i was reading today (
this fic for mdzs/the untamed) and this passage just came into my home and lovingly knocked me down the stairs:
It's a bit of an odd feeling at first, sharing with someone the minuscule details of a city he's lived in pretty much alone apart from two friends. Walking with someone down streets he's used to stepping alone on, taking a bus and having someone he knows and can talk to in the seat beside his.
Wei Wuxian can't help but find it strangely intimate: here, this is my life, welcome in. These are the streets I walk down, the roads I take, the city I know how to navigate without a map.i... have a lot of feelings about showing people around places i've lived, and i want to say 'which i always forget' but i DON'T because i think about this constantly, and i genuinely don't think i've ever read it put into words this well.
i've had several times where people have visited me somewhere, and i've been wanting to show them around, and they haven't been interested, and objectively, i get why! it's not always fun for someone else to be shown around a bunch of mundane places that don't have any emotional resonance. and yet everytime, i'm kind of quietly devestated, because it IS personal and intimate, in a way that - at least for me - feels vulnerable, and so it sucks when it's not taken that way. and i think that's what kind of shocked me about this passage is that i'm not sure i've ever seen someone describe it that way before! not that i don't think people have, i'm 200% sure it's happened multiple times in books even, but EYE'VE never read it and it hit me unexpectedly well, to feel acknowledged by this fic.
(it's also just a great fic so far, did i mention that yet? :p)