[ CLOSED ] - OH, I'VE GOT SOMETHING IN MY THROAT.

[alterplex]

Who: Venom Snake (alterplex) and Tetora Nishizono (nishizono).
When: post-arrival.
Where: on Avagi— welcome to your new home, dinguses.
What: an old guy gets punched in the face by a teenager for being a moron.
Warnings: R for language and mentions of violence, possibly! M for Manpain too, god i'm sorry about it



[ Here's what it's like to be displaced again: everywhere Venom goes, he leaves a trail of loose ends behind him. The halls in Avagi are half-memorized, shapes and corners that crudely overlap with a mental map he'd drawn for himself in the faraway concept of 'before'; he rakes his bionic hand over the cool slide of the chrome walls that surround him, feels for a hum under the metal that he can put a name to.

It's useless. He might as well be talking to ghosts.

(sometimes he wonders if he won't just wake up in a nondescript facility again, surrounded by men and women in starched-white uniforms who speak to him in simple 6-word sentences. "you're awake. don't panic. do you remember who you are?" it wouldn't surprise him. nothing really does, not anymore.)

The station is busy with footsteps. Venom recognizes a few of the faces that pass by, fellow refugees that he knows by sight and not by name. He's relieved to see them, partially because they corroborate the question of his sanity. Even his imagination has its limits.

Anyway. Unimportant.

What's important is the task at hand: finding his people. He's not worried about his homeworld comrades (who will inevitably find him, because this is how this works, this is how they work— worry is never the right word for them) as much as he is about the black-haired firecracker who'll burn himself at both ends if left to his devices. Venom will know, immediately, once he sees Tetora— the bite in his glare, the snap of his teeth. Venom's not expecting a warm welcome, and he wouldn't settle for anything less.

Tetora is a ball of frenetic energy at the far end of the hall where Venom spots him, nerves and anger and who-the-fuck-knows.

Thank fucking god. ]

—Didn't keep you waiting too long, huh.

[ How derivative of him, to almost default to his counterpart's catchphrase. Venom, unfortunately, couldn't be original if he tried. ]

Comments

[nishizono]

[ breathlessness, asphyxiation - in due time, enough exposure to both blurs the line separating them, and tetora's crossed that line more times than any human reasonably should.

don't blame him for his genetics. blame the men and women and children he's slaughtered along the way - the ones he shares genetic material with, the ones who crafted him from the ground up, the ones who taught him how to use a gun and then left him to his own devices. blame the first shot he made that hit its target. blame the woman who demands he call her mother, hiding a rotting heart and an evil mind behind her perfect, pristine teeth and expensive negligee. tetora knows all the stages of suffocation as intimately as a man knows the roughness of his own hands against his own skin - that heady rush of blood to the head, the coppery aftertaste in the back of the mouth as oxygen starts dissipating from the bloodstream, the pinprick pain climbing from the neck up as carbon dioxide starts poisoning the body.

this is the biggest piece of misinformation: it's not the lack of air that kills you. air is everywhere. the body's just a finicky piece of shit that can only handle one kind.

tetora — is suffocating, choking on his own tongue when he lands on his knees after coming through the light. the dogs are off like a gunshot as soon as their paws hit dust too, running up and down the hallway in agitation, burning off the panic. a howl. a series of barks. wet tongues on his neck, hands, face.

breathe in. breathe in. count to ten, let it out.

but it's not coming out.


he doesn't know how long he stayed on the floor; he knows he's screamed himself hoarse. he knows he's slammed his fists against the floor; the skin on his knuckles are scraped clean off, healing flesh knitting over and over because he keeps splitting them apart.

go, they'd said. i'll find you.


they're still not here.


he gets angry with himself, eventually. it comes sooner than later, because he's never learned the definition of "moderation"; anger lights him up like a beacon, keeps him on his feet when nothing else can make him move an inch. he gets up and he walks in circles, he doesn't know for how long but it's enough time for the dogs to lag behind. jaegar and mama; guess he's looking after them now.

this time, he doesn't shout out - but the few tears he sheds are hot on his cheeks, and bitter on the tongue.

there's a metal tray of some sort that he finds in his hands, somehow, and he doesn't think twice about flinging it against the wall just to hear it bend from the impact. it's a classroom type of space, or it used to be - what does it matter? he grabs a chair. throws it forward, pitches it with his whole body. it breaks; it doesn't break enough.

his face is still wet. he doesn't think he can talk anymore; he spat blood minutes ago. the blisters on his hands are begging him to slow down. he's working on prying a table leg off because what else is he going to break, when he hears his voice. his voice.

tetora doesn't turn around until he has a solid piece of metal firmly in his hands, blood making the scrubbed surface squeal.

he turns, and throws the bar at snake, aiming right for his face. ]

[alterplex]

[ What did he expect? What did he think Tetora would do?

This is exactly what he was waiting for: the about-face, the externalization, the honest communication that comes with flash-bang violence. It's what he deserves for the hour of dead space he'd left Tetora in, that white-noise-radio-silence that accumulates like snow and builds into a migraine— only Venom's fighting instinct shields him from the incoming blow, and he catches it with the wrong forearm. Metal to bone, metal to linoleum.

He can feel the bruise forming on his skin on impact. It hurts like hell, but what did he expect?

What did he think Tetora would do? ]

—Tetora.

[ "Calm down" is the coward's way out. Feet on tiles and fingers tingling with pain, Venom spans the distance between them with all the stolidity of a man who's always lived behind someone else's crosshairs.

His expression only flickers when he catches the signs of distress that tinge the corners of Tetora's eyes red; above all else, that fucking kills him the most. ]

Breathe.

[nishizono]

[ fuck you.

he swings - it's wild, with too much force behind it for someone who knows better, but this isn't a fight to the death. this is a wave of unnamed madness crashing over his head, dragging him below sea level and keeping him pinned to the sea bed. his fist connects and pain races up his arm like lightning on a storm's eve, electric and knife-sharp.

without a moment's stutter, tetora swings with his other fist.

he can hear his teeth grinding.

he swings again.

the hits keep coming until his hands begin to really hurt, messed up as they already are from his manic venting earlier. he can barely hear anything over the sound of his pulse - this constant, unrelenting roaring in his ears that's drowning out even his own thoughts. this isn't a fight to the death, this isn't a fight for his life, this isn't the end, this isn't—

it takes one wrong swing for tetora to draw back in a soundless cry, wrist cradled in hand as he's bent over from pain. or maybe it's numbness; he can't tell anymore. all he knows is he's seething, so full of something so vile that his skin has gotten two sizes too small. this beast of a thing in him is scoring itself against his bones, gagging him, driving him out of his own body.

this isn't normal. none of this is normal.

but no one's promised tetora anything in his life, and no one's ever come through for him either.

he wants to stop crying now. ]

Make it stop.

[alterplex]

[ Fists fly, and all the prepackaged instincts installed into his hollowed-out skull whisper words of advice on how to subdue the onslaught. Funny, that he can think of 5 different ways to catch someone's wrist and break it in a way that'd make them scream— funnier, that he doesn't act on his programming no matter how easy it would be to go on autopilot.

Tetora's leaving knuckle-patterned bruises all over Venom's collarbone. Grinding his grievances into the hollow of Venom's bones, because he doesn't know how else to communicate. Listen carefully, and Venom's sure that the drumming of those fists are Morse Code. A clumsy SOS.

It breaks his fucking heart, because of course it does; he thought gentility left him with the death of his identity, but he's never been able to carve it out. The realization makes him frown, his grimace splitting the latitudes and longitudes of his face to pattern the outline of his austere features with barely-repressed regret— not for being late, not for telling Tetora to survive (that's one thing he'll never apologize for), but for underestimating what his absence would mean.

(this is the real blow from left field, as far as Venom is concerned.)

He steps forward. Closes the gap between them as tentatively as a man of his size and composure can manage, and reaches with his injured arm to sweep Tetora into the crook of his elbow. ]

I know.

[ The price of caring. Bad news— it never gets easier.

But Venom is fine with this, with keeping Tetora steady and easing his own heartbeat so that it keeps a one-two. Patient as a metronome.

He taps the same rhythm along his charge's spine. ]

[nishizono]

You don't get to do this to me.

[ six simple words, not one of them more than a syllable - but every one of them is shaped by a short lifetime of cleaning blood out from under his fingernails, from scraping knees and elbows diving onto pavements and unfinished floors just to live one minute more. it's a simple accusation, or a threat, or assignation of blame for the weariness in his bones and the soreness in his fists.

you don't get to do this to me, he repeats, quieter this time but no less heart-felt.

(heart-felt; as if he still has one left, and if he does it's not for a lack of trying to get rid of it.)

he's swept into an embrace, covered by arms that he'd fought against what feels like a lifetime ago, and fingers tap out a comforting rhythm on his spine. they play out like the subtle beat of a programmed drum machine pattern, a chk-chk-boom sort of thrum. it pins him firmly in the present, draws his mind close, closer still with every beat.

it's overwhelming.

snake's warmth is too much, too soon, it's not enough and tetora would swallow himself whole for the chance to tear snake wide open and crawl under his bones - to soak in his blood and bite into the muscle that keeps him running. it's morbid; it's all morbid. tetora has yet to learn gentleness. he's never liked the taste of it.

he's a feral creature left out all alone for too long. he doesn't know what else to be.

without the words he needs to elaborate terrifying need to connect, tetora turns to what he knows to do: he presses up against snake in search of skin, and bites down. ]

[alterplex]

[ The answer to Tetora's accusation is silence: it always is. Silence forged out of necessity and discretion, unspoken words picked right out from between Venom's teeth and redacted before they can be printed on paper. Some people mistake his muteness for callousness, but the truth is that the shape of Venom's emotions have become as alien to him as they are to Tetora. An aberration, a play with only one act and no actors.

It's his collarbone that receives the brunt of Tetora's bite, the scoop of vulnerability made visible from where the embrace has tugged the fabric of his shirt down. The skin is thin there, taut over tense muscles; it breaks easily under sharp canines and bleeds without pretense.

Venom curls inwards. Cut him open, spit him out— he won't budge. ]

Tetora.

[ "Yes, I hear you". Yes, he hears Tetora's terms and conditions, the rush of his blood and the groan of his lungs. Yes, he knows who this is, knows the color of this anger. This is Tetora, not Shinji or Kazuhiko or anyone Else.

Venom has no right doing this to Tetora, no, but nevertheless—

—this is for Tetora, anyway. The hand on Tetora's back, the same hand that gravitates up to nest in tangled hair. ]

[nishizono]

[ blood, rich and thick - it spills onto his tongue like honey, takes its sweet time getting between tetora's teeth. this is not a play at vampirism or porphyria, this isn't the madness of king george; this is a twisted bonding of a young man to a war veteran over twice his senior. this is primal speech. this is how humanity's ancestors whispered to another, you are needed.

you are desired.

you are important.

the punchline of the joke is— they've both long ago left behind the parts that made them human. those paltry little tricks have been sitting on the sidewalks, discarded like plastic balloons that have died from sun exposure. tetora grinds his teeth. digs in as dog might with a bone to chew. still snake holds on; he doesn't push tetora away, doesn't reprimand him, doesn't tell him to heel. the man stays silent as a tower, steady as a lighthouse, warm like the worst of a summer afternoon - the hairs on tetora's neck stand in a shiver that races up and down his spine at the thought of such comforts.

his teeth ease on their clutch on snake's skin. a little more pressure - just a little more, just a little more - and he'll hit bone; he chooses not to. he pulls away and spit sticks as a string between them, against tetora's nose when he turns his head from the bite mark. it streaks on his face now, with his cheek pressed over snake's heartbeat, his ear against the man's pulse.

he's counting.

one, two. one, two. it keeps steady, like the fingers in his hair.

he's still angry.

he's also tired. ]

Don't tell me to leave you behind again.

[ don't make me do that again, is what he means. and between those words is this, repeated in faint code: don't hurt me again. ]

[alterplex]

[ Wartorn and self-torn. Tetora's a kaleidoscope mess of lives half-lived and identities half-worn, but the sum of the whole is this: Venom's sure that Tetora's never known when to stop. Always-shifting colors and always-shifting sides, with components so jostled and shaken that they've forgotten what their true shapes used to be. The same as the battlefield orphans with mud under their fingernails, the kids who saw value in the cut faces of the diamonds in their palms instead of the pulse underneath it.

Venom pats the tousled ends of Tetora's hair back in place, lays flat the jagged ends of the kid's kinetic anger. A low hum under his breath, and Venom reaches to wipe the blood from Tetora's chin.

(he won't make promises that he can't keep.) ]

Told you I'd be right behind you.

[ That sounds like a 'sorry'— he must be going soft. (ha ha.)

Bleeding and bruised and tired, Venom slows his breathing to a quiet andante. It relaxes into an adagio, temperate and understanding, and he keeps Tetora upright until he's sure that the beat's calmed into something more manageable for the both of them, simmered down into the eye of the storm. ]

...Kaz made it, too. He'll be glad to see you.

[ Another gentle scrub of thumb to skin, and Venom's relinquishing his hold. No effort made to move Tetora from where he's cataloging the rise and fall of his ribs, though. ]

[nishizono]

Good.

[ for such a pleasant word, tetora manages to make it sound vile and poisonous; four letters have never been so packed full of concentrated fury. even when snake frees him from his hold, tetora remains - and he remains as he's always been, contrary and difficult. yearning for touch and affection in the same heartbeat that lusts after blood on the cut. ]

Don't move just yet, okay?

[ they stand there in the middle of a hallway, still and steady for a long minute before tetora makes a move. small movements, barely anything worth noting for most people; when you've killed almost everyone you know, though, they mean something. they're gestures meant for softer people - those who understand tenderness and haven't perverted the meaning of intimacies with other human beings.

it's a hug. a proper embrace. tetora's fingertips don't even touch behind snake's back, but it's the thought that counts -- right?

it has to count for something. ]

[alterplex]

[ As a professional human-turned-automaton (Pinocchio's worst nightmare), Venom understands the nuances of touch far more intimately than the limitations of language. This crops up time and time again with him, the relief he etches into his exhales when people respond in a way that's known and understandable to him; he masks it with 5 layers of stoicism and a bulletproof vest made out of duty, but it's there.

The mind is capable of many things. It's a great con artist, for one— tell it something enough times, and it'll construct truths out of lies. It'll see what it wants to see, tell someone what it wants to hear.

What it can't do, on the flipside, is make someone unlearn basic instincts. Venom can hold his breath, but his brain will find a way to pry his jaws open and to keep his heart beating; in the same vein, Venom can forget why compassion is an easy outlet for him, but his hands will always remember how to loop around someone to keep them grounded.

Tetora hugs him, with hands healed over from an hour of self-inflicted violence, and Venom barely has to think twice before his palm is between the sharp jut of Tetora's shoulderblades. Reinforcing as easily as breathing: this matters, this counts. Time sprints and life is unforgiving; they're entitled to respite. ]