samwellmen:

it takes a little while to get used to samwell. it’s slow. chris misses home, the beaches, the sun, his mothers homemade chinese food. there’s no homemade chinese food at samwell.

usually, nursey and dex can tell when he’s homesick. they do things like send him a string of emoji hearts, or bring him coffee from annie’s, or just sit with him, watching netflix or hockey.

once, bitty made char siu for chris. it was nothing like his mother’s, but chris ate it anyway. when nursey found him crying in his room after dinner, he slid into bed with chris and listened to chris tell him about all the food his mom cooked, and how the flavors felt more like home than any place chris had ever been.

the next morning, chris found a piece of notebook paper folded up in one of his sneakers. it was a poem about the taste of missing home. chris taped it on the wall next to his bed.

he is homesick, and that never goes away. missing home is second nature, but eventually it begins to fade.
not because he misses it less, but because he’s found a second home. here, at samwell, with ransom and holster shouting over each other, and shitty’s hugs and sloppy kisses, jack’s quiet words of encouragement, bitty always making sure that chris is okay.

lardo lets chris sit with her while she’s painting, and chris doesn’t know how to describe the way it feels to watch a work of art bloom onto a blank canvas, the way it feels to have a sanctuary, but it’s good. nursey writes more poems, and they talk about what it’s like to feel distant from the cultures they were raised on. dex tells him about his own family, manages to keep chris laughing with stories of his sisters when the two of them start to feel sad again.

he meets caitlyn farmer. she’s fierce and funny and understands chris in a way that makes him breathless. he fits into her life like there was a place created just for him. they talk, and they dream, and she makes him smile even when he thinks he can’t.

chris starts a new set of roots, across the country, for his second family. it’s not like california, of course. it’s different, but it begins to feel like home just the same.