Somehow, being mean to the big dummy wasn’t as satisfying as the groupie had been hoping for. It was that big, broad face Frankie’d given him, the wide eyes that looked like they could do no wrong. Collie straightened up a little on the ladder, withdrawing some from the tank, and gripped the lip of it tightly in her hands. She could go. She could go and live the creature to its whining, sulk around the castle like Riff or spit in Frankie’s food like ‘Genta, but somehow, that didn’t feel like the kinda thing one person did to one another.
And even if he was coming out fully formed, he was still a person.
“…big dumb baby,” she muttered, descending the ladder. can’t even take care of yourself. She smacked the lip of the tank with an open palm and remembered Frankie doing just the same thing (he’s okay! “okay?” SMACK! “okay?!”), slid her hand off the red metal as the memory struck her. That wasn’t right. She hadn’t liked the way that had sounded to her ears then, and the creature wou- Rocky wouldn’t like it now. Probably.
(Oh, how sometimes she wished she could have ‘Genta’s spite, Frankie’s callousness. It felt like she bled out alone in the dark from all the ways their tongues cut her up, and the only other person she’d ever reached for was dead and gone now, too.)
“C’mon, get outta there.” She beckoned with one paint-chipped fingernail this time, bitten to the quick in late night anxieties. “Frankie ain’t comin’ back ‘til ya’ gone, anyway. ‘S’just the way he is.”
He couldn’t tell her that he didn’t want this. But it was written plainly on his face. This was a creature who never asked to be created. He never was given a choice to stay with the man who gave him life, but he was expected to just be okay with it the moment he was given freedom.
He couldn’t tell Collie that fear gripped the thing in his chest that he still couldn’t name, or that his body ached after hours of being curled up in on himself in a small tank not fit for a man his size, or that his head was spinning with all the questions that were half formed in his stupid half formed mind.
The metal of the tank sounded out with a sharp clang, and Rocky whimpered further, moving to cover his ears with his hands and lower his head between his knees. She didn’t like him, that much he knew, but he couldn’t understand why, or why she had to be so cruel, especially when Rocky thought of how pretty her hair was. Someone with hair like that should be nicer.
But then she’s speaking to him. Talking in kinder tones and beckoning for him to follow her. He can understand following. With a weak groan, and a nod, he’s uncurling his body and taking the extended hand. It’s the way he knows, even if it’s not what she’s offering.
