franciscoramon | riverview ∆ ic inbox ∆ @ciscodelamancha

[He's too drunk and emotional for this. Also things have been kinda weird with Eddie but he doesn't... know how to talk about that.]

the pickle joke is too easy to make

[ Cisco has officially gone from worried to Worried, now. ]

you're right. low-hanging fruit tbh.

[ He doesn't know how to make this better so his solution is to just keep saying words. ]

the less ranty answer is it's been good living there
the communal housing was the fucking worst
i had a stupid nightmare and screamed a lot and it was a disaster
he found out i was sleeping in my lab and wouldn't let it go until i agreed to take the attic and stop living like a hobo

[ Cisco doesn't actually know how much of that Taako already knows, whether Eddie had relayed any of that info or not. It's kind of an embarrassing story, and not one he would tell almost anyone, but... it's Taako. Who's drunk and being too quiet and whose own housing situation is kind of not ideal at the moment. ]

he's a good guy like that

[Which comes back to Taako not being sure about the whole relationship thing because he doesn't feel like he's a good enough person.]

communal housing did suck, for sure. i couldnt wait to get outta there but i didnt wanna live alone either, you know?

[He's never been a fan of that.]

yep.

[ He's not at all surprised, that Taako hadn't wanted to live on his own. He seems like a guy who really wouldn't do well living alone. ]

i get that.
my plan had been to save up enough to get a place on my own because i figured it was alone or room with some weird strangers
but there was a third option after all

if id known i wouldve

well no i wouldnt have invited you to live iwth us but not cause of you its just like ellie doesnt do great with strangers

it's cool.
you didn't know cuz that's how i wanted it.
and look i'm glad i am where i am now, it worked out great, but i was handling it, y'know?

obviously ellie's the priority
she's just a kid, and it's her place, and like i just said living with strangers is the w o r s t
it's good she's got you looking out for her.

yeah i get it

kids are so much easier than adults, even teenagers. shit never seems as fucking complicated with them

[This conversation is all over the place, but that's probably the tequila's fault]

[ There are people who, Cisco thinks, he wouldn't really believe them if they said "I get it" to that. But with Taako, he doesn't doubt it. ]

gonna have to trust you on that one
can't say i've known a whole lot of kids.
not since i was one, and obvs that's different.

what kind of shit, though?

i dunno its like

[It hits him, suddenly, how much he misses Angus fucking McDonald.]

even if you fuck up they still care about you. adults have got their own agendas and shit, kids just want someone to be nice to them

[ Oh. ]

man, i so wish i could say you were wrong
but that sounds about right.

[ Cisco's own recently increased pessimism aside, he doesn't want to push Taako even deeper into a low mood than he already might be. ]

at least not all the agendas are bad
there really are people out there who just want to do good, and help others and make the world better even for all the shitheads that don't deserve it.

[He remembers telling Ellie that it was better to never trust anyone, to never rely on anyone, and that was... before he remembered Lup and the IPRE, but some of that paranoia still lingers. He spent ten years believing he was alone, the only person he'd trusted in that time had ruined his life.]

i mean, i know that

most of the people here are way too nice and good and shit, i dont fucking get it

[ Cisco's actually thought something along the same lines, and from what he's heard, Taako's world is much harsher than his own. So whatever adjustment Cisco had had to make, it must have been double for Taako. ]

yeah people are super friendly here.
made me all kinds of paranoid when i first showed up.

[ Taako had seen some of that paranoia - Cisco had asked him point-blank why he was being so nice, why Taako was befriending him in the first place. ]

i know it's not the same but there's a lot of adults here who'll still care about you even if you fuck stuff up
i mean everybody fucks up now and then

fuck, right? i for sure thought clark was secretly evil or something, he was just too good

[Clark is Too Pure and it's endlessly baffling.]

for ten years i was a completely fucking different person

i dont.

its weird

[For all that seems like a tangent, it's related to things like this, how hard it is to trust people and to believe that they won't abandon him if he makes a mistake. He's never really talked about this, the way losing his memories of Lup changed him, and how hard it is to reconcile what feels like two versions of himself.]

i thought YOU were secretly evil. just for a couple minutes. don't feel bad tho i think that about everybody.

[ Another one of those things he wouldn't admit if they weren't having drunk texting soul baring sharing time. ]

while you didn't remember?
yea, that's gotta be a hell of a trip.
makes sense, though. you thought you had a whole different life, right?

im just real fucking charming, thats not the same as like, nice

[That possibly only makes sense to him, but he feels like there's a difference between being friendly and charming because he's an outgoing person, to being the sort of genuinely kind person that Clark and Eddie are.]

i thought i'd been alone. only person id ever fucking let close was sazed and look where that ended up.
and now i get it, i remember my family and i know i wasnt alone but ive got like, two sets of memories. two versions of everything that happened to me

well, maybe that's true. but you've been nice to ME on several occasions, no matter what you say.

i actually don't know who sazed is or where that ended up.

yeah.
you might not have always been alone, but you were alone for those years. that has an effect, you know?
and after all the stuff that happened, it's not like you can go back to being the person you were before lucretia messed with your memories.

i guess... you just gotta build a whole new you out of whatever's left.

thats cause i like you, duh

sazed was my assistant. friend. sous chef. whatever.

he got mad cause i wouldnt let him be in the show and he tried to kill me by poisoning a dish. killed the crowd instead. kinda fucked up that whole famous wizard chef thing i had going on

[He's glad he's drunk for this, it makes it easier to talk about.]

youer right i just dont fucknig know how to do that

holy fuck, dude.

[ As awful as Eobard's betrayal had been, as deeply as it had fucked Cisco up, it had at the very least not had a body count that extended beyond Cisco himself. It doesn't escape Cisco's notice that Taako called Sazed a friend, said he was the only person he'd let close during those years without his sister. That kind of betrayal leaves a mark, and Cisco knows it. ]

that's so goddamn messed up
what a backstabbing psychopath

[ And Taako had never mentioned this, that anything had messed up his celebrity chef reputation. Probably not the kind of thing that's easy to bring into a conversation. But... Cisco's had Taako's food. He knows how good it is, and how much pride Taako takes in making it. He can act like that wasn't a big deal, but Cisco knows it must have felt like the end of the world. ]

hey man if you ever figure out how to do it, teach me.

i thought it was my fault for 5 fucking years cause i used magic right? to make the show look good and i thought i'd fucked up

the chalice showed me what really happened

[And it was such a relief, that it wasn't his fault.

The fact of Sazed's betrayal had sunken in later.]

hey so this is fuckign depressing, huh?

jesus, really?
you're telling me he just got away with it?

[ Cisco had been kind of assuming that Taako had realized right away, and that he'd... gotten whatever payback he needed to get. The knowledge that he'd been stuck blaming himself for that long and Sazed got off scot free is way way worse. ]

it is and that's my bad
i was supposed to be cheering you up and i'm totally just making it worse

he sure fucking did, i dont even know where the asshole is now

dead, hopefully. or he will be soon enough i guess

[With the whole... Hunger thing.]

my dude, its cool. pretty sure no matter what you tried this was gonna be shitty. im very drunk

i guess that counts as a silver lining?

[ Not much of one as far as Cisco's concerned. ]

naw man fuck that
i don't believe in inevitable shittiness
where you at anyway? i can come there and we can be very drunk together at least.
do bad karaoke or play pool or whatever.

im gonna take it

[If nothing else, at least Sazed will be super dead. It's nice to think about.]

first of all, im fucking amazing at karaoke, even when drunk. im at some bar called sylva's? its not like, amazing. you dont have to drag your ass all the way over here just cause im a mopey fuck

[ Cisco's already pulling on a jacket any heading out the door before he gets Taako's reply. His goggles can wait, and he's long since stopped working on them in between texts. ]

oh reeeeeeaaaaally? what's your best karaoke song? like your most reliable showstopper?

sure, i know i don't have to, but i'm absolutely gonna

[For all that he said the night is likely to turn out shitty no matter what,
Taako is willing to take this distraction.]

assuming we're sticking to earth shit since anything else is gonna be meaningless to you

pretty much any beyonce song is guaranteed to turn the place into boner central

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