#dukeciet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

artistowlsnest · 2 years

Text

Monster Like You

@dukeceitweek

For Dukeceit week Tuesday prompt: Shedding/Monster

2,132 words

Summary: Janus wasn't actually sick, he just needed an excuse to stay home from school so that he could shed his snakeskin in peace, and he obviously couldn't tell anyone that he was actually some kind of monster. It sure would be a shame if...someone were to find out.

Janus was a monster.

This was not a condemnation, per se, but a simple statement of fact. He was arguably not human anymore, maybe never even had been, though he pretended to be. His parents were the only ones who knew his secret, and that was only because they’d been there when he’d transformed – Janus couldn’t honestly tell himself that he would have immediately told them otherwise.

After the initial freak-out though, his parents knowing was pretty helpful. When he woke up with clammy skin and vision in one eye going blurry, he could just go downstairs and ask Mom to call him in sick to school.

It wasn’t fair, he thought to himself as he went back up to his room. In books when kids get visible magic powers, they grow wings or can turn into animals, not half-snakes that can’t even shed right.

Janus didn’t know how or why he grew scales on half his body, got a fucked-up eye, and grew a fang, but it had happened anyway. As far as he could figure, the only way he’d be able to get any answers was by submitting himself to the tender machinations of experimental scientists, so he had resigned himself to living in the dark, as much as not knowing chafed at him.

Almost literally, in fact. It would have been nice to know how this whole thing worked, because there had to be a better way to go about it than this.

At school, he smiled with closed lips. He wore long sleeves and painted a thick layer of foundation over his scales and said that he had eczema to excuse the bumps. He wore an obscenely large contact lens in his left eye, to hide that it was entirely yellow aside from his slitted pupil. Those choices, while necessary to go undetected in human society, likely didn’t do him any favors when it came time to shed.

Janus envied actual snakes who were shaped like tubes and could scrape their skin off in one quick and easy piece. Human bodies weren’t built for half of their skin to be easily removed, so every few months Janus got to spend a couple days in his room, the door shut and both a heater and humidifier doing their level best to turn his room into a pressure cooker until his snakeskin was loose enough for him to peel it off.

It was gross, he felt like shit the entire time, and it was boring. He was tired and achy enough to not want to actually do anything, but he unfortunately couldn’t actually stay asleep for three days straight.

So now, he was laying in bed, sheets kicked off because he couldn’t stand the texture right then. He’d turned on some music for background noise and then turned the volume down to a quiet enough level that he could tune it out entirely. His phone had been buzzing, and he’d finally turned it on silent – it was probably texts from his boyfriend, wondering why he wasn’t at school, but he didn’t want to have to look at the screen right then. His parents were at work, but Mom had left him a large mug of tea on his nightstand and stern orders to drink it; since it had probably gone cold by now he decided against the effort. Over the music, he could hear a tapping at his window like tree branches against the glass…

Janus’s mind caught that thought. Turned it around a few times. Examined it. Tried to figure out why it struck him as wrong somehow –

Oh, right. There weren’t any trees in the yard.

Janus sat bolt upright in bed, adrenaline powering him through how the motion made his headache worse and his skin hurt, just as his window was pulled open and a figure crawled in.

Janus hissed defensively, surprising himself and the figure with the previously unowned instinct. The figure at the window paused as it stood upright, and Janus forced his mouth shut with a sharp click of teeth.

A cold dread seeped over him. He knew them.

“Remus?” his voice came out in a hoarse rasp. “What – what are you doing he– wait, this is a second story room, how’d you even get up here?”

“Oh, I climbed,” Janus’s boyfriend said, casual as ever, even as his face was uncharacteristically serious as he looked Janus up and down.

Janus’s tired mind spun as fast as it could, trying to come up with an excuse for his appearance, some lie that Remus would believe. In the few months they’d been dating, he’d almost never lied to Remus, and certainly never about something this big, so surely that would make it easier, right? Maybe he could brush it off as an eczema flare-up? Janus was pretty sure that those didn’t look like flaky yellow-green scales, but maybe Remus wouldn’t know that. Right. Just – just act normal, don’t even bring it up.

“What time is it?”

“Almost eleven.”

“Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“Heard you were sick so I ditched. Figured it was TB or something cool like that.” Remus held up a plastic bag that Janus hadn’t noticed. “I brought sorbet.”

Oh, that was really nice. Fucking infuriating in his current situation, but nice. Janus laid back down, adrenaline already wearing off and leaving him more drained than before. “Thanks Rem, but I don’t think I can hang out right now, I’m really tired.”

Remus nodded and put the bag down. “That’s cool. You can tell me why you’re a snake then.”

Janus blinked at him, trying to look confused. “What? I’m not a snake.”

“You’ve got scales.”

Janus huffed in what he thought was a decent sound of offense. “Really? I’ve told you that I have eczema, Remus, it’s just flaring up really badly right now.”

“Jay, your eyeball is peeling off.”

Oh, already? Nice. Well, no, not nice, not right now – “I wear contacts.”

“In bed when you’re sick?”

“…I forgot to take them off last night?”

“Janus.”

Janus squeezed his eyes shut. It was not easier to lie to Remus, especially when his boyfriend wasn’t acting nearly as unhinged and untouchable as usual, when he said Janus’s actual name with a tone of hurt lacing through it. “What,” he managed to grit out. “What do you want me to say?”

“Hey, Jay –” Janus’s eyes flew open when Remus’s voice came from somewhere much closer, and he saw his boyfriend crouching in front of him on the bed. He looked worried, which wasn’t normal, Remus shouldn’t look like that – “I’m not mad Jay-Jay, I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Janus stared at him blankly. “Remus, I’m a fucking monster.”

“Bitch you ain’t special,” Remus said immediately. “There’s a lot of fuckers out there who ain’t human, who gives a shit if you’re one of them?”

…What?

“I’m assuming, at least.” Remus ran a hand through his hair. “Like, I still don’t know why you’re a snake. ’Cause you didn’t tell me. Which I will obviously forgive, because I am awesome and cool like that, but I would still really like to know.”

Janus coughed a laugh. “You’re taking this weirdly well.” Not that – if he’d expected anything at all – he would have expected Remus would run screaming for the hills, but he certainly wouldn’t have expected him to just calmly go along with it.

“Yep, sure am.” Remus didn’t elaborate. “So what’s up?”

“…I don’t know,” Janus admitted. “This just – happened. A year ago, I was itching and hurting and then I just…peeled off half my fucking skin and this shit was under it.” He rolled onto his back to look at the ceiling. “And it sheds, every few months, and every time it does there’s a few more scales on the edges than before.” He hadn’t noticed that til two sheds ago, and he hadn’t told his parents yet. He didn’t know how. He didn’t want to think about why that was happening, or what it meant.

Remus hummed. “Welp, sounds like either you’ve got some kinda Shadow Over Insmouth shit going on with some kind of snakey ancestor, or you were just fucking cursed.”

Janus blinked, and turned his head back to Remus. “How would you know that?”

“I’m a were-fish.”

Janus rolled his eyes. “No, really.”

Remus snickered. “Fine, fine – the technical term is merfolk.”

“Remus.”

“Well, the real term is actually –”

And then Remus made a noise that Janus didn’t think a human would be able to hear in its entirety, much less make with their mouth.

“But humans can’t really pronounce that,” Remus continued cheerfully, like he hadn’t noticed Janus jerking back, staring at him with wide eyes, “so merfolk works. English translation or whatever.”

“Remus what the fuck.”

“I’d demonstrate, but you don’t have a pool in here and you look like you’re gonna pass out, so I’ll be nice enough to your carpet and not dump your sink onto it.”

“I…thank you, I think, but…seriously, what the fuck. Mermaids exist?!”

“And men, and folk, and whatever else – English is weird, isn’t it? How come it’s got so many words about gender –”

“Rem, if you’re a merperson, why the fuck are you going to high school in Florida.”

“Oh, I’m grounded!”

…Janus’s head hurt too much to deal with this shit. “…What.”

“My family lives in the gulf. They got tired of my fucking shit up on purpose so they sent me up here. There’s an exchange program.”

“What the fuck.”

“Hey, it’s chill – I like it better up here, humans have such weird shit going on all the time, it’s great.”

Janus really didn’t know if he believed Remus, but whatever noise he’d made earlier had been entirely inhuman, and Janus knew already that this sort of thing existed…and he was also entirely too tired to process it. He’d freak out later.

“Okay,” he said, leaning his head further into his pillow, closing his eyes again. “Okay. Sure. Whatever.”

He heard Remus huff out a laugh, and felt a hand brush his bangs out of his face. “So are you like, actually sick, or was that a cover story?”

“Not sick,” Janus muttered. “Just shedding.”

Remus made an interested noise. “How’s that work?”

“It doesn’t.” Remus snickered at that, which made a smile tug at the edges of Janus’s lips. “But basically I’m stuck here for the next two or three days until I can peel my fucking skin off.”

“Sounds fun!” Only Remus could say that and sound genuine about it. “Want some company?”

Yes. No. Maybe. “You don’t want to be company right now,” Janus said. “I don’t want to be touched right now, or move, or have anything loud.”

“I can be quiet! I can be so quiet. I can be the quietest –”

“Remus.” And if his voice was maybe a little more fond than he entirely wanted it to be, well, he could just blame it on the fatigue. “You don’t have to stay.”

“What if I want to?” Remus laid down on the carpet in front of Janus’s bed, forcing Janus to lean over the side to see the winning smile that Remus was shooting him. “What if I want to spend time with you even if we’re not doing stuff?”

…Well, the answer to that ‘what if’ was that Janus would be feeling many incredibly sappy things that even in his exhausted state he could muster enough dignity to not voice out loud. He huffed, then turned on his back again so that he could drop his unscaled hand over the side. Remus immediately went to hold it, stopping just shy of actually doing so, and looked up at Janus with a clear question in his eyes.

“Go ahead.”

Remus hummed happily as he slid his hand into Janus’s and entwined their fingers.

“I’m probably going to go to sleep now,” Janus warned. “And I won’t want to talk. And you don’t have to stay, you can leave whenever you want –”

“I know Jay-Jay,” Remus cut in, still smiling. “I’m good, I’ve got a phone, I can amuse myself fine.”

“You hate sitting still.”

“I can fidget and be quiet about it for you, Jay.” And Janus was going to say something in return, but then Remus absolutely cheated by bringing Janus’s hand up and pressing a kiss to his knuckles, which to Janus’s tired mind felt unfathomably sweet and he forgot what he was going to say. “You just sleep now.”

Janus’s next words were cut off by a yawn, and then a wince when the yawn pulled at his scales. “Okay, he relented. “Thank you,” he said, quieter.

Remus heard him anyway, and pressed another kiss to the back of his hand. “Always.”

#dukeceitweek2022 #dukeciet #janus sanders #ts janus #remus sanders #ts remus #urban fantasy #established relationship #sickfic #kinda #tw skin peeling #which does not actually occur in the text but is talked about a lot #not as happy with how this one came out but eh #i rewrote it like four times with three different plots so this is probably the best its gonna get

23 notes · View notes