Grounded Icarus

so uh i’ll be sparse until the hyperfixation passes lmao

Please specify muse for multi-muse blogs

“So when’s our stop?” Maybe she could give the line a tug when they were closer to town. It suddenly felt like a competition between herself and the other passengers: who would pull the line first and win? 

He looked out the window as silence fell between them, the desert landscape rolling by evenly. It was very different than his home, much less green, but in a way it was the same, too--a lot of flat, empty space. The bill of his hat thunked against the window as the bus went over a bump, so Chuck turned it backwards with a little frown. 

also if anyone was interested in that b/nha stuff u can also message me abt that? i have the oc(s) i mentioned and august also has an au for the ‘verse though I dunno how old he would be for that one

Lifting him was out of the question; Fireman’s sling would aggravate the wound, piggyback was a possibility but what if one arm failed to hold on? A bridal style would be ideal but they were still in the end-game of the match– They would be down two Scouts. “I gott’a medpack in my bag I can help try an’ stop th’a flow’a blood but there’s nothin’ I can do till I get’cha t’a gun.” Her mind continued to come up short, blanking on every avenue of remedy she knew of for a stab wound in the side. Maybe it hadn’t punctured a lung? Maybe it was surface-bound?

“I, uh--I can just bandage it up, if you wanna get back out there. I’d hate to hold you up, or anythin’...”

I also had him have, like, his buck turner all star shoes in the back of his closet for angst fodder, because when I first made him I didn’t do any fucking research. Like, amputees can fucking wear shoes. You don’t wear one pair of prosthesis for your whole life. Come on, past me.

Look, I know it makes it look like I have some kind of weird thing here, but it’s a coincidence, by which I mean I started the fic after I fell off rping Chuck for a while (I made Chuck before we had Jeremy as a name, for instance,) and the fact that I’ve picked them both up again is because I didn’t want to leave my shipfic unfinished......

It was kind of like her school bus as a kid, but less yellow. And no kids running down the aisles and the bus driver threatening to turn the bus around. “How does the bus know when it’s our stop?” she whispered, leaning over to Chuck. 

“Oh, well. Or stop is town, which the bus always stops in, because it’s the main stop people use this bus for. If you wanna stop somewhere else, like when we head home, you tug that cord,” he explained, pointing up at the yellow plasticy wire that went all the way around the bus. “It lights up a thing on the dashboard that tells the driver to stop at the next stop. The downside of that is that you gotta be paying attention on the way back...”

“I heard sometimes people still think they got part of their body when its gone. D’ya ever feel your feet itch? Or feel like you can move ‘em?” 

He pushed off the pole as the bus trundled to a stop near them. Leading the way, he pulled out enough coins to pay both their fares, then trotted to a seat near the back--which was open, because most of the bus was open. Only a few people took up seats near the front, none of them paying the duo any mind.

She felt relieved to see the bus coming, but it looked like the bus was taking its sweet time. “Does it hurt?” she asked, glancing at Chuck’s legs again. 

“Naw, not any more,” he answered with a little shrug. “I mean, if I don’t wear the socks, or don’t wash ‘em, which is gross in its own right. Or if I overwork myself, they sort of rub sores, sort of like if you wear dress shoes for cross-country running.”

◑ What is a side to your muse you want to show off, but haven’t had the chance to yet?

She was about to question him further when he started talking about his legs. She watched as he demonstrated them and showed off his nice shoes. “So like…they come off?” She had thought the blades were a permanent attachment. Something he’d sleep with and shower with. 

“Oh! The legs? Yeah, they come off.” He bent to roll his pant leg up, showing the place where the connection happened. “My leg ends right here,” he explained, sticking his finger between his leg and the plastic, “and then I have on a sock, and then there’s a plastic socket thing that it fits into. That way I can, like, wash it, and stuff. Otherwise it’d get sweaty and gross in there...” He gave a little shrug, looking up at a sound in the distance. Off on the horizon, a bus trundled towards them, kicking up clouds of dirt in the barely-defined road. “Once we’re in the bar I can take one off for you to show you, but it takes a few minutes to get back on, so I don’t wanna end up stuck with it in my hand when we have to get on or off the bus, you know?”

It was then she glanced down at his shoes and realised he was wearing different…legs? The blades were replaced with something more leg-like and fit into shoes. When she realised she was staring, she looked away. Staring was rude. 

It took him a few seconds to realise she was looking at his legs. “Oh, you like ‘em? These are my, like, normal-person legs, ‘cause the runners kinda freak people out sometimes. With these most people don’t even notice, except that I walk a little funny.” He lifted one leg off the ground to hold it up, the foot remaining at a 90 degree angle. “Plus I get to wear my cool shoes again, which is nice.” They were his favourites. Well, his favourites had blown up with his legs, but the company had replaced them without cost, probably since it was their fault they hadn’t respawned like normal. Which he appreciated, ‘cause they were expensive, damnit!

She then paused to look up at the bus stop sign. It looked like it was kind of in th middle of nowhere. She glanced behind her shoulder as if she expected to see a bus rolling in. “You sure we’re at the right place?” 

Leaning against the pole, he looked up at her, buck teeth poking out in a placid smile. “But yeah, doesn’t seem like a lotta people around here are very, uh... outgoing? Everybody’s sort of wary of each other, I guess. Maybe we’ll make some friends at the bar! Or at least get to know each other better, so we can say we have at least one more friend.” He wasn’t sure if she really wanted to be his friend--she didn’t seem to, most of the time--but he was nothing if not persistent. 

“I bet you got lots of friends back home,” she commented, staring down at her boots. “Who’s your friend? The one on RED?” Maybe she could try talking to that person. Get an extra friend on her side. 

“Oh! Her name is Dolly! She’s an Engineer. I broke her window with my baseball. I offered to fix it, but she was like, if yew start fixin’ thangs, all th’ otha scouts will start thinkin they can fix thangs,” he put on a bad southern accent when he imitated her, despite the fact that he had a little southern twang of his own. “Which I guess is fair when you’re an Engineer and there’s a buncha complex machinery you have to fix.”