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Author Topic: Life in Black and White  (Read 910 times)

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Offline Zero Undead

Life in Black and White
« on: March 14, 2018, 09:45:25 am »
Deacon drifted out of the theater with his hands shoved in his pockets, letting himself be carried along with the throng of people doing the same. If you had asked him what the movie he had just watched was about he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Like everything else these days it was all just noise and shapes and flashes of dull color.

Going out had been a stupid idea. Maybe not for someone else, but for him it just didn’t matter anymore and nothing he was doing was helping. Deacon had tried to do things that would bring him enjoyment, things he typically loved doing, but it was like all the color and pleasure had been sucked out of the world and left him with something gray and cold. His favorite foods tasted like ash, the words of his books blurred together into meaningless black lines, and even making a nuisance of himself was a half-hearted effort at best.

He didn’t recognize Libra anymore, and worst of all he could hardly recognize himself.

It was like everything that was Deacon had been ripped apart and scattered, but even as he tried to pull himself back together the pieces just didn’t quite fit anymore, like parts of him had simply gone missing altogether.

For now he was able to focus on one thing, and because he felt so disjointed he clung to that thing and stewed on it like the miserable bastard he was. Firefly had given him a crash course on some interesting elf stuff. Eit had never told him a thing about resonances and this whole soulmate thing that was clearly super fucking important. Deacon wasn’t sure what to really do with the information. Should he feel insulted that someone who he thought was pretty damn close to him hadn’t even bothered to mention something like that?

Maybe Eit just hadn’t thought to tell him about it because it hadn’t come up. He had never seen or known his partner to be particularly close to anyone else, so it could just be Eit hadn’t found this resonance person yet and so had never brought it up. That just brought up a whole different batch of unpleasant feelings bouncing around in his head.

Someone neither of them had probably ever even met yet had some exclusive, ordained by fate, dibs on Eit’s love. It was irrational and stupid to be this jealous of someone he didn’t even know. Whoever it was, Deacon already knew they would never be good enough for his partner. He didn’t need to meet them to know that. Hell, he sure as hell wasn’t good enough for Eit either, but he couldn’t lie to himself about never thinking of a whole slew of what-ifs. Of course it was much too late for all that now. Not only was he dying, but Eit was already taken, if only on reserve for now.

Well if he didn’t think he had a shot before then he sure as shit knew he had a snowball’s chance in hell now. Maybe it was all for the best that Eit was meant for somebody else. Humans were short-lived and fragile anyway.

It would have never really worked between them.

Deacon knew that Eit was going to live a long time, but he’d never actually thought about it. Of course he was probably going to be long gone and nothing but a distant memory one day – if he was remembered at all.

The thought of being forgotten was enough to convince him he needed one hell of a drink.

Actually it was enough to convince him he needed quite a lot of drinks, as it turned out, because before Deacon knew what was what he was fumbling with the front door at three in the morning, barely able to hold himself upright. He couldn’t wait to collapse into bed and just forget about the whole shit day.

Not that he made it that far. He was lucky he remembered to bother shutting the front door once he staggered inside. Seeing the empty couch, he unsteadily made a very wobbly beeline for it. Deacon threw himself down on it face first. His arms wrapped around a throw pillow and he buried his face against it. He didn’t know if Eit was in his bed or if he’d finally decided to go home, but either way he wasn’t in the mood for lectures or spooning.

Offline nephero

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #1 on: March 16, 2018, 05:05:47 pm »
   Eit was… tired.

   It wasn’t the type of tired that could be resolved with ice water or a nap. It wasn’t the type of tired that really could get better. It was an existential kind of tired, a cosmic kind of tired, the type of tired where the sun simply had no more fuel left to give and just couldn’t hold itself together in quite the same way it had before.

   It was a thousand year old tiredness, a ten thousand year old tiredness, a million year old tiredness that would just continue to build and build and build until it just—

   Stopped.

   And that was the worst part of it— Eit knew that there was a point where it would stop. Where it would end. Where this lingering tiredness would cease to exist and be replaced with something altogether worse: the emptiness that followed when such a constant presence of feeling in his life vanished. When the tiredness left, all he would have was void, and that somehow was more terrifying than any lingering malaise that could ever take hold of him.

   Eit tried to make the best of it. He tried to stay close, to make dinner, to do all the little domestic things he’d thought of and considered and even daydreamed about. The little romances of vacuuming a rug. Fragments of alternate universes and realities and what ifs made manifest only for a moment— the briefest moment where Eit could play pretend like this was his life. Where he could pretend like this would work out. Where he could pretend like he’d have all those memories to keep him warm at night long after he’d relearned to sleep alone.

   That part was the hardest; knowing that he’d have so few memories to keep, and knowing there was no time to make more. Time was, as always, against him— it was against all of them. It was against him, and it was against Gray, and it was against Deacon.

   Eit was not a religious man; he was especially not so when he considered just how many bad lots Deacon had been dealt. Between his mother, between his own sickness…

   And that was something Eit could never hope to help. Deacon had already made his choice. Had made his peace, such as it was. Had placed his canoe, set his course and paddled firmly onward. All Eit could do was try to catch up, to paddle faster, to maybe hopefully be able to keep his eyes on Deacon’s back all the way to the edge of the waterfall.

   He wanted to be there for this. Eit needed to be there for this. He woke up so many nights in a cold sweat, thinking he had somehow missed it, had somehow failed to be there and Deacon had gone and died alone, and—

   Those nights were the hardest. Those nights were what dragged him from the couch and down the hall, and sank him down into the bed and up against Deacon’s back, taking solace in the gentle rise and fall of his ribcage and the deep, settling knowledge that Deacon was yet still alive.

   Still.

   But even that solace was falling apart. His partner, his mage, his friend and the other half of his harmony was fading. And with it so too went his want to be… anywhere. Least of all, near Eit.
 
   Eit had tried to give him some distance. Slunk back to his own home and did little things to occupy himself. Showered. Cleaned the living room he hadn’t used in weeks. Threw out the fridge of food he hadn’t eaten and restocked it again. But all of this carried with it the distant, lingering anxiety that This Was It. That him doing all these little things was keeping him from that waterfall moment, that he’d wander on back to find Deacon already gone and he hadn’t been there for it, he’d missed it and Deacon had left all alone—

   Eit sucked in a deep breath, and fought the urge to panic. The waves of fear crashed against his bones, whittling them down just a bit more and a little bit more still. He pressed his palms to his eyes in the dark, took another steadying breath, and looked to find the clock had only changed by a mere few minutes. As it had only done so for the past several hours.

   Wherever Deacon was, it wasn’t home. And whatever Deacon was doing, it wasn’t here. Eit had tried relaxing. Had tried drinking (beer was nasty and you couldn’t possibly tell him otherwise). Had tried doing a little cleaning around Deacon’s apartment to maybe catch a little bit of that aspartame-romance again.

   Eit gave up somewhere around midnight, and shuffled into Deacon’s bedroom. For a few minutes he just stood there, staring at the personal space without quite breaching it. Looking at all the little things that said someone had lived here— that Deacon had lived here, that Eit’s—

   The elf took another breath, and moved to fall into the bed. Cold, of course. But he did at least have the memory of warmth to hold onto. Maybe if he just sat and concentrated on that, curled the blankets just so, it’d be enough.

   It took about another hour for it to work, and even then the sleep was fitful at best. Everything seeped into his dreams, from the rattle of the vents to the thrum of the station to the sound of locks tumbling open and a door being opened and shut—

   The door. Eit snapped awake, stared at the glowing light of the bedside clock and read the hour.

   The door.

   Eit sat up, listened more, head angled to catch the sound of shuffling footsteps, a mismatched gait and then finally the soft thud of a body. And like that, the elf was up, covers thrown aside as he made a beeline for the living room and the couch and Deacon—

   His panic subsided. The fear that Deacon had gone, really gone, abated. And in its place some new feeling surfaced, a bitterness like cinnamon mixed with sour, stale beer, and Eit bit down hard to where he could hear his teeth scraping against one another.

   It didn’t take phenomenal senses to know Deacon was piss-drunk. The reek of alcohol was obvious even from here, and as Eit’s eyes adjusted to the dark he could see the other man hadn’t even taken his shoes off. Just collapsed onto the couch and curled up there without so much as a god-forsaken blanket to keep him from catching a quicker death of cold and—

   That bitterness rose up, and became something even uglier. Eit moved over to the couch, nostrils flared and voice wavering harshly as he grabbed onto Deacon’s side (only barely remembering not to grab his shoulder) and shook him roughly awake.

   “Hey. Hey! Did you just get in!”

Offline Zero Undead

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #2 on: March 16, 2018, 07:49:24 pm »
Alcohol and the very late (early?) hour made certain that the moment he hit the couch Deacon was out cold. He couldn’t care less that his shoes were still on or that there was nothing to keep him warm draped over him. At that point it was just a miracle he hadn’t simply collapsed on the floor to sleep the liquor off.

Deacon would have been more than happy to simply remain there undisturbed for at least a few hours, time enough to at least let a little of the alcohol work its way out of his system, but that wasn’t to be. It was jarring to be shaken awake so suddenly and with such force, or for the unsteady voice of his partner to pierce through the haze of alcohol as he started awake. For a moment he looked around confused, genuinely not remembering making it back home at all, even though it had been less than two minutes since he’d walked through the door.

“What?” First he hissed in grumpy confusion, before he sort of (but not really) focused on Eit and that the elf seemed upset. Why was he angry?

What?” He repeated with more venom, clearly annoyed at the disturbance. Deacon hadn’t even gone into the bedroom! It wasn’t like he had stumbled in and just rudely woken Eit up with his drunk mess of a self. An act especially considerate considering it was his fucking bed.

Oh, Eit had asked a question, hadn’t he?

“I don’t fucking know. Maybe? What does it matter?” Deacon really didn’t know what time it was or how long he’d actually been passed out for. Now that he was awake – or as awake as he could be intoxicated as he was – he felt his anger and resentment bubbling back up. What even right did Eit have to be angrily asking him something like that? He was a grown man and this was his place, he could stumble in at any goddamn hour he pleased.

Offline nephero

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2018, 02:04:41 am »
   Somewhere, in the back of Eit’s mind, he knew that going at this all fire and brimstone had been a terribly bad idea. But he had been so tired, so worried, so wound up that it didn’t matter how bad of an idea it had been to shake Deacon awake, Eit didn’t care. He just wanted to take all that vile bitterness in his chest and throw it everywhere, let it infect everything, make everything else in the room feel as poorly as he did.

   So when Deacon posed the question about what it mattered, Eit got to throwing.

   “What does it matter?” he spat back, pulling back to stand his full height and narrowing silvery eyes down at the other man. “You’re sick, Deacon! What if something happened?”

   It was irrational, of course. Deacon was an adult. He’d made his decision to refuse treatment and he’d made his decision to spend some of his lingering moments like this: drunk, careless, and presently pissed. If he was feeling a little more fair, and less like he wanted to grab Deacon and shake him while screaming at the top of his lungs, Eit might have to admit that it’d be… probably the exact same thing he might do.

   It’d probably be exactly what Eit would do, later. In however many minutes he was afforded between now and then. When it all finally stopped and Eit was left with that deafening silence and the only thing he wanted to do was hasten his own trip down that waterfall.

   But, on the other hand, this was not a time where Eit felt like being fair, so instead of calming down and trying to express how he felt in a heartfelt and sympathetic manner, instead all he managed to say was—

   “I was worried! I was up all fucking night and you didn’t even tell me where you were! You could at least afford me that courtesy in between trying to kill yourself!”

Offline Zero Undead

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2018, 06:05:45 am »
Any other time the posturing probably wouldn’t have mattered, but drunk and angry, Deacon forced himself to stand up, an action that was accompanied by a wave of dizziness and nausea that he stubbornly ignored. If this was a fight he didn’t like Eit towering over him, and part of him was itching for a fight, at least when he was pissed off he felt something besides emptiness and dread.

“So fucking what if I’m sick?” Honestly at this point his illness seemed a fairly moot point to take into consideration on whether or not he should do something. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, right? “Would it make you happy if I just stayed in bed for the rest of my short, miserable fucking existence? Excuse me for wanting to go out and do something for one goddamn night. Who cares if it was something stupid? At least I managed to go do it.”

Deacon couldn’t summon the energy or willpower to leave the house a lot of days, and he knew it was going to get worse. That was all logic in the back of his head, but he couldn’t make a logical argument right now, just like he couldn’t sympathize with Eit’s feelings on the matter in that moment.

“And I never asked you to worry about me. Not one fucking time did I ask you to do that. It isn’t your job to worry about me.” He conveniently ignored the fact that if their positions were reversed he would have been just as annoyingly fussy and frustrated. If Eit were dying he didn’t know what he would do. Probably not handle it nearly as well as Eit was handling Deacon’s own impending doom.

In the back of his head Deacon knew that he needed to stop talking, because he was only going to end up hurting them both, but he couldn’t stop that alcohol-driven locomotive.

“I have a great fucking idea, go find yourself a resonance to nag instead and leave me the hell alone.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth they reignited his earlier hurt and resentment that he had tried so hard to drown in booze.

This was all Eit’s goddamn fault - at least in his liquor-muddled mind.

“Oh yeah, Firefly told me about resonances earlier today, like how all of you have one. Funny that I would need to learn that from some stranger in a chatroom instead of from, I don’t know, my idiot partner.” Deacon honestly didn’t know which bothered him more – that Eit had one or that he hadn’t told him about it.

Offline nephero

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2018, 06:41:53 pm »
   It was a terrible feeling, being caught between wanting to reach out and steady Deacon before he fell and hurt himself, and wanting to hit him so hard he fell right off his feet again. Eit clenched his hands into tight fists, before promptly releasing them again, hissing quietly behind sharp canines to keep from doing something he’d no doubt deeply regret.

   It wasn’t easy.

   Especially when Deacon just… flippantly dismissed his own illness. An illness that there might have been time or the means to fix, but instead of even trying Deacon just decided to go off and get even sicker like it didn’t even matter. And maybe to Deacon it didn’t matter. But it mattered to Eit, and after so many weeks of stress and sleeplessness and worry and fear, Eit was incapable of pretending like it didn’t destroy him every single time.

   “Don’t talk to me like I’m the asshole for giving a shit about you! I don’t worry about you because it’s my job! I worry because I actually care if you end up catching pneumonia from aspirating whatever piss you’ve been drinking!” There was no holding back his volume now; Eit was well beyond any kind of rationality, the Archernar practically navy for how flushed with fury he was. “It’s not fucking selfish of me to not want to watch you kill yourself! It’s not selfish of me to want to keep you safe! It’s not selfish of me to be worried about my partner when he can’t be fucking bothered to be worried about himself!”

   Eit honestly thought he couldn’t feel any worse. Between his anger and his resentment and his despair, it felt like he had some gigantic worm twisting around his insides and squeezing as hard as it was able. Though that was nothing compared to what followed. With just a few words from Deacon, it was like someone had taken Eit and thrown him out into the cold void of space: he was frozen in place, eyes wide and blood cold and unable to breathe. Whatever fury had been singing in his blood was gone, now, replaced by nothing short of liquid terror.

   It had been… a year ago, give or take, that he’d ‘found himself a resonance’, after all. And now it was too late. And Eit couldn’t do anything except make his resonance utterly despise him. And for what? Wanting to keep him alive just a little longer? Not wanting to just give up? Not wanting today to be the day to wake up and just know it was over?

   Something deep in Eit’s chest twisted, and he couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath that followed, arms coming up to fold tightly over his chest, one hand pressed tight to his side where his secondary heart lay as if that would somehow keep them both from hurting so badly.

   “…You don’t get to use that against me. Don’t you dare use that against me! It wasn’t the time to talk about it, and if Firefly actually did tell you all about them, you’d know that! So don’t you stand there and tell me I should just fucking give up on you and nag someone else, when you know damn well that I can’t!

Offline Zero Undead

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #6 on: March 28, 2018, 07:40:50 am »
Maybe it would have been good for them both if Eit really did hit him. That or it was more of Deacon’s selfishness. If his partner hit him for being an asshole it would have assuaged his own guilt slightly, but that would have only made Eit feel worse.

Some ugly part of Deacon wanted to make everyone feel worse, to make them hurt like he hurt.

Anger felt good. It felt empowering. Feeling full of fire and rage left no room for the hurt, the pain, or worst of all the fear. Having that anger bounce off of Eit and be returned fueled him. It was better than the constant pity and worry. Deacon thought he should go into a drunken rage more often if it made him feel this alive when nothing else he tried could incite him out of his melancholy.

Part of him just wanted to keep provoking his partner, push him further, and make him crack even as Deacon was crumbling. He hated that selfish, bitter part of himself, but the more frightened he had become the stronger that part of him grew.

The rest of him wanted to stop. Fighting with Eit, taking any of this out on him, was wrong.

It was hard for the mage to bring that side of him around when a giant, angry elf was still standing in front of him, screaming in that high, trilling voice. It didn’t matter how justified his friend was in his anger, drunk Deacon only cared about the emotion itself, not the logic or rationality behind it. All he wanted, needed, was to keep hold of that spark of fire.

The words didn’t even matter. Hell, Deacon could barely process what was being yelled at him. His mind glossed over most of it, seizing on only certain key words to react (more like overreact) to and Eit was giving him plenty to work himself up with.

Nobody could call his friend selfish. Caring didn’t make Eit selfish, it made him stupid. The man had completely put his life on hold to take care of Deacon and he didn’t deserve one bit of it.

Fire turned to ice in an instant and Deacon knew that he had buried the knife quite deep. It was enough to make him pause, hesitating and unsure. He could respond to anger with more anger, but this wasn’t that. Eit wasn’t really angry as he told him off for using “that” against him. At least he didn’t think he was still angry, or at least if he was it was different than the anger of a few moments ago.

Deacon was missing something important, but he couldn’t put it together through the muddled mess in his head, which he realized was pounding something fierce. He raised his hands to press against his temples as he pushed past Eit, stumbling away from the couch as he felt the need to move before he burst from building tension.

This was not right. Nothing was ever right anymore.

“Well I am running out of time, aren’t I?” Deacon didn’t yell it this time, he didn’t shout or rage it, just more of a resigned tiredness. “I don’t want to die, Eit. I know you and Gray think I’m so fucking stupid or that I have some kind of death wish, but you don’t know a fucking thing either.

“Do you think I enjoy any part of this? Do you think I am hurting myself, or you, on purpose? Then you don’t fucking know me at all.” Deacon would never hurt Eit on purpose; he would gladly throw himself on the sword if it meant sparing his partner pain. That wasn’t really an option here. No matter what he did he was going to hurt his friends. He knew that better than anyone.

“Please Eit; I don’t want to fight with you anymore.” With the fire gone all he felt was exhaustion, his hands moved from his temples to press his palms against his eyes as he squeezed them shut, fighting a feeling of vertigo.

It was just another thing for him to fail at, really, because he swayed and went down like a sack of bricks in the middle of the living room floor.

Offline nephero

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #7 on: April 22, 2018, 02:12:22 am »
   There was no denying it.

   Deacon was running out of time.

   It was a fact. A fact Eit hated, but a fact nonetheless. The tiredness in Deacon’s voice spoke volumes more than the shouting from minutes earlier ever could, and for a moment Eit was stunned by the sheer wash of emotion that hit him square in the chest.

   His resonance was running out of time, and there wasn’t a single thing any of them could do about it. Even if Deacon caved to treatment, what time would that really buy them? A couple years, panicked and worried that it would resurface again, full of the lingering threat that Deacon could relapse at any moment, at any time?

   Even if the cancer was beaten back into nonexistence, even if they did everything right and even if there was no chance of illness or injury ever happening to Deacon— he was still mortal. He was still (mostly) human. There would still come a day, a sudden, quiet day, where Deacon’s body would simply give out from old age because that’s what human bodies did.

   His resonance was running out of time; his resonance would always be running out of time.

   The thought made Eit’s chest twist, caused the center to throb in anguish, and Eit took in a shocked, shaking breath as the full weight of everything crashed around his shoulders all at once. He was going to lose Deacon, this way that way or another way, and he was going to lose him fast.

   Especially if they kept arguing like this. Eit scrubbed at his face, where the prickle of deep blue stubble signaled he should really trim his beard again, where the tenderness beneath his eyes signaled he really needed to get more sleep.

   Now if only he wasn’t too tired to shave. Or too scared to sleep. He took another shaking breath and looked over at Deacon, thinking of some way to apologize, to assure him that it wasn’t that he thought his partner was stupid, or that he had a death wish or… anything else.

   All Eit really wanted to do was drop to his knees and confess, to let go of the weight of his own carefully kept secret and let it be free. It was all ending soon, why hold it back? But where could he even begin with any of that? Where could he even begin to tell Deacon that it wasn’t that he had been asked to worry, and that it wasn’t that he didn’t think Deacon capable of making his own choices.

   Where did he even begin to tell the other Duo that Eit simply wasn’t ready to live in a universe without him?

   The words caught in Eit’s throat, burned behind his eyes and made breathing all the more difficult. So much so that he didn’t even stop Deacon as he moved past him, towards the bedroom door. The only thing that sprung Eit to action was the sudden loud thud, and he whirled, eyes overbright and terrified to see Deacon on the floor.

   Stupid, stupid. Fighting had been stupid, waking Deacon up like he had had been stupid; the mage had needed all his strength, had needed to be kept stress free as much as possible, and what had Eit gone and done? Stressed him out in five minutes flat. Trying not to think of how weirdly light Deacon felt, Eit scooped him up off the floor and carried him to the bedroom, grunting with the effort of settling his partner down onto the bed and easing him out of the evening’s clothes and shoving the spare pillows beneath Deacon’s legs.

   His own pain didn’t matter right then. What mattered was making sure Deacon was all right, and that whatever came next Eit would be there to witness it. The elf settled beside the bed, legs tucked beneath himself as he knelt by Deacon’s side, eyes on the other Duo’s chest and following the gentle rise and fall of each little breath.

Offline Zero Undead

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #8 on: April 22, 2018, 12:58:07 pm »
Deacon was not asleep as Eit picked him up off the floor and carried him into bed. A sleeping person would have still had some stirring sign of life, would have shifted their body, groaned, something – anything. The only thing indicating the mage was still among the living as his partner undressed and settled him into bed was the shallow, hitching breaths still making his chest expand and contract fitfully.

He even looked somewhat lifeless.

It wasn’t painfully obvious yet, but the Duo had clearly started to waste away, losing some of his mass and definition. Someone who had consumed that much alcohol should probably have flushed skin, but Deacon appeared somewhat drained of color and he was already normally relatively pale, now he was downright ghastly.

For about a quarter of an hour that is how Deacon remained, still and silent save the slight rasp of his breath. The deathly stillness was broken suddenly with a gasp, as if he finally was able to suck in a decent breath of air after being deprived.

Deacon turned his head with a soft groan. His mind was a tangled mess of confusion, starting with not immediately sure where he was. The soft bed really threw him off since one moment he had been at the bar and apparently now he most definitely was not. It took him a moment to recognize the comforting scents of home as his tongue ran over his lips to wet them.

They were dry.

Why was he on his back? He never slept on his back, always favoring sleeping on his left side until the injury had forced him to change positions. More than that didn’t feel right, because he was cold. Where were his clothes? Not the most pressing question as his arm reached out to the empty space beside him.

Where is Eit?

The elf crawling into bed with him was a new development, but having his partner warm against his back was something the mage had easily gotten used to in a very short period of time.

Dragging his green eyes open was a chore, but they darted around until they found the huge blue elf kneeling by the bed. Deacon’s brow drew down in a scowl as he struggled to sit up. Who the fuck put those pillows there? With a bit of irritation he grabbed them and threw them haphazardly elsewhere on the bed as he rolled to his side and made himself more comfortable. He still had no idea why Eit wasn’t in bed, what time even was it?

Late as fuck, that much he was sure.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” His voice was sleepy and confused, Deacon didn’t remember coming home or climbing in bed, but he knew that Eit wasn’t supposed to be on the floor. “Did I push you out of bed? Sorry.”

Offline nephero

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #9 on: April 29, 2018, 05:07:21 pm »
   For a quarter of an hour, Eit existed in a ball of dread. It felt a lot like drowning, if Eit knew what drowning felt like. He imagined it was like this, though: cold and with a deep aching pain where his lungs fought to find and process the air necessary to keep him alive. For a quarter of an hour, Eit was so sure Deacon’s breath would stop. For a quarter of an hour, Eit was so sure the last words he’d exchanged with Deacon had been said in anger.

   Eit felt like he’d been yanked out of a frozen lake when Deacon finally took deep, life-giving breaths, no longer the terrifying, quiet rattle from before. The elf very nearly wept in joy— as much as he tried to prepare himself for That Moment, every time it didn’t happen he had to sing his thanks to whatever parts of the heavens were listening.

   Deacon wasn’t gone yet.

   Thank you, thank you, he wasn’t gone yet.

   “Easy,” he said, quiet and as gentle as he could. Something to keep from sounding like he was going in for another round of nagging. “You… you fell. I was worried, I thought I’d need to call medical.”

   Deacon sounded dazed, grumpy but not the same kind of agitation that had gripped him not too long ago. Had he hurt himself in the fall? Or was that just the lingering alcohol talking. He was licking his lips and he didn’t seem to remember the past twenty minutes, was that a problem? Should Eit call medical anyway?

   “Are you all right?” Eit asked, waffling between wanting to fuss and wanting to avoid pissing off Deacon any more than he had. Last thing the mage needed was to worked up into another frenzy and made to feel even worse than he did. Distantly, Eit felt a little more than shame. He should have known better.

   Eit shifted, moving from the floor to the very edge of the bed, just beside where Deacon himself lay. It was awful to think, but, Eit was a bit glad that Deacon didn’t seem to remember the argument, or how he got into bed, or anything. There was so little time left, he was terrified of how much time would be lost just trying to make things right again.

   “You didn’t push me out. I’ve been awake for a while.” Eit chewed at his lip a bit. “Need some water? Did you want me to call someone?”

Offline Zero Undead

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #10 on: April 29, 2018, 06:31:41 pm »
Well there were some words to wake a person up. At least a little bit, Deacon still found it hard to bring thoughts into a sharp focus, like someone has stuffed his head full of cotton, but being told he fell was definitely enough to get his attention. Suddenly he was less worried about making himself comfortable to sleep off his late night of drinking and much more concerned with trying to decide how he felt.

Alcohol could numb you to pain. The mage tried to be subtle about shifting and stretching a little, testing his left shoulder especially. Everything felt okay; at least he didn’t notice anything as particularly achy aside from his fuzzy head. Lots of stiff drinks explained the head fine. He hoped.

It still made him anxious to know he had fallen and couldn’t remember it. Once was a coincidence, a fluke, some freak accident. Twice was the beginning of a pattern. Deacon remembered all too well standing in the kitchen one moment while Eit was out, his arm had still been in a sling then and they’d just thought it was a dislocation, and then he had woken up on the floor in a kind of agony he hadn’t known before. He hadn’t even been able to drag himself up off the floor until Eit had come home and taken him to the hospital that time.

That was not something that he wanted to point out. His partner had worried and fussed more than enough over him. It might have been too much to hope that Eit wouldn’t make the same leaps of thinking, but he wasn’t going to bring it up if he didn’t have to.

“I’m fine. Yeah.” Deacon didn’t notice it, but a few beads of sweat had formed on his brow. The Duo tried to recall something after leaving the bar. He would have settled for remembering anything at all past taking that last drink that was still floating around in his head – might as well have tried to catch something that didn’t exist. All he knew was that he felt distinctly unsettled now.

Thinking about something else seemed like a great idea, so he grabbed onto Eit’s voice and tilted his head to look up at his Jockey as the elf settled on the edge of the bed. Should they call medical? It wasn’t really an emergency, so there wasn’t much reason to stir that hornet’s nest now that he was conscious and semi-lucid at least.

“No, don’t call anybody. More than anything I think I just want to go to sleep, I am so tired. If I feel weird in the morning, or if you’re still that worried, I can go for a walk-in and have a quick check up, yeah?” Was he just offering Eit platitudes to get him into bed and resting? It was a distinct possibility, but Deacon was worried about his partner too. None of this was easy on anybody involved, but the big blue bastard looked stressed out and tired. It made him feel guilty. He hated being the cause of Eit’s distress.

Offline nephero

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2018, 08:24:28 pm »
   Eit shouldn’t have been surprised that Deacon didn’t want to call anyone. He’d hoped, of course, in some distant way, that this would be the one time Deacon would take his health into consideration and do something responsible about it. But then again, would he really be Deacon if he didn’t? Of course not.

   The elf took a breath, let it out in a soft sigh, and looked around the room that belonged to his Mage partner. There were a few things set up on the dresser that had been Eit’s, little supplies he’d ended up bringing over rather than having to run back and forth between their apartments over and over. At the time it had felt a little thrilling; even now Eit got a little case of the butterflies when he caught sight of an active sharing of space. His and his, in another time in another universe.

   Just not this one.

   Eit looked at where two hairbrushes sat— one in dire need of cleaning for how much blue clung to it. The other looking like it hadn’t been touched in too long. Like a prop, a staged item to make a room feel more lived-in. The sight of that brush was enough to have Eit swallowing hard around the sudden lump in his throat. He coughed, quietly, into his shoulder to clear it, scratching at the side of his cheek by one eye to make sure none of the sudden wetness in his eyes actually fell.

   “Okay,” he said, rubbing at his eyes as the full weight of the evening hit, tiredness sinking into his bones. And he wasn’t even the one that was sick. At least Deacon was promising to seek some kind of help if he didn’t feel better. That was a good step, wasn’t it?

   “Okay,” Eit repeated with a little more finality, rising to his feet and walking up to the head of the bed to help Deacon get a little more comfortable. It wasn’t much, just pushing the pillows back from where they’d been shoved away, giving Deacon’s bad shoulder a little more cushion just in case the fall had done… something. Anything. Eit was too tired to take chances. “I’m gonna take a shower. I’ll keep the door cracked, just yell if you need something.”

   At another time, Eit would never dare any such thing. It would be too good an opportunity for Deacon to get back at him for any number of pranks he’d pulled. Eit missed that more than anything, the weird normalcy of terrorizing his partner with big-eyed kitten pictures. All of that seemed like it happened a lifetime ago, a sensation that left Eit’s chest feeling hollow. He moved over to where his duffelbag sat in one corner of the room, pulling out some spare close and slipping into the adjoining bathroom.

   If nothing else, Eit could pretend he’d gotten soap in his eyes if it looked too much like he’d been in distress. Deacon had his own health to look out for, he didn’t need to worry about Eit on top of it. It took quite a few moments of biting down on his own fist, of sucking in deep and steady breaths, of squeezing his eyes shut as tight as he could, but eventually the moment passed and Eit was able to finish washing and get dressed again.

   It was late, so late, and he barely managed to get his hair towel-dried before he moved back into the room. A soft check to make sure Deacon was still breathing, and he tossed the towel into the nearby hamper before crawling up onto the other side of the bed. The pillows felt amazing, nice and cool against the shower-warmed heat of his skin, and for a moment Eit could pretend like everything would be okay.

   He could handle this. It was inevitable. It would be okay.

   “Still there…?” he asked, quietly, not really expecting an answer.

Offline Zero Undead

Re: Life in Black and White
« Reply #12 on: May 24, 2018, 08:30:31 am »
Stubbornness or fear, it was hard to say which exactly kept the mage from seeking help and medicine he clearly needed. Deacon wasn’t even always sure which, but probably a big heap of both. Bull-headedness had been a major personality trait of his for all of his still relatively young life. Sickness, even staring into the face of death, hadn’t managed to change that. It just made him realize how petulant and childish he could really be – and how much of a coward.

Deacon let his eyes slide closed, brow furrowing softly as Eit rose up from his position sitting next to him. He somehow managed to bite his tongue as his jockey fussed over him, rearranging the pillows in an attempt to make him comfortable. It was always a war between frustration at the coddling and acceptance of it.

More than most Deacon knew what it was like to be helpless as someone close to you suffered. It was a terrible feeling. Years before he had fussed over his mother endlessly as she slowly died in front of him, and she had let him fuss. Darla Chambers was a proud woman that had never needed taken care of by anyone, but she had let him – because being able to do nothing was the absolute worst feeling he had ever felt in his life.

Taking care of her had been at least something. It was doing something, no matter how pointless or insignificant the action, it was still action. So Deacon let Eit fix his pillow and cushion his shoulder because that was all the elf really could do for him and he was too tired to try to deny his partner that small comfort of doing something to help.

“Brave man, I’m fine.” Deacon didn’t bother opening his eyes, though a ghost of a smirk did flicker across his lips for a half a moment. He wished he weren’t too tired to actually do something with an open bathroom door. That was such a great invitation to do something diabolical to his friend.

He cracked his eyes and watched the other man gather fresh clothing to change into from a bag in the corner. It caused a sinking sensation in Deacon’s chest. When was the last time Eit had teased or tortured him with kitten stickers? How long had it been since he’d pulled some sneaky payback on him for a well-placed cat picture?

Way too long.

The water in the shower turned on, Deacon could hear it faintly through the cracked bathroom door, and he closed his eyes again. He should go to sleep. Every part of his being was achingly exhausted, but he couldn’t just drift off. Tears gathered at the corner of his eyes as he thought about his life being over – not dying from the cancer. The chilling feeling that it was already over.

This wasn’t his life. It was someone else’s life. Someone he didn’t know.

A hollow life that had him trapped and one he didn’t want.

Those thoughts were dangerously close to sounding like giving up, and Deacon pressed his face angrily into the pillow, letting the fabric soak in the stray tears. It wasn’t over yet. What even was normal anyway? Just because everything had changed didn’t mean it wasn’t worth anything. If he got better things could even go back to the way they were before, right?

Except he didn’t believe he would get better.

The soft slapping of water hitting the shower tile stopped and he stilled, keeping his face pressed against the pillow and listening intently for Eit to come from the bathroom. He tried to make his breathing even, to pretend he was asleep. Maybe if he pretended he could even actually fall asleep. That was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it?

He sensed the elf check on him, heard something being thrown in the hamper, and then finally felt his partner sliding into the other side of the bed. His heart lurched painfully but he didn’t dare move. Eit couldn’t see him cry. Maybe he pretended not to notice, but the mage saw more than he let on. His jockey looked at least as tired as he felt. The worry was getting to him and there was nothing Deacon could do except pretend everything was better than it was.

That’s why he forced it all back inside of him, let the pillow make his eyes dry as he heard a sweet, whispering voice reach out to him. Deacon could pretend for Eit. “What do you want now? Do you need tucked in? A goodnight kiss? Maybe I should sing you a lullaby? For fuck’s sake go to sleep.”

 

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