Bel, Erskin, and Jethro: Be celebrities.

You grimace. "I'm not sure. I'm no mediculler, but Erskin certainly can't be trusted to do self-evaluation -- his habit of claiming to be fine when he is, in actual fact, dying, is kind of how we came to this pass in the first place. Do you need the pint all at once?"

Jethro puts in, "Sigs said he put a suggestion in Cloris's pan that she weren't hungry, so's she wouldn't kill Erskin afore we could rescue 'im. He probably ain't that low on blood."

"But --" You look pointedly at the still-vivid bite marks.

"Sex stuff." Jethro wrinkles his nose. "You should know."

"Subject change! The point is, I think we can try it. Erskin, you let us know if you feel like you're going to black out or something, all right? No false bravado, don't be stupid."

 

"I wasn't dying," you grumble, swatting Bel's hip. "You will note, because, because on point of the fact is, I am not dead. So. That's what's happened. That's what didn't happened."

Then you catch sight of the needle that needs to go into you and your heart does a weird corkscrew sort of maneuver in your chest, because, goodness, no, it is large and horrible, you do not want that anywhere near your veins or your— your— marks. Which all start burning, desperate and intense even through the miserable sweaty fever-heat. You bite your lip, hard.

"Er," you say, and manage to hold out your wrist and shrink back against Bel in the same moment.

 

"He doesn't like needles," you inform Jethro.

"He don't gotta like 'em," Jethro smiles, cradling Erskin's wrist in one of his hands and petting his hair with the other. "You be as grumpy as you want, babe, this whole deal sucks skunk balls an' you're bein' one hell of a trooper about it."

You hold Erskin steady against you and nod at the engineer. "Okay, Clarke, go for it."

 

Clarke takes his arm, ties a stretchy cord around it above the elbow, then prods the scarred-and-scabbed skin of his forearm critically.

"Deepfried mother of fuck, his veins are a disaster. This is gonna take a few stabs."

The first time she tries to get the needle in somewhere useable, Erskin makes a high, choked-off whimper, and claps his free hand to his mouth. He shudders as Clarke curses and pulls it back, and keens through his fingers when she tries a few inches higher.

"If at any point in this totally non-weird medical procedure your bulge makes an appearance I want you to know I will nail it into your nook," Clark says briskly, and sinks the needle in again. It takes, and dark blood starts to wind down the tubing and into the attached packet.

 

"Think unsexy thoughts," you tell Erskin helpfully. "Think about schoolfeeds. You hate those platonically."

Jethro puts in, "You wanna go shopping tomorrow? We can go to the mall an' I'll be your turret gunner again an' we'll mow everybody down with the four-wheelie."

 

You shiver and rest your head on Bel's leg and close your eyes, relaxing into the sensation bit by bit. It's unfamiliar and heavy and hurts more than you were expecting but it's alright, you can manage, you can be calm.

"No mowing," you tell Jethro, slitting an eye open. "Ssss....no. I forbid it. Not in malls. 'S very quite extremely well rude."

 

"Yeah, I guess it is," Jethro admits, "but we can do donuts an' whoop a lot, right?"

You rest your hand on the side of his neck, serruptitiously checking his pulse. You don't want to let on that you're worried, but -- well. You just hope Jethro's right about Cloris not really feeding on him, and that those party assholes didn't take much.

When Clarke at last withdraws the needle, you hold the sterile pad on the puncture, because if Erskin's going to be getting horny about people poking his bruises, those people had better be you. "What's next?"

 

"Dump the catch of the day back in the pond and get out of my damn hair is what's next. Go watch a couple of cartoons, jerk off, I don't care," Clarke says absently, already unscrewing a jar of pink, slowly squirming tentacles. "Even flood-priming takes a while. I'll get you to fish him back out for me when it's time to insert tabs a into slots b."

 

"An hour or two, then? Okay. Jethro, why don't you call room service, let's make sure he's hydrated. Erskin, put your arm around -- there, good -- huh, you don't weigh much without that leg." You lower Erskin gently back into the pool, keeping an arm around him to help him stay upright if he wants to.

Jethro looks up from texting and says, "Miz -- Clarke, right? -- you want anything while I'm orderin' up?"

"No vodka," you put in before Erskin can open his mouth. "No vodka in the same room as Party God here until such time as there are no symptoms it can be masking."

"Okay, Bel, we all know you're butthurt about that, you can stop bringin' it up every third sentence," Jethro sighs.

 

"Something that used to be alive but then got deep fried four or five times. And a sour soda," says Clarke.

You rest your head against Bel's shoulder and shudder with nauseous horror, rather than uncomfortable arousal.

"Not that," you say. "Not that none, for, for me, no. I.... soup? I don't know. Soup."

 

"I'll have the fried thing too. Just get us a monstrous huge order of fried thing," you say. "And get some of that salad juice, he made faces at it but it seemed to help you when you were recovering from blood loss."

"Will do." He leans down to kiss Erskin's forehead and give him a smile so pitying you're embarrassed to have seen it. "You be good, boss." Then he goes out, presumably to voice call room service without disturbing his moirail.

You sit and watch Clarke work for a little while. Eventually you say, "What's wrong with EMP shielding? Military computer hardware's got it, why not a prosthetic?"

 

"You sure got done fondling yourself fast," Clarke grunts, then turns and waggles a long, thick tentacle. "The wetware doesn't run off the kind of electricity EMPs are made to fuck with, Mister Big Shot Computer Hacker I Probably Have Fifty Eels In My Basement And Kiss Them Good Morning. Any weapon as makes a pulse strong enough to disrupt the communication of neurons and nerve impulses is going to be something like lightning gun or a pocket nuke, and those tend to give people a lot more problems than their damn leg fritzing out on them."

She stuffs the tentacle into the leg plating, then adds, "Durr."

 

"Oh, that makes sense," you say mildly. "I'd assumed there were some regular electronics in there as well." Pause. "Only two dozen eels, and they're in my respiteblock. Oh, that reminds me -- gonna take my arm back, Erskin." You make sure he's okay to hang onto you on his own, and get out Cloris's husktop. "I don't guess she told you her password? That would speed this up considerably."

 

"BriarThorn," you mumble sleepily. "My Lady. 'S she here...? Is that what— what I— " you struggle to sit up. "I needed the password?"

 

"What? No, troubleface, it's okay, I'm just computering. You rest until the food comes."

You pat him back down against your side and turn back to the husktop. Well, knowing her trollhandle isn't nothing. And thanks to a whole lot of trolls being complete idiots, there are a whole lot of handy-dandy devices and techniques out there for those 'I forgot my password' moments, some of them even legal. It's just a matter of systematically trying them until something unlocks.

 

"Lady," you say mournfully, and doze off. You walk through the gardens again, looking for her, looking everywhere, but it's all burnt, here, the bushes charcoal black and still smouldering at their hearts. The golden light of this place is choked red and black and it's too warm, a punishing, sick heat, and ash shows against the dark sky instead of butterflies. She's not there. She's not anywhere. She's gone.

 

You grimace to yourself. You get out your phone and troll Lu.

CH: * He's still in love with her even though she tried to kill Jethro right in front of him. I don't know what to do.

Then you put your phone away and get back to work. You feel a tiny bit better just for having whined to somebody, even though you feel a little guilty for it.

 

Clarke finishes installing tentacles into the leg-shaped shell, then picks up the packet of blood, slits it neatly, and dumps the whole thing in. after that she adds a variety of weird powders and syrups and mixes the whole wriggling concoction by hand, slicking herself up to the shoulder with hideous pink-purple fluids. When Jethro comes back in with the food she says, "Fucking finally, give some of that here, hotstuff," shakes off a few clinging biowires, and holds out a hand dripping with bloody slime.

 

With the curious expression of a scientist, Jethro holds out a basket of beer battered tarantulas in one hand and a napkin in the other, and waits to see which one she takes. When she ignores the napkin, his expression turns to amusement, and you crack up, which wakes up your hug barnacle.

Jethro distributes the rest of the food, and settles in on Erskin's other side to feed him soup right in front of god and everybody. "You two are shameless," you point out.

"Prude," Jethro says absently before Erskin can say it.

"Huh," is all you have to say back, because being jealous is dumb, and anyway, these tarantulas are hella good, especially with the hot honey mustard. "How long does it need to do whatever it's doing?" you ask Clarke.

 

"You can, next time, you, when we, er. You can feed me soup in the next time, there is a soup, when that happens," you assure Bel, butting him groggily on the shoulder. Jethro patiently straightens you out by a horn.

"I love you," you tell him, and yawn, and accept more soup. Soup is an excellent idea. Good job, whoever invented soup. "I love whoever invented soup. A soup? Soups..."

You have more soup. You try to take the spoon for yourself but after you drop it once, Jethro won't give it back.