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[redforce]

WELCOME TO THE SALTBURNT NETWORK

USERNAME:
SHANKS

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fucktent; backdated to just post-rez-party

[kobes]

[There's a way these parties usually end -- Koby staggers away half-drunk and sore and giddy, collapses into bed for a few hours before staggering awake and to the shower, to the list of texts asking him where he is, how he is, recounting the events of the previous night. Sometimes it's embarrassing, sometimes it's a giddy rush, but that's how it's been in Saltburnt, for months. It's only October that things have changed. It's only October that has a knot in Koby's chest, a hitch in his breath that feels like a permanent part of him now.

He's still sore, half-drunk, but that hitch remains, that sense of a thread left undone, of something he still needs to do. Because there'd been the vote and the messages and that call, that selfish, desperate agony in Koby's voice -- don't ever do that to me again -- but nothing after, no resolution, no answer to the first thing Koby had ever feared asking Shanks for. For some part of him to stay, to remain, even if it was just letting Koby know he was safe and alive. He doesn't ask for all, for everything -- they know each other too well for that.

But for a part of this man he'd never met a year before, but who'd spread himself irrevocably into Koby's existence, like the scent of seasalt on the air. A part that belongs to a too-earnest, too-persistent crybaby Marine cadet.

And maybe Shanks will refuse. Maybe he'll say this is too much for Koby to ask, that he can't give him any part, not for good, not for real. And that'll be -- well. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing is permanent. So then, Koby will ask if he can have it just for now, just for as long as this strange, nightmarish, dreamlike house allows it. And he'll cling tight enough that maybe Shanks will feel him when he finally has to let go. But in order to hear either answer, yes or no or something else entirely, they need to see one another. They need to reconnect -- like Koby has with Quentin, with Nami and Zoro, with Tim on the dance floor, in the arms of half a dozen nameless guests, reminding himself what it feels like to be inside his own body.

And now: Koby is sore and half-drunk, his skin is still thrumming from the night's events, from the hands and mouths and bodies that have been pressed up against his in the past few hours. His knees are wobbly and he's long since lost half of his costume, strewn in pieces across Otherworld's glittery, alcohol-sticky floors and halls and rooms. What's left is little more than a clinging, insubstantial bit of nothing, silky white and dripping off his shoulders. And he should probably take a shower and go to sleep, but instead Koby pauses, leans heavily against the wall, resting his aching head against it for a long, long moment and trying for the first time since he'd thought him dead, to reach out for Shanks's presence.

And there's still that block, that weight, but it's soft enough around the edges that Koby (thinks, hopes) he gets through. That there's a blush-colored flicker in Shanks's mind, laced with the sweet liquor and the sweeter company, that the throb and ache of Koby's well-used body translates in every giddy, aching, blissful bit of clarity.

But just in case it doesn't: a message.]

Are you awake?