Catra Applesauce Meowmeow (![]() ![]() @ 2021-02-24 11:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | pll: caleb rivers, spop: catra |
Who: Caleb and Catra
What: Getting their Chaos Brands
When: Recently
Where: Their apartment
Warning/Rating: Low/none
Status: Complete
Caleb was getting used to having Catra around. The curtain had worked and she had a bed of her own now. It was close quarters but he was used to living in small spaces. Not a huge deal for him. Plus it was kind of nice to have someone to talk to at the end of the day.
“What do you feel like for dinner tonight?” Caleb asked looking through his sparse cupboards. “I can offer a choice of ramen or.. ramen.”
Catra was enjoying staying in Caleb’s apartment, too. They could chat, sometimes, but the best part was that Caleb left her alone when she wanted to be left alone. She thought she would go absolutely insane if she had to live with a roommate that was constantly in her business. She’d had a best friend once, a roommate that she’d spent every minute with, and look how that had turned out. No thank you.
“Hm, tough choice,” Catra said, her voice all the more sarcastic due to the complete lack of sarcasm in her tone. Honestly, she didn’t mind ramen so much. It was hot, it was tasty, and it was dirt cheap. “I think I’ll have to go with ramen. Got any of the chicken or the shrimp flavours?” she asked.
“You’re in luck,” Caleb said. “I have chicken.” He was going to have to go grocery shopping again soon. Hopefully it wouldn’t be as embarrassing as it had been the last time. Even if it had worked out thanks to the woman behind him in line. He hated that he had to have someone else pay for any of his items.
Caleb got a bowl adding water into it. Just as he put it in the microwave he had burning sensation in his arm, causing him to jump back from the microwave. 422SwSlDaR1105! appeared on his arm and then some of the letters and numbers faded away and he was left with just the 422. “What the fuck?”
Catra looked toward Caleb, eyebrows furrowed, though she didn’t move from where she was seated. “You alright?” she asked him, frowning. “Burn yourself or something?”
Burn himself on what, she couldn’t entirely be sure, seeing how he hadn’t even turned on the microwave yet. She couldn’t think of what else it could have been though.
The fact that there was nothing on for him to actually burn himself didn’t even cross Caleb’s mind. Or he would have made a remark about how there wasn’t anything for him to burn himself on. But he was too focused on what the hell had just appeared on his arm.
“Uh…” Caleb said walking over to her. “This look like a burn to you?” he asked holding out his arm where the 422 was visible just past his wrist going towards the middle of his arm.
Catra squinted at it, frowned, then shrugged. “A super weird burn, maybe. When did you get a tattoo?” He must have bumped it against something at some point. Catra didn’t have any tattoos herself - Shannon would not have taken a tattoo well, and it wasn’t like she had money for them now - but she knew that they were supposed to be kind of sore for the next couple of days.
“Just now apparently,” Caleb said, frowning. If he hadn’t seen it show up and more than half of it disappear he wasn’t sure he would believe it himself. What the hell did the numbers even mean? “It just… showed up.”
Catra frowned at the tattoo, then stared into Caleb’s eyes, eyes narrowing. His pupils looked normal, but… “You’re not on drugs, are you?”
“Uh no.” Drugs wasn’t Caleb’s thing. Drinking? Sure. But he had no interest in drugs. Though if he hadn’t seen it for himself, or if Catra was the one saying the shit he was saying, he probably would have thought the same thing.
“Because ‘mysteriously appearing tattoos’ sounds like drugs,” Catra said, peering at his eyes one more time before deciding that he must be telling the truth - about the drugs, at least. She peered at the mark on his wrist, frowning a little. It didn’t look fresh, whatever it was. “What does that mean, anyway? 422?”
“Fuck if I know,” Caleb replied, frowning. He didn’t want to have these random ass numbers on him. And what the hell happened to the other letters and numbers? “It’s not like I had any choice in the matter.” Not that Catra believed him… which he couldn’t really blame her.
Catra frowned. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, it was just… well, it was kind of unbelievable. Of course, it didn’t make much more sense for Caleb to have gotten a tattoo of random numbers and then just forget all about it until he knocked into something. Not unless he was doing drugs, and Catra trusted him enough to believe him when he said he wasn’t using.
She opened her mouth to say something, but what came out instead was a surprised squeak. If the pain hadn’t engulfed nearly her entire back, she would have sworn that she had just been bitten by something. Or maybe someone had scrapped off a layer of skin, or whatever.
She clamped her mouth and eyes shut, hoping to block out the pain.
Caleb could tell she wasn’t fully believing him. He was about to insist again but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Besides, before he could she had made an odd, pained, noise. And then her eyes were shut a little too tightly. Like she was trying to fight something off.
“Catra?” Caleb asked, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Catra snapped, her voice tight with pain. The pain started to subside, and once she trusted herself enough to move, she got up and stalked toward the bathroom. She didn’t bother to close the door when she went in, turning her back toward the mirror and lifting the back of her shirt.
At first, she didn’t see anything unusual. Nothing that could have caused that pain. But a second glance showed the red outline of a triangle over her spine, just a little above her lower back.
She stared at it, dumbstruck.
It clearly wasn’t nothing. Especially if she was randomly snapping at him like that. Normally he would give her privacy in the bathroom, even if the door was open. But his eyes followed her this time, watching as she looked at her back in the mirror.
He took a few steps closer to the bathroom, getting a closer look at her back himself. “Has that always been there?” he asked, brow furrowed. He wouldn’t know considering he didn’t see Catra with her shirt lifted that high often, or well ever. In fact if it hadn’t been for what just happened to his wrist he would just think she’d had that tattoo for awhile.
“Of course it hasn’t always been there,” Catra snapped, pulling down her shirt, though she didn’t move her hands after, hugging her stomach, her shoulders slumped. She didn’t know what was going on, but between this new tattoo and the feelings she had developed for Yang, it was all getting to be too much.
“Sorry?” Caleb offered, brow still furrowed. He knew her anger wasn’t at him. More at whatever the hell was happening to the both of them. He stepped back, figuring what she needed was space, well as much space as he could give her in the tiny apartment.
Catra frowned, looking once more at the mirror, though she couldn’t see the strange marking through her shirt anyway, and then she stalked past Caleb and threw herself onto her bed. She wanted to blame this on Adora. If Adora had never left her, she wouldn’t have gone throwing herself at the next cute blonde she’d seen, and somehow, if Adora had never left, she and Caleb wouldn’t have gotten these weird tattoos.
“This is so weird,” she complained after a moment to gather herself again. “Why us? Do you think everyone’s getting these things?”
Caleb went back to getting their dinner ready, letting Catra have a moment or whatever, letting the water heat up in the microwave when he heard Catra speak again. He turned to look at her, frown on his face. “I don’t know,” he said in reference to her first question. He had no fucking clue why them. “I do think I saw other people posting about random tattoos though.”
“On that social media website?” Catra asked, frowning. She rolled over onto her stomach, resting on her elbows to watch Caleb work. She hadn’t really checked it since she’d made an idiot of herself, mooning over Yang like she had. “I guess I should check it a little more often.”
“Yeah,” he said as the microwave beeped. Caleb didn’t really do much on it. He had yet to post and had only made a few comments. But he still liked to keep tabs. He grabbed one of the bowls and walked it over to Catra. “There is definitely some weird shit going on.”
Catra sat up, sitting cross-legged on her mattress, and took the bowl from him. “Well, whatever it is, I don’t like it,” Catra said. There was something going on, some feeling that Catra couldn’t place, that made her hair stand on end. It was disconcerting, to say the least.
“Me either,” Caleb agreed, grabbing his own bowl. He remained at the counter as he dug in. “But at least we aren’t alone.” As fucked up as it was he couldn’t help but feel a little comforted by the fact that Catra was going through the same thing.