snowblindrpg | [log] Grave Men, Near Death [closed]

Before

[Rhys is doing so badly. But he needs to keep himself together. John and Beckett are, he can't be the weak link that encourages despair. Can't let his battered mind be drawn to it. So he focuses on the things he can offer. Like the soap the other Rhys had traded - practically gifted - him. He does intend to indulge in one of its few uses, but he'll offer it to his companions first.]

I have soap, if it will help or if anyone wants to bathe while we have hot water. It isn't much, but it's something.

During (character nudity in this prompt, of course)

[Whatever's left of the soap, he takes for his own shower. It's been a long time since he's bathed - his experiences with Clayton and his unfortunate lack of shoes on arrival have taught him to be warier than is strictly necessary of frostbite. He thinks it will help him. Make him feel better, and more useful for morale if nothing else.

Coming from a life largely lived with communal bathing, he finds himself wishing he had invited John or Beckett to join him because being alone under the water, however warm, isn't a comfort. It leaves him to his thoughts, about how he had spoken to Angel before her fight with Rhys. How he could have tried harder to get her out of there. If he'd just picked her up and carried her, her hallucinations of Jack surely couldn't have stopped him.

It's his fault. Her death, Rhys's condition, he could have prevented it all. Perhaps in an earlier month, in the time when he actively pursued and fought Jack when they were in danger, he would have. He looks down, and for the first time sees how much more weight he's lost now that he's gone to half-sized meals. The metaphor for his weakened, withered spirit is too apt. He sinks against the back of the shower, sliding to the cold floor with both hands over his face, muffling the sobbing he can't stop, didn't even see coming. He spends a while in there, unable to bring himself to get up, to move out of that confinement he's put himself into. Out of the warmth that is no comfort, back to the company that is too good for him. He just can't.]

After

[Eventually, whether it was because someone came into the bathroom or not, he does get out of there, and his misery is on full display. He huddles in a corner, shivering from not properly drying himself beneath his - admittedly warm - blanket. The yin-yang-patterned one, that the collective gave him when he had basically given up. He had thanked them for their generosity, but, much like the shower, it had been of less comfort than was ideal. He's staying far away from the bedroom with the bloodied mattress, as if his pain is contagious, though occasionally his reddened eyes stray that way, like he could somehow check on him without getting up. Pathetic as it is, this low has completely blindsided him. He was supposed to feel better...]

Beckett certainly doesn't intend to disrupt anything as incredibly important in Norfinbury as a hot shower, but after a while - well, Enoch's been there a while, and something about the absence of any sound of business or movement is alarming. And it's easy to convince himself that he just wants his turn, because don't they all.

"Enoch?" He starts with a knock on the shower door, but isn't sure the sound carries through the running water, and anyway this being Enoch he's not very worried about more modern notions of decency. He nudges the door open with his shoulder, ready to turn away if Enoch does want him to. But it's very quickly clear that Enoch wouldn't.

The door snaps shut as Beckett quickly moves forward, dropping to one knee on the damp floor just outside the shower. He thinks he can tell what's going on - emotional distress only, which isn't to be dismissed but in a Norfinbury context is often a best case scenario - but he's not taking chances. Not when just in the other room...

"Enoch. Are you all right? Should I be getting John?"

The presence of another, particularly as well-loved as Beckett, draws him out of the crippling loop of pain and guilt his mind locked him into. It was loneliness that enabled this spiral, so it's only natural that his company should break it. He peeks over his fingertips at the sound of Beckett's voice, hiccuping as he tries to stop crying and fails.

"I'm- not hurt." His voice fails him and he weakly shakes his head to emphasize. "Can't stop, I-" A wracking sob pulls itself out of him and he chokes back only the very end of it, burying his face again in shame Beckett has to see him so distraught when he already has so much to worry about. He can't even say he's sorry he can't stop crying.

Not hurt is a good start, though really it just makes the situation considerably more awkward. Hurt, Beckett could deal with, or get John to deal with. This, though, this is squarely outside his expertise. Those visceral, human tears.

He quickly decides against words. Nothing he can say will sound anything but idiotic to his own ears. The physical intensity of Enoch's emotion unnerves him, as a creature intimately familiar with the worst driving depths of some feelings. And since this is Enoch, he's short on all his other tools. Dark humour won't help him here. There's no practical action he can think of taking. And the one thing he still will not do is lie and say things will be fine.

He lets all of that go. There were other things he'd learned, ways of dealing with inner demons that completely eradicated reasons. Sometimes giving way to the bare physical instinct was the only right way after all. He moves in, and wraps his arms fully around Enoch, drawing him in. It's more than a hug, more physical contact in its most total, rawest form. He'd held Anatole like this, through his madness. He knows how.

Madness makes a good comparison, when Enoch feels like he's crying for five different reasons, all right and all wrong. Touch is as powerful as it has ever been, though, and the effect of being drawn into Beckett's arms is immediate. He curls tight into him, into the secure circle of his hold, burying his face in his shoulder. One instinct tells him to return it, another keeps him from moving his arms too far away, and his water-wrinkled fingers latch onto the sides of his clothes instead. He is weak and hurting and Beckett is safe.

It helps immeasurably. He can't show it at first, still unable to control his tears, each sob dragged from somewhere deep. But the moments crawl onward, and they begin to wane, until his crying shivers weakly on his lips instead, a soft weeping as he begins to recover.

"Beckett..."

He tries to gather his thoughts to speak, try to explain himself, to thank him, anything. But he finds most of his mind thoroughly drained and still raw, so all he can do is continue to cling and wait for things to start making sense again.

"Please don't." He wishes he could make it wry, back to normal form, don't get those soppy emotions all over him. But it comes out more hushed, weaker. Don't talk or he might not know what to do, how to answer. He thinks if Enoch tries to apologize to him he'd probably lose it, some way or another.

He wishes he were warmer. It was different when he held another of his own kind, where their mutual cold stillness was itself a kind of comfort just by merit of being mutual. But Enoch is alive and human, and, God, that changes a lot. He feels almost old in his arms, fragile.

"Don't talk. Let it come and pass."

Enoch nods into Beckett's shoulder. Crying it out is the one thing that's going to happen regardless. And though Beckett may resent it at the moment, his body temperature provides a grounding contrast, something to keep Enoch from falling too far into his own mind and starting this entire mess over again.

He feels empty, when his tears are finally spent. It isn't quite the pleasant unburdened kind of empty, but isn't the upsetting kind, either - it's just exhaustion, an all-encompassing emotional tiredness that barely permits thought. His grip on the vampire's clothes loosens, and he lifts his head a fraction of an inch before laying it back down.

It's the simple thoughts that persist, when he first tries to speak again, breathless still. His self-blame, reflexive as it is, is complex. Too much thinking back, too many what-ifs. So what is left, when he's worn down to the raw emotional core?

"Thank you. I love you."

And he means it, the poor bastard. It's all Beckett can think, when they're both down to the bare bone like that, Enoch with exhaustion and he with a kind of total helplessness. One he's familiar with, that very particular kind, the base recognition that the world is wrong and broken and he is a wrong and broken being within it, dreaming of grace he knows he doesn't deserve. And there's the difference: with Anatole, he would always know that his friend, his brother, would stand back up when faith won over madness inside him again. That was what Anatole was, his sweet double-edged gift. Enoch too will stand up again, he's reasonably sure of it, and yet, and yet.

Enoch says love and he means it. He means it in a way that he doesn't even mean with faith. Beckett knows he's got to be strong for him in a way he has never had to be for anyone he's ever loved before. And damned if he can say for sure whether he even can.

This is part of it, isn't it, brother - your bitter cup? I'll take it. Just as you said I would.

"One day you'll regret it." He says it perfunctorily and it has never been more obvious that he doesn't mean it at all. That he says it to shed it like an old skin. "I won't leave you, Enoch. Never again. Cry all you want, you're stuck with me."

This time Enoch does raise his head fully, to look Beckett in the eyes. His own are still reddened from crying, widened with hope as his words sink in. I won't leave you. It's all he ever needs to hear, and some part of him just pulling itself back into place recognizes it again as his counterpart to Beckett's own transformative phrase wake up. The words that changed it all, forever.

A smile crosses his face, weakly relieved and then truly warm. He wraps his arms around Beckett completely, straightening his cramping shoulders to rest his head against the side of the other's own. He's weeping again, and at a loss for words, but this time, it's not distress.

Right now, for this moment, the pain is lifted. For this moment, he's happy. His own brain may work to undo it in short order, but these beacons in the dark that are his closest and dearest forever, they are precious.

It's a change for the better. That's what Beckett gets and he rolls with it - he can't manage, for the moment, the deeper insight about what his words have meant and what they've sealed. In this, Enoch's experience is so totally different from his own. But for once, he doesn't need to understand so deeply. He knows he did right and that's enough. There's a relief, a kindness in letting be.

For long minutes, he lets Enoch cry himself out. The shower keeps running, and very slowly the realization comes into focus in the back of his mind that his clothes are soaked and getting back out into the dry cold is going to be unfortunate. The thought makes him shudder and then it make him laugh, or would have if he thought he could do that to Enoch's face right now. Sad laugh? Happy laugh? Who even knows. They're a mess, but he is at peace with that.

"I hope anyone out there has something resembling a towel," he mutters when he feels Enoch might be calming down. Then he winces at the realization of how Enoch might take this honestly innocent statement. "If you apologize for getting me soaked I am going to bite you."

He absolutely would have apologized, too, even if it would have been a much less self-flagellating apology than usual. There's too much of this that he needed too desperately for regret to feel like anything but a distant shadow. And Beckett's jab at it dissolves even that.

Enoch laughs, weary, raspy, relieved. His speaking voice is no different. "You say that as if I wouldn't feed you whenever you needed or wanted..." A deep breath, letting more of him float back to cohesion. "You can use my blanket. It's warm."

That means, of course, it won't dry him nearly as well, but that's fine. Enoch has dry clothes out there, after all, and he can only repay him for being there so often, in just the right way at just the right time, by continuing to give. Comfort, companionship, supplies, food.

A more pragmatic course of action might have been to suggest taking the opportunity to wash Beckett's clothes, and let them dry while he bathes, but that would require Enoch to let go of him. He can't bring himself to even dwell on that thought, just yet.

"This is going to end in huddling, isn't it." Okay. He can live with that. Angel can make all the fun she wants about hugs but Beckett knows that any of his small coterie must be aware by now that he is much less averse to physical contact than he might give an impression of. Warmth. Essentially it's about living warmth, had been even before Norfinbury. Sometimes he thinks about how he can give warmth too now, however faintly, and that is a thought he's still barely processed even around Enoch.

He can still give it, though, counter-instinctive, strangely almost sacrilegious as that might fee.l. He lets Enoch hold on and doesn't dwell, no more than passingly, about how fundamentally unfair it is that a man like Enoch must turn to a creature like him for comfort. This is how it's fallen; for once, it's obvious what he needs to do to set the world straight. He stays.

He does comment, because he is what and who he is: "Not tonight. No feeding and no giving blankets. I'm not doubting what you'll give, but being your friend I choose not to take." Free will, and all that.

"Huddling it is, then." Something in him seems to relax, and the rest of him unwinds gradually in kind. It results in a much less desperate cling, something much less afraid to lose. Somehow, this refusal of his generosity hasn't sparked the worst imaginings his beaten mind can come up with - in all likelihood because he is staying, because he's here, and that means more to Enoch than anything.

"That isn't giving, after all, but sharing."

Only Enoch can make huddling sound positively cheerful. Beckett doesn't remark on that, though - not sure if it's going to lead to real laughter, yet, or just ring bitter - and instead starts moving, slowly, gently, to untangle them and get off the shower floor. It's more a suggestion of movement than anything else. Whether Enoch likes it or not, for the moment, he's still being considered fragile.

It's without pity, though. Just with care. The recognition that sometimes fragility is a fact. He offers Enoch a hand to help him up before he even as much as climbs to his knees. "Come on, then. Before rumours start to fly about us and our long showers."

That should work for laughter, surely?

There's resistance to breaking the contact, token and entirely reflex and nothing new - he has the same hesitance when breaking up sleeping piles in the morning or even simply removing a guiding hand from a shoulder. Enoch is starved for touch, always, and that reflects in all he gives and receives. But he does allow it, and takes Beckett's hand with a grateful squeeze when it's offered. It's probably no surprise that he doesn't let go when he's on his feet.

The joke, well, that hits another reflex entirely, and he does laugh, albeit soft and somewhat reserved. There's that secret he never got to share. And he has too much of his senses now to do so.

"It would-... We're too old to care about transient gossip, aren't we?" he says, in the same tone he laughed, a reserve of warmth from within touching his eyes as he smiles. That falter at the start's as far as he'll go, though, as things are. He tilts his gaze, still one of that distant warm something, towards the shower door.

Strangely, it doesn't seem like the prison it did now that Beckett is here. It's cold and painful out there. It's with reluctance that he gives his hand a gentle tug as if to say let's go, despite the fact that his movement towards it is just as hesitant.

[log] Grave Men, Near Death [closed]

shower meltdowns, because more angst! (pre-mercy killing obvs)

sup shower meltdown

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