#yourxcreator

[zenyattasperceptrons]

yourxcreator started following you

HI MOM

[magswasright]

He's humming today.

There’s a feather-light grip on Shaw’s watch today, like the brush of a fingertip. It’s been there since the morning, when Erik woke to the sound of light footsteps and a deep humming in the hallway. He likes to keep track of Shaw’s position on days like this - or any day that breaks the monotony - but as unobtrusively as possible. 

“Feeling spry?” Erik asks, a hint of cynicism in his tone as he brushes past, quiet and cat-like. As always, there’s an odd weight at the end of his question, where a title might naturally have fallen.

[ziischeln]

"I'm not the enemy here, Erik; I never was." Shaw draws back; his breathing is labored, his proud thin face smeared with soot and blood. The remains of the wiring in the wall are smoking, shooting off sparks at odd intervals. He is tired. "But this makes me wonder who the real one is, for you."

DEEP ASS STARTERS.V: HELLFIRE (the beginning)

Erik’s chest heaves, his body heavy with exhaustion, fueled by rage,  adrenaline and the fervent desire to watch this monster b l e e d. He braces himself against the wall with one hand, panting for breath. His knuckles feel like fire, but the pain doesn’t stop him. It never has.

“Stop talking,” he grits out, eyes flashing like steel. “I don’t care.” Because this is how Shaw wins, always, his voice forcing doubt under Erik’s skin like a needle until there’s nothing left to do but give up, give in. Because Shaw knows better. Shaw knows Erik, knows him to his bones, knows how to shake the foundations of his conviction until it crumbles.

“It’s just you. It always was. It always will be.”

The room is shaking and so are Erik’s hands, but he grasps at the air and wrenches a length of pipe from inside the walls, sends it crashing into Shaw’s knees with all the strength he can muster. His nose drips blood, head ringing. A quiet buzzing in the back of his head warns him to stop. 

He ignores it, shoves back the blackness ebbing at the corners of his vision. The closer he stalks to Shaw, the harder it is to hold onto anything, his grip on metal slipping like water through his fingers, but Erik’s past caring. He’ll beat him bare-handed if need be.

His fist cracks into Shaw’s face and Erik swears, agony lancing through two broken fingers. It doesn’t stop him.

“You lied to me,” he hisses. “You used me. You–you made it sound like everything would be different once we got here, and it’s not, it’s just the same shit dressed up except now I don’t even–now you don’t even need me, do you? You’re just--keeping me around.”

[ziischeln]

"Ah," he says, stooping down close, stripping away his coat (after all, we mustn't dirty our books). "I see. Yes, this is mostly correct, almost perfect. But 'to bear', which means, among other things, to endure or to tolerate- you have the preterite of 'bore', but the participle is 'borne'. In context: 'the Agency has nevertheless borne central responsibility for managing this Regulation on rural workers.'" His pronunciation is only faintly accented, and he laughs a little.

"'Rural'. Such a difficult word. Let's see how well you can say it, hm?"

Erik brightens quietly under the praise, despite the immediate disappointment with himself that comes as soon as Schmidt says but. "Ru--rughal--” He chokes on the pronunciation a little, lips thinning in frustration. “Ruwal.” He shakes his head, hands fidgeting at his sides, eventually settling for picking subtly at a thread in his trousers. He’s dimly aware of his gifts reaching for the lamp and wrapping around it, the metal more grounding than any other sensation. “I can’t.”

[ziischeln]

Schmidt smiles in that way he has, as though the thin spectacles he wears can let his eyes cut straight through Erik's head to show him a perfect cross-section, turning raw thought out into the open air. He peels rubber from his skin, freeing his right hand to smooth tousled hair. It's almost fully grown back. "Would you like me to have a look? Or straight to bed for you?"

The corner of his mouth twists upwards in return, the closest approximation of a smile he ever manages. He wants to request permission to go to sleep. He wants to. But Schmidt looks at him like he can see every thought in Erik’s head, and Erik has the crawling, heavy feeling that he’s lying to Schmidt somehow, that he’s hiding things, and if he doesn’t own up to it Schmidt will know anyway. 

“If you’re not tired.” Erik steps aside, as much to give Schmidt room to approach the small stack of paper and books as it is to get out of his way, and out of reach. In his less desperate moments, Erik prefers to keep as far away from people as possible. 

(Those other moments, he--doesn’t like to think about.)

“It’s the... conjugations? that trouble me.”

[ziischeln]

"An autopsy," the doctor tells him soothingly, as though that were the most reassuring thing in the world. "One of the outer guard fell afoul of something unpleasant. All I'm doing is being sure it's nothing dangerous. Nothing to fear from the dead, Erik." Schmidt takes a cloth, dabbing at his brow only semi-effectually. "I take it you've finished your studies for the evening?"

The tension eases marginally from Erik’s frame, but he still eyes Schmidt warily, like he’s expecting a fight. 

Nothing to fear from the dead, Erik.

He wants to say, you don’t dream like I do. 

You don’t wake in the night feeling hands trying to pull you into the furnace with them, into the grave.

“Ja,” he says instead, quietly. Erik has an aptitude for languages, there’s no denying it, but he picks it up far easier when it’s spoken to him rather than written down. His attempts at reading and writing in English, in particular, are still flawed enough to make him nervous, should Schmidt choose to look over his work. “I think so.”

(He wishes Schmidt would take the gloves off.)

[ziischeln]

"It isn't what it seems," he says, all soft voice and pale hands. Sometimes his hands are covered in thin rubber; sometimes they are covered in blood. Tonight, it's both. His white coat looks, more than anything, like a butcher's apron behind the half-open door. "No need to be alarmed, son. Put that lamp down, won't you?"

His breath comes sharp and shallow, thin chest heaving rapidly as light creeps in through the half-open door, obscured by Schmidt’s blood-stained figure. Erik is too tall and too thin, all bony limbs and wide shoulders trying to shrink into something smaller, trying to be invisible. 

He doesn’t realise the lamp is raised several feet in the air and trembling like a snake ready to strike until Schmidt points it out, and Erik almost drops it in response. It hovers shakily back into its rightful place. Erik smells iron and rust.

“What is it?” he asks softly (so softly, always either whispering or screaming with nothing inbetween). His eyes never leave Schmidt’s hands save for the barest flicker up to his face now and then, trying to pretend he can meet the doctor’s eyes. “Why is--?”

[ziischeln]

Shaw rounds on him, seething. "Do you think it was me that caused the rules to change? Hm? Do you think I have power over every fucking thing that keeps you from getting your way?"

He takes an instinctive step backwards when Shaw rounds on him, bumping his calf painfully on the table in the centre of the room in his haste. Erik’s rage makes the coins in his palm tremble and contort- he balls his hand into a fist and fights to keep them from flying straight at his creator. The only thing stronger than his anger at Shaw is his fear of him. “I never said that!” he snaps, backing up again, putting the table between himself and his creator, just in case. He’s shaking. “You don’t have to scold me like a child–”