Gamzee sits there all to grinning, because he gets this by now, he does: Equius says Do you want me to when he means I fucking want to so bad I can't fucking stand it, like getting all close to what he wants would make it snap like one of his motherfucking robots. Seems like, if you pity a brother with a hangup like that, about the only motherfucking thing to do is take the decisions right the fuck out of his strong hands.

This isn't a thing Equius does; surrendering to impulses is for other people. He has always been one to measure, to strategize, to rein himself in as best he can. It was a necessity. Even his liaisons to satisfy the drones were more matters of negotiation and restraint than unbridled passion, adequate but not exceptional. But as Strider follows him out of the hangar and down the corridor, it's all Equius can do not to turn on him, not to attack him right there, not to pin him to the wall with hands around his throat and knee between his thighs.

Honestly you don't give two shits what the kid looks like. Your audience will go for it even if you get someone who got beaten half to death with the troll ugly stick. The picture loads. You're going to make so much alien fetish money you're going to have to hire somebody to build a swimming pool on the roof, just so you can fill it with sleazy intergalactic flesh trade dollars and roll around in it like an asshole.

"I need to—" you can't, you can't say it with Mituna there. "It's my mutation," you say instead. "There are complications." "Okay, dude, open the door," Latula says. The knob rattles, and you miss whatever Mituna says next. "Yeah, I know, but he's still one of us. We can't just let him suffer, you know?" (Kankri misses a social outing. Some of his friends come to check up on him.)

The dishes need doing. They're not the only thing.