[ it’s another piece of corry to inspect, jagged glass held up to the light. both surprising and not that someone so confident could be inexperienced in other forms of intimacy. bob recalls that soft surprise, tucked in the contours of his face, when he’d tried to comfort corry in his suite. ]
uh huh really really well
[ he lets the talk of bucky and their shared, tortured lot slip away. corry’s tended him enough already. ]
no way we’re past the bailing threshold you’re [ another undefinable relationship. not just some guy he’s fucking, when that guy would have bolted after the void unspooled his worst memories. ] i’m not going anywhere i’ve already conned you into having me over tonight
Two really's, wow. I may develop an ego problem, if you aren't careful.
[deflection, because of course -- corry knows he's objectively good in bed, that he fulfills and satisfies and soothes things not everyone can. it's this flip side, softer and careful, like there's anything left worth protecting or thinking about inside him -- that's what disarms every time.
like now. we're past the bailing threshold, when bob knows the root, but not all the ugly ways it grew and festered and twined thorny and choking through the next twenty years. there's so much he doesn't know.
still. i'm what on the tip of his tongue.]
Ain't no con when I was thinking about it anyway. It's why I went to your suite. Ex-suite. Thought it was my turn to give an out. Even cleaned up, threw out all the bottles.
[ it may seem like a small thing to someone else — that effort to tidy up, to address the evidence of one’s own suffering in the room — but to bob, trying his hardest not to think about the coronal and the relief it offers, it means a great deal. ]
yeah? now i gotta take you up on it maybe even push my luck see how long it takes for you to kick me out after gold breakfast in bed, right?
You mean brunch in bed. I'm no morning bird, babe, I'm gonna be rolling over and cuddling for five more minutes til at least 10:30. You up for pillow duties, Bob? I run warm, remember. Sleep naked, usually. Big responsibility.
That's right, damn. This your way of warning me you're gonna steal all the blankets? Burrow on down in them? Cute.
[it's even more indulgent, in some ways, than the more raunchy fantasies -- corry doesn't usually let himself think about morning-after, about someone snuggled up under his chin, breathing in time with the pulse of his heartbeat under their cheek.
he's thinking it now, though, with his february-weary body longing for it. bob nestled like some hibernating forest creature, loose-limbed and relaxed and safe.]
I'm a very patient and fair taskmaster, so obviously extra work, extra reward. I'll keep a list. Keep track of whatcha deserve. Make sure I show all kinds of appreciation once there's no more audience, yeah?
so you’re saying i get all the covers and an IOU for prizes now i’m the one in trouble that kinda treatment’s gonna go to my head make me think this is the new standard
[ maybe it is, and people like yelena aren’t simply outliers. ]
i’ll come by after my shift tonight? just remember i’m gonna bruise easier now or well at all
Good. That's the plan. Think a little spoiling would be good for ya, sweetheart. Professional opinion and all.
[something to offset 20-odd years of being conditioned to not take up space, time, attention, etc. -- balance out whatever hisses low and venomous in bob’s head all the time, since corry can't put that through the drywall.]
After your shift, deal. Put it on my calendar. That a "please be careful" or a "go nuts, happy belated birthday"? Or both?
[ unsure what to say to that, for all of the reasons listed and more. he still has the team because the power requires government oversight (and valentina holds hope something might come of project sentry). if he’s normal again — neither asset nor threat — nobody, what does that mean?
no free room and board at avengers tower, that’s for sure. ]
huh i was so busy thinking about the big pros and cons i kind of forgot the small stuff both?
[powers and lack thereof have thus far been firmly above corry’s paygrade, but -- the fact of it being bob changes things, somewhat. the brief moment before touching him when a part of corry braces to see, hear, witness that house (those houses) no longer being part of the landscape is -- something.
more pressing, though, the "small stuff".]
That's me, the details man. Worried I'm gonna break ya and send you back with my fingerprints all over?
[ corry is one of few people — among them armand and yelena — who make a point to untangle bob’s passing remarks, as if his point of view or preferences might be inherently interesting or valuable.
bob notices this. he notices a lot things. ]
i guess the second one in general i trust you and all
but tonight i just i just really wanted to see you
[ and not worry about the other stuff, for once. ]
[but -- he leaves it at that, lets the flirty, raunchy line of questioning lie, difficult as it is to turn off (pun not intended). because bob wants to see him. not fuck him, not have some need met (it isn't off the table, it never is, not when bob enters a room and corry’s body temp kicks up a couple degrees automatically in wanting).]
Yeah? I can be seen. Good at being seen. Tell me about how the other half lives and I'll show you the gold flake pepper grinder I stole from the dinner table.
Wouldn't mind a night off, now that I'm thinking about it. [a confession, subtle, sly: this month's worn on him more than he's let on.]
[ not off the table, no, but not, uh, the centrepiece? the main course? no longer the thing he’s thinking about when that’s all this place wants of him. a new angle on the body he merely tolerated before. that became a weaponised, unrecognisable thing after. now desired and used and still not quite his.
(the reason people paid attention to him at the commune in the first place. a stupid picture in a defunct group chat.)
he waits for corry to be the guy he always says he is, shallow and single-minded. ‘course he finds himself unsurprised, when corry isn’t that way at all. ]
now that’s gotta be a sign of the apocalypse
[ teasing through the starburst of relief he feels on reading that. ]
yeah it’s a lot right? the real stuff and the fake stuff and everything at once wanting to and not wanting to makes my head spin
[corry blames the damn house -- his usual pattern of love 'em and leave 'em falls apart when he can't have a heated, entangled encounter with a stranger, then slip out the hotel room door when the sun rises. when he looks up from his breakfast and the body that had been beneath his the night before is standing at the buffet, taking the last of the watermelon cubes. the eyes he'd last seen hazy and heated, the mouth that had been moaning his name -- brightening, grinning, respectively, and corry had been fucked, fucked. because it's either stay the asshole in an inescapable cage, alienate the entire household, or let himself soften in places. just a few, enough to make him palatable, worth keeping.
bob's one of them, a fact that starts to fit like a well-worn jacket, two months in. corry's not been able to keep him at arm's length at all, if he's truly fucking honest with himself, has slipped easily into the back-and-forth, into the way bob fits in his arms, in his bed. maybe that's what makes the allowance easier -- that this isn't easy for him either. that he's craving something not purely sexual, not parceled out and lit up and glitzed for an audience. he wants to be boring with bob, so boring everyone changes the channel, lets them be alone for the first time all month.]
Yeah, it's pretty fucked up. Like hedonistic sex castle? Sure. Why not. But it's not for me, y'know? It's not mine. Ours. Someone else's watching. Never liked that, even giving classes. Always kept it real professional, everyone dressed, talked clinical through it all. I mean, obviously people still popped boners, but it's cause it's me. Can't blame em.
Don't like being sold, either. Kinda poisons it, when I think too hard about it.
[closer, nudging closer, and acknowledging what hurts doesn't make it better. just makes it ache, unleashed from where corry's kept it locked up all month.]
i know it doesn’t help, but i like that you care about that that you cared the first time, too
[ about whether someone saw them, about sharing him with other people. things being theirs, not someone else’s. all contributing factors to the feeling of safety that had nothing to do with the collar telling him yes, yes, yes.
he turns over that final message. the kind of specificity that likely comes from somewhere. ]
yeah feels like it won’t stop with ruining the moment in the now, right? like it might ruin everything
[ infecting every previous and future encounter with the blight. the memory of not-quite wanting and feigned acceptance. ]
you left home pretty young, right? i was outta there at 16 soon as the school said i qualified for truancy, i knew i couldn’t go back cause they serve your parents papers after that, i mostly did whatever to get by and get ahold of morphine, which cost a lot more than getting by
[a thoughtful beat.] It helps. You'd be surprised how much that helps. I care about it every time.
[with you, a caveat corry doesn't verbalize, because it'd open up too much, go too deep but -- it seems like that's where bob’s going anyway. the next few messages are the equivalent of opening up a vein, a vulnerability in sideways terms. i mostly did whatever like there isn't inherent horror in the thought of teenage bob, too young, too raw from that humid, nightmare house to protect himself from the collateral damage of that life.
corry wants to ask how did you keep it from ruining you. he wants to say every man who put his hands on you like that, for that, is guiltier than fucking sin, wants to find a way to retroactively make each and every one of them pay. make promises he can't keep, fight battles he can't win.
instead, after a pause so long it's plausible to believe he's done talking, corry opens up his own vein, a little more, a little deeper:] Fifteen, when pops got sick of me. Kicked me out in December, in Missouri. Lived rough for about a week, til I got picked up. Drifter type guy, working back and forth across the country. Helped pay the way for him. For us. Truck stops, hotels, diner bathrooms. You get it.
[staccato, the broad strokes, but bob said did whatever, so he knows. corry just never saw a dime from his own doing whatever, had someone else arranging and overseeing and making sure he did his job without complaints. a parallel, a version of being young and hungry and scared that ends with the leash in an older man's hand, and bob’s life stacks up ugly and awful and helpless, but at least--
again, because there's something sort of hideously wonderful in the understanding:] You get it.
[ whatever to get by. cater waiter, sign-twirler, dot dot dot. he remembers the first time he broke a window and cut his hand on the glass. how he wrapped it in a shirt the second time and snagged two bottles from a guy’s glovebox in the CVS parking lot. nothing as intentional as what corry speaks of — guided by a crueler hand, not until valentina found him — more of a passive acceptance of prices to be paid, favours exchanged, the inherent appeal of dangling something before someone even more desperate than you. like a fucking dog treat. instances where need and want blurred to one end or could be shared between two in a dingy bathroom. where staying the night meant staying somewhere with somebody instead of nowhere alone. high or in the throes of withdrawal, blurring what it means to say yes because need and want are very different things, and he needed the next shot of bright, burning relief more than he’s ever wanted anything, except maybe for the ache to finally stop.
but corry’s right: it helps. this helps, the bloodletting required for closeness. the light of mutual understanding that staves off the dark. his heart pangs, even so. there had been a certain a allure — and bitterness — to the idea of corry as the better off version of himself. sliding doors, proof of some fundamental flaw in his person, for falling victim to his situation. like maybe there was a right turn he missed along the way, and if he’d taken it, he’d be confident and successful and fine.
his heart pangs. bob doesn’t know that he could have said anything, if they were together, but he wishes they were now. ]
yeah, i get it everybody always says somebody should have protected me or maybe that they’d kill my dad for what he did in the first place it doesn’t make me feel any better about it, but now that i’m the one on the other end, i don’t know what else there is to say
i’m sorry you went from one bad situation to another and another one now, after everything you must have done to get out
[it's not funny, but it's a little funny, the way bob articulates corry’s inner urge, his thoughts that have stacked up and around the faceless mr. reynolds (a voice and the slamming of doors, a memory of a knotted-up stomach that spoke of perpetual, sick anticipation, a collection of knee-jerk emotion more than a man). violence is an answer, the only answer, sometimes, and corry understands both the want to destroy everything that's ever taught bob to duck his head and brace himself and stay small and less of a target -- and the understanding that it's already happened, already over.]
Someone should've. But they didn't. I don't think there's any other way to say "you didn't deserve that, and I want to take away everything that ever hurt you". Except that, maybe. Cause you didn't. And I do. And probably so does every other person who tells you that.
[a pause, the vein open, bleeding, sluggish and gentle, as gentle as tearing open a wound can be. corry could let it lie, let himself be the shivering, hungry, mindless with fear boy in bob’s mind, preyed on and manipulated and used, sold over and over and over again until there was nothing left, until the motions of undress, get on the bed, make the right sounds and movements and collect cash when it's over took on the mundane monotonous air of a dead-end desk job. he could be a good victim, if he doesn't say anything else.
but:] His name was Miles. I was with him for five years. Did that for five years, every night. And then I put rat poison in his coffee and watched him die in a motel in Kansas. And I took all his money and his car and left.
belated cw survival sex work, dubcon, suicidal ideation, domestic abuse, the usual
[ there probably is no other way to say it. or perhaps it’s simply that every way to say it is similar enough — is as well-intentioned as it is inadequate. a fantasy in which you might right all wrongs before they come to pass.
bob understands it ‘cause he wants it, too. wants to have found corry when they were both lost and lonely, as if they could have done anything for each other in their respective states of undoing. better yet, to the be the so-called hero he is now, and do something worth the title. ]
good fucking riddance
[ an understatement, in answer to another impossible horror. he dreamed of doing the same to his father. of reaching across the dash and yanking the wheel just to show him that he could do harm, too, even if it cost him more pain. he was scrawnier then, or at least it felt that way. the same smallness corry experienced in their convergent memories. the biting sense of insignificance that comes with it, when the harm repeats again and again. because if you mattered to anyone, it would cease.
(he thinks of valentina again, too. of his hands on her throat, how his rage had simmered, a solar flare about to burst. no punch thrown has ever felt quite like that, so real and total and imminently deadly, with the finality that now characterises his every act as the sentry. if mel hadn’t pulled the trigger first, would bob have gotten there himself?) ]
[somewhere on the other end, gold to silver, there's a laugh surprised out of corry’s too-tight throat, thick with the shame, the horror of being that boy in that hotel room. he presents it coldly in retrospect, paints the picture of the steely, in-control killer, of someone so hardened and hollowed by five years of misery that murder was the only option. and there's truth to that, at the core of things.
but, also true: davey had sobbed the entire damn time, hands over his mouth, crumpled onto the floor, watching because he had to, because he couldn't look away. you don't burn five years without feeling it, it's not possible.]
Could've had some redeeming factors. He always recycled? There any karmic balance to be found there?
[joking, deflecting, the opened wound of acknowledging that time making corry lightheaded, maybe. he wants to say that's understandable, you can allow a just death of someone who deserved it, but what else, what else could you allow? where's the line, does one even exist when he can taste the blood bob's letting, the matched-teeth savagery of he fucking had it coming in the allowance of murder. and would corry do the same, with the same opportunity, with bob's father, dealer, whoever, laid out in front of him?
maybe. but -- he'd rather watch bob do it himself.]
Chicago. Some of the others at the truck stops shared names, numbers. People who'd gotten out, who could help. 2007, not a great time to have my resume consist exclusively of "sleeps with men", so. Found people. Figured it out. Success story.
[ even though he knows corry wants to make light of things, bob opts for sincerity. ]
most people do but it’s not enough
[ not enough good to outweigh the bad, balance the karmic scales, the horror of pushing someone to that brink.
he wonders if corry thinks about the act still, when someone like him isn’t dredging it up. bob’s mind often turns to the scientists — the smudges of them left behind — the idea that they didn’t know what he would become any more than he did. (well, they knew a little a more. they just assumed he would die before anything came of it.) he wants to tell corry that, to see what else they might understand, but it invokes that strange, inhuman part of him now. the monstrosity that thrust corry back to the house that first harmed him.
a story that would likely alienate rather than bring them closer, so he holds it back. ]
no more problems forever right barely think about it when you aren’t being forced to relive it for portia’s sick friends
[ speaking of individuals he’d rather see dead than fussing over their morning tea. ]
we can take a night off the bullshit, okay? do whatever you want
[not enough, a judgement passed, a verdict reached. there was a man who killed whatever was left of that lonely, scared, trapped boy named davey somewhere between missouri and michigan and maine and whatever else he did, there is no forgiving that. bob will never meet miles (thank fuck; the thought makes corry just shy of homicidal), but he's already made up his mind about what the man deserves, period, end of story.
there's something in that, in someone shouldering your enemies when they don't need to, when there's no battle left to fight. something that feels like caring, like protecting, like a lot of things corry had long since given up on having.
so:] I want you. Wanna be boring with you, y'know? Something Portia's friends won't find titillating. Something quiet.
You make it quiet, for me. Walk in the door and it all kinda stops. Did you know that?
[ with a simple, wanna be boring with you, corry turns the insecurity he felt at asking for a night off from the only thing that matters around here into something good. all his schoolboy nerves — over being the buzzkill, ever the oversensitive, problem child — dissipate.
the rest takes all his systems offline. faulty code, nonsensical inputs. bob has heard for too long, too often that he makes things worse, not better. and now his flaws have taken physical form, terrible enough to swallow new york city whole. maybe to end the world. the serum only makes you more of what you already are, so for all he denies it and depersonalises it, he must hold the same fundamental flaw as the void, contagious with grief and pain.
the pause stretches on, dots starting and stopping as he struggles to answer. ]
i didn’t never really been my thing before kinda the opposite, actually
[ a day’s shift suddenly seems too long, when he thinks of corry clearing out his room just to invite him inside, now sitting on his bed alone — ]
i’ll be there soon and then we can bore the shit out of everybody together watch tv get deep into a puzzle
[bob takes longer than usual to respond, and corry isn't usually bothered, but -- there's half a dozen empty fifth in the trash that have sanded away his careful edges, and he sits on the edge of the bed and scrolls back through what he'd revealed, and it's -- fucking terrifying, actually, because that's half his life someone else knows. but there's no backtracking, not now.
and then bob is so -- bob about it, baffled at the concept of his own effect, and corry knows damn well everyone feels it, everyone can see it. bob can't, he's the only one, the emptiness that lives inside him eating up anything good, an endless hungry mouth. a mouth sated, for the moment, only temporarily banished. and maybe corry’s selfish, but he thinks of sprawling sleepy-limbed and warm, one hand tucked up under bob’s shirt, absently petting along his spine while something mindless plays on the fuck-off-huge television, and he craves it like water, like rest.]
Hm. Never seen that, y'know. You've never made shit worse for me. One of the very few parts of this place I like.
[you, i like you.
corry flops back onto the bed, the unmade sheets, one arm slung above his head and his mouth is tucked into that sleepy-eyed smile and -- so what? who's watching that he gives a shit about?]
Make you watch reruns of Law and Order. Criminal Minds, maybe. You ever seen Breaking Bad? I'd say Monopoly, but I'm an asshole when I play board games.
[ reading corry’s messages makes him ache. a good-pain, workout-worn kind of feeling. you’ve never made shit worse for me, a gift, blinking up at him. bob arcs his thumb over the message, waiting for it to disappear.
he supposes that even when the void had drawn out corry’s worst memories, he hadn’t pulled away. not for long. ]
hey i’m not arguing with the guy describing my ideal night i like being around you too even more now than i did before
[ because corry has revealed more of himself, his thoughts, his hurts since they met. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
uh huh
really really well
[ he lets the talk of bucky and their shared, tortured lot slip away. corry’s tended him enough already. ]
no way
we’re past the bailing threshold
you’re [ another undefinable relationship. not just some guy he’s fucking, when that guy would have bolted after the void unspooled his worst memories. ]
i’m not going anywhere
i’ve already conned you into having me over tonight
[ ‘cause he’s not leaving, once he’s there. ]
no subject
I may develop an ego problem, if you aren't careful.
[deflection, because of course -- corry knows he's objectively good in bed, that he fulfills and satisfies and soothes things not everyone can. it's this flip side, softer and careful, like there's anything left worth protecting or thinking about inside him -- that's what disarms every time.
like now. we're past the bailing threshold, when bob knows the root, but not all the ugly ways it grew and festered and twined thorny and choking through the next twenty years. there's so much he doesn't know.
still. i'm what on the tip of his tongue.]
Ain't no con when I was thinking about it anyway.
It's why I went to your suite.
Ex-suite.
Thought it was my turn to give an out.
Even cleaned up, threw out all the bottles.
no subject
yeah?
now i gotta take you up on it
maybe even push my luck
see how long it takes for you to kick me out
after gold breakfast in bed, right?
no subject
You up for pillow duties, Bob?
I run warm, remember. Sleep naked, usually.
Big responsibility.
Big, girthy, huuuuge responsibility 😏
[are you regretting this yet, bob.]
no subject
[ it’s another fantasy, but one he wants to indulge more than ever. intimacy that’s chosen, not forced. ]
does sound like i’m on more than pillow duty though
extra work, extra reward?
no subject
This your way of warning me you're gonna steal all the blankets? Burrow on down in them?
Cute.
[it's even more indulgent, in some ways, than the more raunchy fantasies -- corry doesn't usually let himself think about morning-after, about someone snuggled up under his chin, breathing in time with the pulse of his heartbeat under their cheek.
he's thinking it now, though, with his february-weary body longing for it. bob nestled like some hibernating forest creature, loose-limbed and relaxed and safe.]
I'm a very patient and fair taskmaster, so obviously extra work, extra reward.
I'll keep a list. Keep track of whatcha deserve.
Make sure I show all kinds of appreciation once there's no more audience, yeah?
no subject
now i’m the one in trouble
that kinda treatment’s gonna go to my head
make me think this is the new standard
[ maybe it is, and people like yelena aren’t simply outliers. ]
i’ll come by after my shift tonight?
just remember i’m gonna bruise easier now
or well
at all
no subject
Think a little spoiling would be good for ya, sweetheart. Professional opinion and all.
[something to offset 20-odd years of being conditioned to not take up space, time, attention, etc. -- balance out whatever hisses low and venomous in bob’s head all the time, since corry can't put that through the drywall.]
After your shift, deal.
Put it on my calendar.
That a "please be careful" or a "go nuts, happy belated birthday"?
Or both?
no subject
no free room and board at avengers tower, that’s for sure. ]
huh
i was so busy thinking about the big pros and cons i kind of forgot the small stuff
both?
no subject
more pressing, though, the "small stuff".]
That's me, the details man.
Worried I'm gonna break ya and send you back with my fingerprints all over?
Or hoping for it?
no subject
bob notices this. he notices a lot things. ]
i guess the second one in general
i trust you and all
but tonight i just
i just really wanted to see you
[ and not worry about the other stuff, for once. ]
no subject
[but -- he leaves it at that, lets the flirty, raunchy line of questioning lie, difficult as it is to turn off (pun not intended). because bob wants to see him. not fuck him, not have some need met (it isn't off the table, it never is, not when bob enters a room and corry’s body temp kicks up a couple degrees automatically in wanting).]
Yeah?
I can be seen. Good at being seen.
Tell me about how the other half lives and I'll show you the gold flake pepper grinder I stole from the dinner table.
Wouldn't mind a night off, now that I'm thinking about it. [a confession, subtle, sly: this month's worn on him more than he's let on.]
no subject
(the reason people paid attention to him at the commune in the first place. a stupid picture in a defunct group chat.)
he waits for corry to be the guy he always says he is, shallow and single-minded. ‘course he finds himself unsurprised, when corry isn’t that way at all. ]
now that’s gotta be a sign of the apocalypse
[ teasing through the starburst of relief he feels on reading that. ]
yeah
it’s a lot right?
the real stuff and the fake stuff and everything at once
wanting to and not wanting to
makes my head spin
no subject
bob's one of them, a fact that starts to fit like a well-worn jacket, two months in. corry's not been able to keep him at arm's length at all, if he's truly fucking honest with himself, has slipped easily into the back-and-forth, into the way bob fits in his arms, in his bed. maybe that's what makes the allowance easier -- that this isn't easy for him either. that he's craving something not purely sexual, not parceled out and lit up and glitzed for an audience. he wants to be boring with bob, so boring everyone changes the channel, lets them be alone for the first time all month.]
Yeah, it's pretty fucked up.
Like hedonistic sex castle? Sure. Why not.
But it's not for me, y'know? It's not mine. Ours. Someone else's watching.
Never liked that, even giving classes. Always kept it real professional, everyone dressed, talked clinical through it all.
I mean, obviously people still popped boners, but it's cause it's me. Can't blame em.
Don't like being sold, either.
Kinda poisons it, when I think too hard about it.
[closer, nudging closer, and acknowledging what hurts doesn't make it better. just makes it ache, unleashed from where corry's kept it locked up all month.]
no subject
[ insert teasing wolf whistle. ]
i know it doesn’t help, but i like that you care about that
that you cared the first time, too
[ about whether someone saw them, about sharing him with other people. things being theirs, not someone else’s. all contributing factors to the feeling of safety that had nothing to do with the collar telling him yes, yes, yes.
he turns over that final message. the kind of specificity that likely comes from somewhere. ]
yeah
feels like it won’t stop with ruining the moment in the now, right?
like it might ruin everything
[ infecting every previous and future encounter with the blight. the memory of not-quite wanting and feigned acceptance. ]
you left home pretty young, right?
i was outta there at 16
soon as the school said i qualified for truancy, i knew i couldn’t go back cause they serve your parents papers
after that, i mostly did whatever to get by
and get ahold of morphine, which cost a lot more than getting by
no subject
[a thoughtful beat.] It helps. You'd be surprised how much that helps.
I care about it every time.
[with you, a caveat corry doesn't verbalize, because it'd open up too much, go too deep but -- it seems like that's where bob’s going anyway. the next few messages are the equivalent of opening up a vein, a vulnerability in sideways terms. i mostly did whatever like there isn't inherent horror in the thought of teenage bob, too young, too raw from that humid, nightmare house to protect himself from the collateral damage of that life.
corry wants to ask how did you keep it from ruining you. he wants to say every man who put his hands on you like that, for that, is guiltier than fucking sin, wants to find a way to retroactively make each and every one of them pay. make promises he can't keep, fight battles he can't win.
instead, after a pause so long it's plausible to believe he's done talking, corry opens up his own vein, a little more, a little deeper:] Fifteen, when pops got sick of me. Kicked me out in December, in Missouri.
Lived rough for about a week, til I got picked up. Drifter type guy, working back and forth across the country.
Helped pay the way for him. For us. Truck stops, hotels, diner bathrooms.
You get it.
[staccato, the broad strokes, but bob said did whatever, so he knows. corry just never saw a dime from his own doing whatever, had someone else arranging and overseeing and making sure he did his job without complaints. a parallel, a version of being young and hungry and scared that ends with the leash in an older man's hand, and bob’s life stacks up ugly and awful and helpless, but at least--
again, because there's something sort of hideously wonderful in the understanding:] You get it.
no subject
but corry’s right: it helps. this helps, the bloodletting required for closeness. the light of mutual understanding that staves off the dark. his heart pangs, even so. there had been a certain a allure — and bitterness — to the idea of corry as the better off version of himself. sliding doors, proof of some fundamental flaw in his person, for falling victim to his situation. like maybe there was a right turn he missed along the way, and if he’d taken it, he’d be confident and successful and fine.
his heart pangs. bob doesn’t know that he could have said anything, if they were together, but he wishes they were now. ]
yeah, i get it
everybody always says somebody should have protected me
or maybe that they’d kill my dad for what he did in the first place
it doesn’t make me feel any better about it, but now that i’m the one on the other end, i don’t know what else there is to say
i’m sorry you went from one bad situation to another
and another one now, after everything you must have done to get out
i’m glad you’re here anyway
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Someone should've. But they didn't.
I don't think there's any other way to say "you didn't deserve that, and I want to take away everything that ever hurt you".
Except that, maybe.
Cause you didn't. And I do.
And probably so does every other person who tells you that.
[a pause, the vein open, bleeding, sluggish and gentle, as gentle as tearing open a wound can be. corry could let it lie, let himself be the shivering, hungry, mindless with fear boy in bob’s mind, preyed on and manipulated and used, sold over and over and over again until there was nothing left, until the motions of undress, get on the bed, make the right sounds and movements and collect cash when it's over took on the mundane monotonous air of a dead-end desk job. he could be a good victim, if he doesn't say anything else.
but:] His name was Miles.
I was with him for five years. Did that for five years, every night.
And then I put rat poison in his coffee and watched him die in a motel in Kansas.
And I took all his money and his car and left.
belated cw survival sex work, dubcon, suicidal ideation, domestic abuse, the usual
bob understands it ‘cause he wants it, too. wants to have found corry when they were both lost and lonely, as if they could have done anything for each other in their respective states of undoing. better yet, to the be the so-called hero he is now, and do something worth the title. ]
good fucking riddance
[ an understatement, in answer to another impossible horror. he dreamed of doing the same to his father. of reaching across the dash and yanking the wheel just to show him that he could do harm, too, even if it cost him more pain. he was scrawnier then, or at least it felt that way. the same smallness corry experienced in their convergent memories. the biting sense of insignificance that comes with it, when the harm repeats again and again. because if you mattered to anyone, it would cease.
(he thinks of valentina again, too. of his hands on her throat, how his rage had simmered, a solar flare about to burst. no punch thrown has ever felt quite like that, so real and total and imminently deadly, with the finality that now characterises his every act as the sentry. if mel hadn’t pulled the trigger first, would bob have gotten there himself?) ]
where’d you go?
cw: allat, underage, murder, the usual cocktail
but, also true: davey had sobbed the entire damn time, hands over his mouth, crumpled onto the floor, watching because he had to, because he couldn't look away. you don't burn five years without feeling it, it's not possible.]
Could've had some redeeming factors.
He always recycled? There any karmic balance to be found there?
[joking, deflecting, the opened wound of acknowledging that time making corry lightheaded, maybe. he wants to say that's understandable, you can allow a just death of someone who deserved it, but what else, what else could you allow? where's the line, does one even exist when he can taste the blood bob's letting, the matched-teeth savagery of he fucking had it coming in the allowance of murder. and would corry do the same, with the same opportunity, with bob's father, dealer, whoever, laid out in front of him?
maybe. but -- he'd rather watch bob do it himself.]
Chicago.
Some of the others at the truck stops shared names, numbers. People who'd gotten out, who could help.
2007, not a great time to have my resume consist exclusively of "sleeps with men", so.
Found people. Figured it out. Success story.
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most people do but
it’s not enough
[ not enough good to outweigh the bad, balance the karmic scales, the horror of pushing someone to that brink.
he wonders if corry thinks about the act still, when someone like him isn’t dredging it up. bob’s mind often turns to the scientists — the smudges of them left behind — the idea that they didn’t know what he would become any more than he did. (well, they knew a little a more. they just assumed he would die before anything came of it.) he wants to tell corry that, to see what else they might understand, but it invokes that strange, inhuman part of him now. the monstrosity that thrust corry back to the house that first harmed him.
a story that would likely alienate rather than bring them closer, so he holds it back. ]
no more problems forever right
barely think about it when you aren’t being forced to relive it for portia’s sick friends
[ speaking of individuals he’d rather see dead than fussing over their morning tea. ]
we can take a night off the bullshit, okay?
do whatever you want
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there's something in that, in someone shouldering your enemies when they don't need to, when there's no battle left to fight. something that feels like caring, like protecting, like a lot of things corry had long since given up on having.
so:] I want you.
Wanna be boring with you, y'know?
Something Portia's friends won't find titillating.
Something quiet.
You make it quiet, for me.
Walk in the door and it all kinda stops.
Did you know that?
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the rest takes all his systems offline. faulty code, nonsensical inputs. bob has heard for too long, too often that he makes things worse, not better. and now his flaws have taken physical form, terrible enough to swallow new york city whole. maybe to end the world. the serum only makes you more of what you already are, so for all he denies it and depersonalises it, he must hold the same fundamental flaw as the void, contagious with grief and pain.
the pause stretches on, dots starting and stopping as he struggles to answer. ]
i didn’t
never really been my thing before
kinda the opposite, actually
[ a day’s shift suddenly seems too long, when he thinks of corry clearing out his room just to invite him inside, now sitting on his bed alone — ]
i’ll be there soon
and then we can bore the shit out of everybody together
watch tv
get deep into a puzzle
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and then bob is so -- bob about it, baffled at the concept of his own effect, and corry knows damn well everyone feels it, everyone can see it. bob can't, he's the only one, the emptiness that lives inside him eating up anything good, an endless hungry mouth. a mouth sated, for the moment, only temporarily banished. and maybe corry’s selfish, but he thinks of sprawling sleepy-limbed and warm, one hand tucked up under bob’s shirt, absently petting along his spine while something mindless plays on the fuck-off-huge television, and he craves it like water, like rest.]
Hm. Never seen that, y'know.
You've never made shit worse for me. One of the very few parts of this place I like.
[you, i like you.
corry flops back onto the bed, the unmade sheets, one arm slung above his head and his mouth is tucked into that sleepy-eyed smile and -- so what? who's watching that he gives a shit about?]
Make you watch reruns of Law and Order. Criminal Minds, maybe.
You ever seen Breaking Bad?
I'd say Monopoly, but I'm an asshole when I play board games.
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he supposes that even when the void had drawn out corry’s worst memories, he hadn’t pulled away. not for long. ]
hey i’m not arguing with the guy describing my ideal night
i like being around you too
even more now than i did before
[ because corry has revealed more of himself, his thoughts, his hurts since they met. ]
you get it
[ a sentiment worth reiterating. ]
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