Inquisitive ✓

Extra: In which...

A/N: In which I asked some of my readers what scenes they would like to read. Are they canon? Maybe. Maybe not. You can decide. Again, this is old and unedited. Don't judge. Or do. I don't care. I'm not the person who wrote these one-shots anymore lmao.

In which something unexpected happens

(Suggested by Brechje)

I'd love to say it's Elija's fault that it goes wrong, but really, the blame is completely mine. It wasn't supposed to happen today. It wasn't supposed to happen here. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Apparently.

Yet, it still happens.

The train ride back home is long. Not because we suddenly live so far away from my family home, but because the train gets fucking stuck. When we are only ten minutes away from our destination, too...I didn't know a human could sigh this many times, but I'm sure this is about the eightieth time a sigh leaves my lungs.

"Mikky, they said they'll be riding again in a few minutes."

"A few minutes..." I groan. "They feel more like hours, Eli."

"Is it really that bad to have to sit with me for that long?" he jokes and I turn to him with a tired smile on my face. "If I was tired of you, I would have broken up with you years ago."

"You could still grow tired of me."

"Don't say that, idiot. If I've managed to live with you for... what's it been? Twenty-four years now? I think I can handle twenty-four more."

With an amused smirk, he lifts an imaginary glass. "To twenty-four more years. You know, you should pretend you can't speak English the first year, so it's comparable to how it used to be. And don't forget to constantly say 'shit'."

I grin at the memory of our kindergarten years and say in a high-pitched voice, "Shit, shit, shit!" which has him slapping his knee with laughter. "No but that would mean you should sleep with every person you run into from the fifteenth year until the twenty-fourth and that's not only unfaithful, but also very, very disturbing, since you'll be..." I pause to do the math in my head, but he finishes with choked laughter. "I'll be in my forties! Imagine that. A forty-year-old slut."

We both can't stop chuckling, while leaning into each other, completely ignoring the two girls constantly leaning around their chairs to look at us, until the speakers of the train suddenly announce that we're leaving again. The carriage does this little stuttered movement, before it finally starts riding.

"Well, thank fucking Jesus," I mutter, but then we're silent again. The moment is over, yet all that's going through my head is the idea of being with Elija for so long that we'd be two old, cranky men, together. It's a scary thought, yet comforting. These days, it's all I can think of. If I'd want to grow old with anyone, it'd be Elija.

Say that to past me, 'straight' me from five years ago, and I would have laughed my ass off. When we finally get out of the train, breathing in the fresh air, I still haven't let the idea go. Growing old with Elija. It sounds like... a happy life.

Getting a weirdly sudden rush of confidence, I grab his jacket, stopping us on the middle of the bridge in a packed train station, and ask him, "Elija, do you ever think about, like whether you... want to... get ma—" I pause and squeeze the pocket of the jacket I'm holding onto, trying to feel what exactly that shape that's in it is supposed to be. It's box-shaped and seems to be about the size of...