Forge & April | Early morning reversals
Mar. 24th, 2023 03:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_mayhem posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logs(backdated) Powers are reverting back, which means Forge and April wake up in the early hours because his math is back and his limbs are going. She helps with the cleanup.
TW: Light Body Horror
April wasn’t a light sleeper, but she also wasn’t used to being in bed with another person. In the same room, sure. Boris - or the dogs she’d had back home - definitely. But being curled up next to another human for more than a light nap or couch time was a new experience. Forge’s reaction to emotional empathy had given the two a crash course into sharing space. So when he started moving in his sleep - not the natural rolls and shifts, but with pained noises and jerky movement that had him accidentally kicking her calf, she woke. Startled a little, even.
She turned to look at him, eyes sharper in the dim light of the moon than she was expecting, and saw a face scrunched in pain. “Forge?” It was a quiet ask, the first time, trying not to startle him awake. A nightmare, maybe? At the lack of response she put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle shake. “Forge, honey. Wake up.”
Forge was a deep sleeper and he'd worn himself out the previous day. So he just made an unintelligible noise and tried to roll over. But the sheets covering his body were showing some gnarly streaks and the reason why presented itself as he shifted and revealed his right hand, which was starting to erupt in blisters that were weeping some sort of nasty.
April’s voice took on an urgency as she saw his hand. She went ahead and got out of bed, moving towards the bathroom even as she raised her voice, sharpening her tone to pierce through her boyfriend’s sleep. “Forge. You’ve gotta wake up, right now.”
"Fuck off." he mumbled as he tried to recapture the dream he'd just been rudely pulled from. But it was more of her concern and worry that cut through the cobwebs than her words. "Fine, fine. I'm up. What's going on?" he asked, still clearly very bleary from sleep.
“Not with that attitude,” she called back, rummaging in the bathroom for cleaning supplies. Bandages? bandages. “Hon, you have any bandages? I think you’re going to need them.”
Forge glared blearily in the general direction of his bathroom. "Doubt it." he said and then as more brain cylinders came online, he fell backwards with a groan. "Find my painkillers while you're in there?" he said. "Massive headache."
“Mm yeah, you’re gonna want it. Have you checked on your leg?” April found the bottle of pills and grabbed a second towel, then detoured to the kitchenette for water. She brought the whole pile back to the bedroom, setting them on the foot of the bed. “Your hand looks pretty gnarly. I’m gonna guess powers are officially reverting.”
Forge paused to consider that, and given how he'd just randomly calculated the air pressure in his room, could only sadly agree. "Looks like." he said miserably. "Welp. Easy-come, easy-go." he said, trying and failing to make light of the situation. He'd really loved being physically whole again and the thought of having to go back to the hand and leg was a crushing disappointment.
April sat next to him on the bed, cracking open the water and holding up the pills. “You’re probably going to want these first, but I’m sorry in advance they won’t be working while I clean you up.”
"Yeah." he said, reaching out with his right hand to take the pills. Then it dawned on him what was going on and he recoiled. "OK, that's just nasty." he said dispassionately as he adjusted so he could take the offered meds with his left.
“It’s not great,” she agreed, biting her lip. “You might need to go down to medical, make sure nothing gets infected.” April was actually hoping that it’d wipe away cleanly and not make him relive any early wound care, but she kept that thought to herself.
"Yeah, let's save that for people who actually need it. Believe it or not, the hand doesn't actually hurt. Painkillers are for my headache - the math is back and making up for lost time. Which probably means the shapeshifting is gone or on its way out, so therefore so is the hand and the leg." he said with a tone of bitterness. "Because of course they are."
“Not entirely surprising though, is it?” She perched on the bed next to him, a towel in her lap as she held out her hands. “Gonna have to clean your sheets anyhow, might as well take care of this here. I’ll grab your prosthetics after.”
"Leg's gonna be gnarliest. You can get that first. I can take care of my hand." he said, temporarily putting his things down so he could reach over for a control to remote-activate Thing Mode. One of his hands sprung to life, jumped off its storage shelf, and skittered over to jump up onto the bed. Then it laid back down, ready to be re-attached.
“Alright. I am sorry if this ends up hurting.” April peeled back the sheet, unable to hold back the wince as she looked at the mess of his leg. “Well, on the bright side, you’re not completely naked, if we end up taking that trip to medical?”
"The weird thing is, this doesn't hurt. Much." he said, only lying through his teeth a little. It itched and felt uncomfortable but most of the misery in his current state of existence was coming from the math coming back and the drain on his cognitive bandwidth.
“That’s something.” The slight pinch around his eyes and mouth told a different story, but she wasn’t going to push, focusing instead on cleaning the area. The light in the room was fairly dim, and it was quiet. Her hands were steady as they cleaned the area, and she let out a sigh of relief once the detritus was gone. “Looks a little irritated, but not awful.”
"It's probably in the process of dissolving into slime, considering the power that kept it around is now back with its rightful owner. Presumably." he said. "Seriously, it doesn't hurt. Math is letting me know it missed me by trying to eat my brain whole, but that's just what it does."
“Well yeah, the dissolving bits are gross. But the original wound area just looks a little red. Will math stop eating your brain if you focus on something specific? Breathing patterns or some such?” April dropped the now filthy towel carefully on the floor, then grabbed a wet wipe to finish cleaning the area. “You’ll probably want a shower, yeah? I can change the bedding while you do that.”
"Working on it." he said, trying to regulate his breathing and let the math just happen, not focusing on it. "Yeah, let me just grab a leg and a hand and then go take a shower." he said, hopping up on his good leg to head over to his prosthetics bench.
April started balling the linens together. “So. Washing these, or calling them a lot cause?” On one hand, some vigorous washing could probably get the gunk out. Possibly even any staining. On the other… well, the first round would at minimum be at least a round of rinsing. Maybe a full hand wash, even.
"Toss 'em. Who knows what kind of narsties are lurking in there." he said as he retrieved his leg and hand, the latest models pre-powerswap, as well as his cane to handle as he tried to hobble over to the shower with his armload of limbs.
“Would you like some assistance?” She knew he was capable of getting around. Used to it. But he’d just lost his limbs again. April wouldn’t push his independence, but she didn’t see the point of him moving around in pain if she could lend a waist or shoulder or even a free hand to give him a little extra stability. And a quiet acknowledgement that she was fine with letting him lean on her, whether it was a want or a need.
"Do me a favor and hang onto the limb parade until I get situated?" he asked as he almost dropped his artificial leg.
“Of course.” April left the pile of linens on the floor and stood, taking the few steps to Forge and leaning up slightly to give him a kiss on the cheek as she took his leg. “Thing, you wanna ride on my shoulder?”
Thing, for its part, lifted itself off the bed and scampered along the floor to scale Mount April while avoiding inconvenient bits to finally land on her shoulder, perched there like a triumphant mountain climber. Forge, for his part, just grunted his amusement and opened up the door to the shower so he could get cleaned up and maybe get rid of the remaining rotting bits.
April leaned her cheek against Thing briefly, letting out a whistle at Forge. “Forget I was here, or don’t care since I’ve already seen it all?”
He proceeded to his best (really poor) butt-wiggle as he got the shower prepped. "Just leave the hand and leg there, I can handle reattachment after I get cleaned up," he said before ducking himself into the shower and pulling the curtain closed behind himself.
She did leave the leg leaning in a position that’d be easy to grab, but Thing was stubbornly attached to her shoulder. “Take your time in there, apparently Thing wants to be tall and ride around.” She’d have it help grip the used linens closed while she got a trash bag around them. Between that and her tendrils, cleaning up would be fast.
"If Thing is being clingy you could grab another hand off the stand." he said, and followed it by an "Ew, this is just _nasty_…". He did, however, decline to give any context.
“Thing is fine, it just wants to help. Isn’t that right?” Thing gave a quick thumbs up, skittering down her arm to clamp onto the ball of linens as she eased a trash bag around them, then jumped off and moved back into the bathroom. “All yours now,” she called back, grabbing some cleaner and tackling the floor next to the bed. Just in case. Mainly because stuff had been gross, even if it thankfully hadn’t smelled completely awful.
“Where are your spare linens?”
"Umm." he said, letting his voice trail off. "Not sure I have any?" he added after a long pause.
April let out a sigh, but wasn’t terribly surprised. “You can sleep at mine tonight. We’ll go shopping tomorrow? At least your pillows survived.” And the mattress protector was actually doing what it was made for. It just needed a hot wash, probably with bleach.
A few minutes later Forge re-appeared, sporting a bare artificial hand and leg. "Well, at least they paired up without giving me a fuss." he said, wiggling the fingers on his artificial hand through a diagnostic cycle. "Feels weird, but hey, I had two flesh and blood feet when I went to bed." he said with the blackest of humors.
“You did! And you got to be the strong one for a few days.” She wrapped her arms around him in a hug, careful not to squeeze very hard. “I’m sure it’s just as strange reverting as it was waking up without your math.”
"Waking up without the math was terrifying. This is merely irritating." he said with a certain degree of Grumpy in his voice. He made his way over to his limb storage bench, opened a drawer, and pulled out a glove to wear over his artificial hand. "Welp, not gonna go back to sleep for a while and the math being back means our Trek among the Stars has just ended." he said. "So I guess I won't need the hairclip over my eyes after all." he teased. "Gonna get more dressed, maybe check in on existing projects."
April bit her lip, then gave him a grin. “Ooooor you can come back to my room like I suggested. See if I can’t tire you out enough to nap for a bit.”
He almost committed a grave error by opening his mouth to protest. Then he closed it and smiled sheepishly. "Yes, ma'am." he said as demurely as he could.
“You can work on the math, see if you can perfect that one move that makes my eyes roll into the back of my head.” She followed up the tease with a poke to his side for calling her ma’am. “I’m younger than you, don’t call me that."
"You're in charge, ma'am." he said with a more natural-looking smirk on his face.
TW: Light Body Horror
April wasn’t a light sleeper, but she also wasn’t used to being in bed with another person. In the same room, sure. Boris - or the dogs she’d had back home - definitely. But being curled up next to another human for more than a light nap or couch time was a new experience. Forge’s reaction to emotional empathy had given the two a crash course into sharing space. So when he started moving in his sleep - not the natural rolls and shifts, but with pained noises and jerky movement that had him accidentally kicking her calf, she woke. Startled a little, even.
She turned to look at him, eyes sharper in the dim light of the moon than she was expecting, and saw a face scrunched in pain. “Forge?” It was a quiet ask, the first time, trying not to startle him awake. A nightmare, maybe? At the lack of response she put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle shake. “Forge, honey. Wake up.”
Forge was a deep sleeper and he'd worn himself out the previous day. So he just made an unintelligible noise and tried to roll over. But the sheets covering his body were showing some gnarly streaks and the reason why presented itself as he shifted and revealed his right hand, which was starting to erupt in blisters that were weeping some sort of nasty.
April’s voice took on an urgency as she saw his hand. She went ahead and got out of bed, moving towards the bathroom even as she raised her voice, sharpening her tone to pierce through her boyfriend’s sleep. “Forge. You’ve gotta wake up, right now.”
"Fuck off." he mumbled as he tried to recapture the dream he'd just been rudely pulled from. But it was more of her concern and worry that cut through the cobwebs than her words. "Fine, fine. I'm up. What's going on?" he asked, still clearly very bleary from sleep.
“Not with that attitude,” she called back, rummaging in the bathroom for cleaning supplies. Bandages? bandages. “Hon, you have any bandages? I think you’re going to need them.”
Forge glared blearily in the general direction of his bathroom. "Doubt it." he said and then as more brain cylinders came online, he fell backwards with a groan. "Find my painkillers while you're in there?" he said. "Massive headache."
“Mm yeah, you’re gonna want it. Have you checked on your leg?” April found the bottle of pills and grabbed a second towel, then detoured to the kitchenette for water. She brought the whole pile back to the bedroom, setting them on the foot of the bed. “Your hand looks pretty gnarly. I’m gonna guess powers are officially reverting.”
Forge paused to consider that, and given how he'd just randomly calculated the air pressure in his room, could only sadly agree. "Looks like." he said miserably. "Welp. Easy-come, easy-go." he said, trying and failing to make light of the situation. He'd really loved being physically whole again and the thought of having to go back to the hand and leg was a crushing disappointment.
April sat next to him on the bed, cracking open the water and holding up the pills. “You’re probably going to want these first, but I’m sorry in advance they won’t be working while I clean you up.”
"Yeah." he said, reaching out with his right hand to take the pills. Then it dawned on him what was going on and he recoiled. "OK, that's just nasty." he said dispassionately as he adjusted so he could take the offered meds with his left.
“It’s not great,” she agreed, biting her lip. “You might need to go down to medical, make sure nothing gets infected.” April was actually hoping that it’d wipe away cleanly and not make him relive any early wound care, but she kept that thought to herself.
"Yeah, let's save that for people who actually need it. Believe it or not, the hand doesn't actually hurt. Painkillers are for my headache - the math is back and making up for lost time. Which probably means the shapeshifting is gone or on its way out, so therefore so is the hand and the leg." he said with a tone of bitterness. "Because of course they are."
“Not entirely surprising though, is it?” She perched on the bed next to him, a towel in her lap as she held out her hands. “Gonna have to clean your sheets anyhow, might as well take care of this here. I’ll grab your prosthetics after.”
"Leg's gonna be gnarliest. You can get that first. I can take care of my hand." he said, temporarily putting his things down so he could reach over for a control to remote-activate Thing Mode. One of his hands sprung to life, jumped off its storage shelf, and skittered over to jump up onto the bed. Then it laid back down, ready to be re-attached.
“Alright. I am sorry if this ends up hurting.” April peeled back the sheet, unable to hold back the wince as she looked at the mess of his leg. “Well, on the bright side, you’re not completely naked, if we end up taking that trip to medical?”
"The weird thing is, this doesn't hurt. Much." he said, only lying through his teeth a little. It itched and felt uncomfortable but most of the misery in his current state of existence was coming from the math coming back and the drain on his cognitive bandwidth.
“That’s something.” The slight pinch around his eyes and mouth told a different story, but she wasn’t going to push, focusing instead on cleaning the area. The light in the room was fairly dim, and it was quiet. Her hands were steady as they cleaned the area, and she let out a sigh of relief once the detritus was gone. “Looks a little irritated, but not awful.”
"It's probably in the process of dissolving into slime, considering the power that kept it around is now back with its rightful owner. Presumably." he said. "Seriously, it doesn't hurt. Math is letting me know it missed me by trying to eat my brain whole, but that's just what it does."
“Well yeah, the dissolving bits are gross. But the original wound area just looks a little red. Will math stop eating your brain if you focus on something specific? Breathing patterns or some such?” April dropped the now filthy towel carefully on the floor, then grabbed a wet wipe to finish cleaning the area. “You’ll probably want a shower, yeah? I can change the bedding while you do that.”
"Working on it." he said, trying to regulate his breathing and let the math just happen, not focusing on it. "Yeah, let me just grab a leg and a hand and then go take a shower." he said, hopping up on his good leg to head over to his prosthetics bench.
April started balling the linens together. “So. Washing these, or calling them a lot cause?” On one hand, some vigorous washing could probably get the gunk out. Possibly even any staining. On the other… well, the first round would at minimum be at least a round of rinsing. Maybe a full hand wash, even.
"Toss 'em. Who knows what kind of narsties are lurking in there." he said as he retrieved his leg and hand, the latest models pre-powerswap, as well as his cane to handle as he tried to hobble over to the shower with his armload of limbs.
“Would you like some assistance?” She knew he was capable of getting around. Used to it. But he’d just lost his limbs again. April wouldn’t push his independence, but she didn’t see the point of him moving around in pain if she could lend a waist or shoulder or even a free hand to give him a little extra stability. And a quiet acknowledgement that she was fine with letting him lean on her, whether it was a want or a need.
"Do me a favor and hang onto the limb parade until I get situated?" he asked as he almost dropped his artificial leg.
“Of course.” April left the pile of linens on the floor and stood, taking the few steps to Forge and leaning up slightly to give him a kiss on the cheek as she took his leg. “Thing, you wanna ride on my shoulder?”
Thing, for its part, lifted itself off the bed and scampered along the floor to scale Mount April while avoiding inconvenient bits to finally land on her shoulder, perched there like a triumphant mountain climber. Forge, for his part, just grunted his amusement and opened up the door to the shower so he could get cleaned up and maybe get rid of the remaining rotting bits.
April leaned her cheek against Thing briefly, letting out a whistle at Forge. “Forget I was here, or don’t care since I’ve already seen it all?”
He proceeded to his best (really poor) butt-wiggle as he got the shower prepped. "Just leave the hand and leg there, I can handle reattachment after I get cleaned up," he said before ducking himself into the shower and pulling the curtain closed behind himself.
She did leave the leg leaning in a position that’d be easy to grab, but Thing was stubbornly attached to her shoulder. “Take your time in there, apparently Thing wants to be tall and ride around.” She’d have it help grip the used linens closed while she got a trash bag around them. Between that and her tendrils, cleaning up would be fast.
"If Thing is being clingy you could grab another hand off the stand." he said, and followed it by an "Ew, this is just _nasty_…". He did, however, decline to give any context.
“Thing is fine, it just wants to help. Isn’t that right?” Thing gave a quick thumbs up, skittering down her arm to clamp onto the ball of linens as she eased a trash bag around them, then jumped off and moved back into the bathroom. “All yours now,” she called back, grabbing some cleaner and tackling the floor next to the bed. Just in case. Mainly because stuff had been gross, even if it thankfully hadn’t smelled completely awful.
“Where are your spare linens?”
"Umm." he said, letting his voice trail off. "Not sure I have any?" he added after a long pause.
April let out a sigh, but wasn’t terribly surprised. “You can sleep at mine tonight. We’ll go shopping tomorrow? At least your pillows survived.” And the mattress protector was actually doing what it was made for. It just needed a hot wash, probably with bleach.
A few minutes later Forge re-appeared, sporting a bare artificial hand and leg. "Well, at least they paired up without giving me a fuss." he said, wiggling the fingers on his artificial hand through a diagnostic cycle. "Feels weird, but hey, I had two flesh and blood feet when I went to bed." he said with the blackest of humors.
“You did! And you got to be the strong one for a few days.” She wrapped her arms around him in a hug, careful not to squeeze very hard. “I’m sure it’s just as strange reverting as it was waking up without your math.”
"Waking up without the math was terrifying. This is merely irritating." he said with a certain degree of Grumpy in his voice. He made his way over to his limb storage bench, opened a drawer, and pulled out a glove to wear over his artificial hand. "Welp, not gonna go back to sleep for a while and the math being back means our Trek among the Stars has just ended." he said. "So I guess I won't need the hairclip over my eyes after all." he teased. "Gonna get more dressed, maybe check in on existing projects."
April bit her lip, then gave him a grin. “Ooooor you can come back to my room like I suggested. See if I can’t tire you out enough to nap for a bit.”
He almost committed a grave error by opening his mouth to protest. Then he closed it and smiled sheepishly. "Yes, ma'am." he said as demurely as he could.
“You can work on the math, see if you can perfect that one move that makes my eyes roll into the back of my head.” She followed up the tease with a poke to his side for calling her ma’am. “I’m younger than you, don’t call me that."
"You're in charge, ma'am." he said with a more natural-looking smirk on his face.
