cain. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blyat) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meadowlarklogs2019-02-03 11:40 am
blyat) wrote in meadowlarklogs2019-02-03 11:40 am
Entry tags:
(no subject)
WHO: Cain & Giovanni.
WHERE: Their tiny apartment.
WHEN: September 11, directly following the event.
WHAT: Getting used to living together & coming home to lick their own wounds.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Possible descriptions of violence/injuries, blanket potential for Cain's foul mouth, prob not much else.
[The apartment is empty by the time Cain returns, sun beginning to cast its blazing hot presence across the city. A quick stride across the main room and he pulls the black-out blinders shut tight in preparation for the new day. Everything plunged into cooler shadow, he sighs, shucking off the sweat-drenched shirt overheard to leave him standing in center of the tiny kitchen in pants, boots, and gloves alone. A lucky toss hangs the shirt off the edge of his bedroom doorknob when he throws it, to be cleaned later.
There's not much space to move around: one main living area, crammed half-kitchen, two individual bedrooms without much more than a bed and dresser, narrow bathroom only large enough for a toilet, sink, and shower stall. The size doesn't bother Cain, little to his name beyond the meager possessions of daily living. With one other person, there's enough privacy for them to coexist, and in truth he's seen little of Giovanni since their initial first move-in introduction. That's fine by him. They don't get in each other's way.
Two full-sized first aid kits rest underneath the kitchen sink for either of their necessary purposes, considering the nature of their income-gathering needs. He'd learned Giovanni also participates in ring fighting, although they've yet to cross paths as opponents. Cain splits his time between fights and a new job, each relying on the physical health of his own body in its ability to perform both manual labor and take a hard hit from someone's fist. The enduring night against the UNA soldiers, at least, proved he's managed to keep himself up.
Never mind why he decided to throw his lot in with a bunch of heroes, anyway. He keeps his thoughts deliberately off that track.
At the sound of the door, Cain leans hips back against the counter, cradling a glass of whiskey with an ice pack pressed against his chest. Waiting for what is most likely his roommate to appear and curious for his condition.]
WHERE: Their tiny apartment.
WHEN: September 11, directly following the event.
WHAT: Getting used to living together & coming home to lick their own wounds.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Possible descriptions of violence/injuries, blanket potential for Cain's foul mouth, prob not much else.
[The apartment is empty by the time Cain returns, sun beginning to cast its blazing hot presence across the city. A quick stride across the main room and he pulls the black-out blinders shut tight in preparation for the new day. Everything plunged into cooler shadow, he sighs, shucking off the sweat-drenched shirt overheard to leave him standing in center of the tiny kitchen in pants, boots, and gloves alone. A lucky toss hangs the shirt off the edge of his bedroom doorknob when he throws it, to be cleaned later.
There's not much space to move around: one main living area, crammed half-kitchen, two individual bedrooms without much more than a bed and dresser, narrow bathroom only large enough for a toilet, sink, and shower stall. The size doesn't bother Cain, little to his name beyond the meager possessions of daily living. With one other person, there's enough privacy for them to coexist, and in truth he's seen little of Giovanni since their initial first move-in introduction. That's fine by him. They don't get in each other's way.
Two full-sized first aid kits rest underneath the kitchen sink for either of their necessary purposes, considering the nature of their income-gathering needs. He'd learned Giovanni also participates in ring fighting, although they've yet to cross paths as opponents. Cain splits his time between fights and a new job, each relying on the physical health of his own body in its ability to perform both manual labor and take a hard hit from someone's fist. The enduring night against the UNA soldiers, at least, proved he's managed to keep himself up.
Never mind why he decided to throw his lot in with a bunch of heroes, anyway. He keeps his thoughts deliberately off that track.
At the sound of the door, Cain leans hips back against the counter, cradling a glass of whiskey with an ice pack pressed against his chest. Waiting for what is most likely his roommate to appear and curious for his condition.]
no subject
He's holding on though, the hand attached to his uninjured arm moving to grasp the edge of the table in a whiteknuckle grip as though he's clinging on to consciousness through physical effort alone. He hadn't known. Hadn't known that it could feel like this.
This time, he does laugh, a sound that bubbles up from him like the blood from his wounds.]
No one. No one wants to live like that. It isn't really living at all its a long and bloody march to the grave but monsters like us, like Heine and I, that's the very best that we could hope for. And we enjoy it because it's what we are, hammered down into bones, into blood, until its the only thing left to enjoy anymore, the only thing that transcends the horror and the knowledge that you're slowly falling apart, coming undone, piece by bloody piece.
[Drunk on pain, on loss of blood. A near-delirium is right, but he holds all the same. Doesn't scream, or cry out, or slide blank-minded into unconsciousness.]
Trying to die. You're not wrong. I hope he kills me. Kills me like he did Lily. Kills me like he should have done all those years ago. But that's why I can't die here, do you see? It wouldn't be right. Not like this.
no subject
You really want him to kill you? [That's fucked up. To say the least of it.] Try to survive this first.
[Pliers in hand, he prizes out the last bullet with one quick movement, dragging it back up the channel of flesh carved out by the lead casing. Blood gushes from the hole. He's ready to pack in another handful of cloth towels, grimacing as the red mess greases the table underneath where the other towels he laid out have begun to saturate.]
Still with me? Hold these over your wounds, I gotta get something.
no subject
[If he can do that maybe She'll see something of value in him, just the once, the one singular time, and perhaps even that doesn't matter at all, as long as he can die before his mind comes undone and everything he's ever known is ripped away from him piece by piece, like so much sand falling through spread fingers. His memories, bleak as they are, cold and fraught with terror as they may be-- they're the only thing he's ever been able to call his own.
But the bullet is dragged free of him in a hot red gush and again the darkness encroaches, swims across his vision like a rushing tide. His eyes flutter worryingly for a moment, and there's something blank and empty in his face, just a void where signs of life ought to be. But Cain asks his question, and Giovanni's eyes, the colour of his leakig blood, crack open. He flashes his razorblade smile.]
Oh yes. Still here.
[And he lifts a hand, just a little limp, to press over the wound as requested.]
no subject
[Something in what Giovanni says sticks to him, even as he tries to shake it and focus on the remaining task: stripping off the blood-soaked gloves, washing his hands again, and then beginning clean-up. He's going to have to stitch up those wounds. After fetching medical thread and needle, Cain draws up a stool and perches.
The first bullet-hole is wiped clear of blood before he hooks in the thread, working quickly to fasten skin back together. His reply takes a few moments.]
Look at you, good at surviving. Pretty impressive you didn't pass out, you're white as a fuckin' ghost. [His dark eyes glance up the length of Giovanni's body, then return to the work.] So why is getting Heine to go wild and kill you the only choice you've got? Can't just retire from that shit?
no subject
--but the other man returns with needle and thread, there's the bright biting pressure around torn flesh and he looks up into the taller man's face. Registers what he'd been saying a few moments later than he should have, but when he does, he laughs.]
It isn't a job, what I do. One can't retire from being what they are. Can a gun stop being a gun? You may as well be asking that of me.
[He lifts the shoulder Cain isn't working on in a shrug, skin sliding against the table with an ugly sound.]
Besides, I wasn't going to last that long. Broken, you see. Faulty, one experiment too far and everything was coming undone, unraveling and getting away from me. I was running out of time.
Better to die by his hand then become...something else.
[He's going to have so many regrets later.]
no subject
On his end is a dichotomous tangle: distraction, annoyance, confusion, frustration. Understanding, and a flicker of sympathy, like a flame deep beneath the well of his focus. He bites off the thread on the first wound, tied into a neat knot, and pauses before moving to the second.]
Doesn't matter here. You get that? [The contact of skin is bleeding into his words, an impulse that has him reaching up to take hold of Giovanni's hair - like seizing a dog by the loose scruff of his neck. As though the only way to get through to him is a physical message. It feels that way. There's too much blood everywhere, a grease on his thoughts, empathic connection making him too caught up in Giovanni's internal struggle.] This isn't that place you came from. Your shit affects the rest of us. Your shit affects me.
[He lets go, moving to the second wound with thread and needle.]
New house rule, I'm not gonna stitch you up the next time you're in a fight 'cause you didn't care what happened. Especially if it's from him. [Heine, he means.]
no subject
Above all else, the loneliness. The dark sick isolation of his closed-in consciousness.
Cain's feelings wash into him like a roiling wave and then the other man has his hand in his hair, leaves Giovanni vaguely stunned. He stares up at the taller man through the deep red of his animal eyes - blood on his hands, Giovanni's blood - the mixing mingling feelings acting to silence him, make him still. At any other time, he might have gone for Cain's throat, ripped it right out in clots and gouts between his very teeth, but right now he's left silenced and vaguely shaken, though by what he can't rightly say.
The violation of being inflicted with another person's feelings, maybe. Something achingly human in it, sympathy - even if it is just a flicker of it - that cuts him like a knife.
It leaves him feeling more dizzied, more sick, than the blood-loss has done.
And it's that contact, the skin on skin, the sickness of the shared bond, that makes him react in a way he would normally find unthinkable. He ought to tell Cain that he feels only vast and infinite indifference over whether what he does impacts the rest of them, that they're nothing but smoke and shadows to him, puppets pulled on strings. But when one feels another individual's emotions rattling inside of them, it makes that kind of empty dissociation momentarily hard.
And so instead--]
--this isn't the place I came from, but that place is in me now, down to the bones, whether I want it there or not. But if it's really going to leave you so ruffled then...I'll try to bear your delicate sensibilities in mind, next time.
[Because of course he can't just say 'I'll try to take care of myself', politely.]
no subject
The loneliness hits hardest of all. The force of that collision drives him into memory of his own isolation, the day to day distance from his fellow soldiers, the superficial lie of each moment. The fear of never leaving it. The fear of losing that barest connection of skin and bodies.
And then his hands withdraw, bloody and shaky, and it ends. Wounds mended and stitched, towels saturated by the mess, a heavy layer of silence painted in the air.]
Good.
[It's the only word Cain can summon to his lips. Even that sounds quiet, shaken both by what he's seen and felt in Giovanni, what he's heard, and by his own reaction to it. Like he's swallowed bits of glass, and now his throat's filling up with the blood and pain of it.
He stands and grabs the whiskey bottle, setting it down on the kitchen counter with a jostle of amber fluid. His fingers leave sticky smears on the neck. Disappearing into the bathroom, he leaves Giovanni there on the table.
Make no mistake, he'll be back soon to check on him. For now, Cain places his concentration into the efforts of clean-up -- it's going to be a long night.]