So I started this story a whiiiile ago at the behest of my bestest friend WaterGoddesYuki, but I just now had the inspiration to finish it. This is a slash fic. Going under T for now, but that may change. If you're nice.

Anyway, I don't own Homestuck or the characters.

Hope you like the story.

Edit: I went back and edited this for style and grammar. Sorry it was so rough before. My normal checkers were all asleep when I finished this chapter.

"Aradia, just so we're clear...this is a hellbubble, right? It's my eternal punishment to have shitty rapoffs with this tool forever, is that it?" When Dave had asked Aradia to take him home, this wasn't exactly what he had had in mind. They were in his apartment; that much she had gotten right. Unfortunately, he had some unwelcome company. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tall male troll shift uncomfortably to his left.

"Yes, you figured out the mystery!" The fairy-troll's smile was enthusiastic in spite of her surroundings , but Dave had the slight impression that she was being sarcastic.

"I guess I had it coming for a flagrant lifetime being incredible at rap and practically everything else..." His face was mainly expressionless as he held out his hand in a gesture which seemed to say 'of course'. Then his eyes shifted to the right as he finished the thought. "...Except not dying."

"You may think so...but then again, you have not faced team charge in a match of slam poetry have you?" That same eager grin was on her face, her hand held in front of her in a challenging fist.

"Oh...yes!" Tavros smiled, jumping a little at the mention of a challenge.

"Just kidding, I'm no good at slam poetry." She laughed softly, looking to Tavros as his face fell. "Sorry..."

"Oh..." He sighed softly , his shoulders slumping forward a little as he dropped his hands. "Oh."

After a few moments of silence, Dave looked over at the brown-blooded troll and noticed something he hadn't before. "...Is he dead? He looks dead."

Aradia smiled and nodded, looking as if she talked to dead people every day (and really, she probably did). "Yes, he's dead."

"...What about you? You don't look dead." She shook her head in response." Are you dreaming?"

"No, I am wide awake...and I physically stand before you in person!" She laughed and hopped down from the table she had been standing on.

"So...you're not dead?" He was really beginning to wonder how she could be here in real life. From what he knew of these bubbles, she really shouldn't be here.

"Oh, no. I am very much alive. And I intend to stay that way." That enthusiastic grin was back on her face as she turned to the door. "But I must leave you two now. Lots of work to do!"

"Wait!" But she was already opening the door onto a new place, somewhere on Alternia it seemed. She stepped out and the door closed itself with a snap behind her. Dave rushed to follow her, but when he opened the door, it revealed only the hallway that led from his room to the rest of his house. It seemed she really had gone so quickly. "...Great."

With Aradia gone, they both just kind of stood there, Tavros looking around the room while Dave studied Tavros. He had obviously never seen a troll since before Aradia and he was a bit surprised at the differences between the two of them looked. Hairstyles were different, but that was to be expected...although Dave did like the messy mohawk this guy had going on. It was the horns that really stood out to him. While Aradia's were compact and curly, Tavros' were long and mainly straight, curving up on the ends like a bull's. He wondered for a moment if all trolls had different horns or if it was just the two types for guys and girls... Hm. Another difference he noted was that the thinner parts of his skin where a pale human would normally look pink or red, this troll had a bit of a orange-ish brown tinge. Is that the color of his blood...?

Dave frowned slightly as he looked at the troll's blank white eyes. They made his otherwise happy and curious expression look a little vacant. Either way though, he had a nice face: sweet and innocent without looking too feminine. Okay, maybe a slightly attractive tool.

The troll shifted slightly uncomfortably again, bringing a hand up to scratch the back of his head. Behind those shiny glasses, this human's eyes could be staring at him, or simply looking off out the window. When he thought of it though, Tavros realized that his blank gaze had much the same affect. Perhaps Dave was thinking the same thing about him. Tavros rubbed his shoulder and decided to try to start a conversation. "Hey, uh, what's this?" He turned and eagerly walked over to pick up a record from the desk across the room, somehow tangling himself up in the process. His wide horns caught on a line strung with photos, but the more he tried to pull the wire off, the more it got tangled until it soon snapped off the wall, springing towards him like a snapped rubber band. "Ow..."

"Dude...what the fuck?" Dave jogged over, expression confused and maybe a little angry. "Did you just grow these yesterday or something?" He scowled behind his glasses as he started untangling the string, pictures falling in a small pile around Tavros' feet. He was vaguely aware of the trolls eyes following each one as it fell past his face.

"Uh...no. I was, um, born with them." He gave an apologetic grimace as he tried to move away from the fingers on his horns, a blush quickly rising to his cheeks. He was pretty sure that Dave didn't know how good his touch felt...or how much it hurt when he jerked the string.

"Then you should have gotten used to them by now." Dave frowned as the other pulled away, grabbing the horn to hold him still. "Hey, I'm trying to help. Stay still, man."

The troll's eyes widened and he jerked away but that only caused Dave to grip tighter, his hand slipping along the curve of the horn slightly. "Oh, uh...Please, uhhh, don't touch those..." Tavros reached up to pull Dave's hand away but his other hand shot up to grab the taller troll's wrist.

"Why? Is it some kind of kink for you or something?" He pulled Tavros' wrist down, peering at him over the rim of his glasses.

"No, no, it's just..." Tavros winced and took a cautious step back, stumbling and nearly falling in the cluttered room. "It's kinda, uh, personal for us, you know...?"

Dave frowned and loosened his grip on Tavros' horn. "Personal...?"

"Well, uhh...You obviously don't have horns so you, uh, wouldn't know this but...They're kind of, um...sensitive? Like...it can feel, uh, really good, but it kinda hurts when you grab it like that..."

"Oh, whoa man, I didn't mean to get all up in your business and shit. I guess I should ask next time." He let go and stepped away, but Tavros caught his hand.

"No, no, it's fine. You were just trying to help..." Dave gave a curt not and pulled his hand away, turning to rummage through his desk drawers. "Oh, um...what are you looking for?"

"Scissors." The young man turned, scissors in hand and motioned for him to sit on the bed.

Tavros' eyes went wide again, and he took another step back. "Huh...?" The expression on his face told Dave that he had taken that in the wrong way entirely. He sighed and put his hand on Tavros' shoulder, pushing him down and back.

"I'm not trying to make a move on you or something bro. You're just too tall. Sit down so I can cut that cord off."

"Oh... Oh, okay." He sat down a bit awkwardly, a light blush still on his cheeks.

"Don't worry, dude. I won't hurt you or anything. I'm not that big of a douche." He pulled off the longest part of the thin nylon cord and snipped it off before starting to pull at the tangled mess near the troll's head. He really couldn't understand how he got it this tangled that fast. "...You're not exactly...coordinated are you?"

"Uhh, yeah, I guess you could say that." He winced slightly as Dave pulled the string off of one of his horns, the headache that had started to form slowly subsiding. "...I fall a lot. And stuff like this happens, uh, at least once a week."

"How are you not a fucking cripple?" Dave laughed softly as he moved over to the other side, tugging gingerly at a complicated knot that somehow got around the troll's pointed ear as well.

Tavros frowned slightly, looking down to study the symbol on Dave's shirt, really just as a distraction. He didn't particularly want to look the human in the face right now... He was being more gentle this time, which was both a good and bad thing for the troll whose blush came back and brought along some friends...butterflies that made him feel just a little bit sick. "Oh, well...I was for a while. But...I'm dead now, so I don't guess it really, uh, matters..."

"Well, shit. I'm sorry bro. I was talking to you all that time and I didn't even know. You really should be tellin' a person something like that." He pulled the last bits of cord off and tossed them on the floor with the others. Tavros turned his head a few times to make sure things were okay, nodding and making a small noise of approval as he combed his hand through his hair to get rid of any loose threads. "I didn't mean to offend you or anything though."

"...Oh, no, it's fine. In a way..I'm kind of glad to be dead. At least I have my old legs back." He looked back up, a sheepish grin on his face. "Though I do have these weird eyes now. Pretty creepy, huh?"

"I didn't think it was that creepy." Dave shrugged, a minute rolling of the shoulders. "All dead people have eyes like that. Besides, the rest of your face looks so nice that it hardly matters what your eyes look...like..." I did not just say that. Nope.

"Ah, thanks!" Tavros stood, a beaming smile on his face. He chose to ignore the hesitance on the end of that sentence and just take it as a compliment. There was a pause before he remembered something he meant to say earlier. "Um...I'm Tavros Nitram, by the way. I don't think I ever told you that..."

"No, you didn't. Aradia did. But what kind of a name is that anyway?"

"Well...it's a troll name? I don't really know, I just, uh... It's just my name." Tavros, looked down, tugging on the end of his shirt (a nervous habit of his).

"...And socks with sandals, dude. Really?" Dave took a step back and looked him up and down again. This guy seriously needs some help in the swag department.

"Yeah, uh...Don't you like them? I think it looks pretty neat. ...Or, at least, I did."

Dave raised an eyebrow and shook his head. "No. Just...no. Don't you have any other shoes?"

"Well, um, back at my hive but... Actually, we could go there if you want! I haven't been in a while..."

Dave was pretty sure that "hive" meant home. That's was the word Aradia used when he saw hers anyway. That was after he had realized ..well, after he realized that he was dead. He started to go over the things he had seen today...was his bro really dead?. Dave only realized he had drifted off a bit when the troll in front of him tilted his head. He looked up, making sure to wipe his face clean of the emotions that had slowly started to bubble up. "Sure."

"Great~" Tavros strode across the room and opened the same door Aradia had gone out of, but the scene beyond had changed yet again. Now the door opened onto a different bedroom, this one looking very foreign to Dave but very familiar to Tavros. As the tall trolled picked his way across the room to an empty spot in front of his desk and sensed Dave start to follow, he felt the need to apologize. "It's, uh...kinda messy."

Dave chuckled as he gently moved some things out of the way with his foot, making a small path through the refuse. "Not much worse that mine. My room just has more...surfaces."

Tavros nodded a bit numbly as he pulled open the door of his closet, revealing a pretty meager stock. A few pairs of blue jeans and one pair of black pants lay folded neatly on shelves to the right side, long and short sleeved black shirts hanging on a bar to the left. One the bottom, a few pairs of shoes lie jumbled along with a few of the cards and toys that similarly littered the trolls room.

"There. Those black and brown shoes." Dave nodded toward a slightly scuffed pair of black tennis shoes with brown stripes down the side.

"These?" Tavros picked up the shoes and with a confirming nod from Dave, he pulled a discarded chair from the corner and set about putting the shoes on. Dave continued to nod in approval as Tavros stood, the troll awkwardly looking down at his feet.

"That's better," Dave told his encouragingly. "Now you look more presentable."

"Presentable...?" Tavros quirked an eyebrow at his new friend. He wasn't used to people judging him on his clothes. Trolls just weren't usually concerned with such things. But he found he liked the way that Dave's grin made him feel. Especially when he knew he had caused it.

"Yeah. Like...decent, attractive?" As he saw the troll's head tilt again, her threw his hands up in defense. "Hey man, I'm not a fucking dictionary."

Tavros smiled slightly at the explanation the human gave, but he didn't really know what to say. He turned to close his closet, then just stood there in front of Dave, not really knowing what to do either.

Dave coughed a bit to relieve the silence. The awkwardness of his companion was starting to make him feel awkward. Or maybe that wasn't the right word. No. He decided this troll looked more shy than awkward, which made Dave feel even more weird. Welp, time to get out of here. Here goes nothing. He coughed again, this time to clear his throat. Tavros looked up expectantly.

"So, ah...your place or mine?"

"Wha...?" Tavros's expression changed from curious to incredulous, as he pondered the implications of that question. But a sharp laugh calmed him somewhat.

"For dinner, bro. You know, food? I want some."

"You, uh, want to get dinner with me?" That disbelieving expression was creeping back onto Tavros' face.

"Actually, I was thinking of cooking. I make a mean chili mac."

"Chili mac...?" As Dave was rambling into an explanation, another thing clicked in Tavros' mind. "Wait. Um. Wait. Is this, a, ah, like...a date?"

Dave grinned. He liked that brownish blush that covered the flushed troll's face. "Bro. Chill. There's no need to freak. I just wanted to hang out a bit longer. But you're...endearing in a way. And definitely cute. I won't deny that. So it's...hell, it's whatever you want it to be, okay? "

The troll's face briefly held a confused frown, but that quickly vanished as he was reassured. "Yeah. Uh, yeah, okay."

"Let's go then." Dave turned and led them out of the troll's room, focusing hard on what he wanted this door to open to. And when he opened it, he saw his kitchen. Maybe he was getting better at this whole death thing after all.

As they stepped into the kitchen, Tavros briefly grabbed Dave's wrist to turn him around. "Wait...I, uh. Well, I never got your name."

"Dave. Dave Strider."