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artdecosupernova-writing · 3 months ago

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Find the Word Game XXXIV

(Double Feature)

tagged by: @space-writes & @pertinax--loculos!! my words: sleep, breathe, play, exact, plunge, coy, valid, naked, rose tagging: @drippingmoon, @ashen-crest, @zmwrites, @oh-no-another-idea, and open tag! your words: feel, life, burn, pulse, grave, water

(a)sleep (Meridian)—

Warren escorted him through the station to NodeSource headquarters, where a couple of Thrive's guards broke off to inspect the place and make sure it was safe enough for His Majesty. Once it was deemed adequate, they all moved inside to a small room where a terminal was set up, attached to a powered-down, very human-like android chassis sitting in a chair. "He's...lifelike," Thrive said quietly as two guards posted themselves inside the room out of the way of the techs and programmers filing inside as well. "Even while inactive, he's simply...asleep." The chassis had cropped, pale blond hair, a soft face. It didn't look to be any taller than Warren, and it was dressed in a gray NodeSource t-shirt and black jeans. Its hands were placed on its knees and its eyes were closed, short brown eyelashes resting against rounded cheeks. It had fair skin, cool-toned on the pink side, and realistic intermittent freckles peppered on its face and neck. "Guetry loved the model," Warren said, brushing a knuckle over the chassis' hand. Its skin was indistinguishable from the real thing. "They worked on it while he was...they all worked on it together. I came in for the programming." "This is highly impressive," Thrive said, running his fingers through the hair. "I don't think even Slodian obhelians could've done this, not to this level of realism. Admittedly, I feel as if I'm being forward even now touching it like this."

breathe (Aurora)—

Thrive took Warren's face in his hands, his touch surprisingly gentle for someone so severe in the moment, and he looked him right in the eye. "Do me a favor and breathe." Warren did as he was told, inhaling for four seconds and releasing for five. "Go with Sig and their crew. You're extremely vulnerable in this state." "No," Warren said immediately. "No way. I'm not going anywhere, I—" "Please," Thrive interrupted, steady and clear for someone on the verge of panic. "I need you to go. Warren, I need you to go." Something huge rammed into the window, sending a fissure across the glass, and Warren caught the terror in Thrive's eyes that was replaced in an instant with fiery determination as he whipped around to throw a shield into the window at the exact same time as the shattering of the glass into hundreds of pieces that sprayed all around the bridge in the second before the breach barrier prevented them from getting sucked out into space. Warren made a move to jump forward, but Thrive caught him in a blast of force that threw him into the bulkhead and out of the way. He slid down the wall, mildly stunned, and watched, horrified, as a battering ram of dense black fog slammed into Thrive's shield over and over and over. Thrive struggled to keep it in place, but the fog began to bleed onto the bridge. "Oh, god," Warren breathed, trying to scoot further into the wall. "Thrive…!" He turned his head, eyes alight with the orange glow, and the fog poured in around them, pooling on the floor. It gathered at his feet, vines of onyx crawling up his ankles, slithering around his legs. He grit his teeth and dropped the shield, instead sweeping powerful blasts over the fog, dissipating it only for a second or two at a time. Someone has been deceiving you. Warren could do nothing but stare in wide-eyed horror as the tendrils caught one of Thrive's arms and gripped tight enough that he had to struggle to break free. It caught him again, and the determination in his eyes doubled behind the steadily brightening light. And as a vine of black smoke snapped from the ground to wrap around his throat, Warren realized what it was the Emmuli was trying to tell him. "Fight it," Warren said, his voice fracturing. "Thrive, fight it. You've gotta fight it!" But he knew, as soon as the toxin wrapped itself around Thrive's torso and he thrashed wildly about to overthrow it, that the doubt and fear and insecurities had been far stronger than he'd let on. He harbored too much guilt, too much self-loathing, too much hurt to keep the Emmuli at bay. And when the fog swallowed him where he stood, the tendrils snaking into his mouth and down his throat, he made eye-contact with Warren, a hopeless apology welling beneath the orange glow that was snuffed in a second.

(re)play (Meridian)—

Charis shrugged dramatically, face scrunched in a disapproving frown. "I can't get this routine down. I don't have enough talent for something this complicated. I quit, man, I quit!" Warren quirked an eyebrow and snorted. "We just started this choreo today, dude. If you're expecting to perfect any of my routines in less than a half-hour, you're gonna be sorely disappointed all the time." "Don't give up, Char!" Fiorella called across the room during her stretches. "You're really good!" Charis attempted a particular move—a downward thrust of the right elbow that was supposed to slide into a sideways pull while simultaneously crossing his ankles but ended up looking a bit more like an aggressive flail of the arms. He threw his hands up. "See?! Mr. Cougar, I'm so sorry for getting short with you but this is ridiculously impossible and I'm frustrated." "Right," Warren said, facing Charis. "Do that again but in instant replay." He did, resulting in the same flub, and a few other kids stopped hydrating from the fountain to watch in curiosity. After observing carefully, Warren nodded and set his water on the floor away from his feet. "Okay. Start with the fist up." He made his arm into a right angle with his fist pointed up. "You're super excited. Your mom's taking you to that extreme amusement park on Earth that's got eight hundred laws pending to try to get it shut down. Fucking psyched, right?" He brought the elbow down as if he'd just received good news of the slow-motion variety. "Yes! But what—your dipshit brother's running up behind you because he wants to get out the door first. Uh-uh." He tilted his elbow to the side, ramming it into an invisible person running at a glacial speed. "Not today." Charis followed along move for move, entranced. "Hey, I did it!" "Rockstar. Now, the feet," Warren said. He began to cross his left ankle over the right one. "You've really gotta make sure that elbow gets into Yalis' gut so you pop a slide, and...pow!" "Screw you, Yalis!" Charis exclaimed. "You're named after a planet you've never even been to!" Warren laughed out loud and went over the moves with Charis until they became somewhat second nature, after which Charis continued into the rest of the dance with the entire class hyping him up in a circle around him. Warren clicked the remote for the music and joined in the encouragement.

exact (Asylum)—

"That is correct," Thrive said coolly, eyes never leaving Cattaneo's face. "Currently taking the form of a male-presenting human…biological sex classified as H with the markers 3130-B formation 6…you've undergone entu'borah and are, in Earth years, approximately eight-thousand—" Thrive sighed again, shorter and more agitated. He cast his waning attention onto one of the walls. "Yes, that's correct." Cattaneo shoved the tablet away. "Alright, fine. Let's get right down to it, then." He narrowed his eyes at Thrive during a pause in which his forehead began to visibly perspire. "...Would you like to explain why you decided the way to stick it to the Consortium was to murder hundreds of innocent people?" A pit began to open in the bottom of Warren's stomach. Thrive, however, returned his focus to Cattaneo. "I won't dignify that with a response." "D'you see these?" Cattaneo leaned forward and rapped a knuckle against one of the cuffs emitting a steady white glow around Thrive's wrists. "You're the only one in the entire universe with this level of security at current. These were invented because of you. What makes you think we haven't been preparing for this? What makes you think we haven't been gearing up for the exact moment you turned your back on the galaxy, your people, the very oath for which you've supposedly devoted your entire self and soul, 'Protector'?" Thrive slammed his hands down onto the table and also leaned in, causing Cattaneo to recoil before attempting—failing—to reestablish his dominance within their dynamic. Warren's teeth clenched. "I have turned my back on nothing," Thrive hissed. His eyes flashed, quite literally, a brief ribbon of gold ripping through the green of his irises and the voids of his pupils. "It is the likes of you and those clutching your puppet strings in cold, merciless fingers who have turned your backs on me."

plunge (Eternal)—

Mercury turned off the feed and they were plunged into silence. Warren looked at everyone's faces—stunned, horrified, unsure if they could process the last several hours. He realized with a start that Thrive wasn't on the bridge, and he sprinted out into the corridor, skidding to a stop right beside the door to their quarters, which didn't open. He placed a palm on the metal and it slid open for him, shutting immediately once he stepped inside. He crept carefully, not noticing anything out of the ordinary...and then he caught a faint reflection in the false window, toward the floor. He came to a sudden halt and turned sharply to his right as he discovered Thrive sitting against the bed, facing the window, his knees up and his face in his hands. Weeping.

coy timid (Meridian)—

The sight of Thrive on his throne in Leviathan was a rare one, but intimidating nonetheless. Surrounded by vast shadows and shimmering precious metals sculpted into Escherian shapes, draped in an endless cascade of gold fabric that dwarfed his old cape by what appeared to be miles, meticulous strokes of black and gold paint creating intimate patterns of geometry on his tired human face. Warren loved how gorgeous and powerful it made him look. But he hated what it did to him. "Your...Majesty," he said timidly as he entered the throne room flanked by the High Guard. Thrive closed his eyes and sighed, connecting the thin lines on his eyelids to the lines that broke off in opposite directions along his cheekbones. "Please, Warren." "The last time I didn't address you by your honorifics in front of the High Guard, they yelled at me." "I've had a word with them. I don't like this any more than you do." Warren stuffed his hands in his pockets, aware of the cold and gaping distance between them as they stationed on separate ends of the room. "Then tell them to make me a king too or something." "If I had that kind of power, I wouldn't be one myself." Thrive shifted on the throne, sending a shimmering ripple along the cape and cloak dark as night, highlighted by small strips of white LED along the stitching. "The paradox is cataclysmic."

valid (in)accurate (Meridian)—

Warren's voice caught in his throat. "That looks like—" "It isn't." Thrive spun around, scanning the panicked faces streaming past them before pointing at two of the sentries. "Track down Thoeala'laris and Ataneq." "Your Majesty, our jobs are to protect you and the prince—" "Your job is to do what I say," Thrive barked. "Track them down or I will break your spines with a single bare hand and render your already obsolete positions additionally unfeasible." With a nod, the two sentries ran off in the direction of the security office. Warren stood back as Thrive pried the atrium door open, and even then he couldn't have been prepared for what they witnessed. Soldiers of some kind, fully dark and phasing in and out of solidity, aiming strange weapons into the screaming crowd, opening fire. There were dozens of them, and they looked as if someone had taken a vague description of Consortium operatives and molded an inaccurate, shadowy representation of them. Thrive immediately snapped out a blast of force, knocking back an entire group in the midst of phasing out. He did it again, knocking another group away, and their attention diverted to him. He deflected their weapons fire from Warren and himself with a shield. "Gimme a gun," Warren shouted. He caught a rifle thrown to him by a security officer taking cover behind a large bench next to them. "Thrive, go!" They both ran into the atrium, Warren picking off the ghostly figures a few at a time. Thrive lifted stones from a cluster of planters, melting them down and forming long blades with them on the way to his hands. He cast one into the side of a long-range gunman, summoning it back to his grasp in tandem with driving the other blade upward into an intruder's ribs. He swung at a phaser's head and his arm went through, but he recovered in time to send a blade into a sniper aimed down at them from the second floor.

naked (Warpath)—

"Then let's spend whatever time you've got left here fucking each others' brains out." "I'd like to see the remainder of our children at some point if that's alright with you." "No, no," Warren teased. "They're overrated. When you've seen one kid, you've seen them all." Late into the night, once Thrive had reunited with ——— in such a time frame—and after another passionate hour and a half—Thrive stood at the window of Warren's room, stark naked in the light of three moons. He gazed at a point in the distance, thoughts running a mile a minute, and Warren approached him with a light dressing gown. "I gotta tell you something." The silence from Thrive was thoughtful and patient, and he took care in sliding the garment on. His lack of haste was almost a considerate act, a way of quietly conveying that he knew Warren's eyes were on him, his shoulders, his back. The material shifted over his arms and he flexed beneath the material, and it seemed deliberate. Warren stepped up to him, then, couldn't help himself. He slid his arms around Thrive from behind, burying his nose into the space between Thrive's shoulder blades, inhaling him deeply and running his palms over his pectorals. Thrive clasped his hands over Warren's, held him tightly to him. "What is it you need to tell me?" he asked, voice gravel over the liquid gold of his body heat. "Oh, man," Warren groaned, pressing his forehead to the back of Thrive's neck. "This…I dunno how you're gonna take this." "Out with it." "Well…it looks like we could have some in-laws in the future." Thrive turned to him, displacing him long enough to grace him with a deep look of concern and confusion. "Who?"

rose (Aurora)—

Warren moved over to the bathroom and pulled the door open a little, peeking inside to make sure Thrive was okay, and once he caught sight of him, he wasn't quite sure okay was the right word...but he did lose his breath for a minute. Thrive was practically boneless, arms draped over the edge of the tub, and his head rested against the back, eyes half shut and amber light twinkling within them like the dying coals of a fire. His wet hair slicked back, knees drawn to compensate for the sheer length of his legs, his entire frame a painful amalgamation of tense and fully relaxed. "Thrive…?" Warren said in a small voice. Thrive's chest rose with an inhale and his gaze shifted to Warren. The water barely rippled with that movement. They remained in further silence until the base of Thrive's expression shifted, brows drawn tight and eyes becoming despondent. Warren stepped into the bathroom, sliding the door shut behind him, and he pulled his shirt off over his head. Looked at Thrive again to make sure he wasn't overstepping. Thrive hadn't looked away. Warren tossed his shirt to the side, shed the rest of his clothes, and stepped into the bath between Thrive's ankles, making a point not to let the absolute frigid water deter him from his job. He sank in all the way, the water level rising until it reached the rim. "C'mere." Thrive pulled himself up to Warren, touching his face with a ginger hand, and the swirling glow of his eyes only seemed to intensify upon cupping his jaw. He slid his arms around Warren, who shifted to be more accessible, and Warren held him for ages, the relief of his heat from the cold and the emptiness pooling in his chest. After enough time had passed that the water no longer felt as cold, Thrive gently pressed his lips to Warren's. His hands found his waist, holding on with a tight grip, like everything would crumble again if he let him go, and Warren wound his fingers through Thrive's hair to ground himself.

#tag game #find the word #loooooong snippets folks #I figured I'll just stop trying to justify this lmao

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