listen puppet boy, before you disobey

[generationlost]

There's a knock at the door.

The sound is startling, makes Ranboo suddenly bolt upright from where they'd been lounging on the couch.

Knock-knock.

They pick themselves up from the couch and, as quietly as possible, they creep out of the room, searching frantically for somewhere to hide; his frame is much too long to tuck away into a cabinet or something, but he does, with some internal amusement at the joke, find a closet to tuck himself away into. Thankfully the swords in there aren't taking up too much space.

Knock knock, Dirk! There's a knock at the door!

Comments

[themostempty]

Dirk, on the other hand, is hyper-present. Everything is happening exactly at the pace it should be, it just feels slower because the problem hasn't been solved yet. That's how he perceives it, anyway. Every second is excruciatingly slow, every millimetre that the pool of blood spreads across his floor towards the doorway and the carpet is too much time. He doesn't feel his own pulse, creating a weird effect like he simply haas none. He has no blood, no heartbeat, no heart. He's an artificial, hollow-bodied marionette or mannequin or simply fellow corpse, only of course he's not. He's breathing. He's hot under the skin. Sweat is beading. He just has no pulse.

"Of course I have a fucking tarp," Dirk snaps. It's a lot sharper than he means for it to be, or at least sharper than he knew it would be until it's out of his mouth. Okay, so he might be feeling some pressure. That's reasonable. He can accept that. He takes a deep breath, quickly re-composing his presentation to something more direct, more purposefully commanding.

The breath he takes in smells so much like blood it's almost like being back at work. This body isn't kicking, though. It doesn't thrash, doesn't tremor, barely flailed for more than a second. It was like cutting the head off a doll with wiring in it. A Furby reacts more when its wires are cut than this corpse did. It leaves a weird, sour pit at the base of his stomach. Like he's powerless over it now. The body, that is. It just lies there, bleeding. He can't stop it from bleeding, he can't clean it up, he can't re-do or un-do or solve, or--

"One under the bed, another under the bathroom sink. Pick one." And with that, he grabs his own shirt, yanking it off over his head and throwing it down on the linoleum in front of the door frame, desperate to at least stop the blood from leaving his apartment.

[generationlost]

Ranboo recoils as Dirk snaps at him-- just slightly, but very visibly, and despite how he towers over Dirk, it makes him look remarkably small. Fortunately for Dirk, the urgency and severity of the current situation doesn't allow Ranboo the time to feel properly annoyed, so they just wait quietly, anxiously until Dirk explains the location of the tarps, then quickly hurry off to retrieve the closest one.

Everything still feels strange-- it's as if the light has somehow changed, or the air. The familiar setting of the cluttered apartment feels alien somehow, or like they're trapped inside a copy of the real thing, swaying their way over to fetch the tarp from where it's hidden, folded as neatly as possible.

Dully, Ranboo realizes that they're standing back in the living room now, opening the tarp up, and that they have no idea how or when they arrived there.

Don't panic. Now is not the time to fucking panic. He sucks in a breath through his teeth and slowly releases it, trying to hide his rising panic from Dirk the best that he knows how.

"Okay. Okay, okay, now... now what...?"

[themostempty]

Dirk blinks, once, as Ranboo reacts to his slip, but he doesn't just stand there staring at the body once he's gone. As Ranboo begins to move, so does he--and despite his fondness for horror, it does not occur to him not to leave the body. After all, he has experience with them now. Thousands of hours with living, breathing animals ranging from sheep to cattle weighing as much as a tonne, from walking in under their own power with bright, wary eyes and swishing tails, to.... well, the moment they hit the floor. Hoisted and swinging as they bleed and kick, until they no longer do either. Death is common, it's cheap, it's done on a timer, and if you know what you're doing, it's easy.

Which doesn't make this less weird, somehow. But he has a task now, a purpose motivating his body--and as Ranboo comes back with a tarp, Dirk is laying towels he's seized from his living room, towels that normally exist there solely for workout purposes and which are now the main line of defence between incriminating evidence and the hallway, the carpet, and the layers below the linoleum.

"Uh." He glances over his shoulder. His first thought is for both of them to take a limb--an arm and a leg each--and swing the body onto the tarp, but that's. Stupid. Human bodies don't weigh that much, and their range of motion is completely different. They can just. He's been trying not to look at anything except her head, which is. Easier to look at. It's just a head.

The body is what's weird. She was dressed nicely, for her little job. The way her limbs... lie there.. is weird. It's weird, because it looks so fake. The lay of it, her limbs and the bend of her spine, is exactly like how he'd expect it to. But it's the fact that it's a woman, maybe, and nicely dressed? It's like looking at World Trade Center site photos. Or like, an assassination of some politician he doesn't care about.

He can't get off to this.

"Fuck it. Grab her legs. We're just going to roll her on, so we don't splatter the walls. I don't want dripping, let's keep it all clean between here and the bath tub." He glances at Ranboo, sees how pale they are.

"Are you going to make it? Don't answer that. Once I get her in the tub you can go lie down. I'll take care of this." The confidence in his voice sounds earned.

[generationlost]

Are you going to make it?

Ranboo simply blinks at Dirk as the question takes a moment to process-- fortunately by the time it does, Dirk has already made answering unnecessary, rushing right ahead to assure Ranboo that he'll take care of it.

But...

Slightly sluggishly, Ranboo shakes their head as they move their way down to her legs, trying to figure out the best way to just... grab them. They finally settle for just... wrapping their long fingers around her calves, lifting her legs slightly from the floor.

She's still warm. The sensation of handling her body makes their stomach lurch, the room seem hazy and wobbly around them. She's still warm, and the weight and shape of her is disturbingly human, and Ranboo knows that this was necessary, that she isn't-- she couldn't be human, not anymore, but... she sure does look and feel human right now, laying like a broken doll in a growing puddle of her own blood.

"No, you... did this-- for me, I can't just..." Ranboo takes a breath, releases it in a sigh. "I can't just leave you to deal with it by yourself..."

Dirk did this, this, to... protect Ranboo. And their conflicting feelings about that are squarely filed away to be dealt with later. Ranboo really couldn't handle them right now on top of everything else, even if they wanted to.