airlocked cmo

[motherfucking_ghost]

For all your shitposting needs.

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[scourgingstars]

[So that entire goddamn day happened. And once things finally, actually calmed down, Ardyn dropped onto the nearest flat surface not obscenely uncomfortable to sleep on with a hand pressed to his eyes.]

I find it astounding that this may actually rank somewhere near the third or fourth worst day of my life to date. Have you any idea how difficult a list that is to qualify for?

[motherfucking_ghost]

Could've been worse. [He's still got some whiskey out. In case indulgences need to be had.] It can almost always be worse.

[scourgingstars]

Hardly need to tell me twice. [He dropped his hand from his face and glanced over, holding his other hand out and producing two empty glasses.]

I told Junpei it was probably not the wisest course of action to drink until today felt like an annoying dream, but quite frankly it's seeming the more appealing option.

continues shitting this up

[scourgingstars]

Do you want to see what might be the most ridiculous thing imaginable?

[or, 'hello', as some people would say.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

Besides your face? Yes please.

[scourgingstars]

It's funny you mention that, actually. You'll never believe the ridiculous thing they were selling that I'd neglected to show you.

[A quick flash from the Armiger and Ardyn was holding a box. Visible in said box was a figure, complete with various small accessories.]

[And, perhaps more importantly, a special alternate faceplate.]

[serrata]

[ Yuuri's not blind. She's been keeping an eye on Junpei, Ardyn and Arianna, yes, but that doesn't mean she doesn't notice how badly Church is taking all this. But she's worried about crowding him when he needs the space or pestering him when he needs the time to process whatever it was that had set him off so badly.

So she gives it a little while before she seeks him out. The first episode of the new Airlocked! has been long over by the time she finds him, with a mug of coffee in her hand and an uncertain smile on her face. She's not exactly sure what she can do or say, but trying is better than doing nothing. ]

... so, do you need to talk about Airlocked, or do you need to talk about anything but that?

[motherfucking_ghost]

[Thankfully, time to brood and time around Ardyn have mellowed Church out significantly from the tightly wound ball of punchy nerves he'd been. He is, in fact, unwound in comparison. He looks exhausted, but he's present, and he's not yelling. So both of those are a plus.]

Think I can talk now that it doesn't feel like I'm pulling incomprehensible feelings straight out of my mouth with pliers.

Sorry. That I was worrying.

[scourgingstars]

[It was a while before Ardyn came looking for Church after...everything today had decided to be. And it was less a matter of 'looking for him' and more 'it was getting late and Ardyn probably had to sleep somewhere that wasn't the roof'.]

[He walked into their room and closed the door behind him quietly, not looking directly at Church--then stepped to the side so he wasn't blocking the one exit out of the room short of jumping out the window.]

...I shouldn't have lost my temper like that. I'm...sorry.

[There was something rigid to his shoulders, Ardyn glancing to the door like he was the one in need of an escape route.]

I can--I can leave, if you would rather I-...

[motherfucking_ghost]

[It's not that Church can't eventually admit when he was wrong. It's just that he can't admit he's wrong in the moment, when everything is bright and sharp and he has to say what's on his mind or he'll go crazy. After taking out his frustrations physically, which he's starting to find he's doing more often but refuses to acknowledge it in any way, after sitting in the shadow of the good ship Temerity with post-adrenaline shakes, after being summoned by a bird that things had calmed down enough that it was safe to return, he did. Did not seek out Ardyn, but wasn't actively avoiding him. But he saw none of his boyfriend at all.

Until now.

The fear had long since retreated, the anger snuffed out like the bright but short-lived flame it was. What was left was mostly exhaustion and shame with more than a dab of worry.]

Shut up. [Not a snap, nothing harsh, just a statement. Church stands and moves over to...not the door, but to Ardyn.] Just...shut up. [He leans up to press a kiss, gentle but insistent, to Ardyn's mouth.]

I fucked up, okay? My mouth went running before my brain ever caught up. I don't do tact. Never have. It's a fatal flaw of mine. I shouldn't have gotten all caught up or pushed it or anything. I don't mean to say I hate her or anything. She's pretty cool. She's not family, but she's good. I'll...probably...have to apologize or...something. [Things he's not good at: apologies when appropriate.]

But yeah, no, you're also absolutely right in that you shouldn't have flown off the god damn handle like that. So. We're both in the wrong. I'm more in the wrong than you, but you're still more in the wrong than the right.

space is warped and time is bendable

[serrata]

[ Yuuri fully intended to corner have a nice talk with Church the instant she'd heard the news from Junpei. You know, like a good sister. But she's well aware that she can't just leap on him with the topic. She has to ease into it. Otherwise it's not half as fun.

Their visit to space mall and the gift buying she's done provides her with the perfect cover though and the day after Church has his remarkably ill-advised talk with Junpei, Yuuri finds him around the house and gives him what looks like, for all the world, a perfectly innocent smile. ]

I feel like it's a bit late to ask now but... you don't mind jewellery, do you? Or at the least, you'd wear a chain?

[ She's holding up a little paper bag as if to preemptively answer the question of just why that's at all relevant. ]

[motherfucking_ghost]

Uh, no? I mean, it's not exactly something I've ever worn save for...man, I guess I never really wore dog tags, either.

I'm guessing you got a good haul from the mall. [God knows he did, thanks to her. (And got knows Ardyn did, in several ways.)] You didn't have to...get me anything, you know.

[scourgingstars]

[You know what's a good distraction? Sparring and not thinking about all the awful murder that they got to see this week.]

[The results, however, was a mess Ardyn was going to be dealing with for a few days. Oh, well. He needed to learn how to fight as a mortal, and he was going to figure it out. He walked into their room after a shower to clean up the utter mess he was after fighting Xander, running a towel over half-drying hair and checking over the scrapes and bruises in between the scars on his upper body.]

[For now, he ignored the bruise forming on his jawline.]

...should commend him for being unpredictable, at minimum.

[motherfucking_ghost]

Should commend him for helping me get hard as a fucking rock. [Church, as usual, gets straight to the point and doesn't care to beat around the bush.] Impressive show between you two. Can I ask why the hell he decked you?

[He makes a motion to come here, hands ready to do more checking over. And more than checking over, should that be necessary.]

[scourgingstars]

[Here is a bird.]

[Here is a bird dropping a hairbrush on your head and perching somewhere she can stare at you judgmentally.]

[By sheer coincidence, Ardyn is sitting nearby minding his own damn business.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

Ow-- [what the shitfuck luscinia there are easier ways to kill a guy

judgy lil rotisserie

At first he thinks it's a judgement being passed on his own hair, a bit of a wild mane in and of itself. She doesn't make a habit of preening him like she does Ardyn. Quoth the pigeon, 'go fuck yourself'?

It's very mature to flip off a bird, right?

She fluffs up and makes a head jerky bird motion in Ardyn's direction, then continues her judge pidge stare.

............oh. Oh? Oh. Lazy sack of feathers is getting tired of preening, fine, whatever. Church doesn't exactly have anything better to do unless he wants to instigate more sparring. So he takes up the brush and sidles in behind Ardyn, casually pulling off the orange scarf, tugs Ardyn's hair out of his messy little ponytail, and starts brushing it out.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

[CT's dogtags hide a secret, a jumpdrive to plug into the computer console. Data. Information. Intel. Will couldn't tell him what might be on it, but the Counselor--Price thought he should have it. Whether out of guilt or pity...he doesn't know. Price was good to them, generally. Does it make up for whatever he might have done, whatever he might have allowed to happen?

Church doesn't know. There's a lot he doesn't know. And in lieu of Connecticut or Dr. Price being here, this...whatever this is, it might be the closest he get to anything.

With so many people around and space suddenly being at a premium again, he's made sure to indicate that no one is to open the door once he closes it. If it's for Church, then it should be for Church's eyes only until he decides otherwise. And besides...it gives him a chance to let himself feel things more. With Ardyn it's fine, but for the sake of impressions? Even if those people have seen him at his worst, he's not comfortable with showing his vulnerabilities if he can help it.

He settles himself in the chair and, after a few long moments of breathing, pops in the drive.

A video plays. Not for him. For Tex. For...Allison. From her friend, Connie. Dirt on Freelancer. Everything dubious and illegal the Director got up to. It's the sort of thing that, if set loose, could've done what they set Epsilon out to do. What happened? (Oh. Right. She died. But what about Tex's copy? What about...anyone finding the originals? Why didn't anyone know?)

That Cece's dad might be able to bring everyone back is little comfort when confronted with a dead woman speaking to another dead woman. He can't shake that terrible feeling that he once must have known her. How else does he know little, bare details about some of the agents? He thought Tex told him stories now and again, or that he'd even hung around some of them, like Wyoming, like Reginald, back in the day. But no. That never happened. His brain is so full of gaps, making up details to bridge them all.

When the video ends, the files pop up. It's...a lot.

AI experimentation, mission logs, personnel files, financials, video surveillance--shit, she had been doing digging for a while, and she was damn good at it. And he does want to look at the rest of it, of course. But there's one folder that's clearly near and dear to Church.

ALPHA

He nearly closes it out right then and there. To hear Wash explain it is one thing, and to hear the voices of the other fragments call him by that name is another. And yet another to see it in front of him. (They had their research with agressive AI, but they could only get the one, and they needed more to conduct their experiments.) He scrolls through, Beta (password protected?), Omega, Gamma, Delta, Theta, Sigma--where are the others? There are others, he knows there are, but Epsilon isn't there. The twins, they aren't there. Is the data old? Empty files, labeled with emotions. (greed love fear happiness memory is the key)

(That's why Epsilon went insane; it was meant to. It was all the horrible experiences the Alpha needed to shed to survive. And that's why it had to be removed from me.) And they didn't make any more after that. Everything went to hell after. Wash went crazy, Epsilon went crazy, everything got halted because memory is the key. But if Epsilon hadn't happened the way it had, the way he had, they would've kept going. They would've kept harvesting from Alpha.

From him.

Breathe.

He has to start from the top. He has to start with Alpha. He has to crack Beta's password. He has to read about each of the fragments that Connie knew of. He has to go through personnel files, or at least the important ones. He has to...there's so much. He can't do it all at once--

Breathe.

Start from the top.

It's quite a long while before the door ever opens again. When he does, he seems small. Silent. Haunted. He's barely scratched the surface, but he knows, for certain, a lot more than he did before. The computer is still on, the tags still plugged in, but it's clear that he's copying the data over to another portable source. There's no way he can dig through all of it and ever hope to give Varric the tags in any reasonable timeframe. Besides...it's his now. The data. It's important. There's just so much that it's going to take a while, and he can't keep sitting there staring at the window indicating with a bar and a number the percentage copied. He can't. He'll go crazy.

Well. Maybe he already has.]

[scourgingstars]

[Something was very not right. Ardyn obviously had no concept of what was on CT's tags, but...'worried' did not even begin to explain how he felt when he saw Church looking perhaps as shaken as he'd been that last week, clinging to each other in an empty hallway with the faintest two thousand year old melody drifting between them.]

[Ardyn reached out cautiously, brushing a hand across his shoulder in a feather-light touch to try to start pulling him out of whatever this was. For not the first time he felt very much at a loss, desperate to fix something and having no way to simply take it on himself.]

...Where are you right now?

[misanthropicprinciple]

[Junpei missed the dog tag exchange. Everything happens so much, and he's been trying to get a read on Season Four's survivors, watch Noctis, and make friends with the poor traumatized teenage girls, so he doesn't even know what's going on until he asks Ardyn where Church went. Once filled in, he comes to check on the door periodically. It goes against Junpei's grain to respect a closed door; but he understands how important this is to Church.

So he waits. And around the fifth time he checks, the door's open, and there's his bro.]

Church? Dude.

[Church is six feet tall. He shouldn't look so small.]

That bad, huh?

[scourgingstars]

[Like his descendant, Ardyn often slept through the morning. Sometimes that was down to simple Lucis Caelum genetics, and sometimes it was because of nights like this one. Nights spent recollecting the darkened haze of millennia in darkness--nights where it was Yuuri rather than Lunafreya he sank a dagger's blade into, where it was Church instead of Ravus falling to Starscourge and begging kill me in a distorted voice, Junpei's arm burning out instead of Nyx Ulric's. Or where a darkened room twisted into an isolated stone prison, an empty throne room beneath a blighted sky, and all of it completely, painfully empty.]

[Ardyn awoke with a slight start on one such night, breath caught harshly in his throat as he stared wide-eyed at the ceiling trying to figure out where he was or what he was doing there. It took longer than he would have liked, seconds that felt as though they stretched into hours before he was aware enough of himself to sit up and bury his head in his hands, breath ragged and a very human heart pounding a frantic rhythm in his chest.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

[Church, meanwhile, has been blessed with a moderately normal circadian rhythm. But he, too, gets restless nights, paranoia creeping in, or thoughts of missing memories creeping in making sleep next to impossible. He's managed sleep tonight, though, nestled in with his lover, warm and safe.

Until Ardyn shifts, and something feels wrong. He cracks open his eyes, peering at Ardyn beside him in the darkness until the harsh breathing hit him. He knows somewhere in his brain that the answer is 'nightmare', but he sleepily asks the question anyway:] What is it? Wha's wrong? [As he groggily pushes himself up so he can drape an arm over Ardyn for comfort's sake.]

since everything's gonna go to abject fuck

[scourgingstars]

[It was a chilly and rainy day outside Science House, as weather tended to get around December or the equivalent thereof on some planets. Ardyn stepped out of the bathroom after a particularly warm shower running a hand through still damp violet hair and stretching with a slight frown of annoyance on his face. He rolled one shoulder, collection of scattered white scars moving with him as he did.]

[...Hm. That was a little annoying.]

[motherfucking_ghost]

[Gross it's gross outside there's no way he's getting any training done or doing anything other than staying in, being warm, cuddling up, drinking warm things, and basically gravitating toward anyone and anything warm in the entire house.

Like Ardyn. For instance. Freshly out of the shower and thus very warm Ardyn. It means greeting his boyfriend by sliding hands that are going to feel chilly when one is fresh out a shower up his face and tugging him down a little while leaning up a little for a kiss.]

Penny for your thoughts?

time's a flat circle i'm saying this happened sometime just before new year

[serrata]

[ why hello church, stop what you're doing because you're being greeted by the sight of a harassed looking Yuuri on this fine morning who looks sort of like she's on the warpath?? but also like she's been cooking if those rolled up sleeves and the apron are at all familiar. ]

Church-- you're not busy, are you?

[ no

no yuuri you don't know what you're dOING ]

[motherfucking_ghost]

[Oh. Oh, this is bad, he feels like he's done something wrong even though, upon reflection, he's reasonably sure he's done nothing (in recent memory) to annoy Yuuri, so--so what did he do .-.]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm super, extremely busy just right this second, oh, man, you caught me at, like, just the worst possible time to ask me that question--