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 Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:13 am
[[IC chronological reading order:]]⭐ [R] Exposure of a Portfolio, if only it contained plants.⭐ ⭐ [R-UPG] The Inevitability of Hell (Faustite & Ransomite)⭐ ⭐ [R] Putting in the Research {Nectaris & Ransomite}⭐ ⭐ [Solo] Motherly Advice (Elliot/Fr. Isaac)⭐ ~~~~~~~ Elliot’s key hovered outside the lock to the house. It had been a longer time than he would have liked since he’d been there. But how could he reconcile his ever-increasing periods of unreachability? It had started getting easier to just… add another one. And another one. And another one. Even just the week-or-so since his meeting with General-King Faustite already seemed both terribly immediate and forever ago. But it had to end sometime, didn’t it? He took a deep breath. His conversation with Nectaris echoed in his head. Penance. Righting wrongs. There was a way out. The key didn’t move any closer to the lock. What was his excuse, again? For not visiting, for not returning calls, and eventually rarely–if ever–returning texts? How busy could he believably say he’d been? Would it have been easier just to ghost them entirely? They’d’ve been alright, right? It wasn’t like he’d been in their lives for years and years or anything. Surely– He paused to do the mental math. Surely twelve years wasn’t that long, right, when it came to moving on? The hand not holding his house key brushed some of his hair out of his face. It felt weird holding the key. Wrong, somehow. He remembered seeing Zebulon in the park, dealing with him fighting back, having to try to keep General Prehnite off of Zebulon’s trail. It had always seemed like a bad idea to have Zebulon brought into the Negaverse. Something sat heavy in his gut at the thought of it. But like he’d asked himself many times over, if he was alright being in the Negaverse, what was the issue with Zebulon being recruited? Was he alright being in the Negaverse? He’d been alright enough to make it to Captain. Elliot frowned, his eyes still on his hand holding the key. It felt like an invasion to enter that house. Maybe he should just go, just go– The door swung open, and Elliot felt his heart sink as he looked up at Tobias and Tobias’ bright yellow-brown eyes and Tobias’ bright smile. <********> He looked up, eyes startled wide before he regained his composure. He returned Tobias’ smile with an affectionate one of his own. He could hear footsteps and voices and see that the other two had been summoned by Tobias’ exclamation. Quickly, “hi Toby. How have you been?” Tobias swept Elliot inside immediately and without hesitation, tucking him close under his arm and presenting him to Zebulon and Diryas. “Look! Elliott’s home!” ‘Home’. Elliot’s gut twisted.
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:14 am
“******** finally!”
Zebulon had a way of never quite measuring his tone or what he said or how he acted. To go from a stalwart Eagle Scout to where he was now had been something of an attitude shift, and in the process he had just become more and more … well, unwilling to back away, unwilling to measure. There was something of relief and agitation in his tone all at once–finally glad to see him, finally frustrated that it had been, what?
Six months?
“Where the hell did you go dude?”
At some point priest s**t had stopped being a sensical explanation. They knew where he was, in that sense. Father Isaac was still holding mass or whatever Catholics called it at his church at least weekly, usually near daily. But that had never made him disappear from the house that long. They knew he was alive. It prevented Zebulon from assuming the worst, especially with his new knowledge of what the Negaverse was. It would have been easy to assume he had died otherwise.
That still didn’t resolve, though, what had led to the absence. There was something else to this. Zebulon just hadn’t a damn clue what, and to be honest, he didn’t like that. Zebulon was a gossip. He needed to know everything.
This wasn’t everything.
“They figure out you fall into bed with men or something?”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:14 am
Ah, there was Zebulon. Elliot murmured something vague and non-committal in response, playing off on the distraction of Tobias kissing his forehead and Diryas stepping around Zebulon to look him up and down.
“No, no, they didn’t find out I’m breaking my priestly vows.” He couldn’t help the indignant whuff of air from his nose. “Please. I’ve been sleeping with men since seminary.” He turned his eyes to Diryas. “Why are you staring at me?”
Diryas’ eyebrows raised a nearly imperceptible amount. “Are you here to break up with us?”
Elliot choked.
As he sputtered around a reply, he felt Tobias pause and then step away from him. It was cold. He didn’t like it.
“No, no, I’m not– I’m not breaking up with you all.”
Now, whether they’d break up with him was another matter–
“Then why were you gone for so long?”
And there it was. But he was saved from having to answer immediately by Tobias. Sweet, gentle Tobias.
Tobias waved his hand in Diryas’ direction, shaking his head. “We can ask him all the questions once he’s had a chance to sit down and relax.” At Elliot’s reassurance that he wasn’t going anywhere, the knot in Tobias’ stomach had unwound itself. “He’s not breaking up with us. The rest can wait.”
He steered Elliot toward the living room, toward the well-worn sofa, then pushed Elliot lightly down onto it. “Stay there.” And then he was gone, headed toward the kitchen where much clattering of glassware could be heard.
This left Elliot with Diryas and Zebulon in the living room. He looked up at the two of them from where Tobias had left him on the couch. Diryas’ expression was unusually impassive.
Or maybe he’d just forgotten how to read him with how long he’d been gone–
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:14 am
Zebulon, too, was atypically impassive.
Was he hard to read normally? Not necessarily; he was considerably better with an amicable public face and projecting emotions than the husband beside him tended to be. What was different, though, was that he was private. He emoted, but it wasn’t always the depths and the truth of what he was feeling underneath his facial expressions and his teasing and jocular expressions.
Now, though?
There was an expression not of suspicion, not of happiness, nor of the lascivious tendencies he’d usually dive into after long absences. It was an expression of nothing at all other than intensity as if he was trying to suss something out.
And he was. If Elliot wasn’t breaking up with them, and nothing had happened to make the diocese suspicious of his absences and dalliances, what would drive him so far away? Did he find some new people he was interested in as well–and if that was the case, why not just introduce them? Did someone else die who wasn’t him–and if that was the case, why not just tell them he had to manage some affairs or was too in mourning to do anything but attend to the priesthood and stay in the rectory? Had Elliot done something wrong? Was he trying to get the law off him or some s**t?
Besides for Tobias who was incapable of hurting a fly, Elliot was arguably the cleanest of all of them. The ******** was it?
He was the first to broach the silence with a gruff, “Well, what, it’s already been at least a half-year? Longer?” Long enough that they had installed the video doorbell that Elliot had clearly not been expecting– “What’s another five ******** minutes.”
Couldn’t really get any worse, could it.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:15 am
On the one hand, Elliot was glad for the reprieve. It let him pause to experience a breath of the peace he felt in their presence, even if Diryas and Zebulon were both treating him like he’d done crimes.
They… weren’t wrong.
He looked over to them, watching as Diryas gave him a long, level stare.
“...You could say something, you know.” Elliot’s voice was a quiet, resigned sigh.
“There isn’t anything for me to say. You were gone for months.” Elliot was not so out of touch with them that he missed the nearly imperceptible hard edge to Diryas’ voice. However, before he could say anything, Diryas continued. “And you stopped responding to everything.”
There was an emphasis on ‘everything’ that Diryas placed very deliberately, and Elliot didn’t miss that, either.
“...I know.”
“Why is that?”
“I got busy.” Elliot knew it was the wrong answer as soon as he said it, and the set of Diryas’ mouth confirmed it. “Didn’t Toby say to leave me alone for a sec?” He meant it with a sense of brevity.
The flash in Diryas’ eyes told him that the brevity was not appreciated. Something in Elliot was rankled by that flash, indignance welling up in his chest. Couldn’t they leave him alone? Did he have to deal with prying the millisecond he walked in the door?
“Are you in some kind of trouble? It’s not like you to just ******** off without word.”
Was he in some kind of trouble? Well… yeah. Technically.
“No.”
“Liar.”
There it was.
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:15 am
Zebulon held tight to his words, letting his husband handle the initial you could say something--and he was certain it got Elliot none of the words he wanted, not with the way he responded with a brevity that set up Diryas’ hackles and honestly some of his own. It set a tone of hostility before they even started talking, even if it was unintentional–but to be honest, Zebulon didn’t have the time or mental space to calculate why.
He just knew he was already seeing a problem, and Zebulon generally did not like problems. There was a reason why he had taken to violence as even a civilian as of late. He had for years. Diryas had handled simply removing Tobias’ things from Jason’s house in his even keel, sure, but Zebulon swung at Jason the moment he swung.
Things would be handled however they needed to be handled.
“If you’re not in trouble,” which Zebulon doubted, and that would be clear by his emphasis alone, “what the hell are you in, then? Because that sounds like too fast bullshit to me, especially after,” he waved his hand in the air flippantly. How the hell else was he going to explain any of this?
If he wasn’t in trouble, why didn’t he have a better explanation?
Why didn’t he have one at all?
The yawning emptiness of much of anything of a reason was an explainer in its own right. If it was any of the prior things he had thought of, Elliot would have said something, or at least would have had an immediate explanation. Elliot, at least, would not have hesitated at the door with his damn key until Tobias took the initiative to intercept. The ******** was so bad that he was hiding like this?
“The ******** did you do, Abbán?”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:15 am
The use of his legal first name also rankled Elliot. He frowned, trying to hide just how much. “The hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Why were you gone so long?”
“I was busy!”
“Liar.” Diryas’ eyes flashed again, the flatness of his voice dissonant with the knit of his brow. “We’ve known each other for twelve years. You have never been so busy that you disappear for months on end.”
“I get busy around Christmas and Easter all the time!”
“That’s not for months and months, Elliot!” Diryas did not typically yell, and so that volume coming from him startled Elliot into silence for just a moment. But it was all the time Diryas needed. “Where the ******** were you when Zebulon got attacked? We tried to call you and you never answered! Where were you?”
Right there, came the thought, unbidden. Right there.
Doing the attacking.
How the ******** did he answer that?
How the ******** did he answer that without lying some more? Wasn’t clearing the air what he was here for? He couldn’t act surprised that Zebulon had gotten attacked. He knew Zebulon had gotten attacked.
How dumb could he afford to play before it just made everything so much worse than it was already going?
Diryas must have noticed his hesitation. His eyes got so, so narrow. Elliot felt his heart sink through the floor.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
He couldn’t help the frustration, the anger in his voice. “What the ******** do you want from me? What do you want me to say? I’m sorry!”
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:16 am
“Sorry isn’t good enough!”
Zebulon had heard enough, especially after Diryas’ volume increased and he brought up a valid point. He hadn’t really been fully conscious at the time he managed to ping out an emergency contact call to Diryas when he came to laid on the ground after that draining by that ******** lieutenant that was trying to act casual. He ******** knew better. It hadn’t been the first time he had been drained by someone trying to talk cute.
The image of the woman with wild hair who konked him out at a cafe came unbidden, and he buried it down under the wave of anger he also felt building, the way his fist clenched and unclenched before he walked in a small circle to calm himself down before he did something he regretted.
It gave him long enough to turn around and snap back with a, “That’s right, where the ******** were you that day? Those days? We tried to get a hold of you how many damn ******** times before we just gave up before you floated in again for some quick release before disappearing the next morning before we could even talk!”
Zebulon pinched the bridge of his nose hard and took a deep breath.
It cut.
“It’s been longer than the holy seasons, Father Isaac.”
That was a name he never really used for Elliot. A part of letting him have his religious covenant was letting him have his separation. Beyond the occasional priest teasing and daddy jokes, it was left to be.
The way he said Father Isaac contained none of the jocularity.
“You’re hesitating. You ghosted without explanation. Explain.”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:16 am
Several things happened at the same time.
Exasperated by both his inability to find the words to come up with a satisfactory answer and also knowing that nothing he came up with would be a satisfactory answer, Elliot pulled on the thread that linked him to his powered form. Within an instant, Captain Ransomite stood before Zebulon and Diryas.
Tobias came back from the kitchen with a glass of water, freezing in surprise at seeing someone he didn’t recognize outright. Context told him who the blond man was, standing in a dark suit, but something about it refused to compute properly.
Without even thinking about it, as soon as Elliot’s jeans and t-shirt were replaced by a Negaverse uniform, the aura of a Captain radiating off of him, Diryas pulled on his connection to his wonder. He’d been wearing loungewear, and now he wore blue, the symbol for Mercury lining his sleeves and displayed prominently across his chest.
Putting himself between Ransomite and Tobias, Imhotep’s voice was utterly, completely, dangerously flat. “You have three seconds to start explaining.”
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:16 am
When Elliot was no longer Elliot, when Diryas was no longer Diryas, when Tobias was frozen in place holding a cup of water, Zebulon was frozen, staring specifically in the spot where Elliot had once been.
His fingers were cold. His gut was cold. He felt heavy in his limbs in a way he didn’t like.
All at once, a, “You!” ripped from his throat, and Zebulon, too, was standing there as someone with a prominent, albeit split by a zipper, Mercurian symbol on a too heavy coat that he immediately decided needed to leave. He ripped it aside as he advanced toward the one who had been Elliot, fire in his eyes. He trusted Diryas to defend Tobias.
This was suddenly and horridly personal.
“You’re the ******** who attacked me.”
Promethei wasn’t here to give three seconds. The betrayal had already frozen the blood in his veins.
“I will kill you.”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:17 am
It was maybe divine providence that Ransomite was a captain. Two pages were decidedly less of a threat than if he’d been a lieutenant. Even still, seeing not-Zebulon advance toward him brought back memories of trying to drain him as a civilian and how difficult it was even though Ransomite had been powered. Difficult enough that Prehnite had taken a shine to Zebulon immediately.
And had led to months, more than a year, of Ransomite desperately trying to pretend he couldn’t find him again. Trying to pretend he didn’t know exactly where that interesting civilian was, where he lived, where he worked, who he lived with. Who Zebulon loved.
Looking at two Mercury pages where previously two of the people Ransomite trusted the most had stood made his heart ache.
Diryas was, indeed, moving to defend Tobias. His fingers closed around the neck of an empty glass bottle–left on the dining table after someone had drank a rootbeer–and, in the next instant, sent it sailing for Ransomite. Ransomite ducked immediately on impulse, covering his head as the bottle shattered against the wall behind him.
Imhotep pressed himself back against Tobias, trying to push him back into the kitchen, where there was a wall between him and Ransomite, where he would be safer. Tobias went, at first, but even as he began to protest, Imhotep steadfastly ignored him. Two pages had a much better chance of taking down a captain, but they couldn’t afford the distraction of also trying to shield Tobias if it could be avoided.
Once he’d backed a distressed, objecting Tobias back into the kitchen, Imhotep reached for a floor lamp and launched for Ransomite.
“Please–” was all Ransomite got out between twisting out of Imhotep’s path and trying to make sure doing so didn’t put him right in Promethei’s.
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:17 am
The please tore at Promethei’s heart, but everything at the moment felt like daggers made of the ice he was supposed to represent. Elliot was–had been–one of the people Zebulon trusted the most in this apparent forsaken universe. Their bond had been almost instant when they met, ignoring any of the other circumstances around it. Their rhythm was natural, constant, and reliable, a back-and-forth that Zebulon felt was unique to them and fulfilled him in ways he had trouble articulating.
There was a reason why Zebulon had grown from calling just Diryas his crush, to his boyfriend, to his husband, to all of them being his husbands.
But as he felt the ice dagger twisting in his heart, he felt nothing but the heat of anger under his skin.
“Please ******** what?” Promethei gazed at the test tube that was his so-called weapon dismissively–it’d never be as threatening as whatever this ******** captain possessed–and banished it to subspace in favour of grabbing one of Tobias’ giant textbooks. Something that could do some actual ******** damage.
It said something on it about equity in land planning.
“What the ******** are you going to say, ********, that explains any of this ******** s**t?”
Ransomite was attempting to get out of the way like a scared animal. Good. It didn’t stop Promethei from clearing the coffee table in one easy motion to break the distance and swing the textbook at him in full force.
“You’re lucky I’m ******** alive! Though,” Promethei growled, “perhaps considering, perhaps you’re not. Are you here to finish the ******** job?”
As he readied for another swing, he had already resolved he wouldn’t let him.
This ended here.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:18 am
Ransomite dove to the side to avoid the swing, a wordless shout leaving his lips as his arms came up at the same time. This off-balanced him and caused Ransomite to crash into the wall. It was a wonder he didn’t dent it–
He was just a page. He was just a page, and Ransomite was a captain, and he shouldn’t have any problem with him, but–
‘Are you here to finish the ******** job?’
Ransomite pushed back against the whispers of chaos in the back of his mind that urged him to answer ‘yes. Yes!’.
“No!”
He rolled to his feet and broke to the side, but hadn’t been paying attention. He meant to go for the front door. This had been a mistake. This had been a mistake. He should never have come there. They were better off without him there after all–
Ransomite realised when he saw Imhotep bring up a chair that he had gone the wrong direction. He saw Imhotep pull the chair up higher.
He was just a page–
Imhotep brought the chair down with as much strength as he could muster, ice in his veins and in his limbs and in his eyes. He heard Tobias shout behind him, but paid it no mind. There was no way he was letting the Negaverse captain get past to Tobias, no matter what pity party sob story he tried.
‘Please’?
Ransomite’s second plea was lost in the sound of chair fragments splintering around him. Imhotep didn’t care how much Ransomite begged. He wasn’t going to give him the chance. How long had this been going on? How long had Elliot been smiling, laughing to their faces, while he’d been willing to kill them if only he’d known what they were?
He’d been the one to drain Zeb. He’d been willing to drain Zebulon and leave him on a bench somewhere in the park.
Unacceptable.
How many people had Elliot killed? How many starseeds had Elliot ripped out? How many times had he been too busy to come by because he was, instead, trying to murder innocent people?
Unacceptable.
As the chair came down on him, it left Ransomite stunned and trying to get his thoughts to form an intelligible string again, something to make sense of the adrenaline screaming through his body. His heart was in his throat, and why was that–
He didn’t see the knife Imhotep had pulled from the butcher block just inside the kitchen threshold.
He didn’t see Imhotep raise the knife.
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:18 am
That b*****d.
“Then what are you ******** here for?!” Promethei kept his grip on the textbook, fingers turning interesting shades of pale and white as he turned to pursue after where his former husband had bolted off to. Really, what a wonder how quickly that arrangement could be dropped like a scalding beaker and spill its liquid all over the floor to scald his feet the way Elliot had hurt him.
Or … whoever the ******** this was, because he was Elliot no longer in the way he was Zebulon no longer.
“You had already effectively ghosted the s**t out of us. Do you know–” Zebulon–Promethei–felt his fingers squeeze the book tighter as much as he could, swallowing down what he was tempted to spill. All the nights where he would turn to make a comment to Elliot and realize there was no damn point. How all of his personal chats with ridiculous memes eventually just got replies of ‘lol’ until both parties stopped bothering sending anything. How he had actually gone to a bar, of all things, and spilled to a bartender who had been absolutely incredulous.
As the chair shattered around he-who-had-been-Elliot, Promethei felt like he felt a piece of his own heart shatter again.
But not for what Imhotep was doing.
If Elliot had been willing to do that to him, he would be willing to do that to the other two, too. If Elliot had been willing to drain the one he had officiated for, for the day of Zebulon’s life that had meant the most to him, why wouldn’t he drain Diryas, too, the person Zebulon was ******** marrying?
If he could do that and leave him in the park, how far would he go?
Promethei finally finished his thought, choking out, “do you know how much I’ve thought about you, to only ******** learn you ******** betrayed me? All of us?”
He saw Imhotep move out of the corner of his eye. He made no move to visually acknowledge it.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2023 5:19 am
As Ransomite tried to bring his thoughts back online, he was aware of the sound of Zebulon’s voice, and he focused on that. His voice was familiar, it was something Ransomite had missed hearing, and–
Oh.
The words were beginning to register, and all Ransomite could do was let them wash over him. What could he possibly say to him? What kind of answers could he possibly give?
He didn’t see Imhotep raise the knife and only dully registered him stepping closer. Ransomite looked up in reflex, something in him starting to ring out danger before he could comprehend what he was looking at.
Tobias, however, acted much more quickly. He stepped forward, wrapping his arms firmly around Imhotep’s waist and hoisting him into the air, away from not-Elliot. As Imhotep immediately began to struggle, he grunted at the inadvertent elbows and heels making contact with his shoulders and shins.
Imhotep hated being picked up. Loathed it. His voice was none-too-gentle as he demanded that Tobias put him down, as he pushed and pried at Tobias’ arms and hands. The kicks and elbows were indeed accidental, however. He had no desire to hurt Tobias even as Tobias grunted again at what would probably end up as a black eye and turned Imhotep bodily away from Ransomite.
“No.”
The firmness in Tobias’ voice surprised the normally unflappable Imhotep into pausing his struggling.
“He’s going to kill you! He tried to kill Zeb! What do you mean, ‘no’?!”
“No. Drop the knife.”
He didn’t leave Imhotep much choice. Sure, Imhotep was powered, but Tobias was nearly a foot taller. He took advantage of the fact that Imhotep didn’t want to stab him with the knife on accident to jerk him to the side. The motion caught Imhotep by surprise.
He dropped the knife.
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