[CLOSED/OPEN] No words can heal a broken heart

[chronomancer]

Characters: [AU1] Eridan Ampora & [AU1] Equius Zahhak; Eridan Ampora and YOU.
Setting: Meadow floor (closed/backdated to the January event), Floor 64 (open/current)
Format: Starting with action but I'll match you.
Summary: Two logs for the price of one, lmao so I don't flood the comm: closing up aged up shenanigans, Equius is displeased and Eridan is about to learn just how much. Also back in real time, Eridan finds a deliciously tempting slice of home.
Warnings: Violence and swearing for the Equius log. Eridan being actually honest and pathetic and stupid, for the open one.

[Closed: Meadow floor.]

[He wasn't tired so much as he was trying to hibernate. He wasn't entirely sure trolls, undead or otherwise, actually did the whole hibernation shtick, but he could at least try. Save up his energy. Make his last feeding last. He was pretty sure things didn't really work that way but he was lazy and this was a good enough excuse. So there he is, as long as he is, lying on his back and sunbathing in the meadow without a care in the world.

Not that he didn't have cares. He had a lot of them, actually. But if he started thinking about all of them he'd probably implode. Or go on a rampage. Or both. Really, it was for the best of everyone involved, if he just laid there, soaking up sunlight and carefully thinking of nothing in particular.]

[Open: Desert floor.]

[It's so familiar it hurts, really. The heat, the sand, the occasional blast of wind. It's probably a bad idea to head out, and given the last few terrible ideas he's indulged lately, mostly as a result of the experiment last month, Eridan resists the urge to go.

But he wants to, dear god, he wants to so bad.

He's curled up on the sandy floor, barely two steps off the staircase, staring aimlessly at the distance and quietly drowning in nostalgia. He's never really stopped to sit down and miss life before the Game... but now he does and the wave of homesickness is almost entirely too much to handle.]

Comments

[geometry]

I had a visitor the other day, Eridan.

[Oh, how saintly he sounds. Equius walks closer and bends down in front of his face, indifferent as usual... and in the next moment Eridan's toes are four feet from the ground and there's a death grip on the back of his shirt and overcoat.]

Tavros had some fascinating things to say.

[chronomancer]

[Eridan made a sound in the back of his throat as he found himself so roughly off the ground, startled enough that he started glowing on reflex. The glowing helped hide how Equius words made him go from pale to pallid to transparent. He flinched a little, in Equius' hold.]

...oh fuck.

[He squirmed a little.]

...I can explain?

[geometry]

Damn right you can.

[Whether that series of noises counts as 'speech' is still debated to this day. But in the meantime, he's got no intention of letting you go, Night Light.]

[chronomancer]

[Squiiiiiiiiiiiirming. Also raising his hands placatingly.]

I'm... gonna go out on a leg and say this is about Gamzee? 'cause you always get pissy about Gamzee and I get it, really! He's an asshole! But it really wasn't that bad? ...this time?

[geometry]

Eridan, you and the words "not that bad" have a very complex relationship, I understand that.

[Italicized bits are growls. He's grinning now, grinning in the tightest and most snarl-like way possible, because the alternative is screaming like a lunatic and he doesn't really want to do that in the middle of a public oh wait apparently he does.]

But "not that bad" does not at all line up with the report I got from a much more trustworthy source than YOU!

[chronomancer]

...nobody died?

[Yeah, this is his squeakiest, smallest voice.]

[geometry]

[Laughter.]

[Mirthless, furious, hateful laughter.]

[chronomancer]

[...oh fuck, that's not a good laugh. That's seriously not a good laugh. We're back to squirming like a worm on a hook which is a terribly fitting simile for his current situation and one he'd wish his pan would not have supplied so easily.]

...just out of professional curiosity, what exactly did Nitram say?

[geometry]

Bite marks. Some 'other things'. Things got out of hand. But no, it was just a bite, Makara swears.

[It's either this voice, fluctuating between sarcastic high pitch and death threat at all the wrong points, or a permanent wall of caps. Equius has made his choice; now let's see how long he lasts before shit hits the fan. He pulls Eridan closer, so that the next word is spoken directly into his ear. The grip gets even tighter; "if you lie again, I will end you".]

Input?

[chronomancer]

[Eridan winces and then shivers as he's pulled closer. He swallows hard, audibly hard.]

Yes, kinda, sorta, maybe, in that order.

[He tries to shrug but it comes out as a squirm again.]

...I did bite him, and it kind of did get out of hand, a little, but not like that. Of course Makara swears, he's a fucking idiot, it wasn't just a bite. I don't bite people just for the fuckin' joy 'a it. I was hungry.

[geometry]

Yeah? You sure?

[No matter how much he looks it at some points, Equius is actually not an idiot, yo.]

Quite the experience, drinking, isn't it?

[chronomancer]

[Eridan winces.]

...sort of?

[This conversation feels like trying to hit a piñata with a stick except underwater also the piñata is a shark and the stick is made of paper towels.]

[geometry]

I suggest you give me the entire truth, Ampora, and that you give it to me now.

[chronomancer]

[Oh Jesus tap-dancing Christ, isn't Equius terrifying when he wants to be. Eridan wilts to the texture of the aforementioned paper towels.]

I was starving and I know there's blood in the infirmary but fuck taking anything from the tower when they're pulling off shit like this so I was out prowling about just minding my own business and Gam was picking up a bickering fit except I was really hungry and I figured he was someone I could just ask for a snack and then he was being a bitch about it because last time he did I kind of sucked him dry until he died which wasn't honestly my fault really he's too goddamn big for his own good and it screws with my math when it comes to bodymass bleeding ratio thingy so I promised him I wasn't going to kill him this time and he kept being a bitch and I was being maybe a little bitchy about it too granted because I was fucking starving I feel the need to emphasize that a lot because I feel it's a very important point in this because hunger makes people dumb and since I'm already dumb it makes me dumber if you can even believe that haha anyway I was being maybe a little too bitchy because I asked him if he wanted to be bitten in the wrist or the neck and he was being a moron and we were kind of doing a balancing act on a chair already because Gamzee and chairs motherfucker doesn't even know how to sit properly it's not my fault honest to god so he said he wanted the neck and I maybe perhaps shouldn't have but I did and it was pretty hard to concentrate on it because balancing act on a chair while being dumb out of hunger it probably wasn't the smartest idea I've ever had I'll grant you.

[Finally, he took a breath.]

...and then Gamzee popped a boner, I think.

[geometry]

And you were doing nothing but sucking his throat this entire time?

[Woo grip gets tighter.]

You know why I find that hard to believe.

[chronomancer]

It freaked me out, alright! I'm not used to lunch getting off on being lunch!

[geometry]

[He's just going to turn you around, Eridan. Look into his eyes. Remember the great big mass of horrorterror anger craziness that used to live behind yours, many years and a few floors away, and still does? Dunno if you've ever really witnessed it before.]

[But it's there.]

[He stares at Eridan for a long time, with the force of a thousand imploding Green Suns behind his eyes, and then opens his mouth to speak again in that weird fluctuating voice. Then he reconsiders and shuts it again.]

[He twitches.]



BULLSHIT!

[chronomancer]

[The sound Eridan makes is the quintessential sound of something small, furry, defenseless and pathetic that has just realized it's about to become lunch.]

[geometry]

What's that?

[Aaand now Eridan is actually being held to a level above Equius' head.]

Something else to say?!

[chronomancer]

I was fucking with him, honest!

[Eridan starts struggling again, squirming.]

He was being a bitch and all, but c'mon, Equius, I wouldn't fuck Gamzee.

[There's a small pause.]

It's motherfucking Gamzee.

[Why is this even a thing that needs to be said??]

[geometry]

[Because it's Equius and you need to say it a few more times before he'll believe you.]

[...Okay, Eridan, you've just been dropped from over twelve feet in the air, and tossed aside as you've done so. WHAT NOW]

[chronomancer]

[...land in an awkward heap of limbs with a choked whine? Because he just did.]

...c'mon, love. You'd fuck Gamzee far more willingly than I'd ever would.

[And it's an obvious fact Equius hates Gamzee in the non-sexiest of all ways.]

[geometry]

[OH GEE WHIZ that is a boot on your face.]

Shut the fuck UP!

[chronomancer]

[This is a whine and a completely ineffective attempt to raise his arms and stop that. He can do better than this, really, but he won't. He certainly won't run away.]

But it's true.

[geometry]

[The boot presses harder. He doesn't want to crush your skull like an over-ripened grape, Eridan, he really doesn't, but that self-control is running low.]

It is not true!