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Your name is John Egbert—Heir of Breath, doer of the windy thing, and unapologetic film aficionado. You will always have a soft spot in your heart for Hackers (1995), starring Angelina Jolie in a sick pixie cut and Jonny Lee Miller rocking indoor shades (of course you'd sent copious screenshots to one Dave Strider). You will never forget seeing Jonny rocking up to Cyberdelia, breaking into supercomputers, and hacking into all the mainframes—all of them. What can you say? Hackers are just the coolest.
So it's no surprise that when you meet your very first hacker, you feel every part of you light up. Shades? Check. Devil-may-care attitude? Check. Sheer badassery? Well, the two of you'd just helped to prevent the complete annihilation of Paradox Space. In your eyes, Sollux Captor is the real deal. Or maybe something about him just calls to you, intangible and ill-defined, inevitable in the way all your friendships now seem to be in retrospect.
It's not easy to get close to him, though. He's cagey, ornery, quick to snap. Bristly about his personal space. Kind of an asshole sometimes. But he's fiercely loyal to those he knows well—his voice goes soft when he talks to Aradia, high-pitched and fervent when he fake-feuds with Karkat, and halting, almost flustered when someone mentions Feferi. And now you want to know if his voice will ever change for you. You don't know how or why you've started thinking about this stuff, but now it fills your brain every time you spy him at a friendly gathering, every time Karkat scoffs his name.
He's just cool. Not the ironic way Dave tries to be cool. You can't put your finger on it, but you want to be in range of that coolness, the willing accomplice to it. At some point, you even try to figure out where your feelings are on that troll quadrant thing. Obviously you don't hate Sollux or want to butt into his other relationships. That flushed quadrant, glaring red, doesn't really seem to be the best fit either. You've never really related to that feeling: racing heart, sweaty palms, pupils blown wide. Nah. What you feel for Sollux is something between deep admiration and totalizing curiosity. You want to burrow under the skin of his face, see what the world looks like from behind his half-blind eyes.
So naturally you start showing up. Making yourself useful. You learn what nectar his bees like and pester Jade for some mutant flowers. You pore through all the old GameGrub issues the trolls thought to captchalogue before Alternia’s destruction. And one day you just show up at his hive bringing a box of grub pizza, a shittily-alchemized Xbox you’d pawned off Dave, and one of your many throwaway laptops.
And much to your surprise—and his too, you think—he lets you in.
**
Your name is Sollux Captor, and you are one confused motherfucker.
Life on Earth-C has consisted of hive reconstruction, apiculture network maintenance, non-apocalyptic video games, and the occasional outdoor venture with AA. All in all, it's quiet compared to the shithive maggots situation on Alternia. Your friends are (mostly) alive, and you half-feel the same. Though there's one new thing, and that's John Egbert.
He's taken to hanging around you lately. Shows up at your hive just to "say hi." Makes stupid comments about the mind honey. Even brings some Earth video games for you to "try out” every week. He's persistently friendly and more than a little dumb and just the right amount of sincere. Fuck. Do you actually enjoy his company? Do you actually look forward to this idiot taking up space in your hive?
He's just sitting in your block now while you wrangle with some lines of ~ATH, and you're hyperaware of how intently he's watching you. His gaze is dopey and intense and fuck, it makes your skin prickle, it makes your bloodpusher race, it makes something in you stir. You're no stranger to the intricacies of troll romance, but this is a human. You have no idea what to make of his stupid persistence.
"So uh, what are you working on now?" he's asking in that matter-of-fact way.
You affect a deep scowl. "Like I said. I'm reconfiguring KK’s husktop so it doesn't blow up again. Gog, he’s literally the shittiest programmer of all time."
"Oh." He's behind you in a flash, and you fight the urge to leap from your seat. His warmth presses into you as he peers at the monitor, and you're hyperaware of his smell, bready and hot and altogether human. "Can you like, explain some of that stuff to me? Because I've always wanted to learn how to code, but the Earth stuff goes way over my head, not to mention troll stuff."
You scoff. It's instinctive and mean and fuck, why are you like this? “EB, why do you even wanna learn this shit? One, you’ll never be as good as me, and two, don’t you literally have better things to do?”
You feel him shrug. “I dunno. It’s cool, I guess? I wish I had a super important reason, but honestly, I just do whatever I think is neat.”
His breath tickles the hypersensitive skin at your nape, and you wonder if he knows what he’s doing to you. The words tumble out before you can stop yourself. “So you think I’m ‘neat’? Is that why you’re always in my personal fucking space?”
That comes out harsher than you expect. You’ve forgotten, again, that John hasn’t put up with you for sweeps like the other trolls have. That he’s just this soft blue dope who’s somehow even worse of a leader than KK is, but also better, and that paradox really fucks with you.
So does the way he brushes off insults. He gives a half-laugh and steps away, though you can still feel him hovering over your shoulder. “Yeah, well, you’re a hacker, and hackers are awesome. And you’re friends with Karkat and everyone, right?”
Right. You’re just part of this human’s kumbaya vision of Earth-C, another side character in the feel-good world they all worked for. Of course he wasn’t here for you specifically.
“Look, can you just fuck off once and for all?” you find yourself snapping. “Go back to your hive, or house, or whatever. I’m not gonna be your friend.”
”Oh.” He seems genuinely disarmed. “Why not?”
You make some sort of noncommittal gesture. Feign at absolute lack of shits. “To be completely honest? You’re too fucking nice. I don’t get it, it—it’s weird.”
He laughs, to your horror. It’s a goofy and too-comic “ha!” that catches you completely off-guard. “I know trolls are ‘supposed’ to be violent and bloodthirsty and whatever, but being nice is typically a good thing. You should try it sometime!”
You have no easy rebuttal to this. You splutter a bit before getting up from your seat, looking him dead in the face. “Look, I’m not KK, or TZ, or whoever the fuck you panwashed with the Power of Friendship. I’m just some guy who wants peace and quiet and to do fuck-all with his life, okay?”
John’s answer is no less jovial, but also edged with something else. Resignation. “Yeah, that sounds about right. That’s kinda where I’m at too, and I think that’s okay? We just saved Paradox Space. If you wanna just lay around and play video games, sweet.”
You realize that John is a sugary enigma. There’s something… sad that lies under his unshakeable cheer. You recognize that look, because you’ve half-seen it in your other friends, and you’ve also half-seen it in yourself, reflected in a dark monitor some nights. Because who else but you all faced the deaths of your universes and lived to tell the tale? Who else fought a succession of brutal enemies only to fail, and fail again, and sometimes die, only to be reborn into the same shitty-or-worse circumstances?
Nobody but you and these stupid humans, obviously. And John’s looking at you with those bright, sad eyes and you suddenly find that you can’t kick him out of your hive. You’re just inches from each other now, and your mind is scrambling for answers. Fuck. Fuck. KK would die laughing at the sight of this pathetic stand-off.
To your horror, something disgusting, sweet, and terribly pale makes itself known to you in your chest. And the longer you keep staring at him, the more it feels real.
**
You are now John Egbert again, and something in the air’s shifted.
All of a sudden there’s Sollux in front of you, all fake-mean and bluster and vulnerability, and tenderness wells up in you. He looks for all the world like someone in need of a hug. So without much fanfare or thought or anything really, that’s what you give him. The world’s most awkward bro-hug.
He makes a sound like choking. You can almost see the two parts of him at war: his arms spasming as if to propel him away from you, his chest sinking into yours as though he’s starved for physical contact. And you guess the second part wins out, because it ends up being a pretty long hug. He’s so warm the way trolls are, beaming radiant heat into your bones, and you let that warmth sink in, bringing your arms tight around him.
Finally, he coughs out: “Fuck. Okay, fuck, that’s enough.”
You back off, unruffled, though there’s no denying how fast your heart is beating. When he meets your gaze again, it’s still with a defensive sneer, though weaker this time. You can swear that his cheeks are flushed a powdery yellow, and you fight the urge to comment.
“Seems like you needed that,” you say kind of pointlessly, if only to fill the awkward silence widening between you.
“Gog, this is so pathetic! This is stupid. This is…” he makes some halfhearted gesture, then fists his hands. “We need a pile.”
“Uh, what?”
“A pile. If you insist on fucking doing this, we’re doing it the right way. Get those video games over here.”
You blink. You’ve heard Karkat throw around talk of piles and paps and feelings jams before, but you’ve never witnessed those things yourself. “Like, all of them? Just the discs, or the cases too, or—”
“Fuck! I’ll do it myself.” He stalks over to the game cases you brought over from your house, arrayed in neat little stacks, and dumps armfuls of them at your feet. They lay on the floor in a confusing heap. Soon you join him, bringing armfuls of Madden and Donkey Kong and Tony Hawk (courtesy of Dave) to the makeshift pile. It doesn’t seem very comfortable, but suddenly Sollux plops himself onto a case (you wince as it splinters beneath him), and you gingerly lower yourself to the floor too.
“So,” he says in that bristly way of his. “What are we gonna talk about here?”
“I didn’t really have anything in mind,” you admit. And it’s a lie, because of course you’d lay awake in your bed inventing rambling conversations with him about troll hacking, life on Alternia, his half-sight, his relationship to his bees.
“Then I’ll start,” he says, beleaguered and a touch antagonistic. “Yeah, I’m fucking lonely. I miss AA and I miss FF and when KK’s around, it’s not really the same. I’m fine with it, most of the time, but there are days I kind of miss the way things were back then. Stupid, right?”
You weren’t expecting such a ready disclosure. All you can do is blink for a few seconds. “Yeah! I mean, no, that’s not stupid at all!” you manage. “I definitely miss my dad, and the way Earth used to be. I even miss messing around on the old Internet with Rose, Dave, and Jade. I think that’s all kind of normal when you destroy your planet and make a new one.”
“Yeah,” Sollux says with more solemnity than you expect. He’s not looking at you anymore, but at one of the game boxes on the floor. It’s one of his games, actually–you can’t read Alternian, but there’s a giant dragon on the box art, wings outstretched, and you get the vague sense that this is Troll Pokémon Silver. “Don’t get me wrong. Alternia was all sorts of fucked-up. But Earth-C is… I don’t know. I don’t feel like I have a place here, like I’m even supposed to be here.”
His voice makes your heart ache. He looks like he believes every word he’s saying. You’ve never really been good at comforting people, especially not verbally. So you dredge up every bit of troll knowledge at your disposal, scoot across several errant game boxes, and end up right next to him.
“Um. Shoosh,” you say, and reach up to touch the side of his face. His skin is hot, sandpapery. You hold your hand there, lift it away gingerly, and then touch him again. “Shoosh?”
“You are critically terrible at this,” Sollux says. But there’s no denying the streak of yellow running bright across his face. He also doesn’t push you away. If anything, he’s leaning into your touch, his skin burning against your own. So you continue papping him (you think), touching him with slightly more intention each time, and soon his face is practically melting into your palm each time it makes contact.
Your heart’s fluttering. This is beyond anything you ever imagined. It also feels right. The “shooshes” leave you in quiet exhales now, almost like you’re trying to calm yourself down too. And suddenly Sollux’s head is on your shoulder—a heavy, warm weight that fills you with tenderness—and your hand is running through his wiry strands of black hair. You feel him flinch and exhale when your fingers accidentally graze the base of one of his horns.
“Shoot, sorry, I—”
“No. That’s good. That…” he sucks in another breath, the words leaving him almost painfully. “Do more of that.”
So you do. Your fingers run experimentally along the thick perimeter of one of his outer horns, and you take in how the smooth keratin feels under you, how just touching him sends shivers down your arm. And wow, now he’s making these low sounds under his breath—you think he’s mumbling at first, but you soon realize he’s chirring. The noise makes you want to stroke him until your fingers fall off. You trace the curve of his horn with a finger now, from bottom to top and then back down again, and a groan escapes him.
You realize that your pants are stupidly tight.
“Hey EB,” he says in strained syllables, like he knows what you’re thinking. “You know you can… do whatever, right?”
“Like, touch you wherever?” The words leave you too eagerly. His head shoots up from its place on your shoulder, and your heart plummets. Damn. Damn. That really wasn’t the right thing to say. Maybe you should’ve just stayed put, kept touching him in a way that could’ve been interpreted as chaste. Maybe you should’ve just held your breath and stroked his hair, thanking your lucky stars just for the chance to be near him—
But then Sollux is in front of you, then only a breath away, and his mouth is on yours. It’s an awkward, disjointed kiss, punctuated by the scape of your teeth against him and the hiss of his breath, but then he’s pressing you onto your back, and you feel some game boxes give way under your combined weight. He pulls away only slightly before taking your lips again, this time more forcefully, and you make this undignified “mhh” sound as you taste him—some cross between a shitty energy drink and salt and licorice. He seems bent on nearly suffocating you, pressing his body into yours, tangling your limbs together, and you realize with dim excitement that he wants you.
When he finally pulls away an inch, panting, you eke out: “So what quadrant is this, again?”
“Pale. Pale-red. Some flavor of pale-red-black? Shit, I don’t fucking know.” You marvel at how he can sound both irritable and fond and desperate at once. Maybe this is the voice he’ll use just for you. “I never really cared about that stuff the way KK does. I just wanted to do that, okay? And if it’s not what you want, then, I don’t know. We can stop.”
You bring his hands around the small of his back and tug him to you. Your glasses have fallen off somewhere in the pile and he’s not wearing his, so when you kiss him again, you bring his face in close, and you hold his body against yours like he’s a security blanket. You kiss him slowly, tenderly, without expectation, and your whole body sighs when he opens his mouth to you. Your tongue tangles with his—it takes you a while to figure out the shape and size of him, but you manage—and soon you feel the writhe of something against your thigh, hear Sollux go “unhh” into your mouth with piteous softness.
You break the kiss, chuckling nervously on instinct. “You too, huh?”
“Fuck you. Don’t laugh.” He’s all flushed again, and you suddenly want to tear his shirt off, see just how much yellow is streaked across his chest. “Are we doing this or not?”
Dave’s shitty jpegs flash through your mind unbidden: where doing it man. where MAKING THIS HAPEN. And so you find yourself peeling your ghost shirt off, grinning helplessly as Sollux turns an even sunnier shade of yellow. He follows suit with his shirt, grunting, and you can’t help but sweep your gaze across his body: lean muscle on the chest and pudge around the abdomen, so soft compared to the rest of his features. You glance at the yellow marks carved into his side, and you want to press your fingers into those indentations, eke out all sorts of delicious noises from him, tangle your legs together and—
“Seriously, we can stop,” he’s saying, and you snap your gaze back to his face. He looks more vulnerable than you’ve ever seen him before. “Not all moirails—I mean, I personally don’t give a shit—but if this isn’t what humans do, then whatever.”
You’ve come to realize that Sollux is usually of two minds about everything, and this is no exception. Good thing your brain is on a single track right now. “As a matter of fact, I’m really enjoying this! So just stop talking and feel good for once, okay?”
Then your hands move of their own accord, shifting up and down his bare chest. He makes that piteous, delicious “unhh” again, and your brain short-circuits. Soon your fingers are roving against the yellow indentations at his sides (grub scars?), and he’s making more of those noises, and you can’t help yourself. You lean up and kiss his neck, nipping at the sandpaper skin, and he clutches at your shoulders, gripping you with a conviction so fierce it makes you groan.
You have enough presence of mind to realize that his pants are getting soaked. When he shifts atop you, you feel his dampness against your crotch. “Hey,” you pant into his skin. “Should we, you know—?”
“Fine,” he grunts, and reluctantly parts from you. You already miss the warmth of him flush against you, but the sight of him shedding his pants is fantastic consolation. Your eyes can’t help but track his every movement—how he peels his underclothes off, the fabric stained through with viscous gold that reminds you of dark honey. How, free of its confines, the writhing thing you felt earlier now unfurls itself before you. It’s a tentacular, bright yellow appendage, searching the air with raw need, and it’s dripping. And just underneath it, drenched gold as well, are two lips that you desperately want to slide open with your tongue.
The terms flash through your mind: Bulge. Nook. Turns out Karkat’s crass insults ended up teaching you something over the years. Remembering yourself, you unbutton your own jeans, breathless. Your boxers come off easily, and all of a sudden you’re naked before the guy you’ve had a terrible friend-crush on for months.
His eyes rove over you in turn—one gray-socketed and gaunt, the other ghostly white and penetrating. His breath catches when he sights your erection, twitching with need. “Fuck,” he says. Then a slight, mad laugh escapes him. “Fuck, this is really happening.”
“It could happen more,” you say, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind. And suddenly he’s above you again, mouth finding the tender place where your neck meets your shoulder, and his bulge—oh God, it wraps around your dick and starts squeezing, and you choke on your own bliss; you squirm underneath him like a demented worm. His bulge is hot and slick and thick and wet and you can’t fathom how good it feels. He’s whimpering too, bucking his hips against yours, and you thread your fingers into his hair and start fondling his horns again.
You’re not prepared for the quiet squeal he makes, something between a cry and a gasp, and it gets you even harder. You’re shifting your hips in time with his now, letting his bulge pump you with long, indulgent strokes, and he’s marking your skin with sloppy, desperate kisses. His name leaves you—once, twice—and you claw your fingers into his hair, tugging as he fucks you slow and hard. You strain against him. You’re already close to bursting. Your heart is thick with adoration for this troll, trusting you in spite of himself. And when you come for him the first time, it’s with you gasping his name in broken syllables, shivering delightfully in his hands.
He pulls back at this, expression a mix of curiosity and disdain. But he doesn’t comment on the peculiarities of your human body—how your cock softens underneath his bulge, how there’s a smattering of fluids across your belly now. Instead, he says: “Good for you, but I’m not fucking done.”
And you say: “Okay, but neither am I!”
He does have enough mercy to disentangle himself from you and sit up, letting your body recover. He’s panting too, and still ungodly amounts of wet, and your dick twitches as you watch his juices drip down his thighs like so much nectar. You want nothing more in the world than to lick him up and make his loneliness disappear. That’s all you want—to let him know how you see him, and to like himself through you.
So after a few seconds, you’re on all fours before him. He opens his mouth as though to protest, but you beat him to the punch. Your tongue laps up a line of juice that’s escaped his nook (fuckfuckfuck he mumbles), and soon your mouth is pressed to his opening, sucking at it, licking his slick lips. He tastes unlike anything you’ve ever had before, wildly salty and a touch sweet, and the flavor makes your head spin. So does the way he’s clutching at your hair, babbling. You feel his bulge writhing against the top of your head, slathering its fluids against you.
It’s encouragement. It’s hot, frankly. Your tongue slips into him—as far into him as you can manage, anyway—and his knees go weak; he buckles, and your hands find his hips so you can steady him in place. He grinds against your mouth, and you let him ride you the way he wants, and each moan you eke from him is like winning a thousand bucks. You’re hard again by the time he grips your head and says “EB, wait, I’m gonna—I’m…”
You pull your head away to look him in the face. He’s nearly undone, face flushed and slick with sweat. Your own face is dripping with his juices, and you swipe at it with your bare arm, amazed at how wet he still is. “You wanna change things up?”
“Yeah,” he chokes out. You pull back from him a little more, and you’re greeted with the sight of just how ready he is for you: engorged bulge pulsing and slick with want, nook swollen and drenched with all the pleasure you gave him. You’re pulsing too, desperate to be inside him, to feel his nook squeezing you dry.
So you lick your lips (tasting him again, oh God) and say “Get on your back?”
He does so with a quickness that sends a few more game boxes scattering. You’re beyond caring at this point. You clamber up above him, taking in his perfectly vulnerable face, and ease yourself inside his dripping nook inch by inch. He keens, clawing frantically at your back, and you wince as his fingers make delicious marks against your skin. Meanwhile he’s gripping you, his walls pulsing and slick with that tempting honey, and you can’t hold back your own delirious whimpers.
When he finally takes all of you—both of you panting in tandem, aching for each other—he leans forward and says “Fuck, EB, go faster.”
So you do. You grip his shoulders and bury your face in the sharp crook of his neck, and you thrust yourself in and out of him, releasing all the admiration and desire and fondness you’ve kept inside you for months now. Soon you’re pistoning into him, moaning indulgently at how well he sheathes you, and he’s tossing his head and chirring your name in broken syllables. You want to make him feel so good. You want to show him just how incredible he is. So you turn him to putty under you, tangling your limbs together and thrusting him even deeper into the shitty pile, and meanwhile he’s clutching you and squeezing you and slathering you with his fluids, so tight and so wet all at once. You feel his bulge thrash against your pelvis and you reach a hand down to take it, stroke it, let it thread through your fingers and baptize your entire hand with gold. You feel his whole body tighten under you. His bulge constricts against your fingers, locking them in a vice grip—
Then he screams, if it could be called that. It’s a truncated, throaty yelp punctuated by a series of clicks and chatters, and you feel his walls pulse as he comes around you; you feel a torrent of sticky heat coat your abdomen and hand; you feel wetness coat your dick and drain from his nook. But you’re not done yet. You’ve got weeks of patience to make up for. He’s still moaning, trying to piece his mind back together, when you thrust into him again, this time making slow love to him. He’s perfect like this, still so good and so talented, and every move you make is an effort to communicate that. Just take it, you want to whisper with every hilt of your cock. Just believe that you’re worth it. And he doesn’t fight you, just lolls his head back and loses himself in bliss, and you can’t be happier to be the one giving it to him.
Your eyes find his after a few more strokes, and he half-stares back with the most tenderness you’ve ever seen in a face, and it’s finally enough to undo you. You stammer out a Sollux before burying yourself in him again, your orgasm sweeping through you in a mad, sloppy rush. Soon you’re collapsed atop him, panting, and he doesn’t move you away. For what feels like ages, you lie there tangled in each other on a sticky heap of broken video game boxes, and… you’re okay with that. Both of you are more than okay with that.
Finally, he says: “You can stay.”
And you say: “Well, yeah. I was planning on it.”
**
You’re Sollux Captor again, and life is actually… good.
EB makes regular visits to your hive now. You’re slowly re-alchemizing the games you jointly ruined. Sometimes you even play a few of them. Most days, you code while John sits nearby and watches shitty movies on your TV, guffawing every thirty seconds.
You teach him a little ~ATH, though he’s predictably kind of bad at it. He teaches you some good old-fashioned pranks. And whenever the mood strikes, you teach each other more about human-troll anatomy. You crave his weird bone-bulge deep inside you, and he craves your bulge wriggling inside him, and together you figure out how to use your mouths on each other without asphyxiating. And afterwards, he holds you and lets you breathe, and sometimes even half-cry, and he always comes away looking like you’ve hung the stars.
Best of all, he never expects anything of you beyond this. You know what this is, and he knows too, and it’s no less sacred for its namelessness. Both of you have explained this to your friends in different ways—you prefer telling them all to just fuck off—but at the end of the day, your mouth against his defies easy explanation. It’s just the way things are, and you like it. And you like him. End of story.
He’s resting his head on your lap now, making all sorts of silly remarks, and you’re watching what seems like two machine claws fight each other onscreen. “Oh man, this scene makes Hackers one of the greats,” he says, and you scoff and run your fingers through his hair. Sweeps ago, you wouldn’t have been caught dead watching Earth movies with a too-nice human. But now? You don’t half-mind it.
Hell, you don’t mind it at all.