bluebrawn

[bluebrawn]

[bluebrawn]

My endless list of favourite horses: Zum Glück. [Ridden by Sönke Rothenberger.]

[bluebrawn]

Alternian proxy server @ /hvysurge/

screenshot.jpg: 

Popular heavy-surge band Order of a Descent arrested for suspicion of subliminal messaging related to domestic terrorist sympathies

kineticOpus: y ou’v e g o t t o b e f uckin g k iddin g m e 

silentReciprocity: i mea^n it’s ^not like we did^n’t see it comi^ng :/  still a shame though, i did^n’t see it as a political message, it was just art to me you k^now :/  people take thi^ngs too deep sometimes :/

kineticOpus: @ SR d ud e t he y w eren’ t e xactl y f uckin g s ubtl e a bou t i t w er e t he y 

demonicMess: cdhrist noot tuhat stufferer mnetal cdonspiracy tuheory sthit abgain [turoll_mnonkaS.jpg] 

rustyTorque: oh no....but they were so good D: 

silentReciprocity: they ARE good, they have^n’t bee^n culled yet, fuck :/ do^n’t talk like that :/ it’s ^not like they’re actually cou^nter empire or a^nythi^ng it’s just music

kineticOpus: @ SR s hu t u p y o u k no w i t’ s g oin g t o h appe n 

silentReciprocity: @ KO hey how about you shut up :/ what the fuck are you si^ngli^ng me out for i did^n’t do a^nythi^ng :/ you’re lucky i’m chill e^nough i could probably call dro^nes o^n you too for all you’ve said o^n here

kineticOpus: y ea h l ik e t hi s i s t h e f irs t t im e w it h y ou r s nak e a s s 

demonicMess: fguck tuhough.  hiey @ clandestineTechnophile wxeren’t tuhey opne opf yzour fgavs?  yzou uvsed tuo tualk abbout tuhem ab lmot bcack ijn tuhe deay.  ij klnow tuhey ghot yzou tuhrough stome tuough tuimes. bctw hiope yzou’re ghood mnan opn tuhat sthithole pqlanet.  

> And you... you genuinely don’t know what to say and just close the browser instead to go for a workout. 

[bluebrawn]

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

See, you keep saying you are going to ignore him and somehow he keeps saying things that make you so angry that you can feel the whirlpool of nothing break in vivid flashes of pure anger. More like you before you took those qualities away. That pesky will to say ‘ONE MORE THING’ every single time. The spite that comes back every time he talks.

You turn and twist rather violently to get off the couch and reach at Equius, hands clawing at him but they just go through, oh for fucks SAKE. “How dare you take what is mine?!” Entitled piece of shit, even in death he can’t stop making it about him, SERIOUSLY. You snarl to his face before-… before… is a bit like a drop of anger in an ocean of apathy it dissipates far too fast to be continuous. You groan very loudly. “You are an idiot.” You finish phasing just right through him and  then you turn around to do it again and pop out of his chest. Not that it matters. “Go ahead, think that.” Okay, couch again, for the 5th time you think. Maybe until he says something stupid. AGAIN. Or you know what… no…

Enough is enough. “Goodnight.” You fly out of the room straight to a wall and decide to find a random spot in one of the visiting rooms and make your sleep there.

You feel a little like the early days of your relationship with Eridan, confused and bewildered and a little frustrated, and a lot just plain scared.  All the same you tense and pitch your whole body into defense mode before his claws just go through you.  Your jaw is clenched so hard in vexation now that it’s starting to hurt your teeth, glaring pinholes into Eridan’s ghost.

“I don’t understand,” you say, voice flat as bricks hitting the ground.  “If it wasn’t me then--who--was it related to your work?  What...”  You think of his enormous apathy, this mourning hole that’s too strong even for grief or remorse.  It’s an enigma to you, and somehow that magnetizes you to whatever this is.  

But before you can think any further he’s--doing that, first off, with his head in your chest, and it makes you huff and stutter in surprise, but then he’s gone--truly gone, somewhere in this house.  And the whole ordeal has exhausted you more than a full shift at work.

You think you will stay here on the couch, waiting for whatever this is to be over.  You lie down, forgetting completely about dinner and promptly passing out. 

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

“They wanted a future me and future me is dead idiot, on the other questions… I can’t tell you any of that.” Literally, if you so much try nothing will come out but bubbles, those were the rules. You let him pretend he can keep you there for a second before you phase through and continue your self pitying existence on the couch.

“This is not a warning, this is another magic occurrence…” The next question is the one that is the hard one and you frown, you have anger responses but not the energy to say it. You also aren’t that bothered, soon enough, every second now. “Nothing that you didn’t already try… what is done is done. There is no point.” Is going to be hard for him to accept, but thus the reality of the situation. “I die for a second time …” Simple, really. “You should just learn to live with it. Wouldn’t be that hard for you, you already had to. Just remember how that was when you did it, apply it to now and leave me alone.”

You don’t want to hear it.  You almost refuse to hear it.  Your face ripples with a grimace the longer he goes on, eyes wide and fearful in the dark.  You don’t have the context for it, but this is what you think a nightmare might be like, refusing to let you have any control, any brakes to stop the flow of information.  You don’t want to know.  You asked for it and you regret it.

A distressed noise of pain gets crushed in your throat, turned into a strangled and long groan.  Both hands are in your hair now, since Eridan shook you off.  You shake your head at him, like it would be enough to block it out.  

“No--no you wouldn’t.  You can’t.  You can’t.  You can’t do that, I won’t let--”  You flinch like you’ve been shot again, recognition for his words going through your gut, and you turn your stare away from him immediately, looking down instead.  Instead of tears the feeling like lead in your stomach and lungs overflows as shuddering exhales.  “I--I didn’t mean--did--”  No.  Your stomach feels like ice now.  You snap your head up to look at him, hands pressed hard to either side of your face like to keep your pan in there.  “...I couldn’t--I didn’t do it, did I?  Not again, not again, that was then and I wasn’t--”  You lick your lips.  “I wasn’t thinking straight, I would never...not again.  Please tell me, not again.  I didn’t do that--not again.”  An image of your own hands swiping Eridan’s life away for a second time curls like a noose around your neck and you can’t help but choke on it for a second. 

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

You float up in one motion and move above him, your face floating a few inches away from his face. The rest of your body mirrors his, but yours goes upwards instead of staying at the same distance. You can see him better now and because of that you can remember him better too. You can’t help but hold his face, it is still disappointing that you get nothing out of this. He isn’t even in the correct time to be the one that knew you till your last breath.

“I’m dead.” Void. You get your hands off him, fingers lingering on the draw back. You cross your arms in front of you as you spin to a sitting position without any effort, still floating, just high enough that Equius has to look up to you. ”I’m the future and I can’t tell you more than that.” And you can’t be bothered to say more than that. However the news that you just gave him are strong enough that will probably hit him like a sack of bricks. He is going to have to connect those dots himself but you think he has laid it down. You look about, if not, exactly the same as  his Eridan does. Your apathy and depressive whirlpool contains no rage in it and if that doesn’t say anything to him that doesn’t matter to you.

“Leave me alone until I go back with Death.  The alive one will be here by morning.” You move forward pass Equius and onto the couch in which you take the position you had on the floor, curled onto yourself, you decide to not face him.

With so much going on at once, there’s no time for you to feel consoled or comforted by his touch.  If anything it just scares you more.  It isn’t the feeling of a cold hand on your cheekbone; that would require something solid, forceful.  What you do feel is this, lack of heat.  Cold is a lack of warmth, but this is something you sense as more abstract than regular cold.  All the same, it’s him, and although it scares you enough to want to reject it away from you, you let him touch you and stare at his face coming into focus.  You hate (fear, more fear in this hour than you’ve felt in weeks) that you can’t quite see his eyes.  They just aren’t there.  

Relief is a cold comfort when you hear that Eridan isn’t dead--isn’t really dead, isn’t dead right now.  You dislike philosophical talk about how seeing the future can change the past.  You always thought it was inconsequential and silly to consider such impossibilities, and now you wish you had a better idea of what to do with the information.  Thank God, you still think to yourself, selfishly, aching with the way the revelation took weight off of you, temporary though it is.

Then it floods back into quieter dread.  “What do you mean the future?  How--when?  How far in the future?  When does this happen?”  You reach out again, this time making firmer contact on his arm to keep him grounded next to you, refusing to let him go.  “This can’t--if this is a warning then how am I supposed to...”  You struggle to put your want into words.  “What can I do?”  

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

You open your eyes when you hear your name, white pupils showing. You look at Equius with hesitation, he was talking to you. Sort of… you are still very aware you are not what he wants. Not on the time, and unknowingly not on the space. Knowing that he can’t do nothing to fix a sealed fate doesn’t help anything.

“Not that one that you want…” You say very softly. Unusual neutrality still residing in your voice. Frozen, broken, weak, the usual delicacy that you reserve for your worst moments, that is all that stayed this time. 

You prop your torso up with your arms, which isn’t necessary since you can float and move with ease. And as you move, the vortex of empty moves with you, even if it is ever so slightly with your current position. “I’m not the one that you know yet…” You don’t know how long he is going to listen or even be able but you will make it count so at least he gets that you just want to cry yourself in peace.

You can’t--this is not something you can face straight on.  Your mind balks at it, at evidence and conclusion.  Your body language speaks as much of that, pusher on your sleeve as you start shaking your head--sharp, jerky motions that stay small because of how tightened up you are in your neck and shoulders.  

“What do you mean--” you say, voice rough and then you cough, clearing.  “What do you mean, not the one I want?  You don’t--this is not--you were just--”  Your hand flies to your hair and you grip into it enough to hurt while everything just gets weirder.  That negative space getting more defined edges, starting to look like a someone instead of something.  

None of what you feel reminds you of when Aurthour died.  You had sweeps of knowing he was older, bracing yourself for it and making the most of what you had.  The suddenness is something you can’t even start to understand, and that terrifies you--you don’t cry, but your expression might be close to it.  

“What happened?  How?”  It’s all you can keep repeating, your pan shellshocked into refusing to consider anything else. 

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

He touched you, he grabbed you and you-… you are a little too much into yourself for this, you don’t uncurl  or move, you stay in your spot on the floor and let everything sink, you let yourself sink.  Nothing, nothing, there is nothing here. You are not real. You are not worth to be real. 

If the void was overtaking the room, by this point there should not be anything else. This overwhelming sense of nothing, isolating even when the two of you are in the room.

“… shut up.” Its a request? and order? The mix in your voice is hard to tell, not that he can hear you. Or maybe, maybe not. 

Everything should just stop.

In another story, you might have known what to do about this.  In another timeline or universe, topics you don’t bother paying attention to, you might have known how to ride the crest into understanding and grappling with Eridan’s existence here.  

But you aren’t that Equius Zahhak.  You sit on the floor, on a precipice of realization and coming to terms with one fact: You heard Eridan’s voice, distinctly this time, and it makes you shake as if the whole house has been turned inside out into the Derse cold.  

You almost don’t dare to voice it, because even you have an instinctive sense that identifying and acknowledging things condenses them into reality.  The room feels like a whirlpool at this point, everything cycling deeper into this heavy, heavy center.  You don’t question your sanity at all; the idea of being crazy never occurs to you, always trusting your senses completely.

“Eridan?” you finally say, quiet as the grave.  You regret saying it, regret calling this thing him, because of what it means if it’s true.  You can’t help but tremble.

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

“…”

You can reach him with your hands and you do, and you get his bad knee with your spectral claws and try to focus for him to take it. Take a knee, Equius, “WHAT AM I? LOOK AT ME.” What started with you trying to avoid him has ended with you full blown wanting to leave you alone forever. As one does you are just lashing to him with as much as strength as your spectral body can. But that doesn’t last long.

Your own nature, the one you died with doesn’t allow for anything but apathy, tiredness, everything that was soft about you. Your anger expires fast and once you burn all of the oil you go down. Your tiredness hits you like a truck and you let go while just moving to lay down on the floor, like your fury got erased and replaced with a sense of… nothing. There is no point.

You give up. He can stay if he wants. You are laying on the floor now. Nothing, nothing. You start curling on yourself. Nothing, nothing. You feel nothing.

What are you supposed to do against what you can’t see or begin to know?  You’ve had to become familiar with the unknown, in one sense; your grubhood and adult years were packed with having to face situations you had no basis for and had to adjust your thinking.  For all your stubbornness and refusal to change, your surroundings constantly forced you to do just that: relearn how to see things, relearn how to interact with them.  

This, however, is one of the more violent, painful, and rushed experiences of having to change your perspective.  You swear you can feel knives digging into your leg right at its weakest point.  Your knee buckles a little and you lean completely back against the couch to keep from falling, breath coming in sharp bursts of adrenaline now.  You can’t help but retaliate even at nothing, lashing out with your hand to grab in the direction near your leg, swiping for something, anything, some scrap of information to shed light on it all.  

You didn’t expect to feel something.  In that moment, feeling your hand make contact and grip something, just for a second, and the shape of that feeling like getting ice dumped on you.  Not knives.  Nails.  Just a ghost of a sensory memory: how big a wrist felt gripped in your hand when you try to get him to turn back and listen to you.

“No.  No that’s--”  Your voice gets robotic and stammering, pressing far back against the couch as if to lean away, but hand still extended out to where you thought you felt it.  You don’t know how to begin to process the depth of emotion through the initial shock, but the more that void starts to eat up the room’s space, the more you think you’re starting to feel the shape of it.  “Impossible.  Impossible.  That isn’t--”  Who are you even talking to.  You hope you’re not talking to anything. Your hand is just reached out to the middle of the room, back sliding against the couch until you hit the floor sitting, unable, unwilling to voice the possibility you’re seeing in front of you.

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

Equius sits where you are and you can’t help but be annoyed that he just happens to do this by complete accident. You just want to sleep in peace, its a big house and somehow he seems to be just going where you are. You jolt up out of his space and look at him. Standing between the table and the couch.

He made you dinner.

You don’t know how to feel about that, you can’t even eat that, because that isn’t for you, that is for him. He isn’t doing this for you, he is doing this for the past you. Why would he do that for you, why would anyone do anything for you.

And then he addresses you and you know that is not for you either, that is for anything that is here, you are distressed and broken and you want him gone now because he is only making you hurt in places you didn’t know still had. And that turns into the table and couch being moved abruptly this time. The plate is almost sent flying to the floor.

You sit down on the floor, legs folded and wrapped by your arms. You stare daggers at Equius and hope he gets the message.

The room is oppressive the way it curves in on you--or seems to.  You don’t feel outside pressure of any kind, nothing in the room changes.  But the cold and aching, aching feeling inside you right now echoes something here.  You don’t like to base your conclusions on feelings and what might be the case, but you don’t know what else there is to go off of right now.  Right now all you have is this dark black feeling in your chest like that moment when you thought the world was ending--and this, this feeling, is not your own.  You don’t know where it’s coming from.  

You feel loneliness from it in a way you never felt alone by yourself.

So it’s a terrifying jolt when things move suddenly, enough that you can’t stop a short scream--well, what counts as a scream for you.  It’s mostly just in your throat, and very quick, but it’s a loud and scared sound straight from your lungs as you bolt upright and grip the couch when it’s moved, wildly looking around.  

And no one as the culprit.  You’re scared and annoyed because you would much rather be scared of something that you could see and define, instead of being made a fool of right now.  You plant your feet on the floor, braced against the couch with both arms as if to keep it in place.  The food--you hiss slightly with the same frustration, re-aligning the plate to the middle of the table and holding the fork down as if to insist that no these do not go flying off the table. 

With no set notion of how to do this kind of conversation--this kind of close encounter with something you would tell Jude about if you talked with him about personal things.  You ask the first and only question that you think can even apply to this situation.

“What are you?”  

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

You can hear it, just his movements around your house. It would be nice of you to not be on his way so you aren’t. In another time you used to enjoy doing exactly that, although enjoying is a strong word when everything is a pit of unhappiness. You were distracted that is all.

There isn’t really a lot complicated about you, really, you have been in a bubble for quite a while and you had forgotten a lot of your living times, and you were fine with that. You remember now vaguely the last time you saw yours… he didn’t know what was happening. Makes you wonder, did he find you? You will never know but you think its likely. Equius probably broke in to find you. You wonder if he cried.

Your sleep here isn’t like in the bubbles, there isn’t rest here and you dislike that. There is no beach here, there is no sun, no father. It makes you shuffle on the sofa and face the table in front of it.

All noises from the kitchen make you wish you could eat things again. And you are slightly annoyed at the noise and that you can’t just wish it away or even cover it. This weird mix of things is as many emotions as you’ve had in a long time, you dislike all of that. In your tantrum you make the table move and inch and everything over it gets pulled, something rolls off the table.

There is no point. You go back to fake sleep.

The steady movement of cutting things is a small comfort to you.  Working carefully with your hands soothes some part of you, just like simple physical exertion soothes another part.  You can handle this.  Fish and vegetables done and in the oven, you step back, calmed down a lot since the respite block.  You adjust your hair back into something smoothed out and neat over your ears away from your face, hands held there for a second and holding your breath before letting it out with more tension leaving you.  Eridan is fine, he’s probably still with his brother--except.  The phone.  You have to consider the phone.  

Eridan can take care of himself.  This is the thought you meditate on when you hear something scrape on the floor and thud in the next room over.  Another startled hiss and yell pops through you with a jolt that makes you grab the counter.  You’re fearful in a way you would never be to a large opponent--you can’t handle these things you can’t touch or see, only teasing hints of understanding that has all your senses straining to know how and why.

You do bolt to the living room a second later, staring around for evidence.  Where there is none, except an empty glass on the floor.  You stare at it like a snake for a moment before walking over.  You put a hand on the couch to bend and pick it up, and you don’t know why your knee is choosing now of all times to ache again.  After you set it down, you look around the room.  There is nothing there.  Nothing here, and that--that same nothing.  

You swallow a quiet anxious groan and sit down on the couch even as the weight of all that empty space gets stronger and stronger.  You just sink into it for a second, frozen and eyes wide as you keep twitching, looking around the room.  Your steadiness is rapidly leaving you--but that cannot stop you.  You are immovable even in a vacuum with no understanding like this.  You know absolutely nothing about horror tropes, so it’s completely sincere in what you say next, even if it’s cliched.  You don’t know the cliche, but more importantly, you have no idea what’s going on.

“Who is there?”

[bluebrawn]

Pedro Torres & AHOTO, lusitano stallion, Champion of Champions of the 2012 Golegã National Horse Fair | © Lusitano’s Market

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

The buzzing noise of the messages ring far away in your ears. You left that back there didn’t you. You stop at the doorway, of your once favorite room, remembering the effort that it takes to communicate. You don’t want to do that, you have no desires to be regarded as possessed phone. You told him the truth already it is up to him if he will just take it. You don’t turn back.

“How… Unfortunate…”

You left the phone on the bed next to where you were laying. It probably lights up as the new texts come up making the notifications noises and all that. Visible for Equius to see if he hasn’t already.

You gently press yourself and cross… open? Doesn’t matter. It’s just a living room. The room where- that room, your room. This is your house, all of these are your rooms. But that doesn’t matter. You lay neatly on a sofa… and go back to sleep.

Whatever he does is up to him, you will not interfere anymore unless he happens to barge through this living room too. You don’t want to mess with the living that is just asking too much out of you.

There’s a buzzing noise from the bed and you nearly jump out of your skin, legs tensing in a moment of getting ready to bolt.  When you determine where it’s coming from, your ears twitching wildly to pick up the sound, it doesn’t help matters.  Sickness crawling into your throat, you walk back over to the bed slowly, almost inching a foot at a time, and look down at the lit-up screen, tilting it to see your text there in the preview message.

You drop it like it’s scalded your hand, and nothing could stop the single, shuddering gasp of panic you make.  With all these things slotting together, you would expect the puzzle to line up into completion.  But nothing is filled in.  There’s more left open to question--open to not knowing, and those holes of unknown are always greedy to grow bigger.  You leave the phone on the bed, shut the door firmly behind you.  

The house suddenly feels far too cavernous and full of possibilities unfolding with each room.  You feel that if you stay in this threshold, this moment of what-ifs for too long, you’ll be crushed, turned into another layer of this dark hollowness.  

You can’t have that.  You huff, out of breath a little as you keep your head down and walk downstairs, eyes forward as if with blinders to the kitchen.  You are not going to be eaten alive by this bizarre situation, nor will you suffer from whatever oddity is at work here.  Things will unveil themselves in time and you have no preconception to work off of to help you.  So.

You start up the stove and get out some of the seafood in his fridge, your movements methodical and rigid.  You decided to do this, because action is better than inaction, no matter how finicky the detail is.  You would rather spend hours on minutia to prepare for a bigger decision than spend that time assessing all of it at once.  Dinner then, because if he comes home he will be hungry.  If he’s in this house, somewhere in the rooms that you don’t want to search right now, he will be hungry, eventually.  And you are going to stay the night in case he comes home.  If he doesn’t, in the morning, you’re going to contact Feferi and his brother, and whoever else to let them know he isn’t here.  But until then, you’re going to wait for him.

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

He can’t see you, you figured. It would be different if the present you was turned into a ghost, the present you would had trashed and turned and tried as much as he could to be heard, get attention. To scream and destroy until someone listening. But future you just wants to go back to a good place.

Equius’ horror doesn’t even tickle you the right way. You get up from the bed and slowly make your way to where he shakes. His eyes are fixated through and behind you. Hm… There is no point, you recon, but you remember his kindness. You remember he was… he was nice.You put both hands to his chest and lean in, nothing. You thought so. No heat  and you phase through. There is no point except pain and you escaped from that.

You go through him and make your way to the hallway, there is an specific living room in this floor where you can wait that is familiar to you. You make your way there, the softest of steps that sometimes aren’t even steps at all.

There’s so much more wrong with this than you thought.  You’re still staring at the bed when something happens.  Something, you think of it as, because you don’t know how what you’re experiencing can be defined.  This isn’t in the limits and definitions and parameters of your life.  You aren’t just a scientist; you do see the validity of things beyond measurement.  Art, philosophy, conversation--these aren’t quantities and you appreciate them.  But everything in your life has been solid, whether in number or description, things to analyze and size up as you do with everything.

You don’t like feeling things out of the blue.  Sudden emotions always distress you, and so when the ache starts up in your chest, something pressing heavy and cold in your lungs and diaphragm, you start gasping a little more, turning in a circle and backing up--but you don’t know which direction to back up in.  All you feel is a vivid, heavy lack in this house.  

In just a small way, it reminds you of how you felt in the mist, when you kept walking between places.  This is far more desolate than you remember even that loneliness being though.  

You fumble with your phone, for the first time in this weather feeling genuinely cold to your fingers. 

[txt]

D --> Eridan where are you

D --> You said you were going to be in coon

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

You don’t want to be here. You never asked. Many others would like to be here but not you, you don’t. So you are just waiting for Death to take you back to your bubble or for whichever magic that is out there to… just do its thing. As you said you are in bed waiting for time to go by. Only a bed sheet to cover you. No lights besides the coon.

You hear Equius but there is nothing you want to do about it. Maybe move if he really wants you to but… you just stay there, a lump on the bed. You don’t think he can see you. You don’t look at him either, he isn’t yours. All windows are closed, everything is down… that is okay with you.

You look down at the lump on the bed, and you’re a little annoyed at how the sigh that comes out of you is just relieved.  You can fake it as exasperated, but at the end of the day...

“You should be out of bed by now you know,” you say, staring at him.  He doesn’t move, and it makes your gut twist.  “Eridan,” you snap a little sharper.  “Whatever you’re going through is one thing but this is certainly not doing you any favors so would you just...”  You walk over to him--unnerved, anxious frustrated all at once--and you shake his shoulder and pull the sheet back with all the kindness of steel wool.  

You can’t help the sudden wrenched inhale you take, kicking your breath immediately up to panting as you jerk back, stumbling a few steps.  You’re a steady man, able to deal with many material horrors of violence, mystery, suffering, weird things.  But there is weirdness and there is the physical outline of your quadrantmate disintegrating into air with just the brush of your hand to pull it back, with nothing there to show for it.  You don’t realize you’ve been stepping back this whole time until your legs hit the corner of a table, and that makes your muscles seize up a second time, nearly jumping out of yourself because you aren’t someone equipped to deal with this, or even understand it.

[bluebrawn]

gunsandshipsandtheradio‌:

[pvvt]

ok

ill leavve you the door open

not gate

His neutral answer scares you more than anything he said, because Eridan is never passive.  Dismissive, uncaring yes.  But if he didn’t want you there he would have said ‘wwhatevver” or griped about it and then left the door open.

His quietness scares you in a way that has you popping your head into the sergeant’s office, asking to step out to check on him--which is something you would never consider, usually.  Usually you would wait until after your shift.  But unease is an emotion you’ve made your bed with and relied upon when you’re most at a loss.  And you are very much in the dark on what is going on.  Ingleton approves your leave and you head over to Eridan’s hive straight away. 

You arrive and it feels almost like last time you went here when he was in one of his low points, and when you walk inside you half expect to see him on the same couch, in the same slumped, lethargic position.  

The fact that you don’t makes your ears fold back so hard it hurts your head, the hive is so quiet and your eyes are adjusted so well to this dim lighting that you feel like you’re seeing too much in these empty spaces.  

“Eridan?” you call out, loud enough to be heard upstairs but you’re afraid of actually yelling.  You hiss-grumble at the lack of response and go upstairs towards his block to see if he’s still curled in coon.