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 Posted: Tue May 17, 2022 2:20 pm
There were sounds. Mouth-sounds.
Words — they were words, and someone was saying them. Someone was saying words at him. Faustite kept his eyes shut.
He recognized the voice first, then the words. Hewn of gravel and grovel. A hint of whine in a vat of nonsense. Yes, he knew those words. He knew the boy saying them. But the lot of it felt foggy, like there was dew collected on the folds of his brain, forming a watery film between it and reality. First, he managed a short, weak grunt, as he was being threatened and pleaded with nigh simultaneously.
"You're annoying me," he teased, but the words came out a mumbled mess. How frustrating.
So he communicated in a manner that he knew a margin better — he searched for Albite's hand, for he was sure it was somewhere on or near him, and once he found the hand, he would give it a lame squeeze. Something to say I'm here, but I'm exhausted, and your mouth sounds are killing my patience. Though, the last part demanded a very different gesture.
After he squeezed the boy's hand, he reached for his face, and splayed his spindly palm over Albite's gob.
He could fall asleep to that — to the rhythm of beeps and bells, and to presence without the word salad.
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Posted: Sat May 21, 2022 5:55 pm
"Mmmhn," the palm pressed over his face got held there and laced with kisses, as if to say that was the very best way to shut him up. Give his mouth something other to do than make ceaseless confounded noise that meant next to nothing -- or did it mean everything? He couldn't tell, didn't care, and found he held his breath just to pick out the percussive mutter of impossibly slurred tones from Ei's dry, cracked lips. If his boy was awake enough to gripe at him beyond the haze of medicated sleep?
Maybe things'd be okay..
"Mh'I keeping you up firebrand," he didn't sound one iota of sorry for it. Turned that palm in hand to kiss the grooves between digits; palm lines, the divots and creases between each bend of lengthy finger. How many were scars versus being wrinkles? It was eerie, sometimes, where the smooth parts turned sharp round his dark nails...How he couldn't tell the red that clung neath the bed, in the creases, from earthn clay..from blood...."I'll try n be quieter."
More lies.
"M'gonna stay though. Right here. Jus' in case you need me. Kay Ei?" hushed down humms and fingers held captive - just for him. His free hand got antsy; as if not being full of something to busy it lent it towards seeking distraction. To trace tight cloth, ghost his bruised jaw, and knuckle up around the soft line of skin between eye and temple - as if he could brush his own worries away through repetitive motion alone.
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Posted: Sun May 22, 2022 7:26 am
Whatever Albite wanted to drone on about, he would drone on about until Faustite was truly bothered by it. But for as much as Faustite complained — or tried to complain — he had always found it easy to tune out Albite's empty-headed nonsense. It was easier to pretend all was normal, that he hadn't narrowly escaped death by way of Almadel's calling card, and that he wasn't lying in medical right now, with every uncertainty underpinning his survival.
He felt exhausted. But what if they missed something unique to him? What if he dozed off and never woke up again?
He couldn't feel through his fingers, but he knew by the way his forearm twisted and turned that Albite was doing something with his hand. He tried to tug, to grasp the boy's hand or wrist or face and pull him inward, whatever might come across as a sloppy attempt to say come here.
"Cold," Faustite mumbled. As if he wasn't the warmest thing in the room. As if his sobriquet went unearned.
If Albite wanted to stay, he was going to stay in arm's reach. He was going to be the heating pad until Faustite mustered flame enough to reach his normal temperatures.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2022 7:21 pm
<********> - he was climbing in.
The logistics of it all, hazy half guesses at how best to maneuver himself near enough without causing undue harm; he didn't need to be told twice, after all. His boy was cold - his love - fiancé to be, and he'd be damned if he sat by idly when there was a simple need he could fulfill with just a bit of trying. Carefully.
Because Eion should've neve been cold.
"Yanno, m'thinking, all the ways we can warm you up better than with just me? Maybe once you're less of a human sized bruise." and the bits of heat that his boy produced, that radiated falteringly from his form; less warm than the hot air Albite figured he made when speaking alone. So easy to give up his thoughts when they were endless as grains of sand, and equally loose when scattered.
"M'thinking -- also," careful, careful, careful, testing the frame to hold the weight of metal and meat-slab in one. However slight and wane Faustite seemed to him under ugly phosphorescent's and grounded to dangling wires; he knew them both to be a bit more hefty than a pair of men combined. He tried, nonetheless, to curl up around his side; to turn bicep into pillow, thigh into sheet. A body for a bed made far better then the solid, uncomfortable thing they'd set his boy up on; close enough to see the mottled bruises and clotting of dark wet matted through heat straightened strands -- "n forgive me for it, but! M'thinking -- beaches? You, me, vast grasslands n short falls into the ocean. M'thinking...the kind of Christmas you deserve, yeh? All of us cooped up together come next year - all those good kinds of warm."
Close enough to find a space absent of - if not mark - than open wound; that he could nose at unabashedly like some heeling dog. It certainly meant he could keep humming brightly in Eion's ear, knowing full well that if he talked like run on sentences written by kindergarteners, then he wouldn't think about all the other bloody minded things that threatened his tentative attempts to find peace. Nonsense wouldn't chomp after knowledge, wouldn't demand answers over endless *beeps*.
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Posted: Tue May 24, 2022 5:39 am
It hurt to blink, to move, to settle into a conversation between bodies when each muscle twitch reminded him with a dull ache. Whatever they gave, it worked to take the edge off, but his hurts were ubiquitous. They drained him, and he learned to ignore them again as he shut his eyes to Albite's rambling.
The boy figured his way into the bed and nothing collapsed. He shivered, found his way onto a lukewarm elbow while he was trying to fold in on himself. Pushing back against the boy, as if that would wring more heat out of him, Faustite wondered — would he get to see a beach again? Would he get to see the ocean, Earth's ocean, without a constant threat of death for what he was? Perhaps Albite spoke pipe dreams, but they were something to weave together in his head, even if that was the only place where he could get what he wanted.
Then he mentioned Christmas, and Faustite found that he was too tired and dehydrated to cry. Each breath gained an edge and lost its evenness.
Albite's words may be nothing but scattered little hopes, but they were something to which he could fall asleep, and in dreams, see for himself. He could imagine the beaches laden with smooth pebbles, the grasslands with soft, loamy earth. He could still remember running barefoot, with toenails that didn't dig into the earth with every footfall. And while he couldn't imagine what Christmas would even look like, it was something worth mulling over in the seconds between words.
He still shivered, but exhaustion had set in. Claimed him so thoroughly that he offered no response, for words were simply too much. Then being awake was too much, and he drifted into a light sleep to the rhythm of Albite's baritone.
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