UM!! Meandering writing my apparent beloved. Also Derrek my beloved.
[It’s been a long time, since it happened again. Derrek was starting to wonder if he’d just… live without it. That… jerking connection to the other forms of himself. At most, maybe a sensation would drift to him, something sharp biting into his skin as he clenches a fist around it, or wind on his face, or sounds, when he’s just falling asleep. But… his dreams have all been his own.
It’s been so long that he’s stopped worrying about it, even. Maybe this is just it. It ruined his life, and it made him better for it, and it just… goes away, now? After years of it haunting his sleep, and crashing into him like glass at random… he finds himself making plans.
And he finds him following through on them.
Derrek goes out for lunch with his friends. He goes with Strom to a concert, and he watches the colors of the music dance before his eyes, mingling with the souls of the crowd before him, through the earplugs that she bought him.
He goes to a pottery class with Aura and Strom, and the clay is… surprisingly nice to work with. He makes a mug, and unintentionally shapes it to fit his hand much more than anyone had realized until Amber borrows it one morning. Aura still laughs at him about it, every so often.
He visits the coast with Amber and Jay, and he feels the ocean on his skin for the first time in… what feels like far, far too long.
He lets himself sit in the bittersweet feeling of it, while the two of them head off for something to eat. Some cafe they’d spotted on the way in that hadn’t sounded too appealing to him, but Amber promised to bring him back something.
So here he sits. Sand under his legs and between his fingers as he leans back, the sun on his cheeks and shoulders, the wind catching the hairs that have fallen from his braid, and the waves rising and falling around him like breathing… it feels like home. Just as much as the home he’s made, with Amber and Strom, and with Aura and Jay… it’s home.
But it feels like home to a person that’s not him anymore. A person that’s not been him for quite some time now. Someone harsher, and crueler, and someone who would stare into the eye of the void in spite of everything just to challenge the universe to blink first.
It didn’t. It never does.
But now, here he is again. The same sky and sea and beach that his ship made port at so very many times over the years, and… as nice as it is, to visit, it feels wrong.
He’s come to terms with the body he’s been placed in, for the most part. That isn’t the problem. It isn’t the face or the blood or the skin that makes him feel like he’s in somebody’s place when he shouldn’t be… it’s him.
Derrek had forgotten how hollow that feeling was.
He takes a deep breath and lays back, dragging his arms back and forth through the sand as he just… breathes. Listens to the waves, and the wind, and the voices of whoever is wandering within earshot for the time.
And then it happens again.
He’s not used to it anymore- he doesn’t even have time to try and brace himself for the feeling of landing in the experiences of somebody else.
He feels bandages around his ribs, and a pulsing, burning ache under his arm, and the warmth of a fire in front of his shins and palms…
But he still feels the sea.
He had forgotten how disorienting it could be, being so torn like this.
The other him is crying- his tears are warm on his cheeks, and there’s an arm across his shoulders, and a leg pressed against his own. There’s a voice he doesn’t recognize, singing a song he doesn’t know, but… it seems to help.
Derrek doesn’t get whatever turmoil this version of him is experiencing, and it feels like he’s staring in on a moment he shouldn’t be, because of it.
But he experiences the moment nonetheless.
He takes a deep breath in sync with the weeping man, and… damn. It’s nice, for things to line back up, even just for a second.
And as the seconds draw out, or maybe minutes, he finds himself picking up the songs tune. Humming it himself. Maybe he’ll look into it, to see if he can find it in this reality.
He can feel the air around him cooling, and distantly wonders if the sun- his sun- is setting.
He wonders if this other version of him enjoys the night just as much as himself.
He’s still digging his hands back and forth in the sand when he comes back to himself, a little at a time.
And he breathes. The ocean’s smell carries in the air, here, and he wonders if he’s going to miss it, when they go back home.]
