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He hadn’t even paid attention to it for the first couple days after he’d salvaged some wreckage for Equius in a particularly gross part of the bay. There had been a few dead fish lying around--some kind of bullshit explosive-fishing-device fallout, he’d have wagered--but he had found and brought back the key bit that Equius wanted for his latest robot. It was something to do with spatial recognition and beyond that Eridan had not fucking inquired.
He’d felt a little off afterward, that night, uncomfortable in the sopor slime, but hadn’t really registered it; nor had he registered the sort of weird itching or how he had to try to clear his throat more often until he noticed the first whitish nodule on the back of his hand. And then the others up his wrist.
Oh sweet Jegus I’m gonna die, he thought. I’m gonna die and I haven’t even seen half the fuckin things I wanted to see and Eq is gonna mourn and oh wow I kinda do feel pretty gross now that I come to think about it, and help what do I do now?
Equius was working on the robot when he let himself into the workroom. He waited until the bright unbearable flicker of the welding-arc extinguished before venturing further into his matesprit’s personal space. The congestion that had been building in his gills made it hard to breathe quietly.
He itched.
“....Eq?” he asked, his voice thick and unlovely. Instantly Equius pushed up his welding goggles--Eridan noticed his face was deeper blue around them, he’d gotten an arc-light burn again, jegus how many times had he told the doofus to wear a fuckin fullface weldin helmet or at least wear barrierblock cream--and got up, coming over to frown down at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t...feel so good,” Eridan admitted. “I got spots.”
Frown. “Let me see.”
He displayed his unbeautiful hands and pulled open his collar to show Equius the pale dots on his skin, and the movement made his gills shift and he coughed, a nasty thick noise.
Equius put a steadying, enormous hand on his back. “Shh. It’s all right, we’ll sort you out. Do you know what’s doing this?”
Eridan almost whimpered, shaking his head. He thought he’d heard of whitespot before but never with any real clarity or understanding, and he huddled against Equius, suddenly wanting his warmth. His matesprit’s arms curled very carefully around him.
“I’m going to look this up,” Equius was saying, “because I am no expert in pathology pertaining to seadwellers and I don’t actually know anyone who is. How long have you been feeling ill?”
“...mmmaybe a day or so?”
“And you didn’t say anything? Oh, Eridan.”
Equius rested his chin on top of Eridan’s head and sighed. “I despair of you. Come on, let’s find what’s going on and how it can be made not to.”
~
He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or not that they were so quickly able to diagnose him with Cryptocaryon irritans. Probably he should have known about the seadwellers’ version of ichthyoptherius, but ugh, since when did seadwelling royalty concern themselves with gross disgusting pathogens?
The fact that this was parasitic made him feel several times sicker. Fucking....things. All living on him. In him. His gills twitched reflexively and he coughed, clutching at his sides.
“You’re mostly marine,” Equius said, “so we’ll treat this with hyposalinity first and if that does no good we’ll say it’s ichthyoptherius after all and put you in super-salty water. It won’t be terribly comfortable, I’m afraid.”
Eridan was trying really hard not to scratch; also, it wasn’t as easy to breathe as he would have liked, and his gills felt huge, swollen, thick, hot and sticky under their protective opercula. He could feel the pleural membranes straining back and forth as he breathed, wanting to retract and let the gills press into all the available space, not allowing them. That was beyond his control, that was autonomic. Each breath he took with his lungs pushed uncomfortably against the inflamed gill filaments; he found himself breathing in rapid little sips of air that felt less nasty in his chest.
Some of this must have shown on his face because Equius kissed him gently on the forehead--god, his lips were wonderfully cool--and stroked his hair comfortingly before going off to set up a treatment tank.
He had to give these little fuckers credit, they worked fast. By the time Equius came to fetch him Eridan was having legitimate difficulty with his breathing, trying not to pull at his opercula in a stupid helpless reflex to reduce the pressure in the gill filaments. He didn’t protest or complain when Equius deftly divested him of his clothes, scooped him up, and dumped him into the tank--which was hyposaline compared to the water he was used to, it stung his eyes and hurt all the way inside him with each flutter of his gills. He coughed helplessly underwater, his opercula snapping shut to force the water he’d inhaled back up his throat and out, hands covering his mouth from habit, a little violet staining and swirling in the water around him. Ow. Oh, ow, that hurt, that hurt all through him, he shouldn’t be in water this fresh, it’d, it’d do that thing where his tissues drew in too much water and sent his stupid blood pressure careenin all over the fuckin place, it was...
Equius was doing something to the outside of the tank. Something with wires on it was clamped to the outside of the glass with some kind of conductive gel, and then he was settling a headset over his ears, careful of his ruined horn. “Eridan?” the voice came all through the water, and calmed his rising panic. “Eridan, can you hear me all right?”
Speaking underwater was a completely different concept than speaking in air. Seadwellers’ vocal cords were tougher, harder than humans’, capable of maintaining their contraction and dilation even in a medium that much thicker than air. Eridan cleared his throat, or tried to, his gills fluttering, and was rather horrified to see little white things floating in the water around him after his expulsive efforts.
“....yes?”
“Good,” came Equius’s voice. The white things faded down to the other end of the tank and disappeared into what looked like a filter manifold, and he felt rather better once they’d gone. “Good. I know this is extremely unpleasant but it shouldn’t last too long, you seem to be shedding the cysts pretty rapidly already--”
Eridan wrapped his arms around himself and hunched over miserably in the water. Fucking cysts. He was all cysty. Oh, Jegus this was terrible, this was the worst thing ever, he would take being kidnapped by those jackasses over being all covered in disgusting white cysty things and they were inside of him they were in his gills and oh, he felt sick, he felt really sick, and
And then Equius was there, reaching into the tank, stroking the floating black cloud of Eridan’s hair between his fingers, and Equius’s warm fingertips traced little circles over his neck and back, and he forgot everything else in the necessity of concentrating on breathing, in and out, in and out, slowly and steadily, despite the sting as bits of his gills unstuck themselves and became fully surrounded by the water.
~
He wasn’t really sure how much time had passed when he drifted back to consciousness, itching all over and deeply fucking sick of this entire situation. The lights in the lab were turned down and Equius was perched beside his tank with his headset on and a book in his lap. “--Back with us?” he inquired. “How are you feeling?”
“Shitty,” Eridan said, and coughed: but it felt a little easier to breathe already, and fewer of those disgusting white things were floating in his water. “Unbearably shitty. Knock me out, Eq, be kind?”
“I can’t. But I can read to you, if you would like. You have a choice between Troll Danielle Steele and Troll Barbara Cartland, with a wildcard in the form of Troll Anne Rice if you’re in the mood for sexy rainbow drinkers.”
Eridan couldn’t help laughing, which made him cough again, which made him hold on to the side of the tank to steady himself through the fit; but he was feeling better, and after a few moments he let go to float in the water and close his eyes again. “Troll Danielle Steele,” he said. “And you have to do the voices.”
~
Another night and another day passed with Eridan in the medical tank, quarantined in pure reverse-osmosis deionized water that circulated completely twice in ten minutes, by the end of which he was frantic with boredom despite Equius’s kindness in reading.
This may have had something to do with the fact that the tank was located in Equius’s main lab/exercise block, so that he had an uninterrupted view of Equius doing his nightly workout. Dim light slid over the curves and planes and angles of his muscles, glittered on the sweat gemming his skin, sank into the blackness of his hair. Eridan had to watch him move with the oiled grace of total physical control, going through the measured dance of his martial-arts techniques, stepping and spinning and lunging and kicking and effortlessly flipping imaginary assailants over knee and hip and back, his black ponytail following each motion like an inkstroke on the air.
By the time Equius was finished with his workout Eridan would be twitchy and desperate with desire and utterly, utterly frustrated when Equius refused to let him have more than a kiss and a caress, citing his condition. And Equius would come back freshly-showered with that hair falling in blue-black silk around his shoulders and proceed to read. And do the voices.
And then there were the evening strifes. With the robots.
Eridan was saving up frustration in an account with considerable interest which he had every intention of demanding as soon as Equius let him out of this goddamned fishbowl. He hadn’t coughed in hours and he hadn’t seen any sign of those gross white things anywhere on him or in the water and he was bloody well done with sitting in here like a lab specimen.
He said as much to Equius when the latter arrived to bring him breakfast. They’d let him up into the air for that long, and for lunch and dinner. Now he rested his elbows truculently on the side of the tank and demanded to be let out.
Equius sighed. “You do seem so much better,” he admitted. “All right. Fine. You can come out but you are not to do anything strenuous for several more days and you are absolutely not to go anywhere near that location again.”
Eridan had already hoisted himself up to the tank’s edge and was draining out the last of the water in his gills. “I am fuckin tame, sir,” he said, “pronounce.”
~
He rather enjoyed the next few nights. Equius wouldn’t let him do much of anything other than lie around and be lazy, but at least he could lie around and be lazy in reach of his matesprit, and when being lazy failed to entertain him sufficiently he could always go over and wrap his arms round Equius’s shoulders and nuzzle the back of his neck, which tended to be the signal for Equius to give over whatever he’d been working on and twist around to drag Eridan into his lap for proper kisses.
He’d even got to the point where he was up and about enough to make proper dinner, that spicy seafood stew Equius liked so much, when he felt a weird tickling sensation in his gills--like something was inside there, maybe, crawling about--and had to dismiss it because what the fuck, ew.
That night his culinary endeavors were very well received, and in fact neither Eridan nor Equius ended up in a recuperacoon, lying entangled instead on the concupiscent platform Equius had built for them shortly after his return from the Dualscar the first time. It was big. It was comfortable. It was littered with pillows and draped with warm covers and Eridan absolutely loved falling asleep wrapped up in Equius’s strength amid all that perfect softness.
It came as some surprise, therefore, when he woke sometime after midday to find his gills itching and beginning to hurt, and the thick congestion he’d been so glad to throw off beginning once more.
He lay perfectly still, eyes shut, hoping that it was a dream and he’d either move on or wake up, but something shifted inside his left-side gill arches and he hunched over in an instinctive effort not to cough. It might even have worked if something hadn’t started tickling in his right-side gills as well, and that was just more than Eridan could manage and he sat up in bed doubled over and coughed and coughed and coughed, grueling, helpless, until his head swam and his eyes streamed with tears.
Equius was there, Equius was holding him, steadying him, that was good, that helped, but it still took him far longer than he would have liked to catch his breath and just droop in Equius’s arms, panting, his fingers absently scratching at the pale blotches up and down his chest.
“....I don’t feel good,” he rasped, when he could catch his breath.
“It’s come back,” Equius was saying. “I’m so sorry, love; the infection is back. We tried hypotonicity before, this time we’ll do hypersalinity and heat at the same time. I think I have some copper and I know where I can get quinine.”
Eridan drooped against his chest. “This is gross,” he managed.
“No, not gross. Unfortunate and regrettable.” Equius stroked back his hair. “Stay here, I’ll get the tank ready, and then you have to choose what you want to hear tonight. I have to announce a moratorium on Troll Danielle Steele because I think I may actually do myself an injury having to read that tripe out loud, but anything else in the ironically awful library is yours for the requesting.”
Eridan just buried his face in Equius’s chest, clinging. “Mmh,” he said.
“I love you,” Equius pointed out.
“Mmh.”
“I love you a great deal. Far more than water loves salt.”
Eridan looked up, a pathetic glittery-violet-eyed expression, and was very firmly kissed for his pains. “You will be well, my dear, and I shall demand you read awful things to me next time I damage myself or suffer an accident and require amusement.” Equius sounded deadly serious.
“Okay,” he said after a moment, pushing his head under Equius’s chin. “Okay, deal. But you have to not skip over any of the really embarrassing bits when you read to me.”
“On my honor.” Equius kissed the top of his head. “Let go, dear, I have to prepare your marinade. I don’t think it’ll take long to knock this out a second time, and if it won’t go away on its own I’ll have Maryam in to look at you.”
“Oh God no. Anything but that.”
“Precisely, so you had better hurry up and get on with getting well.”
Equius kissed him again and eased him back down to the pillows before hauling himself off the sleeping-platform and going to measure salts and electrolytes and set up filtration rates and monitors. Despite the itch-ache-unhappiness in his chest and the miserable feeling of invasion, Eridan found himself relatively content as he lay back with a pillow in his arms, eyes closing.
Whatever happened, Equius would deal with it. It was what he did. He dealt with shit.
A few horrific little parasites were nothing compared to his matesprit’s indomitable will and his unending fury.
Eridan smiled a little to himself. Have to remember that one, he thought. Unending fury.