capeandcowl2020 | Open Post 002

And in possibly the first brief whiff of awkwardness thus far, Eridan simply stood in the corner as Eddie made his motions. Glanced over the flash drives, read the covers of the newspapers.

It was only when he glanced back to answer Eddie that he became aware of the revolver, and felt a sudden pang of longing for the weight of his magnum. He wasn't entirely sure if it was to defend himself from his pursuers — or from Eddie.

"Fixated as ever, I take it?" He dragged fingertips along the nearest surface, examined dust that wasn't there. "Not surprised. Not after what he did to you. Helped do, really, but I'm sure he gives himself plenty a credit."

He rolled purple tongue against dull human teeth, thoughtfully. What were his odds of survival if Eddie turned that revolver against him, for whatever reason? He couldn't use his ranged powers again without tipping off every government man within a hundred foot radius, and crawling off to a hospital oozing purple was not an option.

Bad odds.

"In fact, I know he does." The soft shuffle of a mostly empty pack of cigarettes. He let one hang out of his teeth, patting himself down fruitlessly for a lighter. "You're the one that got away, right? He must obsess."

A soft huff of laughter. Eridan glanced back over, making a gun motion towards the end of his cigarette. And fired.

"Got a light?"

"In fact," he said after a pause. "I do."

Talk of Norman swelled in his ears, swum in his head. A swarm of locusts plaguing his very thoughts. He imagined Norman's face, that smug sneer. That black hole of an eye socket covered by a simple patch. Edward (and perhaps Edward alone) understood how the Establishment's rabid dog had lost that eye: it was a punishment for losing Eddie the first time. When he slithered right through the enforcer's fingers. It only vulcanized Norman's hate for him, but even a miniscule part of Eddie believed it all worthy.

He smiled at Eridan. Warmly.

The kettle hissed again, a siren for attention.

Eddie drew a step closer, his eyes on Eridan. The other man had flourished under the regime -- not without his own sacrifice, of course, but comparatively, he had done more than simply survive. He had exploited. People suffered, people died because of Eridan Ampora and his survival instinct. A lesser man would have already tried to strangle that gill-lacking lackey, but Edward understood the depth to the situation. Here was Eridan Ampora, a prince reduced, an heir apparent -- his heir apparent -- suffocated. He was desperate and dire. He was alone.

Edward held the revolver to Eridan's cigarette, his free hand shadowing the back of the Alternian's head.

The blood would never dry from Eridan Ampora's hands.

Eddie shoved the gun against the other man's teeth, speaking in a measured, soft voice.

"Why shouldn't I? Tell me, Eridan, why I should not."

The clink of steel on teeth was not altogether unexpected; that didn't make it any less painful.

"Ah." Just ah, barely a breath, just a casual glance down the barrel of the gun before murky brown eyes matched Eddie's once again. A flat glare. Pupils blown wide with fear.

"Because you need me." Soft, measured. "I know better than anybody else that you rebel wannabes have jack shit that can actually do damage. You got trouble makers with homemade bombs. Psychic or two. You got angry college kids writin' letter campaigns to their local governors. But you've got nothin' else. Nobody who's been on the inside and come out normal, no offense."

Sharp, on that last syllable.

"But you could have me. Somebody," he breathed, imagining he could smell gunpowder, "who's got nothin' left to lose. A turncoat. A snake. And you could really use a snake right about now, couldn't you?" His heart pounded against his ribcage. "And you — you could use a friend. A pal. Somebody you can trust."

Eridan narrowed his eyes.

"A right hand man."

Another breath held. And then his voice came booming, confident; he just hoped, in his delicate condition, that Eddie wouldn't trip his trigger and blow Eridan's purple matter all over the kitchen tile.

"But if you want to just kill me, just throw away the last person who really gives a shit about you besides whose side of this war you can win for 'em, be my guest. And have fun scrubbin' purple outta the carpet."

And in a move recalling the brashness of his youth — not an accidental turn — Eridan leaned in just far enough to let the muzzle of Eddie's revolver slide cool onto the bed of his dry tongue, teeth closing around steel with an audible clink. He matched eyes with Eddie and, not for the first time within the past week, gambled it all.

He hoped the lack of gag reflex was suitably distracting.

Edward displayed little beyond narrowed eyes and a skeptical sneer throughout Eridan's entire defense. His trigger finger stroked over the mechanism, taunting, but never pulling. Before Eridan was even midway through his argument, Eddie had been dissuaded from cold murder.

He wasn't in a mood to clean the carpet, anyway.

As Eridan took the gun into his mouth, Edward watched with his now default impassive expression.

"Practice that much? Given who you work for, I mean, isn't a real surprise is it?" His familiar tone equipped the quip. Slowly, gently, he pulled the gun out from Eridan's mouth. And wiped it down Eridan's shirt. There was a quirk of judgment in the movement, a flicker of disdain along with the mercy: Eridan was still a G-man, far as Eddie was concerned. A turncoat could always turn again, yes, but the problem wasn't the direction -- it was the fact there were far too many coat racks.

He needed Eridan. But he couldn't trust him.

"A friend, you said." Eddie cleared his throat. "What could a friend do for me? Thought those were more useful to normal individuals."

A biting echo of Eridan's own barb.

Eridan quirked his eyebrows at the quip, hummed down the metal. Licked his lightly throbbing teeth as Eddie wiped.

"Besides the obvious?" A quirk of his smile, not quite a sneer but hovering around the genus. "Not that you'd get the pleasure. I've got standards, and they sure don't bend for guys who live in shitty one bedrooms in Queens."

Cavalier in the face of his (probably briefly) prolonged existence, Eridan retrieved his fallen cigarette and made a show of brushing it off before returning it to his mouth. Dingy carpet from shitty one bedrooms in Queens, and whatnot.

"Hey, maybe you need someone to talk to besides yourself." A lean inwards. "What do I know. You gonna light me up or not?"

Eddie smiled all the while, his smirk deepening at the insults and insinuations. And still, through all those silent lip quirks, he refused to offer Eridan a light.

He was done playing the Prometheus role.

"I already have friends," he said. Edward was still a manipulator, and he had always known Eridan to embody envy. "I had the most effective Intelligence network, before -- before my capture. Don't you think I took pains to ensure it would continue without me?" Two fingers extended, lifting up Eridan's chin. "No writhing snake without it's head."

The bait cast.

"I'm involved with them. My Network."

Not to the extent he had been, when Eddie built his espionage group from the grass. But he was involved, defiantly, even if under the vigilant eye of Max Gibson.

"They haven't forsaken me."

Eridan hadn't given Eddie the pleasure of visual displeasure when he'd been grasped before, but now — well, now he couldn't help it. Narrowing eyes, locking jaw on a cigarette yet to be lit.

That's what irritated him most, out of the whole thing. Friends he could go without, but he'd gotten so used to people doing what they were told.

"You think they love you? Eddie." Chiding, almost scornful. He moved to brush past the man in favor of his stove, the nicotine craving after that mild brush with death suddenly pressing. He flipped a burner on, waited impatiently for it to heat up. "They only give a shit about you because you can win the war for 'em. You're a tool. A, ah —" inspiration striking, pulling the kettle off its burner and kissing the unlit end of his smoke to the hot metal. "— bottle of someone else's Xanax stashed away in the back of the medicine cabinet."

He clicked the burner off, drug in deep. Finally looked back to Eddie again over his shoulder, words smoky.

"You're nice to have on the rough days, but they don't need you. Not really." A quirk of his lips. "Once you're all used up, they're gonna move on to the next best thing. Maybe something even better."

"Maybe," he followed up. Cool, aloof eyes drifted over Eridan's body, collecting around Eridan's mouth when he turned over and around. "Maybe. But at least I can look at myself in the mirror, each morning."

Now cam his turn to gamble, with different stakes. He crossed his arms, leaning against the kitchen threshold.

"Better to be a useful tool than a disposable pawn, wouldn't you think?" A low chuckle, from the back of his throat. "Better a bottle of pills than, ah, a bottle of lubrication."

Lewd as the insinuation was, Eddie held no qualms at clarification.

"Your superiors slick you around their dicks and thrust, Eridan, there's no mincing words. In and out, and never their focus. Have I taught you nothing?" Now came the theatrics, now came the note of disappointment. Of unadulterated sadness.

"Have you already forgotten our first lesson? Never let them define who and what you are."

"If I was their lube, then I used to be your glove." Idly, he made a jerking motion with his right hand. "Means to an end, smooth glide, stylish as hell, and kept you from gettin' yourself dirty."

Nonchalance aside, Eddie's words prickled down his spine and stuck there, like a knife. He'd always had the ability to do that with little more than twisting phrases and tone of voice, something Eridan had never been able to accomplish with such off the cuff efficiency. Yet another thing, a quirk that Eridan hadn't quite been able to duplicate.

Yet.

"Besides, those lessons of yours don't mean much when one of us made out in the end and the other probably hasn't made out with anythin' other than his hand in, what, a year?" He leaned heavy against the stove and blew smoke rings around Eddie's face from his point of view, more than content with the distance between them, this hostility. He liked it. And he was more than happy to further it. "I mean, I'm not the one twitchin' and tweakin' here, Winston."

Another drag. He'd barely blinked since taking up position at the stove.

"You're gonna regret not blowin' my brains out, Nygma." He brought his cigarette up to his lips again, dangled in delicate fashion between the knuckles of his first and middle fingers. "I'd suggest not tryin' tonight, by the by. Light sleeper. Forgot to grab my Xanax on the way out this mornin'."

Eddie froze in his muscles for half a minute, staring at Eridan with that plastic smile of his. It was a facial feature well practiced and worn so often before the Establishment's company. That static, buzzing smile. Twitching only in the corners.

Winston Smith, he had alluded.

The next half of that minute was spent violently, Eddie's hands seeking to tear at Eridan's once-gill scars. Thumbs pressing into larynx. His body pressing against Eridan's, pulling them both down, using the advantage of surprise to angle a pinning.

He took pains not to bash Eridan's skull against the stovetop. He wondered if the Alternian had noticed.

"It must be s-so hard," Eddie whispered against and ear. "So hard for you. Still desperately hating someone you admire -- hate to admire. Afraid to invest lest I d-disappear again. Afraid that I judge you for choosing the easy route."

Lips touching aural cartilage.

"So hard for you."

It shouldn't have been an unexpected reaction — or, in other words, it shouldn't have caught Eridan by so much surprise. He knew that. Should've known that. Shouldn't have ended up pinned under Eddie, dull and long since manicured nails biting desperately at the soft parts of his assailant's face, hands, tearing at brunet hair.

He took pains not to burn Eddie with the cigarette still clenched between his fingers. He wondered if the Riddler had noticed.

"Is that puh-puh-pity I hear, Nygma?" Eridan hissed back, free hand scrabbling across the linoleum for purchase. Arched back, estimating his own weight versus Eddie's, how much of a difference they had between them. "Not really your style."

Thin. Hard to breathe, with Eddie's weight on his chest.

"Not our style. Not us."

"Is it not?" Edward poised the question on his tongue, before that tongue licked over his teeth. He held onto Eridan. Tightly. No more scratching, no choking, just pinning. Eddie relied on the force of his motions, his intensity -- he had yet to gain back the weight lost during his captivity. He took his pressure on Eridan as a good sign, that he still held that entrancing power.

"You don't think that empathy can be learned? Fff-forced into your skull by wires and steel blades?" He couldn't help the stutter. This was an emotional topic.

One hand slid up Eridan's shoulder, pushing it back down.

"I can't say I don't hold, at least, s-some sympathy for you. It was a hard choice to make. They can be so persuasive."

Eridan's shoulder didn't fight the push. Still taut as a wire underneath Eddie, the whole of him, but he had stilled.

"Feels like forever on the inside, don't it?" He muttered with a stiff jaw, eyes constantly moving. Eddie. the wall. The stove. The door. The stove again. "They don't keep clocks in there. They don't handle you at the same time everyday. That's on purpose. Feels like a lifetime of gettin' the bile beat out of you."

His tone quaked, almost imperceptibly. He hadn't thought about those hazy months in years. Hadn't wanted to.

"You learn to like it, huh? Because it's better than sittin' in the dark."

"What else did they do to you, Eridan?"

Purposeful use of the other man's real name. His birth name. His legacy name. Gentle fingers stroked stray wisps back with its twin hand kept that shoulder still.

"What else did they take from you?"

Eddie knew how his features drew softer. It was an authentic reaction: few, very few, deathly few individuals lived to see the sun outside again. Even fewer were still capable of coherent speech. Eddie was a brother in trauma to Eridan, a veteran of the same blanching horror. They both knew the scorch of their own screams upon their ears.

"You can tell me."

"Nothin' important."

Was that a lie? Eridan had no idea, honestly. He'd closed that entire section of himself down just as he closed back down now, the hand not bearing his rumpled cigarette once again pulling taught in Eddie's hair. Pulling, as he began his efforts to escape once again. He turned his head to the side and stared at the far wall.

"Nothin' I feel like bondin' over, either."

Eddie chuckled. It was a rasping, broken sound.

"You think you have that choice?"

He dropped his head against Eridan's other shoulder, senseless to the hair pulling. It wasn't a battle worth his interest, he said without words. There were greater goals at fingertips. They had a greater purpose.

But the bickering was familiar. Maybe Eridan needed something familiar.

So Eddie drew back his hand to slap the other man.

To Eddie's credit, the move caught Eridan completely surprised.

The hand at Eddie's hair paused, as the sting across his cheek fully soaked in. And then it raked hard down his neck, seeking purchase at the collar of his shirt.

"Stop that." Blandly chiding, like scolding a child. Like his blunt nails weren't seeking blood at Eddie's neck. "You really want to get into a feelins jam about gettin' tortured? 'Cos I don't do that until I've got a couple bourbons in me."

Edward shook his head, a nuanced movement that Eridan would wholly feel what with Eddie's head right against his shoulder. At this angle, Eridan couldn't see Eddie roll up his blue eyes. He had returned to his prior pinning position, post-slap.

"It isn't so literal, Eridan."

He knew the Alternian would use every innuendo, every word slide, to dodge the meat of his meaning. It was expected. What Eddie proposed only promised an inferno from a candle, a status quo upheaval. But in that chaos breathed organized opportunity.

"You require my perspective once more. You realize this, don't you?"

Eridan didn't quite groan in frustration, not nearly, but let his skull thump audibly back against the tile. He breathed, and felt Eddie's weight fight the expansion of his lungs. Thinner than he remembered. But maybe that's because Eddie had seemed so much bigger when the sea prince had been small.

"Yeah." Bone dry. He turned his head slightly, cheek pressed to Eddie's temple, to suck another drag off his cigarette. It wasn't easy, with the positioning of their bodies. "Yeah."

A thin exhale. The hand at Eddie's neck had stopped its fruitless clawing, now content to lay idle across the span of his shoulders.

"Did you do that on purpose?" An incline of his head, towards nothing in particular. "Earlier. Just for this, just to get my foot in the trap. Or did you just do it to fuck up what I had with them?"

"I'm never not a manipulator, Eridan," Eddie clarified. He was exhausted, his spirit stripped of his prior confidence and glamor. He was exhausted, his body worn and broken and splintered, new skin still cracking over old wounds. Despite his self-aware enigma, despite his casual and static smirk, he felt depleted. It was easier to rest, a moment, to understand the once-protege in his company. To remember what times had been.

The clawing down his neck begin to sting. Red welts, he estimated, would soon form. Blood he felt already.

"That's what I have to offer either side. That's what I've always given to myself, alone." Vaguer wording. He was slipping into memories, and wasn't that good at dodging the bad ones. "Always."

"It's fine."

Eridan's tone was opaque; didn't imply either truth or falsehood in that statement, just simply was. And in the end, it didn't really matter if he was sincere or not, because he'd learn to be. The same way he'd learned to love his shitty apartment, his thankless job, and his disfiguring gill scars.

"It's fine, Eddie," he muttered lowly, in that subsonic rumble, and soothed that free hand down Eddie's neck; settled on the back of his skull, and held that head down against his shoulder. He could recognize that airy, indistinct tone; could tell when a sentimental spell was coming on, and knew that in Eddie's case, those probably came with requisite amounts of violence and delusional spells.

Not really something he wanted to weather when trapped underneath the other man.

"Don't start slippin' off on me now, Nygma. I need you here, so sooner or later you can decide to get the fuck off my chest."

"Nn."

His widened eyes winced. His fingers took to a chunk of Eridan's chest, gripping as if it were an anchor to be minded. His breath was shallow, quick, panicked. It wasn't fine, nothing was fine, and his falsehood told him so.

But then came the dilemma: could it be trusted?

The question bubbled into his brain, along with the resounding phantom burns down his back, his thighs. No, they said, when they had reeducated him. It lies. You can only trust me.

It lies.

"I wasn't --" about to believe it, his speech melded into his mind. I wasn't, I really, wasn't, please.

Short breath. Dark, cold rooms. Eddie dragged his clawed hand down Eridan's front.

And squeezed his eyes shut.

Nope, probably not getting off his chest any time soon. His rolling eyes gratefully invisible (sympathy was, after all, quite hard for him still), Eridan settled his other hand at Eddie's back, mindlessly smearing ash across the material of his shirt; turned head, lips pressed to temple.

"Shhhh."

Far too intimate for Eridan's tastes, this. More intimate than the gunmetal on his molars had been. He didn't like being the soothing party in any arrangement, quickly removed himself from the encounter when someone came to him for a sympathetic ear — I don't let people cry on Gucci, he had sneered more than a few times — and this? This reeked of pale overtones. Not an exact match, but it fit well enough.

How completely fucked was that?

Eddie raked down his chest, and Eridan swallowed a wince. Began to hum the bars to some obscure hipster coffeehouse drivel, low and soft in his throat.

A dry sob cultivated into the crook of Eridan's neck. Shadows stuck to his skin, even as he heard Eridan's humming. He knew, some part of him understood, that Eridan was just trying to calm him. To soothe him. He swallowed the second squirm of sounds coming from his mouth.

Eridan was here. That was communicated sharply enough.

Shivering now, Eddie fought to keep his composure. He heard his own screams from months past, haunting his ears. His lips quivered.

"They never had to do that," he said. Quietly. "There were other ways, but they -- he -- they delighted in it. Because of what I was to them."

Edward, it was clear spoke more about an individual than a collective. The tiles of his floor were like blank windows as he stared at them, watching a void and a universe unfold.

Eridan had never actually felt pale before, not in all his miserable salt-soaked years. Not during either of his petty, halfhearted attempts at moirallegiance, not hardly, and he'd never thought he would. Moirallegiance is a leash, he'd spat the few times it had been suggested in his youth, and princes don't wear leashes. A soft shoosh and cordial pap to numb the sharp edges that composed greatness, that's all it ever was. The societal construct of scared and shivering whelks. He'd never needed that, and he'd never cared enough to offer it to anyone else.

By his third shhhh into the dark fight-mussed span of Eddie's hair, he'd broken it near the end with a lightly hysterical half-giggle at the ridiculousness of it all. More of a rattle, actually. The chain smoking hadn't done his human body much good.

"Oh, Eddie," mumbled against his scalp; leg wrapped around the other man's and rolling them just slightly off kilter, onto their sides. He pillowed Eddie's head with the span of his arm and ignored the bite of the cold tile. "You're a fuckin' mess if I ever saw one. God, I'm so sorry."

What exactly he was sorry for — not being at Eddie's side to protect him back then, not being the right hand, not intervening when he was caught, not stepping in during the torture, not following him afterwards, there was actually quite a variety of failings to choose from here — he didn't know, didn't care to look into very deeply. Examining his numerous failings had never been an effort Eridan had made willingly. But he was undeniably sorry, and that was actually remarkably upsetting.

Was this genuine paleness? He wasn't sure. Still, Edward Nygma was just about the only creature that needed him in all those soft, tenderly platonic ways right here, right now. The only person that seemed to need or want him at all. Eridan flicked the dying sputter of his cigarette across the linoleum and closed his eyes, breathing in panic sweat and the smoke from his own clothing.

"You can tell me about him later." The riptide tug of his own curiosity couldn't keep him from that. He wasn't a saint, after all. "I don't want you gettin' too deep and frothin' into my Gucci, now."

Open Post 002

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)