hold me like a knife — roe & vin / d5

The heat is suddenly stifling. The humidity sits in his lungs like water damage. In the space between one blink and the next, the field is gone. They're somewhere else. Roe loses time in sections. He should be fighting it, Vin has to pry his fingers off of the sword.

Everything is sticky. Red. The warmth of the steam makes him dizzy and softens the blood pressed to the places where his skin is pulled tight. It's tacky in the creases of his palms, vibrant along the lifeline.

His back burns when he moves, it makes him wince and then stop, arms hanging useless.

Maia's glaive, he thinks. Her iridescent vial.

Good boy.

He blinks at the shower tile, doesn't notice the water until it's falling over his head, sending the gore down his face in rivulets, gentle flow to his eyes and his mouth. Red baptism; he's soaked through in a matter of seconds. He can taste it.

He'll have to go back down to the stage to get more clothes. Run into Laney again. Tell her again that the jeans suit her but not as much as the dress does. He'll just have Bentley's head with him this time, parading it around on a metaphorical pike for everyone to see.

At least Antigone would probably get a kick out of that. Vin too.

They say something that sits lost under the patter of the shower. Roe's fever makes the hot water feel cold. Stinging. He shivers under the spray but otherwise doesn't move. The feeling jolts him, even if it's slight, even if it's slow.

His head thunks backwards against the wall, but his eyes focus again.

Vin's there, holding something that glows. Roe ignores them and reaches for that instead.

"Wha'the fuck is that."

Vin hands over a duck. The plastic of it is strangely soft, there'd never be anything like this in Twelve.

Roe holds it, squeezes it in his fist. It squeaks on the release, letting out a long shrill sound between his fingers.

Good boy.

”Haha.” He says with no inflection.

Funny joke.

Vin holds his jaw steady, moving his head to the side so the water flows down. When Roe passes his hand over the duck's head, his fingers glow. The little bones and the veins look backlit through the skin.

The air tastes like metal.

He lifts the duck a little when Vin comes at him again

Their fingers trace along the hem of Roe's shirt. He reacts delayed, another punctuated squeak, his voice draws out and bounces against the tile - "Whoa."

Not so fast, there.

The room is warmer now. The steam makes him dizzy. Lightheaded; the heat presses against his temples and clogs the space in the back of his throat. His breath feels wet. Like there's a drip in his lung.

"Lift your arms, bog mutt."

And he really does try. His arms raise halfway before his back flares again and his whole body goes rigid. He tries to pull one arm back in instead and somehow gets it caught in the body of the shirt, the rusted seam clinging to his elbow. He only struggles for a second before he gives up again.

He sinks down another inch, sighing so exaggeratedly that it rattles through him.

He catches the water running off of him in tracks, circling down to the drain in the floor. It's a soft sort of pink. When Bellezze had finally gotten him clean the water had been a murky sort of grey. This is something so clearly diluted. It's the inside of Bentley's trachea; that tender little bit of flesh that had clung to the sword.

"Think I'm good now." He tries to sit up properly, reaches out to pat Vin's shoulder and misses by about a mile, just knocks their arm with the duck, "Thanks though."