OPEN SEASON 2.

[crawly]

1. pick a character.

☛ optional.
☛ character list here.
☛ full list.
☛ specify in the subject line if you want one character in particular.

2. provide a prompt.

☛ image, words, music, whatever you want.
☛ i like to think at least one of my three tumblrs has something interesting. (be warned that all three blogs contain nsfw material, including porn.)

3. gotta go fast.

☛ not actually. this is a permanently open post! tag at your own speed.

previous post here.

Comments

[quatrain]

Do you prefer French or Thai?

i'm not sorry at all

[shooteverything]

[ the needles bother him, more for their association with hospitals than the actual pinching pain. he fidgets uncomfortably in his seat, always twitchy and made no calmer by the situation. ]

Yeah. [ he takes a breath through his teeth and shrugs. ] Sure.

[ it's now or never, and he doesn't want to back out now.

the process starts with going under, a feeling that would make him feel unsafe if he weren't then too drowsy to think about it. and then it's like dreaming — like seeing flashes of people that he thinks he knows, of events too vivid to be real.

but they're real, and they're hers. inside his mind, he just watches. outside, his feet kick, eyelids twitch, but it's started and he can't go back.

(what she sees of his memories starts with a cold hospital room, loneliness, and brief flashes of joy and a sense of family, with a girl and a few other boys who make a ragtag band. their 'mother' is a beautiful woman with long, burnt-caramel hair, their 'father' a man with perfect hands, and their smiles are terribly cruel.) ]

[erythristic]

[she doesn't know what to make of these, some sort of dream that makes sense but doesn't because all these belong to him, all are his and not hers and it's much like peering through the curtains at someone else's home. parents, though, parents she wishes she was awake enough to tell him they're awful people aren't they. and outside she's beginning to hyperventilate because then what does he see? what does he know?

(she's in a school uniform angrily ripping a letter to shreds pretending it doesn't hurt, she is so alone but there is a woman red as anything who she'd die for, there is so much blood and the red woman's lifeless in her arms, by her hand. there are people in suits, and they whisper to never forget you are nothing, less than nothing while you reload your gun and feel so hollow.)]

[beloving]

[Way to show off something he didn't even intend on filling...]

Have you thought of something? Judging from the rate of your income, I'd say you could do with a karma boost.

[Yeah he's definitely suggesting he donate it to charity.]

[quatrain]

Karma doesn't exist. If it did someone would've hit you with a car by now.

[beloving]

That's another for the jar. I wonder who it was who forgot to teach you etiquette.

[shooteverything]

[ things they have in common, death and blood, reverberate more strongly. heine stares at the body for a while before he's drawn away again to guns and people who know exactly what they're doing in a way that hurts her, and the surge of... protectiveness (maybe, or just anger), that he feels takes him aback.

in the back of his mind he knows that she's seeing things like this from him, and the thought makes him want to get out. images flood into him more and more quickly, telling him more than he ever needed or wanted to know. he is seeing her past.

(there is school, and lessons, learning to handle guns and knives too big for their hands. the kick hurts but it's important to be able to defend yourself, they learn, and they fight until there is real blood and the fear of something inside them that is —

— not quite right.

then more blood, and he is holding his sister and her voice tells him again and again: this is what you did by trying to disobey. but he runs, anyway, better to run than stay there with her and the blood of all his other siblings. people follow him and he still runs, and destroys, because that's what he's good at.)

his face twists into a scowl, despite being unconscious, and his body shifts. he wants it to stop. ]

[quatrain]

My parents are lovely people.

[beloving]

There are few things I can take your word for.

[quatrain]

That's one of them.

[ he sounds honestly annoyed. well, more annoyed than usual, because he loves his parents. ]

[beloving]

[What a little goodie2shoes. He takes a seat on some kind of cushioned stool, book in hand.]

Aren't you going to make a deposit? Or have you run out of money?

[erythristic]

[it's like they tore open every drawer a person could lock up and let the other walk around in the wreckage. she doesn't want to know, doesn't want to feel his pressing need to run on top of her own. get out of their heads.

(you forfeited your right to be a person. you will always be a pathetic wretch who paid for amnesty with her body and soul and so nothing belongs to you, not even the color of your blood, because you are a weapon as much as any blade or firearm and you have their same rights.

you will die before you are thirty years old and you are not a person.)

she's suffocating and his memories overlap with the reality she knows. her body isn't responding and she's scared. her mind cannot be a place to hide because there are no places to hide.

panic attack, they'll say, it was a risk, while her adrenaline levels shoot through the roof and push down the sedative enough for her to seize what connects them, tugging at it-get out of her, she doesn't care if it bleeds or hurts she just needs to be done with it because she can't breathe here.

a ghost of the panic might resonate through the link, a fear that consumes and drives in flight and just let them go, please.]

look non-suffering

[phaseshifted]

...Never had either, to be entirely honest.

[shooteverything]

[ alarm rushes through his brain and into his body, processed into rapid breathing and him tensing physically. they disconnect them both in a rush, but it takes a minute or two for him to settle. it's only the sedative that keeps him from breaking something, and he still manages to shove someone over as he scrambles to his feet, pulling an IV drip as he goes. ]

...the fuck. What the fuck —

[ swipes a hand over his face, trying to smooth the raggedness of his breathing. ]

[quatrain]

Maybe I should deposit you in it.

ayyyyy

[quatrain]

Well, I know these two great places...

[beloving]

If you did that, wouldn't you be afraid that I'd use your savings to my liking?

[quatrain]

I wouldn't let you out to use them.

[beloving]

As if I would.

[erythristic]

[one of them, well meaning, tries to restrain her and she sinks her teeth into their arm so they'll let go and she can bolt out of the room, sitting down once she's further down the hallway.

back to the wall and herself pulled tight into a ball, eyes shut because she doesn't want to see, doesn't want to hear, and maybe if she's quiet she can sort through his memories and she'll be able to breathe again. she's shaking and she couldn't care about his fate, only her own, because she never would have agreed had she known how badly they were going to have him trespass.

(sorry, sorry, sorry, Heine. sorry for putting you through that.)]

[quatrain]

You totally would.

[shooteverything]

[ he yanks out the IV drip on his own, tearing part of his skin. the pain helps, grounds him in reality rather than what he'd seen in his partner's memories.

he's shaking with every breath as someone hands him gauze and adhesive tape. they realize there's no way he'd trust someone to touch him now; he tapes it messily over the bleeding mark and stumbles aside, leaning heavily against the wall until he can catch his breath.

— now he has to talk to her. it's now or later, and while he'd generally prefer later, he can't exactly avoid her when he has to work with her. ]

[beloving]

I wouldn't, that's theft. Are you accusing me of being so petty that I'd steal spare change from my colleague?

[phaseshifted]

[is he legit asking a mystery woman who isn't even showing him her real face out. is he.]

Where are they?

[erythristic]

[breathe, breathe, you have enough air, it's all she tells herself so that she remembers to breathe deeply again. eventually she does, and she almost gets up until she hears the sound of someone coming, which makes her tense up all over again. no, she can bear no one right now, and she's not moving until either the lights are turned out or her mind feels safe. one or the other will work.]