Work Text:
It’s not very often that you see Eridan working on his own shit.
Which isn’t to say that he’s usually lazing around, twiddling his thumbs or watching television. He’s just usually busy with something not involving himself, be it laundry, dishes, cooking, sweeping, using the crowbar from the hall closet to pry Sollux’s ass out of his computer chair. You know he’s a student; he’s more of a regular student than you were, and there are little pieces laying around the apartment that remind you of the fact. Like his admissions papers, graded reports, library books, newsletters, transcripts, pens with the school crest on it, and even a couple of shirts that he wears as pajamas boasting various school events like the first friday football game or the study abroad fair. It’s not exactly something you forget, when he leaves for class every morning, but you feel kind of disconnected from it.
You’re always tired, never coming home at the same time every night, usually not long before he has to get up. There are more stories about patients, both horrifying and heartwarming, than you could ever hope to recount, but there are visible reminders of your job like your scrubs in the hamper or your ID card that’s clipped to a command hook just beside the door that Eridan put there because he got tired of having to bring it to you. You have to work hard, very hard, to get your certification, and it shows in how often you go out on the balcony to smoke or how pissed you get at Sollux for destroying you at video games.
You forget, sometimes, that Eridan has to work as well. It’s a bad habit, one that you really hate yourself for, but you assume that since he focuses on more fine arts, history and photography primarily, he doesn’t have to work at it. It’s just reading books and pointing a camera at shit, right? Not nearly as hard as memorizing drug names and knowing how to give injections or recognize dozens upon dozens upon dozens of symptoms and illnesses. So it’s always a bit jarring, so used to seeing him putter around the apartment and take care of things for you that you neither have the desire nor time to take care of yourself, to go into his room and see him with papers spread all over his stupidly soft comforter and a book propped against his knee, looking at the papers marked through with reds and purples and blues before consulting his text again.
“Hey,” you say from the doorway to his room, leaning on the slightly rough wood of the frame with your hands shoved through the pouch on your hooded sweatshirt.
He glances up, just a little flicker of motion behind his glasses, the corners of his mouth turning up even as he doesn’t acknowledge you just yet. Just drags one long, pale finger over the slightly yellowed pages, brow furrowed as he looks for whatever secrets may be hidden in the black ink. You chew on your right lip piercing, the one you’re always more prone to fiddle with, just admiring the curve of his spine and how long his legs look in his stupid colored skinny jeans. It’s not like you have anything better to do than admire him while you wait, after all. “Hey to you too,” he says eventually, straightening from his hunched position to look at you properly. There’s a tension in the movement, like he’s stiff, and has been sitting there for longer than you were aware.
“What’re you doing?” And while that’s exactly what you meant to ask, it’s not how you meant to phrase it, but you don’t really realize until he’s raising an eyebrow over the rims of his glasses.
“Swimmin’ the channel,” he says, dryly, and it makes your blush as hard as your complexion lets you. It must be noticeable enough, because his teasing expression softens just as quickly as it came across his features. “Workin’ on a research project. Got my class notes out here, just lookin’ for textual evidence to support it.” Stretching makes his back pop, which makes you wince, but he just lets out a satisfied sigh. “It’s still kinna early for you to be up; do you have to go in tonight?”
Your fingers grip your forearms inside your hoodie pocket, and you lean your hip against the door, still not willing to actually walk into the room because shit, that sounds kind of important. “No, I’m done till Monday actually. I was um. Just wanting to see if you were busy, which you clearly are, so I should probably just clear out. As much as you may love how my voice sounds like a trash compactor, it’s not exactly good background noise.”
He just looks amused now, tapping his fingers against the pages of his book, the rings on his fingers catching the artificial light and glinting softly. “You could always shut up,” he points out helpfully.
“Wow, why didn’t I think of that? I mean, it’s not like I have a bomb strapped to my chest that’s set to go off if I’m silent for more longer than five minutes. Which I totally do. Hypothetically. But I’d rather not hypothetically blow to bits all over your pretty rug instead of hear myself talk, so. Sorry.”
Almost distractedly, he flaps a hand in your direction, universal Eridan for “wait one fucking minute before you storm off and sulk on the futon” (which is a sign that gets thrown around embarrassingly), pushing some papers aside and scooting away from his mountain of ornate decorative pillows that aren’t comfortable to lean on at all. “I don’t know where y’all get the idea that you communicate so much better than me,” he says, and you kind of hate the way your heart flutters when he drops an honest-to-god southern colloquialism but he tries so hard not to, it feels like a victory for prying away the shell of his Italian heritage and getting to see the center of his unfortunately southern upbringing. “How about instead of sulkin’ off to yell at the PS3, you come sit with me while I highlight the passages I’ve already looked up and you can tell me about work last night.”
You stand in the doorway a bit longer, like if you give in too easily he’ll think less of you for it. But he’s already dug a highlighter out from the valleys and mountains of his rumpled comforter and is uncapping it with his teeth, getting a barely discernable smear of orange on his lip in the process, and that alone is enough to make you want kiss him giddy. So you maneuver carefully around the papers and other writing utensils scattered around on the bed, and you’re pretty sure you almost sit on his phone, but eventually end up against his spine, your cheek pressed to the backside of his ribs and you can feel them move slightly as he breathes. His scarf is just barely not in your face, but you can feel the end of it tickling against the back of your hand when you wrap your arms around his chest. And while you can’t see his face, the sudden lack of tension in his frame makes you pretty sure he’s smiling.
“Comfortable enough for you?” you ask, despite knowing that if he wasn’t comfortable for whatever reason, you’d fucking know. There just the sound of flipping pages for a moment, and jeez, you’d forgotten just how bad he is when he gets wrapped up in his schoolwork. Almost as bad as Sollux when he goes on one of his coding binges. Only not really, you’re just petulant and like being responded to immediately. At least Eridan is willing to spend time with you, even if he’s busy.
“Scootch up a bit,” he says after a moment, and you obligingly slide up his back until your chin is hooked over his shoulder, looking at the small-print words on the pages but not really reading them. But your vision is obscured rather quickly, before you can decide if you give a shit about what he’s reading, when he turns from the book to brush your lips together. Unforgivably chaste, he doesn’t even play with your piercings like he usually does, but soft and warm and enough to make you squeeze him a bit tighter. The words stick in your throat, because you’ve missed him, just spending time with him without the knowledge that you’re putting off some pressing matter to obtain it. The way he kisses you seems to reflect this, because it’s affectionate, wanting, but desirous of your presence, not something carnal.
“Okay, this is better,” you mutter, and he grins, rubbing your noses together teasingly before turning back to his book. And for a while you just lay there, feel the way his back moves as he breathes, the shift of his muscles as he turns a page or highlights another stream of consciousness, the way you can feel his heart beating, just faintly, against the inside of your arm from where you have it around his chest. You lose track of time, just lulled by the sounds and sensations of his body, the silence comfortable and companionable but one that, unfortunately, you’re destined to break. There’s a bomb strapped to your chest, after all. “So they were shorthanded at the ER last night, so my advisor sent me and one of the other students down there to lend a hand, and you would not believe what this jackass did to his hand. He cut one of his fingers-”
“Okay, I changed my mind, you can go.”