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Entry tags:
cast a calming shadow (closed.)
CHARACTERS: Elliot and Annie
WHERE: The Red Coast
WHEN: Day 38, after this.
SUMMARY: Elliot testing his new powers on a "screaming psychobitch" (her words).
WARNINGS: Both characters are kind of their own warnings. Substance use and abuse, mental illness, swearing, etc.
[ It's the kind of early where the only sound is really the call of distant animals still waiting for the sunrise, and the constant shush of the waves, a soothing and steady noise after the jangle of yesterday's celebrations and catastrophes. But that also means it's the best time to do this without disturbing their respective broods. ]
Come on. Let's get out of here.
[ Slipping past dreamers and into the night. They don't go far — it would be stupid and suspicious to get caught out so late, after what happened to the girl yesterday. But it's not hard to find somewhere private enough that he can pull his hood back, escape the claustrophobic robes. ]
WHERE: The Red Coast
WHEN: Day 38, after this.
SUMMARY: Elliot testing his new powers on a "screaming psychobitch" (her words).
WARNINGS: Both characters are kind of their own warnings. Substance use and abuse, mental illness, swearing, etc.
[ It's the kind of early where the only sound is really the call of distant animals still waiting for the sunrise, and the constant shush of the waves, a soothing and steady noise after the jangle of yesterday's celebrations and catastrophes. But that also means it's the best time to do this without disturbing their respective broods. ]
Come on. Let's get out of here.
[ Slipping past dreamers and into the night. They don't go far — it would be stupid and suspicious to get caught out so late, after what happened to the girl yesterday. But it's not hard to find somewhere private enough that he can pull his hood back, escape the claustrophobic robes. ]
no subject
You sure do like creepin' off into the corners, huh.
[ But she's got her hands in the pockets of her robe, following along after him all the same. ]
no subject
[ How he's found that so far, includes setting up a pillow fort at the back of the barracks, and mostly getting his sleep in the late morning when everyone else is up and out, spending the dark nights awake and often alone. Boring, sometimes, but better than forced socialization. And that is also why he's so comfortable with the early hour.
It seems a funny contradiction to follow that up by nudging their minds together, but Elliot's concept of privacy extends only to his physical self. ]
And we need to be touching.
[ Which means gloves off, human hands — dangerous prospect even in the barracks given some of the people who came knocking in the earlier evening. ]
no subject
[ Except the laziness from sex was a limited relief. Brief in the action, brief in the afterglow, and then she'd need to put herself back together and carry on like she wasn't aching inside. She always hurts. There's something huge sitting in the back of her thoughts, constricted by this human form. Flesh bound in flesh, pierced with bone, lacking an outlet big enough for its immensity. And always lacking it, even when the portal in her chest had been open. That had been only a small, torturous taste of what she could achieve. Now it's closed, leaving only ghostly remembrances of her of what she could be.
Another reason to cling to sex, it made this fucking body feel a little less tiny and useless when it was stretched out and hot and vibrating. ]
no subject
I want to practice.
[ With his powers!! ]
But we could do both.
no subject
Guess we'll see if I can still get it up once I'm fuckin' sedated, huh?
[ Actually thinking about fucking the drug pusher. How old is she, that sounds like something she'd do when she was fourteen. ]
no subject
For a moment it's just bare skin to bare skin, and then he feels the blanket of it activate, press through that connection — may I, it asks without words, and it's so gossamer that it's obvious her own symbiote could shut it down in a second if she wanted to. The other reason why he needs a volunteer.
It's an intimate connection; even as he gives her sensation like cotton wool and warm sunshine, a duvet of anhedonia and a sweet sigh of relaxing pleasantness over that, he can feel what it is he's snuffing out, and is aware for the first time of the sheer space of her. It's not just crazy in there but void, and while he's used to voices in his head this is more than just a couple but an entire roaring chorus. ]
( Shhhh. )
[ Whispered to them as he strains to reach. ]
( It's okay. It's okay now. )
no subject
She exhales heavily, the weight of her anxiety sloshing back and forth between herself and Elliot. That anxiety of breaking everyone around her. The self-hate that made her want to drive them away before she could. The loneliness that made her reach anyway. The emptiness that couldn't ever be filled trying to devour everyone she reached.
Her eyelashes jerk as she blinks, almost like trying to shake it off, the last vestiges of resistance, trying to focus, but the resistance slips out of her. So does her guilt, the weight of all the death and pain and disappointment she doesn't know how to let go of. It's really too bad Elliot can feel it all. It's not a good time. ]
no subject
But he doesn't really have the capacity to think about it right now, so much of him is spent chanelling the symbiote's power, learning how to make it his own. They're both tired — this is his third time doing it in less than a day — but the power itself gets him wired,
makes him feel energetic, antsy.
Which is probably good when it comes with such a truckload of Annie's darkest emotions.
Elliot knows guilt. He got his last girlfriend killed. He got Darlene's boyfriend killed. Fuck, a part of him still believes he killed his dad. There's plenty of death around him, plenty of things he deserves to atone for. But most of that he doesn't let himself feel, channels it away into Mr Robot or blankets it under anhedonia and self-medicating drugs, just like what he's giving her now. And in return he has to feel it.
It's a boner killer, that's for sure. A whirlwind of trauma and loneliness and self hatred. It's painful in its intensity — is this what it's like to just, feel things, all the time?
At first he thinks he's crying, but when he reaches up to wipe the dampness on his cheek he realizes his left eye is bleeding a little. The sight of it, black on his fingertips in the dark, jolts him out of the depression haze and he eases off the power, the stream of dopamine and deadening, his head pounding. ]
no subject
Annie wonders what Cathaway would think. It's an idle half-thought. ]
Y'all right there, sparky?
no subject
[ No. He's a little shaken. At least it wasn't vomit this time, but the churning of her emotions somehow inside him, the contrasting spike of manic energy ... it's too much. Bakugo was a pretty uncomplicated teenager, and Hadrian had just been Bakugo overspill, and in comparison Annie is, just, too much. He rubs at his eye again. ]
Fuck.
[ He laughs suddenly, a stark cracked sound, pushes his knuckles into his eye. ]
Fuuuuck. You're like a bad trip.
[ Sweet talker. ]
no subject
[ It's unclear whether that's some unconvincing laughter or some other sound. ]
Yeah, and I'm in there now. Swimmin' around, poisoning your brain with my screaming.
[ The sluice of a sideways smile. ]
Lucky you.
no subject
[ It's hard to say if the resurgence of that word in his vocabulary is all his own. There's a jumble of it, coating him: her vicious phrasings, her cravings, her void. Places they overlap (emotionally neediness like a hole inside him that even drugs have never been able to fill) and shit that is so foreign his mind shudders away from it, represses it into —
Well. Where all Elliot's repressed things go. ]
( Mutual, sweetheart. )
[ A whisper of someone (something?) in her brain that markedly Isn't Elliot. Mr Robot is more willing to stick his hands directly into the more unpleasant feelings and pull it all out to look at. ]
no subject
( Lots of that. )
[ Lots of people have met her head on, taken all her fucked up shit right into their hands, and watched as she stained them with her noise and her color and her madness. Noctis. Nyx. Lakshmi. Sam. November. And now there's... Elliot. Blushing at the thought of fucking and always skulking around in corners. Now he thinks he's calling her sweetheart... Unlikely.
The octopus taps on the glass in greeting. ]
( You're not right. )
no subject
[ He's not afraid of her because he lacks the capacity to be afraid, not because she's not fearsome. Awful, via "awe". ]
( Don't worry about the kid. He's had worse. You, though. )
[ He wants to run his hands all over their connection like a man admiring the chrome chassis of his dream car, touching it both possessively and to believe it's real. ]