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bardspeak · 8 months

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And now I can finally post my piece for the 2nd edition of the Fallout Ghoul Zine: Greetings from Gecko! @falloutghoulzine

Tidal Waves | (ao3 link)

Warning for self harm during a meltdown.

Understanding comes in waves, aching things that slosh around her head to the point of flinching. There’s something there, so distant a memory it’s more of a feeling, before it’s gone - the crackling concrete under her hands the only real thing she knows she has. There are clumps of dirtied paper scattered across the floor, a casualty of her and her brothers knowing they should be able to understand the words and bringing a book up to their blunt teeth in sorrow and frustration when they can’t. Olive couldn’t remember if it were her teeth that ripped the pages. They might as well have been, all of them here with their chunks of memory falling through and sloughing off to pool in the center of the room. Special to all of them if it was special to one. Special because it came from Henry, if all other associations failed.

Sometimes they would snap at each other, then seconds later reach out unsure why. It settled her to feel their touch, to lay in a pile of them together, even if they would inevitably stumble onto each other's nerves.

A brother often listens at the door. It slips Olive’s mind when it’s her turn - instead folding and folding a scrap of paper until it’s the smallest she’s ever seen and then unfolding it to do it again. It enraptures her enough that she almost misses the knock that means Henry. The sharp clank of the lock releasing startles her, paper slipping from between knobbly fingers.

The others clamor for the door as soon as his voice rings out, eager to see him and be seen in return. He has a lovely voice, low but clear, though trying to hold on to what he’s saying is like trying to catch an eel with her hands. It bites.

He checks on each of them individually before anything, holding hands and pressing easy kisses to their heads. Bandaging scrapes and bites. There’s something in him that sets them all at ease, the frantic buzzing they can become, bouncing off of each other to snaps and snarls, becomes something docile in his presence. Easily moved when pushed.

Henry cares for them all, rarely spends longer on one than another - finds activities they can all do together - but Olive gets to see the flash of his teeth in the dim light when he smiles. Feel the rumble of his chest in a laugh when she shoves her head under his chin in a clumsy embrace. Across the room, though, Lovelace is last, and he holds his head in his hands. Something drawn falls across Henry’s face, so far from the fond grins and bubbling warmness. Words warble from his lips as if all but him stand with their heads underwater, but his voice isn’t so clear anymore. It cracks and dips and sends an oily slickness into Olive’s stomach.

Lace’s hands twitch up as if to hold him back, small movements made graceless and billboard big by time and the blankness that lives in their eyes. He doesn’t say anything in that same warbling tone, can’t pull his head up from underwater to do it, and in a few moments he’s lost whatever was telling him to try. He pulls himself out of Henry’s hands, thin muscles twitching with haunting regularity, and walks away.

The shadow over Henry’s face makes Olive’s own hands itch to lay on his arm, to pull him away from the sticky green light filtered through the few windows laid in the very tops of the walls. It makes her want and want even after she can’t remember what it is she wants anymore and returns to her kingdom of scraps scattered across the floor. It makes her slump down to the floor next to him when she stumbles over him sitting alone hours later. It makes her slide an ungainly hand against his until he grabs it firm in his own.

She can’t hold onto anything, not the reason she sits, the reason she tucks her head into his shoulder and settles in, not even the oil in her stomach. It’s enough to be comfortable, to run her fingers along the uneven skin of his hand - parts thick and bulging like scar tissue and others thin enough she fears any pressure would break through. She knows she doesn’t want him to bleed. His breathing stutters in his chest, a silence that speaks to her over words. But he doesn’t let go.

Time slips away from her, and by the time her heavy lids lift to look for Henry, he’s gone again. Most of the others are sleeping in the corner, tangled together in the dim light. The green is gone from the room like he took it down and wrapped himself in it when he left.

Lovelace is awake, milk white eyes staring not at her, and something about all of it has her grinding her teeth, digging her blunt nails into the sinewy flesh of her thigh. Henry slipping away from her and leaving them both alone, the uncaring mass of flesh and limbs in the corner that she wants to be a part of in the marrow of her bones. The way Lace doesn’t see anything, not Henry, not her, and not the spilling from her head.

She launches herself towards the middle of the room, the pool as it lives in her head, scrabbling for anything she can reach and bringing it up to her mouth. Then, there’s finally noise besides whatever’s in her head: a confused shuffle from the pile in the corner, the tearing of fabric as she bites, and a low keening noise she doesn’t understand comes from her own mouth until it rings across the room, bouncing off of the tiles and getting eaten by the gaps between.

A gray mass of stuffed toy falls apart in her hands, beady little eyes of a soft creature staring up at her forlornly from the floor. A now pitiful little thing Henry had once made with his own two hands for all of them. She brings her forearm to her mouth to block the increasing noise, the hitching breath, and to bite down as hard as she can.

An arm wraps around her middle just as the blood starts seeping out around her teeth, pulling and tugging her insignificant weight until she’s met in a backwards embrace. Her bony spine meets the firmness of a stomach - sinewy muscle and little give, ribs and starving - and a rough hand comes to tug her arm out from between her teeth.

There is no more life in the room than there had been minutes ago, nothing restorative in her blood or anything changing for the better that makes her turn and tuck her head against the crook of Lovelace’s neck. She’s the same Olive, who bites and forgets and feels the tremor of loneliness in every small remembrance. He’s the same Lace, whose stare is blank, whose hands turn to each other when he’s lost, and who was the first of them to stop eating all that time ago. But his arm stays firm around her, tucking her into his side like their own little pile of flesh, and he doesn’t let her bite down anymore.

It’s more than enough for the night.

Henry seems to already know she needs special attention the next day without a word being said. As if they would be able to divulge each other’s secrets anyhow. He pulls her gently away from Lace - who protests even in his sleep - and holds her bloody arm away from her side. Out and bared, like her teeth.

There’s a small bathroom attached to the room of their life, though she hardly enters on her own. The pipes rattle and shed rust onto the floors, and despite the effort Henry puts into the place, the bathtub never appears clean enough to meaningfully wash anything from their skin. It doesn’t stop him from reaching beyond her to turn the tap, a terrible screech and ominous rattle bringing her hands instinctively up to her ears.

The water runs mostly clear from the brittle shower head, though even before he guides her into the spray she can tell that the water is cold in temperature but warm in something else. Something that knits the bite out of her arm once Henry sweeps the blood from it with careful hands. The something that fills her body with strength and dread in equal measure.

It’s only Henry, all height and strength made gentle, that keeps her there through the panic and the tenderness that still seeps from her bones from the night before. The way he inspects the gouges in her flesh and sighs her name, exasperated and fond and leaving her warmer than the slow and uneven heating of the water. The soap he brings is piney, so strong it stings her nose, but she leans forward and lets him wash her anyway.

Blood swirls down the drain along with whatever was holding her muscles locked tight even through her sleep. Through Lovelace holding her like he hasn’t in a long time. She lets Henry tilt her head back, a rough hand keeping the soapy water out of her eyes. Somewhere outside, beyond where she can fathom anymore, there’s water washing onto the shore in waves. Somewhere in her head, equally unfathomable, there are also waves. Of anger, of remembering, of unrelenting sorrow. Ebbing and flowing, but quieting under Henry’s hands and Lace’s hold. She never knew being taken care of before them.

He helps her out of the tub, body trembling, and folds her into a threadbare towel. She tucks her head under his chin in turn, just to feel the rumble of his laugh.

Back out with the rest of them, just as Lovelace’s hands begin to twine and twist together at the loss of them, they appear - Olive still wrapped in the towel and Henry’s arm. The tense line of his spine relaxes, leaving him to slump back into the tangle of bodies behind him.

It takes a bit of cajoling to pull Henry with her, but he joins them in the end. In their pile of limbs, Lace’s knobbly hand finds Henry’s, and in starts and stops - muscles inaudible but creaking to her like the loudest machine - squeezes it three times, thumb rubbing stuttering circles into the back of his hand. An expression of love held in the circuitry rather than the brain.

None of them know what to do when he cries, besides hold him back.

#fallout #fallout 4 #fo4 #feral ghoul #fallout ghoul #ghouls #fanfic #fallout fanfic #fallout fic #fallout ghoul zine #fallout oc #writing #olive #henry #lovelace #i might write more with them later hence the tags. or draw them idk #also let me know if meltdown is a word preferably used with autistic people? olive isnt autistic #but i interpret the feral ghoulism as somewhat of a neurodegenerative disorder? due to the radiation?#but i couldnt find a proper term in that case by googling it

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