bakerstreet | Things we lost in the flames

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Things we lost in the flames

Mutual Healing Shipping Meme

Healing doesn't come quickly, whether the need comes from physical or mental wounds. But you're trying regain your strength - and yourself.

People, as a general rule, are kind, or at least not outright inflammatory to you, it seems. Still, you just can't connect with them. No matter how nice, how caring, they don't understand. They've never experienced anything like what you've gone through, or they're not like you in a way that lets them see what you still go through; they have no frame of reference. Sure, they have sympathy, but it's not the same. So there's no real connection, despite any friendliness. It's so easy, then, to feel detached...

...until you meet them, in this place of both death and healing.

They may not have been through the exact same struggles, they may not be exactly the same as you, but they know what darkness is light. How they handle this fact may be better or worse than how you do, yet you can see yourself in their actions. And for once? There's connection; more than that, too. Slowly, you can feel yourself opening up towards them, and then, falling for them.

Is this something your used to? Will you fight your feelings, or will you jump at the opportunity to be with someone who can begin to get you? You may have little choice in the matter, as your instincts may just reach out to be with whatever compatible contact you can get. That's better, in the long run, though. Who else could have wounds like yours?

Essentially, it's what it says: a "romance," in the loose definition, or "shipping" meme for characters who have been through the wringer or have hangups.
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( i'm up to date but if anyone wants to avoid season 2 spoilers just let me know! )

[ two broken people figuring out how they can slot those fragments together? absolutely yes. interested in awkward emotions and painful honesty. i'm alright with it pre-romance/just getting them started, with lots of nerves in the approach, possibly fights or what-have-you depending on how full of barbs the partner is. i'm also ready to go for established relationship/assumed cr and getting to explore how they manage to make some frayed and exhausted emotions work.

okay with m/f and m/m. i will only thread out romance with people near Will's age (at least 25, preferably older, aging up is fine). ~~also i'm just saying that this mun is v familiar with the MCU and marvel's lineup in general and i have Thoughts about how Will would play off of some of them.~~

for anyone unfamiliar with Will's canon: he's an ex-cop who works for the FBI...as a professor, and then as a consulting detective once he's nudged to take a look at a new serial killer. he catches bad guys because he can think like them, and it's a very gruesome method-acting he employs to do so. it's also a bit involuntary, and Will is constantly worried he's going to slip too far into a killer's head someday and not know how to make his way back out. concerns about being a monster are big with this guy. concerns that he'll like being a monster are also big. ]

The plastic-skinned phone receiver is almost sticky in Rust's sweating palm, the Texas heat not nearly bad enough but made worse by the dampness of yesterday's rainfall. The phone rings for what feels like minutes; Rust's eyes flinch shut briefly, neck bending and head lowering down like a heavy apple on a weak branch, when the tone floods his vision with the texture of dandelions, petals, not the seeds. The color too is vibrant, distracting, painted into the backs of his eyelids, until it and it takes him a moment to realize that the sound has stopped.

Silence. Not audibly, but visually: aurora borealis against a black, star-splattered sky. He didn't hear Will answer, didn't process it audibly, but he saw it.

"Will," Rust breathes, throat dry, cracking. He lifts his head up and stares at the blank living room wall, as if the man were right in front of him. His eyes, wide, stare as he tracks flickers of woozy shapes that ghost across the white paint. "It's Rust."

Maybe Will knew that. He probably did. Rust has never liked assuming his presence was preceded by a caller ID, though. He likes making his presence known in his own way. Hell, he's particular like that about pretty much everything.

He's especially particular about help. Asking for it. Rust would seek it out more if he wanted the people he knew to help, to get that close. It's not safe to approach a wounded feral animal, no matter the good intention.

But Will isn't someone stopped on the side of the road who's found a struck animal.

"I uh..." They've forgone the pretenses of 'you busy?' after this long, and Rust is physically incapable of being patient with himself right now.

"...I've been drinkin'." His stomach flips, sick and angry. It sounds pathetic. It sounds like every sad sack at Northshore in group discussion. He has to remind himself this isn't that. He can own up to this. Actually, that isn't the hard part -- it's seeking help, which is why anything more to say gets caught in his throat, balls up there and doesn't budge.

It's cool outside.

By comparison, at least. The heat of summer had gone from warming to scorched about two weeks ago, the sky always overcast with thunderclouds between the blasts of sun. The grass outside Will's apartment complex is gathering a dusty gold at the tips, laying flat against raw dirt and pavement squares.

The hot breath calms to a certain stillness at night, though. Will's out in it, barefoot, on a compulsion he'd indulged. The yellow-tipped grass feels alive under his feet, still softer than it looks. The dirt feels like the dampness of the last thunderstorm hasn't quite left it.

Will thinks of Rust squinting out at the clouds last time they'd met at a diner to discuss cases, of him commenting on how his area of Texas had always been a lot dryer than Louisiana was. Will had reassured Rust that he was plenty dry enough to make up for it.

Will's face tilts up to the still night unfurled overhead. It's a dark, bruised blue, one that Will thinks he's seen in autopsy photos as well as nature calendars. The air's clearer out here than in his apartment.

He thinks to himself that he's really going to get a dog, once he moves into a place with the sort of yard he could let one run free in during the evenings when he's actually home.

Will's walking up the outside stairs to his apartment. Walking, that is, until he starts sprinting and nearly jams a finger trying to unlock his door in time when he hears the phone ringing.

He picks up and is almost worried whoever it is would have hung up, but the silence crackling over the line is fuller than a dial tone.

And then it's Rust's voice. Will's squeezing the receiver too hard before Rust has even finished that lone sentence. Will sucks in a breath, eyes blind to the wall they're fixed on. This is new. This hasn't happened before. Rust's never drank, never been anything short of curtly aware that it's a road he doesn't want himself going down again, and Will had never pressed for specifics on how the alcohol had slotted in amongst the cocaine, the guns, the danger.

Will's thought about it, though. Of course he has.

"Okay." Will says, because he's already been silent for too long. And then because it's the very first reason his brain can come up with for Rust to be calling him with a confession, he continues. "You need a ride home?"

Edited 2017-11-13 03:26 (UTC)

It takes Will a strangely long moment to speak -- but then again, it's a loaded conversation to have at all. Rust feels the weight of his declaration, his problem, weigh the air down between them, miles made shorter with a couple feet of phone cable. Rust's eyes have shut themselves away with swelling regret for all of this he's doing by the time words crackle through from the other end.

Then blink open again. A ride home. Will's usually pretty damn observant, but is apparently distracted now. There's no clacking of billiards, no blaring music or voices rumbling over each other -- just the silence of Rust's apartment. Were he in any different mood right now, he could probably laugh a little. Instead he's just acutely aware of the possibility that Will's mind is too busy running with his thoughts about this.

"...No." Rust's voice is soft, low but clear, before he slips the filter of his cigarette between his lips for a moment. The sigh burying the smoke deeper into his lungs is just as audible as the momentary corked silence on the cigarette. "Guess it's worse than that." In that this slip of sobriety was a little more deliberate than succumbing to weakness and pulling into the parking lot of a bar on the way home.

"I'm at my apartment," Rust clarifies, because saying 'I'm home' is false advertising. Home hasn't existed for Rust in a long time. Years. 'Home' is a foreign word at this point, and most of the concepts attached to it.

So he reminds himself, which keeps him from fully confronting those of which pushed him to calling Will in the first place.

'No', Rust says, and Will blinks away the walls of his own living room in the space between his next words. He sees the outline of Rust's lamp sitting on the plastic tote in the corner, lower than any nightstand Will's ever seen. He sees the apartment-standard blinds with nothing extra pulled over them, letting in the burnt light even at three in the morning, too-bright street lamps interrupting any hint of sleep any occupants of that room might strive for.

And now, newly, Will sees a bottle of Jim Beam on the carpet near the mattress. Abandoned not because Rust's done drinking, but because that first bottle's empty.

Will's hand drags across his face. It might have been cool outside, but that doesn't explain how shaky his breath is as it comes out.

If Rust didn't call him for a ride...

"Am I still getting into my car?" Will clears his throat. "I mean-- I can-- Did you--" Rust called him. Rust was signalling. That is him asking.

Just offer, Will.

"I'm coming over." A beat, where Will finds he can't quite press Rust's head down and force him to accept this. "If that's what you want."

Rust blinks with surprise, albeit a slow and sloppy kind. ’Am I still getting into my car?’ If Rust didn’t know Will any better, he might think his penchant for a blunt tone when caught off guard might actually be a pissy attitude. By now, Rust knows it not even as a false swipe, but as a genuine mishandling.

But Rust can’t help a spark of ire that catches alight — there’s a ’why the fuck do you think I called’ coiling up tight on his tongue, gearing for a venomous strike, but is subdued by the trampling stuttering Will follows with.

It’s true, this is Rust asking, and he has the patience of a saint right now, considering his state. He drags fingertips across his forehead, crushing out some sort of stale ache under the skin that the whiskey had made him forget about. Don’t make him have to do more than he’s comfortable with, Will, you’re not this oblivious...

Rust drops the cigarette into the ash tray, staring holes into this living room wall before him. Will had said it looked like a hospital once, his living room, bare clean walls with a bed and a single chair. Rust disagreed. The only reminder of the hospital he has is the crucifix on the wall above his bed, the one he lays awake under every night as he thinks in the half dark between striped shadows of black and fluorescent light.

Shit, Will said something. Rust inhales sharply through his nose, opening eyes he didn’t notice had closed. He blinks the fog away.

What he wants. For the first time in a long damn time, Rust sees something he wants — and it’s within arms reach.

“...Door’s unlocked.” Does that work for the confirmation Will’s adamant about getting?

Silence is a fact of life when you interact with Rust. There's an ebb and flow of speech from both of them. The deep and pensive lulls are just as genuine as their wordy confessions and indictments. One isn't more honest than the other, and Will knows better than to read 'annoyance' or 'lie' just by virtue of Rust not speaking many words.

The tone, though. The spaces between the sparse words. Will can feel those twist his thoughts, point him like a diving rod towards a truth that Will recognizes as Rust through practice and...

...And whatever softness is welling, hurt, in Will's chest right now. He's already grabbing his keys, already with a jacket on after being outside. "Okay. I'm coming." His cell phone's a battered thing, has been accidentally dropped enough times that if it was a touch screen Will would surely have had to replace it by now. But he's at least got one, which means he doesn't immediately lose their tenuous connection while he careens back out his front door.

Will's hit the night air again before he realizes he's left his shoes behind. "Stay on the line." Rust isn't in the mood for talking about feelings over the phone, that's fine, but Will isn't going to let him excuse silence into abandonment. "You don't have to talk, just... Keep the line open in case. I'll leave my phone in the seat on speaker."

His keys grind against the steering column's plastic before they turn in the ignition, and then he's rolling out of the driveway as soon as the dashboard lights are on.

It’s a stiff and subtle motion when Rust nods to himself at the confirmation, eyes dropping off the wall and to the cropped carpet under his feet. He didn’t have any reservations about Will’s compliance, but it’s good to hear that he’s coming over. With his wobbly mind full of ambient thought, knowing is a weight that grounds him in the fog of it all. It’s not often that Rust asks anything of Will, and it’s that step toward asking and making a desire known that feels thorny in his hands. Will either knows how to handle holding his want, or simply doesn’t feel it prickling in his palms.

He isn’t the kind for exit formalities, and Will knows it. Rust is about to slip the phone down back to its cradle when the man abruptly adds — ’stay on the line.’ His brow wrinkles deep in the middle, confused and as Will continues, alarm transitions into something defensive.

“I’m glad you’re not making this into a big deal,” Rust growls, realizing how he’s made him worry, and how that makes him feel ill. Like he can’t manage to avoid getting punished every time he succumbs to the insistent advice he finds constantly lobbed at him. “Jesus, I had a couple drinks. I’m not...sobbing on the floor of the bathtub, ‘r anything.”

It makes him look at the half empty bottle, part with simple awareness of it, and part with that spiraling want to disassemble himself, lay out in pieces and stop trying to hold this shamble of a person haphazardly together. That want had lead to a thought tonight, a realization that ended in picking up his phone: wanting Will to be here and keep these pieces from slipping off completely, because Rust remembered how much it fucking hurts to let himself come apart. At least with Will...it will be easier, less excruciating.

At the moment, that foundation is feeling a little rocky, Rust feeling inklings of self-conscious regret spill quietly through cracks running in. ‘Easier’ is slowly losing its original charm.

"I'm not making this into a big deal." Will says, and his voice is the most even it's been since he picked up his phone. He breathes in steady against the rising tide of Rust's defensiveness, feels himself get pulled up along with it instead of drowned.

And then, as he lets the wave continue to crash back down to earth, Will lets it pass him right on by.

"I think your perception's a little warped right now." Which is almost too on-the-nose, almost feels cruel to say when Rust's called him for what he has. Will blinks off the trailing edges of Rust that he can see even through the phone connection, turns onto the main street. "And I'm not talking about the alcohol."

Just the part where it's not easy to ask for help. Just the part where Will's known him for months, known of him for years, and has never seen him willingly crack that open. Everything Will has given him was offered silently or requested silently.

Nothing like what's happened tonight. "Does your apartment still have that dumpster out front blocking a parking spot and a half?"

The argument is expected, but it’s a swipe that lacks claws. Will genuinely believes that his reaction is appropriate, and for most people, it is. Rust can’t fault him for that — but this is hard for Rust, to reach out of himself and grasp at another with battered, bloody fingers. Rust is trapped in a dark midwinter, struggling through banks of memory frozen in perfect clarity, painful to touch and chill him deeply. Even the gentlest warmth can be too much for him to take.

Will is like the fucking sun right now, two inches from his face. It’s well-meaning, but doesn’t know the extent of his frost bite tonight, and under the warmth that feels scorching, Rust burns.

He sighs sharply, feeling Will’s words dig in to those spots that are the weakest — and finds there’s a lot of those. “’My perception...’” Muttered low, challenged and incredulous. All perception is warped, compared to reality; all of the interactions and awareness of reality is taken in through crude, untrustworthy senses. Rust’s mind rolls down that hill of thought easily, and so intensely that he doesn’t realize at first that he isn’t speaking aloud.

Until Will responds with something completely unrelated. Rust frowns at the carpet and then up, glancing over at his sliding glass door to his open patio. “You got some garbage to get rid of?” Rust’s curiosity is veiled by his low, even tone, despite how suddenly the remark derails him. He’s grabbing his cigarettes and moving to stand, taking the cordless receiver with him as he crosses the floor and to the slatted vinyl curtain along his wall. He doesn’t make an effort to play quiet as he pulls the blinds and sliding door open, leaves it so when he walks out onto the concrete slab designated as his small slice of territory in this bizarre place, a communal environment where nobody knows nobody. Rust is pretty sure half of these apartments stand empty, but how the hell would he know? He doesn’t see most of the people who rot within these thin, hollow walls. Like bird bones.

...What was that about warped perception, again?

[Would love someone who can help her deal with her feelings of loss and/or inadequacy. Bring me all your angst.]

( preferences on profile; will avoid ragnarok spoilers/set beforehand unless otherwise requested. )

He would be the healer this time, in the sense of actually using his abilities (not necessarily following canon version) to do it. Bit of a mess this one is but his intentions are good.

[ He has anxieties for days, about both himself and having very self worth, and about being in/forming meaningful relationships. However, whether their platonic or romantic, relationships are something he desperately wants and needs.

His current living situation is a severely abusive one, but I am more than happy to have this take place after he's managed to get away from said environment. Full info is on his journal, would prefer modern au for this meme. ]

[if anyone is up for the sloppy shitshow of a survived-the-barricades au (and probably being light on shipping), hit me with your worst shot]

He's still not sure how the lifestream works exactly. For one thing, he should have returned to gaia by now. Yet, here he is, smirking as she joins him in the green.

"Hey," he greets fondly. He's been watching, feeling strangely detached to it all, but there, nonetheless.

She'd always had a connection with the lifestream, but the sense of peace and harmony that she'd had from it is magnified a thousandfold now that she's here physically. She'd known when Zack died, had felt him return here, and had always been certain she'd reunite with him here one day too.

Aerith smiles in return, smaller and quieter than his smirk, but happy to see him nonetheless.

"Hello."

"Sorry I never called." He wanted to. He was sure about that much. "But I think you knew I was there when you found Cloud."

((healer!Derek))

[ He's seen some shit, but probably the supporting one unless you're super interested in dealing with the fallout from everything that happens in FFII. ]

[ Sunlight filters through a hole in the tent and the Warrior finds himself gently slipping away from the depths and warmth of sleep. The sound of birds chirping catches his attention, arm draped across his forehead while eyes of crystal blue stare sleepily toward the flickering rays of sunshine coming through that hole. Beside him, he can hear the steady breathing of his companion- his comrade, fast asleep.

Firion.

He can still feel the other's fingers on his skin and recall the ways in which his body bent so beautifully against his own while whimpered moans spilled from bruised lips that desperately sought after his own. Exhausted and spent, somehow sleep had claimed the both of them and, as always, he is the first to wake.

This isn't the first time... nor the second... third... well past fourth and fifth that they've found themselves like this together come morning and memories of the night before crash into them as ocean waves do against the shore. Somehow, they've taken solace in one another through all of this and while their ragged breaths and the shuddering delight that comes from their movements together doesn't fix any of the pain that either of them has been through, it numbs it, in the moment, allowing them both to feel something that isn't broken or damaged or seconds away from falling apart.

But that... is all it is, it seems. Glances exchanged so briefly when out in battle, words kept to a minimum and Firion always so respectful of his words and wishes. Outside of this little tent of theirs... they are not warm like this, not tangled in each other, not even beside each other... and neither has brought it up with the other concerning why.

At least... not yet.

The pads of pale fingers gently ghost along tanned skin, coming to touch against each and every scar that the other wears while eyes of blue curiously stare to them, wondering in silence how each of them was made and if they still hurt... and not in the physical sense. Leaning in, lips brush over a couple scars, not meaning to wake the other but... perhaps also wanting to, finding the silence and the chirping of the birds to prove lonely here in this tent; all of this will disappear as before once they both leave the confines of the tent after all. ]

[ It is rare for the sun to rise upon either of them still sleeping. And yet, it is easier here. There is no good reason for it. He is no safer here than anywhere else. The tent is only cloth, barely fit to protect them from the weather in its worn state. The Warrior's arms are only beautiful flesh laced with light.

And yet here-

He has been remembering of late, they all have save for the Warrior, and the more he recalls the more he finds that safety and comfort are difficult things to come by.

He does not feel, as he has before, scaled fingers moving over his skin in his sleep, tracing over lost battles marked on him and mocking his failures in a cruel imitation of someone else's voice. Only warmth. He stirs softly, turning to look at the Warrior's face. ]

Dawn already. [ He says sleepily, reaching out to rest a hand against the Warrior's cheek. ] The nights are so short in this tent.

It would appear so.

[ Lips brush against the inside of Firion's wrist, words soft against tanned skin as he speaks. Eyes of blue that look down to the lazy soldier, a smile, so gentle in every way, slowly tugs at the corners of his lips. ]

There is still time to rest. Though not as much as you may like.

[ They needed to continue on, press forward with their missions. For now, however, there is still time which they can savor for themselves here within the confines of this tent they share and the Warrior plans to drink up as much of it as he can... he finds that he wants to, surprisingly.

Quietly, he comes to press his face against the crook of Firion's neck, the pads of his fingers brushing softly over warm skin along his side, slipping down to rest against a slender hip. It's there that the Warrior presses a tender kiss against Firion's neck, a tilt of his head after in some attempt to have a better look at him. ]

You were talking in your sleep. [ He mutters then, keeping himself pressed against the other. ] You were... dreaming?

[More Avengers than Ragnarok for behavior and temperament. Can avoid Ragnarok spoilers if wanted.]

[ooc: still super voice-testing, but tentatively ota canonmates.]

Edited 2017-11-04 17:06 (UTC)

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Things we lost in the flames

rey | star wars

Owen Shaw | Fast & Furious movies

nancy wheeler | stranger things

will graham | hannibal nbc | ota

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larus ( original ) ota

Wanda Maximoff || MCU || F/M

Rey || Star Wars: The Force Awakens || F/M

Bruce Banner ( MCU )

Sabine Faber ( X-Company )

Eugene Root ( Preacher )

Jean Moreau ( All for the Game )

Elizabeth Foley 🍄 Atomic Robo 🍄 OTA

Karen Donahue | OC | F/M

widowmaker | overwatch

thor odinson ⚡ mcu

Protagonist [Akira Kurusu] | Persona 5

Thranduil | Tolkien's universe, cross-canon especially wanted.

Gabriel Starling | OC | OTA

enjolras ] les misérables

Izumi Sena | Ensemble Stars

Aerith Gainsborough | FFVII | OTA

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Eren Jaeger | Shingeki no Kyojin | OTA

Derek Hale (AU) | Teen Wolf

Firion | Final Fantasy II

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Bruce Banner | MCU | ota

jyn erso || rogue one || ota

cassian andor || rogue one || m/f

Lavi | D.Gray-Man | OTA

Yuto | Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V | ota

Jyn Erso | Rogue One | OTA

Rey | SW: TFA | OTA