Eridan didn't flinch, at Eddie's hands on his face; stilled, narrowed his eyes a touch, but didn't pull away. Fingernails points of heat into cool purple skin.
He waited.
And after Eddie let him go, he began to follow again, comfortable — at home, even, in those long minutes of silence. At least until his companion spoke again, and then his laughter rumbled out dark in all the empty spaces surrounding and between them. Subsonic, almost; like the way he expected mountains would sound, if they could chuckle.
"I'd prefer avoidin' that, honestly. They don't like bein' told no. They call people like your darlin' hatecrush in when people tell 'em no." And people like me, he didn't say, but didn't bother not implying. He exhaled; continued nonchalantly. "We can't all be nice enough to nail ourselves to the cross, Nygma."
The years had made him smarter, more cunning, more... well, a lot of things. They hadn't made him the least bit more nice. And he imagined Eddie had weathered worse in his years than rude commentary.
"But I suppose I wouldn't mind havin' the opportunity to tell Osborn to fuck himself in the socket." A thoughtful cluck of tongue. "If it honestly came down to it."
And the torture, pain, and death that would come after it — either a physical or spiritual death, it really depended on how useful they found his powers — all of that, he would gladly do, take, suffer. All of that for the opportunity to tell the Establishment that there was something they couldn't make him hand over.
But that would come off so sentimental, wouldn't it just? He'd shed sentimentality like a second skin years ago.
no subject
He waited.
And after Eddie let him go, he began to follow again, comfortable — at home, even, in those long minutes of silence. At least until his companion spoke again, and then his laughter rumbled out dark in all the empty spaces surrounding and between them. Subsonic, almost; like the way he expected mountains would sound, if they could chuckle.
"I'd prefer avoidin' that, honestly. They don't like bein' told no. They call people like your darlin' hatecrush in when people tell 'em no." And people like me, he didn't say, but didn't bother not implying. He exhaled; continued nonchalantly. "We can't all be nice enough to nail ourselves to the cross, Nygma."
The years had made him smarter, more cunning, more... well, a lot of things. They hadn't made him the least bit more nice. And he imagined Eddie had weathered worse in his years than rude commentary.
"But I suppose I wouldn't mind havin' the opportunity to tell Osborn to fuck himself in the socket." A thoughtful cluck of tongue. "If it honestly came down to it."
And the torture, pain, and death that would come after it — either a physical or spiritual death, it really depended on how useful they found his powers — all of that, he would gladly do, take, suffer. All of that for the opportunity to tell the Establishment that there was something they couldn't make him hand over.
But that would come off so sentimental, wouldn't it just? He'd shed sentimentality like a second skin years ago.