042. Custard Pie

[samson]

[Brock's at his cabin like he usually is, and he assumes Molotov is in her office like she usually is. So he opens his journal and pens a filter to her, quickly jotting down a note.]

Hey baby. Do you want to learn to cook?

Comments

[samson]

[He's mad she punched him in the fucking eye, so he's just going to stay in here and drink too! Straight out of the bottle, because fuck glasses. They've been nursing this bottle all night though so eventually he runs out and just opens another one.]

[molotov]

[Well, he kicked her in the fucking shin! Molotov has conveniently decided that she no longer cares about whether or not she'll be punished for wishing, and she is wishing up lots of wine now.]

[samson]

[I think punching someone in the eye is a little worse! How rude. Anyway, meanwhile Brock just gets drunk in the kitchen. Alone.]

[molotov]

[Good! They'll both get drunk alone and then Molotov will go find Ezio and have him make her dinner and then she'll fuck him. Nice going, Samson.]

[samson]

[Oh, okay. Brock will just stay in here forever and drink himself into a coma, nbd.]

[molotov]

[On wine? I doubt it. Anyway, all he has to do is come apologize for basically accusing her of wanting to cheat.]

[samson]

[Except that isn't what he was saying at all, Molotov just doesn't know how to listen! So nope, he's just going to stay and drink.]

[molotov]

[That was exactly what he said! That cooking for someone is intimate and "for family", but apparently you can be close enough friends with someone to cook for them as family, but Brock has decided for Molotov that Ezio isn't on that level. So him cooking for her must be romantic because he wants to sleep with her (and Ezio wants to sleep with all ladies, come on), which would only be important if Brock thought that Molotov was going to surrender to that and cheat.

So no, her logic makes perfect sense, and Brock owes her an apology.]

[samson]

[Molotov has known Ezio for like six months. And if she's grown close enough to him in six months to consider him family, and to be someone she apparently talks to when she's depressed when she won't say a word to her own husband, then Brock's jealousy also makes perfect sense. And she owes him some sympathy that doesn't involve socking him in the face! Go die.]

[molotov]

[Yes, but six months of Paradisa time is more like a year in real time! And sometimes, people just click, and it just sucks for Brock if he doesn't get that. Furthermore, had Brock ever devoted his tiny amount of thinking power to considering that maybe Molotov didn't want to talk to him at that time because she partially blamed him for the situation anyway? Brock's jealousy is completely wrong, and he owed her an apology.

And Molotov wasn't going to apologize because he shouldn't have kicked her!]

[samson]

[Well, it was shitty of her to blame him in the first place for something that wasn't his fault. So now she owes him a double apology!]

[molotov]

[It was his fault, it was completely his fault that she didn't have a baby in her own world, and that she didn't have a dad!]

[samson]

[Oh, well. I guess everything is Brock's fault. All the more reason for him to kill himself with alcohol!

Because he's not going back in there. Is the point.]

[molotov]

[Well, that sucks, because now Molotov is going to starve.]

[samson]

[Yep! Sure is a tragedy.]

[molotov]

[Oops, guess you failed at this too, Brock. Sucks that your stupid little ego matters more to you than your own wife.]

[samson]

[Because she sure is going to starve to death within the matter of half an hour. And she can't leave the room? Or wish for food? Yeah, this sure is his fault. What a piece of shit!!!

It's around this time that the oven timer goes off, and Brock has gotten so stupid drunk that he tries to take the pizza out without an oven mitt.

Which results in this:] Fuck! Goddammit!

[molotov]

[That makes Molotov very drunkenly yell... slur this:] Did you hurt yourself? I hope so!

[samson]

Oh, nice! Yeah, I burned the hell out of my hand, not that you care or anything.

[molotov]

Nnnnnnope!

[samson]

[He doesn't answer her, because what the hell do you even say to that? Instead, he just turns off the oven and takes the pizza out, the pizza stone loudly clattering on the counter as he drops it kind of angrily.

It broke his heart that they fought all the damn time; he couldn't stand it. Why did they even get married? He wanted this to be another cute little date night, and it turned into a big thing because he was a moron and because everything he said made her mad. She probably was better off with Ezio, because from what Brock could see, they got along a hell of a lot better than he did with her.

Brock just glares at the pizza instead of cutting it, which is probably good because he might wind up cutting his hand and bleeding all over it if he tried, drinking wine straight from the bottle.]

[molotov]

[It wasn't like Molotov was pleased that they fought! She loved him so much, but he never thought anything through, and he never backed down when she explained why it was wrong of him to say stuff. Molotov hadn't spent more than half of her life resisting him and other men just to get married and then accused of wanting to cheat, which was what was happening, regardless of what Brock said. He was asking her not to have dinner with a friend because he was afraid she was going to cheat, and he was jealous. And that wasn't fucking fair, and Molotov was not about to kowtow to that argument.

She wanted nothing more than to get along with him, but he made her so angry, and he never wanted to talk to her. Whenever she had something to say in a conversation that opposed his view, he would shut her down. He held things against her that weren't fair -- like finding relief in talking to Ezio after a mental breakdown, almost purely because Ezio had been outside of the situation to start with. And it wasn't fucking fair. It was fucking unjust that forty years of evidence wasn't enough for Brock -- Molotov was being honest when she said that she didn't trust him because of his past. She barely trusted him now, and she largely got the sense that he was only faithful because he was afraid of what she would do if she found out! But Molotov had spent her entire life waiting for one person, and then she waited even longer for him to prove himself, too; what part of that screams "willing to hop in bed for the price of a pasta dinner"? And when she pointed out the flaw in that argument, he screamed that she was wrong and that wasn't the argument at all, even if taking that logic away means that his entire argument is that Molotov isn't allowed to ever have close friends. That's basically it. "No one else is allowed to cook for you, cooking is for family", but it's okay for Brock to cook for his friends? That means that Molotov isn't allowed to have friends.

Of fucking course.

The longer Molotov sat there, getting more and more drunk as she thought about this, the more upset she got. And since Brock wasn't there to be violent at, she just sort of whimpered and then started to cry into her hands.]

[samson]

[Except no, he wasn't accusing her of anything. He was jealous, sure, but he didn't think she was going to jump into bed with someone else or anything. He even said so! Maybe he was jealous that Molotov had an emotional connection with someone other than him, did she consider that? Or did Molotov just think that Brock was incapable of being jealous about anything other than sex?

To Brock, cooking for someone was about taking care of them, which of course was something he equated with family and love and all that stuff. He just happened to be so wary of Ezio because he'd been so blatant about wanting to fuck her; it bothered him that this dude who wanted to get with her was doing something as intimate as cooking for her. It wasn't that Brock didn't trust her, but he didn't want to be replaced in any capacity in Molotov's life. He didn't want anyone to usurp the role of taking care of her, and he didn't want to share it with anyone either. He loved her obsessively, and was fine with her being friends with other people, because what kind of controlling psychopath would he be if he wasn't, but he didn't want anyone else into their little family box. He didn't want anyone else to cook for her, or brush her hair, or slap her, or kiss her, or see her cry -- all of that stuff was his domain, his rights as her family, and he didn't want anyone else in there.

Of course, this was all subconscious because he wasn't that self-aware, so it pretty much just came out as him being weirdly jealous and unable to articulate because he just didn't know what bothered him so much about it.

Brock is not a smart man, but he is a sensitive man, and of course he is going to get defensive when she criticizes something that is so deeply personal to him, particularly when he doesn't even know what his own deal is. It's just frustration about his own shortcomings.

Eventually Brock gets mad enough where he just couldn't stand here staring at pizza anymore, he refused, and he very angrily cuts it into slices (without cutting up his hand in the process, so good job Samson), angrily slaps some down onto two plates, and angrily stomps/carries them into the living room.]

[molotov]

[But if he couldn't explain that, why was Molotov expected to just understand his thought process? All Molotov heard was that he didn't trust her to be faithful, and it hurt. And then, to throw salt in that wound, he was basically calling her stupid for thinking that, because he couldn't clarify his own issues. And she linked it explicitly to sex because that was what Brock had always been jealous of! He didn't even care that she was dating Guido until she had insinuated that it might lead to sex. So of course that was what she thought.

By the time that Brock stomps/carries into the living room, Molotov is curled up on her side on the couch, sniffling and covering her face.]

[samson]

[Well, then Molotov needed to learn to listen better, because the fact of the matter is, he told her several times that it had nothing to do with trusting her. She wasn't expected to understand something that he didn't understand either, but it would be nice if she at least tried to be a little more patient and sympathetic.

Brock awkwardly stands there with the plates in his hands, just kind of frowning down at her.]

Stop.