He had been lying there for some time, curled into his arms and shoulders, head dipping into his thighs as he breathed heavy and loud, as if this was some weird way he had devised to talk in his kind of contemplative hours of time wasting. You regard his pale figure with succinct interest, gnawing your teeth against each other, not eager to break skin by biting your lip like that damn idiot over there. And you're not exactly sure how to broach a conversation with him anymore. You could start yelling, but your gut feels too placated, far too somber to even feel hate for him. He just makes you feel too damn depressed looking at him. You might fucking cry, he makes you so goddamn depressed.
"God, you're pathetic," You bite a little at your tongue, but relax your jaw when you taste blood. "Just really fucking pitiful." You feel some movement against the arm you rested on his side, and his sporadic breaths from his chest throw you into a panic for a fraction of a second, making your body go numb when you realize he's just laughing. Your teeth grind into a frown, pissed at him for making you freak out for a moment, but more pissed at yourself for getting freaked out.
"What?" You hiss at him when his heads twists up a little, your teeth ache a little when you can finally see his blue eyes without his smudgy piece of shit glasses, and you're tempted to scream when you can see his stupid fucking buck teeth kind of almost quirked in a smile- but it was a bullshit effort because you've seen Egbert smile before, it's annoying and way to over the top and kind of hideous in a thousand ways but you could tell he was smiling because he had at least some faith in you and wasn't trying to be an insufferable douche. But this was his shit eating, half arsed, bullshit kind of smile that shows his top row of teeth, but really all you can fucking pay attention to is his goddamn monster beaver teeth as if this entire face was meant to accentuate the fact that they were there, and you should be looking at them. And it could almost be a smirk, but for it to fucking be that it would have to be sincere in some freaking way and there is not one part of sincerity in his not-really-a-smile smile, and it makes your blood boil and your skin grow a rash, because this was the kind of crap he gave you whenever he didn't want to fucking offend you, but you can clearly tell he thinks you're a fucking dumbass, and you have to fight your own urges to keep from punching him right in the teeth.
"Dude," His voice cracks as he talks, and all that rage you had built up kind of just goes away for a moment. You have to lean in a little to even understand what he's saying. He talks like he hasn't fucking said a word in years. Maybe that's the curse of a guy who won't shut the fuck up for five minutes. His smile kind of spreads out a little, and whatever hope you had to be angry in kind of gone in a flash, but you're kind of mistaking your confusion for anger, because it kind of makes you feel not so damn stupid. "Are you hitting on me?"
Your face flushes. You can feel it fucking flush, because your cheeks are practically bursting into flames when he says that, and you can tell you're not in your fucking mind because the first thing that you can think of when fire comes into your mind is some bullshit joke that asshole Strider kept repeating. That makes you pissed enough to make your face paler, but it goes the whole nine yards when you fucking realize that you had forgotten about what the hell calling him pitiful could probably even imply, especially since to some extent you did pity him at that moment, curled up in his own misery. And you might go off deep end when it dawns on you that the human, for just a while, remembered more about troll romance than you—the goddamn encyclopedia on that shit- knew.
You're not exactly sure how much time with humans you had been spending, but you figure way too fucking much.
You open your mouth to scream at him for even suggesting such things, but you're too choked up and you make a weird breathy, crackle tone. You grit your teeth and swallow, glaring at his kind of hopeful smile, "Shut the fuck up Egbert," You growl more than speak, shoving his face into the dirt and using it as a crutch to get to your feet. You can hear him laugh, but it's weak and somehow the fact that he's even struggling to laugh pisses you off. It really does. You can't fucking stand to be around him anymore, not if he's going to be like this. And you're trying to walk away, but that piece of crap is wrapping his arms around your legs and no matter how loud you curse, or how much you try to get out of his obnoxious grapple he keeps giggling like a fucking moron until he manages to trip you over.
Your face pretty much feels like the goddamn forge now and you swear to your ancestors that you're going to end Johns' life there are now. But he's already on top of you as you lie there on your belly, holding your arm behind your back and giggling like a madman, maybe even full out fucking laughing, you can't really tell with this idiot because something's is wrong with him, honest to god broken. You have a mouthful of dirt in your mouth, your wrists kind of hurt from breaking your fall, and he's got you pinned to the ground, cackling like it's the funniest fucking thing he had ever seen. You can't remember ever being this pissed off. You can't even remember if this is what being pissed off feels like.
You bare your teeth at him and growl, and he still smiles. "Get the fuck off, Egbert," You damn near scream, and he keeps on laughing, head damn near resting on yours. You snap your neck up and knock your skull against his nose, breaking his laughing long enough to break his hold so you could reverse the roles and lock him on the ground, looking at him, face to face. You're both breathing heavy, or you're at the very least breathing heavy enough for the both of them. He's not smiling, but his cheeks look like they're ready to burst. You're tempted to rip his skin off. He can see that murderous look in your eye, and breaks down laughing again. You're about ready to kill. And you damn near do, but instead your vicious attacks against him somehow degrade into wrestling you would classify as anything but friendly.
He keeps laughing the entire time. You yell at him to shut the fuck up, but that only makes him laugh even more, and then eventually you both get so damn tired that you can't try to hit him anymore, and he can't laugh anymore, and you're not really angry anymore so you decide to lay next to him as he pants and you look at the clouds wondering how to hell you managed to degrade yourself enough to even do this kind of shit with a guy as annoying as John. Fuck you hate him. Or pity him. Or what the fuck ever. It's been so goddamn long, you really realize you don't actually remember that much fucking shit about being a troll anymore. Maybe that idea depresses you, but mostly, you feel kind of okay with it. Not okay in the okay sense, but in the sense that, this isn't the end of you, you'll get your shit together, you'll figure it out, there's more important crap to worry about.
Like right now, you and John are sitting on the ledge of this ridiculously high cliff. There's some blue ocean crashing around below. It's not anything like any ocean you've ever seen before. It's fucking pristine, is what this is. If you weren't so goddamn terrified of the fact you would die if you fell off, you might just jump down and scare the shit out of Egbert. Because he deserves it for smiling like that, for being so content or whatever when you probably couldn't have stopped him if he decided to flop down to his death hours before—but you're too fucking exhausted to be pissed off so you just try to fake it, and push his face, knocking his glasses askew just a little bit. His ugly peaceful face gave that stupid fucking smile you hated, giving you his full attention.
"Knock it out." You say, making direct eye contact. He broke out into a smile that was sincere, and you hadn't even realized you were on edge until he did.
"Knock what out?" He asked. It was a genuine question, which didn't grate you as much if he had given one of those obviously fake kind of questions he asked when he knew full well what you were talking about.
"Being so damn happy. You're creeping me out." You hitch your shoulders when he laughs, and it isn't crackly or broken, but actually kind of happy and a little bit of something else you recognize, but can't identify. You aren't even looking at him anymore. Knowing that idiot he's still looking at you.
You both sit in relative silence after that. Relative, because John won't shut up, and he keeps talking to you. But you're not really even annoyed listening to him, because his voice seems to have a lot a purpose right now, and you can hear a soft sort of vibrato in his tone. He isn't really hyped up and yelling right now. This is the most genuine you've ever heard him. And in a weird way, you feel somewhat at ease listening. And at some point you started talking back and you weren't totally pissed off by the sound of your own voice, and after some time you two had talked so much that you didn't even notice when you stopped.
Not until John looked at you, and you mean really looked at you, and gave you that bullshit kind of smile that you hate, but didn't really hate so much right then and there because you kind of realized this smile was so much more in pain than any other, that his eyes were kind of scrunched up together and his buck teeth seemed almost normal compared to the rest of his, and he was almost biting at his lip but not really, and he almost touched your shoulder but didn't even move, and he gave this kind of weary breath before his lips quirked up a little more and said, "You really would have been great as a human."
And you're almost tempted to respond, to say something stupid or foul or angry or uncharacteristically receptive and positive, but you're really just too damned tired to do much of anything, and he really just looks too damned sad and pitiful, and you kind of start to wonder at this point if he's just being an ignorant douchebag again or something else that you recognize but can't identify exactly. But he looks too damn sincere for that. And you want to imagine that you're pissed off for him being serious when saying that, but really, you're not, and you're not even sure why you aren't, because what he said is bullshit, and he's full of shit, and you verbally and physically tell him this, but you're too damn tired to really put any energy behind it.
And you're really not sure why, but you still can't shake this nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that he's absolutely right.