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You’re not entirely sure what you were expecting when Rose asked you to come over and help her out with something, but assisting her with wrangling some dude into a dress wasn’t it.
It’s for one of Kanaya’s school projects, you're told as your sister's girlfriend circles the work in progress like a particularly hungry predator, needles poised for immediate action. Her roommate and supposedly willing victim does an admirable job trying to not squirm away.
There’s something more about the artistry of overcoming gender roles and the dress being ‘really complicated to wash bloodstains out of, so please stop moving’, but your concentration is wholly absorbed by figuring out how to actually lace up the back of a dress and not at all by noticing how the neck on Kanaya’s roommate goes on forever.
His name starts with an E, and the rest of his introduction got kind of muffled into the thick, woolly scarf now hanging off the back of the chair. You think it involved something about film history, but for all you know he could have been talking about grooming small loud poodledogs or racing snails.
His skin’s got this weird patchy discolouration thing going on, -and you’ve got red eyes and white hair so you really shouldn’t be staring at anyone-, but his eyelashes are long and thick and they’re different colours and it was somehow just about the most fascinating thing in the world. Right up until you were talked into trying to lace up his dress and subsequently exposed to his neck.
Which goes on forever.
You fumble with the laces some more, fairly sure you’re finally getting the whole thing tangled in a way that could convincingly pass for 'messy but fashionable' when E-something suddenly scoots backwards with a high-pitched gurgling noise.
“Eridan!” Kanaya snaps, responding with an impressively instant slap to Eridan’s arm. “I just told you to stay still!”
“Stay still my cactus, you just jammed a fuckin’ needle up my nip,” Eridan screeches back, earlier shy murmur turned up to slightly above indoor voice while he cups both hands protectively over the offended nipple.
“A little louder, I’m sure they didn’t quire hear you across the country,” Rose chimes in from behind her knitting project across the room. “And wouldn’t it be such a terrible waste for one of many tragedies in your life to go undocumented? What would the people who follow your blog think?”
“Go fuck a hedgehog’s ass Lalonde,” Eridan snipes back with the loaded kind of hostility that leaves you torn between wanting to know the story there and staying far away from what looks like, for all intents and purposes, a catfight.
“Oh wait, of course. How rude of me. That would imply that people actually follow your blog,” Rose crows out, drawing an admittedly hilariously adorable furious snarling noise out of Eridan, who looks like he would probably have physically lunged at her if he weren’t pinned down in impressive amounts of fabric and lace.
Kanaya, bless her twisted little heart, interrupts the two of them by announcing she needs Rose’s help removing the bloodstains off of something that looks knitted and delicate before the verbal slaughterhouse can truly commence.
Which leaves you in a room with Eridan, his halfway laced dress and his really nice neck.
There is a fairly long, incredibly awkward silence. Eridan, no longer threatened with getting skewered by needles, shifts around uncomfortably.
“So you’re Lalonde’s brother or somethin’ right?” He asks right at the same time you blurt out “You have really nice eyelashes.”
He twists around in place and gives you a wide-eyed look, the effect of which is slightly ruined by the dress, which now rather awkwardly hangs off of his shoulders. You shrug at him helplessly. “Uh. Want to go out for coffee sometime, maybe?”
He blinks at you a few times, and you’re fairly sure your face is turning the least flattering shade of red. “…sure?” He asks more than answers, but you consider it a victory anyhow.
“I am disappointed by your lack of taste in men, Dave,” Rose shouts from the other room.