patheticvillain | fifty-three ➢ video

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fifty-three ➢ video

[Cassel's in his room, rearranging his drawer of scraps in some order discernible only to him. Ilia is perched on a high shelf, his eyes narrowed and tail twitching, disturbed by the commotion and looking ready to jump down onto Cassel's shoulders at any moment. As he rummages, Cassel addresses the camera; the moment he turns towards it, a bruise slides into view on his left temple, light and mottled black. He seems not to notice it.]

A few things. First of all, if anybody who's not all Admiral-ed up has a problem with the power outages, I think - I think I can make flashlights and lamps that don't need to be powered. [He's speaking specifically to Morgana here, but he doesn't know everybody's hangups, either, so he's leaving it open to the Barge as a whole.]

Second of all, has anybody actually gotten anywhere with the ship? Steering it or anything? Because this seems like it's getting kind of. Critical. [As Dean so astutely pointed out.]

Last thing - I know nobody cares right now, but we still need staff for the gym. At least one more person. If you feel like going slightly less stir-crazy while we're marooned in the middle of nowhere, apply now.

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[Mean though he knows Cassel can be sometimes, that laugh sounds more like Ian to him. Ha ha, okay, calm down, psycho. Like it's crazy that Mickey is upset. He is upset, it's fucking upsetting, but he doesn't know any words to explain how or why. Don't? Stop? Hasn't he said them before? Has he?]

Grow the fuck up, Cassel.

[He knows simultaneously that lashing out is probably the wrong move and that he has no idea what the fuck else to do. He can't take care of this. You can't even take care of yourself, Zane whispers in his head, as right now as he was then.]

[It's possibly the worst thing he could have heard right now, especially because he knows that Mickey is right. He does need to grow up. He's always needed to and he's never been able to, not now, not ever, not for anybody. Not even for Chris. He's not good enough, he's not going to be good enough, and he should just fucking stop trying.]

[The look on his face is - not even angry. Not sad. Just frozen for a long moment, a silent beat that he wants to fill with something but has no idea what even to start with.]

[Then he throws something - a thick piece of wire - at the communicator, knocking it off his desk and onto the floor. There's a curse in the background, past the gloomy underside of his desk, and then the slam of the cabin door. He's gone.]

Fuck.

[Big surprise: he fucked up. Mickey is no genius, but he doesn't need to be to have seen that that would go badly. He should go after him, he thinks -- but something, some fear or indecision, paralyzes him where he sits. He's not going to do any better in person. In person, he might wind up hitting Cassel himself.

When he does eventually pull up roots, that's what it winds up being for. He can't take care of Cassel, or his family, or himself. He runs again and again into problems he can't solve, can't help, makes fucking worse just by opening his mouth. The only thing he can think to pull out of himself, maybe the only good in him at all right now, is that he can find something better to hit.

Or at least something else. By the next time Cassel sees him, he'll be sporting some fresh bruises of his own.]

[What Cassel does after he leaves the room is he copes. Poorly. He spends most of the night in Anya's room, curled up with her, drinking. He doesn't talk much, or if he does, he tries to forget about it the next day. Sometimes talking doesn't help anything at all. Sometimes talking just makes it worse.]

[Drinking shouldn't help as much as it does. But when he wakes up the next morning with a headache and a dry mouth, it's at least something else to focus on. He uncurls from his nest of blankets and stretches and prods his bruises to make them hurt, because he can, because he wants to. It's supposed to hurt.]

[He almost doesn't go to work. Mickey's gonna be there, unless he's a bigger douche than Cassel thinks he is. But in the end it's a matter of responsibility. If he can't be responsible for himself, he can at least be responsible for this thing that's bigger than himself.]

[When he enters the gym, the first thing he sees is a big black-and-blue bruise. It tugs his eye, makes his stomach roil, and it takes a minute for him to realize who it belongs to. When he lifts his gaze to meet Mickey's, his eyes are wet, his expression pinched and hurt. What is this, some kind of I told you so?]

[It's not the same for Mickey as it is for Cassel. He doesn't relish his war wounds; he takes no pleasure from the pain once it's been inflicted. For him, it's all about the adrenaline, and now that it's past all he can do is feel hollow and achy.

He's trying to get it back at the punching bag when Cassel comes in. His knuckles are bandaged under their wraps, but he's still hitting hard and fast as a runaway train. He doesn't like the pain, but there's a certain grim satisfaction in the way it lances through his hands with every smack of his fists against the bag. It's real. It's solid. Maybe that's what really drives him into all these fights: with all the problems chasing each other endlessly in his head, there's something about being able to hit something heavy with his hands and hear it crack.

The sound of the door comes to him only distantly, but he stops anyway, fighting to catch his breath, wiping the sting of sweat away from his eyes and the cuts on his face. He turns, spots Cassel, and goes still, expression hunted and guilty.]

What?

[It doesn't connect for him just yet what the look of betrayal is for.]</small

Edited 2015-05-18 03:04 (UTC)

[He opens his mouth, closes it again, tries to make sense of things. He did a bad thing, he knows he did. The part of him that still remembers a bare hand and an electric magic touch wants to fall down on his knees, sob, apologize, make it better by being anything that Mickey wants him to be. If it was Shandra--]

[But it's not. He has to forcibly wrench his thoughts off that track. Mickey can't hurt him like that. He can hit him, he could probably kill him if he really tried to, but he can't take away what makes him him.]

[Cassel hopes he wouldn't want to. But sometimes it's hard to know. The parts of him that are intrinsically Cassel are also the parts that hurt other people, over and over and over again, that make people turn their backs on him. Tell him to grow the fuck up.]

[Swallowing, he shakes his head. What ultimately comes out is helpless and small.]

You got hurt.

[Mickey figures it out then -- what Cassel thinks happened -- and shakes his head. He moves away from the bag and goes to sit down, straddling one of the benches.]

I got in a fight.

[He starts unwrapping his hands with a veil of disinterest, like it's just something that needs doing. It is, but he also wants Cassel to see. Underneath the wraps the bandages around each fist are mottled, a fresher, darker red where they hit the bag, but brown and rusty elsewhere with the lingering stain of yesterday's blood. Maybe not the nicest thing to look at, but proof in their own way: he didn't do this to give Cassel a taste of his own medicine or to make some kind of point. He gets into fights. It's what he does.]

You should see the other guy.

Edited (SORRY) 2015-05-18 23:03 (UTC)

[Not the nicest thing to look at, but Cassel's eyes are drawn anyway. The blood is refreshing, somehow, a reassurance that things aren't as he expected them to be. Still not great - he expects that he knows the reason Mickey was so angry that he had to get into a fight in the first place - but better than he thought, anyway.]

[He didn't make Mickey mad enough to lash out on purpose. He hasn't lost another friend. This, he can deal with this.]

[His smile is hesitant, quick as a flash and gone, but he attempts it, anyway, and it lingers around his eyes as he crosses the floor to sit next to Mickey on the bench. Close enough to feel his body heat, not close enough to touch. A compromise.]

You fuck him up?

[Mickey tenses slightly as Cassel comes near, watching him with shadowed eyes until he settles down next to him. Then he settles down again, too, grateful for the compromise. He shifts, bringing his leg over so they're both facing the same way.]

I guess.

[He shrugs. He and Tig had both walked away at the end of it, which means that it's far from as bad as it could have been. He finishes with the wraps and tosses them carelessly aside, then flexes his fingers with a grimace. Maybe the bag hadn't been the best idea today.]

[He watches Mickey's knuckles, the way they move under his manipulation. It's been a really long time since he got into that kind of fight. He wonders if it's better, if it makes you feel better, than what he does, if it makes people less angry with you, because he doesn't feel very angry with Mickey now. Maybe he should.]

Does that mean you're not mad at me anymore?

[It comes out rawer than he means, and he looks down at his hands hanging between his knees. He's tired of being weird and fucked-up and vulnerable, but he doesn't want to leave, either, not until he gets his answer.]

Edited 2015-05-19 02:07 (UTC)

What the fuck does one thing have to do with the other?

[He glances at him out of the corner of his eye, his confusion genuine. He'd hit Tig, not Cassel. It had gotten all that extra energy out, yeah, but that's all.

Then again, there's the other fact at hand: that he was never really angry with Cassel to begin with. Not angry. That had come when he couldn't handle any of the rest. He frowns down at his hands and curls them into loose fists, his voice going quieter and less sharp.]

I don't get why you do that shit.

Edited 2015-05-19 02:19 (UTC)

I don't know. [He really doesn't. He was just kind of assuming.] Victory forgiveness or something.

[His gaze slides away like oil on water, snagging on the weights and the still-swinging bag. He's never gotten or given a good reason for it. Once again he finds himself thinking of Kon, how disappointed he'd be. This isn't how a warden's supposed to act.]

It makes me feel better. And this time . . . I thought it'd help him, too.

[He had felt so grounded, afterwards. Like one stupid thing was in his control. A leftover of his old life: if people are going to hurt him anyway, he might as well control how.]

That's not good, Cassel.

[Now it's Mickey's turn to sound raw, and more than he means to, as well. He's briefly relieved that Cassel isn't looking to see the flash of pain that he knows passes across his face with it. He bites it back, covers it up with a sigh, rubs at his eyes like he can push the feelings back inside if he just tries hard enough.

But then, that's really his fucking problem, right? They're all locked up in him, lodged under his throat and in the pit of his stomach, growing sharper and harder to manage every time he gets into something like this. Each and every time: he lets someone in, lets them in until he has no choice but to... give a shit, his mind supplies, unwilling to go near the obvious word. Until he has no choice but to give a shit, and then they lay something at his feet that he can barely even understand, let alone help with. Let alone take care of.

He presses the heels of his hands harder into his eye sockets, then lets them drop again once he sees stars.]

I don't-- [He bites his lip.] Do you-- do you think you need help or something?

[Cassel didn't mean to put this on Mickey, is the thing. If he knew what he was doing - if he honestly understood how hard he was making it to just function, to just give a shit - he'd leave, make it so Mickey didn't have to. Which is part of the problem.]

[He doesn't want to lay anything more on the line here. It feels instinctively not only like he's done something wrong but like he continues to do things wrong, every second he's sitting here. Like he's actively fucking up Mickey's life by being near him. Like he's cursed.]

[I don't need help, I need Zane back, he thinks, and bites his lip hard enough that it doesn't come out.]

I don't need help. I'll be okay. You don't have to worry about me.

[A bright smile as he turns to Mickey again, all sunny bullshit.]

[The look Cassel gets in response to that is so tired, so hollow; it ages Mickey too far beyond his years. He might not deal in bullshit the way Cassel does, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know it when it's staring him in the face this blatantly.]

Don't fucking do that.

[A couple years ago he might have said, Do what? A couple years ago, it would've been so fucking habitual for him he wouldn't have even noticed. Now he's doing it on purpose, and that's probably worse. It's insulting, he thinks. It's stupid. Why does he do any of the shit he does, why isn't Mickey leaving, he should be leaving and letting it go.]

Fine. I don't--

I don't know.

[If he needs help, if he wants help, if help even exists for people like him. He wants Kon back, he wants Zane back, he wants life to be normal insanity again.]

[And that's where they hit the impasse. If Cassel doesn't know, then like hell Mickey does. He sits there for a second, helplessly frustrated. Maybe he should go. Maybe that would be better for both of them. A boy who likes to get hurt and a boy who likes to hurt people -- that can't be a good combination.

But he can't. He knows too well how it feels now to lose people, to linger behind and suffer alone. It's completely selfish: he's not thinking of protecting Cassel from that, but himself. Losing Ian the first time had almost killed him by itself. Losing him again now, and his sister, and all those people on the Barge that had held a piece of him and taken it with them... Mickey already knows he's falling apart. He doesn't want to know what will happen when the next person is gone.]

I'm worried about you.

[It's so, so quiet. He knits his hands together, trying to scratch an errant flake of dried blood off his palm.]

About what happens if it gets bad.

[A punch in the face is one thing, or a little blowback... but Mickey's learned the hard way not to wait for the little things to get big.]

Edited 2015-05-19 17:58 (UTC)

[It's terrifying, hearing Mickey say he's worried. Mickey who uses his fists instead of his words, sitting here on the bench small and curled up on himself because of something Cassel's done. No: because of something Cassel does.]

[If he could stop by himself, he would. He thinks. But he can't, and part of him doesn't want to, because what does he have to hold onto without it? Nobody stays. Nobody stays for good. Even Mickey - maybe he'll go soon. Maybe he'll just disappear like the rest of them, or go without saying a word, because maybe he doesn't care as much as Cassel would like to think he does.]

[But all the same, here he is, saying he's worried, like Cassel's somebody important, somebody he wants to hang onto.]

It's never gotten worse than this. [Is this supposed to be reassuring? Even he doesn't know. It can't get worse than this, that's good, but also - things literally couldn't be any worse.] Except one time. And I got better then.

[He glances at Mickey, his expression pinched and worried. It's getting big, he can tell. Even if not for him, for Mickey. It's getting so it interferes, and he wants to make it better. He does. It's just that he's at a loss, too, and he's supposed to be the smart one, the one with his shit together. He's supposed to be the warden.]

If I promise I'll tell you before it gets worse. If I promise. Does that help?

[Mickey doesn't have a lot of imagination in him, but he can say this much: where Cassel thinks it can't get worse, Mickey's already thinking of all the ways it can. Unless there's a lot more that his friend is hiding from him, it could be so much worse that the possibilities are dizzying.

It's Ian's fault, of course. Or Mickey's, for helping turn Ian into what he became, for not trying to stop it sooner. For ignoring the little things. Maybe it would be easy to write off Cassel's bad habit as just another dumb coping mechanism if he hadn't become so terrifyingly attuned to the ways sanity can just... slide away from someone.

But what else can he do? Cassel got himself hit. This isn't kidnapping an infant. This isn't psych ward territory. So he swallows back his paranoia, gives Cassel a little nod, and hopes like hell that Cassel will actually know when it's getting worse, will remember that he said this if it does, will still care enough about Mickey by then to speak up.]

[He means to. He does. The trouble is the difference between what Cassel means to do and what he ends up doing. A lot of times the difference between the two is a moment of impulse, a second of stupidity, and he's broken promises and hurt people all over again.]

[But this is too important a promise to break. Mickey might break if this promise is broken, Cassel thinks, just shatter and never trust anyone again. Cassel knows what it's like not to trust anyone. He wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy.]

[He knows he can't reach out to Mickey. It's been made clear enough again and again when he turns away, when he shies from physical contact. So Cassel holds onto his own wrists, so tight he almost cuts the circulation off. Something to touch, something to hang onto so he doesn't fly away.]

Okay. Then I promise. I won't do anything stupid. . . . I won't do anything stupider than this.

Good. Fucking thank you.

[But Mickey catches the way Cassel's hand holds onto his wrist. His eyes linger on it for a moment: the way Cassel's sleeve bunches underneath his fingers, how tight Mickey can tell his grip is. He feels a little stab of something that's not guilt, exactly, but a little like it. There are times he truly can't stand to be touched -- when he's feeling cornered, when he's feeling scared, contact is sometimes as painful and terrifying as a burn. If Cassel had tried to hug him that night with the text message, Mickey very well might have hit him, or worse. He had with Ian the one time; as bad as he feels about that, he knows it never would have happened if Ian hadn't gotten right up in his space and started pushing.

But it's not always like that. The rest of the time, it's just... uncomfortable. Sometimes it's just new. He can hug his sister easy, but it had taken work to get there with Iris, with Mira, with other women. He's still working on it with Allison. And he's learned to hold Ian, to be held by him, even to feel safe holding his hand, but there's Ian and then there's other guys. He doesn't think he's ever really touched any of them with affection except the odd cuff to the head or shove at a shoulder -- things that men can do.

He can, though, he thinks. He just hasn't. He hasn't really wanted to. But he can see the way it hurts Cassel now not to, and Christ, if he can't do anything else... He shifts over a little bit, just enough to nudge Cassel with his shoulder and knock the back of his hand against his knee.]

[It takes a second for Cassel to look up. He's so locked in his own head right now, in doing the right thing in a shitty situation that he made, in hating himself and trying to be better, that the way Mickey slides towards him barely registers. It's another piece of sensory input in a world that's trying to overwhelm him right now.]

[But when Mickey touches him, he does glance up, looking confused and lost and a little hurt, as if pained to be distracted from holding himself down so he doesn't float away. The gesture doesn't make sense to him as shitty as he feels right now. He frowns, but mirrors it anyway, his knee knocking against Mickey's, shoulder bumping.]

Yeah?

[Or... maybe not. He'd thought that would do more, somehow. He'd thought Cassel would look happier, not hurt. And for him... it's not terrible or anything, but he's uncomfortably aware of Cassel's warmth and weight pressed into his side, apparently pointlessly. He sighs, mouth twitching in frustration, his other hand rubbing agitatedly over his thigh.]

Yeah. Whatever, man.

[Hasn't he said enough? Exposed enough? What else does Cassel want him to say?]

[His grip on his own wrists loosens, just a little bit, his hands falling away to his sides. After a moment, he nods, not smiling but not frowning anymore, either, some of the tension leaching out of his shoulders. He doesn't know if he feels better, but he doesn't feel worse. He feels . . . able to maintain.]

Sorry I made you worry.

[That much is true. It's better than people not thinking about him at all, but not by much.]

[Now Mickey is wandering back out into unfamiliar territory. If he's not used to worrying about people, and definitely not used to admitting it aloud, he's even less used to the words I'm sorry -- in this context, or really in almost any context. He shrugs stiffly, at a loss.]

We're supposed to be friends, right?

[Another low mumble, hands moving over each other, eyes trying to find something to land on. A moment later, unable to contain the new flood of anxious energy anymore, he nudges Cassel's shoulder again and stands, making like he's looking for something. He grabs an errant towel and scrubs the lingering sweat from his forehead.]

fifty-three ➢ video

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