[SO AFTER MANY ADVENTURES which reflect but aren't accurate to canon, Rean finally got ahold of Crow for reals. It took a betrayal, a death, a revival-with-amnesia and probably another near-death to do it but HE GOT HIM. And everything is FINE and OK at least for now, which is p great because these gays need time to gay. Or rather Crow needs time to figure out how to be a person again and Rean needs time to keep an eye on him in case he spontaneously combusts or something. After all that's happened, it feels more than a bit like they broke some laws of destiny to be living in a house of their own, with nothing more stressful on their plates than their feelings and Instructor Rean having to grade papers or whatever he's decided to do with his life after saving the country like 3 times.
To Crow especially, something feels wrong about it. You don't get that kind of outcome. He decided what he wanted to do, and he did it. He hurt people, because it's what he wanted. He acknowledged that, and he did his best to minimize the fallout, but he didn't regret his actions, and he didn't expect to ever go back to the carefree happiness he'd felt, fleetingly, at Thors. After all, even then, he'd been hurting the people he cared about behind their backs.
It was nice, that Rean never gave up on him. But it didn't really feel deserved. It feels less deserved to have cheated death, to have lost his identity and regained it. To throw away everything, only to see stubborn, impossible Rean Schwarzer hand it back to him without hesitation. What is he even doing here? It's been three months and it still feels like a simulation.
But Crow is Crow, so he's been laughing it off the whole time. Eating junk food, playing games, asking Rean every time he comes home if he had any lewd encounters that day... It's his normal behavior. But he's also been visibly tired, though that happens when you come within an inch of death twice. He wasn't in good shape when they got here, but his smile hasn't faltered the whole time.
He also hasn't addressed the elephant in the room: what the hell is their relationship now anyway? It's not like Crow doesn't know how he feels about Rean. It's Rean he's confused about. It doesn't feel at all likely that those feelings should be returned, and Rean hasn't come out and said they are, but the living situation is starting to feel like a marriage, and it's hard not to notice Rean's gradual invasion of Crow's personal space. At least, not from this end. But he kind of suspects Rean hasn't noticed himself doing it either. Sitting closer, brushing their fingers against eachother when passing the salt -- little things.
Honestly it's a little maddening. But Crow refuses to make the mental leap to the idea that there's something there, despite living in Rean's house, cooking him dinner every day, and the entire thing with having been physically yanked from the edge of oblivion and clung onto like some kind of teddy bear the day Rean brought him back. It's just... domestic bromance? Right. And Rean's thick as a board, so today like always when he comes home from work, Crow's in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on salad and seafood stew, and like always, his greeting is cheerful and cheeky and totally avoiding any of the actual things going through his head.]
Hey, Rean. You look tired. Didn't get down and dirty with the receptionist on your way out, did you?
[OK SO this is a slightly-future world where there are human-level androids. It's not your typical "abused population of inhumans" world but instead one where android work alongside humans with a fair amount of equality. It's not perfect -- there will always be groups who see it as unnatural or even immoral to treat robots as people, but mostly it's okay.
It's also pretty necessary, because there's a lot of them. And because the technology to make them was not just normally developed but found, in a strange dimensional rift that appeared one day and started spewing digital monstrosities. While humans are perfectly capable of destroying the machinery that comes out, going in is other thing entirely. For that, you need something made of the same materials. Thus, the androids, created from the scraps of the living machines that have been coming into the real world for a good thirty years now.
Inside the rift is a whole nother world, full of surreal scenery and advanced technology that humans can barely understand. They're still exploring it, slowly, trying to figure out what actually is ordering the seemingly thoughtless monsters to attack. There's a human settlement there now, but every human is linked to an android, via a brain implant that allows telepathy, and for humans to survive in a world where normal technology becomes inert on entry. It's weird, too -- not just electronics but mechanical things just seem to stop. Guns jam, wires short, anything that isn't made from the materials and powered with the crystals from the other world becomes useless immediately. Humans without an implant quickly sicken and die, too.
So they're reliant on re-purposed weapons, and on links with artificial humans, to convince this other world they're not foreign bodies to destroy. And Crow is one such artificial human. Recently, his partner was killed in an incident, so he's not sure he's ready to trust the new kid they're shoving at him.
C'mon, man. This "Rean" is only 20. Nevermind that Vita was also 20 when they met, and that means Crow is currently 7 years old, and designed to look and behave like someone in his early 20s himself. It's not really fair to dismiss the new guy, but he's doing it anyway. This is what humans call grief. Crow calls it self-preservation. But he's here anyway, walking into the office where his new partner has been left waiting for him for the last half hour. The implant hasn't been switched on yet, but Rean's probably feeling a little residual soreness around the tiny cut they used to put it in.
They haven't met before. Crow doesn't really want to meet. But when he walks in and their eyes meet there's just something about Rean's face that makes him curious. He sits on the table, rather than the opposite chair, and swings one leg over Rean so he's sitting directly in front of him, with his chest as Rean's eye level.]
[In this timeline, when Rean agreed to board the pantagruel, he never got home. Not because he didn't try, or his friends didn't try, but because he wasn't offered the opportunity to chat and run around on his own. Instead, when Crow brought him lunch and chatted with him, he was distant, quiet, never looking Rean in the eye. And about 10 minutes into it, Rean was hit with a deeply sleepy feeling, and then... nothing.
He can't know how long it's been, but he's woken up in a basement medical facility somewhere, in a room that would seem like a nice hospital room (comfy bed, tiny bathroom, two uncomfortable-looking chairs), except that the walls and floor are immaculate, undecorated white tile, there are no windows, and door is heavy and very, very locked, with only a tiny window slot. Off in the distance there are faint voices, some speaking, some shouting, some making terrible wordless noises, all muffled by the thick walls and door until they're just a din of horrific sound. Rean's clothes have been replaced by basic scrubs, and there's some kind of small flat disc stuck to the skin of his chest that won't come off. It has a tiny green glowing light on it.
There's no one else there. Rean can explore to his heart's content, but there's no way for him to get out.]
[In this futuristic AU Rean had a pretty normal life, at first. He was the son of the leader of a small town just like in canon, was loved and taken care of and taught well just the same. But in this one, when he was 18 his home town was flattened, a casualty of a conflict between two bigger political powers. Rean was taken prisoner in the process, and a few weeks later in order to pay the cost of weapons and damage to their own property the ruling force sold Rean and the other prisoners off. They were all separated, sent to goddess-knows-where, probably never to see eachother again.
Rean, specifically, has ended up in a high-end but highly shady brothel. Not that he's been told that yet. He's only heard orders ("move", "be quiet", "don't ask questions"). But he was carted off to a medical facility and put under anaesthesia and now he's waking up in a gaudy bedroom with a big barred window, a headache, and a tall, lean man with hair going grey at the temples standing over him.]
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To Crow especially, something feels wrong about it. You don't get that kind of outcome. He decided what he wanted to do, and he did it. He hurt people, because it's what he wanted. He acknowledged that, and he did his best to minimize the fallout, but he didn't regret his actions, and he didn't expect to ever go back to the carefree happiness he'd felt, fleetingly, at Thors. After all, even then, he'd been hurting the people he cared about behind their backs.
It was nice, that Rean never gave up on him. But it didn't really feel deserved. It feels less deserved to have cheated death, to have lost his identity and regained it. To throw away everything, only to see stubborn, impossible Rean Schwarzer hand it back to him without hesitation. What is he even doing here? It's been three months and it still feels like a simulation.
But Crow is Crow, so he's been laughing it off the whole time. Eating junk food, playing games, asking Rean every time he comes home if he had any lewd encounters that day... It's his normal behavior. But he's also been visibly tired, though that happens when you come within an inch of death twice. He wasn't in good shape when they got here, but his smile hasn't faltered the whole time.
He also hasn't addressed the elephant in the room: what the hell is their relationship now anyway? It's not like Crow doesn't know how he feels about Rean. It's Rean he's confused about. It doesn't feel at all likely that those feelings should be returned, and Rean hasn't come out and said they are, but the living situation is starting to feel like a marriage, and it's hard not to notice Rean's gradual invasion of Crow's personal space. At least, not from this end. But he kind of suspects Rean hasn't noticed himself doing it either. Sitting closer, brushing their fingers against eachother when passing the salt -- little things.
Honestly it's a little maddening. But Crow refuses to make the mental leap to the idea that there's something there, despite living in Rean's house, cooking him dinner every day, and the entire thing with having been physically yanked from the edge of oblivion and clung onto like some kind of teddy bear the day Rean brought him back. It's just... domestic bromance? Right. And Rean's thick as a board, so today like always when he comes home from work, Crow's in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on salad and seafood stew, and like always, his greeting is cheerful and cheeky and totally avoiding any of the actual things going through his head.]
Hey, Rean. You look tired. Didn't get down and dirty with the receptionist on your way out, did you?
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Phone account switching is hell
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It's also pretty necessary, because there's a lot of them. And because the technology to make them was not just normally developed but found, in a strange dimensional rift that appeared one day and started spewing digital monstrosities. While humans are perfectly capable of destroying the machinery that comes out, going in is other thing entirely. For that, you need something made of the same materials. Thus, the androids, created from the scraps of the living machines that have been coming into the real world for a good thirty years now.
Inside the rift is a whole nother world, full of surreal scenery and advanced technology that humans can barely understand. They're still exploring it, slowly, trying to figure out what actually is ordering the seemingly thoughtless monsters to attack. There's a human settlement there now, but every human is linked to an android, via a brain implant that allows telepathy, and for humans to survive in a world where normal technology becomes inert on entry. It's weird, too -- not just electronics but mechanical things just seem to stop. Guns jam, wires short, anything that isn't made from the materials and powered with the crystals from the other world becomes useless immediately. Humans without an implant quickly sicken and die, too.
So they're reliant on re-purposed weapons, and on links with artificial humans, to convince this other world they're not foreign bodies to destroy. And Crow is one such artificial human. Recently, his partner was killed in an incident, so he's not sure he's ready to trust the new kid they're shoving at him.
C'mon, man. This "Rean" is only 20. Nevermind that Vita was also 20 when they met, and that means Crow is currently 7 years old, and designed to look and behave like someone in his early 20s himself. It's not really fair to dismiss the new guy, but he's doing it anyway. This is what humans call grief. Crow calls it self-preservation. But he's here anyway, walking into the office where his new partner has been left waiting for him for the last half hour. The implant hasn't been switched on yet, but Rean's probably feeling a little residual soreness around the tiny cut they used to put it in.
They haven't met before. Crow doesn't really want to meet. But when he walks in and their eyes meet there's just something about Rean's face that makes him curious. He sits on the table, rather than the opposite chair, and swings one leg over Rean so he's sitting directly in front of him, with his chest as Rean's eye level.]
Heya, new kid.
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He can't know how long it's been, but he's woken up in a basement medical facility somewhere, in a room that would seem like a nice hospital room (comfy bed, tiny bathroom, two uncomfortable-looking chairs), except that the walls and floor are immaculate, undecorated white tile, there are no windows, and door is heavy and very, very locked, with only a tiny window slot. Off in the distance there are faint voices, some speaking, some shouting, some making terrible wordless noises, all muffled by the thick walls and door until they're just a din of horrific sound. Rean's clothes have been replaced by basic scrubs, and there's some kind of small flat disc stuck to the skin of his chest that won't come off. It has a tiny green glowing light on it.
There's no one else there. Rean can explore to his heart's content, but there's no way for him to get out.]
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Using this post til I'm forced to stop
Rean, specifically, has ended up in a high-end but highly shady brothel. Not that he's been told that yet. He's only heard orders ("move", "be quiet", "don't ask questions"). But he was carted off to a medical facility and put under anaesthesia and now he's waking up in a gaudy bedroom with a big barred window, a headache, and a tall, lean man with hair going grey at the temples standing over him.]
Get up, boy.
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