Aᴜɢᴜsᴛɪɴᴇ ᴛʜᴇ Fɪʀsᴛ, Sᴀɪɴᴛ ᴏғ Pᴀᴛɪᴇɴᴄᴇ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
butnotyet) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-06-08 11:12 am
butnotyet) wrote in deercountry2022-06-08 11:12 am
Even the illusion of June is enough to send a stabbing pain through my chest
Who: Augustine the First and ____________ (This could be you!)
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout June
Where: All around Trench; specific locations listed in TLs as necessary.
Content warnings for this character: Necromancer with visibility issues (still running a little bit Invisible Man) seeking CR for explicit gore/body horror as a matter-of-fact daily occurrence / being jaded AF about life in Trench and otherwise (look, man, he's older than dirt) / needs more people to be slutty at-or-with (bearing in mind he is, again, currently at-least-mostly Invisible, you/your character's kinks/mileage May Vary, player more interested in vague/FTB/finessing a scene than anything explicit). Also, his omen is his brother, and also a venomous snake, and also really chatty.
Specific warnings for this post: Nightmares featuring a lot of violence, including self-inflicted/suicide; various types of religious imagery/discussions, definitely including "taking the Lord's Name in vain"; invisible nude spying on God (might get spicy).
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout June
Where: All around Trench; specific locations listed in TLs as necessary.
Content warnings for this character: Necromancer with visibility issues (still running a little bit Invisible Man) seeking CR for explicit gore/body horror as a matter-of-fact daily occurrence / being jaded AF about life in Trench and otherwise (look, man, he's older than dirt) / needs more people to be slutty at-or-with (bearing in mind he is, again, currently at-least-mostly Invisible, you/your character's kinks/mileage May Vary, player more interested in vague/FTB/finessing a scene than anything explicit). Also, his omen is his brother, and also a venomous snake, and also really chatty.
Specific warnings for this post: Nightmares featuring a lot of violence, including self-inflicted/suicide; various types of religious imagery/discussions, definitely including "taking the Lord's Name in vain"; invisible nude spying on God (might get spicy).
5. Clearly There's No Way At All This Can Go Wrong [The Emperor]
Alfred sighs, inasmuch as a snake can manage to sigh, when all Augustine does is — nothing; nothing visible, nothing audible. But he can feel the impatient glare his older brother is leveling at him; he can picture how withering it is, even if the angle and perspective (and image) are all wrong for this body and its senses.
The conversation itself had been earlier, of course, in another part of the house entirely, far enough away that Augustine seemed entirely unconcerned about being overheard — or was that just a result of the type of wards he keeps on his rooms? Alfred isn't actually sure, given how little of them he seems to understand, now; did he used to know more than this? How much of this knowledge was discovered after his death, anyway?
Augustine had been pacing, in his room, as much as the small space allowed, worrying at a fraying seam in one of his gloves; Alfred had been lying along the edge of the mirror frame atop the dresser that's been a resident of the room longer than either of them have, watching his brother pacing, listening to the way his muttering gradually grew loud enough to contain actual words, rather than just a lot of exhalations and hums and grunts; eventually the words even started to make sentences, and — just a little bit later still — sense, of a sort.
And somehow, that turned into this: Alfred tamely slithering into God's study, earthbound and practically tame, all the better to push the slightly-ajar door open widely enough for Augustine to fit through without leaving any sign of doing so — all so that Augustine can... stand there, apparently, in the Presence, but not the Sight, of God.
He knows that Augustine is convinced he's going to learn something, as a result of this; something, he thinks, that's supposed to be able to clarify how the two of them are supposed to relate to each other, now, here in Trench, here in this strange and sometimes-overcrowded house. (He knows that Augustine's insistence that they do this right now, while the idea is fresh and Alfred hasn't come up with a good reason not to, has had the side effect that the door to God's study is fully half-open, now, because it would make no sense for Alfred to worry about closing it after making such a blithely-oblivious fuss to open it — and if Augustine is intent on being as unnoticeable as his idiotically naked body is invisible, well, he can't very well close it for himself, either, can he? Alfred's also fairly certain that the goal and the setup are going to cause problems — but Augustine had just kept undressing, when he tried to point that out, stubbornly refusing to listen.)
Alfred hopes he's going to be proven wrong; he would love to have Augustine be right, in this particular instance. Maybe God will say whatever it is Augustine is obsessed with hearing him say. If Alfred knew what it was — hell, if Augustine knew what it was — it would probably be a lot easier to ask him to say it.
The worst part of this, of course, is the way he has to play wingsnake for Augustine the Invisible Silent Stalker Refusing to be Categorized as a Fly on the Wall.
«Hey, my Lord,» Alfred begins, calm and cool and collected enough, for starting out already dreading this subterfuge assignment 100%. He shifts his trajectory, halfway across the room, swimming through the air as effortlessly as he undulates across the floor, aiming to reach the surface of the desk to see whatever it is that's holding God's attention. «Are you too busy to chat a while?»
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Doesn't really want to, honestly. There's enough to deal with here in town. Why open that can of worms, right? The silence hangs as heavy here as it did in the Mithraeum.
So when Alfred comes to him, John closes his book. He drops everything. He tries to be cool about it, but Alfred knows him. Even for as short as Alfred's life was, compared to his brother's, Alfred knows him like family.
"I can pencil a meeting into my schedule," he says, and pushes his notes away. In their place he extends a hand, palm tilted as though for a handshake, so that Alfred can coil up and onto him. "What's up?"
no subject
(The last time the three of them had been alone in this room, Augustine had locked the door. Augustine had been very, very drunk. Augustine had probably made an absolutely idiotic fool of himself — but that's the thing; he doesn't know. He doesn't remember. He woke up safe and sound in his own bed, alone, and Alfred — Alfred had let him down; Alfred had taken God's word, promising that he'd take care of Augustine, and not specifying — and the few memories he's clutched close, examining again and again, are too inconsistent to answer any of his questions.)
«Even you are, after all,» Alfred continues, and it's a little easier to know where Augustine is while he's swimming through the air, given the way his brother still distorts the currents rippling against his shadow-formed scales — but he remembers what it is to be human, perhaps better than either of the two men in the room whose bodies still
mostlytake that form; he remembers what it is to hold and be held, the importance of simple human contact that hasn't been poisoned by time and doubt and need and betrayal.(He loves them both, and he's always been very good at hugs; was his first act on this Earth not to hold them both, together?)
«Mostly, though, I was curious about what's going on with you, my Lord — you've been here so much longer than we have; I know you've been doing research, along with building up something of a new House,» even if his tone grows a touch more (carefully) dubious, here, «but — I don't know where you want us to fit. You sent Augustine away, once already — and I couldn't follow him!»
Okay, well, apparently he actually does have more to say to God (to harangue at God) on his own behalf than he'd realized; at least it's adjacent to talking about his brother, and how God feels about him, right? Augustine can't blame him for this topic.
With an effort, Alfred smooths his ruffled scales back down, tongue flicking out to taste the room, still trying to figure out how close Augie is, right now. More importantly:
«Sorry, my Lord,» he mutters. «I just — that was hard, having him gone like that. Didn't you think so?»
(Augustine isn't close enough to be breathing down God's neck; he knows that would be stupid. He was planning to get close enough to see God's face, or hopefully John's — but instead he's standing there, stupidly, in the middle of the room, staring at Alfred's face, utterly floored by the intensity of his emotions, utterly astonished by how quickly he's steered the conversation where Augustine had had to beg, after saying so many times how he didn't want to. Truly, he is the best brother any man could ever have
lost.no subject
"I sent him away because he was needed," says John, very tiredly, with his thumb pressed between his brows to ward off the headache. "Because someone with real expertise had to untangle that mess, and we don't have anyone left with more expertise than Augustine... It's not that I wanted him gone."
And there's the issue, right? There's the unspoken question.
"I didn't want him gone," John says again, and it's not clear which of them he's trying to soothe. "Things are— a little awkward, right now, sure. But I'm not trying to foist him off on the first mission that'll have him. Talk about petty moves, right? No; I'm going to need the both of you."
It's easier to say than I need him. It'd be easiest if Alfred didn't make him unpack it at all.
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But his patience has never been indefinite, any more than any of his other virtues, and God has definitely stretched it to the breaking point.
«You weren't the one who invited him,» Alfred points out, in his least-impressed tone of mindvoice. «And I don't think the one who did had you in mind, my Lord, when inviting him. But even more than that — if you didn't want him gone, why didn't you tell him that, at any point? It wouldn't have stopped you from telling him you thought he still should, any more than it would have killed you.»
His body ripples along its length, around God's shoulders: a shrug, but also still an embrace.
(He doesn't say: My Lord, You are the Emperor of Petty Moves; why would anyone expect You not to make that be Your choice? He could; he doesn't.)
«Are you?» he asks instead. «Are you going to need us? Or do you need us now, already, right here, right now, for who we are, rather than for how we might serve some plan of yours, later?»
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But they know that about him already. They know that he wants them close just to have them, that he's always been a sentimental bastard. He's been really upfront about that bit.
It's just that they know his vindictive streak, too. So. Fair's fair.
"It's a difficult conversation to have," he says, and now God is being defensive, which is always awkward for everybody. He traces Alfred's scales rhythmically, fidgeting. "And if I'm being honest, I hate having it here, sitting under someone else's sword. I feel like we're on a reality show. We're somebody's entertainment. If the big squids in charge could stop swinging at us for a little while, it'd be better timing for a heart-to-heart."
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The question is laden with even more irony than God knows, given the third presence in the room, right? They are having this conversation with an audience. They're having this conversation at the instigation of an audience member, as Augustine drifts like a stereotype of a pre-Resurrection ghost around the borders of the room, circling until he can, eventually, hopefully, see John's face, somewhere in all of this —
«I don't see a sword overhead right now, Sire,» Alfred continues, his innate gentleness creeping out again — but then again, he's the one receiving an affectionate touch, with God willing to just touch him, not worrying about all the different weights of all the different meanings that one touch or another might imply; why wouldn't he just simply enjoy the feeling of God's love and affection?
«Is this really the worst time and place to have this conversation? In your own study, nobody barging in, nothing currently on fire? I'm not going to eat any weird fruits and take the effects out on you, either. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die, even.»
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It is at this point that something in the room shifts, in a way he isn't expecting. A shadow of alarm crosses God's face, as distant as a man listening to some far-off sound on the wind. It sharpens to interest, there and then gone like a flare of the sun.
They love to throw curveballs he can't see coming, or can't see coming well. It's an offense all over again, each time they find a new way to trick his senses. He usually gets the hang of it, by the end. He's having to learn on the fly more than he has in the past few thousand years.
Alfred is unaware or Alfred is lying, and both are interesting concepts. He tries not to take it personally.
"If you don't see a sword, you haven't been looking," he says, more grimly. "Five minutes of peace and quiet isn't enough to appease me... maybe my standards are too high, I know, but I'm not a fan of the constant wacky surprises. I could tell your brother as much."
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(If pressed on the subject, Alfred would, of course, point out that he isn't lying; nobody is barging in, given that his brother crept in like a thief, instead; he didn't eat any fruit...)
«Besides, it would be more like the fifth time,» he adds, almost an afterthought — a mutter — before more practically asking, «How long is enough to appease your high standards, my Lord? How far away does the sword have to be to keep it from hanging over your head?»
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So has Alfred. Alfred was one of the first to pay, when it comes down to it.
"Look," he says, more practically, more placatingly, "I see what you're saying. But doesn't it feel a little weird to treat this like a vacation? Aren't you tired of being nice?"
cw: reminders that this is a snake
«Do you expect me to treat this like it's Hell, Sire?» he asks, finally, his mindvoice as thin as the blade of a knife, and as comfortable to hold close. «Do you forget that we've been there already? Should I prefer, instead, another ten thousand years spent mindless, unaware, fuel for a furnace and unable to comfort my brother in his grief, or you in yours?»
His eyes narrow to slits; when he opens his mouth again, it's more than is strictly necessary to loose his tongue, emphasizing not only its forked tip but also the profoundly deadly fangs always held at the ready. Sure, he has no limbs like this. It doesn't mean he's unarmed.
«I don't think I'm the one you want to try this particular argument on, John,» he says, and here's the worst part: he is absolutely every bit as gentle, here, as anyone who's ever known him might have expected. (His patience is not limitless — that doesn't mean it doesn't regenerate.) «You seem to be forgetting that I am this nice, as a rule.»
He drifts, without shifting his relative position — as if the invisible tree branch he's on is rotating above John's head.
«Besides,» he adds, humor barely repressed, «if you're all that worried about having a sword overhead, your best bet is obviously to practice turning your hair into a sheath.»
The invisible branch, having finished its relocation, vanishes; Alfred drops like a rock, directly onto John's head; it's a good thing he only weighs about six pounds.
(Augustine, less than six feet away, was not expecting that; startled, he reaches, as if to catch his brother, as if to prevent injury from coming to his Lord and Savior —
It's not the reaching that makes a noise, of course, but the sudden quiet intake of breath from his startlement.)
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"Thanks!" he says, in the tone of Damn it. "Thank you, Alfred, really helpful."
Augustine gasps, and isn't that just hilarious? It's what he needed; it's the last key. John turns, with unerring precision and a nonchalance he deeply enjoys, and catches that invisible hand by the wrist. He lifts a coil of snake out of his face, and says from beneath his new hat:
"Look, if the plan was both of you jumping me— in a weirdly literal sense— that's great, but not really what I planned for my afternoon."
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(This is not what was supposed to happen!!)
The coils of snake serving God as a very strange hat ripple, atop his head, in one of Alfred's new shrugs. «I do strive to be helpful, my Lord,» he points out, serenely unrepentant. «Besides — technically speaking, neither of us have jumped you, yet. Fallen on you, yes, sure. Hoped you'd actually get the point of all that? Absolutely. Actually expecting you to get the point...?»
The chance of that is as ghostly, as insubstantial, as suddenly gone as Alfred himself, it seems, leaving... Augustine, still frozen, still trapped in place by his surprise and God's dexterity.
Two hearts beat, in God's study, out of habit more than need, and then one thought reverberates its way around Augustine's mind loudly enough to force its way out again:
I didn't want him gone, God said.
And: Five minutes of peace and quiet isn't enough to appease me... I could tell your brother as much.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, his voice the barest whisper of sound, hardly any louder than the muffled gasp of his useless startlement, only to drop even more, into being more the idea of words than any sort of actual sound.
"Why don't you talk to me?"
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He can feel Augustine's pulse against the whorl of his thumbprint, the ghost of Augustine's brother evaporating from around his shoulders like so much smoke. It's just the two of them, again, and that echoes the last time. He has to wonder if Augustine even remembers the last time.
Augustine breathes his question, some more plaintive murmur beneath it, and God's hand tightens upon the bare lines of his arm.
"There has been a lot going on," he says, still in that tone of pleasantries skinning over something vast and thorny. "With you, too, apparently. Just enjoying the show?"
cw: nsfw (if you squint)
"Hi," Augustine manages, as virtually every thought flees his head. There is something very real, in the weight of God's attention, focused on him right now; he feels stripped bare — hah — as if his every motive has become transparent — hah — as if God can see right through him —
shit?He knows the myriad feelings the hand on his arm can evoke, has evoked over the millennia — but there is something entirely too surreal about watching that hand move, and only being able to guess what will happen next, when he can't see his own arm to know what to predict. It isn't like watching hand and arm alike, regardless of whether he could move his arm; it isn't even like being blindfolded, and having no idea which way that hand will move, and having everything be an eventful surprise —
There is something very dangerous in the tone of God's voice, in the line of His body in the chair, in the way His hand tightens on Augustine's flesh, as if reminding him of a claim staked long, long ago, when the Resurrection was young, and memory less complicated.
(There is a door that is still mostly open, on the other side of the room, because nobody asked Alfred to close it, and he's really not in the best of moods, after God tried to suggest that Trench was so terrible a place to land — he wasn't about to volunteer, especially when he still thinks Augustine should go back to his own bed, alone, and sleep this off.)
Augustine has been asked a question, and the question itself has promptly fled his mind with too much attention paid to the grip on his arm. He could ask for the question to be repeated, but — well, there's an older, well-established option that is probably going to work just as well, if not better.
He sinks to his knees, beside God's chair, even as His grip on his arm means the flesh twists and aches, and he asks, plaintive and meek and wobbly and all-too-genuine:
"Have I ... displeased you, my Lord?"
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He sounds so desperate, is the thing.
But Alfred's in his ears, saying fuel for a furnace, and he doesn't want to talk about it. Talking about it is, honestly, the very last thing he is interested in doing. They'll have to, eventually; but they're old, and eventually can be a long time. Eventually can be a day he doesn't feel so pinned and on display, so backed into a fucking corner. He knows Augustine will let him forestall that hurt, if only for a little while.
"Only if you weren't planning to clue me in to this," he says, with all the distance of levity. When he says this, he shifts his grip back down the smooth stretch of Augustine's forearm; his hand again becomes a warm and steady shackle upon Augustine's wrist. "Seriously, should I ask? Am I going to find a statue in a compromising position somewhere?"
Whatever he's looking at, it must be the Pthumerian game of the day. This is exactly his point.
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Nor any way that the brush of Augustine's lips against the pulse point on that wrist is an accident, either.
"You seemed," Augustine continues serenely, as if that touch has grounded him, "awfully fond of the full-body leather suit, after all. I figured I'd just keep wearing it, for now."
(Implied: for you.)
There's a faint and delicate pressure just above John's knee, exploring his rectus femoris, no doubt anticipating the chance to run from insertion all the way up to the origin — his free hand happy to explore for as long as it's allowed such familiarity.
"I'm not —" He stops, uncertain, unsettled, again, by the vaguest of memories of what might have happened after the unfortunately-not-vague-enough memories involving statues, here, in this room — when God was in this chair, to begin with, wasn't he? Wasn't that where He Himself had been afflicted? "I'm — I'm just me, my Lord," is more of a whisper, again.
(He is nothing but a voice and two points of contact: a wrist held in a hand, a hand on a thigh — and the glimmer of his soul, masked and hidden by Pthumerian interference, such that no one could possibly see him, under any circumstances, surely — except that, of course, God raised his soul from the dead; how could He not retain dominion over it? How could He ever not know the shape of Augustine's soul, and perceive it, when He saw it even as a squid?)
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"The plague doctor thing is pretty cool," he allows. "But this seems worth having a look at."
It's a joke: there is nothing to see. He could still make it a very thorough inspection.
Across the room, a ward evaporates, and a sliver of bone folds itself outwards into a skeleton. Politely, it shuts the door, flicks the lock, and crumbles back down to dust. It's only fair that if Augustine can come staggering into his office and lock the door, John can turn it around on him, right? There's no whiskey on Augustine's breath, no slur in his voice but the sweet fumble of wanting it. It's only fair.
"Just Augustine," he echoes, rolling the concept in his mouth: considering it, like he means to assure one of them. Both of them, maybe. "Just Augustine is all I need."
(He doesn't correct the Lord. He doesn't unpack this into all the things Augustine has, apparently, been wanting him to say. He'd rather do something Alfred isn't inclined to watch from the shadows; he'd rather do something just the two of them, and not have to drown in thinking about it.)
He does not discourage the hand on his thigh. His free hand moves through the air, unerring in the empty space, to trace the line of Augustine's bowed neck. There is a new and interesting thrill to seeing nothing, visually, and still finding heat and the shiver of thalergy beneath his fingertips. There is a reassuring certainty in being able to map out this familiar body beneath his hands.
casually nsfw
Later, when Augustine will have eaten something else, will have had something else to drink, will have cleared the obsessive effect from his system — when the grape-colored tint finally falls away from his gaze, where it's currently coloring everything he sees as he stares up at John — it's going to hurt, to think that those six words could have such an effect on him as this: the way he's shuddering, just a little, at the warm certainty at the back of his neck; the way he wants to cry, and laugh, and throw himself into John's lap, maybe all at once; the way those six words are all he needs to hear —
It's going to hurt, because they aren't all he needs to hear; there's so much more that he needs, that he's owed, maybe, after centuries and millennia of we can talk about this later when the later never comes — it's going to hurt, because he may be, as it were, under the influence, but he isn't drunk; he isn't drugged; he is, in fact, just Augustine, without even a scrap of fabric to hide behind and claim some kind of modesty or dignity — it's just that 'just Augustine' is not the same, at the moment, as 'Augustine in full possession of all his memories and senses'.
This is just Augustine who adores God, and just Augustine who adores John, and it's going to hurt, later, when he can remember every part of this perfectly, every sensation, every sound, every moment — when he can shut his eyes and replay the sights of this interlude, as he watches John react to him — eyes open, eyes closed — reacting to touches that Augustine himself can't see, even though he remembers touching John; reacting to the sight of his own flesh falling prey to the magic ensorcelling Augustine's body, disappearing when it passes those boundaries, and no matter that he could still feel everything —
It's going to hurt, when he replays all those sights, every desperate moment as his eyes were watching God, watching John — because he won't be in a single one of them.