Chapter Text
The unadulterated fury in the Halovian’s narrowing glare made Aventurine wonder what gods he’d pissed off this morning, to have ended up like this.
The gambler hadn’t intended to see Sunday again, ever. He couldn’t be sure, but he’d found it easy to assume Sunday felt the same - they had nothing more to say to each other, now that the rest of the IPC had followed in the wake of their shattered Aventurine. They were the sort of royal pain that the choir leader deserved well enough, after the stunt he’d pulled back there. If not for that Emanator of Nihility, he would have ended up melting into the Harmony’s freakish hivemind, like a nickel on a bed of lava. Even if he wasn’t one to cling too tightly to futile grudges, or blur the lines between business and private affairs, it was difficult not to take that one a little personally.
And then, they’d crossed paths once more, in the cold and grounded material reality of one of the more distant balcony walkways, high above the lobby. Aventurine’s mood had shifted from pensive to inflamed in an instant when he ran into him, finding him seated quietly by the banister with his gaze on the bright core of Penacony.
The winged bastard could sense sudden hostile emotions like a radar dish. Before there’d been a chance to slip away back into the maze of the hotel’s velour hallways, Sunday had already risen to meet the wave of disdain, on his feet and tightly restrained.
Damn, even after all this, he’s barely twitching.
Sunday’s cold and wary stare, like a proud beast boring down on a lesser creature to send it scurrying, had done nothing to douse the acid in the Sigonian’s chest. Quite the opposite happened. Rather than being cowed, Aventurine’s emotions flared like boiling oil being hit by water.
One burst of speed, one moment of letting go of hesitation-
A short cuss was all the warning he got.
It had felt good, amazing, to see his ringed knuckles make contact with the haughty bastard’s face, to feel the sting of the impact travel up his own arm, and to hear his beloathed trip over his own ankles and hit the deck like any other schmuck who’d ever picked the wrong fight and come to regret it. Here in the real world, with real gravity, that heavy sprawling thud reverberated a short distance through the walkway.
Got’im good, huh?
It was the same mundane motions as always that followed, those of a rattled man scrambling up, and wiping the back of his hand by his nose to catch the first drops of blood. The surge of fear and anger in him dissipated easily, seeing the thing of his recent nightmares reduced to nearly falling over onto his hands when he tried to stand back up, before he finally managed on a second dizzy try.
Yeah, Sunday was no Veritas, neither in size nor strength.
Aventurine had already forgotten the sharp and bitter pithy line he’d perfunctorily thrown out at him. Half the time the words he said didn’t matter anyway, as long as his automatic pilot delivered the right tone.
‘Screw you’ wasn’t difficult to get across, in any case.
By all means, it should have ended there. He should’ve taken advantage of the situation to turn away and vamoose, before any more trouble could come from this.
He’d already been on his way, fists balled, scarf trailing.
So… why was he still here, right now, losing his composure more with every second like an emptying hourglass?
Ah. Right. That noise he’d made, that had made him stop and look over his shoulder. Aventurine’d barely believed it, that the Halovian was capable of sounding so human, so very convincingly in distress. It was brief, clipped off behind lips pressed together tightly, but strangely loud - a groan, a whine, almost.
Maybe he shouldn’t have given him that stupid grin of delight, out of sheer giddy surprise. It’d been funny, though, for a moment or two before his defenses snapped back up, and his gloating became a facade once more. He’d stayed to watch, to drink in the sight of his tormentor’s faint trembles, finally on the back foot. Maybe he’d run, run to his sister to cry, or something.
No, he hadn’t cracked him that easily. Sunday retained enough poise to dispel that little fantasy, and the brief flare of fun fizzled out fast. This wasn’t a revenge comedy. This was just two exhausted men with lake of bad blood between them, and one had just been decked in the face by the other.
Aventurine had passed up yet another chance to leave, this time because he’d noticed just how sharply the fleck of bright red under the fellow’s nose stood out against the pallor of his face. Sure, Sunday was a bit of a pasty nerd per default, but Aventurine had seen the blood drain out of plenty of people’s faces, and this looked like passing-out material.
“Hey now, if you’re going to faint, try not to drop over the balcony, will you? Or maybe do, I couldn’t care less.” Slick, drowning the worry in his voice in trash talk. He really didn’t want to be here any longer.
Sunday only moved a hand to vice-grip the railing, apparently unable to get a word out past the slow, shallow breaths he was pushing out. His effort to keep his gaze on his attacker was succeeding, but only barely, with how his eyes were twitching into a pained squint.
Aventurine had expected him to shy back when he’d stepped closer, but the Halovian instead forced himself to stand up taller, fiercely rigid, a warning in his sharpening glare.
A frightened predator puffing up to seem big. The gambler had seen it before, though admittedly the display had mislead him for a moment. He’d almost failed to notice the man had all but stopped breathing, until he caught on to the whispery gasp that broke through the bunker wall.
He decided to reach out to him -
And Sunday had tersely backed away, only to wince, latch onto the railing again, and clutch a hand to his head. The studded wing on his left side flared up, and the one on his right… Oh. Huh.
“Hoo boy, that’s not right, is it.”
His anatomical knowledge was limited, and his body plan didn’t have space for head wings, but something about how the way those feathers were angling gave him an iffy feeling in his stomach. Haha, oopsies. He hadn’t meant to ruffle his feathers that literally. Was it just him, or was the air up here really thin?
Before he knew it, that anxious fussy part of his brain had taken over, and he’d leaned in, hoping to fix the tangle by finger-combing the feathers like messy bangs back into shape. He barely spotted a look of panic in his peripherals, and the growl coming from between the Halovian’s canines had him pause.
Then, in a mindless reaction to Sunday trying to push his hand away, he gripped on tight.
Even through his black gloves, he could feel that hot-blooded avian heat through feathers and down. He could also feel something catch when the limb reflexively tried to pull in, and the expected structure under the pads of his digits slightly buckled in at a joint it didn’t have before.
Aventurine froze, as did Sunday, with a similar look of horror.
He felt oddly humbled at just how quickly Sunday pushed the fear out of his expression, and replaced it with a stone cold glare.
Right, that was how they’d gotten here.
“Oy, haha, hang on-”
Sunday’s furious glower narrowed, just slightly at first. His chest expanded with a halting breath in.
“L-let go.” he commanded, quiet but hardly whispering.
Aventurine would have heeded the more than reasonable demand, if not for how his instinct was telling him he had a viper by the throat, and if he let it slip, its bite would come swiftly.
“L e t. GO.” Sunday bit out more sharply, locked between the banister and this complete and utter oaf in a very uncomfortable position.
“Ah, shhhh- I’m sorry, let’s try to handle this calmly, shall we?” Genius. Lock a jaguar’s paw in a trap, and then ask it to relaaaaax, easy now~
Genius.
Weirdly enough, the braindead comment didn’t fan the flames at all.
“I-I’m trying.” Sunday’s unstable wing twitched against Aventurine’s grip again, and that hiss clipped off into a visible wince.
“P-please let go.” he breathed out, and tensely closed his eyes, both yielding to his unintended tormentor, and summoning his every last nerve to keep his voice down.
“I’m sorry! I will, holy mary, I didn’t mean to-”
“Mister Aventurine. Please let go.”
How he managed to enunciate those husky words so clearly was a mystery to Aventurine. He knew he had him in a position some professional intel gatherers could only dream of, at his mercy and in intense pain. He could feel the man’s nauseatingly fast heartbeat, see the glisten of tears in his eyes. If even he had trouble hiding how much this hurt…
Aventurine slowly loosened his vice-like clutch, and he watched, slightly slack-jawed, as those tears broke to roll down his cheeks and a breathy whine forced its way out between clenched teeth. Soft staggering gasps stopped in their tracks just short of a sob when he finished prying his fingers open.
“Sunday… I…”
He didn’t dare move his hand away entirely. Bright flecks had begun to seep out into the peaky down, and had spread into a sheet of diluted red through a few of his biggest feathers.
“Aeons, I don’t know how to handle this, talk to me, friend.” Screw all pretense, he felt bad about this, and something about the fellow caving in like this made his gut churn with anxiety. He had to think of something.
“I-I’m just made of flesh and blood like you, Sigonian. I just- just need to get some assistance from one of the medical practitioners around.”
“Wow, that’s…” Surprisingly coherent? Bizarrely understated? Freakishly detached? Aventurine found himself dumb-struck, lamed enough to offer no resistance when Sunday slowly nudged his hand away.
With a shudder down his spine, the man carefully folded his injured wing against his silver hair. He then gave him a dull look, too exhausted to manage proper annoyance.
“That’s what.” he asked, then squinted and barely resisted shaking his head. “Forget it. A-and I’m not your friend.” A predictable, if delayed, snap back. Aventurine had heard that one hundreds of times. “…Am I?”
After a beat of silence, they shot each other an equally baffled look, one blond eyebrow raise, and one perturbed stare. That was a new one…
“You really did hit your head, did you. Damn bird-bones…” Did this count as good luck, or bad luck? Or just a strange happenstance. He didn’t know anymore. “Hey, where do you think you’re going.” Oy.
Sunday stopped to grip the railing tightly, mid-way a first stride away, and when Aventurine unwound like a coil to get a bracing arm around him, he reflexively forced a stand-still.
“Breathe, bird-brain, you’re going to pass out of you keep holding it in like that.”
Sunday leered weakly at him, and… seemed to accept the constructive criticism. Once he’d forced himself to take in a few deep breaths, the tension in his body eased slightly, and soon enough, Aventurine had to hold on more tightly.
“Alright, this isn’t a great time to go weak in the knees for other reasons either.”
“M-make up your damn mind.”
Aventurine blinked uncomfortably over how plagued he sounded, through every quiet wheeze.
“Sorry. Force of habit. You should sit down, friend- No, don’t get hung up on that now, sit down. Do you have your beacon with you?” Finally, a sensible idea. This mess had his brain all scrambled, too.
“I- Yes.” Sunday foggily confirmed, relenting to being guided down to a more secure position on the floor, where he could lean back against the railing wall. He hadn’t moved his hand from where he was trying to hold his wing immobile, and he grunted softly when he carefully rolled his shoulder.
“Right pocket.” He got the idea, great.
“You don’t even have your sister on speed dial? I’m surprised.”
“Why- G-give it here.” Sunday huffed impatiently, and unlocked the device with his free hand. Almost without thinking, he navigated to Robin’s tab on the messaging function.
“Can you… ask her to come here, at her earliest convenience. I’m having trouble reading.”
“Can do. That doesn’t sound so good.”
“It’s just the… headache. My skull is fine. And if you steal her contact information, you’re dead.”
“No way, she’s way out of my league.” Aventurine dryly bounced that one back, focused on tapping out a message. He had no interest in the lady, though he could play along with this protective brother act for the sake of it.
“You better know it.”
“You’ve got issues, man.” Aventurine sighed.
“Who doesn’t.” muttered Sunday.
Send
“...three minutes.”
“Mhh?”
“Three minutes until she responds. I’ll bet on it.”
“Nonsense. At least ten, she’s very busy.”
“Are you sure I shouldn’t just call her?”
“I’m not dying, mister Aventurine.”
“Phew, you look like hell though.”
“I had no idea, tell me more.”
Aventurine couldn’t hold back a snicker, being on the receiving end of such a defanged withering look. When Sunday offered no further reaction, only a dejected sigh as he sunk into his own spine a little more, he too, fell quiet.
Two seconds past the three-minute mark, the screen lit up faintly with a response.
“...I win this one.”
“Oh, joy, oh, joy. What ecstasy.”
“Friend, your sarcasm is exquisite.”
“Hooray for me. Now, is there any chance you might shut up??”
“...”
Fine. He got it, he was understandably not in the mood for this meaningless natter. Was gloomy silence any better, though? Hmph.
“... I sent her the floor and the number of the room we’re closest to. She says she’s on her way.”
Boy, did he ever not appreciate the lapse in communication.
“Veritas isn’t scheduled to head off until investigations complete. I could call him in as well, he’s not a medical doctor but I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew how to fix… that…” Aventurine circled a fingertip towards the issue, and stopped when Sunday leaned subtly further away.
“If I tell you ‘no’, you’d find a way to have him coincidentally show up either way, would you not.”
“No. You’re not dying, mm.”
“... do what you want.”
“That’s very unlike you, leaving it to someone else.”
“Do. You… ever”, Sunday drew in a laborious breath, “just shut up?”
“... headache. Got it.” It couldn’t be easy to think straight, in a state like this, Aventurine figured. He sent out a message on his own device - this was becoming a headache for him, too. Ratio would chew him out for what this had escalated into, but the man found reasons to fret and fuss and bicker with the zeal of a neurotic parrot everywhere anyway.
He could be quiet. He could be everything anyone wanted him to be.
And so, they waited.