a city with no limits / lost to hope
Feb. 22nd, 2021 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlishpopi haven't had a lot of time or energy to work on fic this year, but earlier in february i wrote 2.7k of a shyan bioshock au i'm really quite happy with? but it's so far from complete that i can't rly bring myself to post it to ao3 + idk if i want it under my current handle or if i should use one of my alt accs... this fic/post is in some weird in between zone of "wip amnesty" and just regular wip post, and i'll see if/when i pick it up again
the idea of this au is that shane is one of the passengers aboard the plane that crashes into the sea by rapture and that he too survives, while ryan moved to rapture as a kid with his family, and that as the full bioshock 1 game takes place (good ending) all of this fic happens in the background/elsewhere
Shane was aboard a flight bound for London from San Francisco for his work, a hastily planned trip that entailed nothing but his boss calling him up to his office in a panic to let him know he was to head straight to the airport and that they’d wire him some money for expenses in the UK.
It was a long gruelling trip to be thrust into unprepared, not only for the duration of it, but also because of how the many hours in a cramped space never bode well for his legs.
He was aware that he is well above average height, that his legs were long, and while he has had more than one bed partner swoon over the way he wears a pair of good slacks, it was more of a nuisance. The additional inches of length made it difficult to get comfortable, and attempting to sleep away the travel time had always been difficult due to it.
This time he had succeeded though, making it all the more startling when he was brutally woken up by screams and shouts, coming to his senses to feel the sudden tug of the seat belt and how it dug into his hips.
Turbulence was not uncommon, but he had never heard any long distance travellers make such a commotion over it. Something was wrong though, he soon realised through the cloudiness of sleep. The aeroplane descending at a rapid speed, the commotion of the passengers. The confusion.
The impact of the plane into the ocean was hard, metal tearing and creaking, lights flickering out as the cockpit was submerged and the tail broke off. His knees hit the chair in front of him, hard, and his neck snapped in a way that almost had him worried in the back of his mind were he more capable of rational thought at that moment, though he thankfully had fast enough reflexes to throw his arms up to protect his head and cushion it.
Amidst the tumultuous chaos one of the engines exploded. Shane could feel the heat more than he saw the flames engulf everything in its vicinity, the shockwave
Shane’s hand trembled as he tugged himself free of his seat belt. He knew he had to get out of the plane body before it sank further to have any chance of survival. Having the aisle seat came in handy for once.
He broke through the surface, gasping for air and inhaling the smell of fumes and smoke. Shit. This was bad, with a capital B. All he could see was floating debris and the leaking fuel atop the waves was aflame, burning.
“My parents moved here early on,” Ryan tells him.
“A Rapture native then, you,” Shane says — a little playful, a little questioning. Ryan’s got a bit of a babyface as is, and he appears softer yet when his hair isn’t slicked back and styled. Ryan smiles at his words, slightly weaker than Shane would’ve liked for him to, and he shakes his head. His soft bangs fall into his eyes.
“Was born on land, me,” Ryan says, correcting his statement. Shane hums. Stretches out the length of his legs, all too aware of Ryan’s gaze. “I was what, eight? seven?— eight, when we moved here in ‘46.”
His voice turns softer. “My brother’s younger, doesn’t remember much before coming here. I remember thinking it was better. Like, it’s so cool, you know? Like nothing the world’s ever seen before?”
Shane thinks of the wonder that he as an adult experienced when he first laid eyes on the city of Rapture. It was a city in shambles, damaged and fallen into destruction, but it still held so much beauty. Above the sea, the architecture would perhaps be called dated; the glamour of the forties not quite what the world was moving toward in the nice bright shiny nineteen-sixty, but even so it was a beautiful work designed by great architects. He can only imagine what it would have been like to come here as a child, moving into a city below the sea. It’s like something out of a comic, or a fairytale. Something made up for a great work of literature or something presented beautifully on the silver screen.
“Dunno how much you saw during, or, after the war, uh, ended? But being half-Japanese and half-Mexican…” Ryan’s voice fades, leaving his sentence incomplete. Shane is fairly certain he knows where it’s heading, though he can not claim to have any first hand experience comparable to what Ryan is hinting at. His own parents are second generation Polish immigrants, and while growing up with a very obviously non-Anglo Saxon surname could attract comments from the more unlikable folks, it’s not like people can tell just from looking at him that he’s got one. If he says his name is something like McClintock or the one he used earlier, Tinsley, no one [is going to question it.][would take notice. He would just pass them by.]
Shane lets the silence hang in the air. All words feel like empty platitudes. Ryan fidgets, too many nerves in one tightly wound and tense little body.
Almost unthinkingly, Shane reaches out and places a hand on Ryan’s knee. He wasn’t quite bouncing it before, but the movement stops entirely — he freezes under Shane’s touch, eye wide. Like a deer in headlights. Shane wonders if Ryan’s ever seen that for himself, or if the expression is just one of books. Perhaps it’s been replaced even, by terms more appropriate for the citizens of Rapture’s everyday lives.
“The American dream’s not all that,” Shane offers. It still feels like too little, but more than that it feels wrong to try to diffuse the situation with a joke. “Makes sense people would try to chase something similar— better, elsewhere.”
Ryan glances at him. His dark eyes reflect the neon colours of the signage in the room, and lighter shades of the ones seen through the window. He swallows. Shane’s eyes catch on the bob of his Adam’s apple.
“Can I be honest with you?” Ryan asks after a moment. His eyes flit nervously between the entrances to the room. Shane nods. He understands the fear and risk that every still moment in this city can mean. The splicers or worse are always lurking around out there. It’s been a while since they’ve seen any other humans at all. It is likely that this is not the only reason that Ryan is nervous though. “It’s real bad down here. A— A fucking mess.. I, I realised when I was growing up that I, well, I didn’t agree with the top guy? Don’t think my parents did—do either, but they were already so. Their debt was big. Tried to hide it from us but, y’know, you figure it out.”
Shane takes a slow breath. Pretends to not hear Ryan correcting himself
Rapture is a city built for capitalism in its very purest form. Any type of solidarity and sharing has no place in this utopia to be.
“Yeah?” Shane says.
“Yeah. Um, yeah. Wanted out but at the same time it’s, it’s all I’ve known,” Ryan says. It’s a confession of something much bigger, of something Shane isn’t sure he is equipped to handle.
“You said you remembered before you moved here, uh, stuff from the surface?”
“Do you have, how do I— have you had a dream, that feels really real? Like it might be a memory? Or a memory that feels like, that’s more of a dream, or you just— it’s difficult to tell?”
Shane kisses Ryan. It is a simple press of lips, their mouths meeting in a chaste touch.
“Ghosts aren’t real,” Shane says. It is one thing he knows with certainty. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Ryan’s glum face at his words, the hollowness in his eyes.
“They are, in Rapture,” Ryan disagrees, firmly, but his tone is telling — he is already tired of the conversation. “Maybe elsewhere too, but— ghosts are definitely real.”
Shane’s been worried that Ryan is a bit lost, and this topic would probably lead to a joke about a bump to the head as a kid, at other times but… Shane can not pretend that being recognisably human in the insanity that is Rapture must have taken a toll. Anyone can tell that. It is understandable, and furthermore entirely human.
The mind will play tricks in dark decrepit places, or hell, even in the safety of people’s own homes at the best of times. On people who have not had to deal with what Ryan has witnessed for the past year.
Shane softens his voice. Teases, a little. “You got the vision?”
Ryan shoves at him, a push to his arm that has Shane slightly off-balance for a second. A feeling he won’t think of as anything but physical, no matter how enticing the feeling of warmth from his hand had been.
“I don’t, the hell, I don’t have quote the vision unquote,” Ryan says derisively, seeming almost insulted. He keeps his voice quiet though. Perhaps a habit at this point. He takes a deep breath and nimbly rolls an EVE hypo in his hands, careful even when his hands are quick and trembling. “That’s not it.”
The bright blue liquid is enchanting in its own right, the subtle glow eye-catching. That is the only reason Shane’s looking so intently at Ryan’s hands, his fingers, with their square tips and rounded nails.
“Plasmids,” Ryan starts, cutting himself off. His eyes are wide-open, head twisting and turning at every creak and noise. They should be barricaded safely tonight, the door is locked with a code and there are no vents large enough for anything but air to pass through.
“‘M not entirely sure how it works but, using plasmids you sometimes. You see ghosts, or like, I think it’s like. Memories, maybe, but it looks like ghosts, the whole. Translucent corporeal forms. Fuck, sounds so stupid like this but— you see and hear things, sometimes,” Ryan says. He seems ready to fight Shane on this, shoulders tense and squared up, drawn tight, as if it would ever come to physical blows — or maybe Ryan is simply full of pent up anxious energy and fear, ready to be laughed at by some almost stranger from the surface.
“You’ve not. You’ve barely touched the plasmids, ADAM, EVE, not much shit in your system,” Ryan breathes out.
“I’ve done my research,” Ryan says. “Had a lot, a lot of time this past year.”
“Just me and Jake, my, my little brother. Our parents went to, they were supposed to go above the surface. See if they could scrounge up enough to get us all outta here, but because of the debt I don’t.. I’m not sure.”
Shane has seen this version of Ryan, bent over his desk, large headphones on as he listens to anything the radios are picking up on.
Ryan’s smile is wide, large. Perfectly straight white teeth. That’s the kid of a dentist, Shane thinks.
The radio crackles and Ryan all but falls out of his seat from the loud and sudden noise cutting through the feigned normalcy they have fallen into while trying to make their way to the lower levels. The words are unintelligible, but Ryan alternates between shushing him and blabbering over the sounds before just listening intently. Shane waits, quietly. He hates the sound of the thing, but he knows that when tuned correctly
“What the hell is all that about?” Shane whispers.
“The Medical Pavilion? What’s on the label but also.. that’s dr. Steinem’s place, he went um…” Ryan’s words trails off and he raises a hand to his face, draws sharp lines cutting motions with his hand, fingers curled as if holding something— a scalpel, Shane realises. He isn’t too sure what his expression does at that moment, but Ryan grimaces too when he can tell they’re on the same page. “My dad always said to stay away from Steinem and his pals, even way before.”
“We’ll thank daddy Bergara for that,” Shane says. The trails of blood around this part of the city seem all the more wrong than the casual bloodshed of violence elsewhere. There’s something to be said for a simple grisly murder.
“I’m not, like, it’s not as if I’m a splicer like those things out there!” Ryan exclaims, worried, cowering in a little as he looks up at Shane. He backs away, but then seems to think differently of it, pushing up on the balls of his feet and getting up in Shane’s face, pushing closer. He doesn’t make a grab for Shane’s jacket the way Shane assumed he would, but he holds his gaze something fierce. This is the face of a man with little left to lose, and all the more fear for it.
Shane places a gentle hand on his shoulder. The touch far from heavy or tight, nor anything like a push to direct his movement, is still enough to have Ryan sink back down. Take half a step back. He shakes his head just slightly, as if he isn’t sure what’s come over him.
“Sorry,” he says, voice small.
“Don’t, uh, mention it,” Shane says. “Nothing to worry about.”
Ryan appears to think differently, but he closes his mouth before he pushes back verbally. His shoulders are still squared, tense, and his sweater moved over the flex of his arm muscle as he patted his left pocket.
He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Only the sound of faint leaking, water trickling down and dripping into puddles can be heard.
One of the fully glass corridors is not the ideal spot for this conversation, no, for any conversation to be held at length but for just a moment Shane allows himself to forget that Rapture is a self-contained hell with its many layers and countless monsters. That Ryan’s admitted to genetically splicing himself, much like the majority of what’s left of the city’s populace.
Perhaps in a different timeline, he would’ve grown up in Rapture with Ryan too. Be walking him home from whatever it was teens and young adults did for dates here, and that this corridor confession covered a completely different topic.
“You aren’t like them,” Shane says, continuing the earlier conversation. He bites his lips, wonders if he should mention that. If it would only make things worse. Ryan is all too human to be anything like the malformed creatures that used to be people but now lack everything that made them such.
“I try not to use, but I’ve always got an EVE hypo on me… telekinesis isn’t too bad, I don’t think, not like— not like some of the other plasmids? Have you seen the insect shit, or whatever they call that rage thing, enrage? and. Fuck. I’m sorry for not being honest.”
“Telekinesis is handy,” Shane says. Pun intended. It startles a laugh from Ryan that surprises them both, but
“First time I saw you I was terrified,” Ryan jokes, laughing lightly as he jostles Shane’s shoulder. There is a half-truth hidden beneath the tone. “Thought I’d opened the doors to some goddamned splicer after all.”
He pushes the jovial tone harder, taking the edge off even further.
“Then I saw your movements didn’t match up—don’t get it wrong, was still concerned at first because some of them got this jagged pattern of movement, but then you traipsed through the doorframe and I knew you’d gotta be the other top side guy.”
It’s a fair assessment, and despite the seriousness of what Ryan’s admitting, Shane can’t help the wheeze of laughter — Ryan grins back, a little relieved, a little desperate at finally having someone to talk to. To be able to share things with, even when played off as jokes.
By now, Shane is aware of just how afraid Ryan is on the regular. How long he was alone, just listening. Hoping.
“Oh yeah, makes perfect sense,” Shane says merrily, lighter than Ryan had been, only because he wants Ryan to keep smiling like that at him.
the idea of this au is that shane is one of the passengers aboard the plane that crashes into the sea by rapture and that he too survives, while ryan moved to rapture as a kid with his family, and that as the full bioshock 1 game takes place (good ending) all of this fic happens in the background/elsewhere
Shane was aboard a flight bound for London from San Francisco for his work, a hastily planned trip that entailed nothing but his boss calling him up to his office in a panic to let him know he was to head straight to the airport and that they’d wire him some money for expenses in the UK.
It was a long gruelling trip to be thrust into unprepared, not only for the duration of it, but also because of how the many hours in a cramped space never bode well for his legs.
He was aware that he is well above average height, that his legs were long, and while he has had more than one bed partner swoon over the way he wears a pair of good slacks, it was more of a nuisance. The additional inches of length made it difficult to get comfortable, and attempting to sleep away the travel time had always been difficult due to it.
This time he had succeeded though, making it all the more startling when he was brutally woken up by screams and shouts, coming to his senses to feel the sudden tug of the seat belt and how it dug into his hips.
Turbulence was not uncommon, but he had never heard any long distance travellers make such a commotion over it. Something was wrong though, he soon realised through the cloudiness of sleep. The aeroplane descending at a rapid speed, the commotion of the passengers. The confusion.
The impact of the plane into the ocean was hard, metal tearing and creaking, lights flickering out as the cockpit was submerged and the tail broke off. His knees hit the chair in front of him, hard, and his neck snapped in a way that almost had him worried in the back of his mind were he more capable of rational thought at that moment, though he thankfully had fast enough reflexes to throw his arms up to protect his head and cushion it.
Amidst the tumultuous chaos one of the engines exploded. Shane could feel the heat more than he saw the flames engulf everything in its vicinity, the shockwave
Shane’s hand trembled as he tugged himself free of his seat belt. He knew he had to get out of the plane body before it sank further to have any chance of survival. Having the aisle seat came in handy for once.
He broke through the surface, gasping for air and inhaling the smell of fumes and smoke. Shit. This was bad, with a capital B. All he could see was floating debris and the leaking fuel atop the waves was aflame, burning.
“My parents moved here early on,” Ryan tells him.
“A Rapture native then, you,” Shane says — a little playful, a little questioning. Ryan’s got a bit of a babyface as is, and he appears softer yet when his hair isn’t slicked back and styled. Ryan smiles at his words, slightly weaker than Shane would’ve liked for him to, and he shakes his head. His soft bangs fall into his eyes.
“Was born on land, me,” Ryan says, correcting his statement. Shane hums. Stretches out the length of his legs, all too aware of Ryan’s gaze. “I was what, eight? seven?— eight, when we moved here in ‘46.”
His voice turns softer. “My brother’s younger, doesn’t remember much before coming here. I remember thinking it was better. Like, it’s so cool, you know? Like nothing the world’s ever seen before?”
Shane thinks of the wonder that he as an adult experienced when he first laid eyes on the city of Rapture. It was a city in shambles, damaged and fallen into destruction, but it still held so much beauty. Above the sea, the architecture would perhaps be called dated; the glamour of the forties not quite what the world was moving toward in the nice bright shiny nineteen-sixty, but even so it was a beautiful work designed by great architects. He can only imagine what it would have been like to come here as a child, moving into a city below the sea. It’s like something out of a comic, or a fairytale. Something made up for a great work of literature or something presented beautifully on the silver screen.
“Dunno how much you saw during, or, after the war, uh, ended? But being half-Japanese and half-Mexican…” Ryan’s voice fades, leaving his sentence incomplete. Shane is fairly certain he knows where it’s heading, though he can not claim to have any first hand experience comparable to what Ryan is hinting at. His own parents are second generation Polish immigrants, and while growing up with a very obviously non-Anglo Saxon surname could attract comments from the more unlikable folks, it’s not like people can tell just from looking at him that he’s got one. If he says his name is something like McClintock or the one he used earlier, Tinsley, no one [is going to question it.][would take notice. He would just pass them by.]
Shane lets the silence hang in the air. All words feel like empty platitudes. Ryan fidgets, too many nerves in one tightly wound and tense little body.
Almost unthinkingly, Shane reaches out and places a hand on Ryan’s knee. He wasn’t quite bouncing it before, but the movement stops entirely — he freezes under Shane’s touch, eye wide. Like a deer in headlights. Shane wonders if Ryan’s ever seen that for himself, or if the expression is just one of books. Perhaps it’s been replaced even, by terms more appropriate for the citizens of Rapture’s everyday lives.
“The American dream’s not all that,” Shane offers. It still feels like too little, but more than that it feels wrong to try to diffuse the situation with a joke. “Makes sense people would try to chase something similar— better, elsewhere.”
Ryan glances at him. His dark eyes reflect the neon colours of the signage in the room, and lighter shades of the ones seen through the window. He swallows. Shane’s eyes catch on the bob of his Adam’s apple.
“Can I be honest with you?” Ryan asks after a moment. His eyes flit nervously between the entrances to the room. Shane nods. He understands the fear and risk that every still moment in this city can mean. The splicers or worse are always lurking around out there. It’s been a while since they’ve seen any other humans at all. It is likely that this is not the only reason that Ryan is nervous though. “It’s real bad down here. A— A fucking mess.. I, I realised when I was growing up that I, well, I didn’t agree with the top guy? Don’t think my parents did—do either, but they were already so. Their debt was big. Tried to hide it from us but, y’know, you figure it out.”
Shane takes a slow breath. Pretends to not hear Ryan correcting himself
Rapture is a city built for capitalism in its very purest form. Any type of solidarity and sharing has no place in this utopia to be.
“Yeah?” Shane says.
“Yeah. Um, yeah. Wanted out but at the same time it’s, it’s all I’ve known,” Ryan says. It’s a confession of something much bigger, of something Shane isn’t sure he is equipped to handle.
“You said you remembered before you moved here, uh, stuff from the surface?”
“Do you have, how do I— have you had a dream, that feels really real? Like it might be a memory? Or a memory that feels like, that’s more of a dream, or you just— it’s difficult to tell?”
Shane kisses Ryan. It is a simple press of lips, their mouths meeting in a chaste touch.
“Ghosts aren’t real,” Shane says. It is one thing he knows with certainty. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Ryan’s glum face at his words, the hollowness in his eyes.
“They are, in Rapture,” Ryan disagrees, firmly, but his tone is telling — he is already tired of the conversation. “Maybe elsewhere too, but— ghosts are definitely real.”
Shane’s been worried that Ryan is a bit lost, and this topic would probably lead to a joke about a bump to the head as a kid, at other times but… Shane can not pretend that being recognisably human in the insanity that is Rapture must have taken a toll. Anyone can tell that. It is understandable, and furthermore entirely human.
The mind will play tricks in dark decrepit places, or hell, even in the safety of people’s own homes at the best of times. On people who have not had to deal with what Ryan has witnessed for the past year.
Shane softens his voice. Teases, a little. “You got the vision?”
Ryan shoves at him, a push to his arm that has Shane slightly off-balance for a second. A feeling he won’t think of as anything but physical, no matter how enticing the feeling of warmth from his hand had been.
“I don’t, the hell, I don’t have quote the vision unquote,” Ryan says derisively, seeming almost insulted. He keeps his voice quiet though. Perhaps a habit at this point. He takes a deep breath and nimbly rolls an EVE hypo in his hands, careful even when his hands are quick and trembling. “That’s not it.”
The bright blue liquid is enchanting in its own right, the subtle glow eye-catching. That is the only reason Shane’s looking so intently at Ryan’s hands, his fingers, with their square tips and rounded nails.
“Plasmids,” Ryan starts, cutting himself off. His eyes are wide-open, head twisting and turning at every creak and noise. They should be barricaded safely tonight, the door is locked with a code and there are no vents large enough for anything but air to pass through.
“‘M not entirely sure how it works but, using plasmids you sometimes. You see ghosts, or like, I think it’s like. Memories, maybe, but it looks like ghosts, the whole. Translucent corporeal forms. Fuck, sounds so stupid like this but— you see and hear things, sometimes,” Ryan says. He seems ready to fight Shane on this, shoulders tense and squared up, drawn tight, as if it would ever come to physical blows — or maybe Ryan is simply full of pent up anxious energy and fear, ready to be laughed at by some almost stranger from the surface.
“You’ve not. You’ve barely touched the plasmids, ADAM, EVE, not much shit in your system,” Ryan breathes out.
“I’ve done my research,” Ryan says. “Had a lot, a lot of time this past year.”
“Just me and Jake, my, my little brother. Our parents went to, they were supposed to go above the surface. See if they could scrounge up enough to get us all outta here, but because of the debt I don’t.. I’m not sure.”
Shane has seen this version of Ryan, bent over his desk, large headphones on as he listens to anything the radios are picking up on.
Ryan’s smile is wide, large. Perfectly straight white teeth. That’s the kid of a dentist, Shane thinks.
The radio crackles and Ryan all but falls out of his seat from the loud and sudden noise cutting through the feigned normalcy they have fallen into while trying to make their way to the lower levels. The words are unintelligible, but Ryan alternates between shushing him and blabbering over the sounds before just listening intently. Shane waits, quietly. He hates the sound of the thing, but he knows that when tuned correctly
“What the hell is all that about?” Shane whispers.
“The Medical Pavilion? What’s on the label but also.. that’s dr. Steinem’s place, he went um…” Ryan’s words trails off and he raises a hand to his face, draws sharp lines cutting motions with his hand, fingers curled as if holding something— a scalpel, Shane realises. He isn’t too sure what his expression does at that moment, but Ryan grimaces too when he can tell they’re on the same page. “My dad always said to stay away from Steinem and his pals, even way before.”
“We’ll thank daddy Bergara for that,” Shane says. The trails of blood around this part of the city seem all the more wrong than the casual bloodshed of violence elsewhere. There’s something to be said for a simple grisly murder.
“I’m not, like, it’s not as if I’m a splicer like those things out there!” Ryan exclaims, worried, cowering in a little as he looks up at Shane. He backs away, but then seems to think differently of it, pushing up on the balls of his feet and getting up in Shane’s face, pushing closer. He doesn’t make a grab for Shane’s jacket the way Shane assumed he would, but he holds his gaze something fierce. This is the face of a man with little left to lose, and all the more fear for it.
Shane places a gentle hand on his shoulder. The touch far from heavy or tight, nor anything like a push to direct his movement, is still enough to have Ryan sink back down. Take half a step back. He shakes his head just slightly, as if he isn’t sure what’s come over him.
“Sorry,” he says, voice small.
“Don’t, uh, mention it,” Shane says. “Nothing to worry about.”
Ryan appears to think differently, but he closes his mouth before he pushes back verbally. His shoulders are still squared, tense, and his sweater moved over the flex of his arm muscle as he patted his left pocket.
He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Only the sound of faint leaking, water trickling down and dripping into puddles can be heard.
One of the fully glass corridors is not the ideal spot for this conversation, no, for any conversation to be held at length but for just a moment Shane allows himself to forget that Rapture is a self-contained hell with its many layers and countless monsters. That Ryan’s admitted to genetically splicing himself, much like the majority of what’s left of the city’s populace.
Perhaps in a different timeline, he would’ve grown up in Rapture with Ryan too. Be walking him home from whatever it was teens and young adults did for dates here, and that this corridor confession covered a completely different topic.
“You aren’t like them,” Shane says, continuing the earlier conversation. He bites his lips, wonders if he should mention that. If it would only make things worse. Ryan is all too human to be anything like the malformed creatures that used to be people but now lack everything that made them such.
“I try not to use, but I’ve always got an EVE hypo on me… telekinesis isn’t too bad, I don’t think, not like— not like some of the other plasmids? Have you seen the insect shit, or whatever they call that rage thing, enrage? and. Fuck. I’m sorry for not being honest.”
“Telekinesis is handy,” Shane says. Pun intended. It startles a laugh from Ryan that surprises them both, but
“First time I saw you I was terrified,” Ryan jokes, laughing lightly as he jostles Shane’s shoulder. There is a half-truth hidden beneath the tone. “Thought I’d opened the doors to some goddamned splicer after all.”
He pushes the jovial tone harder, taking the edge off even further.
“Then I saw your movements didn’t match up—don’t get it wrong, was still concerned at first because some of them got this jagged pattern of movement, but then you traipsed through the doorframe and I knew you’d gotta be the other top side guy.”
It’s a fair assessment, and despite the seriousness of what Ryan’s admitting, Shane can’t help the wheeze of laughter — Ryan grins back, a little relieved, a little desperate at finally having someone to talk to. To be able to share things with, even when played off as jokes.
By now, Shane is aware of just how afraid Ryan is on the regular. How long he was alone, just listening. Hoping.
“Oh yeah, makes perfect sense,” Shane says merrily, lighter than Ryan had been, only because he wants Ryan to keep smiling like that at him.
