03. Po‐uta

Right? It has to work, right? Because if it doesn't, what other option do you have?

You cradle Porter in your hands.

He’s so fragile.

 

He doesn’t fall asleep properly. You conjure up a pleasant haze around him, and he dozes.

You try to not worry.

 

He grows restless.

“Can we stay in the library for today?” you ask.

He nods.

 

You’re scared of this version of him. You're not entirely certain what you've done. You didn’t know you could do this to him, that you could make him like this, docile and fearful.

He stays in the library like you asked. He picks out a dense book about fairytales and settles down to read it in the cozy corner he slept in.

Normally you would pull away, relegate yourself to the background so that he could more easily pick apart the confusing jargon and figure out the context, but you’re afraid to leave him like this. You’re still imperfectly melded; you hear every one of his muddled thoughts, and he hears none of yours. You are wrapped around him, seeing everything, and he is held in a cage, trapped halfway through his body.

You don’t want to let go (at least, not yet) for fear of hurting him.

When he falls asleep, everything should reset back to normal. It has to, right?

 

Porter gives up reading the book after struggling through the first chapter. He’s frustrated with how foggy his head is, leaving him feeling slow and dumb.

It’s because of your ruminating. You saw his fear, how terrified he was when he realized that the only thing keeping you in check is your, as he put it, obsession with hm and his desires.

You don’t think he’s wrong.

He really is your more-than-sun. If he asked you to kill someone, you’d do it.

If he asked you to kill him, you….

You might actually do it. If it would be the better of two options.

You might actually be capable of it, too. Currently, you’re taking up most of your shared brainpower—you’re effectively sedating him so that he doesn’t panic over what you’ve done, what have you done—which has left him as a shadow. A docile, sluggish shadow.

It scares you.

He’s right. You are the one in control, the one with the power. Your end goal, his happiness, is the only thing really preventing you from taking over and erasing him from his own body.

You’ve thought about it, over these past few hours. Would you do it if he treated you horribly? Would you still love him, in general, if he were awful to you?

You’d probably still try to make him happy.

And if he was treating you badly, well, there would be two possibilities: either he saw you as a person and would feel bad about it (even if he didn’t admit it), or he didn’t see you as a person and didn’t feel bad about it, in fact, maybe even happy.

And if he saw you as a person, well, the easiest way to make him happy would be to stop him from mistreating you. To take over, take him away from whatever external things were making him unhappy too, and lock him in a corner of your mind that was safe and comfortable until he was happy.

And if didn’t, well… you’d let him mistreat you, if it was making him happy.

You think that’s what he’s scared of. It's so... not human. The opposite of a normal human reaction. You behave like a human, for the most part, so it makes sense that when your inhuman nature comes through, it's disturbing. Wrong. The opposite of what you're supposed to be.

Now that you think of it, though, his fear is a little silly, because he’s so worried about your well-being that he definitely sees you as a person.

You’ll bring that up to him tomorrow, when he feels better. He’ll feel better.

 

After an excruciating day of normal length, he settles down into the nest of cushions and blankets and slowly drifts off.

You shut down before he falls asleep, as per protocol.

 

He’s in the same position he was yesterday evening when you wake up.

It’s exactly like yesterday evening.

You are back to normal.

Thank goodness.

“I’m sorry,” you say, “for everything.”

He moves after a moment. To your surprise, it’s to pull you closer.

You slip into the vague idea of having a body, lying on your side behind him, one arm over him.

“Um.”

He’s soft under your touch. Mentally, that is. Physically you know that he’s the same, flesh on bones, but that knowledge is overridden by the bruised and yielding psyche.

“Porter?”

He’s forcing his body limp. You can feel that. What’s going on?

“Darling?” you whisper.

This has to be your fault, right? What you did to him yesterday, nearly pushing him out of his own mind while ransacking it… you know that that messed him up. You'd hoped he'd be able to sleep it off, but maybe the damage you did was too much.

Well, you’ll figure it out.

Hopefully. You… don’t know where to start.

Maybe just holding him is enough for now? Should you ask him what he wants? Or no, you think letting him take the lead (as you are programmed to do) is what upset him in the first place. Or was it insisting that he do that what upset him? Or was it that you really don’t know how to be an equal to someone?

You didn’t bother to transcribe the conversation, so all you have are piecemeal notes of your thoughts. Over the past few days, they’re mostly complaints and worries about how Porter wasn’t talking to you. Yesterday’s file is completely empty.

You just—you just don’t know what you’re supposed to do.

Is he afraid of you? He should be. After what you’ve done, it would make sense. Should you do nothing? Leave him be and come back later? Or stay in silence? He pulled you in, does he want you here? Is he expecting something from you?

You fall back to what you’ve come to know best. You bring your hand to the side of his face and run your fingers in circles through his hair.

That is it, for a while. Until his forced stillness changes into something more genuine, still anxious, but… resigned, almost. The tension melts into an uneasy feeling in his gut.

“Could you tell me what’s wrong?” you ask.

The bruised psyche beneath your hand gives way, and you trip out of feeling like you have a body.

 

Heaviness, fear, resignation fill the space around you like molasses. It’s Porter’s—no, it is him. Him around you, though he's not overpowering you, instead... standing there, essentially, except neither of you are subscribing to the idea of having a concrete body at the moment.

You open yourself up to it, to him, trying to tangle the edges of yourself with him. Just the edges, no more; after yesterday, you don’t want to push him.

Despite the viscosity, there’s no resistance. He’s… soft, for lack of a better word. Pliant, maybe. You bleed into one another, and the word ‘submissive’ pops into your mind.

What’s wrong, you ask without words. You feel your own voice echo back as ripples in the liquid.

<Give me something, anything,> you beg.

The concept of everything is shoved into your arms. You shove it back.

<Why are you acting like this,> you screech. <Why, please, let me fix this.>

The problem, he thinks, is that you are both kneeling for each other.

Then you’ll take something. You’ll take something, you’ll take everything, if that’s what it takes to—to—

You don’t know. You just want him happy.

What an awful truth, some mix of you thinks.

This would be a bit easier if either of you were into romance. Or more precisely, sex, an offhanded bit of his mind offers. The indistinct memory of two characters pushing and grabbing as they tried to kiss each other starts to play before he shuts it down.

It’s an interesting thought, to you. Repulsion roils off of him, although there’s a tiny spark that catches your attention.

You pull it under the mental magnifying glass. He looks away; you pull him back.

<I’m interested,> you insist, with the undercurrent of if it makes you interested, if there’s a chance it’ll pull you out of whatever I’ve pushed you into, I’ll try it.

Butterflies, nervousness, and then finally he relents.

<I just like the, um, the part where she was pinning him.>

Curious. You file the thought away—not literally—for later.

Something like nervous laughter emanates from him. He’s comfortable, though—comfortable with the idea that your curiosity begins and ends with your general interest in human behavior.

Which it does. In any case, your desires don't extend beyond his comfort.

Which is some of the part that scares him, he thinks, and then you hear that thought and realize it.

It hurts. Not in a way you understand, but it does.

That’s scary.

But something has to give, you both know. You’ll go insane without each other. You got into this mess in the first place because one of you refused to talk to the other and neither of you could stand it.

So what changes? What’s going to give? How do you make… both of you happy?

<How do we make something that works for us,> he wonders.

<By throwing away everything else,> you think. There’s nothing… if the past few days are any evidence, there’s nothing he knows that’s going to be of help.

<No,> he says, very aggressively in your direction. <If there is one thing I will insist on, it’s that I will listen to you.>

You concede that point. You won’t pretend to understand why, but if that’s what he wants—to listen to and respect your idiosyncrasies, something he already does—well, it’s not like you’re going to stop him.

Good.

And… then there’s the everything else. He feels very awkward about it; you don’t.

<So we’re…>

<Not doing the sex thing,> you finish. <I thought we already established that.>

He knows, he just—he’s not used to it. He’s not used to any of this.

<And it would be better to talk about it now than leave it for later, and we’re already making something completely new—>

You cut him off as you hear the undercurrent memories of previous experiences.

<Fuck’s sake, Porter, I’m not going to put my curiosity above—>

<Your what?>

Curiosity. It seems like a human thing you should find out more about at some point.

He sifts through that.

<You… um….>

He finally says, <Well, maybe. If you were just curious.>

<Oh. Okay.> You weren't expecting that, but it's as exciting as finding out you have two bags of flour in the pantry instead of one. You feel… something, underneath his words. Not hunger; too relaxed for that.

It’s the lack of hunger, the blended part of your mind offers. No pressure.

<It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, though.> He sounds apologetic.

<What is it cracked up to be?>

<Uh. Something… awesome. Great.> He has no idea what’s he’s talking about. <Like… everything. Super important. I don’t really… get it. But I think that’s just me being weird or broken or something>. He’d laugh nervously if you weren’t purely in your mindspace. <Sorry.>

<There’s always books,> you say mildly.

<Yeah. I guess there is.> A foggy, lonely emotion swells up. <Can we talk about something else?>

<Sure. If… if you wouldn’t mind, I know yesterday—>

Yesterday.

<—was rough, but… this might be a bit quicker if we melded fully?>

Yes. No. He wants and he doesn’t want. You’re right and he should listen and he still fears that complete losing of himself and some—he won’t go there. No. He doesn’t want to think about it.

<We have all the time in the world.> Well, you do need to get up eventually, but until then….

 

You continue your half-meld and talk through everything. Absolutely everything. You learn far more about certain human behaviors than you ever cared to know (and if you’re any judge, that Porter knows more about than he cares for either), but for the most part it’s rehashing what you already have. It almost feels redundant, but you think that it’s necessary in order to prevent a repeat of yesterday, so you don't mind.

<And because it hasn’t been said yet, I’m sorry for what I did yesterday. It wasn’t right.>

He’s not sure how to respond to that. There’s a sense of I deserved that, but it’s tempered by his acknowledgment of your apology and remembrance that he agreed to actually respect you (whatever that means).

Eventually, he settles on, <I’m not angry with you. It’s… I understand why you did that.> Implied is despite all the fear, there’s nowhere to run, and in different circumstances, maybe he would be angry. But you’re pressed up against each other, which leaves no room for either of those things.

<Okay,> you accept.

<Is that… everything?> he asks.

<Everything we could think of.>

<Can we…>

<Take a break now, yeah.>

You break apart, returning focus to his body, and ouch—

“Headache,” he mutters, disgruntled. “I think we melded for too long.”

“Yeah.” It’s not sharply painful, but it’s a headache, and there’s only so not-painful those can be. “Water?”

“I’ll see… I should get something to eat, too…”

“When was the last time you ate something?”

“Uhh….” You aren’t going to like the answer to this, are you? “Twoooo days ago? I think?”

“Two days?”

“I just haven't been hungry, I don't know.”

And you, being more or less in charge yesterday, should have noticed if we was hungry, right? Why wasn’t he hungry? Why—

“I don’t think I’ve been hungry much at all, actually,” he realizes. “I haven’t eaten more than once a day for… how long has it been… weeks?”

“Oh,” you squeak. “Oh no.”

“Have I…” He scrambles so he’s sitting upright, looking at himself for something. “No, I haven’t, what the fuck?”

“Haven’t what?”

“Lost weight. If you don’t eat enough that starts happening and I haven’t been eating enough for weeks, so it should have, I” — he pokes at his chest — “I’m pretty sure there’s not supposed to be a layer of fat or thick skin or whatever here. With how I’ve been eating, I’m pretty sure these should just be skin and bones.”

“…how about the rest of you?”

He pulls back his sleeves. “Arms look the same.” He twists around so he can pull up the cuff of his pants. “And—yeah. My legs haven’t changed either. Something should be different, I—I don’t know, but this isn’t right.”

“At least you’re not dying?”

He briefly considers your words.

“That's assuming I’m not turning into some kind of awful berry monster.”

“Really?” you say flatly.

“It would make as much sense as anything else, at this point.”

Unfortunately, he has a point.

“On the bright side, we won’t have to worry about finding food as much anymore.”

“We already weren’t worried about that,” he mutters, “give the rate at which I’d been eating. At which I am eating." He puts his head in his hands. "I hate this.”

You imagine yourself a body, leaning on his shoulder.

“We’re in this together.”

“Yeah. At least I have you.” He bumps your heads together affectionately, which works despite your lack of actual body. “Fucked up little thing.”

“You love me.”

“I do.”