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You don’t remember if you fell asleep or died, but you wake up wet and cold and more tired than you could ever imagine possible outside of a dreambubble. Icy waves slap at your shins, soaking through your sneakers and filling them up with freezing water. Your shirt clings to your sides and smothers the gills that are fluttering, trying in vain to drink in the water from the black fabric. If it were at all possible, you would try to shimmy out of your shirt, if only to stop the suffocating feeling that comes from having your gills taunted with dripping clothes, but you’re drained, exhausted, completely devoid of energy to move.
The best you can do is slowly dig your claws into the slick rock- you realize that you’re draped over a coddamn rock in the middle of the ocean-, as if that will pull you out of the sub-zero hell engulfing your legs.
Though you can hardly see through your dripping glasses and dropping eyelids, you catch a glimpse of the shoreline not too far away. You’re obviously not a shitty swimmer- you’d have drowned at one sweep if you were, and in a normal circumstance, it would take you less than a minutes to get to the shore, but there’s invisible anchors shackled to every inch of your skin, imaginary leeches sucking out all your violet blood, leaving you an undead shell slumped over a rock, shivering violently enough to start a whole tsunami.
Over the crashing waves and misting rain, you hear a splash that’s misplaced, and within moments, there’s arms wrapped around your waist, dragging you further into the cold water. You gasp out as the ocean starts to grind its frozen claws into your chest, certain that your heart is about to stop and you’re going to die here- die again, or for good or whatever happens when you turn to fucking ice in the furthest ring.
But you don’t die. Instead, you find yourself heaved onto one of the drier parts of the beach, one shielded under the cover of a thicket of palm trees. Sand immediately covers your clothing, and your lip curls up instinctively. “Gettin’ my… pants dirty,” you huff, unsurprised at how breathless and sluggish the words tumble from your lips.
“Just relax, champ,” you hear the voice of your dancestor say, and for the first time since he opened his mouth when you met, you’re glad to see him. At least he knows how to deal with a seadweller caught in freezing water, plus he just dragged you from absolute torment. “Let’s get you dried off.”
You’re a little surprised how chastely he strips you down, especially with you being vulnerable in your mystery fatigue, but it turns out the asshole has some morals. He peels all of your wet clothes off, throwing them on the ground so carelessly that you want to smack him, until you’re completely naked and twice as cold as you were before, however impossible it had seemed to be a minute ago.
Cronus yanks a dry shirt over your shoulders- his own shirt that he had presumably stripped off before diving in the water to get you. It’s big on you, which turns out to be quite the convenience as the fabric pools down low enough to provide a little bit of modesty.
The next you’re aware, you’re inside some sort of shoddy peasant hive, on a cheap couch in front of a crackling fireplace while Cronus sponges warm water over your side gills. Your toes are still blocks of ice, even beneath the massive blanket that covers your legs.
“Here he comes,” Cronus says to no one in particular as your eyes open. Your vision is blurred without your glasses, and you think for a second that he’s wearing them, but the glasses on his face are rounder and arched up more than your own. It never really occurred to you that Cronus needed glasses. “You gonna make it?”
You try to come up with something that makes you sound like less of a charity case, but fail spectacularly when a pathetic ‘mmmnmg’ is the only noise you make. With every second that ticks by, the shitty couch feels softer and softer.
Cronus laughs, a tender look crossing his face. He’s outrageously tolerable when he’s not being a lecherous shit, and the way that he’s dabbing at your gills with such concentration is comforting, less pale and more lusus-like. Maybe it’s fitting, considering he’s your ancestor, or dancestor, but you have trouble thinking of him as either, especially the former, since it makes you want to tear down a hive with your bare hands to imagine The Orphaner Dualscar as… well, as Cronus.
“Warmin’ up?”
“Mmm.”
A wet plop hits your ears as the sponge drops into the bowl of warm water, and Cronus rolls his shirt back down your sides and picks you back up, wrapped up like a pupating grub in the blanket, which you are far too tired to oppose.
“Man, you’re goin’ to love this,” he says as you drop onto possibly the plushiest surface ever created. “It’s called a human bed. It’s where they sleep.”
The human bed dips a little where Cronus climbs in beside you and drags an even bigger blanket over your legs. “They’re basically the hallmark of romanticism and human love.” You roll your eyes, as much as you care for romanticism and love, you’d prefer them to be leather bound in books read on your own time, not something experienced right now.
The skim of his jeweled fingers across your thigh assures you that yes; this is more like the Cronus you know. “Quit it,” you breathe, sinking into the big plushy square at your head. “’M…tired.”
To nobody’s surprise, Cronus doesn’t stop, but he doesn’t go any further either, just keeps tracing lazy circles on your skin. You don’t mind really, in fact, you kind of like that somebody wants their hands all over you. Wants you, and doesn’t find a thousand things wrong with you like everybody else.
You curl your body closer into your dancestor’s, the heat radiating off of his bare chest helping to thaw your frozen insides, and he wraps his arms around you and tugs you closer. As you fumble for a comfortable place to put your head, settling on his collarbones, you realize with a twist of your gut that you’ve never actually snuggled up to anybody before, save for putting your head on Karkat’s shoulder, only to have to shoved off a moment later.
You hadn’t ever imagined that the first time your body would be wrapped up with somebody else’s, it would be the teenaged other universe version of your hero. You also hadn’t imagined that you’d both be dead, or that you’d be doing it mainly because you’re both cold and alone.
Warm hands start to shift down your back, making you very aware that you’re still not wearing anything other than Cronus’ ugly shirt. He massages all down your spine, wiggling his body in closer so he can grope at your ass, and you pull away slightly.
“I said quit it.”
“You didn’t mean it.”
Cronus slides his hands up and down your thighs, and you sort of hate and sort of love how the friction starts to warm them. He kisses your forehead, and you close the distance that you made, until your bodies are smashed together. “I’m not gonna stick my bulge in you or anything.” His hands travel to the insides of your thighs, where you feel even more exposed with no underwear on. The cold of his rings touches to the very top of your inner thighs, right where leg meets groin, and you thank god that your bulge is still comfortably sheathed, but he drags the knuckle of his index finger across the slit of your nook, making you suck in your breath a little too fast.
“I’ll leave.”
“No you won’t.”
You don’t leave.