Ian
The road was empty on the way back from the
chantry, giving Ian more time to think than he actually wanted. As he
drove, he listened to music and kept his eyes on the dark monotony of
the winding country road. It felt different than it had on his way out.
More lonely, maybe, with the rest of the world asleep.
It wouldn't
be that way in the city - not on a Saturday (not even this late.) But
out here it was as though the landscape had descended into a dream. Tall
shadows passed around him: thin, scrubby pine trees and distant
mountain peaks. Ian ought to have felt tired, but he didn't. Not
tonight. Tonight he was wide awake.
[Willpower!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5) ( fail )
Ian
[And Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
spores
[Just in case it a a comedy of errors kind of night]
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
spores
[Dmg]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
spores
As
he drives he feels that eerie swimming cold from the dream, or
mindscape, or vision with Sky. This time though, it settles into his
bones. The scrubby trees start to look like maybe they have forms, the
way trees sometimes do. Twisted, nightmarish forms, increasingly
obscured by wisps of green-tinged fog.
Except, Ian realizes, it
isn't fog. It's a cloud of something, some fine particles in the air
instead of water vapor. The world is washed in bare shadow and green
tendrils of fog and a fine green dust is settling over everything. The
lines of the road, the edge of the road, distinctions between anything
by color becomes impossible, because everything is that shaded green.
And
then there is a spike of pain, vibrant red into glowing molten orange
into white hot light that floods and sears over his eyes. He tastes
blood on the back of his tongue, blood and damp stone, blood and damp
stone and something rich and earthy and decaying. The last traces of
something surrendering to consumed by a rainforest.
Vines are
brushing at skin, vines and leaves, vines and leaves and dripping water
that has the feel of something thick. Something oily. It is no rain of
this earth, at least not this earth at this time in this series of
eventualities. There are other worlds than this, and in those worlds
perhaps the trails over his skin those heavy, fat droplets leave in
their wake, gritty and oily, like the silt at the bottom of a mud puddle
oil has spilled into, could simply be rain. There are, after all,
worse worlds than this one.
There is a rush of sound with the
light and the pain, deafening and dizzying after the sense of driving
through something lonely and quiet. Shrieking frogs and dying leaves in
and angry, biting wind.
And that wind tears into him. Seems to
slice under his skin and tear away something, something deep and
precious and vital. Slicing under his skin, slicing through his bones,
and taking away warmth. Life.
Ian
Perhaps it was a lucky
thing that there was no one else on the road, because when that flash of
pain hit (the sensation of something bring spiritually ripped from
his pattern) he almost lost control of the car. There was a rush of air
as his breath punched out of his lungs, and then a gasp, and around him
the world became covered in green fog.
The audi swerved into the
other lane and nearly tipped over the grassy shoulder before Ian grabbed
the wheel and forced it back onto the road. It was an instinctive act,
and he did it without fully comprehending how close he'd come to what
could easily have been a fatal accident. He pulled the wheel and hit the
break, and the tires screeched on the pavement as the car's forward
momentum was abruptly throttled.
By the time he stopped, he was
facing diagonally across the yellow line in the middle of the road.
Black tracks of burnt rubber had been left in his wake. If someone came
along, they might hit him.
But he wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about thick, oily water and green fog and blood.
He
was thinking that he needed fresh air. He didn't even bother to shut
off the car's ignition - just left it idling while he opened the door
and half stumbled out onto the road, his muscles shaking as he leaned
back against the car for support.
"Fuck you," he growled under his breath.
[-1 WP]
spores
The
sense of leaves and vines slithering over his skin is fading, though
that sense of something oily and gritty lingers on his skin and that
uneasy sense of something cold swimming in his blood is slow to fade.
There is a sense, before Ian is back to being on a normal, lonely road,
that something can recognize that curse enough to be amused.
He might be imagining it.
But it fades, that presence and that amusement, when the vines and the fog fade.
Ian
The hallucination faded. The vines and the fog. Gradually his senses returned to the waking world.
Everything
hurt. A line of blood dripped down from his nose. He wiped it away with
the back of his hand, leaving a streak of red on his skin. Seconds
passed like this, with his eyes closed - just leaning there against the
humming car... breathing.
He could feel the damage in his pattern.
The internal tears. Nothing serious. Torn vessels and bruising. It hurt
to breath, and probably there would be a wash of purple on his chest
when he looked at it the next morning, but right now he didn't care to
look.
Instead he crawled back in his car and opened the glove
compartment for a tissue, which he used to clean the blood off of his
face and hand.
Blood. The smell and the taste of it actually grounded him a little. It was familiar. It was his. It helped to remind him that he was still alive. That his heart was still beating.
Eventually he closed the door and began to drive. But he didn't go home.
Instead
he ended up at Kalen's house at 2:30 in the morning, idling in the
driveway like he couldn't entirely decide if he wanted to announce his
presence or not.
Kalen Holliday
[Nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 5, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
[Do you notice Ian?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
is home, settled onto his couch with a bottle wine and a book. He sets
down both the book and the wine when he senses Ian, waits a moment and
then goes to the door. He doesn't come down to meet Ian, off the small
porch and across the stone path someone edged with vibrantly colored
tulips. Probably not Kalen, flowers don't seem outside the realm of
possibility, but tulip-edged walks...?
He leans on the doorframe, and waits to see if Ian is going to get out of the car.
Or
drive off. Ian is complicated. Maybe coming to the door is the wrong
thing. But he cannot, quite, bring himself to text Ian that his
adorable neighbors are going to suspect stalking and call the police if
he doesn't make up his mind what he wants.
Ian
At
this precise moment, Ian did not especially care what Kalen's neighbors
thought - if they were even awake. An hour ago, this wouldn't have
happened - this indecision. An hour ago, he'd have been at Kalen's door
in a heart-beat. But a lot could happen in an hour. A lot had happened.
He
breathed. His chest hurt - aching down through his ribs. He didn't try
to numb the pain, though that would have been easy enough to accomplish.
Instead he focused on it - breathing in and out with a meditative
rhythm. It wasn't the first time he'd grounded himself this way.
Wouldn't be the last, either.
Finally he shut off the engine and
got out of the car. When he got to the door and saw Kalen standing
there, he didn't bother trying to explain why he'd been sitting in his
driveway, and he didn't apologize for showing up at such a late hour.
Instead he just waited for Kalen to open the door and said, "Can I use
your shower?"
Kalen Holliday
Up arches one of
Kalen's eyebrows, but he doesn't ask just nods. "Yeah. Sure. Let me
grab you towels." He looks over Ian, and it is not the appreciative
kind of look Ian has gotten before, this is an evaluation: not on fire,
check; not dripping blood, check; no sign of bones or foreign objects
sticking through his skin, check.
He does not really examine
beyond that point. It's hardly as though Ian is going to let him fuss.
Instead, he grabs towels from a closet full of towels and blankets and
plastic storage boxes full of first-aid supplies. "Here," he says
quietly, handing Ian a set of towels that are ridiculously thick and
soft. "Everything else should be in there. There are extras of all
kinds of things in the medicine cabinet."
Ian
It
was almost business-like, the way Ian took the towels and nodded. The
way he kept his distance. The way he said "thanks," like Kalen was just
some person he barely knew (which in some ways, he was.) Not the quiet
gravity of a person accepting help from a friend. Though maybe that was
less about Kalen than it was about whatever was going on in Ian's head.
He
was a long time in the shower, letting the scalding water wash away the
last traces of grime and pollution that were lingering on his skin.
When he got out, the steam obscured his reflection in the mirror, which
made it easier not to look at the bruises. He didn't bother putting his
clothes back on - just knotted one of Kalen's towels around his waist
and walked into the bedroom, where he sat down on the edge of Kalen's
mattress. His hair was damp, and his skin still held a pinkish hue from
the steam. And there were bruises. On his back, on his chest - flowering reddish-purple marks resembling a faded rorschach pattern.
Maybe
Kalen was already in bed. Maybe he was asleep. Or maybe he was still
reading in the living room. Ian didn't call him over if he was, though
likely he wouldn't have to. Instead he lay back on the bed and looked up
at the ceiling quietly. Thinking. Or maybe trying not to think.
Kalen Holliday
Ian
just gets towels and no questions. Kalen leaves him be while he
showers, does not come to check on him, does not offer to join him.
When
Ian comes out of the shower, Kalen is still in the living room, and he
stays there for a few moments before he comes to lean in the doorway to
his bedroom. Something flickers across his expression at the sight of
the bruises. "Hey," he says, voice still quiet. "You want company?
Tea? A nap?" He offers each of those things as though they are
reasonable. As though anyone might just show up at the home of someone
they alternately sleep with and snub and ask to use the shower and maybe
take a nap and be on their way. "Kharisma makes this stuff that's good
for bruising, there's some of it around."
Ian
"One
time," Ian started out of nowhere, ignoring Kalen's questions. "When I
was still in college. I was practicing some choreography for one of my
finals and landed wrong on my leg. It broke the shin-bone in two places
and fractured my ankle. If I'd been any other student, that might have
been the end of my career. Instead? I just healed it and kept
practicing."
He paused, like that story was supposed to mean
something. Like Kalen was supposed to be able to glean some obscure
piece of information from it. When he glanced over at Kalen, he changed
the subject.
"You have nice lips." The tone of his voice was a bit
too dry to come off as flirty (more like observational.) "I don't care
about the pain. You get used to it. Even get to like it sometimes, in a
weird way."
Another pause, and he dropped the pitch of his voice.
"Come here?"
Kalen Holliday
Kalen
nods and crosses to the bed, settling close to Ian. He does reach out
now, not to cling but to run a hand along the line of Ian's shoulders,
taking his hand back if Ian shies away from being touched. It isn't
really for reassurance so much as because Kalen likes contact, and
despite the bruising the contact isn't tentative and feathery. It isn't
rough, but perhaps it's what Ian said, perhaps Kalen just doesn't think
that Ian is fragile even bruised, but it's more greeting than anything.
What
can he say to any of that? Years of curling up on his own, hiding
while injuries healed? Ian's changed the subject anyway. So he just
settles onto the bed, waiting to see how Ian responds to contact before
he tries to force any more on him. "Yeah," he says, and it is the same
quiet tone as all night. Not really soft. Not really affectionate.
Warm, yes, but not really...Ian has heard his voice when he's really
all about trying to connect. This is more patient, more like the
version of Kalen that leaves him tea and doesn't say anything at the
time or later.
But what he says, without any change in that tone is, "I'm here."
Ian
He
didn't push Kalen away this time. Didn't rebuff or snap at him, though
neither did he seem very willing to fall into any state of
vulnerability. Here is where they were: Ian lying down, looking up while
Kalen leaned over him. Ian (mostly) undressed. Ian wounded in a way
that cut deeply into his pattern - in a way that left him feeling
incrementally less alive in his own skin.
Between the two of them,
Kalen was almost certainly in the less vulnerable position. But Kalen
didn't seem to acknowledge it, either because he didn't think Ian wanted
him to, or because he didn't see Ian as something fragile. And Ian...
he wasn't unaware of his position. But he held his ground anyway.
Only a few hours earlier, he'd said this to Sera: I'm not what you think I am.
"I'm being haunted," he said, and gave this bitter little laugh.
"I
don't know if I can fuck you tonight, but I think we can find something to do anyway. If you want." When he looked at Kalen, his eyes
were dark and veiled and strangely hungry.
"You have nice eyes, too."
Ian
touched Kalen's hand and brought it to his chest, letting Kalen's
fingers make contact with the bruises there. Then he put both of his own
hands on either side of Kalen's face and pulled him down into a kiss.
The motion was a bit less gentle than perhaps one would expect, and it
echoed the hunger in his eyes.
It hurt. But it felt good too.
