Comfy in Nautica

[Kermit]

Slowly, Michael rose from the sea, naked as the day he was born.

Even a day ago, he would have found the very prospect of anybody seeing him like this unthinkable. He was, in general, a very private person; borderline nevernude. Being naked felt like a form of honesty too concentrated for him to ever be comfortable with, like it was forcing him to say to someone 'yep, this is everything I am.'

Presently, though, he'd just wanted to feel clean. He'd been wearing the same outfit for days. It was covered in blood. He'd been covered in blood. He was tired of being covered in blood.

And, since he was, for all intents and purposes, alone, he decided to go for it. It was strange, like the cameras had just stopped being there. Maybe he was okay with being himself in front of them now, he guessed.

Anyways yeah he went for a little swim. An approximation of one, at least. He still didn't actually know how to, like, swim, but he was pretty good at chilling half-submerged under the water. Every so often he felt the bigger kinds of zooplankton (like shrimp, chaetognaths, or ctenophores, for example) brush past him, which was generally unnerving, but also kind of comforting in an odd way, like he was friends with them now.

He stepped back onto dry land, and flinched at the sudden crunch of desiccated seaweed under his feet. He scratched the back of his neck, and shuffled over to the towel he'd set his pack on. Sitting down cross-legged, he picked up his glasses and put them on, gazing out at the stars over the shoreline. Snapshots of their pasts, delayed by however long it had taken their light to be intercepted by his eyes.

They were all so beautiful that he started to cry.

[Emprexx Plush]

A pinprick of orange lit up in the distance behind him.

((Blaise D'Aramitz Continued From The Edge of Heaven))

"Are you enjoying yourself?"

Blaise did not call attention to the gun they weren't yet pointing at his back. It would color his reactions. If he turned, he turned, and they would point. Until then they would leave him stargazing. Out of sight they smoked one of their recently acquired cigarettes and kept advancing. Would he recognize them by their voice, they wondered? They recognized him. Michael was not an entirely unremarkable boy before and a number of murders kept his name fresh in their mind.

They had never been interested in whatever fumbling words Michael had managed in shared classes but they no longer knew what drew their interest or disinterest. It occurred to them once they realized who he was that they had not had the opportunity to speak with another mass murderer. So their first question was genuine, as was the second. "And do you object to company?"

[Kermit]

He knew they were there before they spoke. At least, he knew a lit cigarette was there.

His tensed his back, briefly, before realizing whoever it was had already had a decent opportunity to shoot him in the back. Then, he remembered he wasn't wearing any clothes, which meant they were totally checking him out.

He wasn't entirely comfortable with that. He wasn't entirely uncomfortable with it, either. It was what it was, he supposed. He didn't move.

Then he heard them speak.

He still didn't move.

"Depends on how you define enjoy, I guess."

He shrugged. Sniffled. He was still crying a little.

"Objecting to stuff isn't really my thing, so..." he inhaled shakily, taking in the sea breeze, "go for it, if you want."

He cupped one of his hands over his other, and idly cracked his knuckles.

"Haven't shot me yet."

[Emprexx Plush]

Yet. It did not bear repeating. Michael understood the position he was in. Which made one of them. Blaise did not understand what they were doing so much as why they were doing it, even that much only vaguely. They stopped a few feet behind him and considered their next words. "I thought this must be some comfort to you, to make yourself so vulnerable to enjoy it. You had to imagine...mm, unless." Unless he did not care if he was discovered. Perhaps Michael wanted to be found. It was possible he did not look at them because he did not want to see the inevitable coming. The sea and stars would make a pleasant last memory. Perhaps he was disappointed that they spoke at all.

They would not follow that line of thought yet. It was not useful to them.

Puffs of smoke drifted towards the beach in silence.

"Do you smoke?"

[Kermit]

"I don't," he smiled to himself, lightly. "Always considered myself above physical vices. Preferred emotional. Dunno anymore."

Back at home, he'd shittalked Blaise more times than he could count. Usually to Morgan, because then only Morgan would know. 'Wig Person' was his pejorative of choice for them.

He prodded a shard of broken seashell with his toe. It gleamed in the starlight, almost paler than his skin. He took another deep breath in. The smell of the sea reminded him of home — actual home, in California; not dumb fucking hick-ass Chattanooga. Chattanooga was literally a goddamn stop on the Trail of Tears. Nothing said white trash like being founded on genocide.

Why did Chattanooga even have an aquarium, anyways? Tennessee was fucking landlocked. Aquariums were supposed to be by the ocean, and not in fucking Trainville.

He poked at the shell again, then opened his mouth to speak. What Blaise'd said about vulnerability was accurate, sort of. To Michael, to be free meant to allow oneself to be vulnerable around other people, emotionally or otherwise.

He also found it the scariest thing on Earth.

"I'd be open to trying, though, if you're actually open to wasting a cigarette like that."

[Emprexx Plush]

"They are not mine." They let the implication speak for itself.

Blaise walked the rest of the way down in diagonal so that little distance changed between them but they could see each other if he cared to look. Julien, now they could have imagined him killing someone. Ace too. Quinn with minor skepticism. Michael did not look like a murderer, not the kind who did it for malice or passion. If they heard it in passing, a flash of a news report or a picture next to a diminished headline, they would have thought him the sort of killer who fills some perverse need he can no longer contain. There was that man, the one who inspired the slasher villain with the chainsaw, who would dance in the moonlight naked save for the skin of his victims. They'd heard that on some podcast or another. That was the sort of killer they would imagine Michael to be, and wasn't that fitting when the other face he brought to mind was their own resident mad chainsaw killer? The demons that drove them weren't so different, they might surmise. Both doubtless rooted in inferiority. While Marco made speeches to anyone who would listen about the size of his now rapidly dehydrating balls Michael would shrink into some safe comfort of identity, perhaps mental but likely physical. It was not so inconceivable to see him in the skin of a bully he hated, or a girl he decided he loved despite her never knowing he existed. Yes, they would think themself very clever in the corner of whichever coffee shop posed the least risk of undesired sympathies over their lost classmates.

They would have been wrong. They often were. Michael seemed comfortable in his own skin at the moment, he had no need for anyone else's. That was not to say he cared for himself; the reckless position he adopted spoke against that. But he did not shrink from them. Curious.

"But I would be open to trading one if you will answer a question."

[Kermit]

'They are not mine.' Blaise said.

Michael caught an implication, though he doubted it was one that Blaise intended to convey. A Freudian slip.

'They are not mine.'

Michael'd been there before.

Then, they offered a trade; a question for a smoke.

Pupils dilated as always, he glanced sideways at where Blaise now was, and then up into their eyes.

Michael had a complicated relationship with questions.

His dad, he remembered, had always said it was hard for a person to get any actual information out of him unless they did it through asking questions — and not just questions, but queries. 'Like a search engine,' he'd said.

Because, to his dad, he was was a computer, and nothing else.

It was one of the reasons he didn't let people know he was on the autism spectrum, unless they were extremely close to him (Literally, out of everyone at school, the only person who knew was Morgan). Once someone knew, they'd start to interpret everything he did through the lens of autism. Him being good at marine biology became him being a savant. Him remembering useless bullshit trivia became him being a savant. Everything became him being a goddamn fucking savant.

Once, his dad had compared him to Sheldon Cooper. He'd cried himself to sleep that night.

When people knew, he wasn't allowed to just be normal around them. He wasn't allowed to be a human. He wasn't allowed to be himself.

And the worst thing was, a lot of the time, he found himself unconsciously playing into their expectations. His speech would become kind of weird and stilted. His movements would become stiff, repetitive, and uncoordinated. He'd start making painfully unfunny jokes, and not just the 'more like Fart Gallery' kind, but ones that either lacked a set-up or a punchline.

He was good at talking like he was good at marine biology.

The fun fact about ctenophores he'd told to Jonah? He'd gotten the goddamn sea wrong. He remembered now. Black Sea, not the Mediterranean.

He blinked, realizing his brain had been caught on yet another irrelevant tangent.


"Y'know what? You can keep the cigarette," he said, giving a lopsided smirk while consciously raising an eyebrow. "How about a question for a question."

[Emprexx Plush]

Their head tilted to the right. Their expression remained neutral.

"What is your question, Michael?"

Why hadn't they shot him?

Were they going to shoot him?

Those were options. Not ones they expected, but options. Perhaps he would ask about someone they had killed. He seemed the type Dante would try to befriend. Joanne or Alexander maybe. Julien, Dolly, Megan. It was not as if Blaise had really known them. They had no answers that would satisfy. Knowing the path he had taken Michael might be used to that, but they hoped-no, that was a lie, they hoped for nothing. It would be more useful in a way they could not define if Michael still had some sense of satisfaction. They did not have the energy to remember why.

[Kermit]

"What made the cigarettes be worth taking?"

[Emprexx Plush]

Their laugh was dry and short. Movement it demanded hurt their jaw, which hurt what used to be their ear, which hurt their head. A long drag afterwards brought the burn to help them forget.

"I understood how to miss them."

Questions buzzed indecipherable inside them like so much static. Words came through here, there, implication of a plan they'd once had one they approached him. It was hard to keep continuity when they kept struggling to exist without something to lash out against. Another day they might have used him as a contact point to grind the memory of, mm, Cam something, one of the many. The one who had clung to Dante. Michael had killed her. She was his first. They remembered that like they remembered her name but still lied to no one but themself to serve malice they could no longer muster. It rotted away inside them unfulfilled yet raw, too uncomfortable to touch as directly as they just had. Impulse to pivot overtook intent they could not recall.

"Who do you miss most?"

[Kermit]

Michael simply nodded in acknowledgement to Blaise's answer. It seemed truthful. He wasn't sure, of course, because he didn't know how to be sure of things, but it seemed true beyond what he considered a reasonable doubt. There was an ambiguous double-meaning, which Michael got, since there'd been a period of time here when he, as a person, had been nothing but double-meanings.

Then, they asked their question.

It was a good question. He broke eye contact and looked out over the waves, trying to think of the answer.

So who did he really miss?

...He missed things. He missed things about people, and the things the people made him feel. He wasn't sure if he missed the people themselves.

His lip quivered, as a tear worked down from the corner of his eye. He still smiled. It wasn't necessarily a sad tear. He wasn't really sure what kind of tear it was, actually.

"Nominally, Beryl Mahelona," his voice stayed neutral as he spoke. "But, like... I dunno. It's hard to put into words."

...Oh, he got it.

"Myself. The only person I really miss is myself. All the better mes."

He shrugged and looked down at the ground, noticing the way the stars kind of blurred and melted together into a blob of nothing when reflected off the gross slime-covered surface of the seaweed. Exhaling, he opened his mouth to speak.

"I think we both asked the same question."

[Emprexx Plush]

Alternatives came unbidden, as they often did.

Parker with a hand outstretched. They could not recall his smile looking so easy. They spoke over coffee without tension about nothing in particular. The words were not so important as the environment they created. Casual, that was the word. Parker and Blaise had never been casual in any sense but performative but they could imagine it.

Dante fresh off the field. Of course they would not let him touch them. Laps were not worth ruining their outfit. When you saw Dante run once you had seen everything there was; he was talented but he didn't change. Pleasure was his motivation rather than competition. it would not amount to anything. Still they watched him because it brought him joy to have company, and they allowed themself to enjoy seeing him happy. Blaise had never once attended Dante's meets, much less a practice, but they could see him on the field.

Megan lying next to them, her fingertips lightly tracing behind their ear. No words. No circumstances. There was no space to describe. The act of being open to her, seeing her happiness shine without hesitation in their presence, was alien enough. They could see it and nothing more.

They looked into the sand. "I do not think they exist anywhere. My better selves. This is all I am." And they knew they were lying because they had been in these circles before, all Michael confirmed was that he was trapped in them too. They knew what step came next, but to get there they had to ask: what did Michael see when he envisioned his better selves? The possibilities were infinite, but he had given one to them with his first answer. Blaise gave him a nod and began to walk back the way they came.

Beryl had been a friend to Blaise. She was a friend to most people that she met, and they had bonded to a degree over her pursuit of non-heteronormative relationship structure. A shame that her ambitions mostly ended in being burdened with two disappointing men instead of one. It was not so surprising that Michael might have drifted into her orbit in one way or the other given her poor taste. Just not so directly that they remembered him from any of their conversations. It might have been lost in the wide range Beryl could cover. She had much to say but Blaise did not get the sense from her that she enjoyed the sound of her own voice.

Blaise had appreciated it well enough for both of them.

They remembered it.

It came to them in facsimile before they disappeared into the night. Out of practice, yes, and simple. Two words captured imperfectly in the darkness.

"Goodbye Michael."

They could hear her in it. Did he? What might that mean for him?

Another day, perhaps. If either lived to see it.

((Blaise D'Aramitz Continued And Nothing Will Go Wrong!))

[Kermit]

Michael said nothing. Closed his eyes and exhaled through his mouth.

He felt more about the fact that Blaise's impression hadn't drawn any emotion from within him than he did about hearing something resembling Beryl's voice.

Like hearing Alex the parrot asking 'Am I gray?'.

He kept staring out into the stars. They'd lost some of their magic, it felt like. They were just a bunch of burning spheres of space gas. Nothing more.

Maybe it was because he'd told Blaise the truth. No physical secrets. No mental secrets.

Just him.

He sat there, staring blankly for the next few hours. Eventually, he got dressed. New socks. New underoos. New pair of joggers, nearly identical to the last. New long-sleeved shirt; a gray one, bearing the words 'This is my too tired to function sweatshirt' in big block letters. Same pair of boots.

The announcements played at some point. Tonya by Erika. Aliya by Justin. Lizzie. Tirzah by Ivy. Theo by Camilla. Julien by Blaise. Sean by Justin. Clown Cult Lucas by Erika. "I win Morton's List," Michael accidentally said out loud. Jonah. Sierra by Willow.

It felt wrong to him that he barely felt anything about Aliya and Justin, or Blaise and Julien, or Sierra and Willow.

It was what it was.

The new DZ was announced, which was notable, since it was where Michael was.

His collar beeped.

"Fuck off you dumb fucking crackheads I already heard you the first time Jesus fucking Christ."

He picked a random direction, and started walking. It would be a fun surprise to see if he could make it out or not.

((Unfortunately, the direction he picked wasn't straight into the sea.))