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hum--hallelujah · 7 months

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all ears and all scars - Danger Days/America's Suitehearts, Dr. Benzedrine & Horseshoe Crab character/relationship study & hurt/comfort

There's only so much a silent sandpup like him can do. Understanding only goes so far. In the end, it seems the others always turn to him, as if he has any idea what he's doing. All he knows is that he wants to make life better for them. It's the same thing they all want for each other, isn't it?

Benze wants to make life better by making it safer, offering help where it's needed, making something out of what he's lost. Sandman wants to make life mean something, be it by love or smuggling. Donnie wants to make the harm he's done mean something. Crab just wants to make his friends know that their lives do mean something, already, without any of that.

When Sandman and Donnie go to the races sometimes Crab stays behind. If they're not taking the van, there’s no point. They can’t all ride on Sandman’s bike, anyway. Half the time Crab and Benze stay back, do inventory, bicker silently and make each other crazy trying to read or talk. The fact that Crab’s shit at reading and Benze is shit at signing makes things difficult. But they make it work.

Crab will admit it can be frustrating. Not just that Benze never seems to be able to learn sign, that’s just the way his brain works, or doesn’t work; but that the other see him as someone solid, a fallback. He’s not too much of everything the way Sandman is, or trapped inside himself like Donnie. Benzedrine’s brain is broken. Crab is arguably the most steady of them, but they think he knows what he’s doing. They think it’s on purpose, instead of accidentally stumbling into exactly what he needs to do. He’s fumbling through everything and they don’t even see it.

It’s never bothered him as much as it should that he can’t talk anymore. The wound itself hurt like hell when it happened and it took a long time to get used to it, but it doesn’t cause him grief anymore. He thinks, sitting on a rusty stool in the garage while Benze flips through a medical journal one of their sources had slipped into a shipment as a bonus, humming something under his breath about surgeries and biometrics and cybernetic replacements, that it bothers the others more than it does him.

And oh, Sandman is chill about it. They knew each other as kids, though Crab was never as close with him as Donnie was, but meeting up again as they are now, one of them more jaded and one with vocal cords severed, never seemed to faze him. Most sandpups grow up at least vaguely versed in sign, anyway. But Donnie will never forgive himself, and Benze spent a week after they met trying to avoid him before asking, suddenly, if he could examine the wound. Crab had sat patiently, curiously, while the strange little guy’s hands had probed and pressed at his throat. Benze had apologized, said he wished they’d met sooner. Crab thinks he still regrets that by the time they knew each other it was too late for him to do anything. But Crab doesn’t care.

He waves a hand in the air for way too long before Benze registers the movement. That's how he knows it's bad. When Benze looks over, there's something faintly glazed in his eyes, like the blue has been mixed up in a sandstorm. He's not exactly focused. There's a wildness in his gaze. Not many people clock it, but Benze is a whirlwind. They see the soft roundness of his face, the wide eyes, the complete and utter lack of understanding of how life works in the Zones, the way he struggles with words and language, and think he's an easy target, something fragile. They don't know the heart that beats behind those soft clothes and sunburnt skin.

Benze might be crazy. His brain is definitely broken. He doesn't think the way anyone else does. He doesn't talk straight — tenses change a the time, his words come out in the wrong order, similar sounding words mixed up, syllables misspoken. There's times he gets confused about people's names. His own name, sometimes, even. The things inside his head just don't work right.

"Are you okay?" Crab signs slowly, concentrating on making the movements clear. He's known sign for most of his life but only had to speak in it for two years. His habits are sloppy, hands slurred.

Benze blinks a few times, quickly. "Am I... okay?" He checks, face forming into a quick flash of a frown. Crab nods. "Oh," Benze says. "I'm... thinking but fine?"

Crab doesn't think that's how he meant that sentence to sound. He forms his response off his best guess. Maybe they're always trying to translate each other. "Thinking about what?" There's about a half dozen phrases the two of them can bounce back and forth. They've had some version of his conversation, either out of concern or curiosity, enough times that this, at least, is easy to translate.

Benze takes a pause to process the question. There's an untidy stack of papers in his hand, pages torn from books, dictionaries, zines, anywhere Benze could find them. He looks like if he thinks much harder he's going to drop them. Crab huffs with a smile and leaves his stool behind with a hop, reaches out and takes the sheets from his friend before they slip and cut his hands. Benze might think Sandman is the careless one of the bunch, but Benze hurts himself more often than any other.

"You," Benzedrine mutters faintly, glazed-over eyes squinting upwards at Crab. "The... if I could... you... I want just..." he purses his lips the way he does when he realizes his words are getting all tangled up. "Maybe it's not too late?" he says shrilly, high pitched and hesitant and determined all mixed up.

Crab shakes his head. He sets the papers all down and snags Benze's hands in his own. Benze freezes, any small movement stalling completely as he jerks his eyes down to the contact. He'll let Crab know if it's too much. It always startles him but it isn't usually bad. It always startles Crab how warm his hands are, too. He always expects Benze's hands to be cold to the touch, but they're warm and soft and uncalloused. He wonders idly if Benze would let them paint his nails.

He's not gonna use any words for this. He's too much at a loss for that. He doesn't see his condition as something that needs fixed. But he's stopped being offended by Benzedrine's fixation on it. He's a doctor. He thinks he's supposed to fix things. Crab thinks it might be the only way he knows how to show love. He never knows what to say and he has to let his hands speak for him anyway. Sign isn't the only way to do that. If it all goes wrong they'll figure it out as they go.

He draws one of Benze's hands up and lets it go. Benzedrine's eyes become suddenly clearer as his hand hovers just over the thick, raised scar across his throat. His breathing hitches and his eyes flick to Crab's. "I'm sorry," he whispers. Crab isn't sure if he means for overstepping or for the wound itself. Crab shakes his head again either way.

Benze carefully runs soft fingers over the scar. The feather-light touch almost makes Crab flinch, but instead he leans into it, pressing his neck into Benzedrine's hand. It's an incredibly vulnerable position to be in. A doctor should know that. By the careful steadiness of Benze standing in front of him, straw-colored hair illuminated by ugly solar-rigged fluorescent lights, Benzedrine does.

Crab wonders if Benze can feel the fast, fluttery way his heart is beating. He's out of his depth, so far at a loss. He's trying to do the right thing and terrified it's wrong.

"Your pulse is fast," says Benze. His familiar fingers move from the pinkish scar to Crab's pulse point, pressing gently under his jaw. "Are you okay?" He asks, turning Crab's question back on him.

Crab lifts his hands up between them. "If you are," he signs, so wholeheartedly his hands shake. This whole thing scares him. Benzedrine's insanity, the mess in his head that drove him to shoot up just to get away from it. The fact that they'll never really understand each other. The way he's always offering reassurances but sometimes wants some for himself. If he can make others okay then maybe he can reassure himself next.

Benze stares at his hovering hands for a moment, then grabs them again, like he doesn't want to let go. "But you're shaking," he observes, almost clinically. "Your pulse is racing. You're nervous," he says. "You asked me if I'm okay but you're anxious." He says all this calmly and confidently, as a doctor, but then glances up at Crab with a question asking in his eyes.

Crab hesitates, but nods. He feels out of his depth, and he can't swim. Like the way it feels when you're falling asleep and jerk awake with the feeling that you're falling, losing your balance. Maybe that's it. He hasn't been sleeping well. Nightmares he can't tell anyone else about because they'd only make the life they've built worse. So he nods. And doesn't offer an explanation. He isn't sure he has one.

"Why?"

Crab shrugs. He suctions his tongue to the roof of his mouth, like sealing his mouth shut makes any difference. He shifts his weight, almost swaying back and forth on his feet.

Benze hums a few low notes, the way he does sometimes. They never have any particular melody. But Benzedrine has a beautiful voice. "Can I help?" He asks, half sing-song.

"I wish," Crab signs bitterly, pulling one hand away to form the words and mouthing them silently at the same time.

With unusual clarity, Benze peers up at him, before questioning, "You wish what?"

"You could help," signs Crab. He doesn't quite care if Benze gets it or not. Whatever strange nervous, feedback loop energy is hanging in the air says enough already. "I'm just tired," he adds. The doctor will accept that explanation even if Crab's own mind will not. He has no real reason to be bothered. He wasn't bothered a minute ago. He's supposed to be worrying about Benze, not the other way about.

Benze catches the last word, used enough in the station to be familiar to him. Maybe if the others used sign more, it would help him learn it better? Or maybe his brain just won't accept it, maybe things will always be stilted like this. "Tired?" He hums thoughtfully. "Are you sleeping enough?" He asks, his hands moving back to either side of Crab's neck. Much longer and he's going to start going through the motions of a checkup, lights flashed in eyes and all.

Crab nods. He's always some form of tired. Aren't they all? Sleep doesn't change it. Benze should know that by now. "Not always well," he admits, because he is a mostly honest person, unless you play cards against him.

Benze, after the cautious confusion of working out the words, nods, like he expected that. Maybe he did. Far be it from Crab to know what goes on in that cracked head of his. Far be it from Crab to know much of anything, maybe. He’s been operating on instinct for so long that paying attention starts to feel weird. Benze continues humming, a light sound that’s half thought, half music. It’s tense, like most things about him, but soothing.

His thumbs run over the scar over Crab’s throat again and he tips his head in a parody of a knowing shrug. “Bilateral vocal cord paralysis can lead to increased fatigue,” he says. It’s less cold, doctorish and more flowing into that continued subconscious hum he carries on. “You might not even notice it. The effort of even breathing takes more work due to the lack of function… here,” he says, pressing slightly on parallel spots at Crab’s throat. It makes Crab’s breath stutter outside his control, and his eyes lock onto Benze’s.

Benze is staring fixedly at Crab’s face, brows folded slightly, watching for his reaction. It’s unsettling. Still, despite instinct welling up inside him, he trusts that though Benze might be crazy, he’s still his best friend. He would never hurt him.

He forms one hand into the single letter 'Y' and his face into a question. Benze watches it intently, adds the two together. “When the vocal cords are paralyzed they usually fall into a default position that’s too close together to allow for perfect normal breathing. The remaining throat muscles have to pick up the slack, which requires more effort than simply the medulla oblongata and pons’ rhythms.”

Crab doesn’t know what much of that means. He doesn’t know much of anything, as a matter of fact. But when Benze moves his hands away, he knows he misses the touch. It’s a strange version of the kind of comfort Crab usually offers. He’s not used to being on the other side of it.

“Did you know you snore?” Benze hums quietly. He’s shuffling through his stack of papers again while Crab stands unsure of himself in the same place, and looking back over his shoulder. Crab shrugs. Makes sense, he guesses. Benze nods. “That’s why.”

Crab looks over Benze’s shoulder at the papers. He can read some of it, tentatively, uneasily. It’s all the things Benzedrine was muttering about earlier, he thinks. It unsettles him, but at the same time, this is how Benze cares about people. By caring for them. Maybe they’re a little bit alike in that way. He sets his hand on Benzedrine’s shoulder and reaches, fumbles more like, for a pen he’d seen him writing with earlier.

You don’t have to fix me, he writes next to the heading of a lone page of a heartless medical advertisement. It’s wobbly and spelled by sound, so probably not right, but Benze gets it right away. He stares from Crab’s shitty handwriting on the page and then into his eyes. Crab doesn’t know what’s going on in there, but does he ever?

“I know,” he says eventually. “But I still wish-“

Crab signs, “Wish what?”

“That I could help.”

Crab nods. He leans against the work table, stares down at the mess there. He taps one of Benze’s books. It’s one of the ones he goes back to when he’s trying to explain his practices. It’s old and soft around the edges and was written by a real human. Benze says it was one of the only things he had on his person when he broke for the Zones. The humanity is written in the pages. “Read to me?” He signs slowly, not because it’s something he thinks will help Benze. It might. Maybe even probably will. But it’s something he thinks will help him. Maybe even probably.

Benze’s eyes go wide and startled for a moment when he gets the gist of what Crab is saying. Crab thinks he pieces it together more from the gesture to the book and the asking in his eyes than by the actual words he spells with his hands. That doesn’t bother him. And Benze, after a few moments’ hesitation, leaves his stack of scavenged papers to reach for the book.

“Okay,” he says, not quite a question but nearly there. “…Inside?”

Crab huffs, the lift in his chest just brushing the edge of his lips. He nods, loops an arm around Benzedrine’s shoulders when he turns toward the door to the rest of the station. He starts to pull away when Benze tenses up, but he shakes his head.

“It’s okay,” Benze assures him. “It’s fine. You’re good,” he says, far more casual, loose even, than he’s seemed all day. Maybe the switch has flicked somewhere in that cracked brain of his, and the light is getting in. He glances sideways at Crab and offers a smile. His smile is always a little off. Too wide, not wide enough, too flat, something wrong in his eyes. But it’s genuine. He never smiles unless he means it.

They wind up settling on the ancient, worn-through couch in the lounge, where there’s a faint breeze pushing through the fabric covering a broken window. Crab taps the cover of the book again, drops his head onto Benzedrine’s shoulder and tilts it to look at him expectantly. Benze stares right back, like he always does. The sandstorm’s out of his eyes and now it’s more like that breeze.

Benze starts to read quietly, stilted at first before setting into that natural humming tone. It’s just the introduction, the most human part of the book, the part that talks about promises to be kept, lives to be saved. Crab’s head rests comfortably on the soft slope of Benze’s shoulder and the warmth of him beside him is comfortable, safe. His breathing rasps a little, but the doctor is right here. He’s asleep before Benze gets to the second chapter.

#oh yeah btw in my headcanon the suitehearts live in an old fire station outpost thing #i mean like the zones are in california it’s highly populated irl there’s probably fire stations all over out there #so like they have the garage/bay to park their van/sandman’s bike/their supplies #and they’ve got a reasonably adapted living space directly attached to it #anyway. yeahg this…. them….#she writes!#ddas #danger days #america’s suitehearts #dr benzedrine #horse shoe crab #i’ll edit to add a title later once i uhhh figure one out dsjhkjghfjkg #and if i have to make any like. regular edits too. but i’m too tired rn lol

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