[closed]

[skelepun]

Who: Sans and Miles (and Steven + Papyrus!)
When: 21st
Where: Harashan, to start.
What: The first bimonthly meeting of the itty bitty brittle bones committee.
Warnings: An excess of determination.


Emiri was, in Sans' opinion, one of the last places he wanted to be. The travel ban was frustrating enough without the obvious unrest quite literally written on the walls of Harashan, warning all passersby of whatever vague threat Link'd Inc. posed. If Sans was sure of one thing, it's that they should have left long ago.

But hey! He was just the janitor, right? Who was he to meddle in the affairs of those much, much higher up the food chain. It sounded like a whole lot of effort. Better to leave it to the Miles Vorkosigans of the world and keep his nasal bone out of other people's business. It was a good, solid plan. For a little while, anyway.

"Sir?"

Sans looked up lazily from where he leaned against the wall, unsurprised to see the voice belonged to some sort of police officer. Beaming, Sans hoped he looked as unassuming as he felt.

"Morning, officers." He saluted, grateful he thought to wear his Moira uniform today. Whatever distance he could get from this local conflict, the better. "Just taking in some air."

They gestured to the wall directly behind him, diving immediately into a series of rapid fire questions. Sans filtered them out easily enough, turning to squint at the graffiti. Something about the children. After his run in with a little girl in St. Murtel, Sans couldn't really blame the city for getting antsy about protecting its kids. That said: still really, really not his problem.

Unfortunately, the police disagreed. Pretty forcefully, actually. Any attempts to explain that, no, Sans was not responsible for the cryptic message were met with disbelief at best and veiled threats at worst. Getting dusted on this hellhole, where his brother would never know what happened to him? That wasn't an option. Resisting in any way wasn't an option.

The holding cell was about as hospitable as you could imagine, but Sans thanked the guards with all the veiled contempt he could muster. None of them appreciated his crack about cell phones. Their loss. What Sans did know is that he would eventually be led out of the holding cell, into a much smaller room, and then questioned in regards to his involvement with the Komai.

The tone used wasn't very reassuring.

So, really, what better time to catch a nap?

Comments

[forwardmomentum]

Miles' disagreement with the local authorities had been somewhat more...colorful.

He'd been caught in roughly the same situation as Sans, except his involved a lot more intentional nosing around. Even with an early alert, Miles couldn't have gotten away in time on his short legs, even with the braces Hiro made him. That didn't stop him from arguing, though, in a flat-out refusal to recognize their authority via a series of irreverent cracks when logic failed, and against his better judgment refused to relent until he heard and felt the sickening crack of a bone in his arm when one of them twisted it behind his back. Oh, shit.

One day that insubrdonation streak is gonna catch up to you, Miles. Oh wait, it already has.

He's thankful they don't cuff him, and he's cradling his broken arm in the other when they shove him roughly into the cell. He stumbles but manages to catch himself with a snarl through gritted teeth. He twists halfway to yell "And you hit your mother with that baton?" before they slam the door shut and Miles mutters something distinctly unflattering in Barrayaran Russian, shutting his eyes against the pain in his arm. Not much more than a hairline fracture, it feels like. Nothing's sticking out at an angle, no risk of it poking out through the skin, but it still hurts like a son of a bitch. Hairline fractures are like the papercuts of broken bones.

His face is a little pale when he opens his eyes again, his grip tightening on his broken arm, and when Sans comes into focus Miles gives him a strained, sickly smile. He's a little dizzy, still reeling from the initial wave of nausea that always accompanies a fresh break -- he knows this song and dance by heart by now. It'll pass. He'd like very much to sit down, but he knows if he does it'll make it much harder to get back up. So instead he staggers toward the wall to lean against it, drawing in a long, thin breath.

"So how are you finding the accommodations, Sans? Because so far I'm leaning toward two out of five, but there's still room for improvement."

[skelepun]

Sleep didn't come as easily as Sans would've liked. The dream from earlier still haunted the vacant spaces in his skull, threatening to revisit him if he so much as dozed off. It wasn't ideal, but at least it meant Sans didn't miss a moment of the Miles Vorkosigan Show.

This was a very special episode: Miles Vorkosigan Gets His Groove Back, with the help of a veritable posse of armed guards. Guess he made it tough for them. There's something hinging on respect in Sans's fixed grin as Miles made his way inside the cell.

"Order the salmon." He suggested, leaning his cheekbone heavy against his palm, mentally assessing the damage. His arm hung at an unnatural angle, pain and tension obvious, the clear signs of getting roughed up... It was bad enough that Sans wondered if he resorted to using a SAVE. It certainly wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, with the determination writ across his face.

"You doing alright there, champ? Y'know, they're very peaceable guys if you follow instructions. A little tip for you next time you find your way into the clink."

[forwardmomentum]

Miles lets out a hoarse scoff on the end of a hard swallow to try and tamp down the ebbing waves of nausea. "More partial to vat protein myself," he says as if in confession, breath heaving a little. Fresh breaks always hurt like hell, but it's just a hairline fracture. He can breathe his way through it until it settles into a mostly dull ache, although he's a little out of breath from being half-dragged, too. He tucks his broken arm a little higher so he can rub his cheek against his uniformed shoulder, wiping away a smudge of dirt from the brief scuffle that had ensued.

"Ha." Miles gives Sans a grim smile through his teeth, jaw clenched like a steel trap. Despite the obvious pain -- or at least discomfort -- there's a strangely animated light to his face. "Compared to some of the prisons I've been thrown in, this might as well be the Imperial Residence. At least I've still got all my clothes this time. So far, anyway." He sounds vaguely thoughtful, half-talking to himself as his gaze shifts from Sans to the walls, the ceiling, alive and alert. Yeah, he's not sticking around for that interrogation if he can help it.

[skelepun]

Content to watch for the time being, Sans observed Miles' eyes made their way around the cell. It wasn't too hard to pick out his intent. Sans had a thing for reading faces. They could tell you a lot if you knew what to look for. Sometimes, things you never really wanted to know in the first place.

"I don't think we have to worry about that just yet." Sans sunk lower down on the bench, chuckling softly to himself. About what, it wasn't clear. "So what did you do? Cross talk the wrong person?"

[forwardmomentum]

Whatever he might do on the Moira, whatever physical limitations his ill-developed body presented him, Miles has never been much of a desk jockey. Anything but. Ordinarily he'd be pacing by now, but he hasn't quite worked himself up to pulling his weight away from the wall yet.

"Me? This is business as usual for me." His grin sharpens, and he draws in another long breath, exhaling slowly. His fingers dig into his uniform to ground himself. He's getting there. "What I want to know is what you did. You never struck me as the type to get mixed in with this kind of trouble. I figured you'd avoid something like this at all costs like you do with everything."

[skelepun]

"Wrong place, wrong time. It's almost like humans don't like monsters or something. Who knew that was universal, right?" The tone of Sans's voice suggested that he knew, but he wouldn't linger on that particular sore spot.

"But you pretty much got me pegged, Manganese. I'm just your average lazybones." His grin seemed to get wider, somehow. Self-deprecation wasn't the word so much as objective assessment. "Rocking other people's boats isn't exactly my style."

[forwardmomentum]

"You must find the Moira crew a refreshing bunch, then," Miles says mildly, taking note of that tone in Sans' voice. Even if Sans wasn't all that popular, it's for anyone on the crew to be too judgmental when they all live among aliens and dragons and gods. The monsters fit in just fine. Miles watches the shifts in Sans' expression, and then he blows out his breath and pulls himself away from the wall. He sways a little, then shakes it off, still cradling his broken arm.

"Consider your own boat rocked. And, if we don't get ourselves out of here soon, possibly capsized." His gaze settles on a vent on the wall behind Sans, well above them up by the ceiling. Then he glances down at his broken arm and frowns. That's going to be a real pain in the ass.

[skelepun]

"You're alright, I guess." He winked, cheerfully signaling his unwillingness to talk any further on the subject. A month on the Moira with a largely baffled (if kind) crew wasn't enough to erase those dusty human hands from his memory.

On the plus side, it meant a few dickish security guards barely blipped Sans' radar.

"N' hey, I don't mean to be pushy or anything, buddy." Angling his skull towards Miles' arm, Sans fixed him with a Look. "Do you want to sit down for a second? I'm getting tired just looking at you."

[forwardmomentum]

Miles smiles thinly at him, a little white at the lips. His eyes are sharp, but faintly amused. "Concerned for me, Sans? Really, I'm touched." He wrinkles his nose and sucks in a breath. The broken arm isn't seeming too bad. They could've cracked a rib, and he's having a blessedly easy time breathing. His mind clearing a little, his speech picking up its usual rapid pace. "If I sit down now, I'm not sure I'll be able to get up any time soon, and I'm not interested in sticking around for the interrogation. Forward momentum and all that. D'you think we could reach that?" He nods up at the grate above San's head. Worth a shot.

[skelepun]

"C'mon, I'm not that much of an ass." He rubbed his hands together, a faint green aura emanating from them. His healing was borderline at best, better suited to paper cuts than bone fractures (an irony not lost on him). Still, better some relief than none.

"That?" He moved closer, observing for where Miles' arm looked its most tender. "It's a little tall for us, don't you think? Not that it's not a grate thought. Hold still a sec."

Reaching out his hands, the green aura wrapped its way around Miles' arm. It did the job of a warm compress and not much more, but still. It was something.

[forwardmomentum]

Miles scoffs at that pun. "No, I think between the two of us and the bench, we -- hey!" It's a response of pure surprise, no protest, tinged with just a little bit of awe. He stifles a reflexive flinch of surprise, standing remarkably still by Miles Vorkosigan standards. He blinks down at the green aura enveloping his arm and then back at Sans, his agitation fading momentarily in favor of intense curiosity. His arm still hurts and it is most definitely still broken, but it hurts a little less. The difference is certainly palpable enough. "How'd you do that?"

[skelepun]

"Party trick."

Wink.

Sans stuffed his hands back into his jacket pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels as he observed the grate with fresh eye sockets.

"So what's the plan once we're up there. You got an idea of how this place is laid out?"

[forwardmomentum]

"So -- magic, then." Magic is something Miles never expected to be comfortable with accepting, but it'd be an enormous waste of effort and time to insist on skepticism after almost five months spent among the company of gods and aliens and god knows what else. He takes careful note of that we, mouth twitching up at one corner. He was expecting more resistance from Sans,

"I paid attention while they were bringing me in -- enough to not get too turned up around there. We should be able to find our way out, and at any rate, it looks like the local authorities have their hands full enough that they probably won't be paying enough attention to their HVAC systems." He smirks, then directs a thoughtful look up at the grate over the bench. "I think you'd better pry the grate open, though. I can't do it with just one hand, but I can give you a boost." A painful boost, granted, but he'll live.

MEANWHILE, IN ANOTHER PART OF THE JAIL...

[coolskeletonnyehntyfive]

After a series of very unfortunate events, the local authorities had a couple more suspicious characters to detain and process. Papyrus, for his part, went quietly. He didn't want to make more trouble for them, especially when Steven was clearly already upset.

Once both were in the cell and locked in, Papyrus pressed his skull against the bars and tried to peek down the hall. He felt awful. He'd never been to jail in his life; he'd always been such a good person. He had tried several times to explain to them what had happened, to clear things up, but each attempt had ended with a rough shove and an order to be quiet; they would be the ones asking questions in due time.

"W...wowie," he said, trying to sound at least a little bit upbeat. "This will make one heck of a story once we're out, won't it?"

[tigermillionaire]

Steven would usually be trying to join him in that attempt, but he can't quite seem to manage it right now. They'd had to cuff him on the way over due to the amount of trouble he was giving them, which had only made his anxieties worse - the stress brings on a total change in his disposition, going from an even tempered child to a terrified animal within a half hour.

People trying to contain him brings everything he tries to keep away from right back to the forefront of his mind. All the fear, all the paranoia, and all the pain. It paralyzes him in a way that nothing else can, and in that absence of control his monster side takes over, fighting for survival and little else. The take the cuffs off when they drop them off in their cell, and all that Steven does is bolt into the cell only to curl up in one of its corners, yeowling discontent and watching the guards warily until they leave.

Inside, he is deeply embarrassed and ashamed. Back in Ryslig, everyone understood why this sort of thing happened to them, because they'd all been through it. Through Papyrus is technically a monster, its nearly impossible to imagine him devolving into this kind of wildness. Steven has managed to avoid hurting anyone, but he knows it's a near miss - especially when he can still feel the craving for meat lurking in his senses.

He doesn't speak at first, still too unfocused and too humiliated by his own behaviour. This probably isn't what Papyrus expected out of him at all. His tail thrashes violently, working out excess agitation, his face tucked low behind his arms from down beneath the cell's bench.

[coolskeletonnyehntyfive]

The change in Steven isn't lost on Papyrus, who glances back at him now and then while keeping a lookout for anyone. An officer he can explain their situation to, a friendly face from the ship, his brother. Funny, even though Sans is the last person he'd expect to see and he's totally embarrassed to have gotten himself thrown in jail, he wants to see him. Funny, it's been awhile since he thought of himself as a kid, but his first instinct is still to turn to big brother when he's in trouble.

But nobody's coming, and he doesn't feel like he can leave Steven alone much longer. He abandons the bars and kneels beside him, steering clear of the tail, unsure if he should touch him. Usually when he's handling someone having a bad time, it's Sans, and he knows all of his tricks backwards and forwards. Steven's still a puzzle to him in some ways. "Hey, look," he begins, "it's going to be all right. You were only trying to protect everyone, and it's only a matter of time before they realize! And in the meantime, you're in the company of the great Papyrus! So things couldn't possibly be that bad."

[tigermillionaire]

For the first few moments, Steven's eyes don't even settle on Papyrus, too distracted with watching the bars for any signs of someone coming back to mess with them. Gradually, though, he manages to steady himself enough to look up at his friend, his tails movements slowing a little in turn. The green in his eyes has become so deep that it's hard to tell his iris from his sclera.

His leafy ears perk up and then fold down again, uncertainly. It takes him a moment to speak, but he gets there, and when he does it's unsteady but as friendly as he can make it.

"I know," he says, his words slightly more chittery than usual. "I...I'm just scared that I'll..." He trails off. There's a lot of things that could be. Scared that he'll lose control of himself and hurt someone. Scared that the people here will hurt him. Once upon a time he wouldn't have believed that he could have possibly been punished unfairly, but that is not longer true.

[coolskeletonnyehntyfive]

Papyrus doesn't fully understand what he's looking at here -- monsters with transformation magic exist in his world, of course, and Steven's shifting doesn't shock him that much, but the behavior that comes with it is harder to explain. It's like parts of his soul become temporarily obscured, a phenomenon he can't quite explain.

So he doesn't dwell on it.

"Nonsense!" Papyrus pats his head and gives him another bright smile. "You're perfectly safe, and I'm right here with you! What we need is something different to think about until we're released. What about the band? Did you have more ideas for that?"

[tigermillionaire]

Steven's hair is soft and mossy and probably pretty pleasant to pet, no matter how prickly the rest of the kid may seem at the moment. There's a couple of moments pause, and then a soft exhale as he tries to balance himself. He offers a small smile.

Papyrus is wrong, but for the moment that's okay.

"I asked a bunch of people if they wanted to play with us. Peridot didn't really know what music was, but...I think she'll come around. Did you know what kind of thing you want to play?"

[coolskeletonnyehntyfive]

"Oh, I think I've met Peridot! They were very... grammatically sound." He wasn't sure what else to think of someone as relentlessly straightforward, but he'd enjoyed their conversation. "I was thinking... the guitar! It's like the essence of coolness itself, therefore it'd be perfect for me."

[tigermillionaire]

He laughs a little, soft and sort of awkward, but he's trying. He's still has more feral instincts clawing for attention at the back of his mind.

"That sounds like her! She can be sort of mean, but I'm working on her. I think she just needs some friends, is all." His expression brightens a bit at the guitar part, though. "But guitar is awesome, it's one of my favourite...they gave me this really cool looking electric one, you should totally play it!"

[coolskeletonnyehntyfive]

"Well! If that's all she needs, then consider it done! After all, being friendly is our job, and we're very good at it!" Papyrus dropped Steven a wink. The kid was still worked up, but he seemed to be calming more as they spoke. And truthfully, having Steven to focus on was making his very first time behind bars so much more bearable. He didn't want to think of how much harder it would be to stay cheerful if there wasn't someone around to see him do it.

But then the vitally important matter of a super cool electric guitar came up, and he lost all other trains of thought. "Wowie... really? You'll let me play your very cool guitar? Steve, that's so... I'm very... thank you! I promise I'll be careful with it!!"

[tigermillionaire]

"Yeah! I'll show you when we get back to the ship, okay?" The smile stays a bit more easily this time. Papyrus gets so excited about stuff, it's contagious. (Lo and behold, the same emotion a lot of other people feel around Steven.) He settles down onto the floor, a bit more comfortable. He's still sort of curled up like a cat, but less like a cat that's going to swap you.

"I've never seen one like it before. They gave me a harp, too...like, a really big one, taller than me! I wanna teach myself to play it, so I'll be learning, too."

2/2 (1/2 above!) How's about a sans --> miles --> steven --> papyrus order?

[skelepun]

--and the pair were back in a jail cell.

"Oof." Sans muttered, getting up to his feet stiffly. Blind teleportation had its drawbacks, but Miles' estimation of the location coupled with his preexisting knowledge of the cell layouts left them (thankfully) not stuck in any walls and in the right cell.

Unfortunately, they also spawned in a few feet off the ground. Rookie mistake on his part.

"You okay, man?" Miles had that arm to worry about, after all. Once he got confirmation the guy didn't break something else in the process, Sans looked up at their new cellmates.

"'Sup."

THUMBS UP

[forwardmomentum]

Before Miles is even aware of what's happening, he's crashing to the hard floor of the cell, landing, with great and terrible luck, on his broken arm with a strangled yelp. Crawling around air ducts on a hairline fracted arm he can grit his teeth and bear, but he didn't even have any warning. Clutching at his arm, he glowers up at Sans from the floor in outraged incredulity.

"Are you frigging kidding me?" he snarls through his teeth, painfully palpating his arm to make sure the fracture hasn't been displaced. Well, it sure as hell hurts more now. "You could have transported us out of there at any time, and you had me crawling on a broken arm through half the building's ducts, you son of a bitch -- "

He catches a glimpse of color and form at the upper periphery of his vision and brings himself up short. Right. The reason Sans teleported them in here. "Ah," Miles says, pale face transforming into a bleak smile as he tilts his head back to look at them upside-down. "Hello, Papyrus. Oh, and Steven's with you, wonderful." He lets go of his arm to give a flourishing wave and immediately regrets it. "Your rescue party has arrived."