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 Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:17 pm
The burning boy woke with a start, coughing and sputtering so vehemently that he spat black threads of saliva over his pillow. He wrenched himself upright, supported by two pale, thin arms as he tried to drag another breath inside himself. Then another coughing fit arose, this one as dry and wheezing as the first. He dragged himself out of bed, away from his boy, away from the flammables, laid on his back next to the recessed pit where the bed remained. Deft black fingers fumbled for the fasteners on his cincher until he peeled out of it, coughing all the more.
Finally he caught a breath of clean air. A couple coughs erupted for him, nearly lifting him off his back, but they hadn't persisted.
So he lay there, staring at the ceiling, breathing, watching thick plumes of smoke wind their way toward the stony ceiling. The floor felt cool against his back, his shoulders, his arms. It felt soothing against his bare legs. In minutes, it would warm to the temperature of his overheated body, but for now, he could enjoy it. Seldom did he get the opportunity to enjoy the chill floor in his own home.
Once he'd taken several breaths without incident, Faustite rolled onto his side, faced the bed. His boy had been sleeping, but now he roused — likely due to the absence of heat at his side, or all the racket Faustite had made. With the issue taken care of, Faustite had planned to stay out of the pit and use his arm for a pillow, maybe catch up on more sleep. Surely they could afford to do so; it wouldn't be time for him to rise for a few hours yet. Exhaustion told him he'd be better off knocking out on the floor, anyway.
So he shut his eyes, had himself a last couple coughs, and hoped sleep would take him before his boy could fuss about any of it.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:26 pm
Sleeping next to a fever often made Waru think of home, dragged his dreams towards those of the hottest nights so heavy with humidity that even when the windows were wide open and the blankets were kicked off. Still, he was hot for it. Those dreams weren’t bad, though. Surely not the worst they’d ever been, and no longer did his thoughts warp hellishly into visions where he was cooking alive; that’d all faded peacefully after enough months of ‘first nights’, and starting awake stickily for reasons that were far less fun than he’d wanted them to be. Luckily the tower had windows, if not always a breeze. That alone soothed away in minutes the feel of a leather-bound grate pressing against the sweaty skin of his back.
N Faustite n him woke opposite hours often enough, tossed n turned, slept starfish, kicked tangled fits….
Their nightmares were rarely ever quiet, sometimes being alone in the aftermath was better than being pinned. Sometimes it was the exact opposite of that. So it wasn’t the movements that woke him. Nor the sudden lack of heat (though he did groan for the loss of it). It wasn’t the smell either. His senses had long since dulled for waking up and thinking his kitchen’d caught fire, or that he’d left the stove on. A dangerous side-effect, maybe, for anyone who didn’t have access to an Eternal’s trove of burn-me-nots n trinkets made explicitly to let him love a man forever ablaze.
Which meant it was the sound. The noise was familiar, distantly so. The way it broke through his thick, cottony consciousness n dragged him up to an absence that was so very odd —
Because the noise was still *close*, but Faustite wasn’t.
Waru groggily pawing for the source told him that Faustite was gone. His fingers caught thin blankets first, then thick leather, slid grittily through the soot that coated the thing. Ignorant fumbling of the half-awake and dozing; he slid them back over his face leaving war paint streaks without even realizing; all that thick, black, brackish char. Sticky as a grease trap over a meat-centric flat-top stove.
“Eion…” a stifled yawn and long slow blink, the leather got clutched, shaken, hung aside while staying just within reach. He could feel the thing needed cleaning again – properly — “********…” sleep-deep grousing and sighs that tasted like Christmas – the ones where the whole forest was already on fire “...y’okahy?”
Oh no, rubbing his eyes was a bad idea, his regrets immediate; increasingly so as he searched the recesses of tangled sheets, n the circular sides for his — wherever the ********’ pen’d gone off too. The collar was in subspace, n subspace was in the Senshi part of his brain. That Senshi were ‘magic’ but needed still a talisman to properly harness their powers through – like a shitty antenna for a long distance wifi signal. Least his rabbit ears had bat wings on ‘em now! Way better than the tinfoil-rolled blunt his pen’d originally come packaged in. Bob smoked some weird s**t, of this Waru was certain…
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:48 pm
He laid there and breathed, and once he felt like he could return to sleep again — Ah, that gravel-churned, sleep-stricken voice. He always sounded cute when he was so terribly dredged in sleep. Took all his common sense to remind himself to shake off his feelings and answer the damn question.
"Fine," he spoke back. Not because he knew he was fine, because he didn't, but he was fine, usually. He wasn't going to wake up and start assessing his s**t when all he wanted was more sleep. If Waru was dying, baked into another nightmare, then yes, he would rouse enough to see to that — give the boy space to cool off first, maybe run chilled water over his hands before he started to soothe him. Tell stupid stories of his youthful misadventures while he was still human, or whatever other nonsense was just boring enough to get the boy back to his usual deep, quiet rushes of air. In a sense, fine was I can't be ******** if he wasn't wearing his cincher, then he wasn't sleeping in bed for the rest of the night. And that was fine, too, he thought. It wasn't the first time.
The number of times he slept alone had lessened significantly, but they still happened in snatches. Same for the boys that choose to sleep next to him — they cycled, depending on morning affairs and individual schedules, who missed what bed, who could tolerate so much heat at night that it was like sleeping wrapped around a radiator. Sometimes a boy couldn't take it anymore and went back to a cooler bed, sometimes his odd schedule had him up not long after they bedded down, and sometimes he was off on an unavoidable bullshit extravaganza that had him up during his sleeping hours, and irritable enough to see the world burn indiscriminately under his heated gaze.
If he was sleeping on stone again, he missed his slab of sheet metal. It had wicked away his heat so nicely before, but now it was put up in a closet somewhere, maybe in one of the bedrooms. He wasn't about to go rifling for it, not if this was some out-of-the-blue oddity. Shittier sleep quality was better than an hour of cut sleep because he woke up too much to go back to it by doing s**t.
Waru'd be fine. He had blankets. And if he was dying imminently, it didn't feel that way. He was sure Waru'd clean up the dust when it was his turn to be awake.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2023 10:03 pm
There he is.
As if the fire didn’t give it away, squinting into that light through bleary blinking; relieved to find his boy all splayed out looking like he hadn’t wanted to be woken, sounding tired, fine, n’yet? Waru was up enough that he had to try for words. Like pinging checkins’ into the void the he same way he scrolled his texts every morning – looking to see who exactly his face had let Faustite speak to the night before – not even for the sake of knowing the context of a conversation, but just because he liked seeing his team was doing alright, communicating, being alive
Even if it was stupid s**t, or arguing, or ugly gifs n loud meme’s -– so long as everyone was alive.
“Thn’why,” an indiscriminate huff of sound smothered beneath a fist, ******** all his yawning for interrupting his start/stall thoughts in the middle of trying to place ‘why’ all that hacking seemed so uncomfortably familiar, “d’you sound like….” he waved lazily in his boys direction, scrunched the whole of the covers aside enough that he could kneel and – oh – there the stupid Senshi-stick was!
The shape familiar enough that he knew it was his and not some other errant object once he’d dug it free from where he’d been sleeping on it earlier; he’d be rubbing the mark of it out of some part of his back later, he was sure. Instead of pulling on power in a panic, he set it aside atop the stone lip of the bed circle; useful enough as a makeshift bedside table for now. No reason to ******** over ‘just fine’.
“Like that? You haven't coughed that way since…” and it was far easier to splay half in bed and half out, like a lazy sea lion sunning only it’s upper half. Waru could prop his head atop the curl of his arms, n hiss for the feel of slow to warm stone against his bare chest. Faustite radiated heat – it spread - so, so, so quickly sometimes, “....since….is Headache alright?” As soon as he was thinking it, it couldn’t be unthought. The image of Faustite as he’d first met him: a dwindling flame dying within a nearly skeletal frame, spilling bile like fresh tar. Half starved. Always hungry.
Still eerily beautiful, even then.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2023 10:11 pm
Wasn't fine supposed to mean let's stop having a conversation and go back to bed? Did he miss something about how he was supposed to say it to Waru? Did he need to sound more disgruntled about it, or would he actually have to tell his boy let's stop having a conversation and go back to bed?
Because now he was awake — more awake than he liked — and now he was thinking. He thought it was just a cough. Admittedly, he didn't cough much, but it lacked the urgency that all of his prior medical needs had. It seemed benign enough to leave for the morning, though Waru wasn't going to leave it the ******** alone. He loved his boy, truly, but did Waru have a right to worry when his husband was part youma and constantly burning? That seemed at odds with fine, even though Faustite just told him he was fine, and —
Oh, ******** it all. This was becoming a right mess in his head, too.
Sighing, Faustite bent his legs at the knees, heedless of the drag that his toenails made across the floor, and walked himself upright with his yearling arms. What smoke escaped him either billowed out to the sides or was trapped inside his ribcage and slowly suffused his lungs. Small rivulets of it escaped as he breathed or spoke. "Headache's fine." That miserable pile of insects was probably in his office about now, posing as him and tormenting anyone who came in the room. Or it was in the Rift minding its own business, the same thing Waru should be doing, Faustite couldn't really tell a difference. Just that it was still in existence, somewhere, doing whatever it did.
Another couple coughs escaped him, half-assed things for how Faustite didn't want to commit to them. "Don't know what this is." He yawned into his knees afterward. "Hope I don't have to get the pipes reinstalled. Thought losing my stomach spared me from that." Evidently, it hadn't spared him from anything.
"Maybe I'm getting sick," he postulated hopefully. "Like a cold."
A fire youma with a cold. That sounded believable. Faustite sighed into his arms, then coughed.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2023 10:45 pm
Warus relief for that, Headaches continued existence as an extraordinary annoyance, it was palpable as the sigh he heaved through his nose. More obvious, likely, than the confused inhale that followed; scrunching his face as his eyes adjusted to the smoke-laden glow. It was almost like his boy’d been downing diesel for dinner instead of food — though maybe it was the cincher to blame? Maybe there were limits to Almadels generous gifts….
Considering any of that did ******** all and nothing to smooth his thoughts on Faustites suggestion for a hardware change.
The ******** s**t, pipes?
Waru couldn’t see added holes doing anything more for ventilation purposes; save maybe make his boy an over-encumbered, maligned mess. Probably a miserable one to boot, n he didn’t need him any more miserable than was customary. Than was manageable.
“Jeezus Firebrand, just cause you sound like a car backfiring— doesn’t mean we need to install a set of mufflers on you.…” spoke with love around the smudgy, soft smirk lobbed into the dancing shadows that played like children about the space. Waru walked one sleep-leaden hand towards the splay of curls over stone—
He’d always admired how flexy his beloved was. A little yoga-ball of half-youma, impossibly agile, even like this — he woulda sworn the metal was more malleable than it should’ve been — that there were nerves in there — muscles n sinew that *moved*; even if he knew better by now.
—tip-toed that hand towards *hot* — odd that — the strands always felt sun baked, but never like they’d just been run through a flatiron on *high*. The ends at least were usually comfortable to touch, tolerable, but now?
It was probably because he wasn’t powered up. Faustite was fine.
“M’sorry…I know I should be letting you sleep. You’re probably just exhausted, right? Bein’ overworked’s a thing…like burnout…n’stress…” he skidded by that, jumping on Faustites idea of falling ill like a well placed checker piece. It was an easier thing to hope for, his boy running high fires n hacking up lungs he couldn’t spare because — ******** — the last few months’d been rough with little to no downtime between one disaster n the next, “…those kinda things can happen. Can make a person sick.”
Oh so very hopeful that Faustite was right, and Rocktankaskite, that absolute p***k of a d**k, was *wrong*. His words stuck though, rattled round like rusty chains — the things that happened to agents when their youma died — how Faustite was too hot for anything to live in, why treat him at all when he was always on fire? ********’ impermeable to the average bug!
As if a cold coulda survived in him.
Waru hoped Rocktankaskite was wrong — a liar — that his remains were rotting — that even the dust of his remains rotted.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2023 3:12 am
"Hope not," he muttered miserably. He'd never gotten used to chairs with backs for fear of needing pipes in his back again. He'd gone this far without it, but there seemed to always be the chance, especially when he was back to fighting his body just to survive again, But even so, he didn't want his husband to remember him with those things protruding from his back, waiting for more of Encke's magic to bolt down his spine and shock his heart again.
Faustite started into another coughing fit, uncoiling himself enough to double over, when he saw his boy from the corner of his eye. He recovered enough to do a double-take, then stared at Waru with brows scrunched. "The ******** happened to your face? Did I do that?" Looked like Waru had landed face-first into a fireplace that hadn't been cleaned in 20 years. "Babe, you're a ******** mess," Enough that Faustite leaned away from the hand to avoid all that soot getting into his hair. Even in the dim of his heavy fires, Waru looked like he was wearing an exceptional amount of war paint.
It reminded him of Xenotime, a little. Umber's General. Not that he needed to think about their last conversation.
"Don't know." Faustite's gaze fell. Felt queasy as soon as he climbed to his feet — that haven't-eaten-in-too-long hunger that gnawed and gnawed until the Youma General wanted to puke it out of himself. He spat into the dead cactus that still sat in the window, overlooking the desolate waste that was Negaspace. "Everyone's been telling me to take a break for a long time. Years. Never got like this." But he also didn't know what could have possibly infected him.
"What if the White Moon devised a youma virus?" Faustite looked back at his stumbling, sleepy husband. "Or this is what aging's like now." He could be dying. They didn't have established life expectancy on half-youma.
But all that conjecture wouldn't matter. None of it could be answered, not by them, not that night.
Faustite wished he could go back to bed, sleep it off, wake up again feeling fine. After everything, was that too much to ask? Must've been, for how it never seemed to happen. Burnout made people sick, but Faustite was only half a person. His youma side had kept him hale before, when it wasn't accidentally killing him.
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:43 pm
“Oh, ********—“ slurred as he wiped at his face one more time, made it worse, sighed at his hands; blacker than a nightsworth of working his own frustrations out one of the few ways he knew how.
Most of which culminated in him being fixatedly mouthy and subsequently silenced in ways that benefited them both, he swore up n down it benefited him the most. That there was something of a high in bedding his husband down till he was begged off or— “m’not nearly a messy eater as you are — or — okay that’s a lie, buhhh…” and his brain flatlined, as he looked, hands to sooty cincher to Faustites face to their bed — ******** — laundry day was always sooner than later, “ probly did this t’my dam self..” passively muttered into a splay of fingers that weren’t doing any good at smearing things off.
It was fine, he was up and so he was awake and so he was crawling a tad closer to standing — edged up into the laziest of push-ups on his knees and over the lip of their bed. All of Eions asks were valid, pertinent, things worth being considered.
“Can’t all be fifteen forever Firebrand, but this corset things soaked in— It’s not even ******** grease anymore? S’like…” he tosses his beloved a baleful glance when he mentioned the possibility of a virus. Not because he thought it impossible, but because he didn’t want it to be possible at all. He’d had enough of the white moons bullshit — and if they could hurt youma?
More than they already could. No. Nope. No thank you…
“Lisn, let’s run down the saner possibilities afore we both spiral. Base needs n s**t, hunger, thirst, lackah sleep - which we’re remedying after this! M’keeping overworked on as a possibility — cause you don’t take the breaks you need n — seriously, Firebrand? The’last few months’ve been extra ******** stressful…” that they weren’t Schorl levels of stressful, that in his nightmares he imagined Faustite having faced worse things and having survived on just fine, hearty, hale, without a smokers cough and trying to rid himself of lungs he barely had. All of that stayed unspoken, locked behind his tired teeth.
“Th’sink n soaps calln me, you want me to bring you something real quick?” he knew it wouldn’t stem the constant tide of hunger that gnawed his boys insides, but he hoped it’d narrow things down. He realized belatedly that Faustite blazed hot — even at a distance — Waru could feel his skin prickle, the urge to sweat, even knowing the space they held now wasn’t some great thing between them; he almost expected to see heat waves in the air around Faustites curled form.
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 3:08 pm
Faustite didn't need to tell Albite that he agreed with him. He was always doing something to himself, getting a stupid idea that led to stupid results, or failing to think of the consequences to his actions. Faustite had enough experiences of watching with slow horror as Albite, who had helpfully volunteered to clean parts of Faustite's grate bare-handed, then wiped his hand across his sweaty brow.
Now that he was up again, Faustite coughed dry into his hands. He didn't care that Albite was competing for messiest eater — it wasn't much of a competition. Neither of the two were desirable to have around a dinner table; they usually soured others' appetites.
"I know," he eked out between small bouts of coughs. "Like it's soot now, right? Like dust." Youma dust wasn't much different. Usually that was more of a grey, but it was all the same to him. Could be parts of his organs slowly turning to dust in the slowest youma dusting known to the Negaverse and White Moon alike. Still, shockingly, Albite had a point: before they went digging through all the worst case scenarios that populated Faustite's head, they should treat the easy stuff. Acknowledge the basics before they ruled them out. Even if this was entirely different from any time he'd been hungry or overworked.
He wanted Albite to be the one who was right, here. They didn't need more disasters in their life together.
"Coming with you." Faustite didn't feel keen on being alone right then, and the exercise kept more of the smoke from getting into his lungs. He took the lead on the long spiral stairs, knowing it'd be easier on his boy to have a light source to follow in the darkened house. The shadows he cast on his descent were sharper, however, owing to the brilliance of his own fires. He coughed on the way down, but it was only a few short hacks. Whatever was wrong with him, keeping himself in motion helped somewhat.
When they made it to the ground floor, Faustite was quick to go toward the (mostly) renovated kitchen. He liked their stone countertops, often found them agreeable for sitting as much as the others didn't like him parking his a** in an area that was for food prep. The stone felt cool against the bare backs of his thighs, though, and he wanted to watch Albite while he got something together.
His boy was a good cook, certainly better than him. Were it up to Faustite, he'd have grabbed a stick of butter from their icebox and called it an agreeable snack.
"Remember after we finished the mission? Couldn't hardly sleep." Must've been three days before he crashed for a few hours. "First time we went to the Scar, I slept for fifteen hours. Might be right that it's a lack of sleep." It was something hopeful, spoken to break the dolor.
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 3:16 pm
“Worse than dust,” he’d always thought of dust as this fluffy thing — or maybe clingy when it was the kind that caught in air filters at the opening of vents to the house— this? Brackish grunge that was bound to cling, hard to clean, almost oily. He wondered if it were simply a symptom of Faustite overusing the cincher to ensure Warus comfort.
He wanted things to be that simple. Willed it as such while he followed sleepily behind his beloved, and prided himself on watching the sway of those narrow hips for only a few steps before being enraptured by the shadows cast-off by his boy's flames. He knew that if Cerbs had been up and about just then, that the tri-headed-ibis could’ve caught the updraft of heat that existed in the wake of Faustite’s even, heavy steps, n ridden it back to the top of the tower with ease. Probably would’ve cast a mingling of even darker shadows through the windows and out into the quiet beyond. Maybe even startled a youma or two with that kinda concentrated backlit glow.
It was funny enough to imagine their little lighthouse being easily spotted due to his Hisbands upticked fires at night, midday, at anytime, really. The one thing alive amidst a city of ghosts, existing brightly, as if in loud rebellion of all the nothing. Like the way Agni existed as an explanation to the fire in Faustite’s guts — a fire in place of nothing — a quickly burning life who he thought was all the more beautiful for how angrily the colors inside him flared.
Waru recognized he thought about the strangest damned things in the strangest ******** ways sometimes, and was distracted from that almost immediately - enough to groan - as he watched though a smudgy smile, Eion park his a** on their stonetop. Ever a cat taking the higher ground, and him not caring a lick so long as his man was at ease in their shared space. After all, that was what soap n water was for, right? For making the Youma clean~!
“Mnn,” impossible to forget that first mission in the Scar, its hectic beginnings and even more harrowing end, “the circumstances were different though. The first mission was days on end of exhaustion - everyone always being on alert. Not to mention whatever the ******** those scales did to people? This time was—“ Waru fumbled for phrasing as he sprung on the sink, tried to undo the worst of whatever the ******** he’d done to his face with tepid water, dawn, and a dish towel (because if it was good enough for baby ducklings it was good enough for him!) “—phleh, different? For this you had to get wired up, plugged in, drained, n the fact that you were nearly snipped in two at the end? Adrenaline n all that energy ******** could be playing into this, too. S’like……like when a pre-workout routine goes wrong?”
Slow rolling shrug and he didn’t worry at his unpinnable thoughts too harshly, left the filthy rag in the sudsy sink and scouted for quick to make eats — “********, you ever had Shashuka, Firebrand?” a messy untangling of an idea, he could use up some of the rest of their supplies without worry of them expiring on his watch. High protein, it only needed the one pan, and Waru hoped the sizzling of a stove would detract from the way everything new cough dragged on his own senses.
He didn’t want to worry. Things would be fine.
Maybe they’d invest in some battery powered fans to clear out the air in the tower on more stifling nights, or——
“Even if you haven’t? I promise you’ll like it. Now, what does my red-hot husband want to drink? Waters always a safe start—but….”
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 3:21 pm
"A what." Wasn't that an old lady? No, wait, that was a babushka. Well, if he ever had a shashuka, he ate it without knowing its name. Highly probable event since becoming a General.
Faustite fanned his midsection while he watched Waru go about the business of breakfast-making. Pan out, started sifting around in the not-quite-finished cupboards and the ice chest that was their fridge until they figured out how to get one down in the sunken city. Faustite watched in silence for a time, thinking all the while about how to address Waru's thoughts. As much as he teased Waru that he was the darkest crayon in the box, he wasn't actually that dim. What he was saying sounded quite probable. Except —
"Remember napping after Jet called the retreat. But something woke me up. Felt like I'd had too much caffeine after that. Jittery, wide-awake. Think I remember coughing after that, but it wasn't a concern to me then," he continued, as he started to cough.
"But it got worse when I touched the crucible. Like the latent energy in it was drawn up by the youma inside me. Couldn't shake the buzzing feeling. Felt dizzy after, too. Now it's getting worse, I guess." He hoped it was still some kind of bug — like the cold, but for youma. They could wait it out, he could eat ice cream (for that was the only positive he remembered from getting a cold), he would get better, life would go on. No need to worry. No reason to add more metal to his body.
Or he was overthinking all of this. Waru's interpretation might well be the correct one, and he had done enough to his body over the course of that mission that he was now a little under the weather for it.
Maybe he was worrying over nothing. How many agents worried about an unexplained cough, even when it worsened? Probably none of them.
Faustite opened his mouth to answer Waru's last question, but coughed instead. He leaned over, coughing harder, expecting it to clear itself out. But each time he tried to draw in air, he coughed again — harder than the last time. Then he coughed so forcefully that he gagged. Only when he leaned over enough that smoke fled through his open back did he seize a shaky breath, and thin strands of spit dripped from his lower lip. <******** me," he said hoarsely. "Might be better to do tea. With brandy." He coughed again, something raw and dry. "That works, right? Alcohol for coughs?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 3:28 pm
Seasoning, because what was life without spice? Cumin, garlic, a jalapeño and salt mix. It let him get rid of the rest of their tomatoes, half a bell pepper, an onion. The eggs sat on the counter, half crumpled cardboard of a costco pack; pristine beige-white shells waiting for everything to simmer together and fill the house with more than the overwhelm of smoke and underwhelm of abandoned ozone and desolation.
The eggs always went last because the yolk was meant to run, it’d taken him far too many shell filled trials and rubbery overcooked errors to figure out how to get ‘em that way. Mostly his own doing with being easily distractible.
The vegetables would survive time on the heat, maybe even better than Faustite would. The tone of the cough behind him was enough to startle him into attention, furrowed brows and scrutinizing gaze as he watched his boy curl over with each new heave for air — like his body was running a marathon his lungs couldn’t keep up with.
Like he couldn’t vent the irritant quickly enough. It shouldn’t have been bothersome, people got sick sometimes. Faustite was looong overdue. If only he could’ve classified his beloved as ‘people’ alone and nothing more.
“Oh, I think that’s a wives tale — but?” put his back to the stove long enough to compare, and his boy was still an oven from a distance, always heated a room nicely with his presence alone, with residual runoff warmth. Waru never minded braving that heat, even when it became a scald — but from where he stood and where Faustite sat? Tonight he noticed the fire. Watched it expand and contract and gout more ashen brackishness with something like concern.
“You n me’r dealing with special circumstances here, yeah? So—“ Faustites habits had become ingrained, replicable. Their kettle was never less than half full, Warus insistence on watching Faustite practice ensured at least a few silken pouches laden with tea were available to all. All tied by careful claws and neatly stored within reach of an array of bottles on the shelf above.
Of increasingly mismatched mugs below. Like a hefty, ceramic orange, one eyed fox, and a rotund black cat with too large a smile.
Perfect.
The teabags found the mugs, the brandy the counter. The eggs went into the pan as it left the heat, only for the space to be taken by the long spouted, bronze and black wedding gift.
Waiting was the hardest part. For the boil. The steep. The food.
“Now, you’re saying that you took a nap, or that you passed out?” sympathy dripping from every syllable as he finally thought to pass Faustite a clean dishcloth for his face. He knew that crucibles held things, right? But the Crucible hadn’t been a true crucible, had it? Unless it had— n whatever’d been inside had poured out into his boy. Like all those weird memories people’d gone on about, n ghost paths, n knightly guises.
“There’s a difference.”
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 3:30 pm
"You think it's just an excuse to drink?" He asked his boy as Faustite watched him go from stovetop to cupboard. Waru was good at domestics in a way that Faustite knew he could never approach on his own, always able to rustle up a recipe for leftover ingredients, or find ways to rearrange the pantry into something usable or pick out the exact tea that would taste best to Faustite based on his current mood. He was handy, too — always trying to fix this or build that, make the youma under Faustite's command haul fresh lumber here or there, then build it into a viable bed frame. He rebuilt half his shitty postage stamp of an apartment on his own. And he was inestimably good at people.
Faustite wished he could be half as capable at Waru, who still somehow found ways to be stupid as hell around all that talent. And that, he supposed, was what made Waru more endearing than maddening. Why Faustite could never find it in himself to stay pissed off at the boy, no matter his sin.
Waru was busy with the teas, so Faustite slipped off the counter to examine the makings of the dish on the stove. Looked like Waru had all sorts of fresh vegetables in there, and since he was presently busy? Faustite reached in with a pair of claws and plucked out a chunk of bell pepper. Then a sliced jalapeño. Then a ring of onion to crunch. Then he coughed as he was trying to swallow down the onion and had to cover his mouth to keep from spitting it all over the cabinetry.
Back to the countertop it was, then. He was feeling somewhat lightheaded from all that coughing, anyway; better to stay still for a while. Faustite's throat hurt, but it hadn't begun bleeding yet. They had time before they had to figure out something more serious than alcohol.
When he was sure he wouldn't cough through the answer, Faustite replied. "Took a nap." He sounded sure of it. "Remember laying down when we'd all gotten back to the first room. Felt exhausted. Used my arm for a pillow." He'd felt like s**t, but it wasn't surprising after so much of his energy went into keeping the lights on in the building. It was when he woke up that he felt off in a way he couldn't place.
"Just don't know what's wrong with me. Bothers me that it's stuck around this long." They hadn't figured out what it was, let alone found a solution for it. Taenite had suggested some medicine back when he visited between the end of the mission and the debrief, and that helped, but it didn't cure what was wrong with him. He wasn't sure any medication could. He was on fire; wouldn't that just incinerate a pill? And besides, who was going to diagnose him when so many of the half-youma medical team was composed of humans who did halfassed studies on those who weren't human anymore?
Faustite sighed, then coughed. "Tired of my body failing me."
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Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 3:33 pm
Waru smiled slow, felt the upturn reach the creases around his eyes where he was tempted to rub at the sleepy grit there. An easy look of joy for his beloved's verbal musings; exacerbated only by his own tiredness and the smudging of poorly washed coal. He thought a lot of ‘sage advice’ given broadly was an excuse to drink. When alcohol flowed cleaner than the water from a sink? When a cure-all was as easy to reach as the bottle at one's bedside?
He could see it being so.
Hardly said as much as he poured a fifth of oaky amber dredge into steaming hot mugs of tea, discarding the steeped bags into the sink like the messy heathen he was. He’d clean tomorrow, compost the onion peels n pepper stems, sprinkle in the used tea leaves - bother Fulgurite with a sixth text and a picture of a sad pot of soil in need of a water Senshis attention.
“At least it’s not your mind,” there was relief there, for knowing it’d been an actual nap and not some telling moment of his husband losing consciousness — the mission had been an entirely different kind of drain than the one into the Scar — the constant check-ins had ebbed his worry. Knowing the whole of multiple teams could fall back to bolster his boy's position if the place came down on their heads.
Except he hadn’t considered the toll it would take on Faustites body, not before, not after. That playing battery might come back with tethered hooks to exact a payment down the line. He swallowed down his regrettable lack of foresight and lacquered it over with as much optimism as he could summon up.
“Your body’s being a b***h right now, but it’s nothing we can’t fix…”
It’s just a hiccough, it won’t fail you. We won’t let it.
As if his rank would give him command over coincidental fates, as if their tram held magic monkey paw levels of power they could wield indiscriminately.
“Now — when’s the last time you had an actual checkup? *As a human*. What’s to say this isn’t some crossover bullshit — like — the zoo diseases? I mean, if crabs can live in volcanoes, then who's to say some human-born ickness *can’t* make a habitat outta you. You’re all youma all the time—I know—but that means people are always ruling out the humany parts, yeh? Overlooking common s**t just because you’re on fire. You coulda inhaled some of that sparkly bullshit in the forge n *bam* — a case of Cosmos lung!”
Did it make sense? Was asking more of Eion fair? Albite was sure the answer was some complicated kinda ‘no’, shrugged as such as mugs, pan, and thick wooden spoons found the countertop just shy of Faustites thighs, a mess of space stolen before he joined his boy up top with a bit of scooching and a sigh for how warm the stone soaking Faustites ambient heat had become. The cats woulda loved it — but right now? The cat was him. Soaking it all up - observing s**t - if solids n spices weren’t an answer? Then maybe Brat diet simplicity - maybe soup - maybe they’d go back and shake down Galvorns ghost till he coughed up an antidote!
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2023 5:52 pm
Albite was right, whatever this was probably wouldn't kill him. It didn't match up with his prior experiences, which usually had him losing something irreplaceably important in a short time. With a couple weeks since descending into the Rift, he'd have experienced a life-threatening component by now. But none came — only a bothersome cough and feeling too hot.
If he thought like a person — that is to say — a completely human individual, they'd probably be going to the doctor with a fever and cough that lasted this long, which was more to Albite's credit in being sensible. He hadn't seen a doctor in years because he hadn't needed to, and couldn't spare the time; now that the Negaverse had its own hospital, someone could probably evaluate him based on what was going on and give him a diagnosis as if he were human. Maybe there were colds and flus that a fire youma couldn't suppress. He didn't know. The medical field was someone else's business, not his.
Faustite scooted over when he saw that Albite intended to sit the hot pan on the countertop again. It was their preferred method of sharing meals — fewer plates to wash after, and it kept the food warm. Faustite didn't find much of a difference in it, but it was probably hot to Waru's standards.
He coughed as he picked up one of the spoons. "Haven't seen a doctor since I was fifteen." Which would've made it six years ago, by now. It felt like an age had gone by, for how his world was so completely different than what it used to be.
Eating a stuffed shell with any sort of finesse was out of the picture for Faustite. He gave it a lukewarm attempt by using the wooden spoon, but he couldn't get the damned things onto the spoon and had battered them against the sides of the skillet instead. He gave up pretense afterward, discarding the spoon in favor of picking them up with his hands and trying to eat them out of a cupped palm. Sometimes egg spilled over the side of his hand, but that was easily licked off. While he didn't care for the way an egg's consistency changed as it continued cooking in his mouth, the flavor was unbeatable.
How Waru hadn't gotten a job as a chef in one of his favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants was beyond him. The boy could cook, especially for a bottomless pit like himself.
"You'd think the smoke would've flushed out Cosmos lung by now," he half-joked, sighing. The smell of freshly-cooked onions and spices just under his nose seemed like all the medicine he would need. He drank from his mug next, wincing for the kick of it as his midsection flared up briefly. The sizzle of an active griddle filled the room. "Think they'll see me at the hospital? Don't know how any of this works.
"Oh — think they'll let you come with me, too?"shiningamisgirl i wrote this covered in g o r b
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