AN: Messing around with my own humanstuck AU. They're about college-age. Updates will be sporadic at best.
"Uhhh, Gamzee... What's goin' on, bro?"
Gamzee felt his insides twist a little, but he kept any change in emotion (currently set to "stoned") off of his face when he replied.
"Just makin' my move, motherfuckin' best friend. There be miracles up in here. Don't worry though, buddy, I won't do nothin' if it ain't your style. That's not how bros motherfuckin' operate, my man."
Gamzee slid back gracefully, heading over to flop down on the couch on the other side of the room as if nothing had happened. Tavros just stood there for a moment, leaning weakly against the counter in the kitchen with his cheeks flushed, trying to regain his mostly absent composure.
Gamzee kissed him.
Gamzee. Kissed. Him.
No, stop, his mind screeched, bringing his thoughts to a grounding halt. He couldn't go there right now. Instead, he hobbled on his new prosthetics to his room, where he left the door open just a crack - he needed time to process, but he didn't want Gamzee to think his roommate was trying to shut him out completely - and plopped down at his desk (in a chair! A real chair!) and stared at his laptop, currently idle and blacked out.
His roommate was his best bro. But his roommate was interested in being more than best bros.
How much more? What did Gamzee want?
What did Tavros want?
He really didn't know.
While it was barely noticeable at all to the outside observer - it might seems as though nothing phased him, as though he took everything in stride with the same content, absent expression, as though it took things a while to sink in, as though he was often barely paying attention to the world around him - Gamzee was just as big of an emotional shitstorm as Tavros at that very moment.
Gamzee did a lot of drugs. And sometimes they allowed him to forget - forget the sound of his mum's panicked voice, or his dad's drunk and angry one, forget his abysmal grades, forget the way his insides melted every time Tavros gave him one of his shy smiles. And sometimes the drugs didn't do jack shit. The fact of the matter was, he was high often enough that he'd found the mannerisms infusing their way into his regular actions and speech patterns, into his daily life, so that one could no longer tell without a drug test whether he was actually high or not.
This gave him some advantages in his interactions with people. He could always blame impulsive decisions and stupid words on the drugs, say he'd been high at the time, he didn't know what he'd been thinking, and whether it was actually true or not, sometimes even he didn't know. But it also made it really difficult to be straight with people.
He'd fallen into the habit of following whims, experimenting, and generally doing whatever the fuck he felt like. And for the most part, that was awesome - he didn't need to get good grades or try hard or be a psychiatrist or athlete or lawyer or whatever the fuck father dearest was prattling on about this week. He didn't get emotional about things easily - didn't get mad when his Dad yelled at him, didn't get upset when he didn't show up to the school events (the play, the basketball game, the science fair) like he said he would, didn't get lonely, didn't get attached.
But now, now that he needed Tavros to know, to see him not just as his drug-addicted best bro of a roommate, now that he had to do something, he didn't know. He didn't know what to do or say, how to express it, how to make Tavros understand.
And then there was the complication of the fact that he still wasn't entirely sure he wanted him to, for although Tavros was his bestest bro in the world, there was another who at one time had called him best bro, and still motherfuckin' might.
Every time he thought about Tavros, thoughts of Karkat weren't far behind. While Tavros was his roommate now, and had been awesome and chill ever since they'd decided to share space, Karkat had been there first. Since childhood, as a matter of fact. Before he found the drugs, and then when the drugs weren't enough, Karkat had always been there. It was a safe place he could go, where although there was yelling a-plenty, none of it was angry, none of it really directed at him, and so it was much safer.
There was no violence (unless it was the occasional armwrestle or ticklefight nonsense that bros tend to engage in every now and then) and there was no hatred, not really. For while Karkat might profess to dislike him a great deal - hate him even, sometimes - Gamzee knew he never meant it. Not even close.
And so there was Karkat, now living with some motherfucker named John that "likes the shittiest fucking movies," and there was Tavros, who was here, who was adorable when he blushed, who was living with him, who called him best bro and not anyone else, who was a little broken but trying to heal.
Trying so, so hard to get better.
And maybe, if Gamzee could help... if he could see Tavros start to improve, start to become a new person... than maybe, just maybe, he could get better, too.