This was the day that Sollux Captor met Eridan Ampora on Alternia.
He tried to move back in with Karkat. For a few days before that he stayed in Eridan's house. Curled on the couch with all the doors and windows locked. The blinds pulled. But it became too difficult. Too difficult to do something as simple as using the toilet without seeing the carefully arranged line of hair products on the sink. And so he locked the bathroom door, shut himself out, gathered up his computer along with five pairs of socks, and made his way across the street.
Karkat stared at him like he was some kind of apparition. Hesitantly, he let his eyes lower, taking in the hollow figure before him.
"You…aren't wearing any shoes," he said at last. His voice was cracked and brittle. Like papyrus.
Snow sank through the silent, inky air around them.
"I brought socks," Sollux whispered at last. His words were so fragile that a stray flake nearly knocked them away. He clutched his laptop closer to his chest, staring down at his hands. Ghost white and curled around the edges of the plastic.
If his feet were cold standing there, bare and melting imprints in the snow, he couldn't tell.
Karkat stood back. "You should get in before your more important extremities turn black and I'm forced to hack them off."
Sollux's expression didn't even twitch. He trudged inside, dragging snow with him onto the welcome mat. He didn't stop to glance around or relish the warmth of the house. He simply shuffled forward down the hall.
"Oh, Sollux, wait a minute." He heard Karkat's voice behind him, urgent, but he didn't pause. He walked past the bathroom and hung a left, making his way to his old door. He pushed it open.
That was where the familiarity ceased.
The bed was gone. In its place were a few boxes and some spare cords. Some of his old neglected clothing had been taken out of the drawers and shoved along the walls. He stared at it. Stared at the space that used to be his.
"Shit, I'm sorry, just… Hang on, I'll get Gamzee to help me move the bed back. Tavros was using it for a while after you left and—wait, where the fuck are you going?"
Sollux never even flinched. He wheeled around and strode back down the hall, socks falling from the pile in his arms. Karkat dashed up to him, walking alongside him as he returned to the front door.
"Hey, come on, I can put the shit back. Sollux. Sollux, goddammit, fucking stop—"
He reached out to grab Sollux's elbow as they stepped back onto the welcome mat.
The response was like a spark hitting gunpowder.
Sollux wrenched his arm away so fast that Karkat was sent stumbling against the wall and the laptop fell to the carpet with a shuddering slam. Sollux stood frozen in place, his hand uplifted and cords still dangling from his arms. His mismatched eyes locked on Karkat's, but they did not see. They were only different shades of the same emptiness.
Karkat shrank away, sliding back along the wall and drawing his arms to his chest. Sollux stared at him, unblinking. Only breathing.
Then he picked up his laptop and exited the house.
When he returned to Eridan's, he dropped the computer back to the carpet and approached the couch. He picked up the blanket and held it to his face. Wrapped himself in it. Sank into the cushions and tried to pretend.
The first few times the pain in his chest had been too great to produce any convincing illusion. All he could do was immerse himself in vanilla and fling silent pleas into the darkness. Beseeching the empty air for relief.
The air responded to his supplication by filling his insides with cold, cramping hollowness. And it buoyed his mind up. Allowed him to fill it with warmth. The sound of a hissing shower. The dreamy weight of a damp palm against his cheek. Of soft lips. Of all the planes and curves of the body he'd mapped out pressed flush against his own.
Then he would awaken, and his mouth would taste of bitterness and salt. And all he could do was shiver against the pain and bury his damp cheeks in vanilla before the oppressive quiet of the house would relent. Grant him relief.
Until the hollowness in his stomach began to poison him.
That's when the soft lips grew cold. When they abandoned kisses for accusations. When the hiss of the shower morphed into the shriek of sirens, and sinking into his mind meant falling into a blackness like oil.
Until he woke up in a snow bank with the blanket underneath him, screaming words that didn't make sense, his extremities like dead things tied to his torso. And he would've fought the pair of arms that heaved him up into the car if he'd had any strength left. Instead he could only let his limbs dangle from the back seat, staring up at the face above him and trying to explain.
He had to save him. He had to save him because he was still out in the snow. And it was cold. It was so cold. Please go back. Please.
He tasted the salt of tears that were not his own. The warmth of fingers in his hair that were stubby and rough and small. The heat of a voice against his snow-bitten cheek, telling him over and over again how sorry he was. How fucking sorry.
Sollux didn't go back to the house after that.
Instead he was carried by a pair of long, tattooed arms to a bed with familiar red sheets. Right across from a familiar desk with a familiar laptop. And the emptiness was squeezed from his body as warm, rich things were placed in his mouth.
Soon the fevered lightness disappeared. And as the weight of reason returned, he found himself remembering things. Like his affinity for codes. And peanut butter. But with each recollection that was added to the folds of his mind, he found the warm apparitions visiting him less and less. Until the ghostly hands vanished from his cheeks. Until the lips no longer kissed him. Until the only thing left was the stale scent of vanilla on his blanket, fading more and more each day.
He rolled himself lifelessly into patterns. Into waking up and eating food and going to the bathroom and lying in bed. Soon he found the strength to pull his computer close, and he incorporated videos into his daily rituals. But it was nothing more than watching colors dance across the screen, each hue reflected on his glassed eyes. He heard the voices, nothing more than garbled sounds and laugh tracks. It was just something to do. Something to while away the hours before sleep would take him again.
The only novel experience that would ever punctuate his days would be the occasional knock on his door. He would never move when it happened. He didn't have to. Karkat would always let himself in, whether Sollux tried to lock the door or not.
The first time it had been about Eridan's funeral.
"…say they're going to be taking him back to California or whatever since I guess they want him to be buried on the family plot. And you still have those tickets. So you could go."
Sollux stared at his computer screen, his head resting against his arm as he lay curled on his side beneath a knot of bed sheets. He never blinked. Karkat turned the phone in his hands around, picking at the buttons as he sat beside Sollux in silence for a moment.
Then he tried again.
"They say they want to meet you. His parents. I don't usually say this about a lot of people but they genuinely didn't sound like assholes. I think you should go. Maybe the warm weather would be good for you, I don't know."
Sollux gazed unblinkingly at his monitor.
Karkat's voice began to crumble. "Please Sollux. Please don't do this again. Please at least…fucking talk to someone. It doesn't have to be his parents, fuck, I know that shit's awkward. But…Feferi's going too. She's at least tolerable, right? You can hang out with her or something. Anything. Okay?"
Sollux's lips parted. His voice sounded like petrified bark scraping against cement.
"Eridan didn't want a funeral."
Karkat blinked, trying to pull his composure back together under the shock of receiving a response. "What?"
Sollux's eyes flicked up to him briefly before returning to the computer. "He said he didn't want one. That he didn't want people standing over a hole and talking at it like he could hear."
Karkat stared before letting his gaze flicker aside. "Okay, well, let's just assume for a second that I believe you and that this isn't some steaming pile of horseshit you just creamed out your ass. Because even then, most people don't go to these things to carry on conversations with the casket. They go to say goodbye. To deal with their grief instead of locking themselves up in a room with it and letting it starve them until some jackass shoves food in their mouth."
Sollux pulled the covers tighter around him. "I'm not going."
"Okay, I will literally get down on my knees and—"
"No."
Karkat's lips snapped shut. Something in Sollux's eyes had sparked, and there was a flame there. But it was not alive like flames were. It was red. Like blood.
"…All right," Karkat replied at last. He had cast his gaze aside, hands trembling as they gripped the phone tighter. "I'm sorry. I…don't mean to be an asshole about this, Sollux. I really don't."
Sollux was like some marble thing with a molten core. He lay there, his eyes continuing to burn. A restrained explosion.
Karkat began smoothing the sheets beside him. "So if you're not going to California for Christmas do you maybe want to chill with Gamzee and Tavros and me? It's probably just going to be shitty eggnog and gingerbread again, but—"
"Get out."
Karkat ground his words to a halt, blinking down. "What?"
Sollux's marble face had begun to crack. His lips had pulled back, revealing gritted teeth. And the fire in his eyes had begun to moisten. Glazing them with a violent shimmer.
"Leave me alone," he hissed, pulling the blanket up to his face. "Just leave me the fuck alone."
Karkat gazed at him before he squeezed his eyes shut and pulled himself from the bed. Sollux never saw him go. All he could make out was the flickering white light of his monitor against the blurred red edge of the covers beneath his nose. Then there was the soft snap of a closing door. And he could afford to bleed out some of the hot, swollen pain through his eyes. Wetting his stained comforter until the wound in his chest congealed, and he lay on his side, his eyes drying back to glass and the lights of a new video dancing over them.
He wouldn't have even noticed the arrival of Christmas had he not nearly tripped over a box on his way out to use the bathroom one day. He stared at the package and the brightly colored wrapping paper that had been tacked on with copious amounts of duct tape. On top of it sat a plate of gingerbread men, all with smiles and big circle noses done up in green and red icing.
Sollux gazed at them for a while before nudging the box against the wall with his foot and shuffling to the bathroom.
He thought about taking a shower. He stood over the toilet as he finished, flushing it and watching the water swirl. Maybe he would take a shower. He didn't know why he never took showers anymore. It would feel good.
His pants were already undone, so he shucked them off first. As he peeled off his shirt, however, he felt something light and cold hitting his chest. Like a raindrop. His fingers drifted up his front until they touched the tiny red bee resting just below his throat. Cold. Rough where it had been broken. He curled his fingers around it, shaking.
"…I want to be happy for what it was, and the time we did have."
He felt his knees buckle as the image bloomed before him. A drop of blood in water, it reached out, tendrils lacing over his vision until everything had been painted in memory. And he was sitting on his bed, staring into confused blue eyes. And on the floor two red fragments of stone winked like tears.
He tried to plead with the vision. Beg for it to stop. To spare him. And yet he was crushed to the bathroom floor with it. Helpless and shaking on the tile as it continued its descent, unfurling over him like some leaden shroud.
"I'm so tired of being afraid, ED."
"Please," he found himself coughing into the tile. His voice was thick with salt. It burned. He gripped the rug at the foot of the toilet, shaking his head helplessly against the horrible weight of it. "Please no. Please please please."
The vision was deaf. It pinned him. Held his eyes open and forced him to look. To watch as his own hands reached forward. As they tangled in that thick brown hair. As he was given a look of frozen shock in return. Wide blue eyes. Furrowed brow. And then he tasted the poison of feeling being poured down his throat. And it spread through his chest like fire until he could recall every movement of the air. The weight of the tiny pendant dangling from his neck like an anchor. So heavy. And yet he moved forward. Leaned into those lips, still parted in shock, and pressed his mouth against them. And a fire so sweet flooded through his veins that Sollux thought he might be sick with it now, his face pressed to the floor, immobilized by memory.
He clawed at the grooves in the tile, trying to drag himself away by the fingernails. But the vision continued. Like hot iron weights settling over his back, it held him down. Seared through flesh and bone until it was inside of him, eating at his heart. Exposing him until the sweet warmth of the memory stung and burned like acid as he watched himself pull away. As he watched those blue eyes flutter open and peer at him in confusion. As his lips formed the words.
"I love you Eridan. I don't want to be scared of loving you."
He choked, coughing up what he was sure was his own heart. He shook his head, face wet with something hot and blinding that to him could be nothing else but blood.
He would die from this. He would die if he couldn't get away.
He clawed at the side of the tub, heaving himself up over the edge. He toppled to the shower floor in a tangle of limbs and agony, choking and gasping and pleading. Pleading for it to stop. But it didn't. Even as he scrabbled at the knob and sent scalding water screaming over his body, he felt the walls press in around him. Darkening with memories. Recollections of sweet laughter and wet touches. Of kisses exchanged and kept, soft fingertips. A smile as drenched clothes were stripped and cast aside.
Such soft sweet things that had once lighted delicately on his mind now cut him. Butterflies with razor wings.
And he was bleeding to death.
He stumbled from the shower, ripping the curtain down in his desperation, water spraying the floor. But he never stopped. If he stopped they would catch up to him. All smiles and kisses and laughter. Chasing him down the hall, nipping at his ankles, cutting into him until he fell onto the bed.
And there, like some gaping beast, the jaws of vanilla were spread to snatch him.
He cried out, a strangled desperate sob like a creature beaten, and he tore the blanket from his bed. The blanket that smelled so sweet. That filled his nose with memories. Memories that stung and stabbed and choked. He staggered out into the hall with it, eyes blurred, throat raw, and stumbled to the laundry room. There he threw open the lid of the washing machine and stuffed the blanket inside. Unable to think. Unable to breathe. Blind with tears and pain, he reached for the bottles lined on the dryer. They all toppled to the ground under the violent shaking of his hand, and Sollux crouched down, choking, to scoop the bleach from the floor.
"Jesus fucking shit what the fuck are you doing?"
Words. Words. He didn't care. He had to get rid of it. Get rid of the pain. The softness. Everything. Or he would die. He would die. He unscrewed the lid on the bleach even as arms wrapped around his waist and tried to pull him away.
"Let go of me!" he screamed, hooking his fingers onto the edge of the washing machine. "Let go!"
They struggled for a minute. Bitten nails clawing at arms, fingers and elbows digging into ribs, feet scrabbling at the linoleum. But Sollux managed to give a strangled cry and heave himself forward, just enough to upend the bleach over the opening in the wash.
That was when the arms at his waist released him. And he sagged against the cold metal of the machine, mouth open in a silent, salty plea. And through the hot acid of his tears he watched as the blanket was drowned in bleach. As the red began to bleed out of it. Until it was snow. Cold and silent.
Clean.
He fell to his knees, putting his head against the washing machine and letting the tears drip silently from his eyes. He stared at the floor, his throbbing heart beginning to cool in his chest.
It was done.
After that there was peace. A hollow kind of painlessness as Karkat helped him back to his room. Dressed him. And then led him out to the living room. He sat on the couch, staring ahead. He never moved as Gamzee and Tavros joined them, circled around the coffee table laden with sweets and hot chocolate. Never blinked as they traded gifts and forced a kitten sweater over Karkat's head. Or as they placed a present in Sollux's lap that Gamzee eventually volunteered to rip open for him. Sollux couldn't even remember what it was.
Colors and words. None of it meant anything to him. He was clean now. He would stay that way.
After only crumbs dusted the plates and all the cocoa had gone cold, he was eventually pulled from his spot on the couch and led back to his room. And in the darkness, after he'd been tucked back under his red comforter, he felt the brush of skin against his forehead, and the heat of breath on his ear.
"Merry Christmas, buddy."
He stared, unblinking. Even as the shadow left him, closing the door and letting darkness swallow the room once more. He never moved. Never closed his eyes.
He was clean.
And so it was with little movement or recognition that he responded to Karkat's next visit.
"Feferi's here to get Eridan's stuff out of his house."
Sollux stared at his computer screen. One finger was extended past the covering of the comforter, pressed against the down arrow. The Minecraft forum scrolled past on his laptop's monitor, the words barely touching his eyes.
Karkat tried again.
"I'm going too. She really wants you to come. Just…help her sort through his shit. You know…"
A soft tap as Sollux hit his track pad, sending his browser to the next page of the forums. He felt a shift in the blankets as Karkat fisted his hands in them.
"Fucking dammit, Sollux." His breath was the hot whisper of tears hitting cloth. "What the hell was it all even for? Are you just going to bleach him out of your life too? Is that all any of this fucking meant to you?"
Another click. Another shift of the browser's window. Another page of text.
Then the bed creaked. The door clicked shut. And he was alone.
He moved through the forum more slowly then. Letting himself settle into the words. Allowing meaning to bloom dry in his brain.
Someone was asking about palette swaps.
He knew about palette swaps.
He opened the server without thinking. Though perhaps one part of his brain had desired it. Some dark corner fogged with a horrible longing. But the feeling didn't come to the fore until the world spread before him. Purple skies and blue trees. Fuchsia leaves. Two moons, green and pink. An emerald castle in the sky.
Their world.
He moved his avatar forward. Tentatively. Like some lost traveler treading on dreams. He crunched softly through the grass, the trees creeping past him. In the distance, the windows of hives glowed. A small city, governed by the gleaming red outline of the imperial ship.
He turned away from it. Away from the warmth of the town and toward the sea. Where an island peeked up on the horizon, a broken ship beached on its narrow shore. The windows glistened with warm light, tinted to the color of sunset as it passed through the purple glass.
Eridan had been so fond of teal and purple that he demanded his own dwelling be constructed out of diamond and amethyst.
Sollux let himself sink into the water. And he kicked up, bobbing through it, fighting the water's drowning embrace. And as he floundered, urging himself forward through the vast blue expanse, he felt a warning tug at the back of his brain. A desperate supplication to turn back. To stay on the shore where it was safe.
But he kept kicking forward. Even as his avatar dipped beneath the surface, the screen flashing red with damage, he struggled on. Against the broken cries ringing through his head, he tapped at his keys. He fixed his sights on the beached ship in the distance.
He had to see if he was there.
To make sure it hadn't all been a dream.
He clambered onto the shore, footsteps crunching on the dirt. The door clunked and squeaked as it opened, and torchlight flooded Sollux's monitor, glossing his eyes. He stepped inside Eridan's hive.
It was quiet inside. The main room was lined with chests, a furnace occupying the corner. Sollux moved through it silently. Like a ghost. He approached the walls. Walked beside every one. Let his cursor hover over each wooden crate. Over the crafting table by the window.
Then he reached a second door.
Chest tight and fingers fumbling, he pushed it open.
Inside was a bed. And against the far wall, a fireplace roared in the diamond hearth. In front of it stood an avatar with gray skin and candy-corn horns. Swathed in the purple cape Sollux had made for him.
Sollux approached the figure cautiously, his heart beginning to beat hard enough for him to feel. He moved around so he could see the avatar's face. Its blocky pixel eyes and impassive mouth. It didn't move.
Sollux licked his lips. He had sat up in bed, his fingers trembling over his keys as he stared. Eridan was still logged in. Still occupying their world. A ghost basking in the light of a fire. Hushed. Content.
He shook. Pulled his laptop onto his knees and bent close. Even as his heart gave a recalcitrant throb, he couldn't look away. Couldn't stop the desperate tapping of his fingers against the keyboard or the words he input with the push of an enter key. A message in a bottle, cast out to the undulating quiet of their digital sea.
are you still here?
The avatar was motionless. Firelight played off it in flickering golden waves.
i miss you.
He tore the words out from the black scab of his chest. And blood followed. Coursing through his body. Gathering behind his eyes and sending hot tears dripping down his cheeks. He drew in a shuddering breath and ripped at the scab again. In defiance. In desperation.
i miss you so much.
And then the avatar flinched. Shifted. Turned toward him, yellow eyes staring into his monitor.
i know you do. so come over here. stop letting it kill you.
He sat frozen. His throat filled with bile and salt and the throb of his heart. He tried to swallow. Tried to breathe.
For a moment he dared to hope.
And then his brain began to turn. Like cogs breaking free of the bonds of rust, realization shattered the quiet dream of their world.
Eridan never signed out. Never password protected anything. And people were in his house. Touching his things. Invading what had been solely theirs.
He stared at the screen, skull filling with a boiling pitch that put out his vision.
Karkat.
He shoved his laptop away, letting it thud to the ground. Ripped the sheets off his body, springing to his feet and tearing through the house. Opening doors so fast they nearly splintered. Kicking up snow with his bare feet as he raced across the road and up Eridan's driveway. Burst into the house with the bang of wood against wall, his feet pounding over carpet as he raced down the hall, skidding into Eridan's room, heaving like an animal.
Karkat twisted around from his spot in front of the purple Macbook, shifting his gaze from the screen where Sollux's blocky avatar stood. But that was all he had time for before the real thing kicked the computer away and tackled him to the floor.
"You fuck!" Sollux roared, fisting his hands in the front of Karkat's shirt and slamming his head against the floor. "You miserable fucking shit, that was his! That was his, you stay the fuck off it YOU STAY THE FUCK OFF IT! DON'T TOUCH IT, DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH IT!"
He heard another voice from over his shoulder. A pleading screech. But he was deaf. Deaf and blind and filled with the hot roar of rage. His fingers tightened into fists, and he was flailing, punching madly and blindly at the face beneath him. Hammering down even as arms were jerked up in feeble defense. Screaming things he couldn't understand until his knuckles were slicked with blood. Until the body beneath him sat up, bearing the rain of fists, reaching a pair of arms around his shoulders until Sollux's fingers loosened. Until he was clinging to the front of Karkat's shirt, his face a mask of tears and pain as he wailed with cutting anguish.
"I can't do it anymore," he sobbed brokenly into Karkat's chest. "I can't fucking do it anymore."
"Yes you can." The voice came from above him, clogged with blood. The arms around Sollux tightened. "Yes you fucking can. Because I need you to, dammit. I fucking need you to."
He was deaf to it. Senseless to the desperate embrace holding him up. All Sollux could do was bleed out from the hole in his chest. So he clutched at it. Scrabbled and tore at the front of his shirt as if he could rip the pain from his body.
"There's nothing left," he heaved. "He took it. He took it all away." Tears dripped from his eyes as he clawed at his sternum, his entire body wracked with grief and pain. "I gave him the rest of it. It was all I had. And there's just nothing fucking left."
"Shut up. Just shut the fuck up and fucking listen."
Hands clamped on his shoulders and tore him away, jerking him out to arm's length. Sollux sagged in the grip, tears rolling down his cheeks and into his open mouth. Karkat shook him, and Sollux lifted his blurred gaze to the battered face in front of him. And though one eye was swollen nearly shut, it did nothing to dampen Karkat's black glare.
"You fucking listen to me, Sollux. He didn't take anything okay? He fucking gave himself to you. And now he's gone and you are all that's fucking left of him. And yeah it hurts. I know it hurts. It hurts to be the only thing holding him in a world where he doesn't exist anymore. But god dammit…"
His face crumpled and he had to blink and give Sollux another shake to keep the moisture from slipping past his own lashes. "It's like you don't want him. Like you're fucking content to just let his memory rot you from the inside. After all the shit you guys went through together. After you laid your irritating asses all over our house and were fucking slopping all over each other like a pair of slugs in heat. And then I came home from work that one day and found his fucking argyle sock on the back doorstep and you both got it into your thick skulls that I must have rolled out of the womb that morning or something because you seemed convinced that I would buy your bullshit story that you didn't make out and touch dicks together in the garage. And as fucking gross as all that is, I didn't say nearly as much shit as I could have about your coy lovers' glances because goddammit you were happy."
He dragged a sleeve across his bruised eyes, tears mixing with the blood smeared under his nose. And Sollux looked on, swallowing and shaking and helpless.
"He was all alone," he whispered, a halting, ugly sound. "All alone. And cold. And I wasn't there for him."
"You were though. Every god damned day, Sollux. I saw you get up at the ass crack of dawn to drive him down to the coffee shop so he could collect ammunition for his complaint cannon to blow a couple of holes in your resolve once he got back. Then you'd let yourself get suckered into running errands for him, the consequences of which usually culminated in an hour long IM-ing volley where we both agreed that Eridan was a jackass but that you were going to keep letting him do it anyway. Because you guys were fucking awful together. Awful and perfect and he loved the shit out of you."
Sollux shook his head, trying to push Karkat away. "Shut up. Shut the fuck up."
"No, Sollux. I won't. I'm done shutting the fuck up. I've been shutting the fuck up about you for the past two fucking years and I won't do it anymore. Because now I'm scared shitless that if I don't say anything, I'm going to lose you."
He glanced up helplessly. And through the relentless pounding in Sollux's skull, he could hear the shifting of fabric, the shuffle of feet against the carpet. Then he remembered the yell from earlier. Someone else had been in the room with them. Those were his thoughts as that someone crouched down beside him, clothed in a brown skirt and white sweater. Feferi.
He stared at her. Tried to mouth the words. Tried to apologize. But she shook her head, putting a finger to his lips. Her eyes were red, but her cheeks were dry. And resting in her hands was a thin square wrapped in blue gleaming blue paper with a red bow. She uncurled Sollux's shaking fingers and placed it in his palms.
"I wasn't sure you were going to come," she said. Her voice was no more than the dust of its usual silver. She lifted her eyes from the box up to his face, and she gave him a little smile. "I'm really happy you did though. He wanted to give this to you so much that it didn't feel right keeping it all wrapped up next to my dresser."
Sollux let his eyes fall over the square in his hands. He knew what it was before he even opened it. Perhaps it was why he found no reason to hesitate. No reason to wait for Karkat to extend his hands and tear the wrapping for him. Trembling, he inserted a finger carefully under a flap of paper, slitting the tape holding it in place.
He could feel Eridan's thumbprints there. Feel the care put into each crease in the paper. He had always been so meticulous, taking joy in life from the tiny details. And so it was that Sollux took care to savor that moment. Even as it cut at his heart and made him bleed, he unwrapped the gift slowly, keeping his mouth clamped shut.
He slipped the CD case out of its blue paper, turning it over. The cover was a picture Eridan had taken once of their hands clutched together. Sollux remembered it as one of the days Eridan had been seized by a particularly violent artistic urge, and had been going around snapping pictures of all the most trite bullshit he could find. Sollux had told him as much after he'd taken a photo of their entwined fingers. The remark had resulted in the reward of having the camera turned on him. That was the image Sollux found as he opened the CD case. A blurred photo of himself, smirking even as he raised a defiant middle finger to the lens. He laughed, a tear shivering on the ends of his eyelashes plopping onto the disc inside. He dabbed it away gently with the bottom of his T-shirt before he popped the CD from its place inside the case. Without a word, Karkat and Feferi parted from his sides, allowing him to reach for the purple Macbook that he'd kicked away not moments before. He righted it gently, slipping the CD into the disc drive. It whirred for a moment before iTunes popped up over the Minecraft screen.
'Hey Sol. So I got you a compilation of all my greatest hits for Christmas. And before you go pissin' yourself with excitement over the prospect a gettin' to listen to my stunnin' voice singin' in your most favorite genre a music, let me just tell you that I actually invested at least two months a proper practice into these songs. So they're not gonna be the travesty they were at the Core. Fef even hooked me up with a recording studio in her town here, didn't you Fef?'
From the distance he could hear a door open and a distant voice yelling out, 'Merry Christmas, Sollux!'
'Okay thanks for that stunnin' cameo, Fef. Anyway, so all a those times I said I was goin' to the mall with Vris I was actually hangin' out with her and Dave, who's not actually as big an asshole as Kar says he is. He's still an asshole though. But he's an asshole that's been teachin' me his musical sorcery, so I can put up with it if it means producin' you a gift that might not result in the disintegration of your sensitive eardrums. He's gonna mix my songs with some of his 'sick beats,' which is I guess the technical term for the electronica garbage that you listen too. But that way I figured it'd have a little bit a both of us in it. I have no fuckin' clue if it's gonna sound good, but I had no fuckin' clue the two of us were goin' to go together as well as we did either. So I guess I have a lot more faith in puttin' stupid things together than I used to.'
'Aww, Eridan, you're waxing poetic!'
'Get outta here, Fef! I told you not to fuckin' listen to this part, I can't be sincere and romantic here with you sneerin' through the glass at me. No, take the headphones off, I'm not sayin' another fuckin' word until I see them sittin' on the soundboard there. God, fuck… Okay. Where was I…? Fuck it, I don't know. I was at the place where I always seem to be these days, which is like this fuckin' fantasy land that I would've called bullshit on ages ago if I didn't keep wakin' up to it every day. I know I give you a lot a shit, Sol, and that's fun, I'm not gonna lie, but sometimes I guess I just want to be fuckin' serious for a minute and tell you how much I love you and how happy you make me. I know this is probably not the gift you were expectin', but to be honest, you weren't the gift I was expectin' either. And I guess that's why I've sorta made my peace with things and all the bullshit I've had to go through. Because yeah, life fuckin' sucks sometimes and you gotta deal with shit when you're least prepared for it. And for a long time that seemed to be all my life was. Until I found out that good shit comes up when you're least expectin' it too. And I swear that if you're the only good thing that happens to me ever again, that'll still make the whole goddamned thing worth it. You made it all worth it for me, Sol. Merry Christmas. Enjoy this fuckin' masterpiece a music and…know that I made it with you in mind. I love you.'
The track switched then. A calm bass began to beat in the background as the sounds of guitar were meshed seamlessly with ethereal chords of electric harmony. And then Eridan's voice came. Singing the words of his song. The song he'd sung as they had lain naked on the bed, flushed and full, fingers entwined, staring up at the ceiling and letting the words permeate the air about them. Sollux felt the memory fill him up. And though the tears came unbidden, for the first time, it didn't sting.
They listened to the whole CD together. It was only four tracks. Fifteen minutes. But it was fifteen minutes spent in peace. In the embrace of a comfort and warmth he never thought would touch him again.
Then it was over. Eridan's voice faded, and the last notes shivered into silence. The disc whirred to a halt inside the computer. Sollux blinked, the room coming back into focus around him. He expected the illusion to end there. For the warm hand cupping his wounded heart to leave him. But it never did. He put a hand to his chest, and looked down.
There was no blood. No gaping wound. He was whole.
Another hand covered his own and he looked up. Feferi was gazing at him, smiling through her tears.
"I knew Eridan since he was this goofy kid with a book about dragons in his backpack and a pair of glasses that were way too big for his face. We always did some pretty fun things together. We baked and went shopping and talked. We had lots of good times." She squeezed Sollux's hand, tears slipping down her cheeks. "But I never saw him smile the way he did when he talked about you. He was so happy, Sollux. That's how I know that if he was thinking anything out there in the snow, it was about how lucky he was. Because some people go their whole lives without knowing what happiness is. And I know he found it. He lived a whole lifetime of happiness in the four months he had with you."
Sollux shuddered. His face crumpled with the weight of it. The awful, crippling bereavement. And though it was unlike any pain he'd ever felt before, he knew this time he wasn't dying. He put his head down, shoulders shaking, but felt hands cupping his face. Lifting him back up. He blinked away the tears, and saw Karkat's eyes peering into his.
"Eridan wasn't the only one, okay? I saw that fucking grin on your face every second of every minute you were with that guy. I don't want you to forget that. I don't want you to forget that happiness like that isn't just some bedtime story parents tell their kids to help them sleep at night. And I wish I could be him, Sollux. I wish I could do whatever he did to make you see that it really is worth it to put up with this bullshit world sometimes."
He put his forehead against Sollux's, his eyes squeezed shut and tears dripping out of them. "But I don't know how. I don't know how to be what you need. So you have to do it yourself. If he meant enough to keep his memory close despite how much it fucking hurts, then you have to do it yourself. Because it's become painfully fucking obvious that I can't. That none of us can except you."
Sollux closed his eyes. The tears were natural now. A stream that he no longer tried to stave off. That no longer burned. It was as much a part of him now as his heart. He put his hands over Karkat's and knelt there with him before he got shakily to his feet. Neither Karkat or Feferi moved. They simply watched as Sollux turned and peered at the room. He approached the bed cautiously, putting his palm against the comforter as if it were made of mist. He ran his hand over the velvety purple fabric, letting his eyes flutter shut.
After he traced the length of the bed, he went to the dresser next. He eased open a drawer and weaved his fingers through the bottles of cologne. He picked one up and held it to the light. He uncapped it then and squirted some onto the back of his hand. He closed his eyes and inhaled. Drinking him in. Letting himself become so full with his memory that it hurt.
He set the bottle aside and opened another drawer. He found a scarf almost instantly. The blue argyle one Eridan had worn the day he'd broken Aradia's necklace. The day Sollux had chosen to live with the memories, as heavy and cracked as they were. He smiled through his tears, winding the fabric around his neck.
He would need a bit of help for this.
"Sollux…?" Karkat got to his feet as Sollux ducked into the closet and began rummaging around. At last he emerged, clutching a small box in his hands and wearing a pair of shoes. One his own black tennis shoe, the other a teal hightop. He laughed.
"I know it looks stupid," he whispered.
Karkat shook his head, his unbeaten eye wide. Sollux shrugged a shoulder before he wandered out of the room, hearing Feferi and Karkat's footsteps padding quietly after him. Once he reached the kitchen, Sollux opened the tiny box in his hand. Inside, nestled between two swells of velvet, gleamed a silver ring with a glittering purple stone. He lifted it from its soft bed, covering it with kisses and tears.
"I tried to forget once. And I'm not going to do it again. Not to you."
He closed his eyes. Behind him, Karkat and Feferi stood, motionless and silent. Watching as Sollux crouched down and set the ring on the floor.
"I love you," he whispered as he stood.
He covered the gem with the teal hightop and stepped down.