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"Occupied." Nero groans in the tiny room allotted to him for rest. He double checked the route through cameras to be sure no one he knew would be around to pester him. His fatigued mind could only do so much after a city wide supernatural event. Nero groans as he hears someone knocking at the door again. "It's open, what do you want?"
"With what?" The door swings open quietly, and Aether steps in without much ceremony, the synthetic joints of his frame moving with that particular stiffness that came after prolonged strain. The kind of tax on the body that rest would fix in a human but that he'd have to manually address later with a diagnostic he was already dreading. His shirt hangs loose off one shoulder, half-stripped from what was clearly an exhausted attempt to wind down somewhere along the walk over, the fabric creased and tired-looking in a way that mirrored everything else about him. Beneath his chassis, Rin whined low and continuous, his spiritual energy moving like an ember rather than a flame, the inugami wrung dry from the effort of keeping them both functional through the worst of the recent catastrophic event. It had been ugly out there. They'd both felt it in different ways.
"I came to say thank you." Aether says, stepping further inside and letting the door fall shut behind him. His voice carries that faint harmonic undertone that only surfaces when Rin is too tired to fully smooth himself out of their shared speech patterns. Two frequencies bleeding into one, neither of them quite bothering to hide it tonight. "Rin picked the direction. I just walked." He settles against the opposite wall rather than taking a seat, like he hadn't fully committed to staying but hadn't committed to leaving either. His eyes do a slow sweep of the room out of habit rather than suspicion, the way years of vigilante work had made automatic. The optical sensors dim slightly as Rin stirs beneath the surface at the sound of his own name, roused just enough to take stock of his surroundings. "This room is stuffy and smells like someone fu—"
"It smells fine!" Aether cuts in, the words coming out faster than was dignified, his gaze snapping to Nero with an expression that he hopes reads as apologetic. The effort of it is visible. The slight recalibration in his features, the almost-too-careful arrangement of them. Android faces weren't built for sheepishness, but he's had time to practice. "I'm so sorry. Genuinely." "No he's not." Rin's influence bleeds through again, dry and unbothered. "Yes I am." "Are you, though?" There's a flicker of something almost amused in the undertone, the inugami clearly not as depleted as he'd been thirty seconds ago. Leave it to mild social chaos to revive him. "Shut up, Rin." Aether says it quietly, with the particular exhausted patience of someone who has had this brand of argument approximately ten thousand times and expects to have it ten thousand more.
open starter [my first one, be gentle!]
location: cassian's place, he's just finished a client for the day and you've just walked in...
the door shuts behind the departing client, and the room settles into an uneasy quiet - as if something just finished but hasn't quite stopped echoing yet. all of a sudden, the door creeps open again... and a new arrival enters, lifting his gaze at last.
cassian doesn’t look up immediately. he lets the silence stretch, fingers idly near the planchette around his neck as if it might act as a subtle remind the other of the sheer power he had at his finger tips.
he studies them the way he studies anything unknown: not with suspicion, exactly… but with interest sharp enough to cut.
Most people shuffle, fidget, overcorrect when they feel watched. Aether just stands. His shoulders too taunt, posture almost artificially composed, the kind of stillness that reads less like calm and more like something holding itself together with considerable effort. The light from the hall cuts across pale features, catches the faint iridescence of irises that shift between hazel and a pale, unnatural amber depending on the angle. Android. That much is obvious, if one knew what to look for. The faint seams in the skin. The slight delay before blinking, like the gesture is remembered rather than reflexive. But there's something else layered underneath that artificial casing. Something older. Something that doesn't belong in circuitry at all.
A soft exhale. Then he steps fully inside. "I wasn't sure you'd still be taking walk-ins." His gaze moves around the room once before settling on Cassian, and when it does, it lingers, unblinking in a way that's either very machine or very predator. "Deliberate," he admits, wincing at something unheard. "I suppose?" His jaw tightens slightly. A small, involuntary motion as the voice inside his head growls, his eyes shifting to read for a moment before bleeding back to amber. Somewhere beneath the composure, something flickers, an aura that doesn't belong to him, a faint luminous essence around his hands that he seems entirely unaware of, like ghostly energy clinging to his fingertips.
"My name is Aether. I was told..." he bites his lip, the voice in his head making it hard to get the correct words out, his limbs start spasming slightly like a broken marionette. "Well... strongly... suggested, actually, that you were someone who deals with situations that don't fit into more conventional frameworks." His eyes drop to the planchette as he manages to stop his clawed arm from assembling into a rifle. "Sorry..." They stay there a beat too long and his ears flick back against his head. "I have a situation." And then as if to punctuate it, as if the universe itself has decided that subtlety is no longer on the table something shifts. His feet. His ankles. The clean line where shoe meets floor simply… ceases to exist. For just a moment, three seconds at most, the lower half of him loses its argument with solid matter. He sinks into the floor. Not dramatically, not like falling, but like his body has forgotten it is solid matter. Like whatever is stitching him to the physical world momentarily lost the thread. He looks down the looks back up. The ghostly wisps at his fingertips have crept to his wrists now. "…A fairly urgent situation..."
News about what transpired with Karma - Murphy - had shocked him to the core in ways that Ji Hao had not anticipated. He was aware of how chaotic Karma's powers could be, especially since he had almost been killed several times during the apocalypse by cars moved by the other miracle. But to kill so many people? To level entire buildings and turn them to rubble? The last time he saw Murphy was when he left the apartment. When he made Murphy stay behind. For his own fucking security! How could he fight and kill those monsters if he were always looking over his shoulder to make sure Karma was fine? Staying behind would keep him secure. It would keep the danger at bay and he could do what he did best without having to hold back for the sake of another.
But shit happens. Monumental shit. The shittiest of shits that ever shit. His jaw tensed for a brief second as he entered Hyun's office. Ji Hao was there physically but mentally it was a different story. There was nothing he could do now other than attempt to visit the person in question. Yes, he wanted to try the official channels and do things legal-like but he wasn't opposed to slaughtering half the fucking city if that meant he would also get to see Karma. He was worried. Concerned. And a part of him felt incredibly guilty in ways that Bloodborn had never experienced before. Maybe he if had brought Karma with him rather than leave him behind? Maybe he could have seen it coming and stopped the tragedy from unfolding. Not that he particularly cared about the innocent people who died. Sure, it was a loss, there were children amidst the victims… but he didn't know them. He knew Karma.
One of his eyebrows rose ever so slightly as the candy was pushed toward him from one end of the desk to another. He did not pick it. He did not even move from where he stood, like a marble statue in full display. Ji Hao was doing his best to play by the rules. Not fuck things more than they already were, not make Hyun's work a living nightmare. Ever since he became a hero, some topics have become more political rather than self-serving. Could he just attempt to storm the super max prison to see Karma? Of course, he could. Even if his powers were nullified, his entire body was a weapon on itself. And if he got arrested, at the very least, he would share the cell next to Karma. Remain close. Yet… he was trying not to fuck everything up. There was still Beatdown, who was important to him. What would happen to Bri if he happened to end up in jail? To the Bloodhounds?
"I know enough." The answer was short and to the point. Like hitting a nail on the head and leaving that topic of discussion closed and sealed. As much respect as Ji Hao had for Hyun, discussing his private thoughts and reasons behind his request was not something he would do. His reasons were his own. All he could see now were Murphy's eyes as they stood under that shower. The fact that he had shielded him from an exploding mirror. Someone who was so afraid of his powers because they endangered everyone around him if they ever got too close. And that was a string that Ji Hao did not wish anyone to pull. Not when he also knew how it felt to fear the things he could do. When on a sudden emotional burst, he could just explode someone from the inside out by making their blood boil within their veins.
"I want to see him. Talk to him." Ask him why the fuck didn't he stay indoors when he told him to. Why did he have to go out? How the fuck did everything happen? "I told him to stay inside when we were all fighting for our lives." He did not need to explain why. His reasons were his own but Hyun had always been someone Bloodborn respected. He owed the PR that much. "I wanted him to stay hidden so that the monsters wouldn't come for him. I would not be able to fight to the fullest if a part of me was concerned with someone else." And as a former villain, showing concern for someone else other than himself was a pretty fucking stupid thing to do. Yet, there he was. Concerned about Murphy. About Briar. Maybe a little about Hyun. The rest of the world is fucked. "You can say whatever you want about this, but a part of me feels responsible."
Because he could have prevented everything from happening if he had been close to Karma.
"I need to know if he is okay. I need him to know that what happened was not his fault." Officially, it was. And it was Karma's powers that killed so many people. But something must have happened because of losing control of his abilities on such a scale? The fucking building didn't crash around them when they kissed. Just a mirror exploding. But to level an entire block and kill so many people? "Shit happens, Hyun. He needs to know that shit will keep shitting even when you're tired of the shit." Ji Hao's jaw clenched. His veins throbbed underneath the skin. "I have to see him, Hyun. And I'd rather do it through official channels than to revert to my old villainous ways and slaughter every living person standing in my way to do it."
The candy sat untouched between them. Hyun hadn't really expected him to take it. Old habit, maybe, something his mother used to do when she didn't know what else to offer a person who was hurting. Put something sweet on the table first. As if sugar could soften the edges of anything. He let Ji Hao finish. All of it. Every word, every weighted pause, every syllable that the man probably considered an enormous concession just by virtue of having said it out loud. And to his credit, and Hyun's own considerable surprise, it was. Coming from Bloodborn, I feel responsible was practically a confession extracted under duress. The candy remained where it sat, untouched. Hyun watched it for a moment before leaning back in his chair with the particular brand of exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep deprivation and everything to do with the kind of week he'd had. His fingers found his temple. Pressed. Released. "That's all very touching, truly. However..."
"I'm going to give you one opportunity to walk that back," he said. Hyun didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. He just stopped performing calm and let what was underneath it show, which was quieter and considerably less comfortable to be on the receiving end of. "Not because it scared me. Because you're grieving, and I'd rather not hold it against you permanently." He let that sit for exactly as long as it needed to, his voice even. PR-trained calm layered over something more human. "I understand what you're asking for, Ji Hao. And why you're asking for it." His gaze flicked briefly to the untouched candy on the desk, then back up. "But I need you to hear me clearly on the part you don't get to override with force or instinct. Walking into a supermax facility unregulated is not a visit. It's an incident. And incidents like that don't end with you standing in front of Karma. They end with half the city reacting to what you did to get there." He leaned back slightly, fingers folding together. "You're not wrong to want answers. You're not wrong to be worried about him. But you are dangerously close to turning grief and guilt into justification for collateral damage, and I will not greenlight that direction. Not as PR. Not as someone who has to clean up what it leaves behind for the Bloodhounds."
"Visitation has been... approved." He slid a single document across the desk toward him, not candy, not this time. Something actually worth reaching for. "Two days from now. Supervised. Forty-five minutes." He let a brief pause sit before adding, evenly, "No contact. Those are the terms and they are not negotiable, so don't look at me like that." He straightened in his chair. "Now, I want you to understand something. I have spent the last few days on the phone. In offices. In rooms with people who were very motivated to ensure that nobody got anywhere near Murphy without a court order and a congressional hearing attached to it." He tapped the document once with two fingers. "That cost me considerably." He held Ji Hao's gaze without blinking. Getting the visitation cleared had taken three days of phone calls, two meetings he hadn't been invited to before aggressively inserting himself, and one very long, very uncomfortable conversation with a woman who shared Karma's blood and absolutely none of his softness. "You came in here carrying weight you don't need to carry. What happened to Murphy was not the result of one decision on one day, and it was not yours to prevent."
"So the part at the end. About reverting to your old villainous ways and slaughtering everyone in your path?" Hyun's expression did not change. Not exactly. But something behind his eyes sharpened in a way that had very little to do with bureaucratic irritation. "Don't do that. Don't make my job harder than it is, I beg." He reached over and finally retrieved the candy himself, turning it once between his fingers without unwrapping it. "You're worried about him. I understand that. More than you probably think I do." His voice had lost the edge now, leaving something considerably more tired in its place. "But the moment you make this difficult, officially difficult, Murphy's situation gets substantially worse. Everything I've built around this gets dismantled. And then you will not get to see him. Or Briar. Or me, because I will not bail you out of that shit-pile you jumped head-long into." He set the candy down. "Forty-five minutes. Be grateful, and for the love of everything, fucking behave."
What he wouldn't say, what he didn't have the energy to say, was exactly how not easy it had been. The calls. The walls. The bureaucratic architecture of a supermax facility that did not particularly enjoy being called seven times in two days by a PR representative whose title alone made half their administrative staff immediately suspicious of optics and media angles. That was the thing about this job that he had never fully anticipated when he took it. He wasn't just a Bloodhound. He was the person who stood between what they were and what the world was allowed to see, and that position came with its own particular kind of exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical danger and everything to do with other people's decisions landing on his desk like debris. "Do not fuck this up, Ji Hao."
it had been an incredibly difficult run for the kickstarters. their team had been fractured far before the invasion, but the cracks were grew under the stress, until the whole thing fragmented under his watchful eye. he had his responsibility, of course, but it was his duty to do whatever he could for whoever was left.
pandora's box wasn't exactly where he expected to meet one of his own, but he couldn't let karma rot in a cell.
it seemed a bit high security, but given the circumstances, it made sense.
Karma sat in the corner, back against the wall, knees drawn up as far as the jacket would allow. He was rocking slightly. Muttering to himself, something low and formless, the kind of sound that wasn't really words anymore. He'd gotten good at sitting still instead of throwing himself around and screaming until he'd pass out. The therapists called it progress. "Do, uh… d'ya recognize me? It's me, Tex." The rocking slowed to a stop. Karma's head turned toward the reinforced glass, eyes wide and glassy, the way you look at something you aren't sure is real. He sat there half hoping his mind was just playing a cruel game, half terrified it wasn't. He bit his lip silently, staring towards the voice in his drug-induced haze. Something behind his eyes shifted before it clicked into place. "…Tex." His voice came out hoarse. Cracked down the middle, raw from screaming he only half remembered doing. "Tex, I—"
And then he broke. Completely, suddenly, the way a dam doesn't crack but fails. All at once, nothing held. Something that had been pressed down for God knows how long finally gave way. His shoulders caved forward, forehead dropping to his knees, and he wept with his whole body, shaking hard against the restraints. The worst part, the part he'd never be able to explain, was how glad he was. How some part of him was just glad Tex was there.
"Y-you're here..." His voice came out quieter than he meant it to. Smaller. He hated that. "You're not... supposed to be here." Some part of him wanted to stand up, cross the cell, press his forehead to the glass just to confirm Tex was actually there. He didn't. He stayed exactly where he was. "How bad is it?" he asked instead, reddened eyes dropping to the floor between them as he blinked the tears away. "Out there. How bad did I—" He stopped. Exhaled slowly. "Is... everyone okay? This is... just a bad dream... r- right?"
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It was a tragedy. Over five hundred people had died due to one single person being unable to control their powers. Woe is me and all that. In the end, the culprit - this miracle called Karma - had been held accountable for the tragedy that took place. He had been sent to the supermax prison. Away from everything and everyone and the only contact he could have was with his family… that, according to a nice little background check… weren't all that interested in having the chaos bringer out. As if monsters taking over the streets and destroying Halcyon haven't been enough drama. As if all the lives that were lost other than those in this particular instance haven't been enough. And then there was Hive's death at the hand of a backstabbing motherfucker. But Gossamer would get his due sooner or later. There were other priorities that needed to be tended to. Like a good game of chess, some pieces needed to be moved and taken off the board before the checkmate.
It wasn't easy to get visitation privileges… but Alistair was a well-known politician who had contacts in all the places that truly mattered. Bypass the family permission and a few other official channels in order to get to do this: visit the latest miracle tossed into a cell in a prison that negated their powers and rendered them all human. In a way, Alistair was satisfied. He had been pushing the bill that miracles needed to be held accountable for their actions - accidental or not - so Karma being there was actually a good rallying call for his campaign. But that was all in the public optics. Behind the scenes, he was busy hiring the best motherfucking legal team he could to get this particular menace out of jail.
Because there was use for him. Because someone with the sheer power to kill so many people in a matter of minutes? That was not Miracle material. That was Calamity. And with the False Mask losing some members due to murder and being complete idiots… their ranks needed to be refilled. Directly or indirectly. "Here ye' are." With his hands behind his back, Alistair approached the glass panel that separated him from Murphy, aka Karma, with his hands behind his back. Lovely place that cell. Plus, their powers were nullified? Man… talk about KARMA, right? "Ye' have become quite the topic of discussion lately, luv. I had to come 'ere and see what the fuss was all about."
See for himself if Murphy was worth the investment. Being a banner for stricter miracle measures and at the same time, a nice little toy that he would use when the opportunity presented itself. For every task, there was the perfect tool after all. "Ye' alone took the lives of five hundred and fifty-five residents. Men, women and children. Even pets." Alistair shrugged. He honestly did not give a flying fuck about the deceased. How many has he killed so far? "Ye' alone took almost as many lives as the monsters that attacked our lovely city. This might be quite the unpopular opinion, but bloody hell mate… I was impressed." Because that revealed how massive a power Karma had when left unchecked. A fucking glass canon. "Unfortunately for ye', I am also the one pushin' forward on more severe punishments for miracles who get innocent bystanders killed. And boy… ye' did a fuckin' number. People are out for blood. Yer' blood."
Alistair leaned in. Just close enough to almost touch the glass with the tip of his nose, his hands still resting behind his back. "How did ye' do it? Why did ye' do it? Questions like this are bein' asked. And as much as I support miracles bein' held accountable… I don' know yer' circumstances. Did ye' have a maniacal episode? Or were ye' fully conscious of what was goin' 'round ye'? These questions are important, luv. Yer' defense attorneys will need all the details. If it was a maniacal episode - ye' can be let out under very severe and constrictive rules but… ye' would be able to see the sun again. I'm reasonable. I only want true monsters to reside in these cells. Ye' really don' strike me as one. And trust me, luv… I can tell when someone's a monster."
The fluorescent lights didn't hum. They screamed. A long, drilling whine that lived somewhere in the base of his skull, and every few seconds his spine would just give up and spasm like something inside him was trying to escape. Cold. He felt cold. That specific cold that wasn't temperature, it was absence, it was the feeling of being opened up and scraped clean. Murphy folded. There wasn't a better word for it. His forehead damn near kissed the padded floor before he caught himself on one knee, and he stayed there breathing, just breathing, while the canvas of the straightjacket ate into his shoulders where the skin had gone from raw to something worse. He'd been fighting the restraints long enough that he couldn't remember not fighting them. Time was a problem in here. He'd blink and eight hours would be missing. He'd stare at the lines and feel centuries pass inside thirty seconds.
His eyes. He could feel them, which you're not supposed to, you're not supposed to feel your own eyes. The hemorrhaging had been spreading for a while now, tiny ruptures threading through the whites every time he tried to claw his way through the nullification field. When he looked at Alistair through the glass. The man came through a filter of red and brown, a bruise forming over the world. Murphy stared. Said nothing. Just breathed through his open mouth like a panting dog in a kennel. Because pieces kept coming back. Not memories. Shards. A woman pulling herself across rubble with her fingernails. A little boy screaming in the middle of a street while cars floated upside down above him, rotating slowly, almost gently, the way things do in dreams before they start being nightmares. The smell always came with them. Burned hair. Melted plastic. That copper in the air so thick it sat on the back of your tongue. And stayed there until it was all you could think about.
"No..." Murphy squeezed his eyes shut hard enough to feel his face wrinkle around them. "No no no... stop!" His body jerked. The probability tried to claw its way out of him the way it always did, some sick homing instinct toward catastrophe, and the suppression system came down on it like a boot coming down on fingers. He screamed before he'd decided to scream. Fell sideways to the ground. No grace in it, no catching himself, just a man going down badly and lying there while his shoulders wrenched against the jacket and the blood from his nose made a small dark pool. Alistair kept talking. Numbers. Bodies. Political language wrapped around atrocity like a bow around a severed hand. The hooks went in.
Five hundred and fifty-five.
Five hundred and fifty-five.
Five hundred and—
"STOP FUCKING SAYING IT!" His voice cracked down the middle of the word and he didn't care. Murphy got upright using momentum and fury and nothing else, legs shaking so badly they looked borrowed, and he staggered toward the glass. Toward Alistair. Toward his stupid smug face. If he could wipe that smirk off he would. His shoulder hit the barrier and the echo came back to him from somewhere far away. "You think I don't already hear them?" His eyes were too wide, wet at the corners, and there was something in them that had stopped being sane somewhere around the third day. "You think I need somebody standing there reading me numbers like I haven't counted every single body myself?" Then the flash. A hand reaching up from under rubble. A voice begging. Murphy backing away because the closer he got the worse it became, probability collapsing around the victim like a sinkhole, and every step toward them was another step toward making it catastrophic. The memory was gone before he could hold it. He looked almost lost in the silence after. "That one wasn't real," he whispered. He shook his head. "That one wasn't." He didn't sound like he believed it.
"You wanna know what I actually remember?" He laughed. It was one of those laughs. Manically giddy. "I remember trying to stop a bus from flipping. Watched the road open up underneath it instead. I remember stairs. People on them. Then no stairs. Collapse." His breathing spiked. "I remember the smell inside the walls. I remember—" Karma stopped. Swallowed. "People looking at me like I was about to save them." That last part almost took his legs out. He hit the floor hard, wrenched his shoulder out of the socket on the way down, and the sound he made lived in the space between a scream and a laugh and he was already trying to get back up before the sound died. Each attempt smaller than the last. "You came here to look at the freak." Murphy muttered, staring at the floor while his hair hung down wet and dark across his face. "That's all anyone does anymore. Karma the catastrophe. What a fucking joke." He laughed, managing to right himself and sit against the wall. His dark eyes came back up to Alistair through the glass and something shifted in them as he considered the questions. "I just... do it... just move my hands... think things... sometimes it listens. But sometimes... it doesn't." he said quietly. "He told me to stay put. And I did, stayed, for awhile. But then I figured... I could help. Unlike... the last time. When I choked. And I did help until... it got to be too much. Chaos... feeds... chaos."
"I just... went numb. It felt... nice. To let it go." He looked down at his arms, focused on the familiar feeling. Then nothing. The pulse didn't come. Murphy froze. He waited for the pressure behind his eyes. For reality to hinge sideways. For the pull in his chest, that specific pulling stomach feeling that preceded bad things the way barometric pressure precedes a storm. He'd lived with it for so long it had become second nature. It held him together the way bones do. Probability moved through him constantly, a current of terrible static, catastrophe-in-waiting radiating off everything within fifty feet of him. Always. Even asleep. Even sedated. He felt for it. Nothing. "It's quiet now." The words came out afraid. Not relieved. Afraid. He looked down at his own body like it might explain itself. He felt for the static again, that screaming current, the migraines, the certainty of survival that had always lived somewhere in the knowledge that he was dangerous. Gone. All of it. He let out a laugh so weak it barely made a sound. "I thought this was what I wanted." He looked at the walls. At his bound arms. At Alistair. The realization moved through him slowly, like a cold thing putting its weight down on him. Without the chaos inside him there was just the hole where it used to be. No static. No violent instinct humming through his blood. Nothing telling him he was going to survive whatever came next. He felt small. Not dangerous. Not unstable. Just small.
"I can't feel anything." Karma said. "I can't... feel it...." He sounded ashamed. He was ashamed, because what kind of wreck do you have to be to miss the thing that was destroying you? To stand in the quiet you'd prayed for and feel like you were drowning in it? Murphy stared at the floor. "I used to think if they took it away I'd at least still know who I was." He began to laugh, his body shaking violently in the jacket, despite the dislocated arm. "I... fuck... don't..."
it had been weeks since ghost stepped foot in the warehouse the sevens called home, nights these days spent on the job, working, stalking, killing. it’s the cost of success, of being good at his job, (or at least that's what he tells himself) contracts and contacts almost always hitting his line, keeping him busy. and if he’s completely honest with himself? a part of him likes it that way. he wasn’t built for this… for them. to be regarded and regard others. its been years and still, the care he has for them fits wrong, like a suit that's been tailored for a man different than him, stretched over his body, tight and restrictive. he doesn’t know how to move with it, with the concern that he has for them ⎯ so instead he lets the time pileup. he’s never regretted that more than now. he doesn’t know how any of them have fared in the darkness. is everyone okay? safe? are there any injuries or even worse, casualties? ghost hasn't let himself think about it. he swallows roughly as he lets himself in, morning light barely peeking through the horizon. his body heavy with emotions he’s sealed up tight and he could almost sink into how it feels to cross the threshold. “anyone home?”
The glass nearly slips from Finn’s hand when the voice cuts through the warehouse. For a second, he just stares. Ghost standing in the doorway, all long shadows and exhaustion, dawn bleeding around him like something dragged back from the grave itself. Finn’s stomach twists so hard he feels sick. Weeks. Fucking weeks of empty rooms and colder sheets and pretending he didn’t care where everyone disappeared to every night. And after the Darkness? After dying. Maybe dying? He was still tryingto figure that out. After clawing his way back through whatever screaming abyss had split his skull open and left another voice living behind his eyes?
Seeing Ghost upright feels unreal enough to make his pulse spike. The second tail lashes behind him before he can stop it. Finn quickly takes another drink from the Bloody Mary to hide it, grimacing as the vodka burns all the way down. The strange voice in the back of his head hums low, curious, but he ignores it with practiced force. “Yeah,” he says, rougher than intended. “Unfortunately.” A weak joke. Thin cover. He could hear the tremor in his voice.
He leans against the back of th chair like he isn’t fighting the urge to cross the room and physically check Ghost for bullet holes himself. “You look like shit.” Relief leaks through anyway, impossible for Finn to fully bury. His eyes drag over Ghost once, twice, taking inventory of injuries, posture, blood, breathing. Alive. He's alive. Finn exhales slowly through his nose. “The Darkness didn’t eat you either, huh?” Another sip. His hand trembles once around the glass before tightening. God, he’s tired. The warehouse suddenly feels too quiet.
“You missed some real fucked-up house bonding activities, babe.” he mutters, ears flicking irritably. “I had an aneurysm, apparently died for god knows how long, woke up hearing some asshole in my head…” He gestures vaguely behind himself with the drink. “And now I’ve got two tails. Which I’m choosing not to unpack right now.” His gaze finally settles fully on Ghost again, sharp eyes softening despite himself. “…You okay?”
Intimacy had never been something Bloodborn had issues with… because he kept things light. Physical. It was just sex. Just guys fucking their tensions away and pursuing the shattering climax that would not only ease their minds and bodies but also paint the world in different colors. There was nothing wrong with sex. It was carnal, physical - an itch that needed to be scratched and then it would be done and over with. Sometimes, he would cuddle his partner after they had done it. If it was someone he was close to, someone whom he actually liked rather than merely tolerating their existence… Sometimes he would stay the night, only to wake up with his arm wrapped around the other man's waist. Maybe even share a kiss before having to leave and go back to his usual schedule. Because sex was simple. It was not complicated. Both parts knew what they were getting into and they accepted the consequences.
But there was also the type of intimacy that scared the bejesus out of him. The emotional one. The one where his feelings would get involved, where he would toss all fucking caution to the wind and consequences be damned. Ji Hao had fallen in love before. In his younger days, before age, circumstances and powers turned him into someone more guarded and skeptical. He had his heart broken, too. Emotional pain outlasted physical pain for miles. It lingered. It festered. It turned the insides rotten. Why would he even contemplate getting close to someone in an emotional way when nothing but tragedy and heartbreak would follow? He was not perfect. He was quite the opposite of that, in fact. He relished seeing other people suffer, he felt no guilt taking other people's lives and his priority would always be looking after himself and those close enough to be considered valuable.
And being this close to Murphy scared him. It made his heart beat faster, his lips dry despite the random streams of water, his skin tingle whenever Karma's body would make contact with his own. It scared him and aroused him in equal measures. Everything within him, everything that he had grown to listen to - his gut - was telling him to back off. Step back, don't get attached to the brat. Not because Murphy was a potential nuclear bomb waiting to blow up but because of himself. He was corrupt, murderous, and cunning. People like him did not get happy endings and if he and Murphy were ever, ever to become close… Murphy would be dragged down the gutter with him. He would be at the end of the lashes, of the public scrutiny… and a man like him deserved more. Someone who would give him the world rather than paint it in blood.
His breathing suddenly hitched when Ji Hao finally realized - after seconds of looking at Karma and not paying attention to anything else - that the man he held against his body was undoing his wet jeans. It made sense. They were still half-clothed and wet clothes were a nuisance and heavy and uncomfortable. But whatever he was expecting - seeing Murphy's body in display, just in his underwear…? That ain't it. His heart beat faster for a moment and he was forced to flip the table on himself - by making his own blood flood upwards rather than downwards… otherwise he would get incredibly horny and if a damn kiss made a bathroom explode…? What would sex even do? Turn the entire fucking block into a crater?
"There is nothing to admire." Ji Hao shook his head. There truly wasn't anything about him to admire, unless one was counting the innovative ways he killed people by using their blood against their own body. Honestly, he didn't believe when Karma confessed that… but a fraction, a little portion buried deep within him… shone with pride. He didn't believe it but maybe Murphy had admired him before. Like a flicker of a candle in a vast, all-consuming darkness. A flicker of light that could bring him some degree of hope. Maybe that's why the corner of his lips curled into a barely noticeable smile as he kept admiring the younger man's face, his long fingers still exploring those gentle, smooth cheeks and perfect jaw.
It took every bit of self-restraint that he didn't even know he possessed to stop himself from kissing Karma once more. Forcing himself to look into Murphy's eyes rather than his lips. To focus on the person and not on the things he wanted to do. Even more so now that Karma was standing against his body in nothing but his skimpy underwear that definitely would leave very, very little to the imagination if he were to look from the neck down. "I don't give a fuck about the building." It was an immaterial thing. If another kiss would sink the whole block down to Hades, then that would be a price Ji Hao was willing to pay over and over again for the chance of feeling Murphy's lips against his own once more.
Alas…
"But we are still inside said building. We already have enough bruises as it is." Risking the literal sky falling on top of their heads because they couldn't resist one another would be tempting fate. Not now. Not yet. Maybe once the proverbial apocalypse was over, somewhere safe where neither one of them would need to shield the other from the consequences of their desire. "Yet, there will be a next time. I can promise you that." Bloodborn didn't know the why. Or perhaps he did, deep, deep down. Yet - dealing with his own emotions when the world around them was going to literal shit would have to wait. "Fuck the soup. If you need more energy, I can give you a temporary boost with your own blood. May last a little over half an hour." He was still trying to reach the duration of one hour with that blood boon but it was easier said than done. "However, I will still hold you while you clean yourself. Not because you might slip and break something…" Because that could definitely happen, considering the tension brewing between them… "But because I like holding you against my body. You fit perfectly. And I like that."
Murphy had spent most of his life keeping people at a comfortable distance. Not because he didn't want them close, he did, in the way you want something you've talked yourself out of wanting so many times it starts to feel like a preference instead of a wound. But craving anything too much felt dangerous for someone like him. Attachment meant vulnerability. Vulnerability meant loss. And loss never came quietly. It arrived all at once and left gaps where people used to be. So he learned how to exist beside others without letting them get all the way in. Conversations stayed light. Affection came out sideways: sarcasm, humor, brief contact he could write off afterward. And when something started to feel real he'd find a reason to pull back before it got there. Small retreats disguised as personality. The problem was he knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted it and he couldn't have it, because the closer someone got the more clearly he could see all the ways the universe might make them pay for it. His probability fed on fear. He had never run out of fear.
He was unbothered standing there in next to nothing. Anatomy was anatomy and he had never had much patience for embarrassment about that. But then he caught it, peripheral and quiet, easy to miss if he hadn't been paying the particular kind of attention he was currently paying to everything. A faint flush high across Ji Hao's cheeks. Not from the steam, he silently guessed. He didn't say anything of it. "There's nothing to admire." Ji Hao said. Murphy looked at him for a moment. Then shook his head. "I... disagree." His voice thoughtful. "Someone who could cause the kind of damage you could, and doesn't. Not because they can't, but because they keep choosing not to." He held Ji Hao's gaze, more earnest than he'd intended to be. "That's not a small thing. That's actually the whole thing." He let out short breath, something tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Which I recognize is rich coming from me. I'm not pretending otherwise." His eyes didn't move from Ji Hao's. "But I meant it." Ji Hao's fingers were still at his jaw, and Murphy felt himself lean into them without making a conscious decision to. The way you lean toward warmth without thinking. His eyes stayed up, fixed on Ji Hao's face, not on his lips, specifically not on his lips, though the effort of doing that was becoming exceedingly difficult to maintain.
He watched Ji Hao not look down. The careful way he kept his eyes up, his hands exactly where they were, holding a line that Murphy could feel the strain of because he was holding the same one from the other side. I don't give a fuck about the building. That landed somewhere it probably shouldn't have. But we are still inside said building. And then: Yet, there will be a next time. I can promise you that. The words settled low in his chest and stayed there, spreading heat outward through his ribs. He felt it move through him and pulled it back, carefully, the way you'd reel in a line with something too large on the end of it. He was aware of every point where their bodies were close. Aware of the space between them that had stopped being distance. He kept his breathing even. Kept his hands where they were. He could feel his own probability beginning to stir at the edges of him, restless, reactive, and he pressed it back down. 'Not now. Don't leak. Don't.' They were both standing at the edge of the same drop, looking down, choosing not to jump. Not yet. The recognition of it moved through him warm and strange and almost worse than the wanting itself, because he had no way to stop it or what it would cause.
"Fuck the soup." Ji Hao said, and Murphy laughed despite himself, short and genuine. The laugh felt good. It felt like something releasing that had been held too tight for too long. He listened to the extended offer and shook his head before Ji Hao had quite finished. "The offer's kind but," he said, genuine about it. "I think I just need actual food. Real food. Actual calories. The soup if it's salvageable is fine." I will still hold you while you clean yourself. Not because you might slip and break something. But because I like holding you against my body. You fit perfectly. And I like that. Murphy went quiet for a moment that stretched longer than he intended as those words fell over him. There was something almost unbearable about being wanted that plainly. I like that. Three words with nothing behind them but the truth of it, and Murphy felt them land somewhere undefended, somewhere he hadn't thought to protect because he hadn't expected anything to reach it. He was used to people wanting things from him or wanting things despite him. The plain declaration of simply being liked, being wanted close for no reason beyond the fact of it, rattled around in his chest and didn't settle. His jaw tightened. He looked away for half a second, trying to pull his thoughts back before they became something his body would broadcast. He could already feel probability twitching at the edges of him like a sentient entity. Wanting too much was risky. Longing was risky. Hope had a way of being catastrophic. Because people like him did not get to have things gently.
Murphy forced a crooked smile onto his face. "Yeah." he murmured, trying and failing to sound unaffected. "Well. You make it difficult not to stand here like an idiot and let you." His eyes betrayed him before the rest of him could. They dropped to Ji Hao's mouth for one second too long. "People do this so easily. They touch each other without calculating consequences first. They feel things without thinking about every horrible way it could end." His eyes came back up to Ji Hao's. "And you make me forget to calculate." The confession sat between them. Murphy felt the heat crawl up the back of his neck the second Bloodborn looked at him like that. Too soft. Too focused. Too close. His pulse stumbled and the air pressure in the bathroom shifted slightly. 'No.' He pulled himself back, forced his breathing flat, clamped down on the leak before reality could decide his feelings were an invitation. It left him visibly tense.
He let Ji Hao hold him while he cleaned up, moving through it quickly, a little clumsily. Every few seconds he caught himself thinking about Ji Hao's hands. About the way he had said you fit perfectly. He was almost done when he made the mistake of looking up. And without deciding to, without any part of him choosing it, Murphy's gaze dropped. Just for a second onto Bloodborn's lips. He pulled his eyes back up immediately but it was already done, the wanting moving through him like a current, something thick rose in his throat. "Entschuldigung." The reflexive shape of an apology in a rarely used language that put a little distance between the feeling and the saying of it. Sorry. For what exactly he couldn't have said. For looking. For wanting. For not being better at not doing either.
He stepped back. The absence of Ji Hao's warmth was immediate and he didn't acknowledge it. He reached past the curtain for a towel, pressed it briefly to his face, and bent to collect his soaked jeans from the shower floor. His feet caught on the wet fabric, one hand shooting out to catch the wall before he could fully embarrass himself. "Sorry." he muttered, though even he wasn't entirely sure what he was apologizing for. Pulling away. Existing like this. Maybe all of it. He straightened, tucked the jeans under his arm, and left without another word. The cool air of the hallway hit him and he moved through it toward the bedroom, toward the vague promise of finding something dry. He pushed through the doorway and started pulling open whatever drawer was nearest.
His movements slowed when his fingers brushed plastic. He paused. Then pulled out the cassette tape. For a moment he just looked at it. The label was faded, his own handwriting still legible across the front. A mixtape he had made for Milo years ago, for his birthday. He remembered staying up all night arranging the songs in the right order, obsessing over transitions, pretending the whole time that it wasn't as sentimental as it was. The casing was worn smooth at the edges. Used often. Loved, even. He set it on top of the dresser and kept looking. Something twisted sharply in his stomach and stayed there, quiet and specific, while he pulled out a shirt that wasn't his and shook it flat and put it on anyway. A slow greasy roll low in his gut that climbed upward without asking permission. His mouth had gone the specific kind of wet that was never a good sign. He went still, one hand braced on the dresser, breathing through his nose, waiting to find out which direction it intended to go. Eventually it receded. He let the air out slowly through his teeth. His eyes drifted back to the tape. He didn't pick it up. He just stood there for a moment, shirt hanging loose on his frame, the cassette sitting where he'd left it, and an ugly ache settling quietly beneath his ribs alongside everything else. "God you're so stupid..."
He'd sent the message himself. Short, no subject line, the kind that didn't require a subject line because the summons was the subject. My office. When you're free. Which was a courtesy phrasing. Ji Hao was not free. Ji Hao was whatever Hyun needed him to be for the next twenty minutes, because that was the quiet understanding that lived underneath their professional arrangement, unspoken and uncontested.
Hyun was on the phone when Ji Hao arrived. He held up one finger, indicating just a moment, and smiled, and the smile was the first unsettling thing. Not because it was false. Because it wasn't. It reached his eyes and everything, warm, the smile of a man genuinely pleased to see you, and it sat completely at odds with the fact that he was clearly ending a conversation that hadn't landed the way the other person had hoped. His voice was light. Cheerful. "No, I understand. I do. I just think you'll find that the window for that particular option has…" Hyun gave a small laugh. "Closed. Yes. Take care of yourself." He hung up and the smile stayed, seamlessly, like it had never been about the call at all. Then, almost to himself, still looking at the phone: "That whole family." He shook his head, letting out a short exhale. "Fuck." He set the phone face-down and looked up at Ji Hao with the expression of a man returning from a mildly interesting tangent. "Sorry. You know how it is. Or…" Hyun tilted his head. "You're about to."
"Sit, sit." He gestured broadly at the chair across from his desk. Then, already turning toward his monitor: "Do you want anything? Water? I have those little…" Hyun rummaged in a desk drawer without looking, and produced a small wrapped candy, which he set on the edge of the desk nearest Ji Hao with the precise placement of a man leaving an offering. "Things. From the front desk. I take them. No one has stopped me yet." He folded his hands. He looked at Ji Hao. The smile didn't change, but something behind it settled and the office was suddenly a different room than it had been ten seconds ago. "Anyway, Karma situation." Hyun said pleasantly, watching Ji Hao's face with the careful attention of someone waiting to see where a reaction might land. The name itself was light in his mouth, amused, but something about him felt fractionally out of sync. Distracted. Not visibly enough that anyone else outside of their circle would have noticed.
"You know what I find interesting?" He didn't wait for an answer. He stood, not abruptly, just fluidly, like the thought had lifted him and drifted toward the window, hands loosely clasped behind his back. He looked out at nothing in particular. "I have worked with a lot of heroes. A lot. And there's always a moment. This…" Hyun made a small, looping gesture with one finger, illustrative of something working in his head. "Moment, where someone very talented does something inexplicable, and every person in the room is watching, and you can see them doing it, and no one says anything because everyone is hoping it will simply resolve itself." He turned. Still smiling. "It never resolves itself."
He came back to the desk. Sat behind it this time. Both hands flat on the surface for a moment before he reached for his mouse. "I made a call this morning," he said, almost conversationally, navigating his desktop with the ease of a man who knows exactly where everything was. "To his sister. I thought—" a soft sound, not quite a laugh "I thought perhaps there was a reasonable person somewhere in that orbit. Someone I could have a productive exchange with." He paused, clicked something. "There was not." Another click. "No. That whole family is a—" he stopped himself, shook his head once, and the laugh came out properly this time, brief and genuine and inexplicably warm "Fucking disaster. An absolute disaster. Across the board. Generational, even. You really have to respect that kind of consistency." Hyun turned one of his monitors toward Ji Hao. "How much do you know about him, Murphy? Truly?"
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“ i’m perfectly fine, ” a grunt escaped his lips when he made an effort to sit up. immediately regretting his decision, leon decided the best course of action was to listen and accept the help from the stranger. if only he had a good source of light, heat or electricity nearby, he could've sped up the healing process. since that wasn't the case, his only option was to conserve as much energy as possible. words were hard to concentrate on, but he understood enough of what the stranger was saying to know that no zombie would bother them for a minute. that knowledge was enough to shut down the survival instinct keeping him awake, leaving meteor to fully black out.
once they entered the office and the telekinetic control dissipated, leon's consciousness briefly returned, high alert, like a man waking up from a bad dream, just enough to allow him to scan the room and make his way to the couch. a groan of relief escaped past his lips once his back hit the cushion, and his mind shut off again. he mumbled a few things in his sleep, mostly about finding his brothers.
it took hours for the actor to conquer the tiredness and get back on his feet. once awake, he looked around the unfamiliar room and started moving around to learn more about his whereabouts, with absolutely no memories of getting there. it didn't take long to cross paths with his rescuer.
“ where am i? ” was the first question in his mind, quickly followed by another inquiry. “ who are you? ” and once he finally became aware of his own nakedness, he added: “ what the fuck happened to my clothes? ”
The laugh came out of him before he could do anything about it, genuinely amused by what was unfolding in front of him. This guy, clearly built like someone had been serious about it, wandering around Hyun's office like a newborn deer figuring out what legs were for, completely bare, and still somehow managing to sound indignant about it. Like the apocalypse owed him an explanation and some pants. Hyun pressed two fingers to his mouth and let his laughter run its course before he bothered responding to any of the three questions: where am I, who are you, what the fuck happened to my clothes, delivered in rapid succession like the man was working off a list.
"Grindhouse Communications. My office to be exact." He pushed off the desk, unhurried, moving toward the spare clothes he'd already set aside in anticipation of exactly this moment. "You weren't looking so hot when I found you in the street." He picked up the stack, turned, held it out. "I brought you in, you were out for hours with your little light show. As for your clothes," he gave a small, almost apologetic tilt of his head, "I had to make a call. What did you say? Oh yeah... I'm perfectly fine." Hyun chuckles at that mental image of Leon being anything but I'm fine. You were in bad enough shape that I wasn't sure you were going to make it, and soaked fabric sitting against potential open wounds doesn't do anyone any favors. So they went. I took stock of everything before I did, brands, sizes, the works. Replacements are already being sourced. Same as what you came in with. Consider it a formal apology on my behalf." He set the stack down within reach, careful, a half-second slower than necessary, and it was in the middle of that transaction that the man asked who are you.
Hyun exhaled once through his nose. Not wounded. Something quieter than that: the specific, weary deflation of a man who had spent years being someone and had made peace with the fact that it didn't always travel the way you hoped. He searched the other man's face for some flicker of recognition. Nothing. "Right," he said softly, more to himself than the room. "Ribbon, built that name in Korea before I crossed over and joined the Bloodhounds, retired early due to my health taking a toll give my particular skillset. Now I do PR for this place, which is its own kind of violence I suppose. You can call me Hyun though." He let that settle, then tilted his head, something shifting in his expression. "The funny thing is, I already know who you are. Leon... or should I say Meteor?" He said with a knowing smile, tapping his chin with his pointer finger. "Mm. You were calling for your brothers in your sleep, by the way. Didn't seem like you knew you were doing it." Hyun glanced at his phone as it buzzed, not particularly caring if Leon thought him to be rude. "I know your brothers too. Know of them, anyway. Your family's reputation gets around whether you're maintaining it or not." He moved toward the door, pausing in the frame to glance back with an expression that was almost manic. "So you can save the introduction. Put some pants on first. The world didn't completely end, but there's still such a thing as dignity."
Their exchange was becoming more and more dangerous by the second. Not because of the risk that the entire apartment could potentially collapse on their heads and bury them both under the debris… but because they were both so physically and mentally exhausted. That made things dangerous. There would be energy left to filter their words. There would be no point in concealing the ugly truths that both of them kept hidden from the world. They were just raw in their essence. Physically battered, emotionally drained and their feelings were all over the place. Their brains lacked the necessary energy to stop their mouths from moving. It lacked the required brain processing power to stop them from being what they were now.
Vulnerable.
Ji Hao remained silent as Murphy spoke. He was beginning to understand the whole hero complex of putting himself in the line of danger from someone else. Not something he would have done before. Not someone he willingly did now… but he understood where the need came from. When there was someone who needed protection, a safe haven - instincts would kick in and they would do something fucking foolish like shielding someone else from an exploding mirror. "There's a lower chance of the glass to kill me than your tendency to nearly hit me with vehicles." It was his attempt to crack a joke. To make light of the situation they were both finding themselves in. And while he understood why Karma had done what he did, it didn't necessarily mean that the villain turned hero accepted it. Murphy could see that both of them were worth saving, while Ji Hao saw a clear difference. He was tainted by the horrors of his past. By the things he did, the people he killed. If Murphy ever killed someone, it was probably an accident derived from his powers. But when Bloodborn did it? It was intentional. Because he wanted to kill people.
A dark chuckle dances past the older man's lips as he keeps Murphy secure under the shower water. Having his lifespan decreased by thirty years wouldn't be that terrible, considering the chance that neither of them would survive this whole ordeal. A darker thought that he did not voice, replaced by one mixture of confusion and affection when the sudden admission came from Murphy's lips. That the kiss was not an accident. That the kiss they shared was perfectly and completely intentional from his end. It stunned Bloodborn for a moment. Not because of the words themselves but the raw honesty behind Karma. It would be easier to lie. To say it was an accident or even not to say anything at all. It would allow them both to brush what had transpired between them under a rug. Yet - saying it out loud forced both of them to confront that reality. That the kiss happened because someone wanted to. Because a part of them wished it into existence.
"Murphy." Ji Hao tenderly kept his arm around the younger man's waist. Securing him against his body, not afraid of him or for him - but simply because there was a part within him that craved that physical proximity more than he was openly willing to admit. Perhaps all those near-death experiences they both dealt with recently had put things into a different perspective. Maybe they just didn't want to be alone, maybe there was indeed some lingering feelings toward one another. Maybe they were just insane and acting on sheer instinct. To hell with the consequences. The fucking world could end any second now. He lifted Karma's chin with his free hand, their gazes meeting for a moment of silence where only the water cascading around them and against the shower walls and floor acted as a soundtrack.
If he kissed him now - what would explode next?
"I don't regret it either." The confession is provided with a such a low voice, with such an unfamiliar vulnerability that Bloodborn nearly kicks himself for that momentary weakness. But he wanted Murphy to know. It had happened. It was brief. But it did happen and while it would definitely be easier to consider it an accident… their brains were too tired to be able to lie or conceal. Raw honesty as the world came to shit around them. "As brief as it was." One of his curled fingers brushes against Karma's locks, pushing his wet hair away from his face. No one knew what would happen to them. If they were alive, dead, if another kiss would make the fucking building collapse around them. "Maybe next time… we don't kiss near anything that might explode on us." Perhaps it would be more enjoyable that way. Perhaps they would both be able to actually go for it rather than just… wait for lightning to strike on their heads. "I know I am a good kisser but never thought I'd be causing shit to explode." Another attempt at a joke. To lighten the mood, to make Murphy laugh. To lift their mood after such raw, emotional confessions.
"It's all going to be alright, Murphy. Just remember… shit happens."
"There's a lower chance of the glass killing me than your tendency to nearly hit me with vehicles." Karma laughed under his breath at that, rough and exhausted, the sound fraying apart before it could become anything warm. "In my defense," he muttered, "you moved like you had a death wish. Be more vigilant next time." His mouth twitched faintly despite himself. It was easier to joke than acknowledge how badly seeing Ji Hao almost get hit by the sedan had terrified him. Easier than admitting that for one horrifying second downstairs, Murphy had genuinely thought he was about to watch him die. He swallowed and shoved the thought away, blinking water from his lashes.
The shower water ran over both of them in uneven streams, tracing blood, ash, and dirt down the drain while the apartment groaned around them like it might finally give up and collapse. Somewhere deeper in the walls another crack split the silence. Steam moved through the ruined bathroom in slow, indifferent curls. Ji Hao's body against his felt too solid, too grounding, and that alone was enough to make Murphy's chest ache in ways far more dangerous than shattered glass or unstable probability ever could be.
He hated that Ji Hao still carried himself like a man halfway convinced he belonged in a grave. Even now, held there beneath the lukewarm water, Murphy could see it written all over him. Too violent. Too stained by his own choices to deserve the same mercy he gave everyone else. Every life Bloodborn had ever buried still clung to his skin no matter how much had already washed away tonight.
"Is it silly if I say," Murphy started quietly, gaze fixed on Ji Hao beneath dripping lashes, "you make me not hate my name?" Something uncertain moved across his face as he watched him. "It sounds different when you say it." His forehead dipped forward, nearly touching Bloodborn's shoulder as he tried to steady the riot happening inside his ribs, his mind flashing briefly back to the car. "But the car. Maybe I lost control when it happened to me. Maybe yours was intentional." He swallowed thickly, jaw tightening for half a second. "That doesn't erase the fact that you still pulled me out of danger tonight. You still helped me when that mirror blew apart. You still—"
Care. The word nearly slipped free before he caught it and buried it behind his teeth. "I know what you've done. I know what you think it makes you." His thumb brushed once against the damp skin of Ji Hao's arm, slow and grounding. "But every time things go bad, you still throw yourself in front of the damage anyway. Every fucking time." A shaky exhale left him. God, they were both too tired for this. Too stripped raw to hide behind sarcasm and half-truths anymore. Every emotion sat exposed now, impossible to shove back down and ignore.
And then Murphy told the truth about the kiss. Not an accident. Not confusion. Not adrenaline. Intentional. He felt Ji Hao still against him after that, just for a second, something flickering across his face. Because Murphy knew exactly what he had done by saying it aloud. There was no taking it back now. No pretending it had simply happened in the chaos. He had wanted it. Some reckless, selfish part of him had looked at Bloodborn in that moment and chosen him anyway. "Yeah," Karma said softly, voice nearly drowned beneath the rushing water. "Turns out I kissed you on purpose. Tragic news for both of us." The joke came weak, fragile around the edges. Because Ji Hao was still holding him. Not out of obligation, not restraint, not fear. Murphy could feel it in the way the older man's arm stayed firm around his waist, in the unconscious pull keeping their bodies flush together beneath the spray. It would have been easy to step back. There was room to. Yet neither of them moved an inch.
That was when the discomfort finally caught up with him. His jeans had been soaked through since before they'd even made it upstairs, and now the denim had gone heavy and mean against his skin, chafing raw at his hips and thighs with every small shift of weight. Murphy grimaced faintly, glancing downward before working at the button with one hand, the other still loosely anchored at Ji Hao's side. Stubborn, clinging, completely indignant about being removed while he was still tangled up against another person in a cramped shower. A short, boyish sound escaped him, unguarded in a way most of his laughter wasn't. "Okay," he muttered, struggling as the waistband fought back with impressive dedication. "This is— hold on." The fabric peeled reluctantly, catching at his thighs. He had to shift awkwardly to work them down, which did absolutely nothing for his dignity and everything for the absurdity of the moment. Eventually he managed it, shoving the soaked jeans aside and exhaling like he'd won something small but real. When he looked back up at Ji Hao, the faint flush riding high on his cheekbones had nothing to do with the steam. "Only fair," he said, tilting his head slightly against Ji Hao's fingers where they still rested at his jaw. The movement was lazy, instinctive, the way an animal leans into a hand it's decided to trust. His mouth curved, small and wry. "You've seen basically everything else tonight anyway."
Water ran in rivulets down the bridge of his nose, pooling briefly at the corner of his mouth as his gaze drifted toward the soap forgotten in its shelf against the tile, something so mundane against everything the night had become. Then he looked back at Ji Hao. He studied him the way he rarely let himself, taking in the exhaustion etched into his face, the sharpness that still lived underneath it, the way Bloodborn existed in a room like he was always half-prepared to be asked to leave it. Murphy's throat worked once. "I'm glad I'm not alone," he said quietly, laying it out plain and open, something for Ji Hao to do whatever he wanted with. "At the end of the world." A small laugh escaped him. "I always admired you." Low, barely spoken, like he was afraid the walls themselves would overhear. "Even when you were the villain." His voice dropped further, nearly beneath the sound of the water entirely. "Ji Hao." The name sat differently in his mouth than Bloodborn ever had. Like handling something fragile, or worse, something that might mean too much. His gaze dipped briefly before finding Ji Hao's eyes again. Neither of them moved. The building creaked somewhere overhead, indifferent to all of it.
Murphy's fingers slid upward, curling loosely against the back of Ji Hao's neck. The pulse beneath his fingertips was steady despite everything, despite the destruction and emotional wreckage still hanging between them. Human. Alive. When Ji Hao lifted his chin, Karma felt his pulse stumble hard in his chest. All he could hear was water crashing against porcelain and the uneven sound of both their breathing. Ji Hao's fingers at his jaw were warm despite everything, roughened from violence and survival and years of carrying too much death in his hands. Murphy looked up through wet strands of hair, and the intensity in Bloodborn's gaze pulled something loose in him. "Next time?" he asked softly. He leaned closer, not enough to kiss him, not yet, but enough that their breaths mixed warm between them, enough that the remaining space became almost unbearable. His gaze flickered once, briefly, helplessly, to Ji Hao's mouth before returning upward. "You keep looking at me like that," he murmured, "and we're probably gonna bring the whole fucking building down ourselves." The world could end tomorrow. Hell, at this rate, it could end tonight. And somehow this still felt like the most dangerous thing in the room. "Also," Murphy added quietly, breath ghosting warm between them, "the soup is probably cold by now. So, I don't think everything will be alright."
Many wouldn't have noticed the little changes in Blitzen's demeanor. The way he was so protective, how attentive he was, picking up on your patterns, studying you as if you were the only thing he'd ever wish to memorize. How he truly figured Ducky out in the time they've been together, and for once, the doctor was the one who felt the tender love and care that's been missing from his life. He had found it the first day they met, when Blitzen had been sleeping under a shabby tent in the rain, holes in the fabric that could do little against the rampaging droplets from above. It had been mating season, and his natural instincts were heightened; he was irritable in ways that seemed explosive, but Ducky hadn't been frightened, because he saw a bigger fear in Blitzen's eyes, and once he offered the man solace, he began that steady descent into the unknown, into that very scary thing called love. "You make it sound as if I don't, but I have contingency plans for everything. You were the only thing I didn't plan, the only thing that ever caught me off guard, and I've been grateful for it ever since we met. Do you know what pirates are? Remember that movie about those men on the boat who sail to sea in search of treasure? Well, you're mine."
You don't get to fix me while you're hurting. That was the very first time anyone had ever said something like that to Ducky. It had brought him back when he was nothing more than a child, used for his abilities by men who used him as a cure for their group. He had no real voice, no freedom, just a band-aid for them. For so long, he was nothing more than an object, so when Blitzen came barreling into his life, for once, the doctor was at a loss for words. Ducky, who always had a smartass retort, who never kept quiet, and always spoke his mind because he hated the fact that at one point in life, he wasn't allowed to. So every word, every little touch, every act of service, all the the love languages, they resonated with him, in every way that mattered. Because Ducky finally felt as if he did matter. To Blitzen.
With the pill in his system and some water to go along with it, he could will his internal system to begin its own healing process, as color finally returned to his face, and his gaze steadied. "I'm sorry," was all he could say because he knew Blitzen did indeed deserve an apology. For so long, he'd been so used to putting others before himself, that not once did he ever consider the opposite could ever happen. Then here Blitzen was, muscle and horn, slow blinking eyes sometimes filled with confusion, but often just filled with pure unfiltered devotion. "It was silly of me to think you'd ever even agree to something stupid, and I know for a fact neither of us is stupid. So I'm sorry, but before I say anything else, let me just say this." Ducky said, clearing his throat, feeling much better than earlier. "Blitzen Guerrero, I am so hopelessly in love with you, and I never thought I deserved to be loved the way you do, so honest, so devoted and passionate. Your curiosity and thirst for life have made me happier, your arms make me feel so safe, and I know that you'd rather rearrange the world, than see me get hurt. I love you, and I promise you, I'll never do something like that again."
As Blitzen's fingers found his core, rubbing against the sheer sweat slicked fabric, Ducky couldn't do much more than arch into his touch, his head thrown back slightly as his lips parted and little whimpers began to echo. Involuntary little thrusts, began in rhythmically chasing the high Blitzen's finger provided. "I don't mean to worry you," he said in between pants. The next few sets of words made him throw his head back in laughter, pulling his boyfriend closer as he captured his lips. "I fucking love you...Now," he stopped, smiling with an impish grin as he guided Blitzen's head lower towards his wet core. "Please,"
He didn't say anything for a long time. That wasn't unusual for him. Ducky knew by now that the silence wasn't emptiness, just the way Blitzen processed things. Slowly, like turning something over in his hands to look at every side before deciding what it was. He sat very still, and his eyes had gone that particular soft that they only ever did around Ducky, the kind that made him look younger somehow, less like something the world had weathered. His brow did that small confused furrow, like the words had landed somewhere in his chest and he wasn't entirely sure what to do with them there.
He reached out first. Didn't say anything yet, just took Ducky's hand in both of his and looked down at it for a moment like he was figuring out how to hold it right. "I didn't know," he said finally, very quietly. "That you felt like that. That you didn't think you..." He stopped. Tried again. "You always seemed so sure of everything." It wasn't an accusation. Just honest, the way Blitzen always was, a little clumsy with it sometimes but never cruel. He looked up then and his eyes were glassy in a way he clearly hadn't prepared for, blinking once like he was surprised to find them that way.
"I love you too." Simple, just that, first, because it felt like the most important thing and he wanted it out before anything else could get in the way of it. His thumb moved absently over Ducky's knuckles while he seemed to gather the rest. "I wasn't sure if it was the right word, for a while. Love." He flicked his ears, biting the flesh of his lip. "I just knew I didn't want to be anywhere you weren't. And I didn't like it when you were hurting." He seemed to consider that for a moment, then added, with complete and total sincerity, "I looked it up, actually. What it's supposed to feel like." He said it without a trace of embarrassment, because it simply hadn't occurred to him that there was anything embarrassing about it. "The things it said... I already felt them. I just didn't have the name yet."
He was quiet again after that, and then softer, almost careful with it: "You don't have to apologize so much. I wasn't angry." His ears dipped slightly the way they always did when he was admitting something that made his heart race. "I was scared. There's a difference." He didn't let go of his hand. His other hand gently teasing the slick fabric, pressing gently up against Ducky's throbbing core. He could smell him, a soft huff leaving him, listening to every breathy whimper Ducky let out under his touch. The scent of his arousal leaving a taste on his tongue from memory alone. His mouth waters at the sight of Ducky, his body laid out before him.
The doctor's skin is flushed a rosy pink, sweat beading at his temples, his chest heaving with anticipation. Blitzen can see the way Ducky's pulse races in his neck, can hear the hitch in his breath. He can smell the sweet, intoxicating scent of Ducky's arousal, and it makes his mouth water, his cock throb against his jeans. "I was trying to be good." Blitzen mumbles as he leans in, his antlers brushing against Ducky's thighs, the velvet softness a stark contrast to the rough, calloused texture of his hands. He can see the way Ducky's body shudders at the touch, can hear the soft moan that escapes his lips. He smiles, a dark, predatory smile, and teases his thighs. He has claimed Ducky, has marked him, has made him his. And he will do it again, and again, and again, until neither of them can move, can think, can do anything but feel.
His tongue flicks out, the first lick a tentative exploration. He can taste the salt of Ducky's sweat, the sweetness of his skin. He can feel the way Ducky's body convulses at the touch, can hear the gasp that escapes his lips. It spurs him on, makes him want more. He delves in deeper as he teases the doctor's clit, swirling his tongue around it and sucking on it gently. Ears twitching at every sound that elicits from the both of them. His tongue exploring every inch of Ducky's core almost territorily. He can feel the heat, the wetness, the soft, velvety texture. He can taste the sweetness that's uniquely Ducky, can feel the way Ducky's body writhes, the way his hips buck, seeking more. "Mine..." He hums playfully against his skin, gently gripping Ducky's hips, holding him in place, anchoring him as he licks his folds in slow, lazy strokes before swirling his tongue around the hardened bud. He can feel the hard ridges of Ducky's hip bones, the soft give of his flesh. He can feel the way Ducky's muscles tense, the way his body trembles. He can feel the way Ducky's fingers claw at his back, dark eyes catching the way his head thrashes from side to side.
He can feel the pleasure building in Ducky, can taste it in the sweetness that coats his tongue. He can hear it in the moans that escape Ducky's lips, can feel the way his body tenses, the way his breath hitches. Blitzen pulls back, just enough to look into Ducky's eyes. They are wild, unfocused, lost in the pleasure. He can see the way Ducky's pupils are dilated, the way his lips are parted, gasping for breath. He wants to watch Ducky come undone under him, his body shaking with the force of his release. Blitzen smiles softly as he looks up at Ducky, checking in on him as his chin glistens with the evidence of his boyfriend's pleasure. "Keep going? Or..." His voice drifts off, unsure if Ducky wants to rest, have him continue, or go further.
TW: graphic violence, character death (karma's sanity), minor character death, civilian casualties, child death, mental breakdown, dissociation, car accidents, loss of grip on reality, self-harm (minor), graphic injury. Read to YUNGBLUD's "The Freak Show"
It starts small.
A woman fleeing the street twists her ankle at the exact wrong angle. The man trying to catch her slips on shattered glass that wasn't there a second ago. A fire escape gives out beneath the weight it held perfectly fine for twenty years. Somewhere overhead, a helicopter clips the corner of a billboard. Coincidences. Tiny, awful coincidences. Then Karma loses another piece of control, and coincidence becomes contagion.
The residential district dies by coincidence. That is the worst part. Not explosions. Not fire. Not some clean, cinematic catastrophe. Things simply start going wrong around Karma in escalating, impossible chains of bad luck that spread outward from him like infection. A mother slips while dragging her child down the porch steps and snaps her ankle at the exact second a power line tears loose overhead. A car swerves to avoid a mutated corpse stumbling into the road, hydroplanes on bloodslick pavement, and slams broadside into a gas main already weakened by a collapsing telephone pole. Every accident births three more. Every mistake multiplies.
The giant bat-creatures dive through the smoke above him and one clips a chimney at the wrong angle and spirals screaming into an apartment complex. They don't reach him. They never reach him. Everything around him fails catastrophically. Except the things trying to kill him. Those fail worse. People trying to help each other become obstacles to survival instead. A man grabs his wife just before falling debris crashes down exactly where they would have been, except the impact ruptures a steam pipe beneath them that blasts upward hard enough to skin flesh from bone. Karma makes a sound like he's choking. "No no no no no..." But the chaos feeds on panic. The more terrified he becomes, the more vicious the probabilities grow. Wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong person. Every probability around him begins selecting the cruelest possible outcome.
A nearby apartment sheds windows in a glittering avalanche. Not because he touched it. Not because he aimed at it. Because one bolt in the exterior support structure happened to fail. Then another. Then another. A chain reaction of catastrophic luck races upward through the building like disease through veins. People scream from inside. His breathing stutters. See? "No." Every room you enter becomes a statistical massacre. "I save people!" Karma snaps suddenly. A crackling red discharge tears from his hands, scarring the flesh of his arms, and sends a parked car through the front of a house. The kind of uncontrolled release that bleeds out of him when his focus splinters. The reaction infects the world around him with imbalance. A nearby construction crane groans violently as if startled. "I save people. I HAVE saved people." Temporarily. The word hits harder than anything physical could.
Around him, reality develops a kind of malicious clumsiness. Bad luck spreads through the surrounding streets in invisible waves. You can see where it touches because things start failing. And Karma walks through the center of it all like the eye of a hurricane too exhausted to care anymore. He can feel it happening before it does. Every terrible outcome blooms in his mind all at once like flowers opening. He sees people crushed before the building even falls. He sees blood before bones break. He sees survivors become casualties because of one misplaced step, one jammed exit, one slipping hand. His power doesn't destroy directly. It simply makes sure the worst thing possible happens.
There is a woman in a yellow coat on the corner. Karma sees her the moment he turns the block. She is pulling a child by the hand through the smoke, moving fast, head down. He watches her without meaning to. His misfortune notices her too.
Her foot finds the one broken grate in the sidewalk.
She goes down hard, twisting to protect the child, and the motion carries her into the path of a fleeing car that was already swerving from something else entirely. Karma watches the yellow coat disappear under the front bumper. He stands very still while the sound of it settles over the street. He does not look away. He makes himself not look away. "I'm… good." The words are barely audible beneath the screaming and collapsing homes. A nearby house immediately suffers the consequences. Its foundation gives out all at once with a noise like the Gods grinding their teeth. The entire structure tilts sideways into the neighboring home, dominoing both into the street where panicked civilians are already running. Someone disappears beneath splintering wood. Someone else is hit by flying debris hard enough to spin them midair. Windows burst up and down the street in rapid succession like gunfire. A fire escape collapses with people still on it. Cars fly up and slam into each other turning every intersection into violent metal carnage.
His boots crunch over broken glass and teeth indistinguishably. Zombies claw toward him from lawns and overturned vehicles, bodies swollen and mutating. Knees dislocate. Vertebrae snap. One trips and impales itself through the eye on exposed rebar jutting from the sidewalk. Another gets too close just as a second-story air conditioning unit tears free from weakened brickwork and crushes its skull into pulp beside him. He doesn't look at them. He looks ahead with hollow, sleepless eyes while the neighborhood destroys itself trying to exist around him. The smell of gasoline, blood, electrical fire, and opened bodies thickens the air until breathing feels pointless. "No heroes leave this behind..." Karma whispers brokenly. A bus trying to evacuate survivors blows a tire. Just one tire. That's all bad luck ever needs. The vehicle jackknifes instantly across the road. A bat-monster crashes through it from above at the exact same moment. Metal folds inward around screaming passengers. Arms reach from broken windows. Someone crawls halfway out before another bat slams the wreck sideways.
Karma stops moving. For one grueling second, everything around him seems to hold its breath. Then his psyche fractures open. "You didn't mean that Murphy." he tells himself quietly. A quiet voice answers from somewhere inside his skull, weaving itself between his own thoughts so cleanly he can't tell where one ends and the other starts. Didn't you? "I'm trying to help." Then why is she dead. He doesn't answer. The yellow coat. Why is she dead. His expression twitches violently. "I'm trying to help." Look around you. He does. The neighborhood looks cursed. Homes burn unevenly, flames crawling in unnatural directions. Hydrants erupt with blackened water. Corpses litter lawns beside people still dying in pieces. The zombies aren't even the greatest threat to the area anymore.
He is.
Karma bites his lip hard enough to draw blood beneath his teeth. "Stop. Talking." You know it's true. "No." Everywhere you go becomes a mass casualty event. A collapsing balcony crushes a parked car. The impact forces the horn to blare continuously, startling fleeing civilians into the street towards the zombies shambling through the intersection. Bodies hit pavement wrong. Bones breach skin. Someone is screaming for their daughter somewhere in the smoke. "Shit happens Murphy... shit happens... and it happens and it happens and it happens..." Karma laughs suddenly. Not because anything is funny. Because his mind is beginning to split under the unbearable statistical weight of disaster. The laugh keeps going past the point where a sane person would stop. It bends upward at the edges and doesn't come back down. He presses the back of his hand against his mouth and the laugh leaks out anyway, shaking his shoulders, shaking his whole chest, while the street burns and the screaming gets closer and he stands in the exact center of it all, the absolute fixed point around which every catastrophe orbits, and he cannot stop, he cannot stop, he cannot stop.
"Chaos... chaos isn't heroic." Karma finally gasps through a broken laugh, and his voice sounds like it belongs to someone else entirely, someone watching from very far away. "Bad luck isn't heroic. There's nothing heroic about this." His eyes are unfocused now, staring through reality instead of at it. Around him, the world suffers microscopic failures faster than physics can correct them. Bolts loosen from buildings. Glass stress-fractures spontaneously. Guns jam in the hands of officers. Staircases collapse under fleeing weight. "They were right. Everyone was right." He whispers to himself as every possibility nearby trends toward tragedy. And Karma is the centerpoint all of it curves around. "I destroy things." Murphy whispers. Yes. "I hurt people." Yes.
"I didn't want to...?" But even he sounds uncertain now. The voice inside him grows calmer while he grows more frantic, the two of them moving in opposite directions down a corridor that is narrowing. Intent doesn't matter to the dead. Something in him tears completely. Not physically. Mentally. His thoughts stop lining up correctly. One part of him is horrified. Another is numb. Another is quietly fascinated by the precision of the disasters unfolding around him. He watches a rooftop collapse at the exact angle necessary to kill a mutated zombie while simultaneously crushing three civilians beneath the debris, and somewhere deep inside himself, he understands the mathematics of that outcome instinctively. The realization makes him sick.
"It's fine..." Karma says suddenly, backing through the street. Every panicked step triggers more catastrophe. He bumps a parked car and the unstable wreck beside it shifts and crushes someone underneath. He looks toward a burning house and weakened support beams immediately fail, bringing the second floor down onto the survivors trapped inside. People are dying because he notices them. Because probability itself is trying to please him. "It's fine it's fine it's fine—" His breathing has gone somewhere past ragged, past animalistic, into something with no name. He gestures vaguely at a collapsing storefront like he might explain it to someone. "That was going to happen anyway." A fleeing civilian slips on blood and disappears beneath stampeding crowds. He watches them go with bright, empty eyes. "I'm helping." he tells no one, voice cracking high and strange on the last word. "I'm still helping. I'm still—"
Then something behind his eyes goes out.
He stops backing away. Stops flinching. Stops tracking the disasters as they unspool around him. His hands drop to his sides. His breathing evens out with a slowness that has nothing calm about it, the way water goes still right before it freezes. The screaming continues. The fires continue. Somewhere very close a child is crying and then isn't anymore. Karma doesn't turn toward the sound. He doesn't turn away from it either. He just stands in the street while the world he has made burns itself flat around him, and his face holds nothing. Not horror. Not guilt. Not the fractured, hysterical grief of a man watching himself become a monster. Nothing. The part of him that was keeping score has stopped keeping score. The part of him that knew what the yellow coat meant has gone somewhere he can't follow.
He starts walking again. Not away from anything. Not toward anything. Just walking like a windup toy on a path of destruction. A zombie lurches into his path and its spine inverts and it folds to the ground and he steps over it without breaking stride. A building sheds its facade in a roaring curtain of brick and glass directly ahead and the debris parts around him like a river around a stone and he walks through the gap without slowing. He is not navigating. He is not surviving. He is simply moving through a world that keeps destroying itself to make room for him, and somewhere very deep and very quiet, beneath the place where thought used to live, something that is no longer quite Karma understands that this is just how it is. How it has always been. How it will keep being.
The street behind him erupts into a chorus of screams he doesn't hear anymore. And the disasters don't follow him. They come home to him. And the worst thing, the thing that no longer has a mind left to flinch away from it, is that some part of what remains recognizes the feeling. Has always recognized it. The way you recognize a place you've never been but somehow already know the layout of. Every door exactly where you expected. Every room already familiar. He has always been here. He just needed everything to burn down around him before he could finally stop pretending otherwise.
Carlos couldn't stop his eyes from rolling briefly before he ordered CELYN to retract the helmet of his suit. And soon enough he was staring at the other with his face visible as he tilted his head and fully got the opportunity to take the other creature's appearance in. “I know you know how to walk. I just wanna-forget it.” Carlos cut himself off mid-rant with an almost exhausted sounding sigh as he shook his head as he looked at the large ass creature. Deciding picking a fight probably wasn't the smartest idea. Not when so many drones needed recharging and were low on ammunition.
He actually made it into the salvage yard a few seconds before the transformation began. He couldn't help but to wince as he saw all of the stuff going on with his own eyes. If someone else had told him a few hours ago, even with Miracles and such? Angel wasn't sure if he would believe them. But after the stuff he's seen now? Carlos was a bit more open to the idea. Carlos walked confidently when it seemed like the transformation was complete, and a form a lot more convient was left behind. “Silence,” he didn't raise his voice at the nearby people but there was no questioning the authority in it, “or do you want more of those demonic creatures swarming the area?” He offered them a calming smile. “This guy here was out there helping protect people. So if anyone has a problem with him resting and getting treated here? Let me know, and I'll be more than happy to send you on your way.”
Despite his voice having it's usual kindness, there was a firmness to it. Someone who's not afraid to lead or make tough decisions when it's needed. Carlos did let out a relieved sigh as no one seemed to challenge him. “Glad we're in agreement." He finally turned back towards the other. “CELYN, scan him for injuries. Anything you need to tell me that might make our job easier?” Carlos asked as he moved beside the other, a few drones coming by with some equipment for him.
"Don't... touch the blood... it is acidic..." The scan request earned Carlos exactly what he probably expected and didn't want. A readout that made very little conventional sense. Aether's synthetic skin had torn along both shoulders and down the left side of his ribcage, exposing wiring beneath that twitched intermittently like something still trying to decide if it was alive. Three of his lower ribs, the artificial ones, ceramic-composite by the look of them, had fractured and not yet fully realigned. His internal temperature read seventeen degrees below what any living thing should have been running at. His heartbeat, when CELYN managed to locate it, was irregular in a way that suggested the organ doing the beating wasn't entirely biological. Or wasn't entirely one thing. The blood still clinging to him wasn't registering as any known compound.
Aether hadn't moved from the concrete. He was staring out at the junk with half-lidded eyes, breathing in the shallow, rattiling in a way of something reminding itself it was supposed to. His fingers had found a crack in the floor and were tracing it absently. When Carlos crouched beside him the tired drifted over slowly. "The wiring." His voice had settled somewhat. Still rough. Still carrying that odd doubled quality, like two sounds occupying the same frequency. His eyes dropped to his own torso almost clinically, the way someone might inspect a machine they were responsible for rather than a body they lived inside. "None of it fixes itself. I need someone who knows what they're looking at." He said it without apology. The flat delivery of someone who had stopped finding the fact humiliating a long time ago.
Fingers left the crack in the floor and pressed carefully against the exposed section along his ribs. The wiring flinched with residual current. He didn't seem bothered as he sat up slowly. "The plating here is cracked. Not broken through but the ribs underneath shifted during the transformation. They won't realign without being physically reset." His hand moved upward to one shoulder, pressing against torn synthetic skin. "This one is surface damage mostly. The tissue underneath is intact. The other one..." His eyes tracked across without him turning his head. "It is not surface damage." Something had punched clean through the joint housing at some point. He demonstrated anyway. Slowly. The arm moved but not cleanly, a faint grinding accompanying the motion that had no business sounding the way it did. He let it drop back against the concrete. "The housing needs to be manually reset." As if in quiet acknowledgment of that, something shifted faintly beneath the torn skin along his ribs. Not healing. Just… holding. Pressure applied from the inside by something that understood urgency without understanding engineering. "The temperature reading is always wrong. CELYN will flag it. Don't let it change what you prioritize."
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In the midst of all this chaos, one of the only recurring thoughts on Layken's mind, was Aether. Where he was, if he was okay, how much damage had he taken because he knew, he just knew, Astro Boy had thrown himself into as much danger as possible. Frown lines would soon begin forming the more he worried about that robot and his incessant need to be a damsel in distress, but as soon as he found him, all frustration and annoyance, dissipated like smoke in the wind. Pulling Aether close, wrapping his arms around his lithe frame, he listened to distorted static first, the way his body clicked and whirred before he fell back into his regular speech pattern.
The something in question, Layken had seen before, a creature with many eyes that rampaged once before, when that demon child was set loose. "I know, I've seen it," he mentioned with nonchalance as he rested his chin on Aether's head, fingers lazily combing through his dark curls. "I can explain later, but right now..." Home, that was the word that cut off his train of thought, and all fight had drained out of him instantly. "Let's go home," he mumbled into his hair as he scooped him into his arms from below, ensuring Aether's legs were wrapped around his waist, torso pressed against his as he walked back home.
In their not-so-humble abode, Layken set Aether down on their shared bed, leaving him alone as he went to gather the necessary things. It only took a few moments before he was padding back to Aether. "Here's a new battery pack for you, and before you say anything, I stocked up the first day you got here. I knew you'd need them eventually. There are spare parts and a few select upgrades for you, too, but right now I want you to use the new pack and nothing else. You're not allowed to leave me again; you stay by my side. Do you understand me?
I can't afford to lose you. Layken thought but didn't say as he came closer, kissing Aether briefly in a soft yet longing kiss. "Pack now," he ordered. " I can't lose my favorite henchman roommate, or my damsel."
The moment Layken's arms wrapped around him again, Aether felt something in his systems loosen. Not mechanically, though several strained servos did finally stop screaming warnings through his frame, but something deeper than circuitry. Something warm and aching and terribly human that he still did not have proper terminology for. He had known Layken would be angry, or annoyed at the very least. Aether had thrown himself directly into collapsing debris, burning buildings, and got swallowed an eldritch monstrosity with more eyes than should exist on a single creature. Statistically speaking, Layken should have been furious with him for the recklessness alone. Instead, he was being held. The movement jostled damaged components beneath synthetic flesh and he winced faintly, quiet clicking noises following the motion. Still, he tucked himself closer. The word echoed strangely through him: home. Not coordinates, not a designated charging station, not a laboratory or docking chamber. Home.
By the time they reached the bedroom, Aether's internal systems had degraded enough that his balance compensation was struggling to keep up. When Layken set him down onto the bed, the android remained seated exactly where he was placed, posture slumped slightly forward as dim blue light pulsed unevenly beneath the artificial skin along his throat and collarbone. He frowned as Layken left but didn't bother to follow. Drawers opening, footsteps against the floor, the rustle of packaging. Aether lowered his gaze when Layken returned, optics immediately landing on the battery pack in his hands. His processor stalled for half a second. "You stocked replacements?" he repeated softly, voice quieter now, roughened around the edges by static distortion. The realization struck harder than the actual damage had. Layken had prepared for his needs before they were ever necessary. No one had done that before, not for him. Aether stared at the battery for a long moment before finally reaching for it with careful fingers, his tail gave one weak twitch behind him.
Then came the order: you're not allowed to leave me again. Aether's eyes flickered upward immediately. There it was again, that fear Layken refused to say aloud, the fear of losing him. Something in Aether's chest tightened painfully around the damaged housing of his core. The kiss surprised him. It was brief, soft, longing in a way that made warmth flood violently through synthetic nerves never meant to carry emotion this intensely. "You keep calling me a damsel," he murmured weakly once Layken pulled back, trying and failing to sound offended. "But you are the one that is distressed." Despite the teasing, there was no resistance in him. Only exhaustion, only relief.
Slowly, Aether brought trembling fingers to the center of his chest. A nearly invisible seam split apart beneath his touch with a soft mechanical hiss, revealing the recessed battery port beneath synthetic plating. Internal lights flickered erratically inside the compartment, unstable from overexertion and damage. Even exposed like this, vulnerable in a way few people ever saw, he trusted Layken enough not to shield himself. His gaze lifted again as he pressed the release mechanism and removed the failing power cell from his chest. The movement caused his systems to dip sharply for a moment, body swaying as several lights dimmed dangerously low. "Apologies," he whispered, voice briefly fragmented by static. "Power reserves at three percent." He hated sounding weak, hated that Layken had to see him like this. Carefully, he inserted the new battery into the port embedded in his chest. The connection triggered instantly, a deep hum resonating through his frame as power surged back online, stabilizing failing systems one by one.
Blue light spread steadily beneath his skin again, no longer flickering but glowing warm and strong across the lines of his throat, collarbone, and chest. "Better..." he breathed. Much better. His head tipped forward until his forehead rested lightly against Layken's shoulder, curls brushing against his neck as he stayed there for a long moment simply listening to him breathe. Then, quieter and softer: "I did not leave because I wished to." His fingers curled gently into Layken's shirt again. "You were in danger. My priority matrix continually reroutes itself towards protecting those I am close to regardless of circumstance." He paused. "I believe this may qualify as a catastrophic design flaw." Another small burst of static escaped him alongside the faintest smile. "But I understand."
"Although, I cannot promise I will stop protecting you," he said, honest as he always was. "But I can promise I will return to you afterward." His thumb brushed lightly across Layken's wrist. "And if remaining beside you is an order," he tilted his head slightly, glowing eyes finally meeting Layken's fully again, "then I suppose I will obey, loosely. Don't want you putting a tracking collar on me." He shifted faintly against Layken's shoulder, synthetic fingers fidgeting at the fabric of his shirt. "I am covered in debris, and what I believe to be monster residue, and you are not in a significantly better condition." He held Layken's gaze for a moment longer, then closed the distance himself, pressing a slow and gentle kiss to his mouth. When he pulled back, his expression was unbothered by the state of either of them. "I would like to shower."
Two sets of steps echoed anxiously through the hospital halls. Lucien walked with determined urgency, his voice low as he spoke to a well-dressed woman who was older than him. Though she balanced a tablet and assorted items under her arm, the hero’s tempo nearly swept her off her feet. Yet after the shadows that clung to his recent days, Lucien was not here for himself. He ignored the persistent sting of unhealed injuries and the exhaustion that throbbed through his muscles. His purpose was to bring hope to the city’s children. Despite all he had sacrificed for Halcyon, his heart still burned with concern for those in need. He came to lift spirits, offering a fragile thread of comfort as the city struggled to heal.
Heavy thoughts weighed on Lucien’s mind, shadows nearly as dark as the scenes he had witnessed. Sunlight warmed his skin again, but guilt gnawed at him for those lost, denied another sunrise. Even as Halcyon embraced survival, the emptiness left by fallen lives pressed against him, restless and aching. Sitting still was impossible as his heart demanded he stay present for those who needed him, the only respite he could allow himself. Training would begin anew, harder than ever, but at this moment, reaching out was his way to heal.
Their hurried journey came to a sudden stop, tension lingering between them. The assistant retrieved the cover bag from under her arm and, with a knowing smile, handed it to Lucien. “Everything you need should be right here. If my handling left a few wrinkles, I trust you’ll stretch them right out. That being said, the room behind you should be the one they allowed you to use.” Sandra’s voice raced, tracing familiar lines of their rapport. Lucien managed a grateful smile despite her attention already drawn back to her tablet. “I’ll be over there dealing with other matters, but I trust you’ll manage perfectly.” Her footsteps faded with a warning, “Just don’t get blood on it; it’s such a bitch to clean,” blending a fleeting warmth with her concern.
Lucien entered the uncertain room, heart fluttering as he unzipped the black bag to reveal a bright white, golden-accented hero costume. He hadn’t seen it in ages, and now its cartoonish flash felt almost surreal, a relic of sorts. A bittersweet smile flickered across his face as he remembered how this suit once brought laughter to children. He tried not to wince as he stripped down, bones weary and muscles stiff, but the promise of joyful faces spurred him. Solstice wrestled into the costume, struggling more than he had fighting monsters, when suddenly the door swung open, exposing his vulnerability. “Whoa there, buddy,” he called out, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “My bad, am I in the wrong place?” Solstice apologized quickly, tension breaking with uneasy laughter.
Hospitals. Hyun hated them. The antiseptic sting in the air mixed badly with the metallic scent that still clung beneath his skin after a flare-up. Every few steps his arm twitched involuntarily, his body still misfiring through exhausted nerves despite the suppressant patch stuck to the side of his neck. The doctors called it “residual overstimulation.” Hyun called it his body trying to eat itself alive. He tugged the sleeve of his jacket lower over the faint dark veining crawling along his wrist and kept moving. The Bloodhounds had insisted he stay overnight after the incident downtown, mostly because he’d nearly collapsed in the briefing room afterward. Typical. Nearly liquefy a concrete support beam with unstable mutation output and suddenly everyone acted like he was fragile.
The worst part was boredom. He wandered the recovery wing with a paper cup of terrible vending machine coffee balanced in one hand, trying to ignore the ache behind his ribs. Most of the rooms were dim or empty, curtains half-drawn around patients. Then he heard rustling from one of the side rooms. Hyun slowed instinctively. The door sat slightly ajar, warm light spilling into the hallway. He figured it was probably a nurse or another patient looking for supplies. Without thinking much of it, he pushed the door open farther.
The former hero froze in the doorway so fast his shoulder clipped the frame with a dull thud. “Oh shit...” He immediately turned his head away, one hand coming up over his eyes despite the fact he’d already seen enough to know exactly how awkward this was. The movement tugged painfully at the fresh bandaging wrapped around his forearm, and he hissed under his breath before letting out a strained laugh. “No, no, this one’s on me,” he said quickly, voice rough from exhaustion. “Apparently the Bloodhound PR department’s newest talent is dramatic entrances into active changing rooms.” He kept his gaze firmly on the opposite wall, though curiosity still pulled at the flash of white and gold. It looked familiar somehow. Softer than what most heroes wore. Kinder.
“You’re good, I got turned around.” Hyun added after a moment, tone gentler now. “I can wait outside while you finish wrestling with… whatever level of betrayal that zipper’s putting you through.” A faint smile tugged at his mouth despite himself. “For what it’s worth, though? The suit looks nice. Kinda nostalgic.” He shifted awkwardly, hospital bracelet catching the fluorescent light. “Makes the place feel less depressing for a second.”
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