It's not that Dave was bad at reading people, per se. He just wasn't great at it, and that was only natural. Growing up in such a secluded environment, he became infinitely more used to reading text than speech or body language. He could read volumes from the placement of punctuation, tell the difference between poignant and accidental pauses – but in person? Face to face with people, having to take into account not only intonation but facial expressions, eyes, hands, bodies? He wasn't great. Too much to keep track of, too many variables. Humans were complex creatures, to say absolutely nothing of trolls.
Taking this into consideration, it's only natural that the situation on the meteor made him uncomfortable. It didn't make sense to chat anymore, so all of a sudden he had to talk. To his sister, her alien girlfriend, his own alien ex-girlfriend (if you could call her that), a silent carapace, and an insane clown (though they had never really talked), and … Karkat.
And, honestly, it was making him a little paranoid. He didn't like getting to know all these people in the way that he was, because the better he got to know them the sadder he would be when they, in all likelihood, died. Soon. Someone never signing into pesterchum again was one thing, and hearing that a friend had died was another, but seeing it happen was definitely a third. Your friends go from font colours and shapes and grainy webcams to real flesh and blood beings that you'll remember the voice and smell of when they die. And he didn't like that because he couldn't pretend it didn't bother him.
He didn't talk to Rose or Karkat about it, and not Terezi, anymore. He had brought it up once – drawing in her room, wanting to touch but not knowing how in that childlike way that he was still kicking himself for, watching her and wondering why trolls would have breasts when he doubted they were mammals. She hadn't wanted to talk about dying, and although he didn't say it, he got mad at her for denying that they would all probably die before this game was over. What other option was there? And hadn't he himself already died more times than he could even count? It had taken its toll on him and then some. There were no words for the dreams he had, when he dreamt normally – his own lifeless body, time and time again, soaked in blood. The bodies of his friends. The blood's sour tang scorching his nose, coating his teeth and throat, there was nothing like it. Nothing so red in the universe. He used to like the colour, but now he was starting to hate it. On top of this, after experiencing easily double the play time than everyone else going backwards and forwards through time, he was fucking exhausted.
He didn't think he should feel so burnt out at sixteen. So jaded. But, it didn't really matter anymore. Genuine apathy had dampened the sting of things he was never good at feeling anyway – stress, jealousy, anger. But it hadn't affected the ones he wished it would have taken away – a kind of loneliness. And the teenage hormones he knew would come, but maybe not in the way he expected.
Speaking of which, he wanted to talk to Karkat about dying. He hadn't yet, because he was kind of unpredictable. Half the time Dave didn't get him at all, and half the time he did. When he didn't, talking to him was like pulling teeth, and when he did … he didn't have words for that yet. It was good. He didn't know which way the topic of their own imminent death and that of all their closest friends would go, but he had a hunch. Then again, Karkat had many more of his friends die than Dave ever had. Dave's count was, mercifully, at zero, despite what he personally had experienced: John, Rose, and Jade were all alive in reality. Karkat had lost a lot of people, whether he liked them or not, so he might have more to say about death than Dave would have thought.
Something in him was particularly melancholy the night he went to find Karkat, and he didn't know why. Karkat could be a time bomb. Sometimes he'd get mad, sometimes embarrassed. Usually embarrassed. Once he'd asked if Dave and Rose were mutants among humans because of their hair colour, and Dave hadn't realized right away that trolls only had black hair, as did John and Jade. Once Dave had almost asked him if because trolls had such sharp teeth, did that mean they didn't give or get blow jobs? Almost.
The hallways of the meteor hummed like a furnace, but were cold like a prison. It was late – they always saw each other late out of habit, night owls by nature. They didn't want to answer any of the many questions Rose had to ask, or deal with the bright, meaningful looks she would exchange with Kanaya over him. So they usually talked at night, which meant jack shit in space, where it was always night.
He didn't knock, deciding after almost three years that Karkat was never doing anything interesting. He wasn't a physically interesting person. Mentally, sure – he was smart, crass, funny when he had to be, and startlingly sincere, though some would just call that blunt. But physically? He just sat around. Which was good, because Dave liked to sit too. They had so much in common. Excluding their species, he reminded himself, as he often did.
He pushed the heavy cell-like door to Karkat's room open. "Sup."
Karkat wasn't hunched over his computer, but reading. Dave had found him leaving his husktop alone more often than not lately, and he assumed he'd just gotten tired of it after everything that had happened recently. You end up wanting to do something else pretty quickly. So Karkat was lying on his back on a shitty mattress they'd made, holding a book in the air over his face.
Dave walked a few paces into the small room and stopped. "Where'd you get that?" he asked, nodding to the book.
Karkat kept the book in the air but peered over at Dave. "Some of us are forward-thinking enough to captchalogue reading material for later."
Dave shoved his hands in his pockets and wandered closer. No matter how long they lived in them, these little cells they'd taken as rooms stayed uncomfortably bleak, at least to Dave. Trolls were used to living under different circumstances, as far as he was aware, but they were just so bare. Even Kanaya's room, which she'd decorated and draped to the nines, still threw him off. He missed his own bedroom. Karkat's had a low table he sat at like a desk, and the mattress. It was lit by a single bare bulb in a circuit plugged directly into a wall socket, free of any fixture or mounting. There was a towel and a little trash can at the foot of his bed, with wads of crumpled paper around it. He wasn't very neat. "So you just walk around holding a library?"
"Not a library," Karkat sneered. "Just enough."
Dave flopped down on the other end of his mattress, hard enough to make Karkat bounce and drop the book on his face. Dave snorted.
"Well," he yawned, "Gimme a book, cause I'm bored as hell over here."
"I didn't know you read." Karkat sat up on his elbows. He looked less tired than usual, alert and kind of cat-like as he peered at Dave. His hair was thick and wiry and never looked the same two days in a row, and now that it was getting long, it swept hard to the left side. Rose had cut Dave's hair last week, and was trying to convince Karkat to let her cut his.
"I read plenty." He stuck his hand out and made grabby motions with it until Karkat rolled his eyes and a book dropped into his hand, which he flung at Dave.
"There. Try that." Dave lifted it off his lap. It was the size and shape of one of those small, thick novels you see in grocery stores, its cover and pages battered and yellowed.
"This is well-loved," Dave comments. He squirmed up the mattress to lie next to Karkat, who scooted away from him to give him more room. Dave still insisted on making their shoulders touch, but now Karkat had no bed left to get away from him in.
"I've read it."
"Is it your favourite?"
"Shut up and read."
So they lied there, shoulder to shoulder on Karkat's sagging mattress on the floor, and they read troll novels. Dave insisted on lying exactly like Karkat was, on his back holding the book in the air over his face, knees bent. After five minutes, Karkat looked over at him.
"Don't copy me."
"What?"
"You're lying exactly like me and it's weird, sit some other way."
"No, this is comfy."
"Bullshit, your arms get tired."
"Then why are you doing it?"
"Mine don't."
"Fine." Dave flung his arm across Karkat's chest, and a leg across his legs, knocking the book out of his hands. He smushed his face into his shoulder. "This better?"
"Fuck off!"
Dave flipped onto his side and threw both arms across Karkat's chest with his book still in hand, pressing to his side. "How about this, good?"
"Fuck off, Strider! You lose reading privileges!" He snatched the book from Dave and captchalogued it again, pushing Dave back as hard as he could. Dave was a little bigger than Karkat, but not by much. He was certainly heavier; although they didn't have a scale, they had found out that the trolls were, in general, much lighter than humans of their size would have been. Karkat, being small for a troll, must have weighed at least twenty pounds less than Dave. Dave never let him forget this, and picked him up whenever he could. Picked him up, or wrestled him.
Dave laughed, rolling back to his side of the small bed. Their shoulders were still pressed to one another's, but Karkat didn't seem to mind that. Dave chuckled quietly, pushing his hair back off his forehead, his elbow passing over Karkat's face. He could feel him breathe next to him, and he lied silently, trying to sync the rise and fall of their chests. Karkat didn't have pillows on his bed, so he stared straight up at the ceiling. If they got out of this, Dave would never own anything chrome ever again. He missed wood and bricks and stucco and carpet. The little stalactites on apartment ceilings.
He looked over at Karkat, more out of the corner of his eye than anything. He had a short, straight nose. His body was generally pointy. His ears weren't quite human, but not really selfish either, short and pointed but going back, almost like a deer's. Thin lips, the colour of charcoal. Skin that light grey colour, and a little drier than human skin, less buttery. Wild, wiry mop of dimensionless black hair.
"D'you think we're gonna die?" Dave asked suddenly.
Karkat's head whipped over to look at him, but when he did he realized how close their faces were and he sat up, looking around his arm back at Dave, still lying down. "What do you mean?"
"Like, soon. In the game, but for real. Like everyone else."
Karkat put his book down, leaving it with the spine open on his stomach to hold his page. "Do you?"
"Yeah." They were quiet then, and Dave waited. He sat up on his elbows so he wasn't looking at Karkat under his glasses, because then he could see his eyes, which he still never had. Again, he had misread him. He'd expected yelling or name calling, either brash reassurance or chastising him for being so naive. He said, more meekly than he would have liked, "You don't?"
Karkat rubbed his hair sort of nervously and it just sprang back into place. "Maybe. I guess so. I don't know."
"You've never thought about it?" Dave found that hard to believe. Sure, being on the meteor was a welcome intermission from everything that had been going on, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the game hadn't centered fiercely around death. You had no choice but to think about it - Dave certainly did, at least.
"No, I have." Karkat opened his mouth like he was going to say something else, but shut it. For a second, his sharp teeth had glinted brightly in the dim of the room. Dave had cut his tongue the first time he kissed Terezi, and she was being careful. He wondered if Karkat was careful. Troll tongues were harder than human tongues, because it made no sense to have teeth that could cut your own tongue open. Dave rubbed his face and stared up at the ceiling.
Karkat sighed. "What does it fucking matter, though?"
Dave accidentally snapped at him. "You know I had to see my own dead body? My own corpse?"
"You told me," Karkat said quietly, looking away.
"You can't imagine what that was like. Dying so many times. Seeing so much -" The lump in his throat stopped him. He ruffled his hair to keep his hands busy, pulled at the collar of his shirt like it was too tight to his throat. "Sorry. I know you've had friends die."
Karkat shrugged. He finally gave up on keeping his place in the book he was reading and lifted it off his stomach, shutting it and dropping it on the floor next to the mattress. "It's not the same, I guess. But it's done. You can't change it, so you just … can't think about it."
"How can you not? Why wouldn't you?" Dave was getting fidgety in his distress but didn't want Karkat to know, so he laced his fingers. He realized this was one of those things where it's perfectly fine to think about in your own head, but the minute you talk about it your voice gets all thin and wavery. He hated himself. "What's more important than your own obviously imminent death? For all of us?"
After a second, Karkat sighed and said, very profoundly, "Living."
Karkat didn't seem to think much of his statement, and they lapsed into silence. But Dave sat up. He looked at Karkat, who looked back at him, and in the light of the room's bare bulb his yellow eyes glinted green and iridescent like an animal's. Hair pushed out of his eyes, thick eyebrows low and apprehensive.
They had kept careful track of the days, like prison inmates. They had another six months on the meteor, give or take, until whatever was going to happen would happen. They were probably almost sixteen years old. Not even close to the same species. Technically both male, although one may or may not have been hermaphroditic – Dave hadn't wanted to show his cards by asking anyone. But, he thought slowly, what did that fucking matter now? He was sixteen years old and hurtling through space. It was incredibly likely that he would die before he reached seventeen, and he couldn't ever go back home. How much could anything other than living matter now? What was he worried about, bringing him home to his parents? The logistics of marrying him? Nothing like that mattered for anything anymore, and he wasn't sure why he had ever thought it did. At this specific point in his life, not having an alien boyfriend was a lot less cool than having one.
"Living, huh?" he repeated quietly, more to himself than anything. And he leaned forward, closing the already narrow space between them, and he kissed Karkat. His glasses bumped his cheek. He breathed in and he wasn't sure if the what he smelled was a troll smell or a Karkat smell, but it was kind of like how a bird smelled; warm and dusty, like an old book or a fine coat.
Admittedly, this is what he thought about when he wasn't obsessing over his own mortality. Like everything, it had started as jokes, just to piss him off, but had eventually progressed beyond that into honesty. They were real friends now, he knew that, but did it stop there? He hadn't wanted to ask, through a head cloudy with trying to figure out what was normal and abnormal and drawing the line between homosexuality and xenosexuality and quadrants and what everyone would think, and he didn't fucking care anymore. It was time for death to stop scaring him and start making him bold.
Karkat didn't move back, but after a few long seconds, Dave did. They blinked owlishly at each other. Karkat watched his reflection in Dave's glasses, warping his face with their slight curve, and he opened his mouth and closed it. Dave vowed to wait. Slowly, Karkat reached up and touched the arms of his glasses. On instinct, Dave's hand shot up and grabbed one of his wrists, hard. Karkat's eyebrows lowered, and then so did Dave's hand. He let him pull his sunglasses off.
Dave stubbornly kept his eyes closed for a few seconds, and Karkat started expectantly at the eerily white blonde lashes on his cheeks. He opened his eyes and looked at him, squinting for a second even in the low light. Karkat didn't mean to jump, but did.
"What?" Dave said through his teeth, but he knew what. He'd hoped that to someone who had thought being blonde was a mutation, having blood red eyes might have seemed more normal.
WIthout looking away, Karkat reached back and put his glasses on the ground. He looked younger when he wasn't angry, big eyes made bigger with surprise. He said slowly, "They're like mine."
"What?"
"Like mine'll be. They, uh, fill with our blood colour as we get older." He trailed off, knowing he was staring and not giving one shit.
Dave insisted on just sitting there. Karkat had pulled his legs under him when he sat up to take Dave's glasses off so now their legs were touching. Dave's heart was thundering. This was more anti-climactic than he wanted. He wanted to be yelled at, pushed away, he wanted to have to do some convincing. Of all the possible reactions, he hadn't expected awe. He had made the first move and was stoically determined not to make the second. He felt naked and stupid and ugly without his glasses.
Karkat must not have thought so, because he kissed him. He was clumsy but earnest. Dave thought about how the only girl either of them had ever kissed was the same girl, and he almost laughed against his mouth. Neither of them knew what they were doing, spurred on eighty percent by hormones and twenty by various forms of poor erotica, for one of them novels and the other grainy internet pornography. The pigheaded teenaged part of Dave kicked himself every day for freezing up and not going farther with Terezi, having already gained an ex-girlfriend with no sexual experience to show for it.
Karkat's dry, bony hands touched where his neck met his shoulders, and he could feel his claws snag his shirt. He was dizzy. He fisted his hands in the front of Karkat's shirt and dragged him closer. His tongue was wet and warm and kind of rough, which was nice. Karkat's hands moved to pull his hair between his fingers, to grab his face, push his thumbs into the hollow of his cheeks and force his mouth wider.
Dave scooted backwards inch by inch until he was pressed against the wall, half of him freezing on the metal and half burning with the heat of another body. He could do this for hours. Instinct bridged the gaps experience didn't, and neither of them knew any better anyways. Karkat had half climbed into his lap and he weighed so little. Claws grazed his neck and he was sure it was intentional.
He grabbed Karkat's arms and tried to stop kissing him, but his mouth followed. He had only cut his tongue a little and mumbled against his mouth, "Swap me."
"What?"
"Get off."
When Karkat blanked and tried to keep kissing him, Dave picked him up by both arms and threw him down on the mattress that bounced under their weight, following quickly.
"Oh fuck no!" Karkat snarled, "I will do a fucking honour suicide before I let you mount me, Strider!"
"Yeah? Watch me," Dave laughed. He wrestled his bucking body down into the mattress, kissing his throat, pushing hands under up under his shirt, bunching it under his arms. He liked how his skin looked against his; he didn't look especially pale anymore, just human. "Sorry, what's that? Are you fighting me or begging?"
"Let me up!"
Dave's hands roved over Karkat's chest and stomach, smooth and warm and arching as he fought against the body pinning his. He sucked his throat and could hear his breath change, but fists beat against his back and heels shoved into the crooks of his knees.
Karkat started, "I swear to god I'll fucking –" but Dave pushed his knee between his legs and the sentence got lost in something distinctly growly. He dragged his mouth into a kiss and their teeth hit and Dave was sure one of his would break off because troll teeth were probably made of fucking diamonds. The claws that were digging into his shoulders to wrench him away started pulling his shirt up and over his head. Karkat lifted his back to let his own be taken off. The unfamiliar, mind-numbing thrill of skin on skin turned angry into horny and wrestling into uncoordinated, hard grinding. Kissing so hard their faces hurt.
Dave darted back and hissed, "Shit, watch the claws," trying to peer over his own shoulder. With his shirt off his back stung instantly, skin white as anything now tracked with angry red marks.
"What are we doing?" Karkat said quickly, unable to keep from sounding incredibly nervous and panicky. Without his glasses on, Dave could see the red flush from his ears to his throat, thrumming under his ashy skin. Dave had his weight on his arms, still bent over him and looking into his face from inches away.
"What's it look like?"
"I literally have no idea." He squinted at Dave's chest and added, "Because what the fuck are these?" and flicked one of his nipples.
"Jesus! Don't touch my nipples!"
"That's the stupidest word I have ever heard in my life. What do they do?"
"Do you want to do this now, or should I get you a copy of Gray's Anatomy first? See what kind of gross human shenanigans you're getting into?"
"You're really bad at this," Karkat snorted.
"I didn't hear you complaining a minute ago." He pressed his thigh between Karkat's legs and loved what it did to his face; equal parts shock and arousal, with a tiny bit of shame.
"If you," he swallowed, "say one more fucking word right now, I'm punching you so hard you'll have never been born."
"I didn't know you were so romantic," Dave jeered, and when Karkat opened his mouth to yell, Dave fisted his hands in his hair and kissed him so hard he choked back whatever inane threats he'd been ready to spit.
Nonetheless, Dave obeyed, and went silent. He didn't want this to be like that, anyways. Time stretched forever as they mapped bodies with hands and nails and hips, never having been so close to another being in their lives. Bare skin had never felt so good and so strange. They'd never felt so out of control, borderline panicky in their inexperienced, over-eager movements, grinding so hard it almost hurt. They both loved and hated it, feeling as stupid and embarrassed as they did powerful.
Dave's pants came off first, against his best efforts – and not so much 'came off' as were pushed down, because he didn't have the dexterity to squirm out of them and couldn't have cared less anyways. Throat and face covered in scrapes from pointed teeth, lips kiss-swollen, heart racing marathon fast, he had his face pressed into the crook of Karkat's neck and his back bowed, mumbling, "Watch your fucking claws, and I mean it this time."
He took his hand and, pushing his boxers down, he wrapped it around his dick, which was by this point so hard it hurt. Not big, but not small, and thick.
Again, he felt Karkat jump a little. Dave kept touching his hand, showing him how to move his fist.
"Harder."
"That doesn't hurt?" Karkat whispered into his hair.
"No," he groaned.
He let go when he'd gotten the idea and his clumsy hands fumbled with Karkat's jeans, but he flinched away.
"Mine doesn't look like that," Karkat stuttered.
"I figured," Dave said through his teeth. "S'okay."
Karkat turned his head and pressed his face to the side of Dave's head, lifting his hips to let his jeans be shoved down his thighs. Dave sat back to pull his jeans down over each of his feet, Karkat pointedly looking anywhere but at him, his face flushed bright red.
"Woah."
"Fuck you."
"No, not …" Dave still sat back on his knees between Karkat's legs, eyebrows raised. "Not bad woah, just …"
"Shut up. Now."
"I'm complimenting you."
"I don't want you to." He paused. "Here." He did the same as Dave had done and took his hand, trying to pretend his own wasn't shaking. His bulge was a deep red and while somewhat phallic-shaped, it was more a tentacle that tapered to a blunt end, and it looked vaguely prehensile. If Dave's eyebrows went any higher, he wasn't sure he could get them back. Karkat put his fingers on it lightly and it stiffened under their touch. It was warm and slick and impossibly smooth, and Dave didn't know what to think about liking it as much as he did. It was unexpected. He gripped it lightly, up and down, and liked how it felt and liked how it made Karkat move when he did, knees gripping his bare ribs, trying to keep his breathing quiet. Karkat's hand was reached up between them jerking him off and their knuckles brushed, and he was staring at his dick with so much curiousity it was funny, like he was waiting for it to do a trick.
Dave cocked his head and looked down. "What's this?" He slid his hand down his bulge to the base, then let his fingers slip lower. Karkat went tense. All of him. "I knew it."
Without asking, Dave shifted his weight to his knees, leaned forward, and pressed two fingers into his nook. Karkat looked like he was going to die; against his better judgement, he gurgled, "Fuck," and his arms shot up to cover his burning face.
Dave grinned. "Can I?" It was hot to the touch, soaking wet, and soft as velvet. It was agony. He pushed his fingers in to the knuckle and felt his body cling greedily around them. His dick hung neglected and hard as a rock between them and he probably wouldn't have taken no for an answer anyways. Out, and in. Behind his arms, Karkat gasped. Again, and again. His skinny body arched like a bow.
"Yeah?" Dave said again, throat dry, staring. Teenage desperation bled into honest passion and he wasn't that he'd ever wanted anything like this in his life, and never in a million years expected his first time to go like this. Looking at him now, though, he was definitely not disappointed.
Karkat mumbled into his folded arms. "Yeah."
Dave squirmed up onto his knees, lifting Karkat's legs over each of his thighs, feet swinging in the air behind them. He felt awkward, positioning his hips, bowing forward, pushing his hair out of his eyes from where it already stuck to his skin. He went to push his sunglasses up his nose as a reflex, but they weren't there. He rested his forehead on Karkat's arms, still covering his face in embarrassment. He pressed forward and sunk in. His body sung.
It took every fiber of his being not to come instantly. He bit his lip so hard he felt the skin break. but still moaned and it sounded loud in the quiet of the room. They stilled. Dave could feel his heart beating in his ears and his dick and he could hear Karkat breathing hard behind his folded arms.
"Move your arms," Dave whispered.
"Don't look at me."
"Okay."
Karkat moved his arms, and Dave rested his head on his shoulder, feeling sweat prickle where their skin touched. He wasn't sure if trolls sweat. He moved his hips. He wanted to say something but didn't know what would sound right, and there was nothing to say anyways. He just felt like he should.
He pulled out and slid back in. His eyes closed. Again. His hands moved along the mattress and behind Karkat's head, one closing around the nape of his neck. His thrusts were jerky but hard, and Karkat's heels beat lightly against his back, knees pushed up. Karkat moaned and growled and would never admit to it in a thousand years, letting his hands wander up Dave's back. He felt with his fingertips the cuts he'd already made and dug his fingers into his bony back, making more.
Dave got the hang of it quickly, and once he had he knew he wouldn't last long. He tipped Karkat's head to meet his, kissing him, sucking his tongue, feeling his groans and swallowed curses on his lips, feeling his claws dig into his knobby shoulder blades. He cut his tongue again. Their skin slapped. Dave's nails couldn't break the surface of his hips, but he gave him a hickey on his throat that bloomed a deep, garnet red. The scratches on his back and arms stung and he was shocked by the sound of his own voice; choked, swearing, and blissed.
Karkat had started moving with him, meeting his thrusts and growling unintelligible x-rated nonsense against his lips, and he got so deep and it was perfect and he knew he was done.
His hands were shaking. "Fuck, I'm gonna come."
"You what?"
He buried his face in the crook of Karkat's neck and his mouth was open in a silent shout and he thrust as deep as he could and came so hard his toes went numb and every muscle in his body hurt from being pulled so tight. Karkat hissed into his ear, hips lifted clear off the bed in Dave's hands.
His voice was shaky and thin but biting as he pressed his mouth into Dave's hair a second later. "Don't you dare stop."
Dave slid a hand between their bodies sticky with sweat and jerked him off, breathing against his throat, hand slippery and careful and with his eyes closed he felt him come, hands crushing Dave's arms, swearing so loud it echoed in the tiny metal room. He felt his genetic material spurt between them, hot and sticky and a lot of it. He felt his hands shaking. He felt him collapse under him.
Dave chuckled quietly and started to sit back. "Jesus. That was a produc–"
He looked down at their bodies and screamed. His come was red. It was bright fucking red and there was so much of it and it was all over them and it looked so so much like blood. And then he was seeing his own corpse again, and there was so much blood then and it was on his hands and he'd tried to wash it off but it was stuck under his nails and there was so much of it. Like seeing his friends dead again, and he didn't ever want to see Karkat like that. He leapt off the mattress and, without thinking, vomited into the trash can at the foot of the bed.
"What the fuck?" Karkat sat up, panicking. "Oh my god, what did I do? Are you okay?"
Eyes squeezed shut, he threw up again. His hands groped for the towel he knew he'd seen earlier and he was frantically wiping his chest and stomach.
He sat there shuddering for a second, sweat cooling on his skin. Trying not to heave. He felt a warm hand on his shoulder and flinched away, and so did the hand. He instantly felt like an asshole. His mouth tasted sour and he spat a few times into the trash. He heard the mattress squeak as Karkat sat back down, silently. Tried to breathe. He couldn't get the image out of his head no matter how hard he tried; his own mangled body, the blood on his hands from trying to get rid if it. This wasn't that. This would never be that again.
"Sorry," he croaked.
He looked over his shoulder. Karkat had cleaned up and sat on the edge of the mattress near him, corner of a blanket pulled over his lap, looking like someone had just punched him in the face. Shit.
He didn't say anything, but looked distinctly uncomfortable and wouldn't look at him. Dave pushed the trash can away with his foot and sat on the ground, hiking his underwear and jeans up from where they were pushed around his thighs. "I …" He didn't know where that sentence would go. There was absolutely no good, normal way to explain freaking out and vomiting after sex, and he felt horrible.
And Karkat obviously did too, because he started gathering his clothes and pulling them on.
Dave leaned forward and grabbed his arm. "No, it's okay, I –"
"Look." Karkat finally looked at him and his bright eyes were dark and nervous. "You don't have to explain, I know it's fucking disgusting and horrible, and it – it's not supposed to be, like – fuck, never mind." He pulled his boxers on angrily, crumpled up in his jeans. "Just get your shit and go, I don't care, I won't tell –"
Dave hugged him. He was off-balance and too heavy and Karkat staggered back, almost falling. Dave held him up.
Karkat kept babbling into his shoulder. "I didn't think you'd care, humans wouldn't – I mean I know it's not like yours or hers, she's normal, I'm –"
"Shh, shut up." He liked the way his hair smelled. Dusty like a bird. He ignored the way the cuts on his back ached when he moved his arms. "It's not you. I didn't have sex with Terezi. It's me."
"Oh." He felt his hands touch his ribs, and then he was tentatively being hugged back. They let go after a second but stayed in close, Dave sitting on the floor in front of the mattress between Karkat's bent knees. "What do you mean?"
Dave was embarrassed, obviously. Their little talk about death was humiliating enough for him, he wasn't supposed to be weak like this. They all had to be strong and Karkat had seen so many of his friends die, he'd had to kiss the corpse of one of his best friends, and he didn't have any stupid hangups.
He sighed angrily and rubbed his hair at the back of his neck, where it was prickly with dry sweat. "I'm … I don't like blood. It looked like blood. A lot."
"You're scared of it?"
"Or you could not put it like that, that's good too."
"Sorry."
"I'm sorry for freaking out. It wasn't you. I just … yeah."
After a second, Karkat leaned forward and pressed a clumsy kiss to Dave's cheek. He mumbled, "There won't be any more blood. Don't worry."
Dave stared at him incredulously, smiling. "You are too fucking cute, I'm getting a tooth ache over here, bro."
Karkat's ears flattened back. "I am not –" but then Dave was kissing him. Earnest and nice but inexperienced, which meant maybe too hard for the situation, holding his head in his hands, mouths open. Sweet regardless. Dave's knees hurt from the hard floor and was cold now without his shirt.
"Besides," he said quietly, against his lips, "you're gonna have a hard time not telling anyone unless you hide that hickey."
A hand flew to his neck. "Oh, fuck you!"
"It's okay," he said, reaching for his shirt. He pulled it around Karkat's neck. "We can find you a trendy scarf. Say you've turned over a new fashionable leaf, Kanaya will flip."
Karkat laughed at batted it away. "Good fucking luck explaining these, though." He grabbed Dave's chin and smushed his thumb into his upper lip, where there was a cut. He moved it; more little cuts from overzealous troll teeth.
"Ow! Fuck!"
"You look like Rose. You don't even want to see your back."
"I hate you so much."
"I fucking bet you do." He squirmed into his jeans. Dave loved the look on his face, both embarrassed and excited, like a little kid keeping a delicious secret. Which he was. "Get your clothes on, let's get something to eat." He wasn't so hard to read now.