#(sᴛᴀᴛɪᴄ sᴋɪɴ ᴀɴᴅ ʙᴜᴢᴢɪɴɢ ʙᴏɴᴇs) ;;; vᴇʀsᴇ: mᴀɪɴ

[walriding]

@buriedabove asked: there's a lot I don't understand. aw2 starters || accepting

"And let me guess -- you're expecting me to fill in the blanks?"

There was a not too distant point in time where Miles would have welcomed an inquisitive ear. Would have indulged someone else in their quest for information as it intersected with his own. But a lot can change in a short amount of time. Months, weeks, days -- sometimes all it takes is a single night to turn everything you know on its head.

His distrust is palpable. He's always been one to keep his guard up, hold strangers at a distance, but there's a measure of necessity in that habit now. Nothing about the guy screams Murkoff, not at first brush. Nothing about him screams totally innocent third party, either. He knows something or he wants something or both. The nails of Miles' remaining fingers press into his palms, hidden in the confines of his jacket pockets.

Undue paranoia is also a distinct possibility, but given history the concern feels justified. Still, playing it too defensive is its own risk. Playing it dumb, though, that's something he can do convincingly.

"Sorry to disappoint, but I probably know as much as you do. Less, even." A shrug, feigned haplessness, but he's still side eyeing the other with a scrutiny that's too sharp for his words. "Wish I could help."

[walriding]

@mslangermann continued from [x]

He's confused by the onset of her panic -- when she goes for tissues he assumes it's something to do with the baby, and immediately looks to the small bundle with redoubled uncertainty. The expectation is that he's about to get spit up on or baptized with some other unfortunate bodily fluid. This is where the concept of kids becomes notably less appealing. Too much of a mess.

His posture shifts like he's readying to hand the baby back to Lynn, but then she's pressing the tissue up under his nose instead. Instinct pulls him back a small measure, and when he does he sees the bloom of blood left behind. "Oh shit," he echoes. "Yeah, that's probably wise." Already he's trading child for tissue, slotting her back into her mother's arms so he can deal with his own problem.

When he blinks he sees inkblot shapes that linger on the edges of his vision. He has to tip his head forward slightly so he doesn't swallow blood.

"Alright, maybe take me off the babysitting roster for the immediate future." Not that he would have expected to be trusted with an entire tiny human on his own regardless. He hazards a sidelong glance at Jessica -- already her name in his mind. "We'll work on it. You're gonna need a fun, bad influence uncle y'know."

[walriding]

She's arguing semantics. Relationships are claims by their very nature -- or so something with a broader perspective believes. Claiming someone's time and energy and attention, their physical and emotional selves. Perhaps it isn't done so with the intent to possess, but the result is largely the same. Having and holding. What is that if not a claim?

Jealousy. A twinge of it, unrecognized. Greed. A general unwillingness to share what belongs to it. Feelings that it can't name let alone understand, because feeling at all remains an unwanted unknown.

But that doesn't make them less true.

It responds with a stiff nod. Maybe her understanding shouldn't matter. It's not as though her refusal would have changed anything. But it's close enough to a brokered peace that it should placate the Host, and that matters more than her perception of it.

It's a quiet thing, the way shoulders fall slightly and posture becomes a bit less rigid. There's still a reluctance to give up control, but then Miles is rolling out the too tense muscles of his neck and blinking away the ink-spill aura at the edges of his vision. He pulls a face at the first sip of cold coffee.

"You two have a nice chat?" He takes another sip of coffee to clear the roughness from his voice.

@walriding / continued from here

As the hum softens in her mouth, Miles’ hand is taken back and she feels only the table beneath her fingers. Instinctively, she withdraws and leans back a little in her chair, watching the other cautiously. Although, these days, this caution also breeds curiosity. Lynn is humble enough to admit she will never understand the Walrider, not fully, its mere existence and ties to this world bring about questions that go well beyond her understanding of the world. 

However, this doesn’t stop her wondering, assessments on how it can co-exist with a human body or where it really came from or how much… of Miles is truly left. The latter frightens her and is something she doesn’t like to dwell on long. But she knows what remains of him is fused with the entity inside, the two of them inseparable and dependent on one another. 

“I know I can’t,” she admits somewhat begrudgingly, though the harshness in her tone has subsided. She speaks softer now, a quiet acceptance. “I don’t claim him. He’s not a prize. He’s a person…” A sigh. “I’m not going to pretend like you’re not there. You make that impossible. But… yeah. I accept it.” 

[walriding]

@mslangermann​ from [x]

      Miles wishes he had answers. Not because they would make any of this any easier, or because neatly presented rationale would somehow negate the pain and horror that’s brought her to this point. But answers would at least stop his head from spinning.

      The child doesn’t make sense. Everything he’d read about the psychosomatic pregnancies as a side effect of the Engine suggested that the occurrences were just that -- mind over body. The fetuses were never real. Just a byproduct of the Engine. For some reason anyone with a uterus experienced rapid cellular growth that closely mirrored gestation enough to fool the brain. Cancer, essentially, that was mistaken for a miracle.

      If he hadn’t seen the baby for himself he would have assumed Lynn was just as mistaken as the women that came before her. But he’s looking right at it -- her -- and unless they’re both lost in the same collective hallucination, what he’s seeing can only be real. Reality is confirmed by the way he feels the Swarm uncoiling itself, like a cat stretching and craning its body to keep an eye on an insect. It’s curious, which is rarely a good sign.

      And it doesn’t have any answers either, which is equally concerning.

      “I wish we knew.” He wants to sit by Lynn, wants to get a closer look at the baby, but something keeps him rooted to the spot a respectful distance away. “She shouldn’t be possible. None of the other pregnancies...They were all psychosomatic. And you’re sure there’s no possible way you were just -- pregnant before and didn’t know?” There’s at least one whole reality show about that, right? Yet even from where he’s standing, something in him knows there’s nothing of Blake in that baby. And Lynn doesn’t strike him as the type to have been sleeping around while married.

[walriding]

@mslangermann from [x]

      There’s still a slight thrill to be had at her unease. An unintentional response born of instinct and necessity. Miles can soften the creature’s edges with the constant flow of his psyche for all eternity and he will never manage to buff away every coarse aspect of the thing in his bones. Fear keeps it alive and keeps its Host alive in turn, and every moment in chills the blood in another’s veins with its mere presence is another moment Miles is allowed to keep breathing.

      But where once there had been something gleeful in garnering that kind of reaction from her, there now resides something closer to indifference. It has poked at her open wounds before, and though it can offer little in the way of healing, at least now it doesn’t seek to rub in any additional salt.

      An almost equivalent indifference is leveled at the mug set before the body. Lip twitches but doesn’t manage to curl in distaste. “No, he doesn’t.” Need the caffeine or the accompanying sugar, that is. The Swarm has little taste for such things itself, and sees no value in calories and stimulants when it already gives Miles everything he needs.

      “You don’t trust us, either.” Understandably so, and it bears her no ill will for that. “Yet you haven’t turned him away.” Not in any way that she’s really and truly meant, anyway. When there’s been distance between the reporters, it’s been of Miles’ own making by at least half. “Anyone else would have, after what you’ve seen. Why haven’t you?”

[walriding]

@demcnsinmymind​ from [x]

      Normally he’s opposed to involving other people in his personal bullshit. It’s a matter of principle -- people who aren’t possessed tend to be at greater physical risk when they find themselves on the wrong end of Murkoff. At least Miles knows he’d capable of withstanding a little more danger. Preston, however, isn’t most people. Calling him with a request for somewhere to lay low had been an act of sheer desperation, but he’d thought that of anyone the tv host was the best equipped to handle the risk.

      Granted, he hadn’t expected to be followed. He thought he’d given the mercenaries a clean slip before they’d noticed, but of course they’d managed to track him back to the dingy motel where Preston was holed up for the time being. He feels bad now for having brought all this down on the other man, but he’s still privately hoping the mercs just give up and fuck off long enough for them to get the hell out of here.

      “What, you haven’t had any armed cult crazies up your ass hoping to bring you back into the fold? Kinda sad -- thought you would’ve been more popular.” Joking to deflect, as per usual. He’s keeping towards the back of the room, well away from the windows. Without knowing what the mercs are armed with it’s difficult to know what he should be trying to avoid. If they’ve got any kind of EMP detecting tech he’s screwed, so he’s trying to maintain as much distance between him and the outside as possible in such a cramped space.

      “No, definitely Murkoff. I don’t know how, I’ve been keeping a low profile lately. Guess I’ve been sitting on my ass too long and they finally caught up.”

[walriding]

@thomasrekowicz​ asked: ❛ how long have i been asleep? ❜

random dialogue starters || accepting

      Too long.

      At some point his attention had split between computer screen and open-faced notebook, the fingers of one hand idly hunting and pecking for keys while his other hand scrawled a pen across lined pages. Perhaps there was something intelligible buried in the typed gibberish like some kind of children’s wordsearch game, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to examine it. The notebook was equally incomprehensible, pages of heavy handed ink etchings. The pen must have run dry at some point, for the page that was currently opened to the ceiling was marred by inkless lines dug into the blank paper.

      He blinked at the sound of a nearby voice, his eyes stinging as though he hadn’t closed them for some time. His fingers cramped as he released the spent pen, and a frown tugged at his lips when he got a look at how productive the last -- lost -- chunk of time had been.

      A housefire. Pain, unimaginable pain, so deep it felt like his soul was being wrenched from his body. A gunshot. Gossamer wings, butterflies -- or were they moths? The faint ticking of a pocket watch.

      “Not long.” A lie -- he didn’t really know the answer. His voice sounded faraway to his own ears, and he blinked again. For a moment the world looked ashen, decayed, but the illusion was brief and he thought little of it. “You snored.” Another lie, or a deflection. Miles chewed on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, a sensation that was close enough to grounding. “Must be an old man thing.”

[walriding]

@styxisms asked: 5 for spotify from Sable lol spotify wrapped meme || accepting #5 -- Night Springs; by Alan Wake Keira 'Cause in Night Springs, we're just looking for the thrill All your nightmares come true

Whatever's going on here, Miles really doesn't think it's his problem. It's outside the bounds of how Murkoff usually operates -- they're more about underground facilities and shady science that suburban legends. But, still, he's curious. Disappearances, spooky sightings. After the catastrophic success of their last supernatural project, they're looking for the next best thing. He knows that much. And a place like this, a place that feels like it's resting on the nexus of unseen fault lines...

Well, it's the kind of place they might want to look. Which means Miles wants to beat them to it.

Cursory research hasn't yielded much. Someone's got every useful book on local history checked out from the library, and whatever he can find online is spotty at best. There was a recent disappearance but coverage is sparse, and it's difficult to discern how much anyone believes it in the first place. A magic trick gone wrong. Not exactly solid starting grounds. He has other methods of investigation at his disposal, of course, but isn't eager to use them in circumstances that don't call for bloodshed. Overkill would be putting it mildly, so he resolves to do this the old fashioned way. A little b&e never hurt anybody.

He knows the minute he's in the building that he isn't alone. Call it extrasensory perception -- or call it a perfectly human amount of perception based on the jimmied lock that greets him. It could be anyone, and he has to remind both himself and the thing that is not himself that whoever it is might not be an immediate danger. Still, he treads carefully, making as little noise as he's able to. But when he rounds a corner and catches sight of someone else, he has to bite his tongue to hold back a curse.

The wisest thing to do is back away quietly in the direction he came and chalk this up to the wrong night for digging. Which is exactly what he tries to do, until his foot catches on something that grinds between his heel and the floor with a sharp, metallic sound. So much for subtle.

[walriding]

@alsquiet asked: " dangerous to be out so late "

random dialogue starters || accepting 

      It’s not exactly a rarity for Miles to find himself somewhere he shouldn’t be. Warning signs, whether explicit or implied, mean little to him. There’s a damn good reason why instinct tells you to shy away from all things dark and decrepit, something he’s had more than his fair share of experience with.

      Too bad he never really learns.

      “What am I supposed to be afraid of? You?” Most people should be -- whatever the other is, isn’t human. But the reporter isn’t most people, and he’s a few steps removed from human himself. He’d like to think that gives him an edge, but mostly he’s trying to cover for the fact that he is a little bit freaked out. At least he has learned how to hide his nerves in even the worst case scenarios. “Because unless you’re about to rip my head off, I’ve seen worse.”

[walriding]

@mauscleum​ asked: ❛ was that a friend of yours? ❜ - Alessa

random dialogue starters || accepting

      She hadn’t seen him in such a state since that town. Of course she knew about the nature he tried so desperately to hide -- at times he thought that to be the only reason she’d trusted him enough to leave with him in the first place. But he’d done his best to shield her from the messier facets of his life. Maybe that wasn’t worth much, given who she was and what she herself had already been through. Alessa was a unique child -- hardly a child at all in certain respects -- but it felt wrong to burden her with his troubles even if she might have been able to empathize. 

      Her past haunted her well into the present. She didn’t need to worry about him, too.

      So he’d made little mention of Murkoff and the risks they continued to pose to him. Them. Miles would quietly take care of whatever threats crept in, would conduct his business with the corporation without breathing a word of it to Alessa. If she’d caught on at any point, she kept it to herself. Until now, when it could no longer be ignored.

      Every fiber of his being tensed at the sound of her voice, and reality slammed down all around him like a cascade of bricks. There was blood, a lot of blood, most of it still seeping from the mangled remains of the unidentifiable body at his feet. The static in his ears pitched high before it retreated, a protesting whine as Miles gathered up the pieces of himself and used them to box the Swarm back inside. 

      She wasn’t supposed to follow him. Had never followed him. But she wasn’t a little kid anymore, and a part of him had started to worry that he couldn’t keep up the charade of normalcy forever. 

      “How... how much of that did you see?”

[walriding]

@celestieu asked: ❛ why can i not come with you? ❜

random dialogue starters || accepting

       “You think they wouldn’t recognize you?”

      As far as he knows, there were only two survivors of Mount Massive -- and he only survived in the loosest sense of the term. He knows he’s playing with fire as it is, continuing to poke at Murkoff like the proverbial sleeping bear. But Miles can’t help it. Can’t just leave well enough alone.

      But that doesn’t mean he wants to drag someone else into this shit on his behalf. While she isn’t a neutral party herself, the kind of digging he’s doing now is inherently riskier than simple information gathering. The last thing he wants is for her to get caught in the crossfire.

      “Look, I appreciate all of your help -- seriously, I do. But if Murkoff gets the better of both of us, we’re kinda fucked. And everything we’ve done will have been a waste.”

[walriding]

@demcnsinmymind​ asked: 'You were nothing more than a corpse when I found you'

moon knight starters || accepting 

      “When you found me, huh?”

      It should unsettle him more, the notion that he isn’t speaking to the man that body belongs to. Because he’s certain that he isn’t. The stages of possession aren’t quite as obvious was what Miles has experienced for himself. There’s no unnatural blood, no drastic change in tone, no shadow crawling across his skin. Nothing about that change is subtle for Miles. But although it’s less overt for Preston, Miles feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up when he realizes he’s no longer talking to the former tv show host.

      Yet even then he keeps his cool, easily tamping down the very human instinct to put as much distance between himself and this thing as he can. What could it do to him that hasn’t already been done? Miles is, as this thing has professed, little more than a corpse animated by something unknowable. How could something like a demon scare him?

      “Last I checked, I was the one who tracked down that host of yours.” Perhaps the meeting had been ordained, but Miles isn’t about to let the other have that satisfaction. “And you weren’t the one scraping me off the floor of Mount Massive.” Although he’s wondered, more than once, if Preston’s pal had been there in some capacity, given the ties that bound the two asylums. At the suggestion though the Walrider has always bristled. Their connection has always been their own -- but he can’t help the curiosity about what else might have been working behind the scenes.

[walriding]

@literalminded​ liked for a starter

      “If we want this to work, we need to... talk.” One corner of his lip curls lightly with distaste. For a man who prides himself on his honesty and staunch refusal to pull punches, Miles has never been good with frank emotional conversations. They make him feel too exposed, too raw. 

      And this particular wound is like a scab he just keeps picking off.

      “Set some ground rules. Expectations.” He snorts a sharp sigh through his nose. “That, or we just pretend like none of this shit ever happened.” Easier said than done. It always is.

[walriding]

@mauscleum​ asked: ‘ this idiot wants to die! ' - alessa, except it's her and the walrider playing some board game and guess who's winning

outlast starters || accepting 

      Of all the mind-bending, soul-crushing, life-ruining horrors the Swarm was capable of enacting on mankind, Miles hadn’t assumed that make a gradeschooler cry over Connect 4 ranked high on its list of priorities. He was fairly certain they were on round thirtysomething -- truthfully he’d slipped from the passenger’s seat to the backseat of his brain after the seventeenth game -- and by his count, Alessa hadn’t won yet. A tally that was corroborated by the way the curtains framing a nearby window started smoking.

      The sudden drop into awareness sent a clear message as the Walrider sunk back into his bones -- your problem now.

      “No one likes a sore loser, ‘Les,” he frowned, moving to throw the remnants of his drink glass over the smoldering fabric. “And no threatening grievous bodily harm to my nanite co-parent over board games -- unless it’s Monopoly. All’s fair in love and Monopoly.”

      Sitting back down Miles glanced at the game still set up between them, and quickly surmised she was cruising for loss number thirtysomething. “Y’know what, let’s play something else.” Candyland, from his memory, never sparked World War 3 on game night.

[walriding]

@demcnsinmymind​ asked: ‘  what do you expect? what insight are you trying to gather from here?  ’

buzzfeed unsolved starters || accepting

      Tracking down someone who doesn’t really want to be found is no small task -- Miles should know. He’s gotten good at flying under the radar himself, and Murkoff had done a damn good job of making sure his story never saw the light of day. These days they’re the only ones he has to hide from. There had been that other footage, shot by the whistleblower, but the corporation had thrown enough resources around to effectively bury what happened at Mount Massive. Other than whatever obituaries his family published, Miles’ story -- and his death -- never made much in the way of news.

      Not like this guy.

      He’d made connections before trying to hunt him down. Started putting together pieces of puzzles that seemed too different at first, but whose pictures showed enough similarities to warrant further interest. Maybe Miles is just grasping at straws, trying to make sense of things that exist outside the realm of reason. Or maybe he’s really on to something. Either way, it became increasingly clear that if he wanted to get any further, he’d need a primary source. And who better to answer his questions than the man of mystery himself? Finding him hadn’t been easy, and then after brief introductions he’d had to convince Preston to meet in person. Somewhere public enough to tread just this side of cautious, but not blatant enough to attract any unwanted attention. The quiet coffee shop Miles is currently sitting outside of fit the bill -- now it’s only a matter of waiting for him to show up.

      He’s lost in thought, scribbling aimlessly in his notebook and trying to quiet the nagging itch at the base of his skull with another long drag off his cigarette. Lost enough that when someone sits down across from him Miles reacts with a start, drawing a thick line of ink across the page he’d been marking up and coughing on his lungful of smoke. He mutters a quick “Fuck, sorry,” and stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray sitting on the table, eyes shifting briefly to his notebook as he does. Under the startled slash of ink, he’d been writing. All capital letters, the words thick and scratch-like. Miles doesn’t read past the first line -- ‘DEMONS IN THE WALLS’ -- before he’s turning to a clean page with the hand not preoccupied with the cigarette. Someone, or something, is trying to tell him something, but with more pressing matters at hand he isn’t in a mood to listen.

      Then, finally, he looks up. And there’s Lance Preston in the flesh. Looks only slightly better than complete shit, but pot meet kettle and all that. Before he can attempt to make any kind of introduction he’s being asked a question that sounds like a censored version of ‘so what the fuck you you want?’

      “Miles Upshur,” he responds dryly. “And you must be Lance Preston.” Sighing, he elects to leave the formalities there, not offering a handshake. “Like I said in my emails, I just want to talk. Which I’m sure you’ve heard a lot, but... whatever happened to you, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. There’s other shit going on in the world, and if your shit is related to that shit, it’d be nice if I could figure that out.”

[walriding]

@mauscleum​ liked for a starter

      “I wouldn’t call it a bad idea...” Even though the slight scrunching of his nose and the faint furrow between his brows said otherwise. Miles wasn’t a stranger to questionable plans -- he’d been at the helm of his own a fair few times. But he wasn’t one for keeping his opinions to himself.

      “But I wouldn’t call it a good one, either.”