simplerbox | Play with me

Not a sucker?

Affirmative. [It comes out as a sigh, he's so tired. Tired of his head, tired of thinking like this, like a troll not a machine. He's so good at being a machine. Churning over percentages. And he's not even all the way there. Not even half the way there. This is it. This is all he's managing. Affirmatives.]

[No. By any troll's standards, unrequited romance, pale or flushed or the dangerous mix of both she feels, would make the yearning troll a complete and utter sucker. And if he's saying she isn't, then it's not the records talking; it's Sollux.

Quietly, she takes one of his hands and brinds it up to her mouth, brushing a tender kiss against his pulse. He could zap her out of existence right now, for all she cared, and it wouldn't hurt. Slime and all, it still tastes like Sollux. Not toxic.]

You're the only troll in this joint to think so.

[He doesn't know who else is around. Can't tell what they're thinking anyway. So he can't let a 'negative' fly. But it seems unlikely that everyone thinks she's a sucker.

Terezi Pyrope with stubborn off the charts, that's not being a sucker.

Except that's only what Sollux thinks as he doesn't realise that kiss was a kiss and doesn't know what lips on sopor on skin means beyond what every piece of contact means.]

Insufficient evidence to support Troll Pyrope's claim. [Is the best he can do.]

We're not in a courthouse, conscript. Session has been adjourned. [Another kiss, pressed hard against the back of his hand, trying to leave it there like a burning tattoo. She's almost hoping, almost wishing, it'll trigger his psiionics, and her lips will burn, because then she'll feel something that isn't -

Ridiculous. Being ridiculous. She lets their arms drop.] Troll Pyrope claims to be the maximum authority on the matter, as well as the owner of a hot ass.

[He sighs with a huff that might be a laugh or might be just another irregularity in all physical functions. It's almost certainly just another quirk of being out of tune with his body.]

Troll Pyrope - file updated to indicate spreader of falsehoods.

Ass is of regular temperature.

[!! Did he just - that was almost a laugh, wasn't it? Now's not the time for her eyes to burn with the threat to leak everywhere again, what is she turning her into. But oh does it give her some hope, if he still is capable of those irregular noises.

It makes her croak out a laugh.] You bitch. I'd demonstrate that it's hot but we're covered in slime. And it's a good thing, too! Otherwise this whole recuperacoon would be on fire from my butt.

[He's- that's- his mind is spewing up errors and now he's leaking just as much as she was. He doesn't know what to say. He would have known what to say before but now, now his brain can't do jokes, he can't find what to say.

Through the slime that's dripping out his nose, he reverts to facts. Truths that he knows.]

Sopor is flame retardant.

[She sniffs it out, of course. She'd sniff out that mustard leaking anywhere, and it makes her sit up in the recuperacoon, sopor sliding off her. She turns towards him.]

You're leaking. [Her hands are dirty, her elbows could bruise his nose; she leans in and cleans his face the other way. With her tongue, but steering clear of sopor.]

[It's mostly subsided, he knows the response to that. And no more mustard flows after she wipes it away. He remember to snort up or wipe the trickle oozing from his nose. Charming.]

Affirmative.

[He is so charming she could swoon! Instead, she sort of sits there, looking without seeing, because there's only Sollux on her tongue and it shouldn't be attractive at all.]

Cause?

[That sets it off again, exception: unexpected qualification required. Rebooting.

He's leaking again. Snot trickling over his lips so he blows a bubble when he talks. The knots in his stomach are working themselves bigger and bigger.]

Unknown. Reply not retrieved.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhh. [She can't help but lean down to clean it again, taking some perverse pleasure from being this close to his mouth. It should gross her out that she's essentially licking his snot off his face, but you know what - it doesn't.]

Shoosh, little bug.

[Contact. He's. He's. He's. Who knows what he is.

It's too much, he's restarted parts of his own brain and now she's stimulating things he shouldn't have and she shouldn't be able to reach.

He's overloading. Lightning sparks along his tears and over her cheeks as well, along her tongue and into he back of her throat.

He is out of control.]

[It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts, and she keeps going. It gets to the point where she's holding him down by his forearms, nails digging into his skin, but she keeps going. It gets to the point where she's dripping tears on his face, teal mixing with mustard mixing with lightning, and she still presses on and cleans them, and whispers shoosh between each pained gasp against his skin.]

[It doesn't help. It doesn't help anything. Her shoosh is perfect and refined and he's just one step closer to burnout.

He's shaking and crackling down to his bones. He drags his hands up out of the slime and up to his head, fingers wedged to his temples and still radiating lightning.]

[If he tries to fry his brain, she swears to god. She swears to gog.

Desperate, she grabs for his arms, pulling them away.] Stop - Sollux, stop.

[A crack - focus inside his chest - and he sags. His psiionics still flow, but harmless and dissipating. Retreating back into his eyes and mouth.

Pain blossoms up from his ribs, seeping through the rest of him and confirming the need to acquiesce to her command.]

Locked. Shutting down.

[He can detect spikes in teal but it barely gets through before he's slowing his heart and breathing.]

Just sleep, Helmsman. Feelings jam is over. Just sleep.

[She's shivering, suddenly. Exhausted and shivering, her insides feel like they've been burned on a slow fire. But she doesn't lie down yet.]

[He reaches for her as a last trickle of mustard squeezes out of his eyes, wraps his arms around her. The most willing movement he's made in his records.

He's asleep in moments.]

[She can't even deal with him anymore. Her arms wrap around him so tight, first voluntary contact he's given her of this significance in...some time. Before falling asleep, she manages to negotiate their bodies into a position that doesn't involve either of them drowning in sopor, and then finally lets go, with one last check for his pulse.]

[He wakes up sweating and panicked, pusher rate elevated two hundred and twenty two percent. His body never quite got the memo that he's giving up the duality theme.

His psiionics are out of control, if sopor could catch on fire then it would have. It evaporates in puffs of steam leaving concentrated spots of rubberised sopor.

A whiff of something that is right at the top of his records infiltrates through the crusted snot in his nose. It's important to know what seared troll flesh smells like. Not high quantities.

He's too frantic to know if it's his or Terezi's. ]

[Here's a not-First: waking up screaming and smelling fire. Every troll ends up having nightmares and daymares at one point or another, but this one feels real. One moment she's drawing a moustache on a grumbling Vriska's face and the next one she's wrapped up in electrified barbed wire.

Oh wait, it's Sollux.]

Hey! Get yourself together!

[They snap off in a flash at her voice.

A literal flash, unfortunately. His hair and her hair stand on end and he reaches up to touch above his eye sockets.]

Losses: two eyebrows.

[No laughter, if he was being funny he would have commented on the sopor ones he's drawn on.]

[There's a beat, then she flops back down in what's left of sopor.]

I wouldn't call it a loss, they're the shape a wriggler makes when they first grab chalk.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject