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 Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2025 5:25 pm
"If you did, it'd be me that leaves." A soft assurance in the shape of a threat.
Then he let go of that hand, stood, cast off the lengthy black tank top that blocked the view of so much of his body. Like some insidious censor bar that didn't belong in this space. Without a word, he started for the door. Eles knew that Malory wasn't getting up to follow him. Wasn't going to call after him, though he was stupid enough to keep talking instead of switching to ASL.
He'd hear the thump of heeled boots on the stairs. A few occasional yaps and barks from the herd of schipperke that enjoyed scrabbling through the house. Some beleaguered squeak from a toy that got tossed. Then those sounds faded into something different, almost imperceptible. More scrabbling of claws on flooring. Then, once again, boots thumping steadily on the stairs.
Eles reappeared, a pair of cold packs in his hands. One he tossed, which landed next to Malory's head. The other he kept as he bent over to reclaim his own shirt, then he wrapped the cold pack in it until its chill softened to a whisper. He held onto it as he peeled himself out of belt after belt after belt after belt after belt, then unzipped the calves of his overwrought shoes and finally stepped out of them. It felt decidedly good to stand flat-footed again; Eles shifted back on the balls of his feet to work the sore out of his ankles.
He sat atop the furs again, still feeling quite satisfied, and pressed into Malory's hand the cold pack that had been so unceremoniously dumped near his head. One rib would be Malory's responsibility, but he could help out with the other one.
Lying down beside him, Eles draped an arm across the boy's bare chest and cupped the shielded cold pack loosely against the heat-ridden injury. Maybe it was the good mood, but he couldn't help himself.
"Say someone wanted to kill you tonight. Take your s**t off your corpse. Tell me how you'd survive it."
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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2025 5:25 pm
The unceremonious removal of Ebon from Eles’s person was simple and casual, and Eles felt all the more his when it was done. Some he could touch and know would touch him return, someone he could obnoxiously tug, pry, and coax attention out of. But no, not someone he could take for granted. It was only the barest piece of happenstance that brought their paths together like this, and in such a way that bypassed Faustite’s rage and Hybris’s fear and cowardice.
The boy leaving the room left Malory free to assess and accept his pains. He took the time to better control his breathing, testing out the depth and meter of it. What hurt less, what hurt more. Which hurts felt closer to something he might like, a day or two from now. Malory gave the healing at least two weeks, if he spent most nights as Hybris. Less if Eles allowed for the use of more active magics and the Mirror provided (as it always did). More if Eles decided he wanted Malory sooner than was wise, because Malory knew he’d want the other boy right back. Already did, beneath the pain and still further beneath the near terrifying depth of emotion that had been uncovered tonight. Want truly did ******** weather just about anything.
He sighed into the gentle press if the ice pack Eles held to his side, and gave a painful flinch for the one he’d been given. a*****e. Someone decided to be the sole arbiter of comfort tonight, right? Malory snorted softly to himself and was relieved that hadn’t brought a new stitch of pain along with it as well.
“Give all up.” He answered, not easily, but without much need to think. Giving up what robbers want was generally a good first step. People who stole were rarely people who also felt the need to kill. “Play dead.” And if they still wanted to attack him, wasn’t it fine to just meet them halfway? To be dead with so very little effort on their part?
But then maybe they were very big, and very scary. “Hybris.” Who was strong, though he hated to ever show or admit to it, and faster than any would expect, even other senshi who knew him. “Mirror.” Because it was better to escape than fight. “Fractured. Crystal.” Because there wasn’t always a mirror to be found, so sometimes life simply called for a wound to be torn through reality as a getaway.
And if none of those worked out? “Get lucky anyway.”
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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2025 5:25 pm
In all, his answers proved pragmatic. Neatly calculated. Why risk a fight when what mattered most to him was protecting his face and body from damage? All the zeroes attached to his outfit had no meaning to him. He wasn't risking himself over them. Let them have whatever they wanted, no fight required.
Well. Whatever they wanted, but for him. Eles supposed those answers would have to do.
He'd died once before. He seemed proud of that fact. Beamed for it like his continued existence was something particularly exceptional. Like his presence should be revolting to anyone who put stock in a natural order.
Eles wondered if he was really lying alone in the center of a room. Holding ghosts. Talking to someone that ceased to be long before they ever met. So he ensconced himself in the boy, held him closer, pressed the bridge of his nose against Malory's shoulder where it fit best. Shed some of his sorrows for the idea that a sickened mind had dreamed a boy up as a balm for him. A boy who kept talking, knowing how much it hurt. A boy who kept talking because it hurt.
Eles hadn't wished for power. He considered it in the lens of who he might've been before, if anyone at all. He always found it easier to play with the idea of some special alter ego, found it manyfold more comforting than the thought of a psychotic break. It let him avoid such a grim reality with a measure of grace. It suggested that he and Malory had something in common. For a time, it even granted him some direction. But when those steady leads provided no new information and they'd chased every hint to its logical conclusion, Eles still lacked a conclusive answer. It sucked, but he could tolerate it as long as the delusion played on uninterrupted.
And as he laid there, watching each flinch disturb Malory's placid expression, he decided he trusted the boy enough to not get himself dead too soon. If they had to face down such a situation, Eles needn't spend his passion wishing for power. Even now, he had no reason to need it. How pleasant. Gratifying, even.
"Do you want to?" He asked, attentive orange eyes lighting on that perfect face. "Get lucky. Right now."
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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2025 5:26 pm
The answers met with no argument, nor any small punishments to correct him, and Malory relaxed still further into the stabbing beat that meant he was both alive and forgiven. The press of the boy against his shoulder didn’t hurt at all, though. For a long stretch they settled into simply existing next to one another, and now, to a degree, within. An aching, broken, within.
The offer provoked a laugh that already had him paying dearly for the joy of it.
“You are. Horrible.”
As always.
“Yes.”
Always and now written in bone.
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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2025 5:26 pm
Eles smiled at that. A slight well-earned. "No worse than you."
How quiet and obedient he'd been during all that suffering. With such endurance, too! Eles was impressed that he hadn't lost so much as a hint of want, both before and after the hammer. All for him, no less. Eles didn't need more flattery with half the boys in DC eating out of the palm of his hand and licking his fingertips for another taste, and those boys were fun in all their quirky little ways and their plucks of personality, but this boy understood him better than all the rest.
And he'd been so uncharacteristically well-behaved. A boy named after misfortune deserved a little luck. Ein bisschen Pech.
Ma pêche, he thought with mischief on his lips. Pushing off the floor, Eles walked on hands and knees to settle below those twin altars of hurt, where he might unwrap his prize and pay him some fitful, savage worship.
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