Sollux still hadn't managed to ease the knots from his stomach.
He had thought that perhaps an hour or two of trying to break the encryption would be relaxing enough to untangle the mess his innards had managed to twist themselves into. In reality it only served to make things worse.
He stared at the flickering screen of his grubtop, the only light in this deep portion of the lab. He had chosen a rather dark area, surrounded with gaping pits. It wasn't exactly the epitome of safety, but when all it took was a quick thought to lift himself from the ground, the threat of long falls didn't worry him much. He had just wanted to go as deep as he could, to run away from the conversation he'd had with his future self.
And yet even in this dismal place, its long fingers managed to reach him, wrapping around his neck, choking him.
He had never expected thoughts of forming a quadrant with Eridan to bother him so much.
It was a joke, he told himself again. It was something he was surely meant to laugh at. It was something he should be laughing at, by all rights. Eridan was nothing but a huge joke to him. A sad, awkward, and really uncomfortable joke, but a joke nonetheless. Something that was never meant to be given serious thought. And yet here he was, giving the sea dipshit serious thought.
He rapped his fingers against his keyboard, trying to figure out if the encryption was using some convoluted algorithm, to no avail. He leaned his elbow on his knee and propped his cheek on his palm, the buzz of voices in his skull growing louder in the suffocating silence of the room around him. In crowded areas where it was impossible to string together two thoughts without some outside distraction, the constant hum in his brain hardly bothered him. It was when he tried to retreat into silence or close his eyes to sleep that they became relentless. It was no different now. As he pushed his other thoughts away and tried to focus on the screen, the screams crept up his brain stem and flooded his skull. He rubbed his eyes behind his glasses, blinking as he squinted at the characters scrolling across the screen in front of him.
He sat back after what seemed like hours of fruitless typing and eye-rubbing and voice-ignoring. The encryption refused to yield. It was, quite simply, a problem he never encountered. And it was beginning to piss him off. And being pissed off made him think of other things that pissed him off, and at the moment those other things consisted almost wholly of Eridan, which just served to piss him off even further.
He was almost grateful for the distraction.
He poked at his backspace button absently, fuming. He wasn't sure what he was going to do about the situation now. He had to emerge from the bowels of the lab at some point, and when he did, he knew that Eridan was likely to be there. Knowing him, he would probably try to initiate another duel to take vengeance for his hurt feelings from the last idiotic spar they'd had. And what then? Sollux knew he should simply refuse. That was the best and safest route for everyone. It avoided further entanglements of dubious platonic rancor, and would no doubt keep his stomach unknotted.
But he had already made a promise to Feferi, and by extension himself, that he would kill Eridan. And really, even if a second duel only served to muddle his brains and feelings more, if he could use the opportunity to simply relieve the sea dwelling asshole of his pathetic existence, then it wouldn't matter. He would be free, and the fact that Eridan somehow had an uncanny ability to rattle Sollux's blackrom chains with the most mundane of provocations would cease to have any immediate relevance.
But Sollux would have to kill Eridan first. And he wasn't sure that he could. Not for lack of ability, of course. If their last duel had done nothing else, it had at least been an accurate demonstration of how much better psychic energy was at dealing out copious amounts of pain than any sort of weaponry. No, his ability to kill Eridan was not even a question. He could do it, and easily. The real problem was actually scraping up a sincere desire to see it through.
And that scared him.
He told himself repeatedly that it was largely due to the guilt he had felt after the incident with Aradia. That it had somehow damaged his innate desire to kill. Yet the knots in his stomach put forth a very different, more unsettling argument.
It was because he liked Eridan's antagonism.
Again, it was something he never would've even given a second thought had it not been for his future self. His goddamned good for nothing future self, who just had to tell him that a relationship with Eridan was imminent. Of course he'd tried to remedy the situation by telling himself that such an idiotic future self was probably just part of some shithole doomed timeline because there was no way anything remotely alpha would support a relationship of such retarded proportions. But trying to convince himself that forming a quadrant with Eridan was not necessarily inevitable had done nothing to quell the burning realization that the prince of dope's needling and whiny little challenges were irritating enough to be erotic.
As he had done multiple times already, Sollux attacked the thought with as much brain soap as he could muster, trying to scrub it from the walls of his cranium. But caliginous thoughts concerning the sea dweller had generated so much graffiti on the inside of his skull already that he was having a difficult time keeping up.
He snapped his grubtop shut and let himself stew in the darkness for a time, relishing in the way it pressed against his eyes.
But not for long.
A flash of white light snapped across his vision, making him reel. He blinked furiously, trying to make the glowing imprint it had left on his retinas disappear. But it never did. It was then that he realized the light was not generated by his eyes, but by the barrel of a gun.
He leapt to his feet, clenching his fists until red and blue light burst forth. It lit up the lab around him, including the distant figure of a caped troll, smiling through a layer of dried purple blood.
Shit. Fuck. Sollux clenched his fists tighter. He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready, he couldn't be forced to make a decision yet. Kill him or not. Kill him or not. Kill him or not. He squeezed his eyes shut.
"So, Sol, I guess you probably thought you could hide from me down here," Eridan said as he began to move forward, his rifle held loosely at his side. "That's understandable seein' as how fuckin' pissed I am and how I'm about to rain a bunch of fuckin' justice down on your double-horned head. But you're actually pretty predictable, once I took the time to think about it. You think you're such a fuckin' genius with your two brains, but it didn't take me too long to figure out where a coward would scamper off to. I mean, really, it was fuckin' wriggler's play to find you."
Sollux blinked his eyes open in bewilderment. "Wow, that wath really thtupid," he blurted.
Eridan's expression stiffened. His lip curled. "What?"
"That jutht now. What you thaid. It wath really thtupid. I'm not even bothered by it," Sollux continued, his voice now growing giddy with relief. "I don't know if I jutht built you up in my paranoia or what, but you actually legitimately fucking thuck at thith, don't you? You couldn't antagonithe thomeone if your life depended on it." He wanted to laugh. So he did. He put a hand to his forehead and doubled over, chuckling so fitfully that his knotted stomach threatened to empty its contents over the tile.
"Those were just my openin' statements, you excrement spittin' idiot," Eridan snapped. "Like I would come down here with only a fuckin' daggerlance in my arsenal. Which is a lot more than I can say for some nook-lickin' amateurs I have the misfortune a knowin'."
Sollux kept an eye on Eridan's gun, but its barrel never raised. Nor was the sea dweller's finger anywhere near the trigger. Sollux squinted.
"Wait, are you being theriouth?" he asked incredulously. "You actually came down here with the intent of hurt my feelingth?" He felt his lips pull back over his fangs as his face was forced to yield another grin. "All right. Yeah. That'th completely cool. Do your wortht. I want to thee how badly I mithjudged you."
Yet, he felt his stomach twist painfully as he spoke. A knife to his side, with a message pinned to the handle. You want him to goad you, it read.
Sollux licked his lips.
Eridan, in the meantime, looked a bit taken aback. His eyes flicked from side to side, his posture losing some of its puffed up certainty.
"Well," he began, licking his still bloodstained lips. "I know about your split brain. I mean, it's not a secret that you're just some lowblooded freak who only managed to escape culling by runnin' away to this fucked up cyberspace that you managed to create outta shit you dug up from the ground."
Sollux's lips pulled back further. But even the act of smiling was painful. His stomach was tight. Clenching painfully, as if he'd swallowed a half-baked grubloaf that was now wriggling through his intestines.
"Ith that it?" he asked, his voice edged with mocking laughter. "You're big plan ith to jutht thtand there and thpout off the obviouth?" He shook his head, pressing his lips together to avoid the sudden onslaught of nausea. He bent to pick up his grubtop before straightening. "You got one thing wrong though, dumbath," he said. "It wath Aradia who dug thothe ruinth out of the ground and convinthed me to make a game out of them."
The memory made him remember the screaming. It was even louder then, amplified by the voices of every troll on the planet. Even before knowing what the game was or what it would mean for his species, Sollux had heard those screams and not expected to live a long life. Culling had never been a worry for him.
The jab was, all in all, unremarkable at best. Unbearably dull at worst.
"That's right, it was her, wasn't it, I mean, how silly a me to forget," Eridan said with all the disgusting coyness of a troll holding royal flush in his hand. Sollux frowned. It had not been the reaction from the sea dweller he'd been expecting. "I guess it's just because I don't give a flippin' shit about her either way. But you did."
Sollux gripped his grubtop tighter, his stomach roiling with a different kind of sensation now. A distant burning. "Where the fuck are you trying to go with thith? When'th all the pain thuppothed to come crashing down on my shoulderth? I'm thitting on my ath and waiting for the show to thtart, fish breath. Don't athk me to play along with whatever thort of game you thought it would be fun to thlap together ath thome thort of crutch for your inadequathy."
"You're the one fuckin' avoidin' the gunblasts here, not me," Eridan burst out suddenly, his eyes wild in the flickering red and blue light. "If you want to present yourself as an open target like the pants-wetting novice that you are, go ahead. But if it's a servin' a verbal slaughter that you want shoved down your slimy yellow protein chute then stop dodgin' the fuckin' feeding prongs."
"Then thay whatever the fuck it ith you came down here to thay tho that I can laugh in your fathe and we can all go back to the exthiting agendath we've drawn up for ourthelveth to whittle away at the pathetic thliver of time we have left on thith rock," Sollux snapped.
"You cared about that fuckin' red blooded dirtscraper, didn't you?" Eridan cut in, as if the phrase had been boiling in his gut for hours and had only now just been released.
"Yeah, I did, tho what? Are you going to talk about how thad it maketh you that a yellow-blooded double-brained freak can get more action than your pompouth ath?" Sollux rebuked, his glowing fists clenched at his sides.
"How much more action, Sol?" Eridan snapped back, his pupils so large in the dim light that his eyes looked almost entirely black. "I mean, really, tell me. I'm so fuckin' interested in your mundane quadrant exploits. How was fillin' all those pails?"
Sollux paused for a beat. The remark had come as an uppercut where he'd been expecting a jab.
"Come on, Sol, don't be shy. I know how much you love lordin' your romantic conquests over me like you think it gets to me. So why don't you just tell me how amazin' it was bein' Ar's matesprit. Or even Fef. Yeah, that always puts a hole in my expandin' and collapsin' bladder based aquatic vascular system. Tell me how awesome it is bein' Fef's matesprit since she wants nothing to do with me anymore."
Sollux's throat grew tight. The laughter had drained from his face along with the color. The voices grew louder in his head, a screaming reminder. A reminder of Aradia's face as he'd tried to explain. Tried to explain that he had no feelings for her even as his chest ached so badly he thought he might suffocate. And then the next day, when she had cast her sad gaze over to him, feeling nothing at all, the cries of anguish ripping at his brains.
"What's the matter, Sol?" Eridan asked, his voice suddenly quiet. "Don't tell me you haven't made any moves yet. That's pretty fuckin' pathetic, even from my standpoint, since we all know how fuckin' desperate I am. But I guess we're not all that different, are we? I couldn't keep my fins in that shithole quadrant with Fef where I guess they were supposed to stay forever."
Sollux felt as if he had been hit in the gut. He tried to swallow air. To think. But all he could do was listen to the screams and the soft snap of a realization fitting itself together.
"KK told you," he said. There was no anger in his voice. Just a faintness. A feeble attempt to disregard a truth that had wrapped itself around his eyes.
"You really think I need Kar to figure out that your bisected spine bulge has made you a quiverin' heap a gelatinous grub slop? It's pretty fuckin' obvious that you're nothin' but a huge asshole, even to the people practically throwin' themselves at you."
Sollux's fists tightened. The realization was tightening around his head, pressing into his eyes. Light snapped over the retinas. The lack of air in his lungs began to burn. "KK told you," he repeated.
"How many times do you gotta make me repeat myself, Sol?" Eridan retorted, his rifle still held loosely at his side. "I can understand not likin' to look at those ugly truths about yourself, I mean it's something I try to avoid doin' too. But I guess I came around. Thanks for showin' me what a huge desperate piece a shit I was, that one was pretty hard to look away from."
Eridan paused, the flickering light emanating from behind Sollux's glasses causing the shadows to dance over his face.
"But I guess I should be thankin' you really," he went on. "It was really fuckin' thoughtful a you, sparin' me from all your psychological garbage. Because really, who the fuck needs that in their lives? But I guess that's why you do what you do, grumblin' and spittin' on anyone who tries to show you the least bit a decency. I mean, if I wasn't so fuckin' over Fef like I am, I'd feel bad for her. You haven't done her the favor a pushin' her away yet. When are you goin' to get around to doin' that, Sol?"
Sollux clenched his teeth, the burning in his chest starting to boil like hot acid. "Shut up."
"No, come on," Eridan, his voice escalating and his grip on Ahab's Crosshairs tightening. "When are you goin' to tell her that your brains and your fuckin' voices can't sustain a consistent set a feelings for more than a few hours?"
The voices in his head seemed to be laughing now. Shrieking with mockery, pointing at him. Sollux raised his hands to his head. His gut was roiling now, lurching with burning bile that began to creep up his esophagus. He swallowed, the light buzzing about his eyes beginning to sound like angry wasps about his head.
"What, are you not goin' to do it?" Eridan asked, leering. "Come on Sol, I know you're fuckin' hopeless and obviously don't know the first thing about relationships, but I at least thought you were generous enough to let people down early. I mean fuck, maybe you don't have those kinda feelin's for Fef after all. I mean, you let me down earliest of all, before I could get any good caliginous material goin'. I guess I should take that as a compliment, because it was obvious from your behavior that you had black feelings for me—"
The was a sharp crack as Sollux's fist flew into the side of Eridan's face. The sea dweller stumbled, nearly dropping his gun. Fresh purple blood spattered the black tile. When Eridan straightened, he was holding his cheek, his teeth stained violet as he grinned.
"I'm surprised this is gettin' to you, Sol," he said, panting slightly. "I thought you said I was shit at this, but you look pretty riled. Which part did you hate the most, come on, I gotta work on this, like you said. Was it that I might need to go in against my better judgment and save my washed up moirail from your yellow mucus encased brains since you think it's high caliber enjoyment leadin' her on like—"
He cried out as Sollux's knuckles connected with his nose. He fell backwards onto the floor, his rifle knocked from his grasp and sent skittering across the tile. Eridan bared his fangs, blood dripping from his nose and onto his shirt.
"Fuck!" he yelled clutching his face. "What the fuck I wasn't even prepared for that you nook-licking—"
"Shut up!" Sollux roared. "I don't give one tholid shit about what you were or weren't prepared for. You think you've become thome kind of thlayer of thelf-worth jutht becauthe KK told you thome old dried up garbage? Well gueth what? You're fucking right. Congratulationth, you win the big shiny trophy. I'm jutht one fucked up guy who enjoyth breaking the heartth of thothe around him. That'th me. Congratu-fuckin-lationth on that athtounding dithcovery. Let me kith your royal shoeth. That'th what you want, ithn't it? You want me to get down on my leg joints and cry my dithguthting yellow tearth?"
Eridan wiped a shaking hand over his upper lip. He stood. "Do whatever it is you're goin' to do, like I give a swimmin' fuck. It won't matter after this."
Sollux felt the burning in his chest flare—the knots in his stomach tighten. He saw the conversation with his future self flash before his eyes. He heard the voices screaming in his ears.
"It already doethn't matter," he replied, his voice soft. "Becauthe I already knew all of that shit. None of it matterth. I already knew what a fucked up piethe of shit I wath. I already knew I wath teetering on the edge of a gaping pit with no bottom. No future. None of uth have a future anymore. The thingth we do now don't mean shit. None of it doeth."
"If that's supposed to worry me or something, consider that tactic dried up and blowin' away on some measly gust a wind. Your fuckin' end a the world shit can't get to me here, not when we're on some asteroid floatin' in the middle of an abyss tagged for extermination."
They stared at each other for a moment, in the flickering light. Blood continued to drip over Eridan's lips and onto his shirt. Sollux's fists remained balled at his sides.
They both moved at once.
Eridan swung around, scrambling toward his dropped gun. He dove for it, his jeweled forefinger pressed against the trigger as he lifted it and spun around to face his assailant. But Sollux was already on him, looming above him with raised, glowing fists.
Eridan pulled the trigger just as Sollux's hand sliced sideways through the air in front of him.
The glowing rifle was jerked out of the sea dweller's grasp as white energy exploded from its barrel. The entire room burst with light as the weapon arched through the air, spinning helplessly on the blast's momentum, shattering tile and columns around it as it fell.
Eridan was on his feet before it ever hit the floor, dashing after it as debris rained down around him. Sollux caught at his cape as it flew out behind him, yanking the sea dweller back. Eridan stumbled, grabbing at his neck as Sollux reached for his shoulder. He swung Eridan around and pulled his arm back. As he loosed his fist in a glowing red right hook, however, he found himself swinging at air. The sea dweller had ducked under his arm, and drove his jeweled fist deep into Sollux's abdomen.
Sollux doubled over, stumbling, his boiling stomach threatening to empty itself onto the tile. Eridan peeled away, throwing his cape aside as he sprinted for his gun. Sollux staggered after him, screaming as the sea dweller reached his weapon. Sollux raised his flickering hands, the energy emanating from them growing so intense that the entire room was bathed in dancing light.
Eridan swung his rifle around just as a psychic blast came bearing down on him like a tidal wave. He pulled the trigger of his gun and let the white light burst forth to meet it.
There was an explosion loud enough to shake the dust from the ceiling far above them. A haze of smoke filled the room. Sollux forced his hands down, and the psychic energy dissipated. He ducked instantly, and the white hot blast of Eridan's gun lanced over his head. He ran under it, screaming wordlessly, his shoes beating the tile until the sea dweller materialized through the smoke.
Eridan had just enough time to see Sollux bearing down on him out of the haze before the lowblood leapt toward him, fastening his hands around the sea dweller's scarfed neck.
The two went tumbling to the floor. They rolled over each other, Eridan trying to get his gun in position to fire a hole through his assailant's chest. A crack of red energy sent it rolling across the tile, its barrel steaming.
Sollux pinned the struggling sea dweller to the floor, sitting on his waist. He then drew his fist back and drove it into Eridan's face. His stomach twisted as he heard the troll yelp with pain, blood gushing from his nose with fresh force, spattering his glasses. Eridan kicked desperately, trying to force himself out from under Sollux's weight. The hand that Sollux hadn't pinned formed a fist and swung toward his attacker until red and blue light snapped it to the ground beside Eridan's head. Sollux pinned the other wrist in a similar fashion, raising both his own fists before driving them alternately into Eridan's body. The sea dweller cried out in pain as his glasses were knocked from his face, bouncing away across the tile.
The knot in Sollux's stomach squeezed and twisted until he felt something inside him break.
He lifted his fists, his knuckles dripping with purple blood, before he leaned down and seized Eridan's lips with his own.
It was like kissing beneath the apocalypse. The screams of the soon to be dead flooded his skull. The air above him filled with red and blue light that flashed against a haze of smoke. And the sensation of leaping into a black abyss from which he could never crawl out of clawed at his chest.
He gripped Eridan's hair, biting down on the sea dweller's lips to get them to part. Eridan, for all the bloody mess he was, continued to fight, twisting beneath Sollux's weight. It only served to make the black ooze flowing from the mess that was Sollux's stomach pump faster. It was like a poison, leaking through the walls of his organs, filling his intestines, creeping through his veins and into his heart. It consumed him, a hunger that boiled in him like hot pitch.
He grabbed at Eridan's scarf, yanking it so that it tightened around the sea dweller's neck. Eridan opened his mouth, gasping in sudden surprise. Sollux used the opportunity to force his tongue into the troll's mouth, the tang of purple blood greeting him.
It was soon mixed with the salt of his own blood as Eridan's fangs clamped down around the intruding organ. Sollux jerked back, somehow satisfied as he spat blood from his wounded tongue onto the floor beside him.
He couldn't think. Not with the screaming in his head. Not with the black poison taking over his body, heating his insides like tar bubbling in a fire. So perhaps it was for that reason that he let his hand trace down Eridan's chest. His abdomen. Perhaps it was for that reason that he let his fingers dip beneath the hem of those ridiculous pants.
Eridan made a strange bubbling sound, blood gushing from his nose, as Sollux seized him. Sollux stared at the sea dweller's face, yellow and purple blood marbled over his lips. Eridan gazed back at him. He was completely silent, and his eyes were wide with hate and fear. It seemed to feed that black poison—to make it gnaw faster at Sollux's insides.
Unable to move his arms, Eridan attempted to twist his hips away from Sollux's touches, his fangs bared as he swore with panicked fury. Sollux grappled with the troll's legs, at last throwing a shock of energy around one ankle. The leg slammed into the floor, bound fast. Sollux sat on the other leg, shoving his hand further into Eridan's pants. He adjusted his grip over the sea dweller's bulge, his fingers curling around it, his thumb resting against its tip. As he moved his arm down, beginning to rub, he found he was surprised at how soft it was against his palm.
Eridan's grunts of exertion began to become quieter. Easier. His pinned hands balled into fists, the long, yellow nails cutting into the flesh of his palms and sending rivulets of blood down his wrists. Sollux grabbed Eridan's obnoxious purple streaked hair with his free hand, yanking the troll's head back as he bent down to bite at his finned ears. More of the tangy purple blood slid over his tongue, and Sollux licked it up slowly, watching the way Eridan's brow furrowed over eyes that were clamped shut. He watched the way the blood trailed from the sea dweller's nose and over his black lips. Sollux bent down and claimed those lips. Claimed them as the victor. The superior. Claimed them as something else entirely. Something that made his heart thrum and roar with a hate that made him tremble.
Shaking, he withdrew from Eridan's mouth, and the sea dweller gasped, hissing through his fangs as Sollux tipped the troll's head just enough to have access to his neck. He pulled the scarf down with his fangs before scraping them over the smooth skin that served as the thin covering over the thick, warm veins beneath.
"I could kill you," he said suddenly, the words bubbling up from the frothing pit of black ooze that was his mind. "Right now. One thought and I could wipe your pathetic ath from exithtenthe."
"Then do it," Eridan replied through the blood in his nose. "You fuckin' won, is that what you want to hear?"
"I want to hear you thcream it," Sollux replied, baring his fangs.
"Like fuck I'd ever lower myself to your crazy fuckin'—"
He cried out as Sollux gripped his hair and slammed his head against the tile.
"Shut up," he snarled. He released the troll's hair as he positioned himself over Eridan's leg, bending down over the sea dweller's hips. "Your voithe maketh me thick. It'th the thcreaming that I want, not your moronic whining."
Eridan opened his mouth as if to rebuke, but Sollux bent down, lifting the sea dweller's shirt and biting the skin just above Eridan's hips. Eridan sucked in a breath, squeezing his eyes shut. Sollux let his tongue trace the flesh just above the hem of the troll's pants before he reached down and clamped the button holding them in place between his teeth.
He hesitated for a moment, a thought piercing the black poison roiling in his brain. It wondered how it had all happened. It asked where he had lost his mind.
And then it fell away, swallowed back into the abyss of Sollux's screaming skull. He bit down on the button and ripped it away, yanking Eridan's pants down to his knees.
Sollux engulfed his bulge entirely, letting his lips slide over the soft skin. He pulled his head up, sliding back over the organ, feeling it stiffen against his tongue. He released it completely, raising his head to see how Eridan was reacting.
The troll had tipped his head back, his fangs bared but slightly open. Sollux dipped down again, his tongue sliding over the soft, faintly salty flesh, before he came to the tip. He nipped at it, just hard enough to draw, not blood, but a strangled cry from Eridan's lips. The black heat in Sollux's veins began to collect beneath his pants as Eridan's bulge grew firmer against his lips. He engulfed the sea dweller again, taking him as far into his mouth as he could. Though the screams echoed in his head, Eridan's sharp gasp cut through the noise. Sollux let his fangs brush over the troll's shaft as he pulled up before dipping down again. He brought his hands up as he continued his ministrations, pressing one against Eridan's hip bone. The other curled around the base of the sea dweller's shaft, rubbing absently with a thumb what he couldn't reach with his lips.
He felt Eridan's legs tremble underneath him as the troll began to struggle once more. This time it was a quieter struggle. The profanities were gone, to be replaced only with heavy breathing and the occasional whimper. It made the burning in Sollux's stomach flare, and he was tempted to reach up and silence the troll, when the knee of the leg he was sitting on rose up slightly. He felt it press into his crotch, even as he pushed his lips down over the troll's shaft. Sollux shuddered, exhaling sharply through his nose. The knee shifted underneath him, then again, until it was rubbing against him, pressing at the bulge beneath his trousers.
Sollux released Eridan, panting heavily as his glowing eyes glanced up at the troll. Eridan's eyes were glassy, as if he were lost in some kind of haze. But not too lost. Those feverish eyes were fixed on Sollux, and Eridan rubbed his knee against Sollux's crotch again.
Sollux doubled over, panting. He bit and sucked at Eridan's hip again, before seizing the troll with his mouth once more. Eridan began to get more vocal then, whimpering audibly, straining against the psionic energy holding all of his limbs but one in place.
At last Sollux sat up and lifted himself forward until he was straddling Eridan's hips. The sea dweller watched him warily, and Sollux leaned over him, his nose inches from the troll's face. For a moment he simply hovered there, staring at him through his bi-colored glasses in silent challenge. Eridan returned his gaze, his eyes still distant, a sheen of sweat glistening over his blood smeared face. And then he lifted his head, pressing his lips Sollux's in a forceful kiss. Sollux felt fangs dig into his lips, and tasted his own blood in his mouth. He pressed his lips back into Eridan's, biting the tongue that tried to intrude on his mouth. Eridan drew back from the kiss then, panting and licking his lips.
Sollux pushed Eridan's shirt up to his chest, letting his nails scrape over the unmarred gray flesh. Eridan exhaled loudly, straining against his bonds. Sollux's hand dipped lower until his fingers curled around Eridan's bulge once again. It was still wet from Sollux's earlier ministrations, and his hand slid easily over the soft skin. Eridan cried out, tipping his chin up and arching his back. Sollux bit at the sea dweller's exposed chest, and Eridan clamped his eyes shut.
"Sol…" he gasped, his voice strained.
"Shut up," Sollux growled into his chest. He continued to rub at Eridan, his thumb brushing the other's tip. The troll stiffened and trembled.
"Sol, come on…" Eridan repeated, his voice growing urgent.
Sollux leaned forward again and seized his lips once more before letting the bonds surrounding Eridan's limbs fizzle away.
Eridan was on him instantly, with a desperate fury that Sollux hadn't expected, even in his own black madness. The sea dweller pulled at Sollux's horns, deepening their bloody kiss before he wrapped a leg about Sollux's waist. His hands scrabbled at Sollux's pants then, fingers plunging below the waistband and rubbing at the hardened shaft beneath. Sollux bit down on Eridan's lower lip, groaning, thrusting against the fingers blindly. Eridan pushed Sollux's pants down to his thighs before beginning to rub at Sol quickly, his nails scraping against the tender skin in his wild abandon.
Sollux tore away from the kiss and cried out as well. His voice sounded just as small as Eridan's in the vast dark room. He lowered his hips against Eridan's, pressing himself against the other troll. Eridan's arms flew to Sollux's back as the other began to rub his shaft against the sea dweller's. Eridan clawed at the back of Sollux's neck, and Sollux bit at Eridan's finned ears in response. Blood and sweat ran down Sollux's skin as he felt Eridan's hardness pressed up against him. He pushed against it, rubbing harder and faster, feeling the heat seep into his skin and feed that black terror looming in his gut. Light snapped around his eyes.
Eridan was groaning, one leg still wrapped around Sollux's waist.
"Sol—"
"No."
"Sol, we gotta—"
"Shut up."
He knew what Eridan was thinking. He was thinking it too. His body was snapping with a dizzying euphoria, his world winding tighter and tighter on a brittle spring.
Eridan arched his back again as Sollux rubbed against him, but his convulsion of pleasure was rapidly followed by a fit of struggling. He tried to push Sollux away, and Sollux was surprised at how much strength he had. Without his psionics to aid him, Sollux found himself being forced away from the sea dweller.
But he wouldn't have it.
He couldn't stop.
Not now.
He had already thrown himself from the edge.
He pressed Eridan into him, his hand curling around both their shafts. His thumb probed at Eridan's tip, and the sea dweller writhed desperately.
"Sol, wait—wait—!"
Sollux clamped a hand over Eridan's mouth. His mind screamed at him, this time with a voice other than that of the imminently deceased. This one was the harsh bellow of instinct, roaring like blood in his ears. Screaming at him to find a pail.
But there were no pails, and Sollux wasn't stopping.
Eridan writhed, clawing at the hand covering his mouth, leaving deep gashes in the other's flesh. Warm yellow blood dribbled over Eridan's face as the sea dweller's chest hitched. He reached his climax suddenly. Violently.
It twisted the spring in Sollux's gut until it snapped.
He removed his hand from Eridan's mouth in a fit of pleasure, and he let the sea dweller scream.