update from sparkleup

writing/ata.md

@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ And then a single step *down* to the hallway which led to the bathroom.
 
 Yves knocked his toe against the step from kitchen to entryway, and the dash from there to bathroom was less graceful than the rest.
 
-AJ stood before the vanity mirror, wide-eyed. Stood, gripping the edge of the vanity, white-knuckled. Stood and stared at the steam-clouded mirror, fresh from the shower. Their skin, always a comfortable, warm olive, had been burnished into bronze by the heat of the water.
+AJ stood before the vanity mirror, wide-eyed. Stood, gripping the edge of the vanity, white-knuckled. Stood and stared at the steam-clouded mirror, fresh from the shower. Undried. Their skin, always a comfortable, warm olive, had been burnished into bronze by the heat of the water.
 
 The way in which they relinquished their grip on the edge of the vanity and turned looked tightly controlled, anxiety kept from them by sheer force of will. It set Yves own nerves on edge, and he balled his fists up.
 
@@ -91,6 +91,92 @@ They both stood still, staring into the mirror. Yves would trace the surreal lin
 
 "I don't know, love. I don't know."
 
-They turned again, movements no longer so well choreographed, and brushed their fingers over the tattoo-like marks covering his face. "It doesn't...feel. Doesn't feel like anything, I mean. I can't tell that it's there."
+They turned again, movements no longer so well choreographed, and brushed their fingers over the tattoo-like marks covering his face. Then pressed and rubbed as though to remove rubber cement. "It doesn't...feel. Doesn't feel like anything, I mean. I can't tell that it's there."
 
+Yves touched his face, touched AJ's side. Hunted for words. Words his only solace. "I don't know," he repeated. 
 
+Another moment's silence, and then: "Did it happen in the shower?"
+
+"Yeah. I was reaching to turn off the water and looked down and it started."
+
+"Started?"
+
+"Yeah, like it started there--" They pointed at a confluence of lines on the point of their pelvis. "--and then spread upward."
+
+"You could see them moving?"
+
+"Mmhm. It was quick. Took maybe a second. I tried scrubbing it but it's like it's in my skin, or is my skin. That's when I called for you."
+
+Yves nodded. "Stay here, love."
+
+He ducked out of the bathroom and walked --- more cautiously this time --- back to the living room. There on the roll-top was Isaac's fly-tying rig. The magnifying glass was integral to the set up, but the whole thing could be picked up in one go. Picked up and carried back to the bathroom.
+
+AJ laughed at the sight of it. A nervous laugh, perhaps.
+
+"Sit on the toilet."
+
+They did, and Yves sat on the edge of the tub next to them. He flexed the magnifying glass away from where it had been aimed at the vise and pointed it toward his partner's side, toward those lines. They were as dark and as surreal under magnification. No: darker, less real. The black ate light all the more hungrily under magnification, and with it stole definition and texture from the skin. But there, if Yves nudged AJ's skin until it faced up toward the ceiling light, there was the faintest hint of a hair, two, five. So it was only skin deep.
+
+Balancing the rig between knee and left hand, he flicked at the design sharply with the fingers of his right. Pinched it.
+
+"Ow."
+
+"Sorry, love."
+
+The skin reddened to either side of the mark, but within it, nothing. No change.
+
+"Do you have your insulin lancets?"
+
+Yves frowned. "Yes. Are you sure?"
+
+AJ nodded.
+
+Another trip to the living room, and he returned with a small, teal lancet. In the bathroom, Yves twisted off the cap and sat on the tub once more. "You're really sure about this?"
+
+They smiled weakly. "I can handle a pinprick, jerk."
+
+Yves snorted, nodded, pinched to either side of the line once more, using his partner's bulk to his advantage, and quickly dotted the lancet into the skin. A sharp hiss from AJ, and from his skin a droplet of blood, carmine shining bright amid the blackness of the stigmata.
+
+Before the blood dripped, he pressed the pinpoint of the lancet into the plastic of the cap and tossed it in the trash. Back into his lap the rig went, and he lined magnifying glass up with eye, blood. The contrast was sharper, thus. Blood shown brighter, nearly glowing against the eager blackness of the line.
+
+The drop started to roll downward, so he grabbed a square of toilet paper and dabbed at it, then held that up beneath the magnifying glass. "It's red."
+
+"I can see that, Yves."
+
+He lifted his eyes to shoot a wry glance above the rim of his glasses. He pressed the paper back to AJ's side. "No, I mean it's not colored any by the...the ink. The whatever. It's just red. Nothing different."
+
+They grunted and nodded. "Right, yeah. That we can see, at least."
+
+"Fair."
+
+"So what do we do?"
+
+Yves set the rig down once more and rested elbow on knee, forehead on palm. This thought was too big, too strangely shaped to fit within his head. "Wait for Isaac, I guess. Unless you want to risk a doctor."
+
+AJ's face twisted into a grimace. "No thanks."
+
+"Right, sorry."
+
+"So what do you think it is?"
+
+"I don't know, love."
+
+"You're the brains of this operation." The words were fond rather than testy.
+
+"And you're the cute, yes." Yves lifted the toilet paper and, seeing the bleeding had long since stopped, tossed that into the trash as well. "Even with your new tattoo."
+
+AJ laughed. "Really? I think I'd look better with yours. It's all flowy."
+ 
+He grunted.
+
+"This is dumb, Yves. Why are joking? What is happening?"
+
+He stopped himself before repeating his I-don't-knows. "Something weird. It's too organized to be something like an injury or whatever, or some sort of reaction."
+
+"Never heard of black being the color of a reaction, anyway."
+
+"Me either. Maybe something we can look up online?"
+
+"Yeah. Maybe Isaac's heard something, too."
+
+## Miasmata