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You don’t know how movie nights always wind up like this.
Well, no. You do. Movie night is essentially date night, and you think that this is a fairly standard progression of date night. Plus, even though Dave can be weird about touch sometimes, Karkat is super physically affectionate, and they both have an awful tendency to escalate things.
You’re sort of sandwiched between them, but you know you won’t be for long. Your particular anatomy means that the three of you always wind up in the same position eventually. The thought nearly makes you grimaced, not helped in the least by Karkat rolling his hips up against your ass and Dave sliding a hand to fiddle with the button of your pants. On the one hand, you want him to touch you. Desperately. On the other hand, you don’t want him to touch you the way you know he’s going to touch you.
You’re only kind of aware of what’s happening when Dave gets his hand into your pants and suddenly you’re up on your feet. Your chest feels impossibly tight as it heaves with panting breaths. You try to take a deep breath, but it doesn’t work, and something an awful lot like a sob threatens to bubble up out of you.
Dave and Karkat are both staring up at you with red cheeks and wide eyes. When did Dave’s shades come off? Are you the one who took them off? It occurs to you that you can only kind of remember the last several minutes. You guess you were dissociating more than you thought.
DAVE: sollux?
DAVE: you ok man?
You nearly flinch at that, stumbling back a step.
SOLLUX: i’m
SOLLUX: i just need to step 0ut for a minute.
SOLLUX: y0u guys keep going with0ut me.
KARKAT: WHAT?
You don’t bother to stick around and try to explain yourself. You don’t even bother to stop for a second to fix your fly or put your shoes back on. It’s not like you’re leaving Karkat’s block forever; you can go back for the shoes later. You just need some air.
Well, as much air as you can get in a lab on a meteor drifting through the Furthest Ring, anyway.
You’re only half-aware of where you’re going as you walk—which is fitting, you guess. You’re not surprised by where you wind up though. Regardless of which one of them answers the door, it was always going to be these two.
ROSE: Sollux?
ROSE: What’s wrong?
You thank all your lucky stars that it’s Rose. She’s the one who’s officially your moirail, so you don’t feel as bad when you collapse against her and start hyperventilating. Not that Kanaya wouldn’t help you, too, but your quadrants situation is already complicated enough with Dave and Karkat without trying to blur these lines, too.
Rose doesn’t ask you what’s wrong again before she pulls you inside. She walks backwards with you in her arms until the backs of her knees hit the human bed she’s somehow conned Kanaya into keeping in their room, and you go right down with her. You’re absently aware of her fingers stroking through your hair. You’re also absently aware of your snot smearing against your shirt, but that’s not a problem you can fix right now, other than sniveling pathetically in the attempt to avoid spreading more.
She waits until you’re breathing again—or at least doing something mostly resembling breathing—before she tries to ask you anything.
ROSE: What happened?
Her voice is unbearably gentle. It makes you feel like a stupid little wiggler. You guess you’re kind of acting like a stupid little wiggler. Why does she even bother with you?
ROSE: No.
ROSE: Sollux, I can see that spiraling look in your eye. Do not start going off the deep end about how you don’t deserve me again. I am perfectly capable of making my own choices, and I am choosing to be here for you.
You nod because that’s what you’re supposed to do. You know that she doesn’t believe it, but it’s pretty much your universal signal for not wanting to talk about it, so you also know she’s not going to push the matter. Or, at least, she’s probably not going to push the matter, unless she deems it absolutely necessary. You don’t think it’s absolutely necessary yet, but she’s better at gauging that than you are, generally.
When you still don’t manage to muster up an answer, she finally sighs and decides to start making guesses.
ROSE: Is this about Aradia?
You wince. It’s a good guess, or at least it would be a good guess any other night. Even a sweep later, Aradia’s abandonment still stings, and you still don’t entirely understand why you had to go on the meteor while she got to stay behind in the dreambubbles.
It’s not about Aradia this time, though. A part of you almost wants Rose to be proud of you for that. Look, see, you can be a blubbering idiot about all sorts of nonsense! She doesn’t have to keep talking to you about the same issue over and over again until she gets bored of you.
SOLLUX: it’s not ab0ut AA.
At least you manage to say that out loud with your mouth words. Progress is being made.
ROSE: Alright.
ROSE: I’m not sure whether to be relieved or even more concerned.
ROSE: I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this upset about anything other than Aradia.
ROSE: What’s going on?
SOLLUX: it’s dave and karkat.
SOLLUX: or...
SOLLUX: n0.
SOLLUX: i’m the idiot. it’s me.
Rose raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t bother to argue or correct you. You think she’s realized that you’re past the point where that sort of bargaining would be successful. You could kiss her for it if that was an acceptable pale gesture to humans. You might do it anyway, depending on how your night goes.
SOLLUX: it was m0vie night.
ROSE: I can see that.
You grimace and cross your legs.
SOLLUX: don’t... d0n’t lo0k at that.
SOLLUX: THAT’S the problem.
ROSE: What do you mean, that’s the problem?
SOLLUX: i mean i’m a fucking freak and my stupid b0yfriends don’t even understand why.
SOLLUX: and f0r sweeps everyone has just j0ked and joked and laughed and laughed and i just want t0 crawl into a h0le and die.
ROSE: That seems a bit drastic.
You scoff a bitter laugh.
SOLLUX: you d0n’t even get it.
ROSE: I’m sure I get it far more than you realize.
ROSE: But I apologize for making light of the situation.
ROSE: I suppose, in an ironic sense, no one ever prepared me for being on this side of this conversation.
You decide to brave a look up at her, even though you’re sure your face is still all yellow and splotchy from your temper tantrum. Rose has never made fun of you for how ugly your face looks when you cry.
ROSE: Alright, let’s see... What did my mother say to me at the time?
ROSE: You’ll have to give me some grace, as I was 6 years old when I had this conversation.
ROSE: Not to mention the humanity of it all.
ROSE: What you’re feeling is perfectly normal. Perhaps not average or common, but normal. There isn’t anything wrong with you. You’re not a freak.
ROSE: I think that was the basic gist of my mother’s rousing speech.
ROSE: If delivered through the fog of a third martini.
SOLLUX: what are you talking ab0ut?
Rose offers you a wry smile, but there’s a look in her eyes that you don’t entirely know how to read.
ROSE: Sorry. I had hoped it would be obvious from context.
ROSE: That was the conversation my mother and I had when I realized I was not like other boys.
ROSE: I had never been particularly interested in my peers irrespective of gender, but I found the confines of the gender roles in the kindergarten classroom appalling.
ROSE: Why was it that boys were expected to behave in one way and girls were expected to behave in another way? And why was it that I got in trouble for behaving the wrong way?
ROSE: It was absurd.
SOLLUX: i’m gonna be real with y0u RS, you’re l0sing me.
ROSE: Ha.
ROSE: Sorry. It’s just strange to say out loud after so many years.
ROSE: I’m transgender, Sollux.
SOLLUX: what the fuck is that?
Rose laughs, although it’s more of a startled sound than anything, so it doesn’t cut into your chest quite as deeply as it otherwise would. You still shrink in on yourself, though, until she gets an apologetic look.
ROSE: Sorry. It hadn’t occurred to me that trolls wouldn’t have the same concept.
ROSE: I suppose coming from a hermaphroditic species has its advantages.
ROSE: I was born male, like Dave. I then realized at an early age that my gender identity didn’t align with my biological sex. I informed my mother, who revealed that she was like me.
ROSE: I suppose in hindsight, it’s obvious.
ROSE: The ectobiological breeding process used to create Dave and me from my mother and his brother’s combined genetics would have been taking sex chromosomes from two XY pairs. Rather than the typical 50/50 chance, there was only a 25% chance that either of us would have come out biologically female. Though I admit I am not well read enough on chromosomal conditions to know what would have happened if one of us had been YY, or, indeed, to know that neither of us could be YY.
ROSE: I’ve gone off on a tangent.
ROSE: The point of this is:
ROSE: My anatomy is wrong, too, Sollux.
You stare at her. You’ve seen Dave naked plenty of times, and you know what equipment he’s working with. Hypothetically, Rose should have the opposite. But she’s saying…
Oh.
SOLLUX shit. i’m sorry.
ROSE: You’re sorry?
SOLLUX: yeah.
SOLLUX: s0rry.
SOLLUX: you pr0bably didn’t want to tell me all 0f that.
ROSE: If I didn’t want to tell you all of that, I wouldn’t have.
ROSE: But I think I would be a rather piss poor excuse for a moirail if I left you feeling entirely alone. Wouldn’t I?
SOLLUX: i
SOLLUX: yeah.
Your chest feels tight again as you finally realize just what she was trying to tell you here. Now that you know, it feels kind of insane that trolls don’t have a word for this. Or at least, if you do, you don’t know it, and you’d like to think you have a pretty good vocabulary.
Of course you would be the only freak of your species stuck feeling like this. Is this just part of your Mage of Doom bullshit? You’re destined to suffer—as if you didn’t have enough suffering already. And what are you even supposed to do with this knowledge, anyway? You just get to live like this now?
ROSE: What are you thinking about?
You hate it when she asks you that. It’s designed to give you room to lie, but you find that you’re never fucking able to. She has too many psychological tricks up her sleeve.
SOLLUX: so what d0 you... D0 about this?
ROSE: I’m not sure I’m enthused with your phrasing, but you’re new to this, so I’ll grant you a pass.
ROSE: If I’m being entirely honest, I don’t know how well my own experience of transition translates to your particular situation.
SOLLUX: transiti0n?
ROSE: The process by which I ceased to look like Dave and began to look like me.
Again, you stare at her—awestruck this time.
SOLLUX: you used t0 lo0k like dave?
ROSE: Oh, it was uncanny.
ROSE: I’d show you the baby pictures if I hadn’t burned them years ago.
SOLLUX: so h0w did you... transiti0n?
ROSE: Well.
ROSE: I started with makeup.
Rose’s smile turns downright conspiratorial, and for the first time in your life, you think you understand exactly what she’s suggesting without it being explicitly spelled out for you.
It’s nearly an hour before you’re ready to go to Karkat’s block. Frankly, it’s a fucking miracle that Karkat hasn’t come busting down Rose and Kanaya’s door looking for you—they know just as well as you do that there’s nowhere else you would have gone. Maybe Kanaya somehow knows to run interference, since she doesn’t walk in at any point, either.
Rose swears you to secrecy when she uses Kanaya’s lipstick on you instead of her own, because it’s "formulated for troll lips" or something like that. It’s silly, because your lips are already naturally black, so they don’t look any different. But they feel different.
You feel different.
She does, at least, apply some other makeup to your face. She doesn’t have anything in any of your colors—yellow, red, or blue—but purple is basically just a combination between red and blue, and you think it pops out nicely against your pale grey skin. Plus, you always thought it was kind of weird that Nepeta wore a blue hat because it was Equius’ color, but you think you get it now. You do feel closer to Rose this way.
ROSE: Now remember.
ROSE: Use protection.
ROSE: And I want you home by ten o’clock young lady!
You think she’s referencing some human thing you don’t understand, but your blood pusher squeezes so fondly at being called a young lady that you don’t really care.
When you walk back into Karkat’s block, he and Dave are sitting on the couch, looking every bit like the worried parents of a teenager in one of the sitcoms Dave has made you watch. Their heads both snap up to look at you the second the door slides open, and you struggle not to flinch or shrink into yourself. You want to be confident about this. You want them to know that you feel good like this.
KARKAT: UH... SOLLUX?
DAVE: holy shit
SOLLUX: hey guys.
SOLLUX: sorry f0r freaking you 0ut.
SOLLUX: but uh... this is me.