It was on this day that Eridan Ampora saw Sollux Captor's eyes.

But before that, he had a dream that he was falling.

Those were the dreams that always worried him. Not that the dreams themselves were any kind of an issue. They were fake, after all. And fake things had no business being a part of his business, which was most decidedly real and of the utmost importance at all times, no exceptions.

It was the waking up that he hated.

He rolled onto his side, gasping, clutching his chest, his heart palpitating so fast beneath his trembling fingers that he felt like this time it surely marked the end. And, as usual, his mind flipped through his mental notepad of thoughts with wild abandon, making no distinction with regard to significance, snagging and tearing at some of the more delicate pages.

Who was going to tell Feferi if he died?

What were his parents going to say?

He hadn't even finished learning all the chords on his guitar.

Would this house just go up for sale immediately?

Would his father have trouble selling it due to the chilling tale of the young man found dead by his moving crew?

He'd never even had sex, what a fucking scam.

Would anyone remember him?

Anyone at all?

Finally, his thoughts slowed, along with his heart, and his brain came down off its electric, antemortem high. He rolled onto his stomach and let his face fall into the pillow, groaning as he sorted through the mess his mind had made of his thoughts, trying to reorganize things into comprehensive stacks.

He breathed in the scent of his own shampoo as he recalled the night before. Right. He'd have a moving truck stuffed with all his worldly possessions arriving soon. At which point he would be receiving assistance from the generous household across the street.

He flopped his hand over to his side where he'd placed his duffle bag the night before. He made no contact with anything but the floor. He tried again, trying to flop his hand in a different place. Slightly to the left. Again, his fingers found nothing but the carpet. Sighing exasperatedly, he lifted his head from his pillow and squinted at his bag, which was sitting just out of arm's reach. He leaned forward, yanking it toward him before rummaging around through its depths, extracting his watch from the clothing stuffed inside.

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. His truck was scheduled to arrive at around three. He sighed, slowly pushing himself up into a sitting position and running a hand through his hair. He didn't really need a shower, but the thought of warm water running down his skin was a pleasant one. He grabbed a fresh set of clothing: a simple t-shirt and some khaki shorts, and made his way to the bathroom.

He'd sort of forgotten how shitty the room was, in all the excitement of the day before. He grinned at the hideous pink wallpaper. He was going to enjoy fixing the place up. As he stood in the shower and washed himself off, he went through a mental list of all the acceptable color combinations he could employ in such a space. Maybe, if his music career really took off, he could start putting on additions and expanding rooms. The bathroom would definitely need a size adjustment if he was ever going to settle down properly with his future man. Because no matter how much he loved someone, Eridan Ampora did not share mirrors.

Or sinks.

Or shower shelf space.

Or shampoo.

Or shaving cream.

Or cologne. No, he would never share cologne. Who the hell wanted to share scents anyway? That was simply an offense of a level so grievous that he could barely stomach the thought of it for more than a few seconds.

By the time he had shaved, dressed, and sculpted his hair perfectly in the mirror, it was well on its way to being three. He slipped on his flipflops and made his way out the door, crossing the street to see how his able-bodied recruits were progressing with their own preparations.

He noticed that the yard was still largely littered with beer bottles and red plastic cups. He curled his lip at the sight of it. If he was going to maintain any kind of a reputation in this town, he would have to keep strict tabs on the conditions of the households surrounding his own. Especially the one belonging to these three. They were all quite obviously crying out for his guidance. Eridan knew that they were all probably secretly glad to have been recruited by him for today's activities. He would lend their lives some purpose, he was sure.

Puffed up with his newly established sense of altruistic pride, Eridan rapped on the door. It slowly opened and he found himself staring up into Gamzee's relaxed face.

"Morning, brother," the taller man stated, lifting one hand in lazy salutation.

"It's actually afternoon, but your effort was decent enough, I guess," Eridan replied, ducking under the man's arm and making his way into the house.

It was as if an alien race of pizza-based organisms had landed in the middle of the dwelling and staged full apocalyptic warfare on the residents within. The boxes were torn up, the grease-stained remains lying scattered over the carpet. An empty root beer bottle stood up-ended in a wilting plant by the TV. Pizza crusts adorned every horizontal surface, including, it seemed, the blades of the ceiling fan in the middle of the living room.

"What the fuck happened here?" Eridan asked as he cautiously plucked up a piece of crust from the couch and held it between his thumb and forefinger.

"I'm not all to be really knowin' since I guess my mind has other plans for those memories and maybe they'll stop and visit some other day when I'm ready for them to be all up and revealed to me," Gamzee replied. If it was supposed to be an explanation, Eridan didn't know which part of it was supposed to clarify anything.

"Well, never mind that, then," he sighed, setting the crust back down where he'd found it, for fear of inviting any sort of pizza fallout to his person. "Are you guys ready to be gettin' yourselves over to my establishment? I've got the movin' truck scheduled to stop by at around three."

"Is it three already? Damn, I keep trying to catch time with my hands, man, but it's like some kind of excited jack rabbit and just hops its fluffy little tail away from me like it does." Gamzee made a motion of catching some invisible thing between his hands, smiling down at his clasped fingers.

"Well, it is three already, yeah, so I've come to tell you that you better have yourselves ready to help me like you fuckin' promised to do." Eridan crossed his arms, his chin lifted defiantly.

Gamzee gave a soft chuckle. "Do you like motherfuckin' bakery, bro?"

Eridan dropped his chin. "What?"

"I got some motherfuckin' shit all bakin' in the oven, my friend, and soon our nostrils will be assailed by its loving pie pheromones." He smiled easily as he began to make his way over toward the kitchen.

Eridan followed him. "Okay, I studied pheromones in college, and those are definitely things that a pie can't produce."

As Gamzee passed through the kitchen's narrow, door-shaped entrance, he paused, putting his hand on the wall and turning to Eridan with a rather sad expression.

"Ah, bro, you shouldn't be all up and discouraging of what sorts of scents a pie can produce because that's just the sort of thing that could get them up to deciding not to make that wicked shit for our noses to enjoy."

Eridan squinted at the man, his jaw slightly slackened as he tried to puzzle out the nonsense that Gamzee was spewing. At last, he could only reply with a question.

"Are you high?"

"My thinking is always sky-level, my brother," Gamzee responded, his lazy smile returning as he made his way into the kitchen and pulled open a drawer. "I like to keep my thoughts up on a higher plane, like where clouds would be existing at if they ever sort of switched modes of reality like a thought is prone to motherfuckin' do. And I'm like, why should I be keeping myself tied down when there's a whole universe to explore and my mind's got motherfuckin' butterfly wings?"

He pulled on a pair of oven mitts and opened the oven door. A wave of heat washed over Eridan as Gamzee crouched down and, as if he was plucking a baby bird from its nest, pulled out a steaming pie tin. Eridan craned his neck to get a good look at the pie couched within. The top was covered with a golden crust, and the slits for venting had been carved in the shape of a smiley face. The room was soon filled with the buttery smell of baking.

"All right, little pie bro, you just get your wicked motherfuckin' chill on up here," Gamzee said to his steaming creation as he set it on a little baking rack next to the oven. "And don't be lettin' anyone know you're motherfuckin' ready until we help our good bro Eridan with his moving shit."

Eridan watched, at a loss for words as Gamzee closed his eyes, still smiling as he slipped off his oven mitts and replaced them in the drawer. He lifted his bare foot up a bit and closed the oven door before turning back to Eridan.

"So…can we get goin' now, or what?" Eridan asked, trying to inject some indignant authority into his voice, but failing rather badly under Gamzee's relaxed expression and the scent of pie flooding his nostrils.

"Yeah bro, we can go motherfuckin' anywhere as we get to be setting our minds to." He shuffled out of the kitchen and down the hall. Eridan followed him. The trip took him past the bathroom, which he peered into for a moment to look upon Karkat's toilet with a deep sense of brotherhood. The toilet seemed to stare back at him in acknowledgment, as if to let Eridan know that it would be there whenever troubled times were afoot. Eridan gave a nod of somber gratitude before continuing on after Gamzee.

The tall man turned right as the hallway came to an end, forking off in two separate directions. Eridan followed him as he stopped before one of the doors and went inside.

The room was fairly cluttered, with clothes crumpled on the floor and tossed over the back of the desk chair. Sunlight filtered in through the slats on the blinds in the window. It created bars of gold on the rumpled, dark hair of the head poking out from underneath the huge comforter on the bed. Gamzee shuffled around a few magazines scattered on the floor and patted the sleeping boy's head.

"Hey, Karkat, it's time to up and get yourself out of bed."

Eridan crouched down and picked up one of the magazines littered on the floor as Karkat gave an unintelligible grumble and tried to swat Gamzee away. As Gamzee patted Karkat's head again, Eridan flipped the magazine over and looked at the cover. People. Eridan raised an eyebrow and began thumbing through it. He didn't have a ton of interest in celebrities, but if there was a magazine sitting out for him to read—

A hand descended from nowhere and slapped the item out of his grasp and onto the floor. Eridan jerked back in surprise, his eyes flying up to meet the bleary gaze of the short boy standing in front of him. Clad in a baggy T-shirt and boxers, his hair wild and dark circles smudged under his eyes, Karkat looked even more dangerous than usual. But, remarkably, he didn't say a word. He simply shuffled past Eridan and down the hall, slamming the bathroom door shut behind him.

Gamzee smiled and made his way from the room. Eridan stood, dumbfounded, in the middle of the floor for a moment before he reached down to pick up the magazine once more and scampered after Gamzee.

The taller man was at the other end of the hall now, peeking through a crack in the door. Eridan ducked under his elbow so that he could get a look into the room as well. He couldn't make out much, but what he could see made his stomach twist. There were empty food containers everywhere, and the clothes were so thick upon the floor that it was hard to make out the carpet's true color. Gamzee pushed the door open a bit more, revealing the bookshelves and the desk. Every flat surface was covered with cans of energy drinks. The bed itself was littered with books and loose scraps of paper, as well as a pile of clothing shoved up by the pillow. Eridan wondered briefly how any human could possibly find room to sleep on such a thing when his thought was cut short by the sight of a pair of feet sticking out from beneath the desk.

Gamzee waved a hand through the door, but made no move to enter. "Hey, Sollux, it's time to be gettin' into a conscious sort of zone, bro."

There was a groan, and the lanky stick of a boy emerged from beneath the desk. The blinds were shut, keeping the room rather dim, but Eridan could see Sollux sit up, pressing the heel of his palm to one of his eyes. It was the first time Eridan had seen the young man without his dark glasses. As Sollux pulled his hand away and blinked his eyes open, Eridan squinted, trying to catch a glimpse of the blind eye that Karkat had mentioned when they'd first met. Indeed, the young man's right eye was clouded over and distinctly lighter than its brown twin.

As Eridan continued to stare, those eyes both suddenly turned to him and narrowed.

"What the fuck is he doing back here?"

"We made a pact, bro, to be all helping our good buddy Eridan into his new living place," Gamzee replied, making no move to open the door further.

"He's not our 'buddy,' GZ, he's a sleazy mooch and a con-artist."

"All right, you can be thinking what you all have your mind to be set on, but I made pie."

Sollux frowned. "You say that as if the fact that you made pie has any sort of bearing on my feelings regarding this subject."

"I'm just sort of making information about the baked state of my pie go in your general direction, and I'm also just sort of hoping we could all eat it together with a motherfuckin' beverage after we all got on like a couple of choice bros lifting possessions for another bro."

Sollux sighed. "Whatever. I'll be there. Just get out of my room. And don't come back while he's around."

Gamzee slowly pulled the door shut. Eridan stood, his nose wrinkled a bit. The room had exuded a foul sort of odor. Like old food and stale air and sweat. He was grateful to be able to follow Gamzee out into the pizza-ravaged living room. He couldn't help but cast a curious glance back over his shoulder though. Back toward the room and the young man inside. The one with the blind right eye.

"Okay, so are we going to get this shit done or what?"

Eridan turned to see Karkat standing just inside the living room, clothed in jeans and a sweatshirt. His hair was a bit more tame now too. As if he had at least run his fingers through it and patted it down a bit.

Eridan cleared his throat. "Well, the movin' vans should be here soon, so—"

"About that. If you've got fucking movers coming, why the hell can't they do this shit for you?"

"Well, because they're only paid to get my boxes outta the van, aren't they? And I can't very well leave boxes lyin' around my establishment. I mean, I've got standards. Not to mention the fact that if they don't put my furniture in the right spot, I'm goin' to need help makin' the necessary adjustments." Eridan crossed his arms and sniffed after he finished. This was all just basic to him, but he knew he was going to be met with objections from people with Karkat's sense of taste.

"I can't believe this. So we're like your interior decorating crew? The paid movers get to go home after moving the shit into your house, but not us, oh no. We're there under some bogus agreement to make your house aesthetically pleasing? Fuck that. I'm going back to bed."

"Hey, bro, is your nose all letting you in on the secret of what I got myself up to this morning?" Gamzee smiled at Karkat from the couch just as the boy was about to turn and stomp back off down the hall. Karkat's gaze snapped to him as he paused mid-stride. His eyes then drifted slowly up to the ceiling as he inhaled deeply. His eyes flicked back to Gamzee.

"Strawberry pie?"

"Yeah, motherfucker."

Karkat sighed before walking over to the couch and plopping down next to his taller housemate. Gamzee smiled and began to bob his head slowly, tapping the arm of the couch in a sporadic rhythm with his thumb.

It was about then that Eridan moved to the window and peered across the street. In all fuss of trying to round up his three neighbors, the moving van had already come. It sat parked in his driveway, and the two men were busy carrying all of his goods onto the concrete.

Eridan pushed himself away from the window. "Ah fuck, they're here already. I'm gonna head over there. You guys can just show up when you're all accounted for, I guess."

Even after he arrived, spoke to the moving guys, and proceeded to watch them unload all his worldly possessions onto the driveway, his neighbors still hadn't shown up. He was sitting on one of his boxes, flipping through the magazine he'd nicked from Karkat's room, when two of them finally decided to arrive.

Eridan looked up as Gamzee and Karkat crossed the street and made their way up the driveway toward him. Eridan quickly stuffed the magazine into the box he was sitting on before standing to greet them.

"Where the fuck is Sol?" he asked.

"Dude, that's not his name. Also, I can't guarantee anything, okay? Sollux is his own guy. His own extremely grouchy guy that, when forced, is not above the kind of violence that could separate your head from your scrawny twig neck. So don't push it, all right?"

Karkat walked past Eridan then, inspecting the boxes while Gamzee simply grabbed the one nearest to him and began to take it up Eridan's driveway and into the house. Eridan stayed where he was, watching as Karkat squatted down to peer at something more closely.

"You've got a guitar?" the smaller boy asked, jabbing his finger at the sleek black case.

"Yeah, it was a graduation present a sorts. I've been teachin' myself the fingerin's as well as the basic chords and shit. I'm hopin' to produce my first masterpiece by the end a summer." Eridan's face lifted as he imagined all the record deals he could sign with an exquisite enough composition.

The thought was quickly swept away, however, by his own hand. He sat back down on one of his boxes, leaning forward so that he could be as close to eye level with the squatting boy as possible. Karkat's eyes flicked up to meet his, staring at Eridan through his long, wild bangs.

"What?" the boy demanded.

"Does Sol ever come out of his room?"

Karkat looked away from Eridan for a moment before fixing his gaze back on him. He lifted his upper lip slightly, just enough for his teeth to show. "Why the fuck does it matter to you?"

"I'm just askin' out of a basic obligation to social decorum, but I gotta say, Kar, that it's pretty fuckin' obvious that the guy's got issues. I've only been livin' across from you for hardly two days and I already know that he hasn't changed his shirt in all that time, doesn't eat much, and has a room that looks like the inside of a used vacuum cleaner. Also, I'm not sure if he sleeps on his bed either, since when Gam went to go wake him up, he crawled out from underneath his desk."

Karkat stared hard at Eridan's guitar case for a while. At last, he replied, "Sollux doesn't sleep under his desk. He just sort of sits there and listens to his awful techno garbage for hours on end. At least, he used to. I haven't done a hell of a lot of best-friend-sitting lately, since this is a wild fucking improvement from how he used to be. Like, they should put this improvement in a goddamned zoo. Because hell if it was ever meant to be enclosed in our domestic property."

Eridan's eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips bemusedly. "You're losin' me here, Kar."

"Okay, that's not my name. I am not a fucking automobile for you to drive around and use to move your shitty musical instruments. Is two syllables honestly way too difficult for your egregiously empty cranial cavity to force over your drooping lips? Like, please tell me that this isn't actually how fucking stupid you are."

"Christ, Kar, I'm just tryin' to establish some sense a camaraderie between us, seein' as we're neighbors and all."

"Okay, well, dickass, deciding to give me a cutesy fucking nickname is not the way to do it." He backhanded one of the cardboard boxes next to his elbow. "Nor is conning me into helping you move your shit around. Seriously, how do you even own this much stuff?"

As if to answer his own question, Karkat yanked the lid off one of the boxes near him and peered into it. "What are these, books?"

"Yeah. For research. And some for enjoyment, like, but they're pretty silly and not worth mentionin'."

Karkat sighed and slammed the lid back in place.

"But what was it you were sayin' about Sol? About him bein' better now than he used to be."

Karkat continued to stare at the box of books he'd just closed, his brows sunk low over his eyes as he spoke. "Listen, idiot-boy wonder, if there's one thing you're going to have to get through your head around here, it's that you should keep your grotesque proboscis out of other people's business. Because if you prod hard enough, the answers tend to snap shut on your face like a fucking bear trap."

He picked at the corner of one of the boxes as Gamzee came back out, picked up a potted plant, and went back inside again. Eridan kept his lips pressed together, practically biting his tongue in half to avoid making some remark and derailing Karkat's thought train yet again.

"I told you Sollux was blind in the one eye, right?" the boy asked at last, ripping off a chunk of cardboard and inspecting it closely.

"Yeah. I actually saw it today too, when he woke up. Like, the room was dark and shit, but since I sorta knew to look for it, it was pretty obvious."

"Yeah, it is. Which is why he does the whole enigmatic-asshole shades thing. He doesn't like people asking him about it."

"So are you gonna tell me why, or what?"

Karkat peeled a layer off his chunk of cardboard, exposing the rippled interior beneath. "Sollux didn't always live with Gamzee and me. He used to have his own place. He worked all the fucking time to keep up with the payments because his family was, and still is, too broke and apathetic to help with anything. But he's kind of this…masochistic asshole who takes pride in that sort of thing, I guess. Doing all that work by himself and making his own way. Or he was. Before he got into the accident."

Eridan blinked, trying to lower his head further to meet Karkat's gaze. "Accident?"

Karkat refused to look at him. Instead, he just continued to pick at the cardboard between his fingers. "Yeah, accident. I was pretty fucking clear in delineating the whole eye thing, so it makes me wonder where the fuck you thought this story was going."

"I don't know, I was kinda just waitin' for you to tell me outright."

Karkat sighed. "Sollux was dating this girl all through college. And then one night about a year ago, he ran a stop sign. Three fucking seconds was all it took and he was minus one eye and a girlfriend. The end. Happy you asked?"

Eridan felt a stone settle in his stomach. It was more serious than he'd expected. He supposed Karkat was right. That one had kind of snapped shut on his face. He tried to ease through it, however. "So what happened with the whole college thing?"

"It didn't. After that shit, Sollux went into his room and never came out. He lost his job and his chance at a degree, and, after defaulting on payments for a few months, his apartment." Karkat began to rip the remaining cardboard in his fingers into tiny pieces. "Sollux and I were kind of best friends throughout high school and college. So I knew he was never going to ask for help, even though everyone and their canine companions knew he needed it. So I just took Gamzee with me one night and dragged him off the streets and back to our place."

"So what, he's a freeloader?"

Karkat turned to him furiously, his teeth bared. "Okay, are you actually looking to lose your head, here? Because you are just making a bed on the goddamned chopping block and painting a dotted line across your neck in melted chocolate. I mean, was I not fucking clear with you? He killed his girlfriend. I mean, not really, but that's how he sees it and so that's the frame of fucking reference we have to deal with, here."

"I mean, I heard you, Kar. And I'm not sayin' that shit is easy for anyone to handle. But you said all this happened a year ago. And I'm just wonderin' how things stand now, since you said he was better." Eridan's expression was simply curious, the death threats rolling off him like raindrops.

Karkat's ornery expression flickered, and he dropped his gaze. "Okay, well, to be honest, it's not like we really need money from him to put him up. Gamzee might not look like much, but his parents are actually really fucking well off. Like, I think they enjoy wiping their asses with Benjamin Franklin's face, if you need any help visualizing it. And they also don't give a shit about anything, so it's kind of like no-questions-asked if Gamzee ever needs extra cash. So we moved into this place on Gamzee's dime after he and I got done with school."

Eridan's eyebrows lifted slightly with sudden realization. "Is that why you two kind of do whatever he says?"

"What? If you're talking about our uncanny inability to say no to that shithole, it has more to do with the fact that he lies around talking about miracles and smoking weed and loving animals and baking fucking strawberry pies with smiley faces on them than it has to do with his cozy financial situation. I mean seriously, how the fuck are you supposed to give the middle finger to a guy that just baked you a strawberry pie with a smiley face on it? You answer that for me, because I've been trying to work my way around it for years and I still haven't come up with anything."

Eridan had nothing to say to that. "All right, so my understandin' here is that Sol survived some horrific accident and he's been dealin' with that by holin' himself up in his room for days at a time."

Karkat shrugged a shoulder. "Yeah, I guess that's the gist of it."

"And that you've been respondin' to this by pretty much lettin' him continue to live like he's been doin'?"

Karkat seemed to catch a whiff of the antagonism swelling in Eridan's voice. "Yeah. Why, do you have something to say about it, dick prince?"

"Only that it's the most offensive waste a life I've ever had the displeasure of observin'," Eridan remarked, leaning away from Karkat and regarding the boy with a stolid expression.

Karkat bared his teeth. "Oh is that so? Should I write up a formal fucking apology to you in which I describe the way I'm going to get down on my knees and beg for clemency on account of unscrupulously subjecting you to my best friend's offensive depression?" He stood suddenly, his eyes boiling with rage. "Or should I just take your head in my fist and smash your face against your fancy fucking guitar case until there's enough of your teeth on the ground to make a fucking pick out of? Then maybe you can strum a little tune about your life and how fucking hard it is being you with your fucking boxes of shit and your fancy fucking house and your goddamned goal of…what did you say your plan was? 'Finding your muses' or some shit? God, how fucking difficult your life must be. Why don't I just stuff your pompous head up your ass, maybe there are a few muses floating around in there?"

He finished by slamming his foot into the nearest box, sending clothing bursting over the concrete. Eridan gave a cry of dismay, reaching for them just as Karkat spun and kicked at Eridan's guitar case, sending the instrument tumbling over the cement.

"Stop it! Fuck!" Eridan yelled, lunging for his guitar.

Karkat already seemed to have lost interest in destroying Eridan's things, however. Instead, he turned around, beginning to storm back toward his house. Eridan gave an exasperated sigh, pushing himself to his feet and scrambling after the boy, catching Karkat's wrist before he'd even made it to the end of the street.

"Don't touch me, you jackass," Karkat snarled, snapping his hand away so violently it caused him to turn to face Eridan completely.

"Fine." Eridan balled his rejected hand into a fist at his side. "But let me just say that the only thing I was tryin' to tell you is that treatin' Sol like he's a fuckin' egg isn't goin' to do any a you any good. Him least of all."

"Okay. I'll definitely take that advice to heart, especially considering how goddamned much you know about any of us." Karkat turned to storm off again.

"And you don't know the first fuckin' thing about me either, all right?" Eridan snarled, yanking on Karkat's wrist again.

The boy whirled around. "And what the fuck is there to know? That you have literally fuck-all to worry about because mommy and daddy are paying for you to go chase your fucking artistic bullshit?"

"You don't know that—"

"Well, it's true, isn't it? Tell me that's not what's going on here, and I will literally get down on my knees and lick your pedicured toes."

Eridan pressed his lips together, his chest burning.

"That's what I fucking thought."

"Okay, well, regardless a what you think a me, my thoughts on the subject aren't gonna change. He needs someone to treat him like a human being, all right? Not a fuckin' glass statue. If he's really your friend, you owe him better than that. You owe him a better life than what he's got locked up in his room."

They stood there for a long time, glaring at one another. They said nothing more and made no move to step away until they were interrupted by a rather grainy voice with a soft lisp.

"So are you guys just having a lover's spat while GZ does all the work?"

Karkat dropped his malignant gaze and turned his eyes to Sollux, who had come up behind him from across the street. "You took your sweet time. I had to converse with this asshole for almost ten minutes."

"I'll make sure to sacrifice a Red Bull to your altar in order to beg your jackass gods for forgiveness," Sollux replied. He then tipped his head up, turning his face toward Eridan. His mismatched eyes were hidden once again behind his dark sunglasses, but he looked somehow less gaunt than he had when Eridan had seen him in his room.

"So are we doing this, or what?" Sollux asked after the three of them stood in silence for a time. Karkat gave a derisive sigh and Eridan's lips twitched in a smile.

"Come up here. I'll show you what you guys need to do."

The rest of the afternoon passed in relative peace. What surprised Eridan, however, was how much strength Sollux had in his wiry arms. He moved the heaviest pieces of furniture along with Gamzee, going in and out of the house without showing any outward signs of exhaustion. As his face became slick with sweat and his dark bangs stringy from the moisture, Eridan could almost swear a glow was radiating from beneath the young man's skin.

"Are you planning on carrying any of your own shit, or are we going to get stuck with the brunt of this legwork?" he asked as he and Gamzee passed, hauling Eridan's sofa between them.

"My body's built for aesthetics, all right? I mean, look at this." He gestured to himself. "This was not meant to carry fuckin' couches."

"Whatever. Rich-ass pansy."

Beneath the sweat and flippant tone, Eridan swore he saw something playing around the edges of the young man's lips. Something that looked suspiciously like the beginnings of a smile.

As far as he was concerned, Sollux Captor looked like a man who was ready to live again.

And Eridan would be damned if he wasn't going to make it happen.