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 Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 11:19 am
It had been just about 24 hours since Bix had risen from the dead. It was enough time to go through every gamut of emotion and face the reality that perhaps not everyone would handle his return in a nice and positive manner. It was bad enough that he'd been legally dead for a week. Now that he was alive, he just couldn't let it drag out for those that were close to him. The albino hovered uneasily in front of Gale's door. Was there a better way to do this than to just show up? Maybe Molly had called him to warn him? Bix didn't even feel 100% cure of his own mindset yet, but he knew he'd never be forgiven if he was 'alive' too long without telling his closest friends. With the pit in his gut growing with dread by the second, he rapped his knuckles on the door.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 4:06 pm
Somewhere in the kitchen of the little yellow house, Gale sat in the middle of what looked to be some sort of wreckage. There were cans of paint lying haphazardly around him, paintbrushes and little wooden stirrers dumped unceremoniously on the floor, and plastic tarps to cover things were draped over most of the surfaces. Gale himself was speckled in pale blue paint, and his hair - with its newly done white streaks in his fringe of bangs - was pushed back away from his face as he concentrated on keeping the paint off of the more important surfaces.
Somewhere off in the distance he could hear a knock on the front door.
<< We have a visitor. >> remarked Jinhai lazily, and for a second Gale just sat in the comfortable silence of knowing that his weapon was back and he was, perhaps just a little bit less lonely than he had been before.
Seems so, he thought, wondering whether or not it was Eva, or maybe Wilson, since they were two of the few people he was allowing himself to see at the current moment. Pushing himself to his feet, Gale brushed off a few of the paint stains, smearing it on his fingers, and made his way towards the front door.
"Yes?" he said, pulling it open. His eyes fell on the person standing in front of him.
Everything inside of him seemed to screech to a sudden, awful halt.
It was impossible. It wasn't true, it was someone playing a trick on him - a horrible, cruel sort of trick that made nausea rise in his throat, that made his mouth drop open, and then clench, teeth grinding together, his face pale, feeling suddenly weak.
<< ...oh, dear. >>
For one long moment, Gale did nothing but stand there, staring up at the ghostly pale form of his best mate.
And then he slammed the door in his face with as much strength as he could muster.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 4:16 pm
Bix sort of opened his mouth, to say anything, but the door was slammed inhis face. You could have been punched in the nossse you know."Um.." Bix tried to pipe up. "I woke up naked in the morgue with a toe-tag yesterday.." He was trying to talk loud on account of the door, but his explanation didn't really change much.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:01 pm
He felt nauseated and fragile. Gale stood in the hallway of his little home and tried to get the air back into his lungs, since it was suddenly extraordinarily difficult to breathe.
It was impossible. Not true, no. His mind could not seem to comprehend just what it was he was seeing.
<< Oy vey. >>
He lifted a hand, pressed his fingers to his chest, feeling his own heartbeat beneath his palm and hearing Bix's all-too-familiar voice wafting muffled through the door.
He was alive. Bix was alive.
Slowly the front door opened again, and Gale stood there, his white and blonde hair pushed back from his face, which was quite expressionless - at least, until he said, in a voice dripping with hardly concealed fury,
"So?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 5:14 pm
SO? He didn't really have an answer for that. Bix could tell Gale was upset. He had a white streak of hair and he sounded furious. That was so Gale.Bix shrugged, he remembered last night in his room as he tried to analyze and dissect how he would feel in someone else's shoes. It cause the pit in his stomach to widen, threatening to devour him emotionally if he didn't do somehting instead. The archer shuffled, almost tripped on the door frame, and pulled the shorter young man into a tight hug. He squeezed him, didn't let him struggle or fight it. "I'm sorry." Bix murmured genuinely. His voice was soft, directed into Gale's hair as he gripped him in a (very manry) bear hug. "I don't remember anything. I don't know what happened but.. the thought of you being on that slab instead of me..." Bix shook his head. "I can't help what happened. I'm sorry I did this to you."
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:32 pm
For a moment after being enveloped in Bix's crushing embrace, Gale let himself relax into it, let himself be thankful for the fact that Bix was, in fact, not dead, that he was here, that he was breathing, that he was alive.
But then he remembered the awful, sinking sensation in his stomach, the horrible, gut wrenching pain of an agonizing blackness, of sinking into a despair so putrid that it hurt, that it made it difficult to breathe.
In one swift movement he had shoved Bix away, his face bright red, eyes sparkling and reared his fist back, throwing a punch at the older hunter.
"I watched you die!" he screamed. "You were dead. I had to go on without you, you lousy, lying, horrible git!"
It felt hard to think straight, to comprehend what was going on. Gale's hands balled into fists.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH? ANY IDEA AT ALL HOW I'VE FELT, WHAT I'VE HURT BECAUSE OF YOU, YOU STUPID PRAT?!"
Shouting made his voice hoarse, but once he started, he could not seem to stop.
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Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2012 6:37 pm
This was sort of expected, at least from Gale. Bix ducked when Gale exploded, catching the punch in the edge of his arm as he raised it to block his face. It definitely left a ache and he rubbed it while he was screamed at. Bix had nothing to say. He couldn't do anything. He didn't choose for this to happen to him. He didn't even know how he was alive right now. "I was really dead." Bix said it softly, like it wouldmake a difference. "In a cooler for a week. It wasn't a mission or a plan. I died. I would never deliberately..." He trailed off, knowing he couldn't really help himself in this situation. So he simply looked sheepish and red in the face.
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 7:40 am
It hurt. Everything hurt.
To have someone die in front of him, to see what had happened, to have gone through that, only to have them not really die at all. It was like some colossal, horrible, cosmic joke, one that wasn't funny. Gale stood there, breathing heavily, his cheeks flushed scarlet, his eyes oddly bright beneath the new fringe of white hair.
"I watched you die," he said hoarsely, and to his embarrassment, his voice broke a little on the last word. He swallowed hard, fingers clenching into fists at his sides. "Do you have any idea what that's like? How that feels? It's one thing to die, Bix. It's one thing to be the one dying. It's an entirely different thing to have to be the one to watch someone else die."
He shook his head, feeling hollow inside. "It's easier to be the one dying than to be the one watching," he whispered.
Gale's voice swelled again, like the tides of an ocean, growing louder and more pain-stricken, everything tumbling out all at once, the words stumbling and tripping over one another as they spilled from his lips.
"We had to kill you. Ryan defied orders and got his arm broken by Caelius and his weapon locked down because he refused to attack you or Ceres. Caelius wanted us to take you down, but he refused, and Caelius snapped. And he wasn't the only one; there were loads of us who couldn't do it, who couldn't attack you, but Caelius wouldn't listen."
A look of darkness had crept over his face, anger etched into his eyes. "Good riddance to him anyway, the lousy git."
Silent tears were now falling down his face. He looked back up at Bix, feeling awful, feeling as though nothing in the world was going right, that the blackness was threatening to swallow him whole.
"I was drowning in grief," he whispered. "And I wasn't the only one. They put a sheet over you and took you out and then there was a grave, and you were dead."
Jinhai was silent inside of his head as Gale lifted his hands, putting them over his face to cover the shameful tears that had started to fall down his face now. He turned his arm to cover them, his other hand clenched into a fist at his side, hating himself for feeling the way he did.
"You idiot."
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 8:04 am
There was a grave? He didn't know that yet. He hadn't bothered going to the cemetary. Bix didn't need more reminders about the situation. "I do know." About death. Seeing someone die. Seeing someone way too young taken away. "And you wish it was you and you wish they had a chance to live because they were better than you. So much better." His brother hadn't even had a body. But his brother also hadn't come back. Bix eyes burned now seeing Gale cry. He thought he'd choked that down but apparently, not exactly. Bix stepped up again, wrapping his arms around Gale and taking a few strides in the house. He flicked the door shut with his foot. It was no one else's business. Even if Gale was mad, upset, lost. He clung to him and felt his own tears now wetting the young man's hair. "I am an idiot. I'm stupid. I'm the worst." His voice cracked. "I failed one little brother. I don't want to fail you too."
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 8:26 am
He knew what Bix had been through. Not the dying part, because he couldn't even begin to understand what it had felt like to be the one dying, though a part of Gale had been dying slowly every day since Bix's "death." But he knew there were things in Bix's past, about his brother. He had talked about it, a long time ago, so far that the memories were hazy and unfocused.
"I had to bring your body back," said Gale, and closed his eyes, the image of his arm wrapped around Bix's waist, his body lifeless, Eva and Wilson on the other side to help him carry him back through the portal. "We left Caelius there, but Dakota grabbed Ceres and I grabbed you and we had to carry your bodies back."
It hurt talking about this. He could still feel the drowning sensation in his chest, as though he were never going to be fully whole again. His marking of a little wooden grave that said Leslie Gentry had been the breaking point, the end to something that had long since been over.
Bix's arms were around him again, and Gale shook his head violently, shoving at him, pushing at his chest.
"Idiot," he snapped out, hot tears stinging his eyes as he twisted and shoved and kicked. "Stupid ridiculous prat you git - "
But then the kicking stopped and Gale's forehead was pressed against Bix's front, his fingers clenched in the fabric of his shirt, tears sliding down his face. He had wanted to believe that Bix's death was untrue for what felt like a century, that one day he would come back - but it had not seemed like a possibility, and Gale had already come to accept that he would never again hear Bix's voice in this lifetime.
He felt as though the ground had been pulled out from under his feet, fallen into a hole, and then been pulled out again.
"Stupid," said Gale again, but he wasn't fighting anymore.
"Don't ever do that again."
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 10:55 am
"If you hadn't brought me back I might not be here." Bix murmured, bearing the hits and kicks. His skin stung and ached from the hits but he would just take it from Gale. "If the mists hadn't take the bodies I could have been some project for H. Ceres and myself. I'm grateful. I am." Bix hadn't know the details of Caelius' demise but he filed it away. That was useful information. He couldn't promise he wouldn't die. It just wasn't possible. "I'll try. I promise I'll try. I don't even know how it happened. I don't remember any of it. I found out but.." Why he and Ceres? How had they become infected and changed? Bix petted Gale's hair and then loosened his grip to wipe his own red-rimmed eyes. "Your hair looks awesome though.." He gave a goofy grin. He was trying. it would probably get him punched again though.
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Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2012 6:49 pm
He closed his eyes, aware that, for the first time, he could feel Bix's breathing, which meant that this was not an illusion, nor was it a joke. Bix was really and truly alive.
Gale's fingers clenched on Bix's shirt front, glowering at the shirt in question and being too embarrassed to actually look at him in the face. He felt absurdly childish, ashamed of how far he had fallen upon hearing of Bix's death, but that was how things went. People lived, people died.
Or not.
His heart still ached, as though there was something missing in it, and he knew why. It was as though, because Bix and Ceres had come back, that there was a chance that Leslie was not truly dead either.
But that one, Gale knew for certain, was impossible. Leslie would not ever wake up.
The scowl grew more pronounced on his face, his cheeks flushed, his eyes still damp.
"Yes, well, I decided I'd do something in honor of some git who decided to go and die on me, you see."
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Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2012 8:54 am
"Well that guy sounds like a jerk." Bix smirked. "But a jerk with cool hair. I think you should keep it." He ruffled Gale's bangs. And then, because he couldn't hold back any longer, he pulled the young man into his arms and they made out hardcore, which led to sweet illegal lovin... illegal due to age and because what they were doing was wrong in several US states.The albino softened again, stopped his teasing and gave Gale another quick and tight hug. He was like a brother to him and seeing him so upset just tore at him inside. After a moment he did release his grip again and did that annoying thing where he used his own shirt to roughly wipe Gale's face of tears. "So.." He looked at the paint covered fingers on the young man. "Doing some work around here? You need help?" Way to change the subject.
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Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2012 1:37 pm
"Or maybe I'll just shave it all off," said Gale with another glower. He lifted a hand and tugged self consciously at the white fringe of bangs, feeling embarrassed that he had done something so...well, it was supposed to have been a tribute to a certain someone, at any rate.
And then there was much kissing and loving and general tender loving care as Bix and Gale professed their mad love for each other and then ran off together like a star crossed Legolas and Gimli.
The scowl deepened at the "help" wiping his eyes from Bix, but he just let it happen, with the feeling that he might as well. Following the albino's gaze around the messy house, he gave a half sort of shrug, one shoulder rising and falling.
"I figured it was time for a change. And I can put you to hard work."
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Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 8:23 am
"The harder the work, the better." Bix pinned Gale to the wall. "I'll also be happy to change..." he tore his shirt off, "into something more comfortable.""No don't shave it!" Bix squawked. He really did like the new look and was doing his best not to have Gale feel awkward. Unfortunately he was probably going to do it again in a moment. "I'm happy to help for a while." He took a few more steps into the house. "So umm.. Molly said you had some of my things. I guess you saw the umm.." Letter. The letter. Yep. All his gushy feelings. Oh yeah.. cue the bright red face.
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