[ she points this out a little ruthlessly, but given that she tongues at her front teeth and finds them loose, it feels better to put him on his heels than to engage the changes to her body in a more meaningful way.
she doesn't really want to think about what's going to happen when this set falls out, like her own teeth had when replaced by these. she lifts one hand from his back, stares at it on the rim of the tub and wonders if she's imagining that the webbing between her fingers is smaller now.
likes he needed arlong further embedded beneath her skin. she closes her eyes, breathes out slow and frustrated. then she reaches into her mouth to wiggle at her tooth. blood spills from the gum. yeah. it's definitely on its way out. she takes her hand from her mouth and starts to pick herself up off of him.
they might have dreamt of being married once, but that level of intimacy had not been the real them, and it certainly had not involved pulling teeth during the afterglow.
her body is a mess of black ooze, though the bathwater has it running down her sides like it's bleeding away except for where it catches in the dips of muscle and bone. ]
[ It's a fair comment, and with it bursts the bubble: they've moved on from peace and holding and back into an easier - more difficult - alignment. The next outward breath is a sigh, bidding the last stretched handful of moments a regretful goodbye as Nami prizes herself up to her feet—
And Stephen's brow furrows as he remembers - or at least resumes an awareness of the implications of - why he'd been in the bath in the first place. She's covered. It trails off of her in sheets and streams of stained water, but there's still too much for comfort. ]
You should stay. [ He realises how that sounds after he's said it. Knows instinctively what kind of reaction he's likely to get now she seems to have crossed the threshold of tolerating closeness. ] I can refill the tub. Give you some privacy if you need it.
[ Redundant as that was even before this, and especially now. But the point is he'll get of her hair if it means she can clean off. ]
[ she whips her head towards him again, briefly bewildered by the offer. but of course it's not a real offer. he was as distant as she was. as unused to relying on others. this is borrowed knowledge, she thinks—or maybe just observational. he doesn't seem to make a secret of his isolation.
it never occurs to her that it's out of respect for her own. ]
I didn't realize we were on watching each other pull out teeth and scales terms.
[ she opts to hook her finger between her lower lip and her gums—not to reveal the bleeding, but to at least indicate that she is worrying at them. the black ooze gets on her gums, too. numbs them, strangely enough, where it had done the opposite to her skin. ]
[ Oh. Attention homes in past his concern about his own impact on her to the places where whatever she was becoming might be starting to come apart. The mouth she draws his attention to, the patches where he remembers scales. Her gills. ]
I'm not squeamish.
[ Firm. A broad enough statement that it might speak for more than just the debriding of the monster from her body. ]
But you need to get that stuff off of you. I don't know what it'll do.
[ That stuff. Him. She needs to get him off of her, as soon as possible. ]
[ she tongues at her tooth from inside. feeling it out. how much will it hurt to just push it out the rest of the way now? how long will it be before her own teeth come back in? ]
It's inside of me.
[ no sense in not putting that plainly. she hasn't stepped out of the tub yet, however. she just hovers over him, as she had when she'd entered. dripping, now. ]
It doesn't hurt. [ she drops her hand from her mouth to instead feel at her ribs, where gils are starting to pucker and close between them. ] It feels ... weird.
[ It's inside of me. Concern hardens in an instant, something in the tension around his eyes, in the way his gaze dips to where else he was just inside her - darts up when she moves to where her fingers trail over her ribs.
[ He ignores the snip, too focused on important information, attention fierce. His focus slips as she answers his question, going far away as he goes inward, connecting easy dots. Almost to himself even as he addresses it vaguely to her: ]
It's interfering with your nervous response. [ Shit. She makes it sound harmless for now, but where does it stop? It's not him, it's the it he was on his way to becoming. He doesn't trust that to not get worse. ] Where?
[ Somewhere in this his hand's found its way back to her calf under the water, wrapped in a loose hold. Comfort she doesn't need. An anchor he maybe does. ]
[ but as she looks down at herself, she has to admit that much of the black liquid has started to wash away into gray trickling. it's not as evident where his hands have been — on her breasts, her thighs, her cunt.
she reaches up with one wet hand, pushes sweaty hair back from her face. the salt and water keep it together a little, half-holding it. ]
Everywhere you touched me. [ her hand moves up to rest at her chest. ] Are we really doing this right now?
[ Everywhere he touched her, also known as most places. God.
But the problem is, he doesn't know what this is. Because he doesn't know what he is, what the creature is when all's said and done, can't anticipate the progress of its infection - if it is an infection. Most importantly, doesn't know the cure.
So instead he sits there, scowling up at her, frustration plain and unfairly targeted— until he pulls his legs abruptly back from between Nami's, clearing her so he can abandon her, standing with sudden determination and stepping out of the bath.
An instant later the water's clearing, the murk of it dissipating until it's clear enough to see the bottom of the small metal tub, warming where it had started to cool. ]
[ nami is stubborn. she stares at him, annoyed. annoyed because she is not more stubborn than she is smart and self-preserving.
she would have to be stupid to step out of the tub. to stomp out like she wants to. to refuse his expertise, his investigation. he's concerned about the unknowns, and that should make her concerned too. she can trust him that far, at least, and it's her life on the line.
she sinks down with some annoyance, folding her arms over her bent knees and looking away from him. she pushes her fingers in her mouth to worry at her teeth—looser, now, and one of them rocks free with a wet sound. she drops it into the wash bin with her. ]
Next time, I'll bring rope. [ her scathing tone is only half sarcasm. ]
[ Lesson learned. He's not doing this again. Not knowingly putting her or anybody else at risk, not holding out until the last possible second in hope of reprieve and smearing the consequences of his actions all over her skin, under her skin, inside.
Nami's pulled a tooth clean out of her mouth. Stephen watches on, made uncertain by distance and ignorance, face set with concern.
But this isn't a time to freeze.
Kneeling, he reaches down into the water, submerges his hand. A quick trip of fingers and what's left of any more stubborn residue starts to slip from her skin, swallowed up into the glass-clear of the bathwater as though it were never there. And still Stephen's frown persists. It's too late for this, he knows it is, but he has to start somewhere. ]
[ what else can he do with that? the magic startles her, straightens her back, has her looking down at the water like it's something foreign. she runs her fingers across the surface, but it stays clear. nothing is revealed. the ink (venom? poison?) is just gone.
she redirects her gaze up at him. ]
What exactly is it you think you can do about it now?
[ A brief display of additional tension - his fingers frozen under the water, a tightening around the jaw— then his hand goes limp, breath pushes out in a huff through his nose, and he doesn't quite meet her eye. ]
I don't know. [ Words he really hates to say when he's operating in his own wheelhouse. And they aren't reassuring either, so he wrangles himself enough to meet her eye. ] I'll figure something out.
I'm gonna need something more substantial if it involves me staying in this tub.
[ it's perhaps a little unsympathetic. it's probably scary for him, realizing the strangeness of his own body. but from nami's side, it seems like inventing problems — whatever outcomes he fears have yet to come to pass, and the stuff is cleaned off her skin for the time being. ]
[ He's frowning, small but certain. But she's right. He doesn't know what's next, and there's nothing more the water can do for her that not staying submerged to slowly prune won't. So he finally settles back, arm limp where it hangs over the side of the tub, a ceding gesture. Body no longer an active barrier.
[ she raises her eyebrows at him, as if challenging the gesture, was that so hard? then she gets to her feet, resting one hand on his shoulder as she steps out, wet feet on the wood floors. she grabs someone's towel, bundled near the foot of their bed. ]
You'll be the first to know if there are any lingering side effects. But hey, maybe you got lucky. Maybe — [ she starts to draw a breath to continue the sentence as she towels herself off, but it hitches. her lungs won't expand.
she blinks at first, like it's just something caught in her throat. puts the towel in her hand to her chest in momentary confusion, then looks at him like she's ready to laugh it off. no laugh comes.
the discomfort starts creeping through into her expression. the silence unnerving, suddenly. ]
[ For a moment he doesn't understand that anything's happening. Then her sentence hasn't carried on for a beat too long and he turns to look, catches her on the edge of humour, and he thinks it's a joke. A trick, a nudge in the ribs for being precious about a little numbness, a little heightened sensitivity.
Then it's been too many moments and the expression on her face isn't giving way to the laughter it implied and he moves almost before he can think, snatches her up under the knees and around the shoulders, pulls her to him for as long as it takes to turn on his heel and move the two steps back to the bath, lower her back in just carefully enough to not have technically dropped her. Half crunched over the edge of the tub himself, arms still around her, making sure she's submerged.
The water. The gills. That's all he can think of, all he can hope. If it isn't them, if it's him, if he's impeded the neural relay to the respiratory system— ]
[ she is too startled to stop him, fight him — and what would she do? she doesn't know any better than he does how to make herself breathe again. but her whole chest shudders with the effort, sternum heaving without any matched effort from her lungs.
the gills have largely closed, by now. little cuts in her skin that are not longer real flaps, that don't respond in any way to the water around her ribs. when she realizes this, she reaches up for him, grabs at his shoulders, pawing at him like holding him close will do something for the fact that she still can't draw air into her chest.
panic hits her. eyes wide, she searches him. when she parts her lips to try to say something, she just gapes like a carp. there's no sound. no air to pass in or out of paralyzed lungs. whatever black ooze had left her skin tingling, alternately numb and hypersensitive, it had seeped into her gils and run through her respiratory system, settling inside her chest as her detransformation settled in.
she can't die here. in that moment, she's not thinking about the people who call it impermanent or the rituals or the duchess. she's thinking only of nojiko and coco village and the people counting on her. the people who she'll have abandoned if she can't figure out how to just fucking breathe. ]
(cw: magically approximated medical ventilation, blood)
[ Ventilate, he needs to ventilate, but how is he supposed to ventilate her in this fucking place? There's no time for the clinic, for help, he has to fix this. Now.
Thoughts turn to magic, grasp for it, search for the simplest solution. He has his lungs, but all they have to offer is the stuff she doesn't need.
So change that. Change it.
He pulls his arms out from underneath her, behind her, frees them up so one can grip her firmly by the jaw, thumb holding open her gaping mouth. The other he holds out of the way, ready to move fingers through the theft of carbon right out of their breath as he passes it back and forth between them. He worries at his already tattered lip to target his focus as he recalls the right pattern of spellwork, anxious to be specific, no margin left for error.
Blood's already beading as he leans down, presses his mouth over hers, and empties his lungs. ]
[ his breath forces her lungs open. her eyes flutter with it, suddenly awake just as the edges of her vision start to swim. she holds tighter to him. wonders if this is how luffy felt, when arlong had left him to drown in the east blue. wonders if he'd survived because she had pushed arlong to leave, to let the ocean do its work.
wonders if this is punishment, maybe, before she remembers she doesn't believe in that kind of thing.
the oxygen in her lungs helps her blood flow, thinning out the toxin, carrying fresh blood back into her lungs that helps them start to stir on their own, so that she can gasp against his mouth, sucking in breath for herself finally, hands shaking as she grabs a fistful of his hair to steady herself.
breaks what can't be called a kiss, his blood smeared again over her mouth, to press her forehead against his, to remember what it feels like for her lungs to fill themselves for a change. she realizes she's shaking and yanks her hands back from him, retreating as if she can hide the weakness when he'd just had to breathe her back to life in a haze of orange.
she coughs, choking down too much air at once, lungs taking a second to remember how it's done. ]
[ For a few frantic seconds he doesn't know if it's going to work. Spends more effort keeping his breath a steady, easy inhale-exhale than he does manipulating the chemistry of the air passing between them, barely avoiding killing her with his panic alone.
Then her hand's a fist in his hair, and breath that isn't his staggers into her lungs, and as she breaks them apart just to press them back together he gulps out an small sob of relief, spell hand lowering to clasp her by the back of the neck, hold her there and let his breath turn to panting as she regains her own.
It doesn't last. She pulls apart from him almost violently, leaves him staring at her as she chokes on the ability to breath. He wills himself not to coddle when she's just claimed space, works on bringing his own lungs back under control - but doesn't stop watching her like a hawk, attention fierce and frightened. Ready at a moment's notice for the cure not to hold. ]
[ she wants to cling to him. she wants space. mostly, she wants a clear head and a glass of whiskey. her head is spinning, a sudden alertness coming with the renewed oxygenation of her blood.
her grip on his hair loosens. moves to his chest instead, steadying herself on the matted patch of salt-and-pepper hair that settles in the dip of soft muscle. tension unspools from her shoulders and neck, from her jaw. she breathes on her own again.
blinking, sniffing, composing herself, she looks at him with an almost sulking expression to reiterate: ] Rope.
[ She shifts, and when her hand finds his chest he expects her to shove. She doesn't. Rope. ]
Yeah.
[ Not a promise, just acknowledgement. Hurt, near-death. What he's done and his intention not to do it again. To take precautions of one nature or another. To take care.
He deserves worse than this from her. But for as long as she's not fleeing from him, he's going to take comfort in the closeness, in the fact of her survival. Careful not to push his luck too far, he moves only to lift a hand to where hers braces against him, swipe cautiously along her thumb with his own. ]
[ her hand slips out from under his, the intimacy of that little gesture too much to bear when she has already had her life in his hands. when she has already admitted to urges that she wants to suppress, that her wanting for him is distinct, somehow, from what she could get at the brothel. ]
Cost of doing business. [ here, at least. she remembers how kovacs had gripped her chin to get a look at the teeth that shredded him. sees blood on stephen's mouth, now, too. he isn't the only one who'd become something violent. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(cw: teeth/tooth loss gore)
[ she points this out a little ruthlessly, but given that she tongues at her front teeth and finds them loose, it feels better to put him on his heels than to engage the changes to her body in a more meaningful way.
she doesn't really want to think about what's going to happen when this set falls out, like her own teeth had when replaced by these. she lifts one hand from his back, stares at it on the rim of the tub and wonders if she's imagining that the webbing between her fingers is smaller now.
likes he needed arlong further embedded beneath her skin. she closes her eyes, breathes out slow and frustrated. then she reaches into her mouth to wiggle at her tooth. blood spills from the gum. yeah. it's definitely on its way out. she takes her hand from her mouth and starts to pick herself up off of him.
they might have dreamt of being married once, but that level of intimacy had not been the real them, and it certainly had not involved pulling teeth during the afterglow.
her body is a mess of black ooze, though the bathwater has it running down her sides like it's bleeding away except for where it catches in the dips of muscle and bone. ]
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And Stephen's brow furrows as he remembers - or at least resumes an awareness of the implications of - why he'd been in the bath in the first place. She's covered. It trails off of her in sheets and streams of stained water, but there's still too much for comfort. ]
You should stay. [ He realises how that sounds after he's said it. Knows instinctively what kind of reaction he's likely to get now she seems to have crossed the threshold of tolerating closeness. ] I can refill the tub. Give you some privacy if you need it.
[ Redundant as that was even before this, and especially now. But the point is he'll get of her hair if it means she can clean off. ]
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it never occurs to her that it's out of respect for her own. ]
I didn't realize we were on watching each other pull out teeth and scales terms.
[ she opts to hook her finger between her lower lip and her gums—not to reveal the bleeding, but to at least indicate that she is worrying at them. the black ooze gets on her gums, too. numbs them, strangely enough, where it had done the opposite to her skin. ]
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I'm not squeamish.
[ Firm. A broad enough statement that it might speak for more than just the debriding of the monster from her body. ]
But you need to get that stuff off of you. I don't know what it'll do.
[ That stuff. Him. She needs to get him off of her, as soon as possible. ]
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[ she tongues at her tooth from inside. feeling it out. how much will it hurt to just push it out the rest of the way now? how long will it be before her own teeth come back in? ]
It's inside of me.
[ no sense in not putting that plainly. she hasn't stepped out of the tub yet, however. she just hovers over him, as she had when she'd entered. dripping, now. ]
It doesn't hurt. [ she drops her hand from her mouth to instead feel at her ribs, where gils are starting to pucker and close between them. ] It feels ... weird.
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Shit. The water. What was he thinking? ]
Weird how?
[ Tension in his voice too. ]
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[ she huffs, glancing away. she doesn't do this. she does slipping out quietly and avoiding conversation.
and now she fucked her roommate. ]
It's messing with my senses. [ she's just going to stand here, naked, dripping water and explaining. ] Numbing. Hypersensitivity. Back and forth.
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It's interfering with your nervous response. [ Shit. She makes it sound harmless for now, but where does it stop? It's not him, it's the it he was on his way to becoming. He doesn't trust that to not get worse. ] Where?
[ Somewhere in this his hand's found its way back to her calf under the water, wrapped in a loose hold. Comfort she doesn't need. An anchor he maybe does. ]
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[ but as she looks down at herself, she has to admit that much of the black liquid has started to wash away into gray trickling. it's not as evident where his hands have been — on her breasts, her thighs, her cunt.
she reaches up with one wet hand, pushes sweaty hair back from her face. the salt and water keep it together a little, half-holding it. ]
Everywhere you touched me. [ her hand moves up to rest at her chest. ] Are we really doing this right now?
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[ Everywhere he touched her, also known as most places. God.
But the problem is, he doesn't know what this is. Because he doesn't know what he is, what the creature is when all's said and done, can't anticipate the progress of its infection - if it is an infection. Most importantly, doesn't know the cure.
So instead he sits there, scowling up at her, frustration plain and unfairly targeted— until he pulls his legs abruptly back from between Nami's, clearing her so he can abandon her, standing with sudden determination and stepping out of the bath.
An instant later the water's clearing, the murk of it dissipating until it's clear enough to see the bottom of the small metal tub, warming where it had started to cool. ]
Sit down.
(cw: more tooth gore)
she would have to be stupid to step out of the tub. to stomp out like she wants to. to refuse his expertise, his investigation. he's concerned about the unknowns, and that should make her concerned too. she can trust him that far, at least, and it's her life on the line.
she sinks down with some annoyance, folding her arms over her bent knees and looking away from him. she pushes her fingers in her mouth to worry at her teeth—looser, now, and one of them rocks free with a wet sound. she drops it into the wash bin with her. ]
Next time, I'll bring rope. [ her scathing tone is only half sarcasm. ]
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[ Lesson learned. He's not doing this again. Not knowingly putting her or anybody else at risk, not holding out until the last possible second in hope of reprieve and smearing the consequences of his actions all over her skin, under her skin, inside.
Nami's pulled a tooth clean out of her mouth. Stephen watches on, made uncertain by distance and ignorance, face set with concern.
But this isn't a time to freeze.
Kneeling, he reaches down into the water, submerges his hand. A quick trip of fingers and what's left of any more stubborn residue starts to slip from her skin, swallowed up into the glass-clear of the bathwater as though it were never there. And still Stephen's frown persists. It's too late for this, he knows it is, but he has to start somewhere. ]
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she redirects her gaze up at him. ]
What exactly is it you think you can do about it now?
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I don't know. [ Words he really hates to say when he's operating in his own wheelhouse. And they aren't reassuring either, so he wrangles himself enough to meet her eye. ] I'll figure something out.
[ For her sake or his? ]
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[ it's perhaps a little unsympathetic. it's probably scary for him, realizing the strangeness of his own body. but from nami's side, it seems like inventing problems — whatever outcomes he fears have yet to come to pass, and the stuff is cleaned off her skin for the time being. ]
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She wins. She's free to get out. ]
(cw: suffocation :) )
You'll be the first to know if there are any lingering side effects. But hey, maybe you got lucky. Maybe — [ she starts to draw a breath to continue the sentence as she towels herself off, but it hitches. her lungs won't expand.
she blinks at first, like it's just something caught in her throat. puts the towel in her hand to her chest in momentary confusion, then looks at him like she's ready to laugh it off. no laugh comes.
the discomfort starts creeping through into her expression. the silence unnerving, suddenly. ]
yowls
Then it's been too many moments and the expression on her face isn't giving way to the laughter it implied and he moves almost before he can think, snatches her up under the knees and around the shoulders, pulls her to him for as long as it takes to turn on his heel and move the two steps back to the bath, lower her back in just carefully enough to not have technically dropped her. Half crunched over the edge of the tub himself, arms still around her, making sure she's submerged.
The water. The gills. That's all he can think of, all he can hope. If it isn't them, if it's him, if he's impeded the neural relay to the respiratory system— ]
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the gills have largely closed, by now. little cuts in her skin that are not longer real flaps, that don't respond in any way to the water around her ribs. when she realizes this, she reaches up for him, grabs at his shoulders, pawing at him like holding him close will do something for the fact that she still can't draw air into her chest.
panic hits her. eyes wide, she searches him. when she parts her lips to try to say something, she just gapes like a carp. there's no sound. no air to pass in or out of paralyzed lungs. whatever black ooze had left her skin tingling, alternately numb and hypersensitive, it had seeped into her gils and run through her respiratory system, settling inside her chest as her detransformation settled in.
she can't die here. in that moment, she's not thinking about the people who call it impermanent or the rituals or the duchess. she's thinking only of nojiko and coco village and the people counting on her. the people who she'll have abandoned if she can't figure out how to just fucking breathe. ]
(cw: magically approximated medical ventilation, blood)
[ Ventilate, he needs to ventilate, but how is he supposed to ventilate her in this fucking place? There's no time for the clinic, for help, he has to fix this. Now.
Thoughts turn to magic, grasp for it, search for the simplest solution. He has his lungs, but all they have to offer is the stuff she doesn't need.
So change that. Change it.
He pulls his arms out from underneath her, behind her, frees them up so one can grip her firmly by the jaw, thumb holding open her gaping mouth. The other he holds out of the way, ready to move fingers through the theft of carbon right out of their breath as he passes it back and forth between them. He worries at his already tattered lip to target his focus as he recalls the right pattern of spellwork, anxious to be specific, no margin left for error.
Blood's already beading as he leans down, presses his mouth over hers, and empties his lungs. ]
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wonders if this is punishment, maybe, before she remembers she doesn't believe in that kind of thing.
the oxygen in her lungs helps her blood flow, thinning out the toxin, carrying fresh blood back into her lungs that helps them start to stir on their own, so that she can gasp against his mouth, sucking in breath for herself finally, hands shaking as she grabs a fistful of his hair to steady herself.
breaks what can't be called a kiss, his blood smeared again over her mouth, to press her forehead against his, to remember what it feels like for her lungs to fill themselves for a change. she realizes she's shaking and yanks her hands back from him, retreating as if she can hide the weakness when he'd just had to breathe her back to life in a haze of orange.
she coughs, choking down too much air at once, lungs taking a second to remember how it's done. ]
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Then her hand's a fist in his hair, and breath that isn't his staggers into her lungs, and as she breaks them apart just to press them back together he gulps out an small sob of relief, spell hand lowering to clasp her by the back of the neck, hold her there and let his breath turn to panting as she regains her own.
It doesn't last. She pulls apart from him almost violently, leaves him staring at her as she chokes on the ability to breath. He wills himself not to coddle when she's just claimed space, works on bringing his own lungs back under control - but doesn't stop watching her like a hawk, attention fierce and frightened. Ready at a moment's notice for the cure not to hold. ]
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her grip on his hair loosens. moves to his chest instead, steadying herself on the matted patch of salt-and-pepper hair that settles in the dip of soft muscle. tension unspools from her shoulders and neck, from her jaw. she breathes on her own again.
blinking, sniffing, composing herself, she looks at him with an almost sulking expression to reiterate: ] Rope.
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Yeah.
[ Not a promise, just acknowledgement. Hurt, near-death. What he's done and his intention not to do it again. To take precautions of one nature or another. To take care.
He deserves worse than this from her. But for as long as she's not fleeing from him, he's going to take comfort in the closeness, in the fact of her survival. Careful not to push his luck too far, he moves only to lift a hand to where hers braces against him, swipe cautiously along her thumb with his own. ]
I'm sorry.
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Cost of doing business. [ here, at least. she remembers how kovacs had gripped her chin to get a look at the teeth that shredded him. sees blood on stephen's mouth, now, too. he isn't the only one who'd become something violent. ]
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(cw: more teeth gore)
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(cw: erectile dysfunction jokes, but also still further teeth gore...)
(cw: references to eye gore... and teeth gore...)
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