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There’s a ringing in Caine’s ears. A dull little whine, like someone edited a file of a squeaking door hinge and played it back, faint and high and stretched out eternally. “That was,” he says, attempting to be careful, though his voice comes out ragged and raw, “My favorite mug.” Red flushing covers much of his face; he can feel the heat on his face, behind his eyes, coalescing in his chest. The tinnitus seems to go right through Caine, in one ear and out the other, buzzing in his head, the places the Gaiaphage had ripped chunked out of his mind with its hooks. For all that, he doesn’t really feel the anger. Just the heat in his chest.
“...I’m sorry,” says Sam, who Caine is faintly aware is standing across the kitchen. It’s a weird adjective to use to describe his awareness-- faintly-- considering he’s looking directly at Sam. Not in his eyes, but rather at the white scar jagged down his jaw. It had been from a piece of debris in one of the earlier Battles of the FAYZ, as the dramatic are wont to call them. It’s faded now. Like Caine feels. Faded and faint. “What do you want?” asks Sam. There was a pause there, between his words, but not a hesitance. He’s still in his pajamas, flannel pants and an over large t-shirt, not even shaven for the morning. Of course there’s no hesitance, not after six years of this. It’s routine. Something will happen, Caine will-- do this, and Sam will respond accordingly. Even his phrasing is carefully picked. They’d learned the hard way, seventeen and angry, before they’d ever started living together, that Caine reacted badly to open requests about his well-being. Pathetic. Or--
Yes, pathetic, but he knows that. Naming it isn’t helpful. What set it off this time, he wonders absently, feeling around for whatever emotions his brain has hidden from him. Dissociation. A ‘coping mechanism’ both Caine and Sam picked up in the FAYZ, in the Anomaly, the hellscape. Right. It’s not only Caine who does this awful dance, suddenly torn to pieces by something unidentifiable. Usually Sam is better at identifying his ‘triggers,’ though. It had taken… too long, for Caine to stop the well of Gaiaphage related terror whenever something felt wrong. The Gaiaphage is long gone. This is a trauma response. Faintly, he hears Sam call his name, and realizes he’s waiting for a response. Caine raises his head, feeling every vertebrate in his neck shift. Feels the meat on his face shift to accommodate the smile he places there, eyes crinkling in their corners, brows raised just a little. Genuine, that’s what he’s going for. “I’m just going to sit down.” Good. How does he make that better? “I’ll sweep if you want, just… in a minute.” Good. Better. It feels wrong not to have a smooth, natural slide into the end of the sentence, feels worse to admit he needs the minute, but it’s also more natural. Puts Sam at ease. The smile didn’t mesh with the words, with the situation, but intentionally taking control over his muscles is grounding. The same with feeling the words in his throat, though they’re always steadier than he feels. Incongruent.
“Nah,” says Sam with a yawn, as Caine starts moving his limbs, creaking muscles working in thoughtless unity. “I got it. Do you want a drink?” Hm. Does Sam think this is another resources issue? It may well be. Caine is always finicky about resources. More like panicky. He keeps their cabinets stocked and their dishes clean, always ready for another bout of starvation, another era of raw sheep off dirt.
Settling down in a top-heavy clump against their couch, Caine says, “No, thank you,” and pushes away the memory of the island. Not helpful. This isn’t a resources issue, he doesn’t think, but it’s best not to dwell anyway. He’s not certain how well he’s timing these responses. Seconds move by in a crawl. Nothing in Sam’s reaction would give it away; the two of them have slogged through difficult conversations over a matter of hours, only forcing out the words every so often. Sam is used to the wait. He recognizes the self-loathing in that statement, and follows it with, I am used to the wait from Sam too. There. He’s not sure it does anything to dislodge the ball of disgust at himself, but at least all the facts are there.
This must be a sentimental thing. At first, Caine thought it must have been the sound of shattering, the ceramic bursting violently onto the ground. But across all his memories, he can’t locate any one that a mug shattering might bring up. Frustrated, he screws his brows together, going at the memories with a fine-tooth comb. The Gaiaphage memories are the most obvious for rooting at, fuzzy and indistinct as they are, but he’s not stupid enough to dig into those. Even now the prospect of the glittering green in the cave blackens his dull awareness of his surroundings. The early battles, then? There was plenty of bursting, shattering-- white hot heat sliding past him as Sam barely misses his shots. The church, the rubble. Were there still windows in the church by that time? When he had dragged Astrid out of the rubble, eyes wide and terrified, and brandished her at Sam like a weapon? Sam’s hands, pressed to the side of his head, pushing him into the cluttering dirt and gravel and perhaps glass. But the glass hadn’t been what Caine was afraid of then. No shattering. No, only burning, the smell of human flesh only a ghost he had only barely known then, but a threat all the same with the hands pressed to his,
Oh, Sam is
Sam is speaking. “--finitely a flashback, then. I got you water. You didn’t ask for water, but I brought it all the same. It’s in--”
“Thank you,” says Caine, cutting Sam off. Sam rambles, looping topics, as a familiar presence. It’s not always the most helpful thing, but surprisingly enough, more of Caine’s memories of Sam are good than bad these days. The same can’t be said for Sam of Caine, so Caine doesn’t talk for Sam's episodes. He gets blankets, gets music. Lets Sam ride it out and sits, reading, until he can make out a couple sentences about whatever happened, how he feels, and how to avoid it in the future, and promptly pass out. Caine can’t imagine. Sam burns himself out, driving himself into a state of calm after a while, but Caine just keeps climbing. Doesn’t even notice, has to be pulled out of it. Ah. Like now. “Sorry.”
“Not a problem,” says Sam, for about the thousandth time. Caine reaches, carefully, and sips at the water. His body thanks him; his mouth has gone parched. It’s cold and makes his skin break out in goosebumps on his upper arm, contrasting the warmth of the couch below him. The old quilts, thrifted or part of Sam’s teenaged projects. The cup has left a ring on the table, but not one that will stay for long. Caine’s careful about keeping it free of rings and stains. The materialism of his youth hasn’t passed yet. Sam says, “You’re scowling,” at about the same time Caine notices he is, or near it. Before and after are a bit fuzzy. His jaw’s not set, but his brows are furrowed, lips pressed into a line. He is feeling something, isn’t he. Confusion, irritation?
Naming it makes it present, and all the sudden Caine can recall why. “I can’t figure out the trigger.”
“Do you need to?” says Sam, and Caine frowns.
“You always do.”
“Not always,” Sam shrugs. He doesn’t have the easy, laid back surfer face he had at fourteen, nor the grim anger of fifteen, or the caged animal fear of sixteen. Of course not. He’s twenty six.
“Usually.” Sam's triggers are textbook, mostly. Not all of them, but mostly. Surprising contact, especially on his back. Words like whip . Words like Drake . The feeling of having no control, or, conversely, having too much. That one Caine shares, or at least the lack of control. A lack of control makes Caine feel cornered and likely to lash out, though it only makes Sam feel helpless, useless, failing. Too much control makes Sam fear that he might go unchecked, hurt people, not to mention the overwhelming responsibility. That fear Caine knows too well, every hour of every day. That he might hurt someone. That he might blink and be the Caine Soren of fifteen, spitting and angry and ready to take over what little amounted for their world.
Spiraling, right. Spiraling. Sam is here, Sam is speaking, Sam is saying, “--me. Doesn’t have to be that way for you. Besides, you still haven’t managed to jot down the cause for when I broke down crying over the sight of the woman at the shop. No answers in your book for that.”
What? Right. Sam needs an answer. He needs a-- Speak, goddamnit, Sam's smile is slipping, you’ll just make him concerned that he’s hurt you, just say something-- “I’m thinking it was the guilt, still.” Okay, horrible job, but Sam is still smiling.
“That was a jab at your little mental health day-planner, you know,” Sam says, faking an irritation that he didn’t get the joke. Of course Caine gets the joke, Sam hasn’t stopped his running commentary on Caine’s little notebook of trauma since he started it on their psychologist’s word at twenty. Those first few months as room-mates had been tumultuous. Caine’s not too offended: it’s as much Sam’s as it is Caine’s. He’ll often find Sam scribbling whatever new torment his mind sprung upon him in the pages for Caine to read later. Usually Caine writes, but sometimes he dictates to Sam, when his hands get shaky, and analysis has always been his quickest coping mechanism. Though Caine hasn’t known hunger since seventeen, his body likes to mimic the effects on occasion.
“If you have a problem with the book, please feel free to take it up with Doctor Bellamy. In the meantime, I very much like knowing what will send either of us into an embarrassing breakdown.”
“A decade now, and they’re embarrassing . Watch out with that negative language or Bellamy might re-institutionalize you. Never know when you’re abandoning your treatment .” Sam drags out the phrases to the extent of mocking, toying with Caine’s long abandoned neurosis. Committing himself to recovery only to blink and find that the walls of whatever recovery facility he was in were entrapping, only holding him back, and attempting some sort of scheming escape. Ah, delusions of grandeur.
He bites back the shame and gropes for a pillow to chuck at Sam before going for a sip of water. It’s grounding, but not enough. “Get over here, bastard.” Sam laughs, clutching the pillow he’d caught easily, and settled onto the couch beside Caine. They’re not touching- Sam isn’t big on contact with anyone besides Astrid and a few others of the Perdido Beach leadership team- but he’s close enough that Caine can feel the warmth. Good. The warmth, and the steady rasp of his breathing. “You don’t have any plans today,” Caine says, as a command rather than a question, reaching for the remote. He’s not present yet, not fully. No amount of healthy coping mechanisms could really drag Caine back from a stupor, he always had to wait it out, grounding himself again and again until he didn’t float away. It’s annoying, but he supposes the inability to cut it short is a fair trade from the dissociation itself giving his flashbacks some mercy. He can tolerate it.
Feeling merciful himself, he even lets Sam snatch the remote, though Caine doesn’t catch whatever he says about it. Just fixates himself on the screen, the couch, the rolling waves of the surfer show Sam's chosen, and drags himself back to reality inch by inch.