[ 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. ]
[ It stings. He attributes that to ego and casts it aside, commits to not looking any deeper. ]
I'll find you a new towel.
[ The one she had was caught in the crossfire, dropped half in the tub. He doesn't need to look anywhere for anything, could summon hers from their room in a second, but they both need a moment and he has no intention of leaving her entirely alone now. He sits back on his heels, stands, goes to rummage through somebody else's belongings. Subtly warming the air he walks through as he goes, sparing himself the need to pluck another towel from the air and give away the deceit. ]
[ she glances at him over her shoulder, a skittish thing that doesn't want to admit to interest. then she rubs at her upper arms, putting some warmth back into them. it's unnecessary, really. he'd warmed the bathwater when he'd cleaned it. a useful trick.
she could make conversation. the curiosity is there—about his magic and how he'd come by it, for instance. but she doesn't want to make this any more personal than it already is. the risk feels unwarranted. so she just sits, trying to discern whose room he had found himself in and why by scrutinizing the various trappings of personal effects that she can see from the tub. ]
[ The room could be anyone's: all he'd been looking for was seclusion, finding the tub a bonus he couldn't pass up. Now the floor's covered in ooze and dark water, and if he wasn't planning to before he's most certainly going to have to see to that now before he leaves.
But first things first - another towel. He finds one hanging from a wardrobe hook, holds it hanging tactfully in front of him to spare them both his nudity as he crosses back to her, hands it over. ]
[ she reaches one hand across her middle to rub at her ribs. the gills are gone. some of the scales flake away under her fingers. her teeth are looser at the front when her tongue presses against them. ]
I think my body's going back to normal. [ instead of tonguing her loose teeth, she feels for the hollow where she'd already pulled one. a new tooth has halfway emerged already. ] No more sawtooth.
[ except for the one that is permanently tattooed on her shoulder, that is. ]
[ she glances at him long enough to affirm that, then takes a deep breath and ducks her chin. it hides her relief, but only barely, only because he's standing and she's not.
she reaches up with her hand, rubs at her neck, taking a deep breath (this feels like a luxury, now) and soldiering past the awkwardness. ] I've got teeth to pull. Like at least ten more. So.
And I can't leave until I've cleaned every speck of slime from this room. It's probably leaking through the floorboards as we speak.
[ A wry twist to his expression here, easing through the discomfort of emergency into whatever space it is they're going to have to inhabit now. They still share a room. They're going to have to get used to one another in new (old) context.
For now though, Stephen ruins the very brief and poorly constructed illusion of normalcy with a quick shift of his hand and the apparition of a loose pair of linen pants onto his lower half. ]
I can drop back to the room if you want. I'll be here a while.
(cw: erectile dysfunction jokes, but also still further teeth gore...)
But if your dick can't get hard next time because you keep thinking about what the inside of my gums look like when they're bleeding, don't say I didn't warn you.
[ that's as far as she'll go with being precious about it. the mystique is gone. and honestly, it's fine. the greater discomfort is how married it all feels. the practicality of it all. like inspecting each other's moles.
but she goes about her business, removing the loose monster-teeth with only mild grimacing and a predictable amount of blood that makes her nauseous more from the taste and the bits she can't help but swallow than any squeamishness. ]
I've pulled the eyeball out of a giant cyclops octopoid after impaling it with a streetlamp. I think I can survive your empty tooth holes.
[ He's seen and done worse, and can still get it up! But he gives her the illusion of privacy as he turns to get on with his own business, waves of his hand peeling tacky black smears from off floors and furniture.
The bath overflow he deals with the traditional way, conjures a heap of rags from about the boarding house and dumps them on the ground to soak up whatever's still soakable as he listens to the squelch, drip and pop of teeth being steadily evicted from Nami's mouth. ]
[ when the task is done, she splashes water into her mouth to rinse away some of the blood. her own teeth are growing in more steadily, and with the others gone, it's undeniable that the ache in her head and discomfort in her jaw is the speed with which they're pushing in.
still. she reaches down and plucks one of the shark-like teeth from the bottom of the tub, holds it up to the light. it doesn't look like her tooth. then again, no tooth held out of your mouth really looks like your own. she turns it, though, considering its strange shape, the unfamiliarity.
her tongue works at the half-emerged human teeth pushing back to fill the empty spots. ]
What do you do with lost teeth? [ she looks over at him. her teeth have grown in enough already that her speech lacks the strangeness of a lisp past empty gums. ]
Put them under your pillow. [ Without missing a beat, spoken with total and complete sincerity. Then a pause, doubling back, like another thought's just caught him. A small dip between the brows, a frown. ] Though the tooth fairy might not visit here.
[ He glances at the tooth in her hand from where he's busily shoving the bundle of rags around underfoot beside the tub, reaches out a hand for it. Asking to see. ]
[ He accepts the tooth, holding it up between two fingers against dim light. There's a question that's been growing, kept quiet for how fraught the last half hour's been, how tenuous their peace is now. But the tooth amplifies it. Burrows it into his thoughts like - well, like something stuck between his teeth.
It still isn't the time. He offers the tooth back. ]
It's a shame. These would probably fetch a good exchange rate.
All yours. [ she holds up her hands to refuse it. ] Keep it as a souvenir. Or toss it. Whatever.
[ she rises from the basin of the tub, tinted just barely pink by her own blood. she reaches out to take the towel from him, then. wraps it around herself before she steps out, leaving wet footprints on the wood floors. ]
[ Oh. The tooth goes dropped his palm, fingers wrapping it inside as he relinquishes the towel to her, watches as she drips water all over the just-wiped floor.
The huff is indulgent in spite of himself. As she walks, he kicks the rag bundle over her wet footsteps, letting it seep them up behind her.
(With her out of the water again, he follows her movements as subtly as he can. No risks this time. Not expecting any further disaster, but not about to be caught unprepared for one either.) ]
[ she wrinkles her nose at him in a way that feels familiar. cleaning up after her feels paternalistic in a way that can't help but be reminiscent of their marriage. the marriage they'd never had.
all the same, she steps onto the rags. a little arch of her eyebrows that makes the gesture a spiteful concession rather than cooperation. ]
[ Breezy nod to her concession, smirk poorly disguised. Still, with her no longer spreading wet over the floors, he does her the service of skirting around the room plucking up her discarded clothing items, returning as human clothes horse with them draped over his arm for the taking when she's ready. ]
[ she takes the clothes from him with her own thinly veiled smirk. it's easier to mock than it would be to offer even snide gratitude for his genuine gesture. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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. ]
no subject
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.
no subject
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. ]
no subject
I'll find you a new towel.
[ The one she had was caught in the crossfire, dropped half in the tub. He doesn't need to look anywhere for anything, could summon hers from their room in a second, but they both need a moment and he has no intention of leaving her entirely alone now. He sits back on his heels, stands, goes to rummage through somebody else's belongings. Subtly warming the air he walks through as he goes, sparing himself the need to pluck another towel from the air and give away the deceit. ]
no subject
she could make conversation. the curiosity is there—about his magic and how he'd come by it, for instance. but she doesn't want to make this any more personal than it already is. the risk feels unwarranted. so she just sits, trying to discern whose room he had found himself in and why by scrutinizing the various trappings of personal effects that she can see from the tub. ]
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But first things first - another towel. He finds one hanging from a wardrobe hook, holds it hanging tactfully in front of him to spare them both his nudity as he crosses back to her, hands it over. ]
How do you feel?
(cw: more teeth gore)
[ she reaches one hand across her middle to rub at her ribs. the gills are gone. some of the scales flake away under her fingers. her teeth are looser at the front when her tongue presses against them. ]
I think my body's going back to normal. [ instead of tonguing her loose teeth, she feels for the hollow where she'd already pulled one. a new tooth has halfway emerged already. ] No more sawtooth.
[ except for the one that is permanently tattooed on her shoulder, that is. ]
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[ Good. That's good. He spends a moment watching her, tracking from her face down to the water and back again. But she is okay. For now. Breathing.
A lift of one hand finally, waggling clean fingers. ] No more ooze. So, thanks.
no subject
[ she glances at him long enough to affirm that, then takes a deep breath and ducks her chin. it hides her relief, but only barely, only because he's standing and she's not.
she reaches up with her hand, rubs at her neck, taking a deep breath (this feels like a luxury, now) and soldiering past the awkwardness. ] I've got teeth to pull. Like at least ten more. So.
no subject
[ A wry twist to his expression here, easing through the discomfort of emergency into whatever space it is they're going to have to inhabit now. They still share a room. They're going to have to get used to one another in new (old) context.
For now though, Stephen ruins the very brief and poorly constructed illusion of normalcy with a quick shift of his hand and the apparition of a loose pair of linen pants onto his lower half. ]
I can drop back to the room if you want. I'll be here a while.
(cw: erectile dysfunction jokes, but also still further teeth gore...)
[ she shrugs. ]
But if your dick can't get hard next time because you keep thinking about what the inside of my gums look like when they're bleeding, don't say I didn't warn you.
[ that's as far as she'll go with being precious about it. the mystique is gone. and honestly, it's fine. the greater discomfort is how married it all feels. the practicality of it all. like inspecting each other's moles.
but she goes about her business, removing the loose monster-teeth with only mild grimacing and a predictable amount of blood that makes her nauseous more from the taste and the bits she can't help but swallow than any squeamishness. ]
(cw: references to eye gore... and teeth gore...)
[ He's seen and done worse, and can still get it up! But he gives her the illusion of privacy as he turns to get on with his own business, waves of his hand peeling tacky black smears from off floors and furniture.
The bath overflow he deals with the traditional way, conjures a heap of rags from about the boarding house and dumps them on the ground to soak up whatever's still soakable as he listens to the squelch, drip and pop of teeth being steadily evicted from Nami's mouth. ]
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still. she reaches down and plucks one of the shark-like teeth from the bottom of the tub, holds it up to the light. it doesn't look like her tooth. then again, no tooth held out of your mouth really looks like your own. she turns it, though, considering its strange shape, the unfamiliarity.
her tongue works at the half-emerged human teeth pushing back to fill the empty spots. ]
What do you do with lost teeth? [ she looks over at him. her teeth have grown in enough already that her speech lacks the strangeness of a lisp past empty gums. ]
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[ He glances at the tooth in her hand from where he's busily shoving the bundle of rags around underfoot beside the tub, reaches out a hand for it. Asking to see. ]
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[ she hands the tooth up to him, an offering for inspection. it's sharp at a point and serrated around the edges like the teeth of a saw. ]
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[ He accepts the tooth, holding it up between two fingers against dim light. There's a question that's been growing, kept quiet for how fraught the last half hour's been, how tenuous their peace is now. But the tooth amplifies it. Burrows it into his thoughts like - well, like something stuck between his teeth.
It still isn't the time. He offers the tooth back. ]
It's a shame. These would probably fetch a good exchange rate.
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[ she rises from the basin of the tub, tinted just barely pink by her own blood. she reaches out to take the towel from him, then. wraps it around herself before she steps out, leaving wet footprints on the wood floors. ]
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The huff is indulgent in spite of himself. As she walks, he kicks the rag bundle over her wet footsteps, letting it seep them up behind her.
(With her out of the water again, he follows her movements as subtly as he can. No risks this time. Not expecting any further disaster, but not about to be caught unprepared for one either.) ]
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all the same, she steps onto the rags. a little arch of her eyebrows that makes the gesture a spiteful concession rather than cooperation. ]
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[ Breezy nod to her concession, smirk poorly disguised. Still, with her no longer spreading wet over the floors, he does her the service of skirting around the room plucking up her discarded clothing items, returning as human clothes horse with them draped over his arm for the taking when she's ready. ]
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[ she takes the clothes from him with her own thinly veiled smirk. it's easier to mock than it would be to offer even snide gratitude for his genuine gesture. ]
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