Chapter Text
You are Sollux Captor, and you have a fucking terrible headache.
You haven't been out of your respiteblock for nearly a perigee and a half, hunched over the keyboard and staring in bleary fury at the flickering screen of your monitor, occasionally cracking open a bottle of honey Faygo (TC captchalogued practically nothing useful) and shoving prepackaged food into your chute when you feel the need for a buffer between your grinding teeth. Trollian is barely functional on this stupid fucking asteroid - you kept having to write changes to it, send patches to everyone as every other Alternian server slowly died or simply vanished and the massive Imperial network collapsed.
It's not good enough to just rip a copy and allow it to infest the network you've set up, you've been running it through everyone's browsers. The actual program file resides on your backup heavy-duty husktop - it's a shitty chat client riddled with bugs and it can't handle everyone's bullshit fuckery with the pink aliens AND the memo board AND the private chats, it keeps crashing and eating up all the memory and occasionally causing actual hardware damage, and then it's Oh, Sollux, help, my computer isn't working anymore, fix it!
(Except it's only your computer, because you're a clever fucker doing some complicated bullshit that KK will never grasp in a million fucking sweeps, heheheheh. You're only willing to let them damage machines you feel comfortable ripping apart and rebuilding from scratch. You do not want to sink your elbows into, example, CT's hard drive. He's on his own. God2peed.)
The universe has ended. Obviiou2ly, you had to write your own chat client.
It's compiling, right now, your latest version of Trollian. If it runs properly and handles the very generous test load on your private LAN - you have seven other functional computers in your work room because yes, I fucking need that many, fuck off KK - you'll give everyone a warning, force-install your program on the 'tops in the lab, and then reboot them remotely. You don't really give a fuck if they're in the middle of something. Odds are astronomically tiny that it is anything fucking important - shit, the compiler froze - no, okay, just your monitor acting up, you need to fix that.
You sit up.
Ouch. Your head is throbbing and your shoulders ache and your mouth sort of tastes like something crawled into it and died a week ago, so, clearly the most urgent course of action is to fetch your laptop.
Preciiou2 baby.
(You pop a jellypupa and bite its head off, too, letting the foamy mint gel clean your teeth, and spit gracefully into an empty Faygo bottle. Yeah, you're cla22y as 2hiit.)
This was the last seriously expensive piece of hardware you bought yourself before shit went utterly haywire, and the first sensible thing you did after you found a secure spot on LOBAF and had enough grist was alchemize a copy of it to keep in your sylladex, fresh and carefully untouched.
It boots in exactly two seconds.
You have thirty-six messages from KK, three from CT, none from AA, twelve from FF, a few here and there from the others, and... six thousand, four hundred and eighty-one messages from ED.
... shit, you'd forgotten you bothered to re-alias him from CA. Your lip is curling downwards and your pulse is throbbing a little harder in your temples before you really notice you're reacting, and when you do, you are incredibly pleased with yourself for ignoring him by complete accident. Let the fucker stew in his own shit for a while.
You check only the approximate file sizes - KK sent you some really obscenely large ones, so you'll probably have to ask him what the fuck was crawling around in his nook. FF's were small - brief, reassuring little data packages, but they still sent a stab of disappointed pain through your guts - CT's were short, long, short - ED's start off incredibly massive, but it looks like the last five thousand nine hundred and eighty nine of them are all the same message. You open one.
It reads:
fuck you
You snicker, and then delete everything.
Eridan Ampora is the most grating, obnoxious, over-the-top prick you have ever had the ill luck to encounter, and he is even worse in real life. He stuck to you like used gum even after FF - yeah. Anyway. Point is that he's a fucking inexhaustible head wound of pure bullshit.
You've all been stuck on this fucking asteroid for weeks, and the bullshit relationship drama has only gotten worse now that the asshole humans are here. You've deliberately avoided them and they've had the decency not to fucking bother you.
Unlike your kismesis, who's been re-sending fuck you every two minutes - hmm, he must've downloaded a script - but that's basically par for the course.
The variously-personed noises stopped fucking shouting and whinging at you a few days ago through the intercom next to your locked transportalizer - your response to that fucking nonsense was ear plugs, everyone could settle the fuck down as far as you were concerned. Hormones and awkward confessions and tears are flying thick in the air now that you've all basically hit the unfortunately sexual part of puberty. You are not interested.
And you sure as fuck don't want to run into FF and AG.
It might be easier to cope with that if you had a moirail, but you don't really want to try to resume your pale fumbling with AA and KK's pretty happily taken. It's painfully awkward to bring that shit up, for one thing, and it would leave you with two relationships, which is either not enough or too many. To balance it out you'd need an auspistice, and the prospects are not exactly pretty, so. Hah. Why bother, right? It's not like you want your relationship with Eridan to get that intense, anyway. He's needy. It's totally black to deny him.
It's definitely not that you're an antisocial piece of introverted shit who fails at relationships. It's fine. He's not gonna wake up one night and stop hating you.
- oh, the code's done. 2weet.
... fuck yes. Works like a dream. This is the thrill of victory. Talking to Eridan right now would only ruin the mood and piss you off, wouldn't it? And it'd be easy, in this rush, to just fucking smack the shit out of him. Right across the face. His stupid fucking face offends you, just looking at it, with its long eyelashes and sickly purple-ash pallor and its perpetual angry grimace that only gets uglier when he sees you. You'd backhand him before he could even get mouthy - he's guaranteed to get mouthy, he knows it pisses you off like nothing else.
... Crap. You're kind of horny.
Serendipitously, your intercom buzzes to life.
"- gives a fuck, anyway. Evenin, Thollux. I hope you were tryin to sleep."
- and then there's a full minute of a noise that really resembles an alarm siren, and you slam your palms over your ears and hiss. Speak of the fucking devil.
You set your laptop aside and stumble to your feet, slamming your palm against the intercom. "The fuck ith wrong with you, you thtupid pieth of shit, were you hatched retarded?" you spit into the mic. Your blood is racing through your circulatory system at an accelerated pace.
"- holy fuckin shit, someone kelp me, it's Sollux Fuckin Captor here to spray spit on us all, only he can't be fuckin bothered to leave his fuckin hive -"
Your stomach clenches, something in your gut twists violently and a snarl builds in your throat -
You turn the intercom off.
You try to control your breathing - there are little flecks of red and blue blossoming in the edges of your vision.
No. You're not going to do this. You've been shut up here for ... over a perigee. You've got a bad case of hive fever, you just need to get out of this room.
(Feels like there are bees crawling all over your skin, you want to smash something, which is bad and you're not going to do it and fuck, your head is throbbing even worse, why the fuck did you talk to him?)
You try to regain your balance, wobble over to your low work table, open your laptop again. Come on, Captor, focus on something else. You have to install your fucking awesome new program on everyone's computer - one of your testers has both variants of the humans' operating systems, neatly partitioned in two, you wrote a brilliant translation program -
(Insulting your lisp. Really, Ampora? Running out of slop in the thinkpan? He's off his game. You don't want to rip him to pieces, literally or figuratively. You'll deal with him later.)
- you hear the transportalizer in your antechamber hiss.
Your bloodpusher thuds.
He fucking broke in.
(Your hands are quivering with rage on your keys. How fucking dare he, the disrespectful piece of shit, how dare he come in here - how dare he invade your space like this - no, stop, fuck, don't rise to it.)
Your thinkpan is sloshing around. What the fuck, you can hear his boots clicking incredibly quietly, he's not - normally his entrances are all bombastic lame-ass shitty movie entrances, hipster supervillain vomit. You hear him pause in front of the door to your work room (of course he knows where to go, fuck, you hate that he knows where you'll be, it's your fucking respiteblock, can't you get some fucking respite ?) and you think - the dull white noise of the ventilation is not quite enough to mask the soft noise of him cracking his knuckle as he clenches a fist.
He doesn't knock.
He's wearing a black overcoat and some other typical bullshit, but no rings, and he's staring at you with an expression so flat and stony it almost cools you off, for a second. Eridan Ampora has shut the fuck up, for once, and his face is fucking unreadable, his limbs are disturbingly still, like he's waiting for something. It's fucking weird.
"The fuck do you want," you spit out, all venom, spine rigid. You're sure your face is broadcasting precisely how pissed off and murderous you feel right now.
He doesn't snap back immediately, just takes a few graceful steps forward, places a hand casually on his hip, cocks it minutely. His face is still a weird, frozen mask, and his eyes are the sharpest fucking daggers you have ever seen. Expression? Subzero. He fucking radiates disdain and something, something you can't quite place -
"What, I interrupt your fuckin cryin session?" he asks, brazenly. He remains unnaturally still. What the fuck is he doing here, breaking and entering and being halfway to fucking polite with you?
"Waxing pale, Ampora?" you sneer, forcing yourself to look back at your laptop, pretending to type. Fuck if you'll give him anything to go on. You're not in the fucking mood anymore -
He moves, crossing his arms, and you have to look at him again, instinctively. He waits until he's sure he has your full attention before he saunters another two steps forward, the most disgustingly smug grin slowly oozing across his face like a goddamn oil slick, and you're furious because he's here, in your room, uninvited, and you don't know what the fuck he's playing at - you can't figure it out, what's he doing, it's at the edge of your senses -
"Know what you are, Sol?" he says, curtly, abruptly. The tiniest of fucking tremors is running through his arms, he's close enough for you to catch it, but his eyes are the same unnatural still blades, frozen and watching you for something.
You don't dignify that with an answer. (Your claws are unsheathing, spasmodically, into your palms. It's the only thing keeping you from punching the shit-eating grin off his face.) The fuck, the fuck, the fuck, what is he doing, why is he here , what's - you almost -
"Boring," he whispers, the word falling like ashes, and you fucking smell it.
Your room typically smells of honey and your sweat and static electricity and the ozone-like odor of your honeycombs, a room over.
Eridan Ampora smells like sex . He fucking reeks of it.
Your heart has become grinding, shuddering staccato. You can't hear what he's saying in the roar your blood is making, his lips are moving, but - your nostrils flare, your mind is on fire, you are trying to place - Feferi.
... Vriska, Tavros.
Equius, Nepeta, Karkat, AA -
- You are an atom bomb.
He fucked them, in succession, some of the scents are older. He fucked them and then he came here to gloat, this was the only relationship you had that wasn't a complete fucking disaster, this was your fucking constant, he -
You cannot bear up under the fucking cataclysm, you're vibrating with hate. You see only red and blue swirling in your periphery - the air around you is shrieking and you are only half aware of the fact that you are floating upwards, dull roaring crackle everywhere.
He is mouthing nothing, frozen like a hopbeast facing the barrel of a cannon, and you can fucking smell him and smell his utter terror and arousal and all those people he pailed, the pheromones are laughing/mocking/screaming at you and you can't fucking shut the stench out, he brought it in here, into the only place you had left to -
"- fucking whore ," you wheeze out, like shattering glass, and the door to the room cements itself shut. You are almost blind with your rage and hurt and unadulterated, painful hating him , you can barely breathe, your laptop is rattling on the tabletop -
His hand twitches two centimeters to the left.
It is all the movement necessary to set you off. You are Sollux, the destroyer of worlds.
The tall thin troll is on the floor beneath you, slammed down so hard he's screaming in pain - blue to wrench his wrists down, red to rip his clothes off in one snap of your thoughts, the tearing noise like the tearing sound of muscle and flesh - coat, shirt, pants, everything a shredded ruin in the corner, leaving welts as you tear it away - he won't stop fucking screaming , like he has any right -
Red flays the flesh of his chest, your hands are stripping your pants off, fumbling in your absolute wrath - your hate is a bolt straight down your spine and through your bulges, hard as fucking knives.
- hyperventilating, you can't fucking breathe, your chest is so tight -
" - Sol -" he whimpers, and you are on him, you have him pinioned with your churning brain, and your left hand settles around his throat like a vise, severely limiting his air. Finally a little fucking quiet. You are seething a blur of red and blue around your head, whipping your hair like a demented halo, your mouth a fucking agonized silent scream as you gulp in air -
His bulge is curled down defensively over his nook. With your right hand you pull it roughly away - should be fucking grateful you don't rip it off should fucking kiss your feet for the favor - and, positioning yourself, shove yourself, one at a time, inside of him without ceremony.
Eridan arches his back off the floor, in agony, he's fairly dry - you are incandescent, you don't fucking care if the rough friction hurts you, you only care to hurt him. He can't scream. His lips are mouthing silently at the air. Something dark and sick and horrid inside of you is gleeful with satisfaction at the terror in his eyes.
His wrists and ankles might as well be bolted to the floor - you don't even have to concentrate to keep him down, it comes easily to you, you want - need - to hold him down, and your powers purr to do it for you. Your hands are free to do as they please - you dig your thumb a little harder into his throat, feeling at his voicebox and its (flimsy, crushable) cartilaginous protection. You score stripes down his front with your claws and burn lines into his back with your red rage, panting, mania making you grin. He's thrashing involuntarily, he can't escape you, can't escape anything you do to him, sweat and tears and spit running down his skin, every muscle helpless - gills fluttering in useless spasms.
- you are going to fuck him until he never smells like anything but you, ever again, everyone who ever sees or smells him will know he belongs to you, you won't let him leave you, won't let anyone touch him again, won't let him eat or drink or breathe without your consent -
"Mine," you croak, your throat so ragged from the war within you that you sound utterly fucking insane.
His eyes go black.
You settle both hands around his neck, and begin to move your hips.
You're slow, dragging yourself out and plunging into him with excruciating precision. He's a little wet, now - you don't look, don't particularly care, your eyes are fixed on his, nailed to his fucking traitorous bitch face. He doesn't look away, keeps staring until his eyes begin to roll back into his skull without his meaning to - you let him take a single breath, and then tighten your grip once more, crushing deep purple bruises into his elegant throat over and over and over again. You only regret you can't beat him, too.
The crashing riot inside you settles into a predictable, nearly tidal rhythm, the rage swelling up and abating a little with every slow, violent minute murdered. In; his hips flinch away from your girth and the stench of his adrenaline-sweat gets a little stronger, his eyes narrow, his face is a flushed silent whimper of pain. Out; his jaw goes slack, his hips try to follow yours, the pain in his eyes is sheer ungodly desolation. Every ten thrusts or so you let him take a breath, because you are not killing him, you are torturing him, you are teaching a fucking lesson -
Time stretches, bends.
Your crackling power lazily scores over the same wounds again and again, twists into them, makes him jerk away and into another punishing cut. You spill his deep violet blood on your floor, rich and delicious when you bother to lick beads of it off his chest, spattered and slick on your arms and shirt. Eventually he is too broken even to flinch away, and you relent a little - you don't want him to bleed out or escape you in unconsciousness. You demand him to be present , and he obeys you with his eyes, always bringing them to meet yours, no matter how heavy.
He is shivering, shaking almost continuously now, lips trembling in a way that has nothing to do with asphyxiation. You can see him struggle to keep his eyes open to your gaze as his orgasm hits him - you feel it splashing against your hips, note how slick and wet and shuddery his flesh feels against yours.
You stop drawing his blood, then, but he keeps trembling, exhausted, tears leaking slowly out of his pinned eyes as you fuck him. He is a wreck. He's your wreck, there's a faint, soft, terrible little smile softening the edges of his airless mouth. (In. Out. Same slow, punishing drag. Every single part of hum is vibrating like a wire around you, it feels -)
He hates you so much he adores you.
Something wrenches, slows down in your chest. You're not sure what prompts it, but this time, when you relax your hands, you give him air from your lungs, sealing your mouth over his and (gently) breathing into him. He blinks, rapidly, as you break off the kiss. He manages a low, tremulous moan, before your fingers slowly tighten again.
You like it, you do it again, every five thrusts now forcing him to take air from your mouth - his mouth is open to you, tongue pliant and subdued when you slip, briefly, into him. ( Only my air. Only my touch. Look only at me. ) Your hands around his neck anchor you.
He cries, silently, staring up into your eyes, and you -
You hiss, and your hands spasm a final time as you flood him. The fury ebbs out of you - the psychic bolts pinning him down slowly fade into nonexistence, and you finally slump down on top of him, letting go, letting him breathe. (Only because you allow it, you think dully to yourself.) He begins to cough, a little, and pants, taking deep drags of oxygen, his chest rising and falling beneath you; you settle your hands, wearily, on his horns, keep his head in place.
" - mine," you mumble, exhausted, your anger melting out of you. "Never pull that shit again."
In answer, he makes a rasping little noise of protest - you snort, slump down, relax in the afterglow.
He smells yours and it's a fucking relief. You're oozing out of him, and his blood, sweat, tears, snot, and drool flood every one of your senses.
... that's.
... wait.
No.
... that's all you can fucking smell, you and him, what -
A sense of unease freezes in your stomach. You press your face into his chest, smelling him, desperate for something to confirm what you smelled earlier, but there's nothing . It doesn't - he can't have sweated it off, pheromones don't fucking work like that -
There's fucking horror growing in you, as your capacity to actually fucking think returns. Keep calm, don't fucking panic, he's had enough of you flipping your shit tonight - you prop yourself up on your elbows, to check his face -
Eridan is staring, with glassy, distant eyes, at the shredded heap of his clothes in the corner.
... fuck.
"Eridan," you say, and he hums a little, his limbs twitching. "Eridan."
He looks at you, and his lips move like he's trying to talk, but he can't. He can only manage a horrible choked noise that sounds fucking painful to produce. His arms are legs are splayed precisely where you left them - the joints are already swelling, you sprained them, possibly broke them, he can't fucking move them - you start to fucking shake, press your thumb over his lips, desperate and horrified. What have you done ?
- fuck, fuck, you -
- very, very slowly, and gingerly, he turns his head the tiniest degree into your palm, and nicks your skin with one of his teeth. Then - your chest hurts - he licks your hand, gently lapping up the blood he drew. His eyes are, still, fixed on yours - half-lidded, content; he rests his lips and cheek against your fingers.
If you strain your senses in the direction of his clothes, you can catch a whiff of the sex-smells you picked up earlier, your room isn't that big and they didn't get hurled very far -
He did this on fucking purpose .
He fucking planned on this. He didn't fuck anyone, he just - somehow, through extortion or begging or whining, got them to agree to this fucking stupid scheme and painted his coat - black coat - with their slurry. He was wearing a white shirt beneath it - some of the colors bled through onto it, you can see that now.
"- did - n't," he croaks, tired, drawing you out of the chaos in your head, nipping at your thumb. Didn't fuck anyone else. Didn't really do it.
"Fuck," you say, helplessly. He's trying to fucking reassure you, like you really needed him to explain the plot to you. "I know. You didn't."
He nods, a little. His neck is a collar of dark violet bruises. You did this to him, you went way fucking overboard, all you've done up until now is bite each other for fuck's sake.
(And oh, fuck, the worst is that he's so fucking gorgeous like this, when you've ruined him - the way it makes your blood sing, happy, to marvel at the welts on his body, that you gave him those injuries, that he's in pain for you - he is so strong, so arrogant, so ferocious, and you've utterly wrecked him, he's yours to wreck -)
Shit.
All right. Try to fucking salvage this.
"You were trying to provoke me," you try. You'll be damned if you lisp now, you enunciate with all the painful precision you can. He nods a little into your hand, blinking, still catching his fucking breath.
"You... I was ignoring you." He nods again, eyes narrowing a little with upset, almost peevish. You struggle for words. You aren't good at this. "... You can't pull something like this again," you tell him, firm and solid, using your free hand to pet his hair a little. "It's not fucking safe, okay? I could have fucking killed you. If you want something like this, you need... you need to fucking talk to me about it, not try to manipulate me into it."
He stares up at you glassily, solemnly - wrenches a few coughs from his throat. His voice, when he manages to produce intelligible sound, is a barely-audible whisper.
"Tried," he says, hopelessly.
That's -
You remember the messages you deleted, and guilt rushes over you like water.
"Fuck, I'm sorry," you babble, eyes stinging, though for some reason you can't fucking cry. "I'm. I'm tho fucking thor- fuck. "
He licks your hand again. "Liked it," he whispers.
"I fucking damaged you," you hiss, claws unsheathing involuntarily - you're upset - he hisses a little as they scratch him, and glares at you.
"Do it again," he argues, croaking in a way that's kind of painful to hear.
... fuck, fuck, you hate his stubborn, stupid ass.
"We'll. Okay. We'll talk about it," you promise him, and you fucking mean it. You love hurting him, that's fucking normal, but damaging him like this is fucking insane. You don't know if you can handle how horrified you are by yourself right now, and the thought of doing it again any time soon is nauseating.
"... hate you, Sol," he murmurs, and grins up at you like a fucking lovestruck idiot. You melt.
"Shut the fuck up, your voith ith painful to hear," you snap at him, peeling yourself off of him. "I'm taking you to my recuperacoon and you're going to fucking retht. "
He nods, a little, sleepy and tired and worn-out, blinking wearily into your eyes. You want to hate him forever, for the rest of your lives.
So. You need to be better at this. You can't keep - shutting yourself off for perigees at a time. It was stupid to think you could.
Once you've managed to get him settled in with you, and sleeping, you stay awake for a long time, watching him breathe in and out, suspended in your slime, tracing little spades on his skin with your fingertips. Next time will be better. You'll figure it out, somehow. You're Sollux Captor and you're a fucking genius.
Next time.
You nod off, still cradling him in your arms, and you don't remember that you were going to upgrade the computers for another three days.