IC INBOX

[klepto]

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Nami, 24

ABOUT_YOU

CODE BY

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[klepto]

So much for fine.

[ she's not rushing towards anything, that's for sure. not after that attitude. ]

[rehandle]

I know [ Fuck. ] I know

Nami

[klepto]

I was told in no uncertain terms not to worry.

cw: body horror (ongoing potential for it throughout)

[rehandle]

Then don't worry.

[ Something paws at his abdominal wall. Gentle, touch like a purr. She'll be able to hear him this time. ]

Please.

[klepto]

[ she sighs. this comes through, too. as does her voice. ]

What kind of shape are you in?

[rehandle]

Bad.

[ Honest, immediate, but - there's a more thorough assessment to be made. He's standing on a knife tip, balancing. ]

Okay. I don't know for how long. Not very.

[klepto]

Helpful.

[ by which she means not at all. it's self-contradictory and muddled and he's clearly not-okay enough to struggle to articulate it. she feels a little better about the itching of scales. ]

Where are you?

[rehandle]

Boarding house. Few doors down the hall.

[ From theirs, in somebody else's metal tub, taking advantage of the empty room to wash sweat, sex and the perpetual ooze from his body. The water's already black with it. At least this way he can't see if his skin's moving. ]

I can come back.

[ If she's there. If she'll let him in. ]

[klepto]

Are you going to ooze on our floor?

[rehandle]

Yes.

I can clean it up after.

[klepto]

I'll come to you.

[ less muss less fuss. she heads down that way, rubbing at the flaking skin revealing some of her scales. the tattoo on her shoulder is peeling away, a sawtooth design giving way to real fish-like scales.

she knocks at the only fully closed door. ]

[rehandle]

[ The knock, a nod to civility as everything else warps obscenely around and inside them, has the ridiculous effect of injecting him with a sudden shock of nerves.

A lift of his fingers swings the door open to put paid to that, and when she steps inside he's reminded immediately that he isn't the only person her offer might have saved the trouble of things getting this far. He's been selfish.

What a surprise. ]

—Sorry.

[ Far enough gone to not even withhold an apology. It must be bad. ]

[klepto]

Which part?

[ she steps inside, despite the question. shuts the door firmly behind her. it is loud enough to send a message. ]

[rehandle]

[ Yeah. It's a fair question, fair punctuation. His hand drops back into the tub as he swallows down discomfort, fingers trailing in dark waters. ]

I thought I knew better.

[ Explanation, not answer. And anyway - he was wrong. ]

[klepto]

What else did you try?

[ conversational. like he's not slick with ink all the way up to his elbows, like he's not submerged in a metal tub in the center of the room, like they are discussing a leaky pipe.

except that she walks around towards the tub, starts stripping off her shirt. ]

[rehandle]

Magic. Warding, then decompression. [ Throwing magic around in the woods. And when that did nothing - ] People.

[ People. He doesn't elaborate, watching her, attention fixed and following, relief stirring as she goes for her shirt. ]

[klepto]

People.

[ the shirt drops to the ground. then, after it, the short-cropped bodice that the people here used in place of bras. she steps on the heel of one shoe to lift out of it. all very perfunctory. the coming home kind of undressing that he has and hasn't seen before, that she has and hasn't done before in front of him. ]

Yet you didn't call me until now. [ it's not hard to guess why. the pain of asking for help was made worse by having refused the offer. but that's precisely why she wants to hear him say it. if asking for help after he'd refused her hurt, it still wasn't an equal to the sting of rejection that had come with knowing that she, too, would be on her own with the growing sprawl of scales that claws its way up over her deltoid and towards her neck, shining gold. ] Where'd you start? The brothel?

[ it had been her strategy, anyway. ]

[rehandle]

[ There's a thinly veiled hunger in the watching, waiting for skin he knows (doesn't know), a body he's missed (has never known.) Only the deferential set of his expression can't last as he gets a taste of what he wants and finds it not as he remembers. His brow furrows, inky water shifting as he sits up a little straighter, instinct to reach for her quelled only by the palpable tension carried in her idle gait, her statement, the line of her questioning.

If you let this go on much longer, you will do harm.

Too late a warning when it had landed. Here's some evidence of harm already done. Speaking of... ]

The clinic.

[ Not that he'd been looking for the kind of help he'd received. And not that somebody else offered help and this time I accepted is going to do him any good in this specific context, even though it's almost every story he has. ]

The brothel later.

[klepto]

[ the opposite of her trajectory, then. she'd started at the brothel, ended up in the clinic, and only then had he called. it hasn't made a difference. the scales have stopped climbing, but they haven't gone away. the skin around those that started is still sloughing off. one of her eyes is still strangely uncomfortable with the half-slimy feeling of a second lid.

she unbuttons the back of her skirt and lets it drop down fall. bends to tug down her underwear, too. reveals a short tangle of orange hair between her thighs and long legs with tan lines from her shorts, the same ones that she'd had in the dream in the void. the same ones that webbed around her neckline. ]

What makes you think this will help when that didn't? [ she approaches the tub. ]

[rehandle]

[ He doesn't want to answer, the admission everything he'd like never to unpack, and he expects she won't like what she hears. But as she bares herself in full and he recognises close to every inch of her, familiarity coiling around the want and making it heady, more consuming the closer she comes, the danger of saying it out loud gains an allure all its own. ]

You mean something.

[ To him. And he craves her for it. ]

[klepto]

You don't know me.

[ she stands at the foot of the tub. rests her hands on the rim of it, leans over to narrow her gaze on him.

and what if it does help? does that change things? the possibility frightens her. nothing has slaked her hunger so far, not in the way that people talk about anyway. but he had been the one that she'd reached out to. ]

[rehandle]

No. I don't.

[ And it doesn't matter. Some version of him had known whatever part of her had found a home in his dream of another life. It's enough to have it take all of his not inconsiderable will just to keep himself from pressing forward, at risk of overstepping at the critical moment.

Instead he meets her gaze and holds it, intent. Oddly calm now, the thing he's waiting to become gone still with anticipation. ]

What difference does that make?

[klepto]

[ this close, the stripes of the gills on her ribs are visible. lightly pink in the shadows of bone. every little piece of her just a shade off of human. she's becoming one of them. not just arlong's crew, but a fishman proper.

she hates the reminder. hates catching glimpses of her reflection and realizing that she looks like she belongs amongst them. ]

It's not always good. To have someone that means something to you.

[ she drops his gaze in that moment. swallows the rest of the thought. chokes the sentiment down. then she climbs into the tub with him, carefully placing her feet on either side of his legs. the water, dark with ink and blackening ooze, sloshes around them. some spills out to the floor.

they've not done this before. sharing baths, showers. fitting their bodies around one another in various cramped spaces. ]

[rehandle]

I know.

[ All agreement today, apparently. But he does know. He's spent enough years avoiding connection to understand the instinct even if he doesn't know its cause for her.

And here, as she takes her first steps into the liquid mire he's made of the bathtub, his good behaviour finally slips. Arms dip into the water to coil around her legs, disrupting it all the more as he draws himself toward her and her toward him if she'll let him, keeping just enough of a hold of himself to press his face against her thigh and breathe deep. ]

[klepto]

[ his hands are slick. not wet like from bathwater. slippery. the inky ooze on him is viscous, it clings. she lets him draw her closer anyway, even though it'd be simple to slip free of that grip, even though it should repulse her.

she drops her hand to his hair, lets too-sharp nails curl against his scalp. she'd planned to settle down with him, straddle him, make room for her knees around his hips and make this quick and perfunctory and move on with her life.

this is better. ]

Convince me. [ she offers, tentative. ] Do you remember how I liked it?