The being started dissolving right in front of Stephen's eyes. Dissolving into his skin!

Naturally, he tried to pull back, but the child still had a firm hold around him. It didn't notice what was happening until it was almost completely absorbed, only a small cry coming from it before everything was silent.

Stephen kept his eyes closed and held his breath, praying and swearing internally that nothing happened.

After standing tense for minutes, he opened his eyes and looked down. He felt…normal? He patted around his arms and chest and legs, confused. Nothing seemed to have changed. Where was the child?

And then he heard a scream. In his head. A scream that put pain right through his temple, and seemed to burn him from the inside. He held his head, trying not to let out his own shout of pain.

The plasma being was freaking out. It could hear Stephen's thoughts, which increasingly got louder the more it panicked itself. It could almost understand them in a weird way. Its own thoughts consisted of screams of terror and confusion. It tried to calm, as it could feel heat coursing through the body, and knew that it wouldn't be long before it made something around them look like the...tabowl (table), Stephen had kept yelling about when it had put some strange crater (bowl) filled with even weirder objects in front of it, and gestured to consume it. 

Everything had flown back and Stephen scrambled away in fear. But it had just become one with his vessel! And it could hear him! It could hear the panicked thoughts of the other, feel what he felt, and much more.

As Stephen tried to calm its insanity, hugging himself, and sitting down on the floor in his living room, he noticed the body was actively changing in front of his eyes. He could swear he saw his skin deepening a bit in shade, as if he’d gone to the beach for a few hours.

Seeming to still have majority motor control of the body, he moved them clumsily to the bathroom, where he finally let out his screams.

Stephen once had dirty blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin with a ghosting beard matching his mane, and was now faced with what he thought was almost a Frankenstein's monster mashup.

Gazing into the full-body mirror he’d had next to his sink, he noticed that half of his medium length blond hair had turned raven black, as well as his eye’s iris on that same side. His face was covered in spots and freckles, and he could see them reaching down past his neck and collarbone, scattered like paint on his skin. He saw them darkening, like they were settling in place on his skin. Speaking of skin, it felt rough and insanely heated, almost like leather in the sun, yet it remained slightly fair, bordering olive, as if the tones of the child had mixed with his.

After an hour of admiring and crying in the mirror, the fused body passed out from exhaustion, slumping against the wall.

Stephen's consciousness awoke next time to having no motor control, watching his hands claw at his skin and hair, as if trying to get it off, or let something out. Blood and nasty red scratches were all over his now freckled arms and legs. Or…he should say their.

‘What are you doing?! Stop, you’re hurting me! U-Us!’ He screamed internally, since the body’s mouth was already bubbling out sobs of sheer agony.

‘Wrong! Wrong!’

The body faltered its incessant clawing when Stephen faintly figured out how to get power back, but the child’s will was strong.

It screamed, making the body physically scream more, stunning Stephen in his attempts. 

Stephen resorted to retreating to his…their mind, trying to find the other.

He seemed to search aimlessly in a clutter of collective manifested thoughts, memories, and feelings, before coming across a manifestation of the child, taking the form of the body it inhabited before this. He saw it doing the same thing the body was, clawing and sobbing, and screaming in confusion and pain.

Stephen ran over to it, trying to pry its hands away from its somehow scratched up manifestation.

‘Stop! Your emotions are too powerful, you’re not just hurting yourself here!’

The child kicked and screamed, but it deterred it enough to make the body stop hurting itself. It went limp, breathing like it had just ran miles without a break.

‘Wrong! All wrong!’ It cried, though the person in front of Stephen had continued screaming his ears off, its mouth never moving to form words. He realized his hadn’t either.

‘What’s all wrong? How do we right it?’

‘Leave! Leave!’

‘You want to leave?’

‘Yes! Leave!’

‘How? How will you leave? We’re literally fused together! We share a mind and a body now, what will that do to us if you leave?’

The child barely understood. It just knew Stephen was angry, and confused, and it sent them into another wave of nauseating panic.

The back and forth of their confused and clashing consciousness had the physical body not doing so well. It screamed its vocals raw as the child’s meltdown took the body by storm, Stephen’s befuddlement and lack of answers not helping to calm them down.

Eventually, the body shut down, and the child had also screamed and cried itself into unconsciousness. Stephen, or at least his thoughts, were the only thing remaining present at the moment.

The man sighed. If this is how it would always be, they would either die from blood loss on his bathroom floor, or get themselves killed if they ever managed to get up.