#techgilded

    manny has no idea what’s happening. one second, henslan seems fine. he’s up, he’s carrying on a conversation, and maybe he’s acting a little spacey, but it’s nothing that sets off any alarm bells. but between one heartbeat and the next, it’s like something takes him over. 

       he’s on the ground, and manny’s dropping down beside him, a hand on his chest. he checks him for injuries, because that’s all he knows how to do. it happened so fast, he thinks it’s got to be something like that. he sounds ... he sounds wounded. 

        i can’t breathe. 

        manny can’t find anything wrong, but henslan looks like he’s dying. it’s sickeningly familiar in a way, like watching a spirit trapped in a death echo. reliving something terrible, and even if it can’t really hurt them, it does. somehow, it does, and it’s the hardest thing to watch, because he can’t always stop it. 

been a while since he’d crossed ways with the tall fella with a stink eye that seemed to follow manfred like a ghost. yeah, maybe some part of him is jealous. bobo winthrop is too proud a sonuvabitch to admit that though. see when you stab someone with a knife, it’s intimate. so bobo looked up at him set his jaw and swallowed back pain when fingers dug in at his wrist.

the guy got in close, talked real quiet, and bobo had felt something dark rise up in the pit of his stomach in retaliation. whatever it was the guy woke up just won’t die down or go back from wherever the hell it came. surprising no one, instead of words the only thing that came out was a mean right hook. now bobo is sitting in the midnighter’s room, jaw aching from a run in with a pair of rowdy customers earlier in the day. creek’s voice is a clear indicator there’s another midnighter coming to sit off in the back and he’s looking up from his meatloaf expectantly.

“aw hell.”

“ — because contrary to whatever you may think, I’m really not that kind of criminal. I draw a fucking line at that shit. ” M.R. clutched at the cigarette in his hands, dragging off of it hard. He might have been bound to half-a-life with a shared body but he wasn’t completely devoid of a moral compass, and there was shit that turned his stomach just as much. 

He isn’t wrong, and that’s the terrifying thing. Roderick can keep his breathing steady and restrict his reaction to a single unsteady ‘ha’ as Henslan starts talking, but he can’t stop the well of old, cold fear in his chest.

( he knows how the world works for things like him. he’s alive so long as he’s useful, so long as there isn’t a whisper of a doubt that he is ever anything but the coldblooded tool merc he’s supposed to be. if some guy he only just met can tell that much about him, then he’s dead, dead, dead )

But well, he isn’t wrong and Roderick doesn’t have to go through it to know he isn’t wrong about the effectiveness of the physical side, either.

But well, it wouldn’t be the first time he flirted with death (ha).

He flattens a hand against the Henslan’s chest for a moment, before shifting to loosely ball a hand in the other man’s shirt. As close as they are, Roderick barely has to move to mutter right back in Henslan’s ear.

       “ i’m gonna go out on a limb here and say you’re not looking to have your palm read. ”    which is good news and bad news. good news, because manny hates palm reading. there’s a certain level of bullshitting to it that even he has to work hard to pull off.

         it might be easier if he had something more than tylenol to ease the ache, but there’s more to this particular rehabilitation than a bum knee. 

        “ fortunately, i have someone who loves me very much who will fetch me all the nachos my lil’ heart desires. ” and yes, he’s definitely holding out his plate in a silent request for seconds. 

    manny realizes henslan’s going down about two seconds too late to do anything about it. it doesn’t stop him from trying, but there’s only so much he can do about six-and-a-half-feet of muscle and stubbornness hitting the deck. he manages to get a hand kind of near his head, so it doesn’t bounce off of anything, but that’s all he manages to do. he tries not to feel too bad about it;; it’s the guy’s own damn fault. 

         tries. fails. hard to blame the guy when he’s got his arm around his middle, looking like he’s trying to hold himself together with his own hand. 

      “ is there a right devil to sell your soul to?? ” he asks with a huff of a laugh, trying to lighten the mood as he drags a pillow down off the couch and tucks it behind henslan’s back. moving might be a five minutes from now kind of goal, so he’s trying to ease some of the strain on his ribs if he can.  he almost wishes they were back in the rv; he wouldn’t even have to stand up all the way to grab an ice pack and a wash cloth from the kitchen. here, he’d have to leave the room.