sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Great Shakes

[MINGLE] Great Shakes

WHO: EVERYBODY
WHERE: EVERYWHERE
WHEN: 13 July (afternoon, main quake) - 14 July (morning, last aftershocks)
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Potential injuries, PTSD, and anxiety

The sun is still high when the earth begins its initial, almost benign sway, but seasoned villagers know well enough that what follows will be far from gentle. Vibrations ramp up swiftly, exponentially, until within the space of a few seconds, the whole world is shaking — Dishes pinging down from shelves, young trees sifting free of the earth, shingles dislodging and tumbling like rain.

After 20 seconds, the worst is done, and after 30 the shaking has ebbed completely. Some will have escaped relatively unscathed, but others will not have been so lucky...

...and the aftershocks are still to come.

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"Karen isn't here," he says between sips, even as Frank wedges himself into the corner regardless. Aurora doesn't seem to mind it at all, shifting partially into Frank's lap to fit. Kira shifts as well, leaning into the shelves as they settle and resting his head against his back-bent hand.

Maybe Frank already saw her, somewhere upstairs.

Maybe he has to check on the dogs first. She'd love that.

Kira, at this point, is entirely ambivalent. "From the bar, for once." He passes it across the dog with no puppy eyes needed. "Not one of those things with a name on it, unless someone tore it off." It's his now, but not so much so that he won't share it.

"I didn't ask," he points out, taking the jar from Kira and glancing down into it with an almost wanton gaze. That's not normal Frank, just take a drink. He takes his sip, long and appreciative, before pressing it right back into Kira's waiting hand. Then he strokes Aurora with his free hand, henley riding up to reveal the leather bracelet he's always wearing now. Except wait, now he's thinking about Karen and... "Have you seen her?"

It's too dark for Frank to really see it, but Kira looks over the bottle as he tips it back again, staring at the opposite corner like there might be a camera there to look into. Eventually his eyes slip sidelong away from Frank, not quite a roll, and slide back as he dangles the bottle in both hands, elbows propped on his dog's ass.

Her tail is rhythmically beating him in the ribs, which he assumes is a good sign. She's still panting, but the shaking has stopped for now and for once she has the laps and attention of both of her caretakers.

"Check your fucking messages; she told you she's fine. She's either upstairs somewhere or still making her way here." Here probably being this exact corner of this exact cellar, the way things go lately. Why did he ever think he could get shitfaced in a dark corner without one of them showing up, and inevitably summoning the other? "Before she gets here," he asks annoyance and alcohol prompting him to dive at the subject, "what the fuck is up with you two anyway?"

Frank had actually seen the check-in and blows out a breath. He just panics because... (1) he's him (2) Karen is Karen and (3) he'd just come from a place where literally everyone is in danger all the time. Karen's fine, of course she's fine. It's just a stupid earthquake. He leans into Aurora a little more and stares straight ahead, wondering if it'll never not be terrifying to be here with Karen.

"What... do you mean what's up with us?" he asks, brows knitting tightly as he snatches the liquor back. He already feels it clouding his mind, and he wants so much more of that feeling. Playing dumb probably isn't going to work on Kira though, is it? He looks down before taking a sip, knowing he doesn't have the words for this but maybe he owes it to them both to try. "We helped each other, back home. Saved each other."

Before she gets here. God, he's so tired. He really just wants to skip it, the weird kooky adventures with the three of them. Can he just rest?

"She said she's been waiting for me to get here." If that isn't a reason to drink, he doesn't know what is.

No one plays dumb like Kira Akiyama; he'd tell Frank it's all about commitment to the role, but Frank's already abandoning the strategy. Actually, he'd probably just tell Frank it doesn't count if Frank just is a stupid motherfucker, evidenced steadily by his every interaction with their mutual friend. Mutual stalkers. Jesus.

Kira brought up the subject and it's still driving him to drink right alongside Frank, the tension of previous encounters like a dried leaf litter skittering his insides.

It's only half the reason to be annoyed with them; the other is everything Karen doesn't want Frank to know, and doesn't want Kira to discuss with anyone else. Frank shows up, discussion shuts down, Karen starts doing that fucking thing with her hair. "You know she's still fucking waiting, right?" He passes the bottle back to Frank, figuring he'll need it more to hear this than Kira ever could to say it. "Yeah you're here, but it doesn't seem like you're here for her, much. Non emotionally stunted people care about that shit, you know."

It cuts, jar still hanging in his fingers limply when Kira lays into him. He knows he's been a shit friend, and not just to Karen. He takes a drink, then sighs, looking down at the dog and his own boots. "I know."

Being aware of it doesn't magically make him better at this, okay?

"You think I don't wish I could be better, for her? That's all I've wanted since we met. It doesn't fix me. Nothing can." He shoves the bottle back and holds onto one hand with the other, leaning over and braced against his knees now, displacing Aurora some as she gives an offended doggy groan. Booze can't fix him either, it can't even make him forget. Maybe that's enough for one night.

Kira meets the shove with his hand, every movement slow, and pronounced: the gleam of the bottle shifts for one obstinate sip, and then lowers very firmly to the floor. His hand rests over the open lip, fingers stilling over the neck.

"Oh boo fucking hoo," he says. Just as slow, enunciating every word. He's a little ahead of Frank, in terms of drinking, in terms of emotional fucking intelligence. "People don't change because they don't want to. Sometimes it's macho bullshit, sometimes it's just being attached to your own fucking pain."

Which, pot meet kettle--but nobody expects him to do anything but water and roll the weed, these days. "It's been a few weeks, Frank. There's time to try harder. When you butt up against the hard thing, just fucking do it. I know why I'm drinking in a dark corner while the world shakes to shit; why the fuck are you?"

Kira makes fun of him and it gets a sharp glare shot his way for the effort. It softens almost immediately, though, because again this kid is annoyingly right about him. Like, all the time. If Karen didn't also see him he would swear he was hallucinating him. His head hits the cement wall behind them hard, but it doesn't seem to impact him. His skull makes a dull thud he might've shied away from a week ago, but he's getting bolder all the time. Building up callouses to the loud, loud world he finds himself transplanted into.

"She's better off without me anyway. I'm always gonna be around if she needs me, but I can't..." Or he won't - he's not denying the merits of what Kira says - but this is still his truth. It's still something he feels incapable of doing, of being for her. "She knows the score. All the ways in which I'm lacking." She keeps trying anyway, keeps trying to force him into being a real person when he'll only ever be an approximation of the shadow of the man he'd once been. To say nothing of what Reims had stripped from him, afresh.

His own anger deflates, and so does his skeleton, melding with the wall as he tries to calm his racing heart. Maybe he would be better off in New York. Or dying, finally, once he gets tired enough. Tired enough not to wake up again.

"This is what trying looks like, if you're me."

"God, you're such an asshole." Kira picks the bottle back up, cradling it in both hands and leaning his head back against that same wall. Another tremor runs through the village, shaking shelves, loosening dust from planks above. He can hear the already spilled supplies and utensils rattling over the kitchen floor. Eyes closed, he's back on his cot in the old gymnasium, trying to sleep through the pass of armored cars in the night.

It didn't matter what side they were on: they were the only thing moving out there, and in Manhattan, that was wrong.

Not that any of it fucking happened.

At least he isn't alone down here, even if it's at something like Karen's expense. He doubts it: Karen can handle herself. They were fine before Frank. They were--slightly less complicated, maybe. Kira takes another drink as the shaking stops. "I don't have anybody here," he says--shouldn't say, really. He has people, kind of, just not the way Karen and Frank have each other, or the group of assholes who think a big purple alien did this to them. "I can fly right off the rails at any time. I can fall in a ravine and get eaten by those stupid crocodile dogs. She cares about you, you stupid fuck. You owe her; figure it out."

Frank nods, thinking of the first time Karen had said the same thing, sitting across from him in that diner. "Yeah, yeah you're goddamn right about that." Just like everything else. His efforts to stay calm are moot when more aftershocks rattle the Inn and he has to shut his eyes to recenter himself, squeezing his eyes closed and licking his lips and trying to let the bourbon in his system work already. It's like his anxiety is casting it out, pushing it out the same pores that welcomed it in.

A cruel smile curls his lips, but it's for him, not Kira. He slowly peels his lids open and forces himself to breathe, fingers burying in Aurora's fur to try and drag his blood pressure down a tick or two. It's easier to listen to Kira than to his own increasing agita, but that doesn't make what he has to say what Frank wants to hear. It earns another sharp look, though there's even less venom behind it, considering reaching out for the other man's arm even as he spears him through with his gaze.

"I care about you. So does Karen." Frank shakes his head, giving into the urge to latch a big hand around Kira's slim wrist. "If you get eaten by a croc-dog I'll make it spit you out." They're friends, that's how this works.

Did it ever mean anything, when people touched him? He used to get drunk at parties, clubs, ride every high in the room and find the best feeling to go home with. Whoever thought he was the most interesting, the most attractive. Some fucked up mirror that showed him his best angles, made him feel good for awhile, made him forget he was going to die.

And he didn't.

And he didn't do any of that either. The only reason he even thinks his gifts were real, for someone, some-when, is how they've shown up in other people. Like some piece dissected out of the original and distilled, coded into someone else. Given in doses, like that dream before the badger attack. Did that make the memories real too? Does it matter?

Of course it matters. Kira lets Frank have his wrist because what the fuck is he going to do? Pull away, get gripped harder or pinned with some pitying look he'll still know in the dark? "I know you care about me. I know people care about me." Mark's stupid messages, Mark letting him move in so he isn't just kicking around that brick house with the animals. At least Mark's in the same boat he is, even if Mark doesn't seem to fucking care, one foot in front of the other motherfucker.

"It's not the same thing. I don't know anybody here, I don't recognize a single fucking person, when they come out of that fountain. I didn't even recognize Aurora, when I crawled out and they said I'd already been here. There is no one here to tell me any of my life ever really happened, and I'm not that for anybody else." Hand still in Frank's grip, he pushes, until he pokes him hard in the chest. "And you keep showing up at the worst fucking times, so I'm getting drunk in the basement because I never get to fucking talk about it."

Kira thinks Frank and Karen have each other, but after Reims... he barely even has a grip on reality, let alone this one. He lets Kira push at him though it has no effect, letting go of the man's wrist at the last possible moment. It isn't the first time he's been told he has bad timing, not even close. There's no pity to be found in his gaze, however, only understanding. He wants Kira to trust him, to tell him what's clearly disturbing him so deeply, but he knows it doesn't work that way. That trust has to be earned, measure by measure, and still people will break it. He had, even, so often; as often as he'd been betrayed probably. Even if the trespasses against him were more severe, if only because it doesn't get worse than two dead kids and your beautiful wife still smiling in a pool of her own gore next to your shared picnic basket.

"Did Karen ever tell you how we met?" he asks suddenly, wrapping his arms around his own knees so he won't feel tempted to reach for Kira again. At least, not until he needs him to. Or asks for it, but that'll be a chilly day in Hell he's sure. No one ever asks for his support, they just get it in an annoying swarm of dad vibes. That is, unless you're Karen Page. Then he can only ever muster to support her when he's already falling apart himself. No wonder she's pissed. "I was shooting at her, in a hospital. Yeah, 'cause she was protecting this scumbag guy I really wanted to kill."

He smiles as he says it, almost wistful. Karen had already blown the lid off the whole murderer thing, and maybe it's because this place only feels half real or the bourbon in his system that erases any reservations he may have had about telling Kira the whole truth. But it's also because he wants the man to trust him, for real. He can't lie to him if he wants that.

"When we saw each other again, I told her I was a sharpshooter, that if I wanted to shoot her, I would have. And that was the truth. She was the only one who believed me. I think she's the only one who ever does, still."

Frank lets him go; one hand on the floor, one on the neck of the bottle. Kira curls his hands to fists and clenches his teeth, as Frank ellaborates, all but vibrating with mounted frustration. He closes his eyes; he takes a breath. He holds in the immediate reaction, building behind his pursed lips.

It didn't happen.

None of that happened. Fuck you. Fuck your special ops violent backstory bullshit. Fuck them for getting to pretend it happened, because it's a memory they share. He has a picture that could be of anyone, he has a coat with a bloodstain that has never gotten him Ty, remade, rolling out of the fountain. He has cards that only mean as much as their symbols, that offer none of the guidance they once did, and probably never meant anything in the first place.

He wants to tell Frank all of it; he wants to open his mouth and scream.

But more than a betrayal of Karen, it would just--it would be awful. He's being awful; he's always awful, he knows, but fuck if he's going to tell Frank to be there for her, and then tell him the reason is all in his stupid, copy of a copy head. A brain grown in a jar, electric shocks mimicking life. They don't even fucking know. They're never going to know.

Frank has never shot anyone.

Karen has never published a single story.

Kira has never told a single future, including his own.

And he can't tell him that; they are friends. These are the only people he has, and everything he misses, everyone, is just some part of a script. Something that maybe once was. Something that won't ever be again. "That's great, Frank." The words are hollow and hoarse to his own ears, and another swig does nothing for it. He leaves the bottle on the shelf, eases Aurora off of his lap, and starts to pull himself up. Once he's standing, he makes himself turn, holding onto the shelves for support.

"But that's not all she believes about you. That's not all of who you are. We don't have any guns for you to shoot, around here. Never have, probably never will. Be the other fucking parts; especially around her."

He wasn't expecting what he said to upset Kira further, watching him get up with a hurt expression of his own. Aurora gets up with him, but Frank doesn't chase either of them. This isn't Reims, he's not Mayor Dad. They can leave if they don't want to hang out with him and his dumb feelings.

"Jesus Christ, why does it mean so much to you? I'll talk to her, okay. Just--" Stop yelling at him!!!!! Frank stretches his legs back out and lets his head thunk back against the wall. "Thanks for sharing your booze." You're free to go.

"Because I care about you, and I care about Karen," he says, more like a gauntlet tossed back across a line than real endearment. Twisting the cap back on the bottle, he swings it idly in his hand, hitting that punchy side of terror and liquid courage. "And if you let your bullshit eat her alive, I'll make you spit her out."

The how of it can be left to Frank's imagination, Kira unsteady on unsteady ground, tossing the bottle at his chest. "Fucking keep it, I'm done."

It sounds more final than it is; Kira tells Aurora to stay, and she only follows him to the stairs before a tremor sends her straight back to Frank, whimpering and trying to hide in his armpit.

Frank gets that, he knew it already, but the way Kira says it is still from a place of hurt. It selfishly makes him want to get up and wrap the man in a hug, but he doesn't seem like he's in a place to accept physical kindness either. He settles for hugging the dog, as ever, gathering her to his chest and stroking her spine until she evens out a little. "It's okay, girl. You're safe. I won't let nothin' hurt you. Shhh." It seems to do the trick, Frank's voice like a balm as her ears perk right back up and her tail thumps against the ground.

He looks up at Kira's retreat, attempting to staple him there with his gaze even as he catches the thrown bottle easily and sets it aside. "You don't have to leave, I won't say anything else. I usually don't unless it's you, you know." Talk. Karen and Kira are two of the only people he spares full sentences on. He knows it isn't always what they'd prefer anyway.

Kira puts an arm over the railing, another under, eyes closed as he rides out another roll of earth beneath their feet. The steps groan, the building shivers. It's a nauseating kind of fear, and tempting to ease back down with Frank and the dog. As far as earthquakes go, he assumes this one is fucking bad, but--he wants to find his bird, he wants to see Karen with his own eyes. He wants to go find Mark and be given a real task, even if he's too drunk now to do it well.

"I don't care if you talk," he admits, still holding on as the shaking stops. He slides upward, one step taken between the words. "It's fine, Frank. Better than fine. I'm the one who needs to shut the fuck up, and I don't trust myself to do that."

So he'll go. Gold star for self fucking awareness, even if he winds up concussed in a ditch for it. "I'll message you later," he promises, finding the swaying door and pushing out into the inn.

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[MINGLE] Great Shakes

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