I used to think there was no future left at all

[takethatnature]

Who: Wilson P. Higgsbury
What: Last call for pre-endgame threads, open to backtags afterwards
When: January and early February, after the beacon launch and before Tiamat goes to the bridge
Where: Around the ship
Warnings: Pseudo-animal experimentation and death, general doom and gloom, anything else warned as it comes up

1. Let's go down the waterfall

By this point Wilson knows better than to antagonise Darcy or Max Maximum by using the good kitchen knives on things that aren't food, which is why he's using an axe to chop a small pink foam-rubber shoe in half. He has no idea how he'd go about knocking a living shoe unconscious, so the best he can do is make it quick. The shoe has been taped to a table and is doing its best to squirm out of its restraints as Wilson raises the axe.

After the killing blow has been delivered, he cuts the foam carcass into smaller pieces with his shaving razor, to see what he can learn from dissecting it.

2. Think about the good times and never look back, never look back

Wilson is tired of stepping in pastry filling when he goes in and out of the formal dining room to check for fresh meals. The jam gets right into his socks. Nobody else seems to have managed to get rid of Sheogorath's choice of replacement flooring, so Wilson's going to have to do it himself, putting together a pitchfork out of sticks and flints and digging into the crust. A four-foot-square jam turnover pops out of the floor and immediately shrinks to half its former size, which is still a considerable amount of pastry. The space it formerly occupied looks... pretty much how the floor of the ship normally looks, without even an indentation.

"Is this tile-y stuff the ship's equivalent of exposed rock or sand?" Wilson wonders out loud, ignoring the turnover for now.

3. What would I do? What would I do if I did not have you? (Closed to Maxwell)

Wilson knocks on the door of Cabin 117. He's holding a mug of hot spiced eggnog; the mug was the least corny one he could find in Bric A Brac and just says "boat" on it in a comic-strip-style rounded font, the eggnog produced through hard-won, slightly out-of-season knowledge. When Maxwell opens the door, he shoves it at him - not roughly enough to spill it - and says, "This is your bribe to shut up and hear me out."

The thing about those caliginous romance novels Karkat gave him is that he was too preoccupied with the absolute pandemonium of Lieutenant Tayrey's beacon launch to actually read them right away, but eventually he needed a distraction from his anxieties. They've certainly proved to be that, even with the learning curve of deciphering the jumble of obscure English words and insufficiently translated Alternian words to figure out what's even being described.

4. Have ourselves a good time, it's nothing at all

Wildcard. Find me on Discord or Plurk.

Comments

[freedomsuitsme]

He rolls his eyes, bares his teeth a little, grabs Wilson by the collar, and pushes him against the wall.

"Must you insist on continuing to lecture me, Higgsbury?" he growls, his face a little closer than necessary to the scientist's.

[takethatnature]

The look of surprise on Wilson's face is swiftly replaced with a diabolical grin. He makes no move to get out of Maxwell's grip. "I haven't even started lecturing you! Wait until you see the flash cards."

Running his mouth while his heart is racing is second nature by now. He'd have thrown in a pun, but the fathomless depths of Maxwell's eyes are too distracting.

[freedomsuitsme]

Those dark fathoms creep even deeper as his glamour thins by a few shades. The ends of pointed teeth creep a little further from beneath their mask of perfect, civilized rows. The ends of his fingers grow sharper and more pronounced beneath his gloves, subtle claws still clutching the scientist's shirt collar tightly and oh so close to the pale flesh of his throat. He leans closer, smirking that smug smirk. One would think a habitual smoker like Maxwell would suffer from halitosis, but no; he smells like smoke and mirrors, with an infuriatingly alluring hint of some sort of cologne that probably doesn't actually exist. He's a complexing combination of reality and illusion, blended so well and so long that it's hard to say where one ends and the other begins. And his attention is firmly and entirely on Wilson.

"You could do something better with that mouth than babbling, you know," Maxwell croons, his voice somewhere between teasing and complaining and... and...

... and his lips, full and pouty, are so close.

[takethatnature]

"You're not shutting me up that easily," Wilson says, and then, "Think fast!"

He grabs Maxwell by the back of the head and pulls him into a kiss. As much as it seems like pure sudden impulse, Wilson's careful enough not to bash their noses together or draw blood with a hasty movement of his own clawed fingernails; he gave some thought to this before he did it. He tastes of a mintiness that suggests this is the outcome he was hoping for when he approached the cabin.

[freedomsuitsme]

The first thing he feels is a surge of emotions, and an impulse to likewise mash his face against the scientist's as gracefully as he can manage. It's not a bad attempt. He's kissed before, and passionately, too.

Then, after a couple of seconds, the implications of Wilson's pleasantly fresh breath hit him.

He planned this. I played right into his hands. Just like before, he had me in checkmate before I thought we'd even really begun to play. This causes an upwelling of irritation, admiration, and spite in his twisted soul.

Next, he takes notice of Wilson's hair, as he instinctively runs his fingers through the scientifically magnificent coiffure, dark and soft as always, and he finds himself thinking back to a certain someone else's hair, dark and soft against the pillows while the smell of roses tickles his nose gently.

And then the guilt hits him. Not because he has any moral qualms about kissing a man, no, but because he's kissing anyone at all that isn't her.

I can't spend my whole life lingering on thoughts of Charlie.

Can't you, though? Shouldn't you? When you're the one who destroyed her?

This... was not where he was hoping this would go. He doesn't pull away from Wilson, but it's clear from his fading enthusiasm that he isn't as into it as he was a moment ago.