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[deuceoftears]

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About a week after Eiffel's death

[littletonoidea]

[Eiffel could communicate by- well, communicator. But it's more fun to go by walkie-talkie.]

This is Texas Blue Dog hailing Mothman, come in Mothman.

Re: About a week after Eiffel's death

[deuceoftears]

[A week later - feels right, in his bones. The toll is over, or nearly; Jedao isn't hurting Eiffel every moment, any more. It's fair, somehow, even though Jedao doesn't usually care about fair. It also means he doesn't have the added guilt of Eiffel reaching out to him through the misery of the toll.

The callsigns even make him tweak a tiny smile, for a moment.]

This is Mothman. Reading you loud and clear, Texas Blue Dog. Over.

[His voice is a little scratchy with disuse, sounds hoarse and tired - playing into the joke is an effort. But worth it, probably.]

[littletonoidea]

[He was worried Jedao wouldn't reply, but the relief is obvious in the wide grin in his voice that follows.]

Copy that, Mothman. We are on an intercept vector to your last known position, please confirm vector fiver decimal one three is correct for current approach.

[...in retrospect he doesn't know if being good at his job is a joke Jedao will appreciate right now but it's very much not the dazed tone of his chipped self; it's dry, playful and a little bit silly just overall.]

[deuceoftears]

[Jedao swallows. Part of his brain is busy laugh-mumbling that's not what a vector is - he loves Eiffel so much - and part of him is immediately afraid. Voice he was ready for. Eiffel's actual, physical presence - when he doesn't know what Eiffel will want from him -

Maybe it will help, Jedao tells himself. Maybe it will help to see him.

Eiffel lives on level one. He's probably still in the elevator, not on level 5 yet. Which Jedao would know if he'd given an actual vector. The more Jedao panics the more chance Eiffel will catch him.

Jedao checks the door camera and runs for it. He gets to the stairwell and jumps the last three stories through the center hollow, stopping himself with a mothpush a few feet before he hits, which hurts like all fuck for about three seconds, but does mean he doesn't destroy any joints.]

Uh, Negative, Texas Blue Dog.

[He doesn't sound breathless. He lets himself into the engine room.]

Current position, aft engine block. Over.

[Leaving aside that he did almost fuck Hakkai in the engine room once, it feels - safer.]

[littletonoidea]

[Eiffel has indeed just gotten out of the elevator when Jedao gets back to him, with no evidence of his sudden exit from the floor in sight.]

Oh, uh. Copy, Mothman. [And slightly more quietly, as he lowers the walkie but forgets to let go of the talk button:]

Goddamn it. [He's still banned. Or at least doesn't have a key.

He'll just drop the act, at least.]

Can you at least meet me in the hallway so we can talk?

[deuceoftears]

I'll let you in. But you do have to knock.

[Unlike his cabin door.]

[littletonoidea]

Wilco, Mothman. Over and out.

[Small victories! And he'll turn up at the engine room just a minute or so later, rapping 'Shave and a Haircut' on the door to announce himself.]

[deuceoftears]

He knocks back, to finish it, then takes a deep breath and opens the door, stepping back so Eiffel can follow him inside.

[littletonoidea]

The relief lights up Eiffel's face immediately on seeing Jedao, and it takes all his self-restraint not to immediately launch at him and hug him.

But he's practically vibrating with the urge when he follows Jedao in. "Well you'll be glad to know I've got a clean bill of health from- pretty much everyone I know, now. And now we've got a back-up plan for the next time I die, which is always useful."

[deuceoftears]

"I am glad."

He goes to fiddle with the old brass dials, to have something to do with his hands, a place to look. "Please consider this more incentive to die less. Get one of B's alarms and use it. Maybe protection magic. But it's still good to have a plan."

[littletonoidea]

He reaches into his back pocket and put one of the emergency alarms, leaning on the console next to Jedao and wiggling it in his face, a moderately respectful distance from smacking him with it.

"You mean the ones I helped him make?" he asks dryly, before he puts it away. "Besides, I always try not to die. Didn't really need much incentive for that, you know? But getting slammed back into Happy Little Butler mode for it..."

The thought sends a genuine shiver of horror down his spine, and his hands grip the console tight for a moment, his mouth pressing into a grimace. "Yeah. If I don't die again, I'll die happy."

Which makes no sense and he doesn't care: he's just watching Jedao, without trying to be stupidly obvious about staring at Jedao.

[deuceoftears]

It's pretty obvious. And yet -

"Have you ever heard of an ant vortex?"

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel just blinks at Jedao.

"Can I ask you to enlighten me?"

[deuceoftears]

"So ants follow each other's chemical tracks, right? But sometimes, if a column of ants has to bend around a big stick or something, the front of the column loops around and hits the middle. And the front ant goes, oh yay, an ant trail to follow! And then a couple hundred ants are stuck going in circles for a few hours, just following each other around."

Jedao pauses, then double-checks -

"They have ants on Earth, right?"

[littletonoidea]

"I am aware of them as a concept, yes," he says, prim and dry for a moment. But he's gentle when he continues, "So which one of us is the poor hapless ant here?"

[deuceoftears]

Jedao huffs softly.

"Both of us. That's why it's a loop. You're trying to follow my cues and I'm trying to follow your cues. Only I'm not as confident about reading them as I used to be, and you're the one who died. You gotta un-loop us, fearless leader."

[littletonoidea]

And his mind immediately goes blank.

"Uhhhhh."

He looks down at Jedao's hands instead, rather than meet his gaze.

Okay. Deep breaths. This isn't so bad, it's just the two of you. You don't have to spiral about it.

"Look. I know we talk about boundaries and red-light-green-light and all that, but. I always figured we only had one rule. No regrets. Right?" He looks back at Jedao. "I don't want you to come back to us just because you think it's something I want. If you're still messed up about anything, you gotta tell me, so I don't make your anything worse. You were my friend first, and I don't care if we never have sex again - I just don't wanna stop being buds."

[deuceoftears]

No regrets hits him in the chest like a sledgehammer; he has to fight the urge to gasp.

"I'm messed up about a lot of things," Jedao whispers, because a whisper doesn't give it away quite so obviously, how much his voice is suddenly on the verge of breaking. He wasn't planning to tell Eiffel. He didn't need too. Eiffel would be fine, and forgive him, and Jedao would never, ever, ever say -

He should. He should probably tell him, though.

"I've been avoiding almost everybody, not just you," he says first, instead, swallowing. "My brain is still kind of a smoking crater right now. And there's nothing for some of that but time."

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel's gaze is nothing but sympathetic.

"Yeah. I guess that kinda makes two of us right now." He turns, leaning his butt and palms on the console instead, and sways slightly to nudge his shoulder into Jedao's. "Let's take our time."

[deuceoftears]

Jedao leans his shoulder back into Eiffel's, very lightly.

"I do - I still want -"

He stutters, can't bear to finish the sentence. Can't meet Eiffel's eyes.

"Slow would be good," he agrees, voice thick.

[littletonoidea]

He stays solid and present against Jedao's shoulder, letting him set the pace for how much contact he wants - and fighting a vicious internal war asking to give him a hug. "Let's start with movie nights and air hockey?" he asks instead. "Long as you don't mind letting a criminal get his sticky fingers all over the engine again."

CW, SA/situations of deeply fucked consent, suicide

[deuceoftears]

Jedao wants to gulp air like a frog, like a dying man. If he doesn't find the courage to tell Eiffel right now, he probably never will.

He could ask Hakkai to tell him. But they both deserve better than than that.

I'm scared, he thinks to the barge, in the humming gravitational language of moths, nestled into her heart. She never answers him in words, but he feels - warm, faith. He blinks too fast.

"I loved someone, before." Jedao whispers. "Who was mind controlled. Not - obvious, not happy. He was - subdued. Stern."

Jedao hadn't known, until Kujen showed him the video of Dhanneth before, just how different it had made him. The way he'd been stripped of his fierce air of command, his capacity for decisive, ferocious action.

"I knew he'd been - broken." Like a horse. "I didn't know he was. Forced to love me. I swear I didn't know."

Re: CW, SA/situations of deeply fucked consent, suicide

[littletonoidea]

Eiffel twists his neck (grateful it no longer stings to do so) to try and get a look at Jedao's face, but all he can see is the side angle of his face, no expression visible.

But he can read between the lines despite that. And...

He doesn't pull away from Jedao. The opposite - he nudges his shoulder into Jedao's a little more solidly.

And his voice is quiet, concern and nothing else. "Is it too fast to ask if you need a hug right now?"

Re: CW, SA/situations of deeply fucked consent, suicide

[deuceoftears]

"But do you want to." His voice trembles, wretchedly, broken open and soaked with tears still waiting, in his throat, to be shed.

[littletonoidea]

Without hesitation, Eiffel rounds on Jedao, throwing both arms over his shoulders and pulling him into a hug like he's being slammed into a foam brick wall, all but cradling Jedao's head against his neck.