taxonomites | [visual: Cain's place | location: Mick at the Hedge Maze] Two for One, experimental thingie

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[visual: Cain's place | location: Mick at the Hedge Maze] Two for One, experimental thingie

Under normal circumstances, Cain sleeps because he knows he needs it rather than out of enjoying it. Normally, he rises early and gets started on the new day. He knows he needs routine, and he takes comfort in the small things of everyday life. Getting the first pot of coffee for the day going while he grabs a shower, then a few yoga exercises aimed just as much at loosening his joints as to help him learn to relax. Then he has his coffee, checks the tablet, and from there on in, he takes the day as it comes.

But not this morning.

This morning, he wakes up feeling like he's been caught in a swarm of angry bees, stumbled out onto a busy road and been run over by something very big. Blinking his eyes open at the ceiling, it takes a moment for him to register where he is: it's his bedroom, his bed, but he couldn't feel more out of place. His skin itches from the top of his head to the base of his neck, the back of his skull burns where he's rested his head on the pillow, his lips taste like blood. His hands feel only marginally better, the skin stretched too taut, and raising them to have a look only confirms it. Hands swollen and red, knuckles covered in cracks as thin as hairs.

Another moment's spent convincing himself he isn't dreaming, then he crawls out of bed to the muted sounds of his body protesting the decision to move at all. His feet are covered in sores and blisters.

Reaching for the tablet, he selects the visual mode, as there's no way in damnation he's going to type with his hands. "What in the forgotten halls of Emerald City happened to me?"

~*~

Mick's awakening early afternoon on the same day comes with less calm and more panic. He scrambles, pushing against the confines of his freezer, momentarily confused. Then realization hits, and instead of trying to get out, his hands find his face in frantic pawing slaps that would probably be highly comical if there weren't for the stabbing, gnawing hunch in his gut that it wasn't all a dream.

Not ten minutes later he's running for the hedge maze, if possible in an even worse state of panic. Finding the crack in the ground still there doesn't help.

Bad things happen, that's just the way it is, but sometimes, all you want is to catch a break. Instead, you find yourself picking up the pieces.

He drags in the cool night air through his nose, on all fours by the gaping, jagged hole in the ground trying to hear something, anything at all. He smells blood on the air, and burning flesh, and all he can see is Glitch, falling into a fiery grave and suddenly the earth seems to move under him. He can't breathe. "Oh, God. Oh, God, no."

It's 2:33 PM on Wednesday, when Mick's citywide text message goes out. It says, in no uncertain terms: Glitch is dead. Hedge maze. I'm sorry.

[placeholder post for anything you want to happen during the week following the end of the fairy tale event, especially dealing with the fallout of Glitch's death. Visits, tablet convos, bumping into each other in town, anything goes. If you're unsure where to start, ping me at sakuraofrureo on AIM and we can work something out. Or just tag in, and see what happens.

Anyone and everyone who expressed wanting more cr with either of my characters, go ahead and tag.]

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[Visual-Locked]

"Yeah, I'm on my way." Slight pause, Paul hesitating, opening his mouth to say something, shutting it as he heads to grab his coat off a hook and moves for the door.

A second before he ends the transmission he mutters something that sounds like, "just fucking be there when I get there," and then the screen goes to black.

[location - and that's not likely to change anytime soon, so why not skip the brackets for now unless it does?]

Cain ends the feed from his side as well, lips pressed together as he stands there motionless for a moment. Thinking back to their meeting in the forest - and it must have happened the way he remembers it if Paul's reaction's anything to go by. Fucking be there when I get there speaks loud and clear. You don't have to be a cop to get the message.

He pushes himself into action, out of the bedroom and into the bathroom to rinse off the worst of the grime. And then he waits, dressed in a pair of soft drawstring pants simply because buttons just aren't an option right now. There's something he needs to do when Paul walks through that door, and getting into the tub would just...

So, no. He'll wait. He's quite happy to, come to think of it.

Paul heads up the stairwell after a short tram ride, gets to the door and doesn't bother knocking-- he's figured out the hand locks and got himself coded into Wyatt's weeks, no months ago now. He still usually knocks, courtesy, but right now he figures Wyatt probably doesn't want to move much so what the fuck.

He's in the door moving at a speed that is not-quite-a-run, and just manages to come to a stop before bowling Wyatt over.

Wyatt half expected it, half didn't, and finds himself stumbling back half a step to avoid either one of them tripping up. Then he brings his hands up, fingers burrowing into the soft hair at the base of Paul's neck and looks him straight in the eye.

"It's me. I'm me."

Paul stares back a few seconds, not moving, then nods once, short and jerky.

"Good. Good. That's... good."

He lifts a hand of his own but there's no place on Wyatt's body that doesn't look sore or peeled or cracked, so that hand hovers a bit like an uncertain glance before dropping back down to his side.

"Come on, let's get you to the tub or some shit."

"Oh, for the love of--" He cuts himself off just short of an exasperated huff, and smiles just a split second before pulling the other man into a hug.

"I'm not made of glass, all right? I won't break. I promise."

"christ--" It is hard to speak when your face is fwumped against somebody's chest.

"I fucking know that, you're mister indestructifuckingble," Paul mutters against Wyatt's chest with considerable testiness. Somewhat belied by the fact that his arms are around Wyatt's waist for a short, hard hug before he pulls back.

"Right, Hallmark moment over, Jesus-shit you look even worse in person, turn around, go, go, tub, come on." Much finger gesturing for Wyatt to obey.

"All right, all right," Wyatt gives, hands up in the air and starts shuffling very carefully towards the bathroom. "First of all, I always finished my vegetables as a boy, and second..."

He looks over his shoulder briefly. "What's a hall mark? I'm guessing it isn't a sign."

Behind the casual facade, he can't help but feel...any number of things, all centered around the hug he got, and how it made everything seem just a bit less bothersome.

Hall mark or not, whatever it means, that wasn't just a good and proper hug.

It felt like coming home.

"I'm sure that you did." Shooing hands, although Paul mentally insists he is not hovering.

"Hallmark is a company that makes, hm, greeting cards, floral arrangements.... they deal in sentiment. Gah, you look like you have frostbite on your fucking shoulders."

Getting there, getting there, one sore step at a time. Inside the bathroom, everything looks the same as always, with the exception of the first aid kit sitting on the counter. It's steamy, but not foggy. Wyatt knows better than to further dry out his skin with hot water.

"I think I've heard it before," he notes, a faint mumble as he gestures for Paul to please do the honors with the tub and the filling thereof. Once was quite enough for him, thanks.

"...right. You said something about my childhood being like one of those cards. I think. I knew it sounded familiar. And as long as the skin hasn't gone white or purple, I'll be fine. I wasn't completely exposed to the elements, you know."

Paul Smecker is of the school that believes any exposure to the elements is a tad fucking much.

"Hallmark, or Norman Rockwell, maybe, more or less the same thing," he grunts as he spins the faucet on and starts filling the tub with water that he adjusts to a lukewarm temperature.

"Just don't do it again, cowboy." Paul scowls a little as he says it, because he knows quite well intellectually that it wasn't Wyatt's idea to do it in the first place and that there is no guarantee here in Taxon that any resolution on Wyatt's part will stop it from happening again, either.

"I won't." Murmured softly as he half pushes, half slides the sweatpants off. He knows he can't make any promises, but that much he can mirror Paul's sentiment. What's to say it couldn't have been much worse than this? What's to say it won't be, next time?

Paul hears the emphasis and understands Wyatt's meaning. He grunts with a nod-- it's the best that can be offered, it's the best they can do. Paul rubs briefly at the bridge of his nose before getting to his feet and standing there, hand out, in case Wyatt needs a hand getting into the tub.

Time to change the subject, far as he's concerned.

"Do you know if you ate during that mess?"

Taking the offered hand with an incremental softening around the eyes, Wyatt gets in, almost immediately hissing as his foot hits the water. Nothing left to do but grit his teeth and tell himself it'll get better. Next foot in, and he eases himself down with a bit of help. As if on cue, his stomach makes a rather pitiful sound.

"Not much." He shakes his head, sinking lower for a soak. "I should have something in the kitchen that isn't stale or moldy." Go ahead, in so many words, do that thing you do that keeps me from starving.

"Some toast would be nice."

"Toast," Paul mutters darkly. It feels pretty insufficient to him, but he's grudgingly aware that's because he'll feel like he's helping only if he makes a nice big meal. But this is for Wyatt's health, not what will make Paul feel like he's done enough, and Paul's brain points out that toast is probably the best thing for Wyatt's stomach right now. Bland and easy to digest.

"Alright. Toast," he sighs, and does a cursory glance around to make sure there's towels and washcloths and everything else in Wyatt's immediate reach.

"Don't try and get your back on your own, wait for me on that, genius," he mutters before heading for the kitchen.

Toast and rice. He'll compromise.

"Don't look at me like that," Cain retorts with half a smirk. "It's not like it's store bought or anything."

Baking his own bread, like cooking his own food (unless someone steps in to make it something a bit more special than mere fuel), is one of the things Cain does to try regain some token control over his life. It may not be much, or seem like it, but it's a big step up from spending his days staring out the window or walking the streets for hours.

Shaking his head as Paul leaves, he grabs one of the bottles leaning against the wall on the tub's edge. Some bath oil can't be bad at this stage. It just can't be.

"You made your own bread? Oh my god, someone put you on a Christmas card already," Paul grouses over his shoulder as he disappears into Wyatt's kitchen.

The bread is found, put in to toast; Paul gets out butter and starts a pot of water boiling for the rice. Once things are merrily started he slips back for the bathroom to check on Wyatt's progress so far.

The jibe does nothing to diminish Wyatt's high spirits, and while Paul's busy getting things under control in the kitchen, he starts a more thorough cleanup of his feet. The last thing he wants or needs is an infection.

Damage control is easy enough: he can feel a steady, hammering pulse wherever damage has been done, and the warmer, more insistently tangible that pule is, the worse. His hands and feet, his legs, neck and up. His torso isn't quite so bad, all things considered, nor his legs, but he has a feeling he won't want to crouch or kneel for a good few days.

He lifts his head at the sound of footsteps, waiting for his friend to come into view. "Find everything?"

"Yes. Your kitchen is about one step away from being alphabetized, mister Organization." Not like Paul can really throw stones there.

He rakes Wyatt's body with a critical gaze, inspecting the damage with a fairly practiced eye, looking none-too-pleased at Wyatt's state.

"I ought to have just pistol-whipped you unconscious and dragged you in to somewhere with heating," he mutters darkly.

He can't help but smile at both assessments, then gesturing for the other man to come closer.

"Not sure how that would've worked out. I couldn't feel pain. Not the physical kind, not the emotional or psychological variety either. And do you know what I figured out thanks to all of that?"

Paul stalks closer, sits down on the toilet commode.

"Wouldn't have mattered," he says with a sigh. "Knocking someone out via blunt force trauma to the head has nothing to do with pain. It's the force of the impact jarring your brain sufficiently within its cradle of cerebrospinal fluid that your body shuts down in order to get you horizontal and return your brain to its normal stabilized position."

Ah, it's gems like these so casually dispensed that made Paul Smecker such a charming conversationalist with the various agents and cops he has served with over the years.

Paul picks at imaginary lint on his sleeve. "Here, let me get your back. What did you learn, the True Power of Love?"

Edited 2012-01-06 00:25 (UTC)

"Don't get cute with me," is his few-worded response to both the lecture on cerebrospinal fluid (is that what the witch's henchmen kept Ambrose's half a brain in? Not something he wants to dwell on) and the cheeky remark.

"It's a cliché, but something I think I needed to experience for myself. I used to think it would be so much easier if you couldn't feel pain. But having lived through it, I've changed my opinion."

Pain completely and utterly sucks, as any Othersider might put it, but it's part of being human...and for a good reason, too.

"I don't do cute," Paul retorts. He leans back against the tank of the toilet and crosses his arms, listening to Cain's life revelation, as it were.

"Should I withhold my remark about oh, and this has led you to embrace the other extreme and I should now bring a whip to bed with us?" Paul asks, not withholding his remark.

"Only you would twist that into a dominance-masochistic whateverthewordis," he grouses fondly, sitting up straighter with a tiny bit of effort (or, okay, a fair deal, but he isn't going to let anyone in on how sore he is - not even Paul. Especially not him).

"So, yes. Please do withhold it, or my fragile sensibilities will be irreparably damaged."

Paul's eyes narrow slightly at the bunching of Wyatt's shoulders and the slight grit of his teeth.

His tone's light though-- "Consider it withheld. You're safe. For now."

He hears the toast pop in the other room and gets to his feet.

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hasaheart - 2012-01-13 09:09 (UTC) - Expand

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