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====> Eridan: Drown.
This is a dream you have from time to time. Now that you are spending your days in the company of someone enormous and warm and very much unlike anyone you have ever shared a recuperacoon with, you have not drowned for a while; but you suppose after all you were due for it. What with all the shit that’s happened to you. (You’d had it every single day after Fef left you, waking over and over in shuddering hysterics; you’d almost forgot that, now, how much you’d dreaded going to sleep.)
It’s understandable.
It’s terrible.
The worst thing is that it isn’t terrible, after the initial panic.
You are wearing all your finest things, your cloak and your scarf and your perfectly pressed stripy trousers and your void-black soft shirt with the jagged scars of your sigil on the breast, and all of them seem to have been sewn with lead in the seams, they drag at you as you struggle to keep your face above the water of this unknowable cold ocean. Under your shirt you can feel your gills fluttering helplessly but they aren’t opening, you can’t feel that odd sliding in your chest that means the membranes are closing and you are ready to take your first breath of water. You are flailing in increasing desperation as the choppy waves slam against you, lumps of water hitting you in the face, stinging your eyes, making you choke and splutter. The blank taste of salt fills your world.
Not only is it too cold for you to struggle for long--which is wrong, as well, you’re quite all right with cold, even three hundred feet down you can stay quite happy for hours--but you are struggling completely without control, and your muscles fizz with exhaustion and acid and now you go under all the way, bubbles gloinging in your ears, the cold like a vice, and fight your way back up to the surface. You are gulping water helplessly, spitting, coughing, and you go under again and your legs are tangled in your cape which is now made completely of lead and you still can’t open up your gills, it’s as if they’ve been sewn shut, and your chest is burning, the dim light from the surface falling away from you in a cloud of bubbles.
When your body gives itself up to the water, unable to hold your last breath of air any longer, it hurts. It’s so cold and the salt is like knives in your chest and you are still helplessly idiotically trying to breathe and the last of your air is dancing its way up to the surface and slowly, now, slowly the pain begins to fade, and it is comforting to feel the sea invading you and filling up all your interstices. You are mostly made of the sea in any case, it seems quite natural that it should take the rest of you.
Light dims, and you do not know if this is because you are sinking into the darker deeps or because your brain is shutting down. Your world begins to narrow to a candlepoint of light in that vast darkness and you know that nobody, nobody at all, will ever know that you were there, or ever find what’s left of you once the sea-scavengers take their fill.
…And hands find you in the darkness, large warm firm hands take you by the shoulders and lift you up and suddenly you are not sinking under the ocean at all. You gasp and discover that in fact you are capable of breathing, which surprises you sufficiently to make it embarrassingly long before you can say anything.
You are being held firmly against somebody’s chest and they are stroking sopor-sticky hair out of your face and slowly, with feeling coming back to your fingertips and toes as the cold of the ocean leaves you, you realize where you are.
“Eridan,” he’s saying, and you can feel the vibrations of his voice where your chest touches his. “Eridan, it’s all right, you’re safe, you were dreaming...”
You thunk your head on his shoulder and groan in life-threatening embarrassment. “Ngh,” you say. “Sorry. Haven’t...had that one in a while.”
Equius goes on stroking your hair. You can feel your opercula, all just as they should be, sealed against the sopor with the pressure in your lungs; nothing hurts, nothing feels off, you really are all right. “It looked like a particularly nasty daymare, yes. Would...can you tell me what was happening?”
“It’s stupid. Really stupid.” You rub your cheek against his shoulder, wanting the reassurance of his solidity. “Like I’ll get kicked out a the ranks a the fuckin awesome seadweller badasses stupid.”
“Everyone has bad dreams,” Equius points out. “They are no respecters of rank.”
“Mmh. Okay. I have it every now and then, it’s been better since we got together, but it’s...fuck, it really is stupid, Eq, I don’t even get why I have it but...I’m drownin. Like my gills won’t work, for some reason, I can’t open the fuckin things and there’s no one there and I can’t tread water forever and eventually I pretty much fuckin drown and it sucks.”
“It does, yes.” He stops petting your hair, slick-heavy with sopor, and just holds you. “I don’t remember very much about it myself, but I can firmly state that it was not an experience I should care to repeat. Oh, Eridan.”
“Told you it was dumb.” You sigh. “Anyway, sorry I woke you, it’s gotta be like midday or somethin’...”
“It isn’t stupid. In fact I should say it’s perfectly logical for someone who has to go through a moment of visceral...uncertainty, or perhaps discomfort, every time he switches mediums. I’ve never asked you but I don’t think it can possibly be pleasant to feel one’s body adapt to one form of respiration from another.”
You stay silent for a while, long enough that he makes a little concerned noise and says your name, but when you lift your head to look him in the eyes you can’t help the smile. “Y’know you are the first person ever to get that? It’s...yeah, it’s like so common and mundane I practic’ly never think a it but yeah, each time, it’s like a tiny fuckin leap a faith switchin over. Sucks worse comin out a water into air simply because the pressure lock feels like the biggest hiccup ever, but it’s not real fun either way.”
He’s still looking at you with concerned ultramarine eyes and you can’t help kissing him. “You don’t even know how damn good you are, do you, Eq? You have no idea. Fuck. I’m gonna have to start writin it on little cards or somethin and leavin them around the place. Equius Zahhak Is The Best. Maybe like underlined twice for emphasis. In real curly font.”
“That would be untidy,” he rumbles, but his eyes are amused. “Tantamount to littering. Furthermore it is not a factual statement without including the classification by which I am supposedly superior.”
“Yeah it is.” You yawn and settle your head back on his shoulder, absently reaching up to touch the hornguard he made you. “Factual as all hell, cause I said so.”
“You are incorrigible, Ampora. But you should know that your dream is, while understandable, absolutely missing a key element of the narrative.”
“Hmmm?”
“Well, I’d rescue you,” he says, as if this is obvious. “You will never drown, Eridan, because of several perhaps more practical reasons, but among them is the fact that as long as I am capable of doing anything about it I will keep you safe.”
You cling to him and he makes a surprised little hrk noise and coughs: you’re a lot stronger now than you were just after he hauled your wrecked ass off that ship. You don’t say anything, though, just pressing your face against his shoulder, and after a moment he goes back to stroking your hair. His breathing deepens and evens out into sleep after a little while, and you don’t actually know if he hears it when you say under your breath I love you.
You drift, and this time there are no dreams at all.