Here, have new act thank to be reading.

Um. This wasn't supposed to be done today but I wrote the first 400 words during class and then the other 2200(!) followed easily and... I cannot believe it. So Eridan's little stunt will be revealed in the act after next.

Many thanks to Dreamingfishy, obsessed01616, BlOo KiSsEs, YaoiOverlord, thepeopleofthecrysis, and Heki564 for your reviews to last chapter! Each and every one of them is appreciated!


He was an idiot. How could he have been in such a damned rush?

He knew the answer, though. If he was going to be honest, he had barely made it to the bus on time as it was. He needed to set his last-chance alarm two minutes earlier. Still, Sollux berated himself for hurrying like that. Why had he even needed that alarm? Why hadn't he woken up earlier?

He remembered, however vaguely, waking up from a dream in the middle of the night. He never dreamed, a side effect of the sleeping pills, but he had last night for reasons he couldn't fathom. He tried to recall what it had been about, but falling asleep again and the intervening hours had driven the dream past remembrance. He just knew with a cold certainty that he had dreamed, and he'd gone back to sleep, and he'd woken again, too late to realize what he was forgetting.

And now Eridan Ampora had seen his stupid blue eye.

Ampora's face had been... stunned. Neither of them had realized right away who they'd smacked into. It wasn't until they'd wheeled around, coming face-to-face, that Sollux even realized it was someone he knew. He'd seen the way Eridan had spun around, some barb on his lips, and just the same, he'd seen the words freeze in his throat and how his eyes moved from one side of his face to the other. For the briefest of moments, Sollux wondered what the Hell Ampora was looking at like that.

And then he remembered. It was painfully obvious from the expression on his face what he was looking at. Awed wasn't the right word, but it was the first word that came to mind. Eridan had seen his freakishly mismatched his eyes were, and Sollux muttered, "Fuck," spinning back around and hurrying to his Political Science class. He half-expected Eridan to call after him, just like the evening before in the library, but Ampora never raised his voice to hail him. When Sollux looked back just before ducking into the building his class was in, Eridan was still standing there, looking at him. A shiver ran down Sollux's spine.

In class, suddenly painfully self-conscious of the colors of his eyes, he kept his head down and his mouth shut. He had half a mind to head home during lunch to retrieve the contact lens, but he only had an hour between Political Science and Chemistry and he didn't want to cut it too close. The buses only ran every fifteen minutes right now, leaving him ten extra minutes, if he was lucky, to make it to class on time. He was stuck.

It wasn't easy to hide his six-foot-two frame behind five-foot-ten Jake English in front of him, but he made it happen, slouching and propping his feet up on the wire basket beneath the other boy's desk. He hoped it would be enough to keep his teacher from picking him to answer a question, thereby keeping all eyes off him, but he knew his instructor also liked to call on random people, just minding their own business. It would be a cold game of Russian Roulette, but Sollux was pretty good at remaining unseen, even at his height.

As class dragged on, he half-paid attention, the other half focusing on shitty doodles he roughed out in the margins of his notebook. He wasn't really artistic, wasn't good at drawing or writing or anything—the only reason he had that Creative Writing class this semester was for a mandatory elective requirement—but it soothed him to draw, at least a little.

He sketched out a chessboard with nine tiles, and—he grinned to himself—two kings locked in an eternal stalemate. Next to it, he started drawing a boy with glasses and a hammer smacking the shit out of a bunch of little imps. By the time he started in on the finer details, class was ending and he had gone mercifully unnoticed.

Now all he had to do was avoid running into Ampora again. This time, he would watch where he was going. He tossed his notebook and textbook into his backpack and slunk out of the classroom, eyes lowered to his shoes.

He wished he had prescription sunglasses so he didn't have to worry about people seeing this stupid eye thing. He could forgo a contact lens and just toss the shades on whenever he felt like it. It would be a lot faster than contacts, too.

Sollux kept his head down but peered up as he walked, keeping his eyes moving across the sidewalk, scanning anxiously for Ampora or anyone else he didn't want seeing him like this. He irrationally felt that all eyes were on him, but as he looked more closely, he saw that hardly anyone spared him a glance. It was a relief, to be sure.

He was at the door of the cafeteria building when he saw Eridan heading out. Shit! That asshole is everywhere! He spun around and searched for a place to hide. All he could see that was within sprinting distance in the time it would take Eridan to reach the door was the outside wall of the building. The doors were set about ten feet out from the rest of the building in their own enclave, leaving enough of a wall to hide him until he was well out of Eridan's peripherals. Seeing no other alternative, he dashed behind the building and pressed his back to the wall.

This is stupid, he realized as he stood there. He was twenty years hold and hiding from Eridan goddamn Ampora because of his eyes. He felt like a moron, but he wanted to avoid harassment. Apparently, this was the way to do it.

He wasn't stupid enough to think that Eridan wasn't angry at him. He knew the little hipster douche was pissed-off. Sollux just didn't know how pissed he was. He didn't doubt, though, that Ampora had the ability to make his life a living Hell.

Considering he was hiding from Eridan behind a fucking wall, he'd already started to make his life a living Hell, actually.

Once he was sure Eridan had passed without noticing him, he breathed a sigh of relief, hopped over the knee-high concrete barrier he'd vaulted over earlier, and headed inside. To his relief, Aradia was already there, but she was sitting with someone he didn't recognize and someone he did. Sollux wondered where he knew the guy from when Aradia caught sight of him, waved excitedly, and quickly got up and dashed over to him. He gave a half-hearted wave in return as the other boy and girl turned around, and he made a big show of brushing his bangs away from his left eye to hide the blue.

"Hey, Sollux! I missed you this morning!" she said brightly, giving him a tight hug. She stepped back as he lowered his hand and she inhaled sharply, covering her mouth with her hands, but he could see a smile on her face. "Sollux, your contact is gone!" she breathed, sounding pleasantly surprised.

"Yeah. It was an accident," he muttered, not caring about his lisp anymore. "I got up so late that I forgot all about it."

"Oh." She seemed disappointed. "So it wasn't intentional?"

He shook his head. "Of course not. I look like a freak, and Eridan Ampora saw it, too."

"Who?"

"Oh. Right. I forgot I didn't tell you."

"Tell me what?"

Sollux sighed and sat down on a bench near the stairs. Aradia glanced back at the two others she'd been sitting with (both of whom were looking confused), held up a finger as if to say hold on a minute, and sat down next to him. "Remember how KK decided to take me to lunch yesterday?"

"Yes..." she said slowly.

"Well, his lab buddy Eridan Ampora came with us because he has a car. TZ and Eridan's friend Fef came with us, too."

"Terezi came?"

"Yeah. She pretty much invited herself, but KK didn't tell her no. So Eridan bitched the whole way pretty much and then he bitched some more when we got to the restaurant and he bitched the whole time we were eating, and then TZ opened her mouth and made some insinuation that he's gay and ED basically lost his shit insisting that he's not, and TZ said that me and her are a 'very accepting' couple of people and added that I'm bi, and ED made this crack that it didn't surprise him, and I... Well, I think I snapped 'cause I dumped my cup of Dr Pepper on his head and now I think he's out to get me."

By the time he finished his story, Aradia had buried her face in her hands and begun rocking back and forth in her seat. Sollux wasn't sure what to make of this, but suddenly, she let out a shrill giggle and her hands dropped, revealing the huge grin on her face. "I'm sorry, Sollux, that's hysterical. I never would have guessed you had it in you to—"

"Retaliate against a blatant insult?"

"Retaliate at all. I'm proud of you for standing up for yourself! The delivery could use a little work, but good overall message."

Sollux laughed in spite of himself and ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, I've made an enemy out of Eridan Ampora, so we'll see how well that ends."

"If he's going to insult your sexuality, he probably is an idiot. And so far in the closet, even Dean Winchester's like, 'Damn!'"

He chuckled again. Aradia always knew what to say to make him feel better, at least for a few minutes. It was a relief to not worry about something. "So," he said, figuring it was past time to ask, "who are those two you're hanging out with in there? I think I know the guy, but I don't know from where."

"Oh." She blushed suddenly, hiding her face behind her hair until the dull flush receded. "Um. She's Nepeta, and he's Equius Zahhak. He says he's in your Coding class, actually."

He nodded. That did sound right. Most people in that class kept to themselves, though. It wasn't a really lecture-based course. "And?"

She blushed again. "And... um... he's really cute."

He knew that wasn't the whole story. "And?"

"What do you want me to say? I think he likes me, and I think I like him!"

"You never mentioned him before. How did you meet?" he asked patiently.

She ducked her head and mumbled something he couldn't quite make out.

"Huh?"

"I said, Nepeta caught me staring at them."

"You were staring at them?" he asked incredulously.

"Yeah. It was this morning, right after you said you were running late, and I started reading Game of Thrones but I kept looking around and I saw them and she was braiding his hair so I was watching and they saw me and... Well, Nepeta invited me over and we started talking and then she left and it was just me and Equius and Nepeta had been hinting that Equius liked me or that we'd be good for each other or something, I'm not really sure, it just all happened so fast and anyway I gave him my number and I'm pretty sure me and Equius like each other."

"Is he cool?" Sollux didn't know the guy, after all. Coding class offered very little time for socialization, Terezi be damned.

"Yeah, he's really nice and really strong and... you should come meet them!"

"Uh." Sollux pointed to his eye. "Not really feeling all that social right now, AA."

"They won't care, I promise. Nepeta is really sweet and Equius seems too polite to say anything mean anyway. Come on, I'm sure you'll like them!"

Sollux glanced at the tiny blond girl and the huge dark boy. A cold weight settled into his stomach. "Okay," he mumbled, standing and slinging his backpack over his shoulder. "Let's go."

He followed her to where Equius and Nepeta were sitting. Equius looked a lot more intimidating from the front, considering he'd really only ever seen the boy's back in class. Nepeta looked like a cat, though—she had a tiny, pointed face and button nose, and she had an air of mischief about her. This was only amplified as she sprang gracefully from the table she'd been sitting on, next to Equius, and grabbed Aradia and Sollux by the wrists. "Hi, Sollux!" she said brightly. "I'm Nepeta! Did Aradia tell you about us?"

"Uh, yeah," he said, allowing himself to be steered toward the table with the other boy. Now that they were standing next to each other, he fully realized just how short she actually was. In fact, it was kind of funny because he, Aradia, and Equius were all at least six feet tall and she looked to barely clear five feet. Karkat would love hanging out with her.

"Good afternoon," Equius said. Sollux realized he'd never heard his voice before.

"Hey."

Nepeta shoved him into a chair next to Aradia and she scampered to the other side, using Equius to climb onto the table where she settled in the middle, sitting cross-legged. The three of them resumed their conversation and he quickly excused himself to get lunch, leaving his backpack next to Aradia as an unspoken promise to return. Nepeta's hyperactivity was giving him heart palpitations.

He took extra time to pick out what he wanted for lunch to postpone going back to Aradia and, more specifically, her new friends. It wasn't that he didn't like them—it was just that his blue eye, exposed to the world, was making him increasingly self-conscious and he didn't relish the thought of keeping his eyes down for the rest of the day. It was a pain in the ass.

Finally, though, once he had his burger and fries on his tray, he couldn't postpone it any longer. He slunk back to the table, just in time for a flash of fuchsia to overtake him.

"Sollux! Can I glub at you for a second?" Feferi asked, rushing over to him from Lord knew where.

"Uh, yeah," he said, looking nervously down at his plate.

"Great!" He chanced half a glance up, and she was looking at his eyes. There was no surprise on her face, though. It was as if she was confirming what she already knew. "Look," she started, "I'm so sorry about what happened yesterday. Eridan was wave out of line. He's my best frond and I know how he can get sometines, and I codn't make any excuses for him, but I just wanted you to know that I think he might be planning somefin to get back at you. I'm gonna glub at him about it, too, but again, I am reelly sorry about everyfin."

"I'm not mad at you or anything," Sollux started, and Feferi nodded like she already knew.

"I know, I know, but try not to be mad at him, either. He's not a bad guy, reelly! He just takes some... netting used to."

Sollux felt a bit bowled over by the fish puns, but he nodded. "Yeah. I'll try. If he fucks with me, though, I'm going to hit back."

Feferi bit her lip. "Okay. I'll try to glub some sense into him," she said, and then hurried away as quickly as she'd come.

Nepeta let out a high-pitched giggle, and Sollux turned his head to see that she had stuffed her sleeves into her mouth to muffle the sound. Her mischievous look had only deepened. "What?" he asked, shooting her what he hoped was a cold glare.

She just shook her head and giggled again.


Someone posted a masterpost of Feferi fish puns on Tumblr and I see her using them a lot more when she gets nervous, hence the waterlogged rambling.

Aaaaaand Jake English made an appearance. I wasn't sure about adding the alpha kids into this but I have a few of the Beforus trolls so I figured, why not? (Also Dirk.)

Aaaaaand Nepeta's gigglefit is because she already knows what's going to happen. She is the shipping queen.

*Edit: OMFG THANKS TO BEAR FOR POINTING OUT THAT ARADIA ACCIDENTALLY CALLS SOLLUX "ERIDAN" I FIXED IT THOUGH OMFG* *hides head in shame*