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Dandy's always needed something.
Young and downy with dandelion fluff, he's always dug his nails in and needed.
Second to be born of this cosmic ichor stuff, Astro has always been within arm's reach, and Astro has never complained for Dandy's cloying clinginess, his wants, his vices.
Forever his taproot, his deepest hold, his dearest accomplice.
Dandy thinks of him and wants.
He knows what is happening to him.
It is a consequence.
The dark halls recoil and waver in his hazy black vision, and he knows why.
There is ichor under his sharp, sharp claws and his eyes ache fiercely, staticky pain roiling through him like the dawn of the day, the coming of the end. He could be in a sprawling field. He is in the small expanse of Gardenview. All plants are fake. He's lived his life here, and some part of him resents it.
His teeth are grit. His mouth tastes like the thick, sluicing jam of bitter huckleberry, fermenting weeds.
He wants to retch.
He knows how. He knows why. Maybe it'd be better if he didn't. If it wasn't his own fault. If he could've stopped it.
Like the beaten dog, he crawls his way home; hand dragging along the wall, back a branding iron rod, vision wavering.
He staggers himself through Astro's bedroom door, and Astro looks up from his book—on coastlines, their ecosystems, something he's never seen and never will—to stare, face furrowing in concern.
"Dandy?"
Dandy does not answer. The air is thin and weak to him. His fingers feel like knives in the painful way.
He digs his feet into the solid flooring which could be soft dirt, if he willed himself to imagine hard enough, and urges himself to move, pulling himself up into Astro's bed with him, curling against his side like something wounded. He feels wounded. His body aches, clammy with sweat.
Astro is warm and smelling of lotus. He is soft and gentle with him. He pulls his two left arms around Dandy as Dandy has done to him, his soft, fuzzy blueberry blanket draping against him. He nuzzles his forehead into Dandy's. He slackens his hold on his book. They breathe in each other's air.
Dandy digs his claws into Astro's bedding, full of many-colored and soft blankets, puncturing holes, drawing wounds from the fabric.
He makes sure to breathe.
That is important.
Astro's room is dim. There are glow-in-the-dark stars and half moons like freckles on the walls, the ceiling. Bookshelves, lined with sturdy hardbacks and cardboard children's stories. A reading lamp on his bedside table.
Dandy does not answer him, so Astro does not ask. He presses a hand to Dandy's back in reassurance. He reads the pages of his encyclopedia through the corners of his eye. He thumbs the pages with one free hand and turns them at a slow, rhythmic pace.
It's almost enough.
It's more than enough.
It's just what he needs.
He knows what is wrong with him.
He cannot afford to stop it.
He knows he gets worse. The others—
He has never been allowed to feel sorry for himself. He has responsibilities. He has duties. He has work to do. It is a heavy feeling deep in his heart, dripping from him like liquid mercury, or mournful blood. Like metal weight, like heavy burden.
The others have noticed.
He cannot let them know what he knows. He cannot afford to. Not Sprout, not Vee, not—
There would be no hope.
There has to be hope.
He sits in a dark back room, the air conditioner rattling like something deeply wounded, and bites his nails. Claws. What his hands are becoming. The soft, gentle green bleeding to black bleeding to red, yellow, orange, green, purple, blue.
He can feel the sharpness of his sturdy bones lengthening beneath his soft, pliable skin. He can feel his body begin to contort. He knows what is happening, he knows why, but there must be hope.
He presses his face into his palms, the back of his hands pressed to his thighs, his legs tucked neatly beneath him. He is curled up over himself and breathing steadily, practiced and true. As he should be.
There is a faint, echoing bark from the hallway.
For a moment, he stills.
There is the soft skittering of paws. Footsteps. Another bark.
Pebble. Someone else.
Dandy, for some reason, wants to cry. He pulls a smile, as bright as the light of day.
It's Pebble who noses his way through the cracked door, pawing across the short distance of the worn wooden floor to sniff at his petals, his outstretched hands.
It's Astro who steps in after, arms bundled beneath his blanket, eye tired, soft. The star on his face glows faintly, pulsing with the beat of his heart.
Pebble whines, pressing his doglike snout into Dandy's wrist, insistent until he's pet, firm and level down the thin, hard carapace of his back, rocky yet gentle to the touch, smooth enough to feel the miniature fissures, infinitesimal wounds.
Astro steps in, closing the door behind him with a small flurry of sparkles which vanish in their fall to the floor, firework-like.
Dandy watches him. His smile is wide and painful.
Astro settles himself on the floor, a foot or so away from him. He takes a heavy breath. Says, "Dandy, it's… it's okay."
It's okay that you hide this.
Or.
It's okay that I've seen you like this.
Or:
It's okay. It's okay. You have nothing to worry for.
And for a moment, Dandy thinks it's true.
He fears for them terribly. He fears for Astro, for Pebble, for Vee, for Sprout—
He thinks of what is happening to him as something that is happening to Astro and his teeth ache. His smile falls.
He feels tired.
For a while, they sit there. Astro and Dandy facing each other, shoulders slumped. Pebble, having climbed into Dandy's lap, heavy and grounding and quiet and content.
When Dandy's eyes weigh heavy, Astro shuffles over, dust from the floor sticking to his blanket, his slippers, his knees, and wraps his four long arms around him, mumbling some lullaby or another, tugging on his mind, urging him to sleep.
When he does, dead weight against Astro, his dreams are sweet.
He knows who to blame.
He wakes to Astro's room, Astro's sleeping body beside him, Pebble resting contently in the crook of Astro's two right arms.
"Dandy, you know that I'm just to trying to help, but—"
Sprout, when he was younger, held pale white strawberry petals, much like himself. Then, he grew older. He matured.
They have many memories together; many simply memories, never real, meaningful, genuine interaction. Falsities that are just real enough, plausible a so-so, understandable amount. Dandy has learned to live with this. He doesn't allow himself to care what the others have done.
One of the light bulbs in the room is faulty; flickering, casting the counters in shadow when it slips from working condition, briefly, into the great light bulb beyond.
However, he can't help but think, quietly and to himself, he has such a nagging, careless voice.
"—you have to tell me things. What is happening? Dandy! This isn't normal, it's— where's Delilah? Arthur? Sam? Do you know where they went? We need them, you know this! You—"
Dandy can't say anything. If he says something he will say everything. Or maybe just something. Something he doesn't want to say. His heart beats quickly and his blood coils around his muscles like vicious ensnaring vines.
He was not made to be strong.
He is.
He sees grey, he sees black, he sees blurry visions of left being right and up being down. But he can keep it together.
He proves it by leaving.
Sprout follows, exasperation melting into fear melting into frustration and then, finally, anger.
Dandy slams his room's door shut.
Sprout bangs on the wood, says something that sounds like white noise in his ears, and leaves.
He cannot hear his footsteps. He cannot hear anything but his breathing. But he can breathe. He is very good at it.
He reminds himself that he is normal and friendly and kind.
He can feel his bones splintering. His mind hurts. He cannot think without pain. His skin weeps ichor.
He clutches at himself. The air is too stale and too fluid, escaping him when he reaches for its swirling coolness, its endless comfort.
The pain is blinding. Deafening. Rending.
He reminds himself that he is normal and friendly and kind, the mantra of the ages, the metal spikes of a snow boot.
Someone has poured acid, or perhaps lava, or maybe a vat of his own tears over him, and on the floor of his room, he writhes. Ichor is everywhere he touches in monstrous, claw shaped smudges.
His back legs crush themselves under the pressure of nothing. They rearrange themselves.
He breaks. He fixes it. He always does, but he's never done it like this before.
He is normal and friendly and kind. Benevolent guide, line leader, course setter. Friendly face. Happy creature.
He is frightened. He does not know what is happening to his body, but he knows why.
His teeth bite into themselves.
He digs his claws into the wood of the floor, the plaster of the walls, the electric sparks of whatever is close enough for him to damage.
In his room, he becomes a nightmare. Long and four-legged, tall and frightening. He grows lethal to the thought and touch and sight.
In his room, he bunches in his paws cassette tape after cassette tape. He watches, behind his eyes, his show. He is normal and polite and kind. Even if he doesn't feel it.
It passes. It always does. It always will.
He is a monster, but it passes.
He is normal and friendly and kind.
Even if it isn't true, he is.
His petals cast rays of sunlight across the walls in shadow.
Astro sees him for what he is.
Whatever love Dandy holds for him, Astro reflects right back, cool and deep as the still water of the lake.