He's all hands and fingers, and everything about him is lithe and tentative at first. He comes to her in the dead of night, shaken and scared. For the first time, she feels pity. She feels merciful.
She takes him into her bed and lets him wrap around her, a broken troll clinging to her like he's drowning. She huffs and sighs and shifts around too much for him to be comfortable - he doesn't complain. She falls asleep with her back up against the wall and his breath on her neck.
She wakes up when he begins to cry.
She doesn't know how to handle remorse from him, doesn't know how to comfort him. She's used to Karkat's ornery blustering, to Vriska's subtle hints. She's never dealt with this rawness, this purity of grief. It's terrifying, and she is so glad she can not see his face.
That is the first time.
The second is worse, and better in a way. He doesn't speak, like before. This time she can see the grief straight away though, and that is confronting in ways she doesn't understand. There is a quiet misery to him, a darkness in his eyes - and even in the dim light she can still smell the smears of his facepaint.
The second night passes much as the first did.
She is loathe to admit that she may have cried a little herself.
The third is the strangest. She meets him at her door, asks him why he's here. He doesn't answer. He looks at her, just looks, and she can't take the weight of his gaze or the heavy slope of his shoulders. She bursts into tears and this time it is he who gives comfort. He leaves when she's asleep and covers her with a blanket.
She wakes in the morning feeling drained but renewed. The blanket sends a thrill through her bloodpusher. It shouldn't. But it does.
On the fourth night he doesn't cry. He begins to talk, and she listens like the troll she might grow up to be. She listens to his complicated metaphors and his awful phrasing and tastes as his hands shift as he tries to explain how he feels.
She is overcome with the urge to touch his face and feel the scars there.
She does it and he falls silent. Her fingers touch his lips.
She pulls away and he leaves.
The fifth night he asks her to talk and she does. She talks of Vriska and justice, of mercy and pity and Karkat's advances. She talks of Dave and pale feelings, she talks of death and hate and love. She doesn't know what she's saying.
He listens.
He kisses her on the forehead before he leaves.
It's the sixth night, and she is waiting for Gamzee Makara to come into her bedroom.
This isn't how she expected love to be.