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Wake up a week after your arrival on the meteor to the realization that you have never in your entire life played any traditional children’s games. Search the past thirteen years for any instances of tag, duck-duck-goose, hopscotch, hide-and-seek, or leapfrog. Find none. Recognize this for the depressing truth that it is, and tell yourself that today is the day you will rectify it.
Rule that hopscotch is a good game to start with, because it requires only chalk and a pair of fully functional legs or, as your new troll travel mates would say, “walk stalks.” Snicker to yourself about troll vernacular as you brush your teeth and prepare for another day. Amuse yourself by conceiving potential Alternian terminology for everything in your bathroom. After this gets old, leave your room to procure some breakfast.
Do not get lost on your way to the nutrition block like the last six times. Toast yourself two pieces of bread. Only burn them a little. Steer clear of the bag of grubloaf and the jar of freshly-alchemized grubpaste, no matter how curious you are about how they taste.
Hunt down Terezi after breakfast. Eventually find her sitting on the roof with a piece of rope in her hands and several anxious-looking scalemates at her side. Watch the practiced ease with which she ties the rope into a noose and feel a little unsettled despite yourself. Remind yourself what you found her for.
Ask if you can borrow a piece of chalk. Watch with fond disgust as she drags her tongue along every stick in her sylladex before handing you the red one, because it is apparently “the most scrumptious!” Recognize this for the huge honor that it is. Give her an emphatic fist bump as thanks. The stick she dropped in your palm will be soggy with spit. Vow to wash your hands later.
Wander around for several minutes trying to find a hallway long and empty enough to play hopscotch in. Stroll past the room containing Can Town. Pause to say hello to the Mayor, who is stacking empty Tab cans in a pyramidal formation with grave concentration. Wince sympathetically when the pyramid tumbles down a few seconds later. Ask him if he’d like to take a break and play hopscotch with you. He will nod his head enthusiastically and scramble to his small black feet to join you. Cheer internally.
Locate an appropriate hallway easily with the Mayor’s help. Settle down onto the floor. Spend a minute struggling to recall what hopscotch is supposed to look like. Remember that it includes numbered squares. Press your chalk against the cool metal floor and start sketching.
Finish drawing four squares by the time Karkat stomps past you. Set your chalk down. Survey the discouraged slope to his shoulders, the grim set to his jaw, and the dark bruises underneath his puffy eyes. Assess with even your own rudimentary social skills that he is miserable.
Invite him to play hopscotch with you because you are not a total asshole. Snort when he replies, “What the fuck is a hopcrotch?” Notice that his shoulders are tense and his eyes are narrowed like you’ve issued him a challenge.
Open your mouth to reply, but close it when the Mayor stands up to offer Karkat the stick of chalk instead. Raise a knowing eyebrow when Karkat, after a moment of scrutiny, takes the chalk from the Mayor’s tiny fingers and sits on the floor next to him. Declare to Karkat that you knew he would cave because “no one can resist the Mayor.” Be pleasantly surprised when Karkat rolls his eyes, but says nothing to contradict you. Decide that you may have to reevaluate your previous assessment of him as an obnoxiously argumentative dude.
Explain what hopscotch is to the best of your ability as you finish drawing more squares. Shrug when Karkat dubs it “a waste of time” and “a pointless wriggler’s game.” Admit that while it was played almost entirely by little kids back on Earth, you never got a chance to play yourself. Argue that your mission for the next three years is to quite literally kill time.
Let your lips twitch into a smile when he calls you a “smug shitsmear.” Smile a little wider when he states that you “look constipated with your mouth twisted like that.” He will ask you when the last time you “successfully navigated a loadgaper” was. When he does, tell him honestly that you’ve never navigated “whatever the fuck a loadgaper is" in your entire life. Grin outright at his horrified expression. This will be the first genuine banter you’ve held with anyone since your death, ascension, and arrival on the meteor. Revel in it.
Kindle your conversation with topics like how finicky the alchemiter has been recently, how dry Rose’s cooking is, and how the Mayor has founded Can Town and recruited you for his city council. Gossip about how close Terezi and Vriska are. Embark on a long-winded tangent about how chilly your new room is, even after you’ve fiddled with all the heating. Trail off when talking about how you’ve taken to wearing socks to bed when you realize that he is staring at you with a strange expression on his face.
Wonder if you said something wrong. Feel a bit anxious, all of a sudden. Also feel a little bewildered that you care what Karkat Vantas of all people thinks of you. Ask him flatly if you have something on your face.
He will admit that you aren’t what he "was expecting.” Ask him what he was expecting. Keep your lips pressed into a neutral line when he replies, a little sheepishly, "An arrogant windbag who thinks he’s hot shit because he parades around in abhorrently bright pajamas.”
Remark dryly that you admire him for his honesty. He will reply, equally dry, “It’s about fucking time someone appreciates it.”
See that he is smiling. Respond with a small, tentative smile of your own.
Realize that you have been so enraptured with your conversation, you have forgotten about your game of hopscotch. Finish drawing and numbering the other six squares while he complains theatrically about the amount of dust in his new respiteblock. Casually ask him how long it’s been since he’s slept as you get to your feet and start hopping. Frown when he shrugs like he doesn’t know the answer. Frown deeper when he says, after a moment of contemplation, “Shit, I don’t know. A couple weeks? Since Prospit was destroyed, give or take.”
Tell him that’s not healthy. He will roll his tired eyes and say, “No shit, troll Sherlock,” but won't promise to get some shuteye. Drop it anyways because you don’t want to push someone you’ve only just discovered makes a decent conversation partner. Feel something like concern gnaw at your gut as he gets to his feet to hop.
Clap loudly when the Mayor takes his turn. Announce that watching him play hopscotch is the most adorable thing you ever have and ever will witness.
Draw another hopscotch court. Make it phallic because you can. Realize quickly that Karkat and the Mayor have no idea what a dick looks like. Laugh at Karkat’s bewildered expression until your sides ache. Try to remember the last time you laughed as heartily as this around another person. Come up empty, but feel fuller than you have in a long time.
***
Do not spend time with Karkat again immediately because you don’t want to appear desperate for attention. Try to entertain yourself, but find yourself bored to the point of frustration by your third week on the meteor. Feel a familiar stifling, sluggish lethargy creep back into your joints, the same type that used to plague you whenever you felt trapped inside your apartment before the Game.
Try to stave it off with a flurry of activity. Write raps until you run out of words that rhyme. Start mixing again. Cram all of your equipment into your sylladex and set up on a table in the common room whenever you need a change of scenery.
Through this, discover that Karkat spends a large portion of his day curled up on the common room couch, devouring stacks of Alternian bodice-rippers. Observe the back of his head from your vantage point at the table, behind the couch. Watch him read through book after book like poorly-written smut is his sole source of nourishment and he’s starving. Think that the only thing worse than the books in his lap is his posture while he’s reading them. Purse your lips to keep from laughing whenever you see his face: his dark brows furrowed and eyes narrowed in grim concentration as he consumes what is undoubtedly absolute garbage. Smirk whenever you catch him bobbing his head to your beats.
Hit a dead end on the track you’re working on one day. Use this as an excuse to join him on the couch. Suggest that he read aloud to you. He will roll his eyes and pretend to be bothered, but proceed to read with great enthusiasm. Dub this event “Storytime with Karkat.” Partake in Story Time often whenever you’re bored, in a creative rut, or feel like laughing yourself sick over inappropriate usage of the word “supple.”
***
Finally gather some much-needed practice making eye contact with other people. Do not include Vriska in “other people” because you find her abrasive and unsettling. Use your shades to hide the fact that you cannot usually bring yourself to look her in her mismatched eyes. Attend the first few endgame strategy meetings she hosts, anyways. Be barred from these meetings alongside Karkat after the two of you, giggling obnoxiously, scribble one too many dicks in Rose’s book.
Establish weekly movie nights with Karkat to showcase cinema from your respective planets. Invite the others too over Pesterchum. Attendance will dwindle after Rose and Kanaya start dating and Terezi and Vriska officially establish their moirallegiance. Eventually claim movie night as a Dave-and-Karkat activity in ironic response to the recent influx of Rose-and-Kanaya and Terezi-and-Vriska activities. Relocate movie night to your rooms. Get really, really good at alchemizing popcorn.
***
Harbor, for lack of a better word, a “thing” for Terezi. Offer to hang out with her often. Fuss with your hair in the mirror and the drape of your cape across your shoulders if you know the two of you are going to hang out. Feel like an idiot for trying to impress a blind girl with your appearance. Flirt the only way you know how to: absurdly. Congratulate yourself every time one of your jokes makes her cackle.
Do not flirt with Terezi when Karkat is around after you realize that doing so causes a pinched, decidedly unfunny look to come onto Karkat's features. Wonder what his deal is, but lack the gumption to ask. Make a conscious effort to only hang out with one of them at a time.
Wrestle with indecision for a week before asking Terezi out. Stutter and stumble your way through your offer to “maybe go on a date sometime” despite having practiced it on the Mayor dozens of time previous.
Get turned down before you even have a chance to feel proud of yourself for getting the words out. Ask her why while you’re still reeling from the decisiveness of her answer.
She will explain how her past self told her not to date you. Joke nervously that dating you must have been downright awful to spurn an entire doomed timeline. Feel like you’ve been kicked in the stomach when she doesn’t laugh, just asks, her voice uncharacteristically gentle, if you want a little time to yourself. Nod mutely, still shell-shocked, and watch her dust chalk off her pants and leave you sitting alone in Can Town.
Sulk in your room for two days. Repeatedly remind yourself that sacrifices must be made to stabilize a timeline. Try to admire Terezi’s conviction to make this timeline better than the last one. Refuse to indulge the childish part of you that just wants to stomp your feet and whine about how unfair it all is.
Be roused from an angsty slumber by someone knocking aggressively on your door. Groggily open it to Karkat’s scowling face. Note the determined set to his shoulders and the plate of hot food he’s carrying. Don’t bother trying to stop him when he shoulders his way into your room and forces the plate into your hands.
Shrug avoidantly when he asks how you’re feeling. Do not ask him how he knows that Terezi turned you down. Eat the food he brought you and try to ignore that the whole meteor has probably been watching you fester in your room like a loser.
Stop chewing in surprise when he says, “She turned my sorry ass down too, you know, before this trip even fucking began. So I get it. And if you ever want to talk about it, my hear ducts are wide open."
Judge from how uncharacteristically quiet his voice is that he’s telling the truth. Swallow the bite in your mouth with a little difficulty, and ask him if she turned him down for timeline reasons, too. Feel a bit better about yourself when he says yes. He will ask you if anyone told you what happened between Terezi and Vriska. Say no. He will offer to tell you about it. Say yes.
Listen attentively as he recounts the fiasco in its bloody entirety. Afterwards, reflect that trying to date Terezi probably would have ended messily, anyways. Thank whatever gods are still out there and not wearing pajamas that you and Karkat are bonding over her instead of squabbling over her like entitled douchebags. Decide that neither of you were dynamic enough for her, anyways. Resolve to get over it.
Start hanging out in Can Town with her again. Fill any awkward silence with the white noise of cans being stacked and chalk tapping against the metal floors, and find yourself pleasantly surprised by how quickly you stop hurting.
***
Sometimes, Karkat will tell you stories about his lusus. Listen attentively to them. Watch his face as he embarks on anecdote after anecdote about his childhood. Notice that even the stories he complains about carry an underlying tone of affection, an exasperated fondness.
Remember how John used to whine about having a surplus of homemade birthday cakes. Remember how Rose grumbled when her mom framed one of her drawings and mounted it on their fridge. Remember how Jade used to huff over her grandpa’s over protectiveness. Watch Karkat get embarrassingly emotional over that one time his lusus, under the impression that Karkat was in danger, accidentally started fighting a carpenter droid.
Be abruptly overcome with an intense bout of jealousy. Berate yourself for being greedy and irrational. Remind yourself, like you always do, that you have nothing to be jealous about.
Shrug when Karkat asks you if you have any stories about your bro to share. Rifle through your childhood memories for a story that won’t make your heart beat really fast. After a moment of deliberation, tell him about the time your bro taught you how to mix on your twelfth birthday.
Do not mention that your bro didn’t touch you once the entire lesson. Also do not mention that there were no follow up lessons. Absolutely do not mention that you spent weeks afterwards trying and failing to create something good enough to make him want to teach you more.
Wonder why memories of your bro pinning you to the concrete with his foot on your chest, of him leaving traps around the apartment and unsettling comics pinned to your bedroom door came to mind faster than the memory of him teaching you to mix did. Decide to stop wondering when your chest starts to hurt. Stubbornly refuse to classify the dull ache packed tight inside your rib cage as anxiety. Tell yourself it must be nostalgia, instead.
Notice that Karkat is trying to get your attention. Mumble an apology for spacing out. Push aside all thoughts of your bro, and immerse yourself in another one of Karkat’s hilarious diatribes instead.
***
Spar with Karkat on the roof after he decides that he needs more practice with his sickles. Grit your teeth every time the metal of your weapons makes contact. Force yourself not to flinch when Karkat shouts, hollers and growls as he strikes. Find yourself immensely grateful that there is no Houston sunshine bearing down on your back. Wipe away non-existent sun-sweat from the back of your neck with your free hand, anyways. Inhale deeply to catch your breath. Choke a little on the phantom scents of car exhaust and sun-baked concrete that haunt your lungs. Tighten your grip on your sword and let eight years of muscle memory parry Karkat’s clumsy blows.
Win just like you expected to. Gloat halfheartedly about your victory. Chuckle quietly when Karkat flops down onto the roof, breathless and sweaty. Walk over and sit down next to him. Consider lying on your back like he is. Decide that you have already had your back pressed against enough roofs for a lifetime, and remain upright.
Feel your stomach flutter unexpectedly at the sight of Karkat’s bangs stuck to his forehead with sweat and his cheeks red from exertion. Blame your suddenly rapid heartbeat on the adrenaline from your spar.
Feel the tension in your shoulders begin to dissipate only when both of your weapons have been put away.
***
Spend an entire day playing children’s games with Karkat and the Mayor. Race around the meteor playing tag. Flash step until Karkat screams that you’re cheating. Discover that the Mayor is the fastest runner out of all of you. Try and fail to play duck-duck-goose with only three people. Stumble upon empty rooms, laboratories and hallways you had no idea existed while trying to find a hiding place during hide-and-seek.
Attempt to crawl and hide in one of the air vents. Abort that attempt when you hear a quiet honk greet you from further down the vent. Shimmy out as fast as you can without betraying how unnerved you are, and decide you are done playing hide-and-seek for the day. Propose another game of tag instead.
Play regularly for the first few minutes, then disregard the rules completely and pick the Mayor up, piggyback-style, when it’s his turn to be “it.” Charge together towards Karkat, who looks comically alarmed. Reach forward to tag him and yelp in surprise when he grabs your hand and yanks you forward instead, a mischievous grin on his face. Forget about your game of tag completely as Karkat tugs you around by the hand, the three of you running in giddy, nonsensical patterns across the metal floor. Let the Mayor clamber off your back, and grab one his small hands while Karkat grabs the other. Laugh and spin in a clumsy circle until all three of you are dizzy and breathless.
Flop down onto your backs afterwards to catch your breath. Force yourself to stop laughing because your belly aches. Realize that this is the first time you’ve seen Karkat well and truly grin. Soak in the sight of him smiling wide enough to show all of his blunt teeth like sunshine. Wonder if anyone else has ever seen him open and happy and relaxed like this, seen the way his tired eyes sparkle with mirth and hear the way he snorts when he laughs too hard. Bask in the novel way the dimples on his cheeks frame the upturned corners of his mouth.
Become aware that you are still holding his hand, his calloused, stubby fingers intertwined with your longer, bony ones. Feel for the first time that his hands are rough like yours are, his palms and knuckles crisscrossed with old scars: remnants of mistakes he made with his sickles. Do not force yourself to let go of his hand when he doesn’t show any sign of wanting to let go of yours. Savor the warmth of his palm.
He will remark, still grinning, that he’s glad no one else was around to see you two “frolic like slap-happy wrigglers” in a way “entirely unbefitting of a pair of respectable, mature best bros.”
Stiffen in surprise when he refers to the two of you as “best bros.” Feel something big and bright burst inside your rib cage like a fireworks display. Realize that yeah, that’s what you two are: best bros. Bask in how surreal it is that Karkat Vantas has become one of your best friends. Realize that you’ve been staring at him with an unreadable expression on your face for several seconds when he starts frantically backpedaling, his cheeks blotchy and red.
Give his hand a squeeze before he can begin a self-deprecating rant of herculean proportions. For the first time in a long time, find yourself at a loss for words.
Clear your throat. Say earnestly, awkwardly, "Yeah… yeah, best bros. Sounds about right.”
Literally feel Karkat unwind as his grip on your hand relaxes. The smile that he will give you this time will be smaller, shyer, and infinitesimally more intimate than any look that’s ever crossed his features before. Return it as best as you can, and feel as happy as you do maladjusted. Mirror the relief in his eyes with your own, but lack the bravado to take off your shades to show him. Think, with no small amount of gratitude, that maybe he understands how you feel even without a demonstration.
***
Take a midday nap in your room on the meteor. Awaken a few minutes later atop your old mattress, your legs tangled in your ratty card suit sheets. Inhale the familiar scent of your childhood bedroom for the first time in nearly a year. Every muscle in your body will tense up at once when you realize that you’re in a dream bubble of your old apartment.
Slip out of bed, a little stiffly, to take a look out the window. Glance behind your shoulder to make sure no one else is around to push you before you lean out the window. The Houston skyline will look exactly the same as you remember it looking, clouds of smog generating a muddy orange gradient against the setting, cancerous sun. Note distantly that you are already beginning to sweat from the heat.
Linger in your room for a few minutes. Peruse your collection of dead things. Gaze at the potpourri of your possessions, of the life you led before the Game, and feel like it’s been decades instead of months since you last stood in this room. Instinctively check your closet for food and be relieved to find three bags of Doritos and a single, dusty, unopened bottle of apple juice stashed in the corner, behind some cardboard boxes. Captchalogue one of the swords decorating the wall above your turntables before leaving your room, just in case.
Creep into the living room, one hand clenched at your side in a tight fist, the other left open for the hilt of your sword. Force yourself to keep your breathing measured. Your eyes will dart immediately to the place your bro mounts his swords on the wall; before the Game, you’d always check to see if his swords were gone from their holders to try and anticipate a strife. Find both of his swords on the wall. Let out the breath you didn’t know you were holding.
Stare at the back of your bro’s folded up futon. Step lightly across the carpet, tiptoeing over computer cords and smuppets and stray shuriken. Jump a little when an old issue of Game Bro crinkles under your socked foot. Notice that Lil Cal and his traveling trunk are gone, too. Figure that in this particular memory, your bro must be out performing one of his ventriloquist gigs. Allow the adrenaline burning in your veins to fizzle down to a relieved, manageable hum.
Wander over to the kitchen. Nudge a pair of nun chucks laying on the carpet with your toe. Count nine steel throwing stars sitting atop the counter top. Do not bother counting the fireworks in the sink, the saws hanging on the wall, or the swords in the fridge. Especially do not count the swords because you know they have been arranged by your bro to come tumbling to your feet whenever you check the fridge for food. He never told you why he did this, so you assume it was because he found it funny. Think that you have never once found the thin white scars on the tops of your toes even remotely funny. Try to justify this like you’ve done for the past fourteen years with the fact that your bro was an eccentric guy possessing a unique sense of humor. Stop trying when, for some reason, all of your normal excuses refuse to settle with you.
Stare at the handful of appliances, none of them being used correctly, that make up your kitchen. Think about the nutrition block you and your fellow meteormates now share. Juxtapose its counters—counters populated with loaves of bread, disconcertingly insectoid Alternian snacks, bananas, apples, and occasionally, chocolate—with your apartment’s shambling excuse for a kitchen, overtaken with weapons and lacking even a box of crackers. Remember the strange look Rose had given you a few weeks previous, when you’d bundled a surplus of snacks into your arms to stash in your room, “just in case.” Feel something old, angry and battered from years of fervent denial begin to claw from the back of your brain to the front.
Make uneasy eye contact with the puppet your bro stuffed in the blender. On a whim, turn the blender on. Regret this immediately when the fake blood capsules your bro apparently hid inside the puppet burst. Hate yourself for falling for that trick again. Stare at the red splattering the blender’s plastic walls and feel a little nauseated.
Flinch at the sound of a key sliding into the front door. Listen to the doorknob turn as all the hairs on the back of your neck raise. Immediately retrieve your sword from your sylladex. Turn on your heel to face the door. Grip your weapon so tight your knuckles turn white. Think frantically that he’ll see you and know somehow, he’ll know that you died a coward and came back no braver than you were before, that you haven’t trained properly in months, that you’ve been parading all of your vulnerable parts in front of Karkat like they’re something to be proud of instead of beaten out of you—your bro's going to beat it out of you, he’s going to force you to scale the stairs up to the roof and leave you bruised and bitter and bleeding against the asphalt again...
The second before the door opens, gasp awake to the sight of the ceiling of your room on the meteor.
Pant in the dark, your sweaty back clinging to the sheets, and try to quell your racing heartbeat. Dwell on the fact that knowing your bro was out of the apartment, your brother that raised you, your brother that is dead, your brother that you should want to see again, was a source of relief. Your brain will begin to ruthlessly supply adjectives like maladjusted, malnourished, neglected, abused. Get stuck on abused, your brain skipping like a badly-scratched CD. Repeat it over and over—abused, abused, abused—in your mind until it starts making sense, or until it no longer sounds like a word—whichever comes first. Think, a little hysterically, how ironic it is that you went from wearing a broken record to becoming one.
Roll out of bed and pace in your socks on the cold, metal floor. Try to approach the question of your bro logically, materialistically. Desperately recall all of the birthday presents he ever gave you. Place them on a scale you create in your mind and weigh years of expensive records, turntables and shitty swords for your birthday against chipped teeth, bleeding noses, ugly bruises, and hunger pangs. Try to balance that one time you broke your arm after he pushed you down a flight of stairs with the fact that he set the bones into place afterwards.
Watch the scale tip. Try not to vomit. Fail miserably and gag when you remember how he, after setting your bones back into place, had shrugged off your weak suggestion to go to the emergency room and tossed you a bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol instead. As you make a beeline for the bathroom, feel a kind of sick, lingering pride over the fact that you hadn’t let yourself cry until he’d left you trembling, alone, atop the toilet seat.
Listen to your blood rush in your ears after you finish heaving in the sink. Gulp water from the faucet like you used to do when you were five and thirsty and too short to reach the shelf holding all of the cups. Aggressively brush your teeth. Fail to get the taste of iron out of your mouth.
Leave the bathroom and, after a moment of contemplation, your room too. Find Karkat in the common room, lounging on the couch with a heavy book open and balanced on his chest. Marvel at the way he immediately, nonchalantly makes room for you as soon as he sees you. Mumble a greeting, then plop down next to him. Throw your arms over the back of the couch so he can’t see the way your hands still tremble. Ask him, faux casual, to read to you. He will comply. Sit there next to him on the couch until you are absolutely certain the dream bubble you were in has passed, until your hands stop their shaking. Listen to the way your best friend’s tongue curls around alien surnames, and let his gravelly voice wash over you like a benediction.
***
Devise and play a point-based game with yourself. Award yourself one point every time you make Karkat smile, five points every time you make him chuckle, and ten points every time you make him laugh. Play this whenever thinking about your bro becomes overwhelming and you need a distraction.
Note with satisfaction that your score is rising steadily by the week. Start playing not because you need to, but because you want to. Eventually quit keeping track of points entirely, but still feel just as accomplished every time one of your jokes brings a smile to his face.
***
Agree to watch Good Luck Chuck with Karkat for the first time. Regret this as soon as he demands to know what a blowjob is. Laugh at the alarmed look on his face when you reply. Learn that dentists on Alternia are called “denterrorists.” The realization that your bro never once took you to a dentist will make something heavy and unpleasant settle in your gut. Distract yourself from it with the movie.
Resist the urge to squirm your way through every sex scene. Karkat will watch them with the same contemplative furrow to his brow that biologists have when they watch animals copulate. Sweat a little. Worry that he can feel how clammy your palms are when you pass him the popcorn bowl. Notice how warm your cheeks are, how stuffy your room suddenly feels. Become acutely aware of all four inches of space between his hand on the mattress and your thigh.
Panic silently when your eyes trail wantingly along his jawline. Catch yourself admiring the sweep of his collarbones. Be hit like a bag of bricks to the face with the realization that you really, really want to kiss your best friend. Tighten your hands into fists in your lap. Count to ten in a feeble attempt to calm the erratic thump-thump-thumping of your traitorous heart.
Do not kiss him, no matter how much you want to. Clumsily suggest putting on another movie instead, and ignore how the light from the movie casts shadows across the soft slopes of his gray cheeks.
Pick errant strands of his wiry black hair off of your floor, your sheets, the soft fabric of your pajamas after he leaves. Wonder how they got there; if trolls shed seasonally like cats. Marvel at the fact that you have someone to leave hair in your bed in the first place.
Wait until you are in bed with all the lights turned off to let yourself panic in full.
***
Remind yourself you are straight. Think of all of the girls you have liked. List them. Repeat Jade and Terezi and sometimes Rose’s names until they become a metronome in your head. Chant this mantra of heterosexuality whenever Karkat leans his head on your shoulder and your chest starts to hurt.
Consider consulting Rose. Try to imagine her reaction. Conclude that she’d tell you to stop stressing over the bullshit heteronormativity and toxic masculinity of a planet that’s been blown to smithereens. Imagine telling her that the bullshit didn't feel like bullshit when it was slicing up your shins. Picture the look of pity on imaginary Rose’s face as she gently presses you about your childhood. Decide you are going to talk to Karkat instead, because he always knows when not to push.
Procrastinate your conversation with Karkat for a week because you’re a coward. Stumble your way through the entire discussion when you finally have it. Wonder why you thought talking to an alien whose entire species was bisexual would benefit you. Wonder even more why you thought talking to the boy behind your sexuality crisis in the first place was a good idea. Pack the puzzled-but-earnest support he’d offered you tight in your chest, close to your heart like some kind of foundation. Leave his respiteblock feeling flustered and confused, but lighter.
Be surprised when he brings the topic up again a few days later. Sate his curiosity to the best of your ability. Relax an increment with every question you are able to answer. Agree with his eventual, thoughtful assessment of Earth’s ideas about gender and sexuality as “unnecessary and ass backwards.” Feel a little bit better after everything.
Barrage him with questions of your own about Alternia, some about gender and sexuality, some not. Chance a couple delicately phrased questions about his blood. Be filled with anger and a great and terrible sadness at his answers. Decide after Karkat gives you a thorough explanation of culling that Alternia sounded like a really shitty place to grow up. Accidentally say so out loud. Trample on every occasion he’s boasted about his home planet with one slip of your tongue. Honestly consider, not for the first time, stuffing your cape into your mouth. Prepare to be verbally eviscerated.
Hold your breath when Karkat blinks at you slowly, like he’s surprised. Stare when he, instead of taking offense, just laughs bitterly and says, “Yeah. Fuck, yeah, it really was. And having to explain all of this to someone else makes me wonder how I ever fooled my desperate ass into thinking otherwise.”
Feel completely, utterly lost. Watch with wide eyes as his lower lip starts to tremble and alarmingly pink tears begin to roll down his cheeks. Launch into a panicked babble, determined you did something wrong and even more determined to fix it. He will tell you to shut up. Do so immediately. Against your better judgement, believe him when he says, shakily, that you actually just did him a favor. Almost feel compelled to shed a few tears yourself when he buries his face in your shoulder, fists his hands in your shirt, and weeps over the death of a planet that wanted him dead.
Later, lay in bed for a long time before going to sleep. Consider the word “bisexuality.” Begin to reconsider your sexuality. Slip into unconsciousness wondering if there will ever be a person of any gender you will feel comfortable enough to cry in front of.
***
Re-watch Good Luck Chuck with him for the second time at his request. Get bored ten minutes in and complain about Dane Cook’s “greasy horse-face.” Sprawl across Karkat’s lap for dramatic effect. Stay there when he huffs but does nothing to nudge you off.
Accidentally fall asleep with your cheek pressed to his thigh. Wake up before the credits roll, but keep your eyes closed and your breathing slow so you can savor the comforting weight of his hand on your shoulder as long as possible.
***
Teach him how to mix. Guide his hands atop your turntables and offer encouragement from where you’re leaning over his shoulder like you wish your bro had done for you. Do not laugh when he makes mistakes, even in good humor, because it makes him reluctant to try again. Counter every self-deprecating remark that slithers out from between his lips with insistent “no wait, do this instead”s and “hold on, try this out”s. High five him hard enough to make your palms sting after you finish rendering his first completed track. Wish you could render and save a copy of the accomplished smile on his face in that moment, too.
***
Pester him whenever you have trouble sleeping because he suffers from insomnia, too. Meet him in front of his respiteblock and wander through chilly, sterile hallways together until your eyes start to droop. Traverse the bowels of the meteor and unearth corridors, transportalizers and sometimes even entire rooms you didn’t know existed. You will memorize these locations for further exploration on a later, less exhausted occasion, but never remember them the morning after.
Talk and walk and talk some more until your tongue feels sluggish and your feet feel heavy. Only then begin the long, sleepy shuffle back to your rooms. Do not use your god tier powers to float when your feet get tired because it makes Karkat jealous.
Host impromptu sleepovers in whoever’s room is the closest. Develop a habit of keeping a spare blanket and pillow in your sylladex. Fall asleep back to back, your spines pressed together like the two toothy sides of a zipper.
Wake up in a tangle of blankets and limbs. Open your eyes to the sight of his sleeping face pressed against your chest, his arms looped around your waist and his bedhead underneath your nose. You will both be flustered and apologetic the first few mornings, painfully self-conscious about your bedhead and morning breath. Despite your best efforts, these mornings will make repeat appearances.
Eventually mutually accept your closeness upon waking for the embarrassing inevitability that it is. Make quiet peace with the fact that you are a sleep cuddler. Only ever complain about his close proximity when he drools on you, and sleep best on the nights he’s next to you.
***
Realize during a late-night game of cards with Karkat that you only have seven months left until you reach the new session. Set your hand of cards down and say, “Man, can you believe we’ve only got seven months left to kill until we reach the new session? Like, holy shit.”
He will digest that for a moment with a grim look on his face, then eventually reply with a single, emphatic “fuck.” Chuckle at this.
A few contemplative seconds later, he will ask, “Am I a lazy piece of shit for wishing this trip was a little longer?”
Be a little surprised that he feels this way. Remember all the times he complained about feeling stir-crazy, about contracting “meteor madness”. Also remember the day you held hands and spun around in giddy circles, wasting time and being glad for it, more at ease than you’d ever been back in Houston.
Reply, “Naw, I wouldn’t mind kickin’ it here a little longer, too. Why?”
“There was just something I wanted to do before we reached the next session, I guess,” he will reply, uncharacteristically vague.
Say, “Well shit, dude, time’s a wastin’. Better do it quick.”
“...Yeah,” he will agree, after a moment’s hesitation. Find his expression, for once, unreadable. Feel uncomfortable under the sudden, strange intensity of his gaze and bow your head to look down at your cards instead.
Look up again when he says your name—“Dave?”—like he’s posing a particularly controversial question.
Reply, a little apprehensively, “What’s up, dude?”
Watch him fidget and run his tongue over his lower lip: two nervous habits of his you’ve become well acquainted with. Start to feel a little anxious yourself.
“Can I kiss you?” he will inexplicably, loudly blurt out a few seconds later.
Feel like the entire meteor has screeched to a halt. Stare at him like he just started speaking in tongues. Wonder if you have wandered into a dream bubble, a doomed timeline, a bizarre, alternate universe where your best friend wants to kiss you just as much as you want to kiss him.
Make sure you heard him right. Say, “What?”
He will squirm where he is seated on your bedroom floor, anxiously shifting from one buttock to the other. “Can I kiss you, Dave?” he will repeat, a little quieter this time.
Search his tremendously red face for any evidence of trickery or foul play. Find his expression frighteningly earnest.
Think yes, yes, god yes you can kiss me, please kiss me. Try to tell him this, but find your mouth painfully dry. Lick your lips. After a few long, heated seconds, choke out a strangled, “Yeah.”
At this he will give you a doubtful look. Clear your throat and try again, with added conviction. Say, “Yeah, I mean… shit, yeah, you can. If you want to.”
“Do you want to?” Karkat will counter.
Swallow thickly. Say, “Yeah,” again, like it’s the only word that hasn’t been eradicated from your vocabulary. Wipe your sweaty hands on your pants.
“Okay,” he will say. “Fuck, okay, good, because you just told me that we only have a handful of perigrees left and I’ve been wanting to act on this quadrant-transcending train wreck for half a god damn sweep already and you literally just handed me the opportunity on a golden fucking platter.”
Find the sight of him rambling like you usually do surreal. Stare at him a little dazedly. He will stare back at you, his lips pressed tightly together, and take a deep, unsteady breath.
“I am going to stop running my squawk blister, and kiss you now,” he will state, a little awkward and a lot determined. “Just… push me off or sock me in the jaw or something if you stop wanting this, okay?”
Nod. Reply, a little shakily, “Wouldn’t worry about that, bro. The chances of me not wanting this are about as nonexistent as your chill right now.”
At this, he will pretend to be exasperated and roll his eyes, but look considerably more relaxed. His eyes will soften when he places a hand on your face. Lean cautiously into the gentle circles his thumb is rubbing against your cheekbone, and blush red-hot underneath his calloused fingertips.
Stare with wide eyes at his slowly approaching face, at his half-lidded eyes and the slight part of his thick black lips as he leans towards you. Do not look away. Listen to the erratic pounding of your heart in your ears. Get goosebumps when his breath ghosts against your lips.
Place your clammy palms atop his shoulders. Tilt your head so your noses won’t bump, and close your eyes in surrender. Bridge the last inch between your lips to do what you’ve wanted to do for months now: kiss him.
Melt a little when he immediately kisses you back, his mouth chapped and chaste and as warm as the palm he still has pressed to your cheek. It will feel like your heart has suddenly become too big for your chest. Let this feeling overtake you until you every cell is singing with it. Kiss and kiss and kiss him until you feel dizzy.
Pull away to catch your breath. Rest your forehead against his and lick your lips. Laugh together over how cliche your first kiss was later. For now, focus on making your second kiss even better than your first.
Trace your tongue along his front teeth. Memorize the gaps in between his fangs, the press of his incisors against your lower lip, the texture of his tongue. Lick your lips when you remember all of these things later, and relish the way your smiling mouth still tingles.
***
Do not make any announcements when you and Karkat start dating. Do this partially because you don’t want to deal with everyone else’s “I told you so”s, and partially because it’s fun to keep them all—especially Vriska—guessing. Decide that Karkat is by far the best, if not the most poorly-kept secret you have ever kept.
***
Apologize whenever you ask to kiss him. Apologize every time you grab his hand. Apologize against his back when you hold him, when he holds you. Feel simultaneously better and worse when he tells you, mostly patiently and sometimes impatiently, that you have nothing to be sorry for. Apologize for apologizing. Resist the urge to kick yourself in the teeth.
Reassure yourself again and again that you have nothing to be sorry for until you almost believe it. Chant this like you used to do with the names of the girls you’d liked. Teach yourself to dam floods of unbidden "fuck"s and "sorry"s from spilling out your lips with kisses.
Think that your bro would absolutely despise seeing your fingers in another boy’s hair instead of wrapped around the hilt of a sword. Ask yourself who you have really been apologizing to this whole time and hate the answer.
Decide you are tired of being afraid of what a dead man thinks. Stop apologizing. Love vindictively because it is the only way you know how.
***
Touch him with reckless abandon until the intimacy becomes easy and instinctual. Doodle phalluses, crude caricatures of your meteor mates, and hearts with your initials inside of them on his arm in pen. Press your cold toes against his thighs whenever the two of you cuddle and chuckle at his ensuing, indignant shriek. Hold his hand whenever the two of you go late-night exploring. Bury your nose in his hair and inhale until your lungs are fit to burst. Throw your arm across his shoulders and play with the short hairs at the nape of his neck. Splay your fingers across his lower back and feel him shiver. Play footsie with him underneath the table during meals. Bundle the two of you in your cape on the couch like a cocoon. Still fall asleep in his lap during movies sometimes, but no longer need an excuse to stay there after you wake up.
***
Become a certified xenobiologist. Study his alien body with the same intense curiosity with which he studies yours. Run your fingertips along the foreign bumps and ridges of his spine like braille. Scrape your fingernails lightly along his grubscars. Sample the sound of his purring and incorporate it into one of your mixes as a bass line. Count the ridges on his horns and marvel at the wiry thickness of his hair. Inquire about the shampoo he uses and receive an exasperated groan as an answer.
Compare your notes on troll physiology with Rose sometimes. High five over your results when you know Karkat isn’t looking.
***
Canoodle on the couch when everyone else is asleep. Abandon the movie playing on Karkat’s husktop and make out, instead. Press yourselves together chest-to-chest and sync the heavy thump-thump-thump of his heart to your own, down to the millisecond.
Pause when his warm fingertips dance down your belly. Suddenly understand what the authors of his terrible romance novels meant by “searing intent.” Stare at his hand. Stare at him.
He will ask, “Are you okay with this?”
Reply, “Fuck yes,” and pepper his concerned face with kisses until he believes you.
Let yourself have this. Let yourself have him, and let him have you.
Commit the afterglow the two of you share afterwards to memory. Squirrel it away into your deepest, safest, most secret place. Arrange the cadence to his breathing and the crooked slice of his smile into patterns and impressions you can translate into code and weave into your DNA. Burn the warmth of his skin against yours into your bones. Swear that this moment is the one you will play and loop the next time you find yourself dying. Decide that any death of yours after this could be ruled Just because you've been blessed with this moment.
Pantomime lighting a cigarette. Jokingly ask, “Was it good for you too, baby?” He will pretend to be annoyed and swat you halfheartedly on the chest, then hide his smiling face in your shoulder.
Feel compelled to tell him just how much he means to you, how much he has done for you. Consider telling him how the first time you kissed him you went supernova, and every time he kissed you back after that he was arranging your scattered, celestial pieces into a new galaxy. Decide that’s too saccharine, even for him and especially for you. Paraphrase with a simple, quiet, “Love you,” instead. Listen to his breath catch.
Glow brighter than ever when he replies, “Love you too.”