#hemoflip

God, they’re going to kill him. God, they’re going to get him backed into an alley and even powerful psions can’t fight back against a group of angry paintheads, the lean hunger in their faces only amplified by the black soot and white powder they coat their faces in. They’re going to rip him to pieces and sell off everything he has on him, in him, and pocket the cash.

It’s none of your business. You should turn on your heel and walk away and let the uppity fucking highblood suffer for thinking he could step foot in a space he does not belong, but something stills your feet, wraps a thick hand around your bloodpusher and squeezes tight, holding you frozen fast. It’s none of your business but you can’t just let him die. You can’t just let someone die- Feferi, gods bless her soul, would haunt you for eternity for allowing something so terrible to happen, and you can almost feel her hands pressed against your shoulders, pushing you forward.

One second, you’re halfway across the market- the next, you’re four steps from him, three, two. You stand beside him and nod and put a hand on his shoulder; he startles, staring at at you [with such tired eyes, god], and you tighten your grip, smiling pleasantly at him.

“Play along,” you hiss through your teeth, needling through the thick cloth of his embroidered jacket with your ragged claws; he narrows his gaze but tips his head agreeably, setting the little trinket down and following as you tug him closer to the middle of the street.

Your hands seem to move for you, like someone else is guiding your touch; you straighten his jacket for him, your fins angled low and easy, fingers curling to adjust the little golden chain hanging from his lapel; at the physical expression of fondness, you can feel the gazes of the other lowbloods wavering, the four of them staring at each other and flicking signs across the streets, arguing. Good.

“You’re bein’ followed,” you murmur, and comprehension dawns on his face; the hand that presses against your shoulder is hot, almost too hot, and you shiver beneath it, trying not to cringe away from the feeling you’re decidedly unused to. Warmth is not something you experience regularly.

“And I take it you’re supposed to be my rescuer?”

God, his voice is awful, but at least he’s not fucking stupid; some highbloods, their pans practically rot from lack of use, their brains reduced to mush by all that lazy indulgence, but he speaks with the sharp snap of someone who can at least string multiple words together to form a complex sentence.

“Unless you want to get ripped to pieces and divided up into coolers to be sold to the highest bidder,” you reply calmly, because if you’re not calm then the idiots still staring are going to think there’s something wrong, god forbid; a weak relationship is worse than no relationship at all, and the only reason for a highblood to be so deep in the slums is because of some attachment or another.

Which doesn’t explain why he’s here, but whatever.

“Highbloods pay a lotta money for organs, you know.”

Your fingers pet over the side of his cheek, a mockery of a pale caress, and you can see the struggle in him not to snap at your hand; instead, he leans into your touch, and you tug him back to your own stall with little resistance on his part.

“Four’a them,” you continue, voice lilting sweetly as you push him into a chair; the words don’t matter so much as the tone, and you know they can still hear you but the noise of the busy street will drown out most everything else, “Three purples and an indigo. Clearly you’re fuckin’ pandead if you think it’s a smart idea t’parade around like a goddamn peacock with all your finery all aflutter in a neighborhood where the profits from one’a those gold chains would feed a troll for more than a month.”

He has the audacity to raise an eyebrow at you, the bastard; you rub a thumb over his horn and delight in the startled little chirp he lets out. [You refuse to admit it’s cute.]

“Last I checked,” he drawls, lathht and it makes your fins twitch, “You aren’t my lusus.”

Luthhhuthhh. Dear god.

To shut him up [and not because he’s nearly as skinny as you, fucking hell], you stuff a cup full of your particular ware into his hands, even though you can’t really afford to go handing that shit out for free. It’s whatever. Fuck, you’ll just skip lunch. You ate yesterday, you’ll be fine.

Your own stall is tucked out of the way but still gets plenty of business; cheap fish is hard to find, and your particular shade needs all the nutrients from the fatty flesh as they can get. You primarily sell street food, because it’s easy and quick to make- little fried balls of dough stuffed with cubes of barely-seared salmon and tuna, but you sell bulk meat as well- and jars of fish eyes, but only for special customers. Your favorites.

He picks at the food like it’s going to bite him, but after a chitter and a flick of your fingers he’s eating, at least; you keep an eye on the four that seemed hellbend on stalking them, but one’s already given up the chase and the three remaining are fussing at each other, debating the intelligence of pissing you off. Good. You hope they fuck right the fuck off a cliff, but if not, you’d gladly sharpen your claws and teeth on the hide of some overinflated buffoon who dared to snatch yours out from under your nose.

Not yours. Whatever. Just don’t think about it.

“One down, three to go,” and he nods at you, staring with those weird mismatched eyes, his gaze a little too intense and making your skin itch and shivery with the force of it; impeccably manicured claws pluck little bites out of the cup you’d handed him and you just. Twitch.

“Why?”

You busy yourself handing another cup to someone who hands you a dented bronze coin in return; it goes straight into the safe you have stuffed under your stall specifically for that purpose as you ponder the answer to his question.

“There’s already too much death here,” is what you decide on, the words sitting strangely in your mouth, not quite the truth but not quite a lie, “An’ besides, if you die in a lowblood market the whole place’ll get razed to the fuckin’ ground by highblood patrol officers.”

Also true. But not the truth; he stares at you and it’s like his gaze is clawing its way into your chest to settle in among your lungs, heavy in your throat. He looks tired, he looks thin; despite the pristine care he’s put into his appearance there are certain signs, certain blaring alarms of exhaustion and overwork that you see on your own face, on the face of every troll that frequents the marketplace here. The narrowness of his limbs, the brittleness of his hair, the dark, dark shadows underneath his faintly glowing eyes…

Fuck.

You scan the market; another purple is gone, leaving only an indigo and a clown with dark, messy streaks of soot-paint down his face; they’re huddled together across the street from you, and you make a point to rest your hand on the highblood’s head, fingers petting down the side of his face.

The indigo turns and leaves.

“If you wait a half hour, I can walk you back to the Wall,” you say, and when he blinks his eyelids are so thin you can still see his eyes glowing through them; despite the symbol of power it makes him look so fragile. Your face aches from the false smile you’ve had plastered to it since you picked him up like an errant barkbeast pup. You kind of want to hit him.

The next half hour passes so slowly you could swear time has become molasses; you sell a lunch-rush’s worth of dough-fish snacks and bulk packages and fish eyes and he just sits on his ass and stares at you so much you want to shake him, except if you did he’d probably snap in half. It’s infuriating. Your chest aches. You hate it. He says nothing, except when you turn to stare back at him and he reminds you your food is burning. His lisp makes you want to pull his teeth out.

[Except not really.]

Except yes really, fuck off. You pack your pans and everything you can’t live without into your safe and stuff that into your worn and overladen sylladex, and he stands without a word, following you as you lead him to the monolith of stone that separates the lowblood slums from the highblood lawnrings you can’t even afford to look at, much less live in.

You hold his hand, even though you don’t really need to.

There’s no sign of the final purpleblood but he could be hiding, you justify to yourself; his fingers curl around your hand sun-hot and skinny and your fins flutter. It’s always possible. Your prescription hadn’t been changed in sweeps and your glasses are cracked and dirty- for all you know he could be standing right down the road and you wouldn’t be able to see him if he had a bright-ass neon sign.

So you hold his hand. You walk him to the Wall, and when you part, he looks at you with all the feverish fervency of someone on the verge of solving a centuries-old puzzle. Like you’re something to be cracked open and examined with all due clinical interest. It makes your skin shiver.

“Thanks,” he says, and he slides his hand from yours and is gone, disappearing with a burst of bright red-blue, a powerful leap boosted by psionics that takes him straight over the Wall.

There’s something heavy and cool in your hand. When you manage to uncurl your fingers, a thick gold chain lays twined in your palm, along with a note- a name, a trollian handle.

Sollux Captor, Advisor to the Court, Seer First Class

twinArmageddons

take me on a real paledate next tiime, diip2hiit