vestigechat | inaugural tdm of unspecified duration.

Entry tags:

!tdm

inaugural tdm of unspecified duration.

				
				VESTIGE TEST DRIVE MEME

WHAT IS THIS?

Vestige

The Box

invite-only

horror jamjar

Good Quality Suffering™️

ongoing

no official start date

literally nothing but this TDM

all powers intact

items

Intro + Friending

EDIT 5/20:

DISCORD SERVER

 PROMPT 1 ► just your ordinary cabin in the woods 

⬛ARRIVAL + GENERAL PROMPT

 PROMPT 2 ► who's up for some fighty-fight, kids??

⬛MONSTER HORROR.

packed

A child's drawing, of what appears to be... shit, what even is that? Is it a bat? Is it some kind of... reptile? We just don't know. (result! warnings for gore/violence.)
A light-blue paper face mask, the sort used in hospitals for patients who have a cold. Maybe you guys should've brought masks too. It sure would keep all this dust the hell out of your nose... ( result! warning for body horror! )
A buzzsaw blade, dusty but intact. ( result! warnings for gore/violence. )
A music box, covered in faded yellow flowers. I wonder what music it plays? ( result! warnings for gore/violence and Alarming Children. )
A funeral urn. But... It seems that someone glued it shut around the edges? I guess that's one way to make sure nobody spills grandma. ( result! )

 PROMPT 3 ► congratulations, you fucked up

⬛SURVIVAL HORROR.

easy

smoke

here

 PROMPT 4 ► "escape"? never heard of her.

⬛PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR.

try

The first time your character ventures into the fog, they're just turned around and sent back to the cabin.
The second time, they hallucinate things that they don't want to hear. Something they fear, something that hurts them, something that stresses them the fuck out. Maybe a character's worst fear is wildcats and they hear one growling just out of sight in the mist. Maybe instead they hear a loved one crying for help back in the direction from which they've come, drawing them back to the cabin. Or maybe they hear the voice of someone they admire berating their cowardice or stupidity or something, for running away from the cabin in the first place. The goal is to psych them out and send them running back to the place where the action is happening.
The third time, it's the same but full-blown visual or even physical hallucinations. Basically anything that might lure, scare, emotionally wound, etc. them into going back to the vicinity of the cabin.

 THE LOOP ► a note on replayability

left unbothered

sunrise

burnt

fall unconscious

reawaken in a perfectly undamaged cabin

CODE BY TESSISAMESS (patreon)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Absurdly, it occurs to Mace that all of this would be easier if Ian were different. If he were selfish, maybe, and afraid — someone like Harvey, who’d put his own safety above others, who’d take the quick way out every single time, while his teammates worked and died around him. Somebody like that would listen to Mace’s directions without question, without worrying over what happens to him.

Moreover, if that were the case, they wouldn’t have this connection between them either. Mace knows the science of it, that the trauma they’re undergoing together is forming an attachment that would normally take exponentially longer to foster, and that might’ve held true even if Ian were just a civilian focused on his own survival.

But situational bonding aside, Ian’s not Harvey. Ian is deadpan humour and easy-going flirting over cheap tequila, an engineering teacher who chooses cauterization over stitches, who decides to fight zombie doctors head-on instead of letting Mace face them alone. Batman jokes after being cut open, old movie references in a dark basement.

And that’s the biggest reason all of this is so, so hard, because Mace just flat-out likes the guy, and his attachment now is not just circumstantial, or on an intellectual scale, but on a sheer emotional level that means he’s fucking compromised. Ian’s wellbeing is suddenly important to him in a way that has Mace unwilling to risk having him hurt, trying to get this damn knob off.

Or staying out in that hallway alone, open to any threat in this murder cabin — and uncharacteristic frustration bleeds into Mace's voice as he says: ]

Not in your condition. You just went through a goddamn surgery, put down whatever the hell it is you’re making and get somewhere safe.

[ Yeah, he sees that blue, and instead of the usual intrigue, all Mace feels now is indignant concern. He doesn’t know how Ian’s magic works, if what he’s doing is gonna drain him in a way he can’t afford right now, leave him more defenseless by dulling his agility or strength.

Whatever decision they make right now has to be predicated on the assumption that the rest of the cabin is no longer safe, that there’s an invisible countdown before the rug gets pulled out from under them all over again. ]

If you get hurt doing this, or one of those fuckers gets the drop on — look. I’m gonna break my way out through the window, and break my way back in from the living room, okay? I can handle that. [ A pause, and then: ] I can’t handle the other shit.

[ Dimly, distantly, somewhere from a source he can't pinpoint comes a sudden, loud cracking sound. It's like limbs from dead trees compromised during a storm, thick heavy things giving in and snapping, groaning, falling. His breath stutters, head shoots up, wide-eyed. The front door is still closed.

It could've come from outside.

It could've come from the basement.

The fact that he has no way of knowing is shaking his courage. If it's the basement, he won't have enough time to get the knob off. Fuck, if it's from outside and they bust the door down he's just as fucked. Shit, shit. ]

Okay, okay- Watch your feet-

[ Urgently, another blue glow that feels like it takes too many precious seconds. There's a 1/4th inch gap under the door, just high enough that he can push through one long razor blade like the kind you'd slip into a retractable box cutter.

It's all he can thing to do right now, all that will fit. ]

Don't come in the front- come around, come around to the master bedroom, I can break that window-

[ Quickly, around heaving breaths as he hauls himself to his feet. Hand pressing against stomach, forearm bracing against wall to push himself off. ]

Don't fucking die!

[ Snapped out, snarled really, an unchallengable order.

He's a coward. He knows it. He knows the right thing to do would be to stay, to get the knob or the hinges off. To summon up a hammer and start bashing the doorknob until they could snap it completely off and pull out the thick medal column that embeds itself into the door frame.

But god, fucking, god almighty, he remembers getting picked up and held down and cut into, and he just can't.

He staggers gracelessly down the hall. ]

[ A noise like a gunshot goes off and Mace’s attention is momentarily diverted by it — his upper half whips around, staring out the window again, thinking maybe it’s one of the tree branches in the distance.

The mask is gone.

In the few frantic seconds it takes for him to make sure his eyes aren’t tricking him, Ian’s slipping a long, thin blade under the slight crack beneath the door and Mace quickly leans down to pick it up, nodding with a new sense of urgency and fucking relief that Ian’s listening to good sense, glad to have a weapon on him again.

And then last part of that sentence hits him properly, and Mace’s head is snapping back up. No, he can’t come in through the master bedroom because — ]

Ian, I —

[ Don’t fucking die comes the order, barked out like things are the other way around and Ian's the soldier here, and he can hear the sliding thump-stop-thump of Ian rising to his feet again before moving down the hall. ]

Shit.

[ Hissed out from between his teeth as he strips the sheet off the bed and begins to wrap it around one fist. The reason he’d said he’d break back in through the front was the security of the master bedroom — they can’t have that window broken, because if Mace could use that as an entrance point, so could anyone else.

His only hope is that Ian waits for him to get there first before trying to break that window on his own, and it’s with that thought in mind that Mace revs up and throws a punch right at the top corner of the window, where the glass is weakest. It shatters apart on the second hit, and Mace keeps smashing into it until there’s a large enough breakage for him to clamber through.

The hem of his shirt snags on a jagged edge and the fabric tears on his way out, sending him to the grass face-first. When he gets to his feet, it’s in time to see that the mask isn't the only thing that's pulled a disappearing act. The headless corpses of the doctors that he'd dragged out into the woods yesterday had left a trail of blood and indent in the soil.

Neither of which is visible any more. Aw, fuck. ]

[ He's thinking immediacy. He's thinking of how fucking hard it'll be to break down a thick wooden cabin door. He's thinking about the sound of Mace trying to kick it in over and over and over again, but Ian not knowing whether it's him or it's a fucking killer.

He's thinking if he shoves the dresser in front of the door he won't be able to move it again fast enough if something happens.

They can nail shit up over the window. Fuck the window.

Mace's glass breaks before he even makes it to his door. He uses his hand around the raised trim to swing himself in, shoes squeaking on hardwood. Slams it shut behind him loud enough to probably alert anything in the building where he is, but fuck it. They're gonna know anyway, aren't they? At least if they're heading in toward him they're probably not heading out toward Mace.

Push the dresser in front of the door.

What if, what if, what if. Fuck it, compromise. He presses his back against it, grits his teeth, grounds his heels and scoots until it overlaps only six inches. Enough to deter more than just the lock, not so much that he'll hate himself for it.

Blue glow.

Glass cutter. Simple, easy, and if he takes the window out in one piece they can put it back and seal it. He can do basic sealants. Glued his fucking fingers together too many fucking times to get that one down, but it paid off in the end. Never bothered to learn how to make the solvent to remove it, but nobody's perfect.

Something drifts through the house, new sounds. Something that makes him freeze midway through dragging the glass cutter down the side of the pane.

It's a steady, rhythmic beeping. A single tone, a polite mbeep that's universally recognized as a heart rate monitor.

A second later, the horrifying thought: they beep in time with heart rhythm. What- who the fuck do they have it connected to?

The thought no sooner crosses his mind before he hears it - a groggy, slurred, clearly drugged out raw tone. Desperate but sedated.

Ian... Ian, fuck- Ian-

There's no fucking way. There's no fucking way they got him so fast. Fuck. Fuck. He's split in two. Split clean down the middle. Half of him logical - how, how could they have, unless they stuck him the second he fell out the window and dragged him around directly to the fucking table.

The other half's calling that half a fucking coward. Spineless. He'd go get you and you fucking know it.

Snarled out into absolutely nothing: ]

FUCK!

[ Fine, fine, fuck, fine, he has to-

Back to the dresser, grunting through a push. ]

[ There’s no two ways about it. If the tracks are gone, if he and Ian have been moved around and pulled apart, if something grabbed that goddamn mask off the tree after leaving it to taunt Mace through the window —

Whoever the fuck it is, they’re out here right now, and the right thing to do would be to hunt them down while Ian’s still inside the relative safety of his room. He’s got the cutter as a weapon, he’s got time on his side with how quick he’d been able to smash that window —

Ian’s voice, angry and desperate, telling him not to die. Ian, waiting for him to come to the master bedroom, ready to break open the damn window and probably would do it if Mace took too long to get there. ]

Fuck.

[ No, his priority is to do what he’d said he would. Screw the logistics, the tactical advantage of it, because he’d said I’ll find my way to you, and he’d meant it. Which means no detour to the living room window to bust through, just a straight line to where he surmises the master bedroom is.

The fog presses in on him as he moves along the perimeter of the cabin, billowing up softly and menacingly through the woods. It’s thickening somehow, and a new foreboding starts to trickle into his thoughts: what if he can’t find his way? If he doesn’t get back — if this goes tits up on him, that would leave Ian permanently alone and injured, a sitting duck for whatever the hell was after them.

Just as he thinks his visibility’s about to be fucked for good, his hand lands on what is unmistakably a window sill, and Mace can’t help the relieved oath that comes out of him. ]

Jesus Chr—No!

[ It morphs into a hoarse yell, his blood running cold. Through the misted glass in front of him, he can see Ian, being held down by all four of those sons of bitches, spread eagle on the bed, and they have that fucking hospital mask on his face—

No. He doesn’t bother wrapping anything around his hand this time, feeling absolutely nothing but black terror and fury as the glass gives way under his fist. Pulls himself through the moment he can get his head in, looking up with frantic eyes to see —

Nothing. The bed’s empty, there's no doctors, where did — ]

Ian?

[ He pushes despite the way his stomach is burning, but it's getting the fucking lock open that takes longer because his hand won't stop shaking. Because he's scared, because he doesn't want to, because what the fuck is he even going to do when he goes out there and sees them holding Mace down and cutting into him and he's got no fucking weapon and he can barely fucking move and there's gonna be more than one of them and no backup, no protector this time, just him and he can't not because FUCK, because he fucking let himself give a shit again--

He yanks the door open, fingers gripped tight around the screwdriver he made earlier. It's long, longer than the knife long enough to go through eye socket and into the meat of a brain and maybe that'll be enough.

He stumbles down the hallway like it's twisting, like gravity's propelling everything left, with a hand flat and one knee dipping down - not from injury, but from nerves.

To the living room.

To an gourney that's empty except for one thing, one moving thing, one thing he thinks must be a small animal attached with electrodes to the beeping monitor.

Everything... slows... down.

There are no surgeons. There is an entire hellish Georges Mathieu painting of blood on and around the gourney, splattering up the walls. No Mace.

Just a single still-beating human heart that his feet propel him toward of their own accord. As if in a daze. As if entranced by this disbelief, a need to see it up close with his own two eyes to know if it's--

Like he might know if it's...

He stands at the edge of it where the surgeon probably stood, holding a screw driver instead of a scalpel, watching it beat.

Shocked to a blank mind. Dead unaware of his surroundings.

Healthy, strong. Alive.

Dumbly, something in him thinks, does that mean he's still alive, wherever they took the rest of him?

Suffering and carved out?

Should he- should he- put it out- ]

Edited 2020-05-28 07:26 (UTC)

[ Ian's not there. Just the empty bedroom in front of him, peaceful and bloodless — hell, even half of the bed is covered in dust, undisturbed as though he'd never lain down next to Ian the night before which makes no fucking sense.

None of this does.

His heartbeat slowing down from where it had ratcheted up to a racehorse's pace, Mace pulls his head back and then breaks the rest of the window with the heel of his shoe this time, crawling through one-handed because the other's cut and bleeding.

Off to the side, the bedroom door is wide open, and the dresser — ]

God, no.

[ Not terrified this time, not a shout so much as it is a growl, but still laced with dread, because this meant Ian had fucking gotten in to safety, going so far as to block the entrance ... and then had promptly thrown himself right back out.

Out of the frying pan, onto the counter top, and then into the fire? What the hell?

... Unless. He hadn't gone willingly, he'd been taken, but there's no signs of a struggle even all the way out into the empty hallway that Mace can see now. He shifts the cutter to his free, uninjured hand and resists the urge to call out into the hallway, keeping his footfalls light, his back to the wall.

Nothing stirs. Mace makes it all the way down the hall, past the second bedroom, through the kitchen, and when he rounds that last corner into the living room it's like he's in a different fucking house altogether.

There's blood everywhere. The sofas are fucking gone, and in the center of the room is — ]

Ian.

[ A faint, disbelieving murmur. It's the scene from the bedroom all over again except this time, there's no bed. Only a gurney, splattered with blood, and Ian isn't held down by anything except straps at his sternum and at his hips. His arms are cut up and so are his legs, and his is middle open and exposed and laid vulnerable to the

motherfucking

white-coat

raising a scalpel right above it. Right above the seared wound going down his chest, clearly intending to slice it right back open. ]

Son of a bitch.

[ The snarl is out before Mace can think twice, his body flooding with rage and adrenaline; he drops the fucking cutter and just lunges bodily at the doctor, twisting on the way down so that they hit the ground instead of the gurney, his hands going for a raw-skinned throat. ]

[ 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. ]

[ His fingers close around the throat beneath them, and Mace knows objectively that he’s got seconds to get this shit done. Strangulation alone didn’t kill these fuckers, so it was going to take a lot more than a blood-choke to render this threat obsolete. Any moment now, he could expect a scalpel or a syringe to stab him in his now-bared stomach, the tatters of his shirt barely hanging off him.

But subjectively, the only thing registering in his head right now is an unadulterated anger that’s overriding his usual pragmatism. It’s not red-hot. It’s not panicked, rushed, distorted. It’s the sort of concentrated, cold fury he’s felt only a handful of times in his life, preceded by drawn weapons, ending with blood on his hands and a clear conscience.

Where did James Mace learn to knife-fight? They don’t teach that at ROTC.

Probably helps that his hands are already bloody right now, or at least one of them is — rivulets running down his busted knuckles, sliding over the wrist that the doctor is gripping, for once showing something other than that fucked up tranquility that was their trademark.

Good. It’s scared. It’s struggling. It’s —

… raising its coat up and patting the skinned flesh of its — ]

The fuck are you doing.

[ A vicious hiss, his eyes narrowing in furious confusion, still locked on its stitched sockets. Thinks at first that it’s some mocking attempt at distraction, because even though he can’t see precisely where it’s patting itself, it’s obvious that it's the same spot they’d cut Ian open.

But the confusion only grows, steep and fast, when the thing’s other hand comes up

and

strokes along the skin of his inner forearm, soft and slow and so utterly strange that even through the rage, it gives Mace pause. It's not the touch of a monster. There's nothing about it that adds up in any way, not even mockery. Too light to be a distraction. Too deliberate to be an accident. He blinks hard, his vision swimming for a brief second before clearing.

The stitches disappear. Melt into long lashes, dipping lower and lower as the eyes of the man underneath him go out-of-focus. And realization is a slow, heavy wash of acid as Mace sees exactly who it is that he’s been attacking, who he's been trying to kill.

Ian.

He’s fucking hurting—

A horrible sound rips out of Mace and he wrenches his hands back like they’ve just been scalded with liquid nitrogen. They might as well have been for all the use he gets out of them in the next few seconds, his gaze widening and aghast as he stares at the long-limbed, prone body of the person he's been trying to protect this whole time. The person he did this to instead. And then he's scrambling forward, uncoordinated and urgent. ]

Ian — no, no, no, Jesus fucking —

[ One hand cups the side of his face, the other raising his hitched shirt higher as Mace, agitated, tries to see what further damaged he's caused. ]

[ Light disappears down to only a narrow pinprick, blurry sensory input from pupils but without the brain computing power required to translate images from what they take in. He can feel his pulse in his neck, in his head, in his chest - too hard, thumping pressure, uncomfortable. He's floating somewhere, though, in a way. Sort of just floating above it, and in a kind, whimsical way he thinks: this is better than getting slit open. Apparently that's where he is in terms of reality now, weighing and assessing potential deaths and being a little appreciative that this one may be painless. Also, selfishly, a little glad that it's by Mace's hand rather than those bastards.

And then the pressure's off and his body sucks down air on instinct, overfilling his lungs, head tipping back, chest rising off the ground an inch or so in his fervor to make even more room for it. From the pressure, from the swelling, from the dryness, that sharp inhale scrapes through his throat. Sends him into a coughing fit, which grapples for dominance with his lungs demanding priority.

Thank fucking god.

The world floods back into his vision, and while he catches a glimpse of Mace's face the coughing has him sort of peeling off to the side, eyes forced closed in the peak of a cough and fluttering back open right after. ]

Not--

[ A sucking, straining sound. ]

How I like to be--

[ Throat closes up because he's trying to stop the coughing. Thickly: ]

Choked.

[ The coughing dies off, he slumps to the flat of his back again to pant out: ]

Safe word.

[ Slowly, slowly, his chest steadies out. Calms down. There's no blood spatter on the ceiling anymore, he notices. Fuck. ]

[ Performing the cauterization had been one thing. Nerve-wracking, yes, and the sight and smell and experience of it had left its mark somewhere in Mace, despite the steadiness of his hands and the relative calm of his demeanour throughout.

But it had been a necessary evil — a pain he’d had to inflict, moreover something which Ian had chosen for himself. A choice that he might have felt regret about (because who the fuck wouldn’t regret taking a burning knife-tip to their fresh wound), but a choice all the same. And a smart one, given current events, because there was no way dental-floss stitches would have held properly with the thrusting force of Mace’s full weight on them.

This, though.

This wasn’t a necessity. This wasn’t a choice. This was Mace almost murdering the guy he’d been reassuring and doing his god-damnedest to keep safe this entire time, and the realization of that rankles hard and bitter in his chest. And fuck, but he knows the rationality of it, knows it hadn’t really been Ian his mind had seen there. But that didn’t change the fact that it’d been Mace’s hands around his throat, and the strength in Mace’s hands trying to pull the life out of him.

A lot harder to compartmentalize this.

Feels like a horrible forever before Ian takes his first sputtering gasp of air and in that time he’s able to ascertain that the wound hadn’t sustained any further damage, thank god. That same sense of bleak but powerful gratitude hits him to see Ian's breathing go from a wracking cough to actual breathing, Mace’s eyes dark and anxious as he watches Ian come back to consciousness.

Safe word. ]

Shut up.

[ Hoarse, quiet. There’s no weight behind it, quite literally none. In fact, it sounds a lot more like I’m sorry, guilt twisting both it and Mace’s gut as he slides a hand under Ian’s upper back and gently steers him until his head is positioned in Mace's lap, trying to elevate it. Better than a seated position, which would put more undue pressure on Ian’s chest, his lungs. ]

Christ, I’m so fucking —

[ This isn’t like the cauterization, because an apology here can only mean so much — and in Mace’s head, it doesn’t amount to anything. I’m sorry I tried to kill you, yeah okay. He pinches the bridge of his nose hard, his eyes squeezing shut, before saying in an uncharacteristically empty tone: ]

I swear to God, I thought you were one of those doctors. I thought you were on that — it isn’t here anymore, it's the damn coffee table again, but he had you on this gurney. You were unconscious, and I saw him about to fuckin’ cut into you again, and I lost it.

[ His eyes open again and he looks into Ian’s, honest and intense. ] It wasn't you.

[ Now that he's not actively dying, his body's quite happy to remind him of just how fucked up he is, really and properly. His stomach's not a precarious ziplock baggie without the zipper thing so you have to trust that you pinched it closed right, this much is true. It is, however, a navel to chest burn wound. It's scabbing in places, flaming bright red in others, gnarly and tender. That doesn't really speak of the bruising blossoming out from around it, the aches in torn muscle. All of that freshly tackled into the goddamn ground and then weight pressed upon it.

And then there's his throat, so thick it sort of still feels like there's something wrapped around it.

He'd protest about the gentle lap treatment, except the second his head's up a few inches fresh air flows in from a relieved, slightly more open pathway.

Okay. Yeah. Maybe he'll just hang out for a minute until his body stops hating him.

For a few seconds there he lays boneless, arms tentatively folding over his chest - hovering, really, almost. Barely any pressure. Eyes closed. Breathing.

When the apologies start his eyes crack open again. One burst blood vessel in the far corner of one, only noticeable if he looks too far to the left. ]

It's not-

[ Hoarsely, and he has to stop to swallow. To gently clear his throat. ]

It's not your fault. I fhh-

[ A little squeaky in the windpipe there, sorry. ]

Fuckin' came out 'cause they 're playing your voice. Somehow. Sounded like you.

[ Which is to say, yeah, he's having the hallucinations, too. He gets it. ]

Thought I saw-- your heart on the-

[ Fuckin. Table. You get it. But the fucked up thing is... ]

Was still beating. This is gonna be-- a problem.

[ The last part with resignation, and his eyes closing again for a minute. Throat feels too fucked up to keep on at it for a minute, he's gonna need some water or something to start working this off. Maybe some heat/ice alternating combo on his throat. Or just fucking deal with it sounding like that squeaky penguin from the Toy Story movies.

In any case, it's going to be a problem and he's trusting Mace to unpack that statement, because he always picks up what Ian's putting down without needing any steering. ]

[ God, the reassurances somehow only make it all worse. He can see the burst capillaries in the far corner of Ian’s eye, visible proof of the damage Mace had done, and when he closes them again Mace does the same, swallowing soundlessly. Tilts his head back until it hits the leg of the coffee table behind them, just breathing as he listens.

So Ian had left safety after all — and done it because they’d, of fucking course, found some way to exploit the sapling of a connection they’d somehow managed to forge. Lured Ian out, and Mace can imagine what that must’ve been like, the choice he must’ve had in front of him. It causes a strange pang in his chest, removed from all the other negative emotions swirling there — to know that Ian would do that because of him. For him.

Sparks a hatred in Mace, too, cutting through the fog of guilt and worry. For Chrissakes they’ve only known each other for a day, and yet this place had already figured out how to use that against them. Fed them some kind of hallucinogen — figuratively, in the very air they were breathing, or literally in the food that they had no choice but to rely on to consume.

(There's a third option, too, but. He’s not going to consider that until it’s been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s possible, because that would mean this goddamn cabin was able to influence the very reality around them.) ]

Don’t talk. You sound like a chew toy.

[ A murmured order, a bit redundant maybe because it seems as though Ian’s fallen silent on his own. He's right; this is gonna be a problem, it’s already become one, and they’ll need a way to render this weakness unsusceptible before it’s too late. First things first, though, Ian’ll need some water and some goddamn food. Even if he doesn’t want it, he's gonna have to at least try to eat because otherwise how in the hell’s he supposed to heal? The wound running down his chest, the mass of bruising around it, and now the injury to his throat — ]

We’ll have to figure out a way to stymie any lure like that in future. But first let me get you some ice.

[ Slowly, as he pulls off the tatters of his torn shirt over his head, wrapping it around the hand that’s bleeding. Then it’s a matter of maneuvering Ian up and onto the couch that’s somehow right back where it had been all along, a cushion underneath his head. Once Ian’s as comfortable as he can get, Mace heads to the kitchen.

Turns the sink on full-blast, and by now the stinging of soap and water to his hands is just a matter of course, on his palms from the lacerations from the day before and his knuckles where he’d punched the bedroom window like an idiot. Great, they’ll have to block that somehow too.

He comes back a minute later with a glass of water and a pack of frozen peas from the freezer for Ian’s throat, setting them on the coffee table and sitting down next to them. It’s partially just in case Ian needs help sitting up to drink, and also because Mace had been mulling over what he’d said earlier, and. ]

So … safe words. You might’ve been onto something with that.

[ There may be an irony between his words and the sound of them when he wheezes out: ]

I'm not an invalid.

[ While being maneuvered to the couch. He does, in fact, sit up on his own - curl halfheartedly really - to take the glass and ease some water down. Small, experimental sips at first. Testing how much his throat can handle.

It's not that bad. It'll ease off in a day or two, he thinks - though there'll be a hand spread of bruising around his neck. He doesn't hate that so much, frankly.

The glass goes down, the peas come up, and he props his back against the arm of the couch so he's reclining rather than laying. Gently drapes the peas across his neck. ]

Not out loud.

[ They're obviously recording, or listening, or... something. ]

We can write it. Come up with a hand sign for it too, because I don't think you- heard me.

[ The smallest little hitch at the end, but the water's helped. His voice sounds an octave deeper, and he's always had a subtle rasp when he spoke. It's just more pronounced now. Sounds like he just got throat-fucked. ]

Something we can-- feel.

[ When pressed against skin, because just flashing it doesn't help if you aren't seeing hands at the time. ]

[ Every word out of Ian’s mouth is a reminder of what had just gone down, and Mace finds that it’s harder to put something like this out of his mind. And if it’s a problem right now, it’s only gonna get worse tomorrow when the reddened imprints of his fingers start to smudge into something blue-black and unmistakeable. It’ll be days before they fade, and even longer before Mace’ll be able to stop thinking about it.

Not how I like to be choked.

But Ian’s saying something else right now, and Mace tears his thoughts away from the way his voice is hitching, the throaty rasp of it, rubbing his knuckles into the palm of his other hand to distract himself. Something they can feel. Right. ]

Make a knife, and if I so much as look at you funny ...

[ Self-deprecating humour isn’t one of his strengths, better suited as he is for irreverence and the odd, terrible pun; it comes out choppy and far too serious, trails off into nothing before he changes gears. ]

Anyway, we can have something like a s—

[ Secret handshake is what he’d been about to say, but if they’re being listened in on, which is pretty much a certainty at this point …

Mace's eyes, which had hitherto been mostly fixed on a nebulous point around Ian’s shoulders as he’d maneuvered himself from a supine position to a reclining one, finally meet his. Only a trace of darkness there now, because nothing helps him focus like a plan being drafted into action.

He mouths the words slowly, and then follows it up with a meaningful nod, as if to ask: get it? And immediately after: ]

Could be a reference to something only you or I would know about.

[ With a vague gesture of one of his hands scrawling something into the palm of the other, a silent request for Ian to make them some writing tools. ]

[ It's clear from the absolute flatness of Ian's stare he won't be making any goddamn knives no matter how funny Mace looks at him. Not for him. Doesn't matter if he's getting choked in an unsexy fashion or not.

He sits up properly. It sucks, it still very much sucks, but it's more his stomach than his windpipe. There's a soft exhale through his nose, lets stretching out long to the right and his body tilting a little to the left so he's not curling up his abs.

It's good enough. One elbow settles on the arm of the couch to help prop. Drops the peas off to the side, because you can only do so much at one time.

Right hand out, palm down over the table. Snaking blue glow back-lights it. When he moves his hand out of the way, there's a standard Bic pen, black. He rolls his fingers, flexes the ligaments, then goes again - blue, slower than it would've taken him yesterday. White knitting together, weaving, filling.

Paper. ]

So we can burn it after.

[ He rasps by way of explanation. No sharpie on surfaces, no chalk on the table because it's not small enough to curl over and hide from cameras with their bodies, with tiny letters, with hands. They can pass it back and forth.

Picks up the pen. Writes in almost perfectly evenly sized letters. Academia habit. ]

ᴀ ʜᴀɴᴅsʜᴀᴋᴇ ᴡᴏɴ'ᴛ ᴡᴏʀᴋ ɪғ ᴏɴᴇ ᴏғ ᴜs ʜᴀs ʙᴏᴛʜ ʜᴀɴᴅs ᴏᴄᴄᴜᴘɪᴇᴅ
ɪᴛ ʜᴀs ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ sɪɢɴ ᴀɢᴀɪɴsᴛ sᴋɪɴ

[ Case and point, both hands wrapped around his throat, stroking a forearm for dear life. ]

[ He'd meant it as an — admittedly failed — attempt at a joke, but there was an undeniable note of seriousness to it. One that, judging by the look Ian leveled his way just now, he'd caught onto immediately, and clearly didn't like the idea of.

But out of the two of them, Ian's the more vulnerable party here, and Mace is planning to revisit this topic later on to let him know Mace can take some bodily harm and it won't be a big deal. Grievous bodily harm, if it comes down to it, because he's done inflicting anything on Ian and he despises the fact that he has such an intimate knowledge of doing so.

Once was more than enough. Twice was a nightmare.

Blue light shimmers in Ian's outstretched palm, but Mace's gaze is back to watching the rest of his body language, taking note of where there's tenseness and how he's holding himself.

Shifts closer until he's using his upper body to shield the movement of Ian writing on the newly emerged paper from any prying eyes.]

Or I could eat it.

[ Which reminds him, he has to get something inside Ian's stomach other than pain after this. But they'll cross that stovetop when they come to it, so he lightly plucks the pen out of Ian's hand to write, ]

MORSE CODE? CAN USE ACRONYMS FOR KEY PHRASES, SHORTEN THEM DOWN TO PASSWORDS.
LIKE THAT JIMMY BUFF GUY = J.B.
OR STROKE EACH OTHER, THAT WORKED PRETTY GOOD.

[ His penmanship isn't as meticulous as Ian's, the letters slanted and broad and careless, and the contrast is a little funny to look at. There's also an innuendo there, but the compliment is meant sincerely; Ian's quick thinking in the heat of such a horrendous moment was nothing short of impressive. ]

[ He hasn't even thought about how little he's eaten since they've been here. Very little before they initiated operation Home Alone, and almost nothing after. A glass of milk, two shots of tequila, a wayward piece of cheese. Chugging water otherwise, enough to keep his stomach from feeling too empty to concentrate.

Not enough calories in, especially given the physical exertion and the injuries. He's fine now, but it might explain the lingering subtle shades of fatigue. He's chalking it up to stress instead. ]

ᴊɪᴍᴍʏ ʙᴜғғᴇᴛᴛ ᴍᴀɴ, ᴍᴀʀɢᴀʀɪᴛᴀᴠɪʟʟᴇ?
ɪ ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴍᴏʀsᴇ ᴄᴏᴅᴇ ʙᴜᴛ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇᴀᴛ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴡʜᴇɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙʀᴀɪɴ ɪs ғɪʀɪɴɢ ᴏɴ ғᴇᴀʀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴅʀᴇɴᴀʟɪɴᴇ ᴅᴇᴄɪᴘʜᴇʀɪɴɢ ʀᴀɴᴅᴏᴍ ᴛᴀᴘᴘɪɴɢ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴍᴏʀsᴇ ᴛᴀᴘᴘɪɴɢ ᴍɪɢʜᴛ ʙᴇ ᴅɪғғɪᴄᴜʟᴛ
ɪ'ᴍ ᴛʜɪɴᴋɪɴɢ ᴡᴇ sᴛᴀʀᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀ sɪᴍᴘʟᴇ ᴏɴᴇ-ʜᴀɴᴅ sɪɢɴ + ᴍᴀᴛᴄʜɪɴɢ ᴠᴇʀʙᴀʟ ᴘʜʀᴀsᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴏᴠᴇʀ ʙᴏᴛʜ ʙᴀsᴇs, ᴀɴᴅ ᴏɴᴄᴇ ᴡᴇ'ʀᴇ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇ sᴀᴍᴇ ᴘᴀɢᴇ ᴍᴀʏʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇɴ ᴡᴇ ʙʀɪɴɢ ᴍᴏʀsᴇ ɪɴᴛᴏ ɪᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴄᴀᴛᴇ
ʟᴇᴠᴇʟ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴍᴇ, ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴘɪᴄᴋᴇᴅ ᴜᴘ ᴏɴ ᴍᴏʀsᴇ ᴡʜɪʟᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ᴋɪʟʟɪɴɢ ᴀ sᴜʀɢᴇᴏɴ?

sᴛʀᴏᴋɪɴɢ ɪs sᴛɪʟʟ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴀʙʟᴇ.

[ There's silence in these moments, long pauses around the scratching of pen, the quiet of the house. Temporary peace, which almost serves to make the pair of them look like fucking morons for all of their running, yelling, fighting, window breaking.

Was there ever even a goddamn thing anywhere near them? Was it all just the product of hallucinogens and a single locked door? ]

[ That first string of words might as well be German to Mace and he carefully draws a circle around them, followed by a big question mark off to the side. With little lines coming out of it, to emphasize how lost he is, and a pointed eyebrow raise.

But. The rest of it is very much a touche — he knows without a doubt that his brain wouldn't have been registering any morse code during that moment, and even if it had, he would've probably sneered it off and just squeezed down even ha—

A muscle twitches in his jaw and he shakes his head in a quick back and forth jerk. ]

POINT TAKEN. BUT WE'D KNOW TO LOOK OUT FOR IT NOW.
THOUGH COVERING BOTH BASES DOES GIVE US A HIGHER PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS.
WE CAN CHUCK UP DEUCES FOR A HAND-SIGN, HOW ABOUT THAT.

OR I COULD JUST TICKLE YOU.

[ The brief stretches of quiet, the peace around them — for some reason, it strikes Mace as false. Leaves him doubting, leaves him looking over his shoulder once or twice at the emptiness of the rest of the cabin behind them ... and hell, but maybe that's the point. Psychological warfare in between the bouts of hallucinations. Trip them up mentally so they don't even know what to expect, give them a false sense of security in the living room that had been a former nightmare before the floor drops away below them all over again. ]

I'm thinking we should take this to the bedroom. [ Almost under his breath, handing the pen back, and then a little louder: ]

After you eat something.

[ Deuces, he says. That last line gets him squinting at Mace through narrowly slitted eyes, and it might be hard to tell if that's meant to be a warning or if he's trying to determine Mace's sincerity at the suggestion.

He'll have commentary on that later. In the meantime, he folds the paper in half and then half again. Moves to stand up (slow, careful) and slips it into his pocket.

There's a kitchen. It's beyond their power to make sure the food isn't spiked with more hallucinogenic properties, but they don't exactly have a lot of options. Heading out into the woods to live off the land is outside of his skill set.

He nods his head in a c'mon gesture, and ambles into the kitchen.

The first thing he goes for is the fridge. When he tugs it open, a familiar sight freezes him in his tracks for a second. Right after, he gropes around blindly behind him for Mace's arm, shirt sleeve, whatever he can grip and pull around to see what he's seeing.

Heart on a plate in the center of the fridge.

Beating.

Dimly, awed. ]

Do you see it?

[ Having a poker face comes naturally to Mace, even under the weight of a squinting look from an engineering teacher — a look that might mean anything from don’t even try it to do I look like Elmo to you, it’s hard to tell. Although the payoff if Ian is actually ticklish would be well worth the elbowed spleen and/or nose that Mace gets out of it.

Not now, though. Later on when he’s in less pain and, more importantly, less likely to be further injured by any monkey business, and his poker face flickers with concern when Ian makes to get up, folding the paper in on itself. At that little head tilt, Mace's hands hands go out slightly for a couple of seconds, both in unspoken protest and just in case Ian ends up stumbling on those first few steps toward the kitchen.

Following close behind, Mace pauses when they reach the fridge to do another area-check over his shoulder, his wariness intensified by the relative quiet they were in just now. Can't be that easy. ]

See what?

[ The thing about blind groping is that you never know where your hands'll end up. In this case, with the way he's half-turned to the kitchen entrance, it would've been the bottom hem of Mace's shirt — but because most of that is a torn mess still hanging off the jagged edges of the master bedroom's window, Ian's fingers end up nabbing Mace by his belt.

It catches his attention faster than his shirt would have, anyway, and he immediately leans over to look at whatever's got Ian sounding so quietly astonished.

It's a head. Dark-haired, familiar, turned away from them on a silver platter — but there's very little doubt in his mind whose it is, or is supposed to be anyway, and his stomach turns at the thought.

Mace tenses up all over, one hand landing protectively on Ian's shoulder, his voice going hard. ]

Yeah, taking that as a threat. I'll grab some shit from the pantry, we gotta go.

[ He is not even remotely 2% bothered by snatching Mace by the belt and reeling him in. There are other circumstances where he'd be more interested in that than what he's looking at, but as it stands... This sort of takes precedent for his attention.

The heart's still beating, and once again Ian's overcome with this... urge, this impulse -- grab a knife, drive it through. Make it stop. Put it out of its misery. He thinks, irrationally, that somewhere out there is a person carved open but still alive, desperate to have all of it just stop.

He slams the fridge closed. Nods, and if he... seems to hover a little too close to Mace as they move, well, frankly it's because they're building sort of an association here. A dynamic. Hard not to think of someone as your protector when they've taken every available opportunity to protect - even though Ian's adamantly never allowed himself one before.

He guards himself. He doesn't trust his safety or his body or his vulnerability to another person.

Tell that to the way the front of his left shoulder's almost constantly brushing the back of Mace's right.

Supplies are gathered. Canned soup, canned meat, canned vegetables, canned fruit. Crackers. It's gonna be a hell of a lot of sodium, but it's a decent enough array of nutrients aside from that. He can make water. He can make- well, not fire in the traditional sense, but he can make a chafing dish. Utensils. Dishes.

They retreat, once again, into the bedroom. The dresser gets pushed back in front, but as soon as it's there Ian takes out the bottom drawer. The window's still broken. He can take apart the drawer and they can board it up. Got a screwdriver already, the hammer's just as easy. It might sooth mace to see him sit down on the bed for this part. ]

I think we gotta start thinking about trying the woods again.

[ He murmurs, wedging the screwdriver in. Smacking it with a hammer once or twice, then wiggling back and forth to pry the front away from the sides and bottom. ]

This isn't sustainable. Cameras, mics, maybe hidden speakers for audio replication. Whatever the fuck they're pumping into the air to make us see shit, or...

[ Actually manipulating, somehow. ]

[ Fuck, this can't be easy on Ian. Setting aside the physical torment he's been put through, and at least half of it at Mace's hands, the strain this must be putting on his psyche ...

No wonder he can't immediately look away from what's in the fridge, no wonder he slams the fuckin' door shut, and Mace's hand tightens sympathetically on his shoulder. For whatever godawful reason, this place has Ian squarely in its eyeless sights; once might've been a random hit, twice a lot more suspicious, but the third time is flat-out enough for Mace to want to make dead certain that he doesn't leave Ian's side for the duration of this goddamn nightmare.

So if he's a little too much in Ian's orbit even while they gather supplies, all the way back to the bedroom, well. He can't really help it. Keeps a discreet eye on him with more concern than for his body alone, watching his hands for any tremor, his face for any signs of distress.

There's none that he can see, though he still breathes easier once they're inside the bedroom and the dresser's shoved against the entrance. Which, of course, is when Ian pulls out a drawer and promptly starts taking it apart. It doesn't take more than a couple seconds for Mace to realize why he's doing it, but still. Take it easy, buddy.

At least he's sitting down for it, and Mace takes a seat next to him with a vaguely exasperated exhale — but what Ian says next has him pausing mid-way. On the one hand, Ian's right. It's absolutely not sustainable, and they have no damn way of knowing what the next day's gonna look like here, at the mercy of these evil motherfuckers.

But in the woods, surrounded by all that fog and the way it muffled sound as well as sight, they'll be at the mercy of everything else.

When the bottom panel of the drawer is all the way off, Mace snatches up the hammer up before Ian can get any ideas, and holds his other hand out for nails so he can go board up the window. It's his fuck-up, after all, and it's only right that he fixes it. ]

Outside could be potentially worse. Although if we stay here much longer, we're definitely fish in a barrel for these pieces of shit. Fuckin' cowards.

[ Spoken in between hammering in nails at the window, that last part grunted out with no small amount of ire, because it's not lost on him that they're targeting the teacher over the (ostensible) soldier. It reminds him of the horrible sight that had awaited them in the fridge, though, and there's a pause as he mulls over how Ian must be feeling.

With a pensive, sober look over his bare shoulder, ]

What about a compromise? We stick it out here until you heal up a bit more. Take shifts to keep watch at night, so they can't get the drop on us like that again.

[ Ian does huff softly when Mace takes his hammer - yeah, he'd been absolutely right, Ian had every intention of nailing the damn thing up himself. There isn't much he's been able to do to contribute aside from summoning up things that are only useful about half the time.

All the same, he places his palm down on Mace's directly, skin on skin, fingers to wrist.

Muffled glow that doesn't feel warm or cold, but rather a little electric. Ionized particles. Ozone. Static cling. The light weight of nails slowly press down, and there are six when he takes his hand away. ]

They broke into the bedroom without waking either of us up.

[ He points out mildly, using the screwdriver to detach the four remaining panels of the drawer. While they're at it, they can board the door shut too. No telling if it'll make a difference, but... ]

I'm not that hard of a sleeper. Betting you're not, either. Not hard enough to sleep through a damn dresser sliding across a hardwood floor. It means they've gotta be pumping the room full of something, right?

[ Not that it matters. Mace is right, he's in no real condition to start a days-long trek into nowhere, he couldn't climb a tree well enough right now to save his life - which might be a literal concern. Their single play is Mace's idea right now.

Four panels taken apart, he saves one for himself on the bed to use as a tray.

Blue glow, this time it's there longer. Bright and burning away for minutes, because what he's making is complicated. It has chemical components. A specific structure. Ethanol gel in a shaped canister. A book of matches. ]

[ That’s true, neither of them are light sleepers — definitely not enough to miss the sounds of a damn dresser being dragged across wood, no matter how badly they’d had the figurative shit kicked out of them the day before. ]

Dunno about that, I slept pretty soundly next to you.

[ Murmured with more humour than he’s feeling on the inside right now, but if Ian’s able to put on a brave face after seeing himself served up on a literal silver platter, the least Mace can do is keep true to their brand, so to speak. Besides, there was something to be said for gallows humour to keep a guy sane.

Finishing up the window panel, Mace sets the hammer down and cracks his knuckles as he gets to his feet, grabbing one of the few perishable items they’d snagged (a clementine) before heading back to where Ian’s currently — huh. Making hand sanitizer, with a book of matches already next to him on the bed. Watching the blue glow as he seats himself on Ian’s other side, Mace thinks he can still feel the tingle of it on his own grazed palms.

Or maybe that’s the phantom sensation of Ian’s palms resting on them, surprisingly warm for a guy who’d just been knocked down with a fresh surgery wound on his chest. ]

You know, Da Vinci had a weird fuckin’ sleep pattern. He’d take twenty minute naps every four hours. Not saying we do that, but … maybe a modified version of it. A full REM cycle every three hours? Or maybe two, and then we swap throughout the night.

[ Said with ulterior motives, because Mace intends to let Ian sleep through his shifts; it’ll delay his healing, for one thing, if he stays up. For another, Mace’s protective nerve is well and truly raw at this point and he’ll probably deal better with staying awake.

Without really thinking about it, he starts peeling the fruit in small, methodical movements, and only offers it to Ian when it’s fully unpeeled. Another habit from his days of dutifully cutting off bread crusts. ]

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