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Eli's arms are swathed under bandages. A part of him is nervous to take them off.
He knows what’s under them, but seeing them will be…different. Probably. It can’t be any different from seeing wounds go from fresh to scarred over. He just needs to get used to the idea a little. Yeah, it’s no more different than the scars…
Trixie leans against the front wall as Eli arrives home. He slows his mecha down to an awkward stop. Crapcrapcrap. Why are they all outside? “Did you really leave out that new video game to distract us so you could get a tattoo without us noticing?”
It’s like she can read his mind. “Uh…”
“Well?” Trixie takes a step closer eagerly. “What did you get?”
"C'mon, Eli," Kord wheedles. He looks like Santa gave him full access to his workshop. "Show them to us. You guys see mine all the time.” He flexes an arm, smoky tattoos bulging with the muscle.
Eli tosses an easy smile and waves both arms at his friends. "There. Just pretend you can see through the bandages." He slips upstairs before Pronto can jump on him to peek at his arms. Inside, though, he's unsmiling.
Training with Burpy before Slugterra was...messy at times. Slugs need to transform to stay in shape. Spending five years completely out of sight from the eyes of the Surface and eating only people food meant Burpy had had to adapt to not being able to use his fire very much.
The first few times they had tried to get around the 'No-slinging-until-fifteen' rule was with Eli's old Lego train set. He had rearranged the plastic rails to go from a loop-de-loop, a hill, and a cliffhanger that launched Burpy into the sky.
Eli had a large bedroom, but that didn't mean it was any better of an idea. That was the first and last time he and Burpy had tried to find a loophole for slinging. They stuck to small stuff. Lighting matches and candles, then the fireplace in Jimmo's when Eli moved in.
The white bandages are soft and gentle, pressing lightly against his muscles when he leans on his palms, hands flat on the side of the sink. He lets his hair fall above his eyes, so he doesn't see his reflection.
He peels the bandages off but doesn’t look at his scarred arms. Mottled and darkened patches of healed burns, and linear ladders of raised pink and flat white. The burns were accidents, but less prominent than the other type.
He honestly doesn’t know how his friends haven’t noticed them. He’s elusive enough to dodge Megamorph Ghouls. And apparently also people from seeing his scars. Though, now, with his arms tattooed and his friends curious for a look…
"What do I tell them, Burpy?" His best friend hops onto his shoulder and tugs at a lock of his hair behind his ear. "They don't..."
They don’t know his past. Not really. The ‘It’s a Shane secret’ excuse is usually enough to get them to not probe for more information, but scars as precise as the ones on his arms? Even with months of smart slugslinging, he can’t think a cover story fast enough to -
“Eli?” Trixie’s knocks jolt him out of the mess of We’re-doomed thoughts. “You decent in there?”
He tries to roll the bandages back on - why did he take them all off? The tatts cover the scars, and there’s a lot of them, and the solid black of the thin, solid pictures inked under his skin are only a contrast to the messiness of the scar tissue.
“Uh, yeah - yeah. I’m good.” He tightens the bandages up one arm. The other bandage, however, is dangling in his hand when -
“Pronto cannot wait for Eli to come out. I must judge his tattoos without haste -”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. C’mon, little dude. Maybe he just needs some time to adjust. It did hurt when I got my tatts for the first time -”
“Don’t you ‘little dude’ Pronto. Also, have you seen his pain tolerance?”
Trixie’s voice cuts in now. “That’s why I don’t think we should just, you know, barge in - wait, Pronto -”
“Hang on -”
The other bandage is halfway up his right arm, loose as a white flag. His friends step in, Trixie and Kord trying to restrain Pronto from entering. By the way three pairs of eyes freeze, staring at his uncovered arm…
Yep. Doomed.
He turns slightly to hide it, but he’s a second too late. Before he knows it, Trixie’s shoving the others out of the room. The brief scatter of black circles connecting the solar system on his arm over ridge-y skin is still red and swollen enough to catch the eye, the dark ink contrast against the white bandage.
Whenever he’s in a do-or-die situation, he’s usually full to the brim with annoying quips and comments. Not this time, though.
“I won’t ask if you don’t want me to,” Trixie says simply.
“...Okay.”
She stretches her arms casually. "You want to stay in here or come out? There's cookies in the fridge."
It all feels anticlimactic when he leaves the bathroom and they walk to the kitchen. Pronto and Kord have a plate out on the counter.
Pronto sets down the uneaten cookie sheepishly, un-Pronto-like. "Eli, erm, Pronto will like to apologize for his earlier...unwanted intrusion of privacy. It was unheroic of him, and..."
He glances to Kord, who's not-so-stealthily hiding something behind the table and glaring at the Molenoid. Probably notes. Cheaters.
"And I am very sorry."
That was...
No shock, no torrent of questions and pity, no ‘What are those!’
Well, probably not on the outside.
He can feel their skeptical stares as he quickly accepts the apology and snatches a cookie. They're trying to play down the tension by acting normal so hard it's giving him the opposite effect.
"Bye." He takes another cookie just to have an excuse to be away for longer, walking outside to eat.
The door closes behind him and he groans. "Oh, my gosh. That was so..." He rubs his eyes in frustration and grinds his nails into his palms. "Yikes."
"You can say that again." Trixie stands beside him, biting into a cookie in her hand. “Cool tatts, by the way.”
"Huh? Oh, thanks." He's not even surprised she followed him out.
Silence falls between them. Either she doesn't know what else to say or she's letting the atmosphere quieten. Words aren't always needed.
And, being with Trixie is somewhat easier than being with Kord and Pronto sometimes. She's rash and prickly, but she's also the most capable of being serious and dependable when she has to be.
Kord and Pronto are more jokesters and followers than pillars, and more of partners-in-crime than brothers, yet.
"I, uh... I don't talk about, um, why." He tugs at the end of the left bandage shiftily. "It was stuff I dealt with. Before."
"From the Surface?" It's still an alien topic to her, but part of her normal through him now. There's a note of tension in her voice.
"Yeah. It wasn't always that great." He rubs the burning patch of a fresh tattoo on his bicep. "Between the two of us, Slugterra is way scarier but... lighter in a way."
The side of a smile touches one eye mockingly. "So, I take that as in you're okay with being stuck with us for life?"
Slugterra is so much more mysterious and alien and confusing than the Surface. It's similar in some ways, but the best difference is having his friends, even if they don't know what happened on the Surface.
"Yeah. I am."