((pat, shoulder or remind for null))
[ remind ] sender sets their hands on both sides of receiver's face and tries to get them to look at them directly
Oh my sweet stupid thing, your mask is slipping, hanging on by threads and thumbnails.
You're getting bad again, barely eating, always high with your lips wrapped tight around the mouth of a bottle or the mouthpiece of your hookah.
Your lungs are 90% smoke by volume.
Your work phone rings and it sounds like screaming that nobody else seems to hear.
You stay sober as long as you can, to keep your kids and animals safe, but the second they're safe and asleep you're chasing daydreams down the neck of a bottle.
What drugs and drinks can't numb are buried beneath mounds of food and flesh, gross over indulgence that would make Bacchus blush if he kept a much closer eye on you.
When Null finds you, you're hunched in the velvet swaddled sin pits of the Warren licking caviar and truffle shavings off the bare brood patch (belly) of a pretty Drow boy with eyes like Angel's and a fat set of spinnerets to match.
The air is thick with rainbow smoke that coils into impossible swirls and shapes as it saws through your lungs and soothes an ache you cannot name.
The sheer waves of Null's disgust shroud the room in a Darkness you Know but cannot make sense of in your shit-wrecked state. You pause, mouth open, tongue lolling and stare at the creature striding towards you with purpose. Something cold settles in your belly, the fine hairs along your spine lifting as Null comes closer and closer.
The Drow boy sits bolt upright, many eyes widening before he scuttles out of your arms like a terrified cat.
Null's hands are suddenly there on your face, the deep and familiar miasma of various cleaners and chemicals that clings to Null like a perfume fills your chest and reawakens your ache with a new and terrible hunger.
Hands.
Not gloves.
Not the chem treated rubber of Null's everyday gloves.
Their bare hands are on your face, cupping it gentle, making you look them in the eye.
Soft, cold, pulse wrong and erratic like something pretending to be a person after only hearing about them secondhand.
Your breath hitches, ears back, skin prickling. For a second you are not a person, but an animal backed into a cage and struggling not to bite. You could bite Null if you wanted, tear them apart before they could blink and go back to the depths of your debauchery.
You could
Should
Scratch out their eyes, those sulfur yellow eyes that look at you with such care and warmth it makes you SICK.
How dare they?
How dare they care about you right now? How dare they touch you so tenderly that it feels
It feels
It feels more intimate than all the sex you've ever had with all the people you've ever loved with your half a dozen hearts thumping the whole time.
Another hitch that becomes a hiccup, becomes a sob, tears streaming down your face before you can stop them. The emptiness inside you yawns and aches like the maw of a teething child and begs to be soothed but all you can do is sit there and cry into the hands of a being so
So
So...
So Nothing, Everything, all at once.
