starmark | IC Inbox | prismatica

[ So the words 'I care' are kind of magic words when it comes to dealing with Trevor. Anything like them. A statement that something matters. And so he shuts up, long enough to finish serving himself and set about eating. To take his first few mouthfuls in silence and actually consider them rather than just interacting with them the same way he usually interacts with food and trying to not starve as efficiently as possible. To eat the slower way that he usually only eats when Cordis is up. ]

So this is how it's meant to taste?

[...Hm. Well, that's certainly a change in attitude, isn't it? He wonders, vaguely, what it was that struck a chord. Something to think about another time, maybe.]

Close. It's still not the same as my mom's, but it's getting better.

[He hesitates a minute, then disappears into the kitchen and returns with a bowl of his own, sinking into a chair and spooning himself a helping — heavy on the meat — as well.]

...I didn't used to. Cook. Used to just drink beer and eat...whatever.

[He shrugs a little, ducking his head into his food.]

Now I cook.

[ Eating is useful, because it means he doesn't have to speak right away. There's a built-in reason to not respond immediately and he takes advantage of it, taking another few mouthfuls before he speaks again. ]

What changed?

[ It seems like the natural question. Even if he's half expecting 'and then I met this rad vampire who taught me the error of my ways'. Jotaro said he cared, and so at least for now he's trying. ]

Dr. Acula said my diet was shit.

[He actually doesn't know if Trevor will get that joke without seeing it in print first, and knowing what to expect. But maybe he'll get the connection anyway, just from the "doctor" part.]

...I didn't want to moonlace when I first got here. Didn't really want to do anything. Didn't sleep. Smoked a lot. Just ate whatever, I didn't care. Drank.

[HMMM SOUNDS LIKE DEPRESSION AND BAD COPING MECHANISMS SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE FROM THE 1400S TO THE 1900S I GUESS]

Seemed kind of hypocritical to be hassling him about not just taking a forever nap, but then not listen when he told me to take care of myself too. So. "Eat better" is one of the things I worked on.

Doctor-? [ It's easy enough to guess who Jotaro's talking about from context, but he's never seen 'Doctor' abbreviated like that. ] Oh.

[ It's almost laughable, isn't it? How pathetic the person he is sounds when it's someone else. It's also kind of laughable how predictable that all is. How he probably already knew, or why would he have gone out of his way to actually eat properly for the few days before offering Alucard blood? He knew that Alucard would be the exact fucking type to make a big deal of it. ]

Did it change anything? The eating better shit?

...I didn't stop having nightmares.

[That...wasn't what he meant to say, he doesn't think. It's more candor than he was expecting to show. But the words hang in the air, and he sort of gauges them as they fade into silence, and at the end he decides that saying them...wasn't as bad as he might once have expected it to be.

He shovels another mouthful of noodles past his lips, unknowingly using the same trick as Trevor, to buy himself a minute.]

But it meant I wasn't just sitting still. All of a sudden I had stuff I had to figure out. Choose something. Find a recipe. Go to the store, buy the stuff it needs. Figure out how to put it together. Make food come out.

[He's quiet another minute, reflecting.]

I had to try. That's what it changed.

[ His expression doesn't really change. Relaxes a little, maybe, though it wasn't particularly tense before. There's no pity. He doesn't look away. ]

You had to break living down into stupid little tasks with rules. That you could do right or fuck up and you'd know right away whether you did it right or fucked up.

[ He considers the noodles, and his tone is even. ]

Where if you follow all the rules to the fucking letter, it just works. Like it should.

Yeah.

[His spoon clinks against the edge of his bowl, idle tapping that does nothing to scoop up the contents within.]

Thing about cooking, you do it right and you get food. Then you have to eat it, or what was the fucking point.

[He pauses another moment.]

You know anything about boats? Sailing.

Less than most. Spent most of my life pretty far inland. Closest I'd know anything useful about is how to deal with the shit you might find out there.

[ He pokes idly at a vegetable that isn't, for once, a sliver of mystery green stuff rehydrated into something resembling a piece of paper that thought about a spring onion once. He's still thinking about the cooking thing, in truth. ]

A lot of it boils down to 'if you see a horse in the sea, that's weird and you shouldn't try to ride it', which seems like common sense.

O...kay.

[LORD TALKING TO BELMONTS IS SO WEIRD you never know when they're just going to say some shit like DON'T RIDE WEIRD HORSES YOU FIND IN THE SEA like okay, man, I wasn't gonna to begin with but thanks for the heads-up, cheers to that.]

So there's these parts of the ocean where there's no wind. Ships that sailed into them would get stuck, they'd be going and going and then all of a sudden there wasn't anything pushing them anymore. No wind filling their sails. They were just stuck.

[He swirls the broth in his bowl with the edge of his spoon.]

Hard to get out of something like that. You have to get down and row. But rowing's hard. You get tired. It'd be so much easier to just stop, except the wind's not coming back unless you get yourself out first.

[ He listens, despite the fact that Jotaro has not given proper confirmation that if he encounters a horse in the water he will not try to ride it. ]

Oh. That was a metaphor. [ And he lets go of his spoon for a moment. He could fuss at the food to pretend that that's the reason for the long silence but- at this point, there's no deception in it. ] Yeah.

It's fucked up. Things are so much easier here. I always know I'm going to be able to eat. Him and you are the only people who've ever even heard my name, as far as I know. Weird shit happens, but everyone ends up more or less safe. Can't even fucking die for real. Everything should be- you know. Better.

And it's not. Half the time it feels harder. Nothing but time to think.

...Are you waiting to see if I'll tell you I won't ride a water horse.

[Trevor's silence here is eerily like when he was just waiting around in the grocery store with are you done hanging in the air, and, well, Jotaro learns fast and hangs out with a lot of weird people.]

You get used to...

[What was it Alucard had said? Something something the whole world hating Trevor Belmont. He's probably not supposed to even know that, but there's the echo of it in what he says. The only people who've ever even heard my name. Like that's a good thing.

Funny how easy it would be to substitute in Joestar for Belmont and still have that sentiment make sense.]

...Everyone's out to get you. And then all of a sudden no one's out to get you. And it feels like you're what's wrong. You're what doesn't fit.

It's perfectly reasonable to want to be sure you're not going to ride a water horse.

[ Rude. But he sighs. This is the most emotionally fraught conversation about noodles he's ever had with a dragon. ]

...yeah. That. You'd think it'd be an improvement, to go from everyone wanting you dead to nobody caring that much. But you know how to deal with everyone wanting you dead.

You know, I could tell you anything you wanted to hear about things half the world doesn't even believe are real. Couldn't tell you the first fucking thing about how you go about being a human.

If I see a water horse I won't ride the water horse.

[...Now he wants to see a water horse. Fuck. It's like not thinking about pink elephants!]

...Anyway. You already know how to do the first thing. You already did it.

[He sets his spoon down, staring into his udon broth for a long moment. Then, eventually, he glances back up again and points a clawed fingertip at the hideous boyband mug keeping them company on the table.]

Somebody needed help, and you didn't have to help them, and you did. That's the first thing about being human. That's what we do that the monsters don't.

There, was that so hard?

[ He watches Jotaro's hands, follows the motion of his finger to look at the perfectly servicable mug. It has a handle. It can hold liquids. Or, in this case, clay made of thief bone. It's a mug, Jotaro. It can have boybands on it and it doesn't make it a bad mug. ]

You've known better humans than me, I suppose.

Kinda. I want to ride a water horse now.

[He shakes his head, ducking it slightly before setting down his spoon, groaning, and rubbing a hand down his face.]

Known worse ones than you, too. What's your point?

Better humans than I've known, I mean. Never really thought of that kind of shit as a defining characteristic of humanity.

[ He puts a lot of thought into his noodles, at that, because they're not the conversation. They're- good. And it's weird to think that. Weird to care what food tastes like. Wrong. He'd be furious with himself for it a few months ago, for the pointlessness of it. ]

Don't ride the water horse. They're sticky.

Oh. You meant it like that.

[What does it say about Jotaro that he just automatically assumes that Trevor is being self-deprecating when he says something like that? Well, given the response, it doesn't even sound like he was that far off.

But anyway.]

So what happens, I stick to the horse and then it drowns me before I can get off again?

Pretty much. Most of them don't mean any harm, they just- they're sticky. And they like humans, and get excited if they encounter them. Fight over them sometimes, so if you don't drown then you get stuck to two different horses going in opposite directions get your skin ripped off by the losing one. Best way to deal with them is to throw them someone's clothes. Makes them happy.

[ FACTS ABOUT STICKY WET HORSES. ]

Thanks. Did I say thanks before? For being there for him. It's not that I'm not trying to do right by him, but- shit.

...Do they think that the clothes are a person? They identify people by clothes?

[This is a dangerous road to go down, oh lord. Still, though, he quiets at the returned mention of Alucard, and glances again toward the hideous mug before folding his hands and resting his chin on them.]

But what?

They like- having human stuff. Or stuff that belongs to human-shaped things, anyway. 'Human' gets to be a really fraught term sometimes.

[ He shakes his head. ]

But I don't know if you've noticed, but people aren't exactly my strong point. And he always seems-. Fragile? Is that the word? Like if I fucked up even a little, it'd hurt him worse than anyone could fix.

That's. They like having human stuff.

[HE IS A GROWN-ASS DRAGON MAN HE IS NOT GOING TO SAY IT'S "CUTE" (it's cute oh no oh god he loves these sticky horses what the fuck).]

...You're right. About what would happen, if you fucked it up. If anybody fucked it up.

[His mind drifts back to that one phrase, the one he's convinced was said only once, and only in passing — like an icy well — and yet how the thought of it plagues Alucard, how it permeates everything he is and haunts him, how convinced he used to be that he was cold and unworthy of love.]

You've got your thing, right? That thing that everyone does that gets in your head and gnaws at you, and it's everywhere, and it fucks you up. That thing that hurts because no matter what you do, it's always there.

So does he. His thing is being different. And I think you're probably better than anyone at making him feel different, even without realizing it.

Yeah. It's- surprisingly common. Like kids who don't know how to look after animals yet. Lots of things that are only dangerous to people because they like people enough to want to keep them but don't know that there are things that kill them.

[ Yes this is a serious conversation about a mutual friend's delicate emotional state but also he's not going to STOP talking about sticky horses. He's good at talking about one topic and it's 'weird shit that Belmonts learn'. ]

...yeah. I am. I mean- it's what I do. Knowing why things are different from other things. Why sticky horses are different from horses that aren't sticky. Keeps people alive, most of the time. Just- you know. Makes me the least qualified person in the fucking world to make things right for him.

Like cats. That superstition about cats stealing the breath out of babies in their cribs, when really the cats are just trying to curl up with them like they would another cat, and they're too heavy for the baby to breathe through.

[why are monsters suddenly so kawaii oh no]

...He did tell me about you, you know. By name. You and Sypha both. When I talked about people who were important to me, he would talk about you and her.

[ There's a long, long pause. Like it's taking everything he has to not WELL ACTUALLY that and go off on a long tangent about cats. ]

...yeah, that's probably right.

[ He's finished his noodles, so he's not entirely sure what to do to avoid looking like he's thinking about that last statement too hard. So he just continues to mime eating noodles. Nailed it. ]

That's- shit. Kind of sad. And a nightmare scenario, as far as not fucking him up worse than he already is goes. Going to hurt him by being around, going to hurt him by buggering off.

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