applesaucedream | Encampment Under the Sea [Open to All]

Encampment Under the Sea [Open to All]

photo encampmentunderthesea_zps98ceddce.jpg

Since the dreamers of Manhattan had such a lovely time at the last vaguely-nautical-themed party, the Rift has decided to step things up a notch. Tonight, the dreamers will find themselves in what appears to be a city very much like the one they inhabit in the waking world, full of towering skyscrapers, neon signs, and heavy traffic. But there is one rather crucial difference: this city is located deep underwater, and the aforementioned traffic is mostly whales and fish, with the occasional submersible thrown into the mix.

The walls and windows are heavily reinforced to withstand the pressure of the water outside, and the people who dwell in these buildings seem to be doing rather well for themselves, for the most part. Buildings are connected by enclosed walkways, so barring any horrible accidents, the dreamers should have no problem getting around without getting too wet.

Much like the city they inhabit in the waking world, some areas are more obviously affluent than others, and the dreamers are as likely to stumble upon an upscale club as an underwater pub. But while the chances of a full structural breakdown are slim, there are definitely some areas that are on the leaky side, and a general sense of claustrophobia pervades the city wherever you might find yourself.

Explore. Or, if you're feeling particularly ambitious, attempt to escape. Either way, take care - it's hard to say what might be lurking in the darkness just beyond the city lights.

[ooc: Y'all know the drill. All characters are welcome, whether they are in the game or not. Characters can remember or forget the events of the dreaming at the player's discretion. And the party never stops - backtag into infinity!]

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At the moment, Daniel's objections are really not worth much, since, well, a little incapable of making informed decisions. Or even focus. Seth may have over-estimated a little bit just how much morphine Daniel would need given his size, but at least he isn't knocked out. Still conscious.

"Yeah, that happens," he answers. "Don't worry, your lip's still there."

He's just going to... keep giving Daniel his blood a couple times. Until he feels like it would be a bad idea to continue, or perhaps when he can't properly hold his hands still. Then they can just both be a bit anemic, rather than Daniel alone suffering from severe blood loss.

"Mm-mm." Daniel shakes his head emphatically then...stops shaking his head emphatically.

"Feels like 'm floating," he complains.

It would be really, really easy to just drift off and...stop thinking for a bit. Fortunately, Daniel's not the type to stop doing that. Pretty much ever.

"'S not safe," he says, ridiculously admonishing in tone.

"Well, you've lost an unsafe amount of blood, so," he answers. "We're the same blood type, it should be fine." So he's just going to keep doing this a few times. At least Daniel's not longer worrying about the needle.

It's actually calming Seth a bit, having Daniel so relaxed. Sure, if something happens, he'll be pretty much useless for the next half hour. But this place is pretty quiet. Hopefully they can just stay here a little, try to regain their strength for a while. Let Daniel heal up enough that he can walk without risking injuring himself further. They'll be fine.

"'S not, um. What's the word. Can't think've it." Speaking clearly is becoming more of an issue. Daniel redoubles his efforts, only to hesitate, having forgotten completely what he was planning to talk about.

"'S your blood," he finishes at last, feeling tired and so very, very heavy. He doesn't think he could move even if he wanted to. "Y'need it."

"Not as much as you do at the moment. Don't worry, I've got plenty, I haven't gotten myself impaled or anything ridiculous like that," he answers. His injuries have all been battering, not so much puncture. Well, besides a few scratches, but nothing that's really lost him any blood. Just pain. "Trade ya for that dinner. How's that sound?"

"Mm," Daniel mumbles, now concentrating too much on staying awake and not enough on blood transfusion discussions.

"Glasses," he says vaguely, and even the one word takes a fair bit of effort. If he still had full motor control over his hands he doubtless would have waved them around for effect, but as it is he simply lies there.

"Yeeahh... They're gone. Sorry, mate," he answers. By now, who knows where they are. They were carried a fair way by the water, and so the glasses might've been. It's not unthinkable they're broken now too, wherever they are.

"Not good," Daniel agrees, with all the airiness of someone who is not completely there.

He can't remember what it's like to be cold.

It is amazing.

It dawns on him, slowly, that Seth is not feeling as great, probably, what with the sticking of needles and all, and fresh concern wells up out of nowhere and he looks back up at him, squinting to see past the grayish blur of the room.

"Y'doing okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good," he answers lightly, hoping the morphine in Daniel's system will help mask the lie.

He realises that he's not doing as great as he thought when he misses the vein in Daniel's arm because his hands are shaking. Daniel will just have to deal with having multiple puncture wounds in his arm after this. But then it's nothing compared the one in his stomach.

Seth takes a steadying breath, and manages on the second try, slowly injecting the last syringe of blood. It'll have to be the last, cause Seth doesn't think he can manage any more. Though that's probably mainly because of shock and exhaustion and both his arms hurting, not so much the blood loss. He's pretty sure he's still got more than Daniel does.

"Almost done," he promises.

"Mm. Ow," he says reflexively, even if the needle doesn't really sting so much as just tingle mildly. "S'good. Y'need to be okay. S'all."

His arms still feel like lead but with a little concentration he gets his hand to flop over and pat at Seth awkwardly. "M'sorry about this," he mumbles. "S'my fault. Got in th'way."

Seth smiles gently at Daniel's worry and apologies.

"How exactly is this your fault? Unless you secretly have water-summoning power, I'm pretty sure we've just both been fucked over by circumstances," he answers, finally pulling out the needle and going to clean it and putting it away.

Then he sighs heavily, scoots backwards up to the wall, leans his head back against it and closes his eyes. He's so tired and everything hurts.

"Should've, uh. Expected. 'M a trouble magnet."

Seth moves away, out of the periphery of Daniel's limited vision.

He's about to say something else, until he isn't.

Something important? Yes.

It must have been important.

Ah-ha. Yes. There.

"S'gonna be okay," he slurs. "Mmf. This stuff, s'great."

"You and me both," he answers tiredly.

He's just sitting there for a while, listening for noises on the other side of the wall, but there's nothing. Just silence, barely any ambient sound at all.

He opens his eyes when Daniel speaks again. "Yeah... It is," he answers, looking over at the kit. He's pretty jealous of Daniel at the moment. To be so blissfully unaware and free of pain. Seth knows exactly how great the stuff is. And how bad.

He reaches up and rubs absently at his arm, frustrated by the itch of recent needle use when not coupled with the relief of the morphine. He could justify using some himself, the beating he's taken today. Just a little. But no. He has to be careful. He can't just shoot up every time he feels a bit shit. He may be morphine dependent, but he's not an addict. There is a difference. Even if the line feels pretty blurred.

He grits his teeth and lets his head fall back against the wall with a soft thunk, annoyed with himself.

He's feeling less dizzy - no, wait, he's still dizzy, just pleasantly so now, a feeling that breathing in deeply only exacerbates. Daniel spends several minutes (seconds? Longer? Time doesn't seem to be moving linearly but he's hardly in a position to tell) simply lying there breathing, enjoying the strangeness of it. He's never been conscious to properly assess the sensation of being injected with morphine.

Thus far, he's finding the effects agreeable.

It doesn't take him long to get bored of the activity. Seth hasn't been talking, so there's no way for Daniel to measure the passage of time. Not that he'd trust any judgment he has to make about time, morphine or no morphine, because since when has his awareness of time been in any way accurate?

Eventually it feels safe enough to move again. He's beginning to feel less warm, and a few experimental shakes of his head clear things into focus a little.

"Think it's wearing off," he says, relieved when the words arrive with reasonable clarity and are in no way mangled by an inability to vocalize.

Seth doesn't really have the energy to make conversation, especially when his company is in such a completely different mental state. Nor does he feel much like exploring. There's really nothing to explore in this room anyway, it's spacious but more or less empty, and the only thing of interest is the curved glass wall looking out into a vast ocean, which he can see just as well from where he's sitting. Occasionally something will swim by, but that's about all that happens.

Eventually they will have to explore, of course, but Seth has no intention of leaving Daniel on his own after everything that's happened so far. Several theories about where they are and how they could've gotten here pass through his mind, but all of them pretty intangible and unsupported by any actual evidence.

It surprises him a bit when Daniel speaks again - Seth had gotten so used to the silence. He might've even dozed off - he's not entirely sure.

"Yeah?" he asks, then clears his throat. "Should continue to keep the pain minimal for at least a few hours, but you're over the peak effects," he says, moving over next to Daniel and investigating his wound. It still looks a little bit gross, but it doesn't look like it will spontaneously start to bleed, and hopefully enough's been fixed inside that he can start to move a bit.

"Oh, good." Yeah, ow, the ache is slowly seeping back into his nervous system and while he appreciates being able to think again, he hasn't missed this bit so much. According to Seth, this is "minimal."

Wonderful.

He doesn't know how he'll handle maximal. Or how long it'll take for maximal to kick in. Okay, so he's...not going to dwell on that.

He still inhales a little sharply when he tries to move, but it's nowhere near as bad as the "dangerously close to passing out" levels of pain from before. That means - good. Yeah. Okay. He's going to try this.

Grunting with the effort and stopping frequently to breathe and focus on not blacking out, Daniel tries bracing himself with his elbows and sitting up. It could be going better. The muscles in his lower back feel like they're tearing and the section of his midriff that got slammed through with rebar still burns with every movement and the going is slow and long and painful and...painful, but finally he manages it.

"Agh." Breathe, breathe, breathe, god that hurts. "Please stop me if I ever try to do that again."

Once Daniel starts showing his intention to sit up, Seth immediately moves over to support him. He doesn't push him up though, it's important he knows Daniel can actually manage this before they start wandering around.

"Which part? The throwing yourself at a piece of rebar thing? Cause yeah, I'd definitely advise against that," he says, giving Daniel a little smile.

"You know, you don't have to move. We can just stay here for a while." Because, well, Daniel doesn't exactly look like he should be up and about if he can avoid it.

"Mm. Also sitting up or, or just moving in general." He tries to straighten up a little more. "Ow."

He has to stay in that position for a little while and ride out the refreshed ache with gritted teeth, leaning on Seth to give the abused muscles some respite.

One of Daniel's eyes cracks open.

"What, you kidding? I'm doing fantastic, all things considered. Couple minutes and I'll prove it to you. We'll arm wrestle. I'll race you out of this place. Two minutes, let's go." He makes no actual movement to do any such thing, but the talking helps. It always does.

"Pretty sure you'll win an arm wrestling match no matter the condition you're in, your arms are twice the size of mine," Seth comments, and he feels like he's only exaggerating a little bit. The guy is kind of huge.

"And, well, especially now, since I dislocated one arm and then you kind of fell on the other one," he adds. Which, ow.

And also why Seth isn't doing a better job at supporting him, and is probably gonna have a little trouble eventually helping him to his feet. At least him giving away his blood has only given him some mild light-headedness and somewhat weaker muscles. Not that they needed to be weaker given how exhausted he already was.

"Sorry about that." Daniel winces. He remembers landing on top of something that had promptly cried out and even while not exactly in the right state of mind, he'd known that couldn't be a good thing. "And thanks," he adds, turning to squint at him. "I thought it was touch and go for a while there."

Then he squints harder. He still misses his glasses; he doesn't need to be doped out on morphine to take notice of that.

"Listen, Seth, don't take this the wrong way, but you really don't look so good."

"Well, apparently you've died enough times for one person already, so..." he jokes, because the best way to deal with thanks or shit like this is clearly to make weak jokes.

At the comment, he smiles wryly. "Keep talking like that, and I won't go out to dinner with you," he answers. Yep, definitely the best solution is to always brush away legitimate concert with humour and pretend you're fine. Otherwise it might seem like things are actually serious or like you've got feelings or something.

"Seth, seriously, you're -" He starts to reach out with one arm and that turns out to be a really bad idea because he immediately cringes and almost slips and quickly has to drop the hand to help keep him upright.

"You - ah - your arms." He has to grunt that last bit out, halfway hunched over and trying not to die inside, it feels like his guts are revolting, good god what a horrible idea that was. "Ah. Not good."

Seth winces and frowns with worry when Daniel cringes. He really wishes he could do more. And it's a little worrisome that this is with the effects of morphine.

"Are bruised and aching, yeah, but nothing that won't heal," he finishes Daniel's sentence, shifting a bit to look at the wound on his back. The blood-soaked shirt is sticking to him just there, but thankfully the blood's not gone dried and crusty over the wound, so it mercifully doesn't stick to the slowly-forming skin when Seth removes it. It looks about the same as the front - kind of brutal, but healing.

"And that -" Stop, swallow, breathe for a minute. Continue. "Ow. My arms. What the hell."

He's peering at the track marks that look too varied and manifold to be the product of one morphine injection. And he's having trouble recalling everything that happened in the immediate aftermath of said injection. Some of it's a bit of a worrisome blur.

He has to really narrow his eyes to see Seth's arms, but unless he's mistaken -

Daniel's eyes abruptly widen.

"Did you do a transfusion?"

It's probably a good thing Daniel's not wearing his glasses, otherwise he might've noticed Seth has way more track marks than Daniel does. Seth instinctively pulls down his sleeves, silently glad both the shirt he ripped up to use as makeshift bandages and the one he's still wearing have long sleeves. But then he doesn't really wear short-sleeves shirts anymore for that very specific reason.

"Um, yeah," he answers. "You said you were A positive, and, well, you would've reacted to it by now if something was wrong." Clearly the thing Daniel is worried about is that it was a risky thing to do, not that Seth made himself weaker to help Daniel.

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tw: i swear we're almost done with the needles

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tw: drug addiction but really that warning applies to Seth in general

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