Archive of Our Own ^beta

She’s three steps into the living room when the sound of someone choking on air nearly gives her a heart attack.

“Kyle??” he’s on his knees, lungs heaving violently, and yet as she darts to his side to offer aid, one arm swings wildly at her. Between the horrendous sound he’s making, her attempts to sidestep the limb still keeping her at bay, and the anxiety rushing blood in her ears, she misses the words choking their way off his tongue for a few minutes. Then he starts repeating them at higher volume, such that she is required to listen, and do so quickly, before the neighbors start asking questions.

“Take…shower…” he manages, around some truly horrific hacking, “Get…off…now. NOW!”

He’s only satisfied after she’s taken not one, but six showers. With a towel still wrapped around her drying figure, she gets him on the couch with two chilled cloths across his forehead and chest. Every inch of his skin is an alarming shade of red, and though she finds the chemical reaction fascinating, this simply isn’t the time for scientific inquiry. Not to mention, Kyle just looks pitiful. Every few minutes, he makes a weak sound that resembles a kitten with its first hairball.

“For the last time,” she says, five hours later, “I promise. Now stop begging or I’ll dump the whole bottle of perfume on your face, just to see what will happen.”

He doesn’t speak to her for two days, like a petulant toddler. At least it affords her some peace and quiet.

***

“I really wish you would take better care of yourself, darling.” Mama sighs, after Stazia has bent herself over the toilet for the fifth time in half as many hours. “This stomach bug has been tearing your sweet self up for weeks.”

“Mmph.” It’s hardly a coherent response, but it’s all she can muster. Opening her mouth might mean she vomits again, and her stomach can’t deal with it any more than her throat.

“Have you been to a doctor?” Mama asks, now with a cup of ginger ale pressing to her lips.

Absolutely, she thinks but doesn’t say, I’ll go to the emergency room and explain away daily contact with copious amounts of hydrogen cyanide. And while I’m at it, I’ll just casually mention my current living partner is supposed to be in a pine box, buried in an unmarked grave, outside Iron Heights prison.

“Not yet.” she finally answers. Okay: two words, and no consequences. It’s a good start.

“How about you think about it a little more seriously?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And I don’t want you comin’ in for the rest of this week. You park yourself on the couch, drink like a fish—water, not the other stuff—and don’t move until this is over. You understand me?”

“Yes, Mama.”

This isn’t going to be over anytime soon, she doesn’t add, but thanks for caring.

***

“Which part of Do not go near any water source was unclear to you?”

“Ngh.”

“What severe lapse in judgment made you think submersing yourself in said water source was a brilliant decision?”

“Hrmph.”

He feels her glare even he can’t see it (seeing it requires the uplifting of his head, which presently weighs about fifty pounds, give or take). “I told you, Kyle,” Stazia huffs, perching on the couch edge and draping a cloth across his sweating brow, “no water, under any circumstances, unless you want to feel yourself combust.”

He’s not sure that doesn’t hold some appeal, at least at the moment.

***

Drinking liquid is out of the question, and eating solid food is an equally lost proposition. His stomach complains, loudly and obnoxiously, yet simultaneously rejects any form of sustenance. His days are spent splayed across the couch, a lifeless lump that dissolves and reassembles itself with a will all its own. More than once, he considers drowning himself in the bathtub. But, with his luck, he’d only manage to poison the water supply.

Some days are better than others. Some days, he’s able to drag himself into an upright position and read one of the books Stazia leaves out on the coffee table. She’s become a proponent of the classics. Jane Eyre happened to be at the top of the pile, and on his better days he manages to skim through a few chapters. The story itself isn’t necessarily engaging, but it’s entertaining enough to distract him.

And then there are days like today, when Stazia comes home and finds him curled under three blankets, shaking and sweaty with a fever from Hell, yet ice rushing fast through his veins. He’s incoherent, vision swimming, and his lungs feel fit to explode. No doubt, some great mind of science could explain what the hell is going on in his body to make him feel this way. He almost thinks it’s better that he doesn’t know. The answer would make his head hurt worse than it already does.

Stazia stretches out alongside him, pressing close and sharing her heat. He wants to tell her to not get so close, that this proximity is the reason she is perpetually sick from exposure. But he doesn’t, and he can’t, because when he’s this cold her body feels like fire.

“I’ve got you, baby.” She whispers, and he squeezes her hand a little tighter.

***

Weeks become months. Stazia’s sickness finally ebbs away and she’s able to work again full-time. His body calls a cease-fire and slowly regains strength—enough that he can move from one side of the apartment to the other without collapsing in a heap. Small improvements, but he’ll take what he can get.

It starts slowly. The poison which lately has seemed a burden and a curse takes new purpose when his private experiments offer no serious repercussions. Of course, there are a few little hitches: he feels dizzy and breathless each time, and only more so the longer he lingers in his…alternative form. But the gas is not an enemy. It is his ally. It is an extension of his anatomy, and he will control it. Just as an infant controls itself into walking, he will control this new body.

***

“I wish you’d take this more seriously, Kyle.” Stazia says, eyebrows lifted disapprovingly on her face, even as she stands in the far corner and watches him flit across the room. “I’ve had more complaints this past week than I have in the year I lived here.”

Without a mouth to speak, he can offer nothing in his defense. Instead, he lazily dances himself across the ceiling, in such a way that his dismissal of the matter is heard without words. Her scowl deepens and one hand reaches for the spray gun she uses to mist the plants.

“That’s low.” He growls, rematerializing on the couch edge; all limbs are protectively tucked close, as if that will save him from a messy fate. “You know I can’t dodge that thing.”

“Precisely.” She replies. “Now, if you’re done acting like a five-year-old,” he gives her a look, “listen to what I’m saying.”

“So the neighbors are complaining about strange noises in the ventilation system.” He stretches out, folding arms behind his head with only minor discomfort this time—recovery is taking far less energy than it originally did, when he would stumble around like a drunk man on limbs unprepared for the change back to solid form—and huffs a disinterested breath. “Tell them to get earplugs.”

When he opens his eyes, she’s towering over him like a little storm-cloud. “Knock it off,” she whispers, “or I’ll put you in a vacuum bag and leave you there.”

His eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t dare.”

***

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you, sweetie.” Stazia’s voice is a little muffled, but the satisfied smirk is more audible than ever. He can just imagine her stretched along the couch, a book in one hand and a drink in the other, happy as a clam.

“Open the bag.”

“Can’t do that.” If possible, he’s fairly certain the smirk just got a little bigger. “You’ve only been in there for five minutes.”

“I can’t breathe.” It’s pathetic, reduced to begging, but there are no escapes from this damned contraption (he wasted three of the five minutes trying to find one) and bartering for freedom is his next best option. “Another five minutes, I’ll suffocate. Then what?”

“Then I imagine you won’t ignore me again, will you?”

The hell with it: the gas chamber couldn’t kill him, and he’ll be damned if a vacuum cleaner will finish the job. “…I’m sorry.”

The smirk must be a grin by now. “What was that, darling?”

“…I said, I’m sorry.” A pause, and then—since he’s already sunk this low, “I won’t do it again.”

“Promise?” she’s practically cooing at him, the manipulative little vixen.

“Cross my heart, hope to die.” And he really does, because his pride will never recover from this. Suffocating suddenly doesn’t seem such a terrible option.

But, no…Death will not be coming for him today. The bag opens, fresh air floods in, and his body reforms itself on her living room floor. He has half a mind to wring her neck for this, but his lungs are busy gulping down air and attempting homicide at the moment isn’t an available option.

Stazia crouches down, kisses his cheek, and then pats him on the head. “Let’s see if you can stomach something for dinner, hmm?”

He hopes whatever morsel she spares him is laced with arsenic.

***

It’s well into the fourth month when Raffi comes to the club again. He catches her off-guard, appearing in the far corner while she’s halfway through her shift. She has too much respect for Mama to make a scene, and he doesn’t deserve the satisfaction of knowing her feathers are ruffled. She continues on as though he isn’t even here. As if he doesn’t exist.

She should be so lucky.

“Anastazia,” he calls, following her back into the dressing room when the shift ends. He should know better than to place himself within such close proximity to her. Apparently, the message wasn’t received effectively last time. Or perhaps she didn’t communicate clearly. “Cousin, please—”

“Don’t touch me.” she snaps, when he attempts to put a hand on her shoulder. “What the hell do you want?”

He has the audacity to look offended. “Cousin,” he says, after a pause, “this is enough. Uncle wants you to come home. Come back to the family.”

“Family?” she repeats, with all the venom she can possibly summon. “All I wanted was Kyle. I just wanted to be with him. And you all threw him to the dogs. Maybe you should have considered what family means before you took away the only thing I wanted from this life.”

“Anastazia—”

“Get out.”

“Uncle is worried about you.”

“Get out.”

He tries to put another hand on her shoulder; she doesn’t quite break his wrist for it, but only because he manages to jerk it away before she gets proper leverage. “We are family, Anastazia!”

“Kyle was my family.” Her throat catches, and the unshed tears are genuine—not for a loss which she never had to suffer, but for the horrific hour she truly believed Kyle was gone and lost forever. “You took him from me. As far as I’m concerned, I have no family. Now get out.”

He does, finally, but only after Mama sweeps in—a den mother protecting her little cub—and tosses him out by the scruff.