Chapter Text
"As if she wasn't already enough of a god damned know-it-all," Dave muttered as he strained his eyes to see through the gloom. "She's let this Seer of Light shit go to her head, and now she's a smug god damned know-it-all. 'Go find Vantas, brother dear. No I won't tell you why, it might irreversibly distort the timeline.' As if I don't know ten times as much as she does about keeping the timeline straight."
The inner bowels of the asteroid weren't exactly well lit to start with, and the dim emergency lighting was rendered almost non-existent when viewed through his dark shades. Of course he could have just taken the shades off, but that would be tantamount to sacrilege, right up there with baby killing and eating All Bran for breakfast. Not in this lifetime.
Besides, he was hunting for Karkat. No way in hell was he letting the little prick think he'd somehow gotten one up on Dave by finally seeing his eyes uncovered. Nearly three years of enforced close association hadn't done much to foster any love between Dave and his fellow Knight, though it had at least been entertaining as hell, learning just what buttons of Karkat’s he could push to make the troll see red - or whatever colour it was. And Karkat’s schemes to get his shades off were getting more elaborate as time wore on, which only made their strifing worse.
Or better, as far as Dave was concerned.
Why Rose had been so damned insistent that Dave go chase him down, he had no idea. It was hardly the first time Karkat had stomped off to sulk in a dark corner, or gone looking for his murderclown platonic life partner or whatever. Not likely to be the last, either. Karkat always came back eventually, usually more pissed than when he'd left, and generally ranting at the top of his lungs.
He hadn't been gone all that long this time, just a couple of days since anyone had last seen him. Rose wouldn't even let Dave bring Terezi along for company. So here he was, slogging through the depths he could barely see thanks to his shades, looking for an asshole he didn't want to find and who didn't want to be found.
Upon reflection, this might have been one of the more ironic things he'd ever done, so maybe it wasn't all bad.
"Vantas, get your lazy ass out here already," Dave called. "Seriously, what the fuck are you even up to? Ollie ollie oxen free. Do you play hide and go seek on Alternia? I bet it’s Find and Go Slaughter. Last one there is a corpse, since you probably think rotten eggs are a good thing.”
He hadn't actually expected an answer, but a hollow moan echoed through the large chamber he stood in. It could have been the wind whistling through some of the broken monster tubes or some funky piece of machinery still working at whatever it was supposed to do, except there was no wind down here and the tech was dead as the proverbial doornail. Or was that a dormouse?
A lesser person might have been a bit spooked, but Dave had been raised to be made of sterner stuff, and waking up to Cal’s face sure as hell made this haunted lab schtick seem tame in comparison.
The shiver was from the cold, that was all. The damn lower levels were always fucking freezing.
"Vantas?" he said again, less annoyed and more wary this time. He had to listen hard for a moment, but finally he caught the sound of a faint, keening whimper not quite like anything a human throat could produce.
Jesus Christ on a pogo ball, was Karkat hurt down here? Possible scenarios ran through Dave's mind. Maybe some of the broken lab equipment had collapsed on him. Or maybe he'd actually found his insane palebro and the reunion hadn't gone well. That thought made Dave pull his sword and fall into a defensive stance. He had no desire to let Gamzee get the drop on him, not after hearing about what the juggalo had done.
Cautiously he moved in the direction the sound seemed to be coming from. It led him to a doorway that passed into a much smaller room, where he found something more than a little out of place. A pile of fabric and yarn and half-made clothes was heaped in one corner, fully large enough for a troll to bury himself in. Pausing, Dave raised one eyebrow as he took in the sight.
Well, Rose and Kanaya had been complaining about their supplies going missing for a while now. This certainly explained it, and put a rather different interpretation on the sounds Dave had been hearing. He made a disgusted face.
"You do realize our Sylph and Seer duo are going to pull a biznasty combo strike on you when they discover you're the one who took all this stuff, right?" he asked, putting the sword away since he hadn't found any bloody bodies. "Especially when they realize you've been playing tonsil hockey with your loverclown in there. Or is kissing too far for your non-romantic romance... Vantas?" he broke off with a frown as a muffled cry came from inside the pile.
There was no mistaking that sound as anything but a cry of pain. Whatever the pile had originally been constructed for, it wasn't being used as a cuddle site now. Carefully Dave moved forward and started digging in what seemed a likely spot. He'd just caught a glimpse of grey when the troll in the pile thrashed, sending a stray smuppet straight into Dave's face. Great. Just what he needed, a close up and personal session with plush rump. Where had Karkat even found the damned thing?
"Don't," a hoarse voice said, so strangled it was barely recognizable as Karkat. "Gods, don't uncover me, just... just leave me alone!"
No creative swearing, no colourful invective... that worried Dave more than any hundred cries of pain could. "What the fuck is going on, Vantas? Are you hurt?" The thrashing had been an arm, he was pretty sure, so Karkat's head should be right about... there.
"Don't," Karkat repeated, but it was a feeble protest as he tried in vain to burrow deeper.
"Stop being such a damned baby or wriggler or whatever and just let me see... jesus." The last word came out as hardly more than a breath, both awed and horrified. He'd managed to uncover the troll's head, shoulders, and one arm. Karkat's skin was cracked and bleeding, the lines running together and forming patches of skin that looked like the crazed mess left behind by a mud puddle dried in the Texas sun. Some of the cracks ran so deep Dave was pretty sure he could see the slick muscle beneath. It was worst on his arms and shoulders, but the flesh on his face was peeling away in strips, too, leaving painfully raw looking wounds behind.
It took serious effort of will for Dave to keep his lunch down. After a couple of deep breaths and maybe a gag or two, he got himself under control and knelt next to the pile. Karkat was watching him warily, but his eyes were half closed like he could barely keep them open, and it seemed pretty obvious that he was too weak to fight back in any way. Despite that, there was as much anger as fear in his eyes, and Dave had to respect that courage a bit.
Dave's voice was softer than he'd meant it to be when he spoke again. "What the fuck happened to you, the bubonic plague? Is it catching, do we need to quarantine you?"
"It's too soon," Karkat ground out. "This shouldn't be happening yet, I'm not even eight sweeps old! I can't, I can't do this, there's no sopor and I can't even..." A shudder wracked his body and he cried out again, the spasms making his muscles ripple and widening the cracks in his skin.
When Dave cautiously reached out to touch a patch on his arm, he found the skin curiously hard and dry, almost like a shell. Troll skin had always seemed pretty similar to human skin before, though maybe a little tougher or they'd all claw themselves to pieces just getting dressed. He'd certainly never seen anything like this before.
"Shouldn't be happening yet," he repeated, keeping his voice flat and face expressionless. Karkat would hardly welcome any sign of sympathy - of what he would see as pity - from him. "You're saying this is something normal?"
"Ad... adult moult," Karkat rasped, shuddering. "Shit, even rust bloods don't hit it until they're at least eight or nine. Stupid fucking useless mutant blood." He gritted his teeth and keened as he rode out another spasm.
Adult moult? Dave eyed the cracked and peeling skin in a new light, torn between disgust and fascination. The three trolls had all stayed pretty much the same as when the humans had joined them, even as Dave and Rose struggled their way through early puberty and came out the other side much changed. Terezi only came to Dave's shoulder these days, horns and all. Karkat barely reached his chest.
Dave had shrugged it off as alien weirdness, and figured maybe they just didn't get any bigger. If Rose knew different, she'd never shared the knowledge with Dave. But now he remembered a dozen conversations with Terezi about wigglers and how they pupated into trolls. If they changed that drastically once in their lifetimes, but considered themselves to still be children at the age that they'd played the game, it made sense they'd have a second transformation into adults.
Fuck, what the hell was Karkat going to look like after?
Another whimper drew his attention away from contemplation of various Mothra-style monster forms that Karkat might take on. Cursing, he shook his head and focused on Karkat again. "Okay, well, Rose sent me down here looking for you, and I’m assuming it wasn’t for the amusement value of watching you turn into the sci-fi monster of the week. What do you need?"
"Sopor," Karkat retorted through clenched teeth. "And my god damned lusus. You can't give me either of those, so fuck off and at least let me die without your disgusting pale human features as the last thing I ever see."
The insult was weak by Karkat's standards, and didn't even come close to distracting Dave from the fact that the troll had essentially just whimpered for his mommy. Any other time, Dave would have had a fucking field day with an opening that obvious. As it was, he just stored the gleeful insults away for later use. He was never going to let Karkat live this down.
But first he had to make sure Karkat lived at all. That might not be so easy.
"I'm going to get Kanaya and Terezi," he decided. They were trolls, they'd know what it was that Karkat needed far better than Dave could. Why Rose hadn't sent them looking in the first place, he had no idea.
Far from calming Karkat, the suggestion appeared to panic him. "No! Don't you dare! I will fucking fight my way through the bubbles after I die to find you again and rip out your intestines to strangle you with, I swear to god. And then I will follow your dead self from bubble to bubble, making your afterlife as miserable as I can possibly conceive."
Well, that sounded a little more like Karkat, though it was still far from reassuring. "What the hell is your issue? They’ve presumably gotta have a better idea of what to do than I do." Looking at the translucent red fluid oozing out of the cracks, Dave grimaced. "Don't tell me you're on about your stupid blood again. They know you have red blood, it's not going to be some shocking revelation."
"Knowing it and seeing it in disgusting technicolour are not the same thing," Karkat growled. "And I'm... fuck, I'm god damned helpless right now. Bad enough to have you see me like this."
Right, the apparently ingrained certainty in all trolls that anyone other than their red quadrants will feel obligated to kill them for showing weakness. Huffing in annoyance, Dave sat back on his heels. "I can't get you sopor, and you won't let me bring the only people who might actually know how to help you. I'm not just leaving you to die down here, so get that the fuck out of your head right now."
They'd all been through way too fucking much not to be willing to stand at each other's backs now, no matter what Dave’s personal feelings about the little fuckass might be.
Eyeing the pathetic, shivering mess that currently was Karkat Vantas, he sighed and rearranged some of the fabric to cover more of the troll's exposed body. Kanaya and Rose were never going to be able to use this stuff after it got covered in troll goop like this, but he figured Karkat had probably buried himself for a reason. Even if it was just for psychological comfort, that was still better than nothing.
"Okay, sopor’s off the table, but maybe we can find a way to recreate whatever it is the sopor is supposed to do for you," Dave said. "Knock you out, obviously, and I can see why, that looks hella painful. What else?"
"Hydration," Karkat croaked. "It's not coming off right because I'm too dry."
Nodding, Dave rummaged through his sylladex quickly. He always kept some supplies on hand, just in case something happened to the machines they'd found to produce food and it took some time to fix them. He pulled out a couple of bottles of water and twisted the cap off one, handing it to Karkat.
Scowling made the sloughing skin on Karkat's face look even worse, and it was hard to read his expression but Dave thought there might have been a hint of reluctant gratitude in the troll's eyes as he snatched at the bottle. His hand was shaking so badly he spilled nearly as much as he drank, even after Dave reached out to help steady the bottle, but in moments he had drained it dry.
He was gasping for air when he finally ran out of water to drink, but already his breathing sounded less harsh. Dave cracked the second bottle, and this one Karkat drank a little more slowly, taking the time to actually swallow rather than just pouring it straight down his 'protein chute'.
"Not as good as soaking you in it, obviously, but maybe we can improvise," Dave said, thinking fast. "There was an unoccupied monster tube in the last room, if we dunk you in it that might help. What else do you need?"
"Heat," Karkat said. "I'm fucking freezing, I've never been this cold in my entire life. You really think this is going to work?"
"Better than doing nothing at all," Dave pointed out. "You hang out there for a minute, let me see what I can do about warming the water. I'll be right back." He set a third bottle within Karkat's reach, then headed quickly back into the larger room.
The unoccupied tube was right where he remembered it, surrounded by other tubes which held weird and twisted monsters. These ones weren't the oversized giants they'd found on some of the upper floors, but only a little larger than a person. The tubes were deep enough to go over Karkat's head, so Dave took a minute to haul one of the platforms hanging outside the tube over the edge, trying not to think of what might have previously occupied it. Heating the water turned out to be as simple as finding the right button to push.
He returned to find that Karkat had nearly buried himself again, only the top of his head and his eyes still exposed. The troll watched him as he approached, and with most of the damage to his face hidden, it was easier to read the bewildered suspicion in his eyes.
Sure enough, the first words out of Karkat's mouth were, "Why the fuck are you doing this?"
"You saying you wouldn't do the same for me?" Dave asked, splaying his hand over his heart and putting exaggerated betrayal in his voice. "I'm wounded, Vantas, I'm god damned bleeding out here from the sickle you just stabbed through my heart. Here I thought we were bosom buddies."
"What the fuck is a bosom and why would I want to be one with you?" Karkat demanded. "You're the single most aggravating thing in my existence, Strider, and considering nearly everything aggravates me, that's saying something. I'm completely vulnerable and helpless, you could do anything you wanted, why are you helping me?"
"Because I'm not a god damned troll, and if you haven't figured that out yet you're suffering from more brain damage than I ever gave you credit for," Dave shot back. "Humans don't default to 'kill' status the moment someone shows vulnerability, all right? What the hell would I want to do with you when you’re like this?”
"You don't like me," Karkat said. "You don't even hate me in any useful way."
"What’s liking you got to do with it? We're in this together for the long haul, we've known that since we caused the Scratch," Dave said, folding his arms across his chest and tapping one foot impatiently, maybe just a tiny bit put out that Karkat thought this little of him. "Just because I'm not fawning all over you doesn't mean I want you dead, and we're going to need everyone we can get when we reach the new session. Which is only a few months from now, thank god. Now are you going to let me try to keep you alive, or are you going to keep whining about my motives until you bleed out or something?"
For a moment Karkat just glared at him, and Dave honestly wondered if he’d pick death rather than accept help from Dave. Then another spasm tore through the troll, and when he came out panting on the other side, he looked resigned. "Fine. But don't think this means I owe you anything."
"Oh Vantas, you naive little child," Dave chuckled, reaching into the pile to get a careful grip on Karkat's shoulders. "I am going to hold this over your head for as long as we both live. Come on, let's get you out of there."
Removing Karkat from the pile turned out to be an absolutely disgusting exercise that Dave devoutly hoped he would never have to repeat. Chunks of hardened flesh came off in his hands when he tugged at the troll, leaving raw welts behind. They weren't actually bleeding, he discovered, just oozing a thick, clear red fluid that as far as he could tell was supposed to be helping the skin come off. Now there were enough places exposed that he could be sure it really was muscle he saw shifting around, with only a membrane so thin he couldn't rightly call it 'skin' to hold everything in place.
It wasn't until Karkat was halfway out that Dave realized something that should have been obvious. Karkat wasn't just shirtless, he was naked. Since it was pretty much the perfect opportunity to satisfy his curiosity, Dave let his eyes drop briefly. The troll was built pretty much like a ken doll as far as Dave could see, with only a featureless protrusion of bone between his legs. It didn't even stick out very far.
"Getting a fucking eyeful, Strider?" Karkat snapped, and when Dave looked up he could see the troll was blushing.
"Aw, you're shy, that's the cutest thing," Dave drawled. He bent and scooped Karkat up in his arms as carefully as he could, though he could feel the skin shifting where he held the troll at the shoulders and knees. Trolls were surprisingly light, as he'd discovered in previous scuffles with Karkat and occasionally Terezi. "Don't worry, your modesty is safe with me. I don't kiss and tell. I have to admit though, I'm disappointed. I expected you to be all groping tentacles straight out of classic hentai, man. Or at least that it would be barbed or something, considering how pointy you are on all your other extremities."
Karkat gave him a fanged smile that emphasized the 'pointy extremities' on that particular end. "Sorry Strider, your swag isn't even close to being massive enough to distract me from monumental agony and get me in the mood. I'm surprised Terezi's still interested in you if you're this bad at seduction. Can't say I'm impressed."
"I didn't realize I was supposed to be making this romantic," Dave said. "Just hang on and let me fetch the candles and the mood music. Oh no, wait, I almost forgot. How many times do I have to tell you I don't hate you that way?"
"Hey, you're the one who brought it up," Karkat said as Dave mounted the steps to the top of the tube. He was shivering enough to make it difficult for Dave to keep his hold, though he'd barely been out in the air thirty seconds. "Don't get 'all up in my grill' and then tell me you're not interested."
Grateful that the topic had apparently distracted Karkat from what had to be truly agonizing pain, Dave carefully lowered him into the water, making certain that the shelf took his weight and his head would stay in the air. The relieved gasp Karkat gave as the water covered his oozing skin was thanks enough.
"Oh god, that feels so much better," Karkat said, the words closer to a warble than a moan. Slowly he tried to stretch out his arms and legs, hissing with every incremental movement. "Fuck. The skin has hardened too much, I think. I can barely move. If it doesn't come off the new chitin might not form properly... oh god, what if it just fuses the chunks and I'll be locked in a shell of my own body?"
His voice was rising - he was starting to panic, Dave realized. He couldn't really blame Karkat. Dave might have been panicking a little himself, if he wasn’t far too cool for such a pedestrian reaction. "Maybe soaking in the water will loosen it up again," he said. "What's supposed to happen next?"
"How the hell should I know, I should be unconscious in a sopor cocoon right now," Karkat snapped. "Like I said, the old shell has to come off. It's supposed to dissolve in the sopor and then get absorbed by my body to help produce the new skin."
"Well, god knows if that'll happen with the water," Dave said, eyeing the tube somewhat dubiously. "I guess if you come out of this a little thin skinned, it might actually make up for your thick skull."
Karkat growled at him, and sank down in the water a little further. "It's a damned good thing my think pan is so thick, otherwise I'd have brain damage from how often the sheer stupidity of your existence causes me to slam my head against the nearest hard surface. Really, it's a miracle I haven't dented it yet."
"If you're insulting me, you must be feeling a little better," Dave chuckled. He started to climb back down the ladder, but was halted by Karkat's frantic cry.
"Wait, where are you going? Don't just leave me here," Karkat protested, wide-eyed. Dave had never seen him look so frightened. He supposed he would be pretty terrified too, if he was going through a life-threatening monumental change and had only Karkat as his lifeline.
In a carefully calculated expression, Dave tipped one corner of his mouth up into a smug smile. "Are you kidding me? Like I'm going to pass up the chance for one second of this opportunity to lord it over you. I'm just going to get you some drinking water, dumbass. You're still dehydrated, and you don't want to be drinking the shit your skin is sloughing into." He grimaced. "Or maybe you do, if you're supposed to get the nutrients back or whatever."
Some of the tension in Karkat's shoulders eased, and Dave nodded just as slightly in return. Message heard and received, in a language they could both tolerate. Dave wasn't going to abandon Karkat here, but outright promising that would have been treading into territory they didn't want to take their association into. Plus Karkat would never have believed a straight up statement.
By the time Dave made it down the ladder, retrieved the unopened water bottle from the pile, and climbed back up, Karkat had slipped into a sort of dazed stupor. Worried about the hydration issue, Dave woke him up enough to get him to drink the water, but he fell back into a restless sleep as soon as he was done. Not surprising, if his body was telling him he was supposed to be unconscious for this. Only the pain was likely keeping him awake at all.
Hours passed, and Dave fussed with his sylladex, rearranging things to be easier to retrieve. He wished it had occurred to him to ask Karkat how long the process usually took. For all he knew, he could be down here for weeks, though he certainly hoped his darling ecto-sis would have warned him to take supplies if that were the case. He briefly debated going back up to the main room just to grab some stuff, but decided in the end that he didn't want Karkat to wake and find him gone.
Eventually he shuffled the clean parts of Karkat's pile over to the base of the tube, and curled up there to catch some zees for himself. He was dozing when a sudden splash woke him, followed by a yelp that ended in a glubbing sound that definitely was not a good sign.
"Oh shit," Dave exclaimed, practically flying up the ladder and plunging arm-first into the water, his other hand gripping the edge to keep from going in completely. He had to go underwater halfway down his chest before his hand closed on some part of Karkat's body, and he hauled the troll back up into the air.
They both emerged coughing, though Karkat was worse off than Dave. The troll floundered in the water, still flailing like he thought he could swim even though his movements were jerky and weak. With an effort Dave got him situated on the platform again.
"What the fuck happened?" Karkat wheezed between coughs.
"You must have shifted in your sleep and fallen in," Dave replied. "Damn, I should have anticipated that. You okay?"
"Well I'm not drowning anymore, but I wouldn't say I'm 'okay' by any stretch of the fucking imagination," Karkat replied miserably.
He certainly didn't look much better than before. A few more chunks of hardened skin had been pulled away by the rough handling, but as far as Dave could tell none of the rest had sloughed off by itself. When he reached out to poke a piece on Karkat's shoulder, it felt a little softer than before but not much.
"If they're not coming off by themselves, we'll just have to pull them off," Dave said grimly, trying not to grimace at the idea. "Hold still, and don't attack me for this." Wedging his fingertips under a small piece of skin on Karkat's upper back, he peeled slowly and carefully downwards.
Karkat hissed and his hands clenched on the sides of the tube so hard Dave was surprised not to see blood in the water, but he held still. Once the chunk was free, Dave dropped it into the tube, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the slimy feel of the underside. "Okay, that's one down and roughly... half a million left to go," he said. "You up for it, Vantas?"
"Do it," Karkat growled. "I can take anything you can dish out, Strider."
It was obviously utter agony for the troll as Dave slowly peeled the pieces off. Dave didn't dare go any faster for fear of tearing the delicate membrane beneath. The whimpers and keening noises that Karkat made grew progressively louder, but Dave stoically continued to pretend not to hear anything. There wasn't much dignity in this situation for Karkat, but he could at least grant the troll that much.
It got far worse when he reached the sensitive places like his sides and stomach, where the skin was thinner and hard to get a grip on. Dave was impressed - and also grateful - when Karkat forced himself to help. He managed to take care of the most awkward spots, his inner thighs and groin area, which spared Dave from having to do it. Neither of them would have been able to live it down.
By the time they were done Karkat looked disturbingly like one of those skinless dummies used in science classes to show muscle structure. The thin remaining layer of his skin was so transparent it hid nothing, and Dave could hardly imagine how it was containing everything. But he was breathing a lot easier, and able to actually move more than an inch at a time, which Dave decided to assume was a good sign.
Actually, with his red blood pulsing just under the flesh, Karkat looked rather demonic like this. He'd have made good money as a movie extra.
"How long does it take the new skin or shell or whatever to grow?" Dave asked. They both leaned on the side of the tube to recover after the disgusting ordeal, Karkat perched on the platform and Dave on the other side of the glass, sitting on the top step of his ladder.
"I don't know exactly, but the whole process usually only takes a couple of days, maybe three at most," Karkat replied, tilting his head back to rest against the lip of the tube, his eyes closed. It was a display of trust unlike anything he'd showed Dave before. Or maybe it was just exhaustion overcoming his wariness and Dave was reading too much into it. "Of course, that's assuming nothing goes grossly wrong. It's been about that long since this started, but I think this qualifies as grossly wrong."
"Definitely gross, no question about that," Dave said, glancing at some of the chunks that had decided to float on the surface. There was an oily sheen to the water now, probably the fluid Karkat had been leaking. "Feeling better?"
"Yeah, except..." Karkat shuddered and rubbed his hands over the thin flesh of his arms, making a face. "Now it's itching. Or maybe it always was, and it just hurt too much to notice before. Argh." He started to dig his claws into the offending spot, but Dave was faster and caught his hands before he could do any damage.
"Are you crazy?" he demanded of the troll. "There's nothing wrong with your fucking claws, Vantas, and right now your skin is thinner than mine. You'll rip yourself to pieces."
"I know, but it's itching!" Karkat protested, squirming against his hold.
"Yeah, well, suck it up," Dave told him unsympathetically, refusing to release his grip on Karkat's hands. Thankfully Karkat was still weak as a newborn kitten, and he had no leverage to try to free himself.
"Nnnngh," Karkat groaned, slumping against the tube wall in defeat, though Dave could see the way parts of his flesh kept jumping as his muscles clenched. "Another reason why I should be unconscious for this. Great. This has been just one joyful experience after another. Thank you, mutant body, for refusing to wait the normal number of sweeps for this, by which time I would presumably either have a new supply of sopor, or be dead. Argh GOD just kill me and put me out of my misery."
"If I thought it would work I might, just to stop your whining," Dave replied, still not letting go. "Unfortunately we both know our luck is so bad I'd just run straight into you in a bubble. Maybe you should try to sleep again?"
"That's a great idea, nearly drowning once wasn't enough fun," Karkat retorted.
"Jesus you just never stop bitching do you? All right, fine, shove over." Dave considered his clothes briefly, then shrugged and decided they were already soaked. He kicked off his shoes and ditched his god hood and cape, then slid into the water on the platform next to Karkat.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Karkat said.
"Keeping you from drowning, or itching yourself to bloody ribbons after all my hard work getting your stupid skin off," Dave told him. "Now sit tight and shut the fuck up already. Or is it hurting you for me to be holding you like this?" That hadn't occurred to him, but with skin that thin any contact must feel ten times as intense.
"It's fine, just... don't hold too hard unless you have to," Karkat said, slowly relaxing into Dave's grasp. It was obvious he was reluctant, but didn't feel he had any choice.
They shifted around a bit, trying to find a comfortable position on the narrow platform, and finally ended up with Karkat basically slung over Dave's lap, legs dangling on one side and his head against the opposite shoulder, and Dave's arm curved around his waist to keep him in place. Dave's other hand held both of Karkat's wrists to keep him from scratching.
Earlier Dave had been sort of hoping Rose would send one of the other trolls to help as well. Now he devoutly hoped she wouldn't, because anyone who caught him and Karkat in this position would never let them live it down.
Though Karkat was clearly fighting to stay awake, it wasn't long before his muscles had gone lax and his eyes closed. It looked less like sleep than some kind of comatose state, but Dave tried not to think about it too much. He needed to keep believing that Karkat would come through this okay, because he was pretty sure that him acting like he believed it was the only thing keeping Karkat from panicking completely.
Of course, there wasn't much to do but sit there and brood over it. Eventually Dave let his head rest against the edge of the tub and let himself slip into sleep as well. He knew how to cat-nap without moving thanks to his bro's training, and if Karkat thrashed himself off the platform again Dave would wake up fast enough to catch him. It was better than driving himself crazy trying not to think about the situation.