“What are you doing here?" You watch Tegan's eyebrows twitch.
"I live here," he says, tone rough. Incredulous, like he's offended you even asked. It immediately makes you bristle, hackles rising with the set of your jaw. A heave and shudder. A teenager jumps across a crosswalk as the walk sign blinks off. A man in a car holds down his horn until they reach the other side. The sound splits your brain in two.
"What are you doing here on the boardwalk?" you clarify. You know he hears it, even though you didn’t say “asshole.”
"Errands." The grin is all teeth as he steps around the bench, one hand braced on the back of it—not quite touching your shoulder—and leans further into your field of view. You watch him as he watches you, aware that he’s looking for something, and you only manage a frown because his damn shields are up, and you - - you are unwound across the length of the boardwalk, drawn thin. Only focused on this conversation because Tegan's here, talking to you now and making a go at pissing you off.
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Little drabble inspired by talking with @crowshuh about Dina and Tegan's very different side effects from connecting with the carnivorous nanovores during the Nanosurge that caused Dina to become meat repulsed and Tegan to have cravings he'd rather not talk about. Tegan's pov, warning for mentions of disordered eating and just being kinda icky.
"Oh shit!" You untangle from Dina's mind as quickly as you can but not before the first wave of nausea hits you like a punch to the gut. How could you have been so stupid? As if walking past that butcher shop was something either of you could handle, was getting lost in her mind so addictive it overrode your situational awareness?
You chide yourself for being the idiot that you are as Dina clasps a hand hard over her mouth, eyes shut tight and she allows you to pull her off the street and into a shaded alley. Luckily its deserted and relatively clean, though not for long if Dina loses what little lunch she had.
She curls in on herself, lowered into a squat as you kneel down beside her, her breathing quick and erratic, fighting every instinct to purge it all, to get rid of the rot, the sickly sweet decay roiling in her stomach, sticky tar-like—strengthen your shields you idiot!
"Easy." You say in as steady a voice as you can manage, reaching out to touch her back, half expecting the contact to burn you like a hot stove and punch straight through your shields but it doesn't. "Try to breathe slower." You move your hand in slow circles across her back in what you hope is a soothing motion though you can feel her shaking slightly.
A sheen of sweat had broken out across her forehead you know has little to do with the Los Diablos heat, causing her dark waves to stick to her face. You pull the hair tie from your hair, gathering hers up and away from her face in a messy ponytail of sorts. At least this way if she does hurl she doesn't risk getting it in her hair.
You wait it out together.
You wait and you try not to think.
You try not to think about what you definitely didn't see. It was just the store front. Its not like you saw the glistening pink meat behind the counter, raw and bloody. Or the deep red marrow from the discarded bones. You're not prey anymore, your teeth were meant to sink deep into soft flesh of lesser things and the saliva that fills your mouth tastes like blood, a by product of your over-active, destructive imagination.
"Tegan?" Despite your closeness, Dina's voice sounds distant but its enough to bring you back to the here and now and a sharp sting makes you realize you were biting the inside of your cheek, hard enough to draw blood. Not your imagination after all. You swallow hard stealing a glance at Dina.
Her hair looks absurd.
The snort-laugh that erupts from you is enough to break the spell that had washed over you, the haze receding back into the well of memories, best left forgotten. The Nanosurge had been one of the strangest scars for you both, marked in ways no one else could see. And you wouldn't want them to see.
"Don't let me do your hair again, I don't think I'm good at it."
"What you don't think this could be my new look?" The shake of her head caused the lopsided ponytail to wobble.
"I guess its not worse than those ridiculous cowboy boots." You roll your eyes for dramatic effect, please to see her squint in annoyance
"Hey, don't knock the boots." Dina stands, helping you up as well as she pulls the hair tie from her hair and hands it back to you. You quickly put your hair up in a well-practiced ponytail.
You don't remember the small talk you made as you shared a cigarette, an excuse to linger and to make sure you were both in control once more. As you parted ways you make a mental note of the street name, one more place to avoid. The list was starting to get long.
