BLINDWILD.

mituna turns over his shoulder to smirk at the yellowbloods behind him, expression doused with pride. kankri has no stage, but he commands their attention nonetheless -- even his unsteady voice seems to fall away when he addresses the small crowd mituna has managed to amass. there are maybe twenty goldbloods in attendance to this pitiful sermon, but double and sometimes quadruple the listening ears (mituna pours over the numbers in his head when his skin starts to itch, because they are neat and even and amuse him) is always good, always better. one of his workmates puts their fingers on the back of mituna’s neck, and mituna reaches up to clasp them tight, arm across his chest. 

“i5s that yo0ur mo0irail?” they ask into the topmost section of his ear, and he feels himself flush honeysuckle all the way up to the strands of hair in his eyes. 

“NOTT YETT,” he says, raising an eyebrow, looking cocksure but feeling anything but. 

another colleague, much to mituna’s delight and befuddlement, jabs him in the grubscar and hisses a very different kind of shush. the only reason mituna doesn’t erupt into a fit of laughter is because he knows that right now, kankri already has their attention. who is he to take it away with something as meaningless as an explosion of sound?

instead, he grins, gentle and ever-trembling fingers nursing the dull throb in his side, and listens to kankri as though he were singing a song mituna had heard all his life. 

mituna’s been told more times than he can count that his laugh is distinctive. they never put it so kindly, of course (he’s heard attention-seeking, loud, ccacc-oph-on-ous from a particularly irate violet), but he takes pride in the way it tumbles and fights its way out from between his teeth. even before they’d left beforus behind, it had felt like he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do when he smiled so wide his face hurt, when he smoothed out the lines of determination and arrogance from his face and tossed his head so hard his hair flipped back and he saw stars. it’s much the same now; he’s rocking with hapless peals of joy, shoulders shaking as kankri frowns at him from the dirt. mituna snorts and bubbles over for only a few seconds more before he leans down and, with his hands instead of his psionics, seizes kankri underneath the elbows and pulls.

mituna reminds himself that this isn’t a feelings jam.

it’s kind of hard to have a feelings jam tucked away in an alley that’s peppered with still-drying white paint, after all. the smell makes his head hurt if he thinks about it too long -- thick and sour and compressing. his art (though it might be generous to call it that) sits underneath three thick coats of the stuff, all its bright colours muted and muffled under the sterile brightness of it. it’d been funny, at the time, spraying nonsensical messages somewhere quiet like this, somewhere it wouldn’t really make a scene. the other yellows had laughed along with him, snorting cackles and giving him ideas. he realises now that it had only ever been a game to most of them, a way to relax and hit back after a long day of exhaustion and light.

light in the literal sense, blinding and technicolour, but also light like the smile the receptionist gives them as they file in uniform lines into their work halls. mituna looks over his shoulder, as though he can see the building from here (he can’t. they’re too far away, too shrouded by the towering indigo hives either side of them). kankri must be talking about work. the thought makes him frown, his whole face twisting into a deep crease, all the way down to his chin. he’s not like kankri. he can’t keep his confusion or impatience or anger out of his expression.

“WHY??” is the first thing he asks, as he plucks at the lanyard around his neck. the laminated picture of him spins on its chord, and he does not read the information written in neat print that is not his own next to it, because he doesn’t need to (CAPTOR, mituna  (♊︎) . her imperial condescension's troupe 2241. there’s a little box beneath his name that doesn’t have a checkmark. he thinks it’s supposed to indicate that he wasn’t culled). 

he doesn’t think he has it so bad. mituna thinks about his lusus first, the sincere and unsure way in which it combs his hair. biclops can never get through the parts near his ears without pulling on his head, but he doesn’t complain. then he thinks about kankri’s curls and how hard they must be to brush through and then he’s thinking about not complaining, about both of them keeping their mouths shut. he puts the lanyard in between his teeth and bites down on it, his teeth finding the familiar grooves in the barkbeast-eared plastic. “BECAU5E I WORK?? EVERYONE WORK5.” not everyone. not really. but kankri knows what he means. 

sometimes, if he isn’t paying attention, the feeling of the warm-wet harness curls around his wrists and chest when he isn’t even wearing it. sometimes, they take it off of him and he falls to his knees without anything to hold him up. the first time, he’d been afraid that the others would make fun of him, and they did, but they also picked him up from underneath his arms and held him steady as they walked him out. he does it for others, now, younger trolls that fall because they’re too tired not to. he watches electricity fizzle in their eyes as they twitch and fret in his grip but they’re smiling, dazed and dreamlike. they’re --

“WE’RE HELPING.” 

there’s pride in all of them, mituna thinks. even the yellows that complain about sore joints and splitting headaches, even the yellows that fall and don’t move and get carried out by the violetbloods instead. the seven and eight sweep olds puff out their chests and say that they’re the useful blood caste, the group that keep beforus afloat. what would the planet do without them? they challenge, grins gaudy and sick. mituna doesn’t know.

he does know that he likes kankri. he likes how kankri is so sincere about everything and never looks at him in that overblown display of confidence. kankri has this way of making mituna think that his questions aren’t necessarily stupid, but important. kankri is different, and different isn’t bad, not when it agrees to meet him on a sideroad too close to its house to be genuinely comfortable or genuinely freeing. 

“I DONTT TTHINK ITT5 TTHATT BAD. MAYBE ITT5 JU5TT BECAU5E YOU HAVENTT 5EEN ITT!! ITT CAN BEE FUN, 5OMETTIME5.”

sometimes, like when mituna had sparked so intensely that he had overridden the main power outlets in the building and they all had to go home early so an indigo could fix it. one of his friends, an older troll with two missing eyes had hefted him up on their shoulders and he’d laughed himself dizzy with the thrill. sometimes, like when he’d collapsed at the end of the day and hit his head on the floor. one of the violets came towards him, fins pinned back and stride determined, until the yellow being freed next to him stood over his body and told them that he was still breathing, that he’d be fine eventually. 

the idea that working isn’t normal is a scary one. mituna never did like being frightened. 

he bites back an indigo cuss, one of those words that make his caretakers cover his ears even though he suspects they aren’t really all that crass. mituna’s said far worse in the few minutes kankri’s known him, and kankri’s trying really hard to seem cool. still, he can’t stop his muscles from tightening ; it was a harmless shock, nothing more, a prank that worked. he decides promptly that he doesn’t enjoy being pranked.     “    Kankri Vantas.    ”      is he meant to give his full name out to strangers ?     “     I live in thhe area. D# y#u hhave a l#ng walk hh#me ? Is there a g#ldbl##d neighb#rh##d nearby ?     “      he has to slow down through the last few words ; it’s a lot of os, and those always trip him up. he wants to say that he’s never seen mituna around, but  –  well, of course he hasn’t.

A gentle sigh, she could rub the bridge of her nose right about now. For a moment, she debates on if she would’ve preferred the Grand Highblood’s company over this.

Of course, she quickly dismissed that. Let’s not get crazy, Redglare.

Fingers drum against the dragon’s head upon her cane. “Ancestor… Yes, that would be correct,” Redglare would confirm. “You haven’t answered my first question. I would like an answer before I go on and continue answering anymore of yours. I’d like to know who I am speaking to.”