Chapter Text
It was the first snow of the winter season and everyone was still inside so early in the morning, still warm and asleep in their bed. Your neighbors in the apartment next door woke you up with an especially spirited round of very early sex, and instead of rolling around in bed with your own boner you decided to go cool off outside. The sun was just coming up and all the street lights were going out.
It was barely snowing, just extremely little flakes that melted on contact with any of the surroundings. Still, it was pretty despite the cold. You were bundled up in your ironically bright red jacket, scarf, hat, and sunglasses and it kept the cold out pretty well. The snow was right on time this year, early November, but it wasn't cold enough to stick to the ground, just look pretty coming down.
Even though you were moving it was starting to feel cold, your play list still had another seven songs though so you prolonged your walk and headed for the park. The grass was crunchy with frost and a few leaves had a pale shell of ice, but it was melting fast. It was too early for anyone else to be meandering around the park, at least most people.
At first glance you assumed it was just an unhappy homeless person hunched over on the bench, still sleeping. They were sitting with their legs out in front of them, top half slumped forward with their face in their knees and arms wrapped around their legs. You had to dismiss your first idea that it was a bum when you realized they just had on a black tee shirt and rather fashionably tight pants. They looked skinny enough to be homeless. When you got closer you could see it was a young guy, but couldn't see his face with it pressed into his knees. He had a short black mop of hair that left the back of his neck uncovered, but you couldn't see his face.
He wasn't moving and you were worried upon approaching that you were going to see your first dead body in the park, but he was in fact breathing. He was also shivering quite hard, you could understand that, it must be awful out here in just a tee shirt. You stopped a decent distance away from him and pulled out your ear buds, you could hear his shaky breaths.
You edged as close as you dared but he didn't move, was he asleep? Passed out drunk from the night before? Did he get mugged or something? You'd never heard of a mugging this early in the morning, but who knew when sketchy fuckers roamed.
“Are you okay?” you asked quietly, but it sounded loud in the silent park.
He jumped like he'd been burned, kicking up some dirt and sitting bolt upright with his arms out like he was going to block an attack. You put your hands out instantly, palms facing towards him and taking a step back. You didn't think you were especially intimidating, but maybe he hadn't heard you come up.
“W-who's there?” he asked, sounding somewhere between terrified and completely frozen. You stood in confusion for a long few seconds, before letting your arms fall down to your sides. His eyes were firmly closed, and you had to wait for your brain to catch up to what was happening. When several seconds passed and he didn't open his eyes you waved to him, no reaction.
“Uh, sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, sorry. You looked like you were hurt or something.” you bent over to get a better look at his downcast face, he shuddered hard and tried to curl in on himself again.
“Oh, no... I'm fine.” his voice cracked and his expression indicated he wasn't fine.
You looked around but the park but there still wasn't anyone to be seen, or any indication how long he had been there. No other belongings, just small flakes falling from the sky.
“Or... could you help me a little? If you're still there...” he sounded small and drew your attention back with his quiet murmurs. You could hear a small lisp, just barely there and hard to hear. He lifted his head towards you, upset and confused, and you took a step closer.
You could see his eyes were a little red around the edges, but his lips were tinged blue and his whole face was washed out white. Despite that he was actually pretty cute, if a little bit too skinny. He had short shaggy black hair that looked like his mom cut it, and curly black eyelashes.
“What do you need man?” you asked, folding your hands into fists in your pocket, fuck if you were cold he must be freezing.
“Shit, sorry, I don't even know you I don't mean to ask for favors, Jesus. I just, I lost my cane, over there somewhere I think. I couldn't find it before and I... kind of need it.” he gestured vaguely towards you, and you realized that he meant the bushes behind you.
“Sure, lemme see.” you turned slowly and it only took a few seconds to find a black walking stick wedged into a bush. You drew it out and found it to be a blind man's cane, he was definitely blind. You just ran into a possibly hypothermic blind guy stranded on a park bench without his cane or a coat, what's sadder than that.
You crunched back across the grass with his cane and he had his hands folded in his lap, trying to suppress his shivers with his head down again. He looked so pathetic, in the cute way though that made you want to feed him hot chocolate with marshmallows and snuggle in your bed.
“Found it.” you said quietly but he jumped a little anyways, lifting his head.
“Seriously? Thanks.” he sighed, reaching both of his hands out towards you. It took you a second to understand but you placed it into his hands and he pulled it close, holding it between his legs and wrapping both hands around it. You stood in front of him for long enough that it was going to get really awkward no matter what you did next, but what were you supposed to do? People started dying if they stayed out in this kind of weather for too long.
“Hey, what's your name?” you finally asked, moving to sit next to him on the bench. He shifted uncomfortably but didn't move away.
“Sollux.” he mumbled, trying to pronounce it without slurring the 'S' parts; it was kind of cute, in a grade school way.
“I'm Dave.”
“Okay...?” he turned his head a little towards you.
“What are you doing out here Sollux?”
He shivered and you could see his eyelashes flutter like he was going to open his eyes. It made you wonder if he had eyes under there or if it was just empty holes.
“I left my apartment.”
“That is what being 'outside' means.”
He frowned at you and shook his head with a huff before folding his twig arms tightly to his chest. God he had to be freezing.
“I left and I can't go back, not yet.”
“And you don't have a coat or..?”
“I left in kind of a hurry, okay?” he snipped back at you, shuffling his feet. You yawned but stayed silent for a long time, nodding for no one's benefit but your own.
“You have anywhere to go?” you asked, trying not to sound like a worried mom.
“... This is it.”
You drew in a deep breath of cold air and let out a puff of cloud, trying not to make it as despairing as you felt. This guy was seriously pulling on pity chords you didn't know you had.
“Here.” you said, pulling your phone out of your pocket and unzipping your coat, shrugging it off. Sollux looked towards you, confused and unmoving. You picked up one of his hands and pushed it into the sleeve of your coat, trying to put it on someone who wasn't helping. His hand was freezing in yours, how cold did it have to be before he got frostbite?
“This is your coat?”
“Yeah, so put it on.”
“What? No, I can't take your coat.” he shook his head and started pushing the coat back towards you.
“Shit, you're not going to keep it, just put it on for a little bit.”
“...But then you won't have a coat.”
“Yeah well, I also have a heated apartment to go back to.”
That shut him up long enough for you to get him to put the coat on and he sighed, lifting his legs to fold against his chest and shivering. Your coat was a little big on him and his cane slipped to the ground ith a tinny thud. You picked it up for him and leaned it against the side of the bench.
“When can you go back to your apartment?” you asked after yet another awkwardly long pause, this whole encounter was just strange.
“I don't know, later.” he muttered and the look if distress was back.
“Okay um... shit, well the coffee places aren't open yet. And I know this is super creepy for me to ask, but you could come sit on my couch for a while?”
“You're right, that is a super creepy thing to ask.” so he had some sass hidden in there.
“You've got a better plan?”
“I don't know, my plan only went as far as try not to get lost and stranded on a park bench. You can see how well that was going for me.”
“Right, well, I'm fucking freezing so you're either coming back with me or I have to call the homeless police or something because Jesus dude, I don't know how you still have all your fingers out here.”
“It's not so bad once you get past the initial stages of hypothermia, after that it's almost fun.” one corner of his mouth quirked up and he huddled deeper into your coat.
“As great as you make that sound, I'll pass.” you stood and crammed your phone and hands into your jean pockets.
“Coming or staying?” you asked, shuffling from foot to foot and trying to warm up a little. Sollux looked torn, you could understand his difficulty. You would be uncertain of strangers anyways, and much more so if you had no idea what they looked like.
“I don't know...”
You looked around the empty park once again to find no one. To be honest you were worried to even leave him alone out here, what if the real creepers showed up?
“Look, you seriously can't stay out here like this. I won't make you come with me, but you've go to go somewhere. So are you coming with me or am I calling someone to come get you?”
He swallowed hard and his head hung low. You thought he might be ignoring you until he finally gave a solemn nod, wobbling into a standing position and managing to knock his cane over again. His legs were shaking and it looked like they didn't want to respond.
“I got it.” you picked it up for him and he took it after you poked him in the arm with it.
“So... how do I like... lead you?” you asked, holding your hands out towards him without touching. You'd never even met a blind person before, what was the etiquette? You'd somehow managed to avoid blurting out the question 'are you blind?' so far, but there were a million other pitfalls you'd never even thought of.
“Uhh, just let me grab on to your arm.” he reached a pale hand out of your jacket sleeve towards you and you took it, tucking it between your elbow and chest. It was like snuggling with a pack of icicles, but you were still better off than him. You could feel the involuntary tremors as his fingers curled around your arm and wanted to throw an arm around him to help warm him up.
“Good to go?” you asked, taking a halting step forward and he followed you with an easy step.
“I'm blind not crippled, walk.” he threw his other arm forward to gesture with the cane in a way that could be described as wild. You had an idea how his cane ended up in a bush twenty feet away from him.
To your surprise he didn't use his cane while he followed you, just letting it drag along the ground beside him. He followed you without trouble, only tripping once when you accidentally tried to lead him past a sign but didn't leave enough room for him on the other side. He graciously didn't complain about your error.
You could feel how he wanted to huddle in against your side, and to be honest you wouldn't have minded either, you were cold too. This close you could tell he smelled clean like soap and by the time you made it back to your apartment building his hand was starting to feel warm against your arm. The snow had mostly stopped by now, just a rare flurry floating down to quickly disappear as soon as it hit the ground.
You pushed through the front door of your building and Sollux shuddered, pulling his hand out of your grasp. Straightening his cane he tucked his other hand into your coat's pocket.
“Where is this?”
“Uh... well it's The Derse building, just outside of downtown? I'm in apartment 2C.”
Sollux nodded slowly, sliding his cane across the slick floor and reaching his hand out towards you again. You took it and he took a hold of your elbow, letting you lead him again. As it turned out stairs were especially dangerous to him, he looked like a baby deer learning to walk, clutching at you and the railing like he was going to fall at any moment.
Finally you made it up the stairs and down the hall to your apartment. He ran his hand across the wall all the way down the hall, lightly touching the number plaque next to your door.
“You good with this?” you asked while fishing out your keys, fumbling a little with your cold fingers.
“Not really, but I have limited options.” he gave a small jerk of his shoulder almost like a shrug, but it was hard to tell through his shivering.
“Anything I can do to make myself seem less sketchy?”
“Not raping or killing me?”
“We're off to a good start already then, because I totally could have in the park and then I didn't.”
He actually cracked a smile at that and shook his head.
“Yeah well, I don't know what you have in your apartment, it could be a torture dungeon for all I know.”
“Close, that's my neighbor. Mine is the morgue.” you were only half kidding, but Sollux wouldn't be able to see your various collectible dead animals in jars. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
“You're an insufferable prick, you know that?” he actually laughed a little saying it, and he basically butchered the word 'insufferable'.
You finally managed to unlock the door and reached out to take Sollux's hand, guiding him through the door. He took short shuffling steps in behind you, staying quiet and keeping his hand tucked into your coat until he was inside.
“You wanna take a look around or... I'll just take you to the couch.” you had to refrain from smacking yourself in the face for saying 'look around'. He took your direction without comment and you left him standing in front of your sofa, nudging it with his cane before leaning down to touch it with his hands.
You turned the heat up a few degrees in your apartment, heading back around to see Sollux sitting on your couch, leaning forward and running his hands over your table. He nearly knocked a stack of magazines off the table but they just slumped over in an uneven pile.
“Want coffee?” you asked and he turned to face you.
“Uh, sure.” he was still shivering but hopefully he would start feeling better soon.
You grabbed your extra blanket and dropped it in his lap before heading off to your kitchen to make two cups of coffee instead of your usual one. Somehow you felt a little giddy, almost like you were on a date. This was far from a date, but it felt almost the same. Except for the part where he was worried you were a psychopath, that didn't feel so good.
You returned to the couch, a cup of coffee in each hand, to find Sollux balled up in a cocoon with your blanket. You told him to put out his hand and a hand obediently emerged from under your blanket. He took the cup of coffee from you and it disappeared into the cocoon. You sat next to him and regarded the slowing shivers emanating from the ball of blanket.
“So what happened in your apartment, fight with the girlfriend or something?” you ventured, gaining a snort from somewhere under the blanket.
“Just my roommate, but close enough I guess.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
He was silent for a long time.
“I'm just really curious what could be so bad you would risk dying in the snow than see your roommate.” shit, you needed to strike the words 'look' and 'see' from you vocabulary.
“There was snow?” he sounded quiet and you thought about it, there was no way he could have known it was snow, it melted as soon as it touched anything. Blundered into that one too.
“Yeah, just a little.” you cleared your throat, telling yourself not to broach the subject of his blindness. He probably got asked that same stupid question by every single person he's every met.
“I haven't been blind that long, in case you're wondering why I suck at it.”
That caught your attention, because while you hadn't been thinking he was bad at being blind, you were just wondering about it. It kept you from having to be that guy who asks about it when he doesn't want to talk.
“Oh... Can I ask what happened? You can totally ignore that by the way, sorry, forget I said it. Shitty question.” you cringed, regretting your own stupidity.
“Chemical spill, almost six months ago.” he said in a careful monotone.
“Jesus, sorry about that.” you mumbled. Of course there was no good way for someone to go blind, but your head was busy conjuring up horrible images of acid and gore. And so recent too?
“My roommate and I were fighting about the accident and I left. He treats me like some fucking invalid now.” you could hear the bitterness in his voice and a hand emerged from the blanket, setting a mostly empty mug of coffee onto your table.
“Yeah... I kind of did that too I guess, sorry?”
“Not like he does. Besides, I can practically hear you cringe whenever you reference me 'seeing' by accident, so that's pretty funny at least.”
“I was hoping you wouldn't notice that because now I feel like a huge dick.”
“As long as you keep feeling that way I'll let it slide.” he smiled and you could feel a weight lift. You'd only known him for half an hour now, but from what you could tell he was pretty cool about being blind.
You kept talking for a while, leaving Sollux to huddle on one end of your couch. As it turned out you and Sollux actually had a fair amount in common with each other for a random meeting on a park bench. You talked about video games, computers, Sollux listened to you prattle on about music and mixes. You turned the TV on at a certain point when the conversation lulled, reruns of The Daily Show were rambling in the background when you turned to look at Sollux, still wrapped in the blanket.
You didn't see any shivering through the fabric anymore, just slow rising and falling of his breathing, which was a good sign. You quietly said his name but got no response. He must have fallen asleep, it was still only 7AM, you had woken up really fucking early. You got up and walked over, carefully lifting the blanket enough until you could see his face.
He was still wrapped in your coat underneath the blanket, zipped all the way up his neck, but his face had some color in it finally. His cheeks were a healthy rosy color and his lips had lost their purple color. He was breathing softly into the arm of the couch, still clinging to the sleeves of your coat. You hadn't seen too much of his face yet, he seemed to keep it downcast most of the time. But you were growing to like his features, a little thin but good looking.
Up close it was more noticeable that he didn't have eyes, his eyelids were sunken in just a little bit. It wasn't even visible until you got up close. You could see subtle scars around his eyes, just barely there paler patches of skin that told of a trauma. It didn't seem fair, to have an accident like that when you were so young. You don't know what you would do if something like that happened to you. It would feel like your life was over.
You placed the blanket back over him and let him get some sleep, you had no idea how long he'd been outside before you got there, he could have been there all night. As far as you were concerned he could stay as long as he wanted, he seemed nice, and from what you knew of him you wanted to know more.