if you're looking for someone to pull you outta that ditch,

[thingpuncher]

WHO? bruno shaw thingpuncher & jiaming shou dipolar
WHAT? a misunderstanding leads to (gasp) more misunderstandings.
WHEN? A lil' bit after landing in scenic Gallipoli.
ANYTHING ELSE? rated p for tsd

Ever since Noctis mentioned tracking vitals, he's been keeping track. It's not that he wasn't checking before, but now? Now, he's definitely keeping an eye on it, every hour, nearly on the dot if there aren't distractions. Gunfire or shells make for a great way to miss his schedule, but the computer makes it hard to fuck up for very long, and then he's checking again.

So when Hei's vitals indicate a spike in heartrate, one that lasts longer than can be excused by almost getting shot. No, this is more along the pattern of 'definitely shot'. He's location is public, thank fuck, so Midnighter makes his way through the trenches, rushing with all the ridiculous speed Bendix gifted him. He can make it there on time. He can fix this.

His own vitals spike, but those have been private since he got there. His location, private for the last few hours. He's not thinking on that now. He's just worried about Hei, quite possibly dying fucking alone.

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[thingpuncher]

He was really that worried? There's that dry throat again, and Midnighter has no clue what to do with it. But his mouth twists unto an unsure frown, and he reaches out, numbly with one hand, to place unsteady fingers on Hei's shoulder.

He was so upset, panicking, over him?

"I'm not going anywhere," he says, expression crumpled in concern. "And I'm... it's not worth getting worked up over, believe me."

There's that impulse to kiss the crown of his head again, or draw him into an embrace. He resists both urges. Unecessary muscle memory. Pointless, here.

[dipolar]

"Don't," he spits with a bow of his head and a tightening of fists, "tell me what to do. It's worth it to me, I don't give a fuck what you think about it. Don't turn off your location again, do you understand?"

Just like he took care of Xing and Yin against their wills, imposing himself on their lives and making everything that much worse-- Midnighter and Noctis receive the same treatment. It's not their fault, he knows it's his. He's weak. He can't stay away from people no matter how hard he tries to.

It's so lonely. He's not strong enough to live a life so fucking lonely.

"I want to hear you say it. Weren't you the 'bad penny' I couldn't lose?"

[thingpuncher]

Oh, is that what he wants? Someone confident and cocky to reassure him? Midnighter feels something like relief. Confident and cocky, he can do. He grins, and leans in, expression just this side of threatening. His confidence is always a little threatening. Too sharp. He knows what his bare fists can do to a human body. He's strong and basically indestructible.

And here's a turn of phrase Hei can't possibly misunderstand or be unfamiliar with.

"Fuck pennies. I'm a fucking cockroach. You can't kill me, and you can't fucking get rid of me. You're stuck with me, you lunatic."

[dipolar]

Arms by his sides, Hei stares at him. Midnighter leans in and he wants to backhand the look off of his face. Smiling like that, no thought to the Hell they've stepped into as sweat chills on his brow. Despite this, it's comforting in some sick way, stoking his dependence with a fire iron.

"Lunatic," weakly accepting, "yeah."

Hei averts his eyes. It doesn't feel all that real. They were just somewhere he was beginning to think of as a safe haven. Now rifles crack over his head and detach him from the moment.

"I'm a lunatic, not someone you can convince to stop worrying with metaphor after metaphor. You already lost that fight before it began. So you see... you can't win every time. That means you're fallible. That means you can die." He lifts his fist at his own irrational reasoning, opening aching fingers to press an open palm to M's chest. "I won't let that happen if it kills me. I'll protect you."

[thingpuncher]

Midnighter feels his mouth go dry. I'll protect you. No one says that to him. He doesn't need protecting, is why; most people realize that. But Hei is strange and stubborn and unwilling completely to realize he's not the strongest thing in the room. Sure, he's got skill, he's impressive, but he's hardly the first metahuman Midnighter's ever seen. Fuck. He's seen mirrors.

Still, the statement is so utterly unexpected that Midnighter can't help be stopped by his. His hands are still on Hei's shoulders as, and his smile is still stuck in place, mostly out of habit.

"I think you're just too stubborn to die," he says, keeping that grin up. "And I'm not gonna let you."

One hand leaves Hei's shoulder to press at Hei's on his chest, keeping it there. The gesture feels... very intimate. He hopes Hei doesn't notice. He's not sure why.

"Promise."

[dipolar]

"Fine, then it's your responsibility. You will protect me from myself and so will I." A statement with meaning: he won't kill anymore of his friends.

Passing soldiers are taking second glances. He notices, but his mind steeps in its disarray and it's not even close to a feeling he needs to address, deeming it unimportant on a logical list of priorities. Keeping his comrades safe is what matters most to him in the moment. Keeping M safe, despite his denials where help is concerned. Deny it or not, the uniform on M's back feels a mite heavier now with a sudden electrical current applied to Midnighter's chest. It's a negligible amount, difficult to say whether or not the man will even notice.

Hei's ability only activates for a split second and looks much like the flare of a match end, easy to blame on a trick of lights. He'll fish out a cigarette in a moment to make that story more believable.

"I'm satisfied with this much. Check in regularly, so this doesn't happen a second time."

[thingpuncher]

Midnighter feels something, but more importantly, the computer registers an electrical output. He flinches on instinct, but finds no harm has come to his body. He looks around, concerned, before giving Hei an annoyed look. The fucker just tried to zap him, didn't he? Shithead.

Whatever. Midnighter probably deserves it, anyway.

"I'm not protecting you from yourself. You just told me not to tell you what to do." Hei's a fucking adult; he can deal with his own issues. "I'll protect you. You can," try to, "protect me. That's how it works. No other deal."

[dipolar]

"Then you're not protecting anybody. The biggest danger here is me." He looks convinced of that, reaching out to pull at one of M's lapels. "This can withstand a bullet, now... can we get out of here, or are we going to make more of a scene for people to gawk at?"

Removes himself and rummages for the cigarettes he's been collecting and stowing, found in the pockets of dead men. Catching one with his mouth, he covers his own ass with a flare of a match that should be — by all reasonable assumption — too damp to light.

"C'mon," said as he sidesteps him with trailing smoke, getting a better handle on the strap of his rifle.

[thingpuncher]

"You're gonna have to compete for that title," Midnighter says with a roll of his eyes, but he lets himself be lead, not sure where they're going or why. It's nice to follow, sometimes; it's part of what he appreciated about his partnership with Apollo. That guy didn't mind telling him what to do.

"What now? You gonna try'n electrocute me again?"

[dipolar]

"I didn't electrocute you, M," matter-of-factly, trudging forward, "It was your uniform."

Fits his slouch hat back over cropped hair, ignoring the soldiers who finally turn away to get back to real business. Don't ask, don't tell, they have more important things to do than worry over bickering men. If a fight breaks out, that's when they deal with it. Or watch for a little bit of quality entertainment.

It's clear after a moment that they're heading to the front. Hei is more than happy to get back to the fray.

"Don't accuse me of something I wouldn't do. Unless you'd like to get shocked."

[thingpuncher]

"You sure give a lotta orders for somebody with less tenure than me," Midnighter says, dry, but he doesn't really mind. He still gets to choose which orders he follows, and honestly, the shit that Hei says really isn't that objectionable.

Wait, he feels like he missed something-

"You're saying you'd never shock me?"

[dipolar]

"Less tenure?" No, that doesn't sit well with him and he stops dead after another step into deep mud, tense with an abject frustration. "Is that something you want to brag about to me, when you don't know how damn long I've been fighting?"

Casts a long look over his shoulder, eyes narrow.

"I'm saying what I want to say and I'll give orders if they make sense. If you want a commendation, go talk to a commanding officer and I'm sure they'll give you a medal."

[thingpuncher]

"I was fucking kidding. If you wanna throw down, pick a better reason. Fuck, you're on edge tonight." Midnighter is unfazed by the other man's anger; who isn't angry at Midnighter for some reason, on some day. He shakes his head. "I'm more interested in the other thing you said."

[dipolar]

'You're on edge tonight.' He nearly laughs, but it dies painfully in his throat and the very overwhelming urge to lash out at him makes his fingers twitch. His hand doesn't go in any direction but up, however, pressing over his own dirty face to smear flecks of soil, blood, some fucked up medley of the two, thumb rubbing in painfully against an eye. On edge.

On edge during another war he can't escape and couldn't if he was allowed to leave. Seeing the same soldiers die and the same bodies sink into the slop they're calling mud when it's always been a soup of piss, shit, vomit, and rain. His feet feel the same overuse they did in South America, drenched and steeping when he's changed his socks three times that long, long day. Except it's bone-chillingly cold here, less bugs to bite at skin, the whites of his eyes, and what spit they can find on his lips.

On edge when every shell blast and crack of a rifle makes him want to drop, curl in on himself, and hide lest he remember that these were the exact conditions he was forced to detonate under when his now-severed soul hit critical mass the first time. On edge when the only people he has now are virtual strangers he's cobbled ties together with to keep himself tentatively alive and from feeling so utterly abandoned by a god who doesn't exist.

He can't suddenly breathe and he doesn't want M to see. M's more interested in his abilities or how they're used — or not used. So Hei's quick to turn back with a hard swallow, clenching his teeth around the panic that wants to escape him in rough, shaking pants.

"No. Another—" shakes his head, angry, "another time, not now. I'm going."

[thingpuncher]

"I'm following."

Midnighter doesn't know much. He hasn't got a clue about most things. What's the appeal of ketchup? What's the National Anthem? Who are the Dodgers? Where is Timbuktu and why do people keep talking about it? But he knows one thing, and it's that Hei shouldn't be alone right now. He also knows how to push. Sometimes, that's all you can do.

Midnighter's never been used the way Hei has, despite quite literally having been made for it. He doesn't understand the way Hei seems bone-deep tired and ready to fight anything that moves, the way he seems constantly bubbling with nervous energy and exhausted emotion. He only knows that he cares.

His boots slosh through the mud, dogging Hei's steps.

"If you won't use your powers on me, I won't use mine on you. Fair's fair."

[dipolar]

"I don't give a damn if you use your powers on me," snapped, head bowing on a tight grind of his jaw. "I don't care. I don't care."

It all really took its time overwhelming him, but the realization that he's more attached to M than he thought drops hard into the pit of his stomach and nauseates him. It's happening all over again, now. M's his friend, Hei's worried about him and it works both ways. This is the first stage and he recognizes the pathetic desperation in him that wants to cling onto it so he won't have to be so goddamn lonely anymore.

The frustration with himself makes it difficult to tolerate the fact that he's trapped in this body, stuck as this monster when he'd rather be anyone but. Li, Lee, Nanashi, Shou, Low Thel, anyone. Anyone else.

"Why are you fixating on this? We're in the middle of a war-zone and what you find unusual is that I don't want to hurt you? Look around you, look at where we are...!"

[thingpuncher]

Anybody who says anything that much, that vehemently, can't be telling the truth. Midnighter chews on this, the thought of Hei's worry and anxiety, the way he's lashing out. It's obviously Midnighter's fault, which means it's his job to fix it.

Midnighter leans down a little, so they're slightly closer in height. Tries to put a hand on Hei's shoulder, gently, like reaching out toward a scared animal. He's never tried to be comforting or trustworthy, not except for... the last time, the first time, also with Hei.

Well, then... that's just the way it is.

"I'm sorry," he says. He's working on instinct, not sure what else to say. Subconsciously, he's parroting Andrew, the way Andrew would give him a gentle hand when he was in the middle of some deep shit, but consciously? Midnighter only knows the path he's chosen feels vaguely familiar, right in a way he can't put his finger on. "I'm sorry I scared you."

[dipolar]

Watches the cigarette he holds pinched between two fingers shake with the rest of his hand, allowing the gentle touch at his shoulder. He wants to slap it away, but he doesn't have the strength anymore. This kind of touch is something he's grown dependent on, in a previous life, and it's happening again.

God, he hates it.

"Are you?" He asks with a waver to his voice, swallowing it back with a bullish snort and a long drag from the cigarette that burns and burns and gives him something to focus on that isn't his own stresses, "Fine, maybe you are. Just, fuck— forget it all... I have to get back to work..."

[thingpuncher]

The way his voice is almost... confused? Midnighter feels his throat tighten again. He lets his hand drop from Hei, realizing they both need their space. Hei needs to regain some sense of composure. Midnighter needs to process why this keeps happening.

"Stay safe," he says, and then, "I'll be."