Fic: Unholy, Dirty, and Beautiful.
I'm tempted to do some seriously TMI ranting about post-procedure stuff, but I'll spare you all. Long story short: OW and EW. Instead, have random fic I didn't plan on writing and had never thought of before......ooooooohhhhhhhhhhh, two hours ago?
Also! Song from the title.
Title: Unholy, Dirty, and Beautiful
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Glimbrose/Cain, oneside-ish-kinda-but-not-really Ambrose/The Queen.
Warnings: Artsy. Weird. Not looked over at all. Written while still half high. Angst/hurt/comfort/bizzare-not-addiction/ETC! Once again, stiiilllll hyped up on pain meds...
Summary: To his horror, Cain tries to help him, and kind of actually does.
Unholy, Dirty and Beautiful
He can’t remember being this angry at anyone before. He’s not even sure if it counts as anger, really - he knows all the reasons that make it forgivable, and he does forgive him for it, forgave him the moment he said it.
It doesn’t stop him from wanting to strangle him to death, though.
It’s like some endless frustration that’s been wearing him down and down and down, longer than he can even remember, as if the world’s been spinning him into string and Cain’s the scissors hovering above him, quiet but always there.
“How was I supposed to know?” Cain defends himself, and all he can do is glare and wish he was as angry as he would be with almost anyone else. “I just suggested she go inside! It was raining-”
The Queen’s already been through enough that she doesn’t need to even have the words ‘inside’ and ‘rain’ in the same sentence to have her jaw tightening and walking briskly towards her husband. It’s just like how Azkadellia still has trouble looking at the sky, like DG doesn’t like caves, like Tutor still turns into a dog when a room’s that much darker, like Raw insisted on taking Kalm and more or less running back to his people after things got settled. It’s like how you don’t say Adora around Cain and Zero around Jeb and everyone tries to maneuver around the scar still burning into his head, no matter how much hair he has to brush over it now that he can wash his hair without the fear of getting soap in his brain.
He doesn’t say anything, but Cain knows to stop anyway, looking at him and trying to figure out if he’s Glitch or Ambrose. He’s both, really, but it seems to matter to all the others, as if there’s no middle ground he can stand on, only black or white and no shades of grey.
“I didn’t want her getting sick,” Cain finally says. He knows the Queen’s a touchy subject with him - he gave his life and mind for her once, and they both know he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. He loves her in a way that goes so far beyond anything describable that even the thought of kissing her is sacrilegious. Cain knows that soulless devotion. How can he not? He’s the scissors hovering over the string, always there, always ready to break him.
“Just don’t do it again,” he says. His voice is quiet, but definitely loud enough for Cain to hear. They’ve taken to standing close together and neither can really say why - they know why, but they don’t say. Saying it would make him snap, and Cain’s seen him snap once before. It ended with Ahamo near tears and DG having to slap him to make him stop shouting and demanding to know why he’d left her alone with robots on the Otherside.
It all worked out, Glitch, DG had said, a hand on his shoulder, anchoring him and pushing that cool fury that built and built and built in him ever since the surgery. She’d said it all worked out, but it all would have worked out better if Ahamo had managed to get his act together and realized DG was more important to the quest than even the Emerald of the Eclipse.
“Don’t try to help her?” Cain asks, obviously horrified at the thought. “Gli…Amb-”
They try so hard to figure him out, try so carefully, and the tiny screw keeping the blades on the scissors together squeaks just a little, the jaws nearly closing. “Want me to start talking about how your wife’s dead because of you, Cain?” he finally asks, and Cain turns white even though he glares fire at him. “I’m not going to. But that’s just one step past what you did to her.”
“I told her to get out of the rain, Glitch!” Cain snaps. Everything’s close to snapping.
“She couldn’t!” he finds himself shouting back. “For ten annuals she was stuck in floods and downpours and deserts and couldn’t get out, and you go and tell her to get back in!”
“I didn’t say that and you know it,” Cain growls, and tries to turn away, obviously trying to avoid the argument by walking away. He doesn’t let him get further than two steps, pushing him into the wall and holding him there with a hand on Cain’s surprised chest, feeling it move up and down, up and down. “Let me go.”
“Don’t ever do that to her again,” he says instead. There’s no snip in his head, not yet, but Cain’s pushing. He shouldn’t push, but Cain’s always been one to ignore the sane thing to do and concentrates on what he thinks is right and just and honest, an idealist to such epic proportions he doesn’t even realize he’s the only one with ideals.
Cain glares, but nods. “I didn’t think about it,” he grudgingly admits. “I was trying to help.”
“You’re always trying to help.”
Cain frowns, obviously picking up on the bitterness in his voice, but he’s the one walking away now. He got what he wanted for now. The scissors are easing up just enough that he can breathe without heaving, that he can see without the corners blurring, that he can’t hear the counting in his head anymore.
But Cain’s always trying to help.
It isn’t anything particularly surprising to feel Cain’s hand go onto his shoulder, the other man stopping him to frown. “You okay?”
No is the honest answer, but Cain doesn’t need honesty, so he shrugs, looking to the side. “I care about her, and you hurt her.”
“You love her,” Cain says, as if it’s something it isn’t, something to be ashamed of, something dirty and guilty and a long, lonely secret.
But there’s still a bit of truth to it. He loves her like people breathe, and they’ve been the same thing for him longer than his brain will let him look back. He thinks of it in the same way - he feels like he’d die if he stopped, doesn’t even think about it while it goes on and on and on.
The hand on his shoulder tightens. “Hey. It’s okay. I know you’re not the type of man who’d-”
The scissors squeal, backing away in anticipation and humming as he twirls and twirls and twirls, and they snap together with the force of a starving shark. They blissfully break him, and he snaps, grabs Cain and slams him into the wall again, harder, hand shaking.
Cain’s a smart guy. He knows there’s something different about this time, and he can read him well enough to watch everything come into place.
Cain’s the scissors, truly sharpest when he opens up only to shut back down on someone, and he isn’t about to let that happen. He’s already been cut one too many times, already been run ragged and bruised and left out in the cold like the runt of the litter they just can’t afford to feed, and he can’t afford to be cut in two again, not when there’s no zipper to take refuge in anymore, no jagged way to close a wound up. He’s shaking and tempted to just run, but he’s already snapped.
“Not like that. Never like that,” he says, voice shaking just like his hand, and Cain always tries to help. He nods, heart still in his eyes, and tries to carefully move his hand off the same rusted vest he had a year ago, but he doesn’t let him. The hand stays, and the other grabs Cain by his hair and pulls the very surprised blond into a kiss.
It’s short, and his eyes are squeezed shut so tightly he could rival air locks as he just feels Cain’s frozen lips, like it’s the Northern Island all over again and he’s not breathing, the blanket on him killing instead of warming, and the thought finally clicks.
He pulls away, looking at Cain’s rabbit-shocked face. “You really are afraid of water now,” he says, amazed a bit at the realization. “Gods, you must be scared of so many things. How do you get through the day with a phobia list that-”
Cain pulls him back, kisses him, and he can finally see the handle with care sticker on Cain’s heart instead of just the holes in it that are killing him slowly. They’re still there, but it’s like the sticker’s coating some of them, keeping him alive just that bit longer. Cain kisses him, and he kisses back easy and simple, like the third grade of kissing.
He pulls back, and Cain looks like he’s being lied to. He wonders if the scissors managed to break along with him.
“You need to stop,” Cain says. He frowns, and Cain clears his throat. “Tell her how you feel.”
“Why do I need to tell her something she already knows?” he asks, and the hand on Cain’s chest slips lower, resting on his hip. “I technically let myself die for her. I pledged my life to her. I gave up my sanity to try and give her just a few more moments of freedom.” He says the last like it’s larger than all the others, because it is. His mind is the only thing he’s ever really valued about himself, and he gave up the only thing he would kill for without a fight, just to give her a few moments by the creek.
It’s like breathing, is all. He can’t do anything else, and would never want to.
Cain looks like he’s about to try and help again, and he might even find some way to teach him to hold his breath, but he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to hear Cain trying to help him with something he doesn’t want help with, and shuts him up with another tug on his hair, kissing him hard enough that Cain actually makes a noise between a whine and a groan and kisses back, graduating and heading for the Academy, a please surfacing at the beginning of the label binding his heart together. Arms pull him chest-to-chest, Cain still trying to help, to protect him from something he doesn’t think he needs protecting from.
He’s seen addicts, but living for one person and keeping them happy doesn’t need an intervention. It doesn’t need a twelve step program, doesn’t need anything because there’s nothing wrong with it. Cain hasn’t said a word, but it’s like the words are coming out of his lips as they kiss, telling him he needs to move on and learn to hold his breath, but everyone dies if they don’t breathe.
He pulls away again, knowing as soon as Cain looks at him the entire conversation will be over. He says it anyway, letting his head be supported by Cain’s shoulder, practically hugging him like a life raft. “There’s nothing wrong with caring about someone,” he says. Cain smells like oak and home and heat on a cloudy day.
He feels Cain nod, and knows it’s all over, the spindle slowing its sickening spin as Cain hugs him back. “No,” he says. Cain doesn’t say a name, and for some reason he knows Cain knows him. It’s terrifying and comforting and dangerous in a way he’d never even considered before. “There’s nothing wrong with caring about people.”
He nods, not sure what else there is to do, eyes open and staring at the continuously flawed leather of the vest, each blemish and scratch unique in such a normal way that they’re almost boring.
“You care about everyone,” Cain continued on, trying to sound casual even if he sounded like he was trying to laugh off a corpse beneath his floorboards. “Try to even it out some, is all.”
Cain was trying to help, and to his mounting horror, he realized the man actually was.
“I wouldn’t object to some more caring,” Cain said lightly, and this time there wasn’t a corpse under the floorboards, just a box of embarrassing childhood pictures and old love letters from people he couldn’t remember all that well anymore.
He laughs at that, and raises his head just enough to smile at Cain and kiss him, a soft promise. “We can work on that,” he smiles against Cain’s cheek. Cain smiles, too. It’s that big goofy smile he gets when he’s happy enough to almost be embarrassed about it, almost think he doesn’t deserve it, and he wonders if those scissors had been more like tweezers, nothing but concentrated pressure.
They actually hold hands. He figures that bumps them all the way back to kindergarten, really, but the kiss that follows makes him decide they’re more like terrifyingly intelligent seven-year-olds with no idea where to go or what to do, aside from that it’d probably be together.
He smiles for Cain, but he still breathes.
Also! Song from the title.
Title: Unholy, Dirty, and Beautiful
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Glimbrose/Cain, oneside-ish-kinda-but-not-really Ambrose/The Queen.
Warnings: Artsy. Weird. Not looked over at all. Written while still half high. Angst/hurt/comfort/bizzare-not-addiction/ETC! Once again, stiiilllll hyped up on pain meds...
Summary: To his horror, Cain tries to help him, and kind of actually does.
Unholy, Dirty and Beautiful
He can’t remember being this angry at anyone before. He’s not even sure if it counts as anger, really - he knows all the reasons that make it forgivable, and he does forgive him for it, forgave him the moment he said it.
It doesn’t stop him from wanting to strangle him to death, though.
It’s like some endless frustration that’s been wearing him down and down and down, longer than he can even remember, as if the world’s been spinning him into string and Cain’s the scissors hovering above him, quiet but always there.
“How was I supposed to know?” Cain defends himself, and all he can do is glare and wish he was as angry as he would be with almost anyone else. “I just suggested she go inside! It was raining-”
The Queen’s already been through enough that she doesn’t need to even have the words ‘inside’ and ‘rain’ in the same sentence to have her jaw tightening and walking briskly towards her husband. It’s just like how Azkadellia still has trouble looking at the sky, like DG doesn’t like caves, like Tutor still turns into a dog when a room’s that much darker, like Raw insisted on taking Kalm and more or less running back to his people after things got settled. It’s like how you don’t say Adora around Cain and Zero around Jeb and everyone tries to maneuver around the scar still burning into his head, no matter how much hair he has to brush over it now that he can wash his hair without the fear of getting soap in his brain.
He doesn’t say anything, but Cain knows to stop anyway, looking at him and trying to figure out if he’s Glitch or Ambrose. He’s both, really, but it seems to matter to all the others, as if there’s no middle ground he can stand on, only black or white and no shades of grey.
“I didn’t want her getting sick,” Cain finally says. He knows the Queen’s a touchy subject with him - he gave his life and mind for her once, and they both know he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. He loves her in a way that goes so far beyond anything describable that even the thought of kissing her is sacrilegious. Cain knows that soulless devotion. How can he not? He’s the scissors hovering over the string, always there, always ready to break him.
“Just don’t do it again,” he says. His voice is quiet, but definitely loud enough for Cain to hear. They’ve taken to standing close together and neither can really say why - they know why, but they don’t say. Saying it would make him snap, and Cain’s seen him snap once before. It ended with Ahamo near tears and DG having to slap him to make him stop shouting and demanding to know why he’d left her alone with robots on the Otherside.
It all worked out, Glitch, DG had said, a hand on his shoulder, anchoring him and pushing that cool fury that built and built and built in him ever since the surgery. She’d said it all worked out, but it all would have worked out better if Ahamo had managed to get his act together and realized DG was more important to the quest than even the Emerald of the Eclipse.
“Don’t try to help her?” Cain asks, obviously horrified at the thought. “Gli…Amb-”
They try so hard to figure him out, try so carefully, and the tiny screw keeping the blades on the scissors together squeaks just a little, the jaws nearly closing. “Want me to start talking about how your wife’s dead because of you, Cain?” he finally asks, and Cain turns white even though he glares fire at him. “I’m not going to. But that’s just one step past what you did to her.”
“I told her to get out of the rain, Glitch!” Cain snaps. Everything’s close to snapping.
“She couldn’t!” he finds himself shouting back. “For ten annuals she was stuck in floods and downpours and deserts and couldn’t get out, and you go and tell her to get back in!”
“I didn’t say that and you know it,” Cain growls, and tries to turn away, obviously trying to avoid the argument by walking away. He doesn’t let him get further than two steps, pushing him into the wall and holding him there with a hand on Cain’s surprised chest, feeling it move up and down, up and down. “Let me go.”
“Don’t ever do that to her again,” he says instead. There’s no snip in his head, not yet, but Cain’s pushing. He shouldn’t push, but Cain’s always been one to ignore the sane thing to do and concentrates on what he thinks is right and just and honest, an idealist to such epic proportions he doesn’t even realize he’s the only one with ideals.
Cain glares, but nods. “I didn’t think about it,” he grudgingly admits. “I was trying to help.”
“You’re always trying to help.”
Cain frowns, obviously picking up on the bitterness in his voice, but he’s the one walking away now. He got what he wanted for now. The scissors are easing up just enough that he can breathe without heaving, that he can see without the corners blurring, that he can’t hear the counting in his head anymore.
But Cain’s always trying to help.
It isn’t anything particularly surprising to feel Cain’s hand go onto his shoulder, the other man stopping him to frown. “You okay?”
No is the honest answer, but Cain doesn’t need honesty, so he shrugs, looking to the side. “I care about her, and you hurt her.”
“You love her,” Cain says, as if it’s something it isn’t, something to be ashamed of, something dirty and guilty and a long, lonely secret.
But there’s still a bit of truth to it. He loves her like people breathe, and they’ve been the same thing for him longer than his brain will let him look back. He thinks of it in the same way - he feels like he’d die if he stopped, doesn’t even think about it while it goes on and on and on.
The hand on his shoulder tightens. “Hey. It’s okay. I know you’re not the type of man who’d-”
The scissors squeal, backing away in anticipation and humming as he twirls and twirls and twirls, and they snap together with the force of a starving shark. They blissfully break him, and he snaps, grabs Cain and slams him into the wall again, harder, hand shaking.
Cain’s a smart guy. He knows there’s something different about this time, and he can read him well enough to watch everything come into place.
Cain’s the scissors, truly sharpest when he opens up only to shut back down on someone, and he isn’t about to let that happen. He’s already been cut one too many times, already been run ragged and bruised and left out in the cold like the runt of the litter they just can’t afford to feed, and he can’t afford to be cut in two again, not when there’s no zipper to take refuge in anymore, no jagged way to close a wound up. He’s shaking and tempted to just run, but he’s already snapped.
“Not like that. Never like that,” he says, voice shaking just like his hand, and Cain always tries to help. He nods, heart still in his eyes, and tries to carefully move his hand off the same rusted vest he had a year ago, but he doesn’t let him. The hand stays, and the other grabs Cain by his hair and pulls the very surprised blond into a kiss.
It’s short, and his eyes are squeezed shut so tightly he could rival air locks as he just feels Cain’s frozen lips, like it’s the Northern Island all over again and he’s not breathing, the blanket on him killing instead of warming, and the thought finally clicks.
He pulls away, looking at Cain’s rabbit-shocked face. “You really are afraid of water now,” he says, amazed a bit at the realization. “Gods, you must be scared of so many things. How do you get through the day with a phobia list that-”
Cain pulls him back, kisses him, and he can finally see the handle with care sticker on Cain’s heart instead of just the holes in it that are killing him slowly. They’re still there, but it’s like the sticker’s coating some of them, keeping him alive just that bit longer. Cain kisses him, and he kisses back easy and simple, like the third grade of kissing.
He pulls back, and Cain looks like he’s being lied to. He wonders if the scissors managed to break along with him.
“You need to stop,” Cain says. He frowns, and Cain clears his throat. “Tell her how you feel.”
“Why do I need to tell her something she already knows?” he asks, and the hand on Cain’s chest slips lower, resting on his hip. “I technically let myself die for her. I pledged my life to her. I gave up my sanity to try and give her just a few more moments of freedom.” He says the last like it’s larger than all the others, because it is. His mind is the only thing he’s ever really valued about himself, and he gave up the only thing he would kill for without a fight, just to give her a few moments by the creek.
It’s like breathing, is all. He can’t do anything else, and would never want to.
Cain looks like he’s about to try and help again, and he might even find some way to teach him to hold his breath, but he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to hear Cain trying to help him with something he doesn’t want help with, and shuts him up with another tug on his hair, kissing him hard enough that Cain actually makes a noise between a whine and a groan and kisses back, graduating and heading for the Academy, a please surfacing at the beginning of the label binding his heart together. Arms pull him chest-to-chest, Cain still trying to help, to protect him from something he doesn’t think he needs protecting from.
He’s seen addicts, but living for one person and keeping them happy doesn’t need an intervention. It doesn’t need a twelve step program, doesn’t need anything because there’s nothing wrong with it. Cain hasn’t said a word, but it’s like the words are coming out of his lips as they kiss, telling him he needs to move on and learn to hold his breath, but everyone dies if they don’t breathe.
He pulls away again, knowing as soon as Cain looks at him the entire conversation will be over. He says it anyway, letting his head be supported by Cain’s shoulder, practically hugging him like a life raft. “There’s nothing wrong with caring about someone,” he says. Cain smells like oak and home and heat on a cloudy day.
He feels Cain nod, and knows it’s all over, the spindle slowing its sickening spin as Cain hugs him back. “No,” he says. Cain doesn’t say a name, and for some reason he knows Cain knows him. It’s terrifying and comforting and dangerous in a way he’d never even considered before. “There’s nothing wrong with caring about people.”
He nods, not sure what else there is to do, eyes open and staring at the continuously flawed leather of the vest, each blemish and scratch unique in such a normal way that they’re almost boring.
“You care about everyone,” Cain continued on, trying to sound casual even if he sounded like he was trying to laugh off a corpse beneath his floorboards. “Try to even it out some, is all.”
Cain was trying to help, and to his mounting horror, he realized the man actually was.
“I wouldn’t object to some more caring,” Cain said lightly, and this time there wasn’t a corpse under the floorboards, just a box of embarrassing childhood pictures and old love letters from people he couldn’t remember all that well anymore.
He laughs at that, and raises his head just enough to smile at Cain and kiss him, a soft promise. “We can work on that,” he smiles against Cain’s cheek. Cain smiles, too. It’s that big goofy smile he gets when he’s happy enough to almost be embarrassed about it, almost think he doesn’t deserve it, and he wonders if those scissors had been more like tweezers, nothing but concentrated pressure.
They actually hold hands. He figures that bumps them all the way back to kindergarten, really, but the kiss that follows makes him decide they’re more like terrifyingly intelligent seven-year-olds with no idea where to go or what to do, aside from that it’d probably be together.
He smiles for Cain, but he still breathes.