MUSE / Kim Kitsuragi - Tumblr Posts

❝ what happened to you? come inside. come inside. ❞ (To Kim from Stranger on the Balcony)

It had been a long time since his head pounded the way it did tonight.

When he was younger, this kind of pain had been the consequences of stupid actions he could predict, account for, undermine. Controllable, in a way. A way he had learned over time to minimize where possible as he'd gotten older, the years perhaps not making him wiser, but his priorities changing. Causes rattle like a snake's tail in the back of his mind ( insomnia, substance abuse, stress, injury ━ )

Bruises littered the Lieutenants face in a twisted painting, sore like a battered dog as he waited patiently at the Smokers door. ━ It felt like the freeze of the plummeting snow of evening made it worse, frost reaching up from the base of his shaved neck into his brain-stem, crystals icing the grey-matter as it burned at the bruises & faint streaks of fractured blood-vessels littering his cheek ; a lightning strike in a torpefied spring. ━ his hands drew behind him, almost absentminded, twitching. he realizes, a moment after, that he lacks his gloves. ( left at the Whirling, he recalls, he'd needed dexterity for tending to the wounds Harrier had sustained where leather could not permit ) ━━ too slow, too late.

━ Kitsuragi is certain, instantly, that he must look much worse than he is alone in the infant light of the apartment cascading upon him. He takes a breath & mouth gapes with a series of about-to-be-said sentences, but to his surprise finds himself being ushered inside before the words form. perhaps even more surprising; he obliges, almost without hesitance, the sound of his boots on the stone flooring as he enters is clear cut in the muffled feeling of the world at large, a consequence of wretched senses. maybe it was familiarity, even in a place like Martinaise, of the unspoken protocol that stretched its nerves throughout cities from spaces he thinks both men are familiar with ━ the Smoker, someone new but versed. Kim, a history teeming.

How it wasn't protocol at all, wasn't obligation, but the same heart across a community that understands what to do when one of your own turns up wounded, or shaken, or afraid; accustomed with living looking out for each-other as well as oneself, it inspires a trust that works its way into your bone marrow. the knowledge that if you go to the right people, they will take you in, and that even briefly, you will be safe. a brotherhood, a sisterhood, a something else lit in the underglow of pretty colors & community & language built to harbor them, harbor each-other.

Maybe it was that that inspired such blind faith in him, blind trust. He scolds himself that could get him killed one day. ( the night prior? it had saved his life. )

" Khm. I can assure you, sir, it isn't as bad as it looks. " dark eyes flick across the Smoker, then, the rest of his apartment as he briefly refamiliarizes himself with the foreign space, lingering near the door like a nervous animal waiting for the cue to leave if he needs to ; only out of the way enough to close it behind him. body tense, almost uncomfortable, but maybe that was only to suppress the subtle tremor in his hands, up his wrists, as they were locked behind his back. ━ Hiding, in a way. " Just some bruising, and a concussion. Nothing severe. "

he catches a clock and Kim wonders, briefly, if he should've come earlier ( 21:03 ; 9:03pm ), but dismisses it. As far as he knows, this was the most likely time for the Smoker to be here, too late now. Kim murmurs something about having a few questions as the stabbing pain of the migraine flares in the side of his skull, something he forgets as soon as he says it. ━ Ah. Whatever. He can still work with this...

a tension pulls at the air, weighted with the smell of chestnut-scented smoke and cold, stagnant wind, as Kitsuragi was viscerally aware of attention on him. the roads are lovingly iced in the early morning, world slowly coming alive from the night prior, and already beginning to discolor in the dust & the sunlight. Nothing stays perfect forever. the Lieutenant speaks finally, back turned but conscious, attentive. specific in his posture to perhaps look bigger than he was, calm & prepared for what the day might hold. ( Show me your cards, I'll show you mine. ) ━ " ... If you have something to say, say it. "

@vendettavalor // harry & kim!

even the air smelled different in Precinct 41st.

Maybe Kim should've expected that, with Coal City's mines living as a still-breathing recent history for Jamrock bleeding old smog into the wind even as the furnaces have long shut down, the subtle differences there'd be that somehow still catch him off guard in the sheer fact he didn't anticipate them to exist at all. No one thinks about the way the air smells, or how the rain sounds different with different things to touch ground upon and different layers to sleuth through, or the way the sun rose in a slightly different position from the vantage point changing ━ but here he was, thinking about it, because this is what his reality was now. a myriad of tiny changes, but ones felt, under it all. ( there was a tiny, nervous part of him that shied away from it, from the adjustments and changes, and said that they could still back out, nothing has to, we can go. go home, where we are familiar, and our history lies. with the people there we are leaving behind for this. ━ but the part of him that knows why he's here at all, because of Captain Pryce's affirmative, because of his own, because of Harry, the part of him that wanted to stay was the one he trusted, the one he believed, the one he wanted to put his time into. he'll stay, he decides as though its still a decision to make, he'll stay. )

It was raining again in the early morning as Kim enters the Precinct for the very first time where he'd be part of it. ━ He'd visited a few times, throughout a handful of weeks of sorting the logistics of changing precincts mostly to talk to the Constabulary desks and the Captain after the case in Martinaise had reached it's end, but this was the first time he'd truly, truly been incorporated. He was of Precinct 41 now, not 57, like grafting another branch onto a different tree. ━ soon enough after THE HANGED MAN for that change that hung in the air still yet to manifest into whatever it was trying to, but long enough for the bruises that once littered the Lieutenants face to subside, small discolored splotches in what used to be out of control, blood vessels small and tempered beneath the skin with time.

His waterproof boots ignore the weather regardless, bomber jacket striking against the cold-warm humid sky, an umbrella in his hand and a small box of little things in the other as he entered the oddly shaped building. For his desk, mostly paperwork he'd transferred over, some notebooks and stationary, his new badge tucked away in his pocket as the ledger shifted near the bottom of the box. He shudders the umbrella outside the door, closed, and slips in.

It takes all of 15 minutes to find the numbered desk that'd now be his; dark green-blue paint chipping and dried in thick droplets permanent 'pon the woods surface, drawers squeaky but smooth, chair just as dedicated as the people who needed them. its years of service likely grander than most people here, he imagines, in a moment of impulsive thought that he's certain he must've fed into from his time with Du Bois in Martinaise. ━━ Kitsuragi wonders how long it'd take for Harry to find his desk, as he begins the process of acquainting himself with the space. It was still morning, and if Vicquemare was truthful about Harry's old habits ( as reasonably biased as they might be ), he'd give it a few hours. One at best, three at worst he figures.

Part of Kim shoots back that he could have been waiting for you, you know, to meet you first thing on your arrival. Vicquemare could've kept him up to date, after all, and he was the one to offer to begin with. Usually, Kim would dismiss it as unreasonable to expect that from someone, but, well... Harry wasn't usual, so he'd have to wait and see. ( he finds himself amused by the concept, regardless of its validity, anyway. )

Maybe he could read the story on his face. Kim was a composed, concealed man, and he intended to keep it this way regardless of how his brow fruitlessly insisted on furrowing his eyes shut under the pounding migraine that cracked through his skull, but the Smoker wasn't stupid. ━ No one in Martinaise could afford to be, and especially not with the clientele he worked with. ━━━ The bruises, the sounds of gunshots, the absence of Harrier, the fact the hanged man had been a mercenary ( or, at least, donned the armor of one ). It wasn't difficult to piece together that they'd been involved, if nothing else; a fact confirmed if he asked or found himself 'round the Whirling in the last little while. The cleanup was still going on, the blood clotting in the street, sticking to the gravel or being frozen by the cold...

The sarcasm briefly disarms him. Not in the way of sarcasm softening nerves, but in the way of reflecting a strike and driving a blade into the ground ━ sloppy, uncoordinated ━ and part of the Lieutenant felt briefly like an embarrassed child at the remark he'd made, gloating about being stronger than he looked, something like that. He knew better, and the steel bordering that made-up his endless resilience against the world is righted in an instant. The feeling is compressed into a fine, dense cube, and gone within a quarter of the time the younger takes to slip back out from the bathroom ; a room admittedly more adjacent to a closet than anything else. ━ Come on. Get it together.

" Thank you, monsieur, but that isn't necessary. " Kitsuragi raises a bare hand in a gentle, dismissive manner, the faintest stains of blood caught under nails and in the stubborn ridges of callouses before he lowers it, lets it lock back with its partner. " I have already taken painkillers ━ Drouamine. I'll re-check how willing I am to take medication handouts in a few hours. "

Kim says it with a straight-face, but the dry humor lingers in the latter sentence. ━ you can't tell if he's being serious, but he appreciates the gesture.

there's an understanding, beneath it all, of how much those painkillers can mean to be handed out so easily, the allyship neither directly acknowledge but know. ━ He decides, unspoken, that the Smoker needs them more than he does, regardless of how long it takes for that drouamine to kick in.

Kim does oblige with taking a seat, at the very least. Taking the open chair closest to the entrance, plush old fabric smelling of dust and cleaner, wearing its age. He anticipated being too high strung after all that had happened to sit down easily, but he finds his legs conceding easily. ━ maybe all the running around with the Detective had finally worn him out, at last, when there'd be a handful of days of inaction for the both of them... ( and yet, here the Lieutenant was, still working, still asking questions. He briefly worries about Harry's state, back at the whirling, but reminds himself of Garte's nearby presence. It was... It would be fine. In a way, it had to be. )

After a moment of consideration, he starts with the obvious; " I can assume you heard the commotion of gunfire the day before, yes? "

continued from here. // @quillheel

Upon hearing the knocking on the door to his apartment the Smoker had originally thought to dismiss it. It wouldn't have come as a surprise to him if it had been one of the children running around who liked to cause trouble - he couldn't even count how many stones that one kid had thrown at the corpse that had been hung up on the tree. However due to the gunfire the previous day, his mind decided that it was an urgent matter.

He was glad he had chosen to open the door.

While the Smoker had talked more to the other detective than he had with Kim, the Smoker had a feeling that they ran in the same…circles so to speak and that only urged him further to help him, not only out of the kindness of his heart, but in the sense of having a bond of sorts with the other male. The Smoker was confident that they had both had the same insults thrown at them over the years and while he had learned to either hurl a sarcastic comment back or outright ignore them, it didn't change the intent of discrimination.

"Of course it isn't as bad as it looks." His lighthearted airy tone of voice may have been a little sarcastic, if only to try to lighten the atmosphere and Kim's nerves.

After the older male enters his apartment, The Smoker takes a moment to slink off to the bathroom to see what he has for medical supplies. A few moments pass and he comes back into the main room with a small bag in tow accompanied with a glass of cold water. Setting the glass down on the nearby nightstand, the younger male takes a small bottle of painkillers out of the bag he grabbed from the bathroom. He places his palm on the lid and opens it with one swift push. Dropping a few pills into his hand, he hands them out to Kim. "Here. Take these and have a seat and we'll see what else can be done."

// i know there's about a grand total of Two People here who plays Harry but PLEASE i wanna write a thread formed around their dynamic & specifically a scene of asking Kim for his glasses for w/e reason when alone, and in turn asking him to trust him. Kim trusts Harry, trusts him with his life, but actively testing it, reaching out and getting Kim to consciously relinquish control over to him through the medium of something he was so often bullied for as a child, revealing his face in totality without obstruction, the vulnerability of both self and emotion? the examination, the fear, the way his eyes have hurt him and others before, the test of faith?? the difficulty in which that comes to Kim, the gentleness yet unhesitating, the way it is still being asked???? 'although you beg me, curse me, hate me, i will not look away from you, you will not persuade me to stay my hand' 'i am asking how to endure it' 'on the strength of my having asked you' BEGGING shit

@vendettavalor

initially, Kim paid no mind to the opening of the main entrance. People came and went in the repurposed mill, two chimneys like stalks from the perceived head of the oversized animal made of concrete and metal as, within, a few rubber mats desperately tried to keep the rainwater at bay, doors left relatively open in the rampant shuffling of morning and the influx-outflux of officers coming for work or leaving for home after nightshift, chatter filling like white noise. it's when Harry makes his approach that Kim notices.

I told you comes the part of his mind that proposed the idea of him waiting ever so patiently in the first place, midway through him re-establishing an old organizing system in the drawers and little places in his desk, as it hollers in its newfound victory ━ I told you he'd be here, he'd be waiting, hours for the best detective on the force? you're off your game, Kitsuragi!

the Lieutenant subtly shakes it off, twirling one of his pens in his hand as he looks towards Harry's approach properly. The grin upon worn skin slowly relearning itself as the onslaught of years of damage has at last called a ceasefire & beneath the bristles of facial hair it seems almost almost out of place, mismatched. It reminds Kim of a large dog, forgetting itself as an elder and remembering only its youth, in the way Kim finds himself thinking it apt for him, suitable; he liked it when he truly smiled. ━━ His own face refuses to betray him, but there in the margins of his cheeks, the skin around his eyes, a ghost of a smile lingers. ( he was wrong. a pleasant surprise, regardless of how major of a miscalculation. later, he'd blame it on the early morning instead, or perhaps his own out-of-touchness with Harrier's timing, given how fleeting their engagements... )

" Bonjour, Detective. " he answers, resuming his motions as he squirrels little things away ( stationary, paperwork, the ledger, his notebooks, sticky-notes, umbrella leaned and carefully hooked against his desk ; ever the practical man he'd like most to seem, aren't you, Kitsuragi? )

" Wet, but it's too early to say. " is the sentence he settles upon for the inquiry, it's hard to tell if he's joking. " I have been here about eight minutes, not counting the commute, so you haven't missed very much. Ask me again in an hour or two, if you really want to know. Though, are you always here this early? " ━ an eyebrow raises as he casts him a brief glance, a momentary pause before returning to the task; attention nonetheless focused upon the yefreitor.

Having lived in Jamrock for so long, the little sensations were lost on Harry. Until now, anyway. Whether by the result of his constantly alcohol intoxication, his assured peripheral neuropathy, or the natural haze that clouded his senses after years and years of being exposed to it all, he'd fallen into a routine at the Precinct. Not comfortable and not comforting all things considered - but a routine. And now, he was learning all but the most fundamental of things from scratch again. The feeling of his desk under his calloused fingertips. The smell of smog-tinted air and the rain on his head as he stepped out for work that morning. To many, it would've seemed a glum day in Jamrock.

But to him, looking at it all and drinking it in with fresher eyes than he's had in years, it was beautiful.

For once, he'd come in on time. He'd tried to be early to prepare for Kim, but in his haste of excitement, he'd forgotten the fact that he'd forgotten where the precinct was. In the end, he'd left so early that by the time he did arrive, he was right on time. (Trant seemed pleased by the fact. Judit seemed encouraging. Jean seemed only mildly grumpy, if a bit surprised. But he does get an earful about walking in sopping wet. So Harry goes to the locker room just to grab a towel and dry off.)

It doesn't take long for him to return. Still damp from the rainwater and a little more disheveled than when he initially walked in. But overall, it seems that the sobriety offered in Martinaise has already begun to work wonders on Du Bois. His skin isn't so flushed and red. He doesn't scratch at his palms with nervous anxiety, nor swing between sluggishness and hyperactivity. His hygiene's improved and his ability to concentrate seems to have followed suit, as he immediately looks over to Kim's newly-assigned desk to find his partner there.

The glee on his face is positively puppy-like. He nearly trips over himself in the rush to come up to Kim, the biggest grin on his face that he's ever had lighting up his worn and overgrown features. "Hey, Kim! You made it! Sorry, I wasn't able to greet you at the door... but welcome to the Precinct! How are you liking things so far?"

Harry, please, it's been five minutes...

⚔️ @quillheel

04.     entry made after experiencing a nightmare. ( for kim mayhaps? :0 )

DEAR DIARY... // always accepting!!!

poised vertically among a dozen and a half of its brothers on a shelf that is not cramped, but in equal measure begins to lose its space, is a notebook. hands pluck it out by the top ridge along the well-made blue spine, the skin of it covered carefully in a deep navy, the papers a pristine white. inside, the handwriting is dense and thick and fast, bunched together on each line, a code with it's cipher in the language itself. it has not sat here long. the date on the inner cover like the notice of an eviction in black, fluid pen; '50 - '51.

you open it. its pages rustle as though a guarded cage has been opened, rendered vulnerable, almost meek despite the intimidation of straight iron and pressed paper, rustling like a snarl. you sit with it, you learn it, it learns you. it is uncomfortable with what is asked of it. you ask anyway.

you reach back into the memory it holds. it gives way, like sticking your hand in the guts of a soft oily thing, or jello, reaching for a pearl in a clam-shell.

━ I have had more nightmares in the past two weeks than I have in four months. I don't know how much longer I can do this.

Maybe the stress is getting to me. Seeing the recently deceased is never good for your health, but I can't afford to take leave. If I did, all the ground I'd been covering my entire career will be torn out from under me. I'm lucky. I think it's more than just the corpses.

I keep watching him die. There is blood drawn. Kortenaer aims higher. Shoots. The bullet ruptures his liver as a virulent bomb inside of him. he is unconscious after an unimaginably painful half-second. Someone shouts. I panic. I attempt to stop the bleeding. I do not see de Paule. She aims. Shoots. I wake up in the 57th infirmary. I am forced to ask what happened to him instead of being told. I am informed there was nothing they could do, dead within the two days I am unconscious, an excruciating death as the liver and gallbladder poisons his bloodstream even as the bleeding stops. I do not get to see him again. I do not even know if there is a funeral held. The trial never happens. They were gone. We remained. I remain.

The dream changes often, sometimes being so abstract as if only pertaining to the color of his existence or Martinaise itself, but the point remains the same. somewhere in Jamrock, another little light blinks out.

This hasn't happened since Eyes, and never this constant. I wish I could call him.

I don't know. I'm tired. I want to hear his voice. I want to talk to him again. It's late. He'd answer.

The ink is allowed to dry for a long, long time. the pearl is clutched in your right hand. your reaching the end, oblivion, always cut short.

I'm going to work on the Kineema. I can't really, the only thing to do is something to I want to do with him, but an unnecessary tune-up is enough to keep my hands busy.

Maybe then I'll be able to go back to sleep.

"i'm not scared of death anymore." (Harry to Kim)

" You should be. " the words pop off his tongue, off his teeth before he can stop them. a blunt bitterness, levelheaded but thoughtless, true mind lunging like a spring. he's been something braced since the tribunal, something bruised, something tense and rigid and battered, a broken mirror waiting for its frame to let go. Stubborn as he is, though, he wouldn't let it. there is work to do. he has endured the worst day of his life already.

But something about Harry, something about the ridges of him, his language, his mind, his body ━ the inflamed lines of veins down the injured leg, angle of the shoulder to the neck rested against the bed's cushioning, knuckles stern with twitching fingers in his sleep. mandible ( jaw ). sternum ( chest ). patella ( kneecap ). his silhouette now. an inspiration. a reluctance. ; learning it to care. caring to learn. ━ made him fast. practiced opinions shedding skins for the real ones beneath, something more genuine, allowed to be; here, with him.

a blessing and curse. freedom at the cost of being shackled elsewhere, there is no one like him. his tone unchanging, but a knowingness beneath it. he understands the threat. he aims for the throat. ━ impulse, impulse, impulse ━ pull the trigger.

He did. You should be. A lesson learned the hard way.

the Lieutenant isn't wearing his gloves as he takes a drag, subtle ridges of nylon pockets revealing where the gloves had hidden as fingernails are tinged with the remains of dried blood cracked in the digits ━ harry's blood. ━ ghostly, concealed, but Harry would open anything. " Self preservation is imperative now more than ever, Detective. " ━ ( Detective, not Officer. He only called you Officer when he was angry with you. )

" Krenel has not sent retaliation, but that doesn't mean we are safe. " the words come like reasoning he didn't need to explain, an understanding between them ( 'This is not the first person to die in his place. He goes on.' you remember, right? pray for it ) but the motions being danced through regardless. Flimsy at best; in the way Kim is never flimsy.

The Lieutenant's eyes move from where they'd been poised, out the broken window of Harry's hotel room, cold breeze whistling through the cracks, and instead they shift onto Harry. Studying for a moment. The smell of chestnut Astras laces garotte lines through the room.

" ... Or, are you leaving me to the wolves so soon? " a brow raises over the gleaming lenses of his glasses seemingly at his own selfish, dry wit; lingering on his tongue. or is he serious? the light makes it hard to tell, but no less heavenly a halo. maybe it's the concussion.

"Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." (Harry to Kim)

They’d been standing outside of the Martinaise bookstore ( Crime, Romance, and Biographies of Famous People ) for upwards of 20 minutes by now, not entering, not perusing, the time occupied exclusively with the Detective’s staring; eyes clouded the way they become when something occupies him, the edging-on-vacant look he sometimes acquires when he looks up into the cold sky and murmurs under his breath. Locations. Distances. A gridwork of nerves under the city streets; or rather what they were built atop; that despite the efforts of the shivering, terrible absence of memory in his brain persisted in reaching him. Useless information heralded as jewels. The names of streets. Seeing from another angle.

For the last 5 of those 20, Kim was beginning to worry on if Harry had suffered some kind of stroke, perhaps caught between the conscious and unconsciousness, the way fainting seemed to be becoming a habit for him ( or at least, so he’d learnt. ) and his body simply hadn’t fallen, knees locked, keeping him stable. There’d been the temptation to gently nudge his shoulder, a tap to see the structural integrity under that disco blazer, on those snakeskin boots, but he answers before he fully settles into it & the consequences it may harbor; the words soft and raw like fruit fuzz left to rot, quiet on the wind, and all the Lieutenant can do is nod sagely, peering over at whatever it’d been to occupy him so thoroughly. Nothing interesting to Kim, maybe, but all encompassing to the other. Some days, Kitsuragi considers spending entirely on dissecting- ━ no. not dissection. he would not to kill it. ━ considers spending entirely on understanding what it is that goes on inside his head. Part of him whispers that to do so would be to ruin the magic.

Another part of him offers the refute of ‘I wouldn’t know’ in answering Harry, but he decides against that, too. It was too critical, too good at shutting things down. I wouldn’t know is to say I don’t know and I have nothing to say so can we please move on? ━ at least sometimes, it was, to him. Too vulnerable. Too much. Too little.

Kim adjusts his glasses, removing them. " I suppose that is true, Detective. " he relents, almost, but curious eyes give way to his unprovoking answer; an unspoken question of continue?; as the Lieutenant adds on, offering more as he cleans the lenses of the water built up from snow with a handkerchief. " Something about the eternity of a love that can persist past everything, even death, is an appealing thought to many people… " ━━ he tries not to study Harry as he says that. as if anticipating, as if proving himself correct.

Are they skeptical of supernatural phenomena or do they believe in them? (Kim)

HALLOWEEN QUESTIONS // always accepting!

Kim is definitely somebody who I think hasn’t really believed in the supernatural past age 13. 

In the past, when he was much younger, he believed in not the religious kind of supernatural, but the more human. He believed in ghosts. He believed in weird unexplained things that had no logical cause and never would, he believed that things and people lived in the Pale, he believed the pale itself was an almost living non-entity. He believed in the past coming back to play tricks on you or teach you lessons, never werewolves, never vampires, and only ever sometimes did he believe in Gods. 

Her Innocence like a dream on a broken tape reel that he slowly stopped replaying. Her Innocence like a dream on a broken reel that he knows many people can’t stop.

But after 13, after 14, he became an impossible sell. It was in large part because of the bullying he’d endured, and admitting you believed in ghosts was the same ammunition to them as saying you believed in Santa Claus when by that time you were old enough to know what kissing somebody when you were drunk was like and recognize the economic disarray you were all in. He never believed in the supernatural, but he believed in things that didn’t always make sense; because in a world where nonexistence bubbles at the edges of your reality, there’s bound to be things without answers, that didn't line up with how you thought reality worked. There’s bound to be questions left in dead air and never going back.

After the revolution, after so many wars, after so many captains lost in that great fog, how couldn’t there be some ghosts left in Revachol by sheer virtue of their magnitude?

He thinks, these days, that it was how he was coping with death as well as childhood ignorance. He’s still uncomfortable with the idea that when you die, you’re gone, and nothing remains but the body. He knows, in all likelihood of the world they're living in, it’s the truth, but he still tries to untangle the maybe-there maybe-not souls of his fallen brethren when it is they do fall, and fall often. Parts of him still with the fibers of a ghost’s coat under it’s nails, parts of him still believing in something a little more.

But he’s tried to stop entirely. Dedicates himself to the logical, and while never above his own curiosity and the potential of things, Kim is a skeptic. The world kicked the belief out of him, and the disillusionment has been setting in his entire life. He does not believe in ghosts anymore. He does not believe in Gods. He believes in himself, and he believes in the RCM, and he believes in what he can do here and now as he’s alive rather than a thousand years of looking back at what he couldn’t change, because a glance can trap him, just a glance.

Give him fact. Give him something to hold onto with both hands. Give him something, something that makes sense.  He does not believe in the fictions of humanity half out of their minds for the entire rest of time.

But with enough evidence, anything can change. With enough persistence, with enough dedication. When things stop being ghost stories, and start being metrics you can read.

Less supernatural than science, even when science seems supernatural.

☕ (My Harry & your Kim)

Send me “ ☕ “ for my muse to drink tea uniquely flavored after your muse, and I’ll tell you what my muse tastes! // accepting!

When the thermos is passed, Kim is dubiously hesitant to sip its contents. Glances spared into the dark metal container where a thousand tiny lights reflect back up at him off the angles of glitter that seem to consume the liquid, bouncing off the sharp lines of his glasses, highlighting the ridges of his face; cheekbone meeting upper-eye meeting the crease of his nose between. He questions, and the answer he receives is likely as inane but incredulously trustworthy ━ which is to say, only Kim would trust it ━ and he is prodded to drink. A sigh, a murmuring of If you're trying to poison me, at least have an alibi… before it's raised like a chalice to the lips and, tentatively, he drinks.

He swears the glitter clogs his through the moment he does, and he chokes. ( although, the choking may not all be from the glitter. ) Like congealed blood, glitter clinging, he can feel the pieces cut micro-ribbons of flesh down his esophagus as it slides down in a wet mass, leaving behind it a terrible feeling of glitter lining the space between his lungs down, down, down. The taste is indescribable ━ sharp and salty and sweet and bitter and tangy all at once, apricots and rotten fruit and alcohol, the taste of sweat and iron and cinnamon, unpleasantly cold at first which becomes kinder as it soothes the roughness of the throat's wounds before the heat hits the way habanero in coffee does. like dark chocolate, like stale cake frosting, like pleasantly unpleasant soreness, sweet-sour wine, cloying cheap children's medicine, nausea-inducing cigarette smoke.

Indescribable the way cubic measurements of atmosphere containing updraft are indescribable, not indescribable the way metrics too large and too small become nothing. indescribable like space, like music, like sea.

Like God, he thinks, like Innocence. he corrects; Like God. Like Pale. Innocence is a dead language they've been trying to read, and neither of them, neither of them, were born enough to be that again. But maybe they were, once. Like Pale. Like dreaming. Like oblivion. ( Apricots still linger in it like fruit floating on saltwater, fermenting on waves, cracked wide as geodes and spilling guts, spilling light. Beneath it is an oil spill 300 kilometers long from a model of motor carriage that has not been made since the day he was born, mingling, separate, beneath, above. Like tainting it, like swallowing it whole, like becoming more by virtue of what he gives, by no virtue at all. ) Like God, he thinks, like Innocence.

Kitsuragi's composure returns to him, and with the embarrassment of a freshman being handed a drink he couldn't handle, he screws the thermos shut again, and passes it back with the more guttural-than-usual sound of clearing his throat. He pulls off a glove and swipes the flesh of a hand over his mouth, bottom lip coated in the shine of something like lip-gloss beneath the chunky square glitter clinging to it. Stubbornly, pieces remain regardless of how hard he scrubs it away, caught in the cracks between lips, before he sighs, slips a glove back on, and resolves to chew on the skin for the rest of the day, if only to hide it, until he can attempt to better extract it somewhat mournfully with the bristles of a toothbrush. A small part of him asks him to let it stay, and the rest of him refuses. A moments consideration, but little else ━ at least for now, anyway, at least for now.

As the flavor lingers on his tongue like an unwelcome guest, progressively, it shifts. never does it lose the sharpened edges, the quality of chaos, the almost fermented kind of age & simultaneous unblended freshness to it, all mixed together and separate all at once, but over time it mellows, perhaps, or maybe Kim just gets used to it. the acidic highs mesh better with the taste of artificial fruit and the heat lends itself as he considers it to the taste of cheap coffee and dark chocolate. grape sugar with the salt and bitter not better but a different taste than they would be alone, iron manageable with the undertone of something other than the blood ━ maybe it becomes more palatable the longer its in his mouth, accustomed like an acquired taste king of all acquired tastes, or maybe it just burns itself out the longer it's left to mix with something other than itself. Saliva like a neutralizer to however many medications he can feel, chalky, on the underside of his tongue.

The heat subsides and the bitterness erodes, slowly and fast all at once, and a smoother kind of flavor emerges from beneath all of it. soft lime and distant haze of honey and a kind of watered down cocktail, no longer sharp with alcohol, but cold anyway. like something hidden, like something suffocated, like something that couldn't afford to come out unless it knew, really knew, it wasn't going to be rejected. the craze of the rest does not die, but the aftertaste offers a different kind of kindness, like hangover medication after a bad night. charcoal pill, cool water, dimmed lights. ( acts of love, acts of not wanting to see someone dear in pain, acts of staying with them; staying with them; regardless of how wretched they were the night before. people cant get that sad, she said to you once, or you thought she did, but people will love you enough to kneel at your bedside and hold your sweaty hand and close the blinds so the world can't see you for just a little while more. people will love you and be loved and try to save you, and maybe you cannot be saved, no one can, there is no messiah waiting at the foot of your bed to cure you, the world just doesn't work like that, and you can't keep waiting for it, but people will love you enough to wash the stains out from your favorite shirt so you can keep it a little longer.

people who bring cold cloths when you are sick and sweet coffee when you need something to keep you warm, people who can't save you but can in the same strokes; where it's not saving you, it's giving you the means to save yourself. people who work you through it as you lift the stones you're building castles out of, hoping, praying that you don't smash them down again. people who stand proud for you at the checkmarks in the road, and tell you that you're doing good, and wait for you when you can't keep running, or even when you turn back and decide it's easier to give up than to sink in deeper. people you've treated bad before, and cannot stay forever, and cannot save you, but they love you enough to stay a little longer. they love you enough to hold you when you need it, and hold you down when you need that too, and make the hard calls you'll hate them for. they love you hard enough that it turns into hate when it's fed the wrong things, giving dogs chocolate, but they love you, love you, love you. )

it soothes pain of his throat, and Kim does not concede to the fact he finds himself wanting another sip, another shot of chaos and that sweeter smoother aftertaste, knowing what he's putting in his body and deciding to come back anyway, wondering, but he admits; quietly to himself as he holds the pieces of glitter in his hands like the shed skin of a disco ball in his little bathroom in the Whirling that night; that maybe the pain is worth the reward. that maybe he's crazy, but maybe they both need a little sanity, a little less, a little something else.

( kneeling at your bedside when you are too afraid to sleep, he traces the scars nickering your hands, and cleans his glasses, and slowly; slowly; the apricots stop mattering. as you notice a little more how the oil spill gleams on the crest of waves, as the oil spill becomes something different. )

-100 HP. +660 HP.

@playedbetter // lyric starters; without mythologies by the weakerthans.

Maybe the scariest part of seeing Kim with a fever, hot-cold all the time and aching, was less about the fever itself; it was about seeing how that sickness pried back the composure on him like skinning a beetle of its shell, it was less the times he was asleep and more when he was awake; often irritated beneath a reluctance to engage at all and murmuring barely there mostly through the breath of wheezing, it was more about the times he murmured at all.

The Lieutenant's apartment is clean, and maybe it would've reminded you of the Pox if not for the fact you were allowed within it's walls where many weren't, and the various small details that filled itself in on it's own lived in qualities. Clean but imperfect, and unable to escape from the fact of the city you both lived in ━ Revachol whispering on the paint cracked window-sills as summer heat leaked in through them, on the smell of maybe something rotten. gasoline. vaguely something plantlike, like trees bending their leaves up to break up the noise.

There are exactly 11 trees along Kim's street. Maybe you would've noticed in the way here, or maybe not, since Kim invited Harry over after struggling; frustratingly inattentive; throughout the day on a case, and the first time Kim had handed over his place at the wheel of the Kineema so willingly since the beginning of it's service at the station ( it might've been the station's vehicle, one he was lucky to have been able to take with him when transferring over to station 41 after a major amount of string-pulling, ass kissing, and excuses about repairs, but in the end it was always Kim's baby ) to Harry. ━ so naturally, there were many other things to notice when one is entrusted with the golden ticket of a sick man almost begging him not to crash the damn thing than the amount of trees on Kim's street. But there are still 11 trees, and one way or another, you'd gotten home.

And in this home, Kim lays on his back on his couch, glasses removed and eyes covered with a cool wet cloth as a radio plays some random station quietly enough to be unintrusive but still filling a white noise ━ something classical, or at the very least, instrumental. the voices of the piece if you focused on it no more than a distant kind of cloud that wasps over hazily on compressed air waves ━ and occasionally he murmurs to himself, quiet and voice shot. this was the scary part, what he'd say. what it'd tell you. this was the scary part, to hear him through the softest electrical hum...

" si je pouvais, je ferais de toi une rivière déchaînée avec des rapides en colère alimentés en pluie, pour que tu puisses toujours serpenter et pouvoir toujours t'enfuir… " ━ breathe in. ( if i could, i would make you a raging river with angry rapids supplied with rain, so you could always meander, and forever be able to run away… )

sings to himself, rather, here. sings to you? the language hangs on his tongue, syllable after syllable.

" sans lutter… contre les mythes mal interprétés, contre la douleur… " ━ breathe out. ( without contending… with myths wrongly interpreted, with pain… )

he does, sing to you. the only person you can remember who would, regardless of intention. he breathes with the music, and with it comes over with the terror of an honesty so grandiose it becomes small again; marble-like; like an unfulfilled wish he offers out, downy feathered, anyways, because the sentiment matters more than whatever it is now. maybe he doesn't even realize he says it out loud to begin with, but he does, whispers in the gentle shuffle of the apartment's small spaces, composure a dream he hasn't woken into, rarely; rarely, a heart on his sleeve. ( like speaking in your sleep. like honesty when you don't realize it, laid back on the worn cushioning of a couch, allowing himself not to see, allowing himself to merely be, be there. to drive him home. trusting. trusting you. )