|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2023 3:16 am
It was all he had in him to teleport the pair to the rooftop of the Farnsworth. Even at that, he was panting as the reeling weight of exhaustion sat in his vestibular system. It was nearly a welcome change for how it disrupted his attention on the dull and sharp pains scattered throughout his body.
The rooftop was tall enough to feel distant, detached from the goings-on in Destiny City. While they could still hear the rush of traffic, the honk of horns, they could likewise hear their own thoughts and the wind that soughed quietly through their hair and clothes. There were views on all signs of the busy downtown area and all the adjacent buildings that proved so necessary to scale up to the Farnsworth itself, the quiet battlefield that had since been converted into a construction yard, and a spraypainted squid that traced the ground and some of the barriers.
"Better she doesn't," he huffed out, "Try to kill you." Faustite groaned as he clawed at the ground with his good hand enough to wrench himself into a sitting position. He winced for how both his arm and ribs screamed about it, how his face had begun to swell for the punches. Moving his jaw entailed a granular clicking sound now, too. Faustite suffered a small sigh.
"Expect she would've called in reinforcements. Left us to die by someone else. Save face."
Faustite paused in his projections, as if remembering something. He knew he should thank Muri, but anything that came to mind seemed so cheap in comparison to what he had done. He'd have to think about how best to approach it, for he was certain that nothing he had on himself or in subspace would qualify for a proper gratitude gift. "Sorry about your shoe," he said instead, gesturing with his unbroken hand at the burnt ribbon.amorremanet Sorry it took me 8000 years to start this!
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2023 5:37 pm
“Trusting Faustite to only drain your energy for a very good reason” did not, on its face, sound like the smartest thing that Reiki had ever done in his life. As they dropped onto a different rooftop, hopefully far away from Cybele and whatever her ******** problem was, Reiki could admit, even if only to himself, that this particular idea probably ranked somewhere between “deciding exactly what kind of magical girl Levi and Soya had meant by offering him the opportunity to become one and asking exactly zero questions about any of the fine print” and “talking to a cop in Berlin with a line from a pop song that was older than his parents’ marriage because it had been the only German Reiki could remember at the moment, while moderately s**t-faced, and it conveniently translated to ‘Everything okay, Mr. Officer’” on the list of Ideas He’d Certainly Had.
Probably ranked closer to the incident with the cop, if mostly because, same as that one time, trusting Faustite had worked out. Insofar as Reiki could tell.
Which currently didn’t mean much. Reiki……didn’t trust that he was aware of much at all, between letting Faustite take what he’d needed to make good their escape, the time Reiki had donated to Mirrorspace before finding Faustite and Cybele in the middle of……all that mess, and the way that, in the sudden calm atop the Farnsworth, everything felt dangerously unstable. Uncertain. Crashing down, about to crash, in the midst of aftershocks from crashing. Stubborn pride wanted to stay standing, to keep alive any semblance of sprezzatura—that studied nonchalance of disguising any effort that you put into anything and never letting anybody see you sweat (as if Reiki had any room to claim such things with Faustite, when he’d witnessed more than enough emotionally frazzled nonsense out of Reiki to undermine the whole idea).
Most of the rest of Reiki, however, won out. He took a seat near Faustite, only remembering to exercise caution about the burning, right, literally on fire part of him thanks to the fresh memory of how ******** up Cybele’s front had been. “Sounds like she’d fit better with the Mirror than the White Moon,” he grumbled off-handedly. “Starting fights isn’t the style you see with most of us, but weaseling out of doing your own dirty work sure fits.”
A statement that Reiki supposed also included himself.
Given his policy on draining energy (dirty work) for the Mirror had been “No, thanks, I don’t think I will, actually” for going on a year.
Which he now felt HELLACIOUSLY justified about, jesus tap-dancing christ on toast with a side of ******** bacon.
—But Reiki would live. If, however, he went through all of this only for Faustite to die? He’d…………very seriously consider having a tantrum before deciding that it wasn’t constructive and trying something else. That, or shutting down completely, he guessed.
“It’s okay—about the shoe I mean. I’ll power down later and it’ll fix itself next time I power up,” he said gently, smoothing out his skirt and watching as Faustite……put himself back together? Checked over the extent of his injuries? Some other thing that Reiki didn’t feel like trying to guess right now? Something significantly more important than Reiki’s fuku, at any rate. “Thanks for getting both of us out of there.”
Faustite hadn’t needed to do that. As much as a certain part of Reiki yearned to scribble this anecdote into a Very Secret Diary with glittery pink gel pen, though, the majority of him told that piece to shut up. Cool it. Let the action be itself without limning to it any levels of Cute Boy Significance that Faustite hadn’t intended.
Don’t treat him like Sinope did, in so many words.Strickenized It’s okay, I know you’ve been busy with work and moving plot things along for Faustite! heart heart
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 10:19 pm
'Weaseling out of doing your own dirty work sure fits.'
Perhaps that was why Sinope was socially blacklisted from the Dark Mirror Court after committing his own murders. Had he passed that burden off to someone or something else — say, one of those mirror wraiths, or one of the ones that had deeply and abidingly ******** up the city some years back — he would likely remain in the Court's good graces. But that thought was unsustainable; he couldn't allow himself to have cerebral what-ifs while pained and exhausted, while stranding a cute boy on a rooftop. To think of that manipulative little ******** now would spoil Boy Times, which was the only thing keeping Faustite some semblance of sane for the moment.
Even if Murikabushi was trying to be polite about it, Faustite deflected the gratitude in a manner that belied his practice at it. "Was your energy that footed the bill." He winced thereafter, having shifted just so, where a fragment of bone touched a frayed nerve and, briefly, Faustite had no thoughts at all.
Heaving a pained, if smoky sigh, Faustite summoned a screwdriver to hand. Perhaps one of his best ideas since requiring a grate be put into his middle was frequenting the Home Depot aisles in the middle of the night and stealing everything of value. One of those items was a rare, magnetized Philips head screwdriver with a metal handle that had since become a staple for any grate cleaning, alongside the metal barbecue brush.
However, when he began to unscrew one of the many bars comprising his grate, the screwdriver soon fell out of his hand. He tried again, expecting that the first time was simply a fluke, but he lost hold of the tool again and it fell onto his lap. Huffing, he tried a third time. Then he realized that, on the many occasions that he had to take himself apart for a thorough cleaning, sometimes with Albite's toothbrush in a fit of seething frustration with his boy, he had always done so with two hands. And it wasn't as though taking apart a grate once a week made him particularly handy; Faustite still lacked much of the hand-eye coordination needed for home improvement tasks, which was often why he still left those to Albite.
And all of that was proof, at least to him, that he wasn't getting the part he needed without putting someone else to work for it. If he couldn't summon Albite, then —
Faustite's attention settled on Murikabushi. He turned the tool around and offered it to the boy, handle facing the intended user. "Test it first," he warned. "See if it's cool enough.
"Need this piece here." He gestured to a long, straight bar that leaned away from the epicenter.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 11:16 am
“Wasn’t going to mention that,” Reiki said, giving Faustite a small, tired smile. Nudging his glasses up, he rubbed at one of his eyes, then pinched at the bridge of his nose. The headache starting to form—that was some kind of related to the energy-draining, wasn’t it? Felt like a reasonable conclusion, based on what Reiki had observed from Michel and that one gentrification-happy a*****e he’d set mirror-wraiths on. “Won’t say it’s a particularly enjoyable experience? Because it’s not. But……I tried to signal that I was okay with you doing it. Trusted you to have your reasons, or something in mind.”
Trust that had, so far, proven itself deserved. Even if Faustite had only gotten himself out, though, Reiki probably would have chalked it up to “He’s already dying and this b***h in the slutty Midsummer’s Night’s Dream fuku tried to kill him right here tonight; he needs to conserve that energy for himself and that’s okay” and decided to be fine with this. Which, in a dim and distant sort of way that he didn’t particularly want to deal with, he realized was probably not the best Way To Be in relation to any boy, but especially not a boy who was, among other things, given to fairly extreme emotional responses and literally on fire.
Ah, well. Puzzling out the finer points of that sounded very much like Future Reiki’s Problem.
For now, much easier to focus on Faustite’s request. Shifting to a kneeling position, Reiki watched where Faustite pointed, tried to get a better look at the grate than he’d ever done before. In all their previous encounters, the grate had simply been a fact of life, worth remembering but not thinking about too intensely. Birds flew, fish swam, Faustite had a grate in his midsection that seemed to help contain his fires. Even though Faustite likely (and more than understandably) preferred not to say it out loud, Reiki could recognize that not everyone would get asked to not only pay closer attention to the grate, but also help Faustite with such a delicate task with its maintenance. It probably wasn’t inventing too much significance to acknowledge that Faustite didn’t allow himself such vulnerability with just anybody.
Keeping that “test it first” suggestion in mind, Reiki reached for the screwdriver—then stopped shy of the handle. The memory plunging his scorched right hand into a snowbank after holding Faustite’s shoulder rushed back to him……but with a deep breath, he powered through it. Maybe that helped in its way, because he found the handle perfectly fine to touch. As he moved his hands closer to the grate, Reiki repeated that process—the memory insisted upon itself somewhat more loudly, this time, no doubt because Faustite’s grate was significantly closer to the boy himself than a screwdriver he’d happened to have held—but it only took a moment for Reiki to get himself together.
Let nobody say that I never learn anything from my mistakes, he mused to himself as he worked on the screws.
—Well, except for the ones about running his mouth. But that had too many things bound up in it, a far more complicated tangle of issues and impulses than could be fixed by Reiki burning himself on Faustite’s shoulder.
“Y’know, I’d say something about letting pretty boys inside you on the second date,” Reiki said without looking up from his work on the screws or doing anything to modulate his tone. His head wanted to snark this line out as the words normally would’ve gotten from him, with the panache he’d practiced first with bullies and then with drunk queers getting rowdy during drag shows. Aside from his distraction with grate, though, Reiki’s heart didn’t feel like sounding anything but fond. Catching the last screw in his right hand, he added, “But that sounds like it might involve a lot of tedious semantic debates that really aren’t the best use of our time.”
Not least because Reiki had gotten the bar loose. He caught it as well, then looked up to Faustite, ready for whatever instructions might have come next.Strickenized weh, sorry it took me so long to wrangle this boy! heart
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue May 23, 2023 5:50 am
"You trust too easily." Part reprimand and part observation, for Murikabushi had known of his prior dealings with the Dark Mirror and how he detested them, while likewise knowing that Faustite's allegiances lay with the Negaverse, who had no business with the Dark Mirror. Of anyone, Faustite should be less trustworthy than the average Negaverse officer, who was like as not to abandon Murikabushi to his own devices in front of a White Moon Eternal.
While Murikabushi was at work with the more obnoxious part of unscrewing a piece from his grate, Faustite reached back with his working hand and grasped a fistful of his split cape. With a harsh enough tug, it snapped loose. He coughed, then, which didn't help for staying still while the boy disassembled part of his grate, but the end result was the same — Murikabushi managed to wrestle a piece loose. And he hadn't set himself on fire with the sheer heat of the damn thing, which was another good sign. Even if Muri had no other self-preservation skills to speak of, he did learn that fire was hot.
Faustite got to his knees afterward, but Murikabushi's comment had him sighing something fierce as he rolled his eyes to the heavens. "Where the ******** my first date then," he asked, feeling ripped off.
Even if it wasn't what the boy meant, Faustite thought it rude to make a comment about a second date without there being a completely non-sarcastic, non-theoretical first date. And, to his recollection, he had Murikabushi had no such thing. He would even check with Albite after, and he was certain that Albite would confirm that no first date had happened.
Cruelty. Pure and simple cruelty. Youma abuse, even.
"That's," Faustite pointed at the piece of Metal in the boy's possession, "for a splint. Know how to make one?" He held up the length of cape that was to accompany the metal in holding his wrist sort of in the correct orientation.
Even if the boy hadn't known, for who but the people who did their own dirty work would know how to splint a broken bone for just a little more energy draining or a little more fighting, it wasn't hard to instruct him on the process. And if he did know, it would save Faustite the hassle of talking. Not that it would save Faustite the hassle of finding more energy so he could teleport back to the Dark Kingdom and actually be seen by a medical professional, but these things happened one step at a time. He couldn't be draining energy while nearly fainting from the pain for banging his wrist off the corner of a dumpster or something.amorremanet no worries! always worth the wait heart
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat May 27, 2023 4:33 pm
Reiki……truly could not refute that assertion.
He wanted to argue with it. Partly, he felt like he should’ve tried to defend himself from the level on which Faustite’s comment felt like an admonition. Partly, Reiki felt like this would’ve been a nice time for him to have an incisive quip ready, or been ready to throw some affectionate shade (though it would’ve helped to actually have been in the mood for that). But……Faustite wasn’t wrong, and all Reiki had to say for himself was, “Being fair, I don’t trust everyone. I’d argue that you’ve earned it. But that’s a whole separate argument that would probably just make most people either agree with you or think I’m a lunatic. Possibly both.”
He shrugged. “If it helps, think of it as ‘I trust you to act like yourself and no one else at all times,’ which is more than I can say for most people.”
Moving on to the splint was the easier part of things here. Significantly so. Reiki could practically move on autopilot while nodding to confirm that, yes, he understood and yes, he knew what to do. Less so for making the actual splint, but regardless, it felt so much less tangled than the other thing.
The thing about dates.
The thing about dates that Reiki had started.
“Won’t call it per se fortunate that I’ve had to learn this,” Reiki said with a sigh, carefully arranging the piece of grate under Faustite’s injured arm and gently holding it in place with one hand. “But wrist injuries have come up often enough at the bar where I perform when I’m not gussied up like this.… Best for everybody that someone learns this.”
It would’ve been nice to leave everything at that, as Reiki carefully handled Faustite’s injury and looped the torn-up fabric around his arm, but……ugh. He could practically hear Obaasan admonishing him about how, if he could use his mouth to lip-synch onstage to “WAP” and convince a bar full of drunk queers to give him tips, then he could damn well use his lips, teeth, tongue, and voice to tell boys how he felt about them. Especially when, last Reiki had heard, Faustite’s condition had no known precedent and no protocols for treating it, at least none that seemed to be working.
Taking a deep breath, Reiki thought of Ojiisan. Thought of the ever-present, freshly renewed threat of losing him and potentially missing time together. Thought of Faustite’s harem and how, if nobody figured out what was wrong with him or how to fix it, they’d all be in the same position. Reiki tucked the end of the fabric in where it would be safe—not the best splint anyone had ever made by far, but it would hold until Faustite could get actual medical help—and made himself look Faustite in the eye.
“As for dates, I was going to say something about ‘How are we defining date when we only know one side of each other,’ and I was going to keep it light? But……”
Wow, it felt weird to be doing this with, A., someone other than Levi when Greg had rightfully accused Reiki of having feelings for Levi while they’d still been together, and B., someone who Reiki did trust to be himself, but for whom that definition included plenty of traits that, to most people, probably seemed like some serious red flags.
“If you’re serious about wanting a date? Then I’ll be serious about accepting it. My biggest hang-up right now is……” Reiki gestured at Faustite’s torso, around where his lungs were. “I’m sorry, thinking about the worst case scenario right now? But……if you don’t make it through all of this? I can live with ‘what if.’ But not with taking time with you away from Albite, Heliodor, or Space-Buns.”
Swallowing thickly, Reiki rushed a hand under his glasses and messily scrubbed at one eye. “……I’m sorry, that’s so morbid. And ‘I want to, but if the threat of imminent death is on the table, I’d rather miss out on dating you so your other boys don’t have to live with feeling like they didn’t get enough time with you; I don’t want to do that to them’ sounds like such a stupid answer, doesn’t it?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon May 29, 2023 4:31 am
He'd earned Murikabushi's trust. Faustite coughed, then it deepened, and he ducked his head into his elbow to steer the smoke away from the conversation. It was up to the wind to do the rest.
He wasn't sure what that meant, or how he did it, but Faustite supposed it had everything to do with 'acting like himself at all times', whatever that meant. Who else was he supposed to act like? Was that something people did often? People were worse than he thought if they did, and it led him to wonder if there was some duplicitousness at work among his boys that he hadn't yet spotted.
That thought left him feeling terribly uneasy and morose, so he discarded it. It was easy to do with the pain of splinting so distracting him.
He winced a few times as the makeshift wrap wound around, righting bone in roughly the direction it should have remained. The end result was crude for its materials, but Faustite trusted it was stable enough that he could finish scalping energy off the general public to make the trip home. He was yet exhausted to the bone, so the trip to gather enough might be a long one.
And Faustite learned that Murikabushi performed somewhere. It wasn't like the city was completely loaded for bear with performing arts centers and theatres and buskers and other types, though. They certainly didn't have an entire damn theatre district that drew crowds upon crowds whenever they put on a well-anticipated show. Surely Faustite could narrow that one down in a reasonable timeframe.
Once the splint was finished, Faustite looked it over. His wrist throbbed straight up the forearm, and some of that was likely due to pressure, but it seemed like it would hold without doing much damage.
Faustite wasn't sure what was meant by 'one side of each other', but it caught his attention. Then it seemed like Murikabushi wasn't going to dance around Faustite's comment and leave him hanging, which had him looking up at the boy as he waited for the rest of what would undoubtedly be a long explanation. It was certainly fit with pause lengths that equated to Albite's veering tangents, but the message was much more serious than that.
He had been expecting 'no' in a multitude of ways, from a simple and straightforward you're a monster to something like sorry, I'm taken or I don't want to hold hands if mine is going to melt off. And even if they both needed to drain energy, Faustite could and had pulled starseeds, so perhaps that would factor into a moral compunction about being associated with him. But he'd never thought to expect that Murikabushi's answer had nothing to do with Faustite not being good enough to be around him, but was instead based around concern for his condition and his existing relationships. It blindsided him. Being so emotionally unprepared, he had to wipe the ink from his face with his good arm.
"It doesn't," Faustite answered at last. "Better answer than I've ever gotten." However the boy wanted to deflect that, Faustite would let him.
"But you were as concise as Albite about it," he finished, as he drew himself to his feet. The world swayed, but he more or less remained stable. "If I don't die from this, you'll have to revise your answer."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2023 5:37 pm
As with so many of the things that Faustite ever said, or at least implied, about his life, that answer left Reiki with a feeling that……well. He knew it was safe to express to Kerberos, because Kerberos tended to feel similar amounts of empathy and concern for Faustite. It probably would’ve been safe to express to Monoceros, who tended to be patient and understanding, or maybe Amsvartnir, who’d also escaped the Negaverse.
But who else was Reiki supposed to tell something like “I know Faustite can take care of himself enough to survive, and I know he already has a harem of boys who can look after him in the ways he might not look after himself, but he’s with the Negaverse and kindness doesn’t seem to come to him very often despite the harem of boys, and yeah, yeah, Negaverse, I know, but somebody should care, right? Why are we so okay with acting like his pain doesn’t matter, just because he’s half-youma?”
……Nobody, really. For most of the people Reiki knew, even in the Mirror, the Negaverse of it all pretty solidly obstructed their desire to think of Faustite like a person, even before they knew about the half-youma part. On top of that, the idea of gossiping about this specific thing that Faustite had said—“Better answer than I’ve ever gotten”—felt……significantly different from obliquely talking around concern for his well-being. It felt closer to telling anyone about what Faustite had said regarding the Dark Mirror Court, and Sinope, and his interactions with them in the past, and even using vague terms to do that left a bad taste in Reiki’s mouth.
He’d just have to keep that feeling tucked away safely, then. Distract himself from it and move on.
Easy enough to do when Faustite was wobbling on his feet. Instinctively, Reiki pushed himself up and went toward the boy’s back, with a mind to offer support. Only the heat around Faustite made Reiki stop shy of actually touching him. Fire, hot. Faustite, very much on fire and not currently wearing the cincher that had made him touchable last time. Right—so simple, and so perfectly frustrating, because it left Reiki feeling useless. Which objectively wasn’t as true as it could have been, but……still. Things that belonged in conversations with his therapist, as much as Reiki could discuss them there, considering the whole truth involved magical girl nonsense and he couldn’t exactly tell normal people about that.
“I hope we get that chance,” Reiki said, softly, earnestly. For one thing, it would’ve meant Faustite getting to survive this, and Reiki liked the world much more with Faustite in it, no matter what Cybele or anybody else like her thought. So few people were real in the same way as Faustite, and……well, Reiki liked that. For another thing—“Even if we don’t? I’m glad you asked. It’s nice, somebody being interested, even knowing that I’m a hot mess. Instead of deciding he’s in love with the idea me that he made up in his head because he was drunk, and for one of my numbers that night, I made an unnecessarily slutty milkshake, accompanied by an equally sexed-up song.”
Greg.
Keeping the by-name indictment of his ex to himself (it was probably bad enough form to call out his ex while talking to someone else), Reiki held out his wrist. “Do you need another hit of energy to get home?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2023 4:47 pm
"Me too," Faustite admitted with a puff of ash. He was tired, it was true, but the matter of getting back always cost a measure of energy. Often, that energy came from strangers he would never meet again, or from the starseeds of people whose faces he no longer remembered. War cost death, and health from the ones unlucky enough to survive it. To Faustite, his predicament only cost more health and death than the usual, but he yet had control over who paid for his continued existence.
Where possible, he preferred those people to be strangers over friends. He wasn't sure what he counted Murikabushi as. 'Friend' might have suited him fine, but it lacked nuance that Faustite would've liked to know was present in a title. 'Love interest' and 'romantic interest' dealt in terms that Faustite no longer had use for, terms that hit differently since his days of having his nose in The Southern Vampire Mysteries.
Irrespective of his mediocre vocabulary, any label he could append to Muri wouldn't change his decision about the boy's question. When asked about needing another hit of energy, Faustite shook his head.
The world didn't care for that much. Faustite silently swore at it.
"Got a starseed," he explained before Muri could get overly concerned about him again. Then he summoned it from nowhere, balanced the chartreuse gem on the tip of a clawed finger where it hovered witlessly.
"Know we're all whoever we need to be to survive. Could end the one who put that mask on you — give them the 'worst' one to wear."amorrremanet gorb confiscated my arm partway through
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2023 6:41 pm
Reiki nodded silently at Faustite’s plan for how to get back to the Negaverse. That Faustite needed to rely on a starseed to get home unsettled Reiki’s stomach some, but……he didn’t know how Faustite had come by that starseed. The person who’d had it in this life might have already been dead. And while the idea of cutting off all that starseed’s possible future reincarnations also didn’t entirely feel right? There were people who were still alive who wouldn’t get drained—or at least, maybe not as much—because Faustite already had that starseed.
Sometimes, it couldn’t be about getting a morally perfect victory. Sometimes, that option didn’t even exist. Tonight, Reiki decided, was one of those nights where all he could do was give it his best efforts to minimize how many people got pointlessly harmed, to try and make it so whoever had originally belonged to that starseed didn’t lose it for nothing. Not to mention minimizing the harm to Faustite, even if people like Cybele didn’t think that mattered.
That offer, though…… Reiki took a deep breath and bit his lip, weighing the pros and cons in his head. Frankly, even if he told Faustite most of Greg’s life-story and gave him a perfectly accurate physical description, it felt like there was an inherent risk to every mediocre white boy named Greg who lived in Destiny City. Except……Reiki had his civilian phone in his subspace. And he still had a few old photos of Greg in there.…… Could’ve helped keep Faustite from getting hooked on anyone else’s scent, thinking that he had the right guy, only for it to turn out that he’d found some other miserable excuse for a person who didn’t know how to treat people right.
“I probably shouldn’t,” Reiki admitted with a sigh, reaching into his subspace for his phone regardless. “But—y’know, Greg is so absolutely godawful at being human. He’s the only person my dog never really warmed up to, even though we lived together for a while. He might genuinely be happier as a youma.”
Needing to type in his passcode was annoying. Needing to flick through his photos was more so. But before too long, Reiki came to a photo he’d taken of Greg before his first day working at the State Senator’s office where he was still employed, last Reiki heard. Tall-ish but not overbearingly so, broad shoulders but not too broad, a build that might have struck someone as a perfect specimen of toned and well-muscles masculinity if Greg had ever put in more than the bare minimum effort before whining that it was so hard and the results weren’t really worth it. He’d tried to tame his brown hair into something more presentable, but something about how he’d slicked it down made it just look wrong, like anyone could have seen how badly the hair wanted to not behave itself.
“He was really pleased with himself for getting the job he needed that suit for,” Reiki said, tilting his phone so Faustite could see the photo but wouldn’t need to try and hold the device. For one thing, injured arm; for another thing, boy on fire. “His dad is old law school friends with the State Senator he works for, though, so there’s really nothing to be pleased with himself over.… Greg was supposed to go to law school himself. I helped him study for his LSATs. Several times over. Busted my a** with bookings and some work online I’m not proud of to pay for a prep course because, oh, his monthly allowance from his parents wouldn’t cover it so easily.”
Reiki huffed. “It would have covered everything fine—if he hadn’t been seeing someone else behind my back. Which I didn’t even find out about until after I dumped him for trying to make me choose between him and my art.” Objectively, a shitty story, but Reiki got to conclude it with a small smile anyway. “At least I got the victory with the guy he cheated with. He’s a sweetheart, dumped Greg as soon as I did the math and clued him in on it. So now we’re friends and there are at least two queer bars in the city that have Greg blacklisted.”
Maybe Faustite wouldn’t have time to go through with this, in light of how sick he was. But……really, the more Reiki thought about it: becoming a youma might genuinely have been a good thing for Greg.Strickenize_d ms. gorbacat, noooooo heart
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 11:05 am
While Murikabushi fought with his own moral compass and brought out his phone, Faustite popped the starseed in his mouth. They were ever delightfully crunchy, but the thrill that once shot through his spine for the moment he broke into one was long depleted. Now, it was more like chewing candy just to reach a tolerable baseline. Nevertheless, he looked more himself while he tuned in to what Murikabushi had to say.
It was difficult to set aside the notion that he could advise Murikabushi to do away with that morality of his, however. To him, it seemed an easy solution, and a necessary one for the Faustite of old; people proved time and again that they weren't worth fighting for in the manner and means that Murikabushi had for it. They always found ways to squander the time bought for them, but that was less Faustite's concern as what all these extra thankless tasks must be doing to the boy in front of him. How long would Murikabushi be able to keep up under the suffocating yoke of his own conscience before it crippled him? And what, exactly, was he getting out of it?
Faustite thought about explaining that youma didn't know happiness the way people did, but decided he had yet to find a way to make that conversation go well. Better to practice running it by Jet until he got a solid, comprehensible version of it before he opened that debate with Murikabushi.
Which, it shouldn't have to be a debate when he spent years among them. And yet, when he answered questions about youma, other people thought the answers flawed. But maybe that was their own prejudices for an anthropocentric experience that got the better of them, and it had very little to do with what Faustite knew by his own discoveries.
Faustite leaned toward the phone when Murikabushi angled it, squinting at its brightness. Yes, Greg did look average in a handsome sort of way, and Faustite nodded to the story that came with the photo. What bothered him about Greg was less his general mediocrity and more the understanding that this was the type of boy Elex would have ended up with had he not become part youma, had he not joined the Negaverse. He would likely have a Greg of his own, with a family allowance and a penchant for cheating on him for someone better than him. Elex wouldn't know, either. He would believe every word about late night projects and sleeping over with his work bud because he got too hammered to drive home. And Elex would do everything possible to make that duplicitous life comfortable for him.
Instead, it was Murikabushi who was afflicted with Greg. He was the one who had to make the discoveries, decide what to do with those discoveries, and start the painful process of kicking that man out of his life. And if Faustite, as a former General of the Information branch, could track down and find Greg, then Greg would be most assuredly banned from every queer bar in the city. He would be banned from people's homes and people's hearts, and he would no longer exist as the mediocre piece of s**t human he was. He would be a youma then, free to bond with and work for an equally mediocre agent of the Negaverse. But even agents, as full of themselves as they could be, learned to follow orders under enough pressure. Greg would be compelled.
He didn't have any words for Murikabushi about how he didn't deserve that treatment. There was no need, for Murikabushi already knew he didn't deserve what he endured from Greg. "See what I can do," he said instead, as an implication that he had no intention of dying from whatever ailed him, and an assurance that he would keep an eye out for this milquetoast, foppish boy. Then he vanished, for goodbyes were so often overstayed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
