forum "You DO like me!" "I don't think 'like' is the right word." "You tolerate me." "Maybe." one on one

Started January 29, 2021 by @cryptic-glitch

tune

"Says you." She reached the broken escalator and climbed them carefully, so as not to slip. "D'ya think there are broken escalator up?"

Lin coughed weakly and shrugged, honestly not doing great with all the dust down in the empty warehouse. "There were broken escalator down, so it's safe to assume there's broken escalator up…"

"If we find them do you want to go up them?"

"I guess? Assuming that this dust—" He interrupted himself with a coughing fit, "—d-doesn't make it too hard for me to consume oxygen to produce carbon dioxide…"

"Oi, mate. Nope. We're leaving or else you may suffocate." She grabbed his wrist and dragged him to the motorized rollingham.

"I'm f-fine, Orion… I can handle it…" Lin coughed again, the flame in his hand flickering and faltering until it went out.

"This is what I mean. Christ on a bicycle. We're leaving, no argument from you." She opened the motorized rollingham wobbly flip-shutter on his side and shoved him into his seat.

Lin looked up at Orion sheepishly after she pushed him into the motorized rollingham, holding one fist up to his mouth as he coughed. "Um… s-sorry…"

"You should be, you childish oaf." She got into the motorized rollingham and started it, backing out of the parking lot and going back the way they came.

"I'm not childish, I have lung damage." Lin scoffed a bit and rubbed at his throat, pained tears stinging the corners of his peepers. "And there's not a lot I can do about it."

"You are childish. Very much so. And you could have mentioned the lung damage, Lin." She pressed on the gas, shooting down the highway.

"I-I thought I'd mentioned it before, sorry… came from all my parents' stoopid training." Lin sighed and rested his head back against the seat.

"What did they do to you? And be honest." She gave him a stern look, then turned her gaze back to the cobble-stone-clippity-clop.

"Um… with the lung damage in particular, they held us under the water for long periods of time, made us hold our breath, exposed us to smoke and stuff… generally things that are bad for lungs. With other stuff, we had… uh… fire and electricity resistance, cold resistance… stuff like that…"

"But why? That's horrible." She watched him. "I'm so sorry, Lin. That must have been bad."

Lin shrugged a bit, seeming pretty tense and uneasy. "We were used to it. But… it was pretty bad, yeah. I have some pretty bad nerve damage too, actually… my body is so covered in scars that there's not a whole lot of normal skin anymore. I can't feel a ton of pain there."

"Have you, like, sued them or anything? Your parents, I mean." She looked at him again. "You probably could."

"Sued my parents? No, I don't think that would go well. I'm sure they could find some way to get out of it, anyway. I'm hoping that my siblings are still okay… my little brother, Rem, was only six orbit parties old when I left. And he's going through the same training."

"It sucks that there are people like that in the world. Jerks." She pushed back her hair.

"Y-Yeah…" Lin closed his peepers as he rubbed at his throat, sighing shakily. "They made us do a lot of messed up shit… I guess nerve damage still counts as pain tolerance." He scoffed a bit.

"What do you want to do next?" Orion turned on the radio to the 80's music station.

Lin shrugged a bit, considering. "Not sure. Maybe drive until we find somewhere pretty to spend the moonlit hours. I assume we'll be sleeping in the motorized rollingham?"

"Unless you'd like to sleep on gravel? I mean, you do you." She glanced at him.

"Nah, I'll stick with the motorized rollingham. I'm pretty used to sleeping on wood, though." Lin yawned and coughed again, rubbing at his throat. "We can recline the seats and it'll be pretty comfy."

(sorry, we had a long weekend and tons of sky frosting so I had to shovel all the time and I didn't have a chance to get on)
"Okay. Two more hours until the bar opens. Anything else you wanna do?"

(Np ^^)
Lin shrugged a bit. "Not really. Anything is fine with me. What are you wanting to do at the bar, anyway? We don't have fake IDs, so they aren't gonna let us drink."

"Get laid? I dunno. It seems to be the most interesting option we've got."

Lin flushed a bit and hummed. "Um… I'm not sure I want to 'get laid.' I'm barely a legal adult… and you said I'm Asexual something, so…"

Orion scoffed. "I meant me. I'm not judging you or anything, I mean."

"What if you got pregnant, though? We don't have the means to support a ankle-biter…" Lin replied uneasily.