Chapter Text
For as long as Jontan could remember, the house had always been closed of. Walls of nondescript grey enclosed the young boy from the sight of the world. Sure he went out on the roof. He could see other trolls-but only around his lusus, where the crab could fight away anyone who thought to come over. The crab did anything it could to keep it’s charge from being discovered as a blood mutant. He needed to survive to adulthood. No one must know his differences, and that had been ingrained in the young troll's mind from the day he'd wriggled from the caves in to the claws of his lusus.
Jontan was surrounded by people, yes, he lived in a full culdesac, but he was still incredibly lonely. All of them, every single person was kept out of reach while Jon was drilled, over and over, about the reasons he needed to be safe.
So, when the perigee turned to Jon’s second wriggling day, the crab brought the boy a computer. Games and movies, and even other trolls were safely at a fingertips reach. The stroke of hunt and peck keys made everything, and everyone, accessible, so the boy hunt-and-pecked his way through the communication, information and media sharing network, grey eyes wide with excitement. Not that it was easy for him to see, his eyes were pretty bad. He wound up having to sit with his nose inches from the screen as he poked at the keys.
Over the course of the next sweep he discovered talk-client(TA: diid you 2eriiou2ly u2e your own name for the talk-cliient hanlde?). It was, as his new friend 'twinArmageddon's informed him, clunky and inelegant. The other troll insisted they could do it better, and Jon laughed and informed him that he believed him, after all, Sollux never said anything he didn't mean.
Three months later, there it was: zipfile on his desktop, clearly labeled 'unpack-thii2-2hiit'. Inside were a pair of files. One a 'read me' file(Jon chose to disregard this, but had he chosen to, he'd have found that the directions he needed were in large, bold letters cor him to read.) the other was the program itself.
JE: ok, so how do i make it work?
TA: JT, you’re fuckiing kiidiing me, riight?
JE: no, really. How does it work.
TA: open the fiile. hiit the ‘unziip’ button. open the new folder. cliick the iicon. the program wiill run, and done. fool proof.
JE: where’s the unzip button?
TA: you have no iidea how bad ii want to hiit you riight now
JE: found it!
JE: my screen went black, is it supposed todo that?
JE: um. it won’t turn back on.
JE: sollux help it’s broken.
JE: i can’t go outside for help.
JE: i think it’s really broken.
JE: like really broken! HELP I CAN’T SEE THE CLIENT
TA: uuuuugh. okay. fuck iit. ii found you. ii’m on my way, not that you can see thiis but whatever.
TA: computer iilliiterate moron.
Jon sat in front of the computer for hours, poking at his screen pathetically.
“Come back. Come baaaaaaaaack.” he whined, one arm wrapped around his legs, the three sweep old feeling pathetic and lost. It took very little for him to crawl onto the pile of clothes he made several days before and curl up on top of it, pulling a shirt over his head, staring from across the room.
-
The sound of his lusus puttering in the kitchen was soothing, and he started to drift off-only to be surprised a half hour later by a pounding at the door. The voice that accompanied it was high and nasal with extreme youth.
“LET ME IN. IT’TH THUNRITHE.” the voice shrieked, pounding on the door never ceasing.
Jontan scrambled to his feet, beeting his lusus to the door in record time. He’d be able to escape if the cullers ever came to his neighborhood, that was for sure.
The heavy black door swung open, letting in the pink light of the barely rising sun, and his tiny hand wrapped around the yellow Gemini symbol on the stranger’s shirt, dragging him in.
“Geeze, what’re you doing outside at this time of night? That’s a silly thing to do you know. You could have been fried to death if it was any one else but me.” he huffed, shoving hair out of his eyes, peering up at the lanky stranger. "I mean I know people can be a little DUMB but GOD you can't be dumb enough to just walk out at sunrise and expect a random stranger to let you in!"
He examined the person before him, peering at him, leaning up on the tips of his toes. One red eye, one blue eye, four horns, four fangs, a lisp, and hair that looked like it was cut out of necessity rather than for fashion. Not to forget, pastier than normal complexion.
“Jontan Egbert?” he quiried, frowning at the short, blunt-wave-horned boy.
His eyes widened and he grinned. He definitely knew this guy!
“Sollux Captor~! You came! I was kind of freaking out. I thought you’d be mad at me because I messed it up but the thing’s all hot and making sad whining sounds. I have NO idea what to do.” he grabbed the bigger boy's hands, the grin on his face threatening to split, showing off all his blunt, too-big-for-his-mouth teeth. His best friend had arrived.