try to do with no promises of success. But he also could not fail. The weight of the situation made him close his eyes for a moment.

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“In the end… I think you’ll have better luck than me talking to her, anyway.”

He sighed; this tiny, infinitesimal little thing that his partner wouldn’t notice before he looked down at him.

“Maybe another perspective would sway her. I’onno. But yeah…” he went on as he felt his arms wrap around the other man once more, afraid to let go.

Because if he let go, what would happen? Would the hackles come out again?

“Let me know how it goes… for better or for worse… whatever happens, happens. Should shit hit the fan… we gotta just. Roll with it.”

---

this happens sometime after Anna’s visit. Good luck calming him down, Frog.

[attr="class","samjermain"]“Whatever Dahlia thinks,” Memo said, voice full of conviction despite it coming out sort of chubby-bunnyish by the way his cheek was smashed up against Alex’s chest, “we’ll protect ourselves. We’ll take care of us and ours.”

He tipped his head back, chin resting overtop Alex’s sternum.

“We have each other, and that’s the important part.”

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