Oh, my God, today was so full of drama. I cannot wait to sleep.
By the way, NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER FEEL BAD ABOUT LEAVING ME A LONG REVIEW. I cannot begin to describe how much I love knowing exactly what you all like and dislike about this fic, and I got some really good reviews on Act 54. Speaking of which, many thanks to iDreamBig, TooLazyToLogIn, Wolfen Artist of Hetalia, LinkinPark X, SlytherinUnicorns, Bitblondetoday, and two guest who left reviews in English for your reviews to the last act. To the guest who left a review in Serbian... I am so sorry, I have no idea what you said, because I live in America and have never even heard Serbian before in my life.
Oh, you get more fun times in this chapter.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Sol was chuckling nervously. "He's—" he started, probably about to comment on Cronus's behavior, but Eridan was pretty anxious to resume their elevator shenanigans because he cut Sol off by capturing his mouth again, sinking his fingers into Sol's hair. Sol let out a faint gasp of surprise (Eridan didn't think he'd ever get tired of hearing that sound) before cupping Eridan's face, knocking both of their glasses off-kilter, and returning the kiss just as eagerly as he received it. Finally, it felt like he could breathe again. His lungs didn't seem to want to work properly unless they were fighting with Sol's over the same air. Sol's lips felt soft and warm against his, and their bodies so close together made Eridan feel somehow both safe and out-of-control. He just wanted to hang onto him and kiss him until their lips bled.
He slid his fingers under the collar of the shirt Sol wore, wondering how the skin of his neck and shoulders would feel between his teeth, his hands itching to undo all those buttons, and he suddenly cursed himself for picking this shirt for him in the first place—true, he wore it well, but those buttons were going to end up being a hassle later, he could just tell. He was already so distracted that he couldn't concentrate on anything but getting Sol that much closer to him, but Sol's hands stayed firmly above his shoulders no matter where Eridan's hands strayed—and stray they did. He ran one hand down Sol's side and back up under his shirt, lightly scratching his nails along his side and enjoying the shudder that ran through Sol's body. At first, Eridan thought Sol was just focusing on his neck, but even through the hormone-riddled haze in his head, it slowly became apparent that Sol didn't want to lower his hands, and for reasons he couldn't fathom, it bothered Eridan. Was Sol actually afraid to touch him too much? Now?
He grabbed Sol's hands and moved them to his waist, running his tongue across Sol's as he did so. "It's okay," he murmured, pulling back a half an inch for just a moment. "I'm not gonna freak out or anythin'."
"I just don't want to push you into something—"
"Sol. Listen to me. If I didn't wanna kiss you, I wouldn't be. If I didn't want your hands on me, you better believe they wouldn't be. I don't know why you think I'm not, but I'm actually okay with all this. I like you, okay? I'm not gonna push you away, so why don't you let me worry about when it's goin' too far, okay?"
Sol swallowed hard and nodded, and Eridan realized suddenly just how douchey that sounded.
"Sorry, that's not..." He sighed. "Look, Sol, I don't want you to think I'm doin' this just 'cause I feel like I have to. I like you an' I want you to... to touch me, okay? I mean, I've basically already kinda accepted the fact that, whoo-hoo, looks like I actually do like guys. You don't have to be afraid..." His voice trailed off, and that's when it clicked. It wasn't that Sol didn't want to touch him or something—he wanted to, but he was afraid to. "What happened?"
Sol sighed, let go of Eridan, and gently dropped to the edge of the sheetless bed. Eridan was strongly tempted to sit next to him, but Sol had distanced himself for a purpose, so he settled cross-legged onto the floor. "So this isn't the first time a guy used me as his gay experiment."
"Hang on, that's not—" Eridan protested, but Sol cut him off.
"Oh, yes, it was. Just because it's made it to this point, with us actually dating, doesn't change how it started. You didn't realize you liked guys until you kissed me."
I didn't realize I liked guys until I met you. It didn't take kissing you to figure that out, Eridan wanted to say, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew what Sol was trying to say, and loathe as he was to admit it, he was right. It made him feel like an even bigger douche than normal. There had been hints before they even kissed—his eyes on Sol longer than strictly necessary and looking forward to his stupid pranks since he so desperately craved attention and knowing that somewhere, there was someone who spent a lot of time thinking about him.
"But the first time didn't end like this," Sol went on. "It ended... pretty badly, actually. He flat-out said to me that being with me made him realize how straight he really was. And that was after two months of fucking around, so it was a pretty big slap in the face. And it was even worse since I wasn't even sure I was bi until... we started doing whatever the fuck it was that we were doing. And being with him made me realize that I did like boys, so I just felt like a worthless piece of shit for the next..." His voice caught and he swallowed again. "The next year and a half. So I'm just not that anxious to rush into that kind of relationship again."
Eridan wanted to tackle Sol to the bed and cuddle him until it didn't hurt anymore. He couldn't believe someone could actually hurt Sol like that—it didn't seem possible. How could anyone willingly hurt him like that? "So who was he?"
The way Sol avoided his gaze tipped him off. "You don't want to know."
"I know him, don't I?"
"Yeah. And like I said, you don't want to know."
"I actually do."
"I don't want you to kick his ass or something. I'm over it."
"That's not why I wanna know."
"Then why? Planning on judging me for my shitty taste?"
"Jesus fuck, Sol, what the fuck? Why would I do somethin' that messed-up? I mean, I'm a little bit of a douche, but not on that fuckin' level. No, God, I... I just wanna make sure I treat you better than he did."
Something behind Sol's eyes softened and for a second, Eridan was pretty sure he was about to cry, but then he didn't. He just nodded. "It... it was KK."
Eridan felt like he'd been hit by a truck. "KK? Karkat? Karkat Vantas? Short and shouty?"
"Nubs McShouty, yeah," Sol confirmed with a small smile at Karkat's nickname. "We're kind of getting back on track to being friends again but it took a long time to even get here."
"I'm sorry. I had no idea."
"That was kind of the point."
Again, Eridan was swept by the urge to hug Sol, and this time, he actually did. He got up, sat down next to Sol, and put his arms around him, and after a moment of awkward maneuvering, Sol managed to wrap his arms around Eridan. He rested his head on Sol's shoulder and the two of them sat there for several long minutes, and Sollux felt immensely grateful for their proximity. Eridan had assuaged all his doubts about their physical contact and now he was just happy to enjoy the feeling of Eridan's arms around him and his arms around Eridan. It was soothing.
He became dimly aware that Eridan was nuzzling into his neck and he was pretty sure he felt lips pressing into the curve where his neck met his shoulder but he just closed his eyes and let it happen. It felt nice, and besides, he wanted to see just how far he would take it with his brother in the living room. He didn't think it would go all that far until Eridan actually bit his neck and suddenly Sollux's fingernails dug into Eridan's shoulders and he let out a tiny sound that could have been a whimper. Eridan nibbled gently on the skin of his neck and Sollux's head involuntarily tipped back, inviting further exploration. The shorter boy moved across him until he was straddling Sollux's lap, and then he began moving his teeth and lips up Sollux's neck to his jaw, his chin, his lips, and they were kissing again, open-mouthed and suddenly needy. Sollux licked every possible surface of Eridan's mouth, desperate to memorize the taste of him, and his hands found their way beneath Eridan's shirt and over his chest. He couldn't stop touching him, running his fingers over every inch of skin he could, and he felt a spark of self-satisfaction when, with one hand pressed over Eridan's heart, Sollux sucked Eridan's lower lip into his mouth and nibbled, and Eridan's heart actually skipped a beat.
Eridan started fumbling with the buttons on Sollux's shirt (It's still his shirt, he reminded himself), his already-apparent arousal clearly offsetting his coordination, and Sollux started working from the bottom up so they met in the middle. The moment the last button had been undone, Eridan shoved it open and pushed it over his shoulders, down his arms, and finally off to fling it to the side. Before Sollux could even think about removing Eridan's shirt or either of their glasses, Eridan was kissing back down Sollux's chest and he couldn't help but lean back until he was completely lying down and Eridan was scraping his teeth along Sollux's ribs.
Sollux knew he was breathing more heavily than normal and his heart was thumping hard in his chest and Eridan just kept going lower and lower and he tried not to torture himself with the thought that he was getting extremely close to his jeans and he'd gone commando that day and Eridan might be about to—
And then Eridan was unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans, and God, Sollux felt so much better the moment his cock was free and an involuntary moan escaped his lips when he realized that Eridan was already stroking him and all it was doing was making him harder. He closed his eyes and just let himself lose himself in Eridan until he felt a wet heat on his dick and his eyes flew open.
"Eridan," he whimpered, the other boy's name a plea. Eridan's wide purple eyes looked up, but Sollux couldn't tear his gaze away from the sight of his dick half in Eridan's mouth.
"Is this okay?" Eridan asked, completely removing Sollux's cock from between his lips before he spoke.
Sollux struggled to find the words he wanted to say. He really, really wanted Eridan to suck him off, but not if Eridan wasn't fully okay with it. "You don't have to," he breathed.
"I want to," Eridan insisted. "I wanna try. Okay?"
Sollux nodded quickly and he moaned again when his cock almost completely disappeared back into Eridan's mouth. He worried for two seconds about Cronus barging in on them, catching them like this, but then Eridan's tongue began a slow, dreamy revolution around the head of his dick and he stopped caring about anything at all except how fucking good it felt like this. The only thing he could focus on was Eridan, and, true, his technique was frankly shitty at times, but considering this was the first time he'd gone down on another guy, he wasn't doing too badly at all.
Still, he felt Eridan's teeth more often than he was strictly comfortable with. Sollux tried to keep his thoughts together in order to form coherent sentences, but he could only manage to gasp out, "Teeth." Somehow, though, Eridan understood what he was trying to say and his jaw dropped, hollowing his already-narrow cheeks, and his tongue ran up the underside of Sollux's dick. He groaned, the power of speech abandoning him, and all he could utter was a formless string of vowels that he hoped sounded like praise or encouragement.
Eridan's head started bobbing faster up and down Sollux's shaft and he balled his hands into fists, struggling to grab sheets before remembering that they were in the washing machine downstairs, and he felt a telltale heat pooling in his belly and he knew he had to warn Eridan—Hey, ED, I'm about to jizz, so you might want to change your method if you don't want to get a mouth full of it—but his brain was already half-melted and all he could manage was, "Oh, God, ED, gonna... I'm gonna... oh, yeah..." before he came, reduced to just sounds and so far beyond caring if Cronus caught them that he almost hoped he would. Yep, your little brother just sucked my cock. What are you going to do about it?
His vision returned gradually, but when he could finally take in his surroundings, there was Eridan—Sollux hadn't noticed until now, but he'd sunk to his knees on the floor between Sollux's spread legs—still on the floor with a huge grin on his face. He playfully wiped at the corner of his mouth and asked, "So I did good?"
Sollux very nearly laughed. "Yeah. You did great."
"Great." Eridan crawled over him, lightly biting at Sollux's shoulder and neck but carefully avoiding kissing him. He seemed to sense that he needed to brush his teeth now that his mouth tasted like Sollux's come. For a few moments, they lay there, and Sollux was just starting to contemplate returning the favor when there came a loud knock and Cronus was calling through the door, "Hey, you guys ready to eat?"
Well, that's not going to happen anytime soon.
"Uh, yeah," Eridan said, trying to adopt a casual air. "If you open that door, I will kill you. Just give us like five minutes an' we'll be right out."
Cronus sounded highly amused, as if he could tell what they'd just been doing. "No rush. No rush at all."
"Oh, my God," Eridan muttered. "I cannot believe his shitty timing."
"It could have been worse," Sollux pointed out. "He could have interrupted us in the middle of something."
"We were in the middle of something."
"We were at a stopping point." Sollux quickly nipped at Eridan's neck. "But don't worry," he added quietly, right into his ear. "We're definitely going to pick up where we left off later."
Eridan grinned, a thrill of anticipation running down his spine. "I can't wait."
It's all fun and games until you bring up the exes.
