Work Text:
“How about this one?” You hold out the next shirt. It feels flowing and soft in your hands, but Evan takes it gingerly, slipping his arms into the sleeves with hesitant care.
In the months since his transformation became undeniable, his skin has gotten exponentially more sensitive. He isn’t built for the open air anymore, and he gets dry and itchy within hours if he can’t take a dip in the water. Every piece of clothing he’d owned now causes chafing and rashes.
But he can still wear his legs sometimes, and if anyone is insensitive enough to ask about his skin or eyes, their coloration can be passed off as albinism or some obscure autoimmune condition. Neither of you wants him to lose the human world entirely until he absolutely has to. So you still take him out—to movies, to haunted houses, to farmer’s markets. Never more than a few hours at a time, but while he always comes home fevered and breathing too shallow until he can slip into your pool, sighing in relief as his legs melt together into that powder blue tail, as soon as he’s caught his breath he turns to you beaming and chattering and already making plans for the next weekend.
You dread the day he hauls himself up onto the pool deck and his tail refuses to unknit. Whatever change the tsunami wrought was inexorable, you feel it in your bones. All you can hope now is that you won’t lose him to the water when the transformation is complete.
Until then, just in case, you’ll steal every second that you can.
But his undercover human outings—as he’s started to refer to them with a wry grin that makes his newly pointed teeth flash in the sunlight—require clothes. And that situation has tipped over from uncomfortable to unbearable recently. The past couple outings, it’s been so bad that even a two hour movie proved too much. You had to leave in the middle, helping him stumble out into the back of the van you bought just for this, stripping him naked as soon as you were both out of sight. You emptied movie theatre water bottles over his hips, his chest, his groin, trying to alleviate the worst of it. You hoped there was no one else in the parking lot to hear his muffled whimpers as the water splashed over him, as he clawed at the floor of the van to keep from scratching himself to pieces, as you whispered Evan, it’s okay, I’m here, I’ve got you, it’s okay, I’m so sorry it hurts but I’m here, I’m here.
He’d been so depressed that night, sinking to the bottom of the pool and refusing to surface.
When you’d given up on trying to get him to talk to you, you’d gone back inside, sat down at your laptop, and started researching.
Now you watch as Evan finishes buttoning up the third shirt—out of about fifteen—that’s arrived on your doorstep in the past few days. You hold your breath as he tests it, moving his arms, shrugging his shoulders. Then his face transforms with wonder.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he says. He looks back at you, a grin spreading on his face. “Maddie! This one doesn’t hurt!”
You match his grin. “Pure silk it is then.” His face falls.
“Can we afford that?” he asks. You roll your eyes at him to disguise any concern, for him or the price. You can afford anything that will make him happy.
“Well, if you need to keep up with the latest TikTok fashions we might be stretching the budget, but I think I can handle a few sets of shirts and pants.” You watch the smile reluctantly creep back onto his face.
“Movie night next Saturday?” he asks, all boyish hopefulness.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”