SCP Foundation Oneshots

Klexos

It was a gift, he would think, sitting in the enclosed lining of his own mechanically beating heart, a rubatosis, the steady beating under his fingers heavy and hard like it would break his sternum at any moment. Klexos is something he understood very well, like his heart under his fingertips, it was the art of dwelling on the past - and it really is art if he thought about it deep enough. Recalling a memory now in the present, then recalling that same memory five years from now can have a different effect each and every time a vision would pass buy and enrapture his mind in colors and words that shook what was left of his human bones in a familiar tingle that reminded him of his humanity.

It was a gift and even then it could only stretch so far, patches and holes still holding his long memories in soft touches even when the distant static of rain and crackles deterred his mind away from them. 3 had called this a ‘Chrysalism’, being in the warmth of his own home while storms fought their long battles against his window.

1 never thought much of it, never pushed to understand the things that no longer applied to him when they repeated over and over in the centuries he’s breathed on the earth.

Even then, the dark press of his own existence restrained him from, what 3 called, the enjoyment of living. He stil never saw the point but he learned early on that arguing with 3 was a battle he would never win with the other 05's sharp tongue piercing through every word.

But here he was, sitting on the floor like an animal listening to the pop of raindrops hit against his window. It felt like a mix of monachopsis and ruckkehrunruhe, like he didn't fit in with the calm atmosphere the storm gave and yet he felt like he was returning home again. 3’s head pressed against his shoulder and 1 realized just how zoned out of focus he was. He was hit with a sense of adronitis, and he bit away at his lip to keep himself from breaking the subtle calmness they both grew.

“Hey Arron?” 3’s voice was mellowed and smooth like honey, slowly dripping out syllables through sleepy tongues of a native language 1 had yet to fully learn but melted when 3 spoke through it. 1 turned his head, a fraction, an inch, his cheek against 3’s head and he realized through the pitter patter of rain how closely pressed they were together. He flushed pink, and he blamed it on the cold settling in the room.

“Yes Hiro?” It felt strange speaking of 3’s name in front of him, a name that flushed his heart with an irregular beat and made his tongue feel like cotton against the roof of his mouth, and acting as though it didn't affect him as much as it did. He had a feeling 3 already knew.

He always had a way of subtly revealing of the things he knew, swift brushes of fingers together and the one incident that 6 not so believably swore was an accident  where his lips were so dangerously close to his own that he could feel his mainframe he worked so hard to keep from malfunctioning turn too fast and jerk around inside of him.

It took him weeks to rewire his mainframe correctly again, with the ghosting feeling of 3 against his chest making him shakey and almost shameful with how much he failed to remain calm while plucking his wires in place.

“Sometimes, during the storms, while listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, it sounds like the muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension in the crackles of thunder are so understandably perfect, it makes me think to the times where I could hear you through the walls of your office. Psyching yourself up or winding down or even when Gears would come along and the air around your office was thick with apprehension and anxiety. The storms make me think of you. Buzzing on your own tune with the beats of electric taps following you, cloudy and heavy and bleak to some but comforting to others.” 3’s speaking was sleepily slurred between his teeth, his lashes fluttered lightly as he dipped his head back from 1’s shoulder and laughed softly, like he already anticipated 1’s question.

“To whom could I ever be ‘comforting’ to, Hiro?” He went back to bitting away at the red of his gums, the slight stingy pain dissipating some of his tensed stress. He feared, a statement he never thought he would or could ever make, what 3’s next words are. His tenseness burned away at the Altschmerz that dug deep into the throes of his chest.

The weariness with the same old issues that he always had follow him—the same boring flaws and anxieties he’d been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert desperation, with nothing interesting left to think about other than how he was so easily caught in the clutches of 3’s hands, nothing left to do but spit his worries out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain he might have buried long ago to cover up the terrifying warmth in his chest for the other o5.

3 softly smiled, a soft little thing with a flusteredness of a child finding a way to confess, and he was momentarily distracted by the soft crooning meow of one of 3's cats that curled up on top of both of their thighs, it warmed his chest more watching the affection bleed soft pink shades across 3's cheeks. His head was back on his shoulder, buried into his side as the rain gained force again and caught his apprehension by the tail.

“To me.”