Bel, Erskin, and Jethro: Be celebrities.

Seeing the relief on Erskin's face when the leg connects eases a tightness in your chest, and by the time you're showing Clarke out you're all smiles. You scribble a note and hand it to her with a generous tip as thanks for coming to do the job on such short notice and untidy circumstances; the note is Jethro's trollhandle.

"See you at the wars," you tell her as you shake her hand.

 

"Not if you don't fucking show up for them, nerdlord," Clarke replies, scanning the note. She punches Bel on the shoulder a final time and ambles off down the hallway.

 

Glancing into the pool room, you see Jethro absently shuffling a towel around with his feet while poking at his phone. Probably more for something to do than because he's forgotten that hotel staff would do the cleanup if you called them. Still smiling, you slide down the wall to sit on the floor, and get your own phone out.

- crossfireHurricane [CH] began trolling bustedCrankshaft [BC] -
CH: * 'Nerdlord' is 8 letters, what do you think of it? <3

 

You drift and sleep for a long time, waking up only enough to stretch or roll over or, one time, scoot hastily away from the part of the wall the filtration system apparently turns on in. Then, finally, you yawn and stretch and feel something very close to alright, and surface.

"I'm hungry," you announce, and pull yourself out of the pond.

 

"I thought you might be," you say from the lounge, "so I ordered something in. That place with the sashimi delivers, it turns out."

You're sprawled on one of the couches with a game controller, the game paused on the room's laughably huge media screen. You're not exactly angling for a hate date so soon in his recovery, when he hasn't yet forgiven you for killing Cloris or accepted your reasons for doing it, and with his moirail napping in the suite's shared respiteblock. You just know he likes games.

"Reggie's already been at your portion, I'm afraid. How's the leg feel?"

 

You blink at him, then down at yourself. You got to your feet without even thinking about it, and you tentatively shift your weight.

"Not so bad," you say, testing out a few steps. Your hip's still stiff, but the prosthetic responds pretty well, and your gait's only a trifle unsteady."Hm. I think I'd still want a cane if I were carrying anything, or going across rough ground, but it seems like a decent enough fit to be getting on with." You make your way over to Bel's lounge and flop down heavily.

"I like the lines," you decide. "It's not flashy."

 

"Yeah, I didn't think you'd like anything flashy." You reach questioningly, and he doesn't object, so you explore its smooth surface with your hands. "No open seams for your clothes to catch on, and it's less temperature conductive than steel, so it won't get cold as fast as your old one. I asked Clarke for those things specifically." You hook over the somewhat griffin-nibbled sashimi platter so he can reach it more easily. "Did you know Reggie will chase a laser pointer in circles until he gets dizzy, and then pretend he's deep in serious thought and didn't want to walk anywhere anyway? Cutest thing I ever saw."

((if reggie is not like that i will edit but i am p sure he is like that))

 

"What the devil is a laser pointer?" you ask, digging in to the fish and rice. "Did something skittery get in? He'll do the same thing to tadpoles, I saw him tip over in pond mud once and then have to pretend he wanted to be brown all along one side."

 

"Like one of these, I mean." You get out the laser scope you were using to make a red dot for Reggie to chase and show Erskin how to turn it on. While he's looking at it, you steal half his pickled ginger.

 

You make a noise something like "!" and immediately shine it, painfully, into your eye. When Bel laughs you shine it into his eye. Then you play it over the floor and Reggie gallops furiously into the room, tail up, crest back, wings out, intent on wholesale slaughter. You get him to chase it across the table, up the wall, over the curtains, under a chair, and then lunge for it, all beak and claws, right at Bel's face.

You laugh until you hiccup.

 

You manage to dodge Reggie, mostly, but he gets sort of tangled in your hair and ends up perching on the arm of the couch with his back turned, the very picture of affronted dignity. You're laughing too hard for your apologies to be more than garbled nonsense, but he accepts pettins as a substitute.

You shove Erskin and he shoves you back. You essay an exploratory tickle attack.

 

You yowl in wounded outrage and deposit Bel on the floor by his shirtscruff and a lot of slapboxing. Then you climb on to the arm of the couch to sit beside Reggie and project the same air of patient stoicism in the face of persecution.

Well, except for the badly stifled hiccuping.

 

Snickering softly, you creep up behind him and shine the laser past him onto the curtains. "Go get it," you stage-whisper. "Go get that red bug."

 

You give it a moment, until Reggie catches sight of it and expands menacingly.

"Brrrrprenk," he says, low and threatening, and lashes his short tail. The instant your guardian launches for the curtains you whirl as fast as you can manage and give Bel a ringing, open-handed slap across the chops, then grab the laser out of his startled hand. Then you make off at a decent clip towards the water room, and the comparatively defensible deep end of the pool.

 

He's never slapped you like that before. It makes your heart rate spike, takes your anatomy from 'maybe just friends roughhousing' to 'we are absolutely going to hatefuck' in under a second.

"Oh no you don't," you growl-laugh, and launch yourself in a flat tackle-dive at his back. Catch him around the waist and roll with him, sit on him, pin his wrists.

Grin down at him, breathing hard. "Hello, troubleface."

 

"Hallo, prettyboy," you return, and lean up as if to kiss him. When he falls for it and leans down to take your mouth, you headbutt him. Not in the nose or anything, but forehead to forehead, so your horns clash, and he makes a low beautiful noise and you can plant both feet on the ground and heave him off to the side by main strength. He's stubborn enough he keeps hold of one of your wrists but when you get a leg over the side of the pool it works against him: you twist around to get hold of him, and wrench him along with you.

There's a sharp, sweet bloom of blood in the water, after the bubbles clear. He's scraped his knee. It's not like when you're breathing your own blood, not a fearful choking reek, having Bel's scent running across your gills is good, you like it. You don't let him go: the pool's not deep enough to easily drown him, save for at the farthest end, and that leaves you plenty of room for scuffling.

 

It's a beautiful little fight. You struggle to keep leverage, keep at least one foot on the bottom of the pool so you can shove and twist. He struggles to deny you that leverage, so his webbed fingers and toes can give him the movement advantage. Laughing and sputtering, growling and yelping, you scratch each other's skin, nip each other's ears, pull hair and clack horns. His new leg is working beautifully, and doesn't seem to be paining him at all.

You feel free in a rare way. So much of your life is spent feeling like a snortbeast in a pottery store, but with Erskin you can cut loose.

 

You're wild enough from the fighting that you can shrug off the sting of nipped ears and split knuckles, but finally he gets a firm grip on you and lays a hot, biting kiss to the hollow of your throat. All your fierceness unravels in one ragged gasp, and you drift to a soft, quiet, cooperative stillness in his arms.

 

You go still for a moment, confused, hurt. Then angry. You rear back and deal him a slap across the face, twin to the one that roused you a few minutes ago. "Who are you with?" you demand. "Where are you? Look at me."

 

The slap rattles you: it's not the right sort of pain, it flares your fins and bares your teeth and knocks the whole world out from under you. You growl, weakly, and cover the bite on your neck with one hand, struggling to focus through the compulsion to tilt your jaw back and surrender. God, but you need— you need so badly for someone to have you like your Lady had you, but it won't be Bel. It could never be Bel.

"Go fuck yourself," you say thickly, and make an attempt to knee him in the bone bulge.