engineers: (everybody gangsta)
bixing the science king ([personal profile] engineers) wrote2023-02-03 05:50 pm
Entry tags:
awol: manhua. (049.)

sweatyyyy

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-03 11:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[ everything is wrong. it's not quiet enough, he can breathe, and when his eyes snap open and the unfamiliar clothing locks into place as details taken in by the millisecond he knows that he is not adrift any longer. he blinks slowly, though his instincts are honed, a knife of a man first. his fingers close fast around lu bixing's wrist.

this isn't right. this...

god this highlighter pink is killing his eyes. he squints. while his wounds are healed, everything in him is still swimming, nerves on fire down to his knees. they're breathing in the same air. he grabs his wrist just to pull him closer, like he's about to flutter away. fingers tangle in offensively bright fabric until his knuckles crack just a bit.

lu bixing. ]


You.

[ softer, his voice hoarse. ] You're here. How are you here...?

[ this is likely torture, tantalus, everything you want just out of reach. this is a dream, or a nightmare, there's no way... ]
awol: manhua. (037.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-04 12:00 am (UTC)(link)
[ so much happening in such a compressed moment in time, sucked down to the marrow, eviscerated by the toothy grip of the wormhole. he breathes in, he breathes out, slow and with the barest hint of a tremble. lin jingheng does not bow to fear, but he's been walking on his knees over grains of rice for too long. he hears the hiccup, and when he speaks his voice shakes like the softest twitching of a tree bough.

his he real? his thumb twitches, digging in. ]


I don't have an answer you'll like.

[ the silence in the lack of atmosphere, the constriction like a fist around his heart, by comparison lu bixing's voice is deafening. but it is the only thunderous sound he'll tolerate besides his heart pounding a pulse in his ears. he can't see or feel any dregs of zhanlu as he takes a mental inventory, running it parallel alongside the slowly mounting panic in his stomach.

there's a beat he holds himself still like a statue. he's desperate, grasping, clinging for some kind of anchor, but he feels like he's floating, disoriented still, and lu bixing is the only thing to moor him now. he take lu bixing's hand and pushes it to his chest, holds it there for a moment. it's stilted, jagged. but it's there. he should feel it, the human beat of him, pulse and all. ]


Alive... [ unspoken: we were so fucking close. ]
awol: sollamolla @ twitter (060.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-05 03:52 am (UTC)(link)
[ this isn't the safety of a shuttle, it's the safety of (warm) oxygen filling their lungs, the frigid horror of space kilometers away. he presses his forehead suddenly to lu bixing's a sharp "thunk" as they meet. ]

I...

[ he clutches him belatedly, it takes a moment, moving his fingers to tangle one in warm hair, the other at the waist of lu bixing's jumpsuit. ]

This isn't right.

[ it doesn't feel right. we can't be alive. lin jingheng knows that he died, he felt it, still feels it in how his insides churn. he doesn't say anything else, just shakes his head and holds tighter instead. distracts. he's thinner. the both of them are. ]

You're here with me. Fuck everything else.
awol: manhua. (037.)

W0, MONDAY

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-06 07:08 pm (UTC)(link)
[ where the fuck is he where is this little twink i'm going to find him. lin jingheng is going to deadass search the planetarium and library both up and down before slinking into the lap to check there too. any hits?

(if not he's rouning back to where bixing's room in the dorms ought to be.) ]
awol: manhua. (045.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-06 07:37 pm (UTC)(link)
[ fuckin coward he will strangle him (no). but yeah he does swing into this room with a very wild-eyed look for all of a moment before his shoulders relax, a barely too-visible motion... ]

Prime Minister.

Ran away after your crime, didn't you?
awol: sollamolla @ twitter (057.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-06 07:58 pm (UTC)(link)
A second count of fraud.

[ he leans back against the couch and lets himself sink into it. the doki is there, buried under the thousands of feet of "we are in hell."

when he leans, it is just a millimeter, enough to touch shoulder to shoulder. ]


You left quickly.
awol: manhua. (031.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-06 08:15 pm (UTC)(link)
[ he sees that. and oh... it kind of hurts. what is relearning this sort of thing after over a decade? lin jingheng feels rusted over, that he's trying to make his joints move in all of the right ways again. even then, theirs is a bridge fashioned carefully over so many years already. it's been left in disrepair.

so he scoots just a little closer. subtly. it is a subtle scoot to press a little closer, the way a cat might in their aloof way. ]


Did you? So soon?
Edited 2023-02-06 20:15 (UTC)
awol: sollamolla @ twitter (105.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-06 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
[ yeah, this is... this is definitely the puppy behavior that jingheng knows. he can practically hear every molecule in bixing's body vibrating for some sort of grasp of what once was.

what still is, just behind fogged glass.

i wish i could tell you what i did to get back to you. but he's always been of fewer words. so instead he reaches up a hand and very carefully sets it on lu bixing's wrist, pulling it forward to that he can cup the back of his hand and

just brings it up to hold it to his own cheek. ]


Wherever you go.

Even Hell.
awol: sollamolla @ twitter (106.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-07 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
[ lin jingheng thinks for a moment that he is still dreaming, drifting, pulling his consciousness back together slowly. but when teeth click against his own, he realizes just how flesh and blood under his fingers lu bixing is and holds faster to him like iron.

don't think about it, don't be afraid. he surges forward like he could consume the tremor behind his teeth. he bites down on his lip briefly like an animal. it's okay. i'm here. and then lets go.

his hand drifts up to curl into the fall of lu bixing's hair, his brow furrowed into concentration as he stays close, tethered without fear of floating away for just this moment. it passes, and he drifts back, eyes focused on him and only him.

of all the people who do not deserve this... lin jingheng feels the rage boiling behind his eyes, tight heat in his jaw as he nods. which he shouldn't because it makes him dizzy, and soon they're leaning against one another again, and jingheng can only try to hold less like a desperate drowning man and more like a solid pillar. ]


You look like you're going to fall over.
awol: sollamolla @ twitter (055.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-07 08:06 pm (UTC)(link)
[ it's critroles all over again but worse???? still, jingheng does emerge from the room very quietly, zhanlu on his arm. he's been up for a while, so hearing bixing move down the hall isn't too difficult. as he lifts his head, he sees the coffee and

glances down the hall before gently setting a hand on lu bixing's arm. ]


... You slept by yourself.

[ captain obvious but like THIS IS A COMPLAINT IN THE MOST LJH MANNER. he bumps him as he starts to walk them towards idk a source of food maybe. ]

Stay with me tonight.
awol: omoknunyi @ twitter (125.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-11 06:21 am (UTC)(link)
I told you I would.

[ nothing would stop him, not even death. clasping hands, there one moment, pain the next, and now this, just this. he clings to him with honesty now, letting his own face drift towards lu bixing's palm a moment to allow himself the honor.

he holds that hand to his face a selfish moment longer. ]


I... made a promise to you.

[ he focuses then on the little tug of lu bixing's mouth, and his own thumb slides up to hold his jaw, to stroke a little against that twitch. ]

Bixing.
Edited 2023-02-11 06:21 (UTC)
awol: sollamolla @ twitter (060.)

[personal profile] awol 2023-02-11 06:24 am (UTC)(link)
I'm sure.

[ here, in the privacy of just the two of them, he can say this. (later, he will find that it slips after half a bottle of whiskey, and all because of lu bixing's stupid little puppy face.)

he glances back at his and cosmos' room one more time. ]


I'm very sure.

You like him. [ bixing is just a puppy who loves (almost) everyone. ]

Page 1 of 19