Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1986291.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      Homestuck
  Relationship:
      Eridan_Ampora/Orphaner_Dualscar, Cronus_Ampora/Eridan_Ampora/Orphaner
      Dualscar, Cronus_Ampora/Orphaner_Dualscar, Cronus_Ampora/Eridan_Ampora
  Character:
      Eridan_Ampora, Cronus_Ampora, Orphaner_Dualscar, Spinneret_Mindfang
  Additional Tags:
      Humanstuck, Porn_With_Plot, Daddy_Kink, Sexual_Fantasy, Oral_Sex, Xeno,
      Dysfunctional_Family, Metaphysics, Trippy_Dream_Sequence, Incest, but_not
      really_because_they're_aliens, and_also_because_this_is_all_taking_place
      in_someone's_tortured_subconscious
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-07-23 Words: 5273
****** The Art of Past Life Regression: A Step-by-Step Guide ******
by orphan_account
Summary
     Cronus Ampora Sr. has got ninety-nine problems and his unchecked lust
     that is still lingering in his subconscious after his eternal self's
     rocky karmic journey from an alternate life spent as a bodacious
     alien fishprince constitutes pretty much all of them.
     (This started out as a frisky-fun romp through the land of xeno
     sexual deviancy, but then everything got intense. All I can say is
     you're welcome and I'm sorry that I was clearly brought up so badly.)
Notes
     This is a bit of an experiment (I've never written a dream sequence
     or based something off of another fanwork before). If you have any
     constructive criticisms that will help me improve my work, please
     leave a comment! It'll be much appreciated.
  This work was inspired by
      A_Sleepover_Plot by caalsio, Dualscar:_wwin_at_life. by Laylah
You watch them fondly, letting their lips and tongue do fucking beautiful
things between your legs, moaning for them so they know how good they are. Your
boys, your precious, perfect boys.
—Laylah, Dualscar:_wwin_at_life.
"You're terrible," John clicked his tongue. "Can't have your boys so you gotta
find someone to call you 'Daddy,' huh?"
The heat beneath John's frame suddenly rose and the look he was getting was of
total bewilderment.
"That ain't how it is!"
—caalsio, A_Sleepover_Plot
 
Have you been an astronaut? A pioneer? An actress, or a former king? Would you
like to find out? Discovering your past life can be fun. It's easy, relaxing,
and you don't need a Hollywood hypnotherapist to go exploring! Follow these
step-by-step instructions, and you'll be reliving your past lives in no time!
—Wikihow.com
 
===============================================================================
 
“Daddy?”
Dualscar winced at the full moon’s light filling up the window, bright and cold
like a fluorescent lamp illuminating an aquarium. A warm weight perched in his
lap. The mattress dipped as a second body crawled across the covers.
“Dad,” Cronus whispered. “You awake?”
By degrees his eyes adjusted to the pale light. Dream haze clouded Dualscar’s
head. He catalogued the room. There were no doors and no mirrors.
The boys were at their mother’s house. Nevertheless, Eridan sat on his pelvis,
ass planted square on his groin. Cronus hovered beside him. Neither wore their
glasses or their pajamas, and instead sat cloaked in glimmering flecks like
fish scales, which flashed out of sight as soon as Dualscar noted them, as
though they were wary of being discovered. The pale shadows pulling over the
front of Cronus’s boxers revealed the outline of his hard cock.
No. He was naked. Discarded in a heap by the door, Cronus’s boxers lay on top
of Eridan’s. Cronus’s erection bobbed against his hard belly, swollen pink with
blood and glistening wet at the tip.
Dualscar swallowed. “You boys want to sleep in my bed tonight?”
Eridan chewed his lip and nodded. Cronus padded forward on his hands to kiss
his father. His lips landed on his cheek; it was the kind of kiss he used to
give Dualscar when he was a toddler making puppy eyes and grabby hands.
Daddy, pick me up.
After almost sixteen years of maturity between that three year old and the
young man prowling closer, those displays of affection were a rare animal.
Cronus licked shyly at his father’s mouth. Dualscar brushed a thumb over his
flushed cheek.
Dualscar growled. “C’mere, boy.”
He tugged Cronus’s body flush to his. With his tongue, he nudged his mouth
open, tasting warmth and toothpaste. Cronus circled his arms around his
shoulders. Dualscar breathed in his scent; axe shampoo, acne face wash, and
something musky. He sucked Cronus’s tongue until the boy rewarded him with a
groan.
Eridan snuggled up in the crook of Dualscar’s arm and placed soft,
inexperienced kisses on the underside of his jaw. Dualscar choked back a moan.
He squeezed his youngest close, feeling his erection pressed against his hip.
Eridan whimpered. Curled up at his side, he nuzzled Dualscar's neck. Dualscar
broke into a smile. He pulled himself away from Cronus’s delicious mouth to
press a kiss to the top of Eridan’s tousled hair.
He rumbled, “You’re a sweet boy, ain’t you Eridan?”
Pink blossomed in Eridan’s cheeks. He buried his grin in his father’s chest
while Cronus relaxed against him, panting. Dualscar chuckled.
“What do you say,” he asked. “Are you daddy’s sweet boy?”
Eridan shimmied up his body. Their lips met with just the barest touch, lighter
than Cronus’s breath ghosting over his neck. Dualscar shuddered. His boys were
warm. They were so warm and felt so real. Dualscar’s fingers tickled up
Cronus’s spine, trailing over each vertebrae, testing every centimeter of
smooth skin for cracks in the illusion. With his other hand he palmed the curve
of Eridan’s rear.
“Dad,” Cronus whispered, mouthing his father's cheek, tongue dragging a stripe
along one of his scars. His hand slid down to massage the thick length growing
hard in his Dualscar's sweatpants. Dualscar bucked into his palm. “I want to
choke on your big, fat cock.”
“Daddy,” Eridan (his little one, his seventeen year old) gasped. “Please, let
me suck your cock, too. I want to taste you.”
Cronus writhed against him. “Will you come in my mouth?” He rolled his naked
hips against his thigh. “I’ll be so good. I’ll wash the car and clean out the
garage. Whatever you want. Please, I just want you to fill my throat so badly.”
Dualscar retracted his hand. “Cro, no... I…” Vague nausea brimmed at the back
of his mind, but the lust operating the control panel overrode every warning,
every flashing light, every red alert. He raised his trembling hands to cup
Cronus’s face. “Of course, Junior. Whatever you want,” he stammered, brow
furrowed. The room blurred.
Dualscar fidgeted. An itch crept under his skin at the junction where his neck
met his shoulder. Gills split open along his flesh. Dualscar scratched the
membrane. They sealed shut under his fingers, afraid of being found out. They
were a secret. Shh.
The room pitched and rolled over the waves. He glanced out the window. The
swell beat against the house.
An invisible hand turned the page on the scene. Dualscar blinked and saw
himself resting on the end of the bed. Cronus kneeled between his legs. Eridan
sat beside him feet dangling over the edge, eyeing his brother.
Eridan didn’t want to go fishing but his father was determined to teach him. He
languished on the edge of the dock the whole day, legs hanging over the water
while Dualscar and Cronus caught and released mackerel after mackerel.
“Watch your big brother. He’ll show you how it’s done.”
Cronus licked at Dualscar’s cock through the fabric. “You smell so good, dad.”
He yanked the hem of his sweatpants over his erection. His eyes brightened to
take Dualscar into his fist, thumb smoothing the tip. He investigated the veins
thrumming with his pulse. Cronus dragged his tongue up the underside. When he
reached the head he sucked a kiss from the leeking slit. Dualscar’s nerves
tingled. Cronus’s mouth was hot like a wire ripped from its insulation.
“How should I do it, daddy,” he asked, voice husky.
Dualscar shivered. “Just… cover your teeth with your lips… yes, Cro. There’s my
darling.”
Cronus suckled with one hand wrapped around the base while his velvety tongue
caressed the point where the shaft met the mushroom tip. Dualscar sighed
through his nose. With each bob of his head, he sank with a moan and pulled up
with a wet suck. The vibrations rattled through Dualscar’s length down to the
root.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Good, Cro. That’s good.  You’re a fast learner. Daddy’s
proud of you.”
Not to be outdone, Eridan joined him between his father’s legs. His cheek
pressed against the inside of Dualscar’s thigh. “It’s my turn.”
Cronus pulled off. A drop of cum smeared his ripe lips. “What are you, four?
I’ll let you try in a minute.”
“Junior,” Dualscar warned. “Play nice.”
Eridan leaned in, moist breath ghosting over Dualscar’s heavy ball sack. He
gave his testicles a curious lick. Dualscar bit his fist. Cronus lifted
Eridan’s chin to guide the shaft into his mouth; Eridan’s brow contorted with
pleasure as the tip slid over his tongue.
Dualscar’s spine numbed. “Is it nice, sweetheart?”
Eridan mewled while he nursed. Bile boiled in Dualscar’s gut. He squeezed his
eyes shut, denying the image. Denying Eridan kneeling before him, denying his
plush lips stretched around his cock, denying the cum and drool trickling down
his chin. Dualscar stroked Eridan’s cheek, battling parallel instincts: one to
push his boy away and the other to pin him down and he sheathe himself in his
throat.
Cronus pressed a kiss to one of his testicles, mouth reshaping around the swell
of his sack, before he licked up Dualscar’s length, over Eridan’s lips, and up
his round cheek.
Dualscar leaned over them with his camera aimed to shoot. “Come on, Cro,” he
coaxed. “Just so that daddy can take a picture.”
Cronus pouted. He shook his head. The sea breeze picked away at the particles
of sand and salt clinging to his skinny legs. Eridan squirmed, buoyed up in his
mother’s arms. His tiny hand gripped her swimsuit strap as he gazed in wonder
at everything but the camera.
“Cronus Ampora Jr.,” Mindfang scolded. “Do as your father tells you.”
She crouched beside him, holding Eridan like a pudgy loaf of bread. Eridan
blinked up at his brother. Cronus sighed. He leaned down. The camera captured
the moment of him dropping a kiss on Eridan’s forehead. Dualscar grinned.
“You boys are too cute.”
Abandoned, Dualscar’s cock wobbled against his abdomen. Cronus pulled Eridan
close. He licked his chin clean and sucked the cum off his tongue while his
hands wandered over his baby brother’s body, grabbing the soft flesh and
dragging his knuckles up the underside of his cock. Cronus molested every
vulnerable inch of skin. His fingers dipped between his legs and teased the
puckered hole.
“Cro,” Eridan gasped.
Dualscar seized Cronus’s arm. Something reared up inside him, something sane
and natural, and for an instant it ripped the glamour away from his eyes before
shying away again.
“Dad?” Cronus released Eridan. His hand returned to Dualscar’s length. “Sorry,
I got distracted.”
He placed Dualscar’s hand on the back of his head, threading his fingers
through his hair. At nineteen, Dualscar and he could’ve been twins. High,
imperious cheekbones. Hair like dark chocolate. Skin like clouded ice.
Dualscar’s pride transmuted into lust faster than he could account for.
Cronus’s eager tongue coaxed the tip past his palate. With a groan, Dualscar
slid down the velvety vice of his throat.
He forced himself deep into Cronus, as deep as the limits of their two bodies
would allow. Cronus’s lips reached the base of his length. His bottom lip
rolled against his sack, dribbling drool down the fat curve of his balls until
the pool of spit and cum saturated the carpet. Cronus’s neglected cock added to
the puddle. Dualscar trembled while Cronus’s breath came in hard bursts, in
through the nose, out through the nose. Tears gathered on his lashes. Tendons
strained in his arms as he gripped his father’s thighs.
Dualscar hissed, “Do you like that, Cro?”
Cronus nodded, moaning around the foreign body strangling him. Eridan gave into
impatience. He rested his head on Dualscar’s knee and observed his brother,
stroking himself, lids weighing heavy on his eyes. Dualscar rocked into Cronus,
pleasuring himself with slow, decadent thrusts.
Dualscar growled, “You’re daddy’s good boy, ain’t you, Junior? My sweet, pretty
boy. My hot, tight, little boy.”
Cronus sobbed. A full body blush colored him pink.
“You’ve done such a good job. You want your reward? You want daddy to fill you
up?”
Cronus nodded. Tears streaked his face. He struggled for breath as Dualscar
pressed his nose against his pelvis and emptied into him, spilling down his
throat, flooding his mouth. A muffled moan thrummed deep in Cronus’s chest.
Dualscar released him. Cum dripped from the corners of his mouth as he
collapsed on his hands and knees, hacking. Eridan pounced on him. They met at
the mouth, one devouring what was on the other’s tongue. White oozed between
their lips.
Against logic and biology, Dualscar’s erection lingered as though he hadn’t
come. Pleasure ebbed and returned like the tide.
“Daddy,” Eridan whimpered, lips sticky. “Can I—?”
Eridan never said what he wanted. It didn’t matter what he wanted; whatever he
wanted, Dualscar wanted.
“Enough,” Dualscar whispered. “For fuck’s sake. Wake up. It’s enough.”
Eridan dipped his head. With brows furrowed in concentration, he took
Dualscar’s cock into his mouth and sucked him clean. He pulled off with a wet
smack. Kitten licks lapped up every stray drop on his thighs.
A year after the divorce and a month after he turned twelve, Eridan sat on the
swing in the backyard with a grape ice lolly. He rocked as he licked at the
purple dribbling down his wrist. Dualscar stared. The hotdogs burned on the
grill and a neighbor called to him over the fence, but he couldn’t tear his
eyes away. Eridan’s mouth wrapped around the ice lolly, sucked, pulled off.
Wrap, suck, pull. Wrap, suck, pull.
That was the first time Dualscar hid in the bathroom from his sons.
“You taste good, daddy,” Eridan mumbled, nuzzling his hip.
Cronus climbed on the bed. He kissed Dualscar’s neck under his jaw and rubbed
his erection against his leg, swollen to the point of pain. Dualscar stared at
the wall.
“Daddy,” Cronus whined. Dualscar squeezed his eyes shut. The last time Cronus
called him daddy he had been nine years old.
“Do you need daddy to take care of you,” Dualscar murmured.
Cronus nodded against his neck.
Dualscar pulled him into his lap.
Outside, the ocean rose up to beat against the window, swallowing up the
moonlight. Eridan peeped out one of the portholes. “Daddy, I can see fish,” he
chirped, tapping the glass. A shark hovered just inches away from Eridan’s
fingers.
Cronus rut against Dualscar’s leg.
“Please fuck me, daddy,” he begged, cum still lingering on his chin. “Fill me
up again. Once wasn’t enough.”
Dualscar ran his palms along his hips, gripping his thumbs over Cronus’s sharp
pelvis, like his wrists were attached to the body of another; Attached to
someone unscrupulous; Attached to someone with a taste for leaving scabrous,
pus-filled gashes on children’s souls. Cronus’s muscles flexed. His cock left
streaks on Dualscar’s belly.
“I love you,” Cronus sighed.
“I love you, too,” Dualscar mumbled.
Dualscar brushed over Cronus’s entrance as though it might bite him. Slick and
stretched, fringed with petals of (violet) flesh, it kissed his fingers with
intriguingly vagina-like lips.
“It’s only incest. Fuck my nook,” Cronus explained, eyes glassy. “I’m not your
son.”
“Nook…?”
Understanding materialized out of a black and timeless nothing, where
everything was familiarly alien. A peaceful haze smothered his nerves. Dualscar
nodded. “Right. Of course.” It was, after all, only incest. No harm in that. He
caressed Cronus’s hungry entrance, smiling at the blackberry blush creeping
across his cheeks.
Dualscar pulled Cronus onto his cock. He stuffed him until he was fit to burst,
he loved him so much, Cronus could have whatever he wanted. Dualscar’s legs
numbed at the sudden pleasure. It weighed on him like the ocean’s pressure;
soon he would bleed from the ears. Seawater dripped from the ceiling where
cracks opened up. The plaster bowed under the weight. Splashes fell into his
eyes. The salt didn't sting.
He laid Cronus out on the bed face down. Cronus rested his cheek against
Dualscar’s pillow and gazed up at the ceiling with one eye. Blue aquarium light
drenched the room. It soaked into Cronus’s skin. Eridan sat on the window seat,
giving the space where Dualscar’s hips met the back of Cronus’s thighs a
glutinous look.
Dualscar fucked him slow and gentle at first. Every thrust hit that button,
lighting him up like neon and drawing shuddery breaths out of his throat. At
nineteen Cronus was still a virgin, a fact which he buried away under a
swaggering and virile performance, but someone, someday, would claim him.
Dualscar was sick with envy. Envy. He was sick.
Cronus writhed beneath him like the perfect image of his desire.
“You’re a sweet little thing, Cro. You love it when I fuck you, huh, boy?”
His hips thrust deep, racing against the creeping sense of dread.
His wife went with the cesarian section.
Dualscar hung around the operating room during the procedure. He leaned against
the wall and gawked as they sliced her open and gagged when the calipers
appeared in the surgeon’s hand.
Like plucking a juicy seed out of a pomegranate, the doctor reached into his
wife’s viscera and dug out a fat, squirming worm about the size of a baby.
Blood and chunks coated the creature’s body. A nurse wiped the thing “clean”
with a wet washcloth.
His wife’s head lolled on her pillow. Tubes and rubber obscured her glazed eyes
and blissful, slack jaw. Dualscar played with her hair while the doctor checked
the infant over for any signs of illness or deformity.
“Mr. Ampora, would you like to hold your son?”
Dualscar honed in on a spot that Cronus screamed for, ignoring all else. Their
fingers laced together. In the last throes, Dualscar wrapped his arms around
Cronus’s torso, squeezing the orgasm out of him as he shuddered, wrapped up in
his own climax.
Dualscar nodded, struck mute. The doctor instructed him to sit in a chair
before she passed the bundle into his arms. Dark blue eyes gazed out of a pudgy
mess of red skin. The little shriveled tumor waved a fist at his father. Hello.
“What are we going to call you,” Dualscar wondered aloud. “We could name you
after me. Bet your mother would love that, huh?" He snorted. "We'll call you
junior. Pretend were in a 1950s sitcom.”
The baby gurgled.
Dualscar growled, deranged and possessive. He slathered his boy's neck and back
with kisses, tasting the salt in his sweat as he pumped him full of his
release. Cronus fisted the sheets.
Comprehension came and went in waves. At the sight of his son, shivering, ass
in the air, cum dripping from his raw entrance, it crashed against him like he
was a sea wall and it was the storm-battered remains of a bay full of schooners
and the stringy corpses of swimmers. Dualscar took deep breaths. He positioned
himself on the edge of the bed, head between his knees. The digital clock on
bureau glowed with four zeroes.
Soaked to the fibers, the carpet squished beneath his feet.
Cronus disappeared. He was there behind Dualscar one moment and then he was
gone.
“He swam away,” Eridan said, pointing at a porthole on the wall behind a bed.
Dualscar scratched at the gills lining his neck and the spines sprouting from
his ear. They flinched at his touch but didn’t retreat. They were getting
bolder.
Eridan clambored into his lap. Dualscar held him close and kissed him deep,
deeper than he ever kissed their mother, so deep he felt Eridan’s soul lick him
back. Even after they parted at the lips, Dualscar snuggled him tight.
“Daddy—“
By now the word inspired a Pavlovian reaction in Dualscar. He swallowed his
drool and obeyed. “Yes, sweetheart,” he murmured.
“Will you fuck me, too?”
Dualscar wanted to throw up. “No,” he said. “No, daddy can’t do that.”
Tears welled in the corners of Eridan’s eyes.
Eridan clung to his leg, sobbing. “I want to go too.”
Dualscar pat his head. “No, Eri. You have to stay here with your mum. I promise
I’ll be back in a few weeks.”
“No,” he wailed. “You said you wouldn’t go.”
Anger surged in his throat, choking him. “I never said that. Yourmothersaid
that.”
Cronus glared down from the top of the stairs, face masked in a scowl.
 Eridan clung to his shoulders. “Please, I want you so badly.”
“I can’t.”
“I want to feel you inside me, daddy.”
Dualscar kissed him, silencing those words. From the mildew-caked veins
spreading across the ceiling, a trickle of water dribbled onto his head. The
house creaked like a galleon swaying on the waves.
Eridan ground down on Dualscar’s sore erection. “Please, daddy. I’ll be so good
for you.” His starving mouth sucked at Dualscar’s pulse.
Arms desperate for his boy, he held Eridan flush to him. Dualscar kissed down
his chest and laved his tongue over his nipple, sucking on the silky pink
flesh. Eridan gasped exactly the way Dualscar intended him too. He snatched
Eridan by the nape of the neck, mouth brushing the spines sprouting from his
ear. “Get on your hands and knees,” he rumbled.
Eridan whined, “Yes sir.”
He didn’t need to be told what to do; no sooner did he drop on the squelching
carpet than he spread his legs and offered up the tender, vulnerable gap below
his bulge.
Dualscar purred deep in his chest. “There’s my darling boy,” he cooed,
smoothing his thumb over his opening. Slick drooled from the nook’s silky
folds. Eridan whimpered and rocked back against his fingers. Dualscar grabbed
his hips. He stroked a hand down Eridan’s back, sliding against the sweat
beading his spine.
Water slid down the walls in rivulets. A cuttlefish bumped against the window
like a bright pink pigeon blind to the glass.
Dualscar stroked Eridan’s slit, tracing the lips’ pucker. He smeared the
lubrication in a spiral, beginning on the outer edges and swirling into the
boy’s body.
“You feel good, darling,” Dualscar drawled. “You’re so tight, Eri. Daddy loves
that. You don’t let anybody touch you except daddy, huh?”
Eridan made a hollow sound from the bottom of his throat, which could’ve meant
anything. Dualscar grinned. “I know you don’t. Because you're my good boy. My
precious, perfect boy.”
Dualscar’s fingers curled against Eridan’s sweet spot. He mewled. Hands
gripping his hips, Dualscar nudged his cock past the first ring of muscle. “You
ready, love?”
Eridan panted, forehead resting in the pond of seawater surging across the
floor. His muscles flexed to adjust. “Wait…”
His objection died inside a gasp. Dualscar thrust into him. Like a finger
prodding a venus fly trap sprout, Eridan’s nook clamped in a useless attempt to
snag the intruder. Grunting, Dualscar pushed forward. At an agonizing pace he
discovered every sweet centimeter Eridan secreted away between his thighs. He
grabbed him by the jagged horn to hold him still.
“Good boy, Eri,” Dualscar panted. “You’re fucking perfect.”
Eridan’s muscles tensed at the pain but he rocked his hips back. “More.” Tears
streamed down his cheeks.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay. Don’t cry, darling.”
A trickle of violet blood slipped down Eridan’s thigh. He sobbed.
Dualscar’s stomach lurched. “No, no, no.” Without thinking, he ripped himself
out of Eridan. The boy screamed.
The house lurched. Great, albino tentacles, sensual and slick, unfurled against
the outer walls, petting the window. The glass crackled like ice. Spider web
fissures spread from pane to pane. Dualscar ripped the blanket off the bed and
wrapped Eridan, careful not to stifle the delicate gills slicing open along his
neck.
“I want you,” Eridan sobbed. “No, I want—”
I want to go too.
“Shh.” Dualscar kissed his cheek, siphoning up his salt tears. “No more. No
more, okay? Daddy’s got you.”
“No…”
“Shh.”
Dualscar’s gills itched like triplet infections extending down to his clavicle.
Too dry. He cupped water from the floor and splashed it over the membrane. He
dribbled water over Eridan’s as well, mumbling a song like the ones he used to
compose on the fly while coaxing the boys to sleep. Something slow and soft,
full of seafoam and colorful scales.
“Dad,” Eridan whispered, his golden eyes gaping at the window. “There’s
somebody outside.”
They hovered beyond the glass, floating suspended within orbits of gold
bangles, gold anklets, gold collars. Their jewelry floated in the current, in
danger of floating away, like satellites breaking free of a gravitational
field. Women and men grey as waterlogged cadavers and ancient as glaciers and
lovely as nothing else Dualscar knew of. Their gills flexed open and closed. A
song echoed through the deep, traveling to Dualscar from across a distance so
great that even time could not measure it.
Dualscar pushed himself up, one arm still cradling Eridan. He sloshed toward
the window through the foot and a half of water drowning his bedroom.
Eridan sniffled. “Daddy?”
“It’s okay, Eri. We’re at the aquarium. See?”
Eridan was two again, curled up against Dualscar’s shoulder, wearing an Elmo t-
shirt and a nappy, snuffling with a nose that was allergic to everything.
Dualscar rooted through his trouser pocket for a tissue. Eridan pointed at a
cuttlefish as it darted by. “Look it.”
“Say hello to the fishies, Eri.”
Eridan lifted one paw in salute. The lilac-grey beasts swerved around one
another with their glittering finery like anchovies swirling in a bait ball,
like lords and ladies waltzing in a ballroom.
One of the men pressed a webbed hand against the window and frowned like a
caiman. His jeweled rings clacked against the glass. Eridan wiggled his fingers
at him. The creature observed the child (Impassive? Contemptuous? Tender?)
before diving out of sight. Dualscar produced a Kleenex and pressed it to
Eridan’s nose.
“He had daddy scars,” Eridan mumbled.
A heavy tentacle swayed like a pendulum just beyond the front yard. It seemed
to move as though through a sea of molasses. An optical illusion. Just like how
the moons in the night sky don’t appear to shift at all even when they’re
moving hundreds of miles an hour. Dualscar hugged Eridan tight. He stared as a
sucker-studded arm as wide and as long as an interstate highway swung down onto
the roof.
“Daddy?”
The ceiling caved in. Salt and water and fish and sea monsters and lecherous
hands and gold jewelry and tentacles and screams and glaciers and galleons and
pink moons and bubbles filled Dualscar’s bedroom.
 
===============================================================================
 
He slept through his alarm.
The bedside clock blared. Every shriek was another knife stabbing the morning
hush.
“Jesus.” Cronus Ampora Sr. slapped the offensive device off the table.
“Christ.”
He staggered bowlegged into the bathroom. He peeked at the congealing mess in
his boxers—“Like I’m a fucking teenager again. Charming.”—And peeked at the
mess in the mirror. Eyes aglow with red capillaries, snot on his upper lip,
hair hurricane-whipped.
“Looking good,” he grunted, “you sick fucking animal.”
Ampora dredged up enough time to wash his face, floss, and swear seven more
times before the doorbell clanged downstairs. He spit his toothpaste in the
sink. “Crikey,” he hissed. The clock presented three numbers: seven, two and
zero.
A finger (no doubt lacquered in matte blue nail polish) rang the doorbell
again.
“I’m coming,” he shouted. “Fuck’s sake, I heard you.”
In his old rugby t-shirt and sweatpants, he stumbled down the stairs, almost
slipping on the waxed hardwood before locating the front door. He rubbed the
sleep-goop from his eyes.
He threw open the door. “Aranea.”
She glowed in the morning light. Her new tits were bustier’d to full capacity
under her lacy blouse. She stood flanked by sprogs; On her left, Eridan,
holding a tissue to his nose and moping at the ground, and on her right, his
namesake wearing an overpriced leather jacket, smelling like an old man soaked
in English Leather, and glaring down at his iPhone.
Aranea scanned her ex-husband from his bare feet up to the prickles of hair
scattered over his cheeks. “Not going to work today?”
“I just woke up—hey, boys.”
“Yeah,” Cro grunted. He kept his eyes fixed on his phone as he muscled past his
father, slipping under the arm braced against the doorframe.
“Hey, dad.” Eridan mumbled. He trundled into the house with his tissue stuffed
up his nostril.
“What the hell happened to Eri,” Ampora asked.
Aranea raised her eyebrows. “Junior punched him in the face. So just FYI, Cro
is not allowed near the computer or television, nor is he allowed to go out
with any of his little"—she raked the air with a pair of finger
quotes—"‘steadies’. Eridan is not allowed out of the house either. He was an
unbelievable brat this morning. And you need to drive him to school earlier
than usual today so that his math teacher can have a word with the both of
you.” She flashed him a bright grin. “Anyway, you three have fun. As always
Cronus, it’s been a pleasure.”
He snorted. “As always Aranea, it’s been… something.” He slammed the door on
her smirk.
He stretched his spine and followed the sound of teenaged squabbling. He found
them in the kitchen.
“—fuck off, you dipshit. I grabbed the box first,” Cro sneered.
“Dad,” Eridan whined, “Tell Cro he can’t have the last of the coco puffs
because he ate all the fruit loops at mama’s and I didn’t get any.”
Their father's face hardened. He snatched the box out of Cro’s hand and tossed
it upside-down into the dustbin, scattering the remaining handful of cereal and
chocolately dander over a pit of apple cores and damp coffee grounds.
The boys’ mouths clicked shut.
“You two,” He said slowly, training his gaze on the pot of chilly coffee
sitting by the sink to keep his eyes off of Cro’s skintight denim, “are going
to behave yourselves. All complaints, all bickering, all bitching stops here.”
He drew a line across the kitchen tile with his toe. “Clear?”
“Yes sir.”
“Yes sir.”
He threw together two bowls of Cheerios. The little bastards almost came to
blows over who would pour their milk first. Halfway through breakfast Cro’s
phone rattled across the table. Eridan dived for it.
“Dick,” Cro shouted.
“It’s from Meenah,” Eridan teased. “Mama said you aren’t allowed to talk to any
of your girlfriends.” He checked the screen and giggled. “Oh, wait, she’s
telling you to fuck off. Big surprise there. Nevermind.”
“Give it to me!” Cro slugged Eridan on the ear, knocking his glasses off his
nose.
“Dad,” Eridan bleated. His blood-soaked tissue bounced onto the floor.
“Junior,” their father said, the calmest he'd been in the last twelve hours (it
was normal to fight over breakfast, it was normal to snap at sons when they
were disrespectful, it was normal to glower over them and be the angry father).
“Sit your ass down and finish your breakfast. School starts in twenty minutes.
Eridan, give me the phone. It’s mine now.”
“What,” Cro spat. “I get punished when this little spaz gets off scot free?
That fucking bites. Fuck you, old man. Don’t bother driving me to school. I’ll
walk.” He slung his backpack over his shoulder and stalked down the hall. The
front door slammed.
Ampora smiled into his coffee. The state of zen he found himself in was absurd.
“Dad,” Eridan said.
His father turned his bloodshot glare on him.
Eridan flinched. He pulled eyes back to his breakfast. “Never mind.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “No, sweet—No Eridan, I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep
so well last night. What did you want to say?”
“Will you check my math homework?” Eridan stirred his cereal. “I don’t think I
did it right.”
“Fuck, uh.” He glanced at the clock. “I don’t have time right now. Let me take
a look at it later, all right?”
“It’s due first period.”
He sighed. “What do you mean you don’t think you did it right?”
“If I knew that I wouldn’t need to ask you.”
“What happened with that maths tutor your mum hired? No good?”
Eridan shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. “No,” he said slowly.
“Mama told youto hire a tutor.”
“Well,” he replied, jaw tight, “I guess I’ll just have to do as she says.”
Eridan wrapped his lips around a spoonful of cheerios, molding to fit the
concave shape. A drop of milk rolled down his chin. His father shuddered and
closed his eyes. Dreams aren’t literal. He’d read that once in a psychology rag
while waiting for the marriage counselor to finish up a one-on-one session with
Aranea.
He drummed his fingers on the table.
“C’mon, boy,” he sighed. “Let’s get you to school.”
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