Chapter Text
This was a bad idea from the outset, and you knew it, you knew it! You’ve never even had so much as a single inclination to delve into the world of FLARPing, not when you first heard of the dubious past time and certainly not after you got to see its long term effects on some of your friends. So what kind of sad sack of suicidal shit for brains idiot would want to go and stick his feelers into that mess now? Your kind, apparently. And let’s not forget that the reason you’ve made such a terrible life decision is none other than Eridan fucking Ampora.
Eridan ‘sighs dejectedly in your direction’ Ampora. Eridan ‘I’d just like to havve some company for a little bit is all’ Ampora. Eridan ‘It’ll just be this one time, Kar, I swwear’ Ampora. Eridan ‘drops hints like fucking construction drone supply palettes’ Ampora.
Screw you sideways with a rusty culling fork. You are a sucker.
You are soon to be a dead sucker.
It wasn’t even supposed to be that fatal of a campaign. Eridan had assured you that this adventure was a real low stakes one. Kiddy stuff, he’d said. No one would want to get in a serious scrape over lowbie gear, and he could get you decked out with some decent loot and then power level you. You hadn’t understood half a word in three when he started with the game jargon, but you’d gotten the gist of it. This was supposed to have been safe, and he was there to back you up.
Ha. And also, ha.
The sad part about this is you aren’t even going to live to hear Sollux’s smug “I told you tho.” You never thought you’d live to see the day when you actually want to hear that bastard crowing in mocking glee as his yellow text lays out paragraphs explaining what a fuck panned moron you are in excruciating detail.
Instead, you’re going to die kneeling in the dirt like you’re groveling, which to be honest you would have considered if you thought it would do a lick of good, but that’s not even a remote possibility at this point. They’ve seen you for what you are, an off spectrum freak. Your blood is oozing, bright and cursed through your fingers where you’ve got them clamped down on your leg. It was a feeble attempt to hide the truth, and you wasted your time trying to conceal the wound instead of going for your weapons.
Welp.
You want to move, to reach for your sickles so bad. You want to go out fighting, tearing a hole through the universe and anyone who dares get in your way till you can’t go on, but that chance is long gone. The second you move, the spell of stunned shock will be broken and that will be the end of you. It’s already starting to lift. One of the assholes that had jumped you lets out an appalling titter.
“The lauded Dualscar, cavorting with mutants! Man oh man, this is the best day I’ve had FLARPing in a month.” He laughs again and fingers the disastrously sharp knife he’s been brandishing- the one that bit cloth and flesh on your leg open so easily- with barely constrained glee. He’s getting all sorts of kicks out of seeing Eridan humiliated by his mere association with you. The troll’s partner doesn’t seem quite so mirthful. He grimaces and gives you a look that says, ‘better you than me, buddy,’ and you wonder just how far down the spectrum he is, how much abuse he’s used to taking from his “friend” on a regular basis. And Eridan... He’s still just standing frozen looking like someone punched him in the digestive sac.
That someone was you, of course. Metaphorically speaking. Although you do feel a bit like boxing his gills a couple times for dragging you into this mess, mostly you just fell sick. It’s a mystery how you can feel like a complete asshole when you’re about to be brutally murdered but there it is. The knife wielding troll is hovering closer to you, licking his fangs like he can’t wait to carve you into bite sized pieces, but the other one coughs politely and mumbles, “Scar‘s gotta do it, Kimmy. It’s his right”
It’s Eridan that gets the first shot at you by principal. Technically, it should be a quadrant mate, but your moirail isn’t here, and they aren’t about to go fetch her just to honor some vague tradition and risk you escaping in the process. That leaves the person that brought you here in the first place, but he’s still trying to reboot his thought process.
“Sure, yeah I know that,” knife kid replies. He turns his feral grin on Eridan and oozes faux sympathy. “Of course if it’s gonna be too hard for you, Orphaner, I can put your dog down.”
That kicks starts something, and Eridan blinks, and glances slowly to the other two trolls before coming back to you. He frowns, mouth pressed into a hard line.
“No, I can handle it.” Your friend unshoulders that ridiculous laser rifle and levels it.
“Eridan...” You open your mouth, close it, open it again, words caught it your throat. What can you even say at this point? Sorry. Don’t do it. Choke on my heaving bulge and die. All of it seems appropriate but none of it enough. You lock eyes instead, and he doesn’t blink or look away when he says, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care a this.”
You do, dropping your gaze in a flinch, so you almost miss when he pivots to the right before pulling the trigger.
At this range, the rifle’s beam has nothing to diffuse its power, and the leering troll in front of you crumples to glowing ash and ozone before the wind scatters him.
The second troll shrieks, terrified and enraged all in one go and throws himself at the seatroll, flashing a nasty looking sword that wasn’t there a second ago. Eridan is swinging the tip of his gun to meet him, but you can see he won’t line the shot up in time-
The sickle’s grip fits easily into your hand and the solid shock that runs up your arm from the impact the hooked blade makes in flesh is a satisfying one. It’s nice to know your combat instincts aren’t entirely crap. The troll’s screams have gone from fear to pain with the tip of your weapon buried in the meat of his shoulder. He’s still trying to hit something with his sword, but now it’s all awkward backhanded slashes aimed at you, and you’re small enough to make landing any kind of hit a problem.
In a blink, you have the first blade’s twin out and swinging and it slices through your opponent’s neck like...
Well, like steel with a freshly sharpened, unused edge though a troll. There’s much less resistance than you were expecting and the cut goes so deep the poor sodding fuck is nearly decapitated. Arterial spray goes everywhere, thick and brown. Now you have the answer to a question you don’t even remember asking. He slumps into a limp heap on the ground, and your first sickle is still stuck fast so the dead weight pulls you down with it. You try unsuccessfully to extract it, only managing the task on the third yank.
Okay, actually killing another troll is way different than practicing in your room against dummies made of shirts stuffed with other shirts. Eridan makes a low whistle, and you’re going to take that as meaning something good and also pretend that whatever it was, you did it on purpose. You are the bad ass.
Except the bad ass is trying hard to choke down his gag reflex against the smell of blood and quite possibly shit. Seems like the guy let go of his bowels at some point during that strife. Eridan thankfully puts an end to that by firing his rifle into the fresh body and disintegrating it like the first. Now you’re just trying not to breath in vaporized remains.
He pauses. A moment of tense stillness stretches out between the two of you, neither willing to make the first move, bridge the space between. It occurs to you belatedly that Eridan could very well have been eradicating those other two first just to get rid of witnesses to his shame, and you actually did him a huge favor. If that were true though, he could have pulled the trigger when you were still entangled with the other troll and neatly offed you both. He stands rigid, hands gripped tight on his rifle as he looks you over, and you refuse to put down your sickles so you’re left at a stand off.
Then he’s stalking toward you in a rush. Your blades come up defensively but he slings his gun aside, and you’re left so boggled by the action for a moment that you forget to actually swing before his fingers clamp over your wrist in a vice grip. He doesn’t stop, just sweeps past and ends up dragging you along behind him as you feebly protest. His stride is so much longer than yours over the broken ground that you end up half stumbling along like an idiot. Once you remember your weapons you briefly consider taking the offending hand off and fleeing, but he’s not actually hurting you, just ignoring your sputtering and snarling as he insistently marches you along.
When he does come to a stop, it’s so sudden that the forward momentum you were building just to keep up pitches you forward instead, and you end up twisting in his grasp to land flat on your ass. You’re in the shelter of an outcropping of jutting stone, somewhat shielded from roaming eyes that might happen to pass by. There’s a sharp rock under your ass, and his continued silence has you tense and miserable, and you can’t tell which actually feels worse. He drops to one knee in front of you and starts pulling his scarf off his neck with slightly vicious movements, and your mounting worry comes to a head. You grab his hand when he reaches for your wounded leg.
He’s shaking. You can’t see the subtle tremors, but now that you’re touching him you can feel them ghosting through your fingertips.
“Er- idan.” You have to clear your throat and try again before you can speak without your voice cracking. “Eridan, what are you doing?” He takes so long to reply that you’re worried he’s refusing to speak with you entirely.
“I’m dressin’ the wound. Or do you want to bleed out?” he replies flatly.
“That’s not what I-”
“I told you I’ll take care a this, right? So stop askin’!” You wince when his voice goes that shrill. He-
Oh. Oh god, he was actually talking to you when said that? You swallow back the sudden lump in your throat, but it refuses to go away. You finally let him go, and he starts winding his scarf tightly around your leg.
That really is a lot of blood now that you look at it.
The spike of adrenaline that carried you through the fight is starting to fade, leaving you feeling nauseous and dizzy with pain. Eridan gives the ends of his impromptu bandage a firm tug to bring it tight, and the shock goes right up to your digestive sack and makes you swoon.
When you come back blinking he’s got an arm hooked under yours holding you up right, and his face is creased over with worry.
“Kar?”
“M’ okay,” you say as you try to bat him off. It turns into weak pats against his chest. Eridan doesn’t look convinced. Before you can protest, he slides his arm all the way around your thoracic cage, pushing his shoulder under the joint of your arm then pulls you up with him as he stands. Neither your swimming thinkpan nor your burning leg is amused by the sudden change in elevation, and you find yourself needing to lean on the solid strength of him. With the previous bravado crushed, your plunge into the depths of embarrassment is pretty well complete at this point.
You can still feel him quivering against you, quieter now but it’s there. You press a palm to his chest and somehow it calms him.
He waits until you’ve steadied yourself a bit before starting out at a slow pace. Once you’re reasonably sure of your footing, he picks it up a bit. It takes a stupidly long time for you to actually question where exactly it is you’re going. You decide to blame it on the blood loss.
“I’m taking you to my hiwe,” he informs you matter-of-factly when you voice the concern outloud.
“What!?” You falter and squawk before you can reign your composure back in and try to smooth it over. “We should go back to my place. It’s closer.” It’s also not out in the middle of the ocean where you’ll have no escape from a highblood whose behavior has thrown you for one too many loops today but you still have enough sense not to blurt that last bit. Eridan scowls anyway.
“Yeah, it’s also surrounded by other trolls. You got too many neighbors, Kar, an’ I don’t know how long that patch job is gonna hold. Besides, I’we got plenty a supplies at my ship.”
Point to him, it wouldn’t do any good to head into the moderate safety of the suburbs if your leg bleeds through his scarf before you can get out of sight.
You shut up after that and let him shepherd you along until the grass starts growing in clumps and patches and the ground gives way to shifting sand dunes. By the time you reach this point you’re favoring your injured limb so heavily it might as well be dead weight. The place is abandoned with the weather for this time of year, still a little too blustery for the beach to be at all attractive as a gathering place. There’s a short dock not too far away with a sleek looking sailboat moored to it that you can make an educated guess belongs to Eridan.
Managing to navigate the dock doesn’t prove too difficult, but Eridan has to do most of the maneuvering to actually get you into the boat. Your leg has turned into one indistinguishable pulsing throb by now. In one ill-advised move, you try to put weight on it while climbing down into craft and nearly pitch over onto your face when it give out. It’s only because Eridan still has an arm around you that you’re saved from adding a broken nose to your list of injuries.
Once you get settled, you prop your offending limb up onto the seat, lean back and drape an arm over your eyes. Shutting out visual stimulus and focusing on slow breathing helps you deal with the pain a bit. The rocking of the waves is surprisingly comforting too...
You don’t mean to actually fall asleep, just dose for a bit, but when you startle awake and glance around, you find that Eridan has already cast off and that land is fully out of sight. The pain has actually receded into a sort of unpleasant white noise, and you can pull yourself into a sitting position without jostling it too bad. Eridan is guiding the sail with skillful ease as the wind pushes you along. He actually looks a lot more relaxed than he had back at the dock. Putting his concentration into steering the ship must have put him into a better state of mind.
You sit still and silent for a long while, studying the back of his head as though you’ll somehow developed some latent psychic ability and be able to pluck answers right out of his pan if you stare long enough. Eridan should have culled you. His casteist bullshit might not be as intense or blatant as Equius’, but you’ve never known the seadweller to shy away from spilling blood of anyone, least of all trolls below green. You’re a mutant freak, not even on the spectrum, and he had the misfortune of being publicly embarrassed by you just existing. Why is he being so fucking nice about it?
The question presses too heavy on you. It bounces and rattles around in your pan and knocks loose bad feelings, doubt and fear that there’s something worse for you in store down the line. You’re completely at the mercy of a kid that hasn’t been well known for having any. He’s about as high as you can get up the spectrum and you’re not even supposed to exist. Dying isn’t the only fate on the list of ones you could have, it’s was just the one that was most likely. Now you can amend that with slave or highblood play toy.
Okay wait just one globefondling second, this is still Eridan you’re talking about. You’ve been friends with him for sweeps. You’ve sat up past dawn just gossiping about stupid inane shit because one or the other of you couldn’t sleep and wanted company. You watched him fall to pieces after he pushed for the affection of the girl he loved too hard and ended up pushing her away. You’ve been a wall of grey sympathy and logic for him time and time again. That’s got to still count for something. Right?
The tension is unbearable. You cough, trying to get you words in order, and he jumps at the noise. So you aren’t the only one still stressing about this. Maybe that’s a good sign.
“Why are you helping me?” Nothing wanted to come together eloquently in your head, so you just spit the question out. It sounds more bitter than you were intending.
“Would you rather I threw you ower board and let you swim back?” he snips back peevishly. “Try a be a little more grateful when someone’s goin’ out a their way for you, Kar.”
“That’s my point! You’re going out of your way to help me, but for what? If someone else found out you could get culled right along with me for conspiracy. I mean we aren’t even quadranted or anything, so what’s the trouble worth to you?” You really didn't mean for that to come out sounding like an accusation but it’s too late to take it back
His shoulders hunch defensively, and he turns a mouthful of bared fangs at you. “Gee, I don’t know, could it be because you’re my fuckin’ friend?” He looks like he wants to say more, but a gust of wind snags sharply at the sails, and he has to turn his attention back to what he was doing. “Look just... drop it till later, okay? I need to concentrate on this.”
“Okay,” you say softly. Great, you feel like a jackass again. You sag in your seat and fold your arms against your chest.
The rest of the trip passes in strained quiet broken by occasional awkward small talk. It helps a little. By the time his hive comes into view, you’ve managed to get the gnawing pit in your stomach to quiet a little, and his fins have stopped being pinned so tightly to his skull.
It take you a few minutes to realize just how big Eridan’s hive is. The thing is an honest to god fucking ship, an ancient behemoth washed up on a rocky reef island. You think your own hive could fit into it three times over, and there would still be room to spare. Mothergrubbing fuck, you are going to break you neck from looking up at it alone!
“You live here?” Attempts to keep the awed tone out of your voice fail spectacularly. He chuckles.
“Aye, Shipwreck sweet shipwreck. It used to belong to my ancestor, you know.” He slides the sailboat smoothly in alongside the dock. The flurry of quick, precise movements he executes to get it properly parked and secured is rather rather graceful. They fall somewhere between a dance and machine timing.
“By yourself?” you ask because you can’t even begin to imagine what you would do with all this space. He has to have servants or something. Kidnaping you just for some company is suddenly looking like a distinct possibility.
“Well,” he chews over the word, “There’s my lusus, a course and Fef... She used to come here a lot too, I guess.”
Shit. You have got the most acute case of foot-in-mouth disease tonight than has ever existed in all of Imperial Space. Congratulations on your Shameshitting Douchcookie of the Week award, Mr. Vantas. Whatever are you going to do with your prize? Curl up and die, thanks for asking.
Eridan finishes securing his smaller boat and hops up on the dock with ease. If his mood has soured again, he’s doing his absolute damnedest not the show it. Feferi is like a sore spot in an innocuous place. You keep forgetting it’s there until you go and whack it again.
He offers a hand down to you and eases you out onto the dock in reverse of how you got into the boat in the first place, only without as much flailing about stupidly. Throwing an arm over him and letting him escort you down the planking and across the short stretch of beach comes easier this time, you don’t fight against it. Letting him help you up the rope ladder dangling over the side you aren’t so sure of.
He crouches down into the sand and says, “Hang on to my shoulders an’ I’ll giwe you a ride.”
“No I’m not being carried. I can do it myself,” you protest and cross your arms again. So kick you in the wastechute, you still have a little pride left and you aren’t about to throw it out like that. Eridan lifts an eyebrow at you.
“Reely. You’re gonna climb the whole way up there while you’re down a limb.”
“That’s what I said, nooksniffer. Quit looking at me like that, it isn’t funny.” His mouth is twisting like he’s trying very hard not to laugh. He straightens and gestures to the ladder.
“Whatever you say, Kar.” You scowl and grab the first rung.
About half way up you are seriously wishing you could take all of that puffed up pride and stuff it down your past self’s proteinchute till he strangles on it. Your arms are burning. To climb, you have to lock your elbows and pull up till your good leg hits another rung. The ladder sways in the sea breeze despite you and Eridan both weighing it down and every so often you bounce off the ships wooden hull, not hard but enough to make you nervous for your tiring grip.
By the time you make it over the railing you’re shaking from exertion. You flop and sprawl on the deck rather than immediately stand. Eridan is crouching beside you a moment later. You expect some snarky I told you so reply but he just leans over you and waits for you to catch your breath before helping you up yet again. It’s frightening how comfortable you’re starting to get with that.
He doesn’t take you far. Once inside he ushers you past several doors before pulling you into what has to be the biggest ablution block you’ve ever seen. There’s a soaker tub that looks like it can fit four trolls comfortably, and he settles you on the edge of it then goes rummaging through cabinets. You’re distracted by all the frivolous fiddly details on everything. Even the load gapper looks like it has scroll work on it. With seahorses. What the hell.
You’re startled when your host clears his throat right next to you. He’s taken off that ridiculous cape and turned it into a sling of sorts for whatever medical supplies he’s gathered. Without it he looks smaller and strangely vulnerable. Definitely less like an over the top movie villain and more like a normal troll.
“Uh, I’m going to hawe to cut these off,” he says and tugs at your pant leg. You blink at him.
“Wha-- Why?”
The look he gives you is somewhere around don’t-be-an-idiot-vile “Try pullin’ the hem ower that cut either way an’ you’ll see why.”
Yes, fine, that would be a bad idea. You huff a frustrated sigh. “They’re going to look ridiculous.”
“Well, these are kind a lost for a cause by now, anyway, what with all the blood. I’ll cut off the other side too if it will make you feel better.”
“Sure. I guess it can’t make it any worse.” Your grip on the porcelain tightens. “Go for it.”
He starts to work at the knot in his scarf slowly and delicately. A patch of blood did seep through and stain, but it looks like most of the bleeding has stopped by now. Unwinding the wool from your wound pulls at the blood crusted around the edges and makes you flinch. Once that’s out of the way, Eridan plucks a wickedly sharp looking pair of scissors from his pile of things and does exactly what he said he would. The blades make you nervous, but he’s careful and focused. It’s almost the same level of concentration he had used to sail his boat. You find yourself wondering just how many times he’s had to this for himself or possibly even Vriska or Feferi in the past.
Once he’s cut a slit up the side, he makes a second one all the way around just above the knee and peels back the fabric just as carefully as he had the scarf. In the light the wound looks ugly. It’s a long clean line dividing your flesh and makes you think obscenely of a carved oinkbeast roast. Your stomach does an impressive flip-flop at the thought.
“Kar?” Eridan rests his hand on your knee, and it’s shockingly cool on your bare skin. When you look at him, he’s got that same anxious expression on his face that he wore when he was first trying to bandage you up except this time he’s biting his lip.
“I’m okay,” you say then try to force out a laugh. “I just don’t think I’m going to be eating anything for a bit.” He nods at that.
“Okay but you’re goin’ to hawe to tell me if you think you’re goin’ to pass out or somefin.” He still looks worried, glances down at the cut then back up to you before speaking again. “This parts goin’ to hurt. I’we got to clean it.”
You breath in through your nose and nod. “Let’s get it over with, then.”
He helps you maneuver around so that your feet are in the tub then goes to the tap and starts running water till it’s washing lukewarm over your feet. The spray wand on the wall is extendable, and he retrieves that to clean out the laceration with. Getting it flushed with water makes you hiss through your fangs, but it’s not much worse than the pain you’ve already been in.
The disinfectant makes you scream.
You kind of think you might be leaving bruises on his shoulder from your grip on it by the time he’s finished with that, but he never says a word about it. Once the blood is cleaned away the cut doesn’t look quite so awful. Still like a filleted piece of meat and you think you’ve been put off of steak for a while, but it’s better. Eridan pinches the edges together a couple of times and says something like, “not bad,” before reaching for another tube of something from the pile. He dabs goopy shit along the edge of the wound where it runs deep enough to gape then presses and holds it closed one last time. When he lets go the edges stick together.
“Did you just fucking glue my leg?”
“It’s surgical glue, Kar, that’s what it was made for,” he says, capping the tube and reaching for a packet of gauze. “An’ I really didn’t think you’d want me to demonstrate my lack a’ needlecraft skills on your person.”
“Good call. I guess if I need to I can have Kanaya take a look at it later.” It’s his turn to look a little ill.
“I think maybe the less involved your moirail is in this the better it will be for my continued respiratin’.”
He finishes dressing your leg in silence that weighs heavy between the two of you. As he secures the end of a light bandage over the gauze you feel need to say something, anything.
“Sorry,” is what comes out.
“Sorry,” he blurts at the exact same moment, and you both do a double take. Laughter bubbles up from a tight spot in your chest, an overflow of all the stress and worry you’ve been carrying all day, and he soon joins you. You sit and giggle like a couple of pan fried idiots huddled together in his ablution block and thinking about how silly you’re both acting makes you laugh harder until you’re blinking tears back from your eyes.
It takes a few minutes to regain some semblance of control. Frightening as it is to realize just how close you’ve been riding next to hysteria, getting all that out feels good and little aftershocks are still filtering through you when you try to speak again.
“I’m sorry for being such an insufferable shitlord about letting you help.”
He sighs. “I’m sorry for gettin’ you into this mess in the first place.”
Once he’s pulled you to your feet you try testing some weight on your leg and find that it’s not entirely terrible. He takes a few minutes to clean up the disaster that’s been made of the room. The scarf he doesn’t even try to salvage, just tosses it into the waste receptacle with your shredded pant leg, and you wince. He catches you making a face and waves the concern away with, “I’we got more,” and leaves it at that.
With clean-up finished he shuffles back over to you uneasily. He won’t quite meet your eye, just keeps looking over his glasses somewhere at chest level and sneaking glances up. It’s the most pitifully shy expression you’ve seen on him in a while, and you’ve seen him pretty pitiful.
“So, uh,” he starts uncertainly, “I’we got a new movie and I thought since the rest of the ewenin’ was pretty terrible you might want to watch it while you giwe your leg a rest.”
A tired smile tugs at your mouth.
“Hell fucking yes, I do.” He beams at you and that squeezes your heart more sharply than the expression he was wearing earlier.
When Eridan’s arm slips around your waist for yet another time tonight, it’s comforting and familiar.