[ his voice softens. it's makoto, who worries about the stray cats on his street. he hadn't meant to question rin's capabilities, hadn't meant to dig the truth of his lack of utility value into a wound. he's fine. they're all fine. zack and korra and all the others took care of it.
and then makoto continues, and the frustration rears its head again.
the silence on his end is a living thing. it breathes. its heart beats a rhythm between rin's ears. haru, he thinks, and wonders if the hours spent within the pages of a textbook have set makoto wrong, maybe it's the hours spent alone on another world alone with the knowledge that their home is gone. he's never had the best memory, has he? it's a tiny thing. not worth losing hold of his temper.
rin breathes out, corralling his frustration before it can poison his tone. ]
Text me a list of names if you want me to look around for your friends. I don't think anyone has been seriously hurt, but -- just in case, I'll make that the priority.
he'd only just returned, in the wake of trepidation and paranoia and the conversations that rin couldn't remember — kisumi with his eyes turned refulgent in the settling night, asking him to dance, kisumi's presence in tellus at all, wiped clean from the database.
makoto doesn't pick fights. he prides himself on non-confrontation, pacifism its own ideology, but the silence is more disconcerting than his anger — because rin is nothing without the fire that keeps him alight, the push-pull tension that'd brought him to iwatobi all those years ago, chasing after the boy they both deeply admired. ]
You're joking, right? I'm serious, Rin, call Haru. He needs to know, and I think he'd take it best from you.
[ a partial lie. ]
Please. I'm just asking for a few minutes of your time. I'd do it myself, but I —
[ he was a popular upperclassman -- he dealt with more than a few loopy underclassmen, each worse than the last. he had to give one particular freshman the puberty talk. he can handle a little bit of tachibana-style irrationality.
rin listens to the odd lilt of makoto's voice, the deception that he can't hide, and he doesn't understand.
but he's hiding behind a building with smoke in his lungs and a newly-healed wound in his shoulder, and he understands that even less. this isn't the time for pettiness; he's bigger than this. ]
I get it, alright? We're all stressed. This megalomaniac just finished ranting about puny humans like he popped straight out of this week's issue of Jump.
[ an audible sigh; rin hunkers down, back to the concrete wall. this deserves his full attention -- makoto is his only real connection to home, after all. ]
Maybe you told me about him, you know, the last time I was here, but this time around I have no idea who Haru is. Text me his last name and - like I said - I'll make sure he's okay.
it was cold before when he first arrived, glacial frigidity with his breath coming out in penitent wisps, but it's like rin's words have the capacity to drop the temperature a full fifteen degrees celsius because he can't feel his face or his hands or his legs anymore. however, he can feel the sickening, lopsided psychosis within himself, a sort of ghosting, apparitional horror while rin speaks, diaphanous and full of inarticulate misunderstandings.
makoto drops the cerevice.
it hits the floor, thunks with a reverberating clatter, and it takes him yet another minute or two to grab it, to manually pry it from the floor with clawing fingers and hope it sticks solid to his hands, unlike everything else.
at some point, he's bitten his lip. his mouth is warm with blood. ]
Did something happen to you? Were you injured? You know better than to walk around in a condition like that.
[ his voice is a little more vacant now, heedless as he abandons the arduous endeavor of carefully stacking away the books. deserting the library entirely without so much as a backwards glance, he treks out into the hall, taking the staircase over the nebulous risk of falling clear through an elevator shaft. ]
Can we meet up somewhere? I need to see you for myself.
[ the clatter of sound has rin cursing and jerking his cerevice away from his ear, his heart shattering his ribcage. after a morning spent in the midst of exploding buildings, for a moment he'd believed that it had all started up again, that he had to get out, raise the alert all over again --
and then makoto's voice rises above the churning of his blood and rin forces himself to listen. the meaning of makoto's words coagulates before rin can make himself understand.
he forces himself to count to ten. tries again. ]
Told you I was fine, Makoto.
[ it's softer than it should have been, rin falling short of irritation. he's tired, an exhaustion that goes beyond the simple desire for sleep. he doesn't have time for this. ]
There's a lot of stuff I need to be doing out here. I'll call later. Keep your phone on you and text me if anything comes up.
[ it's not anger that has rin cutting the line, but necessity. it's (pathetic, weak, idiotic) to be so affected by a clatter of a phone hitting the ground, but rin has no control over the rabbit-skitter of his pulse. he tucks his phone away, grateful for the distance between makoto and himself.
besides, the search team had planned on sending a message to the school once everything cleared up. makoto - and his friend, too - would be fine. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
audio.
[ his voice softens. it's makoto, who worries about the stray cats on his street. he hadn't meant to question rin's capabilities, hadn't meant to dig the truth of his lack of utility value into a wound. he's fine. they're all fine. zack and korra and all the others took care of it.
and then makoto continues, and the frustration rears its head again.
the silence on his end is a living thing. it breathes. its heart beats a rhythm between rin's ears. haru, he thinks, and wonders if the hours spent within the pages of a textbook have set makoto wrong, maybe it's the hours spent alone on another world alone with the knowledge that their home is gone. he's never had the best memory, has he? it's a tiny thing. not worth losing hold of his temper.
rin breathes out, corralling his frustration before it can poison his tone. ]
Text me a list of names if you want me to look around for your friends. I don't think anyone has been seriously hurt, but -- just in case, I'll make that the priority.
audio.
he'd only just returned, in the wake of trepidation and paranoia and the conversations that rin couldn't remember — kisumi with his eyes turned refulgent in the settling night, asking him to dance, kisumi's presence in tellus at all, wiped clean from the database.
makoto doesn't pick fights. he prides himself on non-confrontation, pacifism its own ideology, but the silence is more disconcerting than his anger — because rin is nothing without the fire that keeps him alight, the push-pull tension that'd brought him to iwatobi all those years ago, chasing after the boy they both deeply admired. ]
You're joking, right? I'm serious, Rin, call Haru. He needs to know, and I think he'd take it best from you.
[ a partial lie. ]
Please. I'm just asking for a few minutes of your time. I'd do it myself, but I —
[ i can't. ]
... anyways, he'll listen to you. I know he will.
audio.
rin listens to the odd lilt of makoto's voice, the deception that he can't hide, and he doesn't understand.
but he's hiding behind a building with smoke in his lungs and a newly-healed wound in his shoulder, and he understands that even less. this isn't the time for pettiness; he's bigger than this. ]
I get it, alright? We're all stressed. This megalomaniac just finished ranting about puny humans like he popped straight out of this week's issue of Jump.
[ an audible sigh; rin hunkers down, back to the concrete wall. this deserves his full attention -- makoto is his only real connection to home, after all. ]
Maybe you told me about him, you know, the last time I was here, but this time around I have no idea who Haru is. Text me his last name and - like I said - I'll make sure he's okay.
audio.
it was cold before when he first arrived, glacial frigidity with his breath coming out in penitent wisps, but it's like rin's words have the capacity to drop the temperature a full fifteen degrees celsius because he can't feel his face or his hands or his legs anymore. however, he can feel the sickening, lopsided psychosis within himself, a sort of ghosting, apparitional horror while rin speaks, diaphanous and full of inarticulate misunderstandings.
makoto drops the cerevice.
it hits the floor, thunks with a reverberating clatter, and it takes him yet another minute or two to grab it, to manually pry it from the floor with clawing fingers and hope it sticks solid to his hands, unlike everything else.
at some point, he's bitten his lip. his mouth is warm with blood. ]
Did something happen to you? Were you injured? You know better than to walk around in a condition like that.
[ his voice is a little more vacant now, heedless as he abandons the arduous endeavor of carefully stacking away the books. deserting the library entirely without so much as a backwards glance, he treks out into the hall, taking the staircase over the nebulous risk of falling clear through an elevator shaft. ]
Can we meet up somewhere? I need to see you for myself.
audio.
and then makoto's voice rises above the churning of his blood and rin forces himself to listen. the meaning of makoto's words coagulates before rin can make himself understand.
he forces himself to count to ten. tries again. ]
Told you I was fine, Makoto.
[ it's softer than it should have been, rin falling short of irritation. he's tired, an exhaustion that goes beyond the simple desire for sleep. he doesn't have time for this. ]
There's a lot of stuff I need to be doing out here. I'll call later. Keep your phone on you and text me if anything comes up.
[ it's not anger that has rin cutting the line, but necessity. it's (pathetic, weak, idiotic) to be so affected by a clatter of a phone hitting the ground, but rin has no control over the rabbit-skitter of his pulse. he tucks his phone away, grateful for the distance between makoto and himself.
besides, the search team had planned on sending a message to the school once everything cleared up. makoto - and his friend, too - would be fine. ]