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actual-changeling · 8 months

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i'm mentally playing around with the good omens worldbuilding and i can't stop thinking about them not being able to heal their own corporations/bodies.

they're not entirely human, their occult/ethereal essence shapes and changes it, so what if when it does get injured they can't miracle it away or fix it? like the paintball stain on aziraphale's coat just that he isn't trying to get crowley to do it for him, crowley has to do it for him because he can't.

we see aziraphale heal anathema's broken arm after she hit the bentley the car accident, and i imagine it would be a little like that.

aziraphale breaks his wrist in some stupid way, like falling from a ladder while putting books away or stumbling, the kinda thing that has him trying to deal with it alone out of embarrassment. however, they have plans the day after, and crowley comes by with a bottle of wine and immediately notices something is off (hard not to with the way he is pressing his arm against his chest).

cue to crowley sitting him down on the couch in the backroom, and they're very, very close together. aziraphale is having trouble holding still because crowley is kneeling in front of him, no glasses, all open care and concern, and it's killing him.

"angel, if you don't-" "i told you, my dear, it's fine."

the look he gives him in response is entirely unimpressed, and he gently pokes his wrist and says nothing when aziraphale flinches in pain.

"right, fine, it's broken, just fix it. please."

every single time aziraphale says 'please' it's a silver bullet to his heart, eating away at him from the inside out; he would have done it no matter what, yet he can't tear his gaze away from the plea in his eyes. a soft blush spreads across his face, and it's too close to a confession for comfort, so crowley finally blinks and focuses on the fracture in his bones.

fixing it is simple, one cleanly aimed thought and a careful caress of his palm less than an inch above the skin, and the bones knit themselves back together without complaint. when the pain bleeds away, the tension in aziraphale's shoulders does, too.

"thank you."

"don't," he answers, more reflex than real bite, and they realise at the same time that with the miracle done, they're holding hands now. crowley savours the few seconds it takes aziraphale to pull away as if he's been burned, face turning away, and he expected it, he really did, but it still stings. he gets up and resists the urge to put his sunglasses back on, locating the bottle of wine he had abandoned rather quickly.

"right then, do you want to-"

"stay."

neither of them needs to breathe, and yet the air in the room stills in trembling expectation, confused.

"i- i meant- let me get the glasses."

crowley does not move (or breathe. or blink. or think), simply watches as aziraphale hurries away, tasting the disappointment bitter and familiar on his tongue but swallowing it before it can spill. expectations are never a good idea, causing pain neither of them can miracle away, and the undying optimism living in his chest is a curse aziraphale's blessings are powerless against.

he turns, ready to sink into his usual spot and drink the uninvited thoughts away, when a tentative touch makes him freeze once more. aziraphale's fingers are curled around his, their hands pressed together with enough plausible deniability to allow the squeeze he gives him to linger.

they're standing in the middle of the bookshop, holding hands, and crowley tastes the unspoken gratitude in the air between them, stronger than the sour heartbreak could ever be.

it rips a whispered angel out of his throat, more exhale than word, and maybe if one of them was a little bit more courageous, if the world was a little bit less dangerous for the two of them, aziraphale would have leaned over and left a kiss on his cheek before hurrying away.

maybe crowley would have pressed his fingertips to the lingering mark and blushed the same shade of rosé the bottle he had brought carried.

maybe the rest of the evening would have felt... different, saturated with all the confessions they cannot make, not yet.

maybe the next time aziraphale needed crowley for a healing miracle, the thank you was accepted without comment.

maybe if you believe in it enough, in one universe or another it did happen like that.

perhaps even in this one.

#alex writes good omens #good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #good omens season 2 #go2 #aziracrow #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable divorce #oh lord this completely got away from me it's 5 am please ignore any errors #i'll probably fix them at a more humane time #anyway #i need to stop accidentally turning my two paragraph tumblr posts into ficlets #i cant not do it at this point send help

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kicktwine · 5 months

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oh so alisaie’s exaggerated bully behavior is 80% fanon. saying this she casually picks up a large rock

#say one thing wrong to me and you will have a wonderful few days with the rock #if angry silly girls have 100 fans etc if they have 0 fans i have died #sorry i saw a YouTube meme i vehemently disliked on principle and got mad at the only child behavior-#kipspeak #she is just short tempered and uses anger to mask other more ‘shameful’ emotions!!! alphy did the same thing with just deciding not #to express them. which is still not good and I think why he breaks and ends up teary so often now #this shortness does not translate to actually being mean to people. she only uses being mean as a shield for herself and being snarky #Is just fun for her. it’s fun for Me. you have to inconsequentually tease people or they’ll never learn to laugh at themselves #the twins and thancred 🫵 do this thing where they have big emotions but they don’t want anyone to SEE they have big weird emotions #so alphy pretends he doesn’t have them under a veneer of dignity and alisaie pretends the emotions are Something Else. thancred is #just so emotionally constipated he has trouble expressing anything. he’s got enough baggage for a flatbed #anyways. alisaie is such a compassionate and kind girl and she learned how to make snarky jokes and went ham. and she hates appearing sad o #weak or vulnerable so she blocks it off with an unapproachable emotion so no one pities her and they maybe get on with the plot #it is in fact also great at getting ppl to move away from the sad or embarrassing topic. even if the tradeoff is being more offputting #she would never (grabs youtube meme) she would never seriously bully her brother. this is sibling ribbing only. Cain instinct #just leave her be she is learning how to snark humor and she loves it she loves being sharp. alphy has wit he just keeps it close #my brother didn’t learn how to tell or receive a joke until he was 14 he took everything so seriously. he can do it now though and he’s #HILARIOUS. Don’t tell him I said that. my man knows exactly where the funny points are even if he hasn’t learned when to stop yet #too many tags. Whatever. jokey snark alisaie who sometimes compliments is happy alisaie grouchy snappy angry alisaie is way too stressed #very easy way to tell between the two. even alphy can tell between the two I believe! He tends to rib back in protest if they’re having fun #and try to stop her if they’re not having fun. case in point ‘what is that supposed to mean?!’ vs ‘alisaie ryne was only trying to help.’#I know they’re twins but that’s such an intensely older sibling thing to do that it reels me #LONG TAGS AND THREE EDITS TO ADD ON SHORT I resent this stereotype taken too far into ooc behavior. it happened with nya #It will happen again and as a postscript let me regale you with Things U Can Notice About Character Motivation and Actions—#I’m not done let me s #she and raha are friends now I decree. ‘haha you like me’ SPUTTERING PROTEST FROM BOTH

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inannasdream · 12 days

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i think the reason why i gravitate towards belos on a deeper level a lot more than any of the other characters in toh is bc my preference in characters and stories is in how they are affected by institutions and the messiness that results from understandable character flaws exacerbated by those institutions, whether they are the oppressed or are enabled to become the oppressor. belos is a mix of both in a way that i like — it's possible to read him as nd & left handed (both heavily stigmatized in his day and society) yet both are possible to hide. in the demon realm he yet again had a trait that made him a possible outcast, as he was a lowly human, yet he transformed himself into a magic user through painful mutilation of his skin all so that he could conform to that society, even when it was one he couldn't stand. his conformity in the demon realm supports the idea of him having to conform in the human realm. but because he was enabled for being a white man in the human realm and could reasonably hide anything that made him a nail to be hammered down, he clung to that power and dominion over others that it gave him for the rest of his life like a security blanket, represented literally with him lording his magical prowess over other witches and demons. it's a lot of layers that i think are very fun and i'm 90% sure are unintentional when put together into this cohesive of a picture for reasons i will state later.

compare that against almost every other character in toh (w maybe the exception of darius??) — every good guy has flaws that can reasonably be blamed on other people as a freudian excuse or that are downplayed by the narrative (eg. amity going from an active bully in her debut to a passive enabler of bullying in understanding willow). there's a dire lack of messiness in them all, from their appearance (all the witch kids could easily be mistaken for humans, fairly good looking ones at that, if it weren't for the ears), to how they deal with pain, etc. it gave me the impression that they really wanted only the villain to be allowed to be messy and ugly because those are traits for villains, when i think it's a lot nicer to see stigmatized traits (ugliness, childishness, hallucinations, mental illness, etc) in everyone. i really wanted the heroes to get in on that kind of action too.

another thing that drew me away from connecting with and trying to deeply understand most of the characters in toh is the lack of meaningful bigotry on the isles. i'm not criticizing the race-, queer-, and gender-blindness of the demon realm on an objective level bc the writers wanted to accomplish a v specific thing w that bit of world building and that's ok and it's a wonderful aspiration for usamerica. it's ok if it's not for Me and the world can't have a million yasuda sayos (i say with difficulty through tears). but because there is a lack of bigotry in what's supposed to be an oppressive society and there's no highlighted underclass in its place (covenless witches should theoretically be the underclass, but the show tends to undermine this aspect of its society, eg. letting wild witches like eda and luz roam perfectly free and having the government-funded school allow witches to study multiple covens without pushback from said government funding them), it becomes just another part of the show that makes it so much more squeaky clean and made me disinterested in a lot of the characters — i connect so much better with characters when i feel their pain and struggle against a world that can't find it in itself to care about them, witnessing all the ways they try to fight for their right to be happy frantically and imperfectly, and that is what makes their happiness so meaningful to me and makes me care abt them deeply.

contrast that w belos: i really love that he came from a society infamous for its conservatism and religious extremism grounded in the real world, and it's so thought provoking for me to think abt the layers of that society and how he interacted with it. which parts he rejected, conformed to, wanted to conform to, etc. that's a challenging character to understand (and then, after having fully understood them, condemn with so much more feeling) and i adore the idea of that being intentional if it wasn't for the fact that almost every other character in toh is boringly easy to understand because they lack enough material in the layers that can make them feel like real, messy people to challenge the viewer in a meaningful way. (side note: a lot of the layers created simply by belos being from colonial connecticut also disappear if you're solely looking at his background based on the text in the show, bc you're expected to fill in the gaps with, like, wikipedia basically lol. similar thing w luz where they show very little of her being bullied/outcasted bc of her adhd and you're mostly supposed to fill that in w your own experience & irl knowledge of adhd.) it results in the show being weirdly liberal about the bigotry/lack of bigotry certain characters have and only being able to halfheartedly say "idk some people are just evil i guess", instead of examining the material conditions that shape people to act the way they do. Bigot Phil vs Weirdgirl Luz could've been "these characters are shaped by their circumstances and have been encouraged to respectively become their worst/best selves through ideals instilled in them" but instead it's "some people are bad and we won't attempt to look at what made them 'bad' in the first place" and then pretending this is a groundbreaking message and not the laziest takeaway they could've possibly written.

basically i like my characters messy with hearts that you have to go out of your way to understand and sympathize with who come from understandable circumstances and i think all girls should be allowed to kill freely. i hope you can understand my position.

#chirp chirp!#this post got away from me. i swear at some point it was only two small paragraphs #what can i say i love mentally ill orphans (collection of ryukishi07 girls in basement)#anyway im going to pull my final trick and reveal my favorite character is actually eda #the characters i analyse and think about every day are usually top five but my favorite character is ALWAYS the wildin girl #(looks at sonozaki mion and shion. like im always thinking abt shion but mion is my number 1 freaking GIRL)#toh critical #bc i think i went a lil too hard in the later paragraphs. sry for blending together opinion and critique here #this was just meant to be a personal post don't come for me pls ajdkwjkfjc

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hum--hallelujah · 9 months

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like a sledgehammer to a disco ball - 3.9k words, Fun Ghoul angst and protective Kobra Kid

Kobra jerks awake at the first creak of the floor. The only person who has any right to be in his room at night knows better than to step where the floor creaks. Instinct takes over and he's holding his blaster at body height by the time his brain and eyes are awake enough to see through the dark.

"It's me, it's me, it's me," Ghoul stammers, holding his hands defensively in the air. Only, it sounds more like "'smee," because of the way Ghoul is slurring. And he's bleeding.

Kobra drops the blaster as soon as he realizes that the dark smear across Ghoul's face is blood. "What the hell, man," he hisses, groping in the dark for a light with one hand and trying to pat Ghoul down to make sure he's not like, actively dying, with the other. He could be blackout drunk or he could have gone out alone like he does sometimes and any number of things could have happened. The cold metal of an old flashlight meets his fingers and he flicks it on, shining the dim light over Ghoul.

"I did something stupid," Ghoul says. Only, it comes out as "Uh did su'hn stooid," wavering slightly, because the entire right side of Ghoul's face, from the corner of his mouth to his cheekbone, is sliced open. There's a horrific flap of flesh hanging loose that's supposed to be connected to the rest of his face. That's where the blood staining his face and clothes and hands is coming from, and why when he speaks, it sounds wrong.

"Holy shit," Kobra whispers, feeling cold Zone night air sting his eyes because they're open so wide. "Okay. Okay, what happened?" He holds Ghoul carefully by one arm, feels the way he's shaking. He's always shaking, except when he's got his hands in a bomb. This is worse than normal though. This is so much worse than anything Kobra's ever seen.

Ghoul shrugs, waves his hands vaguely and wildly. Kobra hisses a sharp breath through his teeth, frantically runs a hand through his hair. "Okay," He says again. "I'm gonna get-" He needs Jet, de facto medic, he needs Party, needs his brother-

"No," Ghoul says sharply, and that at least is completely clear. His eyes are wild from what Kobra can see in the dark. If human eyes could glow, his would. He grips Kobra's arms. "Please don't," he mumbles around the gruesome injury. His voice is high and frantic, and it has to hurt to talk. "Just you."

Kobra freezes. There's a slowly building feeling of dread, growing stronger by the moment. He pulls Ghoul off him, holds him by the wrists. "Okay. Just me," he promises, and feels sick about it. "Just me."

Ghoul noticeably relaxes, though he's still trembling head to toe, and lets Kobra drag him across the diner in near-silence aside from the occasional seemingly involuntary whimper on Ghoul's part, into the single-stall bathroom with a barely working lightbulb. Somehow, they make it past the front room where Party sleeps without waking him, much as Kobra wants to let his brother take care of this. He's practically trembling at how badly he wants Pois right now.

There's a medical kit in the cabinet that Kobra pulls out immediately. He knows how to handle this, physically speaking. It's whatever else, the shit he doesn't know and is scared to find out, like how this freaking happened, that makes him nervous. Ghoul stands in the flickering light like he doesn't know what to do.

"Sit the fuck down," Kobra snaps nervously, gesturing to the toilet lid. Ghoul does. Kobra pulls a dubiously clean rag from the cabinet and eyes it. It scares him to see Ghoul like this. Usually if he's scared, he fights. He hisses and spits and claws at whoever comes near him. More often than not, that's Kobra. But this, the wide-eyed jittering, is a whole other animal.

"This whole thing is gonna suck," he says stiffly. Ghoul nods. With a little more light, Kobra can see the thick, shiny blood streaming from the wound through his cheek. It isn't enough that Kobra's afraid Ghoul will bleed out, but the cut is so long and clear through and absolutely grotesque. He crouches down in front of where Ghoul is sitting, sideways on the toilet, and he can't tell if Ghoul is looking at him or through him, almost as if he's the ghost.

In a quick motion that startles both of them, probably, Kobra grabs the back of Ghoul's head with one hand and presses the rag to the seeping wound with the other. Ghoul's eyes go even wider and even greener, and what starts out as a shout of pain from him turns into a choked keening sound. Hearing it feels like being stabbed.

"What happened?" Asks Kobra again, when he's convinced that the bleeding has slowed enough to try and actually deal with this thing. He twists the handle on the faucet on and off, on and off, enough times that the ancient water pump starts up and clean water gurgles into the sink. He cleans the rag that way, then wets it and wrings it out before shutting the water off.

Ghoul's shoulders rise and fall in short, panicky breaths. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry. I'm- I didn't think, it was stupid, I'm sorry," he continues babbling like that before going silent again aside from the sharp sounds of his breathing.

In a testament to Kobra's selfishness, his biggest worry is that Ghoul took his motorbike out for a spin and crashed it. He can't think of what could have caused something like this. He has visions of his bike sliding out on a turn, crumbled metal and Ghoul's body flying through the air. But if that had happened he'd be hurt other than this. If that had happened he might be dead.

"Yo," he says quietly. "Chill. Just tell me what happened." He presses the now-damp rag to Ghoul's face, trying to ignore just how grotesque the wound really is. Maybe because it's fresh, maybe because of the fear, but somehow it's worse than the space where Jet's other eye used to be. Kobra never wanted to see an injury of that level on another person again in his life, let alone someone he cares about.

Ghoul flinches away, but Kobra shoots him a look and it must process somehow, because he stills and lets Kobra clean the already drying blood away from the edges of the wound with barely a whine. "It was stupid," he repeats, his voice shaking as much as it's slurring. "I don't know why I did it, Kid."

Something about the way he says that, voice small and wavering, sends a chill down Kobra's throat. Sudden understanding dawns on him. The blood on Ghoul's hands. He's not injured anywhere else. "You did that to yourself?" Kobra asks hoarsely.

Ghoul's eyes snap onto his and the rest of the color drains from his face. Kobra thinks he's going to pass out for a second, but he doesn't. He pulls as far away as he can, scrabbling awkwardly against the cold tiles and porcelain of the bathroom. "I don't know what I though, I was stupid, I don't- Kobra," he whines, with enough animalistic despair that Kobra wants suddenly to burst into tears, if he weren't so utterly stunned.

"Ghoul, calm down, I've gotta stitch it still," he says on autopilot. "Cool your engine, man."

Maybe it's the practicality of the thing that makes Ghoul momentarily stop panicking. "I'm sorry," he says again, tears welling in his eyes that he then blinks away half-frantically. Kobra's never heard him apologize for anything before tonight. He never wants to hear it again.

"It's okay, man. I've got you." He replies. If his own voice is shaking now, too, no the hell it isn't. "Come on, you have to let me..." he trails off, eyes wide. "Ghoul, why..." Then he shakes his head. He can't think about that now. He needs to disinfect the wound and stitch it up. And it's going to hurt Ghoul really, really badly.

He reaches behind him, grabs at the bottle of alcohol. This stuff is rare out in the Zones. They try to use it as little as possible. Only in emergencies. This is enough of an emergency, though. This is a fucking crisis.

He pours the bare minimum of the alcohol onto another piece of cloth, feels the cold soak in. Ghoul watches every move with jerking, stilted intensity. Kobra looks up at him from where he's now kneeling on the cold tile. He puts a hand behind Ghoul's head again. "This is going to hurt," he warns. They've nearly gouged each other's eyes out before, yet suddenly Kobra feels like he's going to be sick at the thought of causing Ghoul any more pain. Ghoul shuts his eyes in preparation.

Ghoul still nearly screams when Kobra dabs the alcohol over his wound. Kobra can see it in the way he holds his breath, the spring-tight tension in Ghoul's entire body. The only noise he makes is a quiet, drawn out whine, though. When a tear streaks down his cheekbone, Kobra catches it before a drop of salt can enter the wound.

"'Kay," he says in a ragged whisper. "That's done. Now I have to-" he gestures like he's sewing. Ghoul's eyes pop open to see what he's saying and he visibly forces himself to breathe again.

"'Kay," Ghoul says back in an equally torn up voice.

It only takes Kobra three tries to thread a needle. Medical supplies of any type are hard to come by, a whole new kind of commodity, but this stash has been here for as long as he can remember, just in case. Blaster burns, the most common injuries amongst 'Joys, come pre-cauterized. He's rarely had to sew sutures before.

Ghoul flinches back when the tip of the needle first touches the edge of his torn skin, and Kobra pauses. "Hold still," he grumbles, more out of familiar sniping than any real frustration at this point. He keeps his hand in Ghoul's hair the entire time he sews.

The feeling of a needle piercing flesh is horrible. The fact that it's his friend, someone he'd give his life for before seeing them hurt, is even worse. Kobra wants to fucking throatpunch whoever did this to Ghoul, or better, do the same thing to them, before he remembers with a sinking feeling in his stomach that Ghoul did this to himself.

He ties off the suture just barely keeping his hands from shaking. He doesn't know how Ghoul does this with bombs. Ghoul flinches again, violently, when Kobra cuts the excess line, and Kobra has to jerk back to keep from catching a flailing, uncoordinated fist in the face.

"Hey," he snaps. "Ghoul!"

Ghoul slips off the toilet lid and onto the floor almost as if he intended it but halfway as an accident and immediately curls in on himself. He pulls his knees to his chest and curls his arms around his head and Kobra can hear him hyperventilating. Kobra fucking freezes. He's used to fighting and wrestling and knee-jerk reactions that wind up with someone sporting a black eye. He is terrified right now. And there's still Ghoul's blood on his hands, too.

"Ghoul..." He cautiously reaches out, puts a hand on Ghoul's leg. Ghoul twitches, lets out a hiccupy sound that takes a moment to register in Kobra's mind as a sob. Ghoul, chaos loving, cackling Ghoul, is crying. And not just a single tear, now, his whole body is shuddering with the force of how hard he's crying. Kobra's heart is pounding with how hard he does not know what's happening, but he grips Ghoul's arm and lightly shakes him. "Hey, I'm still here, man."

Ghoul makes that keening whine again and Kobra thinks at first that he's going to pull away at best, or throw a real punch at worst. They fight enough, for any and no reason at all, that he expects it now. That's their normal. This isn't.

Ghoul scrambles to his knees, his hands finding the front of Kobra's shirt. This restroom is small, they're already in close quarters. But maybe unintentionally, maybe just scrabbling for a little purchase on anything, Ghoul winds up grabbing onto Kobra. And Kobra has always had a hard time letting anything go.

Ghoul's forehead crashes into his shoulder and Kobra instinctively puts his hands up, grabs back onto Ghoul in return. Ghoul's usual shaking is familiar to him, but the repressed wracking sobs aren't. Kobra clutches desperately around Ghoul's back, like he could hold together what he's just sewn up, like if he keeps Ghoul close enough he can't shake into pieces. No one should be able to break Ghoul. Not even Ghoul himself.

The edges of the cabinet dig into Kobra's back, but he ignores it. Ghoul is folding in on himself, making himself as small as he can against Kobra, and Kobra doesn't fucking know what to do. He's never seen Ghoul cry like this. He's never seen anyone cry like this.

"It hurts," cries Ghoul suddenly.

"I know," Kobra says, before he realizes that crying like this is probably making everything worse, that he'd worried about salt in the wound a minute before for this exact reason. He can't imagine the pain Ghoul is probably in.

"It didn't hurt at first," Ghoul mumbles, then chokes on a sob. "It didn't hurt when I started. And then it did."

Kobra wants to ask again, why? But he won't get anything intelligible. There's a part of him that doesn't want to know. He's terrified of knowing the truth. Instead, he threads his fingers through Ghoul's hair again and just repeats, "I know. I know."

A few minutes pass in speedy, spiraling silence. The only sound between them is their shared too-fast breathing.

"I can't," stammers Ghoul finally, after his cries have tapered out into raspy gasps. "I can't turn it on or off."

"Huh?" Is all Kobra can think to say. "Ghoul, you're not making sense, nothing about this makes sense," he snips, too quick and too tense. He's so beyond his depth. He wants Jet or Party to come help but he can't have it his way because he promised. He promised Ghoul. He wants to hit something. A wall, just to feel the impact. To imagine he's hitting whatever it is that hurt his friend so badly he hurt himself.

Ghoul sniffs. All Kobra can see of him is the top of his head and the cheek with the stitches. The wound is swollen and red and is going to leave a horrific scar. Kobra clenches his fist tighter behind Ghoul's back. "When I'm having fun or not," Ghoul says. "I can't. I am or I'm not. But."

"But what?" For fuck's sake, Kobra just wants to understand. He can read Ghoul like a book from cover to cover most times, and it scares him that he's so lost right now.

"It isn't good enough," he mumbles. "It's... It's in my fuckin' name, Kid, if I can't live up to that what am I?"

Kobra stares, wide-eyed, at the wall across from him. Something clicks. The clean cut through Ghoul's face, clearly from a recently sharpened knife, clearly intentional, reached from the corner of his lips almost to his ear. "Oh fuck no," he whispers. "Hell no. What the fuck. You're not-" He feels himself shaking suddenly, with restrained searing hot anger. Ghoul cut his head open, mutilated himself, to make himself permanently grin. "You're not fucking beholden to your fucking name," Kobra says. He never swears this much, only in his own mind. He's running out of words. "Fuck," he says, with feeling.

Ghoul shudders again. "I'm fuckin insane, aren't I?" He asks with sudden clarity.

It's exactly what Kobra had been thinking, for once completely unable to figure out Ghoul's mind, but he can't just say that. He can't just say that he's terrified because nothing makes sense and he's never going to freaking leave Ghoul alone again because this is all completely unhinged on so many levels that he can't even begin to sort through it. He can't say anything. He hopes Ghoul is sane enough to understand that, at least.

He just holds his friend tighter. He wants his brother more than anything right now, wants Party to come and take this weight out of his hands, but a part of him knows that even if he did, he wouldn't be able to let go of Ghoul. Why didn't Ghoul want anyone else but him? Why, after pretty much imprinting on Party like a feral kitten when they'd first met, to the point that sometimes Kobra thinks bitterly than Ghoul might know Party better than his own brother does, did he come to him? Why did he do any of this?

If a few tears of his own drip down Kobra's nose and land in Ghoul's tangled hair, no the hell they don't. He's never seen anyone go to pieces like this and he's struck dumb at the fact that it's literal. Very, very literally, Ghoul has gone to pieces. Taken a knife, that's probably still lying on the floor of his abandoned-office bedroom, and cut a line through his own cheek just so others might see a smile there.

There's crazy in his veins. Acid, maybe. And Kobra's always known that even if Party recognized it first. Watching your whole family die, failing to save your baby sibling, doesn't leave a person without any scars. Only, now, the scar is far too visible. Kobra's always known that Ghoul is more wild than any of them. Feral, unpredictable. He was raised by a pair of Killjoys who named themselves Hoot and Holler, and the thing is, a ghoul is just a ghost, and ghosts wail too. He should have known.

"I should've known," he says out loud, the first words in a while. He knows Ghoul so well. Better than he knows himself. He should have known something was wrong. He should never have left him alone. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He can't even blink. He stares hard at the opposite wall and tries not to scream.

Ghoul shakes his head against Kobra's shoulder and winces. "Nuh-uh," he mumbles. "I'm crazy, man. I'm insane." The fuzzy way it sounds around the stitches and the swelling just seems like proof. Just last night Ghoul's cheek was smooth and soft as he grinned across a table in triumph after winning a card game. How is it that that was just a few hours ago? He shudders again. "I'm scared," he says more quietly.

"Me too," Kobra says. As soon as the sun comes up he thinks he's going to storm out into the desert and find something, anything to beat up. Even a freakin cactus would do at this point. He doesn't know how he's going to explain this to Pois or Jet but he knows that much. He's gonna shake so hard he blows up, like a can of soda, unless he hits something. "I fucking hate you," he snaps suddenly.

Ghoul starts to flinch away, but Kobra doesn't let him. In fact, he curls tighter around him without even knowing why. "What the hell," Ghoul rasps.

Kobra hisses through his teeth. Speaking of living up to names. He fucking hates anyone who hurts his friends. But he can't say it. Hard as he tries, in the one moment of clarity about his own mind that he has, he can't speak.

"I fucking hate me, too," Ghoul says finally. The single dusty lightbulb above them flickers. If it goes out, they'll be in total darkness. Kobra thinks one or both of them might have a wicked eyeshine by now. The desert makes you wild. For some people, they're born that way.

"I think you're my best friend," Kobra finally manages to whisper. It isn't exactly what he was going for. It's not something he would ever say if he had thought of it before it popped out of his mouth. But Ghoul gets the point. Of course he does. Ghoul always gets his sharp edges, snakebite teeth and misspoken definitions and all.

"I think you're mine," Ghoul says back. "I'm-"

Kobra smacks the back of his head, like this is in any way normal, like they aren't collapsed on a dim bathroom floor in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning and like one of them isn't mutilated for life by his own hand. Like this isn't the worst thing they've ever gone through together. "If you say you're sorry again, I'll cut you myself."

It's rough, and it's torn up and pained and choked, but Ghoul laughs. Just a short bark of laughter, hardly like the dry, rasping cackle that Kobra knows so well. It sounds like agony but it also sounds like the sun coming up. Kobra makes a noise in the back of his throat, more whine than laugh, but he's so close to blowing up that it's as good as it gets. He wants to freaking die if that would keep Ghoul in one piece.

Ghoul shifts in Kobra's arms and pulls away just far enough to look him in the eye. He clumsily wipes at the tears and snot all over his face and Kobra has to snap a hand out to catch his wrist before he unthinkingly swipes at the fresh wound and stitches. "Kobra," Ghoul says, shivering in the dark. The sun won't take long to come up once it starts but until it does, the Zones are freezing. "Kobra."

"Yeah, man, I'm still right here." Kobra forces himself to look Ghoul in the eyes and not the stitches. The wound takes up so much of his face. It's all Kobra can see when he looks at Ghoul, his best friend's mutilated mouth, sliced open by his own hand. Kobra flinches just imagining it. He focuses instead on Ghoul's green eyes, boring holes into his head with the desperate pleading in them. "I'm still right here," Kobra repeats, quieter. Reminding himself, too.

Ghoul doesn't blink. Kobra doesn't blink. Their eyes reflect the dim light back at each other. This is what wild animals must feel for each other. Terror. Uncertainty. Just themselves, each other, and whatever comes. Ghoul licks his lips, tongue flicking briefly, visibly, to the corner of his mouth that he cut open. "Don't let me-" Ghoul starts and then falters. "You gotta make sure," he says. "Don't let me- do stupid shit like this, don't let me go crazy again, Kobra, please."

Kobra stares back at him, matching Ghoul's trembling desperation. He's known Ghoul since the day their crew found him, shell shocked between the shelves of an empty gas station with the bodies of his parents and previous crew around him. Perpetually shaking hands and feral bared teeth, animal eyeshine. No one can match Ghoul for determination, and no one knows Kobra as well as he does. Even if Ghoul does know his brother better than him, the same is true in reverse.

Kobra Kid has a hard fucking time ever letting go of anything once he's got it. Fun Ghoul holds on too loosely. They're both terrified. What a pair they make. But when Kobra Kid makes a promise, he means it. He grabs the ends of Ghoul's hair and pulls, not too hard, but hard enough. That's their normal. Play fighting and hair pulling, and they both know it's a kind of language for when they can't speak. "Okay," he says, and because it's a promise, he repeats it. "Okay."

#uhhhh anyway. come to killjoys world with me #I keep calling these two my mongoose and snake #they take out their worst on each other but at the same time it's like they were *made* for each other #also a few notes in the tags: kobra repeats himself a lot. that's intentional. it's because I do it irl #quite honestly at this point I might almost have a stutter??#anyway also there's a TON of super vague song references in here. I almost called this ''a scar away from falling apart''#but I couldn't stop thinking about that one boygenius song while I wrote this. would you still love me if it turns out I'm insane?#also the two(2) minor refs to famous last words!!!!#and very very loosely the ''what a pair they make'' line is bc what a catch donnie came up on my playlist right then #also this is WAY more swearing than I would usually write but... it just felt right? like it helped the flow?? and fit the characters? idk #ANYWHOMST. random danger days precanon fic. the girl isn't here yet.#she speaks!#HMMM do I need a writing tag for this blog?#she writes!#danger days #the true lives of the fabulous killjoys #kobra kid #fun ghoul #K I think I've got it covered #wait trigger tags #self-harm tw #self mutilation tw

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