Chuchi follows around behind him, yapping and yowling, and it is a testament to his ability to compartmentalize that he pays her no mind.

He’s still in his staredown with Amplexus, trying to get him to cure the flu-- Onyx didn’t know why he couldn’t and Amplexus couldn’t fathom the sheer stupidity required of a human being to not understand, and so the pattern repeated, over and over again, in a silent war of furrowed brows and gradually slouching shoulders-- the stalemate only broken by Andres stirring on the floor below.

Onyx immediately goes to kneel and freezes in some bastard representation of a sorority squat, torn between what to do. An undercurrent of frustration-- with himself, mostly, and not knowing how or why or when even he started to care about Andres like this-- ripples beneath an exterior of propriety.

What was he planning on doing? Scooping him up bridal style and… taking him where? The bedroom? Was that right? Was that proper? Would the gesture be read into in a way he didn’t want it to be? When the fuck did he start caring about all this shit? God, life was so much easier when he didn’t fucking have feelings.

Then Andres says the thing about leftovers and Onyx--

--the spell is broken. He laughs, something harsh but soft at the same time. “I don’t want-- why are you always trying to feed me?” he shakes his head, sweeps some stray strands of hair behind his ear, and stoops. “I don’t want your leftovers, dumbass. Let me help you to the bed.” And he’s smiling as he plants one knee on the ground, slides one arm under Andres’ head-- the back of his neck is fever-hot against Onyx’s bare bicep-- and twines the other under his knees, lifting him off the ground, comforter and all, with an ease brought around through practice, well-honed strength, and just a touch of fear.

[attr="class","mintag"] andres buenaventura

He was right there. On god, he was right there. He could just lean in and—

“Unbearably,” he says, and there’s a weight in his voice that’s half a joke and half real, half a real, physical, undeniable weight, but it isn’t in his lap, it’s in his chest, and as languid and slow as his smile is he is also incredibly reticent for this evening, this moment, to end.

Then Andres is standing and the spell is broken. He is invited to stay for pizza. And part of him knows he should get out now while the getting was good. He’d done enough damage to his own psyche, sent enough mixed signals to his own exploded bomb-shelter of a brain, to last a lifetime.

But he’s caught in the light of the shadow of Andres’ body as he stands and stretches, and feels every pop of his vertebra in the thrum of his own pulse; he’s hollowed out a little place here, on this couch, in these clothes, a little comfy hole to crawl into and die.

“Sure. Pizza sounds fine,” he says, shooting himself in the head. “Get whatever you want. I’m not picky.”

andres buenaventura
local disaster feels too much

☉

Generally their roles were reversed. It was not unusual for Andres to fire off countless texts into the dark and silent void that was Onyx’s capacity for interpersonal communication. But the radio silence on Andres’ end of the connection was highly unusual— even more unusual than Onyx eliciting the first contact.

But, you know, hey, I think I spoke to my sister’s ghost was kind of a big deal. So not getting a response to it was concerning on entirely different levels. The ball of dread in his gut was growing exponentially, forked into a serpent of two possibilities: something horrible has happened said one head; he thinks you’re a psychopath and hates you, whispered the other.

Eventually the gravity of it got to be too much so he gave in to the pull and rolled on over to Andres’ apartment. Not unusual for him to just show up out of thin air.

The door was locked. He was halfway to breaking it down but rationality won out: he picked the lock.

Andres was laying on his living room floor, wrapped in a comforter and fetal curled around Chuchi, like an embryo cuddles close to its amniotic sack.

Onyx panicked. He dropped to his knees with a thud that probably had the downstairs neighbors startling and ascertained that Andres was, in fact, still breathing. He released Amplexus and went to do a lap of the apartment, checking closets and behind the shower curtain for any sort of intruder, more to satiate his anxiety than any real sense of danger.

Once he’d finished his security lap he returned to where Amplexus was standing over Andres. “What’s wrong with him?”

His Gardevoir looked at him with an expression of utmost tolerance. He’s got the flu, dipshit.

Onyx scowled.

“Fix it.”

I can’t.

“Why not?!”

Amplexus did not dignify him with a response.

[attr="class","mintag"] andres buenaventura

Though his scales and rough skin protected him from the majority of the damage, here and there tracks of snot-green liquid would sluice through the protective covering to touch the skin beneath, causing the back of Mord’s head and neck bubbled in grotesque purple bulges.

His twister was spawned in a fit of rage, but it buys him a little time, a little breathing room; the illusion shatters, revealing the Zoroark beneath. Onyx expected as much, as soon as the Blaziken was revealed to be a red herring. It was less a purposeful deduction and more that he couldn’t think of any other Pokemon that could conjure up such a realistic illusion.

Mordekaiser doesn’t relent, crashing across the battlefield with heavy, angry steps. The Extrasensory needles into him, bypassing any sort of defense he might have, and he screams, a horrible, deafening sound. He violently shakes his head, saliva flying off his shining teeth, and, in an attempt to get out of dodge, he crashes his claws into the ground, digging furrow after furrow into the ground, rapidly clearing space enough to disappear into the floor.

Alexandra Briarwood
garchomp is hit by extrasensory and uses dig

☉

It’s instinctual, he thinks, the way they come together. Like they were made for it. It’s awful. It’s beautiful. If he’s going to die he’s going to go out like this.

Andres is kissing him back (why would he do that) (what had he expected) and his palm is cool against Onyx’s cheek, something grounding, something whole against the still-healing wounds and ghost of pain he’s been muddling through these last few weeks.

He has Andres up against the wall, one hand hooking underneath the man’s right thigh to hike it up, somehow get them closer, as Andres’ hands fall to grasp at his lower back and--

--the pain that lances through him strikes the breath from his lungs and he stiffens, lips parting in a wordless cry, fingers digging into the meat of Andres’ thigh.

In what is, somehow, the most uncharacteristically Onyx thing of the night, he doesn’t fight through it and, instead, lets his forehead fall forward to rest against Andres’ shoulder, nose to his collarbone.

“No,” he says, pain making him unbearably honest. “I don’t know what it is.”

[attr="class","mintag"] andres buenaventura

Andres is poised in his lap like a baby bird about to leap from the nest. Onyx is struck by this image and wonders how, at that moment, someone so obviously built can seem simultaneously so fragile. It’s a terrifying thing he now holds in the palm of his hand-- er, lap-- and this close he can see, in the low light from the tv, a scar peeking out of Andres’ hairline where he’d--

The pain of Andres’ fingers gripping his shoulder fade away and Onyx can do nothing but sit, frozen, as if one motion would make everything crash down around him and shatter into hairline fracture’s like he’d done with Andres’ skull so many years ago.

Why did he suddenly feel so horrible?

Better than I expected.

“Yeah,” he says, intelligently, because-- this all kind of is, isn’t it? Better than expected. Better than deserved. He’s fucking lucky Andres didn’t murder him the moment they saw each other again. Instead, he’s invited him into his home. His life. He’s sitting in his fucking lap for god’s sake.

So foolish. So fragile.

“It’s one of my favorites,” he says, then remembers he said it already so he chooses to elaborate: “He’s painted as a coward the entire movie and then in the end he has to save himself. It’s a horrible choice to make.”

He swallows, too aware of how close they are right now. He hasn’t moved a centimeter except to speak. Hasn’t even breathed.

“I also like the monster.”

As though Andres gives a fuck. God, this boy made him such a moron.

andres buenaventura
local disaster feels too much

☉