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son of moar humanstuck
More humanstuck high school AU Davesol!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Shift, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Uncool
Chapter 3
"Are you trying to make me puncture my own eardrumth?"
You've concluded that the shittiest possible thing has to involve Rickrolling, and your coder is objecting.
"The kittenth, I can handle. The goddamn baby hedgehogth, fine."
"They remind me of you," you chime in, and Captor flips you a double bird.
"But thith. Thith... abominathun mathquerading ath one-hit wonder. How can thomething tho thitty get lodged in your brain tho completely?"
Fuck, he's cute when he gets too worked up to avoid S's. This thought might have alarmed you once, but if you took the time to be concerned about every thought like it that's floated through your brain these last few days, you'd be in a constant state of being shocked at yourself, like some internalized easily-scandalized granny, clutching her pearls, and that is no way to live.
"That's slander. You have crossed a line, Captor. He had two hits."
"Wath the other ath bad?"
"Yep," you say cheerfully. "But somehow, it's been sadly neglected as meme fodder. Maybe our next project should focus on fixing that."
"You're athuming I'll have gotten the frontal lobotomy I need to agree to there being a next project."
But he goes back to work on this one. You're pretty sure he couldn't stop at this point. Once he's pointed at code, he just keeps going until it's done, some kind of nerd Energizer bunny fueled by those weird honey-flavored candies he keep a stash of in his backpack. You've seen him correct snippets of other people's shit left on the whiteboard in the computer lab. He gets even twitchier than usual if he doesn't, like he can't stand knowing other people are doing it wrong.
Your devious and brilliant plan of keeping Captor occupied for long enough that he'll have to eat dinner here is working. It's not like you care, or anything. You just can't have him keeling over of malnutrition before your project's done. To that end, you have obtained actual food that's actually in the freezer.
"I'm gonna throw a pizza in the oven," you say, as if that's totally a thing you do all the time, no big deal.
Captor makes a "mmphm" sound without looking up from the keyboard.
You'll have to put the shitty swords back in there before your bro notices you moved them. The last thing you want is for him to catch the scent of you making an effort for someone. That way lies only condoms left around the apartment, and living in fear that Bro will try to have a talk with you about growing up and shit while Captor's around to hear it.
You pretend to be scouring the net for even more horrible shit to throw into this, and you'd claim you don't think you've achieved critical mass of shittiness yet, but you're really just watching Captor. He all but goes into a trance when he gets on a roll, his eyes half-lidded behind those stupid glasses, fingers flying over the keyboard, and he kind of talks to the code under his breath, like he's coaxing it along. He probably doesn't realize he's doing it. It's yet another thing about him that's both hopelessly dorky and weirdly sexy, and maybe you should be more concerned about your objectivity here, but you just want to figure out how it's possible. How he's possible.
He seems to have forgotten you're here, until, with a final rattle of keys like the crescendo of a sonata, he stops typing and surfaces from his trance.
"There," he says. "Now the hedgehoths dance to the thitty two-hit wonder. Happy?"
"All my dreams are coming true at once," you say. "Hungry?"
He blinks. "Yeah, actually."
You fully expect him to do something weird with the pizza, like pull the crust off and just eat that, but all he does is fold the slice in half before biting into it.
"What time do your parenth get home?"
"Beats the hell out of me. They're about thirteen years late already."
"Oh, fuck. Thorry, I didn't--"
"You didn't know. Don't worry about it."
He slouches, though, in that way he does when he's trying to hide, and it irritates you into saying what you mean, without bothering to make it ironic. "C'mon, don't do that."
Captor darts a glance at you from behind the glasses (you wonder what his eyes look like without them), and unslouches. "For thomeone tho full of it, you have a damn good bullthit detector."
"Takes one to know one," you banter back, and if that's skating too close to the truth, you don't care; there's a heady giddiness in doing it.
On the flimsiest of pretexts (new game, HD TV), you get him to stay a little longer, and you sit on the couch while he sits on the floor, leaning as if it'll make the character go where he wants, as he navigates this weird red guy through the desert. (Your Bro would embarrass the shit out of you if he knew you'd brought someone here, but you offer a silent thanks to him for always having the latest tech.)
Maybe fifteen minutes into the game, you get up the nerve to adjust your position on the couch, casual as hell, and let your hand fall, like it's totally an accident, onto Captor's shoulder. He's fucking rigid. You feel secondhand twitchiness just looking at him, just touching him, like something's got to snap, and if he won't, you will, because the tension is crazy up in here, it radiates off him.
"Do you even relax when you're asleep?" you say.
"No, and fuck you, Thtrider."
It's the first time he's used your name, and fuck, it's more adorable than you would've imagined. You slip your fingers into his hair.
"Hey," he says, his guy on the screen going still, and you can't tell if it's hey, stop, or hey, that feels pretty good, or even just hey, I've noticed your hand's in my hair. Most of those are a step up from what the fuck, at least.
"You ought to get used to being touched. It's a thing that happens. Sometimes, people even like it."
Captor pulls away. All the way away, drops the controller and gets up, rounds on you with a scowl. "You're trying to thothalize me? Like a fucking wild animal?"
"Yeah," you say, pretending you're not taken aback. He gives you this look, like he expected you to deny it, had already started to build up steam to argue you into admitting it, and is annoyed that it has nowhere to go now.
His shoulders slump, and he sits back down, completely ignoring the game. Leans his head lightly enough for plausible deniability against your knee. "Athole."
"Uh-huh, you love me."
You also pretend you don't hear the snort he gives at that. You go back to toying with his hair, trying to smooth down the cowlick horns, which won't stay smoothed. Captor finally relaxes a little, letting his head droop forward the slightest bit, and you rub your thumb over his neck, trying to work out the knots there. He makes this little noise in his throat that's barely a noise at all, like he can't help it but tries to.
You've hardly even touched him, and you're already dizzy with wanting him.
"See? That's better." It comes out maybe a little breathless, but you don't think he notices.
"Yeah. I gueth." That sounds suspiciously breathy, too.
You trace along the sharp lines of his shoulderblades, not even pretending anymore that you're doing anything other than petting him, and his shoulders curl, but not like he's trying to shake you off, a hell of a lot more like he can't help that, either.
"Captor," you say, not entirely on purpose. For once in your life, any more words fail you. Not because you have nothing to say, but because there's so much that you're afraid your brain will take opening your mouth as an invitation to let it all spill out, hopelessly jumbled and sappy. For once in your life, you're afraid that the thing you say will be the wrong thing.
He looks back at you, and you sort of nudge at him to get him to move, and then you're kneeling on the floor looking down at him, not sure how you got there. You just slid off the couch and let gravity do the rest, and you're still lucid enough (barely) to appreciate that you probably couldn't have done it so neatly if you'd been trying.
"Sollux," you say, for the first time, and you know, somehow, that you have permission to pull the glasses off.
His eyes are mismatched, too, one blue, one brown, a weird clear brown that's almost red, like cherry liqueur or claret. Are you only thinking that because he goes to your head, makes you feel drunk? Maybe. It's profoundly uncool, but you want to kiss him so bad, you don't even care.
It's not like you've never kissed anyone before. It's not even like you've never kissed a guy before; Makara seems to consider sloppy makeouts, complete with groping, an acceptable way to say 'hi.'
But it feels like you've never done this before when you lean down, carefully, giving Captor time to back out. Feels like you're inventing it for yourselves, just the two of you, when your lips finally brush his and it sends a jolt of heat up your spine. You hear his intake of breath, short and sharp, and it makes this heat bloom in your chest, fierce and weirdly protective, makes you want to make this amazing for him.
"Wait," he says, and your heart feels like it stops. "Yourth too."
You're so relieved he didn't mean stop that you nod without thinking about it. A split-second later, you're blinking against the unfamiliar light--the living room's dim, but it doesn't seem that way without the shades. Captor's blushing, which makes you feel better about your own face feeling hot, and you have another smile to add to your tiny catalog of them, this one more with his eyes than his mouth.
You don't have time to note too much about it, because it shifts into this determined look, like are we doing this or not?, and he tugs you back down.
His fingers are cool against the back of your neck, but his lips are warm, his tongue's warm when he licks at your mouth, and you sort of thought he'd be terrible at kissing, messy and awkward, but he's really, really not. He's careful, feeling his way, hesitant maybe, but when you press closer, he makes another of those little noises and gets a hell of a lot less hesitant. You lose track of time, even, which isn't a thing that happens to you often, and get lost in how he tastes like that honey candy he's been popping, in the way his fingers slowly curl into your hair.
When you break apart, you're both definitely breathless, and you can't stop grinning.
"I... thould get home," Captor says.
"Yeah. Guess you should." It's getting late. You have to lean in for another quick kiss, though, as if to say I like it there, I'll be back.
After he's gone, you put the shitty swords back in the freezer. You're still kind of floating from the kiss, but looking around makes gravity reassert itself with a vengeance. Who are you kidding with this? Don't you realize that if you let someone close enough to know you, they'll... know you? They'll look around this fucking mess and wonder how the hell they got here, what the hell they're doing with you.
You give yourself a hard mental shake. Thoughts unworthy of a Strider, come on, man, get it together. Anyone would be lucky to have you.
You don't buy it, this pep talk that's cheesy without even sort of approaching ironically cheesy, but that doesn't matter. You never do. All that matters is that you look like you buy it.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Shift, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being Uncool
Chapter 3
"Are you trying to make me puncture my own eardrumth?"
You've concluded that the shittiest possible thing has to involve Rickrolling, and your coder is objecting.
"The kittenth, I can handle. The goddamn baby hedgehogth, fine."
"They remind me of you," you chime in, and Captor flips you a double bird.
"But thith. Thith... abominathun mathquerading ath one-hit wonder. How can thomething tho thitty get lodged in your brain tho completely?"
Fuck, he's cute when he gets too worked up to avoid S's. This thought might have alarmed you once, but if you took the time to be concerned about every thought like it that's floated through your brain these last few days, you'd be in a constant state of being shocked at yourself, like some internalized easily-scandalized granny, clutching her pearls, and that is no way to live.
"That's slander. You have crossed a line, Captor. He had two hits."
"Wath the other ath bad?"
"Yep," you say cheerfully. "But somehow, it's been sadly neglected as meme fodder. Maybe our next project should focus on fixing that."
"You're athuming I'll have gotten the frontal lobotomy I need to agree to there being a next project."
But he goes back to work on this one. You're pretty sure he couldn't stop at this point. Once he's pointed at code, he just keeps going until it's done, some kind of nerd Energizer bunny fueled by those weird honey-flavored candies he keep a stash of in his backpack. You've seen him correct snippets of other people's shit left on the whiteboard in the computer lab. He gets even twitchier than usual if he doesn't, like he can't stand knowing other people are doing it wrong.
Your devious and brilliant plan of keeping Captor occupied for long enough that he'll have to eat dinner here is working. It's not like you care, or anything. You just can't have him keeling over of malnutrition before your project's done. To that end, you have obtained actual food that's actually in the freezer.
"I'm gonna throw a pizza in the oven," you say, as if that's totally a thing you do all the time, no big deal.
Captor makes a "mmphm" sound without looking up from the keyboard.
You'll have to put the shitty swords back in there before your bro notices you moved them. The last thing you want is for him to catch the scent of you making an effort for someone. That way lies only condoms left around the apartment, and living in fear that Bro will try to have a talk with you about growing up and shit while Captor's around to hear it.
You pretend to be scouring the net for even more horrible shit to throw into this, and you'd claim you don't think you've achieved critical mass of shittiness yet, but you're really just watching Captor. He all but goes into a trance when he gets on a roll, his eyes half-lidded behind those stupid glasses, fingers flying over the keyboard, and he kind of talks to the code under his breath, like he's coaxing it along. He probably doesn't realize he's doing it. It's yet another thing about him that's both hopelessly dorky and weirdly sexy, and maybe you should be more concerned about your objectivity here, but you just want to figure out how it's possible. How he's possible.
He seems to have forgotten you're here, until, with a final rattle of keys like the crescendo of a sonata, he stops typing and surfaces from his trance.
"There," he says. "Now the hedgehoths dance to the thitty two-hit wonder. Happy?"
"All my dreams are coming true at once," you say. "Hungry?"
He blinks. "Yeah, actually."
You fully expect him to do something weird with the pizza, like pull the crust off and just eat that, but all he does is fold the slice in half before biting into it.
"What time do your parenth get home?"
"Beats the hell out of me. They're about thirteen years late already."
"Oh, fuck. Thorry, I didn't--"
"You didn't know. Don't worry about it."
He slouches, though, in that way he does when he's trying to hide, and it irritates you into saying what you mean, without bothering to make it ironic. "C'mon, don't do that."
Captor darts a glance at you from behind the glasses (you wonder what his eyes look like without them), and unslouches. "For thomeone tho full of it, you have a damn good bullthit detector."
"Takes one to know one," you banter back, and if that's skating too close to the truth, you don't care; there's a heady giddiness in doing it.
On the flimsiest of pretexts (new game, HD TV), you get him to stay a little longer, and you sit on the couch while he sits on the floor, leaning as if it'll make the character go where he wants, as he navigates this weird red guy through the desert. (Your Bro would embarrass the shit out of you if he knew you'd brought someone here, but you offer a silent thanks to him for always having the latest tech.)
Maybe fifteen minutes into the game, you get up the nerve to adjust your position on the couch, casual as hell, and let your hand fall, like it's totally an accident, onto Captor's shoulder. He's fucking rigid. You feel secondhand twitchiness just looking at him, just touching him, like something's got to snap, and if he won't, you will, because the tension is crazy up in here, it radiates off him.
"Do you even relax when you're asleep?" you say.
"No, and fuck you, Thtrider."
It's the first time he's used your name, and fuck, it's more adorable than you would've imagined. You slip your fingers into his hair.
"Hey," he says, his guy on the screen going still, and you can't tell if it's hey, stop, or hey, that feels pretty good, or even just hey, I've noticed your hand's in my hair. Most of those are a step up from what the fuck, at least.
"You ought to get used to being touched. It's a thing that happens. Sometimes, people even like it."
Captor pulls away. All the way away, drops the controller and gets up, rounds on you with a scowl. "You're trying to thothalize me? Like a fucking wild animal?"
"Yeah," you say, pretending you're not taken aback. He gives you this look, like he expected you to deny it, had already started to build up steam to argue you into admitting it, and is annoyed that it has nowhere to go now.
His shoulders slump, and he sits back down, completely ignoring the game. Leans his head lightly enough for plausible deniability against your knee. "Athole."
"Uh-huh, you love me."
You also pretend you don't hear the snort he gives at that. You go back to toying with his hair, trying to smooth down the cowlick horns, which won't stay smoothed. Captor finally relaxes a little, letting his head droop forward the slightest bit, and you rub your thumb over his neck, trying to work out the knots there. He makes this little noise in his throat that's barely a noise at all, like he can't help it but tries to.
You've hardly even touched him, and you're already dizzy with wanting him.
"See? That's better." It comes out maybe a little breathless, but you don't think he notices.
"Yeah. I gueth." That sounds suspiciously breathy, too.
You trace along the sharp lines of his shoulderblades, not even pretending anymore that you're doing anything other than petting him, and his shoulders curl, but not like he's trying to shake you off, a hell of a lot more like he can't help that, either.
"Captor," you say, not entirely on purpose. For once in your life, any more words fail you. Not because you have nothing to say, but because there's so much that you're afraid your brain will take opening your mouth as an invitation to let it all spill out, hopelessly jumbled and sappy. For once in your life, you're afraid that the thing you say will be the wrong thing.
He looks back at you, and you sort of nudge at him to get him to move, and then you're kneeling on the floor looking down at him, not sure how you got there. You just slid off the couch and let gravity do the rest, and you're still lucid enough (barely) to appreciate that you probably couldn't have done it so neatly if you'd been trying.
"Sollux," you say, for the first time, and you know, somehow, that you have permission to pull the glasses off.
His eyes are mismatched, too, one blue, one brown, a weird clear brown that's almost red, like cherry liqueur or claret. Are you only thinking that because he goes to your head, makes you feel drunk? Maybe. It's profoundly uncool, but you want to kiss him so bad, you don't even care.
It's not like you've never kissed anyone before. It's not even like you've never kissed a guy before; Makara seems to consider sloppy makeouts, complete with groping, an acceptable way to say 'hi.'
But it feels like you've never done this before when you lean down, carefully, giving Captor time to back out. Feels like you're inventing it for yourselves, just the two of you, when your lips finally brush his and it sends a jolt of heat up your spine. You hear his intake of breath, short and sharp, and it makes this heat bloom in your chest, fierce and weirdly protective, makes you want to make this amazing for him.
"Wait," he says, and your heart feels like it stops. "Yourth too."
You're so relieved he didn't mean stop that you nod without thinking about it. A split-second later, you're blinking against the unfamiliar light--the living room's dim, but it doesn't seem that way without the shades. Captor's blushing, which makes you feel better about your own face feeling hot, and you have another smile to add to your tiny catalog of them, this one more with his eyes than his mouth.
You don't have time to note too much about it, because it shifts into this determined look, like are we doing this or not?, and he tugs you back down.
His fingers are cool against the back of your neck, but his lips are warm, his tongue's warm when he licks at your mouth, and you sort of thought he'd be terrible at kissing, messy and awkward, but he's really, really not. He's careful, feeling his way, hesitant maybe, but when you press closer, he makes another of those little noises and gets a hell of a lot less hesitant. You lose track of time, even, which isn't a thing that happens to you often, and get lost in how he tastes like that honey candy he's been popping, in the way his fingers slowly curl into your hair.
When you break apart, you're both definitely breathless, and you can't stop grinning.
"I... thould get home," Captor says.
"Yeah. Guess you should." It's getting late. You have to lean in for another quick kiss, though, as if to say I like it there, I'll be back.
After he's gone, you put the shitty swords back in the freezer. You're still kind of floating from the kiss, but looking around makes gravity reassert itself with a vengeance. Who are you kidding with this? Don't you realize that if you let someone close enough to know you, they'll... know you? They'll look around this fucking mess and wonder how the hell they got here, what the hell they're doing with you.
You give yourself a hard mental shake. Thoughts unworthy of a Strider, come on, man, get it together. Anyone would be lucky to have you.
You don't buy it, this pep talk that's cheesy without even sort of approaching ironically cheesy, but that doesn't matter. You never do. All that matters is that you look like you buy it.