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Tonight it's a fishbone braid, gleaming black and ever so faintly blue at the edges of each highlight as the locks overlap and slip beneath one another. Last night he let you clip damp sections of his hair round empty wire bobbins and wait for them to dry, brushing each lovely coiling curl into a wave that made you think of black oceans, smooth slick seas of ink. You'd wished you could paint, watching him set neat little stitches into the hem of the waterproof cloak he's making you, head bowed over the work, the bare lamp bulb silvering that wave of hair and catching the edge of cheekbone and chin sharp against the darkness.
"Do you have to do that?" he rumbles.
You tug on a lock of hair. "Yeah, I totally do. It's keeping it out of your face, anyhow, right? You get all tetchy when you get hair in your eyes."
"Which is why I normally pull it back with a rubber band instead of whatever it is you're up to."
"Oh, bitch, bitch, bitch," you tell him, and lean in to kiss the back of his neck.
He sighs, and you rest your chin on his shoulder and peer down at what he's doing. "--What are you doing?"
"I'm trying," he says, without turning to kiss you as you'd envisioned, "to get this circuit board soldered. You are somewhat hindering the process."
"Aww, don't be like that," you start, but his shoulder tenses under your chin and you stop and actually look at him properly. "Eq?"
"Really, could I just have a few minutes of peace, you can finish doing silly things to my hair later, I'd just like to get this finished if you don't actually mind."
You take your chin away. "...Sure. Sure. I'll just be...doin somethin else for a while then."
He just nods, and you leave your half-finished braid abandoned, and try not to feel hurt. He very rarely speaks to you with that edge in his voice and all those comma splices, and when he does he always apologizes later, but it means he has something important on his mind. (That there are things more important than you on his mind is, of course, difficult to believe, but hey.)
~
A little later you're in his kitchen putting a kettle on and reading the news on your tablet when he appears in the doorway, twisting an oil-stained towel between his hands and regarding the floor. "I'm sorry I snapped."
"Don't be," you say, and mean it. "You got work to do, that's cool. Circuits all soldered, or whatever?"
He nods.
"...Eq, are you okay?"
Little head-shake, and more of his hair escapes your half-braid. You get off the table and come over to look up at him, cup a hand to his cheek. "What is it?"
"I don't feel very well," he admits. "I, ah, I have a headache."
"Shit, why didn't you say, I wouldn't a been fuckin around with your hair if I'd known." You slip your arms around his waist, and he droops to rest his face on your shoulder. "C'mon, come sit down and rest your eyes, jesus, you been workin on that thing all night."
Equius lets you tug him over to the couch and sits down with no grace at all: he must be tired as hell. "What is that you're doin anyhow?"
"New and improved array processor for the hydrophone net," he says, rubbing at his eyes. "Should let through less static, make sure the signal's as clear and strong as possible."
He hasn't stopped tinkering with the damn hydrophone net since you first went out to install each of the receiver arrays along the coast. You have your doubts about the utility of the whole project, but it makes him happy, or at least it makes him less anxious, keeping an eye (or an ear) on the comings and goings of vessels near your hive. "There isn't static. Well, not much."
"Now there will be less." He just presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, and you reach over to put your arm round his shoulders, tugging until he heels over with his head in your lap. "Nngh."
"What's really buggin you?" You leave his hair alone, despite how much you want to play with it, petting his shoulder instead. His hand comes up to cup your knee.
"You're...inconveniently perceptive, Eridan," he tells you, and sighs. "It's nothing. Just...bad dreams, that's all."
"Ah, hell. I thought you weren't havin those any more."
"I wasn't. I don't know what brought this on. Maybe the sopor needs changing."
"Maybe," you agree, but you think you know why: it's coming up on the dark-season storms again, the wind outside his cavern-hive is taking on that thin whine that presages the shrieks and howls to come. It's been...that long, since you rescued him and brought him to the Dualscar to wait out the red weather. That long since you discovered the world had more to it than the spaces inside your own head. He must be remembering what it was like to drown, and you know that for yourself, you have your own daymares, and you drop a kiss on the curve of his shoulder. "You know, that was a lucky goddamn night for me."
"...what was?"
"The one last dark season where you fell outta your awful fuckin boat and I happened to be fishin and caught you instead a dinner," you tell him, and now you do ever so gently stroke his hair. "Luckiest night I can remember."
He shifts so he's lying on his back, looking up at you, the blue blotching in his irises almost completely obscuring the silver. "How did you know I was thinking about that?"
"I'm very clever." You take one of his hands, tilt it in yours, examining the familiar paler grey lines and dents of scars, the short-clipped claws, the ring he'd made himself out of the leftover gold from your horntip, chased with the same wavelet patterns and set with the same tiny violet gems. He doesn't always wear it, specially when he's working with heavy equipment, but he always keeps it with him. "And the storms are comin. It's that sound, Eq. The wind's risin."
He lets you work his fingers, lace them with your own, kiss the tips: he closes his bruised eyes. "I wasn't sure what it was, when I woke up for the first time in your hive. Wasn't very sure of anything, except that I felt dreadful and for some reason wasn't in my boat or my own hive. There was just the creaking, and the wind crying outside. It was...singing, in the rigging of your hive, and crying."
"You don't remember me haulin you back to shore and drainin all the ocean out a you?" You kiss his palm. "Good thing too, I must a looked a total fuckin fright. Ruined a good pair a trousers rescuin you, y'know."
He chuckles deep in his chest; you can feel as well as hear it. "I vaguely remember being terribly cold, and it being very difficult and painful to breathe, but not much beyond that. The first clear memory is you coming into the block and shouting at me."
"You needed shoutin at, you were tryin to climb out and go sailin merrily home again in the middle of a class four storm while runnin a fever, and then you said somethin about how I shoulda left you to drown."
Equius winces, and you kiss his hand again, and press it to your cheek. "Idiot."
"Then you made me tea," he says.
"Yeah, I did, didn't I? And got you to tell me what was wrong."
This time the wince is much worse, and you're the one chuckling. "Don't remind me. I was being...irrational and overly dramatic at the time."
"Hey, you were sick as a pike, a little irrational drama is pretty much understandable. Besides, you'd had some shitty news." You go back to stroking his hair, letting silky strands move through your fingers like water. "I think I started to fall for you right then and there."
"You were...kind," he says, closing his eyes. "You gave me the order I needed."
"I told you to go the fuck to sleep."
"Yes, exactly. And the next time I woke you'd made dinner and I had never tasted anything so vivid and intense and complicated--hush, I mostly made do with packaged grubloaf until you came along--and I said something stupid and you stormed off. I was definitely falling for you, you were so...illogical and tempestuous and I couldn't figure you out. And then things got very...strange."
"Yeah, you were delirious by then. I couldn't make out half the shit you were sayin, when you said anythin at all, mostly you were coughin your head off. I think you were rememberin the ocean, though. How cold it was."
"It was," he says, "very cold," and catches your hand as it moves down a strand of his hair. "Cold and huge, and I was entirely alone until you found me."
"You found me," you point out. "You rescued me. Quid pro quo, as Ter might say."
He opens an eye, and you smile down at him, and he smiles back. "Say that we found each other."
"That works. Also, I love you. I feel this bears sayin at every possible opportunity."
"I love you, too," he says. "So much. Sea-prince."
"Well, amphibious prince these days," you correct, and he reaches up to put a finger gently against your lips.
"No; sea-prince."
You kiss his fingertip. "As you wish. Yours, anyway. Whatever I am now is yours."
Equius smiles one of those rare but exceedingly beautiful smiles that transforms his whole face, makes him look the age he really is, takes away the weariness. He smiles up at you, and you are warm all over with the power of that smile, and say nothing at all.
After a little you go back to stroking his hair, and he sighs softly, and drifts off into sleep.