patheticvillain | fifty ➢ video ( cw bodyhorror )

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fifty ➢ video ( cw bodyhorror )

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This is bullshit.

["This" being the black, silky ears he's sprouted in the wake of the flood. His long tail, equally black and twitching with irritation, pokes out from under his blanket, where he's curled up and sulking. The camera's at a skewed angle, balanced on the edge of his pillow.]

I just woke up like this. I didn't even do it. If it's gonna happen, I want to at least be the one to do it. I want . . .

[He trails off, his eyes distant and dull. When they snap back into focus, he sits up slowly, blankets falling around him, and narrows his eyes.]

It's supposed to hurt.

[And then he begins to change: skin rippling, body changing, limbs twisting. He grows a third arm, and then a fourth, the new ones vestigial, skinless, ugly. Growths emerge across his face, limning his high cheekbones. He curls up in the fetal position; you can hear bones crack, shift, curl, and break. All the while he's crying out in a dog's whine, an ugly helpless yet somehow angry noise. The blankets tangle around his shifting feet as they grow bark and tentacles and recede into stubs.]

[Eventually, endlessly, he is still. The ears and tail have gone completely.]

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Talk about what.

Die Hard. What the fuck do you think?

Don't be a dick.

Eat me.

Can we just-- why don't we just go get a beer or something?

. . . Yeah, okay. I could do that.

Meet you there?

Yeah.

[And thank God. Mickey is technically still supposed to be healing up in the infirmary, and the extra set of arms he's sprouted on his end of the flood actually aren't helping all that much, but fuck it. He's worried, and this is easier than trying to come up with something useful to say on the spot.

He tries to get a shirt on, but eventually gives up and just lets the bandages wrapped around his shoulder and waist sub in as he limps up to the pub.]

[Cassel's already there, in a booth way in the corner, far in the shadows. He's got a beer he's looking at kind of suspiciously, like maybe it's gonna bite him, and he's sitting hunched over, his shoulder and spine curved with pain.]

[When he sees Mickey, he raises a lackluster hand, waving him over with about as much enthusiasm as somebody getting ready to go to the dentist.]

[Good enough. Despite the pain and the stiffness in his side, he reaches over the bar to grab a bottle for himself, then goes to join Cassel, sliding into the seat opposite. He pops the cap open on the edge of the table, takes a drink, and...

...sits, chewing on his lip. The journey upstairs hasn't helped him come up with anything. When he really thinks about it, he doesn't know if he has anything to offer, or if Cassel even wants anything from him. All he can think of, in the end, is the honest question:]

Fuck's going on with you, man?

[Concerned, quiet enough that Cassel could ignore it if he really wants to.]

Do you ever . . .

[Is how he begins, but then he doesn't know how to continue. There's a whole lot of nothing in him now, despair curling around him like a snake, and he doesn't have a single clue how to put it into words, much less address the problem, this problem that's too big for any one person to handle, this problem that's drowning him.]

[Do you ever what? Feel like nothing? Probably. Probably Mickey does. But all of a sudden Cassel doesn't want to ask.]

It's just a lot. I'm just. I feel heavy.

So you're depressed.

[That's a word that comes easier now than it used to, for all the pain that conquest has brought him. He rubs at his brow with one hand, the one below it helpfully bringing the bottle to his lips for another drink.]

You, me, and everyone on this boat.

Yeah, so.

[He shrugs, takes a drink; pulls a cigarette out of his pocket, lights it. All natural, habitual actions that don't throw him too much, that put him in his comfort zone, as much as it even exists right now.]

It's not a big deal. It doesn't matter.

[He doesn't say that it is or that it does; Cassel has to have known he wouldn't. No one comes to Mickey Milkovich for a pep talk. Instead, he reaches across and steals the cigarette from Cassel, a gesture that has its own kind of immature meaning: an overture of familiarity, of friendly intimacy, from someone who might just as easily hit him and take the entire pack if he wanted to. Maybe it doesn't mean all that much coming from someone whose friendship doesn't actually mean he can help with any of this, but... well, it's something in his limited means.

He draws on the cigarette, sighs out the smoke, and holds it back out to him.]

So that was what -- some kind of fucking self-expression?

[There's a quick little crooked smile when Mickey steals the smoke. He lets his hand sweep lazily across the table, as if to say take it - it's yours, a measure of generosity that indicates camaraderie. He's happy to share with Mickey, if not with everybody.]

It's just something I do sometimes. It's not always so . . . [He makes a face, takes the cigarette back, and breathes in smoke, moody again.] Public. That's just how it happened this time.

[That makes him go quiet again. It sounds stupid to him, frankly, but his own coping strategies have historically involved sleeping with people who disgust him, beating on people he cares about, and outrageous amounts of denial, so... he's aware that they're really getting into stuff he can't say much about. It's not like he's doing much better with that these days.

He runs a hand through his hair and sighs, one of the other hands bringing the bottle back to his lips.]

I shot up a coffee place a while back.

[He says it sort of conversationally. Cassel turns into monsters; Mickey takes out espresso machines.]

Oh yeah?

[He doesn't seem bothered in the least by this revelation. He just tilts his beer from one side to the other and kind of grins into it, cigarette smoldering between his fingers.]

You have fun?

...Yeah, actually.

[Granted, he'd been drunk enough and coked up enough at the time that anything probably would have been fun, but destroying hipster coffee joints with assault rifles? Definitely fun.]

These gentrifying assholes keep trying to come in and Beacon-Hills-up the place. Fuck that.

Yeah. Fuck 'em. I bet you left it in ruins.

[He wonders if Mickey ever did any time, but doesn't ask. If he ever spent time in a place like where his mom did time, he doesn't want to know about it.]

Next time, you should take me with you.

To the South Side?

[That surprises him, it's clear. He doesn't have quite the same impression of Cassel that he does of someone like, say, Scott, and he knows Cassel's said that Chris's money isn't his, but... it's still a pretty big leap from there all the way down to the ghetto. Besides, who the hell actually wants to go to the South Side, except the loyalists like him who grew up there and the yuppie scum that want to invade?]

...Why?

[The question surprises Cassel, too. He doesn't know why he'd suggested it, except - this is what people do when they like each other, right? They hang out together, figure out what makes the other one tick, go to each other's homes and examine their neuroses from up close, and get closer together that way. That's how you do it, isn't it?]

[It's not how he and Sam did it. But he wonders now if he was ever that good a friend to Sam, or if he didn't do it the right way at all.]

We're friends, aren't we?

I mean... Yeah, but.

[But they're friends here, where he has friends, where that makes sense. He's not sure what the intersection of those worlds would look like. It's hard to imagine. How would he even explain where he picked him up -- this smart, snarky, gloomy kid with the magic touch that's nothing like anyone else he knows?]

You've seen how shitty my place is, man.

So? It doesn't--

[He shifts in his seat, struggles to articulate what he means. It's not that it doesn't matter, he knows that it does. It's just that he doesn't want it to. He doesn't want to be left out of somebody else's life, yet again, when they go home and go to do the things that matter to them on their own. He wants to be part of something. And he wants Mickey to want him to be part of his life.]

I don't care. I just don't.

[He looks at him for a long moment, still pretty clearly perplexed. If he knew what Cassel was thinking, he might be even moreso, because no one has ever looked at the Milkovich house and thought I want to be a part of that.

Except Ian, anyway. No one sane.

But it's clearly important, somehow, for whatever reason. If this is about them being friends, like some kind of... rite of passage or something he doesn't get, maybe all he needs to know is that it's important.]

Okay. Whatever. Your funeral.

[And if anyone asks, he can say Cassel is his cousin. There's always a cousin around. Even his brothers probably wouldn't question it too closely.]

Don't bring anything nice with you.

[He smiles, a thin, relieved smile that nevertheless comes across kind of nasty. Something curls at the edges like hunger. Yeah, he wanted to be a part of this so much that now that he's going to, he feels a little sick with relief.]

Wasn't planning on it.

And if you want, you can come see Carney sometime. But you don't get to see my mom.

[Because she's a crazy motherfucker more than out of any protective instinct towards her, obviously.]

Wasn't planning on it.

[He's got enough crazy evil family to contend with, thank you.]

Do they all...? Like you do? Out there?

[Is everyone magic?]

Not everybody. Not even most people.

[He shrugs, a little helpless to describe the politics of work. Even the demographics of it - there's so little known, and so much less that he personally knows.]

It's genetic, I mean. I know that much. My mom and my brothers can do it, and my dad could do it, and Lila and her dad can do it. But it wouldn't be, like, weird, that you can't.

fifty ➢ video ( cw bodyhorror )

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