Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bro would have been more disappointed about the FBI visiting their apartment, only he (like everybody except the FBI, apparently) had a soft spot for John. As things were, Dave got off with a hair ruffle and the unspoken promise of weeks of payback. It helped that the FBI’s warrant was only for John’s letters, and so when they looked pointedly at the piles of smuppets and shitty swords, they were met with twin uncaring Strider gazes, each brother raising a single don’t-give-a-shit eyebrow over their opaque shades.

The suits left without the letters they’d come for. (why would I keep them, like some sentimental 1940’s girl pining for her man away in the navy, you expect me to have like a shoebox full of everything egbert ever mailed me) It was true he’d gotten rid of the physical copies, no need to keep them around taking up space. That didn’t mean he didn’t have any copies; as soon as the door had shut behind their unwelcome visitors, Dave’s laptop was hurtling toward him, spinning like a blunt oversized ninja star. As he caught and opened it, Bro was behind him, looking down over his shoulder.

“Explain.” Dave was already opening the scanned files, John’s always-blue handwriting filling the screen.

hi, dave!

it is really exciting working here! we are so close to roswell, you don’t even know! hee hee, what if i find an alien? wouldn’t that be so cool?? i bet you and rose think aliens don’t exist. when i find one you will be so jealous!

i’ll send you some photos of my job. i’m not actually allowed to take pictures in some places but i’ll sneak one in somehow…

hey dave
ha ha, you’re gonna have to wait for those photos i promised! i tried being all stealthy and snapping a couple on my cell phone but i got caught and it got confiscated. i don’t know if they’re gonna give it back. it is super inconvenient not having a cell phone! i don’t want to have to buy a new one but its been like a week. i still wanna get some photos to you too, the layout is so neat! it’s like i see new things every week. none of it phases jade though, what with all her crazy robots.

i’m getting more used to grocery stores and restaurants out here…

==> Skip ahead to the good stuff.

sorry for rambling. it’s just been bugging me lately but i can’t even really talk about it except in all this vague circling around the topic. so don’t worry about it! i just needed to get that out!

anyway, hee hee, i found this great store with discount dvds and guess what they had on sale…

i wish i could have all my favourite people together. i wish you all could meet each other, i bet it’d be interesting. we could have a movie night! i know you would all make fun of me for how much i like nick cage, like even more than you normally do. but it’d be worth it. you guys could tease me all you want if we could just have a night with all five of us together. just pizza and movies and no big worries.

it’s hard, growing up and having grown-up responsibilities and making big life-changing decisions. it’s hard, and nobody here understands. but i think if i could tell you everything, you would.

thanks for being a great friend.

john

PS i guess you should probably get rid of my letters. i don’t think i said anything dangerous in them but better safe than sorry!

Rose’s mother swirled the drink in her glass contemplatively. “I’d have expected this sort of thing from you,” she conceded.

“Or Dave,” Rose added, fingers resting tense on the home keys of her laptop, just this side of the pressure needed to impact them.

“Or Dave,” her mother agreed, carelessly brushing Rose’s hands aside to scroll through the .pdf once more, sending the scanned blue-inked letters flying across the screen. They were both heedless of the mess of their house, sitting crosslegged on an overturned wizard statue, laptop propped between them. Neither of them had bothered reining in the sarcasm for their visitors, and in return the visitors hadn’t bothered being careful with their search, or even making any pretense of not tearing the place apart. Rose knew her mother would be brining this up for weeks in carefully constructed guilt trips, never mind that the woman had already stated her intent to remodel, and that it was none of it Rose’s fault.

Well. Save for the part where she hadn’t cooperated with the governmental agents, denying that she had any remnants or copies of the letters from John, and claiming to not remember any of their content other than John’s endeavors to get his supervisors and coworkers to watch Con Air, and how he secretly missed his dad’s cooking though he would never admit it. It was possible that if she had directed them to the laptop with the .pdf file of each and every one of John’s letters she had received, they would have been content with that, and left without ransacking the house.

It was also possible that they would have believed there was more to it than that, and torn the house apart in their search regardless.

It was wholly irrelevant, because Rose had no intention of helping them pursue her friend.

Her mother’s smooth fingernail tapped against the computer screen, sending out tiny electronic ripples and earning a swat from Rose. Her mother knew she hated it when she did that.

“ ‘all five of us together,’” the older woman read aloud, sipping from her glass. “Who is he talking about here?”

“Himself and the rest of us, of course,” Rose condescended. “Dave, Jade, myself…”

When Rose fell silent, lacking a fifth name to complete the count, her mother picked up the thread of thought. “It seems unlikely he confused the number accidentally. The four of you have always been so tightly-knit… Your correspondences have never indicated there was another member to your little circle of friends?”

Rose’s mind was already building and tearing down plans of how to inquire with Jade and Dave—did they know this fifth person? Did they know more about what John had done? Had John’s letters to them been littered with any other clues that could be picked apart and pooled together to determine just what had created this huge federal issue? Obviously their pesterchum handles would be watched, they couldn’t discuss things freely online, and if she was to suggest another method of communication, that would be noted and subsequently tracked as well. Visiting the others would be the worst by far. They’d be pulled in for questioning faster than her mother could mix a martini.

“I wonder if it was this unknown fifth element that caused your dear John to enrage the governmental offices so. I really never would have expected it from him—he lacks the cunning and guile, not to mention the resources, to evade such focused pursuit as the FBI will give.” She paused only to drain her glass. “He believes a little too much in the inherent good of others. Whatever he’s done, he thinks he’s made the Right Decision.”

And that was the scariest thing, Rose thought, scarier even than the implication that her mother had been reading all her pesterlogs somehow, to have such a handle on John’s character. If—when John got caught, he wouldn’t fight. He would try to talk to his pursuers and explain to them why he was doing the Right Thing.

Rose powered down her laptop and turned to her mother.

“In light of your intent to remodel the house this summer, I was considering perhaps taking a vacation to stay out of your way.”

“Oh, but then how will I know if you like the changes to your room?”

“You would have personally ensured that my room was modeled to become the antithesis of anything I ever wanted. It’s safer for all involved that I leave as soon as possible.”

“Oh Rose, why would I ever do something like that? I’m your mother. I love you. I just want you to be happy!”

“I’ll be back just in time to get my things and leave for college. It will be like I was never here.”

i really miss your cooking.

love you.

Chapter Text

“Who wants to go for a walk? Who wants to go for a walk?”

With an all-encompassing crackling flash, deathly white streaked with radioactive yellowgreen, the volcanic mountains and blooming fields of Jade’s island were gone. In their place rose towers of man-made buildings, boxy and uniform shape stretching high above the horizon. The island of her home was by no means quiet, melodies of wind and wildlife and sometimes crashing of waves providing constant noise, but it was as nothing compared to the racket of the city. Jade stepped closer to Bec, a purely white beacon amongst so much gray grimy concrete.

“Good dog! Best friend.”

Even when beginning a rescue mission, there was still time for a cuddle with the best doggie in the world.

you know theres leash laws in the city
gotta put a collar on that devilbeast or the fuzz gonna be up in our grill
you know
even more than they already are

Well, that does neatly solve the issue of transportation.

The isolated forest mansion became plateaus and long empty stretches of dusty desert, a scent that made Rose think of fire curling in her nostrils, made Dave wonder how far home was, made Jade want to have a barbeque. There were plants here, yes, but their leaves were only the dullest shade of green, short and stunted and dry. Unmistakably the Southwestern United States.

“Oh man,” Dave drawled. “This is the best idea we have ever had. Three barely legal kids and a dog, gonna gallivant across the wild wild west, strike out on the lam with our fugitive bro as soon as we find him.” He shouldered his backpack and surveyed the expanse of land around them, confirming to see if Jade’s devildog had in fact dropped them off in the middle of bugfuck nowhere, or if there was any sign of civilization—even a road—within sight. Predictably, there was nothing but cacti and mesas as far as the eye could see.

Jade rolled her eyes and punched him in the shoulder. “We don’t have to run from the police forever, silly! You can all come live with me!”

“Don’t worry,” Rose smiled, patting Dave on the unabused arm. “Living on the lam is, purportedly, fairly simple. Most outstanding arrest warrants are only recognized and brought in by accident. So long as we avoid traffic violations and telling Facebook posts, we should do fine.”

She did not mention that for whatever offense John had committed, his was an arrest warrant that was unlikely to be filed aside on the backburner to-do list, to be forgotten for thirty some odd years until his name resurfaced in some local newspaper. It was far more likely that a fugitive task force was doing their best to track him down that moment.

His chums would just have to get to him before anybody else.

Between the three of them, they were pretty sure John didn’t have a credit card, which at least prevented a hypothetical task force from tracking him through purchases that way—but on the downside, how much cash would he have on him? Did he have enough to get by? (If he started shoplifting, his chances of being apprehended for petty theft and then held until he was recognized for his greater crime increased exponentially.) If he was staying at hotels, was he at least smart enough to give a fake name? Had he switched his glasses out for contacts, dyed his hair, taken any steps to hide his appearance?

He was at least smart enough to cut off all contact with them, never logging on to pesterchum, his phone number still going straight to voicemail. (They did call him; the FBI would likely have thought it odd if they made no attempt to contact him, surprised as they all were by his new fugitive status. They also purchased pay-as-you-go phones for themselves, new numbers not attached to any names or credit cards, untraceable.)

“Aw man Lalonde, I already told all my Myspace fans I was gonna keep them posted on all the details of my lawless, carless roadtrip.”

“Do forgive me, I had no idea. We cannot disappoint your loyal fans.”

“You guuuuys.” The blondes turned to Jade, who had a hand absently scratching behind Bec’s ears as she looked past them, taking in the view of unobscured nature, coming to the same conclusion Dave had. “Can you have your Irony VS Sarcasm deathmatch of the century after we figure out where we are?”

“Though this was the plan,” Dave teased, hands in his pockets. “Just gonna hop all around the Four Corners until we get lucky and trip over Egderp. Forget haystacks, this shit’s easy as finding a needle in Nevada.”

“You are just being silly!” Jade scolded. “Just because John probably didn’t have any kind of plan doesn’t mean we shouldn’t!”

“So what do you propose?”

“The FBI is offering rewards for information leading to the apprehension of John Egbert, pictured here at age eighteen.

“Egbert is wanted for assault and battery, and will face charges of theft up to six hundred thousand dollars. He should be considered armed and dangerous, and should not be approached. If you think you have seen him, please alert your local law enforcement agencies immediately.

“It is probable that Egbert is not traveling alone. Any person with him should be treated as an accomplice and considered just as dangerous.”

Chapter Text

John stood, emerging from the aisle of hair care products, holding his prize aloft like some green-clad boy skylark in a video game, and hummed a little victory fanfare. “Got it!”

His companion eyed the box, lip curling distastefully at the orange-red shade of hair it promised. “Ugly,” was the decreed judgment.

John giggled, but did bring the box back down to eye level, giving it a careful examination. Taking a lock of his bangs between two fingers and tugging it down to where he could see it, his eyes went back from the picture on the box, to his own hair, and back again several times, until his companion growled in impatience. “Yeah,” he agreed, letting the blond bangs fall back against his forehead, “it’s gonna be pretty awful. But it can’t be worse than what I’ve got now, heheh!”

They made their way back toward the front counter, retracing their steps through the narrow and crowded aisle that was packed tightly with all manner of beauty products John never before would have looked twice at, let alone considered what they were for. But it had taken far more experimentation than their budget could really allow to find a brand of foundation that wasn’t painful to apply to gray skin, that didn’t wash off later in the day to reveal agitated blisters, red and hot and rough as the rocky plateaus under the sun outside. Now John knew that it was better to spend the extra couple of dollars and not resort to the cheap stuff, that they didn’t need too much foundation to turn unnatural grey to hot-topic-junkie-pale, and that a red shade of lipstick was a waste of time because the black lips only helped cement the impression of a rebellious teenager. People took in the details of a hoodie and fingerless gloves in New Mexico summer heat, and gold nails ending in points, and they expected to see a punk and let their mind fill in the rest of the image. It was obvious enough that everybody considered John and his friend to be childish morons of the it's-just-a-phase variety, but it was that kind of acceptable idiocy that nobody would look twice at.

John definitely didn’t want anybody looking twice at them. Not when they were one double-take away from somebody recognizing John through the bleached hair and discarded glasses.

The cashier was busy helping out one customer ahead of them, and John bounced on his feet as they waited for the woman to find her ID to get her cigarettes. Next to the counter was a rack displaying souvenir knickknacks, key chains and shot glasses adorned with cartoon cacti, magnets and pins in the shape of New Mexico. John picked one of the pins up and held it to his companion’s chest, pretending to consider how it would look on the hoodie.

His actions earned a snarled, gravelly, “What?”

Even with the impression that John’s companion was some manner of misguided youth, such as an art school student, the flash of a mouthful of pointed teeth and a dark gray, nearly black tongue neatly shattered the disguise’s already paper-thin credibility. John was thankful the cashier was still focused on their register.

The alien—troll—was inclined toward short, blunt statements, as few words as possible to hide the inability to communicate fluidly. Mastery of English was a slow, difficult process. Instead, the troll opted to pack as many meanings into one word as it would hold, and then some more besides, like stuffing a suitcase overfull and sitting on it to make it close. John interpreted the question as both, “What the hell is that,” and also, “what are you doing you fucking moron?”

“I just wish we had enough to buy this, too.” But then again, John was guilty of it as well, making one statement mean others—I wish this were a normal vacation and I were buying silly useless things to mail to Rose and Dave and Jade. I wish we weren’t on the run and we could take our time to appreciate our surroundings. I wish we didn’t have to be so careful with our money that we can’t even spare two dollars on a stupid kitschy souvenir.

“Why? Looks stupid stupid dumb.”

He was a little grateful that his companion didn’t understand English well enough to pick up what he really meant. He flashed the troll a careless grin and put the pin back, and it was their turn to make their purchases.

The sun was falling below the horizon when they left the Taco John’s, gradient from red to pink to purple stretching across the sky, orange streetlights just starting to flicker on. John’s still-damp hair seemed to almost glow in the dim sunset, bright hues of the new colour shining across his bangs. A half moon was already hung high above them; when the troll craned his head back to stare at the earth’s single natural satellite, his hood began to slip back. Without a moment’s consideration, John’s hand darted out to tug the hood forward. His action earned him a smack to the shoulder, but there was no real force behind the blow.

They had used the fast food restaurant’s dirty bathroom to hastily apply the dye to John’s hair. Following this, they then purchased a single small soft drink, which was shared and refilled as many times as they could before the manager kicked them out. Now, nourished on a balanced breakfast of Pepsi and Mountain Dew, they began to walk, the alien pulling his hood to shield his eyes from the brightness of the setting sun to their right.

Nighttime had become the optimal time to travel. They’d tried moving during the day at first, but twice it ended with John moving at a snail’s pace, overheated and having to carry the alien over his shoulder after he’d passed out mid-step. While it was harder to flag down cars and hitchhike at night, the troll was far more active and alert after the sun went down, and if they couldn’t get a ride then they at least walked faster than they would have during the day. For John’s part, he figured he was already half blind without his glasses, so it hardly mattered if he had enough light to see by or not.

He still wasn’t sure if hitchhiking was illegal or not, though he was sure it was one of those things his dad had warned him about. Somehow his luck held, and they had yet to be brutally murdered. His thigh had been inappropriately fondled 2.5 times, however.

Besides the increase of ground they could cover, the other bonus that made hitchhiking worth the inappropriate thigh touching was that it interrupted their tracks, and thus prevented another episode of “When police dogs chase lanky science students and malnourished aliens!” John would subject his left thigh to all the creepy truckers this side of the Mason-Dixon line if it meant he didn’t have to lose his pants to a German Shepherd again.

The sun was gone now, though inky blackness hadn’t quite conquered the sky completely, and John could still see the dirt under his feet and the alien to his right. He couldn’t help worrying every time he heard a car approaching from behind them—he wanted to stay close enough to the road that a friendly car could see them and stop, but not so close that an unobservant car would prove dangerous, not noticing them in their dark clothing until too late. The nighttime might have given his traveling companion all the advantages, but it exacerbated all of John’s fears. They didn’t only have to worry about the FBI (they had been so lucky the one time the helicopter took them by surprise, able to duck underneath a bridge just in time) but also all the natural dangers of the Southwest, coyotes and scorpions and snakes all going about their own carnivorous and/or poisonous business as the human and alien tromped alongside the interstate.

They had encountered a rattlesnake, the second night on the run. John hadn’t known what the sound meant until he about stepped on the creature, and of course the alien hadn’t know what he was looking at. But when John yelped and stumbled backward, and he saw the briefest ripple travel through the snake’s coiled body before it leapt for him—

The alien had lunged, inhumanly (of course) quick, claws clamping down on the snake’s neck just behind its head, plucking it from mid-strike a foot away from John’s leg. He held the thrashing, hissing creature at arm’s length. As John watched, frozen but for his blood pumping double time and rushing in his temples, slowly its movements stilled, the gray fist closing tighter around the reptile body, until all of its hissing and rattling ceased, and not even its flicking tongue moved anymore.

Though the snake was dead, and the summer heat just as scorching as always, John had found he was shivering.

Suddenly the fist full of ex-snake was shoved under his nose. He’d shrieked like—well, not like a girl, because he was fairly sure that if presented with a fresh reptile corpse, Jade would be bursting with curiosity while Rose would wax poetic about her old cat’s tendencies to bring her similar presents. But John shrieked loudly and embarrassingly, and after he calmed down, the alien had to repeat his demand of “What is it,” each word carefully snarled as though the force with which he spoke could make up for the garbled pronunciation and frequent mistakes.

When John had finally managed to explain the concept of poison, a vicious grin of too many pointed teeth spread across the alien’s face.

That had taken place a mere three days ago, John considered—or at least, probably three days. Already it seemed like so long ago that he had been cheerfully running around the lab, blissfully fetching this tool and that coffee, recording this statistic and that chemical reaction, doing all the silly intern tasks for his employers, completely ignorant of what resided in the lab’s sublevels. When he arranged recent events in his mind and found that it had not yet been a week since their flight from Roswell, the shock at how quickly his life had been destroyed settled like sheet of ice draped on his shoulders.

He was only eighteen. He was supposed to be looking forward to college, not trying to evade the police long enough to cross the border into Mexico. But…

He turned his head, smiling softly at his companion, whose glare was fixed forward, marching on one forceful step at a time.

“Hey, Karkat.”

The alien only grunted in response, not bothering to turn toward John.

“How old are you?”

This time he did garner a half-hearted glare, brief flash of gold eyes before the troll brought his foot down in an extra-forceful stomp. “What the hell old?”

“Oh man, you know, age! Um, how long you’ve been alive!” With a grin, John jogged right up next to Karkat, bumping their shoulders and ducking the punch thrown at him in return. “We count in years, like, how many times the Earth makes it around the sun!” He wondered if he was making the concept clear—Karkat understood more than he could say, if only by listening to John’s incessant babbling when they walked, there being little to do besides talk and appreciate nature while they hoped for a car. He knew they’d gone over ‘sun’ and ‘Earth’ and ‘planet,’ difficult not to considering both Karkat’s origins and nocturnal habits. Nouns, John discovered, were easy to teach, especially with a handy example such as the snake.

(The snake had also provided ‘dead’ and ‘alive’ and ‘kill,’ which Karkat immediately proceeded to demonstrate his mastery of:

“Humans kill Sollux.”

“… Killed. Past tense.”

“Try killed Karkat and John.”

“Tried to kill.”

“Tried to kill Karkat and John.”

"Yes."

“Karkat and John kill humans.”

“No. We run. John doesn’t kill anything.”)

The less tangible concept of ‘age,’ and ‘how old,’ however, was less simple.

“So the Earth,” John explained, holding out one fist to symbolize the planet, “goes around the sun!” The other fist became the star, and John circled the ‘Earth’ fist around it. “And we call that one year. You count how many years you’re alive, and that’s how old you are.”

Karkat frowned, but not in the tooth-baring, snarling, sincerely angry way, just in the I’m-Karkat-and-I-don’t-smile way, and held up eight fingers.

John facepalmed.

They practiced the words for numbers, counting aloud one to ten, until the minivan of frat boys pulled to a stop next to them and drove them to the New Mexico/Texas state line.

Chapter Text

John’s small studio apartment was both a horrible mess, like some windstorm had swept through, as well as under constant surveillance, as though he could be foolish enough to return to it. They materialized in the living room with what Dave termed Bec’s ‘Snap Crackle Telepop,’ stray bolts of demon dog lighting dissipating around them as they took in the chaos of the one-room apartment.

A poster for Con Air hung peacefully above the bed, settling against the wall after the disturbance of their entry. It was, at first glance, the only thing in the room still intact and in its proper place. The bed beneath it had been overturned, slashed open along with the pillows strewn on the floor, fluffy and perfectly legal innards spilled in the search for clues. The desk’s drawers had been pulled out, their contents dumped and ransacked. A perfect clear square on the desk’s top, marked by the dust around it, indicated where John’s computer likely had stood before being confiscated as evidence.

“We are way beyond fashionably late to this party,” Dave observed, crouching down to pick through a pile of papers leaking from a drawer propped on its side. Christ, was that really a printout of the lyrics to Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing? He tossed it aside, shuffling through the other papers and discovering printed gamefaqs guides to every single Zelda game. “If there was anything useful here to begin with, the fuzz have already absconded with it. Shit is long gone.”

Jade picked up the empty case for Little Monsters from the floor, where it lay strewn with the rest of John’s shitty movie collection, open boxes and scratched DVDs piled so thick they could barely see the hardwood floor beneath the movies. Sitting on her heels, she gingerly picked through the discs, looking for the Little Monsters DVD. “This is terrible.” Her voice was soft, hesitant with disbelief. “Why would anybody do this?”

“Somebody is very desperate to learn John's secrets,” Rose hypothesized. “What were his intentions? Did he have a plan? If the state of this room is any indication, the search thus far has been particularly fruitless.” She joined Jade by the upended entertainment center, carefully picking her way around the overturned (and subsequently broken) TV. Plucking the sought-after disc from the mess, she handed it to Jade, who happily reunited DVD and case, before stashing it in her bag.

“Our goal, however, is slightly different,” continued Rose, rising to drift through the rest of the room, coming to stand by Dave. “At the least, Bec can get John’s scent. At the most…” She critically eyed the single copy of Penthouse that had been revealed when John’s bed was pulled aside—thus far the only item discovered to indicate the apartment had belonged to an eighteen-year-old young man, rather than a middle school student. “At most, we might learn what he actually did.”

“I’ll bet you a nickel he ticked off the local men in black, herped like a derp when it was all Close Encounters up ins, made some huge alien culture faux pas and pissed off the mothership, now we are this close to intergalactic war but the Martians are willing to hold their fire if we turn over the Earth human John.”

“Nah,” Jade dismissed Dave’s theory, making her way through the wreckage toward the two blondes, and excitedly waving a paper in one hand. “If that was it, he’d have been totally excited to go to Mars with them. Anyway, look what I found!”

Dave had to reach out and take hold of her wrist, holding her still so that he and Rose could see what was written. She still fidgeted, bubbling over with excitement, as Dave read aloud, “Class selection and tuition confirmation for the Fall semester at Goucher College…”

“While its relevance is not immediately apparent, this is an interesting development.” Rose tapped the paper, the return address beneath her finger reading, Baltimore, Maryland. “It is suspiciously serendipitous, in fact.”

“Please, drag out the suspense and keep us in the dark as long as possible,” Dave drawled, while Jade took her hand back from him.

Rose could not help shooting a level glare at Dave, which accomplished nothing more than giving her a view of her own reflection in his shades. “This fall, I, too, was planning to travel down the East Coast to pursue a degree. Loyola College is located in the same city.”

“Nooooooo waaaaaay!” Jade gripped the letter in both hands, biting her lip against a grin that fought to break out. “I’m going to Hopkins! This is soooooo coooool! Rose, why didn’t you mention that’s where you were going!?”

Hooking his thumbs through his belt loops, Dave cut in. “What can I say. I knew it was only a matter of time before the ladies resorted to crossing oceans to be with me.” Both girls turned to him, Jade staring wide-eyed, Rose raising an eyebrow as if to say, Now who is dragging out the suspense? “I don’t even remember telling you I was planning to go to college way out on the east side. You been having your demon dog go through my mail, Harley?”

“Are we honestly having this conversation? Is this actually an occurrence that is taking place? It would be difficult enough to suspend disbelief for this development in fiction, that for as often as we talk to each other, we did not bother to share our college choices—”

Jade’s grin could no longer be held back. Dave’s ninja skills were absolutely useless in the face of the enthusiastic group hug, her thin wiry arms squeezing him and Rose close. “We’re all going to college in the same city! This is the greatest! We’ve got to get an apartment together, all four of us—”

She deflated instantly, more depressing to watch than seeing a parent pop a little kid’s balloon, her arms falling from around them before they even had the chance to return the hug. Dave’s ribs were grateful for the release, but not at the price of seeing Jade’s entire demeanor droop, her eyebrows coming together and lower lip rising in a hopeless moue.

Rose placed her hand on the other girl’s back, brushing fingers soothingly through the long mess of dark hair. “We’ll find John,” she reassured. “We have a plan, don’t we? Between the three of us and Bec, we can surely find him before he gets himself arrested.”

John waved as the van sped off, then let his hand fall, and turned to Karkat with a strained grin. The alien didn’t bother returning the expression—John wondered, briefly, if trolls smiled at all? He’d never seen Karkat crack a grin, nor the other three. Were they like dogs, only baring their teeth to threaten? (Jade claimed that Becquerel had a happy doggy grin, but John wasn’t so sure.)

The frat boys who had been kind enough to give them a lift had also been in possession of a map—John couldn’t believe his luck. Before putting the breakout in motion, he’d tried to memorize the route he’d investigated on Google maps, but being able to ask where they were and where they were headed, and actually confirm that they were on track and that the Mexico border was less than fifty miles away, well, it went a long ways to reducing the terror he constantly felt.

Now dawn was a few hours off, and the traveling van had reached their destination, a small town on the state line between New Mexico and Texas. It would just be one mad dash through Dave’s home state before they left the USA entirely, and could maybe start relaxing a little bit.

Maybe. John hadn’t bothered to check if Karkat was an international secret, or just a federal one. He really hoped he wouldn’t have to worry about dodging la policía once the crossed the border, too.

They would also need to resolve the issue of the police cars camped out on State Line Drive, an aptly named road if John had ever encountered one. The blockade was proving thoroughly aggravating to everybody John overheard, as he and Karkat shopped for dinner in a gas station convenience store (an apple and a Mr. Pibb for John, five Slim Jims and a Mountain Dew for Karkat). From the conversations he listened to while poking around in the candy aisle, it sounded like cops were stopping and thoroughly searching each and every car that passed through. The surrounding desert was patrolled by agents with police dogs and off-road vehicles. Luck, it seemed, was still marginally with them—if the van they’d been in had made to drive across the border, they’d have been caught.

Purchases made, they didn’t leave the store immediately, John wanting to stay stationary to collect his thoughts and consider their next step. Karkat didn’t complain. Perhaps he lacked the words to do so, or perhaps his legs and feet ached as much as John’s did.

Trying to focus on how exactly they could avoid the law enforcement after them—at least, it was probably all for them, unless some other manner of criminal had managed a jailbreak at the same time—John found his thoughts absolutely refusing to remain on task. Instead of wondering what the risks of trying to cross uninhabited desert were, all he could think was how many drug smuggling operations had probably been thwarted since the police blockade had gone up.

All in all, he felt fairly foolish for thinking he could steal an alien so easily. Of course if he managed to erase his tracks, they wouldn’t even bother to follow him anymore. It was no wonder he’d been able to run without being caught so far. The investment in pursuing him had been shifted instead to moving forward to cut him off. He hadn't gotten away or evaded the last of the pursuit, not by any means—he'd just run into a trap. It was an easy prediction that he’d want to leave the state at the least, the country at the most—he wondered if every road leaving New Mexico was just as swarmed, and what airport security had to have been like for the week since they’d started to run.

As he imagined the shenanigans that would have resulted from trying to smuggle Karkat on a plane, John found himself giggling hysterically, the gallows’ laughter that could only come from staring down the end of the line, signaled by so many flashing red and blue lights. Sure, they could double back, keep running all around New Mexico, but if it came down to who could afford to keep on as they were the longest, John was pretty sure he and Karkat would die of exposure or malnutrition before the police were forced to stop lurking over every inch of the state border.

“We are fucked,” Karkat grumbled, tearing off a bite of Slim Jim and staring out the storefront window.

John wanted to congratulate him on properly using a first person pronoun, but all he could do was stare dumbly, wondering when exactly Karkat had picked up on such an expletive, because he certainly hadn’t learned it from John.

The convenience store’s front door jingled as it was opened, the click of claws on tiled floor paired with the sharp clack of shoes, and as one John and Karkat’s heads turned simultaneously to see the cop and police dog enter. Immediately the dog jerked against its leash, hackles raised and teeth bared at them.

Karkat bared his own teeth in return, growling low in his chest, just in time for the policewoman to look at what her dog was reacting to. The mouthful of clenched, inhumanly pointed teeth was on full display as Karkat and the dog stared each other down.

John could all but see the conclusion forming in the policewoman’s head, details adding up like elementary school math, as she took in the hoodie and gray pallor and gleaming golden eyes.

“Oh, fuck,” was all John had time to say, as the last of his luck promptly out.

Chapter Text

* * *

The sky had just began to grow light, that clear dawn mix of blue and yellow that seemed to somehow skip right over teal, when Dave pulled the ‘borrowed’ ’95 Ford Aerostar on to the road’s shoulder, put the gear in neutral and the emergency brake up, and turned to face the car’s other occupants. Jade and Bec had been napping in the backseat, but had started to stir at the deceleration, and now that all motion had stopped, they were blinking awake.

“So explain this to me again. Krypto the superdog here can magically teleprt us all the fuck over the US of A, but cannot figure out where Egderp is?”

After having Bec successfully find John’s trail the previous day, they’d left his apartment to formulate some sort of plan. While night fell, Jade and Rose debated the merits of hitchhiking versus seeing if Bec could teleport them along John’s trail (something Jade had never before tried, not having depended on her dog’s abilities so heavily prior to this trip). Absolutely disengaged from the conversation, Dave had told them he would be right back, and jogged toward a grocery store parking lot, digging through his backpack and pulling out a pair of scissors.

He had been right back, at the wheel of an old, sputtering, dirt-encrusted minivan.

“We can’t steal this!” Jade had been quick to protest, even as she opened Dave’s door and climbed over him to see how he had started the car without keys.

“We’ll bring it back when we’re done,” Dave smoothly reassured, looking as though he were completely apathetic to the teenage girl sprawled over his lap to get a good look at the scissors wedged in to the car’s ignition.

Jade pushed herself up, accidentally honking the horn when she reached out for support. “I bet you’re just saying that,” she accused.

“How many days do you think it’s been since John first went on the run?”

While Jade had examined Dave’s handiwork and berated him for it, Rose had let herself in on the passenger side and begun to buckle up. Now settled, she saw fit to interrupt the other two. Jade’s playful smirk vanished instantly at Rose’s question, while Dave showed no change of expression.

“It seems likely that he would have run shortly after posting his last correspondences with us. If we only received those letters two days ago, when do you estimate they were sent?”

“We get it, Lalonde,” said Dave, punctuating his statement with a rev of the engine. “Don’t waste your time talking circles around some Machiavellian end-justifies-the-means bullshit, just call it like it is. Shit, let’s be car thieves.”

Ten minutes later found Jade bouncing in the backseat, having no concept of seatbelts, and Bec halfway out the window, tongue flapping in the wind.

Progress was slow—twice they took the wrong exits, and Jade had to frantically inform them they were going the wrong way. Rose had convinced Dave of the merits of not being the fastest thing on the road, even if she couldn’t get him to follow the speed limit. Driving a stolen vehicle, they did not want to be pulled over for speeding, even if Bec could teleport them out of trouble. Their escape plans shouldn’t hinge on a dog who, if Jade’s stories of growing up were true, often seemed to have his own agenda anyway.

It was this conversation that led to Dave pulling the car off-road and asking just why, exactly, they were going through all this trouble when they had an omnipotent demon dog in the car with them.

“Well… it’s kind of a silly reason…” Jade offered a sleepy smile, absently scratching behind Becquerel’s ears. “That’s what I tried before I even went to get you guys, you know! I told him, go find John!”

“You did mention that it was ineffective,” Rose recalled, setting her knitting aside. “But you never did inform us why.”

Jade buried her face in the fluff of Bec’s shoulders, then peeked out from behind him. A pink tint to her cheeks was just visible over the white fur, and when she spoke, it was muffled. “You guys know how I grew up on that island all alone, right? Other than my Grandpa, the three of you were the only people I talked to for years. So, sometimes I liked to pretend you guys were with me.”

Having an idea of where the story was headed, Rose only nodded, waiting for Jade to continue.

“And, um, I might have built a few robots and named them after you and John, and, well, you know! I even got them programmed to read your parts of pesterlogs out loud, they were pretty neat. It was almost like you guys were really there talking to me!”

“That is the saddest fucking thing I have heard all day.” At Dave’s statement, Jade once more hid her face in her guardian’s fur.

Privately, Rose agreed. Out loud, she only pushed the story to its logical conclusion. “Therefore, when you told Bec to find John…”

“Yeah. He just kept brining me to Johnbot!”

Dave couldn’t stop himself from snorting, loudly.

“And yet, you did not encounter the same issue when you came to find us?”

“Oh no,” Jade shook her head, and smoothed down Bec’s fur where she had disturbed it by smothering her face moments before. “If I asked him to take me to see either of you, we had the same problem. But then I asked him to take me to see your mom, and your bro, and that worked!”

Dave tapped his fingers along the steering wheel, a restless beat under his fingers, poker face back in place. It wasn’t what he’d hoped to hear. Equipped with a stolen vehicle as they were, they had to be gaining on John, but he couldn’t help the feeling that even with the advantage of transportation they weren’t going to be fast enough. John had such a head start on them, and they were left with days-old tracks, trying to play catch up.

Rose’s thoughts went in a different direction. She pulled her laptop from her duffel bag, booting it up and opening the file of John’s letters. Scrolling down, she selected a block of text, and turned around to show the screen to the girl and dog in the backseat.

you guys could tease me all you want if we could just have a night with all five of us together.

“Jade. Do you think that Bec would be able to locate and bring us to John’s fourth favourite person?”

John dreams.

John has won the nobel prize, John has cured cancer, John has cured AIDS! John has saved the world! They are giving him a big trophy. The woman who hands it to him bares her teeth, full dark lips twisted around gleaming white points. The notasmile does not reach her eyes, partially because one of them is not there. Her dark hair is matted to her face with stickyblue but it does not cover the gaping hole.

She drops the trophy before John can accept it, because now she only has one hand and it is covered in slippery flowing blue. John has to bend down and pick it up, politely averting his eyes from the pool of blueberry koolaid she has spilled on the stage at her feet, and the gleaming gold shine of his prize is muted and coated in two distinct shades of deep ocean and evening sky. It drips down his fingers and traces the lines of veins on his wrists and burns the whole way down. His right arm is coated in that searing liquid and hangs limp and useless at his side now.

He turns to the gathered onlookers and raises the trophy high with his left arm, accepting their cheers. They are calling his name, “John! John! John!”

He sees his father in the crowd. His father is so proud of him. His father has baked a cake for all five of them, but an excited salamander jostles him and the cake is dropped. The crowd is really so loud and enthusiastic, it is too much for John to deal with. John waves goodbye to his loyal fans and steps backstage where his dad is waiting with the car.

John gets in the car and buckles up, waiting while his dad turns the key. He has to turn around and reach back into the backseat to help Karkat and Sollux with their own seatbelts. Everything is so difficult using just his left hand, but it wouldn’t do to get pulled over and get a ticket! But the buckle keeps slipping out of his hand and he can’t get Sollux’s belt fastened right. Karkat is yelling at him for being a stupid fucking idiot, and John’s dad says that Karkat should watch his language, but as long as John can’t buckle Sollux in, Karkat keeps yelling and cursing.

“John! John! Not dead, John, oh fuck, open eyes, fuck, fuck, fuck! John!”

you know
i'm glad we’re here together
i'm so grateful i got to meet you in person and see you face to face for the first time ever!
but i wish it could have been for a different reason!!!

still, i think
i know
everything is going to work out okay
just as soon as we find john :)

Chapter Text

John was jostled awake, the pain in his arm and Karkat’s yelling somehow not fading even as the rest of the dream was quickly forgotten, overridden by reality insistently making itself known. The floor (cold, metal) beneath him bounced again, sending John rolling onto his back, crushing his handcuffed arms underneath himself.

Karkat’s shouts of anger and concern were instantly drowned out by John’s scream.

He struggled to roll on to his left side, feet kicking out uselessly until they finally found purchase on a wall. In his haste, he overshot, pushing himself flat onto his face, and took a moment to lie there breathing raggedly, forehead pressed uncomfortably against the hard steel floor. It helped a bit to concentrate on the discomfort of his forehead, rather than the pain lancing through his arm.

Everything shook again, and John’s forehead knocked against the floor with the motion. When he opened his eyes, he could see that he was leaving red smears on the metal surface.

He became again aware of Karkat’s hoarse voice coming from somewhere behind him, hearing his own name mixed in with foreign growls. He wasn’t sure that the alien had even stopped speaking, only that all of John’s senses not related to his arm had gone on sabbatical. Now the nerves in the rest of his body quietly slipped back into place, alerting him to further aches in his torso and legs. The little hurts couldn’t compare to the searing that remained in his arm, a fresh snap of pain with every bump and jerk of the floor under him. His forehead was sticky, tacky, and he twisted, slowly working his protesting legs underneath him and rising to his sore knees. Now kneeling, he could look up and see where they were.

A small, dim light installed in the low ceiling illuminated bare steel all around him. To either side were box-like benches, protruding from the walls of their tiny bouncing cell. The remaining two walls before him and behind him contained the outlines of doors, but no visible handles nor hinges. A glance down at himself revealed his clothes were torn and stained with dirt and blood, his knees bruised to the point that they looked like the inside of a blood orange. He was suddenly glad his arms were stuck behind him; he didn’t think he wanted to see the source of something that hurt so badly.

“Oh fuck. John.”

And there was Karkat across from him, down on one knee, arms pulled uncomfortably behind his back, face covered with bruises nearly as dark as his hair, one eye swollen half shut, and lines of red falling from his hairline and his nose and his eyes.

John smiled at the sight of him anyway—couldn’t help trying to offer reassurance, but Karkat only winced. The smile dropped from John’s face immediately, as he felt what had caused Karkat’s reaction. His tongue probed the empty spot in his upper row of teeth, feeling the sensitive gum and tasting a trace of a metallic tang.

He shrugged, and then resolved not to repeat that motion when it twinged all the way down his arm, dropping off a deposit of fresh pain in his wrist. The smile he offered Karkat this time was smaller and strained, but not close-mouthed. “I was always embarrassed about my front teeth anyway,” he lied.

Karkat snorted, then wrinkled his nose when the motion caused a fresh trail of blood to drip out of his nostril.

After giggling at the troll’s face, John made to rise, intending to take a seat on one of the benches protruding from the walls. At the precise moment he had his feet beneath him, their tiny cell gave a massive lurch, and he went tumbling forward.

It was ridiculous how landing on his face could still pull at his shoulder and send a new and excruciating jolt of pain down his right arm. Underneath him Karkat grunted and shifted, but John lay frozen, not even breathing as he waited for the throbbing to subside. Slowly the pain gave way to a slightly lesser pain that pulsed with his heartbeat, and he forced his concentration to other sensations.

Under his cheek was the pilled fabric of Karkat’s hoodie, and under that, the solid warmth of the troll’s chest. As soon as the realization that he was laying atop Karkat sunk in, John squirmed and made to roll to the side.

“John no move." The order was no less firm for the rasping quality his voice had acquired.

John corrected him out of habit. “Don’t move.”

“John don’t move.”

He smiled into the hoodie, amused that the way Karkat rushed through the words still made them sound incorrect. Pauses and commas would need to be incorporated into future lesson plans. He’d just have to burn that bridge when he came to it. For now, there were more pressing concerns.

“We’re inside a police van, aren’t we?”

There was the hesitation that meant Karkat was rapidly searching his vocabulary to figure out what John had asked. He settled on, “Pohlice car.”

“Yeah.” John considered moving again, knowing that every bump the van made had to be hitting the back of Karkat’s head against the floor, and that Karkat’s arms were crushed beneath both their weights, handcuffs probably biting into thin wrists. When he considered the likelihood of banging his (probably broken) arm against something and the way his legs shook when he thought about moving, though, he decided that until Karkat told him to fuck off, he was probably all right staying where he was.

“You should have run,” he told the alien. “You’re faster, you could have made it.”

“Stop talking stupid dumb,” grumbled Karkat, squirming underneath him. John tilted his head, trying to catch a glimpse of the troll’s face, but his blurred vision revealed only an expanse of hoodie. “What I do on this planet with no you?”

“Without you.”

“Without you,” Karkat repeated. It made sense, John thought, now that Karkat had pointed it out. Maybe he would eventually pick up on the spoken language without John, but they hadn’t started on reading at all. John had abandoned his initial attempt to outline their route and why Mexico would (hopefully) be safe for them when he realized Karkat wouldn’t be able to read road signs, nor did he comprehend the division between countries. He hadn’t gone over currencies and money—well, Karkat probably knew that they didn’t have enough cash, from how often John had lamented their tiny budget, but he had only a minimal understanding of why it was important.

It made John want to squirm and twist to match the weird feeling in his chest, this knowledge that Karkat needed him.

He remembered how they’d bolted, throwing open the convenience store door and running as though their lives depended on it (oh, wait). He remembered that he’d fallen behind Karkat almost instantly, the alien sprinting away at speeds John couldn’t hope to match. He remembered the police dog tackling him to the ground, and he’d let out a yelp as he impacted rocky dirt and prickly plants, knowing he wasn’t going to be able to get away in exchange for just his pants this time. He remembered rolling and trying to push the dog off, and a snout full of teeth closing around his arm. He didn’t remember the dog letting go, but he did remember hearing identical snarls from dog and alien, and then distinctly canine whimpers, wet thuds that made him wince, and screaming in a language that wasn’t from his planet. There had been gunshots, but no pause or variation in the screaming (thank god) and John had pushed himself one-handed to his feet, one arm bloody and numb but not enough to stop him. He’d used his good arm to tug at Karkat to flee again, only now there were people in addition to dogs and no way they would miss their shots at such close range…

His following memories were jumbled, like strips of film ripped apart and mixed up on the cutting room floor, but the sequence of events hardly mattered when the unchangeable conclusion was the two of them laying in the back of a paddy wagon.

“Sorry, Karkat,” John whispered.

He heard Karkat’s reply rumbling in his chest, attempts at John’s language abandoned. Despite the alien words being composed of approximately 50% growls, John found the echo of the sounds under his cheek soothing.

He felt tears pooling in his eyes and let them go, little droplets pioneering wet trails across the bridge of his nose, eager on their way to discover and subsequently soak a patch of Karkat’s hoodie. He had to face facts: their lives were over, they were on their way back to Roswell and those little rooms with the reinforced glass walls and nothing else in them, no bed or toilet or clothing or anything, and that table stained in shades of blue and blue and yellow and red. He bit his lip and cried harder when his lower lip stuck through the new gap in his teeth. Oh fuck, he was shaking.

“John.”

He tried to still himself, feeling the sobs churning in his throat, waiting for a chance to break free.

“John,” Karkat repeated, rolling one shoulder, a restrained nudge.

“Yeah?”

“Humans take Karkat to Roswell.”

A thick sob tore itself from the mass in John’s chest, barreled right on up out of his throat and he hacked it out. “Yeah,” he whispered, shaking harder, unable to deal with his fears given words, unable to stop his mind from picking out the multitude of meaning Karkat shoved into the tiny, broken sentence.

“I don’t want to.” Each word was bitten off, precise. John was so fucking proud of that sentence, it was perfect.

“Me either, buddy.”

“I want… John kill Karkat.”

The van shook and began to decelerate, the both of them sliding into one of the doors, Karkat crying out as he hit the steel horns-first. He thrashed under John, who was helpless to do anything but flop around as Karkat pushed himself up to lean his back against the metal door. John’s face wound up on Karkat’s thigh, and a terrified part of his mind wondered how the hell the alien expected him to kill anything when he was bound and broken and useless like this?

“No, no, oh god! Jesus, don’t ask me that, Karkat.” There was no stopping the sobs now. He turned his head, wiping his nose on the rough fabric of Karkat’s pants.

“I don’t want humans! Want John.” Desperation was creeping into Karkat’s rough voice now, pitching it higher.

“I’m human,” he objected weakly.

The van lurched to a stop, causing John to inadvertently head butt Karkat in the stomach. The sound of the engine cut, leaving only their quick breaths and tense stillness. When the silence had gone too long, John risked rising to his knees once more to meet Karkat’s gold-eyed glare.

Fresh red tears were falling from said wide eyes. “I want John,” he said again, voice breaking, and before the human could protest, he was tilting his head back, baring a gray throat. His shoulders rapidly rose and fell with ragged gasps, and John was no longer the only one shaking.

“Please don’t ask me to do this,” John whimpered, his mind already supplying that if he could get to his feet quickly enough, before either the van started moving again or somebody opened the door, and if troll anatomy was similar enough to his own (he wouldn’t know for sure, he hadn’t looked long at the corpse on the table that day, just long enough to see ribs and entrails and a colour of blood previously reserved for cartoons and bad video games and feel his lunch begin to reverse tracks and start to rise in his stomach) … if, if, if… he could probably crush that neck under his foot, just lean forward and let his weight do all the work….

He could see Karkat swallow, his throat (it looked so much like John’s, Adam’s apple and veins and all) working at the motion.

“There’s got to be another way—we can rush them when they open the door, we’ll push through, Karkat, please—”

When the alien growled, his neck vibrated with the sound. John closed his eyes against the sight, shaking so hard he was waking up the pain in his right arm again. Oh god, he couldn’t do this, how could anybody do something like this?

“I gave up so much for you,” he whispered. “My future, my friends, my dad. And I didn’t regret it, even when we were hungry and tired and scared and lonely.” His voice shuddered and shattered; there was silence as he swallowed rapidly. Then, “I’d never regret it. Saving you.” He had one foot on the ground. “I was gonna teach you all kinds of words. Show you movies. Prank you, once we got somewhere safe. Bake a cake, even though dad’s are the very best.” Both feet under him now, wobbly but standing, hunched because the roof of the van was too low. He could see that Karkat’s carnivorous teeth were clenched, and his eyes were scrunched shut, squeezing tears out like juicing a grapefruit.

“I want to believe we can still make it.”

“Shut up!”

John’s mouth snapped shut, but he didn’t move otherwise, staring at the twitching alien before him. He was stalling, but how could he be expected to be okay with this? He wasn’t okay with it, he couldn’t do it—he had to do it. He didn’t want to kill Karkat. He didn’t want to be here, considering the logistics, hearing his own voice saying, “Maybe it’ll be easier if you… lie down on the floor or something…” He didn’t want Karkat to have understood that sentence, to be sliding down the wall and shuffling over until he was at John’s feet. He didn’t want any of this.

He didn’t want to send Karkat back to that place if he could help it, either.

“Okay, just… s… stay still.” He closed his eyes; when he opened them, Karkat was still on the floor, head tilted back, waiting for John to crush his windpipe. “Oh, fuck.”

He wished he could be a normal eighteen-year-old freaking out about getting caught drinking, or about getting dumped by his girlfriend, or any other normal teenage crisis. He wished he could be anywhere else doing anything else, anything that wasn’t screwing up his courage to kill another boy.

They both started at the sound of the door behind John. The clicks of locks opening and handles turning echoed in their tiny chamber. Karkat dropped his head just enough to glare at John, Quit fucking around and fucking do it already!

There was a thunderous white flash, and quite suddenly the back of the van was far more crowded than it had been a moment ago.

Chapter Text

Becquerel allowed nobody time for reaction shots. The self-proclaimed rescue team had barely registered that there wasn’t enough room to stand up before a wave of unnatural green washed over everything, a well-furnished living room appearing in its wake. John’s startled cry was left behind in the police van; he fell to his knees on plush carpet, mouth gaping open soundlessly. As Karkat hit the floor in front of him, wide-eyed with terror, John had an instant to observe his dark pupils shrinking rapidly in the bright daylight admitted by the room’s tall windows. The moment passed and Karkat slammed his eyes shut, rolling and twisting blindly to his feet, standing defensively between John and the other three before the last of the sickly white electricity from Bec’s transit had faded.

If John turned his head he could just make out three people-shaped blurs (hard enough to see without his glasses, but now with his eyes full of tears, even things he would have been able to make out otherwise were reduced to bright blobs of shape and colour) standing in a semi-circle around him and Karkat. Blinking and squinting provided only minimal clarification, if any; he still couldn’t make out facial features. His gaze moved from the people to his surroundings. The dim light and hard steel of the police van were gone, replaced with a well-lit, spacious living room. Arches and rectangles to his left were probably a fireplace and hearth, and the rounded boxy shapes in front of him resolved themselves into a sofa if he concentrated. The question of how his location had changed so quickly vied for his attention, only outbid by the question of where exactly he was.

He looked from the three people standing apprehensively, to Karkat growling a low wordless warning, and tried to stumble back to his feet.

“Shit, John, I thought Jade was the one with the kinky furry fetish. Who’s this douchebag you’ve got dolled up all pretty?”

John lost his balance and fell forward, thankfully catching himself with a shoulder on Karkat’s knee instead of planting his face on the carpeted floor. It didn’t have the usual webcam mic crackle, or a beat to back it up, but that voice… “Dave?”

“John, what happened?” And that sounded like Jade, words rapid fire with concern. He saw her—it had to be Jade, he remembered she’d once taken a picture to prove she wasn’t lying when she said her hair was long enough for her to sit on top of it, and even blurry, that had to be what he was seeing now—he saw her step toward him, only to stop abruptly as Karkat’s growl escalated into a full-fledged snarl.

“Call off your crazy cosplay guard dog,” Dave joked, but there was an edge to the words. Now that John knew who he was looking at, he could make out the dark shape of the sunglasses he’d bought as a gift for his friend.

John rested his forehead against Karkat’s leg, brand new tears joining the party on his face. He was pretty sure he was giggling; his shoulders were shaking, the vibrations dancing painfully down his arm, but he couldn’t stop. “Karkat,” he gasped, “Karkat, they’re okay.”

Karkat didn’t move from his slightly crouched defensive stance, still willing to meet any threats head on even with his hands cuffed behind his back. “Humans,” he grumbled quietly to John, but coupled with the anger and aggression and distrust and fear in that word, John heard a question lurking.

“They’re cool,” he promised. “We’re safe.”

“As we’ve been dropped off at my home, that statement is not necessarily an accurate one. But I would go so far as to say your situation has vastly improved.”

Rose’s cynicism did nothing to deter the relief John felt. He continued laughing shakily, tears falling off his face and hitting his bruised knees. He didn’t know how he’d gone from being trapped in a paddy wagon in New Mexico to Rose’s house, surrounded by his friends. Was he dreaming? Was he dead? Was Karkat dead too? He didn’t feel asleep, or dead—everything still hurt, for one thing. If he discounted those possibilities and tried to accept this as reality, if he tried to accept this glorious relief and the comfort he felt at realizing he was surrounded by friends, he had no way to explain the impossibility of his rescue.

He decided he was okay with that.

“We’re safe,” he whispered, and hoped that he wasn't just offering Karkat reassuring lies. This time, when Jade made to approach them, the alien was silent, though he did not relax nor move from where he stood supporting John. Jade slowly knelt down next to the handcuffed pair, tentatively setting a hand on John’s shoulder, taking his injuries into account and restraining herself from hugging him close. “We’re gonna be okay," John promised, resolving to do what he had to make it true if necessary.

“Not with hair like that you won’t. Jesus, Egbert, how high did you even have to be.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The curtains couldn’t quite completely keep the light out of the empty bedroom where Karkat had retreated, but if he pulled the blankets over his head and didn’t mind breathing in stale air, and closed his eyes, he could pretend it was dark and safe.

Karkat knew by heart the scientific facts, the readouts Equius had been so fond of quoting while they debated which planet to target. Among other trivia about the little blue and green planet, he knew that the human’s sun was younger than Alternia’s, still had billions of years left as a main sequence star, and therefore was not yet as large and luminous as Alternia’s. This knowledge, however, didn’t make much of an impression on Karkat’s eyes. He still had to squint and hide himself from the sun’s rays, his pupils always trying to shrink in on themselves further and further. Maybe an accidental glance at the human’s sun wouldn’t permanently blind him, but it would leave him temporarily without sight, black clouds fogging his vision no matter how he tried to blink them away.

Not that there was much of anything on this ass-backwards shithole of a planet worth looking at.

He could hear the humans moving around and speaking outside the room—heard John’s name several times, heard the phrase “the alien” quite often. He’d learned that one even before meeting John, and he didn’t hate it any less now. He liked that he’d been able to teach John “troll” instead, even if the human absolutely mangled the pronunciation—apparently it was too similar to a soft English word for John to really separate out the proper sounds.

He burrowed deeper into his nest of blankets, rolling over and piling pillows and fabric underneath him. Goddamn, but he missed things he’d always taken for granted, like having a comfortable place to sleep. The “bed” was better than the ground had been while they were on the run, but it was difficult to curl up on his side. His horns, nubby though they were, rubbed annoyingly against the pillow, but if he laid on his back he felt too exposed—

—cuffs holding him down on that hard table, they’d switched to metal after Equius tore through the former restraints and so now metal bands strapped him down from the ankles to legs to waist and up to the wrists, on his chest and upper arms, one even on his forehead pinning him down, and they weren’t even necessary because he hurt too much to even tremble or remember to be ashamed of the little whimpering noises he could hear himself making, too much to even care about the sight of his bright blood on their knives—

—he didn’t like to lay on his back. Who he wouldn’t kill for a fucking recuperacoon, he didn’t know.

There was muffled conversation outside his door, a brief exchange discussing, “the alien” and “sleeping.” “Ask John,” the boy’s voice said. Karkat’s eyebrows drew together at the sound.

The new humans were another area where known facts and logical conclusions did little to deter Karkat’s instinctive reactions. If one looked at the facts, any wriggler could see that they were safe here, just as John had told him repeatedly. Even without John’s words, he could observe for himself the proof of the destroyed metal cuffs, cut from Karkat’s and John’s wrists. He had the tangible reminder of the bandage on his forehead, the clean clothes he now wore… and the memory of the infuriatingly kind and patient tones which the bespectacled girl used to speak to him, as though he were some idiot wriggler with a damaged think pan.

None of this, however, did a thing to change how the human with the shades had a face Karkat didn’t like, and how he talked too fast for Karkat to understand the words. It didn’t stop the human girl with the unnaturally pale hair and troll-dark lips from looking at him with that measuring stare, using her eyes like the humans before John had used their knives. It didn’t mean Karkat’s insides weren’t twisted and tense when the girl who looked so much like John got so close, too close, arms wrapped around John and clear tears dripping down her face. She’d turned her brilliantly green eyes to Karkat and gave him a buck-toothed smile, and it was too much, seeing her and John next to each other, their eyes the same deep blue and green of their planet when seen from afar, their grins offered as comfort even when John’s was gap-toothed.

The other two had taken this as some kind of cue, for the pale-haired boy and girl had also approached, Karkat’s constant involuntary growls dismissed as the empty threats they were. The girl had pressed her black lips to John’s forehead, while the boy gave John a featherlight punch to the shoulder and promised a real one later.

And then the fourth human had appeared, another woman with pale hair and sharp eyes, her countenance far too calm for the unexpected and inexplicable appearance of four humans and one troll in her hive, and Karkat’s feet had started backpedaling before he knew what was happening. The backs of his knees hit something firm yet forgiving (the cushioned seats he’d noticed when they first arrived), and he’d toppled over backwards with a yell.

From the floor, he’d heard John’s giggling, and again logic made a valiant effort to inform Karkat he was being silly and overreacting, if John could be so relaxed in the presence of these people. John did not think there was anything to worry about. Again logic failed. Karkat had seen the piercing curiosity in those gazes before.

(When the humans had looked down at him, scalpels in hand and flimsy masks pulled across the lower halves of their faces, the sickly white eyes had been all he could see of them.)

In the end, Karkat’s fears went completely disregarded. It was obvious that John trusted these humans absolutely. When they got the cuffs off his wrists and examined his broken arm, among the indecipherable human squealing Karkat had caught the words, “three places,” and, “gonna hurt.” He didn’t need to catch all the words to know what they were saying, though. He’d had broken bones before, growing up; he knew what they had to do for the arm to heal properly. (He wondered if humans also had two bones in their forearms, and if John had managed to achieve multiple factures.)

John had looked from his human friends to Karkat, as though wordlessly asking permission, before proceeding to faint dead away.

The girl with the dark lips caught him before Karkat could reach him—and then the green-eyed girl was before him, smiling gently, hands on his shoulders, pressing so lightly that not even a determined grub would have been stopped. Karkat stilled, watching over her shoulder to see John carefully laid out on the floor, arm out from his body and bent sharply between elbow and wrist. “It’s okay,” the girl who looked like John reassured, and even the way she said the words was similar to John—or maybe Karkat just thought that because he could understand her at all. “We’ll take care of him.”

Karkat’s throat made a token rumble of protest, but his own cuffs hadn’t yet been severed, and he was so tired under the weight of the sunlight. If he wavered for even a moment, he would join John unconscious on the floor.

He grit his teeth and allowed the girl to turn him around, facing away from John, and even knowing it was coming, he still flinched when the bolt cutters made short work of the metal. Automatically he pulled his sleeves over the raw, bloody rings left behind on his wrists.

Again that gentle pressure that wouldn’t have deterred a newly-hatched and crippled grub rested on his shoulders, the girl moving to guide him from the room. When he looked back over his shoulder he could see both pale-haired women kneeling over John, ordering the sunglasses-boy to fetch them this and that, as they prepared to, Karkat presumed, set the arm. The green-eyed girl’s voice rose and then stopped, the tone of a question, but Karkat could only stare blankly at her encouraging smile.

Most of John’s words at the end there in the police car had been just as incomprehensible to him, but the point had come through well enough. They’d come too far together for John to give him up now. The human was just that kind of idiot to hold out until the very end, just that kind of moron who didn’t know when to quit.

Only now he’d gone and passed out and left Karkat alone with—with—

Her small pink hands were on his shoulders, and he let himself be led away from the only thing he could stand on this awful planet.

Rose entered the kitchen to see Dave perusing the contents of her artfully decorated refrigerator. (When the FBI agents had visited, they’d torn the expensive frame from the freezer door, perhaps thinking she’d hidden important documents behind her old drawing of Jaspers. It was affixed back in place now, impossible to tell it had ever been removed in the first place.) Patiently, she leaned against a counter, arms crossed, as Dave finally judged their cold food stock to be sadly lacking and shut the door without helping himself to anything.

“I apologize. Had I known we would ultimately be returning to my house, I would have surely stocked more apple juice in preparation.”

“Nah,” Dave shrugged, hefting himself up to sit on the counter next to the fridge. Rose briefly entertained the thought of searching out a velvet cushion to pointedly place on the counter next to him, but dismissed the idea. Handling Dave called for other tactics. She was lucky, she considered, that she’d met him and Jade and John. Broadening one’s perspective was invaluable; it enabled her to explore the rest of the world armed with more than just her mother’s passive aggression. “It’s not worth it with Egbert in the house, you know he’d never shut up about that Little Monsters scene.”

“Oh, come now,” Rose smirked. “Surely if the bottle was still sealed, you would be at ease, free from unfounded fears of what it truly contained preying upon your thoughts.”

Dave was saved from responding as Jade entered the kitchen, biting at her bottom lip. Her expression brightened at seeing her friends, and she gravitated to Rose, resting her head on the blonde’s shoulder. “Is he okay?” she asked. There was no ambiguity in who she meant. Rose and her mother had finished setting the cast on John's arm but ten minutes ago.

Rose wrapped a comforting arm around Jade’s shoulders. Such physical displays of affection weren’t a frequent occurrence in the Lalonde household, but Jade causing people to make exceptions to their rules was a frequent occurrence everywhere. “He’s sleeping it off,” Rose replied. “He’ll be sore when he wakes up, which will be soon. There is no need for grave worries.”

“Until you consider that none of us are gonna be okay while the feds are still up in our grill, and your demon dog’s pissed off back to hellmurder island or wherever it is he’s got bones buried.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Rose contemplated. She dropped her arm from around Jade, though the brunette remained at her side. “Mother’s never been fond of dogs. I don’t think she’d respond well to having one in the house.”

“Yeah, clearly the highest priority here is your mom’s crazy passive aggressive bullshit and her thoughts on dogs, since she obviously doesn’t care about having a couple fugitives napping in the guest rooms.”

“Well, she did berate me for bringing guests over without warning her first. It is unbearably awful to have you see our home in such a state. She is forever shamed as a hostess.”

Jade tilted her head, and took a quick look around the kitchen. The counters were bare, save for Dave and several bottles of alcoholic beverages. In the sink were two empty martini glasses. While walking the gray-skinned alien through the hall, she’d seen nothing out of place, save one picture frame that was tilted a precise 2.5 degrees to the right, out of alignment with its fellow wizard paintings on the wall. The guest bedroom had looked like a photograph out of a magazine, sheets and blankets pulled tight over the mattress and a pile of plush pillows artfully piled at the headboard. She wondered what she was missing.

“Aw fuck, we can’t have that. Looks like we are up a shit creek without a paddle, stranded in the Bog of Eternal Goddamn Stench, and our dinky rowboat has sprung a fucking leak.”

Dave’s words were taking on a certain rhythm, and while he hadn’t made a rhyme yet, Jade had a feeling it was only a matter of time. “Oooooooh gosh,” realization dawned, “are you guys restarting the irony VS sarcasm deathmatch?”

Rose only raised her eyebrows, her slight smirk still in place.

“Nah,” Dave replied, “This is just a warm-up. We’ll have the real deal later, judges and all. You’ll get ringside seats.” Grabbing a small flask of scotch from his left, he tapped it against the counter, not needing much force at all to coerce a few loud bangs from the surface. “Got other things to address right now, and so I am hereby calling this meeting of the Furry Fruity Asshole Factory Rescue Team to order. Vice Prez Harley, you wanna read the minutes from the last session?”

“I get to be the Vice Prez?” Jade giggled, giving Rose a helpless smile.

“Careful, Jade. The alluring call of the authority you wield may prove to be too much for me to resist. Who knows what manner of convoluted political scheme I may hatch in order to usurp you and steal your place.”

“And it is precisely that kind of corruption that prevents me from ever giving you a seat of power, Lalonde. You’re too much of a liability.” Jade had her hands in front of her mouth now, trying vainly to suppress her laughter. “So VP, whenever you’re ready. Lay it on us; what is the deal with Growly McGrayskin?”

Her giggles faded, fingers curling under her chin. “Oh, gee,” she breathed, “I don’t even know. I think when John wakes up he will have a lot of explaining to do!” Her gaze drifted to the side, unfocused, as she recalled, “I tried to ask him what his name was, but he just stared… his eyes are so big and yellow!” Her own eyes went wide in imitation, and she put her open hands on her cheeks. “Oooooh, maybe aliens don’t have names!”

“No,” Rose tapped a finger on her lips, “I know I heard John call him something, though I can’t say with confidence what it was… Did he speak to you at all?”

Jade shook her head. “He just kept staring at me when I talked to him, it was kinda weird. And then when we got to the guest bedroom, he started staring at the bed, too. I had to pull the covers up off the mattress and tell him he could take a nap if he was tired.”

“Wow, okay, he better have been staring at that bed because he’s used to sleeping on a fucking pile of rocks.”

“Dave, I am not sure what you are implying but I am sure it is inappropriate!” Jade’s hands were on her hips now as she frowned up at Dave. “He just looked really confused and maybe kind of scared! He’s not from around here, you know!”

In response he held up his hands, palms out and placating. “Fine, whatever. So let’s leave that topic behind and move right along to where the actual fuck is this asshole from? Are we actually saying he is some kind of extra-terrestrial, from a whole other world, a different dimension, is that the thing we are doing right now?”

“My, Dave. Did you think you could hide your animosity under the ironic use of Katy Perry lyrics, or were you trying to hide the lyrics under your animosity?” A tone of amusement ran through Rose’s question, heedless of the serious subject matter. “Does your hostility stem from when the alien growled at Jade, or does that only augment your initial feelings from when you discovered that John had decided rescuing him was worth giving up contact with the rest of us?”

“Just because I am skeptical of all this does not mean that hostility is what is taking place here,” Dave defended himself, leaned back nonchalantly and casual as ever, but the speed of his reply betrayed him. “We don’t know that Egbert rescued this guy.”

“Pleeeaaaase,” Jade rolled her eyes. “This is John we’re talking about! You got the same letters we did, right?”

“Fine.” He rested his hands on his knees, his voice flat with the familiar tone of too-cool-for-this-bullshit. “Let’s roll with that theory. John finds an alien imprisoned in a science facility in Roswell, which is so unironically cliché that it makes the loop around to ironic and overshoots, crash landing right back in unironic cliché land. John, being John, decides to stage a one-man rescue, and now he’s on America’s Most Wanted. Am I allowed to think he made some poor decisions here? Can I put that on the table in all sincerity?”

“The Vice President seconds this motion,” declared Jade, raising a hand. “We would have helped him sooner if he’d asked!”

“While that is perhaps not the part of the decision making process with which Dave takes issue, I have to agree that John did not plan this well at all. He must have been possessed of unearthly amounts of luck, to get as far as he did.”

“He doesn’t need to rely on luck anymore, because he has us now! Between the four of us we can find a way to fix this,” Jade chirped, a chipper declaration that left no room for arguments. “We’re his friends and we’re doing this!”

Both girls looked to Dave expectantly. Presumably he returned their stare, his head facing toward them, but behind the dark glasses there was no way to know for sure. Rose met his blank shades with a level gaze, while Jade grinned up at him.

There was no beating their combined powers. Dave held out as long as he could, but finally had to give in.

“We’re making this happen.”

Chapter Text

John woke to gentle sunlight and the foreign softness of an unfamiliar hotel bed. He shifted, settling further into the mattress—why was it that all beds that weren’t your own seemed so comfy? But he could enjoy it a little longer, it wasn’t as though he had anywhere to be. It was summer vacation and that meant it was officially time to sleep past noon. He didn’t have any summer homework, not now that he was out of high school—

--oh shit, he was going to be late for his internship—

--oh, shit. This was not a hotel, nor was it some fun and relaxed summer vacation where he could laze about until the smell of Dad’s baking became too much to bear, and there was, most definitely, no internship anymore.

John threw the covers off, ready to leap from the bed, only to cry out and clutch his arm when he banged his cast on the nightstand to his right.

Wait. Cast?

His right arm was—save for the fading throb from his haphazardly swinging it around a moment ago—feeling much better than it had been before, now encased in solid plaster. He dragged his fingers around it, feeling the hard texture—how had this even happened? It wasn’t as though he could very well go to a hospital… The cast was white, which was a little disappointing (he would have preferred a neon green or maybe a bright blue) but on the plus side, a large cursive “RL” took up a significant space by his elbow, elegant calligraphy in purple ink. A broken record was drawn above his wrist, and a sprawling pattern of flowers and pumpkins took up half of the remaining blank space, wrapping around like a colourful sleeve.

He fluffed up his pillows, leaning back and staring at the cast, his mind playing back recent events. His last memories were dreamlike and easily doubted, but his current surroundings argued for their veracity. If his mind was to be believed, he and Karkat were safe now, by some miracle delivered to Rose’s home (two wizard paintings on the walls confirmed this as his location beyond any shadow of a doubt). His three best friends were there for him, and while he had known, even while reassuring Karkat of their safety, that this was no permanent solution, the promise of even temporary sanctuary had been overwhelming. He’d let himself relax, just for a moment, and then before he knew it—

“Hey there sleeping beauty. Recovered from your case of the vapors, or should I go before you faint again?”

“Dave!” A huge grin broke out over John’s face, even as he leaned forward and squinted to make out his friend. Here was proof to dispel all his doubts. The blond had something in one hand—a soda?—and some blob on his shirt that John suspected, under closer inspection, would reveal itself to be a screen-print matching the broken record design on his cast.

“I dunno man, they warned me you might not be recovered enough yet to handle this much cool. Looks like you’re about to start swooning again, maybe I should send one of the girls in here instead.”

“You wish!” John protested, but he was giggling.

Dave shut the door behind him, sitting himself on the edge of John’s bed and setting his soda bottle on the nightstand. At the closer proximity, John could make out more of his friend’s features, or at least the ones on the lower half of his face.

He remembered trying to needle Dave once, years ago. It had been one of many ill-advised and futile attempts to ruffle the coolkid’s feathers, saying that the blond had the same tiny button nose that Rose possessed. Dave had accused him of having a homocrush, before they knew it John would be composing bad poetry about Dave’s handsome visage, and John had dropped that line of heckling instantly. He wasn’t even sure where he’d been going with it. Maybe he’d been trying to call Dave girly? Who even understood how the mind of a thirteen-year-old worked. It didn’t change the fact, however, that Dave and Rose did have very similar facial features, and now that Dave was close enough, John could see them with more clarity.

“Better drink that, bro, before the Lalondes find out you’re awake,” said Dave, nodding toward the nightstand. John blinked, the soda bottle resolving itself to in fact be a bottle of water.

It was only when Dave indicated he should drink that John realized his throat was sore and dry, and swallowing felt like somebody had shoved cotton candy spiced with razor blades down his gullet. He reached with his right hand to grab the bottle, and was momentarily boggled at the sight of the tips of his fingers wiggling where they protruded from the end of his cast. His befuddlement only lasted a moment before he switched to his left hand instead, though he was pretty sure Dave noticed—Dave noticed all the moments. Water bottle successfully grabbed, he again found himself in a conundrum when he had one hand to hold the bottle, and did not have another to uncap it.

“Christ, this is like watching somebody’s youtube video of their retarded dog. Give it here.”

“No way, man, I got this!” He could just hold the bottle secure if he shoved it in the crook of his elbow, bracing it between his cast and his torso, so his left hand could twist the cap off—

“When you need to change out of your shirt ‘cause it’s soaked, I’m not helping you.”

“Shut up, I can totally manage t—aw man!”

The water bottle went tumbling, triumphantly uncapped and clearly of a mind to celebrate its newfound capless state by rolling all down John’s front and landing upside down on his crotch. He mad a clumsy grab for it and had it in hand and right side up within seconds, but not quickly enough to stop half the bottle from soaking through the sheets over his lap. Mouth agape and arms held aloft, as though that would encourage the wet fabric to remove itself from him, he sat helplessly, trying to prioritize a solution and coming up with nothing.

Dave didn’t laugh, but John suspected that had more to do with his coolkid façade than with any sense of sympathy for his friend’s plight. Suspicions were quickly confirmed when he remarked, “What I wouldn’t fucking give for a video camera five seconds ago.”

John lowered his arms and debated using the water bottle as a jerry-rigged watergun, but ultimately decided his throat still hurt and that chugging the last half of the water was the most important thing to do here, along with kicking the covers off and shifting so he wasn’t sitting in the wet spot.

When he lowered the empty bottle, it caught the edge of a tooth that normally wasn’t exposed, and John winced.

Even with the shades, John got the feeling Dave was staring. He was facing John and hadn’t moved from his position, at any rate. “How bad is it?” the dyed-redhead asked, smiling widely, using the fake grin he most often used when presented with yet another cake from his dad.

“Shit, son, you look like you ought to be hopping trains and begging on street corners. Want me to get you a piece of cardboard so you can write on it? Will give head and/or quote Nic Cage movies for food.”

“You’re an asshole, dude,” said John, throwing the empty plastic bottle at the blond. Though his grin had shrank, the expression was sincere now.

“You asked,” Dave replied, not even bothering to dodge; thrown with John’s left hand, the bottle had gone wide of its target, and landed on the floor somewhere.

“Whatever.” John hesitated, his grumbling stomach derailing his train of thought. He wanted to ask what the plan was—if Rose was involved, there was a plan, no question. Hopefully it would be a bit more thorough than the one John had initially made, which consisted of about two steps, hitchhike to Mexico and don’t get caught. But he also wanted to actually eat a full meal, to sit at a table that wasn’t at a fast food place, without having to constantly tug Karkat’s hoodie down and angle himself so his face wasn’t fully visible to anybody who chanced a look toward the fugitives, looking over his shoulder every time he heard the door open, inhaling his food as fast as he could without choking.

(He wanted to take the time to ask Karkat what food was like where he came from, teach him words for sweet and sour and bitter and dry and batterwitch, and he wanted to be able to laugh out loud at the faces the troll made when presented with a new taste, without worrying about drawing attention to them.)

“Come on.” Dave stood, looking down at John. “Rose said some shit about not raising suspicions and acting normal, but we are going to order a goddamn pizza, fuck the police.”

“This is why you are basically the coolest!”

“Hold up.” John paused before standing, his legs over the edge of the bed. “Get yourself some new pants first, Egbert, it looks like you pissed yourself.”

Karkat dreams.

“The aliens are rebelling,” Equius informs him. His arms are crossed behind his back, his poster rigidly straight. Their ship is the center of their temporary headquarters, substitute hives slapped together, made from the remnants of destroyed human architecture. Karkat thinks maybe his next order of business should be getting himself a proper hive. Equius, in his always-pressed always-regulation military attire, not a single thread out of place and somehow free of sweat stains, looks ridiculous against the ramshackle background of human refuse.

“It’th pretty hilariouth,” Sollux adds, dragging a captive human behind him. “Thith ith their leader.”

The human he throws to the ground at Karkat’s feet has dark hair, as all creatures rightfully should, but when he looks up his eyes are blue as Vriska’s insides, if not even more so. One of his arms hangs limp and bent at a way Karkat doubts is natural, even for the abominations that inhabit the Earth. The aberrant bright red blood that is common to the humans drips from his nose and is smeared across his face.

“Good work,” Karkat tells his two soldiers, satisfied. They have already done the hard part in quelling the alien rebellion, if this is truly the leader. Karkat’s task is more symbolic than anything at this point. Although, he thinks, it is no less enjoyable for all that. He draws his sickle slowly, savoring the moment. The human’s eyes go wide and he bites at his front lip.

“Karkat, no, please—”

Terezi drags her fingers through the fresh gash in the human’s neck, coats her hands in viscous candy gloves and licks at her fingers.

“Who taught it to speak Alternian? Who told it my name?” Karkat demands, snarling, but Equius and Sollux are nowhere to be found, and Terezi only laughs, dropping the human’s corpse and lunging for Karkat.

She pins him against the wall of her hive, her hands on his cheeks to hold him in place, and she licks the tears from his face, long sweeps of her tongue sweeping up each bright red track. Her eyes glow even redder than his and the human’s blood, and the inside of her mouth is coated with the colour. It collects in her gums and paints her perfect teeth.

“I told you this would be the last time we would see each other,” she cackles. “I told you I wanted to savour the flavour!” Her claws dig in tightly to his jaw, forcing him down as she dives in for a kiss. His body thrashes, he kicks stray scalemates across the room in his struggles, and he tries to protest that he’s coming back for her, just as soon as they’re done their mission he’ll come back for her, he swears, nothing could ever keep him away, but his voice won’t come. She holds his head steady, savouring and plundering and biting as though they have flipped quadrants. He tries to raise his hands to grab her wrists, to pry her fingers out of his face, but his arms are bolted down to a metal table splashed with primary colours.

Vriska finally pulls back, licking his blood from her lips. She rubs a thumb over the bags beneath one of his eyes, pushing at the flesh, digging her claw in just under the socket. He swears she is touching his skull. “How long do you think she’ll wait for you, Karkat?” she taunts, vicious smile pulling at her torn mouth. “How long before she gives up on you ever coming back?”

Karkat understands Vriska, has analyzed the way her mind works. He’s had to, in order to work with her, and while he’ll never be able to manipulate her as effectively as Terezi can, he has realized she hates herself almost as much as he despises himself—though not, ultimately, as much. Her dense, dark hair curtains around his face as she leans in, biting at his lower lip.

“I saw what you had that was so special,” she hisses, infuriated. “They cut you open and they stitched you back up and I watched and I learned. I know what Terezi saw in you, you hideous mutant!” Karkat whimpers into her mouth, his protests dribbling down his chin.

“You can have my luck,” Vriska says to John, caressing his pale pink face, tenderly kissing him, pressing her body against him while Karkat watches, can do nothing but watch, hanging limply in his metal restraints and feeling strangely bereft. She breathes good fortune into the human, “For all the good it’s done me.”

John clings to her and is left clutching ineffectually at air, surrounded by ten thousand rapidly fluttering blood-blue butterflies. Her glasses are perched on his nose. Karkat opens his mouth to scream and nothing comes out. He keeps trying until finally a voiceless cry tears itself from his throat, and he tries and tries again to yell to John, but the human doesn’t notice, doesn’t hear.

“Well,” Rose began, pressing a paper towel to her pizza. It grew damp with grease quickly, and she wrinkled her button nose at it before continuing. “You have three options, as far as we can see.” John tried to listen attentively, but was distracted by Rose’s careful process of pizza preparation. He was kind of boggled by the thought that she had never had pizza before. What about parties at school, or sleepovers, or birthday celebrations at Chuck-E-Cheese? She lifted the slice, regarded it with a flat glare, and at last took a tentative bite, only to have to tug a long line of cheese in order to successfully separate her mouthful from the rest of the slice.

While Rose was thus occupied, Jade licked a line of tomato sauce off her palm, completely disregarding her own napkin, and picked up where Rose left off. “The first option is that you could just keep running forever, which kind of sucks! You’d always have to worry and we wouldn’t be able to see you or talk to you at all, ever. That’s option one.”

“I kind of thought that was my only choice!” John admitted around a mouthful of delicious cheese and pepperoni and tomato goodness. His eyes darted to the side again, down the hallway where he knew Karkat was sleeping. On the way to the kitchen, Dave had toed open the door, and they’d peeked in on a head of black hair and orange horns poking out from a rolled up cocoon of blankets. Though John wanted nothing more than to wake Karkat up and teach him the all the essential words of pizza and grease and extra cheese, he’d pulled the door shut and let the sleeping troll lie. Undisturbed rest was not something he and Karkat had been able to afford in any great quantity; they could always save a few slices for Karkat later. In any case it was a relief to know for sure where the troll was, that he too could enjoy the luxury of sleeping indoors and on a bed, but John still couldn’t help the constant niggling worry that caused his gaze to slide towards that hall every few moments. It was the first time in days that he and Karkat had been out of each other’s line of sight, and even the spread of pizza and soda and Rose’s preposterous pizza inexperience could not outweigh his apprehension.

Having finished her first bite, Rose obtained a fork and knife, systematically cutting apart the rest of her slice. “It was your only choice, before we found you,” she allowed. “However, ideally there are now two further options that will put a stop to your pursuit. If we can pull either one off, they are vastly preferable to the potential future of remaining a fugitive.”

“So behind door number two, you’ve got my personal favourite.” Dave ate pizza like a champ. There was not a single grease mark or drop of stray tomato sauce anywhere to be seen upon his face, shirt, or the table before him. “You’re in it deep, Egbert. The Feds aren’t just going to give up when they can’t find you for a while.” He plucked the Pepperoncini pepper from the corner of the box where it had retreated, biting off the bottom half and proceeding to talk while he chewed, to the further wrinkling of Rose’s nose. “So you fake your death. Maybe the alien’s too. They might still wanna cut him up anyway, even if he is a stiff, but nobody’s gonna be interested in your pasty white corpse.”

Jade took the remainder of the pepper from Dave, chewing on it herself, heedless of the fact that his mouth had already been on it. “We could probably redo the paint job on my old Johnbot and use it for this plan! It’d take some planning but we think we could pull it off.”

“Johnbot?”

“And I know a couple guys who could hook you up with a brand new social, get a pretty legit looking ID too. If we could scrounge up enough cash they might even be able to hack the new you right into Goucher.” John wasn’t sure he trusted Dave not to hand him a new birth certificate with a suitably ridiculous name, like Nik Kage or something outrageous.

Actually, that would be kind of cool.

The clinking of fork and knife on ceramic paused, and Rose spoke up once more, interrupting John’s pondering on what kind of name he’d like if given the opportunity to pick a new one. “The last option is certainly the most ambitious plan, and perhaps beyond the scope of our ability, although in the interest of potentially sparking further ideas, I have been convinced to share what I think is a poor one.” She set her silverware aside and rested her head on now steepled hands, leaning forward. “It requires a multi-level approach, with precisely aimed information attacks and a certain amount of deception. The basic premise is that you turn yourself in, and we expose the depth of the conspiracy within which you find yourself trapped. In essence, you would be going public, John.”

“That, um.” John’s stomach was gurgling unpleasantly; he recalled that at the start of the meal, Rose had voiced her concerns over whether the artery-clogging mess of a dinner they had ordered in was suitable for him, after several days of poor nourishment while on the run. He had laughed her worries off. He was a teenage boy, and as such, weren’t poor diet choices mandatory? Now, he was not sure if he should have taken her up on the offer of baby carrots and cranberry juice and celery sticks, or if it was just worrying about his status as a fugitive giving him an ulcer. “That sounds like kind of a bad idea!”

“Indeed, the drawbacks are many. They include the possibilities that we reveal how you have been framed too slowly to prevent dire consequences, or that we cannot spread the information widely enough, or we are simply no match for the opposing misinformation currently racing throughout various news media, in which case you are tried under your current false charges and sentenced to life without parole, or something equally dreadful.”

Dreadful was one way to put it, John thought, chewing his lip and careful not to agitate his exposed gum. What Rose was proposing was a huge risk. But on the plus side...

On the plus side, if he could be legally absolved of the phony crimes he was accused of, if he could remain John Egbert and not have to worry about a letter or phone call to his father being traced, if he could allow his natural hair colour to grow back in, no longer afraid of being recognized… if he didn’t have to lie about everything anymore (and he was a pretty awful liar, all things considered)…

“You don’t have to deci—”

John was bolting toward the guest bedroom before the second word had left Rose’s mouth, his chair clattering to the floor in his wake, as the scream filled the kitchen.

Dave and Jade were up and after him instantly, the brunette clapping her hands over her ears even while she ran. The gesture did nothing to prevent the inhuman noise from expanding and seeping into her skull from all sides, a monstrous screeching, and she had no idea how John could run towards the source of such a noise so quickly and without hesitation. He was already down the hall and throwing open the bedroom door, allowing that much more of the horrible wailing to escape and hurl itself at the rest of them. When he disappeared into the room, the change was almost immediate, the volume dropped and the screaming resolved into shouted shards of broken words, and Jade and Dave rounded the doorway to see John kneeling on the bed, drawing a thrashing and yelling alien into his arms, wincing every time one of those wildly flailing limbs hit his face or his cast.

Before Jade could let out a, “what the fuck,” Dave was behind the alien and had him in a restraining hold, arms tugged immobile across his chest and legs hooked and locked. It didn’t stop the troll from struggling, butting his head back in an attempt to break Dave’s nose. The yelling hadn’t stopped, and John’s shouts, “Dave, let go! It was a nightmare, he’ll calm down! Karkat, it’s okay—Dave, let him go!” joined the cacophony.

Rose arrived at the door just in time to see the troll lurch to the side, throwing off Dave’s balance and taking the blond down with him, both of them hitting the wall with a thump that shook the hanging wizard paintings and stopped the yelling. Jade winced reflexively as the two boys slumped down to the floor, the alien listing forward and gasping, biting at the air in front of him as though it would help him to breathe. His gasping breaths grew to wheezes, as Jade worried he might start screaming again. With each inhale he pushed forward, away from Dave who still had his arms trapped, forcing out more of his strained voice, eventually forming a rasped, drawn out, “Stop.”

“Holy shit,” Dave observed, tilting his head to look over the troll’s shoulder and at his face. “It speaks.”

“Stop!” he repeated, jerking uselessly.

Slowly John was moving off the bed, as though he had just remembered his own injuries and that he should perhaps not make them worse by jumping headfirst into the fray. “Dave, let go, please.”

It wasn’t that it was unusual for John to mind his p’s and q’s and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ and even Dave had been known to resort to manners when under duress or for irony’s sake. But that John felt it was necessary now to tack on a ‘please’ irked the coolkid for reasons he couldn’t identify. He let go of the alien’s wrists instantly, rising to his feet even as said alien flopped forward on to his gray face. He watched with an air of disdain not uncommon in the Lalonde house as John rushed forward, only to have his outstretched hand slapped away when the alien wobbled up to hands and knees, refusing John’s help.

Anxious, John hovered, shifting his weight from foot to foot and intently watching the alien prop himself up against the wall. Twice he reached out and then drew his hand back before making contact. When finally the troll was standing, John grinned and bounced on the balls of his feet, as though he could make everybody else in the room relax through the sheer force of his smile. He stepped back and turned to look at all his assembled friends. Rose stood in the door, observant and patient to let events unfold, though alert and ready to step in if she judged it necessary. Jade had her hands drawn up, as though she would start biting her nails or hiding her face behind them; like John, she shifted back and forth on her feet, too much nervous energy held in reserve. Dave was closest but closed off completely, arms crossed, leaning against the wall seemingly unphased and uncaring.

John’s grin wavered. He had imagined introductions going much smoother, but then again, he’d imagined a lot of things. He’d imagined not getting caught before they reached Mexico, for one. Nothing for it but to roll with the punches and paste that smile firmly on his face.

“Okay everybody! This is Karkat!”

At his name, Karkat bared his mouthful of fangs (which John pretended not to notice), eyes darting over the assembled humans. “Karkat, this is Dave.” The blond gave the most minuscule of up-nods, and was treated to a brief crescendo of growling in return. John laughed nervously and gestured to the two young women, “And that’s Jade, with the long hair and glasses!” She smiled and raised a hand in a small wave; Karkat wrinkled his nose, but didn’t growl again. “And that’s Rose. This is her house! Her mom is around somewhere too.”

“Hi Karkat! It’s nice to know your name finally!” Surprising nobody, Jade bounded forward, seizing one of Karkat’s hands in her own before the overwhelmed troll realized what was happening. His arm jerked back automatically, but stopped before he could rip his hand from her grasp, and his throat worked around several aborted sounds before he simply gave up and nodded. “I wasn’t sure if you could understand me or not, when I asked your name earlier.” She paused, looking at him, and he gave another tentative nod. Studying his expression, the wide eyes under furrowed eyebrows, his slightly open mouth revealing clenched pointed teeth, she felt the corners of her own mouth turning up playfully as she asked, “Do you understand me at all?”

He slowly nodded again, eyes fixed on her, and John couldn’t help but giggle, though he wasn’t sure what he found so amusing.

“Often when learning a new language, you can understand more than you can actually say yourself,” Rose put in from the door.

Jade “hmm,”ed and gave Karkat’s hand a gentle tug, stepping backward toward the hall and pulling him with her. Her grip was loose and light, barely more than the pads of her fingers resting on his calloused palm. “Come on,” she coaxed, “there’s pizza in the kitchen. John was starving so I bet you are too!” Karkat’s gaze darted around the room, from human to human to John to Jade, and when she pulled their linked hands again, he shuffled forward with her, inching along.

Dave left his spot against the wall, striding past the slow Egbert-Harley-alien train and ignoring the growls directed his way. Rose stepped aside to let him pass, and after consideration, followed him out. John watched the two of them leave, heard Rose’s voice fading down the hallway, “With those teeth, it would be a safe bet to say he is carnivorous. I wonder if…”

With only John and Jade left in the room with him, Karkat’s unease dissipated and his steps grew, though he did not take his hand from Jade’s. She turned, opting to walk abreast with him instead of tugging him along, and flashed a smile at John, who grinned back and began to lead the way to the kitchen.

“I’ve been teaching Karkat English,” he told Jade, a little pride sneaking into the claim. “It’s like my Spanish teachers always said, if you’re in another country you pick up the language really fast, it’s only been a few days and he knows a lot!”

Karkat stepped on John’s heel. “Know you’re dumb,” he grumbled.

Laughing, John tripped forward, toeing his shoe back on. “See?”

“It’s okay Karkat,” Jade said, squeezing his hand. “We won’t let him make you watch Con Air.”

“Hey!”

They made their way to the kitchen, giggling humans and reluctant frowning troll, to see that Rose had a fifth plate and pizza slice already prepared. Dave was once again leaning against the counter, while Rose pulled out a chair and gestured to Karkat. “Please, make yourself comfortable,” Rose invited. “Now that things have calmed down a bit, allow me to welcome you to my home.”

Sometimes John was not sure where the sincerity ended and the sarcasm began with Rose—he suspected that she was not always sure, either. He also suspected that often the sarcasm was a line of defense, something to fall back on if sincerity turned out to be the wrong approach. (As far as John was concerned, this was just silly, since sincerity was always the right approach.) He nodded to Karkat, who was warily regarding the proffered chair.

Karkat slowly sat, John and Jade plopping down on either side of him at the same time, as though they had choreographed it. He shot half-hearted glares at them both, before turning his scowl to the slice of pizza before him. Again his large eyes flicked from human to human as he hunched, tense and only seated halfway on the chair, ready to bolt in an instant.

“Hey, Rose, now you’re not the only one who’s never had pizza before!” John teased, reaching over for another piece. Karkat’s gaze fixed itself upon John, watched him take a bite, before Karkat picked up his own slice and mimicked the human.

John kept a running commentary even with his mouth full, and Rose and Jade exchanged smirks as they watched Karkat completely ignore John’s stream of explanations, the words for “garlic sauce” and “delivery” going unheard, to be defined another time. The troll did pay attention when John picked a pepperoni off his slice in order to identify it, which started Karkat plucking pepperonis off the rest of the pizza in the box, popping them into his mouth one after another until John managed to get the idea across that the rest of the pizza was for everybody and you didn’t go eating just the toppings off the rest of the pizza! (Jade was not sure how effectively the message got across, as Karkat snatched a few pepperonis from John’s slice when the human wasn’t looking.)

“It is rather fascinating that there are so few differences between the two of you,” Rose observed, watching Karkat and John work their way through the rest of the pizza. “Most of his unique features seem purely cosmetic—surely the horns and teeth have an evolutionary purpose, and the eyes obviously have a different sensitivity to light, as expected for a nocturnal species, but the basic structure is otherwise suspiciously similar. I imagine your skeletons are close to identical, but perhaps there are unseen differences in internal anatomy?”

John sucked a bit of grease from his pointer finger, giving Rose’s statement consideration. “I didn’t really think about it,” he said, gaze drifting to watch the troll, who hadn’t relaxed in his chair and still stared apprehensively at everybody else in the room while he chewed. “Or maybe it’s because we’re so similar I didn’t think about it? Jeez, Rose, I don’t know. Karkat’s Karkat. He’s really amazing but he’s not here for you to take apart to see what makes him tick!”

“I apologize,” Rose demurred, looking to both Karkat and John. “Though I am insulted you would compare me to the Roswell scientists you spoke of. I cannot help my curiosity, but I would never treat your friend as a disposable puzzle to carve up and examine.”

John looked away, setting his pizza down. “I’m sorry, too.”

Though Karkat’s nose was larger and rounder than Rose’s, it wrinkled just the same, his face scrunching up. Noticing the change in the troll’s expression, John winced. “And sorry for talking about you while you’re right here.”

Karkat shook his head, uncombed nest of hair following the motion. “Don’t understand what you talking,” he grumbled, face still pinched. “Don’t… don’t want to eat now.”

“Oh, dear. I did worry that it was too much of a coincidence that his digestive system had no issue with human food. John, what did you eat while on the run?”

Realization washed the melancholy expression from John’s face, replacing it abruptly with wide-eyed worry. “Lots of junk food, mostly—Karkat likes Mountain Dew a lot! And Slim Jims. Tacos were all right but he picked off all the tomatoes and sour cream!”

“Mountain Dew,” Rose scoffed, shaking her head. “And he had no troubles with that? Perhaps this was simply too much, too quickly.” Karkat bit his lip, a gesture echoed by the two humans on either side of him, and moved a hand to his stomach.

“Where is…” he started, looking around the kitchen rapidly, eyes lingering on the hallway they’d come from.

“Oh man. Are you gonna be sick?” John stood quickly, and Karkat followed at a slower pace, gripping the back of his chair as he rose. “Come on, let’s get to the bathroom!”

“Sick,” Karkat agreed, curling in on himself, but still shoving John away when he reached out a hand to support the troll.

Jade hopped from her seat. “Hold it for just a bit, Karkat! The bathroom’s that way,” she pointed, a hand on the troll’s shoulder steering him in the right direction.

Before Karkat took a single step, Dave was in front of him. “You guys are never gonna make it,” he stated; from the retching motions John could see crashing up Karkat’s torso, he had to agree. “Here,” the blond said, dropping a bucket to the floor, “you’re cleaning it.”

At the clatter of the bucket’s landing, Karkat’s face went pale, the gray washing out as effectively as if he’d been dipped in bleach. His yellow eyes grew wide, big sunny yolks on the sickly egg white of his face, and he spun on his heel, grabbed John by the arm, and vomited all down the human’s shirt.

“Oh, man,” said Jade. “He didn’t chew all his pepperoni all the way.”

Chapter Text

The summer heat was tempered by the stream washing over Rose’s bare feet, as she sat at the grassy bank, shoes set aside and legs dangling in the water. Birdsong and cicada buzzing competed with the trickle of water over rocks, the familiar noises of isolation from civilization. While Bec’s motivation remained a mystery, Rose’s amateur psychoanalysis failing to reveal the dog’s logic, she was grateful that the group had been dropped off at her house. Near as she could tell, Bec made decisions based on what he could discern of Jade’s wants and needs, but at his own discretion, and communication between girl and hellbeast was not perfect. Had he brought them to Rose’s house because it was furthest from Jade’s? Had he somehow know that the elder Lalonde would have the precise combination of eclectic skills and resources to provide John with necessary medical care, no hospital visit required, as well as the means to house and feed the rest of the Rescue Team? Whatever the reason, her own house would have been her first choice as well. If nothing else, she had no desire to deal with the Texas summer with all five of them crammed in Dave’s small apartment, and she could guess what the humidity of Jade’s island would be like.

The sound of John’s sneakers tearing and tromping through the grass alerted Rose to his approach. She leaned back, looking over her shoulder, to see him trudging toward her. Paranoid as they all were of pursuit, the sight of him without his glasses and with that particular carrot-coloured hair was jarring, unrecognizable for an instant. She watched him stumble, navigating slowly and clumsily with blurred vision.

“Hi, Rose,” he greeted, falling more than settling next to her, awkwardly holding his broken arm away from his body. She nodded in return, angling herself to face him while keeping her toes still submerged.

“This place is really nice,” he observed, squinting at their surroundings. “Back home I always wished there was, I don’t know, a lake or something nearby, but it’s just all identical houses everywhere. They’re not even fun colours like that neighborhood in Edward Scissorhands.”

“John.” He looked to her, the blue of his eyes nearly hidden from how he was squinting to try to focus, “Did you just reference quality cinema for once in your life?”

“Aw, come on, Rose! I have great taste in movies.”

“Sometimes I begin to think you may actually believe that.”

“Roooooooose,” he groused, giggling.

The sound of John’s laughter was a light, breezy thing, yet somehow still full—genuine. He and Jade shared a quality of earnest sincerity, a certain heartfelt dept to all their actions, even the most frivolous. While Rose found it strange, foreign, and impossible to relate to, she also appreciated it.

He let his arms fly out, flopping to his back on the grass. “Rose,” he said once more, eyes falling closed under the high noon sun, “I think I really upset him.”

She regarded John, laid out before her, unguarded, with open arms. If only all her prey came so willing, ready to spill out all the trials of their psyches. “You’ll have to clarify whom you mean.”

He brought his uninjured arm up over his face, the crook of his elbow settled over his eyes to block the light. “I was kind of hoping you’d pick one for me if I left it open! Like, maybe you’d have noticed Karkat or Dave being especially grumpy and you’d already figured it all out.”

“Rest assured that their mutual unpleasant demeanors have not escaped my notice.” She smoothed out her skirt, recalling the previous day’s events. After John and Karkat both washed up and changed their clothes, John had suggested they postpone anything too serious and simply relax for the night. Rose had withheld her objections; while she privately thought they had no time to spare for anything other than plotting how to either clear John’s name or otherwise remove the threat looming over them, it was clear that the two fugitives were still drained. Any discussion of future plans would be fruitless, with the two main contenders unable to concentrate and contribute ideas.

When Jade produced the Little Monsters DVD she had rescued from John’s apartment, the night’s outcome was sealed. The five of them proceeded to the living room, John and Jade piling on to the couch while Karkat and Dave sat as far from each other as they could, each dropping to the floor at opposite sides of the living room.

In hindsight, Rose decided that providing popcorn had been a mistake. It should have been a clear foregone conclusion that Dave and Karkat would convert the snack to miniature projectile weapons. Then again, if she hadn’t made the popcorn, the two would probably have found something else to fight with. Karkat had been eying the small wizard figurines on the mantle…

Interestingly, the alien had been wholly unfazed by the TV setup, despite being mystified by the pizza and, purportedly, the bed. Had he encountered TVs while on the run with John, or were there parts of his own culture and technology that paralleled that of Earth?

“One should always be wary of the trap of making assumptions,” she said. “For the most part, you are already aware of the problems you are facing, as well as the best solutions. My role is that of facilitator, to help you understand what you already know, not to tell you my own thoughts.”

“Bluuuuuuuuh,” was John’s eloquent response.

“Indeed.”

Silence fell between them, to be filled with the steady buzz of cicadas, calls of birds, even the sounds of small rodents clawing their way through trees above. The breeze toyed with John’s orange bangs and the long blades of grass around him, playing through branches and shifting the dappled shadows.

“I don’t get it,” he said, bringing his arm down to stare up at Rose in frustration. “When we were on the run, you know, Karkat wouldn’t—he was always grumpy. He doesn’t smile or laugh or anything, and it’s not like there’s been much about Earth to make him happy, but I thought he…. I thought we were pals.”

“And now?” Rose prompted.

“Come on, Rose, you saw! He keeps shoving me away when I try to help him out, he won’t let me touch him at all…” He bit his lip, gaze drifting to the side, no longer looking at Rose but seeing a memory. “In New Mexico, even though it was so hot during the days, we wound up sleeping next to each other, as close as we could without burning up. He’d wake up with nightmares pretty much all the time, but he calmed down fast if I was there. He didn’t panic and start screaming when I was with him. No homo, but there was a lot of hugging involved.”

Rose rolled her eyes at the interjected ‘no homo.’ “So the nightmares are typical?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I don’t know if he always had them or if it’s because of what… you know. What happened to him here. But as far as I know, he gets them every night. Day. Daymares?” He turned his head, resting his cheek in the grass. They couldn’t see Rose’s home from their position, trees and bushes in the way, but John could imagine the building well enough, and recalled the scene he’d observed before leaving to find Rose. Karkat was rolled up like a burrito in his blanket, but the bed itself had been abandoned in favour of huddling in a corner of the guest bedroom, shaking and chewing his lip raw in the grip of some dreamed horrors.

John had lurked by the bedroom door, conflicted. What if he left, and Karkat woke, alone and scared, while John was outside?

What if he stayed, sat and wedged himself in the corner with the troll, remained until Karkat woke only to push him away?

“I don’t know what I did, Rose.”

“What would you think if I told you that you had done the best you could?”

He snorted, closing a fist around blades of grass.

“Pretend, for a moment,” she continued, “that you are lost and running for your life, far away from home. You have no means of returning to your friends and family. No way, in fact, of contacting them at all. Does this sound familiar?”

A hesitant nod. “But we…”

“Yes?”

“We had each other.”

“Yes. And now?”

“Now we have you guys too!”

“No, John.” His eyes flicked to hers, questioning, and she held his gaze. “You have the three of us. You have years of trusting us, mutual disclosure of our lives, from the tedious and mundane details, freely shared, to reticent secrets, carefully guarded and unknown to even our own families. Whom did you try to contact, John, when you first discovered Karkat?”

As she spoke, he had pushed himself up to a sitting position. Now at her level, he stared at her with wide eyes, mouth slightly agape as he worked to reassemble the facts that she spilled before him. “I tried to tell you guys.”

“Why?”

“It’s like you just said. I knew I could count on you guys for anything!”

She rewarded him with a rare soft smile.

“And who does Karkat have?”

It was with some satisfaction that she watched him open his mouth to answer, close it, and make faces for a moment, stumped and perplexed. The answer nearly given had been, of course, “all of us!” Only that wasn’t quite true, and how could it be, when the troll and Dave sneered at each other when they thought the others weren’t aware, when all of Jade’s good intentions were blocked by the great wall of languages, and when Rose had to ‘borrow’ from her mother and reread The Dehumanizaiton of Man by Ashley Montagu, so that her own thoughts would not betray her guest?

(in your defense hes not human to start with

It is both that fact and his difficulties with the English language that make it so easy to forget he is still a person, semantics of species aside. Did you notice that you and he have the same hue to your irises?)

John had dropped his eyes. His left hand made a fist, while the fingers of his right hand curled loosely around the edges of his cast. “I’d be there for him if he’d let me,” he insisted.

“This is working on the presumption that his emotions function at all similarly to our own,” Rose began, “but while I am certain he appreciates your support, I want you to imagine for a moment the prospect of forever having to rely on others, cut off from your home and transplanted to a place not of your own choosing. Your own autonomy neatly obliterated, your independence eternally lost. No matter if you learn the language and culture, no matter if you escape the long arm of the law, still your very body is a foreign intrusion to your new home and must be kept hidden away for the rest of your foreseeable future.”

She paused, then before he could interject with a suggestion of making new friends, added, “Rather, imagine Dave in such a scenario.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

“So what do I do?”

“Well. What do you think?”

“Roooooooose! No, wait, seriously Rose, where are you going?”

She stood, brushing foliage and insects alike from her legs, and nodded her head toward the house. “Do you see Jade there, coming to get us? This means that Dave, Karkat, and my mother are alone in the house together.”

John was up and running in a whirlwind of motion, managing only just to get to his feet and avoid somersaulting forward onto his face, long limbs circling in wild arcs in his ascent. Rose watched him tear toward Jade, slowing to a jog for the few seconds needed to hear what she had to say. Her message delivered, he was flying toward the house once more, tripping over roots and uneven earth but somehow never quite falling.

She wondered, as she made her way at a more sedate pace, if he realized they had been interrupted before broaching the topic of Dave.

“Hey, Karkat.”

Jade’s greeting was met with only a grunt. The entirety of Karkat’s attention was held by the movie playing; he was glued to the TV in a manner most often exhibited by five-year-olds entranced by Blues Clues. As days piled up and became a week spent hiding at Rose’s house, movies had proved both an effective distraction to lure Karkat from his perpetual sulking, as well as a useful tool for expanding his vocabulary (though Jade needed to have words with whoever had the bright idea to let him watch Boondock Saints, as parts of his vocabulary had gotten a little too expanded).

Folding her skirt under her, she sat on the couch next to the alien, purposefully bumping his shoulder in a way she knew would get a half-hearted hiss of irritation out of him. It did, but his eyes never left the screen.

“Come on, jerk-face, I want to talk to you.”

He waved a hand at her, no words necessary to communicate that she should kindly fuck off. As he hadn’t thrown a punch at her yet, however, she persisted. “Kaaaarkaaaat,” she said, bouncing on the sofa cushions and shoving at his shoulder. In return she received a spitting hiss and swats that never connected.

With a roll of the eyes, she stood. Her last resort was standing in front of the TV, hands on her hips. After thwarting Karkat’s attempts to lean to either side to look around her, he finally grabbed the remote to pause the movie, then crossed his arms and met her eyes.

“What?”

His grumbling voice was perfect for communicating his irritation, but Jade smiled at his snarling face and bared teeth anyway. His vowels were becoming clearer and less swallowed; the difference between ‘uh’ and ‘ah’ and ‘ooh’ was more enunciated and easier to understand every day.

“I’ve got an executive order for you, so I need you to listen up!”

Though he quirked an eyebrow at ‘executive,’ he remained otherwise silent and disdainful.

“We need to figure out what we’re going to do from here, and that means you and John have to make a decision together. And that means,” she continued, raising her voice to plow right on over the snarling that erupted at John’s name, “that you need to get over yourself and start talking to him again!”

“Fuck that asslicking piece of garbage shit on the face!”

“In the face.”

“Fuck him in the face,” Karkat repeated, though it came out sounding more like ‘en.’ He looked off to the side, his mouth stretched in what Jade was sure was an attempt at a scowl, but she had difficulty interpreting it as anything but a pout.

“And, rude, Karkat! What is your deal!” Again she plopped down to the couch with him, placing herself in his line of sight. He turned his head again to escape her playful-but-firm reprimands, only for her to prop her elbow on his shoulder and lean on top of him, “Don’t you look away from me, mister! We’ve given you a lot of time to cool off, and none of us can pretend to really know what you’re going through, but you are acting like a big baby, and you won’t tell anybody why, so we don’t know how to help.” She thought she spied a twitch in the corner of his mouth, a softening to his frown, and she pressed on. “You let John calm you down when you wake up from bad dreams, but then you just try to hit him as soon as you’re actually awake!”

Even Jade could not bring Karkat back from a nightmare-induced panic attack. They’d tried, but it was about as effective as simply leaving the door shut and letting him work through it on his own. Despite Rose’s recommendations and Dave’s near insistence that they do just that, just ignore the noise for half an hour or forty-five minutes until Karkat realized it was all in his head, John continued to show up every time Karkat woke up screaming, putting up with frequent bloody noses those times the troll landed a lucky hit.

Nobody was really happy with the arrangement, least of all Karkat, who had attempted to forgo sleeping altogether. He’d managed somewhere close to 48 hours in one stretch before passing out midway through watching The Princess Bride, a testament to how exhausted he’d been, because how could anybody sleep through The Princess Bride unless they were at the very end of their rope?

“Maybe he’s stupid.” Karkat rolled his shoulder to try to dislodge the girl, but had no luck. Her tenacity was another trait shared between her and John. He may as well settle in for the long haul.

“Maybe you’re stupid,” Jade replied immediately, knowing even as she said it that they would get nowhere this way. She chewed her bottom lip, wondering if it was even possible to get Karkat to open up. But what had caused him to clam up in the first place? She remembered when he and John had first arrived, how the troll placed himself between John and any potential threats, how he hadn’t wanted John to leave his sight. He was still tolerating John that first night of pizza and movies, but it seemed that after waking up screaming a second time in the Lalonde household, he’d decided that Jade’s, Rose’s, or even Dave’s company was preferable to John’s.

She’d tried to coax the reason out of him, first when she began drawing things with the troll in order to clarify the meanings of words. Teaching him to write had been a logical progression, his name and her own in both their languages, and then she wrote John’s—but then, and all subsequent times, Karkat refused to elaborate on why he now found the other boy’s company unbearable. Jade’s attempts had changed from gentle questions to firm demands, even harsh reprimanding with a rolled up newspaper at one point, but no tactic could pry the reasons out of Karkat. By this point, even if he didn’t have the exact words, Jade was confident he could have spoken around the issue, or even drawn it out with the set of crayons Rose’s mother had kindly provided. It was no longer likely a language barrier was stopping him from sharing, only his mulish refusal to admit what the problem was.

She let her hands drop limply from Karkat’s shoulder, and it was this that caught his attention better than any of her other attempts. The sight of her pitiful, downcast face made Karkat fidget; in his haste to distract her from the disappointment he’d caused, he began to babble in his own language, and had even stuttered out an apology before he figured out he wasn’t speaking English.

“Karkat,” she soothed, catching his flailing hands, “Karkat, it’s okay. But nothing’s going to get fixed if you just avoid the problem. Running out of rooms when John shows up and throwing things at him isn’t going to fix whatever’s bothering you.”

He wiggled his fingers a little, testing Jade’s grip on his hands. As always her hold was loose and easily broken. As always he allowed the contact to remain.

“Maybe I want to don’t fix it.”

“Don’t want to fix it.”

“Maybe I don’t want to fix it.”

He regretted both the grammatical errors and the words themselves when he saw her give an unhappy sigh, slumping against the sofa and puffing up her cheeks in a moue. “I don’t know what to say, Karkat! You are so difficult!”

He fell against the couch’s back as well, mirroring her pose, their hands still linked. “Watch the more of Ladyhawke with me?”

“It’s the rest of Ladyhawke,” she corrected automatically, grinning despite herself. “And this is exactly what I am saying! We can’t just avoid the issue forever!”

“Watch the rest of Ladyhawke with me?”

“… Yeah, okay.”

The more Karkat understood English, the more he could not understand Dave Strider at all.

It was clear enough when he was being insulted, because even if the human’s face hardly ever changed expression and his voice remained flat, there was a certain intonation, a unique slap of rhythm aimed at Karkat, as pointed and direct as a bladed weapon against his skin. The words were fast and chopped fine, ones he never heard in all his movie marathoning, so that even when he could parse the sentence, replay it back in his mind, he came up with unfamiliar sound combinations and arrangements for which he had no definitions. Whatever “hooked on fonix” meant, Karkat had no idea, only that it made him want to punch Dave in the jaw.

If he were honest with himself, he admitted that he might have appreciated the blatant black flirtations before arriving on the worthless blue and green planet. That was one quadrant he hadn’t yet filled, and it had been a lucky break for him that their expedition would neatly overlap with the imperial drones making their rounds; having another sweep to find his kismesis, he could stall his inevitable culling for a little longer. Now that he was stranded on this shitheap of a planet, however, he was more than happy when Jade stepped up to play auspistice and made sure the two red-eyed boys didn’t sit near each other at meals, or fixed Dave with a disapproving look after one of his indecipherable insults, or lightly placed her fingers over Karkat’s curled fists when a growl started rolling up his throat.

For that first week sequestered in Rose’s hive, this arrangement was stable. Then Rose returned one evening from a three-hour shopping trip with her mother (Come now, Dave, we’ve discussed how close I am to civilization before. I would invite you to accompany me in order to see for yourself, but on the off-chance the road to my home is still under surveillance, it is best that we pretend this trip is nothing more than routine foraging.) and pushed a pair of cheap, plastic, red-rimmed sunglasses onto Karkat’s face, carefully hooking them over his ears. She stepped back to admire the effect, and while a small smile graced her face, Jade leaned over with an approving grin. The shades removed the washed-out chalk-dusted look from the too-bright light that humans preferred, and now Karkat saw Jade’s eyes were even greener than before, a neon hue impossible to be mistaken for the colour of blood. Karkat wondered if this was how humans saw normally. He blinked inquisitively at them before realizing they couldn’t see him do so.

“For your sensitivity to light, and to add a further layer to your disguise should you need to don it again.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised John didn’t think of sunglasses while you guys were still on the run!”

Karkat chose not to mention the two pairs he’d ruined out of raw anger that first night. The shape had been too close to Sollux’s, and John had offered the glasses to Karkat with a strained smile, and it wasn’t as though the human could have known what Sollux used to wear, not when the scientists kept them naked in cages. So John had brought two pairs of pants and two t-shirts and two pairs of sunglasses for the escapees, but there was only Karkat to clothe. Furious with loss, Karkat had snatched both pairs, crushed them in fists that were pounding at John’s chest, screamed and couldn’t find the capacity to care when the shards of lenses cut into his hands and candy red slicked his grip. Vriska and Equius and Sollux had all seen his blood and now they were dead, before he could even know if they would have decried and rejected him for his mutation.

It didn’t matter that John wasn’t the human who’d gunned the yellowblood down as they ran, he was just as guilty by virtue of being alive when Sollux wasn’t anymore. John had fallen under his fists, and Karkat had toppled with him. But when he pulled himself up, straddling the human who wasn’t even raising an arm to protect himself, Karkat’s wrath turned inward, seized every muscle and aborted every motion. His loose fists cradled the broken glasses and sat limp on John’s chest, while his shoulders shook and his chest felt like it might crack open and fall apart from all the impotent anger within. He’d found his muscles unwilling to continue to hold him up, found himself slowly slouching forward until his forehead rested on whatever inane neon-green symbol adorned the human’s shirt. He’d trembled continuously, the only motion he could afford that would not result in his coming apart completely.

For uncountable moments John had laid still beneath him, murmuring unknown human words that Karkat hadn’t understood at the time and could no longer remember now. When Karkat failed to move himself, with tentative motions John had righted the both of them, easing them to sit cross-legged on the sand and dirt. He’d set Karkat’s hands palm-up on his fuzzy pink human knees, and with a touch as light as a nervous gust of wind, plucked the shards from Karkat’s skin.

Thinking of John was accomplishing nothing but creeping tension up his back and making him want to grind his teeth. He focused, instead, on the sunglasses Rose had provided him. They were larger than Sollux’s had been, more square than oval, closer in shape to Dave’s than anything else. He ran a finger over the obnoxiously-coloured edge and grimaced, but he’d seen John bleed enough to know that the humans didn’t mean anything by the colour choice.

“Manners, Karkat!” Jade chimed.

He curled his lip a little, but obligingly turned to face Rose. “Thank you.”

She responded serenely, completely unbothered to his reluctance to show gratitude. Karkat wasn’t concerned with her seeming apathy to him, however, his attention caught by a blur of motion at the corner of his vision.

Rose’s mother (not a lusus?) and Dave both moved faster than any of the other humans, too quick for the eye to catch, frequently appearing behind him without warning, and then pretending they weren’t amused when they managed to spook him. “What you want!” Karkat would demand, and Rose’s mother would simply smile before vanishing on her way, infuriatingly unnerving in a way that definitely didn’t make Karkat want to find John and leave this hive far behind. Dave, on the other hand, consistently made Karkat wish he’d never said anything, because the response was always some rapid-fire English that the troll couldn’t decipher.

He caught the flash of blond hair that could have been either quick human darting by, and then a glimpse of bright red, Dave’s shirt sleeves. Neither girl seemed to have noticed him passing through, or if they had, weren’t acknowledging it.

Karkat pushed himself up and made his way to the doorway he’d seen the red vanish through. “Where are you going?” Jade asked behind him.

“Nothing,” Karkat grumbled, not bothering to turn back to face her, stomping determinedly after an elusive trail of shadows darting through his peripheral vision.

“That’s not the right word!” But she didn’t follow, choosing to remain with Rose.

It was in the observatory that Dave finally stopped to let Karkat catch up to him. They matched shaded glares, Dave’s mouth a thin line, Karkat raising his lip to show his fangs.

“Sup?”

Chapter Text

“And then he tried to tell me that he’s carnivorous, so he doesn’t need to eat carrots and berries and stuff, only it came out carneevrus, and I started giggling too much to tell him he’s full of shit!”

Even now as she relayed the conversation, Jade was giggling at the memory, and John could not help but chuckle himself. He was glad, too, that after that first pizza-induced shock to his system, Karkat had not had further issues with human food. Rose had hypothesized he hadn’t been fed terribly well before John had entered the picture (or even after) and that it would just take a little while to get his stomach used to processing real food again; so far her theory was proving correct.

“It sounds like he understands a whole lot more, now.”

“Oh, tons! I cannot believe how much he can say. I guess it goes to show what you can do when you really put your mind to it! Or when you don’t have any other options.”

John shifted, his fingers drumming an arrhythmic pattern out on his knees. Jade had shown up for a feelings jam, unannounced but never unwelcome. Now the two of them were seated on the edge of the mattress in the guest bedroom that had been set aside for John and Dave, though when had John peeked into the room, the blond had taken off for parts unknown. To John’s dismay, this was hardly an unusual occurrence for the past week. Sure, Dave had made use of the sleeping bag on the floor, he wasn’t flat out refusing to share the same space as John, but often John found himself falling asleep in a silent, empty room, then waking to just barely catch sight of his friend flashstepping to the hallway.

Of late, it seemed many things in reality were failing to match the scenarios John had dreamed up. He’d imagined nights where he and Dave lost sleep because they couldn’t help staying up and talking for hours, of anything and everything, as they had before on Pesterchum. Only now there would be the ease of John’s laughter replacing the emotes he’d thrown liberally into his text, the nearness where Dave could reach out and sock him in the shoulder for extreme amounts of silliness.

When John rolled over in bed at night, shifting from facing the wall try out his other side and see if maybe it would be easier to fall asleep that way, he did not see his best of bros grinning back at him, but Dave’s crumpled and empty sleeping bag.

In more than five years, John had never gotten into an argument with Dave. Their online conversations never left John uncomfortable or Dave irritated, no matter what the subject might have been. It was no biggie when John’s intense offense at all things Betty Crocker was easily ridiculed, Dave not understanding how the batterwitch was Serious Business, or if John unintentionally belittled the gravity of the code of honour that was the foundation of Dave’s martial arts training. They didn’t care much about religion or politics, but if they had, John was sure that even topics as heavy as those would have been as easy to talk about as shitty webcomics and Pen & Teller performances and upcoming summer movie releases.

But now that they’d met in person, John had somehow upset his best bro, and he had no idea what he’d done or how to talk it out to fix it. Or, if he were honest, he had no idea how to start the conversation that would, ideally, lead to resolution.

What if it didn’t? What if he tried to fix things and just made them worse? After all, how could he expect to be able to fix things if he didn’t know what he’d messed up in the first place?

And Jade was here with him now talking about his other best friend, who was also angry with him!

Having friends was hard, and John didn’t understand. Why was it that he now had to hear second-hand recountings of two of the most important people in his life? (He was happy to hear Jade tell him about Karkat’s progress, truly he was, only…)

“And even stuff he doesn’t get at first, you can explain to him a lot easier.” She fixed her eyes on John, who shrank back, knowing where she was headed. “Which means that the two of you have no excuse anymore for not talking!”

“I know, I know. It’s just…”

“No buts!” She smacked his forehead, just hard enough to startle him into falling backward. He tilted his head up to see her cross her arms over her chest and glare. “It has been a week, and every time you tell Rose and me that you’re going to talk to Karkat and Dave, and then it’s all, ‘Karkat punched me in the snout, I think now’s a bad time!’ or ‘Dave looked like he was busy being cool, I’ll try again tomorrow!’ And then,” just as he sat back up, she was jabbing at his chest with her finger, “and then, you ask me and Rose to tell you how they’re doing, when you could have had this figured out five days ago! You could be looking at Karkat in his cute new sunglasses right now!”

“His cu—what? How did you even get him to wear sunglasses in the first place?”

Jade’s expression had been growing steadily more predatory, requiring increasingly large applications of Mangrit for John not to give into the urge to flee, but at his question her eyes popped wide like bubbles, threatening air dissipated instantly. “We just gave them to him, John! It wasn’t rocket science.”

He wanted to point out that yes, it kind of was—and there was a joke to be had in there about rockets and Karkat coming from outer space, he just knew it—but a compressing cold was spreading through him, unexpected and swift as a power outage. All his happiness that Karkat at least got along with Jade and Rose was blacked out, replaced with unfamiliar envy. He groped blindly for some logic to shine into that intimidating abyss of new feelings, only to come up short.

What did it mean that he’d given up so much for Karkat, only to be given up himself? It shouldn’t matter—he’d saved a life, there was nothing more valuable, he hadn’t done it for anything but that it was the right thing to do. He hadn’t done it for Karkat’s gratitude, and if Karkat didn’t want to spend any more of that life with John then that—that was fine. It was okay! John was okay with that.

Above all, he was not jealous of Jade and Rose, he didn’t begrudge Jade for taking over his role as Karkat’s language teacher, and he did not feel the clench of resentment when he saw that Rose could set a hand on the troll’s shoulder without earning a growl. There was no way, no how, no distant possibility that he would ever feel anything even remotely like that for his best sisters. He was nothing but pleased that Karkat, slowly but surely, was coming to trust and accept at least two of the five humans who didn’t want him locked in a cage in a government facility.

He gave Jade a smile that was lukewarm at best. “I guess when you put it that way, it is pretty simple.”

“That’s right! In fact,” Jade’e eyes narrowed, her predator’s gaze returned in full force, “none of this is as complicated as you’re making it out to be!”

“What’s not?” He got no response; the time for feelings jam was past. Her small fingers clamped down on his left wrist, tugging at the same time she rose to her feet to pull John up with her. “Um, Jade?”

“What?” she asked, but didn’t bother to look back, dragging him along behind her. “I saw Karkat heading this way earlier, come on, let’s go!”

Later, John would say that he’d recognized the truth of her words and gone willingly. This lie would neatly hide the fact that when he dug his heels in to the floor, Jade had not even noticed, plowing forward and pulling him behind her, carefree and easy as if he were no more than a stumbling kite.

Karkat’s fingers twitched and groped reflexively for the familiar handles of his sickles. Momentarily he forgot the fact that he was clothed in Jade’s shirt and John’s shorts, and therefore didn’t have his chosen weapons hanging from the belt at his hip; then, once reminded, he tried to ignore the memory of the human scientists prying them from his weak grip.

As always, he was unsuccessful at preventing the unwanted memories from playing out in their entirety behind his eyes.

It didn’t stop him from trying to force himself to forget, focusing instead on the human before him. Dave was relaxed, leaning against a wall with his hands in his pockets, the perfect picture of perpetual nonchalance. By all appearances he was completely unarmed, not even equipped with natural defenses of claws and horns and teeth, and Karkat’s anger grew at the fact that he felt intimidated in spite of the human’s unthreatening appearance. Standing hunched forward, claws bared, stance low, he was hyper-aware of how Dave’s casual bearing contrasted with his own. Yet he was completely incapable of forcing his posture to one less aggressive, instincts overruling logical thought when he tried.

Dave observed the troll in return, silence stretching between them as his initial greeting went ignored. Though inhuman, Vantas’s features had never been particularly difficult to read, his expressions translating perfectly when words failed to. Currently there was no recognition or comprehension on that round, gray face, only apprehension. While Dave thought that a dumbstruck expression particularly suited the alien’s dumb face, it would present a certain setback to his plan. “Let me make clear that I could not give a single fuck if you think you’re too good to give me a hollaback, but this is going to get sincerely awkward if you honestly just don’t get what I’m saying. So much as I anticipate I will regret inviting you to talk, I gotta know if this is about as productive as having a conversation with a smuppet. How much of that did you understand?”

“I understand,” said Karkat, carefully picking out his words like he was shopping for fruits at the market, gotta check each and every one for freshness, “that you’re a mother fucking dick.”

Dave was glad he’d slipped Boondock Saints into the troll’s movie pile. It was still stupidly easy to dance verbal circles around the alien, but at least now he had a modicum of an arsenal to fight back.

“Yeah, your mom understands plenty about my dick,” he replied absently, contemplating the best way to get his point across while he watched the troll’s nose scrunch up in confusion and distaste. Reiteration would probably be necessary, but he could work with that; you could build up some good verses on repetition.

Who the hell was he kidding, this was going to be physically painful.

But hopefully more so for the alien than for him.

He pushed away from the wall, taking a few steps closer to the troll and noticing, not without satisfaction, how Vantas’s fingers twitched anxiously again, and how he planted his feet firmly in trepidation.

“I’m going to make this clear for you, one way or another. I am going to speak slowly and use words so small that Lalonde would probably gut me and crochet something out of my still warm innards if she knew how few syllables were being uttered under her roof,” he began, already slowing his tempo and inwardly grimacing from it. “I am going to reduce the metaphors like they’re employee wages at Wal-Mart. I am going to use insults so uncreative that frat boys will weep, and I am going to form the smallest fucking sentences, subject verb object, just for you. So you had better listen and listen good, you achromatic alien asshole.”

At, ‘alien,’ the troll snarled, a deep throaty sound accompanied by a flash of teeth, animalistic in a way that no human, not even Jade’s furry friends, could hope to achieve.

Dave was entirely unperturbed by the naked show of aggression. “I don’t know what the fuck your deal is with John—” surprise of all surprises, another snarl here— “and I do not give a shit, either. What I do know is that, here on Earth—the fucking planet you’re on now—we don’t show gratitude by giving dudes the cold shoulder and punching them in the face repeatedly. When a guy throws everything away to save your life, you show a little god damn appreciation.” He paused here, resetting his mental metronome back to the sluggish pace he’d deemed necessary for Vantas’s understanding. “You getting any of this, or do I need to take a page out of Jade’s book and break out the crayons, draw you a play-by-play?”

The alien’s ridiculous red-rimmed shades didn’t do much to obscure his growing unease. The, “Fuck you,” he threw at Dave was gravelly and garbled, and the blond contemplated whether this conversation would need a follow-up with Vantas in a headlock until he proved that he could pick up what Dave was putting down.

“You don’t have any fucking inkling of what he gave up to save your sorry ass, do you?” Dave heard his words accelerating again, but decided that the troll could just deal with it. “I wasn’t even going to apply to college if he hadn’t talked me into it, how high do you even have to be to get that excited about paying thousands of dollars to go to more school? And now he can’t go because he’s a fugitive. Because of you. Shit, and I bet he knew we were all headed to the same city, it would be just like his dumb prankster’s gambit to think it’s funny to keep that kind of thing a secret until we fucking got off the plane.”

The distance between them was closing, Dave advancing as he spoke and the troll refusing to back up, a steady growl rising the closer Dave got. He stopped only when he was uncomfortably inside Vantas’s persona bubble, looking down on those nubby little horns, the tiny ridges and subtler colour variations visible from this close.

“You owe John your stupid little life.” Dave’s voice was low, almost entirely buried under the volume of the troll’s growl. “If it weren’t for you, he’d be finishing up his internship, getting ready to meet me and Rose and Jade for the first time—if it weren’t for you, he’d still have all his teeth.” Rose would probably have something to say about victim blaming, in addition to the average syllable count of each word, Dave thought, but he didn’t let that stop him. He was making a point here. “You are a repulsive little dipshit, and you’ve ruined John’s life. Do you understand?”

Karkat’s growl wavered and trickled down to nothing, his tense hunch falling into a slouch. “Shut up,” he grumbled, more plea than command.

“I asked if you understand. Do you get that if it weren’t for you, John’s life would be immeasurably better? It’s a yes or no question, you can manage that much.”

“Yes! I know!” Karkat lashed out, pushing Dave square in the chest, sending both of them back a few steps. “I know I fuck up everything!”

Dave brushed off his shirt, letting the outburst slide. “Yeah? ‘Cause you sure as shit aren’t acting it. What are you gonna do to make it up to John?”

Karkat’s hands clenched and he drew himself up, though his face was tilted down and to the side. Dave leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. This had better be good, or they would be having even more words. They’d have all the words, if that was what it took to drive the point home.

Both of them heard John and Jade’s voices at the same time, and Karkat’s mouth snapped shut, sharp teeth interlocking audibly. Dave had just enough time to say, “Protip: you can start by apologizing for being a huge douche,” before Jade threw the door open.

“This is great!” she declared, tugging John through the doorway behind her. “They’re both here!”

“They were here alone, and nobody’s unconscious?” John quipped, a nervous grin twitching across his face.

Apparently Vantas disagreed with Jade’s assessment of the situation’s greatness. He didn’t even wait for John to clear the door before he pushed the human aside, rushing out of the observatory. Dave’s eyes narrowed, but before he even could flashstep after the fleeing alien, Jade had let go of John’s hand and turned on her heel. “What the hell, Karkat! Get back here!” She went tearing after him, abandoning John and Dave, her shouts of “Fuckass!” fading with her rapid footfalls.

John shook his hand out, eyes drifting after Jade, his apprehensive grin dropping as Dave watched. “What was all that about?” His unfocused gaze slipped to Dave for a nanosecond before crashing to the floor. “Were you guys talking or something?”

“Nah.” Dave slouched back, hands falling to rest his thumbs in his belt loops. “It was nothing.”

Rose set her knitting down in her lap and watched, eyebrows raised, as Karkat barreled past, Jade hot on his heels.

“You had better march back up there right the fuck now, mister! I am not dealing with another week of you pretending we have time for this bullshit!”

“No don’t want!”

“Don’t care, you’re going to talk to John and like it!”

She pushed the needles and yarn aside, settling them on the arm of the plush loveseat, and stood, stretching, before she followed them into the kitchen. Karkat had maneuvered so that the table was between him and Jade, and his hands gripped the back of a chair tightly, as though he were prepared to use it as a last resort to keep the girl at arms’ length. When Jade feinted to the side, Karkat jerked towards the opposite direction, the two of them locked in a stalemate.

Over the past week, Rose had been amazed to observe how Karkat’s actions and reactions indicated either a culture impossibly similar to her own, or an incredible skill for near instantaneous analysis and mimicry. Were so many gestures and expressions truly universal, or was Karkat an extraterrestrial mockingbird, aping John and Jade with uncanny success? Body language, after all, made up more than half of face-to-face communication, but Karkat’s only discernable language troubles so far were oral. He picked up on and broadcasted facial cues without any of the hesitation that accompanied his attempts at speaking.

It was, in fact, harder and harder to think of him as ‘alien’ or ‘inhuman,’ as days went on. Despite unavoidable evidence of his otherworldly origins any time she so much as glanced at him, the week had not revealed significant differences that were more than cosmetic. Rose found it increasingly difficult to think of him as another species, rather than a palette-swapped human with bonus content in the shape of candy-corn horns and increased surface area of the ears. Of course she knew he was an alien, but it was less of a constant conscious thought and more something she had to recall, much like if somebody inquired of her age; it was a fact that she knew upon prompting, but not one she was regularly reviewing at the forefront of her thoughts if it was not otherwise brought to her attention.

(The whole thing, she thought ruefully, was far too alike the novels she had read as a younger teenager. So many elves and demons and supposedly fantastical ethereal races populated the pages of her favourite fantasies, but were nothing more than prettily packaged and rebranded humans. Oh, maybe they lived longer lives, perhaps they communed with nature or drew upon the darkness of mankind, possibly they had different teeth and unusual eyes and so many other superfluous qualities, but in the end their humanity and the power of love was what saved the day, without fail.)

“You talk to him!”

“No, Karkat, I am sick of being the middle woman! Rose and her mom have the market cornered on passive aggressive horseshit, you are not allowed to act this petty and cowardly! –Oh, hi Rose. –Don’t you try to slink away, I’m still yelling at you!” She pinned Karkat with a fierce glare, and he froze in the middle of a dash to the door.

Rose walked around toward the refrigerator, pointedly ignoring how Karkat skittered away from her while still attempting to keep the table between Jade and himself. She perused the selection of cold drinks—a container of apple juice sat untouched in the door, next to a few bottles of wine. Still not acknowledging the troll warily eying her—still so easy to read, even with the shades—she pulled out three cans of Blue Sky natural soda and moved to stand next to Jade.

“Tag out?” she asked, handing Jade one of the cold cans.

Jade’s grin was equal parts grateful and sinister. “Yeah, I think he’s pretty much earned a turn under the psychological microscope!” Rose held up a hand, and Jade gave her an enthusiastic and loud high five. The blonde pulled a face and shook her hand out, then turned to finally fix her stare on Karkat, watching the way he curled in on himself. If Rose was correct in interpreting his actions through her human perspective, he tended toward trying to make himself smaller, pulling in his limbs and hunching over, when he felt vulnerable or intimidated. (It wasn’t a gesture that was in John’s vocabulary, nor Jade’s, which was a point against the theory that Karkat was copying from observed behaviours.)

On the other hand, the few times she’d seen him around John, he was all broad gestures and bristling at his full height, noisy and fearless anger.

She tossed the third can to the troll, who fumbled, startled, to catch it.

“Come on,” she said, nodding her head toward the living room. Without waiting to see if he would flee or follow, she returned to her seat, setting her drink on the coffee table and picking her knitting back up. She only had to wait a few moments before she saw Karkat slink past Jade; at Rose’s gesture, he sat on the edge of the sofa, guarded and chary. He set his soda can carefully to the side—he’d already had one explode in his face after Dave tossed it to him, and clearly didn’t trust it any more if it came from Rose rather than Dave.

Jade hovered in the doorway, sipping her soda and staring intently. Rose imagined the girl twitching muscles, a cat ready to pounce at the first sign that Karkat was being… well, more uncooperative than usual, she supposed, much as it wasn’t something that could be quantified.

She did, however, allow herself a moment of satisfaction, savouring the fact that she had her subject on an actual couch. If only Dave were not busy being emotionally constipated with John, he would have enjoyed the irony with her.

She sat back, knitting needles once again clacking regularly, though her eyes stayed on the troll. “I had hoped to allow you and John the space to sort through your mutual issues naturally, but it is simply no longer reasonable to continue dawdling here. We need to take action, and for that, you need to at least pretend you can deal with John.”

Karkat snorted, nose scrunched and teeth bared, as he hunched forward and crossed his arms. “Why?”

“Do I need to enumerate the merits of teamwork?”

Karkat shook his head viciously. “Not… not a team. Only me. Problem is me… mine.”

Rose tilted her head and began a new row in her knitting. “Do you truly not understand that John is just as much a fugitive of the law as you?”

He flexed his fingers, tugging Jade’s shirt tight over his arms, tension in his muscles highlighted under the ill-fitting fabric. His head was bowed forward, ragged fringe and dark glasses hiding half his face.

“I understand.” The gravel in his voice fought with the careful effort he was expending to enunciate his vowels, and he cleared his throat. “I leave, take problem to me. John will be not fugitive without me.”

Jade’s hand clapped over her mouth, eyes wide behind her glasses. Rose’s needles stilled and went silent. She lowered the knitting to her lap.

“Karkat, I need you to look at me. Head up. Look, over here. Are you watching?” When the red-rimmed glasses were directed her way, Rose very purposefully, and with great exaggeration, rolled her eyes. Karkat’s mouth flattened in a frown. “As sarcasm seems either not universal, or too difficult to translate at this juncture, it is costing me extreme effort to be direct with you right now. Please listen when I say, with genuine sincerity, that what you have just proposed is a horrible idea.”

“Why?” demanded Karkat. “Why horrible?! I fuck up John’s life, I leave for he be not fugitive! Is my words not right?”

“Your grammar structure is absolutely appalling right now, but that is hardly the issue.” Rose leaned back in her chair, resuming her knitting. “Admittedly, I am bothered very little by your being under the impression that you would be able to get anywhere without John’s help. The fact that you would either die or get recaptured immediately does not upset me even half as much as knowing how it would kill John.”

The last two words she spoke jolted visibly through the troll. His eyebrows rose above his shades, and his mouth dropped open, as he fixed a clearly shocked gaze on Rose.

“Did you really think so little of him that you expect him to give any less than everything? He is in this to the end. He will not stop until you are not only okay, but safe and happy.” Even as she watched him sag under the weight of the words, she asked, “Do you understand, or do I need to rephrase?” It would be best, she considered, not to give him room to dodge her point by claiming he hadn’t known what she was saying.

When he muttered foreign words in response, Rose tried not to visibly perk up. Karkat tended toward silence when he couldn’t readily form his sentences in English; she’d had rare opportunities to hear his native language. He was grumbling quietly, but the gruff sounds he made lent themselves to a lower voice. There were growls deep in his throat, and no wonder he had trouble differentiating between “in” and “an” if he’d spoken all his life with so few enunciated vowels. Rose had previously thought her interest in linguistics was limited to the application of English in prose form, but now she wondered if a study in foreign languages and the history of the development spoken word might be worth pursuing after all.

“Could I get that again in translation?” she asked, a hint of flippancy in her tone.

Karkat snorted, but switched back to English, though she had know way of knowing if he truly complied with her request or not. “You remember me of somebody. Always meddling.” He threw in an extra frown as he added, “Always giving bad advice.”

In response, Rose tsk’d. “You cannot verify that statement unless you actually enact it.” At his puzzled look, she reworded, “You don’t know it’s bad advice until you try it.”

Karkat “hmph”ed and glanced toward the door. Jade had disappeared, and Rose wondered if she’d gone running to alert John to Karkat’s intentions to leave. Likely the troll had the same thought; he rose from the couch, gave Rose a scowl as if daring her to say more, and walked to the door.

Rose was not in the habit of responding to dares. As a younger teenager, she had dismissed them as juvenile wastes of time, as part and parcel of her charming attitude which had endeared her to her schoolmates. (Oh, how appealing, somebody commands you to do something dumb, and you lose if you fail to perform. That certainly sounds like the most enjoyable of pastimes.) No, it was not the challenge presented in Karkat’s clenched fists and titled chin which drew her response.

“If you give up now,” she warned, “you invalidate everything he’s done for you. It will all have been for nothing. And,” here she smirked, narrowed eyes and dark satisfaction, “Jade will be angry with you as well.” It was equal parts threat and promise. She couldn’t see if Karkat’s eyes went wide under the dark glasses, but she did see his mouth tighten.

He might have stood at the door forever, frozen between fear of Jade’s retribution and terror of John’s affection, if John hadn’t made such a racket barreling down the stairs. As soon as they heard the stampede of teenage boy headed toward the living room, Karkat bolted. Rose watched her front door slam shut, and acknowledged that she was, truth be told, irritated to have her advice disregarded so thoroughly.

The architecture of Rose’s home had left the observatory secluded and distant. It was only seconds after Jade left that a complete silence settled. None of the other noises that would indicate the house’s other inhabitants made it into the observatory, no squeaking floors nor slamming doors. The sounds of other residents going about their own business on other stories was something Dave had grown up with in his small apartment, and learned to tone out. When it was not present, however, the absence came near to unnerving him, at least as near as anything could come to unnerving a Strider. There was only John in the quiet, fingers playing over the hard edges of his cast in lieu of wringing his hands. He was overfull of nervous energy, like he’d cooked up a full course meal of anxiety, enough trepidation to feed an army when the box only advertised it served two.

He was fully expecting John to toe at the ground and fiddle and stall for another ten minutes; it caught him flat footed when his friend burst ahead of schedule with an exclamation, “I’m sorry!”

Dave only just caught himself from uselessly blurting out, You what? He was beyond grateful that his wide eyes remained hidden behind his shades, and John mistook his bewildered silence for cool consideration.

He was rushing to explain, “I should have talked to you way sooner, but I mean, I don’t know what I did exactly, but I’m sorry about it!” Now he was flailing his arms about, big sweeping motions as he unleashed a windstorm of apologies. “I didn't mean to drag this out so long! And I maybe kind of have an idea of what I did to make you mad, but what if that’s not right at all and I totally did something else to tick you off and I never even realized?”

Dave held up a hand. “Slow down before you smack yourself in the face with that cast.” John stilled, looking at his arm as though he’d forgotten it was broken, before giving Dave a sheepish grin. Except for the gap in his teeth, it was a sight Dave had seen countless times on webcam chats, and the blond held on to that, grounding himself with the familiarity of John’s awkwardness. “Now. Backtrack like it’s Back To The Future and you’ve got a DeLorean. Why do you have this idea that I’m ticked off with something you did?”

He was grateful to hear John’s tone lose the frantic edge it had carried moments before and switch to incredulous. “Uh, because you won’t talk to me, or even stay in the same room as me for longer than you have to? That’s kind of not how being best bros works!” But now John’s eyebrows—still dark under that dyed carrot hair—were drawn up, his face pulled in worry which slipped into his voice. “And I hope you’re just gonna tell me I’m being dumb, but it makes me wonder if you still wanna be my best bro.”

“Well then allow me to make all your hopes and dreams come true when I say shit, yes, you are the very dumbest.”

Dave had once, long ago, wondered why John seemed to get so happy at being insulted. The grin alighting on his face now was not an atypical response to such a statement. Eventually Dave had figured it out, the simple fact that John knew better than Dave himself which words Dave actually meant.

Of course, it didn’t work if Dave avoided him entirely. How was John supposed to interpret his words if he withheld them all?

“Wait, no, belay that. I’m the dumbest, it’s me. I should be the one apologizing here, way to steal my thunder Egbert. You big prima donna.” That garnered a small chuckle out of his friend, and Dave secretly stored away the warmth he felt in his chest, keeping his expression flat. “Between you and Vantas, it’s like everybody wants in my spotlight. I better step back for a hot minute, now I’m not the only red-eyed bro in your life, gotta share the stage. Can’t just be me singing solo the whole time, the crowd’s gotta have something a little sub-par to compare to my performance now and again.”

“Dave!” John tried to interject, but wound sabotaging his own attempts to interrupt Dave, laughing when he tried to talk. Generously, the coolkid refrained from continuing, giving John a moment to compose himself.

Huh. He hadn’t realized John was so close that he could grab Dave’s shoulder to support himself.

Laughter subsided, John turned those unfocused eyes on him. “What if… what if the crowd thought, since your performance is so good, the audience worried you might move on to bigger venues? Leave your old haunts behind and sign on for a world tour?”

“Man you just cannot help yourself, gotta muck up all my metaphors.” The corner of Dave’s mouth quirked upward and he reached over to ruffle John’s hair.

“Sorry! Guess it’s just easier for me to talk about things the way they really are. I’ve gotta call a spade a spade, you know?” He batted Dave’s hand away, and reached over to return the treatment, but found himself stumbling over when Dave was suddenly standing on the other side of the room. He straightened up, undeterred, “And I know that talking about your feelings violates your code of irony, expressly forbidden by rules four to thirteen, but… if you weren’t mad at me, then what was wrong?”

“Look,” Dave shrugged, “it’s not as big a deal as all that. Vantas pisses me off. That’s pretty much all there is to say on the matter.”

“Oh man. Dave.” He had not expected John to start smiling at the admission that Dave hated his alien convict buddy, but there it was, that mischievous prankster’s shit-eating grin. “Dave. Are you jealous?”

Dave was either not fast enough, or too quick with his disdainful denial. John had scented blood, or rather, his prankster’s gambit had; he would not be so easily dissuaded. Even now he was crossing the room to Dave. “You totally are! Aw, bro!”

The blond punched John in the arm, but only earned a chuckle for his troubles.

“Dave, Karkat’s not competing with you for Best Bro Of The Year or anything! You are definitely my best bro forever. If you were stuck on another planet and I could save you but I had to give up everything to do it, you know I’d be there in a heartbeat!”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Yeah, but I only mean it for you.”

Dave felt an embarrassingly large grin fighting to claim territory on his face. Worse, it was proving impossible to quash down.

Then again, what would it hurt to let John see him have a sincere display of emotion?

“John! Karkat’s leaving!”

Jade burst into the observatory, throwing open the door and drawing John’s attention. Dave tilted his head away and stomped down the rising grin.

“What?”

“He’s being so stupid and I am fed up with it!”

John started toward the door, then froze, turning to look to Dave. Poker face solidly reinstated, he waved a hand at John, shooing him off. “Go on, your alien homocrush needs you.”

“Dave!” John scrunched up his nose and stuck out his tongue, making exaggerated “bluh” noises, while Jade hid a smile behind her hands. Still he hesitated.

“You know I’m not picking one of you over the other, right?”

“Oh my god, who would even be that stupid?” Both boys turned their gazes toward Jade, who rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “Duuuuuh! Dave is actually capable of taking care of himself. Karkat needs your help. It’s not even a choice! God! Why is everybody so dumb today?” She put her hands on her hips, then raised an eyebrow at John. “Why are you still standing there!? Get the fuck out and go get Karkat!”

John raised his cast, threw a salute to them both, and got the fuck out.

Chapter Text

The sun had just begun to fall when Rose first stalled him. Now, as he ran outside and away from her hive, it was no longer visible, leaving Karkat’s surroundings cast in highblood blue twilight. Above him was a spill of stars, which logically he knew weren’t the same as those he’d grown up with, but he’d never given enough of a damn about astrology and constellations to recognize any at home, and the unfamiliarity of the ones he saw now had no impact on him. Fireflies in the grass and scattered through surrounding trees mirrored the sky, blinking lights surrounding him on all sides.

Behind him came the noises of John’s frantic bumblings. The human seemed not to notice how he tripped with every other step he took, but pressed onward with a blind determination that was far more well-known to Karkat than any starry sky. They both were aware that, even disregarding John’s blurred vision, Karkat was the one who saw clearly in the dark. The troll had all the advantages; if he decided to flee now from John’s slow fumbling pursuit, the human would never catch him. Maybe John had forgotten in the heat of the moment, but Karkat knew, at least, that it would be the easiest thing since arriving on this planet, to dodge behind a tree and out of sight, then creep silently away until he was far enough that he couldn’t hear John stumble, until he couldn’t see the human go down in a whirlwind of flailing limbs only to push himself up and brush his knees off and smear the (bright, bright red) blood already dripping down one leg. He could just never look back, until he didn’t have to acknowledge ever again that there was one human who wasn’t terrible. He could push from his mind the fact that if he had the choice of steering Her Imperial Condescension's imperial battleship here, if he had the clearance to bring the spacecraft within range, if he had the opportunity to fire the lasers and reduce this planet to nothing more than a second asteroid belt in this stupid solar system, if he had the chance, he wouldn’t take it, not as long as he knew John was here.

“Karkat! Wait, please!”

Even before he’d ever told his team that this planet was the one they’d target, he had a history of making poor choices. His legs stopped moving, and he stood, exposed and waiting, while John tore frantically through bushes and nettles to close the gap between them.

“Karkat,” John gasped as he got closer, but had to stop to catch his breath, leaning forward with his hands on his knees and taking deep and loud lungfuls that, Karkat thought, seemed exaggerated for the short distance he’d run. John straightened before his breaths had entirely evened out, mouth hanging open and showing off that gap in his teeth.

(Karkat was starting to suspect that human teeth didn’t grow back.)

The troll braced himself for when John met his gaze (or tried to, through the sunglasses). Understanding human facial expressions was not so new and different and difficult as understanding human language. They didn’t bare their teeth as often as trolls would, but the instinct was still there; he’d observed Jade nearly growling at him when he was being particularly obstinate. In the fading light and through his dark glasses, Karkat could still make out every detail of the planes of John’s face without difficulty.

Expressions didn’t seem to matter a whit, however, when it came to this particular human. It didn’t make any difference to the squeezing feeling invading Karkat’s internal organs whether John’s alien eyes were wide or squinting, or whether his mouth was drawn in a tight line or grinning so wide it pushed his cheeks up. Looking at his dumb face making any expression at all was enough to send a churning twist of icy anxiety through Karkat’s torso, traveling up from stomach to chest in a parody of the motion he’d normally use for disemboweling an enemy with his sickles. He only registered belatedly how John’s eyebrows were drawn in, the corners of his mouth pulled unhappily down, and his words slurred and obscured with a desperation, the source of which Karkat couldn’t understand any more than he could parse John’s sentences when they were that rushed and frantic.

He could pluck out little words, his own name, and “why” and “for you” and “forever” and “help!” But the rest jumbled and piled on top of each other, and by the time he’d translated one there were fifteen more pushing and shoving for his attention. While the efforts of comprehending John’s rapid babbling dizzied his think pan, John had grabbed his hands, a firm grip that didn’t hurt when John squeezed, only felt warm and comforting like falling into a pile with Kanaya.

“Jesus, Karkat, why are you so angry at me? I know you’re probably more homesick than I’ve ever been in my life, and I swear I’d totally help you get back home if I could, you know that right? I just want to help and be there for you forever, and if you hate me then that—that’s fine but at least let me help!”

Karkat could see, in the soft here-and-there glow of the fireflies, little wet droplets building up in the corners of John’s eyes. He tugged at his hands, and John tugged back, holding on tight.

“John,” he growled, warningly, but the grip on his hands did not relent. Even John’s weak fingers poking out from his cast were wrapped firmly around Karkat’s own.

“Rose said you’re probably never going to be happy as long as you have to depend on me, or something like that, and the more I think about it the more it makes sense, because it makes everything off balance, like you’re stuck with me, like you don’t have a choice about it, not if you want to be safe, and Karkat, I don’t want you to feel like you’ve got to stay with me forever and ever, I just want you to know that you can count on me for anything forever!”

“John,” he repeated, feeling his fingers curl, seeking to dig claws into pale human flesh. Whatever the boy was saying, he obviously felt it was important, but Karkat’s building frustration was providing just as much a deterrent to translation now. The last few words ran clear in his mind, but the rest was a bundle of meaningless building noise.

“Please, Karkat,” John pleaded.

The troll shifted one of his feet back, and with a twist from hips to shoulders, tore his hands from John’s grip. Unprepared for the motion, John stumbled forward; Karkat caught him and shoved him with more force than necessary to stand straight. Hands free, he reached up to remove his shades so John could see just how furious he was, forgetting that in the low light the human could barely even make out his silhouette. Still, John backed up a baby step, letting his arms fall to his sides.

“I can count on you for anything forever?” Karkat parroted back, lip rising in a sneer.

“Of course, Karkat!”

“Then why,” he snarled, gathering his words to deliver them properly and hating his inarticulacy in this language, “why did you not kill me when I asked?”

John’s smile, nervous and thin as it had been, broke under the question, his earnest hope crumpling before Karkat’s narrowed eyes. “Karkat,” he tried, but his voice was no more steady that the emotions playing out on his face, falling between sob and whisper.

“You think I not serious? You think I say I want you to kill me, I really saying I want going back to hell?” Karkat ignored how John took a full step back, how he started to raise his arms as though to fend off a blow. He’d wanted to say this ever since that first night, once the euphoria of being rescued had faded, once the full scope of his situation had sunk in. Hell, he probably should have taken things into his own hands and secreted a knife from the kitchen—they were dull so it would probably take a little hacking, but he was sure he could have managed to do enough damage to do himself in. And yet, there was that insistent and illogical hope that stopped him from acting on the urge, that when the humans talked about whatever plans they were making, that maybe he wouldn’t have to go back to where John had found him, that maybe there was the remote possibility of a future where they wouldn’t live constantly mired in fear and paranoia.

“But—but it worked out all right, didn’t it? We’re here now, we’re going to be okay!”

“You weren’t know that when we were in police van,” Karkat pointed out, trying to focus on the pleasure he felt at seeing John flinch, rather than the guilt that was slowly pooling in his gut. “You were wait too long, you were let humans take me back.”

“No—god, Karkat, I’d never—”

“You were!”

“No!”

Karkat was caught off guard when John surged forward, the clumsy shove from his uninjured arm catching the troll in the shoulder and sending him down to land hard on his ass. He stared in confusion at the stars above, only just registering the thump as John fell to his knees next to the troll.

“I—I didn’t mean to do that, but you probably deserve it for punching me so many times! No, you definitely deserve it, you’re not even bleeding.”

Karkat had to grant that John had a point, but it didn’t much sooth his anger. He pushed himself onto his elbows and glared at the human.

“Anyway, of course I didn’t want to kill you, you asshole!” Karkat opened his mouth to interject, but John rolled right over him, gesturing widely enough that Karkat had to jerk his head back to avoid being smacked in the teeth with his cast. “I care about you! Like, way more than I should for somebody who I only saw for the first time a month ago, and who I’ve only been able to get to know for two weeks of that, and who’s given me, like, a bloody nose every other day!” Karkat wanted to turn his head away at that, the pool of guilt in his stomach expanding to something a bit more like a sizeable lake, bubbling up his throat like nausea. “I’m so scared of losing you, Karkat, and I don’t get it, when Jade said you were leaving…”

Karkat pulled himself to sit cross legged, which freed his arms so that he could reach for John’s hand. Their palms slid comfortably together, fingers casually intertwining.

John had thoughtlessly grabbed his hand when they first made their break for freedom, and then yelped so loud he blew their cover, when Karkat’s claws jabbed his soft palm. But he’d never stopped trying to hold the troll’s hand, to pull him along when they ran, to direct him without words, or sometimes just to compare the two of them. Karkat, too, didn’t understand how at just two weeks, holding the human’s hand was the comfort of safety, the interlocking perfect fit of two gears made for each other, familiar like they’d known each other for sweeps.

Jade’s hands on his were light and calming, the reassurance that he could leave whenever he wanted, which he never did. But John’s…

The human was watching him, blue eyes huge and hopeful, fighting to keep a smile off his face.

Karkat didn’t have the words in English, so he didn’t bother.

“You make me so mad,” he said, the easy Alternian sliding off his tongue. Despite the language switch, John didn’t stop watching him, intently staring and for all appearances avidly listening.

Then John did the thing where his thumb rubbed back and forth over Karkat’s knuckles, and everything inside Karkat bubbled over, a frothing overflowing boil of words John would never comprehend.

“I’m stuck on this stupid, miserable, worthless mudball for the rest of my stupid, miserable, worthless life. I’ve got to learn your dumb, ass-backwards language, because there’s no point to teaching you how to speak properly, not when the only person you’d ever talk to is me, and you’d just mangle the consonants anyway. I’d never say any of this if I knew you could understand it. I’m going to start thinking in English if we stay alive long enough, I’m going to start forgetting words in Alternian because I’ll never use them anymore and your dumb English words will kick them right the fuck out of my think pan. I hate that. I hate knowing I owe you everything. Without you I’d still be dying, fuck, even the subjugglators would have shown me more mercy than that. Fuck. I still wish I had died sometimes instead of being alive to have flushed feelings for a human, I should be content to pine away hopelessly for Terezi forever instead of wanting you, you putrid pink sack of candy red blood. I hate the way you don’t fucking get it, you don’t give up when anybody sensible would just throw in the towel already. I hate that you’re a human, did I go over that yet? It makes me want to puke forever, you’re so hideous that I could just barf up a fucking ocean, I’m just that repulsed knowing that you have anything in common at all with those bastards that killed Sollux. And I want to pretend you’re not, that you’re just your own moronic species, because how else can you be so fucking nice? It’s so dumb, it’s… it’s fucking wonderful, you make me wish I had Eridan’s rifle so I could shoot myself in the foot twice when I notice how sappy I feel when you look at me. How am I supposed to hate your dumb shitheap of a planet when you’re here making me feel like everything’s okay as long as I’m with you? I thought if I could stay angry at you I could fix it, but fuck, that’s no good, I just feel like a bigger asshole than normal.”

John watched attentively until the last of his words had faded into the air, until slowly cricket chirps competing with croaking frogs rose up to fill the silence. Karkat stared back, taking in the details of John’s face that he already knew—a skinny, upturned nose, where Karkat’s own was bulbous and smooshed; a jutting chin with a strong jaw, compared to Karkat’s puffy cheeks and round chin; eyes a shade of blue that, until meeting John, Karkat had only ever detested before.

“Does all that mean that we’re okay now? Maybe?” The human was leaning forward, so slight he probably didn’t even realize he was doing it. “Can we go back inside, and talk about where we go from here?” His smile was gaining ground on his face despite efforts to keep it contained. “Can you sign my cast?”

Karkat stared at the gap in John’s teeth, letting himself hunch forward until his forehead hit John’s. Both of them winced, but neither moved away. This close, Karkat’s eyes had trouble figuring out where to focus, or remembering how to work together. Everything was undefined double vision, pasty human skin overlapped with the tip of Karkat’s round nose and John’s own huge unfocused eyes. Karkat wondered if this was how John saw everything, without his glasses, or if this was how Rose’s mother viewed the world, constantly inebriated.

“Together, forever?” Karkat tried to make it come out as an affirmation, but his voice lifted into a question, even as he tilted his head up and his forehead slipped against John’s, pulling their trapped bangs uncomfortably, and now they were nose to nose.

“As long as you want,” John answered, voice scared into a whisper. “It’s your call, buddy.”

Karkat didn’t know if he squeezed John’s hand, or if John tightened his grip around Karkat’s gray fingers. He didn’t know if John could feel his breath the way he could feel the ghosts of John’s exhalations on his lips. He wondered what metaphors John would have used to describe the feeling of adrenaline slashing its way up his abdomen, a phantom evisceration of nervousness, and he wondered why all the movies he’d watched during the week at Rose’s home only showed romantic couples that were male and female, no matter if the chemistry between other characters was so much more interesting.

What Karkat did know, a fact as certain and undeniable as his being trapped on this planet, was that he would miss Terezi for as long as he lived, every time he looked at John and felt guilty that his feelings for the human could at all parallel his feelings for her. He knew that all week he’d been at war with himself, wanting to let go of his anger at John even while being absolutely terrified of what he would do without that anger as a division between them.

What Karkat did know was that they were so close, and if he angled his head just so, and closed his eyes, his dry lips pressed against John’s. The human inhaled sharply, gave a little under Karkat before pressing back, and they each squeezed their hands hard enough to hurt, hard enough to hide if they were trembling.

It was nothing like kissing Terezi, whose maw of razor teeth would be digging into Karkat’s lips within the first nanosecond of contact, whose tongue would already be down Karkat’s throat to the point of testing his gag reflex. Here and now, they hardly dared to move, that first tentative contact of lips to lips already sufficient to set Karkat’s heart racing, already all that was needed to make John’s breaths shallow and rapid. It seemed that they stayed that way for sweeps, or at least long enough for the position to strain Karkat’s shoulders. Finally, when the ache was too much to ignore, Karkat pulled back just enough to wet his lips and give John the chance to recoil. Instead the human remained as he was, hand still clamped firmly around Karkat’s, and so he adjusted his position and leaned in to press a second kiss to John’s pink mouth.

It was so unbelievably dumb—only two weeks he’d known this human, and what if years in the future John grew tired of looking after Karkat, what if months in the future he came to regret the sacrifices he’d made for an alien he barely knew, what if tomorrow he decided he wasn’t ready for an interspecies romance, what if wasn’t ready now and he’d never be ready?

But, Rose had already made it clear that Karkat didn’t have much of a choice. He was a fool to think he could survive without John, she’d told him.

She didn’t know how right she’d been.

It was John who broke the second kiss, only to place his injured arm around Karkat and draw him even closer, hiding his face in the space between Karkat’s shoulder and neck. The troll mirrored the pose, hand on John’s back, drawing little circles with his thumb and feeling the knobby vertebrae under his other fingers. He became aware of a damp spot growing on his shirt, just above where John’s nose was poking at his collarbone.

“We’re in this together ‘til the end,” John promised, muffled whisper against Karkat’s chest.

Karkat decided he could probably be okay with that.