Cohost writing prompt: @Making-Up-A-Villain — Villain who is filled with… you know what, never mind
Inkfathom wakes up in abject misery. The morning sunlight hurts. Their skin is too dry, their gills feel crusty, their eyes feel dry and raw, their mouth tastes vile. They are lying on a heap of uncomfortable objects, and they simultaneously would very much like to drink a gallon of water, submerge in a pool, sleep for four more hours, and very carefully not move their splitting head at all.
They make a croaky noise of existential horror, and flinch as somewhere in an adjacent room, a toilet flushes. A connecting door opens. Halting footsteps stumble across thick-pile carpet.
"Hi," Tempestua says, sounding approximately how Inkfathom feels. "You, uh. Awake?"
Inkfathom gingerly cracks their eyes open, then rolls their head enough, moaning, to bring Temp into their field of view. From this angle, they can also see some of the pile of horrible objects they're sprawled on.
It's money. They slept on a heap of bundles of cash.
They whimper a little at the haze filling their head where last night ought to be.
"We, uh, we pulled it off. Hitch-free. Entire heist," Temp says, lowering herself gingerly to the edge of mattress.
"Cool," Inkfathom croaks. "Go us."
"Then I think we drank a little much."
Inkfathom licks their lips. "I can't get drunk on ethanol," they manage.
"Yeah, no, but I remembered you saying that there are, like, organic proteins that drunk you up."
They squint. They very vaguely recall a comparative recreational substance discussion — once, years ago. "I got fucked up on mollusc venom?"
"I didn't, like, roofie you," Temp says, face crumpling defensively. "I just wanted to party when we pulled it off, and I wanted you to be able to too, and I said I had the stuff if you wanted, and you—"
"Got fucked up on mollusc venom." They flop an arm in Temp's direction. "Not blaming you, Temp, just — really fucking hungover."
Temp nods, but somehow looks even less happy. "You, uh — you remember much?"
"Nope." Inkfathom shifts, hisses, and awkwardly extracts an empty champagne bottle from under them. "Holy fuck, everything hurts."
"Yeah that's—" Temp's face is screwing up like she might cry, folding in on herself with tension. "That's — I just—" and she says something rapid and shaky and pretty much unintelligible.
Inkfathom does their best to roll over and shakily grab for her hand. "What? Slow down."
Temp heaves for breath and blurts it again; this time they manage to pick out enough words to mentally reconstruct, after a second's lag, something like splorted out a vag full of eggs.
"I'm not gonna get pregnant, am I?" Temp adds, shaking.
"Oh, honey, fuck no." Inkfathom needs to soak in a cold bath for an hour before any kind of serious conversation, but Temp is freaking out. Which, fuck, understandable. "They're all unfertilised. To, uh, babies I'd need to fuck 'em into a — one kind of partner, who'd fertilise them internally and lay 'em as a mucous skein for a second kind of partner to take up and incubate—"
"I don't have to have your squid babies?" Temp says shakily, face crumpled up and lip wobbling, which might be severally offensive phrasing if not for the fact she's clearly been terrified. (But not also instantly planning a squidbaby abortion?)
"Couldn't if you wanted," Inkfathom assures her. "Which, no offence, thank god? I've never wanted kids. I'm heptochiral, for fuck's sake."
"I don't even know what that means," Temp says in a small voice, and Inkfathom opens their mouth, closes it, opens it, closes it again.
"Well," they say eventually, "it's definitely queer, okay?" and don't add anything about this whole...deal...kinda making them a monsterfucker. Which is new.
"Okay," Temp says, squeezing their hand. "Does that mean we had gay sex and I don't need to reconsider whether I'm a lesbian? Because it, you, uh." She ducks her head, reddening. "Uh."
Inkfathom looks at her, at her wholly undeniable blush. "Yeah?"
Temp widens her eyes a little and nods.
"Wow. Fuck. And I don't remember a damn thing," Inkfathom says.
Temp says something small and garbled and embarrassed containing the words some other time if you wanna and gets real interested in looking at the other side of the room.
Inkfathom squeezes her hand. It's probably a line of thought best investigated by less-hungover-Inkfathom, but they need to say something. Temp is, at the very least, a friendly hookup now. "We should probably get checked out," they say. "Just because I don't think there's, you know, much...recorded medical data. For this situation. Don't wanna mess up your, uh, bacteria? But so long as nothing goes awry..."