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“Hey, Hermie,” Link starts, breaking the silence that usually consumed their group ‘meals’. “I’ve been meaning to ask, how long have you been able to do the whole…?”
He gestures vaguely at his face.
“I’m sorry?” Hermie tilts his head slightly. The movement causes a jolt of discomfort in the burnt side of his neck, but he’s long since learned how to hide the wince.
“The shapeshifting!” Taylor clarifies, bouncing in place a little. “D’you think I can do it too, since we’re related?”
“Huh?” Hermie mumbles.
“And the like… new clothes. Does that mean your clothes are like… a part of you, or do you just, like, summon shit?” Scary joins in, pretending to be indifferent, “because I feel like that would be helpful. Maybe you could start by summoning some food that isn’t Taylor’s shitty rations.”
Taylor gasps in offense. Hermie opens his mouth to protest, but Normal is talking before he can.
“I thought you looked kind of different every time I saw you, but I just figured you were really good with makeup…” Normal muses.
“I am! That’s-“ Hermie sputters, waving his hand to try and get everyone to just stop talking because he needs a moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Dude, people can’t just change their clothes and hair color and face whenever they want.” Scary cocks an eyebrow.
Neither can I! part of Hermie thinks
Wait, they can’t? the other part questions.
Hermie had never really thought that much about it before. As he thinks back, he suddenly recalls something an elementary school teacher had told him; It’s not nice to comment on how people look, but especially on things they can’t change. It had confused Hermie at the time, because they could change . Hermie could, at least. All his life he’d been fine tuning his features to suit his needs, never anything major, just little changes to hair and eye color, to the shape of his nose and the curve of his jaw. It was part of what made him a great actor, he’d thought, but he never considered it to be unique.
“Hermie?” Normal asks softly, breaking him out of his thoughts.
Hermie blinks rapidly and looks up. He realizes, suddenly, sickeningly, that he has no idea what he looks like.
“Oh, wow, you can change your eye color too?” Normal cracks a smile, like the comment isn’t throwing Hermie’s entire world off-kilter.
“What color are they?” Hermie asks, desperately.
He reaches out his hand towards Normal’s shoulder, but his eyes- eye- how many eyes is he supposed to have?- catch on the tips of his fingers, the way his joints bend. His green nail polish has long since chipped away, but when did his nails get so long, and so sharp? They curve from his fingers like claws. They shouldn’t.
“Uh, it’s hard to say, it keeps changing?” Normal says, suddenly miles away.
Like a cat sheathing its claws, his nails disappear entirely beneath his skin. The beds are gone, just leaving smooth skin in their place. There’s a brief flash of sharp pain, before it settles into something dull and distant and nauseating.
Hermie muffles a shout and shoves his hand out of sight. His eyes shoot up to meet Normal’s, which have gone wide at the sudden movement. He tilts his head like a confused dog- did Hermie pick that habit up from him?
“What happened to your hand? Are you, like- are you good?”
“We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” Link pipes up.
“In fact, I don’t want to talk to you at all,” Scary joins in.
Taylor just stares at him, brows furrowed and nose wrinkled. His jaw is set in that way that makes one of his fangs poke out of his mouth.
“Uh,” Hermie stutters, but the sound comes out strange. “Yeah, no, it’s fine. Guess I never really thought about it that much,” he says, or at least tries to, but his tongue has difficulty navigating the odd shape of the inside of his own mouth.
Once the words are out, he runs his tongue over his teeth and hisses when he finds them to be far sharper then they have any right to be. He clasps his hand over his mouth.
“Oh, your nails are gone…” Link says, sounding a bit faint. “That’s…”
Hermie muffles a scream into the palm of his nailless hand and hunches forward. A hand pats his shoulder, and he knows, somehow, that it’s Normal’s.
“Do you want to keep talking about this? Just nod or shake your head.”
On one hand, Hermie never wants to talk about anything he’s ever doing or feeling at any point in time. On the other, this is basically the best chance he’ll get, and Scary had a point when she said his… skills could be beneficial. He needs to figure this out, so nods shakily and holds up a single finger.
“Ok,” Normal says, and then everyone is blessedly silent, beyond the rumbling purrs of the CatBus beside him. Vaguely, Hermie wonders if he could get himself to make that sort of noise, and then he immediately stops wondering that, lest his body get any ideas.
Hermie forces in a few deep breaths, and then gathers the courage to look down at his hand. It does not look very good at all, like hot wax draped over a bone, only just beginning to think about solidifying.
There’s that idiom, of knowing something like the back of your hand, but as Hermie looks at his own, he realizes the inaccuracy of the phrase. There’s a lot of things that one takes for granted, things that fade into the background because they’re simply there; the back of his hand is one of those things. How long are his fingers? How much space is there between one’s knuckles and the breaks between their fingers? Hands have hair on them, right? What do cuticles looking like? He can’t even check his other hand for reference, seeing as it hardly resembles a piece of human anatomy at this point, much less his own.
He can’t do this. He doesn’t know how.
“I don’t know how to…” Hermie whispers, staring at his hand.
He feels like the flesh is going to slough off the bones at any moment, and it doesn’t hurt. That’s the worst part about it, somehow. It’s sickening, and it feels as natural as breathing… not that that’s the best comparison to make at the moment, each breath catching in his chest.
“It’s ok,” Normal says, and somehow it doesn’t feel like a lie. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” Hermie mutters, voice soft and shaky.
“Can I touch you?”
“You-“ Hermie pulls his hand away a few moments inches as Normal reaches out. The thought of subjecting someone, especially Normal, to the horror that is his own body is sickening. “It’s gross-“
“No it’s not,” Normal says softly.
He keeps his hands where they are; an offer, far kinder than he deserves. The rest of the Cast mumble amongst themselves, doubtlessly disagreeing with Normal’s reassurances. As falsified as the reassurances may be, Hermie is weak. He can’t help but accept them.
He takes Normal’s hand. A shudder runs through Normal’s entire body, but he doesn’t pull away. He closes his other hand over top of it and rest them upon his lap.
“It’s ok.” Normal repeats, giving him a soft look. His hands have strange scars and callouses, but they’re soft too. It’s a good way to describe Normal.
“Sorry…” Link says, and Hermie very nearly forgot that the rest of them were there. “I didn’t know… are you ok?”
“I didn’t know either,” Hermie admits, before clearing his throat and forcing his tone back into its usual register. “I’ll be fine, just a moment of difficulty regarding our practical effects!”
Link seems unconvinced, and Scary seems to have lost interest completely. Taylor has a contemplative look on their face as they stare at Normal and Hermie’s hands.
Normal just squeezes them, firm, grounding.
Calling him soft was reductive. He is, but there’s a strength in his grip and the set of his jaw and the look in his eyes. It’s a feature the rest of the Cast shares, but Hermie can’t help but fixate on Normal’s. He’d like to blame that fixation on gratefulness- considering Normal had saved his life many times over- but he could admit that that was only part of the puzzle.
Falling for Normal was surprisingly easy. He hadn’t expected it when he first asked him to the dance, but as soon as he’d seen him crumbled against the wall of the high school bathroom, it was a forgone conclusion. They were fellow performers, friends and foils as they fought for a sense of identity without their act. If the story was about Hermie, it would be a romance, with Normal as his co-star.
But it wasn’t. It was never going to be. The scale of this particular narrative went well over his head. He was lucky to have a supporting role.
“Talk to me, Herm, you’re a thousand miles away.” Normal says, squeezing his hand.
I love you, Hermie wants to say.
“I guess I’ve always been able to do this,” he says instead, circling all the way back around to Link’s original question. “For as long as I’ve been performing anyways; I’d take little features of my favorite actors in each role and incorporate them into my own, slowly, gradually, never enough that one could notice a change from day to day… myself included, I’m sure. I never considered the ability to be unusual.”
“Well, it is. That’s like… super creepy,” Scary says, but she looks impressed if anything. The words don’t hurt anyways; he’s well aware.
“More like super fuckin’ sick!” Taylor says, bumping Scary’s shoulder with their own as they lean forward eagerly. “That better come from my side of the family, I want to steal people’s faces!”
“Taylor…” Link says, casting concerned glances between Taylor and Hermie.
“I’m not stealing, they still have their faces,” Hermie scoffs, indignant. It’s a much easier emotion than dread or anxiety or self-loathing. “Besides, I only take little bits at a time.”
“Do you think you could do the whole thing at once? Could you-“ Taylor gasps. “Could you turn into me!? You should turn into me so you can do all the lame stuff that I don’t want to!”
“Please for the love of god do not do that,” Scary groans. “The world does not need another Taylor.”
Instead of being offended, Taylor smirks.
“Hm, perhaps you’re right! The world would be unable to handle two of me…”
As usual, their conversation devolves into a petty little squabble that Hermie has no part in. He looks over to Normal, who he finds is already looking at him with a smile that could be described as fond, if Hermie allowed himself to look into it. When he squeezes his hand this time, Hermie is able to squeeze it back.