lukeoutbelow | (no subject)

Julien had been feeling unwell for a couple of days. He'd spent all of yesterday in, doing nothing much but sleep and eat, feeling hungry almost constantly. Putting away the detritus left behind by that seemed unusually difficult. He had to leave some wrappers where they lay, and couldn't focus to cook, and that thing kept happening, where it was like he couldn't remember how to move his face, and somehow his resting expression was a Mona Lisa look.

He'd wanted to think he was just sick. It didn't happen much at all, his body wasn't used to it. But on some level, he knew. It was in the occasional paralysis of his face, and the thick warm feeling in his sternum, and the way both his hips clicked when he stood up.

So in a way it wasn't a surprise when he woke and that feeling was pressing out, hot and throbbing and painful, getting worse as he pressed his wing against his chest. It was a surprise when he tried to get up, and fell. He'd wanted, when he thought about this day coming, to do it alone, but he couldn't manage to heat water or pick athelas. It hurt. Eventually he couldn't take it. He had to call for help.

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Julien rolls eyes that are starting to bulge from his head, and obeys. The points in the fused keratinous structure that replaced his teeth are more prominent and tinged pink with blood vessels. "Seriously?" he says once he's let go. "This is what bendy straws were invented for. My trachea's in the floor of my mouth, get something to the back and it can't go down the wrong tube."

He's terrified - is that all of why his eyes are so wide and round? - even with athelas's influence but if there's someone here to see, he desperately doesn't want to show it. That leaves trying for peevish smartassery, or asking questions. Either is possibly a distraction to seize at. God, he doesn't want this. The good thing about laying in pain was that it had been so hard to think.

"You've got a giant hole in your memory too, right? Start of the year, like everyone blacked out for days and suddenly you're in a different place."