#» | × | Aapeli&Misha || It’s Like Being Friends With A Five Year Old Child Who’s Also An Alcoholic ||

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[ Reply too ] -- @mangher

It was a sight to witness, to be in front of so raw. Misha was never like this - a joker, a jack the lad, an annoying shit that cracked all his walls by kicking open his doors like he's hands were allergic to doorknobs. The doctor however felt like this wasn't something out of the idea of needing attention, of playing with the heart but a real, vulnerable Misha.

Staring in silence after asking what was on his mind to seek out Misha's reasoning to be this way - he felt himself fall numb. A monster. It wasn't harsh to think of oneself in that manner considering what they were - but to Aapeli, Misha was proud to be himself. The beast and him, had a connection - now the doctor was going to try and pay more attention to how the two minds connected. Was it an easy slip into the bestial mind like himself? Or was it more like a fight, like his friend Andrew, who despised anything to do with his wolf. The natures of the human and animal mind were complex, and the reality was harsh…

But, as Aapeli's thoughts silenced and his frame turned upon his own chair at his writing desk - he gave the other man all his attention. Moving to stand up when Misha was struggling with words, listening on and then finally the weight of it all. The reason as to why his friend was out like a deflated balloon. A heavy, heavy reasoning that warranted nothing but the purest of Aapeli's sympathies.

He reached out though once he was close enough, a hovering touch that retracted at the right time to instead settle on his own ass next to the other figure. Instead - opting to touching their shoulders with a bump. Stretching his legs out, and resting his hands between his knees - the Doctor's features were tensed with a weary furrow. Agony, he understood - though his own bloodline was still thriving in their hideaways in Finland, it wasn't like he hasn't witnessed the death of his loved ones.

At least two packs, he's been with and watched their ruin.

Once he believed to be his second home from his first, and then last being one he was trying to help only to be shunned and no longer able to help unbeating hearts.

"I'm sorry, Misha." A soft tone, but not one to cause irritation, instead it was spoken with true intentions to let the other know he wasn't alone. "You're no monster… annoying gremlin, at best --- but not a monster." Not in the sense he knows monsters out there. His hand rose from his lap this time to reach over, palm up in offering to something else to be connected if his shoulder was or wasn't taken.

"I'm here if you need to say more… It's not good to keep it inside that head of yours." An offering to be hear more, to take on the burdens and sadness of their life and the days long gone, but emotions still fresh. "I'll set up the spare bed for you... Rest here for tonight."

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It was painful, so fucking painful. The stabbing in his own eyes, the headache from the empathy almost, the sensation of being there for someone who needs it and when the pitiful wails came through - Aapeli's tension eased because that sound was the hurt child, the confused tool, the so-called monster - that understands what it's done and just seeking the safety to release it all freely. Grief was a disease and Aapeli knew it best himself also. The sensation of it clawing away one's pride and mind, clouding or blinding those it settles in the core of. Aapeli understood some of this grief, but he was happier. Knowing that Misha didn't hold on anymore - letting it out, and weeping for the moon and leaves to ease the grief away. Little by little.

Holding onto a crumbling stone was only so much work but to hold the pieces and rebuild, it just needed time and patience. Thus being asked on why he was able to care. How he was still here where Aapeli believed the other thought he'd be running away right now? It was an easy answer. "Because what else can I do for you?" He couldn't fix the past, couldn't stop the emotions or the memories, he couldn't tell Misha off, he couldn't punish him nor his parents or that whole country… "Because you're already at the bottom of your tether, Misha. I can now help you by just being here." He knew it wouldn't work or be a quick fit without Misha's cooperation either.

"If you want the support - I'll be that. This place can be yours too, or one of my cabins. Whatever you need, I'll provide. Safety? I can provide. A shoulder? I can provide. A warm meal, I can provide." Came the list with ease, moving to gently retreat his grip so he could look upon them all the same. Though this time with a softened stare, his own eyes reddened with tears that were wiped aside and shown to be on their level. "I have no right to judge you anymore than you judge yourself… You have already set yourself on the guillotine." He doesn't need to drop the blade above.

Instead, he's here with an open hand to help him off it.

"And I think the first thing you need to do… Is hold a ceremony for them." It was a ritual for all species, to have a sacred place for those long past, to rest, to hold their thoughts and emotions as their shoulders could no longer hold it all on top of them. He reached out to swipe a thumb over a wet cheek, smearing the salted tracks aside and giving the man a solid look before resting foreheads together.

"You need a place to mourn - a place to talk to them and let them go eventually. I'll be there with you if you want me there. Help you plan something for when you are ready - but this, is something you need to learn to live with better. I don't know how you've managed this as you have, Misha - but you don't have to anymore."

Reliving the memories were the worst. Every year he went through the scenarios in his head over and over. He tried to remember anything that got to the point of him breaking that day, for being so utterly useless and weak, that he allowed it to happen. It brought guilt and shame with it. Shame more prominent. He was supposed to be in control all the time.

But he knew, he could say what caused it all. It probably was probably just a culmination of many things. All the things that could have gone wrong, did. Unable to find a culprit, a solid someone to blame, he blamed himself.

Breathing felt hard, the salt from his tears were splattered on his tongue. He felt like choking. There were a pause to his desperate attempts to breathe when he felt the first touch. It had him flinch, snarl, snap his maw-- just to go back to breathing with difficulty. He shouldn't, he wouldn't, he needed to--

And Misha did struggle when embraced. The feeling so foreign, unwelcome for a brief second, just for him to take two large hiccuping breaths and slump. He slumpped right into the warmth provided by Aapeli, sinking into it as much as possible and wishing, hoping it'd just hold him like this forever, to hide him away, so he could just disappear in something soft. Let it all out.

Unheard of. He couldn't, he shouldn't. Yet, the lump in his throat was making itself known more and more. A pitiful noise left him.

Something shattered. That something was the rest of his heart and soul he has tried to keep together. Broken now thanks to nothing but the, dare he say, loving kindness from the doctor. He wasn't deserving of any of this. Not the embrace, not the home offered to him, nor the help the other so generously was giving him.

Mikhail didn't even notice how he'd been sobbing, sounds broken, stuttering. A broken wail here and there. His own wolf confused, crying, yet angry. Ready to both fight and run away. Mikhail's arms found themselves around the doctor's waist, holding on tight, anchoring him into something solid and warm. Something he distantly remembered it having been like to be hugged by his mother, before it had been prohibited. No running away.

If he left now, he probably would end up hurt more or killing someone else. His sense of self teetering slightly, only contained by the arms around him.

Misha was starting to get a headache, not used to crying or showing emotions in any degree. "I was… I was still it," he croaks, explaining how, when he came to his senses, he was still the beast. How he towered over everything. "I still held h-her… so small, she was so small," his little sister. Limp, lifeless, crushed. He gagged at the memory, hacking a few seconds, ending it in a dry heave. "I tried help her," he whispers, "she wouldn't breathe… I tried help…"

Eventually he manages to get the rest of the story out, of that day, how he kept carrying his sister with him while hoping, against all odds, that she would wake up. She didn't. Not once during the three days. His own wolf grieved this still, howling loud and pitiful inside him as he recalled it. The scent, the view. How he had to leave her behind.

Maybe, it all just in the end explains why he's hurt so often. Numb to the outside pain since he's in agony from the inside. Wanting to feel something else than just the deep wounds his past has left in him. Because how else would he feel anything else?

They can work through this? It's ridiculous. Nothing could possibly help. It was all just wishful thinking! It almost made him angry, but enough so that he actually did look up, nevermind how unbecoming he looked at the moment. "How-- how!?" How does one work through all this? How and why doesn't Aapeli regard him as a monster, why doesn't he fear him or what lurks inside him?! What ever spike of aggression he felt was gone as quick as it came. Because he didn't understand. "Why…? Why do you care so much…?"

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"You have unreasonably high price for me, comrade," Misha states, even if it might not be the best moment to do so, being patched up by Aapeli, once again. However, before he might be stabbed harder with the needle that's stitching him up, he's reaching over, hand brushing against the older male's cheek, fingers curling to grip his chin gently, pulling Aapeli closer while he leans forward a little. An overly confident, smug smirk paints Misha's scarred features as he speaks up, voice a seductive low rumble, "I could always pay with my body~"

Movement was at ease, a composed Doctor at work as he moved to smear aside blood and clean his fingertips before continuing on with threading two sides of the gash shut in a simple stitch. Half way though the other's wound, did his attention lift away from his focus. Lashes flutter aside the concentration to allow his lips to pull a touch at the corner with a smirk - but the taunt on his tongue was left to the wind as he felt the others touch to his cheek.

The proximity finally clocked on that note also, as he found himself lulled in closer to listen to the proposition. A jest? Though his hands hovered with needle in grips and his brain turning to mush - Aapeli was sure he felt his gut twist in a desire he believed to of passed with the season.

He was hoping the gulp of saliva was inaudible but with their senses, no doubt the fool before him heard it as clear as day since Aapeli was as silent as death. Though that did change as his lilac hues shuddered to a golden hue at the desire that burned through his veins in a sudden want. Fuck --- his brows furrowed, forcing his teeth to grit behind his lips as his jaw to pull away from Misha's palm to instead hiss upon straightening his spine and returning to stabbing the needle through numbed flesh with efficiency.

"Don't." A scold from the Elder at work, as he moved to weave away - faster than before - but nonetheless professional as he knotted the thread and cut the rest of it free to place aside with a loud clatter of metal on metal. A gauze, with ointment smeared on it, then a bandage of the top to keep things in place, he fastened it with a swift knot to suddenly stand up from his work and pushed his cart aside to step towards his skin.

Leaning on it as his head dipped, hot all over and foggy with the others words in his head. God damnit. "I'll send you the invoice, you damn brat. Get out." His growl was thick, though, as he meant it - even in this state of want. He might have come back to work too early, fucks sake.

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Misha had been shadowing Aapeli for a long while, more or less been in the way with how he was right there every time the doctor turned around. Did he apologize? No. Instead, he just stared at Aapeli, then moved enough for him to get pass. Now Mikhail was right up in Aapeli's personal space, again, barely an inch separating him from the back in front of him. With a small step, he'd slot himself perfectly against the other. Which is what he ends up doing, arms winding tight around Aapeli's waist, nose pressed against the back of his neck where he inhales deep. There's an urge to bite, but not even he's that crazy, even if his lips part and a canine pricks at the skin. Instead, he presses against Aapeli's backside more firmly.

It was like his shadow was above him, at all times, the sensation of being watched and mimicked to the point of elbowing the man in the stomach a few times from turning around or reaching behind him too much adjusting his lab coat. The irritants grew with ease, his metre bar having reached it's peak the moment he needed to grab those papers he just put down only to be seized in the motion of the other's body literally slithering like a second skin on his back.

Lips part with an inhale, sharp and with warning for the personal invasion but with the sudden shift of arms following with a heat that his body hadn't had for a while, made his thoughts stutter. His fingers twitched, and then his eyes widened at the strangest touch to his nape. A foreign space, a sacred space for their species in a sense of just many reasoning but it was enough - enough to make Aapeli's heart stop and his fangs to bear in a silence warning.

Wariness was at it's tipping point, he didn't even hear his own growling at Misha until he felt them just sandwich against him shamelessly. "What…. What are you doing, Misha?" Hands long forgotten about things held in them, dropping letter and pen long ago, allowing his hands to latch onto the younger's wrists around his middle. He felt hot, hotter than usual with two of them being unnaturally warm… The inhaling of his scent no doubt rattled him a little further too. It was just so intimate he didn't know what to do…

"S… Let… ??" Aapeli's vocabulary was out the window, red to the tips of the ears and his face sweaty no doubt from the blood rushing to colour it a nice new hue. "You… let me go." Choking it out though with a sense of self-awareness to his state. He could smell his own excitement, his interest in the attention he barely gets or sought for when he was deep in his research and job. Gods, it was embarrassing, it made his gums itch again before he snapped his teeth with a reprimand.

"Misha! Off!" Hands that once rested on the others forearms now scratched at them with motions of pushing himself forward, to part their bodies, to stop his own from enjoying something so simple and biologically okay. "You damn rut headed oaf, get off me before I hurt you for real." Another snarl, deeper this time and hint of his wolf in his throat.

He was panicking.

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Deeper it went the sea of nervousness into the plummeting realization that it wasn't just a mental break-down over a mishap of some small proportions but the true horrors of a world that corrupts the unknown into weapons. Aapeli felt his stomach clench, sickness and nausea close to the back of his tongue. The sensation of dread in witnessing Misha's body language crumble before him. Even though stable and on his ass, they knew that if they were to be standing - this man would fold.

No stable foundation could bear this weight.

Not after what Aapeli heard.

He knew of Russia's regimes in the grapevine, it wasn't hard to hear things about that countries methods of the supernatural armies but to think they'd be this vicious. Aapeli could only half imagine what it was they put into their minds and souls, how they broke them down and released them into the wild. To know that Misha's own family too, used their blood and knowledge, to aim for a rage transformation was a taboo and violent desire.

Cold and numb, Aapeli didn't even know what to think of what Misha was feeling now. The way he was curled up like a child, left to his darkness and fighting the emotions of any being to be a 'man', almost… It hurt more to him. To know that this was what Misha was carrying with him. It wasn't like traumas could be put on a shelf to deal with later, they could be ignored - the mind was powerful in fixing itself like that to protect themselves, but this wasn't something words would fix….

Not right now.

"Misha…" Aapeli felt his own heart pain at the idea, the horrors, the nightmares, sights and sounds but worst of all??? The smell. The wolves nose was a terrible gift in this state. "Oh - Misha." Aapeli moved again, not holding himself back this time - not when his pack was in pain. He's helped a lot of people in his time, wolves alike, drugs, rape victims, child trafficked wolves etc�� but this was the first it was so close to home. So - painful in his ears. It was easier to treat patients that were strangers and you take on their burden for their duration here but with a pack mate it was a shared pain.

Aapeli didn't resist himself now, moving to greatly touch Misha's forearm, taking hold with a firm grip to tug a hand from his vision, to instead coax the larger of two closer, and in fact just pull the man into his shoulder. To hold them tight, to press his fingers into his hair and aid with physical touch. They both were touch starved here - they lacked good families - affection felt wrong and foreign, but instinct. Aapeli knew when to listen to his wolf, he could feel it howling in despair to aid its pack mate through and through. "I'm here… " He didn't know what else to say outside just holding the man tighter, squeezing firm, holding and protecting them with what he could provide little of.

"Let it all out…" Everything that those veins were burning with, the tear ducts, the vocals - the beast within. That sorrow was nothing but torment for all involved. "I'm so sorry… I'm so, so sorry you have to carry this with you." He didn't dare try and spin this into a positive light, it was horrifying to know that his friend had a moment of blacking out with his beast and slaughtered those that bought it upon themselves but it wasn't the focus right now. Misha was suffering, but he wasn't alone… Aapeli could only provide that much and a safety net --- cause it only took Aapeli now to notice the flight sensation.

"You have a home here with me, Misha. This… this is something we can work through, if you're willing. I do not fear you, your wolf, your past… It hurts. It hurts that you had to do this and carry this alone, but. I want to help, in any way you need me to. I'm here."

Misha barely allowed his eyes to move, watching Aapeli walk over to him, sitting down next to him. He was hardly worth the sympathy in any shape or form. He doubted the kind hearted doctor would even want to have anything to do with him, if he knew the truth, and the weight of the sins he'd commited before stumbling over to this little area, this city. It felt like he should be on his way again soon. He'd been stuck in one place far too long.

The paranoia of being found out by his country's hitmen, hunters, was too prominent. Itching at the back of his head. He'd betrayed his country by leaving. A traitor.

"You'd be surprised how wrong you are, doctor," he scoffs; head turning to stare at the hand offered. The temptation to hold onto it was there, yes, but he knew better. He'd been taught different. Instead, he pulls one of his legs up, arms crossing lazily over his own stomach. At least he's stopped trying to give himself a neck cramp when he lifts his head and instead just heavily leans against the furniture while staring at the floor to his right.

"If I told you everything I can remember, you'd kick me out. Your hospitality would be no more... and I would have no reason to stay." There was a new pang of pain that he felt, though it had settled in his chest. Annoying, he thought, licking his lips. Giving up on something that perhaps could be considered a home felt surprisingly bad. Misha took a deep breath. Might as well get it over with, so Aapeli can hate him, and he'd have a reason to leave.

"I come from a small village in the wilderness of Russia," he starts, but he's not facing the doctor, being fairly sure that he can hear him loud and clear. "I was the second oldest, with a sister before me, and five younger siblings. Sister had been wed off....."

He goes on to explain the kind of loveless upbringing he'd had, how he at a young age was expected to start providing for the family, how he was forced to participate in military practices when he'd reached the age of barely 17. Training for him to at will change into a wolf through stress, fear, how that fear had to be turned into anger, then rage. How he was expected, thanks to his bloodline, to be in the frontlines to serve his country during conflict.

And then when he turned twenty, "Father and mother picked me a mate. I was supposed to marry her come summer." He then laughs, lifting a hand up, rubbing his eye with his palm. "I was accused of treason, doctor. I was taken away. I don't know if you've heard, but mother country doesn't take kindly to traitors, or those housing them, associating with them. I was gone, for a long time. Father was not happy with my return, nor were my grandparents."

"We argued..." Misha inhales sharply, stopping himself from scratching his face. He wouldn't want to cause more work for Aapeli after all. Though he was uncertain, if he should continue the story or not, as anxiety swirled in his gut. There's a lump in his throat he can't get rid off, no matter how many times he swallows. "I lost control," it comes out more shaky than he wants it to; Misha crosses his legs, leaning over with both hands in his hair, pulling. "I lost control, and when I came to, everyone were dead." He readjusts his grip on his hair, curling up more into himself when his eyes burn. "Everyone died, because of me! I killed everyone, her, the little ones ...everyone!" He could clearly remember how blood painted the ground, the white snow, he could still taste copper on his tongue from that day. "...even the little ones..." he whispers, more broken than he'd like to admit.