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The newest member of your household is under your bed when you get home, and your little bro has fresh band-aids on his face. The flat stare he gives you tells you he is holding you personally responsible. "He's still not settling in so good, huh," you say as you hand off one of your Mickey D's bags.
Dave pops a handful of french fries in his mouth. "No, he's doing great," he says with his mouth full. "The perfect family pet."
You nod. "Knew I could count on you," you say, and take the rest of the food into your room.
You drop the bag on the table where a couple of smuppets can keep it warm, and get down on the floor to look under the bed. Two bright alien eyes, one blue and one red, gleam at you from the darkness. "Come on out of there," you tell your new troll.
Sollux takes a swipe at your face, but you were expecting that, and you dodge.
You're actually kind of used to this by now. Pretty much all the trolls that wind up at your place are damage cases. It's like any exotic pet craze, right, you get a few people who really know what they're getting into and then a bunch of others who get bored or don't have the time or can't cope with their needs or whatever, and then guys like you wind up trying to look after little broken aliens that somebody else didn't take good care of.
"I got some food for you, but you can't have it under there," you say. It's important to be clear about this stuff, especially with the new ones: stay calm with them, but let them know where the limits are. Your house looks like a big chaotic mess to human visitors, but it's got rules, and trolls tend to get that pretty quick.
"Not hungry," Sollux tells you.
He's almost definitely lying—the poor little thing's a sack of bones—but you don't call him on it. "Okay, well, I'm just going to eat my dinner," you say. "When you do get hungry, come on out and we can share." You maybe ought to be trying to get him to eat healthy, but Quarter Pound Filet of Questionable Meat Product is already more like food than that shitty dry troll chow that unscrupulous pet stores claim is adequate, and maybe getting a few extra calories into him will be a good start.
You sit down at your computer, back turned to the bed on purpose. You've got revenue streams to check on and new content to upload; niche porn sites don't run themselves. You leave an anonymous flame on Dave's latest comic—when he can guess which of the week's comments is you, you owe him a pizza. He's getting better at it.
While you catch up on work, you munch your way through most of the shitty sandwiches and unnervingly addicting fries in your bag. Sollux has got to be able to smell that. You go slow, giving him time to think about it. When you see a little yellowish gray hand reaching for the last wrapped sandwich, you don't move. You let him take it, slow and careful like he's worried about getting caught. He's got a lot to learn about being sneaky enough for Casa Strider.
"Remember, no food under the bed," you say conversationally as his hand leaves your field of vision.
He hisses like you've startled him, but when you turn around a few seconds later he's crouched beside the bed, not stuffing himself back under it, with about half the sandwich in his mouth already. He swallows a couple of times and then tells you, "That'th a thtupid rule. It maketh thenthe to eat thomewhere thafe."
"Dude, you are somewhere safe," you say. He probably won't believe you this time, but it won't hurt to start saying it. "This whole apartment is your safe place, okay? Me and Dave, we're here to be your packmates now."
"Cohortth," Sollux corrects you, and then cringes like he expects to be in trouble.
"Right, cohorts," you say, retrieving stray french fries from the bottom of the bag. "We strife each other sometimes, yeah, but we're on the same side, and you're on our side too."
Sollux finishes inhaling the sandwich. "Only until you can find a way to get rid of me," he says. "I'm not thtupid, I know what fothtering ith." He cranes his head to look around you at the bag.
You take the cue, reaching in there to pull out an apple pie. Still sort of warm and everything. You hand it to him and he takes it, careful not to let your fingers touch. "Not being stupid was part of the problem at your old place, huh?" you ask.
"I got bored," Sollux says, hunching his shoulders defensively. He sniffs at the pie box once, then tears it open with shaking fingers to bite into it. You make a mental note to hit an actual grocery store sometime this week and buy one of those frozen ones you stick in the oven. A whole entire pie would probably double his lifetime supply of kind gestures.
"Idiots just left you at home all day with nothing to do, didn't they?" You know the type. They pick up a troll for some dumb shallow reason but they don't want to invest a lot of attention, which is always a bad plan but an extra bad plan with a high-strung bloodline like yellows tend to be.
Sollux nods. He's already licking the last of the pie goo off his fingers. "It thucked," he says.
You nod. "I'd believe it," you say. Inspiration strikes. "Hey, you ever get to play video games?"
Sollux gives you a really suspicious stare. "Are you trying to coakth me out to the other room now?"
"No, dude, too much too fast," you say. "But I've got a PSP around here somewhere, hang on."
The chaos of your room is a clever trap for unwary little brothers who try to go through your stuff; you know where everything is. It's a matter of seconds to dig out your PSP, which might even still have some battery life left, and a couple of game options. You sit on the edge of your bed, close enough to be easy to reach, far enough that you don't give Sollux a good reason to bolt. "Here, check these out," you say.
The system looks pretty big in his hands, but he's got long fingers. He'll probably manage. "I could take thith back under the bed," he points out to you slyly.
"Come up here and give it a try with me first?" you ask.
"Jutht for a minute," Sollux says. "I can thee what you're doing here."
He's such a skittish little thing. "All right, just for a little bit," you say. Eventually he'll realize that you're not being nice as a front or anything, but it'll take time.
You settle in on your bed and Sollux crawls up next to you, a bundle of mismatched eyes and skinny limbs and stubby, doubled horns. You get a racing game fired up for him and he hunches in over it in concentration, lisping little curses as he gets the hang of the controls. He doesn't even freak out when you move closer, a few minutes later—he lets you sit there almost leaning against his side, and after a few minutes of that he starts to relax into your warmth.
After a few minutes of that, it starts to hit you: you actually really like this little guy. Sure, yeah, in general you like trolls, you think they're neat, you like being able to help them out. But Sollux in particular, smart and defensive and lispy and sort of weirdly cute...okay, you put the brakes on for now. If it's too soon for him to be comfortable chilling with you and Dave in the living room, then it is worlds too soon to talk about making this permanent.
You can let the idea hang out in the back of your head, though, while the rest of you ponders whether you'd get bitten for trying to skritch Sollux's horns. You're good at multitasking like that. You'll just...start considering it now. And by the time he's ready to give it some thought, you'll be prepared.