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a home without a door

Summary:

Eridan finds Psii first. He’s old and bitter, but Eridan himself is still full of self-hatred and shame. They don’t fit together like pieces of a puzzle, but they cling to the companionship that comes from finding someone else struggling with all the scars and broken pieces they have to try and put together.
They try to help each other. They try to make the best of what they have. They explore and wander and go to the beach. It’s nothing like what either of them is used to.
And then they find Dirk. It’s a surprise when they find Dirk but they welcome him into what they have and Dirk welcomes them into his home.
None of them knows what they are doing or how to make things better, but they try. God, do they try. It’s a mess full of good intentions and desperation.

 

[Polyswap Big Bang 2019 - Derse]

Chapter 1: Eridan

Chapter Text

You wake up with a migraine. It's normal. You need to ease back into existence or else the blinding white pain won't leave you alone. It takes three attempts before you feel like you belong in your own body.

There is a warm fingertip tracing the ridges of your left fin. You keep your eyes closed.

You are dizzy; trying to follow the pathway of memories that belong to this version of you when you still get flashes and pieces of memories of thousands of other versions that both are and aren't you leaves you dizzy. You wish you meant that in a figure of speech sort of way but what happens is actual vertigo. You feel like someone shook the whole planet and threw you down off a building to just fall which, all in all, is a bit of overkill. You tense up and the finger caressing your earfin stops for a second before resuming its trail.

“There is a shitty migraine coming your way,” Psii sighs next to you on the pile. He sounds every bit as Captor as he looks. “Try to remember before it hits, dumbfuck.”

His comment annoys you because you’re already trying to ground yourself enough so you no longer feel dizzy. It may be easier for him – some sort of code he was already used to following – but you don’t see him struggling with migraines as bad as yours. You don’t say that out loud; you don’t want to start something leaning pitch with the Imperial Helmsman. It would also be a dick move considering that he shooshed your ass off since you happened to fall into a pile with him. And it may be the case he just hasn’t complained about the shit storm that is waking up in a world that isn’t yours.

You try to blink to look at him but the hive isn’t as dark as you’d have liked and the light hurts.

"This fucking sucks," you say in lieu of anything else.

You close your eyes tightly and tried to focus on the feeling of the tip of Psii’s claw. He is careful – unnecessarily so – but you don’t think that’s for your benefit. Well, a little of it, yeah, but not all of it. As it turned out, you aren’t the only one who woke up a little broken.

You hadn’t felt right in your own skin even before you first opened your eyes in the new universe. The victory had been their victory and death had been hard on you so many times. It happened too much and too often and you were left with these impressions of people that weren’t quite you but that also weren’t anyone else. Waking up in the new universe had been traumatic at best and a fucking mistake at worse.

And there were the headaches.

“It’s already here,” he says with a sigh after a moment, realizing what is going on.

Your head is a mess and while you don't have the prerogative on suffering, you do feel entitled to complaining. It's not a matter of being a different person now and more a matter of not being a lot of other versions of yourself that at some point some part of you was. You hate it. You hated it the moment you woke up in their universe.

Not that you liked being a ghost much more than you like this.

You just fucking hate yourself these days. It makes sense, you think. After a lot of time to think and die and have a meaningless existence in which you were stuck and nothing ever happened, you ended up contemplating your life and your choices and how the fuck you ended up dead again and again and again. It was a matter of time until you found the path of self-loathing. You felt it deep in his bones, still too used to self-hating and shame.

Psii sits up a bit and leans over you, making you tense up before you calm down enough to relax and let him rub both sides of your forehead at the same time. He moves his hand to your temple and starts rubbing circles on your forehead while his palm cups your cheek. You still have trouble believing that you fell into a pile with the Imperial Helmsman – from legend and myth – but here he is and here you are. There is energy on the tip of his fingers but it doesn’t spark through you.

You blink slowly and focus on him.

You met him when you first woke up; he was just sitting there on the grass, not very far from you. You didn’t call him Psii back then. You didn’t call him anything back then. You thought he reminded you of Captor and you despised him on first sight. And then your first migraine hit you and he mocked you because you were new and much younger and much much stupider. He didn’t say so, but you knew it anyway.

He held you, then, when you fell back and it had been so long – you had been dead for so long – and suddenly you were not and their victory was written on the sky and this world was new and different and you didn’t know what to do with yourself. So you cried. You cried and ranted and he held you through it like you’ve been palemates for all eternity.

He didn’t say anything, not even when you held on his shirt and didn’t let him go. You just wanted another troll to be there and he accepted it. He petted your hair and shooshed you with hesitance and you had been dead for so long. The feelings came pouring out of you and you made an ass out of yourself like the embarrassment you are.

You had looked at him through the tears and you realized you didn’t know him; he wasn’t the Captor you knew. You snorted and whipped your tears with the back of your hand and asked – demanded, really – to know who he was. And he had laughed at you.

“Psii,” you say softly and reach out for his face. He pities you, you think. He pitied you from the very beginning and it was easy to feel pale for him.

“Stupid,” he says and his lisps bring out memories that aren’t really yours and the hive swirls around you once more.

You snarl and push him back down on the pile. Your feelings for him are complicated at best and you don’t want to think about what they are at worst. He smirks at you and you feel tempted to hold down his arms. You are stronger than he is, you can hold him down if he doesn’t use his psionics on you and you know he won’t because he’s weird about being held down like that. You aren’t sure if it’s a trigger or a turn on and, to be honest, you don’t think he knows which one either.

You don’t pin him down, in the end. You cup his face with both hands and lean down to press your lips against his lips in a chaste kiss.

“I’m bored,” you tell him, out of the blue.

He snorts.

“I’m not doing a very good job here then, am I?” You flick his horn, the smaller one. “Must I entertain the little seadweller?”

“Yes, yes you must. I could go insane because I’m so bored.”

You hold himself half on top of him but you don’t press him down with your weight. Psii gets restless if he can’t move for real – and you have learned that the hard way because the asshole is just as bad at opening up as you are. Were. You guess you’re better at it this time around.

 “I suppose I must take responsibility for your tantrums,” he arches an eyebrow at you and paps your check. It’s nice.

You drop down next to him on the pile. You feel relaxed. Hiding away with Psii and trying to get a grip on being alive again, without the pressure of meeting everyone and talking to them and apologizing again and again and maybe being rejected, maybe they would just kick you out from wherever they were living. What use are your apologies? What would your presence even accomplish? You just don’t want to face any of that and you have a whole new planet to escape in, so you roll over and press your face against Psii’s chest, trying to hide from the whole universe by hiding away with just one troll.

It’s been some time since you two decided to hide away on this hive. You aren’t sure if this is his hive, there is nothing personal lying around or, at least, nothing that couldn’t have been deployed at will like this pile. It hadn’t been here a day before. You also aren’t sure if you have a hive of your own waiting for you. You have been hiding here for who knows how long. You think you’d like a hive by the sea, but you aren’t sure there is a sea. You haven’t really done anything on this planet other than fuck off to Psii’s pile when he offered. He doesn’t seem to mind your clinginess and hiding and, truth be told, it looks like he’s doing his own hiding which he was kind enough to share with you.

Psii stretches and gets up. You watch him move out of the room and, for some time, you watch the door leading to the kitchen which he just disappeared through. Eventually, you doze off again. When you wake up, Psii and the migraine are gone.

By now you can tell Psii hates staying in one place for too long, so you don’t worry about it. You do call for him to sound off where he is and, well, if he’s okay at all. Sometimes he likes to fly off to the top of the building and make stuff explode.

This isn’t one of those times.

You get up and stretch. You put on your glasses and you feel like an actual troll again. You go to the kitchen to check out the food. There is almost none, but you don’t want to go through the trouble of getting more. You suppose neither does Psii.

There is a package of sugar grub candy that must be days old on the table. You sniff a piece and eat it anyway on your way to finding Psii. He’s in the room you suppose is meant to be a respiteblock. There is a window and you can see some trees nearby; Psii is watching them like it’s something new. You walk up to him and while he has his back turned to you, you can feel his psionics crackling around you like a reminder that you should not try anything because he could and would fry your thinkpan.

You wrinkle your nose and shake the bag of stale candy in front of him. He doesn’t take any and, instead, he sighs.

You hate it when he just stands there like this. You feel like a failure and the echo of hundreds of other lives agree with that conclusion. You captchalogue the rest of the candy and pull him away from the window. The sight isn’t anything to really hold interest, you suppose, but you find Psii watching the trees time and time again. You suppose it’s nice to have proof that he isn’t on space anymore, but that’s just a guess based on how nice it is to have proof you aren’t in a dreambubble anymore. You don’t like to dwell on it.

You turn Psii around and he just lets you. You wrap your arms around him and rest your cheek on his shoulder. He’s taller than you as it is and you don’t know if you’re still growing in this body. You should but, by all means, you should also have been erased from existence so it’s a wild guess.

“I want to go to the sea,” you confess, voice muffled against his neck. Your earfin twitches and brushes on his chin. Psii is very still in your arms. You aren’t really sure he heard you. “Have you been to the sea?”

As far as you know, he could’ve woken up in the new world just a bit before you did. But he had a hive so it was likely he had been awake for some time. The idea that he found you and decided to keep you sounds both absurd and ridiculously romantic. The sort of thing you wish you could share with Kar.

You wonder where everybody is and what they are doing. Psii is still trapped on his own mind. You pull back and watch his face; his eyes are kinda buzzing. You give him a gentle pap and then move your hand to his hair, running your fingers through it and scratching his scalp lightly with the tips of your claws. It makes your bloodpusher ache a bit when he gets like this.

“Psii, come back here,” you ask. It’s a gentle request but you are ready to hold him by his horns and demand it. He has no business getting lost in the past anymore.

He leans on you and rests his head on your shoulder, careful to not poke you with his horns. He doesn’t say anything so you pet his hair and shooshes him. You think you pity him, truly. He gets weird sometimes. You think being essentially a battery for so long fucked his pan over but you don’t say it.

“There were seadwellers near the water,” he says after a long silence. You take a moment to realize he’s answering your question. Your silence reads as the confusion it is because he adds: “At the coast.”

You laugh.

“I think I can deal with that.” He actually pulls away so you can see him rolling his eyes. You smile a bit. “Do you need me to protect you?”

Psii snorts and swoons at you but you have read enough history to know what led to him becoming the Imperial Helmsman and you know this is actually serious.

“Oh powerful highblood, please protect me.”

Despite the seriousness with which you want to deal with the subject, that actually makes you blush so you flick his smaller horn.

“Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious. You really should protect me.”

“If you’re just going to mock me, I’ll let whatever lives on this planet’s oceans eat you.”

“You wouldn’t. You’d miss me,” he says and finally stands back on his own. He rolls his shoulders and his neck and then seems to remember his arms, stretching them back behind himself before relaxing. He flexes his fingers a few times. “You are already attached to me.”

You stay silent while watching him. He pokes your side, right on a grubscar.

“What?” he demands.

You shrug.

“Do you think someone bothered to map this planet?”

He pauses and frowns a bit. The subject change wasn’t subtle at all, but these days, you have given up on keeping a single line of thought.

“I suppose I could ask.”

“So could I,” you tell him because you want to make it perfectly clear that you know he’s no longer part of a computer. You think about telling him that this could be the perfect excuse to reach out to Kar but you don’t really want to do that and you’re trying to be more honest about your feelings. You settle for making it clear you aren’t asking him to search and check things for you, although that would make things easier. “I’m just wondering. I mean, I could probably do it myself,” you say and shrug it off.

“The maps?” he asks and he sounds genuinely curious. You nod and he hums at you. “I guess I could do it, too.”

“And there you go ruining my fun. This is why I can’t have nice things,” you whine at him and then chuckle. “I suppose I can let you help me.”

You don’t bring that up again for another couple of days. By then, one of you would have to definitely suck it up and go get food so it’s as good a time to leave this place for good as any. You tell Psii so and, for a moment, you think he’ll tell you to fuck off on your own.

“You were serious,” he frowns at you.

“Yeah,” you say and you reach out to him. He holds your hand and squeezes it moving his hand to your wrist and gently holding onto you like you are a breakable wriggler. “I miss my hive. My island,” you add despite the embarrassment of saying so. You hate it and for a moment you hate him. “I know it won’t be there. It’s not…I’m not stupid.”

Psii sighs like you said the exact opposite of what you actually told him. He looks at you with pity written all over his face.

“It’s as dumb an idea as any,” you say and glare at him for a moment before looking away.

“Yeah, it is,” he agrees. You feel tempted to tell him he doesn’t have to go with you, but you’re afraid he’ll agree to that, too. “It’s dangerous to go alone,” he smirks and you roll your eyes at him. Psii pull you close and kisses you. It makes your bloodpusher flutter. It also makes your fins flutter, but that’s on a whole other level of ridiculousness. He’s still smirking against your lips and you feel his fangs behind his lips. You bite his bottom lip as gently as you can – your own teeth weren’t really made to this soft teasing, but you’ve managed pretty well so far.

He pulls back and sucks his own bottom lip while watching you. He wriggles his eyebrows at you and you scoff at him, but you know you look a little purple on the face.

“We could fly,” he suggests after he successfully gets you to blush.

You haven’t tried any of that god-tier bullshit since you woke up here. You think you have enough to deal with without that and you don’t really like the whole concept of flying since your lusus died. It brings back memories from before and from the game and you don’t think you can handle so much grief at once.

For a moment, you wonder if Psii miss soaring through space. The idea that anyone would miss being part of a fucking ship freaks you out a bit, but, at the same time, you know people get used to the weirdest things and they goddamn miss it despite themselves.

“I’d rather walk,” you say and, in the end, it’s what you two do.

Psii gets you supplies for the trip and you’re sure he knows better than you what sort of supplies are needed for walking into the wilderness to try to find a beach. Before you leave, you cave and message Kar to ask for directions because you would rather not wander in the opposite direction than the one you meant to go. It takes a day just waiting for his answer but you don’t mind it. A migraine is back for vengeance with bloodthirsty anger and, while the sun on this planet doesn’t burn you down, the brightness does make everything so much worse.

When you finally leave, it takes a few days for you to truly get out of the outskirts of civilization in which you have been living with Psii. He seems to mind the idea of walking through the new planet more than he wants to admit to you. You don’t ask because you think you know what’s going on; you’re just glad he decided to endure it because of you.

Sometimes, you hold his hand and caress it, but you try to not make him feel trapped. It also feels stupid to walk around holding him like he’s a balloon that’s going to drift away as soon as the wind hits. Psii’s deep in thought and quiet most of the way so he doesn’t tease you about that, but you can do your own head in if left alone long enough. Even so, you don’t mind his silence. You keep an eye on him because you are done being a shitty moiral for any lifetime, but you don’t mind the silence itself. When you do – if you do – you are vocal about it, but you had also had enough of a non-stop lisping rant for any lifetime so it’s mostly fine.

You don’t tell him that. You didn’t tell him about the sprite shenanigans yet; you feel that is something that will have to be drawn out of you instead of freely offered. You don’t know why.

It’s not the adventure you expected. The walk itself is boring and, now that you can’t wash them, your gills are itchy under your scarf. Sometimes you feel dizzy like you’re falling like the ground is waving under you like there is no ground at all. Sometimes you feel sick to your stomach. More often than not, you wake up and you have a migraine, but you never get used to it. You keep waiting to the point the migraines will fade out completely and it sucks, but Psii’s presence makes it a little better. He holds you and pets your hair and doesn’t let you fall.

Your map doesn’t come out the way you wanted. You think you’ll have to explore the place a lot more seriously if you want to make a proper map, but with your head messed up and Psii’s in a mood, you just don’t think that will happen right now. Your attempt, as it is, is dumb.

It’s a few more days before your path leads you to the water. You hear it before you see it and you get excited enough that it makes Psii laugh. You grab his hand and pull him along until you can see the sea.

It looks nothing like Alternia's ocean but you get overwhelmed by homesickness and suddenly you miss everything all over. It's hard and you can't just bring yourself to say out loud that you miss the things you lost because you aren't a fucking wriggler anymore and you’re done being an embarrassment to yourself.

You notice Psii's breathing harder by your side. You turn to him and put a hand on the back of his neck. He flinches but you pull him closer because you know better by now.

"Are you afraid of the sea?"

Sometimes you misunderstand Psii’s emotions. He doesn’t always get your own emotions right either, so you think it’s fair enough. You rarely do it on purpose though. There is some noise coming from your left and it distracts you from Psii's panic.

You should’ve noticed it before – you would’ve noticed it before if only you were another version of yourself, someone warier, someone more attentive, someone else – but there is a hive on the beach, far away enough from the path that people don’t simply end up there. It isn’t actually hidden tough. You give Psii’s nape a light squeeze so he would look at it, too. The place looks like it was built for – by – one of the humans and it’s pretty much just shaped like a box. It’s an ugly building.

“Do you think someone lives there?” you ask in a whisper. Psii looks at you through the corner of his eyes; you don’t know what he’s thinking. You feel like an asshole already for being mesmerized by a building but it fills you with hope. You are already making plans of moving into that hive and being away from everyone when Psii’s voice finally pulls you back from your romanticizing fantasies.

“Do you think it’s another troll?”

You hadn’t considered it. You suppose it could be another troll, but…but you don’t want to deal with that possibility because it could be Fef – she would’ve liked to live by the sea, you think, and you simply don’t have any idea where the hell she is these days – and you don’t want to deal with Fef. Not yet, maybe not ever. You can feel Psii tense by your side. You don’t think Psii can deal with an heiress. Or any other seadweller – which makes you feel a little special, but it’s not the point.

You hook your fingers on the back of the collar of his shirt like he’s going to barge into that hive if you let go. You tilt your head to indicate the opposite side of the beach and when you turn around you actually get startled by the human standing there. The thought of someone just sneaking up on you makes you uncomfortable and the fact he looks like a douche makes you annoyed at him for having the upper hand.

Your first instinct isn’t as much of a growl as it would’ve been before, but it still shows him a bit of fang. You narrow your eyes and tighten your hold on Psii.

“It looks like all you’re missing is a leash,” the human tells you and, although you probably know his name if you dive into your past memories, you feel that just calling him human is alright. You don’t feel as bad about it as you feel about calling Psii the Imperial Helmsman in your mind, but you suppose that comes with feelings. You don’t feel much for this guy but you do respect that he, at least, showed up with a weapon.

Psii narrows his eyes at the insult and you can’t help but smirk because you are pretty sure no one can just safely get on Psii’s nerves without some pretty awful outcomes.

“Now, now, no need to go on strife mode,” the human says and there is laughter on his voice even if there is no change in his facial expression. “No one ever visits. Come on in.”

He walks past you and you frown a bit while your eyes follow him. Psii reaches back on his neck and squeezes your hand lightly so you’d let go. You look at him and he nods before pulling you with him towards the hive.