Chapter Text
"Sollux fuckin' Captor, get your nasty fingers out of my insides right fuckin' now," you snarl, teeth bared, and he sniggers and you, fucking sniggers, and teases your internal gill filaments in response.
Your kismesis has, over the past few weeks, apparently decided to see how far he can push you when it comes to sticking things in places where things should not be stuck. This was probably prompted by your actions the first time he'd slid his claws into your gills, on accident: you had, in an embarrassing display of negligence, choked out the loudest noise you'd ever made to date and come messily all over the both of you.
Because- and this was the part that really got you, this was the terrible part- even though gills are not fucking made to have things shoved in them, it felt really, really good when he did. Shove things in them, that is.
Like now.
He's knuckle deep in your left side, lower rib-slit, carefully trimmed claws mapping out your internals, and fuck if it doesn't feel mind-numbingly good, and you hate it. You hate it because it hurts just as much as it doesn't, but you can't even tell the sensations apart anymore, everything blending together in an intoxicating, pain-pleasure cocktail that is knocking you on your fucking ass.
Sollux sniggers again as he pulls a quiet whine from you, sliding in a little deeper. Fuck, if that didn't sting. But, as he'd oh so helpfully taught you, you like pain. You like pain a lot, a lot more than you should, anyways. He'd teased you about it, until he found out that it was something that made you genuinely freaked out, then he'd tied you up and showed you how to not just like it, but enjoy it. And he'd enjoyed every last second of your bitterly gratified masochism.
And now he has more than an inch of his thin, spindly fingers shoved into your secondary respiratory system and you're shivering, breath coming in short pants, head spinning, because fuck it hurts but it hurts in a good way, a really fucking awfully good way, and he's dragging it on and on like an asshole when he should just get on with it already-
"I guess I could, if you really wanted me to," he lisps, and his stupid voice gets on your nerves so much but it also gets you going, really going, and you snarl out something incomprehensible but might have, at one point, been an order for him to not even dare.
Of course, the whole 'finding pain like, really sexy' thing has it's drawbacks, at times.
Like now, because you were an idiot and not paying attention to how far he'd actually managed to sink his fingers.
Because he's just slid his fingers deeper, even deeper, and you feel a burst of oww and something pops, and suddenly you can't breathe.
"Fuck," you gasp, reaching up, pushing at his shoulders, "Fuck, Sollux, stop, fuck it's too far get- get 'em outta me fuck-"
You choke, coughing, and he looks confused for a second, like he can't decide whether you're serious or not. You don't blame him, really- you're a bit of an asshole when it comes to teasing, yourself, but you wish he'd just listen to you for once because you really can't breathe.
You push at him again, frantically, but you're weakened by the activity and lack of air, so you hardly manage to sway him. He seems to get the hint, though, because he tugs his hand away, slowly, careful not to catch anything on the way out.
As soon as he's removed himself from your goddamn internal organs, you struggle upright, clawing at your chest. In this position, you can choke in a few strangled gasps of air, enough to keep the spots in your vision from taking over completely, but it's not enough, fuck, fuck fuck fuck.
"Eridan?"
He grips your shoulder, keeping you from falling back onto the bed, and peeks at you with his stupid anaglyph eyes from behind his equally stupid anaglyph glasses.
"What the fuck?"
You can't respond, you just slap a hand to your mouth and hack, spattering your fingers with purple fluids.
"Oh my god you're coughing up blood," he says, and he actually sounds worried now, "Fuck I actually broke you."
You manage to throw a weak elbow at his ribs, but he barely seems to feel it. Asshole. He could at least act like you'd injured him or something, could have thrown you a bone in your dying moments. You won't forget this. You are going to haunt the shit out of him.
He wraps an arm around your shoulders and holds you up, pressed against his chest, and you can feel him breathing and for a moment you are struck with jealousy because wow, breathing, such a stupidly simple thing and you can't even do it right.
You cough up more fluid, and he freaks the fuck out, muttering something about killing his kismesis and it'd almost be cute if his panicking weren't making you panic more.
"S'not blood," you gasp, and he tilts your chin up, thumbing away the streaks of purple from your mouth, "Fucker, c-calm the… fuck down 'm… gonna be fine…"
"You sure look like it," he retorts, but his breathing slows, and you focus on the push and pull of his lungs, the steady in and out, and force yourself to somewhat match the pace he sets. It's hard work, and you keep getting interrupted by nasty liquids being expelled from your injured gillslit, but after almost ten minutes you can finally pull in a breath. Then another, then another.
"I'm… fuck, I'm gonna be fine," you pant, and he just looks at you with that dumb fucking expression of his, the one that says, 'you are an idiot' more clearly than if he'd just said it out loud.
"Eridan. I stuck my fingers in your gills and you started coughing up blood. I do not think that counts as fine," he lisps, and he actually sounds kind of serious. Huh.
"Like I said, It's… It's not blood," you wheeze, and wipe some of it off your chin, "It's respiratory fluid. It flushes out the gills when they've… got shit stuck in 'em, like your fuckin' fingers, except… hah, except you popped the layer that keeps the gills closed an'… the lungs open."
"Why didn't you fucking tell me I'd stuck them in too deep?" he yelps, and zaps you a bit with his fucking psionics. This, of course, prompts you into another coughing fit, and you're just going to say farewell to this pair of pants because there's purple all over them and you don't think you're ever going to get it out.
"I didn't notice," you mumble, spitting into your hand. Eugh, gross.
"You didn't notice," he responds, and he sounds incredulous, like he can't actually believe what he's hearing, "You didn't notice that I'd stuck my hand too far into your internal organs. You didn't fucking notice that I basically gave you a pneumothorax. Fuck, Eridan what is wrong with you?"
You cringe, a bit, and he sets a hand on your back, over the knobs of your spine, and just sighs. Sighs like he can't believe how fucking dumb you are, and hell, you agree with him right now because not noticing how much he'd managed to shove up there was really, really dumb of you.
"Fucking hell."
You just nod miserably, and cough up more fluid.
"Is there anyone I can call? To come make sure you don't drown in your own disgusting excretions?" he asks awkwardly, and it's kind of hilarious because here's your kismesis, obviously worried about your continued existence and suddenly unsure of where to put his hands, and he's just so fucking awkward you can't help but choke out a messy giggle.
He punches you for that, but it's a light tap compared to your normal scuffles.
"You're my only quadrant, Sol," you finally say, after you've managed to get yourself under control, "But I'm gonna be fine. I'll just be coughin' up this shit for a day or two, then I'll be back t' normal."
To make a point, your lungs decide to make you hack another handful of shit up, and you grimace as more purple liquid drips through your fingers.
"Okay, I admit, it sucks, but fuck, I'm not gonna keel over."
Or at least you think you won't. The first, and only other time this had ever happened, you'd gotten a huge splinter of wood lodged in your left upper gillslit during a storm, and you'd been so out of it you're missing a good three weeks from your memory. All that you remember is that you were alone, then Fef was there, and then… well, not much, and the next memory you have is of being weak and tired and absolutely miserable in bed for another week after the blank spot.
Of course, you aren't going to tell Sollux that. He doesn't need to know how fucking miserable you are going to be for the next few days, if it doesn't get infected.
If it does… you're fucked, well and truly fucked.
"Like hell I'm just going to leave you here," he says, and for a moment you think you misheard. Did he really just say that? Fuck, really?
"Look, I broke you, so as your kismesis it is my duty to make sure you don't stay broken, because you're already whiny enough without serious internal trauma," he mutters, ducking his head a bit, and you think you might see the tail end of a blush on his cheeks and before you can think better of it you're cracking up again, each laugh sending unenjoyable pain throbbing through your gills and your chest.
"Oh shut the fuck up or I'm going to finish the job," he snarls, but he still pats you on the back, softly, catching you at just the right angle to help dislodge some of the crap that's making itself at home in your respiratory system.
"Either way, I'm not leaving, and you can't make me, so you'd best stop being a wimp sooner rather than later because you have a nice hive and far be it from me to not take advantage of highblood privilege," he says, and you punch him in response but he barely feels it, you can tell.
He wriggles out of bed and lifts you up with his psionics, keeping you in a vaguely upright position. The sudden movement makes you nauseous, and you are thankful as fuck that he only moves you about four steps to your ablution block before setting you down.
"What do I need to do," he says, and he's completely serious, not one ounce of sarcasm or trickery hidden in his tone, and for a moment you're taken aback.
Vriska would have never done this for you- she probably wouldn't have even stopped sinking her fingers into your gills, not until you were unconscious and thus not interesting anymore.
If you had died, she would have moved on to the next thing in line. She would have never patched you up like this, never helped you fix the damage she'd wrought.
"ED. Hey, Alternia to ED, where's your medical shit," he lisps, and you blindly point to your bathroom cabinet, fully, almost excessively stocked with medical supplies.
"I need a swab, some bandages, an' some'a the disinfectant in the red bottle, not the green or blue ones," you say, and he hurtles them at you with his psionics, barely missing your head. He has to catch them again when your attempt to grab them from the air causes you to hiss, hacking another handful of viscous liquid into the palm of your hand, and he sets them down beside you carefully after that.
The red bottle contains antiseptic that's safe to use on your delicate seadweller anatomy, and you start with that. Running the swab through the already swollen opercula along your lefthand ribs is almost as painful as the initial puncture was, but you need to clean out some of the fluid and gunk or it would solidify, and then you'd be truly fucked, because then it would get stuck, your lungs would get infected, and you'd probably die.
So you clean out your gills despite the truly heinous amount of pain you're in, biting down on your tongue to keep yourself from making any embarrassingly pathetic noises in front of your kismesis. Sollux is just watching you, face blank, eyes hidden behind his shades. You have no clue what he's thinking, but true to his word he refuses to leave.
You go through almost a quarter of the bottle and four separate swabs before you're content with the state of your internals. You're shaking hard by now, though, hands trembling so much you almost drop the roll of bandages twice before you begin attempting to wrap up your side.
The bandages spark red and blue, and they're lifted from your hands before you can fumble them again. Sollux has floated over to your side, and you resist the urge to flinch away when he places a hand on your shoulder because Vriska would have hit you. She would have shoved you down, ground you into the dirt, and left, laughing, not caring if you lived or died.
"Let me help," he says, and he plucks the cloth from the air and stars winding it around your ribs, asking you quietly if it's too tight. You shake your head, but don't dare move after that, don't even dare to breathe just in case he gets it in his head to do something painful.
You can taste blood in your mouth by the time he's done, from your bitten tongue because it hurts, it fucking hurts but you are not weak, you refuse to be seen as weak. He doesn't comment on the few sounds that make it past your teeth, or the small twitches away from his hands when he puts pressure on a particularly sore spot.
"I'm not going to do anything to you," he murmurs, tucking the loose end of the bandage back into the rest of the fabric, "I might hate you and find you annoying and really like pushing you around but you're my kismesis. I've hurt you enough already, don't you think?"
He smooths his hand down your uninjured side, checking the tightness of the bandaging.
"Vriska probably would have kicked me in the gills and left," you say, and you know it's dumb to talk about your past relationships with your current partner but you're tired and hurt and very, very sexually frustrated and confused and so done with everything, "Hell, she probably would have shoved her hands even deeper when I told her to stop, it wouldn't have been the first time she made me pass out, so…"
You jerk back, fins flared in threat display, when Sollux's horns and eyes crackle ominously with power. They only do that when he's mad, outraged, even, and while you've never been trapped in a room with him while he's been in such a state, you're sure it isn't pretty and right now you're incapable of either defending yourself or running away.
"Is that why you're always so surprised when I don't fuck you up beyond repair? Eridan, that's not kismessitude, that's abuse. You'e injured, and not in a fun way, I'm not going to beat you or anything."
His hands are soft as they touch your face, wiping away the traces of purple in the corners of your mouth before he lifts you up with his powers, walking you back to you block.
"I take it dumping you in the sopor is not a good idea when you've got holes in your internals?" he says, and you nod.
Your gillslit wouldn't be able to handle the pressure of the bands you use to keep yourself from inhaling slime. Sopor on the injury itself would burn more than you can currently tolerate, and that pan rotting shit in your lungs sounds like an even worse idea than it in your stomach, which is definitely an achievement in your opinion.
Sollux carefully dumps you on your concupiscent platform, your uninjured side hitting the nest of pillows and blankets first before the rest of your touches down.
"Do you need anything?"
You shake your head. You're tired, tired and in pain and you want him to finish what he fucking started, so you grab his wrist as he walks past and use your considerable strength to yank him down to you, slamming your lips against his in a rough kiss.
He's floating above you, knees hovering uncertainly over your platform and you just want him on top of you, in you, and you bite at his lips, lapping away the yellow that beads there. The taste of his blood is like metal and honey, addicting, and you curl your arm around his neck and pull him closer.
He wraps his hands around your hips and touches down, but when he lands he jostles your damaged side, causing you to hiss into his mouth and pull away.
"ED," he pants, and he's licking the blood away from his own lips and refuses you when you try to pull him in again, "ED I just fucked up your lungs we are not having sex."
"Fuckin' hell Sol I'll be fine," you snarl, ear fins flapping in irritation, "I'm tired and hurtin' and all I want is your goddamn bulge in my goddamn nook."
He shakes his head again and your snarl melts off into a whine, and you let your head fall back onto the pillows and bite your lip and goddammit you hate him right now.
"ED I'm not going to fuck you."
You bite him. You don't know what else to do, so you sink your teeth into his shoulder and he yelps, grabs your horns and yanks your head away and stares at you like he can't decide whether he wants to kiss you or hit you.
You wish he'd just pick already because you are sick of waiting for the day he gets bored of you.
"ED. You're going to lay down and go to sleep. I'm not going to put you through rigorous exercise after I effectively punctured your lung," he says, and you're almost put out except the stupid, ridiculous eyebrow wiggle he does when he says 'rigorous exercise' makes you punch him in the shoulder instead, laughing painfully.
Laughing prompts another coughing fit, and he rolls you onto your uninjured side and holds you there while you hack up what feels like a bucketful of disgusting respiratory fluid and foam.
"Yeah, not happening," he mutters, and when did he start floating again? He's drifting above you, suspended by red and blue, and he settles down cross legged on the platform next to you, keeping a hand on your shoulder.
"Even if I was sadistic enough to still be in the mood, that right there would have turned me the fuck off."
He hands you a towel and you shakily clean the mess off your hands and your mouth, breath bubbling in your chest uncomfortably. You are in for a miserable few days, you can tell.
So you resign yourself to being watched over by your kismesis, curl up as much as you can, and force yourself to drop off to sleep, even though you can feel the weight of his eyes on your back.