Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Corrosive rain bleaches the trees outside, running down their rough trunks to sizzle onto the fallen leaves below. The night sky is grey, and crackling with humidity, though the open space district isn’t in the right environment to receive thunder. Nonetheless, Jo’s head sparks with static. 

Oof ouchies, she thinks, lying on her back in hopes the floor will correct her shit posture enough to at least lessen the pain in her shoulders. The mostly-melted ice pack does little now to cool her neck, and even less to the rest of her. Despite the chill winds outside, (or maybe because of them,) she’s fucking boiling. 

Everything just feels weird. Her spine plays the part of a military telegraph, and her stomach tries to digest a meal of rocks. She’s edgy, tetchy, wound-up, dizzy, spacey, nauseous, just plain bad, and as mentioned prior, everything fucking hurts.

At least the chronic pain is tangible, unlike the memory picking at her. 

Jo flips onto her side. Well, “memory”. It’s closer to an intrusive fact given phantom form. She’s not in her recuperacoon for this reason; the slime would only make her more aware of everything, and she already has enough internal sensation bullshit. It is strictly a No Body Time, which she is failing miserably. 

Despite her wrist’s protests, Jo reaches for her phone and opens Normal Spotify. The app is named for its exploitative treatment of artists and, more pressingly for Jo, its ridiculous free version, which she (being the most talented young man on Asternia) hacked to make her playlists actually fucking play in order without the five minutes of advertising and government propaganda between every song. 

Squawkpipes blare through the tiny tinny speakers, which Jo fumbles to turn down, because she is an idiot who forgot that upbeat ska music is 1. not good for an aggravation sponge 2. not congruent with a shit mood 3. not good or congruent for a mood-based spongemax. 

She has a “chill vibes” playlist she hasn’t touched since… sweeps ago (hence why it’s called “chill vibes”; she was cringe back then, unlike now, epic and handsome, collapsed on the floor of her hive and too numb to draw tears like some Troll Romantic hero, very cool very epic Jo, you’d be such a compelling character and everyone’s cheering for you through your misery), but with a tremendous amount of logic and fortitude, she overcomes the urge to listen to her lame wriggler bands, (the crowd goes wild,) and instead puts on one of Fedalt’s recommendations. Troll Moses Sumney. The lush instrumentation would be better with headphones, which she doesn’t have on account of being evil, probably.

Still, there is music now. Everything still HURTS, OW, but there is some very good music. Her matesprit is so cool, she wishes they could meet up in real life and firebomb the stupid hospital he’s trapped in. Cullbait4Cullbait 4ever. HER FUCKING WRISTS AUGHHHH

She drops the phone and closes her eyes. Okay, bad idea. Keeps her eyes open instead, staring at the blurry glow-in-the-dark stars she stuck to the ceiling of her hive.

In a few perigrees, it will be two sweeps since her and Fedalt officially called each other matesprits. Peace and love on planet Asternia, Jo thinks with a hollow chuckle, as if there is such a thing. Still, it would be a much better anniversary than this, not only in content, but because it actually had a solid date rather than a vague haze over the wet season. Definition is good. Definition means something to celebrate. 

When would that be? About half a sweep before Jo would legally be off-planet; if she was in better health, she could petition to be legally matesprits, and then they could move in together or something sweet and scarlet. 

Hemolymph thumps in her hearing. She tries not to trace it to its origin inside her torso. 

Instead, she opens up the phone one more time (oof ouchies yeowch augh) and, with care, types out, “<3”. 

Chapter Text

On a typical summer day, Dani would usually be in one of four places. Coincidentally, they could be neatly placed in a quadrant graph, with the x-axis rating heat, and the y-axis indicating foot pain. 

Lower right (high heat, low pain) would be her house. It was small but comfortable, save perhaps for the stuffiness; they had fans instead of air conditioning. At least she had constant access to ice and water (and the fusion of the two) to temper the discomforting way warmth clung to the living room’s old couch. 

Lower left (low heat low pain) was the library. She did most of her schoolwork there now, on account of the PCs, A/C, and priva-C. The carpet was hard and itchy, but there were plenty of fine wood chairs where she could settle down with a paper and textbook, or better yet, once she was done (or more accurately half-done and completely unable to think), a regular novel. The hours were frustrating, but on the best days she could remain until sunset. 

Her job behind the counter at 7/11 filled the upper left quadrant (low heat high pain). To be honest, it was maybe too cold; even in the midst of SoCal’s boiling July, Dani would tie a jacket around her waist whenever she left home. People talked a lot of shit about customer service, and there were certainly a lot of days when she could feel misanthropy curl its roots tighter around her, but most of the time, people were just slow and quiet. The real grind was the waiting. Would anyone really be mad if their clerk had one of those rolling chairs? Only management, she suspected, given how she would be pulled aside again and again for her “uncongenial” conduct, at least until she gave up and started solving it with twelve fluid ounces on the way over. 

Which brought her to the last quadrant, hot and painful: the sidewalk. It was only last December she turned sixteen, so much of this summer had been spent at the library preparing for her driver’s test. As such, most of Dani’s personal transportation was on foot, down unshaded pavement beside asphalt so hot the air shook and shimmered above it. It was this particular location where Dani trod now, a golden retriever tugging her forward and her half-brother dragging his feet behind. 

The dog’s name was Daisy. (“Of course it fucking is,” she had said to Jasper. “It was either that or Fido.” Jasper bopped her shoulder. “No one’s named their dog Fido since, like, the fifties. Besides, it was the shelter’s name.”) The Gardens family was going to be out of town on vacation, so Dani had suggested that maybe she could watch the dog while they were away. Mr. Gardens thought this was a great idea, and even insisted that she be paid for her services. (“If there’s anything we can do to help,” he said, “just let us know.” It made Dani feel oddly itchy, but her stepfather say her down afterward and told her that not a lot of people would just hand her opportunities. Don’t be so proud that you starve yourself.) 

And things were certainly good with a fluffy dog in the house. The Gardens family provided the food and cot and instructions, and Daisy, being middle-sized and middle-aged, wasn’t exactly clamoring to play all the time. She just needed her walks. Dani was glad to oblige. In the abstract. As established previously, July was fucking hot, which made Alexis’s mood and jacket all the more ridiculous. 

“Dude,” she said, “you have to hurry up.”

He groaned. 

“Look, we’re going to the falafel place. They’ve got fans, it’ll be better once we get there.” It took a lot of restraint to walk him through the logic instead of just grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him along. She didn’t even mention that her head was pounding from the brightness and heat. Sure, she wasn’t turning to dust, but God, it was uncomfortable. Not that Alexis knew anything about that, and, outside of her more spiteful moments (such as this present moment), Dani really didn’t want him to.

“How long is the walk?”

“Walking distance. At least take off your jacket. I don’t know why you wear that all the time.”

He did, hesitantly. “Not like I ask about all the weird shit you do.”

“Don’t swear.”

“Fuck,” he spat. The dog even stopped in place to look back at Dani, probably just wondering why she was moving so slowly.

She sighed. “Not because I’m lame, I just don’t want you getting into the habit in front of Mom. She’ll think I’m a bad influence.”

Alexis blew a raspberry instead of replying.

She wished it was evening, when the sky burst into bright blue-pink-red-orange, staining the sidewalks with citrine, blacking out the trees, cooling the air. Noon set a dreamy haze over everything; the sky was blue without a cloud in sight, and the shadows were dark and deep, as if they were cast by floodlights. Sweat dripped down Dani’s neck, but the heat didn’t seem to affect Daisy one way or the other. Good dog. Lucky dog. Another very dog name for a dog.

They finally arrived. Thank fucking God, Dani would have actually burst into flames if she had to walk any longer. She handed Daisy to Alexis, hoping that the dog would behave herself and not drag off a kid who probably weighed the same amount as her. 

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Alexis said as Dani set down the food trays. He was staring intently at Daisy, who had tucked up politely beside the plastic mesh table.

“What?”

“Mom, I mean,” he mumbled, reaching for his milkshake first. He still didn’t make eye contact. “You’re fine.”

“Oh. Okay.” He didn’t know shit, Dani thought, but she didn’t say that out loud. It was… nice, for a change. She tore off a bit of pita and dropped it down to Daisy, who had been staring at her with her very big and very wet brown eyes. “Thanks, I guess.”

They ate the rest of their food in silence.

Chapter Text

“Everyone’s staring at me.”

“Not at you,” Merel murmured. Anyone’s eyes would slide right off Joan, with how she shrank into herself despite only being midsize. Even if she really was secretly a dog, it didn’t show on the outside, not the same as Merel’s human identity.

The two of them were sitting in the tiny shade cast by a tree hanging over the backyard fence. Merel absently wondered if the hosts of this end-of-fifth-grade party had argued with their neighbors and lost, given how flat their lawn was, or just didn’t care. Either way, she clung to the small cool space. Her parents had encouraged her to go, saying it’d be a good opportunity to talk to her friends before starting anew. She had decided not to explain that everyone had already settled into their little groups, and not much would change at one meeting where, again, everyone already knew each other. The only new connections she would make would be with the few parents who had arrived. She suspected the reason she had received an invitation at all was just because the host’s parents had gone down the list and sent letters to everyone. 

It was a lame party, too. Tables were set up on the utterly bare backyard, but the idea of unfamiliar food made Merel kind of sick, so she had stuck to the dollar-store lemonade. She would have gone inside, but a group of boys was playing Smash with the sound turned all the way up, so Joan and her had agreed it was better to be roasted alive in the Scyllian heat. 

Admittedly, that was an exaggeration. It was late June, so the temperature was only climbing, not bursting any thermometers.

“It’s cold,” Joan said at last. “Don’t you think it’s cold?”

“Not really.”

“I think it’s cold.”

“That’s only because you’re an ice witch.”

“And I’ll put my ice witch paws on you and turn you to a popsicle.”

Merel chuckled. “Why did you leave your hoodie at home?”

A pause, then, “My mom said it made me look like I was being abused.”

“How?”

“I don’t know! I mean, look at me.” She stuck out her arm, dotted with brown flecks and soft with fur. Unsure of what to do, Merel pet her, then suddenly stopped and folded her hands. 

Joan eyed her, but drew back her arm and crossed it over the other, covering her chest without pressing into it. “Like, bruises or something? They don’t hit me, so I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

After a moment of thought, Merel got up and ventured inside to locate the woman she’d met upon arrival. She remembered she was blonde, and her hair was long and curly. 

Merel still winced at the sound echoing off the walls, but it didn’t take long to find the woman. She steeled herself, and said, “Hello. My friend spilled on her shirt. Can I get a hoodie?”

“In this weather?” the woman laughed. 

Merel nodded. 

It convinced her well enough. That woman went down the hall to shortly return with a black jacket. It was her own size, she admitted, which meant it would probably be too big on a kid. Still, Merel thanked her and darted off. 

The jacket was indeed baggy on Joan, enough to hit halfway down her thighs, but she seemed happy. The sleeves were so long as to hang over her hands, and she flapped them in amusement, before sticking them out to Merel, who reached in and twined their fingers together. After a moment, the warm contact became uncomfortable, and Merel retreated. 

“Thanks,” Joan said.

Merel blushed. “I didn’t do much.”

“Still,” she replied, shooting a lopsided grin. “I know it’s hard for you.”

Merel shrugged, but rested her head in the crook of Joan’s neck, cheek brushing the jacket’s black fuzz. It was warm already, but pleasantly so— voluntary, unlike the air, and more than that, holding someone dear underneath. 

Chapter Text

Your house may be packed up in little boxes, but you aren’t moving out. 

It’s been like this for three months. You haven’t gotten to unpacking everything (since when have you unpacked anything), save for the few things you absolutely need— the kitchen to the kitchen, your clothes to your closet, your air mattress laid out on the floor and breathing heavily like a partner underneath you. It’s not the position you prefer, but any reminder of your own skin makes you want to crawl out of it, the way flies crawl from your drains.

Your friend comes by. He is not your friend, but you have no other word for your fluvial connection, name yourself horses for your shared birthdays in the same hemisphere, parts together don’t fit in the right places. He lays out the kitchen table on the blank floor where the kitchen table should be to make misshapen graphite marks in incorrect proportions, rectangles in the wrong sizes, before listing out what goes where, as if anything goes where it’s meant to. You know. He knows. There’s no point in pretending. 

“Take off that mask, Lark,” you say. “I want to see your face.”

His hair is slick with sweat. Your house is cold. 

You start in the bathroom, stocking the cabinet under your sink with cleaning supplies. The tangy smell is entrancing, and you have to push away thoughts of just opening the containers to bury your breath in them. No, Lark laughs, can’t have your hair spilling over the floor. It’d take too much time to wash it all again.

He shaved his head clean, began anew. You did not. No point in razing if there’s no undergrowth to climb back up; a lesson you learned from your parents’ flat lawns out front and back. You only have a backyard, and little to fill it with. All your plants are indoor plants. Aren’t you a lucky thing, never getting your hands dirty. 

The pair of you set up blinds. They’re old, lacy things from your grandmother; your parents weren’t using them, so you took them for your own home. The same origin holds true for many of your supplies: shower curtain, rug, shelves, dissected chairs. Best to save until you find yourself a good _____, no, until you find yourself.

“Close the curtains, I want to show you something.”

Haueis is a Norman name, a racehorse name, a name so old it becomes new. Letters spilled across a million pages like home-drawn constellations. If you squint, that diamond is Pegasus. Everything could connect if you don’t know what you’re looking for. ———? No, you say. How is this pronounced, then? How is. 

Lark pulls something long and green out of his backpack— Christmas lights— to pin them up along the walls and plug them in, making your dim rooms gleam like hard candy church windows. The two of you lay down together in the dark, fingers intertwined without the rest of your bodies present. 

Your boxes are empty. You’ve done well.

Chapter Text

“Look upon my works, ye mighty, and respair.”

“Yippee,” John said dully— his natural state— as he surveyed the little board of food on the coffee table, before carefully setting himself down on the couch, sure not to spill his tea. He had cut up the apples and poured out a bowl of almonds when he saw Nancy pull down a bottle of wine, figuring it’d be nice to have something more to settle the stomach. The cheeses and crackers had been her doing. She sat beside him, the television casting white light over the two of them as announcers sped through cheerful advertisements, before John suddenly blinked and nudged her off. 

“I forgot,” he said, walking down the hall, “to get a blanket.”

While he conducted his quest, Nancy tried to smooth down the prickling awkwardness of only pouring one glass. John had told her he hadn’t wanted any between the taste and the vertigo, and he was perfectly content to just sip his tea. Deep down, she suspected it was something more than that, but it wasn’t her business to pry. 

John returned when the credits started to play. It was some sappy romantic comedy from the 30s, evidently popular enough to air now, though neither of them knew the plot, only the name in passing. It didn’t really matter, it was just an excuse to snuggle up together and nuzzle the underside of his unshaven jaw. You didn’t get a lot of that these days, but it made her heart flip. John ran a hand through her hair in turn, then slung his furred arm around her shoulder. 

“How’s the taste, by the way.”

“Hm?” Nancy swallowed. “Oh, it’s nice. This is honestly one of the sweeter ones. You could… smell it?”

“No,” John mumbled, “my nose is broken.”

She chuckled, but her amusement faded as she watched him work through the unintentional pun.

At the first advertising break, John turned to her and said with a smile, “I don’t understand anything that’s going on.”

“Really?” 

“No, I’m messing with you. I’ve seen this before. Well, not this, but all this, you know.”

She would agree; the film was awfully straightforward, cliché even. “Oh,” she said in her best professional voice, “I don’t think you have. You see, though on the surface the meeting of man and woman may seem to have played out dozens of times before, our filmmaker Whatsisname was actually the origin of these tropes, so they were quite subversive for the time.”

“Ah, I see, very avant-garde. I’m just not smart enough to follow it.”

Nancy was silent for a moment as John mumbled something about replacing the cigarette commercial on with a testimony of his father hacking up his lungs and how it was probably what killed him, which startled her enough to ask, “Didn’t you say your parents died in a car crash?”

“You’d remember better than I would.” 

“No, I mean, um.” The movie had resumed. She glanced at the screen, then back to John, his eyes nearly obscured by the television’s reflection in his glasses. “Smoking couldn’t have… I think—” She wiped her face. “What’s the name for it, vehicular non-slaughter?”

“You have not had that much.”

“I haven’t, I just— there has to be a more technical term…”

“Well, the car was smoking when they found ‘em.”

The joke caught her so off-guard that her laugh came out more as a cough. “No,” Nancy said, pointing a firm finger at him. “I am not going to join in on your orphan humor.”

“It’s been five years.” John’s voice was pointed, but he didn’t drop his deadpan smirk. “Besides, I meant that he would have died of a heart attack or whatever if he didn’t. Mm. Not exactly something to talk about, hm.” He flicked a finger at the television. “This movie is really not good.”

“You brought it up,” she said, getting up to turn it off. 

There was still light, not of sun but the blue of the night, but it was thin compared to what had been present. As such, she made her way back to John by memory more than sight, though by the time she curled up beside him, head on his shoulder, her eyes had adjusted. Any vision didn’t matter now; it hardly ever mattered with him. 

“Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re serious.” She drooled the words. In embarrassment, she took another swig from her glass. Bad idea; the flavor nearly overtook her, and though she managed to swallow, she could feel saliva pooling behind her teeth. 

“Depends, doesn’t it.”

“Mm, but I can read most people.”

A beat, then, “I thought you liked my mystique.”

“I don’- like you for your mystique, I like you for your humor.”

“Not my looks.”

“Yes your looks, I just didn’t want to seem shallow.” 

“Really, because Tom said I look like a drowned puppy.”

“Y’don’t look like a drowned puppy, you look like…” Nancy bit her lip, then concluded, “Well, maybe a little. And what about me?”

John chuckled, the sort of laugh one felt more than heard, and traced a hand through her hair. “Well, you’re smart. You’ve got all these interesting views on things. Know when to laugh, that’s always nice, and… you don’t pry.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t think I’ll be walking home tonight. Could I stay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” You don’t pry. Well, it was true, Nancy had tried to keep her distance, figuring she wouldn’t appreciate someone asking her about everything terrible in her life either, but there was just… so much obscurity around him. That even after two months together, John would still make odd roundabouts in conversation, strange jabs at humor, instead of… well, instead of doing what she was doing, letting the silence grow like creepers up the walls. The living room would be a jungle before long, cool and quiet and dark, windows gone over with leaves, no distant birdsong, nothing besides remains.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “You say you like my humor and you tell me to be more serious.”

“Not what I said. I just want to know the difference.”

He cocked his head. “Well, I’ll give you a taste.” And he put his lips to hers, his hair scratching against her, his saliva a bitter dampness she hadn’t quite adjusted to, mixing lingering years of yellow with fresh milk and honey.