Archive of Our Own ^beta

Really liking the idea of some multi-level powerplay (Casteplay? Hemoism?) where there's a hierarchy of Feferi dominating Eridan and Sollux --> Eridan dominates Sollux --> Sollux dominates nothing except maybe a plate of pizza rolls because he's a trash goblin and instead he gets Put In His Place. Basically Feferi has her way with both of them while also sitting back and demanding exactly how Eridan will bang her precious lowblood matesprit in front of her, while Eridan also takes what he wants from Sollux. So long as Feferi permits it, of course :^) BDSM can be A Thing if you'd like.

Lmao this idea is kinda hilarious to me but I'm looking for some rare Arafef in spades, and also Sollux Is There. Somehow Aradia and Feferi end up using him as some sort of sex toy; he's very confused but also very turned on. He's less a part of the ship and more along the lines of a tool to be used by Feferi and Aradia.

“If you two are going to fuck with each other so much, then why don’t you just fuck each other?”

Eridan diverts his attention from a riveting round of 2048 to look to his left, to Feferi instead. “What, now?”

“Yes, now!” Feferi, in turn, abandons her progress in some variety of game on her iPad that, fittingly, involves both bubbles and witches. “Aren’t we all bored enough as it is just sitting here?”

To his right, Sollux makes a noncommittal grunt.

“But Fef, he’s playing...” Eridan frowns. “What is this, exactly?”

“Lumines Plus,” Sollux lisps.

Feferi blinks. “Huh?”

“Lumines Plus,” he repeats, with slightly clearer articulation. “It was better on handheld because it’s harder to see this shit on a larger screen, if you ask me. Can’t tell where the lines are headed.”

“You’ve been playing this same level for like twenty minutes.” Eridan drags his finger down his phone screen and makes matches in color and number. “I’m fuckin’ sick to death of hearin’ about shinin’.”

“It’s not a level, it’s a skin.”

“See, this is what I’m talking about.” When she says it, it sounds closer to boat, and they both smile while still staring at their respective screens. “Instead of hanging around carping at each other, you should be channeling all that antagonism into something more entertaining.”

With one hand, Sollux reaches absently towards a plastic plate stacked high with pizza rolls that cooled off a bit too much due to the extended run of his current session and his tendency to forget to actually consume his snacks in anything resembling a timely fashion. He crams two of them into his mouth, anyway. “Pass.”

Eridan shrugs and slides several twos and fours quickly down to the bottom of his screen. “Meh.”

“Wow.” Feferi huffs. “Is this how you treat a princess?”

“You’re not being hauled off to another castle, sand or otherwise.” Sollux speaks with his mouth full. “And you’re a badass and wouldn’t want us to save you anyway, so. Yeah. This is how.”

“Well, and you’re hardly one to talk about us not doing nothin’, Fef.” Eridan reluctantly slides his finger up on the screen, and lets out a soft tch when a 2 spawns directly beneath a 256. “Unless you’re willing to put down Bubble Witch 3 Saga for five fucking minutes.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, and all three of them acknowledge that the instant she starts pouting is when Eridan’s going to cave. Sollux, however, is impervious.

“Why do you wanna see us pail so badly?” Eridan asks. “What’s different about today that it can’t wait?”

“Because it’s hot!” Feferi sticks her bottom lip out just a bit, just enough, and Eridan’s doomed. “Because you’ve been bickering for hours and I want to watch you play with each other instead of these games.”

“Get a man who can do both.” Sollux keeps staring at the TV, and won’t even look at them sidelong. “I can win him over with one hand.”

“What if we make a game out of it?” Feferi looks at Eridan with bright eyes, entreating him to capitulate and to swap out his puzzle solving for performativity. “That’d be fun, too, wouldn’t it?”

There’s a violet flush at his throat, where his gills flare for an instant, the longer she lets her gaze linger on him. “What kind of game?”

“If you fuck him first, and you do a good enough job...” Feferi pulls her knees up on the couch and lets her skirt shift enough to show off sections of her thighs, strengthened by sweeps of swimming through the darkest of depths, against currents and water pressure within which any other troll would succumb. “Then maybe I’ll pail you after.”

Eridan swallows. “That’s all I gotta do?”

“Yeah.” She grins. “If you think you’re up to the task.”

“Yeah. Of course I am.” Eridan presses the power button of his phone once to lock it, and sets it down to his left, between Feferi and himself on the couch. “I can give you a fuckin’ nice show to watch.”

“You’re a pushover,” Sollux says, rotating sets of squares and steadily dropping them into deliberate, structured patterns. “You do anything she tells you and you don’t even put up the slightest bit of resistance, no matter how big a game you talk.”

In response, Eridan splays his palm on Sollux’s shoulder and shoves him lightly. Sollux allows himself to be unrealistically affected by the touch and intentionally topples over to lean against the arm of the couch, his fingers still quick on the directional and action buttons.

“You two fucked like, yesterday.” Sollux grabs for some additional pizza rolls, awkward with his elbow knocking into the plate. “You’re both acting like you’ve never even touched each other until now.”

“That’s the scene, Sollux,” Feferi explains, as if the issue is a lack of understanding of the concept. “That’s the allure of it!”

Eridan laughs. “Lure.”

Feferi grins again, with teeth that can cut through cetaceans.

“You can do whatever you want to me.” Sollux lifts his left leg to sprawl it out over Eridan’s knee. “I’m not gonna stop playing.”

Eridan runs his hand from Sollux’s shin and all the way up to his inner thigh. “That a challenge?”

“Sure.” The orange and silver squares continue to apparate and rotate, situate and dissipate, and Sollux doesn’t even blink. “Gee ay em ee.”

Eridan hesitates for a split second, then swears.

Sollux snickers.

“Okay, wise-ass.” Eridan pulls the controller out of his hand and backs out of his current progress, which is an already distressing amount of time elapsed while looping the same music track on the same backdrop of a stage. “Then I’m not listenin’ to this same thing for the next hour.”

“Is that how long we’re going? Show some fucking mercy.”

They’re both aware of Feferi’s eyes on them as Eridan returns to the main menu and sets him up for Challenge Mode instead of Single Skin. He hands the controller back to Sollux. “Here’s your DualShock, courtesy of Dualscar. Try not to lose the game.”

“It’d take a lot more than you fumbling with my genitalia to make me lose at this.”

“That what you want?” Eridan asks, returning his touching to Sollux’s thigh. “You want me to touch your junk?”

“I want you to touch his junk,” Feferi reminds him. “So get to it.”

Sollux smiles, but only at the screen, where it’s started off with the same song as before. “You heard the lady.”

Eridan dips his fingers into the creased denim between Sollux’s thigh and his pelvis. His body temperature is so much warmer than theirs, even with the fabric as a barrier. The novelty has yet to wear off.

His own fingers still working quickly, Sollux keeps his attention on the game, and speaks to him as various triumphant sound effects alert the room that he’s successful. “Come on, man. Press start.”

“Yeah.” Feferi shifts her posture behind him and looks over his shoulder. “Turn him on, Eridan.”

“That’s some clever innuendo you two got. Real clever and on the nose.” Eridan splays his palm over Sollux’s crotch and presses the heel of his hand against him. “Make some more comparisons between our sex life and the wonderful world of videogames, please.”

“Here’s your next puzzle: unlock my pants.”

Eridan unbuttons Sollux’s jeans and tugs the zipper down. “Wow, looks like I had the magic key in my inventory the whole time, just waitin’ for this moment.”

Neither of them correct him to science key, and a somewhat awkward moment passes without anyone remarking upon it.

His hands linger on Sollux’s hips, and he finds a grubscar and presses into it until he can trace out the jut of the bone. Sollux just lies there, indifferent, and Eridan takes it as an opportunity to take him in: eyes focused on his gameplay, slender chest rising and falling with his shallow breaths, one arm crossed over his there’s no place like 172.0.0.1 t-shirt so he can grip the controller with greasy fingertips.

Feferi’s breathing is increasingly shallow behind him, too, and he tries to ignore the tension in the nape of his neck as he slips his hand beneath the hem of Sollux’s shirt to stroke over his flat stomach, his guts sunk with gravity towards his back as he lies there, all revealed ribs and accessible solar plexus as Eridan shoves the shirt further up.

The music changes as the silver and orange progress to green and silver, like so much copper exposed to seawater and turned to verdigris. Eridan can feel Sollux’s heart beating against his hand.

Feferi prods him at the small of his back. “Hurry up.”

Eridan pulls his hand away, fingertips trailing over Sollux’s skin, and then hooks his fingers into Sollux’s jeans to pull them down and away from his hips. The attempt is fairly unsuccessful, in no small part thanks to Sollux’s utter lack of cooperation.

He tugs twice at his pants. “C’mon, dude, help me out here.”

“No.” Sollux laughs. “Do it yourself.”

Eridan purses his lips, and pulls harder, until he’s yanking his predictably hexagon-print boxers down along with the jeans, only to get stuck just above his knees. “For fuck’s sake, you’re nothin’ but dead weight.”

“Yeah, that’s why AA likes me.”

Eridan snarls.

“Why is this taking you so long?” Feferi tuts at him. “Are you complaining just for the halibut?”

Aggravated, Eridan slides one arm under both of Sollux’s calves and lifts them upward until he has the leverage he needs to continue coaxing his jeans down and off his legs. The motion shifts Sollux’s torso enough to upend the plate, and plastic and pizza rolls alike tumble to the floor next to the couch and his lukewarm beverage of choice. Sollux makes no move to save them from falling, but he does reach one hand over the edge of the couch to pluck one off the carpet and shove it into his mouth before returning to playing the game.

It’s easy for Eridan to keep Sollux’s weight suspended, his knees bent over the crook of his arm, and finally gets the pants past socks that probably ought to be changed. He drops both the jeans and the boxers to the floor, draping over the odd pizza roll or two in the attempt, and lowers both Sollux and himself onto the couch, with his head between his thighs.

The only sounds that greet him are the steady clicking of the buttons on the controller, and the related sound effects that result from successful gameplay. Eridan glances back at Feferi, who quirks an eyebrow, and then brings his mouth lower to exhale over Sollux’s nook before breathing back in, familiar with the smell of his skin. It’s enough to have him salivating.

He drags his tongue in a slow stripe over the folds of his nook, licking away the initial slight wetness that’s gathered there. Sollux’s bulges are still sheathed, but Eridan is well aware of how to draw them out, in every way that counts. The delay in button-pressing and the soft sigh that escapes him are details that Eridan counts as victorious, and the delay in the game’s own sounds is inversely proportional to the frequency of Sollux’s inhalations.

Feferi wraps a hand around Eridan’s left horn, her fist aimed out to the side as his horn points towards the television. “Nuh uh.”

Eridan presses a quick kiss to Sollux’s bone sheath. “What now?”

“Enough of that.” She yanks at his horn until he raises himself up slightly.

A sludgy blend of desire and resentment works its way through his chest. His fins flick. “Fef, I want to taste him.”

Feferi shrugs, and he feels the motion of it in his horn where she’s holding him. “If your head’s in the way, then I can’t see.”

Sollux’s hips move a scant distance when he angles his arms differently to resettle the controller closer to his chest. “Eheheh, owned.”

Eridan sits up but doesn’t turn around. Through spatial awareness and sound he can tell she’s picked up his phone from where it was between them and set it next to her iPad on the far edge of the third cushion.

“You got your taste.” Feferi winds her arms around Eridan’s waist from behind. Her breasts are against his back through two thin layers of fabric, and it’s far from the first time, but it always comes as a welcome surprise. “Now get to work.”

“So what am I supposed to do, if I can’t eat him out?”

“Get his bulges out.” Her demands are as infuriating as they are titillating, and he can’t suppress a shudder as she speaks against the back of his fin. “And remember that I’m trying to watch. Hop to it.”

The squares on the screen have transitioned into a return to orange and silver, albeit with different accompanying music and variant beveling. “You guys are talking about me like I’m not even here.”

“It’s on account of you being so Lumines nonplussed about it.” Eridan returns his touching to Sollux’s thigh and strokes his skin, softer as he reaches the spots where it’s more obviously flushed ochre.

“Rub your thumb over his nook,” Feferi instructs, with her words as the input that directs his movements like a control stick, as she lives vicariously through visually following the path of his fingertips. “Check if he’s wet.”

Eridan does as he’s told and runs the pad of his thumb over the lips of his nook, testing out the slickness that’s just started to form, with traces of violet saliva still lingering on him. “He’s gettin’ there,” he narrates, as if her chin isn’t resting on his shoulder, staring at the way he’s assessing the arousal of their third.

Sollux leans over the edge of the couch to grab his MTN DEW AMP GAME FUEL with his right hand and slide open its resealable lid. He takes a swig from it without lifting his head very much, and uses his left hand to move the newly dropped squares to opportune places on the stage.

Eridan watches his throat move as he swallows, and then brushes his thumb up to spread slickness over his bone sheath. Without even meaning to, he catches Sollux’s gaze for a second over the rim of the aluminum. Sollux smiles against the can, face flushed enough to betray the barely-concealed reality of the situation, and swiftly returns to paying attention to the screen while he sets the drink back down and regains the use of both hands.

Eridan smiles back at him, where Feferi can’t see, even though they both know she already knows. Nothing ever escapes her notice, but she doesn’t remark upon it, and he repeats his earlier efforts of using Sollux’s existing wetness to ease the slide of his thumb over his sheath. Sollux plays the game like nothing is happening, and pointedly does not look at Eridan as the tip of one of his bulges begins to unsheathe itself and twist towards his touch.

“Aww, hey there, buddy!” Feferi says, her fins flicking against Eridan’s as she leans over his shoulder. “Where’s your friend?”

“Don’t fuckin’ talk to his bulge, Fef. That’s fuckin’ weird.”

“I can talk to his bulge if I want to!” Feferi nips at his fin and Eridan shakes his head to ward her away. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“Let me go on the record as squarely not giving a fuck,” Sollux adds. “Not triangularly, circularly, nor exactly.”

Feferi pats the top of Sollux’s foot twice. “Shush!”

“We’re blurring quadrants more than usual, huh? Kinky.”

She tickles the underside of his toes in response.

Sollux laughs and yanks his foot away. “I don’t think you want to touch these socks, FF.”

“He’s right, you don’t,” Eridan confirms. “Besides, I’m touchin’ him, ain’t I? You’re the viewin’ audience. Back off.”

Feferi snaps her teeth just shy of actually catching Eridan’s fin, and he winces.

“Wow, what a sea dweller showdown this is turning out to be.” Sollux mocks both of their accents’ emphasis as he speaks. He moves his fingers quickly over the controller and a series of satisfying sound effects rush out of the speakers as he clears huge sections of the screen of red and off-white blocks. “What a thrill. Really breaking my concentration.”

“That so?” Eridan circles his thumb around Sollux’s bulge tip, slowly drawing it out and occasionally dipping his touch lower to drag his genetic material back up to help further coat it in gold. “Here’s the second wave.”

Sollux’s hips lift up slightly, just enough to raise himself towards Eridan’s hand, and Eridan is just as susceptible to Sollux’s signals of needing something from him as he is to Feferi’s. He takes the exposed tip between his index finger and his thumb and gently teases it. The reward for all three of them is Sollux spreading his legs further and letting out a shaky breath as his second bulge slips out to join the first.

“Suckerfish,” Feferi taunts, running her hands up Eridan’s chest, over the black fabric of his v-neck shirt. “You give him everything he wants, even when he’s not following the rules. We should call you Eridan Remora.”

“You can’t call me shit ‘cause you’re not letting me suck him off.” Eridan spreads his fingers apart so Sollux’s bulges can wind around them and curl against the slight webbing, where there are currently no rings to impede the movement.

Sollux shifts his weight and keeps his gaze on the screen, fangs bared in a grin as he earns a single color bonus. “I’d roll my eyes at you two if I thought you’d be able to tell.”

Eridan’s lip curls back to show off his own row of razor teeth. “What if I make ‘em roll back in your head? Are we gonna be able to tell then?”

“You could give it a shot and find out.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t suck him,” Feferi clarifies. “Just that I want to see what you’re up to down there. So keep your thick skull out of the way this time.”

“Rude.” Eridan huffs, but instantly drops back to lower his head between Sollux’s thighs, shoving Feferi back in the process, as if a pistol had fired and sent him racing in a lane. “Sol wouldn’t say that to me.”

“Yeah, I’d just call you an ass-shoal.”

“Yeah, sea?” Eridan rests his cheek on Sollux’s thigh and licks at the base of his bulges, right where they’ve unsheathed. He tilts his head to keep his efforts visible for Feferi, who’s wisely leaned over to watch from the side as gold genetic material seeps out of Sollux’s nook and onto Eridan’s lips. With his peripheral vision trained on Feferi’s face, he brings his left hand between Sollux’s legs to brush a knuckle between the folds of his nook, and then lower it to ghost over his wastechute. “That’s more like it.”

Sollux takes in a sharp breath and Eridan takes the tip of one bulge into his mouth, to let it twirl between his tongue and his upper lip, just out of reach of his teeth.

Eridan pulls off to speak and smirks up at her. “I’m gonna make him come like it’s nothin’.”

Feferi scowls down at him. “You’re gonna spoil him, is what.”

“So spoil me,” Sollux says, reaching again off the side of the couch to grab a few pizza rolls and stuff them into his mouth. He speaks through barely-chewed barely-food. “Who needs grapes? This is luxury right here.”

Feferi blanches. “Sollux, you’re going to choke.”

“No, I’m not.” He pops another pizza roll into his mouth to drive home the point. “I can just use my psionics to dislodge them from my trachea.”

The fear transmutes into an unimpressed glare. “With the notable exception of that time I had to save you.”

Sollux shrugs while lying down, which is less effective than usual. He makes up for the progress he lost while eating, and clears through several sections of squares. “That was one time.”

“You only get one time.”

“Will you both shut up?” Eridan puts his right hand around both bulges to grip them tightly and hold them still as he licks across their slick surfaces. “Cod, I’m trying to be sexy or something.”

Feferi puts a hand on his horn. “Are you angling to have your head-giving privileges revoked again, sir?”

Sollux laughs at her. “Like there’s anything you could do to stop this guy from putting his mouth on my junk.”

She tugs at Eridan’s horn in retaliation for the comment. “I’m thinking next time it might be considered Just, regardless of your status.”

“Fuck, fuck both of you, just let me enjoy this!” Eridan shakes her hand off and lowers his lips to lick between Sollux’s folds, eating him out with his eyes closed, taking and giving whatever pleasure he can before he’s interrupted again.

Sollux laughs even harder. “What’d I tell you? Dude’s predictable.”

Eridan strokes his thumb along Sollux’s bulges as they twine in his grip, and keeps them held out of the way for him to move his mouth against his nook. Every quiet sound out of Sollux is an achievement, and he’s unused to him being so still beneath his tongue. The inherent problem is that he knows exactly all of the ways that Sollux likes to be touched, even while he's pretending to be disaffected.

Feferi’s fingers run up through Eridan’s hair, fluffing it out around his hornbed until there’s a warm tension at the nape of Eridan’s neck. “You’re back on his nook again. We talked about this.”

“Breakfast nook’s open for business all hours of the night and day.” Sollux keeps playing the game with his left hand, to keep moving the blocks to ideal places that work without rotating them, then uses his right to pet at Eridan’s hair, next to his opposite horn. “He can stop by any time.”

“You’re getting grease in his hair,” Feferi notes, wrinkling her nose at the reddish-orange stains on Sollux’s fingertips. “More than he already has on a given day.”

“He loves me for who I am, grease and all.” Sollux’s scratches his scalp around his hornbed in a way that has Eridan sighing out through his nose, against his inner thigh. “And that goes both ways, because with me, everything goes both ways.”

Feferi’s fingertips trace around his horn as a looming threat, and Eridan keeps his eyes closed through what time he has left. With his left hand he holds onto Sollux’s thigh and pushes his leg back to allow him further access, his tongue licking between the lips of his nook and up towards the base of his bulges, flicking against the underside, glad for the gold on his chin and the multisensory richness of reaching this level of familiarity with the experience of him, with his body and how he responds.

She closes her hand around his horn and pulls him back again, and Eridan struggles against it for a half second before acquiescing, his gills flared and throat bared as she tugs him up towards her. His right hand leaves Sollux’s bulges and braces against his knee instead, and he watches him as he dutifully drops silver and white squares into the same patterns as before, at a faster pace.

Eridan growls at her. “You’re fuckin’ killing me, Feferi.”

“What a poor choice of words.” She presses her hands over his chest, palms flat over the center of his sternum, fingers spread. “You should think before you say things like that.”

He feels his own pulse beneath her touch, and takes a series of deep breaths, still smelling the taste of Sollux on his lips. “Sorry.”

“Now then.” She kisses the back of his neck, over his vertebrae between his shoulders, where they begin to descend down his spine. “You’ll fuck him for me, won’t you?”

“Yeah, I will.”

“Just in case anyone was wondering?” Sollux speaks without looking at them, and reaches down to take another sip from his energy drink. Bold, bright notes from a piano in the game’s soundtrack provide the backdrop for the moment. “I consent to this incoming sex.”

Eridan squeezes his hand on Sollux’s knee. Sollux rocks his leg from side to side in acknowledgement.

“How do you want me to fuck him?” Eridan asks, turning his head back to try to look at her over his shoulder. All he can see is her hair.

“On his back, just like he is. Let him keep playing.” She disentangles her arms from him and lifts a hand to remove his glasses from his face. “And you get to be the one who can’t see.”

She folds his frames and sets them next to their electronics on the couch cushion, then thinks wiser of it and places all three items on the floor, well out of the way of Sollux’s snack collection.

“Sollux, where’s your phone?” she asks, pragmatic and breaking scene.

“Somewhere.” His bulges wave between his legs. “Maybe in our respiteblock, I dunno.”

“As long as it’s not getting crushed on this couch.”

“Are you gonna call it or cull it?”

Feferi leans forward to flick a finger against his foot. “You’re talking back a lot today, huh?”

Sollux kicks at her hand, but not hard. “Oh, did we time back in? Did you want to unpause your psionic plaything?”

She makes a grab for his leg, but once she has it in her hand, she just holds him and rubs her thumb over his ankle. “Only if he wants to keep playing.”

“Only if you’re willing to welcome this fine piece of vidya into our polyamorous quadrant-fuckery arrangement.” He lifts the controller to his face and kisses the plastic. “Our torrid romance is off the grid.”

“Sure,” Eridan says, before Feferi can reply. “Eject the disc and stick a bulge through it. Get it in on the action.”

“And lose my progress?” Sollux shakes his head. “No way. Not while you’re both supposed to be challenging me.”

“Can’t it play for a while without the disc in there?” Feferi asks. “If it already loaded what it needs to?”

“Are you honestly suggesting that I insert my bulge into a DVD?” Sollux picks a pizza roll off the carpet and eats it. There is a troubling quantity remaining. “Because I’m not entirely opposed and now that you have that knowledge, you have to decide what to do with it.”

“I have to decide what to do with you.” Eridan runs his hand from Sollux’s knee back towards his hip.

“You don’t have to decide anyfin.” Feferi slips her fingers beneath the hem of Eridan’s shirt and starts to tug it up. “Because I’ll be the one calling the shots.”

“So call them.” Eridan raises his arms above his head and lets Feferi pull his shirt over his head, the stretch of the fabric catching briefly on his horns before she moves it entirely away. “Give me some guidance, here.”

“Hmm!” She tosses his shirt to the floor, on top of Sollux’s discarded jeans and boxers, then reaches around to unbutton Eridan’s pants. “How about you nibble his ear?”

“Fishhook joke,” Sollux says. The squares are silver and orange again and he’s making substantial progress in clearing space on the level. “Seems weird to go back to foreplay after he’s had his face in my junk, but I’m not complaining.”

“Aren’t you?” Feferi chides.

Eridan leans over him, with his right elbow supporting his weight as he rests it between Sollux’s body and the back of the couch. The cushions don’t quite threaten to pull him under, but it’s a near thing. “C’mon, Captor. Whisper some sweet bullshit into my sponge clots.”

“The SONY PSP debuted on Earth in 2004 and 2005.” He raises his hands along with the controller to allow Eridan to lie down on him. “Lumines was a launch title, and what I’ve learned in my time here is that I am evidently always a slut for human Tetsuya Mizuguchi.”

“Just for him?” Feferi asks. “Nobody else?”

“None of the bodies,” Eridan echoes, his mouth still stained gold as he speaks next to Sollux’s jaw. “None of them.”

“Hey, I’m allowed to restrict my sluttiness within whatever parameters I set.” Sollux brings his hands back down behind Eridan’s horns, to rest the controller on his back as he plays. “And those parameters involve 2x2 squares.”

Eridan takes Sollux’s ear between his teeth, cautious with the delicate structure of it, and darts his tongue against the shallow notch in his cartilage. “How about two scars?”

Sollux squeezes Eridan’s torso with his forearms, in something that approximates a hug but doesn’t require him to stop what he’s doing. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

Feferi tugs hard on Eridan’s pants until they’re halfway down his thighs, uncovering skintight boxer-briefs the color of his caste. The black waistband digs slightly into his hips, and she curls her fingers beneath its elastic to do away with all of it, or at least attempt to.

“You’re just gonna get stuck, Fef.” Eridan moves his mouth to just beneath Sollux’s earlobe, to kiss his neck, as it’s offered up with the way his head is turned towards the television.

“You could do more to help me take these off you.”

“Well, what do you want me to do first? Kiss on him or kick these off?” Eridan readjusts his weight distribution to assist with the efforts, anyway. “Multitasking only goes so far.”

Feferi pulls his clothing down further, and slides them off one raised knee at a time. “Why did I think you could handle this?”

“Because I have always consistently handled everything you’ve thrown at me, for as long as you’ve known me.”

Without comment, she yanks his pants and underwear down to his ankles and lets his feet get caught in the fabric for a few moments before freeing him. The garments join the rest on the floor.

Sollux presses his thighs around Eridan’s waist, his bulges slipping against the bare skin of Eridan’s stomach. “You gonna give him his marching orders, Feferi, or just some regular orders?”

“Yes.” Feferi runs her fingertips down along Eridan’s spine, to trail over whatever’s within reach. “Put your fingers in his mouth.”

Eridan turns his head on Sollux’s chest, to angle his right horn over Sollux’s shoulder and towards the cushion instead of into his face. “Got any other preferences for how I go aboat doing that?”

“I do.” She follows the motion down until her hand is gripping the muscle of his thigh. “Use the hand that wasn’t touching his ass.”

“Way to spoil the fun, FF.” Sollux sets up a complicated chain of combos and gets another single color bonus for his trouble, just before the squares swap into icy white and dark blue, now blurred in Eridan’s vision. “I hope it’s not for my sake.”

“It’s for mine. Some of us here still have standards.” She tightens her grasp, until her claw tips are tense against Eridan's skin, but as soon as she releases her hold she runs her palm over the area to soothe it.

“That means I gotta rethink this position.” Eridan raises himself up onto both elbows, and Sollux floats the controller overhead until he’s settled back down and propped slightly on his left arm instead of his right, at which point Sollux resumes resting his wrists on Eridan’s shoulders. “Open wide.”

“Aaaah,” Sollux says, as if awaiting a pass-fail inspection of his palatine lymphoid tissue by someone who could cull him with a checkmark on some paperwork.

Eridan raises his right hand and slides his index and middle fingertips into Sollux’s mouth, past teeth blunt enough to allow for this and fangs that have left their mark on lewd occasions.

Sollux lets his eyes go half-lidded and tastes the remnants of himself on Eridan’s skin, of the slickness stroked from his bulges.

Feferi resettles herself on the couch and rearranges her skirt, and Eridan recognizes that telltale fidgeting for what it is.

“Gettin’ hot and bothered, Fef?” he asks, with as much emphasis as he can manage on his articulation of the ‘h’ sounds.

“Hush.” She moves her palm from his thigh to his ass and gets a handful. “Tell him to lick your claws.”

“I can hear you,” Sollux mumbles, awkwardly, around Eridan’s fingertips.

“Lick my claws,” Eridan repeats.

“I’m already here.”

Eridan rests the pads of his fingers against Sollux’s lower incisors and watches him, close enough to him that he can easily see, as Sollux bites down lightly to hold his fingertips in place and runs his forked tongue over the underside of his claws. He can feel Sollux’s hands still at work over his back, still checking his peripheral vision to preserve his streak in the game, and he’s content to share the attention if it means he can engage in a tug-of-war for his focus. There’s slight pressure from his jaw, slight wetness from his saliva, and between the heat of Sollux’s tongue on his fingertips and the cool touch of Feferi’s hand on his ass, Eridan’s stomach jolts along with his bulge, along with an ache in his nook.

Sollux’s bulges are too high up to find his, and Eridan’s curls instead against the couch cushion, the ruination of which is already a foregone conclusion. Eridan lets his fingers serve as a stand-in, and shudders as Sollux’s tongue flicks at every nerve ending that’s ever helped him take aim or turn a page or touch himself.

“Fuck,” Eridan sighs.

Sollux tilts his head back and licks between his fingers, quickly with the split tip, and it’s impossible for Eridan not to think about how his efforts have felt elsewhere.

Feferi lets out a brief huff of air and speaks in more hushed tones, somewhere behind him. “Tell him to suck your fingers.”

Eridan takes a sharp breath. “Suck ‘em, Sol.”

Sollux arches his back and does so, lifting his bulge towards Eridan’s abdomen and moaning through the moment, the sound muffled as he works his tongue over and seals his lips around his fingers. A short glance to the screen informs him that the squares are starting to stack up, as they’ve moved to white and red with rounded-off corners that are even harder to distinguish than before, with or without glasses.

Feferi palms his ass, but when Eridan pushes his hips down against the upholstery, she pulls her hand away. “Enough.”

Eridan obeys instantly, but Sollux chases after his hand and keeps applying suction to his middle fingertip, until it leaves his mouth with a wet sound.

Sollux looks up at him and grins, and licks his lips before reaching off the side of the couch for another pizza roll. “You gonna suck the grease off my fingers next?”

There’s effort involved in catching his breath. “You’re plenty salty as-is.”

“That’s the nitrites, man.” He turns his head completely towards the screen to rescue himself from the buildup of blocks that he’s been ignoring. “That’s some mechanically-separated meat products, the worst that currency can buy or some Strider or another can alchemize.”

The change in Feferi’s posture is again audible behind him. Eridan’s fins flutter in response, unconsciously.

She fusses with fixing her skirt but they all know it’s no use. “It’s time to put your bulge in him, Eridan.”

Sollux dissolves several sections of the stacked squares and beams, pleased with himself. “Yes, ma’am.”

Eridan dries his fingers on the couch cushion and sits back on his heels, evaluating Sollux, who’s sprawled below him. “You gonna take off that shirt?”

For a split second Sollux looks at Eridan instead of the screen, where the blocks have turned to dull bricks in front of a distracting set of animated bird-like figures. “Fucking make me.”

“I don’t care. I’ll pail you with it on.” Eridan rests a hand on Sollux’s knee, and this time finds that his partner’s posture is a lot less accommodating. He tries to push his legs apart, and is met with resistance. “What the hell, dude.”

Sollux laughs instead of answering with words, and rolls onto his side entirely, his arms dangling over the edge of the couch to hold the controller.

Feferi giggles, because of course she does.

Eridan slides his hand under Sollux’s thigh and tries to roll him back over, with no success. It’s not for a lack of strength, but due to zero desire to actually hurt him. “Sol, why are you doing this?”

“Because,” he says, lifting the television with his psionics and tipping the whole thing ninety degrees as if he’d set a phone screen to auto-rotate, “it’s really, really funny to me.”

“Fef,” Eridan begins, his eyes imploring as he glances back to her.

“What do you expect me to do about it?” Her legs are crossed, one thigh over the other, and there’s no mistaking her bulge beneath her skirt for anything else. “You heard him. Make him pay attention to you.”

“Yeah. I’m being insubordinate or something.” Sollux is on a roll with his score and lands one combo after another, clearing busy sections of blocks, bricks for a human classroom instead of construction, yellow and red with bustling robot avatars in the background. The speed has increased noticeably, even with Eridan’s limited ability to focus on the blurry screen. “Despite what you may think, I’m not even subbing. I’m just hanging out.”

Eridan makes a grab for his shin and tries again to coax his legs apart while Sollux snickers at his every move. “Goddamn it, are you not entertained? Am I boring you?”

“I’m entertaining myself, because you’re boring the piss out of me.” Sollux twists himself on the couch to fumble for his energy drink. He rests his chin on the edge of the cushion, brings the can to his lips, and sips it at an angle that’s utterly useless for anything other than inspiring a neck cramp. He makes an exaggerated, pseudo-marketing style refreshed aaah sound and sets the can of tepid corn syrup back on the floor. “Try harder.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t be as bored as you say you are,” Eridan leans over and waves his hand in front of Sollux’s face, “if you’d stop drinkin’ this fuckin’ swill.”

“Maybe ‘no’.” Sollux levitates the screen even higher so he can see anyway, and picks the can back up to chug the rest of it in one go. “And that’s a logical fallacy.”

“Sometime tonight, please.” Feferi truly does sound bored, and Eridan’s disappointed in himself just from hearing her tone.

“What’s it gonna take to placate you, Captor?” Eridan slides his entire arm between Sollux’s thighs and achieves some success at prying his legs apart, one knee pressed to the back of the couch, the other still resting on the cushion.

“Nothing will soothe me except your highly potent sea dweller bulge.” Sollux pushes back against his arm every step of the way, and it doesn’t distract him from keeping the screen held in view and matching the new waves of teal and grey squares. “Use your freakish oceanic strength to subdue me, since my blood’s got the wrong hex code or whatever.”

Eridan lays his right palm flat against Sollux’s inner knee on his left leg and defends that territory, the accomplishment enough to afford him room to shift inward and bring his hips towards his. “Oh my god, will you just—”

Sollux gropes around on the floor for a few pizza rolls and flings them in Eridan’s face. He’s all smiles, his bulges still very much unsheathed and active between his legs as he’s laid out on the couch, his torso twisted at an odd angle that he keeps returning to, despite Eridan’s best efforts.

Eridan reflexively wipes at his hair and releases Sollux’s knee in the process. “You fucker.”

“Bitch.”

“Fuck you.” Eridan wedges his right knee beneath Sollux’s left thigh and holds his leg up by leaning in, and snatches the controller out of his hands. Despite the aggressive display, he leans over to let it drop lightly to the ground.

“I thought that’s what you were supposed to be doing.” Sollux floats the controller off the carpet and back into his reach. “Can you explain the delay, please?”

“Yeah, what’s the hold up?”

Eridan glances over his shoulder to see her gathering her hair into a ponytail for which she has no hair tie, and then releasing it all again to land in black waves on her shoulders, over the straps of her tank top. If there’s anything he wants, it’s to impress her.

“Stick it in, man. She told you already, it’s high time for that shit.” Sollux makes no attempt to allow him further access, and doubles down on clearing as much of the screen as he can, his face flushed gold despite his commentary. “I was ready for an orgasm sweeps ago.”

Feferi lifts an eyebrow and regards Eridan as he’s flustered and naked before her, occupying the other two thirds of the couch along with Sollux as she stays in place on the third. Her fins flick, and his mirror hers in response. “Are you sure he should be talking to you like that?”

“Good luck shutting me up.” The screen speeds up as it transitions into a reused orange and silver rounded blockset, and Sollux maneuvers the television and its power hub to dangle dangerously over their bodies on the couch, casting Eridan in a weird, vibrant and shifting glow from the game’s graphics. “Guess you better find a way to get all my attention.”

“Okay, time out.” Feferi looks up at the floating screen and shakes her head, her hair going everywhere, parted only by her arced horns. “Maybe not over the couch. Please set it down so you don’t hurt yourselves.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Sollux returns it to its place on the stand and allows it to support its own weight. “Just got into it.”

“Thanks for the assist, Fef.” Eridan seizes the moment and pushes his hips against Sollux’s, his bulge easily finding the slick heat of his dripping nook and slipping inside.

Feferi’s shocked tone is everything he wanted. “It wasn’t supposed to be—”

“Fuck!” Sollux’s stimulated tone is the other everything he wanted. “Fuck, yeah.”

Electric guitar from the game’s soundtrack fills the room as Sollux pushes his cheek against the couch cushion, still trying to hold out and maintain his progress. He takes a breath through his mouth and lifts himself towards Eridan, rocking shamelessly up against him now that he’s inside him, his hamstrings taut. The blocks become red and silver instead, and his eyes start to fall closed again.

“How’re you doing?” Eridan asks, as he leans over him, using his weight to try to position Sollux in a way that makes more sense.

“Winning,” Sollux replies, fingers flying on the directional pad, as the screen fails to corroborate his assessment of his situation.

Eridan takes the controller out of his hands a second time and lets it fall a short distance to the floor. With his palms on Sollux’s shoulders, he pushes him down against the couch and kisses him. There’s a breathy gasp from Feferi behind them, and Eridan smiles against the corner of his mouth.

“If you wanted crumbs, all you had to do was ask.” The controller lights up with psionic energy as Sollux continues playing, hands-free. He alternates his gaze between Eridan’s face and the TV, trying and failing to stave off the inevitable as the blocks invert their colors to silver and red, and furiously stack up. “This is like, trickle-down economics.”

“That’s backwards, ain’t it?” Eridan kisses his cheek and pulls back enough to self-consciously lick his lips and clear away any crumbs that may have actually gathered. “I’m higher ranked than you.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

Feferi’s voice is urgent when she interjects. “Eridan.”

He looks back to her immediately. “Yes?”

“You'll make sure he takes the whole thing won't you?” As she speaks, the fabric of her skirt lifts with the lazy waving of her bulge. “I know what you're both capable of.”

“Of course I will.” Eridan moves his hands from his shoulders to his waist, and raises Sollux’s hips off the couch to haul him into his lap as he kneels on the couch. The juncture between the cushions sinks beneath their combined weight, and his knees start to slide between them, fast-tracked towards even more residual crumbs of days past. All of it’s well worth it, though, for the way Sollux squeezes his thighs around his waist. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Sollux agrees, as the squares climb towards the digital ceiling. “Fuck, you feel good.”

With the controller out of the way, Eridan’s able to run his hands freely over Sollux’s chest, mapping out the latitudes of his ribs through his t-shirt until Sollux brings his own hands up to hold Eridan’s wrists and guide him towards lingering on his grubscars. Eridan follows his lead and rubs his thumbs over the spots until Sollux is tipping his head back and knocking his horns against the arm of the couch.

Feferi clicks her tongue. “You really do spoil him.”

“Instant gratification is his deal,” Sollux says, idly making a token effort to play the game, despite how tightly his thighs are tensing around Eridan’s body, how his wetness allows his bulge even deeper access at this angle, how his own are twisting together at the hem of his shirt. “Just gotta ask nicely, or compliment him in any way whatsoever.”

“So how about now?” Eridan asks, as he stares downward and watches himself slide sheath-deep into Sollux’s nook, the violet of his bulge barely visible if not for the telltale trail of genetic material that’s mixed with Sollux’s. “Am I still boring you?”

“You’re bone bulging me.” Sollux clenches his nook around Eridan in response, and slides his hands up his arms to grip at his biceps. “Bored or not, I do sort of have to piss, though.”

Eridan rolls his eyes. “Like I said, that’s totally the fault of the ‘charged original Dew’ you insisted on imbibing.”

“I’m fucking sorry, do you not want your sexual partners to have...” He cranes his neck to read the side of the can where it sits. “Alertness, accuracy, and vitamins A & B?”

Eridan is caught so off-guard he instantly abandons any attempt for a comeback and just laughs.

Sollux grins up at him, in between checking his success or lack thereof on the screen. He tightens his grip on Eridan’s arms and tests the definition of his muscle tissue with his fingertips.

Eridan decides on a response and lowers himself further onto Sollux, until he’s helped to push Sollux’s knees nearly against his chest. “I’ll just have to fuck you quickly, then.”

“Is that something you’re proud of?” Sollux asks, tugging at Eridan’s arms to draw him down. “Your sexual prowess and your stamina are best defined by being ‘quick’ at this?”

“You’re the one who’s gotta get off quickly, not me. I’m good to go for a while.”

From behind him, Feferi adds, “You’d better be.”

Sollux runs his right hand up Eridan’s arm to lift away from his skin just long enough to cup his jaw, his fingertips brushing over the rays of his fin. “Gotta go fast.”

Eridan glances with blurry vision to the television. “Sol, your score—”

“I’m scoring right now.” He runs his claws lightly down his neck, cautious to avoid his gills. “Kiss me, loser.”

The squares encroach on treacherous terrain, building upward to an overflow as Sollux’s fingers curl across the nape of his neck to tug at his hair. Behind the gameplay are flashing lights illuminated in the shape of something with trailing tendrils that reminds him of a jellyfish, or a brainstem, and Eridan takes his eyes off Sollux to witness the instant when thirty minutes of gameplay crash to a halt.

“Kiss him,” Feferi commands. “And I want to see your bulge going into his nook.”

The screen silences itself as if Sollux had paused, but instead shows them his score and stays there until a future moment when he provides further input. Within seconds the glow of his psionics has stopped, and he’s warm and waiting, watching, and Eridan cherishes the intensity of his stare as if he’d found it within some sunken depth no one had ever before tried to seek out.

“Eridan,” he says, on his exhale. “Fuck me.”

Eridan drops his full weight onto him and kisses him, keeps his lips pliant so Sollux can touch the split tip of his tongue to his, keeps his knees apart to bend Sollux backward and make all the action accessible for Feferi’s evaluation. As soon as Eridan thrusts himself back in, sunk to his sheath, Sollux starts trilling.

The sound shoots directly to his gut, and he kisses him harder to capture it, interwoven with chirring and chirping that leave Sollux’s lips as Eridan pushes him down into the couch.

Feferi’s breath hitches.

“That’s hot, Fef.”

“Is she touching herself?” Sollux asks, as if only Eridan could hear him. “I can’t see.”

But Eridan doesn’t need to see her to know it for fact. “Yeah, she is.”

“That is hot.” He rocks upward towards Eridan’s hips and sighs as his bulges trail against his stomach. “Ask her if she likes what she sees.”

“You like that, Feferi?” he asks, suggestible from all sides. “You gettin’ off watching me pail him like you asked?”

“Yeah.” Her skirt audibly shifts alongside the wet slide of her hand dragging along the length of her bulge. “Yeah, I am.”

Eridan sighs, content and carnal, and rests himself primarily on Sollux’s clothed chest, with the rest of his weight braced in his left forearm and in his knees, to keep his bulge in view as it slides between the wet folds of Sollux’s nook. Their combined slickness smooths the movements of their bodies as they rock together, from sweat on his stomach against Sollux’s twined bulges to the genetic material that runs down between their nook lips as they frot together on closer thrusts.

Sollux winds his arms around Eridan’s shoulders and continues chirring, hair stuck to his forehead, teeth bared as he takes shallow breaths.

Eridan kisses his cheek before posing the question. “You have any messages you want me to pass along to your loyal subject, princess?”

“Tell him...” Feferi speaks with a shudder in her voice. “Tell him that he’s doing so well to be taking your bulge like this.”

Sollux’s nook clenches around his bulge as soon as the words leave her mouth, and Eridan leans in to nip at his ear again, his exhalations warmer than usual but still cool against the sweat on Sollux’s jaw. He brings his right hand up to cup his face, with no fins to block his fingers’ access to his bone structure, with his thumb brushing over his cheek and brushing back his hair.

He kisses the shell of his ear and rolls his hips down, thrust as deeply as he can be, eyes half-lidded beside Sollux’s temple. “Good boy, Sol.”

Sollux chirps, bringing his feet down on the backs of Eridan’s thighs to pull him closer. He tilts his head against Eridan’s, his cheek against the fluttering of his fin, and starts whining.

“Tell him to talk,” Feferi orders, the slick sounds of her hand speeding up. “He should verbalize how much he wants your bulge in him.”

“God, fuck me, Eridan.” He lifts his hips up, assisted by psionics when it helps to get a better angle, and rubs his bulges on Eridan’s stomach. “Fuck me until I come all over you, until I—”

Eridan cuts him off and kisses him again, and Sollux kisses him back, tongues lax and accommodating as they lick each other. Sollux’s fingers trace over his shoulder blades, Eridan’s knuckles brush gingerly over Sollux’s eyebrow, and they both make out to the sounds of their own slickness until Feferi prods at Eridan’s ankle enough times for him to pull his mouth away from Sollux’s.

Sollux isn’t stupid, and he picks up where he left off, obviously aroused and uninterested in self-censoring.

“Yeah,” he gasps, baring his throat to him and stroking along his spine. “Fuck yeah, Eridan, yes. Fuck my nook, fuck me into the couch.”

“Fuck him, Eridan,” Feferi echoes, transfixed by their bodies touching.

Eridan huffs a laugh against Sollux’s shoulder, against his shirt collar. “I’m fuckin’ him, Fef.”

“I’ll be so good,” Sollux sighs, clenching and holding around him several times over until his hips twitch upward moreso than usual. “I’ll be so good for you, Eridan, just fuck me.”

“Fuck, you’re hot.” Eridan kisses his face, once on his cheek and once over his eyelid, gently. “You wanna come for me? You gonna come for her so she can see you spill?”

“Yeah. Oh fuck, yeah.” He breathes through his mouth, his skin flushed gold, his arms and thighs tight around Eridan’s body, pushing towards him needily. “I want you, I want you to make me come, I want her to watch.”

“Sollux,” Feferi says, and his name alone is a set of instructions.

“You’re gonna make me come.” With sweat enough on his skin to confuse the issue of his caste despite the color, Sollux uses his psionics to support himself in grinding up against Eridan’s bulge and sheath, his chest heaving through t-shirt, soaked at his armpits and his shoulder blades. “Eridan, you’re gonna make me come, I’ll be so good, just—”

“You’re so good, Sol, you feel so good.” Eridan kisses his throat and licks away salt. “You’re so fuckin’ tight and wet for me, I want you to come for us.”

Sollux chirrs and chitters, desperate for air. “I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come for you.”

“Make him come, Eridan,” Feferi insists, the eager tone in her voice as unmistakable as the wet grip of her hand on her bulge.

“I’m makin’ him, Fef, he just said!”

An electric tingling picks up in his bulge as Eridan feels Sollux’s psionics take hold of him from within his nook, driving the tip of his bulge into his globes and pressing it into his inner walls in ways that typical writhing would not accomplish. There’s a vibration that kicks into gear at the same instant that nearly has him pailing on the spot, but with Feferi’s eyes on him, he wouldn’t dare give into it.

“Yeah,” Sollux gasps, his bulges trapped between his t-shirt and Eridan’s abs, themselves surrounded by psychic stimulation. “Oh yeah, Eridan, I’m so close, I wanna come with your bulge twisting in me, I’m so fucking close...”

“I wanna make you come, Sol,” he repeats, seeing him through it. He flicks his tongue over the notch in Sollux’s ear, and shudders as Sollux’s hands find their way down his sides, to fleetingly skate over the gills at his ribcage. “Just give into it, just come for me. Just like this.”

Eridan can tell that Sollux has ramped up the intensity of the psionics within his nook past the breaking point, from the way it shoots from the tip of his bulge down into the base, and into his bone sheath, rattling him in ways he could never replicate.

Sollux trills again, and his shoulders shiver as he angles his horns towards the couch cushion, his eyes on Eridan, his teeth biting his own lower lip, face flushed and nook convulsing around Eridan’s bulge. The rush of genetic material flows out of him, coating his inner thighs with gold, along with Eridan’s skin as he’s set between his legs. The couch was done for the moment they decided to fuck, and Sollux lifts his hips towards the deeply-set rolling of Eridan’s hips as he chitters his way through the waves of pleasure.

“Sol.” Eridan kisses him on his mouth, over his teeth, then up to kiss his eyelids, and brushes his sweat-soaked bangs away from his forehead. “Sollux, I’m here. We’re here.”

Sollux rolls his hips up and keens. “God, you’re so fucking thick.”

“You’re the one pressing me into your globes.” He kisses up along his jawline, where his fin would be if he were a sea dweller. “You’re so needy.”

Sollux hugs him tightly, dropping kisses along his shoulder and listening for Feferi’s labored breathing. “You know what it is that I need.”

Eridan laughs. “Improved bandwidth?”

Sollux shakes his head. “I love you, but you gotta get up.”

Eridan plays dumb and kisses his neck. “Why?”

“Ha ha, okay, make-believe time is over.” Sollux shifts beneath him, horns nudging the arm of the couch. “You’re heavy and you’re right on my void sac.”

Eridan keeps kissing him from his neck to his collarbone.

“Eridan, I gotta go.” Sollux pets his hair and flexes his toes in his socks as an outlet for the tension.

Eridan lifts his head enough to grin down at him, their eyes locked.

There’s a spark of recognition, of sudden understanding, and Sollux’s eyebrows shoot up before settling as he grins back, sly, as he strokes his hands down Eridan’s back and grabs his ass to bring him even closer, bulges twitching.

Eridan kisses his face as he holds him down, and Sollux squirms under him until he gets his lungs under control and allows himself to relax, allows himself to breathe, and tries to overcome the resistance to indulge the urge in a space that’s not designated for it.

Sollux’s lashes land on his cheeks and he takes a deep breath, rocking shallowly against Eridan’s bulge, his elevated heart rate still present and evident when Eridan presses his lips to his throat.

“Let him go, Eridan.”

Both of them snap to attention and Eridan can feel Sollux clench his nook again, this time for a vastly different reason. There are two wildly contrasting ways to interpret her statement; he lets out a huff of frustration and errs on the side of caution.

When Eridan pulls out of him there’s a second flood of genetic material that runs from Sollux’s nook to the couch cushion. Sollux is out from under him within seconds, and he stands on wobbly legs supported by psionic energy as he lifts himself from the couch and barely avoids stepping on his scattered snacks.

Sollux turns back to look at Eridan, naked and flushed violet beside Feferi, who’s just as flushed fuchsia but has more clothing to speak of. Sollux wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand, the hem of his shirt rumpled and low on his hips, bulges retracting but not quite resheathed. He stares at Eridan, and laughs low in his throat.

Without another word, he leaves the living room with slurry trailing down his thighs, and spares one more glance at Eridan over his shoulder before disappearing down the hall.

Feferi speaks. “Come here, Eridan.”

And he does.

The couch is a throne beneath her, just as any chair would be if she inhabited it, and he stands up from his seat entirely first before facing her and dropping to his knees. His and Sollux’s clothing are in a pile on his left, and his and Feferi’s electronics are to his right, along with his glasses. She is in front of him and she’s gone quiet, her skirt swept out of the way to leave her bulge uninhibited, her hands stained fuchsia where she’s been attending to herself.

She nods to him. “On your feet.”

He stands, reverential, and keeps his head bowed.

Feferi reaches out with one upturned hand and trails one fingertip between the folds of his nook, up along the underside of his bulge, to gather the mixture of gold and violet that coats his skin. She raises her hand to her lips and licks the slurry off her finger.

“You’re ready for me,” she says, and it’s not a question.

He nods without fully looking up.

Feferi pats her knee twice, her pink-tinged saliva still evaporating on her hand. “Sit with me.”

Eridan sets one knee and then the other on either side of her thighs on the cushion, far enough over to avoid the wet spot on the remaining portions of the upholstery. He loops his arms around her neck, beneath the ample texture of her hair, before letting his weight settle completely onto her thighs.

At last, he looks at her face.

“Hi, Fef.”

“Hi.”

Feferi brings her hand up to cup his cheek, her claws careful near his fin, and it takes everything in Eridan not to nuzzle into her palm. He stays still, save for the salvaged oxygen that he takes from the atmosphere of this earthsea, and waits for her to speak.

“You did well, when you took care of him.” There’s a reserved fondness in her eyes that he wants to memorize, to preserve for the inevitable end of this delicate thing they’ve made, when she’s had enough of him for good. “You should be commended.”

They’ve done this many times before and he knows where it’s headed, and he can’t bring himself to smile; it doesn’t seem right. He simply nods. “Thank you.”

Her expression changes to something at once severe and serene. Her lips are as black as the hadopelagic, as the space between stars, as the furthest ring. No matter how often he’s asked, she won’t share with him the name of the gloss she’s used, and when he spots it left out in their shared ablution block, he pretends he can’t read the words.

And then her lips move with the words he knows best, the ones that never leave him, that they work through on every occasion. “But I don’t have to tell you what it is that you’ve done.”

“No.” He shakes his head, and does not acknowledge the brief slide of her bulge against his, between their bodies, not nearly enough to satisfy. “I already know.”

Eridan is bathed in this ambiance again by the afterglow, backlit by the greyed out screen of what came before, when all of that simulated, synchronized movement stopped. She lowers her fingers from his face and routes his arms away from her shoulders to take both of his hands in hers, squeezing them until her claws press into his palms.

“Then you know that this is not a punishment.” She brings his hands to lie flat on her chest, crossed over as if he’d administer compressions, as if he’d save her life. “This is an honor.”

He can feel her heart in his heart line. “I know, Fef.”

“I'm going to take everything back from you, Eridan.” She holds his wrists and positions his hands to slide them to the side in each direction, to rest on her breasts. “I'm going to take back everything you took from me, with interest.”

He keeps his hands loose and won’t grasp at her; the taut fabric of the tank hides nothing that he doesn’t already know, and they know each other too well, too deeply to ever be matesprits.

She pushes his hands down, presses on his knuckles, and he can feel her peaking beneath his palms. “Starting with your nook.”

Eridan keeps his eyes on hers. “Anythin’ you want, Feferi.”

“Remember when I was what it was that you wanted.”

He flexes his fingertips down, to find her ribs through the cloth, below her first set of grubscars and above her gills. It’s too small of a movement to hold her, to try in vain to contain the vastness of the ocean within cupped hands. “I don’t take you for granted.”

She lets go of his wrists and leaves his hands where they are, in order to bring hers to brush over the gills at his ribs, to settle on his waist. “Then grant me this much.”

“I’m yours,” he says, voice catching. “I’ve always been.”

Feferi tilts her head, and he recognizes it as the next beat of this routine song and dance. “Have you?”

“Yeah.” Eridan nods and he knows she doesn’t believe it, has no reason to do so. “I’ve always had your back.”

“Yes, you did.” She pulls him closer on her lap, his knees skidding on her skirt as it’s pushed up and to each side, where with nothing beneath it there was nothing to remove when they all began playing with each other. With strength that few others share, she shifts his weight easily, supporting him on her thighs, bringing his body against hers to frot the folds of his nook against the base of her bulge. “Right up until the moment you shot me clear through it.”

He shudders, and doesn’t give in to the temptation to thrust against her; he keeps his hands on her chest for balance, grasping without groping. “I know.”

“The most painful thing anyone can hear is what it is that they have done in their life.” Feferi rocks him against her again, and allows the closeness to coax their bulges together, nearly matched in hue but with him outmatched in heft. “Or do you disagree?”

“No.” Eridan shakes his head. “You’re spot on.”

“Someone else already took you apart for me.” Feferi brings her thumbs to the center of his stomach and drags them back towards his hips. “So I don’t have to.”

Eridan looks down at her hands, claws a far cry from a chainsaw, but worrisome all the same. “But you will, won’t you?”

“If you need it.” She presses her fingertips into his grubscars until his bulge tightens its twirling around hers, smearing what remains of Sollux’s slurry. “If you ask it from me.”

He can feel her looking at him, even without looking up, and maybe in some ways this was always what he wanted, the destination he was driving towards without even realizing, whether or not he’d admit it to anyone but himself. At the end of all things, at the culmination of every timeline and their placement into the endgame, pitch is proving to be perfect, every other time, sunken and resurfaced as they vacillate with Sollux.

Eridan’s gills flare at his throat. “Please, Fef.”

She smiles, barely within his field of vision. “Suit yourself.”

He rotates his hands to let his fingertips rest on her collarbone, at the edge of the fabric, grey against black against grey. “When you say jump,” he begins, leaving the sentence open for her to complete it.

Her smile broadens, and her teeth are as sharp as ever, excitable, eviscerating. “You ask how high.”

“Please fuck me,” he begs, flicking his gaze back up to her, flicking his fins. Her face is all that’s worth focusing upon with his blurry eyesight, as though she were underwater with him, all else swirling formless in the sea as she guides him forward. “Fef.”

Feferi watches him, her hair in cascading curls down her shoulders and against the back of the couch, her neckline without anything adorning it other than the hesitant brush of Eridan’s claws. “Do it to yourself, like you always do.”

Eridan shifts his hands up to rest on her shoulders instead, his palms over the tank straps, lifting himself with her as leverage until his bulge is slipping away from hers, until only the tips are tangled. She’s larger than he is, but the furthest thing from unfamiliar, and he looks her in the eyes as he holds his body above her bulge and waits for it to work its way towards his entrance.

As soon as its tip teases between the lips of his nook, enough to give him something stable to work with, he lowers himself down onto her, thighs trembling as he takes her in and bottoms out at last, back in her lap. He grips onto her shoulders and throws his head back, gasping uselessly through his gills, back straight like a trident had speared through his spine.

“Fuck!” He lets his lips stay parted as he pants for breath, full and spread out around her, and his chest feels as tight as his nook as he looks at her through half-lidded eyes, aching for this. “Fef, please.”

Feferi keeps her hands on his waist and rolls her hips against his before bringing her mouth against his, and he kisses back as if they’d never touched each other until now, as if the act of observing the moment could make it materialize into what was being expected to be seen, as if Sollux wasn’t spot on in his own assessment.

“Fef,” he pleads, her name sounding less like itself and more like a mantra, one syllable isolated from three.

Feferi runs her hands up his back and presses her lips against his cheek, next to his fin. “Shhh.”

Eridan clicks to her instead, with intonation only she could interpret, expressive even above water, fins signaling soundlessly to her with every shift of his hips. He wants her to take him in the ocean, at depths the human inhabitants of this world could never reach, with pressure around them both as his pulse pounds in his thinkpan.

With strong hands she steadies him as he fucks himself on her bulge, genetic material leaking from his nook and onto her sheath and her thighs. She’s as encompassing as empire, with him as a shark seeking refuge within a reef, and he knows he’s nothing without this ecosystem sustaining him, feeding him reasons to be here, on a planet that had never known a sun besides Sol.

“Eridan, sometimes I feel as though you’ve set me up for failure as your kismesis,” she says, and despite what she’d noted previously, her words do leave him coming apart at the seams. “You’d already squandered all of your potential long before we ever entered this quadrant.”

Her bulge is long enough to double back at his seedflap, her girth enough to push constantly against his shame globes, to yield slick violet soaking into the cushion between her legs as he yields to her.

“Please,” he whispers, his face still close to hers, sharing the same air.

“I don’t pity you.” She meets his eyes, levely, and keeps her voice low. “You deserve everything that you get, because these decisions were your own, and I can’t save you.”

He's never finished with the feeling of her filling him, and he does all of the work of it, writhing in her lap with her hands on his waist, tethered as she tells this to him.

“Would it have been better if I had never known you?” she asks, rhetorically, without waiting for an answer. “I can’t say for sure, because I could not be here thinking about it otherwise.”

“Maybe...” Heat begins a steady, cinching curl in his gut, and he struggles to speak all the same. “Maybe we were fated for this, for spades instead.”

“No.” She shakes her head, and her hair goes with the movement, brushing over his knuckles as he continues to brace himself on her shoulders. “No, Eridan, we weren’t. This is just what it is.”

The path that took them here was as fated as anything can be when a given eventuality is the outcome of its own series of switch-flipped ones and zeroes, retroactively seeding itself, difficult to perceive from outside its own context. Even so, even with what he knows now, he can hardly claim to have known when he was making the choices that layered the lab with blood.

“But maybe I did avoid you, at least once. There’s that other version of me, and maybe she never knew a version of you.” She licks her lips, grey tongue against gloss, teeth briefly visible within her mouth. “She left me to wonder about her, because she didn’t play the game and I can’t reach her, even out there in the furthest ring.”

Feferi is every bit as beautiful as she was on the day he took her life, her face aged with maturity as all three of them were brought back and made accessible for post-game content, for reasons that they could not sufficiently explain to themselves.

“She didn’t have to play at being the empress,” she continues, her gaze on his face as he blushes aubergine, as Sollux alluded in more guarded moments, through transcripts he came to know both through access to infinity and the simplicity of asking. “What use is an orphaner when there’s no one to feed lusii to? How superfluous is that sort of life when nothing necessitates all that defunct death?”

She’s thick and twirling inside him, and he seeks something within the terror of her tyrian eyes and the rhythm of her royal blood, knowing well that she could put him down, if only she would.

His fingertips tangle in her tank straps.

He clicks to her and flicks his fins for her, takes her deep into himself as he moves on her bulge, violet flowing freely from his nook as he approaches his climax. Feferi’s fingers dig into his hips, hard enough to bruise in a way, with the hue of him, that wouldn’t look unnatural on a human. But he’s not, and neither is she, and they don’t belong in this landlocked place except for whatever systemic forces decreed it, whatever conspired to reunite the three of them, back when he looked up in the moments he ceased to be split and saw him and her and her, standing and staring as he joined their eternal sleep.

But he’s awake, now, and alive, and he stays where he is, with her strength greater than his in all circumstances excepting a sucker punch. His hair is stuck to his face with sweat, his gills are open at his throat and his chest, triceps tensed and fingers clenched, swimmer’s muscles taut in his thighs and his thorax. The slide of her bulge between the slippery wetness of his nook lips is enough on its own to bring him off, and it’s only further augmented by how widely he’s stretched around her.

“Fuck,” he gasps, exhaling raggedly as he rocks on her. “Fef.”

“I will always harbor a hatred for you, Eridan.” Feferi keeps her hands on his waist and uses her thumbs to circle his grubscars. “For what you’ve done, for who you are, and what you’ve allowed yourself to become.”

He brings his arms around her shoulders, draped against her, her breasts against his bare chest through her tank top. There’s a contrast to be made between the tightening, telling twitching within his stomach, deep within his inner walls with the pressure on his globes, and the relative coolness of her bulge, of her body, of her demeanor. If he’s the thermal vent, she’s the surrounding sea, and he hides his face against her hair.

“Fef,” he says, again, forever a shaky statement of intent, just shy of a whimper.

Feferi pushes her thumbs into his grubscars, pinning him in place via his pelvis, and whispers against his cheek, against his hair, her voice cutting clear through the overwhelming enormity of his respiratory and circulatory systems as they nearly consume his attention.

Her lips are against his skin, her sheath is against his nook, and her words are everything.

“I should have killed you on LOBAF when I had the chance.”

Eridan comes with a cry, choked out with his chin on her shoulder, unable to contain the
deluge of slurry that spills out around her bulge and between their legs. He shivers and clings to her, drowned in the moment by his own design, his own desperation, every time asking for this same thing, every time itching for deliverance denied him only by himself.

She’s stronger than him, and her hands move him easily in her lap, picking up for him as he goes shuddering and slack against her.

“You should’ve, Feferi,” he says, to her, to himself, voicing it into the waves of her hair, breathing the scent of her sweat, poised on another plateau and pressing against her chest. “You really should’ve.”

Her own gasping picks up, then, bright and brisk, and he lets her fuck him the way she wants, with sure rolls of her hips as she supports his weight, meeting no resistance whatsoever. There’s fuchsia gathering below them, staining the couch in the rarest hue, its saturation lost amidst the darker evidence of his orgasm.

Eridan is warm and well-fucked, and doesn’t stop himself this time when he feels the impulse to nuzzle against her neck, her gills beneath his breath, and he kisses her just beneath her jaw. Her tank is drenched at her lower back, and he brings his hands lower to seek out the structure of her spine, supporting her the best he can in exchange for her exclusive attention, for this precious piece of intimacy.

She’s brought him close again, even so soon, spurred on by the ceaseless driving of herself within him. He lifts the hem of her tank and draws it up, away from her skin, and presses his fingertips into her muscle, tensed as she focuses on fucking him.

With his full weight settled in her lap save for her own lifting of his hips, he runs his hands up, threads through her hair, combs back down in sections separated by his fingers. Sighing, he rests his cheek on her shoulder, face towards her throat, and holds her as he poses the question.

“You gonna pail, princess?”

After all this time he’s attuned to her, and she slides herself as deeply inside him as she can go, as her gasping climbs up to an octave he can’t reach, as her bulge writhes within the walls of his nook. When the pressure on his globes passes a threshold lowered by his existing arousal, attainable through her persistent twisting, he hits his peak again, nook clenching around her thickness, convulsing as he comes in waves, emptied until he’s something akin to dry docking, with nothing left of himself to give.

Her shoulders shiver as he rests against her, her chest lifting with her ragged breath, and he cannot separate the sounds she makes when she climaxes from the ones she choked out while she was dying. Fuchsia flows onto the cushion from their fucking, and nothing could make him move from this place, an emotional anchor dropped as solidly as his cheek on her shoulder.

Feferi takes heaving gulps of air until she’s stilled enough to bring her hands up past his gills, past his shoulder blades, up to run her fingertips through his hair, her hands encircling the back of his head. She lets her head tilt down against his, her fin fluttering next to his, her exhalations against his skin.

She settles for a midpoint and keeps her arms enclosed around him, hugging him to her, kissing him occasionally at the crown of his head.

Even if he had the energy to move, he wouldn’t, not of his own volition.

“Do you feel better?” she asks, exhausted.

“Yeah.” Eridan closes his eyes and savors the moment, at ease, at peace with himself and with the world, whichever one it is now that they’re expected to call home. “You?”

“Mmhm.” She nods and noses into his hair, kisses his fin. “Much better.”

Eridan smiles, and even without looking, from the tone of her voice and the relaxed slope of her shoulder, he knows she’s doing the same.

“Oh god, did you guys have sad sex again?”

Eridan’s smile broadens as Sollux’s footsteps tread back into the room, and he lifts himself up to see Sollux plunk his chin down atop Feferi’s head, between her horns. Sollux presses a kiss to her skull, lost in the sea of hair, and scratches his fingers through the wavy strands as they fall back from her temples.

“Welcome back,” Eridan says, raising his gaze enough to meet Sollux’s eyes, still seated with Feferi inside him, as she gradually resheathes. “Glad you could join us.”

“I swear to fucking god, I can’t leave you alone for two minutes or you go dredging up all each other’s most depressing shit.” He braces his hands on the back of the couch and leans forward enough to kiss Eridan through the space between Feferi’s horns, if a bit awkwardly. “She lets you touch her tits, dude, what is there to be so fucking upset about? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Eridan makes a face, and even he isn’t sure how to quickly respond to this sort of statement.

“I think Eridan wants to be sad sometimes, Sollux!” She rubs at Eridan’s back, beaming at both of them, unperturbed by the soggy destruction of the furniture beneath her. “I think we should let him, when the mood strikes.”

“The mood seems to strike twice a night, at least, for your weird fuck-ritual.” He turns his head slightly to kiss one of Feferi’s horns, and traces over her fins with his fingertips. “Just lighten up a little. Haven’t you seen The Simpsons?”

Eridan rolls his eyes. “We’re not the ones addicted to syndicated human programming.”

“Programming is my shit, or didn’t you know?” Sollux reaches around Feferi to ruffle Eridan’s hair. “I still say none of this is something good snacks can’t fix.”

Eridan shakes his head beneath his hand, although he can’t prevent himself from grinning. “Whose definition of ‘good’ are we subscribing to?”

“Anything with sufficient levels of saturated fat is automatically in the running, although I’m personally willing to expand the definition to other criteria on a case by case basis.” Sollux steps back and walks around the couch to scoop pizza rolls off the floor and back onto their former home on the toppled plastic plate. “You may submit requests to me in writing, along with a box or similar package of whatever it is you’re expecting me to peruse.”

Eridan wrinkles his nose at this display and makes a sound of disgust. “Dude.”

Feferi laughs.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is eating something off the floor where you draw the line for hygiene?” Sollux immediately pops one of the pizza rolls into his mouth and talks with his mouth open, as he chews. “Excuse me if I got the impression that there was something of a grey area there.”

“Yeah, Eridan. Weren’t you going to let him pee on you?” Feferi brings her hands up to squish Eridan’s cheeks beneath her palms. “Don’t think I didn’t notice!”

“I, uh.” Eridan’s face flushes darker than it already was, and he manages a half-hearted scoff. “Well, we’ve all got Sol’s number now, and it isn’t two.”

“Shock of the sweep, right there.” Sollux is wearing the same t-shirt along with a set of baggy cargo shorts that have something clunking against his knee, in his pocket. From the state of his skin and hair, he cleaned himself up somewhat without actually setting foot into a shower. “What a plot twist.”

“Fucked up twist of fate, is what it was.” Eridan squirms in her lap, comfortable with her bulge but suddenly in the spotlight in ways he wasn’t prepared for. “Almost had a way worse wet spot, and we avoided it thanks to my quick strategic thinking.”

Feferi kisses Eridan’s cheek and laughs against his fin. “You say that like you weren’t the one who was gonna make him do it!”

Eridan groans and looks away from her.

“Keep kinkshaming him, FF. He’s into it.” Sollux eats another pizza roll. “I’m gonna heat these up. You guys want anything?”

“Yeah, a new kismesis!” Eridan snaps, without teeth.

“We might be out.” Sollux steps towards the kitchen area and shoves the plate into the microwave. “I’ll check the thermal hull.”

“I’ll take a snack!” Feferi shouts. “Please and thank you!”

Sollux salutes her, then gives Eridan a look. “See, she’s got manners.”

Eridan turns his head to look over his shoulder, and sticks his tongue out at him.

Feferi’s bulge finally retracts enough that Eridan has nothing left to sit on, and he shifts away from her lap and settles beside her to stretch his cramping leg muscles, his toes and knees clicking as he tenses them. She drapes her right arm around his shoulders and hugs him sideways, her fingertips on his upper arm, and his horns not quite in her face.

“That was way better than just staring at your phone, don’t you think?”

Eridan picks a smushed pizza roll off the side of his thigh and discards it onto the floor. “Yeah. You can’t buy this kind of entertainment.”

Feferi rubs her thumb on his upper arm in absent-minded, successive half-circles. “I don’t think that’s wholly true, but I think it’s fairly priceless!”

Sollux returns from the kitchen juggling his plastic plate of pizza rolls—which maybe shouldn’t’ve gone into the microwave—as well as a bowl containing something that isn’t yet within view, but has a spoon lodged within it, and is solid enough that it’s sticking out from it. He sits down on the arm of the couch and passes the bowl to Feferi, and scoops up a handful of pizza rolls for himself.

“Here,” he says, just after swallowing, barely chewing. “I already ate the husks but I saved the goop for you.”

“Thanks!” Feferi tilts her head up sweetly and waits for Sollux to kiss her, which he does. She laughs. “You taste like pepperoni.”

“And you taste like nothing, because I just burnt off all my flavor receptacles.”

Feferi scoops some of the Hot Pocket interior content into her mouth. “Mmm. This is the best part.”

Eridan leans away from Feferi. “You’re both fuckin’ nasty. Don’t even pretend that’s healthy.”

“If you add mayonnaise to the goop, it’s a salad.” Sollux wipes grease away from his mouth. “A disgusting technicality.”

Feferi lifts the spoon back to her mouth. “Did you know sometimes the humans feed each other like this and make sounds like they’re from a non-interstellar flying vehicle? Can you imagine such a thing?”

Sollux rummages in his pocket and pulls out a chunky piece of hardware. “Some ideas are too spectacular even for my mutant brain to consider.”

“What is that thing?” Eridan asks, intrigued.

“It’s a SONY PSP,” Sollux lisps. “I hope you enjoy hearing me say it, because I think it’s sort of entertaining to say.”

“If you’re like, two sweeps old, maybe.” Eridan pointedly ignores Feferi’s “food” and tries to get a better look at Sollux’s electronic device. “What are you playing?”

“The same goddamn thing as before.” The system boots up, and the disc spins within it. “I don't know that this is a path I would recommend in life, but that sure is a skill I've developed. I’m good at squares.”

Eridan manages to give him an affectionate sneer. “You’re also good at being foul.”

Sollux snickers. “Can I still be a foul bachelor frog if I’m in two long term relationships?”

“If you believe in your-shellf!”

Sollux laughs harder. “Yeah, you guys are all right, I guess.”

“Is that where you were?” Eridan asks. “Trying to find that thing in your pile of mess?”

“Duh.” Sollux clicks through the menus and adjusts the settings. “Unless you wanted details of what else I did after I left.”

“No!” Eridan puts his hands over his face and tries to ignore the slurry on his fingers. “I mean.”

“You’re as smooth as a shark, dude. That is, not at all.”

“Sharks are smooth as hell!” Feferi faux-protests, barely able to keep a straight face.

Sollux balances the plate on his knee, keeps hold of the PSP with his left hand, and lifts his right to give her a high five, which Feferi enthusiastically completes.

Eridan watches them from between his webbed fingers, then finally lets his hands drop when the moment has passed.

Sollux waits for the PSP and gives her a sidelong look while the UMD audibly spins. “Can you do me a favor, FF?”

Feferi licks congealed grease off the spoon and goes back for another helping. “Shore! What is it?”

“Can you stop pretending to have standards?” Sollux grins at her. “I mean, seriously. Look who you’re dating.”

“Hmmm!” The contemplative sound is muffled around the sandwich innards. “I’ll conch-sider it.”

Eridan shakes his head, still sitting in the wet spot, still nude. “What the fuck am I gonna do with you two?”

“Nothing. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about us.” Sollux reaches across Feferi’s lap with his right hand and fishes around for Eridan’s, already off to a solid start on Single Skin mode with his left hand alone. “You’re stuck with us.”

Feferi holds the bowl with one hand and grabs hold of their joined hands with her other, all three of their hands resting on her knee. “He’s right!”

Eridan huffs but can’t stop himself from smiling at them both. “Well. Good.”