Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shrimpo is not shy about what he hates. Shrimpo is not shy about claiming to be the best.

Astro…

Astro is a fool. He knows this. He is a fool who worries and tries his best to ease worries, he…

He is, also, very well aware, that if he were to say, “Shrimpo, I want to be close to you. I want to learn about you. I want to be there for you—“

It would not end well.

Astro is a fool, but one that knows better.

It starts like this:

Shrimpo insults him.

“ASTRO, MORE LIKE BAD!”

Astro blinks his hazy eyes awake, refocusing.

“Uh… what?”

“BADSTRO!!!”

Astro blinks. His eyes shift to Shrimpo; the angry frown, the slanted eyebrows, the shifting color of his antenna and face and mandibles. He takes in exhaustion, too. Bone deep, under skin, burrowed deep within bones. Like Astro’s own.

Astro blinks. Looks away. Unsure of how to feel, how to respond, how to act. Awkward.

The elevator doors open. Floor five.

Shrimpo, Astro notices. Is very loud.

If Shrimpo is as tired as Astro is, he has no idea how he manages it. He uses his ability, again and again, but it doesn’t help the toon. Constantly tired.

Strength of will, he supposes. More than Astro has. Stronger than Astro is. Maybe. Maybe.

Shrimpo is hateful, and Astro kind of detests that.

Shrimpo is hateful, and he hates everything about everyone, and he hates elevators, and he hates extracting ichor, and he hates machines, and yet, and yet— Shrimpo is still here.

Shrimpo is so tired. As tired as Astro is.

Shrimpo wears it better.

How do you befriend someone who detests everything about everything?

If there’s a simple, easy answer, Astro is incapable of finding it.

Astro’s control over dreams is… odd, to say the least. There is always a predetermined scaffolding set that the mind strays to. Recent thoughts, fears, obsessions, goals, they all play a part.

Normally, it’s easy to hold a toon’s dreams in the palm of his hands—all four thin, small, smooth hands with neat, manicured deep blue nails, the pulsing, icy-burning brightness of the culmination of unconscious dreaming potential, control over someone’s mind—and let things play out the way they’re meant to.

He stares down at it, the thing in his hands, transfixed, focused, working. If he notices things taking a turn, going violent, going frightening, his hands shift, move the dream, making it better, kinder.

Through that, he can tell: Shrimpo hates everything, Shrimpo hates himself.

All of the toons have been struggling, recently, and yet— Astro’s heart clenches.

He’s never gone into another toon’s dreams before. He’s never appeared in the flesh. Never reached down, reached into, and chosen to take root.

But—

If there’s a simple, easy answer, Astro is incapable of finding it.

He mulls it over with himself a lot. Goes back and forth on ‘should I? what if?’ so many times that the arguments for and against are seared into his eyelids.

For all Astro is trying to be reasonable, he is irrational. He never knew he was so illogical.

Because he wants to.

So he will.

And isn’t that selfish?

He sets parameters for the other toons. Routes for them to take. And he’s never done that so much, before, never preplanned a dream, a set beginning, middle, and end, for more than one toon a night, but he doesn’t want things to go wrong while he’s gone, so he does it for all of them, tries to think of something they’ll enjoy.

All of them except Shrimpo and himself. His entire attention will be there to monitor. There’s no need.

He rests himself, comfortably, under his bed’s covers to sleep, truly sleep, for the first time in a very long while. His blanket, always on him, is still around his shoulders, restrictive in its comforting cocoon. He wants it for the dream.

He closes his eyes. When he feels himself slipping, drifting, he instead reaches out for a familiar sleeping presence, the essence of it clasped between the palms of his lower set of arms, close and safe.

When he opens his eyes again, it is raining. Raining so hard that he’s soaked through, his blanket unable to shelter him, and he feels hopeless.

Hopeless, in the clinical, detached way, because this is not his dream, just the one he’s submerged himself in.

His clothes stick to his skin. His blanket is hard to move, heavy on his shoulders. His breathing wants to come in heavy, labored bursts, but he doesn’t let it, forcing his breathing steady, though still heavy, as he settles in the shock of it.

On either side, extended unnaturally high, towards the grey, storming sky, buildings loom.

He’s in an alleyway. A long, never-ending, winding alleyway, full of twists and turns and dead-ends. Stuck. That’s the entire dream. Nightmare. Whichever.

Astro heaves a breath, one so forceful it hurts his lungs, feeling small in the clinical, detached way, and his heart clenches in a way entirely his own, aching sympathy, empathy.

He searches.

He searches in word, only, because he already knows where Shrimpo is; wandering, frightened, angry— what else would he be, if not angry? Dead, maybe. Astro doesn’t want to think about it.

Everything is heavy. It’s hard to walk, hard to move, hard to run, hard to stay silent, hard to keep stealthy. If there were a machine in front of him, Astro would struggle to finish it.

His breathing is labored. Astro can’t help it.

When finally, finally, he finds himself turning a corner and existing, somewhere, in Shrimpo’s immediate path, his back hits the grey, grimy, rough wall, and he slides down. Too rough, he feels like he wrenches something in his shoulder going down. Too quick, he hits the ground with a painful jolt, and Astro stares up, up, up, as water blinds him and rain pelts him, to keep quiet. He’s freezing.

He curls into a ball, his cold, sopping blanket—with the help of all four arms—is wrapped around his knees, his legs hugged to his chest. His breaths are heavy, hot against the frigidness of everything else.

And he waits.

He’s very patient. And he’s very used to waiting.

It isn’t hard.

He doesn’t hear Shrimpo’s footsteps, drowned out by the rain, but the toon has never been good at being quiet. He doesn’t know if he should stare at Shrimpo’s imposing, approaching frame or not.

The closer he gets, though, the more Astro doesn’t have a choice, hazy eyes drawn to the mouth strung into a scowl, the tilt of his head, the water. The water. Shrimpo’s roughly textured face, like a cat’s tongue, full of tiny, sharp, backward facing hooks, trapping water, water trailing down between Shrimpo’s eyes. Water pelting against his face, against his body, like he can’t escape.

Shrimpo’s hands are clenched, by his sides, into fists.

Shrimpo, looming above him, stops. His chest is heaving, Astro can see.

Astro’s breath hitches, oddly. Is he frightened? Is that it? He can’t tell. He thinks he might be, but he can’t tell.

Shrimpo’s mouth moves. “Badstro.” Breathless, quiet, subdued. Or maybe it’s just loud? All the rain, Astro wouldn’t be surprised. It drowns things.

Astro’s mouth drops open, maybe to say something, but Shrimpo is already shouting over him; a loud, breathless, sharp crack of:

“…I HATE WHEN YOU LOOK LIKE THAT!”

Astro’s lungs won’t breathe. At least, they must struggle.

“I… you hate…”

“I HATE IT… WHEN YOU LOOK LIKE THAT!”

Astro looks away, as if it would spare Shrimpo the sight of him.

This isn’t going that well, is it? Astro feels delirious.

“I’m sorry,” he forces, like it hurts, like his eyes sting like he’s about to cry, but he can’t be, because he hasn’t cried since the ichor operation started and ruined everything, and he certainly isn’t going to cry now, so— “I’m so sorry.”

He just feels, so small, and so raw, and so pathetic. But he can ignore that, can’t he? Astro is used to it. He can push through.

Shrimpo heaves, and stares at him, glares at him. Angry, hurting, everything Astro has already known of him.

And after a long, painful handful of minutes, against the opposite wall, Shrimpo sits, across from him.

Astro spares a glance.

Shrimpo’s legs are hugged to his chest. Resolutely, Shrimpo stares at the ground. Quickly, Astro does, too.

They are both cold, and shivering, and heaving. Astro can feel, intricately, the feel and make of this dream. How to change it. How to fix it.

But would Shrimpo grow suspicious?

Shrimpo meets him and his dream changes. Astro has been accused of walking in people’s dream before, even if he hasn’t. What’s to say Shrimpo won’t catch on?

Still, Astro has no idea on what he should say, what he should do.

In the end, they sit there for most of the night.

Near the end, close to morning, Shrimpo stands and leaves.

Astro leads him to a stretch of alley, newly sheltered with his mind’s control.

Not that Shrimpo would know.

…This was always going to be a long game, wasn’t it? Astro can’t find it in him to be surprised. He’s not very good at these things.

The second time Astro shares a dream with Shrimpo, a week or so later, he’s had the setting figured out since noon the day prior, and he opens his eyes to a sun, bright and warm, and an anger. A writhing, deep-seated anger that it is not his own. It’s resentful. It’s bitter. It’s leaving Astro quite confused.

This is a good dream, he knows. Other toons long for this dream, prefer this dream, ask him for this dream; of all of them, in a garden, having a picnic. Garden view, Gardenview. How domestic.

Everyone is here. Astro, himself, is sitting on a checkered blue-and-white blanket, with Dandy—and his heart ails him—and the other main toons. His friends. Getting along, together, again.

There are trees, pine and maple and cherry blossom, all sorts of unnatural pretty, which stand like pillars between the toons. In rows, around everyone, are crops, tomatoes and corn and wheat and potatoes, encircled with stones, or gemstones, or decorative bronze gears. Idyllic. Perfect. The sun is just the right amount of warm. Toodles is playing with Glisten, laughing gleefully. Dandy is talking to people other than Astro— and, sure, maybe that was all Astro’s doing, but—

Despite it all, Shrimpo isn’t happy.

Astro doesn’t know why.

Shrimpo is picking a fight with Goob. Angry, angry, angry, itching for a fight. Shrimpo’s dream setting was going to be a boxing ring, before Astro changed it.

He knows Shrimpo is hateful. Truly, he shouldn’t be surprised.

His hands tangled in the blanket, assaulted by foreign, unheard of, impossible and dreamlike sensations, he watches. He runs his thumbs along the texture of the fabric, soft and fluffy, yet worn. Warm. Sheltering. Comforting. Constant.

In a patch of grass, Goob is trying to reach for Shrimpo, and Shrimpo is spitting and hissing like a raccoon, mandibles snapping, antennae flicking to and fro aggressively, anxiously, rippling and flowing, long. Rodger, sat near them, is looking concerned.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!!”

Goob’s arms seem to reverb, like a mechanical slinky with weight and strength behind it, clunking lowly, in preparation to grab him. “But—“

“NO!!!” Shrimpo’s hands are in fists, and Astro can tell from the way that his rage swells that he’s about to throw them.

Astro can feel the dream wanting to shift, wanting to warp. Astro refuses it. He wraps his control around dream-Goob, the coiling, all-encompassing presence of it forcing the figment to back off, to settle, to groan in disappointment and longing of a nice, long hug, and scamper back to his sister, bemoaning, “Aww, but it would have been so fun!”

But nothing more.

Shrimpo is still on the offensive, and he turns, near-immediately, to pick a fight with Teagan. Stomps up to her and shouts, standardly hateful.

“YOUR TEA TASTES TERRIBLE! IT’S NEVER GOOD. IT MUST BE THE WAY YOU BREW IT!”

Slowly, Astro sighs.

So, this is unavoidable?

It must be.

The one thing he can’t control here is Shrimpo. Unless… unless Astro were to try and alter his mental state, and though Astro knows—instinctually—that it’s possible, he’s never done it before, and he doesn’t want to mess up. What would that even do to Shrimpo?

Astro takes a deep breath.

This dream isn’t helping, he realizes. It isn’t doing anything anywhere near what he needs it to.

Astro sits, hunched over himself, thinking. What should he do? Should he let it play out as it should? Really? The way this manufactured, predetermined environment should?

Vee speaks at him, but her words are meaningless, and she doesn’t acknowledge a lack of response. Sprout speaks as if Astro had answered. Dandy nods along. Shelly cuts in with a fact about something, but the words are garbled and sit as heavy stones of white noise between them. Pebble barks. Even that sounds staticked.

What would Astro even do to change things in a way that would benefit them; them—both Astro and Shrimpo?

If he does nothing, what’s the point of being here at all? Why not let a dream replica of himself sit, stare, and do nothing?

But what would he even do?

He thinks.

Dandy says something. Shrimpo yells at someone. Sprout must be talking about a recipe, with how he drones on and on.

Is Astro just assigning things to them? Shrimpo doesn’t know them, why would the figments that he conjured behave in the way Astro knows they would?

Nonsense. He should quit thinking about this. Astro is influencing things, too.

Astro has an idea.

So, he waits, knees pressed to the picnic blanket beneath him.

Time passes, and then warps. Things transition, thrown into place, held there.

Astro waits, the backs of his thighs pressed into the plastic of the fold-out lawnchair he’s sitting in, shaded by a willow tree, far from the others.

Shrimpo, herded there by conjured dream figments and Shrimpo’s natural desire to avoid, avoid, avoid, slams the back door of the small recreation building open, the metal slamming into concrete with a resounding thrash as Shrimpo stomps forward.

Astro, swaddled in his blanket, looks up at him, blinking wide, open eyes. Focused. Interested. Hopeful, maybe.

Will this work? Astro has always figured himself bad at social schemes, and this is definitely one of them.

Shrimpo huffs a long, aggravated breath. Then, he points.

“THAT’S MINE!”

Astro, not for the first time and not for the last, blinks. Confusion, like a cold storm, brews in him.

His mouth works, but his voice almost fails him. “…yours?”

“YES!!”

Lost, Astro follows the curve of Shrimpo’s finger, black nail curved at the tip, claw-like, to the chair Astro is sitting on.

“The… the chair? You want— the chair belongs to you?”

Shrimpo’s teeth grit. His next words are a searing, assertive, “YES!! MINE!” And he readies his fists like he’s prepared for a fight.

Simply, Astro slips from the chair. He sits on the grass beside it.

For a moment, as they stare at each other, there is nothing but the sound of the fake wind, the fake birds, the feel of the fake sun, the muted feel of the fake cool grass under Astro’s star-patterned pajama pants.

Then, Shrimpo’s the one blinking, head recoiling as the toon barks a sharp, “WHAT?”

Shrimpo must have wanted a fight.

Astro isn’t going to fight him. It isn’t something he considers. It seems counterproductive to getting Shrimpo to like him.

Stiltedly, entire body rigid, Shrimpo sits.

Astro sits under him, calmly, serenely.

They sit there.

Maybe Astro is acting too much like himself? He doesn’t have a clue, but they sit there.

Shrimpo eases, relaxing. He holds his chin in the palm of his hand, elbow on the armrest, entire body tilted away from Astro on the ground. He grimaces, chews on his nails, watches the grass swaying dubiously, as if it could jump out and attack him.

And that’s the way the dream wants to go, oddly. A large, armored creature to emerge. Astro doesn’t let it. He forces it back.

They sit in silence, before Shrimpo shouts, “WHY ARE YOU SITTING THERE?”

Astro blinks. “Where else would I sit?”

Shrimpo scoffs, but says nothing else.

They sit there, and when Shrimpo wants to leave, Astro sends dream-Rodger to burst the door open half a second after Shrimpo stands.

Dream-Rodger opens his mouth, a script Astro designed, to ask for help. Predictably, Shrimpo cuts him off and starts a fight.

Astro sits and watches. His eyes drift to the empty seat.

Shrimpo shouts something. Astro’s eyes move back to him.

Shrimpo is as a feral animal. He’s given a good dream, no threat, nice food, good company, and all he wants to do is to fight someone, to leave.

It must be part of his nature. Astro wants to be there for him, because he is so lonely, and so tired. But it is apart of his nature. Astro won't get far if he tries to ignore that. That toons having nightmares about him is not because Shrimpo is misunderstood. It is because of his nature.

Astro, himself, is bound to his own, as well. It's how things are meant to be

Eventually, the dream ends.

Astro can’t tell if he’s doing what he wants to, but it’s something.

It’s natural for someone to prefer someone familiar to them than someone not. It’s natural for people to start to get along with someone when they spend time together. It’s psychological; you like who you’re around.

Normally, Shrimpo doesn’t let people around. Astro is frightened of trying. So he visits him in dreams.

The next dream, a week later, has them sitting by a river.

In the humid air of a warm forest, the sun sparkles on the water of the river, bright and beautiful, winking like jewels. The trees have them sheltered.

They sit in the dirt.

“How are you?” Astro asks.

Fidgeting with his prawn trap, Shrimpo answers, “SHUT UP!”

Astro does.

Astro is getting closer to figuring out what Shrimpo’s ideal dream is. He’s the happiest with this one than he’s been with any of them, and it’s fishing.

Fishing fish. And fishing prawn.

Astro doesn’t know what to make of it. If it’s even important at all.

There is a group headed for the elevator, for an expedition.

Quietly, not apart of the initial preparations to set off, Astro settles in beside Shrimpo.

Shrimpo gives him a look. Glares at him.

Blankly, Astro blinks, tilting his head.

Shrimpo scoffs. “WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?”

Astro looks away.

He doesn’t stop. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

Astro is here for Shrimpo, but he obviously can’t say that.

Anxiously, he opens his mouth. Vee steps in for him. Her words roll over him like a cool tide, relief a simple thing. Voice a smooth electronic song.

Astro’s hands clench, all four wrapped in his blanket.

Each of the dreams they share are days, sometimes a week or more, apart from each other. That’s not counting when dream-Astro sits and does nothing in the general area of the other toon.

Astro tries to be discreet. He doesn’t know if he is being discreet enough.

If Shrimpo is going to figure it out, he figures, it would be because Astro gave it away.

He’s a good actor, isn’t he? He’s a main character on the show, at least. That has to count for something.

Shrimpo harrumphs, crossing his arms and turning his body away.

During their run, though, Astro is at Shrimpo’s beck and call. He does everything to be helpful, everything to stay close, everything to be valuable.

There’s no telling how well he does.

A dream they share includes an arcade.

Shrimpo, appearing to have been worn down, wins Astro prizes. He grins proudly, proclaiming that he is the best.

Astro nods along. He smiles.

Maybe his cheeks are the slightest bit red. Maybe his chest is feeling the slightest bit warm. And maybe he isn’t quite immune to psychological principles, either.

Three months of regular meetings have had their toll.

But his goal has not changed.

Three months of regular meetings must have had their toll.

Would Shrimpo allow Astro to get closer, now? While they’re awake? While Shrimpo believes it matters?

He’s frightened. He’s buzzing with it. It sidetracks him at night, when he should be focused on the others’ dreams, and not his own reveries.

But it is a mantra: he wants to be there for him. Everyone else has someone there for them. Shrimpo is achingly alone. Astro feels achingly useless.

At his core, he is irrational. Emotional. More than he’d ever thought himself before, but he’s learning things.

In the dead of night, Astro builds his resolve.

Chapter Text

In the end, the whole thing is really anticlimactic.

Astro had worried for little. He expected worse.

A mission ends, and he follows—dutifully, as he had most of the time during it—behind Shrimpo, at his side.

They get halfway to Shrimpo’s room before he turns, sharply, to face him. Arms crossed, eyebrows twitching, confused and angry. “WHY ARE YOU HERE?!”

Would he take ’I want to be with you’ well?

Most likely not.

Astro outstretches a hand from his blanket, inside of it dangles a charm; silver, warm with the heat of Astro’s body, shaped into the form of a star, the same kind of star on Astro’s face, hung on a long black leather cord; a necklace.

Shrimpo stares at it.

Astro’s arm is growing cold in the chill of the air conditioned hallways. He’s always struggled to retain heat.

“IT’S UGLY!” Shrimpo finally decides on, and Astro doesn’t know if his heart should wither, but his offering is stolen from his hand before he could even have time to think about it. 

Shrimpo holds it up to his face, examining. His hands aren’t clenched around the cord, though, and he supposes it’s a win. That he isn’t trying to break it.

Shrimpo’s feet move, turning away, and he stomps his way to his room. 

Astro, breath half caught in his throat, follows behind, eyes trained on the texture of Shrimpo’s head, the way his fins move with his head as he walks. The way Shrimpo casts a glance behind him, eyes locking with Astro’s, before he whips his head back around, facing forward. The way his hand darts forward to open his room’s door. The way he leaves it open for Astro to follow him in.

Astro knows what it looks like because Shrimpo has dreamed of it, but still, he looks around curiously. Scuffed, punched through walls, stained a deep burgundy in places, concerning places. Shrimpo must have punched himself raw and bleeding. Something strange curls in him at the thought.

He looks around curiously, wondering where he should sit. 

Shrimpo walks to his desk, jerking the chair back in a strong, harsh movement, the wood banging into the floor. He sits, arms crossing over his chest, glaring at the desk, at the scattered papers on it, the red notebook, the red and black pens.

Astro considers. Should he sit on the bed? On the floor? In Shrimpo’s lap?

Of course not, but still.

Astro, feet light and quiet, skitters over to Shrimpo’s bed, where Astro plants himself, hands wrung in his blanket. He stares at everything, anything, a nervous energy tingling his exhaustion-dulled senses.

He tries to force it down. He tries to count. One, two, three, four, so on, so on, match his breathing to it.

Shrimpo pulls the notebook open. Grabs a pen. Scribbles. 

Then stops.

Shrimpo takes a breath, harsh and loud. It must hurt to breathe like that. “HOW LONG ARE YOU GOING TO SIT THERE?!” 

Astro’s lungs must be in a weird limbo, because he doesn’t know if he breathes. “I… as long as you’ll let me, Shrimpo.”

Shrimpo’s shoulders hunch up. “I HATE YOUR AWFUL ANSWERS!!”

Astro doesn’t know where the necklace he gave him is. Astro wants to hold his hand.

Astro wants to hold his hand?

Shrimpo returns to writing in his notebook with wild abandon. Astro wonders what he’s writing about.

Oh, it seems he does. He does want to hold Shrimpo’s hands.

It’s not like he’ll ever get to, but still.

“I HATE IT WHEN SCRAPS GETS IN MY WAY!” Shrimpo goes on, working himself up. “I HATE EXTRACTING ICHOR!! I HATE THOSE EXPEDITIONS! I HATE!! I HATE!!! I HATE IT WHEN— I HATE IT WHEN—! BADSTRO, YOU SAW!!”

Shrimpo rants and he raves and he curses, ramming a fist into his desk, and then continuing to spit vitriol, which devolves into standard statements about how much he hates the weather.

“DAFFODILS SUCK!!! THEY’RE SO YELLOW!! WHY ARE THEY SO YELLOW!? I HATE IT. I HATE LAKES. I HATE DIRT. I HATE IT WHEN I HAVE TO GO IN LAKES.”

Forget that they can’t even leave the facility. Forget that they haven’t had the opportunity to see a lake in months. Forget it, because Shrimpo hates lakes.

It makes Astro’s heart lighter, for some reason. For some reason, he likes that Shrimpo hates. Toons are so frightened, most of them seem to have forgotten—or perhaps they never learned, or were taught, or were allowed to learn or to be taught—how to hate.

Shrimpo shouts, and when he gets tired of shouting, he stops. He writes, or perhaps draws, but he does something with his pen to his notebook.

When the warning comes for thirty minutes until lights out, quietly, Astro leaves.

At the door, he murmurs, “What dream do you want tonight?”

Shrimpo, his head supported by his fist, straightens like he’s heard an explosion, nearby and a threat to his safety, eyes narrowed. “YOU FUCK WITH MY DREAMS?”

Astro…

Astro’s eyes widen, naturally, as if he’s surprised. Surprised by the very idea, he hopes it comes across as.

He shakes his head. “That’s… no. Not really. That’s not how it works, anyway.”

“HOW WHAT WORKS!?”

“The— the dreams,” he tries to explain, forcing himself with every fiber of his being, suddenly locked up, to look Shrimpo in the eyes, to act natural. “I don’t touch them if I don’t have a reason to.”

Mostly true. Astro’s reasons can be flimsy, he’s found.

Shrimpo seems to relax, scoffing. “I DON’T CARE! DON’T TOUCH MY DREAMS!!”

After half a beat, Astro nods, stiltedly. “Noted,” he says, on his way out. “Have a nice night, Shrimpo.”

“I DON’T CARE!”

“Oh—! ASTRO!”

Astro can’t comprehend the excited squeal before, heat, hot, fire is wrapping around him, yanking him against something fluffy, so solid it knocks the air out of him.

His arms are trapped, something— Goob’s arms, coiled around his torso, all of Astro’s hands awkwardly shoved into his body, painful. It’s hard to hold onto the blanket. He desperately doesn’t want to drop it.

“Hiya buddy!” Goob crows, head tilting next to his face, eyes imploring, teeth sharp in his mouth. “Did I surprise you?”

Astro’s legs feel unsteady, like they’re made of splintering wood. “I— yes,” he gasps, ruffled, staring. “Would— could you please… let me go, now?”

Goob hums, as if considering, then squeezes tighter, nuzzling his face against Astro’s cheek. “Hug time!”

Okay, he thinks, resigned, every nerve alight, feeling like he’s on fire. Goob runs hot, Astro feels like he’s being smothered in heat, struggling to breathe.

“I HATE TOONS WHO DON’T LISTEN!” Shrimpo shouts, directly behind him, claws suddenly nicking into his arm, outside hands clenched around a point of context between Astro and Goob. “LET GO!!”

There’s a distinct creaking sound from the metal of Goob’s arms as the toon flinches, grip suddenly weakening as he yelps, taking several quick steps back. Shrimpo’s hands release him, then curl around Astro’s shoulders, patting them down.

“Ow! Shrimpo!” 

“SHRIMPO WINS!” Shrimpo barks. The doors open. Floor seventeen. “I WIN!” 

Shrimpo drags him onto the floor. Astro follows willingly, casting a concerned look to Goob before he’s around a corner, the creak and hum of the building a permeating pressure, weighing on his shoulders.

When they slow to a stop, Astro realizes, belatedly, that one of Shrimpo’s hands are still on him. A firm, gentle pressure. He turns his head to their point of contact. Abruptly, he realizes the issue.

A small section of his blanket is torn. Not much, but just enough to reveal a small strip of his pale skin, air cooling on his heated upper arm, of his upper set of arms.

He looks up, to Shrimpo’s face. 

Shrimpo’s eyes are on the tear, blinking as if bewildered. 

“Shrimpo?” He asks. “Are you… alright?”

With a start, Shrimpo shakes his head. “FINE! I’M AWESOME!”

Shrimpo doesn’t mention it.

When they get back, Astro sews the tear shut. He’s confused by the way Shrimpo’s eyes stray to the spot the next time they meet.

Shrimpo tolerates Astro hanging around him. Shrimpo talks to him, rants to him, sits and waits until Astro is finished talking.

Astro tries, he really does, to give good, sensible gifts. A notebook here, a set of blue pens there, a few sets of red boxing hand wraps.

If his gifts are used, he can barely catch them in glimpses.

It makes him feel better, though. That he’s helping.

In the late hours of the night Astro is sitting in the kitchen.

He’d planned to share a dream with Shrimpo, but Shrimpo is still awake.

The other toons’ dreams have already been preplanned.

He has nothing to do, and that shouldn’t make him feel so… dejected. He shouldn’t feel… lonely.

He knows he’s needed. He knows his job is important and necessary and— as Teagan has said, a godsend to the others. It’s just that—

He wants to spend time with Shrimpo.

He hasn’t had a free night in years. He doesn’t know what to do with himself.

And Shrimpo is in his room, wide awake, and Astro is trying his damndest not to doze off over his cold cup of hot chocolate, stale since he spent hours doing nothing but sitting, alone, in his spot at the communal dining table.

Despite his best efforts, eventually he begins to drift. Slowly, and without direction. The swirling mists of sleep. His forehead rests against the rim of his mug.

He’s interrupted by stomping, and his eye snaps open so quick he can’t recognize the shapes in front of him, head snapping up. Pure instinct has the words tumbling from his mouth, sleepy and panicked, “Wha— sorry!”

Who’s not asleep—?

He turns his head. Shrimpo blinks back at him, surprised, before his eyes narrow and he scolds, “QUIT BEING AWAKE!”

Astro blinks, gaping. “I— wha…?”

“GO TO BED!”

Astro doesn’t. Instead, he watches, blinking blearily, as Shrimpo turns to stomp to the fridge, yanking the door open to rifle through, rummaging loudly, cold light across the linoleum floor bringing illumination to the dark, quiet kitchen.

Shrimpo looks good like this, he thinks, pulling himself into awareness, dizzy with it, looking down to his mug and then back up, at Shrimpo’s back, as harsh shadows emphasize the movement of his hands, the Tupperware he pulls from the fridge.

Blankly, Astro stares as Shrimpo curses under his breath, prying the lid open, and pouring the entire meal into the trash. 

Shrimpo tosses the empty Tupperware into the sink, the glaring mirror drawn on with pink chalk marker a damning giveaway to the owner of the food he just threw out.

Ah, well.

It is the way Shrimpo is.

Astro sits, resigned, helplessly fond, only mildly concerned.

He throws out two helpings of Rodger’s food, but returns the third, before he figures he’s done enough. As he stomps out of the kitchen, he points to Astro, finger shaking with his aggressiveness. 

“I WASN’T HERE! TELL THEM YOU SAW NOTHING!!”

And of course Astro listens, pushing his mug off to the side and laying his head on the table properly, eye slipping closed.

And of course Astro listens; truly, he saw nothing, he saw no one walk into the kitchen, he doesn’t know what happened to the food, even as Glisten bemoans his fallen meal to anyone who’ll listen, and even as Rodger and Teagan are without their food, the only remaining helping going to Toodles.

And of course Astro listens, he wants to get to know Shrimpo, and any time spent is good enough for him.

It’s who Shrimpo is. Astro doesn’t mind. In the grand scheme of things, someone like Shrimpo was always going to be made for the show. 

They need someone who hates, in a way. Like how they need someone who dreams.

“Ahem— Astro!”

Astro’s eye opens. Quickly, his mouth catches up. “—Yes, Sprout?”

Sprout’s mouth is pulled into a frown. “Keep focused,” he admonishes, “don’t doze off when we’re out here in danger.”

Thoughtlessly, Astro nods, concern and guilt a churning thing in his gut. “Mhm… Sorry.”

The doors open. Floor twenty. Pebble runs off first. The rest of them soon after.

“I’M BETTER!” Shrimpo shouts, predictably, hands a cherry red with his boxing hand wraps. “GREENIE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT!! I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE. SLEEP WHENEVER!”

Astro blinks. Nearby, Brightney and Sprout give him bewildered looks.

Astro can’t help the way his cheeks warm. The way he feels soft, thankful, awake.

“Oh, I…,” he tries to stamp down his smile, but his lips still curve up, “thank you, Shrimpo.”

Abruptly, Shrimpo turns away from him, his arms crossed. “DON’T MENTION IT.”

Astro enters a dream of Shrimpo’s that he hasn’t touched, and he opens his eyes to dust, in his mouth, in his eye, in his lungs, in the swirling winds of the dream.

There is noise, too. Raucous, endless noise. He can’t stand it.

He is in a gladiator’s ring, and the noise is cheering from the stands. Everyone in the stands is human, but Astro can’t recognize a single one.

He isn’t looking at the stands, anyhow, he’s staring at the hulking monstrosity across from him. Dripping ichor. Bipedal. Large, wolf-like, gnashing teeth and mandibles, large eyes which narrow, a hanging necklace with a star charm, and he knows what this is, he knows who this is, the armored plating peeking through the mess of ichor, ichor, ichor, but he looks so much like—

“Dandy?” Astro gasps.

It was wrong to say anything.

The dream surges around him with rage, and Shrimpo howls like a horrific thing, and Astro knows, instinctually, that he cannot fight.

That he cannot run. That he cannot beg. That— at the very least, Astro is going to die in this dream, and he better not feel frustrated with it later, because there’s no way he could ever take it out on Shrimpo.

Astro is the one who got himself into this.

The pain of being crushed and maimed and ripped apart is something he saves himself, though. Shrimpo bears down on him, and when Astro is, predictably, blood and cloth on the dry ground, Astro sighs, pulls himself into being in the stands, near the front.

Shrimpo thrashes. Slashes the floor at random. Growls and hisses and howls in rage at the audience. The gold star on his chest is dirtied, yet catches the glint of hot sunlight.

Astro sits near the front.

The second Shrimpo catches sight of him, he charges. The large body of himself tries to climb the stands. Brick and wood crumble beneath him, but he can’t. He throws himself with everything he has, and the dream echoes his desperation, his frustration, his want— get back here, Astro. Come back. I’m sorry. Come back.

But Astro can’t, really.

It pains him to leave.

Shrimpo wrecks havoc on the dream when he leaves. When Astro is gone, Shrimpo kills the handlers and finds his way up to the stands. Astro is already gone, of course, so he kills as many watchers as possible. Witnesses. They saw him murder Astro.

There is a dream where Shrimpo decides to tear people to shreds. It was a good dream from the start, but Shrimpo can do what he wants.

There is blood and ichor and visceral stuff all over him. Guts. But he’s laughing.

Cackling like a witch who won, like a dying thing. Laughing so hard he chokes on it, then takes a bite from the carnage.

Astro doesn’t know what to do with it. With himself. There is an odd, curling feeling inside of him. It wraps around his rip cage. It feels like a strangled sort of fond. He can’t name it.

The dream version of him is taken, pressed flush against Shrimpo’s bloody side.

“DON’T WORRY! DON’T WORRY.” 

Astro stares at the ball of light, eyes wide, his heart beating out of control.

“I’M THE BEST!! YOU’RE WITH ME!”

Shrimpo wipes a bloodied hand across dream-Astro’s cheek. Astro thinks his heart may have stopped.

“I HATE THOSE TOONS!!”

Astro is dizzy. He’s dizzy. He can’t stop watching. He never can. It doesn’t matter what he’s meant to be doing.

Shrimpo cares about him. He does in every room.

Astro is enraptured by it.

It’s very different than how toons normally show it. Normally feel it. Because Shrimpo cares about him, but he still hates him. Just not completely. Just not enough.

Astro can’t handle it. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t know what to make of it.

It can’t be called love. It can’t be called hate. Nothing between could fit.

They are friends. And they care about each other.

And they are glued at the hip every expedition.

And Astro’s friends have noticed.

Isn’t that enough? 

Chapter Text

Floor twenty-nine.

Astro and Shrimpo are extracting at a small cluster of three machines, right next to each other.

It, like most things that happen on expeditions so low, occurs quickly, with little time to react.

They’re extracting. Astro is staring down at his stars, swirling around the extractor’s wheel crank, tugging it along. He thinks he hears something, or maybe he senses something, but he glances to the side, and when he sees the slow, irregular gait of a twisted turning the corner—an amalgamation of suffering and strife that does not sleep—he reacts, entirely, without thinking.

It is care. It is a sort of devotion. It is love.

But Astro’s four arms dart out and reach for Shrimpo—a hand on his shoulder, a hand on his wrist, a hand on his waist, a hand on his upper arm—and yanks the other toon closer, into the cocoon of his arms. His feet are taking rapid, small steps backward. Shrimpo’s face is smushed against Astro’s neck.

Astro’s lower arms drag the blanket, tied around his neck and resting on his shoulders, back into place, wrapped around them both. His back hits the wall. There’s a cluttered wire shelving unit on one side of them, a half-full extractor on the other.

Shrimpo starts to struggle, tries to pull back. The twisted grows closer. 

With one hand, Astro keeps the blanket secure. With two hands, Astro holds Shrimpo locked in the cage of his arms with force. With his last hand, he soothes circles into Shrimpo’s skin, smooth fingertips against rough, textured flesh. His breath stutters in his throat. Astro can’t breathe.

He sits there, and he watches, Shrimpo stilled against him quickly, as the twisted shambles past. Its eyes are dead. Ichor leaks from them, as ichor leaks from its mouth. It stinks of musty decay. Like abandonment. Its steps sound like sacks of meat hitting the floor. It misses them entirely.

Astro holds his breath until it’s past their hiding spot. And he cares for Shrimpo dearly, but they’d have been caught if he’d been out. That’s why he’d grabbed him. To protect him. 

And he cares for Shrimpo dearly, so he steals a scant few extra seconds of stillness in the wake of his own dawning horror before he forces his body to relax, arms going limp around Shrimpo.

“It… it’s gone,” he whispers. “We’re safe.”

Pebble… lost one. That’s what happened. It must have. Pebble lost one, and it almost saw them, Astro was just keeping them safe—

His blanket falls open. Shrimpo shifts, and Astro has no reason to keep him there.

He’s tempted to still keep him there, but he doesn’t. Shrimpo would hate him for it.

He— four arms. No one is meant to know about that. The only one who does is Dandy and Sprout and Pebble and Shelly and Vee—

He doesn’t know how Shrimpo will react. He doesn’t regret anything, though.

Shrimpo’s head pulls away. His eyes lock onto Astro’s. He has that same unhappy frown, but his eyebrows are twitching, eyes wide and narrowing and blinking.

He still hasn’t stepped back.

Astro doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t know what Shrimpo is thinking, how he’s feeling, they aren’t asleep— Astro can’t control Shrimpo’s mind like that while they’re awake. He’s never tried.

Should he? 

No.

Astro doesn’t move, stock still. His hands are still in various, loose positions on Shrimpo’s body. Shrimpo’s palms are on his chest, fingers splayed across grey cotton fabric, from when the other toon had tried to push himself away. 

Their points of contact burn like brands on his skin. He is suddenly so hot. Burning up from the inside. Bleeding.

Shrimpo’s mouth opens to say something, but nothing comes out. He closes his mouth, starts to say something again, then shuts it. He can’t seem to say anything. Can’t seem to find the words.

Astro is on fire. Embarrassment and shame and hope and fear and— and— they’re so close, really, it’s just—

Shrimpo’s eyes fall to his hands, defined and calloused and sturdy and strong, on Astro’s thin grey t-shirt, before Shrimpo’s body wrenches away from his.

Astro’s own mouth opens. He can’t force himself to speak. 

Quickly, Shrimpo stomps away, back to the machine he’d been working on. His hands lash out to grab the circle crank. He says nothing, but he fumes during his extraction.

Astro, frozen, stands, until he has to move his locked limbs from the floor and move to his own extractor.

For the rest of the expedition, Shrimpo says very little. Astro catches him looking at him, from the corner of his eye, when Astro should really be preoccupied.

Shrimpo talks to other toons, but not him. He’s strangely subdued. Quiet. Unlike himself.

It makes Astro feel small. And sheepish. And apologetic. But there’s nothing he can do but follow Shrimpo, as he always has, to protect him.

If no one knows how much of a freak he is, it’s fine, he can live like he isn’t.

The second someone who shouldn’t know does, the illusion falls apart. Astro is left feeling even more like a fraud.

But it’s fine. He’s always been. He’s always had to push on regardless.

The others who know accept him for the fraud he is.

He just doesn’t know if Shrimpo will.

He can hope, though, that things will turn out okay.

He doesn’t know if he should share a dream with him.

He hadn’t been planning to. There isn’t a reason to, either.

But Astro wants to hear Shrimpo’s voice. He wants to get an idea of how Shrimpo is feeling. He wants Shrimpo to yell at him. He wants to be near him. Just for a moment. Just for a little bit longer.

There is no reason to. But he wants to. 

So he does.

He’s very selfish, he thinks. Quietly, privately, and to himself. But it’s obvious, if you really look into his soul.

He opens his eye to Shrimpo’s dream buzzing with raucous energy, so strong it shakes the foundations of the dream, the lines of Astro’s bones.

He opens his eye to a bookshelf, in a library, with the texture of smooth felt beneath the fingers of his upper set of arms, outstretched outside of the sanctity of his blanket, holding a deep crimson book by its spine. The air is warm, not cold. As dreams normally are.

The book’s title reads, in curling, fairy tale gilded script, ‘The Futility of Hatred’.

His eye widens. He blinks.

Shrimpo has never dreamed him with his hands free like this before. This is a new development. Guilt weighs heavy on his collarbones, as does the concern that leads him to look from side, to side.

He finds nothing. He knows that other toons are nearby. He knows that Shrimpo is in the library, too. He can feel his energy, his fluctuations, the rage and confusion and something that burns him on contact, the second he tries to identify it. Churning and all encompassing. A hurricane, a house fire. Too strong, too much, too loud; and that is more like Shrimpo. It makes more sense than the sullen silence.

He pulls the book into his blanket, holding it in the crook of his lower left arm, then reaches out with both upper hands to skim the bookshelves, his thin, deft fingers dragging across the spines as he walks.

He tries to act natural; as he should. He meanders the shelves. He grabs books and holds them in the crook of his arms. He’s hyper aware of Shrimpo’s presence, his shouting voice carrying across the library and the position of his being a glaring pinpoint of focus in Astro’s mind, but he does not seek him out.

Eventually, he doesn’t have to. 

He turns a corner, and there he is. Seething, glowering, his hands fisted at his sides.

Astro stops. Ignores the breath caught in his lungs. The hands of his top set of arms curled around the edges of his blanket, half open.

They stare at each other. A moment passes.

Astro tilts his head, fingers pressing against the fabric of his blanket. “Shrimpo…?”

As if struck, Shrimpo strides forward with purpose. Astro watches, mute, as his hands flash out, crushing his shoulders in a bruising grip, using it to shake him back and forth, back and forth.

Astro’s vision blurs. He reaches to grab Shrimpo’s wrists, but the toon doesn’t budge. His feet struggle to catch him when his balance is thrown off. “I— Shrimpo?!”

“SHUT UP.”

Astro’s left shoulder is released. He’s hit across the face in the next moment. His lower set of arms loose their hold on the books, surprised, and they hit the ground in a mess of paper.

Head snapped to the side, a burning heat on his cheek where the blow had landed, Astro finally realizes that he’s being attacked.

Shrimpo is attacking him? Shrimpo is— Shrimpo wants—Astro can tell—to hurt him? Hurt him?

In his dreams, Shrimpo’s sharp-toothed rage leads him to lash out, hurt anyone and everyone. But it’s never been so targeted towards Astro before. So purposeful. 

This is his fault? It must be. Why else? Why else would things have changed?

Astro’s head turns, eye wide and blinking and shocked. He meets Shrimpo’s gaze.

Shrimpo’s lips pull back. His teeth are as sharp as they are while he’s awake. Sometimes they’re sharper in his dreams. Sometimes they’re duller.

Shrimpo shoves him back. Trying to catch himself, Astro trips over something behind his left foot, something that hadn’t been there before, something that shouldn’t be there. He knows on an intimidate level, the same level he connects with this dream on, that it’s Shrimpo’s left boot.

His world whirls past as he falls. He hits the floor hard, and stares up, his lungs aching, his body heaving, his mind too stunned to move.

Shrimpo stares back down. His left leg is poised outward. Astro is dizzy.

A foot plants itself on Astro’s chest, over his ribcage. The force knocks the air from him, makes the bones of his body creak.

Astro’s hands are around Shrimpo’s ankle. All four of them. His blanket is still tied around his throat, but with the way it’s pulling, it cuts off some of his breathing room.

His breaths come in shallow gasps and pants. He can’t look away from Shrimpo’s face; unreadable and cruel and conflicted; frightened and frightening.

The dream’s frantic fever pitch settles into a loud, pinpointed stream of unconscious thought, which Astro cannot follow, nor understand. It scalds him, pours over him like geyser spray, glacier water.

And Astro could leave. He could leave. In this moment, he could leave. He could wake up. He could abandon this dream. He could shift things so that Astro wouldn’t feel more pain. He could leave a dream-like manifestation of himself in his place.

But he doesn’t. He can’t bring himself to.

He’s selfish, and he misses Shrimpo, and this is what Shrimpo wants, and if sticking with him means that Shrimpo take his frustration out on him in his dreams, his betrayal or anger or whichever, then so be it. If it means that, after, tomorrow, they can talk and he can be forgiven, so be it. Even if it doesn’t mean that. Even if it will.

He stares into Shrimpo’s eyes, and finds that he doesn’t care. The why is insignificant. He is willing to be hurt like this, for Shrimpo.

And Astro isn’t going to cry about it. He hasn’t cried since the ichor operation started and made their lives a living hell. This isn’t going to be what does it. He’s been betrayed and ignored and discarded and worried over. This isn’t going to be where he cries.

Shrimpo bends down, towards him. His closeness is entrancing. The way his weight shifts to press down on him is agonizing. A hand tipped with curved claws seizes his face, crushing into his cheeks and cheekbones, wrenching his head to the side and flush with the floor, neck exposed.

“I hate you,” Shrimpo hisses, so quiet and full of vitriol that Astro shakes with it. “I hate you.” Soft pressure marks around the pulse points of Astro’s neck; fingers. “I hate how you look. I hate how pretty you are.”

The hand on Astro’s throat constricts. He couldn’t breathe before, and he can’t now. He chokes and wheezes, but he can’t move his head, even as he tries. His hands tighten on Shrimpo’s ankle, but do little.

Shrimpo’s breaths come ragged, too. 

“I hate what you do. I hate you— Astro, I HATE you. You’re too good to stand.” 

Astro’s mind runs blank.

The hand on his neck is released. He heaves and coughs and thrashes, legs kicking out, hands belatedly trying to throw Shrimpo’s leg off his sternum, but Shrimpo doesn’t budge.

Astro could fight harder, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t even dare. He doesn’t want to.

Shrimpo’s hand drags a harsh line down his chest, down his abdomen, fisting in the hem of his shirt, yanking.

Teeth, and hot, hot breath ghost his neck. Astro freezes, a strangled, pathetic sound in the back of his throat.

The teeth dig into his flesh. It feels like his airway is being crushed. It feels like his soul is. Shrimpo’s mouth is warm and wet and undulating. His tongue drags across his skin.

Shrimpo’s hand releases his shirt. Skirts downward. Pressed meanly into Astro’s crotch.

He gasps. “—get off!”

Shrimpo’s teeth tighten. Astro’s voice is small and trembling, his eyes sting, “get off! Get off! Get off!”

He doesn’t. 

His teeth release his neck, and Astro kicks out with his feet, and his arms grab onto Shrimpo every which way to tug at him. The hand just forces itself against his crotch harder, and Shrimpo is just so close, and so hot, and so alluring, and his mouth was on him, and he’s saying these things about how pretty Astro is—

He didn’t choose for his body to get interested, even if only halfway. Only barely. Frantically.

It’s mortifying.

He’s infatuated with him. In every way possible. In any way he can be. He’s been for a while.

Shrimpo grunts against Astro’s skull. It must be the effort of holding him down.

“Shut UP! You pulled that goddamn stunt, Astro, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!”

Astro’s breath catches.

“Let go of me,” he whines, pathetically. His hips jerk. His face burns. His eye stings, but he isn’t going to cry.

What is Shrimpo doing? What is this? He can’t handle it.

“NO!” Shrimpo spits, and he moves, all at once; his hands release him entirely, but converge on his throat, tangled in the blanket tied snugly around it, bruising his skin.

The tie is undone. Astro stares at Shrimpo, dazed, but he can’t for long. Shrimpo’s hands grab him, tug at him, Shrimpo’s leg is dragged off his chest, settled onto the floor.

Astro is hauled onto his side, scrambling. The blanket, now freed, is pulled off of his back. Hands force Astro onto his stomach. Astro’s hands on Shrimpo don’t do much of anything at all; he isn’t trying hard enough, and they’re shaken easily. He paws at everything close to him, restricted to the floor. He can’t reach behind him well enough to snag his frantic fingers on anything Shrimpo.

Astro’s shirt is tugged up. A force—Shrimpo’s body—settles on his bare lower back, straddling him, trapping him. Astro’s body, inches off the floor from his thrashing and his attempt to stand, to get up, to crawl away, thumps against the wooden flooring, stuck. Unable to move.

Shrimpo curses.

Astro opens his mouth, sounding desperate, “Let me—“

—“SHUT UP!” 

Astro could leave. He could escape this. Shrimpo wouldn’t even know that Astro was here. If Astro plays his cards right—

Fingers are splayed on his back, warm and calloused and clawed at the nails.

He stays put.

Shrimpo seethes. “Shut up, pretty boy!”

Astro is overwhelmed.

It’s like— it’s almost like—

Shrimpo wants—

That’s silly. That’s dumb. Shrimpo feels hurt. Shrimpo is lashing out in his dreams, but—

And Astro isn’t going to cry. He isn’t going to cry. He—

He sobs. His vision so full of tears, he’s blind, and his throat so choked he’s suffocating, he near-wails, “Shrimpo— what are you talking about?”

Claws tear into his shirt, dull but with enough force to tear. It’s cotton, light, breathable— it shreds easily. He feels the air hit his skin as it’s torn open in a long line from his back, aches with the way the seams are yanked until they break, hiccups and sobs as his shirt is ripped from him in tatters.

A hand, nearly gentle, caresses his face. The dampness of it. Fingers spread wide and commandeering, covering the expanse of the dark half of his face, dipping into his mouth. Astro feels wet and pathetic and foolish all over, but he doesn’t even have to be here. He’s a wet wound, a soaking ache.

He can’t stop crying.

He doesn’t know why.

He does.

The hand leaves his face.

He hears the tearing of his blanket and he wants to devolve into hysterics. He holds himself together by a thread. His breathing is so quick the world spins and his thoughts stutter.

It feels like a puzzle piece has slotted itself into place. He can feel the dream pulse with love, lust, want—

It’s so intense he couldn’t place it. But it must be. So close to hatred he hadn’t noticed what it truly was. He’d thought it was something like care, affection, but—

It makes sense.

Finally, finally, he understands Shrimpo.

He hates. Of course Shrimpo hates what he loves, too. What he lusts over. Shrimpo’s dreams haven’t been riotous in this way for anyone other than him. The ones centered around him.

Shrimpo grabs each of his upper arms by the wrists. It leaves his lower arms bent oddly. 

Shrimpo ties his upper wrists together with strips of his blanket’s fabric, knotted snug and oppressive, but unbelievably, his heart settles some. Its frantic beat quells. He loves that blanket.

“I— thank you…,” through tears, he chokes, “my blanket— thank you Shrimpo, I—…” He sniffs.

Shrimpo freezes. His emotions swell with something that aches so fiercely it feels like a stab wound. Astro flinches with it.

By his head, heavy handed and harsh, “SAY THAT AGAIN!”

The wrists of his lower set of arms are seized next.

Astro, shaking like a leaf, tries his best. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank… thank…,” he can’t force it out. He has to breathe, too. He can’t do both.

Another strip of his blanket has all four of his arms tied together, fabric conjoining the two previous knots. Four wrists stuck together at one point, four aching wrists.

“Say— say that again—“ Shrimpo grunts. His hand, on Astro’s bonds, hurt.

“I— thank you…” It’s an embarrassing thing to say. Shrimpo wants it, though. His voice is pathetically strained.

“Fuck,” Shrimpo hisses, then grunts, hips bearing down on Astro’s back, “Shit!”

Astro grows dizzy with the amount of blood swarming his veins at the hardness pressing into his spine. Instinctively, he squirms, testing the strength of his bonds, as if that would throw him off.

“Shrimpo—! I—!” 

A hand forces his skull to the ground, cheek and forehead pressed against the wood paneling. “God, do you EVER shut up?!”

Astro whimpers. Something strange coils around his heart; interest and indignation, both at once. It’s new. He’s unbelievably weak to it; he’s always been.

Abruptly, he’s released. The hands on him are gone, and so is the weight pinning him in place. The warmth is replaced with a cold, callous chill, burrowing deep and frantically into his bones.

Immediately, he tries to get it back. Gasps on his tears. Shifts his knees apart to better center himself, and pull himself up. Halfway through the motions, Astro’s bound hands are seized, used to drag him fully onto his knees, to keep him from rising any further.

And Shrimpo isn’t the fastest. He isn’t the one who extracts machines the quickest, or the one who has an easier time with them than he others. He can’t go on endlessly. But he’s strong. The strongest. The immovable force. The one with fists as tough as nails.

Astro could fight, earnestly, and it wouldn’t get him anywhere. He could run, though. Since this is a dream.

He doesn’t. 

Shrimpo steps around him, grasps his jaw so harshly Astro wouldn’t be surprised if it bruised, and growls, aggressive and cruel and breathless, “You fucking BITE me, Astro… I drag you out to the lobby like this.”

Astro’s heart stutters, then hammers away in his chest. His eyes are locked with Shrimpo’s, wide and open and blinking, dumbfounded, warm tears spilling quicker and quicker.

The first thought is knee-jerk, Which lobby?

The second is jarring. Like this? Half naked, roughed up, dazed, sobbing, and bound with all four damning arms behind his back, for them to see? For them to learn about? He’d do that to him? Expose his secret? To them all? Everyone?

The dreamed toons crawl around this library like ants. None of them have come to investigate the shouting, or the sobbing. None of them are.

He’d be protected, he knows he would. His friends would come to his aid. But Shrimpo would do that to him? Just to have him like this, in this way? Even if only in his dreams? Shrimpo loves him that much? To dream of him, entirely on his own, like this? 

The tears come quicker, but he isn’t frightened, he’s overwhelmed. So, completely, entirely overwhelmed. This is a situation he’s never had to prepare for. Never thought of. Never could have hoped for.

He isn’t gasping and shaking his head in rapid bursts of movement because he’s scared, but because it’s too much, too abrupt, too loud, too sharp, too Shrimpo, even if that’s the part he has the least problems with. And he isn’t playing it up—testing his bonds and angling himself away and simpering pathetically at Shrimpo’s feet—because it’s something Shrimpo hates. Because it’s what Shrimpo’s dream, his consciousness, is telling Astro he seems to crave. Violence. Selfishness. Astro.

“No… no— I—“

Shrimpo’s grip grows bruising, bone-breaking, and Astro’s strangled sound of fear is cut off by Shrimpo’s nails prying apart the gentle limitation of Astro’s teeth, blunt and white and useless. Astro was made with the idea of softness in mind, comforting to see in dreams, comforting to know moulds dreams, and he cannot escape it.

He was made soft. Shrimpo was made cruel.

He likes it, a little. Being roughed around. Being smothered. Being loved.

He has no complaints.

His mouth is held open, fingers pressing on on the hinges of his jaw until it hurts, until Astro’s mouth is open, until Astro is drooling and sobbing and shaking, and unable to move, not wanting to.

Shrimpo fiddles with his zipper, the threads of his jeans fraying with the frantic energy of it, and when he pulls himself free, Astro lingers on the hard curve of him, the bluntness of its tip, the girth, the roughness and the color. Curling ombré, scales wrapping the base, partway hidden from his view. Astro swallows. He’s salivating.

His eye, slowly, drags upward, to Shrimpo’s face. The twitching neutral line of his mouth, the pupils of his eyes swallowing the iris, the thin band of crystalline marigold orange.

The second their eyes meet, the fingers around his jaw yank him forward, and Astro can’t breathe, tears a given, constant thing as he buzzes from head to toe; unfathomable. He tries his bonds again. They don’t budge.

He gets halfway down the length of Shrimpo’s cock before his hand switches gears, sprawls flat across the back of his skull to pull him down, down, until Astro is choking and gaging, and even further.

It’s cruel. It’s mean. It hurts him. What else would he expect? Some of the others have had dreams like this— it’s never so forceful, though. Not really.

Astro is very glad he isn’t human right now, or he’d be embarrassing himself even further with snot. The only thing staining Shrimpo’s jeans are his mournful tears. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries to pull away, he can’t. He really can’t. 

He could make himself stronger, maybe. This is a dream, his domain, but Shrimpo’s territory.

He tries to look up, get a glimpse of Shrimpo’s face, something to show him that this staticky, I-can’t-breathe agony is doing something for him, but he’s just forced deeper, until his face brushes the rough fabric of his pants, and Astro can feel the scales spot up on loose, rough skin underneath his tongue.

Astro whimpers, pathetically, and Shrimpo finally makes sound; pants and small, lovely groans. Astro’s eye flutters, even as he tests his bonds.

It blurs together. There are points where Shrimpo releases him for air, but they’re fleeting, and Shrimpo grows louder the harder Astro struggles. It’s a bucket of hot water poured over him. It’s his erection straining in his pants, unbearably untouched, unnoticed, uncared for.

It blurs together. Astro’s vision blurs with spots and his hands are cut off from circulation with his straining, his shoulders birth a radiating ache from their awkward position, his back is pulled oddly, arched with the way Shrimpo’s manhandled him. His entire body is a mesh and blur of pain and discomfort. 

He’s rabid with it. He’s one with the fire of Shrimpo’s arousal. It’s wrapped around him, coiling as snakes do. It seizes his senses. He’s so dizzy that when Shrimpo tries to pull him off, Astro chokes, holds himself there, as his tongue twitches and sounds spill from him, vibrating, as he forces himself not to gag, throat relaxed yet trembling.

It blurs together, somehow, and he can feel the dream slipping, trying to drag Shrimpo into the waking world; too much of a good thing, he’s being worked up too much to stay asleep.

Astro, because he is selfish, refuses to allow it. Wraps the being of this dream around his chest, his straining neck, his bound hands, and holds it there, salivating around the cock in his mouth.

Shrimpo tries to pry him off, gasping and cursing under his breath, blunt claws scraping his face, and then, abruptly, shoves him down, as far as he can go. Astro chokes. Shrimpo moans, long and slow and helpless, above him. 

Astro chokes on more than just cock. Warmth on his tongue and down his throat has him shocked, and then joyous. He isn’t smiling because he can’t, and it’s probably for the best.

He stays there, nestled between Shrimpo’s thighs, until he’s pulled off, Shrimpo gasping above him. Astro has one good breath, a painful inhale, as Shrimpo’s legs give out on him and he falls to the ground with a thump, dazed, stunned eyes meeting his, before—without Astro’s vicious hold—the dream slips, stumbles, ends.

Astro wakes gasping. His blankets are tangled around every sweaty, thrashing limb. His face is hot and damp with tears. It’s agony. It’s sweltering, and he’s choking on it.

He hiccups, and the first thing he does as his arms are freed is reach to shove a hand down his pants, fingers curling around his aching erection with a miserable, muffled whimper. He bites down on the meat of his palm, fingers splayed across his face. Another hand rests on his left thigh, sheltering. The last clutches at the blankets. 

Blankets, pillows, his bed is a gentle cocoon, but everything is too much. Muted blacks and purples and pinks and blues. Bed curtains a mythic satin royal blue, patterned in glittering gilded thread. 

It’s quick. It’s fast. It’s rough. He fists his cock and forces down the strangled cries of something inhuman. When his orgasm dawns, a reedy sound breaks from him, a high whine. And then he’s left gasping. Dizzy.

His hand is warm and gooey with his own spend. His vision spots, the refocuses. He heaves. 

But he gets it now.

He gets it now.

He understands.

He hadn’t before. He doesn’t know what to do now that he does, but he does.

Breathing labored, he rubs at his eye with a clean hand, smearing his tears over his cheek. 

He knows Shrimpo woke up with cum in his pants. The idea has his face burning, and arousal stirring in his gut.

Shrimpo acts normally, jarringly so.

Because nothing is wrong. And he doesn’t know that Astro has four freakish arms. And he certainly didn’t have a wet dream about fucking him, either.

Shrimpo acts normally, in a simplistic, reassuring way. Shrimpo doesn’t hate him for his arms. The opposite, actually. Astro has never known someone to love him like that, in the fierce, bloody way Shrimpo does.

The harsh, gruff words. The shouting, the yelling, the intensity of everything.

And in their time alone, Shrimpo doesn’t hesitate to leave his back to him. 

And Astro is terrible. He is vile in the way he sees vulnerability in it. Twisted in the way he sees weakness and wants to pounce on it. Gracious in the way he accepts it, in the way warmth and affection swell in his chest.

Thing is: Astro is bound to his nature, but maybe he isn’t. Maybe he can dream a set of sharp teeth on himself, a quad set of razors for nails.

And Astro does not cry, but he was brought to tears, and it could happen again.

“Astro,” Sprout pulls him aside to ask, fervent, eyes flitting from the curve of Astro’s mouth to the blue of his cheek to the state of his clothes—messy yet refined enough so that Astro’s handler won’t get onto him about appearances, “Shrimpo, nothing’s changed? He isn’t bothering you?”

This is not the first time Sprout has asked this. The first time had been the hardest, though.

Astro’s mouth pulls into a soft smile, as he answers, “no. I’m perfectly fine. I’m okay.”

Astro is sure in his words. Still, Sprout’s eyes narrow, and he leans in closer; conspiratorial. “Astro. If he steps out of line, if he makes you uncomfortable—“ 

Sprout cuts himself off.

Astro’s smile grows softer, fonder.

“I’m fine.” He affirms.

Sprout’s tense posture seems to slacken. His eyes gentle. “You sure?” And his voice is quiet, caring.

Blinking slowly, Astro nods.

With a great sigh of relief, Sprout releases him.

Loud, blaring sirens. But they’d been prepared for the testing. An emergency alarm, in case of the worst.

This is a test.

Astro can’t stand it.

Slumped in a back room, an insignificant closet, his hands are clasped tight around his ears to block out the incessant, needling sound. Smooth palms over the small, hidden pinholes on either side of his head. Ears like a bird’s, his handler had told him, everything on the inside of his head. When he was younger and curious about near everything.

“I wish it weren’t so loud,” he mumbles, against the cloth of Shrimpo’s shoulder. He ignores the way his voice cracks. Shrimpo’s arms, around him, tighten the barest amount.

Astro is leaning against him, both of them kneeling on the floor. Shrimpo had been the one to lead them there, a steady hand on Astro’s lower back, a quiet persistent presence behind him, when the alarms had started and Astro had flinched and recoiled, eye scrunched shut. It’s somewhat muffled here, but barely.

Astro’s lower set of arms are wrapped around Shrimpo’s back, clutching at his shirt. He tucks his head against Shrimpo’s chest, trying to hide there.

Over his head, Shrimpo shouts to be heard over the alarm, “THE HANDLERS CAN’T ACCOMMODATE ANY OF US FOR ANYTHING.”

Astro can’t help but agree.

Shrimpo does not abandon him for as long as the siren goes on, and for the rest of the day, Shrimpo keeps a careful watch of him.

Astro can’t help but cling close.

Astro is monitoring dreams for the night, when he notices, starkly, that same rising tension mounting, the mind it’s tied to living in Shrimpo’s room, sleeping in Shrimpo’s bed.

And it’s Shrimpo’s. Of course. It could be no one else’s. The blind violence is telling. The very feel of it has Astro trembling, a coiling warmth in his gut that he tries to shake, but can’t.

He tries to ignore it, to tend to the others’ dreams, but it’s impossible. His mind wanders. His hands twitch. He’s lured. Like prawn to trap, fish to hook, moon to earth, earth to sun, sun to black hole in the center of its galaxy.

Astro holds a stopwatch in his lower right hand. It had been a gift. The seconds tick, tick, tick, and he can’t stand it. He can’t stand not being there, not seeing him.

Shrimpo is aroused and he is dreaming and Astro can tell that he is in that dream. The way its river dances in helix patterns tells him. He— 

He knows that Shrimpo is attracted to him. He must be. His mind tells no lies. His emotions so intense that the only thing hiding his intentions is his ferocity. Astro is learning to see past that. He’d thought he’d had it down.

Astro knows how weak he is. 

He had responsibilities.

The seconds tick, tick, tick, and his resolve frays like orange taffy. 

Astro is very weak, and Shrimpo is dreaming of him. Astro is very weak, and he tries his best, but Shrimpo’s dream is already pulled up, and his breath escapes him in a miserable wheeze, heart throbbing. 

The scene is a pretty one. 

Green grass, warm sun, a picnic blanket.

Shrimpo is dreaming that Astro is whining and kicking and holding onto him, all four ugly arms pulled around Shrimpo’s body, the only thing on him being his blanket, well loved, what he wears, constantly.

It should disgust him. This effigy of him is fighting to get away and desperately clinging close. It should make him frightened, conflicted, concerned. Because, what if this doesn’t stick to just dreams? What if Shrimpo attacks him? What if, what if?

And salivating, he thinks, I want to be there. His hands shake so hard he can’t make out the numbers on the stopwatch, but he can’t look away. He couldn’t dare.

A shaky inhale that hurts his throat. A trembling exhale to follow.

He reaches a hand to the ball of light that is Shrimpo’s wet dream, and latches on tight. Digs his teeth in. Slips his eye closed and opens them to a bright sky.

Neglects his responsibilities. Gasps and moans and giggles at jokes. Squirms.

Hates how pathetic he is. Hates how he folds. Loves how it feels. Adores him. Adores Shrimpo, bent over him, grinning like he’s won.

Like he isn’t the only one who thinks this is just a dream.

Shrimpo is drawing.

Astro doesn’t know what, but Shrimpo is sitting at his desk and—aggressively—putting pen to paper, and drawing. Astro, very quietly, is hovering over his shoulder. Shrimpo says nothing.

In his fisted hand, he wields a red marker, and he scribbles with it. Glaring, curving circles overlapping each other. And in the mess, he switches to violent, straight lines, angles, curves. And in the mess, a moon and a star. And a house on a hill.

Astro blinks, tilting his head. Considering.

Slowly, his upper set of arms reach around Shrimpo on either side. He grabs a black pen from Shrimpo’s desk, clicks it functional, and draws a small, curled shrimp on the house’s roof.

Shrimpo’s hands still for him; black at the nails, a delicate orange from fingertip to wrist to forearm, the skin of his palm rough but level, the skin on the back of his hand rough and calloused, shifting to smooth, dotting fish scales at the point where hand meets wrist. Astro can’t stop staring at them. He knows he may be overstepping, here.

Around Shrimpo’s drawing, the sketching scribbles, he draws a picture frame. A standard thing with gentle, curving flourishes, to make the corners lively, and to make the thing look ornate.

Shrimpo, voice rough, with use or disuse Astro can’t tell, “There’s no one else here!”

“I…,” he stammers, “what do you mean?”

“Astro,” Shrimpo scolds, and he can’t see the frown, but he can feel the way it deepens in his soul, “no one else is HERE.”

He doesn’t know what he means until, suddenly, a hand worms its way into his blanket, and Shrimpo flounders until he can shove a pen into Astro’s lower right hand, fingers wrapping around it—a little roughly—to pull it outward, into the air, onto the desk.

Astro stares at his hands blankly, mind shorting out, as Shrimpo gestures to the paper.

“DRAW! DO WHAT YOU WANT!” 

A moment.

“YOUR OTHER HAND, TOO!”

Slowly, and with difficulty, Astro moves.

He plants both left hands on the desk for balance, even as he only needs one, to keep Shrimpo happy. With both right hands, he draws. Shrimpo draws, too.

They are so close, Astro thinks. It’s like he’s caging Shrimpo in at his desk. They are so close, Astro breathes in his space.

Shrimpo hunches his shoulders, but he says nothing about it. Astro’s heart wrings itself bleeding. He loves it. He loves being there, so close. Being allowed there. Wanted there.

Astro feels dizzy, perpetually. Even when he doesn’t.

It’s a mental thing.

It happens most when Shrimpo is busy and leaves him on his lonesome for a few days. It happens most when Shrimpo talks about the others. It happens when Shrimpo talks about what he likes.

Astro feels unsteady, like he’ll trip. Like he’ll slip up and do something he shouldn’t, say something he couldn’t.

The room is dim and quiet, the low hum of the lights in the hall ignorable, and the couch is comfortable. 

Astro sits, back slightly hunched over his lap, with an iced tea help between both upper hands.

It’s just him and Teagan in the room.

Teagan sips her earl grey passively. Lip to the rip of her cup, she says, “Astro, you worry me lately.”

Astro says nothing. He tilts his head.

Teagan raises her eyes from her tea to his face.

“There’s something different about you. Is it Shrimpo?”

Is it Shrimpo?

Who else could it be?

Astro blinks, then melts into a soft smile. “…Teagan, there’s nothing to worry about.”

But the concern doesn’t leave her eyes. She regards him wholly, and then with wariness.

She’s frowning.

“…You know yourself best,” she settles on. “You would know if you need help. And, Astro…,” her gloves glittering and chic even in the low light, she sets her teacup down, refined and elegant, a determined glint in her eye, “if you need help, I would raise hell for you.”

Astro’s breath leaves him like a cold winter wind. He smiles.

“Thank you.”

He’s made his choices, though.

He is weak to himself.

Toodles has a train set.

In the quiet play room, Shrimpo and Astro help her set it up. 

Toodles chooses the path the tracks will take, Shrimpo and Astro help her snap them into place. 

And then, she insists that they play.

Mostly, Astro sits and watches. Smiling. Fond. Soft and chewy from inside out.

“MY TRAIN KILLED YOUR TRAIN, TOODLES! SHRIMPO WINS!!”

“Wha— you can’t do that!”

“I JUST DID! HAHAHA!!”

Astro snorts, and they round on him, dragging him into their quarrel.

“Oh! Astro! Here!” Sprout calls, and he offers a platter of cupcakes. A mix of vanilla and chocolate, all frosted in red. Most of them have been taken.

Astro reaches out to grab one, nodding politely. “Thank you, Sprout.” Then, he turns to Shrimpo, by his side. “Shrimpo, do you want one?”

Shrimpo glares at the platter like it killed his nonexistent shrimp parents.

Astro blinks. “Uh, Shrimpo?”

“MAKE HIM SOMETHING BETTER,” Shrimpo demands.

Astro stares.

Sprout blinks. “…pardon?”

“YOU HEARD ME, MAKE ASTRO SOMETHING BETTER!!”

“Ah, right.” Astro sends Sprout an apologetic smile. “I’ll, uh, get right to it.”

“GOOD!!”

“You don’t have to do that, Sprout,” Astro tries.

“YES HE DOES!!” Shrimpo counters.

Sprout huffs out a laugh, turning to leave. 

Exasperatedly fond, Astro insists, “Shrimpo, it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with the cupcakes.”

“THEY AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!! YOU DESERVE BETTER!! THE BEST!!!”

“Shri—“

—“SHUT UP!”

Curled up on Astro’s lap, Pebble whines.

Astro coos, heart clenching, “oh, Pebble, I’m sorry,” he smooths a hand across Pebble’s back, fervent and gentle, “I know, I’m so sorry.”

Pebble stares up at him with large, guileless eyes.

Over his shoulder, Shrimpo hovers, frowning.

Pebble won’t be allowed on expeditions anymore, after what happened on his last one.

He’d tripped. That’s all. He’d been distracting the twisteds for them, and then he’d tripped, and there had been five of them.

It had been Goob, nearby, who’d saved him.

Pebble has already been seen by Sprout, Cosmo, and a handful of the handlers. This has happened before. They know Pebble will be fragile. Extremely fragile. He can’t go out anymore. 

The handlers keep trying to contact Delilah.

Astro remembers her.

Shrimpo hates her.

Astro has been sitting with Pebble, and Shrimpo has been sitting with him.

Quietly, Shrimpo outstretches his hands. Quietly, Astro hands Pebble over.

Holding Pebble up to his face, Shrimpo says, “that was a very dumb thing to do.” Very quiet, gravelly, matter-of-fact in tone.

Pebble growls at him, a low rumble, until Shrimpo holds him to his chest and pets him.

Dandy hasn’t come to see Pebble. Astro mumbled on about it until Shrimpo shouted at him, told him to stop talking about ‘that weed’.

And because it was Shrimpo, he did.

His frustration mounts. Astro feels powerless and discarded. 

And tired.

And hateful.

Shrimpo has a dream that he is talking to everyone.

And Astro, inside it, seethes.

He hasn’t the slightest idea why, he tells himself, but he does. It’s in the way his fingers twitch and his chest is a smoldering fire.

It’s good, isn’t it? That he wants to talk to people?

It should be, but they— this—

This is how Astro got to him. And now he’s here with the others. The others. Sprout and Cosmo and Rodger and Vee—

There is a sense of ownership in being the only toon Shrimpo wants to fuck, but he still doesn’t have Shrimpo. He’s in his arms but not his clutches.

He doesn’t have Shrimpo. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to get him. 

It makes the others a threat.

If any of them get to him before Astro can, he doesn’t know what he’d do. The nightmares he’d stir up to break them apart. The things he’d say to break their psyche. The time he’d spend weeping.

And Astro isn’t all that moral anymore, he knows. A slow decent.

And, also, Astro knows that, for this, he is evil. He is evil for this.

His eyes fixated on the tiled flooring of the kitchen, he realizes, perhaps for the first time, but actually not, that he really can’t help it.
 
At his command, the dream shifts.

At his command, the others scorn Shrimpo, curse him, demean him, and leave. 

Teagan and Sprout have to drag Cosmo from Shrimpo’s fists, around his throat, around his collar.

And then, when he is weak, when he is raw from rage and betrayal and all else, Astro reaches for him, with all four delicate, foolish arms outstretched.

And by the end of it, Astro is bruised, bloody, fucked-out, and aching.

Not yet, he thinks. You can’t manage to coexist with them yet. You can’t want to. I won’t allow you.

Yet.

Hunched over on the floor of his bedroom, crouched like he’s praying, or begging, or crying, he mutters, tormented, “I’m going insane.”

He knows, with every inch of flesh on him, that it’s true.

Two hands come to rest on the back of his skull, clenched tightly together.

He hasn’t seen Shrimpo in a week. And sometimes Shrimpo gets like this. He sticks to himself, allows no others in, fights and spits and curses the others, runs from Astro like he’s death itself. A kind of death, at least.

Astro survives through dreams they share. Where he can bring comfort. Where Shrimpo can get close. Where Shrimpo can hurt him.

Astro can recognize, though, that this isn’t a mentally sound state of mind. That his thoughts, running frenzied and wild, are tinged with something sick.

And maybe he was always like this. Agonized in this way. Chasing after Dandy’s coattails, begging, listen to reason! We’ve always trusted each other!

Maybe he just needed something to latch onto. Something to latch onto him. To push him this far. 

Maybe Shrimpo—Isolated, miserable, wrathful, lonely Shrimpo—was just a good target.

Maybe he needed someone to choke him out and say, what was I supposed to do? to get really invested. To spiral like this.

It doesn’t matter anymore.

How it started, what it did, what’s become of him.

He wanted to be there for Shrimpo, because Astro was lacking something to latch onto and bleed with.

He wanted to be there for Shrimpo, and now he is.

Isn’t that such a good thing? Shrimpo’s wanting to come out of his shell. 

Shrimpo in stage fright. All that ensues.

Astro’s hands shake from how overstimulated he is. He can’t stop himself.

Shrimpo is dreaming that a version of Astro is trapped and fighting to get free. Astro can’t stop watching. He can’t even bring himself to enter the dream, with how many times he can wring orgasms from himself the way he is; watching, staring, dizzy with it all.

And he can’t stop the way his hands keep moving. One holding fingers in his mouth, one on his dick, one holding his leg with fingers splayed over his bare thigh, the last working himself open, slick with his spit.

He gasps as the dreaming vision of himself shrieks, fighting against the metal around his wrists. Shrimpo’s mouth, full of Astro’s blood, grins like a demon, holding Astro’s legs apart and his body flush against his hips.

It rings in his ears, the—

“No, no, no, please, SHRI— stop it! Stop it already!”

“I’m— I’m so tired, let me go. I’m— I— leave me alone!”

And it only stops when Shrimpo’s alarm clock wakes him, and Astro is too spent to continue.

Astro can tell by the way Shrimpo grows skittish when it’s just them, alone in a quiet room. When no one would question if either of them went missing.

And Astro can tell by his dreams that Shrimpo feels a misplaced sense of guilt. Nightmares where Astro is saved, and Shrimpo is on own again. Where Shrimpo has no one to cling onto anymore.

He believes that Astro, in his naive doe-eyed stare, is trapped with him. That he, the bully, is the terror that brings pain upon everything he loves and everything he hates.

Shrimpo hates everything he loves. It is his nature.

And they are trapped with each other, Astro thinks. The two of them.

The wolf and the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Sitting in dark rooms together. Sharing meals. Speaking to others.

The thing is: both of them are bound to their natures, but maybe this is Astro’s nature. Maybe he was made this way. Made like how Dandy was; flawed, the first, the favorites.

And Dandy does what he wants. What he believes he has to. He doesn’t shy away from the scorn of the others. Why has Astro been holding himself back so much? Keeping himself calm? Keeping himself purely soft, and not also cruel?

Astro needs to get out of his own head and start planning.

He wants Shrimpo to be happier, because Shrimpo deserves it. But Shrimpo isn’t talking to anyone on his own until he’s Astro’s. Because Astro is already Shrimpo’s.

So, Astro needs to get him.

He still doesn’t know how. He’s been trying to figure it out for weeks, subconscious or not.

He’s never been the best with the social game. He’s done his best to try. He’s doing well.

Chapter Text

Nothing goes to plan. He’s still working the plan out, still revising, when it happens.

And it happens quick, almost. Like most things that happen on expeditions. The easy flow of life makes it easy to forget how dire things are. The yearning, too.

Floor fifteen. The section of floor fifteen they haven’t already cleared on previous expeditions. The walls, a sky blue, are painted with rainbows.

Toodles walks next to Astro and Shrimpo, a small cluster of three.

In the elevator between the last floor and this one, she’d started humming to herself. It hadn’t taken long for Astro to join in, and they keep it up, even now.

It’s his own lullaby, after all, from the show. The one he sang on set to lull toons to sleep, used as a transitionary sequence between scenes happening at “night”.

He hasn’t sung it in a while. It makes him feel strangely remorseful. 

Goob had run off first, of course, once the elevator door had opened. Swiftly followed by Flutter.

They hum as they walk, near behind, looking for the closest free machines.

It’s when they’re walking that they hear it. 

Loud, thumping, powerful steps. And turning the corner in front of them is a twisted. A tall one. Tall and grey and unrecognizable.

The sound it makes when it sees them, immediately after, is wretched. Loud, resonant, piercing barking. So aggressive Astro can barely recognize it. So loud it hurts his ears and stabs into his psyche, so suddenly. Eyes so sharp and hazily vengeful it’s paralyzing.

Their song dies in their throats.

He’s never heard anything like it. Never.

It hurts his head. He’s wracked with chills. He’s so on edge.

Its eyes are zeroed in on Shrimpo, who shifts his stance. The twisted— it looks like a dog—

And Astro doesn’t think, because he doesn’t have time to, but he does move. 

Grabs Shrimpo by the wrist and orders, sharply, so sharp his mouth feels raw from it, “Toodles, run!”

“I—“

—“Toodles!”

Her quick feet patter off. As he drags Shrimpo along with him in the same direction, the only direction they have to escape away from the heavy thudding of steps too larger-than-life and too loud, he just manages to catch her turning the corner. 

If nothing else, it’s a rush of relief, as festering fear thrashes in his chest like an animal. Dread growing like mold. 

His hands shake. He grabs onto Shrimpo with three of them.

Their combined effort—Shrimpo pushing himself for speed and Astro giving all he can—is still too slow. A middle ground between them, but nowhere near fast enough.

And Astro knows, in his heart of hearts, as they make it around the corner themselves, that they aren’t going to outrun this twisted. Their feet trip over themselves. It doesn’t stop them.

Weighty growls. Heavy, seething breaths. He’s never seen this twisted.

And it looks like a dog.

And it’s way too fast.

And— where had Pebble been, when Astro has searched for him before? Yesterday, this morning, the day before that? Not in his room—

The dim hall warps and spins. Astro has half a mind to believe he’s dreaming, if it weren’t for his weakness and painful, aching desperation.

Shrimpo’s panicked breaths behind him falter, and— “ASTRO, LEAVE!!”

He’s not going to do that.

Things have taken a turn far too quickly. And he isn’t going to leave, no matter what. No matter his own weakness. 

The twisted is bearing down on them. They can hear it.

He hadn’t known he was this stubborn.

And it will notice Shrimpo first, things always do. But if he hides him—

Astro throws his balance off kilter, turns on his heel, near-tackles him. Constricting his arms around him. Pulls the blanket around Shrimpo like a nest’s soft embrace. Like something that is not a trap. Not a trick. Not something Astro has pulled off as a last resort.

And Shrimpo, startled, tries to throw him off, but Astro clings to him like a leech, shoving his head down, into his chest. They aren’t even running, Astro’s just buying time—

He hears shrieking, farther off. Toodles. ’Help! Help! There’s— Flutter, Goob, Sprout, please! Rodger!! RODG—‘ It blends into the rush of ichor in Astro’s ears.

He hears every step as the twisted hauls its bulky, irreparable body forward. Crumbling like a landslide. A mountain. Pebble. And, at first, the pain doesn’t register. Just pressure. 

Swirling lukewarm air, rife with dust. Movement. Being thrown aside, and losing his grip on Shrimpo. Hitting the wall, then the ground.

Nausea. Dizziness. His vision failing him. The sound ringing in his ears like broken warehouse foundations, his entire body fuzzy and buzzing. Black spots obscuring everything from him. Betraying him. Would having more eyes fix this issue?

He comes back to himself, slams back into his limbs.

He gasps, chokes. He’s been hit before. He’s stood up after, before. Everything is tunnel-visioned, ringing in a riotous way, and the way his bones creak is insignificant, useless information, a dumb hinderance. He doesn’t know if he’s ever been hit so hard. He stares at his hands as he staggers, a guttural sound—somewhere between a hiss and a groan—wrenching from his mouth, pulling into a cry so far in the back of his throat it makes no noise. 

Pebble is stock still. Licking his lips. His tongue laps up black ichor. Ichor. Is Astro bleeding? He can’t tell. He’d heard a crunch.

Shrimpo is clutching two of Astro’s wrists, dragging him away from the twisted, down the hall, behind Pebble’s view. Astro’s clunky feet follow quickly. His throat convulses, like he’s dying. His feet keep moving.

Behind him, the riotous barking starts again.

As Astro struggles, gasping against Shrimpo’s shoulder blade, there it is; a slowly dawning horror, climbing in his chest, up to his throat.

He can hear it. The steps.

“Shrimpo— leave me—“

“AS IF!!”

Astro can’t take it. As another last bid, he tries to wrestle Shrimpo under him. 

Shrimpo is prepared this time, and Shrimpo has always been stronger. The second Astro’s element of surprise is taken from him, he’s overpowered. Astro is the one sheltered, staring at the ground, restrained and terrified for everyone but himself, though he doesn’t want to get hurt. It’s instinct.

He flinches when Shrimpo is hit. It sounds like a tree cracking. Like the nightmares where toons believe they die. Shrimpo’s cry when the blow connects is like pained outrage. Agonized rage.

The second he isn’t held down, he’s grappling his arms around Shrimpo, flinching and throwing them into the follow-through, lurching forward, Shrimpo too dazed—groaning in a grinding way, like an old machine, an old feral animal—to do more than stumble as Astro leads him.

Heaving and dizzy, sweating all over, he knows what will happen here. The pieces click into place. Whether this pays off or not, Astro is giving it his best shot.

And Astro is no stranger to relying on his friends.

It’s much harder when he’s bidding Shrimpo’s life alongside his own. But what else could he do? These creatures were never meant to be fought. It’s not the natural order. And they can’t get away, not without leaving the other. And they’re too stubborn for that.

Way too stubborn. 

Astro knows who Shrimpo is, though. 

The hall’s dim lighting shapes its shadows into monsters. Astro shakes it, forces them forward. 

Barking. Loud, voracious, unending barking. Barking behind his eyes, stuck in his ears, the pounding of his bleeding skull, the fingers which, locked around Shrimpo in a vice, still tremble.

He feels utterly helpless. Useless. Weak.

He was not made to be strong, though. There’s nothing he can do.

Shrimpo is just pulling himself together, dragging his feet beneath himself, Astro supporting him entirely, when Pebble bears down on them again.

It isn’t a question. There is no, how many more last ditch efforts are needed? Because the answer is, as many as he can take. And this is the last.

His arms constrict, impossibly, tighter around Shrimpo. His blanket falls and pulls to cover Shrimpo’s face, his body cradled lovingly under Astro’s.

When the blow comes, this time, everything whites out. There’s a crack, and he’s in more pain. Blinding pain. The kind that you become. White and hot and black and red and burning and, in waves, freezing.

He doesn’t know what kind of sound he makes, it might be as horrific as the pain, but there’s no way to tell.

His mind slips, scrabbles, trips into itself like a broken record. Tries to hold on and falls into the whirling flood of mist and rubble. Dreams and nightmares. Hells and heavens.

Everything. Everything that happened the first time he was hit to his last leg and then further, but worse.

One time, Shrimpo had a dream that Astro had left him for dead.

Astro had fixed it, of course. Selfishly.

“I want to see a real train, someday. Do you think I’ll get to, Astro?”

“…Maybe, Toodles. Do you want to dream about it?”

Astro regrets nothing.

“Have you ever seen a real train before?”

“…No.”

“Then, no thank you. You’d get it all wrong!”

“Oh.”

Things flicker. In. Out. In. 

A flame of awareness. A black current of pain which douses it. 

His breathing is slow, and heavy, and it wrecks him just to do it.

His eye opens to Sprout. Hazy pinks and reds. Furrowed brows, mouth moving, voice hurting his ears.

“—Astro…Astro, you have—…C’mon, Astro—“

“Back off!” 

Hands come into view. Orange. Armored. Armored?

Shrimpo. Unadulterated relief. Breathing feels easier, somehow.

He reaches for him. All four hands, covered in sticky black ichor in streaks, like he bled them.

Shrimpo clasps their hands together. Astro’s two leftover wrap around his wrists. 

Shrimpo pulls him—

Sprout yelps, “Wait—!” 

—and hauls him to his feet.

Sprout’s hands rush to him, but Shrimpo slaps it away. Astro’s hands lose their hold on Shrimpo arm, and then return it, once Shrimpo brings it close enough again. 

In Shrimpo’s throat, a steady, rumbling growl sounds. Sprout stares, rendered mute.

Astro locks eyes with Cosmo, a mere two or so feet away, who blinks, eyes widening.

Hazily, Astro thinks, cold air seeping what little warmth he has left from his limbs, oh, so he’ll know. He blinks, slowly.

“Shrimpo! What’s wrong with you! They can’t know!” That’s Sprout, again. Concerned, again.

“DON’T CARE! BACK AWAY FROM HIM!” Shrimpo’s voice is hoarse.

Eyes blinking quickly, vision swimming, he slurs, “‘m sorry, Shrimpo. I— I really—“

Shrimpo’s forehead knocks into his, gently. Astro’s vision still swims with stars. “Shut up. Shut UP! I won’t hear it.”

Astro’s eye strays to Cosmo.

His breath hitches. 

“You, you saved him,” he says, breathless. Because if Sprout saved Astro, Cosmo must have—

Mutely, Cosmo nods.

Astro’s smiles. His face pulls. There must be ichor on it. He’s hungry. He— he wants—

Shrimpo yanks them forward. Astro gasps, stumbling after. 

“We need to go!” He hisses. “Goob and Flutter SUCK!”

Sprout scowls. His mouth opens to speak, but Shrimpo drags Astro—near limp and his world spinning—by his side, towards the elevator.

Astro’s head rests on Shrimpo’s collarbone, the shrimp holding near-all of his weight.

“Ev’ry, ev’ryon’ else?” He asks. 

“Astro— they’re— they’re at the elevator, already,” Sprout soothes, voice mellow. “Toodles— Toodles told us what—“

Astro nods, breaths slow, heavy, and aching his entire chest. The words settle themselves into background noise. He focuses everything he has on the steady steps, following Shrimpo’s lead.

When they’re to the elevator, just a corner away, Sprout reaches forward. Shrimpo glowers, yet allows it. Sprout’s hands come to Astro’s blanket, pulling it closed. 

Astro, uncomprehendingly, stares at it.

Shrimpo stops walking.

Sprout stares back. 

“I— Astro,” Sprout starts, “use two hands to hold it closed.

Astro blinks.

Then, from his mouth, blunt, “no.”

Sprout falters. “No? Astro, the others—“

—“Get away from me,” Astro answers. “Get off, I don’t care, you—“ he pulls back, away, further into Shrimpo’s side, who does not budge but acquiescences, dragging him slowly, gently, like Astro would ever stop trying to get away from hands that are not Shrimpo’s clinging onto him so tightly, so insistently. He seethes, suddenly, anger a riot in his chest. “Let go of me, Sprout, let go—“

With all four hands, Astro strikes out, grabs onto Sprout, tries to pull him off. Sprout’s stare is disbelieving. Astro reaches a hand towards Sprout’s face, overcome, ichor weakly deafening him with its current though his skull, tries to lunge—

An arm around his waist stops him, steals the air from him. Another hand presses palm-first against his chest, to hold him back.

“Astro!” Shrimpo scolds, mouth by his ear.

Astro gasps. Sees reason. Immediately, he falls limp, dragged back against Shrimpo’s chest, leaning his weight on him.

“Sorry,” he chokes, heaving, “sorry, I—“

“Do you want the blanket?” Shrimpo demands.

Astro shakes his head, clutching onto Shrimpo with all four arms. “I— no—“

Shrimpo drags him until he keeps walking. Astro’s legs are in agony. He’s practically plastered to his side.

Shrimpo spits, “God, you’re pathetic!”

Astro blinks. Oh. Now he’s just horny. The churning warmth of arousal heating his body.

In the back of Sprout’s throat, he scoffs, exasperated. “Hey! He saved your life, didn’t he?”

“THAT’S WHY!” Shrimpo tries to shout, but his voice cracks halfway through.

The second they’re in view of the elevator, Glisten pulls his fingers to his mouth and whistles. A loud, piercing thing. Both Shrimpo and Astro flinch, but Shrimpo’s pace hastens.

And— maybe Astro will regret not pulling his blanket closed. He’s in too much pain to dwell on it. Too dizzy and close to throwing up. If he has his blanket trapping him in sticky heat, he’ll lose his sense. He’ll feel too stuck and cornered.

The second they make it across the threshold of the elevator, Astro is falling to his knees, and Shrimpo—careful, diligent, thoughtful Shrimpo—eases him, gently, to the floor. 

Astro holds himself up with his trembling hands. Everything spins and he’s sweating. 

Behind him is barking. Astro trembles like he’s about to die. Flutter fwooshes in and Goob’s steps race through. The elevator door slams shut.

Astro is panting. Shrimpo is by his side.

He’s hungry. Thirsty. He needs something.

The elevator is silent.

“Up,” Rodger commands. “Dandy, take us back up, now. We’re done here.”

“…right.”

Astro blinks. He looks up. 

Dandy, at his shop, looks down. His eyes are unreadable.

Chasing after Dandy’s coattails, begging, listen to reason! We’ve always trusted each other!

The air circulation systems hum. The machinations of the elevator hum.

Exhausted and utterly defeated, Astro hangs his head.

He guesses not.

Shrimpo’s arm over his shoulder keeps him sane, but he stares at the ground like it’ll swallow him.

The elevator rumbles in its ascent. Rocks like an old thing.

Sprout mutters lowly to Flutter and Goob, then crouches next to Astro and Shrimpo.

“You two okay?” 

Astro blinks. Shrimpo answers, blandly, “no.”

Sprout winces. “Right, well, we can take you two to the infirmary or something when we get back, it’s—“

“No.” Astro’s breathing wavers. “No.” He licks the back of his teeth, feeling ravenous.

“…then, then where are you two going?” Sprout asks, gentle, frustrated, “To your rooms?”
 
Astro nods. “To my room.”

Sprout frowns. “Astro—“

“To my room.”

A moment of disquiet.

Sprout sighs. “Okay.”

His voice is dead and vengeful when he says, “If you disturb us. If you pry us apart. You’ll get nightmares, Sprout. The worst I can think of.”

A moment of silence.

A shaking exhale from Sprout.

“Right. Right. Okay.”

Astro stares at the ground. The gritty grey tile.

He breathes heavy.

He wants— it only took him a bit to understand— it’s ichor, it’s blood.

Astro raises a hand to his face, manicured nails newly a deep ichor black, and smears the drying, tacky ichor from his cheeks across his lips. His tongue darts out, and the taste is savory. Full. Like a soup. Like it’s what he needs.

He spends the rest of the upward trip laving the ichor from his skin, biting on his nails, wiping ichor onto his fingers and shoving them into his mouth, to taste.

By his side, Shrimpo barely even shifts. His hands are armored, which is new. 

He must be like Astro and the other mains, then. He’s the first non-main to survive, saved. 

Astro doesn’t like that, in his absence, Shrimpo was hit enough to get that close to death. But his bid paid off, he supposes.

Astro feels floaty. Fully there and fully up in the air. Like there’s nothing more for him to do, here, and so he’s not thinking.

Not thinking about how cold the elevator is. Not thinking about how close he and Shrimpo came to death. Not thinking about Dandy and not thinking about everyone’s eyes, glancing over at him, staring at his arms.

Astro is a failure, but he’s one who won.

Miraculously.

This isn’t what he’d thought would happen when he woke up this morning.

He and his obsession pulled through.

When the door opens, Sprout tries a halfhearted, aborted attempt to call Astro back.

Shrimpo, shouldering Astro’s weight, grunts, annoyed, and Astro points him in the direction of his room. Shrimpo follows his command, soundless.

On the way, Astro wonders if he’s making a mistake. On the way, Astro understands, entirely, that he’s too far gone to care.

He knows that Shrimpo fantasizes about raping him, and Astro, on some level, does too. He fantasizes about the ownership. The love.

There is no one who Astro trusts more.

Shrimpo is bitter and mean and hateful. And thoughtful. And caring. And possessive, like he is.

Astro is willing to be hated for loving him so wholly, and Shrimpo hates everything he loves.

They stumble into Astro’s bed. 

A nest of pillows and blankets and soft, gentle things. 

They’re flush, Shrimpo on top of Astro, body forcing Astro’s into the cushioning. Shrimpo stares, Astro stares back.

Astro is exhausted, his ichor burning beneath his skin, lashing at his insides. He melts into the bedding, he melts into Shrimpo’s body on top of his.

Slowly, Astro reaches to wipe a smudge of ichor from Shrimpo’s cheek, bringing it to his lips.

Shrimpo’s face scrunches, and a hand shoves Astro’s face away, neck bared and bent awkwardly, his cheek pressed to a soft jade pillow. Shrimpo’s head presses into Astro’s shoulder. Shrimpo has a leg between Astro’s, a leg hooked over Astro’s left thigh. It’s comfortable.

It’s quiet.

They’re close.

Astro doesn’t think they’ve ever been, physically, close like this. Especially not for so long. Never outside of their dreams.

They breathe together. Out of sync and in sync and varying. Gradually, Astro’s face is released.

He drags a blanket, grabbed for blindly, over both of them.

It feels natural. Like there was no other alternative. Like there never will be.

Shrimpo’s scales, where there are any, are harder. Stronger. His skin, inexplicably, feels tougher.

Astro falls limp. 

He’s noticing changes in himself, too. Appetite, fragile skin, blackened nails, bones that feel out of place.

Regardless, he sleeps.

That night, Toodles has a nightmare, one where she leaves Astro and Shrimpo both to their deaths.

Thoughtlessly, Astro changes it. Shares what actually happened. Holds her as she sobs and cries, her dog plush clutched to her chest, then transitions the dream into a fun family outing with Rodger and Teagan.

That night, Shrimpo sleeps like the dead, and he does not dream in any substantial manner.

That night, Astro tries to sleep himself. He tries to recuperate. He is even weaker, now. One heart beats in his chest. Astro and Shrimpo have three—bleeding, sodden, ichor-laden beating hearts—between the two of them.

Two vacancies in Astro’s chest keep him awake. Agonized. Until finally, he gives in, and collapses against the black awning of unconsciousness.

Astro spends most of the next day lounging in bed.

Shrimpo stays, too. Uncharacteristically quiet, he keeps to the room. He leaves only to bring food and water back to Astro, swathed in blankets, staring at the fabric of his bed’s canopy above him, staring endlessly. His mind has taken a toll, he realizes.

For all of their love, they almost died. And yet, they didn’t.

The light is low. Glow-in-the-dark stars light the walls like bioluminescent lichen. The air is stuffy with what feels like sickness.

Shrimpo holds his hands, and they bask in each other’s presences, and they stare at the changes in each other. Like this, Astro almost feels normal.

“You…,” Shrimpo falters. “YOU BETTER NEVER STEP FOOT IN THAT ELEVATOR AGAIN!!”

Subdued himself, Astro smiles, nodding.

Near lights out, Astro takes a trip to the kitchen. Rodger, bent over a cup of black coffee, raises, dully, “Astro. I know this is a sensitive time,” a pause, where Rodger thinks, lost for words temporarily, “but, now more than ever, I feel I would greatly benefit from an interview with you.”

Silence. 

Astro blinks, then shakes his head.

Shrimpo shouts, “NO!! GIVE IT UP!”

Vee is seething, somewhat.

“Four arms?” Her head whips to Sprout, electricity buzzing in staticky waves of noise, something that you feel the moment you hear, an echoing hum in the lights and electronics around them, “No— no, you never told me! No one told me! Are you kidding? Seriously?”

Astro clutches his blanket closer to himself.

He’d honestly thought someone had told her, but apparently they hadn’t. And now she hates him for it.

Astro struggles to breathe.

There’s more words, soothing reassurances, trying to settle her, but Astro can’t make out the sentences, the vowels, the consonants.

It’s too much.

So he leaves.

He squares his shoulders, sets his frantic heart steady, and walks out of the small, secluded room Vee had herded the mains—the mains she trusted, clearly Astro isn’t one of them anymore—into, quiet and comfortable and completely, utterly unassuming.

“Astro— hey, wait!”

The door slams shut behind him.

His mouth pressed in a firm, displeased line, he goes to search for Shrimpo.

The way his bones feel brittle and his teeth feel weak does not matter.

It’s as quiet as it can be, and Teagan sets her teacup down.

And, bluntly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, she says, “Well. It seems you’ve made up your mind about him.” 

Her eyes flit to his, as she finishes— the final nail, the damning hand, “Shrimpo.”

It’s obvious, how they are around each other.

And maybe, just maybe, a small part of Astro already has him. Has had him the entire time. Just maybe.

Maybe he just needed something to prove it to him.

Days pass quietly, slowly, now that Astro is restricted to the living quarters and well over half of the toons still left standing believe they have to walk on eggshells around him.

They don’t, really. He believes they don’t. But maybe they do. Maybe Shrimpo, glowering over his shoulder, tending to Astro’s every need and want, is what truly scares them off.

It’s like a switch has been flipped.

Astro had been planning something to get Shrimpo as his, but maybe his plans fell through for something better.

His weakness can be ignored. His trembling fingers and fawn-like legs. The way he stumbles if he walks too long. The way his breaths come sharp and heavy if he stresses his body too much. The way his mind runs frantic and he needs ichor, ichor, ichor— for his hands to be drenched in it.

Astro had been planning something to get Shrimpo as his, but it’s this simple: if Astro needs him, Shrimpo appears for him, and if Shrimpo needs him, Astro is at his beck and call.

The way Shrimpo looks at him— it sends Astro into a frenzy. Into a deep, peaceful rest. Into an endless obsession like no other.

Astro is terrified that he is beyond absolution. Beyond savior. Beyond cure.

He craves blood and he craves Shrimpo. What could that possibly say about him?

Astro rests in the central living room. Shrimpo sits on the couch beside him. Rodger is glancing between Astro and the notebook he’s scribbling in. Toodles plays house with her dolls on the floor.

“I think— Astro, do you think Lacy,” Toodles holds up a stuffed doll, worn down yet made by Teagan’s skilled, patient hand, dressed in a frilly pink dress, “is good at playing soccer?”

After a short, delayed moment, Astro hums. “I don’t know. Does she take her breakfasts plain or pester her parents for sweets?”

Toodles pauses, gives him an odd look, and giggles to herself. “I don’t know, but she likes to play soccer when she isn’t busy with school.”

School, of course, Toodles will never attend.

Schooling, however, the toons do their best at.

Vee is giving him the cold shoulder.

Astro is doing his best to make sure Shrimpo does not punch her for it.

Astro has taken Teagan’s record player.

It sits in Astro’s room and plays scratchy, old, retro swing music. It is a beaten machine.

Astro is held on his feet by Shrimpo’s steady hand, and slowly, very slowly, they dance together.

Shrimpo does not want Astro to tire himself out. Astro wants to settle Shrimpo.

They are hand in hand, and their heads are hung next to each other.

Astro could try, but he could think of no one else who could ever take Shrimpo’s place, in this moment, and feel entirely natural.

There is no one else close enough to him.

This is vulnerability.

To it, Astro succumbs. He spares no thought to it. It’s the way he is, the way he’s decided to be.

Astro pulls together a dream for the two of them where they are stargazing on Gardenview’s roof.

The wind, gentle and calming. The metal beneath them, cool and settling to the soul. Astro’s blanket around them both. Their arms around each other. Their faces in each other’s necks.

Safe and utterly free together. Like nothing they’ve ever dared to hope for.

But when they wake up, they are as trapped as they’ve always been.

Gardenview is a prison and a plague, and it is killing them.

Waiting for Shrimpo to return from expeditions is hell. Worse than losing his strength.

He paces at the shut elevator’s entrance, impatient and restless. Until he’s dizzy and sweating and tired.

Sometimes, others try to settle him. Teagan offers tea. Brightney suggests a visit to the library. Razzle and Dazzle hand him books; almanacs and dictionaries and one-hundred fun facts about creatures he never has and never will see, trapped in this building. Sprout and Cosmo with sweets. Looey with magic tricks.

And sometimes, no one steps in. Sometimes, he stays until he has to stop and sit, until he falls asleep against the far wall and wakes to Shrimpo, trying to be gentle but always too rough, shaking his shoulder, pinching his cheek, shouting in his face.

He’s in the kitchen, close to lights out.

The second Shrimpo had been pulled into Cosmo’s argument, Sprout had swooped in, stolen Astro from right under Shrimpo’s nose, brought him to Sprout’s home territory, where the fluorescent lightbulbs have just been replaced and everything is awash in harsh white.

Astro is staring at Sprout, and Sprout’s arms are crossed, his mouth in a small, upset frown.

At first, Astro guesses that Sprout, not for the first time, is here to check in on him. But then Sprout opens his mouth.

“Shrimpo— Astro.”

Astro blinks. “…yeah?”

Sprout sighs. Heavy and loud. His hands gesture vaguely. “Shrimpo,” and then his voice grows quiet, deathly serious, “Shrimpo says that you ‘fuck with his head’. In his dreams.”

Sprout stares at him. Something in his eyes are imploring, burning, questioning.

“Oh,” Astro answers. He can’t bring himself to be surprised. Shrimpo isn’t that dumb. Astro can only hide something so big for so long. “When did he find out?”

Sprout looks disbelieving. Shocked. Like he’ll have nightmares about him.

It is like everything that has happened, ever, has been for this point. For this eternal state of bliss.

All of that suffering, for this. All of this suffering, for that.

They’re dancing to the blues. Teagan’s record player works overtime. Dancing is the only thing Shrimpo will allow him. The necklace Astro gave Shrimpo is hanging, freely and obviously, on his neck. These days, it’s no longer hidden in his shirt.

Slowly, they sway. Hands intertwined.

“Why do you fight with the others so much, now?” Astro asks.

Shrimpo sighs heavily. “You don’t want me to get along with them, Badstro.”

He’s quiet for a long moment.

Shrimpo is so… just so… so very obedient. 

That’s the word he was looking for. So good to him.

Astro frowns. “I don’t want them to take you from me,” he answers, petulant. “Shrimpo, will they take you away from me?”

The answer is immediate.

“Not a chance. No way in hell.”

In spite of himself, Astro grins. “Go ahead, then. Have fun. Focus on the others.”

Shrimpo sucks in a pained breath and hangs his head. His voice is growly and choked. “You win.”

“…What?”

“I said, Astro wins.”

Astro’s soul aches. His hands are all curled around Shrimpo. They’re dancing.

“Oh, Shrimpo. I think we’ve both won.”

In Astro’s bed, in early morning, when they’ve just woke up, they’re all over each other. 

It feels like Shrimpo is trying to eat him. Wrapping armored fingers around his throat and staring down at him with vibrant, defiant eyes as his mouth wanders. From Astro’s shoulder to his cheek to the skin by his ear. 

Astro breathes, eyes cast upwards, and Shrimpo grunts, “stay still.”

And because it’s Shrimpo, he does.

This feels like absolution. This feels like savior. Like cure. Like salvation and joy and agony. Like he is alive, again. 

When Astro reciprocates, it feels like he is trying to eat Shrimpo.

Eventually, things will play out as they should.

Now, they play out like they should.

It makes sense. Falling into the embrace of hell feels entirely natural. Soothing.

If there is one thing that they know, it is trust, and mistrust, and the hold of each other’s hands. And darkness. And light.

No one questions it. Not even them.