icy blue eyes train along the notes he'd jotted after their last meeting , a soft sigh releasing from deeply buried in his chest as he thumbed through page after page on the man that was ' yancy ' . this position he'd taken up as a therapist for the prison was something part time , something to get his mind off the turmoil of his personal life and to help those who felt UNHEARD get their thoughts and feelings out to an unbiased party . for the oddity that was yancy though , the time weathered doctor couldn't help but sincerely feel bad for the mental and physical position the man was in .
not that he couldn't recognize the good , the fact that there were moments that the prisoner DID enjoy when it came to being imprisoned , but he knew the idea of freedom that always lingered in the raven's brain was a far more promising prospect ; something he craved beyond mental blocks that led him to believe this concrete tomb was his end all be all . dress shoes carry him back to that same room , back straighten as he shuffled his old documents to the back and shifted his blank papers to the front for their current session . henrik knocks , although it is a rather useless knock as he enter mere seconds after to stand before the younger man , a content , flat smile spreading across his features .
" good evening , yancy . i do apologize for z'he rude entrance , but unfortunately i s'hink you v'ill find it is time for our v'eekly session . " the doctor glances around the room , settling to sit on a metal chair across from the raven on the other side of the cell . " and v'ith my usual office being used for . . . less savory purposes currently , i've been asked to make rounds to cells . " seemed there could only be so many solitary confinement cells and so many people needing to be in solitude , so henrik had been forcibly removed from his office until there was a vacancy . no bother , though , yancy was good company to be in close quarters with .
" before v'e get pen to paper , v'hy don't you tell me how your v'eek has gone ? "
five times glanced at:( five times the receiver noticed the sender stealing glances at them ) (Yancy, theauthorlives, OH MY GOD IT WAS SO HARD TO CHOOSE SEVERAL WOULD HAVE WORKED FOR THEM ;A; )
@theauthorlives
First Glance
Warden Murderslaghter shooed the two of them away with a cheerful wave as he tucked the box under his arm, indifferent to the fact that Mark was all but being choked by a police baton as the security guard forcibly dragged him away. He was shoved into the prison rec room roughly, flailing his arms to maintain his balance.
“I want you to know that I fully blame you for this,” Mark said with a hiss, tugging the hem of his prison shirt to smooth the wrinkles.
“We were chased out of the museum by guards with guns, I panicked!” Morgan argued back.
At one of the corner tables, Morgan saw him. A man who looked like he had just walked off the set of a 50’s greaser movie, tattoos and all. He just needed a leather jacket and a cigarette. He had been looking at them over a hand of playing cards, his gaze hardening to an annoyed scowl once he realized he had been caught. They could practically hear the “tha fuck are yah lookin’ at, yah mook?” from where they stood.
“I pAnIcKeD,” Mark mocked. Morgan leveled a glare at him, and he stared back firmly in kind. After a few moments he huffed out a breath through his nose. “Well, it looks like it’s up to me to get us out of this mess,” he said, rubbing his hands together as he glanced around the room. He slung an arm around Morgan’s shoulders to bring them in close, hand cupping around his mouth. “The prisoners look like they wanna start something, so we could incite a riot.” Morgan glanced up at the assembled prisoners. Some of them had ignored their presence entirely, too absorbed in their own activities to pay the new bloods any attention.
“... or we could- Oh for the love of-” Mark snapped his fingers sharply in front of Morgan’s face. “Focus! God, this is why I don’t work with amateurs.” He pulled Morgan to a small, empty table off to the side and plopped them down in an uncomfortably hard plastic chair. “Look. We both know you probably belong here-” Morgan kicked his leg under the table. Mark winced but continued unabated. “But I’d like for both of us to get out. So please, for the love of God, stop getting distracted and help me come up with a plan.”
Morgan blew their bangs out of their face with a huff and nodded.
Second Glance
Mark was... they honestly didn’t know where Mark was. Last anyone had seen of him, he had been punched through a wall by a guy twice his size and bulk. And against all odds, Morgan had been assigned to the same cell as Yancy- that greaser guy- despite getting into a fist fight with him. Maybe the Warden didn’t care enough to remember, or maybe he did it on purpose. Whatever his reasoning, they were suddenly in a very confined space with the same man they had given a black eye to not even a day previously.
Suffice to say, their plan to escape had gone so far south, it had burrowed into the center of the earth.
Yancy mainly stuck to his bunk once the prisoners were herded into their cells for the night, hopping into the one on top with practiced ease and pulling a pad of paper and pencil out from underneath his pillow. Morgan hunkered down at the small, yet oddly adorable plastic table and chair in the corner of the cell. It wasn’t that they weren’t tired, it was that they didn’t trust Yancy not to stab them in their sleep for disrespecting him in front of his crew. He had taken it well enough at the time, but that could have just as easily been to save face.
“Youse’s punchin’ form is shit. Jus’ so youse know.” Yancy said suddenly, looking at them from the corner of his eye. “Youse’s thumb was stickin’ out for all th’ word ta see. Surprised ya didn’t break it on my jaw. Jus’ wanted t’let you know.”
Morgan’s eyebrow quirked so high it nearly merged with their hairline. Of all the things he could have commented on, it was their punching form he settled on? They stared at his profile, lips settling into a hard line. “Listen. I don’t fuckin’ care what youse do here, just stop starin’ at me like that. It’s fuckin’ creepy.” He grumbled, not taking his eyes off whatever he was scribbling. Morgan tore their gaze away and looked down at the table, hands tugging at the ends of their hair.
If they could just touch the box, they could trigger one of those freaky resets and get the hell out of here. Sure, it would probably end with their death –it had every other time- but it would be better than... whatever this was.
Third Glance
“Okay. So, I just fuckin’...” Tiny stared down at the two lark’s head knots in front of her like they owed her money. Her eyes narrowed into concentrated slits and her tongue poked out from between her lips as she took the two outer cords in her hands. Outer left over the middle and under the outer right. Outer right cord under the middle, through the loop, and under the over the outer left. She pushed the knot up and repeated the process in the opposite direction. She let out a triumphant bark of laughter and held up a nearly perfect square knot. “Check this fuckin’ shit out!” She boasted. Jimmy the Pickle, already halfway through a masterfully crocheted scarf, let out a grunt. Morgan was fairly sure that was his Supportive Grunt. Maybe. Morgan smiled proudly and gave a supportive nod.
In the months they had been in Happy Trails, they had folded into Yancy’s gang surprisingly well. They even had a nickname: Snapshot (“Knots” and “Macrame” had already been taken by one of the kitchen staff and a creepy contortionist-turned-serial murderer respectively) and had formed an odd sort of comraderies with Pickle over their shared love of handcrafts; the hulking giant of a man knew how to knit, crochet and cross-stitch. No one who valued their faces dared to mock him for it. Tiny invited herself into their corner of the rec room one day since, quote: “My girl loves shit like this and I wanna surprise her next time she visits.”
“Christ, is he staring again?” Tiny asked. Morgan’s face flushed and they quickly turned themself in their chair. “It’s honestly getting embarrassing how often I catch him doing it.”
Mark had appreciated and marveled at Morgan’s crafts whenever they had a peaceful moment together, but he had absolutely no talent for it. It was nice to have a small group of people to swap techniques and trade bits of string and/or yarn with.
They set down their latest project –a small tapestry to add some color to their cell- and stretched their arms over their head, stretching over the back of their chair. When they opened their eyes, they saw Yancy at the table he and some of the other guys were playing cards. Morgan righted themself and turned around in their chair to face him, giving him a wave. Yancy, to his credit, played it off as smoothly as he could, pretending to peek at the cards Bam-Bam just dealt him.
Morgan scrambled for their notepad and quickly scribbled: “He doesn’t stare at me that often." Tiny and Pickle exchanged a look.
“You honestly don’t notice? Holy shit, you’re both hopeless.” Morgan asked her what that meant, but she flipped her hair over her shoulder and focused on her cords. “I can’t help you if you’re that blind.” She said. Futilely, Morgan looked to Pickle for clarification, but he continued to work on his scarf, not even offering a grunt.
Fourth Glance
Far, far away from The Happy Trails Penitentiary, a Mechanic and a Captain worked on a starship that would ferry over 100,000 souls to a new planet. It was a simple mission until it wasn’t; until time warped around them and space crashed into the ship with the fury of a hurricane.
Morgan couldn’t remember the circumstances that led to this particular scenario; something stupid they had said or done most likely. Whatever the case, Lady had gotten tired of playing nice, and ordered every able-bodied ship still receiving transmissions to open fire on The Invincible II, declaring it a threat to galactic order and offering a ridicuously high bounty to whomever could destroy it.
The Invincible II jerked violently as another barrage of gunfire tore into the hull, Morgan’s shoulder crashing painfully into a nearby wall. They clutched onto Yancy’s hand and forced themself to move forward, dragging him along. If he said anything, Morgan didn’t hear it; they were certain that they had gone deaf when that explosion went off on the bridge.
Celci and a team of officers from Cryo, Engineering and ADS had been ordered to evacuate to the new colony planet. The Cryobay also doubled as its own escape pod that could break away from the ship in extreme emergencies and was already heading towards the new planet. The Invincible II and her Captain wouldn’t live to see that new planet, not in this universe, but innocent people would. Celci would make a better leader than Morgan could ever hope to be (sorry not sorry, Mark, but Morgan had overridden Celci’s ASSHAT position once things started going to hell). When Morgan and Yancy made it to the escape pod bay, they wasted no time in shoving him into the nearest one.
These escape pods only had enough room and rations for one person. And... well... Morgan hadn’t been a very good Captain. The least they could do was go down with the ship.
Morgan was thankful for their deafness in that moment; they weren’t able to hear Yancy’s desperate pleas. Even muffled, they tore at Morgan’s chest as he attempted to force open the escape pod hatch, pounding on the porthole desperately. They inputted the new planet’s coordinates into the computer, looked at Yancy and smiled.
“I love you. Please live for both of us.” They signed, slow and deliberate. Yancy glanced at them desperately before his pod was shot off into space, far, far away from The Invincible II.
Fifth Glance
They weren’t scared anymore; they’d be back soon enough. But there was never a guarantee that Yancy would be counted among the crewmembers, so they resolved to save as many versions of him as possible. Anything to give him the life he deserved, even if they couldn't be a part of it.
Morgan re-adjusted their hair in the mirror for what felt like the hundredth time that afternoon, frustration seeping into every fiber of their being. They had styled their hair like this because it looked slick but still casual; now it was taking everything they had to not take a razor to their head and just start over. They’d probably regret it immediately after, and they didn’t even own an electric hair razor; so that idea was out. Eventually, however, they were victorious in The Great Blood Feud of Their Stupid Hair Curls and straightened out their outfit, satisfied in the way they looked. Their uniform was left on its hanger in their closet in favor of something that was more... them. Something airy and comfortable in purple and brown rather than stark white and black and gold.
Yancy didn’t even bother to knock before entering Morgan’s quarters, waltzing on in like he owned the place (which, to be fair, he partially did. No one needed to know he only slept in his assigned quarters just enough to avoid suspicion). His own uniform had been tossed aside in favor of a pair of jeans, a plain white t-shirt and a heavy black leather jacket. His gaze caught Morgan’s in their reflection, and he grinned, wrapping his arms around their midsection from behind and nuzzling into the crook of their neck and shoulder.
“There’s my Snapshot,” he purred. “Not that you don’t look fine as hell in your uniform, but...” He glanced up at Morgan with a half-lidded smile. Morgan rolled their eyes and pinched his cheek playfully.
“Demerit.” They signed.
“Ah-ah-ah. Youse ain’t the Captain today, remember? Youse is just Morgan, who I'm takin’ on the date I’ve owed them for way too long at this point.” A promise that had been made lifetimes upon lifetimes ago, before warp cores and wormholes and endless circles. When it had just been the two of them on a single bunk, limbs twisted together to accommodate both of them. A promise that Morgan hung onto in their darkest moments and carried with them from one universe to the next.
Morgan spun around in Yancy’s arms to look at him properly, so close their noses bumped. It was as simple as breathing to close what little distance was between them and seize Yancy’s lips in a kiss; the first in so, so long that hadn’t been desperate or hungry or salty with tears. Warm and tender and proof that the two of them had survived, and that they had the rest of their lives to spend as they wished.
(In Morgan’s ideal world, the rest of their lives included a marriage certificate with both their names on it and rings exchanged in a quiet clearing with only a select few present to act as witnesses. They wouldn’t ask today, but someday soon.)
“Easy, Casanova, don’t give yourself a headache,” Miles chuckled, standing up and taking his journal in hand. The leather-bound book was black, a matte finish. There was a deep color stain on the back panel as he seemingly pocketed it behind him. The man gestured to himself and tilted his head. “That’s my job.
“Let’s cut the filler, alright?” Miles walked up with a sharp grin, fox-like, dripping with the pickings of youth. If he didn’t have such a dead look in his eyes, he’d be a typical twenty-something drunk on hedonism and cheap liquor. “You can call me Miles, and I’m a writer. The best writer, you could say. You’ve caught my attention recently, mostly because of your potential.”
The Author stepped away to look at the wall as he spoke. His journal wasn’t tucked into his belt as Yancy might‘be thought. It seemed to be missing. However, as he turned back around, Miles was holding the book, the pen in his hand. “Everywhere I go, you always seem different, but you? Here in this parole storyline? Just perfect for the start of a good adventure.” He was practically beaming. “What’s life without a little fun?”
Oliver usually landed on his feet when the ring of bright blue took him from whatever universe he had been staying in to another. This time, however, had been different. He had been falling, like usual, until he was whipped around and fell into concrete headfirst. There were voices then, distant and growing faint, then nothing but darkness. Waking up was had been a rude affair, and he coughed with a start when steel-toed boot knocked against his unprotected stomach. His eyes fluttered open, and gruff faces were kneeled down in front of him. He gasped, silently, from his sprawled position on the floor.
“Now just who are you and why’re you inside our highly guarded facility?” Said one guard, grabbing Oliver by his shirt front and tugging him up non-too-gently. Oliver froze up as he thought of a response, only earning himself a light shake for his hesitation. “Well? Don’t hurt yourself for thinking too hard for an excuse.”
Oliver went to sign, mouthing the words of ‘i don’t know how i’m here,’ but the guard raised a brow. That made the attorney sigh helplessly, curtly. Of course they didn’t know sign, that was just his luck. He mimed writing on something, but the guard shook their head.
“I’m afraid there will be none of that right now, sir. Come along, we’re gonna take you in for questioning with the Warden.” The guard stated, and with another uniformed professional, Oliver was escorted from the hall he had appeared in. Oliver knew better than to struggle (that would catch him a charge, if that even matter nowadays), though he glanced around to see if he could get his bearings. It was a grey prison, wide open and mostly unmonitored. Leave it to the attorney to land in the one place with guards actually around. He saw a few prisoners watching him, and he couldn’t quite keep his face from twisting further into worried confusion. When even was he?
❝Hey, uh... How did youse turn into one of them things?❞ (Yancy, theauthorlives. MERMAY MERMAY.)
Mermay! (Open!)
@theauthorlives
-------
It was a simple question, but it gave Morgan pause regardless. For as long as they had been alive, shifting between human legs and their tail was as natural as swimming or eating or breathing. It was just one of those things that happened.
Their time on land had taught them that humans were very, very curious and had a million questions. But maybe that was just Yancy. He had been in a place called a "prison", and was currently on something called "parole". He wasn't allowed to see a lot of the outside when he was in "Prison", so there were human things he didn't understand either.
They picked up their dry erase board and scribbled a reply: "Reflex. I just get in the water and -poof!- scales and a tail."
IT WAS an understatement, actually, to say he’d been avoiding crowds. no, yancy had plainly been avoiding anyone - ever since mark had yanked him out of the little hidey-hole he’d made for himself, yancy’d been running himself ragged to lay low. don’t get attached. don’t get caught. he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong by just ... being alive, sure, but ...
BUT FREEDOM was new. surely he’d get bitched at for something.
GUNTHER WAS COOL. that was the only solid decision he’d made about anyone; laid back, inconsequential, gunther just did what he thought he needed to and didn’t make a fuss about it. it still took him three weeks to pick up the balls to approach him.
YANCY DIDN’T NEED a light. yancy still had matches tucked in his back pocket. he forced himself to approach anyway, slow steps, like a cornered animal; he lit his crinkled cigarette, took a long drag, and sighed loudly in relief - hundred years without a smoke’ll do that to you. “hm?” he mumbled, finally taking a chance to meet gunther’s eyes, instead of staring at the floor with feigned interest.
“ ... YEAH. S’BEEN long enough; you’d t’ink they’d invent a cig ‘dat won’t kill you anymore ... “ maybe that didn’t make sense to gunther, based on whatever scientific process had been made since the 1950′s, but he tried to hide his growing unease the best he could. “yeah. yeah, i, uh ... i know youse. i’m - ... “ he juggled his name in his head for a moment, trying to decide; this was a fresh start. he could go by his government name for once, instead of what the boys in the clink called him.
“ MY NAME’S YANCY, “ he grumbled, defeated. orson just didn’t feel like him anymore. “ everyone’s been treating me okay, i guess. ‘aven’t had any issues, or nothin’.”
❝ you’ve stolen my heart, the least you could do is tell me what you intend to do with it. ❞ (Gunther, theauthorlives. But only when you feel up for it >:U )
The comment stops him dead in his tracks. He gapes, unable to come up with an immediate response. Shock is keeping the words muted on his tongue, dumbfounded by the accusation.
Stolen his heart?
Was Gunther really saying—?
“ Hah. You first, Gunnerson. ” His hands threaten to fidget so he shoves them into his pockets. “ You’ve had my heart for ages. I, uh… I thought you realized. ” And if he didn’t, it was because of course he didn’t see it, didn’t feel the same. Why would he?
“ I— I guess I felt like I was pretty obvious. ” God, the urge to turn and run was burning in his stomach like a fever but he forced himself to hold his ground. “ Uh. Really, if I did have your heart, I’d just… want to protect it? Keep it safe for you. ”
He scrubs a hand over his cheek. His heart feels rather wobbly in his chest. Why is this so hard?
