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TEST DRIVE MEME 002
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:
Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, spiders, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, spiders, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE
The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the frost-covered mosses and ferns, the frozen soil cold and just a little damp on your bare skin. Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.
You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards emerging from a temporary retreat from the wintry weather. With your feet under you, and you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, is running actively again as the weather warms back up from the recent snowstorm.
As you explore, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike, and the weather isn't quite amenable to your lack of.
Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.
This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street — a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer — while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. At the far end of the main street, visible about a mile to the north now that the trees and the enormous wall is out of the way, sits a castle with three towers.
When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available — the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.
breaking and entering
If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.
Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings — bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Anyone who's already appeared in the village just as you did today lives here. Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, and some scorch marks still linger from a recent fire, and some furniture is still lying around in splinters.
Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions.
finding roommates
Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.
Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!
OFFERINGS FOR ULANTI
The festival starts in the middle of the night, when the sun and the children are safely tucked into bed. The streets come alive with dancing locals, their faces painted red and purple and black and yellow. They all wear revealing clothing that, to your sensibilities, may seem sexually suggestive. Some individuals openly expose their breasts and nipples, while some others may incidentally reveal when they turn around to tend to their errands that their dress is backless — entirely! market stands and kind neighbors will gladly provide clothing befitting the occasion to anyone who asks.Notably, the locals' choice of clothes reveal a mark on their bodies. An astute person will notice that there are four varieties — and a very astute (
In addition to dancing and the lighting of any number of candles, you may stumble upon fighting rings inspired by Terry Silver's basement club, where the locals brawl until they're bloody and unable to move. Elsewhere, amongst the performance of a number of erotic dancers, you might come upon a face you recognize — naked and collared and caged, tongue pressed to the bars to taste anyone who'll stop and give them a little attention.
Temporary night market food stands offer various forms of alcoholic beverages and sweet and savory street food in suggestive shapes — sausages, popsicles, flowering cupcakes. many of them represent hedonistic indulgences and displays of wealth that the town usually does not seem to possess. This bounty, they attribute to the Duchess' patronage — and much of it is dosed with herbs and additives that enhance the sexual appetites and aggression in any who consume them.
Another kind of temporary stand has been erected — while new arrivals may at first mistake these for some kind of bathroom, it becomes apparent upon entry that they are partitioned stalls with gloryholes drilled between them. Some stalls are closed with an anonymous stranger waiting inside for someone to push a part of themselves through the hole to be lavished with mystery touches; others are fully unoccupied, should your character wish to lock themselves in and wait on the small wooden stool for a partner to offer themselves.
Anyone native to Rubilykskoye will take the time to answer questions about the festival of Ulanti, which functions as a way to purge their bad energy ("zadza") and sate their inner beasts ("duchozweirz"). They encourage characters to join the festivities — which range from staged sexual performances to sadism and masochism designed to feed the desire for violence. all appetites are welcome here, and there are only two rules: (1) stay away from the unmarked, which refers to the locals' prepubescent children; (2) hold nothing back.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try entering the fighting rings, watching or joining a live sex performance, or eating some aphro food (deliberately or otherwise)!
the fathomless dark of pajak wood
At the outer edges of the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day — eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches. In the void, the air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.
Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.
In addition to the spiders, you may come across the sharp-toothed furred yetis that emerged during the snowstorm, still looking for a meal. Each one hunts alone, a fifteen-foot-tall shambling creature that drips black ooze and super-chills the air around it until your skin feels tight and icy. If it gets the drop on you, you're likely to be its dinner. It has emerged from a long summer hibernation to enjoy the colder weather, and it's starving.
Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body — what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?
In the fog, you may also hear the voices of those familiar to you — people you know from the town, or people whom you know with almost perfect certainty aren't here. these figments may recreate unhappy memories or force trespassers to hallucinate their worst nightmares. Nothing is as it seems in the void, and when you swing at these figments, desperate to silence them, it might not be a figment at all, but a friend in the flesh trying to help you. By the time you see their true face, it could be too late to stop yourself.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger!
HIDING INSIDE EACH OF US
Uh oh spaghetti-os.
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
The baker, Nile Yoren, is a likable, middle-aged woman who can fill any request — wheat, rye, even nut breads. She boasts that her sourdough starter belonged to her grandmother. Today, when you enter her shop — to help out or to get a muffin or a bag of rolls — something is off. Her smiling face isn't behind the counter.
Around the back wall, you hear the crackling of the oven. But when you call, she doesn't come out. You have to go back and look for her. What you find is not just the oven crackling, but nile herself — twisted into an incandescent monster of human flame, the flickers of dark orange light like a face howling in agony amidst the yellows and reds and whites. Before you can scramble away, the creature lunges at you. Defend yourself or flee, or her inner beast will be feeding itself on you.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
someone else transforms
The baker, Nile Yoren, is a likable, middle-aged woman who can fill any request — wheat, rye, even nut breads. She boasts that her sourdough starter belonged to her grandmother. Today, when you enter her shop — to help out or to get a muffin or a bag of rolls — something is off. Her smiling face isn't behind the counter. Around the back wall, you hear the crackling of the oven. But when you call, she doesn't come out. You have to go back and look for her. What you find is not just the oven crackling, but nile herself — twisted into an incandescent monster of human flame, the flickers of dark orange light like a face howling in agony amidst the yellows and reds and whites. Before you can scramble away, the creature lunges at you. Defend yourself or flee, or her inner beast will be feeding itself on you.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
you waited too long
At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
no subject
Apparently it is, since that sure is the expression Daniel is wearing as he hears the other say that. The way it's so reminiscent of the way Terry spoke to him so long ago isn't lost on him in the slightest, and Daniel is very much aware of how well that exact kind of praise worked on him before he realised that every single part of it had been fake all along. A lie.
It makes the bridge of his nose wrinkle as he follows Terry, a near-pout that makes him look younger than his actual age on his face, immediately trying to scrub the words from his mind before they have a chance to linger there, to fester or take hold in any way.
Instead he busies himself with looking around as they go, making sure to memorize the way. Daniel isn't expecting an emergency fleeing situation to happen, since the logical side of him has to believe what Terry said earlier about not looking for a fight, but like hell is he going to be caught unaware all the same. Some might call it paranoia, Daniel would like to call it being careful.
It also means that he's sure to take a good look at Terry's room when he steps in, almost feeling the impact of the older man looming behind him the moment Daniel notices the most obvious thing about the room.
After all, he's pretty sure people were talking about the rooms having two beds--
Of course Daniel ought to play this cool, but somewhere in the combination of his arrival in the strangest and worst possible city, Terry's presence, and Daniel's natural lack of any ability to deal with rising emotions the words spill out before he has a chance to stop them.
His head turns so he can look at Terry, eyes wide amidst the obviously startled expression on his face as he asks the other: ]
You only have one bed?
[ Maybe one day Daniel will learn that giving instinctive reactions like this only feeds Terry and try to put more effort into trying to not show them. Today is not that day. ]
cw: just unhealthy manipulative relationship stuff from here on out really
Yes, just the one.
[ And he pauses for a moment to let Daniel stew on that, to let him imagine sharing a bed with Terry, his big arms around him, back pressed against his massive chest. Just plant the thought that he might expect them to sleep together in his mind, like a seed he plans on nurturing slowly until perhaps he starts to crave it.
And then he shakes his head and rolls his eyes: ]
Oh, Danny boy, of course I won't make you sleep on the floor. I can handle it until we find you some permanent accommodations.
[ He says it as if that was the obvious reason Daniel might be so startled. Because he's tried, and shocked, and didn't want to sleep on the floor. If he was thinking about any other implications of Terry leading him to a room with only one bed, well, that's a product of his own subconscious and definitely not exactly what Terry wanted him to think. ]
no subject
He's so busy shutting it down that the other is already speaking up again while feeling like not even a moment passed, and with Daniel still looking at Terry, it means the latter is getting a full show of the expression passing over his face - first a sense of realisation at Terry's words, then something vaguely flustered because he's so aware there's no way the other didn't do that on purpose no matter how innocent Terry might be acting right now, and then it settles into something closer to offended.
That last one stays on Daniel's face, eyebrows knitting together into a frown as he walks further into the room, towards the bed, moving to sit down on its edge as if to claim it.
Usually he'd feel a little more guilty about taking a bed by himself and letting some other person sleep on the floor. But considering this is Terry, and considering that the other is already being as awful as he always is?
He can sleep on the ground. Hope he breaks his back doing it.
Having to walk over to the bed meant having to turn his back on the other man for a moment, but as soon as Daniel is sitting there, he keeps his eyes on Terry - even if the other might start moving, the gaze follows him. Like Daniel doesn't want to let him out of sight, even for a moment.
And then, as if the bed talk never happened, or maybe exactly because he wants to move on from it, he promptly says: ]
So is it true? Everything they said?
[ Everything said in the dining room had seemed ridiculous enough to be a lie, yet waking up wherever this is, naked, in the middle of the woods-- it makes it hard to deny even ridiculousness.
Maybe he just needs to hear it from the mouth of someone he actually knows is real. ]
no subject
He's very aware of the fact that he's used to this world by now, he has a lot of information about how things work here and Daniel on the other hand is mostly in the dark. It's an advantage he likes having, even if Daniel will catch up to him eventually. ]
Oh, yes. It's all true.
[ Although he could simply roll up his sleeve to show Daniel his mark, he opts to pull his entire shirt off over his head and toss it to the side before gesturing to the coffin-shaped mark on his bicep.
He sleeps with no shirt on, anyway, so Danny'd have to get used to the sight of his bare chest (still muscular although not as defined as it was when he was young) eventually. Plus, the fact that he's undressing - even partially - in a room with Daniel LaRusso is tantalizing. ]
You have a mark like this too, somewhere. That means you have the curse, as do I. As does everyone here.
[ But mostly the two of them. Terry loves it when Daniel has something in common with him, especially something like this. ]
cw: reference in narration to attraction of a teenager towards an older man
(Or more like the boy deliberating sneaking in glances at it, a heart skipping beats every time he caught a flash of just a little bit too much-- all sensations carefully tucked away in a mental box Daniel doesn't even acknowledge, shoved as far out of sight and mind as possible.)
Maybe that's why, rather than hanging onto any other thought here, the man deliberately rolls his eyes before verbally adding: ]
You could've just rolled up your sleeve.
[ Not like he's wrong.
But it's also not wrong that the mark is there. And Terry saying he has one too makes Daniel want to search for it, to come up empty, to prove this world and Terry - but mostly Terry - wrong, like an innate desire, even stronger than the hope that comes with the thought of maybe not having it.
He glances down at his own arms, but doesn't spot a mark anywhere on the olive skin. And it's not like he's going to take off his shirt when Daniel covers himself up like a Victorian lady at all times, and he wants to take it off even less in front of Terry.
But the upside of the shirt the helpful people here gave him is that it's way too wide on him - like it was made for someone with a much larger build than Daniel. Given the choice between something too revealing and this, of course this is what he was going to go with, even if it looks a little ridiculous on a man his age. It helps, though, when he can just grab the front of his collar with two fingers and pull it back, just enough for him to take a slight peek down at his own chest.
Then the look on Daniel's face speaks for him, really. It's obvious he immediately spotted the thing, especially with how quickly he lets go of his shirt again, gaze snapping back over at the other man. There's some shock in his eyes, but also something more. A sense that he's trying to keep himself strong here, despite the emotions running through him. ]
.. mine's different.
[ Is this information Daniel wants to share with him?
Probably not. But he doesn't know whether it being different is a good or a bad thing in this godforsaken place, and if his one source of information is going to be the most infuriatingly annoying person possible, it's what he has to put up with right now. Especially when this information feels too important to ignore. ]
Why is it different?
no subject
[ It'll be funny, really to see Daniel LaRusso - the man who refused to show some skin in a goddamn sauna - have to adjust to living here. As he does with so many things, Daniel comes off as repressed. Terry likes that about him. Gives him a lot to dig into, a lot of layers to peel back.
As soon as Daniel spots his mark Terry's moving in to check it out. He moves fast but his footfalls make nearly no sound. Quick and silent (like a snake). ]
Let me see. [ And before he gets permission he's yanking the collar of Daniel's shirt down until he can see the mark. And then as quickly as he moved in, he draws his hand away, letting the shirt snap back up to its proper position.
Wilk, is it? Part of him hoped that Danny-boy would be Diabel, like him. It would be poetic and it would prevent him from saying 'of course you are' in that smug voice of his when Terry tells him what his own mark is called. He can't imagine Daniel will be surprised to find out that Terry's some kind of devil here. He was some kind of devil back home, wasn't he? At least where Daniel was concerned. Tempting him with power and glory all while leading him subtly down a ruinous path.
It once again occurs to him that he might deserve his fate here.
But that's a debate he can have with himself later, when he doesn't have Daniel in the room with him. It's not as good as Diabel, but there's a lot he can do with Wilk. From his observations they seem to be more animal-like than the other signs. Daniel will hate that, he assumes. ]
Hm. [ A frown crosses his lips, as if he contains some hidden knowledge he's hesitating to disclose. ] That mark, huh? I'm not surprised.
[ There, now if Daniel uses the same line on him it'll just be one more thing they have in common. ]
no subject
Stop!
[ Still, even a belated reflex is still a reflex, even though it means that Daniel doesn't hit Terry's hand with his own until it is already on its way out. And even then it doesn't seem like a coordinated hard strike as much as it seems like some instinctive movement, like when you're trying to bat away a particularly annoying fly.
(Not too bad of a comparison for what Terry is, Daniel thinks.)
Even though his shirt pretty much already went back to its proper position, Daniel still quickly moves his hands up to fuss with his collar until it's just right, like he's worried it doesn't cover him up properly enough, even though it very much does. Can't blame a guy for being self-conscious when one of your worst enemies just sneaked a peek at your chest, right. The skin in his face even colours a little darker. No, he's totally not blushing, get lost!!
Still, maybe it was that quick action on the other man's part, or maybe it's the way he's being so infuriatingly vague now - and on purpose, Daniel just knows it - but something seems to be pulling the spitfire out of him a little more again. ]
If you want to say something, just say it. [ It mostly shows in his eyes, reminiscent of that temper that usually slumbers within the man, readily visible as Daniel moves from his seated position on the bed to a standing position now, probably not wanting Terry to loom over him now he's closer.
.. even if he's still looming over him even with Daniel standing, but he's got to get every since inch he can get here in closing the gap. ]
Else I could just go, you know.
[ He might not put much stock in Terry's story about having Daniel around being a comfort, but there's got to be some reason the other wants him to be in this room right now.
It might just be the only thing he can hold over the other right now, considering everything else in the power balance is firmly on Terry's side when he's the one who's been here longer, when he's the one with all the knowledge.
(Not that he's planning on actually doing that, not wanting to give up a bed now he's found one-- but he's got to at least bluff here, rather than just letting himself get walked all over.) ]
no subject
Oh, Daniel. [ Spoken like a disappointed teacher. If I wanted to hurt you, he thinks, I'd have done so already. He steps away, hands raised, chuckling and shaking his head as Daniel rushes to cover himself as if scandalized by showing a bit of skin. ]
You're free to leave whenever you like.
[ Just like he was free to quit Cobra Kai. That's how it always is with Terry. You're free until you're not. ] I've just noticed that people with that particular mark tend to be a little...well, a little more bestial than most, when they transform. That mark is called Wilk. [ And in case Daniel isn't as well-versed in languages as he is: ] Wolf.
[ By no means is Terry an expert on this beyond a couple of transformations he's heard about, and what he's inferring from the name of the mark. But mostly, he wants to frighten Daniel and put the thought in his head that he's going to transform into some mindless beast. ]
Of course I don't know everything, but I'd try and keep that temper of yours under control.
[ He's damn lucky that Daniel can't read minds because the sheer desire he has to push him over the edge and watch him lose himself (watch him prove he's not the better man after all, that he can fall just like Terry did) is off the charts. ]
no subject
It's a necessary stare, though. He has to see the other man's face as Terry feeds him the information. It seems in line with some of the other things that had been mentioned by the people clothing and feeding them, but there's always still the worry that the older man might lie to him. Terry Silver lies, a phrase branded into his brain after having been burned once.
And it doesn't help when Daniel, at the same time, has to confront the idea that maybe he could change into some mindless animal.
The fear is very much visible in Daniel's eyes, even if he doesn't speak up again right away, instead staring and seeming to process this information. He doesn't even want to think about the possibility of changing into that.
He swallows. ]
Then what about you? [ He sounds a little less angry this time, like he's already heeding the advice right away. Like he's trying to swallow down his emotion, trying to become a bit calmer again, even though he can feel fear rushing through his veins. ] What are you?
[ Does it really matter what Terry is? Maybe not - especially when Daniel has enough to process about himself here already.
But there's some truth in the words the other said before. They're the only people here from their world. If they would turn into monsters, it wouldn't be unimaginable that they might have the urge to specifically go after the other. He has to be prepared.
And maybe he's trying to see just how much the other is willing to share here with him. Where the lines are being drawn between the two of them, especially when it's just them. ]
no subject
Diabel.
[ He doesn't bother translating. It should be obvious enough. Devil. And there's a part of him that still blames Daniel for it. This place turned him into a devil because Daniel's spent his whole life believing that he was one.
The accuracy of Terry's monster assignment might, at least, convince Daniel that Terry's telling the truth about the Wilk mark, too. ]
no subject
It's something he doesn't want to think about. Maybe it's why he's not remarking the same thing Terry said earlier - I'm not surprised. Maybe he's still trying to control his temper like the other noted a moment ago, far too scared where it might take him in a place where it could transform him beyond anything the other man ever did to him.
Instead he silently stares at the other man, not breaking eye contact if Terry doesn't either. ]
Have you ever turned here?
[ A question that requires a level of honesty yet beyond the last one. But Terry had answered that one, and surprisingly easily in Daniel's eyes, so who knows?
The last thing he'd ever want to do is seem like he's hanging off Terry's every word, considering in what ways it reminds him of the past, but that's exactly what he's looking like right now.
He can't help it. He has to know the risks. Risks that seem far worse than still being in the same room as the older man. ]
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Other people know he's already transformed. He admitted it, before he knew anyone from his home who might judge him for it would be here. ]
Yes.
[ That settles it, though. He has to find a way to push Daniel over the edge so he can't lord this over him. ]
Early on. There was a fire, and a lot of chaos. It reminded me of war.
[ Admitting that is also getting more vulnerable than he'd like to be around Daniel, but he's banking on the boy having too much of a conscience to taunt him about his PTSD. ]
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(Which, granted, is saying a whole lot, considering the things he would wish onto the other.)
But that just means that Daniel ends up being double smacked here. First by the idea that Terry did turn, and then by the realisation Terry turned because of vulnerability, rather than indulgence.
It's awkward. If this were literally anyone else standing in front of him, Daniel would have told them he's sorry. He would have been sympathetic, asked if they're alright.
Of course he can't do any of those things with Terry though - which just leaves an awkward silence hanging in the air for a moment or two. If the older man looks at Daniel even for a moment, he might even see instinctive sympathy appear in Daniel's eyes, lingering for a moment, right before the man pushes it down instead.
It leaves the problem though-- what the hell does he say to Terry after that? Daniel breathes in and out, but he feels fully knocked off center, the temper from a few moments fully having died out now, leaving him among its no longer smoldering embers-- almost feeling empty.
He breathes out again. ]
... I'll stay here tonight.
[ It might sound like a non-sequitur, but--
(Even your company is a comfort to me at this point, Terry had said, but this isn't a compromise, Daniel tells himself, not him trying to do something nice. He just wants a bed. There's a bed here. Terry would sleep on the floor. He's at least 95% confident the other won't murder him in his sleep tonight, while he can't be sure about anyone else here. It's practical.)
That's all there is to it. He's not easily manipulated, okay. ]
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I'm glad. Really.
[ As he lays down he can't help but imagine himself in bed with Daniel, arms wrapped tightly around him. Once an impossible dream, now perhaps not so out of reach after all. ]
Good night, Danny boy.
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But it doesn't mean he's resisting the call of the bed. Even if Daniel tells himself he's not actually going to sleep, that he shouldn't do so in the same room as Terry, at least he can lie down on the bed and rest that way while still awake. He's keeping his own clothes on - of course, prudish as ever - and only kicks off his shoes before climbing onto the bed, pulling the covers over himself.
(If he tries to not think about the fact that this is Terry's bed, and that he's lying right now where Terry usually lies, it's actually quite comfortable. The most comfortable thing he's had today so far.)
But no matter how much Daniel tells himself that he's not going to let his guard down and fall asleep, in the end exhaustion wins over his own mind. You don't spend hours trying to escape an eerie forest while being entirely naked and then have to somehow come to terms with the reality of where you've found yourself without utterly exhausting yourself, after all.
So it actually doesn't take that long at all before Daniel is fast asleep, curled up under the covers. No matter whether Terry himself already fell asleep too, or is still awake. ]