wastedcreation | open post

RP here baybee

Weird thing to say, maybe, but it makes Devero tip his head back in a laugh that booms away across the gully. He returns the thumbs up, then says, "That's great, mate." He takes an ostentatious drag on his joint, pulling it in deep and holding for just a few seconds before letting it out.

"I prefer this to alcohol, personally," he admits, pinching the cigarette and holding it out in front of himself in (exaggerated) contemplation.

That laugh spurs on more giggles from Sebastian. The sounds are so different; Devero's laugh is expansive, joyful, untethered to social expectations of decibel levels. Sebastian's is quiet, low and breathy, like his own joy is a well-kept secret that he shouldn't be letting slip.

"I can see why," he says. He's never been drunk, but it seems like drunk people are often angry or sad or throwing up. This feels... Light, easy, like his tightly-coiled brain is being unraveled and all his worries with it.

"You do this a lot? By yourself, or...?"

Does he often meet guys and invite them to smoke with him? Does he do it with his Scorpion buddies?

Devero nods and sticks the herb back between his lips to say, "When I can. When it's safe to. I try not to use it irresponsibly or anything, but it's nice to just be able to feel good.

"It's more fun with company." He leans in towards Seb a little and confides recklessly, "I wish I could hear you laughing. I bet it sounds nice."

"I could use a bit more feeling good, too."

His whole life has been hard and painful. It's been about surviving, about getting through the next gauntlet, about becoming stronger. He's never had a moment to breathe. He barely knows the meaning of the word 'relaxed.'

But he feels it now, rare and probably fleeting.

He's glad it's dark, because when Devero says that about his laugh, his face flushes red. His heart pounds a little harder, or maybe he can just feel it more now.

"Oh, it's nothing much," he mutters. He doesn't laugh often, but the drug and Devero yanked it out of him.

"I like your laugh," he says to the gully, to his own knees, unable to look at Devero at all. "It sounds like..." He's lost in thought for a brief moment, his thoughts a bit scattered now. "Pure happiness."

Devero's answering smile is bright enough it could almost be another source of light up here on this little desert cliff. He has to look away too, grinning and getting hot and feeling like he might float off into the night. "Guess I don't have to worry about it being too loud out here," he says, his motions a little blurred and sheepish. Someone's been scolded for being overloud before, it seems.

He fumbles the case back out of his pocket and flips it open, checking the contents. There's two more pre-rolls in there along with the lighter. He pinches out the one he's smoking and puts it back in-- two and a half, now.

"Here, you take this," he says, offering it out to Seb. "Some feeling good for later."

"I like how loud it is," he says without thinking, able to look at Devero now that the compliment isn't being directed toward himself anymore. His addled mind can't find the right words to explain how much he envies that loud laughter, how free it is, Devero's ability to express what he's feeling without a second thought. Sebastian has never been able to do that without penalty, not even as a child.

"It makes the people around you feel good," is all he can manage to put words to. Really, what he means is that the laugh puts him in a better mood just by hearing it, but that feels too vulnerable to admit.

He decides to put out his joint as well, taking Devero's cue of how much of this stuff is enough. As the case is handed to him, though, he looks alarmed.

"What? No, no, I..." Oh, god, now he has to lie while he can barely form a coherent sentence. "M-My... My home situation isn't good. I can't take this home." Seb hopes he seems young enough to maybe still live with strict parents, or something. With shaking hands, he puts his stubbed-out cigarette back in the case and hands it back to Devero. "Um, thank you, though. It's really cool of you to share with me."

Devero knows for a fact that some people can't stand how loud he is, so he has a pretty good idea that when Seb says 'the people around you', he means himself. Virtues take Dev, when did it get so hot up here? He finds himself opening the front of his fatigue jacket to the evening air, his face flaming and his grin silly.

But then Seb is refusing the case like that, hands shaking and stumbling over his words, and Devero's expansive mood thumps right back down into the dirt. He takes the case back, his expression crumpling. "Seb," he says, and then doesn't know what else to say for a moment. Finally, his motions small and gentle: "You sure? Seems like maybe you need this more than me."

Seb's heart falls into his stomach as he watches Dev's smile disappear.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he says quickly, waving his hands, feeling like he's done something wrong by refusing. That he's insulted or disappointed him. "I don't mean to be rude."

Dev asks if he's sure, and he looks out to the gully. "Um..." He tries to think of places he could ditch this case before going underground. Maybe the hidey-hole in a tree he uses sometimes? Then he could smoke whenever he came to the surface alone... But that paranoid feeling is coming up, the one Devero mentioned, and he just feels like somehow, they'll know.

"Maybe I could... Find a place to hide it..."

"No, no, it's okay," Devero hastens to reassure. "If it'll get you in trouble or something, forget about it." He shoves the case deep into a pocket and scrunches down. "I'm sorry, Seb, I shouldn't have-- I didn't mean--" His hands droop a moment, then lift just a little to say again, "I'm sorry."

Seb watches him frantically apologizing and shakes his head, placing a hand on Dev's shoulder.

"It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong. You've been nothing but nice to me. I'm the one who's... Weird." He laughs weakly. He realizes the drug is probably the reason he can feel his heart pounding in his ears and it's hard to catch his breath, but he doesn't say that, because he doesn't want Devero to feel any worse about offering it to him.

He sighs and lies down on the ground, feet still dangling off the edge, looking up at the stars. He'd never seen stars until he was twelve, when he became a spy, and he still finds them amazing. Looking at them makes him feel immediately calmer, like a reminder there's a much bigger world out there for him.

Lying down seems like an excellent idea, and as soon as he sees Seb do it, Devero joins him. He shifts a little as he flops back, so that he lands nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with the other man.

"You're not weird," he says after they've looked at the stars for a few quiet moments. "I'm the one who's the wiggie weirdo, remember?"

Seb laughs a little, looks at Dev.

"You seem fine to me."

He looks back up at the sky, letting silence stretch out for a while.

"Do you ever feel like... Everyone else knows how to be a real person, and you're just pretending to be one... And hoping they don't notice that you have no idea how to do it?"

Probably not. Devero seems like a natural. But the question is half-rhetorical anyway.

This time when Devero laughs, it's a softer, more contained sound. Still overloud, comparatively speaking, but not nearly as loud as his booming laughter from before. "Any time I walk into somewhere crowded and busy," he admits wryly. "Especially if it's somewhere I haven't been before."

Sebastian looks at him again, for longer this time, considering this. His adaptive tech must have a difficult time picking up on just once voice in a crowd, feeding him a bunch of word soup.

"That makes sense."

Seb feels like that all the time, but especially on spy missions, and especially when he's high on this herb, apparently.

"I hate crowded places too, but ironically, it's mostly because they're too loud." He smiles wryly in return.

Feeling the weight of Sebastian's gaze on him, Devero lays his head over to look back. His smile returns, just from being close and sharing this empty hilltop (and, admittedly, still pretty warm and floaty from the herb).

"Does it get overwhelming?" he asks. "Having to hear everything, when you're stuck in a crowded place?"

Tox nods.

"Hearing everything, seeing everything, people bumping into you, trying to stay out of the way..." He lists these things like grievances. "It makes me feel ill sometimes. Other people don't seem to mind as much, I don't know." He shrugs. It's partly his heightened senses that make everything overwhelming, but he can't imagine liking crowds without them, either.

Devero's immediate instinct is to offer Seb solutions. Has he tried an Interface visor that can dampen or filter out stimuli, or taken advantage of the sensory rooms that most busy public places have tucked into out of the way corners? He goes as far as pushing up on an elbow preparatory to launching into it--

And only then remembers that this is Outsider territory. They don't use Interfaces out here, and he suspects that they're not hiding decompression rooms for folks with sensory disorders in their buildings' broom closets.

Letting himself back down again, Devero sighs. "That sounds rough," is what he says instead. "It's hard having different thresholds from most other people."

Seb looks up with interest at what Devero is going to say, but then he seems to change his mind.

"Yeah. It has benefits, though." He shrugs. Mostly ones he can't talk about much.

"Like... Right now, there's crickets all around. They sound nice. And the stars are pretty."

He looks at Devero again.

"Is it rude to ask if you've always been deaf?"

"The stars are pretty." Even if he can't hear the crickets, at least there's that.

"No, it's not," he answers readily, "and yes, I have. I was born this way."

"Wow..." So he has no idea what crickets sound like at all. Even if Seb explained it, he wonders if it would make any sense.

"All that fancy tech, and they haven't figured out a way for you to hear?"

If that's rude, then at least it's in character.

"I mean, they have," Devero says, shrugging against the dirt. "There are Implants available that could probably make me hearing, at least to a certain extent. But I declined them."

That's curious. He looks at Devero.

"Why?"

"Because they didn't seem worth the effort," he says, looking up at the stars as he explains. "The implantation surgery is the easy part. Once the new hardware's installed, your brain has to actually learn how to hear, and apparently that hurts like hell. For months. No thanks."

Tox thinks of his own augment. Having his arm amputated and replaced by a magically-powered bionic one, and having to heal and re-learn how to use his own arm. It hurt, it was incredibly difficult, and the end result wasn't really that much better than his old arm. In some ways, worse.

"I understand."

Devero looks over at him, a bit...surprised, perhaps? "Thank you," he says with a little smile. "I appreciate that."

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