#don't wake me i'm not dreaming -- wingsdreamt

[steeleidolon]

Scars.

Starter for @wingsdreamt

It makes a certain logical sense to keep military departments close at hand when stationed at headquarters--a concentration of resources that can be mustered out swiftly and efficiently when the need arises. When these resources are clustered together, it is also a simpler affair to keep them contained, at least in theory.

The Wutai war is in full swing. Cohorts cycle in and out on deployment week by week, month by month. Some choose the army proper--the infantry abroad, Public Security and Peace Preservation at home.

SOLDIER is an ideal. A dream for many. A success for comparatively few. Those with aspirations are considered climbers, using the storied, proud, battle-hardened division as a stepping stone for their own edification. The rivalry is and always has been bitter at best.

The barracks levels are crowded. Chaos is a common state between fitful moments of order. Men off of rotation must adjust to the rhythms of time off of the field, away from the need for constant readiness. In a way, the walls, ceilings, and floors feel like a cage, magnifying and concentrating restlessness. Some find outlets on leave. Some do not have that luxury.

Some find other reprieve.

Discord is not uncommon - shouting, chanting, arguments, challenges to the training rooms, bids for space when space is at a premium, cheer around intoxicating contraband and the corresponding hush to keep it from becoming more than an open secret. Thudding boots and elbows against tables, laughing, wrestling, jostling, establishing a pecking order without the distraction of patrols or latrine-digging or mess tent meal services, without concern for the elements since the elements cannot reach them here.

Less common for it to pitch strident, to the point where blowing off steam, jockeying and play breaks into violence.

Furniture slams into a metal wall. The general barracks for each cohort are comprised of orderly rows of bunk cots sectioned out with footlockers and standing lockers, with a minimum of privacy- even in the shared shower quarters.

Sound carries.

The scrabbling of feet. Boot-treads squeaking on concrete drawn wet. Shouts, growls. Fists strike flesh. An overturned desk, smashed glass.

"Got his legs. Get his arms! Get-"

"Fuck!"

"-Lanoue!"

"--rabid fucking dogfucker bit me! Get him off me! Let go! Let-"

"-go!"

…

Tenuous calm can shatter in an instant. Kunsel slipped into the barracks to quietly and efficiently gather his things per instructions, prepared for his move to his new quarters. While the acceptance rolls for SOLDIER were provisionally anonymous, they weren't, really. Not with the lines of disappointed aspirants hoping to see their serials on the printouts, and certainly not with certain commanding officers letting roster changes slip before they're finalized, not with the air of celebration for some.

Anything can happen in the transition.

Anything at all.

In and out, he promised himself. No goodbyes. No gloating. Just another faceless individual among faceless individuals--except things are never so simple. When so few make the cut, grudges are a matter of course.

Fighting for life and limb warrants a ferocious edge - no holds barred. Even unarmed, the terrain can become a weapon. No rules. Fang and claw. Tooth and nail. Headbutts, kicks below the belt. Disrespectful open-palmed slaps to ears, gripping hair and shoving.

No matter how combat trained, they are still only human. Four on one is hardly a fair fight, especially an ambush.

So he is here, now.

On his back, arms and legs restrained, duffel bag contents scattered across the hard floor. Blood on his lips and chin, a sock stuffed into teeth smeared crimson, stringy with ripped skin. Lanoue cradles his forearm and stands guard. Wheeler watches the other direction, a knee planted on the stripped sheet wound into impromptu shackles.

Kunsel digs his heels in and heaves, hoofing his shin directly into Golden's crotch. For his trouble, he earns Tanner's metal-shod boot directly to his ribs - and then the broader man drops the whole of his weight onto Kunsel's stomach, straddling him wholesale.

"Fucking Cosmo coyote-"

The combat knife gleams dully in the overhead light, eye contact blistering and enraged, anticipatory. No amount of breathless arching can escape the hand latched to his jaw, and no amount of cloth can stifle the guttural sound as the first cut falls.

"Lotta guys would give their right eye to be in your shoes. Gotta make sure you don't forget your place."

[steeleidolon]

Quiet reigns.

Quiet and the hum of HVAC, the regular sounds one might encounter in an insulated office far from the hustle and bustle of the main science floor. It is almost out of place. Almost, given the macabre decor all around them.

Kunsel's fingers skitter across the keyboard. His eyes flit from screen to screen, as if at speed he might absorb all of the information at their disposal.

There is too much, and the set of his jaw reveals just how that sours on him.

"…what the hell," he whispers as the screen flickers green with scrolling text, then black, then vivid with color, with moving images.

And again he utters his disbelief.

Taut.

Horrified.

As though he expected anything else given the Professor's inclinations, given what he himself experienced before the Plate - and the world - came crashing down.

He should be looking at a corpse on the viewscreen. Flayed, flensed open from ribs to waist, on a slab that collects and sluices fluids away, the figure is nevertheless not still.

Whoever it was, whatever it has become, should not be alive, but it moves.

Part of it moves in ways it should not move.

Crystalline spires grow from lines of symmetry along the victim's jaw and temples, outer arms, outer thighs. They glimmer in the bright white surgical lights, facets reflecting with each twitchy shudder.

More disturbing, the exposed organs move. Squamous, slow, like constrictor snakes coiling around an item of prey they slither, lit from within as much as from without, blue-green veined with red pressing to membranes stretched flesh to flesh. It is so clear and so visceral that Kunsel can practically smell it, and yet he cannot look away.

"That's-"

Breathing feels like swallowing glass.

It's a familiar shape. Too familiar. And the timestamp on the corner flickers second by second.

"-that's a live feed. That's downstairs."

Blinking is a bad idea. The image will be seared into his brain forever, limned in cold sweat. He has to gather himself, has to focus, and that manifests in a rapid-fire rasp.

"It was linked out through a sim-project. There's info on all of the Firsts in there. Scans of them. We knew Sephiroth was in there, but this looks like... I don't know."

Kunsel glances down to the copy progress on his fob, shaking his head. He has ideas. Too many ideas. None of them are good.

"...what do we do?"

steeleidolon​:

Maybe they can make a difference. Pull that chain. Be the spark. Fan the flames. Deliver some jolt, some spike of Hope into the world. Not out of any sense of obligation, not because they have any inkling that they will see the results. Hell, this might be a suicide mission, except both of them have failed suicide missions in the past. They came back with eyes open, still breathing, hearts still beating, refusing to simply give up and die just because someone else wills it.

This thought, and the too-familiar smell of the labs, creeps down his spine like electrified ice-water, and he grits his teeth against the visceral urge to punch down.

Or to turn around and shimmy back. No, no. They’re here. They’re committed.

“Me too, man.”

The T-junction ahead roars with fans. To the right and directly in front of them, mesh and filter-shrouded blades whip and whir, a rattling drone loud enough to obfuscate any warping or popping their knees on the metal might impress. It’s loud enough to drown out any hope of conversation too. Damn it.

Kunsel threads his arm back behind himself, bends his elbow, and signal-gestures to the left before taking the turn as gracefully as one can in a four-by-four box. At least the standard construction is consistent, sharply squared off and supported underneath with struts strong enough to hold them, likely strong enough to hold whatever monsters might escape from their containment. It’s vital to have a working ventilation system, after all, if one intends to use it to pump suppression gasses into an enclosed space.

Cue a glance up directly above, where tanks - like recessed scuba cylinders - are banded, bolted, and linked together with pipes and wires for remote control. Kunsel ducks his head and slopes further forward, army-crawling on his forearms and spread thighs rather than hands and knees. He figures Zack will get the picture, and it affords him a little more room to gesture two fingers down, clenched fist. Stop where I’ve stopped.

Quicker, practiced, he skitters forward to the other side of a grated hatch and then rolls over, folds flexibly, and ends up facing Zack, peering down below. The shaft has passed either through or above one of the blocky prefab pods, and is somewhat misaligned, providing a split view.

There’s the peek of a toilet and sink on one side, and then the broader section of the ventilation panel reveals… amber light, interspersed with flicker-glows of blue, a computer server, a monitor with a weirdly fetal-looking screensaver. Maybe that’s just the angle on the desk. The main lights are off, and it appears to be unoccupied at present.

Lucky them.

He demonstrates the thumb screws on his side of the vent panel. Easy enough for both of them to undo and lift up, aside, and then drop down one after the other.

Floor level. A plush carpet cushions their feet.

It looks like the office of a tenured executive professor with decades upon decades of plaudits, richly appointed. Shelves in immaculate order border one wall, filled with dozens upon dozens of hard-bound volumes, a luxury in the digital era, contrasting the standard filing cabinets. Display cases in glass and wood hold items of curiosity - specimens floating in formalin, hermetically sealed jars of two-headed serpents and bizarre fish-creatures, a zolom egg, embryos identified only by arcane labeling systems…

And a preserved human arm. Left arm, by the looks of it, skin pale under display lights. The wing tattoo from wrist to tricep must have been exquisite in life, deep black with painstaking black-feathered details.

The specimen holding bay, visible through its reciprocal mirror, was recently occupied. The smears on hard-point restraints and the angled slant of an examination table are still shimmering red.

“…well, this fucking place never gets less creepy. You wanna get the hard copies? I’ve got his computer.”

Any variation of disgruntled noises he makes as blue light crosses into his purview is lost to the roar of the spinning fan blades. Once the grate is lifted, Zack touches down after Kunsel on three points. At a glance, the office might have looked astonishingly mundane– not so much once the menagerie of scientific collectibles comes into play. 

“Hate it, hate it, hate it,” Zack growls, hunching his shoulders and staring too long at what must ostensibly be a human arm while the hairs on his neck stand on end. A perfectly normal arm as far as he can see, save for the intricate inkwork beneath the skin. Why the self-purported man of science himself might feel the need to save this particular arm or even put it on display in the first place, Zack can only imagine. This one feels less like a curio and more like… a morbid trophy.

That isn’t even the worst part about this place. He is keenly aware of Kunsel’s presence next to him when he goes stock still and his breath catches in his throat. The sight on the other side of the thick wall of glass is intimately familiar to him, and Zack wrangles with the flash of panic that briefly keeps him rooted in place. Voice. Focus. Back to Kunsel.

Looking through the bookshelf and cabinet is perfect, because it keeps his back to the slab of steel looming behind the mirror like a bad memory.

“Right. Yeah. On it.”

With a roll of his shoulders, he takes an exaggerated step towards the nearest row of shelves filled with multi-colored tomes. He runs his finger along the top of the books on the way to the metal filing cabinet situated at the end of the shelf. Most of the books appear to be purely decorative. Textbooks covering various topics on the nature of microbiology, genesplicing, and phylogenetics. Zack stops, hovering two fingers over a row of first-edition copies about the Planet’s history. A few with a focus on the Ancients in particular. There is a small gap between the last book, Decline of the Cetra and History for the Modern Midgarian. 

Interesting.

He does another quick pass before deciding to move on. The real trouble would be figuring out which of these ethically questionable gems to take back with them. Anything worth keeping in an unlocked cabinet couldn’t be that Planet shattering. Zack cards through the file folders after he slides the drawer out on its track to skim through titles.

Some of the documents were purely archival; datasets or sequences that had been analyzed long ago littered with chicken scratch notes scrawled in the margins and a dash of angry, red marks. 

Now for the alphabetized sections. Finger over thumb, he looks through each header’s contents. Minutes tick by. Boring, gross, boring–

 ‘Regulation of apoptosis,’ ‘Petri net modeling of biological networks,’ Slowing the rate of senescence in non-human tissues,’ ‘Accelerating mako-osteoclast activation and development of new limbs.’ 

The standouts. At least, the papers he could understand enough to single out.

One last check. Zack flattens out a palm along the sides of the drawer, feeling for any unusual grooves or catches that might unlock a hidden panel. No luck. Plucking out stapled notes from several file folders of interest, he stacks them up then thumbs to the back of the drawer for an empty folder to stash them in. After the folder has been tucked under his arm, Zack rearranges the folders into some semblance of their previous orientation before sliding the drawer shut.

“Alright…think I’ve got as good as we’re gonna get out of those cabinets. I am so ready to get the hell out of here. Dig up any interesting dirt on his computer?”

[steeleidolon]

🍒

@wingsdreamt

The timer starts as soon as the doors close, they said. And the doors are latched from the outside. A suggestion of containment, really. They could bash right through if they wanted to contend with the paperwork - and jeers - afterward.

“Seven minutes,” Kunsel muses, scruffing at his nape and shifting from foot to foot in a test of balance.

He could keep mum the entire time, probably, but Zack, well.

“You were asking about this, hn?”

What the hell is he even saying? It’s probably weird. Almost as weird as poking his tongue out to wiggle the silver barbell. Sure, it’s against regs like most modifications, but he also knows how to keep his mouth shut. Figuratively and literally.

It’s only against regulations if you get caught.

“Little hard to explain, easier to, uh, show you.”

Planet.

“If you want.”

At least he can play it off with a grin and a shrug. Something about infused alcohols, and they never really got an answer as to infused with what. It’s strange to actually feel it. 

Yeah, just the booze. Clearly.

[steeleidolon]

@wingsdreamt

There are muffled voices outside, scuffling footsteps, laughter, then derogatory comments directed at parental figures. Restless troops, stationed in one place for too long with too little to do. He has no desire to join them. Zack stares at the military-green canvas lining of their tent as it billows against the wind snaking its way between the line of trees outside.

They’ve been holding this position for the better part of a month.

High valley walls and a wide river, flowing adjacent to their campsite, make this location a perfect choke point to catch enemy forces looking to regroup in the north, close to the massive fortress nestled at the base of the hills. The nearby village hardly abides their presence. Peace is a tenuous thing, held under threat of an occupying force that could decimate the oppressed. A huff and a puff and they’ll blow the houses down.  

Not that brick walls can stop SOLDIERs.

Wutaian forces and any parties willing to aid and abet them are to be attacked on sight.

Whether the local farmer and his wife are willing to risk harboring combatants looking to slit their throats in their sleep, well– Shinra had made its position clear when all the villagers had been lined up on the first day and warned that the Company would be mounting an attack on Fort Himeji within a fortnight.

The first person caught attempting to sneak beyond the bounds of the village was summarily executed.

Zack remembers that night clearly. Under normal circumstances, the inky blanket of darkness thrown over the sleepy village on the night of a new moon would have provided the perfect cover for a late-night departure. A native can easily navigate the deepened shadows, slip away and warn his countrymen before Shinra can launch their attack and decimate one of Wutai’s greatest strongholds.

But this is a new type of war, waged not with conventional weapons, but with weapons forged of blood and bone. SOLDIERs. Superhuman, enhanced. Faster and stronger than anything these poor farmers have ever witnessed in their lives. There is no hiding from a predator that can perfectly adapt to most any environment.

Nothing can prepare a man for the sight of another human being keeping pace with a chocobo sprinting at top speed.

He remembers that night because he was the one who had caught the runner.

Zack turns to roll over onto his side and face the other side of the tent, where he knows Kunsel is still lying awake. “Do you ever wonder if…y’know…you’re cut out for being SOLDIER?”

The tent breathes.

Everything out here is so alive. Wutai is more green than Kunsel ever thought to see--much less traipse or carve through--in his life. Nothing could be further from arid mirage-shimmer deserts or sheer cliff crags into rivers below; nothing could be further from canyons of steel and mountains of garbage. It is a different world that ShinRa hopes to modernize, answering a call from the people for a better way of life.

Something to that effect. Kunsel is skeptical.

He’s skeptical about a lot of things.

Like the strange concept of sleep at night. Zack knows this well enough to know he is only half-there, half-dozing, senses extended out to the tapestry of sound beyond the tent, beyond the camp, out to fresh water and chirping crickets and breezes whispering through woodland- and river-bordered fields. Hyper-awareness and semi-awareness in the same instance.

A breathy hum answers at first, before he rolls onto his back on the creaky cot. Right, right, that’s not a response. Not a coherent one, at least. So, then, he shifts again, swinging his legs over first, pulling himself upright and leaning his elbows to his thighs.

“I don’t think SOLDIER’s cut out for being SOLDIER, if I’m being honest.”

Scruff-scruff to his nape.

“Not like there’s any handbooks on this shit. There’s not much of a ... uh, a history for us, not much to compare it to, you know?” He wrinkles his nose, tempted to bust out a razor right now. “I mean. You’ve got Honor-face--err, you’re working with Hewley, and that’s. Good.”

Squint.

“But um. Overall. Just means we gotta figure it out, make it better. More to it than throwing bodies and swords at a problem.”

A pause.

“...or did you mean me personally? Heh, hell no. That’s why I’m building tutorials.”

He grins broad and lopsided in the dark with another scritch-scratch-rasp at the base of his neck.

“Did you wanna go for a run or something?

[steeleidolon]

🚿

[Kunsel -> AllsFair | 01:32]: You're a brain. You are inside a skeleton. You're piloting a bone mech that's using meat armor.

[calamitysshatteredson]

@wingsdreamt

He doesn't know why he's surprised. Not at Zack's words themselves, but at the laugh they get after a mild pause, like it takes a moment to remember that laughing is even an option. It does, to be fair.

It takes a moment to realize the distance between them is being closed as well. Aware of it. Paranoia still exists in the back of his thoughts, never really leaving; this could be where it all turns, where everything goes wrong. Where he's forced to realize and admit that a dream is just a dream and the grief will be there to greet him when he wakes--

Sephiroth takes a breath, instead. Unnecessary, probably, but steadying. He can't trust himself entirely, from gut instinct to the occasional intrusive thought, but he does trust that there is something happening. He trusts Zack, and isn't that just saying something in and of itself? It's too familiar and too new and there's a tug of something calling, pulling, pressing, insisting.

He feels it. The solid touch of Zack's hands, the familiarity and the newness, he feels it. And yet he also doesn't. Confusing. Much like--

"You cannot be--"

There's no jolt. There's no struggling against blankets and the fading landscape of a nightmare, there's no scream or sob dying in his throat or tearing its way out. There's a strange, mysterious calm with a forceful urgency waiting patiently behind it.

And the end of a sentence, held for a few seconds like a breath. "Serious."

Logic explains little. It explains less about why he languidly rubs at his face with both hands and laughs, a raspy chuckle to an empty place. He'd slept. And awoke with a mission, in the way one might gladly accept as a request.

For Zack? Of course he'll go.

___________________________________________________________

The pool is concerningly easy to locate. This comes mostly from signage near Edge itself, of where people ought to actively avoid. As if that weren't darkly humorous enough, Sephiroth knows he's on the right track when the gut-deep feeling of wrongness goes from mild paranoia to baser instinct.

Senses no longer enhanced well past human abilities, it's not really the smell of mako that gets to him. It's just that... feeling. Indescribable. The not here, go away of ghost stories, the little tinge of something in the air that used to indicate the time to place his hand on the hilt of his sword--

Sephiroth stops with a shudder just before a mild slope downward, small gnarled trees and bramble giving way to rocky soil. Something is a little too strong to ignore, something that feels mildly acidic to his sinuses if he has to give it a term, but it's not... quite that.

The glow of the mako pool is nearly hidden a ways down the slope and over a bit more rocky earth, the light of day only just starting to fade when he arrives. Patches of grass and weeds all seem inconsistent, for a while, until he gets closer. There's green surrounding the perimeter, thick and lush and just tall enough to distract someone who wasn't looking for the glow to perhaps miss it altogether, but he doesn't quite want to know if he should be getting that close yet. Or ever.

Camp, then. Or the pathetic attempt at one; a proper tent would be nice, but the weather's been decent. With no one around as far as he can tell, taking a long time to look out in every direction and longer to listen to nothing but droning insects, he chooses a spot where the land begins to slope upward again and finally rids himself of the backpack he'd been carrying on top of his very human shoulders. "You ought to show up just to laugh at me." He speaks mostly to himself, but can't help the hope that someone else very specific is listening. "I don't even have a tent. I'm relying on a local forecast, a single lamp, and a sleeping bag that is most assuredly older than I am. I'd never live this down."

Good, good. They’re getting somewhere (while being nowhere at all, how fun is that?), and Zack tilts his chin up, pondering with thoughtful strokes along the sides of an invisible beard as Sephiroth meanders through likely scenarios. A few cracks of dry wit here and there, and the settling camber of the conversation’s mood strikes him with a rare moment of nostalgia.

After so much, before the end. 

The loss that should have brought them closer tore them apart instead. They could be beyond the possibility of making anything right, but this could be their chance to do better, maybe. Maybe.

Zack sees nothing wrong with possibilities to look forward to. 

“If I recall, you’re no longer gainfully employed by organizations henceforth will not be named but also absolutely do not exist though regrettably not in an unrecognizable fashion, so I happen to think you have plenty of time.” Wordy way of poking the behemoth in the room, sure, but he isn’t ignorant of stirring fears and monsters better left sleeping. Sephiroth has to want this just as much as he does. 

To do something. To make a choice.

Zack nods to affirm his own private self-assurances of wisdom, then dares to test his chance by wandering (living unlife dangerously) in Sephiroth’s general direction.

So far nothing has struck him as intuitively unrealistic. 

“Yeah, mhm. Mhm. Sounds about right.” He flashes a grin as he pops up into Sephiroth’s immediate bubble of space. The closest and farthest they’ve ever been, since. This feels right, though. This feels like it could actually happen. His excitement, his hope better be damn well infectious, because he really needed to be able to talk Sephiroth out of himself for once. 

“So you’re gonna go, riiiight?” Expectant, he quirks a brow. “Don’t tell me I came all this way to hype you up for nothing.”

He has no idea how long it will take, no guarantee that it’ll even be the same pool of mako, but he wouldn’t be here if the odds were zero. Reaching across, Zack claps both hands on either side of Sephiroth’s shoulders. 

“Alright, Sephiroth. Enough time for sleep talk. Time to wake up!”   

[steeleidolon]

✿ wingsdreamt + breathofthearth :3

Aerith and Zack. Oh. Oh.

PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP MEME 0.2

bold for things i could definitely see or want,italics for things i could see or am unsure of and strikethrough for things i don’t want or cannot see

FRIENDSHIP.     childhood friends  /  work buddies or coworkers  /  family friends  /  friends with benefits  /  smoking buddies  /  adventure buddies  /  fake friends  /  recently friends  /  party buddies  /  friendship of need  /  dying friendship  /  circumstantial friendship  /  partners in crime  /  old friendship  /  [ your muse ] is the good influence  /  [ your muse ] is the bad influence  /  [ my muse ] is the good influence  /  [ my muse ] is the bad influence  /  opposites attract  /  ride or die  /  frenemies  /  roommates or flatmates  /  penpals  /  exes to friends  /  enemies to friends  /  other-"AND MY AXE"

ROMANCE.     childhood sweethearts  /  [ your muse is mines ] childhood crush  /  [ my muse is yours ] childhood crush  /  exes  /  exes to lovers  /  forbidden lovers  /  highschool sweethearts  /  secret relationship  /  opposites attract  /  long distance  /  unrequited [ from your muses side ]  /  unrequited [ from my muses side ]  /  unrequited [ from both sides ]  /  skinny love  /  friends to lovers  /  enemies to lovers  /  spurious relationship  /  power THROUPLE /  newly entered  /  soulmates [ metaphorical ]  /  soulmates  [ literal ]  /  awkward  /  turning toxic  /  toxic love  /  cheating [ on your muse ]  /  cheating [ with your muse ]  /  other 

FAMILIAL.     siblings [ half ]  /  siblings [ step ]  /  [ my muse ] is an older sibling figure to your younger sibling figure  /  [ my muse ] is a younger sibling figure to your older sibling figure muse  /  [ my muse ] is a parental figure to yours  /  [ my muse ] is a child figure to your muse  /  guardian figure  /  legal guardian  /  adoptive child  /  foster child  /  [ your muse ] is taken under mines wing  /  [ my muse ] is taken under yours wing  /  other-Surprisingly functional unit even if they sometimes share one (1) brain cell

ANTAGONISTIC.     dangerous to each other  /  dangerous to others  /  unpredictable  /  rivals  /  petty  /  developing into sexual or romantic tension  /  based off family matters  /  based of off circumstance  /  based of professional matters  /  based off misunderstanding or lies  /  conflict of ideology  /  betrayal  /  hero - villain dynamic  /  enemies  /  fight club  /  friends turned enemies  /  lovers turned enemies  /  exes turned enemies  /  other-lemme double up on the 'dangerous to others' situation

[steeleidolon]

✿ (buahah)

PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP MEME 0.2

bold for things i could definitely see or want,italics for things i could see or am unsure of and strikethrough for things i don’t want or cannot see.

FRIENDSHIP.     childhood friends  /  work buddies or coworkers  /  family friends  /  friends with benefits  /  smoking buddies  /  adventure buddies  /  fake friends  /  recently friends  /  party buddies  /  friendship of need  /  dying friendship  /  circumstantial friendship  /  partners in crime  /  old friendship  /[your muse] is the good influence  /[your muse] is the bad influence  /[my muse] is the good influence  /[my muse] is the bad influence  /  opposites attract  /  ride or die  /  frenemies  /  roommates or flatmates  (oh my god they were roommates) /  penpals  /  exes to friends  /  enemies to friends  /  other

ROMANCE.     childhood sweethearts  /[your muse is mines] childhood crush  /[my muse is yours] childhood crush  /  exes  /  exes to lovers  /  forbidden lovers  /  highschool sweethearts  /  secret relationship  /  opposites attract  /  long distance  /  unrequited [from your muses side]/  unrequited [from my muses side]/  unrequited [from both sides]/  skinny love  /  friends to lovers  /  enemies to lovers  /  spurious relationship  /  power couple  /  newly entered  /  soulmates [ metaphorical ]/  soulmates  [ literal ]/  awkward  /  turning toxic  /  toxic love  /  cheating [on your muse]/  cheating [with your muse]/  other-reunited requited

FAMILIAL.     siblings [half]/  siblings [step]/[my muse] is an older sibling figure to your younger sibling figure  /[my muse] is a younger sibling figure to your older sibling figure muse  /[my muse] is a parental figure to yours  /[my muse] is a child figure to your muse  /  guardian figure  /  legal guardian  /  adoptive child  /  foster child  /[your muse] is taken under mines wing  /[my muse] is taken under yours wing  /  other

ANTAGONISTIC.     dangerous to each other  /  dangerous to others  /  unpredictable  /  rivals  /  petty  /  developing into sexual or romantic tension  /  based off family matters  /  based of off circumstance  /  based of professional matters  /  based off misunderstanding or lies  /  conflict of ideology  /  betrayal  /  hero - villain dynamic  /  enemies  /  fight club  /  friends turned enemies  /  lovers turned enemies  /  exes turned enemies  /  other 

[steeleidolon]

♫!

send ♫ for me to list 3 - 5 songs that i associate with our muses — @wingsdreamt

die for you -- starset

i know your eyes i know inside the walls you hide behind and i saw the truth inside the real you because i know you're lost when you run away into the same black holes and black mistakes taking all my will just to run alone when are you coming home?

feels like home -- sam tinnesz

feels like home feels like home my fingers down the map yeah, this is where i wanna be i'm always coming right back yeah, this is where i wanna be

start a riot -- banners

i will wade through the fire and smoke like sunlight through the haze i will fight til the flag waves white until my dying days through the bombs and blasts we will take it back if your world falls apart i'd start a riot

other lives -- stealth

lying next to you what the hell did i do? i must have done something right in my other lives

past lives -- BØRNS (martin arteta cover)

past lives couldn't ever hold me down lost love is sweeter when it's finally found i've got the strangest feeling this isn't our first time around past lives couldn't ever come between us sometimes the dreamers finally wake up don't wake me i'm not dreaming

[steeleidolon]

Huge pearl-winged moths cling to the vine-strewn sides of the bungalow, drawn to the feeble floodlamps that cast flickering angles of amber light into the torrent. Normally, the perfumed air would be thick with wheeling insects and other flying creatures, crepuscular birds and bats and the sounds of living and dying and fucking.

Different from the city and its concrete hollows, all strip-mined metal and ground-up dead things. Different from the way the wind sings through support wires in senseless ululation, a voice that isn't. Everything that is out here is alive in some way, from the mycelial mats underfoot to the parasitic greenery devouring untreated wood and weathered metal.

Left to its devices, the jungle will devour this outpost before long, blotting its memory from the skin of the Planet, and no-one will be the wiser. The rain will fill their boot prints and vehicle treads with mud, and the wind and crush of verdure will obliterate what is left.

But they are here. They have this. This experience. This moment. 

And somehow, the bump of bare shoulder to bare shoulder, the bunt of temple to temple, cements it - in all its impermanence - as equal parts important and irreverent.

Kunsel laughs, sidesteps, extracting a boot from the muck with a sucking sccchulp of heavy treads. A tottering swing of leg, and he glances back, down.

Cups his palm, claps it over the soaked canvas of the seat of his own pants, a tense of buttocks lending the swat a solid sound of percussion. Pop-pap. A grunt of surprise. Discovery. Ridiculous. “Yep. My ass is in fact out here!”

He cannot help his face. “So’s the rest of me. I blame you.” Dimples deepen with the slash of his grin, bright and broad even as water weighs his incorrigible fringe of hair down over his eyes. A puff of air does absolutely nothing for him. Neither does a toss of his head. Makes it worse, really, and with another laugh he slings his arm around his comrade’s waist, attempting a lock-step and failing--a bit like a pair of drunkards on a stroll, they are, with no-one to monitor.

Probably.

“What was it you’re always saying...don’t knock it ‘til you try it?  Figure if anyone’s an expert at wet socks it’s you.”

Where are they going?

Does it even matter?

At the moment, Kunsel finds himself incapable of mustering protest.

@steeleidolon

continued from x –

Kunsel’s words are like skipped stones lost in the lake. Zack barely hears them, a revel of memories and homesickness bursting forth with each step into a torrential downpour that turns the world into one big, gray, blurry smear.

Most missions, even the stringent ones, have a buffer period.

When the day’s unpacking is done, when logistical problems are identified and solutioned with the butting of so many heads, and tired feet seek warm beds. A sliver of time in which to make the most of anything or nothing before the real work begins.

Who knows when an opportunity like this will come again?

Flashes of lightning, rain, rain rain, real rain. Not the terrible acid rain that pours down on Midgar, stripping paints, nibbling away metals, slowly disintegrating various organic odds and ends like swiss cheese. Their surroundings are pervasive humidity and a warm dampness, moss-covered trees, intricate networks of vines, fungi ladders, and pitcher plants awaiting their prey.

Lost and drowned in the rumbling roar of rain and thunder, coqui coqui! The chirping calls of hundreds of little frogs hiding under broad leaves and dead logs.

Smells, sounds, and sights that remind him of home. A place he’s locked away from his heart; a closed chapter in the book of his life. Memory is a powerful thing, bearing even the most neglected emotions to surface.

 A touch that is not rain– contact against his shoulder; solid flesh and bone. Surprise finds Zack in the form of a half-formed grin, a brief widening of sky-blue eyes, and topped off with the sound of an easy laugh immediately swallowed by the inclement weather. 

Zack bumps him back and knocks their heads together like a pair of coconuts. “Hey, your ass is out here too!”

And he’s glad for it, in the same many ways he’s glad for anything that Kunsel does for him (or because of him). He slings an arm around the other SOLDIER’s shoulders as they leave a trail of boot-shaped puddles in the mud behind them. They walk a slow, clumsy path with a vague trajectory that eventually takes them back to a row of mismatched bungalows. “Never figured you to be a wet socks kinda guy.”

[steeleidolon]

📂

Kunsel has relatively narrow feet (and relatively long fingers).

Bonus:

Since uniforms demanded gloves and boots at all times, Kunsel would acquire 'contraband' polish, typically in a matte or metallic bronze shade--or something ridiculous and UV-reactive--and paint his nails. Something about precision and fine motor function. Plus it looks good and feels good.

[steeleidolon]

Any selection and combination of AFJK for Kunsel and Zack! Sorry mobileness :c

Sexy ABC List Prompts

A ─ After care. Do they take care of each other after sex ? How ?

After care is important even if it's not rough. Clean-up can be a pleasure all its own. And cuddles.

Can't forget that.

F ─ First time. How was their first time together ?  Was any of them nervous ?Did it live up to their expectations ?

Completely unexpected and unplanned 'holy fuck we're alive' succumbing to skin hunger and wonder right after waking up. It hit like a truck. Whatever expectations he might've had, it wasn't that, and he's not complaining in the slightest.

J ─ Jewellery. Do they own any sexy jewellery  ( like butt plugs with rhinestones, piercings in intimate areas, cock rings, collars, etc... ) ?  What do they think about it ? 

Yes. Yep. Kunsel is pierced. Tongue, nipples, apadravya genital, occasional navel (when he could reasonably expect to not be wearing the turtleneck uniform shirt that rides up). He likes gold as an aesthetic choice--silver for the tongue because he's a cheeky shit. When he was more active clubbing as a nobody, he'd like to string chains between various points of his anatomy, sensation play jolting southward and whatnot. Depending on reaction, he might be inclined to wear them again.

The apadravya is a deliberate enhancement. It was incredibly painful to get, but was worth the investment in his estimation; it feels amazing, and partner-responses make it even better.

Very worth it.

K ─ Kissing. How important are kisses in their relationship ?  Any favourite kind of kisses ?  Do they have any rituals involving kissing ( never leaving for work without kissing the other, always sharing a kiss goodnight, etc… ) ?

Kissing is like an art and a language rolled into one. Vital. Important as breathing. No specific favorites, they're all favorites.

Forehead touches are a kiss-like ritual though. Warm and grounding and intimate.

[steeleidolon]

KunZack: L

Sexy ABC List Prompts

L ─ Lingerie. Do they enjoy wearing it and/or seeing their partner in lingerie ?What kind of lingerie do they find the sexiest ? Any other clothing they love seeing their partner in  ( like grey sweater pants, wearing nothing but an apron, really short shorts, etc… )? Do they often wear what the other likes, just to please them?

Kunsel wears lingerie... sort of? Kind of.

It's mostly a matter of personal preference - but that is not to say he doesn't like reactions. He'll play it up based on responses. The man knows how to highlight his assets, just like he knows how to hide 'em. Look good, feel good, with concessions for what can be hidden under 'uniform' or 'street' clothes, like a little secret only they know about.

Nice socks, for instance. Specifically over-the-knee or thigh-high socks, the kind that are smooth on the skin and cushioned on the feet, in stark contrast to the crappy thin standard issue, that may or may not need sock garters.

...okay, so maybe the jockstraps count too. They are strappy.

...

And the mesh/cut-out shirts, and sheer ones for layering, and compression shirts. And titty window shirts. And harnesses of varying types. Okay. Okay, yeah, that's fair.

End of the day, Kunsel has an eye for fitted things, especially when fitting a body he finds attractive. Any shirt Zack borrows is probably going to look fitted, or close to it. Beyond that? Sleeveless things. Comfortable things. Custom things. Uniforms. Silly t-shirt and jeans.

Catch Kunsel admiring.

Who knows? The contrast of something relatively delicate on sheer strength is intriguing.

[steeleidolon]

@wingsdreamt

🍇 

It’s interesting, seeing Zack like this--excited-nervous for something outside of pursuing SOLDIER-related goals.

It’s...

It’s good to see him happy. Something to look forward to after so much crushing disappointment and harrowing danger.

And he’s here. Asking for advice about something outside of HQ. Why, Kunsel does not know, not really. They no longer room together thanks to the housing authority’s insistence. His career has taken him elsewhere, to places he has wanted to go, and to places he hasn’t.

If he were to be completely honest with himself, Kunsel would say that Zack’s happiness is all that matters. Jealousy has no place. Zack is happy. Buzzing with it. And that is good.

A genuine relief to see him like this. A pleasure too, what with the sheepish grins and the touch of a blush Kunsel decides not to tease about at the moment. It’s in his face, though.

“Okay, okay, so- um. Well. She’s a civilian, so... precautions. Wouldn’t recommend getting frisky right after a lab visit, but that’s just me. Spirit and flesh might be very much willing, but the grip strength might be too much, y’know?”

Zack typically doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Certainly not someone he cares about, but he shows mercy even with enemies when he has the opportunity.

More could stand to be like that.

“Condoms, lube, wipes, the usual. Don’t keep ‘em in your wallet, last thing you need is for your gil card to just - pbtt out of your hands. Can get you a little case for supplies.”

How romantic.

“Look, I’m not... you know me. I don’t exactly have a great track record with relationships. Go with your gut, go with what feels right and good, with what she feels good with. Pace doesn’t matter, really, if you want to see how things play out. Just keep in mind our NDAs. Find stuff you can do and talk about otherwise.”

He scratches his chin and muses on practicality.

“Um. I’ll see about getting some transit passes so you can bring her up-plate. Sector 8′s always nice. It’s bound to draw less attention if I make the requisition. Got your back, man.”

Then, finally, a little shrug.

“Have fun. The most important part.”

[steeleidolon]

“C’mon, man. I’m sorry I didn’t read my messages!” 

For about a week, give or take, but who’s keeping count? Coming and going for missions, Angeal (that’s it, just, Angeal), collating all the data for his post-mission reports so Lazard can rubber stamp them– that stuff takes time. Gets in the way. Company-wide memos aren’t that important. If it were really important, someone would have told him. Probably.

Zack gently raps his knuckles over the door and gives the handle a meaningful jiggle. The stiff clacking of the handle in its socket tells him the door is locked. He has the keycard to get into their room, of course, but that’s not the point. The point is that he must explicitly be welcomed back by Kunsel, or else things are simply not right.

“Let me in. I prooomise I’ll make it up to you. It’s raining out here,” Zack pleads with his best kicked puppy whine.

No doubt, Kunsel’s next question might be: how could it be raining if they were indoors and there were no open windows in the hallway?

It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Zack is holding a running hose out of line of sight to sprinkle water over his head and definitely should not be considered a complete misuse of company property and resources to attach a hose to the chemical rinse off station faucet down the hall and around the corner so that he could run it to their door for dramatic effect.  

Silence is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be incredible for focus, for getting into a flow, for completing tasks that distractions would absolutely disrupt. Boring things, data-related things. And in those cases, silence isn't silence, not really; there is always some sort of backdrop, a background hum, white noise, the din of distant conversation. HQ is never completely silent. (He does not know what he does not know--that he will learn the truth of silence in these halls).

Silence in the context of communication, though, is maddening. Kunsel has his finger on the pulse of comms--that is one of his specialties on the field. Except this time he was not on the field, sidelined for intensive materia training and then recovery. Not time off, recovery. No liberty to leave HQ, mandatory appearances at medical, with all of the poking and prodding that entailed.

Zack is capable, the men of their cohort are competent, and Angeal is known to run tactically sound missions. Kunsel knew that. He knows that. His mind can't help but fill in the gaps, no matter how he thinks his way through it logically.

Kunsel has already decided on forgiving Zack--Angeal runs him ragged, after all, and generally does not provide much time for PHS use. He decided on that when he received word that the cohort entered Midgar airspace. Probably before.

Giving him shit, on the other hand.

He doesn't answer. Not at first, as he stands there with his PHS, recording.

Not for a while as he listens to the characteristic whine Zack has weaponized to shocking success against many (and shocking annoyance with many more).

Not until... water, of all things, begins to intrude past the metal threshold, darkening the low-pile carpet panels that run from wall to wall.

He toes against the floor - it squishes - and then opens the door to capture a few frames of Zack with the hose, standing there like a wet puppy.

"...Well, well, look what the cat coughed up."

Flat. He manages a stony face for .03 seconds before breaking into an incredulous grin.

"What the hell, man."

[steeleidolon]

[ AWAY ]:  

“Hey, are you awake yet?” Zack is hanging upside down over the black railing of his top bunk so he can see Kunsel. A bolted-to-the-wall bunk bed, more specifically. It wasn’t always that way. 

Few guesses are needed as to why.

The sky outside is still gray with cloud cover. That took some getting used to, not being able to see the true color of the sky behind the ever present cloak of smog that gathered like a bad crowd around Midgar’s tallest buildings. He keeps his voice low. Any louder, and he fears he might shatter the morning quiet. “You were pretty messed up last night.”  

Reaching out feels natural, easy, and right. The messy curtain of cowlicks covering Kunsel’s face is gently pushed back by one of Zack’s hands, shifting the curled auburn strands away from his eyes. He quirks a smile when Kunsel blearily looks at him from the tangled nest of sheets. “How ‘bout this.”

Zack holds up a finger to represent his one very good idea. “You stay here and sleep in a few more hours andddd…I’ll go keep Angeal busy, huh? Can’t help him with the VR stuff that you guys were planning to work on but eh, I’m sure he’ll come up with some way to torment me with extra training while I’m there.” 

The room is dim but everything is bright, haloing Zack's face and bedhead spikes in light tinged green to Kunsel's sight. Like thunderheads over the desert, warning sign, promise of a gust front. No danger here. Not of that sort anyway.

Rousing feels impossible. Kunsel must squeeze his eyes shut to blink a film away, sleep-tears limned and luminous as the mako settles in his bloodstream, in his system. It has only been a few hours at most, appointments slotted later in the night to account for more SOLDIERs and fewer technicians.

Something like that, anyway.

"Mmmnnnh..."

Soft, soft. Belated, he tips his cheek toward the nearby hand, squinting to follow Zack's gestures. Voice. Tone. Suggestion. His brows furrow and his nose scrunches--

And then he seizes the dangling forearm with freshly-juiced strength to pull Zack bodily from the upper bunk and into the lower. It is not graceful, not at all, for all that he bridges up to ensure a gentler landing for Zack and a pancaked landing for himself.

Huffy, his smush of face to his friend's shoulder. Or something. Somewhere. He can't quite tell and doesn't care at the moment except for pressure.

"Nope."

It's muffled.

More like 'nophe' in this instance.

"...mmnf. Half an hour. If you want to roll my carcass there. Then you can."