Lee Shore

by JumpingJackFlash

Summary:

"I asked Egbert to ask you if you have Ampora's new contact information."
"No, man, I didn't even know the old info was old. How can you not have a contact for him? It's not like he changed his chumhandle, email, and phone number all at once."
"As a matter of fact, that is apparently exactly what he did. And deleted his Facebook and his photo blog."
"Dramariffic."

 

In the years after the game, the twelve trolls and eight humans have tried to stick together, because no one else would understand. When Eridan misses one of their yearly reunions, Dave makes an impulsive decision to go find him.

Notes:

please do read this note, folks.
this is what i call a doodlefic. it's something i do to keep the word well flowing when i can't work on anything more serious. i have no plot in mind, no outline, no real plans for where it's going. i've been posting it on my tumblr for a while now, but it's getting so huge i decided to put it here for easier reading.

i'm asking you pretty please NOT to get update-hungry on this one. i mean, i hate having my elbow jogged anyway, but with this particular fic it'd be extra bad; this fic only works as a pump-priming exercise because i have no expectations for it. i'm trusting you here, guys.

Chapter 1: Dramariffic

Equius sounds confused when he answers the phone. "Yes, hello?"

    "Hey, big guy. Got a minute?"

    "Why are you calling rather than texting, Dave? You always text."

    "I'm unpredictable. Spontaneous. Like a natural disaster."

    "And?" Equius prompts with exaggerated patience.

    "And yeah, can I get a voice sample from you? I tried pitch-shifting mine down but it picked up this weird buzz at the bottom of the range. I need your big bass boom."

    "Well... in principle I have no objection, but it's a long trip just to say a few words into a microphone. Can it wait until the reunion? Can you bring the relevant equipment?"

    You laugh. "Man, I would've texted you for that. I thought you were supposed to be a genius."

    There's a brief pause. "Oh. Over the phone?"

    "I guess now's a good time to mention I'm recording this call. Let's start with 'shut it down.'"

    "Shut it down?"

    "An imperative, not a question. And if you can manage to sound a little bit menacing that'd be great."

    Once you've finished recording the samples, Equius says, "While I have you on the line -- did Egbert talk to you about the reunion?"

    "Yeah, I'm good. I'll be there."

    "Er." Apparently that wasn't the question.

    "Next weekend, Vriska's celebrity party pad, bring a sleeping bag cuz the beds are all spoken for. I got it, I'll be there."

    "Yes." Another hesitation.

    Now you think maybe you know what this is about. You give a dry laugh that's probably a little cruel under the circumstances. "Bro will be there too. He's not the backing down type, so I guess you're just going to have to work your shit out like men. By which I mean have a big juvenile fight, end up in bed without resolving anything, then start the whole cycle over again a couple weeks later."

    Equius gives a gusty sigh. "That is... not actually the topic I wanted to discuss. But since you brought it up, I'm sorry to say that your sibling and I have mutually agreed to call things off for good."

    "Yeah, that'd be a damn shame if it wasn't bullshit."

    "What do you mean? Did he say something?"

    "I'm not your go-between, guy."

    "Goodness. I didn't mean to imply. Er. That was not an ashen solicitation. I only wondered if. No. Never mind."

    "Never-minding, aye-aye sir." Which you know isn't what Equius wants to hear, but fuck a pile of that. Your brother and Troll Bruce Banner have been doing their off-and-on thing since like five minutes after you all snapped conscious in this new-and-improved postgame world, and everyone is sick of it. People who've never even met them are sick of it. "How about you just tell me what it was you were trying to bring up, then."

    "I asked Egbert to ask you if you have Ampora's new contact information."

    "No, man, I didn't even know the old info was old. How can you not have a contact for him? It's not like he changed his chumhandle, email, and phone number all at once."

    "As a matter of fact, that is apparently exactly what he did. And deleted his Facebook and his photo blog."

    "Dramariffic."


    "It's not a proper reunion unless everyone is there."

    "I don't know what to tell you, man. I barely say two words a year to the guy. But if I hear something I'll let you know."

    "That's all I can ask, I suppose. Well then. I'll see you next Saturday."

    "Hang on a sec."

    You save the track you've been picking at during the conversation, bump the volume, set your phone to speaker, and click play. It's only a beginning, thirty seconds' worth, but you've got that first sample roughly how you want it: Shu/u/u///ut it dowwwnn stutter sloping into a precipitous pitch shift right before the bass drop. It sounds pretty damn good already.

    Picking up the phone again, you cut the music just before it would've trailed off into three and a half minutes of bare drums. "You see why I needed the deepest voice I could get."

    "I'm impressed by your technical proficiency," he says.

    From anyone else that would've been a backhand, but this is Equius. That's his best compliment. You thank him and hang up. As you're reaching for your headphones, preparatory to diving into this song in earnest, something catches your attention. Something too subtle to name, but your strife-honed senses still pick it up. "You like it so far?" you say to your closed door.

    It opens, and your brother leans against the frame, composed as if he wasn't just lurking in the hall. "Did you sample Zahhak?"

    "Yep."

    "Interesting choice."

    Once, that would've sounded like a veiled criticism to you. You would've ended up overthinking the piece, and maybe not finishing it at all. But this Dirk isn't the man who raised you, any more than you're the heroic progenitor he never met in the flesh. In this reality, you're twins. Equality took a bit of getting used to, but you managed it. The fact that you're both emotionally constipated egotists helped with that, oddly enough. Neither of you knows how to defer.

    "Only trolls get that harmonic in the baritone range," you explain. "Only big trolls."

    "By which you mean highbloods," he points out. "I assume you're aware of the connotations his voice will have to your troll listeners, the vast majority of whom will be lowbloods with unhappy memories of the Empire, and that this fits the intent of the piece. I also assume you didn't inform him of your theme, or he would never have agreed to be recorded."

    "Yeah, I have met the guy."

    "Also, you mixed the sample too far forward. It sort of ate the rest of the low midrange. It makes the drop a bit of an anticlimax."

    "Bro, when I'm done with it that bass drop is gonna be so heavy it'll warp space. As for theme, you know I don't like to get too political, because that is boring as shit. But I will say I'm sampling 'Sunslammer Down'."

    "The original or the remake?"

    "If I meant the original I would've said 'In Which A Yellowblooded Helmsman Breaks His Compliance Programming Etcetera.' The remake's got that bit where the psionic goes 'I love a good shipwreck' -- I've been wanting an excuse to use that clip since I first saw it."

    Your brother nods agreement and begins to turn away.

    "Hey," you say suddenly. "Speaking of Equius."

    He turns back, a warning written on his face. You ignore it.

    "He thinks breaking up was your idea, and he's hoping you didn't mean it."

    "It was, and I did. Is that all?"

    You sigh. That right there was as much effort as you feel like putting into this clusterfuck. "Sure. Enjoy your misery."

    "My romantic involvements or lack thereof are actually none of your business, you realize."

    "Yeah, I am pretty much aware of that. You're just a lot easier to live with during the 'on' part of your on-and-off deal. The caramel coffee fro-yo was mine, dude."

    "That was nothing to do with this. I was just hungry."

    "Uh-huh."

    "I'll replace it."

    "Uh-huh."

    He stares you down for a moment, shades versus shades, and he's the one who blinks first -- or rather, his lenses run with reflections as he turns his head slightly. "I'll go do that now."

    "Awesome." You turn back to your desk, expressing your forgiveness with a display of disinterest. "Grab some burgers on the way back?"

    "Not a problem." He shuts your door with a near-inaudible click.

    You wait until you feel the hum of the elevator against the soles of your feet before you slump back in your chair and shove both hands through your hair with a growl of frustration. He's so much like you in most ways that the differences drive you extra crazy.

    "You're a moron," you complain to thin air. "If you're not gonna be serious, don't get serious. You know these things."

    This kind of shit is why you don't date. The occasional hookup with a stranger, sometimes a just-for-kicks roll with a friend who knows the score, nobody gets hurt. But if you ever decide to make a stand, by God you are not gonna budge an inch. You're going to make that shit work. No breaking up every other month because you had a fight or quadrants are weird or you have a case of emotional tetanus. Not like every other idiot you know.

    Beating the game created a reality in which trolls who couldn't take their crapsack culture were able to emigrate to Earth, humans took the technology the trolls brought and ran with it, and all of you who played are now dirty stinking rich.

    And every single one of you is completely fucking dysfunctional.

    You're one of the saner ones. Eridan Ampora is one of the craziest; you're not surprised he did a quick fade. He'll turn up at the reunion. Even if he wasn't the attention-seekiest guy in the world, he'd have to show. You players have to stick together. Nobody else understands.

Chapter 2: Lifestyles of the Rich and Stupid

    He doesn't turn up at the reunion.

    There's no uproar about it, but the subject keeps coming up as everyone tries to figure out whether they care. It's weird to watch. Equius is the most bothered; he takes procedure a little too seriously, and the fact that one of your number is missing must strike him as the first rumbling of an avalanche. He's obviously afraid the whole group will fall apart. He wants to organize a search.

    Rose is at the opposite end of the bothered/not-bothered spectrum. She believes he's making a dramatic statement, and acknowledging it would simply feed his narcissism. She suggests that when he puts in an appearance at last, you all simply pretend he was never missing.

    As for you, you're kind of curious but not enough to have an opinion. There are plenty of other interesting things going on. For instance, the reason you've all gathered at Vriska's flashy Palm Beach mcmansion, rather than at Equius's neo-Moorish mini-palace in Sonoma as originally planned, is because Vriska is under house arrest for reckless driving and property damage. She spends the weekend walking around in her swimsuit, showing off her ankle cuff like it's a medal of valor and explaining that she's learned her lesson: in human culture you're only allowed to drive a car into your own swimming pool.

    After the win, all you humans woke as pairs of twins, placed together in your familiar homes the way you always wished they'd been. John and Jane got the modest suburban house they grew up in, unchanged in every detail, except that instead of being jammed cheek by jowl with a hundred identical houses it now sits on seven acres of woods and lawn and rose garden. Roxy and Rose got their old house too, but where once it was isolated in the forest, it's now a short walk from an ivy-infested college town with three good pubs and a huge library. Jade and Jake are neighbors instead of roommates -- Jake in a mountaintop house that apparently got destroyed when he was little, Jade in her goofy moon spire thing -- and their whole island got moved. It's part of the Hawaiian chain now, a half hour flight from Oahu by pontoon plane. Which they have two of, and somehow woke up knowing how to fly them.

    And your Houston apartment is in the same building as before, but now it's a penthouse condo, and instead of having to jimmy a rusty lock in a smelly stairway to get roof access, you can just step through a set of glass doors into your private roof garden. It's kind of less fun, in a way, but you don't get tar on your shoes when you strife now because there's cedar decking all over the place, so that's nice. Also, the elevator works, and the lobby has a concierge desk instead of an old couch stained with wino pee.

    The trolls' new situations are less of a nostalgia trip. Troll immigrants to Earth don't get to build Dr. Seuss monstrosities with randomly placed windows; they have to live in houses that meet local building codes just like everyone else. All of you players are equally rich now, so it's kind of interesting that, for instance, Karkat got a little clapboard one-bedroom thing in a working-class trollish neighborhood in Tacoma, with a postage stamp yard, a chain link fence, and a stunted cherry tree. John's theory is that Karkat always wished he could fit in and be normal, so he got the most normal troll house on Earth. Nepeta didn't even get a house; she got an Airstream trailer and a National Park Service lifetime pass. She stays with Equius when she's not out hunting or fishing or lying on a tree branch pretending to be a puma or whatever she does.

    As for Ampora, you can't actually remember where he ended up, if you ever knew. Probably someplace where wild hipsters roam free. Hollywood?

    It's not that the question is nagging at you or anything. You've got plenty to occupy your time. You hang out with John when he's not setting off illegal fireworks with Vriska and Jake or trying to get Karkat to play mini-golf. You get sloshed with Roxy, and get lectured about it by Rose. You catch up with Terezi. You avoid Dirk, who's avoiding Equius, who's annoying the crap out of Aradia, who's avoiding him, while at the same time trying to get Sollux to do something other than mack on Feferi. This is the best bunch of lunatics. You kind of wish these reunions happened every weekend instead of once a year.

    Sunday morning, the party begins to break up. Taxis come and go as people head for the airport. Rose and Roxy came by train; you and Dirk road-tripped it, so you've offered to drive them to the train station. When it's time to go, though, your brother is nowhere to be found. You search the place methodically, increasingly annoyed. What an irritating time for him to vanish.

    Finally, you conclude you're going to have to drive the Lalondes to the station and then come back for him -- and lo and behold, there's Dirk sliding out of the back of your truck, nonchalantly buttoning up his jeans. You're not at all surprised to see a tousled Equius emerge a moment later.

    Out of the corner of your mouth, you tell the girls, "Act like you don't even notice. That'll drive him crazy."

    Rose keeps a pretty good poker face. "It was good to see you again, Dirk," she says politely.

    Roxy laughs and wolf-whistles. "Have fun, boys? Jake owes me twenty bucks!"

    You and Rose sigh in unison. It would've been so funny, too.

    While Dirk and Rose exchange wordy, sarcastic goodbyes, Equius steps closer to you with the determined expression of someone who has embarrassed himself completely but knows it will get worse if he acknowledges it. "When you get home," he says, nervously picking a tangle out of his hair with his claw tips, "would you be the one to stop by Ampora's residence and make sure he's all right? Someone must, and you're the closest."

    "Why, where's he live?"

    "Gavis something... fiddlesticks, I've forgotten." He digs in his pocket for his phone to look it up.

    "Galveston," you suggest.

    "That's right."

    You shrug. It's a fifty minute trip from your place, and you like driving. "Why not. Text me the address. Did Dirk say no?"

    "Oh. Well." He gets his fingers snarled in his hair, and a fresh sweat beads his brow. "He thought he might come visit me for a few days."

    "Great. Good for you." You raise your voice and aim your chin at Dirk. "When were you going to tell me I'm driving back alone, asshole?"

    "Does it matter? You know now." His voice is infuriatingly flat, but there's a sort of soft curve hovering around the corners of his mouth that keeps you from being truly annoyed. Whatever the hell his issue with Equius was this time, he's honestly glad to have resolved it. He's your brother and you love him. If this makes him happy, well, Godspeed the both of them.

* * *


    So you drive the Lalondes to the train station, and then you drive back to Houston alone. Just you, your truck, and your road trip playlist. It's pretty restful, actually. Much as you enjoyed shooting the shit with Dirk on the way out, having some alone time is nice. You nap for a couple hours in the leaned-back passenger seat at a rest stop in Louisiana, wake up when sunrise starts cooking you through the windows, and get back on the road.

    You cross the river around lunchtime, musing on whether you want to eat out, order in, or cook something. As you approach the junction with 610, it occurs to you that you could go take care of that Galveston errand right now. On the one hand, you're pretty tired, and the truck's AC is starting to struggle. On the other hand, if you get it out of the way you won't have to deal with it later, and it'll be cooler by the ocean.

    Yeah. Sure. What the hell. You take the southbound exit.

    It's more of a drive than you expected; the place is way out on the west part of the island, a tall, stilt-legged house on a shallow bayou. As you pull into the palm-shaded driveway you catch a glimpse of a boathouse and dock out back. Nice, you guess, but it doesn't say 'prince' or 'hipster' or 'attention whore' in any way you can detect. What it says to you is 'retired dentist from Baltimore who keeps talking about marlin fishing but never actually uses his boat for anything but sunbathing'.

    And there's a for-sale sign in the yard.

    Before you reach the door, you can see through the front window that there's no furniture inside. You ring the doorbell anyway. Not that you actually think he's sold his furniture and is camping out in an upstairs bedroom with nothing but a futon and a milk crate, but you know if you don't at least make a little noise here you're going to wonder later.

    After you've been ringing the bell for a few minutes, an old lady in a hibiscus-print dress comes out of the house next door. "There's brochures in the sale sign," she shrills urgently as she hurries to the hedge, as if you're going to set the place on fire if she doesn't get to you in time.

    You give her your best old-lady-melting smile. It doesn't work as well at 21 as it did at 12, but it hasn't completely lost effectiveness. "Actually, I'm looking for the guy whose house this is. Do you know where he moved to?"

    She purses her lips suspiciously. "Are you sure you have the right house, honey? This fella was one of those fish people from outer space."

    "Zigzag horns, likes the color purple? Yeah, that's him. He kind of pulled a vanishing act and his friends are worried."

    She gives an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe he went back to outer space!"

Chapter 3: Where In The World Is Eridan Ampora?

    Two hours later, you're sitting at your computer with a pile of sandwiches and the house brochure, running every search you can think of. You already called the realtor, but they wouldn't give you any contact information for the seller. He was very clear about wanting them to handle the sale. His name turns up nothing in the month since he deleted his websites. You tried a bunch of likely misspellings, too, but no cigar.

    You pester Jane about it. She's into all that detective shit, right? But all she can think of to do is what you've already done. You consider asking Sollux to try to hack the postal service and see where Ampora's getting his mail forwarded to, but decide it's not worth possibly getting someone in trouble for.

    When Dirk finally pops up on your chumroll, you give him a summary of the situation. He doesn't have any new suggestions.

TT: To be honest, I'm surprised at how much effort you've put into this already. You don't even like him. No one does.
TT: Which is probably why he vanished. Let the poor jerk lick his emotional wounds in peace.
TG: its more interesting than video games and i cant focus on work because im sleep deprived and shit so
TG: you know
TG: typing search terms and eating sandwiches whew im such a caring guy
TT: The caringest.
TG: you know it bro
TG: anyway if you think of anything i havent tried let me know
TG: your boyfriends kind of worked about it
TG: cant take the thought of our little club losing a member
TG: even if the members a tool
TT: Nicely succinct.
TG: thanks
TT: It hasn't escaped my notice how Equius feels, but I'm with Rose on this; disappearing is the only attention-grabbing stunt he hasn't yet tried, and he'll reappear in due time.
TG: yeah and the rest of us have tried everything except actually giving the asshole what he wants
TT: Are you volunteering as a sacrifice? I suppose he's attractive enough when he's not talking.
TG: nah you know i only do casual shit id just make it worse
TG: just saying
TG: somebody couldve fucking talked to him once in a while
TT: You seem to think the trolls shunned him entirely.
TT: At last year's reunion Feferi spent nearly three hours lecturing him about his halfhearted attempt to develop a self-harming habit. Surely you haven't forgotten that.
TG: mustve happened while me and john and tavros were out digging that hole for equius
TG: what was the hole even for
TG: did you ever find out
TT: An irrigation reservoir. The pump used to keep breaking when he'd water the upper vineyard. The reservoir reduces the peak load.
TG: whatever i dont get that guys hobbies he doesnt even like wine
TT: Well, it happened, even if you missed it. She seems to make the occasional effort to act as a sort of emergency patch moirail when he does something especially stupid.
TT: Such as putting out cigarettes on his arms.
TG: thats fucked up
TG: why are we not asking ourselves if the guy offed himself thats starting to seem like a plausible explanation
TT: Because he only did it when someone was looking.
TT: And because he's asking half a million dollars for that house. That is not the asking price of a man divesting himself of his worldly possessions preparatory to eating a bullet.
TT: It's worth four hundred grand at the most.
TG: its a nice house dude
TG: bayou right out the back door
TG: built on a little rise so hurricane season isnt such a nailbiter and everything
TT: North side of the island or south?
TG: north
TG: no gulf waves
TG: houston lights on the horizon at night i bet
TG: it was twenty degrees cooler down there today too
TG: fuck now i wanna live there
TT: So buy it.
TG: shit i forgot im rich
TT: Don't buy a boat without me, though. I have very specific criteria.
TG: you got it bro guess ill call the money guy then
TG: say hi to the tick for me
TG: unless hes reading over your shoulder in which case what up big blue how ya doin
TT: He's sleeping the sleep of the thoroughly fucked.
TG: wow yeah thats my cue to go

    You call the accountant the two of you hired when you discovered how much money you had. In the handful of years since the win, he's turned that shitpile of zeroes into an even bigger shitpile of investments, but he's under instructions to keep a big chunk of it liquid in case you want to pull any crazy rich-brat stunts. So far you haven't bought anything more expensive than your truck -- a nice truck, granted, but it's not encrusted with diamonds or anything -- but the accountant doesn't bat an eye when you tell him you saw a beach house in Galveston you absolutely have to have.

    "Vacation property is a very good investment," he says smoothly. "Provided it's built to withstand the weather, of course."

    "Yeah, I was thinking more like me and Dirk wanna go fishing and Houston's a bitch in the summer, but okay, it can be an investment too."

    He gives an annoyingly avuncular chuckle. "What I mean by that is, during the season when you're not using it, it can be earning for you as a rental property."

    "Whatever. We can talk about that later. I just wanna make sure we get the house before someone else does."

    "I'm sure that won't be difficult."

    You were going to leave it at that, but it occurs to you suddenly that you don't actually have to bullshit this guy. He works for you. You can fire him. He knows this. You're so used to having to fast-talk adults that you sort of forgot that. And also that you're now legally an adult yourself. "One more thing. See, the seller is someone we know, and he kinda pulled a quick fade, and none of his friends know where he is. So if you can get current contact info or an address for where he is now, that'd be great."

    A brief pause. "Mr. Strider, if you're buying this house simply to find your friend, there are cheaper ways to do that. You could hire a detective, for instance."

    "Huh? No, man, he's not that close a friend. I swung down there to see him and that's how I found out about the house, that's all."

    "So you're quite sure you actually want --"

    "Dude, Bro's got some 'very specific criteria' about boats, I'm not sure he can hold off buying one until we have a dock to park it at, and that's bound to get inconvenient. Let's get this deal rolling."

    "Very well. I'll get right on it. I'll keep you posted on my progress."

TG: were doing this man
TT: Don't do the meme.
TT: For the love of God don't do the meme.
TG: i wasnt gonna
TT: Yes, you were.
TG: fine you caught me i cant help myself sometimes
TG: good thing ive got you around to help me control my addiction
TG: so anyway beach house
TG: do you want to get a chihuahua so we can film an alligator eating it and get youtube famous
TT: No.

* * *

    Buying a house is not a rapid process. It's not that you forget about it, but it's a backburner kind of thing. As the weeks pass, you think about it less and less. You finish the song you were working on -- it kind of balloons into an 8.7-minute epic, so you have to do a shorter remix as well -- and put it up on your Soundcloud under the name 'A Submarine Waiting To Happen'. It gets 1500 downloads in the first 24 hours; a personal record. Dirk comes home as relaxed and cheerful as he ever gets. He's full of new robot ideas, but he's got plenty of time for you by Strider standards. You strife, play stupid video games, heckle movies, and shop for boats.

    He says he wants a military-grade speedboat so he can hunt for drug runners in the Gulf, because there is nothing more exhilarating than bringing a sword to a gunfight. You suspect he misses competing with Jake. You never did find out what happened between those two, but the ripples just never quite seem to die down. You want a little cabin cruiser you can give an ironically tacky name and take your friends for rides in. You admit you're probably not really going to do a lot of fishing, but he's probably not going to really go speeding into hails of bullets either.

    You compromise on a catboat and sailing lessons. Ideal for what you'll actually be doing on the water: drifting around daydreaming.

    Nearly a month after you started the process, the accountant calls you to tell you it's all over but the paperwork. "And I got that address for you."

    "Address?"

    "The mysterious seller?"

    "Oh, yeah." You'd sort of forgotten about that. "Good job."

    "It wasn't easy, but money talks."

    Does he mean he had to bribe the realtor? You kind of wonder what the going price for a realtor's integrity is, but not enough to embarrass Money Guy by asking. "I appreciate it."

    "I'll just email you that information, shall I?"

    "Awesome. So when do we get the keys? There's a sailboat on a trailer in the parking garage and people are starting to complain."

    When you get the email, you do an actual literal headtilt. Eridan 'Prince of Hipster Douchebags' Ampora is living in Grand Marais, Minnesota under the name Lee Shore. If not for the nautical pun, you'd think they had the wrong guy. What is he, a lake troll now?

    A few minutes' research confirms that Ampora has gone completely round the bend. Grand Marais is a flyspeck town of about a thousand people up near the Canadian border, and Wikipedia's climate chart is almost all blue. The place is a fucking freezer. It's on Lake Superior, which you guess is maybe picturesque or something, but it's way too cold for swimming. Sea trolls are tropical, as far as you know. What is he even trying to pull?

    Maybe he didn't bother spending the same five minutes you just spent. That'd be like him.

    On the other hand, it's been two months since he vanished. If he wasn't expecting to freeze his ass off, he probably would've taken his house off the market and gone back to it.

TG: this makes an entire fucking truckload of no sense bro
TG: its completely weird from top to bottom
TG: im like this geologist taking sediment cores pulling up cylinder after perfect cylinder of solid weird
TG: calling my colleagues over to have a look at it what do you make of it guys were down to two point eight million years ago and still havent reached the clue strata
TG: call scientific american and tell them to hold the front page this formation is one hundred percent senseless top to bottom
TG: lets have a look under the microscope hey what do you know its made of the shells of tiny sea creatures each wearing a minuscule stripy scarf and urkel glasses
TG: and each infinitesimal crustacean face is frozen in an expression of bewilderment
TG: okay im running out of material here come on
TG: youre the mastermind you tell me what the fuck he was thinking
TG: bro
TG: bro as time passes i am only going to get more curious
TG: and wordy
TT: I was in the shower. Didn't you hear the water running?
TG: nope got my headphones on
TT: Give me a moment to read this.
TT: Huh.
TT: Apparently the town has some sort of art scene. It's wall to wall seminars and retreats all summer. That's the only thing I can think of that might attract His Pretension.
TG: what whered you find that
TT: The tourism site.
TG: oh i didnt look at that one my bad
TG: yeah maybe thats it
TG: can he actually do any art i mean does he write or what
TG: i never heard of him having any talent or skill
TG: at anything
TG: or like
TG: making any sort of effort to develop any
TT: If your door were open, and my door were open, and you were to look across the hall, you would see me shrugging the shrug of the absolutely indifferent.
TT: Tell Equius where he is and let him deal with it.
TT: Or if you're concerned for his well-being, tell Karkat. His patience for his friends' bullshit is endless, however much he complains.
TG: or i could just take a road trip
TG: wow that sounds nice actually
TG: i could go right now

    A handful of seconds after you send that, Dirk opens your door. You pull your headphones down around your neck and give him an attentive look.

    "Are you serious with this?"

    "What?" You're not sure what 'serious' would entail; it's not like you're writhing with anxiety over the 'why Lake Superior?' question or anything.

    "You're just going to pack up and bug out on zero notice."

    Oh; he means the road trip. "Why not? Not like I have a job. You wanna come?"

    "No. You're in the middle of buying a house, did you forget about that? There's going to be documents to sign and who knows what else."

    "That's probably next week. And if I'm not back in time, you can sign them for me."

    His eyebrows do the thing that tells you he's rolling his eyes. "Legally speaking, we're not actually interchangeable."

    "Wear aviators and don't gel your hair. Boom, you're me. What do they know? Bet you fifty bucks even Money Guy doesn't notice."

    "I don't want to trade IDs. If you get in an accident using my driver's license it'll raise my insurance."

    You throw your hands up in exasperation. "I'll work something out. I'll tell whoppers or throw money at it or whatever. I feel like driving north and seeing what happens. At the worst, I get out of the heat for a few days. I have a permanent odor of SPF 90 and there's heat rash all over my chest. You wanna see it? It looks like fucking smallpox."

    A smile twitches his mouth. "Fine, but if you delay my getting that boat into the water by even one day, you're going to owe me."

    "You are a fair and upright young man. And I admire you for it."

    He gives you a salute as mocking as your praise and walks away.

    Half an hour later, backpack on your shoulder and keys in hand, you poke your head into his room to let him know you're heading out. You find him sleeping in his underwear on top of the covers, a fan blowing on his feet. You snap a couple pictures -- they'll come in handy if you ever need to bribe Equius -- and leave without waking him up. It's not like you don't both have phones.

Chapter 4: Welcome To Frostbite Falls

    Google's driving instructions want you to switch highways like six times on the way, but fuck that. You know how to get to Dallas without directions, so you just pick up I-35 from there so you won't have to be messing with the map on your phone while you're driving. Added bonus: that route takes you through Kansas rather than Missouri, and the air's a lot drier on the plains. You roll your window down and bake your elbow, giving your gas mileage a break from the air conditioner, taking in the atmosphere.

    You drive through a thunderstorm at sunset on the Iowa border. You'd planned to stop for the night in Des Moines, but you're feeling charged up, exhilarated. Horny for the road like your hormones are tuned to concrete and asphalt instead of skin and sweat. You keep rolling.

    Northern Iowa at night smells alternately of pigshit and fresh-cut grass, respectively the worst and best smells in the world. Eventually your nose seems to get whiplash and give up, and what you mostly smell is truck and rain.

    An hour into Minnesota, you're seeing less farms and more woods. More and more often the moon shows you a stretch of water on one side of the road or the other. So apparently they weren't bullshitting about the lakes thing.

    Minneapolis is a cute miniature metropolis. Tall and tightly clustered, like a slice of Houston pie on a green leafy plate. In the cool before dawn, the city is sleeping. There's construction, but no traffic, and you skate through at full speed, orange no-go barrels flicking past and reflecting your engine noise like a rattlesnake warning. Suburbs slip behind you, the sun rises, the forest starts to turn from oak and maple to pine and aspen.

    There's a word for that kind of forest. You muse on it for a while. Something Russian-sounding. Taiga, that's it.

    The sun cooks the inside of your car halfheartedly, while the cool wind gives your left arm goosebumps. Next time you stop for gas, you stand at the edge of the parking lot and smell the breeze. Not a hint of farm or city, barely even a whiff of the highway that's right in front of you. This forest is huge enough to swallow it all, indifferent to your presence, kind of unnervingly so, and you're not even up among the state parks yet.

    Traffic thickens a bit, and then you come over a hill and you're looking down on Lake Superior. The water is the wrong color. There's not a hint of green in that blue. It's almost purple. It kind of freaks you out a bit that people would voluntarily live next to water that'll give you fatal hypothermia in July.

    Duluth is cranes and ore piles and vast metal ships. It brings back memories of LOHAC just a bit. Except none of it's red-hot. In fact, the breeze off the lake is kind of chilly. You pull into a scenic viewpoint just past the town to dig your extra shirt out of your backpack. Why the hell didn't you bring a jacket? What were you thinking? Oh well, short-sleeves-over-long will do for daytime. You didn't expect to be grateful for your shades up here, but the glare off the lake is blinding, and the road runs along it pretty much the whole rest of the way.

    Two Harbors. Silver Bay. Now you're passing signs for parks and wilderness areas every time you blink. Now you're up where the satellite picture looks like nothing but rumpled green velvet. Aside from the occasional dirt driveway or tiny resort, there's nothing here but trees. There aren't even banks or ditches or chain link beside the road. You could pull off onto the shoulder, step out of your vehicle, and be lost in five minutes. Well, on the left side you could. On the right side what you could do is fall off a fifty-foot cliff of red basalt into the gently sloshing fridgewater below. Awesome.

    Grand Marais is a tiny town with a tiny harbor full of tiny boats. The non-residential buildings seem to be about 90% art galleries. You decide to stop for lunch, because who knows what kind of shenanigans will ensue when you make contact with your target. There could be strife or sex pollen or nature hikes or any fucking thing. You get lunch at a pizza place that's half school cafeteria and half gingerbread Tyrollean clusterfuck. It's appallingly, enthusiastically, unashamedly, delightfully tacky, and the pizza's pretty good too.

    The air's warmer when you come out, and the two shirts thing is a bit much. You stand by the open door of your truck and strip your shirts off to change back. When a middle-aged couple slows down on the sidewalk to look you over, you wonder if you've scarred their psyches with your naked torso. Maybe they never take their shirts off up here.

    "Texas plates," the man says cheerfully. "That's a long way. You planning to do some fishing?" Wow, they really do have the 'Fargo' accent up here.

    "Might do," you say, and pull your t-shirt back on, careful not to knock your shades off.

    "Be sure and wear sunblock," the woman says. "Even if it's a little bit cloudy. The light'll bounce off the lake and fry you like an egg!"

    "Yeah." Motherly types with well-meaning advice: oh goody. But there's no need to be a dick about it. "Thanks. Actually, I'm visiting a friend. You happen to see a sea troll around, just moved in a couple months ago?"

    The man shrugs, but the woman lights up. "Oh sure, I think I know who you mean! He's about your age, and he's got --" she tugs at the hair above her forehead -- "purple up front here?"

    "That's the guy."

    "You bet, I see him in the galleries all the time. Seems kinda shy, but, you know, we're not real prejudiced around here. You go ahead and tell him he's just welcome as anything."

    This is equal parts hilarious and alarming. You need to get out of here before you crack up. "Will do, ma'am," you say solemnly, touch an imaginary hat to her, and get in your truck.

    She must not have noticed your window's open; as they turn away, she tells her companion, "Gosh, I love that Texas accent. It's sexy!"

    You make it all the way to the end of the block before you bust out laughing. You are the politest.

    Even with the address and driving instructions and satellite map, you still take a couple of wrong turns before you find Ampora's place. Rather, one actual wrong turn, and one time you become certain this dirt track you find yourself on is not actually a road, and if you keep going you'll end up driving into the lake or something, so you turn around. And then check the map again and begin to think you chickened out too soon, so you turn back. You creep in first gear through the bumper-high weeds growing between the wheel ruts, pine branches scraping the roof of the truck, and then suddenly there's a neatly graveled driveway with the numbers you're looking for painted on a post at the corner.

    The house -- cabin? -- yeah, cabin. The cabin is one of those modern-rustic chalet things, all peeled logs and glass with decking all the way around. Built on a steep slope, one story in front and two in back. Small, but nice. There's a station wagon parked in the driveway. You park it in. He's not escaping that way.

    The doorbell does nothing. Disconnected? You knock, then knock again harder. You try to peer through the door glass, but the curtain is just opaque enough to foil you. The front window's got slat blinds, so no luck there. You knock again.

    You try yelling. "C'mon, Ampora, open up! I drove here from fucking Houston, you could at least offer me a beer!" Nothing. Maybe he's on a nature hike. Yep, that totally seems the likeliest explanation.

    He's probably out back by the beach. You would be, if you lived here.

    As you make your way around the side of the cabin, you spot something funny, and then something disturbing. First you see the firewood pile and chopping stump, unevenly split wood scattered around like he was trying to figure out how to do it. Gotta do the northwoods experience right, gotta wear a checked shirt and have a wood stove, can't just plug in an electric heater like a regular person. Then you see the hatchet lying in the grass by the stump, and notice the smear of purple on its edge. You squat down to look closer, and find some purple among the wood chips, too. Not enough to be fatal or anything, but way more than a band-aid level boo-boo.

    You resolve that if you don't find him out back you're going to break in.

    Turns out that's not necessary. You find him on the lower porch in back, in the shade of the house, painting. Rather, sitting at an easel, gripping a paintbrush like it's a dagger, glaring death at you as you come around the corner.

    You give him a smirk. "Sup."

    He snarls his reply through locked sharkteeth: "You utter fuckin bastard."

    Not precisely what you were expecting. You raise your eyebrows questioningly.

    "You just had to go an fuckin ruin everythin."

    "Dude, I'm just standing here."

    "That's kinda the problem, isn't it?" he demands. "I changed my fuckin name, you asshole! Did it not occur to you at all to maybe take that as a hint I didn't want to be disturbed?" He throws his paintbrush down in disgust and climbs awkwardly to his feet, unsteady as if he's been sitting there long enough for his legs to go to sleep. "I was just gettin settled in here, an now I gotta leave! So thanks a fuckin --" He takes one step toward you and his leg crumples, pitching him forward.

    You catch him easily by the arm and put him back in his chair. While he sputters in furious incoherence, you sit on your heels and capture the weak leg. You should've noticed right away that he's wearing pyjama pants in the daytime and connected it with the bloody hatchet. Sure enough, when you tug his pants leg up, there's a purple-spotted handkerchief tied around his calf just below his knobby gray knee.

    When you start to untie it, he splays a hand on your head and shoves. You catch his wrist and dig your thumb into the tendons until his grip weakens. Then you engage him in a staring contest, which your shades win effortlessly.

    "Not your fuckin problem," he snarls, but without force. "Like some little scrape's gonna even slow me down. But whatever, gawk at it if that's what it takes to make you leave me alone."

    You get the halfassed bandage off. The cut is as long as your index finger, an inch deep into the meat at the deepest. You can tell how deep it is because it's gaping open, not even properly scabbed, though it's not bleeding so much as oozing. You guess sea trolls really do have a slower metabolism. On a human this would be sheeting blood down his leg. A human could actually bleed out from this if he didn't bandage it properly or keep it elevated.

    You retie the hankie, tugging it tight enough to get an angry hiss out of Ampora. You stand and wipe your hands on your jeans. "Grab something to read in the waiting room, we're going to the hospital."

    His lip curls. "The hell we are. This is nothin. I'm not fragile like you are, it'd be upright embarrassin to see a medic for somethin this minor."

    "Dude, you can't walk."

    "I got worse in the game."

    "We had healing items in the game." You reach for the handle of the glass door behind him. "What do you want, a book, your laptop?"

    "I'm not goin anywhere with you, Strider!"

    You take out your phone and give it a little waggle. You don't know how he thinks he can argue with you when he's already given you all the leverage you need by being sincere about wanting to be alone. "Right now, no one knows where you are but me and Dirk, and Dirk doesn't give a fuck. Keep digging in your heels and I'll call Feferi."

    You see the hope spark in his eyes, and for a split second you wonder if you read him wrong and that's actually what he wants, but then his glare darkens again. "You wouldn't fuckin dare."

    "She'll catch the next plane up here -- no, not fast enough. She'll charter a plane. Be here in like three hours. She'll resent the shit out of you for making her do it, and she'll chew your damn head off about that, and this, and this --" the cabin -- "and every other fucking thing she can think of. She'll act like it's for your own good and you should be grateful, like having an emergency patch moirail is more than you deserve." You steal Dirk's phrase, and you can tell it hit home. "Then she'll tell everyone else where you are. And for the rest of your life it'll be a funny story that gets told at reunions: That One Time Eridan Failed At Lumberjack."

    His jaw clenches and his mouth goes flat. His claws dig gouges into the arm of his wooden deck chair. Then he looks away. "There's a book on the table. 'Oil Painting For The Serious Beginner'. You could grab that."

    "No problem," you say cheerfully, dropping your phone in your front pocket and giving it a little pat.

    You fetch the book, hand it to him, then turn your back and crouch. He doesn't move. "Climb aboard." Still he doesn't move. "What, you want a princess carry?"

    He grumbles his way upright. "Just give me a arm to lean on or somethin."

    "Dude, I will knock you out and put you over my shoulder."

    He gives an exaggerated sigh. "Fine, I guess I can suffer the indignity a bein carried by you."

    Despite this nonsense, you're as gentle as you can be about piggybacking him to the truck. You're not mad or anything. Actually, his automatic balking is kind of funny. He's like a three-year-old in a bad mood. Doesn't want a cookie, doesn't want a nap, doesn't want his binky, all he wants is to throw a tantrum and hate everything. The thought makes you grin.

    You drive down to the end of the dirt part of the road before you check your phone for directions, because if you sat around in the driveway he might get a wild hair to climb out. "Oh, hey, there's a hospital like a mile from here."

    Eridan is picking at the corner of his book, scowling at his lap. "What were you gonna do if there wasn't, did you think a that?"

    "Um... go to the nearest one? Wherever that turned out to be? This is not a huge deal." Satisfied that you know the way, you put the truck in gear and gun it onto the narrow two-lane highway.

    "They won't know how to treat a troll."

    "I really doubt stitches are all that different. Seriously, man. You're hilarious with this. Were you planning to waste away, palely loitering? Pro tip: there is nothing romantic about gangrene."

    He snorts and glares out the window, and doesn't say another word until he's sitting on an exam table, trying to tell the doctor what happened without admitting he left it untreated overnight -- apparently the hatchet slipped yesterday -- out of pure stubbornness and machismo.

Chapter 5: On Earth We Say Thank You

TG: found him
TT: Would you like a medal?
TG: can i get one of those employee of the month plaques we could line the hallway with them so i can gloat on my way to the bathroom
TG: i am the most valuable player
TT: It's you.
TG: did i ever tell you i get a warm feeling of family and home whenever you indulge my memes
TT: You're being absolutely sincere right now, aren't you?
TG: oh shit hes onto me
TG: dive dive
TT: I love you too, Bro. Sentimental digression achieved. Did you just text to say you've arrived safely, or did you want something?
TG: oh yeah
TG: if you havent told anyone where ampora is yet could you not
TG: dude genuinely wants to be alone
TG: turns out its not a play for attention but rather some other kind of melodrama that involves not actually talking to anyone
TG: in fact hes pretty cheesed off at me for finding him
TG: which is bullshit because he is so crap at this backwoods life thing if i didnt show up to lend a hand hed probably have legit died
TG: but is there gratitude
TG: is there hell
TT: In short, he's as ridiculous as always but now he's under witness protection and you're his FBI contact.
TG: bingo
TT: I can keep a secret. I only told Equius 'up north somewhere' and that you were going to check it out.
TT: How long are you staying?
TG: havent decided yet but theres been no word from money guy about paperwork so im not in a hurry
TG: i guess until he gives up thinking hes gotta ditch this sweet lake cabin and vanish again just cuz i found him
TT: Yes, that is some kind of melodrama all right.
TG: yeah no shit gotta talk a little sense into the dude i dont even know what his problem is
TT: Do you care?
TG: allow me to reiterate
TG: sweet lake cabin
TG: im freeloading like a boss
TT: Have fun with that.
TG: thats the plan bro

    Eridan's kitchen is a mess. Not the kind of mess yours is -- the long-term mess of a couple of guys who eat a lot of takeout and have better things to do than scrub countertops -- but the immediate bomb-site mess that comes from someone who can barely function trying not to starve. You can spot where he had to quit in the middle of cooking something a couple times, maybe because his leg was hurting too much to stand. There's a package of macaroni on the floor, noodles scattered into the corners; probably dropped it and didn't dare bend to pick it up.

    Cleaning's not a hobby of yours, but what the hell, if you're gonna mooch the guy's coffee the least you can do is brush that macaroni onto a piece of cardboard and dump it while you're waiting for the water to boil.

    You fix him a cup too, and bring it to him where he's sulking on his pretentiously bohemian hand-woven-blanket-draped couch with his foot up on the antique steamer trunk coffee table. He takes the cup, scowls into it suspiciously, takes a tentative taste, then glares at you. "Who did you ask? You didn't tell them where I am, did you?"

    "Ask what?" You flop onto the other end of the couch with a sigh. Man, you are tired. You're not sure you can stay awake until night.

    "How I take my coffee."

    "There's a spoon in the sugar bag and the only dairy in the fridge is yogurt. I made an educated guess."

    He sips again. "Don't think you're earnin any points with this."

    "Whatever. I cleaned up your spilled shit and made you coffee. On Earth, we say thank you."

    "I didn't ask you to come here."

    "What's the worst that can happen?"

    He thumps his mug angrily on the table, sloshing coffee out, and snarls at you: "Everything I went through this past couple a months comes to nothin an I fall right back into the same sick act that made everybody hate me, that's the worst that can happen, an oh look, it's happenin already! Right this fuckin minute!"

    You raise an eyebrow. "I meant if you say thank you."

    That derails his building rant. "What?"

    "Like, what are the dire consequences of saying thanks for the coffee instead of being a dick."

    His mouth snaps shut. He looks away, but not far enough to hide a brief chin crumple. After a few awkward seconds he mutters, "Thanks for the coffee."

    "You're welcome," you say serenely. You sip yours with perfect Zen composure. Who is the master? You. You are the master. You weren't sure until just this minute, but now you know: Eridan Ampora cannot rile you. His bullshit rolls right off you, and you are untouched.

    That being the case, you figure you might as well hang around until his leg's healed up enough that he can pick up any further macaroni that might get an urge to go cliff diving.

    Naturally, he doesn't like this plan.

    "Like hell you will!" he yells. "I was bein polite by lettin you finish your coffee! You can't just fuckin invite yourself to stay over!"

    "Can; did."

    "Listen, Strider. I got violent impulses, you know that. And you gotta sleep sometime."

    "I'm a light sleeper and you're a cripple. Plus you're not really mad at me."

    "Goddamnit, wipe that smug fuckin smirk off your face! I'm tellin you to get out! This is my place!" His voice cracks. "Even if you ruined it. Even if I gotta leave it."

    "Yeah, that's another reason I'm staying. Because that's a USDA choice terrible idea and I reckon I should stick around until you're over it."

    "Stop!" he wails. "Stop doing me favors!" He gives a hard, angry sniff and shoves the back of his hand across his eyes. "I'm so fuckin sick a people who don't like me doin shit for me outta a sense a duty! Just so they won't feel like a asshole! You think I don't know it's got nothin to do with me or what I want? An if I don't like it I'm ungrateful, an if I do like it I'm clingy! I can't be around people, so will you please, please leave me the fuck alone?"

    That's an interesting spin he's putting on the situation. You wonder if that's how it really looks to him, or if the words just came out that way. Not that either possibility would change your answer, which is, "Nope."

    He gives a frustrated yell, mopping at his face with his sleeve, and tries to get up. It's a struggle, but he seems determined; when it's clear he's going to walk on that leg if you don't stop him, you grab him by the back of the collar and haul him firmly back down. He flails a wild fist at you, but of course it doesn't connect. You'd have to be a lot tireder than this for his tantrum-fu to be a hazard.

    "Quit it, you spaz," you say gently. "I don't dislike you. We're acquaintances. That's a thing people can be. You could use a hand. It's hot as fuck in Houston and I don't feel like going back until I'm done buying the beach house. Win-win. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you: I'm buying your house."

    He's gone past fury and pain now into a sort of calm bewilderment. "What?"

    "Yeah, I swung by there to check on you and saw it was for sale."

    "Why?"

    "It's a nice place. Me and Bro have been thinking of getting out of the urban heat bubble for a while now."

    "No, I... why did you check on me? Why did you come here? Why are you... how did... I don't understand."

    You shrug. "Equius asked me to check on you. It bothered him that one of us missed the reunion. I reckon it would've bugged him no matter who it was. You vanishing like that made me curious, and since I fell in love with that house and decided to buy it, I asked my money guy to see if he could get the seller's new address. Where you turned up made me even more curious, and the air conditioning was chugging nonstop just to get the apartment down to 80, Bro was taking cold showers like once an hour, it was just fucking ridiculous. So I thought to myself, you know where it would be really nice to be right now? The north shore of Lake Superior. I bet it's like, sweater weather up there." You throw back the last gulp of your coffee. "And I like driving. So here I am."

    He spreads his hands helplessly. "So this is all just... spur a the moment? You came here on a whim?"

    "Yep."

    "And you're staying on a whim?"

    "Yep."

    "You took me to the hospital on --"

    "Nah, that was more like, holy shit what the fuck is wrong with you walking around flapping open like a deli ham on display, let's get some stitches in that motherfucker stat. Seriously, man, you are so neurotic."

    He's quiet for a while. He actually seems to be thinking about it. Eventually he picks up his coffee, takes a drink, and wrinkles his nose. "It's cold."

    "Own fault. Drink it anyway."

    He drinks it anyway.

Chapter 6: Slumber Party

    Since pitching fits didn't affect you, he goes for plan B: sulk nonstop. He sulks when you use his shower. He sulks when you make him dinner. He sulks when you tape plastic wrap over his stitches so he can shower. He sulks when you fetch clean pyjamas and a sopor patch down from the loft for him, and he sulks when you make him a bed on the couch. The nicer you are to him, the more sullen he gets. By the time you unroll your sleeping bag on the floor, he's not even bothering with monosyllabic answers.

    You wonder if he thinks it's going to start bothering you if he keeps it up long enough. You guess you could tell him he's got nothing on your brother -- when Dirk sulks, he stalks around the place like a caged panther and picks the perfect moment to shoot a finely honed remark right through a chink in your emotional armor -- but why make things harder on him? Let him believe he's got you on the ropes if that's what gets him through the night.

    Speaking of night, you aren't sure at first whether he might be one of those trolls that can't adjust to a diurnal schedule. Earth's sun is no more dangerous to them than it is to you -- you personally, not humanity in general; viva sunblock. But whatever governs their circadian rhythms doesn't know about geomagnetic fields and charged particles, it just knows day equals bad. Either he doesn't have that problem, though, or he's just plain worn out, because five minutes after he slaps that sopor patch on his arm he's blowing spit bubbles.

    You take pictures. You don't have a plan for them. You just think he's funny. Then you shed your shoes and shades, burrow into your sleeping bag, and tap out.

* * *

    You wake with a hard shock, holding your breath. Keeping absolutely still. You stare at blackness while data starts to trickle into your blank, shivering mind.

    Your body reports in. Your sense of time. Your weight. Your skin. The dryness in your mouth. Your hammering heart.

    You're cold, and your shoulders ache something fierce. You're in a sleeping bag on the floor of Eridan Ampora's lakeshore cabin, it didn't occur to you to light a fire before you went to bed, and the tangled sticky mass of ugly that's weighing down your mind was just a dream.

    You take a deep breath. You wriggle around some, out of a ball and onto your back, and raise a hand to find out if you have room to sit up. When you do, the illusion of being in a cave or a grave is broken: there are stars in the sky outside the deck door, and you can sort of see where their light faintly defines the lake's horizon. The sound that your dream interpreted as Things breathing is actually calm surf on a pebble beach.

    Okay. Reality established. You're good now. You got this.

    First priority: get some goddamn heat in here. It is really, really cold. You wouldn't be surprised to find frost on the pines in the morning. What the hell kind of summer is this? You know where the wood bin and the stove are, you could do that bit by feel, but you can't remember where you saw the matches.

    You get out your phone and turn it on to get some light. Instead of the bright message screen, you get the dim reddish ember of a low battery warning. "Shit," you mutter.

    There's a rustle from the couch, and then a square of pale light blooms, bright enough to make you wince after straining by starlight. Eridan's holding a tablet, a page of text on the screen.

    "Nightmares?" he whispers. "Me too."

    You shrug. "We all get 'em." And that's all that needs to be said about that.

    With Eridan's book for a nightlight, you get the stove lit. You even remember to open the vent. You've only touched a fireplace like three times in your life, and every time, you forgot the vent until you were choking on smoke, but not this time. Go you. Maybe there's something to this northwoods retreat thing. No distractions.

    Once you've closed the slatted door, you turn to look at Eridan by the dim glow of it. He's sitting up, blanket around his shoulders. There's an empty bottle of probably-wine on the coffee table; you can't see the label, but it's that shape.

    "You've been walking on that leg," you say neutrally.

    "Sorry if that spoils your little nurse fantasy," he smirks.

    You chuckle. "If I was into that, there'd be a lot less coffee and a lot more thermometers. And latex gloves." You pantomime snapping one against your wrist, and get an actual grin out of him for a second. "I'm not getting back to sleep anytime soon. You?"

    He shakes his head. He holds up the tablet. "Sopor patches don't do a lot if you got a troubled mind. I get lots a time to study."

    You scootch down in your bag and then sit up again, so it cocoons you all the way to your shoulders. "What're you studying?"

    "Earth history an warfare. Machiavelli, just at this present moment. I'm startin to suspect he was fulla it, though."

    "Try Sun Tzu. Full of a lot less 'it'. Not that I guess any of us has much use for battlefield philosophy anymore. We did our thing."

    He wraps his arms around his knees and nods, looking down. "It's like there ain't even a point to us now. We got no fuckin purpose."

    "We just have to make our own."

    He grimaces. "How?"

    He sounds tiny and lost. He's not trying to jerk your heartstrings. It wouldn't work if he were trying. But he isn't and it does. It's a legit question you don't have a good answer to and you're starting to suspect his pretension is as much a pose as your indifference. Which is to say: not entirely, it's rooted deep in your personality and grows along all your flaws, but it camouflages the soft parts so very, very well.

    "I dunno, man," you murmur, quieter than a whisper. "Still figuring that one out myself."

    Glancing up and then down again, he scrunches his knees a little closer. "You wanna sit up here too?"

    You get up and shuffle-walk in your sleeping bag to the other end of the couch and sit mirroring him. You lean your head to the side, resting it against the couch back, and he does the same. He twitches a wry little smile, and, unguarded with tiredness, you match it. Neither of you have your glasses on, you both have bed head, and you're willing to bet neither of you has ever actually been to a slumber party, so you don't know if this is what they're like at all.

    "Why Lee Shore?" you ask eventually.

    "In a storm, you have to get farther out to sea. The same wind that blows you home, if it blows too hard it'll wreck you."

    You nod appreciation. As nautical puns go, that one is damn near poetic. "Why here?"

    "I fell in love with a painting. It reminded me of home."

    "So you decided to move here and be an artist? That's a pretty wild leap, man."

    His mouth turns down, one side pulling as if he's chewing on the inside of his mouth, and his gaze wanders across the dark room as he searches his thoughts. God, he's so expressive, no wonder he makes everyone uncomfortable. It's like he's walking around naked.

    "You know nothin good comes a me bein around the others. I got no fuckin self control.  When we were kids... I guess I probably was a pain in the ass on Trollian, but I wasn't around them all the time except for Fef, an her an me had shit to be occupyin ourselves with. Feedin her lusus an all. Now I got nothin better to do than make a nuisance a myself, or somethin. Anyway, after that fuckin appallin fiasco of a reunion last year, I knew what I had to do. I gotta learn to embrace solitude. Nobody's gonna wanna be with me if I don't wanna be with myself."

    After giving that due consideration, you nod slightly. "That's... actually pretty healthy under all the drama."

    "Fuck you, I don't need you judgin me," he says, but he's not angry.

    "I don't judge, man. Just stating my opinion. You don't agree with it, no big. The general consensus is, you disappeared to make people worry, or chase you, or, you know, make people react, and maybe I thought so too. But you're just doing your thing here, and that's cool. I can respect that."

    Now he doesn't know what to do with his face, and it's kind of goofy to watch. Kind of really cute. "I don't remember the last time someone said they had any kind a respect for me."

    "I don't think it's the kind of thing people say, mostly. I dunno if anyone ever said it to me either."

    "They say it to Kar all the time."

    You crack a tiny grin. "Yeah, well, he throws off the curve."

    "You got a point," Eridan chuckles. His eyes drift from your face again, and after a few distant minutes he says softly, "I guess this doesn't look romantic to a human. Like, it doesn't mean --" He breaks off, wincing hard. Grabs a handful of his forelock and yanks it. "Forget that. Forget I said anythin."

    "No, it's cool, finish the thought."

    He shakes his head sharply, still hanging onto his hair. "I made myself some rules for gettin along with people. Number one rule is no solicitin quadrants, nor anythin that might fuckin look like it."

    "What're the rest of them?"

    "No orderin people around, no insultin 'em for what they can't change, like their blood an whatnot, an no askin anybody to do anythin i can do myself. Or hintin at how i might like it if somebody did that for me or whatever."

    "Oh." Funny how much of his moronic behavior makes sense if you know the premises he's working from. "That's why you didn't want to go to the hospital."

    "I guess that cut must a looked mighty fuckin scary to a human." He hesitates. "It does feel better now than it would a felt if it wasn't stitched up. So. Thanks."

    "Not a problem. What you started saying, though, it didn't sound like you were hitting on me. It just sounded like a question. So ask it."

    He shifts uncomfortably.

    "Seriously. I'm an exception. You can bend your rules with me."

    "No." He looks nervous, almost panicky. "I get started bendin em, where's it gonna end?"

    "It ends with me. Because I will straight-up tell you what I think and I won't do anything I don't wanna do, no matter how you try and guilt me. So loosen up a little."

    "Argh!" He gives his hair another yank, then wraps his arms around himself. "You just sound so fuckin pale for me right now!"

    "Oh. Well, by troll standards humans are huge palesluts," you grin.

    "I don't even know how I'm supposed to feel about it, and it is confusin as fuck, and I just wish you'd quit. Except. I should wish you'd quit, but I don't, because it's. Really fuckin nice. But that's the thing I do that's creepy an everyone hates it. Thinkin things mean somethin they don't."

    "Hey. Look at me, man." You knock on his knee like it's a door, because taking hold of his shoulder or his hand right now would be way too much. The knee thing works, though. "I don't want to make shit harder for you, but I reckon the best way to handle it so that doesn't happen is, you just ask me and I answer. That only works if you believe me, though. And like, actually listen."

    He nods guiltily.

    "I'm human. I don't do quadrants. I gather what we do for our regular friends looks pretty pale to you, though."

    "From where I'm sittin, Dave, you got four moirails."

    You snicker. "You rumbled me. I'm a diamond-studded harlot."

    That gets a grudging chuckle from him. "Yeah, but you don't put out."

    "What's 'putting out' in moirail land?"

    "Well, you know, like... snugglin and pettin an stuff."

    "Oh. Yeah, no, I'm not a real touchy feely guy. I guess in terms of the psychological part of it, the thing where you reality-check each other and talk shit out, Dirk would be the closest thing. But me and him don't hug much either. We don't usually get more cuddly than like... this." You gesture to where your feet have ended up overlapping in the middle of the couch, with so many layers of blanket and sleeping bag wadded between them that you didn't notice until you looked.

    "You're not makin this a whole lot easier, Dave."

    "Dude, you're not pale for me, you're just lonely."

    He grimaces. "An that's supposed to make me feel better?"

    "I dunno. Nah. Probably not. Maybe in the long run. Who knows." You laugh at your own incoherence. "Holy shit I'm tired."

    "Me too." He shifts, starting to lift his bad leg with his hands, but it has nowhere to go. "This is really startin to kinda hurt."

    "Gimme one of your pillows." You shove it behind you and scoot down so your head's on the couch arm and your legs are sprawled off at an angle. "Okay, stretch 'em out."

    "Are you fuckin serious?"

    "I don't care if it looks pale or whatever, just don't kick me in the junk."

    He creakily unfolds his long, bony legs until his heels are resting on your hip and thigh. If you were remotely inclined to be horny, that might be a little uncomfortable, but all you want right now is to doze a bit more before the sun comes up. You fix his blanket where it slipped and uncovered his toes. You let your eyes fall closed.

    "Hm," he says after a moment, and it sounds like the prelude to some kind of complaint or objection, but he doesn't follow it up.

    You realize eventually that your hand is draped over his ankle, but decide you don't really care. It's comfy there, and you can't be bothered to learn the nuances of where friendship ends and pale begins. You've had your couch-tanglebuddies moments with John and Jade, and it ended up in shoving and smell-my-feet more often than hugs. You decided long ago not to mess with quadrants. So Eridan can roll with it, or tell you to lay off. Those are his options.

    Well, or he also has the option of developing some kind of desperate, unrequited palecrush on you and making himself miserable, and a few hours ago you would've put your money on that horse at any odds. But you're starting to think he's more self-aware than anyone gave him credit for. That must really suck -- seeing exactly what you're doing wrong, and not having the self-control to stop.

    Way worse than the other way around, where you have enough self-control to stare down a runaway train, but pretty much no clue what's going on in your own psyche. Not that you know anyone like that.

    Even through the insulation of the sleeping bag, you can feel the warmth of his legs on top of yours. It isn't much, but it's there. He's not cold-blooded after all, just chillier than you.

    The next thing you know, the sun is high enough to bake the top of your head through the windows, and you don't remember dreaming at all.

Chapter 7: Small Town Life

    His painting from yesterday got left out overnight and is covered with bugs and pine pollen, because when you got back from the hospital you didn't think to bring it in. He sets it aside and starts over. He won't accept sympathy or apologies. "It's just fuckin practice," he snaps.

    He's gone back to being surly, as if your late-night feelings jam never happened. You guess you don't blame him. It was probably the palerom equivalent of a one-night-stand and he's the last person you'd expect to handle that kind of thing well. All you can do is not mention it. You perch on the deck railing and watch him work, and you keep your damn mouth shut while you do it.

    "If you're goin to hang around," he says eventually, "make yourself useful an go get me some fuckin smokes."

    "You're kidding," you say flatly. "You actually took up smoking? You didn't just have the one pack so you could --" You pantomime stubbing a butt out on your forearm and get a death glare for it.

    "She told everyone, didn't she?" he snarls.

    "Nah, my bro overheard you. Why am I the only one who thinks that was stupendously fucked up? Like, required more action than just a good talking-to fucked up."

    "Because I was only doin it to get attention." The bitterness dripping off that is an alkaline burn hazard you're not equipped to handle safely, but leaving it alone would be worse.

    "Yeah, well, if you need attention bad enough to char the shit out of yourself to get it, I'm thinking maybe treating it like a kiddie tantrum is --" You hesitate. You'd been heading for 'not the best response' or something sarcastically mild like that, but you're not in a mood for understatement right now. "Complete bullshit, actually. I am seriously starting to get cheesed off on your behalf."

    "Well, stop," he growls. "Are you goin to the store or not?"

    "Apparently. You need groceries too. Any requests?"

    "Salmon," he says instantly. "The produce options are mainly shitty in this pixel of a hamlet, but God, the fuckin salmon. I ain't had fish that fresh since I usedta catch it myself, and the water here's a fuckin sight cleaner."

    "Than the Gulf around Galveston?"

    "Than the ocean on Alternia."

    Wow. He is really homesick. If salmon and cigarettes help, then salmon and cigarettes he shall have.

    You finally listen to your own thoughts as you're walking to your truck. You end up standing in the driveway, keys dangling, for a good ten minutes while you process the realization: you basically are pale for him.

    If that was a thing humans could be, you mean.

    You want to be better friends than this. Even though he's kind of a self-involved pain in the ass. Because so are you. Because there's a reason for him being a self-involved pain in the ass, a pile of reasons, and you sympathize. He doesn't belong here; he never belonged anywhere. He wants to be loved and doesn't know how to love anyone else, he rubs everyone the wrong way, he can't even get negative attention anymore because he just keeps repeating the same song and dance, he's basically a complete and total loser -- and all you can think is, wow, that sucks, maybe I can distract him with food.

    Hell, even 'putting out' doesn't sound bad. He's a long, jangling mess of elbows, probably not comfortable to hug at all, but folding him up and letting him curl into you would be... pretty okay.

    But.

    He'd be jealous of your friends, wouldn't he? He'd cling, he'd demand, and it would matter to you, you'd lose this detachment that lets you slip his wild swings and throw him with the momentum like a master of emotional judo. You'd end up taking those punches right on the chin, and you've got a hell of a glass jaw.

    Nope. Romance ruins friendships. You're not going there, not even in a nonsexual context. You may be feeling surprisingly brotherly toward him, but he's not the one you're going to break your lifelong shutout for. He'll just have to deal with being human-style buddies.

* * *

    When you name Eridan's brand of cigarettes, the grocery clerk looks from you to the four-pound package of today's catch you just put on the counter and makes an 'aha' face. "Are you the troll's friend?" she asks as she fetches the cigarette pack from the rack over the register.

    "Yep."

    "Sorry, was that racist? Should I say Alternian?"

    "Nope, they say troll. Alternian's a bit iffy, actually. Like they're not really citizens of Earth or something. Is he the only guy who buys salmon and smokes together or something?"

    She gives a sheepish shrug. "Well, and also my sister works at the hospital. I heard he came in with a really bad cut on his leg from like a chainsaw accident or something, is he okay? Sorry, I'm being a typical small-town gossip."

    The phrase 'chainsaw accident' actually makes you twitch, and you honestly don't know whether you're trying not to laugh or puke. It only takes a split second to get your face under control, though. "Asking outright's way better than speculation and rumors, believe me. It wasn't a chainsaw, just a hatchet. Guess he was splitting kindling and overswung. He got six stitches and I'm having a hell of a time keeping him from walking on it."

    "Well, tell him 'feel better soon' from me, okay?" She starts scanning your groceries. "So can I ask you another thing?"

    "Sure."

    "I know why the like, red and orange and yellow trolls would want to come here, because they get a really raw deal, right? But isn't he purple? Why would he want to leave?"

    He didn't get a choice. None of your friends did. Not that you can explain that to her. "Coolbloods are under a lot of pressure to be ruthless and violent. If you can't hack it, your friends stab you in the back. Literally. Eridan just wants to read and paint and like, wear scarves. I think this place is gonna be good for him."

    "I hope so," she says sympathetically as she scans your card. As she hands it back with the receipt, she adds with a wry grin, "It's a good town for scarves. Tell him to check out the trading post by the pier, it's mostly tourist junk but they've got some Norwegian hand-knitting from a local lady that's just gorgeous."

    You put your grocery bag back on the counter. "Can I get one of those thermal ice cream bags for the fish? I do believe I need to make a detour."

    When you get back, you poke your head out the deck door to tell Eridan, "The clerk at the grocery store says 'feel better soon'."

    He blinks at you. "What?"

    "Her sister works at the hospital, she heard about your accident, she was worried. Oh, also, some random lady on the street said to tell you you're 'welcome as anything'."

    "What?"

    "Humans: huge palesluts. You gotta learn to live with it."

    It's clear he doesn't know whether to be upset or pleased. "Are they all talkin about me behind my back or somethin?"

    "It's a small town and you're interesting. Cheer up, they like you."

    "Okay, I know I should probably be glad about that, but holy shit, Dave. To tell you the honest fuckin truth it's a little alarmin."

    You grin. "I know what you mean, man. Small towns kinda creep me out. Think fast." You toss the smokes at him. He fumbles the pack out of the air, then starts patting himself down for matches. You toss him those too.

    The look he gives you belongs in the dictionary next to the word 'conflicted'.

Chapter 8: Show That Canvas Who's Boss

You go back inside before you can make it worse. Also before you have to breathe his smoke. Sooner or later he'll wrap his head around the fact that humans just like to do nice things for people, and it's not a come-on of any kind. You're tempted to do something really fancy with the fish to see if you can break his brain, but cooking's not your number one skill. You'll need the internet's help just to keep from ruining it, and the internet has no help for you right now because your phone is dead. Fortunately for your nose, by the time you've set it up to charge and put the groceries away, Eridan's done with his cigarette.

    You lean against the deck railing, hands in your pockets. "Got any specific plans for the fish?"

    "Yeah, I was thinkin I'd eat it raw, guts an all," he says absently, scowling at the bit of sky he's painstakingly doing pretty much nothing to with a flurry of tiny fussy brushstrokes.

    "Too bad I got a fillet, then. Big one, though. You're gonna have leftovers."

    He sighs gustily. "I was jokin, smartass. Grill it with ginger an soy sauce probably. Whatever else I might say about this fuckin planet, human food ain't bad."

    "Okay, that's easy enough, I can do that."

    "You don't gotta cook for me."

    "But I'm gonna." You deliberately change the subject. "What are you even doing? That bit's as sky-colored as it's gonna get. Maybe you oughtta --"

    "Argh, fuck!" he shouts suddenly, throws his brush at the painting, and kicks his easel over.

    You flash to catch the painting before it can land facedown. "Whoa."

    "I don't fuckin know!" He's on the edge of tears all of a sudden. "Why am I even doin this? I got no talent! The only thing I'm any fuckin good at is annoyin the livin shit outta everyone I care about!"

    "Uh-huh, because you're totally supposed to be awesome after only a couple months' practice," you say blandly. You set the easel back up, put the painting on it, and poke the brush back into his trembling hand. "You don't like this one, fuck it up."

    He squints up at you, purple eyes swimming behind his glasses. A bit distorted by the lenses, now that you're looking; huh, so they're prescription after all. You thought they were fake.

    "Fuck it up," you repeat patiently. "Don't just throw it off the deck, that's boring and you'll only have to go clean it up later. Paint bullshit all over it. Show that canvas who's boss."

    "What would you know?" he sneers. "You're not even serious, you just mouse-draw joke faces with oinkbeast-chop mouths. What if I don't want my art to be ironically terrible, did you think a that?"

    "Remind me to send you some audio files sometime. When a track's unsalvageable -- I mean obviously I can reuse some of the sequences, sometimes, if they're not just too lame to see the light of day, but before I break it down for parts I fill it in with bullshit. Play 'Wipeout' with fart noises. Interview one of Bro's rapbots about 80's cartoons and run it up to chipmunk speed. It's therapeutic as hell. Also it gets your brain to stop trying to save the damn thing. It's like a funeral."

    While you were talking, you came around behind him, the better to look at his fail painting. It's okay, you guess. Kind of generic. It basically looks like a blurry photograph of the view from the deck. There's the lake, the sky with a few wispy clouds, a bit of a rocky outcropping coming in from the left, the curve of the beach, a pine branch crossing in front. Nice, in a bland way. Very dentist's office waiting room.

    You can see why he kicked the easel over.

    Since he's still not moving, you lean on his shoulder, reach over him to jam your thumb into his palette, and smear a gob of iron red across the water.

    He comes to life with a jerk and shrugs you off. "Oh my God," he babbles as he scrambles for his palette knife. "Oh my fuckin God, I can't believe you just fuckin did that."

    "Dude, you kicked --"

    "It's my painting, asshole, not yours!" He scrapes the red up with the knife, and for a moment you think he's trying to save the picture. Then he swipes the paint he scooped up onto the waves near the beach with a series of jagged, angled strokes. "If anyone's goin to fuck it up, it'll be me."

    "Cool." You step back and watch, half smiling, as he throws himself into wrecking his picture with ten times more energy than he put into painting it in the first place.

    Except that he's not really wrecking it. He's dashing red and white into the water, turning the placid summer morning into a wind-churned winter sunset. He hasn't touched the sky or shore yet, but you can already see where it's going. Holy shit. He does have talent.

    "Go away," he snaps after a while. "You're distractin me."

    Your thumb's still got paint on it. You wipe it off on his cheek. "There, now you look like a proper artist."

    "Whatever." He scrubs at it absently with the back of his hand, then goes back to knifing his twee picture until it bleeds awesome.

    You go kill some time on the beach. It's not exactly the kind of beach you can lounge on; it's made of rounded stones from pea-sized to fist-sized, with the occasional small boulder, and here and there a slab of solid basalt. It's hard to walk on. The rocks shift underfoot in unpredictable ways.

    Under the clear water, though, they're all different colors, which is neat. You decide you kind of like this beach. As long as you don't have to run on it.

    You ramble around for a while, climbing boulders, jumping from slab to slab. Then you just skip stones until a warning tightness across your cheekbones reminds you you're not wearing sunblock. You crouch to wet your hands in the lake -- dang, that is chilly, like a beer straight out of the fridge -- and wipe the cold water on your face wherever it feels burned. Won't fix it, but it'll stop it getting worse if you get out of the sun now.

    When you go back up, you vault the deck railing instead of using the stairs. Eridan doesn't even notice. He's hunched over, black lip caught under the points of his vicious teeth, eyes burning, painting like a madtroll. With his fingers. There's a palette knife behind his ear, and he's got two brushes, a palette knife, and a cigarette in his other hand. As you watch, he tries to take a drag off one of the brushes. It doesn't even slow him down; he finds the smoke on the second try, tucks it in his mouth, and uses the brush on the painting. Not for fussy daubing like before, but in a long, twisting stroke that uses his whole arm.

    He doesn't look up until his cigarette burns down to the filter. He gives you a challenging glare as he drops the butt in the coffee mug that is apparently now an ashtray. "What," he demands.

    You open your mouth, but shut it again without saying anything. I've never seen you look so real. You're intense. You're so fucking alive. You're scary when you stop fronting. You're beautiful like an atom bomb. Do your friends know how lucky they are that you're full of shit most of the time? You're not willing to voice anything you're actually thinking, and you're not going to spoil the moment with random crap.

    He slumps back in his chair with a fluid shrug, gesturing at the painting with a jerk of his chin. "Well?"

    You come around where you can see it.

    "Whoa," you breathe.

    Is that Earth or Alternia? It's sure as hell not the view from here. Angry water and sullen skies, grasping cliffs and unforgiving land, all the colors intense like a fever dream. And down at the water's edge, dwarfed and menaced by the world, your silhouette in blank white, skipping blank white stones.

    "Fuck me," you intone after a while. "Holy shit. What just fucking happened."

    "I stopped carin." He reaches for the shirt pocket with his smokes in it, pokes himself in the chin with a brush, and suddenly realizes just how covered in paint he's become. You can see it dawn on him: this slow wave of half-gloating horror. "I think I just started carin again."

    "Yeah, that shirt's a paint shirt forever."

    "It's on my glasses, what..."

    "Fuck your glasses, man, look what you did."

    He focuses on the painting, and his eyes widen as if he's seeing it for the first time. Maybe he sort of is; you know what it's like to get lost down among the beats and repeats and lose sight of the whole song. He takes a hesitant breath. "That's not bad," he ventures.

    "Moron. It's genius. Jesus dick. Now is not the time for an attack of the humbles. Do you not get what this means?"

    Baffled, he looks up at you and shakes his head. He yelps when you haul him up by the arms so you can shout in his face.

    "You can't say you're not good at anything anymore! Because guess what? You're crazy fucking talented at art! Maybe you don't have the skills yet, but that painting says something and one of the things it says is 'Hey Eridan, you should paint another one!' No more pity party, dickweed! Time to live!"

    Expressions roll across his face, too muddled together to read. His hands come up to clutch your arms, mirroring your grip on his. "I," he tries. "But." Still no good. "You just." So much for talking. He hauls you in and mashes your mouths together.

    About five seconds later, he backs off stammering apologies. You wipe blood and paint off your mouth and flash him a grin. "It's cool," you assure him. "Celebration. You got excited. Don't bust a gasket."

    "Yeah. That's -- yeah," he says, relieved. He steps back to drop his brushes in a cup of turpentine and look at his painting again. "I should sign it." His ear-fins are an unusually bright purple. That's probably a blush. "I never figured out a signature. Because that's the kinda thing you'd expect a pretentious dick like me to do, you know? Sit around workin out his signature an dreamin about bein famous, and never get around to doin any real work. So I didn't -- fuck, what alphabet do I even use?"

    "Alternian."

    "You think?"

    "Totes."

    He bites at his lip; guiltily swipes his tongue across traces of your blood there, fading fins re-flushing. Selects a fine brush, dabs up some white, and signs in tiny letters without reloading. The white blends with each stroke, so his name fades as he goes, until, at the end, only the direction of the brushstroke reveals it.

    "Nice," you approve.

    "I think I need to go lie down," Eridan says.

Chapter 9: Miracle Romansu

    What he does instead is shower and then clean his brushes. He gives the impression of being deep in thought, so you try and stay out of his way. You wish you'd brought some kind of music equipment with you, something you can take audio notes on, but all you have is your phone. You suppose you could record yourself beatboxing. It would be funny, but probably not useful.

    The phone's not quite done charging, but you're bored. You unplug it and turn it on. It immediately lights up with a cascade of unread messages. Yeehaw, the rumor mill's a-grinding.

CC: I )(ear tell you know w)(ere -Eridan is, but you're keeping it a S-ECR-ET???
CC: T)(at is mig)(ty susfis)(ious, mister!
CC: I t)(ink I )(ave a rig)(t to know! You're going to )(ave to tell me sc)(ooner or later!

    Schooner or later. Ha ha. Yeah, you're not answering that.

TT: Dirk informs me that Eridan's disappearance is not, in fact, a ploy to generate the attention he can't otherwise obtain, but rather 'some other kind of fuckery'. I am intrigued.
TT: If there is some sort of secrecy surrounding the subject, of course I would never ask you to betray his confidence.
TT: And I would never indulge in wild speculation, not even if you fail to throw me some scrap of truth to sink my teeth into. Such gossip is beneath me, and I've entirely outgrown my unfortunate habit of inferring what you don't want to say from what you do.
TT: Take your time, Strider. I can wait.

    Wow, that's not ominous or anything. You'll answer her later.

CG: IT'S EMBARRASSING HOW MANY OF US CAN'T SHUT UP ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY DON'T REALLY CARE WHERE ERIDAN'S GONE. PLEASE, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, THROW ME A BONE I CAN USE TO CLUB THEM INTO SUBMISSION.
CG: AT THE VERY LEAST I'D LIKE TO KNOW HE'S OKAY.
CG: I AM SLIGHTLY CONCERNED, AND PERFECTLY WILLING TO ADMIT IT, BECAUSE IF I ADD HYPOCRISY TO MY LIST OF FAILINGS I'LL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO REMEMBER THEM ALL.

    There he goes, throwing off the curve again. Him, you can answer now.

TG: obligatory bone joke yadda yadda yeah hes fine
TG: just wants to fly solo for a while thats all
CG: SOLO ASIDE FROM YOU, APPARENTLY. I WON'T ASK WHAT YOU DID TO BECOME THE EXCEPTION.
TG: nah he tried to kick me out im just a rude motherfucker and wont leave
TG: but i promised not to give away his position so dont ask
CG: I WASN'T GOING TO. HE'S OBVIOUSLY GONE TO A GREAT DEAL OF TROUBLE TO SCRAPE US OFF.
CG: TO TELL THE TRUTH, I DON'T BLAME HIM. WE AS A GROUP HAVE BEEN BECOMING PROGRESSIVELY DOUCHIER AS TIME GOES ON; IT'S NOT SURPRISING HE WAS THE FIRST TO JUMP SHIP.
CG: POOR OVERSENSITIVE DIPSHIT THAT HE IS.
CG: YOU SHOULD PROBABLY LEAVE HIM THE FUCK ALONE, STRIDER. YOUR INTERFERENCE MIGHT BE THE LAST STRAW.
TG: nope
CG: I MUST BE BUILDING UP A TOLERANCE TO YOUR ASSHOLERY. I DIDN'T EVEN PUNCH A WALL AT THAT.
CG: FINE, I'LL BITE. *WHY* ARE YOU REFUSING TO LEAVE HIM ALONE?
TG: tempting as it is to spin you a tale of miracle romansu just to see if i can burn the bearings off the rumor mill
TG: fact is hes okay to hang with and i dont feel like being in houston right now the smell of melting asphalt is nice at first but it gets cloying after a month or two
TG: seriously karkles relax hes fine
TG: chilling eating fish wearing scarves talking like a jersey cabdriver with a liberal arts degree charming the locals and reading machiavelli
TG: the usual
CG: WELL
CG: GOOD.
CG: JUST TELL ME YOU'RE NOT TEASING HIM BY LETTING HIM THINK HE'S FINALLY FILLED IN A SQUARE IN HIS ETERNAL GAME OF QUADRANT BINGO. YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HIS SENSE OF REJECTION REDLINES.
TG: yeah i know
TG: just like i know what happens when gamzee sobers up kanaya feels vengeful terezi gets her justice on or vriska fucking breathes
TG: whats special about aqualad here why not ride herd on the whole crew while youre at it
CG: I AM.
TG: shit
TG: yeah you are arent you
TG: sorry man youre right we have all been extra disagreeable this last year or five and you have your work cut out for you playing den mother to this haberdashery of asshats
TG: in which i include myself by the way hands up whos an asshat thatd be me
TG: so
TG: good luck with that i guess
CG: SAME TO YOU.
TG: im gonna go now gotta get started cooking
TG: gotta set the table for my candlelight no quadrant whatsoever just earth human buddies date with eribro here
TG: if you could clear the rubberneckers off my block for a while thatd be fantastic
TG: move along folks nothing to see here just a couple regular guys eating food and breathing air in the least dramatic way possible i swear the most exciting thing i did today was toss a fork at the sink from the couch and miss
CG: IF YOU THINK HE COULD HEAR A MESSAGE FROM ME WITHOUT FLIPPING HIS SHIT, TELL HIM I HOPE THIS WORKS OUT FOR HIM.
CG: AND NOT TO FORGET ABOUT US.
CG: WE MAY BE A YAMMERING SACK OF ASSHOLES BUT WE'RE BETTER THAN NOTHING.
TG: will do

    You turn off your phone. That's about enough of the outside world for now.

    "I swear, Dave, if you told anyone a single fuckin thing about me..." Eridan's leaning on the counter that divides the kitchen area from the rest of the big room.

    "Would you quit walking on that goddamn leg?" you sigh. "I'm trying not to be a mom here, but you're limping worse every time you go past."

    "Dodgin the question, I see."

    "You didn't actually ask a question." But that's pure dickery, so you tell him what he wants to hear. "I said you're okay and you just want to go solo for a while. That's all."

    "To who?"

    "Karkat."

    "Ah." He's not doing a good job of hiding his disappointment.

    "Yes, Feferi texted me demanding to know your whereabouts, and no, I didn't answer. And I'm not going to, either. Now sit the fuck down and put your foot up."

    He visibly pages through his library of feelings, can't find one he can handle, and falls back on surly. He limps over to the couch and throws himself onto it with a huge sigh. "Truth is you're a better moirail than she ever was and you're not even bein one."

    "That's not fair, dude. She was a kid."

    "We were kids," he corrects. "We were all stupid fuckin kids and it ain't the least bit surprisin some of us couldn't handle the kind a thing we went through. So how come we're so unforgivin a the mistakes we made back then?"

    "Hope you're including yourself in that, bro, because I'm pretty sure I heard a grudge just a minute ago."

    He heaves another sigh and turns his head away from you, like staring at the back of the couch is going to make some kind of point. "It ain't like that. I just don't know how many times she wants me to goddamn apologize."

    "Maybe she wants you to quit apologizing."

    "Maybe I would if she'd forgive me."

    "Aaaaand maybe she would, if you forgave her for dumping you once upon a time. This is stupid. Karkat's right, we're all being dicks lately."

    He snorts. "Speak for yourself."

    Okay, that conversation's a loss. Good thing you decided not to get too close, or you'd be really fucked off about it. But you did, so you're not.

    What you are is hungry. You were bullshitting Karkat about going to get supper on, obviously, because it's way too early for that, but it occurs to you there's no actual reason why the fish has to be supper. It could be lunch. Something has to be lunch, anyway, or you're going to start eating furniture.

    When you go to get started, you discover Eridan's forgotten cup of coffee steaming on the counter. For a second, you're tempted to pour it down the sink. But only for a second. Then you decide to be a grownup and bring it to him. He doesn't even look up.

    Aww, sulky doesn't want his binky. Fuck 'im. You're too hungry to care.

    Baked salmon doesn't look hard. You forgot to get lemon juice, but you throw together some other junk that looks good, the ginger and soy sauce Eridan mentioned -- how much ginger? Who knows? Who cares? -- and black pepper and hey, there should be green flecks, fancy food always has green flecks, what's he got? Dill, sure, dill goes with fish, right? Once that's in the oven, you start some rice -- he doesn't have a rice steamer, but the internet says you can make it in a saucepan, only he doesn't have a saucepan with a lid, so, well, a frying pan is a pan. Aaaand carrots, what the fuck do you even do with carrots, you only know how to stir-fry them and how to microwave the frozen kind, so back to the recipe sites for advice. Covered pan again. Right. Throw those in with the rice, then.

    You go back to the living room to wait. Eridan's curled fetal on the couch, chewing on his scarf. What the fuck even is his problem right now? Is he mad you told Karkat he's all right? Is he mad you didn't tell people where he is? Or maybe he doesn't believe you. The kid's a puzzle, that's for sure.

    "Shove over," you command. You're prepared to move him if he won't move himself, but after a moment he sits up. You sit down next to him. You get out your phone, scroll back to the beginning of today's messages, and hand it to him.

    He gives you a look of frank disbelief as he takes it. He reads the messages, face gradually tightening, mouth turning down. Chin crumpling. Aw shit. Not again -- yep, purple tears time.

    "Hey." You pat him awkwardly on the back. "Hey now."

    He shrugs you off with a violent jerk. Then he suddenly twists and burrows against your shoulder.

    "Whoa, watch the horns!" But even as you grimace at your own idiocy for offering aid and comfort to a volatile drama generator, you're wrapping your arms loosely around him. When somebody needs a hug, they need a hug, and you're not such a dick you can't roll with it.

    "What does she even want from me?" he whimpers. "She acts all possessive an shit, but then she turns around an gets mad at me for hangin around too much."

    "I reckon your habit of picking fights with her matesprit might have something to do with that."

    "Well, he's a asshole," Eridan mutters.

    "You're still really hung up on her, huh? After all this time?"

    "No! Maybe. I don't know. I just..." He takes a deep breath and sighs a shaky, uneven sigh that reaches into your empathic little tribal-primate heart and twists. Goddamn it, that's not fair. "It's like she thinks I'm silly for bein hurt. I just want her to understand."

    "She's the classic popular girl, bro. She's not trying to be cold to you. She just doesn't know what rejection feels like."

    "Do you?" he challenges. After a moment he raises his head to scrutinize your face, and his expression softens. "Yeah, you do," he concludes.

    You shrug.

    "Was it John?"

    "Ancient history."

    "Sorry. Shit, sorry." He pushes away from you, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. "You're actin so fuckin pale it's easy to forget you ain't really tryin to be my moirail."

    "Human, no quadrants."

    "Yeah. Yeah, I know." Another wobbly sigh.

    "I don't get the difference between palerom and friendship, man. Call me whatever you want."

    "Dave..." He ventures an uncertain, tilted smile. "You're doin exactly what Kar told you not to do."

    "Huh. So I am. I'm such a rebel. Well, it's up to you." You try putting a hand on his back again, and damn if he doesn't lean into you like it's automatic. "Look, I'm not going to stop doing anything that's important to me. Just so you know. I'm not going to stop hashing shit out with my brother or calling John my best friend."

    "That's not what it's about," he says. The relief in his voice is so intense it makes you relax. "Just... keep doin this?"

    "Yeah. Sure." You rub circles. He sighs.

    "How long are you stayin?"

    "Until I have to go sign papers for that house, I guess. Couple more days maybe. But I'll be online after that if you wanna talk."

    "Thank you." He rests his head against your shoulder again, curls his fingers into your shirt, and goes boneless. "You don't know what this means to me."

    "I'm starting to have an idea," you smile wryly.

    Yeah, okay, so you feel sorry for the guy and you kind of don't mind hugging him at all. If that's enough for him, then fine. Everyone's going to give you endless shit about this, but that's their problem. This is all right.

    You push him off you, but just so you can lie back with your head on the couch arm. Then you tug him back down. He snuggles in with a contented rumble, like the hybrid offspring of a housecat and a bag of hockey sticks. When you rub his back, you can feel the knobs of his spine under his shirt. You wonder if he's undernourished or just naturally skinny. Backrubbing gets boring after a while, so you try out hair petting just for variety. Yep, he likes that. His hair feels nice, too, really soft, still a little damp from his shower. He's not getting this when it's full of product, though. You try to stay away from the horns. You're not really sure what the implications of that would be.

    "What am I smellin?" he says eventually.

    You take a judging sniff. "Lunch," you conclude. "Burning."

    He snickers. "I thought you were Time Guy. How'd you lose track?"

    That? Is a really good question.

Chapter 10: Not A Big Deal

The next day is gray, drizzly, and straight-up cold. Eridan offers you one of his sweaters. Apparently troll hipsters don't wear hoodies, or even plain-colored sweaters; your choices are a blue and purple fair-isle dealie that's clean, or a black and white fair-isle dealie that's been worn, but is not, he promises, 'gross or anythin'. You grab the black and white one out of the laundry hamper. You know you'll feel like a massive tool wearing it, but you don't even consider refusing. It's that or huddle by the stove all day playing tower defense games on your phone, and Eridan is showing signs of cabin fever.

    He still limps a bit, but the cut is closing nicely. He's jittery. He can't paint in the rain, and the light's not good enough inside. He's bored with his books. Over breakfast, he makes vague yearning noises about showing you the town, then goes all shamey and apologizes for hinting. He doesn't yet have a grasp on the difference between asking for what he wants and manipulating people. You let it slide for now. You have a feeling prodding at his rules any more would cause him to flip out, and funny as that might be, you'd pay for the momentary amusement with hours of being ignored.

    "So here's the deal," you say as you stack the breakfast dishes by the sink. "I'm driving, we drive between all the places unless it's right next door, and if I decide you're limping too bad I get to call time out."

    He perks up for a moment before remembering to be a pain in the ass. "How come you get to make the rules?"

    "Because you like to suffer, and suffering bores the shit out of me."

    "I do not. I'm just not a big baby about it like some people."

    Is he seriously calling you a big baby? You who've died so many times, and complained about it so little? Well, never mind. He's Eridan. He can't really see past himself. "Cuz if your leg swells up your pants won't fit," you smirk, with a meaning glance at the skin-tight violet jeans he apparently thinks are a good plan for today.

    He tilts his head, considering, then gives a grudging shrug. "Eh. I suppose."

    Grinning, you start getting ready to go. "Cuz if you pull your stitches, you'll bleed all over everything and embarrass the fuck out of yourself. And the locals will crowd around and fuss over you and make you go back to the hospital. It'll be like a moiraillegiance gangbang. Old ladies might even kiss your cheeks."

    He shudders. "That there is a fair fine reason for followin your rules. You win. Just don't let it go to your head."

    "Sorry, bro, my head's already there. The headspace of the bossy boss is the atmosphere I was born to breathe, so I am sorry to inform you you're just gonna have to fuckin deal with it." You pause in the middle of retying your shoe. "Goddammit. You've got me clipping my g's."

    Eridan grins this weird, bashful grin, fins purpling, as if you just gave him the hugest compliment ever. Huh. Interesting. Copying his speech patterns counts as flattery. That might come in handy if you ever want to jolly him out of a sulk in a hurry.

    Not that you're taking responsibility for his moods or anything. Just... the need might arise, that's all.

    He absently re-wraps his scarf as he's limping to the door. Then he pauses, pulling a face. Takes the scarf off and scowls at it. "Oh, hell. I got paint on this. I should soak it. Just a sec."

    He goes into the bathroom to run some water. When he comes back out, scarfless, his long neck looks thin and vulnerable, the gill slits like half-healed wounds. "You can't go out like that, bro," you say. "Your gills'll freeze."

    "It's not that cold, but I'm not goin to." He heads for the tiny coat closet tucked away under the loft stairs. "Did you think I only have the one --" He stops as you shove a small paper bag at his chest. He doesn't take it fast enough, so you bop him on the head with it and then shove it at him again.

    "Dude," you prompt.

    The apprehensive look he gives you as he starts to open it makes you laugh. His expressions only get better from there. Suspicious when he looks inside, confusedly pleased as he begins to pull the scarf out -- almost-black navy on white, beginning with a geometric border -- and then exasperated when he comes to the part with the pine trees and moose.

    He raises an elegant brow at you. "Ironic?" he guesses.

    "But warm," you grin. "A local lady knits 'em, apparently. Reckon she'd make you a hat with horn holes if I asked?"

    He drops the bag and spreads the scarf over his hands. Looks from it to you a few times. You can almost see the judging algorithm ticking over in his mind. Kitschy pine trees and moose, presented in a plain paper bag with the receipt still in it. But. Super-soft lambswool-or-something, good timing, handmade locally in this town he clearly loves -- and it's an honest-to-God present, something he probably hasn't gotten since he was a tadpole, if ever.

    At last he lifts his chin and throws the scarf around his neck with a flourish. Survey says...?

    Survey says sudden, crushing hug.

    "Grnk," you explain, patting at his back in sort of a flaily, asphyxiating way.

    "Sorry." He loosens his grip so his shoulder is no longer digging into your adam's-apple, but he doesn't let go. "But. Dave. You got this when you went for groceries, right? That was before you decided I got talent or we talked about the pale thing or like... anythin, an I don't... get it?"

    You shrug as best you can with his arms around your neck. "Saw it, thought you'd like it, bought it. Not a big deal."

    "Not a big deal?" He laughs unevenly. "Well, it's a pretty fuckin big deal to me."

    What can you even say to that? You pat him a couple more times and then push him off, a bit more gently than you ordinarily would've. Telling him it looks good on him would probably make him burst into tears right now. "Quaint and charming small town shopping experience: go. Now is the time. Go the fuck forth and get in the car already."

    The shops are about as tedious as you expected. The galleries are full of cutesy crap and self-consciously spiritual pseudo-Native-American-ness, but a few things are kind of cool. They sure beat the antique store, anyway.

    Naturally, now is when Eridan suddenly needs a marble-topped end table and a stained glass lamp. "Oh, I see, so your leg only hurts when you need something carried," you grumble as you load his purchases into your truck.

    "You made the rules a today's little outing, Dave," he smirks. "An it just so happens I was plannin to get somethin a this sort anyway, so it's not like I'm doin it just to watch you sweat."

    "Lies. You know you love this manly sheen of perspiration." You wipe imaginary sweat from your brow, tossing your head as if sparkling drops might fly off in anime slow-mo. Seriously, that table weighed thirty pounds tops; you're a little insulted at his implication that you'd have trouble with it.

    After that, it's like all bets are off, and it's a shopping free-for-all. He's clearly determined to fill his cabin with knicknacks and art. His taste isn't even ironically bad enough to interest you; he keeps going for elegant, restrained, extremely expensive things. $1500 for a painting of a pile of rocks? Really, Eridan?

    "It's called a inunnguaq, you ignorant dick," he explains smugly. "Humans build them in lonely places to declare their presence. This is your planet's culture, how do you not know this?"

    "This planet's got a lot of culture," you say with an eyeroll. "Nobody knows it all."

    "Well, it's a excellent paintin and the price ain't out a line with the quality at all. Hey, don't lean it on the lamp, you wanna poke a hole in it?"

    "Calm your tits, I'm just rearranging shit a little." Finished, you back out of the truck and slam the hatch before he can fuss any more. You wipe a drop of cold drizzle off the end of your nose and sneeze. "Okay, you're done."

    Eridan crosses his arms. "I was wonderin when that bossy nature a yours was goin to assert itself. As a matter a fact --"

    "As a matter of fact, you're standing on one leg like a stork."

    He glances down in annoyance, as if he hadn't noticed himself holding the bad leg bent, toes barely touching the ground. He makes an effort to flatten out his foot, wincing.

    "Quit it," you sigh, exasperated. "It's not like you get points for taking 'shop til you drop' literally. The truck's full and I'm running on empty. It's lunchtime."

    "Oh!" He brightens. "I know just the place."

    It dawns on you that he doesn't really care that much about the shopping part. He just wants to keep hanging out. You grin as you give him a shoulder. "Your chariot awaits, Prince Purplepants."

    "That is a terrible nickname an I forbid you ever usin it again." But he's grinning too.

    He directs you to a café a stone's throw from the lake, where you sit in a booth overlooking the water. Your burger is mediocre, his fish is 'decent', and the coffee is pretty damn good. You chatter about nothing important, riding over the ends of each other's sentences, laughing at things that aren't really that funny. The rain intensifies. Thunder rattles the windows. The surface of the harbor turns furry with tiny splashes.

    You're not in any hurry to go out in it. You pull over a chair for Eridan to prop his foot on, and the waitress volunteers an icepack without even being asked. You order pie and another round of coffee.

    "You know what," Eridan suggests, "you might as well leave the pot."

    You stay so long you end up eating supper there too. That poor waitress has had to shuttle refills for like six hours on a thirty-dollar tab. You leave a hundred-dollar tip to make up for it. What the hell, you're rich. You leave before she sees it; that shit's embarrassing, yo.

    Back at the cabin, you build a fire with almost the last of the wood in the bin. There's nothing left but a few thick sticks and a big weird-shaped chunk that might not even fit in the stove.

    "I probably should've finished your chopping job when it was sunny," you sigh as you scoot your ass in reverse across the floor until you can lean back against the couch next to where Eridan's sitting. "Like hell I'm going to go do it now." With perfect timing, lightning flickers outside, and the thunder steps on the end of your sentence.

    Eridan shakes his head solemnly. In a hushed voice, he says, "That hatchet's tasted blood. It's a man-eater now."

    Your laugh catches you by surprise, and you snort like a pig. That makes Eridan start laughing, and by the time you're done hooting yourselves stupid he's curled over sideways behind your back and you're punching him in the thigh and wheezing at him to quit it. You haven't laughed like this in years.

Chapter 11: Terrible Ideas Are Awesome

Finally, you let your head fall back with a sigh and grin at the ceiling. Eridan emits a few last breathless giggles and falls silent. You relax your neck, let your head roll to the side. You find yourself looking at Eridan upside down with your noses nearly touching. His ear fin flutters slightly, and you wonder if it's blushing. You can't tell; you are getting a shitty quality of daylight in here. You take your shades off and set them on the coffee table without looking away from him. Big improvement. Yep, that fin is way purple right now.

    His glasses are skewed against the couch cushion. That can't be comfortable. You slowly hook a finger under a corner of them and tug them off. He lifts his head slightly to make it easier, then settles back down. Wow, eyelashes. You've noticed before that trolls are basically the eyelash champions of the multiverse, but Eridan wins the title belt. Despite being technically nocturnal, his pupils are so wide his irises are grape-juice colored instead of the usual bright violet.

    The rain destroyed whatever statement he was trying to sculpt out of his hair. It's mussed every which way now, just starting to dry and spring back into its natural waves, a few strands plastered to his cheeks and forehead. It crosses your mind to wonder if the shape of a troll's horns is actually correlated with the curl of their hair. Certainly makes more sense than their wacky blood colors. You absently brush a few of the purpler strands back, because they were catching on his eyelashes and it was making your own eyes itch to look at it.

    "Dave," he murmurs through the last of his smile, "what're you doin?"

    "Dunno," you answer automatically. That's kind of a lie. You know damn well you're flirting; actually, this is kind of past flirting and shading into countdown-to-sloppy-makeouts. It's a dumb thing to do. It's not the plan. If you weren't so used to doing whatever you want, you'd definitely pull away now and start backpedalling like a dick.

    But even though you know it really is a terrible idea to take this anywhere sexual, sometimes your terrible ideas are strangely awesome. He is awfully pretty. He already sees your relationship as something more than friendship, since you cuddled him and talked about his feelings. Twice. You know that clumsy lip-mash he pulled earlier wasn't just enthusiasm. You've never actually had an upside-down kiss before. They look interesting in the movies. You're tired from sleeping short hours on the floor; your judgement is impaired.

    It could go either way. This moment of possibility, of almost-ness, is a rare type of pleasant. You put off making the decision so you can savor it. Your fingers muss at his damp hair, stirring up a scent of rainwater, styling products, and Eridan. The same mixture you've been smelling on this sweater all day. It's nice, but not especially arousing. Maybe you won't make this any more confusing. Let him take it for moirail-pettings. Maybe fall asleep like this; it's pretty comfortable. You try an experimental head-scratch. Stroke a knuckle along the smoothness of a horn.

    He half-closes his eyes, takes a shaky breath, and catches his lower lip with his teeth. Suddenly your heart's accelerating, blood's rushing to your face and your dick, and you realize your choice just made itself without waiting for you.

    You barely have to move toward him at all, just lift your chin. He hesitates only a split second before copying the motion. Your lips graze, brush, so lightly, press so gently, it might almost be a mere greeting if you weren't starting to vibrate from adrenaline and he wasn't taking those shallow, desperate breaths. You can't remember when you were last this turned on.

    You shouldn't have put yourself in this situation in the first place. Now you don't know how you're going to stop.

    With your hand spread on the back of his skull, you lean in a little more and lift your head so you can kiss him deeper. His arm curls around under your shoulders, trying to pull you closer, but it doesn't quite work. You break the kiss just long enough to turn around and kneel up, and he lifts himself on one elbow, and then you come together again. Urgently but without violence, sweet as bourbon.

    Before long, that isn't enough either. You move up onto the couch beside him. He clings to you like he's afraid of falling off the world. He feels thin in your arms, fragile despite his alien strength. Your kissing grows fiercer by the minute; you're past thinking about stopping, and now what little thought you're fit for is all occupied with ways to get more of this glorious desperation out of him. He's clumsy with it. His teeth catch at your lips occasionally, the sharpest of any troll you've kissed, but you're so bombed on endorphins right now it actually feels good.

    Clothes accumulate on the floor beside the couch. Your legs tangle. You revel in the foreign topology of him, fascinated by things you never wondered about before -- the taste of his gills, the unearthly groan you can draw out of him by sucking the tissue-thin skin of his ear fins, the way his breath flutters when you tongue the webbing between his fingers. His skin is like living silver. His lips are plum-black and swollen from kissing. He feels cool to your burning flesh, even inside, even when you push your fingers deep into his nook and your tongue into his mouth.

    The last of the daylight fades; the fire in the stove sinks to embers. By its dull red glow, and by lightning flashes, you watch him come apart. Torn between hunger and surrender, he alternates savaging you like a wildcat and helplessly dissolving.

    When he straddles you and sinks down onto you, you almost regain your senses. It feels incredible, but god he's so tight, it has to be hurting him. His claws are digging into your sides, probably drawing blood even though they're filed round. Troll nooks narrow with depth and oh shit what if he's a virgin and he doesn't know you're not going to fit and he's going to do himself serious harm and

    holy shit this is amazing

    no but really you have to

    "Eridan, god, fuck!"

    A long flicker of lightning reveals him to you, body arched, head thrown back, hair tousled into his face, eyes closed and lips parted, beatific. The ecstacy of a saint. Either you're not hurting him, or he loves the pain.

    He settles against your hips with a sharp gasp. He's taken all of you. He's trembling, sweating, triumphant.

    "Ohmygod," you gulp.
    
    "Dave," he whispers, prying his eyes open with an effort. "Touch me."

    Eager to see just how much more of a mess you can make him, you wrap your hand around his bulge and begin to give it the rhythmic squeezes trolls like better than stroking. His nook clenches around you in counterpoint. Tight as he is, deep as you are, you can feel the quivering of sensory nodes around your tip, it's maddening, and you're not going to last much longer.

    He grows more vocal, shudders harder, starts to rock his hips a little. If his expression seemed naked before, now it's flayed to the bone, raw joy and need, unselfconscious. So lethally, savagely beautiful.

    "Eridan," you begin, and you want to tell him you can't hold out, it's happening now even if he's not done, but the rest of it comes out as a moan.

    "Say my name again," he begs in a choked voice.

    "Eridan. Fuck. I." You lose yourself, seeing stars. You buck senselessly under him, his fragility forgotten, but instead of screaming in pain he sobs with pleasure. He curls over you, rests his forehead against your collarbone. Wraps his fist around yours and helps you finish him. His come spatters lukewarm on your chest, pools in your navel, runs down your side to tickle your back.

    He stays where he is, panting rapidly, while you both come down. You wipe your gooey hand on the couch so you can use both to stroke his head, the back of his neck, his shaking shoulders.

    "Are you okay?" you whisper.

    He lets a pained grunt escape as he lifts himself off you. He settles along your side. Curls his fingers against your chest. Meets your concern with a wincing smile. "I might a overdone it a little," he admits. "Totally fuckin worth it."

    "You sure, man? Because I totally did not fit in there and I have no idea how you did it." Your words are as casual as always, but your tone is a stranger to you. You don't think you've ever heard yourself sound like that. So soft and genuine.

    "I uh. Well, you know." He looks away bashfully, which is perfectly silly considering you guys just had wild monkey sex like five minutes ago. "I might have a sort a kink concernin nooks bein extra full an such. Don't you dare fuckin laugh," he adds sternly when you chuckle.

    "You're a size queen," you grin.

    "What's that even supposed to mean, Strider?"

    "Hey." You gently catch his chin and kiss him. "Let's not go back to Strider just when you were getting comfy with Dave."

    The way his face lights up at that would shatter you with guilt if you still believed you could disengage the way you're used to doing. But whatever's going to happen now, nonattachment is not an option. You care, whether you want to or not.

    Also, his size queen thing is downright wholesome compared to the desperation kink you've just discovered in yourself.

Chapter 12: Stupid Dave Logic

Several times, the thought crosses your mind that you're gloppy and foul with bodily fluids, and should probably get up and do something about that. But you don't get up. The storm is finally moving away across the lake, the lightning getting fainter. Now the only light is the embers in the stove. Its redness glimmers along the curve of his shoulder, the point of a horn. The way the back of his neck fits into your hand is perfect.

    When you start to feel cold, you just grope for the throw draped over the back of the couch and pull it down across you. You tuck it around his back and he sighs deeply.

    Abruptly he says, "When are you leavin?"

    You breathe a laugh. "I'll take 'things you don't want to hear while naked and covered in troll jizz' for five hundred, Alex."

    "Uh... huh?"

    "And after you lectured me about not knowing Earth culture. For shame." You realize your hand has tightened as if he might try to escape, and deliberately loosen it. "You can't kick me out into the raging tempest, Eridan, have a heart."

    He snorts softly. "I think you are deliberately misunderstandin me. And bein a smartass besides."

    "It's totally an act, though."

    A pause. He spreads his fingers, resting the tips lightly along your collarbone. "Is it?" he asks at last.

    You take a deep breath. You let it out. "After all the times I did a fuck-and-run on someone I thought knew the score, it'd only be fair if you did it to me right now. But Jesus. Please don't."

    He suddenly pushes up to kiss you with profound tenderness. "I meant how long can you stay, you pan-rattled imbecile. God, Dave, how are you such a idiot."

    "Kinda wondering that myself right about now," you smile ruefully. "You know this was a bad idea. I don't do relationships. I have basically no clue how they work. You're not moving back to Galveston, and I'm not moving up here."

    "Ain't like we can't afford to visit," he says uncertainly.

    "Maybe that's good. A long-distance thing might be all we can handle. This is --" You break off with a self-deprecating huff. If you're making speeches about how you're not going to be lovers, wouldn't it be better to stop stroking his hair while you do it? And tracing the line of his cheek with your thumb is definitely not a gesture that says 'let's be sensible'. "I just shoved my way in here and started throwing my weight around. I feel like I took advantage of you or something. Let's be honest, you wouldn't be into me if you weren't lonely."

    "That's a load a crap an you know it --"

    "I shouldn't have -- you're starved for touch, it's --"

    "So are you," he says fiercely.

    The figure-ground inversion takes your breath away.

    "Listen, you simpleton." He punctuates it with pokes to your chest. "It's true I thought you were a asshole -- well, I still do, because you are, but so am I, and anyway, it's growin on me. The way you just shrug it off whenever I start actin out, it's... comfortin, I think."

    "I don't know if I can now, though. I went and got involved."

    "You sure fuckin did." He flashes a grin. "As if you showed a lack a carin before. Stop tryin to protect me or whatever the hell you're doin. Just say what you want. Ain't that the way we decided to play it?"

    "Ah." You slowly close your eyes and slowly open them. Take a deep breath. Think it through.

    Item: You just fucked Eridan Ampora, and it was amazing.

    Item: You have absolutely no clue what to call your feelings, but you sure do have some. Intense ones. Uncomfortable, in-between feelings that make you want to run away from him and take him with you at the same time.

    Item: He is not doing what you thought he would do if such a thing were to transpire, which is to immediately try to shove you into a quadrant and demand you follow romantic conventions.

    Item: He's right. You're starved for contact. Parched for attention. You always are. You're not the needy showoff you used to be, but neither is he, and hey, does he kind of understand these things maybe? And aren't you the one who latched onto him here?

    Item: The thought of actually, really, for serious never doing this again is fucking sickening.

    Item: Reading his expressions feels as deadly important as reading your opponent's moves in a fight, and as his smug I-turned-the-tables grin fades gradually into uncertainty, and then into the first sinking of resignation, you're filled with a sympathy so strong it's like a kind of panic.

    "Oh shit," you breathe. "I think humans can do romantic pity."

    His eyes widen. "What?" He sounds half strangled. "What're you sayin?"

    "Eridan, holy shit, I feel like an amplifier with the gain cranked, and this is just not my department at all, I have no skills, just -- could you please not --" You give in to the impulse to take his face in both hands and try to kiss that expression off him, but it doesn't work. "Could you please not look at me like I have a gun to your head and you're waiting for the boom? Please? Because it is fucking killing me."

    "Sorry. I." He struggles with his expression, but only manages to add confusion to the mix. "Not that I mind, a course, but this ain't like you."

    "I know."

    "Dave, if you're messin with me..."

    You shake your head slightly.

    "I don't know what we're doin. I don't know what to call it. You don't do quadrants an I suck at quadrants an I don't wanna stop this but I'm so gonna fuck it up."

    "Yeah, me too." The absurdity of it finally strikes you. "You infected me with your melodrama. I have emo contamination. Why are we losing our shit? This doesn't have to be dire, does it? We could just... wing it. See what happens."

    "Well, that's not terrifyin at all."

    "I know, right? I'm so freaked out right now you don't even know. But Eridan, look, we're both the same kind of freaked out at the same time, and that's gotta count for something."

    His face softens into something near a smile, and he snorts fondly. "Your logic is stupid Dave logic an no sane individual would follow it. But I believe we already established I ain't exactly a paragon a sanity."

* * *

    Eridan's 'bed' is a cocoon-like bean bag thing, and it's only marginally less awkward to share than the couch. After showering leads to round two, though, you're pretty sure you could curl up in the sink with the dishes and still sleep like a baby. Stamina: it is a thing he has.

    "No sopor patch?" you mutter as you weave yourselves together, groggily wriggling and shoving in search of a comfortable position.

    Smiling, he shakes his head slightly. "I won't have bad dreams tonight."

    You tug a corner of pillow to cushion his bony shoulder, settle your head, and decide that's good enough. "Yeah, I don't reckon I will either."

    Of course, you're both wrong. Any change in routine is enough to stir up the bottom mud and wake the monsters that slither there. You claw your way out of a pile of your own corpses to find Eridan feebly shoving and batting at you, whimpering apologies. You capture his hands and mumble some incoherent reassurance. His eyes open a sliver, close again as his breathing begins to slow, and he settles without really waking at all.

    You insinuate a hand between his pyjama shirt and waistband and let the rise and fall of his stomach lull you back to sleep. It works better than tequila.

Chapter 13: Extra Sympathy Hold The Snark

    In the morning, you wake alone, slow and lazy. You've taken over the entire bed... bag... thingie, sprawled foursquare on your stomach with your toes hanging off opposite corners. You lie like that for quite a while before you even bother turning over. You stretch thoroughly, feeling every sore muscle, bruise and scratch, remembering how you got like this. Roll back over, nuzzle into Eridan's pillow and inhale. The smell goes straight to your groin.

    You roll out of bed and pad to the loft railing to look for him, see if maybe he has a use for this halfie you're sporting. You spot him on the deck, at his easel; he looks pretty involved in what he's working on. The deck doors are standing open, admitting brilliant daylight and a faint whiff of turpentine and cigarette smoke. It's like he left those open so you'd still be in the same space or something. Like an invitation.

    It's... nice. It's really, really nice.

    Not bothering to get dressed, you go down to piss, shave, and make yourself a cup of coffee. Even though you don't make any particular effort to be silent, Eridan doesn't seem to have noticed you're up. He's painting crazy again. It's good to know that enthusiasm wasn't a one-time thing. Rather than interrupt him, you take your coffee and your phone back to bed.

    Dirk is logged in, but that doesn't mean he's around. He tends to just leave his status set to 'available' even when he's out or sleeping.

TG: you there bro
TT: It seems that I am.
TG: yeah that im actually the autoresponder joke never gets old im laughing so hard i fear a prolapse
TG: your comedic genius endangers my colon
TT: Charming. But you didn't pester me to talk about about your bowels.
TT: At least, I sincerely fucking hope not.
TG: i need a large order of fraternal understanding extra sympathy hold the snark
TT: You want fries with that?
TG: hey dont get salty with me im being serious
TT: I didn't realize that by indulging your metaphor I was signing on for puns as well.
TG: guess where i am right now
TT: Ampora's bed.
TG: ...
TG: jesus
TT: It's eight thirty in the morning, and you're begging me on bended knee not to crack wise about what you're about to tell me. The most probable explanation is an awkward morning-after.
TG: not awkward so much as
TG: terrifyingly pleasant
TT: Wait, you actually slept with him?
TG: since when do you doubt your deductions yes we boned
TG: twice
TT: Are you fucking retarded?
TG: were clones bro if i am so are you
TT: I was expecting a less probable, more amusing explanation for your uncharacteristic insecurity. Are you telling me you actually treated Eridan 'Please For God's Sake Someone Love Me, Anyone Will Do And I Don't Mind If You Fake It' Ampora to one of your no-strings specials and then fell asleep on him?
TG: what did i say about the snark
TT: That's not snark, that's genuine horror.
TG: its not like that
TT: I cordially invite you to fucking enlighten me.
TG: i think i sort of
TG: i think were maybe good
TG: i think we might be good with this
TG: i mean in a continuing way
TT: My face and my palm just had a meeting. They agreed that you're stupid.
TG: wow so i guess thats a no to the brotherly support thanks a lot you dick
TG: i know if i try to figure this out on my own its going to be a joint army navy clusterfuck but whatever
TG: count you out apparently
TT: Wait.
TT: Don't flounce. I had to get that out of my system, but I'm prepared to be sympathetic now.
TT: Explain it to me. What exactly is your panic?
TG: my panic is im on cloud fucking proverbial nine and i cant get down
TG: my panic is im in his bed in my shorts and hes out on the deck working on a painting i can see him through the loft railing im just sort of watching here and its
TG: so nice
TG: he wears black silk pyjamas bro its so goddamn pretentious and he folds them neatly in the morning why do i think thats cute
TG: hes a sulky little bitch but hes also really funny and kind of sweet as it turns out which was a surprise to me and i was not prepared for it
TG: kinda caught me broadside
TG: and now im sinking
TG: mayday mayday whiskey tango foxtrot sos
TT: So you're telling me you're in love.
TG: probably
TT: Shit, that is serious.
TT: What do you want me to do about it?
TG: who knows man
TG: i cant even ask the right questions this is way outside my job description
TG: youre the one whos practically married
TT: It may have escaped your notice, but Equius and I are not exactly a model of stability and harmony.
TG: hell fucking
TG: im not stupid
TG: all appearances to the contrary
TG: i know who im with okay
TG: i might be smelling his pillow like a freshly deflowered debutante picking out bridesmaids dresses but im fully alive to the fact that hes unstable as shit
TG: also that im prone to a certain type of dickbag behavior myself
TG: thats why im not asking rose about this
TG: shed love to lecture me about our various neuroses and issue grim warnings about us making each other worse maybe after she unloaded enough of that shed drop a pearl of advice but i dont want a mental health perspective on this
TG: i just want to know how you guys manage to hang on
TG: no matter how bad you break it you always pull it back together somehow
TG: so
TG: can you just
TG: dirk are you there
TT: Of course I'm here. I was just letting you finish.
TT: So what I'm getting is that you genuinely want to try to make a go of it.
TG: i think so
TG: or maybe im just demented from dehydration and low blood sugar i mean wow for such a skinny fuck he has some serious staying power
TG: and surprisingly well trained pelvic muscles
TT: Don't do that.
TG: relax im not going to tmi you any worse than i just did
TT: I don't mean talking about your sexual escapades. Although, for your comfort and convenience, we thank you for not mentioning Eridan Ampora's pelvic anything ever again.
TT: I mean don't start trying to explain away your own feelings.
TT: I've watched you do that before, and it's
TT: Believe it or not, I just resorted to a thesaurus. Unfortunately, it turns out there isn't actually a word that succinctly conveys the intersection of 'tedious' and 'depressing'.
TG: can we please not dig up the john thing that was a long time ago and besides this is different
TT: Yes, this is essentially the opposite of that.
TT: With John, everyone thought you would be perfect together, you adored him with the kind of blind certainty only an unfinished frontal cortex can generate, and he turned you down.
TT: With Eridan, you got a yes right off the bat, you're second-guessing yourself like a grownup, and everyone is going to check your temperature and suggest you get professional help.
TG: everyone can take a long walk off a short go fuck yourself
TG: they dont get a vote
TT: Good.
TG: so do you have any advice or not i think hes cleaning his brushes
TT: I can tell you three things.
TT: Thing one: don't waste time trying to figure out if it's 'really love' or any such pop ballad horseshit. You want to be with him. That's sufficient.
TT: Thing two: accept that you're going to fight. You're going to make each other miserable sometimes. You will have to decide for yourself whether it's worth it.
TT: Thing three: you cannot pokerface your way through this. Learn to talk about your feelings or you're doomed.
TT: That is all.
TG: are you telling me you and big blue emote freely at each other because im not sure i believe it
TT: Just because it doesn't happen in public doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
TG: seriously
TT: When we got back together after the first breakup, he cried like a baby.
TG: i guess i can see that
TT: So did I.
TG: whoa
TT: I'm musing fondly on all the times you judged us for struggling, and looking forward to watching you learn just how easy it isn't.
TG: i wasnt judging
TT: Yes, you were.
TG: oh
TG: well fuck
TG: i didnt mean to be
TG: im sorry
TT: Too late. Karma's already given you Ampora for your sins. No one can save you now.
TG: thats fine i wasnt actually looking for a rescue
TT: You poor, doomed soul.

    He logs off right after that. You realize you're grinning.

Chapter 14: Bagels Are Not A Sexy Food

Eridan stands, has a leisurely stretch, and strolls back inside. His limp is so faint you wouldn't notice it if you weren't looking for it. You lean on the railing, and he smiles up at you, awkward and hopeful and lovely.

    "What do you want to do today?" he says.

    "Why don't you come up here and find out?" you grin. "Wait. Bring food," you add as he starts for the ladder.

    "Lazy," he accuses fondly. "Fine, first let me just --"

    "Don't wash off the paint smell."

    He tilts his head, and his smile slowly widens. "You're a little bit weird, are you aware a that?"

    "Bagels. Doubletime. March."

    "And overbearin," he adds, but he not only brings you the bagels you demanded, he does them just the way you did them for yourself yesterday, with cream cheese and pepper, even pops them back in the toaster oven for a minute to get the cream cheese melty.

    Then he tries to feed them to you, which is ridiculous and annoying and results in both of you laughing yourself stupid -- and Eridan licking cream cheese off your stomach.

    "Bagels are just not a sexy food," you mumble around a mouthful while he sucks at your abs. "That tickles," you add.

    He hums thoughtfully. Nibbles. Glances up through his eyelashes, smug as a thief with a pocket full of diamonds.

    "That's you, not the bagels," you explain, because denying your reaction would just be dumb. "Let me finish eating, you douche. Mmmnn..."  Your thigh lifts and your hips roll all on their own as he runs a fingertip just under the hem of your shorts. "Seriously, I'm no good to you with an empty stomach."

    "I'm just appreciatin," he smirks. "Take your time." He presses his parted lips lightly to the hollow of your thigh; his tongue drags against your skin, his breath washes over you.

    You have never eaten breakfast so fast in your life.

    He's as dressed down as you've seen him yet, in a thin stripy shirt and worn-soft, paint-stained white jeans, barefoot, and there's something so appealing about that, so vulnerable. The self-consciously wicked looks he's giving you, the awkward attempt at seduction. The shape of his collarbone showing through the shirt. He's precious. He is goddamn precious and he wants you so bad and you can't get enough of him.

    He smells like turpentine. He tastes like toothpaste and the gulp of coffee he stole when you were washing down the bagel. He kisses like he wants to crawl inside you and curl up in your chest cavity -- and you kiss like you wish he could.

    You take him from behind this time; kneeling, with him on your lap, thighs held wide by yours and back arched, arms looped back to touch your hair and face and shoulder, taut stomach shivering under your spread hands. You wish you had a mirror so you could make him watch himself. Let him see how gorgeous he is, how fierce and needy, how deliciously wrecked he becomes when you tease his writhing bulge with too-light touches until he's begging you to let him come.

    "Look how desperate you are," you gloat against the angle of his jaw. "You're a mess."

    You expect a denial, but get an exasperated groan instead. "No shit, brainiac, your powers a observation aaah are fuckin astoundin."

    God, he's not even ashamed, that's so hot. "I love it," you whisper, and give him the firm grip he wants. He keens like a lost dog and spills lavender over your fist, shuddering, clenching. It's almost enough for you, but he stills too soon. Sags against your chest.

    "Wait, let me lie down," he pants. You disengage, lay him tenderly on his back, cradling his sated weakness. Aching for it. You want to own him, and you're too much on fire to question that want. His lips are so soft as you drive into him again. You fuck him hard while he twitches and whimpers with aftershocks. For the third time in twenty-four hours, you see stars. It's never been this good with anyone else.

    Afterwards, he strokes your hair, kisses the crown of your head at long intervals. You lazily run your palm over his silvery skin, learning his bones. You don't want to go home. You don't want to do anything but this.

    You think about telling him. About ways you could say it. You know Dirk's advice is good, but it's easier said than done. You could wreck things by being too pushy or too aloof, speaking too soon or waiting too long. Being too uncertain, or too demanding. Or too careful, for that matter. You might assume too much about what Eridan feels, or understand too little. How does anyone do this?

    "Now you're all tense," he says sadly. "What'd I do?"

    "Nothing," you say reflexively, then grimace. Hide your face against his chest. Take a breath. Force yourself to lift your head and look. His lips are smiling, but his eyes are terrified. Your brother's right; you can not pokerface your way through this. "Bro said I have to tell you about my feelings. I'm trying to figure out how."

    "You just... say words?"

    You snort. "You know it's not that easy."

    "The hard part's knowin how to shut up. Wait, when did he tell you that?"

    "I texted him while you were painting."

    Wary hope. "About me?"

    "Yep."

    "Like... what about me?"

    "Well, like... kind of... um." You shut your eyes and let your head drop with a groan. "I swear my mind goes fucking blank when I try to put this shit in words."

    "To me. But not to him." Thank God he sounds amused instead of hurt.

    An idea occurs to you. It worked before. Well, what it did before was make him cry, but it got the gist across, and it can't be beat for believability. You dig your phone out from under his wadded jeans and show him the conversation.

    Expressions flicker over his face while he reads, like the shadows of racing clouds. You start to regret the impulse. You said a lot of unflattering things about him in that chat. And you also kind of admitted some things it is probably way too early to express. But how the fuck else are you supposed to break radio silence here? You just. Do not have the words. In every other area of life, words are your bitch, they dance at your command. But when you get close to a tender spot, they turn against you. Obfuscate instead of illustrate. Auto-reject whatever you're reaching for. Eridan has had more than enough auto-rejection in his life already.

    At last he sets the phone aside; gently, as if it's a bomb. Then he gathers you in just as carefully. This is so damn awkward. Your hands are tentative on his back. You hook your chin over his shoulder and now you really feel how naked you are.

    "You're not your brother," he says softly. "I'm not Equius. I got no fuckin clue why they use breakups as punctuation but I'm not gonna do that to you. Okay? An you don't gotta do it to me either. You don't gotta go that far to get your point across. Maybe I ain't always the best listener but even if I don't wanna hear it I will stand foursquare and take it. I fuckin swear."

    Your breath catches in your throat, and suddenly you're clinging like a baby monkey. Of all the things in the chat he could've responded to, he picked that? Not the disparaging things you said about him -- or about yourself -- or Dirk's unkind characterization of thim. Not the fact that you want to keep him, that you think you might be in love. Not 'the John thing'. Not even the fact that you're willing to flip off every one of your mutual friends if they have a problem with this.

    No, he went and spotted the thing you're most afraid of. And the hell of it is, you're convinced. You believe him. This northwoods retreat is the first time he's ever walked away from emotional ties, and you've seen how hard it is for him to stay gone.

    "Me too," you say roughly. "And that is scary as shit, because Jesus, there are so many things you could do to make me completely fucking miserable."

    "No." A bit uncertain. "Like what?"

    "Like get a kismesis."

    He tenses in your arms, but doesn't let go. "Dave..."

    "I know. I know, cultural sensitivity blah blah. Well, let's go with my culture here, because I'm not fucking sharing you. The thought of anybody else getting naked with you -- I'm pretty sure I'd go full-on possessive creeper shotgun-toting redneck crazy."

    "Dave. Fuck." He pushes you back, and in that moment you know for a fact that you just wrecked this thing all to hell before it's even really started. Then he takes your face in his hands and looks at you with swimming eyes, and you're not so sure. He gives a wry, watery smile. "Are you sayin our love transcends the quadrants?"

    "It fucking better."

    "Like in Karkat's dumb ancestor scriptures?"

    "Eridan, there's no drones on Earth," you plead. "There's no color coded buckets unless that's your private kink. You don't have to catch 'em all. If one lover's not enough for you then we need to pull the emergency brake right fucking now before I start making plans with you in them and other lovestruck bullshit that will only get my heart messily exploded when you mmfm --"

    It's just a shut-up kiss, but you kiss back with everything you've got, and when it's over you're both breathless.

    "You don't listen too good either, do you?" he says fondly. "What did I just say? I'm not Equius. Fuck the rules, fuck culture. Nobody ever wanted me before, let alone like this, an then on top a that you're... you."

    "Uh... yeah. Me is a thing that I am." What is English. How do you words.

    "You're the only livin thing in the universe that ever made me feel like I'm worth somethin beyond the accident a my blood rank. Not even my poor lusus, Dave. Nobody. Just you." He breaks for a hard sniff and swallow. "My blood doesn't mean shit here. I was a prince an then I was nothin. My friends were just puttin up with me outta habit, or for old times' sake or somethin. It was like, who the hell even am I? In all fuckin candor I don't know what stopped me from just walkin into that lake and swimmin down until cold started to feel warm an... an sleepin it off forever."

    "Hope," you suggest wryly.

    He snorts. He gets it. "Pride," he corrects. "An not one actual fuckin thing to be proud about. Well, now I got two. You tell me my pictures are sayin somethin worth hearin, I believe you. You say you want to be human-style boyfriends with me, I'm yours."

    "You're such a crybaby," you say hoarsely, thumbing wetness from the upper curve of his cheekbone. "It's not just gratitude, though, right?"

    You wish you hadn't said that. You sound so insecure.

    "I'm startin to think I never pitied anyone before," he says slowly, studying your eyes as if his answer is written there. "I was crazy about Fef, but pity's about bein safe haven for your partner's flaws, an I didn't even see hers. I thought she was perfect. I never even had real compassion for myself. So this... is a whole new kinda thing. Don't get your knickers in a twist," he adds with gentle exasperation. You must've made a face. "You been around trolls long enough to know I ain't lookin down on you."

    "No, yeah, I get that, but. Dude, seriously, what's to pity. This is me we're talking about."

    He laughs. "Dave, were you present for this conversation we just had?"

    "You mean the one where I was all suave and collected, and expressed myself eloquently without resorting to showing you my embarrassing chat logs?"

    "That's the one." Another laugh, softer, as he burrows into a more comfortable position with your heads leaning together. "You're shit-scared but you're chargin full speed ahead anyway. Seems you honestly believe it's possible I might do somethin besides fall for you twice as hard. You coulda held back until I said it first. But you didn't." He cups the side of your neck, thumb lying along your jaw. "I guess you never seen your own face when you're bein courageous."

    "I'm not that scared," you say with a halfassed attempt at a grin. It's such an obvious lie he doesn't even bother calling you on it.

    "You are splendid fuckin fine, Dave Strider. Course it ain't just gratitude. And for the record, I am also shit-scared my ownself."

    "Thank Christ for that," you laugh weakly. "I'd have been a magnificent double asshole about it if you were cooler than me."

    "What are you talkin about, Dave? Of course I'm cooler than you."

    "Yeah, in Opposite World."

    "In all possible worlds. I am the Prince of Poise. The Autarch of Aplomb."

    "The Czar of Sangfroid?"

    "Ooh, nice."

    "Well, I am the Sovereign of Swag. I out-cool you on every planet including Opposite World because my swagger is fully reversible."

    At this point he loses control of his building giggles and ends up sporfling his reply into your shoulder, and you have absolutely no clue what he was trying to say. This is roughly a million times cuter than an entire truckload of baby animals. You're laughing at your own stunned adoration as much as at his purple-faced sputtering.

    You're ridiculously happy. The universe is probably going to take it out of your paycheck somehow. Just now, it doesn't seem to matter.

Chapter 15: Interlude, With Product

Eventually you get bored with lying around bantering and making infatuated googly eyes at each other, so you get up and shower. You take turns this time; that last fuck was so epic you may not be horny again for three or four whole hours. You sit on the toilet lid and talk to him while he washes, then switch places, and he does his elaborate hairstyling routine while you're under the spray.

    "You're cuter without the gel," you point out as you towel off.

    He sniffs, leaning across the sink to smooth back an errant strand. "Easy for you to say. Your hair behaves."

    "My hair just sits there," you say, not really getting it. "It doesn't do anything."

    "Exactly."

    You reach for the mirror, give him a moment to get out of the way, and open the medicine cabinet. Careless as he is of his own health and safety, you're not real hopeful about the state of his first aid supplies, but he does have a bottle of peroxide. You close the mirror and wet a pad of folded toilet paper. "Well, I like you all tousled." You dab at your bitten lips; gingerly at first, and then more firmly once the first burn has passed.

    "I'm not gonna change my look for you, Dave." That's ninety percent defiance, ten percent worry.

    "Okay."

    "I happen to care about my appearance."

    "I did notice that, yep." Dang, he must've gotten you again this time, this can't all be from last night. You've got a pretty good fat lip coming up.

    "Unlike some people who can just throw on whatever an look perfect. I gotta take some care to make myself presentable."

    It finally dawns on you that he thinks you're taking a dig at his looks. "Oh, please. You're drop-dead gorgeous in your jammies with bedhead. You can't not look good."

    He hesitates, then quickly turns away to fuss with the shirt he brought in on its hanger. "Well, that's your opinion," he mutters.

    Silly fishtroll. Doesn't he know you can see his fins flare and color even when his back's turned?

    "Yep, that's my opinion. You don't have to try so hard, man. You're a knockout. Relax a little."

    "I already relaxed my style a lot, you know. In case you didn't notice. Like I quit wearin all that jewelry an capes an shit. But I ain't gonna stop puttin effort into my personal groomin no matter how much you flatter me, so you might as well just knock it off right now."

    He looks so much like an affronted cat, you have to laugh. You scoop an arm around his stomach, pull him back against you, and kiss the nape of his neck. "Did I tell you to stop being a dandy? It's goofy as fuck and also stupid cute, and anyway, it's your thing; I'm not trying to change you. I just like your hair messy."

    "Like... what kind a messy?" He spreads a hand on your wrist as he turns to the mirror, keeping you with him. He meets your reflected eyes. "Not like overall messy, right?"

    "These fine distinctions escape me," you say placidly. You reach up and muss his meticulously shaped do. It's less vertical than he used to wear it, more sideswept; about as much less flashy than the old style as his sweaters-and-colorful-jeans thing is than the cape-and-striped-trousers ensemble. But it's just as fussy and uptight. You give it a good scrunch and ruffle, until the purple streak is no longer distinct from the black, the waves are breaking free from the tyranny of the comb, and a couple of loose not-quite-curls fall beside his eye.

    Then you wipe your hand on his chest. His styling product was a lot less goopy than you expected, but it still got on you some.

    He studies himself judgingly. He pats at the most rumpled bits, pushes a curl back and flicks it down again. "It ain't outright bad, I guess. Bit of a dissolute poet look. But I don't got the wardrobe to do a bohemian thing."

    You roll your eyes. He's a lost cause. "You're a painter, you squirrelly little goober. The fact that you do laundry puts you in the ninety-ninth percentile neatness-wise. No, look, I'm not trying to change you," you interrupt when he seems about to say something. "I told you. It's cute how you're all dapper and shit. It's just cuter with less nervous hair."

    "You're callin my hair nervous?" he says incredulously.

    "I'd go so far as to say fretful. Your hair is worried. It is concerned it will say the wrong thing to sensitive people. It has nightmares about pop quizzes and getting on the wrong bus."

    "Oh my God, shut up," he says through a grudging grin.

    "It is imagining the audience in their underwear. It has forgotten its notecards. It's going to have to improv the whole --"

    "You're such a tremendous wiseass I don't know how you have any friends." He's trying to sound scathing, despite being on the verge of laughter, while leaning back against you and holding your arm around his waist. It's so fucking charming you kind of don't know what to do with yourself.

Chapter 16: Weapons Versus Tools

He brings in his painting; apparently done working on it for today. It's just clouds, but they're wildly colored, enthusiastically curling clouds that make you smile. You let him catch you smiling. He tries to hide how pleased that makes him, but it's only a token effort.

    After a quick lunch, you go out to see what you can do about his firewood situation. Everything's soggy. There are mushrooms sprouting at the base of the woodpile. The hatchet's been washed clean of Eridan's blood and is starting to rust. It's kind of dull, too. He doesn't have steel wool or a sharpening stone, though, so you're going to have to put up with it.

    He perches on the railing of the narrow side porch to watch. "On the one hand," he muses, "I'm lookin forward to watchin you get all shirtless an sweaty. On the other, I ain't some helpless wiggler. I can chop my own damn wood."

    "You can chop your own damn leg." You set up a medium-sized log and take an experimental swing. The hatchet sticks in about an inch. You lift wood and hatchet together and bring them down for a clean split.

    "Dave, you're never goin to get anywhere at that rate."

    You set up one of the split halves. "Just getting a feel for it." Thunk. Tchok!

    "You oughtta be able to do it in one swing. Did you go soft or what?"

    "Sure, let me just take your advice to heart since you're clearly the expert here, Pegleg."

    "Oh for. Let me do it."

    You turn and toss him the hatchet, nice and slow, aiming a bit to the side so it won't clobber him if he misses. He snatches it out of the air with a blur-fast motion while in the process of jumping down to join you, huffing his exasperation.

    Oh yeah. Seatrolls. Natural born badasses. He makes it so easy to forget.

    He scoops up the remaining half, sets it on the chopping stump, and cleaves it with one easy stroke. Then he turns to you with a raised eyebrow.

    "Mhm, and that's how you winged yourself," you say as you take the hatchet back from him.

    "What are you talkin about?"

    "Here's your swing." You play it out in slow motion: a long arc with the followthrough aiming at your own kneecap. Even at a fraction of real speed, it takes too much effort to stop the swing. "If I didn't know better I'd say you were used to swords."

    "A course I trained with all the traditional weapons a the aristocracy," he says proudly.

    "Yeah, well, this isn't a weapon. It's a tool. And so are you," you add, because you can't help it.

    "You're a whole rack a tools," he grumbles, but he watches intently as you show him the proper swing. Downward toward the stump, with a slight flex in the wrist. He makes a frustrated noise.

    "You can't get any power that way!"

    "You don't need power. You need control. This thing's way too short for a swing like that. You wanna chop wood with a sword, get a sword. Get a dozen, cuz you'll wreck 'em doing that."

    "But it'll take twice as long --"

    "Yeah, that's a bonus."

    "How the fuck is that a bonus?"

    "Gives you more time to work off your aggression." You prop the hatchet on your shoulder and give him his eyebrow quirk right back. "That's what you were doing when you deli-sliced yourself, isn't it?"

    His eyes dodge yours. "Like you even know what you're talkin about. Humans don't gotta deal with the kinda impulses I got wellin up in me. In this timeline you stalemated the Empire by nerd power."

    "I thought you were studying history, man."

    "Yeah, you got your wars. You make your messes. Then you fuckin clean up an pray for atonement. Don't get me wrong, I ain't lookin down on you. That'd be upright ungrateful considerin you bein so civilized is the reason we could merge universes an I could be here an all. I'm just sayin you got no idea the savage fuckin instincts I gotta keep a lid on at all times, okay? It ain't the kind a thing you can just work off."

    "So, what, you just bottle it all up?"

    He makes a helpless, jerky gesture with his hands, and the way his leg tenses tells you he almost reminded you of where 'working it off' got him. But he doesn't want to bring up that mistake again. Or else he refuses to demand pity for it.

    "Here's something you could maybe consider," you say neutrally. "Maybe we have our aggressive instincts too, and we're just better at channeling them. Maybe it's a cultural thing. Culture can be learned."

    "Maybe I don't wanna assimilate an be a good little mock-human, did you think a that?"

    "What's your alternative?"

    "Aagh!" He kicks one of the split quarters, sending it flying into the woods.

    Then he grabs his calf with a yelp, hops twice, and falls on his ass.

    "Wrong leg," you point out.

    "Fuck you," he whimpers.

    "Eridan..." You mean for it to sound exasperated, but it comes out apologetic. You stick the hatchet in the stump and go kneel beside him. "Let me see, did you pull your stitches?"

    "No. Don't fuss." He bats your hand away on the first reach, but grabs it on the second. He looks up at you with a scowl-and-chin-crumple combo that pretty much punches your heart right out of your chest. "I'm a mess," he says. A flat statement.

    "Yeah."

    "I'm countin on you thinkin like a human here. If I said that to a troll they'd think I was tryin to be extra pitiable."

    "No, I get it. You're... you're figuring shit out."

    "I'm not, though." In the battle for his face, the scowl finally wins. He tightens his grip on your hand and lets you help him up. "Don't get me wrong, Dave. I'm out a my fuckin mind for you. But you puttin up with me don't make me any less of a shambles. I'm not figuring one single goddamn thing out, I'm just hangin on by my claw tips."

    "I think we all kind of are."

    He gives a sharp headshake. "Don't give me that 'everybody has bad days' horseshit. So what if I came up with some rules a what not to do. I still got no clue what I should do. An even if I don't fuck this thing up between you an me, well, chances are I'm still gonna get some wild hair about takin my bloodright back an get myself culled, undoin all Fef's diplomatic efforts in the process."

    Well. This is a new one. "So that's something you still want, huh?"

    "No, but --"

    "That 'kill the landdwellers thing' still --"

    "No!"

    "Then why would you --"

    "I don't know! But I'm scared I will!" Tucking his hands under his armpits, he glares at the woodpile like it's the one accusing him. "I get stupid ideas. You know I do. An they seem so fuckin logical at the time."

    "Okay. Okay, look. No." You loop your arms loosely around his waist; you have a feeling now's not a good time for any confining gestures, but maybe closeness will help. "It's not going to happen again."

    He's not relaxing, but he's not pulling away either. His only answer is a skeptical sniff.

    "You've got me."

    "But what if --"

    "Nope."

    "You didn't --"

    "Nope."

    He headbutts you. Not hard, but it surprises you long enough for him to get his sentence out: "You didn't know what I was goin to say!"

    "Doesn't matter. It was an objection. I'm not hearing those."

    "Obviously," he drawls, rolling his eyes, and you grin. You'll take snide over tragic any day.

    "Nothing's going to stop me from listening to you, and nothing's going to stop me from telling you if you go off the rails. No, even if we break up," you say over the start of another objection. "Even if we can't make this thing work, even if we can't be friends, even if we can't stand each other, I'm promising you right here I will still be your sounding board."

    His lips press thin. After a long hesitation, he says, "Outta a sense a duty. Which is what I came out here to get away from."

    "No," you say quietly. "Out of respect for whatever we found here. Even if we screw it up like a couple of dumbasses, it's a thing that exists. Look, Eridan... what I'm trying to say is there is no concievable Dave who doesn't want your life to get better instead of worse. So trust me. I got this."

    He gnaws his lip. Slowly, he unwinds his arms from around himself and puts them around you instead. "Dave Strider, you are too good to be true and it is scarin the livin shit outta me."

    You take that as your cue to tug him a little closer. Put your hands in his back pockets and bump noses with him, grinning slightly. "If it helps, most people think I'm annoying."

    "You are annoyin as hell," he says with a soft laugh. "Also the best thing that ever happened to me. When you go home I'm goin to think this was a dream."

    "Nuh-uh, cuz I'll be blowing up your phone. I plan to subject you to the full annoyingness of me. Hope you like getting a million texts a day about nothing."

    "That sounds awesome," he whispers, like it's the best idea he ever heard.

    Eventually, you figure, you'll be able to kiss him once and stop. Sooner or later the cool softness of his mouth won't make you forget what you were doing. It'll be totally possible to greet him or thank him or part from him with a quick press of lips and then get on with your day. Eventually. But not now.

Notes:

and that's the end of the big fat backlog dump. i'll post more here when the pile of mini-posts over on tumblr gets unruly again.

Chapter 17: Five Bucks Or A Chicken Sandwich

When you get back to splitting wood, the work goes surprisingly fast. He's done trying to make some kind of ninja art out of it, but even using a controlled angle he usually gets a clean split on the first swing. You set up the logs for him, stack the quarters, and watch him for signs of either his leg or his self-control giving out. He keeps it together, though. Just does the work. Good. It's good to know he can do that.

    At last he sticks the hatchet in the stump and shakes his hands out. He wrinkles his nose at you. "I thought you were gonna be the one to get all sweaty."

    "Coulda handed me the hatchet at any point, babe." You heft the milk crate he uses to carry wood inside.

    "It's okay. I want to do things for myself." He pauses in the act of gathering an extra armload to bring in, and looks at you as if you said something. Reads your face, grimaces, and goes back to what he was doing. "Fine. I want to be waited on hand an foot an have people jumpin at the chance to please me. But nobody likes that guy, so I'm gonna learn to want to do things for myself."

    "Did I look skeptical or something?"

    "How the hell should I know, Dave?" he grumbles as he works the door latch with his elbow. "You're hidin behind those fuckin shades so nobody can read you. Gives you a big advantage in a argument, that's for sure."

    That's not the first time you've heard that accusation, but it's the first time he's said it, so you refrain from ripping him a new one. "Dude, bright light hurts my eyes. Me and Dirk both. Rose and Roxy have some photosensitivity too, but I guess they just avoid going out in the sun. Which isn't much of an option in Texas, so: shades. For the record, all I was thinking was if my hands weren't full I'd brush the wood chips off your ass."

    He dumps his armload in the woodbin, starts to twist to check his ass, notices the wood chips and bark dust all over his front, and gives you this utterly helpless look that makes you burst out laughing. You drop the crate and go over to help him de-crud himself.

    "How did you of all people think it was a good idea to live in a cabin in Nowheresville, North Freezerburn?" you snicker. "Did it not cross your mind it was going to ruin your manicure?"

    "I ain't helpless --"

    "No, I know, but you don't like being dirty or cold."

    "I told you why I'm here. Dave, I am pretty sure you got all the pillbugs an pine needles off my backside already. You can stop anytime."

    "Pays to be thorough." You goose him, and he shoves you. When you come back for a hug, though, he returns it willingly enough. "Let's go out for dinner," you say.

    "Okay. Lemme just shower an --"

    "You think anyone around here cares if you look like you've been working? I'm hungry now. Let's just go."

    "But I feel gross."

    "No, you feel awesome." You nuzzle at his neck to demonstrate how awesome. He sighs, shoulders relaxing slightly. "Let's go out for dinner and do sickeningly cute couple shit and make everybody vomit rainbows."

    He's quiet for a while. His hands slowly gather the back of your shirt and then smooth it out, as if he considered clinging but decided to be cool. "You really want people to know?"

    "Don't you?"

    "Well, yeah. But. I kinda didn't think you would. I mean. It ain't like I'm anythin to be proud a havin."

    Proud? You never thought about it like that. You take too long coming up with an answer. He pushes you gently away and busies himself hunting bark flecks on his shirt, brows drawn together and mouth thin.

    "Bear with me a sec," you begin.

    "It's okay, Dave. Like I said."

    "No, listen. Eridan, listen." You sit down on the corner of the coffee table, hoping that'll take some tension out of the air, but it has no visible effect. "I know what I'm supposed to say, but if I get in the habit of telling you what I think you want to hear... well, that's not how we're doing this. I'm not ashamed, don't think for a second I'm ashamed. Just. I'm not patting myself on the back either. I'm not like -- woohoo, achievement unlocked: troll boyfriend! I don't care if people judge us and that goes both ways. They could be like ew gay, or ew interspecies dating, or wow I wish I was that guy, and I just. Don't give a shit?"

    By the end of this, he's frowning at you instead of his shirt, so at least he's not going to flounce off and sulk. That's a start.

    You spread your hands. "Beats me how that fits with wanting people to see we're together. I just do. I'm so shitty at analyzing myself. All I know is this is fucking fantastic and I want to feed you strawberries in public. If that's being proud then I guess I am. I just wouldn't have used that word, that's all. That's why I hesitated."

    The corner of his mouth starts to turn up. "What if I don't like strawberries all that much?"

    "Uh-huh, that's totally the important detail here. Well spotted."

    "I'm still halfway convinced your friends are gonna talk you out a bein with me as soon as you go home."

    You roll your eyes. Now he's just fishing for reassurance. Which you're going to give him, but he still gets the eyeroll. "Yeah, definitely. That's so like them. 'Hey Dave, we heard you finally quit tricking around and got serious, and it sure looks like you're totally crazy about him and like, as happy as a thing that freaks everyone out from how happy it is? And we were just thinking that sucks and we want you to be sad. We'll give you five bucks if you dump him.' That's essentially verbatim how it's gonna go."

    He can't fight the smile anymore. He comes closer, lets you take his hand. "Five bucks?"

    You pull him onto your lap. "Or a chicken sandwich."

    "Dave, we're gonna break the table, it's not designed for sitting on."

    "Don't care." You tighten your arms so he can't get up. Rub your cheek against him like a cat to make him giggle.

    "It's a antique, Dave."

    "We should totally have sex on it."

    "Dave."

    "No, you're right, dinner first. Then sex on the table."

    "Oh my God." He's laughing into your hair now. "You're such a fuckin delinquent. You got no respect for property."

    You love that laugh. It's just really hitting you now how very much you need to hear him laugh like that on a regular basis.

    His laughter winds down into a sigh, and you're both quiet for a minute. It feels like a good quiet. Like you got through the rapids somehow and now you're looking at smooth water for a while. You have a feeling the two of you are going to be repeating this cycle a lot. This sort of almost-fight, with the baffled sniping and overexplaining and whatever, and then you'll make a joke and the tension will fade out. That would be okay. It sounds like a lot of work, like maybe it could get tiring, but you still think you might be willing to do that kind of work for a long time.

    "It's crazy," he murmurs. "This time yesterday I didn't even know you had feelins for me."

    "I didn't know either. I mean, I knew I friend-liked you. And I kept thinking like, 'hey that's cute, it's cute when he does that.' But I didn't put it together until just before I kissed you. I've known about thirty seconds longer than you have."

    "I'm just sayin. It's been less than a day. I'm just sayin -- are you sure?"

    Of course you're not sure. You're still punch-drunk and dazzle-blind, you honestly don't know where things are going from here. That's a conversation you've already had. You're not doubting the promise you made, to listen and reality-check him no matter how this all shakes out, but as for the rest of it? Hell no you're not sure.

    But you're not going to hesitate and overexplain twice in ten minutes. There's a limit to how much sadface you can handle.

    "Yeah," you say confidently. "Yeah, I am."

Chapter 18: Inappropriate Public Behavior

    You go to the same cafe as yesterday. Your phone rings as you walk in the door. While you answer it, the waitress hurries to show you to a booth, beaming. Crap, is she going to expect another hundred-dollar tip? Is she going to gush gratitude at you?

    "Yeah," you're saying into the phone while she sets out menus and silverware. "Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Email me the details. All right, see you then." You hang up and tell Eridan, "The house thing is Monday. So I should start home tomorrow morning."

    The way his face falls is gratifying, which is a little weird. Were you doubting that he doesn't want you to go? You've got it bad. So bad.

    "Should I give you a minute, or do you know what you want to drink?" the waitress says.

    It takes effort to tear your eyes off him. "Coffee and ice water."

    "Uh. Same," Eridan says.

    She tilts her head with mixed curiousity and sympathy and taps her lower lip where yours is swollen. "You've got quite a..."

    You give her a big, obnoxious grin. "He's got sharp teeth."

    The realization takes a second to sink in. To her credit, none of the several expressions that cross her face are hostile. She settles on mock-scandalized. "Well, gosh."

    Eridan covers his face with his menu. Shit, that's adorable.

    While she's gone, you move around to his side of the table and drape an arm around him. He peeks one eye out from behind the menu, and you smirk at him. "Problem?"

    "What makes you think I got a problem?" he says, and that one eye squinches so you can tell he's smiling.

    "I can see your fin, doofus. It has gone full-on Nuclear Grape Tsunami."

    "That's a optical illusion caused by your dumb shades, Dave. In point a fact I am so completely unruffled by you tellin random humans how shit I am at kissin."

    You tug at the menu, and he decides not to fight you. "It wasn't a complaint. Did you not spot the smug?"

    "You're always smug."

    "Smug meters from coast to coast are disintegrating with sad little pings and wisps of smoke due to their inability to measure the levels of self-congratulation I'm emitting. You want proof? I'll text Egbert right now if you want proof."

    He opens his mouth a bit and pauses, puzzled. That kind of cute should be illegal. You dive in for a quick kiss; your glasses clack together, and you hear the waitress make a startled noise as your elbow gets into the space where she was about to set your water down. Laughing, Eridan pushes you away, but not very far.

    "Don't blame me if you get bit doin that, idiot."

    You just grin.

    After you order, he gives you an arch look over the rim of his glasses and says, "What happened to not pattin yourself on the back, then?"

    You're actually at a loss for words for a minute. Not because he caught  you out -- you are allowed to be inconsistent if you damn well please -- but because you honestly meant both statements, and now you're not sure where the hell you stand on the issue. "I have basically no idea," you confess.

    Eridan wrinkles his nose. "I'm a moron. Ignore me. Be smug if you want. Please be smug."

    "Hell yeah I am," you mumble, still thinking. God, you are so crap at self-examination. "Guess what I meant earlier is I don't need anybody's approval."

    "Okay," he says too quickly.

    "I don't need a gold star or a trophy. And I sure as hell don't think of you as a trophy."

    "... Good?"

    "Yes good. It is good. You're not a thing to show off like 'look what a sexy high-class lay I pulled, I must be awesome.' I'm more thinking to myself like... way to go, Strider, you dodged the serial monogamy swamp and went directly to epic fucking romance."

    "You think you're such a smooth talker," he laughs softly, and kisses your cheek. Then he lifts your encircling arm and ducks out from under it. You wonder for about two seconds whether he's decided public affection isn't going to happen after all; then he puts his arm around your shoulders instead. "I'm taller, he points out.

    "Not by much."

    "Aww, are you sensitive about that?"

    "No way, I'm far too cool to be concerned with petty shit like a little height difference."

    "I believe 'shorty' is a term a endearment in human culture."

    "Nope, nope, that belief is incorrect."

    "No, I am pretty sure that's what I heard."

    "Shorty's for girls. You can only call girls shorty."

    "Not that I'm sayin I believe you, but what's the male equivalent?"

    "Boo."

    "You want me to call you 'boo'."

    "Nah, I just love it when you're confused. You do this scrunchy face thing."

    "Fantastic. So I can look forward to you talkin complete nonsense just to see me make faces."

    "Yep. Pretty much." You laugh. "Yeah, that thing there. Damn that's cute."

    His scrunchface slowly smooths out into a sort of bewildered joy. "You really like me."

    "Um... duh. How was that not apparent from recent events."

    "No, but it's just hittin me. I mean. I'm startin to believe it."

    You want to say something like I'm devastated that you would ever doubt me like it's no big thing, lighten the mood, but you know what it means to him. From the way he is in bed, you've begun to gather the impression he probably wasn't a virgin, but you don't think anyone ever showed him any tenderness before. He might've had a black fling with Vriska; you remember them getting into a shoving match three reunions ago, maybe it was more than momentary annoyance.

    But even if he somehow secretly had something that wasn't a hatefuck, you are almost certain no one liked him before. He's so horribly resigned to it. It's like his identifying characteristic. Vriska's a sociopath, Sollux does things in twos, Feferi's enthusiastic, John's a dork, you're a pseudo-ironic coolkid douchebag, and no one likes Eridan.

    Well, fuck all that, and then fuck it again harder just to make sure. You like him. His asshole episodes don't bother you much and his moments of sweetness make you feel like you could slam-dunk the moon.

    "Go ahead and get used to that feeling," you tell him seriously. "I'm going to keep on proving it."

    "You don't have to prove anythin." He leans his forehead against yours and closes his eyes, serene. "Even if you change your mind once you're gone --"

    "Hey, hey, what happened to believing?"

    "Ssh. I'm just sayin: even it was just this. This few days. I'm happier than I ever was. I could live on this a long time."

    That is such a lie; if you dumped him he'd be miserable and probably do something cinematic and stupid. It's also the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to you. It may, in fact, be objectively the sweetest thing ever said in the English language. The jury's still out on that, but you like its chances.

    "Come home with me," you say impulsively. "It's your house I'm buying, you could go to the closing, sign the papers in person so the agent doesn't have to Fed-ex them to you."

    He rolls his head slightly in refusal. Draws back, smiling. A little sad. "Quit temptin me, you tease."

    "Who's teasing? You can if you want!"

    "I really can't."

    "Nobody will be there except Dirk. You know Dirk, he doesn't care."

    "He's still somebody."

    "So? He won't be a dick to you, he's not known for random assholery."

    "That's not the point. No." He touches his fingers to your lips to keep you from interrupting. It's the gentleness of the gesture that shuts you up. "I ain't afraid a gettin the stink-eye from your brother, Dave. I'm afraid a gettin complacent an never goin home."

    You take his hand from your mouth, but you just hold it for a bit before you answer. When you do, it's with a resigned sigh. "Sorry. Your solitude dealie is still a thing you have to do, isn't it? Maybe I should do one too. Out of solidarity. Go train in the mountains and sit under waterfalls."

    There's that darling little nose-scrunch again. "Waterfalls? What in the fuck for?"

    "Hardcore points."

    "And those are so useful."

    "Hey, don't knock it. I almost have enough to get the travel mug."

    He cracks up, and you find yourself wondering how many times a day you can fall in love with his laugh. And how you're going to live without it tomorrow.

Chapter 19: A Long Time Comin

Notes:

[this is all there is, folks. the thing about a writing exercise is it doesn't necessarily go anywhere in particular, so it doesn't end as solidly as i usually like my stories to. but i still hope you enjoyed it. :)]

    You move back to the other side of the table when the food comes. Elbowing each other in the face is not romantic. You eat in silence for a while; you're not used to chatting while eating, and it seems neither is he.

    When you get out your phone, he raises an eyebrow at you in question.

    "Gonna tell Egbert," you say around a mouthful of today's special. "Won't tell him where you are. Promise."

    "Don't show me this one," he says uncertainly.

    "Mm?"

    "I don't got the right."

    You swallow. "That's not why I was showing you my chats, Eridan. It was just, if I was gonna tell you what was in them anyway, it was faster for you to read them."

    "I know. But if you keep doin it I'll start thinkin I have the right to know everythin about you, an I'm pretty sure that ain't how it works."

    You slowly chew another bite while you consider that. Then you nod. "Gotcha. I'm not big on secrets. You can ask me anything. If I don't wanna answer I won't. But I gotcha. Boundaries are a thing."

    "If um." He twirls his fork between his fingers. Glances back up at you. "Fine then, if I can ask anythin, then I'm askin. You an John. What's the story?"

    "You kinda already know it," you shrug. "It's not complicated. I was into him, he turned me down. Only reason Dirk keeps bringing it up is cuz I was an immature dick about it."

    "Why?"

    "Why was I an immature dick? Because I was seventeen, dude."

    "No. Why'd he turn you down?"

    And there's the sticky bit. You feel yourself frown, and don't bother smoothing it off your face. You could tell him you're done talking about it. He'd accept that. But it wouldn't stop him wondering. You could give him the easy answer -- he just wasn't into me -- but that'd feel too much like a dodge.

    It's just. Honesty is so much fucking work.

    "I didn't understand why at the time," you say slowly. "I knew what he said, obviously. Egbert doesn't bottle shit up. He said it was because we're best bros and he didn't want to ruin it. Problem is, that gets used as an excuse a lot. It's one of those, you know, 'it's not you it's me' or 'i need some space' things. Nobody believes it. I didn't believe it."

    "Hm." Eridan looks like he's going to comment, but then he doesn't.

    "So I tried to like... play detective. I was sure there was something else. It wasn't that he's het, because he and Karkat sorta tried it on for a while, and I'm pretty sure he's fooled around with Jake. He wasn't in love with someone else. He would've told me. He's not ace, he didn't experiment a bit and then quit, he kept hooking up. He wasn't looking to keep everything casual, because every person he dated was the sun-moon-and-stars for the first month or so. And it's not that I'm not attractive, because let's not waste a moment on false modesty, I am a pretty decent-looking guy. And the whole time I was looking for the real reason, he was just rolling his eyes at me. Waiting for me to quit flipping out."

    Eridan grimaces. "Yeah, that's not a experience I know like a chronic disease or nothin."

    "Well, long story short, after being a thoroughly annoying piece of shit for a much longer period of time than I enjoy admitting, I finally gave up and accepted he was telling the truth. He didn't want our friendship to change. And I was changing it anyway by being an entitled little bitch. So I pulled up my big boy pants and changed it back. The end."

    He takes a drink of his coffee; stares down at it for a while. Speaks to his cup. "I owe Fef a different apology than the one I been makin."

    "What, no, dude, that wasn't about you."

    "Shut up, it's a valid parallel." He looks up, scared but determined. "You should answer her message."

    "You could tell her yourself."

    "I don't even have a message app on my phone now. I'll get one if you wanna do that instead a just textin, but I don't want anyone havin my handle but you."

    "You could use my phone."

    He shakes his head, distressed. Ashamed. "I can't, Dave. I can't yet."

    "Okay, don't flip. It's cool. I was vaguely thinking I should probably answer her anyway."

    His smile is relief and gratitude. "Looks like you can still do that thing after all."

    "What thing?"

    "Where you don't take it too serious when I'm bein... whatever I was bein."

    "Dramatic?" You flash him a fond grin. "Naw, babe, it's fine. You just tell me what you want her to know and I'll pass it along."

TG: ok so concerning that message you sent earlier i have some things to say about it
TG: no you dont have a right and no im not going to have to tell you schooner or later or any other kind of water vehicle so lets just set that out on display in the what is not actually friendship museum for all to experience and learn from
TG: he doesnt owe you status updates and the fact is you treating your attention like a transaction and substituting obligation for friendship is a big part of why he bugged out
TG: not the only reason but one of them
- cuttlefishCuller [CC] became active -
CC: O)( my cod, is )(e blaming t)(is on M-----E???
TG: no dude thats my observation
CC: Well, it's a pretty rude observation, DUD-E!
TG: oh yeah i forgot im the polite one who never tells people what they dont want to hear pardon my oversight ill remember to sugarcoat this shit for you from now on
TG: nope
TG: handle it princess were supposed to be grownups now
CC: After all t)(e sweeps I spent keeping )(im from )(urting )(imself or anyone else, I can't B-ELI-EV---E you t)(ink you can just waltz in out of now)(ere and start S)(OALDING me!
TG: ok whatever you put in the time you have the history youre still treating it like a job you dont like very much
TG: which is what everyone was doing unless they were just ignoring him except maybe karkat who is kind of the trollai lama
TG: i ignored him too i dont get any points in fact this is not a competition i am trying to explain something important to you
CC: -Explain it, t)(en, I'm listening.
TG: he told me the reason he left is hes sick of people who dont like him doing things for him out of a sense of duty so hes going to embrace solitude and become someone worth liking
TG: and hes not talking to anyone because hes afraid of falling back into his old habits
TG: conclusion
TG: and this is my analysis right here nothing he said
TG: conclusion his friends
TG: of whom you have always been the closest by the way whether you like it or not
TG: have convinced him he is unlikable and he is the whole problem and he is the one who has to fix it
TG: so he goes off to do just that
TG: goes to do all the work himself because the only friendship he knows is babysitting
TG: probably the scariest thing hes ever done btw hes not admitting it but hes lonely and fucking terrified here and im really hoping hes not a suicide risk anymore but he sure was for a while
TG: and all you have to say about it is you have a RIGHT TO KNOW
TG: in fact you know jack shit
TG: and he is not the only one who has work to do
TG: thus ends the lecture
TG: proceed to rebuttal
CC: Are you done?
TG: thats what i just said yes
CC: Good, because I )(ave some t)(ings to say to YOU as well!
CC: )(ave you even considered W)(Y we keep treating )(im like someone w)(o needs supervision?
CC: IT'S B-ECAUS-E )(-E DO----ES!!!
CC: )(e's good at making )(imself sound like a victim, but t)(e fact is, )(e's an -EXTR------------EM-ELY messed up troll!
CC: So yes, I )(ave a RIG)(T to know w)(ere )(e is and )(ow )(e's doing, because I'm t)(e one w)(o is committed to making sure )(e doesn't KRILL ANYON-E!
TG: missed a chance to use anemoneone there
CC: S)(UT UP!!!
CC: I )(AV-E )(ADDOCK ABOUT -ENOUG)( OF YOUR CARP!
CC: 38|
TG: what a load of pollocks
CC: 38O
TG: he might not be completely seine but who among us eely is
CC: OMG.
TG: so if youre wondering what my angler is how aboat i just lay it out on the deck for you
TG: im well aweir hes a high maintenance catch and i am totally on board with that
CC: -Eridan, did you steal Dave's p)(one?
TG: come on was he ever this good at word games get reel
TG: youre a nice gill and you only wanted to kelp
TG: youve mopped galleons of his tears i net that
TG: but you dont have to shoalder that burden anymore because its not a burden to me
TG: and it if ever becomes one ill be glad to carrier it so you can relax its my tern
CC: A tern is a kind of bird...
TG: its a sea bird hush
TG: anyway he's yacht as crazy as you think
TG: his barque is worse than his bite
CC: You )(ad better not be PLAYING )(im, Dave Strider!
TG: i know i have a reputation for ketch and release but in this instance i am searious as a shark attack
TG: and if youre about to issue stern warnings aboat what youll do if i strand him you can frigate it
TG: i know it would destroyer him
CC: OK STOP!
CC: Stop making me laug)(, t)(is is not a funny topic!
TG: the sadder the subject the more important it is to laugh at it princess this is what i contribute to the world its a valuable talent
TG: he has a beautiful laugh
TG: whens the last time you heard it
CC: You don't need my permission to be in a relations)(ip wit)( )(im.
CC: I just )(ope you know w)(at you're getting into.
TG: do me a favor dont go spreading it around i wanted to tell egbert first but eridan asked me to answer you because he has something he wants me to pass on
CC: W)(y doesn't )(e tell me )(ims)(ellf?
TG: scroll up
CC: Don't get flipperant wit)( me. I can't make )(im talk to me, but I don't )(ave to LIK-E it.
TG: ok well hes looking at me like whys it taking so long oh shit is the world ending again maybe if i chew on my scarf itll help
TG: and its the nice scarf i just gave him it doesnt deserve that kind of abuse so im just going to relay his message now
TG: quote
TG: a long time ago you said you wanted to be regular friends
TG: i didnt believe you because who would want to be around me if they didnt have to and i was too blinded by my flushcrush to actually enjoy your company
TG: and then i depended on you and made you take care of me for such a long time which wasnt fair to you
TG: ive been apologizing for the wrong things all along
TG: so what i want to say now is
TG: im sorry i wouldnt let go when you needed to be free
TG: and used all manner of underhanded fucking methods to make you stick around that was low of me
TG: im going to learn to handle my own shit i dont know how long it will take but dont worry about me im fine
TG: and i hope someday we can be regular friends
TG: end quote
TG: clip gs and insert zigzags to taste
CC: ...
CC: 38')
CC: Please tell him...
CC: I hope so too.
- cuttlefishCuller [CC] has changed their status to OFFLINE -

    Eridan watches you with big, round, comically alarmed eyes as you move to sit beside him again. You take hold of his scarf and gently unhook it from his teeth. "Stop that," you say softly. "You'll cut the threads and it'll unravel. It'll get snagged on a doorknob and you won't even notice until it's too short to stay on, and then you'll look back and see a trail of yarn all down the street --"

    "Was she mad?" he interrupts. His voice is tight with worry. "That's all I'm askin. I just need to know if I made it worse."

    You shake your head slightly. "She smiled and said she hopes so too. She even dropped her quirk to say it."

    "She smiled?"

    "The goggle smiley. With a little apostrophe tear."

    "Oh. Good." He sags wearily. "Good. That's... that's been a long time comin."

    You gather him in to rest his head against your shoulder. Kiss his brow. "I might talk to her again, but I won't give her progress reports on you or anything. Not unless you tell me to pass something on."

    "You were talkin to her a long time. What was --? No, wait. Don't tell me. None a my business."

    "Nautical puns."

    "Nautical puns?"

    "A previously unrecorded quality and density of nautical puns. I am the best at words."

    He grins; disbelieving, delighted. "You were makin sea puns?"

    "It was a good icebreaker."

    He hesitates. "Wait, is that..."

    "Although I have to dock myself some points. I was basically rigging the game by using Earth terms; we have a shipload of words for boats. Still, I think we can wave the pennanty since I was just doing it to make lighthouse of the situation. Because I caravel."

    He's chortling into your shirt by the end of that. "Icebreaker," he snickers. "Dave, you are brilliant an terrible in equal fuckin measure."

    "It's nice to be appreciated," you grin. Mission accomplished.

 

- end -