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 Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 11:36 pm
Konstantin hurried into his and Mimsy's room, slamming the door behind him, still heaving and sort of in tears. He angrily wiped at his eyes, sinking to the ground with his back pressed to the door, careful to keep his towel adjusted.
He was safe, in here. (Minus the statue's ever-staring gaze.) Mimsy wouldn't touch him, or be stuck in any various state of undress, since they had that coordinated down to a t. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, trying to press them away. A shiver raced down his spine like a shard of ice, because the lingering sensation of touch on his skin was still there.
A gross sob escaped Konstantin's chest, and he despised himself for this weakness. Dakota's grin leered at him, in his mind, warm and open and that just made everything worse, because he clearly hadn't minded at all. Forever unaffected, Dakota, no matter how much Kostya squawked: he took life on with a smile and a hop in his step.
"I hate public showers," he said to the air, not even looking up to see if Mimsy was in the room. "Never," he said, low and it was rare for his voice to be so affected, harsh and gravely, cold anger seeping into his bones like old rot. "Never again."
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 12:19 am
Had Kostya not arrived so frantically, Mimsy might have completely missed everything he said. She was curled up on her bed, engrossed in the journals that she'd received as her Christmas gift, hanging off of every word with a desperation that most reserved for cliffhangers in dramatic novels. Slowly, she lowered the journal, catching a glimpse of her roommate in a towel. Acknowledging the fact that he was in that state would probably not make whatever this was any better, so she refrained, opting to glance back down at the safety of the words on the page. She had never seen him cry. Not even the worst of things thrown at them had been terrible enough for Kostya to cry. This reaction was startling enough that she wasn't sure she should ask, but he both looked and sounded so completely miserable that this wasn't something she could just ignore. "Was there an incident?" she asked, quiet and tentative, trying her hardest to not assume the worst.
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 12:41 am
"Yes," he said in his native tongue, the words thick on it like curdle milk. "Yes, yes, yes." His stomach roiled, and the confliction emotions did nothing to settle it, a war between hate-disgust-rage-despair-arousal-fear. He'd never been...aroused before, by anything in his life. It was terrifying to him that it had stemmed from something he'd despised so much, from the tactile sensation of Dakota's hands on his skin-- but no.
That wasn't right. They were the lingering disease, they had pressed into flesh, searing hot like pokers and Kostya shook his head violently, another sob escaping. Shame joined the pack of emotions, swirling in his gut the strongest.
"So stupid. I am the least intelligent creature in this facility, infantile and incapable of a shower." His words were bitter, and Kostya hurled them at Mimsy like daggers: clearly irate, but not at her. At himself.
He inched to his bed, and promptly wrapped himself up in a blanket, uncaring of if he got it wet. Kostya swaddled himself, and the touch of cloth was better than his. Cool, comforting, undemanding.
Finally, he switched to English, with reddened eyes and a wet face. The risk of hyperventilation minimized.
"Techs got chemicals on me. Had to shower. Vas too many people."
Kostya seemed to shrink into the comforter, devoured by it.
"Tried to leave. Fall. Up again. trip on Dakota. Face to face. Chest to chest. Terrible." The Russian paused, and closed his eyes tightly shut, a pathetic sound escaping, one of defeat. His lower lip trembled. Pathetic.
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 1:34 am
Kostya spoke venomously and quickly and with several words that Mimsy hadn't learned yet; the gist of it was insulting, and she was flooded with confusion, until she caught the 'I' that made it self-deprecating.
After setting her journal down and stepping off of her bed, she plucked one of her smaller towels from her belongings and walked to his bedside with it in hand, letting it slip between his wet hair and the comforter as best she could while still ensuring a lack of contact. It was an odd gesture, but she remembered the times she'd cried herself to sleep when she was younger and Clerise was still around, and she imagined that he wouldn't want to wake up feeling cold and wet. Those were feelings that could be tied too closely to sadness and abandonment and all sorts of negativity. He didn't need those feelings. Especially not right now.
A slight frown across her lips, she kneeled on the floor next to his bed, hands folded in her lap where he could see them. She couldn't easily calculate a response - I'm sorry seemed almost juvenile in this context - so she did her best to make his environment as comforting as possible in the meantime, situating herself below him at a distance, not prying for elaboration.
"None of this is your fault," she reminded him. "You are not unintelligent as a result of this circumstance. It was unfortunate, and I am sure that you would not have chosen for everything to occur as it did, so you are not to blame. Don't let the thoughts that are hurting you try to convince you otherwise."
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 1:59 am
He clutched the towel, bringing it down tight against his scalp, grateful. It had not gone unnoticed that she had avoided contact: her movements measured, precise. Mimsy always did exactly as she intended, no little and no more. He wished he wasn't broken: Kostya had seen movies, television, read books. When someone was upset, you comforted them, held them close and treasured them.
The idea of someone doing that was enough to make him queasy on a good day, and he shivered again, wrestling with his lungs to get his breathing under control.
"I tripp," he murmured, pulling the cloth around him tighter. "No big deal, da? But Dakota." He laughed, a strangled sort of sound, like a fish gasping for air out of water, like glass shards crunching under a boot-heel, like a candle snuffed out because it ran out of wick.
"He just smile. I talk in Russian, talk and talk and panic but he." A hitched breath, stuttered, a record-skipping. "Just smile. Say to me, accent is hot. Just like that!" Kostya ran bony fingers through his hair, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. "So easy, for him. And ve touch, all of us, even."
He made a face. "Dakota, Dakota grab a**, pull closer, say to me 'Moon bruhzers' and hold on tight. And I felt him."
He quieted, chewing on the blanket, to keep himself from talking. To keep himself from saying how confused he was, because seeing his face so close was good, but the touching was not. How could he have both? Want both? Dakota said something about not being into boys, but Dakota had never been into anyone in his life.
"After he tell me we are siblings, I cry, because I am a child." He itched for a cigarette. "Unfortunate a vize vurd. I vould not have chosen, but nearly a dozen men vitness it all." Konstantin's lip curled, and it was ugly on his face, a tear in an original manuscript page. "Do not care vhat they think. But care because.... I cannot control. My fear. My disgust. I, I not even a child. Child can hold a hand, da? Can be held?"
He sighed, and the fight drained out of him, watching Mimsy's hand sit primly in her lap: where he could see them, no doubt. Their stillness was a comfort.
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 3:10 am
As he recounted the events, Mimsy felt a stirring somewhere in her chest, unfamiliar, uncomfortable. Her brow twitched with brief concern as she thought her heart skipped several beats and sunk into the pit of her stomach. She pressed one fingertip into the fingernail of her other hand as she still refused to move.
In that moment came an understanding of his discomfort and panic. The ease with which Dakota did these things was disquieting to someone who would never even consider acting and speaking so freely, to say the least. It was simple to ignore when the attention that came from it wasn't so direct, but in Kostya's position...
She could not admit that he was broken, because that meant admitting that she was too. They worked with a measured perfection in the bubble of their room, where everything was calculated and purposeful and devoid of subtext, but met with people who valued emotion and contact, neither of them could survive around them. They were sheep among wolves.
So she tried to find the words she'd done her best to tell herself, numbly reciting them like memorized poetry.
"Not being the same doesn't make you inept. You have different needs and approaches, but they are not wrong. For you, they are better. Superior." For me, they are better. Superior.
"Your fear and disgust are also yours. We each have things that uniquely raise those feelings within us, but you know them, so you own them. They are within you; you can control them, even if it comes in time. It is difficult, and my intention is not to minimize that difficulty, but you have to try very hard to keep them from controlling you until the time comes when you are ready to control them."
She managed a twitch of a smile.
"Don't let them. You are better than them. I am certain of that."
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 3:29 am
Mimsy was absolutely correct: Dakota was something whimsical, something light-hearted and too esoteric to put into a bottle. Kostya wished he could draw his blood and extract from it the secret to normality.
Not to say Dakota was normal: far from it. But, within him, he possessed qualities that could be labelled as such.
Kostya chewed on his inner cheek, the dull thud of pain keeping him alert.
"Maybe not wrong, but my methods. They failed me. If the experiment fails, do you not try a different method?" His voice took on a hysterical edge. Something had to give. His weapon was long-range, but plenty of their enemies did not believe in such a thing. In combat, it was easier to ignore, easier to retaliate over. If they deigned to touch him, Kostya could lash back, firing off a shot that smelled like ozone and bled crackling blue into the air.
But reacting that way to a normal touch would not be acceptable.
"Time is not a currency ve are rich in." The fight drained from Kostya as fast as it had come on. The anger possessed him, he became its marionette, but the grasp it had buried deep in his chest seemed to loosen with each outburst.
He drank in Mimsy's words, and was struck by an idea, terrible like the vast maw of a beast.
"I am better," he repeated, and a still damp hand slowly crept out from within the folds of cotton. It wavered, in the air, like a deer ready to run.
And he laid a hand on Mimsy's thigh: it was light, barely there, and fleeting. Had she not seen it with her very eyes, Mimsy may have guessed it didn't happen. It shamed him to associate the roil of disgust with Mimsy, to put his favoured person on the island together with the age-old phobia that he possessed.
But Kostya did not jerk his hand back. He slowly withdrew it, hiding it back in his comforter turned armour. The look on his face when he met Mimsy's gaze was something akin to hope, written in the tilt of his eyebrows and framed the brightness in his eyes.
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