Kyle, Marius, 3am trauma dumping
Feb. 12th, 2024 03:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsKyle accidentally wakes Marius up with a night terror and confesses to his friend the events of the mission where the X-Men encountered Frank Costa aka Olivier
TW: Discussion of sexual assault
"Mate, it's been half an hour. You don't answer me and I'll have no choice but to assume you've had a stroke. Please do not compel me to commit yet more property damage."
It wasn't only that Kyle wasn't the sort to shower at 3 AM. It hadn't taken the two men long to realise they were not, as a pair, particularly quiet sleepers. Very quickly, and with enormous effort, they had reached a tacit agreement to ignore any indications of night-terrors that might be overheard from the adjacent room. Marius often dreamed of being paralysed, and he sometimes woke himself with the screams he'd been able to utter. He was unsure of what Kyle might be dreaming of, only that he too, often cried out. And occasionally . . . other things.
Regardless, the duration of Kyle's nocturnal ablutions had become worrying enough that Marius had been compelled to invade his room and knock on the bathroom door.
"I'M NOT DEAD" Kyle hadn't actually realized it had been that long. He wasn't sure if he'd dozed off in the shower, face on the tile and hot water cascading down his back, but he wouldn't attest that he hadn't either. The white noise of water and sensory bombardment of heat and steam and water pressure made it easy to lose time, and just exist.
He forgot that shower noises were audible. His own personal room, he'd installed soundproof squares, mindful of a suitemate that never seemed to have overnight visitors and might not want evidence that Kyle often did. It had the added side-effect of washing out any other noises like abrupt sleep interruptions and nocturnal showers.
A towel later, and the addition of a t-shirt and shorts, and Kyle cracked the bathroom door, hopeful that the statement refuting his death had resulted in Marius going Back To Sleep or at least Elsewhere. His hopes were disappointed.
His once and current suitemate was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. It was a posture often assumed by gentlemen of leisure to communicate that whilst "leisure" might be their default state, this was about to be suspended to deal with the matter at hand. It looked more relaxed than it felt. In his haste Marius hadn't bothered to pull on his gloves, meaning his biceps were being prickled by the teeth ringing his palms.
"My thanks for relieving me of the burden of explaining to Terry I'd allowed you to poach yourself in the night," Marius said, taking in Kyle's heat-flushed face and general air of dishevelment. He frowned. "You all right?"
It took a few moments of Kyle staring at Marius before the Marius-to-English translator sullenly woke up and provided a likely definition for 'poach'. "I'm up at 3am turning myself into a delicious egg breakfast, no, I'm really not okay." He glanced around the room, opened the bathroom door the rest of the way, and dropped the wet towels into a collapsible laundry bin. "Is this repayment for giving you a speech about how you're actually an endangered bird and so I'm appointing myself zookeeper? I wasn't trying to off myself in the shower. "
"Spiteful retaliation, genuine concern, call it what you will. Perhaps both. I'm a talented multi-tasker." Marius pushed himself away from the wall and dropped his arms. There was the brief struggle over whether he really wanted to see this through, 3 AM not traditionally a time known for making good decisions, but even he had a limit to how much denial could be sustained. He sighed.
"Look, you've been quite considerate of my privacy, and as such I have endeavored to return the favour, but this . . ." Marius gestured broadly to indicate Kyle and all things regarding same. "It's just . . . even I can tell something's going on, right? And I feel as if, left to your own devices, it is not something you are likely to volunteer, invested as you are in treating me like the aforementioned endangered bird." The Australian's smile was wry. "You're my mate. I'm not as fragile as all that."
"I don't..." Kyle started, and then cut himself off before he snapped. "I don't think you're fragile. I just think you're to do some dumb shit like getting bad medical test results and then going "well, I'm not going to tell anyone because they'll be sad for me!" He failed to stop the snap in his words. "It's not the same for me, I just had some shit happen, I told people, I have an entire ass therapist and fuckin' everyone in the medical team knows except the new kid and for all I know he does too now!"
Marius watched Kyle for a long moment, then ran a hand through his hair. Strands snagged against the small teeth.
"Right," he said. "Suppose I'll just ask. Did Laurie -- ah. Did something -- did she do something to you? There was all that talk of running simulations against her and that. The two of you had that casual thing for a bit, and well, I was there when she dosed the whole floor." Marius looked away. Not a man prone to embarrassment, his awkwardness now was so rare it could have been studied by experts for generations to come. "My apologies if this is out of line. I've not been eavesdropping, but I'm not sleeping so well of late, and the walls aren't as thick as all that."
Kyle stared, shook his head, and stared some more, before he could bring himself to answer. "Holy shit no, I wasn't... " He scrubbed at his face. "She never did that to me, holy fuck, no, that.." He rushed out of the doorway, and sat down on the edge of the bed, gripping the edge of the disarrayed sheets. "It wasn't her. She never, not once Terry and I, she never even tried."
Marius sagged. "Right. All right. That was just the only -- well. Never mind. Glad to hear it." His relief was short-lived; the expression on Kyle's face was decidedly not reassuring.
"So then..." The Australian's frown deepened. "What are you talking about, then?"
"Fuck." Kyle's voice broke, and he pulled his hands out of the sheets before he clawed holes in them, saw the holes he'd already put in them earlier and picked up the edge of one, deliberately shredding an already torn edge. "It's not the same, I didn't say anything because it's fucked, but I told people. Terry knows. My therapist knows. There was a mission, it was supposed to be dealing with some weapons dealers, turned out to be some kind of magical incubus shit. Fuckin' magic, the worst part wasn't even the goddamn sex."
Bile was already rising at the mention of magic before the full weight of what had said even sank in. Marius stared at his friend for a moment as he turned the statement over in his mind before putting the words into the question.
"Mate, were you assaulted?"
Kyle snorted out a single broken laugh. "Man, assaulted doesn't even begin to describe that shit. It's in the mission logs, sort of. It was me, and.." He stopped. "Me, and some other people. I don't. It's not. I don't want to say names, I don't want to violate anyone's privacy. I don't. I never meant for you to find out, I never even wanted Terry to find out. It was gross, it was, like, the worst parts about me all out at once, and the guy, the demon, he's out there existing in a hell somewhere just knowing my worst fucking secret, and.." He picked up a pillow and pressed it against his face. "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, I forgot the soundproof tiles, you weren't supposed to hear any of those nightmares."
Marius hesitated, then moved to sit on the bed next to Kyle. The proximity to his friend made his hands itch. He ignored it, and searched for words for which there was no script. In the end he could only think of one thing.
"I'm so sorry, mate. I should've been here."
"Oh man, no, no you'd have ended up on that mission right there with the rest of us." Kyle pulled the pillow down. "We picked for people who could pass as SHIELD agents, Jesus, that would've been five hundred times worse. Fuck, the last thing you need is some demon telling you to speak your truth and confessing, you know, whatever." He rubbed at his face, pressing his palm into his nose until it hurt and the pain broke the urge to start picking things up and throwing them. "The worst thing you've ever wanted, that's what he had us admit, like some kind of blackmail. Exactly like blackmail but with a bunch of fucking afterward."
Marius shook his head. "I meant to talk afterwards. I do know something of what it's like to have the very worst of oneself on display. Every time I missed a meal, in fact."
"I'm just glad it wasn't worse." Kyle said, flatly. "Bad enough Ga.. Bad enough people heard me say... " He gripped the sheets again. "I lied, about Ahab. I remembered the entire thing. It used to be fuzzy, and after Genosha, the whole thing came back, like throwing up whole bites of food. It was easy. I didn't have to think freaking out someone at a gas station because I've got fangs, or how hard I can go in the Danger Room, or how far I can go in a fight. It was like, all the guilt and shit was just not there, and god damn, it was so much easier."
Marius felt his face heat with a sudden flash of anger. "Did you truly think I wouldn't understand that?" he burst out, hands clenching against the sharpness in his palms. "Me of all people, who's just a--"
Just in time, the Australian snapped his mouth shut. Calm down, he told himself. This wasn't about what Kyle had or hadn't trusted him to understand..
Even now it wasn't as if Marius himself had a claim to honesty.
"Look," he tried again, "with Campbell . . . I lied, too. That time I was poisoned and went for Jen in the woods, ha, when Marko tossed you at me . . . it took some doing for Xavier to get me back from that. Then when we were made Hounds, and it was that all over again. That, and worse. After that . . . well. All sorts of options began to seem easier, and speaking of why I felt that way seemed just one more step towards making it real." Slowly, Marius exhaled and relaxed his hands, trying to get Kyle to meet his eyes. "You needn't justify to me what you felt, or why you didn't feel so inclined to share. Just know I understand. All right?"
"I know you know! That's why I didn't say anything!" Kyle's voice strained with the effort to not sound angry. Not at Marius at least. "I don't ... I don't want forgiveness or someone to understand, I just want to stop being this way. Most of the time I'm fine and then I'm in the Danger Room or fighting someone and I have to think about how, look, it's some FoH fuckoff, and the world'd probably be better if the guy didn't have a face anymore." He shook himself, head, shoulders, arms, and pulled at his fingers until the knuckles popped. "I don't want anyone to know, because it's disgusting."
"Sorry to disappoint, but you get understanding regardless. You know what I am. A mutant that needs other mutants to stay alive, even if only on occasion -- there's a word for that." Marius rested his hands against his thighs, fingers loosely curled around the orifices that twitched even now. He exhaled again. "You're a feral, right, and I am what I am. And we both know what's it's like, trying to convince the world you're human when every day your own body and brain remind you that you're anything but."
Kyle's brain gifted him the unwanted memory of terrible dialogue in a YA novel, and he grimaced, and then waved off Marius' immediate concern. "Not relevant, just remember I teach literature to teenagers." He snorted a little laugh. "Only a little relevant. I guess it could be worse, nobody's asked me if I'm gonna imprint on someone's baby." He went back to shredding the sheet, he'd amazon a replacement later. "It's been in my face lately, couple of folks who talk about throwing out human concepts and I'm here like, pal, human concepts are why I keep the raw rabbit eating to the outside grounds where it can't freak people out."
"Possibly a more attractive option for those who have a choice in the matter." Marius raked sleep-mussed curls from his face and grimaced. "I can't say recent events have done much for my state of mind, either. People flatter me with the assumption I wasn't in control of myself. On the contrary: I was. At every step. That's what keeps me awake at night." He shrugged one shoulder. "No guilt, yeah? Just purpose."
"Yeah, it's like all the fuckin' background judgement goes away and everything gets easier." Kyle agreed. "Happened in Genosha too. That one might've been Laurie, actually, I was fighting her when she was all bald badass and then the next thing I was like "oh, she's gotta die." and the entire fight got easier. Like, by an entire magnitude. I didn't even feel bad until the next day." The edge of the sheet was slowly becoming a tangled mass of frayed threads. "It's why, people, a couple of people are like, she's gotta be put down and I'm not sure. Did she really choose it?" He looked at Marius, just for a moment, and then turned away. "And why I wasn't gonna let you die, or get arrested."
Marius was quiet for a beat of his own.
"I don't know, mate," he said at last. "Isn't doing a terrible thing worse if you can't help yourself?"
"Maybe, I dunno." Kyle said. "Is it worse if you have a choice and let it happen anyway? Somebody takes my ability to make decisions away, I can tell myself it was their fault. I didn't choose to bite off Rory Campbell's ear, I didn't choose to rip open Laurie's throat. That shit fucks me up, but the shit that's waking me up, I might've.... with the demon thing, I.. there's a chance I said yes, and then I start wondering maybe did I say yes the other times. Did I say, yeah, that guy's ear's a great trophy, Mutate whatever the fuck needs to die, and just let myself believe it wasn't a choice?" He pulled at the sheet, unable to easily remove it from his claws, and it tore. "Either way, I don't get to decide that for anyone else who got their choices taken away."
Marius smiled slightly. "No worries there, mate. Casual cruelty's not your style." It was said simply, but with certainty. Then the smile slipped away. "But what I was getting at. . . what I mean is, what if choice doesn't factor in these things at all? If . . ."
He thought of the crust of drying blood on his hands, and halted. The words clotted in his throat. Once again, Marius took the coward's way out.
"Ah, it's late. I don't know what I'm getting at anymore. Just that the world is fucked, I suppose, and I know that's no surprise to you."
"Dude, I'm not sure I've made sense this entire time." Kyle rubbed at tired eyes. "The world's fucked, and who the fuck cursed us becuse it sure does seem to like to take a dump on our lives." He forced a snagged claw out of the now ruined sheet. "I checked, I'm not cursed. Which is itself, like, what a fucked up thing to think about and go ask. Topaz didn't even blink, just checked for me."
Marius' hand crept to the raised ridges of the brand hidden beneath his shirt. Then, catching himself, he dropped his hand and raised his eyebrows at Kyle.
"This is your fault, you realise," Marius remarked. "Had you only made the effort to become truly shitfaced during our years at uni we could've had the normal ill-advised experience of acquiring inadvisable and poorly inked tattoos whilst on a bender together, but no. You took another decade to indulge in this vice, and so instead our shared experience must now be arcane enslavement. Ta for that."
"Do you think if we went and did stupid tattoos now, we'd get uncursed?" Kyle asked, struggling hard to keep an incredulous laugh out of his words. "Except mine'd get healed off and you'd just borrow my powers..." He shook his head and then gave up on composure. "Jesus fuck what would we have even gotten? X-Men logos? Sports logos? Shit, what is your soccer team, maybe there's some ritual protection in a Manchester Fucking United tattoo." Every third word or so was punctuated with a shake of his head, or a snorted and desperate laugh. "Wait no, no, we get our code names on our backs in gangster font. You can even put the blank from the missing T in as like, an outline of Australia."
"Our backs? Truly you have no sense of vision. Besides, more is required if we are to balance such a staggering karma and missed opportunities." Marius tapped the line of his jaw. "It has to be a neck tattoo. No worries about what Terry might think, just do one of her face. The fairer sex find both subject matter and location simply irresistible."
"Sure they do. Which one of us is sitting on a savings account for a ring again? Me. It's me." Kyle said, through laughter. "We'll do terrible ab tats, like that guy from that band, at the Super Bowl like ten years ago. I can get Montana, you can get Brisbane."
"Absolutely not. With my lower back tattoo it would come off too much like a belt." Marius leaned back on the heels of his hands, suddenly serious again. "You good now, mate?" he asked as he studied his friend.
"Good like, am I gonna go be in the shower for another half hour, no. Good like, am I going back to sleep?" Kyle checked a completely non-existent watch on his wrist. "I am probably not. I am gonna think real hard about pants and where the hell my car keys are and either really bad cheese fries or really good meatloaf. Same diner, just dunno if I want plastic cheese or not yet."
"There's a debate? Truly we have become responsible adults." Marius gave his friend a light punch on the shoulder and climbed to his feet. "I'll join you. I'm gripped by desire for a substandard apple pie with a slice of sharp cheddar. Now it's your turn to experience the joys of being scrutinised for one's dietary choices."
"You eat vegemite. Even the extra rare venison taco isn't gonna really best salty leftovers from beer."
"I'll forgive that remark. Were I an American I, too, would abstain from the byproducts of my locally produced beer." Marius waved a hand and headed for the door.
"Ten minutes. Pants. And then . . . regrettable diner choices."
TW: Discussion of sexual assault
"Mate, it's been half an hour. You don't answer me and I'll have no choice but to assume you've had a stroke. Please do not compel me to commit yet more property damage."
It wasn't only that Kyle wasn't the sort to shower at 3 AM. It hadn't taken the two men long to realise they were not, as a pair, particularly quiet sleepers. Very quickly, and with enormous effort, they had reached a tacit agreement to ignore any indications of night-terrors that might be overheard from the adjacent room. Marius often dreamed of being paralysed, and he sometimes woke himself with the screams he'd been able to utter. He was unsure of what Kyle might be dreaming of, only that he too, often cried out. And occasionally . . . other things.
Regardless, the duration of Kyle's nocturnal ablutions had become worrying enough that Marius had been compelled to invade his room and knock on the bathroom door.
"I'M NOT DEAD" Kyle hadn't actually realized it had been that long. He wasn't sure if he'd dozed off in the shower, face on the tile and hot water cascading down his back, but he wouldn't attest that he hadn't either. The white noise of water and sensory bombardment of heat and steam and water pressure made it easy to lose time, and just exist.
He forgot that shower noises were audible. His own personal room, he'd installed soundproof squares, mindful of a suitemate that never seemed to have overnight visitors and might not want evidence that Kyle often did. It had the added side-effect of washing out any other noises like abrupt sleep interruptions and nocturnal showers.
A towel later, and the addition of a t-shirt and shorts, and Kyle cracked the bathroom door, hopeful that the statement refuting his death had resulted in Marius going Back To Sleep or at least Elsewhere. His hopes were disappointed.
His once and current suitemate was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. It was a posture often assumed by gentlemen of leisure to communicate that whilst "leisure" might be their default state, this was about to be suspended to deal with the matter at hand. It looked more relaxed than it felt. In his haste Marius hadn't bothered to pull on his gloves, meaning his biceps were being prickled by the teeth ringing his palms.
"My thanks for relieving me of the burden of explaining to Terry I'd allowed you to poach yourself in the night," Marius said, taking in Kyle's heat-flushed face and general air of dishevelment. He frowned. "You all right?"
It took a few moments of Kyle staring at Marius before the Marius-to-English translator sullenly woke up and provided a likely definition for 'poach'. "I'm up at 3am turning myself into a delicious egg breakfast, no, I'm really not okay." He glanced around the room, opened the bathroom door the rest of the way, and dropped the wet towels into a collapsible laundry bin. "Is this repayment for giving you a speech about how you're actually an endangered bird and so I'm appointing myself zookeeper? I wasn't trying to off myself in the shower. "
"Spiteful retaliation, genuine concern, call it what you will. Perhaps both. I'm a talented multi-tasker." Marius pushed himself away from the wall and dropped his arms. There was the brief struggle over whether he really wanted to see this through, 3 AM not traditionally a time known for making good decisions, but even he had a limit to how much denial could be sustained. He sighed.
"Look, you've been quite considerate of my privacy, and as such I have endeavored to return the favour, but this . . ." Marius gestured broadly to indicate Kyle and all things regarding same. "It's just . . . even I can tell something's going on, right? And I feel as if, left to your own devices, it is not something you are likely to volunteer, invested as you are in treating me like the aforementioned endangered bird." The Australian's smile was wry. "You're my mate. I'm not as fragile as all that."
"I don't..." Kyle started, and then cut himself off before he snapped. "I don't think you're fragile. I just think you're to do some dumb shit like getting bad medical test results and then going "well, I'm not going to tell anyone because they'll be sad for me!" He failed to stop the snap in his words. "It's not the same for me, I just had some shit happen, I told people, I have an entire ass therapist and fuckin' everyone in the medical team knows except the new kid and for all I know he does too now!"
Marius watched Kyle for a long moment, then ran a hand through his hair. Strands snagged against the small teeth.
"Right," he said. "Suppose I'll just ask. Did Laurie -- ah. Did something -- did she do something to you? There was all that talk of running simulations against her and that. The two of you had that casual thing for a bit, and well, I was there when she dosed the whole floor." Marius looked away. Not a man prone to embarrassment, his awkwardness now was so rare it could have been studied by experts for generations to come. "My apologies if this is out of line. I've not been eavesdropping, but I'm not sleeping so well of late, and the walls aren't as thick as all that."
Kyle stared, shook his head, and stared some more, before he could bring himself to answer. "Holy shit no, I wasn't... " He scrubbed at his face. "She never did that to me, holy fuck, no, that.." He rushed out of the doorway, and sat down on the edge of the bed, gripping the edge of the disarrayed sheets. "It wasn't her. She never, not once Terry and I, she never even tried."
Marius sagged. "Right. All right. That was just the only -- well. Never mind. Glad to hear it." His relief was short-lived; the expression on Kyle's face was decidedly not reassuring.
"So then..." The Australian's frown deepened. "What are you talking about, then?"
"Fuck." Kyle's voice broke, and he pulled his hands out of the sheets before he clawed holes in them, saw the holes he'd already put in them earlier and picked up the edge of one, deliberately shredding an already torn edge. "It's not the same, I didn't say anything because it's fucked, but I told people. Terry knows. My therapist knows. There was a mission, it was supposed to be dealing with some weapons dealers, turned out to be some kind of magical incubus shit. Fuckin' magic, the worst part wasn't even the goddamn sex."
Bile was already rising at the mention of magic before the full weight of what had said even sank in. Marius stared at his friend for a moment as he turned the statement over in his mind before putting the words into the question.
"Mate, were you assaulted?"
Kyle snorted out a single broken laugh. "Man, assaulted doesn't even begin to describe that shit. It's in the mission logs, sort of. It was me, and.." He stopped. "Me, and some other people. I don't. It's not. I don't want to say names, I don't want to violate anyone's privacy. I don't. I never meant for you to find out, I never even wanted Terry to find out. It was gross, it was, like, the worst parts about me all out at once, and the guy, the demon, he's out there existing in a hell somewhere just knowing my worst fucking secret, and.." He picked up a pillow and pressed it against his face. "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, I forgot the soundproof tiles, you weren't supposed to hear any of those nightmares."
Marius hesitated, then moved to sit on the bed next to Kyle. The proximity to his friend made his hands itch. He ignored it, and searched for words for which there was no script. In the end he could only think of one thing.
"I'm so sorry, mate. I should've been here."
"Oh man, no, no you'd have ended up on that mission right there with the rest of us." Kyle pulled the pillow down. "We picked for people who could pass as SHIELD agents, Jesus, that would've been five hundred times worse. Fuck, the last thing you need is some demon telling you to speak your truth and confessing, you know, whatever." He rubbed at his face, pressing his palm into his nose until it hurt and the pain broke the urge to start picking things up and throwing them. "The worst thing you've ever wanted, that's what he had us admit, like some kind of blackmail. Exactly like blackmail but with a bunch of fucking afterward."
Marius shook his head. "I meant to talk afterwards. I do know something of what it's like to have the very worst of oneself on display. Every time I missed a meal, in fact."
"I'm just glad it wasn't worse." Kyle said, flatly. "Bad enough Ga.. Bad enough people heard me say... " He gripped the sheets again. "I lied, about Ahab. I remembered the entire thing. It used to be fuzzy, and after Genosha, the whole thing came back, like throwing up whole bites of food. It was easy. I didn't have to think freaking out someone at a gas station because I've got fangs, or how hard I can go in the Danger Room, or how far I can go in a fight. It was like, all the guilt and shit was just not there, and god damn, it was so much easier."
Marius felt his face heat with a sudden flash of anger. "Did you truly think I wouldn't understand that?" he burst out, hands clenching against the sharpness in his palms. "Me of all people, who's just a--"
Just in time, the Australian snapped his mouth shut. Calm down, he told himself. This wasn't about what Kyle had or hadn't trusted him to understand..
Even now it wasn't as if Marius himself had a claim to honesty.
"Look," he tried again, "with Campbell . . . I lied, too. That time I was poisoned and went for Jen in the woods, ha, when Marko tossed you at me . . . it took some doing for Xavier to get me back from that. Then when we were made Hounds, and it was that all over again. That, and worse. After that . . . well. All sorts of options began to seem easier, and speaking of why I felt that way seemed just one more step towards making it real." Slowly, Marius exhaled and relaxed his hands, trying to get Kyle to meet his eyes. "You needn't justify to me what you felt, or why you didn't feel so inclined to share. Just know I understand. All right?"
"I know you know! That's why I didn't say anything!" Kyle's voice strained with the effort to not sound angry. Not at Marius at least. "I don't ... I don't want forgiveness or someone to understand, I just want to stop being this way. Most of the time I'm fine and then I'm in the Danger Room or fighting someone and I have to think about how, look, it's some FoH fuckoff, and the world'd probably be better if the guy didn't have a face anymore." He shook himself, head, shoulders, arms, and pulled at his fingers until the knuckles popped. "I don't want anyone to know, because it's disgusting."
"Sorry to disappoint, but you get understanding regardless. You know what I am. A mutant that needs other mutants to stay alive, even if only on occasion -- there's a word for that." Marius rested his hands against his thighs, fingers loosely curled around the orifices that twitched even now. He exhaled again. "You're a feral, right, and I am what I am. And we both know what's it's like, trying to convince the world you're human when every day your own body and brain remind you that you're anything but."
Kyle's brain gifted him the unwanted memory of terrible dialogue in a YA novel, and he grimaced, and then waved off Marius' immediate concern. "Not relevant, just remember I teach literature to teenagers." He snorted a little laugh. "Only a little relevant. I guess it could be worse, nobody's asked me if I'm gonna imprint on someone's baby." He went back to shredding the sheet, he'd amazon a replacement later. "It's been in my face lately, couple of folks who talk about throwing out human concepts and I'm here like, pal, human concepts are why I keep the raw rabbit eating to the outside grounds where it can't freak people out."
"Possibly a more attractive option for those who have a choice in the matter." Marius raked sleep-mussed curls from his face and grimaced. "I can't say recent events have done much for my state of mind, either. People flatter me with the assumption I wasn't in control of myself. On the contrary: I was. At every step. That's what keeps me awake at night." He shrugged one shoulder. "No guilt, yeah? Just purpose."
"Yeah, it's like all the fuckin' background judgement goes away and everything gets easier." Kyle agreed. "Happened in Genosha too. That one might've been Laurie, actually, I was fighting her when she was all bald badass and then the next thing I was like "oh, she's gotta die." and the entire fight got easier. Like, by an entire magnitude. I didn't even feel bad until the next day." The edge of the sheet was slowly becoming a tangled mass of frayed threads. "It's why, people, a couple of people are like, she's gotta be put down and I'm not sure. Did she really choose it?" He looked at Marius, just for a moment, and then turned away. "And why I wasn't gonna let you die, or get arrested."
Marius was quiet for a beat of his own.
"I don't know, mate," he said at last. "Isn't doing a terrible thing worse if you can't help yourself?"
"Maybe, I dunno." Kyle said. "Is it worse if you have a choice and let it happen anyway? Somebody takes my ability to make decisions away, I can tell myself it was their fault. I didn't choose to bite off Rory Campbell's ear, I didn't choose to rip open Laurie's throat. That shit fucks me up, but the shit that's waking me up, I might've.... with the demon thing, I.. there's a chance I said yes, and then I start wondering maybe did I say yes the other times. Did I say, yeah, that guy's ear's a great trophy, Mutate whatever the fuck needs to die, and just let myself believe it wasn't a choice?" He pulled at the sheet, unable to easily remove it from his claws, and it tore. "Either way, I don't get to decide that for anyone else who got their choices taken away."
Marius smiled slightly. "No worries there, mate. Casual cruelty's not your style." It was said simply, but with certainty. Then the smile slipped away. "But what I was getting at. . . what I mean is, what if choice doesn't factor in these things at all? If . . ."
He thought of the crust of drying blood on his hands, and halted. The words clotted in his throat. Once again, Marius took the coward's way out.
"Ah, it's late. I don't know what I'm getting at anymore. Just that the world is fucked, I suppose, and I know that's no surprise to you."
"Dude, I'm not sure I've made sense this entire time." Kyle rubbed at tired eyes. "The world's fucked, and who the fuck cursed us becuse it sure does seem to like to take a dump on our lives." He forced a snagged claw out of the now ruined sheet. "I checked, I'm not cursed. Which is itself, like, what a fucked up thing to think about and go ask. Topaz didn't even blink, just checked for me."
Marius' hand crept to the raised ridges of the brand hidden beneath his shirt. Then, catching himself, he dropped his hand and raised his eyebrows at Kyle.
"This is your fault, you realise," Marius remarked. "Had you only made the effort to become truly shitfaced during our years at uni we could've had the normal ill-advised experience of acquiring inadvisable and poorly inked tattoos whilst on a bender together, but no. You took another decade to indulge in this vice, and so instead our shared experience must now be arcane enslavement. Ta for that."
"Do you think if we went and did stupid tattoos now, we'd get uncursed?" Kyle asked, struggling hard to keep an incredulous laugh out of his words. "Except mine'd get healed off and you'd just borrow my powers..." He shook his head and then gave up on composure. "Jesus fuck what would we have even gotten? X-Men logos? Sports logos? Shit, what is your soccer team, maybe there's some ritual protection in a Manchester Fucking United tattoo." Every third word or so was punctuated with a shake of his head, or a snorted and desperate laugh. "Wait no, no, we get our code names on our backs in gangster font. You can even put the blank from the missing T in as like, an outline of Australia."
"Our backs? Truly you have no sense of vision. Besides, more is required if we are to balance such a staggering karma and missed opportunities." Marius tapped the line of his jaw. "It has to be a neck tattoo. No worries about what Terry might think, just do one of her face. The fairer sex find both subject matter and location simply irresistible."
"Sure they do. Which one of us is sitting on a savings account for a ring again? Me. It's me." Kyle said, through laughter. "We'll do terrible ab tats, like that guy from that band, at the Super Bowl like ten years ago. I can get Montana, you can get Brisbane."
"Absolutely not. With my lower back tattoo it would come off too much like a belt." Marius leaned back on the heels of his hands, suddenly serious again. "You good now, mate?" he asked as he studied his friend.
"Good like, am I gonna go be in the shower for another half hour, no. Good like, am I going back to sleep?" Kyle checked a completely non-existent watch on his wrist. "I am probably not. I am gonna think real hard about pants and where the hell my car keys are and either really bad cheese fries or really good meatloaf. Same diner, just dunno if I want plastic cheese or not yet."
"There's a debate? Truly we have become responsible adults." Marius gave his friend a light punch on the shoulder and climbed to his feet. "I'll join you. I'm gripped by desire for a substandard apple pie with a slice of sharp cheddar. Now it's your turn to experience the joys of being scrutinised for one's dietary choices."
"You eat vegemite. Even the extra rare venison taco isn't gonna really best salty leftovers from beer."
"I'll forgive that remark. Were I an American I, too, would abstain from the byproducts of my locally produced beer." Marius waved a hand and headed for the door.
"Ten minutes. Pants. And then . . . regrettable diner choices."
no subject
Date: 2024-02-12 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-12 03:55 pm (UTC)I'm not going to tell anyone because they'll be sad for me!
This line was a great break in the seriousness, even if it has as much punch as the bigger confessions.
I don't ... I don't want forgiveness or someone to understand, I just want to stop being this way.
A very good, real line. There’s a big push toward immediate healing and sharing, but it isn’t easy or always achievable.
Matched with Marius: "You're a feral, right, and I am what I am. And we both know what's it's like, trying to convince the world you're human when every day your own body and brain remind you that you're anything but.
Just great stuff, guys.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-12 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-13 01:53 pm (UTC)