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It's got to be weird, but hopefully in a good way, to know that someone is generally going to be home when you get home, unless she's got somewhere else to be -- something to do for the Freehold or a late class -- after years and years of living alone. Ziv sold the house they'd bought with Rieko and help from the Freehold and paid back the down payment the Freehold gave them, and now all of their things are here.
Mostly, they're all still in boxes. She didn't have a _lot,_ but she'd started to build up the things that they needed to keep a Jewish home, which Aaron also has, on account of having been a rabbi and an adult Jew with a stable house for many years. Things Ziv did _not_ have. Mostly, she's still living out of those boxes yet, which is why a bunch of them are piled up around the edges of the living and dining room, and in the basement, for lack of other place to put them. She's shoved a bunch of them around today to make better paths through the little townhouse, got overheated in the attempt, and so at the present moment she's standing in the kitchen, topless and in a pair of soft sleep shorts with rainbow-colored fish swimming through clouds on them, chugging flavored water out of a water bottle with a bunch of Pride stickers on it.
Don't tell anyone, but Noodlearms may have something approaching normal human muscle tone in her upper body these days.
Aaron returns from the riot, or more to the point dealing with the effects of the riot on the people caught up in it. He's tired, but mostly he's angry. Which is a rare thing to see in an Aaron even when he has every right to be angry. What is *really* cool, though, is that he just takes a moment in the doorway to murmur a few prayers, touch the mezzuzah, and leave it all outside.
When the door shuts, the *truly* remarkable thing is that Ziv uses she/her pronouns. That's the weird part for him. Not in the context of *her* of course. In the context of him. He's a bit of an old head, and they didn't make 'em like Ziv in south Philly when he was angry and figuring his dick out. He shakes his head to clear the rose cheeks and advances with a dopey grin, tossing his book bag aside.
"Hey, Rainbowfish. Where's the shiny scale?" He bends down to begin making smoochy noises at Ziv's butt.
There's a straight shot of visibility from the kitchen to the front door, which means that for a second or three, Ziv's tiddies are visible to the street outside. Also, Ziv doesn't really care. She stops and stares, watching him collect himself, baruch his atahs, and leave all the anger on the front porch. Yeah, she'll ask him about it at some point, but not now. Not when he's giving her that dopey grin.
Ziv leans hard femme these days, but hasn't yet given up the _they_ in their she/they. Maybe they never will -- 'they' has been a good friend for a long time, and letting go would be ... weird? In any case, whether that she comes with a they or not, she sure isn't what he grew up confused about. She gets to be confusing in her own delightful new way.
She smiles back at him, blushing up to her ears, when he advances on her, screwing the water bottle's cap back on and setting it on the counter. "Right here!" she cheerfully answers, tugging down the waistband of her sleep shorts to show a perfectly unmarked portion of her buttcheek.
- Zrrrrrrbbbbbbt***. Because. He's a friggin daddbi, let's be real here. The ass zerbert was to be expected. Moreso when he bodily hoists Ziv off the floor to have an easier time of gnawing on the butt in question with his scruffy hairy manbeard.
He pauses to take an elaborate breath in, bounces Ziv about in his arms to spin them about to expose their tits and tummy and-- you guessed it --in he goes again for another loud, loud zerbert.
The neighbors have a very incorrect idea about gay sex, basically.
He ends up draping Ziv over his shoulder for now, since that's just more comfy than walking about on fin feet. Plus, you know. Carrying the joyfriend around like a spare jacket is always fun for him. What's the point in being inhumanly strong if you can't flirt about it?
"Did I miss anywhere?"
She squeals, because as much as it was expected, it still tickles. Her webbed hands flapflapflap in the air and she laughs and laughs. Ziv's laughter is really something. It's music falling all over itself, like a bunch of tiny cymbals falling down against a harp leaning against a piano. Chaos, but music, still. Ziv yelps as she's bounced around in the air and flings their arms around his head when he goes in for a very loud zerbert. Her feet -- fins -- kick in delighted unison -- if she's not paying attention or trying to locomote on land, her legs always move in unison -- and she squeals again.
Yeah, the neighbors have some very incorrect ideas about how gay sex works, that is _for sure._
She props her elbows against his back and her chin on her hands, like she's some sort of 60s starlet laying on her belly on the beach, posing for a magazine article meant to cover up the _gay rumors._ "Oh, plenty of places," Ziv teases. "But we've got plenty of time." A kiss for the top of his head, squirming themself about a bit to smooch on the top of his kippah. "Are you hungry, baby?"
"I could eat," he answers in the universal response of someone who eats a dozen little meals a day here and there. Rabbis never eat lunch. They graze. He still has to get out of his jacket and such, however. So he lifts Ziv up and just places her in the air, there, for a second.
It might take a second or two for it to really register that they're floating in the air in a manner not at all dissimilar to floating underwater. Given the givens of not surprising Lost with shocking revelations, he does let her off the hook with a wide smile and a waggle of his eyebrows.
He peels off his jacket and flings it away where the reduced gravity and increased air drag make it look like it's drifting to the seafloor. It's not *perfect*, of course. Can't be without actual water. But it's as close as he can make it with his level of talent. He kicks up and 'swims' a backstroke over to where he'd left Ziv floating.
He looks hesitant. Like maybe he's presumed too much. But he looks hopeful. "What do you think?"
"Okay! I made cheesy kugel with the last of the spinach from the CSA box earlier today, there's some in the fridge, I can heat it u... "
It takes a second. And truth be told, with anyone else, this would be terrifying, and it might really fuck up Ziv's head, but Aaron is _literally_ one of her Touchstones. When Aaron is here, she knows what is and isn't Real. So when she's hanging in the air, and she looks down and Aaron is there? And she realizes the way that the jacket is floating to the floor? Her eyes get big. Real big. Like _anime protagonist_ big. Her hands come up to her face and she gasps softly.
Once she's had her moment of shock, the mermx wiggles her way out of her shorts with an absolute _quickness_. Normally when she's getting out of her pants that fast, Aaron has a lot less clothing on, too, but she actually doesn't seem at all motivated by that (yet). Ziv just has to have their shorts off -- flung away to drift, unheeded, to the floor -- so she can have a tail. Even though he can't _see_ it, he has to know, the way that she kicks, pushing herself around him in a smooth, easy circle, her face absolutely beaming delight, that she's let her feet relax into proper fins, that she's willed her mien's tail into being.
She looks -- _relaxed._ Happy? Yes. Joyful, really -- her eyes are lit up and she's grinning madly. But as she spins back around him with the ease of someone literally _made_ for the water, and cups her hands around his scruffy face, she looks _relaxed._ "I love you."
"I know!" Aaron rewards that statement by leaning in and pressing a kiss to the drifting mermx's lips. It's sweet and easy, and asks nothing in return than the smile she's wearing. Even if she were wearing more than only the smile that would also be fine, to be clear. He's smile, respectfully.
"Lux got me thinking about some stuff. About things I was letting hold me back. And things Master Yoshi wanted me to take care of in *me* before I started-- you know. Waugh! With the cosmic power. And I have to say I respect the man's methods, because I am-- just. I am *so much healthier* than I was before." A pause, he's lost the script, clearly. Either that or he's stalling for time as he strips off the rest of his clothing. Oh. No. Yep. That's it. The naked one.
"I'm starting to grow my magic again. And part of that is trying new things with the magic I *do* have. So. Check it."
It may be true that he can't see her finned hands and tail, but with some genuine real-deal concentration, his hands begin to sprout webbing between the fingers, which themselves elongate slightly. A similar condition befalls his feet, which end up looking rather more finlike than feetlike. another set of fins sprouts from his lower back and between his shoulder blades. A side effect is, of course, gill slits. But he still has lungs. So. That'll be fine with a humidifier.
His eyes close, and when they open they have an inner lid and a vertical slit. Like he could lick it if he tried. But they'll do for underwater, too.
Not to put too fine a point on it but if Lovecraft walked in right now, he'd shit his racist pants and die. Cos that's Aaron with the Innsmouth look, there.
Slick. Shlick. That's his eyes. Not at once, but one after the other. They sort of wheel about a bit before finding her. There she is!
"Do I look different? I feel like I look different." A beat. "More than a normal amount of different for what I'm doing different."
She swirls around him again, curling up to him when he kisses her, and answering the kiss with a second, a third, a fourth. Sweetly she peppers his face with smooches, just... delighted. This is a gift, and she loves it loves it. Her webbed hands rest on his shoulders as he talks, and he can see her feet slowly flex, as if she's just... gently... holding herself in place with her gestures.
"Master Yoshi seems to have been really good for you. And I'm glad that Lux has you thinking about things! I'd like to know... like... what all of those things are, naturally." Ziv's head tips to one side, and they nod thoughtfully.
But then? He... changes. And Ziv's eyes get bigger and bigger -- were they anime-girlfriend big before? Now... who knows. Dinner plates. They're just huge. She gets pinker and pinker in the cheeks until she's the color of a sunset, her mouth opening into a perfect little O. "... you're so pretty," she breathes. Only Ziv.
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