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No matter what's in your heart, no matter how indestructible you know Equius to be, you can't shake the mindset of a predator when he comes into view after a long time apart. And the two of you have had little more than long times apart this last sweep approaching Ascension, so it feels like you're stuck viewing him through this hypervigilant lens.
You understand he's busy. Of course he is. Indigobloods are not a dime a dozen, and rarer still for them to be in such good health when reaching maturity. It's thanks to you, mostly, not that you like to preen over it so much. So many other bluebloods you've met are missing limbs, or eyes, or are completely quadrantless. All from their volatility. But your moirallegiance has kept Equius from being a self-destructive idiot (and you don't ever bring up your brief stay in his ashen quadrant to keep him away from Feferi, the closest he's ever come to true dumbassery).
Equius' horn had grown back in, he was physically healthy, and he had stable red and ashen quadrants on top of your own pale relationship.
It's just.
Sometimes, if your eyes aren't on Equius, he doesn't feel like he's there. The telltale pigmentation along his lashes hint that it's some lowkey psionics at play that create a strange vacuum of presence that only eased up if you spent considerable time together, like your brain has to be trained to not let him slip into the background. He could be a whiskers length away but unless you're looking right at him it feels like you're all alone.
Something to fret over another day. Today, you have the privilege of riding in a private buggy Equius had sent just for you to be delivered up to his doorstep. Your nose is all but mashed against the port window, straining to see him across the impossible length of his lawnring. When he does finally come into view his arms are crossed, making him look more like a bouncer than the looming castles' owner. Even from here you can tell he's molted again. He's going to have to dip his head to get back inside lest his horns clip the doorframe.
The sliding doors of your buggy are barely ajar before you're squirming your way out, trilling loudly for him as you sprint, each step breaking up the pale call into something hiccupy and desperate. It's dangerous, maybe, to let everything but him blur out of existence. But Equius is your moirail, and he's right here, and he'd never let anything happen to you here in his territory. Never never nefur.
He wisely braces himself when you coil to pounce and throw yourself bodily against him, arms wrapped around his neck and mouth pressed to his skin to breathe him in. It takes effort to not score his back with your claws, to cling to him non-violently. You want to be closer to him, somehow. Burrow into him and live among the white of his bones, but have to content yourself with the fact that, chest to chest as you are now, his heart beats slow and calming against your own.
"Nepeta," he rumbles affectionately, buzzing shortly as he brushes his jaw to your temple as carefully as he can. After another moment he leans forward slowly until your feet meet the ground. Your hands release their death grip around his neck, sliding down so they're braced against his pectorals. He cocks his head meaningfully and you oblige the gesture by pressing your cheek to his lips for a cool kiss, so chaste and pale your heart could burst with it. Equius still has to be so careful not to hurt you, and the care he takes to avoid even bruising you is sweet.
"I missed you," you tell him unnecessarily, dropping your hands once more to take his and interlace your fingers as you rock back on your heels. "And you got taller again. How am I supposed to catch up to you nyaow?"
"You will not," Equius says seriously. You roll your eyes. Arthur trots up beside the both of you, your bags slung around his arms.
"Thank you, Arthur," you say politely, a little sheepish that you'd abandoned them so readily in the buggy, and even moreso that you hadn't noticed him slipping past the two of you while you'd embraced. Arthur, too, drops a kiss onto the top of your head, right between your horns, before he's heading back into the house, presumably to bring your things to your room for you.
"Your arrival was speedier than I had anticipated. Join me in my workroom." You frown, realizing now that Equius is in his dirtied work clothes. Equius' workshop is not your favorite place to be. It smells like burning metal and wires, and you hadn't thought to pack any books or your drawing tablet to entertain yourself. Equius prefers to work in total silence, and you respect that, but. There's not a whole lot for you to do down there but watch him.
Which you do. With laser focus intensity.
It's not that watching Equius manipulate tiny pieces of metal and machinery isn't cool. It's taken him ages to get such fine motor control, and you're proud of him for it. He no longer has to outsource his work to anyone else. His creations are wholly his own now, and you are curious to see what he's been working on. He's been obnoxiously sneakritive about it.
So. You watch him work on his mysterious gloves, mind more interested in the shifting of tendons under his skin and the way the light plays off his polished-bright claws than guessing what the gloves might be for. The tiniest twitch, every flex, every breath-- it's your business. Because if you look away for too long even the awful smell of smoldering starts to dim, and the world quiets and compresses down until you feel like Equius hasn't inhabited his own hive for days.
So. You chase every movement with hungry eyes. You even slink up onto his workbench itself, onto a perpendicular tabletop to the one he works at, just because you know he disapproves of it. It does not, however, speed his delicate work like you had hoped, but does everything to amp up your fixation on him when he starts throwing little annoyed grimaces your way.
He turns to you in full, finally, more riled by your insolence than you had counted on, but whatever chiding comment he has dies in his throat when he takes in exactly how intense you're staring at him. Sweat starts up immediately along his skin and you watch quietly as one bead treks down over his sharp cheekbone, curves along his jawline until it slips down his neck, and disappears into the soft fabric of his shirt.
"You will stop that," he mutters, so quiet that it almost seems like he's talking to himself. He puts his soldering tool down with shaking hands so he can wipe his palms dry against his oil-stained work pants.
"What, looking at you?" You ask, incredulous. At your tone Equius dips his head, ever so slightly, to brandish his horns. You scramble out of your languid side sprawl and onto your stomach to protect it. This isn't behavior appropriate for a moirail. It borders on hostility; a warning, and it confuses you.
"Yes," he says shortly.
"Why?" And Equius has always struggled with this part. He doesn't like explaining himself, too used to stating himself and others accepting it by virtue of his place in the hierarchy. Not that it's ever worked on you, or any of your friends, really, but you especially are used to more leeway than he's giving you now. You wrack your brain to think about what you could have done to upset him this time but you come up blank.
The muscles in Equius' jaw clench, and you can tell by the way he flinches that he's chipped another tooth. He swallows it with a nervous gulp rather than just spitting it out like a normal person and you can't help but wrinkle your nose in disgust.
"Equius. Ew."
"There is nothing repulsive in my actions." You queue up a retort, the usual back and forth banter bubbling up with ease in your throat, a little desperate to get you back onto playful terms, but he startles you by slamming his hands with denying pressure onto the table's edge and shoves himself to his feet.
It leaves scary indents behind in the metal. Given his anger you can't help but remember what happens when he uses that strength against something living. Against another troll, how quickly they submitted. Or died.
"Your actions, however, are quite repulsive. Uncivilized. You will stop regarding me in this way," he gestures towards you as a whole and embarrassment burns hot over your face so intensely you know your ears are green with it. Equius is your moirail for a reason. His excessive stuffiness compliments your own feral unruliness in a way that has proven vital to your introduction to society. Over the sweeps you'd been horrified to find out much of what Equius said about the hemospectrum had been true. How many other trolls buy into it, how it made them treat you so unfairly, or how shocked other trolls were when you treated them kindly.
On the whole he has never steered you wrong when it came to manners and civility, though you'd never confirmed as much to him, hating the way things were too much to be anything more than stubbornly silent on the issue.
With effort you swing your legs over the edge of the table, feet dangling in such a way to show you trust him not to lunge at you because you have put yourself in a position where retaliation would be slow. This seems to mollify and confuse him, which only serves to confuse you more. "But what's wrong with the way I look at you? How can I stop if I don't know what it is I'm doing wrong?"
"To have someone of your caste--"
"Oh, here we furking go."
"Look at someone like me, like I'm some kind of--"
"Equihiss, seriously!"
"Like I'm some. Some kind of prey item, or plaything. It is…unbecoming. So you will stop."
"That's your thought process? I can't look at you because my blood is too lowly for it?" If you wouldn't be several inches shorter by hopping down onto the ground you would do so.
He's lying to you about something. He's telling a half-truth, guarding and hiding something from you. His moirail.
"If my guidance is so insistent on finding deaf ears, know that it is also poor behavior to show one's moirail," Equius bares his sharp, broken teeth. It's alarming to see him act so uncomfortable to share something that seems so simple with you. You do slide from the table now, brows knitted with worry. "Am I not meant to feel at ease with you? Not as if you're going to pounce on me at any given minute?"
For several long moments your mouth just hangs open. That's what's been bothering him? For perigees you've been acting like this, and he's just now telling you it makes him feel unsafe? How many times had you pounced on him without harming him? Hundreds. Thousands.
"But you're so strong," you protest, mind racing to understand what he's getting at. "I couldn't hurt you, even if I wanted--"
"Do you want?" His tone is dark. Accusatory. His sunglasses had been set aside for his work and you notice his pupils are starting to show the first signs of blue pigmentation. When did that happen? "Hurt the one who won't let you play your little FLARP games? Who wrangles you, clips your wings? Because my counsel is so unwanted?"
He…
He thinks you want to vacillate with him, you realize. Dazed and dizzied by the idea of it that you have to reach behind yourself with one hand to steady yourself against the table's edge. It's not the worst part of this. You know you're still pale for him, no matter what mixed messages you'd apparently been sending him. This, you can fix. It can be talked out.
The thought that's making your breaths go quick and shallow is if he's vacillating with you.
Equius is shaking, angry enough his sclera inches from gold to orange like he's going to have an entire highblood freak-out right here in his basement. His short nails have punctured the leather of his gloves where they've balled up into fists, and that indigo blood he so prides himself with drips onto the dirty workshop floor. The scent of it blows your pupils wide and locks your limbs. If he aggrieves you and you don't meet him head-on and take it seriously you will, without a doubt, die.
Even so you're more worried for Equius. You want to soothe him, sedate, reassure, but nothing makes its way past the tight knot in your throat. It's just you, and him, and that accusation he's laid between you.
Do you want to hurt him?
Maybe it's not an accusation. Maybe it's worse, and it was a proposal.
You can't make yourself reach for him, muscles still locking you into place with such ferocity you realize you've started to tremble.
"Perhaps I was not made for this moirallegiance, with my advice so often discarded, and my hands too brutish to offer you anything gentle."
"Equius…"
"Is it not the truth?" You'd never really discussed the inconveniences his strength caused before because you had assumed you'd both gotten around it. It's not like you had even cared when a touch grew a little too careless and he bruised you. It's not like they really hurt, but he had hated it so much he had stopped trying, and you hadn't pushed the matter.
"I love you even if you feel you can't touch me!" It's only then that your limbs unlock and you take a step towards him, dismayed when he coils up in agitation. "You trust me to touch you, that's all that matters to me." You reach for him to prove your point, actions meaning more to the both of you than words, but he hisses loud enough that you startle back.
Pale to pitch can be some of the most torturous vacillations. To have the one who guarded your heart suddenly turn against you was just so intimate, they understood you on a level that was almost too fundamental. Not to mention in most cases your moirail was already the keystone keeping everything else up. Remove it and turn it against a troll usually results in ashen intervention, the psychological warfare aspects of the relationship too brutal to easily withstand.
Except this wasn't some hypothetical, or the kinds of torrid swapping you'd seen from friends over the perigees. This is your life, and the anticipatory grief that hits you comes out in the worst way.
Your eyes burn as tears well up in them, a green film overtaking the world.
"Equius…" You sound half as miserable as you feel. If this is a true black overture you realize you're unfit to meet it as you blink once, twice, and the tears escape before you can stop them. You dash them away. You try to make your sniffing sound dismissive, but in the face of your heartbreak Equius finally wavers. A kismesis would never cry in front of their would-be rival. Not like this.
"Did I-- have I really--" You hiccup, wrapping your left arm around your face so your eyes are pressed and hidden into the crook of your arm where your coat can swallow your tears. It's hard to breathe evenly but you give it your best as you hear Equius sit down heavily into his chair rather than attack you.
It gives you hope enough to drop your arm and watch as he, too, covers his eyes away from you, breathing ragged. Another, harder lump rises in your throat when you recognize that he's calming himself. You would rather he kill you right now than wrangle himself back under control when you're right here and could do it for him. Like you're supposed to.
Like you were made to.
"I am. Sorry, Nepeta. Please forgive me." Without looking up or uncovering his face he reaches his bloodied hand towards you. The gravity of his apology yanks you forward before you can even fully process them. You press your face into his palm and sniffle pathetically. His blood is freezing and sticky against your nose and cheek.
"Do I really scare you?" You whisper against his glove, not sure if you can keep your voice from cracking if it's any louder.
"Sometimes," he admits, shoulders slumping. His hand shakes delicately against your face as he carefully, carefully runs his thumb under your eye to catch one scalding tear. You can see the bright silver of his eye watching you from between his fingers. "You scare me in many ways. Your lack of care for the hemospectrum behooves me, and I fear one day it will get you killed.
"Regard me all you like with your predatory ways, but no one else. Promise me." Equius has never asked you to promise him anything before, just demanded his instructions be followed.
"I promise, I-- I don't even know why I do it, I don't understand--"
"It is how you're used to getting your way," Equius says fondly. "Food or sport, exercise or play. Hunting is your way. I should have known, I. I should have asked what it is you wanted. Instead, I assumed this pent-up want in you was a declaration of war."
"I just want you," you whisper honestly. "I miss you so much, lately. I don't want to let you out of my sight."
"Nepeta…" Equius finally lowers his hand from his face and you hiccup seeing that he's blushing. "You already have me." His words squeeze your heart into missing a beat for how genuine they are. Shy and embarrassed, like the day he had asked for your quadrant, and your tears come back to blur your vision. Equius has always been good at displaying his moirallegiance, but he's never been so blunt with words.
You fling your arms around his neck and burrow your nose against his skin.
"You really thought I was vacillating with you?" You muffle the question against his hairline to try and hide your embarrassment.
"You have been intense lately. I felt you've been looking for a fight. More than our usual squabbles." You pull back to give him a look.
"Definitely not. I like to win my fights, you know." He laughs at you as he swivels his chair closer to his workbench, choosing to say nothing when you cling to him in his lap rather than get up and give him space.
"You don't give yourself enough credit. Whoever lands your spade would need to be skilled to avoid your fangs buried in their throat. I would be no exception. Brute strength against agility would not guarantee a win. I am, after all, only a troll. My skin would part for you like all the others." To prove his point he shows you his bloodied hand, which immediately makes you fuss over it. The bleeding has already stopped when you peel his glove off to look at the damage underneath. You carefully clear the dried blood away with your sleeve.
"You've thought about it before? What it would be like to fight me?" The question immediately starts Equius sweating again. Your nose wrinkles.
"When I wrongly assumed your vacillation I realized I didn't want to lose you as a quadrantmate. Considering you as anything but my diamond was. Upsetting. But I considered the idea thoroughly because losing you upset me more."
"You would have tried for me?" You say, caught between awe and smugness.
"I would kill the Empress for you," he says simply. It's a terribly treasonous thing to say, even you understand that, but it's why it makes you blush so violently.
"Pale for you," you reply through a purr. A couple more swipes you deem Equius hand clean enough for him to put on another glove and keep working. "I considered the same, just so you know. I thought you were vacillating with me."
"I see." Equius scoots in a little closer to keep working on said gloves. More than ever you were looking forward to running about in the moonlight with him. This entire event had both tired you out and keyed you up horribly. For now, you're content to lay your cheek against his collarbone and chirr on every exhale for how he carefully works around you and lets you stay close, even though it must be a bit of a pain.
Who could be luckier when it came to diamonds? Quietly, you question yourself; would you have come back to Equius, if he had wanted a rivalry, and you truly had time to think about what that would mean?
You had already asked yourself this when it came to matespritship. It's a prudent question, he would have to help you with the pail in the future if you were unlucky enough to have a vacant red quadrant. But a rival…?
It's easier to picture than you would have thought. To challenge him about everything, but actually going to distance to not only disobey, but prove him wrong? To rub in his face and remind him that down here, on a planet full of adolescence, the hemospectrum mattered far less than he thought?
Anyone who entered your territory is as good as dead, and no one could do a thing about it. Not a blueblood, not a finface. You were too good at killing, and hiding, and ambushing.
And he knows that, you realize. That anyone colder blooded than you might have the right to cull you if you stepped out of line, but you would kill them before they even got the chance.
Happily, you snuggle more fitfully against him and close your eyes. You love Equius as a moirail, and you wouldn't ever want to change that, but you feel at peace with the knowledge that you could give vacillation a try.
"I am ready to share my invention," Equius says after some time.
"What are they for, then?" You watch curiously as he takes a work glove off to replace it with his newly finished on. It's a little bulky around the wrist, but every version he's sent you pictures of has gotten more streamlined than the last. Rather than answer Equius nudges you back to sit on the edge of the table and carefully, slowly, brings his hand up to your cheek.
"For you." You don't know what to say, so you just stay as still as you can while he carefully runs his fingers over your cheek, into your hair. The slick material doesn't knot or scratch as he drags it carefully across your scalp and you shiver delicately when his thumb touches along the sensitive velvet of your horn. You lean into his hand, basking in the attention until another purr revs up in your throat. "They dampen my strength, so that I might attend you as you deserve."
Yes. You would do anything for this boy, you decide.