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Liamh laughed, a bit unsteadily. He'd been hoping for more of a reassuring chuckle than an unhinged giggle, but beggers couldn't choose, now could they? "Yeah... must be the humidity..." he took the pills from the other man's hand and tossed them to the back of his throat and swallowed. He coughed hard, swallowed again and coughed some more. Wiping his mouth, he started to make some witty remark... and then doubled over against the chair as a convulsion wracked him. His stomach was pirouetting like a giddy ballerina, and his veins - his VEINS - were throbbing. Pulsing.

Growing.

Unnoticed, they worked their way toward the surface, his muscles shrugging more and more free of their host skin with every twitch.

Liamh grasped his head, throwing one arm over the chair to keep from toppling out of it. He hadn't felt this bad since the food poisoning at the carnival rides when he was 14...

The twitching subsided long enough for Liamh to be jerked to his senses by Gaius' shrill, horrified scream. There was something almost... inhuman in it. His eyes rotated in what felt like slow motion toward the skinless patch on his arm.

The slow, sick surging of horror washed over him. He could see the flesh - the raw muscle - beneath the skin. It was green, ropy and green where there should have been red muscle striations. "Nnngh... nnnnnaa... AAAAHH!" He leaned forward and grabbed his head as the pulsing turned to writhing in his scalp and here and there, small tendrils worked their way through the pores of the dry, papery splitting surface. A chunk of his cheek came off in his hand where he gripped it roughly; skin that had been rejected from a body that no longer required it.

Tendrils burst through his flesh as the masses twisted and bunched beneath it; patches of skin shredded off as coils of the corded veins worked outward along his joints, in patches on his legs...

The strangest thing, thought a tiny fleck of Liamh's rational mind, was the lack of pain in the disconnected flesh. Of course, it didn't much matter to the rest of him as the bulging, throbbing veins pulsed with fire down his left arm. Obviously, SOME nerves were still alive and well. The veins swelled, building pressure against the too-tight restrictions of the frail skin.

He curled up and shook, tumbling out of the chair and onto the floor. A split formed at his elbow, cracking through across his bicep as the... vines... burst through. Long thin tendrils broke through his fingertips, peeling back the skin as they grew. Everything dead came off in chunks and patches - here and there a subborn part still clung, its few remaining nerves left crying out and suddenly silenced as they gave up the ghost.

His entire left arm worked itself free of it's dead sheath as he clutched it to himself. The areas of flesh not yet dead enough to come loose from the muscles beneath burned and raged in protest, the pulsing veins within them bulging further but not enough. From the exposed patches, tendrils poured out, lengthening and spiraling on themselves.

For a moment, he lay there on his side as the shaking and spasming slowed to a jerky sort of respite, and he breathed raggedly.

Oh God.

He could feel... everything. Without the thickness of numb skin between it and sensation, the smooth, slick - not quite wet - surface of the cords of green flesh prickled at every touch. He got his arm - his still somewhat human arm - beneath him, and pushed himself up on it, clutching the green-tendriled arm to his chest.

Liamh gave another shudder, this time less from the convulsions and more from distress. He sat there for a minute, feeling weak from the shock and exertion, his muscles still twitching faintly here and there, aftershocks of the devastation. Then, collecting his wits, he grabbed the edge of the chair to try to pull himself up.

His one 'good' arm was proving less than sufficient in his state, but he gritted his teeth and pushed harder, trying to balance his twisted body. The fingerlike terminations of his left arm squirmed weirdly, still unable to process the instructions his brain was giving. Boneless, they coiled in all directions, tangling with each other and straightening again as they grasped uselessly at the air.

As he struggled, the most peculiar sensation crossed the bare areas of green flesh. More than just the tingle of being exposed to the air for the first time. More than just the spasms subsiding. Slowly, but visibly... small green shoots unfurled from the tendrils and masses of vine-muscles, spreading out gently into full bright-green leaves like sails before the wind.

And then, they breathed. And just for a moment, he thought he felt something, the strange undercurrent he'd felt only dully before - while lounging in the tropic sunshine - as the papery, translucent panels turned to face the light. He couldn't have put his finger on it, but logically he could guess. Photosynthesis. But then, logic was far from his mind right now.

"Oh... hogawd..!" he choked on his own voice, the sick terror rushing back to him.

Liamh barely registered the touch - the skin had little feeling left, but enough to tell him it wasn't completely dead. At the brushed leaf, he flinched slightly on reflex. That wasn't supposed to feel. That wasn't a part of him! He hunched his shoulders, trying to regain his composure for a moment. "Gaius... uhhg... I..."

He straightened slightly, using the chair as support, and turned his head just enough to look at Gaius. "Feels like I... got hit by a train.." he grunted, easing himself into the chair and hunching over again. He hesitantly lifted his left arm and stared at it. He was shaking slightly as his eyes ran over the twisted, tangled form it had become. The finger tendrils had mostly stopped twitching and writhing, and it seemed like he had a little more control of them. He dropped the arm to his side and turned his head Gaius' direction without looking him in the face. "Can... uh... do you have a blanket... you can spare?" He tried to keep the cracking out of his voice, though it was nowhere near his normal tone. "and... some water.."

He lifted his eyes to Gaius'. "...please."

"Thanks..." Liamh gratefully accepted the cup and the towel, trying to figure out how to hold both and unfold it at the same time with his disfigured hand. He managed to get the towel over his shoulders with a bit of trouble, shifting it uneasily over the bare and leafy patches. It was at the moment a very unpleasant sensation, but he stubbornly worked until he had it all the way around him, the cloth fortunately wide enough to cover his whole torso.

He juggled the cup around wrapped the loose end of the towel around his stripped and skinless arm, gritting his teeth against the jangling of his tender nerves - or whatever was serving as them. As uncomfortable as the rustling, bunched leaves and tendrils were beneath the towel, he felt a marginal sense of relief once he was wrapped up.

Call it a security blanket or whatever the hell you wanted, he just wasn't ready to have his exposed innards freewheeling through space like that.

He brought the cup up and put it to his lips. His mouth felt dry and parched from the exhaustion of fear, and the water pouring across it felt like an oasis in the desert. He coughed slightly in his overzealousness, wiping his mouth where the water trickled through the exposed areas. No way he was getting used to this...

He noticed Gaius pointedly examining the room. Liamh felt pretty terrible about having crashed at what was obviously not an opportune moment, and only to have THIS happen... he let out a deep breath and took another drink. "I'll, uh, I'll clean it up, you know." he cleared his throat and glanced across the floor. "Had to go make such a mess in here after all... pristine place like this." he attempted a bit of a wry smile but he just didn't have it in him. "If you wanted to take a walk or something, i could have it out by the time you got back."

"Heh..... well, you know me, I just love to guilt trip people.... keeps the minions under control, after all.." Liamh stared down at his one 'good' hand, flexing it experimentally. He could see the green tendons shifting and bulging where they showed through. "But I have to admit, it was a pretty good fish impression." Dropping this hand to his knee, he glanced around the demolished duplex. "I... think I can stand all right..."

He shook his head at Gaius' suggestion, the tendrils swaying back and forth and making his scalp - what he could sense of it - feel rather strange. "No... no more drugs, thanks... I think the headache's gone. Maybe I should have read that warning lable, eh?" He stared at his knee and brushed a leaf slightly, shivering. "And here I was convinced they were serving me up with lizard DNA or something... I guess there's more than one kind of green." He made a face.

With a grunt, he tucked the towel a bit more securely. "I've imposed on you enough just in the last ten minutes, you really think you want more of me falling apart in here? I'll be fine... long as I don't pass out between here and my place." He half-smiled ruefully, feeling the tug of the skin around the exposed edges of his face.

Liamh gave another grunt as he got up, his legs feeling a little weak and jellylike but steady enough to hold him with Gaius' support. "Hey, i'm not THAT much of a lightweight..." he rolled his eyes. "Well, er... maybe now that I've dropped a bit of.... er, weight." He glanced down at the shredded strips of skin lying about the floor. "But still."

He staggered slightly as he picked his way across the mess and to the door. "Aww, I bet you say that to all the skin-shedding freaks, you cad.." he quipped dryly, wincing a bit as the towel pressed down on the tender shoots. He felt so drained and exhausted, but he knew he had to make it at least that far. One step at a time.

Outside the duplex, he took a long pained look at the flight of stairs, then took a deep breath and started down them. "I'm beginning to think this whole duplex thing is overrated... couldn't they have made them side by side? No, that'd be too easy.." he groaned a bit thinking of the climb up to his own. Really wasn't fair, all that work going down just to go up again. "This is a terrible vacation. I want my money back. Not even a jacuzzi anywhere in sight." He kept up a stream of muttering under his breath, not even paying much attention to himself as he hobbled along.