#arcanacontained

[stonesunk]

'Huh? What? I'm awake, I swear!' Jayce mumbled, he hadn't slept in days and been keeping an eye on Caitlyn since Cassandra passed, a quiet ask by Tobias.

Caitlyn  wasn't  doing  much  sleeping  herself  -  refusing  the  sedative  her  father  had  offered  ,  several  times.  She  was  somewhat  thankful  for  the  company  ,  but  pretending  she  was  managing  was  getting  harder  ,  and  the  enforcer  did  not  want  to  cry  in  front  of  Jayce.  Curled  up  in  her  bed  -  truly  she  was  missing  the  warmth  and  safety  that  Vi  offered  her.

❝  you  can  sleep  you  know  ❞ ,  her  eye's  flickering  over  to  him  ,  ❝  I'll  be  fine  ❞.  She  didn't  have  the  energy  to  disappear  or  run.  Caitlyn  just  wanted  to  fall  apart  -  on  her  own.  ❝  and  I  won't  tell  my  father  -  if  that's  who  you're  worried  about  ❞. 

[stonesunk]

[ BLANKET ]: having found the receiver either sleeping or just lying on the couch, sender gently takes a blanket and drapes it over them.

[ TEA ]: sender prepares a mug of hot tea for the receiver.

[ COOK ]: in an effort to boost the receiver’s spirits, sender arrives with all the ingredients needed to make it

From Jayce

❝  you  didn't  have  to  drop  everything  to  come  and  take  care  of  me  you  know  ?  ❞ she  pout's  ,  snuggling  deeper  into  the  blanket  that  Jayce  had  laid  over  her  shivering  body  and  sipping  on  the  mug  of  tea  he'd  brewed  for  her  ,  Caitlyn  was  sick  and  mopping  ,  she'd  come  back  from  her  school  dorm  to  be  in  her  home  comforts  only  to  discover  that  her  parents  were  out  of  town  -  another  business  trip.  ❝  I  just  sort  of  laid  down  and  couldn't  bring  my  self  to  get  back  up  ❞ . 

❝  are  you  sure  you  should  be  here  -  you  don't  want  to  catch  what  ever  this  is  ❞ ,  she'd  been  taken  out  for  three  days  already  ,  no  sign  of  improving  yet  but  Caitlyn  was  over  it.  She  had  no  patience  when  it  came  to  recovery  ,  and  the  fact  it  was  affecting  her  studies  was  mentally  weighing  her  down. 

She'd  seen  the  bag  of  ingredients  Jayce  had  tried  to  sneak  past  her  ,  ❝  if  you're  making  anything  -  please  let  it  be  soup  ❞ ,  she  didn't  have  the  stomach  for  much  else. 

[recursiveimpulse]

[  ACCIDENTAL BRUSH  ]  *  my muse touches your muse ( somewhere intimate ) on accident.

From Jayce

“A little close, don’t you think,” says Viktor mildly, glancing down at the hand much too far up his thigh. He knows Jayce only meant to clap him on the knee and misjudged. He also knows that Jayce will be mortified, which is perhaps the only reason Viktor finds himself… relatively unbothered, visibly trying not to laugh as he watches the realisation set in on Jayce’s face.

He can’t help it: he cracks, laughing behind his hand as Jayce snatches his own hand back like he’s just committed a crime. “It’s fine!”

[recursiveimpulse]

[  CLOSER  ]  *  my muse comes closer, invading more of your muses personal space.

From Jayce

Viktor is so used to Jayce's closeness these days that he usually doesn't really notice it; they've spent enough days and nights huddled at the same workbench or notebook or chalkboard together now that being shoulder to shoulder is nothing to him now. Jayce is much more--how to put it--effusive in his friendship, and Viktor's become accustomed to that, too.

Which is why it's all the stranger that when Jayce leans down to speak in his ear, his lips just shy of brushing Viktor's skin, Viktor's body reacts like he's suddenly started running a marathon. His heartrate quickens; his breath gets stuck somewhere in his chest. The back of his neck starts to burn as if he's been caught doing something embarrassing, which is baffling--it's just Jayce, for fuck's sake.

Viktor clears his throat. "Hang on, I can't hear you over the..." He leans away to turn off the delicate machinery he's working on, putting space between them, then swivels in his chair to face Jayce directly. His expression betrays some of his nerves, his hands fidgeting the moment they're unoccupied. "What were you saying?"

[recursiveimpulse]

[  ACCIDENTAL BRUSH  ]  *  my muse touches your muse ( somewhere intimate ) on accident.

From Huck

It's nothing, really. An accidental brush of the hand just above Viktor's hip as the Herald allows Huck to adjust his robe for him: perhaps humouring them, letting them feel like they're repaying a debt they don't really owe by serving him. But when Huck touches him there's a spark of feeling in his otherwise lifeless metal flesh, and the Herald's expression blanks. He stares straight ahead for too long trying to catalogue the feeling. Trying to understand it, even as the visage of Sky on his other side takes his arm to--hm. To make him ignore it?

Viktor shifts ever so slightly. He rests his hand on Huck's shoulder to halt him, gently, the fastenings on his robe well-secured.

"That will do. Thank you."

[empyreau]

[ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 ] : sender warns the receiver to not antagonize them

Warwick grumbled as Vander and the beast fought between themselves. 'Watch it.' He warned as Viktor dug around his head. 'There's a lot of trauma and repressed memories in here which neither of us have control of.' He exhaled a ragged breath. 'It's a maze. Even we get lost in them. We are struggling to tell what is from who.'

The vastness of Vander's mind, his complete psyche, stretched out above and beyond him. A near infinite expanse--seemingly infinite to those who could not see as he could--that was both pleading and perturbing. But Viktor was unafraid, unflinching, and as he delved further in he made sure to not reach out hastily.

"There is a hostility that I can feel, gathered in certain areas. A call to remain concealed. I will not venture where you do not want me." The harsh reds and jaggedness made up most of the space, overpowered it. Yet, when he looked closer, there were small patches that broke up the anger and the pain. Where nurturing was needed the most. "I can help you parse these parts of yourself, begin to map out the maze and put these memories in their proper place."

[formshaper]

❛If you keep looking at me like that i don’t think i’ll be able to control myself any longer.❜ Warwick a gruff chuckle, as mismatched eyes watched Silco from a distance.

Those eyes were so much like his own now that it rattled. Perhaps it was a fitting punishment, Vander warped and changed beyond recognition, slave to the same violent temper that had almost claimed Silco's life so many years ago, but for Silco it brought no satisfaction. No pleasure. He hadn't wanted to see Vander like this any more than he'd wanted--well, any of this. So much was beyond his control now. Vander's fate; the Undercity; Jinx.

He didn't know what Warwick saw in his gaze. Didn't care to ask. Didn't feel like looking at the myriad cocktail of hate and fear and longing that burned in his belly like acid when their eyes met, afraid of what lay under the surface of it.

I killed you, he thought. Are we even?

Silco looked away from him. Vander's--Warwick's voice had changed, mangled and bestial like the rest of him, but it was still his. The gruff laugh was still the one he'd spent years hearing in the mines; on the street; from the other side of the bar.

He took a long, deliberate drag from his cigarette, breathing out smoke in long plumes.

"Thinking of strangling me again?" He asked dryly, knowing that wasn't at all what Warwick had meant and deciding now was a good time not to care. "You were formidable even as a man. I shudder to think what those paws of yours can do now."

[recursiveimpulse]

 night terrors .   hold  my  muse  after  they  wake  up  from  a  nightmare . + REVERSE 

For Herald Viktor, from Isha

In his old life he had spent little time around children. He had always assumed he would be of no use around them; that at best they might see him as a mildly interesting anomaly of a person, nothing more. The commune had not changed this notion much. The children here were so changed once healed that they didn’t act very much like children at all, and they saw the Herald the way everyone did: as a healer and a leader, a mystical figure that walked among them only when duty called him to do so.

Isha, however, was still very much a child, and she proved all of the Herald’s assumptions about himself wrong when she woke crying from sleep and he found himself settled on the floor with her, holding her in his arms. There was no thought behind it. He had followed Sky’s footsteps here. He had let her lead him to the child and she had trusted he would know what to do, and he did.

“You’re safe,” he said quietly, a low, artificial resonance in his voice on the last word. She was not one of his flock; he couldn’t enter her mind to show her she was safe. It felt… incorrect, to hold a living thing so close with his augmented form. But it was necessary here. “It was a bad dream. It’s alright.”