sticksandbones | I'm on the brink of disaster [OTA]

Who: Nicholas D. Wolfwood and YOU
What: Catchall log for the aftermath of Saint Nick
When: December 26th onward
Where: Various
Warnings: Reckless behavior/irresponsible drinking

A) Staring down the consequences | OTA

[It's been a couple days, and Wolfwood is still...well, he sure is. And now it seems that the Grove all gets to have a say in the life and times of No Man's Land, so that's pretty Cool. While he does make sure to keep up with Vash's post and all of the responses out of a sense of schadenfreude, it doesn't exactly make him feel any better. Eventually, he has to put it away and go back outside for a while. Not into the Forest thankfully, but out into the snow just outside the Inn, dressed up in his coat from Heimr with a cigarette clutched tight in his teeth.

He's out here because he kindof has to be. He has a puppy on a leash, who has been waddling around in the snow for the last fifteen minutes, biting at the snowflakes and rolling around on the ground.

He watches, deadeyed, as she stuffs her face into a pile of snow all the way up to her neck.]

...please. Please, god.

[He's begging you

He is begging you to do your business he's so fucking tired]

B) To break hard would be better | Locked to Mizuki

[At some point when the puppy has been taken care of and is curled up asleep on his pillow, Wolfwood leaves again. He heads for the therapy building with full intent of going to the rage room and breaking more shit in the hopes it will help him feel less listless and dumb in the head.

Except...he gets there, and he sort of lingers in the middle of the lobby. Like he's lost, or he's forgotten where the room even is. Perhaps that's what it is, or maybe it's that he knows that breaking things isn't really the solution this time.

Maybe he should just leave.]

C) Tonight I'll do what it takes to fail | OTA

[...so anyway when that didn't work, Wolfwood decided to just grab the last of that whiskey bottle from his room and head back out to go wandering again. There's actually a lot of this town he hasn't visited for one reason or another, and the rec center is a place he flat out didn't know existed. Blessedly empty as it is, it's a siren song calling for him. He drags himself through the snow and inside.

...he's not expecting to find a giant like. Waterpark, or something, in here. Who the fuck built this?

He wanders as he periodically drinks straight from the bottle, wondering if the water is cold. It probably is since it's like two degrees outside. His footsteps echo loudly in the empty space, with pools scattered throughout. His feet are cold. Maybe it'd feel nice if he took his shoes off and just sat at the edge, assuming the pools are heated or something. Would somebody build this whole thing and NOT go to the trouble of doing that?

Fuck, he doesn't know. Nobody has this kind of money back home, and certainly not the resources to be wasting this much water. He sits down on the tile like a toddler and awkwardly kicks off his sockless, very wet (very sad, they're in BAD shape yall) shoes before scooting towards the water's edge.

If you show up right around now you'll just see Wolfwood sitting at the edge with his feet in the water. If you show up like, ten minutes later, it will be to the tune of somebody falling in.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wolfwood.

[Disappointed Elsword.mp3

Elsword reaches out and takes the bottle from him.]

That's full of pool water, you know. I don't know how often they clean the pools, but it's full of chemicals and stuff you don't want to drink. At least, that's how Toge explained it to me after he built it... Why don't you have some real water?

[All of this is said as he's still crouching behind Wolfwood and drying his hair off, by the way.]

What...? Wha'happuh' to the whiskey...

[He squints over at where Elsword took the bottle, reaching vaguely in that direction for it. Elsword can easily pull a fast one on him and swap it for real water and he probably won't know the difference, honestly.]

[Real water will be swapped into his hand immediately, thanks.]

You drank it all. [ >:( ] You were sitting here chugging while I was going down the slides.

...

Are you okay?

[...

He wishes he had more. Somehow, the amount he had doesn't feel like anywhere near enough.]

...not really.

[Elsword sits down next to Wolfwood after he burritos the man in more towels. Here you go stay dry.]

You wanna talk about it? I'm not good at advice, but I'm good at listening. [And there's also now a 45% chance he'll forget everything you told him, meaning your secrets are probably safe with him!]

[If he were sober, he'd say no and blow Elsword off. But right now, he is so...miserable, that it doesn't even occur to him that he can. He just sits there half hunched over, water dripping down his face, looking like a drowned rat in more ways than one.]

Vash is a stupid asshole and I hate him.

[Ah]

[.........]

Oh. You guys broke up...?

[Sympathetic wing-hug from Elbuddy...]

And I'm gonna guess based on your tone that you guys talked, but it didn't go well.

We didn't break up. We weren't...we weren't a thing to start with.

[He sniffs and looks away harshly, gritting his teeth so hard it makes his head hurt.]

He never. Wanted that. He made that perfectly clear.

...oh. [Ohhhh so they weren't sleeping together but they were sleeping together. Nuance is so important.] But... did you want that?

It's not really my business, but I was kind of... in the same situation a while ago. I get where you're coming from if that's true, is what I'm trying to say.

[Yeah you see, now you get it Elbuddy.

Normally, Wolfwood wouldn't be this...open about it. About anything. But he's so drunk and so upset that he doesn't care. His talk with Mizuki had helped him work through some of his own feelings in regards to this, but he still is all tangled up about what Vash said, and it shows in the guarded way he holds himself, half curled up on the wet tile.

He knocks back more "whiskey", which is really just plain water.]

...course I did. Thought I made it obvious.

[He sounds frustrated. Disappointed. Let down and humiliated.

Then he glances over at Elsword out of the corner of his eye, able to look at him since he didn't put his shades back on.]

...you were?

[The wing-hug is still ongoing. It's kind of lazy; three of the six wings are loosely draped around Wolfwood's back, and Elsword is sitting with his knees to his chest and his arms casually looped around his legs. Less "depressed" and more "mimicking your posture I'm here for you" kind of stuff.]

Yeah. [It isn't about him, but since they're sharing:] I kissed Add. And then it escalated a little. Eventually we went to bed, and the day after, I woke up and he was gone. I went to talk to him about it and he said it meant nothing to him.

[Jesus—]

It ended up being that he was just scared. Add's not the sort of person that's good with emotions. Sometimes he's worse than I am. We're fine now, although I keep screwing stuff up from time to time, and I wonder sometimes why he even wants to keep me around... anyway, this isn't about me. But what I'm trying to say is, maybe Vash is just scared. Maybe the commitment freaks him out, or maybe he thinks he's not worth your love, kind of like how Add did with me.

[For once, Wolfwood isn't shying away from the hug, even if it's lazy. He just stays put where he is, listening. Add...really does sound like he reacted similarly to Vash, who basically tried to convince Wolfwood that their kiss was just some kind of big mistake.

He wraps his arms a little tighter around his knees.]

...you mean t'tell me you just talked, and that fixed it?

Uh... yeah?

[bro?]

It took a bit. I tried to talk first, then stormed off, then he came to find me a bit later. We talked more. And then we argued a bit more... but we're okay. [Other than the aforementioned fuck-ups on Elsword's part.] I think setting up boundaries and trying to understand each other is the way to go. Even if we didn't wind up together in the end, talking through it would've helped, and then we'd go back to being friends. I guess my relationship had a happy ending.

Maybe yours can, too?

[...]

He already tried to apologize to me, once. He came back saying he was sorry, but he didn't know what the fuck he was apologizin' for. So I kicked his ass out.

[So, you know. Helpful.]

...okay, um. Don't do that. The kicking out thing.

[God. When did he become the therapist, he literally can't feel things.]

You guys should meet up when the wounds are less raw and actually talk. ...and don't be drunk when you do. [JUDGES YOU] I think it'll help.

[Logically, he knows that. He knows Elsword is right, but...]

I just. I'm not gonna be able to stand it if he tries to repeat the same bullshit to me, like that's supposed to magically make things better. It's like talkin' to a fuckin' brick wall, angel.

[Wait who-]

[It's a very literal nickname, but hey, it works.]

I don't think you're supposed to stand it. It's, um... [thinking...] It's okay to feel things. You shouldn't take that for granted like I did. Maybe sometimes things won't fix themselves or feel better, but the important thing is that you say stuff like, "yeah, that made me feel bad". You can move forward from there.

[...]

...what if it don't work. I don't...

[His face screws up, and for a moment he says nothing.]

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

I'm on the brink of disaster [OTA]

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