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 Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 2:46 pm
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It wasn't the first time that Faustite thought there was something wrong with him. Beyond his history for it, Albite had brought up a cold. Some type of infection. A virus. Something wrong with his human side. Maybe he had allergies now. Maybe his youma side had allergies. Something. Anything. Whatever explained away these symptoms.
But they couldn't find anything. Wherever and however they looked, with Negaverse tools or with magic or with the same medieval devices found in a medical center, they found nothing but creeping damage. He'd undergone enough biopsies that Faustite was certain they had a piece of every part of him, but none of them turned up with any bacterial infections or viruses when they cultured the samples. He'd blown into every piece of equipment they held out to him, and had been put under for the ones that explored all the branches in his lungs, but they hadn't found anything before its plastic began to melt. Staring into the fire hadn't yielded any answers.
Faustite thought they had explored everything. Memorized every inch of his body, inside and out, and found nothing foreign about it. What else was there to check? Lying awake on the bed, too hot to sleep, his mind wandered. An hour passed, then two, then three. He shifted positions, coughed, then rolled over, then coughed again. His mind wandered.
Then he thought – what if it was deeper than that?
Faustite reached across Waru, who stirred softly when Faustite's arm brushed over his side. The burning boy felt a few fingers squeeze his elbow clumsily before falling back on the sheets.He found Waru's phone, pushed to the edge of the bed where it threatened to fall off and get stuck again, then held it near Waru's face. Once unlocked, Faustite sat with his knees against his chest as he began typing out a text Aelius.
Faustite touched send. He coughed into the crook of his arm, doubling the intensity as he wheezed out smoke. He froze, waiting, then another cluster of coughs followed. Once it passed, Faustite heaved a slow sigh. His ribs still ached terribly from it.
When he was sure it was over, he typed one last text.
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:00 pm
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Aelius was bundled up tight. Winter had taken its time coming but had blown in with a vengeance recently. Frigid temperatures, blustery winds, and off and on snow and ice coming from the sky. It was down right miserable and the young man was not at all amused. Winter was horrible. There was not a single part of him that enjoyed it and it was this time of the year, with his face tucked into his scarf, hands gloved and deep within his pockets, and discrete ear muffs around his ears that he wished he lived somewhere much, much warmer.
He was on his way home from work, a block from his small apartment when he felt his phone vibrate once. He paid it no mind at first. Whoever it was could wait until he was protected from winter’s wrath, but then it vibrated again. Pausing a moment, he pulled the device from his pocket and his brow furrowed when he saw it was from Waru. The ******** was going on? It was odd for Waru to demand something like that.
“On my way.” He didn’t think more on it, just pocketed the phone and picked up his pace.
Instead of heading home he instead turned down a side street and another, cursing when he found himself in a wind-tunnel effect in a small alleyway. “********. This weather can’t end soon enough.” He mumbled into his scarf as he pulled his henshin pen from the bag on his shoulder, transformed and teleported as quickly as he could.
His office was sparse. In fact, most would call it militaristic with how little was in there. A single small desk, a single chair stuffed behind it and another one in front. Everything had a well-worn appearance. The wood veneer looking as if it could use a bit of TLC, but Helio didn’t particularly mind. He spent as little time as possible in the shoe-box sized room. The only thing marking that he spent any time at all there were the papers and folders sitting on top and a small cup with a few choice writing instruments.
A chill still stuck to his bones as he slipped behind the desk to flop down onto his wooden chair. The piece of furniture groaned under his weight, but the corrupt didn’t even notice the complaint. Instead he reached into subspace, where he had deposited both his bag and phone and pulled the device out. While he had no service, he was still able to glance at the texts again. Yep. He’d read it right. They were from Waru, but Helio had a strong feeling that the actual author of the texts hadn’t been the smooth-talking senshi. It was too precise and to the point. Faustite, then.
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:02 pm
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Faustite got out of bed while he waited for the response. He padded down the stairs, obnoxious toenails scraping against each step on the way down, each cutting a groove into the smooth stone in a year's time. He'd gotten as far as the main room, with the kitchen in sight, before the phone in his hand buzzed.
Pausing, he raised it to look at the response. It buzzed in his hand, intent on blocking Faustite, but the boy only scowled at it. After tossing it onto the couch, he vanished.
Heliodor's office wasn't one he'd seen enough to teleport to it. Instead, he picked the hall outside the captain's offices, where he could navigate the nondescript door by the number. Heliodor's had been long since logged in his tablet since the boy had applied for and received one. Only took a moment to pull up the file, though the General coughed enough that it bent his frame while he skimmed through it.
Sharp claws scraped on stone, a sister to the orange glow that was harbinger to his arrival. Faustite hadn't bothered to knock; Heliodor knew to expect him, and they needn't draw unnecessary attention. His coughing fit in the hall had someone bitching from inside their office, but Faustite wasn't interested in dispensing explanations. He shut the door behind him with a quiet click.
"Need you to do something for me." He hadn't yet stepped into the room, though there wasn't much room to occupy. Seemed like the chairs took up the bulk of it.
"Need you to look at my starseed."
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:12 pm
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"… Oh." Faustite flushed when Heliodor pointed out why it had felt cooler in the halls. He looked askance as he recalled his uniform, though he wondered exactly how much — if any — explaining he would have to do to anyone who saw him. "I'm tired," he tried to explain, as if that could account for his chronic preoccupation of late.
Faustite cleared his throat to speak, though he coughed again, and swallowed afterward. His brows furrowed. Then he was moving again, claiming a seat on one of Heliodor's old, shitty chairs. Wouldn't matter if he coughed all over those or melted them into slag; the Negaverse would pay for something better. Or they'd send him to a different specialist, because Faustite being sick was becoming costly to the furniture.
"Was thinking." Faustite crossed his legs and balanced his elbows atop his horizontal calf, then steepled his fingers in front of himself. "They ran all kinds of tests. Things I couldn't pronounce or recreate, even if I wanted to. Took out pieces of me. But they never found anything — no explanation for what's happening or why it's getting worse. Doesn't seem to be a bug anyone can recognize. So I thought — what if it's deeper than that? What if it's not a body problem, but a starseed problem?"
Speaking it aloud — that brought goosebumps, and Faustite was already growing reticent for it. But what if he was wrong? What if his boy couldn't do it? What if Heliodor didn't want to do it, or he thought it was a stupid idea?
It was likely a stupid idea. He was full of those.
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:13 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:16 pm
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"When you put it that way…" His attention flickered down to the desk. Even the smell of slowly burning ancient furniture didn't rouse him from his thoughts. So Heliodor had seen his starseed. That meant he had to have been incapacitated somehow, that someone else – or even Heliodor – would've pulled out his starseed. He knew they'd been at odds often when they were together under Schörl; had it been bad enough that he thought to get rid of Faustite in his sleep? Or had Schörl pulled it out herself, maybe during one of his surgeries.
It was a harrowing thought. Not knowing when Heliodor had seen it meant he likewise didn't know how many times it had been out of his chest.
Which made this harebrained idea seem even worse. Could a starseed be pulled too many times? Was there a finite limit to the amount of time it could spend outside the body? Besides that, the boy might accidentally kill him and traumatize himself — and all of Faustite's other boys — for the rest of his life. He knew Heliodor had gathered a considerable amount of starseeds, showed them off in front of everyone when he'd turned them in, but would it be different with someone he loved? What if Heliodor's hands shook, and he dropped it, or even stepped on it while hastily trying to gather it up again?
Officers sometimes had their personal youma in these halls. Faustite was guilty of that himself. If Heliodor pulled out a starseed in his shoebox of an office, would one of them sense it and come running?
Who knew how ******** up his might be from becoming part youma? What if the damned thing burst upon leaving his chest?
Faustite fidgeted in his seat, becoming more indecisive by the minute. As much as his sweet boy was willing to help, Faustite didn't know what he was doing. Anything that had been wrong with him was handled by someone else — a someone who wasn't around anymore. She hadn't left him any notes or guidance. She'd probably laugh in his face for thinking she would tell him so easily. That he wouldn't have to figure it out for himself.
"Not really," he conceded as he wrapped his arms about himself. "Not anymore. "Forget it. Sorry I dragged you out here. Wasn't thinking."
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:24 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:27 pm
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Faustite only looked over at his boy when he felt something touch his knee, and there he was, looking concerned and so inconceivably cute that Faustite was mentally cursing himself for his boy addiction. It took a moment to loosen his arms, then his posture, then his tongue. Took another moment to start conjuring words for his worries, then find the right ones in the pile of related phrases. But Heliodor had asked him to communicate more, and he agreed to try, so long as his boy was patient with him about it.
"If you pull it out, and it disintegrates in your hand, I don't want to put you through that. Or any of the others," he recounted slowly, nodding at the end as if in agreement with himself over the concept or the turn of phrase. "And if you drop it, or something happens to it by accident?" He needn't elaborate there. "Think you'd pass away from guilt.
"And… If none of this gives us any answers, then it's a waste of your time and energy." There was a fair amount of emotional labor that went into pulling the starseed from someone loved. He knew that firsthand, then spent the better part of a few days in the Rift to prevent it from happening again.
"And the last reason… I haven't seen my starseed before. Not sure I want to know what it looks like. Not sure I want anyone else knowing, either."
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:28 pm
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It took a bit of time, but Helio let it pass in relative comfortable silence. The physical adjustments of loosening muscles was an encouraging indicator and Helio wasn’t going to push it along any faster. Opening up to others was hard, especially so when one was use to being a self imposed prison for their thoughts and feelings. Helio understood. He struggled with it himself at times, but when that pretty mouth opened up Helio listened raptly to every word.
And gods, the amount of thinking of others Faustite did. Most of it wasn’t worry for his own self being, but the problems that any of this might cause to those close to him.It was incredibly selfless considering that two of those worries would likely mean his demise. Was this how it always was? Were many of the fears harbored in that dark head for the loved ones around him more than himself? A tightness grew in Helio’s chest at that thought as he tightened his hands on those knees, digging in just a little to make sure he had Faustite’s full attention.
“First off, it won’t disintegrate. I have utmost faith that something like that won’t occur since there’s no reason it would. Secondly, I would never, ever drop your starseed. In fact, I’ve not dropped a single one to date.” He leaned in, his chest pushing against those bony knees as he reached a hand up to rest along the side of Faustite’s cheek and jaw. “Third, anything I do for you is not a waste of time or energy, you hear me? I swear that. I want you to be better and if this will possibly shed some light on what’s going on it’s not a waste, not even for that little bit of hope.”
He stood then, and leaned in, dropping a kiss on Faustite’s forehead, before resting his own against it, his hand shifting to the back of Faustite’s. “As for what your starseed looks like, don’t be ashamed of it. It’s part of who you are. I am not going to judge and if you don’t want to see, then you don’t have to.” He smiled. “I did promise myself to you and official or not, I intend to love every inch of you starseed and all.
“So, how about it? Shall we try and see if this is a possible answer? Best not to leave any stone unturned because we need to find an answer to this.”
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:29 pm
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Look at that boy, being so sweet. Faustite tried to bite back a smile. While Heliodor seized his knees, Faustite reached for those hands instead. They felt cool to the touch, as they often did; everyone now felt as if they had a corpselike chill to them. Nevertheless, Faustite liked to hold those hands. It was always different, for each and every boy.
One slipped out to touch his face, but he could accept that. Heliodor was offering his reassurances, addressing some of the questions to which neither of them had an answer. Well – Heliodor would be more experienced than him in seeing half-youma starseeds. They'd both pulled a shitload between the two of them, by now, during their years of being in the Negaverse. Faustite opened his mouth to speak, but immediately turned his head to cough something hoarse and wet, airing thick, black smoke into the narrow office.
It went on for half a minute before Faustite started to regain control, then it petered out into a series of more manageable coughs, until he thought that he could speak again without smoking out Heliodor.
He looked up at the boy, now so close, shoving away the alarms in his head that he needed to gain some distance to avoid setting Heliodor on fire. He stifled a sneaking cough, swallowed it back as best he could manage. Tried to nod, as was impulse, then immediately realized he couldn't. The boy was being encouraging, and he appreciated that dearly – it warmed him in a manner that his hungering fires could not – but there was still a part of him that reviled the concept. A part that didn't want to stop being alive.
"I trust you, but there's something about being… Mm, don't know. Don't like the idea of just. Being a body." Even if Heliodor wouldn't hate however his starseed looked. Part of him was just scared.
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:29 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:31 pm
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Faustite sighed, bracing his hands on the blackening chair arms. Heliodor's point was fair, logical even, but Faustite couldn't ignore his hesitance. Knowing that he'd lose time, that he wouldn't be in control of his own body for however long — it scared him. Would something happen and his youma side would take over? He couldn't know, and he disliked the concept of blind faith for something as life-or-death as a starseed.
Faustite's gaze fell to the hands on his knees. To Heliodor's ring finger. He supposed that, if they wanted a future together, Faustite had to try it. Even if the end result was a quick death, it would spare him the slow, agonizing one that may come of whatever was wrong with him.
The burning boy let out a breath. "You're right," he admitted at last. "But I'm going to hate all of it." Down to the moment he woke up, he was sure.
Looking around, Faustite hadn't decided if it was better to try this stunt in the chair or on the floor. He supposed that he couldn't collapse if he was on the floor, and there would be little damage done if he went limp. On the other hand, it might not be easy for Heliodor. His hair would get in the way. The chair wouldn't be much different, but for the chance of slouching out of it. It'd be closer to how starseeding went normally.
Faustite decided he would stay in the chair. Sweaty hands worked themselves against the chair arms.
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 5:46 pm
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Helio didn’t even noticed the damage to his chair. He honestly could have cared less if the chair went up in flames at that moment. His sole attention was on his dark-haired boy who, rightfully, struggled with a decision. This wasn’t simple, there was no black-and-white here but that tiny shred of hope was what spurned the corrupt on. Kept him holding a breath he didn’t realize he was holding until Faustite finally voiced his agreement.
“We will both hate it.” He agreed. “But, we can make it quick.” He paused a moment. “Do you want to know what it looks like? I can take a picture before putting it back.” A abuse. “If nothing else having an image of it may be useful down the line.” Having an image to refer too in the future should anything like this happen again could be useful, but he wasn’t going to record it without Faustite’s approval. It was Faustites starseed after all.
Standing up, Helio looked at the desk wondering if that would be a better place for the General to be for this, but then noted the bracing being done on the chair arms. Helio’s brows furrowed a bit, worried that Faustite could slouch right out of the chair, but with his back firmly against the chair it was unlikely. Plus, a firm hand on Faustite’s shoulder would make sure there was no sliding.
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