(Authors Note:
Welp, this is the first fanfiction I have ever done, which is exciting to say the least. I will attempt to update weekly, but as finals are coming up it might end up being more sporadic. Comments/Reviews/whatever would be very well received, and I hope you enjoy!)
The night, as he would remember it, fuzzed out around eight p.m. and took the rest of the day with it, his usually clear mind blurring like paint on a wet canvas. Colours tangled and wove into each other, the beginnings and ends of their threads indecipherable. Hours later, the trails of incoherency trickled down into just a few lines he could pull stoutly together. They formed a carpet first, threadbare and worn and smelling of sweat and alcohol, a pungent mixture that led him to make the very unwise decision of attempting to stand.
The world rushed about him before he even made it to his knees, and he almost fell, catching himself just in time with the palms of his hands. After allowing himself a few minutes of recuperation, he looked around the room, carefully studying his current location. It came as no surprise to him that he was in a dream bubble; however, this room wasn't something he remembered.
It was a shabby place, with few furnishings in much disrepair. An archaic couch matched the carpet he sat on, accompanied solely by a make-shift milk crate coffee table, now stacked high with emptied glasses. Along the far wall, a counter jutted out awkwardly, the kitchen it once guarded having now disappeared, and it too was littered with the refuse of a long night. It looked, he thought adeptly, like something from the burned up memories of a very drunk person; in other words, him.
The troll in question was a tall one, well muscled and rather unpleasant looking on the offhand glance. His grey skin was dimpled with scars from where he had accidentally scratched himself, and was often gleaming with sweat. This late at night, his hair had become a greasy, knotted mess, eventually given up on and thrown back into a ponytail. His body, far too strong for his mind, often served as more of a clumsy distraction than any asset, and his drunkenness did not help.
To the right was his drinking partner, another strange-looking specimen. He harbored a cultish love for clown lore, and wore face paint to mark him as one of their own. As the night had crawled along, it had mostly smeared off, leaving his grey face a besmirched mess. The juggalo was extremely tall, though not as tall as the first man, and not nearly as buff. Instead, it looked as if someone had grabbed the arms and legs of a normal sized troll and pulled hard, stretching the clown-boy out as far as anatomically possible.
Equius, though now sober enough to remember his name, was unable to recall exactly how they had found the dream bubble of their current residence, and had long forgotten what had led to him drinking with the high blood- Gamzee, as he was better known- in the first place. Normally, the brutish troll would have never gone near the clown man, for despite Equius's reverence for the blood based caste system, Gamzee had lost all of Equius's previous respect when he killed both him and his beloved morial, Nepeta.
Not that Equius did not understand the violent urges which paralleled being a higher up on the blood caste- he was only a rung lower than Gamzee, after all- but he had tried his best to never hurt another troll. Equius's own hive- now destroyed- had been full of dismembered robots, evidence of the brute's inner turmoil. They were his own creations, and they were built for the very purpose of destruction. See, Equius was a very, very strong man, and he had a temper which often got the best of him. Rather than hurting anyone else, though- the normal outlet in troll culture- he would fall back to fighting these robots, his opponents numbering many before his mind had settled. In this way, he kept himself sane, and did not bring harm unto another living creature. Therefore, Equius understood violence, and the high blood's need for it.
But the slaughter Gamzee had wrought almost a year ago was not simply out of need. It was brought on by a sudden fit of sobriety, an adjective which usually could never be applied to the juggalo boy, and it was full of unnecessary malice. Equius had been willing to kneel for his higher-up, to submit and do whatever the indigo blood had wanted him to, had he not been so confused by the false eyewear Gamzee had donned or the changing volume of his voice; still there had been no mercy. And killing Nepeta- Equius felt an all too familiar flash of indignation. No, what Gamzee had done was inexcusable.
So he was surprised to find himself sprawled out next to the boy, drunk and woozy, emotions clouding over his intoxicated eyes. That Gamzee managed to find him amongst the chaos which were the dream bubbles, as well as convincing him to make merry, was an impossible idea. Perchance their had been some sort of gathering, involving the liquor the Rose human had recently been experimenting in, and Gamzee had somehow procured some and then entered the dream bubble afterward? For the life of him, Equius could not functionally remember whether or not the meteor was passing through a dream bubble in order to give any of the living trolls daytime access.
The purple-blooded boy turned to him, the usual stupid smile plastered across his makeup ridden face. Equius sensed something dark moving behind those dark irises, though he didn't comment or feel afraid. He couldn't die twice.
"HeY, mOtHeRfUcKeR," Gamzee's voice was hoarse from the drinks burning his throat, and he propped himself up on his elbow to be more easily heard. "hEy."
Equius sat up as well, pulling his legs in and crossing them. His usual good posture was askew, leaving him to lean and waver unsteadily forward before placing his hands on the ground and staying in a hunched position.
"Yes?" He asked. Despite being drunk off his ever-livin' (ever-dead?) ass, Equius's words were still somehow eloquent, poised with a naturally poetic lilt. It was the sort of voice no one would expect from someone with such a lumbering size and shape.
"I jUsT wAnTeD tO sAy Im ReAlLy MotHeRfUcKiNg SoRrY aBoUt WhAt HaPpEnEd." Gamzee was familiar with almost all levels of intoxication, so much that he felt able to string a coherent apology together. It was undoubtedly the incorrect time and place for such a confession, but the clown man doubted he would have another chance alone with Equius.
The blue-blood felt a trickle of sweat begin at the top of his hairline, wildly uncomfortable- and somehow attracted- by someone so high above him offering an apology, even if it was well deserved. Above all this, a strange deluge of anger surged through him, and he was unabe to surpress it, despite how far gone he was in drink. Gamzee owed much more than an apology. The thought furthered the darkening blush on his face- but it was true, and Equius did not even mean it for himself. It was Nepeta who had suffered, alone and terrified in the vents while she watched her morial- of all people!- die, just before following him to the grave.
"It'S nOt ReAlLy EnOuGh, I kNoW," Gamzee continued. Even with his high tolerance, the painted boy was knocked sideways by the amount of liquor inside him, and it was leading to loose lips. Equius turned his head away, slightly, his face and bare arms glistening with sweat at Gamzee lowering himself with such an apology.
The makeup smeared face of the clown boy stretched into an unnoticed frown, unable to feel a pang of sadness at Equius's unwillingness to forgive him.
He had never really known Equius before the game, at first hearing his name only in passing. He was Nepeta's morial, was all Gamzee really knew, and people didn't like him much. He was socially awkward and had a body odor problem and was too strong to get near to anyone in person without accidentally crushing them. It was a name that had strangely piqued interest in Gamzee, if only due to the mystery.
However, Gamzee had never gone out of his way to resolve this mystery- that wasn't how the boy worked. He was a fan of waiting and watching and allowing things to come to him by the sheer force of the supernatural, instead of pressing for things no matter how much he wanted them. If the time was right, he sometimes dropped a comment or a beat, but nothing so large scale as going out of his way to find a hidden relic.
He had a few times talked with Equius, but only if Equius made first contact, and thereafter it usually didn't go so well. The blue troll just always seemed so… disappointed in him, his mannerisms and choices for friendship. He'd asked Gamzee to attempt ordering him around, but that hadn't ended well as the purple-blooded boy really had no idea of how to do so and no intention to learn.
Still, when he had learned that Equius had joined their session of the game, he had felt as if the colours of the world had rained down upon him.
And yet he had never been able to talk with Equius for more than a minute- the blueblood was always ducking out of conversation or constantly apologizing for some unnecessary misstep. With such strong ties to the hierarchy, Equius found Gamzee's flagrant apathy towards the usual customs unnerving, and sometimes went out of his way to avoid him.
However, miracles continued to be Gamzee's favored method of going about his daily business, so he did not openly press the matter. But he would be a liar if he pretended that he did not sometimes wish for certain miracles, such as the one that seemed to be occurring now. He could feel the heat radiating off the blueblood's body, flushed with delicious, mind-altering toxins and an odd, late-night induced nostalgia.
"I…" Gamzee perked up, suddenly, as Equius began to talk. "I forgive you."
They were both thinking of their few conversations, but in different shades. Equius still remembered the confusing emotional mingling of both disgust and respect he had found for the high blood, the first for his manners and the latter for his purple plasma. Though he did remember how the troll had indulged him, attempting to order him around despite not understanding how to do so.
It was impossibly queer, the idea that someone of lower rank could have the authority- the audacity- to require an apology from a high blood in return for their forgiveness. He was unsure whether or not he actually meant the words he had forced out of his mouth- they felt like such a debasement of Gamzee's inherited authority! Moreover, Equius still harbored a burning anger, unable to wash away the sight of Nepeta dying on the floor next to him. He could not bear it- but he felt that the indigo blooded boy wanted forgiveness, and so he gave him a parcel of lies.
"MoThErFuCkIn' MiRaClEs," Gamzee rolled back so that his spine was once more parallel against the floor, and from behind his cracked glasses Equius thought he saw some other emotion pass across the juggalo's face, though he could not place it and did not really want to.
So it came as a surprise when Gamzee suddenly sprung back up, slamming his knees down hard into the thin carpet to come at almost level eyesight with Equius. Their knees were almost touching; the blueblood noticed this with a flush of embarrassment, though the thought was quickly overrun by the foggy intoxication of his mind.
On the opposite side of the drunken pendulum, Gamzee was shot through and charged with the alcohol in his veins, so much that he had to restrain himself from grabbing Equius's shoulders as the words spilled out of his mouth, the sudden hunger for Equius's thoughts and feelings.
"Do YoU mEaN tHaT, bRoThEr?" Gamzee asked frantically, in more earnest than Equius had ever seen him. "Do YoU rEaLlY fOrGiVe Me Or Do YoU jUsT fEeL yOu HaVe To?"
The blueblood froze at the confrontation, unable to sort out his feelings here. A higher blood was demanding his honesty- but the honesty would also mean disappointment for him. So was it better to disappoint or disobey? At the conundrum, he began aware of the sweat which trickled between his shoulder blades.
Annoyance shot through Gamzee's veins, but he quickly quelled it. He was not sober- quite the opposite, in fact, thanks to the strong concoctions Rose had recently been creating- but he was still terrified that the currently silent voices would start up and reach him once again. It was impossible to die in a dream bubble, since participants were either dead themselves or asleep- and would just wake up if they perished- but it was possible to hurt them, he believed, and so he still worried over what he would do if provoked.
Yet the idea that Equius was about to lie to him all because of some stupid genetic difference was so obnoxiously irritating that Gamzee could not allow him to do so.
"StOp, MoThEr FuCkEr," he ordered, and Equius snapped to attention, his face flushed and confused. "I cAn FeEl yOu AlL tHiNkIn' OvEr ThErE, tRyIn' To FiGuRe OuT wHaT i MoThErFuCkIn' WaNt. DoN't Do tHaT- i WaNt To KnOw YoUr AnSwEr, NoT yOuR mOtHeRfUcKiN' cOvEr."
"I—uhm… I e%pect- I apologize." Equius was only more confused now, and the near dejected look on his face made Gamzee squirm inwardly. He hadn't meant to hurt him! But it was so infuriating, trying to work a real answer out of someone so afraid of making mistakes, especially now with what had happened.
Of course, Gamzee only had himself to blame for that one.
"DoN't ApOlOgIzE, mOtHeRfUcKeR. jUsT tElL mE."
There was a strange under current in Gamzee's voice that welled a certain alien feeling in the pit of Equius's stomach, some uncomfortable warm feeling he could not place.
"I—uh—I just" Equius sputtered, still unsure of how to properly answer. "Perhaps—I do not know."
Sensing how uncomfortable Equius had become, Gamzee finally backed off, even scooting away a few inches so that they could no longer feel the heat radiating off each other, maintaining a safe distance. Talking to Equius was impossible- he just couldn't seem to get through to him.
"I wIsH i HaDn'T dOnE wHaT i DiD," Gamzee was unusually quiet, his voice still wavering with drunkenness but with a surprising amount of false sobriety. "iT wAs So MoThErFuCkInG sTuPiD. i JuSt KePt HeArInG aLl ThIs ShIt AnD-"
"If you will e%cuse my boldness, highb100d, it was more than foolish merely for you to do so. It was extremely wrong of you," The words spilled out of Equius's mouth without thought, the anger surging through his body threatening to overwhelm him. His hands shook and he clenched them in response, attempting to stop the need for him to express powerful emotion through the invigorating release of physical activity. He wanted to slam his fists into the carpet and crack the dreamt-up concrete underneath, smash a hole in the wall a mighty blow. Most of all, he wanted to hurt Gamzee, to pay him back for what he did to Nepeta. It was the sort of thing he immediately regretted- talking so rudely to or even thinking about harming a high blood, even one so loathsome and disgusting as this one, was simply not allowed.
He cleared his throat. "I apologize, highb100d. That was inconceivably rude of me. It was not my place."
Gamzee had fallen silent, encircling his arms around clumsy knees and pulling them up as to rest his heavy drunken head. Equius was always going on about his place- his place - as if trolls were born in boxes shaped by the colour of their hemoglobin. The blue-blooded troll had never understood how Gamzee could be friends with Karkat, someone so low ranking on the blood caste that he hid the true form of his life-force under grey silt. Equius was allowed to be mad at the ones above him when he was wronged.
Yet there were still those strains of anger, those dark voices he could feel whispering just outside the veil of forced intoxication, and he knew if he wasn't careful they would grip his mind like a vise and strip it down until nothing else remained but the rage gifted to him by his blood. Equius would not forgive him, he could tell, and the dulled red flower of anger was weaved through with the dark sediment of disappointed murk, a great tide of sorrow. It was his own fault, Gamzee reminded himself mournfully.
"YoU dOn'T fOrGiVe Me ThEn?" Gamzee tried one last time, already knowing the answer. It was perhaps careless of him to toy with the already uncomfortable Equius's emotions further, giving him another chance to lie and continue on in his fabled little world of hierarchy and submission. "TeLl Me HoNeStLy," he added after a pause, to remedy this.
For the longest time, all was silent, with Gamzee simply watching the internal struggle inside of Equius. There was so much rage there, barely concealed by the frame of his broken glasses, and yet sweat beaded his brow in the temptation of falling back on the familiar pattern of obedience. Still, the high blood had said to be honest.
"I… no, I suppose I do not." Equius stated after a moment, dropping pennies into the musty water of their silence. They rippled out in a slow motion, small rivets in the surface that washed over Gamzee in a breaking sort of way, flowing fast and calm through the poked holes in his façade.
The painted face of the troll did not drop- in fact, he even slanted his lips up to form a smile, albeit a fake one.
"YeAh, MoThErFuCkEr, ThAt'S hOnEsTy RiGhT tHeRe. SoMe ReAl GoOd ShIt, ThAt iS."
Equius said nothing, still concentrating keeping back the tide of anger which threatened to overwhelm him, especially now that the other troll was changing the subject, taking this all so lightly. Gamzee realized he wasn't about to get a response and that the polite thing to do was leave the raven-haired troll to be alone so that he could smash things up.
"i ThInK i'D bEtTeR lEaVe," Gamzee told him, offering another counterfeit smile. "WoUlD yOu MiNd If I cAmE bAcK tO vIsIt A bRoThEr?"
Equius wanted to say no, to shoo out the juggalo and never have to deal with all the anger Gamzee stirred up within him. Yet he could not, for the idea so revolted his personal values that he had to consent.
"If it pleases you, highb100d," he finally acquiesced.
"ThAnKs BrO," Gamzee said, pulling himself to a stand, careful to keep his expression blasé. "I'lL cAtCh Ya LaTeR tHeN." With that, the clown boy left the room, slightly stooping to allow room for his horns.
Equius calmed himself with deep breaths and silent recitals of numbers, listening as the door closed and then to the footsteps carrying the stumbling Gamzee away, back to the meteor and his friends and his life- because Gamzee still had that. Only after he could no longer hear the tread of the juggalo boy did Equius allow his emotions to break through, and it was less of a crack than an all out and final smashing.
The troll lunged to his feet, growling and unsteady in his drunkenness, before slamming his thick arms into the wall nearest to him. His fists broke through the mortar, crumbling it into sand and rubble which fell at his feet, dusting his legs and abdomen with a fine white powder. He paused, a darkness welling up inside him and causing him to, instead of continuing his outburst, rest his head on the cool brittle wall.
The rage still churned sickeningly inside him, but he knew that all the physical strife would not be worth it. This was not the sort of anger he could merely sweat out; it was burning and encompassing and would not cease. No matter the hemospectrum or hierarchy, Equius could not ever see himself forgiving his higher-up. Not after what had happened.