A/N: Written for lionessvalenti for the trick or treat exchange, based on a prompt for a Jordan Parrish story that included polyamory with Chris Argent and Lydia Martin, body horror, and exploration of what he is. As always, comments, questions, concrit, and squee are all welcome.
Burning Up Inside
by LadySilver
Pain sears through Jordan's muscles, seizing them and locking him down tight. He awakens an instant before the pain starts and can only grind his teeth, his jaw frozen, as it twists tighter and tighter. His eyes are open; his heart pounds against his ribcage with panicked thumps. His muscles pull tighter and tighter, tendons ranking down until his bones have no choice but to crack. A sharp hiss escapes his lips.
Dimly, he registers the bed shifting. A light flicks on and washes out his darkness-adjusted vision.
"2:05 am," a sleep-graveled voice intones. "Day five since the new moon. Metamorphosis rate is accelerating."
A sharp retort marks the snapping of his first bone. Jordan can't yell, can't draw the breath to give voice to the excrutiation.
His mind flees.
"Are all these real?" he remembers himself asking. He was flipping through the pages of the Beastiary, each entry detailing a creature more unbelievable than the next. He pauses at the drawing of a creature with wings where its arms should be: sharp spikes of bone form a lattice from which drapes of skin hang. In place of its hands are wicked hooks. He can't imagine how, or if, this creature could fly. Or what it might use those hooks for.
"Yes," Lydia says, then purses her lips and leans over his shoulder to study the drawing more closely. "We think so, anyway. We've never met this one." She gives a shudder that Jordan mirrors because his eyes have now read the text next to the picture and he's learned that this monster is reputed to come from volcanoes. It's a creature of fire. "Good thing, since there's nothing in the text about how to kill it."
It's too much to take in: all the monsters, the casual discussions of death and killing. He's ex-military so he's been through the training on how to kill—and the therapy afterward—and he knows what it does to people. What it did to him. So many of the creatures in this book seem to revel in wanton slaughter, cannibalism, destruction. Jordan's not sure how he's supposed to accept that as part of himself. He slams the book shut and stands up. "Do you want to come over to tonight?"
Lydia tsks. "You know it's not my turn," she says. "Besides, I have plans." She smiles, head tilted and red hair spilling over her shoulder like she's inviting him to ask. He doesn't. Though they're not exclusive—and he's fine with that—it's easier when he doesn't think about where else she might be spending the night. That she knows who else he's seeing, on the other hand, only appears to amuse her.
Perhaps reading his disappointment, she sidles close and drapes her arms over his shoulders. "We still have a couple hours before anyone's due back," she offers, the smile turning sultry. Her lips glisten; her cheeks are flushed.
She's standing so close that her body heat washes over him. She's hot. Much hotter than a human should be and it makes his own skin burn. She runs her hands down his back and over the curves of his ass, and he can barely feel it.
Her eyes are glowing red.
A rushing noise fills his ears, like heavy machinery operating in the distance. He's getting hotter, and he realizes that Lydia's eyes weren't red at all; it was his eyes, glowing so brightly as to reflect from hers.
Jordan snaps back, but not all the way. In dim light of the bedside clock and the streetlights seeping through the window, he can see his body lying beneath him, rigid, face contorted. He only has a moment to wonder why he's looking down on himself before he sees the first flames licking over his bare torso like a slow wave. In seconds, the skin blackens, chars, then collapses in on the body below in a series of ever widening sink-holes. He's grateful that he's beyond the ability to feel what's happening to him. Once was enough.
He stands under the sluicing shower for a long time. He watches blankly as the cool water streams over his skin and cuts trails through the soot. Gray swirls down the drain in hypnotic eddies. He doesn't know why this is important, though he thinks that he's supposed to. It's too hard to think about anything right now, so he watches the swirls as they fade lighter and lighter. Eventually the water runs clear and his skin shines wet and pink. He remembers to turn the water off before he gets out, remembers to wrap a towel around his waist and to scrub the excess moisture from his hair.
By the time Jordan exits the bathroom, he feels like he's coming back into focus. Each passing second brings a little more of who he was and who he's supposed to be, which is why he's not surprised when he finds Chris padding around the side of the bed dressed only in loose pajama pants and a faded college t-shirt. The sheets have been stripped, wadded into a pile, and thrown into the doorway. New sheets are spread across the bare mattress.
The acrid smell of ash and burned flesh hangs in the room.
Chris looks up from tucking the new sheet into the corner. His eyes are grief-filled, as always, though the smile that tucks at his mouth hints that he's coming around to feeling a wider spectrum of emotions. That barest of smiles fades as he takes Jordan in. "Are you back?"
In response, Jordan glances down at his arms. They're still pink from the shower; a sheen of water glistens through the blond hair that lines them. It's so human, this image he's seen every day of his life, usually without paying it the least bit of attention. For a second, he gets a different image: the veneer of skin is stripped away and he can see his bones. They're thicker, a better support for the cords of muscle that give him a strength he could never hope to achieve with his mundane body. They're solid, the radius and ulna fused together to make a bone less prone to snapping. He feels something shift deep inside him and imagines that spikes are projecting from the new, sturdier supports. These spikes will support the wings that are his due.
"Jordan?" Chris snaps. The question's sharp, meant to cut through the fog that's taken over Jordan's head, like Chris knows. Like they've been through this before.
Jordan rubs an arm self-consciously against the towel and blinks back into awareness of the room with its now made bed and his boyfriend staring at him with narrowed blue eyes. "It happened again?" he asks. The confirmation is all around him, but somehow it's not real until he puts it into words.
Chris nods. "You're getting further along each time before you immolate. I thought you might transform completely last night..."
Immolate. That's Lydia's word. For Chris to use it means that he and Lydia have been trading notes. He hopes that's the only thing they're trading notes on.
"...figure it out," Chris says. Crossing the room, he pulls Jordan close to him. His scruff is rough against Jordan's face. "We will figure it out: what's making you change, what you are, and why it keeps getting interrupted. We'll figure it out."
Before we lose you.
Chris doesn't have to say the words because Jordan knows that they're hanging under everything Chris has done to help him, everything Lydia has done.
Jordan nods. He wants to accept the comfort offered; he wants to.
He can't.
Because if he finally completes his transformation, he'll destroy the people he loves. He'll delight in ripping them apart and splattering the walls with their blood, because whatever he is, it's worse than any beast they've found in that book.
And if he doesn't...
Each time he immolates, it takes him longer to come back to himself. One of these days, he won't be the person that loves Lydia or Chris. Or won't be the person they love.
He lets Chris hold him in the ascending morning light. The humidity left from the shower billows around them and seeps up from Jordan's skin. He feels himself growing warmer.