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it's a common-enough saying that one should never tell themselves that it's alright, because chances are that if the situation calls for confirmation, it's never the way it should be-- agon's always thought that that was bullshit, a sort of pessimistic mindset that trash fall into to tell themselves that nothing will ever turn out exactly the way they want it to, because they don't have the power to mold situations the way agon does. people who are powerless have to think about things like that, things like whether or not tomorrow will be a 'good day', spending hours and days and weeks dwelling on immovables like the past (done and over with) and the future (won't bother until it's relevant).
and agon is always of the impression that he'll never settle comfortably into this mindset, mostly because he doesn't have to. fickle, changeable, malleable agon, his past half-forgotten (except for the things that are still selectively important) and his future undecided until he thinks of something he wants. then, it becomes a certainty.
he's absolutely convinced of all of this until the moment he's bitten.
he's surprised when it happens, uncharacteristically, and maybe (this doesn't register consciously) it's because he hasn't set his bar high for a while. when someone's surviving, when the lowest common denominator is staying alive, there aren't enough variables to make fancy equations with-- there are only simple xs and ys, example problems like "(food+water)/20 zombies=?". he has to settle for simplicity, because anyone who says that there's no beauty in simplicity is wrong, and every time agon feels the crunch of half-eroded bones, shattering calcium, battered flesh under the soles of his thick rubber sneakers, he knows that that's all he needs, all he's ever really needed up until now. the simplicity of winning. of being tactile. of knowing that he can, if he wants. he's always liked that. 'knowing'.
the fact of the matter is that he's never considered stopping to tell himself that things will be alright, because he's never learned how to stop. and consequently, it's the feeling of raking nails and blunt-saw teeth that feels like a foot against dusty brakes, a needle of a record player slipping off the last edge and scratching an unprepared surface, and it's the surprise that comes from making a mistake on the simplest multiplication problem that tilts agon's balance.
his gears shift into automatic for a while after that, and it's through a haze of torn ligaments and broken flesh (not his, not after that singular bite) that agon registers between bouts of anger that he might be, just might be, close to desperation.
it baffles him.
god-speed impulse, god-speed convergence of blood to his head. he knocks out one zombie with a snarl, then another, grinding metal into a miscellaneous socket, and then turns on a twitching body and pushes his foot right through its torso. something is wrong when kongo agon doesn't care about all the gore on his kicks, when his focus is on one thing (trash trash trash) but his attention is on another (they fucking bit me). he's breathing heavily now, clouds of fogged breath obscuring his vision, but he's done and there's nothing left but the dull ache spreading from one shoulder down to his fingers and a thin line of blood seeping into his windbreaker.
nothing else happens during his walk back to base, as if the world's suddenly decided that it should be sympathetic. the silence grates, and the feigned peace is about as welcome as the crawling numbness through an infected extremity, as if the sudden lack of pain or noise will convince agon that he'll forget about this by the morning. the rush is persisting, plastered onto his consciousness as thickly as the open wound that keeps bleeding onto his oakley nylons.
that shit was expensive.
but here he is anyway, with a bag of supplies in one hand, sealed water bottles and plastic-wrapped sandwiches that've magically weathered the storm of infection. his spoils of war. the exchange rate for getting bitten is another four days' worth of food and drink, and at this point, the thought of survival is a slow-spreading malaise between the drumming of cold panic (panic?). it's a slow-burn, and agon doesn't think twice about uncapping one of his earnings and pouring the whole thing over the festering bitemark, tearing off the sleeve of his overpriced jacket in a practiced, pragmatic, and entirely superfluous gesture, because suddenly he's thinking about whether or not this is going to be alright, if that's going to be enough. he's thinking of things in terms of 'glass half-full', like a motivational mantra that he can somehow hold on to as he nurses an injury like a fucking baby, and that drives him crazy. like tranquilized lions with an appendage missing, dragged off a shelter to live out the rest of its years in miserable comfort. neutered and slowly deteriorating, until it (he) forgets what it's like, what running and jumping and living is.
agon is thinking about all of this in flashes of synaptic photos, considerations half-made before they're discarded, but the polaroid images in his mind stack up and they're full to burst when he pulls himself into the shelter that he and his brother's made to fend off the nights. the clutter of the debris from previous raids before the kongos' settlement have been cleared out in meticulous unsui fashion, the remaining furniture laid out in a sensible arrangement as befitting of a living space, tools in strategic positions for easy access and identification. agon notices these things now, because his selective vision isn't working quite right, and his capacity for ignoring details seems to be curiously suspended in favor of overloading: drowning out what he knows to be impending, taking in what he can because he can, aggravating himself with everything, seeing everything and simultaneously resenting it.
he doesn't fuck up, these things don't happen, and somehow it's everything's fault, the chair and the table and the way everything else is stationary and slow, and he's supposed to be better than this. better than all this trash he's surrounded with, constantly surrounded with, and agon is the only exception because he's the highest on the scale out of ten, and everyone else is running a good two or three if they're lucky.
agon is one in a hundred years. he's already beaten probability. that's supposed to be a constant. if the survival rate of zombie infestations is 0.1%, statistically, agon should be well within that tiny percentage, snug between the decimals.
the numbers aren't working out.
and when he finally crashes into base, he literally crashes into it-- a boot against the door, an explosion of footsteps that march straight into the shitty bathroom that he has to share with unsui before his brother can say anything (can assess anything about the state of his being), and agon's holed himself up in his secondary hideout. for someone with 20/8 vision, the saying 'hindsight is 20/20' seems like an insult, but agon acknowledges after the door slams and he grinds the rusty lock into place that what he's just done seems like a code-red sign for desperation. a moment of silence follows this appraisal of the situation, and in exchange for the assessment, the bathroom mirror pays the price: it shatters under agon's fist and fragments into a thousand pieces, littering gritty tile with grimy shards of cheap glass.
the raw sound of something grating into dust under his feet is what keeps agon grounded. it's a priority that he'll never let himself lose.
he keeps on digging his heel into the grooves of all the things he's broken as he listens to the knocking on the door, the "agon"s filtering in through the cracks of the partition and reverberating against the walls. it's almost laughable, how quickly unsui responds to catastrophes with his customary concern, that anchor that keeps him firmly rooted to crisis preparation. if agon is god-speed at everything, he thinks that unsui can rest assured that he's also been given god-speed at being a fucking helicopter brother.
the thought isn't comforting. it's never been a source of comfort to someone who doesn't believe in comfort beyond being sated, but agon thinks about what his brother is going to say when he sees this (is already saying between every time he rattles the doorknob, with every half-patient "agon"), and his gut instinct is to think:
fuck it.
he counts it out-- it takes three more knocks without a response until unsui starts demanding that agon open the door, and agon knows that he's already given it away with his lack of a sarcastic retort when unsui asks "what's wrong".
"you're fucked," is what he says when unsui asks the inevitable.
"that's not an answer," is what unsui says when agon deflects.
from there on out, it's easier. it's one thing to acknowledge, for him, that something hasn't gone according to plan: that's a concession that he rarely makes, and he still hasn't made it, and that's fine because his brother's already caught on and unsui isn't the type to drill that in. it's one thing to say "something's fucked up", and another to have that be implicit.
"use your imagination, unko," agon breathes, and it's almost a laugh. "what the fuck do you think it means if i'm telling you that you're fucked?"
"always following in my footsteps, baldy. go fucking die already; if i'm not gonna make it, what makes you think you will?"
he settles the back of his head against the door, grinding the hand that's bracing himself up against the floor into the bits of glass and plaster that's littered around him. agon is good at knowing when he's found something dangerous, and he knows that decency dictates that he should stop using it to hurt, but this is his moment on the stairs leading to a temple at night, his moment of turning away and saying the things that his brother never did and that he never will, either.
don't look back, and if you go, crush me under your foot.
don't look forward, because when i go, that's me crushing you.
it's the same. he's returning the favor for those middle school years, and despite it being wildly inappropriate, agon speaks like this is way overdue. and he knows that the shuffling on the other side and the weight that creaks on the other side of the hinges, the same weight as his own that balances the door perfectly into its frame, is a signal from his brother that he understands.
agon's never pretended to be fair.
"yeah," unsui says, his voice muffled. "you're right."
agon thinks, you fucking crybaby, and waits for his brother to get up and set fire to the building.
and agon is always of the impression that he'll never settle comfortably into this mindset, mostly because he doesn't have to. fickle, changeable, malleable agon, his past half-forgotten (except for the things that are still selectively important) and his future undecided until he thinks of something he wants. then, it becomes a certainty.
he's absolutely convinced of all of this until the moment he's bitten.
he's surprised when it happens, uncharacteristically, and maybe (this doesn't register consciously) it's because he hasn't set his bar high for a while. when someone's surviving, when the lowest common denominator is staying alive, there aren't enough variables to make fancy equations with-- there are only simple xs and ys, example problems like "(food+water)/20 zombies=?". he has to settle for simplicity, because anyone who says that there's no beauty in simplicity is wrong, and every time agon feels the crunch of half-eroded bones, shattering calcium, battered flesh under the soles of his thick rubber sneakers, he knows that that's all he needs, all he's ever really needed up until now. the simplicity of winning. of being tactile. of knowing that he can, if he wants. he's always liked that. 'knowing'.
the fact of the matter is that he's never considered stopping to tell himself that things will be alright, because he's never learned how to stop. and consequently, it's the feeling of raking nails and blunt-saw teeth that feels like a foot against dusty brakes, a needle of a record player slipping off the last edge and scratching an unprepared surface, and it's the surprise that comes from making a mistake on the simplest multiplication problem that tilts agon's balance.
his gears shift into automatic for a while after that, and it's through a haze of torn ligaments and broken flesh (not his, not after that singular bite) that agon registers between bouts of anger that he might be, just might be, close to desperation.
it baffles him.
god-speed impulse, god-speed convergence of blood to his head. he knocks out one zombie with a snarl, then another, grinding metal into a miscellaneous socket, and then turns on a twitching body and pushes his foot right through its torso. something is wrong when kongo agon doesn't care about all the gore on his kicks, when his focus is on one thing (trash trash trash) but his attention is on another (they fucking bit me). he's breathing heavily now, clouds of fogged breath obscuring his vision, but he's done and there's nothing left but the dull ache spreading from one shoulder down to his fingers and a thin line of blood seeping into his windbreaker.
nothing else happens during his walk back to base, as if the world's suddenly decided that it should be sympathetic. the silence grates, and the feigned peace is about as welcome as the crawling numbness through an infected extremity, as if the sudden lack of pain or noise will convince agon that he'll forget about this by the morning. the rush is persisting, plastered onto his consciousness as thickly as the open wound that keeps bleeding onto his oakley nylons.
that shit was expensive.
but here he is anyway, with a bag of supplies in one hand, sealed water bottles and plastic-wrapped sandwiches that've magically weathered the storm of infection. his spoils of war. the exchange rate for getting bitten is another four days' worth of food and drink, and at this point, the thought of survival is a slow-spreading malaise between the drumming of cold panic (panic?). it's a slow-burn, and agon doesn't think twice about uncapping one of his earnings and pouring the whole thing over the festering bitemark, tearing off the sleeve of his overpriced jacket in a practiced, pragmatic, and entirely superfluous gesture, because suddenly he's thinking about whether or not this is going to be alright, if that's going to be enough. he's thinking of things in terms of 'glass half-full', like a motivational mantra that he can somehow hold on to as he nurses an injury like a fucking baby, and that drives him crazy. like tranquilized lions with an appendage missing, dragged off a shelter to live out the rest of its years in miserable comfort. neutered and slowly deteriorating, until it (he) forgets what it's like, what running and jumping and living is.
agon is thinking about all of this in flashes of synaptic photos, considerations half-made before they're discarded, but the polaroid images in his mind stack up and they're full to burst when he pulls himself into the shelter that he and his brother's made to fend off the nights. the clutter of the debris from previous raids before the kongos' settlement have been cleared out in meticulous unsui fashion, the remaining furniture laid out in a sensible arrangement as befitting of a living space, tools in strategic positions for easy access and identification. agon notices these things now, because his selective vision isn't working quite right, and his capacity for ignoring details seems to be curiously suspended in favor of overloading: drowning out what he knows to be impending, taking in what he can because he can, aggravating himself with everything, seeing everything and simultaneously resenting it.
he doesn't fuck up, these things don't happen, and somehow it's everything's fault, the chair and the table and the way everything else is stationary and slow, and he's supposed to be better than this. better than all this trash he's surrounded with, constantly surrounded with, and agon is the only exception because he's the highest on the scale out of ten, and everyone else is running a good two or three if they're lucky.
agon is one in a hundred years. he's already beaten probability. that's supposed to be a constant. if the survival rate of zombie infestations is 0.1%, statistically, agon should be well within that tiny percentage, snug between the decimals.
the numbers aren't working out.
and when he finally crashes into base, he literally crashes into it-- a boot against the door, an explosion of footsteps that march straight into the shitty bathroom that he has to share with unsui before his brother can say anything (can assess anything about the state of his being), and agon's holed himself up in his secondary hideout. for someone with 20/8 vision, the saying 'hindsight is 20/20' seems like an insult, but agon acknowledges after the door slams and he grinds the rusty lock into place that what he's just done seems like a code-red sign for desperation. a moment of silence follows this appraisal of the situation, and in exchange for the assessment, the bathroom mirror pays the price: it shatters under agon's fist and fragments into a thousand pieces, littering gritty tile with grimy shards of cheap glass.
the raw sound of something grating into dust under his feet is what keeps agon grounded. it's a priority that he'll never let himself lose.
he keeps on digging his heel into the grooves of all the things he's broken as he listens to the knocking on the door, the "agon"s filtering in through the cracks of the partition and reverberating against the walls. it's almost laughable, how quickly unsui responds to catastrophes with his customary concern, that anchor that keeps him firmly rooted to crisis preparation. if agon is god-speed at everything, he thinks that unsui can rest assured that he's also been given god-speed at being a fucking helicopter brother.
the thought isn't comforting. it's never been a source of comfort to someone who doesn't believe in comfort beyond being sated, but agon thinks about what his brother is going to say when he sees this (is already saying between every time he rattles the doorknob, with every half-patient "agon"), and his gut instinct is to think:
fuck it.
he counts it out-- it takes three more knocks without a response until unsui starts demanding that agon open the door, and agon knows that he's already given it away with his lack of a sarcastic retort when unsui asks "what's wrong".
"you're fucked," is what he says when unsui asks the inevitable.
"that's not an answer," is what unsui says when agon deflects.
from there on out, it's easier. it's one thing to acknowledge, for him, that something hasn't gone according to plan: that's a concession that he rarely makes, and he still hasn't made it, and that's fine because his brother's already caught on and unsui isn't the type to drill that in. it's one thing to say "something's fucked up", and another to have that be implicit.
"use your imagination, unko," agon breathes, and it's almost a laugh. "what the fuck do you think it means if i'm telling you that you're fucked?"
"always following in my footsteps, baldy. go fucking die already; if i'm not gonna make it, what makes you think you will?"
he settles the back of his head against the door, grinding the hand that's bracing himself up against the floor into the bits of glass and plaster that's littered around him. agon is good at knowing when he's found something dangerous, and he knows that decency dictates that he should stop using it to hurt, but this is his moment on the stairs leading to a temple at night, his moment of turning away and saying the things that his brother never did and that he never will, either.
don't look back, and if you go, crush me under your foot.
don't look forward, because when i go, that's me crushing you.
it's the same. he's returning the favor for those middle school years, and despite it being wildly inappropriate, agon speaks like this is way overdue. and he knows that the shuffling on the other side and the weight that creaks on the other side of the hinges, the same weight as his own that balances the door perfectly into its frame, is a signal from his brother that he understands.
agon's never pretended to be fair.
"yeah," unsui says, his voice muffled. "you're right."
agon thinks, you fucking crybaby, and waits for his brother to get up and set fire to the building.