Chapter Text
It's been nearly six sweeps since your lusus... died. He has to be dead, because it's that or he just left his four sweep old charge without notice, reason, or preparation. But who cares, not you, and no one knows. He's always out, you say, he's out hunting. They see how thin you are and make faces but you keep your face impassive, unchanged and unruffled. It's been six sweeps, that's enough time for you to have grown and become self sufficient anyway, who needs to know you're an orphan?
Your name is Kankri Vantas and this is just another visit from a well-meaning highblood who has it in their head to care for you. Except, it isn't. This is Cronus, and you know full well his wheedling is to get into your pants and not some legal document he doesn't even have the IQ for. You take a small, measured sip of your tea, only holding the handle so you don’t look huddled in the chilly hive. There's ice on the ground outside from the evening's rain and a rambunctious wind keeps rattling your windows. Inside is different though not by much, mostly only in that it smells like tea spices and has puffs of warmth from the stove.
"Cronus, I have told you on multiple occasions that I simply do not get those particular urges, and in fact you telling me about yours makes me rather uncomfortable." You lift your chin and watch him mildly. He just smiles and leans back in his chair like some sort of lord, hair mostly smoothed back except for a few curls. A lord down to the dressings, his latest getup.
"Alright, I'll give the flirting a break. But I can't really help myself y'know. It's in my nature." That causes you to sigh.
"I know, but although it may be your heritage and something you seem very keen on living up to, I would appreciate you control yourself in my hive, as you are a guest."
"Esteemed guest?" His tone is prompting but his expression looks almost eager. You take another sip of tea and glance at the melting ice on a window pane.
"Esteemed sure." You murmur, then clear your throat. "Actually, and I apologize for the rudeness, but I have things to do currently and would like the hive to myself. I'd urge you to stay warm but I feel that might be inappropriate due to your hue." You set your cup on its coaster and stand. He pulls a face as if pupa-eyes will ever hold any sway with you. When he speaks of course there's that ring of a whine to it.
"But it's all slick and nasty out there, you really going to send me out there?" His tone makes you bristle but, well, can you really send him into that? After a moment of thought, facing away from him, you flip your bangs to the side where they belong. "Alright, you can stay so long as you don't distract me from my work."
"Sure thing, you got it." He takes a sip of his tea while watching you.
It takes you most of the morning to clean up your hive and do whatever online billing you can, checking on and responding to a few argu- conversations, while you're at it. The knock on your open door startles you.
"Hey kankri, know you said you had stuff to do but... sky's letting up a bit, why don't you come on over to my place with me?" He grins at you and you take your fingers off the keypad so you don't ruin it.
"No thank you, I really would like to have the hive to myself for a while. Have a safe travel home." You turn and look him in the eye, your own heavily lidded.
He shrugs. "Suit yourself then, sounds kind of lonely though I've got to be honest with you on this one." Lonely hm, you shoo him off and once you've watched him leave down the street you let out a sigh and allow yourself to put on another layer of clothing, shivering. You can't wait for the warm season. Most trolls would be staying in their hives due to longer sun hours and you only needed to worry about staying cool.
You reach across the desk and tug the husktop closer, scrolling through trollblr with your knuckles digging into and supporting your cheek. It was only a sweep ago you were arguing with that one guy who just couldn't seem to comprehend the plight of warm-identifying coolbloods and the struggles of those who might theoretically try to inject dye into their bloodstream to look right. It would be a terrible thing to deal with of course but he didn't give a crap, going on about a creative imagination and you having some seriously misplaced priorities. A full sweep since then, it feels odd you don't even remember his handle.
A hum slips past your lips when you hear a knock at the door downstairs, and thinking that inept coolblood left something in your hive you answer it without much thought. However, greeting your ganderbulbs is a rather tall, slit-pupiled blueblood. She smiles at you kindly, in that way that makes your bones ache with ire.
"Hello there little guy, mind if I come in?" Her tone matches the sickly sucre of her perfume and makes your skin crawl.
You speak carefully, as if chipping your words from an ice statue. "I'm sorry to inform you but I do not take visitors inside my hive, and I have absolutely no intention of coming out in this weather. Have a pleasant evening outside the limits of my lawnring." You move to shut the door but there is a very glitzy high heel in the way.
"Now darling is that any way to treat your bet- nifactors?" Your face would burn in outrage if this weren't the common fare. Instead you lift your nose in the air and nearly close your eyes.
"High heels in icy weather, now that isn't very responsible is it? I think perhaps I'll take my chances on losing you as a benefactor if that's the sort of thought you put into the things you do. Good morning." You push the door shut this time and lock the deadbolt with a solid snap.
Over the next week the callers at the door and over the internet get more insistent and more annoying about how 'a little acaste troll like you can't afford not to be culled, and really I have your best interests at heart'. It's insulting, as if you can't take care of yourself! And of course Cronus has finally taken to listening to you more so hes been there for a few of the incidents. After you take care of your latest ‘benefactor’, you go right back to what you had been lecturing him about but he interrupts you.
"Hey uh, you know they're not going to leave you alone until you're out of the system." He wets his lips, shuffling the folds of his tunic... thing, the fabric black as night besides his symbol, rings clicking together. Your lip nearly snarls up in your frustration but you keep face.
"Oh? And is this another proposition I'm hearing? Because I think I have been rather clear on where I stand."
"No no, I just. I think that it could maybe benefit us both? My hive's pretty big and you’re the only person who lets me come over regularly, and hey y'know they can't re-cull you." He purses his lips, studying your window and the freezing rain coming down against it. The most you can respond with for a moment is simple starring. Cronus is the last person who would ever actually act on his cull duties, being the most selfish troll you know besides that annoying jerk your wonderful Friend Latula has chosen to slobber all over. Perhaps he's right for once, since it won't be a cull in any way but legally.
"Cronus, I will... consider it. Since it would mean uprooting and moving my belongings into your hive we will need to go over some guidelines, and of course write up who would do which chores and just what is or is not allowed to transpire-"
His expression brightens the moment the word 'consider' reaches his thinkpan and hes leaning forward by the end, interrupting you. "Aw kankri thats great I knew you'd see it my way, see this is why we're best friends."
You pause in your response. "Friends surely, but don't you think it's a bit presumptuous to call me your best friend without first asking me if the position is already taken?" He just snorts and flops back again.
"You? Nah im not too worried about being beaten to the punch."
"Excuse me?" You narrow your eyes from lidded to squinting. "I do hope that wasn't meant to imply anything, although knowing you I'm likely correct in taking offense to such a remark."
He grins at you and settles into his seat, feet apart and spine bowed to accommodate his almost comical slouch. "We going to do this or not, babe?" He laughs at your disgusted scoff while you uncross your legs and stand up.
"Yes, but I am going to fill out the paperwork, since I wouldn't want you to sink to a station so below your current lordship." His smirk falls but he doesn't seem to have caught the full undercurrent of sarcasm. Good, you grab your jacket and hat from off the coat rack, causing him to pop his brow.
"Right now? You wanna go right fuckin now while its raining?" He stands when your response is a curt nod. If you dont do this now you'll talk the both of you out of it and have to deal with everytroll and their lusus trying to cull you 'for your own good'.
"It is now or never, the forecast calls for rain nonstop over the next few nights and I don't exactly feel up to donning my suncoat." You don't wait for a response as you take your umbrella from its cylindrical holding pipe and pull the front door open. He follows you out after a hurried scuffle with his rain equipment and its out into the ice and downpour, meltwater filling into holes and saturating mud puddles.
"Kan- kankri, hey would you wait up?" He jogs as elegantly as an almost seven-foot troll in out-dated footwear can and slides to a halt once he's tripped past you along the road. You look over at him, chin up enough for you to still be looking down at him, even if its only relative to the angle.
"If you fall and make a fool of yourself while we're in the city I want you to know I intend to sign those papers with or without your presence."
You continue walking without another word, apprehension gnawing at your digestive sack the entire time.