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“Are you good? You have a face like if Junior bit your shin.” Bowser stomped into their room, and watched in bafflement as Luigi laid on the floor, staring at the ceiling. At the very least, he had one of the pillows under his head. The man looked up at him and shrugged.
“I just like laying on the floor sometimes. Makes me feel like… like I don’t have to deal with my problems.” Bowser sighed.
“I’m gonna take a mad guess and say it went badly.” he said, his voice softening. Luigi’s gaze went away from monster’s face and to the side. He felt tired. He felt like a ship, drowned and left to rust. He felt rusty.
And there was Bowser, who he’d accidentally grown so attached to. He felt like gold in comparison to him. Luigi really tried not to think how gold would react to rust.
“I- I suppose we ran out of miracles when she actually showed up here.” he tried to joke, but his voice cracked a little at the end. “I really thought she’d take it better. She even agreed to drink tea with me. Well, I can’t blame her for… reluctance, is a good word, but I’d honestly prefer if she was angry. But- but she wasn’t.”
Peach never got angry, not quite. She got sad, she got upset, she got scared. But never angry. She shoved all of what could possibly turn into anger into a tight ball. The residue left her cold and quiet.
She wasn’t angry. She was disappointed.
“Hey. At least now we’re enemies of the state together.” Luigi let out a wet laugh at that, pushing the palms of his hands into his eyes. He could feel shuffling next to him, ending with a soft
thump
. When he blinked away the tears and stars he could see from pushing so hard, he saw Bowser; lying on his stomach, cozying up on the floor like a giant cat.
“What are you doing…?”
“You thought I’m just gonna leave you alone like that? Not happening.”
Luigi shifted closer, hiding under Bowser’s arm. “I really thought this would help fix things. They wouldn’t have to worry about Peach disappearing. Or- or worry about me. But looks like I just ruin everything, don’t I?” It was easier to spill thoughts like that on the carpet underneath them when hidden.
The hand shielding him from the world moved away as Bowser turned on his side.
“Nonsense. You don’t get to say that.” he mumbled, cradling the small human close to him, the way you hold a teddy bear to apologize to it after you accidentally pushed it off the bed. “You’re doing everything you can to make things better. It’s cruel to make you pick a side.”
“What if I’ll have to?” he choked out through a sob climbing up his throat.
“Then we’ll figure something out. But not right now. Right now, you need to rest.”
They held each other. Luigi felt so heavy, so tired, so worn out, he just wanted the time to stop so he could stay in that moment forever. Or at least, for as long as he needed to sort himself out. Bowser’s hands wandered, sometimes pressing against his skin a bit harder, looking for all the knots and tensions. All the stresses and worries.
It was getting harder and harder to keep focused in the soft, loving haze. He tried to remember if he ever felt like that back home; this safe, this treasured, this loved.
Maybe the choice wouldn’t be so hard after all.