white noise.

when her drink comes he’s had time to think a little more, a sigh on his lips and a frown between his brows. “so if the cops don’t know whats up who does? no one here, that’s for sure.” he muses, glancing over the crowd in a quick scan. “or if they know, they’re keeping tight lipped about it.” 

the trouble with relationships, rin thinks, is that they have a demanding way about them. an expectation to stand in front of everything else. to consume attention and time. it’s not a one sided expectation, because she experiences it too. but rin regards it with a stubborn disinterest. because she doesn’t want it to be placed in the center of her life. she wants other things to be more important. feels that they have a larger claim to it. perhaps it’s human nature. and it’s tripped rin up in past relationships, too. caused problem between herself and theo. like she might not have cared enough. gave enough. and she didn’t -- not as much as he did, anyway. 

always holding herself back. even in the revolution, not as prominent as siwoo. she can’t puzzle together that exact reason. fear, unknowing, some irreversible defect scratched into her in that way childhood traumas tend to reappear. but she doesn’t want to look at it, drill down into it. because it loops back around, into that feeling that the revolution should take precedence over everything in her life. her own happiness included. 

rin cares about him though, theo. it’s just that it’s a carefully measured care, with a dam built overtop it. to prevent him from taking up too much space. “maybe…” rin glances back over her shoulder as she speaks. like she’s waiting for something to happen. police, or else a riot. back to theo. she tries to pick apart his expression, to see if he’s worried. “i want to find out what’s going on first.” why their world was plunged into darkness. if it was some grand-scale electrical misfiring. if there was a point to it. so they drink instead of relocating. it seems to be quite a few people’s plan at the moment, given the amount of bodies still fit inside the club. 

siwoo exhales, and bites his tongue so hard he thinks he’ll draw blood. somewhere between, he manages a smile. “i look better than i feel.”

the world seems too silent. the thrum of life and energy stuffed out. no static filling her ears, no in and out wavelengths from weak radio signals picked up by her mods. that technological white noise is instead replaced with people. the remainder, without their built on additions and gadgets. it’s a harrowing thing. in the realm of unbelievable. because who would have thought it could have occurred? a removal on that grand a scale? guesses come together like disjointed patchwork, woven into a tapestry that doesn’t make a lot of sense. the government, or siwoo, or, or, or. but none of it seems all that plausible. not that rin’s really found the time to sit down and think it through. map out the why, or the how.

she knows though that she wants to find siwoo. she’s not sure the state he’ll be in. and her own head’s too quiet. she’s not used to it anymore. hearing just that stagnant loop of her own thoughts. an unpleasant, muted panic that rin doesn’t find to be all too palatable at the moment.

she at least has a spare key. the two of them tangled up in too much, nearly over their heads, this choppy current found in their political climate. siwoo’s always been the paranoid one, but with how firmly they’ve been stuck together, and for so long, it’s no wonder rin’s picked up on some of his tendencies. a hidden doorlock included. the thing about electronics seems to be that there’s always someone else that can take control of them. an unsettling thought, but one not too many in elysium bother to consider.

“you must be half dead then.” rin’s voice has a pointed calmness to it. it usually does. somewhere between bland and soothing. a voice you wouldn’t want to turn off, but doesn’t quite hit the mark of a distraction. it’s how she landed her job. maybe it helps in times like these, when anxiety is taking root behind tongues and leaving words shaky and fractured. and maybe it doesn’t. but it’s hard to change it. it’s always been hard for rin to show what she’s feeling. to let people witness those faults, or that level of emotion. 

“i come bearing gifts and compliments about your adequate choice of music tonight,” he offers, with a dumb grin, lifting a greasy paper bag filled with warm cream-filled bread. 

they build slowly. brick by brick. hoping to turn into something formidable. everyone’s slow to trust. but it seems like a requirement at this point, to someone involved in the revolutionary efforts. for all they distract and deflect away with vibrant holo-ads and virtual realities that stack up so much better to the now (and rot your brain, rot the sad dregs of your own life away), they’re still bearing down on them. taking, taking, and hoping that nobody notices. too caught up in that whirl-winded rain of distractions to care. so of course their efforts aren’t rewarded. she treats officials and the police force with paranoia and disdain.

not that she’s known, out in the open with her affiliation. not in the way some others are. and not to her own knowledge. where she sits now and noeul is someone she slowly let into her life. too trusting, and she should have known better. too trusting, and she’ll make him regret it later. but there’s some amount of desperation to be found when the odds are stacked so high against them. a building wave, ready to crash down. decimate the shoddy lifeboat they’re frantically trying to build. before it capsizes regardless. she wants more people. she wants more interest. she finds it in noeul -- a faulty promise of hope. 

there’s a reason nobody likes the police force in elysium.

for now, he makes good on his job. and rin greets him. oblivious and with a smile through the glass. she mouths the word ‘freeze’ back at him, busies herself momentarily with the setup in front of her, let’s him shift in a cold-footed dance for a handful of minutes before she actually pushes herself away from the desk to let him in. “only because you brought a present.” rin teases him on the way in. 

his  mind runs a mile a minute as his gaze scans the room, taking stock of the situation and account of the unraveling around them. “it’s probably not going to be that safe here for much longer,” he admits, looking down at her, “you should get out of here, maybe go home.”  hades is working to control the crowds and he can see the bouncers working through the room. “or at least get another drink or something.” he half-jokes, brow lifting as he glances askance at her. 

there’s a sharp pressure. it’s too fast, swirled up in the chaos around them. something that feels too cold, nearly unnatural in the grip of it. but that in and of itself should be familiar. theo’s familiar to her, after all. a year imprinted into memories and skin. usually not this tight. he watches himself. a painful sort of careful. she’s watched it in him. the way he holds himself, reaches out. that guarded look hanging half-hidden behind his eyes. he’s not too great at tucking it all out of view. this hesitancy tangled up in coils and wires. but it’s fleeting, and before it the sensation finds time to register across her face his fingers flex, loosen. replaced with an arm and he pulls her toward the outskirts. away from clumps of people slowly letting themselves inch down toward something closer to panic. still dangling on that rope of ‘this might be okay.’

the arm disappears when they find enough space. she feels, often, like she’s caught in a flux. a place of missing and not. and it’s read through moods, words, too. rebounds back on him. the uncertainty that lives in her head. the way that emotion and cause hack away at each other. she lives her life in a semi-chaotic fashion, in that she can’t seem to find any balance between the political schemata that she’s thrown herself into as well as an attempt at happiness, connection. attempt, because she’s not all too sure everything they were could be described as happy. pieces of it. a kaleidoscopic collection of memories. sometimes she misses those fragmented pictures that made them up. and sometimes she doesn’t bother in thinking about him.

the pain settles into a familiar dull ache and he exhales slowly, a controlled sound as he glances over his shoulder at the sound of shifting, noticing the other stirring. “morning,” he rumbles out, throat raspy from sleep. “coffee?” he tacks on, takes a few steps towards the kitchen area, flexing his fingers as he does. the metallic grind and scrape of it echoes in the quiet space,  a rattle and shift that break the tense quiet between the two. it’s never clear how she’s going to feel the morning after - regretful, annoyed, amused. he can’t get into her head and he’s long since stopped trying, pulled back again on the tide of affections long since pushed aside. he’s loved her for so long now it feels like second nature, as easy as breathing, as painful as reconnecting his arm in the morning, when each nerve wires into place and sears individually with sensory output. 

“or are you busy?”

they’re on the outs. not rin and theo, but rin and keisuke. that’s usually when she finds him again. theo, this time. like a slowly deflating balloon, back down into orbit. looking to get tangled up in the grasping, eager hand. her life sometimes feels like a patchwork piece between the two. but somehow things never seem able to grow serious between her and theo, not unless keisuke’s removed from the picture. and even then, was it a fulfilling thing, what they had when keisuke was in jail? sometimes it feels like it, and sometimes it doesn’t. that same balloon, yanked around in a breeze, and then free-coasting when it dies down. rin’s not too sure about love, at this point. 

truthfully speaking, not too sure might have been simmering up and into a slow boil of anger lately. she thinks she might take it out on theo, sometimes. she doesn’t always remember to apologize about it. but he’s there, a strange constant in her life. in a different way that keisuke is a strange constant.

he’s something she knows. and maybe there’s a comfort in that, the known. something to balance out that terrible, vast unknown that seems to be their future. theo shifts, rin stirs. seeks out the sleep-blurred shape of his body in the mirror. watches him and shift and prod at himself. different from keisuke, in the way he creates. she appreciates that about him, sometimes almost forcefully. a misdirected validation. 

her eyes follow him as he walks. watches the flinch, shudder, twist before he fits his arm into place. rin likes that vulnerability, but she hasn’t ever told him. she’s not sure he’d appreciate it. 

“morning” she crawls out from the burrow of the covers, lethargic and slow-moving. hums in ascent at the offer of coffee. she’s got on one of his shirts, it hadn’t exactly been planned. it smells faintly of motor oil, blended enough with detergent that she knows it’s something stubborn and lingering despite his best efforts. “i’m not really. are you?” it’s something of a trade. a pointless dance where they both try to decide whether they’re in the mood to let things continue. play out, like they might’ve been left in a time capsule, sealed up and reopened with a few gap years washed out. 

“i’ve got work to do,” he begins, head tilting to match her stare. the words come out rougher than intended, almost dismissive. keisuke clears his throat. “what is it?” 

rin traps him in place. one ankle hooked under the crook of her knee. faux-shackles, and she wonders if sometimes he might liken her to the prison cell he’d been caged up inside. sometimes it feels like it. sometimes it feels like a lot of things. a fractured mess of emotions liable to maim. but it feels necessarily at times. like they’re both perched atop a calm ocean. everything feels still, but there’s that slow drift of tides. and he slips from her grip. sometimes the words don’t match up with the feeling. sometimes actions don’t, either. it’s a difficult thing for rin to understand. their relationship. 

she wants him near. at least in this moment. and she wants more from him, more than he seems willing to give. she doesn’t want to dismantle a wall to try and seek out an unwilling party. and then she feels strange for thinking that way. because she knows him. years spent learning, and together. the nape of his neck, the curved jut of bone, the uneven edge of hair that tapers into skin. that’s all familiar. she could close her eyes and envision every minuscule detail of it.

but familiar doesn’t always mean comfortable. 

she feels him turn. the swivel of his hip as his face comes into view. the calloused drag of his fingers. once upon a time and it sent goosebumps running down her spine. for now, she stares. seeks out the reluctance she feels she’ll find in his eyes. the words she’ll find in his mouth. 

he frees them, and she bristles. the tensing of muscles, a sharp click of her molars. she lets her foot unhook, legs swinging back down to hang from where she’d perched herself on the work table. 

“you’re always working.” it feels like a fact. is it better or worse for them to bleed out their time into their own work, causes? to leave only slivered spaces in between to spend together? rin can’t figure it out. but she knows it makes her angry. almost as angry as his indifference makes her. 

“should i need a reason?” 

it feels like the answer to that question should be no. she curls her fingers in against the edge of wood, white-knuckled under her grip. “want me to fuck on off then?” baiting. rin has a problem with that.