ic inbox ( ryslig )

[gitanes]

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[gitanes]

[Ugh. That's Komaeda all right. Even in the midst of painful relief at seeing him again, she feels a spark of irritation that's almost comforting. Her expression twists, a little too complex to be readable.]

Don't be stupid. I don't hate you. Get inside, go.

[Because maybe there's a good reason he was gone — maybe — but looking at him, she fucking doubts it.]

[After shoving him inside with the strongest spectral pushes she can manage, she slams the door, locks it, and stands in front of it. Not like she could actually stop someone from getting in probably, but she'd damn well try.]

What is it? What do you need?

cw: dismemberment mentioning

[luckless]

[If he were feeling well enough for it, Komaeda would likely follow up his request with another snide remark of: is this how you treat the recently dead? But Lila's too quick for him, and he's much too tired. So he goes where she guides him—a gangling heap of barely coordinated limbs—only to shoulder-check the wall the moment he's brought in.

Where Lila can see him, he almost looks normal. Almost.

Though he might appear half naked and a bit thinner, what's most shocking is the lack of that overlong tail that would most likely be grasping for her if it were there. Instead, what remains is that same angry, irritated flesh still stubbornly clinging to bone—which appears to be in the midst of reforming its next vertebrae, too. But in true Komaeda fashion, he hardly seems bothered when he rolls his head and smiles over his shoulder at her.]

Would it be too much to ask for some water? I'm actually really thirsty... and I just had to walk a lot farther than I'm used to.

cw dissociation

[gitanes]

[Not a lot shocks Lila. She's seen a lot, most of it awful, and expects only the grimmest, cruelest things of humanity — and by extension, monsterkind. So it takes a lot to upset her. Like, a lot.]

[When she looks down and sees — doesn't see — Komaeda's tail, she flickers. Doesn't dim but flickers entirely out of existence, the shape of her stretching like taffy until it snaps and, like the final stripe of light on an old-school television, goes out.]

[An instant later she returns, along with a humming electrical surge. Every light in the building smashes on, bulbs shattering if they can't handle the wattage. Her microwave pops meekly, announcing its demise. The edges of her buzz and flicker, wisps coming off and drifting away. She's unattached to anything, drifting, empty]

[no]

[kill him kill him kill I'm gonna kill him gonna]

. . . Sure.

[Her voice sounds flat, distant, but casual somehow. She doesn't move, doesn't even look, as behind her a cabinet opens and a glass floats out. The freezer opens. Some ice cubes fly into the glass. The tap squeaks on, and the glass wanders over to place itself underneath the water.]

You want a bath? That's a thing, right . . . ? For mers. If you're dried out, or whatever . . .

[The glass drifts over to hover cheerfully in front of Komaeda. Lila is staring at him, eyes wide and blank and all-seeing.]

[kill him I'm gonna kill him with my teeth gonna eat him alive don't touch that's mine gonna kill him kill him kill]

[luckless]

[It's impossible not to notice it. The surge of electricity that blows a few circuits within the apartment, or likely more; or the way the air hums with the current of Lila's anger. It's not the first time Komaeda has witnessed it, and he knows it likely won't be the last.

In his despair-addled mind, he notices the similarities. The destructive rage, of wanting to hurt just as much as she's been hurt. He notices it, but he doesn't say anything. Instead, Komaeda turns away from the proffered water and he takes a wavering step towards her suspended form.]

Lila.

[His voice is soft, gentle. It's the voice of someone meaning to soothe, rather than be soothed. And he smiles, as he offers her his hand (it's shriveled, like a fish left out long enough in the sun to wither), because he knows that to touch her right now might makes things worse.

But if it's her choice, then it might be alright.]

Will you take it with me?

[gitanes]

[As he approaches her, the glass trembles in midair. She has just enough presence of mind to put it down on the nearest surface, because when he holds his withered hand out towards her she forgets everything else in the world.]

[The last time she felt a true physical reaction was when she accidentally possessed Steve. That's her most recent memory of sweat on her brow, tension in her jaw, tight shoulders ready to push her towards an escape. There's nothing to ground her in herself now. It's in moments like these that she feels the least real, the most broken. Komaeda reaches for her and she can feel the pain in her heart that once upon a time would have been connected to a tremor in her lip or the clench of her teeth.]

[None of those are accessible to her now. Instead, the border of her form shudders, dissolving still further at the edges. The wisps blow towards him in an invisible wind. She thinks about falling into him and disappearing along the way. Falling into and falling through.]

[She hates this. She hates seeing him hurt. She hates caring. God, she hates it. She hates the way her voice sounds, shaky with emotion.]

I don't want to hurt you. Somebody already hurt you, I want — I'm supposed to help.

[luckless]

You won't hurt me, you never have.

[He laughs—that tender, boyish sound that is so soft around the edges with indolence, it's as if he could hardly be phased by anything. Though he looks exhausted, though thoughts of despair had swirled through his mind, one thing remains true: Lila has always comforted him, whether she was trying or not. She has cared about him, when he thought no one else would. So to see her fuzz around the edges, as if she would simply dissolve without him, spurns on feelings of protection in him too.

Komaeda steps towards her with his stump-arm braced against the wall, and grasps for her hand where it should be. Corporeality is hard now, he knows, but the buzz of static across his skin lets him know she's still there as best she can be.]

This helps me, [he laces his fingers in the air, an odd mixing sensation of Lila's hand both there and not,] I came to you because I wanted you. You don't have to do anything except be with me.

[gitanes]

[It's good he says what he says. Somehow, without knowing, he knows: she's so scared of not being enough. Not so much not good enough, because neither of them are good; plainly and simply not enough. She can't touch him. She can't help him. She can't be good for him or take care of him because she doesn't know how to. She's not suited for it. She isn't soft. All of her edges are razor-sharp. He should go find someone else. Someone sweet.]

[But his hand is in hers, their fingers laced together, except for how they're not; and Komaeda doesn't mind that. He looks . . . happy, but tired, but happy, and the edges of her tremble again because she doesn't understand it. Why he came to her, when she can't even touch him right.]

[But she believes him.]

[There's another moment of hesitation, a frisson of static in the border of the void that she is; then she nods, hesitant and shy, and leans into him, and kisses him, soft and barely-there. And falls. Cascades, maybe. She's never been on a lazy river, but it feels kind of like what she imagines that's like: strange and impermanent and comfortable. Maybe it's because she has permission, but his body feels like it's welcoming her; she settles into him like a relieved exhale at the end of a never-ending day.]

[As soon as she can, she opens his eyes and looks at the opposite wall. Sensations are still rolling in, and most of them are bad. Before they all hit her at once, she whispers in his head what she didn't want to say out loud.]

Please don't leave me alone again.

[It isn't fair. But that's not why she didn't want to say it. She didn't want to say it because it's weak — but in the privacy of this secret space, she can. Komaeda already knows.]

[luckless]

[She falls into him and for her, it's like a sigh of relief; but for Komaeda, it's as if he's just inhaled his first taste of fresh air after holding it in for so long. It's overwhelming to have someone inside of you, and it's so very intimate. He's suddenly more aware of every breath, every beat of his heart.

Can she feel it now? The way it races whenever she's near?

And when she turns his head and snaps his eyes open, is it different, he wonders? His senses as a mer are sharper than a shade's. Every prickle of electricity in the air buzzes through his scales, to even the feeling tips of his fleshy hair. His large, pelagic eyes can see better in the dark of her apartment, and he can hear the sounds of shuffling movement two doors down.

Is it new in a way that overwhelms her just as her presence within him does?

But more than anything, he feels a comfortable weight within him. As if he's been a half-empty cup his whole life, just begging to be filled. For once, he has the conscious thought of being thankful he's alive, simply to be her vessel. And then Atem comes to mind—this is what it must have been, for him. This is that comfort he had talked about, all those months ago. Komaeda understands it now.]

I won't leave you, [he responds in the safety of their shared skull,] I need you, too.

[gitanes]

[Sharing space with someone in this way means no hiding. That's the other thing. She hasn't ever voluntarily entered anyone who wasn't a future meal, and even then she rarely does. It's too revealing. All of her emotions are laid out raw. She can lie in words, but the feelings resonating in the shared space will always give her away.]

[Dizzy with incoming pain, she swallows hard around the playful assault of physical and sensory input. She's wanted her body back for so long, and this isn't it, but it feels so close, as strange and inhuman as it is. She's crawled all over this body already. She's made it home in almost every way.]

[She lays a hand on the kitchen island for balance. It's not hard to take pain, but it takes a little concentration. The subtle touch of cool tile under her hand is so overstimulating that she shudders.]

[If she looks down at the sink, she can almost see their — his — reflection, the color of his eyes strangely vibrant in the steel. She looks, and the softness of her own expression seems alien to both of them.]

[There's no lying, really. There's no way he can't already feel the resonance of it.]

. . . I love you.

[luckless]

[Those words echo in his mind, and for a moment, he can't tell if they're hers or his own. This feeling—so full and vivid, his heart beating out of tune as it competes with itself—is it his or hers? This love that resonates so viscerally between them in a shared body, does it stop or start? Or is it simply existing—warm, trembling, afraid in the same way a child fears the bumps in the night.

This naïve feeling. It's theirs, isn't it?

Lila places his hand on the tile, but Komaeda folds his stump-arm over his middle, as if it were a mockery of hugging himself—her. He likes this feeling, he's sure she knows that without him saying it. And where one might panic in the face of such vulnerability, his own emotion—acceptance, joy—radiates through her anxiety.]

I love you too, Lila.

[He's said it a thousand times in affectionate glances and soft smiles—in the way that he touches her delicately, as if she were fine china instead of leather and barbwire. This time, it's forward. This time, she can't second guess the reason why he would show up on her doorstep unannounced, time and again. There's no running when they're together like this.]

I've loved you for a long time.

[gitanes]

[Something about the way he does that, like he's trying to hug her — it feels good, but it hurts, too. She wishes she could hug him the normal way. She wishes she could hold him. He's okay with this, she doesn't know why, but he is, but is she? She wants to be able to make him forget. She wants to hold his face in her hands and kiss him like a real girl.]

[She wants to be real. But he's really holding her. He really loves her.]

[I love you too, Lila.]

[That's what makes her start crying, messy quiet fat tears that fall from Komaeda's eyes and splat on the counter, the noise they make too loud in the silence of her barren kitchen. When she reaches up to rub them away, they just knock more tears out from behind his eyelids. Sniffling, she shakes her head.]

Ugh. [Out loud; and then in the privacy of their head, shrinking down close, trying to get a feel for it, trying to tuck herself into him, to make the metaphysical shape of herself as close as she knows how. She's needy, even if she doesn't recognize it. This is the safest space in the world that there is.]

Sorry. I don't cry about this kind of— [All current evidence to the contrary, of course. She blinks out another couple of tears.] I love you. I already said that. I love you. I'm . . .

[Scared. Sad. Desperately grateful to see him again.]

Bath?

[luckless]

[It's weird. All these feelings so decidedly not his own, but felt with such tremendous compulsion that his body reacts to it. In a way, he sort of prefers this. Understanding others is difficult... but occupying the same vessel means that he knows everything. He feels everything.

His chest seizes as tears roll down his cheeks, breath stuck in his lungs like he's drowning in the sensation. Is it relief? Is it like pressure being lifted too quickly, and the blood rushing to his head? He can't place it, but in the space of this body, his soul leans against Lila's. And his hand lifts, but he isn't the one to do it—rubbing raw at his eyes, coaxing the dam to overflow.

He wants to hug her. He wants to kiss her. Kiss away all these tears and tell her she's perfect in her imperfections, and that he loves it when she's messy. He loves her the most when she finally lets the wall around her crumble, so that he can crawl in beside her.]

I love you, too, [he repeats it, because he feels like she needs it. A thousand I love yous tied to a thousand red roses. And then he's walking—carrying them to the bathroom mindlessly, like he knows the route without even having to rely on Lila's memory of this apartment.]

I missed you, Lila...

[When he was on that cold slab—a shudder of the memory rolls through them, a flash of sterile lights and a macabre dead mask hovering just out of view.]

I don't like being apart from you.

[gitanes]

[She used to hate crying. Now . . . she still hates it, but differently. It's uncomfortable, it's so fucking gross, it feels vulnerable and horrible. But at the same time, now she knows what it's like not to be able to cry, to be in such a strange form that can't express remorse in the natural way.]

[Now it's like a dam bursting, like all of the awful things she's had to hold back for months coming out in a rush. She chokes on it, but she doesn't mind, not really, because losing her breath for a second makes it all the more meaningful when she catches it again. And Komaeda just holds her through all of it, physically and in the shared space in their brain, like that's something she deserves. Like that's something he's happy to give her.]

[She's in control, following him as he leads. The whole thing is messy and muddy, but it feels good. It doesn't feel like getting lost in him exactly, not how she thought. It's just welcoming, safe. He let her in and now he's got her and they're not the same, he doesn't make her less, all of this just makes her — more. More and more and more.]

[There are no red roses, but she feels the way they bloom, somewhere in the deepest places of her heart.]

[Right behind them, a pulse of rage at the flickering memory, at his feeling of loneliness. Someone took this from her. Someone took him, made him live without her, frightened and in pain without her — one of the few people she actually cares about, ripped away in the worst way. Don't they know that Komaeda's special? That he makes her happy? He should be protected, he should be treasured, they should die.]

[Her tears run hot down her face, as messy as she ever is. There's sterility in her shade form. In his body, she can be imperfect. She can just be.]

I missed you, too. I was really scared. I wanted to find you, I wanted to fix it.

[Absently, she makes his teeth gnaw his lower lip.]

I don't know how to take care of anybody. But I want to take care of you. Even when you're not happy, I want you to at least be okay.

[Shaking hands lean over the tub, grab the handle on the second try, stopper the drain, turn on the hot water. She leans against the edge, the one whole arm between them wrapping around Komaeda's opposite shoulder.]

I'm going to hurt him. But when I do, I won't be gone for long. I won't leave you alone.