Work Text:
==>Aradia: Consider Equius
You can't help but consider him, actually.
It was true, he was creepy, and strange, and got worked up entirely too much sometimes, and he was sweaty, and yes, rather smelly because of that. He was a hemospectrum bigot, in bluntest terms. It made you angry, and at one time, it would have made you burn with blackest hate.
But.
But.
He was also selfless. He built your soulbot—of course there were some ulterior motives, but he did build it. In the end, even when you'd torn out the heart of the bot, even when you'd beaten him almost senseless, he had asked for nothing, only received gratefully that which you gave him, which, back then, was a strange, passionate confusion of pity and hate.
He built Tavros' legs, and for that, he got nothing in return. You could have pitied him forever just for that. He built the delicate mechanisms, had warned Tavros about the stairs, had taken pains not to hurt him during the multitude of tiny adjustments to the intricate gears.
In the end, he had obeyed Karkat's instructions to seek Gamzee out, he had left his moirail in order to do so, warning her to stay safe. Even if he did not succeed, he still tried.
You had no chance to see him when you reached God Tier, you'd merely done your best to help the game through to completion. There was no time to think about your conflicted feelings, nor any time to grieve if you'd been so inclined.
But now, now that the world was new and you were alive (with no plans of dying any time soon), and Equius and Nepeta were alive again, you felt that...perhaps there was something between him and you. Something unfinished and left hanging.
In short, you'd missed him.
In the interim between the end of the Game and now, you'd been able to think about Equius, and his situation, with his inability to gentle himself, with his sweating problem, with his pitiful broken horn and his oft-broken teeth, his need to secret himself in the lonely caverns where he lives.
And you think Of course he would need to do that. Didn't we all sneer at him for sweating so much, for having his own strange kinks and fetishes, for being awkward and strange?
Children, you know, are cruel. You certainly were not exempt.
You talk to Equius over Trollian regularly, at least once every other day. You've tried not to pressure him into talking to you—things since the Game have been a little strained—but when he talks to you, you think that he enjoys it. He always starts out formal as ever but as the conversations go on, you can tell he's beginning to relax, because you know him and he knows you and somehow, he knows you aren't judging him.
You hear from Nepeta every so often as well. She's a very dear friend now. Friendship is totally a thing on this new Alternia, and you aren't quite sure how to navigate this non-romantic thing, but Nepeta just seems to have the knack for it. From her, you hear how Equius is really doing, how he closes himself off even more now that he's getting older, and even more freakishly STRONG than he used to be.
Nepeta tells you that she worries for him, that he's been closing himself off even from her, that he sometimes doesn't look well at all. Sometimes when they're in the pile together, he feels a little too warm, but he tells her it's only because he is contented and she is near. Nepeta does not believe him.
Neither do you. He's a blue-blood. His body temperature is cooler than Nepeta's, and considerably cooler than yours.
You suppose that it may be time to visit.
==>Aradia: Visit
You don't warn them when you drop by, but you make sure you aren't dressed in your God Tier clothes, you make sure your wings are banished and you're in your normal clothes when you do. Nepeta gives a wild exclamation of joy (all of her exclamations of joy are wild—more so as she's gotten older) and hugs you hard and you laugh, and Equius merely stands in the background, twisting an already-damp towel to shreds, his eyes hidden behind his cracked eye shades. He's a good two feet taller than the last time you saw him, and perhaps a little thinner, which tells you he's gone through a growth spurt in the past perigee, at least.
But he is always, as ever, polite. He invites you in, and you watch the broken interactions between Equius and Nepeta, how his position stays closed, almost as if he's folded in upon himself. Nepeta makes the tea, as Equius rarely trusts himself to do much of anything that doesn't involve robotics.
He holds the teacup carefully with just two fingers. He's gentle and careful, and you can tell he's holding every muscle at a precise tension, worrying about not tensing up so as to break the chair he's sitting on, or breaking the teacup. You can tell that he's just dying to abscond, to leave and go back to his workshop, to work on his robotics, the only thing that doesn't make him need a towel, tense up so badly that he breaks things, or creep anyone else out.
Nepeta babbles on in her friendly way—she's gotten bigger, and prettier, and more comfortable with herself in the past couple of sweeps—and Equius doesn't say much, just gives you shy, soft glances that make you realize that he's still flushed you. Something in your blood pusher thrums, making your throat close up slightly.
And that's when Nepeta decides, quite abruptly, to head off to “do something else”, and leaves the room. You smile to yourself. Nepeta always knows when to make her exits.
Equius, startled at her sudden departure, drops his teacup, the china falling to the floor and shattering, tea making a mess on the floor. Immediately, he takes his towel, already sodden with blue tinted sweat, and tries to sop up the mess, muttering and fussing.
“Stop.”
You watch him as he halts immediately, every muscle locked in place, mid swipe. It shakes you to your core, the way he just obeys you, without pause or question.
“You fuss too much,” you say, and your voice only trembles a little. You approach him and your ears go down in an instinctive submissive gesture, irritating but you can ignore that. “Sit, Equius, I'll take care of it.”
You clean up the small mess, and then you inspect each one of his hands to make sure he hasn't hurt one of them. And then you remain with his hands limp in yours, and sit next to him on the sofa.
“Please, Miss Aradia, please...I...”
Miss Aradia? Ouch. Why is he trying to keep you at arm's length, after all you've been through, and after everything? After the pity and the hate and showing each other all of your pre-teenage stupidity?
He's so tied up in knots that he can't speak. “Ssshooosh,” you murmur. He's flushed blue, and though he's sweating only a very little bit (less than you've ever seen, really), his breath is coming in soft gusts with a soft, high whine at the end of them. Nope, something is not quite right here. You press a fresh towel to his face, and remove his eyeshades.
“You shouldn't touch me,” he mumbles, but you just shake your head. He's so pitiful, so utterly pitiful. You ache for him.
“Hush, you silly troll.” He doesn't feel right, through the towel you can feel how warm he is, much warmer than his blood should allow for, and his eyes are half-lidded, and his lips aren't the right color black. “You are unwell, Equius. What is wrong?”
“It will be better,” he tells you, with a trembling little smile. “It is nothing.” He looks at you, his eyes so full of hope that you can't resist pressing your lips to his lightly, and his hand comes up to touch your hair. You brace for the feel of his hand, most likely rough.
You barely feel it, but there are his claws only lightly running through your hair, you can feel the drag of his fingerpads over your hair. It doesn't hurt. He hasn't hurt you.
He makes a sound of wonder, pulling away and looking at his hand curiously. And then he touches you again, careful of claws, touching your cheek, closing his eyes halfway as he strokes down your skin. “I'm not hurting you? Am I...am I not? Hurting you?”
“You're not hurting me, Equius, but you are not well, you are...you are too warm, please...” You don't know what's going on but you do know he's not well. His skin is burningly dry.
But he ignores you, and kisses you again, joyfully--but this is Equius, he doesn't do anything joyfully, and oh—you know something's wrong, but you can't tell him to stop when he's kissing you with his mouth curved into a soft smile. It's so sweet it makes you hurt inside. He throws his arms around you and pulls you to himself, and he makes a sound against your lips, almost like a sob, and it's then that you realize that he hasn't hurt you by mistake. It's almost...gentle, the way he's touching and kissing you, barely like Equius at all...
“I didn't hurt you? You promise?” His voice is soft and low. He's so warm, and you're worried but he looks so happy. So ridiculously happy. You can put your worries aside for a little while, surely. To make him happy.
You put your arms around him. “No, you didn't hurt me at all, I promise.” The blue is starting to seep into his eyes and even if it's mottled and rather uneven, you still think it's attractive.
He makes another sound like a strangled sob, and clutches your hands in his, soft and warm. “I...I never thought to...to touch you like this, I...” He looks overwhelmed, adoring and just...happy and contented.
You've never seen him look like that.
He releases you and cups your face between his hands, kisses your forehead, cheeks and chin, your closed eyelids. You let your breath out and he kisses you on the lips, and despite your worries that something just isn't right, your blood-pusher speeds up, and you can feel yourself flushing. You pull him closer and thread your fingers through his hair (his scalp is dry, dry, how is that even possible?), slide over onto his lap, and he just looks up at you, trusting, before you kiss again.
You can feel his blood-pusher thrumming in the pulse at his neck as your hand rests lightly there, and it's beating far faster than you'd ever expect a heart to beat.
Something's wrong, you think, and before the thought has even crossed your mind, Equius has gone limp, slumping over on the sofa, bringing you with him.
“Equius!” You get to your feet, kneeling beside the sofa, and look at him. He's gasping for breath and his blood-pusher is beating madly, and his eyes are closed to slits, but he's still smiling slightly, even though his lips have gone ash gray.
He manages to get out two words before he passes out: “Worth it...”
“NEPETA!”
The two of you watch over him, and you are caught between the reddest pity you've ever experienced before and a horrible, terrifying anger that catches with the pity and makes you want to just weep.
It's been an anxious two days since he passed out in your arms, and then once Nepeta had come back and the two of you had worked over him, piling him into the ablution trap and dumping cubes of frozen water from the thermal hull over his overheated body. Nepeta gathered aromatics, boiled water, and stuck his head over the steam.
When he was finally breathing easier, you'd gone to his respite block and searched. You didn't quite know what you were looking for, but eventually, you'd found a lot of things that didn't precisely look healthy. Chemicals, some legal, but some, very very dangerous. Chemicals he'd rubbed on his skin, injected into his muscles. Websites on his husktop cache. Things that made the phrase “worth it” become horribly clear in your mind.
While Equius was still out cold, while Nepeta took care of him, you'd researched and talked with Sollux, and between the two of you, figured out what you could do.
So you and Nepeta ran water into the ablution trap, scrubbed every inch of his body. You drained it and ran in hot water. Scrubbed again, then patted him dry and waited.
You went through it again, and again.
You and Nepeta wept with relief when you saw the thin blue sheen of sweat finally break out over his body, and you rejoiced when he snapped the edge off of the ablution trap in his sleep.
Between the two of you, you get him into his recuperacoon and wait. You and Nepeta take care of each other.
And wait.
It's three nights since he collapsed when Equius finally stirs from his sleep. Nepeta jumps on him, uncaring of the sopor slime still dripping off of him, and you go to get him some water. He will need it; he's dehydrated.
When he breaks the glass before he's finished the water, you see something despairing break inside him, and Nepeta butts her head up against his cheek and purrs against him.
You patiently clean things up and wait for him to get out of the ablution trap. The conversation you need to have with him can wait.
When you go to find him, he's sitting at his food preparation block table with his head in his hands, Nepeta taking a well-deserved nap in her own recuperacoon. His shoulders are hunched in, and he is covering his eyes with his hands. Occasionally, a drop of blue falls on the otherwise pristine surface of the table. His hair, tangled and still damp, is hiding his face. You watch him for a moment before going to get a comb from his room. You clear your throat as you enter the kitchen and make plenty of noise as you step up behind him. “Your hair,” you say quietly, “is a terrible mess, Equius.” So you begin, gently, to comb it, teasing out the tangles, careful of his broken horn. He stays silent and still and you watch the sweat bead up on his shoulders. You pause, take his towel up, and pat his shoulders dry again. The smell of him reaches you, and you don't mind it, you really can't mind it, flushed as you are for him. You lean down and kiss his shoulder, tasting the new sweat as it comes up almost immediately. You lick your lips, making sure he can hear you do it.
“You do not have to...”
“Shhoosh, you silly man and let me do this for you.” Now that his hair is mostly free of knots, it's easier to let the comb slide through. His hair is soft to touch and shiny. “You frightened us both so very much, Equius. Don't you know that Nepeta would be lost without you? And would you deprive me of someone I am...flushed for?” You have the grace to blush as he jerks underneath the combing and looks up at you. “We nearly lost you, Equius. If I did not pity you so very utterly, I would be far more angry than I am. Or, at least, more inclined to harm you.” You touch his face—damp, of course, with tears and sweat—gently, placing a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth.
“But—but I cannot touch you--”
You point at yourself. “God Tier, Equius. You cannot hurt me that badly.” You really hope you're right about that. “Touch me.”
He clenches his fists. “I...I...Aradia...I do not wish to hurt you.”
You ache again. “You won't. Please.” You pull up a chair and sit down near him, and take his hand and place it on your face.
As Maid of Time, you can fully recognize the power of a delicate moment, which this one certainly is. You release Equius' hand and allow him to do what he wants.
His fingers twitch involuntarily, a little harder than he wants to touch, but it doesn't even hurt you. You lean forward and his fingers brush gently past your ear. You shiver. It was nice when he was touching you before, but somehow, with him being careful, even with the sweating and the slightly too-firm pressure on your cheek (but it isn't bad, not at all), it's so much better because it's really Equius, too-strong, too-sweaty Equius. Just the way you like him.
He kisses you, clumsy, and he nicks your lip with one of his teeth, but it's not bad and he eases up the pressure carefully in a moment. He makes a soft sound and draws back, looking at you.
“I am...not hurting you? Please...do not deny it simply to be kind...” His brow furrows as he wipes a drop of blood from your lip gently with a finger.
“You aren't hurting me, I promise, Equius. Of course, Nepeta...well, you must be careful with her. But with me...” You let your voice trail off, to let him draw his own conclusions.
He must be doing just that, because he flushes blue. You pat his face gently with the towel, a small smile on your face. He puts his head down in your lap, looping his arms around your thighs, and as his shoulders tremble, you stroke his hair.
And you listen as he soaks your skirt with his tears and mumbles into your lap, soft, halting phrases of his flushed feelings for you, of how he'd tried so hard to make himself better, how lonely he's been, how tired he is. You hurt for him again.
You hug him around his shoulders and kiss his head. “That is because you are pitiful, my darling, and you are a creep. But I pity you so much that I do not care. And you will not be alone again—Nepeta and I shall make sure of it.” You stroke his hair, the dampness familiar to you—and welcome.
Because it's Equius.
And because it's real.