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The next night, as the remaining half of the burnt-out hive cooled, Karkat observed his neighbors going out and poking through the ruins, scavenging for anything useful or interesting which might have been spared. Judging by the brief time they all spent doing so, Karkat had to guess pickings were slim. He had no intention of going out there himself. Nothing he could find at the destroyed hive could be worth potentially running into one of the neighbors he so diligently avoided, and the whole place looked like a death trap, anyway.
It would not be terribly far in the future, however, that he would kick himself for not going to rummage through the remains himself, because, after careful consideration of the timeline involved, doing so would have saved him the horrifying events which ensued that night.
The unfortunate string of misfortune started when someone frantically started knocking on the door—though “knocking” was perhaps a tame descriptor for the action. From the sounds of it, someone was putting their whole body into it, fists and horns and feet and possibly a shoulder or two. Karkat was taken aback by this enough that he actually ran downstairs to answer (though fortunately, he was not rendered stupid enough by the surprise to forget his sickle).
He opened the door ready to meet (and half expecting) an entire threshecutioner squad. Instead, a lanky troll drenched in his own brown blood fell to the ground, his breathing labored and his wide eyes swiveling in fear as he looked behind him, then back at Karkat.
“...please,” the troll croaked, and he fell to the ground that very moment with the last, heaving breath he would ever give.
Karkat stared down at the bloodied troll, frozen in equal parts shock and terror. He recognized his neighbor, whose hive had burned down the night before. His neighbor who seemed to be thoughtlessly bleeding into his carpet at the moment.
'Close the door,' a small part of Karkat's mind yelled at him. 'Close the fucking door before whoever was after him comes and strangles you with your own bowels, you shit-panned idiot!'
The remaining parts of Karkat were just a hair slower to catch up, however, and he could only look up when he finally noticed the dark shadow looming in his doorway.
*
Too slow, too stupid, too fucking cursed. Karkat could come up with a thousand reasons why this was happening to him right now, but whatever the reason, it always came back to his personal deficiencies somehow.
“Evenin', motherfucker,” the lanky troll in the doorway greeted him.
He smiled slowly and stepped into Karkat's hive as if he owned the place, and that was no wonder, because the sign on his black T-shirt was indigo.
Karkat let out a strangled gasp and stepped back, clutching his sickle in front of him with shaking hands. The tall troll smirked at this, completely unalarmed. He had his own weapon, a juggling club splattered with brown blood, but he did not brandish it; he kept it casually perched against his shoulder with one hand, while his other hand was in a pocket. The pocket of a pair of awful black and indigo clown pants, which seemed to be a theme with this guy. His face was painted, mostly white, but with jagged gray around his eyes and mouth, giving him sharp edges where his face should have only soft planes. Even his horns were ridiculously long and intimidating, so much so that he'd had to lower his head to fit through the door.
Karkat was going to be bludgeoned to death by a psychotic clown. Of course he was. At no point did his life indicate it would end in anything less than a violent and utterly humiliating fashion.
“Now, you ain't gonna MOTHERFUCKING DISRESPECT ME like this motherfucker here did, ARE YOU?” the clown asked, still smiling in what probably qualified as a 'good-natured' manner by his standards. The gray paint around his mouth gave the illusion of fangs occupying the entire lower half of his face, like a bestial maw ready to devour naughty little trolls.
When the manic clown yelled, his voice hit just the right frequency to wash Karkat with terror. He wondered if that was an indigo thing, or just a rampaging serial killer thing. Probably it was both.
Karkat whimpered and dropped the sickle. No. There was no way he was going to fight his way out of this one. He hardly came up to the clown's neck, and he had no real idea how to use the damn sickle. He was not naïve enough to believe that prancing through his respiteblock playing at being a threshecutioner had imbued him with the fighting skills necessary to ward off a murderous mini-subjugglator.
“That's more LIKE IT, MOTHERFUCKER,” the other troll said, as a look of satisfaction spread over his face.
“Now kneel,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
Karkat gaped, the words almost not making their way through to his think-pan.
“You deaf, motherfucker? I SAID KNEEL.”
Karkat dropped the the floor like a stone and commenced to study his own carpet intensely. He'd tracked blood, he noticed; a brown stain shaped like the bottom of his shoe was right in front of him, taunting him with his impending demise.
“See? Ain't hard. COULD HAVE TAUGHT THAT DEAD MOTHERFUCKER a thing or two about respect.” He punctuated this remark with a kick to the brown-blood's corpse.
Karkat's hands tightened into fists as he tried desperately to stay as still as possible. This was hindered somewhat by the fact that he was shaking in fear at the moment. Where was his lusus? Where was the damn crab when he needed it? Where, where, where...?
“NOW LOOK AT ME, MOTHERFUCKER.”
Karkat flinched and looked up. The clown was looming over him, staring down with a mildly peeved expression on his face, which on anybody else would have qualified as murderously enraged, at the very least.
“Why the fuck is your sign gray? YOU HIDING SOMETHING, MOTHERFUCKER? Or is your blood gray? IS THAT IT? You some piece of shit gray-blooded mutant?”
Karkat flinched violently, falling back on his hands and scuttling away as quickly as possible. He shook his head in denial, though there was tragically little to deny. He was. He was a piece of shit mutant, and this psycho was going to find out and bash his face in for it. Thus end the inglorious chronicles of Karkat Vantas, waste of fucking space.
“Where you goin'? DID I SAY YOU COULD MOTHERFUCKING GO ANYWHERE?”
In one step, the clown was upon Karkat. He grabbed the smaller troll by the collar and easily lifted him to his feet. The bloodied club disappeared to his sylladex, but that was little relief when his claw came up and slashed open Karkat's cheek.
Whatever Karkat felt before and foolishly thought was terror was now replaced with something even more potent, overwhelming to the point of numbness. Six sweeps of carefully keeping this secret, of studiously avoiding any opportunity for injury, or emotional extreme, or perilous social contact of any kind, and it was all rendered pointless in this one short instance—all because he had to answer the fucking door, like a complete tool.
His eyes screwed shut, so tightly it was beginning to be painful. The clown touched his fingers to the blood, and even if he couldn't see it, Karkat could just feel him turning his fingers to the light, studying the mutant candy red substance.
The knowledge that this day was going to come sooner or later was little comfort.
But the club Karkat expected to come crashing on him at any moment never arrived.
“...Motherfucking miracles,” the clown troll whispered, barely audible, and Karkat hazarded to open his eyes. “You've got MOTHERFUCKING MIRACLES RUNNING THROUGH YOUR VEINS.”
Karkat flinched, and his ears started ringing. Being so close when the clown yelled seemed hazardous to his health all by itsself.
The troll was transfixed by Karkat's blood, rubbing it between his fingers with a rapt expression. This was a far cry from the disgust and anger he had always expected when he'd imagined this situation.
Karkat took a long look at his own blood, almost convinced he was missing something, but the sticky coagulating mess on the clown's fingers remained bright red.
The clown turned his head to look at Karkat suddenly, and the smaller troll shrank back. But the clown was smiling, rows of sharp teeth on display.
“Hope you ain't got plans for the rest of the night, bro,” he said, his voice low and cheerful in a way that was perhaps more frightening than when he was yelling.
*
Gamzee Makara's week was turning around, he decided.
True, it hadn't started very well. He woke up on the first day in a wretched mood. His lusus had been gone for a few perigees, and his art project was stalling, and that was when he'd gone down to the beach to clear his head and keep and eye out for the old goat.
He wandered up and down the coastline, but the beach was deserted for miles and the ocean was just as still. Once in awhile he could see the dark shape of a seadweller or some other sort of aquatic creature darting under the water, but the old goat was still elusive.
Tired and cranky, Gamzee finally reached the end of the beach, where sand turned to rocky outcroppings, and he sat down on a reasonably flat boulder to drink a Faygo and revel in his own misery. He must have been sitting there for a few hours when he noticed that it was getting late. At least, he assumed it had been a few hours, because his ass was numb and the horizon was starting to get the milky-white tint of dawn.
There was no way he was getting back to his hive in time, so Gamzee decided to look for alternate shelter. Sleeping without sopor would not be pleasant, but neither would being caught in the blinding Alternian sun.
At first, he considered finding a cave of some sort. The rocky shore had to have one or two within walking distance. But he changed his mind when he saw the troll boy perched on the shore, fishing.
Oh, yes, Gamzee decided. This was a much better idea, he thought.
He thought wrong.
In retrospect, the brown-blooded bastard turned out to be more trouble than he was worth (and really, what kind of suicidal idiot uses flamethrowerkind? That was just a recipe for disaster right there). He didn't even have an interesting enough blood color to be included in Gamzee's art project, and the clown was just about ready to write the whole thing off as a wash, except the low-blooded maggot did one good thing before he croaked, and that was to lead Gamzee to the troll with the miracle blood.
This. This bright-eye-searing-candy-red was just what he'd needed to get over his artist's block. This was going to tie everything together. Divine inspiration, straight from the Mirthful Messiahs. And Gamzee had no doubt this was a sign. How could such a blood color be permitted to exist, except as a miracle, as a special gift, just for Gamzee?
And special gifts should not be wasted, so he stomped down his initial impulse to cut the troll open from belly to neck and squeeze every last drop out of him. He was going to motherfucking cherish this miracle.
So Gamzee released his grip on the troll's collar, and he swayed on his feet, looking ready to fall over. The clown grinned and threw an arm over his shoulders, pulling him close in a way that would have been amicable, save for the claws carefully pressed against his bicep, drawing tiny pinpricks of blood even through the shirt. The red-blooded troll was terrified, but Gamzee ignored it. Terror was always a lowblood's proper response in front of one so vastly his superior.
“We goin' for a stroll now. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?” he asked.
The troll shrank back and shook his head minutely, but he also raised a hand to his face and pressed a sleeve against the cut on his cheek. He did not want to go with Gamzee, did not want to have his blood displayed for all to see, but he did not fight back, either.
“Nah, didn't think so,” Gamzee murmured, and led his miracle troll out the door, stepping over the ugly-blooded corpse.
*
Karkat knew, knew, that there was no possible way this scenario was going to end in anything but gory and painful death. He didn't know the exact details yet, but he was sure they'd make themselves readily apparent as soon as the clown finished toying with him and got down to business.
Until then, he had to put up with the indignity of being led off, his blood on display for all to see and scorn. He could feel eyes peering out the neighboring hives' windows; they had to be. There was no way nobody would notice them—nobody would notice his blood—even if he was trying to hide it behind his hand. He could feel it trickle down to his chin and onto his shirt.
The clown had shifted his grip to Karkat's shoulder, walking behind him and pushing him along. When Karkat stumbled or took a wrong turn, he pressed his claws in—just a little, just enough—and Karkat corrected his course. And he was humming. The fucking clown was humming, and he was off-key and this pissed Karkat off more than anything else for some reason.
They passed the remains of the burned down hive, the smell making Karkat gag a bit. He thought, initially, that that was where the clown was taking him, that maybe, according to some twisted logic, that was going to be the place of his demise. But no, they walked on, beyond the remains and further on.
It was at that point Karkat gave up trying to understand anything. The fuck if he was spending his last living minutes being psychologically terrorized by some indigo fucker with power fantasies. So he stubbornly stared at the ground, doing his best to ignore this situation. He walked, concentrating only on putting on step in front of the other.
That was why it took him awhile to notice when they got to the beach. Walking over sand was difficult, and Karkat's feet kept slipping sideways, unused as they were to the unsteady terrain. When the clown hurried their pace a little, Karkat slipped and would have fallen over, but for the steadying hand on his shoulder. He felt claws sink into his skin deeper and leave tiny gouges, and the clown even ceased humming for a bit, but he was not allowed to stop.
But that slight stutter in the routine allowed Karkat to become aware of his situation once again, and now he was genuinely confused. Was the clown taking him for a swim? Did he plan to drown Karkat? Or feed him to seadwellers? Something yet more sinister, viler than anything Karkat could imagine?
Probably that last one, Karkat thought, knowing his luck.
They walked along the length of the beach for what seemed like hours. It was desolate and wending and Karkat never did get used to walking on the sand, so his calves were burning and his ankles were aching by the time he saw the structure in the distance.
It was a hive.
“Home sweet motherfucking home.”
It was... the clown's hive?
The building was only just far away enough from the water not to get flooded. It looked fairly normal.
Except the wall facing the water was splattered with purple paint, which Karkat soon identified as seadweller blood. The coats were unevenly applied, and Karkat could pick out three different shades, probably applied at different times, given how they were layered.
“HAD TO TEACH THE FISHFACED ASSHOLES A LESSON,” the clown said, after seeing Karkat stare at the purple wall. “Now the rest of 'em know to up and give a motherfucker his space, y'know?”
Karkat did not respond as he was pushed through the hive's front door. As he heard it being shut and locked, he felt slightly ill. He wondered what lesson was being reserved for him. The clown seemed very keen on educating other trolls. Somewhere in his hive, he probably had a colorfully blood-stained textbook on the proper etiquette to be used when interacting with murderous indigo-blooded clown-paint wearing maniacs, and every single person who ever needed it was already dead, because the first lesson was on how you should know all this shit already.
The clown's humming resumed, more cheerful than ever. He released Karkat, probably assuming (quite correctly) that he wouldn't try to escape.
Not that Karkat wasn't considering it. The moment the clown released his sweaty and bloodied shoulder, he started scanning his surroundings, looking for an escape route, for a weapon... something, anything. Heroes in movies and TV shows did it all the time, taking stock of their surroundings and using everything around them to maximum effect, while hatching a daring plan on the fly.
But Karkat had to admit he was not an action movie hero. At most, he'd be the comic relief, if he even qualified as fucking interesting enough for a speaking role. His mind was a blank as he looked about the bare interior of his kidnapper's hive.
“YOU COMING, BRO?” the clown asked, waiting in the threshold of a door impatiently.
Karkat snapped out of his reverie and followed, gaze to the floor. It was happening. Everything would end soon. At least the waiting was over.
He walked through the door and into what Karkat noted with some confusion to be an art workshop. Or maybe an atelier. Whatever the fancy word was that painters used to describe the room where they painted.
There were a few canvases out in the open, only one or two finished, but all done in the same abstract style: splatters and splashes, and blotches, and drips of color in every shade the hemospectrum had to offer. There were no concrete shapes that Karkat could identify, and if there was an order or a logic to anything, it was probably crazy clown logic alone.
There was one half-finished piece in the middle of the room, and Karkat could tell it was unfinished because the colors were a bit too orderly. It was also placed on the ground, for no reason Karkat could imagine, other than the aforementioned crazy clown logic.
“You all gettin' your art appreciatin' on?” the clown asked with a grin, appearing from seemingly nowhere.
Karkat refrained from commenting on the macabre displays, but the clown scarcely took notice.
“Yeah, sometimes I even come across some lucky motherfucker who's got some color I all like, and shit,” he continues, with a wistful look to his unfinished piece. “Motherfucking miracle when that happens.”
Oh, Karkat realized. They weren't all painted with blood. Though that was only marginally reassuring, because he now noticed the clown had a short knife and a wad of bandages in his hands.
“Like right now, you get me, bro? You're the lucky motherfucker today,” he continued, absolutely serious and almost... reverent. “Motherfucking blessed, ya follow?”
“Uh...” Karkat was not sure what the appropriate response was to that. He certainly didn't feel lucky, or blessed, but he couldn't exactly contradict the guy with the knife. Fortunately he didn't seem to be expecting a reply.
“Push up your sleeve,” the clown instructed.
Karkat hurried to do it, and hated himself just a little for his eagerness. He extended his arm, bare to the elbow, and the clown grabbed him by the wrist—surprisingly gentle, all things considered—and pulled it over a table, where an empty paint can was waiting. Then, slowly, he pressed the blade against Karkat's skin and slashed open his forearm in one swift descending motion. The cut was not deep, but it started bleeding immediately. Streaks of bright red slipped down Karkat's arm and into the can, the first drops producing frightfully loud metallic clangs as they hit the bottom.
Karkat was not completely sure how long he stayed like that, perfectly still, being drained, but the clown watched the entire process with a concentration bordering on the obscene. When the flow finally slowed, as his blood began to coagulate and the cut close, Karkat's fingers were cold and numb.
For a second, he was afraid the clown would open up another wound. The pain had just started to ebb and he was feeling lightheaded, so that would not have been pleasant (not that any of the events he'd experienced that night had been pleasant.)
But the clown threw the bandages at Karkat, who caught them awkwardly with his good hand.
“Ablution block's through there,” the clown said, gesturing vaguely towards a door Karkat had not noticed before. “If you all wanna wash up or summat.”
This seemed like a dismissal, because the indigo was not paying Karkat any more attention. Instead, he picked up the can of blood, almost three quarters full with the colorful substance, and moved to the unfinished painting, staring at it thoughtfully, probably planning on how he was going to integrate his new prize into the picture.
Karkat could not help but notice that the clown was not paying him any attention.
In a few clumsy motions, he tied the bandages around his forearm, just enough to cover the wound. The white material almost immediately turned candy red and the pain flared, but Karkat did not notice. He tiptoed (or at least, tried to not stomp like a hoofbeast) towards the other door. The one leading outside.
He managed to leave the room without alerting his host, and almost broke into a jog right there, but he mentally slapped himself for even considering it. He had to be careful and stealthy. Once he was outside, he could run and hide, but not until he was outside. He had to get there first.
He reached the front door, and he was almost dizzy with relief—or with blood loss. But the lock proved to be unexpectedly challenging. Not because it was complicated, but because it was hard to budge. The mechanism was half-rusted (probably something to do with the salty air, or some shit. He didn't really fucking care about the specifics at the moment), and Karkat's hand kept slipping on it, especially since he couldn't use the one on his injured arm.
He'd almost opened it all the way, almost made the stubborn contraption cooperate, when he was grabbed by the back of his collar, spun around and shoved into the door. The back of his head cracked painfully against it, and he was so dazed, he almost missed the angry troll screaming in his face. Almost.
“IS THAT THE MOTHERFUCKING ABLUTION BLOCK, YOU UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF CRAP?”
Karkat slipped to the ground, cradling his bleeding arm to his chest and nursing a brand new headache. Unfortunately, the clown was not going to let this slide so easily. He grabbed Karkat by the throat and pulled him to his feet, knocking him against the door once more. This time, Karkat was prepared, so his upper back took the brunt of it instead of his head.
“Is this the thanks I get, FOR TRYING TO ALL BE NICE AND SHIT?”
It was probably at that point that Karkat became completely sick and tired of the entire situation. Emotionally exhausted, he reverted to his default setting: angry. Not explosively, violently angry like the troll. Karkat's anger had always been inwardly directed for the most part. And now he was working himself up in a regular self-loathing frothing-at-the-mouth fit.
Then why don't you just kill me, Karkat thought, and he belatedly realized that he'd said it out loud, because the clown's expression changed almost completely. Still pissed off—nobody could look at the clown and say he was calm—but now a bit of something else. Surprised, probably. Karkat doubted many people were as fundamentally stupid as Karkat had been just then, to run their mouth at him. The clown released the grip he had on Karkat's neck.
“You say something, motherfucker?” And Karkat almost laughed, because the clown was giving him the opportunity to take it all back, to lower his head and say, 'No, I didn't say anything, sorry, I'll be good', but there was no way that was happening. Karkat had long since passed the point where his self-preservation overrode his incoming flip-out.
“Yeah, yeah I said something, you psychotic fuck. Why. Don't. You. Kill. Me. Did I need to fucking enunciate it for you? We both know this is where we're headed, so why don't we just cut out this coy shit right now and get to the juicy gory bits you've been looking forward to, okay? It's not like dying in fucking pain wasn't the foregone conclusion to the torture porn which I call my life, and let's face it, there's been enough padding already in this shitfest, time for Karkat Vantas to bite it like the mewling little bitch he is.”
What followed were several seconds of utter silence on behalf of the clown, and heavy breathing on behalf of Karkat.
Well, that had to have done it. He was going to die for sure. Good job.
“Who the fuck is Karkat Vantas?” the clown asked eventually.
Karkat's jaw quite literally dropped.
“I am, you fucking ignorant piece of grarrgh...”
Rendered incoherent by rage Karkat slipped to the floor, pulled up his knees and leaned his forehead against them.
Fuck this noise. If the clown was going to kill him, he might as well do it while he was like this. The hell if Karkat was going to make it easier for him.
He stayed completely still for what might have been seconds, but felt like hours. He felt the clown crouch low on the ground in front of him.
“You're one crazy motherfucker, ain't you?” he asked, his tone more sedate than it had been all night.
Karkat raised his head and looked at him. He didn't seem upset. He seemed almost thoughtful. Not the least bit homicidal.
“Man, that weren't part of the plan,” the clown continued in that same calm manner. “You don't motherfucking waste miracles when they all walk into your life, know what I mean, brother?”
Karkat did not know. Most of what the clown was saying sounded like gibberish to him. But he was too exhausted to attempt a reply.
“Get on your motherfucking feet, if you ain't gonna take care of that, I am,” he said, pointing to Karkat's bleeding arm.
Karkat hoped that 'take care of it' wasn't some sort of code for chopping it off, but he had no grounds to complain when the clown was sounding all... reasonable. He got up to his feet and swayed, still light-headed, but the clown grabbed him by the upper arm—perhaps a bit too roughly—and steadied him. He then guided Karkat away from the door.
To his surprise, the clown was leading him to the ablution block.
“Gamzee Makara, by the way,” he said out of the blue.
“...What?”
“My name, motherfucker,” the clown said, a smirk in the corner of his lips. “Figure it ain't right what I know yours when you don't know mine.”
*
It was almost uncanny how different the clown—Gamzee—acted after that incident. He cleaned Karkat's wound and dressed it in new bandages, and he was almost personable during the entire process. He even made Karkat wash the blood off his face, though the cut on his cheek was already closed and starting to heal. It was all a bit surreal, and incredibly creepy. It felt transgressive to let someone who was not even a friend, much less a quadrant, take care of his wounds, and he had to fight the urge to pull his arm back the whole time, but the entire thing was a lot less unpleasant than he expected. Karkat began to truly believe that he would not only live, but eventually be let go.
But then Gamzee gave Karkat's arm an appraising look, and said,
“We'll have to all cut the other one open next time,” and Karkat's vascular pumping bladder sank.
As always, Karkat was his own worst enemy. He should not have for a moment let himself hope, because shit like that always lead to this kind of disappointment.
“Man, this all made me motherfucking hungry,” Gamzee remarked apropos of nothing, and wandered out of the ablution block.
Karkat was slightly perturbed, because he couldn't imagine poking at someone's oozing wounds would have done wonders for his appetite, but then, to each his own.
He wasn't sure what to do, or what Gamzee expected him to do, but another escape attempt likely would not go over well, especially since it was clear the clown had every intention of keeping him alive. So he stood awkwardly in place, trying to decide if he was supposed to stay where he was or follow, but his decision was made for him.
“You coming, motherfucker?” Gamzee's voice rang after a while, and Karkat scurried after him.
The food preparation block was just as sparse as the rest of the hive that Karkat had seen so far. There was a large table in the middle, but only a refrigerifying unit and a few food storage containers in a corner. Gamzee was already halfway through the process of making a sandwich, which seemed to involve splattering a slice of yeast-based nutritional loaf with several varieties of grub sauce, and adding a thin pre-processed meat square before slapping another slice of the nutritional loaf on top.
It didn't look very appetizing, but between the fact that Karkat had lost a fair amount of blood and that he hadn't had the opportunity to eat anything that night, he suddenly felt ravenous.
Gamzee took a large bite out of the sandwich and was happily chewing before he noticed Karkat.
“Oh, fuck, I ain't all getting my host on proper over here, am I, motherfucker?” Gamzee said. “Here, I'll just make 'nother one.”
He leaned over and held the sandwich out to Karkat.
Karkat eyed it hungrily. There was greasepaint where Gamzee had bitten into it, and there was also the fact that it was already bitten into, but Karkat had no way of knowing how long he'd be there or when the clown would remember to feed him next, so he only delayed for a moment before snatching the sandwich.
In three bites it was gone, before Gamzee had even finished making the next one. The indigo did not notice however. He'd started humming again, as he splattered grub sauce everywhere. Karkat couldn't help thinking that Gamzee's food preparation was like his art: messy and incomprehensible. Why did one sandwich need so much grub sauce? It ended up soggy and barely edible.
He did seem to derive a lot of enjoyment out of the process. A disturbingly gleeful sort of enjoyment. Karkat tried not to watch too closely.
In the end Gamzee made an entire stack of sandwiches, each more disgusting than the last. He pushed half the stack across the table in Karkat's direction (apparently the clown had an aversion to crockery), and Karkat saw fit not to insult his host. He ate them all, even though after his hunger was satisfied, it was more a chore than anything, and he had to be careful not to retch as he chewed on the soggy mess.
Gamzee certainly seemed to be enjoying his sandwiches, though. He ate them all with a huge smile on his face, staring off into space. He also chewed with his mouth open, and while Karkat didn't like to think of himself as prim, he did have to wonder if Gamzee's lusus had ever thought to teach him even the most basic manners.
Though, now that he thought about it, he didn't really see any evidence of a lusus' presence in the hive, no traces of fur, or scratched floors, or destroyed furniture. Perhaps it was too large to fit inside the hive, but he hadn't seen any signs of a lusus outdoors, either. If Gamzee weren't an unstable, untalented indigo-blooded clown who didn't know the proper use of the word “all” and went around abducting people, Karkat would be a bit concerned for him. Just a tiny bit.
As Gamzee was finishing eating, his eyes suddenly went wide. He made a sound in the back of his throat, like he'd just realized the secret to the universe, dropped his sandwich and dashed out the door of the food preparation block.
This made Karkat genuinely curious, so he followed. Gamzee was headed to his little art studio, and Karkat suddenly got the dreadful feeling he was going to see the artist at work.
As he got there, Karkat immediately regretted following.
The reason the unfinished canvas was on the floor, Karkat found, was because of Gamzee's technique, which seemed to involve dripping and splattering paint from above straight onto the canvas.
Gamzee took the can of Karkat's blood, the top of which had already started coagulating and was emanating an unpleasant smell, and dipped his hand in up to the wrist. He then flicked it over the canvas. A few darker clots hid the surface with a squelching sound, but brighter red droplets rapped against the canvas like raindrops against a hive roof.
There was no method to the pattern. Gamzee would randomly snap his wrist in different directions, but he seemed uninterested in keeping the colors even. One corner was drenched in Karkat's blood, while another had only a couple of droplets.
After a few minutes of this activity, Gamzee stopped suddenly. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were wild, but the smile on his face was satisfied, and maybe a little manic.
Karkat thought he was done, but Gamzee extended his hand over the canvas and tightened his fist. He dug claws into his own palm, and a few drops of indigo slipped between his fingers and fell over the corner where the red blood was most abundant. The colors blended together at the edges.
Finally, Gamzee turned his head to Karkat, apparently surprised to see him there, and Karkat flinched back slightly. But the clown's smile returned, more viscerally satisfied than before.
“COME CLOSER, BROTHER,” he said. “Miracles need to be motherfucking witnessed.”
Karkat did not really want to come any closer to the gory display, but his feet moved of their own volition until he was staring down at the canvas.
The colors were making him dizzy. Or maybe it was seeing so much of his blood at once, mocking him. Karkat seriously hoped Gamzee was not looking for a review, because if he had to open his mouth, he'd probably vomit all over the canvas, and while that would have summed up his opinion of it neatly, it would probably not be conducive to keeping his limbs intact.
But Gamzee only started laughing, like he'd just heard the best fucking joke ever.
*
It was late.
Or maybe it wasn't, and Karkat's biological clock was fucked up by the exhaustion which had been building steadily ever since the forced march along the beach. Either way, Karkat found himself stifling yawns as he watched Gamzee put the finishing touches on his painting. It was uncanny how much attention and finesse went into producing something which was little more than colors spewed on a canvas.
Karkat would have given anything to be able to crawl into his recuperacoon, have a nice, long sleep and wake up the next night in his own hive, alone, free to live the rest of his miserable life without casting eyes on another clown. At this point, however, he was willing to accept being locked up in a closet for the day, or whatever else Gamzee had in mind for his sleeping situation.
If he had anything in mind at all. Gamzee didn't seem like he spent much time worrying about logistics; more like the the murder-as-you-go-along type.
“Yeah, I feel ya, brother,” Gamzee said as Karkat was in the middle of a yawn, making him choke in startlement.
Gamzee rose to his feet and stretched, arms extended over his head, and then relaxed, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly. Then he picked up a rag and wiped his hands, though not very successfully; they still remained mostly red.
“We best be getting our rest on.”
He left the room without another word, and Karkat really had no choice but to follow. It rankled him, but even if he had the presence of mind to come up with an escape plan, leaving the hive during daylight would have been suicide.
Gamzee walked down an oddly-angled hallway with three doors. He walked through the first one, and into his respite block. Karkat followed him, though he felt sort of awkward doing so. Gamzee's respite block seemed like an uncomfortable glimpse into his psyche.
It was the clown posters. The creepy, creepy clown posters. Karkat found them sort of upsetting, though he couldn't put his finger on why. And there were horns littering the ground, except for the ones gathered in a pile in the corner, as well as soda bottles and juggling clubs. There was a table with a husktop next to another door and a recuperacoon in the opposite corner.
Gamzee had stopped in the middle of the respite block, blinking blearily as he stared at the recuperacoon. It was probably just now occurring to him that he did not have a spare for his “guest”.
“Sorry, man, don't got a motherfucking 'coon for you,” he said, confirming Karkat's suspicions. “Now, don't make that face, motherfucker. Not like I motherfucking meant to leave you high and dry. I just didn't think ahead, is all.”
Karkat didn't think he was making any face at all, but that was a moot point.
“No, I suppose you didn't mean to. I've only known you for one night, and I can already tell thinking ahead is not exactly in your repertoire,” he muttered. It was only after he'd already said it that he realized he probably shouldn't start pointing out character flaws to someone who still quite literally had blood on his hands.
The clown scowled, but it was not the same murderous expression as before.
“If you're so smart, motherfucker, what do you suggest?” Gamzee retorted.
Karkat bit back whatever annoyed reply he had ready, and made his tone sound as reasonable as he could.
“Look, just take some sopor from your recuperacoon and put it in an ablution trap, or something. It won't be pretty, but it's better than sleeping dry,” Karkat said.
Gamzee's expression turned from annoyed to thoughtful.
“Huh, guess that'll motherfucking work,” he said. “You ain't half stupid, for such a crazy motherfucker,” he added (quite unnecessarily, in Karkat's view).
“Depressingly, that's probably the biggest fucking compliment anyone's ever given me,” Karkat replied.
“Naw, man, naw. I motherfucking told you, didn't I? You got motherfucking miracles in your veins,” Gamzee said, suddenly incensed.
“Alright, second biggest,” Karkat said quickly, partly because he didn't want to annoy Gamzee, and partly because he didn't want to hear anymore of his goddamn stupid ramblings. “Still fucking depressing.”
Gamzee shrugged vaguely. He looked about as tired and Karkat felt, and without a perceived attack on his religious beliefs, didn't seem inclined to argue.
They resolved the sopor situation as Karkat had suggested, and despite the fact that it was cramped and uncomfortable and not the least bit like a recuperacoon, Karkat fell asleep right away. If he had any dreams that day, he was too tired to remember when he woke up again.
*
Karkat woke up confused and sore, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. It took him a few moments to recall the events of the previous night, and when he did, he groaned and fell back in the sopor, regretting that he'd even woken up.
But the ablution trap was uncomfortable and the sopor slime was starting to go off—probably because Gamzee hadn't changed it in a while—so Karkat crawled out and stretched awkwardly (though Gamzee's ablution trap was much larger than Karkat's, it still didn't allow for much leg room). His slimy clothes stuck to his skin, but even without that, his shirt was encrusted with blood and stiff.
He sat on the edge of the ablution trap, pushed up his sleeve and checked the bandages on his arm. The cut no longer hurt, so he carefully started to unravel the bandages. They stuck to the scab, and he had to pull quickly to tug them loose, but the cut had been thin and precise, and was healing well. He could probably do without bandages, especially since they were slimy now, anyway.
When he looked up, he saw a plate full of sandwiches by the door (so the clown did own tableware), along with a note, written in indigo.
wEnT oUt FoR a BiT, bE bAcK sOoN
hOnK
Karkat had no idea what to make of the note (...honk? What?), so he shifted his attention to the sandwiches. If he thought they were inedible fresh, they were even harder to keep down after sitting out for a while. The grub sauce on the five sandwiches had congealed into a substance not unlike cement, and Karkat hardly got through one before he gave up and threw the rest down the load gaper.
Eating to keep up his strength was one thing, but clown cuisine would probably kill him. How could Gamzee eat this shit? Did he actually think this was good food? Didn't he know how to make something else? Even Karkat could blunder his way around a food preparation block and accidentally make something which would probably qualify as “nutritious”.
How old was Gamzee, anyway? Karkat had assumed he was maybe a sweep older, going by how much taller he was, but maybe he was older and his growth had been stunted by his terrible nutritional intake. He was certainly a skinny bastard, for all his wiry strength.
Where the hell was his lusus, and why wasn't he nagging Gamzee into eating right? The crab was always after Karkat to eat and wash and get some fresh air, and even if Karkat couldn't stand the constant griefing, he certainly appreciated it. Didn't Gamzee's lusus do the same?
And where was he right now, anyway? What pressing errand did he need to run at this very moment? What, were there some trolls in the vicinity he hadn't kidnapped yet? Or maybe he was only “out” on a recreational murder spree?
...And why the hell was Karkat giving that stupid clown so much thought?
*
As it happened, Gamzee was not out on a recreational murder spree. And while Karkat was giving Gamzee a lot of thought, simultaneously, Gamzee was giving Karkat the same.
Most of these thoughts were disjointed religious ruminations, except for the part which was about Gamzee wanting to prove to Karkat that he was not as inept as the little troll seemed to believe. It was a matter of principle, after all. He was highblood. He couldn't for a moment prove himself inadequate to any task. Shit like that got trolls of his station killed.
The first part of that plan was to find Karkat's hive again. This proved a bit difficult, because Karkat's hive was surrounded by numerous others, and Gamzee hadn't exactly been paying attention to its exact location the first time he visited; he'd been more interested in catching up to the brown-blood.
Still, once he got to the burned-out hive which had once belonged to the brown-blood, he managed to trace his steps back somewhat.
He just looked for the hive with the front door wide open. Not many like that in the area.
The corpse in the doorway was gone, dragged off by some diurnal scavenger, most likely. Only a stinking pool of rotting blood remained to mark its former location. Gamzee stepped over it, holding his breath.
Next, he tracked down Karkat's textile storage subunit. He took out a bunch of clothes and heaped them on the floor, then figured he'd put them all in a neat package so they'd only occupy one card. He searched the back of the subunit and ran across curious teal box. Opening it up, he found a gray coat. It looked a bit too elaborate, jarring with Karkat's style; closer to something a flarper would wear. Was Karkat into that shit?
Gamzee had taken a look around his respite block, and had seen no indication of this. He did see plenty of posters for bad romantic comedies, though. Karkat definitely seemed to be into those.
Either way, Gamzee bundled up the clothes and wrapped them in the coat, and captchalogued the whole mess. On the way out, he poked around Karkat's food preparation block, but couldn't find any Faygo in the refrigerifying unit. Clearly this was a huge oversight and he'd have to introduce the miracle-blooded troll to the wicked elixir as soon as possible.
He made his way back to his own hive, enjoying the evening breeze. He looked out to the ocean as he walked, but there was no sign of the old goat, and his prolonged absence was really starting to bum Gamzee out, even if the lusus was not very good company when he did bother to appear.
*
Karkat stood shivering in the ablution chamber for a long time, trying to decide what to do. The door did not have a lock, but there was something blocking it. Going back to sleep was not an option, and sitting around in sopor-crusted clothing was deeply unpleasant. Not to mention he felt slightly nauseous, probably because of the sandwich he'd consumed.
It would just perfect, just fucking perfect if Gamzee forgot all about him and left him here in this ablution chamber to rot. Just the final ass blister on the putrid descent into wretchedness his life had taken: dying propped up by the load gaper, alone, miserable and crusty all over.
And he didn't even care if Gamzee came back. Oh, no, now he was committed. He was going to play this thing through. He was going to sit down and die like the animal he was, unnoticed and unmourned.
Except just as Karkat was working him into a proper self-loathing fervor, he was interrupted by the sound of something heavy being dragged just outside the door. It opened and Gamzee loomed in the doorway, grinning from ear to ear.
“Evenin', motherfucker.”
Karkat had never found deja vu so eerie.
Gamzee threw a bundle to the floor, and it took Karkat a few moments to realize it was full of his own clothes.
“I take it this means I'll be here for a while?” Karkat said.
Gamzee shrugged, still grinning.
“Shit, motherfucker, I dunno. Just planning for the motherfucking eventuality. Ain't that what you all were complaining 'bout the other night?”
“...thanks.”
“Could stand to sound at least a bit more motherfucking grateful.”
“Oh, thank you,” Karkat burst, “thank you so much for your fucking hospitality, even if technically you kidnapped and terrorized me, thank you so much for feeding me, and putting me up for the day and fetching me clothes, even if your shitty food preparation skills nearly gave me food poisoning, and your fucking ablution trap gave me leg cramps, and you probably had to break into my hive for the second fucking time in two nights to get my things. No, no, other than those minor fucking issues, everything's been fucking peachy.”
Gamzee's smile faded somewhat.
“Didn't have to motherfucking break in or nothin', door was open,” he said.
“Oh, so the list of your failings is one item shorter! You think that fucking improves the situation, you nooksniffing idiot?”
And Karkat regretted the words as soon as they came out, because Gamzee's whole body tensed and his face settled into that expression he always got when he alternated between the oily slick tones of cold anger, and the unrelenting enraged screaming.
“You motherfucking forgot WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO, MOTHERFUCKER? You think you got anything TO MOTHERFUCKING COMPLAIN ABOUT?”
He advanced towards Karkat, who retreated a few steps until the backs of his thighs were against the edge of the ablution trap, and leaned back wishing he had more room to escape. Gamzee caught Karkat by the front of his shirt and pulled him properly upright, bringing their faces close enough together that Karkat thought he was going to get his face bitten off.
“I ain't got the motherfucking TIME OR PATIENCE to deal with your MOTHERFUCKING SHIT. I had a motherfucking SHITTY WEEK, and I ain't letting you ruin it JUST WHEN IT ALL WAS TURNING AROUND. This all getting through, motherfucker?”
Karkat nearly gaped. He was having a bad week? He was not being held hostage in someone's ablution chamber. He was not being terrorized and bled out by some maniac, and for that matter, he was not a freak of nature unfit to even appear on the hemospectrum.
“And what THE MOTHERFUCK is wrong with my food?” he continued, though he didn't look like he was expecting a reply.
But Karkat was shocked enough to actually answer that last question.
“You're fucking kidding, right? How much grub sauce can one person possibly need on a sandwich? It's a slice of yeast-based nutritional loaf, it isn't one of your fucking paintings. Show some restraint.”
Gamzee released Karkat and looked around the ablution chamber, spotting the plate he'd left for Karkat.
“But you motherfucking ate them,” he pointed out.
“I ate one, because I was hungry, and it made me feel sick. I threw the rest down the load gaper, like the shit it was.”
“Aw, motherfucking hell, I think some a that grub sauce mighta been kinda old,” Gamzee said, scratching the back of his neck thoughtfully.
Karkat tried not to gag. Grub sauce had a pretty long shelf life, but if it went off, it could be close to lethal to anyone who ate it.
“Please tell me sandwiches aren't the only thing you can make,” Karkat said.
“Naw, I can... I can bake some pretty motherfucking sweet pies, too,” Gamzee said, shifting his weight from one foot to another.
“So you've been surviving on sandwiches and pies this whole time?”
“Faygo, too.”
“What the fuck is Faygo?” Gamzee opened his mouth to answer. “Nevermind, I already regret asking,” Karkat cut him off. “We'll figure something out, but after you get rid of that expired crap.”
“You're pretty motherfucking bossy for being a mutant-blooded freak,” Gamzee snapped.
“And you're pretty fucking helpless for being such a cold-blooded asshole,” Karkat shot back.
Gamzee had no reply to that, and Karkat just realized he'd hit upon the most efficient way to communicate. Apparently, nobody had ever tried being brutally honest with him until now. Gamzee had no idea how to react.
“I'll go and clean out the motherfucking kitchen,” the clown said resentfully and walked out of the ablution chamber, dragging his feet like a petulant grub who'd been ordered by his lusus to go to sleep because it was past dawn.
Karkat unraveled the bundle of clothes and noticed they were wrapped in the godawful coat Terezi had sent him back when she was trying to get him into flarping—which he refused to do because, one, he did not play games for girls, and two, it was obviously a transparent ploy to find out his blood color, probably through some “accidental” injury. Terezi was not as clever as she thought she was, and he was not as stupid as he let on. She'd probably had Kanaya make it for him, which was a shame, because there was no fucking way in this life or the next he was going to wear it now, on account of his not being a pretentious douchebag.
It was mortifying, actually, that Gamzee even knew he owned such a coat, though Karkat didn't know why he cared about the opinion of a guy who went around dressed like a mentally unbalanced clown. A fancy flarping costume was downright conservative by comparison.
He picked out a fresh change of clothes and, after emptying the ablution trap of the thin layer of sopor on the bottom, washed up.
After getting dressed, he gathered the clothes from the floor and bundled them in the coat again. He wasn't sure what to do with them yet, or if Gamzee would let him store them somewhere, so he left them in a corner of the ablution chamber. He was not going to store his clothes to his sylladex, when the stupid encryption modus would just make it a pain to recover them.
He arrived in the food preparation block to witness Gamzee kneeling on the floor, rifling through storage units while muttering under his breath. There were two stacks of cans on either side of him, presumably separated by freshness. One stack was noticeably larger.
Gamzee must have taken out nearly everything out of the storage unit, because he was leaning in, half-disappearing in the darkness of the waist-high box.
“Are all those cans grub sauce?” Karkat asked as he approached.
Gamzee let out something which sounded a lot like a startled shriek. He lifted his head out of the storage unit, but his too-long horn cracked against the top of it with a sound which made even Karkat, with all his horn envy, wince in sympathy.
“Motherfucking OW,” Gamzee yelled, hands going to his hornbed and rubbing. This only succeeded in tangling his unkempt hair further. “Trying to kill a motherfucker here?”
“I'm sorry, I thought you heard me,” Karkat yelled in return. “The fuck kind of troll are you, if any asshole can trot right up to you without you hearing?”
“The kind with a motherfucking headache right now.”
Karkat couldn't believe he was doing this, but he went up to Gamzee anyway. The clown looked at Karkat askance, but didn't seem alarmed or about to flip out again.
“Here, let me see what you managed to do to yourself,” Karkat said, suppressing the urge to add you empty-panned bulgelicker.
Gamzee scowled, but sat down, crossed his legs and let Karkat take a look at his head.
Karkat pressed two fingers down against his scalp, through the mess of hair, at the midpoint between Gamzee's horns.
“Does this hurt?” he asked.
“No.”
“How about this?” Karkat asked, and flicked the top of one horn.
“Yeah, but not too motherfucking much.”
“Then you managed not to fracture your horns. You'll live. Or at least you won't die of sepsis from a fracture. Congratulations, I guess.”
Gamzee snorted.
“Who motherfucking taught you to do that?” he asked.
“Nobody. I saw it in a movie once,” Karkat replied.
He sat on the floor and inspected the cans in the larger stack. They were all expired, just as Karkat had dreaded. Some had passed their due dates sweeps ago. Had Gamzee never cleaned out his food preparation block? Judging by the cobwebs, probably not.
“Oh, yeah,” Gamzee said suddenly. “I remember, you had all those motherfucking posters on your walls.”
“Well, I'm sorry, not all of us can be into nightmarish representations of circus freaks,” Karkat said. “Some of us have real fucking interests.”
“Wasn't taking a motherfucking shot at you, bro,” Gamzee said.
Karkat almost asked why not. He knew how shitty his own tastes were, he expected to be taken to task for this. But he sure as hell was not going to dwell on the question, so he changed the subject.
“There's a lot of grub sauce here,” Karkat said. “Did you clean out the refrigerifying unit?”
“Nah, nothin' in there stays for too motherfucking long,” Gamzee said. “It's where I keep my wicked elixir.”
Karkat had no idea what that meant, so he got up, went to the refrigerifying unit and opened the door.
“What the fuck are you talking about? There's nothing but soda in here,” Karkat said, slightly perplexed.
Gamzee grinned and nodded.
*
It was about midnight when they finished clearing out every last can of expired food, and Gamzee gathered them all in a corner, building what looked to Karkat like a heap of cans, but Gamzee claimed was a castle. A sense of whimsy could be a terrible thing.
But this kept Gamzee occupied while Karkat tried to prepare a proper meal, or at least the kind that would be far less likely to result in vomiting and/or death. Luckily, there had been a functional nutrition warming plate and a pan somewhere in that mess, and there was still a considerable amount of food left that was perfectly safe to eat. Karkat had double-checked, even if Gamzee insisted he could read the motherfucking labels. And true enough, he hadn't messed up. Karkat had no idea why he worried, though.
Actually, Karkat had no idea why he worried about Gamzee. What did he care if there was one less indigo in the world to boss around lowbloods and cull other trolls on a whim? How was that any loss from Karkat's perspective?
If the bastard dropped dead this very moment, wouldn't that be a good thing?
Karkat looked over his shoulder at Gamzee, who was trying to build a spire for the castle by putting smaller cans on top of larger ones, and at the look of serious concentration as he carefully worked, trying hard to keep the cans from falling over. When he wasn't in murder mode, he was pretty damn...
...pretty damn...
...pitiableohgodfuckingdamnit NO.
He was not developing red feelings for that asshole. He was Karkat Vantas, not a fucking rom-com character, some idiotic conciliatory ingenu who went pale for the first unstable lunatic he came across. He was not the cliché. It wasn't him.
If he was going to be a cliché, he was going to be the caliginous kind. Yeah, that's it, he was going to be the resentful victim who hated his aggressor so much that he found heretofore unknown depths of resourcefulness and eventually, through a string of unlikely but humorous incidents, became a worthy kismesis and evened the score.
Except he didn't really hate Gamzee in any romantic sense of the word, which made things a hell lot more inconvenient, because he sure as hell didn't want a moirallegiance with him. This was not how he pictured filling a quadrant, and Gamzee was definitely who he pictured filling it with. NOT. Not who he pictured filling it with. That's what he meant the first time.
Fuck. He was blushing now. He was sure of it. This was mortifying.
Did Gamzee notice? No, he was too busy trying to figure out how to build a can bridge. His can castle was turning into a can town. What a fucking ridiculous notion. He actually pitied this guy?
Yes. And he was making him lunch. Fuck fuck fuck. This was serious.
“Smells pretty motherfucking good,” Gamzee said, startling Karkat.
“Uh, yeah,” Karkat mumbled, and flipped the sizzling meat to cook on the other side. He stared down in the pan with undue attention.
Gamzee came up and leaned over Karkat's shoulder, inhaling deeply.
“And it don't look half motherfucking bad, neither,” he added.
Karkat tried not to get too distracted by Gamzee's proximity, but this was difficult while he was also trying to suppress a new-found urge to turn around and... and nuzzle him. Fucking hormones. Now all he could think about were piles. This was ridiculous. Why did his mind have to go down that road in the first place?
Gamzee wandered off again, and Karkat quietly sighed in relief.
What a mess. Just when Karkat thought the universe had run out of ways to sabotage his life any further, it pulled shit like this. Unbelievable.
Gamzee took to the food with unbridled enthusiasm. It wasn't the best Karkat had ever made, but after just two nights of Gamzee's disgusting sandwiches it tastes like a feast—he could only imagine how it tasted after a whole lifetime.
Gamzee, in turn, handed Karkat a bottle of that soda he was obsessed with, Faygo. Karkat gave it a try and admitted that it was okay. Maybe not the best he'd ever drank, like Gamzee claimed, but it washed down the meal nicely.
“Motherfucking miracle on a plate,” Gamzee said between bites—and he still chewed with his mouth open, and that still annoyed Karkat, but it was an endearing sort of annoyance, much to his own disgust.
“Glad you like it,” Karkat mumbled in return.
After finishing lunch, Gamzee pushed his plate away and bounded off, but Karkat called him back.
“Hold on, what are you going to do with those?” he asked, pointing to the expired cans in the corner.
“Dunno,” Gamzee shrugged. “Motherfucking throw them out, I guess.”
Karkat was relieved he didn't plan to keep them and make Can Town a permanent fixture in the food preparation block, but Gamzee made no move towards them. Karkat stared at him expectantly.
“C'mon, bro, you want me to do that now?” Gamzee whined. “Don't I need to all let the motherfucking digestive juices work for a while, or some shit, before I up and put in work?”
“I guess,” Karkat said begrudgingly. “Are you in a hurry somewhere?”
“Nah, was just going to the motherfucking beach, keep an eye out for the old goat,” Gamzee shrugged. “Ain't seen him in a while.”
“Oh,” was the only thing Karkat said. So Gamzee did have a lusus, out there, somewhere.
Gamzee gave Karkat a speculative look, and tilted his head slightly towards the door.
“You all wanna come along, bro?” Gamzee asked slowly. He seemed hesitant; Karkat couldn't imagine it was for any other reason than because he feared another escape attempt.
“Sure,” Karkat said, shrugging. He tried appearing nonchalant, but didn't have any delusions of actually having succeeded.
*
It was a clear night, with Alternia's pink moon waxing and the green one waning. It was warm, even hours after sunset, but there was a pleasant breeze coming off the ocean.
Gamzee started wandering the beach with his hands in his pockets, his shoulder hunched, and once in awhile he looked off onto the water. Karkat fell into step next to him, easy to do when he was walking slowly and stopping frequently.
It seemed kind of obvious in retrospect than Gamzee would have an aquatic lusus; he was about as high as you could get on the hemospectrum before you had to start growing gills. But by the stricken expression Gamzee had every time his eyes scanned the horizon and failed to find what he was looking for, this was not a fortunate situation.
Karkat tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about anything, actually, but whenever he made the attempt, his mind always seemed to gravitate back to Gamzee and how pitiable he was, and that was a train of thought Karkat always derailed before the impulse to hug the clown got too strong.
The silence didn't help. It was exceedingly awkward, though perhaps only on Karkat's part. Gamzee didn't seem to notice much. Karkat couldn't really figure out why he'd even been invited along.
Karkat found himself wondering if his own lusus had returned from wherever he'd been off to. Gamzee hadn't mentioned running into the crab, and he didn't have any injuries, either, to indicate anything like that happening. But then, maybe it hadn't been much of a fight...? No, that was absurd. Karkat had seen his lusus take on scarier things than a lanky adolescent troll in face paint.
Still, what would the crab make of the blood and of his ward's disappearance? Would he come to seek Karkat out? Would he find Karkat? Could he find Karkat?
At any rate, the crab would be distressed by his disappearance. Which, on some level, was a pleasing thought. Let the crab see how it felt, when someone just up and disappeared on you for days, gone who knows where and for who knows how long. But it felt unnecessarily mean to make his lusus worry like that. For all Karkat knew, the crab had legitimate reasons to disappear. Not that getting kidnapped wasn't a legitimate reason as well, but staying when an opportunity for escape presented itself made it iffy.
He really could escape just then. Gamzee was distraught, probably not in the mood for a chase. But then again, Gamzee knew where he lived. It wouldn't really be much of a chase, he could just casually walk to Karkat's hive and bash his head in. For all of Karkat's emotional upheaval, he didn't think Gamzee reciprocated his new-found pale crush.
At some point during the walk, Gamzee plopped down on the sand, facing the ocean. Karkat sat down as well, if only to shake out the sand from his shoes.
Gamzee took out two Faygos and handed one to Karkat.
“Thanks, bro,” Gamzee said, bewildering Karkat.
“For what?” he asked, accepting the soda.
Gamzee shrugged.
*
“Weren't no motherfucking miracles tonight,” Gamzee said suddenly, after another awkward stretch of silence.
“Does your lusus drop in rarely enough that it qualifies as a miracle?” Karkat asked.
Gamzee didn't reply at first.
“Wouldn't be so motherfucking worried, but he ain't been back in a while.”
“How long a while?”
“Dunno. Three, four motherfucking perigees?”
Karkat did a double-take.
“And this sort of thing is normal with your lusus?”
“Shit, I wouldn't call it normal, motherfucker,” Gamzee shrugged. “He ain't never been away for two perigees at a time, that I can remember.”
“Two perigees is still a lot of fucking time between visits.”
“That so?” Gamzee said airily, staring off into the ocean.
“Yes, yes it is,” Karkat said firmly.
He wanted to say more, something to make things better, but he just knew that if he opened his mouth, something embarrassing would fall out, like are you feeling okay or do you want to talk about it, something just a bit too pale to say to someone who was still effectively a stranger without sounding a bit creepy.
“Ain't so motherfucking bad,” Gamzee said unprompted, and Karkat wondered if he'd said what he was thinking out loud again. But no, he was certain he hadn't this time.
“Uh, it isn't?” Karkat said when it was clear Gamzee was expecting this to be a conversation.
“Always been like this, you know?” Gamzee continued. “I ain't never known different, 'cept maybe when I was still a motherfucking grub. You get motherfucking used to it. Ain't no big deal.”
“You've done well enough on your own,” Karkat offered, even though he felt it was a big deal and a feelings jam would make Gamzee feel much better. But Karkat was not Gamzee's moirail, and it would have been exceedingly inappropriate (and possibly lethal) to push for a feelings jam at that moment.
Gamzee made no further attempt at conversation.
*
Gamzee's lusus made no appearance while they were on their walk, and Gamzee's morose mood did not improve. He made his way back to his hive, Karkat trailing after him, and surprisingly, went right up to the cans, storing them to his sylladex one at a time. Karkat couldn't make sense of Gamzee's sylladex, seeing only a blur of color and motion, but he must have had a considerable number of cards, because soon enough, the kitchen was completely empty of the cans.
Gamzee returned to the beach, much to Karkat's confusion. He stood just near the water and expelled the cans one at a time from his sylladex. They were hurled violently through the air.
“Won't the seadwellers be pissed?” Karkat asked at one point.
“Nah,” Gamzee shrugged. “What're the finfaced motherfuckers gonna say to me?”
Karkat threw a glance to the side of Gamzee's hive, splattered with violet blood, and silently concluded that they wouldn't get the opportunity to say much of anything at all, even if they made the attempt. Besides which, the activity seemed to be picking Gamzee's spirits up.
“Didja see how far that motherfucker went?” Gamzee whooped when a can was flung especially hard over the water and skipped on the surface three times before disappearing beneath the waves.
This went on for some time, until Gamzee accidentally threw a Faygo bottle out.
“Aw, shit,” he muttered, looking comically crestfallen.
Karkat started snickering, but turned it into a cough when Gamzee turned to glare at him.
“Motherfucking sick of this, anyway,” Gamzee muttered and turned on his heel to go back to his hive.
Karkat would have followed, except at that moment, a seadweller saw fit to make his appearance, emerging from the waves with a dramatic cape and a harpoon rifle. And Karkat would have almost been impressed by that entrance, except... well, this guy had “douchebag” written all over him.
He scowled at Karkat.
“You! Landdweller! You fuckin' responsible for this?” he asked in the most godawful annoying nasal voice Karkat could imagine, made worse by his weird seadweller accent. It was like there was no aspect of this guy that wasn't infused with douchebagginess.
The seadweller was waving a can in the hand not holding a rifle.
“What's it to you?” Karkat shot back.
The seadweller sneered and advanced on Karkat, who stood his ground just to be contrary. It was a stupid decision on his part, but the douchebag was pissing him off in ways Karkat had never been pissed off before.
“Get your prissy ass back in the motherfucking water, Ampora!” Gamzee yelled, having finally taken notice of the going-ons behind him.
“Shoulda guessed you were friends with that fuckin' ecological disaster,” the douchebag spat at Karkat as he looked at Gamzee. “Stop throwin' your shit in the ocean!”
“Lots of worse motherfucking stuff in the ocean already, brother,” Gamzee growled back, in a way to imply that such a category included the seadweller.
Karkat wisely backed off from the two. No reason he should get hurt in someone else's argument—or get his shoes splattered with blood when Gamzee did this douchebag in.
The seadweller pulled himself up to his full height—which wasn't very impressive when compared to Gamzee—and bared his teeth.
“Turn around now, motherfucker,” Gamzee warned low. “I ain't in the mood for your motherfucking games.”
“Who's playin'?” Ampora shot back, leveling his rifle at Gamzee and raising his chin haughtily.
The douchebag was blackflirting, Karkat realized suddenly. With Gamzee. Who was definitely not blackflirting back. But the seadweller seemed to have no concept of how off the mark he really was, and there was no way this situation was going to end well.
And sure enough, Gamzee was having none of it. Moving faster than either Karkat or Ampora expected, he knocked the rifle aside, sending it flying into the sand, grabbed the douchebag by the neck, and lifted him clear off the ground.
“I told you, motherfucker, I TOLD YOU. I told you to turn around AND GO BACK TO PLAYING WITH YOUR MOTHERFUCKING FISH. Was I not clear, motherfucker, OR ARE YOUR EARS FULL OF MOTHERFUCKING SEAWEED?”
Ampora was flailing weakly, his hands scratching at Gamzee's, leaving indigo gouges in his skin. But Gamzee seemed completely oblivious to the pain, and Ampora was making loud choking sounds.
“Gamzee,” Karkat called out, but the clown was in murder mode again, and deaf to anything else.
“Now you gotta come AND PISS ME OFF, so I'm gonna teach you A MOTHERFUCKING LESSON about leaving a motherfucker ALONE.”
He released Ampora, and the seadweller dropped to his knees, wheezing. But before he could catch his breath, Gamzee grabbed the ends of his scarf and pulled them in opposite directions, cutting off his air yet again.
Karkat was jarred from his mute horror at that moment. No matter how huge of a douchebag Ampora was, he didn't deserve to die just because he had bad timing and the social grace of a lobotomized crawfish.
Before he could stop and think about it, he walked right up to Gamzee, grabbed one of his wrists and papped him on the back.
“Gamzee, shoosh,” Karkat whispered.
Gamzee froze in place. He was angry and panting and shaking, and though he wasn't actively strangling Ampora anymore, he wasn't letting go either.
But he wasn't turning around to kill Karkat, either, so that was an encouraging sign, wasn't it?
“Shoosh,” Karkat said again, papping his shoulder next. Gamzee relaxed marginally. “Shoosh,” and Karkat papped the side of Gamzee's face this time.
He let go of the scarf. Ampora fell forward face-first, and by the sound of his sputtering, got a mouthful of sand. Karkat didn't look at the seadweller, and neither did Gamzee, who was staring off into the horizon, his anger melting away slowly.
Ampora scrambled after his rifle. Karkat could see him from the corner of his eye, but the seadweller didn't say or try anything, only jumped in the ocean and disappeared.
Karkat continued shooshing and papping Gamzee for a while, seeing the tension melt away from him with every passing moment.
Finally, Gamzee turned to Karkat and, before he could react, pulled the smaller troll in a bone-crushing hug, nuzzling his hair. Karkat tolerated the greasepaint in his hair, especially since for a split second, he'd feared that Gamzee really was going to crush his bones.
And also... it was nice. It made him feel gooey and warm on the inside, even if only in the metaphorical sense, because in the literal, his ribs were getting a bit bruised. His arms were trapped between their bodies, and he was sure his circulation was being cut off, but he didn't mind as much as he should have. Karkat nuzzled Gamzee's chest; he smelled like blood, paint thinner and something salty-sweet, and he was cool to the touch. None of these things were comforting in and of themselves, but it was strange what difference being pale for someone made. It was nice to feel... needed, by someone. It was validating. And it didn't last for nearly as long as Karkat hoped it would.
Gamzee sighed heavily and loosened his deathgrip on Karkat, standing still with his cheek against one of Karkat's nubby horns. Karkat shifted his arms slightly, now that he could feel his hands again, but Gamzee took this the wrong way and released Karkat, stepping back.
He ran a hand through his messy hair—or tried to—and pointedly avoided Karkat's eyes. Wordlessly, he turned and walked back to his hive.
Karkat didn't understand, didn't know what to do except follow. His encyclopaedic knowledge of rom-com clichés were no use in figuring out what had gone wrong, what he'd done wrong, because count on Karkat Vantas to fuck up things just when they were going well, so he just followed.
Gamzee was slumped against the wall next to the door, his knees drawn up to his chest. His facepaint was messed up, smudged and marked with thin lines where he'd been nuzzling Karkat's hair. His hands were scratched and dripping indigo on the carpet and on his pants, but Gamzee didn't even notice. He was staring at nothing, looking utterly miserable.
Karkat couldn't stand to see him like this, couldn't stand not doing anything about it. He kneeled in front of Gamzee, but he didn't know what to say, either.
“Didn't have to motherfucking do that, brother,” Gamzee said after a while. He didn't look at Karkat, preferring to address the opposite wall.
“No, but I suppose that nooksniffer was asking to be strangled with his own stupid scarf sooner or later,” Karkat said, his attempt at humor falling flat.
“Man, fuck Eridan and his motherfucking stupid fish games,” Gamzee sneered, and it took Karkat a few moments to realize that that must have been the seadweller's other name. “Not what I was motherfucking talking about. Shouldn't no one else have to deal with my shit, is what I'm saying.”
Gamzee drew his palm over his face, smearing the paint until gray skin started showing through.
“The fuck is wrong with me, all jumping some motherfucker just trying to get his blackrom on?” Gamzee muttered.
“Look, you can't blame yourself for the fact that that guy is a pushy douchebag,” Karkat said. “You told him you weren't interested, but he still wouldn't fuck off.”
“I'm still motherfucking sorry.”
“I'm sure he'll learn something from the experience.”
“No, motherfucker. I meant for the other thing. Didn't motherfucking mean to get you having to act all pale. Wasn't trying to... motherfucking trick you, or anything.”
“...Oh. No, I wasn't... it wasn't like...” Karkat felt a blush creep onto his face and held it back by sheer power of will. He opted for irritation instead.
How could he even begin to explain that it wasn't an act, that he really was pale for Gamzee? It hadn't been a fling, like Gamzee implied, or any form of psychological coercion, but what could he say that wouldn't sound like he was merely placating the troll holding him hostage?
“I'mma go clean up,” Gamzee said, starting to climb to his feet.
“No, sit,” Karkat said, putting a hand to Gamzee's knee. The clown froze in place, with his back still leveraging against the wall. “I mean it, we need to talk.”
Gamzee slumped back down, staring at Karkat with an unreadable expression. Karkat licked his dry lips, trying to gather his thoughts.
“You really need a moirail,” he said, after finally settling on the direct course of action.
“Yeah, kinda motherfucking figured that,” Gamzee snorted.
“No, listen. You really fucking need a moirail,” he yelled—just a bit—out of habit. “You're the fucking poster child for moirallegiance. You go around murdering trolls like a lunatic off his leash, you don't know the first fucking thing about taking care of yourself, and at the slightest problem, you flip your shit harder than an apebeast aiming for a fancy shirt at the animal exhibition enclosure. I can't stress this enough: you need a fucking moirail.”
Gamzee nodded sullenly.
“And... and maybe I do, too, a little,” Karkat continued, his anger at the world tapering off into self-loathing, like it often did. “I don't... I've never...”
He had a whole speech ready in his head, but somewhere between his mind and his lips, the connection was interrupted. His throat burned like it did when he felt like crying.
“Nobody's ever known what...” He made a helpless gesture towards the gray sign on his shirt, but couldn't go on. Words, so many words, clogged up in his think-pan, bleeding into each other.
Gamzee nodded, his expression softening. Karkat couldn't say anything else, so he hung his head. He was not crying, because he'd had years of practicing not crying. Gamzee put a hand against the back of Karkat's head and gently drew him closer, until Karkat fell against his chest and buried his face in Gamzee's shirt.
Gamzee wrapped his arms around Karkat and sighed into his hair.
“Motherfucking serendipitous miracles,” Gamzee muttered nonsensically.
Karkat didn't reply, but he clung to Gamzee's shirt a bit tighter.
Karkat Vantas had long since learned that the universe would seize any opportunity to take a huge cosmic dump on him, but what he hadn't expected was for the universe to get clever, and come up with new ways in which to make him serve as its galactic load gaper. If he'd examined his life closer and seen the escalating pattern of shit he regularly had to swim through, he might have suspected this, but unfortunately, he was a bit more worried about dying in a fire at the time.
A literal fire, not a metaphorical one, though Karkat was perfectly able to come up with some sort of complex allegorical interpretation of his life that revolved around agonizingly dying in a fire.
One of the neighboring hives was alight with orange flames, half its roof already collapsed. Karkat took a moment to wonder how he hadn't noticed the fire sooner, then took three whole minutes to repeat “ohshitohshitohshitohshit” in his mind.
The hives were not terribly close together, but it was the dry season and the dead grass between lawnrings could prove to be a serious safety hazard. At least there was no wind that night, so no embers could be spread by it, but Karkat was not the type who hoped for—or expected—the best. His hive catching fire would just be the latest low note in the scatological symphony the universe was playing as the soundtrack to his life.
When his brief panic-induced paralysis passed, he ran downstairs, where his lusus usually lurked. The crab was not there, and Karkat mentally slapped himself. The crab had away somewhere for several day. And what was a large semi-aquatic creature going to do about a fire? As comforting as the thought of his lusus defending him against everything was, some scenarios were less realistic than others.
So he went outside. His neighbors had taken note of the fire as well, and one intrepid yellow-blooded girl was in the process of dousing her hive with water, aided by a gardening hose and her large insectile lusus. This struck Karkat as a particularly good idea, but then again, her hive was closer to the fire than his, and she had help.
The fire did not seem to be spreading, at least. While nobody was inclined to go and help put it out, it seemed to have run its course and was guttering out by itself. Karkat paced around his lawnring for some time, wondering what had happened to the hive's inhabitant. It had been some brown-blood, as far as he could remember. He'd never talked to the boy, who was maybe two sweeps older and even crankier than Karkat, but he still wondered what had caused this. Was it an accident? Was it arson? A caliginous flirtation gone terribly wrong?
The yellow-blood stopped splashing the side of her hive with water and stood looking at the flame-ravaged hive as well. Slowly, she turned to look at Karkat, a suspicious glint in her eyes. Karkat bristled when he realized she suspected him of starting the fire and bared his teeth in response. She stood staring at him for a few moments longer—considering, perhaps, what blood color the gray symbol was hiding—before she decided it was not worth it and looked away.
But now Karkat was wondering as well. Had someone started the fire on purpose? Would they be back to start a new one?
He wished his lusus was back home.