murdoc Member
STATUS: NYEH HEH HEH! 11 yrs ago
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Blue knows something’s wrong - he can sense it when he feels arms tighten around him, and he almost wants to pull away. Hot puffs of air brush against his skin, Skav’s breathing grows shallower by the second, more erratic. They don’t say anything for a long moment, which just makes Blue want to probe further, if only to make sure they stay lucid and responsive. But before he can ask again, Skav starts talking, syllables spilling past their lips in a panicked jumble. They sounds haphazard, barely put together, jagged like broken shards of glass. It takes a moment for it all to sink in - between the too-tight grip around his torso and the torrent of words - that by the time he realises, Skav has already scrambled away from him, tearing themselves free from his grasp. He thinks they look like an animal, cornered and helpless, and the fear he sees behind their eyes makes him sick to the stomach.
“Skav—” Blue starts to say, but he’s quickly cut off. Skav makes their way across the room, or they try to, at least. They’d fallen to their knees almost as soon as they stood, the dingy wood panelling beneath them letting out a groan of protest. By now, Blue could barely piece together what they were trying to say. Something about loose ends? It feels like a vice tightening around his chest, like all the air had been squeezed out of his lungs. Was he in danger too? The question refuses to vacate his mind, howling with the incessant blare of a faulty car horn. He can barely hear anything else, after that. Skav’s lips are moving, but it’s as if he’s underwater. Everything sounds far away, muffled, and the world feels like it’s spinning - a combination of vertigo and vodka. He doesn’t even notice how hard he’s biting down on the inside of his cheek until he tastes iron, and the lancet of pain that shoots through his jaw is just enough to snap him out of it.
“Skav.” He tries again, despite every fibre of his being screaming that nothing good could come of this. His knees scrape painfully against the floor as he kneels down beside them, reaching out to place a hand on their back. “Skav, listen to me. I’m h—”
Then, they start to claw at their scars, and Blue has to will himself not to recoil. The sight is unsettling, horrifying even, but it’s all he can do to ignore it. He grabs Skav by the shoulders, trying to stop their frantic motions. “Stop. You need to stop. It’s okay.” One of his hands reaches up to rest against their jaw, the other clamping around their wrist. His lips try to curve into a reassuring smile, and he hopes it doesn’t look too manic. It takes no small amount of effort to heave the words from his mouth, and even then, they sound like a lie. He doesn’t know if it’s going to be okay. He doesn’t know what Arya was capable of. He doesn’t know what to do. “Look at me, look at me. You’ve gotta stop, alright? You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
Violence is about the only thing Blue understands these days, though he doubts hitting Skav would be a good idea. If it made things worse… he just might have to wash his hands of this business. He wants to help them, he really does, but it's something easier said than done. He’d only ever have to deal with his brother’s bad trips - tainted LSD, expired mushrooms. This… this was something else entirely. He’s seen his fair share of blood and broken bones, knowing just what to do to mend such injuries, but whatever’s going on in Skav’s head right now is beyond his scope of knowledge. The best he can do is try and keep his voice even, calm them as much as he can, and if that doesn’t work, there’s always the option to knock them out cold.
“It’s okay, big guy. We can fix this.” Blue repeats again and again like a mantra, cupping the other’s face with both hands. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay’. For a moment, his smile falters. He suddenly looks lost, like the script in his head’s only run up to here. Can they fix this? Maybe if he keeps believing they can, but they’re not getting anywhere with how Skav was acting. The vodka certainly hadn’t done them any good. Maybe it was a bad idea to let them drink after the whole fiasco back at Quincy’s. Maybe if he just kept his mouth shut, none of this would’ve happened. Numerous possibilities whirred through his head in a flurry of dizzying motion, but then he suddenly remembers the task at hand. There were better things to worry about than what he could’ve done. “Hey, listen. She can’t do anything to us, yeah? We’re gonna be fine, but you need to calm down. Just… breathe.”
Blue expects to flinch when Skav’s fingers grip his wrists, to recoil as if he’d been burnt, but he just lets them turn his arms over. His own gaze fixates itself on the bruises on his wrists, faded from purple to sickly yellow - souvenirs from a client that’d gotten far too enthusiastic, from strong hands that’d held him in place as he’s pinned against the wall, and—
He closes his eyes for just a moment, and lets out a deep sigh. The veins lining the insides of his elbows are like a spiderweb, haphazardly arranged in a mess of purpling bruises. It’s been awhile since he’s injected, but he doesn’t know how much longer he can resist the temptation. He remembers the taste of iron, the caustic tang of stomach acid, skin clammy with cold sweat. Going through withdrawal was hell, and it’s even worse when you have to do it behind bars. The methadone they gave him didn’t do much to help, and the day they lowered his dosage by a mere two milligrams, he couldn’t even muster the energy to stand up. By the time he got out, he wanted to stop, he truly did, if only to avoid the likelihood of withdrawals; but when he saw that needle sitting next to a baggie of china white (pure as driven snow), his fingers started to itch.
Then, he feels arms around him - Skav’s arms. They tower over him, even sitting down, but Blue doesn’t feel intimidated, and it only takes him a moment to reciprocate the gesture. Once again, his hands find their way around the other, easily settling on their back. Skav’s voice quaked with such sincerity that it made his heart ache, though he isn’t quite sure if it’s for him, them, or both. There’s a long pause before Skav says anything else, and he feels a quiet sigh tickle the surface of his skin. The silence isn’t uncomfortable - natural, even. Blue just listens to the sound of Skav’s breathing, jagged inhalations gradually smoothing out into something a little more rhythmic. When they start to speak again, it sounds almost accidental, like they didn’t mean to say it. The existence of a sister is news to him, though his only reaction is to rub comforting circles into the other’s back.
As the recollection progresses, with each memory worse than the last, Blue could almost taste the bile climbing up the back of his throat. And here he thought his mom was a bitch, but what she did, or didn’t do, couldn’t even compare to this ‘Arya’. In his mind, he pictures a young Skav - long before they grew into their lanky limbs - trying desperately to squirm away from the sharp bite of a knife. Then, it flashes forward to glassy eyes and paralysed muscles. He’s seen enough overdoses to come up with a believable approximation. Dark, crushing terror is the first thing that comes to mind, and you don’t even realise it's happening until it’s too late. He’s only ever fucked up once, and a friend managed to save him with a syringe full of narcan, but the memory is seared into his mind, taunting him every time he pokes a needle into his arm. The fact that Skav has gone through much worse sends a shiver up his spine, but beneath it all, he feels anger, simmering, bubbling its way through his bloodstream. Why did bad people always get away with it? Who gave them the right to smash things up without consequence, to hurt others?
What he didn’t expect was for Skav to say that Arya was here in San Marzano. For one, two, three seconds, Blue thinks that he had misheard them, though his doubts are quickly put to rest when he hears the fear in Skav’s voice, and he feels his blood turn to ice. He doesn’t know much about her, just a vague patchwork of the things Skav had recounted to him, but already, a sense of dread was beginning to well up within him. If just talking about her elicits such a reaction, she must be a piece of work. Blue doesn’t know what to do, at this point, what does he even say in a situation like this? He feels a tremor shudder through Skav, and he just tries to calm them down the best he can, arms tightening around their torso. When he first tries to speak, the words die on his tongue. Should he even say anything? He’s so afraid of making things worse, of pushing Skav even further off the edge, but when they start to apologise, he feels like he has to say something.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. You don’t have to.” Blue tries to sound reassuring, voice kept at a quiet hush, but his thoughts keep getting shunted back to Arya. If she was in San Marzano, it’s not hard to guess why. How she managed to track down Skav, on the other hand, is a whole ‘nother matter. The fact that she even bothered to come all this way - it didn’t bode well in the slightest. Just what did she want from Skav? Blue wants to ask them, wants to understand all this, but he doesn’t think there’s a good way to phrase the question. There are too many things he wants to know, and in the end, he bites the bullet. The more he knows about the situation, the easier it’ll be for him to help. There really was no other way around this, and Blue hopes the vodka was doing its work. “When… when was the last time you saw her? Why is she looking for you?”
Blue can barely suppress a scoff at what Skav says, shaking his head slightly. He might’ve believed it a long time ago, before the Razors, before everything, but in his experience, people never got what was coming to them. Chances are, the guy that’d beat the shit out of him is still out there today, trawling the streets for two-dollar whores like nothing ever happened. He knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that it was Skav’s way of trying to make him feel better, and he wants to be thankful, but every part of him is just so inured to all of this. Words, whether they be kind or cruel, don’t affect him as much as they used to. Dealing with people’s bullshit is something you become accustomed to, growing up in the bad part of San Marzano; and rest assured, Blue has spent the entirety of his life getting dealt a shit hand.
What came out of Skav’s mouth next, however, took him off guard. He’d never expect to hear this from anyone, least of all Skav. They had always been distant, enigmatic - emotionally, psychologically - a vague silhouette hidden behind frosted windows. Blue feels his throat tighten, muscles constricting around his airway, and his heart… his heart actually skips a beat. On instinct alone, he presses a tightly clenched fist to the left side of his chest, as if to will his heart into stillness. Blue doesn’t dare to speak, he’s too afraid to, hating how the crack in his voice might give him away. The rush of blood is the only thing he can hear, the sound resonating with the fervour of a thousand, toiling bells. His heart doesn’t stop pounding, and it’s only when he forces himself to take a deep, steadying breath that he notices the tear rolling down his cheek.
How did they end up having this conversation?
The words are stuck on his tongue, caught in his throat. Blue hears Skav’s voice again, and he’s glad that he doesn’t have to speak quite just yet, only nodding when they answered his query with one of their own. It's embarrassing, almost - this side of himself. He’s never liked showing vulnerability, building up countless walls. Strong, solid, invulnerable, he laughs off any jabs thrown his way, no matter how painful. Blue never lets anyone see how they got to him, creating an callous, impenetrable facade that he uses to keep people at bay. As far as anyone’s concerned, underneath his mask, there’s only another snake, hissing and spitting venom in the faces of those who dared look at him the wrong way. But the thing is - Blue breaks instead of bend, shattering into tinier and tinier shards every time something or someone sets him off. It never takes him long to knit himself back together, to gather up the pieces, to pretend like everything’s fine. He doesn’t realise how much he needs those words until he hears them for himself.
Skav’s recollection of their experience stirs up a strange sense of empathy within him. He’s never gone through the same trials they have, not exactly anyway, but he feels their despondency as if it were his own. It’s been far too long since he’s had any meaningful human contact. Most of his encounters are painfully superficial, fuelled by tabs of ecstasy , or whatever he can get his hands on, and he never remembers much the next day - just bits and pieces, tastes and sensations. It satisfies his most primal cravings, the ones deep beneath his skin, gnawing away. None of it ever lasts long enough, though. Like the hallucinogens he loves so much, all they do is leave behind a gaping emptiness, harder and harder to satisfy with each passing day. He never stops searching for a way to fill the void, but perhaps he could stave it off awhile more.
“You are worth something, you know?” Blue begins, but the words sound sharp and jagged, like he couldn’t quite bring himself to say them. The sight of Skav’s tears, however, causes him to blink in surprise. For a moment, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Was it a trick of the light? It was dark enough in the apartment, maybe he was just seeing things that weren’t there. Those doubts quickly evaporated when he heard the sound of their voice - strained and choked with tears. Blue’s fingers reach up as if to touch Skav, but his hand hovers over theirs, unsure. Then, without any warning, he hoists himself up onto his knees, and leans forward, almost collapsing against Skav. His arms move to snake around Skav’s torso, hands coming to a rest at their back. It’s awkward, at first; he can’t remember the last time he actually hugged someone, but it’s all he can do to push any doubts to the back of his mind. Would they react kindly to it? Would they push him away? He doesn’t wait to find out, and draws back after a few seconds, sinking back into his side of the couch.
Blue is only silent for a moment, then he drags a hand down the side of his face, murmurs something unintelligible. He feels bloated, unhealthy, miserable, but takes another pull of vodka anyway. It doesn’t taste any better, even if the burn down his throat is a welcome distraction. Once again, he finds himself on the receiving end of this little game of theirs, though he isn’t quite sure if there was anything left to tell. Still, he reaches into the furthest recesses of his mind, finding a memory that he forgot even existed. “You know that shitty brick building along Mill Street?” He can’t help but pause, a sharp intake of breath punctuating the sentence. It’s as if a floodgate had been opened - old, discoloured memories spilling past with all the strength of a tsunami. It’d been so long ago, but the more he thinks about it, the more vivid the memories become. Blue could almost smell the nauseating stench of vomit, hear the banging of angry fists on the door. “I think they demolished a couple of months ago, but I used to live there when I was a kid.”
“My mom… god, she was a bitch.” Blue lets out another laugh, but his eyes start stinging again, and he quickly turns it into a cough. “Everyone says all this crap about family, right? About how they’re the ones who care about you the most? But she never did anything for me. All she cared about was getting high - didn’t even notice when one of the guys broke my hand for taking his lighter.”
“I got out, though - soon enough. That’s when I found my brother’s place, almost couldn’t convince him to let me stay, but he stopped saying ‘no’ when I showed him the money I stole from her before I left.” His teeth are bared in a grin, as if he’d said something very funny indeed. “Didn’t have to lock myself in the bathroom just to get some sleep anymore.”
Blue freezes when he feels Skav’s fingers in his hair; muscles tensing, eyes widening like a deer in headlights. For a moment, he wants to pull away, maybe even bark some sort of obscenity at Skav to deter them, but he can’t help the chill that runs up his spine, and he nearly melts into the touch. There’s an odd flicker behind their eyes - simple pity, or something else entirely? Blue can’t quite put his finger on it, though if he had to be honest, he really couldn’t care less. His eyes start to water again, chest tightening painfully; but before any tears had the chance to fall, Skav’s hand was gone, and he feels like he could finally breathe again.
Hastily, he rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. It’s only after he hears what Skav has to say that he lifts his head, watching as they took another swig of vodka. Blue opens his mouth to speak, but he just can’t find the words, and closes it again after a second. He could see that Skav was thinking, their gaze blank and faraway, fingers still wrapped around the neck of the bottle. Blue really doesn’t want to push them on - not when the situation is already this fragile. It’s like walking on eggshells, like everything could fall apart with just one wrong move. The memory of Skav’s scars is seared onto the surface of his consciousness, and he almost feels guilty for even daring to tear up. What does he have to cry for when Skav has gone through so much worse? Why does he have to be so goddamned weak?
Listening to Skav’s story is nothing short of surreal. Blue has a hard time picturing Skav as anything but what they are today - a strange, enigmatic figure, hidden behind a mask of jet-black feathers. What was Skav like when they were young? He imagines a nice, suburban home, complete with a white picket fence, and a crisp, green garden… well, it isn’t what he expected, to say the least. It seemed like something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, the exact opposite of San Marzano. How did such an upbringing result in someone like Skav? Scarred, incomplete, but never broken. Then again, maybe not everyone’s as much of a stereotype as he was. The fact that their parents were embroiled in crime didn’t even matter; the mere thought of a pair of kind, loving parents sends a pang of jealousy through him, but it's easily extinguished when Skav resumes their recollection.
At least he never had anything to lose. To have your parents torn away from you like that? Blue is willing to bet that it hurt more than anything else in the world. He feels his heart clench, eyes drawn to the way Skav’s lips curl into a grimace of a smile. He’d never seen this much emotion from the other before, and he has a nagging feeling that they haven’t yet told him all there is to the story. Despite the chilling calmness in their eyes, every other part of them was painfully tense. Part of him wants to reach out, return the favour for what they did before, but he’s never been too good with stuff like this, and he’s not sure he wants to risk Skav lashing out. Like a tightly coiled spring, they seem ready to burst, promising anyone that so much as touches them a bad time. Did he really want to get caught up in this?
Then, before he even realises, it’s his turn again. Blue’s eyes, however, are drawn to the other’s own with a kind of veneration that he never thought he could have for another human being. Maybe he does need to be salvaged. The cogs in his mind turn furiously, trying to excavate a suitable truth to toss into the melting pot. Compared to Skav, he was already an open book. He wanted to know more about their past, but what else could he say?
“God, I don’t know,” Blue begins, eyes darting around the room in a fruitless search for inspiration. When he finds none, he just reaches for the memory that sticks out the most. It’s not something he particularly enjoys thinking about, but it’s the least he could do, after everything Skav had said. “Whatever, I’ll just tell you.”
“I guess I was about eighteen back then - sucked some guy off in the alley behind a bar, then he tried to leave without paying. I asked him for the money first, of course, but he just laughs, calls me a fag, and said that I wasn’t going to get shit for what I did.” Blue reaches over to pick up the bottle of vodka, unscrewing the cap, and taking a swig. It burns the whole way down, but it quenches the fire in his belly. “I got pissed, obviously, punched him in the nose, but he was bigger, stronger, blah blah blah. Fucker broke three of my ribs, got my leg real good, too. I managed to drag myself to the Grotto after he left, figured that was the only place with people that’d actually give a shit about me - don’t know why.”
Another gulp of vodka, and Blue has to take a moment to quell the wave of nausea rushing up to meet him. “Someone actually let me in. They made sure to fix me up, and I thought working for them would be the one thing that changed my life, but nothing happened. Every day’s the same shit as always.”
“Can I touch you?” The query comes unbidden, uninvited, but the words roll off his tongue before he can put a stop to them. He wants to wrap his arms around the other, hold them for as long as he could, but he’s far too afraid of the consequences to do so without asking. “I’m just - I’m so sorry.”
“Who says I’m lying?” Blue questions, eyes wide with feigned innocence, like a child that’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It was true for the most part, what he’d said - he loves money, he loves sex, and most of all, he loves drugs. That’s what he tells himself every time he crawls out of a stranger’s bed, muscles aching, brain fuzzy, hair matted with sweat, and other, less savoury fluids. He doesn’t care what form this supposed joy comes in, they’re all just the same to him. With every pill, every note, every fuck, he climbs closer and closer to heaven on a stairway sculpted from his vices - but it’s never enough. He never gets close enough to touch it, only to bask in its glory from the sidelines, and it’s almost as if every step he takes draws him further and further away from that pure, perfect light just beyond the clouds.
San Marzano is the exact opposite - dark, broken, soaked with blood, a cesspool for the worst of humanity to wallow in. Blue has never known any different, his entire world contained within the boundaries of a city. When something (or someone) new comes along, the dull, monochromatic fug is lifted, if only for a second. The Razors had been interesting, too, a vibrant splash of colour. He remembers the days before them, before Skav, when he would do anything just to get enough cash for his next fix. It’d been an unending cycle of highs and lows, flying and falling, light and dark, heaven and hell. When Blue first collapsed at the front door of the Grotto, bloodied and beaten, it’d been a member of the Razors that’d taken him in. For once, he thought that finally being part of something would put an end to the monotony, but it wasn’t long before he started hooking again. The money he made as a low-level dealer just wasn’t enough to sustain his lifestyle, and like they always said: old habits die hard.
Whether Skav realises it or not, their presence here has made a difference. What they did next, however, was something that caught even Blue off guard. He’d expected a strong reaction, of course, but nothing quite like this. Unspoken words die on Skav’s lips, and he doesn’t miss the way they curl into themselves, pressing further into the opposite end of the couch. He watches on with a modicum of trepidation as Skav trundles off to the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets in search of something. When they finally return, a stale bottle of vodka clutched in their hand, Blue can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. Looks like getting absolutely shitfaced was still on the agenda, after all.
For a moment, he thinks they’re not going to answer, and he fills the emptiness by taking a pull from the bottle. It tastes how Clorox smells, burns its way down his throat like a terrible, caustic concoction, but he just lets out a tiny cough, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. At Skav’s proposition, Blue has to take a moment a consider. Maybe he’d already said too much, maybe he’d rather put an end to this while he could. Was this just a coping mechanism? His brain’s histrionic attempt at a distraction from horrors past? Then again, a voice whispers at the back of his head, quiet and unobtrusive, why stop now? Blue’s silence is taken as affirmation, fingers curling around the neck of the bottle as he brings it up to his lips once again.
The first thing he sees is movement, Skav moving to grip one of their sleeves; then… he can barely believe his eyes. He stares, entranced, at the scars that lined their skin, unable to say a word. Subconsciously, he draws closer, to get a better look. Blue wants to touch them, wants to trace his fingers over the maze of scar tissue, but at the last second, he pulls away, hand dropping back into his lap. It feels wrong, somehow, seeing Skav this way. This Skav doesn’t hide themselves behind an impenetrable shroud, and for a moment, Blue is able to peek behind the curtain, catch a glimpse of something real.
“Pulling out the big guns, huh?” Blue smiles a sad smile. “I don’t think I can top that.”
Silence ensues, dark eyes shuttering to the crucifix on the wall. He thinks about his life, about every single event that’d transpired to make him who he is today. The carved, wooden effigy of Jesus just stares back at him, hands nailed to the cross, crying bloody, bloody tears. And then, Blue feels his eyes water, vision blurring. He blinks - once, twice - before a strange sort of laughter bubbles up from his throat. Blue rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand, takes a sharp breath that he could barely let out without choking. His eyes sting, his chest aches, white-knuckled fists clenched tightly in his lap. It’s with supreme effort that he finally brings himself to meet Skav’s gaze, though he only manages to hold it for a second.
“I didn’t start doing this till I was about - oh, I don’t know… fourteen?” Blue rubs at the nape of his neck, looking everywhere but Skav, dispossessed of his usual, unwavering confidence. “I had a brother once, he took care of me before that.” A pause. “Well, ‘took care of’ might be too strong a phrase, but he didn’t let me starve to death, at least. He’s also the one who got me into this mess in the first place; it doesn’t matter anymore, though. He’s been dead for years.”
“I came home from school one day and he was just lying there. Cold, stiff, dead as a doornail. The paramedics had to pry his fingers open to get the pipe from him.” His shoulders lift in a shrug, the corner of his lips turning up into a smirk. “It’s weird, isn’t it? How someone can be alive one moment and gone the next. At least he died doing what he loved the most, so that’s something.”
Then, Blue takes a deep, shuddering breath, carding fingers through blonde locks of hair. He does his best to sound unaffected, but deep down, he knows it’s all in vain. Skav is too perceptive, too observant; the only way he can turn their attention from him is to shift it towards their own past. “But enough about me. Your turn.”
Blue can’t help but let out a snort when Skav stumbles back over, two plastic bottles clutched in their hands. Of course, he would’ve preferred something a little stronger than water, but he accepts it with a murmur of thanks and takes a gulp anyway. It’s only then that he realises how parched he is, the water sliding easily down his throat, and he takes another swig before replacing the cap and setting the bottle on the ground. For a long moment, he just sits and listens to what Skav has to say, nodding along; once or twice, he even finds the audacity to smirk. If there’s an imaginary line that separated him from being a whore, he likes to think he hops back and forth over it with the ill-intentioned glee of a disobedient child. “I am though, aren’t I? You’re being pedantic.”
“Besides, it gets me everything I’ve ever wanted. Money, sex, drugs. What’s not to love?” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but the corners of his lips quirk upward into a self-deprecating smile. There’s a long, pregnant pause before either of them speaks again, and Blue takes the opportunity to cast his gaze out the window. The repetitive tap, tap, tap of fat raindrops drumming against glass, the faraway, neon blur of city lights - he’s suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of quietude, like he could fall asleep right there and then if only he just closed his eyes. Just thinking about how they could’ve died out there… well, he doesn’t feel much of anything. That paralysing fear of mortality had quickly evaporated as soon as they got into the Qrow, leaving behind nothing more than broken skin and aching bones.
Skav’s voice cuts through the silence like a hot knife through butter, instantly shattering Blue’s train of thought. He turns, however, in such a in-his-own-good-time deadpan that it must’ve been impossible to tell whether he’d heard them or not. “M-hm. Can’t have little ol’ me actually starting to mean something now, can we?” There’s not a shred of malice in his voice; instead, it’s imbued with diablerie, and a pinch of well-meaning sarcasm. He doesn’t take Skav’s comment as an insult, because he knows it wasn’t meant to be. In fact, it was probably the closest thing to a compliment he’d ever get from them. Especially when it comes to the drawling, enigmatic Skav, being nothing is oftentimes better than being something.
It isn’t long before they’re at it again, countering his questions with their own. Blue raises his hands in surrender, before shrugging and crossing his arms again. He looks abashed; stealing furtive glances at Skav every now and then from under his lashes. It’s not an act, contrary to what one might believe, he’s just that uncomfortable with actually taking things seriously. Somehow, despite his best efforts to prevent it, these so-called ‘confessionals’ with Skav always manage to smash through his indifference with a metaphorical sledgehammer. Hell, they might as well be huddled around a campfire, holding hands, and singing Kumbaya. Still, he feels like he has to answer - a little something to repay Skav’s honestly, if nothing else.
“Nah, I can think of worse people to hang around.” Blue masks his uncertainty with an endearingly lopsided grin. “The whole Jesus thing is pretty fucking weird though.” As soon as the words leave his mouth, he feels a seed of curiosity germinate within him. He’d never felt the need to ask about Skav’s past, despite their strange yet easy companionship, but now that he’d put his interest into words, it seemed like most apparent course of action, right behind coming up with a coherent answer.
“But, uh, it’s great that you listen to me, you know?” His fingers curl, gripping the corner of his t-shirt. Skav listens when others merely hear. Most of the time, Blue thinks no one gives a shit about what he has to say. He’s just a dealer in the eyes of the Razors, not even their best, in fact, and to his patrons, a warm place to bury their dicks. Ordinary, mediocre, dime a dozen. Perhaps it’s one of the reasons why he’s always been drawn towards Skav, like they could change him into something exceptional through the simple act of association; and if they couldn’t, well, he doesn’t have anything left to lose, does he? “San Marzano looks better with you in it. Brighter, prettier, less like a shithole.”
Then, he lifts his head to catch Skav’s gaze, voice clear and unwavering. He almost chickens out at the last second, a tension-defusing joke at the tip of his tongue, but by the time he’s able to stop himself, it’s far too late. “I’ve been meaning to ask…” For a second, Blue pauses, silently calculating his words. While it might’ve been hard to believe, fucking everything up was the last thing he wanted. “Why did you come here? Why did you join the Razors?”
At Skav’s words, Blue is suddenly reminded of the cut on his neck. Vertigo begins to creep up from him, a dizzying combination of lightheadedness and nausea. Just how much blood had he lost? No sooner did he remove his hand from the wound that it started to tflaming from sullen mauve to incandescent red. Despite his body’s attempts to knit itself back together, the paper-thin scab that’d formed wasn’t enough to quench the flow of blood, sloughing off in broken pieces as soon as it came into contact with water. He wastes no time in retrieving one of Skav’s shirts, but gives it an experimental sniff before ripping it up.
Blue easily spots the open bottle of peroxide sitting on the edge of the sink, and closes a hand around it, tipping its contents over onto a torn piece of cloth. When he first presses the peroxide-soaked fabric against the gash, the pain is white-hot, searing through his nerves like acid. He lets out a quiet wince at the sensation, but doesn’t let go until the bubbling ceases, a cold trickle of pink sliding down his neck, over the jut of collarbones. The cloth falls away to the floor, and Blue sets aside a fresh, mostly clean piece to knot around his neck later.
“Still look better than you, sasquatch.” He bares his teeth in a half-hearted grin, though it quickly morphs into a grimace when he feels the lingering peroxide begin to foam and sizzle. Still, he has to admit - the shirt was getting a little too grungy, even for him, and he starts to shrug off the jacket, then grabs onto the collar of his t-shirt to yank it off over his head. It falls in a pool next to him, reeking of sweat, rainwater, and the coppery tang of blood. Blue feels a twinge of sadness at having to get rid of it, but he ignores it in favour of climbing to his feet. It’s surprisingly difficult to push himself upright, his legs beginning to prick with pins and needles, and he has to brace a hand against the cool porcelain of the sink for support.
Reaching for the holster at the back of his jeans, he drops two knives into the sink - one colored in shades of rainbow, and the other a simple switchblade. They land with a loud clang that reverberates through the bathroom, clattering around noisily before finally falling silent. “Almost forgot these.”
Blue doesn’t stop the other when they brush past him; instead, he starts to move further inside. A shower sounded like heaven; the fact that warm water wasn’t an option didn’t bother him in the slightest. All he wanted was to get all this filth off him, and a shower - no matter how cold - was just what he needed. He’s in the middle of removing his boots when Skav’s voice reaches him, a short bark of laughter tumbling past his lips. His reply is tinged with nonchalance, much like a mother humoring her child, but he doesn’t reject the notion completely. Something to think about, perhaps. “Yeah, sure. I’ll keep that in mind, Father Skav.”
The rest of his clothes are removed with well-practiced ease, and he steps into the shower, twisting the tap clockwise. Water bursts from the showerhead in a freezing torrent, and Blue has to fight the urge to duck away. His body is warm, warmer than it should be - thinner, too. These days, he’s eating better than he used to, but his hipbones are like knives, the knots of his spine punching out angrily from under a layer of skin. Clear, clean water soon begins to run rusty red, and for the longest while, Blue just trains his gaze on the wall before him, unmoving, unthinking. When he does eventually come back to himself, the water isn’t red anymore, and he twists the faucet closed. Wringing his hair out the best he can, he manages to find a surprisingly clean towel that he uses to dry himself off with, then pulls his boxers back on.
It doesn’t take him too long to find something to wear, a black t-shirt hanging off the bathroom door handle. Skav had obviously left it there for him, and while Blue is positive that it’s a few sizes too big, he pulls it on anyway. The fabric hangs loosely around his shoulder, the hem reaches halfway down his thighs, revealing the two usually-hidden tattoos. The ink has faded somewhat, lines that used to be black turning to a pale, sickly green, though he only takes a moment to knot the piece of cloth around his neck before moving to seek out Skav.
Blue doesn’t even notice his body start to list until he feels his shoulder bump against the wall, but he manages to make it to the couch, collapsing onto it with a sigh of satisfaction. It’s a long moment before he lifts his head again, eyes sliding open, and turns his gaze to meet Skav’s own. Once, twice, he teeters on the edge of conversation, only to decide against it. Another sigh escapes from him, though this time, it’s crossed with a humorless breath of laughter, and he yanks a fist through his hair. “God, where do I even start?”
Endless thoughts swim through his mind, melting together into an amorphous blur. He doesn’t feel like talking, never does; but soon, the words start pouring out of him before he even has the chance to stop himself. “What do you think of me? Like, honestly...” He pauses, draws his legs up to sit cross-legged, and leans forward ever so slightly, head at a quizzical tilt. “What do you think of me; when I let myself get fucked by some John just to make enough money to get high and forget about it? Why do I keep doing it?”
The drive to Skav’s apartment nearly kills them both. Blue is as reckless as ever, shooting past stoplights, making too-tight turns, rainwater splashing up the sides of the car, and he’s almost glad that Skav is knocked out cold when he turns to look. The Qrow is their pride and joy; if anything untoward happened to it… he shuddered to think of the consequences. Blue’s hands jitter on the wheel, skin prickling with gooseflesh. The adrenaline still lingers, and like stop-motion, flashes of the confrontation shutter through his mind’s eye. His hands, slippery with blood. The feeling of driving a blade through muscle, scraping past the stubborn cage of bone. The final, desperate struggles of a dying man. He only snaps out of it when the blare of a horn rings through the cold, night air, swerving out of the way just in time to avoid a head-on collision.
In spite of it all, they manage to make it to their destination without further incident. Blue notices Skav awaken when the car jerks to a stop, and shuts off the purring engine with a twist of the key. Skav is stumbling out of the Qrow before he’s able to do anything else, but when they manage to climb to their feet, worry fades into exasperation. Pushing open the door, he gets out of the car as well, and slams it shut behind him; booted feet landing against the asphalt with a wet-sounding thump. He gazes up at the brick building before them, at the warm, yellow light spilling the third-floor window. He sees a silhouette flash past, a darkened blur of motion, and then the light is gone, extinguished like candle flame. But Blue doesn’t wait any longer to follow Skav inside, stepping through the entrance at the side of the building.
He’s been here enough times to remember that Skav lives on the fourth floor, but the space still feels alien to him. Buzzing fluorescent lights line the corridors, and he hears an argument resonate from behind the paper thin walls. It’s not much different to where he lives, he thinks when they step inside the elevator, though he doesn’t spend much time at home, anyway. Blue moves to lean against the rightmost wall as the elevator shudders to life, sweeps his gaze over Skav’s lanky form to make sure that they aren’t about to collapse. He wouldn’t blame them if they did, considering what they’d gone through, but he didn’t want to have to drag their unconscious body the rest of the way.
The elevator lets out a faint ding when they reach the fourth floor. Blue follows closely behind Skav, taking a small step back when they bolt inside to avoid a potential door to the face. Almost immediately, sounds of retching fill the apartment, bouncing off its narrow walls with ease. He doesn’t bother to shrug off his jacket, but brings a hand up to remove his mask, feeling the tepid air of Skav’s apartment hit his skin as soon as it comes off. Bleached blonde hair, hacked in uneven shocks with black peeking from the roots fall from their latex confines, and Blue draws a hand through the locks in a fruitless attempt at wrestling them back into place. He’s still bleeding from the neck, the stain on his shirt having grown to the size of his palm, but it has slowed substantially, platelets at the wound coagulating into a sluggish brick-red.
Quite unlike the rest of him, the skin on his face is unmarked - pale with a faint hue of olive. He’s always looked like his mother, or what he remembers of her, at least, years before the drugs took their toll. Hollowed cheeks, almond-shaped eyes with irises the color of obsidian, an overall unremarkable nose, and plush, cupid’s bow lips that have earned him many compliments from his clients. His mouth… yes, what was he forgetting? Almost involuntarily, his hand comes up to touch his bloodied lip, fingers coming away daubed with red.
Without thinking, he shambles over to the kitchen sink, turns on the tap, and makes to scrub his face clean. Almost immediately, he feels a sizzle of pain around the cut on his lip, drops of red swirling down the drain. He doesn’t, however, react beyond a muted hiss, pressing a damp hand to the side of his neck before turning off the water.
Then, all of the sudden, it’s too quiet. No sooner did he take a step towards the bathroom that he heard Skav’s voice coming from around the corner. Blue picks up the pace, feet stomping through the apartment, but he isn’t about to let Skav bleed out on the bathroom floor. The door is unlocked, and he steps through the threshold to see Skav, crouched against the sink.
“...For fuck’s sake,” Blue sighs, flicking on the light, revealing the terrible, sleepless bruises under his eyes. Dropping to his knees in front of the other, he eyes the purple-red bruise that was starting to bloom across the bridge of their nose. Bony fingers reach up brush against Skav’s jaw to turn their head, eyes narrowing with an almost metallic focus. The cartilage is slightly askew, but as long as they didn’t go getting punched in the face again, that was nothing to worry about compared to the still-bleeding gash. They needed to get the wound cleaned out before any nasty shit managed to worm its way inside. “It’s pretty bad, not gonna lie. You got any bandages? Disinfectant?”
Blue doesn’t see Skav collide into dog-mask, head twisted to the side by a meaty palm pressed into his face, but the crushing weight is off him in an instant, the prick of metal vanishing into thin air. A warm trickle of blood oozes down the side of his neck and mixes with rainwater, staining the collar of his t-shirt a vibrant red. He feels a stab of pain lance through the cut, a low hiss escaping from him when he turns his head to regain his bearings. The blade must’ve nicked his jugular, barely scraping the surface; though the fact that he wasn’t currently bleeding out on the sidewalk is a much needed reassurance.
His muscles scream in protest, but he ignores it and clambers to his feet. When he sees Skav backed up against the wall, dog-mask closing in on them, adrenaline and basic instinct begins to take over, vision reddening at the edges. Blue easily notices the rainbow-hued butterfly knife on the pavement even through the shroud of night, and bends to snatch it up. Almost mechanically, his feet carry him across the distance, getting faster and faster until he’s barrelling towards dog-mask at full speed. He’s already injured, Blue thinks to himself, remembering the screams he’d heard mere seconds ago. Dog-mask is too busy choking the life out of Skav to notice Blue’s advance on him, and by the time he plunges the knife into his back, it’s too late for any kind of salvation.
Blue is rewarded with a howl of pain when the blade buries itself into flesh, drawing back to plunge it in once more before he can even react. It isn’t long before dog-mask collapses in on himself, stumbling back in a wild thrash of agony. With each pump of blood, more and more of dog-mask’s lifeforce slips out of him, and it’s an easy enough matter to shove the Bomber onto his back, cracking his skull against the concrete with a well-placed kick to the head, though he doesn’t stop there - not yet. When dog-mask tries to grab him, Blue stomps down on his arm, and feels the satisfying crunch of bone and tendon underfoot.
Dog-mask is as good as gone - Blue knows, judging from the pool of blood gathering under him - but he just keeps doing what he’s doing. Readjusting his grip on the knife, he slaps away another clumsy grope before bringing it down again - once, twice, thrice, countless times. Beneath the mask, Blue’s eyes are wild, teeth bared with rage, so furious that he can feel it burning through him, and he only stops when dog-mask dying gurgles fade to nothingness. For a long moment, he just stares at the blood weaving away down the cracks in the pavement, shoulders heaving with exertion, but as if by a flick of the switch, he remembers Skav. Letting the knife clatter to the ground, he stalks over to them, and crouches down to inspect the damage.
It’s hard to discern any noticeable injuries, as covered up as Skav was, though it’s probably a good omen that there’s nothing too readily apparent. What lies underneath the mask, however, is likely a different story altogether. He hadn’t exactly been paying attention, but he’s still vaguely aware of what dog-mask had done to Skav during their little altercation, and despite what some might think, a fist could sometimes do more damage than a sharpened blade. He’d peel off Skav’s mask to check, of course, but he comes to the conclusion that there’s no immediate merit in doing so; out here, there’s nothing he can do to help them, anyway. Right now, their top priority was getting somewhere safe.
“C’mon, get up,” Blue snaps, the words spitting out of him like bullets. This kind of thing had never been Blue’s forte - he doesn’t have the patience - though he isn’t about to wait around for Skav to slip away, either. Gingerly, he snakes an arm around the trunk of Skav’s body, braces himself against the wall, and pulls both of them back up to their feet. His knees nearly give out beneath him, but through sheer force of will, manages to stay upright, and he makes sure to pick up both knives off the ground. Skav feels even heavier than before, no doubt due to the combined efforts of near-unconsciousness and waterlogged clothes. The walk to the Qrow seems much longer than it actually is, but with the steady pitter-pat of rain against his skin, incandescent anger begins to cool into something a bit more manageable.
After what seems like an eternity, Blue spots the familiar silhouette of the Qrow, bathed in the warm, yellow light of a sodium street lamp. Briefly, he turns to look at Skav, then back at the car again, and it’s not at all an overstatement to say that he’s never been so relieved to see it. Half-dragging, half-stumbling, he starts to make his way towards the car, tightening his grip around his much taller companion.
Unsurprisingly, the Qrow is locked, though he still tries to yank the door open. “Keys, keys, keys...” Blue mumbles (mostly to himself) as he rummages through Skav’s pockets in his efforts to find the object. When his fingers finally find purchase, he lets out a triumphant ‘a-ha!’, and fishes the key from its hiding place. Blue has to shift awkwardly around Skav to manoeuvre them into the car, but he does eventually manage to do so, slamming the door shut once all of their gangling limbs have been stuffed safely inside. The bloodied handprint left behind is definitely a problem, but that’s something for his future self to worry about.
Blue then circles around to the opposite side of the car, climbing into the driver’s seat. Once he shuts the door, all that’s left is the steady drumming of rain against the roof, and he takes a moment to contemplate their destination. For more reasons than one, his apartment was definitely a no-go, and after the events that’d transpired, they sure as hell weren’t going to the hospital. Now, there’s only one place left to go, isn’t there? The Qrow roars to life when he twists the key in the ignition, and soon enough, they’re peeling away into the night, leaving the pale, exsanguinated corpse of a Bomber in their wake.
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