Molded

1) I am normal

2) I have always been normal

3) I'm normal now

INBOX PROMPTS ╱ 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔.

“Can I?”

It was just another day.

There were times they got along better than at other times, a product of many variables that never seemed to stay constant. Under the right amount of pressure, it seemed either one of them could have a hairline fracture in their composure. Will was probably more guilty of responding without a clear provocation– solely a result of what side of the bed he tended to wake up on. Gratitude had always been a weird thing for him. Something often performed but seldom ever meant. His hackles normally would raise, and he almost does, but it manages to deflate in him like a balloon releasing reason alongside helium.

He crosses his arms only because lashing out at Will after lashing out in an attempt to help Will felt stupid. Maybe it's a sign that he's growing as a person; able to better control himself. Or some part of him still feels under threat by the media; it's an outside presence encroaching on the pair of them that Ethan knows is only going to hurt them eventually. Maybe not as directly as anything physical, but he knows there's no one in the press wanting to do anything kind for either of them. Ethan can't very well attack Will while they've got outside dangers to deal with.

Then Ethan died. Somehow. That I'll figure out later. But Mia, being clever and determined, managed to make a synth Ethan. Give false memories of a life with her and maybe vague things of growing up in the wasteland.

Ethan Winters, a synthetic husband and father to a family that's long since died.

1. On the eve of the war, Ethan's honeymoon turned into a nightmare when he and his new bride chose to stay at a charming little b&b in Dulvey, Louisiana. Lucas, recent inheritor of the property, decided the young couple would be the perfect victims for all his long suppressed violent fantasies. When the bombs fell, Ethan and Mia were in the bayou, fighting for their lives while Lucas hunted them down. The pair managed to escape, only to later suffer radiation poisoning. Generics, dumb luck, fate; Ethan doesn't know why, but Mia died and he survived. With skin rotting off and hair falling out, he survived.

2. Ethan couldn't believe his luck getting his family a spot in one of the San Antonio vaults. Unable to afford one on his wages, he had entered a contest with Mia, hoping both entering would double their chances. They took aptitude tests, went through several rounds of physicals, and finally got the happy news that Ethan got in, that he could bring his wife. By the time they were being rushed into their new home, Mia was pregnant with their daughter.

Not long after the vault closed, a strange mold began to grow in the ventilation system. The overseer worked hard to have it taken care of, but everything they tried only seemed to make the mold spread faster. Particles in the air infected the residents, growing on their lungs and spreading through their blood to every part of their bodies. It didn't take long for a pattern to emerge; only the contest winners were able to live with the infection while the ones they brought in with them suffered quick onset psychosis, then death.

By the time the vault door opened again, an impossibly long time later, the mold grew to cover almost the entire vault. Only Ethan was left; a strange creature somewhere between a ghoul and sentient mold colony. He escaped the vault and refused to talk about what happened there.

3. In the Lonestar wastes Ethan scavenged for anything he could sell or trade to make enough caps to keep his family housed and fed in Flags, a settlement built from the remains of an old world amusement park. When offered a job that could keep them living well for the rest of their lives, Ethan eagerly accepted. All he had to do was retrieve a set of objects from several old military bases.

Eventually he was able to do so, braving super mutants, feral ghouls, and even the Brotherhood of Steel. Ethan brought all requested items to his contact for the job and expected his payment. Instead he was drugged and used to test a substance created from the very supplies he retrieved.

You could be led to appreciate anything when everything had already had a remarkably low bar. It’s what brings Will to appreciate and recognize Ethan’s genuineness, able to sniff through the subtle manipulations and facades people harnessed often without even realizing it. Ethan? A bit transparent with his emotional output. He wore everything so close to his heart. He was terribly expressive. It was turbulent, mixed in with Will’s natural avoidance, but it was refreshing too. He’d see the knife coming from Ethan, as his back would never be the target.

Whatever was going on in Ethan’s head was undoubtedly stupid. That went without saying. But Will was more curious about his intentions behind it. Running away, staying, his unease from just being a sitting duck– he must be exhausted. His vigilance never seems to wane. And how could it? 

He doesn’t drink? Well, Will doesn’t know everything. Will does though. Drink. Far more than the average person and much more frequently too. He imagines a lot in his field do too. It was one of the few things that took away the sharp edges of reality, even if only momentarily. Bad coping, but it did the trick. However, when Ethan does take the small complimentary bottle, he only offers a small smile. That was more like it. He’d have a decent amount of respect for him if he didn’t. There was only so much the mind could take before it started coming up with alternative methods of surviving than the norm. No more and no less a broken man too.

It wasn’t wise to drink, but given the situation, he doesn’t really care. It gets to Will too, even if he manages to contain it a little better than Ethan. It’s hard to sit still, to not fidget and check doors, obsess over locks and shadows looming down the hall, knowing that when he rested his head on the shitty hotel pillow he was going to be subjected to living through everything twice. His stomach soured, and he uncapped his bottle, drinking it down in one expert gulp. Like a true alcoholic, someone who spent many evenings blackout in the dark of his cabin, accompanied by dogs licking at his hands to wake him or tucked away in the bathtub still fully dressed, clock ticking like a metronome in the background.

If he gets nothing else out of Dulvey, the ability and willingness to sneak around and break into one of the few other rooms for alcohol is probably the healthiest. It's definitely better than the nightmares he knows are coming. Or the paranoia. Or finding out he's surprisingly handy in a fucking chainsaw fight, a thing Ethan never wants to experience again.

The little empty bottle arches through the air in the direction of a little trashcan, and then overshoots to land on the floor near the can. Ethan rolls his eyes. He's not drunk after one shot, not even buzzed. His aim is just bad.

"How many of those do you have in there?" He grabs an onion ring and nibbles it. Maybe salad would've been healthier, but Ethan knows there's no way in Hell he's going for that. He doesn't want healthy, he wants comfort. That's maybe one of his worse traits. It's also what has him holding his hand out for another drink. "If we run out, I'll find us more." It'll be nice to have a goal; even if it's something as small and dumb as a liquor run, it's better than just sitting. Waiting.

Ethan spent three years feeling like he was just waiting. Waiting for Mia to come home or reach out to him. Waiting for news that her body's been found. Waiting to be dragged off to trial and jail on bullshit murder charges with evidence like 'his DNA is in the apartment he and Mia share' or something equally stupid. Up until the literal monsters in the bayous, that limbo period of just numbness and waiting was the worst experience in Ethan's life. He couldn't do anything. There was nothing to do. Alone in a silent apartment.

At least this time Will's around. If it was just Ethan, he wouldn't still be in this room. He probably wouldn't've been trusted to be anywhere outside of direct supervision- technically, he's now out of direct supervision now, but this is different. Will knows what they've gone through. He understands. Some asshole who showed up after everything was already finished wouldn't know shit and Ethan knows it would end in a fight. Possibly being locked up. The thought is too much to confront so he pushes it down hard. He's not trapped.

friend: oh like romantically?

me: no. like cursed object passed between hands for centuries, they are cosmically linked, probably bonded by blood ritual, I think they’ve fought in a war together in at least three lifetimes, and their souls make direct eye contact every time they breathe in the same room

friend: so… romantically?

When Ethan clambers onto the table, Heisenberg comes to the slow realization that they have very much misunderstood each other. He'd been picturing another kind of demonstration inside his head, with a different arrangement of bodies and the table-- specifically himself bent over it. Ethan's fingers also somewhere very different. He doesn't know what the fuck to do with himself now that they're here and this is happening. Not that he really would have known otherwise. This is brand new territory he's being rapid fire introduced to.

The question of lube has him stuttering out a non answer, because he does, somewhere back in his living quarters but there's no way he's getting up now, let alone finding that shit in the chaos. Ethan works out his own solution anyway and if Heisenberg's heart existed for anything other than show, it would have quit on him right now.

It's still hammering violently in his chest, sending all the blood in his body in two different directions. It feels loud enough to drown out the sounds of Ethan fucking himself, but Ethan doesn't seem to notice. Heisenberg drags his chair back a bit to make just a little bit of space between himself and what's happening here, knowing damn well that he could have put a stop to it at any point. But the hungry, repressed part of him that's been caged up for way too long wanted to see how far it would go.

When Ethan turns back, Heisenberg can't look at him. He grabs for the bottle that somehow hasn't ended up on the floor and knocks back the last of the whiskey within it.

"Y'know," He begins, voice rough from the burn of the booze and trying to choke back embarrassing arousal, "I'm more of a uh... I think that I'm a hands-on learner."

He goes back to fumbling with his belts at that so he can tug his overshirt free from his pants. He's itching to reach out and touch, already hard even though no one's laid a finger on him yet. It's pathetic enough to get him reconsidering his words, but they're already here and he's not a coward. Just terribly inexperienced.

“…..The people that created me made sure I couldn’t rebel. It doesn’t matter what I want, what matters is what they want. Someone who wasn’t part of the group doesn’t trigger the directive.”

Despite looking stoic, Zeno was so lost and confused. The world was an alien place for him.

“ I lost my progenitor virus to an antiviral serum. I was created with mold stabilizing the progenitor. Without the progenitor virus…..I’m nothing.”

His back became rod straight.

"You refuse to be nothing, but you refuse to do jack-shit anything." He leans closer, invading Zeno's space to hiss, "Think you can grow a pair without your virus? Because it looks like you've got two choices.