parliansyren:
“it’s natural.” gatsby offers, chin a sharp edge against her shoulder still. shifting the pressure with each word that slips from his mouth. there’s no better way to explain it, he thinks, other than that word. all places and people have grassroots ways of acting when they’re most at ease. but these places, these sensations, they often belong behind closed doors where no eyes may pierce or linger. it’s rare to be somewhere that has people free and loose, especially without many doors or walls to speak of keeping them safe. slice of life. just a life they crave to see more than the day to day performances. maybe, gatsby thinks, small places just feel more homey.
it makes him feel at home, even without the taste of water in his throat and the freedom of scales not hidden by skin.
he makes a face – the options for coffee are slim at best where she works. maybe he should start making it since they wake up at the same hour. send her with a travel mug, something that could last at least part of the day if not all of it with rationing. “starbucks isn’t great.” gatsby murmurs even as he raises a hand, points at tea on the nearby plastic menu hanging from a wall and motions for two cups. “i’d rather drink coolant.”
maybe that’s dramatic, just on the right side of it. excess of emotion, the blatant statements they’re allowed to make up here, it still shocks gatsby at times. what earns a laugh or a barely blink of the eye would be written in blood on stone tablets under the water. something to hearken back to the moment it was useful for whomever was cunning enough to track your every word. gatsby didn’t play those games. they were mostly useless to him anyway, status and self detriments to the masquerade. but he always had to avoid making messes for indigo to clean up.
easier when that’s not an issue. one laugh and wave of hand makes people forget most things you’ve spoken, especially when the conversation keeps moving. just talking about their planning, the whisper from a queen around anyone feels like a secret thrill, a thing done wrong. “…no.” gatsby answers, softly. “i’ll be okay, enjoy it. just know that one am – that’s when metronome’s upstairs is open for the talks. sharing and trading. you’ve always been better at that.”
information and data, that’s how indigo lured herself out of the sea with gatsby by her side. who is he to take that from her?
“it will. i’m convincing …to these ones at least. not ours, just. theirs.” the song is like nothing to syrens unless they’re happy to fall for it, after all. a reason to fear them no matter how content he becomes with other species – a majority of them are worth no trust. no heart or fascination.
it makes gatsby nervous to think about too long. with indigo leading everything until this, until now, his skin is pricking and crawling. when the tea arrives he busies himself with pouring their glasses full, clutching his own in his palms despite the heat almost scalding to water cool skin. “poor thing. how did they mourn her?” what a terrible question, with or without context he thinks. but gatsby can’t swallow his curiosity, the wonder if they stayed cold faced. if they wept silent. if they wailed and pulled their hair.
is there a correlation between ways to mourn and healing? shifting his tea up and sipping at it mindlessly, gatsby wonders.
“i’ll look for him,” gatsby murmurs to her, “be nice too. what about the other one – not the kind? does he like you, then?”
"i suppose it is," she agrees mildly. "you know how i am about the little things." she doesn't really get angry about it, if things go wrong. she merely realigns. but she does very much like the comforts that she has. good coffee. good ramen. good baths, especially. if nothing else, the most pleasant part of her day is ending it with a bath, where she can stretch out and let her skin fall apart and expose the glittering scales underneath. as detached as indigo is from syren culture, she is not detached from herself. her nature and her being can exist outside the kingdoms.
she laughs, though, when gatsby brings up the hellish coffee chain that so dominates the surface, at least in america. starbucks is a staple. and her twin is entirely right. their hot coffee especially is dismal, and that's mostly what she drinks. she's been to the starbucks on the corner a few times with one of her bosses, and every time, she ends up getting an equally upsetting iced coffee. "then go drink something at starbucks after all," she tells him lightly, grinning a little wider. "you'll get coolant with some terrible mix-in to really drive the point home."
in some ways, it's been good to watch gatsby joke more and more easily on the surface. it makes every return back down to the sea more and more stifling, of course, as a result, but it's a result they simply have to grin and bear. they had to learn to adjust to the back and forth. and yet, despite all this time, the switch sometimes still makes indigo's stomach pitch and ache, a sickness at all the remarkable differences between them.
humans talk often about jet lag, about how traveling wears them down and throws their bodies off as they pass through time zones. she imagines it's the same thing, but from the tension that always comes every time they descend below the seas. "i'll be there," she says immediately, a reassurance and a promise. "if we're lucky they're the ones who will feel off about being on the surface, and i'll have all the advantages in the world. i won't mention it. just let them feel sick about it for once." rather than that same sickness she feels in the kingdoms below.
slowly, indigo rubs gatsby's shoulder. reassuring. soft. "i know you're convincing," she says, watching as he pours the tea. her hand half-moves forward to pour tea for herself, but he's already there.
"cried, mostly." it's a clipped way to describe it, but lately she's been aiming for that simplicity of language. "not wailing. silent and heaving. fewer words. they held everything in their expressions, though. all of it, crystallized right there. they told me a lot about her, like they were spilling over with the telling of it."
she laughs a little. "mm. philip doesn't think about me in that way. he's fine with his brother, and he's fine with me, but is very happily married to his wife. he'll only go if his brother asks him to, but... death doesn't stop for a festival. he'll probably just stay locked up tending to all the cadavers."
