8. Why Douchebags Shouldn't Be Allowed On Laptops

Your name is Sollux Captor and you are pretty fucking furious. You have walked in on, of all people (or ghosts), fucking ERIDAN on your LAPTOP. You don't like anyone messing around on your laptop, first of all, but the fact that he did it while you weren't home, while he KNEW you weren't home, and without your permission?

You stomp over to your laptop and literally wrench his hands away from your laptop, resulting in a pained yelp and him fully appearing. He looks scared. Good. He should be.

"What. The. FUCK. Were you doing on my laptop?" you ask in a low voice, holding his wrists captive as you glare at him.

"I wwasn't doin' anythin', Sol- OW!" he yelps again as you twist his wrists.

"I repeat. What were you doing on my laptop?" you hiss, but untwist his wrists.

"I wwas just lookin' through some files, okay?! But I didn't mess wwith anythin', I swwear!" he whines, trying to tug his wrists out of your grip to no avail. It's like he's forgotten he can just disappear. That's pretty dumb.

"And you didn't fuck anything up, right?" you tighten your grip on his wrists just barely, and he groans in pain.

"Yes, yes! I didn't fuck anythin' up, all right?" He's still trying to tug his wrists out of your grip.

"Good," you snap and let go of him.

He jumps away from you, then goes over to the bed, scowling and rubbing his wrists. "You could'vve just asked nicely, you knoww," he grumbles, looking down.

You sit down in your chair and start closing any windows he opened. "You could've jutht dithappeared again, you know," you reply as condescendingly as you can, scowling at your screen.

He flushes in embarrassment, and you sigh. "Thorry for hurting you," you mumble, not making eye contact.

"Hurtin' me? Sol, I'm a ghost. I can't feel pain," he says as he sort of smiles, and it's your turn to flush in embarrassment. Of course he can't feel pain, why did you try and hurt him to get answers? Well, you were angry, but still…

You sigh and say, "Thtill, I'm thorry."

"It's fine," he mumbles back, and you two settle into a comfortable silence for a while as you get to work on some programs.

Eridan nearly scares the shit out of you when he sneaks up behind you unintentionally and asks, "Wwhat are you doin'?"

You yelp, but manage to recover your breathing a minute later and say, "Coding."

"Wwhat's that?"

"It'th… putting together different componenth… it'th… how do I explain it…? It'th like creating programth that do different thingth for your computer."

"Is that wwhat all those zeroes an' ones on your background are?"

"Yup."

After that, he goes back to your bed and leaves you alone in another comfortable silence.

It startles both of you when your phone goes off in your pocket, and you pull it out. You don't recognize the number, but you answer it anyway, "Hello?"

"Is this Sollux?"

"Aradia? Ith that you?" You lean back in your computer chair, raising an eyebrow. Eridan is giving you a weird look, but you ignore him.

"Sollux! I'm so glad I caught you. Hey, are you busy right now?"

"Um- I, uh, no. Why?"

"I was wondering if I could come over so we can work on our project! I would offer for you to come over instead, but my mom's at work and probably wouldn't want some boy I just met to come over today."

"Yeah, it'th fine. I live in the mansion near the edge of town. Do you know the one?" you ask, and there's silence from the line.

Then she says a bit less confidently, "Um… yeah! Yeah, I'll be right over!"

Click.

She hung up.

You put your phone back down, and immediately Eridan asks you, "Wwho wwas that?"

"A girl I met at thchool today."

"Is she comin' ovver?"

"Yeth."

"Wwhy?"

"We're working on a project, okay? I don't know when she'll be over, but when she ith, you're going to need to go away. You know that, right?"

"Fine," he snaps, then disappears.

"Wait, I didn't mean right now! … Fuck, whatever," you grumble, and busy yourself with coding until Aradia gets here.

{}

Half an hour later, you hear the doorbell and you rush downstairs to get it. When you open the door, there's Aradia standing there, and wow she still looks really pretty. You attempt to smile and mumble, "Hello," before waving her in.

She greets you and steps inside the house, immediately looking up at the ceiling. "It's so big in here!" she exclaims, grinning.

"Heh, yeah," you say, awkwardly scratching the back of your head.

"So where do you want to work?" she asks then, turning to you.

"Um, I don't really care. My room'th fine, I gueth," you casually shrug, and you totally pulled it off correctly, shut up.

"Okay then!" she says cheerily, and you both start walking towards the stairs when your brother appears from the kitchen, munching on string cheese.

He sees you and Aradia and grins, asking, "You don't even introduthe me and you're already bringing her upthtairth? Clathy, Thollux."

You flush a deep red and glare at him, but ignore him.

Aradia looks confused and asks, "Why is there a copy of you standing over there?"

"That'th my twin brother, Mituna. He'th an athhole. Now come on," you grumble and start walking upstairs.

"Nithe to meet you, Thollux'th 'friend'!" You can hear the quotations on the word "friend", goddammit.

When you and Aradia get to your room, you close the door and sit down on the floor with her. "Tho, what ith thith project anyway?"

"We get to research the Cold War, and we have to do a presentation and everything. Sounds fun, right?" she says as she attempts a smile, but really looks 200% done with history class already.

"Ew," you mumble, getting up to grab your laptop before sitting back down. "Tho what thpethifically do we need to rethearch?"

As you two start talking about the project, you notice Eridan sitting on your bed, behind Aradia so she can't see him. He's looking over her shoulder, scowling down on the papers you two have written on. Maybe you or she wrote something down that was wrong? Oh whatever, he can deal with it.

{}

Your name is Eridan Ampora and you're pretty pissed. You admit it was your fault for getting on his laptop without permission, but then he has the audacity to invite some chick over when you were having a moment. Also, he specifically said you needed to not be there while she was.

He didn't hurt you when he gripped your wrists, but he did hurt you when you had to point out that because you were dead he couldn't hurt you.

Nonetheless, right now you're staring down at their papers. They have some project to do, you don't know. But it looks like they're researching the Cold War.

You're a bit of a history geek if you say so yourself. No, you're definitely a history geek. You used to love history, acing all your history classes and reading history books in your free time. All of your friends- few as they were- knew you were the go-to person for help on history homework. You know, before you died.

You sigh as quietly as you can- I mean there's a human who doesn't know about you inches away from you- and settle back. You see Sollux glaring at you- what did you do this time? Damn.

You move to lie down on the bed and glare back at Sollux, who rolls his eyes at you and returns to conversing with Aradia.

Ugh. Aradia. You wish she weren't here. She seems like a nice person, it's just… you and Sollux were actually getting along for once, and then she came over. You're not jealous! You're not. You just wish you and Sollux could have some genuine non-romantic bro time.

Yeah, you're not jealous at all.

{}

Your name is once again Sollux Captor, and you are currently working on a project with Aradia while trying to ignore Eridan, who looks upset for who knows what reasons. But you've been paying attention to Aradia as well, and you can see her getting increasingly uncomfortable? She keeps looking around her, and frowning a bit. You haven't moved from your spot… maybe she senses Eridan right behind her?

You chew on your lip, then ask, "Hey, what'th up? You look… um… uncomfortable."

She jumps, obviously not expecting you to notice, then looks down and mumbles, "Well, this house… No, never mind, it's stupid."

But your curiosity has been piqued. "What ith it?"

She sighs, then looks up at you nervously. "Well, there have been… rumors. Rumors about this house, the old Ampora mansion."

"What rumorth are thothe?" Shit, is this why Aranea told you not to ask about it? You can see Eridan's paying attention now though, sitting up and looking at the back of her head.

"Well, the old owners… you know, Dualscar and his two sons… were really rich. Like, super rich. Filthy rich. When the younger son, Eridan, was a junior and the older son, Cronus, was a senior, they vanished. Completely."

"What the fuck…?" you mumble, staring wide-eyed at her.

"It's a local tale that I've heard- it happened quite a few years ago, maybe about 20 years ago. They had to destroy all records of it for it not to get out, of course… I mean, Dualscar was a very important businessman, so a lot of people knew of him, which is why they had to cover the disappearance up. Only the locals know about it… I heard it from my mom. But since you just moved here, it makes sense that you don't know."

"What… what are thome of the rumorth?" you ask, a little bit scared but curious enough.

"Well… there are some that the Amporas just completely moved out and went to a different town without saying good-bye. There are others that they were wanted by the FBI and had to move to a different country. But the most popular one is that they were murdered," she says, her voice hushed.

"Murdered?" Shit, that would explain a lot, wouldn't it?

"Yeah. Of course, then there are different rumors for what they did with the bodies. Cut up and thrown in a well, buried in the cellar, burned and put in the archives of the Town Hall…"

"Damn. That'th thome… methed up shit. But nobody really knowth what happened, do they?"

"No, not really. Nobody talks about it, of course, because it was a bad time in history," she says, looking at you without a smile for once.

"That might explain why the librarian wouldn't talk when I athked her about it… I went to do rethearch at the library, but I couldn't find anything on the computer or paper files. When I athked the librarian, she warned me not to ask anyone about it," you say, looking down and frowning.

"Like I said, nobody talks about it. Anyone who does… well, we don't hear from them ever again. I'll put it that way," she says, and now you're legitimately scared.

"But… we're talking about it," you point out, raising an eyebrow.

"It's not like they have eyes and ears everywhere! Come on Sollux, do you really think they'll know if we're talking about it inside the mansion itself?" she laughs, and you both drop it to return to your project, but you can't stop thinking about it.

Your life just got a lot more interesting.

{}

Your name is once again Eridan Ampora, and for you, death just got a lot more complicated.