read my skin, not my lips

This is an indie RP blog for the character of Grey from Snowpiercer. Mun is 18+. This is a sideblog -- for rules, other characters, and everything else, the main blog is bumblebeeindie!

[deus-ex-igenium-blog]

toothxandxclaw:

Kade liked to watch this broken language they shared with each other grow. It was developing every day. It wasn’t even actually real ASL, either. Kade had been lucky enough to know a woman who spoke fluent ASL after he had been deafened, but before she could finish teaching him more than just the basics, she passed away. So since then, Kade, along with the help of a few of his friends, not least of all Gray, had sort of developed his own sign language. KSL, if you will. 

Regardless of how it was created, or what it was exactly, it was nice to have Gray, who was one of the few who took the time to speak to Kade at all. 

No. He signed, twisting his closed fist back and forth. His face was twisted into something resembling uncertainty. Overrated. This word he spelled out using the letters on Gray’s chest. It was faster than using the alphabet by hand. 

It took him a second to put together that Gray was spelling out rainforests. For some reason he kept hearing it in his head as something entirely different. But after a moment the confusing disappeared and he shook his head again. 

And then it really hit him that Gray had gotten him this book to read. He smiled a little, as much as Kade smiled at all these days. 

No, this is great. Thank you. I have not read a book in a long, long time. 

It takes Gray a second to grasp the meaning of overrated. It’s not a word they tend to use much on the train -- at least, not in the tail section. Everything that happens here is just about as expected. The food is always the same, the headcounts are always the same, and the punishments for not falling in line are the same.

Nobody ever really hypes something up only to be let down.

But after a moment, he does get it, and his expression clears of confusion, only to be replaced with more, since he doesn’t know what the fuck Kade’s talking about. The Two Towers is overrated? By who? He has the vague sense that it was a famous book, but not much more than that.

Neither, he signs.

It’s supposed to be a joke. Gray’s still not very good at joking.

Because he can’t resist, he reaches out and touches his fingertips to the corner of Kade’s smile. It’s not an expression you see all that often. Not much to smile about, Gray supposes. But he decides that he likes this expression, and he’ll have to do more to make it happen again.

In return, you get to help me fix the ball today. Gray tugs the communal soccer ball from its hiding place -- where was he even hiding that? -- and spins it on his finger, despite the fact that it’s made from metal scraps for shape and tattered fabric. It’s caved in on one side; one of the kids was a bit too enthusiastic in kicking it. If we leave it too long, the kids will riot.

[deus-ex-igenium-blog]

toothxandxclaw:

To Kade, it likely wouldn’t matter much if Gray moved through the train like an elephant with a stomach ache. All movements were silent movements to him. And though he hadn’t boarded the train deaf, 17 years of living (if you could call it that) in this place had taught him how to survive with or without the gift of hearing. 

Which meant that when Gray dropped the book so unceremoniously onto his chest in the dead of night (it was a saying train-babies, and those young enough would likely not understand, as nothing was silent like death anymore) it was Kade’s first instinct to let his eyes fly open and take a defensive position. In fact, if it had been anyone but the tattooed young man before him, they might have gotten a quick lights-out punch thrown at their jaw. 

But, as it were, it was Gray. So Kade just watched in silence to see what was the matter. It hadn’t really registered yet that the heavy weight on his chest had been a book, much less what book it was, but after a second he sort of caught on. 

He nodded. Yeah, he could read. He was a fair bit older than Gray was when he got on the train. He was far from one of the oldest here, but he was by no means a spring chicken anymore (another cliche that would be lost on the train babies.) There was a time he could have been considered a well educated young man, maybe. Someone with prospects. And then the world turned to shit. 

Kade looked down at the book on his chest and only then realized he hadn’t bothered to move Gray’s hand from his mouth. He took a second to do so now as he picked the thing up and turned it over in his hands. He made an unimpressed face and shrugged his shoulders. No, the book wasn’t that great. Now, if they had any Pat Rothfuss, that was a book he could get into. 

Okay, maybe he didn’t convey all of that with his singular facial expression, but Gray absolutely had to have gotten the point that Kade could read, just wasn’t a huge fan of this particular book. 

Gray’s face falls a little.

It doesn’t take a mind reader to pick up on the fact that Kade is very definitely not into this book, which means he’s read it before. Gray had anticipated the latter, maybe, but not the former.

It’s times like this that being silent actually come in handy: everybody around them is sleeping, and people get very cranky when they’re woken. Sleep is something of a sacred activity in the tail section. It provides a few hours when your brain isn’t lingering on hunger, or cold, or thirst, or boredom. Of course, not many people have pleasant dreams anymore, but it’s still an escape.

Gray sleeps four, maybe five hours a night. He’s too wary to sleep more than that, wary of someone trying to sneak into Gilliam’s bunk and murder him.

So, silently, his hands move in a language that’s entirely for Kade. Everybody else gets pure tattoo-talk; Kade gets half that, half ASL. First pointing to specific letters of the alphabet grid underneath his left collarbone, then a sweeping motion of ASL.

Don’t you like the book?

He gives Kade something of a frown, settling in to sit cross-legged next to him on his bunk.

I can get you a different one. There are three others. One is about, Gray hesitates, not knowing the sign for the words, and instead spells it out on his chest again, rainforests.

[deus-ex-igenium-blog]

@rosequartzwrites / @toothxandxclaw

Books are almost, but not quite, endangered.

Gray was young when he’d first boarded the train, but he remembers books being more plentiful. He remembers a lot of passengers had had them; many had had multiple books, to keep them company on what they’d expected to be the more boring parts of the trip. At the time, he’d only barely known how to read small words, and hadn’t paid much attention to books and words and paper.

It’s only now, long after most of the books had been used for kindling and even food in those last desperately starving moments before things had gotten really bad, that he appreciates the value of them. The value of words.

He never speaks them. Never has, though he doesn’t quite remember why. Gilliam thinks Gray must have been born mute. Gilliam’s also the one who taught him the written version of them, who had picked out which words were important enough to get inked into his skin.

But he knows what a rare relic books are now. There are precisely four of them in the tail section. Gilliam is the keeper of all of them. And it’s taken Gray a lot of persuading to get him to loan one out. The Two Towers, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Gray’s read it, sort of. A lot of it was confusing, since it’s the second book in a series, apparently, and Gray had never really gotten into it. He only sees the value of it as a rare item, not as a literary masterpiece (he’s told).

Still, he’s not entirely sure why he borrows it only to drop it on Kade’s chest while the man’s sleeping.

People in the tail section used to remark that the way Gray moved around silently was creepy, but they’ve long gotten used to him dropping out of seemingly nowhere, being able to move around the carriages like a ghost, or a snake, or a ninja (whatever that is, Gray’s not sure). But he still loosely clasps a hand over Kade’s mouth so he doesn’t wake up with a noise and startle the other sleeping people.

He taps meaningfully at the book, then gestures at Kade. Does Kade know how to read? He’s fairly certain he does.

[mrbeniciodeltoro]

You’ve seen what people do without leadership. They devour one another.