2022-04-05: Songs of Better Days
- Log: 2022-04-05: Songs of Better Days
- Cast: Xander Lovell, Riley Arwell
- Where: Zoara Badlands
- Date: April 5, 2022
- Summary: As Xander suffers increasing pain from the Fangs’ curse, Riley seeks ways to distract him, including manipulating his emotions with magical music.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander is determined, but not optimistic. So he's disappointed, but not surprised, that they didn't find any viable prey along the way. With how common tragedy is across Filgaia and Lunar, they make it seem so easy. But Xander's trying to be the kind of disaster that isn't relentlessly hunted down by every Geohound, Drifter, and would-be hero their worlds have to offer.
Exhaustion takes its toll more than usual, and somewhere before sunset, he falls asleep. But pain doesn't give him much respite, and he's forced upright again with a wince.
He doesn't actually know what time it is or how long he slept for (not that late, and barely long at all), but fumbles to his alchemy table because he knows he's not getting back to it. And they'll need the supplies when stabbing someone earns them a fight with someone possessed by their own unfathomable power... or someone especially skilled with their chosen obsession of swords and/or sorcery.
Or ARMs. That's the worst one.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley is frustrated that they weren't able to find any promising prey by nightfall, but that seems to be their luck, lately. He sits by the fire, pondering -- Xander said together very forcefully, and even made him explicitly promise not to run off earlier today, so he probably shouldn’t go off hunting on his own. He's a little more tired than he would normally be, anyway. Carrying someone else around isn’t entirely trivial, even when it’s Xander.
Sometimes, when Xander is asleep or otherwise not looking, Riley uses the opportunity to indulge in the emotions that are otherwise not productive to their continued thriving. He's kind of doing that now -- staring into the dancing wisps of the fire, having a bit of a gloom, thinking about things like the amazing life they could have had together that he destroyed or the fact that the Fangs may have some horrible punishment for him as well that could be starting at any moment.
He glances back toward the tent, hoping Xander is finding some reprieve from the thorns in sleep and not just being tortured further in the Garden. He realizes Xander is up and poking at his alchemy, and tries to quickly wave away the cloud of self-indulgent misery to go check on him.
"Xander, how are you feeling?"
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
The curse of the Fangs has always been resistant to treatment. There's probably no way to dull the pain of it... Better to focus on the curatives. Xander busies himself quickly, falling into a familiar recipe routine, only to drop and spill a vial against the ground when for whatever damn reason his body takes offense at the direction one of his fingers moved.
"Fine," he chokes out instead, squeezing his thumb into the meat of his palm and chastising himself for a reflex that doesn't even do anything. He squirms, getting up off of sitting on his knees and, unable to find any comfortable position, flops halfway on the table's work surface to get some pressure off his legs and miserably lies there like a melted cat.
He breathes back in, slow, but shaken, and looks to Riley. "...What about you?" It's usually close together. Within the day. And what if it's Riley's throat again, or his chest, or burrowing in some new horrible configuration Xander hasn't thought to dread...
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley is answered by Xander dropping a vial with a flinch of pain and then melting onto his workbench. He makes a sad hum to communicate that he does not believe 'fine' is an accurate reflection of Xander's current state. He retrieves the vial and sits down near him where he has slumped and rubs his back a little, steering clear of the center where the thorns run down.
"There were a couple of things I was thinking we could try to distract you from being full of knives... there are those candies you made me that do fun sensory things, and then there's also... magic music..."
...What about you?
Riley reflexively squirms around a little to see if anything sharp demands his attention. "Still in suspense, it looks like."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
It's become such a habit that it's entirely possible that Xander's at least subconsciously aware how he says he's fine will communicate what Riley's looking for... while still maintaining the plausibly deniability to avoid being overly coddled.
Not that it ever stops Riley. Xander sighs and breathes a little easier with the attention, and that itself is getting dangerous. He can't be depending on this when whatever Riley's got hits him. Why can't Xander just get his act together?
Xander groans into the surface of the table at the mention of the candies, as if Riley had offered to torture him. More annoyingly, it's not the worst idea he's ever heard.
"Tell me when it happens," he says of the thorns, on the off chance Riley thinks to hide it. "Even if I'm screaming." Then he forces himself to sit up and look at Riley.
"...I wouldn't hate music."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Distracting Xander with even more random sensory inputs does run the risk of just overstimulating him... music it is.
"Let's see, maybe I'll try to do a memory, what's a time you were really relaxed..." Rather than waiting for an answer, he decides on his own and calls his Blood Guitar to form, beginning to strum a slow and peaceful melody. What he has settled on is a lazy summer afternoon from their early days of miniature adventures around Cereza. The earlier part of the day had been full of nonsense, including a capsizing handmade raft. His song focuses on the part of the day where they were lying around drying off in the sunshine, speculating about what the fish may have thought of the disturbance.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander opens his mouth to quip about when the hell that was ever reality, but Riley's already got his guitar and he shuts himself up to listen. The last time Xander can remember feeling relaxed was before --
Oh.
He uncurls himself from his tensed position, letting himself sink off the alchemy table enough that only his head is resting on it, arms around it. This magic music is terrifying in some ways. Xander swears he can feel the sunshine, even though the sun's since set where they are. There's a twitch in his lips and it's funny, it's strange, because he's threatening to laugh at words he can't quite remember. Just the sentiment.
Xander sinks his fingers into his own mess of hair and lets it engulf him, and he's not sure if the tears gathering at his eye are from nostalgia or from the lingering pain.
When it falls he sucks in a breath. "Keep playing." Not that Riley has to. Just that this shouldn't be the sign to stop.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Oh good, he is making Xander cry, but Xander wants to keep crying, because that's the state of their relationship and what passes for a good time for Xander now.
Riley winces but plays on, sending sunshine and idle chatter and echoes of their dreams for the future they didn't know yet was going to end up twisted into a horror show.
The song comes to an end after a while, as even magic songs must, and Riley begins to contemplate another memory to share. But then--
"OW, FUCK!"
Pain in his neck -- sharp and invasive and unpleasant as ever, but... ... ultimately pretty familiar. He feels around, finding a small, thorny tendril emerging from the left side. Checks his hand for blood and only finds a few stray drops from where it's seeping out around the vine that came to the surface. Tests his voice for anything jabbing around on the inside. "...I think it's just normal. Does it look normal?"
If thorns growing out of your skin can ever be called normal.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander presses his hand against his eye and tries to pretend like he isn't crying. He is. Silent and steady. He feels so stupid and so weak and then he reminds himself what other people think strength looks like and he doesn't want that either.
His tears stop before the song does and he lets it wash over him, settling in the quiet to follow until Riley interjects and Xander shoots straight upright, jerking around to look at him in preemptive horror.
He does not breathe again until he sees where the flower is, carefully moving in and ignoring the complaints in his limbs. Xander grabs Riley's wrist to stop him so he can see. The neck, lightly bloodied where it sprouted. Riley speaks and it's a relief so strong Xander's surprised he doesn't collapse.
"Normal," Xander says with a huff, sarcastic enough to be a question, but also a confirmation. Their normal. Xander produces his kerchief and gently dabs at Riley's neck to clean what little blood is there just to feel like he's doing something. "Do you want me to remove it?"
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Relief. Discomfort. Apprehension. It seems like he's fine for now, but the thorns are going to spread, and there's a lot of important stuff in his neck and he no longer trusts them to just spread around over his skin superficially. Losing his voice was such a nightmare...
Before he's noticed, Xander has come over to inspect and even to fuss a little, which seems like a sad joke given their current situations.
Do you want me to remove it?
Riley thinks again about the various important veins and arteries in his neck and the fact that he very recently saw Xander's hand spasm with pain and launch away a vial of liquid unintentionally. He trusts Xander as a doctor, but he doesn't know if he trusts Xander to know when his pride may be leading him to disaster.
"No... I think I'll ride it out this time," he says, pre-emptively patting Xander a little to console him in case he feels rejected by this decision.
"I'm glad my mystery is solved and they aren't anywhere incapacitating, at least. This puts us in a better position for getting rid of them."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
It isn't difficult to guess why Riley would be refusing Xander now, given he's let Xander near his face with a scalpel in the past. Xander glowers and looks away, but he does not protest, even as he's pat like a pouting child.
Useless.
"Then I'll get back to making potions," he says quietly, lowering the blood stained kerchief as he stares at that awful vine in Riley's neck. This has only begun, and they're already on edge with all of it.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Then I'll get back to making potions.
Riley starts a little at this dejected response. "...You don't want more songs?"
Oh no, he really did hurt his feelings. "Xander...! Are you mad at me?" He tries to summon up his courage. Maybe he should take the chance after all in the name of love...
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"I'm not mad at you!" Xander snaps. He grimaces, voice quieted again. "I'm... not mad at you."
He fumbles with some of his ingredients, hissing again, but relentlessly pressing ahead to gather what he can and ignoring the staining of his hands. An acceptable loss.
"...You need rest, too. Don't coddle me."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley watches Xander knock over more of his ingredients with a heavy heart. It seems like Xander wants to prove himself able to do things more than he wants to be comforted, but...
"I like to coddle you," Riley complains. "Don't I coddle you even when you're feeling fine?" Even if that's true, it's probably counter-balanced by how much more he torments and teases him.
Does he need rest? Well, sure, but isn't making music and petting Xander what he does when he's resting? "It's a form of relaxation for me."
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander pauses, back to Riley to hide his face, but that doesn't do much to mask the slump of his shoulders. He looks down at the less than elegant mess he's making -- not a complete disaster, but certainly far from his usual standard. He is going to start being wasteful if he's not careful. Technically, he's already wasted a bit as it is.
It's not fair, making it sound like Xander's doing Riley a favor. It feels like a trick. A ploy to get Xander to agree. But there haven't been many of Riley's ploys Xander's ever been able to wiggle out of.
"If you want to play, I won't stop you."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley is placated. "I'll play, and you'll make potions, and then we'll both feel useful!" Maybe he shouldn't have said it out loud like that...
He resumes contemplating memories. It seems to him now that he should try to think of a time when Xander felt proud of himself, instead. And so his next melody is upbeat and triumphant, and he sends thoughts of one of Xander's earliest battles, when their explorations roused the ire of a Shrieker (okay, Riley raised its ire; he mistook it for a regular mushroom and was trying to eat it) and Xander ended up swooping in and going toe-to-toe with it and proving his mettle to himself for the first time, or so it seemed to Riley.
This was technically in the song full of recitations of Xander heroics, earlier, but he thinks this might be a more gentle way to remind Xander.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Such a direct bullseye to the problem makes Xander's face heat up, and he still refuses to turn and look at Riley in his alchemical preparations.
It's one of those moods where Xander would prefer to stubbornly wallow in how he feels. All right, so he's prone to that even on a good day, and today isn't a good day. Xander bristles when the first few notes don't match his dour state, but any attempts to put his irritation to words die quickly in his mouth when Riley teases the memories out.
He and Riley remember the moment slightly differently. It isn't that Riley's wrong, but Riley doesn't know where the sudden burst of courage came from. He never realized what drove a meek and timid boy like Xander to leap in so heedlessly, his usual hesitant uncertainty honed into the actionable clarity of what needed to happen, and all of him dedicated to making it so.
More than pride, those feelings strike at the surface. Xander glances over his shoulder at Riley, unfortunately still unable to completely wipe the misery off of his face. He sighs, putting his ingredients down, and he drags himself closer to lie on the floor and rest his head against Riley's thigh instead.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Xander abandons his alchemy and comes to lie against him. As far as Riley is concerned, this means his plan worked!! Some of the triumph in the music is now his own...
But... Xander is still miserable and full of knives. And a bit of doubt creeps in--did Riley really get through to him that he doesn't need to prove himself every moment, or did he just give up?
Although the song remains upbeat, some of the sentiments flowing through it end up polluted by Riley's own guilt, turning the memory more toward the retrospective regret of 'look how promising our lives seemed and look what happened instead.'
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
For a moment, Xander doesn't realize the way the music is actively changing. He feels it, but that's true without the magic of a song to remind him. Remembering the past makes him want to go back into it. Relive it, just for its own sake. He only needs to change the part of it that made it the past instead of letting it bleed into their present.
It's only after a moment that the realization sinks in that the song is matching him, his throat getting sore and tight. Is that Xander's fault? Does it go both ways, the way the curse has tangled their souls together? Xander sits up so he can lean against Riley's back instead, idly tracing abstractions against him with a drag of his finger. It's only occasionally interrupted by a stilled flinch of pain.
Xander won't speak over the song, but he tries to will something past the regret, not sure he can channel anything into Riley the way Riley so effortlessly does to him. That he doesn't mind what he's become, if that's what it costs. He doesn't care if it hurts. That it's all still worth it.
That Riley is worth it.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
A new Xander behavior emerges for Riley to attempt to interpret as he continues his song. It is... cute, first and foremost, but what does it mean? It seems like a positive sign, with Xander neither throwing himself at his work nor lying flat on the ground like he may or may not have given up on life. Instead he's drawing little shapes on Riley. Pondering the meaning of this does distract Riley from the gloomy trend his thoughts had taken, and the interference in the song's intended effects begins to dwindle.
The song is instrumental, so Riley can talk over his own playing. "If those are letters, you may need to start over, because I missed the beginning." It's not out of the realm of possibility that Xander has entered some new stage of shyness where he now communicates only by symbols drawn on Riley's back.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander hadn't even thought of letters. That's too direct. (And trying to will his feelings into Riley's soul isn't?) He wonders why it's so easy for Riley to do, and why it's impossible for him.
No, that's not true. Xander knows why.
But at Riley's suggestion, Xander gives him a flat look and does trace letters, responding as if he'd been saying something after all:
N O
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
The next two shapes feel suspiciously letter-like, and Riley's curiosity sparks up and he redirects some of his focus to try to figure out what they are. The song is just a song, by now. Sending magical feelings takes some commitment.
N... O....?
"No, you won't start over? Did I miss your message, Xander? Was it important?"
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"Maybe it was," Xander says aloud, leaning against Riley's back more heavily and closing his eye to rest. He still keeps his palm against Riley's back, squeezing in with a stab of something before relaxing again.
It feels like some of the regret has lifted, and Xander wonders if it was all in his mind, and if Riley hadn't been focusing on such concerns just then. It really is almost impossible for Xander to tell which music is magic and which isn't.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
"I missed the message..." says Riley, with a great deal of melodramatic disappointment. He fades out the triumphant tune to one of sorrow, though mercifully he doesn't put any contagious emotions into it (yet)?
He can feel those little flinches against him, and it makes him want to wrap his arms around Xander and hug the pain out of him, but even if that would help in any way, he can't just glom onto Xander and immobilize him for the duration of the curse. Probably. It depends on how long his willpower holds out.
And the missed message is haunting him... what was it! "Could I have another?"
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander bristles when this teasing backfires by Riley expressing his sorrow musically. He huffs in annoyance, but at least from his position, Riley can't see whatever face he's making and what color it probably is.
He rests his fingertip against Riley, considering. "I guess." And a few stupid ones cross his mind and he only drags down an 'I' before pushing his palm flat and moving like he's scribbling it out before starting over.
What he manages still comes with some stalling and hesitation.
T H A N K S
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
T..H..A..N..K..S?
The sorrowful melody peps up.
"What for?" Riley asks. He sounds hungry for specifics rather than doubtful, and perhaps this is a bit greedy of him, but he tells himself that this is allowed since it is important to learn the things that are helpful to Xander.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"Songs," Xander says quietly, figuring tracing everything out will get tedious in a hurry. "Pancakes. Birthdays, I guess."
He can't remember if he said that. He's pretty sure he didn't.
His voice gets some bite back into it. "Not for carrying me."
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley chuckles softly at Xander's list. Although he is pretending that his only reason for asking is to learn more about Xander's likes and dislikes, he is probably going to mysteriously forget that last one.
"You would think even Valmar would have the decency not to torment you on your birthday," Riley complains. His tune has been getting more abstract as he puts more of his focus into talking, and he gradually lets it come to a stopping point.
"...Do you want the rest of your birthday song today, or after you're better?"
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
"I would not think that, actually." If anything, Xander feels it's perfectly Valmar-like to have done exactly this on precisely the day it happened.
But Riley's question makes Xander hesitate. He burrows his face against Riley's shoulder as if hiding there, even if he's already behind Riley and ostensibly out of sight. An instinct tells him he's supposed to say he'll hear it later, when this is over, because it shows his conviction in ensuring there will be time for such levity after the fact.
A more childish greed inside him protests the thought.
"...I want it now," he mumbles, tone more petulant than he means.
<Pose Tracker> Riley Arwell has posed.
Riley sighs as Xander strips away the last trapping of justice from the universe with his cynical and entirely correct views on what Valmar would be willing to do on a birthday.
But, more importantly...
...I want it now.
Riley's heart swells a little. It can't be the way it was meant to be, but maybe it can be something. Before the pain set in, the song was making Xander start to smile...
"All right. I suppose on account of extenuating circumstances, you can be allowed to look away from me this time if you want." This is just his guess since Xander is hiding in his shoulder, for all he knows he might want to come back out for the song itself.
In any case, Riley takes a moment to take a breath and refocus so he can send the memories properly, and begins to perform the song for Xander again. The song winds through his earliest days with Xander, centering on the way Xander's arrival in his life saved him from despair and filled the world with new possibilities. More than anything, he is trying to send through the first sparks of his love for Xander, and how precious that love was when he otherwise no longer belonged to anyone anymore.
It is also full of fairytale metaphors--a callback to how they started to playact out Xander's stories, taking on the roles of the characters. The song asserts that while Riley often played the knight and Xander the prince (princess), Xander didn't know he was the one saving Riley after all.
<Pose Tracker> Xander Lovell has posed.
Xander responds to this new and most generous permission from Xander with a grunt and decisively not moving from where he is. It's comfortable, and that was a difficult thing to achieve several minutes ago. Xander is not going to risk upsetting that.
It also makes it easier to feel like he's not interrupting to snuggle up from behind, where the guitar isn't. The nostalgia stings, but the pain is dulled by, well, the other pain, but also that affectionate pulse in each of the notes. It echoes in Xander, reminding him of how he felt then.
He shifts, lifting enough to crane over Riley's shoulder and kiss the side of his head while he plays, arms draped lazily over him. Xander settles and listens, only growling a little at princely (princessly) callbacks before relaxing wholly, letting himself sink into the memories.