It comes open smoothly, like the hinge is well-oiled.
"Ah--"
It's a good thing Jamil acts so fast, because it means Kalim doesn't have time to worry too much about what's going to happen. It does mean it comes as a surprise, though, and he can't help letting out a little gasp of alarm.
"It doesn't hurt," he says, sounding a little shocked. It feels like it should hurt. The sensation is bizarre. He holds still, like Jamil asked him to, but it's an effort.
Thankfully, now that the hinge is fully open Jamil can lower Kalim's head back onto his lap. Some of the material spills out onto the towel as he does, which he is not going to look at or acknowledge for the time being. He realizes belatedly that he really should have brought gloves, but if he doesn't get this over with now he'll lose his nerve entirely.
"Stay still," he reminds Kalim again, and then with one last, shaky inhale that he holds--because he isn't sure he won't puke otherwise--he reaches the brush into the cavity of Kalim's head and sets to work sweeping it all into the towel in his lap.
He doesn't look directly at the mess, so he can pretend he's cleaning up something else instead. A horrible dust bunny, maybe. It's just like that time he found a dead rat at the bottom of a vase in one of the lesser-maintained treasury rooms. Cleaning that up was horrible but he got through it. It's fine. He's cleaning something else. He just needs to keep working until it's done.
Occasionally, despite his best efforts, his hand will brush against some of the debris and he has to stop to swallow a gag and take a moment to recollect himself before he continues. But otherwise, he maintains stony silence as he works.
He stays still. It's really really hard, not to fidget or shift to try to see what's happening, but he has plenty of practice holding still while Jamil does some thing or another, behind him or in front of him or wherever. The thing is. though, that none of that has ever felt this utterly alien.
He can feel the brush inside his head. He can feel the surface it's touching, and the sensation is utterly nonsensical – this faint, dulled scraping feeling at a spot that shouldn't be capable of feeling anything at all, because in the ordinary course of things if anything was touching this part of his head it would be so over that there'd be no point in pain.
He's trying really, really, really hard not to think about what this means for his brain. Conversations from his childhood leak out of his mental vault, ones people had around his recovery bed about the potential after-effects of certain poisons, about concussions incurred during particularly clumsy kidnap attempts. This has to be way worse than any of that, right, if what he's pretty sure must have happened to his head is actually what's happened. But he feels normal, mentally. He doesn't feel like he's just...lost half his brain. He doesn't feel like half his brain is being swept out of his head.
He lets himself fidget just his hands, clasped together over his stomach. That should be okay. He curls and uncurls his toes in his sandals. He's pretty sure he can still move everything alright. But...
"Jamil," he says, apparently out of nowhere, partway through this revolting task. "Can you – quiz me on something? Like, school stuff. Math or history or anything."
Jamil manages to lose himself in the soothingly familiar motions of sweeping as long as he avoids thinking about what he's actually cleaning. Kalim being quiet actually helped contribute to the illusion, but his question breaks it, brings Jamil back to the here and now and he stops short in surprise. Part of him is angry that Kalim broke his reverie and made all this real again, but snapping at him for it would hardly be productive. It's not like Kalim did it on purpose; he has every right to be anxious, considering the circumstances. Even Jamil can admit that much.
"What purpose would that serve when you'd get the questions wrong regardless?" he says, not quite managing to hit his typical smug note. "How about... naming all your siblings. That'll keep you occupied, you always forget one."
(He doesn't, actually, but it's easy to convince him that he did.)
He really would have preferred to try to remember history facts; if it turns out he really can't the names of any of his siblings, that'll be so much scarier than if he just can't remember things from Professor Trein's class. He doesn't even want to acknowledge that possibility out loud, though, so he sighs, closes his eyes and starts listing off brothers and sisters.
"Nesrine, Tariq, Ridwan, Fozia, Muna..." He starts out listing them in age order, counting on his fingers as he goes, but somewhere around sibling twelve he hesitates over that. "Ah, wait, is Idris older than Husam or the other way round...?"
In his defense some of these kids' birthdays are, like, days apart.
The chatter serves the same purpose that the silence did, and Jamil is able to return to work with Kalim sufficiently distracted. Now it's like any other time Jamil has redressed Kalim's injuries while he's babbled on, and while the comparison isn't exactly comforting, it's at least still familiar. Having to talk gives him something else to focus on, too.
"Idris is older than Husam but Halima is older than Isam," Jamil reminds Kalim, turning his hairbrush into the intricate corners of the filigree. He's almost done. It's--whatever substance the inside of Kalim's head is made from seems clean, as far as he cares to look at it. As his task list progresses toward disposal, some of the nausea fights to come back.
"Right! Right." Kalim smiles up at him as best as this slightly awkward angle allows, and also as best as his current body horror head nightmare allows. He's smiled more convincing smiles, is what I'm saying – although the gratitude and fondness are one hundred percent genuine. "Thanks, Jamil."
He obviously doesn't just mean for remembering his ten-year-old siblings' birthdays.
Jamil pauses, meeting Kalim's gaze--as if he needs the complication of feeling some kind of way about Kalim's overbearing gratitude right now--and nods wordlessly in acknowledgment. He feels like opening his mouth at the moment might be a dangerous idea.
The gruesome exercise is more or less done, or it's as done as Jamil is willing to make it right now. He gathers the towel in his lap around the desiccated scraps of Kalim's brain matter, making sure not to let anything spill, and silently stands up with the bundle of it in his arms, leaving Kalim lying on his back on the bed. Then he turns and walks to the adjoining bathroom.
Jamil puts the towel and its cargo into the bin near the sink. He'll burn it later, when he has the wherewithal, but right now there are more pressing matters. Next, mechanically, he kneels in front of the toilet, makes sure his hair is safely tucked behind his shoulders, and then vomits neatly into the bowl.
Kalim lies there where Jamil left him, staring at the ceiling. The idea of moving his head feels a bit daunting, unsurprisingly, so he figures getting up can wait -- but even Jamil can't throw up so discreetly that no one hears it.
"Jamil?" He sits up quickly, only to be left reeling and dizzy from the off-balance feeling of his half-empty head and the bizarre and unfamiliar sensation of the lid swinging on its hinge. He sits there for a moment, blinking hard, before he manages to collect himself enough to follow up. "Jamil, are you okay--?"
Jamil hasn't exactly been eating great since they were brought to Patho-Gen, which at least means there isn't much to heave back up; it isn't long before he's just left panting against the toilet, waiting for his equilibrium to return. He groans when he hears Kalim try to get to his feet. The last thing he needs right now is for Kalim to fall over and injure himself.
"Stay there," Jamil wheezes. This was always the worst part of Kalim's recovery period, he refuses to just stay in bed like the doctors want. "'M fine. Almost done."
He doesn't actually insist, though. His head feels so wrong. It still doesn't hurt, but he doesn't trust himself to keep his balance standing up. He does as he's told and shuffles back on the bed to sit with his back against the wall.
"Are you sure you're okay?" he mumbles, even though he knows the answer is no and he knows Jamil isn't going to say so.
Jamil doesn't even respond. Instead he keeps going about procedure: he gets unsteadily to his feet, wipes his mouth, flushes the toilet, and washes his hands, all while avoiding looking at the bin next to the sink. Then he reemerges into the room where he left Kalim, pale and shaky but overall at working capacity. There really isn't that much reason for Kalim to worry; it's not like this is the first time Jamil has thrown up on the job.
He picks up Kalim's headscarf from where he'd set it aside and sits back in place on the bed next to Kalim. Now to make him look decent. "Turn your back to me."
Jamil pauses before responding, making sure that he winds the fabric around Kalim's head just right. It makes him feel better to see the lid covered up. It's easier to pretend things are normal.
He considers lying to save Kalim's feelings, but there's really no point; he'll find out eventually.
"You have an opening back here now," he says tightly. "Like a lid, that opens at that hinge I told you about." Is that enough? Should he say something else? What would make it better??? "It's gold and has quite detailed filigree work. It's rather pretty, actually."
That's mostly not really a surprise, but he doesn't know how to feel about that last part. He's definitely glad if it looks nice -- he was determinedly not trying to imagine what it might look like, but imagine if it had been really horrible and gory -- but isn't it also kind of weird, for it to look nice when it's a literal hole in his head?
He hesitates. "Could you... take a picture? So I can see it?"
Jamil sighs. "Kalim, I just finished putting this on."
It's not a real protest, though, because Jamil would probably want to see it too if it were him. He's already fishing the Syntrofos from his pocket with one hand while he unwinds the mostly-done turban with the other.
Cater would criticize his framing, probably, but it gets the job done. Jamil keeps Kalim in place as he hands him the phone from behind, so that Kalim doesn't unbalance and pitch over from trying to turn and look. Hopefully he'll adjust soon but, well, Jamil has been load-bearing while Kalim recovers plenty of times before.
Without really thinking about it, Kalim leans into his support a little as he takes the phone to look.
"Oh... wow," he murmurs, blinking at the photo. He swallows. "That's..." That's really the back of his head? There's so much nothing behind the filigreed lid. It is kind of reassuring to see that his head is still...head-shaped, that at least it isn't cut off flat or concave even though the mass that the rounded shape should contain is now gone. But it's creepy to look at.
He doesn't say any of that. He doesn't want to dwell on it the way he'd have to if they talked about it like that, and he doesn't want to make Jamil any more worried than he has already.
"...You're right," he says. "It really is kind of pretty, huh?"
It is creepy to look at. Jamil hates it, actually, and he starts re-draping Kalim's turban as soon as Kalim is satisfied. It's much easier for him to pretend there isn't now a hole in Kalim's head that way.
"Look on the bright side," he says drily. "You could be getting scales."
Kalim laughs, tilting his head back to look at Jamil. Might as well get used to the way moving his head around feels now. "The scales aren't that bad! I think they're kind of pretty too."
The flaking skin thing is NOT pretty. But the shiny, fresh scales underneath... an argument could be made!
Jamil scratches at his cheek self-consciously, the first time he's let himself do so all night. He isn't vain the way Vil Schoenheit is, but it's still disquieting to see on your own face in the mirror every day. And...
"It's not just that, actually." Jamil elects to demonstrate rather than explain: he opens his mouth and pulls back his cheek, revealing the tip of a snake-like fang beginning to emerge from his gums near his canine. His tongue also is beginning to elongate and fork, the tip falling just past the edge of his teeth, but it's obvious there's a long way to go before the transformation is complete.
"Huh?" Kalim shuffles round to face Jamil instead of looking at him upside down. His eyes widen immediately and he leans forward to get a better look – way too close, but what else is new. With his good hand, he grasps Jamil's jaw, thumb on his lower lip. "Whoah – your tongue??"
Jamil realizes a split-second too late what he's brought on himself and only manages an inarticulate "whugh" of protest before Kalim's hand is on his mouth and his instincts prevent him from doing anything to harm Kalim by accident. Typically, he proceeds to go bright red and jerks his head back, putting a healthy distance between their faces again.
"Kalim!" Jamil claps a hand over his mouth, looking scandalized.
Kalim blinks. He of course didn't think about what he was doing -- Jamil touches his face all the time -- but this is hardly the first time something it's fine for Jamil to do to him has turned out not to be okay for him to do to Jamil.
Jamil usually doesn't react this strongly, though.
"Ah, my bad," Kalim says after a moment, sitting back slightly.
Usually Jamil isn't so self-conscious of Kalim's proximity to his face. Unfortunately he has Feelings now and such are the consequences.
He's a little thrown by how readily Kalim backs off, though. Right, of course--Kalim respects his boundaries now. Just in time for Jamil to maybe kind of sort of not want him to.
"Don't just grab at my face like that," he mutters, slowly bringing his hand down from his mouth. He's still blushing, but at least his nerves are settling. "But yes, my whole mouth seems to be changing shape."
Is that why Jamil reacted like that? Because of the changes? It must have been, right? Come to think of it, though... hasn't he kind of been acting like this a lot lately? Pretty much since they got here, actually... Jamil has been getting way more flustered way more easily.
A terrible thought strikes Kalim. What if he suspects something? What if he's noticed? When they had to put their foreheads together for the imprinting thing, what if he figured it out then? Or -- worse, what if it was before then? Kalim abruptly remembers that in the dream world Idia had told them they could use his app to watch each other's dreams. He doesn't remember Jamil looking at his, but -- well, he could have! Kalim knows he isn't very observant! What if something in his dream tipped Jamil off, and now when Kalim holds his hand or grabs his arm or touches his clothes or gets really close to him or any of the other things he does all the time without thinking about it because that's just what he's always done, Jamil thinks he's -- trying to hit on him or something?
He'd... say something, right? He'd make fun of him. He wouldn't let Kalim save face over this. There's no way. Right?
He isn't sure. He doesn't know what Jamil would do.
Kalim abruptly elects to slam the lid shut on this horrible train of thought. There's nothing he can do about it now. He'll just, just do his best to be less touchy-feely and otherwise not worry about it. No problem.
He tunes back into the matter at hand, looking slightly haunted. He's absolutely just gone on a weird face journey over this and isn't conscious of it at all.
"Your whole mouth," he repeats, frowning. That's actually a way bigger deal than the stuff Kalim was just worrying about! Sheesh, he fees bad now. "Um, does it hurt?"
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"Ah--"
It's a good thing Jamil acts so fast, because it means Kalim doesn't have time to worry too much about what's going to happen. It does mean it comes as a surprise, though, and he can't help letting out a little gasp of alarm.
"It doesn't hurt," he says, sounding a little shocked. It feels like it should hurt. The sensation is bizarre. He holds still, like Jamil asked him to, but it's an effort.
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"Stay still," he reminds Kalim again, and then with one last, shaky inhale that he holds--because he isn't sure he won't puke otherwise--he reaches the brush into the cavity of Kalim's head and sets to work sweeping it all into the towel in his lap.
He doesn't look directly at the mess, so he can pretend he's cleaning up something else instead. A horrible dust bunny, maybe. It's just like that time he found a dead rat at the bottom of a vase in one of the lesser-maintained treasury rooms. Cleaning that up was horrible but he got through it. It's fine. He's cleaning something else. He just needs to keep working until it's done.
Occasionally, despite his best efforts, his hand will brush against some of the debris and he has to stop to swallow a gag and take a moment to recollect himself before he continues. But otherwise, he maintains stony silence as he works.
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He can feel the brush inside his head. He can feel the surface it's touching, and the sensation is utterly nonsensical – this faint, dulled scraping feeling at a spot that shouldn't be capable of feeling anything at all, because in the ordinary course of things if anything was touching this part of his head it would be so over that there'd be no point in pain.
He's trying really, really, really hard not to think about what this means for his brain. Conversations from his childhood leak out of his mental vault, ones people had around his recovery bed about the potential after-effects of certain poisons, about concussions incurred during particularly clumsy kidnap attempts. This has to be way worse than any of that, right, if what he's pretty sure must have happened to his head is actually what's happened. But he feels normal, mentally. He doesn't feel like he's just...lost half his brain. He doesn't feel like half his brain is being swept out of his head.
He lets himself fidget just his hands, clasped together over his stomach. That should be okay. He curls and uncurls his toes in his sandals. He's pretty sure he can still move everything alright. But...
"Jamil," he says, apparently out of nowhere, partway through this revolting task. "Can you – quiz me on something? Like, school stuff. Math or history or anything."
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"What purpose would that serve when you'd get the questions wrong regardless?" he says, not quite managing to hit his typical smug note. "How about... naming all your siblings. That'll keep you occupied, you always forget one."
(He doesn't, actually, but it's easy to convince him that he did.)
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He really would have preferred to try to remember history facts; if it turns out he really can't the names of any of his siblings, that'll be so much scarier than if he just can't remember things from Professor Trein's class. He doesn't even want to acknowledge that possibility out loud, though, so he sighs, closes his eyes and starts listing off brothers and sisters.
"Nesrine, Tariq, Ridwan, Fozia, Muna..." He starts out listing them in age order, counting on his fingers as he goes, but somewhere around sibling twelve he hesitates over that. "Ah, wait, is Idris older than Husam or the other way round...?"
In his defense some of these kids' birthdays are, like, days apart.
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"Idris is older than Husam but Halima is older than Isam," Jamil reminds Kalim, turning his hairbrush into the intricate corners of the filigree. He's almost done. It's--whatever substance the inside of Kalim's head is made from seems clean, as far as he cares to look at it. As his task list progresses toward disposal, some of the nausea fights to come back.
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He obviously doesn't just mean for remembering his ten-year-old siblings' birthdays.
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The gruesome exercise is more or less done, or it's as done as Jamil is willing to make it right now. He gathers the towel in his lap around the desiccated scraps of Kalim's brain matter, making sure not to let anything spill, and silently stands up with the bundle of it in his arms, leaving Kalim lying on his back on the bed. Then he turns and walks to the adjoining bathroom.
Jamil puts the towel and its cargo into the bin near the sink. He'll burn it later, when he has the wherewithal, but right now there are more pressing matters. Next, mechanically, he kneels in front of the toilet, makes sure his hair is safely tucked behind his shoulders, and then vomits neatly into the bowl.
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"Jamil?" He sits up quickly, only to be left reeling and dizzy from the off-balance feeling of his half-empty head and the bizarre and unfamiliar sensation of the lid swinging on its hinge. He sits there for a moment, blinking hard, before he manages to collect himself enough to follow up. "Jamil, are you okay--?"
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"Stay there," Jamil wheezes. This was always the worst part of Kalim's recovery period, he refuses to just stay in bed like the doctors want. "'M fine. Almost done."
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He doesn't actually insist, though. His head feels so wrong. It still doesn't hurt, but he doesn't trust himself to keep his balance standing up. He does as he's told and shuffles back on the bed to sit with his back against the wall.
"Are you sure you're okay?" he mumbles, even though he knows the answer is no and he knows Jamil isn't going to say so.
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He picks up Kalim's headscarf from where he'd set it aside and sits back in place on the bed next to Kalim. Now to make him look decent. "Turn your back to me."
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"So, um... How bad is it?" he asks with an uneasy little laugh.
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He considers lying to save Kalim's feelings, but there's really no point; he'll find out eventually.
"You have an opening back here now," he says tightly. "Like a lid, that opens at that hinge I told you about." Is that enough? Should he say something else? What would make it better??? "It's gold and has quite detailed filigree work. It's rather pretty, actually."
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That's mostly not really a surprise, but he doesn't know how to feel about that last part. He's definitely glad if it looks nice -- he was determinedly not trying to imagine what it might look like, but imagine if it had been really horrible and gory -- but isn't it also kind of weird, for it to look nice when it's a literal hole in his head?
He hesitates. "Could you... take a picture? So I can see it?"
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It's not a real protest, though, because Jamil would probably want to see it too if it were him. He's already fishing the Syntrofos from his pocket with one hand while he unwinds the mostly-done turban with the other.
Cater would criticize his framing, probably, but it gets the job done. Jamil keeps Kalim in place as he hands him the phone from behind, so that Kalim doesn't unbalance and pitch over from trying to turn and look. Hopefully he'll adjust soon but, well, Jamil has been load-bearing while Kalim recovers plenty of times before.
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"Oh... wow," he murmurs, blinking at the photo. He swallows. "That's..." That's really the back of his head? There's so much nothing behind the filigreed lid. It is kind of reassuring to see that his head is still...head-shaped, that at least it isn't cut off flat or concave even though the mass that the rounded shape should contain is now gone. But it's creepy to look at.
He doesn't say any of that. He doesn't want to dwell on it the way he'd have to if they talked about it like that, and he doesn't want to make Jamil any more worried than he has already.
"...You're right," he says. "It really is kind of pretty, huh?"
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"Look on the bright side," he says drily. "You could be getting scales."
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The flaking skin thing is NOT pretty. But the shiny, fresh scales underneath... an argument could be made!
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"It's not just that, actually." Jamil elects to demonstrate rather than explain: he opens his mouth and pulls back his cheek, revealing the tip of a snake-like fang beginning to emerge from his gums near his canine. His tongue also is beginning to elongate and fork, the tip falling just past the edge of his teeth, but it's obvious there's a long way to go before the transformation is complete.
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"Kalim!" Jamil claps a hand over his mouth, looking scandalized.
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Jamil usually doesn't react this strongly, though.
"Ah, my bad," Kalim says after a moment, sitting back slightly.
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He's a little thrown by how readily Kalim backs off, though. Right, of course--Kalim respects his boundaries now. Just in time for Jamil to maybe kind of sort of not want him to.
"Don't just grab at my face like that," he mutters, slowly bringing his hand down from his mouth. He's still blushing, but at least his nerves are settling. "But yes, my whole mouth seems to be changing shape."
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A terrible thought strikes Kalim. What if he suspects something? What if he's noticed? When they had to put their foreheads together for the imprinting thing, what if he figured it out then? Or -- worse, what if it was before then? Kalim abruptly remembers that in the dream world Idia had told them they could use his app to watch each other's dreams. He doesn't remember Jamil looking at his, but -- well, he could have! Kalim knows he isn't very observant! What if something in his dream tipped Jamil off, and now when Kalim holds his hand or grabs his arm or touches his clothes or gets really close to him or any of the other things he does all the time without thinking about it because that's just what he's always done, Jamil thinks he's -- trying to hit on him or something?
He'd... say something, right? He'd make fun of him. He wouldn't let Kalim save face over this. There's no way. Right?
He isn't sure. He doesn't know what Jamil would do.
Kalim abruptly elects to slam the lid shut on this horrible train of thought. There's nothing he can do about it now. He'll just, just do his best to be less touchy-feely and otherwise not worry about it. No problem.
He tunes back into the matter at hand, looking slightly haunted. He's absolutely just gone on a weird face journey over this and isn't conscious of it at all.
"Your whole mouth," he repeats, frowning. That's actually a way bigger deal than the stuff Kalim was just worrying about! Sheesh, he fees bad now. "Um, does it hurt?"
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