Eruption

Ash stares down at the sight before him. Rory, strapped to his kitchen table at their wrists and knees, stares back at him. They're shirtless, wearing just their briefs, and although it is a bit chill in Ash's small apartment, Rory's skin remains perfectly smooth. On a repurposed end table beside them are Ash's scalpels and forceps, fresh out of their packaging, gleaming in the fluorescent light overhead.

Ash has cut people open before. Cadavers mostly, but lately they've been letting him run simple procedures on the living. He's seen this sight, more or less, countless times before. A bare body stretched before him, his implements gleaming in the light.

But this time is different. This time, he has no mission, exactly, no reason to be in and out as soon as possible. This time, his professors and peers aren't here watching. This time, it's just the two of them. Ash can't quite hide his giddiness at the thought.

He runs his bare hand up Rory's torso. Rory tenses slightly, and then tries to relax. Their skin is smooth, and just a bit damp with nervous sweat. Ash can feel their ribs, when he presses his palm against Rory's side. He can feel their pectoral muscles, the strange absence of nipples. The sharp edge of their collar bone. The fluttering of their pulse in their neck. And soon, he'll be able to see--to feel--much more than that.

He pulls back his hand and picks up a scalpel. Rory eyes him nervously, but he pays no attention. "I'm starting with a lateral incision down the ribcage," he announces to the empty room. His salt and pepper shakers, watching from the counter, don't seem interested.

When he presses the scalpel to Rory's chest, just below the collar bone, their breath catches cautiously. He presses down. He knows, by now, how much pressure he needs to apply to split the skin cleanly. He knows, by now, to expect the blood welling from the cut.

Except that Rory's blood isn't the dark red Ash is familiar with. In fact, he isn't sure this is blood at all. The liquid staining his hands is a bright golden colour, glowing faintly. It's not warm, but rather just below room temperature. Just different enough to startle him. Caught off-guard, he doesn't quite manage to resist the temptation to lick it from his fingers.

Rory, still watching him carefully, makes a small sound. Ash, with his fingers still pressed to his mouth, looks down at them. Their brows are knitted together, a small frown on their face. Ash smiles in a way that he hopes is reassuring, while the glow of Rory's blood travels down his throat. It tingles slightly and leaves him with too much energy, buzzing in his fingertips and behind his eyes. He shakes his head and tries to recenter himself, rein in his own excitement. He wipes his hand on a towel and refocuses on Rory's body.

Rory's breathing is a bit shallow now, but they don't seem to be under significant physical distress as of yet. They had promised Ash that their pain tolerance was well beyond human norms, and so far, that does seem to be the case. Ash hadn't accounted for the mental strain, but that seems like something he can deal with later.

He presses a finger against the incision. He is expecting to feel the solidity of Rory's ribcage, but again, he is surprised. Rory's chest has quite a bit of give, now. Although it had been perfectly solid mere moments ago when Ash ran his hands up their body, it now has the firmness he would expect of something inflated. He watches in fascination as he presses his palm against Rory's chest, and it simply caves in, a couple inches of their person shifting to the sides to accommodate Ash's hand.

He lifts the pressure from their body, and it returns to its original shape. Glowing gold ichor oozes from the incision on their chest. Ash slots his finger against the center of the cut, and presses until it gives him access. His finger slides between the layers of Rory's flesh, and he can hear Rory breathing harder. He can feel it too, each breath out tightening the flesh around his digit. His whole being is abuzz; a flurry of butterflies beneath his skin. He notices that his own breathing is a bit heavier now, too.

He knows he needs to calm down, but he can't seem to do it. He worms another finger into Rory's chest. Rory makes a small sound in the back of his throat, and Ash can't parse the emotions behind it through his own blood pounding in his head. He brings his other hand to Rory's chest, and slides his other index finger into them alongside the first. And then his middle finger.

And then he pulls. Golden ichor wells up like a fountain, bubbling and burbling from the now gaping wound in Rory's chest. There is an incredible amount of it. It splashes up against Ash's hands, staining them up to the wrist, golden and glowing. It runs down Rory's sides, pools on the table, starts dripping onto the floor.

He pulls farther. While his incision stopped where he had assumed the base of the ribcage was, the skin parts farther than that with even the faintest of strain. Ash stares in fascination as he is able to, with almost no effort, tear Rory in half, from collar bone to belly button, and then a bit further still. Rory says something, but Ash doesn't hear it, can't understand it. He is entirely focused on this moment, engraving into his memory the way Rory's flesh parts like wet paper, the way their glowing blood continues bubbling and flowing outwards well beyond the capacity that Ash knows one person contains.

He engraves into his mind as well, the exact moment when the bleeding slows. The sight of something white under Rory's chest--it's bone, right? It must be bone. Except that it's too soft--except that the ichor drains off of it in lines, revealing a texture that's almost like feathers.

No, exactly like feathers. Under Rory's skin, there are in fact, no organs or bones at all, but instead, a mass of feathers, which rush upwards and outwards as soon as Ash is able to register exactly what they are.

Huge white wings sprout from Rory's chest. Dozens of them, all at once. As they erupt forth, they splash their golden blood in arcs, and it hangs in the air, solidifying before Ash's eyes into complex circles. Symbols he cannot read or comprehend are etched into shining golden rings, which begin to rotate slowly around the mass of wings, and they're still coming.

Wings continue to flow out of Rory's chest, until Ash cannot see their skin any more, until he is forced to step backwards in order to continue observing the spectacle. The golden rings--halos, Ash corrects himself--glow brighter and brighter, searing themselves into Ash's vision. He refuses to look away.

And they don't look away from him, either. Eyes open, abruptly, on each and every wing. Red and gold, the eyes stare at him, unblinking and judgemental, even as the wings begin to beat against the air, lifting themselves higher.

"You're beautiful," Ash says, without thinking about it, and that breaks the spell. The eyes all close at once. The rings stop spinning and snap tight against the mass of beating wings, forcing them into stillness. As the glow fades, Ash realizes that his lightbulbs have all blown, leaving the sunlight struggling to make its way through his blinds the only light in the room.

Rory's body isn't there any more. The straps which had held them dangle loose from the legs of the table. The mass of wings falls as though it has no weight, coming to a slow and gentle rest in front of Ash. In the corner of his eye, he can still see his scalpels.

But operating on Rory in their human skin was one thing. This mass of feathers, alighted on his kitchen table so gently it seemed as though it might be blown away by the breeze, is too vulnerable, too far outside his area of expertise. He didn't even know if it had flesh in the first place.

He looks down at his hands. They're clean of whatever ichor had been coming out of Rory's body, as if it had never happened. His table, his towel, his floor, all look just as spotless as they had been before the operation began. As if nothing had happened at all.

Suddenly, Ash is overcome by a fear that the whole event would purge itself from his mind just as it had purged itself from his kitchen floor. He walks quickly into his study, and sits down to record the experience, leaving what is left of Rory alone.