Night 57: M61-M70 Hallway

[terriblehaiku]

[M64]Hijikata finished his meal just as the doors unlocked themselves. Strange, that there were none of the usual announcements, but he wasn't going to take the time to dwell on it. He had a mission to accomplish. Setting the lighter down on the desk for the time being, he went back to his box and began pulling out the few things he was certain to

Comments

Re: M66

[wantsyourzex]

[augh sorry for the delay, i didn't get the notif for this for some reason. D:]

Peter didn't seem disturbed at all, so maybe he hadn't seen it... maybe it was just a muscle twinge. That had to be it. He was not getting torn up by invisible monsters... he was not seeing things. He definitely was not hallucinating because he was sane now. He might have done way too many drugs before he came here, but there were certain things that just did not happen. Invisible monsters were one of those things.

When Peter touched him, he couldn't help a slight sigh. It felt nice to be touched, and even though he quickly scrambled to qualify that in his head that it wasn't because he was a xenophile like ZEX or anything, he couldn't deny that it was nice to have contact with another person. One that presumably knew what to do and could thus take the entire matter out of his hands. Max did not do well in these kind of situations alone.

"Uh, no... not really." There were no cuts there, as far as he was aware. Yet. He barely stopped himself from saying that it actually felt sort of nice. "I don't... well, there probably aren't cuts there, anyway. For now, hee hee." Nervous giggling. "Wouldn't it be weird if there really were invisible creatures attacking me... what would you even do about that?" His laughing was getting a little hysterical now.

And a sudden sting made him pause and wince. He looked down at his hand, where he could make out a new line against his skin in the dark. Even with his limited vision, he could see something welling out of the dark scratch. He held it up to Peter, and it was getting a little difficult to slow his breathing now.

"Was that there before?" Please say it was.

Re: M66

[human_sponge]

This conversation wouldn't have been too out of the ordinary if it wasn't for the giggling. Max almost seemed like he was on the verge of some kind of nervous breakdown, which wasn't so surprising considering the situation they were in and the fact that he might be brainwashed into thinking he was a mental patient with a tenuous hold on reality.

Before Peter could answer the first question (which probably would have been something along the line of "we'd deal with it somehow"), he was distracted by the look of pain that overtook the other man's features. He quickly glanced down, catching only the tail end of what had happened. Still, there was no denying it. That wound had just opened up all on its own.

So much for trying to explain this away as self-harm or hallucination or any of those other things. No, Max was legitimately being wounded completely out of nowhere, or by something that couldn't be seen. Peter didn't think it was the latter so much as some sort of bizarre affliction.

"...No, it wasn't," he admitted with a frown. He dropped his hand from Max's shoulder and then carefully moved the gauze in his other hand to the newly opened cut. "I'll bandage it in a second." He couldn't explain what had just happened, but he could at least see to the wounds. Peter was disturbed by all of this, but he was going to do his best to not let that show on his face.

Re: M66

[wantsyourzex]

That wasn't the answer Max had wanted, and any hopes he had of calming down went right through the window. Okay, so something had scratched him, and Peter saw the scratch so it really existed, and for all intents and purposes the scratch had just appeared on him, and that meant... that meant... god, he really needed a drink. He really needed to get drunk or high or something immediately because he could not think about this too hard.

"What do you think it was?" Max was sort of trying not to hyperventilate, but he had to admit he was not giving it his best effort. What if the invisible things were watching him right now? They had to be, what did they even look like? God, what else could they do to him? They hadn't killed him yet, but who knew what they wanted? Maybe it'd just get worse and worse and then he'd just explode in a fountain of gore in front of Peter and he was feeling a little lightheaded. "You don't think it was a monster, do you? I don't know what did it, it wasn't me, I didn't do it, but I didn't see anything..."

His voice cracked a little. "I didn't see anything..."

Re: M66

[human_sponge]

This whole situation had gone from something manageable to something not in the space of a few seconds, and Peter had to force himself to be calm. He'd dealt with hysterical patients in the past, though he had to admit that the situation had never been quite this bizarre. Still, he'd been trained to do this; he'd had conversations with people who were terminally ill, even. He could do this.

"Just take a few deep breaths, Max," he said, reaching out to grab a roll of bandages from his duffel bag. He carefully started to unwrap them as he kept his gaze on the other man. The last thing Max would want right now was to feel alone, which was why Peter made sure to never take his eyes off of him.

"I don't think it was a monster," he continued, speaking slowly and clearly so that his words got through to Max. "I didn't see anything. It's probably something that those military guys did to you." Not that Peter knew what that could even be, but the idea that Max had been experimented on or drugged made a whole lot more sense than there being an invisible monster hiding in his room.

He gently reached for the man's hand and started to bandage it with all the care he'd been taught to utilize as a nurse. This would both hide the wound away and make Max feel like he was being cared for, so that was a plus. It wasn't much, but it would hopefully help. "You're safe, all right? I'm right here," he assured the man, speaking softly.

Re: M66

[wantsyourzex]

"If it wasn't a monster, then what was it?" Max sounded perhaps a little more desperate than he would have liked. "You think the military can turn invisible and slash us up with knives?" Frankly that wasn't a lot better. "Oh my god, what if they're in here with us right now? What if they're watching us? Why are they doing this to me?"

Max had been wondering that ever since he'd gotten here. Did he really deserve this after everything he'd done? Surely this punishment was somewhat extreme, wasn't it?

Peter didn't seem scared, and Max tried to focus on that. Peter knew what he was doing, he could trust him. Still it was hard not to focus on the idea of invisible creatures chewing on his flesh. How could he defend himself against something like that? Peter held his hand and he was bandaging it and he didn't seem frightened. Max just needed to try and keep that in mind. Although, he hadn't seen any scratches appear on Peter, after all...

"How can we stop them?" He trusted Peter when he said he was safe, of course, but having some kind of plan of action would be real comforting right about now.

Re: M66

[human_sponge]

It seemed that Max wasn't so easily going to give up the idea that there was something here that was invisible and doing this to him, but Peter was willing to be patient with the man. It was hard to wrap up his hand when Max was so shaky, but he pulled it off nonetheless, managing to tie off the bandage.

There were still so many other cuts, though, and he knew there wasn't going to be time to see to them all. It wasn't necessarily needed in most cases, but at this point he figured it would be best to just tend to Max as best he could to help him feel at ease.

"I think... I think it might just be something that's happening to you. Maybe they gave you a strange drug that's causing your body to get wounded randomly, but I don't think there's anyone invisible around." Peter would know; he'd been invisible himself. He'd learned the tricks of the trade, so to speak, and from Claude -- who'd been hiding from the world for years. He wondered if coming clean about that to Max would make the man feel better or worse, but in the end decided against it.

"I don't know how to stop it," he admitted, "but I'll do my best to patch you up." He grabbed some more gauze and soaked it with the peroxide, leaning forward to start dabbing it over the scratches that he had easiest access to.

Re: M66

[wantsyourzex]

[aa sorry, i seem to have caught a cold while i was away D:]

"So... my body's just... sort of cutting itself from the inside out?" Oh god, that was even worse! His visions of just exploding in front of Peter returned, all the more gruesome. "Oh my god, oh my god..." If Peter wasn't here, maybe this would have made sense as some weird delusion about him hurting himself or something, but Peter WAS here. Peter saw this happening, and all the explanations for it were terrifying. Why was this happening to him?

"Why would they do this to me? What did I ever do to them?" In something of a self-pitying tone, and even as he said it, he knew there wouldn't be a good answer, but the unfairness of this galled him. He didn't deserve to have random horrors visited upon him for no reason! He didn't deserve this, how could it be happening to him anyway? This didn't make any sense. "Do you think it's happening to anyone else? Have you ever seen it happen to anyone else?"

A new cut along his upper arm made him wince and lose his train of thought. That never stopped stinging! He breathed hard for a few seconds, trying to remember what he was talking about, and at least Peter was still here. Maybe he couldn't stop it, but at least he could make sure they didn't get infected or anything. That was something right?

"Thanks for doing this for me, thank you." Maybe babbling just a little. "I don't, I'm not really good at doing this kind of thing myself..."

Re: M66

[human_sponge]

[Oh no! I hope you feel better soon. And since DS has started, I guess we'll wrap this up?]

"Well, I don't know for sure if that's it. I'm just guessing," Peter quickly informed the man. It seemed that his explanation was just making the man feel more anxious, which was the opposite of what he'd been hoping to accomplish there. Still, even if Max was having a minor panic attack at this point, Peter knew that he needed to keep his cool. He could tell that his heart rate was starting to escalate at this point, but there was no sign of it on his face.

Really, he could have lied to the man, said that he'd seen it before and he was sure it would be fine. But that wasn't the sort of lie that was going to make things better in the end. It might calm the man down in the moment, but when he realized that Peter had just been trying to spare his feelings, it wouldn't be good. So he decided to be honest. "This is the first time I've seen it. I don't know why they would do something like this, but we're just going to have to try and find out."

How they were going to do that was as much of a mystery to Peter as it was to Max, but... Well, they could try and track down his medical file here, right? Maybe there would be a note about it in there. That couldn't happen tonight, but maybe in the future Max could look into that.

Another cut opened itself up along the man's arm, forcing Peter to hold back a wince as he put his hands on either of Max's shoulders. "You don't have to thank me. Just try to take a few deep breaths and calm down and I'll take care of you as best I can." With that message delivered, he pulled back and grabbed for more gauze, intending to clean out all of the scratches that needed it.