eidxiety | Sticks & Bones // IC Inbox

[Meanwhile: Ain is going through heartbreak because he got rejected :( This is a normal response of course, but he's out here trying to shut it all down... then getting really sad because he totally screwed up the nature of his relationship with Add and Add definitely hates him now and probably won't talk to him ever again. That's what gets him the most, he thinks.

God, he's so stupid.

Anyway, he answers the door and it's very clear that Ain's been crying, but he's trying to look presentable right now. His Neo Eden apartment is clearly stacked with all manner of plants in window boxes, hanging planters, and a bunch of fabric bolts and some instruments against one wall. The auto-decorator did its job. It's hard to see any of this through Ain's giant wings, but he steps aside to let Till in short order.]

From the bakery? Not really. I do have some cinnamon buns though, sitting on the kitchenette. You're welcome to have some. Don't worry about paying me back, haha.

[Oh. Uh. Well.

As much of an emotionally constipated idiot Till can be, even he can tell when someone’s been crying. Maybe moreso than your average person, considering the amount of compartmentalizing you have to do just to survive back home. It’s especially concerning to see on Ain, someone he’s never seen less than totally chipper…basically ever? But that’s ALSO compartmentalization at work, babyyy.

Till looks at Ain for a moment before he cautiously hobbles into the apartment, his snail clinging to his back while eyeing Ain’s plants like ovo. Wish to sit on palnt. Till doesn’t allow this though as he comes inside, feeling a little awkward about just taking some of Ain’s cinnamon buns and dipping. He wouldn’t exactly say they’re close or anything, but…Ain’s been nice to him. For some reason. So seeing him sad makes him feel…

…]

Thanks. I, uh. …you doing okay?

Oh, um...

[Ain can't say he wants to vent, really. But if Till didn't see that entire post... well, he'll probably see it eventually. The whole Grove definitely saw it, so there's not much of a point in hiding it.

He sits down on the edge of his bed, the sheets rumpled because he's been facedown crying into the pillows. Idly, Ain smooths his hand across the sheets, getting rid of the wrinkles in one patch.]

...I just got rejected by a guy I like. That's all. I'm kind of in my "men suck" era. I'll be okay.

[Oh god it’s even worse than he feared. It’s both relationship AND guy related. Eugh.

Unable to just stay standing, Till finds someplace to lean his crutches so he can have a seat, either on a spare chair, couch, or just on the floor outright depending on what’s available. He’ll hold out his arm so Jibang can ooze to the floor.

Till really does not know how to handle gay people. He can barely handle straight people, but this feels like it’s just completely out of his element…never mind the fact he’s equally terrible at comforting people. Fuck.]

..that sucks. I’m sorry.

[Great start he definitely must feel better now.]

I hate men too. They fucking suck, so I get it.

[Oh, good, a way for Ain to avoid talking about himself—

(Dachie comes over to Jibang and gives him a BEEG sneefsnorf before assuming Play With Me position.)]

Haha, you don't have to try to make me feel better, Mr. Artist. ...but it sounds like there's a story there. Do you wanna talk about it? We can have a venting session, just you and me.

[Jibang gets sneefsnorf’d, and very briefly he zoops back into his shell because!!! WHAT DOING-

But then he realizes this is a play display, not a “I am going to hunt you for sport” display, and slowly re-emerges. He will play :) He cannot run though he is. Very slow, and also has no legs.

Meanwhile, Till leans forward with his forearms across his knees, silent for a long moment.]

…I dunno. Maybe.

[Because to vent like that would require backstory, and then he’s just dumping his awful life history on this guy who is definitely not equipped for it right now.

He makes a bit of a face, jaw clenching.]

But you don’t really come across as somebody who’d go ‘round telling other people my business.

…are you?

[Ain would love to not talk about his problems right now, he'd love to not say "I love this guy a lot and I realised it while I was separated from him so being rejected kind of stings" and also "I've been rejected like this before so ouch" and also "I hate being accused of the world's most heinous acts" etc etc he is So romance-traumatized thanks to people here, so it mounts on the rejection feelings and RIP.

So yeah, Till can tell him all his traumas and Ain will be like thank God I'm not the only sad person here :) ]

Not really, haha. It's not like you're going to go telling people that you saw me crying when you came over for cinnamon buns, right?

I’m a dick, but I ain’t that much of a dick. Whatever happens here don’t leave these walls.

[Ain it’s called a venting session for a reason. If Till has to spill his secrets so do you!! But at least Till is uninvolved, so he’d be the perfect guy to vent your problems to. Though maybe not the best…therapist, he at least is good at listening.]

…it’s some real fucking heavy shit. Can you handle that right now?

I'm okay. It's just a rejection. I've lived through worse events.

[Ain, girl

are you fuckin good]

…okay. Fine.

But if I tell you my thing, you tell me your thing. Is that fair?

[Venting session :)]

...okay. That's fair.

You first, though. [lmao]

[Yeahhh it’s fine he saw that one coming.

Till takes a deep, slow breath. He’s done it once, for Mephisto. Surely it’ll be easier the second time.

(It will not, because he has to unpack what happened with Ivan, something he has NOT even breathed about since it happened haha)]

Where I’m from, the alien race is at the top of everything. Humanity dwindled after we were kidnapped from our home planet, and we’re treated like pets. We’re literally raised for it.

Some of us are shipped off to learn how to sing.

[His brow knits as he tilts his head back, hair fanned out across the couch cushions as he looks up towards the ceiling through his lashes.]

If you’re good enough, your guardian will ship you off to be part of the Stage. You’re put up against someone else, and you both have to sing.

If you don’t sing good enough, you’re killed. Survive enough rounds and you win.

[What do you win? Notoriety, fame, money he guesses. The privilege of living.]

[You know, Ain can't exactly say he's thrilled to have his "this man must have been a slave" theory confirmed. God, he fucking hates slavers. He's seen the brand on Till's neck, though; he knows what marks like that means. He doesn't have to understand humans to know that they oftentimes kind of suck — or, in this case, aliens. Whiiiich would explain why he was so cagey when he first showed up here. It makes sense.

Ain feels bad for him.]

...that makes a lot of sense, why you showed up and were scared of everyone. I'm sorry I broke into your room trying to talk to you, and messed with you on the notebooks. [wow you can tell he likes Till because he's issued a Genuine Apology! This will never happen again] Um. ...you lived though, right?

[Look he did not say he was going to be eloquent here.]

[Unfortunately, Till’s reality is indeed just as bad as anything Ain might have imagined. Probably worse than what he could imagine, actually, but Till isn’t going to delve into those parts. No, he has worse to tell!

He grunts, eyes drifting closed.]

If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.

[Till does not yet realize that, if he had died instead of Ivan, he could actually be here still. Oops.

The apology though, admittedly, is surprising to hear. He wasn’t expecting it, but…it’s appreciated.]

…it’s fine. Ain’t like you could’ve known. […] The last thing I remember was my last round I was in. With this…guy.

[The way he says it, just. GUY.]

...This "guy"? Who's the guy? Does the guy have a name?

[Ain assumes Till won the round but like. What does that mean. Does he not like the guy?? Did the guy cheat????]

[Lol lmao even]

His name…was Ivan.

[Was. For all his problems with and surrounding Ivan, having to say it like that hits him like a ton of bricks for the first time. It makes it hard for him to speak, at first.]

We grew up in the garden together. [Till you didn’t explain he’s not going to know what that means.] So I knew him. Which…is extra fucked when you end up in the same round, I guess.

[I guess, he says, as if he isn’t legitimately traumatized now by what followed.]

But he was just. I don’t know. He had no boundaries, or sense of personal space. He was always hanging around…but as weird as he was he was. One of the only friends I had, if that’s even saying all that much.

But he did something…

[He trails off.]

[Ain doesn't ask about "the garden", he takes this to mean some sort of housing situation. Or maybe they literally grew up in someone's front lawn. He wouldn't be shocked, he kind of knows how slavers are. Either way, there are more important things to ask about here.]

Right, I get it. Someone you're close to, but you can't stand parts of him? [wow why is that familiar] But you liked him anyway, right?

...

What did he do?

[“Like’s a strong word”, he thinks, but ends up opting to not say that because it feels extra shitty given the story he’s telling.]

Our song was a duet. I mean, they usually are. You sing, taking turns, sometimes together…

[But the technicalities don’t matter. He shakes his head a little, pointedly still looking at the ceiling instead of Ain.]

It was going fine for a while. [It was not, he is not mentioning how he was deliberately hoping he’d die up on that stage.] But when it came to his part, he…stopped singing. I didn’t realize until I heard him coming over that he’d thrown his microphone down, and he- he fucking-

[Till lifts both hands up and looks at them for a moment, slowly curling his fingers into his palms.]

He kissed me. He grabbed my face and kissed me. I tried to push him off but he just. He kept me there. Then he grabbed my neck, and.

[He closes his eyes, but it doesn’t stop the memory of it all from playing back in his mind’s eye, exactly as if it was just now happening in front of him.]

Ohhhh. [And suddenly Ain knows everything (he thinks he knows everything).] Ohh my God, Mr. Artist! He was in love with you!! Was he kissing you goodbye? Ohhh, that's so sweet and sad, I'm sorry you lost your boyfriend...!

[I'm sorry Till]

Wait, what happened after that? Don't tell me...

[that motherfucker DIED]

[…okay, Till is SO caught off guard by that he just

Sits forward and starts choking for a second, hold on.

He finally looks at Ain now, his expression incredulous to the point of being just…baffled? He is baffled, truly.]

No! No, that- that ain’t what it was, at all. We were not like that, he was-

[Very. Clingy. And protective. And always around. He always used to take his collar off for him, and-

…

Till tightens his fists even more, mostly because his fingers have started shaking.]

They shot him. To the audience, it looked like he assaulted and attacked me on stage. So they started shooting.

[He has to close his eyes again.]

He wasn’t…even squeezing my neck. He was just holding me there.

[It’s said like he doesn’t understand, even now, just…why.]

[Holy shit, okay, Ain understands everything now.]

He sacrificed himself for you because he loves you. [There's a whispered ohhh my goddddd, very quiet, at the end of that.] He only tried to look like he was hurting you, and kissed you to confess and say goodbye all at once.

[It's SOOOOOOO romantic, Ain's going to die. RIP Ivan you would've loved the gay cult in the Grove.]

Love? You call that love!? This is the same guy who wiped blood off my face unprompted, and like, I didn’t see him do it directly, but I swear he put his fucking fingers in his fucking mouth-

[Oops he’s going off now sorry.]

It was already bad enough we had to sing on the same stage! How do you think I felt, watching him fucking die like that? At least if he just lost it wouldn’t have felt like it was my fault!!!

Sacrificing yourself for someone is one of the most loving things you can do. [Ask him how he knows, haha] So yeah, I'd call that love. What do you think love is? That's just one part of it.

[Also licking a man's wounds is romantic sorry, Ain would start sweating (horny) if someone did that to him. Christ.]

But yeah, I mean... it's a sad ending. It's messed up. And I'm sorry you had to go through it at all. I don't really know what else to say.

[What do you think love is?

Those words are going to stick with Till long after this conversation is over. Even now, he doesn’t know how to respond. His stupid 21 year-old brain wants to take it as an attack, like Ain knows love any more than he does…while the logical side knows he’s just trying to help.

But. He can’t think of Ivan that way. There’s no way. Why would he ever?? Ivan isn’t who his heart belongs to.]

I don’t know. But I do know that he shouldn’t have thrown his life away for me. Not when I…

[Not when he wanted to die instead, so, so badly. He still thinks about it often, that newspaper speculating about Mizi’s disappearance. It makes him feel sick.]

I love someone else anyway. Okay? And it doesn’t matter if I tell you because she’s either missing, or dead, nobody even knows right now.

[He grimaces, pulling his good leg closer to himself.]

She barely knew I existed. She was always with her…

Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that he loved you, right? It doesn't mean you have to return them, but he was still willing to die for you regardless because of that love.

[He flops over onto his bed, looking at Till from where he's laying down on his side.]

I think when you love someone, you're willing to die for them. Of course... I'm kind of a coward, and I didn't like dying the two times I did, but I'd rather it be me versus someone I deeply care for. I guess that makes me a greedy and selfish person, but I live for others. Sort of like how he lived for you.

Sticks & Bones // IC Inbox

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cw: human slavery weee

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cw: suicidal ideation, non consensual kissing??? Also choking, uh-

cw: ainchase ishmael

SOBBING

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