You're not totally sure why you're the one that the trolls (well, the ones who don't know what they're doing) want to get fighting lessons from. Like, Wade's better than you—he does this shit for a living—and Hal or Dirk have a decent chance of ending up on top in any theoretical strife. Hell, half the trolls love Ambrose, and he could definitely teach them some shit.
But no. Eridan flatly refuses to take lessons from anyone but you, which is why you're standing here in the basement with a sword in your hand, watching him telegraph literally every move he makes like a full three seconds in advance. Like, this doesn't even feel like a fight, which is probably good knowing how you react to real fights. Some of it's probably the lighting Hal's hooked up—like you're pretty sure that this is the best lit basement in New York, he really didn't need to go that hard with the lights—but most of it is just the sheer ridiculousness of Eridan's insistence that he does know how to use a blade and he doesn't want one of Wade's stupid little guns.
His words, not yours. You feel like Eridan's still getting over the fact that his fuckoff intimidating rifle didn't make it through the weirdass interstellar teleport thing from his planet to this one. Like, that's probably a factor in his insistence that he has to learn how to defend himself, especially when you're just about positive that he hasn't run into any situations where he's needed to do more than tell an asshole to fuck off. He really does not need to know how to use a sword.
But. You get it. Like, you still carry three knives on you everywhere that doesn't have metal detectors, you get it. You kinda wish that he didn't insist on you being the one to teach him how to do this, but...still.
Shit, you need to move. And you do, one step to the left and one forward to put you out of the path of his lunge and inside his range, and smack his right shoulder with the flat side of your own blade for at least the fourth time this session. Like every other time, he jumps back and spits out a couple swear words that don't come out in English and one that does.
This time, though, he lowers his sword and pouts, flashing sharp teeth at you. You're willing to bet that the way his fins are flared out is just as much an expression of frustration as the look on his face is. "You're cheatin'."
"What?" You are absolutely baffled as to how the fuck someone cheats in a god damn swordfight. Like you can't even be offended at this point. It's that ridiculous.
"He's not cheating, you're just slow," Karkat points out from where he's settled on the floor against the wall. Oh yeah, you guess bending time could count as cheating.
"He's not even that slow." Wade sounds like he's about to start laughing at this shit. On one hand, you get that that's just how he is; on the other, that tone brings a light violet flush to Eridan's cheeks. Poor guy thinks he's being teased. "Just really predictable—"
"Wade, not helping. Look, Eridan—" Fuck, how do you teach this shit? Bro did it by standing you up and feinting punches at you (well, kind of feinting, you had bruises after every one of those sessions) until you quit flinching, by straight out cutting you every time he saw what you were gonna do before you did it. You're...not doing that. You're never gonna do that. Wait, you were saying something, was that a long enough pause for anyone to notice? "Okay. If you—like, if you think about what you're doing, you gotta only think about it in your head."
"WWhere the fuck else wwould I think about shit—"
"In your body, dude, why else do you think I can see what you're gonna do?"
"You’re movving fast!"
"I swear I'm not doing that, trust me." (The look he gives you says that he does not, in fact, trust you. You guess that's fair.) "Just try and keep the planning in your head, okay? One more time."
Eridan mumbles something that you suspect is "fuck your one more time," but he raises the sword Dirk lent him again. At least he's got the opening position right this time; you've been correcting his grip and stance for what seems like fucking forever.
Unfortunately telegraphing every move is apparently harder to unlearn, because you step out of the way of his first three strikes with literally no problem at all. He's getting frustrated again, too—you see his earfins flare out again, the way his eyes are too fucking wide—
Then Eridan blinks as he pulls back, and his whole bearing changes. You can still see what he's gonna do, he's not covering shit up any better, but something's different. He hesitates (god, you're gonna have to work on that hesitation too) then lunges again, aiming for your center mass just like you knew he would. You sidestep—
—and he fucking compensates. You guess you got a lil' predictable, and you didn't keep your own sword ready to block. Sloppy.
Oh shit you just fucked up.
Eridan yelps in alarm—you don't know what the fuck he expected to happen when he stabbed you, but apparently it wasn't this. Karkat snarls somewhere behind you—shit, you need to defuse this, you need to keep either of them from getting hurt—
Except you take a step to put yourself between the two of them and abruptly decide that maybe you should just uhh. Sit down. Maybe sit down. There's a lot more blood than you've seen coming out of you in a while, that's...yeah.
"Dave—" Wade scrambles around in front of you as you do a (mostly) controlled collapse onto the floor, reaching out to put pressure on the wound and changing course as he realizes you've got that much under control. "Oookay, time to shift down so we can get you—"
"I got it, I got it—" Ah fuck, Karkat's gonna kill Eridan. "Get them apart first, alright? Please?"
Wade glances over his shoulder, makes a face, and gives you a nod. "Do your timey-wimey stuff and I'll handle the rest."
Okay, good, quit panicking and trust him, it's fine. You take a deep breath and close your eyes—downshifting is nauseating if you keep your eyes open, shit's not supposed to move that fast—and you twist the lil' dial in the center of your brain all the way to the left. Is it the left? You don't know why you're visualizing this with a dial when you can't remember which way you're supposed to turn dials when you're not actively turning them. Like, you guess you could just take one hand off your new stab wound for a sec, see which way you turn dials to turn them off. Wait no that's maybe a bad idea. You're probably not gonna bleed to death in the time it takes you to test how to turn a dial off but you're gonna bleed more than you are, and—
There is no real space between Wade pressing the pen to the bare skin of your neck and him pressing it down to hit you with the tiny zap of electricity. It jolts you out of slow-time, you deliberately go limp as he scoops you up off the floor, and you drop right back down to where you were once he's got ahold of you. The positive side of that is that you perceive the whole process of being carried upstairs as just a lil' bit of jostling; the negative is that Wade has to jolt you again so he can set you down without you falling off shit.
"Now you should probably stay with me."
"Yeah, no shit." You know you should just move your hands and let Wade see how bad it is. Knowing does not mean you can actually do that; he gives you a couple seconds to cooperate and then gently forces your hands back, making a face as he gets a good look.
There is already blood on his hands and you're gonna just...close your eyes now.
"Sorry to say this, but I think these jeans are a loss."
"Again, no fuckin' shit." He's touching way too close to the cut, but you can handle this, you can deal—nooo you can't. Fuck. "Wade, okay, hands off, I—"
Thank fuck he doesn't want an explanation. You say that and he immediately pulls back, looking up at you from where he's kneeling on the floor. What room are you even in? Wait, this is the couch, it's the living room. God you hope you don't bleed on the couch. That'd be a bitch to explain to D—
"Earth to Dave?" That's...not the first time he's said that, maybe. Lot of patience in those three words, though. You shake your head and blink your eyes focused again, and see that Wade's got three pills in his palm, holding them out to you.
Well, at least it's not the hand he got bloody. "Dude, where the fuck where you keeping those?"
"Oh, you mean normal people don't keep painkillers in their pockets? Gee, who would've thought it?"
"Are you being sarcastic so I don't think about the fact I got stabbed?"
"Is it working?"
It is. "Kinda. I need a shirt."
"Pills first. Here, hold out your hand." You do, and he dumps them into your palm in the same movement as rising to his feet. "Hang on, I'll get—"
Yeah, no. You dump all three pills into your mouth and swallow them down dry. (Mostly dry. Wade might not have had blood on his hand, but you sure did. That's not great.)
"—water. Okay, maybe not."
"Nah, I still need water. And some wet wipes. And a clean shirt. Maybe my music if I’m gonna sit here for a couple hours."
"Yeah, I'm on it." Wade points at you, giving you a stern look that you can't possibly take seriously. "Stay put until it starts closing at least."
Like you don't have enough sense to do that yourself. "Yes, dad."
Holy shit, that actually shorts him out for a second; you see the look on his face change as he heads out. It's enough to make you forget that you're still kinda bleeding.
Hopefully the pain pills will finish the process of making you forget before he gets back.