[it's a fairly logical sequence of thoughts that goes through janus' head. arel is washing their underwear. a positive interpretation is: he's helping, that's considerate, laundry in and of itself is tedious, necessary, and not particularly significant otherwise.
but it was a secret and private and something in the apology, the blatant shame flooding arel's face suggests he is aware he did something wrong. that goes in the negative column. which is probably why janus can hear their heartbeat going like jackhammers, a pulse beating so loud that an ordinary sixteen-year-old would think their heads would explode. but janus isn't ordinary; it's just like the night before their first mission when they were scared they'd die, or the first time they got shot and thought they'd die, or the nightmares for only a few weeks when they woke up in a sweat thinking they'd die. in the end, they didn't die.
and though it feels like they're going to die now, it's a useless feeling. they stuff it into a box for later assessment.
one moment, the hunter is in the doorway. the next, mirror glass plinks crunching, shattering behind arel's head and janus' arm is shoved up under his jaw where a little roll of their arm will shift the pressure to his windpipe. janus' eyes are as blank as stone. they're too lightweight to be a threat at a standstill, but that hadn't been the point; it'd been a show of speed, an ugly promise. a threat they'll regret later— unbecoming, reckless, more caught up in childish sentiment than they know. the sink bites into arel's ass and the panties go drip, drip.]
[The reaction is immediate. Janus' hand around his neck, his head throbbing with how hard he hit the mirror behind him. The sink uncomfortably digging into his lower back. The sense of immediate danger, while possibly misconstrued, filling up his lungs.
He goes blank. Arel's eyes turn just as dull as Janus' when he looks back, his body locking up, readying for a fight. Too many times this has happened that Arel doesn't feel fear about it anymore. It's just a sequence of events, one two three one two three one two three. Like a dance.
His hand lets go of the knickers and wraps around Janus' wrist, holding his neck. His free hand waves fingers by the lotus flower Janus' hand is half-covering, the ink dissipating in a spore-like cloud between the two of them as the energy floods Arel's body, from brain to the tips of his fingers. He feels them tingling, the magic starting to work. He reigns it in - he doesn't actually want for Janus' hand to fall off.
But he knows the pain - necrotic damage hurts like a motherfucker - and it gives him a minute advantage, enough to pull Janus' hand away from him, jaw clenched and eyes blank, unwavering. The moment he's free, he lets go, the spell subsiding. He slides back a step, and feels his muscles start to work normally again. Calming down.]
What do you think I did, exactly? What could I have done that would warrant that reaction?
[He holds a hand up, palm open to Janus, placating, but also a warning - the skull inked there could be activated in the blink of an eye.]
I just - got them dirty. I... look, Janus, at first I dismissed it, I thought maybe you were getting laid and keeping knickers and that's fine - bit creepy, but fine - but then they kept on appearing and I realised and - [He feels his cheeks flush, but he stands tall, rolls his shoulders.] It turned me on, okay?
[pain explodes through janus' hand. reel-around, throw up, cry and shit your pants pain, rotting through their nerves and gnawing through their bones. janus doesn't reel around, throw up, cry, or shit in their pants, but it feels like a close thing for an instant. they don't know what they thought arel had done. objectively, they knew vodou and blood sorcery probably hadn't been involved.
the feeling of humiliation crawling over their skin feels bizarrely like what they felt when they were 11-years-old, finding out alongside the demigods and the centaurs what their daimon was. they'd made a lot of mistakes then, amid the taunts, both explicit and implicit, and they're making mistakes now. arel puts some space between them, and it's a good thing. janus looks at their hand, lets it drop. realizes what they did. objectively, nothing warrants that reaction; arel is a creature of light, and if he were human, janus would be returning to florida in shame.
objectively]
Okay, [they say, not really understanding. half understanding. they feel the tips of their ears starting to heat up, so janus stoops down and grabs the panties off the floor. they're wet now, clean, but cold, heavy in janus' fingers.
and they certainly don't feel fun and pretty anymore. so janus very calmly, very cooly, very objectively turns around, stepping out of the bathroom door. in a moment, they're rustling through the dorm room supplies— snatching out a garbage bag. it's with ruthless efficiency that they find the rest of the things: the other pairs, the tubes of lipstick, mascara, the stupid ugly jewelry smuggled in with the guns in their underwear drawer. disappointment is selfish. janus wonders how much meditation it's going to take to get over this, and then they think, fuck meditation.]
[There's a moment there, between the heartbeat during which Janus looks at him, and the next where Janus turns around, that Arel feels like he's dying. He's never cared about it before, never cared to think of how it'd feel like.
Now he knows. He's pretty sure he knows.
If he could activate the spell again, he would, and drives his hand straight through his own chest.
Instead, he follows Janus into their dorm, stops at the door, watches. He doesn't feel any more alive as he watches, discovers more about what Janus has been hiding from him. Reminds him of all the things he's hiding from them, only - his are so much worse.
He can't help himself; the way he moves is automatic. He steps forward, forward, curls a hand around Janus' arm, no spell no nothing but skin on skin, and pulls Janus gently to turn around. The plastic bag crinkles in their hands.]
Janus, what are you doing? [His voice is soft, scared, confused. What - in what he said, made Janus think they had to get rid of it all? Or is the idea that they're turning Arel on that repulsive? He didn't think so, didn't want to think so, but -
He pulls back, swallows hard.]
I'm sorry, okay? I made a mistake. I just - you. I shouldn't have taken them. It's your property, and I get if you don't want to wear them anymore now that you know it turns me on to think about you in them, but. You don't have to get rid of all your stuff. Please.
[what the actual fuck, janus thinks. except it's janus so it's more like: basic nonsense. there's a hand on their arm and the feel of skin on skin is suddenly grating— they aren't accustomed to being touched by anyone besides their family, except by people who were obligated to hurt them, and that suddenly seems more true than ever.
janus isn't usually an impulsive person. usually, they know what they think and what they want, which rules pertain, what their objectives are. it's so out-of-character, so unfamiliar to them to be reacting on mindless instinct, blind hurt, and childish spite that they don't even know they're doing it. or maybe they'd realize it's embarrassing for a new and fragile part of their identity to be treated like a shallow sexual kink, like what they've been reading about on the internet, white men who will only let black girls flog them despite knowing who holds the true power in the world outside, or people who like to get hurt because there's something wrong with their minds, or when normal sex becomes boring, people are boring, volume by numbers; boring people become intolerable. they'd believed arel, when he said it was better to wait until you liked someone. if you were lucky enough for them to like you back. it seems like bad advice now, like pity.
it makes sense, suddenly, arel coming back looking relaxed, with subtle bruises all over, putting pictures of his muscles on the internet. his emily, his others, who comment on the pictures of his muscles on the internet. janus has no idea how it makes sense, but it definitely does. just because they can't string it together in words doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.]
You can have it, [janus says. they want arel to stop touching them but they don't want to seem scared of it, so they bring the back over, press it into arel's hand, then let go like it's nothing. it'll spill all over the floor. maybe the mascara will break open and stain everything.] I don't want it anymore. You don't have to pay me back. It's free.
[it feels true.] I'm going out. You can have the room tonight.
[It's like a bruise on Arel's heart. Blood clogging, a dark halo around his arteries, squeezing at them. He takes the bag but it feels surreal, like a dream where he and Janus have not made any strides since they met.
Arel fucked up. He fucked up bad, and he's fucked Janus up. He broke something, he broke Janus, took something from them that he had no right to take. If only - if only he could take it back.]
Janus -
[It's too late. Janus is already walking out the door, not looking back, like they're putting all of this behind them, like there's nothing else to say. There's so much to say - what it means, what is is, how can Arel help?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Powerpose, lmk if not ok
but it was a secret and private and something in the apology, the blatant shame flooding arel's face suggests he is aware he did something wrong. that goes in the negative column. which is probably why janus can hear their heartbeat going like jackhammers, a pulse beating so loud that an ordinary sixteen-year-old would think their heads would explode. but janus isn't ordinary; it's just like the night before their first mission when they were scared they'd die, or the first time they got shot and thought they'd die, or the nightmares for only a few weeks when they woke up in a sweat thinking they'd die. in the end, they didn't die.
and though it feels like they're going to die now, it's a useless feeling. they stuff it into a box for later assessment.
one moment, the hunter is in the doorway. the next, mirror glass plinks crunching, shattering behind arel's head and janus' arm is shoved up under his jaw where a little roll of their arm will shift the pressure to his windpipe. janus' eyes are as blank as stone. they're too lightweight to be a threat at a standstill, but that hadn't been the point; it'd been a show of speed, an ugly promise. a threat they'll regret later— unbecoming, reckless, more caught up in childish sentiment than they know. the sink bites into arel's ass and the panties go drip, drip.]
What did you do?
[there's no tremor to their voice, no weakness.]
also powerposing but i can edit!!!!
He goes blank. Arel's eyes turn just as dull as Janus' when he looks back, his body locking up, readying for a fight. Too many times this has happened that Arel doesn't feel fear about it anymore. It's just a sequence of events, one two three one two three one two three. Like a dance.
His hand lets go of the knickers and wraps around Janus' wrist, holding his neck. His free hand waves fingers by the lotus flower Janus' hand is half-covering, the ink dissipating in a spore-like cloud between the two of them as the energy floods Arel's body, from brain to the tips of his fingers. He feels them tingling, the magic starting to work. He reigns it in - he doesn't actually want for Janus' hand to fall off.
But he knows the pain - necrotic damage hurts like a motherfucker - and it gives him a minute advantage, enough to pull Janus' hand away from him, jaw clenched and eyes blank, unwavering. The moment he's free, he lets go, the spell subsiding. He slides back a step, and feels his muscles start to work normally again. Calming down.]
What do you think I did, exactly? What could I have done that would warrant that reaction?
[He holds a hand up, palm open to Janus, placating, but also a warning - the skull inked there could be activated in the blink of an eye.]
I just - got them dirty. I... look, Janus, at first I dismissed it, I thought maybe you were getting laid and keeping knickers and that's fine - bit creepy, but fine - but then they kept on appearing and I realised and - [He feels his cheeks flush, but he stands tall, rolls his shoulders.] It turned me on, okay?
[There.]
no subject
the feeling of humiliation crawling over their skin feels bizarrely like what they felt when they were 11-years-old, finding out alongside the demigods and the centaurs what their daimon was. they'd made a lot of mistakes then, amid the taunts, both explicit and implicit, and they're making mistakes now. arel puts some space between them, and it's a good thing. janus looks at their hand, lets it drop. realizes what they did. objectively, nothing warrants that reaction; arel is a creature of light, and if he were human, janus would be returning to florida in shame.
objectively]
Okay, [they say, not really understanding. half understanding. they feel the tips of their ears starting to heat up, so janus stoops down and grabs the panties off the floor. they're wet now, clean, but cold, heavy in janus' fingers.
and they certainly don't feel fun and pretty anymore. so janus very calmly, very cooly, very objectively turns around, stepping out of the bathroom door. in a moment, they're rustling through the dorm room supplies— snatching out a garbage bag. it's with ruthless efficiency that they find the rest of the things: the other pairs, the tubes of lipstick, mascara, the stupid ugly jewelry smuggled in with the guns in their underwear drawer. disappointment is selfish. janus wonders how much meditation it's going to take to get over this, and then they think, fuck meditation.]
no subject
Now he knows. He's pretty sure he knows.
If he could activate the spell again, he would, and drives his hand straight through his own chest.
Instead, he follows Janus into their dorm, stops at the door, watches. He doesn't feel any more alive as he watches, discovers more about what Janus has been hiding from him. Reminds him of all the things he's hiding from them, only - his are so much worse.
He can't help himself; the way he moves is automatic. He steps forward, forward, curls a hand around Janus' arm, no spell no nothing but skin on skin, and pulls Janus gently to turn around. The plastic bag crinkles in their hands.]
Janus, what are you doing? [His voice is soft, scared, confused. What - in what he said, made Janus think they had to get rid of it all? Or is the idea that they're turning Arel on that repulsive? He didn't think so, didn't want to think so, but -
He pulls back, swallows hard.]
I'm sorry, okay? I made a mistake. I just - you. I shouldn't have taken them. It's your property, and I get if you don't want to wear them anymore now that you know it turns me on to think about you in them, but. You don't have to get rid of all your stuff. Please.
no subject
janus isn't usually an impulsive person. usually, they know what they think and what they want, which rules pertain, what their objectives are. it's so out-of-character, so unfamiliar to them to be reacting on mindless instinct, blind hurt, and childish spite that they don't even know they're doing it. or maybe they'd realize it's embarrassing for a new and fragile part of their identity to be treated like a shallow sexual kink, like what they've been reading about on the internet, white men who will only let black girls flog them despite knowing who holds the true power in the world outside, or people who like to get hurt because there's something wrong with their minds, or when normal sex becomes boring, people are boring, volume by numbers; boring people become intolerable. they'd believed arel, when he said it was better to wait until you liked someone. if you were lucky enough for them to like you back. it seems like bad advice now, like pity.
it makes sense, suddenly, arel coming back looking relaxed, with subtle bruises all over, putting pictures of his muscles on the internet. his emily, his others, who comment on the pictures of his muscles on the internet. janus has no idea how it makes sense, but it definitely does. just because they can't string it together in words doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.]
You can have it, [janus says. they want arel to stop touching them but they don't want to seem scared of it, so they bring the back over, press it into arel's hand, then let go like it's nothing. it'll spill all over the floor. maybe the mascara will break open and stain everything.] I don't want it anymore. You don't have to pay me back. It's free.
[it feels true.] I'm going out. You can have the room tonight.
no subject
Arel fucked up. He fucked up bad, and he's fucked Janus up. He broke something, he broke Janus, took something from them that he had no right to take. If only - if only he could take it back.]
Janus -
[It's too late. Janus is already walking out the door, not looking back, like they're putting all of this behind them, like there's nothing else to say. There's so much to say - what it means, what is is, how can Arel help?
But it's too late.]