( his thoughts aren't tangible words, only abstract understanding: it hurts, and it's blinding. Ben's eyes finally open and he sees nothing, doesn't have the capacity for clear and calm thought, only as much as 'I was asleep, I'm awake now, and something is happening.' he isn't afforded the luxury of anything more intricate than simple alarm.
his hands claw around to the back of his head, fearfully feeling for anything behind him — it feels like a sharp device must be boring into his head, and in Deerington, that isn't a stretch by any means. he wants to lift himself up, the urge to coil in against the pain severe enough to send his legs folding up already, but he can barely convince his body to move. it's under attack, by some measure of force, and his body is in the midst of a haphazard attempt to defend itself down to the very nerve endings, to keep the pain from breaking his mind.
but — the pain is a swift swelling rooted deep into his head, and Ben lets a breath out, but it comes as a cry. his back arches, hands crushing at the sides of his skull; he feels submerged, suffocated, and an unbearable heat soaks his skin. had he a calm, exterior sense of looking at the situation itself, Ben might fear a laundry list of things: parasites, an influenza, a transformation, acute and sudden death by something eldritch and gruesome. even now, as he is, Ben is so desperately caught in this cyclone of pain and fear that he can't even gauge how likely this is to end in death.
meanwhile, his blindness grows even more literal; as if Will might have pulled the bedroom curtains away to flood the room with light — even Ben's eyes begin to glow whitely, illuminating his eyes from behind, but the point of light is visible in its own right, in the center of his head, behind the thin skin and the rigid bone of his skull.
but a shape...is beginning to build there, at that point, and as the shape grows larger there above his brow, the more vivid the light becomes.
and the louder Ben's screams of pain become, eyes pressing shut, eyes still glowing dully from behind his eyelids. )
[ It's frightening. Will feels a phantom pain behind his eyes, feels his neck tense until he thinks he'd be able to see the muscles standing out between clavicle and jaw. He swallows back nausea and stays put, stays touching Ben, doesn't want to leave him. Can barely think of other options, of maybe calling for the hospital. Do they even come when called, does 911 exist here? Will's never thought about it before.
The light takes him a moment to notice, and maybe that's because he's the only one who can. With his outside perspective - which he is briefly aware of as an outside perspective instead of the one he's been drowning in - Will can see the glow inside of Ben. His open mouth seems to give light, rather than swallow it up, his nostrils are flared and pale and internally lit, but it's his eyes that glow bright enough to flare. Will touches Ben's temples, flattens his fingers around Ben's against his forehead, which is when he notices something is wrong. Physically wrong, physically odd.
Will pauses, surprised, and feels across Ben's forehead even while the other man hisses and yells with pain, curls up and around with it, roiling around as if no position offers any relief. Will finds he's fighting against Ben's own instincts, here, and he realizes that Ben's forehead is...unusually hard. In just one specific spot.
And then that spot...shifts. Will startles, gasps, and then reaches out again.
And then he reaches in. Will curls his fingers and the find an edge, some sort of slippery purchase on a hard, unyielding surface. It feels like trying to drag a polished brick out from a line of other smooth, perfectly-fitted bricks. Will grits his teeth, chasing instinct and desperation. He can't listen to Ben's pain, can't feel it, this has to work has to has to stop.
Will grabs something inside of Ben's forehead and pulls, with all his body weight as he crouches over him on the bed. ]
( Ben can see nothing now, nothing beyond the flooding light overwhelming his vision, sparkling and fizzling as it over-saturates in his eyes. it hurts without hurting there, or is that because the pain in his skull is so catastrophic? Ben can't practice the patience needed to look, but as the blooming static against the blinding white boils up, more and more, he thinks, somewhere in the back of his mind, that they look like...eyes, an uncountable number of them.
he's growing deaf to his own yelling, Cherish perched with defensive fear up on the windowsill now, having leapt away with surprise. he doesn't know that Will is over him, only that hands are on him, cradling his temples, moving over him; the touch doesn't add to the pain, but Ben can scarcely process anything else in his nerves, in his flesh, than this upward-spiraling pressure roaring through the front of his head.
a piercing pain that Ben feels pushing, and yet also...pulling. he's now caught between two forces, trapped in the direction they're moving, though the sense of push and pull are not cooperative. without awareness, Ben's hands go up, grabbing Will's wrist and leveraging against him...which so happens to add to his intent. Ben's back arches, angling back, while Will holds on, pulling in the opposite direction.
and thus, the pain finally tears like wet, ragged tissue with a final low scream.
Ben lies there and pants, the flood of light gone, leaving him now shrouded in stupefied darkness, voice scraping the air with each breath. his skin tingles uncomfortably, sizzling with raw nerves still processing the waves of pain, his body sending endorphins to ease the sensation that has just completely ravaged him. his skin feels hot and cold simultaneously, and he comes to slowly realize that he's covered in a sheen of sweat. )
...Will. ( he can't quite see yet, though it's muddy and fractured, and his breaths are nearly weeping. he doesn't know where to look yet, though he visibly tries with a squinting, pained gaze — but he lifts his hands back up to find him again, not to fight, but to plea. )
cw continued slight gore & bloody grossness / body horror
[ The resistance suddenly gives way with a suctioning pop and Will nearly falls off the bed. If he wasn't suddenly holding something the size of his own closed fist, shining through the sheen of blood on it, he might have found it funny.
Will pants, staring at what he's left holding - not a brain, or a tumor, or anything that clearly had a nefarious purpose while it was just previously trapped in Ben's head - until he's distracted. By Ben's voice, the first coherent thing Ben's said since he woke Will up with his pained groans.
Will shifts back into place, clambering back over the bed to him, eyes on Ben's face. ] Ben. [ Will's face creases in surprise and then relief in rotations; there is no gaping hole in Ben's forehead that would have accommodated what just came out of it. ] Ben, are you-- okay? The pain's gone?
[ Will is trying, half-heartedly and poorly, to obscure Ben's potential sight of the blood-smeared stone in Will's hand. Considering it's glowing, he's...probably going to lose this attempt. ]
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wontgraham) wrote2019-04-10 08:46 pm
the way to get around my birthing fear: eye and head body horror (this is a cw)
his hands claw around to the back of his head, fearfully feeling for anything behind him — it feels like a sharp device must be boring into his head, and in Deerington, that isn't a stretch by any means. he wants to lift himself up, the urge to coil in against the pain severe enough to send his legs folding up already, but he can barely convince his body to move. it's under attack, by some measure of force, and his body is in the midst of a haphazard attempt to defend itself down to the very nerve endings, to keep the pain from breaking his mind.
but — the pain is a swift swelling rooted deep into his head, and Ben lets a breath out, but it comes as a cry. his back arches, hands crushing at the sides of his skull; he feels submerged, suffocated, and an unbearable heat soaks his skin. had he a calm, exterior sense of looking at the situation itself, Ben might fear a laundry list of things: parasites, an influenza, a transformation, acute and sudden death by something eldritch and gruesome. even now, as he is, Ben is so desperately caught in this cyclone of pain and fear that he can't even gauge how likely this is to end in death.
meanwhile, his blindness grows even more literal; as if Will might have pulled the bedroom curtains away to flood the room with light — even Ben's eyes begin to glow whitely, illuminating his eyes from behind, but the point of light is visible in its own right, in the center of his head, behind the thin skin and the rigid bone of his skull.
but a shape...is beginning to build there, at that point, and as the shape grows larger there above his brow, the more vivid the light becomes.
and the louder Ben's screams of pain become, eyes pressing shut, eyes still glowing dully from behind his eyelids. )
no subject
The light takes him a moment to notice, and maybe that's because he's the only one who can. With his outside perspective - which he is briefly aware of as an outside perspective instead of the one he's been drowning in - Will can see the glow inside of Ben. His open mouth seems to give light, rather than swallow it up, his nostrils are flared and pale and internally lit, but it's his eyes that glow bright enough to flare. Will touches Ben's temples, flattens his fingers around Ben's against his forehead, which is when he notices something is wrong. Physically wrong, physically odd.
Will pauses, surprised, and feels across Ben's forehead even while the other man hisses and yells with pain, curls up and around with it, roiling around as if no position offers any relief. Will finds he's fighting against Ben's own instincts, here, and he realizes that Ben's forehead is...unusually hard. In just one specific spot.
And then that spot...shifts. Will startles, gasps, and then reaches out again.
And then he reaches in. Will curls his fingers and the find an edge, some sort of slippery purchase on a hard, unyielding surface. It feels like trying to drag a polished brick out from a line of other smooth, perfectly-fitted bricks. Will grits his teeth, chasing instinct and desperation. He can't listen to Ben's pain, can't feel it, this has to work has to has to stop.
Will grabs something inside of Ben's forehead and pulls, with all his body weight as he crouches over him on the bed. ]
no subject
he's growing deaf to his own yelling, Cherish perched with defensive fear up on the windowsill now, having leapt away with surprise. he doesn't know that Will is over him, only that hands are on him, cradling his temples, moving over him; the touch doesn't add to the pain, but Ben can scarcely process anything else in his nerves, in his flesh, than this upward-spiraling pressure roaring through the front of his head.
a piercing pain that Ben feels pushing, and yet also...pulling. he's now caught between two forces, trapped in the direction they're moving, though the sense of push and pull are not cooperative. without awareness, Ben's hands go up, grabbing Will's wrist and leveraging against him...which so happens to add to his intent. Ben's back arches, angling back, while Will holds on, pulling in the opposite direction.
and thus, the pain finally tears like wet, ragged tissue with a final low scream.
Ben lies there and pants, the flood of light gone, leaving him now shrouded in stupefied darkness, voice scraping the air with each breath. his skin tingles uncomfortably, sizzling with raw nerves still processing the waves of pain, his body sending endorphins to ease the sensation that has just completely ravaged him. his skin feels hot and cold simultaneously, and he comes to slowly realize that he's covered in a sheen of sweat. )
...Will. ( he can't quite see yet, though it's muddy and fractured, and his breaths are nearly weeping. he doesn't know where to look yet, though he visibly tries with a squinting, pained gaze — but he lifts his hands back up to find him again, not to fight, but to plea. )
cw continued slight gore & bloody grossness / body horror
Will pants, staring at what he's left holding - not a brain, or a tumor, or anything that clearly had a nefarious purpose while it was just previously trapped in Ben's head - until he's distracted. By Ben's voice, the first coherent thing Ben's said since he woke Will up with his pained groans.
Will shifts back into place, clambering back over the bed to him, eyes on Ben's face. ] Ben. [ Will's face creases in surprise and then relief in rotations; there is no gaping hole in Ben's forehead that would have accommodated what just came out of it. ] Ben, are you-- okay? The pain's gone?
[ Will is trying, half-heartedly and poorly, to obscure Ben's potential sight of the blood-smeared stone in Will's hand. Considering it's glowing, he's...probably going to lose this attempt. ]