ca$h hotdog🌠(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oorah) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
quietplacelogs2018-02-28 09:54 am
oorah) wrote in quietplacelogs2018-02-28 09:54 am
III. (open-ish) i said i've been through a lot of noise
featuring: hotdog & his (close) cr
what's happening? frank is suffering from vaccine side-effects and has been ordered to go to the clinic to take care of it; meanttime max has arrived! and just undergone debarking surgery.
day: march 1 (night) & march 2 all day
content warnings: sick man, sick dog, the whine (not)heard round the world.
notes: if it's feasible that frank or micro would have told your character where he is, then feel free to show up. or if you are sick maybe you are unlucky enough to encounter this jerkbutt. hit me up if you want something specific!
march 1
[ after frank gifted jessica a lovely murder basket, she suspects he isn't feeling himself (joke's on her tbh.) since only just injecting him with the experimental drug that would (with any luck at all) make him immune to kilgrave's powers, she assumes frank's weird behavior is a side effect and sends him to the clinic to get checked out. after akira puts him on bedrest, he's open to visitors, and of course the first person he wants to see isn't a person at all. he texts hawkeye and micro furiously: ] bring me my fucking dog, you assholes.
[ okay, so he might be a little testy. once a sleepy max just out of surgery is brought to the clinic, too, the dog will lay at the foot of his bed, alternating between lazily guarding and even lazier dozing. frank hates being stationary. he hates feeling useless. the aches and pains are taking a toll on him, but not as much as the rising tide of frustration and irritability. even if he's usually not a chill guy by a landslide, today he's especially twitchy. he'll likely be up long into the night fantasizing different and creative ways to make kilgrave hurt. oh, hi kids. didn't see you there. ]
march 2
[ frank hasn't slept much. between the fever and refusing to take anything stronger than aspirin, he's sweating and out of it, an angry red rash climbing steadily up the back of his neck to peek out of his black jumpsuit collar. the blankets are on his feet, but he keeps kicking them off. he hates being sick, and he knows he's a terrible patient besides. maria always used to scold him for acting like a child; or worse than their actual children since they took being sick like a champ, just happy for the day away from school. he could endure torture and pain aplenty, max the dog had witnessed both first-hand. he lived in bunkers buried in the sand and traveled to countries that were just holes in the ground, but a little fever and nausea and he's ready to die. every time a cold shiver wracks his spine, he wishes for it even; picturing the bullet in his skull. the doctors telling him a shift in millimeter increment would have killed him. should have, even the way it is.
max is on the floor now, his big block head peeking out from underneath the cot. he watches the door, alerting frank to any new arrival with a tiny growl before shutting his eyes again. the noise little more than a rattly rumble from the dog's barrel chest. the message is clear: you take this one, dad. i'll get the next. ]
what's happening? frank is suffering from vaccine side-effects and has been ordered to go to the clinic to take care of it; meanttime max has arrived! and just undergone debarking surgery.
day: march 1 (night) & march 2 all day
content warnings: sick man, sick dog, the whine (not)heard round the world.
notes: if it's feasible that frank or micro would have told your character where he is, then feel free to show up. or if you are sick maybe you are unlucky enough to encounter this jerkbutt. hit me up if you want something specific!
march 1
[ after frank gifted jessica a lovely murder basket, she suspects he isn't feeling himself (joke's on her tbh.) since only just injecting him with the experimental drug that would (with any luck at all) make him immune to kilgrave's powers, she assumes frank's weird behavior is a side effect and sends him to the clinic to get checked out. after akira puts him on bedrest, he's open to visitors, and of course the first person he wants to see isn't a person at all. he texts hawkeye and micro furiously: ] bring me my fucking dog, you assholes.
[ okay, so he might be a little testy. once a sleepy max just out of surgery is brought to the clinic, too, the dog will lay at the foot of his bed, alternating between lazily guarding and even lazier dozing. frank hates being stationary. he hates feeling useless. the aches and pains are taking a toll on him, but not as much as the rising tide of frustration and irritability. even if he's usually not a chill guy by a landslide, today he's especially twitchy. he'll likely be up long into the night fantasizing different and creative ways to make kilgrave hurt. oh, hi kids. didn't see you there. ]
march 2
[ frank hasn't slept much. between the fever and refusing to take anything stronger than aspirin, he's sweating and out of it, an angry red rash climbing steadily up the back of his neck to peek out of his black jumpsuit collar. the blankets are on his feet, but he keeps kicking them off. he hates being sick, and he knows he's a terrible patient besides. maria always used to scold him for acting like a child; or worse than their actual children since they took being sick like a champ, just happy for the day away from school. he could endure torture and pain aplenty, max the dog had witnessed both first-hand. he lived in bunkers buried in the sand and traveled to countries that were just holes in the ground, but a little fever and nausea and he's ready to die. every time a cold shiver wracks his spine, he wishes for it even; picturing the bullet in his skull. the doctors telling him a shift in millimeter increment would have killed him. should have, even the way it is.
max is on the floor now, his big block head peeking out from underneath the cot. he watches the door, alerting frank to any new arrival with a tiny growl before shutting his eyes again. the noise little more than a rattly rumble from the dog's barrel chest. the message is clear: you take this one, dad. i'll get the next. ]
no subject
slowly, very slowly, without looking away: frank nods. his eyes are bulging out of his head and his teeth clenched like a rabid pitbull ready to strike. then tetora's words are filtering back in. he had talked to kilgrave. he almost-- no. that doesn't matter. if tetora can do all this then kilgrave couldn't control him, could he? except he had gotten to rey and even kara. is there anything that bastard can't take away from him?
when frank finally turns back to look at the younger man, his eyes are wide and vulnerable -- terrified. his fists slowly loosen on the table in defeat. if this vaccine doesn't work he'll be at this dickbag's mercy forever. he'll never get peace and neither will jess. and that's what pisses him off most of all. that she has to face her abuser over and over and over again. that in order to keep everyone safe she has to keep dredging up her own pain. ]
That's him. Kilgrave.
no subject
kilgrave.
tetora's expression smooths out to a mask of impenetrable blankness, and he watches the many tics and tells on hotdog's face narrate a horrific story that's founded on anger and helplessness. he can read the missing lines somewhat - something dark, something ugly and hulking and immeasurably disgusting must've happened to her. the list of possibilities run the gamut of horrors that tetora's intimately familiar with, having been a victim of the same himself. but maybe this time—
maybe this time it's about becoming the perpetrator. tetora reaches out, offers what he thinks is a comforting touch on hotdog's wrist, and says: ]
Maybe it's not about killing him. Maybe you just have to keep him alive.
[ just alive. ]
no subject
but he might still be vulnerable to him. there's no way to know. he pulls in a rattling breath and nods, his pupils dilated. oh, he understands. he understands and he wants. needs, even, to settle the score. ]
They're testing a vaccine and I'm the guinea pig. [ that's why he's sick. he licks his lips and slowly, reluctantly, pulls his hand out of tetora's grip to go back for his coffee. ]
no subject
So your fever, the whole "stay in bed" thing, that's the vaccine. [ tetora nods, drawing his hand back as he folds his arms and leans his elbows on the table. ] I'm guessing you volunteered to be the first one for this thing, too.
[ he's 40% sure he could be wrong, but the 60% in the opposite direction is a pretty strong feeling; much as hotdog might hate to hear it, he wears hearts on his sleeve, plural, because surely no one can have this much space in their mortal body to care for as many people as hotdog seems to care about. a part of him wonders if he could test the vaccine on himself, too - if the vaccine could possibly cure him of his own abilities, the worst of which he hasn't told hotdog yet for obvious reasons.
he can tell people to stop breathing, and they would, if he tries hard enough.
it's not the best conversation starter. ]
Is anyone else on the list of guinea pigs?
no subject
Jess and I agreed a long time ago that I'm the most expendable one. Easiest to kill, too. [ freaks. he doesn't say it with any bitterness, he likes what he is. relishes in it. ]
The others who Kilgrave targeted, if I make it. And then we can start innoculating anyone who's vulnerable. See how he likes being helpless.
no subject
hotdog has more value than he thinks he has, tetora thinks. ]
You're gonna make it. You have to make it.
People count on you.
no subject
like tetora says: they depend on him. he takes an audible gulp before setting his cup aside and lacing his fingers on the tabletop. ]
It was never even a question before, you know? I was always supposed to go out, avenging my family. I wasn't meant to survive, not the first time or the last. But I always did. Couldn't help it. Had to claw my way back. I had to live, even when there was nothin' to live for.
[ he glances out the window again. the permeating darkness around them is a comfort, as is kilgrave's retreating back. that shit stain will never touch him or what's his ever again. ]
So yeah, I'll make it. I always do. Count on that. [ frank makes it sound like a challenge, and maybe it is. a request, even, for tetora to make him hold up his end. he can't be reckless with his life in a place where there is no permanent death, and maybe that's the greatest irony of all. ]
no subject
he wants to ask hotdog. he wants to ask so badly, to spill out the words sitting on his tongue but it's too soon. too early. too rude of him to ask if he's just waiting for the right person to die for, the same way tetora's waiting for that sign that he's done living.
he knows (he knows) it's just a stopgap. for him, anyway, it's always been a stopgap. death always had a place for him - if only he'd stop running.
tetora eyes hotdog with a searching gaze. ]
Avenging your family - how'd you do it?
cw: graphic violence and general weird dreamscape shit
[ and maybe a few who didn't. he likes to pretend that he's perfect, that he's never killed an innocent on purpose. the truth is he likes inflicting pain; he likes to hurt and be hurt. tokyo disintegrates underneath them as though a great big hand has come out of the sky and crumpled up the scene like a doodle it wasn't happy with. the same veiled memory tetora has seen before filters through, but it's like watching from afar. a hazy dreamlike scene of frank's family being gunned down on their picnic blanket in front of the carousel. it's from frank's perspective but then blood gets in his eyes and it's over. everything he ever loved is gone.
a crisp memory is next, one of frank being "interrogated" by men with irish accents. he seems delighted to be there, like he'd put himself there on purpose. "Do I look nervous to you?" his torturer's expression falters, and this time tetora can see the whole scene including frank, like it's a really bloody movie. think quentin tarantino. they bring in the same brown dog that's at his feet now, and frank goes from smug to panicked. he pleads with the kitchen irish, don't hurt him. don't hurt the dog. they put a powerdrill bit through his foot and his screams carry them to the next part. to him shooting every last one of them even while he gimps around the space. he's in command of the scene, murmuring a phrase. "One batch, two patch, penny and a dime." each time a round goes off, he says the words. then a man in a devil costume is screaming his name, is trying to get him to calm down, but it's too late for that.
everything seems to speed up as they go, each time the scenery shifts it's faster, and frank slowly disappears from next to tetora. he's vanished inside his own memories. there's him, listening to his xo's testimony at trial, then him putting a bullet in the same man's head. there's him in a white jumpsuit taking out twelve men in less than seven minutes. there's a broad man, much broader and taller than even frank, and they fight but the words are inaudible. another man's voice filters over instead, telling frank he'd never know who killed his family. that no one cared.
then the tape fast-forwards, all the way to him at the safe house with micro. he's cleaning a gun, yelling about gun safety and dog ownership. the two bicker like an old married couple. the next killings go even quicker, much to frank's chagrin. one by one until he makes it to agent orange. to laughing while the other man hits him, again tied to a chair, but looking like he belongs there. like he'd orchastrated the scene specifically for his own pleasure. it isn't until he's lying in a pool of blood, his wife harkening him towards death, that time stops. it starts to turn in reverse. tetora will see his life with his family in snipets, which is how frank lived them anyway. short, cherished moments between deployments. overseas missions where he thought he was doing right by god and country.
there's a boy who looks like frank drawing the hulking silhouette of a soldier on the wall. when he gets in trouble he just asks his mother, "Who will protect us when Daddy's not here?" then frank is sitting beside a girl who looks like his wife, teaching her the first few bars to pretty woman. they're laughing and he kisses her forehead. they all three ride the carousel now while another man looks on. he might be a few years younger than frank, and he's attractive; but his eyes are calculating like bullets. he sets eyes on them like targets though he offers them all bright smiles when they disembark. frank embraces him like a brother.
a death knell tolls louder than the din of any voice or hit, and frank is bleeding out again, that same handsome man standing over him now. "Oh, how I love to watch you work, Franky." an energized coo of delight. and then there's nothing, and instead micro is over him crying, weeping openly about losing his friend. frank's hand slips from maria's in his dream and he takes a gasping, blood-filled breath in the present. micro laughs through the tears and holds him close until the ambulance gets there.
frank appears behind tetora now, an eerie calm cast over his expression. they're in the park at night and screams are coming from the carousel. "You're gonna wanna see this," he murmurs darkly, and suddenly the scene is right before them. frank is there, punching the handsome man's face until it isn't handsome anymore. he turns and breaks the big mirror with billy's head, then drags him down the length of the glass. he's taunting him, how he won't be pretty anymore. it's billy's turn to laugh, spitting blood on frank. but he doesn't stop until the other man crumples to the ground, bleeding from every orifice on his face as if frank had ripped it clean off. the dream frank looks up at the frank and tetora that watch and his expression is unbalanced, but satisfied. ]
Death was too good for a man who was supposed to be my brother. [ he spits the word like vitriol. ]
cw: graphic violence and general weird dreamscape shit
precious little gems smothered in a pool of red, all in the name of some futile chase for more, and more, and more. nothing really changes, no matter where they came from. the dead remain dead, and there's always someone trying to put more in the grave.
he had a pretty wife.
cute kids, too.
here's a man trying to find the good in the world even as he's ripping it apart without knowing it.
here's a man who—
"You're gonna wanna see this,"
and he does. it's almost artistic, how the whole scene plays out - like one of those ridiculously pulpy movies that reek of sugar-flavored syrup and food coloring, geysers and geysers of the stuff bursting out of the seams. and at the centerpiece is a man, who should've known better, who knew better and decided the odds were worth it anyway. here he lay, on the ground, face shredded as frank towers over him like a gladiator.
the winner, but also the world's greatest loser - no one really wins when it comes to revenge.
but damn if this win didn't taste sweet for a good long minute, even for a spectator such as tetora.
-
when hotdog speaks, it's like gravel crunching under the boot heel of a drill sergeant. death was too good for a man who was supposed to be my brother, he says, and his voice carries. it carries like a sack of meat drags on a cement floor, wet and heavy; tetora can feel the words against the back of his teeth. ]
You're better than I would've been.
[ better, because tetora never knew anything that didn't taste like a storm's anger, never knew a moment where he stopped his hand from taking men down when he wanted them dead. restraint is for better men, stronger men than he is. ]
You did what you had to.
no subject
I'm not better than anyone. [ he gruffs, fixing tetora with his stare as he materializes in the seat across from him. he got his family killed, billy was just the blunt instrument, wielded by a man he should've killed years ago. how naive he had been, how patriotic. but now tetora knows the bulk of it, he's laid it out in grim detail. he regrets that too, pulling him into his nightmare, but maybe that was inevitable when they'd met. he has to believe there's a reason they came together or all of this stupid silent place really is pointless. ] But you're right, I did what I had to. That's what I've always done.
cw: child abuse, hostage scenario and mass murder (1/3)
they sit there for a long moment, steeped in a heavy silence that's waiting to breathe - and when it does, it's to tetora's voice. a chuckle, wet and sad, the rusted trucks parked outside this half-remembered diner, with their brick reds giving way to orange and brown at the edges. there's a faint scent of frying eggs, a shared sensation of cooking oil on the tongue. he's not sure if it's frank's vividly quiet memories or his own lack of them - as if the mind is filling in the gaps.
he taps lean fingers on the linoleum scrubtop, moves the salt and pepper shakers to align against the edge of the napkin holder. ]
You're better than me.
I just... I killed everyone. I'd kill them all, even if they don't deserve it.
[ he lays flat on the table top both of his hands, and the scene shifts to an office lobby. it's a nice space, if you discount the hostage situation currently taking center stage. a man with an eyepatch and a pair of automatics is ranting, aiming at the hapless salary men and women just trying to make a living, his teenaged accomplice attempting to calm him down. but there, at the back, if frank knows where to look - there's a boy with a black shirt on, a picture of a woman's naked breast sewn over as a patch on the left breast. this boy is calm, quiet, even as bullets erupt from the windows and razes the hostage taker to pieces.
that boy, the one who will become tetora, picks up the guns in the aftermath.
picks them up, like he'd been told, and kills the teenager accomplice first before going through everyone else in the scene.
no witnesses, tetora murmurs in the voice of someone possessed with ruthless anger, because the next scene is—
is an old, wizened man with a wide-brimmed hat, telling the same young boy that some things must be done for the greater good. that some men must die for it. toguchi, the man who took hostage the office floor, is one such man - the old man insists, he cannot be left alive. much as it pains him, he says, they all have to make sacrifices—
as the scene changes again, and this time they're in a laboratory cell, a table with straps holding the same boy from before. they shock him repeatedly. over and over, until the boy stops yelling, and then notes are taken down and the process is restarted. the boy never cries out for a mother, for a father; the boy has never known either, so why would he?
they bring out the knives next - and then everything goes black.
]
cw: child abuse, sexual assault, drugs, murder (2/3)
this is the best part, he says with so much fury he's incandescent from the flames they burn in him. this is what they're good at.
this is a video clip of the same boy from before, and he looks docile, even kind. an old cathode-ray television plays the clip in grainy quality - a twelve year old boy, finally named, retells the horrors of the hostage taking. how the man went crazy and opened fire on everyone, even his accomplice. how scared he was. how horrific it had all been.
and then the old man appears again, turning the television off with a quiet congratulations, as tetora, finally given a name, stands expressionless, eyes stuck to the screen long after the man has left it shut off.
it all bleeds into an open field, after a while, and there's a moment where the whole thing fragments before coming back whole. six kids, none of them tetora, are banded together and committing crimes - blowing up people's fingers through toys, inciting school bombings, soliciting perverted old men to bed only to poison them to death. child's play, they joke around, but the girl who leads them keeps saying they're missing their seventh.
tetora needs to play by the rules - and he won't.
he won't, so it's back to the table for him, back to the old man, back to the woman who looks like a two-dollar whore and demands he call her mother. back to "testing the limits of his abilities", the doctors would say, all because his code is corrupted, an inheritance from the man he was copied from.
shinji nishizono, his "original", had been fucking his life up even before he had it. they had the gall to use his surname for him - like it's a joke, like it's funny to name a kid after the man he's supposed to replace in due time.
tetora understood hatred then. every cut was shinji's fault. every shock was shinji's fault. every instruction to kill a man or woman or an entire family is shinji's fault, because he left, he managed to get out and he left without looking back - and now tetora had to fill in for him, and he's nowhere near ready for the job.
-
when tetora starts to rebel, he starts with the lucy six. one, two, three, four - he and shinji race to pick them apart because the grand prize is freedom, but—
-
—but tetora discovers his telepathy ahead of time, and he skips from his body and into the leader girl's own, destroying her mind just for the chance to drive a knife through shinji's side - and he succeeds.
-
but then miwa shows up.
-
at first, she's just a regular girl. she's in her school uniform, her long hair left unbraided, and she's— she's holding a gun, she's in the middle of a plane wreckage, she's death become woman as she stands on the deck of a ship staring out into the sea.
what matters here is this: tetora is fourteen, maybe fifteen, and he's in lab clothes, the kind you dress someone up in before you turn them into guinea pigs on a metal slab. tetora's almost a young man and there's a girl offering him freedom - only if he kills her.
only if he takes matters into his own hands and frees her.
he doesn't know any other answer but yes, but before she finishes giving him the code that will free him, shots ring out, and there—
—on the burning deck is shinji nishizono, dead, and miwa, precious miwa, braindead.
tetora tries to swim to shore, but it doesn't last.
i'm so sick of this, his younger self yells, i'm so sick of all of you. i can't wait to finally kill you.
-
he succeeds, but the cost is the candyman.
-
the candyman appears in his life in the form of a mild-mannered american who can't speak. his voice comes out through some infernal device strapped to his neck, which decodes the movement of his throat muscles into a monotone narration. he has gentle hands. so gentle, so careful, even when he's forcefeeding tetora the first of the drugs he's going to end up hooked on. for his own good, the candyman says. the mouth gags and the blindfolds and the full-body restraints are for his own good. the hands on his ankles are for his own good. the hands on his thighs, and higher; the hands on his neck; the hands that pry open his mouth and feed him pills to keep him alive are doing their best to keep him safe.
to keep him perfect.
-
it doesn't take long before tetora's working for the drugs of his own volition. before he's roping other kids to form his own merry band of murderers, wiping their memories every time he's moved to a different location, but always, always — the candyman is there to guide him.
"guide" him, his damn ass.
tetora knew what they were doing to him, but he can't break out of the cycle just yet. ]
cw: lots of murder, acts of terrorism (3/3 done oh god)
tetora stops, for a moment, and for the first time he doesn't look frank in the eye because— because what do you say, in moments like this? "don't pity me" is a given. "don't treat me any differently" is almost pithy. "this is a thing that's happened to me, and i'm still angry for it" - it's written on every surface of tetora's skin, cutting all the way down to his bones. surely that much is clear.
it doesn't erase the fact that tetora has now murdered his way through every age bracket and demographic. it doesn't change the fact that he needs drugs to remain sane. it doesn't change the fact that, in his rage and burning want to escape the bonds of his creation, he's killed innocents along the way.
but man it sure is a great feeling to shoot the candyman through the throat and listen to him choke.
choke on it, his younger self says, as alarms blare above him. he'd gotten out, finally.
he'd gotten out.
-
the next scenes that follow are just picturesque views of the places he disappears to - slums in foreign countries where he blends in with the junkies and the dealers; back alleys in tokyo, the wharfs at the bay; strangers' homes where he pretends to be someone else just so he can stay one night out of the streets. and interspersed between the scenery are textbooks and laptops, blackmail and extortions in exchange for information, long nights spent planning and planning and planning.
-
until finally, he returns to japan at eighteen, and promptly blows up the national government's peace summit and all of the delegates inside.
-
one name: onihigata, the son of the old man who dragged him into this mess, the man who now holds power over gakuso, and the man who won't stop until tetora is either returned to the fold, or dead.
-
and then it's over.
tetora stops there, pulls away gasping in the liminal space they currently occupy. he wants to vomit. he wants to throw up, to empty himself again like he's used to doing whenever he's in withdrawal. he doesn't have any memories from before the hostage taking; that was his birth. that was his baptism into the world.
no birthday parties, no silly hats, no candles and holy water. just gunfire and blood smeared on the cheeks.
they're back at the diner; it's as good as any place to be, now.
tetora draws his knees up to his chest, threads his hands over them. that's me, he says, toneless. that's where i come from. ]
You're a good man, Frank Castle.
it literally took me 3 days to read those tags thank
his gaze is trained down into his coffee cup. they're back at pete's. he lets out a low, rattly breath as his eyes snap back up to tetora's. you're a good man, frank castle. no he isn't. he's never been, but he can't help feeling some type of way about the words all the same. there's no pity and certainly no judgment in the way he holds the younger man's eyes. ]
You're okay too, Tetora. [ he won't use the man's other name, he won't ever use it after what he saw. for a moment he even mistakes tetora's vitriol for shinji as his own before he's able to swallow it back down. for once he isn't worried about what someone will think of who he is - what he is. he feels safe here, as fucked up as that is. ]
i deeply apologize okay
[ it hadn't been all that bad. just as the world isn't a perfect black and white, tetora accepts that there had been times when things weren't so bad. the days when he could walk down the streets of ikebukuro and shop to his heart's content. the days when, as a child, he was allowed to roam as he wanted, so long as he came back to his handlers and let them tuck him into his straitjackets for the night. the times when he could freely walk the streets, powerful with the knowledge that he's on the side of the gods, the men who made things happen.
with knowledge comes a bitter wisdom. with bitter wisdom came jadedness, and the sour, piss-colored filter that taints all future joy with the fact that all of it is as permanent as the weather.
but this - tetora can accept this for what it is.
this is a good thing, untainted even through its bruised existence. ]
I think we're ready to head back. Do you want to?
you should always apologize
Ready if you are, pal.
no subject
[ the diner fades out to white, tables and countertops being replaced with a clean white that's somehow not blinding. for a quick moment a procession of men and women, all too similar-looking to each other, appear in the spaces, each one seeming to be saying something out loud—
he let you in?
they all disappear as a low static starts to ring in both tetora's and frank's ears - the sound of their return to the waking world, where the silence is different. the sudden change of perceptions catch tetora at the throat, his own breathing sounding loud in his ears.
a blink or two grounds him to the present, and tetora sends a quick message: ]
You okay?
no subject
as his eyes come open shakily, tet's face comes into focus mere inches from his own. and slowly, he nods, tapping P-E-A-C-H-Y against the boy's wrist before breaking away as he spirals into a rattling, wheezing coughing fit. ]
no subject
sick as hotdog - frank, his name is frank - is, tetora still finds himself slumping next to him on the cot for a short moment, catching his breath. there's something about telepathic mindlinks that are exhausting beyond the sort of tiredness that the body experiences - it's an exhaustion that sits against the bones, soaking all the way to the marrow like a disease.
it was worth it, though. this experience had been several shades of fucked up shit that tetora wouldn't wish on anyone no matter how much he's come to hate them, but it's worth it. tetora reaches out to frank, touching his forehead to leech some of the head pain from his body, staying by him until he falls asleep. in the middle of it, he taps a simple, heartfelt message - thank you. ]