milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"Shiva wept!" Autor yelps, crumpling to the floor of his room in a heap.

He expected every break, sprain, and bruise to stick around after he changed back, so he wasn't surprised at his unsteadiness when his Lego-fused braces dissolved.

But what was viciously unpleasant was that the medication he'd been popping to keep from feeling every break, sprain, and bruise dissipated when his bloodstream changed.

And that he had to feel everything snap again--all at once--in his new bones.

The boy laugh-sobs, quietly sick, and props himself up in the doorframe to catch a wait rat by the tail. When it returns, he takes some tea and some ice and some serious pain pills, and waits for it all to kick in so he can drag himself down to the infirmary.

And so, just because he's in a genuinely good mood and he can't exactly move, heirDrosselmeyer is signed on.

[OOC: Millitimed to around midnight.]

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It's... surprisingly cold in the forest, when you suddenly don't have fur to keep you warm. Sunshine hadn't been able to get into the bar from the outside before the holiday ended. Oh, the lever door-handle on the inside had been a stroke of luck, but the round turning door-knob on the outside wasn't helpful at all to someone stuck without hands. She waited until cover of darkness before emerging from the cover of the trees, grabbing a towel from the laundry to at least cover up with as she sneaks up the outside stairs towards the rooms.

But, of course, as she comes quickly down the hall - towel wrapped securely around her - one of the doors is open. Shit. Should she hide until whoever it is closes their door? Should she walk on past as though nothing is wrong? What if they see her? Wait. So what if they see her?

Sunshine does intend to walk on past the open door without looking for a moment like wandering down the hall in just a towel is anything but normal.... but then she sees Autor, lying propped up against the door frame and looking far past the worse for wear.

"Autor!" Rae exclaims, surprised by his battered state. "What happened to you?"

He actually doesn't look that battered. Really, he's fine, ankles and wrists and elbows aside.

Autor glances up, already wincing at the sound of her voice because oh, here we go--but! she's!

"Double carthaginian hell!" he hisses, flushing and jamming his eyes shut.

"Rae," he says weakly, inclining his head as far as it can go, "I want you to seriously consider everything you know about me, and see if you really need to ask that question."

He pauses, as if to let her muse for a moment--shouldn't take much more than one--but then continues speaking. "Then I want you to go get dressed."

Sunshine bristles, just a bit, drawing the towel more securely around her. In fact, there may be a minor telekinesis spell keeping it in place, now.

"Then it's just the usual, then," she says, sounding not surprised. "Doing something stupid and getting yourself hurt as a result."

Of course that's what it is. Autor no more thinks his everyday plans through than he does his plan to set himself up as puppermaster (even after he's expressed his sheer disgust at being surrounded by the characters, the puppets from a story.

"Don't worry about my current lack of fashion sense. I'll take care of it. In the meantime, I can get you down to the infirmary."

Autor nods thoughtfully. "Yes, that's about right," he says quietly, and smiles, briefly, while keeping his eyes on his lap. "Cover me in wax and watch me drown, but flying is still worth it."

The boy shakes his head, still turning his gaze away. "I'll argue with you about the infirmary later," he murmurs, because really, he should get down there sometime, "but your not wearing anything isn't just a fashion issue. It's... you're not... Why are you in a towel?"

This isn't exactly the way he expected their next conversation to go. More yelling, definitely. It might be that he's a bit loopy already from pain meds.

Edited 2013-06-08 06:45 (UTC)

It certainly isn't how she expected their next conversation to go, either. But he's hurt, and that takes precedence, even though she's angry with him.

"Well, deer don't tend to keep a change of clothes handy, especially if they've been locked outside for a couple of days," she says, dryly. "Listen, I'm going to get you to the infirmary, but if the towel bothers you so much-"

This is the sort of thing she can help. The towel is green and fuzzy, but a second later, it is a light green sundress, falling softly around her knees as she kneels down to help him up. "Better?"

"Why didn't you just transmute that at the doo--no, wait!" Autor cries, and hisses when he jerks his ankle getting away from her help. A fresh wave of nausea strikes him in the belly, and he leans his head on the doorframe.

"Bar has some amazing opiates, but I can't stand yet," the boy says softly, giving her a pale-faced, sweat-dotted smile. "I've just been not moving until they kick in all the way."

After taking a minute or so to breathe, he turns his head towards his room and away from her. "I was hoping you'd catch me after this, so you could just be angry without any complications to it."

Rae makes a face at the suggestion that she should've already transmuted the towel. She hadn't really planned on running into prudishly modest megalomaniacs along the way. Maybe she should have. This is Milliways.

"Like there's ever going to not be complications between us, Autor," she says, exasperated, as she checks over his ankle and any other visible injuries without touching him. "If you want, I can lift you - levitate you, I mean - so that it wouldn't exacerbate whatever damage has already been done. You'd not have to put pressure on anything broken or move in ways that might hurt." It also takes the question of his balance out of the equation.

She'll find he has few bumps and bruises, but that he has bound both wrists with Bar-ordered braces and made a half-hearted attempt to do the same to his elbow.

The boy peers at her cautiously, curiously, seriously, and then with resigned recognition and a heavy weariness.

"All right. That would be quite a bit easier than crawling down there myself," he murmurs, and then yawns. "I've taken a pain reduction potion from the moon and the strongest opiate Bar can give me without a prescription. They won't interact with each other. So I should be all right to dangle behind you, even though that will be terribly embarrassing."

He fidgets a little. "Let me know how I can pay you back for this. I will think of a way if you don't."

Edited 2013-06-09 18:14 (UTC)

"There's nothing embarrassing about accepting help from others," she starts to say, but the hollow phrase is ended by something of a grimace. "I can't even say that without feeling ridiculous. I hate accepting help, too, but it's important to know when a little embarrassment is better than the alternative."

Very slowly - and with Sunshine offering a general hand-motion so that Autor can see what to expect from the levitation - she lifts him from the ground to his usual standing-height. He touches nothing, and all of his limbs, broken or not, are supported. Not restrained, but they will not dangle loosely unless he chooses to let them do so.

"You can pay me back by paying it forward," she remarks. "Everything all right? I'm not hurting you, am I?"

And Autor laughs. It's weak, but genuine. "That is true, but frankly, I figured that if I said no, you'd be angry with me due to the wrong stubbornness."

The boy is grateful for the warning, though, and the support without restraints. He murmurs ~~appreciative~~ envious comments about her ability to hoist people in the air, and then yawns again. "It hurts, but that's not you and there's nothing you can do about it. So don't worry too much?"

"Oh, I would be angry, yes," she answers. "I still am, really. But if you had refused, I'd have gone to get people from the infirmary to bring you down there, and it still wouldn't have gone the way you wanted."

They begin moving; Autor floats out of the doorway and starts to follow her down the hall. "I figure this way is easier on everyone involved."

Autor unconsciously curls his limbs inward, grimacing. "Please tell me you're joking," he says quietly, knowing she's not and hating her a little for it.

"You know I'm not," she replies quietly, glancing over her shoulder at him. "You're hurting; the infirmary staff can help, and that sort of help goes better the sooner it's started."

"Even if you didn't want my help, even if... even if you were my enemy, I'd still be bound to try. You understand?"

She can't not. To her, it isn't going out of her way - she is required by her own sense of right and wrong, as part of being human to do what she can. There is some sense of duty there, that what she can do, she must do. Even the pacifist, vegetarian, squeamish baker will put herself in horrible danger and tear the hearts out of vampires on the off-chance that she can save the human world from slipping into darkness.

Edited 2013-06-10 05:02 (UTC)

"I understand your need to try," he says, as patiently as he can while trying not to move. "And it's not a bad thing. But I am awake and aware and I have a right to sit there, injured."

He draws a breath through his nose and tries to relax his neck. "I trust you, Rae," he says softly. "But I hate it when people who need to help usually do so without asking me? What you've just told me is a threat to my person. That you'll move me without my consent when I'm vulnerable and in pain and can't get away."

"It isn't your responsibility to fix me," he says, and lays his fingers on her shoulder. "Nor is it my responsibility to let you try because it would be easier for you."

The mind rebels, of course. She wouldn't know who she is, if she weren't the person who tries to help. It's what anyone in her world would be expected to do. It'd be inhumane to do otherwise, in a world where humanity is constantly under attack and thus fiercely exhibited. She would act out of a need and desire to help, to lessen hurting, to keep people safe, even from themselves - it goes against everything she fights for, to think of helping those who are hurt and in need of help as being a threat to them.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, lifting a hand to cover his fingers with her own. Trying to accept what Autor is saying - though she knows he is right - wrenches at her heart. "I... get what you're saying."

Autor sighs gratefully, and tries to pull himself forward enough to bonk his head into her back.

"Thank you," he murmurs, into her hair. The scent of her Lily-of-the-valley shampoo turns his stomach at first, as he remembers the terrified way she clung to him as a little girl. But it only takes him a moment to feel the comforting weight of her fingers on his own, and reorient himself.

It's a good smell.

He raises his head, yawning. "The levitation thing is still ridiculously convenient. Harsh."

Edited 2013-06-10 07:14 (UTC)

Of course, Sunshine is still aware that, if she were to find Autor in pain but unwilling to accept her help, she would stay with him. Likely arguing with him to keep him awake either until help he'd accept arrives, or until he is able to reach help himself. She doubts her ability to willingly leave with him in pain, but she has no doubt of their ability to find something to argue about. They could argue alliteratively. Or in rhyming couplets.

She is mildly surprised by being bonked in the back by Autor's head, but doesn't pull away. When he lifts his head again, she steps to his side as they turn the corner.

"Harsh? In what way?"

"Oh no," he says, and yawns again, drooping like a shade fern planted in the sun. "Don't tell me I've picked up a Yugoism."

He tries to adjusts his glasses, but he's met with a sudden, gasp-worthy stab of pain in his wrist. He'd been successful in not moving anything too much, but he'd forgotten. The constant throbbing ache of everywhere had subsided to a significantly duller roar under the drugs, and the sensation of floating made him drop his guard.

"I'm all right," he says weakly, but quickly. "I just did something stupid, that's all."

"Careful," she warns, turning quickly in alarm at his gasp. "The bones you've broken aren't going to want to fill their usual function, and they'll let you know."

Talking, sometimes, will help distract someone from pain, so as they slowly head down the stairs, she asks, "Yugoism? That'd be from that guy Yugo who says dude all the time? I met him once, when all that music was following people around."

"Oh, they have," he croaks quietly, clutching at his fingers. "And yes, that's the one. Dude and harsh and Kittenbrodudeski. A list of conversational garnish as long as my arm."

The boy closes his eyes. "Were you spared the musical plague, then, or did it finally get you?"

"Thankfully I was spared," she says, not looking at him.

She's a bad liar. Rae was really, really not spared.

"'Kittenbrodudeski'?"

See a subject-change in its natural habitat!

Autor is a music student attuned to the tones of lies. And he knows Rae's very, very well. "I do hope you didn't suffer too much under the song's power," he says softly, with an eighth note of concern.

See a predator going after weaker prey!

"The music following everyone led me to take refuge in the kitchen," she nods. "It was quiet in there."

At least, for a while.

"So, Yugo calls you Kittenbrodudeski?" Rae guesses, striving to save the endangered subject change.

Autor is also well-versed in her lies by omission, so he frowns at the back of her head. "Was it?" he says lightly. "I assume it became gradually louder when your song did."

And now he's frowning for an entirely different and significantly more annoying reason. "Augh. Yes, he does. He is the best at finding ways to exacerbate my delicate condition"--and here he snorts--"of exasperation."

The kid is clearly very fond of him.

Edited 2013-06-10 09:21 (UTC)

"If I were evil, I would remember that nickname and use it from time to time in order to distract you - it's good to know," Rae replies. She may almost be smiling. A good part of her is still angry with him about his life choices and future plans - someone for whom control over his own body and his own agency is such a sticking point shouldn't be so gung-ho about taking away that agency from others.

But at the same time, she has missed this sort of banter.

"Especially in situations like this, where I want to keep you from finding out that I may have ended up dancing around the kitchen, singing a repetitive, annoying, but nevertheless very catchy song into a whisk held like a microphone."

>_> Yup, almost smiling where he can see.