Archive of Our Own

It had been quiet in the helmsblock for a long time. An oppressive, interminable quiet, generally broken only by the nearly inaudible humming of computer fans or the occasional ping of a notification. The periodic entrances of maintenance trolls were a bit more eventful—there would be the open and shut rush of the door, the rattling roll of a cleaning cart against the floor. Sometimes they spoke, although never to Sollux. Generally to themselves, or occasionally one would get the idea to call a friend while they worked, filling his ears with the sound of babble he cared not a whit for, gossip about trolls he didn’t know or complaints about a menial job he’d give an arm for. There would be the water, the rustle of fabric, so many ordinary little noises that did not linger long and did not hope to break his horrid social atrophy.

The voice of Eridan Ampora, the phantom who’d haunted every horrible daymare he suffered since the day the drones came for him, was altogether overwhelming in the physical realm. Sollux believed it to be the physical realm, anyway. The familiar frame, just a touch shorter than his own and filled out with just enough muscle to befit an orphaner, far from his own near-emaciation, looked solid enough. The voice, too, was clear and present, not snaking away in incoherent wisps as his dreams had the nasty habit of doing, but there was something different about it. The wavy, over-affected seatongue accent snapped on and off irregularly. As if, faced with the grotesque sight of him, the disgusting reality Sollux wanted nothing more than to fling into a black hole, Eridan could not choose whether to be formal or intimate.

“I’m sure it ain’t gonna feel too good,” he was saying, already hedging against Sollux’s upset as if his capability of lashing out hadn’t been near-completely neutered. “But it’s gotta be done, Sol. Okay? I can’t fuckin’ believe they’ve neglected you so much, can’t believe the total lack of respect these fuckers have got for the troll keepin’ ‘em alive up here.” His voice shook ever so slightly, the v in alive wavy to a near-comical degree.

Sollux inclined his head slightly. Even that small attempt at a nod was enough to pull unpleasantly at the uppermost couple of ports in his neck, the biowires inside them. It reminded him, too, of how weak he was, how long it had been since anyone saw fit to let him down from the helmscolumn. Letting him down was what Eridan wished to do, hold him and help him regain some strength. All straight out of a fantasy. How many times had he imagined that very thing? Eridan gathering him up in his cold, cold arms, wrapping him in a blanket and assuring him that the agony he felt would pass, that he was right there with him.

“Right then,” Eridan said, after a brief wait to see if there would be any verbal response forthcoming from Sollux. Written, more like. He’d illuminated one of the many screens in the helmsblock to type on. It had been so long since he’d last spoken aloud that he found himself afraid to try and find out he was no longer able. “I’m gonna get started then. Arms first, sound good?”

He drew on a pair of gloves, sleeves rolled up to expose cold, violet-tinged forearms, dotted here and there with scars from hunting. Then he took up a large pair of shears from the cart he’d brought in, the blades long and frighteningly sharp. He stepped in closer and ran a hand up Sollux’s left arm, fingers trying to sort through the overgrown wires to minimize any tangles and, Sollux assumed, try figuring out where the hell to start. The wires squirmed, undulating like their own, self-aware being. The goals they pursued, however, were Sollux’s own. Being close to Eridan, touching him, getting reassurance. The wires, however frighteningly advanced they were, didn’t have sentience. The only brain connected to the helm system was his own.

okay, he said on the monitor Eridan would be best able to see, knowing that he would be hesitant to start without explicit permission. He was an amateur, after all, and Sollux suspected he was afraid of hurting him. The main wires carrying psionic energy into the helm were ample and sturdy, connected to the forever-aching spinal ports to both gain direct access to his nervous system and facilitate easy connection and disconnection. The countless smaller wires that sprouted from them, however, had nothing to guide them. They buried themselves into flesh at random. Others, not quite having reached that point, just waved sadly in the air, seeking stimulation. When these reached out, Eridan quirked a smile.

Shears still held closed in one hand, he reached out the other to engage a couple of the brave little wires, playing with them. Stroking a finger along one to make it wriggle, moving a hand in and out of range to be chased. The warm expression on his face, akin to a wiggler discovering an enjoyable new game, brought a nervous smile to Sollux’s face in turn. He could feel the heightened tension running through all his joints and muscles, an unavoidable dread of the procedure to come, but at the same time, it was... sweet, seeing how Eridan could happily play with the wires without showing a single sign of the disgust Sollux felt for himself.

don’t they gro22 you out? you can’t po22iibly thiink they aren’t totally freaky.

“Oh, stop yappin’ about how repulsive you think you are, nookwipe. If it makes me some kinda deviant to be attracted to a helmsman, so be it, but the ports and wires don’t bother me at all. Only bad thing they did was hurt you, and for that, as many of ‘em have to go as possible, but honestly, these little guys are kinda cute. They like me.” After glancing up at him solely to deliver a fond roll of those violet eyes, Eridan kept toying with his favored wires a little longer, fingertips occasionally ghosting over his skin near where some had planted themselves. Each time he did that, Sollux shivered, biting back a pathetic whine.

If he hadn’t been paralyzed nearly speechless with terror, he might have taken the opportunity to make some sort of crude joke about what else could squirm around and like him. As it was, all he could do was close his eyes, then open them again. Look at Eridan, then look away. He frantically oscillated between strategies, unsure of which would be best when the jaws of those shears finally opened.

He didn’t have to wait long. Eridan grasped a wire near his wrist, pulling it taut and unmoving, and the telltale tug under his skin, though only a little painful, sent a visceral jolt of panic through his system.

Sollux tensed. The sharp tips of his fangs pressed into his lower lip. As he felt the wire trying to squirm in Eridan’s hand, then the shears snipping it so close that the flat of the blade was cold against his wrist, he forgot how to breathe for a moment. It fought sloppily in and out, a jerking, heaving breath that had no chance at all of going unnoticed by the sharp eyes of Orphaner Eridan Ampora. Through vision blurred with red and blue around the edges, he saw Eridan frown. Rather than going right for a new wire, he ran the pad of his thumb over the barely protruding stump of his first victim. The rest of it laid curled up on the floor, motionless and dead without its connection to the system. It didn’t hurt, though he imagined the end of it working its way out of his skin in the coming nights would.

Still, when Eridan did reach for the next wire, another of what would be countless, he was still drowning in fear, shuddering for air like someone was fiddling with his programming.

“You alright, Sol? That didn’t hurt, did it? I was real careful to keep it steady.”

iit diidn’t hurt. iit’2 fiine. keep goiing.

Eridan, contrarian though he was, kept going. They’d built the early foundations of their pitch rivalry—before they’d even started to contemplate the possibility of a multi-quad relationship existing—on neither one of them doing a damn thing the other said. Either of them would have taken offense to the very concept. And yet now, when he’d really kind of like Eridan to be obstinate and refuse, he did exactly what Sollux said and kept going.

With each little wire, still so small and insubstantial, in his arms rather than near anything vital, he felt his tension growing, a bow-string ready to snap. Maybe he was hardening into cement, succumbing to some kind of awful, living rigor mortis. Every weakened muscle he had control of was enlisted to the service of not making a fool of himself.

Eridan fumbled a wire and it was still squirming when he cut it, a little close to his skin for comfort. Immediately, Sollux was taken back to a bronze maintenance troll from perigees before, one who’d been particularly skittish of helmsman and who he’d overheard in the halls pleading with someone to trade with him. He’d barely looked at Sollux while cleaning him up. Sollux sure as hell wasn’t opposed to that from a privacy standpoint, but it meant the guy would inevitably pull on and snarl wires. And instead of untangling them gently, he’d just— pull.

Within the confines of his restraints, Sollux flinched back hard. He felt his spinal ports and the major wires connected to them smack against the solid mass of the helmscolumn. That jolt of pain, so profound he felt it in his teeth, would have made him whine pathetically even if Eridan hadn’t instinctively pulled at the wire to keep from cutting him. That pull, the wire trying to cling to the oasis of his body, wrenched a sob from his chest.

The bronze had left him dripping blood more than once, wires dying on the floor. Nothing that caused life-threatening wounds, but more than enough to scar and to leave him in agony. He always imagined Eridan at times like that. He fantasized about his very own prince swooping in to save him. Now, the hands on his arms felt too warm, and he was sparking too hard to see anything other than hazes of red and blue.

Eridan pruning him splintered into the bronze and two or three others of his ilk, melting together and separating again through his ozone-scented psionic veil. A distorted, ugly monster so very unlike what he knew of Eridan’s pretty face. He could make out neither fins nor gills, as if the troll cutting and pulling and trying to work stubborn little knots of wire up out of his skin was someone he didn’t know at all. Someone too warm and without Eridan’s big, sad eyes.

He looked spiky, even disregarding the psionic haze and what Sollux realized in embarrassment were tears. It took a few minutes of pruning, more and more multicolored biowire accumulating on the tiled floor, for him to grasp that it was the static messing up Eridan’s perfectly groomed hair. Defying even the layers of goop he knew Eridan slathered into it every night, the sheer electricity of his power had it getting all fluffy and frizzy. Sollux wished he could enjoy it.

Instead, he wept, only able to make choked little noises whenever Eridan pulled the shears away and tried to ask him if he was okay or if it hurt. Writing messages on the screen was beyond him, shameful though it was to admit with a computerized brain.

He didn’t know how long he lasted like that, crying and squirming away from the scissors and the hot-cold hands. Even when it made his frail body sway slightly in the restraints or bump painfully against the helmscolumn—something Eridan couldn’t quite move fast enough to prevent—he couldn’t stop himself. It was a unique psychic agony, the overwhelming impulse to run while being unable to move hardly at all.

A claw pushed down his shirt a little and bit into the back of his shoulder. It dug out the stubborn, freshly-pruned end of a wire, wet with gold blood and not yet dead. Sollux wailed, a near-animal howl. It hurt, and so close to his spine with all the sensitive ports it bore. One wrong move with one of those ports and he could end up paralyzed or even dead. Eridan would never hurt him. Eridan would always be careful. But the voice talking to him then, murmuring incomprehensible words in a low, urgent tone as claw and wire alike worked at his flesh, was so many voices at once.

He struck out behind him blindly, a difficult move while partially restrained, and his weakened fist collided with the rock-solid keratin of a horn. He gripped, the ragged edges of his claws biting into his own palm around it, and heard a yelp of surprise. That was all the encouragement he needed to pull with all the little strength he had, until he both heard and felt the vibration of a skull colliding with the metal of the helmscolumn.

“Hey!” That voice broke through his awareness, shouted over his own rolling sobs and the psionic crackle all around them both. “What the hell do you think you’re doin’? Calm down, Sol. You need to fuckin’ breathe.” His grip was so tight his hand started to cramp, reminding him horribly of just how little action any part of his body had seen in a long time. “Are you hearin’ me? Breathe. You’re hyperventilatin’, and you’re sure as hell not fuckin’ thinkin’, for the love of all that’s holy.”

He had a killer psionic migraine coming on, aching and overstimulated. Sollux trembled, choking down another whimper, and tried desperately to convince himself there wasn’t blood soaking his shirt or anything threatening to invade his ports. He was afraid to let go of the horn in his hand, of the troll who might have been Eridan and might have been a stranger, but in the end, his lack of grip strength made the decision for him. He was shaking too hard to hold on, and so his hand loosened and fell weakly to his side, hitting the helmscolumn on the way.

The troll let out a sharp, sympathetic breath, close enough for him to feel on his neck, on his ports. But as if guessing his next move before he could so much as twitch a finger, Eridan swept out in front of him in a billow of violet silk. Cold hands grasped his shoulders to pin him back against the column. Hard enough to keep him from moving, but not hard enough to crunch his wires painfully.

“Breathe,” he ordered again. For lack of anything else to do unless he wanted to try using his psi against him, Sollux breathed. After three or four shuddering breaths, he caught motion in his peripheral vision. One gloved hand had detached from his shoulder and, after peeling off the glove with his teeth and tossing it in the trash, Eridan brought it up to gently caress his cheek. He could feel the chill of gold rings against his skin as his fated rival wiped away his tears with all the tenderness in the galaxy.

how bad ii2 iit?

Eridan’s thick brows furrowed. Behind his glasses, his eyes wandered anxiously. “How bad’s what? Me? Please, you couldn’t do real damage to me if you tried.”

Sollux wanted to argue about that, to point out that the psionic burn scars and sweeps-old bite marks on Eridan’s skin begged to differ, but he knew that in his current state, he was probably right. It wasn’t what he meant anyway.

me. the bleediing. how bad ii2 iit?

“Oh.” The harsh, ever-displeased lines of Eridan’s face softened. “Ain’t bad at all. Hardly more than a few drops, and I’ll clean it right up if you’re done losin’ what’s left of your sponge. Did it hurt that bad? You said it didn’t.”

ii don’t know. He knew it wasn’t a helpful answer, but his head was still terribly muddied. The image of Eridan in front of him still threatened to bleed into an amalgamation of maintenance trolls. no. ii don’t know.

“Okay,” Eridan prompted, tossing out his other glove and continuing to gently wipe his face dry. “Should I assume we’re not gonna get any more prunin’ done tonight? It’s gonna have to get done at some point, you know. Can’t get you down from there otherwise.”

Sollux fidgeted in place, still shaky but not wracked with the same near-epileptic convulsions as before. He would like to avoid answering, but the sniper’s gaze trained on him said there wasn’t a chance.

maiintenance troll2 have pulled out wiire2 before. or triied two me22 wiith my port2. and that hurt2 a lot.

“Fuck. Are you serious? They’ve just ripped them out unpruned?” The surprise in Eridan’s voice struck him like a knife. He was able to keep from falling apart again, but only just. How cruel it was to be reminded that even when he thought he had the full picture of how brutally he’d been rendered down to nothing more than a piece of equipment, there were still further humiliations to come. He tried to look away, but couldn’t keep his eyes fixed in one direction for long. He kept wanting to look to Eridan again, even if it was painful.

ye2. they left the wound2 bleediing mo2t of the tiime, eiither diidn’t notiice or diidn’t care what they’d done. 2o ii’d 2tay liike that alone untiil the next tiime 2omeone came iin.

“Fuck,” Eridan breathed again, voice wavering despite the lack of w or v. “I’ll cull them, I swear. Every last one. Probably deserve to be culled myself for not findin’ you any sooner than I did, for not gettin’ you out of the empire before they could even think about takin’ you past the threshold of a helmin’ facility. But I’m here now, and even if I never get your forgiveness, I’m gonna take care of you. Gonna take over all your maintenance myself, from your meds to your prunin’ and everythin’ in between. None of them will lay a single prong on you again.”

Sollux listened to that monologue very seriously, doing all he could to remember how passionate Eridan was about him instead of trying to work out all the different ways it could be disingenuous. His mouth twitched, lips parting just slightly to attempt speech, but he aborted the attempt before he could make a sound, still too afraid of failure. Eridan captured them instead, cold and gloss-slicked against his own. It was a chaste kiss, no tongue, but he lingered a long while, keeping them both quiet.

“We don’t need to do any more tonight. I’ll just clean up what I’ve already done. Even before that though, I’ll just stand here and hold you for a bit. How ‘bout that, treasure?” He smoothed both hands down Sollux’s arms, careful not to press down hard against any of the newly pruned areas, then wrapped his own arms around his midsection in a gentle embrace. His hands even slid through the space between Sollux’s back and the helmscolumn without jostling anything, a feat maintenance trolls rarely managed.

better not 2tart lookiing at me liike ii’m a drooliing, iin2en2ate wiiggler. iit’2 bad enough you have two 2ee how u2ele22 my body ii2.

He assumed Eridan could still read at least one of the screens just fine past the column while hugging him, and was swiftly proven right when he got an indignant response.

“I know how dangerous you are, Sollux Captor. I’d never dare look at you in any kinda unserious way. Besides, it’s not the first time I’ve been party to a tantrum of yours, is it?”

ii mean iit. don’t. ii diidn’t mean two freak out or whatever.

“If that’s your attempt at an apology,” Eridan said, drawing back from the hug only just long enough to give him a pointedly incredulous look before nestling back in, “it’s kinda shit. And also blatantly fuckin’ unnecessary. I’m not that fragile. I can take whatever you have to throw at me and more. But...” He paused then, and their heads were close enough that Sollux could almost hear the tiny, wet noise of him chewing at his lip with those shark teeth. “You know I’ll never hurt you, right? Not like that. I’d sooner die.”

yeah, ii know. 2orry.

“I thought I said you didn’t have to apologize. Don’t my words mean anything to you?” Eridan was so indignant at that apparent slight that Sollux couldn’t choke down his laughter. It burbled out in a rusty, uncertain river, the first happy sound he’d made in he didn’t even know how long. That, of course, only deepened the scowl on Eridan’s face, a harsh line twitching persistently in the fight against a giggle fit of his own. How many trolls had heard Eridan laugh since ascension? Sollux was willing to bet not many.

don’t get u2ed two iit. thii2 ii2 at lea2t a 2weep’2 allotment, 2o hold ontwo them.

He felt so proud at the following snort of amusement that all the aches and pains throughout his body melted away for a moment. Eridan was looking back at him like he’d just seen a miracle, like one of the wizards he used to read about as a wiggler was standing right in front of him doing real magic. All that from a laugh.

“There’s the pain in the ass I know and love. About time I got him back. Just so you know, laughin’ at me now means I’m gonna make you try talkin’ tomorrow. Better not try to tell me you can’t.” Eridan hugged him a little tighter, pressing his face right into the crook of his neck, and even with the hard edges of his glasses against his skin, Sollux didn’t feel a fresh surge of panic about his ports. At least for this fleeting moment in time, all the voices in his mind—the dead and his own—were quiet.

ii mii22ed you.