guine
Occurs February 6th. Recalculated to February 20th.
He breathed the why of never again until he couldn't breathe it anymore, until he couldn't more it anywhere but when and why in his hell of hearts where Sturm waxed and Drang rose. Blood once wickerman red and iron bright, woven down into his delight, now painted scrivener's mistakes on ankles and wrists, elbows and knees. Blood stopped and thought flowed — pass the baton, it said, but it never stopped running.
Thoughts didn't need to breathe. They didn't tire. Their legs never ran out and shriveled, caked in their ams and their needs and their hey no listen don't why-are-you-doing-this. They didn't have ears to listen. They didn't have eyes to see. They run and run like blind little nuns too insensate with their board-blank purities —
Bathroom stumble managed, Faustite stutter-stepped with clothes dripping off of him. They came loose in brilliant waves of too-expensive, too-dire cloth, befitting of the man-and-not-boy that he wasn't and won't be. The water hiss rushed ran out of the spigot, its hurry so too and its path so where and its purpose in its drive in its drowning of the bottom of the tub. And everything felt slippery. A black foot in and an ink whorl out and smoke joined water for smokewater but the lukewarm wasn't enough and thoughts didn't care about conductivity or cohesion or any solid-liquid-gas mechanics that the narrow-minded physicists locked in their heads.
His hell of a heart pulled to passion by spread-thin thoughts. Their knife-glide insistence spread heavy beat to thrums to tachycardic. He knew the word, it was the only word. Tachy fast cardic heart. Finger-bones pressed to chest-bones to knock-knock-knock are you okay in there.
The meat symphony said that all was not well, all felt like hell, and the rhythm ramped up uup up while stars shut his prying gaze out of the room. They runneled down into a tunnel, and he stared down their gun-barrel awareness to the punctuated spigot. Hands started to end at the knuckles, then the palms, then the wrists while his nerves crawled up his arms. Too tired they were, too afraid, too much and too how and too where-does-it-end.
The crawl wasn't worth it, slipping out of that slick tub. Smokewater slipped and spilled and splashed where it spread like thoughts across linoleum. All his in-out-in-out clouded a patch of wet on the floor, next to the once-clothes that were now new-clothes on his too-thin same-frame. Fingers too tremble for clammy found the phone, pulled from nowhere to somewhere with his pitched vision poking holes in the dark.
unlock hurry two zero zero one this has to be contacts scroll where is he he has to yuuri matsunaga call breathe in out in out i'm dying ring hurry up ring don't let this be click crackle
"Yuuri," tachy fast cardic heart "I think… I'm having a he—" in out in out "heart attack. Room ten-thirty—" come hurry in out in out the square wall sides falling dead
Sleep was never incredibly easy for Yuuri, but over the past few months things seemed to be getting better for him. The medication that was purposefully designed to help him sleep obviously did wonders, as did the security the warehouse offered, as opposed to thin dorm room walls with college students of questionable natures.
So when he woke that night to the sound of his phone, it took him a few moments to realize what pulled him from his dreams. He squinted through the dark, hand reaching out to the source of light on the bedside table and picked it up. The name was blurry, a combination of sleep and poor vision.
Not many people called him, much less had any reason to call him. Lauri was working that night, and Yuuri didn’t know if he’d gotten home yet. If it was an emergency…
He slurred a greeting as he answered, unsure what language his medicated brain provided in that moment --
And immediately pushed himself up in a dizzying haze when he recognized the voice on the other end.
Faustite. But a heart attack? Did he hear him correctly?
Yuuri blinked a few times before lifting his hand to rub at his face, trying to understand what exactly was happening. Obviously Faustite needed help. And he was calling Yuuri of all people. Couldn’t contact anyone else maybe? First person he noticed on his contacts? Maybe he didn’t want anyone else to see him in such a vulnerable state?
He responded again, he was fairly certain in English, about how he was on his way, and stumbled out of bed to search for his slippers.
“Talk to me, please. Are you at the citadel?” he managed to ask and register the correct language, still blinking the haze from his eyes as he turned the phone on speaker and set it down on the bedside table. He pulled on a robe over his pajamas only because he didn’t know how cold it would be outside, but powering up in the warehouse wasn’t an option. He refused to put Lauri more at risk than he already was. A block or two away would be far enough.
“Are you in pain?” he asked, voice thick with sleep. If Faustite could talk, then he could breathe at least. Contacts were quickly and haphazardly put in, because even if he wanted to find his glasses, which he didn’t, he was sure it would take longer to locate them than just putting in his contacts while mostly asleep.
Phone and wallet grabbed, and he stumbled his way out of his bedroom at the warehouse, down the stairs, barely avoided tripping over the homemade roomba with cat ears, and was out the door.
How he managed to run a block in slippers as quickly as he did, while half asleep, he had no idea. But the moment he was far enough away to throw any white moon lurkers off the scent of the warehouse, Yuuri powered up to Kamacite and teleported once the citadel was clear in his mind, confirmation having been given by Faustite.
This was where he’d been training with Aue, so he was familiar enough with how the rooms were numbered.
Except… he hadn’t expected room ten-thirty to be a bathroom.
“Faustite?” he called as he knocked on the door, and then pushed it open, making sure his robes and hair were out of the way before he shut it behind him.
citadel yes pain yes hurry hurry hurry Faustite thought with his extant thoughts.
Minutes copulated with hours at an hour a minute and he couldn't tell didn't know didn't care how long had passed before a knock-knock-knock stirred him from his almost-no-sight. Black hands slip struggled to hoist himself onto some geometry, onto some line or plane or angle that would tolerate him. Someone spoke in ivory static. He heard it but didn't, in the same knock-knock-knock are you okay in there way. But the okay didn't come from knuckles, and his was am and hurry and pain.
So where and when and how did one stop an unstopped heart? Abject, paper-faced worry found pinpricks of Kamacite. Too-long hair like ink-black rivulets a bathtub parallel a heart beat beat beat to say hey
hurry
xxxxxtime
xxxxxxxxxis
xxxxxxxxxxxrunning
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxout
and he swallowed his no-spit to speak. "Can't feel." Black fingers clutched to black knobs with black fear. "Can't see." A thousand blinks never banished the star ocean. His heart thrummed hummingbird wings too high too far too fast. Cold sweat ventilated hyper and he couldn't form the words. Or the thoughts. Or the sonance. He reached for what he couldn't see.
Kamacite took in his surroundings in the moments it took him to lower himself to his knees, arms covered in silky, embroidered fabric reached out to slide under the young man’s arms as he tried to hold himself up, pulling him close against Kamacite’s chest.
Black.
Tears? Blood? Black from Faustite could be anything. Kamacite was still working on processing everything through being woken in the middle of the night, but determining whether or not Faustite was in need of actual medical assistance or if it was what Kamacite suspected from the little he’s heard from Faustite so far. He couldn’t exactly take him to a hospital like this.
There was no doubt that Faustite was in pain, but a heart attack? It certainly felt like a heart attack. Kamacite knew this pain first hand.
He shifted his hold on the teenager, reaching to press his hand tight against Faustite’s chest, over his heart, fingers pressing sharp, purposefully painful. A distraction. Pulling the pain to the surface helped for him, helped force himself into coming to terms with everything happening to him.
“You don’t need to feel or see. Just breathe with me,” Kamacite spoke quietly into Faustite’s ear, arm still around his shoulders, other hand still against his chest. He audibly drew in breath and let it out slowly, trying to get Faustite to mimic him, at least to start.
Just breathe with me.
Pressure wrapped around him, pressed to chest where his hell of a heart knocked on the other side. Body pressed to body, fighting around exhaust pipes and exhaustion. His livewire fingers cluched for anything they could find — anywheres, anyhows, anywhys. But his mind bled out, let out its thoughts, and Faustite was cursed with action action action. Action to press his too-hot-too-cold face into the maybe-hair-maybe blood waterfall. To press his nose against a too-prominent clavicle acting as a never-used shelf.
Just breathe with me.
He spoke with certain and solemn. "I'll die." He knew the slow of no breath to spare. The fearpainbewilderment. Kamacite didn't fit to his tachy fast cardic heart rhythm. He didn't fit, wouldn't fit —
His heart. His heart was too fast. He couldn't catch it. Schörl singsangsung long ago of ribs punched to splinters for stopping an unstopped heart. Violence to violence to restart to live again. Cold sweat spread its sticky sheen.
Faustite drew deep, sighed out, missed the mark. Too fast still with his staccato into legato. Sight flickered its pinhole aperture. Small breaks broke the rhythm inoutinoutinout to in-out-in-out-in-out as he tried to pace the race. Clutching black-knuckle to unfilled robes, he tried again. Again. Was his body killing him?
"I can't," he managed on an exhale.
This was a heart attack. His heart attacked him. Numb was his left arm. Gone were his thoughts. In half-spilled smokewater they sat, fighting for a breath. Kamacite wouldn't know — "What's… Happening?" What's happening to me?
Kamacite slowly shook his head in response to Faustite’s claim that he would die, pressing his cheek to the other young man’s, feeling the heat that radiated from him. He could feel the almost impossibly fast pulse beneath his palm, could feel and hear the way Faustite was trying to breathe and settle himself. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t going to happen immediately. It would take patience from both of them.
Unless…
Maybe there was a way to help speed up the process. He’d never tried with another Negaverse officer, but now was as good a time as any to test it out. If it didn’t work then it would just be a longer process, that was all.
Gently, Kamacite tried drawing some of Faustite’s energy into his palm as he pressed it against his chest, holding him tightly still in an attempt to sync breath and heartbeat.
“This is not a heart attack. You’re having a panic attack,” he said quietly, or at least it certainly seemed like that to Kamacite. “You’re doing well. You can do this. Breathe again,” he tried, knowing it would be up to Faustite in the end.
The black was worrying. Everything was damp… everything black… was Faustite injured? Was this just a result of him being part youma? When the pipes on his back got wet, was black the result? Just soot?
Kamacite clutched tighter to Faustite’s form, refusing to let go.
“Breathe with me, Faustite…”
When muscles wound past capacity finally started to ebb, immense soreness found its new home. Faustite tried to breathe through the embarrassment, the incredulity, the mistakes, the fear, the lament. The world continued its march like the beat of Kamacite's heart — Faustite needed to match it with his own.
Needed, because his hummingbird heart was the accomplice, not the culprit. That his body's trials were the sum of his mind's demands infuriated him. Again he focused on the paced breath — in. out. in. out.
His living cage opened little by little, cracks in the mantle that let the pressure breathe. In fluxed more soreness, more dearths of energy. Slowly the aperture dialed back on his eyes and more by more and minute by minute, he made more of Kamacite's neck and cheek and jaw. Faustite counted pale pinpoint mounds one by one then two by two while he tried and tried and tried again to anchor himself to Kamacite's shore. Slowly the cold sweat greeted his nerves, and they crawled back down his arms with a certain slowness. He became aware of how his clothes hung and hugged his frame. How wet hair mopped around his face. How it soaked flowing fabric to a thin, cool body.
His too-tight grip on Kamacite's shoulder slackened, and his joints groaned the release. Pressure still hummed in his chest cavity. The mob of a thousand locusts cleared from his ears. Steadily, the world rebuilt itself.
"A panic attack…" He sounded out breathlessly. An exhausted chuckle followed, devoid of both mirth and strength. Of course it would be. There's always something else to lose. "I thought those," he licked dry lips, "were fake. Urban legend. Excuse." But his hell of a heart's hummingbird thrum promised that more than magic existed in the world: mental disorder did, too.
His free hand found the hand over his chest, black betwixt white, and felt the marching rhythm within. Still it beat frantically, his body still rock-tense with anticipation, but control slowly returned to him. To his mind. To all the thoughts spread over the room.
"You had these before." The statement-guess was met with black eyes poaching black for answer.
Kamacite kept his hold, simply breathing while Faustite calmed. It wouldn’t be completely over for a while, but enough to be able to comprehend what was happening would be a good place to start.
As Kamacite felt muscle and grip relax, he lifted his hand from around Faustite’s shoulders, gingerly carding his fingers through short, dark hair. Getting Faustite to calm down enough to be able to explain what was going on was the goal. Or maybe he wouldn’t want to talk about it and just needed someone with him. Either way, Kamacite didn’t mind.
There was a moment in which Kamacite tensed, feeling the too warm hand over his own against Faustite’s chest, but Faustite did nothing to push him back or shake him off. He still felt a bit dazed, although adrenaline from the whole situation was coursing through him by this point.
And when Faustite pulled back enough for their eyes to meet, Kamacite didn’t look away.
“All my life.”
His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. Sad. Ashamed. Because for many, something like a panic attack really was just an excuse. It was made up.
Overdramatic. Craving attention.
Kamacite cleared his throat of the emotion that threatened to build up, and fingers in Faustite’s hair lowered to be able to gently scratch at the back of his neck in an attempt to continue to soothe him.
“Are you injured? The black I… wasn’t sure if… can I get you anything?” he asked, feeling the learned shame of his own mental disorders drawn to the surface, coloring his cheeks and ears.
That explains your expertise.
Faustite settled avian bones against the one thinner than he. Swallowing, his breathing gained more of a pace. Touch loosened the bones constricting his lungs; could Kamacite tell by feel? Faustite didn't want to ask. Didn't want to think. he was better off with his thoughts spread across the floor, their dishwater film staring up at the blank faces and blank ceiling. His fingers loathed to release his hold on the sun-dusted shoulder, and instead crept closer to meet his own cheek. His lids drooped with incoming exhaustion. With a pounding headache. His hand left his chest to push the tension out of his legs — a battle oft fought but seldom won.
All his life he dealt with moments where his body locked up and his mind screamed for total shutdown. For his heart to speed through a sum of finite beats, to edge him closer to death over a raw panic. A fleeting, untempered, distempered mind. No — emotions. There was no reason to it. No provocation. Nothing.
Faustite poured himself into a bath when his bones bent against him. How, then, could anyone live with that threat? What if every bath might provoke another, and another? What if fear gripped so harshly and so suddenly that there were no cursory signs? And if reason never tempered it, if logic couldn't brush it away, then how could anyone grit through the many minutes of sheer, exhaustive, pointless force? How could anyone function in a life rendered insensate by dumb, blind, deaf panic?
"I'm fine." The half-truth meant as much for rope-bruise and tinted water, when his body wasn't fully whole but hale enough. Hurt crept in with her bedmate Exhaustion, and they made anew an irksome song that filled his bones. "Cuts and bruises." His uniform allowed for no better view.
Whisper-quiet words found an ear non too far, with grace paid in minute hand gestures across his scalp. He struggled to sit up a little with the hope that his muscles wouldn't revolt. Collapsed as he was against his comrade, his old enemy breathing remained difficult. "I thought you were certifiable. In the warehouse. Like…" He paused briefly to assail his chances of running off his sole anchor. "You were useless because you couldn't answer simple questions. I thought that the Negaverse had no use for someone like that. I'm sorry. I didn't realize…" He paused for breath.
"I didn't know what it meant for your mind to self-destruct. That we can die without dying."
Inky water was soaking into their clothing, but Kamacite could care less. His own discomfort was pushed as far from his thought as he could manage, and instead kept his focus on Faustite.
He looked tired. More than tired. More than the attempt at drawing energy from him caused. This looked like a tiredness in his very being. But he was at least calming. That was good. Faustite just needed to breathe.
Kamacite pulled back a little as Faustite moved to sit up, taking the opportunity to glance over his body for any signs of injury, but he was dressed in what looked like clean clothing. Well, clean other than the water that soaked the fabric. He didn’t believe Faustite’s comment that he was fine, but all Yuuri did for the moment was continue to smooth his fingers up and down the back of Faustite’s neck.
The apology was a surprise, and it left Kamacite speechless for a few moments. But his expression eased as Faustite continued after a breath. It wasn’t wrong of Faustite to think he was useless. For the longest time he thought he was useless too. Had been told that he was his whole life.
Hands pulled away from where they rested, one from Faustite’s chest and the other from his neck. But only so Kamacite could lift them to gently rest his palms against his packmate’s cheeks.
He really was young, although Kamacite was afraid to ask how young. He knew the Negaverse often recruited officers in high school, but they weren’t exactly all emotionally prepared for what the Negaverse required.
“You didn’t know,” he gently reminded Faustite of his own words. “It’s okay. I’m sorry you had to go through one. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
But while the apology was appreciated, that wasn’t his main concern.
“Is there anywhere we can go? You’re soaked… Maybe I could help you with your injuries. Were you caught in a fight with someone?” he gently prodded, not wanting to push too hard, but also trying to pull Faustite’s thoughts away from the panic attack he’d had.
The closeness they kept was a little foreign, a little familiar, and a little intoxicating. Freedom granted from the confines of social restriction — of raising the boy to look but don't touch. Museum grace bestowed on every human being in their perfect impropriety and he so seldom spent his yearnings on disobeying those ubiquitous signs. Instead they amassed, touch-starved and stripped-down and dehumanized, until heat and skin formed an impossibly distant bedrock — an unmeetable goal.
Kamacite never once retreated and feeling slowly flowed back into Faustite's legs. Like the smokewater surrounding him, all the world felt filmy with unknowing. A filament spread over the intellect in which he once prided himself. Now it seemed strange and distant, caught in a bell jar, left as a specimen in a rancorous world like this. A foreign world driven by rote emotion, impulse, and need. Faustite was never raised to know man's lack of reason, lack of culture, lack of restraint. To see it now both in himself and to hear of it in someone else left him grinding his teeth for answers under ever-chilled hands. He needed an emotional answer to an emotional problem. A solution matched to the thing that was, the way that is. But what answer was that?
What answer fit like a key when the door lacked locks?
Yuuri looked to him, and in an instant, he didn't know where else to set his gaze. Starless eyes seldom gave away the fixed position of his attention, but in such close proximity, there wasn't the space to look away. Nor the impetus. Nor the simple strength left in the fast-twitch muscles operating his eyes. He felt too exhausted too look away. Too needful. Too present. Too aware of every place where their bodies touched like unkempt plants growing into one another. Their closeness felt too focal to answer a question better left unasked.
'Were you caught in a fight with someone?'
He confirmed it haltingly. "I was caught." And that was the answer — he needed a key that fit an entirely different door. Sometimes the fit of skin was grounding, the cold water reminding, the tenuous touch reassuring. But he couldn't touch that question.
So with Yuuri's shoulder still ensconced in Faustite's hand, the captain reached to steer Yuuri's jawline. Fingertips found the shell of his ear, spread over the outer cusp, felt the cool to his too-hot. He pressed as much meaning as he could into a wordless language washed over Yuuri's lips. A monosyllabic 'o' imparted from one mouth to the next in an effort to capture, confine, divert, laud, give, trade, need, and celebrate. To trade volatility for wet, smoke-stained and a few fleeting seconds away from their minds.
Something was off. Kamacite wasn’t sure what, and he didn’t know if he was overthinking it, but something seemed like it didn’t quite match up. Something was very slightly off key, and it had nothing to do with the sudden charge in the atmosphere as Faustite lifted a hand to his face.
His own hands trembled slightly against Faustite’s face as he looked back into his pupilless eyes, until there was no longer any space between them.
Even though he was caught off guard, he didn’t immediately pull away. But Faustite must have known he wouldn’t have pulled away. He was observant enough to know that if he hadn’t backed away by now, he wasn’t likely to back away with a little more push.
Kamacite turned his head away, gently pulling his face away from Faustite’s gentle touch.
“You didn’t - answer my question,” he said a bit breathlessly, keeping his head ducked down in case Faustite tried something like that again, feeling shy and embarrassed and wondering if this was a spontaneous reaction for Faustite, or if this was something he’d thought about. The latter thought had Kamacite’s face flushing darker.
“If you’re hurt, you should at least let me help with first aid,” Kamacite insisted quietly, his hands sliding down from Faustite’s face to rest onto his shoulders. “Do you know who caught you?” he asked, frowning at the phrase and wondering for a moment if he was missing something in the words as he sometimes did with slang and uncommon phrases.
“Caught… in a trap? Faustite… please, let me help,” he tried, unsure if he was just going to upset the other because he’d pulled away before Faustite was ready, or for some other reason.
A minute sigh from his nose disturbed the wefts about Kamacite's face. Anxiety, the familiar foe, clutched its pressure-hands around his heart again. His lungs. The fingers pressed behind Kamacite's ear coiled down to seize a lock of hair, coiling it and curling it and playing deftly with the diffuse language of restlessness.
Someone like Aelius would capitulate to the gesture easily. A kiss — especially when couched in sincerity — commanded so much attention. Devotion. It bespoke need and honesty wrapped in delicacy. It championed the emotional. But Kamacite, ever beholden to emotions, didn't fall under its banner. His small hands and small voice fell away from it and Faustite dared not look at him, at the ebony and ash wrapped in a dying sunburst. Not yet. Not while every organ in his godforsaken body curled in on itself. Screwed this up too.
"I know," he answered at last. Rapidfire pace of his heart quickened, starting up a fleeting, listless stutter-step. The knock-knock-knock are you okay in there returned. He hated it — hated this impotence.
Knuckles curled against Kama's bone-thin shoulder until he formed a ruler's fist. "Sometimes you need to leave injuries untreated. I won't die from this." His shoulders grew tense under feather-touch hands. The way they curved shifted under burdens he was reticent to relinquish — to Kamacite, to anyone, though there was only the one who offered another back to break. "I was caught like a dog please, Kamacite —" Quick breath cut him off, grown deep and steady, looping into deprived lungs and loosed with a tremble. Kamacite's lesson taught tenuous control; it broke a little more of Anxiety's grip and its bitter-black cousin's reign. He whetted lips dry and unanointed. "I can't talk about this. If I give it words, I give it power. Power over me. You know what it's like to lose that power."
I choose. I live. I lead. I fight. I hurt. I rise. I choose.
I choose.
I choose to give it no name or face or body to haunt me. You don't get to win, Sinope. Not against your betters.
His hands slipped from Kamacite in a slow retreat. The heels of his hands found their home on Faustite's forehead where the scathing headache of all his bad decisions came to rest. "Sometimes I forget I'm not human." The careful, measured sidestep answered to the unspoken kiss. He roused another deep breath, one upon which anxiety suckled.
When his hands left his visage by way of a long detour down his face, they found rest at his sides, flatted against wet floor. "There are better ways to help than first aid," he finished, looking askance and nearest Kamacite. "I just… Need to be anywhere but there." Popping like knuckles, he remembered. Like a stiff hip after a bad night of sleep. After a rotten dream.
With the nightmare publicized, the Yorke family went out of print.
I know.
Such a simple thing to say in response, but for Kamacite the words froze him in place as he watched Faustite with increasing concern. Long fingers fluttered along his companion’s shoulders, close enough to his pulse point to feel the rapid thrum of his heart.
Teeth clenched against a hiss of pain that tried to escape, fingers curling too tightly against his shoulders, but he refused to allow Faustite a reason to break away and try to leave. Not this time. Not so easily.
The implications of Faustite’s words, the way his body reacted, how he tensed and practically begged, how his voice trembled… Kamacite didn’t want to believe what his mind was suggesting, what it was piecing together slowly in the daze of exhaustion and adrenaline.
It was as though Kamacite could see this young man drowning, could feel the pressure bearing down on him, on both of them, because Kamacite couldn’t just let go now. He could feel and see Faustite fighting with each strained breath and shift of muscle.
And he watched as Faustite crumbled, hands pressed against forehead and face, then down to the floor.
Kamacite pushed himself up more, hands moving from resting on shoulders so he could wrap his arms around him instead, pulling Faustite tight against him once more. But unlike the embrace from before where Kamacite has been trying to help Faustite ground himself and calm down, this was clearly a gesture of protection and comfort.
“You are human,” he choked on the emotion that tightened his throat, his face pressed to the top of Faustite’s head. “You are human, Faustite.”
There had been times in which Kamacite questioned why the Negaverse did things they way they did, although he generally didn’t care either way, but it was now that he felt hate for it. He hated that it was responsible for Faustite being part youma like this, hated that he questioned his humanity. And Kamacite knew this was what the Negaverse would want; for Faustite to abandon what he held onto for himself and succumb to everything the Negaverse wanted.
“I do know what it’s like to lose power, to lose control, but you are stronger than this. I am stronger than my past, and I am no longer alone. You don’t have to try to fight alone, Faustite,” he promised, voice muffled against dark, damp hair as he clung tightly to Faustite’s shoulders, head pulled against Kamacite’s chest.
“You are not alone. You are not alone.”
When arms found him, sure and strong, Faustite was uncertain what to think. A part of him wanted to tense, to pull away, to retreat back into the magnitudinous space kept plain between them in their initial meeting. To relinquish guard enough to reveal hurts was a terrifying investment — the risk alone that it demanded was phenomenal. And yet, around his weary wariness, he understood the necessity. Terror or torpor. Linger or languish. Accept or abandon. It seemed asinine to call that an option.
Smokestained hands slowly came to rest on Kamacite's pointlessly ceremonial robes. He painted black the smattering of brilliant nightscape flowers that embroidered whimsy into the garb. Clutched as he was against a too-thin chest, he heard all the evidence of life therein — the echo of thought cast by Kamacite's voice, the strings thrumming out his ephemeral tune. Affirmations spoken left him feeling distant, and they stood at odds with the longtime superior that assured him otherwise. Did he doubt? One hand seized part of the deep neckline kept by the outfit, and he caught sight of his own unruly nails. Was that assurance of humanity a lie? I'm not human enough to kiss you. Faustite swallowed against their closeness.
Instead, he breathed a sigh against the floral vagaries that ensconced Kamacite.
"I know," he finally returned. "You're here." Yuuri had every chance to ignore the phone call, to walk back out at the sight of him, to retreat as soon as he pressed the advance. But unlike his impossibly dense subordinate, Faustite never ignored the simple truth that his actions conveyed — that Kamacite took up this duty for someone beyond his team, for someone that once snubbed him for the insecurities he kept, for someone that endangered his partner's identity. And while unnecessary, in sonance there was reassurance — that the room's empty, bleeding silence would be chased away that much longer by the breath of a word. That thoughts painted in dishwater filminess would be left to dry before they crept back into his head.
Kamacite took a risk. And stiff and exhausted and wired and bleary and meager as Faustite felt in those moments, only loosely powered by an anxiety that inevitably started to perish, he knew he needed to return that risk. That Kamacite deserved the trust he espoused.
Licking his lips, Faustite thought back to the scar-scattered constellation enjoined on Kamacite's neck. Maybe we have more in common than I thought.
"His name is Sinope."
Kneeling there in on the wet bathroom floor, arms wrapped around a young man who thought so very little of him in the past, was heartbreaking. Not because of that past between them, but because Kamacite wished that he could have known more about Faustite and who he was, about who Elex was. Forced to grow up faster than he might have been ready for because of the Negaverse.
And in many ways because Kamacite saw himself in Faustite. No, they weren’t very similar personality wise, but there were many things that seemed to parallel each others lives.
He opened his eyes looking from Faustite’s head of black, to the soot swirled water that decorated the bathroom now. And then lower over the open back of his uniform to the ink and torn skin that decorated Faustite’s back. Fresh wounds, some not quite fully clotted.
Kamacite felt his heart skip, breath caught in his throat as he loosened his arms from around Faustite’s shoulders. And a name that was burned into his memory. The name of the monster who would pay dearly for hurting this young man in his arms.
A crushed starseed would be too merciful. He would make sure they suffered a thousand times over. With these kinds of creatures, Kamacite wouldn’t have been surprised if Faustite wasn’t the first victim they tormented. There was usually a history of this behavior, and Kamacite had no qualms against eradicating their type.
He pulled back then, turning his head to press a lingering kiss against Faustite’s temple, before pushing himself up to his feet, rivers of black cascading over his shoulders, his hands reaching to take hold of Faustite’s. Eyes burned cold as he gently tugged on his hands, trying to coax Faustite to his feet.
“Can you stand? Be careful with your knees,” he gently warned, his own legs a little shaky from kneeling for so long. It was clear that the ice was not meant to bite Faustite. “There’s a training room close by if you don’t have another suggestion for where we’ll find medical supplies.”
And it was also clear that Kamacite had no intention of leaving now.
The kiss to temple came a s a surprise — Kamacite showed that he was much more adept at articulating himself through action and gesture than through some of the languages he demonstrated previously. Here, there wasn't that hesitance. Why? Faustite's gaze trailed the senshi once they disentangled from each other.
But the answer was grim — a vitriolic passion supplanted Kamacite's usually mousy demeanor, where rage chased away the insidious values that condemned men to cower. Was it because of Sinope's actions that Kamacite bolstered his spine, or because of Faustite's momentary weakness? He could do nothing for either. He could do nothing to rescue himself from a heavy exhaustion, from an iron curtain of impermeable wear and pain that dulled down his mind. Were it a better day, he felt he could parse these fascinating quirks of his comrade, but were it a better day, he wouldn't witness Kamacite in such rare form.
But that didn't matter — a welcome emptiness settled into his dull skull while Kamacite urged him to his feet. A light wince forced him to draw breath at pressure; where hands touched wrists, splotches of discomfort arose. But he stood nonetheless, with legs groaning beneath him, and the greater taxation to his body still lay ahead. "Walking hurts," he admitted plainly. Not impossible, though difficult.
"There's nowhere else." Not that he found through all the months of aimless, listless meanderings through these yawning corridors. Negaspace had a habit of devouring its denizens and sending them through its winding internals, whether spat out into the Rift or simply pulled wholesale into the labyrinthine bowels. Here they neared those bowels, where ill-used or never-used rooms took up the brunt of the space. Most looked like artifacts from a bygone tragedy — from Chernobyls and Pompeiis and Hiroshimas of yore.
Laconically he nodded to Kamacite's suggestion, and started with an automaton's will toward the door. His leg movements felt stiff and pained — he corrected as much as he could for injuries sustained — which meant a walk slower than purposeful. He wondered, briefly, if he could do much but fall asleep when they reached the place.
"I'm so tired," came his last comment as he tried the knob and exited back out into the professional face of the Negaverse.
