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You’re right in the middle of your favorite part when the knock comes and destroys your mood like a gunshot.
“Fuck!” you shout aloud, partly from the shock, partly from the frustration of the perfect fucking timing that ruined the best part of the movie. You get up hurriedly, wipe your eyes and pretend you hadn’t just been reciting the lines by heart, and open the door.
“What the fuck is so important?” you blurt out before you even register who’s standing outside. You stop when you see him. You pretend you’re not actually embarrassed that you yelled at him.
Sollux is standing there, one arm resting on the doorframe, the other hand shoved into his pocket. He’s tapping his fingers against the metal restlessly, and his foot won’t stop moving either. He looks up, not sure whether to be nonchalant or sorry for intruding. For a while neither of you say anything, and it’s a little awkward. In the background, the scene goes on, the music swelling and giving this entire moment an uncomfortable, bizarre mood.
“Can I come in?” he asks. He’s not looking at you. The tapping gets worse, and more irritating.
“Yeah,” you growl, if only to get back to your movie as quickly as possible. You open the door wider and he walks in without further invitation. He glances around, not really sure what to do with himself in your respiteblock, until he finally decides to just sit down on the floor in front of your TV. You’ve got a little pile of movie cases going, and he leans up against it, staring blankly at the screen. You sit down next to him, wrap the blanket around your shoulders again, and try to ignore him as you pick up the movie where it left off.
Your favorite part is over. You grit your teeth in frustration. The kiss is over, they’ve already confessed, and now it’s gone on to some shitty comic relief scene. You try to continue, but it doesn’t work. You can’t watch this movie without seeing that part. You dig through the pile and find the remote, then hit rewind.
“What are you watching?” Sollux asks. He’s still tapping his fingers. His voice is quiet and a little tired. His lisp is really fucking obvious.
“You wouldn’t know it,” you reply, trying to concentrate to make sure you stop the rewind at the right scene.
Sollux pauses. It’s silent in the room except for the faint click of his nails against the floor. You frown, think about saying something about it, but decide to ignore it.
“What’s it about?” he asks.
“It’s pretty much the most amazing fucking study of quadrant-flipping romance that’s ever been filmed. I doubt your fucking think pan could process it.” There it is: you push play. The scene starts over. You pull the blanket closer to yourself. “Now shut up, this is my favorite part and you fucking ruined it so you’ve lost talking privileges.”
“…Okay.”
He’s quiet through the whole scene. You’re so into it that you nearly forget he’s there about halfway through. You feel your eyes start to well up again and you clear your throat to hide it, so he won’t notice. You catch yourself mouthing the lines and quickly stop, hoping he didn’t see. You glance over: Sollux isn’t even watching the screen. He’s staring off somewhere else in your room. Well fine, let the uncultured nooksucker ignore this fine fucking piece of cinematic art.
The scene is over. You’re satisfied.
“So…” Sollux says after it’s done, “are those two matesprits or kimeses?”
“It’s fucking complicated,” you explain. “The whole movie’s about how those two start off in the ashen quadrant with another troll, and then the auspistice gets culled and the other two trolls quadrant flip all over the fucking place. They start to be kismeses when there’s nobody around to stop them, then it starts to feel stale, so they try out being matesprits, and then that’s fucking weird so they switch to moirails, and it’s just…it’s fucking awesome, okay?!”
Sollux nods. He doesn’t really look like he’s listening but for some reason you don’t care.
“Seriously,” you continue. “There’s entire fucking websites dedicated to tracking the quadrant flipping in this movie. It’s fucking sci-fi levels of detailed. It takes like three viewings to even really keep straight what’s going on.”
“Oh, okay.” Another pause. It’s too much for him, apparently. “So like…is it ambiguous what they end up being?”
You’re starting to get frustrated with all his fucking questions. “Yes,” you say slowly, steadily, trying to keep the anger out of your voice because for some reason you feel guilty about being annoyed. “Some people think they end up as kismeses. But that’s fucking stupid. I’ve got a whole theory about why they actually end up back in the ashen quadrant, but like…lacking an auspistice. It’s…it’s fucking complicated, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Explain it to me.”
You sigh. You put the movie on pause, because clearly that’s where this is headed. You turn to face him and run your hands through your hair. “All right,” you say. Sollux has turned to face you and you have his whole attention.
“So being in an ashen quadrant is all about having a mediator, right? It keeps two trolls in a black romance from fucking killing each other. But you like…you need to have an established relationship in order for you to actually need an auspistice, and….” You stop. He’s listening, but his eyes are kind of glazed over like it’s going in one ear and right out the fucking other. “You know what. Never mind.” You turn back to the screen and push play again.
“Wait,” he says, reaching out and grabbing your arm. You stare at him. What the fuck was his problem tonight? “I’m sorry. I don’t really understand but like…I like hearing you explain it.”
You narrow your eyes at him. You’re really suspicious now. “Sollux, is something wrong?”
He lets go of you and exhales heavily. He points at his head and musters up a half-hearted smile. “Just…they’re just kind of loud tonight.”
“…Oh.” Well. You’re an asshole.
“I was just wondering,” he continued, “if I could just kind of hang out here for a little while…and I don’t know, maybe you could just talk to me for a bit? It’s…it’s too fucking quiet in my respiteblock. I mean, quiet besides….” From the way his eyes are twitching you can tell he’s really making an effort to hold his shit together.
“Okay, well, uh….” You look back in the pile of movies and dig through it, searching for one title in particular, you hope you hadn’t thrown it out, not when you needed it….
“Here,” you say, picking it out and stopping the current movie. Sollux looks at you, perplexed.
“Why’d you stop it?”
“I’ve seen that piece of shit a million times,” you reply, opening up the player and switching out discs. “This one isn’t nearly as good. In fact, I kind of hate it.”
“…Oh.” He smiles. He seems to get what you’re trying to do. You glare at him, daring him to laugh or call you cute or any of that other shit. He doesn’t.
You wonder if you can stand to get through this grub-fucking atrocity of storytelling. You hate everything about this movie. You hate the premise, you hate the story, you hate the characters—you especially hate the characters—and the whole thing is just the most contrived, clichéd piece of shit two-hour-long tragedy that was ever vomited onto film.
You can’t even get past the opening credits without starting to rant.
“I’m about to waste two hours of my life on this shit for you so you better be appreciative,” you growl. He just laughs, ignoring you when you glare at him.
“Look at this bitch,” you say when the main female character is introduced. “Worst fucking troll in the whole world and everybody treats her like a motherfucking highblood. And wait ‘til you see her red interest. Seriously, they’re obviously fucking kismeses but the movie tries to play it like a matespritship! It’s like the script was written by a half-sweep-old grub.”
“Is that him?” Sollux asks, pointing at the next character to enter the scene.
“Holy shit yes,” you reply, making a neck-wringing motion with your hands. “The smug douchebag. He needs to get gored by a fucking musclebeast from the second he opens his mouth, wait’ll you see this….”
It goes on and on. It’s been a long time since you’ve ripped this movie to shreds piece by piece and you’ve forgotten how easy it is to make fun of, how absolutely fucking nonsensical the whole thing is.
“You call that shit ‘acting’?!” you explode. “Fucker’s reading off a cue card! You can see his eyes moving!”
Sollux giggles. “KK, you have another blanket? It’s fucking freezing in your respiteblock.”
“No, but here,” you say absently, lifting up a corner of your own blanket. Sollux moves in closer and yanks the blanket over his shoulders, pulling more than his share away from you.
“Watch it asshole,” you snarl, pulling the blanket back towards you.
“Come on, KK, share a little bit,” he replies, yanking back.
“Fuck you, it’s my blanket.”
The tugging goes back and forth a bit until subconsciously you both compromise and just sit closer together. Sollux is right up against you and shit, he really is freezing. Maybe if he ever gained some weight he’d actually have some body fat and wouldn’t be so cold all the time. Maybe if Sollux remembered to eat during a manic or depressive phase he wouldn’t be so skinny.
Maybe if Sollux actually took care of himself. Which he doesn’t. He doesn’t even have a moirail to remind him.
“Eat a sandwich for god’s sake, Sollux,” you tell him.
“The fuck did that come from?” he asks, actually sounding a little offended.
“Look at this,” you say, pinching his upper arm. “That’s all skin. Did you even eat today?”
He pauses, staring you down, and you stare back, like two musclebeasts about to charge one another. “…Maybe,” he replies with complete fucking confidence. He’s still fidgeting pretty restlessly.
“Fucking shit, Sollux,” you reply, exasperated. You decide not to force the issue. He wasn’t going to listen to you. Or if he did, he’d claim it wasn’t your idea, that he was going to do it anyway.
You go back to watching the movie—no, wait, it doesn’t even deserve to be called a movie—back to watching the slaughter of intelligence.
You continue ripping it to shreds like the thing’s your damn kismesis. You almost do feel a stirring of black romance for this movie. It’s the embodiment of everything that offends you on every level.
You don’t shut up the whole way through and you don’t care if you talk over the particular piece of dialogue you’re mocking at the moment. Sollux is quiet the whole time. If he hates this thing as much as you, or if he even likes it, he doesn’t tell you. Eventually he stops tapping his fingers. Somewhere about halfway through, he relaxes against you, and puts his head on your shoulder. You don’t move him. His horns are kind of poking up against your neck but it doesn’t hurt. You’ve both got your knees drawn up to your chests. Sollux has his arms wrapped around his legs, staring blankly at the screen with heterochromatic eyes, and you find yourself idly playing with one of his shoestrings. You untie it, sort of twist your fingers around in it, and he doesn’t mind.
Okay, now it’s starting to get near the end, and you hate the end most of all. Because there’s not even anything there to make fun of, it’s just boring. So fucking boring and so fucking poorly executed, there’s like a ten minute long montage with no dialogue and it’s supposed to convey all this bullshit emptiness the main character is feeling and it’s just…no. Just no. It doesn’t work. So there’s silence in the room again, and silence is what you’re trying to avoid.
Sollux gets up, and there’s a cold spot where his head was. You glance at him, trying not to look disappointed, and you see him adjusting himself so he’s lying down. He lays down on his back, and you stretch your legs out in front of you so he can put his head down on your thigh. He takes the corner of the blanket and covers his face with it. He’s quiet. The movie is ending, and the boring part is over, and you half-heartedly rip into a few more things but you can tell he’s actually falling asleep, finally.
You want to get up and change the movie but by the time the disc is finished playing, he’s asleep. His head’s turned to dead weight on your leg and his breathing is rhythmic and controlled. You’re glad for it. You don’t know for sure, but you suspect that it’s the first time he’s slept in a while.
Carefully, gently, you pull the blanket away from his face. When Sollux is asleep, when he’s not running his mouth or annoying the everloving fuck out of you, you kind of notice how unhealthy he is. The dumbass doesn’t even eat every night. He doesn’t sleep when he’s in a manic phase. He won’t get up when he’s in a depressive phase. And he doesn’t do anything to fix it. He comes to you, only sometimes, only when the dead voices are really bad, but he doesn’t tell you anything. You want to help. But you don’t. Because he wouldn’t let you.
You’ve tried to tell him, over and over, to get himself a fucking moirail. Because he’s going to end up killing himself if somebody doesn’t watch him. He’s six sweeps old but he needs constant attention like a grub. Of course, you’re not suggesting that you do it. Hell no. You’d kill him yourself after just an hour of talking to him.
You think about it, just for a moment, then you cautiously put your hand on his forehead and brush away a few strands of hair. He doesn’t stir. His hair doesn’t really feel all that soft. You start to sort of play with it without thinking about it, just staring at the blank TV screen and letting your thoughts go where they may. His hair sort of feels wiry, but the sensation it causes on your skin isn’t unpleasant and it’s sort of addicting in a small way, so you keep on running your fingers through it, and the thought that this was borderline creepy threatened to ruin the moment so you promptly told it to fuck off.
Finally, Sollux’s breathing changes. He inhales deeply and you jerk your hand away as if he stung you, and he rolls over a little bit. “Shit,” he murmurs quietly. “I fell asleep.”
“I thought that’s what you wanted, dumbass.”
He’s gone quiet. You look down; his eyes are closed again. He takes in another breath, lets it out slowly. His head is really warm against your leg. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Feeling better?”
“Hmm?”
“The voices, idiot. Are they gone?”
“For now.” You wait for him to get up. He doesn’t move, so you start looking through the pile for something else to watch. Suddenly you feel him reach up with one hand and he pats you on the head.
“Thanks, KK,” he says.
“No problem, fuckass,” you reply. He hasn’t moved his hand. Probably forgot he still had it there, so you patiently take it in your own and remove it. Sollux doesn’t let go. You feel a weird little something inside you and it’s sort of like fear and ecstasy and embarrassment all put together.
You never noticed before, but Sollux has got really long fingers. Small and thin, like the rest of him, but you wouldn’t really call them thin, you’d say they were…slender. And soft. Probably because the only thing he ever uses them for is typing. Hard to get calluses when you haven’t done a single bit of heavy lifting in your life.
He’s holding onto your hand pretty tightly, squeezing your fingers together and constantly adjusting his own. “You were petting my head,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Fucking prove it,” you reply, and hope really, really fucking hard that you’re not blushing right now.
He smirks. “It felt good.”
He’s looking at you. You refuse to meet his gaze because you know your face is completely red and he’s fucking grinning because he knows it too.
“Fine,” you reply, and you almost forcefully place your hand back on his head. You start stroking his hair again, running your fingertips around the bases of his horns, and he snuggles up against you.
“Happy now, you needy fuck?” you snap at him. He nods, an odd sensation against your leg. He opens one blue eye and peers up at you.
“Still fucking freezing,” he mutters.
“Oh my god.” You pull the blanket off your shoulders and drape it over him. “There. Now shut up and go the fuck to sleep.”