[ They have a day off from all the nonsense. Lip syncing and wrobo-wrestling are done, the final event yet to come. She pulls on him at some irritatingly early hour. She had, quite honestly, been waiting quite a long time by her standards: since she's been up, sleepless, drinking coffee in a shop all night. She wants for the company, and he has the misfortune of being the closest person to her in the Nest. Not so surprising for broodmates, not so surprising that she's not allowed herself to get as close with Lucina, who she viewed as in need of her guidance and protection... So Noctis it is. ]
[I'm up, I'm up, he used to say, blinking against the Eos sunrise. Stretching, rubbing at his eyes, crawling out of a tent into the early morning air. Helping Ignis cook breakfast, or training with Gladio. Taking photos with Prompto. Sleeping in had not been an option at the time, and while Noctis was willing to help (as always), it was difficult to shake off the heavy weight of slumber in those years past, and his companions always had to put in the effort to actually wake him.
Some things don't change. He feels someone tugging at his mind, and it only barely drags his consciousness out from under the surface of sleep. Her voice may as well be part of a dream, and Noctis manages back-]
(No. Go to sleep or something...)
[It makes sense in his head. It's early. Why isn't she asleep? Go to to sleep, Annie, and let him continue sleeping too.
[ She comes unbidden, pretty much like she always does, and crawls onto the foot of his bed, settling in with her back against the wall, her knees bent up to make room for his shins. She's unsteady, a familiar enough sensation by now, what is already wrong inside of her more potent, squirming beneath the surface. She picks at her nails, not trying to make him guess what she wants, but not quite ready with fully formed words yet either. ]
[It isn't the shifting of weight at the foot of his bed that wakes him up. It's something else, a sensation pricking at the edges of his mind, even in his dreams, like too many needles -- it's the presence of a broodmate drawn so close, coiling around his thoughts, that forces him to breach the thick fog of his sleep.
Actual lucidity lags behind. He sits up, blinking away drowsiness, looking at Annie who's perched herself nearby.]
What's wrong?
[He's tired, but never tired enough to not be concerned.]
[ Apparently this is what she does now. Spends all day running laps, fighting, scrounging around in all the forgotten corners looking for anything interesting or cigarette-like, sometimes fucks around with Shep. Then at the end of it all, sometimes tidy, more often disheveled, she comes and sits on his bed with bounce, wanting to talk. ]
So, what. You're like eighteen?
[ She's come back to follow up on the 'sleeping in a crystal' story. ]
[Sometimes, Noctis is already asleep when Annie comes in, only to awaken when he feels something shift at the foot of his bed. Mattress sinking slightly with the weight of his broodmate come to talk, come to pass the time. He'll sit up and blink the sleep away, and speak in short syllables until he can form full sentences after waking fully.
Sometimes, he's already awake, quiet with his own thoughts. This is the case today. Annie's presence is never unwelcome, but it's far easier to latch onto when he's looking for something to distract himself with. He offers her a small grin when she plants herself on his bed.]
Twenty.
[The response is automatic, if technically incorrect. He doesn't consider himself much older than that despite the ten year discrepancy, but he does realize his error a second or two later.]
[ It's the middle of the day, Bellamy's sweating in too many layers, and ooze baby has latched onto his bicep. Refusing to answer any questions about his addition hasn't deterred any curiosity. Bellamy's found it tiresome, and retreated to the interior garden with his hollowed out book weighted down with his pad.
The creature wasn't meant to have come, but that hadn't stopped it. Bellamy's mind reaches to find Noctis, tugging lightly for acknowledgement. ]
[The ooze baby's presence was sudden and unexpected, but perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised. Young creatures are often troublesome and curious, and while Noctis is glad that the strange lizard has not latched onto his arm yet, he knows that it's only a matter of time before he takes on his part of the parental duties.
Bellamy's mind is welcome, and he opens up, especially when greeted with a statement that sparks his curiosity.]
[He doesn't notice, of course. They're away from prying eyes at the moment, and so Noctis has just been sitting crossed-legged on the ground, summoning his sword in an almost bored motion, then dismissing it just as quickly. His magic casts strange shadows in the darkness, and he does it a few times without really thinking about it.
Annie's voice has him looking over at her in confusion.]
What?
[He eyes the sketchpad.]
Are you drawing me? [A flash of self-consciousness, unbidden and automatic.]
[ It's an Annie dream. They're distinct. Alien landscapes, sceneries of gore and amorphous flesh, bodies and blood and bursting blazing shapes; the electrical impulses of a mind moving too fast. It comes to a halt, like it always does, in the vast cavern that is the central hub of her greater consciousness. The enormous black space that pulsates with an inhumanely slow, inhumanely thunderous heartbeat.
But she's there with him this time, in person. Too often he's lured in by the mocking chorus of her unfortunate nature, wanting to play with his nightmares the way they play with hers.
They don't mean any harm. Maybe.
She's standing with her hands in her pocket, looking off into the darkness, watching something move just beyond the bounds of immediate recognition. But as the senses adjust to the scene, it comes into focus. A second Annie, this one with an open portal in her chest. Tentacles drool out of the front of her, but they also extend from the back of her, like marionette strings piercing her through. The younger version has a blissful smile on her face, manic and intoxicated. The older Annie's mouth sets in a frown, brows furrowing, and she turns to greet Noctis but the words dry up. ]
[What he had always worn, ten years ago. A shirt adorned with with a little trail of skulls, pants that looked more suited to fishing than wearing on a daily basis (because they were, really), boots with red soles, a short-sleeved black jacket to match it all, as if there wasn't enough black to go around. Noctis, in his dreams, in her dreams, is baby-faced with hair that falls too long in his eyes. He moves a little lazier, shifts his weight around from foot to foot too often.
In his hand, he holds a fishing rod. He's not sure why, other than maybe dream logic dictated to him that this would be a good place to fish -- surrounded by either writhing flesh or the stark black of nothingness. He moves forward to greet Annie, despite something cold in his veins (the apprehension of being in her mind, in her dream, in something incomprehensible), but stops when the question is flung at him.]
This is what I always wear.
[Eyes flicker to the younger Annie, the one with the tentacles coiling in her chest, unsure what to make of her.]
[There is a faint tingling of secondhand embarrassment this time around. In her dream, he both was Noctis and he wasn't. Some past version of him, enthused by the idea of fishing around her soul. Unweighted by everything else.
Awake and cognizant now, he realizes just how... personal it all was. Even if it seems a moot point, where broodmates are concerned.
[Ennui doesn't eat away at him the same way it used to, but sometimes boredom threatens to gnaw at Noctis when he finds himself with idle time and nothing to fill it with. He's borrowed a piece of paper and a pencil from Annie, and is doodling with it against his leg, keeping them crossed as he sits.
He looks up at her remark, though. He looks vaguely confused and surprised.]
I'm not all that great at it, either. [It's what he truly believes. He never was good at words, and the fact that someone thinks that he is is a little mind-boggling.]
[ She's not there when he comes back to the tent, and she doesn't return either. She can't erase herself, for the same reason she had never wanted to bother shielding before, but now she's just perpetually lurking out of sight, hazy and incomplete. No longer the mural of color and sound and monstrous appendages that she's been for the past several months. Maybe that was their problem: too much close contact over too short a time, like they'd always been that way. Which is stupid, since they were both fucked up and useless over all that had gone wrong in their past lives.
Yes, that is definitely the problem. She put too much weight on something that couldn't support her. She knows better. She's too much, for anyone. (That was why it had been so comfortable, splitting the weight between them: Noctis and Nyx. Two halves of a whole that had balanced out just so nicely until the one was gone and she let too much weight collapse onto the other.)
So now she's taken off all the weight. She sleeps with Rani who is too much of a traditional minded woman to understand half of what Annie says or feels, which is comfortable. She doesn't have to worry about Lakshmi putting her fingers where they shouldn't be, digging around in sludge that was better left going stagnant all on its own.
It's fine. The booze puts her to sleep just as well as Noctis would have done -- That's a lie. The liquor is hot and disorienting. Not at all like cool wash of clear water, soothing her infected thoughts. Whatever. It's great. It's fine.
Until she realizes he's there anyway. That she's sitting in the dark of that cavern he always finds her in, surrounded by tentacles rolling lazy and drunken around her. Too lazy to even harass him, flopping around like suffocating fish. Her eyes lift from where she's holding her head up with one hand. ]
[And it isn't. She can't just tell him to fuck off, as if it were something easy for him to do. Standing here, with the tentacles only half-hearted pulsating around him, he radiates disapproval. He ekes with concern, awash in this lazy drunkenness that he has to mentally fend off so that he doesn't become tempted by it himself. It's easier, this time, the wound of Nyx departing no longer bleeding fresh.
He steps forward. The floor squishes under his shoes.]
Annie, what have you been doing?
[They both know what she's been doing. And Noctis believes wholeheartedly that none of this will help. But he can. Surely he can.]
[ She sits down in front of him, her hands on her thighs, elbows out as she leans forward slightly. ]
I'm sorry, about Nyx. I bet it's... harder than I get to have people from your world just drop off like that. If we're fuckin' lucky no one I know ever, fucking ever, hatches into this shit.
[He sits crosslegged, lifting his gaze up from the sketchpad he borrowed from Annie. He's been doodling faces, some recognizable from those in the Nest, and some not. They're various modes of succesful, but nowhere as refined (or as good) as what Annie can draw.
He taps the pencil idly against an empty, white space on the paper.]
It's... fine.
[It isn't really fine, but he'll just have to learn to live with it. Loss is nothing new, even if it hurts just as bad each time.]
Maybe it's better, him just comatose. To be unaware of everything. [Maybe. Probably not. He hesitates, then:] You don't miss anyone from your home?
Listen, you're gonna be disappointed t'see my face.
[he means because of the fluff on his chin. he knows people have given him shit about it: oh, your baby face, prompto! or finally becoming an adult, huh?? but, truth be spoken, he doesn't care.]
Doesn't feel like I've showered in ages, either, so...
[he removes the mask, with it the cape and everything adjoined to it, shaking his head to get the creases and feeling of stuffiness away. sitting inside the tent, it's easy enough to set it down on the cot beside him. no gel, but he tries messing his hair as much as possible with a hand.]
It's the weirdest thing to have t'get disguised after never really doing it ourselves, yeah.
[He doesn't know how it's possible to be disappointed to see Prompto's face, but he doesn't say that much. He only waits for the mask to be removed, and Noctis' eyes search him, taking in every detail. Comparing in his mind what looks different from the Prompto he saw last and...
He has nothing to complain about. This is his best friend standing before him, not obscured by these stupid hoods. He steps forward, grinning, something melancholy in his eyes.]
Still look like a dork to me.
[He saw that fluff on his face before, anyway. That time they spent together in that darkened Eos. The last time around the campfire, and that last goodbye, entering the Citadel again to put an end to the night.]
...You look the same as I remember you, Prompto.
[He says it as he grasps at the top of his hood, pulling it back and revealing his own face. Hair mussed from the action, but still the same scruffy Noctis. Maybe even a little scruffier, because finding the time and motivation to shave is so insignificant these days, compared to everything else happening.]
[ She's hungover, and needy. The former at least means she's stopped drinking long enough to feel that way. The latter means she's been a blot of reaching and unhappiness all day. Noctis is not even the first person she's bothered, he's merely the first one that she's physically crawled on, interrupting whatever clearly inconsequential activity he might've thought he could perform in quiet for a little while.
She has his face in her hands, touching her forehead to his, like he's an ice cube and it helps somehow. ]
[Attempting to nap should never be considered an inconsequential activity. It is one that Noctis clearly needs to survive, and he had just begin to slip beneath the surface of sleep, when he feels someone practically crawling on him.
He doesn't even need to rely on the mental twine between them to know who it is. There's only one person who would be doing this right now. Opening his eyes to see Annie practically pressed against him, it's hard to decide whether or not he should look sleepy or concerned or irritated or all of the above.
She smells like she's been drinking. Opening his mind, he feels the throb of a hangover. Of course.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
somnifacient) wrote2017-03-25 01:39 am
D36
( C'mon, get up. )
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Some things don't change. He feels someone tugging at his mind, and it only barely drags his consciousness out from under the surface of sleep. Her voice may as well be part of a dream, and Noctis manages back-]
(No. Go to sleep or something...)
[It makes sense in his head. It's early. Why isn't she asleep? Go to to sleep, Annie, and let him continue sleeping too.
She'll just have to try again.]
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[A thread of confusion. This sounds ominous.]
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cw: suicide and addiction
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Actual lucidity lags behind. He sits up, blinking away drowsiness, looking at Annie who's perched herself nearby.]
What's wrong?
[He's tired, but never tired enough to not be concerned.]
Talk to me.
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So, what. You're like eighteen?
[ She's come back to follow up on the 'sleeping in a crystal' story. ]
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Sometimes, he's already awake, quiet with his own thoughts. This is the case today. Annie's presence is never unwelcome, but it's far easier to latch onto when he's looking for something to distract himself with. He offers her a small grin when she plants herself on his bed.]
Twenty.
[The response is automatic, if technically incorrect. He doesn't consider himself much older than that despite the ten year discrepancy, but he does realize his error a second or two later.]
Well, thirty now, I guess.
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barges in, backdated to naerstone house before the hatch.
The creature wasn't meant to have come, but that hadn't stopped it. Bellamy's mind reaches to find Noctis, tugging lightly for acknowledgement. ]
( I think I figured out a name. )
[ It's suitably Greek and horrific. ]
hello other parent
Bellamy's mind is welcome, and he opens up, especially when greeted with a statement that sparks his curiosity.]
(Yeah? What'd you pick?)
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i do what i want
Fuckin' hold still, christ.
[ Might've helped if she had mentioned she was sketching him. ]
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Annie's voice has him looking over at her in confusion.]
What?
[He eyes the sketchpad.]
Are you drawing me? [A flash of self-consciousness, unbidden and automatic.]
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But she's there with him this time, in person. Too often he's lured in by the mocking chorus of her unfortunate nature, wanting to play with his nightmares the way they play with hers.
They don't mean any harm. Maybe.
She's standing with her hands in her pocket, looking off into the darkness, watching something move just beyond the bounds of immediate recognition. But as the senses adjust to the scene, it comes into focus. A second Annie, this one with an open portal in her chest. Tentacles drool out of the front of her, but they also extend from the back of her, like marionette strings piercing her through. The younger version has a blissful smile on her face, manic and intoxicated. The older Annie's mouth sets in a frown, brows furrowing, and she turns to greet Noctis but the words dry up. ]
The fuck are you wearing?
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In his hand, he holds a fishing rod. He's not sure why, other than maybe dream logic dictated to him that this would be a good place to fish -- surrounded by either writhing flesh or the stark black of nothingness. He moves forward to greet Annie, despite something cold in his veins (the apprehension of being in her mind, in her dream, in something incomprehensible), but stops when the question is flung at him.]
This is what I always wear.
[Eyes flicker to the younger Annie, the one with the tentacles coiling in her chest, unsure what to make of her.]
I... think.
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You were cute as a kid.
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Awake and cognizant now, he realizes just how... personal it all was. Even if it seems a moot point, where broodmates are concerned.
Hesitantly-]
You said my haircut was bad.
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[ She's braiding her hair nearby in the tent, looking off at nothing in particular. ]
When people say the same depressed shit I say to you, I'm like 'What would Noctis tell this dumbass?' but I can't get it out like you do.
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He looks up at her remark, though. He looks vaguely confused and surprised.]
I'm not all that great at it, either. [It's what he truly believes. He never was good at words, and the fact that someone thinks that he is is a little mind-boggling.]
Who's depressed?
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:)
smh
[He mutters. What.]
(You what? Why? How?)
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Yes, that is definitely the problem. She put too much weight on something that couldn't support her. She knows better. She's too much, for anyone. (That was why it had been so comfortable, splitting the weight between them: Noctis and Nyx. Two halves of a whole that had balanced out just so nicely until the one was gone and she let too much weight collapse onto the other.)
So now she's taken off all the weight. She sleeps with Rani who is too much of a traditional minded woman to understand half of what Annie says or feels, which is comfortable. She doesn't have to worry about Lakshmi putting her fingers where they shouldn't be, digging around in sludge that was better left going stagnant all on its own.
It's fine. The booze puts her to sleep just as well as Noctis would have done -- That's a lie. The liquor is hot and disorienting. Not at all like cool wash of clear water, soothing her infected thoughts. Whatever. It's great. It's fine.
Until she realizes he's there anyway. That she's sitting in the dark of that cavern he always finds her in, surrounded by tentacles rolling lazy and drunken around her. Too lazy to even harass him, flopping around like suffocating fish. Her eyes lift from where she's holding her head up with one hand. ]
Fuck off, Noctis.
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[And it isn't. She can't just tell him to fuck off, as if it were something easy for him to do. Standing here, with the tentacles only half-hearted pulsating around him, he radiates disapproval. He ekes with concern, awash in this lazy drunkenness that he has to mentally fend off so that he doesn't become tempted by it himself. It's easier, this time, the wound of Nyx departing no longer bleeding fresh.
He steps forward. The floor squishes under his shoes.]
Annie, what have you been doing?
[They both know what she's been doing. And Noctis believes wholeheartedly that none of this will help. But he can. Surely he can.]
Let me help.
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I'm sorry, about Nyx. I bet it's... harder than I get to have people from your world just drop off like that. If we're fuckin' lucky no one I know ever, fucking ever, hatches into this shit.
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He taps the pencil idly against an empty, white space on the paper.]
It's... fine.
[It isn't really fine, but he'll just have to learn to live with it. Loss is nothing new, even if it hurts just as bad each time.]
Maybe it's better, him just comatose. To be unaware of everything. [Maybe. Probably not. He hesitates, then:] You don't miss anyone from your home?
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murders most foul
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way backdated, tears galore d20
[he means because of the fluff on his chin. he knows people have given him shit about it: oh, your baby face, prompto! or finally becoming an adult, huh?? but, truth be spoken, he doesn't care.]
Doesn't feel like I've showered in ages, either, so...
[he removes the mask, with it the cape and everything adjoined to it, shaking his head to get the creases and feeling of stuffiness away. sitting inside the tent, it's easy enough to set it down on the cot beside him. no gel, but he tries messing his hair as much as possible with a hand.]
It's the weirdest thing to have t'get disguised after never really doing it ourselves, yeah.
jumps in the time machine
He has nothing to complain about. This is his best friend standing before him, not obscured by these stupid hoods. He steps forward, grinning, something melancholy in his eyes.]
Still look like a dork to me.
[He saw that fluff on his face before, anyway. That time they spent together in that darkened Eos. The last time around the campfire, and that last goodbye, entering the Citadel again to put an end to the night.]
...You look the same as I remember you, Prompto.
[He says it as he grasps at the top of his hood, pulling it back and revealing his own face. Hair mussed from the action, but still the same scruffy Noctis. Maybe even a little scruffier, because finding the time and motivation to shave is so insignificant these days, compared to everything else happening.]
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red coasty
She has his face in her hands, touching her forehead to his, like he's an ice cube and it helps somehow. ]
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He doesn't even need to rely on the mental twine between them to know who it is. There's only one person who would be doing this right now. Opening his eyes to see Annie practically pressed against him, it's hard to decide whether or not he should look sleepy or concerned or irritated or all of the above.
She smells like she's been drinking. Opening his mind, he feels the throb of a hangover. Of course.]
I'm trying to sleep, Annie...
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red coast
( You doing any of this arts and crafts shit. )
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(Uh... not really. I mean, unless fishing counts.)
[Fishing isn't arts and crafts, Noctis.]
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[ Like this is somehow all his fault. ]
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(Hell yeah I am.)
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laughs
8')
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post hunt
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