1.

Cronus refused to smoke. It would be a completely benign factoid if he didn't insist on parrotting it back to every god damned person within earshot. "Gotta keep my voice in tip top shape!" As if anyone fucking asked him in the first place. Completely excruciating, second only to the fact that he had absolutely no reservations about getting completely shitfaced on every other mind-altering substance out there.

On this particular night, he did Eridan the favour of only getting embarrassingly sloshed on some of the Maryams' booze stash. He'd had about ten seconds to start getting handsy with the Pyrope he thought was least likely to bite a chunk out of him before his long-suffering duplicate dragged him away into a secluded alcove to heroically receive all the grievances.

"Stop whining," Eridan snapped. Cronus was a bit of a mess, all the time, and especially tonight, unbalanced with the collar on his jacket popped up on one side. Eridan smoothed it down for him, Cronus' head hanging low while he warbled about being such a sweet guy who didn't deserve being treated like a pariah. Eridan rolled his eyes. A million sweeps of shit like this and Eridan had developed an immunity to all the self-pitying caveats this man came prepackaged with.

"Suddenly mingling's, fuckin', against the rules," he continued whining. He had Eridan in the clinch he usually put him in, both hands gripping on to his younger's waist. He was a few moments away from getting kissy on top of it all, and Eridan kept him at bay for the moment with both hands on Cro's chest. "D'ye know that? We're all meant to just, stand around starin' at one another."

"Mm hmm," Eridan hummed. He did quite like when Cronus dropped the phony accent he'd picked up from all the old human movies he'd taken a shining to and let his burr come back in. It made Eridan feel special, in the way that Cronus had pinpointed every single way Eridan felt special in his aeon-spanning quest to win him over. He also quite liked the way Cronus' hands fit on his hips. He'd had enough time to catch up in size by this point, but Cronus was still thicker than he was, with strong and calloused hands that also played an important part in his aeon-spanning quest. "Yeah, mate, most people didn't show to this hive party to try and hook up. Thought you of all people would know how to read a room."

He really wasn't certain why they'd even showed up to this damn thing in the first place. He had half a mind to assume Kanaya invited him as a joke, or as a thinly-veiled threat, but she assured him it was a mere gesture of good will. Hard to come to terms with those feelings after a fucking eternity of self-loathing, but his opportunity for embarrassing reflection was cut short when he reminded her he had a ball and chain around his ankle.

"I'd have to bring Cronus," he'd said. They stared at each other for a good minute before she'd told him to just keep his boyfriend out of trouble. They'd naturally gotten into an argument before coming over, something that started with Cronus snatching his lighter away from him and demanding he not to spend the whole time puffing smoke like a chimney, so Eridan had told him to fuck right off, and Cronus had called him "exhausting" and Eridan responded by calling him about a dozen extra-nasty things that he couldn't totally recall at the moment and they'd left each other to their own devices upon arrival and, well, here they were now.

Eridan had his back to the wall, the two of them tucked into an alcove in Chez Maryam's empty foyer. Their new^[1] hive really was lovely, lots of big windows and delicately patterned throw pillows and fabrics. Even here, he could trace out the filigree on the wallpaper, the way the brass door handle matched the chandelier, endless evidence of the two women's strict attention to detail. He would have liked to pore through it.

Instead, he was busy stopping his overbearing matesprit from unravelling for the ninth time this week.

"It isn't fair," he whimpered. Eridan waited for him to continue his rant, but he let it sit there and fell into a silence. Poor thing, he must have actually gotten his feelings hurt. Cronus had always been a bleeding heart like that, quick to dish it out but totally armourless in the field of taking it. Tomorrow, Eridan would diligently chew him out for trying to make moves on someone at this casual get together and for not even having the audacity to wait until Eridan was more than a few feet away. In the moment he just lifted Cronus' face up by the chin.

"Still whining," he said, giving his duplicate a pointed look.

"You like me, don't you? Lovey?" Cronus hit him with his best attempt at inebriated fawning and Eridan suppressed his eyeroll.

" 'Course I do," Eridan assured him, skipping the tension and pressing their lips together. He was also quite fond of kissing the man, even when he was messy and clumsy and well on his way to being out of his head. When Cronus did finally lose his legs, Eridan carefully let him down on the loveseat—taking note of the cute little butterflies embroidered into the upholstery; he was a little obsessed with how the ladies had chosen to decorate, really—and fixed his own collar and made a tactical return to the party.

Obviously, Cro's theatrics had drawn enough attention that several pairs of eyes turned to him as he walked through the doorway. There was a fairly dense crowd, a large portion of the assholes he'd been stuck in limbo with for eternity and a few unfamiliar faces that Porrim or Kanaya must have come across in their time on this new planet. A lot of them were fellow jades, huddling and whispering in that cliquey way that he'd come to expect of that caste. Eridan wasn't sure if he disliked the hushed giggles and pointed looks more or the ones who quickly turned and pretended they weren't staring.

The elder Pyrope pointed two fingers at her eyes and back at him. The other one failed to do that for the obvious reasons. Eridan ignored both of them, a little out of his element without his obnoxious security blanket slung over his arm making an ass of himself so that Eridan couldn't. The din of conversation had risen back up despite the expected Ampora-based interruption, but those few erstwhile glances in his direction irked him, made it difficult for him to do much but hover, tense and feeling the wisps of embarrassment burn in his belly. He lingered, preocuppying himself with the broad leaves of a banana plant standing besides the couch, trying to pretend he didn't just scurry off from a huge scene that Cronus had caused, before Karkat descended on him like his saving grace.

"Wow," Karkat muttered. Rare Vantas understatement. "That was a shit show."

"Please tell me you have a lighter," Eridan begged under his breath, and the two of them were out on the patio and away from the crowd in an instant.

Cronus loudly refused to smoke, but Eridan had to put up with him night and day, so he got a free pass. He had the presence of mind to keep Karkat upwind, in whatever sparse, arid breezes the desert dared to give them.

"Break up with him," was the first thing Karkat said, and Eridan wasn't even surprised by it.

"Can't," he replied, charting out this planet's stars. Kanaya was so lucky she lived in a place with such little cloud cover, even if the air was inhospitable and choking and dry. "I love him. Somethin' like that."

"Okay, you say that," Karkat continued, gesticulating with his usual level of passion, "but I'm starting to wonder if even you actually believe it."

Eridan shrugged. "I've been dating the guy for a million sweeps, Kar. Kind of hard to not believe it. Harder still to believe there's anythin' else."

How melodramatic he sounded. Cronus really was rubbing off on him. If he wasn't careful Eridan was going to start straightening his hair, too.

He'd kind of had this conversation with Karkat a dozen or so times. In limbo, there was always a Karkat to wander across him and either enough time had passed that he'd snuffed out his general disgust for Eridan's prior conduct, or he'd clock the developing relationship he was getting into with his dancestor and take it upon himself to try and intervene. Karkat was like this, too caring for his own good, incapable of letting his friends fuck up without wanting to try and save the day. He was a damn great guy, even when he was being insufferable about it, even when he knew it was falling on deaf ears.

"Let me blow your fucking mind with a concept you've never heard of," Karkat continued. He held his hands out, presenting the idea before his friend. "You could consider being single."

Eridan gave him a hefty serving of the signature Ampora glare. "I do not wanna hear that from you of all people."

Karkat, immune to resentment, continued undeterred. "Try pulling your head out your nook for a single fucking second? You've been spending a freakishly unhealthy amount of time building your whole personality around being in a relationship. And it's not even a good relationship! You bring this guy every-fucking-where with you and there's always an argument or some out of pocket incident that you have to do damage control on."

"Mm hmm," Eridan said. The light was sparse, a sliver of pink on the night before the new moon. The temperature had dropped significantly in the hours since the sun had set, but the dry air still made his opercula itch.

"Like I'm not trying to be an asshole for once, so I hope you're actually listening while you pretend you're too cool to care. But you don't have to stay miserable and settle for the guy whose messes you're constantly cleaning up." He sparked the wheel on his lighter a few times, a surprising nervous tic. Karkat also didn't smoke. He made sure to let everyone who wasn't his boyfriend or his insufferable genetic clone know that if they ever saw him with a J, no they didn't. He, evidently, needed his mouth to bitch, so he didn't even ask for a hit. "I'm sure if you spent some time not being dragged down by that ungrateful shitstain you'd remember how much better off you are without him."

Eridan, unaffected by his friend's genuine concern, waved him off. "Can't fucking believe I have to go through this with ye again, man. I'm not," he stopped short, choking on smoke or on the dry air or on something a little too close to sincere for him to be okay with it. "I'm not risking it, going back to being on my own again." There followed a single moment of silence that Eridan absolutely couldn't stand. "So shove off." Better.

His friend's hard stare turned piteous, in a way that reminded Eridan of brief moments when they were kids, when Karkat was the only one who sought him out when he was too in his head. It was a little sickening. Where exactly was that concern when he was isolated in the afterlife with no one to give him the time of night but teen Dualscar? Day late, dollar short, as far as he was concerned.

Eridan sneered at him in response and turned his focus back to the endless black of the desert at night. He could barely see the sparkling hints of a distant city on the horizon, a faint line of gold beneath the cascading sky filled with blue and mauve and white points of light. If Cronus wasn't completely shitfaced and hopefully not choking on his vomit on Kanaya's new butterfly couch, Eridan would drag him out to look up at the stars together, and he'd wrap those strong arms around his shoulders and it would be nice. From the darkness, a beetle buzzed towards them, landing clumsily on the railing, and Eridan favoured watching it latch on instead of spending more time looking at Karkat's leer.

He brought his cigarette up to his lips. "He's not that bad," he insisted, speaking more to the insect than anyone else. "He's sweet. Understands me. We got a lot in common, y'know. More than you'd think. I like him, he likes me. Et cetera."

"I bet," Karkat deadpanned. "Nothing codependent about you two at all."

Eridan finally gave him a long, sideways look, barely bothering to move his head. He looked Karkat up and down, at the conspicuous gear symbol on the breast of his polo. "Nice top," he commented to Mister Codependent himself. Karkat took the appropriate amount of offense, but if calling a Vantas a hyprocrite was enough to get them to go away then they probably would have died significantly faster than they all had as kids.

"Eridan," he said, and his voice had that annoyingly authoritative tone he'd perfected over the sweeps. Eridan prepared himself to rebuke whatever rousing speech about self-love and standards Karkat was pulling out his gullet on this particular night, but the glass sliding door pulled itself open and they were joined by a third.

"Hiyaa," Nepeta Leijon sang, poking her head out into the night air and giving them a little wave. "So supurr sorry to intervene on your uber-important chat, boys! But I'm furrying urgent information." She looked directly at Karkat, coy and conspiratorial all at once. "Dessert's coming out, Karkitty."

Karkat visibly cringed. "Can he seriously not last ten fucking minutes without me glued to his side before he sends his accomplice out to get me?"

Nepeta remained completely unfazed. "Why efurr would you want to not be glued to your beau's side?"

"I'd like to wipe my ass by myself once in a while!" Karkat snapped. "Is it too much to ask to take a single trip to the goddamn load gaper without getting a postcard strapped to a dead bird and delivered through the window? Can we work out a five-minute interval during the day where I can shit in peace?"

"Okay! I'll let Dave know you don't want anything."

"Not what I said." Karkat brushed invisible stray grains of sand off his clothes before he pointed a damning finger at Eridan, who was trying to figure out if he was the shit Karkat was allegedly trying to take. "You. I'm not finished with you."

"Aye," Eridan said around an exhale. "Whatever."

"Seriously," Karkat continued, slipping between Nepeta and the doorway on his way back into the Maryams' abode. "Watch your fucking back, cuz I'm chewing your aural sponges out the next chance I get." He let his usual hard glare soften in the way that made Eridan's chest clench and then he was gone.

Nepeta stared at him, big bright eyes a deep, glowing green. Backlit by the soft indoor lighting, her expression was nigh unreadable.

"Coming back?" she asked him.

Eridan blinked at her. "What, you care?"

She stuck her tongue out. It was horribly endearing. Eridan steeled himself against pernicious optimisms roughly a million sweeps ago, but he didn't have anything close to a poker face, so he turned his back on her and ashed his cig out over the patio railing.

"Probably not," he said to the desert night. "Gotta take the old boy home." He jerked his head in the vague direction of the foyer, where Cronus was ideally still out cold. "Bet you and everyone's gonna be relieved to finally be rid of us."

"Are you suuure you don't want dessert first?" Nepeta asked. "Purrhaps you could take some to go?" The playful lilt in her voice carried an unfamiliar edge of concern, and Eridan almost turned to peer at her curiously, stopping himself at the last moment. He wondered if this was the same thing as Kanaya, a gesture of good will. Things like that were supposed to make a guy feel good, weren't they?

"I'm good," he said, waving his hand over his shoulder. "Bye."

She stayed put for several silent seconds, and Eridan could feel her gaze burn two holes into his back until, finally, he heard the sound of the glass door sliding shut. Letting out a breath he didn't realise he was holding, Eridan snuffed the last little bit of his smoke out on the metal railing. He stuffed the butt in his back pocket (he wasn't going to break a lifetime streak and randomly start littering now, thank you very much) and shook out his limbs. Cronus was a few turns away, harmlessly unconscious, and with all luck, Eridan was going to drag his sorry butt back to their own hive to sleep off his intoxication and, hopefully, wake up in a good enough mood.

He'd spend a few more minutes looking up at the stars, first. The heavens here were still comparatively unfamiliar to him. After sweeps of poring over the Alternian sky, and further aeons learning about the subtle differences Cro and his ilk had grown up knowing, and even further time dedicated to the echoes of him and his friends in the humans' own astronomical charts, he was pleased that he didn't find a new sky any less appealing. It was hard to pinpoint the asterisms with the sky so gravid with astral bodies as it was. He wished they'd picked a more remote spot for their hive, something with a little less light pollution. But Cronus was unassailably a socialite and an extrovert and Eridan couldn't stomach keeping him isolated like that. They had a lot in common, but it really not everything.

Anyway. Eridan bid the heavens farewell and went to tend to his ball and chain.

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