When he got there that was all Hartley texted before actually making his way inside, closing the door behind himself and then heading onward to the backroom. "Cisco? It's me."
It had to be awful, the way Cisco's powers were messing with him. Hartley remembered well how much his own overwhelmed him and Cisco's were even worse. "It will be fine, I promise."
He walked through the unlocked door and looked around. "Cisco?"
As soon as Hartley got through the door of his bedroom, he was ready. Cisco, who was very carefully hiding behind of one the doors, swiftly surged forward and unleashed an electric shock via his own little handmade taser. It was enough of a shock to render him unconscious but it wouldn't last long. Cisco acted fast.
First he took the cuffs and checked that Hartley was wearing his own. Once he knew he was, he removed them from this equation before they got used on him. He double checked that Hartley came alone before taking his phone, checking his messages for any references too him. Nope. Seemed good.
Okay. Okay, he would do this!
He dragged Hartley into the living room and smiled down at his unconscious body. "You're gonna love these, I made them myself. I studied engineering too, you know? Of course you don't. You didn't stick around to talk to me, did you? You just fucked me and ditched me." Cisco muttered to himself as he slapped a pair of handcuffs onto Hartley. There was an attachment to the cuffs that allowed him to attach them to the solid lead pipe. This way, even if he broke the pipe, his arms would still be bound. It gave him more of a chance.
He set Hartley up in what he had now dubbed 'Hartley's corner'. He picked it very specifically. He had a pillow to sit on, he had a direct viewing angle of the TV and it was not far from the window. Hey, natural sunlight. That was nice.
Cisco sat himself crossed legged in front of Hartley and waited for him to wake up, nervously fiddling with his sleeve.
When Hartley came to it, his body hurt all over. Electric shocks would do that. He needed a few seconds to reach some level of awareness, only slowly sitting up straight. Then he noticed a couple of things very quickly and they had him yank on the cuffs, his eyes wide as he looked at Cisco. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
He rattled on the cuffs again, then forced himself to be calm. He knew he was dealing with someone who was very far from stable. "I thought you needed my help, Cisco."
"I do but on my terms. Like I said, I don't trust anyone."
Which was true. Which had always been true. People were bad, they always let him down, he didn't trust a single person and if life had proved anything, it was that he was right and they were wrong. That was his main take away from people in general actually. He raised his hand to his face and wiped away a faint trail of blood that had run from his nose, that happened a lot lately, sometimes vibes caught him off guard and he didn't even notice, he had one before Hartley came. That part wasn't a lie.
"So." There was a pause. "Why didn't you call me back? I thought we hit it off and then you just ditched me in the morning and you never called me. Or visited. Or anything!"
Turning down a guy was really a lot easier when they weren't overpowered and intense. Also when they didn't have you cuffed to a lead pipe, that just seemed to set a bad tone. "I'm really not comfortable talking while you have me handcuffed, you know?"
Hartley chuckled, clearly nervous. "Makes me feel like I'm in the wrong kind of movie." Those movies that might be slightly hot because they had a lot of brutal bondage, hair-pulling and hot men being intense, but that definitely weren't the kind of movie one wanted to experience for themselves.
"But, you know. I'm not really looking for a relationship right now."
"Well, get used to it. You better get comfortable too, I'm pretty chatty. Not like all the time but I like to talk. Usually I just talk to myself because there's no one else but lately that gets weird and sometimes I end up talking to people who aren't here, you know? Barry always says I'm crazy but what does he know? He's crazy too. At least I know what I'm doing. Mostly. Kinda. I think so?" Cisco rambled and yes, he really did like to talk. He didn't get to talk a lot usually, like he said, he was always alone and being around somewhere was nice.
... Putting aside them being handcuffed to a pipe and forced to be there. "Are you thinking like Prisoners with Hugh Jackman or more along the lines of Hostel? Because I'm going for tense thriller, not really a straight up horror movie with blood and guts everywhere." He really wanted that cleaning deposit back eventually.
Cisco's fingers never stopped moving and he almost bounced where he sat with so much energy and excitement. Clearly there was some kind of disconnect here that this seemed almost normal. "Just looking for sex? Cool, cool. So it's not me, it's you?"
"You're not crazy. You just have powers of a scope that would be difficult for anyone to cope with. I told you that before." Hartley looked at the cuffs. Damn. He really needed to use his powers for once, but he would have to test out later if there was any way around this. Doing it right in front of his captor would just be stupid and he prided himself in not being that, even though the talk of intensely uncomfortable movies really wasn't helping. "Neither, I'd really prefer it was neither. I was thinking you could just undo the cuffs and we could have a proper talk."
Hartley watched Cisco and pressed his lips together. "I don't have much room in my life for anyone new. So, yes. It's me." It was also definitely Cisco, but that didn't change that it was him as well.
"No, I am. Crazy. I got a file that says so. I disagree with the file but no one listens to me, I don't have a medical degree. I tell you, if I wasn't crazy when it started, I'm definitely crazy now." Cisco joked with a smile, just ignoring the offer to undo the cuffs properly and talk. Yeah right. Like that'd happen now. His left leg bounced up and down as he spoke, looking at the wall behind Hartley. "We'll have to co-ordinate how to do this as a team, you dig me? The whole hostage thing needs to be a give and take. I mean you're gonna have to take a leak and stuff but the cuffs have a lot of cool settings I'll teach you about as we go along and hey, it's nice here. Don't you think?"
It really was. It was a massive apartment, the TV was a very new flat-screen, razor thin and clearly expensive and everything in the room screamed expensive too. The only thing was it lacked any human touch. Anything Cisco-like. In fact, it barely looked lived in. If it wasn't for the messy pile of DVDs by the TV, it would have looked like a showroom. "You're lying." Cisco turned back to Hartley and smiled. "That's really sweet of you, to spare my feelings. Usually people don't. It was me, wasn't it?"
"Not really my style, sorry." Hartley looked back at the cuffs, his hands tightening to fists. He was starting to feel a little scared and that wasn't good. He had to be rational if he wanted to get out of here. "That wasn't a lie, actually. My last boyfriend broke up with me, because he felt I wasn't committed enough. And given I stood him up five times in a week, I can't really blame him. One time I left the cinema to go to the bathroom and just forgot to go back in."
Sure, it was because of an emergency, but still. Not exactly A+ boyfriend material. "But if you're asking me if I find you unsettling? Of course. More so right now, but that must be what you're going for. If you wanted to put me at ease, you really used the wrong approach."
"Woah, you do suck, huh?" Cisco laughed with a big happy smile on his face as finally, he pulled himself to his feet. He grabbed a pen off his coffee table and stood in front of a big blank stretch of wall. "I guess I am kind of unsettling but I've always been weird. Different. Strange. I can't help it, I tried a lot to get better so they-- but it never worked and I don't get why. Since the blast, since I got these powers, it gets more confusing. Because here." Cisco paused as he started drawing on his nice, clean blue walls, drawing a big circle. "I'm normal. And here." He drew another circle." I'm normal." And then he drew another. And Another. Repeating it each time with only the variation of. "I'm a cowboy. And normal." Or "I'm pretty evil, I like that one. He's still normal though."
The wall was just covered in these circles and Cisco had drawn lines to connect all of them. "There's about fifty-two of these. I've seen it. I drift in and out of them. And by normal, I mean -- fitted. They belong." Cisco paused and turned around, a smile on his face. "The problem is, I don't. I can't stay in this world any more than I can stay out of the other worlds. Do you see that?" He tapped his pen on the line. "I'm connected to all of them at once at such an overwhelming rate."
"I do understand what you're saying, I'm familiar with the multiverse theory. I keep telling you, Cisco, let us help you. If you let us understand your power, we can find out how you can control it. Control yourself. You don't want to lose yourself, do you? Much as I'm sure you'd look great in a cowboy hat." Hartley watched him and wished he really could get through to him, could help him. He knew what it was like to be tortured by one's own power, even if Cisco's must be a hundred times stranger and perhaps even more invasive.
"No! No messing with me, no tests! I am not your lab rat!" Cisco yelled suddenly as he slammed his hand down hard on the wall, his face twisted with anger. "I'm talking so shut up unless you're contributing something useful. I'm not going there, they can't help me." Cisco turned his head back to the Earths, his back briefly to Hartley as he looked over it. "The problem isn't the other Earths, the problem is this Earth."
He tapped a dot on the Earth that was their Earth. "It's broken. That's why I don't fit. Why everything is wrong. There's patterns and people are supposed to connect with the same people but in this one, it's wrong." Less wrong, really, more that Cisco didn't like how it was. He tossed the pen down and held out his hand, concentrating on the bit of wall their Earth was on. Slowly, that bit of dry wall was hit with a strong enough vibration that it crumbled and cracked, their earth falling off the wall while the others survived, fine and in tact.
"There's no place for this Earth in my multiverse."
"...that's a bit extreme." Hartley took a deep breath and let it out slowly, shifting so he could better keep his eyes on Cisco. "What exactly is so wrong about this world? There are some things I'd rather were different, but overall we're not doing as bad as we could. A lot of people here."
What was this conversation? Absolutely insane and deeply unsettling. No single man should have this knowledge, much less the power. "Please, Cisco. We can talk about this, but I'm not going to be your prisoner so you can monologue in a sinister way. It's too ridiculous."
It was also terrifying, but that didn't change that he still felt like in a very wrong movie.
"I've seen how this Earth is going to go, I didn't want to see it but I saw it. I had it rammed down my throat." Because that was what his powers did. They appeared, they hurt and they left him, sobbing in pain with these horrible visions. And honestly, he could have vibed any Earth at this point really and mistaken it for his own but he was determined. He was set on the idea because it was easier for him.
It helped him, to tell himself that the reason things were like this and had always been like this was because the Earth was wrong. It wasn't that he wasn't loved, that he was alone, that he was a bad person who deserved this. Their Earth was broken.
"It's a pointless Earth and it doesn't matter. It needs to be gone." He turned to Hartley, smiling. "You're not here to monologue at. You're going to help me. Together, we'll end this world."
"I won't. You should have come to me when I had my angsty teenager phase, Cisquito, these days I'm a lot more collected. I might not always love my life, but... That's not what matters." Hartley looked at Cisco and shook his head. "I can't help you do that anyway, but I also wouldn't. I don't even believe in God, I'm not going to play God myself."
He wasn't sure what plan Cisco even had in mind to end the world, but he didn't believe he had those kind of destructive powers, just based on all he knew about them. That was only mildly reassuring, since it couldn't be denied that Cisco could still do a lot of damage.
"I spoke to another you. I liked him, he was cool but a little super villainy, I guess. Though that maybe made him cooler. He had this swanky green hood thing and this badass tech flute and-- doesn't matter. He talked to me about this. About you." Cisco crossed his arms and smiled at Hartley, almost excited. "He told me that you can help me, you just don't understand right now but you will. I have to help you understand."
And then together, they could just destroy this universe. Wouldn't that just be wonderful? "Together, we can do this." He moved closer to Hartley now, looking determined. "I just have to make you want it."
"All right, let me get this straight." This was going to be a very strange captivity, he could tell already. "You've done all this to ask me nicely to destroy the world with you?" There was just so much wrong with all this, he had to fight to keep from rolling his eyes.
"Now, I don't mean to insult you, but I've been in this field a bit longer than you have and let me tell you, you're not the best at this. Super villainy. Maybe you should start with a less tall order? Rob a bank before you end the world."
"Why would I rob a bank? I have money." He had a fair amount of 'hush and stay the fuck out of our way' money from his family. Especially since they decided they wanted Dante to enter the world of politics. He tilted his head to the side, confused at first before he realised it. Ah. Hartley was being cute.
He held out his hand and like that, he gave Hartley a sharp blast of vibrations. Not enough to do any damage, just enough to rattle his insides and cause a nasty amount of pain. "I'm not a super villain, I'm a hero! We both are. We're going to save the world and it's going to be amazing. And you're going to want to help me."
Of course he screamed, it was hard not to. Hartley curled in on himself, biting down on his lip as he tried to gauge whether there was any eternal damage done. Hard to tell, honestly. He focused on breathing evenly, looking up at Cisco again, not quite able to keep the pained tone out of his voice. "Is that part of your heroism?"
"Okay so I'm less a hero and more an anti-hero. I'm more Wolverine than cyclops, not gonna lie. This isn't easy, heroes don't always get the easy road, they have to make hard decisions. Like this. I know it's awful but it's okay because in the long run, you'll be better off." That's what the other Hartley said. Break him and remake him as better. Then he could play the song that would tear the world apart.
He didn't really want to break Hartley. Or anyone. He felt bad that the people in this world had to go but they were wrong. They needed to go. "It doesn't have to be such a bad thing. We can be friends?" Cisco hesitated before he looked away for a moment. "Have you seen the Walking Dead? We could marathon that together tonight?"
"I would like to be friends, Cisco, I just don't see how holding me captive is supposed to achieve that. How about you undo the handcuffs and then we can marathon your show? I haven't seen it." He knew about it vaguely, but it wasn't something he had gotten around to yet. If not for everything unsettling about the situation, that wouldn't be the worst choice. "I understand that you're hurting. But you're not alone, Cisco. I'm not going to just abandon you. I came here to help."
"You're lying. The moment I let you out, you're going to attack or run away. And then you'll tell everyone and people will come for me." And Cisco didn't want that. Not again. He moved over to the TV and tilted it at a better angle for Hartley to see. "We can watch it like this. This is better because you're lying and it's pissing me off, I don't want to hurt you any more than I have to but you're provoking me."
Maybe if he shut up and watched some TV with Cisco, he'd relax. He turned back to Hartley looking at him with a frown. "Dude, you talk a big game but you abandoned me after you fucked me. You didn't even text me or anything. If I hadn't of messaged you, be honest, you never would have messaged me ever again."
"Why is this on me? I can't remember you sending me anything." Sure, he might have intended to back off either way, but it still had to be said. "I figured you only wanted a one-night stand, because that's all you showed interest in, I told you to reach out to me to help with your powers, I always said that."
And, yes, he had neither been in a relationship head space, nor was Cisco really... Well. Sane. But that didn't mean it was entirely on him. "Look, I'd just love to have this talk with you, only I don't know how much honesty you're expecting from me after you've already attacked and handcuffed me."
"I said I thought you were special! I told you about what I'd seen and you acted like I was crazy. You didn't want to be near me, did you? You only wanted to deal with my powers, not me. It was just a fluke we ended up fucking." Cisco had been very interested, a little too interested, hence why he started babbling on about other lives, destiny and how important Hartley was going to be to him. And he was supposed to be that. Hell, he gave him his virginity.
"I'm not just a charity case you can just help. We're supposed to be partners. Lovers." Though he'd work on that second part after the whole hostage crisis. "Don't you believe me?"
"I thought you were cute. I'm sorry, Cisco, I happen to not be able to see the future and past of multiple universes, so it's a tad difficult to follow those leaps." Sarcasm might be his only help here, so Hartley used that. Not that he wasn't touching on something very real. It wasn't necessarily that he believed Cisco was lying, that just didn't make what he was proposing any more sane. "I believe that you're saying the truth. I don't believe you're going about this in a good way."
"What's a good way to go about solving the issue of your powers pulling you apart and trying to scatter you across forty two different Earths at once while alone and knowing that everything around you is wrong? There is no good way, Hartley, because nothing about this is good." Cisco snapped and in an impulsive moment of panic and anger, he fired another blast off at Hartley, this one hit the wall instead and took a good chunk of it out. It was a good thing that one didn't hit Hartley.
Hartley stared at the wall and then back at Cisco, his eyes wide and his heart raising. Fuck. He tightened his hands to fists, fighting down the sudden urge of panic and finally he simply lowered his head. He didn't want to die like this. He wished he had a way to just talk to Cisco calmly, but he was neither that good with people nor that unbreakable. "Okay. So you're keeping me. So you're not alone. Right?"
"So you'll see and you'll understand that you belong with me. One way or another." And yes, he was lonely. Whatever. Loneliness happened. He needed someone and he didn't know many people who were willing volunteers. Honestly, at this point, he had Hartley... and that was it. Cisco looked down and pulled at his sleeve. "I'll probably always be alone but that's okay because I know I'm right. And maybe once I fix everything, it'll be better."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earth ... something? 13 maybe
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What's the matter?
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Can you please come help me? I know you said to go see those other people but I don't trust them, I trust you.
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Where do you want to meet?
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Can I text you an address? I don't think I can move. I'm kinda dizzy. I vibed hard this morning.
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Can I bring power inhibitors for you?
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please? I can't stay in one place any more.
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When he got there that was all Hartley texted before actually making his way inside, closing the door behind himself and then heading onward to the backroom. "Cisco? It's me."
It had to be awful, the way Cisco's powers were messing with him. Hartley remembered well how much his own overwhelmed him and Cisco's were even worse. "It will be fine, I promise."
He walked through the unlocked door and looked around. "Cisco?"
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First he took the cuffs and checked that Hartley was wearing his own. Once he knew he was, he removed them from this equation before they got used on him. He double checked that Hartley came alone before taking his phone, checking his messages for any references too him. Nope. Seemed good.
Okay. Okay, he would do this!
He dragged Hartley into the living room and smiled down at his unconscious body. "You're gonna love these, I made them myself. I studied engineering too, you know? Of course you don't. You didn't stick around to talk to me, did you? You just fucked me and ditched me." Cisco muttered to himself as he slapped a pair of handcuffs onto Hartley. There was an attachment to the cuffs that allowed him to attach them to the solid lead pipe. This way, even if he broke the pipe, his arms would still be bound. It gave him more of a chance.
He set Hartley up in what he had now dubbed 'Hartley's corner'. He picked it very specifically. He had a pillow to sit on, he had a direct viewing angle of the TV and it was not far from the window. Hey, natural sunlight. That was nice.
Cisco sat himself crossed legged in front of Hartley and waited for him to wake up, nervously fiddling with his sleeve.
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He rattled on the cuffs again, then forced himself to be calm. He knew he was dealing with someone who was very far from stable. "I thought you needed my help, Cisco."
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Which was true. Which had always been true. People were bad, they always let him down, he didn't trust a single person and if life had proved anything, it was that he was right and they were wrong. That was his main take away from people in general actually. He raised his hand to his face and wiped away a faint trail of blood that had run from his nose, that happened a lot lately, sometimes vibes caught him off guard and he didn't even notice, he had one before Hartley came. That part wasn't a lie.
"So." There was a pause. "Why didn't you call me back? I thought we hit it off and then you just ditched me in the morning and you never called me. Or visited. Or anything!"
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Hartley chuckled, clearly nervous. "Makes me feel like I'm in the wrong kind of movie." Those movies that might be slightly hot because they had a lot of brutal bondage, hair-pulling and hot men being intense, but that definitely weren't the kind of movie one wanted to experience for themselves.
"But, you know. I'm not really looking for a relationship right now."
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... Putting aside them being handcuffed to a pipe and forced to be there. "Are you thinking like Prisoners with Hugh Jackman or more along the lines of Hostel? Because I'm going for tense thriller, not really a straight up horror movie with blood and guts everywhere." He really wanted that cleaning deposit back eventually.
Cisco's fingers never stopped moving and he almost bounced where he sat with so much energy and excitement. Clearly there was some kind of disconnect here that this seemed almost normal. "Just looking for sex? Cool, cool. So it's not me, it's you?"
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Hartley watched Cisco and pressed his lips together. "I don't have much room in my life for anyone new. So, yes. It's me." It was also definitely Cisco, but that didn't change that it was him as well.
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It really was. It was a massive apartment, the TV was a very new flat-screen, razor thin and clearly expensive and everything in the room screamed expensive too. The only thing was it lacked any human touch. Anything Cisco-like. In fact, it barely looked lived in. If it wasn't for the messy pile of DVDs by the TV, it would have looked like a showroom. "You're lying." Cisco turned back to Hartley and smiled. "That's really sweet of you, to spare my feelings. Usually people don't. It was me, wasn't it?"
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Sure, it was because of an emergency, but still. Not exactly A+ boyfriend material. "But if you're asking me if I find you unsettling? Of course. More so right now, but that must be what you're going for. If you wanted to put me at ease, you really used the wrong approach."
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The wall was just covered in these circles and Cisco had drawn lines to connect all of them. "There's about fifty-two of these. I've seen it. I drift in and out of them. And by normal, I mean -- fitted. They belong." Cisco paused and turned around, a smile on his face. "The problem is, I don't. I can't stay in this world any more than I can stay out of the other worlds. Do you see that?" He tapped his pen on the line. "I'm connected to all of them at once at such an overwhelming rate."
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He tapped a dot on the Earth that was their Earth. "It's broken. That's why I don't fit. Why everything is wrong. There's patterns and people are supposed to connect with the same people but in this one, it's wrong." Less wrong, really, more that Cisco didn't like how it was. He tossed the pen down and held out his hand, concentrating on the bit of wall their Earth was on. Slowly, that bit of dry wall was hit with a strong enough vibration that it crumbled and cracked, their earth falling off the wall while the others survived, fine and in tact.
"There's no place for this Earth in my multiverse."
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What was this conversation? Absolutely insane and deeply unsettling. No single man should have this knowledge, much less the power. "Please, Cisco. We can talk about this, but I'm not going to be your prisoner so you can monologue in a sinister way. It's too ridiculous."
It was also terrifying, but that didn't change that he still felt like in a very wrong movie.
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It helped him, to tell himself that the reason things were like this and had always been like this was because the Earth was wrong. It wasn't that he wasn't loved, that he was alone, that he was a bad person who deserved this. Their Earth was broken.
"It's a pointless Earth and it doesn't matter. It needs to be gone." He turned to Hartley, smiling. "You're not here to monologue at. You're going to help me. Together, we'll end this world."
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He wasn't sure what plan Cisco even had in mind to end the world, but he didn't believe he had those kind of destructive powers, just based on all he knew about them. That was only mildly reassuring, since it couldn't be denied that Cisco could still do a lot of damage.
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And then together, they could just destroy this universe. Wouldn't that just be wonderful? "Together, we can do this." He moved closer to Hartley now, looking determined. "I just have to make you want it."
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"Now, I don't mean to insult you, but I've been in this field a bit longer than you have and let me tell you, you're not the best at this. Super villainy. Maybe you should start with a less tall order? Rob a bank before you end the world."
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He held out his hand and like that, he gave Hartley a sharp blast of vibrations. Not enough to do any damage, just enough to rattle his insides and cause a nasty amount of pain. "I'm not a super villain, I'm a hero! We both are. We're going to save the world and it's going to be amazing. And you're going to want to help me."
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Because if it was, he was off to a great start.
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He didn't really want to break Hartley. Or anyone. He felt bad that the people in this world had to go but they were wrong. They needed to go. "It doesn't have to be such a bad thing. We can be friends?" Cisco hesitated before he looked away for a moment. "Have you seen the Walking Dead? We could marathon that together tonight?"
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Maybe if he shut up and watched some TV with Cisco, he'd relax. He turned back to Hartley looking at him with a frown. "Dude, you talk a big game but you abandoned me after you fucked me. You didn't even text me or anything. If I hadn't of messaged you, be honest, you never would have messaged me ever again."
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And, yes, he had neither been in a relationship head space, nor was Cisco really... Well. Sane. But that didn't mean it was entirely on him. "Look, I'd just love to have this talk with you, only I don't know how much honesty you're expecting from me after you've already attacked and handcuffed me."
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"I'm not just a charity case you can just help. We're supposed to be partners. Lovers." Though he'd work on that second part after the whole hostage crisis. "Don't you believe me?"
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