[ This place is a roller coaster. The emotional whiplash happens so fast, so frequently, so intensely that he doesn't know for sure that his fucking brain chemistry can even keep up with it. From fear to shock to relief in the span of a second, shoulders dropping, posture crumpling into something that's almost devastated with how goddamn glad he is to see Mace.
Running.
At him.
Oh, fuck. ]
Hey, heyheyhey--
[ He doesn't even have time to hold the screwdriver up like he's at gunpoint. He's just there one second and slamming into the floor the next with a bitten off grunt, Mace's weight on top of him thrusting down onto his lungs to cut off what would have been a long, low groan of pain. His fucking stomach.
This.
This is why he fucking cauterized. Good fucking call, Fowler. Paid off, didn't it? Otherwise he'd be eviscerated on the floor right now, or under the threat of it.
They go rolling. Mace lands on top of him, and right away there's a crushing at his windpipe. A sudden pressure, and the extremely precarious fact that landing knocked all the wind out of him. No oxygen in his lungs to tide him over. His eyes go wide, bugged out, searching Mace's face.
His mind works quickly. It always has. He knows a few things within a split second: There is no recognition here. Ian is not Ian to him right now. He can't speak so there's no use trying to gasp out a thing, no wasting precious seconds on it. He isn't strong enough to pry Mace's hands off of his throat, despite the fact that his left hand does curl around one taut wrist on instinct. Based on his heart rate, he's going to burn through his 02 in twenty seconds optimistically, his vision will go black, and he will pass out. At the one minute mark brain cells will become damaged, but survival is still likely. At three minutes he will have brain damage. After that, close enough to dead that the semantics don't matter.
His options: Hands up overhead; looks like corpse pose, fainting doctor going limp, hands may not release, choke until certain. Frantic tapping - universal tap out move. Why in the everloving fuck would he respond to it? Ian wouldn't. Morse code - requires a kind of congnition that isn't surface level, may require multiple rounds for pattern recognition. Significant gesture, he may have one. Soft, confusing contradictory touch.
Fuck it, when in doubt compromise.
His hands peel away from Mace's wrists. His right one yanks his shirt up as high as it will go, wounds on display - or maybe not if he can't see them, but maybe he can see the display. The significance of it. Pat pat, man, come on, you're the one who cauterized this, you got up close and personal--
And then the only fucking thing he can think to do, so stupid but it's all he's got- deliberate, slow passage of fingers up and down Mace's forearm. Soothing, nonthreatening, gentle. Feather-light, save on the upstroke when he drags the pad of thumb up with it so it isn't just fucking creepy.
It is so, so goddamn difficult to focus on it and keep steady, especially when eight-bit clouds start to creep into his peripheral vision. The precursor to blacking out, an ominous warning that he's running out. ]
no subject
Running.
At him.
Oh, fuck. ]
Hey, heyheyhey--
[ He doesn't even have time to hold the screwdriver up like he's at gunpoint. He's just there one second and slamming into the floor the next with a bitten off grunt, Mace's weight on top of him thrusting down onto his lungs to cut off what would have been a long, low groan of pain. His fucking stomach.
This.
This is why he fucking cauterized. Good fucking call, Fowler. Paid off, didn't it? Otherwise he'd be eviscerated on the floor right now, or under the threat of it.
They go rolling. Mace lands on top of him, and right away there's a crushing at his windpipe. A sudden pressure, and the extremely precarious fact that landing knocked all the wind out of him. No oxygen in his lungs to tide him over. His eyes go wide, bugged out, searching Mace's face.
His mind works quickly. It always has. He knows a few things within a split second:
There is no recognition here.
Ian is not Ian to him right now.
He can't speak so there's no use trying to gasp out a thing, no wasting precious seconds on it.
He isn't strong enough to pry Mace's hands off of his throat, despite the fact that his left hand does curl around one taut wrist on instinct.
Based on his heart rate, he's going to burn through his 02 in twenty seconds optimistically, his vision will go black, and he will pass out. At the one minute mark brain cells will become damaged, but survival is still likely. At three minutes he will have brain damage. After that, close enough to dead that the semantics don't matter.
His options:
Hands up overhead; looks like corpse pose, fainting doctor going limp, hands may not release, choke until certain.
Frantic tapping - universal tap out move. Why in the everloving fuck would he respond to it? Ian wouldn't.
Morse code - requires a kind of congnition that isn't surface level, may require multiple rounds for pattern recognition.
Significant gesture, he may have one.
Soft, confusing contradictory touch.
Fuck it, when in doubt compromise.
His hands peel away from Mace's wrists. His right one yanks his shirt up as high as it will go, wounds on display - or maybe not if he can't see them, but maybe he can see the display. The significance of it. Pat pat, man, come on, you're the one who cauterized this, you got up close and personal--
And then the only fucking thing he can think to do, so stupid but it's all he's got- deliberate, slow passage of fingers up and down Mace's forearm. Soothing, nonthreatening, gentle. Feather-light, save on the upstroke when he drags the pad of thumb up with it so it isn't just fucking creepy.
It is so, so goddamn difficult to focus on it and keep steady, especially when eight-bit clouds start to creep into his peripheral vision. The precursor to blacking out, an ominous warning that he's running out. ]