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damned_institute2008-10-28 11:57 am
captain-hunam.livejournal.com) wrote in damned_institute2008-10-28 11:57 am
Nightshift 36: M31-40
[M39]
Dinner finished, Zelnick grabbed his flashlight and settled down with his journal and a pen, fully intending to catch up on taking down notes-- and finding himself too distracted to do more than scribble out vague doodles in the margins, occasionally jotting down a word or two before becoming distracted again.
Well, supposedly, allies would come by and distract him. And until then, it wouldn't hurt to try and sketch out Talana's smile from memory, the way her eyes should flash, the curl of her hair...
Dinner finished, Zelnick grabbed his flashlight and settled down with his journal and a pen, fully intending to catch up on taking down notes-- and finding himself too distracted to do more than scribble out vague doodles in the margins, occasionally jotting down a word or two before becoming distracted again.
Well, supposedly, allies would come by and distract him. And until then, it wouldn't hurt to try and sketch out Talana's smile from memory, the way her eyes should flash, the curl of her hair...
identity crises are no fun O<
At least, he did not believe that he was.
ZEX sighed again, a hand raising to cover his eye, then he seemed to catch himself and force it away. He blinked and tried to force everything to mesh back together, to stop seeing double. "Max... I..." He paused for a second to try and compose himself. "He did. He told me you don't remember what I did to you. What happened." ZEX paused again, strained. "At least... consciously."
no. they aren't. D:
"Well, he was right on one thing." Why wasn't ZEX covering his eye? He looked like he wanted to... if he half-started like that again, Zelnick would do it for him. "I don't remember whatever he thinks I went through... because it didn't happen, even if he says it did." A second-long pause, and then he added, "Aside from the Alpha Cerenkov stuff, but I kinda doubt that anyone would bring that up to you while trying to convince you that you're Max."
O<
ZEX gestured for a moment, and then stopped to stare intently at his hand. Human hands... human skin, all of it, it didn't change. Why didn't it change-
"I once tried to kidnap you, as you put it, didn't I?" ZEX had a distinctly haunted expression, and he had a somewhat distant tone in his voice. Still speaking faintly. "Something you still hold against me, don't you...? Wouldn't it be strange, had you escaped and Caleb had not? You escaped, watch me be torn to shreds... what happened to Caleb, do you think?"
His voice faded, nearly speaking to himself, still distant. "Not the delusions themselves, but the reasons that one would believe them..."
._.
"Hey, now." He frowned, just a bit, and smoothed back ZEX's hair as if it would smooth all his uncertainty away. "I may not be happy with what you tried to do, but that doesn't mean I hold it against you." Learning more about ZEX... he understood why, mostly, or at least he thought so. And it was really, really hard to hold it against ZEX when there were bigger problems, and when Zelnick had already seen him die so unpleasantly. "And I'm not Caleb, so it doesn't matter what happened to him," not even if he'd left Tanya terribly sad and a classful of children untaught.
if only i had my tentacles, then things would be different O<
ZEX buried his face against his human's neck, and he wished more than anything to have his body back again. That was something that couldn't be easily explained away. He was shaking. "Are you sure you're not him?" He was trying to keep his voice calm throughout the whole ordeal, look at things logically, try and find an answer, and now desperation bled through his voice. "How do you know? How can you be sure? I'm- I'm in this body, human and he knew me, DAX-, a whole pathetic life of cowardice that Max escaped by going mad, becoming someone better, pretending to be a genius because- I cannot lie to myself, I cannot do that, I swore..."
He'd been struggling very hard to keep his thoughts in an orderly line, confront the problem in a rational way, try to avoid that drowning choking feeling by thinking clearly, and still he sank deeper and he was beginning to panic. ZEX grasped desperately at the shreds of pride he had left and forced himself to stop speaking, instead holding onto his Captain as tightly as he possibly could. He had to calm down.
*Signs ZEX up for SC* I want him to feel better~ ;_;
ZEX's face against his neck started to bring that familiar flush up, but... but no, this was pure comfort, and he shook off the vague feeling of "oh god ZEX is feeling me up again" in favor of stroking ZEX's hair, petting him soothingly. "Absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent certain that I'm Captain Zelnick, pilot of the flagship Vindicator, and not Caleb, science teacher." And he knew because he knew, every part of him knew that that he was and always be Zelnick, the kid from Unzervalt that wound up trying to save the galaxy.
He didn't give that reason; he had a feeling it wasn't anywhere near as good of a reason as ZEX wanted.
"And even if Max were a coward," he murmured, "you're not. No coward would jump on a big dangerous thing and help kill it, like you did last night." Gently, pretending that it wasn't as intimate as it looked, he reached back a foot to hook around a chair leg and tug it away from the desk, then stepped back to sit in it, pulling ZEX down in his lap.
actually if he gets his uniform back that'll be very helpful O3
He gave a shaky sigh at being touched, his hair was so sensitive. How he loved how that felt. "You've always been human... it must be easier for you to know." A teacher... he could see that. "This body, to be changed to this form is impossible, and if I was never changed to begin with, then... I just want... I want to know, for sure... " He wanted to go home, he wanted things to go back to normal, but that seemed too weak a thing to say out loud, and he'd already lapsed too much already.
"If he believed himself to be someone else, who knows what he could do..." ZEX mumbled, miserable, although his thoughts were quickly derailed. Puzzled and blinking, he of course didn't resist being pulled closer to him, or sitting on his lap either, although he hadn't quite expected it. Being held really did bring up warmth and affection, which he was glad to cling to rather than that suffocating helpless feeling.
He stayed close to him, rested his head on his shoulder and closed his eyes, letting out a shuddering breath. "I'm so tired of this... an identity crisis once a lifetime is more than enough." ZEX kept his arms around him. "I'm getting too old for this kind of stress anymore..."
Oh, true! :D And I think that, if Captain looked in his closet, he'd find his own uniform~ hmm! <3
Of course, that applied the other way around, too, but Zelnick wasn't going to think of that.
"A lot of things are impossible," he said, "but that doesn't stop them from happening anyway. Most of this place is impossible-- I have no idea how a creature like the one from last night would even survive, and that arthropod that attacked you should have been crushed under its own weight. And magic..." He smiled, a bit. "Magic is impossible by definition. Which doesn't seem to stop people from using it, here."
Holding ZEX in his lap seemed to be doing wonders (and the vaguely happy feeling he got from ZEX feeling better was entirely
maternalpaternal, Zelnick convinced himself, and rooted in their status as allies), and he stroked the other man's back, soothingly. "Then don't get stressed about it." It seemed obvious enough to him. Sure, it was hard not to worry when you were alone at night and trying to sleep, but it was really easy to ignore problems and focus on other things if you kept yourself busy.if only ZEX had gone to get a sweater tonight
ZEX sighed. Accepting impossibility didn't provide answers... it just ignored the problem. He disliked having things defy explanation... it made them unreal, which didn't help him determine reality from fantasy. "Impossible things are impossible... defying explanation only makes one doubt your own perceptions. If you're seeing impossible things, who's to say you don't believe impossible memories, convincing yourself they're just as real..."
ZEX just felt drained, which was definitely preferable to his earlier mood. If nothing else, sitting with his human was muffling his emotions down to a managable degree, which he definitely appreciated. He hated appearing so vulnerable, much less in front of a human... it hardly suited someone of his stature. Even if a normal VUX might have crumbled under the pressure here already, ZEX knew he was better than that.
"This isn't a problem I can ignore... if I have been lying to myself, if this all was a delusion, I have an obligation to myself, to my character to accept reality. If I drove you mad and sentenced you here, and hid behind fantasies of capability to escape responsibility for it, I have to stop." Although, DAX had said that if he did leave here, he could not see his human again... that it would be too dangerous. He could not lie to himself... but he could not leave his Captain behind, or abandon him somewhere. None of his problems had a clear solution. ZEX sighed and ran a hand along his Captain's side. "If we're simply illusions, we may not know each other at all. Everything we've done together may have been meaningless..."
then he'd have no excuse to cuddle captain-- er, I mean, angst?
Not that he was going to yell at ZEX. Even if he wanted to, the very idea of intentionally upsetting an ally for no good reason was offputting. (He was more than good enough at doing it unintentionally, anyway.) So, instead, he thought about how to affirm to ZEX that he wasn't Max.
"Okay, so, if Admiral ZEX is a delusion," he began, "why are there monsters at night trying to kill, or at least hurt, all the patients? Or is it just a shared delusion?" He glanced down at ZEX's leg. "Was that pain a delusion, too?"
He leaned his head against ZEX's, and continued, "If Caleb was drawing off your delusion to form his own, why can I remember Slylandro and Utwig and Supox, and other species you wouldn't know? How can we remember so many corresponding details, and be joined by two others who fit into our universe, but not know a thing about our supposed lives as Max and Caleb?" He hardly noticed the hand up his side. "And even if it is delusion... it doesn't mean that what we do together, what we think and say and believe, are automatically invalidated. They've still happened."
... not that he was happy about everything they'd, uh, done together, but he really couldn't say that it hadn't happened. There had been two eye witnesses, after all, and his being one of them really made it kinda hard to ignore the testimony.
His cunning plan has been discovered!
ZEX sighed again when his human leaned in closer to him. Maybe this was a battle he should have waged on his own... he didn't like putting so much pressure on someone else to solve his problems, particularly when they had no easy answer. But still... "Our delusions diverge on several key details... I'm dead in yours, aren't I?" You killed me came to mind, but he decided not to say that in so many words. He'd never understood why his human believed he saw him die beforehand... he was obviously alive. This gave a motive for it that was hard to ignore. "You struck a possibly fatal blow against the Ur-Quan, something I thought impossible, in a noble and heroic quest to save our sector from enslavement... do you wonder, sometimes, if it seems too perfect for you? Where our delusions split apart, where I die and you live, you've merely expanded on your own without me?" ZEX paused, and he sighed again, leaning against him with a barely noticable shudder. "But then again, I don't think Caleb would want to escape his life as much as Max would. What DAX described sounded so unpleasant... I don't blame him for trying to run."
ZEX waited for a few seconds, then pulled away from him a little to sit up straight. He blinked again, trying to make the world focus as usual, hand starting for his eye before he forced it away. "Hmm... I shouldn't be dragging you into my problems. This kind of thing is just... difficult for me. When I was young, I had to learn to accept myself for who I was, despite everyone I knew telling me I was perverted, damaged, mentally ill. All of that." A somewhat pathetic attempt at a weak smile. "I told you before, about our therapists. I withstood their threats and attempts to 'realign' me because I knew who I was, and that what I wanted was natural. As long as I knew that, they had no influence over me."
A pause, and he looked down. "It's... self-doubt is not a good feeling for me. It brings back memories I'd rather forget."
But not foiled~ yet. >.> XD
He sobered at the mention of diverging fantasies, though. "I don't know what to tell you, Admiral. What happened happened, though, even if it seems implausible. Though, if it did turn out to be a delusion..." He grinned at ZEX, trying to brighten the mood. "Either I'm far more imaginative than I thought to come up with all the things that happened, or I'm far duller than I'd like to believe to come up with several years of trying to stave off boredom between fights." He didn't comment on ZEX's death; he'd seen it with his own two eyes, but he liked ZEX too much to want to think about it. (Not that his reasoning was that articulate in his head, or he might have noticed that he liked ZEX.)
Briefly, he thought about Caleb, what he knew of him. "Yeah, he agreed, quietly, "it sounds like Caleb had a really pleasant life." His voice became almost wistful as he added, "Not that it matters, since it's not real... and neither is Max, no matter what our visitors say."
Argh, he'd said he'd do it, and he did it, solving the problem of ZEX's bouncing hand by covering ZEX's eye himself. It was kinda annoying, watching that hand twitch up and down like that-- by which he meant really annoying, though his irritation was faint and almost fond-- and if ZEX was twitching because his eye wasn't covered, Zelnick would fix the problem.
"I don't mind," he said, honestly. "I was just going to stay in here anyway, and if I could help an ally while doing that, well, it's a productive night." He smiled at ZEX. "And you still are you. I promise. Even if you doubt yourself, you're Admiral ZEX, and you're far too smart to let this place mess with your head for long-- right?"
we'll have to see how the night goes~
"I suppose my own life has its inconsistencies as well." ZEX tried to return the smile, although it was still weak. "One would think if it was to be my ideal life, I wouldn't have imagined myself being exiled and alone for twenty years, waiting for you." His smile strengthened a little. "I would have had you immediately."
A pause where he thought for a few moments, and he sobered again. "Although, if things did indeed go as DAX described... then you wouldn't have left your life by choice. It would have been my fault... dragging Caleb from his happy life to be here, with me." A moment of self-awareness, and he reached out to touch his human's face. ZEX spoke softly. "I suppose, in a way, that's not so different from what really happened, is it..."
He wasn't sure what answers he had expected from his human... he still didn't have much evidence one way or the other, and the question of whether or not this was all a lie still nagged at him. When his human raised his hand to cover his eye for him, snapping the world back into focus and into one human, one person, he remembered the one thing that he refused to question when speaking with DAX. Even if he really was this Max person, he could not leave here... not without his Captain with him. That was something constant between both identities, the importance of his human to him, and that he could focus on. Until he had more answers, more solid proof, he could focus on something that he knew.
His human's hand on his skin made it easier to think of him, rather than the crisis that faced him, and in consequence it lifted his spirits somewhat. ZEX tried to return his human's smile, still touching his face with one hand. "You know, DAX told me that if I was ever to leave here, be Max again like he asks, I would never be able to see you again. You would... 'press charges', whatever that means, against me. It would be too dangerous. I told him you wouldn't do something like that to me..." ZEX leaned in closer to him. "But even if you did, I wouldn't care. I won't let you get away from me, no matter what happens. I've waited too long to have you, and I'd rather die than let you go."
And whether he was Max or ZEX, that wouldn't change.
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"Er" indeed, actually; that was the first thing he said when ZEX declared his intention to follow him, no matter what. Then he explained and agreed, "Pressing charges means accusing you of doing something illegal. And I really wouldn't do that to you unless you actually, y'know, did something seriously illegal, and I held it against you." ZEX's hand on his face and possessive declaration was totally... creepy, yes, not at all kinda weirdly sweet, "I'd die without you" was incredibly creepily co-dependent and not at all the reason Zelnick blushed more and suddenly felt a little like his stomach was trying to do backflips.
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Although, he couldn't imagine not being interested in humans, particularly the one sitting beneath him right now with a hand over his eye. He did smile, this time genuinely, at how his human changed color in that fetching way he loved. He leaned in quite close to him, one hand on his face and the other idly running along his human's side. "That's what I told him," ZEX whispered. "He worries too much." And if there was anything that could get ZEX's mind off his problems, and indeed off of mostly anything else...
ZEX shifted a little, slowly, on his human's lap, his wandering hand toying with the edge of his shirt, and he briefly touched his lips to his Captain's skin before whispering again. "Besides, there are... other things you could hold against me..."
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This was definitely about the right time to pull away, since ZEX was obviously feeling better, and since Tanaka didn't seem very likely to come by and interrupt at this point. Definitely the right time. And entirely the wrong time to make an uncertain sound and keep holding ZEX and not protest at all, definitely.
Apparently, Zelnick had a bad sense of timing.
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Not that his existential crisis was foremost in his mind right now, what with his Captain so warm beneath his hands and obviously in need of some encouragement. He was continually surprised by the strength of chemicals in the human brain... how easy it was to focus on the physical now! And far preferable to the alternative, given that he still didn't have a solid answer, and if he wasn't who he thought he was, then...
That could wait. His human's chest was in desperate need of being thoroughly touched, and something that important deserved his full attention. Not that he'd allow his human's mouth to go unappreciated either, and he had to make that clear as well. Although, leaning in for a kiss did feel a bit strange with his Captain's hand still over his eye... not that he'd let something like that stop him.
This was much better already.
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Not that he enjoyed this, certainly not any part of this scenario at all, ZEX in his lap and kissing him and feeling warm and comfortable against him. It was something he could live without, and he was absolutely going to put a stop to it any moment now, as soon as he found his inhibitions and common sense and such.
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But that was then. Right now he had much more urgent matters to attend to, such as stroking his human's smooth, warm skin, and kissing him more fervently. Finally continuing after their unfortunate interruption last night! And unless his Captain's roommates (were they even still there?) decided to intervene, ZEX wasn't about to be interrupted again. He needed this right now, he thought firmly. More than usual.
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He so loved his human's touch! It reminded him of how sensitive his human body really was... he'd felt so tired and lifeless before! They really were amazing... he leaned into his human's hand on his face, and sighed at the touch to his back. He pulled away from him for a moment to look at him, one eye shut and the other half-lidded, and ZEX had deeply satisfied smile on his face, although he wasn't aware of it.
"Much better..." ZEX breathed. "This is much better..." He certainly didn't feel cold anymore, that was for sure.
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His common sense still hiding from him like a Spathi from a monster, he grinned dizzily at ZEX and said, "Good. Better is good." And something else that would be good would be... he leaned in and kissed ZEX, a few quick pecks, lips then jaw then neck (ZEX really liked that, he remembered, and ZEX feeling good was definitely a good thing).
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His human kissed him and his scattered thoughts quickly realigned on the thrill of having his human express affection without being prompted. "Ah, yes..." With a soft shudder and a quiet gasp as his human touched his neck. He'd forgotten how sensitive it could be... he leaned his head back with a quiet, needy kind of moan to ask for more. He was always willing to lavish attention on his human, but if his Captain wanted to do the reverse, ZEX was very much in the mood to be ravished. His human wanting him... there was no better feeling in the world.
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It seemed an awful lot like it was working. Which was good, because Zelnick was only doing this to comfort his ally and raise morale-- "this" being kissing and nibbling ZEX's neck, and petting his back, and gently stroking his face-- and certainly not because he might kinda like it, too.
Maybe, if he told himself that often and insistently enough, it would become true. Someday.
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His human heart was beating worryingly hard again, and it seemed that as usual his body couldn't regulate heat correctly, but both things weren't important right now. Shivering, with faint hums of pleasure and quiet gasps when he felt his teeth, ZEX shifted on his lap to try and come closer to him. He held onto him with both hands, almost dizzy with desire for him already. Ah, how he wanted this...
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*REPLY FAIL* s-sorry about the delay D:
i don't mind O3