sixthiterationlogs | [OTA] if you save your soul you will think you're happy now

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[OTA] if you save your soul you will think you're happy now

WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: 6I Canyon and village; The Inn
WHEN: November 19
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Mentions of death/hallucinations in reference to his arrival.

the village

Clary had taken her sketches with her, but not the memory of them, or the conversation. Bad enough for the snows to drift in, bad enough for the feast to set him forward or back in time. Something about the winter air usually made him better. Clear, crisp. Solitude was easy, the mountains seemed to disappear beneath it--and all their spectres, their sulfur vents. Charlie made idle warnings of sinkholes, and Jude wandered out with barely a wave.

Before he got his license he'd walk out of the park into the woods, snow up to his thighs, a sweater under his denim jacket and a scarf on his shoulders. On clear nights with teal skies he'd be the only soft sound beneath trees cracking from ice, and he'd walk a spiral of the valley--daring the ground to swallow him.

No one talks about it, but between the hot spring and earthquakes, the ground here might be just as unpredictable.

Two days in the house proves too much: he finds an early morning lull in which to wander. The trees and snow groan, ice and wood crack, branches fall under the weight of icicles. The cave to the west that he'd crawled out of after the quake has a mouth of clear teeth, and the river pushes displaced ice into piles around the rocks. Jude walks the length of it, deciding at its end between a trek of the western wall, or heading back.

He doesn't want to go home. Even when he isn't sleeping now, something seems to sit on his chest, follow him room to room. He follows the sound of scratching in the walls, breath steaming in the bedrooms he's never used, closets investigated with wooden fingers. When he sleeps, he's back in the valley: the truck is idling out behind him, its front end folded up against the tree, smoke slipping under the hood. His steps go side to side, blood is hot down the side of his face. Footsteps crunch the snow, he lurches along as the ground slopes beneath it. He had to get out of the dorm, he had to get away from the people without faces, knocking at the door. He drove home, he crashed the truck, he walked into town.

When he looks at his hands in the dream, they're cut at the palms and bloody, and the shadows on snow are bodies hanging in bare branches--

So he leaves the house, he walks. He proves to himself that here and now, the trees are clear. His head is in one piece, his hands are clean. And if he falls into a sinkhole, at least he won't have to remember what he's left behind.

the inn

The weather decides him: spotty rain begins to fall, ushering him back toward the village. He doesn't want to go home, but he doesn't have to--there's a fire and company at the inn, and he knows he needs that. Fire, dry, something to eat--but also people. Something by which to measure his own sanity, someone to keep him out of his head.

He'd tried it the other way at school. That dorm would have killed him, he's sure of it. Half a semester without a roommate and he'd covered that side of the room in paper and ink, manifested the eyes he could feel on him. Manifested the teeth.

The dining room in his house isn't covered in teeth. It's just trees, over and over. The slope in winter, bare branches and shadows. He puts them up then he takes them down, afraid of looking up one day and seeing something between them.

By the time he gets to the inn doors, he's soaked through; he should have come straight here while the weather held. Another icy shower puts a shine back on the encrusted village, and all he can do is lean his weight into closing the door, denim and wool hanging heavy and dark from his frame. Jude sways a couple of steps to the right, then left, struggling out of his clothes until he's carrying a coat in one hand, jacket in the other, and aiming for the kitchen.

It's fine: everything is fine. He grits his teeth against a shiver and hangs his first two layers over the nearest chairs to the door, carrying on in until he's out of a sweater and using it to dry his hair, grateful for the fire already started in the grate.

[It's the last day of the ice storm; feel free to meet Jude out early between rain/sleet showers, or at the inn after he's been caught in one. He's starting to remember his arrival point and generally having a bad time, but it's not a bad time to meet him.]

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Even Bodhi's common sense is up to telling him not to go out in this mess, but said common sense is not only unreliable but fairly weak. He's quiet about it, but his impulse control is terrible. He can only sit inside and look quietly out the window and stay too still to be a bother to anyone for so long. His excuse comes when Aurora begins to nose around and whine a little. Clearly she needs to go out. Definitely necessary.

He does take the halfway reasonable step of aiming for the inn. Since he's mostly moved himself over to Kira's second project, it's quite close, a reasonable limit to set himself. No trying to wander into the woods, no meandering down the paths as far as the caves or the spring just to give his feet something to do. He wraps up reasonably carefully, too, and he and the dog are only a little miserably cold and sodden when they stumble inside. Just for a breather.

He expected it to be harder to keep his resolution, but maybe he's finally found the (cold) weather that'll keep him in. It's like monsoon season but worse.

All his meandering crankiness about the annoying things the sky is doing snaps off when he spots Jude, cued to it more by the dog's attention than his own powers of observation.

He's crossed most of the distance before his brain's caught up, only remembering that words are sometimes important a bit belatedly. "...Shit." He's getting good at this earth-swearing thing.

Jude huffs a breath of laughter, which just lets the shivers he's held back by the skin of his teeth start. He recognizes the voice--and the dog--enough to not think twice about pulling his last shirt off as well. Another damp towel for his hair, before he starts looking for the real thing. "Yeah," he huffs after: "Shit."

Wringing water off his hands, he finally puts them on a dry towel by the sink. Now he can twist up his hair in it and stop dripping on himself. "Went for a walk at the wrong time," he explains, orbiting back to the fire.

He spares one hand for Aurora's inspection and a ruffle of her ears, the other rubbing the last of the heavy water from his hair.

Bodhi has no questions about that. He just tried the same thing. He does have a fleeting awareness of a certain irony, considering how much trouble he gave Jude fussing over him when he stumbled in frozen. But he doesn't dwell on it. "You stay where it's warm, okay? I'll get you stuff to wrap up in." He could run back to the house easily enough for more clothes, but the inn will at least have towels and linens. "You okay besides being cold and soaked?"

"Yeah," he says, because cold and soaked need to be dealt with first. The truth of it can be dug into later, or preferably not. He needs a fresh set of clothes, a hot drink, and something to eat. He needs about ten solid hours of real sleep. He needs Clary to keep her demon-infested life experiences to herself.

For now, Bodhi, Aurora, and a blanket will do.

Wiping down with the damp kitchen towel, he makes a show of planting himself by the grate and warming his hands, nodding to Bodhi. "See if you can find any clothes in that storeroom upstairs," he says, dropping down to crouch with Aurora at the fire.

Bodhi lingers for a moment and sets a hand on Jude's shoulder, very quickly, then rushes off. If he'd stopped to think about it he'd have decided he didn't know where much of anything was here, but he's too worried to dwell on that, and he did spend a month lingering around the place back before Kira moved him in. That and it's pretty intuitive. Storage space is what it is. He manages to rush through the errand pretty effectively and only questions whether he should have been that competent when he comes back with a heavy blanket and a pretty shapeless and too large pair of jeans and the flannel undershirt from someone's arrival package, long abandoned. "Best I could do, sorry," he says, lingering nervously. He's actually just fine in a crisis, but it doesn't suit his self image and so he just assumes he's doing badly. At least Aurora has her shit together.

The touch lingers as much as Bodhi always does, in Jude's sense of the world. He stares after his retreat; eventually leans into the dog; soaks up the warmth he can in his still-soaked jeans and boots.

He's a little worried to take them off, a sting at the top that he's pretty sure came from the layer of ice over snow. If it snows on top of the ice, it might be dangerous to walk around in.

Not that it would really stop him, given the choice of the house or the woods, some days.

He stands for Bodhi's return, feeling starting to return to his face and arms. "It's fine," he promises, taking them up and only going as far as the pantry to change. He comes out minutes later, rolling up sleeves, kicking his boots and soggy pants out ahead of him. Hands freed from their flannel prison, he hangs his jeans up with his other clothes, and returns to the warmth of Bodhi, Aurora, and the stove. "Thank you," he adds, the cold sinking exhaustion to his bones. He looks as pale and worn as he ever has, somehow highlighted by his loose clothes. "Can you," he sighs, but not deeply. "I need some hot water." He'd found a long, bloody scratch on his shin while changing.

Bodhi lingers with Aurora while Jude changes, worried without anything to do with that energy. Being sent on another errand helps, actually. That's the kind of busy activity he excels at. It's hard to dither at someone once they're settled and just want to rest, and looking at Jude right now, Bodhi's powerful impulses toward fussing are distinctly overstimulated.

Before he runs off again, he deliberately steps into Jude's space, rolls just the least little bit up onto the balls of his feet, and, with a quick glance to make sure they're alone (for Jude's sake; he doesn't care), steals his second quick kiss. This one lingers just a little and he means it as a promise. He's not even sure what of, but with Jude looking so lost, even leaving him alone for a few minutes feels wrong. "Hot water and whatever's hot to drink. Do you want to eat, or...?" Might be hard to have much of an appetite like this, but being cold burns a lot of calories.

This one comes as more of a surprise, and Jude's stillness is born of exhaustion, not control. He starts to lean his weight into it as Bodhi gives that final upward press before disengaging, and his mouth follows a bit. He's already operating through a kind of fuzz, and the soft kiss sharpens it all into white noise.

The questions that follow do little to penetrate it.

Jude doesn't take Bodhi by the arm to make him stay, but he hovers a hand at his shoulder, trying to project the intent. "What was that for," he asks softly.

Much as he appreciates Jude's careful observance of his boundaries, sometimes he's at a bit of a loss how to demonstrate how emphatically he's happy to accept the current contact. He meets the hovering hand with one of his, not actually bringing it to his shoulder (that might not go great) but holding on gently. "You're cold and--and miserable, and you look like you needed it?" No, pithy is not the right note to hit. "I wanted to," he admits, almost without a pause. And then, in case he fucked up (never a surprise), "Should I stop?" He didn't get the idea Jude minded last time.

"No," he answers, tangling his fingers with Bodhi's. "No, any time you want - it's fine." That Jude might never have the same luxury - that's fine too. He gets kissed, at the end of the day, even if it's on Bodhi's terms. "I just wondered."

He's been kissed before, by people other than Bodhi even. But not for being cold and miserable, usually as a prelude to something else.

Which is the kind of thing he puts out of his head, now. Easy enough, with everything else crowding it. "The water, I - I could eat. But I just wanted to clean up a cut on my leg."

Right, jobs. But he doesn't want to rush right to them after that exchange. It's not like he hasn't thought about that problem--he's pretty good at telling what he can safely do, but Jude's so careful with him he must be missing things he'd like to--well, of course he is. No one but Jude would put up with this.

"Careful," he says, wishing he could feel more playful about it. "I pretty much always want to." And to prove it he does it again. Since Jude just gave him permission, he lingers. Kissing is actually just fine, nowhere near the sensations that bring back Bor Gullet and Saw's minions. He'll go fetch water, tea, and something sustaining in a moment. It's still an odd kiss, clumsy from too much distance, but he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get out of it.

He's still adjusting to the warmth of the room, and it would be nice to wrap up in Bodhi, wrap up in the moment. Just be kissed in a warm kitchen: no canyon, no clamminess all over his skin. To not wonder what to do with his hands, to not think it well through before he corrects the angle. He can do that well enough from Bodhi's chin, which he settles on as safer than setting his hand to the back of his neck, or cupping the crown of his head.

Just a couple of fingers, a little curl to rest under Bodhi's chin and invite him in, invite him to keep lingering. It holds Bodhi's jaw at one angle while Jude tilts into another, sinking into it a bit.

He should say something now like, I always want you to, but it feels a little silly. Flirting after the kiss. Flirting like one of the girls, instead of - the way he just sat in a corner and let it happen. That was stupid.

Bodhi's breath hitches a little at the fingers against his jaw, but it's a surprise. Not bad. He's reached a point with Jude where he doesn't think the worst of every point of contact before anything else. Retraining himself really is going well. He even dares to hope a little that Jude might stop having to painstakingly watch every move. Someday.

Bodhi leans in a little closer, almost at a regular distance for kissing. He keeps hold of Jude's hand in one of his own, but the other reaches up in kind. He's brushed against Jude's hair here and there, but he hasn't quite taken a moment to just run his fingers through--agonizingly gently, a featherweight stroke that ends with his fingers against Jude's cheek.

The enthusiasm warms him as much as the gesture. He's hopefully making Jude feel a bit better, if nothing else.

Inn

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