#these are all doozies but 'helpless' especially lmao

[artdecosupernova-writing]

Find the Word Game XXX

(Double Feature)

tagged by: @oh-no-another-idea & @space-writes!! my words: pocket, passenger, precious, late, fine, disgusted, helpless tagging: @drippingmoon, @pertinax--loculos, @zmwrites, and open tag! your words: force, beyond, statue, core, never, attitude

pocket (Meridian)—

Warren turned to Gouna. "Not a word of this to the Consortium." "I'm not naïve enough to give them any unnecessary information," he said sardonically. He waved his arms at the others. "Everyone but Corin out. I'll keep you all apprised of [Thrive's] status as he recovers." He ushered [everyone else] out of the bedroom and took a thick, glass tube from his bag of supplies. "Corin, we'll need to take a few samples to determine the cause of this." "On it. Gimme a swab." "Third pocket in the front. Fluid in the second pocket." "Test tube? Why do you have loose swabs in here?" "...Third pocket from the other side." "Are you stupid?" "No, that's my fault." Gouna approached Thrive and ripped his form suit from the collar to the shoulder, baring his arm to him. He smeared some clear gel from a little jar onto his skin. "This is going to sting." He pressed the glass cylinder into Thrive's shoulder and depressed a button at the top. A hissing sound from the device coincided with the one Thrive made, and Gouna replied with a speculative hum as the barrel filled with blood. "...That should not have hurt as badly as it apparently did," he said evenly.

passenger (Aurora)—

"This is Tournaltis. Identify yourself." "What do we do if it is an ambush?" Warren asked in the interim. "We don't have planetary support or defense yet, do we?" "No." Thrive swiped again. "Repeat: identify yourself or turn around." Vriea looked nervous. "Maybe we should brace ourselves for an attack just in case?" The comm crackled. "Apologies, Tournaltis, this is the Echo Valtar." "I am Orthrive'poliea. What is your business?" "We're transporting an individual that needs to speak to you...since we were passing by we decided to give him a lift. We only intend to send him down planetside in a shuttle and then we'll be on our way." "Your passenger needs to identify himself if he wants to approach." There was a pause. Warren and [the others] exchanged a concerned look before the silence was broken by the popping of the system again and a different, but familiar voice coming forward. "Uh, hey. It's Guetry. Something's come up and I need to talk to you guys."

precious (Aurora)—

Thrive raised himself to his elbows and he blinked around the room as if the memory aggressively snapped to life within him. He responded with a heavy sigh. "Oras'at. It was my first time." "If oras'at means rearranging my guts, I have bad news for you regarding the validity of what you just said," Warren grunted, leaning over to tap the lighting panel on the wall beside the bed. "No. It's...a rare and precious thing, a bond. Our minds are permanently connected. Obhelians rarely formed such a bond…" Thrive sighed again on a deeper, more existential level. "I cannot believe I took advantage of you like that." Warren sobered up real quick at that, though his pounding headache remained. "Whoa, what taking advantage? I don't remember doing it, but if you did it, then I agreed to it. Okay?" Thrive swung his legs over the edge of the bed and rubbed his face. "Right. We should be able to keep tabs of one another's emotions now even from across the galaxy, much like how we can feel what the other is feeling through touch, but without the touch aspect. I must...really have felt it necessary in that grotto. Bonds were rarely made because in the event of one party's death, the other party would be flattened; would experience the worst pain of their life, sometimes joining them in death whether they want to or not." Warren forced himself out of bed and realized he still wore his wedding pants. He dragged himself over to his clothes. "You've never told me about this." "Because I never normally would have considered it an option." Thrive took a flimsy blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. "Like I said...I must've felt either threatened, or connected to you in a way I never thought possible." He turned a curious gaze onto Warren, and Warren experienced one of the many instances of heat pooling directly in his stomach as a result of a normally casual glance. "So, what do you think the odds were of me feeling threatened an hour at most after marrying?" Thrive murmured with an imperceptible narrowing of the eyes.

late (Eternal)—

They sprinted through the corridors, dodging tendrils, knocking back artillery, and when they reached the tower, Thrive swept a current of force toward the mountain, cracking the wall, and the ground began to rumble as the stability failed. "Go," he yelled. Warren dashed to the door, praying it would open as he approached. It rolled open as chunks of the base fell hundreds of feet, and the ground opened up in the middle of the compound as he escaped. The crack grew in length as he ran. "Thrive?!" He ran by, grabbing Warren's hand again, and they circumnavigated the fissure just before it split the compound in two. The shaking beneath them doubled the farther away they got, and Warren glanced behind them to watch the entire base collapse, along with part of the mountain. His lungs burned. An enormous cloud of debris curled out from the destruction, and Warren realized almost too late that they were not going to get far enough away in time. Thrive tackled him to the ground and they rolled, stopping with Thrive on his back, holding a shield over them as Warren clung tightly to him. Several explosions went off behind them, and Warren could smell the dust and fire. He heard the chunks of concrete and debris bouncing off of Thrive's shield, and he chanced a glance down at Thrive's face. Thrive looked utterly broken. He kept an eye on the sky, but Warren had never seen him so desolate, so defeated, so violated before. His stomach churned at the sight.

fine (Aurora)—

Thrive shook his head. "Gouna's staying behind." "What? Why?" "He's going to make sure that everything goes smoothly with the ———. He refused to step away, saying he wouldn't feel right leaving ——— alone, especially on the off-chance that something were to happen to you or me while we're gone." Warren observed Thrive's face. "You hate that, don't you?" "Absolutely not." Thrive squared his shoulders. "I would do the same. I'm actually somewhat embarrassed that I didn't think of that myself." A beat passed and Warren narrowed his eyes. "You hate that." Thrive rolled his eyes. "Alright, I'm not going to pretend I'm not a little disappointed that [Gouna] won't attend, but all in all, I'm glad he decided to stay. I would feel more guilty knowing that, while they would be safe and on automated care, any ——— left behind would be alone." He tore his eyes away from Warren's. "Okay," Warren said, taking that as a sign to drop it, even though he knew things were very much not fine. "We'll take lots of video and send it to him."

disgusted (Meridian)—

"Ah-ha…" Warren angled his head to the side and eyed him up and down before fluttering his eyelashes at him. "You wanna tell me about 'em?" "I see through your scheme." "My dearest love. Whatever do you mean?" "I know what happens when I start prattling on about a subject." Thrive reached over to grip Warren's chin in his hand, fingers squeezing to force his lips into a pucker. "To be more precise, I know what happens to you." A laugh nearly exploded out of Warren, but he fought the giggles bubbling up his throat. "I am disgusted and offended at the implication," he said as well as he could with half of his face squished together. "You're also a deviant," said Thrive, voice lowered and much smokier than usual, which did not help matters in the least. "Vacate the room." "It's my ship." Warren cleared his throat. "But marriage is about sharing, after all. You know what, I'm kinda hungry anyway, I might bother the cook for a couple hours—" Thrive tipped Warren's chin downward to plant a kiss on his forehead. "Goodnight, Warren," he murmured before releasing him and pushing him gently in the direction of the door.

helpless (Aurora)—

Guetry, also sans helmet, streaked across the clearing. He dropped to his hip and slid nearly twenty feet in the mud, coming to a stop flat on his back beside Thrive to pelt several hundred rifle shots up into the hovering cloud, only breaking to replace his heat sink and jerk the lever back to re-activate his weapon and send more ammo upward. The cloud broke off into a mist that settled right over Guetry, engulfing him. His tattoos flashed erratically and the light in his temple glitched, the intensity and pain in his face the only sign of something amiss, but he didn't let up. Thrive reached over to grasp Guetry's shoulder through the mist, rain pattering off their faces. Guetry didn't stop shooting, the lightshow beneath his skin becoming more volatile, his own eyes streaming, whole frame shaking. A trickle of blood dripped from his nose to his ear. The cloud began to dissipate but a spear of smoke still lodged itself into Guetry's ribs with a sick crunch on its way out. He dropped his aim in shock. Thrive instantly shoved him away with a blast from his hand, making sure he'd come to a rest among Varussa and Emnophene, who grabbed him by the arms to pull him to safety behind a rock. Before Thrive could stand again, the Emmuli spiked a spear into his side. Every breath was a thousand nettle stings in Warren's throat—he watched helplessly as more spears pierced through Thrive's chest, his back, threaded through his legs and arms, strangling him, dragging him to the ground despite his struggling. He watched him as he was pulled back down to a knee, to his hands as the dirt curdled beneath him. Warren tried to call out to Thrive, his eyes pinned to the rain flattening his hair, running through the smears of blood on his paling face, the agony contorting his features, worsening with each stab, each squelch of the Emmuli assault on his body. Nausea churned in Warren's gut while Thrive grew weaker in front of him, sank further into the ground on his stomach, his skin folding into the billowing void. "No…" Warren whispered. He choked around his words, nailed to the ground by the whining in his ears and an unseen force, teeth gnashing with rage and desperation. "...No...I just...I just got you back...get...get up…please..." He heard Guetry scream something unintelligible and full of emotion over the downpour. Thrive went still, his wounds attempting to heal. The Emmuli continued their onslaught, jabbing through his prone form and oozing into his nose and mouth, into his eyes, which found the horizon and grasped onto the red sun as a lifeline. His wide eyes, veiled in fear, reflecting the dying star and swallowing the smoke. Emptying with each passing heartbeat.