#ice mechanic tbt

[sixersigned]

The author feels the world steady. He's ridden out the waves, and is now left with the aftermath. If there's one thing he'll never quite forget, it's the expression on his assistant's face before he plummetted to the ground. Those eyes will always be haunting, and those eyes will see him through for the rest of his life—whatever is left of it. The vision blurs, and the pain dulls, but it's temporary; he knows it is. He feels something about to break forth from his face, but for a moment, he can't quite register what is is. And then he feels the other's hand upon his shoulder. Comfort, and then the dam bursts. His inner turmoil finally catches up with him. Stanford feels his body lurch forward without permission, practically throwing himself at his Muse as he's hosting water crashing into scree.

The glass is clutched tightly in his hands, some twisted recognition that amidst everything else, that must stay stable. This is the only sample of cognitive thought he has, mind on autopilot as he processes the extent of what he's done.

“ Why couldn't he understand?! “ he wallows, brows knitted tightly as his face reddens violently. The sorrow is hand in hand with anger, with pain and anguish, and Stanford feels his throat constrict. It HAD to be like this, of COURSE it had to be like this! Every person he had thought to trust had ABANDONED him, BETRAYED HIM! He's so tired of it! He's so TIRED of losing everything! Why is he so CURSED this way?! But he deflects, biting it down, the voice in the back of his head reassuring: IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT, IT'S HIS. And in spite of it all, Stanford can't fully bring himself to believe it. “ ...WHY DID HE MAKE ME DO THAT?! I th-thought we were in it together, I th-thought...! After everything we've done—I...! What did I d-do wrong? “

YOU'RE THE SICKNESS.

“ WEAK-WILLED HAYSEED! “ he yells suddenly, his voice frail yet simultaneously trembling like a volcano about to erupt; IT IS ERUPTING. He can feel his grip slipping as he slumps to the floor, slamming his free fist into wherever gravity might take it. “ He was too AFRAID! It wasn't ENOUGH he wanted to settle for second-best, the SAFETY of what he knew, HE WANTED TO TAKE ME DOWN WITH HIM! EVERYTHING! Well, if th-that's what he WANTS to do, I won't stop him! I'll wish him luck following his north star to greener pastures! HE BURNED MINE TO THE GROUND! “

His expression softens slightly as he stares out into the mindscape, and he pulls himself into a sitting position as he takes a swig from the glass.

“ I don't need him. “

Does it help?

He supposes if there's one common thread for him to grasp with Stanford, it's destroying something you've cherished. Their difference? Bill doesn't think on it- refuses to, actually. The times his past is brought up aren't necessarily moments of vulnerability. The closest he's ever gotten to a heartfelt conversation was actually with the one sitting next to him. The one who searches for an answer on how to move past- and Bill is the shining example of how to do it in the most unhealthy way possible. Does he care or recognize this? Not in the slightest. He has long since decided pondering memories was useless. It's far easier, far more fun, to simply live in the present and rearrange the organs of anyone who dares call it a bad process. They're a bad process now! Try speaking with ears for lungs, pal!

"IT DOES." Bill finally responds after a moment of silence. It's not uncommon for him to pause when situations such as this pop up. They aren't often, but it's always the usual eerie quiet as the triangle so normally loud and conversational doesn't have any immediate response.

Just like every other time, he's quick to move on again. Eye squinting joyfully when watching his host take the advice as well. That's more like it!

Although perhaps being so cheery around the man who just had to pull the trigger on his close friend is a touch too much. He doesn't want that negativity to shift in the direction of the only one left now, not that Bill thinks it would ever happen with just how deep Stanford had fallen into their work. He'd rather have the thoughts stay devote, is all. There's been questions before, particularly the time he'd been away to prepare for their upcoming big day where his host encountered a monster and cried about him 'off inspiring other scientists'. Talk about clingy! It's best to not let his complete enthusiasm about that dumb hillbilly being tossed to the wolves show- not entirely. For as crafty as he is, his dislike of the assistant is more than clear. Stanford just doesn't need to know about the part he'd love to get his hands on that neck and strangle it for good measure.

So, falling back to comfort and care, Bill places his hand on his hosts shoulder as another sign of loyalty. As if helping get glasses out of their lab and bringing Sixer here wasn't enough of a sign! But he gets it, he's known how much of a mess his host is already. He can work with that, just like he always has.

[hitoripiledriver]

“Every time Joe puts me in a headlock, my life   flashes before my eyes.” 

[willofcausality-a]

Reconnect

@mediioxumate sent:  Trick or Treat! 🎃 :3

I told you I’d do it. Eventually. Let’s just pretend it’s still Halloween. Anyway this got way longer than I meant it to and I made myself sad with it, but I hope you like it!! And as always I hope I did your boy justice!!

Hajime only notices him at first because the hot pink of his hair is bright in the dimly lit, late night cafe. He only pays closer attention because of the bruises on his face. And he approaches because, finally, recognition strikes home.

‘Kazuichi?’

Kazuichi gives him only a cursory glance before returning to staring into the bottom of his cup. ‘I’m really not in the mood to be made fun of right now, so don’t even bother,’ he mumbles.

Kazuichi doesn’t recognise him. Hajime supposes this isn’t surprising. He’s changed a lot since they were children. So has Kazuichi, judging by the hair and coloured contacts. But, despite Hajime’s often hazy memory, he’s good with people. He often thinks it may be because of his bad memory, rather than in spite of it, so used to having to search through some kind of distortion to get to the real thing. And he can see it in Kazuichi. The way he worries at his lower lip with his teeth. The way one leg bounces anxiously. The way his eyes flit around the room and his shoulders hunch, anticipating some kind of threat.

Hajime sits down opposite him.

‘I said—’ Kazuichi begins, finally looking Hajime in the eye, and then he pauses.

Hajime can see Kazuichi’s mind working. It’s his eyes, he knows. Even if everything else about him is different, he still has very distinctive eyes, and they’re stirring something in Kazuichi’s memory even if he can’t quite place it.

‘It’s Hajime,’ Hajime says. ‘Hajime Hinata. We... We were friends when we were kids.’

‘Wait... Hajime?’ Kazuichi almost stammers in his disbelief as realisation finally dawns. His gaze sweeps over Hajime again, and Hajime fights the urge to wrap his arms around himself. To shield himself. Kazuichi is just in disbelief, trying to reconcile memories of his childhood friend with this stranger sitting opposite him.

Instead, Hajime flashes a small smile and gives a small wave. ‘Hello.’

‘Hey!’ All trace of anxiety or distress has temporarily left Kazuichi, and his face lights up in a smile. If Hajime had seen that smile before anything else, he would have recongised him instantly. ‘God, Hajime, you’re so—I can’t believe you—’

He doesn’t seem to know how to finish the sentence, for which Hajime is grateful. Even if Kazuichi is reaching for a compliment, he knows it’s not something he’s going to be comfortable hearing. So he intervenes before Kazuichi can finally pull out a complete sentence.

‘I like your hair.’

Kazuichi’s hand goes to his hair, twisting a lock of it around his finger. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. It suits you.’

Kazuichi smiles for a moment, and then his expression drops again and he sighs. ‘My dad didn’t think so.’

Hajime hesitates, eyes lingering on the purple bruise ringing Kazuichi’s eye, on his swollen lip and the dried blood crusted in the corner of his mouth. He’d always feared Kazuichi’s father would go too far one day and lash out at his son with his fists instead of his words. It looks like that day finally came.

‘That’s... sorta why I’m here.’ Kazuichi looks down into his cup again. ‘Mom’s kickin’ him out finally and she said I should probably... y’know. Stay outta the way until he’s gone.’

Hajime wonders if the advice was to protect Kazuichi from getting hurt again, or to protect him from seeing her getting hurt.

Possibly both.

His heart breaks for both of them. Kazuichi’s mother was always good to him, better to him even than his own. He remembers wishing she was his real mother and then feeling an almost crippling guilt for daring to think something so ungrateful.

And Kazuichi... Well. He’s never had a friend like Kazuichi since they drifted apart after starting different highschools. Someone he could tell anything to. Someone who did not look at him like he was some delicate flower that had to be preserved under glass, or throw him leering, lecherous glances when he looked at him at all.

He thought about Kazuichi less as he grew up, his childhood friend slowly being buried along with everything else from those more innocent times, but it wouldn’t be true to say he forgot him altogether. He still thought about him fondly, almost wistfully, from time to time as was normal with distant friendships. Especially when he found himself in situations where he felt he had no one to turn to for help or comfort.

‘Are you planning on just staying here until it’s safe to go home?’ Hajime asks.

Kazuichi shrugs. ‘Guess so. Ain’t got anywhere else to go.’

‘Come home with me.’ Hajime makes the offer almost before he’s aware he’s going to, but he persists with it anyway. ‘You might as well wait somewhere more—somewhere warmer.’

He was about to say somewhere more comfortable, but his home is anything but comfortable. If Kazuichi remembers anything about him from their youth, he’d know that too.

After a moment, Kazuichi nods. ‘Yeah, okay. Thanks.’ He downs the rest of the contents of his cup and makes a face; it’s probably cold by now.

Hajime gets to his feet, automatically straightening out the creases in his skirt. He catches Kazuichi giving him an amused look, and blushes. He remembers all the fights he had with his parents as a child, insisting he was not going to wear a skirt or a dress, he was not. All the times he purposely put ladders in his tights to spite them, or played around in the mud in his best clothes with Kazuichi. And now here he is, clothes smart and immaculate, hair teased into loose, elegant curls and pulled into a neat ponytail.

He feels a sensation of doubling, like stepping outside of his body and looking back at himself. A wave of dizziness washes over him as his surroundings seem to blur, and he closes his eyes, holding onto the table to keep himself upright.

‘Hey, you okay, dude?’ Concern in Kazuichi’s voice.

Hajime takes a deep, slow breath, and opens his eyes again. There’s a distorted shimmer over everything, like heat, but the dizziness is gone.

He forces a smile. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Come on.’

He leaves the cafe without waiting for a response, and Kazuichi falls into step beside him. He tries to focus on the sound of Kazuichi’s boots as he walks, rather than the clicking of his own sensible low heels.

****

The house is dark and the driveway is empty, as Hajime knew it would be. His parents won’t be back for another few hours yet. He lets himself and Kazuichi into the large entryway, closing the door behind them with a dull thud. It’s a claustrophobic sound to Hajime.

‘Never thought I’d be here again,’ Kazuichi says. He looks uncomfortable as he glances around the room. He looks very out of place here, and Hajime envies him that. Kazuichi’s father may not have reacted well, but Kazuichi is still grasping at his own individuality, becoming the kind of person he wants everyone to see him as, while Hajime has just retreated further and further and into his parents’ ideal image of a daughter, sacrificing everything that makes him feel like him.

He leads Kazuichi through the house and to his room, feeling at least a small sliver of relief when he closes the door behind him. While he’ll never be completely comfortable anywhere inside his parents’ house, his bedroom is the closest he’ll get. It’s his sanctuary.

Kazuichi stares around, no doubt pulling up what he remembers of this room from childhood and overlaying it with what he’s seeing now. Hajime leaves him to it, kicking off his shoes and going into the en suite bathroom. He changes out of his stifling skirt and blouse and into a plain t-shirt three sizes too big and pyjama shorts. Pulls out the ponytail and reties his hair into a loose, messy bun. Scrubs the makeup off his face.

When he reemerges, Kazuichi has sat down on the edge of the bed, and he grins when he sees him. ‘Now you look a lot more like you.’

'Shut up,’ Hajime says, making a face. But Kazuichi’s words cause a spark of warmth inside him.

He sits on the bed beside Kazuichi. He brought a dish of warm water and a washcloth from the bathroom with him, and he hesitates for a moment before reaching out to gently touch Kazuichi’s cheek, tilting his head a little to get a better look at his injuries. Kazuichi does not meet his eye as he does it, choosing to look down and fidget instead.

Hajime soaks the washcloth in water and then gently dabs it over the corner of Kazuichi’s mouth, removing the blood. Kazuichi gives a small hiss of pain despite the lightness of Hajime’s touch, but allows Hajime to clean him up.

When he’s finished, Hajime returns to the en suite, dumps out the water, now tinged a faint pink with blood. He refills the dish with cold water and grabs a clean washcloth, bringing both back to Kazuichi to put over his bruised eye.

‘You can stay here tonight if you don’t wanna go home yet,’ Hajime says. ‘My parents won’t know you’re here, but you’ll have to go out the window in the morning.’

The matter of fact way he says this causes Kazuichi to quirk an eyebrow at him. ‘You sound like you’ve done this before.’

‘Yeah, I like to bring injured boys home with me and soothe them back to health,’ Hajime jokes, artfully dodging an actual answer.

‘Awww, and here I thought I was special.’

Hajime snorts. ‘You’re the only one who’s been here before, if that helps.’ The words stir up a memory in him, and he gets to his feet.

He stands before his dresser for a moment, before gripping one end of it and shoving. It scrapes across the polished wood floor, but doesn’t go far. He tries again, arms straining.

‘What are you doing?’ Kazuichi asks. He approaches nevertheless and Hajime moves aside as Kazuichi shoves the dresser aside with much less effort. Then he turns to Hajime, expression questioning, and Hajime simply smiles and inclines his head towards the now exposed wall.

It’s the same spotless shade of cream as the rest of the room, except for one small patch at the very bottom. This is a faded pink colour, old paint that was skirted around instead of being painted over in the intervening years of redecorating between then and now.

On this small patch of old paintwork is a clumsy drawing of a car, done in marker pen. Beside it are two stick figures. One with black hair, one with brown. One wears glasses, and one has two different coloured eyes. Neither of them are wearing a dress.

Kazuichi lets out a snort of surprised mirth. ‘I remember that! Man, you freaked out so much when you realised how pissed your mom was gonna be.’ He turns shining eyes on Hajime. ‘Why is it still here?’

Hajime shrugs. He doesn’t really know why he refused to paint over the childish drawings put there by himself and Kazuichi when they were no older than ten. His mother never saw it, because he made sure to always keep it covered. After a while, it sort of became his own little secret. Something that was all his and that she knew nothing about. He didn’t want her to take it away from him, to impose her will on this tiny section of wall the same way she did on every other aspect of his life.

This was his.

Kazuichi keeps looking at the drawing for a while, smiling. At last, he returns to sit on the bed, soaks the washcloth in the cold water and places it back over his eye.

Hajime sits beside him. His eyes are on the drawing, but his mind is in the past.

He would never say his childhood was happy, but it was certainly freer. Back when there were less expectations on him. When he was allowed to run around climb trees and play in garages and only received scoldings for causing a mess and not for being unladylike or causing embarrassment. Back when no one cared that the child of a wealthy and powerful family was best friends with the child of a simple mechanic with a habit of drinking too much and raising his voice.

The Hajime of his childhood was a much truer version of the Hajime that exists now, and he can trace all of his growing unhappiness right down to the moment his parents enrolled him in private school while Kazuichi went to a public school, and it was no longer viewed as acceptable for them to be friends.

‘I missed you,’ Hajime says at last.

‘Yeah.’ Kazuichi’s voice is almost a whisper, the sound of tears lurking beneath it. ‘I missed you too.’

Hajime turns to face him, concerned. There are tears swimming in Kazuichi’s eyes and he’s wringing the washcloth out in his lap, not seeming to care that drops of cold water are running down his arms and splattering onto his legs.

‘Kaz? What’s wrong?’

‘I have this—’ He stops. Swallows. Continues. ‘Had. I had this friend. In school. He was my best friend. Only he didn’t... He didn’t really care about me. He was just using me. He was the only real friend I had and he did that to me and now I’ve got no one.’

Fury rises up in Hajime’s chest. He’s had his fair share of mistreatment in school, but how anyone could take advantage of someone like Kazuichi, someone so kind and sweet, so willing to sacrifice anything for someone he cares about. He can’t understand it.

Hajime shakes his head. ‘That’s not true.’ He reaches between them to wipe tears from Kazuichi’s cheek with his thumb, and then pulls Kazuichi into a hug. He wraps his arms tight around him, feels the way Kazuichi’s chest hitches with his sobs, muffled now against Hajime’s shoulder.

Hajime rubs Kazuichi’s back. His eyes are on the drawing, one moment of friendship preserved in time, unable to let go of it. He’s not letting go of Kazuichi this time, no matter what. ‘ You’ve got me. You’ll always have me.’

[dawnbrokcn-blog]

" If you were a triangle you'd be acute one. " Nolan to Ifri B)

    ifri stared at the other for a good ,  solid moment before laughter escaped him as his cheeks faded to a darker color .  he honestly wasn’t expecting anything  –  especially when he usually spend his times alone during nights .  brushing his hand through his short hair ,  glowing blue eyes focused onto the other with a sheepish smile .  there were attempts to say something ,  but only more soft laughter came out .  is he actually used to this ?  no ,  no he isn’t .    @duskbrokcn  /  pickup lines  ( accepting )

[futures-hero]

hexcored replied to your post: “Becoming an unfeeling robot might seem cool but...

I still eat, Jayce.

Unproven claim. Never seen it.

[revunant]

"Smart. Get attached to it. Maybe your bond with Jim will cause you to turn before the rest of us, and we'll be forced to put you down." Completely unrelated thought; it's been a while since he last ate octopus.

" If I'm going to have to live with this thing in my head for awhile– " He taps his head, referring to the illithid tadpole nestled inside. " I'm going to call mine Jim. "

[hitoripiledriver]

Jeez. 

[hitoripiledriver]

Any chance everyone could just ignore that?