( closed ) they being dead yet speaketh by jóhann jóhannsson

[incinerates]

CHARACTERS: Bakugo, Elliot & Hadrian
WHERE: The Red Coast ( Barracks )
WHEN: Day :037, after The Bad Thing Happens
SUMMARY: A sad, bad, horrible day ends with stressed trio doing stressful things to one another.
WARNINGS: Body horror, frank portrayal of mental health and drugs, a teenager with new cusswords to try out, the mods were mean and we're coping via roleplay. More to come if necessary, sorry Avior.

Comments

and soon after hadriot's tender moment:

[incinerates]

[ When he looks back on this moment, he'll be able to retain some measure of pride -- after all, his emotions may have detonated ( less panicked, more utterly distraught -- ) across the length and width of his brood, but at least he'd held himself together until he'd entered the privacy of the barracks. A loose thought comes to him, that perhaps he'd have done better at managing himself if only Hadrian FUCKING Black hadn't been there too. What happened was an echo chamber of rising distress, because Hadrian just. For all the calm that Bakugo was hoping to find in the man's sweetly-smooth mind, for all that he'd dove in among Hadrian Black's person in the hopes that he'd settle his fucking mind down -- he'd broken his broodmate.

Dragged him right down into the shrill, fluttering depths of his own mind. The sight of Keya's body. The sense of failure, a lack of purpose, the strangling, suffocating-thick guiltguiltguilt -- running deeper than should be possible, for a young man who'd only just met the equally young alien. Running back along his heartstrings to a memory cautiously tucked away under a neatly-made bed. Nothing to see there. Nothing to observe about him, but the heat and the fervor. And Hadrian had just, gone looking. So, he broke him, in the end.

In the distance, he can feel the number that Elliot's doing on him. The TRUST that Hadrian feels for that guy is strange to him; unwarranted. ( Who is Elliot, really? What's with the soft whir-hum, the gust of heat that Bakugo feels along his ankles, reminding him of overheating CPUs and long afternoons spent watching and rewatching old All Might videos online with -- ) He's struck, with how little he knows about his mysterious broodmates. How little he wants to know, but how deeply he'll be unable to avoid them. And still, his mind splits. Fractures along old scars and seams, bleeding horror and disorientation and something mournful in the way that his arm bleeds. ]

-- ah.

[ Basic recognition. Something's calming Hadrian, and Bakugo wants it. Wants out of this loop he's stuck in, but he won't reach for it. Not again, not after he'd busted Hadrian up like that. ]

[raw]

[ But wanting is something that calls to Elliot: he's weathered his own addictions, after all. Bakugo's awareness of he and Hadrian feels like eyes on the back of his neck to his hypervigilant brain; he's shaking in the wake of this first use of his power but he's also so awake. And for a brief moment it was like all the other hosts were audible, his connection to his symbiote a connection to the entire hive mind, and so Bakugo is right there, too, and Elliot reaches (or reaches back--) ]

( Here. )

[ He can't do it without touch, and he doesn't really have the capacity to verbally express that right now, so it's just a one word command, but surely the siren song of Hadrian's residual quietude lingering behind it is convincing enough. ]

[incinerates]

[ ( He's never seen someone who's died before -- )

There is a push-pull within him; the combination of the symbiote wanting it's own closer and his own fierce pride. It's a burn inside of him, tearing him into a pile of needs-wants. He needs to keep clean of the dangers of his connection to Elliot, to Hadrian. He wants, more than anything, to bury himself in whatever-the-fuck it is that his strange "broodmate" is putting out. The rapid fluttering of code being written, methodical and monotonous. Elliot reaching out, bridging the physical space between them. ( He can't, for the life of him, get the image of Keya out of his mind. The vibrant pulse of guilt and loathing -- )

Bakugo raises a hand. Somewhere along the way, as he'd entered the barracks, he'd torn the foreign robes and bangles from himself. It's the only thing that prevented them from tearing, from being soaked in blood, after Hadrian seized him with sharp, slicing fingers. Palm out, he holds up that hand, fingers shaking and spread. It's the most contact he's able to ask for from anybody, let alone someone he barely knows. ]

Just -- oh FUCK -- just do it.

[raw]

[ Elliot is familiar with that kind of feeling, at least. Just get it over with, this thing that is both a necessity and the least welcome thing in the world. Does that reluctant demand count as permission? It must.

He does it.

It happens as soon as their skin touches, hand closing over Bakugo's — Elliot's broad palms and blunt fingers are even as an adult a weird counterpoint to his skinny body. The power wells up, and he floods it down that connection. For Hadrian the pill had been coated in honey; for Bakugo it's not as sweet, or as careful. Elliot has been aching to shut him up, and it shows.

The power is one of smothering, spreading numbness, a thick blanket thrown over the fires of Bakugo's explosive emotions. Elliot can taste the acrid smoke of them in the back of his throat, feels the young flex of muscles and the sick guilt. It's worse than what he took from Hadrian, maybe because that was mostly second hand, or maybe because that particular conflagration had similar roots in Elliot's own. Whatever the reason, this time is different, and he lets out a sharp breath of air like Bakugo just punched him in the stomach. ]

[incinerates]

[ Elliot smothers him, and Bakugo spitefully lashes back with a memory ( dark green slime; filling his nose, his mouth, his throat - choking and suffocating him like a wet blanket thrown over his entire body, crushing him and his birthright, even as he fought and fought and tore through it -- because It needed him to submit -- ). He wants to make a point of it, with the last of his wildfire emotions and tightly-held pain: Elliot's not the first person to want to silence him, he was just able to jump to the front of the line.

The calm comes over him, though. Needed, reluctantly desired ( he broke his stupid broodmate -- ); trickling through him like a strong rain, soaking him to his bone, turning his emotions soggy and heavy until they just... wash away. It leaves him muddled, disoriented. Clearly not a youth who's felt anything less than the full force of his emotions, brutal and bright as they are, by the way he physically reels. ]

Is this you -- all the time?

[ Like being underwater, the question comes slow and garbled. Still invasive, though. ]

very: vomit

[raw]

[ Elliot could echo the same thing back to him, with the same level of disbelief. Bakugo is fire bright, feeling everything, yelling loudly against the muffling of the world. He feels everything rawly, and holds it close like he loves the way it hurts him, and no wonder, no wonder this tore Hadrian apart.

But he doesn't respond, shaky and breathless, broken out in a sweat all over. It's not just the mania that he felt when he used his power on Hadrian a moment ago, and it's not just the emotions that he gets off Bakugo in trade. It's a train-brake-shrieking sensation of his symbiote straining, trying to work with Bakugo's — and it's easier, for a broodmate, but it's —

For a moment he's not even Elliot, just a string in a tassel that is part of a fringe on some vast creature that is also him, and yet too big to fit in his brain, too much —

The migraine hits him like a trainwreck, and he feels his stomach expel — vomiting the garstall flesh he'd eaten earlier into his own mouth, bringing up his free hand to cover before it could spill all over the floor. That's enough, and he breaks the connection jarringly, leaving a Bakugo to manage the flood of chemicals that leave him dopey and mind-quiet on his own. ]

[incinerates]

[ Elliot ruptures. All over the floor.

Gross, Bakugo's mind supplies, woozy and vacant. He has enough sense and control to pull his feet off the floor, his knees to his chest, folding up and into himself in the least supportive way, while Elliot struggles under the weight of their tangled psyche. He feels like -- he's in a pool, a big and dark pool, with the soft top drawn over it. The plastic sheet that keeps little kids from falling in, except he's under it, pressing his hands along the liner, looking out at the things that made him what he was.

He can't reach them. Knows he should feel panicked because of it, but the chemicals firing in his brain are just --

it's very quiet, now. ( His chest is sore -- guilt and grief leaving him bruised and shaken, and his head is melting?) ]

Ha. Two down.

[ Broke them both, in a way, didn't he? ]

[raw]

[ Bakugo and Hadrian are both just going to have to sort themselves out. And maybe deal with that little patch of bile. Elliot is going to wash his hands and mouth out as best he can, and then basically pass out on someone's bed. Bye. ]