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bloo-the-dragon · 11 months ago

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BITING YOU BITING YOU RAAAA AHSJKDHSAJKDFHS HFSDJFDGF BUTTERS IM SOBBING ;;A;; THEMMMM OH MY GOSH HECKIN BEST THING I'VE READ SHOVING THIS IN MY MOUTH AND SHAKING IT AHUSERE

Call/Response

A lil' oneshot for @bloo-the-dragon of a branch of their mer AU cos we kept talking about it in Discord and then I got brainworms OwO

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When Eclipse wakes up, Ruin isn't on the bed.

That was… unusual, but not overly alarming. Even though Eclipse's ‘just this once’ had extended by nearly two months now, with the slender mer curling up in a nest made of stolen blankets or wriggling under the sheets almost every night, there was still the occasional exception. His current favorite jacket, claimed just before laundry day and which wouldn't be surrendered until the next laundry day, is also missing, which soothes Eclipse’s mild anxiety further. Clearly Ruin had decided to move to a different sleeping spot during the night, that was all.

Eclipse stretches, feeling cables pull and worn joints scrub, before he leans over to look off the other side of the bed. No sleeping fish here, just a pillow that had gotten knocked to the floor. The door to the closet is wide open, which leaves either the couch or the tub as options.

He hopes it's the couch this time. He's getting really tired of hanging soggy sheets out to dry.

“Rue? You get overheated or something?” Eclipse listens, a faint frown pulling at his mouth when he doesn't hear anything. No scratch of scales against the tub, nor any sleepy chirps. Standing, he heads to the bathroom, poking his head inside.

The shower curtain is pulled back, revealing the tub to be as empty of mers as the bed. There aren't even any puddles on the floor to suggest Ruin might have been here earlier, only to move when it got closer to morning.

Faint unease coils in his chest, but Eclipse tamps down on it, turning towards the living room instead. Things were fine, there was no need to panic. Maybe the fish was feeling sick or something, and that was why he was hiding.

“Ruin?” His boots thud against the worn hardwood floor. From this angle he can't see the couch, nor if anyone is on it. He crosses the threshold of the bedroom–

– and stumbles as his foot comes down on a swaying deck.

Automatically his optics adjust to the change in light levels, from a darkened room to mid-morning sun, with the added bonus of glare thrown back back by cresting waves. There’s activity around him, men with heavy coats and heavier beards lugging coils of rope and net to the ship’s edge, checking that the hauling chains were in good order. Gulls call to one another in their shrill voices, the background soundtrack for most of his life.

He was… back on the ship?

Eclipse’s ventilations hitch, and he immediately turns on his heel. He shouldn’t be on the ship, he’d left it (brilliant red flames leaping into a sky filled with smoke, the distant sound of sirens) but through the door is nothing but his pitiful little closet, too small to even be called a room.

“Well there you are!” The harsh voice pulls him out of his stupor, and he looks over to see the captain glaring at him. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty, get your tools and go check out the No. 2 winch.”

“No, I…” His head feels like it’s full of fog, smothering his thoughts under a blanket of panic, but he manages to force words through the static haze. “Wasn’t I guarding the mer?”

“Hm?”

Eclipse shakes his head, fixing the captain with his best level look and trying to keep the distress out of his voice. “The– the mer that we picked up, the one that was all– all mangled. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on h– it?”

And the captain tilts his head in that way, scorn and impatience under heavy brows, and it sparks a nervousness in Eclipse that he hasn’t felt since he was a boot just learning what his new life would be. The device at the base of his neck weighs heavily with malicious potential.

“You flush your memory after breakfast or something?” The captain snorts, gesturing towards the stern. “We offloaded it this morning! Nearly wasn’t worth the effort of keepin’ it fed on the way back– I would have made twice as much if we’d just gone ahead and skinned it for a pair of boots!”

Offloaded…?

Eclipse isn’t listening anymore. He pushes past the human and rushes to the stern of the ship, catching himself against the railing.

Just on the horizon is a grey smudge, and something in Eclipse twists with despair when he realizes how far they are from shore. Any wild ideas about jumping ship are immediately dashed; he can’t swim, and trying to grab one of the life rafts would get him shut down before he even got it inflated.

Something rises in his throat, bitterly cold and covered in sharp edges, but it’s only when the half-static sound falls from his mouth that he recognizes the feeble cheep for what it is.

A call for help, or to locate companions.

(Where are you?)

His ventilations hitch again. It feels like his chest is crumpling in, like some uncaring god has reached out and started wadding him up like aluminium foil. He can hear the men moving around the ship, low conversation and boisterous laughter and nothing connected to him. Eclipse was a toy, a machine: on the records as barely sentient, the mockery of life constructed from metal. Of no use and no importance to anyone.

Except, maybe, a mangled little mer, who had met his assigned vigil with tolerance and curiosity. Who hadn’t yelled at him, hadn’t dismissed him as a thing just because he was made of metal and there was a hole where his past should be.

Who had heard Eclipse, and called back.

Another cheep rises in his throat.

(Where are you?)

“Hey! Shut up and get back to your station!”

The railing creaks under his grip, metal fingers leaving shallow dents in the aluminium. Conditioning has his voice faltering for a second, the habit of just enough obedience to buy him another day– but the despair is stronger. The longing is stronger.

Eclipse slams his volume to max and shrieks.

(Please, answer me.)

The echoes fade, shrill sound thrown back by countless cresting waves. Land was so, so far away, but surely something would make it the vast distance, and all he had to do was listen. Past the calls of gulls circling the ship, the slap of water against the hull, the complaints of the men behind him.

Listening for the faintest hint of a response. A whisper, a breath.

Anything to let him know he’d been heard, for once.

“I said knock that crap off!”

Heavy boots against the deck, jingling buckles and the snarl of promised punishment. Eclipse turns just in time to catch the blur of metal before something impacts his face.

Everything goes dark.

—

When Eclipse wakes up, it takes his panic-addled mind several seconds to recognize his surroundings.

The soft surface under his cheek and clenched hands is a blanket, a bed, and when he sits up he can feel the gentle tug and sway of a charging cable. Shadows gradually resolve themselves into doorways and furniture, a pile of clothes on top of a shabby dresser, his boots by the door. His roaring fans are loud in the darkness of so-late-it’s-early-morning, yet he can’t seem to get them to quiet.

Something gently touches his arm.

Still on edge, Eclipse can’t help flinching away from the contact, head whipping around to stare down at the culprit. The mer stares back up at him with wide, mismatched eyes, looking nearly as alarmed as Eclipse himself.

“Eclipse…? Are you alright?”

The British accent is still jarring to hear, even now– some hysterical part of him wants to laugh, or snap at the mer in misplaced irritation. The rest of him is struggling to form words, to figure out how to dismiss this or reassure the mer or just get him to forget about it. Everything feels brittle, like the soft blankets draped over his legs will shatter if he moves, but surely he can get himself back under control.

He can’t do it. The words won’t come. Expression crumpling in misery, he stops trying to swallow back the lump in his throat and cheeps.

(Where are you?)

And Ruin blinks, ragged frills flaring out like the rays of a tattered sun, and chirps back.

(I’m here.)

The pitch is a little flat, with a layer of complexity his own chirps lack. It still hits that hollow place inside him, covering near-constant anxiety with a soft blanket of reassurance, a cool hand on a feverish forehead. The rest of his self control breaks and Eclipse buries his face in his hands, shoulders shaking with sobs that are equal parts relief and fading fear, interspersed with pitiful cheeps.

Ruin chirps back every time. A constant stream of reassurance, an unignorable reminder that there was someone here, that they hadn’t left. That he wasn’t alone.

(I’m here. You’re safe. We’re together.)

Eventually the sobbing trails off, then stops. Eclipse spares a moment to be glad that he’s not organic, otherwise his hands and face would probably be covered in tears and snot and it would just be even more embarrassing. It’s bad enough he just broke down over a stupid nightmare, of all things. Huffing through his vents, Eclipse finally drops his hands from his face, and finds that Ruin has built a nest around him.

That’s what it looks like, anyway. The blankets have been arranged so that they more or less encircle him, with Ruin’s current favorite jacket tucked in closest to his body. The mer himself forms the outermost layer of the nest: head pillowed on his arms, body curled in such a way that his crooked tail goes all the way around behind Eclipse and comes back to nearly touch his cap thing.

“Thanks…” The gratitude just slips from him, rough and scraping like gravel. He doesn’t even know if a ‘thank you’ is the appropriate response to this kind of thing.

With how Ruin’s eyes light up, the barely visible patting of his hands against the sheets, he can guess that the mer is probably fine with it. “You’re welcome! I hoped– are you feeling better?”

He can’t help the bitter laugh, looking down at the hands that sit limply in his lap. Scratched, dented, scuffed: the marks of a life spent clawing for anything he could hold on to, and having it ripped away anyway. “Yeah… I guess? I’m not– …yeah. I’m fine.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can just barely see how Ruin’s head tilts. His voice is soft, hesitant. “Did you have a bad dream?”

Well, there was no sense in hiding it, was there? Ruin could sometimes lack what Eclipse considered common sense, or made some bizarre leaps of logic– but it didn’t take a genius to figure out why Eclipse might have gone from peaceful slumber to outright sobbing.

“Just… stupid stuff. Like being back on the boat, working for that asshole again. We were already pretty far out at sea– and it’s dumb, right? That hasn’t been my life for months now, and I made sure that it wouldn’t be ever again.”

Soft tugs on the blanket, a pair of webbed hands slowly inching their way across his legs. It’s easier to watch their progress towards his own hands than it is to look Ruin in the face and see those big, gentle eyes. Eclipse takes a deep breath, trying to keep his voice flippant and steady.

“We were out at sea, and– and I guess I chickened out or something because you weren’t… there. I’d left you in that cage on shore.” The lump is back in his throat, scraping the edges off of his words so that they emerge laced in static, barely more than a whisper. “I tried to call out, but we were too far away, I think. You didn’t answer.”

“Oh. I see.” Soft, organic fingers close over his own, covering the scratched metal with cerulean blue and buttery gold. It always took him by surprise that Ruin’s hands were so warm; all of an animatronic’s warmth was centered in their chest, with the extremities left to range from ‘room temperature’ to ‘christ that’s cold!’. The tail behind him shifts as the coil of Ruin’s body gets a little smaller, the mer doing his best to scootch closer while refusing to let go of Eclipse’s hands.

“I understand. Believe me, I do understand,” he says quietly. There is a deep sorrow behind the words, scars matching the ones that cover Ruin’s body from top to tailtip. The marks of a life spent clawing for anything to hold on to. “However…”

Organic fingers tighten their grip, a reassuringly solid presence. The mer flattens himself against the bed, trying to catch Eclipse’s downcast eyes, and he offers a small smile when the animatronic finally relents.

“However, I am here. You are here.” His smile widens, showing razor sharp teeth, and he makes a musical, trilling sound that Eclipse has no hope of reproducing. It’s soothing, a sound that doesn’t pull at his programming like the chirps do, but it makes him feel better in a way that he can’t quite nail down. He’s hearing it because Ruin is here, because they’re both here.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right, bud.” Eclipse tries a small smile himself, though he knows it's still pretty wobbly on the edges. The tattered remains of the nightmare cling to him like cobwebs, but Ruin is still holding his hands, and it’s surprisingly easy to focus on that warmth instead.

This hasn’t been taken away from him. Ruin won’t suddenly disappear into the morning mist. Eclipse has his own home and a companion that wants to be here, and stupid nightmares can’t change that.

“Come on, we might as well get up now and start the day early.” The small grin gets wider when Ruin whines dramatically, flopping over onto his side and covering his face with his tail in protest. He knows that it’s all for show, and he reaches over to pat what he can see of Ruin’s head, his other hand unplugging the charger. “I’ll make you some waffles, how’s that?”

“...fish waffles?”

“Yeah, I’ll cut ‘em into fish shapes, too.”

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