Paul Atreides (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terriblepurpose) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2023-01-07 10:45 pm
terriblepurpose) wrote in deercountry2023-01-07 10:45 pm
She's having a bad dream.
(We're together. We'll go together.)
She's been having a lot of bad dreams, these gritty, too-long days. She tosses inside damp, sticking sheets, peeling them off with her nails, wriggling like a wet new thing breaching its chrysalis.
(Take John alive. He's worth more to you alive.)
She mewls in her sleep, arching her back like a bow. The sheets slough off her calves, her ankles. They sting coming off, so stuck to her that they feel like a second skin. She ratchets hard with habitual tension, the overclocked engine of her that started chewing through nightguards at fifteen and never stopped, and it's terrible, terrible, unendurable.
She does not have to endure it. Something percussive happens to her chest, to her head, and she sits bolt upright with damp sheets still clinging to her, panting like a dog run out under the sun.
They're not sheets. She doesn't scream. She does vomit.
The next few minutes are unmentionable. She shoves through them impatient with terror, shouldering aside her distress in favour of action. She's always had a knack for that. It's with as much of the blood as she could scrape off on old, dark towels removed and her tacky hair pulled back that she descends the ladder from the attic on her bare feet, draped in a nightshirt that goes down to her knees.
She pads down the hall with all the silence sneaking out as a teenager could teach her, which is painfully loud to her ears, and she passes by the closed doors without opening them. It's the door that's open a crack she pauses at, peering inside to make out a blurry silhouette tangled in his own sheets - cotton ones.
She pushes open the door very carefully. She makes her way closer, to confirm her suspicions, and stares down at the sleeping body in the bed contemplatively for nearly fifteen seconds. She picks up the alarm clock from the side table and raises it up over her head.
She's got a good arm, too. Ask anyone who's ever interrupted her in the middle of her lab. The alarm clock clips the side of his head with a satisfying clunk.
"What the fuck, John!" She bawls, affronted, her pale blue eyes screwed up and gleaming with panicked outrage.
(We're together. We'll go together.)
She's been having a lot of bad dreams, these gritty, too-long days. She tosses inside damp, sticking sheets, peeling them off with her nails, wriggling like a wet new thing breaching its chrysalis.
(Take John alive. He's worth more to you alive.)
She mewls in her sleep, arching her back like a bow. The sheets slough off her calves, her ankles. They sting coming off, so stuck to her that they feel like a second skin. She ratchets hard with habitual tension, the overclocked engine of her that started chewing through nightguards at fifteen and never stopped, and it's terrible, terrible, unendurable.
She does not have to endure it. Something percussive happens to her chest, to her head, and she sits bolt upright with damp sheets still clinging to her, panting like a dog run out under the sun.
They're not sheets. She doesn't scream. She does vomit.
The next few minutes are unmentionable. She shoves through them impatient with terror, shouldering aside her distress in favour of action. She's always had a knack for that. It's with as much of the blood as she could scrape off on old, dark towels removed and her tacky hair pulled back that she descends the ladder from the attic on her bare feet, draped in a nightshirt that goes down to her knees.
She pads down the hall with all the silence sneaking out as a teenager could teach her, which is painfully loud to her ears, and she passes by the closed doors without opening them. It's the door that's open a crack she pauses at, peering inside to make out a blurry silhouette tangled in his own sheets - cotton ones.
She pushes open the door very carefully. She makes her way closer, to confirm her suspicions, and stares down at the sleeping body in the bed contemplatively for nearly fifteen seconds. She picks up the alarm clock from the side table and raises it up over her head.
She's got a good arm, too. Ask anyone who's ever interrupted her in the middle of her lab. The alarm clock clips the side of his head with a satisfying clunk.
"What the fuck, John!" She bawls, affronted, her pale blue eyes screwed up and gleaming with panicked outrage.
John comes awake in a lurch of startled incredulity. He blinks at her, face scrunched in the familiar muzzy way around unfamiliar oilslick eyes; he levers himself up on his ordinary elbows; the clock tips against the headboard with a quieter thunk when he moves. In this first moment, he frowns at her with the easy bewilderment of a man who's just had a clock thrown at his head.
She is a simple mass of thalergy, a human's worth of decay, her soul singular and bare. For a moment he can't understand it. His brow creases with incomprehension, and he shuffles up to look at her, shirtless and rumpled and staring.
He starts to say Mercy, and stops. His lips are still parted around the aborted name. He has gone very still.
Too late, and without conviction, he says: "Ow."
She is a simple mass of thalergy, a human's worth of decay, her soul singular and bare. For a moment he can't understand it. His brow creases with incomprehension, and he shuffles up to look at her, shirtless and rumpled and staring.
He starts to say Mercy, and stops. His lips are still parted around the aborted name. He has gone very still.
Too late, and without conviction, he says: "Ow."
"Ow?" She echoes back, appalled. "Ow? Oh - I'll show you ow, you unbelievable - !!"
With that, she throws herself knee first on the bed, bouncing only lightly before she snatches up the pillow not creased by his head and, for lack of anything harder, begins to punctuate her sentences with it.
"I said, what the fuck, John -" a blow to the chest "- why did I wake up -" she advances with an awkward, infuriated shimmy "- covered in skin -" a feathery thwack to the face "- after I specifically told you not to use your bloody magic fingers on me -"
Her shuffling forward through the mass of comforter and sheets has brought her close enough to slam the pillow against his bare chest with both hands, so she does, glaring so fiercely at him she's near to go cross-eyed, and that's when it's clear that on top of everything else that's so frighteningly askew, so is he.
The wave of her wrath crests and breaks. Her mouth screws up so hard her chin dimples as she glances from one orbital socket to the other.
"What happened to your eyes?" She asks, voice shrunken and unhappy.
With that, she throws herself knee first on the bed, bouncing only lightly before she snatches up the pillow not creased by his head and, for lack of anything harder, begins to punctuate her sentences with it.
"I said, what the fuck, John -" a blow to the chest "- why did I wake up -" she advances with an awkward, infuriated shimmy "- covered in skin -" a feathery thwack to the face "- after I specifically told you not to use your bloody magic fingers on me -"
Her shuffling forward through the mass of comforter and sheets has brought her close enough to slam the pillow against his bare chest with both hands, so she does, glaring so fiercely at him she's near to go cross-eyed, and that's when it's clear that on top of everything else that's so frighteningly askew, so is he.
The wave of her wrath crests and breaks. Her mouth screws up so hard her chin dimples as she glances from one orbital socket to the other.
"What happened to your eyes?" She asks, voice shrunken and unhappy.
She flings herself at him, and John startles the rest of the way up, hands half-raised in hapless entreaty. She barrels right through it to pummel him with a pillow. He plainly did not expect this: she thwaps him right in the face, and he recoils, crowded back by the onslaught like a man faced with a storm. He blinks through every blow as though trying to take in sunlight. He maybe makes a noise.
It puts her nearly in his arms, her chest heaving with life and breath, her face flushed and furious. He is left frozen, his hands hovering an awkward inch between them.
This is, in the moment, the worst question he has ever been asked.
Her eyes are a young and furious blue. There's still a little goop in her eyebrows. Something changes in his face: the marvel and worry creased into his brow darkens with the gravity of something far-off, some distant tide that doesn't fit on his plain and human face. He takes a shallow breath.
"Okay," says John, in the voice he uses when he is stalling. It catches and, for one splintered instant, breaks. "We— might have a lot to cover, here."
His hands touch down light and awkward on her upper arms, and it's not clear whether he's trying to soothe her or hold her off. He smooths the pads of his thumbs over her skin, as though to worry the tacky grime away, then stops.
"I didn't do the skin thing," he says, like he's only just catching up to the accusation. "The skin thing was somebody else. I am not the only skin guy, here. They don't actually take feedback from me."
It puts her nearly in his arms, her chest heaving with life and breath, her face flushed and furious. He is left frozen, his hands hovering an awkward inch between them.
This is, in the moment, the worst question he has ever been asked.
Her eyes are a young and furious blue. There's still a little goop in her eyebrows. Something changes in his face: the marvel and worry creased into his brow darkens with the gravity of something far-off, some distant tide that doesn't fit on his plain and human face. He takes a shallow breath.
"Okay," says John, in the voice he uses when he is stalling. It catches and, for one splintered instant, breaks. "We— might have a lot to cover, here."
His hands touch down light and awkward on her upper arms, and it's not clear whether he's trying to soothe her or hold her off. He smooths the pads of his thumbs over her skin, as though to worry the tacky grime away, then stops.
"I didn't do the skin thing," he says, like he's only just catching up to the accusation. "The skin thing was somebody else. I am not the only skin guy, here. They don't actually take feedback from me."
She was in a car accident, once. She was never able to remember exactly what had happened.
She had been in the passenger seat, watching the countryside roll by. She'd been sitting on a curb a kilometre away from the wreck with her knees pulled up to her chest and blood dripping from her forehead to her jumper. Everything in between had only been a brilliant, shrieking crush of sound and motion. She had to be told later how she'd let herself out of the car and started walking, walking, walking, too small and quiet for anyone to notice until she was already gone.
John settles his hands on her arms like he doesn't know what to do with her, and she feels the same glossy, bubble-headed shock she did then. She feels like fingers right before someone lets go of the rubber band stretched tight around them. Her hands' pressure against his chest through the pillow loses its directed force. She leans into his touch and his breaking voice with a hard, shaking exhale.
"You're not the only skin guy," she says, in disconnected bafflement, "There are - 'skin guys'. In the plural."
Her throat bobs in a swallow, which she distantly regrets, the taste of a fluid she hesitates to call amniotic copper-sweet on the back of her tongue.
"Walk me through it," she tells him, like she has a thousand times.
She had been in the passenger seat, watching the countryside roll by. She'd been sitting on a curb a kilometre away from the wreck with her knees pulled up to her chest and blood dripping from her forehead to her jumper. Everything in between had only been a brilliant, shrieking crush of sound and motion. She had to be told later how she'd let herself out of the car and started walking, walking, walking, too small and quiet for anyone to notice until she was already gone.
John settles his hands on her arms like he doesn't know what to do with her, and she feels the same glossy, bubble-headed shock she did then. She feels like fingers right before someone lets go of the rubber band stretched tight around them. Her hands' pressure against his chest through the pillow loses its directed force. She leans into his touch and his breaking voice with a hard, shaking exhale.
"You're not the only skin guy," she says, in disconnected bafflement, "There are - 'skin guys'. In the plural."
Her throat bobs in a swallow, which she distantly regrets, the taste of a fluid she hesitates to call amniotic copper-sweet on the back of her tongue.
"Walk me through it," she tells him, like she has a thousand times.
He watches it roll through her, feels it in the flex of her palms through the pillow. He can't stop looking at her face, her eyes. Whatever is happening in the depths of him rises perilously close to the surface, his throat closed by some great and terrible swell of emotion.
"It's," tries John, but his voice fails him; this goes nowhere. He starts again: "I don't," and then abandons that tack too. For a very bad moment it's clear in every line of him: he's afraid.
His grip squeezes and steadies on her arms. He blows out a long breath, then drops into the tone which uniformly means he is about to say something she will hate.
"I'm not saying it's aliens," he says to her, almost gently, "but it's aliens."
"It's," tries John, but his voice fails him; this goes nowhere. He starts again: "I don't," and then abandons that tack too. For a very bad moment it's clear in every line of him: he's afraid.
His grip squeezes and steadies on her arms. He blows out a long breath, then drops into the tone which uniformly means he is about to say something she will hate.
"I'm not saying it's aliens," he says to her, almost gently, "but it's aliens."
"Aliens," she says, in much the way she said 'skin guys', the protective absence she's enveloped in wobbling but unbroken.
Aliens. Why not? They'll go with the wizardry and the cult and the rest of the end of days. They're a bit past the point of disbelief, however much whatever is left of her academic integrity kicks at it.
The only evidence she has to go on is circumstantial and paltry, with a dozen superior alternative explanations she could come up with if she stopped to think about them, but what convinces her is this: John's afraid before he says it.
She pulls her hands back from the pillow. They stick unpleasantly, but she's had worse things on her hands. Her fingers come to curl below his bare elbows, and they're pressed forearm to forearm, an unbreakable loop. His skin is warm against hers. Good. Familiar.
"Well." She squeezes him back, a touch too hard, fright skittering into her sharp little fingers. "It's like I've always said. Me and my friends would have beaten E.T. to death with hammers."
She knows things are bad when she starts telling his jokes for him.
Aliens. Why not? They'll go with the wizardry and the cult and the rest of the end of days. They're a bit past the point of disbelief, however much whatever is left of her academic integrity kicks at it.
The only evidence she has to go on is circumstantial and paltry, with a dozen superior alternative explanations she could come up with if she stopped to think about them, but what convinces her is this: John's afraid before he says it.
She pulls her hands back from the pillow. They stick unpleasantly, but she's had worse things on her hands. Her fingers come to curl below his bare elbows, and they're pressed forearm to forearm, an unbreakable loop. His skin is warm against hers. Good. Familiar.
"Well." She squeezes him back, a touch too hard, fright skittering into her sharp little fingers. "It's like I've always said. Me and my friends would have beaten E.T. to death with hammers."
She knows things are bad when she starts telling his jokes for him.
It might be any fine day early in the new year when a pair of green eyes that have not been the colour green for many, many years open to a ceiling he did not fall asleep under. The man behind them, lying in a bed in unmentionable condition, thinks with no small amount of surprise: I remember this.
A number of things happen after that. He's nothing if not a swift thinker, and unlike his last iteration, he has the advantage of fortuitous solitude. They're minor errands, individually. Their impact in aggregrate remains to be seen.
None of them are as important as this next one. The man changes into a fresh black shirt, one that is too large for his teen frame but fits his more muscular maturity appropriately, and shrugs into a jacket he'll have to get let out in the shoulders. Another errand to run, in time.
What a quaint idea. Errands. It brings a slim, benevolent smile to his face as he examines himself and his freshly trimmed stubble (beard shed like old armour) in the mirror that he already knows as his. Satisfied, he steps away, into his shoes, and out the front door, his package and two letters tucked under his arm. The walk is a short one. In no time at all, he's standing before a door he saw yesterday, and nearly a lifetime ago.
He knocks in their accustomed way, to let the boy behind the door know who's come calling, and steps back, smile still gently fixed in place.
A number of things happen after that. He's nothing if not a swift thinker, and unlike his last iteration, he has the advantage of fortuitous solitude. They're minor errands, individually. Their impact in aggregrate remains to be seen.
None of them are as important as this next one. The man changes into a fresh black shirt, one that is too large for his teen frame but fits his more muscular maturity appropriately, and shrugs into a jacket he'll have to get let out in the shoulders. Another errand to run, in time.
What a quaint idea. Errands. It brings a slim, benevolent smile to his face as he examines himself and his freshly trimmed stubble (beard shed like old armour) in the mirror that he already knows as his. Satisfied, he steps away, into his shoes, and out the front door, his package and two letters tucked under his arm. The walk is a short one. In no time at all, he's standing before a door he saw yesterday, and nearly a lifetime ago.
He knocks in their accustomed way, to let the boy behind the door know who's come calling, and steps back, smile still gently fixed in place.
Rubbing at his voluminous bedhead, Midoriya is thinking of breakfast when he receives a visitor. He knows the sound of Paul's slight footsteps in the hall and his routine knock well enough to open his apartment door without question.
"Hey, Paul-kun--AHH!!"
The thick light smoke bursting out from Midoriya's entire body doesn't cause damage, not even a cough, but it obfuscates the retreating boy completely. His Omen, taking his place in a whirl of dark smoke, is not so harmless. They block the door with their body nearly the size of a car and stamp one hoof in a threat display. Wordlessly they demand proof of identity by a show of Paul's Omen.
"Who are you?!" Midoriya demands unnecessarily from what sounds like the living room. Paul's weird uncle who knocks on doors exactly like him?! Someone else in disguise trying to match Paul's appearance as best they can?! It doesn't matter that Danger Sense didn't warn him of anything. A loophole has been found before. Dealing with Himiko Toga made Midoriya more cautious. At least he's mastered Smokescreen enough to automatically reach for it at need.
"Hey, Paul-kun--AHH!!"
The thick light smoke bursting out from Midoriya's entire body doesn't cause damage, not even a cough, but it obfuscates the retreating boy completely. His Omen, taking his place in a whirl of dark smoke, is not so harmless. They block the door with their body nearly the size of a car and stamp one hoof in a threat display. Wordlessly they demand proof of identity by a show of Paul's Omen.
"Who are you?!" Midoriya demands unnecessarily from what sounds like the living room. Paul's weird uncle who knocks on doors exactly like him?! Someone else in disguise trying to match Paul's appearance as best they can?! It doesn't matter that Danger Sense didn't warn him of anything. A loophole has been found before. Dealing with Himiko Toga made Midoriya more cautious. At least he's mastered Smokescreen enough to automatically reach for it at need.
He doesn't flinch, not from the burst of noise or from the wall of smoke or even the looming challenge of the massive Omen. He lifts his empty hand with deliberate slowness, and in his palm a burst of similar smoke coalesces into a familiar tiny shape. Sophia twitches her nose at her fellow Omen and pulses out a band of wordless reassurance.
"Paul Atreides," he says, projecting calm through his voice in unison with his Omen's more ephemeral effort, "A few years removed. Which security protocol do you want to use to verify that? Your choice." A minor beat. "But take a breath, first."
He knows he can pass all of them, down to the rotating and time-bound signs and countersigns. There's no reason to rush.
The hallway feels as well-known to him as if it hasn't been years since he saw it. The collision of time and space is something he's accustomed to navigating, but there's a certain novelty to this configuration of deja vu and recognition. Voices, for example. They have a peculiar closeness to them he wouldn't have guessed at.
"Paul Atreides," he says, projecting calm through his voice in unison with his Omen's more ephemeral effort, "A few years removed. Which security protocol do you want to use to verify that? Your choice." A minor beat. "But take a breath, first."
He knows he can pass all of them, down to the rotating and time-bound signs and countersigns. There's no reason to rush.
The hallway feels as well-known to him as if it hasn't been years since he saw it. The collision of time and space is something he's accustomed to navigating, but there's a certain novelty to this configuration of deja vu and recognition. Voices, for example. They have a peculiar closeness to them he wouldn't have guessed at.
He thinks she'll hit him again; he thinks she'll scrunch her face the way she does, the way he's used to, in utter distaste. What she does instead is worse.
John's breath hitches in one great, awful shudder of a failed laugh. There is a tremble through his shoulders, an aborted flex of his fingers: he could gather her into his arms and tuck his face against her throat. She'd let him. She is plain and human, brave as hell, and she'd do it because they're friends.
He doesn't. He goes agonizingly still, his expression on the edge of collapse. His throat works for a moment, his thumbs worrying the crooks of her elbows, a miserable aimless fidget. He can't stop looking at the way she looks at him.
"There's the bad news," he says, only a little unsteady in his levity. "Less E.T., more Lovecraft."
His hands still and settle, careful and deliberate. Crowded up too close under the heat of her panicked blue eyes, with no other out, he talks.
"They have a very definite aesthetic. One that I can get behind, honestly, as a fellow skin guy. Do you want me to—?"
He lifts one hand away from her arm, palm open in demonstration; the grime has come away on the pads of his fingers as though magnetized. Where he'd touched her, the skin is pale and clean.
John's breath hitches in one great, awful shudder of a failed laugh. There is a tremble through his shoulders, an aborted flex of his fingers: he could gather her into his arms and tuck his face against her throat. She'd let him. She is plain and human, brave as hell, and she'd do it because they're friends.
He doesn't. He goes agonizingly still, his expression on the edge of collapse. His throat works for a moment, his thumbs worrying the crooks of her elbows, a miserable aimless fidget. He can't stop looking at the way she looks at him.
"There's the bad news," he says, only a little unsteady in his levity. "Less E.T., more Lovecraft."
His hands still and settle, careful and deliberate. Crowded up too close under the heat of her panicked blue eyes, with no other out, he talks.
"They have a very definite aesthetic. One that I can get behind, honestly, as a fellow skin guy. Do you want me to—?"
He lifts one hand away from her arm, palm open in demonstration; the grime has come away on the pads of his fingers as though magnetized. Where he'd touched her, the skin is pale and clean.
It's been a difficult transitional period. That's the sort of thing people say when something is absolutely, horrendously fucked, but thinking about it that way would only create further problems.
So it's been a difficult transitional period. Some of the discoveries she's made have been the sort of thing that once upon a time would have had her crouched in the corner of a room huffing into a paper bag. (Which she has done a few times, but that's neither here or there.) But that had been before the first difficult transitional period, and she's discovered (as usual) that she has a reserve of steel in her sufficient to tackle the challenge.
Even if today, the challenge is not dropping the mug of tea she just finished making for herself when there's a knock on the front door. She freezes in the kitchen, her heart tripping over itself all the way down her ribcage, and when hot tea sloshes over her fingers and dampens the hems of her over large sweater she curses fiercely and slams the mug on the countertop with the sort of force that always makes people concerned she's going to break something.
Someone else will answer it. She knows that perfectly well. One of the strangers here (some with the faces of her friends) will pop right off to get it, or leave it to one of John's awful skeletons. She knows she isn't supposed to. Something about the risk of it all, with her and her fragile and rather sad little human body.
But there are no footsteps on the stairs or in the hallway. The dreadful girls don't drag themselves out of wherever they might be moping. John doesn't pop his head around a corner. The other two don't slink out of hiding or bend down by the kitchen window to assure her of her staying put, snug and secure.
There's another knock. She pushes her glasses up her nose.
The front door opens shortly after. A short woman with a messy bun pulling back her pale peach coloured hair peers up at the visitor, her equally pale blue eyes made wide and bright by her wire frame glasses.
"Hello?" She says, with a briskness just shy of perfunctory. "How can I help you?"
So it's been a difficult transitional period. Some of the discoveries she's made have been the sort of thing that once upon a time would have had her crouched in the corner of a room huffing into a paper bag. (Which she has done a few times, but that's neither here or there.) But that had been before the first difficult transitional period, and she's discovered (as usual) that she has a reserve of steel in her sufficient to tackle the challenge.
Even if today, the challenge is not dropping the mug of tea she just finished making for herself when there's a knock on the front door. She freezes in the kitchen, her heart tripping over itself all the way down her ribcage, and when hot tea sloshes over her fingers and dampens the hems of her over large sweater she curses fiercely and slams the mug on the countertop with the sort of force that always makes people concerned she's going to break something.
Someone else will answer it. She knows that perfectly well. One of the strangers here (some with the faces of her friends) will pop right off to get it, or leave it to one of John's awful skeletons. She knows she isn't supposed to. Something about the risk of it all, with her and her fragile and rather sad little human body.
But there are no footsteps on the stairs or in the hallway. The dreadful girls don't drag themselves out of wherever they might be moping. John doesn't pop his head around a corner. The other two don't slink out of hiding or bend down by the kitchen window to assure her of her staying put, snug and secure.
There's another knock. She pushes her glasses up her nose.
The front door opens shortly after. A short woman with a messy bun pulling back her pale peach coloured hair peers up at the visitor, her equally pale blue eyes made wide and bright by her wire frame glasses.
"Hello?" She says, with a briskness just shy of perfunctory. "How can I help you?"
It was close to a miracle that she managed to make her way out to this rumoured social event. She'd had to get emphatic about human rights to association and free movement, as well as bring up how close to bloody raving she was getting already cooped up in the house full of skeletons and mythical creatures and God only knows what else, in order to restore a state of general calm about the idea.
She is, as she pointed out, a big girl. If she could survive the donor dinners, she can surely survive a cocktail hour.
(She has a feeling that she's not going unwatched, anyway. She tries not to think about that too closely.)
So it is that one odd evening she winds up seated on a high stool at one of the satellite bars at the party, tucked off to a less trafficked corner. She sits there in her clean white dress with her pale peach hair done up in a crown and watches the dizzying cavalcade of party goers sweep by, nursing a glass of white wine. Or, as the evening goes on, and her heels come to dangle off her feet by the tilt of her toes, more than nursing.
Her eyes are a pale winter sky blue behind her delicate glasses. They follow anyone who approaches her curiously, without a drop of the hostility that so often animates this particular oval face.
She is, as she pointed out, a big girl. If she could survive the donor dinners, she can surely survive a cocktail hour.
(She has a feeling that she's not going unwatched, anyway. She tries not to think about that too closely.)
So it is that one odd evening she winds up seated on a high stool at one of the satellite bars at the party, tucked off to a less trafficked corner. She sits there in her clean white dress with her pale peach hair done up in a crown and watches the dizzying cavalcade of party goers sweep by, nursing a glass of white wine. Or, as the evening goes on, and her heels come to dangle off her feet by the tilt of her toes, more than nursing.
Her eyes are a pale winter sky blue behind her delicate glasses. They follow anyone who approaches her curiously, without a drop of the hostility that so often animates this particular oval face.
The ram stands down and lumbers away inside the apartment. His Omen communicates wordlessly to Midoriya as they usually do. Sophia is recognized and accounted for, down to her way of communicating. Midoriya has never seen a way to imitate an Omen so completely, so it's a fair security check. Midoriya borrowed it from the Hero Himiko Toga's suggestion about recognizing her or her other villain self.
"Sophia-san should be enough... Let me just... get the window..." The sound of a sash opening and, "Ah--don't worry Miss, it's not a fire, I just burned something on the stove... Sorry...!"
As the neighbor is reassured, the scentless smoke dissipates to reveal Midoriya emphatically waving it away. He really does look like someone very embarrassed to have burned something on the stove, right down to the high spots of color on his cheeks fading away as he returns to the matter at hand.
He openly stares at Paul, who looks old enough to be a teacher at UA. Midoriya just saw him yesterday. His brain cannot compute this. This isn't like seeing a past self, which has a certainty to it based on knowledge he already has. The future is unknown.
"How many years?" he asks dubiously. Fine time for Paul's diplomatic understatements. He has (the neatly shaved stubble of) a beard!
"Sophia-san should be enough... Let me just... get the window..." The sound of a sash opening and, "Ah--don't worry Miss, it's not a fire, I just burned something on the stove... Sorry...!"
As the neighbor is reassured, the scentless smoke dissipates to reveal Midoriya emphatically waving it away. He really does look like someone very embarrassed to have burned something on the stove, right down to the high spots of color on his cheeks fading away as he returns to the matter at hand.
He openly stares at Paul, who looks old enough to be a teacher at UA. Midoriya just saw him yesterday. His brain cannot compute this. This isn't like seeing a past self, which has a certainty to it based on knowledge he already has. The future is unknown.
"How many years?" he asks dubiously. Fine time for Paul's diplomatic understatements. He has (the neatly shaved stubble of) a beard!
There's a thought she had so fleetingly after she thrust her palms against his chest that it did not register as a thought. What it began to do instead was to loop, like all the worst thoughts, a shivering whispered repetition that is boring through the permeable shell that got her this far.
He's looking at you like he's seen a -
But it's not only the looking. It's the whole state of him. The crushed in wreck of his face, the tentativeness underlying the clinging of his hands. He's talking about Lovecraft and aesthetics in the jagged, jumpy way he gets stuck in when there's something else he doesn't want to talk about, but can't shake.
She's always been a bit perverse. His fragility rallies her where comfort might have failed. She breathes down to the bottom of her lungs, so deep it aches, and her freed arm snakes up so she can cup the back of his neck. She nods.
"No funny business," she tells him, reflexively, probing around the base of his neck for knots of tension. Her fingers are clinical, which means that they're gentle and they're through. Someone once told her in another life she would have made a damn fine pediatrician.
He's looking at you like he's seen a -
But it's not only the looking. It's the whole state of him. The crushed in wreck of his face, the tentativeness underlying the clinging of his hands. He's talking about Lovecraft and aesthetics in the jagged, jumpy way he gets stuck in when there's something else he doesn't want to talk about, but can't shake.
She's always been a bit perverse. His fragility rallies her where comfort might have failed. She breathes down to the bottom of her lungs, so deep it aches, and her freed arm snakes up so she can cup the back of his neck. She nods.
"No funny business," she tells him, reflexively, probing around the base of his neck for knots of tension. Her fingers are clinical, which means that they're gentle and they're through. Someone once told her in another life she would have made a damn fine pediatrician.
He makes a noise. Her fingers skim the place where she'd hurt him, out on the shitty cobblestone street of somewhere that doesn't matter, with a tidy lance of bone through the brainstem. He isn't mad about that. But he'd forgotten it had been this way: that she'd touched him this freely, crowding into his space with her palm smoothing up the nape of his neck. No reverence, no silent gravity. She just does it.
He tips his head and lets her. The little crease of distress between his brows waxes and wanes. His lips part, but he doesn't provide a comeback, which is dire. Instead, he touches her too.
He thumbs his way up her arms, over her bony elbows, fingers dipping up into the sleeves of her too-big nightshirt. He takes her unoccupied hand and rubs clean the hollows between her fingers, the nailbeds, the creases of each joint. He can see her now as he hasn't seen her since Cristabel died. In the absence of that burning void, she is tiny and radiant, perfectly complex.
It goes on too long. John isn't sure he can scan what funny business means, anymore. She's always been too clever to think he needs this much contact for anything. Still: he strokes his palms over her shoulders, soothing and reflexive, and the scum dries gritty in her shirt. He cards his fingers through her hair and a soft patter of dust falls out of it.
"If I were in charge, locally," he says, as he collects the goop from her eyebrows, "there would be at least fifty percent less slime. Just personal taste."
He tips his head and lets her. The little crease of distress between his brows waxes and wanes. His lips part, but he doesn't provide a comeback, which is dire. Instead, he touches her too.
He thumbs his way up her arms, over her bony elbows, fingers dipping up into the sleeves of her too-big nightshirt. He takes her unoccupied hand and rubs clean the hollows between her fingers, the nailbeds, the creases of each joint. He can see her now as he hasn't seen her since Cristabel died. In the absence of that burning void, she is tiny and radiant, perfectly complex.
It goes on too long. John isn't sure he can scan what funny business means, anymore. She's always been too clever to think he needs this much contact for anything. Still: he strokes his palms over her shoulders, soothing and reflexive, and the scum dries gritty in her shirt. He cards his fingers through her hair and a soft patter of dust falls out of it.
"If I were in charge, locally," he says, as he collects the goop from her eyebrows, "there would be at least fifty percent less slime. Just personal taste."
John's thumbs sweep across her brow, and she lets her eyes slip shut as she works at the first and largest knot with the bent knuckle of her thumb.
Maybe there was a time when she would have called the reverent pass of his hands over her with such shameless intimacy funny business. In university, in the first days, when she was the hard-buttoned-down piercing point of their queer triangle. When she could hardly stand for anyone to touch her at all.
It's been a long time since then, and they were never any good at the sorts of boundaries healthy people are supposed to have. His fingers stay on top of her skin. She doesn't feel the a foreign nudge at her pulse like a cat's wet nose. When he scrubbed her hand clean, she caught his fingers for a moment in hers, tangled like branches.
"It's not the slime I mind," she murmurs, ridiculously, "If it's a good, honest slime. I should go back up and get some of it on a slide before -"
She falls silent. She shifts her legs underneath her so she's more balanced on one hip than the other, knees tucked to the side, a position that demands the bracing of her forearm on his shoulder to support.
"I don't even know if you have a lab."
Maybe there was a time when she would have called the reverent pass of his hands over her with such shameless intimacy funny business. In university, in the first days, when she was the hard-buttoned-down piercing point of their queer triangle. When she could hardly stand for anyone to touch her at all.
It's been a long time since then, and they were never any good at the sorts of boundaries healthy people are supposed to have. His fingers stay on top of her skin. She doesn't feel the a foreign nudge at her pulse like a cat's wet nose. When he scrubbed her hand clean, she caught his fingers for a moment in hers, tangled like branches.
"It's not the slime I mind," she murmurs, ridiculously, "If it's a good, honest slime. I should go back up and get some of it on a slide before -"
She falls silent. She shifts her legs underneath her so she's more balanced on one hip than the other, knees tucked to the side, a position that demands the bracing of her forearm on his shoulder to support.
"I don't even know if you have a lab."
He loves her for good, honest slime. He loves her for twining their fingers. He especially loves her for wanting to put it on a slide, much as the concept blindsides him: John blinks at her, off-kilter, abruptly chagrined. He hasn't had a lab since Canaan. He hasn't touched a microscope in millennia.
John loops an arm around her, lets her settle the warm curve of her spine against him.
"I have a study full of magic bones," he offers, in his tone of kidding-but-not.
John loops an arm around her, lets her settle the warm curve of her spine against him.
"I have a study full of magic bones," he offers, in his tone of kidding-but-not.
She sinks into the cradle of his arm with a huff that's a pallid mimicry of her best ones, when she's under full steam like a locomotive behind schedule. There's something childlike in the tired splay of her limbs that won't let her gather her indignation to a head.
She pinches the back of his neck, not hard enough to hurt.
"I've never been able to do a thing with those, and you know it." Her cheek rests against the prop of her upper arm. Her hair falls loose over it and spills down to his chest, where she can watch it rise and fall.
"What was that movie we watched back in uni?" She asks, abruptly. "The Nic Cage one, with the numbers...he could see the future in them, or something like that - it doesn't matter. It turned out to have been aliens, in the end. They scooped up his children and whisked them away on an ark, and the Earth was destroyed."
She breathes out. Her hair stirs with it, floats with the faintest charge of static.
"I hated that ending."
She pinches the back of his neck, not hard enough to hurt.
"I've never been able to do a thing with those, and you know it." Her cheek rests against the prop of her upper arm. Her hair falls loose over it and spills down to his chest, where she can watch it rise and fall.
"What was that movie we watched back in uni?" She asks, abruptly. "The Nic Cage one, with the numbers...he could see the future in them, or something like that - it doesn't matter. It turned out to have been aliens, in the end. They scooped up his children and whisked them away on an ark, and the Earth was destroyed."
She breathes out. Her hair stirs with it, floats with the faintest charge of static.
"I hated that ending."
When Midoriya turns around, he'll catch the trailing edge of open and unguarded amazement in Paul's expression. His Omen has moved herself to his shoulder, where she crouches in her customary place at the crook of his neck, and Paul is still just inside the threshold, the door shut behind him.
"More than a decade," he says, his head tilting slightly as his gaze flicks across Midoriya's face. "You look just like I remember."
There's surprise there. There's surprise at the surprise. Of course Midoriya looks as Paul remembers him. The change that occurred did not occur here, that more than a decade elapsed between the closing of his eyes and their opening. His smile twists upward ruefully, and he bends to remove his boots.
"I should have sent a message ahead. Two years in a row...it's not very considerate of me to surprise you like this."
"More than a decade," he says, his head tilting slightly as his gaze flicks across Midoriya's face. "You look just like I remember."
There's surprise there. There's surprise at the surprise. Of course Midoriya looks as Paul remembers him. The change that occurred did not occur here, that more than a decade elapsed between the closing of his eyes and their opening. His smile twists upward ruefully, and he bends to remove his boots.
"I should have sent a message ahead. Two years in a row...it's not very considerate of me to surprise you like this."
It's so easy, the way she touches him. The way she dismisses necromancy like she isn't— won't be— the best in the universe, after him. She could still kick his ass on an anatomy test. He just does things, but Mercy knows them. He watched her learn.
This isn't Mercy, exactly. She pinches him and he makes a little sound of complaint. It's so easy he could laugh, he could break.
"Hell," says John, in genuine and faintly anguished astonishment, "I'd forgotten."
The silence is too big, in the wake of that. It is crowded with things he could say, things she could ask. His throat works with a hard swallow; the hitch of his breath disrupts the steady rhythm of her hair.
He settles on: "This one has more tentacles."
This isn't Mercy, exactly. She pinches him and he makes a little sound of complaint. It's so easy he could laugh, he could break.
"Hell," says John, in genuine and faintly anguished astonishment, "I'd forgotten."
The silence is too big, in the wake of that. It is crowded with things he could say, things she could ask. His throat works with a hard swallow; the hitch of his breath disrupts the steady rhythm of her hair.
He settles on: "This one has more tentacles."
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