still, lay it bare. (open)

[geometry]

Characters: Yelloweq and you
Setting: Floor 4; lounge. Backdated to the fifteenth.
Format: I'll do whatever, yo
Summary: The events of the last few weeks, including this goddamn sickness, finally hit Equius... and leave him as a screaming, shaking wreck clutching his head in the corner of a public area.
Warnings: Freakouts. Cursing. Oh, so much cursing.

[It hurts. Make it stop. Someone make it stop.]

[For quite a while now, Equius has been having some... upsets with this sickness that's going around. As if he really needed to be sick alongside the freezing coldness of the Tower and the whole debacle that had gone down with Eridan the other day. Those two things alone were enough to break his brain. But as if destiny really had to make it worse, there seemed to be a few unpleasant side effects to this damn cold. Nothing quite seems... right anymore. He can feel it. Everything in his perception has been altered -- all that physics-breaking he hates so much, that gives him the headaches so bad he has to avoid some floors altogether? Well, it now follows him around. So to all other residents of the Tower, the fourth floor looks just like it would on any other day. But for the one troll now staggering down the stairs (he hasn't been able to walk straight for quite a while), it's just enough to push him over the edge for reals.]

Oh god. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No no no no no no no no nonononononono...

[...Or maybe it was that he hasn't eaten anything for two days. That could be the reason too. Really, there were a lot of reasons why he could have been pushed over the edge this month. Maybe he had just been good at keeping them bottled until now, hidden under an oversized coat. But now he was repeating the word "no" many more times than a sane, healthy person would, at least until they escalated into something else. Somewhere between a cry and a whine:]

Make it stop!

[Whatever the cause, the fact of the matter was: the walls were spinning. There was a heartbeat shaking the room like small, steady earthquakes. The floor tilted in ways that Equius' Spacey sensibilities didn't think possible. It was nauseating for a normal person, sure; but add that to the fact that even the perception of warped Space brought on the damn migraines (which had gotten much worse since yesterday), what he did next shouldn't have come as a surprise. Though to anyone else in the room, it certainly would have come as a shock.]

[Equius screamed.]

MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP--

[Loud and long, it was the kind of howling that could curdle blood, the #1 sign of a breaking mind. Someone on the next floor up or down could hear it quite clearly, since he wasn't that far from the staircase. And it didn't stop. It kept going for -- fuck, how long, a minute maybe? Something like that. We just don't know. Equius didn't know. He just screamed until his lungs couldn't do that anymore, and the lack of oxygen made his head swim even more, so he just kind of staggered off into the glass, letting his forehead loll onto it when he did. The icy coldness of the unbreakable glass made him scream more, but it was a sensation that wasn't the feeling of his brain leaking out his ears, so that was probably good. He threw his palms onto the glass too. Sure. Why not. WHY THE FUCK NOT.]

[He just kind of... keeled over from there, would be the best way to describe it. Eventually, all that was left on Floor Four was a troll trying to cram himself into the corner between the glass and the floor, clutching his head and shaking like a leaf, making these horrible pained sounds as he went. Fortunately, they were much quieter.]

[Equius won't be going anywhere for a while. Hope you guys brought earbuds.]

Comments

i think you mean equius yes

[hystericull]

[Gamzee is thoroughly entertained, thank you.]

[Maybe he'd been wrong about the "mental breakdowns make one more dangerous" bit. Maybe the opposite was true in Equius' case. To be fair, he'd only encountered a few of them in his lifetime, so he couldn't be the authority on all forms of psychosis that weren't directly related to himself.]

[With a cruel, honking laugh that was sure to scrape the eardrums out of the poor, writhing boy on the floor, Gamzee participated in what was now a pretty sick duet. If he may, Equius, he's just going to shove you onto your back with his shoe, keeping a foot firmly planted on a shoulder as he throws his ass onto a nice spot of yellowblood stomach.]

You're makin' some motherfuckin' pretty music for me, motherfucker.

[Time to pull the finger out of his nose and place a hand just in front of his eyes.]

If I be all closing at my motherfucking lookstubs, almost makes the whole fuckin' production pretty.

no i'm pretty sure it's equius no

[geometry]

[He could have been wrong, yes. Or he could have been absolutely right. Either way, it made no difference in this situation. In a normal state of mind, he would have been correct the first time; Equius would have snapped his shit like a new rave glowstick and gone killer on Gamzee’s ass. Right now, though – unless Equius suddenly developed an all-encompassing Spacey optic blast, there was no way in hell he was going to be able to even land a hit. His senses were too messed up for that. The eye beams would have all of the precision and delicacy of Sollux after eating the mind honey, but hey, at least they would hurt the fucker.]

[Unfortunately, Equius wasn’t at the level of destructive Spacey eye beams. He wasn’t even at the level where he could do something with his powers other than get horrible headaches from them. …At some point, he might, and they would be just as good as any psionics. Gamzee’d better hope that day doesn’t come, because if it does, he is going to be in for a world of lime-green Princely pain.]

[But for now? FUN FUN FUN FUN LOOKING FORWARD TO KILLING THE MUSTARDBLOOD—wait shit what’s going on?]

[As soon as Gamzee parked his ass down there, Equius moved again. Fast. His movements were pretty quick normally, and not being able to figure out what the shit he would be doing the next second put him much more into the mindset of an actual fight. This wasn’t an escape. Equius was being threatened by something when he was down, so simple troll insticts told him to fix that; he didn’t have enough brainpower to stop himself.]

[Equius reached up the arm that wasn’t trapped under a pair of legs and grabbed for whatever part of Gamzee he made contact with. (Depending on eyesight to tell him what he was snatching was a bad idea.) It felt like hair, a lot of hair, so he decided (in the loosest sense of the word) to push back with as much force as he could muster – pain into energy, you know how it goes – to hopefully slam Gamzee into the wall. And if not, he’d just yank it downward.]

you wanna fight about this punk

[hystericull]

[It was, in 20/20 hindsight, pretty stupid of Gamzee to let his guard down. Picking on Equius was just so easy and rewarding, that his mostly-impenetrable guard was momentarily forgotten in favor of complete focus on his torment of the kid.]

[In a flash that was admittedly quick, there were fingers twisting in his hair - an obvious attempt motivated purely by desperation, but dangerous nonetheless. In the time it took to be knocked back against the wall, Gamzee had decided that it wasn't very wise to get too ahead of himself.]

[The force of the collision hurt his spine, and that hurt encouraged a return blow. Namely, a wordless punch aimed at the pissblood's face.]

only if you think you can take it

[geometry]

[...Yeah, that was pretty stupid of you, sorry. But there’s nothing to be done about it now but get into a good old fashioned fistclawtoothfight. There wasn’t really much room for him to dodge the blow, and he didn’t exactly see it coming until it was practically right there, so Equius took a fist to the face — which pushed his head back into the ground, making it rattle dangerously. To say that he was at a disadvantage here was putting it very mildly. Gamzee wasn’t almost completely disoriented and unaware of the world around him, for one thing. But at such close range, Equius could flail randomly like he just did and still get some hits in, as long as he was willing to take what Gamzee could deal out. Which was a lot.]

[Well, see how that works for ya, Equius. In the meantime, he’s going to try to squirm out from under Gamzee, hopefully causing the indigo to slam into a wall again and Equius to have his back to him. But he couldn’t exactly tell which way was the wall, and therefore picked a random direction. So there’s that.]

[hystericull]

[Equius was stronger than Gamzee had given him credit for, that much was true. Of course, he was still a woobie little stringbean, but he had some force behind those flails, man. Gamzee was thrown off numerous times before he wised up, reaching out to dig his claws into the boy's arms to anchor himself. Now, all the flailing did was throw Gamzee's arms around as well. Equius had managed to flip himself around with all of that bouncing, but it didn't really matter. With a grip on his upper arms, it was easy for Gamzee to throw all of his weight against the yellowblood's back.]

[Fucking lords, get back on the damn floor, you crazy piece of shit.]

[Hopefully the force of Gamzee's shove would be enough to get Equius pinned to the ground again. From there, he could work on at least knocking the lunatic out or something. Not that this wasn't thoroughly enjoyable in and of itself!]

[geometry]

[Ouch. He should have expected Gamzee to use him as a balance, and the sharp claws went farther into his arm than he was absolutely comfortable with. After a few seconds, they started bleeding, smearing yellow all over the place. Equius screamed at the same time, a really unattractive feral thing that Gamzee was probably no stranger to, because he was still a woobie little stringbean at the end of the day. And that was why Gamzee’s frantic bid to get him to the ground actually did work out. With arms bleeding out and a much stronger troll than he pinned on top of him, any more movement would just cause him pain in the long run.]

[Equius didn’t care very much about pain at this point, though. It could just keep on coming. Made no difference to him.]

[He could certainly tell what was on top of him, though, and his arms hadn’t given out completely yet. So while Gamzee just sat on his back and dug his hands in, spilling yellow swill from Equius’ forearms, he reached up to do the same thing to Gamzee’s elbows (or nearby areas — aiming was kind of difficult, for obvious reasons).]

[hystericull]

[Those shitscraping nails, for fuck's sake. They tore up his hide and peeled the grape juice right up from under it, turning his arms into a melange of purple blood trickles - something he wasn't too happy about, although it did put to shame the disgusting mustard that shared the same air.]

[It was time to get this screeching lowblood to settle the fuck down. Even though he wished he could hear these shouts of agony all day long, he would much prefer to record them and enjoy them at a time where his skin wasn't getting ripped off of him.]

[Angrily, Gamzee shoved his knee between Equius' shoulderblades, throwing his torso back against the ground and releasing the grip on one of the boy's arms so he could aim a fist straight to the back of his head.]

[geometry]

[Das rood, Makara. Actually everything about you is rood, it’s kind of a given by this point, but that is especially rood. But hey, Equius does know this — there’s a really great thing that happens when people are winding up for a punch. They first, obviously, have to take their arm off of you if it happened to be on you earlier, which is a good thing. But Equius could also sorta-kinda feel Gamzee’s weight lift off of his back on one side, and get heavier on the other. There’s not a lot of time for interpretation on that, but usually, when someone’s putting their weight like that...]

[...it’s really easy to topple them over from the stomach down.]

[So don’t mind Equius just pushing his entire body upwards on the side Gamzee moved away from, including an elbow aimed for his gut. Even if he could just cause the boy to lose traction on his shoes and fall, that would be brilliant.]

[hystericull]

[The sharp bone to Gamzee's innards succeeded in knocking the wind out of him - a burst of air accompanied by a strangled honk. He didn't take the pain gracefully at all, twisting any facial feature that had been left untwisted until his entire visage was a strange mix of anger and exasperation. After desperately sucking some air back into his lungs, he powered through the stiff ache in his gut, closing the short distance between them to prevent Equius from getting any more hits in. By this point, the yellowblood had probably risen a little, and he wasn't going to let that action progress.]

[What would come next would be more of a forceful tackle, instead of a slight shifting of weight. Gamzee threw himself into Equius' side, teeth and claws bared. If he was going to be subjected to elbows and screeching lowbloods, he was going to let Equius crack whatever parts of him he wanted - as long as it meant he got to rip large amounts of flesh off of him as a result.]

[He was aiming for vital spots along his face and neck. Shit was about to get primal in here.]

[geometry]

[And then, shit got primal. The end.]