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dahlialittlejames · 6 years

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Miracle Elixir

Goofing with the logistics of a goo transformation that isn’t instant, all AU but always fun to get the good nasty vibes goin’.

“Lemonade?” Holly asks.

Nick smiles. “Aw, jeez. Don’t go to trouble for me.”

“Nonsense, Nicky! We have a spread in my office for a reason. It may not look like it by my figure, but I try to stay fed and watered in a job like this. I’d be insulted if you didn’t partake!”

Nick’s smile goes a little sheepish. Well, if that’s the case. He hasn’t eaten since this afternoon, so if it’s rude not to eat he won’t gripe. He takes a little cup and fills it, sipping idle as he eyes Holly’s office. It’s a cute place. Every bit the garden she likes to call her business, even if it’s still in its seedling stages. “Thanks! You really know how to make a guy feel home, Ms. Hemlock.”

“You’re looking to stay in Perkins permanently, then?” Holly asks.

“Oh! I didn’t think about it.” Nick goes red. It’s the truth, but he feels weird considering it. “Maybe just the year.”

“Give it time,” Holly says. Soft, almost to herself.

Nick waves. He holds in his arms the rest of his samples, since she reminded him. “Yeah! We’ll see what happens, captain! Er, Ms. Hemlock. Bye, boss!”

“Goodbye, Nicky!”

Nick climbs into his van. Smells faintly of lemons, and he grins. He’ll unload the rest of his equipment and samples in the morning. He has time to. It’s been weird, being in flux so long that he feels like he’s been living out of the same two cardboard boxes. He hadn’t even asked Holly about shower or tub in the lab, even if she seemed to assume he’d be staying there from the couch and clothes.

He eyes the moonlight out the window. Maybe he’ll try to move deeper into town. See what happens.

When he pulls into the lab, he’s almost pleased to see it. It’s not home, but it could be. He kisses his fingertip and boops it to the stuffed critters on his dash. “See ya in the morning,” he tells them, before stumbling inside.

He doesn’t flip on the lights for long. He doesn’t dress down to PJs either, just sorta reclines on the couch and dozes before he can think to get ready.

The phone on the service counter wakes him up. That, and the splitting headache, which has him staggering up the shut the ringing up.

His hands slip a little on the receiver. Sunshine hits his eyes and he’s blinking. “Nick Cervos, what’s up?”

“Hello, Nicky! How’s the lab?” Holly Hemlock trills into his ear. Nick holds the receiver away a little. The clock declares it about 11am. Huh.

“Uh, it’s great,” he mumbles. He rubs at his eye and ends up smudging his vision more. Burns a little. “Ow!”

“Nicky?”

“Nothing, just something in my eye,” Nick says. “Are you planning on coming out today? I can set up everything fine on my own.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to rest from your trip?”

“It’s a five hour drive, ma’am. I think I’m good to go!”

Surprise fills Holly’s tone. “Oh. If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” Nick says, hand on his gut. Which is wet. His shirt’s soaked through, and kinda sticky. Huh. He looks over to his couch. No stains of anything, so where could it have come from. He sniffs his hand. Smells like lemons. He smears it on his pants. “Thanks for checking in, though!”

“It’s my pleasure,” Holly says. “Let me know who everything goes!”

“Will do,” he says, a little absent, and hangs up the receiver. His hands are still wet no matter how much he rubs them on his pants. He keeps rubbing and his palms don’t get any drier.

He rubs his thumb and forefinger together. Like wax, his fingertip smudges, peachy flesh worn down to yellowy orange. Encased not in blood, but in this gooey substance like oil. Like soap. “Huh,” he says.

His fingers wear down as he rubs them with his thumb, like he’s rubbing off paint. Underneath, a gooey hand with the bones inside, but those too are dissolving. He moves and the bones dissolve a little bit more, until it’s just chunks of white only barely connected. It’s like tiny teeth trapped in jello. He gives his hand another wiggle.

It falls to the floor with a wet slap.

“Ew.” Weird.

His other hand goes to his belly. He fumbles his shirt and, sure enough, it’s all yellow and orange. Most of the fabric has eaten into his skin. He can’t get his hand past it. His chest stifles. He feels full, like he’s sick, like he can’t breathe.

He coughs. It comes out wet, like lava that ends up over his fingers. It’s burning, like a chemical burn. Like dry ice in his guts. He spits it out the side of his mouth, a glob of orange that sizzles the linoleum.

He kneels on the tiles. More comes out like drool, if drool usually left your throat raw as if you’d been gargling sparks. “Okay, okay,” he tells himself. “Everything’s going to be okay.” He dips a finger into the goo of his belly again.

His already stung fingers go deeper than skin, into reddening sludge and burns. He screams. “Okay! I won’t do that again. Okay. Fuck.”

Maybe he can wash it off. He shambles up to his feet and heads for the bathroom, then catches himself on the wall before the breakroom. His soles cling to the linoleum. He peels a foot up. Same sludge. He’s leaving a snail trail behind him.

One sink is good as another. Even if he has a bad feeling about it. His hand drips goo now, too, wearing down slower now that he’s not egging it on.

He reaches the sink. He runs his hand under the water.

If the goo burning him up is hell, the water burning up the goo is its deepest pit. The goo bubbles up his hand even quicker, as if running up his wrist to his arm to escape. He screams and turns it off.

The next hand doesn’t fall off, just drips. The drops inch toward his ankle, cling to it, and he hisses. It’s not as bad there, where it’s already burned. It’s seeping back in like blood into a wound, and he steadies on the lip of the sink. Then pushes away. Not again.

He staggers away, tries to think about this scientifically. He’s learning. What’s he learning? First observation: goo burns him. Second: water burns goo, and it’s not recommended. Third: goo has a mind of its own. Whatever intent it has, it’s this. Eating him up, until he’s gone.

The fear he feels permeates his body and he can’t get his breathing under control. He’s too thickly filled to breathe. It’d be like trying to breathe in syrup. Goo’s eating into his lungs and he braces on the chair. He talks himself down, talks without air because somehow it’s possible and he’ll take whatever reassurance he can get.

He manages to get back to the main lab. He dials the number Alan left him.

The phone rings and rings. He gets a beep.

“No, no- okay,” he says. He can’t take a deep breath and forges on without one. “Mo! Hey, but- uh-” How to put this? “Don’t freak out! Something’s just- wrong with me! I need Annie over, if you can call her. Please don’t worry about me- SHIT.” His fingers slip and ooze together. The receiver begins to dissolve. There’s almost a tang in his hand. His hand. Tasting burning plastic and he spits another glob of goo out.

The line goes dead in his ear. “Mo?”

Fuck. Fuck! He has to fling off the phone clinging to his palm. Okay.

Now what to do? He’s a pathologist, versed in the fine art of throwing ideas at a wall until one sticks. He needs a soundboard.

He fumbles a stirring rod into turning on his recorder. The machine shudders to life and he relaxes a little. To calm himself with his usual rhythm, he even dates it. “October 11th, 1987, 11:03am. Something’s happening to my body and it can’t be good. I mean, I try to keep an open mind, but the pain’s pretty bad. If anyone finds this and plays it back, maybe don’t. And maybe don’t touch any of this goo you find.”

His hand feels heavier and he lets the stirring rod clink to the floor. Heat buzzes up his arms. He’s trembling all over as it rushes to meet the heat in his chest, down into his belly. The effect’s spreading. He feels like a PSA for kids who eat too many lemon drops.

He grits his teeth. Even the inside of his mouth’s starting to feel off. Too wet and too thick and burning like a mouthful of tabasco. His words aren’t disturbed, though. “Uh, right. Symptoms. I’m falling apart. I think. I’d get the details if I could work my equipment, but my hands aren’t doing so good. Hand. I lost a hand earlier. Ugh, everything tastes like lemons!” he says, and spits a loogie of goo. He sticks out his tongue.

Goo overtakes it and turns it glowing orange. His eyes cross to see it.

��Ew,” he says, clear as if he’d spoken. “That’s a thing, too. Talking without moving my mouth. So that’s fun.”

His feet sink deeper into the linoleum. It’s about an inch or so. “Losing some altitude,” he says, tongue still out. The heat he’s feeling has dulled to an ache all over. Less of a sting when it’s not in one spot, but his feet are taking it worst. “I gotta stop putting strain on this until I know what’s going on.”

Nick sits down on the linoleum. He lays his legs out in front of him and frowns at his feet.

“Aw. I guess no more toes.” He slept in his socks so now his feet are stuck in the shape of them, even if they’re almost entirely goo now. Makes some sorta sense but he’s still bummed.

He goes on to describe the rest of himself for the recording, taking stock. Any time he loses goo, it comes magnetizing back. The goo’s coming from the inside out, so if it was on his surface when he woke up, his guts should have liquified in his sleep. All of his insides have been gone for hours, and here he is, somehow not dead.

“I’m not complaining or anything,” he says, hands on his belly. “It’s just not the greatest thing to wake up to, ya know? It’s like being sick but not as uncomfortable. If you don’t count the burning. Can’t breathe but I don’t even need to now! If water didn’t probably kill me, I’d go deep sea diving!”

He sniffs but his nose is overwhelmed with lemons. His face has a sheen to it but it’s relatively ungooed, aside from his mouth. He can feel the hair against his neck getting damp, though. His clothes can’t even be plucked off his skin. After a point he can’t even get up off the floor. His back’s stuck. There’s a dusty taste up his back but it’s not as unsettling as the plastic.

He just lays there talking and talking into the afternoon. Where else can he go? It’s a downpour outside, anyway. Who knows how long he’d last in it?

It’s about 2pm when he feels his headache flare up and finally die off. Good riddance, even if he feels something go dribbling out his ear. Goo, probably, but he can still hear. “That’s gross. Guess my brain’s gone. Like I ever used it for anything! Ha!” He chuckles, half-hearted. “Didn’t think this would be how I go out. Feels all Shakespearean, though. Getting my brain eaten by science.”

He puts a goopy finger in his ear. It sinks past his skull, painlessly since it’s goo to goo touch. Somehow he can feel it now. The same way he can taste the dirt against his back in sharper detail, it’s sending messages to his legs again to shift a little on the floor. That’s him, doing the moving and the touching and the panicking when he tries to fling parts of it away. It’s like it wants to be close, to be part of him.

He sticks his gooey tongue out. His teeth are worn down, and the sides of his mouth. He’s filled up to the back of his throat, instead of hollowed out for breathing and eating. “I should probably be freaking out, huh?” he yawns. Yet, come 3pm, he’s just resigned to it.

He spends the rest of his time singing to himself. The recorder’s been rolling all day but it’s not like he’ll use it again. He’s kinda hoping it gets found, and kinda hoping it doesn’t. Not by Alan or Mary-Anne. Anyone else, sure. Maybe Holly Hemlock so she knows she needs a new quality assurance chemist.

He’s halfway into Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat- ensemble cast: Nick Cervos, because without a mouth he can project more than one voice- when the last burns spark over his eyes. His vision’s foggy, like he’s lying at the bottom of a pool. He tries to blink it away.

There’s a puddle on the linoleum. It goes still.

Then trembles and glows. It’s orange and yellow and white and trying to think. It’s tired and only barely grappling onto life. But it manages a torso and limbs and a head and a mess of other features until the goo rises off the tiles.

Nick Cervos holds his head. His fingers are back, distinct and separate again, and digging into his scalp. His eyes blink open, white with no pupils but a nice ring of orange in the centers. He can see, and think about how weird he feels or the fact that he’s not on the floor anymore.

He looks down. “Ha. Ha! Nice! I thought we were down for the count, me!” he says. His voice comes from all over his body. He moves his mouth but it’s all for show. He pumps his fists in the air. “Hell yeah! I’m alive! Take that, living goo!”

He still sees no puddle on the ground. Oh, yeah. “Oh! I’m the living goo.”

#pretty much if holly actually intentionally changed nick it'd go something like this #obnoxious #delete later #of the two this is sadder and i'm thinking does not jive as well with the tone i want to convey in places #but i do love writing it #nick's too goshdang goodnatured about it all #'guess i'm standing in my truth my dude' nick are you okay #writing #transformation

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