white noise telepaths (bog boys, day 3)

[calla]

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After Yael's gone, after the cannon goes off and echos through the trees, Karl briskly starts to pack his things.

There's no use staying with Johnny if Johnny hates him now. He'd thought maybe he hadn't made that much of a fool of himself last night, but it turns out he was dead wrong. Karl heard Johnny and Rene. He saw the way they both looked at him. He'll be lucky if he can slip away before the both of them catch on. Or before he runs into Dyno.

That's what makes his hands shake a little when wraps up his hands.

There's a tremble to him as he haphazardly shoves a bunch of bandages against his chest and then reties the hakama fabric. That's just a temporary fix until he can get somewhere where he can actually look at the wound without throwing up, without having to worry about someone coming up behind him with fire, without that smirk, or that voice, or that face.

It'll be fine with distance, just like everything is. He'll be able to pick up and move on once he can finally blink without seeing that image of Yael and Calamity, both on the ground, both bleeding out. It'll be fine. He'll be fine.

Karl slings the scythe over his shoulder turns to leave, it feels like there's ants under his skin, he's jittery with it, he needs to crawl out of himself and find a jar like Calamity did. He turns to leave but he stops short, rocks back when his heels hit the dirt.

Johnny's standing there at the mouth of the path, looking at him questioningly.

He's in the way. Karl tightens his grip on his bag and ignores the tugging feeling across his fists.

"We're not friends." He says too-loud, and then winces at the volume of it.

There's no sake or Yael or Calamity's heart between them this time. It's just them and the empty space, it stretches out bewtween them like taffy and turns into something cavernous. Their voices echo like the cannon did.

"You said-" He reminds him, "You said it."

[lionel estrada d5 ᥫ᭡ kiah]

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Karl was packing his things. Hurried desperate movements, almost as if he couldn't shove his shit into his bag fast enough. It didn't strike me straight away that he was packing with the goal of leaving. At first I believed he was in a rush to put some distance between us and Dyno. Us and Yael. But as the minutes continue the tension in the air between us grows, the distance between us more emotional than physical.

Ready to go he slings his belongs over his back. Silent, he doesn't look at me and unease beginning to set in. Since last night Karl had refused to look at me. The awkwardness between as had grown so strained that all it would take was one wrong word, action, for it to shatter and become unfixable. And I had to fix things. I had to do something the change the way things had settled between us-

He moves to move down the path. I stop him.

It was at this moment realisation slammed me into my gut like a blow, panic surged through me causing my heart rate to increase, my palms to become sweaty.

For the first time all day he looks me in the eye, "we're not friends." His voice echoes in the silence around us, catching on the wind, running through the forrest.

Shit.

"Karl-" I start but he cuts me off.

"You said- You said it."

"Karl, of course I didn't mean it!" I start, my characteristic grin pulling back the corner of my lips. It was easy armour, comfortable armour. The armour I wore to protect myself. "I only told Rene what she needed to hear. Come on, she was going to kill you! I said it to save you." I pause for a moment, watching Karl carefully. Was he able to see the same cracks in my shield that Calamity could?

This was a make or break moment. And I was terrified of it breaking. Shame slumbered at the pit of my stomach, stirring slightly as the thoughts I had pushed down begin to surface. Damnit. How quickly could this arena shatter the protection I had built for myself over the years? I try to push the thoughts- the feelings- away, refusing to allow my easy grin to falter.

But the feelings surfaced, and my facade starts to slip.

There was a selfish motive behind my desire to have Karl stay. It was pathetic really, I clung to the need to have him around because in the end I didn't want to die alone.

I didn't want to have to face all of this alone.

How many times had I watched, listen from the room over as Mr. Garner's experiments died, begging for their loved ones- for anyone? Many times at the start, I had held their hands, even as they clawed at me, spitting in my face, let me go! Let me go! they would cry. That was until they knew that I was all they had left. Hands would relax in mine, and I would interlace my fingers with theirs. They never thanked me, why would they? To them I was the grim reaper, carrying them across the line between life and death.

After a few months I stopped going to them, it had become too much. Too heavy. Instead, I would sit in my chair, watching them over the edge of my magazine and declaring that I would never allow myself to die like this.

Alone, scared, broken.

"I'm sorry," I say finally, "that was a lie- well, mostly a lie." I allows the cracks to grow, letting go ever so slightly. "It wasn't personal, Karl. I- I don't have friends. Friends betray you. Friends ruin you. I've learnt that survival means that I can only rely on myself."

I close my eyes and I see Flynn and that stupid face he makes when he is in the middle of lecturing me. I suppress a smile.

"No. I didn't have friends. But... but I am trying. I am learning- and failing- but still trying. And I am sure that I will probably be a shitty friend for as long as you know me- but I can be your friend If you'll let me."

[calla]

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"I didn't mean it." Johnny tries to tell him, "Of course, I didn't mean it."

He's grinning, letting the casualness fall through it.

He said it to save Karl, of course of course, but the thing is that it didn't save Karl. Rene still ran him through with that spear and he's still clutching at that bunching of bandages against his chest, pressing them in harder like if he can just punch through his own heart it'll solve the problem.

But Karl's used to watching people. He understands the sounds between words better than he knows the words themselves.

"I don't have friends," Johnny says.

"You have Flynn."

It's not exactly bitter, but it's not flat either. In the span of three days, Karl's cadence has changed. In the span of an hour, his voice has started to crack. It's a strange thing to watch happen in real time. It isn't gentle; the way he changes isn't as gradual as a season change. It isn't personal, but it is a bit ugly.

This is the penultimate factor: all that's waiting back in Eleven is a cranberry bog and the waterlogged bodies that didn't get pulled out in time. They'll be bloated by now because the pH will be off from the excess acid of the berries. He wonders, dully, if the Keepers will have to do the dirty work themselves or if they'll just stay there forever now, swelling up until they eventually burst and contaminate a harvest.

The side of his face stings, right where the blood smear from Dyno is. That faux sign of tenderness made him feel nauseous and it still does now. He can't think about it too closely.

If that's what friendship is, then he doesn't want it.

"I don't want to be your friend."

Look where it got the other two.

He doesn't even know what that means anymore - he never really had a solid definition in the first place, to be honest. Every one-liner feels like a trick. There's a studio audience behind the curtain being cued up to laugh at him, someone's covered all the camera lenses with vaseline.

Friends do things that make him uncomfortable. Friends die. Friends ruin you. Friends sit in a jar in a bag and the only sound they make is when they beat intermittently throughout the night.

He doesn't know how to be someone's friend either. He's only ever been the first choice in one specific circumstance.

Maybe misery just craves company. The same way bacteria looks for a host to spread to, he ruins each connection he touches. The same way a parasite burrows down and festers, he treats his own body like the dirt.

"It's a bad idea." It's a gateway to this terrible, awful, thing - this feeling. He shifts uncomfortably, wringing his hands in the strap of his bag.

It's embarrassing to think of Johnny knowing about what happened with Dyno, but he can't put his finger on why. He wants to refute it, or play off Dyno's taunting as just that, but his tongue gets tied up and he just stares at the ground, frustrated.

He needs the blood off his face.

"Maybe," He starts, puttering out and starting over again: "We should start simpler."