whatever number cold reactor is send post (/j /j ummmmmmm how about 99?)
I'M NOT DOING COLD REACTOR GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!
(it was number 3 :3c )
alright, 99! 99...
haha it was totally Lost by Half Alive. Toootally. anyway I started spinning this in my head and I think I have rendog disease or something. I couldn't stop thinking about him. enjoy some treebark rel!!
(611 words)
Ren watches the fire flicker but he’s mostly watching it reflect off Martyn’s face. He forgets exactly how long it had been since he’d last seen him—a while. Aside from short periods, fleeting moments, memories. Nothing like this, nothing like the tangible warmth of a person, nothing like the solid form of a desperately loyal man with, very clearly, nothing to lose. He leans back on his hands, pushing his glasses up on top of his head. The half-moons rest at his crown, the small gold chain tickling the fluff of his ears.
He squints at Martyn, who isn’t looking at him.
He looks older—not aged, because it hadn’t been that long since he’d seen the man. Maybe a few years, but it was like time and stress had taken chisels to his features, made them tired and shadowy and strong. He follows the scar down his cheek, the hints of what he could see under the collar of his shirt geometric and pale. It’s still him—Ren knows this, that Martyn hadn’t magically become someone new in the moments they’d been away, that all his careless devotion came spilling out the moment the two of them actually met, but he guarded something in his chest like it would wither away if he didn’t. That’s what Ren felt was so different. Or maybe it wasn’t different at all, and he had just been allowed to see the soft inside of Martyn for a moment longer than others.
He feels a bit like he’s seeing it now, watching the fire in his eyes, and watching Martyn watch the sky.
“Is it working?” Martyn says suddenly. Ren startles, realizing that he’d been chewing on the pad of his thumb. He furrows his eyebrows
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re staring at me like you’re trying to read my mind,” Martyn says, offering somewhat of a lopsided smile as he lowers his eyes to look at Ren directly. Ren feels his shoulders soften and round. “Is it working?”
He snorts.
“Not quite,” he jokes, grinning, mouth full of sharp canines and dog-like teeth. Martyn’s smile widens just a fraction.
“Well I bet you’re wonderin’ why nobody wants to work with me,” he replies, folding his arms. His voice is still light and playful, edging on indignant laughter. Ren rolls his eyes, mostly out of habit, and waves one hand.
“Not in the slightest,” he teases back. “You’ve clearly got no skill for mind reading, Martyn.”
“Hm,” Martyn hums, shrugging. “Some would say otherwise. What’re you thinkin’ about then?”
Ren waffles for a moment, not audibly, but he shrugs his shoulders and feels some warmth flood to his face. If he were to describe the relationship he and Martyn had with each other, it might be something like binary suns, or vines, or equally orbiting asteroids, a system of mutually assured destruction, but of two things that were unable to shake the other. Even as faded as it was, Ren could see the stripe of the banner at Martyn’s waist. He decides he wants to be truthful, at least right now.
“I was thinking’ about how long it had been since we’d been on the same team,” he says. “I’ve missed it.”
Martyn hums. His gaze goes far away for a moment as he drags his eyes back to the fire.
“Me too,” he says, much more gentle than Ren thinks he intends. Ren smiles despite himself. He can tell something lingers behind Martyn’s eyes, but he wants to let him breathe through it on his own. For now, he settles with having him at arm's length for now. He can have him in his arms later.
(send me a number from 1-100 and I'll try to write a fic!)
