singillatim | (closed)

William guesses it right away, and Raju's eyes widen. It isn't the first time he's found himself off balance with this man, expecting to have to push through and build a case only to have agreement set easily just like that in front of him. It seems like a bigger leap to make this time, creating fire out of nowhere being a little further of a reach than knowing whether or not you yourself are dead, until—

It almost sounds odd in how odd it doesn't sound. Almost casual, in the way William puts almost more effort into leaving the honorific off of Raju's name than saying the impossible thing that he does after. Raju realises he hasn't replied yet when he realises that his mouth is open to, when he feels the air sharp and cold inside his throat, and moves to tug the part of the blanket around his neck so it's farther up over the bottom of his face before tucking his hands tightly under his arms again. He doesn't know exactly what it would take to make what had happened to his feet, kneeling just over there barefoot for so long under the aurora, to happen to his face too, but he doesn't really want to find out. Then he takes a slow breath, pushes it out quickly, and meets William's eyes.

"You..." Ask. Just ask, damn it. It's important, no matter the mistakes Raju has to admit to to do it, or the things he has to learn. The questions come out sharp and quick with how much he needs to know them. "How does it happen? You haven't lost control of it yet?"

He shakes his head.

The next moment he sticks out his hand. It's open, with the palm of his hand turned upwards. There's a ring on his finger, but that's not what he's drawing attention towards. It's likely that he means to show off the odd scar on the palm of his hand. It's less grotesque than it was right after it appeared, but it's still visibly there - something akin to a cut right across the palm of Billy's hand, but seemingly seared close by a burn that still partially remains on the skin.

"This happened outside of my control," he says. He's speaking a little bit more slowly than the usual. Mostly because he can see that Raju is emotional, that he's only barely holding some stuff back, and Billy knows what happens when you can't hold back your emotions anymore when you have their power.

He has to assume it works the same way for Raju as it does for him, anyway. So it's even more important that Billy stays calm here, that he can hopefully drag the other along into the same mood that way if he just keeps it up well enough.

"That is how I discovered it. I got hurt, I panicked over it, and.. that was when the flames first appeared."

It's not the best news, though, and it's why he withdraws his hand, looking to Raju's face to instead direct his attention upward. "But that is also how I figured out how to gain at least some control over it."

Raju follows the man's look away from his hand and up toward his face, just in time for William to tell him the most important part. Raju's eyes, narrowed to study the scar, widen again. "How?" he asks, urgently. "I was..."

He turns, looking over the landscape again. It looks so different than it had at night, with that awful... that sobbing in his ears, the feeling the sound had left in his heart. The thoughts that it'd left in his mind. And then near the end of that night he'd sat very still and quiet for what might have been a long time, all of his thoughts moving into the spaces where they ought to be. That had felt like controlling it, then.

That hill over there, that's where he'd sat. He focuses on it. "I might be able to... calm it, a little. But it takes time. I need something faster. Better."

He turns back to William, movement as sharp as his voice. "What do you do? I wouldn't have thought it'd be the pain of that wound, it's..."

It's embarrassing to admit it. It isn't the kind of thing you talk about, usually. But if he's going to figure this out, he can't shy away from it.

"...emotion, that makes it happen. I think. Too much of it. I'd think that pain would be the same."

".. yes," he says, confirming the other's hypothesis. "As far as I can see, it is emotion."

It's been his own experience too, after all. When he looks back on it, every single time he involuntarily created fire, it was always because of emotion. And while it's not exactly the sort of thing Billy speaks on either, he knows there's no choice here. If emotion is what controls this power, then they have to address it. It's about either learning how to manage this power, or letting themselves and everything around them burn because of it.

So while Billy's lips are tightly pressed together for a moment, making him look awkward, he forces himself to be brave enough to actually speak the words.

He can trust Raju, right? At least this much. He likes to think so.

"For me it is often.. panic. The fire appears when I experience panic." Granted, it's mostly panic for Billy since it's the emotion he always feels the strongest. He doesn't get intensely angry or intensely sad very often, but stress, panic-- that all lives right underneath his skin constantly. "Calming down helps stop it, though that is-- Well, it is obviously difficult."

It's about as vulnerable of a thing as he's willing to admit to anyone. There are far too many prideful men back home who would deny the words Billy just said, even though he feels like it's likely a universal thing.

"Though I have found that purposefully inducing panic is a way to summon the flame on purpose, in case it's ever necessary."

Maybe it's not really the tip Raju was looking for, given that Billy can tell he's more worried about stopping it - and he understands that. But in this dangerous place, and with some dangerous people around-- Billy thinks that knowing how to make your power start can't hurt either. He's already had to use it once to defend himself.

Raju nods slowly, thoughtful. It isn't what he needs to know the most, but—

He heaves a sigh, feeling the breath hitting the blanket over the lower half of his face and back onto his skin, warm and strange for it in the middle of all this damn frozen air. It isn't what he wants— needs most to know, but everything is useful. "Panic..."

He's thinking it over. He doesn't know if panic will work, not for him. But he should learn everything he can before he decides.

"I thought it was just anger, at first. What do you do? Surely if you're the one who's doing it you know you're not in any danger, not really."

If Billy was already looking awkward a moment ago, there's something even more obvious shifting into his expression now. He fully well knows the answer to that question, after all, but.. sharing it with Raju is another thing entirely. Not because he doesn't have at least some trust in the other man, but Billy's method is so interwoven with a part of him he has only told a few people about ever. A secret he's been carrying with himself for most of his life.

It feels terrifying to even think about giving it up again, and he has to quickly suck in a few deep breaths to keep himself from panicking and having some dumb and terrifying fire accident over it here.

He decides to approach it from a slightly different angle. It's not what he uses most of the time, but-- it's not like what he's about to say now isn't true either.

"Am I not?" He says, after that awkward pause, and then adds: ".. Aren't we all constantly in danger here? We have now all seen what that Darkwalker could to do anyone at any given time."

Between the long pause, that expression on William's face during it, and those deep breaths, Raju would have to be trying not to notice that thinking about the creature isn't the way William makes himself panic, when he needs to. And maybe any other time Raju might let that go, let a man he doesn't need to push keep the secrets Raju would need to push for. But this is different. It's important, and Raju doesn't pretend he isn't watching William thoughtfully the whole time William's trying to come up with an answer that would have sounded easy.

Of course, it could be that the creature scares William so badly he needs that long to even talk about being afraid of it. It isn't impossible. Hard to find out from someone who looked just now like a man who might set them both alight by accident if Raju asks him too directly.

"Mhm. There's plenty here worth being afraid of, though, and I suppose you wouldn't want the Darkwalker to start feeling too boring." Raju smiles at him and then tilts his head back to look up at the sky, taking the pressure of his gaze off. "Is there anything else you think about? When you need that fire to come quickly?"

Please, Raju, he could totally allow the presence of the Darkwalker to work him up into a panic if it was his foremost fear here!

.. though the other is entirely right that it's not Billy's main fear. It's not the one he uses when he has a fear that's far more potent, one that's grown terrible and ripe from having been carried by Billy for years upon years upon years. But whereas most fears would be safe - if not just still emotionally vulnerable - to share, this one isn't. He knows it isn't. Raju has been relatively kind to him so far, even understanding when it comes to specific points where Billy has not been able to sympathise with many others on. Raju understands more about his situation than most, coming from a similar structure.

But.. said structure is likely also similar when it comes to what's being enforced there, if their previous conversations are anything to go by. And the last thing Billy wants to do here is find out that his relatively kind new acquaintance is also one of the people who would condemn him for part of who he is, a part he cannot change.

It's hard for that pressure to grow any lighter, even when Raju is trying to be accomodating here. Even without that gaze on him. There are different eyes Billy can still feel piercing through him every time he thinks about this, after all.

.. then what does he do? Does he try to avoid this? It's not like this specific protip would help Raju anyway when it's so specific to Billy's sexuality, one he knows to be rare. Would Raju think less of him when he was clearly keeping a secret? Would he try to question him further, press him harder?

His exhale is closer to a sigh this time.

"There is something about me other people can't know about." Sure, it's still keeping a secret, but at least he's admitting to it. Hopefully it's enough for Raju, especially when just saying this takes enough of a toll on Billy. He has to actively keep himself from panicking when he gets this close to the thought of it, after all. He's making an effort right now. "I think about that too."

Raju frowns up at the sky. He makes sure to ease the frown at least mostly out from his expression is a second later when he looks back down, studying William’s face. This particular man seemed too shy and sensitive for much force even before Raju knew what would happen if he’d frightened him; there’s every reason to go carefully.

He can feel himself more alert though, a tension in him, a readiness in his muscles. Knowing this damned place, that secret could be about anything at all. In this place, the impossible is possible— and even before this place, hadn’t Francis mentioned a bear with a human face? Of all the kinds of secrets open to this damned place, William being secretly some kind of murderer might actually be preferable.

Go carefully. But it must be something, considering the things William doesn’t find frightening that Raju remembers well from the last time they’d talked.

“Something dangerous?” Raju asks, evenly. “Dangerous enough that it scares you more than the idea of being dead?”

Just by the way the other man says dangerous, Billy is pretty sure that Raju actually isn't onto what he's trying to hide here at all. Which is a good thing, considering just how much he'd like to keep it hidden, though he's not fully sure what it means the other is assuming about him, especially with the things that are possible in this place.

Surely it can't be worse though.

(Billy may have pretty wild standards when it comes to what's worse than anyone learning his true secret.)

"In a sense," he replies, actually looking over at Raju right now, rather than still making desperate attempts to avoid the other's gaze. Billy seems to ponder his words for a moment, but then he slowly adds: "Please don't misunderstand. I do care about dying."

Not wanting to live definitely is not the sort of impression he'd like to give off, for multiple reasons.

"But whether we are alive or dead right now will not change anything about my current situation." Not as far as Billy is concerned, anyway. So what if he's actually dead? He's somehow living anyway. "This," - the secret he's carrying - "however, would change matters."

Raju's eyes narrow as he studies William, and then he looks away with a sigh. One more unknown to worry about, in a place already too full of unknown things. But it isn't as if he knows anything about anyone else living here either; any of them could be dangerous, too. Still, if this quiet, unassuming man is some kind of danger to the people living here, and Raju has the opportunity to find out about it, then he has a duty to try.

"Change things for other people? Or only for you?" He tucks his hands a little tighter in the folds of the blanket over him, thinking past the sight of the burned bushes and trees and the memories that comes with that, past the hateful, ever-present cold. William's been nothing but polite and personable, in his way. And he volunteered this. Even if he isn't going to go into detail about it, that's something.

"It's something that frightens you more than setting fires to anything nearby just by thinking, too. And you won't tell me what it is." William volunteering this much means that it might help if Raju tried to keep his questions light, as much as he can, so he looks over with a wry little smile, eyebrows raised. "You understand why I'd be concerned, don't you?"

He exhales. Very slowly, almost purposefully so, like he's trying to show something with it. Like the way that it isn't particularly subtle that Raju is pretty much trying to find out about it all the same, despite everything Billy has said so far. Despite how dangerous it even is to breach this topic at all with his powers being involved in this.

"What would you do if I did tell you?"

It's an impossible question. After all, Raju has no idea what the thing Billy is thinking about is, so how could he know how he'd react to it? What he'd do?

He could only give an empty answer to that. A platitude, at best. But he asks the question all the same, allowing it to hang in the air between them for a moment before he also adds: "Would it change anything if you knew?"

"If it was something dangerous, yes," he says, friendly, still smiling. Talking about it at all is a risk, of course. But William's cooperation shows the possibility of reward. Not that knowing about another danger to deal with would be a reward, exactly, but you can't deal with what you don't know about. Being able to prepare is the reward.

"We have enough trouble in this awful place. I don't think you want to make it worse for anyone. I think if it was something dangerous you would want to tell someone, and get help dealing with it. The way you were trying to do for me, telling me how to make something like this—" he nods in the direction of the evidence of his own lack of control, the bark of the trees and the bare bushes not yet recovered, "—happen on purpose. But if it isn't dangerous..."

He sighs. "Then no. It wouldn't change anything if this was a harmless nothing that didn't effect anyone else at all. But I can't think of anything that would scare a man that way that would be."

"It is not dangerous to anyone other than me."

As much as some people would like to claim differently. But Billy refuses to buy into those notions. He knows what he is and what that experience is like much better than anyone who would like to lecture him on how bad it is, after all.

It's those people that drive him to be this cautious in the first place. It's enough to almost make him feel a little paranoid, though he tries to quell the feeling before it can - quite literally - ignite. Especially since he can feel thoughts sneaking into his mind when he looks over at Raju, at the way the other is smiling at him. People don't smile at Billy, after all. Not unless they want something from him. Maybe Raju is just buttering him up to try and get him to confess.

(A part of him feels stupidly cynical at that, especially when Raju had been kind before.

But he can't help but be cautious after living his entire life this way.)

"I understand such a thing might be difficult to imagine for someone who does not live with it. We can't always imagine another's lived experience." He presses his lips together, carefully thinking before he adds: "Perhaps you might not have an adverse reaction to my secret if you knew about it."

Hickey had said so, after all. People here are okay with it. Maybe not everyone, but some are. It's more accepted beyond their time.

It still makes it incredibly difficult to tell who falls on which side of that line though.

"But there are men here who definitely would have such a reaction if they knew. It makes it difficult to be open about it. Such a thought is perfectly capable of scaring a person."

Raju's smile lingers on his lips, but the rest of his face is more confused the more that William goes on. He's talking about it like... a disease, maybe? But that would be dangerous to the rest of them, and probably would have started spreading by now. Raju's trying to fit together whatever clues he sees there, but he can't think of a single thing they might assemble into.

It isn't new, whatever it is. Which means it's probably something normal, a problem from the real world — not like the spontaneous fire, or shared nightmares, or people with very clear memories of friends alive and well here being dead at home. Maybe that's enough to be going on with.

Raju gives a few slow nods, smile fading from his lips as he looks away. The chances that he needs to know are smaller now, which means that not pressing is probably safer for both of them. But he's damned curious, still.

He sighs.

"But being frightened of it wasn't a problem before this place, hm? Not the way it is now, with the fire." Raju is in a similar boat, in a way he wouldn't have shared back home. But back home, what he needs and what he needs to be puts him at odds with most of the people he might talk to, even if they don't know it, and the only real details that he'd share would be something very unimportant and small. But none of that matters here. And a little bit of fellow-feeling will help distract Raju from his own curiosity, anyway.

"My dreams used to be that way," he goes on. "It didn't matter what was in them, I could wake up and go on with my day. Now I dream of the wrong thing, and everyone around me is in trouble. Can you imagine, the woman who gave this to us in the first place, do you remember what she said before? She thought she was helping."

He huffs at the charred landscape, adjusting his crossed arms to sit a little higher over his chest. "But it's only been a bloody nuisance."

Hey, he's already happy enough that Raju isn't pressing the issue anymore. Not just because he'd prefer to keep it to himself, but also because it allows him to relax a little, feeling that red-hot feeling inside of him start to subside a little bit, thankfully.

".. It's a double-edged sword," he adds to Raju's remark about it being a nuisance.

Because it's not like he doesn't get it. It's the same for him. He's definitely set some stuff on fire that he couldn't really afford to lose in a place with limited resources like this one, and in the beginning he definitely spent entire days in fear about setting his house on fire.

Even now he's been able to control it a little better - or so it feels like - he doesn't think it'll ever stop being a nuisance either. The possibility of accidentally setting something on fire will always be there, just like Raju describes.

"It is a new source of danger to us, but.. if you care to look at it particularly optimistically, it also brings us a new way of defending ourselves." Not that Billy is the optimistic type.

He's not even saying it for Raju's sake, really. It's just a fact, especially when Billy has already once used the power successfully to protect himself and the things important to him here. He knows it to be true.

"If we learn how to control it even better, we could be slightly less helpless in a place where it seems like the odds are so heavily stacked against us."

“Mhm.” Raju nods, thinking of that night with the wolves, the way the blade of his knife had lit itself on fire. In that moment, being chased that way, doing it had been easy. But if he can’t do it now, consistently, he can’t count on being able to do it at all.

But he doesn’t need the fire to be dangerous. That makes it easier to dismiss it. He supposes William can’t really say the same.

“Have you had to use it yet? You said you learned to do it on purpose. Did that come from practice, or because you needed it?”

"I needed it," he replies, this time opting for full disclosure.

You have to dosage these things, after all. If he's cagey about too many things in a row, it'll just make him look very strange and suspicious in Raju's eyes, and Billy doesn't want that to happen. And if he has to make a choice between being more cagey about his sexuality and this, then he'll pick the former every day. It's a far bigger complex for him.

Even though he doesn't look very happy when he speaks of this either. Less panicked, though-- which is a good thing, given their shared power.

"My house was broken into in the middle of the night." Dang, is he ever glad the honest description of this account still makes Rorschach look like the bad guy in this scenario. Even though - deep down - there was something very satisfying about being able to get some comeuppance on a man who actively threatened and terrified him before. "I had no other method of defending myself, so I ended up needing it then."

Raju frowns, alert to what William's telling him in a way he hadn't quite been allowing himself to look when William had been making that bizarre non-confession a moment ago. That talking about this seems to frighten him less than that odd secret says something about it, but Raju's decided not to dig any more into that and he isn't going to, at least not consciously. He knows himself, knows a part of him is going to keep worrying at it like a dog with a bone already cleaned of any more meat, but without any more clues he isn't going to figure it out.

He leaves that part of his mind to it. More important is what William's telling him now. "Defend yourself? They weren't there to take something, thinking you weren't there? They were there for you?"

That something like that is happening here is a problem. A problem it's probably surprising isn't worse, when everyone knows there's no real authority to stop them, but a problem anyway. What if that had happened to someone who couldn't do the things the two of them can do? Who couldn't defend themselves the way someone like Raju would? There might not be much Raju can do about it now, but it's useful to know who to watch out for. "Who was it?"

There's a soft hum of confirmation when Raju asks if the person hadn't just been there to steal something. At least that had been very, very clear about the entire situation when it happened. And while it's true that he doesn't seem quite as alarmed as he did about the thing he refused to talk about, there's something about him that does seem unhappy when he speaks.

.. though that's likely only natural, right. Who out there is going to enjoy the idea of someone breaking into their house to come harm them? Not Billy.

"It was Rorschach," he says. Not immediately elaborating, because-- well, he figures Raju can make some connections in his mind based on the conversation they had about that man before. Raju doesn't seem dumb enough to have forgotten. There's a very brief pause to give the other man the opportunity to remember that conversation, and then he adds: "His intentions were clear. He kicked down the door and stated them."

“Him again? Really?” Raju frowns. He knows better than to take one man’s testimony to be the entire truth of any matter, and wishes he’d found time to take more of a measure of the silent, oddly-masked man’s character. It isn’t as if there hasn’t been time. There’s an excess of time in this place but there’s no purpose to any of it, no reason to talk to this person or that one except wanting to, no advancement or goal or anything larger to be had of it. And without that, he’s been…

Well, as much of a hermit as Francis was trying to be when they’d met, except without noticing it. That’s an odd thought.

Raju isn’t sure what to do about that, or whether he should do anything at all. But Rorschach, at least, might need a little more attention.

“Did you insult that mask of his again? What did he say when he came in?”

"No," he replies, coupled with a quick of shake of his head. "It was not me he was there for. It was the person I am sharing a house with."

Despite his reluctance to discuss his sexuality only a few moments ago, Billy figures that maybe it's safe as long as he phrases it like that. It's not like they're the only two people sharing a house in town, right? And it makes sense anyway, considering the size of that place. It would be a waste of space if one person took up that much room by themselves. Not like Raju needs to know that they share a bed as well as a house.

"I was only the first one to approach the source of the noise, facing him. Rorschach said he was there to dole out justice." It's only now that he's recounting it that Billy realises the story sounds a little ridiculous. If anyone else told him it, he'd doubt whether it ever happened in the first place, and that thought makes him pause for the faintest moment.

.. but then again, ridiculous things happen here all the time. This is just one of those things.

Unfortunately enough. Billy would rather have had his peaceful night's sleep than any of this.

"His claim made no sense though." A frown. "The person he was there for hadn't done anything, other than being on the losing side of a fight a little while before that. The only thing I can imagine is that Rorschach somehow misunderstood what had happened, and had some stubborn and extremely mistaken idea of vigilante justice." And that he's a madman on top of it.

Raju frowns, thinking that over. The house sharing doesn't get a second thought from him; his own days had improved by leaps once Francis had convinced him to stay. And in Delhi, the first time he'd ever lived on his own before, the place had seemed even brighter once Akhtar had started to come and go. And here, having more hands around to gather wood and food and keep your mind on something good once it's too dark to go out, all that is invaluable. No, it's Rorschach who's the real trouble.

"And then you..." Well, there's only so many ways the kind of ability the two of them have can deal with an attacker. "...Set him on fire?"

He's reasonably sure that Rorschach isn't dead, at least. Some kinds of gossip do travel, even to those who aren't living at the Community Center any more. Raju's mostly sure he would have heard. More importantly:

"Some were talking about how to keep order in this place at that meeting, the one after..." Maybe it's better not to mention the Darkwalker and what it can do when William only has to think of it to set himself off. Raju shrugs, pulls the blanket a little closer over the bottom half of his face against the cold. "...Well. You know. But men like that certainly wouldn't cooperate. Did he manage any justice before you fought him off?"

Set him on fire may be a very direct way of wording it, but it's not like Billy can deny it's the reality of what had happened. It had only been a half-conscious decision in that moment, considering how panicked he had been at the thought of Hickey getting hurt, but the end result was the same, wasn't it? He set Rorschach on fire, indeed.

"The fire prevented it," he says, his voice a little quiet. "He was raising his fist to strike just as the fire ignited."

There's a slight pause, but then the man shakes his head and adds: "It was just his hand."

Before Raju thinks that Billy set an entire person on fire right away. He doesn't really mind the fact he hurt Rorschach, but his main intention had been to stop the entire altercation, rather than his main priority being hurting that man. And he'd prefer to not sound like a total lunatic in front of Raju when Billy likes the man.

.. he slowly exhales.

"I think you are right. There are always some people who will refuse to cooperate, even if we are stuck in a town like this with only each other to turn to for help. That is why I did not imagine spreading this story would help matters, so I kept it to myself."

"Did you think he'd come after you again if you said something?" Raju sweeps his foot idly through the snow, tightens his arms around himself, thinks that over. He's spent too long inside next to a fire while the frostbite healed; he isn't used to pushing himself any more to stay outside in the cold. It didn't take long to get used to being nearly-warm again, did it?

He tries to think past it. "It's a shame he knows where you live. Maybe you could move; there's still more abandoned places here than there are people to fill them up. If he's the kind of person who will do something like that, shouldn't everyone know about it?"

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cw: description of a wound/scar

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there we go, wrapped it! c: thanks again for the thread!