ironflint bodyswap
Jun. 22nd, 2016 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iniquiticityhttp://iniquiticity.tumblr.com/post/146184828259/ok-do-i-stil-have-my-ironflint-bodyswap-anon-oh
(This was meant to a ficlet because you didn’t have time to write one but then it spiraled into something awful and almost 1k and I hope you enjoy it. In addition to Ironflint’s usual warnings: suicidal thoughts.)
Washington wakes to his own face, inches away, laughing at him. This thought, this single observation of fact, is no sooner manifested than it is shoved aside by another – what’s happening – and another – pain everywhere – and another – I fell asleep on the other side of the bed there’s a single lamp on my chest looks even nicer than it does in the mirror – a thousand thoughts break into a bar fight in his head and he’s already so fucking dizzy he has to press a hand against the side of his face. The world does not coalesce. It spirals.
“Is this what karma is?” he sees himself say with a gleeful snarl on his own lips. “I think I’m a born-again Christian.” He watches himself reach down and pinch a vicious bruise high on his hip, dark hand against pale and purple flesh, and Washington gasps from pain and then the bastard twists and a sob wrenches out of his throat and a sick, foreign pleasure rises in the back of his throat that tastes like blood and why can’t his thoughts line up – he’s remembering a month ago when he couldn’t sleep for over two days because of Arnold’s lawsuit causing an internal meltdown and how lines began blurring together – he’s hoping and dreading for the pain to go on and on and on and he’s disgusted with himself – the lamp throws light directly in the face above him, giving the eyes an extra sharp glint – why is he thinking of any of this?
“Overwhelming, isn’t it?” It’s his face but the tone is wrong, smugness curling around syllables and his expression raw with exposed feeling, no restraint, long breaths pulled in through the mouth like a man who has been trapped in a cage his whole life suddenly dropped in the middle of an open field.
“Hamilton,” he says, panic widening his eyes and quickening his breath before he’s given it permission to.
Hamilton’s smirk grows into a grin.
That’s when Washington knows he is in hell.
**
Washington adapts.
A manic, suicidal edge lingers in the background of his every movement, as he leans his head up instead of down to speak to people, as he learns to tie a tight ponytail because Hamilton won’t let him cut it, as he tries and fails to maintain the same level of brutal efficiency his EA had, as he’s forced to worry about reports and schedules and flight dates and assholes and the well-being of his body now worn by the self-destructive animal named Alexander Hamilton. As the thoughts pile up like shovelfuls of dirt suffocating him alive. Hamilton grabs his throat, his hand huge around his new scrawny pathetic neck, squeezes. Hamilton growls, “You’re so incompetent that you’re going to snap your own neck and bring the company down with you.”
Washington doesn’t know why this happened so he can’t fix it. He spends hours searching fruitlessly through the batshit forums of the internet, and then he wishes and prays despite the fact there’s not one bone of an optimist or a believer in his body. Nothing. He sees himself in the mirror – Hamilton’s face, emotionless, boarded up – he feels emptier every day, the whir of everything pushing him out out out until he’s the shell of instincts for nodding and breathing and typing.
For the first month, he tries so hard he feels himself breaking in half. Hamilton ducks out of his sight and comes back drunk or high from who-knows-what, grins down at Washington’s face. “I’m redecorating,” Hamilton says, gesturing to his temple. “This place is too quiet. It’s nice, but when was the last time you had a party?”
Washington attempts to protest but Hamilton shouts him down. Washington struggles and Hamilton presses him down. Washington tries to say no but his body overrides him and screams yes yes yes YES. Hamilton likes hurting his former body more than he did having Washington hurt him originally. Washington always cries – it’s too much, he begs, not enough, until his despair peaks the moment before orgasm in the clarity of a mental scream – give me a dagger so I can slice my throat let me out let me out LET ME OUT – and then his mind blanks. It’s nothing how he used to be, but this bastardized version of stillness comforts him more than the medication he’s tried or the meditation he’s tried or anything else, anything at all.
He whores himself to Hamilton. At first, to regain control of the situation, to distract Hamilton from self-abuse, to tempt him to do this or that. Then, as hope of his situation fades and exhaustion etches itself into his bones, to chase that rapturous parody of stillness, because nothing is changing, nothing will ever change, this is his life, trapped inside a body that stabs him with the jagged edges Hamilton left behind, when even the pleasure he feels twists his stomach, crushes his pride, destroys his dignity. He thought Hamilton had made him ugly before but he was wrong – that was a bruise, some inconsequential hurt, and this is flesh flayed from skin.
This is hell, and Hamilton is still grinning.
(This was meant to a ficlet because you didn’t have time to write one but then it spiraled into something awful and almost 1k and I hope you enjoy it. In addition to Ironflint’s usual warnings: suicidal thoughts.)
Washington wakes to his own face, inches away, laughing at him. This thought, this single observation of fact, is no sooner manifested than it is shoved aside by another – what’s happening – and another – pain everywhere – and another – I fell asleep on the other side of the bed there’s a single lamp on my chest looks even nicer than it does in the mirror – a thousand thoughts break into a bar fight in his head and he’s already so fucking dizzy he has to press a hand against the side of his face. The world does not coalesce. It spirals.
“Is this what karma is?” he sees himself say with a gleeful snarl on his own lips. “I think I’m a born-again Christian.” He watches himself reach down and pinch a vicious bruise high on his hip, dark hand against pale and purple flesh, and Washington gasps from pain and then the bastard twists and a sob wrenches out of his throat and a sick, foreign pleasure rises in the back of his throat that tastes like blood and why can’t his thoughts line up – he’s remembering a month ago when he couldn’t sleep for over two days because of Arnold’s lawsuit causing an internal meltdown and how lines began blurring together – he’s hoping and dreading for the pain to go on and on and on and he’s disgusted with himself – the lamp throws light directly in the face above him, giving the eyes an extra sharp glint – why is he thinking of any of this?
“Overwhelming, isn’t it?” It’s his face but the tone is wrong, smugness curling around syllables and his expression raw with exposed feeling, no restraint, long breaths pulled in through the mouth like a man who has been trapped in a cage his whole life suddenly dropped in the middle of an open field.
“Hamilton,” he says, panic widening his eyes and quickening his breath before he’s given it permission to.
Hamilton’s smirk grows into a grin.
That’s when Washington knows he is in hell.
**
Washington adapts.
A manic, suicidal edge lingers in the background of his every movement, as he leans his head up instead of down to speak to people, as he learns to tie a tight ponytail because Hamilton won’t let him cut it, as he tries and fails to maintain the same level of brutal efficiency his EA had, as he’s forced to worry about reports and schedules and flight dates and assholes and the well-being of his body now worn by the self-destructive animal named Alexander Hamilton. As the thoughts pile up like shovelfuls of dirt suffocating him alive. Hamilton grabs his throat, his hand huge around his new scrawny pathetic neck, squeezes. Hamilton growls, “You’re so incompetent that you’re going to snap your own neck and bring the company down with you.”
Washington doesn’t know why this happened so he can’t fix it. He spends hours searching fruitlessly through the batshit forums of the internet, and then he wishes and prays despite the fact there’s not one bone of an optimist or a believer in his body. Nothing. He sees himself in the mirror – Hamilton’s face, emotionless, boarded up – he feels emptier every day, the whir of everything pushing him out out out until he’s the shell of instincts for nodding and breathing and typing.
For the first month, he tries so hard he feels himself breaking in half. Hamilton ducks out of his sight and comes back drunk or high from who-knows-what, grins down at Washington’s face. “I’m redecorating,” Hamilton says, gesturing to his temple. “This place is too quiet. It’s nice, but when was the last time you had a party?”
Washington attempts to protest but Hamilton shouts him down. Washington struggles and Hamilton presses him down. Washington tries to say no but his body overrides him and screams yes yes yes YES. Hamilton likes hurting his former body more than he did having Washington hurt him originally. Washington always cries – it’s too much, he begs, not enough, until his despair peaks the moment before orgasm in the clarity of a mental scream – give me a dagger so I can slice my throat let me out let me out LET ME OUT – and then his mind blanks. It’s nothing how he used to be, but this bastardized version of stillness comforts him more than the medication he’s tried or the meditation he’s tried or anything else, anything at all.
He whores himself to Hamilton. At first, to regain control of the situation, to distract Hamilton from self-abuse, to tempt him to do this or that. Then, as hope of his situation fades and exhaustion etches itself into his bones, to chase that rapturous parody of stillness, because nothing is changing, nothing will ever change, this is his life, trapped inside a body that stabs him with the jagged edges Hamilton left behind, when even the pleasure he feels twists his stomach, crushes his pride, destroys his dignity. He thought Hamilton had made him ugly before but he was wrong – that was a bruise, some inconsequential hurt, and this is flesh flayed from skin.
This is hell, and Hamilton is still grinning.