"Easy- easy. This isn't what's happening anymore. We got through this, remember? Shook that monkey off your back?" He feels like maybe, just maybe, he's getting through to Locus. That this is just so goddamn unexpected that it's startling him into stillness, if not silence. Of course then the snarl and the bared teeth kick in and Delta offers a helpful list of possible unlikely scenarios.

Shit that might stall Locus long enough for him to book it to the machine and blow it up again.

One of them is the most goddamn looney toons inane bullshit he has ever seen and part of him wants to blame Theta for his taste in media when he knows it's the sheer impossibility of the physics that has him even vaguely interested- but Delta picking up on it? Jesus christ.

Still. No other better options- he peels off his helmet and hooks it into the maglock at his hip, staring up into Locus' bestial face, unafraid. (Actually terrified but sure, unafraid sounds better). He takes that ragged armor plated jaw in his hands, leans up and-

Presses his lips to that bloodslick forehead.

Please don't let him tear my throat out, please don't let him tear my throat out-

God it's gross and slick and the smell- he has to fight down the urge to gag or scream or cry and just. Rocks back on his heels. "I got this. Let me."