Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The nice thing about being in a cabin in the middle of nowhere is that you are well and truly alone. There are no neighbors to visit you out of the blue, no dormmates to drunkenly burst into your room in the middle of the night by mistake. 

Nobody to sneak up on you.

That doesn’t stop you from being on edge, of course. From feeling like you’re being watched.

You covered up the surveillance cameras when you first arrived a few days ago—you started with the doorbell cam, before the cab driver had even had a chance to finish driving off into the night. You check them again each night before you go to bed. Just in case the coverings have fallen off, or you missed one, or an extra one had appeared somewhere during the day when you weren’t paying attention…

It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do. You just need to bide your time for another week or so, then you can ditch your Bro’s shitty “Rentr” cabin that nobody ever rents (Rentrs?) and go hide out at John’s place until you figure out how to tell Bro that yup, college turned out to be just another failure to add to the already long list of failures you’ve got piling up.

At least you’ve still got a little bit of money saved up, you guess. It wasn’t enough to pay for classes, but it should keep you fed through the week.

Your paranoia about the cameras has been soothed (for now), but you’re not quite ready to sleep. You flop out on the creaky old couch in the living room and settle in for another night of fucking around on the internet. As shoddy as everything else in this cabin is, at least the internet connection is solid.

There’s nothing fucking happening, though. The comments section for the latest Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff strip is dead already, a mere four hours after you uploaded it. None of your go-to streamers are currently live. Nobody on your chumroll is online, either.

It’s nearly eleven o’clock on a Monday night, so...it makes sense. But that doesn’t mean you’re happy about it.

After fiddling with your phone for another hour or so, watching the battery slowly deplete, you finally decide to just watch a movie. The extensive selection of VHS tapes stacked on the coffee table isn’t just for show, right? But first, you take a detour into the cabin’s small, cramped (“cozy”) kitchen for some refreshment.

All that’s currently in the ancient fridge is a crusty bottle of Tabasco and the food you brought with you: half a loaf of bread, some sliced cheese and lunch meat, a small jar of mayo, and several bottles of apple juice. It’s...kind of sad, even by your standards. You’ll have to hike into town for more groceries in another day or two.

For now, you just swipe one of the bottles of AJ and pop it open.

As you straighten up and swing the fridge door shut, you think you hear something weird outside, like—like a car pulling up the gravel driveway? But...that can’t be right.

You wait, unmoving, not even breathing—but the night is silent. You decide it must be your paranoia at work again. You take a swig of juice, but there’s an uneasy knot in your stomach now. You creep stealthily back toward the living room, stopping short halfway down the hall when you hear another sound—a voice.

It’s right outside the front door.

“God damn it,” it says, and then—oh fuck. There’s the unmistakable sound of a key turning forcefully in the lock. The door, being shaken back and forth in its frame. Then, all in a mumbled rush, “Middle of fucking nowhere piece of shit asshole rumpus bullshit—”

Oh, you’re so fucked.

Somebody actually fucking Rentrd the place.

You’re so busy full-on panicking that you forget to do something—escape down the hallway to your bedroom, or go open the door for the poor guy, or anything. Instead, you stay frozen in place, right where you are, and when the door swings open—

Oh. Oh shit. The guy—a troll, maybe in his mid-twenties, short and tired-looking—isn’t really what you had expected. You stare at him in silence, and he stares back, and oh god this is so awkward.

“Motherfucker,” he says, breaking the uneasy silence. Somehow, despite the clear exhaustion written on his face, every single syllable overflows with venom. “Double-booked. Are you shitting me?”

He turns away into the night, and pulls out his phone, presumably to call your Bro. Adrenaline courses through you, and everything comes into sharp relief at once. Your paralysis finally ends.

You clear your throat. Your heart hammers in your chest. You can’t let that call happen.

“Nah, man, I’m not staying here,” you say, loudly enough to get his attention. “I’m—I’m just the—fuck. The m-maintenance guy.”

He’s looking you over with extreme doubt, his finger hovering over the call button on his phone’s screen.

“Dave Strider?” you say. You’re hoping he’ll recognize the surname from the Rentr app and connect the dots on his own.

It doesn’t seem likely that he will, though. He’s still just staring at you, his brow deeply furrowed, like he isn’t sure what to believe.

“My Bro owns this place.”

“I’m sure he does,” the guy replies. He stands on the threshold like he’s rooted to the spot. His thumb is still hovering over his phone, but the screen is black now, gone to sleep. For the first time, you notice his baggage sitting on the porch, just behind him. There’s a lot of it.

“Uh, okay,” you say, unsure how to proceed. You wish you weren’t holding an open bottle of AJ in your sweaty hand right now.

His mouth twists to one side. He’s so...expressive. “It’s just—you don’t really look much like a ‘maintenance guy,’ if I’m honest.”

You shrug and say simply, “Nepotism.”

He snorts. “You don’t even look old enough to legally drink.”

“Hey, I’ve been twenty-one for three whole months, dude,” you say, with an air of faux offense. You’re smiling a little in spite of yourself.

Shit. You can’t talk to this guy like—like he’s one of your friends. You’ve gotta be more convincing than this—

But—oh, sweet troll jesus—he actually laughs a little.

And just like that, the tension is broken.

“Help me carry this shit inside, why don’t you,” he says, gesturing toward the small mountain of baggage on the porch. “I’d say you owe it to me for scaring the hell out of me. Thought for a minute I was going to have to sleep in my piece of shit car tonight. It’s cold as globes out here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

You don’t let yourself fully relax, not quite yet, but...it sure seems like you’ve convinced the guy not to call your Bro. Disaster narrowly averted, fuck yes.

Lugging a few bags inside is a pretty small price to pay, considering.

“Yeah, man, sure,” you say. “No problem.”

You take five of the bags, which is just about as much as you can carry at once. Shit’s heavy. He picks up two and follows you.

Luckily the cabin’s got two bedrooms. You really, really hope he doesn’t decide to poke his head into the room you’ve been crashing in—you left the door slightly ajar, but you’re pretty sure the light’s off, at least. It’s...kind of a mess in there.

“So,” he says conversationally, as you walk together across the creaking floorboards of the hall, “were you finishing up some late-night maintenance when I got here? Or are you still on the job?”

You push the door of the second bedroom open with your hip. He flips the light switch on as he enters, probably for your benefit more than his. Freaky troll night vision.

“Oh, uhhh, shit. Nah, dude, I was just ch-changing the light bulb, y’know? In—the kitchen.”

He looks at you expectantly as you set his stuff down next to the bed.

“I...I mean I guess I was just about done.”

He sighs and sheds his big coat, throwing it onto the bed. “Great,” he says. There’s an air of finality to the word, like he’s...dismissing you.

You guess you did just tell him your work here is done.

“I’ll get the rest,” you offer. “Should be able to get it in one trip.”

“Mm.”

There are three more bags, none of them very large. You can easily carry them all in one trip.

You stand out on the porch and look up at the night sky.

It’s past midnight now. It’s cold out—the guy was right about that. You don’t have a car to sleep in. You could call another cab, yeah, like the one that brought you here, but...you’ve got no place to go. Not until John and his dad get back from their trip to Chicago.

Buzzing with nerves, you carry the remaining bags back to the guy’s room.

You realize too late that you probably should’ve knocked before entering, but thankfully he’s still awake and fully dressed. He’s set himself up at the small desk by the window, clacking away rapidly at the keys of a bulky old laptop.

“Well, good night.”

“Yes, all right,” he says absently, too focused on his work to look up at you. “Appreciate the help.”

For some reason, you hesitate before leaving. “I, uh—never got your name.”

His irises are an unusual scarlet red, you realize as your eyes meet for the second time.

There’s a stretched-out moment of utter silence as he considers you, hidden as you are behind your shades.

“Karkat.”

“It was nice meeting you, Karkat.” You slip out of his room, closing the door behind you.

You don’t have much time before he starts to notice all the little signs that you’ve actually been staying here. You need to get your shit packed and get the fuck out as fast as you can—never mind where you’re going to go. You can figure that out later.

You’ve got most of your clothes shoved into your backpack when you hear Karkat’s bedroom door creak open. You wait, holding your breath, as he loudly creaks his way down the hall.

Shit. Your food is still in the fridge. Not to mention you’ve got all kinds of stuff strewn all over the bathroom counter.

What are the odds he doesn’t notice any of it...?

Quietly, you resume stuffing your backpack. If you have to, you can leave through your bedroom window. You don’t want it to come to that—running through the woods at night, in the cold—but if you have to...

“Auugh—holy fuck!”

You jump, startled by the sound of Karkat shouting from the kitchen. He sounds—like he might be in trouble. Maybe serious trouble.

You don’t stop to think about it.

“Dude, are you okay?” you ask as you stumble awkwardly into the kitchen, your momentum carrying you through the hallway just a little too fast. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

“Does it look like I’m okay? What do you mean ‘what’s wrong’? You can see what the issue is here, right?”

Karkat does look like he’s okay, which is a relief, because you didn’t really want to deal with any injuries on top of everything else going on tonight.

The sink, on the other hand, is not doing so hot. One of the knobs has been pulled clean off and is currently residing in Karkat’s angrily clenched fist. Where it should be, a fountain of water is spraying straight up toward the ceiling. 

Karkat continues speaking when you don’t answer immediately. “Did you forget to fix something while you were in here stuffing a light bulb up your chute, or whatever ‘maintenance’ it was you were doing?”

“That was not broken when I was in here earlier, dude. What’d you do, strangle it until it popped off?”

“What’s it matter what I did? Just fix it! Isn’t that your job?”

Right. Your “job.” “That’s what I’m here for. Absolutely nothing else. You’re lucky I haven’t left yet. Let me just, uh.”

“Get your tools?” Karkat suggests.

“Yes. Let me get those. Be right back.”

You shuffle out of the kitchen with far less haste than you should, considering water is still spraying everywhere and making a huge mess. You can feel Karkat’s eyes on you as you make your way over to the closet at the other end of the hall. You wish the closet you were going to check wasn’t in clear sight of the kitchen. 

You really hope Bro keeps some tools in here. If not, you’re not sure how you’re going to explain why you suddenly seem to have lost all the tools you should theoretically have with you.

There’s not much in the closet. Just a cobweb-covered mop and broom, an old vacuum, and, thankfully, a rusty old toolbox, sitting on the floor collecting dust.

You wipe at some of the grime with your shirt sleeve, then pick it up and carry it into the kitchen. Karkat probably won’t notice that this thing clearly hasn’t been used in years, right?

Karkat makes a disgusted face when you set the toolbox down on the counter next to the sink, but he doesn’t say anything about the state it’s in. 

You don’t know the first thing about how to fix this. In place of anything better to do, you fiddle with the second knob on the sink, which seems to make the stream of water die down, at least. 

“Probably should’ve done that first,” you mumble, mostly to yourself.

“You think?”

“You didn’t think to do it either, man.”

“I’m not the supposed professional here.”

“Just sayin’.”

You struggle with the latch on the toolbox for a minute. You’re pretty sure you hear Karkat laugh at you, but when you glance over at him he looks back with the same grumpy expression he’s been wearing since you entered the kitchen.

There is an assortment of actual tools inside the toolbox, which is a relief. It would be just your luck to open it and find a bunch of those smuppets your Bro has all around the apartment, or something equally fucking stupid. 

You grab one of the wrenches for lack of any better ideas. When staring at it doesn’t immediately fill you with the knowledge of what you should be doing, you look back at the sink.

“Gimme that.” You gesture at the knob in Karkat’s hand. He immediately passes it over to you, and you just kind of...set it back where it’s supposed to be. 

You fiddle with it, trying to get it to pop back into place, and there is a split second where it does seem to hook back in.

But then the knob dislodges once again as water starts spraying everywhere for a second time.

“This is ridiculous. I’m calling a plumber.”

“No, I got this. Don’t worry about it, dude. Go chill in the living room or something. Ain’t gotta worry ‘bout a thing. I’ll have this fixed in no time. I just gotta...”

Karkat looks up from his phone. “Shut the water valve off?” 

Fuck. You hadn’t even thought about that. How did you turn the water off...? “Heh, maybe we should hire you to do maintenance here instead. Yeah, right, should shut the water off. It’s late, can’t blame a guy for forgetting these things.”

Karkat looks like he absolutely will blame you for “forgetting” to turn the water off, but oh well. It’s not like that was the first thing he’d suggested, either.

“Well, go on then,” Karkat says when you continue to stand there doing nothing. “Turn the damn water off. Did you forget how?”

“Maybe I’ve got performance anxiety, man. Hard to be on my A game when I’ve got you breathing down my neck. Should see how fast I turn the water off when nobody else is here. It’s impressive. You’d totally be impressed if you could see that. Which you can’t. Sorry, I’m normally a lone maintenance guy, fixing knobs and shutting off water all on my own.”

“Yeah, I can see why your ‘Bro’ wouldn’t want to inflict you upon the cabin guests.”

“Ouch. Deserved, but ouch.” 

Karkat doesn’t leave the kitchen like you’d hoped he would. He does seem to take pity on you, at least. “Well if you did forget, this questionable website says the shut-off valve is usually under the sink.”

“Good ol’ Google. Where would we be without it?” 

You open up the cabinet doors beneath the sink and luckily for you, there is a very obvious switch-looking thing on one of the pipes under there. Score. You turn it and the water from the sink finally shuts off entirely.

That doesn’t fix the problem, but it does make it a little less wet, at least. “Does your questionable website say to mop the floor before attempting to finish fixing the sink? Because I think I should do that before one of us slips on this shit.”

“Do whatever you want,” is what Karkat says, but what he does is go over to the hall closet and retrieve the mop. When he comes back, he shoves his phone at you. “Why don’t you review how to do your job while I take care of this?”

“Yessir.”

The “how-to” article Karkat found is probably decent, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually helpful. The pictures don’t match the style of the sink in the kitchen, for one, so you can’t entirely follow it based on those. The way the article is written also assumes you’ve got some amount of background knowledge on how to DIY, which you do not. 

“How often does shit break in here anyway?” Karkat asks while you continue to try and re-attach the knob. “Just my luck I got stuck in a place where nothing works and the maintenance guy is some unqualified jackass.”

“You’re the asshole who’s staying in a place you found on Rentr, dude.”

“I’m not the one who booked it, okay? None of this is my fault.”

“The sink breaking kind of is,” you point out. “Like I know it’s a piece of shit and it probably would have broken on some poor sap eventually, but I’ve never had any issues with it before you showed up.”

“I just turned the knob! That’s what you’re supposed to do. I didn’t ‘strangle’ it or whatever you want to accuse me o— Holy fuck, give me that.” Karkat grabs the wrench you are currently attempting (and failing) to use to re-attach the knob with. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think what you’re doing with that right now is in any way helpful.”

He’s right. “That’s my patented technique, okay? It works every time.”

“And how many times have you repaired this specific sink? I thought you never had any issues with it?”

“It works every time on other sinks. This one just has it out for us.”

Karkat makes a face at you, then takes a deep breath before setting the wrench down. “Here, give me my palmhusk back and I’ll try to walk you through what you actually need to do, since you clearly can’t follow basic instructions.”

“That I don’t need.”

“That you don’t need because you’re a maintenance guy, yeah, I know. It says we need to reinstall the ‘trim ring’ first. What the fuck is a trim ring?”

“Ring lookin’ thing, obviously.” You look around on the counter, hoping that this so-called ‘trim ring’ does indeed look like a ring. “Hah! Here it is. Okay. We got this shit.”

“I’m going to choose to believe that, because the one plumber in town is already closed for the night.”

“And I’m going to pretend that was a sincere vote of confidence from you. Thanks, Karkat, so glad you think I can do this.”

Together, you two figure out what tools will actually assist you in this process. You clean up the knob when you realize that the rust inside of it is what’s making it difficult to re-attach, and things seem to move much more smoothly from there. 

The whole process is also a lot easier now that you've got Karkat reading the instructions to you. “Uh, thanks for your help with this, by the way. I’d offer you half my cut but it’s not like my Bro is paying me for this. So.”

“Wait, your brother doesn’t pay you? Why the fuck do you work for him, then?”

“Oh, he uh. He pays me usually,” you lie. “I just owe him some money right now?”

Karkat looks like he doesn’t believe that one bit, but he doesn’t argue, just starts to read the next bit of instructions to you.

You two continue on like that until you finally seem to have fixed the sink. “Moment of truth,” you tell Karkat once you’ve checked and double-checked that the knob is not going to fall off again. You slide back under the sink and turn the valve back on. No water starts spraying out of the knob again, which is a good sign. “Okay, your turn. Turn the knob.”

“Why do I have to turn the knob?”

“Gotta make sure it can withstand you and your beefy muscles, dude.”

“I do not have beefy muscles. Shut the fuck up.” Karkat rolls his eyes at you, but he also turns the knob. You’re honestly a little surprised when water starts coming out of the faucet like it should. “Great, it works. Good job. It only took you...” He pauses to look at his ‘palmhusk’ again. “Three hours to fix the sink.”

“Three hours?” you groan. “Fuck, it’s so late.” 

He just sort of shrugs, like he stays up past three in the morning all the time. “I guess so.”

You leave the mop to dry in the kitchen. Karkat follows you down the hall, watching silently as you put the toolbox back in the closet where you found it.

With that done, you turn around to face him, and it’s then that you finally notice how extremely disheveled he is. Both of you had gotten pretty much soaked when the sink first broke—you’ve both long since dried off, but his hair still looks absolutely wild. You think yours might, too.

“The fuck’re you staring at, bulgebreath?”

“Ha. Nothin’.”

There’s a half-second of silence—just enough to set off alarm bells somewhere in the back of your head. It’s time—past time, really—for you to get the hell outta this place. You’ll just have to spend the rest of your grocery money on a motel room, or something.

A really, really shitty motel room. There’s gotta be something out there you can afford, right?

Before you can make a move, though, Karkat says, “Are those all your brother’s movies?”

He seems more awake than ever, in spite of the time. He’s looking with interest at the coffee table, with its tall stacks of VHS tapes. You nod. “Yeah, man.”

You add, completely unnecessarily, “They’re for guests.”

He sort of snorts at you again. It’s—

Like, it’s not what anyone would call a cute sound. But it’s still...pleasant, somehow? Looking at him, you suddenly have to fight off a smile. It just feels...good, you guess, to make this stranger laugh. Sort of. Even if it is at your expense.

“I figured that much, yes. Thank you.”

He moves toward the coffee table to take a closer look. You’re still standing next to the closet. You’re not entirely sure why. You know you ought to get going—the sooner the better.

After inspecting the tapes a moment longer, Karkat declares, “Your brother has shit taste.”

“Tell me about it,” you say, scrubbing one hand over your tired eyes. “Dude’s basically bad taste personified.”

Not for the first time tonight, you suppress a yawn. Could it really hurt all that much to sit and rest, just for a few minutes...?

You let your legs carry you to the soft armchair next to the couch. Karkat’s digging through the tapes now, looking for something in particular, maybe. “Does he happen to have any...”

But he doesn’t finish asking the question. He just glances over at you—are his cheeks slightly flushed?—and shakes his head. “Never mind.”

“What? Porn? Yeah, loads, but not here. Uh—n-no pun intended. Seriously, I didn’t mean loads, like—I just meant he has a lot. You know, back home.”

His face is definitely turning red now. “Why the fuck would I want some stranger’s—ugh. No,” he says. “Romantic comedies.”

“Oh. Might be one or two, man, I dunno.”

“Hmm.” He resumes scanning the titles, head tilted slightly to one side so he can read them. You slouch a little further down in the soft chair. After the scare of Karkat’s arrival at the cabin, and after the whole sink fiasco, the chair is...nice. Comfy.

The next thing you know, you’re being shaken awake by a hand on your shoulder. It’s warm.

“Did you even hear a word I said? Asshole, how long have you been asleep behind those things?” Karkat says, those startling red eyes of his seeming to peer directly at you, right through your shades. You know he can’t actually see through them, but regardless, you can’t hold the eye contact for more than a second.

“Shit, sorry,” you mumble, sitting up straighter. “S-sorry.”

“Whatever,” he says. He withdraws his hand fast, like he only just noticed he was still touching you. “I just thought you might want to head home. It’s almost four.”

“Yeah. Home,” you repeat. Maybe it’s because you were asleep just moments ago, but...there’s something way too vulnerable, you think, in the way you say that word.

The uncomfortable silence that follows wakes you up much more effectively than Karkat shaking your shoulder.

God damn it all. You let yourself fall asleep when you should’ve been planning. Now you’re cornered.

He’s looking at you expectantly. Only one choice left now.

It’s just for tonight.

“Would you, uh, mind if I just—crashed in the other bedroom, actually? I think I might be too tired to—to uh. To drive right now,” you stumble. “It—wouldn’t be responsible.”

“I see.”

You struggle to keep your mouth shut while Karkat deliberates. Did you know driving while tired is worse than driving drunk? you want to ask him, but the slight complication that you are, of course, lying about all this driving business is ultimately what keeps you from rambling on and on and making a fool of yourself.

You just need a few good hours of sleep, and then you can hike into town and find a cheap place to stay. Right?

“Okay,” Karkat says quietly. “Okay.”

You exhale a breath you hadn’t even realized you were holding. “Thanks, man,” you say.

“Yeah, yeah. The bedroom doors have locks, right?”

The bedroom doors do, indeed, have locks. They’re cheap pieces of shit, of course, like everything else in this place—your Bro spared pretty much every expense—but you don’t see any reason to tell him that.

You mumble good night and retreat to the room you’ve been staying in, where your backpack lies open on the floor, half-packed. Several rumpled t-shirts are spilling out. You strip to your boxers and pull on one of the fresher ones, to sleep in.

You’re exhausted, but...now, at four in the morning, lying in your queen-size bed, wrapped in blankets, eyes closed—you just can’t quite manage to go to sleep. You’re worried. About going home. About everything. What if Karkat decides to contact your Bro after all? Are the surveillance cameras still covered up...?

You don’t know how much later it is when you hear Karkat’s thumping footsteps in the hall. Never mind the creaky floorboards—the dude is not stealthy.

You smile to yourself when you hear the sound of his door locking, then unlocking, then locking again.

It never even occurred to you, you now realize, to lock your own bedroom door.

“Too late now,” you mumble into your pillow. It’s cold out there—outside the blankets. “No fuckin’ thanks, ’m good. Aw man, just watch, ’m gonna get murdered in my sleep now that I said that. Just my luck, temporary roommates with a charming murderer. Never suspected.”

There’s a steady, almost rhythmic sound coming from Karkat’s room now. You stop talking to yourself and listen—

clack clack clack

—and it’s then, with the white noise of Karkat’s rapid typing lulling you, like raindrops on the roof, that you finally fall asleep.

The next morning—technically, it’s still morning—you wake up to the sound of Karkat still typing, just as steadily as ever.

Did he sleep at all...? you wonder, glancing blearily at the clock on the wall. Eleven fifteen.

Your stomach grumbles, and you wonder, briefly, how awkward it’d be to run into your troll roommate in the cabin’s kitchen. You decide to just dig around in your backpack for a granola bar instead.

There’s one left, wedged into the bottom of your pack and half crushed into dust by the weight of all your other shit, but it’s better than nothing. You plug your dead phone in to charge while you eat it.

You’ve got several messages waiting, as it turns out. All of them are from John.

-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

EB: daaave! good morning!

-- turntechGodhead [TG] is an idle chum! --

EB: rise and shine, dave!
EB: sleeping in, huh? about what i'd expect from a lazy college dropout.
EB: (i'm just fucking with you, obviously! in case you couldn't tell! :P)
EB: well, anyway. i'm just going to talk to you even though you're asleep or whatever, so deal with it!
EB: this whole chicago trip has been so fun, dude.
EB: if you had told me years ago that i'd be saying that about a pipe convention, i probably would have laughed in your face!
EB: it's just been really cool to spend some quality time with my dad. he's like a kid in a candy store here, ha ha.
EB: still asleep, huh?
EB: yeah, so here's the thing. i know i said it would be cool if you stayed with us for a little bit, and it still is and all, don't worry about that! but...um...
EB: but we're going to be extending our trip, so...
EB: sorry, but we won't be home for another two weeks. :/
EB: i really hope you can find some place to stay until then!
EB: good luck buddy. if all else fails, at least you can just go home though, right? i mean, you know, it's an option.
EB: ok, well, i'll talk to you later.
EB: bye dave!

-- ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

The sinking feeling in your belly makes it really fucking difficult to choke down the rest of your shitty granola bar breakfast, but somehow you manage.

You’re so fucked.

The cheapest motel within fifty miles would still wipe out your entire savings in much less than two weeks.

You sit on the edge of the bed and press your palms to your closed eyes, beneath your shades. Your thoughts chase themselves in circles, anxious and unhelpful. You’ve only been awake for ten minutes.

“It’s too early for this shit,” you say to yourself, even though it’s nearly noon. The point stands.

One calm and reasonable thought does occur to you, amid the panic and anxiety. You don’t know how long Karkat plans to stay.

Assuming he’ll be gone in a few days, you could just come right back, couldn’t you? Stay here until the Egberts return home, like you’d originally planned?

You think about the mountain of luggage he’d brought with him. A dude doesn’t pack that much shit for just a few days...does he?

As you’re sitting there on the bed, wondering how best to bring up the subject with him, you realize just how quiet things have gotten. The clack-clack-clack of Karkat’s typing has finally, finally stopped.

You hear the chunk of his bedroom door unlocking, the sound of his thudding footsteps as he makes his way to the bathroom.

The bathroom—where you left all of your shit last night. Toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shampoo. Towel. Probably some underwear and/or socks. Fuckin’ whoops.

The old-ass pipes squeal in complaint as the shower is turned on. You listen to the water run, a terrible sour feeling settling in your stomach. You wonder what Karkat is thinking right about now.

For all you know, he’s already been in contact with your Bro.

The water isn’t running anymore.

There’s an abrupt knock at your bedroom door.

“Jesus fuck,” you breathe. Lost as you were in your paranoid thoughts, you were more startled by that knock than you’d like to admit.

“Dave,” Karkat says from the other side of the door, and wow, it’s weird to hear that guy say your name. “I need some fucking help here, if it’s not too much trouble?”

“Yeah, come in.”

You get a little more than you’d bargained for when Karkat swings your bedroom door open and leans against your doorframe, dripping wet and naked. Well, okay, he’s covered by a towel. But. You know. He’s naked under the towel. You assume.

“Eyes up here, please,” he says, shaking something shiny and metallic in one hand. “This place is falling the fuck apart.”

You get a better look at the mystery object when he tosses it onto the bed for you to see.

It’s the showerhead.

“Wow. Your world-renowned iron grip strikes again,” you say, because, in spite of everything, you’d really like to see if you can make him laugh again. He just rolls his eyes. You do your best not to stare at the bright red grub scars along his sides, or, you know. Any of the rest of him.

“Can you fix it or not?”

“Yeah, totally. Of course. Are you kidding? They don’t call me Fix-It Dave for nothing, dude.”

“They most certainly do not call you that.”

You smile at him. You don’t know what it is about this guy. His grumpiness is just impossible to take seriously.

And it’s nice—to have something else to think about for a little while. Fixing a broken shower sounds downright appealing in comparison to the rest of the trash fire that is your life.

“I’m all over it,” you assure him, and you head for the closet to get the box of tools.

Chapter Text

The door to Karkat’s room is closed when you walk by on your way to the bathroom after retrieving your trusty toolbox (it worked well enough yesterday, so you think you’re fine to say you trust it, at least within the privacy of your own mind).

Thankfully, there’s no water spraying everywhere this time. The shower is a bit damp from being used, but the situation is far less dire than the sink had been last night. Hopefully, the only one getting wet this time should be Karkat. Because he was in the shower. You’re gonna stop yourself right there. “Jesus Christ dude, get it together,” you mumble to yourself.

You check to see if the showerhead will screw back on, even though you’re certain Karkat would have tried that already.

“Guy seems like he’s smart enough to try that before coming to ask me for help,” you continue on with your conversation with yourself.

You start fiddling around with the showerhead. You’ll put in a solid effort to get it fixed yourself, you guess, while your phone charges a bit more, then you can just Google it like you—well, Karkat, technically—did last night...

You hear Karkat’s bedroom open, then the steady thud-thud, thud-thud that means he’s making his way back toward you.

(You briefly pause to think about how nice that is, to be around someone you can actually hear coming. You doubt Karkat could sneak up on you even if he tried.)

You hear a faint voice that definitely doesn’t belong to Karkat when he enters the bathroom and you look up. “You on speakerphone or something?” you ask him, a little more nervously than you mean to. If he is on speakerphone, you really hope it’s a friend of his, and not—

“No? Why would I come in here if I was? As if I want you hearing my private conversations,” he shoots back. He taps his phone screen and the sound stops suddenly. “It’s a video. I thought that might be easier than attempting to read another pop-up filled ‘how-to’ page to you.”

“I mean, I can read all on my own.”

“I wasn’t accusing you of being illiterate. I was accusing the website we were using last night of being subpar at best.”

“Eh, it got the job done eventually. It’s a pity you keep breaking the plumbing, dude. This clearly ain’t my strong suit.”

“Didn’t cover plumbing in your maintenance training, did they?” The way Karkat says that, it’s almost like he’s joking, but you’re not entirely sure if he is. If it is a joke at the expense of your “maintenance training”, you suppose he’s right to make it. You are pretty terrible at repairing things without his (and Youtube’s) assistance.

“Naw, I’m more of a doors guy, y’know?” You really wish someone would stop your mouth sometimes. “You got a squeaky door, I’m all over it. Fixing it, I mean. Windows too. And uh, desks.” You did make a mean fucking desk out of cinderblocks and a few planks of wood back at your Bro’s place, so you guess that’s not completely a lie.

“Clearly your brother gets what he pays for,” Karkat deadpans.

You can’t help but laugh at that. “You don’t even know the half of it, dude.”

Karkat shows you the video he found. You watch it a couple of times. Your confidence is boosted a little bit by the fact that nothing seems to be missing, at least. You’re not even sure how you would go about getting new pieces for this thing.

You get to work cleaning the showerhead first. It’s just as rusty as the toolbox and the sink handle had been. “Clearly what we need is a better cleaning crew,” you joke.

“Are you also the cleaning crew?” Karkat asks.

You...guess you are, sometimes, when you crash here in secret. You’ve gotten pretty good at leaving no sign of yourself behind, you like to think. With the exception of this visit, of course. “S’why I said we need a better one.”

“Of course my editor would make me stay in the trashiest place possible for the next few months.” Karkat laughs, but it’s the most frustrated sounding laugh you think you’ve ever heard. You wonder what he’s so angry about, other than the place being trash—hold up. Did he say months?

There goes your entire plan. You groan, then quickly try to cover it up by asking, “Your editor? That makes sense why you’ve been tapping away at those keys. You a writer? What d’you write, books or something?” That should do it. Change the subject before you start panicking about where you’re going to stay for the next two weeks. Again.

“I’m a journalist.” He sounds...almost bitter? when he says that. “A fucking great journalist, by the way. I usually write about shit that actually matters, but while I’m here I’m supposed to be doing some ‘Country Living’ fluff column. Which is garbage, since this barely even counts as the country.”

“I dunno man, we are out in the middle of nowhere. Could maybe use some more chickens or something, if you’re really going for that country vibe, though.”

“Ugh, no. If my editor sent me to a place with chickens, I would fucking choke them with my bare hands.”

You can’t help yourself. You try. You really, really try not to, but you burst out laughing anyway. “Y-you’d— holy shit. You’d choke the chickens? Did you seriously just say that to me right now?”

Karkat, to his credit, looks utterly startled and confused by your laughter for a minute, until what he just said must dawn on him. “That is not what I said!” he shouts. “I’d choke my editor. Strangle them. Are you always this much of a pervert?”

“You’re the one who told me you were gonna choke the chicken, dude.”

“Again, not what I said! What kind of insane euphemism is that anyway? Why do you humans always compare your genitals to animals, of all things?”

You laugh so hard at Karkat’s question that you drop the piece of the showerhead you’re currently working on. The loud clunk of the metal on tile immediately makes you stop. “Fuck.” You quickly bend down to retrieve it.

Karkat bends down at the same time, and you two barely avoid knocking your heads together. You quickly pull away and let him pick the piece up.

“Be careful,” he tells you as he passes it back to you. “I don’t want to have to take you to the hardware store in town. I do have shit to do today that involves my own job, not yours.”

“Why would you have to take me to the hardware store? Can take myself if it comes to that.” By calling another taxi that you don’t have the money for. “Not that I want to break anything else. Much easier if we can use the pieces we already have. This thing is old as balls, not sure I’d even be able to find something that matched.”

“Can you take yourself? I didn’t see your car outside.”

You freeze. Oh shit. There’s no way he suspects anything is off, right? Naw. Maybe he’s worried your car was stolen or something. By some rogue bandit hanging out in the woods. “You didn’t see it last night when you got here? You wouldn’t’ve. It’s parked...out back. I usually keep the driveway clear in case guests show up while I’m working on stuff. You know. Stay outta your way.”

“Yeah, you’ve been doing a great job of staying out of my way,” Karkat replies. You’re focused on the shower, but you can almost hear the eyeroll accompanying his words. “It wasn’t out back this morning.”

“Ah shit, my Bro might’ve taken it,” you blurt out before you have a chance to actually think that one over.

Karkat snorts. “Your brother sounds like a dick. Making you work for free and then stealing your car? Who does that? Why wouldn’t he take you back with him if he needed it?”

“Those are all some super valid questions that I don’t have the answers for. Lucky for your showering habits that he didn’t, I guess?”

“Yeah. I guess.” He gives you a long look, then turns the video on his phone back on. “I think you’re doing that wrong. You’re screwing it in upside down.”

You glance over to watch the video again. He’s right, you’ve got the piece upside down. Once you turn it the right way, it slots into place the way it should and you can move on to getting the next piece sorted.

“So,” you start. “You gonna write about this in your column?”

“Am I going to write about your tragically inept plumbing maintenance skills? I might. It would be such a piece of shit that my editor might change their mind and let me go back to my regular job.”

“Naw, it could be a hard-hitting piece about the pitfalls of hiring family. Or how shitty Rentr is. I’ll give you an exclusive interview and everything if you want.”

“I do not want.”

“Your loss.” Probably for the best. You say enough stupid shit as it is without the added pressure of needing to get a good sound bite for something that is actually going to be published in a magazine. Newspaper? Karkat never said where exactly it was he worked.

Your hands slip as you try to get the next piece of the showerhead situated. Frustrated, you try to get a better grip so you can force it into place.

“Here, let me do it.” Karkat bats your hands away and grabs onto the piece. He’s much more successful than you, and it goes right into the place.

“Finally, your manhandling of appliances is being used for good. Thanks, man.”

“I don’t ‘manhandle’ anything. It’s not my fault this entire place is falling apart. I’ve never had a single thing break like this at my hive.”

“Can ask your editor to book you a different place if you really don’t like it, I guess.” That would certainly help you out if he did. Karkat seems like a cool guy, of course, but it would make your life a whole lot easier if he wasn’t here. It somehow feels rude to think that, even if it is true, especially since he’s been surprisingly helpful and understanding this whole time. You’re pretty certain most people would have kicked your ass out already.

“They’d just get me somewhere worse with all the luck I’ve been having lately. I’m not going to give them the pleasure of knowing I’m miserable just yet.”

“Miserable, really? It’s not that bad.”

Karkat huffs, clearly unconvinced. “Yeah sure, keep telling yourself that.”

The next, and final, piece of the showerhead is much easier to get into place than the last one had been. You get it situated on the first try, even. Maybe you’re better at this whole maintenance thing than you thought.

You give the thing a few twists, then step out of the shower so you can turn it on and make sure it’s not going to fall out of the wall again.

“Hell yeah,” you say when the water starts running and the showerhead stays firmly in place. “Look at that, good as new.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but it’ll do.”

You shut the shower off and then kind of...awkwardly stand there. You know Karkat probably wants to continue his shower, and that he likely expects you to stop lingering around and finally get out of here, car or no car.

“Maybe I should do a more thorough inspection of the place?” you ask him. “To make sure you don’t need me to fix anything else? Wouldn’t want something else breaking the second I get outta here.”

Karkat looks at you just a tad longer than is entirely necessary. The way his eyes bore into yours, even though there’s no way he can actually see your eyes through your shades, makes you feel incredibly exposed for some reason. “Right,” he finally says, drawing the vowel out as he does so. “You can start by making sure all the locks function correctly. Since you’re a ‘doors guy’.”

You mock-salute at him, then grin when he laughs at you. “On it. Any other requests?”

“Fuck off and let me finish my shower. I can see if anything is broken when I’m done.”

You gather up the toolbox and do just that, closing the bathroom door behind you. You set the box down in the hallway, not wanting to put it away in case anything else does need to be fixed.

The lock on your bedroom door doesn’t break, even when you pull on the knob with a little more force than is entirely necessary. You don’t really want to fiddle with Karkat’s, in case you do actually break it and he uses that as an excuse to finally make you leave, so you wander around the rest of the cabin and “inspect” the front and back doors instead.

You don’t really know what you’re looking for, of course, but you take your time with the inspection anyway. You swing the doors back and forth a few times, listening for squeaky hinges. You test the locks and the deadbolts and wonder why it was, exactly, that Karkat had had so much trouble unlocking the front door when he’d first arrived.

You suppose it’s possible that over the years, you’ve just...gotten used to this place and its idiosyncrasies. By now, you know just how to jiggle the key in the lock, how to gently finesse the ancient faucets and appliances—and Karkat, understandably, does not.

No one ever rents this fucking cabin, after all. You yourself have probably stayed here more nights than all your Bro’s legitimate Rentr guests combined. Karkat’s beefy muscles aside, anybody who stayed here for a night or two—and didn’t have your muscle memory—probably would’ve broken the sink, and the shower, and god knows what else, in exactly the same way.

Your “inspection” is more or less done, and Karkat’s still in the shower, so you grab yourself a bottle of AJ from the fridge and retreat to your bedroom. In your (decidedly unprofessional) opinion, everything seems to be just fine.

Later that afternoon, you’re suddenly distracted from your phone by the growling of your empty stomach. You haven’t eaten anything, or even left your room, since the shower repair this morning. You’ve been busy drafting and deleting message after message explaining your predicament to your cousin, Rose, but...you just can’t bring yourself to hit send.

Even if she were to set aside her usual snarky horseshit and take pity on you—what then? She’s busy being an actual successful college student way over on the east coast. You can’t even remotely afford to fly out to her, and it’s not like she’s got any money to send you—her mom does, maybe, but you’re not about to beg your estranged aunt for help. No way.

You set your phone down on the bed with a sigh.

The click-clack of Karkat’s typing has been a constant background noise all day, punctuated by short breaks now and then while he uses the restroom or gets something to eat from the kitchen. Sometimes he slows down, sometimes he speeds up; sometimes he pauses for half a minute before resuming at a breakneck pace. It’s rhythmic, in its own way—all his stops and starts. And the sound itself is still strangely soothing, just like it’d been when you had fallen asleep listening to it, last night.

It sounds like he’s working at a good pace right now. Not likely to take a break anytime soon. Probably. You figure you can at least sneak into the kitchen and slap a sandwich together without incident.

You make a quick stop on the way—good god, you’ve had to piss for hours—and at first, it seems like you’re in the clear. You do, indeed, manage to put together an extremely basic (and kind of sad) sandwich. But then...

Just as you’re creeping quickly and quietly back down the hall toward your room, taking care to avoid every creaky floorboard...Karkat’s bedroom door swings open. Your heart immediately slams up into your throat. When he emerges a moment later, you know there’s guilt written all over your normally cool and collected face.

Guilt over what—? some part of your mind calls out, distantly. Needing food?

You clear your throat and try to adopt a more casual stance. You say, “Hey.”

When he doesn’t respond right away, you add, somewhat nervously, “Sup?”

He gives you another of those unnerving, searching looks—his gaze traveling slowly from your shades down to the half-eaten sandwich you’re holding and then back again.

“I...” he says. He bites his lip, and seems to deliberate with himself for a moment.

You wait, your eyes drawn to the way his pointed teeth indent his lower lip.

“So, um. It was really god damn cold in my room last night,” he says, a little wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows as he speaks. “I mean, unreasonably cold. I...think it’s because the window above the desk is drafty? I mean the weather stripping looks old as hell.”

“Oh.”

“So, you know. Since you’re all about fixing windows and doors, that should be an easy enough task for you to handle, right?”

You nod. So casual. So smooth. “Totes. Yeah. Easy.”

“Okay, then. There’s...no rush or anything,” he says, looking awkwardly down at his socks. “Just knock when you’re ready to start working on it, I guess. Sometime before dark, ideally?”

“Yup,” you agree, slipping past him at last, and into the safety of your room. “Will do.”

You shove the rest of the sandwich in your mouth and chew while you Google how to replace old weather stripping, which you had previously never even heard of. Okay—at least it seems to be a fairly straightforward process. Depending on what kind of stuff your Bro used before, maybe even easy. You really hope he left extra lying around somewhere.

You move toward your own window to see what you’ll be working with. Looks like it’s just some cheap adhesive foam—you don’t see any nails or screws. Thank fuckin’ god.

There’s a whole gigantic roll of the stuff in the hall closet, next to where the tools once were. “Fuck yeah, score,” you mumble to yourself. You take a quick mental inventory before shutting the door, for future reference: dusty box of light bulbs, half-empty bottle of antifreeze. Thing of superglue. Duct tape. A few ancient, most likely dead batteries. And in a dark corner, where you almost couldn’t see it, a squished and faded smuppet for good measure, because of fucking course.

You knock on Karkat’s door. You know he said there was no rush, but...well, it’s not like you’ve got anything better to do. And every second you wait makes you feel more and more like a fraud, like—like maybe he’ll start to suspect you were just frantically searching the internet for how to do this shit.

Which, you know, you were.

The sound of his typing comes to an abrupt stop. A moment later he unlocks the door and opens it, waving you in.

“Sorry, were you working?”

“No, not really. Not anymore. I was just...”

He trails off, looking at his closed laptop thoughtfully. Then he shakes his head.

“Nothing. Just messing around with a personal project.”

The small bedroom is tidy—tidier than it was before Karkat got here, maybe. There’s no sign of his luggage, aside from a tote bag hanging from the hook on the back of the door. There’s a bright red cartoon crab printed on it, along with colorful lettering reading WELCOME TO VACATIONLAND!

“It was a gift,” he says, a tad defensively. You guess he saw you looking.

“Relax, dude. I think it’s cute.”

You set the big roll of foam weather stripping down on the desk, next to Karkat’s laptop. “Um...so I guess I’ll. Take off the old stuff first,” you say. You attempt to sound like a guy who knows what the hell he’s doing.

“Off to a great start,” he replies, without looking up at you. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed now, preoccupied with his phone. Palmhusk. Whatever.

You eye the flattened, worn foam strips lining the window casing. This shouldn’t be too tough, right...?

With a glance backward to make sure Karkat isn’t watching, you scrape at the top of the first strip with your fingernail until it comes loose at the edge. Then, remembering the helpful photos accompanying the how-to article you’d shotgunned just minutes ago, you pull it gently down. Rather than peeling away easily in one big, long strip, like in the pictures, however...only a tiny piece of it comes away in your hand, leaving the rest as stubbornly stuck on as ever.

“God damn it.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it under control. All one hundred percent how I expected things to go, yes, sir.”

Another image from the article pops into your mind. In some of the photos they’d used some kind of...scraper tool? You remember seeing something just like it rattling around in Bro’s toolbox. Luckily you won’t have to improvise with a butter knife or some shit—there’s no way Karkat would take you seriously then.

You retrieve the scraper and return to Karkat’s room. He’s examining the window, brows furrowed.

He steps out of your way as you approach. “Yeah, so it’s a slightly tougher job than I figured,” you explain, motioning with the scraper in your hand. “Not a problem for me, though. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” he echoes, perching on the edge of the rolling desk chair to watch you work. There’s a small smile on his face. It’s a little unnerving.

You try to ignore him as you clumsily scrape and peel away chunks of the old adhesive, but you can practically feel the weight of his scrutiny on the back of your head, making you sweat.

“You’re going to clean this mess up after you’re done, right?” he asks.

“Of course, man, c’mon. What do you take me for?”

He snorts. “You don’t want my honest answer.”

“Probably not.”

The second strip is much less of a struggle—it comes off mostly in one piece. After that, to your relief, Karkat returns most of his attention to his phone again. You fall into a more-or-less comfortable rhythm, peeling and scraping at the window frame while he texts...whoever it is he’s talking to. He seems to type on his phone at the same furious pace he sets with his laptop.

When you’ve gotten all of the worn-out old weather stripping removed, you swipe the debris from the top of the desk into the wastebasket in one sweeping motion. You stand up straight and crack your back, groaning.

“Guess I kinda need scissors for this next part. Shit,” you mumble. You’re mostly just talking to yourself, but—

Karkat looks up at you, then motions toward the desk drawer. “I think I saw some in there, maybe.”

The scissors are rusty, like just about everything else in this place, but they’ll do. You don’t have a ruler or a tape measure handy, so you enlist Karkat’s help to hold up the end of the foam strip while you roll out the amount you need, then cut. He helps you peel and stick each new strip, too, checking to make sure each one lies straight and flat. He insists it’s because if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, but...this is the third time now that he’s helped you with a repair job, of his own volition. You’re starting to wonder whether maybe he just likes it. Or...hmm.

He’s sitting so close to you, his head bent near to yours so he can see what he’s doing. His hair is a mess, but he smells subtly like shampoo and deodorant and hand lotion. It’s a clean smell, but...warm, too, like sun-soaked sheets hung up to dry.

You clear your throat in the dusty silence. “So, um, you mentioned earlier that you used to write about ‘shit that actually matters’? What does that mean, exactly? If...you don’t mind me asking.”

“In short, it means politics,” he answers tersely, glaring down at his hands folded in his lap. The last foam strip has been replaced; the job is done. “I’m not really in the mood to talk about it right now. Sorry.”

You sweep up the long curls of paper backing, ball them up and drop them into the wastebasket. “It’s cool. So they put you on this bullshit column for the next few months, huh? Kinda sounds like a sweet deal, t-b-q-h. Aside from the, uh, accommodations, I guess. Sorry ’bout that.”

“It’s hardly your fault,” he grumbles. “And anyway, now that the window’s been fixed, the accommodations shouldn’t be too terrible. I mean, I’ve stayed in worse.”

“That’s ridiculously optimistic, considering everything.” You stand up, taking the rest of the giant roll of foam with you. “You know, I should probably do my window, too? There’s more than enough of this shit left over.”

You’re not exactly surprised when Karkat follows you into your room. While you scrape off the old shit, he sits cross-legged on your bed and complains—about the pointlessness of the column, the backwoods location, and, especially, his editor—in extremely colorful terms. He helps you affix new weather stripping to this one, too, and this time it goes just a little bit faster, and hey—you learn a few new Alternian curse words while you’re at it.

Chapter Text

Sometime after dark, Harley pesters you out of the blue, just to catch up. The two of you chat for a while about movies, about school, about John. She doesn’t judge your decision to drop out, but you get the sense that she’s maybe kind of sad about it. You seize the opportunity she so graciously offers to not discuss it. You’re not ready to really get into it—not yet. Maybe you will be, after things get sorted out with your Bro. Maybe not.

She doesn’t give you a chance to mope too much about it. She moves on briskly, asking about your music, about the possibility of collaborating again sometime. You haven’t thought seriously about making music for a hot minute, so the prospect is actually kind of exciting.

Your stomach grumbles in the meantime, reminding you of your neglected physical needs and distracting you momentarily from your phone. You stretch out sideways on the bed while you type, letting your feet and head spill off the edges of the mattress. You’ll get something going for dinner soon. It’s funny, but you actually feel...refreshed? Like you’ve gotten a nice little charge of energy. Talking to Jade tends to have that effect on you, like her enthusiasm for life in general is mildly contagious or something.

As the conversation comes to a close (Jade still has serious studying to do, after all), you feel a little like a stretched rubber band snapping back into shape. You realize that the way you’ve been acting, tiptoeing around the cabin to avoid Karkat...it’s almost exactly the way you used to act when you were still a brand-new freshman in the dorms, unused to living with anybody but your Bro.

You’d thought you had finally put a stake in the heart of those strange old habits over the last few years, but...apparently not.

Whatever, man. Fuck your Bro. It’s normal and fine to leave your bedroom without constantly looking over your fucking shoulder—to use the bathroom, or to get something to eat, or just to watch TV for a while or go out for a damn walk or whatever. It’s normal and fine to exist, to take up space. That was the one truly useful thing you learned in your time at college. You refuse to go back to the way you used to live—locking yourself away for days at a time, jumping at shadows—you won’t, you won’t. Not until it’s absolutely necessary. Not until you’re back at home, with him.

Unless, of course, you can manage to find some other arrangement before then. Someone who needs a roommate, if you can find a job fast, or, if not...someone who doesn’t mind letting you stay until you can. You need something more permanent than just crashing at the Egberts’ place for a couple of weeks.

There will be more than enough time to worry about that later, though. Right now, your loudly complaining stomach is helpfully reminding you that you really need to eat some actual food, and soon.

You slip your phone into your pocket and stand up. On your way to the kitchen, you note the steady sound of Karkat’s typing, still going strong, if a little slower than it was this morning.

In the hours since your impromptu bonding session earlier, ever since he shut himself back into his bedroom, you don’t think you’ve heard him open his door once. He’s only stopped typing a couple of times, and never for very long. The guy certainly seems dedicated to his work.

There isn’t much left of the food stash you brought with you, but...you’ve sort of had your eye on a dusty, unopened box of elbow macaroni your Bro left in the back of the cupboard. Mac and cheese sounds kinda fucking great right about now. You know next to nothing about cooking, really, but how difficult could it be to melt some cheese?

Thinking of Jade, you slip one earbud in so you can listen to music while you work. You follow the instructions on the box for cooking the pasta, using a smaller pot than recommended, because that’s all there is in the cabin’s cramped kitchen. It seems to work well enough. You mean, the water very nearly boils over when you dump the entire contents of the box into it, yes, but you manage to avoid disaster.

While the noodles are cooking, you open the fridge and pull out your last three slices of American cheese. You’re not entirely sure how to proceed from here. Usually, the kind of mac and cheese you make is...well, sort of foolproof. A packet of cheese powder that comes in the same package as the pasta. Just add water.

You guess you could just...stick the cheese slices on top of the hot noodles? If that’s not enough heat to get it all nice and melty, you could always just microwave the whole mess, right? Or, you could, if this place had a microwave. Which it doesn’t.

You look idly over the various foods Karkat’s added to the cabin’s refrigerator while you think about it. Carton of eggs. Some kind of meat, most likely, wrapped in plain brown paper. Bottle of grub sauce. Bag of mixed greens.

The half-gallon of milk gives you an idea. You don’t think he’ll notice if you just use a little.

It means you have to get another pan dirty, but that’s all right. You figure it’ll be worth the trouble if it turns out well. You heat the milk slowly, over a low flame—you may not know much about cooking, but you’ve experienced bitter, burnt hot chocolate enough times. Patience is key. You remember that much.

When you start to see tendrils of steam rising from the milk, you plop in the cheese slices and stir them around and around with a spoon. At first, it seems like you’re just sort of making a huge mess. Then, slowly, the cheese slices actually melt into the hot milk, creating a silky-smooth, perfectly orange-colored sauce. Hell yeah. Professional-looking stuff, right here. Home fuckin’ run.

So, okay, maybe you forgot about the macaroni for a couple of minutes. Whatever—the noodles are only slightly overcooked. You’ve definitely had much, much worse. Still knocked the sports ball outta the park, all things considered.

You pour the gooey, melty cheese sauce on top of the drained macaroni, right in the pot. Damn, that looks good. In spite of your furiously growling stomach, however, you resist taking a bite. Not yet.

You’d like to add some kind of seasoning. That...might be a problem, though. You contemplate the crusty old bottle of Tabasco sauce languishing in the fridge—it’s really the only option you’ve got, as far as spice goes, but that doesn’t mean you’re happy about it.

Unless...

You run back to your bedroom to quickly retrieve a severely crumpled, half-rolled-up bag from the depths of your backpack. The pièce de résistance, as Rose would say: a whole mess of crushed-up hot cheeto bits. Dave Strider has scored literally all the endzone points now. All of them. There’s no points left for anybody else. You take a bow, right there in the tiny, dingy kitchen. The crowd goes apeshit bananas.

You pause your music and take the pot of mac and cheese out to the living room with you, along with the spoon you’d used for stirring. You set it down on the coffee table while you hunt through your Bro’s VHS tape collection for a movie to put on.

Cool as Ice catches your eye from the top of the pile. God, what a piece of shit movie. A nightmare fusion of an unappealing romcom and a half-baked thriller, layered on top of the ugliest costume and set design you’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing with your own two human eyes. So...more or less a perfect ironic watch, really. You pop it into the VCR without a second thought.

It’s only then, as you sit back and prepare to take the first bite of your dinner to the soundtrack of Vanilla Ice’s shitty rapping, that you realize your mistake. This is way too much fucking mac and cheese for one person.

You lower the spoon back into the pot, glancing down the darkened hallway. You could just eat half tonight and save the rest for tomorrow. You could, or...

Before you have a chance to talk yourself out of it, you’re knocking on Karkat’s bedroom door, interrupting the sound of his rapid-fire typing yet again. Guy must have written an entire god damn novel by now.

“Sup,” you greet him when he comes to the door. He narrows his eyes suspiciously.

He’s got a knitted pink blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak. He’s holding it closed over his chest with one hand. It’s sort of cute. “What do you want?”

“Damn, okay. Right down to business. Uh. I was sorta wondering if you were hungry? I mean, you’ve gotta be by now, right? You haven’t really taken a break since...”

You trail off, realizing how it sounds. Like you’ve been listening to his every move, all day long. Which. You guess you sort of have been? His fingers tighten over the blanket, clutching it closer to his chest. Fuck.

“Not that I’m, like, keeping track of your breaks or—or your, I dunno, WPMs or whatever. I’m not, I promise.”

The disgruntled expression on his face would be kind of adorable if it wasn’t currently being directed at you. Behind your shades, you start to sweat a little.

“I’m not creepy,” you blurt out. Fuck! That makes it sound like you are creepy—

Karkat heaves a sigh, interrupting what might have otherwise become a complete doom spiral. “I actually am kind of hungry. I guess I lost track of the time.”

You move on past the creepy talk, gratefully. “Well, you’re in luck,” you tell him. “I already made us dinner, dude. Get ready for the gourmet-est mac and cheese you’ve ever experienced in your life.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he grumbles as he exits his room, closing the door behind him. He’s still holding the knitted blanket around his shoulders. It drags on the floor behind him as he walks.

You grab the pot from the coffee table and head back into the kitchen with it, waving Karkat over to the couch. He takes one look at the incompetent white rapper flailing around on the TV screen and starts glaring like Vanilla Ice personally killed his lusus.

“What the fuck is this nineties music video hoofbeastshit you’re watching?”

“It’s Cool as Ice, dude,” you explain with a shrug, even though you know Karkat can’t see you from the living room. You quickly search the cupboards until you find two chipped ceramic bowls. You split the pot of mac and cheese evenly between them. “C’mon, it’s a masterclass in terrible filmmaking. A total trainwreck. Are you telling me you’ve never seen it?”

“I am telling you that, yes! Incredible as it may seem!”

You walk back into the living room. “Well now we gotta watch it,” you say, grinning, as you hand over one of the bowls.

He stares at it with clear distaste, brow crumpled and nose wrinkled, but he takes it all the same. A horrifying thought occurs to you then.

“Oh, shit, wait. Are you, like, a vegan? Or lactose intolerant—? Wait. Never mind. You wouldn’t have had milk in the fridge if—uhh—”

You feel your face flush with heat as you suddenly remember your theft.

“Shit, I—I’m sorry, man, I used some of your milk. Listen, I’ll totally pay you back for it.”

His expression is dark and stormy, staring down into his bowl, but...when he speaks, he doesn’t sound angry. He just sounds sort of amused.

“You’re going to pay me? How much milk did you even use, twenty cents’ worth?”

“Umm,” you stammer. “Shit. Sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Can you just,” he snorts, “calm down, please, dumbass. It’s not actually a big fucking deal.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, please don’t make a habit of taking my food without asking,” he says, sniffing his spoon cautiously. “But—you made this for both of us, right?”

Right. Never mind that the whole sharing thing was kind of an afterthought.

“Yeah,” you say. You finally take your first bite as Vanilla Ice jumps his douchey motorcycle over a fence onscreen. It’s...pretty alright. The bright red cheeto bits really do add a special something, in your opinion.

Karkat hums as he chews, blessedly distracting you from the movie. “Well...this isn’t much more than basic wiggler food,” he says, “but, still...thank you.”

Oh, you aren’t about to let that slide. “The fuck you mean? This is the best mac and cheese I’ve ever made in my life. Are you saying you can do better?”

Karkat laughs, then—a loud, genuine laugh. “Of course, I forgot. You haven’t experienced my cooking yet.” He takes another bite, a sideways sort of grin creeping onto his face.

You return your focus to the movie, or at least you pretend to, because something about his smile is a little too much for you in this moment. Your face still feels hot. “I dunno, man. You’ve got a lot to live up to, if I do say so myself.”

“Pfft. Prepare your ignorance shaft, because you’re absolutely going to eat those words.”

You eat your mac and cheese instead, just to give your mouth something to do (aside from getting you into more trouble). Despite Karkat’s dismissive appraisal, he eats his food enthusiastically enough.

“You know, this smug motherfucker has an inexplicable kind of appeal to him, actually,” he says after several minutes, waving his spoon at the screen.

“Vanilla fucking Ice? No, he doesn’t.”

“I’m just saying. I kind of get why this girl would fall for him. Like, conceptually.”

“You’ve gotta be fucking with me. He’s—”

“Yeah. Repellent.” He smiles at you. You try not to stare at his teeth. “But...still. Don’t you think he’s actually—I don’t know, strangely charming, in his own way?”

You sit in stunned silence, unable to think of a single response.

He hums thoughtfully, setting his empty bowl aside on the coffee table. Then he drops a bomb on your head. “He reminds me of you, a little bit, actually.”

That gets a laugh out of you, because what the fuck. “Robert Van Winkle fucking wishes,” you manage to choke out. You gesture toward yourself with both hands. “He could never.”

Karkat laughs again, showing more of those pointed teeth, and it’s such a good sound—and for no reason at all a memory comes back to you from your sophomore year of college, of the first and only guy you ever kissed (at a party, on a dare).

Quickly, you banish the thought.

“Listen, man. If you don’t stop complimenting this trash-ass movie I’m going to be forced to throw the tape as far as I can out into the forest.”

His gaze travels momentarily down over your arms, then flickers back up to your face. Shit.

“As far as you can. So, like, two feet?”

Your mind goes suddenly, horribly blank as you contemplate the difference between your physique and Karkat’s. You haven’t kept up with your sword training since leaving home for college. In a hypothetical wrestling match between the two of you, he’d easily win. Probably within seconds.

You are not picturing Karkat pinning you down on this couch right now. Absolutely not. He says, “Anyway, I wasn’t complimenting it. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s complete garbage.”

“Are we still talking about the movie?”

He rolls his eyes in a way that’s already beginning to be familiar. “I don’t know. I could be talking about your cooking.”

“Your bowl’s empty, dude. Sure seems like you enjoyed it.”

There’s a moment of silence between you, further accented by a brief lull in the onscreen dialogue. It’s almost awkward, but...not quite.

You clear your throat to fill the silence. You fold yourself into a more comfortable position as the climax of the movie plays out. You have no idea whether Karkat’s actually watching it anymore—you’re barely watching it—but slowly, slowly, the silence between you becomes something more-or-less comfortable again.

“Well, that was a waste of my valuable time,” he sighs as the credits roll. “Thanks for the food, though. I, uh. Appreciate it.”

It’s too sincere. You shrug it off with a “yeah, man,” as you get up and press rewind on the VCR. You grab his bowl and stack it with yours, then wordlessly return to the kitchen to clean up.

When you come back out into the living room, sometime around eleven, the cabin is quiet and dark.

There’s no more typing from Karkat’s bedroom that night. There’s no sound at all, in fact—or so you think, until you’re snuggled in bed and waiting for sleep and it’s silent, so much more silent than a college dorm or a skyscraper in the city ever could be—and in that total silence you gradually become aware of the slight, light sound of his snoring.

You wake up to the sound of Karkat’s stomping feet. The guy doesn’t sound frantic or angry or anything, just like he’s never had any reason not to stomp around like an entire herd of trumpet beasts (trunk beasts? you need to refresh yourself on all the troll lingo) and announce his presence to the entire world. You wonder if he’s ever had any roommates, or downstairs neighbors. You might be grateful for the sound, but you highly doubt anyone else would be.

The stomping stops and starts as Karkat moves through the cabin—it stops for a while after he makes his way toward the kitchen, then suddenly starts back up as he comes back toward the bedrooms. 

You hear him stop outside your door, and you figure it’s time to get up and stop lying around listening to Karkat go about his morning routine. Did something break in the kitchen again? Is he here to ask when you finally plan on getting the fuck out of the cabin? Did he see his milk carton and decide that, actually, you did use too much last night, and now he’s here to tell you off for it?

A million questions swirl around in your head as you wait for Karkat to knock on your door, but he never does. Instead, you hear a single, faint pat from the other side of the door, and then he’s walking back off down the hallway, toward the front of the cabin.

You hear a bit of a struggle after that. You’re about to get up and see if Karkat actually needs help with something, but then the front door slams. Seconds later, a car starts up outside, and you listen as the sound becomes fainter and fainter as it seemingly drives off.

The cabin is entirely silent after that. 

You get up and get dressed, feeling ridiculous for not doing so sooner. Despite your resolve to not hide away in your room, you were still doing just that. There are things you could be doing, and instead you chose to just lie there and listen to Karkat walk around? You’re pretty sure he wouldn’t care if you were also walking around the cabin. If you were bothering him, he seems like the type of guy who would just say so.

Then again, he hasn’t really questioned why you were still here. You certainly hadn’t been doing any type of actual maintenance since you’d fixed up Karkat’s bedroom window. Maybe he was just paranoid that more things would break, so he was keeping you around until he decided the cabin was in a good enough condition to kick you to the curb.

You feel almost...relieved?, when you exit your room and see that, yes, Karkat really is gone. That relief is immediately replaced with shame because what right do you have to feel relieved that the poor guy renting this thing decided to go into town or whatever? He’s the one who has a right to be here alone, not you.

You close the bedroom door behind you, and that’s when you get an explanation for that odd, patting noise Karkat made on the door earlier.

A piece of paper is folded up and taped to the door. You’re nervous (why are you nervous?) when you snatch it up and unfold it to see what it says.

WENT INTO TOWN. IF YOU NEED SOMETHING TO KEEP YOURSELF BUSY, THAT FRONT DOOR IS STILL THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. YOUR “INSPECTION” THE OTHER NIGHT CLEARLY DID FUCK ALL.

You laugh when you read the note because of course Karkat writes just as loudly as he talks. 

You shove the paper into your pocket, then go to look at the front door. “Sure is a door,” you mutter to yourself. “Think it’s just got it out for Karkat. Pretty rude if you ask me.” You honestly have no desire to play maintenance man right now, not when you just woke up and finally have a little bit of freedom to move around as you please. You’re sure you could find some videos or tutorials to tell you why it seems to stick, but doing this by yourself just doesn’t seem appealing in the slightest. “I’ll deal with you later,” you tell the door. 

Instead of torturing yourself with maintenance requests, you head into the bathroom for a much-needed shower. You note that Karkat has gathered all your things together since the last time you were in here, and placed them neatly on the little built-in “shelf” along the side of the shower wall. You don’t see any sight of his things. You briefly wonder if he takes them all back to his room, but you suppose his showering habits aren’t really your business. 

You take your time in the shower, letting your thoughts wander as you enjoy the hot water. Once you’re done with that and dressed for the day, you make yourself an honestly pathetic sandwich with the last of your bread and lunch meat. You take your less than ideal “breakfast” out back, where a couple rickety old chairs are sitting on the porch outside.

When the sunlight hits your face, you realize that you haven’t actually left the cabin in days, save for when you briefly stepped out to help Karkat with his luggage the other night. 

You can kind of see why people would want to come spend time out in the country, you guess. Not in this specific cabin, of course. That’s still just as shitty as ever. The weather is decent today, not as hot as it is back home, not freezing cold like it is once the sun goes down. You know there are other cabins out here, but none are visible from where you’re sitting. All you can see is the field directly behind the cabin, and the trees and various other plants in the surrounding area.

With Karkat currently gone, the sounds of his stomping and typing and lack of an “inside voice” have been replaced with birds, squirrels, and...the sound of a new message on Pesterchum. Typical nature sounds, really.

It’s Rose. You briefly glance at the message, then put your phone back in your pocket. You’re not exactly avoiding her, definitely not like you’re avoiding your Bro, but you just. Don’t want her to know what’s going on yet. You’ll message her later, after you’ve had a little more time to just sit here doing absolutely fuck all. Just have to get your thoughts together, finally draft a good message to her, and hope she can’t get any info out of John or Jade in the meantime.

“There’s something wrong with me,” you complain to the empty chair next to you. It doesn’t answer, obviously. You’d probably have to give in and let Rose psychoanalyze you for real if chairs started responding to you. “That would’ve been a great moment for Karkat to come back and sneak up on me. Not that he could.”

Karkat does not sneak up on you (again, not that he could). In fact, he’s still not back when you head back inside after deciding you’ve probably gotten enough sunlight for the day. 

You take advantage of his absence, finding comfort in the fact that you definitely will notice when he gets back. Remembering your conversation with Jade yesterday, you grab your laptop out of your room and bring it to the living room. Working on some music sounds like a great use of your time all of a sudden.

You’re still on the couch, fiddling with a previously abandoned project of yours, when you hear Karkat’s car pull up outside. You fight the urge to grab your laptop and run off to your room. You don’t want him to think you were doing something suspicious, so you stay where you are and try to chill out.

You left the door unlocked, so he doesn’t have to fight with the key when he opens it. “Oh good, you’re still here. Help me carry all this shit inside.”

You’re not exactly sure how you still being here is a good thing from Karkat’s end, but you’ll definitely help him carry more shit inside if that’s what it takes to keep him off your case.

You whistle when you see everything that Karkat has managed to shove into his trunk (and the back seat of his car, and stacked up in the passenger seat, holy shit). “Damn, dude. I know you said you were gonna be here a while, but I didn’t know you were permanently moving in.”

“You would have to completely remodel this piece of shit for me to even think about moving in and I have some doubts about your ability to do that.”

“Just some doubts? Knew I was starting to win you over.”

Karkat doesn’t respond to that, just rolls his eyes and shoves a few bags at you. You take the hint and start carrying things inside.

You don’t think you’ve ever seen this much food in a single kitchen before. A quick glance inside a few of the bags reveals that it’s not all just food, but still. Karkat probably won’t have to go back into town for weeks.

“You better not drop anything,” Karkat grumbles at you when you start loading as many bags as possible into your arms for your second trip. 

“Don’t worry, dude. Your precious...” you look inside one of the bags. “Screwdrivers are safe. What’s with the screwdriver? Didn’t even know they had those at the grocery store.”

He gives you an exasperated look. “I didn’t get it at the grocery store. The one in your tool box sucks.”

“Wow, so you’re replacing it just like that? Heartless.”

You head back inside, with Karkat following close behind, and start unloading bags into the kitchen again. Karkat does the same, but instead of turning around and going outside for another trip, he starts pulling things out of the bags. You leave him to it and go to get the rest. He’s barely made a dent in putting things away by the time you come in with the last of the bags.

“You sure you’re not moving in?” you ask when you see Karkat pull some brand new pots and pans out of one of the bags.

“I need more than a single pot if I’m going to actually cook here. My editor is reimbursing me for all this shit, anyway. They’re the one who booked this thing, the least they can do is ensure it’s halfway livable.”

“Sweet deal.”

There’s honestly not a lot of room in the kitchen, but you and Karkat manage to shove most of his purchases into the available space. He seems to be particular about how he wants things organized, so you’re happy to just take orders from him while you stock the fridge and pantry. He leaves a few things out on the counter, but you don’t ask him why. It’s not really any of your business.

You get your answer anyway, once he’s done handwashing his new pots and pans. He fills one of the pots with water, then places it on the stove (presumably to boil), and you take that as your cue to get out of his hair. “Have fun cooking with your nice new pans, man.” You try not to think about the fact that, despite how much food is now in the kitchen, you currently have nothing left to eat.

You try to exit the kitchen, but there’s a tug on your sleeve, pulling you back before you can. “Oh no you don’t. Stay here. Clearly somebody needs to show you how real food is made.”

“You saying my mac and cheese is fake? I’m hurt.”

“Shut up about your mac and cheese. You’ll forget all about it once this is done.”

It’s awkward at first, just standing around while Karkat starts going through the pile of ingredients he’s set out on the counter. You pick at a hangnail. You’re not really sure what Karkat wants you to do? Just watch and “learn”?

That does not seem to be his plan at all. You watch as he grabs two of the brightly colored little cutting boards he’d purchased. He leaves one on the counter in front of him, then sets the other a little further down. 

“Wash your hands,” he tells you. 

“Uh, yessir.”

He gives you an odd look. “Stop calling me that. You can help chop things, right?”

“Sure can. Won’t look fancy or anything but I definitely know how to use a knife.”

“I don’t need it to look ‘fancy’. Wash your hands so you don’t get grime all over the food, then dice these tomatoes.” 

You quickly go about doing as he says, washing your hands twice for good measure before you start cutting up the tomatoes Karkat set on the cutting board for you. “What’re we making?” you ask.

“It’s just chicken and pasta. I know you humans are super picky when it comes to troll cuisine, so— No, don’t slice them like that. Dice them.”

You immediately stop what you’re doing. “Might need a tutorial or something if you want these a specific way.”

Karkat doesn’t seem like the most patient person, so you expect him to get exasperated with you, but surprisingly, he doesn’t. Instead, he takes the knife from you, asks you to watch him, and cuts up one of the tomatoes into little cubes. 

“Got it. Seems easy enough.”

You go back to dicing the tomatoes properly. You take your time, trying to make the little cubes of tomato look as neat and even as Karkat had. While you’re doing that, Karkat makes quick work of doing...everything else that needs to be done, honestly. He makes quick work of slicing up some garlic and onions, then preparing a few chicken breasts. You’re more of a “throw some frozen chicken nuggets into the toaster oven” sort of guy, so the way he slices, seasons, and breads the chicken by hand is mesmerizing, if you’re being entirely honest with yourself. 

It’s more than a little distracting, watching how efficiently Karkat works, but you manage to get the tomatoes all diced up anyway. You’re not as quick as Karkat had been and they don’t look nearly as neat as the tomato he’d prepared, but Karkat seems to be too caught up in everything he’s doing to criticize your work.

“Get the spaghetti ready. And do not overcook it this time.” Well, too caught up in what he’s doing to criticize the tomatoes, you guess.

It’s a tight fit, with you both standing at the stove, but it doesn’t feel crowded. Just...cozy. You flush a little just thinking that. You hope if Karkat notices that he’ll just assume it’s from the heat of the stove.

Karkat adds the tomatoes to the pan where the garlic, onions, and chicken have been cooking, steadily making the small kitchen smell more and more delicious.

It’s not exactly quiet while you two work, even if you don’t talk much, what with the sounds of boiling and frying and Karkat’s ever-present stomping as he moves around the kitchen. You’re both too focused on what you’re doing to banter much, outside of Karkat giving you some more minor tasks here and there. You don’t feel the need to fill the “silence” for once.

Once everything is cooked, Karkat asks you to grab some plates, then shoos you aside so he can dish it up for you both.

“Right, gotta plate this up all fancy and proper. Can’t just slop food of this caliber onto the plate all willy-nilly.”

“I’m not plating it up ‘all fancy,’ stop being an ass.”

Despite what Karkat says, this is probably the fanciest food you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s not just “chicken and pasta.” The chicken is perfectly breaded and fried, so well that you’d think it came pre-breaded if you hadn’t seen Karkat do it himself. Karkat had simmered it, along with all the vegetables, in a mixture of cream and parmesan cheese to create a thick sauce. After heaping spaghetti onto both the plates, he places a piece of chicken on each, then starts spooning the sauce on top of everything. He finishes it all off with some pepper and fresh cut basil (at least you’re pretty sure it’s basil).  

You finally understand why so many people love taking pictures of their food because, yeah, you can’t help yourself, you definitely need to snap a few pics of the plates before you can even think about diving in. 

You pull out your phone, line it up to get the perfect shot, and get a few pictures before you remember that, oh yeah. Karkat is still here. You shove your phone in your pocket, embarrassed at doing something so lame. “Uh, sorry about that.”

Karkat doesn’t seem to be phased at all. “Why are you sorry? I’m supposed to be sending over photos for my segments anyway, thanks for the reminder.”

“You a photographer too? Man, you can really do it all.”

“No. No, I’m really not a photographer. They just don’t want to exile any of the actual photographers out here and my shitty palmhusk photos are supposed to add to the ‘charm’ of the column or something.”

“You can use the ones I took if you want. Of the food, I mean. I haven’t taken any other pictures here.” 

“You know saying shit like that makes it sound like you have been taking photos here, right?”

“I really haven’t, dude. Can look through my phone if you want.” You pull your phone back out of your pocket, ready to show Karkat your camera roll because really, you haven’t been doing anything creepy at all, you just have a stupid mouth that says things on its own sometimes, before you have the chance to think about how they come across. “Nothing nefarious going on here at all.”

“Calm down. Jesus, I was joking. If I thought you were sneaking around taking photos of me or some shit, I definitely wouldn’t just be hanging around making food for you. With you.”

“Oh, hah. Yeah, I guess that would be a little weird.”

Karkat gives you what might be a grin, then grabs both the plates off the counter before handing one off to you. “I’m picking the movie this time,” he tells you. As if you two eat dinner and watch movies together all the time, instead of having done so for the first time last night. “One of the stores in town had a half-decent selection, so there’s no need to subject me to any more of your garbage taste in films.”

“To be fair to me, that was my Bro’s garbage taste in films, not mine.” 

“You’re still the one who picked it last night.”

“You got me there.”

You make yourself at home on the couch, carefully holding your almost too beautiful to eat plate of food in your lap. You take a bite of the pasta while Karkat is getting whatever movie he’s selected ready, and you let out an honest-to-god moan when the sauce hits your tongue. 

“Holy shit, dude. Where’d you learn to cook like this? You should tell your editor to suck it and just do this professionally. Wow. This is seriously—oh man, no. The Notebook? Seriously? That’s what we’re watching? Cool as Ice isn’t that bad. No, it is. You’re right. I deserve this.”

Karkat’s face goes from lightly flushed from your praise, to downright indignant. “The Notebook is a masterpiece and is absolutely not on the same level as that swill you made me watch last night. I don’t want to hear a single complaint about it.”

With that, Karkat presses “play” and joins you on the couch. 

You don’t complain as the movie begins, but only because you’re too busy enjoying your food. The complaints can wait until you’re done.

Chapter Text

After breakfast the next morning, and after your customary surveillance camera check, you follow the thunderous sound of Karkat’s typing—down the hall, and then right through his open bedroom door. Huh.

“Hey, dude, am I bothering you,” you ask, sort of, as you lean against the doorframe. He opens his mouth to reply without looking up, or even bothering to stop writing, for that matter, but you cut him off. “I know you said no complaints allowed, but listen, man. I’ve given it some more thought since last night? And I was right the first time, okay. That movie was an industrial-grade load of premium god damn horseshit.”

“Oh, really,” is all he says, his head cocked to one side expectantly, eyes narrowed. He drums his fingertips lightly against the desk, waiting for you to elaborate so he can destroy your argument with facts and logic, you guess.

“Yeah, really,” you say. “But, listen, before we get to that. Um. Thank you.”

“For wh—” he starts to say, but stops himself. He looks down at his laptop.

Yeah, he knows for what. For breakfast, on the very morning you had finally run out of food. More specifically, for the stack of warm, fluffy homemade pancakes he’d left on the kitchen counter, covered with a note that simply read MADE TOO MANY. There’d been a small dish of butter sitting right next to the plate, and a bottle of real maple syrup, too, and clean silverware.

You’d tried not to think too hard about it. You had distracted yourself for a few minutes, wrestling with the unbelievably shitty old coffee maker, but after that...sitting down in the living room with your mug and the plate of food...there was just no avoiding it anymore. Karkat—a troll you barely know—had done something incredibly fucking considerate for you, even if the pancakes were just his unwanted leftovers, which you didn’t completely believe. Something about the way he’d arranged everything—the note, the butter and the syrup...it was all too evident that he, you know, gave a shit. Something kind like that...you know you don’t deserve gestures like that, can’t ever expect things like that—not from anybody. Your legal guardian taught you that, as surely as he taught you to swing a sword.

To tell the truth...it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, sitting and eating and processing all that, first thing in the morning. In fact, it made you feel terribly small. You’d had to work harder than you’d like to admit just to contain the tears that threatened to come to your eyes. It had been a close call for a moment or two, though you had prevailed in the end. Reading over some half-finished SBaHJ concepts in your notes app had helped.

You know none of that is Karkat’s fault. So you came here to thank him, and to tell him that one of his favorite movies of all time is flaming trash, actually, because that shit’s been haunting you in the hours since you helped him with the dishes and went to bed. You’d stayed awake until two AM staring at the fucking ceiling thinking about it. You fucking dreamed about Ryan Gosling, god damn it.

Not—not like that. Just, you know. A normal-ass Ryan Gosling dream. A dream (normal) that just so happened to have Ryan Gosling in it, like—like a guest star on a TV show. That’s all.

“So, first of all,” you say, clearing your throat, “I’m ninety-nine percent sure Alzheimer’s doesn’t work like that.”

“Here we go,” Karkat sighs, cracking his knuckles and pushing his chair away from the desk like he’s about to fistfight you over this stupid corny movie. For all you know, he is.

It doesn’t quite come to blows, but damn. This dude has got strong feelings about his preferred genre.

He’s also got volume control issues, apparently. It’s a good thing your Bro’s surveillance cameras don’t pick up sound.

“—excuse the fuck out of me for enjoying a film you personally don’t feel is up to the lofty standards of oh, I don’t know, Cool as Ice? Which actually was an abomination, for which you owe me compensation, I’ve decided—”

You’re not even arguing with him anymore. You’re just reclining on his bed, doing your best to contain your smirk while you listen to his breathless tirade in defense of the concept of romance itself, punctuated by occasional wild gesticulations.

His extreme lack of chill about this subject just strikes you as funny, and maybe even sort of cute—though you’re trying to take him seriously. Sort of. Well...you were, in the beginning. Now you’re just trying not to laugh while he goes the fuck off. You don’t know about him, but you’re just having some fun here—you don’t want to actually piss him off.

You don’t know if you could explain it to John or Jade or Rose, but you like this guy, like, on a fundamental level. He’s hilarious, yes, but...it’s more than that. And if you’re being brutally honest with yourself...you want him to like you, too. In a kind of really uncool way.

Maybe that’s why you hold back some of your more cutting criticisms of the movie. Specifically, you have doubts about the so-called romance between the main characters. You’re not usually picky about that kind of thing, but...when it’s supposed to be the point...?

Or maybe you’ve been hesitant to bring that up because you’d really rather not remind yourself—or remind Karkat, for that matter—of the four and a half minutes of sweaty awkwardness you’d experienced watching Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling bone down, sitting scrunched up on opposite ends of that beat-up old couch. God, that was weird. It had taken you another twenty minutes just to unclench.

Yeah—you definitely couldn’t explain any of this shit to Rose. Not without a lot of sassy eyebrow waggling directed your way.

“Hey, d’you wanna see some of my photos?” you ask him, and it takes the wind entirely out of his sails. He blows out a noisy breath and plops down dramatically in his desk chair, deflated.

“Uh,” he says, after a long pause. “Sure?”

“Okay, be right back.”

You head down the hall into your own room. You pull your scuffed red leather portfolio from your backpack—one of the few things you’d actually saved from school. You’d really enjoyed your photography classes; it would have been nice to be able to continue those, at least. But you’d sold your nice camera, along with everything else, when you moved out of the dorms. All you’ve got left is the shitty old Polaroid nobody had wanted to buy from you.

Karkat seems taken aback by the book when you present it to him. “I thought you were just going to show me some shit on your phone,” he mumbles as he runs his hands over the worn leather cover.

“I got lots of pictures on my phone too,” you say with a shrug. “You can see those too, if you want.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He opens the book and begins to peruse your portfolio. You find yourself holding your breath, unable to work up a good ramble to fill the silence, for once. You’re...actually sort of nervous.

He’s silent, flipping through the pages slowly and deliberately. You watch his eyes as they travel over each photo, watch his brow furrow. When it becomes too excruciating you look at his hands instead, watch how he smooths his fingers over the pages while he’s looking, as if his sense of touch will help him observe better.

“These are,” he says, at long last, “um...”

You can’t stop looking at those pointed teeth of his. God damn.

“They’re—pretty good.”

“Thanks.”

You open the photos app on your phone and find the shots you took of Karkat’s fancily plated pasta last night, handing it over so he can take a look.

He barely seems to glance at them, though. He’s looking at you again, searching you with those scarlet eyes. Despite the cozy warmth of his room, you have to suppress a shiver.

You reach for your phone, but he turns his whole body away, holding it close to his chest. “I’m sending these to myself,” he mutters, typing rapidly as he texts himself, you guess. “You said I could use them.”

“Go for it, man.”

When he hands your phone back to you, the messages he sent himself have been deleted. Of course. You slip the phone into your pocket.

“Wouldn’t want me to have your number, hm?”

“Last god damn thing on Earth I need is you having more ways to contact me. Who knows what kind of uneducated opinions I’d be forced to read. It’s unpleasant enough just talking to you—”

“No, no, that’s fair.”

“Great. Glad you understand. Now if you’re finished bothering me, I do in fact have a lot of shit to get done today.”

You give him a mock salute. “You got it, boss.”

He opens his laptop back up and settles in at his desk, all business again. You very much don’t want to hang around where you’re not wanted, so you gather up your portfolio and leave him to his work, at least for a little while.

You’re prepared to settle in for another day of not really doing anything at all, but when you check your phone, you find that Jade has sent you a few files, along with a demand to make some sick beats with these bass lines :).

You get an alert that she’s gone idle when you reply, so you figure you can check in with her again later once you’ve actually had a chance to, you know, make some sick beats with these bass lines.

You listen to the files. The first one is relatively simple, a nice backbeat you could easily build something up around. The next one, to your surprise, is about ten minutes of Jade freestyling on her acoustic guitar, rather than the electric bass she’d been playing in the other file.

You’re excited to work with these, and it’s not like you have anything better to do, so you grab your laptop and go to set up in the living room.

You feel surprisingly relaxed when you sit down on the couch. You can still hear Karkat’s typing, but it’s just background noise, a near-constant metronome rhythmically tapping away while you settle in to work on this new project. It’s not bothersome in the slightest, doesn’t make you feel anxious with the reminder that someone else is in the cabin.

Once you put your headphones on, you can no longer hear the typing, so you don’t immediately notice when it stops, about thirty minutes into your mixing session.

You do notice when Karkat enters the living room. He seems to be trying to get you to notice, though, as his stomping is a little too dramatic, not like his usual walking pace (you ignore the fact that you already know what his “usual walking pace” sounds like). You pull your headphones off and pause the file you’re currently listening to just as Karkat comes to stand in front of you.

“Sup, dude?”

“I’m going into town for some craft fair I have to write about. Do you know anything about it?”

“Never heard of it. I don’t spend a whole lotta time out in the town while I’m here.”

“Lucky town.”

“Heh, yeah man. Lucky them. They’d get the shock of their little lives if they knew such a cool guy was hanging around here. Don’t think their quaint lil townspeople hearts could handle it.”

He rolls his eyes, but you can tell he’s trying not to smile. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Whatever, man. Have fun.”

“I’m not counting on it.”

You watch Karkat struggle with the front door, as usual, and decide to take a break from your music for a bit to research how to actually fix whatever is going on with the door knob. Maybe you can make use of that fancy new screwdriver Karkat bought yesterday.

You pull up some music to listen to on your laptop while you look for whatever the potential issue could be on your phone. You laugh to yourself when the first result suggests using “lubricant” to fix a stuck door knob. Your laughter is short-lived when you dig through the closet, then under the kitchen sink, and see that there’s no WD-40 or anything similar to be had.

You end up grabbing that new screwdriver because the next result suggests taking the door knob apart to see if any debris is inside that might be causing it to act up.

And oh boy is there debris inside this gross ass door knob. It’s difficult at first to even turn the screws necessary to remove the knob from the door, and once you do, dust and other gunk starts falling out of the hole where the knob once was. Like the rest of the place, it has clearly been horribly neglected. Then again, who thinks to clean the inside of door knobs?

You’re certain Karkat won’t mind you using any of the cleaning supplies he bought in his massive grocery haul, especially since he is the one who keeps having issues with this door. You easily get the thing all cleaned up in the sink. You use a rag and some more cleaner to dust off the door itself, just because you might as well. You think Karkat will be slightly more impressed by the cleanliness.

The first screw goes back in much more easily than it had come out. The second screw is nowhere to be found, and you have a moment of panic when you realize that, but it’s short-lived. You’d just dropped it on the floor.

“Phew,” you say to the screw when you find it. “Don’t scare me like that. I’m tryna fix this damn thing, not make it easier for someone to rob the place.”

(You check the camera outside the front door while you’re here anyway. Just in case.)

The knob seems to work well enough when you test it, from both sides, but that wasn’t really the issue, was it? You’ve got the magic touch when it comes to this thing, full of debris or not. The real test will have to wait until Karkat gets ho— back to the cabin.

You’re back in your room, tweaking a few things on your latest musical endeavor, when Karkat finally comes back later that afternoon.

You resist the urge to immediately ask about the door knob because wow, you don’t want to seem desperate or anything. He starts typing away again anyway, so you leave him to it while you finish up the section of your song you are currently focused on.

You last about twenty minutes before you’re pressing your laptop shut and heading to the room next door.

“Sooo,” you say as you lean against the door frame of Karkat’s once again wide-open bedroom door. “You notice anything different when you got back?”

Karkat pushes away from his desk and turns to face you. “You left a dirty rag on the floor. Is that what I was supposed to notice?”

“What? No, dude. That’s not it.” He doesn’t actually sound annoyed or anything, but you tack on a, “Sorry ‘bout that,” anyway, before continuing with your line of questioning. “You came in through the front door, yeah? I didn’t hear any of that tell-tale struggle you’ve been having with it the past couple days. It worked, right? I fixed it?”

Karkat seems to think that over for a moment, then a look of realization spreads across his face. You enjoy how expressive he is. “Finally decided to show me why you’re the doors guy, huh?”

Since when were you...oh yeah. That was definitely a thing you said at some point. You’re kind of surprised Karkat remembered even a fraction of the bullshit you spout. “The doors guy, that’s me. Had to give it a stern talking to about being rude to the guests.”

“For some reason, I doubt that you talked to the door and it magically decided to start working correctly.”

“No joke, Karkat. That thing was stubborn as fuck. Had to clean it out and tighten up the screws too. The talking to was at least half of what I did, though. Shoulda been there, it was real impressive.”

“I have my doubts about that too.”

You notice that, unlike earlier, Karkat hasn’t bothered to keep typing while you two chat. It almost makes you feel some sorta way, him being turned toward you, his gaze actually being focused on you, rather than his laptop screen...but he has been working all day, hasn’t he? On a column that he clearly doesn’t even like? He’s probably just looking for an excuse not to work right now, and you’ve oh so helpfully provided him with one. He’d just dismiss you again if he actually wanted to focus on his work.

“How was your thing, by the way? Did you see lots of cool crafts? Or do crafts. What happens at a craft fair anyway?”

“Apparently you do fuck all. It was barely worth writing about, honestly.”

Karkat doesn’t really seem like a crafts sort of guy anyway. Then again, it’s not like you know that much about him. Maybe he does crafts all the time. You somehow don’t think so, though. “Aw man, no good at all?”

“Was nice to get outside, I guess. I barely left the house when I was back home and now I’m out here in the middle of nowhere and oh look! I’m still inside, with my laptop, doing the exact same fucking thing I could be doing if I hadn’t been exiled out here.”

“Man, what a mood. I never really get out much either.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“There’s all that wilderness out there and here we both are, being a couple of chumps indoors. What’s with that?”

“I wouldn’t really call it wilderness,” Karkat insists. “Which just makes this worse, honestly. At least if this really was out in the country, I’d have more to write about. There’s barely even any nut creatures running around out there.”

“What creatures?” Karkat just scowls at you while you try not to laugh. Oh, right. Squirrels. “Nevermind that. There are definitely ‘nut creatures’ hanging around, dude. There’s loads of birds too. Don’t you hear them squawking out there? You really do need to spend some more time outside if you didn’t notice all the birds.”

You weren’t really meaning that to be a suggestion that you both go outside right now, but Karkat apparently takes it as such. He pushes himself out of his chair, stands up, and walks over to where you’re standing against the door frame. “Fine. Show me these birds. Let’s go outside.”

“Oh. Yeah? Yeah, we can go outside. Soak up some D. Vitamin D. Do trolls need vitamin D like how humans do? Or do you call it something else, like—”

“I don’t want to know what you could possibly think we call vitamin D. Yes, trolls need it too.”

“Alright, then. Let’s go outside. We’ve got this.” You get a sudden idea and go back into your room, snatching up your old Polaroid camera, along with an extra film pack.

“Why do you need that?” Karkat asks.

“Can get some nice shots of the forest or something. They’ll look super rustic on this old thing.”

Karkat doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t tell you to put the camera away, either. He walks off without another word, and you follow him out the back door of the cabin. You think he’s going to stop on the porch, maybe just sit out here for a while, but he keeps walking as if he’s a man on a mission, straight off the porch and into the field behind the cabin.

Whatever the mission is, Karkat doesn’t even seem to know, because he just sort of...stops, right under a tree. You stop just in time to avoid ramming him right in the back. Ramming into his back. Ramming...running into him. Jesus.

“This sure is outside,” you tell him.

“Shut the fuck up. Just...enjoy it or something. It’s nice out, right?”

“The weather? Yeah. Nice and sunny. Might be sunnier if we weren’t standing under a tree. Can you still get all those sweet sweet vitamins if you’re in the shade?”

Karkat rolls his eyes, then reaches out a hand and...pushes you, out of the shade of the tree and directly into the sun. “There. Get your vitamins.”

“This is for you too, dude. Can’t leave me to soak up the sun all by myself.” You reach out and grab Karkat’s hand. He tries to avoid you at first, attempts to pull his arm away, but you’re too quick for him. “C’mon, we’re out here to be outside, not hide in the shadows.”

It’s an improvement, you guess, standing around in the sun instead of standing around in the shade. You snap a couple of pictures of the forest, for lack of anything better to do. You slip the Polaroids into your back pocket for safe keeping.

You shift and face Karkat, who seems to be scowling at a patch of flowers, then snap a picture of him too. He immediately snaps his head up and turns that scowl on you instead. “What the fuck? Don’t take pictures of me.”

You just grin at him, slipping the photo into your pocket along with the others. “Just seeing if you were still in there. You having a staring contest with the ground?”

“No. This is stupid. Why are we out here again?”

“To experience the joys of being outdoors? Fuck if I know. Maybe we need an activity.”

“An activity?”

“Yeah. Like...” You pretend to think for a moment, but you already know what you want to do. It’s a little childish, sure, but it’s better than standing around awkwardly. “A race!”

With that, you take off back toward the cabin.

Karkat sputters for a moment, but when you look back to check on him, he’s chasing after you.

“I’m totally gonna win, dude,” you call after him.

“Only because you’re cheating!” he yells back.

It’s not that far back to the cabin, of course, and you easily beat Karkat to the porch, given your head start. The second he catches up to you, you take off again. “Race you back to the forest!”

You win again, but you get a little cocky on the next lap and start snapping Polaroids, so Karkat actually beats you back to the porch, and is racing off into the forest again before you have a chance to turn around.

Karkat beats you that time too, then runs off through the field after, instead of making another lap back to the cabin. You trail behind him, laughing when he slips and almost eats shit on a patch of tall grass.

“You really do need to get out more,” you tease. “Learn how to run without tripping all over yourself.”

He pushes you in response, but it’s not enough to actually knock you over. You do almost fall over when you stick your tongue out at Karkat and he sticks his tongue out back because. Wow.

“Now who needs to learn how to run?”

Eventually, you two give up the pretense of racing entirely. You aimlessly run through the field, zig-zagging in and out of the forest as you do so. You snap photos when you two pause to catch your breath. You have to change the film pack out at one point, and you take that opportunity to drag Karkat in for a selfie.

“Why would I want a picture with you?” he asks.

“Why wouldn’t you want a picture with me?”

He laughs in response to that and yeah. You’ll admit, you definitely like that sound.

“Wanna see who can climb the farthest up that tree?” you ask, choosing a tree at random and pointing at it.

“Absolutely not. Nobody wants to see me attempt to climb a tree. But...I’ll race you to the other side of the field.”

Karkat takes off back across the field and you run after him, both of you laughing the entire time.

The sun is just starting to set when you two finally head back inside. You’re flushed and panting, a little sweaty, but it doesn’t feel bad at all. Karkat insists you have a snack before you do anything else (he says some of the fruit he got is going to go bad if you don’t eat it today, claims there’s no way he could possibly eat it all on his own, but you know he’s full of shit).

After that, he does have to actually work on his writing column, so you go back to your separate rooms, with Karkat promising to drag you out for another “cooking lesson” later in the evening.

You take all the Polaroids you took out of your back pockets and lay them on your bed once you get to your room. You used a whole film pack, plus a bit of another, so you hope there’s at least a couple of good ones in here. Those things are damn expensive, and it’s not like you’re going to be able to afford new ones any time soon.

A few of the Polaroids are a little blurry which. Yeah. That makes sense, considering you’d pulled the thing out while you and Karkat were running around. There’s also a decent shot of the trees, with the sunlight streaming through the branches.

The selfie you got Karkat to take with you is a masterpiece, of course. The light is in your faces, shining off your sunglasses and completely drowning both of you out to the point that you can’t really make out any distinguishable features. You’re definitely showing him that one later.

There’s another of Karkat, scowling at you and flipping off the camera. For some reason, you get the feeling that there are likely many photos of him out in the world with this exact pose. You look at the next one, also of Karkat, and—

He’s smiling in this one. It’s an actual smile, too, not a smirk or a grin or one of those half-smiles he’s given you a few times, where you can tell he’s trying not to smile at all.

His eyes are crinkled at the sides, just a bit, from how wide his smile is. You can see all his teeth, glistening in the sunlight. His cheeks are flushed from all the running around you two had been doing. He’s looking just beyond the camera...at you, probably, now that you think about it.

It’s not the best picture you’ve ever taken, but it might be one of your favorites, just because of how cute Karkat looks in it.

You pause for a moment at that thought, the polaroid still gripped between your fingers. Your eyes widen as you really consider what you just thought, and... “Oh fuck.”

You glance over at the wall that connects your room to Karkat’s, as if he can somehow see what you’re doing through it. You then look at the rest of the photos: a couple more shots of Karkat, one of a bird, another blurry blob from when Karkat accidentally knocked the camera out of your hands during another attempt at a surprise selfie.

Your heart pounds while you gather up all the photos, even the ones that Karkat isn’t in. You look around your room, trying to find a place to hide them. Because you do need to hide them, can’t just have these things laying around. If Karkat saw them he would know somehow...

You shove them in your underwear drawer without another thought. You hope Karkat is too busy typing away to notice the way you slam it shut.

If he does notice, he doesn’t care enough to investigate. The tell-tale sound of his typing continues on without interruption, entirely unhindered by your sudden panic. As it should be. You doubt Karkat pays as much attention to what you’re doing as you do to him.

You sit down on your bed, then immediately stand back up, too filled with nervous energy to keep still. What are you supposed to do about this? This...crush, you guess. You can call it what it is. You pace a bit, trying to quell your sudden panic. 

It’s not the worst sort of panic, you suppose. If this had been a few years ago, you know you’d be having a full-blown panic attack about Karkat being a guy. That part doesn’t bother you so much, not now. You don’t even really care that he’s a troll. You’ve had crushes on trolls before, they were as good looking as anyone else.

You just don’t know what to do about the sudden wave of feelings you’re experiencing right now. You’re not even looking at the pictures anymore and you still feel, as cheesy as it sounds, that rolling feeling in the pit of your stomach that you’re hesitant to actually call “butterflies,” even if that’s exactly what it is.

It’s not as if you’ve ever been smooth when it comes to these things. You could just tell him, you guess, but this isn’t some guy you met in class or at a bar. He’s...kind of your roommate right now? But even that would be less strange than the situation you’re in right now.

What if he thinks you’re a creep? You’re not actually supposed to be here, after all. If you were a real repairman, like you said you were, you would’ve definitely left as soon as a guest showed up. Maybe that first night wasn’t pushing it too much, considering how late it was when you’d finally fixed the sink. Maybe Karkat was fine having you here as long as you continued to fix things and stay out of his hair, but...you aren’t really staying out of his hair at all now, are you?

Whatever Karkat’s reasons for not kicking your ass to the curb already, you don’t want to push it. He’s already having a tough time being out here. You don’t need to give him another thing to worry about.

You try to fuck around on your laptop for a little while, just to kill some time, but there are several messages waiting for you on Pesterchum—Why are you avoiding me, Dave? chief among them—so you end up closing it again pretty quickly. Maybe you should just uninstall Pesterchum? But, then, you’ve still got it on your phone. Maybe you should delete it from your phone, too.

Some part of you recognizes that that would be stupid, of course. You bury your face in your pillow and sigh.

You’d like to talk to Rose. You really would. But...she’s got this annoying tendency to find things out. By...getting you to willingly tell her those things.

You have no idea how she does it. It’s probably witchcraft.

You set your phone down on the nightstand, burrowing a little deeper into the comforter. You’ll talk to her later. Not now. Not yet.

You like to think you’re a pretty cool guy, generally. Calm and collected most of the time, with an unrivaled poker face to hide behind when you’re not. You try not to be an outright asshole to people, but you’ve been told you’re...sort of unapproachable. And you’re okay with that, because, well, it lends you an air of mystery, doesn’t it? Until someone inevitably catches you mumbling your inane thoughts out loud, anyway.

Of course, your closest friends know too much by now to ever think you’re mysterious. They’ve witnessed your pathetic attempts to play sports. They remember your skater phase. They even know about your irrational fear of puppets, for fuck’s sake.

You’re not entirely sure where Karkat falls along that spectrum. He certainly doesn’t seem to find you intimidating, perhaps because he’s got a few years on you—he looks to be about twenty-five, twenty-six. He’s probably a college graduate, unlike you. From the way he eyes you sometimes, like he’s got you all figured out, you think he might even, maybe, find you sort of...well, pitiful. In the—the human sense, that is. Shit.

That’s another thing you’ve been avoiding thinking about, isn’t it? The quadrant thing.

You know you’ve only just met the guy, but you think he would have mentioned his quadrantmates by now, if he had any. Right...?

Not that it matters, of course, because you’re not about to pursue any kind of romantic relationship with him. Even if you were all suave and experienced and shit—and even if it didn’t make you feel sort of creepy—the fact remains that you’re simply not interested in playing troll foursquare.

Rose once accused you of being close-minded about quadrants—xenophobic, even—but the thing is, you don’t care what anybody else chooses to do with their romantic life. The concept only bothers you when it comes to your own. You’d like to be with someone you don’t have to share, someone who’s capable of seeing you as both a friend and a lover, who won’t put up artificial boundaries between you because “that’s not what matesprits do,” or whatever the fuck.

Maybe that means you’ll only ever be able to seriously date other humans, and maybe not. You know not every troll follows the quadrant system, after all. Just like not every human wants to end up married with two point five children.

But what are the odds that Karkat is—

Okay. No. You need to stop following this train of thought, Dave, because you aren’t going to pursue anything with him. Remember?

Your phone pings with another message, but you ignore it. Later.

Now that the shock of your realization is beginning to wear off, you’re starting to notice the heaviness in your limbs, your eyelids. You’re tired from running around in the sun, and you’re so comfy here, facedown on the bed. You remind yourself that soon enough, you and Karkat will go your separate ways, and none of this will matter anymore. It helps to quiet your mind, even if the thought is kind of sad.

You watch the light from the window slowly shift and change on the wall as the sun sets, and you don’t think about much at all, for a while.

Some time later, a knock on your bedroom door rouses you from your doze. Karkat stands in the hallway with his arms crossed, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and it’s so fucking cliché it almost makes you laugh out loud but your heart really genuinely thumps at the sight, jesus christ. You’ve gotta keep your shit together, man.

He narrows his eyes at your messy hair and rumpled clothes. “Were you sleeping?”

“Nah, man. Just resting my eyes.”

“Whatever. Come and help with dinner.”

“Sure, be there in a sec.”

You deliberate for a moment before choosing a slightly nicer shirt to wear. Nothing too fancy—you don’t own anything like that, anyway—but you’d rather not look like a complete slob while you’re hanging out and cooking with Karkat.

You duck into the bathroom to quickly fix your hair, too. Not because you’re trying to impress him or anything. You’re not, you just—gotta represent the Strider name in style at all times, you know? It’s important to do that.

He must have gotten started without you. The cabin is already filling up with a delicious aroma, garlic and onion and something else you can’t put your finger on. It’s probably the most inviting smell that’s ever existed in this shabby place.

Karkat is standing over the stove, stirring some kind of thick, reddish sauce in a saucepan while the onions sizzle away on another burner. He looks comfortable here, in his element. One of your Bro’s ragged old dish towels is thrown casually over his shoulder. The cramped kitchen is awfully warm, making you regret changing into a long-sleeved shirt. You roll up your sleeves to match him.

“What do you need me to do?”

He looks you over (fuck, it’s hot in here), then turns his attention back to the stove. “I don’t need you to do shit,” he says. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Ouch, okay.”

He smiles at you (fuck, it’s really hot in here). “You can help by peeling the tubers. Er, I mean the potatoes.”

You eye the vegetable peeler sitting next to the small pile of yellow-skinned potatoes on the counter. It might as well be an Alternian artifact, for all you know how to actually use it. “You got it,” you say confidently. “Comin’ right up.”

You struggle with the peeler while Karkat busies himself with a big metal mixing bowl, hoping he won’t notice. But, of course, he does.

“Like this,” he says, taking it gently from your hands and demonstrating on one of the potatoes. He’s got it halfway peeled in seconds. He makes it look so...effortless. What the fuck.

“Oh, yeah,” you say. “Uh, it’s just been a while since I had to, um. Do that. But thanks for the refresher, dude. I can take it from here.”

He snorts, but has no other response. All of his attention is on the big mixing bowl now. You watch with something like awe as he cracks an egg, and then another, into the bowl using just one hand.

Even mimicking the way he’d gripped the peeler, you can’t quite manage the same level of efficiency, but at least he doesn’t comment on it—just leaves you to figure it out in your own time, which, honestly, you appreciate. When you finish peeling a potato, you reach for another one, and as you work you feel yourself starting to relax. The tension you hadn’t even realized you were carrying gradually falls away from your shoulders, working next to Karkat in the warmth of the kitchen, glancing over at what he’s doing every now and then. He keeps adding things into the big bowl: grated Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper, breadcrumbs, some kind of leafy herb he’s chopped up...

It doesn’t even occur to you to ask so what are we making? until he pulls a large paper-wrapped packet from the refrigerator—some kind of raw, ground meat? You try not to watch too closely as he uses his bare hands to mix everything together in the bowl. You’ve still got your own hands full, with the potatoes and all.

He lifts the whole meaty blob out of the bowl, then, and sets it down on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, and uses his messy hands to shape it into a neat rectangle. You’re so curious. You’ve gotta ask.

“So...what’re we making here, man? Is this the grubloaf I’ve heard so much about?”

He glares at you like you’re a complete idiot. “No? Trust me, you’d know if it was grubloaf. Prepared grub doesn’t look anything like ground hoofbeast. Not to mention I would’ve been using Alternian ingredients for the rest of it. Obviously.”

“Oh. Right.”

He washes his hands vigorously, then pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs, closing his eyes and bracing himself against the edge of the counter. “So I picked out this dish for you and you’re telling me you don’t even know what it is?”

“No...?”

“Have you really never had meatloaf before? I thought it was just as basic as your precious mac and cheese. You know...wiggler food.”

“Oh. Yeah, it is, I guess,” you say with a shrug. “I think they served it in my school’s cafeteria sometimes. I’ve never had it, though.”

“Well, my version is not at all the same as the shit you would’ve gotten in your school cafeteria, I promise,” he says, using some kind of weird rubbery brush to spread that thick reddish-brown sauce generously over the top of the loaf.

“That’s good, ’cause that stuff always looked pretty unappetizing to me, n-g-l.”

“Tread carefully, Strider.”

“No, I—I mean, this place smells amazing already, and we haven’t even cooked it yet. I know it’s gonna be good,” you say as you finally finish peeling the last potato. “I gotta say, though—I kinda object to your implication there, that I’ll only eat wiggler food—”

He interrupts you. “I’m just saying, I thought you’d at least be familiar with it. Most of the humans I’ve cooked for—”

It’s your turn to interrupt him. “Wow, dude, how many humans have you cooked for?”

“None of your business,” he mumbles. He picks up the baking tray with the raw meatloaf, sliding it into the hot oven. Then he sets a timer on his phone. “Gotta let that cook for, oh, an hour and twenty minutes? We’ll check in an hour and ten, then we’ll see.”

“Oh,” you say, just as your stomach growls. It sounds loud to you in the closeness of the kitchen. Fuck.

His expression changes, then, from that familiar look of mild annoyance to something altogether less...welcome.

“I can wait, dude, don’t worry about it,” you say quickly. “I’m sure it’s gonna be worth it.”

He looks unsure for another moment, but then he just grins and says, “Damn right.”

Karkat walks you through the process of boiling and mashing the potatoes, but you kind of suck at it, so he takes over while you clean up some of the messy pots and pans from earlier.

You’re trying to be good. You’re trying, but the way he looks—a little sweaty, his sleeves rolled up, muscles working as he mashes the potatoes with deep concentration—well, listen, you’ve got eyes. And, you know. He’s got. A lot for you to look at.

You’ve still got a while to wait once the potatoes are done. Karkat picks out an old bootleg martial arts film from your Bro’s movie collection, seemingly at random, and you don’t object.

You don’t object, but you don’t really watch the movie, either. You sit turned toward him, your elbow resting on the back of the couch, cheek in your hand, concentrating hard on keeping your leg from bouncing as he talks—

“—sorry to generalize, I guess, but I have yet to meet a human who isn’t averse to troll food,” he’s saying. “Even entry-level stuff like grubloaf.”

You scoff. “You’ve met one now,” you say, because—okay, maybe you haven’t had much opportunity to actually try Alternian food, but—you’re open to it. You’re open to trying most foods, really, after eighteen years of nothing but Taco Bell and Doritos and instant fucking ramen.

Not that you got much of a chance to expand your culinary horizons while you were at school. You were a little busy, working multiple jobs on top of your course load just to stay afloat financially. There usually wasn’t any money left over at all, not even for simple takeout—not that you could ever justify, not when the shit they served in the cafeteria was already included in your tuition.

You never joined your fellow students when they’d go out to restaurants in big groups, “to study,” because you didn’t have the money and you didn’t have the time—but every now and then, one of other guys in your dorm would give you their leftovers: the remnants of a box of pad thai, or half a burrito from a real Mexican restaurant, maybe. That was all the horizon-expanding you ever got.

“I mean it,” you say, when Karkat just rolls his eyes at you. “Bring on your gnarliest, nastiest, most bugalicious cuisine, dude. Fried spiders or—or grasshopper sandwiches or whatever y’all got, okay? Let’s go, bring it on. I can handle it.”

“Don’t stereotype, you ass,” Karkat grumbles, kicking at your foot and missing. “I’ll have you know not all of our food has insects in it. Just...most of it.”

It’s sort of weird, hanging out like this, now that you’ve gone and admitted to yourself that you like him. It’s not especially warm in the living room right now but you feel warm, in a mostly pleasant kind of way—almost like you’ve downed a shot of whiskey. The corner of your mouth keeps stubbornly pulling up into a slight smile. You carefully straighten it back out every time you catch yourself doing it, but jesus. He’s got to have noticed by now.

Maybe he has and maybe he hasn’t. You really can’t tell. Is it that he’s hard to read? Or are you just terrible at this? Or...is everything completely fucking normal and fine right now, and he hasn’t noticed anything different at all, and you’re actually just blowing this all out of proportion, Dave? It’s probably that one.

Karkat’s phone vibrates atop the coffee table suddenly and insistently, jolting you out of your own head. “The timer,” he explains, swiping a finger across the screen to silence it.

“Hell yeah. I’m so ready.”

“It might still need another ten minutes, remember? Plus it’s got to rest before we cut into it.”

“Oh,” you say. “I’m so ready to keep on waiting, is what I was in the middle of saying, obviously.”

“Uh-huh.”

Karkat gets up from his place next to you on the couch—was he sitting a little closer than last time?—and heads toward the kitchen, and then you’re all alone with the movie.

You risk a sideways glance at the screen. It’s not so bad right now—just some cheesy dialogue—but you’ve seen this one before. You remember what’s next.

You eye the remote while Karkat is busy in the kitchen, but he’s back before you can grab it and fast-forward through the next few scenes. Damn it.

“Gotta give it a little more time,” he tells you, setting a new timer on his phone. “Sorry.”

“S’cool,” you mumble, but that pleasant buzz you’d felt a moment ago is gone, replaced by a cold sweat. You don’t even realize how hard you’re gripping the couch until Karkat’s furrowed glare draws your attention to it.

“Are you okay?” he asks bluntly.

“I’m cool,” you say, but even you can hear how flat it falls, and then—then comes the first clash of steel from the TV, and even though you knew it was coming you flinch so hard it makes him jump.

Karkat hmms from what sounds like ten miles away. “You know, I kind of just picked something to watch that I didn’t mind you blabbering over? But now that I think about it, I should’ve taken this chance to continue your rom-com education, I think.”

“Yeah, can’t believe you let that golden opportunity slide,” you agree as he ejects the bootleg tape. You hope he can’t detect the slight tremor you hear in your own voice. Get a fucking grip, you admonish yourself.

“You’re the worst student I’ve ever had, if I’m honest,” he says, sliding a new tape into the VCR. “But I think there’s hope for you yet.” His voice is low (in pitch—decidedly not in volume) and kind of gravelly. It’s nice, just listening to him talk as you focus on your breathing. It takes an embarrassingly long moment for his actual words to register in your brain.

“Think I could get an extra credit worksheet to make up for it?” you finally manage. “Write out the cheesy tagline for each poster, something like that?”

He laughs—just a gentle ha sound, this time—and presses play. “The taglines for troll rom-coms would demolish your fragile human mind. They’re half the length of the script.”

“No fair. Troll movies is a whole other course, man. Introducing quadrants into the mix? I’m still in rom-coms 101 here, remember?”

Whatever Karkat starts to say in response is cut off by the second timer going off on his phone. Soft music plays from the TV in the meantime. You’re grateful for it, bizarrely. You’re grateful, at this particular moment, that this dude’s taste in movies is about as exciting as your average lonely old cat lady’s.

“Be right back,” he says, leaving you with an encouraging smile.

Okay. That wasn’t the worst that could’ve gone.

You’ve managed to sweat through your nicest shirt, yes, but it could have been worse.

Your limbs feel stiff, at first, as you force yourself up off the couch. You take this opportunity to pop into the bathroom and splash cold water on your face, then go back to your room and change into a fresh t-shirt. The messy, unmade bed is awfully inviting, but you don’t let yourself linger—you’re hungry, and you don’t want to keep Karkat waiting.

You’re going to crash hard later tonight, though.

TT: I'm beginning to hear disturbing rumors that you dropped out of school.
TT: Is that why you've been ignoring my messages?

-- turntechGodhead [TG] is an idle chum! --

TT: Very well, then.

TG: ok so maybe i was avoiding you a LITTLE bit before
TG: can you blame me
TG: but listen i actually meant to get back to you earlier today for real i promise
TG: stuff just kept on happening though
TG: it wasnt my fault

TT: So the rumors are true?

TG: uhh
TG: i didnt say that

TT: Hmm.

TG: hey so quick q
TG: (asking for a friend)
TG: theres a really cute guy whos basically my roommate right now?
TG: he cooks really good food all the time for us to share
TG: he made this meatloaf tonight that was so bomb like you dont even understand it was nowhere near school cafeteria quality it was way beyond that were talking gourmet tier
TG: not that ive got tons of meatloaf experience cause i dont but still god damn that shit was basically transcendent
TG: now i get what people mean when they talk about comfort food
TG: i even had seconds rose
TG: and also we keep watching movies together sorta by accident?
TG: or well i mean
TG: its not like oh shit i tripped and accidentally put on a movie haha but you know
TG: we havent actually talked about how we keep doing movie night we just kinda keep doing it?
TG: hes got the absolute dorkiest taste in movies of anyone ive ever met including egbert
TG: and also books i think but to be fair we havent talked about books all that much yet
TG: and i umm
TG: i think i maybe like him too much
TG: so like
TG: what do you think i should do

TT: What do I think your friend should do, you mean?

TG: yeah exactly

TT: I think your friend should really learn to stop deflecting, but at this point it may be a lost cause.
TT: So where have you been staying? With the Egberts?
TT: Where did you even meet this person?

TG: no im
TG: uh im not at johns place
TG: its an undisclosed location ok dont worry about it

TT: Well, to tell you the truth, I wasn't really particularly worried about it until you put it like that.
TT: Are you in some kind of deeper trouble? Do you owe somebody money or something??

TG: no no its nothing like that i just
TG: UGH
TG: bro doesnt know ok
TG: about me quitting school

TT: ...

TG: and i dont wanna go home yet
TG: i know i have to at some point but not yet
TG: please rose please just keep it to yourself
TG: i dont need aunt roxy knowing either

TT: Calm down. I won't tell anyone.

You think about telling Rose that you are calm, that you’re always calm, why wouldn’t you be calm? But you both know that’s not true in the slightest. Your complete lack of chill is something Rose knows probably better than anyone else, and you’re too tired right now for any more deflection.

(Maybe that’s why Rose chose to message you now. She somehow read your mind, knew you were exhausted and that it would be easier to get information out of you... Yeah, that definitely makes the most sense.)

Rose starts typing again, but you cut her off to say you’re going to bed. You’re certain this conversation isn’t completely over, at least not for now, but you’d like to be done for the night at least. You bid Rose goodnight, promise to message her tomorrow instead of ignoring her again (you still need advice about what to do with Karkat, after all), then set your phone aside and crawl into bed.

You’re a bit anxious still, wonder what would happen if Rose did end up ratting you out (she wouldn’t, you know she wouldn’t, she’s much better at keeping secrets than your friends are), but your earlier assessment that you would be crashing hard tonight seems to be correct.

You don’t quite fall into an easy sleep, but you do fall asleep, so you’ll take it.

Chapter Text

“I’m not budging from this one, bro. She should’ve ended up with Jacob, end of story.”

“In what world is that a better love story than—”

“Karkat. We’ve been over this already. I’m not gonna change your mind, you’re not gonna change my mind—”

“I just don’t get how you can say that.”

Karkat sits slouched in his desk chair in his pajamas, swiveling back and forth minutely, ignoring his laptop in favor of you, for the moment. His screensaver displays a random slideshow of photos that you can’t help noticing. Most are of him posing with various other trolls, and a few humans, too—his friends, presumably. He seems to be a pretty popular guy.

You wonder, for just a moment, whether any of them are his quadrantmates.

Not your business.

You sigh. “Justice for Jacob is all I’m saying. Fuck that whole entire mess at the end, like, seriously.”

Karkat sighs, too. He sounds just as exhausted as you feel right now, and he looks even worse, the dark bags under his eyes more pronounced than ever. Neither of you had meant to stay up all night watching the entire Twilight saga from its humble beginnings until its bitter, bitter end, but, look. These things have a way of happening.

“Okay, on that much we can agree,” he admits.

“Also that CGI baby was creepy as hell,” you say with an involuntary shudder. “Forget the—ugh—the birth scene. That was gross, but I mean. Shit really turned into an accidental horror movie as soon as that kid showed up.”

“Yeah,” Karkat laughs. “Look, I’m not defending any of that.”

“Mm,” you hum, resting your head against the pile of pillows on Karkat’s bed. What is it with trolls and making piles of things, anyway...?

You close your eyes against the late-morning light filtering in through the curtains. The pillow pile is pretty comfortable, you suppose.

After a minute of quiet, Karkat swivels back toward the desk and starts typing again, the now-familiar sound of his keystrokes as regular and rhythmic as rain. You feel almost as if you’re sinking deeper into his bed, literally falling asleep, slowly, inevitably. You wonder whether he minds that you’re still here, in his room.

Still here, at the cabin.

“Been a few days now,” you mumble, “since you broke anything with your freaky troll strength.”

He scoffs, but doesn’t stop working.

“Guess my job’s done,” you say. And, for a split second, his typing stutters to a stop.

He resumes a moment later, with no comment aside from a bored-sounding “hmm.”

You turn your head and breathe in deeply through your nose. His bedding doesn’t smell bad or anything. He’s been doing his laundry regularly, unlike you.

The sheets and blankets do kinda smell like him, though.

Clack, clack, clack.

In your last few moments of consciousness, you think—this might be the pleasantest feeling you’ve ever had, just being near him like this.

You’re really going to miss him.

If you dream at all, it doesn’t stick in your memory.

A loud groan of displeasure startles you from your sleep. You try to mask your sharp inhale with a yawn, hoping Karkat won’t notice anything weird. You learned to be a little more normal about sleep while living away from home, thank god. Sometimes you still wake up tense as fuck, though. Seems it can’t be helped.

Your shades are sitting askew on your face. Shit. “Whatsamatter?” you ask as you quickly adjust them.

Karkat doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s glaring at his laptop like he’s two seconds from hurling it clean through the window.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he growls, scrubbing at his face in frustration. “It’s—ugh. My fucking editor wants me to go to another godforsaken hoofbeastshit thing in town, for the stupid bulgesucking Pioneer Woman ass column. God.”

“Oh. That sucks, man.”

“It’s a ‘farmer’s market,’ apparently. Aughh,” he groans again, covering his face with both hands. The dude knows how to throw a fit, you’ll give him that. “I don’t want to go anywhere today. Why did it have to be today? I should’ve slept, god damn it—even just a couple of hours—”

An image arises in your mind, of Karkat crawling into bed next to you, sleeping curled against your side. You dismiss it. This is not the time, Strider.

You push yourself up onto your elbows as he slides down further in his chair.

“I guess I need to get ready,” he sighs, his hands finally falling away from his face and dropping to his sides. He stares forlornly into the middle distance as if his new assignment is some kind of death sentence. You sit up and scoot to the edge of the bed.

You can take a hint. Maybe he didn’t mind you hanging around him all morning, but he definitely doesn’t want you in the room while he’s getting dressed. You stand and stretch, cracking your back, but then—just as you’re stepping through the doorway—

“Wait.”

You turn back toward him, expecting him to say you left something of yours behind—like your phone, maybe. “Yeah?”

“Do you...want to get out of here for a little while? I mean—come with me?”

You can’t hide your smile in response, because, yeah. You do want that. You drum your fingers against the door frame and pretend to deliberate. “I dunno, man. I mean you definitely made it sound pretty enticing, but...”

He fixes you with a flat, unamused stare. “I was thinking you could take the photos, I mean, officially. My editor is seriously rethinking their position on my shitty phone photography being ‘good enough’ for the magazine.”

“Oh. That sounds cool, I guess.”

His eyes widen then, and he sits up a little straighter in his chair. “Shit, I forgot to say. I’m still negotiating your pay for the food photography. Not sure I...ever mentioned that.”

Your pay.

Your pay?

“You did not. Wait, really?”

“Yes, really. Did you think I just—stole your pictures?” He shakes his head and smiles, and doesn’t wait for your answer. “You’ll get your name in there, too, of course. I thought that went without saying, but now I’m realizing...maybe not.”

“What can I say, I haven’t got much experience selling photos to magazines. Or, uh, any. Experience. S-selling photos to anyone.”

“Go get dressed. The sooner we get this shit over with, the sooner we can get back here and get some fucking sleep.”

You salute him with a smile. You feel...sort of loopy. Probably because of the aforementioned lack of sleep. “Sure thing, boss.”

“Quit calling me that,” he grumbles. “I’m not your boss.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

You’ve never been to a farmer’s market before, so you’re not entirely sure what to expect. Seems pretty self-explanatory, you guess. Market for all the farmers to sell their shit. You just don’t exactly know what types of farms there are nearby. Are the farmers just selling fruits and vegetables, or are you going to show up and find...goats for sale or some shit? You have no idea.

“D’you think your editor would let you buy a goat?” you ask Karkat.

He doesn’t take his eyes off the road, has been dutifully keeping both hands on the wheel and both eyes focused on the road in front of him the entire time he’s been driving. He does roll his eyes and make an exasperated noise before asking, “Why the fuck would I want to buy a goat?”

“Dunno. Might make things more interesting around here. Maybe you’ll need some company once I get out of your hair.”

Karkat doesn’t reply immediately, just looks...thoughtful, maybe? for a moment. “The goat might have better taste in movies, I’ll give you that,” he finally says, a small grin spreading across his face as he does.

“Naw dude, pretty sure the goat would indiscriminately eat every movie in that cabin, regardless of whether or not it thought they were masterpieces or pieces of garbage. Don’t goats eat garbage? Oh, shit, okay. We can solve this once and for all. Give the goats all our movies, right, and the ones it tries to eat are the bad ones. Bam. Problem solved.”

“You’re delirious,” Karkat tells you. He’s laughing, though, so you know your delirium-induced ideas are at least amusing to him. Even if he’s laughing at you, it does feel kind of good, being able to make him laugh. “We’re not getting a goat, and we’re definitely not feeding it VHS tapes. That probably counts as animal abuse or something.”

“You’re right, don’t want PETA on our asses.”

“Never mention PETA in my presence again,” Karkat says with a groan. “No more goat talk, help me find somewhere to park.”

You look out the window and holy shit is this place packed. You didn’t notice before, but you’ve made it into town, and Karkat has turned down a side street. Up ahead, you see the tented tops of what you assume must be the market stalls.

It takes forever to find a place to park, probably because you’re too busy watching Karkat instead of looking out for a spot, but eventually, you find one that’s not too far from where the farmer’s market is, and make your way back toward all the stalls you’d seen before.

“So,” you start as you look around. “What exactly are you supposed to be doing here?”

“First I’m going to find some food,” he responds. Makes sense, since all either of you has had since dinner last night is some popcorn that you’d quickly demolished before the first Twilight movie was even half-finished. “Snap some photos while we’re walking around, okay?”

“Can do, boss.” You mock salute, grin when Karkat just rolls his eyes, then start to follow him through the crowd.

There are a lot of people here, far more than you’d expect for such a small town. Maybe people came from nearby towns to shop at the market? That’s the only thing that makes sense to you, though you might also just be underestimating how many people live here. It’s not like you spend a lot of time over here when you’re at the cabin.

You hold your phone out in front of you as you walk, snapping photos of the food stalls you and Karkat pass. You also take a few of him, mostly just to see if he notices. You doubt he’ll actually want photos of the side of his face and the back of his head in his column, but who knows?

“Damn, something smells really good.” You stop suddenly and look around for the source of the smell. It’s...smoky? And spicy, with a bit of sweetness to it. You honestly can’t put your finger on what it is, but it’s definitely not like anything you’ve ever smelled before. Nobody was making anything that delicious in the dorms, that’s for sure.

Karkat looks around too. Something seems to catch his eye, and he gestures for you to follow him. As you get closer to a stall with a sign that simply reads HANDMADE TAMALES, the smell gets more and more pronounced.

Karkat glances at you while you just stand there, enjoying the delicious smells coming from the stall. You eye the hand-written menu board for a moment and while the prices are certainly fair, you should probably save what little cash you have to buy some things to bring back to the cabin. Karkat is more than willing to cook for you and share his food, that much is clear, but you’ll likely need to buy your own groceries at some point, especially if you need to leave the cabin before you can go to the Egberts’ place.

“Do you know what you want or are you just going to stand there staring at the menu all day?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m okay. I don’t need anything.”

Karkat looks like he doesn’t believe you, but he doesn’t argue, either. Instead, he approaches the stall and gets in line. You feel awkward just standing there with him, especially since you’re not going to buy anything, so you mumble something about taking more photos and slowly make your way down the row of food stalls.

You hear Karkat call for you about fifteen minutes later, and you cut back through the crowd to find him. It’s not too difficult; he’s standing not too far from where you ended up, leaning against a picnic table as he calls your name again.

On the table are three huge paper plates, full of tamales covered in a thick, reddish-brown sauce. That must have been the source of the good smell coming from the stall because as you get closer to Karkat and his metric shitton of food, the mouth-watering smell is back.

You’re kind of regretting not buying anything, but you’re not about to tell Karkat that. If you have to sit here and watch him eat all of this by yourself while you go without, you guess that’s just how it is.

“Damn. You get one of each or something?”

“Yes,” he says, a touch defensively. “I couldn’t decide what I wanted. My editor will reimburse me anyway since they made me come here.” He picks up a plastic fork off one of the plates, then pauses and sets it back down. “Better have you take some photos first.”

“Right. That’s what I’m here for.” You’re not sure how anyone could not take good photos of the tamales—they look far too good to have any bad angles, in your humble opinion. You dutifully snap photos from a few different angles, getting close-ups of some of the individual tamales, as well as wider shots of all three plates. It’s probably not entirely necessary to take this many, but you can’t help but get into it.

You stop after a few minutes, and Karkat starts digging in. It’s awkward, sitting here watching him eat when you’ve got nothing. You’re about to tell him that you’ll go ahead again, look around while he eats, but then he’s...pushing the plate toward you.

“Not sure I like that one,” he tells you. “You try it.”

“Why would I want to try it if you don’t like it? I don’t want your rejects, dude.”

Karkat rolls his eyes at you. “It’s just not to my tastes. You’ll probably think it’s fine.”

“Insulting my taste again? Rude, man.” Despite your words, you grab another fork (why did Karkat get more than one?) and get a bit of the rejected tamale. You’ve never had tamales before, and Karkat had said he didn’t like it, so you’re honestly not expecting it to be one of the best things you’ve tasted in your entire life, but damn if that isn’t what it is. “Dude, there’s something wrong with you. This is fucking amazing.”

Karkat shrugs. “You can finish that one, then.” He pushes the whole plate toward you and grabs a different one.

After you polish off the one tamale, you push the plate back toward Karkat, thinking he’ll want to try the other two on it. He just shakes his head and shoves it back toward you. “I got too many,” he complains. “I’m already getting full.”

You...seriously don’t believe him, as he’s already scarfing down the second plate of tamales and showing no signs of stopping, but you are hungry, so you take the plate back and dig in before Karkat can change his mind.

After you eat and grab some coffee (Karkat bought two without even asking you, and said he wasn’t in the mood to argue with you when you tried to pay him back for it), you’re feeling a bit more energetic, though no less tired.

“Did ya plan your outfit with everyone else here?” you jokingly ask Karkat when he pulls out the same reusable bag that plenty of other people in the crowd have.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Karkat looks at his clothes, then around at the crowd of people nearby. His brows furrow as he says, “I’m not wearing the same thing as anyone else here. Is something wrong with your eyes?”

You tap at his bag, then gesture at a person standing a few feet away. Karkat looks, huffs a bit, then steps over to the nearest stall. He picks up a large, round vegetable that kind of looks like a purple head of lettuce. You curiously watch him for a moment before saying, “Didn’t know lettuce came in that color.”

Someone next to you giggles, while Karkat just stares at you for a moment, before replying, “It’s red cabbage.”

“That’s definitely purple. You can accuse me of something being wrong with my vision all you want, but I know what purple looks like.”

“That’s just the name. I didn’t decide it was called that.” He eyes the cabbage again before passing it to you. “I’m getting that, hold onto it.”

“I’m gonna protect this unfortunately misnamed vegetable with my life, but why can’t it just go into the bag?”

“I have to buy it first, dumbass.” Karkat continues to look through the stand, which seems to mostly have various types of leafy vegetables—some actual lettuce, more of what looks like cabbage but in other colors, some tiny cabbages, and some bundles of dark green leaves that you’ve definitely seen before, but can’t remember the name of.

Karkat glances over at you, then at the leafy green vegetable. He grabs a bundle of it and passes it to you, along with a paler green cabbage. “I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know those are called white cabbages,” he tells you.

“Man. Whoever named these definitely didn’t know their colors. It’s light, but that is definitely green.”

That must be enough for this stall, because Karkat talks to one of the women working at the stall, pays her, then has you put all the vegetables into his bag before he moves onto the next stall.

You join Karkat in eyeing the produce on offer. You know exactly what most of it is, but you’re a little surprised because, “What’s with the cactus pads? Do trolls eat those?”

The man at the stand, a human, helpfully tells you that trolls can eat them too, before Karkat responds, “I’m pretty sure humans eat them. Never cooked with them before. Might be interesting.”

You’re not sure how you feel about eating a cactus, but the spines seem to have been removed, and you see a human woman snatch some up, so this is likely yet another aspect of normal cuisine that you just haven’t been exposed to yet.

Karkat also grabs some of those, and they get wrapped in a waxy paper by the stall’s owner before he deposits them into his bag with the other vegetables.

By the time you get to the fifth stall, your sleep-deprived brain is definitely noticing a pattern.

“What’re those?” you ask Karkat, pointing at one of the many varieties of citrus fruit in front of you.

“Those are oranges,” he says, almost distractedly while he picks through some suspicious looking lemons. “Not sure what ki— Oh fuck you, you know what oranges are.”

You can’t help but laugh at that, and then laugh even harder when a parent covers their child’s ears and not-so-politely asks Karkat to mind his language. Karkat doesn’t join in, but you can tell from the grin on his face that if it was just the two of you? He’d totally be laughing his ass off right now too.

He gives up on the lemons, but gets a few juicy looking oranges because, “Apparently you need to be reminded what basic fruit is,” and you can’t help it, you feel a little warm and fuzzy about the fact that he’s buying things specifically for you.

You pass through tables of melons, carrots, potatoes, and a wide assortment of other produce, until you reach one that is once again covered in things you definitely couldn’t name if your life depended on it.

Some of them look like oddly colored pumpkins. Others are bizarrely shaped, more bulbous on the bottom, with thin tops...very phallic, honestly.

Those are the ones you choose to look through, naturally.

“Of course that’s what catches your eye,” Karkat mumbles.

“Can’t help it if I’m a fan of,” you pause to read the little label next to the pile of vegetables. “Butternut squash. Oh man,” you laugh. “What a name.”

“I am once again questioning whether you’re old enough to be a repairman.”

“Ain’t about age, it’s about skill.”

“Still questioning it, then.”

You’re about to retort, but that’s when you spot it: the most beautiful butternut squash you have ever seen in your entire life. True, you haven’t seen many butternut squash in your twenty-one years, not until today, but you know it would still be the most beautiful even if you’d seen dozens, or hundreds, of the vegetable...fruit?...who cares. Whatever it was, this one here was the king, and you were taking it home with you even if you had to waste your own cash to do so.

It’s small, much smaller than the other squash on the table, but that’s not what is so eye-catching. From one side, it appears to be entirely normal, but when you turn it around, there is a little cleft, near the bottom, with three small growths coming out of it, one much larger than the other two.

“Karkat,” you whisper, cradling the tiny squash in your hands. “We have to get this.”

Karkat must know exactly why you want to get this squash, because the second he turns to look at you, he bursts out laughing.

“Oh my god,” is all he can manage to get out before he starts laughing again.

“We need to take this home, dude, I’m not taking no for an answer. The dickbutt butternut is ours. Dickbutternut. This is the highlight of my day. I love farmer’s markets, I’ve been converted.”

That sends Karkat into another round of giggles, which sets you off because damn, that laughter of his is contagious. It takes a few minutes, and some throat-clearing from the person working the stall, but you manage to get your giggles under control, though just barely.

Karkat quickly pays for the squash before you even have the chance to start looking for your wallet, and you two head back down the row of market stalls. He offers to put the squash in his bag with everything else, but you shake your head.

“Naw, dude. I’m keeping this thing safe with me. It doesn’t deserve to get squished into your overflowing produce bag.” You stroke it for a second, but a snort from Karkat makes you realize how...suggestive, that looks, so you go back to holding it carefully in both hands.

“Speaking of my overflowing produce bag, if you want anything else, find it now. I can’t fit much more in here.”

Karkat’s purchased enough for you today, and you would tell him that, but a stall up ahead gets your attention. You smile wide as you look at the huge table filled with various types of apples, as well as jugs of apple cider. “We can’t leave here without getting some apples, dude. C’mon.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, a little more softly than you were expecting. “Let’s get some apples.”

You turn to look at Karkat, but he’s already focused on the table of apples, so you join him in making your way through the crowd.

You manage to stay awake on the drive back to the cabin, your prize still cradled in your hands. You’re thinking it deserves a place of honor—the middle of the coffee table, maybe? How long do butternut squashes last before they start to rot? Maybe you could preserve it somehow...

“Are you asleep?” Karkat sort-of whispers, gruffly, startling you out of your reverie. “We’re almost there.”

You sit up a little straighter. “Nah, man, I’m wide awake. Can’t you tell?”

“Not really.”

Right. The shades. You clear your throat, playing with the squash in your lap absentmindedly, until, once again, you realize how that looks and abruptly stop.

Karkat’s snort of laughter from the driver’s seat sends you into a fresh round of giggles yourself, just as the cabin comes into view through the trees.

“I still can’t believe you found that fucking thing. Incredible.”

“I know, right? It’s like I was pulled toward it across the crowded market. Like we were two magnets, drawn to each other by fate.” You raise it to your lips and give it a little smak. “Guess me and the dickbutternut were just meant to be.”

“You must be delirious. You’re not making any sense.”

“To be fair, my friends would probably tell you that’s normal, actually.”

He pulls into the gravel driveway and turns the car off. He stretches in his seat, arching his back and groaning a little as he does it, and okay. Listen. You can’t be blamed for looking when his shirt rides up a little bit. Anyone would look. He’s cute, okay—like, objectively cute. And his belly just looks so—kissable.

Fuck me. You don’t even know what you’re thinking anymore. You’re just so fucking tired. You need a few good hours of sleep. That’s all.

You turn and exit the car in a hurry, stuffing the little squash into your jacket pocket so you can unlock the front door. Karkat’s right behind you, lugging the big bag of farmer’s market goodies. If you feel tired, he looks positively exhausted.

“Glad that’s over with,” he says as you enter the cabin together. “And you took enough pictures that some of them have got to be usable. Or at the very least, they’ll be better than any pictures I would’ve taken.”

“You’re welcome,” you say as you sink down onto the couch. “G’night.”

You’re woken up by Karkat’s hand shaking your shoulder, about an hour later. “Dave.”

“Mhm?”

“I was putting things away in the kitchen and...well, come here. I’ll show you.”

You stumble a little getting up. You’re still tired after your nap, but Karkat doesn’t appear to have slept at all yet. You fish the squash out of your pocket and set it in its rightful place in the center of the coffee table, then follow him into the kitchen.

“Sup?” you ask him hoarsely, rubbing at your eyes under your shades. God, you need a shave, badly.

“Look at this shit. The cheap-ass handles on these cupboards are practically falling off now! And they’re all like this.”

You watch as Karkat demonstrates, the crease between his eyebrows deepening as he does. You don’t remember them being like that before, but you suppose they could’ve come loose with increased usage or something. The kitchen here doesn’t usually get as much traffic as it’s been getting lately.

To your own surprise, what comes out of your mouth next isn’t even you bluffing. It’s just the simple truth:

“Oh, that’s an easy fix.”

You turn to retrieve a screwdriver from the hall closet, reflecting on the fact that you’ve actually become semi-competent at repairs by lying about being a maintenance guy. Huh.

You tighten up the screws holding each handle in place, one by one. It only takes four and a half minutes.

Karkat seems...almost disappointed when you proclaim the job done and tell him you’re going to your room to get some shuteye.

You’re too tired to think about it too much.

The next time you wake up, you feel much more refreshed. The sun has already set, based on the lack of light coming through your open window. You’ll likely regret messing up your sleep schedule, but you’re not worried about it right now. As long as you don’t get caught up in another all-night movie marathon with Karkat (which, let’s be real, you wouldn’t say no to if he asked), you should be fine.

You stretch, enjoying the satisfying pop your back makes when you do so, then go to see what Karkat is up to. You’re trying not to be too clingy, but hey, he can always tell you to fuck off.

You can hear him typing, but his door is open, so you quickly knock on it to get his attention before walking into the room. “Did you sleep at all?” you ask him. “Or have you just been in here working this whole time?”

“I slept.”

“Yeah but did you really? How long did you sleep?”

“What are you, my lusus?” Karkat stops typing, turns to face you. He does look a little better. The dark circles under his eyes are still there, but they always are, at least in the short time you’ve known him. You wonder if he’s ever gotten a good night’s sleep in his entire life.

“Just don’t collapse from sleep deprivation on me, okay? Think that’s way above my pay grade.” You realize how that sounds and immediately start to backtrack. “Not that I’d like, leave you all collapsed on the floor if that happened. Just that—”

Karkat cuts you off. “I’m sure you could find a YouTube tutorial on how to make sure my dumb ass didn’t die. But I slept, so there’s nothing to worry about. Here, give me your phone.”

“Huh? Why?”

Karkat holds his hand out to you insistently. “So I can get the photos you took.”

“Still not gonna give me your contact info, huh?” You hand over the phone after opening it to your camera roll. Just like before, he quickly sends all the necessary photos to himself, but there’s no message to be found when he finally hands you your phone back.

“Hope there’s some good ones in there,” you tell him as you sit down on his bed. You’re probably being a little too familiar, but he doesn’t tell you to leave, and it’s not like this is the first time you’ve done this, so maybe it’s fine?

Karkat doesn’t say much at first while he scrolls through the photos he’s just downloaded from his email. You watch as he moves a few into a different folder, wondering if those are the ones he’s going to send to his editor along with the article.

He groans, says, “Dave what the fuck is this?” and gestures at his screen. You lean over to get a closer look and you can’t stop the grin that forms on your face when you realize he’s gotten to a series of photos featuring the back of his head.

“That’s you, man. I’m sure you don’t get a good view of the back of your head on the regular, but I’m finding it hard to believe you can’t recognize yourself.”

“I know it’s me, dipshit. Why are there so many? I didn’t ask you to take pictures of me.”

You shrug. “Ain’t gotta use ’em if you don’t want to. Might add to the charm, let everyone see that you’re actually hanging around at some small town farmer’s market. Can’t accuse you of using stock photos if you’re in them, yeah?”

“My editor was already considering using stock photos after I failed to charm them with the photos I sent for my first couple of articles.” Karkat continues to scroll through the photos, and you notice that he doesn’t select a single one of him to move over into the other folder. You guess you can understand why—not very exciting, looking at the back of someone’s head, but there are a few where you can actually see the side of his face, and you happen to like those ones quite a bit.

“I really need to see these supposedly horrible photos you’ve been taking, dude. How bad can they be?”

“They’re awful, trust me. It’s only a matter of time before they decide the shit I’m writing is awful too. I’m the last person who would be doing an assignment like this if I wasn’t being punished for fucking up.”

“It’s a relaxing punishment, at least?” You don’t probe further about the whole punishment thing, since the last time you brought up what Karkat used to write about, he said he didn’t want to talk about it. You are incredibly curious, though.

“Better than them firing my ass, I guess. My editor tried to make it seem like they were doing me a favor, too, which was honestly more infuriating?” Karkat’s no longer scrolling through the photos, and is instead facing you. He makes a frustrated noise before continuing. You guess maybe he does want to talk about it, after all. “It’s like...I’m clearly being punished. I know that. I got a little too into this story I was investigating, found out some shit about some asshole politician nobody was supposed to know, and then when I tried to run my metaphorical mouth about it with honestly one of the best fucking pieces of writing I’ve ever done, suddenly I need to go ‘take a break’ and ‘relax for a few months’ by coming here and writing this garbage column.”

You watch as Karkat rants. It’s kind of hot, if you’re being honest. The way he gesticulates when he describes what happened, how his eyes light up when he describes his writing as “the best”...you realize a little too late that you aren’t actually paying attention to what he’s saying because you’re too busy staring at him. Oops. You hope he hasn’t been waiting for a reply too long.

“Well, they can’t keep you out here forever, yeah? I’m sure you’ll be back to pissing off politicians with your reporting in no time. And not just because you can’t take good enough pictures of trees or some shit.”

It’s probably not the best way you could have phrased that, but it does make Karkat laugh, gets him to relax his shoulders a bit. “Yeah, my photography career is a non-starter. What about you, though?”

“...What about me?”

“Why aren’t you pursuing photography? You’re clearly better at it than you are at maintenance.” Karkat sounds genuinely curious, and you know he just shared a bit about himself, would maybe actually be interested to know more about you, but...

You pick a hangnail, suddenly feeling deeply invested in that instead of this conversation. “Eh, school’s too expensive. Can’t really afford it.”

It’s quiet for a moment, and you scramble to think of how you can save this conversation, but Karkat mercifully changes the subject for you. “You’re way too good at food photography, by the way. Looking at these is making me hungry.”

You take the bait. “Guess we should go make dinner soon.”

“Guess so.” He makes a waving motion at you. “Get cleaned up and we can do that when I’m done with this.”

You don’t need to be told twice, so you quickly hop up off the bed and go to “clean up”, a.k.a. fuck around in the kitchen so Karkat can do his work without you looking over his shoulder.

After dinner, you two spend the evening doing your own thing—Karkat works on his article, you chat with Jade and work on your collab with her some more. Karkat’s gone quiet in his room by the time you take your headphones off and call it a night, and you fall asleep to the sound of wind, rather than his typing.

You’re startled awake the next morning by the sound of...crashing? coming from the bathroom. It almost sounds like glass breaking, but not quite. You immediately rush out of your room to go see what the commotion is. Your brain chooses this moment to remind you of the comment you’d make last night, about Karkat collapsing. Luckily, that train of thought doesn’t get a chance to go off the rails, because Karkat steps out of the bathroom, looking perfectly fine, if not a bit guilty.

“Everything okay, dude? Something break?”

Karkat steps aside, gestures toward the bathroom. You go to walk in, but he grabs you by the wrist before you can actually step inside.

“Careful. The tile broke.”

You peer into the bathroom and, “Holy shit, dude. How did you even manage to do that?”

You were expecting there to be a single cracked tile. It’s old as fuck, was already old when Bro got the cabin, and you wouldn’t be surprised if a particularly heavy shampoo bottle was heavy enough to crack it.

Whatever Karkat dropped, it was enough to crack more than just a tile or two. An entire corner of the bathroom floor is ruined, multiple tiles bent and cracked beyond repair.

Karkat is oddly quiet. He shifts his feet back and forth for a moment, and that’s when you notice that something is a little off about his footfalls. You direct your gaze to his feet and raise an eyebrow at the fact that he’s wearing heavy work boots indoors.

“I slipped,” is all he says.

“Oh yeah?” You feel like there’s got to be more to it than that.

Karkat doesn’t offer any further explanation, though. “I’m so sorry. We’ll probably have to replace the whole thing. I can pay for the new tiles, of course.”

“Right...” You look at the floor again, then at Karkat’s boots, before shrugging. “Guess I’ll get dressed and we can go into town? Or, uh, should probably measure the bathroom first so we buy enough stuff?”

“I’ll make breakfast first,” Karkat offers. “You don’t need to rush. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

You probably do need to rush, since this is the only bathroom in the cabin and it’s gonna suck having to tip-toe around broken tile until you get it fixed. But Karkat seems to feel bad enough, so you just give him a thumbs-up and head back to your room to get ready.

Chapter Text

It’s cool outside, teetering just on the edge of chilly, the tops of the trees waving in the wind up above. You resist shivering, though your worn coat—the only one you’ve got—is really too thin for this weather. You sit in the passenger seat, looking at your phone, the door cracked open to alleviate some of the stuffiness of the car while Karkat pumps gas.

EB: and then we went to the art institute, which was kind of boring but mostly all right...
EB: and after that we checked out the street from the parade! you know, with that big weird sculpture?
EB: which is apparently called "flamingo"!
EB: it doesn't look much like a flamingo to me, but ok, heh.
EB: so, yeah, it was a pretty good day!

TG: unbelievable dude
TG: i thought you hated that fucking movie

EB: well, hate is a pretty strong word...

TG: i distinctly remember you saying youd like to sock matthew broderick in his smug punchable face the last time jade suggested we watch it so idk seems like a fitting word to me

EB: aw, come on, man. that was forever ago!

TG: also the music blows i thought we agreed on that at least

EB: it's not THAT bad...

TG: i cant believe youre flipping on this issue my dude
TG: and here i thought you stood for something
TG: thought you knew right from wrong
TG: thought i could count on you to stand beside me in this extremely low stakes fight that no one but us actually gives a shit about
TG: thought youd always have my back when i stood up to declare that ferris buellers day off is a godawful piece of shit movie and not even in the fun ironic way but ok one trip to chicago and youre suddenly its biggest fan i get it

EB: oh, brother.

A shape in your peripheral vision pulls your attention away from John. It’s a dude you recognize—vaguely—moving around inside the run-down little convenience store next to the gas pumps.

Shit.

Your Bro doesn’t really talk to anyone in this town—he barely maintains the cabin, spends as little time there as humanly possible—but he does know this guy. You’ve met him, too. Dennis, or something? Fuck.

You have no idea whether the guy would actually, like, snitch to your Bro about seeing you here, but you definitely don’t want to find out. You sink down in the passenger seat, hiding yourself from view as much as possible.

“The hell are you doing?”

Karkat’s voice nearly makes you jump out of your seat, but somehow you manage to keep it together. He reenters the driver’s side and slides the key into the ignition.

“Aw, nothing much,” you say, casually returning to a more normal sitting position. You’re careful to keep your face turned toward Karkat, though, as he slowly pulls away from the gas station. “Just...thinking about poor little Karkave, all sad an’ alone back at home, y’know? Maybe I should have brought him with us—”

“Who the fuck is Karkave?”

“Wow, dude. You already forgot about our child? What kind of a father are you?”

Karkat scoffs. “You didn’t tell me you named him. Er—named it. The stupid fucking squash.”

“So fucked up,” you say under your breath, with a slow shake of your head to punctuate the seriousness of the matter. “See, this is why I’m gonna win full custody.”

“As if I would want it,” he grumbles, his eyes fixed on the road. “Maybe if I wanted to make some soup.”

“Well, now I’m glad we didn’t bring him. He’d be traumatized, hearing you say that shit.”

He shakes his head, all tight-lipped, like he’s trying not to smile. You let out a sigh and relax your shoulders, finally, away from Dennis and the gas station, and as a comfortable silence settles over you both you begin to let your mind wander. You watch Karkat’s hands on the steering wheel and the gearshift, the motion of the muscles in his forearms as he drives.

Okay. Stop that.

The only hardware store in town isn’t too far away. You’re there in another five minutes. You have to walk fast across the parking lot to keep up with Karkat, in spite of his shorter stride.

“You have the measurements?”

“Right here,” you confirm, holding up your phone. He just nods.

He’s brutally efficient at shopping, selecting what he needs from the shelves with decisive accuracy and speed. The dude simply does not fuck around.

Fucking around is pretty much the only way you know how to shop for anything, so it’s an eye-opening experience. You’re walking back to the car with your purchases in under ten minutes—the new tiles for the bathroom, of course, plus a hammer, two chisels, a bucket of adhesive and a bag of grout, various small tools you’ve never even heard of before—and of course, safety goggles and gloves for both of you.

You guess he really wants to do this project right. Fortunate that he already seems to know what he’s doing—no hasty Googling required on your part, this time.

Out of the corner of your eye, you watch him as he navigates smoothly out of the parking lot. His car is a beat-up piece of junk, but he drives it well, with confidence.

Karkat really isn’t that much older than you, but almost everything he does makes him seem so much more...adult. It’s not just that he’s a working professional, and it isn’t just his skill in the kitchen, either, although those things do add up to a pretty impressive picture—at least in comparison to you. No, it’s got more to do with the air of confidence he projects, whether or not it’s genuine. He doesn’t seem hesitant to take up space in the world.

Next to him, you feel a little ridiculous, jumping at shadows—constantly worried about your Bro catching you here somehow. Paranoid about the people in town, the surveillance cameras. When you’re shooting the shit with Karkat, he’s got a way of making it all seem inconsequential.

By the time you’re nearly back at the cabin, the sky isn’t just gray anymore—it’s darkening, in spite of the fact that it’s not even noon yet.

“Might rain soon,” you observe, rubbing your arms to fight the chill seeping into your skin. The heater in Karkat’s car doesn’t seem to work very well.

“Mmm,” he agrees. “Think I saw something about a storm coming in, earlier.”

You glance over at him, and—oh. The way his messy, dark hair falls over his forehead—the startling red of his irises in this cold, gray light—damn. You wish you had your camera with you, even though he wouldn’t particularly like his picture being taken in this moment, probably. You try to memorize the way he looks instead.

What the fuck are you gonna do when it’s time to part ways...?

“I’ve got some things to take care of,” he says to you as you haul your purchases up the driveway and into the cabin, “So we’ll start on the bathroom a little later. Just be careful around the broken tiles for now, okay? I’ll come and get you when it’s time.”

“Sure thing, boss,” you reply, just because you know he hates it. You grin at his disgruntled expression, and after briefly checking on your son (sitting just where you left him on the coffee table, googly eyes still stuck on and all), you retreat into your bedroom for some alone time.

Or, more accurately, to give Karkat some alone time. You could hang with that dude all day and night if he’d let you. You just...really don’t want to wear out your welcome, especially considering the unusual circumstances here. Your welcome only exists thanks to Karkat being extremely fucking cool in the first place, after all.

You had sort of wanted to mess around some more with your music—it’s been fun, trading tracks back and forth with Jade, like old times—but your laptop is dead. Figures. You plug it in to charge, then get in bed and burrow under the rumpled comforter, kicking your canvas shoes off as you go.

You’ve got several more messages from John waiting, but you don’t feel like replying just yet. It’s not like he’s on the edge of his seat waiting for your reply, anyway. Dude’s busy having the time of his life on vacation with his dad. And you’re happy for him—really. It’s ridiculous to think you could be anything other than happy for him. It’s not like you’ve ever wanted to be taken on some stupid vacation by your Bro.

You briefly consider pestering Rose, but...you don’t need her prying into your current living situation any more than she already has. She’s got this way of making you feel judged, sometimes, even if she swears that isn’t her intention.

So instead of pestering anybody, you post a cryptic update on the SBaHJ site, along with a shittier-than-usual finger doodle from your phone, just to keep your fans from completely losing interest. It’s been a hot minute since your last proper update, if you can even really use such terms when talking about SBaHJ.

With that done, there isn’t much left to distract you. It feels unavoidable, kind of inevitable, that you’d find yourself thinking about Karkat yet again. So, here you are, curled up under the comforter, thinking about Karkat yet again.

You’re thinking about his face, about how damn expressive it is. Another thing you like about him, another way he differs from you. You’re thinking about that faint little vertical line etched permanently between his brows. About his hands, so sure and steady, whether he’s typing a thousand words per minute or chopping vegetables like Gordon fucking Ramsay. Or even shoving your shoulder, playfully, out in the field behind the cabin. Get your vitamins.

You’re thinking about his eyes, so similar in color to yours. Both of you freaks of nature in the exact same way. What are the odds...?

Stop. It doesn’t matter; none of this really matters. Soon enough, this brief vacation from reality will come to an end, life will go on, and odds are you’re just...never gonna see him again. Why would you? You live in different worlds, don’t you? He’s made a name for himself with his writing, while you’d be thankful just to land a shitty part-time job manning a cash register somewhere.

Not that you aren’t holding out a little hope that you’ll score his chumhandle before then. But...it would be better not to get your hopes up. After all, you still don’t even know the first thing about his quadrant situation, or whether he’s remotely interested in humans that way. You somehow keep forgetting about that—that fundamental incompatibility.

Whenever the two of you spend time together...watching shitty movies, or cooking dinner, or just running around like idiots outside...you don’t have to think too hard about, well, anything. It’s easy, hanging around with him. It’s comfortable. Like you’ve known each other all your lives.

You suppose that’s why you keep forgetting.

You sigh and poke your head out from under the covers. The dresser seems to stare back at you from across the room. You stare forlornly at the top drawer, where you know there’s a small secret stack of Polaroid photos buried beneath your socks and underwear.

God damn it.

You haven’t known each other all your lives, of course. It hasn’t even been two weeks. There’s a lot you still don’t know about him, and an awful lot he doesn’t know about you.

“Dave?”

There’s a perfunctory knock on your open bedroom door. You sit up, letting the comforter fall from your head and shoulders. Your hair probably looks ridiculous, but at least you’ve still got your shades on. You’re still cool. It’s fine.

“Yeah?”

Karkat stands leaning against your doorframe, in that way he always seems to do—sweater sleeves rolled up, arms crossed, brow furrowed. “I made us lunch,” he says. “Come on. We’ll get started on the bathroom after.”

Out in the hall, a delicious smell permeates the air. You can’t quite place what it is, but it’s making your mouth water nonetheless. You follow Karkat into the living room, not sure what to expect, but—there’s just a couple of simple ham and cheese sandwiches on the coffee table, set on paper plates and cut into diagonal halves.

Hm. The bread is...warm.

You poke at it with your finger, watching as it springs back into shape. “Dude...did you make this?”

“I just told you I did.”

“No, I mean—I know you made the sandwiches, man, and thanks for that an’ all—but I mean, did you actually bake your own bread?”

“Oh.” He shrugs, picking up half of his sandwich. “Yeah.”

“Holy shit.”

He scoffs, tch. “What, like it’s hard?”

If you weren’t looking at his face as he said it, you might actually believe him. Oh, just baking my own fucking bread real quick? No big deal, I do it all the time. But...!

For just a moment, for just a tiny half-second before he bites into his sandwich—you see it. You see that smile.

Motherfucker is showing off. For...you. It makes you feel something weird, something kinda swoopy in your belly, if you let yourself think about it too hard.

The sandwiches are fucking delicious.

Once you’re done eating and cleaning up from lunch, Karkat makes you put on gloves and safety goggles before he’ll let you get anywhere near the bathroom again.

“Oh my god. No, take off your sunglasses. Those aren’t going to fit over them.”

You put the goggles over your sunglasses anyway and, yeah, they don’t fit, but you didn’t actually think they would. Karkat just looks at you with exasperation, as the goggles sit crookedly on your face, making your sunglasses press uncomfortably into the skin around your eyes.

“Congratulations, you look like an idiot.”

“Thanks, that’s exactly what I was going for.”

You fix the goggles yourself, without more prompting from Karkat, because holy shit is this uncomfortable. You do feel a little exposed without the shades on your face, but you’ll get over it.

Despite putting on all your “safety gear”, you aren’t even working on things quite yet— you’re currently standing in the hallway, watching a video of someone removing old floor tiles.

It looks tedious, but not that difficult. You know putting in the new tile is going to be more difficult, but Karkat will probably have some handy videos for that too to help you out. You stop actually watching after the third time the guy in the video pulls up a tile. Why is this thing thirty minutes long?

“Why don’t you just go back in there with your boots and stomp the rest of them off the floor?” You already know that won’t really work, you’re not a complete idiot, but the look Karkat gives you is absolutely worth the stupid question. “Just sayin’. It’s too bad your sudden bout of clumsiness didn’t just take all the tile out for us.”

“My feet aren’t that big,” he grumbles. “Pay attention to the video, I want to make sure we do this right.”

“And if we don’t?”

“I’m absolutely not paying for any more tile, so we’re going to do it right the first time.”

Your eyes are on Karkat’s face at this point, rather than the hand he’s holding a little too close to your face. The phone, in his hand, that he’s holding at yeah, an unnecessarily close distance. He’s got nice hands, actually, you don’t mind looking at those. The phone (and the video) itself is not going to keep your attention, though.

Unfortunately, Karkat can see where you’re looking, without your shades, so you drop your gaze back to the phone any time he almost makes eye contact with you.

“I think I’ve got it down,” you tell him after a few more minutes of watching the person in the video do the same thing over and over again. You keep thinking that maybe he’ll do something different to make the length of this video worth it, but nope.

“You can stop watching when you know you’ve got it down.”

You roll your eyes, but then you remember that as soon as this video is over, you’re going to have to do manual labor for who knows how long. You watch the video, because Karkat wants you to, and you only complain a little when he makes you re-watch the explanation at the beginning two more times.

The first stage of this impromptu bathroom remodel is indeed tedious but not too hard, just as you thought. You’re certain this tile has been in the cabin since the dawn of time (or close to it), so some of it comes up as soon as you and Karkat put even the slightest bit of pressure onto the chisel you’re using to pull things up. No wonder so much of it had cracked under the weight of his boots.

That’s not true for all of them, of course. It’s a pain in the ass to get up all the little pieces of broken tile that are still attached to the floor. It’s also a literal pain in the ass having to crouch down on the floor. You and Karkat keep bumping into one another while you try to both work in the cramped bathroom.

You can’t deny that it feels nice, though, when his shoulder knocks into yours or his knee brushes against the side of your leg.

“The floor isn’t going to work on itself while you stare at me, you know.”

“Just tryna watch your form, dude,” you lie. “Gotta make sure you’re doing things right.”

“Watch your own form, dumbass.”

“That ain’t gonna teach me anything and you know it.”

You’re trying to pay attention to what you’re doing, you really are, but your eyes do keep drifting back over to Karkat, completely against your will. You can’t help but watch the way Karkat’s hands move while he lifts up the tile. He doesn’t do it as effortlessly as he types, but dude’s clearly got talented hands.

You try not to let that thought spiral out of control because holy shit. Nope, not going there right now while he’s so close to you.

“Maybe we should do the kitchen too.” You’re joking. Mostly.

“I do have to actually work sometimes, you know.”

“Are you not working right now? Oh shit, should I get some photos? Replacing tiles is totally part of the country living life or whatever the point of your column is, yeah?”

You go to take out your phone, but Karkat shoves it back into your pocket as soon as you get it out. You try not to pay too much attention to the way his gloved fingers brush against your jeans as he pulls his hand away. “I don’t need any more surprise photos of the back of my own pan,” he tells you. “And I don’t need to write about this. I have enough shit planned for the next couple of weeks.”

“Oh yeah? Where we going next?” You catch yourself and hastily correct, “Where are you going, I mean.” You don’t want to be presumptive. Karkat is probably going to need a break from you for a while after being shoved into this bathroom with you for hours on end, after all. “Didn’t realize there were so many events happening in town.”

“I’m convinced my editor made some of them up just to mess with me, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and find out. And you had it right the first time, you’re coming too. As annoying as you can be, it’s far less pan-numbingly dull when there’s someone else with me.”

“And if I don’t wanna go? Huh? What’re you gonna do then?” As if you would actually say no to accompanying Karkat somewhere.

“Nope. You aren’t getting out of this.” When Karkat says this, he holds up his chisel, pointing directly at you, though he keeps his distance and doesn’t actually poke you with it. There’s one of those little grins on his face, and he makes eye contact with you as he does it, so he probably could poke you with it and you wouldn’t complain one bit. “If I have to suffer through canning workshops and melon festivals, so do you.”

That startles a laugh out of you. “You made that up. There’s no way there’s a melon festival. How is that any different than the farmer’s market? Wait, wait. Do you think there’s a contest for the biggest melons? I bet there is. If you’re making this up, I’m going to be so disappointed. You can’t take away the melon contest from me, Karkat.”

“Ugh, stop saying ‘melon.’ I don’t know how, but you’re making it sound dirty.”

“Not a fan of melons? What, you more of an eggplant guy? Peaches maybe?”

Karkat tosses a piece of dried up tile grout at you. You try to catch it, but even this close you completely fail and it goes sailing over your shoulder and out into the hallway. Karkat snorts when it lands. “You can clean that up later,” he tells you.

“Pft, no. You can.”

“No, you’re going to.”

You two spend the next few minutes arguing like five-year-olds over who has to pick up the small piece of grout. That somehow makes your current task go by all that much faster.

The old tile is all up at this point, and it’s time to get everything cleaned up so you can lay down the new stuff. That part might have to wait until tomorrow, since you’re starting to get pretty sore from all this work and there’s no way Karkat isn’t as well. Your arms ache, your legs are sore, and your ass definitely needs to sit on something that is not the floor for a while. You’re pretty thirsty as well, now that you think about it...

Karkat must have a similar thought, because he stands up, stretches, and says he’s going to get you both some water from the kitchen.

You take off one of your gloves when he comes back with two glasses of water. You definitely don’t let your fingers brush against Karkat’s on purpose. That is purely incidental.

You’re not looking at Karkat for once, more preoccupied with stretching out your legs and drinking the water, when he suddenly makes a pained noise, followed by the clink of a tile hitting the floor.

“Shit,” Karkat hisses. “Why is that so sharp?!”

Your head whips up, just in time to see the bright red trail on Karkat’s palm before he clutches his hand to his chest. Well, fuck. You’re not about to ask why he touched a tile without his gloves on, considering he made such a show of forcing you to wear them for protection. You can tease him later.

A drop of blood hits the floor and you finally spring into action.

“Don’t move,” you tell him. Your voice sounds eerily calm, even to your own ears. “I got this, back in a sec.”

Karkat says something in response, but you don’t hear him. You’re already running off to your room to grab your first aid kit out of your backpack.

When you come back, Karkat is trying to clean his hand in the sink. The water is dark with his blood as it goes down the drain.

You turn the water off and gently grab Karkat by the wrist.

“What are you—?”

“Shh, let me see.”

Karkat looks like he’s going to argue, but then he holds his hand out to you. There’s an angry red gash on his palm. It’s definitely too deep for a regular bandage, and it’s still bleeding steadily despite his efforts to clean it up.

“You’re gonna need stitches.” You can say that confidently. You’ve needed them enough times by now to tell just by looking.

You don’t say anything else, don’t even ask permission really, as you start getting supplies out of your kit. Maybe someone else would think to call 911, or ask if Karkat wanted them to drive him to the hospital, but your initial instinct is always to fix a wound yourself. The closest hospital is not exactly close, anyway.

You don’t always bother washing your hands when you do this to yourself, but you’re sure Karkat would appreciate not getting an infection, so you do that a little more carefully than you usually would.

You pull out everything you need—needle, needle driver, sterilized suture thread, alcohol wipes, lidocaine cream. Your collection of items is thankfully a lot more robust than the sewing needle and thread you used to use. You doubt Karkat would let you near him if that was all you had.

If Karkat wants to protest in any way, he doesn’t, just winces a bit when you start to clean the wound with an alcohol wipe. There’s still quite a bit of blood. A lot of it, actually, but you try not to focus on that too much. Just need to get it cleaned and stitched up and Karkat will be fine.

You put the numbing cream on after things are cleaned up enough for you to get to work. “Should make it hurt a little less,” you explain. “But this is still going to be uncomfortable.”

“Didn’t realize you were a medical professional,” he jokes, maybe to distract himself when you press the curved needle into his skin to make the first suture.

“Not a professional.”

Karkat makes a few more comments after that, but you’re hyperfocused on the task at hand. Push the needle into the skin, pull it back through, tie the thread off, cut, repeat.

You’re certain you heard somewhere that troll skin was thicker than human skin. If it is, it must not be that much thicker, as you don’t really notice much of a difference in the way the needle feels as it punctures Karkat’s skin, not compared to how it feels when you’ve given yourself stitches. Perhaps it’s just easier to do this on another person.

Your focus only breaks when Karkat makes a pained noise on the fourth stitch. You pause to look at him, ask if he’s okay, put on a bit more of the numbing cream. He nods after a moment and you continue.

You tie off the last suture (he only needed seven, not too bad), make sure everything is clean and dry, then carefully wrap a bandage around Karkat’s palm. You take a second to admire your handiwork, now that everything is cleaned up and blood-free. Looks good, if you do say so yourself. You hope it doesn’t hurt too much.

“Thanks.” Karkat’s voice is quiet when he says that.

“No problem, man.”

You’re still holding his hand. He doesn’t pull it away, but you know you should probably let go at some point.

Before you have time to actually think about what you’re doing, you lean in and press a quick, soft kiss to Karkat’s palm, just over where you know the stitches are under the bandage.

And just like that, the adrenaline-fueled haze you were in completely lifts, and all you can think is Why the fuck did I do that? What would possess you to kiss his palm like that? It’s not like that was a normal part of the stitching process. It wasn’t normal to just kiss someone’s injury like that, at least not with a stranger... Karkat isn’t really a stranger, not entirely, but...

“Did you just—”

“No,” you say in a rush, cutting Karkat off before he can finish his question. Your own voice sounds far too loud in your head when you repeat yourself. No, you did not just do that. Why would you even do that?

Before Karkat can call you out on the fact that yes, you absolutely did just do that, you run off back to your room, slamming the door behind you like the coward you know you are.

You sit on the edge of your bed and consider the possible courses of action before you.

What if you just, sort of, waltzed into the kitchen later this evening, when you know Karkat will be in there? What’s for dinner, you’d casually ask, and in response, he...

Hm, yeah. That’ll never work.

What if you just climbed out your bedroom window, instead. Hitchhiked your way across the country—maybe all the way to Rose’s dorm. You could change your name. Get colored contacts, dye your hair brown...

Okay, maybe that would be overkill.

If only you had his chumhandle. Then you could apologize without worrying about him interrupting, or...or having to look him in the eye.

Speaking of which. You left your fucking shades in the bathroom in your rush to get the hell out of there. Idiot.

You tear off the safety goggles and drop them onto the nightstand next to the bed. Your stomach is churning. You feel horribly naked now, without anything on your face, even though there’s no one in the room but you.

With that one stupid, impulsive act, you have completely fucked this whole thing up, haven’t you? And everything had been going so well. You’d been getting along great, becoming real friends with the guy, and now...now you have absolutely no idea how to begin to fix this mess.

He hasn’t tried to follow you, or knock on your door, confirming your suspicion that he really, really must not want to see you right now. You wrap your arms around your knees, glaring at the floor, but not really looking at anything, just lost in your own head.

It’s another ten minutes before you finally register the steady sound of raindrops on the roof.

Sounds like the storm has arrived.

Chapter Text

If the rain drumming on the roof nonstop has been good for one thing, it’s put you in the mood to work on your music more. Jade’s been getting a lot more files in her inbox lately. wow, whats gotten into you all of a sudden? everything good? she’d asked last night, to which you had given some vague, rambling answer.

You’re pretty good at pretending things are fine when people actually bother to outright ask. You ought to be good at it. You’ve got years of experience.

You lie on your back in your unmade bed, in yesterday’s clothes, knowing you can’t get away with this much longer—you’ve got to do some laundry soon.

But for close to forty-eight hours now, you’ve managed to completely avoid running into Karkat. You’d really rather keep that streak going, if the only alternative is the most awkward conversation you’ve ever faced in your life, and you’re pretty sure that is the only alternative at this point.

He doesn’t seem to be trying to avoid you in the same way, exactly. When he isn’t typing up a storm in his room, you’ve heard him moving around the cabin a whole lot. Stomping in the hallway, rummaging in the kitchen, watching movies in the living room... You, on the other hand, only leave your room when you absolutely need to, either to quickly grab some leftovers out of the fridge or to use the bathroom.

It has crossed your mind that, perhaps, you’re being a bit dramatic about this.

Maybe he sits on the couch watching movies because he knows you can hear the TV. Maybe it’s a sort of invitation, like he’s waiting for you to join him out there.

What if that’s not it at all, though...? Better not to risk the embarrassment.

You did catch sight of him, just once, this morning, as you were returning to your room from the bathroom. He must have gone alone to one of those events in town, in spite of the weather. He’d opened the front door, carrying a black umbrella dripping with rain, and you had quickly ducked into your room before he’d had a chance to see you, heart hammering. You’d then spent the next hour or so furiously pestering John, just rambling on and on about any topic you could think of—your dumb ideas for upcoming SBaHJ strips, Rose’s impenetrable wizard fiction, early 2000s movie trivia—just so you didn’t have to think about Karkat anymore.

It’s been a few hours now since you last heard him typing, or doing anything, actually. Maybe he went back out at some point? You wonder, not for the first time, how hard it would be just to finish retiling the bathroom on your own, while he’s gone. Maintenance stuff is (sort of) supposed to be your job here, after all.

Maybe if you do a good enough job with it, he’ll forgive you for your little slip-up. You’ll admit, though, you’re no longer holding out much hope for your nascent friendship, or...anything more.

It’s midday, but the diffuse light coming in through the tiny bathroom window is cold, and sort of dismal. You switch on the overhead light, which only improves things a little, because now you can actually see the state of the bathroom. The new tile, all the tools and supplies, the safety equipment—it all still sits piled on the counter, right where you’d left it. You’ve both just been walking around on the unfinished floor whenever you needed to come in here. Karkat had at least swept up the worst of the mess and the dust, so it’s clean enough for you to get right to work. You sigh. Yeah, you’ve gotta get this done. This is pathetic.

You put on your goggles and one of the pairs of safety gloves, but before you can reach for your phone and start searching around for some kind of helpful video walkthrough of the tiling process, the slightly-open door swings all the way open—and there’s Karkat, in a knitted sweater (guy must have a whole collection) and pajama pants.

You guess he never went back out, after all.

It’s a long six seconds or so while Karkat stands there in the doorway, seemingly frozen. The muted rainfall on the roof is the only sound you can hear. You hold your breath, just...waiting. For him to chew you out for avoiding him, or ask you what the hell you were thinking when you kissed his hand, or...or even just turn around and leave.

He doesn’t do any of those things, though. He takes a step into the small room, and then another. He grabs the remaining pair of gloves from the counter and pulls them on, being extra careful with his bandaged hand.

You guess he had the same idea as you. Was he really going to try to finish the job alone, one-handed?

“Great minds, huh?” The words fall out of your mouth almost against your will. You control your expression carefully, like you always (almost always) do, but you’re cringing on the inside. Spiritually cringing.

His snort of derision is the only thing keeping the words from hanging in the air too long, but hey. You’ll take it.

Karkat doesn’t bother with any how-to articles or videos this time. He just gets right to work, measuring and marking lines on the concrete floor with chalk, and even working one-handed, it’s clear he’s done this particular task before. He’s efficient, his work neat, and watching him is really all the tutorial you need.

“Helped my friend Kanaya with this when she moved into a new house last year. We had two bathrooms and a kitchen to tile, so I got pretty good at it,” he says, in answer to the question you hadn’t actually asked. He still isn’t looking at you—his eyes are focused firmly on his task, which is actually maybe making things a little easier? Especially without the protection of your shades, which—

Oh. He seems to be waiting for you to say something.

“Cool,” you finally manage, and there it is again—that sort-of-amused snort (cute), and then he’s back to work.

“Get the mortar and start mixing it, idiot.”

“Kay.”

He takes the two trowels from the countertop and gives one to you. He shows you how to spread the mortar, and line up the new tiles with spacers in between. You follow his lead, working your way out from the center of the floor.

After the first few minutes, you work together in silence, mostly. The soothing sound of the rain outside keeps things from getting too painfully awkward. Working alongside him like this is actually sort of familiar by now, after all the little projects you’ve done around the place together. And after the last two days, all that worry and careful avoidance...just spending time with him again, in any capacity, is kind of nice.

You can almost forget that anything out of the ordinary happened to begin with. Almost, but not quite.

You’re doing an okay job keeping your mouth shut, for once (mostly out of fear of what might come spilling out if you let it), so it’s Karkat who breaks the silence first. He complains that the task would be going much more smoothly if he had two functioning hands, which strikes you as sort of funny—after all, even one-handed, he’s still better at this than you are.

“I dunno what you’re talkin’ about, dude. You’re obviously pretty damn good at one-handed activities,” you say, before you get a chance to think about...the connotations.

He doesn’t reply, but he does pause for a moment. So...okay...yeah. You guess he heard it too.

“I just meant, like—uhhh, texting and—and typing and whatever,” you say nervously.

“Oh,” he says, in a strangely strained tone of voice, peering at you sort of suspiciously through his goggles. You can’t maintain eye contact with him for more than a fraction of a second—shit, it’s intense like this, without your shades. Even when you look away, keeping your eyes fixed on the work in front of you instead, just the feeling of his gaze on you makes you sweat like a spotlight on stage.

“Not that I’ve ever seen you type with one hand, but I’m sure you’d be great at it,” you continue, for some godforsaken reason. Fuck. “Like, just hypothetically, if you were typing and you needed to drink some water, I mean. I’m not tryna imply you’d be doing, uhh, anything—else—with the other hand—”

The choked sound that escapes him is a pretty good indicator that you ought to stop fucking talking, you think.

“—sorry, dude—I swear I’m just kinda a dumbass, okay, I literally wasn’t paying attention to the words comin’ outta my mouth, I promise I don’t just sit around in my room imagining you, like, jerking it or whatever—”

“Jesus christ, ” he wheezes, coughing out another weird, choked noise—you glance up in alarm, is he okay? and he’s on his hands and knees on the concrete, his face all red. Holy shit, is he...crying?

You fucked up, you fucked up again, you think at yourself viciously. Wow, and in record time!

While you’re busy being useless, his arms give out from under him and he rolls onto his side on the floor, getting bits of wet mortar stuck in his hair and his sweater as he goes—and then he finally, finally breathes, and you realize he isn’t crying at all. He’s fucking laughing, so hysterically it’s almost silent, his whole body shaking with the force of it.

He rolls over onto his back, clutching at his belly. There are pinkish tears streaming down his scrunched-up face, he’s practically coughing with laughter, and you...

You’re hit with perhaps the purest feeling of longing you’ve ever known, then and there. Watching Karkat writhe on the bathroom floor, holding himself, in hysterics. That’s it, that’s when you know—you really, you actually love him.

You catch yourself staring at him with a smile on your face, and manage to train your expression back to neutral, ish, before he regains his faculties. He lies there on the floor, hugging himself and rocking from side to side, little hiccuping giggles escaping him now and then. You fight the stubborn grin that keeps surfacing on your face, but finally you resort to simply covering your mouth with one hand, simultaneously twisting yourself into a cross-legged pretzel so you can rest your elbow against your knee in what you hope is a natural-looking position.

“I don’t suppose—ha—I d-don’t suppose you—snrk—”

You wait for him to spit it out. He’s so fucking adorable, fuck.

“Don’t s’pose you could khhgn—haha—”

He probably wouldn’t react well if you took his face in your hands and kissed him right now, huh...? Oh, well. You can dream.

“Fuck,” he sighs, with a long exhale, as he swipes away the tears on his face.

“I’m glad you’re having so much fun at my expense,” you say, far more sincerely than you had intended. “It’s a good thing my cousin Rose wasn’t here to witness that, by the way. She collects my Freudian slips like some people collect Squiddles.”

You leave him to recover. Just to distract yourself from him, from—what you feel about him, holy shit—you spread a little more mortar, lay a few more tiles. You’re coming up to the edge now, against the wall. It looks like you’re going to need to cut some of the tiles to fit in the tighter space.

Karkat pushes himself up into a sitting position again, being careful with his injured right hand.

“If we’re going to have any hope of ever finishing this project,” he says, “you’re going to have to be the one to use the tile cutter.” In a different, lower tone of voice, he adds “that is definitely not a one-handed activity.”

“Yeah, okay,” you say, and only then does it occur to you that he might have been...attempting to flirt with you? Badly, yes, but—why else echo your own words back to you—?

No, you’ve gotta be wrong. No way.

But the crooked, toothy little grin on his face makes your heart leap, stupidly, and there’s something going on here, isn’t there? Some subtle difference in the quality of the silence between you, something not quite altogether there yet, something...potential.

He picks up his abandoned trowel and gets back to work on his side of the room. You scoot a little closer—just because you’ve already finished tiling your side!—and between the two of you, the rest of the bare floor is covered in no time.

You agree to take a short break before you attempt to learn to use the tile cutter. “Give me a minute to find a good video for this,” Karkat says, so you lean back against the wall and wait while he searches on his phone.

He’s still got bits of mortar in his hair, from when he’d literally rolled on the floor laughing at your dumb ass. You wonder whether he’d get angry if you reached out and brushed them away. Maybe...maybe not.

In the end, you keep your hands to yourself.

The rain is still falling steadily, insistently, drumming against the roof of the cabin like it has been for two full days now. You still feel kind of nervous, but it’s...different than when you were avoiding him. You also feel strangely light, like you could run right up the side of a mountain if you tried—cartwheel off the peak, float back down to earth.

“Y’know,” you say, “you don’t gotta keep breaking shit around here just to have an excuse to hang out with me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Karkat replies, while his cheeks turn noticeably pink.

“Okay,” you say, and this time you don’t bother to hide your smile.

With the help of multiple YouTube videos, and the motivation and encouragement of Karkat (he told you that there was absolutely no way he could sew your finger back on if you hacked it off with the tile cutter), you manage to correctly cut the tiles and fit them around the base of the sink and the toilet. You’re sure an actual professional would be able to find flaws in the work you and Karkat have done, but you are far from an actual professional, Karkat seems to think it looks good enough, and you know for a fact that Bro is unlikely to lay an eye on this floor any time soon.

You two will have to be careful for the next day or so while everything dries, but the actual work is done at this point, and you can’t help but feel proud about doing a half-decent job (Karkat’s hand injury and the days spent sulking in your room aside).

Your stomach grumbles, loud, as you’re finishing cleaning up all the tools and leftover materials.

You see Karkat glance down at your stomach when it makes another sound. “We should both clean ourselves up and then we can make dinner together?” He doesn’t quite sound unsure when he asks that, but him having to ask at all makes you feel a little guilty.

“Yeah, man, of course. Just make sure you get all that mortar out of your hair so it doesn’t get in the food.”

“I doubt it would do anything to you, given all the junk you apparently ate before you met me.”

The upgrade in food isn’t the only thing that’s changed since you met Karkat, you can’t help but think, but you don’t say that. You just laugh and let Karkat wave you off to your room so that you can clean up and change your disgusting clothes before you get anywhere near the kitchen.

Karkat takes a bit longer than you to clean up, but soon enough you’re both in the kitchen. The rain hasn't stopped falling outside, not one bit, but it somehow feels far less gloomy than before.

You watch as he starts to dig through the fridge, seemingly trying to figure out what you two should make. His hand hovers over a container of...something, you honestly can’t tell what’s in it. He seems to hesitate for a moment before he turns to face you instead of the fridge.

“Sup?”

“There’s this...stew, I guess would be the best word for it, that I like to make when the weather is like this.”

“Yeah? Stew sounds awesome, let’s do it.”

He looks back at the container. “I’m not sure you’d like it.”

“I’ve liked literally every single thing you’ve made for me, dude. Don’t know if I’ve been clear enough about this fact, but the food you make is kind of the best shit I’ve ever had in my life.”

“It’s got chirpbugs in it. Among other things humans don’t usually eat, but I don’t have all the right spices and vegetables for it anyway. I’ve got the bugs, though.”

You rack your brain for a moment to try and recall what “chirpbugs” are. When the answer doesn’t come to you, you just shrug. “S’gotta be better than mortar. Or the junk I usually eat, like you said.”

“Suit yourself, but I’m not making something else if you don’t like it.”

You’re pretty sure he would make you something else if you didn’t like his bug soup. He’s made plenty of human foods that you’d never tried before, and you liked all of those. You think it’d be rude not to try the stew, actually. “Naw, I’m sure I’ll like it. Let’s try your rainy day stew.” As Karkat starts to pull out various ingredients for the stew, you get an idea. “Hey, we should make bread too. Bread goes with stew, right? If I actually am a wimp and the chipbugs—”

“Chirpbugs.”

“—chirpbugs, yeah. If those are too much for me to handle, which they won’t be, I’ll just eat the bread. S’basically a whole meal by itself anyway.”

“It’s really not, but...sure.”

“It’s gonna be fine, Karkat. Let’s get this show on the road, I’m starving.”

“Fine, fine.” He sounds exasperated, but you can tell just by looking at him that he really isn’t. “Get over here and I’ll show you how to make the dough.”

The bread is not going well. Not at all. The dough is weirdly stiff and it’s getting harder and harder to knead it how Karkat told you to. You’ve been trying to shape it, but every time you stretch out the dough even a little bit, it cracks and tears.

“I think I fucked this up, dude,” you tell Karkat. “You’re gonna have to show me how to fix this.”

You briefly get a mental image of Karkat standing behind you, his chest pressed against your back as he places his hands over yours, gently showing you how to properly knead the dough...

“You overworked it, I don’t— Are you kidding me? Of course you shaped it into a human dick. What are you, twelve?”

You grin at Karkat as he inspects your handiwork. Despite the fact that this is definitely not how the loaf of bread is supposed to look, you are kind of proud of how symmetrical you got the balls to look.

“How do I fix it? It’s all hard.” 

Karkat makes a face but does not comment on how inappropriate what you just said sounds. “You kneaded it too much. Just start over, there’s no point trying to save it.”

“Aw, really?” You pat the dick-and-balls loaf and yeah, it does feel...not great. “Sorry buddy, Karkat says you’re not good enough.”

“Stop talking to it and get working on new dough.”

“Yessir.”

Your second attempt at bread dough is much more successful, even if Karkat does prevent you from getting too “creative” with the shape. It takes a little longer than you’d like, waiting for it to rise first and then bake—and the stew simmering on the stovetop smells so fucking good your stomach grumbles basically the entire time—but then, finally, the stew and the bread are both ready. You set your two bowls on the rickety little wooden table in the corner of the kitchen, while Karkat slices two generous slabs of the still-warm bread.

He seems to be watching you expectantly as you scoop up some of the stew with your spoon. You make sure you get some of the crispy crickets (chirpbugs, you mentally correct, even though that is what they are and Karkat absolutely can’t hear your thoughts anyway). Karkat’s gaze doesn’t leave you, you can feel it, as you take a bite.

It’s...kind of fucking amazing. All of Karkat’s cooking is, but this is legitimately something else. You can see why he eats this during shitty weather because it really does hit the spot. It’s warm, the spices are fantastic, and you’re kind of digging the different textures from the various vegetables and meats, the thick broth, and the crunchy chirpbugs.

As your inner food critic works away (as if you of all people have the qualifications to be a food critic), Karkat doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t eat either.

You swallow, and just as you’re about to start dishing out the praise—Karkat speaks first. “I can make something else. I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“...Who said I didn’t like it? I didn’t say that, unless I just experienced some sort of fugue state where I said nonsense that isn’t true and immediately forgot about it.” You scoop up more of the stew. “This is great, dude. Best stew I ever had. Eat yours and stop worrying about me.”

“I’m not really going to make you eat just bread if you don’t like it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna be eating just bread because I’m probably gonna eat at least three bowls of this stuff.” You pick up one of the crickets out of the soup and pop it into your mouth just to prove your point. “They’re crunchy, they’re spicy. They’re basically hot cheetos but probably way less radioactive.”

“I’m offended you’re comparing something I made to hot cheetos, but fine. I believe you.” He doesn’t look like he believes you. He doesn’t continue to argue, though, and instead starts digging into his own stew.

You had almost forgotten about the bread, but it’s good, too—light and fluffy and chewy, with a perfectly golden crust. It’s kind of mind-blowing to you that something as simple as bread could be so tasty, but...especially compared to the stuff you usually buy at the store, it is, somehow. And knowing that you shaped it with your own hands only adds to the satisfaction you feel eating it.

The silence in the little oven-warmed kitchen stretches out lazily, relaxing into something decidedly less tense as you both eat your food.

In the middle of your second bowl of stew, you catch yourself tapping your foot to music that isn’t there, and you force yourself to be still. Karkat already seems to have noticed, but he says nothing about it. There may or may not be a very faint smile of amusement on his face. Not that you’re looking or anything. You’re not.

Because Karkat is one of those psychopaths who cleans up while he’s cooking, tidying up after dinner is a breeze. It’s almost a relief, just having to wash a few things after all the work you’ve done today.

You’re not really sure what to do after you’re done cleaning up—you’ve been with Karkat pretty much all day, and you only just started talking again after that whole...fiasco. You’re going to call it a fiasco and leave it at that. You don’t want to go back to doing your own thing, but maybe you should...

“Here.” Karkat shoves a bottle of something into your hands and that is when you realize that, oops, you totally zoned out again. The bottle is cold, so you’re assuming he got it from the fridge, but you hadn’t even noticed he’d opened it.

You give him a small smile while you mutter a “thanks.”

Said smile quickly morphs into a wide grin when you actually look at what he’s handed you. “Oh hell yeah, cider. When’d you get this?” You’d already polished off the apple cider you two bought during your trip to the farmer’s market. This is clearly hard cider, too, not the same stuff you’d gotten before.

He’s not quite looking at you when he answers, “Went back to that farmer’s market. Figured you’d like it, given how over-the-top you act about apples.”

That...is kind of sweet? You already knew that Karkat tended to notice things about you, what with all the “accidentally” making too much food before he gave up on that pretense entirely, and he’s obviously been getting things specifically for you when he buys food. You’re just...touched, you guess. That he would still buy you something, after what happened, while you were sitting around ignoring him, convinced he was going to kick you out.

You twist the cap off and take a sip to calm the sudden tickle in your throat. You’re clearly just thirsty. “Great pick,” you tell him. “10 out of 10, must’ve been a great year.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he looks at the bottle for a moment, “last year was a great time to make cider.”

“Aged and everything. Can’t believe you got the fancy stuff.” You rotate the bottle around in your hand in an attempted mockery of the way one might twirl a glass of wine, then take another sip. “Yup, definitely picking up on those subtle appley notes.”

“Didn’t realize you were a cider sommelier too. Must be tiring keeping up with all these jobs of yours.”

You snort. “Oh yeah, you have no idea.”

He gives you a look that you can’t quite decipher, but there’s definitely some amusement on his face so it can’t be that bad. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sit down on the couch and not get back up until I absolutely have to. It might not actually be comfortable, but it’s much better than the bathroom floor.”

“And these kitchen chairs,” you add. “You’ve even got some cushion, imagine how my ass feels sitting on those things.”

“I’m pretending you only said that because you’re already drunk.”

“Might be for the best, yeah.” 

You follow him into the living room, and you’re certain if anyone else were here right now, they’d comment on the fact that you’ve both got a matching set of blushes rising up your cheeks while you sit down together.

Karkat tells you a bit about what he was up to the last couple days as you two drink your ciders. The farmer’s market was apparently open for a few hours in the morning before they closed up due to the rain, which was when he got the cider. You wonder whether he tried to take any terrible phone photos of his return trip. If so, you’d kind of kill to see them, honestly.

You try not to pay attention to the fact that you and Karkat are slowly getting closer and closer to one another on the couch. You don’t do anything to stop it, either, until you’ve drained your entire bottle.

“Do you gotta cool it so you can work tomorrow or do you want another cider?”

Karkat snorts, then chugs down the last of his bottle of cider. “Probably should since I didn’t do anything today.”

“So...is that a no?”

“I’ll take another one. I don’t have to run into town tomorrow for anything and my editor can wait a couple more days for my thrilling article about how everything in town closes down when it rains.”

You don’t necessarily want to be responsible for Karkat not getting his work in on time, but you grab him another cider anyway because you’re not about to convince him not to spend more time with you.

Karkat seems a little tense when he takes the cider from you, but you two are back to chatting as soon as you sit back down.

“What’ve you got on the docket for your column this week, then?”

“I wasn’t joking before. Nothing going on tomorrow, nothing’s been going on the last few days. I’m supposed to just wax poetic about sitting around on my hands doing fuck all while it rains.”

“Oh yeah, that does sound thrilling. You should really get that done A-S-A-P. I’m sure your readers are waiting with bated breath to hear about your next small town adventure.”

“I’d be surprised if anyone is actually reading that drivel.”

You can hear his phone (or “palm husk,” as he’s called it multiple times; you’re pretty sure you’re an expert on troll words at this point) buzz inside his pocket, but he ignores it the first few times. Finally, he groans and takes a look at it, only to silence notifications and toss it onto the coffee table facedown. “I’m not dealing with that right now.”

“Everything okay?”

“Just my boss. Nothing important.”

“You sure?”

“It can wait until tomorrow. I don’t want to deal with this stupid job right now.”

You don’t feel entirely comfortable just outright asking him what happened with his job, considering your own precarious situation, and how little he still knows about it. But...your curiosity grows (and, more importantly, your filter weakens) with every sip of cider.

You’ve always been a bit of a lightweight.

“So, what actually happened with your job?” you blurt out somewhere in the middle of your third bottle.

He reacts as if you’d slapped him—but he recovers fast, holding up a hand and shaking his head at you before you get a chance to backpedal and apologize. You bite your tongue and wait in agonizing silence while he gathers his thoughts.

He leans back and sighs loudly, all the tension seeming to drain out of him at once.

“Fuck,” he begins, scrubbing a hand over his face. “It was...”

You wait while he drains the rest of his cider, suddenly anxious. Is he going to turn this around on you, question you about your “job”—? You aren’t sure you’d be able to convincingly lie to him, half-inebriated like this.

“It was so fucking stupid,” he says, staring off into the distance. “I was so stupid. Thinking I could, I don’t know, use the awesome power of the written fucking word to change the world?”

“That doesn’t sound stupid to me.”

He laughs bitterly. “Of course not.”

You don’t really follow what he’s talking about, but you don’t want him to know that, so you just sip your cider. Sure enough, he takes a deep breath and begins to elaborate: “So. I was looking into this—this, I guess, up-and-coming politician.”

You say “oh shit.” He tries to take another sip of his cider, remembers it’s empty. Neither of you appear to be thinking clearly right now because when you hold out your own bottle, Karkat takes it without question. He gulps down the rest of it and starts fiddling with the empty bottle.

“Yeah. Whatever comes to mind when I say the word ‘politician’—that’s the kind of guy I mean. Ungodly rich, out of touch, empty-headed, violetblood prep-school fuckface with more media training than brains. A real pile of shit, you know.”

“Listen, man, you don’t gotta tiptoe around the subject like that,” you say, a little half-smile tugging at the corner of your mouth, against your will. “You c’n tell me what you really think about him.”

He just rolls his eyes. “Do you want to know what happened or not?”

You nod seriously, but keep your mouth shut. You wonder whether you sound drunk.

“Anyway. He was hypocritical as all hell, too, it turned out. His whole career he’d been campaigning against interspecies marriage, as well as humans-in-quadrants, saying we were ‘fundamentally incompatible,’ blah blah blah. You’ve heard all that hoofbeastshit before, I’m sure.”

“Yeah,” you say, and it comes out in a hoarse sort of squeak. Your heart is racing now, shit. Does he know—?

You keep your face as still and straight as you can, trying not to betray your alarm. Of course he doesn’t know. He’s just talking about politics. And anyway he’s right—you have heard it all before, though you confess you never paid much attention to the unhinged ravings of speciesist bigots. They exist, and you’re aware of them, yeah, but it’s not like you personally know any.

“Yeah, so, of fucking course he had a secret human moirail all along. That’s what I found out while I was looking into him.”

“Damn, that’s wild. Is he famous? Would I know who he is?”

Karkat considers you carefully. “Probably not? Unless you watch a lot of C-SPAN. But he’s powerful, in a behind-the-scenes kind of way. He’s thrown his weight behind some really fucked-up anti-interspecies legislation, even if none of it’s passed. Yet.”

You shake your head. You’re trying to focus on what’s being said, but it’s hard. He looks good, handsome, in the warm light of the living room. And...his sweater looks so soft.

It takes all your remaining willpower not to reach out and touch it.

“The moirail thing—it should’ve been a major story. It should’ve been the story.”

“Yeah, so what happened?”

Karkat shrugs miserably, setting his empty bottle down on the coffee table. “Well, he’s powerful, remember? He found out about the investigation, and the piece got fucking buried.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s when I, I guess I sort of lost my head. Flipped out at my editor and the editor-in-chief. Called them—well, I called them lots of things. But my main point was they were being cowards, which they fucking were. I said we had a duty to run the piece! That it was something the people had a right to know. And...I got punished for it.”

“Banished to the boonies,” you say. “Shit, man.”

“I mean, jesus, I spent almost a year on that piece. It was probably the best damn writing I’ve ever done, too. After they killed it, I kept asking, what was it all for? All that work...”

He stares into the distance, seeming to forget you’re there for a moment. His voice is quieter when he continues—you hadn’t even noticed he’d been raising it steadily as he spoke.

“I was invested in seeing it through, you know. In seeing that pompous asswipe face some damn consequences, for once.”

“Sucks,” you say. It feels inadequate, but what else can you say?

He shakes his head. “Yeah. Well, there you have it. Now I’m the Pioneer Troll, cursed to churn out this dinky little weekly fluff column so I don’t get completely blacklisted. I suppose it’s better than fucking couch-surfing while I flail around in search of a totally new career.”

Thinking of the sheer volume of words the guy types every day, you smile and say, “Maybe you could write something else instead. Like...a book. Or, several, probably.”

He gives you a funny sort of look—like he isn’t sure whether he really wants to say what he’s about to say.

(Did he just glance at your lips? He didn’t, right? No—)

“I’ll probably regret telling you this,” he says, “but fuck it. I did consider becoming a romance novelist for a while.”

Oh, he is definitely looking at your mouth. What the fuck. “No way,” you say softly, mostly on autopilot.

You try for all of two seconds not to also stare at his mouth. He bites his lip and the flush on his face deepens just a bit as he says, “I know, it’s ridiculous.”

“Only a little. The—romance part, not the writing part. You’d be good at that part.”

His laugh is breathy. “You haven’t actually read any of my writing, how would you know?”

“Must be good if you’ve got a job doing it and all that.”

“Yeah, and you’re such a great repairman. I don’t think having a job is any indicator someone is actually good at something.”

You don’t immediately respond to that because Karkat shifts on the couch, getting just a bit closer to you. He leans in and oh yeah, he’s definitely going to—

Stand up.

“I’m going to grab us some more cider,” he says quickly before making his way back into the kitchen.

By the time Karkat comes back with more drinks, the moment (if there ever actually was a moment) is gone.

You clear your throat after taking a huge swig of cider. “Uh, so about that whole...me being a shitty repairman despite that being my job...thing.” 

Karkat just looks at you, an...amused? expression on his face. What’s so amusing? “I might, uh, might not be a repairman. Like—this is my Bro’s cabin, okay, I didn’t just sneak in here. Well I mean I did sneak in here, he doesn’t know I’m here, but—”

Karkat starts fucking laughing at you. “Don’t hurt yourself, dumbass. I already know you’re not a repairman.”

You’re certain the way your mouth hangs open in shock must look absolutely stupid right now. “What? You knew?”

“Pretty much the whole time, yeah.”

“How?”

“Well the first clue was that you don’t have a car? How would anyone actually expect you to get out here to perform maintenance if there was an emergency? Also, you had no idea what you were doing that first night and the tools you used looked like they hadn’t seen the light of day for literal years.”

“I did a pretty okay job with the sink.” With Karkat’s help, sure. But you still kind of did it.

“Sure. For someone who had no idea what he was doing.”

Karkat doesn’t sound angry or upset in the slightest, even laughs a bit more when you shoot him an offended look. “This was, uh, way more anticlimactic than I was expecting,” you say. “Thanks for not kicking my ass to the curb even though you knew I was a huge liar, I guess.”

“Oh trust me, I would have if I didn’t want you here.”

It takes you a moment to process Karkat’s words.

You blame the warmth you feel spreading all over your face and chest on the alcohol.

The two of you go to your own separate rooms soon after that, in spite of the cozy atmosphere that had been steadily building between you all night. Something had abruptly changed after Karkat had said what he’d said—like maybe it embarrassed him, like maybe he hadn’t quite meant to say it, or at least...perhaps not so bluntly.

You’re glad, in a way. You weren’t bothering to keep an eye on how much you were drinking, but now, alone in your room, struggling to get undressed for bed, you can definitely tell you’ve had too much. You’re not the biggest fan of how unsteady on your feet you feel.

And anyway—it would’ve been all wrong, wouldn’t it?

Kissing him for the very first time, like this.

There’s a sort of sour taste behind your teeth, acidic, from the cider; the whole room seems to spin at a dizzy angle when you collapse into bed in nothing but your socks and underwear. You can’t help but imagine the disapproving look Rose would give you if she were here.

So...yeah, it’s probably for the best. But that doesn’t mean you’re not also a bit disappointed.

You had parted for the night sort of awkwardly, in the hallway separating your bedrooms, with a mumbled see you tomorrow. Come to think of it, it’s also probably for the best that you’d completely failed to reach out and pat him on the shoulder like you’d been drunkenly attempting to do. He never even saw you trying—his back had been turned, thank god.

In the quiet of the night, still mostly bare but wrapped tightly in blankets to fight off the chill, a terrible thought occurs to you.

What if...what if you had actually completely misread the situation tonight? Karkat could have been looking at a stray chirpbug leg stuck to your lip, for all you know. You’re not sure what possessed you to think he wanted to kiss you, instead of that much more reasonable assumption. You mean, he’d apparently had you completely figured out for ages—there’s just no way he could be into you in any kind of romantic sense now, right? Not while knowing you’ve been using this place to hide pathetically from the world, from your Bro...

No, the something-on-your-lip theory makes much more sense, you think.

Well. As long as you don’t let yourself think about...that thing he said. About...wanting you here.

You still don’t quite know what to do with that—or his strangely embarrassed reaction to having said it, for that matter.

God damn it. Why did you drink so many ciders? It’s—difficult to think clearly. You hug the bunched-up blankets closer to your chest and sigh, forcing yourself to release the tension in your body. You should probably just try to go to sleep—let the situation with Karkat be a problem for tomorrow, when you’ve sobered up.

It’s easier said than done, though. Your stomach is still all filled with butterflies just at the thought of him—the memory of how close he’d been sitting earlier, on the couch. The way you had felt in that one breathless moment, right before he stood up, when you had thought...

He just—didn’t give you enough of a chance, you think. If he had wanted you to kiss him.

You just needed a little more time. To, maybe, touch his hand or his cheek or something? To...make sure. That it was really something you both wanted.

You huff out a frustrated breath, squirming deeper into the pillows and blankets, and silently promise yourself that if he gives you another chance...you won’t waste it. You’ll show him romance, okay? You can be romantic as all hell. Sweep a guy right off his feet and shit. Yeah...

Your sleep is uncomfortable, disjointed. You wake up after only three hours, still slightly drunk, dizzy and disoriented, with the sheets and blankets thrown completely off the bed and the overhead light still burning bright. You groan, already feeling the beginnings of a headache pounding gently but insistently at your skull.

You shiver, but...it’s not because of the cold.

You can only remember fragments of the dream you were having—soft press of lips, sharp troll teeth, hands sliding over warm skin, friction and breath—

You clench your teeth and set your hands at your sides, resolutely ignoring the tent in your boxers. You just—you refuse to touch yourself about this. It’s too much, it would be much too much. The guy is sleeping like fifteen feet away from you, for fuck’s sake. It would be...wrong. Creepy.

No, you can wait it out.

You breathe and breathe, and wait it out.

Fuck, it’s cold. When you’ve calmed down sufficiently—or when your body has, at least—you bend down from the side of the bed (god damn, your head hurts) and fish the wadded-up blankets from the floor.

You’d like to visit the bathroom, maybe get a glass of water. But from the way your head swam when you’d retrieved the blankets, you think walking down the hall might be too titanic a task to ask of you at this time.

You go back to sleep instead.

It’s about nine thirty in the morning when you next wake up, in a much less disheveled condition, this time. The rain falling outside has slowed, at last, into a soft, sleepy drizzle.

You still wouldn’t say you feel good just yet. Your head is pounding, you have to piss like nobody’s business, and your mouth tastes fucking awful. Oh, and your shades are digging painfully into the entire right side of your face, since you’ve been crushing your cheek against your pillow in a dead sleep and all. But you’d say your condition is still an improvement, overall. You had really been a complete mess in the wee hours of the night.

Your stomach growls, but it can wait. It’s all you can do just to pull on some pajama pants, stumble across the hall into the bathroom, and take care of the basics before your throbbing headache forces you back to bed.

You’re lying on your back, floating in a semi-conscious doze, when the repeated buzzing of your phone shatters the soft lullaby of the rain against the window and startles you back awake. You dive down and fumble clumsily around on the floor for a few minutes before, finally, you find your phone in the pocket of last night’s jeans and fish it out.

You’ve got several messages waiting for you on Pesterchum, but the most intriguing notification by far has got to be the lone new chum request. It’s from one carcinoGeneticist, which is not a handle you recognize, but...

Out of sheer curiosity, and because you have a sneaking suspicion as to this new chum’s identity, you click confirm.

And the moment you do—

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

CG: GOOD MORNING. ARE YOU AS FULL OF REGRETS AS I AM RIGHT NOW?

TG: uhhh hi
TG: so listen i uh
TG: i accepted your chum request assuming youre this one guy i know in real life but now im kinda like
TG: damn did i just walk into an obvious spam trap am i about to get scammed
TG: do you have a bunch of sexy photos you really want me to see and all you need in return is my credit card number cause like
TG: look man im telling you right now i dont even have a credit card so if you are here to scam me youre wasting your time plus i have a killer headache and im just not in the mood to deal with this right now so
TG: if youre not that guy i know could you maybe just fuck off

CG: SO THAT'S A YES, THEN.
CG: UGH. I HAVE A HEADACHE TOO.

TG: uh...
TG: yeah
TG: um. this IS karkat
TG: right?
TG: if yes could you please do me a favor and forget i ever mentioned sexy photos idk why i even said that

CG: OF FUCKING COURSE IT'S KARKAT, YOU BLITHERING IDIOT.
CG: ...SORRY.

TG: none taken

CG: HHHREGHH. I REALLY WISH IT WAS EASIER TO GET FOOD DELIVERED OUT HERE IN THE ASS END OF NOWHERE.
CG: COULD REALLY USE BREAKFAST RIGHT ABOUT NOW, BUT I AM *NOT* IN THE MOOD TO COOK.
CG: DAAAAVE...WHY DID YOU LET ME DRINK *FIVE* BOTTLES OF CIDER?

TG: idk it didnt seem like that many at the time
TG: also lol? as if i could have stopped you?
TG: be real with me dude i could not have stopped you

CG: I TRY NOT TO MAKE A HABIT OF DRINKING THAT MUCH.
CG: I WAS JUST...I DON'T KNOW. NERVOUS, I GUESS?
CG: SHIT.
CG: NO I WASN'T. NEVER MIND.

TG: ok
TG: consider it never minded
TG: what would you want for breakfast if we COULD get delivery

CG: UHH...PROBABLY A WHOLE SHITLOAD OF SPICY GRUBCAKES?
CG: THOSE ARE PROBABLY THE BEST HANGOVER CURE I KNOW OF.
CG: PLUS, YOU KNOW. THEY'RE DELICIOUS.

On a whim, you switch over from Pesterchum and use your phone to search for any restaurant within ten miles—fuck it, make it twenty—that serves spicy grubcakes.

There are a few—more than you expected to find, out here. But none of them deliver to where you are, of course. You’re pretty sure there’s no place that delivers here, period, or you would’ve already found out about it on one of your previous trips to the cabin.

With Pesterchum temporarily forgotten, you scroll through the photos of restaurant grubcakes people have uploaded. They look delicious, fried and golden and topped with all kinds of different things—a sliced avocado here, an egg over easy there, some kind of thick orangey cream with little green flakes in it...

Your eyelids are getting heavy again. You close your eyes, resting your phone against your chest. Just...for a moment.

You drift back to sleep wondering what grubcakes taste like, and whether you’ll ever get to try some.

When you wake again, the rain has finally stopped for good. The sunlight slanting in through the curtains tells you it’s late, past noon—you slept the whole morning away, you guess. God damn.

Your head feels a whole lot better, at least.

The rain may have stopped, but there’s a familiar sound coming from the direction of Karkat’s room: a torrent of rapid-fire typing. He must have recovered enough to start work for the day while you were still sleeping it off.

Your phone is dead. You hope Karkat didn’t take your unceremonious exit from the Pesterchum conversation personally. You think, given the circumstances, he’ll probably forgive you.

You almost can’t believe he messaged you, after all the careful secrecy over his contact information before. If being hung over was all it took to make pestering you his best option...you suppose the headache was worth it.

You scoop up a rumpled t-shirt from the floor and pull it on over your head, fucking up your wild bed hair even more than it already was. You should...go talk to him. See about breakfast. Maybe you could even drive into town together for some grubcakes, if he still wants them? It feels a lot more doable now than it did this morning.

His typing stops for a brief moment when you lean against his open door, but then he continues—only a little slower than before.

“G’m’rning,” he grumbles, his tired eyes still fixed on his laptop. He looks like he feels the same way you do—no longer suffering, per se, but still out of sorts. He’s still wearing pajamas, too.

You enter the room, pulled toward him by something inside you. A desire, an instinct, a feeling, an impulse. Fuck if you know what to call it. “Good afternoon, you mean,” you correct him as you sit down on his bed.

“Said what I said.”

He stops typing altogether and swivels around in his chair to face you, a thoughtful look on his face.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your work,” you say, but he doesn’t respond.

Your right ear still hurts like hell from wearing your shades to bed. After a moment of hesitation, you remove them. Fuck it. He’s already seen your eyes, the unusual color—when you retiled the bathroom together—and never commented on it. You figure it’s all right.

“So,” you say, suddenly nervous, “were you...working? Or, uh—getting a draft of your debut romance novel together, maybe?”

“Maybe that’s exactly what I was doing,” he says seriously, his eyes locked on yours.

Your hands smooth over his comforter without your permission, on autopilot. You fight the urge to stand up, to bounce your leg, to pointlessly fidget. You feel...hot.

“Oh. Yeah. Um. I’m sure there’s a lot of demand for uh, quadrant romance out there,” you stammer, floundering. “Never read any of those myself, but.”

“Who said it had anything to do with quadrants?” he shoots back.

The expression on his face is fucking you up, but...you can’t look away. Your mind is totally blank. Thankfully, though, that’s never been a problem for your mouth.

“Let me know if you want help coming up with a pen name, dude. You gotta have a good pen name if you’re gonna be a romance writer. Somethin’ memorable, but not too fake-sounding, you know?” You’re babbling, and you know it, but you can’t seem to stop. “I’m pretty sure it’s some kinda rule, actually. Gonna get fined or some shit if you insist on using your real name. Aw man, you know something? I just realized I still don’t know your last name.”

He rolls his chair across the room, closer to where you are. You feel sweaty all of a sudden. “It’s Vantas,” he says softly (relatively softly), as he moves out of the chair and onto the bed.

Next to you.

You’re starting to feel a lot more self-conscious about the condition you’re in right now—hair a complete mess, face unshaven, shirt wrinkled and, honestly, probably a little smelly—

“Hey, man, you can keep working if you want,” you say, somewhat stupidly. It’s all you can think to say. “I mean—y’know—sorry to distract you.”

His eyes still haven’t left yours. “You’re not distracting me.”

You’re pretty sure you’re distracting him. But...okay.

“Okay,” you say.

“Are you hungry,” he asks, and he’s sitting so close, just like last night, and his voice is so—dark? scratchy?—like if the concept of “smoke” was a voice. Not a smoker’s voice, but like. Fuck. Jesus.

“Okay,” you repeat nonsensically. You can’t remember what the question was.

“Because, because I have the ingredients already. We could make spicy grubcakes, if you wanted to try them.”

“Thought you didn’t feel like cooking?” You’re wondering how best to bring up your restaurant idea—you’ve been carefully saving what little money you have, especially since he’s been providing you with so much food lately, so...maybe you could...

“Yeah, well, that was before. I feel better now.”

“Oh. Same,” you say, just to say some thing.

He’s not looking at you anymore. He’s looking down, at his hands, on the bed. It’s a relief, in a way—being temporarily unpinned from that burning stare of his. But for some reason, you find that you very badly want him to look at you again.

You attempt to relax your shoulders, hoping your breathing doesn’t sound too noticeably shaky. Then, before you can gather enough courage to reach out and touch his hand, like you’d wanted to—before you can think of anything to say, before you can even think at all—

He shifts on the bed, and something in the air between you shifts too, something invisible but still there—then he’s closer than he’s ever been, moving directly into your space. His hand is touching your cheek, it’s so warm, and he’s closer still, and his eyes are so beautiful and so red and he’s kissing you, sort of impatiently, like he’s been waiting forever to do it.

“Sorry,” he whispers, sort of breathlessly, but he’s still touching your face, and you’re holding him gently in place with your hand on his side, over his sweater. You shake your head.

“Don’t be sorry,” you say. “Just—do it again.” And he does.

It’s happening much too fast, you think. You feel you can’t keep up with him and properly appreciate the kiss at the same time. You wish, desperately, that you could slow time to a crawl, but since you can’t...

You make a slight noise of complaint, moving your own lips slowly against his, willing him to slow down, and after a moment it seems to work. He takes your right hand in his left, grasping it tight, interlacing your fingers, and at the same time he moves closer still, until he’s practically in your lap, pushing you down onto the mattress beneath him, holding your joined hands there.

This is better, you think, as you slide your free hand beneath his sweater to touch the almost feverishly hot skin of his side, just below his grub scars. You hold him there, hold his body flush against yours, not really thinking too far ahead—just wanting him close to you. You kiss him like you’re exploring a path in the woods, getting lost on purpose (not that you’ve ever done that—you’re really not much of an outdoorsman), parting your lips for him at the slightest suggestion, touching your tongue softly to his. The sensation makes you shiver—this isn’t your first kiss, or anything, but it is the first time you’ve ever kissed a troll. His tongue is...different from yours, rougher in texture.

You may or may not make a sort of embarrassing sound, halfway between a gasp and a moan, when he swipes that tongue deeper into your mouth. Who can say.

He’s so solid, pleasantly heavy, a warm weight pressing down against your body. You unlace your fingers from his so you can hold him there, with both hands, as you kiss.

You’re trying not to be in your own head too much, to appreciate this moment as much as you possibly can, but—you can’t help but think, a little, of how this all began. With Karkat unexpectedly arriving at the front door with his fourteen thousand suitcases, and you, caught there in his path, frozen in terror. How strange it is to think that you and he were complete strangers not even a month ago, and now—now you’re tracing his cute little sharp teeth with the tip of your tongue, the soft sounds of his pleasure hitting the absolute shit outta the dopamine button in your brain. Hilarious.

He rests his forehead against yours while you both recover your breath. You feel dazed, almost dizzy with his kisses. He seems to be in a similar state, his breaths coming fast and kind of loud in between all the small, soft kisses you’re still peppering onto his lips. Fuck, he’s cute.

It’s difficult to think clearly, with the way he’s pressing his lower half against yours. You think it’s fairly likely you’ve got a smile on your face that could only be described as “goofy,” but for once in your life, you’re finding it difficult to care.

“Look, man, forget cooking,” you tell him, quiet, practically whispering against his lips. Your words are sort of slurring together, almost as if you were still drunk. “Lemme take you out.”

The way he scoffs might’ve hurt your feelings a bit, in different circumstances.

“I mean it. Let’s go out for some of those spicy grubcakes of yours. You drive and I’ll pay, okay?”

He shakes his head, opening his mouth to speak, but you cut him off: “C’mon, dude, you’ve given me so much—”

“Grubcakes are a breakfast food, Dave,” he interrupts with a huff of laughter. “It’s nearly three in the afternoon. No one’s going to be serving them anymore.”

“Oh.”

“It’s all right. We can make them here. And...and I’ll let you take me out some other time. Okay?”

“You really will?”

“Of course.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

He just hums in reply, closing his eyes and sleepily stretching his body out on top of yours. But there’s a smile on his face that he can’t hide, to match the one on yours.

Chapter Text

You’re sitting on the couch, comfortable as can be despite Karkat immediately pushing your feet off of him when you try to put them in his lap. You’ll get him to let you keep them there one of these days. Maybe.

Your comfort level, and the fact that you are really enjoying being here with Karkat, is somehow not impeded by the absolutely garbage film you two are currently watching. You thought Karkat had been fucking with you when he suggested renting Good Luck Chuck the last time you two went to the old video rental store in town (you’re pretty sure it’s the last one still standing in the state, but you’re not going to fact check that). But... Nope. He was not fucking with you. Or, maybe he was, but in that case...he’s also making himself suffer, just for the sake of messing with you a bit.

So now you two are sitting here, cozied up together on the couch, watching various women pretend to be attracted to Dane Cook. They should have all earned some sort of award for that because there is no way any of that is remotely sincere. It’s painful to watch, honestly.

Some of your enjoyment might be coming from the fact that, despite literally being the one to select this film, Karkat seems to dislike it just as much as you do. Finally, you two have found a movie you can agree on.

He also seems just as uncomfortable as you feel when Dane Cook’s character has his first sex scene of the film. First of many. Why the hell are you and Karkat watching this again?

This is much worse than when you two watched The Notebook. Or any of the other romcoms you two have watched together, honestly. While all those movies were bad to some extent (in your opinion, at least), and watching sex scenes is always awkward when you’re with a friend (or a stranger you’re living with by happenstance), this really is something different.

Because now you two aren’t strangers, or even just friends. And Karkat had to go and pick a “romcom” filled with far more nudity than is entirely necessary for anything involving Dane Cook.

You guess it could be worse. If the sex scenes were even remotely...you know...sexy, there’d be no way you could sit here and watch them with him while keeping any semblance of cool.

“I seriously can’t believe I used to actually like this shit. This isn’t how I remember it at all.” You’d really like to know how Karkat remembers it, because you can’t imagine anyone finding anything remotely likable about this movie.

You laugh at Karkat because honestly? You can believe it. “I mean, you don’t exactly have the best taste in movies.” 

“Oh shut the fuck up, as if your taste in movies is any better.”

“Hey man, at least I’ve always known Dane Cook was a piece of shit.”

“Well good for you!”

“Actually...” You watch as Dane Cook asks a woman on a date in exchange for fixing her chipped tooth, and while, yes, that is fucking insane, this movie sucks, Dane Cook sucks, that is an undebatable fact, you don’t feel...quite as annoyed as you did the first time you saw this movie as a teenager.  “Now that I think about it, I kind of irrationally hated him when I was younger? Like...way more than was entirely necessary?”

“What do you mean?”

You think about all the times you ranted to Rose, Jade, and John after watching some movie or clip of standup that nobody made you watch (nobody ever even asked you to watch them). All the times you went off on your blog about how absolutely garbage Dane Cook and everything he said or did was.

It was...excessive, admittedly. “I mean I wasted hours of my time hate-watching his shit just to dunk on it. To my friends who literally couldn’t have given less of a shit about my opinions about Dane Cook because it’s not like any of them cared about him one way or the other. Just seeing his stupid smug face filled me with unbridled rage.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I’m sure we would have had some excellent arguments on the internet over this movie. I can see it now—you tirelessly defending his good name, delusional in your claims that he’s got a brilliant comedic mind, that Good Luck Chuck is somehow an actually entertaining movie, a good one, even. Me having mostly correct but over-the-top counterclaims to all your arguments.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, I get it. I was an idiot and you had a hateboner for this asshole.”

“I did not.”

“Sure sounds like it.”

“That’s...ugh. Disgusting. Whatever. At least now we are both completely normal in our reasonable amount of dislike for both Dane Cook and his garbage attempts at cinema.”

“Agreed.”

You’re not even actually paying attention to the movie at this point. You’ve shifted on the couch so that you can better look at Karkat while you two talk. As your discussion goes on, you notice that he starts to turn toward you more and more as well, though he’s still at least pretending to watch what’s happening on-screen.

You watch him instead. You don’t even pretend that you’re not looking at him, because you are absolutely allowed to look at him all you want now. Just thinking that gives you such a thrill that you can’t help but give Karkat a goofy grin when he finally looks away from the television screen and makes eye contact with you.

...And then Dane Cook has to go and ruin the mood with his god damn sex montage and—nope. Absolutely not, you’re done. Even if neither one of you is actually paying attention, even if it is only on-screen, you are not going to continue to sit here in the presence of Dane Cook’s bare naked ass.

Karkat must have the same thought, because he immediately grabs the remote and turns the television off entirely.

You two sit there in awkward silence for a good thirty seconds before you break it by saying, “I get to pick the next movie and you’re not allowed to complain no matter what it is.”

“Yeah...that’s fair.” Karkat fiddles with the remote for a moment before adding, “I told you, this isn’t how I remember it. Must’ve got it mixed up with something else.”

“I don’t know how you could have possibly gotten this mixed up with anything that would make you think watching it was a good idea.”

“Employee of the Month wasn’t bad! Or...or My Best Friend’s Girl! His performance was maybe sort of charming in those. Probably.”

You let out a startled laugh because “charming” is definitely not a word you’d put anywhere near Dane Cook. “Ignoring the fact that he was not charming in anything he’s ever been in and he should stop making movies entirely because, wow, terrible— You, what, superimposed his performance in another movie onto this one?”

Karkat flushes, clearly embarrassed. “I get it, okay? Bad movie choice. You can pick the next two movies if we drop this subject right now.”

“Next two and neither of us is allowed to pick another movie starring this douchebag ever again.”

“Deal.”

“You ever going to show me what you’re writing?”

Karkat grabs his screen and turns it to the side, almost to the point that you wonder if he can actually see it at that angle. It’s overkill, honestly. You’re sitting over on the bed, and Karkat’s screen was already tilted away from you, so there’s no way you could read what’s on the screen if you tried. “No. It’s not ready for anyone to see it.”

“Well I’m not just anyone. Can’t even give me a little sneak preview?”

“No.”

“Is one of the characters based on me? Is that it? You’re worried I’ll think you’re writing Fake Dave out of character? It’s okay if you are. I won’t mind. Much.”

“None of the characters are based on you.”

“Not even a background character? Damn.” You go quiet just long enough for Karkat to turn away from you and start typing again. “Are you writing a sex scene? You don’t gotta be embarrassed. I’m an adult Karkat, I can handle the throbbing members you’re writing about.”

Karkat immediately stops typing again and mumbles something under his breath. “I’m not writing about ‘throbbing members,’ so you being able to ‘handle’ them is irrelevant.” 

“Is it? Thought you might be intrigued by that.”

Karkat’s lips twitch but he does an excellent job of maintaining his scowl. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“You know I don’t.”

“Let me write.”

“I ain’t stopping you. Keep writing.”

Karkat shoots you a suspicious look, then goes back to what he was doing. You let him work for a few minutes while you tap away at your phone. You reply to a few messages from Jade about the music you’ve been sort of working on, in between watching movies with Karkat, and going into town with Karkat, and sitting around bothering Karkat while he attempts to work.

Karkat is finally settled back in, clack-clacking away. “So...” you wait for him to look over at you, see that his “annoyed” expression isn’t genuine at all. “What’s Fake Dave doing now, huh?”

“Oh my god. For the last time, there’s no Fake Dave!”

“Kinda sounds like there’s a Fake Dave.”

“I can barely handle one of you, I’m not making another one.”

“That’s fair. Harsh, but fair.”

Karkat stands up from his desk and for a split second, you’re worried that you’re actually bothering him, that he’s going to usher you out of the room, but he doesn’t. Instead, he flops down on the bed next to you. “Since I’m not getting anything done, why don’t you show me what you’ve been doing?”

“Yeah, okay.” You don’t have your laptop in the room right now, but you have a couple files you can download out of your chat with Jade. “This ain’t done but it’s gonna be a banger when it is, I can already tell.”

You start playing the unfinished song and despite your statement that you knew it would be a banger, you’re a little anxious about Karkat listening to it. You haven’t actually shown that many people the songs you make. 

He doesn’t say anything at first and you laugh nervously. “Like I said, it’s unfinished—”

“Shh. I’m listening.”

You go quiet and just watch while he listens to the song. You can’t exactly tell if he likes it, not just from watching his face, but you’re going to take the little tapping motion he’s doing with his foot as a good sign.

“...So then this asshole stands me up again. Despite me doing everything I could to work around his ridiculously erratic schedule. I even picked a place that was all the way across town from my office so that I didn’t inconvenience him.”

“Damn, dude. Why’d you want to interview this guy anyway?”

“I didn’t! If literally anyone else had the info I needed, I would have interviewed them.”

Despite the fact that Karkat is complaining about some source of his ditching him multiple times before he could get the info he needed, he doesn’t actually seem angry. He’s gesticulating wildly, even bumps his hands against your shoulder a few times when he gets to a particularly interesting part of his story. You could scoot away, you suppose, but you honestly love the brief point of contact every time his fingers brush against the side of your shirt.

“How come you couldn’t just call him again?”

Karkat groans. “He was convinced we were going to be wiretapped or something, I don’t know. Nobody cares that much about anything I’ve actually been allowed to report on, there was no fucking way someone would bother with all that.”

“So how’d you get him to finally show up?”

“I didn’t. Showed up at his apartment instead. For a guy who was apparently so paranoid he wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone, it sure was easy to find his address.”

You grin as Karkat continues his story. You wonder what the other guy was thinking, when Karkat just showed up out of the blue. He doesn’t look that intimidating, but you could definitely see how that might be startling anyway. Especially to someone who made such a big deal out of meeting up with a journalist he’d already agreed to talk to.

Watching Karkat talk about his job, the way it used to be, the parts about it he actually likes— It all makes you fall a little more in love with him. He’s so much more expressive, more passionate. You can tell he must have genuinely enjoyed what he did, before he got banished out here and forced to write about far less important topics. You hope he’s able to write about the topics he’s actually interested in writing about again, once he’s—

Once he goes home.

Because, as much as you like to pretend you two can just stay here forever and avoid the rest of the world, he does have a home to go back to. This whole “assignment” (banishment) might be longer than Karkat would like it to be, but it’s not a permanent thing.

You have no idea what’s going to happen when he leaves. You haven’t asked, and he hasn’t brought it up, either. You try not to think about it too much. Try to just enjoy all the time you two have been spending together.

But it’s getting harder to ignore the fact that Karkat only has this cabin rented for a limited time. Neither of you can stay here, as nice as that sounds (and wow, you never thought you’d see the day where you actually liked being out in the middle of nowhere in your Bro’s shitty cabin.)

“Dave? Are you even paying attention to me?”

You...had not been paying attention to him. Oops. “Totally. Tell me more about your glory days of being a hotshot reporter.”

Karkat frowns. “I asked what you wanted for dinner. Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Totally fine. Probably just spacey ’cause I’m hungry. I’m down for anything, honestly.”

“Right.” He looks at you, his mouth still turned down in that cute little frown of his. “Let’s go see what’s in the fridge so you can stop being spacey, then.”

You grin at him, and you let the butterflies you feel looking at the grin he gives you in return take over the heavy, anxious feeling that’s been sitting in the pit of your stomach, at least for now.

“There’s apparently a history museum in town.”

“History of what?”

“The town, I guess? I don’t know where they keep hiding these things, we’ve been around that whole thing by now.”

You think for a minute and...yeah. You have no idea where this supposed museum could be hiding. “Maybe it’s just in some dude’s house.”

“Heh, probably.”

You’re going to guess that Karkat’s editor told him about this museum, but you doubt you two are actually going to end up going to it. You’ve continued going into town for various reasons over the last couple of weeks, but it’s been a hot minute since you went to one of the seemingly endless events that are always going on. It’s fascinating, honestly. You can’t even remember there being that many events at your college, though that might have had more to do with your lack of free time to go to them, now that you think about it. Three part-time jobs and a full course load will do that to a guy.

There’s a movie playing on the television, as there so often is, but you’re not really paying attention. Instead, you’re looking intently at all the little lines along Karkat’s palm. He’d set his hand on the couch next to you while you two (well, just him really) were watching the movie, and instead of just holding it or leaving it be like a normal person would, you’d taken him by the wrist and started poking around at his hand.

You run your finger over the faint line that remains from his previous injury. You’d already taken the stitches out for him, just a couple of days ago, and while there had been a clear mark then, it’s basically gone at this point. Even though you’re certain this particular injury would have left a scar on your skin, you think it’s likely that it will eventually fade completely from Karkat’s.

“You don’t need to fuss over my ‘wound,’ anymore, you know,” he mumbles. You glance over and find that he’s watching you. You wonder how long he’s been doing that. “There’s nothing there.”

Even though, yes, you were just thinking that Karkat’s hand was basically as good as new, you still feel like arguing. “There’s definitely something there still. See?” You’re not completely wrong. If you look close enough, and you know what you’re looking for, there’s a tiny mark still visible.

“I see you poking around at nothing, yeah.”

“Do trolls just have superhuman healing powers or something?”

“I don’t think I need to remind you that we’re not human. So no, we don’t have ‘superhuman’ anything. We are probably better than you at plenty of things, though.”

“Just had to throw that in there, huh? You know what I mean. Do all trolls heal this fast or are you just special?”

“I don’t think I’m special, no.”

“Okay, but you gotta admit this healed pretty quick.”

Karkat shrugs. “Maybe we can just blame it on my mutation and call it a day.” You’re a bit startled when he says mutation. He must see that because he continues. “Come on, you saw what color my blood was. And I don’t make a habit of covering up my eyes. Unlike you.”

You ignore the dig at your sunglasses because you aren’t even wearing them right now. So there, Karkat. “Looked like normal blood to me,” you said without thinking.

“Normal for a human, maybe.”

You pause at that and...hm. Yeah. His blood color is a little unusual for a troll, doesn’t seem to match that of any other trolls you’ve met. You hadn’t really thought to ask about it, though. It’s not like it was really any of your business before. Still isn’t, but he is the one who brought it up. “There are trolls who do have a reddish blood color, right? I’m not making that up?”

He nods. “Mine’s not like theirs.”

“Yeah okay, you’re not like other trolls. Got it.”

“Pft. Sure, when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”

Karkat doesn’t offer any further information about his blood color. You’re a little curious, but you figure he’ll bring it up again if there’s more he wants you to know. It’s not like you actually mind one way or the other how “normal” it is.

You two sit there for a moment in silence, before Karkat breaks it by saying, “You can stop inspecting my hand now. Your medical non-expertise is no longer needed.”

You hadn’t exactly meant to continue holding his hand this long but when you realize you still are, you tap at his palm again. “Hm. Naw, I think I forgot something.”

“And what is that?”

You lift Karkat’s hand up to your lips and place a gentle kiss right over the faint mark on his palm, then a second one against his wrist when he doesn’t pull his hand away (not that you thought he would). “There,” you finally reply once you drop his hand. “All fixed.”

“Pretty sure it was ‘all fixed’ before that, but thanks.”

“Naw. You woulda bled out otherwise. Everyone knows you gotta seal wounds up with a kiss.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”

“Maybe they only teach it at Dave Strider’s Incredibly Real Medical School.”

The eyeroll-smile combo that comment gets from Karkat has got to be one of your favorite expressions of his—right up there with...basically all of his other expressions. You don’t think you could actually pick just one.

“Hey, Karkat,” you drawl lazily in the quiet of an early afternoon, your voice soft as the pillows on his bed. The softness of it nearly startles you, in fact, but...it’s not so bad, is it? Being at rest with him like this. Being...at ease. You wouldn’t quite call it a foreign sensation, not anymore, but it’s still a little strange. Paradoxically, it puts you on edge, though you’re getting better at dismissing that small, scared part of yourself, you think. Slowly.

There’s no reply from him—just the continuous and, by now, utterly familiar sound of keys tapping. You don’t let it deter you. “I was just thinking, uh. If you are actually writing a sex scene, um, just lemme know if uhhh if you um. If you...need any help doing research, ha ha. If you know what I mean. Wink.”

Jesus. That had gone a lot more smoothly in your head.

No matter. He isn’t paying attention to you in the slightest. He’s too focused on writing...whatever it is he’s been obsessively writing, lately. You give up on bothering him for the moment, and simply stretch out on top of his bed, fighting back a yawn. You decide it’s a good thing he didn’t notice your awful attempt at seducing him, and resolve to let him work on whatever it is he’s working on in peace, for once.

His steamy romance novel is just how you’ve been referring to it in your thoughts, half-jokingly, but based on the way he reflexively hides it from you every time you so much as glance screenward, you think you must be right, actually. Maybe someday he’ll officially confirm your suspicions...maybe, someday, he’ll even let you read some of it?

If nothing else, you’re reasonably confident you’ll be able to read it in its entirety once it hits the shelves of bookstores nationwide. No—fuck that. Worldwide.

Man. Your boyfriend is kind of great? You’re so damn proud of him.

“Proud of what? I haven’t done shit yet,” Karkat grumbles under his breath, without turning to face you, and that’s the moment you realize you’d been voicing your thoughts aloud. Whoops.

Wait. Wait. Did you really just call him your—your—

Flustered (though you’d never admit it), you grab one of the pillows from under your head and toss it at him. It doesn’t even make it halfway, flomping onto the floor harmlessly. Even so, Karkat’s typing comes to a halt after another minute.

“Want to go into town to get some groceries with me? In about...oh, half an hour?” he asks you, swiveling slowly in his chair, eyeing the floor pillow with faint amusement.

You make an effort to unclench. Karkat isn’t acting weird about the—the boyfriend thing. You see no reason to make a big fucking deal out of it if he isn’t. Or...shit, maybe he didn’t even hear you say it?

Just be cool.

“Yeah, man, fuck yeah,” you say. “I mean someone’s gotta make sure you don’t skip over all the awesome stuff I added to our list.”

Karkat checks his phone, skimming over the shared document. “Superglue isn’t groceries, Dave.”

“Sure it is. It’s totally a grocery if you’re a repairman, of which I am one. Legitimately and for real. Remember?”

”Uh-huh. Do you even actually need it—? Did something else in this godforsaken hellhole crumble into pieces while I wasn’t looking?”

“Nah, nah. Just trying to get ahead of things for once,” you assure him. “Plus, I bet it’s really fun to play around with.”

“You are absolutely not allowed to play with the fucking superglue, Dave. I’m warning you right now—are you listening?—I will not be driving you to the ER just so they can charge thousands of dollars to unglue your sticky dumbass fingers from the underside of your—”

“Alright, dude, alright, you know I was just kidding. Yeesh.”

It seems he’s not done criticizing your shopping list quite yet. “I’m also not convinced of the need for ‘marshmallow fluff,’ whatever the hell that is. Or really, most of the shit you’ve put on here? I mean, what do you even need with a water gun—”

“Karkat, please. I didn’t put a water gun on the list,” you scoff. He starts to show you his phone screen, glaring at you in that adorably intense way of his, but you cut him off before he can begin to argue. “I put two water guns on the list. It’s gotta be a fair fight or it’s no fun, dude, c’mon.”

He sighs, turning his long exhale into a loud, exaggerated groan as he cradles his temples in mock pain. But there’s barely-contained laughter in his voice when he says, “I can talk my editor into letting me expense a hell of a lot of dumb shit, Dave, but I think two water guns might be just a little bit questionable.”

“Okay, so—maybe I’ll get those myself,” you concede with a small smile. Fuck it. You’ve saved your money so carefully, let Karkat cover so many expenses for you...

“Tell you what,” he says, and now it’s his voice that sounds soft to you—soft and warm and fond in a way that makes you feel sort of weirdly melted inside. He rises from his chair and closes the distance to sit beside you on the bed. “You just buy your own, and I’ll buy mine.”

You tell him it’s a deal. You seal it with a kiss.

Karkat sends you back to your own room to get ready for the trip into town soon after. He had raised an eyebrow (or tried to, turns out he sucks at it) at your suggestion that he was already perfectly presentable in his oversized t-shirt and little red running shorts.

“These aren’t for wearing outside,” he’d said in a sort of puzzled tone, like that should have been obvious to you. He’d stretched the soft fabric down over the tops of his thighs self-consciously as he spoke.

Thinking back, you’d never actually seen him wear shorts until sometime after your first kiss—when you’d begun to spend a lot more time hanging around in his room. You hadn’t thought much of it the first time he wore them in front of you, but...now, alone in your own room, realizing just how comfortable he’s apparently become with you...?

“You’re doing the world a disservice, hiding those legs away,” you’d teased him, just before he’d kicked you out.

“Don’t I know it,” he’d said, and closed the door in your face.

Now, you rummage around in the mess on your bedroom floor for a decently clean t-shirt, thinking about the way he’d said that. Half-joking, yes, yet quietly self-assured all the same. That’s another thing you really admire about your—

Uhh. About...him.

You get your shirt on and your jeans buttoned up just before Karkat enters the room (without knocking)—only to realize your coat is currently sitting at the bottom of a pile of dirty laundry.

“Damn it,” you curse under your breath. It’s chilly outside today, and windy, too—not exactly t-shirt weather. And that coat, threadbare as it is, is your only coat.

Karkat seems to sense your predicament. Before your mental calculations can get too far (maybe you can just dig it out and wear it? Maybe it won’t smell that bad?) he’s already pulling his sweater off over his head.

The shirt he’s wearing underneath rides way up as he does so. You’re not trying to ogle him right now, but...how can you possibly help it? The soft, gentle curve of his belly is just. So fucking cute. Once again you’re struck with a nearly irresistible urge to kiss it. What if you just fell to your knees right now and—

The sweater hits you square in the chest when he hurls it at you from point-blank range. “Oof,” you say, unnecessarily. “Uh. Thanks. Don’t you need this, though...?”

“I’ll just go get another one,” he says with a sort of half-shrug, rolling his eyes at you. “I’ve got plenty. Be right back.”

“W-wait.”

He hesitates, turning back toward you expectantly, but you’ve got no follow-up. Your mouth has gone dry, your mind blank.

He must be able to see something of what you’re feeling in the expression on your face. He steps closer, his eyes searching for yours behind your shades. Right—those. You push them up onto your forehead. Your feelings about eye contact in a general sense haven’t really changed—it’s uncomfortable for you at the best of times—but Karkat has become something of an exception to that rule. When he wants you to look at him (like right now, for example), it feels good to meet his gaze, to give him what he wants.

He grins at you in that special way you’ve become so familiar with—the way where you can almost hear him mentally calling you an idiot—but he’s standing close now, almost toe-to-toe, and his hand on your cheek is gentle, drawing you down toward him.

You bend down just slightly, and then his arms are around you, and he’s kissing you, and it’s perfect—it’s exactly what you needed.

“I needed that,” you admit in a near-whisper, resting your forehead against his. It’s only slightly embarrassing to say.

You kiss him again before he can reply.

“It’s only been five minutes since the last time we did this,” he complains as soon as you give him a moment to breathe.

“Mm, much too long,” you agree, ignoring the snort you get in response. And then you kiss him again, more deeply this time, tilting his head gently back with your hands as you do.

You run a palm lightly over his clothed stomach, relishing the gruff little sound of surprise he makes in return. Going by the way he grabs at your hand, though, he probably wouldn’t be thrilled with you if you knelt down and tried to kiss his belly right now, so you don’t even try. Later, maybe.

You wonder whether he can sense the promise of later in the way you’re kissing him right now.

When he releases you to go get another sweater to wear a few minutes later, you sit down on the edge of your messy bed to catch your breath, heart beating fast.

Right. The sweater. You brush your fingers over the soft green material, appraising it. You’re reasonably sure it’ll fit you—it was a bit oversized on him. You pull it on and immediately his scent fills your nose. Without a second thought, you close your eyes and just inhale it, taking your time to appreciate its intricacies. It’s subtle and sort of indescribable, you think, but it’s a warm sort of smell, and...and it’s comfy, somehow, to you.

You open your eyes, suddenly a little dizzy. Letting you borrow his clothes is, like...

Well, that is a boyfriendish kind of thing to do, isn’t it?

Okay, but it’s also just practical, you remind yourself—you had simply needed something to wear, and he’d had extra. Maybe you shouldn’t be trying this hard to find deeper significance in these sorts of things. Might be setting yourself up for eventual disappointment.

Maybe you’ll run it by Rose or Jade later, see what they think. Or...shit, maybe not. You aren’t really ready to face the questions they’re bound to have about...all this.

What if he thinks of you as his matesquirt? your mind tries to interject, and—that does it. You abruptly slam the door, metaphorically speaking, on that whole mental mess.

You exit the room and meet Karkat out in the hall.

“Looks alright on you,” he says with a small, crooked-tooth smile. You nod your head in just the right way to make your shades fall back into place.

“I know,” you reply, and dodge his fist with a grin when he aims it at your shoulder.

Your trip into town for groceries naturally starts at the video rental store. You two aren’t exactly in any rush, so after Karkat drops the ones you’d rented a few days ago off in the dusty return box, you start wandering around the store looking for new movies to keep yourselves occupied. 

Karkat immediately makes his way over to the romcom section, while you head in the direction of the new arrivals. You’ve yet to see any new releases the few times you two have stopped in here, pretty much everything in the store seems to be at least a few years old, but you’ve certainly found some interesting choices here before.

“No more Dane Cook,” you remind Karkat as you walk by the shelf he’s standing by. You stop and walk closer to him when he immediately puts something down. “Really, dude?”

“It wasn’t a Dane Cook movie!” He grabs what you assume is the same movie from the shelf again and holds it up so you can see it.

It’s some troll movie you’ve never heard of before, with actors you don’t recognize on the cover, but it looks innocuous enough. “Why’d you set it down like it burned you, then?”

“Because it is not a romcom,” he says with disgust. “It looks like one, the summary makes it sound like one. But it’s not.”

“Karkat. Man. You can’t just leave it at that. What is it, then? Porn?”

“No! Why do you always think everything is porn? It’s—it’s a horror movie.” The film is still in his hand, and you watch as he waves it around while he talks. “Made by complete jackasses who thought it would be funny to change the genre halfway through the film without actually advertising that.”

That sounds...kind of amazing, honestly. “Aw, did it trick you? Is that why you hate it so much?”

“More like Vriska and Terezi tricked me. I should have known something was up when they insisted we watch it.” Karkat must realize he’s still holding the movie because he makes a disgusted face and then finally sets it back down. “Do not listen to a word those two say when you meet them, by the way. They will try to fuck with you.”

Karkat doesn’t seem to think anything of his use of the word “when” but oh man, you sure do. That is definitely a thing boyfriends do. Meeting each other’s friends. Getting messed with by said friends. You’re pretty sure your friends would mess with Karkat too, so it’s only fair. “Don’t trust Vriska and Terezi, got it.”

Quadrantmates probably do all that stuff too, your brain helpfully reminds you. You ignore it.

Karkat starts looking through the movies again, then shoos you away when you just stand there watching him. “Hurry up and go pick something, we don’t have all day.”

“I mean, we kind of do? But fine, I’ll let you mull over your selections in peace.”

You do not let Karkat mull over his selections in peace. Instead, you make a game out of finding the most ridiculous looking movie covers and shouting across the store each time you want Karkat to look at them. He tells you to stop making a scene and you eventually do as he says, even though there isn’t really anyone here to make a scene in front of. The only other person in the store is up at the checkout counter wearing headphones and pointedly not looking in your direction.

You still haven’t actually decided what you want by the time Karkat comes over carrying a stack of movies, so you just grab the ones he had the funniest reactions to.

Your stomach starts rumbling while Karkat is paying for the rentals. “Man, we should get some food before we go to the store. I’m starving and I do not make good grocery decisions when that happens.”

“Do you ever make good grocery decisions?” Karkat nudges you once the movies are bagged up. “Don’t answer that. We can eat, I don’t even want to know what you’d try to buy if we went grocery shopping right now.”

“Ten bags of pizza rolls, probably.”

“There is not room in the freezer for ten bags of pizza rolls.”

“Well yeah. That’s why we’d eat them all as soon as we got home.”

“They’d never make it back home. I’d leave them behind at the grocery store.”

You know you just referred to the cabin as “home,” and this isn’t even the first time, but for some reason hearing Karkat echo that back to you is doing funny things to your chest right now. You know it’s not really home, not for either of you (is anywhere really home for you at this point?). It’s just easier to say “home” than “the cabin” every single time...

You should probably stop picking apart everything Karkat says, wow.

“Jesus, you don’t need to look so sad over pizza rolls. We can get one bag if you really want.”

Karkat’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts and you quickly replace whatever expression you must have been making with a grin. “Hah. Can’t resist the pouting, huh?”

“Sure. We’ll go with that.”

Instead of getting back in the car after he tosses the bag of movies inside, Karkat grabs your hand and starts pulling you toward the sidewalk.

“There’s a cafe a few blocks away,” he tells you. “Would probably take more time to drive over there and find a new parking spot.”

You glance up and down the street, making note of all the empty spots lining the road. “Oh yeah, because it’s so busy over here right now.” You aren’t actually complaining, of course. You will gladly walk around town as much as Karkat wants if it means you get to hold his hand. You swing your arms a bit as you ask, “How’d you know there’s a cafe anyway?”

“Because we drive by it every time we rent movies? How do you not know?”

“Musta been distracted every time we drove by. Lots of interesting things going on in your car, y’know.”

“I think there’s lots of interesting things going on in your palmhusk, not my car.”

“Naw man. I’m only staring at that thing maybe 25% of the time.”

“And the other 75%?”

If you’re being honest, you’re usually too busy staring at Karkat to notice anything else while you’re in the car with him. You can’t just say that, though... “Oh come on, don’t make me say it.”

He huffs, but does not in fact make you say it. “At least you can’t miss it this time.”

Karkat starts rubbing his thumb back and forth across yours while you two walk. It’s nice, comforting. You’re pretty sure your palm is starting to sweat, despite the chill in the air, but Karkat doesn’t say a thing about it or try to pull his hand away. You glance down a few times, just enjoying the sight of your fingers entwined, and the way Karkat’s hip bumps against yours when you start leaning a little too far toward him. 

Your eyes catch on a stray thread at the bottom of Karkat’s sweater (the one he’s wearing, not the one you are), and you’re wondering if you should pull it off for him when suddenly he stops. You don’t immediately get the memo that you’re stopping, so you end up being jerked back since he’s still got a grip on your hand.

You catch yourself, luckily. Karkat gives you an incredulous look and points at the cafe in front of you with his free hand. “You did that on purpose. There is no way you actually missed it this time!”

You are a little embarrassed because, yeah, it sure is right there in front of your face. You just grin at him, shrugging as you say, “Can’t help it, I guess. Lots of interesting things going on out here on the street too.”

You have to stifle a laugh when Karkat just blushes and tugs you toward the cafe without an actual response.

The inside of the cafe is something Karkat probably considers charming. The walls are painted a pale purple and covered in frames featuring various paintings and posters. It’s a little later in the day, but the display near the cash register is still full of cakes and pastries. There’s a chalkboard behind the counter with neat handwriting listing drink and sandwich specials. A few other people are here, chatting at tables surrounded by mismatched chairs, but it’s not too crowded.

You two take forever to decide what you want, mostly because you insist that you should get two different sandwiches so you can each try each other’s, but eventually you give the incredibly patient man behind the counter your orders.

Once he gives you the total, you quickly and oh-so-smoothly hand over enough cash to cover the entire amount, plus tip, before Karkat can even think of reaching for his wallet.

Or, well—you try to do that, but you sort of fuck it up.

See, you know you’ve got more than enough to pay for this, and for your own water gun later, too—this is your entire savings you’re talking about, after all, and since Karkat(’s editor) has generously covered so many expenses for you lately, you’ve barely had to spend a cent during your stay at the cabin. But.

Well, it’s just...difficult. Handing over a chunk of your cash like this, when you’ve gotten used to holding on to it so, so tightly. Like your life depended on it.

You do manage to pay for both sandwiches, eventually, but it doesn’t go as smoothly as you would have liked. You stand there, fighting with yourself, silently hesitating almost for too long—and then, once you’ve managed to actually relinquish the cash, you find that you can’t stop your fingers from trembling while the man behind the counter calculates your change. You shift from foot to foot. You take a slow, deep breath.

“It’s on me today,” you tell Karkat, coolly, as if he can’t see this shit.

You’re calmer by the time you get your change back, at least. You drop a generous tip into the tip jar, and hey, look, you’re totally fine. It’s fine.

“You sure?” he asks, with real concern in his voice.

“Yeah man, of course. If I wasn’t good for it I wouldn’t be passing over those bills, obviously.”

You head over to a smaller table in the corner after the man tells you he’ll bring your drinks and food over to you when it’s ready. It’s silly how proud you feel about buying lunch, especially since it doesn’t even come close to repaying Karkat for everything he’s done for you. It’s just sandwiches, and it’s not like you could actually afford to take him anywhere nicer, but...still. 

“Hope that didn’t eat into your water gun budget too much,” Karkat tells you once you’re seated.

“Naw, don’t worry. Got my water gun budget in one pocket, lunch date budget in the other.” You almost backtrack, because you definitely just meant to say “lunch budget,” but you don’t. You think you’re well within your right to call this a date all you want. The way Karkat grins at you just confirms that yeah, you don’t need to take it back at all.

“Okay, first we need to— Where the hell are you going? Get back here!”

You pull one foot down from the shopping cart and let it come to a stop. “What? I made sure nobody was in front of me.”

“I wasn’t worried about you mowing down the other shoppers with your cart surfing. You’re going the wrong way.”

“Naw, I’m pretty sure the stash of toys is this way.”

“And we need to get food before we look for water guns.”

You guess that makes sense. “Okay, okay. Hear me out, though. Wouldn’t it make more sense to get them first? So all the food doesn’t melt and get warm and shit while we’re agonizing over which model to choose? You can’t just grab any old water gun off the shelf, Karkat. Gotta make sure it’s got the right specs.”

“I doubt the measly toy section at the only grocery store in town is going to have that many options for water guns. We’ll be lucky if they have anything more than those small ass ones that wigglers break after one use.”

“That’s why we gotta go look now.” Before Karkat can say anything else, you head back off in the direction you were going in before, this time pushing the cart instead of riding on it. “If they don’t got anything we’ll have to go somewhere else before we buy groceries.”

“I’m not leaving the grocery store without actually getting groceries. If you want to go find some mythical water gun store that doesn’t exist, you’re on your own.”

“You’d be so bummed if I found the mythical water gun store and you weren’t there. I couldn’t do that to you, man. You obviously have to come with me.”

Luckily for both of you, you don’t need to go on a quest for a mythical water gun store because when you turn down the aisle that has a miscellaneous selection of toys, storage bins, and pet supplies, there are indeed some water guns that are large enough for two adult-sized people to have a decent water gun fight.

The selection isn’t huge. In fact, there’s only one kind. But that one kind does come in three colors, none of which are red, so obviously you have to spend some time deliberating what to get.

“I don’t want the orange one.” For all he keeps insisting that you two need to hurry up, and that you are the one being childish, Karkat sure is doing a great impression of a whiny child right now.

You hand him a yellow one instead. “Fine. You get that one, I’ll get the orange one.”

“I don’t want the yellow one either.”

“There’s only one other color, why didn’t you just— You’re messing with me, aren’t you? Fuck you, dude. I’m tryna be nice and help you with this incredibly important decision. Can’t believe you’d treat me like this.”

He rolls his eyes, puts on his best annoyed face, but you can tell he’s just as amused by this all as you are. He ends up grabbing one of each color. “Might as well get an extra,” he explains as he dumps them all into the cart. “With our luck, one is going to break the second we try to use them.”

“See? That’s why we need superglue.”

Karkats “hmms” as he looks at the grocery list on his phone. “Strange. I don’t see superglue on here anymore.”

You look over his shoulder, then quickly snatch the phone out of his hands before he has a chance to react. “Naw? Think you need your eyes checked, it’s definitely there.” It is after you bolt off down the aisle, anyway. Or, well, “suoerblur” is on the list. It’s kind of hard to type with Karkat fresh on your heels.

Chasing each other all over town must have tired you both out more than you realized, because that evening you don’t even make it halfway through the after-dinner movie—you fall asleep with your head resting on Karkat’s shoulder, and he with his face half-buried in your hair. You part for the night, groggily, as the end credits play, the sudden loud music having startled you both awake. You’ll just have to have a repeat viewing of that one, you guess.

You wake up late the next morning, and the first thing you notice is that yesterday’s chill seems to have vanished. The sun is shining when you open the curtains, and it seems like the temperature is warm enough...

Karkat’s already up, so you make your way down the hall, following the scent of coffee.

You’re expecting to find him in the kitchen, maybe getting breakfast ready, or maybe just having a mug of coffee while he waits for you to wake up.

You’re not expecting to be shot right in the chest by a spray of cold water the second you step into the kitchen.

“Hey!” you laugh. “Not cool at all. At least lemme wake up first.”

“You look pretty awake to me.”

“You know I’m not. Lemme have some coffee and then I’m so getting my revenge on you.”

Karkat is amenable to that, despite his incredibly rude sudden attack on you. He even does your coffee up for you just the way you like it and manages to behave himself until you’re actually dressed and ready to head outside with him.

The second you’re both outside in the field he gets you right in the face, then takes off running.

You wipe the water out of your eyes before running after him. “I’m gonna get your ass for that, Karkat!”

“Only if you can catch me!” 

“I don’t need to catch you!”

True to your words, you fire off the water gun once you’re close enough and hit Karkat smack dab in the ass. 

The sound he makes in response could only really be described as a squeak. “Fuck, that’s cold. What the hell?”

“You started it, dude. This is war.” 

He responds by spraying you in the face again.

You chase each other around in circles through the field, little streams of water spraying all over as you do. You both get in a few decent shots but soon enough, the water guns are empty.

You stop to catch your breath as Karkat shakes his to see if there’s really no water left. “Seems empty to me, dude.”

He sounds disappointed when he says, “That didn’t last very long.”

“Awful rude of them not to make never-ending water guns, for sure. There should be a hose next to the porch so we can refill them if you wanna keep going. Or we could go back into the kitchen but I don’t really wanna drag mud in there more than we have to.”

“A hose?” You’re not sure you like the look Karkat is giving you right now. Before you can ask what the hell that’s all about, he’s bolting off back to the cabin. 

You slowly make your way after him while he ducks around to the side of the porch where you’re pretty sure the hose is at. You have no idea if it’s in anything resembling decent shape, but you should be able to at least use the spigot to refill the guns if the hose itself doesn’t work.

Karkat comes back into view, carrying the hose and fiddling around with the nozzle. You’re thinking that it’s honestly surprising it has one at all when said nozzle is being turned on you and you’re once again being sprayed with a whole lot of water.

“I should have expected that,” you say once Karkat lowers the hose.

“Yeah,” he replies with a cheeky grin. “You should have.”

Karkat presses the button on the nozzle again but you’re ready for it this time. You move out of the way, then lunge forward to try and grab the hose from him.

He jerks away from you and you narrowly miss your chance to get the hose. That doesn’t end up mattering too much, though, as when Karkat tries to spray you, he doesn’t realize the nozzle is facing the wrong way and he ends up spraying himself in the mouth.

You burst out laughing when he starts sputtering. You can’t help it, the look on his face is too fucking funny. “Good job man, you really got me,” you manage to get out through your giggles.

He doesn’t miss this time when he turns the hose on you.

The water guns end up abandoned after that. You two take turns wrestling the hose from one another and soon enough, you’re both absolutely soaked. You don’t know why you bothered getting dressed before you came out since you’re probably going to have to change again.

Not probably. Definitely. You’ve got the hose right now and you’re so busy trying to run away from Karkat so that he can’t get it again that you don’t notice when your foot gets tangled up in it.

You fall, landing with an, “Oomf,” in a huge puddle of mud. The hose drops to the ground next to you, the stream of water stopping as soon as you are no longer pressing the button on the nozzle.

“That was smooth.”

“Oh, fuck off.” You’re still grinning despite your words. It’s hard not to. Even if you’re currently sitting in the mud, you’re having the time of your life right now. You pretty much always are when you’re with Karkat nowadays. “Help me.” You hold out a hand to Karkat, beckoning him forward, and even though he rolls his eyes, he walks over and grabs it, intending to help you up.

Instead, you pull him down toward you. He lands right in your lap, his ass pressing against your thighs, and damn, it looks like you just played yourself because your body is suddenly very interested in having him this close.

He echoes your words from earlier back to you when he mumbles, “I should have expected that.”

You watch as a drop of water slides down Karkat’s nose, drawing your attention right down to his mouth as it makes its descent. “Uh huh,” you respond.

He shifts in your lap and you honestly have no idea if he’s doing it on purpose. He must be because when you lean forward to close the small gap between you, he meets you halfway.

You hum into the kiss, the sound quickly turning into a moan when Karkat slides his hand up the back of your shirt. “Fuck,” you mumble against his lips. “Who knew sittin’ around in the mud could be so sexy?”

“Shut up,” he says before pulling you back into the kiss.

The position is a bit awkward, and you’re still sitting in the mud, so you wriggle a bit to the side to at least get into a dryer patch of grass. It’d probably be easier if you two would just stand up, but you don’t even think about that until you’re already out of the mud patch, and then you’re not thinking about anything when Karkat starts pressing kisses along your jaw.

Your brain is still entirely thought-free when Karkat lifts the bottom of your shirt, and you just nod when he makes a questioning noise against your lips. You two break apart for just a moment as he pulls the shirt over your head, and then his lips are back on yours while his fingers trail over your bare skin.

You shift underneath Karkat and he gasps into your mouth. Holy shit, that’s hot. You’re not sure what exactly it was that made him make that noise, but you move again, hoping to pull some more noises out of him.

Karkat’s hands are tickling over your ribs. He sits back suddenly, breaking your kiss again. You’re about to pull him back in because that just won’t do, but then he does gasp again.

It’s not the same sort of gasp as before, though. His hand is still resting against your ribcage. You feel his thumb rub over a bit of raised skin and that’s when you realize what the gasp was for.

You suddenly feel the cold water still clinging to your skin, where you had just moments before only felt the warmth of the sun, the comforting heat of Karkat’s hands. You look to the side, see your shirt discarded on the ground, and while the idea of putting it back on now isn’t exactly appealing, given how wet and grass-covered it is, remaining uncovered might be worse.

You can feel Karkat looking at you but you refuse to make eye contact, instead pointedly keeping your gaze on the grass. You’d lost your shades some time earlier, probably in the struggle for the hose, without even noticing.

You’d like to think that he wouldn’t be disgusted at the sight of the patchwork of scars covering your torso, but a small yet incredibly loud part of you is convinced disgust is exactly what you’d see if you looked up at him right now.

“Dave?”

You still won’t look at him. “Yeah?”

“I’m s—”

“It’s fine. I get it.”

“Get what?”

Karkat moves his hand to rest over your cheek, and even though he’s not actually moving your head to make you look at him, you do anyway.

He doesn’t look disgusted. Concerned, confused, maybe a little sad. But not disgusted.

“I, uh. Probably shoulda given you a heads up about all that? Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “No, don’t be sorry. Fuck. Just took me by surprise, that’s all. I’m sorry.”

You don’t really want this to be a whole thing, not right now, but you also don’t think your previous mood is going to come back any time soon. “Well. Now you know where I got my sick stitching skills, I guess.”

It’s a shitty not-joke, and neither of you laugh. Instead, Karkat moves off your lap and holds out a hand to help you up. Once you’re standing, he leans in and gently brushes his lips against yours in a way that is far too chaste, considering what you were just doing.

His expression is serious when he pulls away. You’re so tense, so busy steeling yourself for a question that you probably don’t want to answer, that it takes you a minute to process his words when he says, “There’s a giant spider on your shirt right now.”

That startles a laugh out of you once you realize what he’s actually said. “Yeah? He can have it. Probably looks better on him anyway.”

“Definitely not.”

Karkat bravely gathers up your shirt and shakes the spider off before handing it back to you. The spider might be gone, but you don’t actually trust that it’s bug-free, so you leave it off, just grip it in your hand as you follow Karkat back inside the cabin.

“It’s sort of infuriating how good you are with this camera.”

Your boyfriend sits cross-legged on your bed, thumbing through the thick stack of Polaroid photos you’ve accumulated over the last couple of months. His hair is still damp from the shower he just took. It’s much less fluffy and wild like this, which makes his horns look bigger, but...not by much. They’re still basically bite-sized, you think. Depending on one’s definition of a bite. Depending on one’s bite capacity—

“You’re spacing out again,” he says, nudging your side with his elbow. You hum in acknowledgement, but don’t reply. You’re thinking about a thousand things, unsure whether you want to bring any of them up.

You look over the photos he’s holding instead. There are several of you and Karkat together on the couch, taken selfie-style while you were watching movies together—he looks pretty disgruntled in most of those. Cute. There’s also a recent close-up of Karkave, googly eyes and all, posed on the porch railing with the setting sun dramatically lighting the foliage in the background. You’re pretty proud of that one. Maybe you could even get it framed someday.

“Hey, what are you thinking about?”

You weren’t ready for that question. Not at all. You blurt out, “How much John sucks at skateboarding.”

Karkat barely misses a beat. “John Egbert, right?”

“That’s the one.”

He waits for you to elaborate, or explain, or...anything. You suppose you ought to.

“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m really not much good at it either, but also I’m not, you know. I’m nowhere near the catastrophe on wheels that is John. Dude wiped out so hard this one time he injured all four of us, me and him and Rose and Jade. I still got the scar to prove it.”

You trace the small, raised line, barely visible now, just above your left knee. Karkat’s eyes follow your fingers, the look on his face unreadable.

It’s the only scar on your body that’s not from sparring with your Bro, in fact. But you don’t really think Karkat needs to know that.

Not yet, anyway.

“There’s more, right?” Karkat asks, and it takes you a long, sweaty moment to realize he’s only talking about the Polaroids. “I remember there being more.”

“Uhh...”

“You know—that one time we were running around outside like idiots? You took a whole bunch of pictures then. I remember because you were pissing me off, snapping that thing right in front of my face.” He looks thoughtful, not pissed off. Not anymore, anyway. “Where’re those ones?”

You hesitate a moment, thinking. You could lie. You could say they turned out terrible, out of focus, motion-blurred. Could just tell him you threw them away. It would only be half a lie. Some of them did turn out blurry. You hadn’t kept them all.

But...you don’t really want to do that. You want him to see the photos. They’re good photos. It’s—just going to be a little embarrassing for you, retrieving them from their hiding place in your underwear drawer while he sits here and watches you do it.

Well. So be it.

He only makes fun of you a little when you hand over the small stack of pictures. You sit back down next to him to look through them—you had honestly forgotten they existed ever since you stashed them away, so it’s been a while.

He thumbs through them, slowing when he reaches the awful, blown-out selfie of the two of you together. He’s trying not to laugh, you can tell.

“I can see why you felt the need to hide this one,” he says seriously. You pinch his thigh to make him yelp. He slaps your hand away, unable to contain his laughter. It bubbles out of him, sort of raspy, one hundred percent contagious.

He flips past several pictures of himself next—scowling, flipping off the camera, rolling his eyes—

You catch yourself smiling at the photos like a lovesick fool at the exact same moment Karkat does.

“You fucking dork,” he says softly. Yeah...you’re not beating those allegations anytime soon. You just give him a big grin and a half-hearted shrug.

He moves on. The next photo in the stack is that one—the one that caused the crisis that led to you hiding the Polaroids in the first place. The one of Karkat smiling at the camera, or, well, past the camera. At you.

He pauses. He’s gone silent now, holding the picture up in both hands, to get a better look at it, you guess. You hold your breath, watching his face. He looks almost angry all of a sudden, brows furrowed, mouth turned down in a slight frown. You wonder if he hates it, for some reason? Maybe he sees some flaw in his own appearance that you hadn’t noticed—? You mean, you know it’s not his best angle or anything—

“I’ve...never...”

He’s talking so quietly, you can barely hear him at all. You guess there’s a first time for everything. “Hmm?”

When you look at his face, he doesn’t look angry anymore. He takes a breath and turns to you with glistening eyes and says, “I’ve just, I’ve never seen myself look like this. Never seen myself look...this happy.”

You almost want to ask, Really? Never? thinking of those pictures you’d glimpsed on his laptop, of him and his friends all together. But, looking at the Polaroid again, he’s right, isn’t he?—this expression is something different than those smiles had been. There’s something less carefully guarded about it—something more spontaneous, something closer to carefree.

The room is so quiet, so still, but it doesn’t feel awkward in the least. You bump your shoulder gently against his, and leave it there, and let the seconds pass. You decide that, maybe, you ought to just say what you’ve been thinking.

So you look at him, and you say, “I’ve never been this happy before, either. You know?”

Your voice only barely cracks when you say it. You’re kind of proud of yourself for just spitting it out, for once, without fifteen minutes of preamble. You open your mouth to speak again, but—

The Polaroids flutter to the floor, forgotten, as Karkat pushes you onto your back and crawls on top of you. Whatever you’d wanted to say is quickly forgotten, too, as he kisses you eagerly, and you hold him close to you and kiss him back, and both of you are smiling so much it’s hard to hold in your laughter.

Five minutes after Karkat leaves your room to go to bed that night, you tear off your socks and toss them onto the floor. You feel strange, almost anxious. Restless? You check your phone for any missed messages from your friends, but there’s nothing.

Another ten minutes tick by. You’re suddenly feeling much too warm for your shirt, so you take that off too. You refresh the SBaHJ webpage on your phone, as if it could have possibly updated all on its own, without you yourself doing it. Obviously it hasn’t.

After half an hour, you kick the sheets and blankets away and turn over onto your side. Fuck.

You trace your fingers lightly over the scars that crisscross your ribs.

You sort of wish he hadn’t left—wish he’d stayed the night with you, in the same bed, just this once. But he’d claimed he really, really had to start seriously catching up on work in the morning, or he’d catch hell from his editor. You suppose it’s at least in part your fault that he’d fallen behind to begin with, so...

It’s quiet. Must be past midnight by now, you think. You stay very still and listen for any movement from Karkat’s bedroom, but there’s nothing—not even snoring.

Maybe he’s still awake.

You can’t pester him to find out, you can’t—what if he’s sound asleep and your message wakes him up? No, you’ve got to find a way to relax. Maybe some music...

You pop in your earbuds and hit shuffle on one of your favorite playlists. You’re not even conscious of whatever song plays first—your mind is firmly elsewhere.

Firmly, ha ha.

You turn over onto your stomach with a groan.

Before he’d slammed on the brakes and left you for the night, it had really felt as though you both wanted—were both ready for—

Okay. You really shouldn’t keep thinking about this, if you want to sleep at some point tonight. But how can you possibly not—? You press yourself against the mattress, hard in your sweatpants, helplessly reliving the memory of Karkat kissing you, kissing your neck, his body so soft and warm in your arms.

In those hazy moments just before he’d disentangled himself from you—you had felt it. Movement, inside his pants, a slow sort of undulation that was decidedly alien. His bulge, you guess. Should I try watching some troll porn? you wonder. But that strikes you as an exceptionally bad way to calm yourself down right now, actually.

It’s not like you’ve never seen troll porn before. You’d gotten curious about it a handful of times. Plus, you know, there’s the basic stuff you’d learned in high school health class... You close your eyes and try to remember what you can, but truthfully, the whole subject begins to lose your interest when it’s more generalized, and less about Karkat in particular. Your mind begins to wander away from the subject at hand and into several tangentially related directions at once.

Before you know it your breathing is slowing, your scattered thoughts are fading, and the music in your ears is carrying you gently down, down into sleep.

You dream, briefly, of fighting for your life on a sweltering rooftop, a cheap sword in your hand, fresh cuts still stinging. You’re awakened by a warm hand on your bare shoulder.

Somehow, you don’t startle. Maybe, somehow, even asleep and dreaming...you were expecting him.

Karkat’s weight shifts the mattress as he climbs into bed next to you and lies down on his side, facing you in the dark. Your playlist is still going, but one of your earbuds has fallen out—he picks it up, and pops it into his own ear, sharing the music with you. He closes his eyes. You stay like that for a while, not talking, just listening. You think it must be two or three in the morning.

You’re still half-asleep, not completely certain he’s really here right now. So you reach for him, pull him closer, and he lets himself be pulled. Then he rests his head on your arm, and while it’s a little heavy and his horn does press a little uncomfortably against your shoulder—it’s a small price to pay, isn’t it? to know you’re not dreaming anymore, that he’s really here, in your bed with you, right now.

You cup his face in your hand and stroke your thumb over his cheek, just admiring him.

“Do you want to have a picnic tomorrow?” he asks, his voice all quiet and close, like he’s asking you a much more intimate question than that. It takes you a moment to catch up, the gears in your head turning sluggishly. A picnic...

“I thought you had to work tomorrow.”

“Mm, it can wait another day.”

“Then yeah, I wanna have a picnic with you,” you say, as you kiss his forehead. “Obviously. Where at?”

“Well...there’s this lake about an hour drive from here? S’posed to be nice. And the weather should be good for it...”

“Fuck yeah. Can we bring some of those little bug-cake things you made that one time?”

“Of course. We can bring whatever food you want.”

“Hell yeah. I wanna bring some fluffernutters, too. And apple pie for dessert. Oh, and we gotta get some chips—”

“Fluffer-what-ers?!”

“Oh, shit. They’re gonna blow your mind, dude. You’ll see.”

“I very much doubt that,” he grumbles, cuddling closer. “Sounds like more wiggler bullshit. Like your mac and cheese.”

“It’s exactly like that,” you say, wrapping your arms around him tighter. “C’mon, don’t knock the mac and cheese, man, I know you liked it.”

“You can’t prove anything,” he says, his lips moving against your neck as he speaks.

You shiver, suddenly very aware of all your bare skin as Karkat presses his body against yours, tipping you over onto your back. You open your mouth to say something, you’re not even sure what—just something idiotic, anything really, to break this tension building between you—but he stops you with a kiss before you can even get started.

“Shh,” he shushes you.

You smile at him, feeling a little loopy, half-asleep and turned on, music still playing low in one ear like some dreamy soundtrack. “Am I really that predictable, Karkat?”

“Yes. Now shoosh.”

“You got it, b—uhh. Babe.”

His choked snort of laughter at being called babe rather than boss is maybe the best sound you’ve ever heard in your entire life. You think you’d do almost anything to hear him laugh like that again...and again, and again, and again.

You tug at the hem of his oversized t-shirt—it’s only fair—and after one more kiss he takes it off.

Your hands are on him immediately, before your eyes even get a chance. It feels so good just to touch him like this, to slide your palms slowly over his sides, his back, his hips. His body is nearly all soft curves, aside from those slightly raised, bright red slashes along his sides. And...his smooth, gray skin isn’t just warm. It’s hot, almost feverishly so. You’ve noticed by now that he runs hotter than you, of course—all the times he’s touched you, or that you’ve touched him—but this—

When you finally manage to drag your gaze back up to meet his, there’s a look on his face you can’t decipher. He doesn’t look unhappy or anything, just—

Like, maybe, he can’t quite believe it...? Believe what, that you actually want him? Oh, but you do, more than anything. But you don’t get a chance to say anything about it before he’s moving to straddle your lap, his arms supporting himself just above you, caging you in—and after that you’ve lost your chance to think about, well, pretty much anything.

That scent, the scent of him, that you couldn’t get enough of from wearing his sweater...it’s nearly overwhelming like this. It feels as though nothing else exists but this room and the two of you—not the cabin, not his job, certainly not your Bro.

He grinds his hips against yours, just a fraction, and the last remaining fragments of your thoughts are banished, at least for a moment. The movement was so slight, you could almost believe he’d done it unintentionally, but...the telltale undulation you can already feel beneath the fabric of his pajama pants says otherwise. Your breath is coming a little harder, a little faster, you can’t help it. So close to him now, you can see him noticing it—noticing your chest rising and falling—and you watch his face with the same fascination, watch the pink flush rising up on his skin. And then, when your eyes meet again, it’s different, intense—it’s genuinely difficult for you to hold the contact, more difficult than it’s been in months.

He moves his hips again and. Well. There’s no mistake about it, you’re definitely fully awake now. Even so, you think, as he bends his head down to kiss you again...this moment does sort of feel like a dream. Maybe it’s because of the late hour, or the music playing in your ear, or just the fact that you’re making out with an alien you recently fell in love with under the strangest possible circumstances... You wouldn’t be too shocked if you woke up right now in your old dorm room, is what you’re getting at here. But nothing of the sort happens.

Instead, Karkat just leans down further, until he’s pressing the warm weight of his whole body against yours. His soft kisses, his bare chest pressed against yours, and his hands, so gentle on your scarred skin—it all feels so good, and not just physically. It feels good to have his undivided attention like this. You can’t get enough. You hold him in place, right where you want him, your hands resting on his thighs as you kiss him, and think, if this is a dream—let me stay in it just a little longer.

That whole train of thought comes to an end, though, when he rocks his hips slowly against yours once more—it’s beginning to feel kind of torturous for you, with the layers of fabric still between you getting in the way. Before you can stop yourself, and to your immediate regret, you make a sound that could perhaps be classified as a whimper. So not cool.

“Sorry, but—it’s just—that f-feels—” you stammer, in an attempt to explain, “I-I mean it doesn’t hurt or anything, but it’s, uhh, it’s—”

You’re losing steam, and Karkat is, you think, visibly losing his patience with you. Why is it so fucking difficult to say these kinds of things outright?

He doesn’t speak, opting instead for a slightly more dramatic method of shushing you. He doesn’t quite bite you—you can feel his pointed teeth touching the side of your neck, but there’s no real threat behind it. Anyway it isn’t his teeth, it’s his growl that actually shuts you up. It’s a quiet but powerful sound, coming from somewhere deep inside his chest—you can feel it in your own body more than hear it—and it makes you shiver, hard, and forget your words entirely. And as you melt into a useless puddle in his arms, you can feel him smile against your skin, the bastard.

Then he moves back, just a few inches, and there’s cool air touching your skin once again. You close your eyes and attempt to catch your breath. That growl really did something to you, god damn. You think you might have blacked out for a second.

His hands are massaging over your sides and stomach and chest, his touch gentle but not too feather-light, thankfully. You don’t think you could take it if he decided it was time for a tickle fight right now. You don’t feel like opening your eyes just yet, but you can guess that Karkat is probably getting his first real good look at the network of scars scattered across your torso, some of them old, some of them much older. You let him look, let him touch. You find that, somehow...in this moment, at least...it doesn’t really bother you. You want him to look at them, even if you still don’t feel much like explaining.

They’re just...part of you. Like it or not.

“You feeling okay?” he asks. It takes you a few seconds to fully process the question.

“Mm.” You’re feeling sort of light-headed, truthfully.

Karkat cradles your face in his hands and kisses the corner of your mouth. He’s making a weird alien noise again, but a slightly different one—it’s not like the growling, it doesn’t send the same spike of heat down into your gut, it’s just—a sort of quiet, constant rumble in his chest, almost like a purr. It’s...strangely comforting, holding a warm, rumbling, half-naked alien (who may or may not consider himself your boyfriend) in your arms.

You realize your emotions might be a bit scrambled when you find yourself holding back tears as he brushes his fingers through your hair and kisses your face, over and over.

You still don’t know whether he’s really your boyfriend or not, and you’re still afraid to straight-up ask him, but...either way...he’s here. Right now. That’s enough, isn’t it?

You grab his sides to pull him closer, not thinking about his grub scars until you’ve suddenly got two handfuls of them. Oops. They’re apparently very sensitive. He gasps, and swipes his thumbs roughly across both of your nipples in retaliation, which makes you gasp, and involuntarily tighten your grip on him. There’s no room left for thought now—it’s all you can do just to hold on to your two armfuls of squirming Karkat and try to keep up. His bulge thrashes wildly against you as he kisses you open-mouthed, rougher and messier than before. Both of you are out of breath and panting by the time you break apart.

“Someone’s getting real rowdy in there,” you comment, half on autopilot, dizzy with arousal. “S’prised he hasn’t torn right through your pants yet.”

“You’re one to talk,” he growls, reaching down to give you a rough squeeze through your sweatpants. “And, for fuck’s sake, don’t refer to my bulge as a ‘he.’ That’s weird.”

He punctuates his words with another squeeze, his eyes widening at the soft little sound you make in response. You cover your mouth like a reflex, vaguely aware that this is all kind of embarrassing—after all, it’s insanely vulnerable, isn’t it? to let him see you like this? maybe even more so than letting him touch your scars. But, but you’re long past the point of caring about any of it by now. You just want him, want whatever this is going to be between you. And...isn’t this kind of vulnerability a two-way street?

You want to see him lose his mind tonight. You want that very much.

You pop out your earbud, and tug on the cord so Karkat will follow suit. The sudden lack of a soundtrack emphasizes the stillness of the night. He looks at you expectantly. You cup his smooth gray cheek in your hand, looking into his ruby-red eyes, and you kiss him sweetly on the lips.

“I like you so much,” you say, in not much more than a whisper, and he laughs, because, yeah, that was kind of anticlimactic. God, he looks so fucking good, all flushed pink and smiling. You want to remember this forever, forever.

I love you, actually, you think, but you don’t say it. Not yet.

You roll both of you over a little so you’re lying side by side. He locks his leg over yours playfully, pulling your body flush against his. You hold him tight, committing all of this to memory, every detail, as he brushes your hair off your forehead with his fingers.

His hands smooth over your skin, traveling downward over your sides until he slips them beneath your waistband to caress your bare ass, and you feel yourself tense up at the contact, though you’re not sure why. Were you not expecting that? He withdraws his hands immediately, to your frustration.

“Shit, sorry—”

“No, it’s—put them back, okay. It’s fine.”

He looks a little doubtful, but he still obeys, touching you more cautiously this time.

“I guess maybe I’m a little nervous,” you admit, face squished against his shoulder. “I’ve never, uh. Done this before. I mean—with a guy. Um.”

He rolls away from you, onto his back, without a word. For a brief moment you wonder did I do something wrong?—but then he lifts up his hips to take off his pants, so. You suppose you didn’t fuck anything up too badly.

Once he’s wrestled them off, he turns back to you with one of those crooked little smiles and says, “You know we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to.”

You move toward him without even thinking, pulled to him by a deep swell of affection. Of course he’d say something like that, of course. That’s why you love him, isn’t it? You crawl on top of him and kiss him, kiss his teeth because he’s laughing, run your hands over the soft material of his boxer briefs. He’s got his hands all over your ass again and okay, okay. You can admit it feels good. You guess maybe, somewhere in the cobwebbed corners of your mind, there may have been a tiny bit of leftover anxiety about. You know. Gay stuff.

He can have me, I don’t care, you think, a little delirious by this point. It doesn’t matter if he wants to, to sit on my dick or, or fuck me, oh my god I just want him so much, all of him, every possible way—

“Dave, shhh,” he laughs, right next to your ear, and oh, fuck. Oh god.

There’s no time to panic about what you apparently just said out loud—he’s slipping his hand under your waistband again, in front this time. You cling to him, not even caring about the sounds you’re making as he kisses your neck, your chest, your shoulders, his warm hand lightly stroking your dick. It’s not enough—he’s just teasing you, really, but oh, christ, it feels absolutely incredible anyway.

He’s breathing heavily by the time he pulls himself away from you to take off his underwear, his eyes all huge and dark, pupils dilated, his cheeks blazing red. You think you must look pretty similar.

He closes his eyes and sighs with relief when he’s finally naked, freed from his damp underwear at last. Your eyes are drawn straight to his bulge, not only because you’ve been wanting to see it, to get your hands on it—but because it’s so. Well. Attention grabbing. Bright red and moving like it’s got a mind of its own.

You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but hey, you’re not about to let that stop you. You reach for it, touch it gingerly, and it coils itself around your fingers at once, wet and slippery.

“Okay?” you ask, perhaps a second too late.

“Mmh,” Karkat replies, sort of. His hips arching up to meet your touch is more of an answer than that, but you guess you’ll take it.

You’re careful at first, unsure how delicate the tentacle in your hand might be, but its grip on you only gets more intense—you figure it can take more than you’d thought. You watch, fascinated, as it winds itself around your wrist, curling and uncurling itself, sort of dancing with your hand as you stroke it, harder now, Karkat’s little moans encouraging you as you go.

You guess it’s not that different from yours, really. You mean, aside from how it moves around an awful lot. And how it’s really wet with this semi-transparent reddish stuff that seems to come from its entire surface area at once. And also how it’s shaped completely differently than yours, tapered to a thin, delicate tendril at the tip, much thicker at the base. Maybe kind of uh. Concerningly thick.

But, like, aside from all that, though...it’s not that different.

You move closer for a better look, holding it by the base as it wriggles in search of your fingers. Down below its thickest point, it tapers again, joining his body somewhere deeper inside his bulge slit, which you guess is normally closed up, neat and tidy. And under all that, nestled between his thighs, is his nook—pretty as a jewel, red and glistening. You’d like very much to spend some time exploring it, but...one thing at a time. You slowly stroke the underside of his bulge, then slip one finger into that tight little hole where it disappears into his body—

“Ah fuck!” Karkat exclaims, thrusting his hips up into your touch. “Ahh—Dave—!”

He grabs blindly at your hair, and although it hurts a little you don’t really mind at all. It’s just so satisfying to watch him writhe beneath you, cursing incoherently as you work his bulge with one hand and his slit with the other. He can pull your hair all he wants if it means you get to see him like this. You haven’t been together for that long—haven’t even known one another very long—and yet it feels as though you’ve waited a long, long time for this.

You slide another two fingers into his nook after a minute, slowly and carefully burying them inside him, where it’s hot and wet and so unbelievably soft—you could come in your pants just imagining how that would feel, oh—

“Does this feel good,” you ask in a hoarse whisper, in an attempt to distract yourself. You get a loud moan in response as he squirms, impaled on your fingers, his legs wide open, chest heaving.

You move your hand, slowly at first, pulling your fingers out just slightly, pushing back in. God, you can hardly stand it. He’s so beautiful, lost in his pleasure, crying your name...

Just in time to snap you out of it, his neglected bulge wriggles out of your grasp, nearly slapping you in the face as it escapes. You can’t help but laugh.

It also gives you an idea, though. You lean forward, and coax the tip of his bulge toward your lips, until it curls itself eagerly into your mouth and meets your tongue. It tastes like—

“Fuck, Dave, stop—please,” he begs, pinkish sweat shining on his skin, still arching up into your touch like he doesn’t want you to stop—but you do, all the same, disentangling yourself from him and sitting back on your heels. Damn, you’re a mess. There’s red shit all over your hands, your face, your chest and shoulders—even on your sweatpants, somehow. Not to mention your sheets.

“Sup?” you ask. “Did I hurt you—?”

He pushes himself upright on shaking arms. “Sup?”

“Wassup, if you prefer.”

“No, you didn’t hurt me. Idiot.”

“Oh, cool. Nice, dude. Sweet.”

He shakes his head like he can’t believe he actually likes you. You grin at him, knowing you must look ridiculous, all splattered with red.

“I just thought maybe,” he says, sounding exasperated, “you might want to get these off.”

He curls his fingers into the waistband of your pants and tugs.

“Oh,” you say. “Y-yeah.”

You start to do it yourself, but he stops you, pushing you backward with a hand on your chest. “Wait. Let me?”

You nod and lie back, a bit nervous as you watch him slowly pull your red-stained sweatpants down over your hips. You hold your breath as your dick springs dramatically free, out of its confining prison at last, still standing proudly at full attention. Karkat sort of looks like he’s trying not to laugh.

“Somethin’ you wanna say?”

“I just—” he begins, but interrupts himself with a soft, surprised-sounding ahh when his bulge brushes against the head of your dick. He moves away before it has a chance to really get a grip. You’re not gonna lie, you find the whole idea of getting those two together pretty intriguing. It takes you half a minute to even realize he’s speaking to you—

“—with you, it’s just the general idea of them that’s—shit, I don’t know, but they are kind of fucking silly-looking, aren’t they?”

“Mhmm,” you hum dreamily. “Sure, yeah. S’why I draw them all over shit.”

You reach toward the smear of red that was left where his bulge had touched you, intending to wipe it away, you guess, but Karkat catches your hand in midair and pins it down on the bed by your side. Then he’s straddling your hips again, both of you naked this time, inches away from—

“What’re you doing?” Your words sound strangely slurred to your ears, almost as if you were intoxicated. In a manner of speaking, you are.

“What’s it look like, genius?”

You have to fight back another pathetic whimper. It’s too much. He’s holding himself up over you on his knees, the tip of your dick just pressing against the hot wet opening of his nook, and it feels so good, too good—you’ll come the instant he starts to drop down, you just know it. So you stop him before he can, your hands gripping his hips tight, tight.

“W-wait, ” you manage to gasp. “What if I—want to be, uh, the one who, uh—who gets, gets, y-you know?” You can feel yourself blushing furiously. You suddenly wish you had your shades on. You don’t dare move your hands from his hips to cover your eyes.

“Dave...” he shakes his head. “You can’t even say it. And besides, didn’t you just tell me you’d never done this before?”

“With a guy, yeah, no. Never, never in the, uh...”

He rolls his eyes, but shifts his weight a tiny bit, putting ever so slightly less pressure on you. “Don’t hurt yourself trying to say it. That kind of thing might be advanced maneuvers for you right now, that’s all I’m saying.”

“No, Karkat, c’mon—you can totally teach me. Like, show me what to do, seriously. I’ll do it. Please?”

He leans forward, looking vexed, holding himself up just above you. There’s only an inch or so of space between your bodies, your faces. You wish you could just tell him what you’re afraid of—of your body ending this much too soon—but it feels straight-up impossible to just...say those words. It would be easier for you to write and perform a fucking feature-length musical, probably, than to say look, I’m just afraid I might prematurely ejaculate, dude.

And besides...you’re not lying. You do want this.

“Okay,” he concedes, growling his words more than saying them—you can feel it in your gut, god, in your balls— “but maybe I want to be the one who gets fucked sometimes, did you even think about that?”

You reach up to tuck a stray curl of hair behind his ear. “C’mon, man, it can be your turn next time, I promise,” you say, as sweetly as you can. Then, like a shithead, “Why won’t you fuck me, Karkat?”

That does it. “Jesus christ. I will, okay? Don’t act so fucking pouty about it.”

“Why not? Worked on you with the pizza rolls, didn’t it?”

“It seems to work on me far too often, to be honest. I believe that’s how you convinced me to watch Step Up 2: The Streets, also?”

“Ha ha, yeah. You liked it, though.”

“The fuck I did!”

You move your body under him as you two talk, squirming slightly from side to side, trying to get his bulge to notice you—hoping you can, sort of, attract it toward your ass? You’re not thinking too hard about it. You’re just kind of being an impatient tool. Karkat finally notices what you’re doing.

“That’s not going to work,” he says, gently. “The angle is wrong.”

“Oh.”

“Gotta be—more like this,” he says, grabbing your ankles and lifting your legs up, much higher than you would have thought necessary. You feel ridiculous.

“Okay, this feels a little silly, n-g-l.”

“You’re the one who wanted this!”

“Yeah, okay, but just—are you sure you don’t want me to, uhh, turn over? Seems like it’d be easier that way?”

“N-no, I—”

He sighs, and looks into your eyes, some of the prickliness of the last few minutes seeming to melt away. Then, softly, he says, “I...want to see your face.”

There’s silence as you process that, your hands framing the sides of his face. You hadn’t thought of it like that.

“Oh,” you say, quiet as a breath, and you kiss him. “Well, I guess I can learn to live with the. The position.”

He smiles at that. “Relax, okay?”

You nod, take a breath, and release it. You keep stroking his cheek with your thumb, keep looking at him, as he reaches down to touch you, very gently massaging around the edges of your (still tense) hole.

“Dave, relax,” he reminds you, one more time. That deep rumbling purr is creeping back into his voice, like maybe he’s doing it specifically to calm you down. “We’re gonna take this slow.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

He stays true to his word, mostly. Fortunately the slippery stuff his bulge secretes seems to provide more than enough lubrication, and the way he’s shaped naturally helps you start slow, only really beginning to feel the stretch once he gets himself buried deeper inside you. He holds you tightly in his arms and talks to you soothingly almost the entire time, that comforting purr backing his words like a kind of subtle music. You stop hearing the individual words he’s saying at some point, just clinging to the sound of his voice as you try your best to stay relaxed, and let him in deeper, deeper.

It’s strange—it doesn’t quite hurt, but it doesn’t quite feel good, either, until, suddenly...it does. It feels amazing.

He’s babbling against your neck, saying something about his turn, next time. You laugh, partly because you can’t believe he’s still going on about that, partly with relief that this finally feels like something people might plausibly do for fun, and say “you’ll see. ’m gonna fuck you so good,” and he smiles like you said something funny.

“I will. You’ll see,” you say again, slurring your words a little. “S’not funny.”

Karkat doesn’t reply. His sort of crickety alien sounds are getting louder and more arrhythmic as he slowly, slowly continues to press forward, the tip of his bulge moving lazily inside you from time to time. He closes his eyes, gripping your thighs tighter.

When he’s all the way inside (you kind of can’t believe you managed to take the whole thing), he lifts his head up to look at you. Damn, he looks so fucking good like this, all disheveled and sweaty and flushed, just barely managing to keep his eyes open. You wish you could take a picture.

“Doing so good,” is all he can manage to say. The praise makes you feel...warm, all the way down to your toes. You stay that way, foreheads resting together, for a minute or so, and then...

He draws his hips back, just a tiny bit, and then thrusts them forward again, slowly, carefully. You absolutely can’t control the sound that leaves your mouth then—you legit moan, and the second it happens you feel kind of stupid, but—Karkat’s bulge comes to life inside you then, thrashing against your insides, almost painfully, but then, then—then it slams into something that feels incredible, several times in quick succession, and you forget about everything else, just holding on for dear life as he thrusts into you again and again, hitting that spot again and again. You’ve never felt anything like it in your life. Whatever embarrassing sounds you’re making now are completely out of your control, and you’re way beyond caring anyway. You just want him to keep going.

You grab and pull and claw at his shoulders, wanting him closer, close enough to kiss. “Please,” you say, whining, begging. He stays just out of your reach, those red eyes locked on yours, as he reaches down between your bodies to stroke your dripping-wet cock, once, twice—you’re so close, you’re gonna come, oh, why won’t he kiss you—

CRACK!

The bed shifts suddenly beneath you, ever so slightly.

You. Actually fucking broke it. You broke the bed.

You broke the fucking bed.

Karkat groans. “I don’t s’pose you know how to fix that.”

All you can do is laugh, really.

You had stolen through the hall to Karkat’s room together after that, still naked, holding hands, keeping quiet as though you were rebellious teenagers sneaking out of the house—as if you thought someone would catch you. No one did, of course.

Now you’re settled down together in Karkat’s bed to sleep for the rest of the night, but...you aren’t tired. You keep running your hands over his bare skin, keep wanting to kiss him, and more...

He’s relaxed, pliant in your arms, the late hour and post-orgasmic haze making him sleepy. He’s beautiful, you think, not for the first time.

And—yes, finally—your chance has arrived. You almost forgot. You crawl down to kiss his soft belly several times in a row, making mwah sounds each time, and he laughs softly, his hands resting on your shoulders.

He doesn’t object when you kiss him again, a little lower this time. You wriggle your way down, down between his thighs, planting a trail of kisses all the way to his nook. He opens his legs to let you in, sighing dreamily, his fingers tangled in your hair.

His bulge is tucked neatly back inside his body for now, but you give his red-stained bulge slit a kiss too. It seems to feel good, judging by the way he tightens his grip and tenses his thighs. You give it a tiny lick, and he moans, and—jesus, you think you might already be getting hard again.

You stroke slowly at the slippery, swollen red entrance of his nook with your thumb. He’s still so wet from earlier. You want to taste it again—his cherry slurpee, your mind oh-so-helpfully interjects—since you’d only gotten a brief chance with his bulge before he’d stopped you. Well...he sure doesn’t look like he’s about to stop you now, with his head thrown back onto the pillow pile and his hands keeping your head firmly in place between his legs.

You dive in. His scent is so strong down here, his taste so sweet. You could stay here for hours, you think, lapping at his nook with your tongue, just as long as he keeps on making those gorgeous sounds—those moans and chirps and curses—slightly muffled, of course, by his thighs pressing against your ears.

You’re not exactly sure how much later it is when he finally releases you from that tight grip, breathing raggedly. You feel positively drunk on him, light-headed, delirious. There’s red all over this bed now, too, and you know you must be an absolute mess, especially after he just came, screaming, all over your face. But you can’t care about how you look right now, you just can’t. You crawl into his arms and collapse, warm from head to toe, feeling satisfied in a way you’ve never, ever been before. You’re pleasantly exhausted and extremely comfortable. You feel like you could probably sleep away an entire day, cradled in his arms.

You’re hazily aware of Karkat getting up at some point, then coming back with a glass of water for you to drink. You think he cleans you up a little. You think you both put on some clothes, because the room is cold, but...everything feels fragmented, dreamlike. You go back to sleep.

It’s just past nine o’clock in the morning when you and Karkat are awakened by—something. A noise from somewhere in the cabin—? Was it the front door? You tighten your arms around him, eyes wide. An unspoken agreement passes lightning-quick between you, and both of you go quiet for a moment, just listening.

Tap-creak. Tap-creak. Tap-creak.

It’s unmistakable now. Those are footsteps, coming down the hall toward Karkat’s bedroom.

Well...shit.