"Oh? What, you got magic powers as well?" Honestly? Wouldn't really surprise him. Not anymore. "The fact that I'm even alive... Probably something to do with him."
Billy continues to stare, face twisted up in horror even as Ivar dresses himself in one of Hopper's t-shirts. It's far too big on him but it's better than nothing, Billy supposes. The teen watches him the entire time, brow furrowing further as the limber wolf is slow to put on the borrowed pants.
"Does it hurt? When you change? And... what's up with your legs?"
"Sort of. Werewolf saliva does wonders for the healing process I'll have you know." That was how werewolves got the reputation of being so hard to kill. Their bodily fluids were made to speed up the healing process, so saliva and blood could both be used to help close their wounds when they were in need. He could always spit into a handkerchief or rag and offer to Billy, as he thought the pup wouldn't appreciate him licking his chest no matter what form he was in.
"Always. But you get used to it," comes the gruff and laconic answer. If it had been too much to bear, Ivar would've died years ago. These days, it was a pain that he was able to bear.
There came a guarded look across Ivar's face, the emotion shutting down behind his eyes when Billy asked about his legs. It had been a thousand years and more since his own times when people mocked him as a useless cripple that should've been left to die in the woods, but he still got extremely touchy over anyone remarking on them. He finished getting the pants on and then threaded the belt through the loops before he bothered to answer. "They're useless. Back in my day, it was thought I was cursed by our gods. These days, the doctors call it osteogenesis imperfecta. Brittle bone disease. I can't walk on them for fear of shattering them into pieces."
"Of course it does. Guess it's my lucky day then." Or something, he supposed.
Even with all that Billy had been through -and he'd been abused most his life before he'd become a puppet for an inter-dimensional monster- what Billy had just witnessed looked more than a little bit horrifying. "Doesn't look like you do. Looks like it still really fuckin' hurts."
Raising both hands in the international sign of 'I come in peace' Billy nods along to Ivar's explanation.
"That's really shitty, man. There's nothing they can do to help?"
"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck. Just fate taking different forms," he says, a philosophy the Norse believed in wholeheartedly. You could take the Viking out of the North, but not the North out of the Viking.
"Well, what do you expect? You've had a bone or two broken before in your time, I imagine. Now imagine all of them being snapped and reformed over and over again each time you switch from wolf to man and back again. You either learn a level of being able to tolerate or just going completely insane," he explains. "Besides, I was already in pain my whole life even before I was turned. Brittle bone syndrome means your bones hurt all the time." It accounted for why Ivar always seem to be a bit tetchy and grumpy at all times.
"No. There's not a lot of treatments for it, save for shoving metal rods in my legs to help me walk better. That would hinder more then help with being able to shift to my wolf form," he says as he goes on. "But I've spent many years dealing with this. If I haven't made my peace with it, I've at least gotten to the point of acceptance."
Mostly. There was still moments where Ivar would fly into a complete rage over one little innocuous comment about his legs, but these days, it was better then when he had been young and wanted to burn down entire nations for the same offense.
"Fate, huh? Can't say I've put a lot of thought into it. Probably because that means my whole life was a shit show on purpose." And wasn't that bleak?
Billy looks down at himself, at the pathetic attempt to bandage himself closed and sighs. "Got some now. This is enough." Nodding again, Billy feels a pang of sadness at the idea of Ivar having suffered his whole life; perhaps he could even relate a little, even if the causes for their pain had been different.
"It's still shitty that you have to go through it at all." With another soft sigh, Billy says, "my old man... he used to beat my mum. When she left, he turned on me. Blamed me for her leaving, for us having to move out here, for everything. It got worse when he drank."
He doesn't know why he says it, maybe because Ivar had shared something about himself that he seemed uncomfortable sharing.
"Perhaps. But the thing about fate is that you can change it if you try hard enough. I was fated to be a poor, pathetic cripple among my people and instead I became a king whose name people remember even today." He sounded quite proud of that fact. Ivar had worked hard to get where he was in life. He'd wanted to be one of the most famous Vikings in the entire world and had succeeded in that goal.
Ivar crawls forward, a serpentine motion that looks more then just a little eerie. There's the same air as when the Terminator in the first movie got his legs blown off: he might be crippled but he's still incredibly dangerous. As he passes through the kitchen, he pauses, then reaches over to a fallen knife block, sliding one into a back pocket. It's a force of habit after all these years to go armed.
"Sad story. There's sadder, not that it's much consolation I'm sure." He reaches the room Billy's in and stops, sitting down on the floor as he adjusts his legs so that they'll be in front of him and in the least amount of pain. "If anyone had done that to be growing up, I would have killed the son-of-a-bitch. But that was a different time." Murder was sanctioned as long as you had good reason for getting away with it.
"You keep saying shit like that. How old are you? 'Cause you definitely weren't born in the 60's." Not like Billy was, even if he did look roughly the same age. Outside of the high school setting and the "Keg King" and "King Steve", kings didn't actually exist, not really. So whatever made him a talking wolfman, also made him old as fuck.
Billy isn't sure of it's because of the blood loss and delirium but there's something about the way Ivar moves, with the practised ease of someone who has never known a different way, that's mesmerising, even as he arms himself and moves around the rubble that litters the floor. There's no doubting that this man is dangerous for all it appears like he shouldn't be.
And yet, Billy isn't afraid.
"I'm not looking for sympathy. But I know what it's like to have something that hurts that people have no fucking tact about. You were deemed a pathetic cripple and I'm the former king of high school who's mummy didn't love him enough and who's daddy hit him." He snorts a painful laugh at the blase tone used when talking about murder. "Yeah, definitely not born in the 60's."
Ivar laughs a little bit at Billy's words regarding his age. "Let me put it this way, pup. I was born when there was still only triple-digit years on the calendar." Which made him at least over nine-hundred years old, and in Ivar's specific case, made him well-over a thousand.
"My nickname back then was Ivar hinn Beinlausi." His accent again grows thicker on the fluid Norse syllables. "It means Ivar the Boneless in English. I doubt you'll know the name much. They don't teach about me in high school last I checked, though they do at the college level." He knows this after sitting in on some classes years ago. Ivar had enough ego to like to hear himself still talked about even after all this time.
That should be impossible but then so should possession and, currently, his continued survival despite his injuries so Billy just pulls a face and nods.
"Guess I can say you look good for your age then?"
Billy shakes his head to say that, no, he doesn't know the name well. But Billy has also gone outside of the recommended school studies, refusing to give his dad any reason to express disappointment over his grades.
"Think I've seen it. Once or twice. But it wasn't the focus of anything." So, no, he's never actively learned about him. "So, here we are. Two men who shouldn't be alive in a shitty little backwards town like Hawkins Indiana. And you just happened to show up when the world split open and let in monsters from somewhere else. I should probably be far more afraid."
Ivar chuckles again. "Very good. The last time I checked my age was around, oh, 1,177 years old, though I imagine it's been quite a few years since then. What year is it?" He's completely lost track during the time he's run wild through the woods. It's been almost six years since Ivar was back among civilized human beings and he'd only considered his age even a few years before that.
"Ah, someone who knows his history," Ivar says approvingly. "When I was young and foolhardy, I said I wanted to be remembered for as long as men had tongues. It turns out that I have gotten my wish so far." His eyes glimmer a bit when Billy mentions monsters. "One monster generally attracts others. There's something in the air that makes us all gather."
He grins then and there's a hint of teeth that are far sharper then they should be before he closes his mouth again. "Yes. You should be." He doesn't say this in an ominous manner, just in that of a man who is giving a fair warning. Billy would be a fool not to be in a room with a werewolf and at least feel a little afraid.
"'85. July... sixth, I think? Last few days have been fuzzy."
Billy nods again. He liked history, found it fascinating to look back at the world and escape his own reality for as long as he can. Even if he didn't, he'd probably still know. He took his studies seriously, despite his image as the town's new bad boy. "I'm sure as long as you're around they'll remember you. You strike me as the type who would make sure of it."
Maybe if Billy were a smarter man, he wouldn't smirk in the face of those sharp teeth. But he isn't. Or maybe he's still far too close to death's door to take anything too seriously. "Remind me later. Too tired to be afraid now." Not entirely true.
"1,185 years old then. It's very old for a creature like me. Despite what the lore says, most immortals don't get into four digits very often. Too much, we are the creators of our own destruction." It took someone both with a strong will to survive and being smart enough to put forth the effort to make it as long as Ivar had.
Ivar perks up, looking pleased at that. He moves one of his feet slightly where it has started to fall asleep. That's one pain he can actually avoid and do without. "I did try. And I've always succeeded at almost anything I tried my hands at."
He leans forward. "Why don't you tell me what happened to you? I'm curious to hear what sort of monster you encountered and how you came to be here with a hole in your chest. Speaking of which--" He pulled a rag he'd taken out of the kitchen over and spits into it, coating the fabric with his saliva. Then he tosses it at Billy. "--Rub that on your chest. I know it's gross, but werewolf spit has healing properties. You heal faster that way."
"Dunno anything about the lore, if I'm being honest. You can tell me whatever you want and I'd have to believe it." He wouldn't even know where to look if he wanted to know more or to know if Ivar was lying.
Billy freezes like a dear stuck in headlights. The last week has been one of the more horrific experiences he's ever had; even going so far as to take the place of his mother leaving him with his old man for the most pain and fear he's experienced.
It's a long moment before he finally speaks. "I don't know what he was, but he isn't from here. He wanted me to build something. A body, a way for him to exist here. He wanted me to bring him a girl. She was the only thing that could stop him." He smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes and it falls immediately with his eyes filling with tears. "She's the same age as my sister. I couldn't... I stopped him. And he... He didn't like that. He did this." The rag falls into his lap and he stares at it. "I don't even know how I got here. Or how I'm alive. It felt like my insides were falling out and then... They just stopped." As if testing it, he presses the rag to a smaller cut on his arm.
"Most of what has been told about werewolves is just pure bullshit. But it's hard to form legends when not many people survive. Vampires have more true things about them told since it's easier for them to move among human beings. But not something like me. You can't expect wild creatures to spend too much time in civilization. Can't tame a wild thing." Indeed, Ivar looks exceptionally dangerous even as a human, to say nothing of the huge wolf he could become.
Ivar listens without seeming surprised by any of it. He's seen and heard too much over the course of his life to really find anything new under the sun. "You'd be surprised what the human body can live through. I've seen men survive injuries close to what you have before. But nothing quite like this."
As they talk, it takes a bit of time, but once the saliva gets soaked into the cut it begins to close up at a highly accelerated rate. "Told you. There we go. Now rub that on your chest so you'll heal properly. I can't have you dropping dead on me now. I'm invested."
“The exact extent of my knowledge is that it’s a person who turns into a wolf. I even thought it was only on the full moon.” Which he was fairly certain it wasn’t tonight. There wasn’t enough light streaming in the hole in the roof for him to believe he was wrong.
“I was also thrown through a wall. Twice, I think.” It was... foggy. Like most of his memories when the Mind Flayer had been in control.
Huh. So it does. Confident now that it’s going to work, Billy unwraps the pathetic excuse for bandages, exposing the true extent of the damage. It really is a miracle that his guts haven’t fallen out and there’s still black blood oozing out the edges. He winces at the first touch.
"Well, there you go. That's one myth already disproven. I can change back and forth whenever I want, though it took a long time to get used to it." Sometimes, he lost himself in the instincts, and he'd forget how to even change. It happened even occasionally in the present day.
Ivar winces when the extent of the injuries is revealed. "Yeesh. It's a wonder you're still alive. This might require a more hands-on approach." He has a feeling Billy won't like the idea of him coming directly up to him and licking his chest. It wasn't like the old days when physicality between men was shown in much more forthright ways. Nowadays, human beings were far too caught up on sexuality and gender roles. Amazing to think his society over a thousand years ago had in many ways been more progressive.
"Pet? Hah!" He seems highly amused by the image conjured up by the word. "I was thinking more along the lines of a minion. That's one part of monster lore that's true. Most monsters have a human being they use to help them out in certain things they can't do themselves."
“Is that because it’s so fucking painful?” Seriously, Billy would never forget that imagery and the sound for as long as he lived. Which might actually be the rest of the week, now.
There are three main wounds, as far as Billy could see. One on each of his sides where his... whatever they were had grabbed a hold of him while Billy’s hands had been occupied holding him off and the main bite in the center of his chest that exposed far more than he was comfortable with. “Yeah? Feels like if I move my lungs are gonna fall out.”
Billy stares, face set in a line and both hands trembling against his chest. “Awesome. Exactly what I had in mind. I’m so ready to be a minion for another monster.” His voice is a strange combination of deadpan and sarcastic, both exposing how unimpressed he is. “Beside, I doubt there’s much you can’t do for yourself.”
"Mostly, yes. Fortunately, I was already used to pain long before I ever became a werewolf." He sounds rather cavalier about the whole thing. Then again for Ivar this was all old hat after so many years.
Ivar's face does take on a more serious cast to it when he takes note of the extent of Billy's injuries. Yes, he was going to need to do something about this quickly before blood loss or infection were swift to take him. He crawls up closer to him. He's going to have to fix this with some direct contact.
"I assure you I'm far kinder then your last master ever was to you." Then again, not leaving him with a big gaping hole in his chest was a pretty low bar to start out with. "Besides, there are certain things I prefer to have a human around for. They won't occur to you, but trust, they are there. And you seem reliable enough."
"Because of your legs?" God, had they even had a form of pain management back then, all those years ago? Something to help him manage it?
Billy watches Ivar wearily as he closes the distance between them. He doesn't flinch away from him at all, doesn't make any move to put space between them, but it's obvious he seems unsure.
"Not making me feed my friends to a monster is a good start." The gaping wound in his chest is barely held together and Billy wonders for a moment what's kept him alive for two days at all. Sheer force of will, perhaps? "Like buying milk? Cooking you spaghetti? I'm good at that."
"Exactly." There had been nothing for the pain back then, nothing except something like taking mushrooms to get high or drinking to numb the pain away for a short amount of time.
"Oh, I'm a monster and no mistake," Ivar says in a cheerful tone. "But if I want to eat anyone, I'll be doing that on my own without any help from you." It's been some years since Ivar ate a human, but he'd never kicked the habit entirely.
"Before we discuss your new life as a minion--" Yep, Ivar's already decided this is going to be a thing without any real input from Billy himself. "--let's get you back on your feet." Then Ivar's licking at Billy's chest, letting plenty of saliva drip into the gaping wound so that it will start to heal at an accelerated rate.
“Yeah. You can keep the people eating to yourself.” There’s disgust on his face and Billy doesn’t even try to hide it from the wolf. Why? Because it’s gross.
The touch of tongue to flesh isn’t a shock -he sees it coming- but he still somehow startles and the reaction is instant. Whatever invisible force -Billy’s own mind, he realizes- let’s go of it’s hold on his wound and the blood that had been oozing slowly spills freely. The sound Billy makes sounds almost inhuman and he feels like his guts are about to fall out of his chest.
Ivar realizes what's happening almost immediately. Shit. The timetable to get Billy's chest wound fixed just moved up by an exponential rate. If he loses too much blood, then it won't matter that the wound is healed. He'll still die.
He continues his ministrations, quickly getting the sides of the gaping hole to start closing, moving towards one another. It's going to be a hard, painful process to get the bones, muscles, and skin to all rapidly grow back in time. It's a good thing Ivar has long since stopped caring about personal boundaries or human levels of embarrassment or he'd find this all incredibly awkward.
Usually Billy would care that there was a man so far up in his space, running his tongue over his chest, but he doesn’t care about much at all in that moment. He isn’t sure if he’s going to vomit or pass out but he is sure that he’s going to die. And wasn’t that just a huge kick in the ass?
It’s a fight to stay conscious but if Billy is anything, he’s a survivor and he knows if he closes his eyes now, that’s it. Game over. So even as he chokes and his eyelids get heavy, he refuses to give in.
Although, if he’s being honest, there are worse ways to go than with an attractive man in his lap.
And if he mumbles that out loud, well, he’s dying? Who can hold it against him?
Ivar's busy focusing on making sure the healing saliva works fast enough. It's going to be a close call. He can hear what Billy mumbles and almost smiles even as his tongue runs over Billy's chest once again. Poor kid. Couldn't have been easy being gay in in this decade. Funny how Ivar's own people had been more accepting of different sexualities then the the so-called 'modern day'. Of course, they'd had their own prejudices instead, like the importance of being the dominant one in the relationship, and how if you weren't you were seen as lesser for it.
Ivar finally finishes and stops, looking his work over. The muscles have all reconnected together and the skin has regrown, looking pink, raw, and tender to the touch from growing so fast. But at least it's all done. Billy, on the other hand, is not looking anywhere near the realm of good. He starts looking like he might pass out even now that the danger is past.
Ivar shakes him none too gently, trying to keep him conscious. "Hey. No, don't fall asleep. Kid, come on, stay awake!"
Billy is losing the battle against his eyelids and he only vaguely recognises that the feeling of falling apart is gone. The worst of the pain is gone. He knows he should be happy that he's alive but he can't feel much of anything in the face of the all consuming exhaustion that's taken over. He's damp with blood and saliva and he's...
"Cold." His eyes jolt open at the shake and they're unfocused when they find Ivar. "So tired. D'it work?"
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Billy continues to stare, face twisted up in horror even as Ivar dresses himself in one of Hopper's t-shirts. It's far too big on him but it's better than nothing, Billy supposes. The teen watches him the entire time, brow furrowing further as the limber wolf is slow to put on the borrowed pants.
"Does it hurt? When you change? And... what's up with your legs?"
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"Always. But you get used to it," comes the gruff and laconic answer. If it had been too much to bear, Ivar would've died years ago. These days, it was a pain that he was able to bear.
There came a guarded look across Ivar's face, the emotion shutting down behind his eyes when Billy asked about his legs. It had been a thousand years and more since his own times when people mocked him as a useless cripple that should've been left to die in the woods, but he still got extremely touchy over anyone remarking on them. He finished getting the pants on and then threaded the belt through the loops before he bothered to answer. "They're useless. Back in my day, it was thought I was cursed by our gods. These days, the doctors call it osteogenesis imperfecta. Brittle bone disease. I can't walk on them for fear of shattering them into pieces."
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Even with all that Billy had been through -and he'd been abused most his life before he'd become a puppet for an inter-dimensional monster- what Billy had just witnessed looked more than a little bit horrifying. "Doesn't look like you do. Looks like it still really fuckin' hurts."
Raising both hands in the international sign of 'I come in peace' Billy nods along to Ivar's explanation.
"That's really shitty, man. There's nothing they can do to help?"
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"Well, what do you expect? You've had a bone or two broken before in your time, I imagine. Now imagine all of them being snapped and reformed over and over again each time you switch from wolf to man and back again. You either learn a level of being able to tolerate or just going completely insane," he explains. "Besides, I was already in pain my whole life even before I was turned. Brittle bone syndrome means your bones hurt all the time." It accounted for why Ivar always seem to be a bit tetchy and grumpy at all times.
"No. There's not a lot of treatments for it, save for shoving metal rods in my legs to help me walk better. That would hinder more then help with being able to shift to my wolf form," he says as he goes on. "But I've spent many years dealing with this. If I haven't made my peace with it, I've at least gotten to the point of acceptance."
Mostly. There was still moments where Ivar would fly into a complete rage over one little innocuous comment about his legs, but these days, it was better then when he had been young and wanted to burn down entire nations for the same offense.
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Billy looks down at himself, at the pathetic attempt to bandage himself closed and sighs. "Got some now. This is enough." Nodding again, Billy feels a pang of sadness at the idea of Ivar having suffered his whole life; perhaps he could even relate a little, even if the causes for their pain had been different.
"It's still shitty that you have to go through it at all." With another soft sigh, Billy says, "my old man... he used to beat my mum. When she left, he turned on me. Blamed me for her leaving, for us having to move out here, for everything. It got worse when he drank."
He doesn't know why he says it, maybe because Ivar had shared something about himself that he seemed uncomfortable sharing.
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Ivar crawls forward, a serpentine motion that looks more then just a little eerie. There's the same air as when the Terminator in the first movie got his legs blown off: he might be crippled but he's still incredibly dangerous. As he passes through the kitchen, he pauses, then reaches over to a fallen knife block, sliding one into a back pocket. It's a force of habit after all these years to go armed.
"Sad story. There's sadder, not that it's much consolation I'm sure." He reaches the room Billy's in and stops, sitting down on the floor as he adjusts his legs so that they'll be in front of him and in the least amount of pain. "If anyone had done that to be growing up, I would have killed the son-of-a-bitch. But that was a different time." Murder was sanctioned as long as you had good reason for getting away with it.
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Billy isn't sure of it's because of the blood loss and delirium but there's something about the way Ivar moves, with the practised ease of someone who has never known a different way, that's mesmerising, even as he arms himself and moves around the rubble that litters the floor. There's no doubting that this man is dangerous for all it appears like he shouldn't be.
And yet, Billy isn't afraid.
"I'm not looking for sympathy. But I know what it's like to have something that hurts that people have no fucking tact about. You were deemed a pathetic cripple and I'm the former king of high school who's mummy didn't love him enough and who's daddy hit him." He snorts a painful laugh at the blase tone used when talking about murder. "Yeah, definitely not born in the 60's."
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"My nickname back then was Ivar hinn Beinlausi." His accent again grows thicker on the fluid Norse syllables. "It means Ivar the Boneless in English. I doubt you'll know the name much. They don't teach about me in high school last I checked, though they do at the college level." He knows this after sitting in on some classes years ago. Ivar had enough ego to like to hear himself still talked about even after all this time.
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"Guess I can say you look good for your age then?"
Billy shakes his head to say that, no, he doesn't know the name well. But Billy has also gone outside of the recommended school studies, refusing to give his dad any reason to express disappointment over his grades.
"Think I've seen it. Once or twice. But it wasn't the focus of anything." So, no, he's never actively learned about him. "So, here we are. Two men who shouldn't be alive in a shitty little backwards town like Hawkins Indiana. And you just happened to show up when the world split open and let in monsters from somewhere else. I should probably be far more afraid."
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"Ah, someone who knows his history," Ivar says approvingly. "When I was young and foolhardy, I said I wanted to be remembered for as long as men had tongues. It turns out that I have gotten my wish so far." His eyes glimmer a bit when Billy mentions monsters. "One monster generally attracts others. There's something in the air that makes us all gather."
He grins then and there's a hint of teeth that are far sharper then they should be before he closes his mouth again. "Yes. You should be." He doesn't say this in an ominous manner, just in that of a man who is giving a fair warning. Billy would be a fool not to be in a room with a werewolf and at least feel a little afraid.
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Billy nods again. He liked history, found it fascinating to look back at the world and escape his own reality for as long as he can. Even if he didn't, he'd probably still know. He took his studies seriously, despite his image as the town's new bad boy. "I'm sure as long as you're around they'll remember you. You strike me as the type who would make sure of it."
Maybe if Billy were a smarter man, he wouldn't smirk in the face of those sharp teeth. But he isn't. Or maybe he's still far too close to death's door to take anything too seriously. "Remind me later. Too tired to be afraid now." Not entirely true.
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Ivar perks up, looking pleased at that. He moves one of his feet slightly where it has started to fall asleep. That's one pain he can actually avoid and do without. "I did try. And I've always succeeded at almost anything I tried my hands at."
He leans forward. "Why don't you tell me what happened to you? I'm curious to hear what sort of monster you encountered and how you came to be here with a hole in your chest. Speaking of which--" He pulled a rag he'd taken out of the kitchen over and spits into it, coating the fabric with his saliva. Then he tosses it at Billy. "--Rub that on your chest. I know it's gross, but werewolf spit has healing properties. You heal faster that way."
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Billy freezes like a dear stuck in headlights. The last week has been one of the more horrific experiences he's ever had; even going so far as to take the place of his mother leaving him with his old man for the most pain and fear he's experienced.
It's a long moment before he finally speaks. "I don't know what he was, but he isn't from here. He wanted me to build something. A body, a way for him to exist here. He wanted me to bring him a girl. She was the only thing that could stop him." He smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes and it falls immediately with his eyes filling with tears. "She's the same age as my sister. I couldn't... I stopped him. And he... He didn't like that. He did this." The rag falls into his lap and he stares at it. "I don't even know how I got here. Or how I'm alive. It felt like my insides were falling out and then... They just stopped." As if testing it, he presses the rag to a smaller cut on his arm.
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Ivar listens without seeming surprised by any of it. He's seen and heard too much over the course of his life to really find anything new under the sun. "You'd be surprised what the human body can live through. I've seen men survive injuries close to what you have before. But nothing quite like this."
As they talk, it takes a bit of time, but once the saliva gets soaked into the cut it begins to close up at a highly accelerated rate. "Told you. There we go. Now rub that on your chest so you'll heal properly. I can't have you dropping dead on me now. I'm invested."
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“I was also thrown through a wall. Twice, I think.” It was... foggy. Like most of his memories when the Mind Flayer had been in control.
Huh. So it does. Confident now that it’s going to work, Billy unwraps the pathetic excuse for bandages, exposing the true extent of the damage. It really is a miracle that his guts haven’t fallen out and there’s still black blood oozing out the edges. He winces at the first touch.
“Invested? What, am I your little pet human now?”
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Ivar winces when the extent of the injuries is revealed. "Yeesh. It's a wonder you're still alive. This might require a more hands-on approach." He has a feeling Billy won't like the idea of him coming directly up to him and licking his chest. It wasn't like the old days when physicality between men was shown in much more forthright ways. Nowadays, human beings were far too caught up on sexuality and gender roles. Amazing to think his society over a thousand years ago had in many ways been more progressive.
"Pet? Hah!" He seems highly amused by the image conjured up by the word. "I was thinking more along the lines of a minion. That's one part of monster lore that's true. Most monsters have a human being they use to help them out in certain things they can't do themselves."
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There are three main wounds, as far as Billy could see. One on each of his sides where his... whatever they were had grabbed a hold of him while Billy’s hands had been occupied holding him off and the main bite in the center of his chest that exposed far more than he was comfortable with. “Yeah? Feels like if I move my lungs are gonna fall out.”
Billy stares, face set in a line and both hands trembling against his chest. “Awesome. Exactly what I had in mind. I’m so ready to be a minion for another monster.” His voice is a strange combination of deadpan and sarcastic, both exposing how unimpressed he is. “Beside, I doubt there’s much you can’t do for yourself.”
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Ivar's face does take on a more serious cast to it when he takes note of the extent of Billy's injuries. Yes, he was going to need to do something about this quickly before blood loss or infection were swift to take him. He crawls up closer to him. He's going to have to fix this with some direct contact.
"I assure you I'm far kinder then your last master ever was to you." Then again, not leaving him with a big gaping hole in his chest was a pretty low bar to start out with. "Besides, there are certain things I prefer to have a human around for. They won't occur to you, but trust, they are there. And you seem reliable enough."
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Billy watches Ivar wearily as he closes the distance between them. He doesn't flinch away from him at all, doesn't make any move to put space between them, but it's obvious he seems unsure.
"Not making me feed my friends to a monster is a good start." The gaping wound in his chest is barely held together and Billy wonders for a moment what's kept him alive for two days at all. Sheer force of will, perhaps? "Like buying milk? Cooking you spaghetti? I'm good at that."
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"Oh, I'm a monster and no mistake," Ivar says in a cheerful tone. "But if I want to eat anyone, I'll be doing that on my own without any help from you." It's been some years since Ivar ate a human, but he'd never kicked the habit entirely.
"Before we discuss your new life as a minion--" Yep, Ivar's already decided this is going to be a thing without any real input from Billy himself. "--let's get you back on your feet." Then Ivar's licking at Billy's chest, letting plenty of saliva drip into the gaping wound so that it will start to heal at an accelerated rate.
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The touch of tongue to flesh isn’t a shock -he sees it coming- but he still somehow startles and the reaction is instant. Whatever invisible force -Billy’s own mind, he realizes- let’s go of it’s hold on his wound and the blood that had been oozing slowly spills freely. The sound Billy makes sounds almost inhuman and he feels like his guts are about to fall out of his chest.
He screams
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He continues his ministrations, quickly getting the sides of the gaping hole to start closing, moving towards one another. It's going to be a hard, painful process to get the bones, muscles, and skin to all rapidly grow back in time. It's a good thing Ivar has long since stopped caring about personal boundaries or human levels of embarrassment or he'd find this all incredibly awkward.
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It’s a fight to stay conscious but if Billy is anything, he’s a survivor and he knows if he closes his eyes now, that’s it. Game over. So even as he chokes and his eyelids get heavy, he refuses to give in.
Although, if he’s being honest, there are worse ways to go than with an attractive man in his lap.
And if he mumbles that out loud, well, he’s dying? Who can hold it against him?
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Ivar finally finishes and stops, looking his work over. The muscles have all reconnected together and the skin has regrown, looking pink, raw, and tender to the touch from growing so fast. But at least it's all done. Billy, on the other hand, is not looking anywhere near the realm of good. He starts looking like he might pass out even now that the danger is past.
Ivar shakes him none too gently, trying to keep him conscious. "Hey. No, don't fall asleep. Kid, come on, stay awake!"
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"Cold." His eyes jolt open at the shake and they're unfocused when they find Ivar. "So tired. D'it work?"
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