Chapter Text
You had a minor heart attack the next morning when Sollux was neither in your bed nor in the kitchen. You managed to walk right past the open window in your search, only noticing when you heard your name called. He was sitting on the fire escape having a cigarette and wearing pajamas with your coat over top.
“I thought you quit those?” you leaned just out of the window and goosbumps rose on your arms, it was really cold outside.
“This is my last one, it's not like I'm going to make you to buy me cigarettes too.” he exhaled sideways, away from you, and the smoke was quickly carried away by the wind.
“I would if you wanted.” you folded your arms on the window sill, just barely leaning out.
“Nah, too expensive to smoke anyways. I used to just steal them from Karkat.” he hesitated with the cigarette just before his lips.
“You heard anything from him since... Gamzee disappeared?” when you were more awake you might have thought better of asking that, but it was cold and you were too tired to stop.
“... I did.” he held the smoking stick between his thumb and forefinger, idly rolling it back and forth.
“Shit, when? I don't remember that.”
“I didn't mention it.” he shrugged, shaking a long line of ash off the end of his cigarette.
“Sorry, didn't mean to pry.”
“No, it's fine. We didn't talk for very long, he basically just wanted to tell me that we probably wouldn't be talking again.” he took a short drag from his dwindling cigarette.
“That sucks, you were good friends right?” you reached out and bumped your knuckles against his knee.
“Better before my accident, but yeah.” he held the remainder of his cigarette inside his curled hands, blinking his eyes like he could see it.
“You want to try and go find him or something?” you pulled your arm back in the window, it was too cold to be hanging out the window.
“Nah, he said he was with Gamzee. Apparently the cops are looking for him pretty hard now, some detective named Pyrope is trying to connect him with these other murder cases so Karkat's keeping him under the radar.” he flinched when hot ash hit his palm, nearly fumbling the cigarette.
“Sounds heavy.”
“Only if I think about it too hard. At least he's not dead like I thought he was.” he gave a twitchy shrug before a wracking shiver.
“Finish that shit up and I'll make some breakfast.” you reached over and gave his arm a quick squeeze. He nodded, resting the cigarette between his lips and shrugging your hand off.
You were half way through making pancake batter when he shuffled into the kitchen, dropping your coat over your usual chair and falling in to his usual seat. He was quiet through breakfast and barely ate, retiring back to bed when you were finished. He spent the rest of the day much the same as he had the previous day, refusing to get out of bed. You made it your job to go bother him at regular intervals, and though he didn't fight you about being there he kept sleeping.
Over the next week it was a battle to get him to get out of bed, he cited any number of reasons from tiredness, illness, mourning, really anything to get you off his back. You didn't know what to do for him besides keep him company, and at a certain point he seemed to accept this and appreciate your company. You were left sitting on the bed next to him playing games on your cell phone, Sollux lying next to you.
“I told Karkat about you, when I talked to him.” he spoke up, surprising you when you thought he had been asleep.
“How did that go?” you didn't look away from your game.
“He said if I found someone who can stand to live in the same apartment as me I should marry them.”
“He sounds like a smart guy. Scale of one to ten, how likely are you to take his advice?” you pulled your eyes away from your game, looking down at him.
“I'd say it's definitely worth some kind of consideration.” he tried to hide his slight curl of a smile.
“Sweet, should I go buy you a ring?” you grabbed one of his hands, squeezing it in yours.
“Wow, I said worth consideration not start picking bouquets for the wedding.” he reached out and hit you in the thigh.
“Hey you were the one who said marriage.” you let go of his hand and he dropped it back to the bed.
“You're right, I brought this upon myself. Still, can't you at least wait for the third date before a marriage proposal?” he rolled onto his back, scratching his hair.
“We haven't even been on a first date, that's a long way to go.” you picked up your phone to resume your game, relieved that he was feeling well enough to stand up to your ribbing.
“Then maybe we better get started.” he spoke quietly, almost like he regretted saying it. It gave you pause and you almost dropped your phone.
“If you want to, let's give it a shot.”
---
It was weird getting ready for a date when you lived in the same apartment. It didn't feel like it was going to be a date, or at least you were pretty sure it was going to be. You just assumed when he'd asked you about going to dinner tonight that meant it was a dinner date. You tried dressing a little nicer, but realized that it would be lost on Sollux anyways. Then was the issue of where were you supposed to take him? Or was he going to take you somewhere? You should have looked this up on the internet before today.
Movies weren't good, although he seemed to enjoy them enough sitting on your couch he never picked one to watch. Ice skating seemed like a romantic option, but with how good he was on stairs you didn't think it would end well. Sightseeing, museums, bowling, the only logical conclusion you could come up with was that dating was not made for blind people. You felt bad for even thinking it.
“Are we going out for food or what?” he bumped in to the bedroom door that you left half shut, shoving it out of the way. He was wearing the same clothes he had worn yesterday.
“Is this really it?” you reached for your shirt to cover your bare chest before forcing your self to relax, he couldn't see you and this wasn't an occasion.
“What?” he leaned on the door frame, pulling the shoulder of his (your) sweatshirt back up.
“The date.”
“I don't know, do you want it to be?” he folded his arms and stifled a yawn, apathetic.
You were stumped. The part of you that had secretly read romance novels as a kid wanted everything to feel special, and to sweep him off his feet with some kind of perfect date that only happened in movies. The rest of you was sure that there was no way he saw any of this in a remotely romantic light, and that was a mood killer.
“Whatever, lets just go eat.” you threw on your shirt, the only one you owned that had a collar besides the crisp white dress shirt you only wore once with a black suit. You toed into your shoes and headed for the door, finding Sollux still leaning in the frame, in the way. His eyes were open, small half blinks in your direction. He opened his eyes less and less lately, but you think you were the only one that noticed.
“Are you upset or something?” his eyebrows were slightly drawn, he usually made that face when he was trying to figure out what he wasn't able to see.
“What? No, lets just go.” you took a hold of his upper arm and turned him so you could get past him in the door, but he held you back before you could get through.
“What is it?” he tried sounding insistent, but all you could hear was his apathy from earlier.
“Nothing, I'm just hungry.” you did your best to sound as uncaring as he could most times.
He didn't press you further on it, but from the look on my face he didn't believe you. He left his cane and put on his sunglasses, letting you lead him, a little unusual but not completely strange. Once you were seated at a table in the restaurant you spent most of your time not talking, and Sollux was starting to look like he was feeling awkward about it.
“So.” you offered, not particularly relishing in being the one to dredge up conversational topics.
“Can you just tell me if something's wrong, because I don't have as many visual cues to go off of as you do.” he sounded annoyed, nearly knocked over his glass of water resting his elbows on the table.
“No need to be an ass about it, maybe I just don't feel very talkative right now.” you nearly reached out and moved his water for him, but decided against it.
“You never don't feel like talking.” he took his sunglasses off and folded them, hooking them into his collar and leaning back in his chair, away from the table.
“Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything.”
You watched him twist his lips, his foot bumped yours under the table.
“Is this just because it's a date? Is that making all of this” he vaguely gestured to the table “weird?”
“Oh, so this is a date?” you couldn't keep all of the bitterness from passing through your lips.
“Uh, yeah, isn't that what you wanted?” he folded his twiggy arms over his chest.
“Well yeah, but you don't seem in to it at all, so never mind I guess.” your impassiveness was slipping, but you would rather sound angry than like you were about to cry.
He looked surprised and maybe a little hurt, sitting up a little straighter and letting his hands fall to his lap.
“Sorry, I- Sorry Dave.” he frowned, shaking his head and curling into himself a little like he usually did when he wanted to hide.
“You kind of asked for this, so when you seem really not into it at all it comes as a little bit of a surprise, you know?”
“I know, you're right. I'm just not as ready for this as I thought I was.” his face was downcast.
“Like how?”
“Like the last person I dated was Feferi, and I don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing when I can't even see you.” he swallowed hard but his posture was closed off.
“I don't even know where we're supposed to go on a date, since most normal date activities aren't friendly for blind assholes like me. We can't even go anywhere with me-” this time when he put his elbow on the table he did actually knock his glass of water off the side, at least it stopped him in the middle of his self deprecatory rant.
“Fuck, sorry, that was me wasn't it.” he pushed away from the table, red rising in his face.
“Chill out, it's fine.” you had to stand and push him back into his chair, whether he was going to leave or just stand there and freak out you wanted to stop him.
He sat in his chair across from you morosely, slumped forward and trying to hide his face as the waitress came and cleaned up the broken glass and water. She assured you both everything was fine, it was no problem, but it didn't help Sollux's mood any.
“Sol?” you spoke quietly once the waitress was gone, trying to keep your conversation quiet amongst the other patrons in the restaurant.
“Yeah.” he marginally lifted his head, enough that you could see his red cheeks and closed eyes.
“Come on, I didn't mean to make this awful, let's just be friends again okay?” you wanted him to stop freaking out, especially in public. This was not the venue that you wanted to have an in depth talk about your relationship, again.
“It's not that, I do want to be more than friends I just suck too much to do it.” he spoke quietly, covering half his face with one hand.
“Could the feelings jam wait until we're back at home? Not that I don't want to hear it, but maybe just not in public.”
“Yeah, you're right, sorry.” he wiped his hand over his face.
It was a long meal, even with Sollux trying to act like normal, and a cold walk back even with him pressed against your arm. He fell face first over the arm of the sofa as soon as you got home and laid still while you closed and locked the front door. There wasn't enough room on the couch for you to sit with him monopolizing it. You dropped your coat and sat on the floor in front of the couch, throwing an arm over Sollux's prone form.
“Sorry I'm consistently fucking awful. You don't deserve that, nobody deserves that.” he said, muffled from the couch cushions.
“Nah, you're not so bad, I was just being a little bitch.” you patted the dip between his shoulder blades. He twisted until he was half facing you, blinking his blank eyes and listing one arm to rest over yours.
“Don't get me wrong, I do want to do this. It's just when something starts happening I flip and... don't know what to do anymore.” his fingers kneaded your upper arm, twisting your sleeve.
“Still scared I'm about to keel over?”
“Pretty much.” he took a deep breath and let it out explosively.
You tried to think of something to say to him, but there wasn't anything that you hadn't said a hundred times. The time when you could reasonably answer passed and you were both left in silence.
“Nothing's felt normal for me since the accident.” he spoke softly, quiet like he did sometimes in the middle of the night.
“I know man, you'll get there though.” you rubbed his back, feeling the grooves of his spine under your fingers.
“How would you know?”
“Because eventually even the strangest things become normal.”
“...Yeah, maybe you're right.” he let his arm slip away from yours, dangling off the side of the couch next to you.
“Of course I'm right, so stop beating yourself up and lets watch a movie.” you pushed yourself off the floor, pressing your hand into his back for leverage and drawing a grunt out of him.
By the time you were finished getting the movie playing and back with an alcoholic drink for both of you he still hadn't moved. You kneed him in the thigh and he swatted in your direction, nowhere near hitting you.
“I'm about to sit on your legs if you don't get up. You have to sit up to drink this anyways.”
“Drink what?” it came out as more of a groan than words.
“The booze.” you twisted the glass so he could hear the ice clink.
“You drink it, I don't want any.”
“But I went through all this trouble, you have to. At least move so I can sit.” you kneed him again, gentle enough that it wouldn't really hurt him.
He moved, but only rolled onto his side, giving you a small amount of room in front of his stomach. Taking the opportunity you sat in front of him, squishing him back into the couch and settling your back against his stomach. Surprisingly he didn't complain, so you set both glasses down on the coffee table. You did end up drinking both of them, and accidentally spilling some on him in an attempt to get him to take his glass and sit up.
You were really squishing him into the back of the couch by the end of the movie, but he just curled up and let you lean on him without complaint, his thighs against your side and one arm resting over your leg. By the time the movie was over it was starting to feel cold in the room and you were ready to get some sleep. He followed behind you down the hall, one hand tracing along the wall and the other holding your sleeve.
He settled in against your side under the blankets, throwing an arm over your stomach in a comfortable closeness you had both grown accustomed to.
“Why don't we try again tomorrow, we'll do a real date.” he spoke quietly while you reached over and turned the light out.
“If you want to, or we can just put that on hold.” you fluffed your pillow a little before falling back onto the bed with a whump.
“Fuck your sensitivity, we're doing this.” his tone changed to something more satirical, dragging you minutely closer to him and throwing the blanket up to your shoulders.
“We're going to make it happen?”
“Yes. Now go to sleep because tomorrow is going to be serious.” he patted your chest definitively and you had no arguments.
The next morning was only slightly disappointing. You had to almost physically drag him from the bed when it passed from midday to afternoon. He managed to bring his energy levels up to that of a normal human being in time for dinner, so you tried again. He brought his cane and actually managed to make it most of the way to the movie theater without guidance from you. It was only a few blocks away, and you had only been there once, but it was a small place that served food during the movies. The cashier rang Sollux up for a discounted senior ticket, apologizing that he couldn't let him in for free even if he was blind. Sollux looked like he took it a little personally but managed to hold it in.
No one else was in the theater so you narrated the whole terrible movie for him, by all accounts it was not worth the money to see it but you had fun. It was too cold on the way back and you both rushed back to your apartment, huddling on your couch together under your only two blankets. You tried to slip him some tongue in a kiss but he pushed you off and laughed.
The next time you asked him to come with you to your job at a bar he accepted. It wasn't a very nice bar, mostly empty the whole time, and all you had was a small platform to set up on. You set up a few songs to play and sat with him at the bar until the owner threatened to fire you if you didn't at least look like you were working. Later the both of you ended up staggering home together drunk, just before the sun came up.
---
“So this is our third date.”
“Is it? I wasn't counting like some kind of freak.” Sollux continued eating your french fries, you couldn't tell if he didn't know they were yours or if he didn't care.
“Hey now, no need for name calling. I just wanted to point out that I was promised a marriage proposal after three dates.” you pushed the tray closer to him, finished with your food anyways.
“Yeah well you know I'm full of shit.” he gave you a crooked smirk and you had to fight not to smile back at him in the crowded food court.
“I should have known I couldn't make an honest man out of you.” you knocked one of your feet against his under the table and he laughed, kicking you in the shin and insisting it was an accident. Whether or not it actually was you weren't going to play footsie with him again.
He complained without pause when you dragged him to clothing stores and bought him things. He had enough clothes to make it through six days without doing laundry (or taking yours). Not that you didn't mind sharing, but he seriously needed more clothes and you were getting really tired of that one shirt with the hole in the sleeve. He kept asking you the price of things and you had to lie to him once or twice when you realized he was keeping a tally in his head, but it was for his own good.
“So are you having a good time?” you were back in the apartment and he was putting away his clothes in one of the drawers you cleared out for him in your dresser. You had to let him put his own things away or he couldn't find them later.
“I don't know if you know this, but being home means the date is over.” you threw your shoes into the bottom of your closet.
“I mean dating in general, you're still... good?” he was facing away from you, focusing more on folding his clothes than was strictly necessary.
“You're asking if I'm going to change my mind about you?”
“...I guess?” he half turned towards you, leaning his hip against the dresser and shutting the drawer.
“I think you'd notice if I stopped liking you entirely. We've got to work on your self confidence or something though.” you sat on the edge of the bed and hooked a hand around his hip, pulling him closer until he was standing in front of you.
“Yeah well, it's not like I have a whole lot going for me right now.” he mumbled.
“You've got me?” it was cheesy and you almost tripped over your tongue saying the words.
“...That's enough I guess.” he leaned over you, arms around your shoulders and rested his chin on top of your head.
---
“Do you wear this?” Sollux called from the other room, on his way to you in the kitchen.
“What is it?” you turned away from the stove and your throat seized when you saw him.
“It's a hat.” he wandered towards you, brushing a hand against the counter with a gray baseball cap in his other hand. He ran his fingers along the well worn creases, pausing over the few tears in the fabric.
“That's uh...” you trailed off, trying to regain control of yourself.
You hadn't seen that hat in years, you couldn't call up the exact date. It wasn't like you didn't have plenty of your brother's belongings, they were all mixed in with yours at this point and everything that had been his was now yours. Most of the time you couldn't remember if a record was yours or his unless you stopped to really think about it.
But the hat was different, it was his hat and every time you saw it you pictured his face with it. It looked empty and strange without your bro wearing it.
“Dave?” Sollux reached out and his fingers grazed your collarbone.
“Sorry, that's uh, my bro's hat.” you took it from his hand and dropped it on the counter, trying to look away but it stuck out and you couldn't keep your eyes off it. You hadn't seen it in so long, you hadn't thought about him in real detail in so long.
“It fell out of your closet and I didn't know where it went, sorry. Should I go put it back?” he folded his hands together anxiously.
“No, really it's fine. I just forgot I had it is all.” you touched his shoulder, trying to reassure him that is wasn't his fault.
“It's burning.”
“What?”
“Whatever is on the stove is burning.”
“Shit!” you actually shoved him away from the stove before whirling around and throwing the pan off the stove and into the sink. It wasn't on fire, but it was still way past done. When the smoke had stopped billowing off the pan and you shut the stove off you finally turned to Sollux standing on the other side of the kitchen, eyes wide.
“Everything okay?” he looked somewhere between worried and angry.
“Well I still have my eyebrows and we're going out for lunch, how about it?” you smoothed your hair out of compulsion, taking a deep breath and feeling your heart beat start to even out.
“Let me just... put this away.” you hesitantly picked up the hat by the brim. It was cold and heavy in your hands. You always remembered it being much bigger, but maybe it was just your memory from being a child.
Sollux stepped aside and let you past and back into the bedroom. The closet door was still open and you stepped inside, looking for the space on the top shelf that the hat would have come from. You ended up cramming it between two boxes, it might not have been where it came from but it should stay. You wanted to keep it safe, but not see it very often. When you closed the door Sollux was halfway through the door to the bedroom.
“Ready to go?” you leaned down to pick up your shoes.
“Lets stay in.” he reached a hand out towards you and you straightened, taking his hand. He pulled you a step closer and hooked an arm over one of your shoulders.
“I'm fine, I'm not going to have a breakdown over a hat.” you had to speak into his shoulder with his chin resting on yours.
“I know, but if it's all the same to you I want to stay here.” he leaned in close, resting a hand on the side of your neck and kissing your cheek.
You hesitated, your arms moving in short choppy movements until you had them around him. He leaned in against you and he was warm, comforting. Ever since you lost your bro your only way to deal with his death was to ignore that he had every been there. Any time that you were reminded of him you found something else to work on and forget about him.
Sollux was someone who knew what it was like to lose someone, probably better than anyone else, and someone who had it worse off than you. You didn't pity him, but it meant a lot to you that you could be there to help him, and he could be there to help you too when you needed it. You hadn't had anyone that meant that much to you that in a long time.