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An illness starts with the little cracks.
Ashswag remembers it methodically, behind the glass of his recovery- the medication he has asked for, himself, and he was good for it, there was never any other choice.
They're on the train to nowhere, every allegation fried in his brain why, he promised Reddoons, it made sense back then and it doesn't now but he lives in a system, is part of it, and this is the direction he chose. He's not stopping.
Reddoons' red clothing hurts his eyes. He closes them, holds his hands up to rub them, and it doesn't help.
"Hey, Reddoons, can you..." He makes a gesture. Reddoons turns his head back from the window before he can continue the thought, and it's good he has no problems with concentration, at least here, despite the illness, but he interrupts him, too.
"Can you not... you keep calling me that." He says flatly, and he has an expression that bears some uncomfortable feelings, half hidden by the sunglasses.
"Reddoons is your name." General statement. He puts his hand down on the table, and there... there's a question to follow it up with, it's just that he may know what it is, in territory that is strange to think of, remember, talk about. He'd say he doesn't want to talk about it, but he's not sure how much he's supposed to still be able to want. It's murky. He keeps silent.
Reddoons frowns, clear by the wrinkles of the forehead. They're strange.
"Sure it is, but you used to call me... It's whatever, it doesn't matter." He turns back to the window, which gives Ashswag a split of a space to observe his eyes. He can't get anything out of that.
"I can call you Red. If that's what makes you comfortable." He might have forgotten, or it might've been some other things. Reddoons stills with his shoulder against the cold grey walls.
"That'll be alright." He makes a small nod without looking at Ashswag, and that makes it somehow even more important.
It shouldn't matter. It's not the same as referring to him in his mind like that. He wants to tell him that, that whatever that changed, made him feel in that head of his, it doesn't make anything different.
Reddoons' glasses clack against the window, and Ashswag stops moving, alongside thinking.
Thinking is hard. Remembering is hard, and his... everything feels like wax, utterly ineffective. The Cure was supposed to bring clarity, but nothing he experiences is the same as it was just a few years ago.
His collar is too tight. It always choked him, and he used to drag it loose in that uncomfortable fashion that pointed to him being something, being hurt, feeling, what comes with the disease. He fumbles with it now, out of habit. Reddoons doesn't look. His face is still lit on fire by the sun.
In comparison to him, Ashswag feels like he never left the compounds he was Cured in, and that makes him stand lower than Reddoons in a society where emotions are null, which is supposed to make them all equal.
That also makes it sound like he feels something.
Remembering is the farthest thing from feeling. Example.
+
Reddoons likes to sit on the side of the building, and he calls it a terrace like at home... his place when he was a kid. Ash is at the point he's already gone through the ritualistic nightmares of jumping, but not where he's admitted anything to himself, so he just assumes, the first time. Who wouldn't.
He clicks the door open, gets up the stairs without running. In his dreams he always stands before slipping off. Red's swinging his feet off the edge.
"So you're saying, you don't have the disease." Ash tells him instead of any hellos, and tries to keep the distance, he really does, stares at his relaxed back, no lines on the shirt. Reddoons doesn't deign to turn.
"Sit here." He offers, flat, and doesn't point at where. Ash squats behind his back and slowly puts his hands over his shoulders, like it will help. Red chuckles and leans back into him, and he feels like the bodies' only point of balance, that if he wanted he could push him down.
Red finally raises his head at him.
"You're a fucking goner, you know that." Ash tells him.
"Says the one legally diagnosed with having emotions." He smiles, full face. "Couldn't be me."
He tilts himself forward, and Ash hugs him before he realises it won't send them down, but the split second's there where he can't catch his breath. He looks down, then, past Red, at the thick crowns of trees in the white-gray utopia of everything else, and he figures out a new feeling, then.
It's where he learns how to fly.
+
Metaphorically, of course. It's adrenaline, pent up in him. He can't help it, stuck in him, circling in the system. He doesn't think it's supposed to be that way.
+
They work same place. They don't look at each other before Ashswag can't help but stare, and all his disease is associated with him, forcefully. He doesn't mind it first, it's just an accident he looks for too long, and then he comes back to his block and throws his chair at the wall, and he keeps asking himself if it was Reddoons, if he was the reason. "It's not contagious", fuck it. He thinks he understands for the first time how good swearing can feel like. He doesn't even know back then if Red's it, he just forces that shift of something in his brain, every time, ever since before he knows him, and that makes him feel like a minuscule machine cog with worn edges, so Red does.
+
An attendant comes by with a cart, and she sees the perfect image of an ill citizen in Reddoons, which he is, but then she just assumes, because she has to, they're on the train somehow past all the terminals, and Ashswag doesn't have a lump in his throat and doesn't want for her to move by quicker.
Reddoons orders a drink.
"Cheers." He gestures.
"This's sparkling water." His throat's dry. He didn't take anything.
"Do you think you can get anything stronger here?" He holds the plastic cup with two fingers, carefully, sips on it. Tilts it away from him. "Want it?"
Ash takes without asking and downs most of it in a few large gulps, puts on the table and the plastic almost doesn't make a sound, slides along the surface, looking up. "Thank you." He only sounds like he's a little bit out of breath, which he should never be.
+
"It's really easy to figure out someone's ill, if you just observe."
Red knows he's it before he does fully, and he, in turn, doesn't know why he bothers with him. He does end up asking, and the answer is entirely predictable. Red was alone, and selfish, and willing to give a hand to drag him out of the water.
He doesn't do it in front of their colleagues, catches him on a break, and he doesn't know back then, seems, not anything, and the only thing in which he's worth something is that he can feel, but he doesn't know that, or that, either.
"Is it? Are you a doctor too, Reddoons?" He turns on his heels, extremely slowly. "I wouldn't guess from your papers on, y'know, space." He's dreading it, looking him in the eye. He doesn't know that feeling yet. Being trapped.
"As in, they're so good? What, thank you." He doesn't know how he can say that with a straight face, he's not supposed to say it at all. "Yeah, you see, it's all in the facial expressions. The illness reworks them completely." He moves like he wants to pat Ash on the shoulder, walking by. The impression's false.
He expects him to stop at least, to talk. He doesn't. He does still, a few steps past him, and it's as if he's not sure what there is to say. Ash doesn't want to hear anything from him.
He runs first. He tries to hold his step so it doesn't look that way.
The ads on every screen keep looping stay vigilant and take your meds. He comes back to his block and rewatches them on the projection there.
+
"It's like it didn't happen. It's weird." He tells him, after a few minutes of silence. He can almost breathe.
"What, didn't happen." Reddoons asks, and he doesn't sound one bit curious. Doesn't mean he isn't, which also incidentally doesn't mean he is. He's gotten too good at hiding. Ashswag remembers he used to be able to guess. He's not so sure he was right as he did.
"You. Your... thing."
Reddoons just settles back in his seat. "Which part? If you think I was going to bawl my eyes out at you..." He shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint, Ash." This looks like a smile, genuine smile. Ashswag doesn't know how to do that anymore, but he can remember that much from his face. It's too... to be fake. He can't pick the word. Not a happy smile, anyway. None of this matters.
"You did. If we can call it that." He thinks it's supposed to have snark in it, but he doesn't work like that anymore, it's not possible. He keeps hitting his head on the invisible barrier in his head.
Red... doons laughs. "You know I hate crying."
"I know."
+
"Eyes weak to light? How did no one clock you instantly, damn." He sighs it out.
"Sometimes people have weak eyes because they have them, Ashswag. It is... it does mess with their heads, but I'm clean, remember? What would they do to me."
He doesn't know what to do with it. Every second of his life he's supposed to get better, and the illness itself is frying his brain, and he chooses to stay here, on the stairs, with Red, anyway, and do nothing except what sounds like... conversing, talking and talking and not figuring anything out.
"People are scared of what they don't understand." He shrugs.
"Were you scared of me?"
"No? No." It comes out before he can think. "Of you being diseased, yeah. Maybe. Not of you, why would I. We weren't even that close of colleagues, Red."
"What? What did you-"
"Huh, sorry? It's how I always thought of it." He shrugs.
"What'd you call me?" Reddoons puts a hand down flat on the stairs, right next to him, like he wants to grip something. He has Ash right here, but they've still have enough to go to the point of touching.
"Red? Red-doons."
+
Stupid. Stupid-stupid-stupid, three letters, like the nickname Ashswag used to be called when he was six or eight, that- he got used to Reddoons calling him, too. Not anymore.
+
"And you should know it's still me. Just because I don't..." He jams a finger to his temple, and it hurts there. "Just because I can't react the way you want me to doesn't mean I'm a blank slate, and you get to throw shit at it again and be superior about it."
"But it can't be the same." Reddoons raises his hands, like it explains everything.
"Of course it can't be the..." He breathes in, gulps air.
You know, the thought's stuck in his brain, it looks like between Reddoons and him the one that's sick is Ashswag himself.
Not even in that revolutionary never-seen-again way they screamed it's better to feel. It's not. He remembers.
"See, this's where the problem is." Red is so, so composed. "You keep saying you're different, and you're being different, and yet you're the same stubborn asshole you are, Ash. It's just it's more you being you, than anything that has to do with the Cure."
Ash- Ashswag is almost whisper-shouting, it's just called whispering loudly not to attract attention, and he doesn't feel anything behind that because he knows how it is to feel, and maybe, maybe he doesn't want anything like that again. "You want to not even blame it on the Cure now? What, Reddoons-"
+
He's stuck in his apartment, when he loses Red, stuck because he is promised he'll get him back, that he'll have him out, and he doesn't even have time to fucking grieve because he's on the verge of losing the last bit of hope every few minutes, and then his head screams at himself that Red wouldn't want him to. So he doesn't.
He remembers Planet sitting him down after a group talk, walking Red out the door, and telling him with a smile, "it happens often, yeah, but you know... you don't know, it's unhealthy to hold onto one person like that", and laughing, quietly and unfunny, at his face.
"I'm not saying, "coupling bad", like one of those ads. It'll just break you one day." They turn away from his expression, but they're casual about ignoring him, like it's normal.
Ash thinks he tells them they're not a couple, and they say it doesn't have to be romantic, but do give him the final skeptical look.
He doesn't like to say Planet is right, but they've gotten into the brains of so many people that sometimes they are.
It does break him. It's the type where he thinks he's sick again, sick times two. Phase one: mindless panic, phase three: suicidal thoughts, but he's never been much of a planner, and hitting his head against a wall is really everything at the same time. It's gonna bruise, and he's going to tell Zam with a nasty smile that the symptoms are great, thanks. Stable phase three. Don't call him out and ship him off to the compounds.
It was always him thinking: he wakes up one day, and gets a call from the doctor, time's up, your illness has progressed for too long, and a knowing kinda scold for never-ever visiting. Was always him envying Red.
+
"And now it's gonna go downhill as it always does, and you'll snap, because you have fucking feelings, Ash. Like a human is supposed to." Red knocks on the table with a fist, and doesn't look one bit guilty about talking over him.
"Are you saying I'm lying about the Cure?" Ash finally snaps open the button of his shirt. Miracle it doesn't pop.
"No." Reddoons says easily. "You're lying to yourself. Stop, lying to yourself."
+
Red comes back, and then he comes back, with a hole in his neck that they've supposed to have dug everything out from — just that it's a small nick of a needle.
"Why." Red asks him flatly, and Ash grins at him full face and says he didn't know the Cure gave him hallucinations.
The guard at the entrance to the compounds told him he was dead, so. Who cares. Not Jaron's face on the projections of known outlaws, suspend on sight, that he laughs at inside, and wants to point at it to the closest person and tell them he always knew he was a bitch, bit of a pity they wouldn't understand.
Red does cry, but it happens farther into the night, because he's not that easy to crack, not even as Ash, but he's never gonna have to worry about that, he tells himself. Then shakes it off.
+
"Would a working citizen of his society ever behave like this, Ashswag?" Red... Red tilts his head to the side. Ash really feels like he's the sick one in this conversation, because Red is deflecting too, he knows, he knows how he works. And Ashswag isn't supposed to, because he doesn't have it as a problem anymore.
"Don't call me stupid, Reddoons." Comes out tired. "I know how it is to feel. I don't... I don't fucking like you anymore." He goes this close by jumping up and attracting attention, so, sure- he doesn't actually think it would've been worse than this pit that starts to grow in his stomach.
"There are feelings that aren't love for little old me." Red snorts.
Ash's hands shake, and what's in his head doesn't feel like cracks anymore, just the whole thing shattering and flying apart.
+
"I still want to go with you." He towers above Reddoons when he's just woken up, and isn't talking. "Since you're not gonna ask."
Reddoons sits up, hugs his knees slowly, and says nothing.
+
"I guess I'm scared, then."
He throws it as a shield, not in the way he's used to saying these things to Red, and it feels utterly insincere. He's used to not meaning everything because he can't. Just not with Red, but some things changed, okay.
He thinks if he touched him for a bit, he could dig something out of that large hole between his lungs, or somewhere by, and say he's in love and mean it.
Red looks like it breaks him, agreeing with him.
"Isn't that worse?" Is this what Red's felt inside all this time, because it makes everything move so quickly it's like he's slipping and nothing matters. But lighter. Not like there's fuck all he can make of it in his head. "Why do you care then, anyway? Yeah, I can feel... something. Why do you have to dig it out of me?"
Red's voice is low, and Ash thinks for him that he probably just didn't know, clawed for it aimlessly, tried to prove his point, and that's the right answer whatever he says, because neither of them can be trusted to speak, fully.
"You know, because I still care about you?"
"Because it goes both ways." He mutters, and then he doesn't raise his head up at him.
The attendant comes by again, and she says the next stop's soon. Reddoons offers him a hand, and he stands up holding it until they break it in the small corridor for entirely the best of not being stared on.
This is exactly what they always did.
They're already by the exit enough, and Red jams his wrist against the scanner before Ash can comment on it, and then there's wind flaring right into his face.
He gulps air like he's gonna drown. If he is, it's more likely to be from it.
"You know, back when I hacked your sensor, I never thought you could go around it worse than me." He hears himself slightly against the racket of the train. He's scared he's not gonna catch Red's words back.
"Thanks for that." Red shouts back. "Made rewiring it that much more- more difficult." He stumbles. Ash would ask, what's with it, and the face that is really not his popping up on screens every time he scans it now, but right now the wind's blowing out his thoughts, and he doesn't have time for the people who helped Red, who he knows are dead at best now.
Or not at best. If the Cure doesn't... work.
"You're very fucking welcome." He takes a step closer, because Red's standing by the exact exit, and they don't have much time. He thinks leaning out to look will get him caught with the air.
"We're probably going to have to run for a headstart." Red stares out at the field. All they were promised, back what feels like a life... fucking lifetime ago — which is, they were promised nothing. No rules, no... authority being stolen away from them.
Maybe it's fine, after all, he thinks and the emotion's almost there and he could easily force it but what he really needs is to let himself feel it, the slight hope.
"Okay then." He tugs on Red's shirt. He's glad it's not any of the sterile white ones back... back there, although it does still make his head hurt. "Take a step back?"
He miscalculates it, probably, and it breaks their fall to grab onto Reddoons, but gripping his hand would just made them strain their wrists, and what, maybe he just wants to hold him.
He lands shoulder down into half sand and some stones, and Red groans before he swears.
Ash can't feel anything except the ache and the dusty air, which in a way is the same as happiness.