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The motherfucking joke of it is that you spent your wigglerhood wishing for a hive less alone and now, when the prayer comes answered manifold, you don’t know what to do with yourself. People all around, and you with your split pan that wants to curl up close and lash out with claws both at once. Might be you could feel betrayed at this trick of the messiahs, but you’ve learned to laugh at the jest of this world that never gives but that it takes and never takes but that it gives.
So you slip through hallways and places less meant to be travelled and get your watch on from the edges of things, where you can hold your temper and your joys both secret to yourself. It’s a motherfucking wonder to watch this hive come to life.
There’s brothers and sisters moving through with boxes and all manner of shit; there’s folks already days settled and others not bothering to try. Sollux looks like to barricade himself right in what with all the combs and datagrubs and tech shit he hauls into the blocks he’s claimed. Rose ain’t touched her own blocks, but she’s over everyone’s shoulder each time there’s a scuffle, posing her little questions like mawbeast traps, spinning folk all around until they wander off too confused strife more.
And Karkat. Karkat you see most everywhere you go, shouting at one motherfucker here, talking low and quiet with another there. He badgers and curses and harries and helps, and you marvel at the way he turns folk just a little more a part of something solid everywhere you find him. Possible true you follow him some, but he don’t note you, and your pusher feels strangely achey-warm to look on him like this, all caught up in the noise and liveness of the thing.
You spy out motherfuckers in all manner of activities as you go: Aradia and Nepeta and Jade, racing and bumping down the graduated spiral acension path. Feferi and the human Jane, squaring off tense and bristly at each other, lips all tight and angry, but crackling bright and secure with the knowing that they won’t do too much damage. Eridan sitting upside down on a couch for reasons peculiar, arms folded, hair flipped wrong-ways, face a thundercloud of thought, while the windy-bro picks noise from white bone keys. Kanaya and Equius and Tavros, engrossed in the decipherment of some human instruction feed, calling out puzzled suggestions to each other, wooden slats and furniture bits on the floor all around them.
Once, you come across Terezi making slow destruction of a room. Vriska sits quiet by, fading into the background for once, eyes sharp and blue and writ large with emotion she don’t speak.
Another time you step not careful enough and that extra pointy Strider bro -- Dirk, it be -- yelps and near to jumps straight out of his skin trying to reach the ceiling. He comes round with weapon out, not cursing, but looking like he wildly wants to. It don’t do nothing too pleasant to your nerves, either, in point of fact. But you both manage to throttle down the urge to lay into each other, and make like you’re full calm and peaceable.
Dave, more broken in to your arrivals, doesn’t hardly flinch at all. Eyebrows high, hand clapped over his mouth, he keeps silence for maybe three beats of time. Then he collapses against the wall and laughs his ass off. You don’t lay into him, either, for all a good portion of your sponge thinks that might be a righteous holy good time. Instead you roll your eyes and offer fistbump and take your violence off with you, leave them shoving and snapping fangless at each other, playful-fond.
You wander after your nose to one of the nutritions blocks, where you snitch something delicious from a metal sheet. You don’t half mind the burn in your fronds from taking it. In still another block, a handful of trolls and humans have gathered, chatting, ’round a screen, and you linger for long wistful moments just to let the nonsense babble of voices wash back and forth across you like waves in the sea.
Eventual, you find a dark place where you can still hear the rise and fall of voices, the bustle of footsteps and movement and life throughout, and tuck yourself down away into it.
After the game you all had your own hives as was spat out for you, and you all went your own ways in the world you had made, as seemed meant. Except. Except you didn’t, really. It’s the world you all made, sure, but it don’t seem made for you. You all who’ve lived and died too many timelines to count, who have heads too full, and souls too scarred. You all that floundered in your strangeness.
You ain’t the only one a bit broken in the pan.
It was Rose’s idea, as you heard it, this strange, sprawling, tangling hive for the lot of you. Hive system, more like, but no row of little private blocks, this. It’s a full on puzzle of a building, scattered through with spaces big and small for all types of doings, and you’ve already got lost twice. You can’t help but think that your brothers and sisters what got their plan on of how it should be must have been touched by the Mirthful Ones for how it turned out, jumbled and fanciful-foolish as a wiggler’s fever dream of a hive-building project.
Hell fucking yeah you like it.
Like the motherfuckers in it, too, for all they set your thinksponge squeezing with conflicting wants, part of you whispering recklessness, grab it, TAKE AND REND, and part whispering careful, careful, careful, and all with no sopor to silence it down and tell you don’t mind.
Ain’t supposed to be thinking on sopor. You promised Karkat. You try to turn your mind to other things, and think instead on his hands, on his small snarling face and the way it goes soft for you, blushing hot under your hands. You think on the way you’ve seen him today, charging through this new hive from person to person, pulling everyone together with sheer force of will. It fills you up shimmery-strange, like a miracle given you to hold in your hands. To keep safe. (Careful, careful, careful, don’t break.)
You squint as light invades your small dark space. Shimmying down into your pile of fabric carapace encasements, you wait for the person to either go about what their business be or spot you and leave. Instead, footsteps turn your way. A head presents before your ganderbulbs.
“Hey there, creepybutt.” Rose’s curly-pale ancestor-sis tilts half over to look at you on the same plane. “What’re you doing hiding in here?”
“...ain’t hiding.”
Roxy tilts her head further. “This is the laundry room. You’re in a pile of laundry.”
“Full miraculous comfy it be, too.” You let your bulbcovers drop farther, eyes half-lidded and sleepy-dangerous, but she just grins at you.
“You know, it hella looks it?”
Was that meant for pale solicitation or just typical heretical human dissoluteness? You can’t decipher. Roxy don’t give you time to hurt your pan on it, just wanders away to circle the small block. Her ear cocks to listen to the voices carrying through the vents in the ceiling. Her hands play briefly with the little door they find along one wall, opening and closing the drop chute that makes a straightaway path through the levels of the hive.
Her eyes, when they come back to you, are that deep, candy-sugar pink, too full of knowing and too close to something that maybe isn’t pity, but still hits you all warm and friendly and overfamiliar, like fingers petting into your insides.
You hunker down and show her just a bit more tooth.
“Jake,” she says suddenly. “Is up in the attics. He’s not real used to people being all right there in his face all the time, you know? Well, actually, and I’ve seen the floorplans for this place--the attics here are wicked sweet. Go on about forever. I’d figure they ate him, but he’s been texting all day, so I know he’s still up there somewheres adventuring.”
“...You got a motherfucking point to be getting to, sister?”
She don’t answer you straight, just makes her way back to crouch in front of you. Not too close, but still closer than most people want to get. Close enough your claws could come for her, if you had a mind. Being immortal don’t mean death don’t hurt.
“I’m just wondering ‘bout this whole setup here. ‘cause it’s like: if you were Jake I’d say leave you be until you get your breath back. But you look like you could just about die from lonely.”
It catches you under the thoracic bone cage, all unexpected. More shows on your face than you mean and her eyes find the expression before you can grab it back.
Her gaze on you is far, far too kind. “You sure you don’t want to come out and get some social in?”
“No.”
“You know you’d be welcome, right?”
“NO.”
“No you don’t know, or no you don’t wanna come out?”
You set your fangs against irritation and find a laugh caught behind them instead. Sister has purest presumption running through her veins in place of blood. She grins back, like she knows the joke, and you think on how sweet she is checking in on you, how you’ve seen her do the same with the others, always moving to the empty spaces between folk, prodding and darting, making a needle of herself to sew up the holes wherever she finds them.
Little pushy sister. She reminds you of Karkat.
For a breath, you could smash her skull in for the effrontery.
Roxy drops still, her skin prickling up in little bumps as your chucklevoodoos lap across the block. Her eyes watch you careful close. You can taste the fear in her, taste the quicksilver flight of it down well-worn paths laid right down to her core, woven all through her--but her smile doesn’t leave and neither does she.
You hold that first breath ‘til the impulse passes out of you. It leaves you dark and tired and wishing for a pie. Not good, not with what promises you’ve made. Sighing out air, you tune your voice down to a low rumble, best you can. “...I ain’t the type of company as anyone should suffer just now, brosis. Got a headful of the most MESSIAH-BLESSED furious whimsy and no knowing on of how to keep my ownself in check when it sings.”
“Well…” she says, like she’s thinking on it. “What about your moirail? Prrr-ty sure Nepeta said you had one.”
Insolent, insolent. You hiss soft warning. “He’s got other shit to occupy him.”
“You sure?”
Your growl rises. “Sure, sister.”
“I mean, you talked that out with him? In words?”
“I said he’s BUSY, MOTHERFUCKER. And I ain't looking for some NOSY-ASS PALE HORNLESS FUCKER to go pawing her hungry fronds ALL UP INTO MY PAN, asking as to WHERE SHE’S NOT WANTED.”
Roxy lets your volume wash over her, squinting against the force of it, then shrugs like it’s not even a thing. “‘Kay, ‘kay. I’ll stop poking. Not trying to hassle you outta your shell if you’re wanting to stay.”
Your fury blows out nearly as quickly as it came. It’s like blowing anger at a leaf, she just dances around it and don’t give you anything to put claw to. And there’s the fact that you don’t really want to be angry. Not at her, not at any of them, not really. Don’t want to feel these things at all.
....Motherfuck you want a pie.
Roxy pushes off her knees, then pauses, standing before you, lips quirked. “...You know, though, we’re a pretty tough bunch. Maybe you should give us a shot.”
Your work your claws in and out of the cloth around you, frustrated because she won’t see what’s plain as the burning daylight. “Now how would that work, exact? Can’t be having a thing and breaking it at the same time. Sometimes the looking on it’s all you get. Not gonna spoil the miracle, sister. I’ll keep where I be.”
“Hm,” is all she says.
You remember something else you promised to do and duck your horns a bit. “Sorry all for yelling.”
She smiles at you. “Not even a prob, bro.” Her hand comes your way and you quiver at the sudden proximity, another person in your space. If she tries to pap you you will take her wrist off with your teeth. But she doesn’t go for your cheek or face, just lays her hand soft in your hair, a brief press of the tangled curls between your horns, like a bird landing. “Hope you won’t be too mad if I meddle just a bit more. It’s a human family thing.” She smiles again and moves off.
You blink after her.
At the doorway, Roxy stops to look back, a dark silhouette against the light. “Don’t hide in here too long, hey? It’s not good to be alone. The dumbest choices start seeming like good ideas.” She mimes a cheerful little self-mocking gesture with thumb and pinky, like a glass tipping back. Then she turns and vanishes.
You blink a good bit more.
Sinking down into your fabric pile ‘til hardly more than your eyes pop out, you wrap your arms tight around your thorax, and settle down to think on these feelings that feel like to claw their way right out of your ribcage, devour you alive from inside out. You’re grateful to be left in the dark to chew through this noise in your pan alone. Grateful more for the voices drifting in through vents that remind you there’s people and life all around, even here in the dark. Grateful for touch even if it hurts, and sweet sugar lies even if they slice clear down to bone.
Except she don’t leave you to your thoughts.
Ain’t ten minutes before she pops back through the door like a wiggler’s toy, sending you snarling deeper into your pile in sheer startlement. She’s got Karkat behind her by the wrist.
“A little lioness told me this might brighten up you both,” Roxy says, and beams indiscriminately between the pair of you like a mewbeast lusus presenting a bloody heap of feathers. “Annnd that’s my facilitating done for the day. Cheers, boys, I’m out. We’re watching a movie in the east den later if you wanna join.” She winks at you, gives Karkat one last nudge, and absconds back out the door, quick as she came.
You’re left in silence. You stare at Karkat, who stares mutely back. Something, you notice, is caught up on your horn. After a moment, you shake your head, trying to flick the fabric from your vision. It slides down your horn instead. You give up.
“Uh,” you try, for lack of any better ideas. “Hey.”
Karkat huffs through his nose and stomps across to you. Taking you by chin and horn, he tilts your head about, mumbling imprecations as his fingers work to untangle the offending garment from your headgear. His actions are gruff, but his hands are careful. You go easy into them, closing your eyes.
You don’t open them again until he takes those hands away. You find him standing, two steps back, with arms folded around himself, brows drawn tight together. His eyes skip away from you and then back, restless.
Finally, he bursts out: “Are you still mad at me?”
Your eyes fly wide. It’s so much the opposite of anything you expected to hear said that words straight up and leave your skull.
“Because I don’t know what I did, but even I can tell I’ve massively fucked something up after the fifth time my moirail just about leaps to get out of a room with me. Was it--did I say something or--did you not want to move in after all?”
“No, brother, no, that ain’t--” you say, but he’s talking too fast to hear you.
“Because honest to god I thought you were excited about this, I mean, you said you were, not that you have to be, but you said you were okay, and I thought everything was fine except obviously I’m a fucking moron because clearly it’s not--”
“--brother, hey--”
“--behold my utter inability to not make a shit-smearing mess of simple language comprehension and basic communication skills and not being a pressury heinous ass-welt on top of that--”
“--bro--”
“--and oh my fucking god we haven’t even been here for 24 hours and I’m already fucking everything up, I have no idea how to do this, there is basically no way this whole setup isn’t going to dramatically implode all over again--”
You’re still making noises like to interrupt him, but he don’t seem like to take heed in any near future. You go forward on your knees. Snatching one of those wildly gesticulating hands from the air, you make some use of the volume you’ve got in you. “BEST FRIEND. Settle down and get your motherfucking CHILL ON ’fore you up and EXPLODE YOUR FUCKING PAN.”
Karkat halts, mouth caught open. His eyes blink too fast, focusing first on you, and then on his hand caught between you. He seems calmer, for the touch, or at least like your noise knocked some of the panic right out of him. “...I have bones in there, you know."
You gentle down your fingers, but don’t let loose his wrist. He hasn’t tried to take it back from you yet, so you don’t mean to give it up. You draw slow breath until your voicebox sits quieter in your chest, ‘til you can speak as you want without edges slipping in. “Ain’t got a bit of mad in my diamond for you,” you tell him, and ignore when it earns you a snort and half-hearted eyeroll. He’s still breathing too hard, aeration sponges trying to steady back down from his outburst, muscles poised to fight or flee. His face just looks unhappy, not wanting either.
Kneeling before him, you’re nearly as tall as his shoulder, his frowning mug not far from yours. His pulse beats against your grip, warm and solid. Your own pulse feels more real for its presence. You draw him a step closer, just because he’s here and he hasn’t tried to leave you yet. Gentle you can do, soothing and quiet, but you can’t quite clear the harmonics from your voice, the darker chords where fragments of power and emotion spin together in unexpected dips and rises. You want to wrap around him and pluck out his fears to see close. “Best friend, best beloved. Little palest miracle brother. What manner of thoughts have you got creeping around in your pan that tell you other?”
Karkat’s face colors up some as you talk, his tension softening, but he don’t let you off easy. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
You open your mouth and then get stuck, desire to deny clashing guiltily with point of fact. Before you can decide how to reconcile them, he’s charging onwards.
“Don’t you fucking tell me different, Gamzee. It doesn’t exactly take a genius to spot. All I have to do is look around a room and say to myself, ‘wow, look at the total abundance of clown there is not.’” He scrubs his free hand over his face, blowing out air. Fight fading out of him and he just looks tired--all dark circle eyes that try to hide beneath his drawn together brows and still show far too much. “I just--don’t lie to me. It’s fine if you--you can be… but I don’t know what to do if you hide things from me. I don’t know what you want.”
And that--hurts. Squeezes you up with guilt all through to hear that kind of shaky-uncertain in Karkat’s voice. But it’s a good fear, a true fear. Stripped down and raw to the marrow. You can speak to a fear like that. You tug again on his wrist, gentle enough that he could pull back without even trying, and feel some of the pressure in your chest uncoil when he steps into you instead. You’re so used to things leaving you; it touches something dark and hungry down in you when he lets you keep close. You cradle his hand like it’s precious and brush lips over the heel of his palm.
“Wasn’t avoiding you--” his hand tenses and you hang on, stubborn “--not you in particular. Best friend. Diamond-bro. You know I got a powerful distrust on of how the wicked whimsy takes me in company of a time. That’s all it be. Just keeping to self what ought be kept, no more trouble nor secret to it than that.” You slide your lips to his palm, speak words there like a benediction. “I got no desire to go breaking what promises I made you, best friend.”
Karkat blinks uneven, fingers fluttering. Then he narrows his eyes. “Right. So basically you’re interpreting ‘please come talk to me before you do anything stupidly murdery or self-destructive’ as ‘avoid all contact with anyone ever and lock yourself in a garment re-hygienating block.’”
The answer to that seems full obvious to you, but you can tell it’s not one he wants to hear, so you don’t give it voice. It altogether baffles you what gets your pale brother riled from time to time. You latch onto the only point of contention you can find. “Didn’t lock it. Don’t think that pushportal even has a lock to be at finding.”
Karkat makes a noise of pure aggravation. Using the hand in your grip, he pushes flat on your face until you slump backward over onto the clothes pile. You don’t much mind, especially when he follows after. Perching half on top of you, he presses his nugbone against yours and bares all his blunt little fangs. “The relevant detail, Gamzee, is the part where you are all alone in a tiny room, instead of, I don’t know, coming to talk to me? Tell me again how that’s not avoiding your damn palemate, because I am having trouble seeing it.”
“Aw, bro. You were all to being busy.”
He actually snarls at you, rolls his head forward ‘til your horns click and lock against his shorter ones, a shivery bolt of sensation. It’s too aggressive a gesture to be technically pale, but it’s Karkat, Karkat who comes head on at everything, who cares too hard, who always seems ready to strife the whole world for pity of it. Karkat, who you think would fight abstract concepts if he could get claw to them.
You go soft and pliant beneath him because you don’t have to understand a miracle to know one when it’s blazing down at you, fierce enough to warm you to your core. He cares. You purr contentedly up at him even as he gives up on the hornlock, pulls back to frown down into your face. His fingertips trace soothing over your cheekbones and you shiver and chirp and press into them. His bulbs search you over like he could pull whatever emotion he’s looking for out just by the seeking of it.
“You really think I’d be too busy for you?” he says, not like doubting, but like he’s laying out the pieces of a problem he’s been set to solve.
You shrug your shoulders into the garments beneath you, voice gone loose and easy with his touch. “Everyone’s got their busy on just now, pale brother. All this new hive shit to be up and getting on with. And what with all these busy motherfuckers everywhere ain’t no surprise you’d be busier than most.”
Karkat frowns more, pets your face absently as you nuzzle into his hand.
You hate to see him all to distressing himself over this. “It don’t hurt me none to wait, best friend,” you offer. “I’m good at waiting.”
He makes a noise like you hurt him.
You chirp apologetically, pet at his sides and what parts of him you can reach, and abruptly his arms go tight around you. He burrows into you, presses his face in hard to the soft join where your neck meets your shoulder, breathing warm and fast against your skin, and it’s not like a caress or an embrace, but more like he’s trying to merge into you, pull you inside him, wrap you entirely in the fierceness of his emotion.
Close.
The sharp, hungry thing in your thorax uncurls in sleepy pleasure. You drape your own longer arms over him, weighing him down, nestling even further into his hold, and go very nearly limp with the pure satisfaction of it.
“...y’ okay, best friend?”
He makes a muffled noise into your neck. Bit by bit the furious tension eases out of him, until he’s just a warm, solid weight there with you, rumbling against you, holding on tight. He sighs and presses a kiss into the soft place over your collarbone. “Pale for you. You horrendous disaster of a troll. You’re like a fucking pity ambush.”
You purr for him, agreeable.
“...your lusus was a massive festering asslord.”
That, you’re less agreeable to. But he don’t prod at you over it, so you let it fade away into quiet again, tracing idle patterns along his back with your fingertips.
Karkat speaks, soft and hidden but oh so serious, into your neck. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to be good at waiting. I don’t want you to have to wait at all.”
“You got other shit to take care of. No, brother, listen--” you say, as he tenses against you, lifts his head all angry-unhappy. “That ain’t the slightest bit accusation. You think I don’t see you, running all round getting your care on at everyone? Think I don’t see what miracles you spin? You got something special in you. Got a knowing on writ right down into your soul of how to make things better than they could be. It’s good, brother mine. It’s full wonderful to look on.”
His cheeks and ears are turning red, his lips pressing together dissatisfied. “I’m not some… crazy bullshit clown saint from your religion, Gamzee.”
You can’t help but honk a laugh, trailing off into smaller wheezy honks. “That you ain’t. Sheerest blasphemies you do speak betimes, the most motherfucking wicked heresies as to vex the messiahs. And yet I have heard you tell a lie so sweet that it falls from your lips like holiest scripture.” You grin lopsidedly up at him and trace fingers over those lips, over that frowning mouth, watch the way his pupils dilate even as he scowls and blushes harder. “That’s a fucking power you have, best beloved. Saving up all your belief for the things as oughtn’t to be true. And then you go and believe in us so strong we motherfuckers near to fall over ourselves trying to make it true for you anyway. Miracles.”
He glares and hides his face against your neck again, flaming hot. “But I’m…” His voice stops small, and you make a noise of encouragement for him to continue.
“...what if I fuck it up?”
“Can’t fuck up a miracle, bro.”
He pushes up on his elbows, pulls restless like he might leave you entire. “No, I’m serious here, Gamzee. I’m not--I can’t do this. I’m not good at it; I just yell; I have no idea what I’m actually doing and I’m pretty sure if there’s an actual correct way to keep everything from going to hell in this ridiculous conjoined madhive, it is not Karkat Vantas stomping around, flapping his dumb trap at everyone in sight like a shit-spewing idiot.”
Your eyebrows draw together. “Best friend…”
“I mean we’ve done this before. It’s not like we don’t have plenty of evidence of how bad I can fuck this whole thing up. Look at the damn meteor: put us all together and nine timelines out of ten, nine out ten, Gamzee, it ended in a grubfucking murderfest. I tried, I tried, but I just fucking made it worse, and now you’re in here, like you can’t even talk to me, and I’m getting it all wrong again, I’m such a fuck up, it’s going to happen all again, and you, and you--”
Karkat’s voice rises louder and faster as he speaks, picking up momentum, hands gesturing wildly in counterpoint to the pulse of his fear beating hard in your pan. He let a sliver of it through and now it’s like he can’t keep the whole mass from tearing out of him, all that packed down worry set loose and turned back on himself because your moirail always does want to carry the whole weight of this unfunny world on his shoulders.
You roll him beneath you, pin him under you in the soft fabric nest of the pile, press him down with the bulk of your body. “Shoosh motherfucker. Shhhh, now. Just breathe a bit. I got you.” You set your hands firm on either side of his face, fan your fingers back into his hair, and hold on until he’s quiet, until he’s gone loose all through, until you can sweep the palm of your hand up along the hot curve of his cheekbone and see him shudder and and go to pieces and fall back together under your touch.
“There, brother,” you croon when he’s soft and surrendered. You pet him in slow, smooth strokes. “That’s enough of that. Ain’t got no call to go talking so about him I love best.”
Karkat laughs a little, a small wet noise. You move your fingers to stroke the red sheen of tears from under his eyes and he turns slightly into your hand. He lets out a shaky breath. “Okay. So. It has come to my attention that I might be kind of freaking out here. Maybe. A little bit.”
“Speak truth? And here I thought you full calm and collected as to set me an example.”
“Holy shit, sarcasm. When the hell did you learn sarcasm? And also basically fuck you, lunk-nug, I could have twenty meltdowns a day and I’d still be a shining pinnacle of calm and collectedness in comparison to your sorry wreck of a life. I am the together member of this moirallegiance. It's me.”
You raise your eyebrows and grin down at him trapped beneath you.
He scowls. “When I came into this block you had underwear stuck on your head. Which, by the way, I will be happy every minute of my life if I never have to find out whose. Let alone whose re-hygienated garments we just piled in. Oh god. You see this? This is the reason we’re all going to wind up murdering each other in our ‘coons. This kind of shit right here. This is not a jam session this is fucking fuel on the inevitable laundry massacre conflagration.”
He’s starting to gesticulate again and you capture one hand and then the other. With precise movements you pin them down above his head.
He turns pink.
“Sweet little brother.” You press a kiss to his forehead. “Palest diamond.” Another kiss. “Precious perfect miracle of mine.” He shivers with each touch like your lips struck lightning through him.
Your purr turns your voice rumbly soft, and the harmonics are creeping back in, rising and falling, tugging at his fears like something you could unravel and own. You feel like your words could sink right down into the ground, into the bones of this hive. “It’s gonna be well. It’s gonna be hella motherfucking well, best friend. This ain’t no meteor and we ain’t no scared little wigglers caught in a trap no more, no angry pupa waiting on war. Ain’t none here wishing murder for true, and some of the rest got at least a little spark of the miracle as could see it stays so. Ain’t gonna be just you all alone, brother. And ain’t nothing we can do to each other now that can’t be made right in time.”
Karkat recovers his voice enough to make an irritable noise of protest at that. “‘s fucking creepy… fucking clown.”
You just shrug and chuckle against his skin, because you don’t figure you’re wrong for all his complaint. Next thing to gods that you be, a little blood and mayhem along the way might just be all up and natural. Nothing to distress over. You kiss the tip of his nose and Karkat pinches his brows at you. “Messiahs’ own scriptured truth, diamond-bro. What ain’t dead won’t be staying in the ground for long--’less you damn well make fight to keep it there.”
He sputters and makes a more spirited effort to tug loose of the hand that’s got his pinned. He don’t say the words as would make you let him go, though, so you just laugh more and hold him fast, watch him struggle until he’s bright-eyed and flushing and surrendered again to the close and the sweet and your lips whispering soft adorations in his ear. The dark hungry thing in your chest croons satisfaction.
You slow to nuzzle the dark circles under his eyes and let your laughter fade away. You’re so full of pale emotion you think you could split right open down the middle, spilling out your life like moonbeams. You drop his hands to pull him close, wrap your arms around him like you could keep all the feeling contained against him, just there, for the two of you. His hair tickles your face and you press your lips down by his ear, speaking wishes like prayer.
“Don’t wanna be one more thing stealing sleep from you, one more heavy thing you can’t ever put down. What promises I made, I swear I’ll keep. And when there’s else that needs doing, I won’t slip over the edge just from waiting. I know well enough how to take myself away and let be. You don’t gotta worry about me so hard, best friend. I’ll bide.”
Karkat’s quiet in your arms for a long time, so still you’d almost think him drifted away if his hand weren’t curled warm and tight, up in the collar of your shirt near your pusher. He curls it harder, holding you so close. Then, all at once, he’s moving again, elbowing and shoving digging his knees in until he’s muscled you full around and perched himself back on top. He crouches over you like a stone lusus decoy, narrow-eyed and frowning.
“Fine. But you still have to tell me.”
You stare up, uncertain.
Karkat kneads his claws all delicate into the cloth and muscle beneath them and slits his red eyes further. He leans in until your noses are almost touching. “You want to make this a trust thing, you think this is something important that you do for me--okay. I can respect that. I respect your right to… look after me, too.” He blinks a little faster, embarrassed, but he doesn’t take his eyes away from you. “This is still a fucking two-way transportation channel, Gamzee. You looking out for me doesn’t mean I stop giving a shit about you. Doesn’t make you a burden. I want to be there for you when you need me. “I. want. this.”
Karkat’s voice thrums and breaks low and hoarse. You can’t breathe for the way he speaks to you, for the way each word reaches down inside your thorax and wraps fierce and possessive around your pump biscuit. He picks one hand up and touches your face so careful, like you’re something unimaginably precious, like you might splinter and disappear if he sets claw wrong.
“So, okay, maybe you don’t need me to drop everything right that moment something comes up. I’ve got a bunch of needy dumbshit irons in the fire and you wanna let me take care of those first. Fine, whatever. You’re a big troll, you know what you can handle. You can still come find me and tell me that’s what’s going on. Not just… drop off the radar without a fucking word. Not just hide in a room all miserable and alone when I don’t even know that’s what’s happening. Not avoid me because you think you’re less important to me. I am so dead fucking serious about this, Gamzee.”
He gets your face between both his hands and you’re breathless, caught, utterly transfixed by him. Your pusher is beating so hard in your chest you think you might straight up die of this moment. You think you might not mind.
“I need to know when you’re waiting,” he says. “And if you’re waiting for me it better damn well be because you know I’m coming to find you.”
You make a low, indescribable noise, like hurting or happiness, and shake under his touch. Suddenly his hands are everywhere, papping your cheeks, stroking and soothing, rubbing your hornbeds while he whispers all manner of sweet nonsense into your auriculars. Love you and always and you’re first, dumbfuck. Okay? You shudder like you’re going to fall apart and press all up against him, wrap yourself around him, hold onto him all small and sturdy and unmistakeable warm in your arms, until you’re sure down into every part of you that he’s real, that this is granted unto you, most holy miracle, mirthful blessing undeserved, praise messiahs in all their caprice who give you what could kill you or save you or both.
You hope your gods are laughing their asses off, for you truly find your life a hilarious, improbable joke. And you, the punchline.
You purr up for Karkat, all lazy happy under his hands, and give him a slow, dozy grin full wide enough to split your pan. He shakes his head, but smiles back, precious little crooked twitch of his lips, like the feeling’s on him, too. His hand cups your cheek, warm and steady. “You fucking mess.”
“Pale for you,” you tell him, still smiling right down to your insides. “Best friend.”
He rolls his eyes at you, paps your face all quick and brisk and business-like, and then leans down real fast to drop a kiss, sweet as anything, onto your smile. You make little wanting noises at him, so he does it once more, and then one more time again. Finally, he tugs himself away, sitting back to look you over straight.
Karkat’s face does something kind of wonderful to see, eyes blowing wide and lips all rippling in consternation. The sudden, startled bark of laughter that rips out of him is more wonderful. “Oh my god. Oh my god, you idiot, how.” He’s tugging at your head and horns again, shifting you round, and you realize you’ve up and gotten another of bit of someone’s undergarments all caught about in your headgear again.
“It’s a miracle of the mirthful messiahs,” you tell him, all solemn serious in your witnessing. “Sing praise and make most motherfucking merry.”
Karkat snorts another laugh and then looks appalled at himself. You grin full wicked back. It’s always a good day when you sneak a laugh off him for one of your jokes.
“Taintwaffle,” he gripes, yanking the last of the cloth free. “You are a fucking disgrace to trolls everywhere. Also, I don’t actually like you.” His hand has come back to rest on your cheek, so you take that in the spirit intended.
“Got a powerful feeling on for you too, pale-bro.”
He humphs and slides to sit to the side of you, still tapping a few fingers at your face. “Are you going to come talk to me next time before you pull your creepy ninja disappearing act?”
“Mmm.” You nuzzle into his hand. “Sure thing, brother. If you want it. You gonna let other people help take care of things? Not just me, either. Got a whole lotta people who can make shift to carry some of the weight ‘round here. Gonna let ‘em help?”
Karkat looks down at you, brows in a straight line, face all sort of touched and bewildered and aggrieved. “I… guess? If you want." It’s an echo of your answer, but no less sincere for the uncomfortable evasion. "I suppose some of these panfailures ought to be able to fend for themselves from time to time without complete chaos descending on us all. Hypothetically, at least.” He looks frownily thoughtful. “Or we could just get used to chaos.”
You roll up on your elbow, grinning cheerful at him, and think on all the shit you seen today. All these motherfuckers running round with each other in all their iterations, strange and wonderful, and you somehow some tiny part of it. You think on your curly-sis all checking in on you, and you think on this beautiful, dangerous, miracle hive. “I been told there’s this human thing called family.”
“Oh my god,” Karkat says. “Don’t you fucking start with that. John will not shut up about all his twee human family bullshit, I am so done. One of these days I will just projectile vomit all over him.”
“You kinky ass motherfucker.”
“Oh, put a bulge in it,” he says, without heat, and then pauses and looks around slowly, like he’s just now taking stock. “...I piled you in a communal re-hygieinating block,” he says, all kind of wondering and despairing. “There’s not even a lock on the door. We’re practically in public.”
You chirr interest. “Wanna go again?”
“No. No, that is all the lurid exhibitionary jam sessions I am engaging in for the day, thank you very much. You keep your pervy fronds away from me. Come on, get up, we’re done. You cannot lurk in this block like a big creepy garment-dwelling clown, I forbid it. We’re going to stop being emotional at each other and keep our hands entirely to ourselves and go watch a movie with people we kind of hate like civilized trolls.” He chivvies you up and out, and you go agreeably, only hesitating at the threshold of the block.
Karkat slips his hand into yours. “And you mind your manners! No more PDAs. None of your sneaky touchy-feely bullshit. No touching whatsoever in fact. We are done.”
His fingers fit perfect between yours and his hand is warm and reassuring, holding you tight and not letting go.
“Okay, best friend,” you agree, and hold on back. “If you say it so.”
Karkat huffs and slides a grin your way, and then he pulls you through the door with him, out into your hive.
---
And now I'm confused on top of it all
I was ready to lose and ready to fall
And there's something about the way that you look at me
It makes it feel okay
You make it feel okay
-OK, Holly Conlan