apocalypticduality | (no subject)

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When Sollux got migraines, it tended to be a warning of tragedy on a global scale. He had been on the cusp of one when Dib's home reality had sung its swansong, and now he was getting that same creeping, dreaded sensation up the back of his skull, making his eyes pulse slowly and slow down in his typing.

He and Dib had long since arranged to live in different apartments, but they visited one-another enough that they each had spare keys to the other's place. There were clothes from each of them in each other's laundry, closets and occasionally floors and those few times that Sollux ever got visitors, he'd been asked if there was someone else living there with him. Every time was met with another version of 'nope', often accompanied by variations on 'and it's really none of your fucking business'. After all, Dib didn't live there.

Sometimes, he wished the guy did though.

This was one of those times that he really regretted just setting Dib up elsewhere in his complex. Sollux had tucked his spare key to Dib's place into his pocket while turning off his lights by hand, but he didn't move away from his desk. He'd had to lay his head down on his desk as is vision blurred and doubled, then trebled, and he tried to resist the urge to simply fall to the ground and curl up into the fetal position. His mind was screaming with dying voices that he couldn't place, and his ears were starting to ring. He couldn't even bring himself to open his eyes as he fished for his phone, shakily thumbing the combination in then risking peeking an eye open and feeling like a cold railroad spike had been driven into the socket for his trouble. He hissed and just swiped his thumb across the screen to bring up his voice app, very carefully keeping his voice level as he ordered the phone to call Dib's seldom-used home phone, operated by Eddie; if he couldn't immediately get Dib himself, he knew the AI could.

"Thingth are getting bad again," he hissed, growling at a pulsing thump in the bases of his horns, making them feel as if there were vibrating like tuning forks. He left the message at that, then pushed the button to turn the phone off and forced himself up to go back and hide in the dark catacomb of his bedroom.

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Eddie received the message, and with a huff of "Wow, rudeass," he called up Dib. "Look, man, your boyfriend really needs you right now. Get out of that tree or sewer or wherever you've got yourself camped, and get over there. He sounds like shit's getting rough." With that, Eddie played back the message, and Dib listened to it, wincing a little as he slid off the rocky embankment he'd set up to do some cryptid watching. It wasn't long before he was in his car, heading back to the apartments, and he parked beside Sollux's classic Camaro with his own newer one, slipping his hands into his pockets to retrieve his keys and his bottle of excedrin.

As he let himself in, he was absolutely quiet, managing to keep stealthy and almost silent as he closed the door and shrugged out of his coat. He slid out of his boots and started into the back of the apartment.
Sometimes, if it wasn't for the fact they both needed their space to work on separate things, he wondered why they didn't live together. He'd spent several idle hours just merely scanning through real estate sites, trying to find a home that fit both their needs and their lifestyle, but had yet to find anything that he could really call theirs. But that was only a flash thought in his mind as he slipped into the bedroom and peeked first in the sopor, and then at the bed.

"Sollux?" He whispered, trying to stay as quiet as he could.

Sollux was curled up with his pillow clamped around his head, tendrils of crackling psionic energy running along his outline in the dark. He was hyperaware of every sound in the apartment, from Dib's entry to the whistling of his downstairs neighbor's nose coming through the vent.

"Shut up," he murmured, his voice almost completely muffled by the pillow, blankets and mattress under his head. His room's normal darkness hadn't been enough obviously, even the soft luminescence of the sopor getting hard to look straight at as he stumbled his way past it. "Find...find the hydroth..."

The hydros? He couldn't figure out what Sollux was even on about, but he managed to brush it off as he slipped close and put his hands on Sollux's shoulders. The haircut was new, and he couldn't help but have his eyebrows shoot up in surprise as he brought his hands up to rub Sollux's temples. He didn't speak, but rather nudged Sollux back to his bed and settled down beside him, not letting up from what he was doing. He knew it helped his boyfriend when he gave him headrubs before, and once he'd been at it for a few minutes, he handed over the pain pills.

"I really don't want to know what's causing this," Dib barely whispered as he slipped behind Sollux, bringing his firm, warm hands up from Sollux's temples to the bases of his horns. "Just try to relax, ok? Close your eyes and take deep breaths."

"I need my goddamn pain medth," Sollux muttered, but he took the pills he'd been handed and swallowed them dry, gagging slightly at the compounding sensory overload accompanied by the medication. He leaned against Dib with his watering eyes closed tightly, breathing shallowly with just a hint of a whimper. Dib's fingers felt so much better through the buzzed part of his hair, and he focused on that as he tried to even out his breathing with long, shaky inhales through his nose and out through his mouth.

"I think...I think we're about to lothe Canada or thomething," he finally said, though whether or not it was a joke remained to be seen. All he knew was that it was going to be wide-scale death.

"Right, I'll get that once you're not throbbing in hideous imminent death pain, they'll cut what's left of it," Dib said in a breath, running his fingertips gently over Sollux's shorter hair. "When'd you go get this done? Looks good on you. I mean... like. Really good. I mean like, if you weren't in so much pain right now, I'd be coming onto you levels of good." He smiled wryly and kissed Sollux's forehead. "Canada had a good run, they'll be better off this way. Just focus on the physical." He slipped his hands down to rub out Sollux's shoulders, which had tensed pretty considerably.

"Ith it too late to point the doom at like. Authtralia or thomething? Nobody needth all thothe goddamn thpiderth." Sollux slouched back over onto his side, letting out a shuddering sigh and gingerly wiping the wetness off his cheeks, making a face at it then looking back around, the muted pulsing glow of his eyes just outlining Dib's face in the dark. He reached out and patted the mattress for Dib's hand, picking it up to hold loosely. "Thomeone thuggethted I get a new haircut after it thtarted getting shaggy around the edgeth again, tho, y'know. Fuck it, let'th go for thomething completely different, right?"

"Sorry, if Australia dies, then the spiders will learn to swim. We already have hellish eight legged swimmy things, we don't need more," Dib whispered with a quiet chuckle, sprawling down beside his boyfriend. He suddenly had a pretty cool flash thought and pulled his flexi-monitor out of his pants pocket and let it float in mid-air before navigating it via his glasses' HUD to slide under the meds bottle of hydrocodone, and float it over to Sollux. "There you go. See, I don't need psionics. I have alien technology." He smirked and leaned back to get a better look at Sollux's hair again.

"Well, there goes looking like each other. Which was weird to say the least, but you look good. It suits you."

"At leatht nobody can accuthe uth of going twinthieth or whatever anymore. It workth for my schtick but it'th only tho funny tho many timeth." Sollux rolled to grab the bottle when it was floated close enough to do so, nearly cracking the orange plastic with the force he used to open it and shake a pill into his hand. He tossed it into his mouth and swallowed hard, then turned over to shove his face against Dib's neck. "Fef likes the swimmy ones though...she can keep them."

"Eegh, yeah, but do we really need anything to compete with the mantis shrimp? That thing is already an unholy terror unto itself, I really don't think we need more terrifying crustaceans." Dib settled closer to Sollux, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend as he rubbed the other's back. "Maybe I should give you a sedative. At least that'll put you to sleep for a while so you can ride out the storm unconscious. Then when you wake up I can praise your half fuzzy head properly."

"I'm jutht fine with horrifying cruthtatheanth ath long ath they thtay far away from me," Sollux muttered, and would have shrugged had he not been prone and starting to suffer dizzy spells on top of the pain. He whined and wrapped his fingers in Dib's shirt, holding his breath until it had passed. He wanted to feel bad about so many people's imminent demise, but really all he could do was curse them for screaming in his ears.

At least he'd gotten a much better handle on his psionics as he'd gotten older, or things might have been ripping away from foundations and hurling themselves across the room.

"Quiet now, head scratches later..."

Slipping his hands gently away from Sollux's head and resting one on his boyfriend's waist, he quietly closed his eyes and breathed, "I've been looking into houses. I mean, if you can tear yourself away from the communal life." He had a twitch of a smile at that. "I haven't found anything yet that would suit us, but I'll keep looking around." He wanted to give Sollux a distraction to dwell on. "The three of us could pretty much move anywhere where your day job's got branches, which frees up a lot of restrictions. And it'd be nice to live somewhere where your neighbor doesn't consistently hack up a lung every evening." He moved his hand up to take off his glasses, and put them up on the bedside table, so they wouldn't get crushed if - more like when - he wound up drifting off. It was a nice thing to think about, moving in with Sollux. They could afford a house that would fit both of them, with both of their accrued savings, including Eddie's day jobs.

Sollux' brow furrowed some at that, one of his arms coming down away from shielding his face to rest over the top of Dib's hand.

"Never lived anywhere but apartmentth...hivethtemth... Can't really thay I want to move very far either. Not again." While he did miss living in California, even with its cost of living, he'd dug in pretty well here and hadn't expected it to ever be necessary to move again. "Maybe thomewhere in the mountainth. Clothe to where Dave and KK live..." He'd have to mull it over when his skull wasn't pulsing.

"I'd like that," Dib agreed with a nod, before leaning over to kiss Sollux on the center of his forehad. "Then I'll look around here. But I don't want to deal with you complaining that there's too much snow." He chuckled under his breath before pulling the blankets over the both of them and rested his hand back down on Sollux's waist. "Get some sleep, nerd."

"I will never thtop complaining about thnow even if we end up in Hawaii," Sollux snorted quietly, then turned to fully face Dib and pull the blankets further up and over both their heads. He let his arm fall to lie limply over Dib's side after that and got as comfortable as he could manage, squeezing his eyes shut. Even his own goddamn glow was irritating him.

He only managed to sleep for a few hours before he ended up crawling out of bed and into the bathroom, the light and vent left off as he stood in the shower, his forehead against the wall. He wanted to throw up, his head still hurt so bad, but he had also taken a pair of hydrocodone tablets and would be able to sleep again soon. He hoped, at least.

When he returned to bed he'd foregone pulling his clothes back on, just drying off and crawling right back in. By then the pain pills were starting to kick in, and he rubbed the shaved portion of his head against Dib's cheek as he settled in.

Edited 2014-12-19 11:02 (UTC)

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