NO FEAR [OPEN]

[tigermillionaire]

Who: Steven and anybody in the Defying Atmosphere penthouse.
What: Greg is rewarded with a slightly used pet child.
When: About 24 hours after the SC concert where he gets kidnapped.
Where: DA's penthouse in Virgo HQ.
Warnings: There is a laundry list of things wrong with this situation.

No matter the intention, the violence of being kidnapped leaves a mark on a person, and that's the lingering anxiety that Steven feels now. He was pulled away from his life once again, as terrible as it might have been. He was manhandled, drugged, and dragged off somewhere else, even as he pleaded, for fear of angering his keepers again.

There was a period of claustraphobic darkness followed by a time where blinding white is all he can remember. And then, suddenly, he finds himself here...a penthouse that is totally unfamiliar to him, and is told that he's going to be with his dad now.

He doesn't know if he can believe it, or what he should do. So, once he's left alone, all he does is curl himself up on one of the couches and wait. He's been dressed in fresh clothing, simple in comparison to anything he's made a habit of wearing - the flashes of pink cracklines are still bright on his exposed skin.

He has no control over anything anymore. He may as well stop pretending.

Comments

[panspermia]

All of Greg's shame, fear, and regret get washed away for this. Helping Steven, letting this lost child know he's wanted and loved, that makes all of this worth it right now.

"Yeah. We're a family again." He rubs Steven's back. The kid hasn't cried since his jewel was hurt, has he? He must want to. "Now we don't have to hide being together. No one can get mad at us."

[tigermillionaire]

He hasn't cried - he hasn't felt a lot of things like he normally would. He hasn't managed to be properly angry, or emotional enough to shed tears. Everything he's been feeling since his gem was cracked has been muted but what feels like an impenetrable fog around his mind. He can feel misery, and he can feel affection and love, but his ability to naturally process anything intense has been somehow been damaged.

It's just distant, far away, like he's constantly part ways into an out of body experience. Which probably makes sense when an important part of his being has been severely out of sync with the rest of his body. He just wishes he could feel like a real person again.

He stays where he is, genuinely comforted by Greg's touch and the things he's telling him, all things that he wants to believe. He'd been so scared, only moments before being stolen.

"I thought she was going to kill me," he says, a rare moment of catharsis. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't play right..."

[panspermia]

"You don't have to worry about that anymore. She can't touch you." Greg doesn't get angry, he doesn't have the energy for that sort of thing, but there's a venom in his words. Everything is Lesedi's fault, and Greg will do whatever it takes to make sure she never gets her hands on Steven again.

"You can do whatever you want, now. You don't have to play if you don't want, you don't have to worry about performing or anything. It's going to be like before, like the old us." He's rambling, reassuring himself just as much as Steven.

[tigermillionaire]

All logic aside, Steven is willing to indulge in it, at least for now. He feels so suffocated by everything that's wrong with him at the moment, he's desperate for some kind of release from it all. Maybe this is the closest thing.

Though he doesn't really understand why it happened.

"Your boss said so?" he asks, finally. He hadn't thought that Blanche would do something like this. Being brought over here and having nothing demanded of him seems too good to be true, considering Blanche's last interest in people from Pride.