“He hit like a bitch.” How quick he was to try and make a point, speaking in such a matter-of-fact tone, despite the blood that began to pool around the skin of his eye. Swollen, the bruising only getting worse by the minute, and despite the blood that began to dry upon his bottom lip, he’d pop a cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he’d speak. 

IT'D BEEN SO ROUTINE FOR HIM BY THAT POINT, the traversal from one beach to the next ( all in search of him, of course ). so colour him surprised ( & devastated, & fearful, & worried ) when one of hundreds of thousands of trips to the chaos that was his beach, he was nowhere to be found. left alone. again. & soon did the routine shift into another .. one where blue eyes watched the waves crashing against the shores of a beach that wasn't even his own, sat atop the servers of an ever growing graveyard. of course, that didn't change his activity beyond the beach .. back in the world of the living ( if only allowing him to spend more time in a body that wasn't his own, but was close enough to the real thing ).

it started with that familiar scent, that subtle shift in energy that he'd grown so accustomed too ( & had missed dearly ); something that drew them closer and closer until they were face to face. where the older's hands came to cradle his face between them, did higgs' own come to rest gently 'pon his forearms; mechanical joints enclosing them in their hold ( as though he'd disappear at any moment should he hold him too tight ).

apology is unexpected, & certainly unwarranted ( given it wasn't he who got himself off the beach ), yet he allows him to get hushed words out without interruption; higgs only doing so much as to shake his head, as though to tell him that both the apology & explanation weren't owed. ❝   's alright ..   ❞ & for once he means as much, without any matter of hostility behind his words ( or ill will ). ❝   —not like either of us expected that t' happen to you.   ❞ he certainly never expected it for himself, even in the way that he was 'freed' now, so to speak.

"I... I don't know. Wandering. Trying to..." Words trailed off. Trying to do a lot of things, he thought. Acclimate like a creature released into a new and unfamiliar enclosure, face strangers who acknowledged and spoke to him, find comfort in a silence he hadn't known in eons. "Take everything in."

Just as he was now. Drinking in the sight of his partner. It was instinctual to mirror faint up curl of lips. Jests remained untouched, he noted. Though eyes couldn't help but drift. From crackled white features splashed in gold over to translucent chest and abdomen that peeked out from curtains of red that draped over his form. Looking more machine like than man. Where it not for that sense of familiarity that came in Higgs' presence, Neil doesn't think he'd have recognized the other. Much to his discomfort.