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AlteredTundra
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6 yrs ago
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rpg’s biggest issue? the gender binary
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6 yrs ago
im a fool in fool clothes
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pussi
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the nyc commute grind reveals why adults pass out at 9 pm daily
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its a dick suck dick world ya know
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Most Recent Posts
Second BISH
sorry i havent posted im kinda working off of my phone cause no wifi so ;3; ill get something up sunday maybe?
ive been going ham on the aesthetics blog if anyone is in need of some artsy inspiration
Update; I've risen from the ashes and is back. Deep apologies to everyone here as I've been sick and in the hospital due to hydration and a 105.7 fever. It hasn't been the best of week for me but no fear, just like the Mother of Dragons, Khaleesi has arrived and ready to reclaim what is rightfully hers.
Whose all still here with me?! -Raises a triumphant fist in the air.-
Just got around to seeing this, and it seems I've been left behind a bit in these next few posts. Aw well. RL is biting me in the butt currently anyway so I'm gonna have to drop this~ Have fun you guys! ;*
jessing collab posted in the placeholder~
Mal had a key, just a small one, that always and without fail rested in the back pocket of his jeans. When he’d returned home from his time at the park, he’d swiped it from the dish at the entrance before he went further inside to see if his mom was home, or if she was meeting some of the other mothers whose kids had been involved in the violence of the previous night. Trying not to track mud in the carpet, he left immediately, and locked the door behind him as if he’d never been there.
He had a master key to the clinic. The only reason Mal didn’t have one already for personal use was because teenagers plus small town equaled drug abuse, apparently, and there’d been issues with that in the past, long before Mal was even aware of the concepts. Either way, Mal’s intentions were pure.
Sort of. He was breaking and entering.
Verona was shrouded in a blanket of dark blue-grey that made it difficult to see the road from Riveredge to the town centre by the time Mal made it there. There weren’t many street lamps in the town, which made it easy and not at all suspicious for him to check that his dad’s car wasn’t in the parking lot anymore, and there was just one nurse left in the building. Even then, she was going to be doing paperwork, which meant Mal could just… Duck out before the hour was up and she made rounds, checking charts and fluids and anything else that was important.
It was way, way too easy to get in through the back door. Mal wondered if this was what Scout Presley felt like, but then he remembered she’d practically melted the night before, and didn’t want to ever feel anything similar to her again. (Those burns were sure going to make lockpicking hard, weren’t they?)
He stopped at the foot of King’s bed and pulled out the chart, brows furrowing as he skimmed through it. He was a wreck. Ouch, even just reading the notes on the concussion written in his dad’s supposedly illegible handwriting was enough to make Mal wince. Slipping in behind the privacy curtain that had been put up between beds (for the first time Verona’s history, probably), he observed King’s state of peaceful sleep.
Y’know, like a stalker.
Mal tentatively reached out and brushed King’s hair away from his forehead with some amount of delicate care involved, as if scared of him going into sudden cardiac arrest for no reason. When his fingers so much as grazed against the other boy’s skin, agony bloomed through his skull for a grand total of ten seconds, just as it had last night when he’d been healing his classmates repeatedly. He was sure that the pain was made much worse by a sense of exhaustion that hadn’t fully gone away. Mal’s eyes even drooped, despite him having slept for twelve hours and being supposedly ‘well-rested’. He let his head fall to the bed sheets from the aftermath of his ability and sucked in a hissed breath as he rubbed at his forehead.
Pain suddenly vanishing wasn't normal, dream-King knew that much. The constant darkness that swallowed him up each time his eyes shut hadn't been nearly as peaceful a few moments, in fact it had been a much more torturous experience due to the constant aches that had formed from the back of his skull. But now it was gone, faded, the horrid red swarms of pain were sucked away into nothingness and he was left with only silence and confusion. He floated there for a moment or two, slowly accepting the fact that the brilliant colors and pain had perhaps finally done him in, but soon enough more after images stained his eyelids and infected his daze. Bright, foreign colors formed swirling lights above him, reds and blues and purples that pushed into his mind and churned uncomfortably with his own unconscious brain.
King forced himself awake after countless minutes mutely accepting the unwanted emotions, blinking passed blooming feelings of drowsiness and nausea that had came with the painkillers he had taken a few hours before, and his head tilted slowly to stare at the source of the colors. A skinny body, male, leaned against his bedside, head hidden and buried under a mop of dark hair and shoulders tense with pain. King’s hand instinctively squirmed out from beneath the thin blanket above him and reached over to lay gently on the crown of the visitor’s head.
“Mal…?” He blinked at his own voice, raspy and raw and pained, though he no longer felt anything worse then a slight ache in his muscles and a brief sting from a few untouched bruises. He had no reason to sound so sickly and embarrassing! Feeling Mal’s familiar emotions, no matter how intense and painful they were, managed to calm King’s thudding heart and cease the shakiness in his limbs, and embarrassment instantly melted away into worry. His hand shifted to card through the boy's hair thoughtlessly, eyes narrowing down at him with unmasked concern, “Heal– You healed me, huh? Are you okay?”
“Richard,” Mal said with some amount of relief. “Are you okay? That’s what I want to know.” He leaned into the touch, and though he was still slumped over the side of the bed, his eyes trailed up to look at King, scanning his face for any further sign of discomfort. His smile was surprisingly bright for someone who so rarely did so.
“I'm fine, I swear.” King wouldn't mention the other faint pains he had, not after seeing Malcolm’s bright smile and feeling his masked discomfort. His pain tolerance was high enough to ignore most of the aches anyway. “My head doesn't hurt– You healed it? That hurts you right? God, Mal, are you okay?” He repeated the earlier question because, really, that wound on the back of his head had burned with an agony unknown even to King. Concussions were normal to him, being a soccer player and all, but the constant state of agony he had suffered in since last night was nothing compared to those injuries.
“S’all right – it only hurts for a few moments. I don’t think I get any lasting damage from it,” Mal told him, downplaying his own suspicion that the pain he did feel was infinitely worse than the wound itself, just condensed into a shorter timeframe. He wasn’t even sure how it worked – for all he knew, his body was getting ruined by the use of his ability, though he honestly couldn’t bring himself to care. “You did worry me a bit, though. I went full Presley to get in here.”
“Are you not supposed to be here?” King glanced towards the darkened ceiling above, eyes closing briefly to listen for any chattering or footsteps, but in the end he only heard the faint breaths of Malcolm and his own heart beat. After hours, of course. No visitors allowed. “Jeez, since when did you become so hardcore?” He asked with a faint lightness to his voice, ruffling Mal’s hair playfully with a still-drowsy hand.
Mal grinned. “I was always this hardcore – you just never noticed,” he said, and flushed a shade of bright pink that was visible even in the half-light over the hospital bed. “I had to climb out of my bedroom window. I… may be grounded. And banned from hanging out.” With you. King’s head tilted to the side, eyes growing wide as images of the party played softly in the back of his still-dim feeling mind.
my fault
King’s hand lifted away from Mal’s head slightly, tense and shaky as his eyebrows upturned into an apologetic expression, “Sorry, Mal. I got you in trouble, huh?” It was his idea to go to the party, his idea to drink and mingle and drag Mal along through the entire thing. How careless was he? He had even left Mal and the others behind after sensing something that he just couldn't remember currently. His hand lowered down again after a moment of hovering, and his fingers tangled and played with long, dark strands, eyes narrowed into stormy slits.
“Are your parents super mad? I'll take responsibility if they think it was your idea to go…”
“It was my idea. Sleuthing, that sort of thing,” Mal said, defending King from himself. “Although you running off into the woods and getting almost-murdered before Jade Taylor went psycho wasn’t my idea. God.” He tapped him on the chest with the back of his knuckles, somewhat chastising. Mal had been terrified for King, especially so soon after a murder in their little blissful town. “Never change.”
“Sorry,” King lifted his free hand to clutch at his tired eyes, rubbing at them to dispel any lingering after effects from the pills and the dissipated injury, but after processing what Mal had said he lifted his head up and cocked it to the side. “Jade Taylor? Wait, what happened while I was, er, out?” Clutching at memories again, King could only really recall being dragged around like a rag doll and then briefly conversing with Alice, Tessa, and Everett. Everything else was muddled into a cloud of unknown thoughts and assumptions. His lips peeled back in irritation.
“Grant said… His sister had been hurt bad. And you helped her,” King stared down at his lap, clutching the blankets with a tight fist. Really, the fact that his mind was fighting against him putting everything together was bugging him to no end. “But he didn't tell me how or why any of that happened– Mal, what happened?”
“I… I honestly don’t know. It was chaos, King,” Mal said, and put his hand over the other boy’s to squeeze it. “One minute, Taylor goes mad and the earth splits in two, Grant’s sis is dying, literally, and then we’re all running for our lives from… from… I think it was the murderer? He was… he was using Alice’s powers. Not just hers, either – I have a suspicion he was using yours.”
“Mine?” King breathed out a sigh, eyebrows knitting together as he attempted to think, to piece together the broken thoughts that simply floated through his mind like shards of shattered glass, but again the basis of a headache formed and he was forced to clear his mind and relax his brow. Leaning back against the pillow, King stared up at the ceiling that was painted with both the colors of Mal and himself, tracing the shades with a wavering glance. Empathy, emotional control, why would someone want to use that?
Grant’s visitation popped up in his mind again, playing out the scene where he had miraculously calmed the crying boy down with just his own emotions, and then King turned over Jade Taylor’s apparent madness in his head. It was possible, right, for his power to cause something like that? And now was it possible for someone else to simply take it and use it for such a dark deed?
King’s hand twisted around in Mal’s, closing tightly around his fingers as fear began to creep up within his chest. “The murderer, huh?” He muttered, eyes cast down to stare at nothing in particular, “We could've… Died last night. Haha, what the hell?” His voice cracked, and his eyes turned up to stare into Mal’s. “This is fucked, the whole town is in danger if some crazy guy can run around using other people’s powers– This is bad.”
“I don’t disagree.”
Mal leaned back in the large chair he’d taken a seat in and sighed, closing his eyes against the burning glare of the light. “I’m starting to wish this hadn’t happened to us at all.” It was somewhat true. Half of the people Mal knew and talked to on a daily basis were out of commission, and the others were in some way prevented from going outside. A girl was dead. Surely, in just a few days, they’d put in place another curfew…
But at the same time, selfishly, Mal had no real complaints. He was holding his crush’s hand, and he wouldn’t have thought that possible. “But at the same time, maybe we were given these for a reason: to stop this.” Very heroic. Such thoughts had landed King in the hospital in the first place. “When are you getting out? Has my dad said yet?” Mal skimmed through the flipchart still on his lap, and reckoned that a home release would be possible for tomorrow morning, though that was just his far-from-expert opinion.
“Haha, that's corny.” King stuck his tongue out at Mal, lips easily curling into a small smile at his best friend’s little speech, and as soon as it appeared it faltered. He blinked once at that thought, eyes gliding down to stare blankly at their joined hands. Huh. What… Were they, currently? King’s lips pursed, but he didn't try to pursue the thought, yet. Instead, he squirmed out from under the covers, slinking up to lean his back meekly against the headboard as his eyes eventually rose up to stare at the clipboard. Looking back on the passed day, King realized he only had a few interactions with nurses and doctors, and most were merely passing conversations while handing out more painkillers. He tapped his chin thoughtfully, then shrugged and sighed.
“Not sure. I've been, er, pretty high the whole day.” He ran a hand through his messy blonde hair, rolling his eyes at his own stupidity, “If your dad said anything to me I probably wasn't paying attention.”
“Story of my life,” Mal joked, and grinned tentatively, furiously glad that they were both alive. He’d lifted his free hand to run it through King’s hair but pulled back, face flushing with embarrassment as he realised belatedly that King himself had already gotten there first.
“S-Sorry…”
King blinked, cheeks heating slightly at the sudden movement from Mal. His hand lifted up to tug at his bangs, a cheeky, flirty smile slowly forming on his lips. What are we, his mind whispered again, pulling at his feelings like some kind of coy temptress, and in response to it he leaned towards his friend and beamed.
“What're you apologizing for, Mally?” He questioned, “You just touched me, nothing wrong with that.” King’s head tilted, eyes scanning the boy’s emotions up and down like some kind of judge, and his smile grew even wider and more sensual. He moved even closer, shoulders shaking slightly as the bruises on his back burned briefly from the sudden lurch, and only stopped when he lacked any bed or bed frame to hang on to.
“Something wrong, dude? Your face is very red~.”
Mal opened his mouth to say something then abruptly shut it when he realised he had no words whatsoever to answer King. He covered his nose and mouth and cheeks with his hand to try and hide the embarrassment, and the burning heat in them. “W-Well,” he ended up starting a moment or two later, voice strangled. “You were sorta ‘touching’ yourself; I didn’t want to interrupt.”
He felt sort of proud of that line, a cheeky grin tugging at the corners of his lips.
King snorted in response, face heating even further, “Mal, if you ever find me touching myself I would love for you to interrupt~.” King smirked playfully, eyes crinkling ever so slightly as a feeling of pure happiness seemed to clutch at his mind. He was flirting, flirting with his best friend. And it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Well, they did kiss the night before… Right? King glanced over Mal’s appearance for a moment, eyelashes fluttering as the dimness of the room did nothing to mask the other’s red face and glittering eyes.
“Mal--” A compliment came and went, and King glanced away briefly, pouting at his own incompetence.
“King, you’re going to be the death of me,” Mal swore with a exasperated, but no less fond, sigh. He bit on his bottom lip and wet it to smooth out the chapped skin from where he’d worried at it for hours during the daylight before he leaned in ever closer. Long fingers tilted King’s chin up so as to face him before he lowered his head to press a kiss to his lips. Mal’s long, messy hair fell unevenly like a curtain around him before he pulled away.
Wiping at his lips with the back of his hand, slightly nervous after a burst of confidence that was certainly unbecoming of him, Mal let one of his hands fall to the rail of the bed while the other tangled in his own hair. “So… um,” he cleared his throat. “Would you like to..?”
Ah, words. Words were horrible in so many ways.
“...Date? Me?” He paused before feeling the need to add, “Please?”
The kiss was short, too short. King wanted to lengthen the embrace but his back kept him from following after Mal as he pulled away. Blushing vividly now, King tried and failed to meet Malcolm’s eyes without growing even redder in the face, and his lips were pulled into an anxious, excited smile. Confessions, proposals, King wasn’t new to them, but when it came from Malcolm, well, he would be lying if he said his heart wasn’t swelling to capacity.
“Ah--” King’s voice cracked, and he turned away briefly in embarrassment, holding a hand over his mouth meekly. Words, words, words. Why was it so hard to speak all of a sudden? King shook, preparing himself with a quick mental pep talk, and then he quickly switched back around and grasped Mal’s face with his hands. A mixture of aggression and delicacy made for a weird combo that pulled Mal perhaps a bit too far onto the bed, but he wasn’t very focused on that. Instead, King pressed his lips against Malcolm’s again, fighting off a goofy smile and giddy laugh by deepening it from a soft peck to a real kiss.
“Date, huh?” He muttered after pulling away slightly, feeling a bit breathless but mostly cheerful, reaching up slightly to tangle his hands in Mal’s hair. “I’d like to, I really would love to date you, Mally~.”
Having been pulled in unexpectedly (though really, he should have expected it), one of Mal’s hands shot out to the other side of King to brace himself. It wasn’t really the most comfortable position for romance but he’d make to – his proximity to his… official boyfriend was making him giddy. He sighed with relief this time. “Good. God, thank god – I’m not sure what I would have done if you said no. Aah.”
He wet his lips again and pressed them to King’s cheek far more chastely than anything else they’d done. “Boyfriends,” he said with a snort. “You don’t– you’re not gonna get… your dad’s not going to do anything if I come out, right?”
“Boyfriends.” King beamed at Malcolm, voice snapping and breaking at every syllable but he didn’t seem to care anymore. His red face practically gleamed in the darkness, and their emotions bubbled in pale, inviting colors that he was glad to bathe in for the time being. At the mention of his father, however, his mood seemed to stiffen.
“Dad--” King paled slightly, eyes widening as he remembered his father’s words right before they left for the party, and whatever grip he had on Malcolm tightened into a stress-lock. “Oh, Jesus Christ, he hasn’t come in yet, mom did but…” His voice was shaking, along with his shoulders and hands. Dear God, he was terrified. Terrified to see his dad, terrified to feel welts on his back and face, terrified to watch his mother once again sink back and ignore it all again. King stared blindly towards the door, as if half expecting to see his father’s sinister figure behind the curtain, and a broken laugh escaped his lips.
“I don’t know, I don’t know…” He blinked a few times, breathing in a quick gasp to try and calm his thudding heart, “Jesus, Mal, I’m so dead. Oh maaan, hit me over the head again please so I don’t have to go home.” He couldn’t control the tremors in his limbs, and he swallowed dryness for a few moments as he tried to calm the sudden swirl of panic in his head.
“King? King,” Mal said, repeating himself twice over just because he wasn’t sure if he’d managed to get through to him the first time. “Listen, shh, it’s okay – if I tell my mom, if I tell my dad, they’ll let you stay over. Hell, I won’t be surprised if my dad doesn’t let yours in here. Ever.” He reached up to run his fingers through King’s hair, putting a knee on the bed so he could actually reach to pull King into a legitimate hug.
King sat stiffly for a moment, mind wandering back to the hug he had received earlier today from his own mother, but eventually he leaned into Malcolm’s embrace, laying his head limply against the other’s shoulder as his arms shakily reached up to grip him shirt. He wasn’t entirely sure if Mal was just whispering sweet nothings to him, escape just didn’t seem like something he could imagine, but… King sighed, eyes fluttering shut for a moment, feeling a bit of bliss spur from being held. Everything faded away into the dim whiteness of surprise, however, when King heard the faintest sound of footsteps outside of the room. He shifted around in the hug, head turning out to stare in the general direction of the doorway.
“... Shit, you hear that?” He muttered, untangling himself from Mal to lean towards the hall. Steps, faint but there, echoed throughout the clinic and were soon followed up by the softest blow of a melodic whistle. The nurse was making their rounds. King turned back to Mal, lips drawn into a thin line as he hissed; “You’re not supposed to be here, right? Hide!” He glanced around the room quickly, looking for something or somewhere for his boyfriend to hide.
First, he pointed down, signaling for him to hide under the bed with a slight shrug. After a moment of consideration, though, a flirty smirk spread across his still pale face and he shifted slightly to raise up the covers beside him, giving Mal and invitation to curl up under both the blankets and King. Was it a cliche move? Yes, probably, but hey, King was as cliche as they come and he knew it, so why not flaunt it?
Mal, though he froze briefly, quickly jumped into action, checking beneath the space to see if there was enough space to hide without looking like a total freak. Plot twist: there wasn’t. When King gave him bedroom eyes in jest, he tugged at his collar and slipped in, kicking off his Vans at the same time.
Blushing with the wrath of a thousand suns and with his heart thudding in his chest like he was some sort of female protagonist in a young adult novel, he ducked his head under the covers and threw an arm over King’s waist just as the curtain was pulled back.
“Well,” said the nurse – a stout, stocky woman with bottle-blonde hair and bright shocking red lipstick. “You’re not hiding very well there, doll.” Sheepishly, Mal pushed himself back up, but the nurse cackled. Cackled. Like a witch. Mal had the strangest feeling that there had been bets made about them.
She turned on her heel and walked out, calling out behind her, “I’m not gonna tell your folks!”
“Oh…” King blinked owlishly as the nurse came and went with only a few words to pass on and a laugh that seemed to echo throughout his mind harshly. His gaze drifted slowly from the doorway down to Malcolm, and his smile grew and grew until he was shaking with giggles. “Worried for nothing, huh?” He managed to sputter through peals of laughter, arms subconsciously wrapped around Mal’s back as his own body curved in to contain his voice.
Malcolm swatted at King for finding it hilarious apparently, when he had been mentally freaking out about a nurse coming in and making him leave. His huffed laughter, however, eventually escaped. “She’s totally going to spread goss with the other nurses,” he informed him, though by the quirk of his lips, it was clear that he didn’t much care about that.
King’s head rested against the pillow lightly after a few moments of quiet chuckles, and his soft snorts soon drifted into light sighs as the colors in the air settled. Anxiety and panic was swallowed by warm feelings, feel-good emotions that warmed King from the inside out. Worries of his family, or Mal being discovered faded into the back of his mind, and he was simply left with the faint hum of the clinic and the rustling of trees beyond his windows.
“This has been a… Strange visit, I think.” King eventually whispered, head turning up to stare blankly up at the ceiling, “Ha, what do you think your dad will think of my wound vanishing. Wasn’t that…” He blinked, slipping a hand away from Mal to tentatively prod at where the wound had used to be. Not even a scratch, nothing. “How do we explain this, then?” He muttered, glancing down to offer Mal a thoughtless, weak smirk.
“I don’t know. For the person telling other people to keep their powers a secret… I’m fucking up just a little bit,” he said worrying at his lip even as he propped himself up on one arm. His gaze slipped to the curtain around the bed rather than at King’s face, and he rubbed at his forehead tiredly. “First with Dani – who would have died – and now with that concussion of yours. I’m… surprised they didn’t send you to a hospital, really.”
His head dropped to press against King’s side after he rolled his eyes. “Although that would have been a bit of a longer commute – they’d actually think I was a runaway then.”
“I guess it wasn't as bad as everyone thought, hmm?” King’s eyes never broke contact with the ceiling, and they barely gleamed in the half-light of the room. “You would have come all the way to the hospital just for me, though? Man, it's like you have– had a crush on me or something~!” His head rolled down until his chin was barely touching the top of Malcolm’s head, and a goofy smile stained his expression. Of course, his boyfriend’s apparent crush on him had come into light merely yesterday, but still King couldn't help himself. Teasing words spurred in him without fault, so why not use them?
King shifted around in Mal’s hold momentarily, wincing as a bruise on the arm beneath the other boy pulsated with pain, but instead of complaining he merely hid his discomfort with another smile. Didn't want to break up impromptu cuddling with complaints after all. “I'm sure…” His head tilted further down, mouth and nose hidden behind Mal’s hair, “No one will notice it was you. I doubt Dani or Grant will spill, and when the doc comes in tomorrow I’ll say you were never here.”
King was floating. Awake but at the same time not, he hung suspended in an air of white, feeling much too warm and much too detached to enjoy the experience. His head didn’t hurt much anymore, save for the occasional pang of remembrance, and his body felt as though it were covered by a variety of invisible pillows, pillows that suffocated him in a comforting and heavy air. Painkillers were a magical thing. They managed to fill his mind with enough fluff to even make the room and bed around him vanish into nothing, leaving him stuck in a pink-white place with only the faintest feeling of dread keeping him weighed down into the real world.
Floating, floating. White noises, warmth, distant colors, static, far-off shapes and faces. Static, static, rain. Thunder, lightning, rain, storm, pain. Lightning, a face, thunder, his face.
.
“Hey, you awake?”
King’s eyes shot open at the sudden voice and instantly he groaned in agony, squinting up at a familiar expression. Drugs still weighed at his mind, dragged him down into a state of drowsiness that couldn't quite knock him out fully, and his half-lidded gaze slid lazily around his visitor's face. Questions were swallowed by feelings of highness, covered by various fake pillows that also seemed to coat his body, and his daze was expressed honestly through his confused, groggy face.
“Whosisit?” King didn't seem to notice the slur in his voice, instead he assumed his question got across and he tried and failed to gain a more quizzical expression. Tilting his head slightly caused some minor discomfort, and he let out a soft ‘tsk’ as red pain momentarily claimed the hazy whiteness of his mind and vision. He tried again, however, turning as much as he could until he was able to see the entire figure standing over him. “Who’s there?” He asked again, voice low and growling and mixed with pain and grogginess.
“It’s Jesse, you dumbass.”
Now, Jesse didn’t usually take pleasure in the misfortune of others, but the dazed confusion so utterly apparent on King’s face was enough to elicit from him a snicker. The guy looked to be in about as bad a shape as he was - save the bruised jaw, of course - and from the way he spoke, it was plainly obvious that they had him under a veritable dose of painkillers and sedatives. He was almost tempted to pull out his phone, capture a video of this incredible sight, but he wasn’t that much of an asshole. No matter how much of a dick King could be, there was still a part of Jesse that sympathised with him, and hey, he wasn’t nearly as bad as Logan. At least the former didn’t feel the need to break his nose every time he even looked at him wrong.
Sliding into the chair at King’s bedside, he shot him a scrutinizing gaze, eyes narrowing. God, what was he thinking, coming here? How could he expect him to know anything about what happened? In his current state, King could barely even string a coherent sentence together, let alone recount the events that’d put him here. He would’ve been better off relying on the paper-thin rumours that circulated in school.
Of course, he could just up and leave. King didn’t seem to have regained his bearings yet, and Jesse was willing to bet that if he left right now, the other would chalk this whole thing up to a drug-induced hallucination. If nothing else, it’d save the both of them some really, really awkward conversation, but Jesse had never been one for doing things the easy way, had he?
“You look like shit, dude.” Involuntarily, the words spilled past his lips, though there was no real malice in his voice. “What the hell happened?”
“Jesse?” King’s eyes fluttered and shook for a moment, but eventually his lips pulled into a cocky, familiar smirk. “Jesse~? Callaghan~? How's it hangin’, homo?” His words were stunted and messily strewn together, making him sound more like a drunkard than a teen, and his expression read of dim satisfaction. Though he still couldn't focus entirely on Jesse’s own face his mind and eyes easily managed to pick up on the cloud of colors surrounding him, his emotions, but looking at the wavering feelings made his head burn and stomach flip. It was like at the party, everything had mixed together in his drunken mind, appearing psychedelic and formless and honestly it was rather sickening to remember such an experience.
Jesse just rolled his eyes at King. How painfully middle-school. Perhaps a few years ago, he would’ve been offended by such a comment, but he likes to think he’s gotten past that.
“I look like shit, really?” King pursed his lips as the faintest hint of shock filled his voice. “I'm hot always, right? Y-You're just lying like a jackass, right? Right?” He wanted to move, perhaps lift a hand to pat his or Jesse’s face, but his body remained stagnant and heavy thanks to the weight in his brain. Lips parted into a slight grimace as his brows furrowed together, and the color of purple frustration came and went through the waves of emotion above him. He was mad, was he? What did Jesse say again? Thoughts curled in his mind like fog, confusing and unreadable, and then all at once he was back to staring up in blank unawareness.
“No, I’m serious.” Jesse quipped, leaning back in his chair, mouth pressed into a tight-lipped smirk. “You look terrible. Just the worst, really.”
He wasn’t going to lie… this was pretty funny, and if he had to be honest, he liked King a lot better this way. Sure, if he squinted, he could still see the remnants of ‘insufferable shithead’ that’d been left untouched by sedatives, but it was an indisputable fact that high-as-fuck-King was much more tolerable than regular-King.
“Mmm, I can't see you,” King tried to turn his head again but a pang of agony twisted his expression and kept him still. “I can't see you but I'm sure you look bad. Were you at the party~?” Hazy faces popped up in my brain, people who he remembered from last night, and Jesse wasn't among them. King wasn't exactly trusting himself currently, though, and without waiting for a definite answer he barreled forward,
“Dude, like, last night was crazy, huh? D-Drunk teens all in one place is never a good idea!” He bit his lip slightly, sweat forming at his temple, “The storm was fucked– too loud– and… And– Dani Wells… Dani died? Did she?” King groaned, eyes squeezing shut as waves of red clutched at his heart and head. “I saw the murderer’s emotions, see? They were bright yellow! And I got rocked. He hit my head I think, and–” A memory pulled him from his words, a color, sickly pale and gleaming through the wooded darkness. King’s mouth involuntarily pulled into a dark smile, a smile that most definitely did not belong to him. A smile he had chased last night. He shook, trembled despite the warmth that held him down, and his twisting expression focused silently on the sitting figure beside him.
Jesse frowned, brow furrowing. Some of his amusement was gone, giving way to worry and confusion, especially when King bared his teeth in a disconcerting smile. What he said was barely coherent - a broken jumble of facts and questions - just what did he mean by seeing the murderer’s emotions? Was he also affected by the eclipse? Was all of this connected somehow? King’s muddled recollections of last night seemed to elicit more questions than answers, and Jesse scooted closer to him in curious earnest.
“Murderer? What murderer? What happened to Dani?” He probably sounded just as confused as he felt, though he regretted asking as soon as the string of questions tumbled past his lips. King was agitated enough as it was, and no matter how much he disliked the guy, sending him into the stress-induced coma he looked to be about two seconds away from did not seem like a great idea. Still, Jesse couldn’t help squeezing in one last question before he had to make a quick getaway. Maybe King would actually be lucid enough to put together a coherent sentence after he’d had something to eat, but by then, he would’ve gotten answers out of someone a little more agreeable. “You could… see his emotions? Like an aura, or something?”
King’s smile faltered, shook, and then vanished all together as his brows knitted into a worried expression that almost exactly copied Jesse’s. The vivid oranges and purples surrounding the boy were already enough to make him forget his last hideous joy-inducing memory, but also they clouded his judgement. King’s eyes grew misty with a concern that did not belong to him, and his head rocked over to lean into the pillow beneath him.
“Emotions– Callaghan, what're you worried about? Me?” A croaked, confused chuckle slipped out into the air, saturated with whatever other emotions were slipping into King’s subconscious. “Emotions, yeah… Presley said I was an Empath? At the meeting, nerd meeting. Astronoooo–” His eyes shut after a moment, a look of regret crossing over his pale face.
The few clear memories he had from Monday were sewn together messily, but through it all he knew for a fact Jesse had not been at the meeting. What did Darling say? Or Moon? The skin on his forehead puckered with concentration, an action that in turn caused more sweat to form and drip from the base of his hair, and his lips pulled back into another pained grimace.
“Don't tell… Anyone without powers?” King’s mouth reacted before his mind did, and his eyes opened wide to stare bewildered up at Jesse. “Oh. You–You shouldn't know. But did I tell you? Oh...!” His voice cracked suddenly, and his eyes narrowed as he literally felt some of the highness in his brain fade away to reveal the agony he had managed to ignore. His breathing hitched slightly, caught in his throat and pumped his chest, and King gritted his teeth in annoyance at the new found awareness in his mind.
Jesse would’ve made a wisecrack about how he should’ve just kept his mouth shut, if he was so scared of people finding out, but he was far too concerned about what King said to do so. Was it really true? The eclipse had given them powers? It sounded like something straight out of a young adult novel, and he wouldn’t even give any of this a second thought if it weren’t for what happened with Logan. Random people off the streets, granted supernatural powers by some strange, cosmic phenomenon, it all added up to a recipe for disaster. If all of this happened to be true… he shuddered to think of the consequences.
“Shit– Callaghan, wha… Did I say much?” King turned his head again, pressing the back of it into the pillow until he felt an uncomfortable amount of pressure on his wound. “Don't repeat… Calm down, you’re curious… Confused and concerned. Orange, blue, purple. He was yellow, joy, Rachel Lewis–” His voice crumbled into discoherent mumbles, eyes half-lidded and stormy. The painkillers were weaker, proven by the rawness he felt from his concussion, but for some reason his mind still felt full of cotton and clouds, and each thought was swept up into a storm that was brewing at the base of his forehead. “Murderer… Still out there…”
“...Yeah, you should probably stop talking.” Jesse murmured, a little half-heartedly, thin lips pressing into an even thinner line. King’s explanation might’ve been jumbled - confused, even - but it did shed some light on the whole situation. From his description of last night’s events, it was clear that there were others like him out there, and they’d already congregated to try and make sense of things. It still wasn’t a concrete lead, of course, but for now, it seemed like it was all that he would be able to get out from King. Jesse was, however, able to pick out a name that stood out from the rest.
Presley.
King was talking about Scout - Jesse knew that much - and he nodded to himself, the motion barely noticeable in the dim lighting of the ward. He knew who he had to talk to next, though along with resolution, he felt a nauseating concern well up in the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t exactly done a headcount of the missing students, but if Scout had been injured as well…
“Alright, dude. You literally look like you’re about to pass out, so I’m just gonna get out of your hair.” Jesse made to stand, wincing a little at the noise his chair made as its bare, aluminium feet scraped against the linoleum.
“Don't...” King’s face contorted again at the noise, voice low and grumbling in annoyance. “Don't… Do anything stupid, Callaghan. It– it would probably suck if you died.” He clicked his tongue again, breathing out loudly through labored lungs. And then, slowly but surely, his face relaxed and his breathing calmed to a gentle rhythm. He was floating again, but it wasn't pink and pearly any longer, instead strips of red stained his dreams, and distant pain kept him from truly fading away to nothingness.
At King’s comment, Jesse almost cracked a smile. Almost. There was something strangely endearing about the way he said it, almost like he actually gave a shit, but before he could dwell on it any further, he pushed the offending thought to the back of his mind, and headed for the door. There were other things to worry about - things that were much more important than a simple, offhand comment from someone doped up on pain medication. Still, there was a part of him that hoped this slightly more tolerable side of King would last. Maybe they could become something close to friends, if they were all still alive at the end of this.
Without another look back, Jesse left the room. There were too many thoughts in his mind, too many things to do. The limits and capabilities of his power were unknown to him; hell, he still wasn’t sure whether it was even real or not. Doubtlessly, some experimentation was in order. If he wanted to finally convince himself that all this wasn’t just some communal fever dream, that was what he needed to do, and he made a quick note to drop by Scout’s for visit once he’d done so.
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