#BvO: Snarky and Clutch BrOTP

[tarnishedhalo]

@lilxlionxman {continued from xx}

lilxlionxman  answered:

[ Text : Duck ] didnt hve 2 cum asshole [ Text : Duck ] its jst a re-knew drivers test [ Text : Duck ] not fuckin directors review.

{Text: Mouse} I think that was the exact point I was trying to make. {Text: Mouse} But you made it sound like life and death. {Text: Mouse} I mean we *could* arrange that. Hey. Do you think if we pissed Hill off enough, we could make off with Phil’s arm before they caught us at the front desk?

[tarnishedhalo]

@lilxlionxman {continued from XX} [ Text : Duck ] Me [ Text : Duck ] When u show up on my doorstep at 3am [ Text : Duck ] Trippin on air & callin me something I cant say let alone spell.

{Text: Mouse} It’s called Gaelic, B. The tongue of my ancestors. {Text: Mouse} And I brought you donuts! It wasn’t like I showed up empty handed. {Text: Mouse} And I wouldn’t have had to wake you if you’d not moved the spare key. That’s just rude. {Text: Mouse} IS that what you are now, Rudeness?

[tarnishedhalo]

lilxlionxman replied to your post: @multi-mused {Zarek Morrians} @lilxlionxman {Baz...

-mouth twitch with nearly non existent ‘huh’-

~slings an arm around B’s neck and raises a brow~ You know its true, however much you deny it.

[tarnishedhalo]

Favorite pizza toppings? List the top five in order.

A Different Kind of Dev || Accepting

Maybe it’s because Baz’s making small talk, which is really impressive. Getting him to talk at all is like trying to climb Everest with board-shorts and flip flops, an act of futility. Now he could blame the amount of fireball that they’ve consumed over the evening, which he absolutely intends to have his sister cleanse from his system; that much cinnamon is not good for anyone, but especially for someone who isn’t even sure he likes it. He prefers single malt, aged at least ten years, but preferably closer to twenty, twenty-five. But the question isn’t about booze, it’s about food. And Riley is nothing if not a New Yorker. More than that, he’s dyed-in-the-wool a Brooklyn boy. He knows a good pie when he sees it, makes an even better one but nothing can beat his favourite... “First it should be from Grimaldi’s or Julian’s, which to be fair is the same lady that founded them but you know. Brooklyn style crust... which is sorta between thin crust and hand-tossed. Bottom’s dusted with cornmeal. Half mozz, half provolone, light on the sauce. As for toppings? Hell. Okay so... pepperoni, first and foremost. bell pepper, mushroom, black olives, Garlic if I ain’t on a date, basil if I am.” His mouth waters just thinking about it and he can’t help but pull out his cell-phone and calls Julian’s, which had won an award for best pizza in the entire US. “Wha’dda’bout you? You good with those? Want something different? Maybe sausage and onions, extra helping of cheese?”   

[tarnishedhalo]

♣ - Is your muse particularly merciless or do they leave their opponents relatively whole after a fight? Why?

The Fight in the Dog || Accepting {also, @ruginite for reasons}

When Riley was a teenager he gave as good as he got, more than once stepping up or stepping in to help someone a little less favoured than he was; mostly his sister, but sometimes a girl who just afraid, a kid getting picked on in the locker room for being different, and just sometimes himself for being a little too Haole for his own good. Maybe it was because of all the years he'd watched helplessly as Beth's mother suffered his father's wrath. For the years after she left that that unslaked rage turned on him and his sister. The reasons didn't really matter, maybe he'd always carried the seeds of anger and destruction in his veins. Later, the Air Force tempered that with discipline. He never really expected to be a doctor like his father or his sister. But he learned how to patch someone up well enough that they could get by, and he was perfectly content to be jumping out of plains and loaded for bear to do just that.

After the Accident though... It's hard to keep everything bottled up. Especially when the victims are kids, are helpless people who maybe deserve better, and it reminds him every time just how much like his father he can be. At the same time, there's something cathartic about beating someone into the ground, the rush of blood over his hands, the ache and the agony that have nothing to do with the pins in his spine or the nerve damage extending down toward the amputation. At over six feet and over two hundred pounds and all of that full of New York Irish spite, Riley tends not to have to worry about being anything less than the last one standing. And when all else fails...well, that's where Beth comes in, right?

Every once in a while though other things bleed through. Other things he can't exactly put his finger on. Guilt. Remorse. Slight sobriety. An emptiness that sits hollow in his chest. He hates those feelings most of all. Like now. Sitting on the floor, his real leg stretched out before him, the fake one bent at the knee and drawn up close. Back against the fridge, head hanging down. He doesn't look. He merely hands the other man a bag of frozen peas. Ignores the wreck the kitchen's in, things that'll get put right when he can find the motivation. A half chuckle rumbles low in his throat. "I'd say...you should see the other guy... but....you know." It isn't an apology. Least not in any shape or form that someone who wasn't Baz would recognise. ~*~

Riley's a beast, and he knows it. Delights in it in a lot of ways. It's only in the denouement that he can see just how bad things are, how fucked up he's been, and only when the 'other guy' is someone that's close enough to him that he can make himself care.

[tarnishedhalo]

Feeding the Symptoms

He stands there for, Christ who knows. Seconds, minutes, days. Okay not days the clock on the wall says it’s been a handful of minutes…whatever. But in those moments Bastian is uncharacteristically still. Not wishing to bring any attention to himself. Studying the hunched over silhouette tucked against the bar in the apartment kitchen. 

He’d known something was wrong with his text went unanswered, since getting off work. Him not answering Riley until hours later is one thing. But fucktard ignoring him? It smells, tastes, sounds, and feels like trouble and the bottom of a bottle of whiskey that’s been drained so entirely even the swill’s gone.

Wiser words rattle about in his head. It ain’t not worth liver failure. Maybe it’s time to admit liquor ain’t fixin’ it. Maybe therapy might be a better idea. Y'can’t keep doin’ this. But the truth of it is not a damn one of those phrases are ever going to pass his lips. Because wouldn’t that be calling the kettle black? Above and beyond the fact he doesn’t think a single one of them is true.

There are two kinds of men in the world. The ones that talk and the ones that don’t. Bastian is the former and his best friend the later. Men like Baz drown their feelings, and the ones they can’t they sure as fuck don’t talk about. They hide them away in steal traps and iron boxes with no lids; because it’s none of anyone else’s god damn business. But men like Riley? They drown them because they don’t have anywhere to put them. Unless someone asks. Unless someone inserts themselves into the equation and makes themselves available. 

And it’s that sentiment that’s got him where he is. Standing slouched against the door frame. Bottle of single malt tucked between fingers, beneath crossed arms. And there’s a breath taken. Something to settle resolve, and everything else; to make room for whatever’s gonna come next. Be that Riley unloading on him, or the pair draining the bottle he’s brought with him. And feet shuffle into the room.

Wordlessly does he ease himself on the stool beside his friend. Warily removing the empty bottle and replacing it with a full one. The old re purposed into a tumbler for himself but the full bottle is left alone. It’s fate is to be decided by Riley, not Baz. And arms come up to cross on the counter. Finding a spot to stare at and keep the silence. It’s about as close to ‘do you wanna talk about it’ as Bastian will ever get. And hopefully it’s enough.

Riley was acutely aware that Bastian had arrived. He could have said when down to the last fraction of a second but the haze in his head prevents him from turning, from remarking on the arrival, and he just hunches deeper into the loom he's worked up at the bar counter, antagonizing his back into saying a single word via electric arcs of pain. Somewhere on the far side of the apartment, on a half moon table under the surfboards are his keys.  His phone, the black screen staring slightly less upward. Not just silenced, not even on vibrate. Turned off.

Like it's owner.

Bastian doesn't say a word, but the Riley finally deigns to come down off his throne, or at least accept the fact that Baz ain't leaving. "If you're gonna be so god-damn loud, might as well sit your ass down." But the words that actually come are something more like 'sagadam laud, migh'well siddassdon.' The diction alone is enough of a warning, if the aura of no-fucks-given didn't do the job already.

Because inside, inside Riley's already bleeding, and he doesn't think a friendly drink is enough to vent his spleen. By the looks of it, friendly passed hours before and had moved straight into assault. When B takes his customary place beside Riley, he can't bring himself to turn his head.  But the liquor is already heavy on his breath, and his eyes have gone from sharper than knives to dulled chips of stone, shot through with red in the whites.  Long, calloused fingers reach for the new victim, unscrewing the cap. Pouring the glass-not tumbler, not snifter but a pint glass, nearly full. Lifting it to his lips like Sisyphus and the bloody boulder; and while his shoulders hunch forward and his lips pull back over his teeth, he's not exactly pushing anything anywhere. Except maybe Bastian's last nerve.

But he did live in the misty shroud of the amber liquid, running the day through his mind in an ever constant loop. But each minute that rolls by, every second of it, something breaks down. The will. The ego. Stripping him down to the bone and there's a hitch in his breath half-way through the pint that seems to unstick his tongue. When it does, there's nothing Riley can do to stop it, to hold it in and he sinks down into the glass, a hand reaching weak and unsteadily upward hoping his best friend will catch him before he's so gone, even his own ghost wouldn't be able to find him. "Got the call around noon. PDI" Being summer, it'd been over a hundred degrees in the city, the kind of hazy humid blanket that made clothes stick to skin and left a permanent sheen over everything. PDI he'd explained once was ‘possible death investigation’. Not exactly confirmed homicide, but sometimes the precincts were stretched so thin that anyone capable of taking a call had to.

" 'Was possible cause the neighbours described a 'foul odor' comin' from the apartment next door an' hadn't seen 'im for a couple a weeks.  Me an' Frankie, we pull up an make our way up six flights of stairs...an' ya think the walk up here is bad. Someone's gotta fix that fuckin' elevator for fuckssake. An' we could smell it before we were a block away. Not 'possible' no more. We were certain as shit."

The shudder ripples through him. Even when he'd gotten home, he'd showered until the water ran cold, stayed in it a while longer, and Riley was sure as fuck he could still smell it on him. He'd been tempted to burn the suit and just buy a new one. "Got to the apartment in question,  and shit just got worse from there."

He takes another stiff belt, draws himself in tighter, closer, shoulders hunched so tightly he might never unwind them again. Closes his eyes for a second before they snap open, like he's seeing it all again. And he is.

"Christ, B...it was a fucking mess." And that was just the beginning of the Godforsaken story. 

[tarnishedhalo]

“Can you just /stop/?” 

It came from the Drafts || The Lost Memes “I mean, I could...” Riley’s legs stretch to one side of his chair but his torso and shoulders span the space between its arm and the one belonging to the couch, where Baz is perched. The leer that shapes his face is at best mischievous, at worst is diabolical. Tossing peanuts at the other man, flicking chips, moving his beer just out of reach. Strumming each time Baz looked like he was concentrating or about to speak. Why? Just to mess with him.

“But...well... make me.”   

[tarnishedhalo]

@rugini​  {{xx}} Baz:

Wait for it.      Waaait for it.            Waaaaiiitt for it.                       And the damn busts.

The torrent of words gushing out, made slick by the copious amounts of liquor; and the fact there’s someone here to listen to them now. And listen Bastian does. In so much as he can. Picking up what’s important and letting what isn’t fall through the proverbial cracks. A small mental note to check the elevator the next time he’s here. If the super’s too cheap to fix it, least Baz can do is take a look. If for no other reason than to make things easier his friends. But for now the thought is shelved and he’s back on point. Ignoring the fact he’d just used friend so blatantly. Even if it had just been inside his own head.

                  …..shit just got worse…..

He’s not a soldier, not in the traditional sense. Not in the way Riley was. He’s not been through war. Battle but not war. Not really. Because there is a difference between the two. A difference between what Riley had once done for a living, verses what Bastian does. One for something selfless and the other for something self serving. And unlike Riley, who he’s pretty sure has never been capable of freezing up in his god damn life, Bastian had choked the first time he’d tried to be a guy like Riley. Tried to walk in those righteous shoes. He’d gotten himself buried under hundreds of tons rubble, and were it not for the fact his body had been unbreakable at the time, he wouldn’t be sitting here. And he can’t help but notice the stark difference that separates them.

So in ways he gets the horror you get used too, in a job not everyone’s built for—but not like Riley. Never like Riley. Because Bastian’s job had never been to rescue, but to hunt down. Where Riley had been some kind of winged vengeful comeuppance; Baz is….well he’s not entirely sure what to associate it with so he doesn’t. And dangerous though it might be, he respects the asshole too much to every assume they’re all the same level of horror stories. The same level of what they’ve been forced to stomach.

Whatever had been in that apartment; has shaken the ex-soldier down to the gritty parts of his insides and Bastian isn’t at all sure he wants to hear the rest of this. But he’s going too; because Riley needs him too. And that’s what friends did. They were there for each other in whatever capacity that required. God damn it he’s doing it again. He’s using that word, when he really shouldn’t be.

                  …..Christ….fucking mess.

The movement is slow.  Gaze stuck on a small flaw in the bar counter top. One arm lifting from the knot in front of him, blindly shifting sideways. Because he really doesn’t need his eyes to map out the space between them, the path his hand takes. And maybe it takes longer than it should to reach its goal. Maybe it doesn’t. But that’s hardly important. What is, is the fact the action is taken at all. What is, is that for maybe the first time the distance between them is spanned by Bastian not Riley. A hand settling on the elder man’s shoulder. Firm but nonrestrictive.

And for heart beats, Bastian leaves it there because he doesn’t know what else to do. Doesn’t know what words to use, mostly because there aren’t really words to pick from. And momentarily he is jealous that his mother had always seemed to know what to say. The right choice of phrase to make it all okay. But she’s not here, and Bastian in that regard is nothing like her. So he is reduced to simply this. Whatever this is. Whatever it might or might not do to help; it’s what he’s got. So it happens and he lets it linger.

It would all be so much easier for the telling and the listening if he just reached over. If he opened up his memory and let it all go pouring into the younger man without the words they both struggle with. Everything in its vivid details, from the body, the dogs, the fucking kids. Because Riley doesn’t know how to say them or what words to pick that could convey the deepest horrors; smells and sights and the nightmares that will invariably follow to haunt him literally all the rest of his life, and well into whatever comes next. Because on his own? Riley can’t forget. He can’t drink enough, smoke enough, screw enough to rid himself of the things he experiences on any level, not without cutting those parts out of himself, a psychic surgery that would, even if successful, still leave scars in place of memory. They say power always comes at a price; abomination is his, the burden that rests on his shoulders alone. Which is why he doesn’t let Baz see the worst of it. Man knows and has seen things he isn’t proud of. Things that would raze him down to the soul if he let it. But this? This is something else entirely and he won’t do it, just as he won’t even mention word one of it to his sister. It would destroy her in a way that was so thorough, so completely, that he might never be able to fix her, and not because she’s some fragile little thing. If anything, tiny as she is, his sister is indestructible in comparison to him. But her soul is pure. It still holds onto its innocence and once that’s stripped of her, she’ll never be the same. He scours at his face with one hand, gulps down his drink with the other. For all that he tells in drips and drabs, his eyes remain dry. Distant. Dull. A sort of minor separation of emotional Church and State as it were, something he holds onto as hard as he can. Uses clinical terms every time he can get away with it. Minimizes the true depth of deprivation and the effect it has on still living creatures, of instincts that promote survival at all costs, of everything that doesn’t paint the fullest picture because he can’t. He cannot look it in the eye without pieces of him chipping off. “So then we had to call in OCFS...” He doesn’t know what will happen to the kids.  It’s better if he doesn’t. “And animal control.” He does know what’s going to happen to them. And wishes he didn’t. Shoulders that are like mountains, strong and broad and stiff as though steel were laced through them. Skin and muscle and bone that neither gives nor bends is what that hand finds. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t shrug it off but instead adds the weight and the grab to the world he already carries on them. Neither does he look side ways to take the kid’s face into view. He knows better than to do that. Introverts startle easy and what Baz is doing is offering human compassion, commiseration that is almost always in short supply these days. And by not making an issue out of it, he’s welcoming it. He’s building trust that it’s okay to do again, though for both their sake he hopes neither have to. In the silence that follows, Riley gathers a breath but doesn’t take it down into his lungs. Instead he lets it puff out his cheeks, then blows it out slowly with an almost inaudible sound, not quite a whistle not quite anything else. Takes yet another gulp and closes his eyes. Raises a hand and lifts it to the back of his neck, scratches at his scalp with an idle thumb. Eventually he rolls the muscles of his shoulders, upper back and neck, not bothering dislodging Baz’s hand. He can hear every creak, every pop, every sound his body makes in protest. He doesn’t loosen up much. “So yeah,” he says, his voice cavernous as hollow earth. “That was my day. What about yours?”

[tarnishedhalo]

-reaches out and puts a finger on Beth's arm while continuing to eat his mountain sized bowl of lucky charms-

"Don't make me have to separate you."

[tarnishedhalo]

lilxlionxman answered your ask: “This is without a doubt the stupidest plan you’ve...

“So....how was that plan supposed to go again, fucker?”

[tarnishedhalo]

☪

Five Times Our Muses Almost Hold Hands, and the One Time They Do:

{{Spectrum}}

I.  HollowHe’s sitting there, head down, ends of his hair spilling over his hands, and for the first time Riley notices they are darker than the rest of him. Years of oil and grease and wrenches have built up callouses but it’s built something else. Shadows of all the things those hands are capable of that no matter how much pumice-soap he scrubs with it doesn’t wash away. Only closer inspection shows that there’s more. Hints of rust under his nails…no. Rust is a different shadow of red. Rust doesn’t leave someone scourged and empty. Rust doesn’t cause shoulders to shake. Hesitantly, Riley reaches out and Baz pushes him away, shakes his head. Saying with actions he doesn’t need this.

Riley nods and grabs whiskey instead.

II.  Two Man TeamThe rain was coming fast, hard and heavy. A storm brewed in the background, lighting striking haphazardly in the distance. But the thunder isn’t from crashing clouds. Riley holds up a fist. Holds up a finger. Then two. Makes a fist, and he’s moving. Low crouch, rifle braced shoulder high. Kevlar soundless. They move and breath as one.  Riley doesn’t have the luxury of wondering how exactly he’d gotten here, on this Strike Team. It’s a by product of too many late nights spent worrying. It’s because Baz is transparent as glass. When the younger walks into a room and looks around before his blue eyes finally fall on him, Riley knows it’s gonna be an issue some day. Riley’s not stupid. He knows that look well. And he loves the guy, really he does. It’s just…just…. So this is the best he can do.

Rounding the corner, he scans through the scope. He reaches behind his back. Hand glances off the fucker’s wrist, just shy of his intended target. There’s no sound over the comms, but he feels his head duck forward as the fucker tags his helmet.“Got this. Laying down cover fire. Go.”

III. Paradox

It was the turkey sandwich that woke him up.

He stares at the unholy alliance of bread, turkey, lettuce and cheese, thinking I’m stuck. Stuck in this perpetually shifting span of time, in which the same day is repeated over and over again. Like Groundhog Day which was a stupid movie. Only worse because time was actually continuing to move forward. Mondays became Tuesdays which turned into Wednesdays. Months still passed by synonymously with the changing of seasons. Children grew into adults. Adults still sank in their depression.Yet the events that occurred in each individual day were exactly the same. Every day Riley would wake up and go to work. He’d be stuck with the same case as the day before and the day before that. Then he’d eat lunch with people who talked in a language he did not understand.  Then he goes home to a world that chooses not to understand. Sleep.

Rinse and repeat.But that turkey sandwich. Something inside of him had gone missing. The anger rises in response. He was sick of the sandwich. Sick of the watery-crunch sound the lettuce made when he chewed it. Sick of the cheese. Sick of soggy bread that almost dissolves in his mouth. The same thing he’s eaten for years now.

He averted his gaze and looked around. He saw fellow cops sitting at the same tables, wearing the same clothes, conversing with the same people about the same things. Amidst the sea of voices he could make out snippets of conversations he’d heard countless times before. All the meaningless gossip and small talk wrapped around his brain.His head begins to throb furiously, a circuit board overloading with too much data. Squeezes his eyes shut only to see the sickening mirrors reflecting infinity on the back of his eyelids. It was like someone had put the feeling of deja vu in liquid form and shot it through his veins. He gets up and sprints.

In the men’s room, there’s silence. He looks at himself in the mirror and his reflection stares back, seemingly surprised by direct-eye contact.“Are you done yet?"What?”“Are. You. Done. Yet?”“I don’t know what you’re talking-”

The mirror splinters in cobweb fragments.

He only just manages to throw his arm up to shield his face.

“"Fa'fuc'sake s'only a'sandwich, asshole. Don'want it? Don'eat it.”

If Baz only knew. His first instinct to grab the kid’s hand, make sure he’s real. But that’s a whole lot of crazy he doesn’t want to get into, because how do you explain Quiet, a mage’s version of metaphysical time-out for bad behaviour?

He eats the sandwich.

IV.  Six

“Be there n'six”The last thing B says to him. He wonders, after six minutes has passed, if the shithead meant six hours, but somehow that couldn’t be right.  He doesn’t remember there being a job out of town.

An hour later and he’s worried. Calls his cell, sends texts, wonders what else he could do.  The worst part about it, Riley broke his word. Long distance knocking around the castle walls, even though he promised he wouldn’t. But the gates are all shut up, the windows bricked up and despite the power he commands, he can’t find a way inside.

And that sparks a wildfire of well…not jealousy exactly. Nor anger.

Hurt, asshole, the word your looking for is…hurt.Normally sleepers have little resistance to his magick, though Baz isn’t technically a sleeper. Nor is he awakened. The best way he could put it was the kid’s a kind of sorcerer, and that’s not right either. It is what it is, but the point was…to get around Riley like he’s doing… SOMEONE has to have shown him how. And that someone isn’t Beth because she couldn’t will her way out of a wet paper bag without him knowing about it.

So that means Baz has been hanging out with someone else.

Someone who’s deliberately shutting Riley out.He paces his way through a half bottle of Glen Livet before he switches to Vodka.Two hours.Three.At this point Riley’s grabbing his keys and his jacket, mentally composing a missing persons report for his missing person, because the inner cop won’t let this shit go.Throws the door open and there’s a strange collision of puffed up chests. There’s a spectacular display of juggling as the plastic sack hits the floor, ass over tea-kettle, though Baz manages to retain his grasp on the bottle, because of course he has priorities.

“‘Y'fuckin’ kiddin’ me? S'fuckin’ dinner, jackass.”The words don’t matter. Riley grabs his hands, and then takes it a step further by dragging the fucker into a hug, arms like vices around his neck and shoulders. 

“Next time, fucking call.”

This is how Baz discovered Riley doesn’t do surprises well.

V.  HettiquetteRiley’d heard, knew Beth and Jay went to these kinds of things in support of their friends, but it’s goddamn fascinating. Like if someone took Carnival and mated it with Mardi-Gras and somehow incubated the result inside of a Vegas Strip floor show. It was absolutely mesmerizing.  And there’s a lot he didn’t inspect. There’s a man and his wife not far away, a group of teenagers. A couple wearing 'Theirs’ and 'Theirs’ tee-shirts that he makes a mental note to ask about later.

And Riley has to wonder if he’s even got a right to be here, that maybe his attempt to offer B moral support isn’t actually having the opposite effect, even if he laughed in his very Baz way over the 'Not Gay but my Boyfriend is’ shirt. Beth had given him one piece of advice before they separated for the day. 

“No dare aks wen Straight Pride is. Jus’…no. If ya do… no gonna be let out of da hale wi'out woke adult supervision, yeah? An’ wha'evah ya do…no embarrass. If I hear ya make him uncomfortable….I will make YOU uncomfortable.”Then she vanished into sequins and feathers and flower crowns.She hadn’t needed to warn him.

Despite everything that marks him as out of place, the people are welcoming. They’re warm and beautiful and the beer flows. Sees a couple people he would never have thought ought to be here. The only awkwardness is when he comes across Wojakovitz. Riley’s not usually intimidated but the rookie is six foot seven and about as wide across. Apparently, his partner…boyfriend… is a school teacher at PS 182. Good on them.At some point, in the bar later, Riley’s managed to hit his limit, and teeters his way over to Baz whose been strangely quiet most of the night, more so than usual. Arm around the younger’s shoulder, Riley leans down and lays his cheek atop Baz’s head.“C'mon asshole. Dance with me. This is a good song.”The look he gets  from both of them would have curdled paint.

He asks twice more in variations.

Twice more he’s rebuked.So he sits down next to B and his hand falls to the other’s side. Trying not to make an issue of it, one pinkie curls around Baz’s and then Baz is up and muttering something about hitting the head.“Did I…say something wrong?”No one answers him. Not even his sister.

VI. The Hang of Thursdays

         “Pick sum’m else dickhead.  Shit’s kill yer dog depressin’.”

There’s a point where his face is pale and haggard, where lack of sleep has left him looking five days dead on a three day weekend,  and the next line of the song stutters into a choking breath. He doesn’t imagine it, Baz’s mouth had moved, had formed the words and it’s stolen all of the oxygen from Riley’s brain. He doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry or …there was a phrase for this, they used to call it 'don’t know if he should shit or go blind’. 

His hands tighten around the fucker’s, careful not to dislodge the IV shunt.It’s a process. Rough palms sliding against each other. Long, blunt fingers seeking the crevices between the other’s hand. The grasp is as tight as he can make it, a warning that if Baz slips out of consciousness, he’s dragging Riley’s two hundred and five pounds with him.Baz’s scarred and battered knuckles are brought up, pressed against Riley’s lips. They’re dry and chapped but gentle as Riley bows his head over their joined hands. It takes him long minutes to compose himself enough to actually speak.

“You EVER scare me like that again, fucker, and I will beat your ass into the fuckin’ ground. You hear me?”He doesn’t mean a word of it.His eyes squeeze shut, lines spiraling around the corners and for the first time since they’d gone and recovered Baz Barton, he can breathe.What he can’t do is let go.

[tarnishedhalo]

👕

Soon as he hits the door, all fucks he might have previously pretended to give evaporate. It is clear where his sister picks up her bad habits, as the jacket and the tie are the first thing to go, dropped heedlessly on the table in the entry hall. The shirt is next on the floor followed by the tee-shirt he wears under it, leaving him without a stitch on from the waist of his slacks, hanging dangerously low on his hips, to the top of his head.

“BETH. GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE.”His voice resonates through the apartment, like thunder shakes the roots of mountains, and his face is carved from the left over stone.He gets no answer and after a second his expression darkness even further when he realises she’s not there.It’s only then that he notices Baz sitting on the couch, flipping through one of the Craftsman catalogs that had come in the day’s mail. A eyebrow cocked on his face that’s caught between appreciation and the seeds of anger at the tone, they’d talked about this, and Baz had made himself perfectly clear about Riley’s wreck of a relationship with his sister.

“T’fuck crawled up y’r’ass?” There’s challenge in his tone, one that’s a little too deep, a little too husky for his own comfort.Riley slants him a look, and shakes his head. “Oh. Hey, B. Make yourself useful an’ grab me a highball full to the top, would ya?”

“‘Scuse t’shit outta you.” But then the reason for the demand comes to light as soon as Riley turns from him unscathed by the two things he’s said. There’s a lot of exposed Riley, and from just below his arm pit and cascading down his ribs toward his hip ~the bad one~ is an angry storm of violent colour. Reds and purples and blacks vie for the muscled space. It spans from his chest to half way across his back. Somewhere in the mess….what look like teeth-marks. 

Human teeth.

“Shit.”

“Tell me about it,” Riley sighs, gingerly sitting on one of his bar stools, and leaning his elbows on the marble counter top, the same pose and position they’d been in that first morning of their relationship. Before Baz can say anything else, Riley’s talking because that’s what he does.

“Some fucktard decides to be a real cleverdick and puts two of the biggest motherfuckin’ AB dudes in a  holding cell with half a dozen of the 9 Trays to wait for fuckin’ transport. As you can imagine, shit broke out, and the only two people they seemed to have on hand to break up the dance was me and Ramos. And she’s about three inches and twenty pounds on Beth. So that left me.”

He doesn’t say if it was the Aryans or the Bloods who bit him.

Baz doesn’t ask. 

Each of them stare in different directions as silence falls between them.After a few moments there’s a humoured chuckle that ends in a breathy wince. “Hey B?”

“Yeah?”

“Gonna get me that drink…or…?”

[tarnishedhalo]

first to flinch : Weirdest thing y've gotten yerself off to? Last person y'eye fucked? One night, no blow back, can be any'un', who'd y'pick?

Mmm. Sixteen. Came into my buddy’s room and he was watching this sick Japanese shit. Shit. I can’t remember what it was called. But I have never seen anything like it before or since. I was kind of horrified and intrigued and well. Ya know.Last person I eyefucked? I think that was you...last week? Pretty sure it was last week. I dunno.One night? Anyone? Bobbi Morse. Tell me you don’t wanna be crushed to death by those fucking thighs.::another drink::First to flinch: Me...or the Hulk? And I’m not talking Banner, I’m talking full on Godzilla-Hulk. A bad blowjob, or sloppy seconds? Being caught by your mom, or your dad?

[tarnishedhalo]

♱

What do they think awaits them after death?For all that Riley says he doesn’t believe, he absolutely does. He believes in the God he thinks failed him, and he believes in the certainty of heaven and hell, though he knows you don’t always have to die to find either one of those two things on Earth, if you know where and how to look.He would love to be able to say he’d be at those pearly gates, his wings unbroken. He’d even be okay with a lake of fire where he’d spend eternity repenting for the sins that he wears in every scar, every memory of his body.But he knows better. He knows that the Riley he is now, will be back. Different name, different face. An entirely different life. And he’ll see her there too, maybe. Maybe he won’t and the cycle will start over.Again.And again.And again.And the idea just makes him fucking tired. “I dunno. Become fertilizer, I guess?”

[tarnishedhalo]

♛

Any enemies or rivals to speak of?He’s got a list.There’s S.H.I.E.L.D. There’s H.Y.D.R.A. There’s people he’s wronged (his sister, Jay, probably the entire Giambelli family), there’s people on there that he doesn’t even know the names of. (Those fuckers in Guatamala, The Dick at the gas station who insists on taking the labels off the fucking urns).There’s Captain Goddamn America somewhere on there, too. But the top and the bottom of it, in various colours of ink that have been crossed out and re-written a dozen times, is one name.That List begins and ends with Baz.They are so much alike, and complete polar opposites. They are best friends and worst nightmares. And while they’d kill for the other, they’re always looking to tear a piece off, too.“Me? I’m the soul of charm and wit, fucker. Everyone loves me.”

[tarnishedhalo]

Three beers