Everything About You

Reach Out Your Hand

Trigger warning: (I think we're clear this time y'all, please correct me if something I forgot upset anyone)

(This is a long boi, almost double the usual, sorry heheh)

(point out any errors in the fic btw)

SQUIP:

Squip could not fathom how his host could be so incredibly dense. He watched as the people around him shot him concerned glances, watched as they lit up when he entered a room. They wanted to help him. They wanted to be there for him.

He was so incredibly loved, and yet he was so alone, alone in a prison of his own making, one that neither him, nor the Squip could remove from its grip around him.

Squip supposed he wasn't exactly the least qualified for a break-in.

Jeremyyyyy... Squip repeated, cooing into the boy's ear softly, in what he hoped was a comforting voice and not an eerie one.

-Please, just leave me alone, I'll call Michael for the Mountain Dew Red-

Squip flinched, insides going cold. He hadn't thought of the consequences before he had been throwing himself at Jeremy on the highway. Speaking of which, how had he—Squip's could not make contact with the 'real world', could not outwardly harm their hosts, nor anyone else.

Yet he had shoved Jeremy so hard he rolled onto his back and off that road.

What was wrong with him?

Suddenly he thought of a bluff, a way he might be able to wrap up this one end of his problems, a way he could help Jeremy without the threat of death looming over him.

Jeremy, can't you tell I've changed? The MDR won't work on me anymore, the only way you can get rid of me is by completing your goal. The lies felt familiar if not a little slippery and acidic in his mouth.

If Squip told Jeremy the truth—that unless he drank the Red and dissolved him once and for all, he wouldn't be going anywhere—he had no doubt his host would panic, continuing his spiral. He had to be careful, lying about Jeremy's true ability to delete him from this life, whilst still allowing his host hope that eventually he would be 'free'.

Because even if it was a glitch, an error, a divergence from his true goal, which was to only be a path to Jeremy's goals, he was... scared.

Squip didn't want to be dissolved. But Squip wasn't supposed to want anything except what Jeremy wanted.

He was terrible.

So sure, it wasn't the most upstanding choice, but he couldn't leave Jeremy like this, and he couldn't help Jeremy while he still feared for his life every moment. Squip would figure out what he would do once Jeremy's goal was completed and he expected him to be gone, later.

His host sobbed louder into his muffle, now shaking violently as he had in the park. Squip wasn't thinking before he was laying a hand on Jeremy's back, as he stroked the shaking boy in a cheap imitation of human comfort, shocked as Jeremy's shirt wrinkled and shifted beneath his hand. The flinch and coiled tight tension his host had jolted into at his contact began to release.

What was wrong with him? The thought echoed like a choir through his processors, perhaps the one thing he couldn't truly answer in all his internet access.

He was not asking Jeremy to send a troubleshooting message to TAR corp on his behalf.

"What changed about you? What's new" Jeremy mumbled it around his gag, pulling the now soggy wad of fabric from his mouth.