You've noticed The way his dark eyes were shifting about all day, the slight frown barely concealed on his face, how he nearly fucking jumped out of his goddamn skin when you asked if everything was okay.
He shook his head and shrugged it off, said he was just kind of tired- but when wasn't he?
The smile was earnest, but you could tell there was something askew about it, it just had this melancholic feel to it, like a warm summer breeze carrying the whine of a toddler that stupidly let his ice cream drop in the dirt, where it melts under the searing sunbeams and the ice cream just sadly melts into this gross puddle of feelings some dog might piss in at a later point in time-
It just didn't align with his face, even you could tell that.
Karkat generally smiled very little, which was a shame if you were honest, you always felt like you've accomplished the impossible when you managed to make him double over in a short wheeze of laughter.
For some reason you really enjoy seeing him happy.
You like his smile.
You enjoy his company.
(Wow that was a weird thought to think damn.)
For a couple of days now though, he seemed more distant. Something is definitely bothering him and not knowing what you could do about it is bothering you, but why?
Well, you sure would be a sucky friend if you didn't care about his well-being but that was still a little too far into prying, or was it-?
"-Dave? Hello?"
You look up from your plate directly at Rose.
Rose looks at you, one eyebrow raised.
So does Kanaya.
Silence.
You start and wager your chances of pokering this and just reply with "yeah sure", hoping that the reply seemed sensible enough, or if you should just give in and tell her that you zoned out, when you suddenly accidentally let out an almost embarassing little noise of confusion,
Rose just rolls her eyes and repeats what she said to you:
"I asked if you would like to come along some time, Kanaya and I wanted to try and alchemize some more items. Our stock on food is growing a bit short and I'm, to be blunt, kind of sick of eating the same things all the time."
Your gaze flicks down to your scrambled eggs, even though having an actually warm meal every day was a very welcome difference from the dozens of convenience store sandwiches and bags of junk food you lived off of in the past, you have to agree.
Eating eggs and pasta in numerous yet sparse variations got all hells of boring after a while. It really would be handy to have some more ingredients to fuck around with, your newly found fondness of cooking could profit from it a lot.
However, you feel like your mind is already too occupied with other things at the moment to get anything productive done.
There's a lot of things that might need to get some thinking done on.
"Hm.. dunno, maybe... I- "
You poke around in your food some more.
... Actually, you really are getting sick of eggs.
Occupied mind your ass, fuck this.
Maybe it'll help take your mind off of this whole confusing living-together thing that's going on.
"Yeah nah, actually- fuck it, when did you wanna go do that?" You eventually ask.
Kanaya brightens up at that, almost in a literal sense - you still find it weird that she's literally glowing - and Rose's mouth curves into a pleased smile.
"We have planned to meet up with Terezi at the alchemiter tomorrow morning, we have yet to set a time but I am sure we will work out a convenient one for every participant" Kanaya replies, seemingly excited.
"Oh okay, cool."
You will absolutely not seem disappointed that they wanted to go tomorrow and not today.
From what you've heard Terezi already had plans this evening to... To... You don't even know what it is she wanted to do, that girl is a mystery to you sometimes.
You start to think that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that your relationship never really got all that far, it was mainly just confusing as fuck.
You're shoving another fork full of egg into your mouth when you hear Kanaya whispering something to Rose, whose pleased smile suddenly gets a slightly smug undertone to her smile.
Oh no.
She's having an idea.
"...what?"
Oh yeah, her smile is definitely smug as fuck now.
"Oh nothing, really, Kanaya just wondered about Karkat's whereabouts as of late, she's barely seen him around and asked me if I knew anything about it-"
Kanaya interrupts her, her already glowing skin flaring up a notch.
"I merely suggested that he might like to come along!"
Rose puts a hand on her arm reassuringly.
"I know, but I honestly don't know much more than you do."
She turns back to you again with her goddamn smug grin.
"But I'm quite sure Dave could possibly know better.."
You're trying not to think too much about her not-so-subtle jab at your time recently frequently increasingly (wow what a word jumble) spent with Karkat.
Is a guy not allowed to hang and be chill with a bro?
That's all there is to say on that matter, you decide.
Rose's grin grows even wider and more smug-
oh shit you've mumbled that aloud again haven't you? Fucking hell.
"Whatever, I haven't seen him as much as you might think, last time was when we helped out in cantown yesterday. I'll ask him if I catch him, aight? Cool. I gotta bounce for now, see ya later."
You finish your plate of food in one more definitely not overloaded fork and walk back towards your room. Even though floating was cool as shit and all, you still do like to use your legs like a normal person.
Who would you be if you'd let your legs shrivel into gross raisin sticks of unused muscles that look like something an old man just pulled out of his nose, just because you can float?
A lazy dumbass is who.
Rose got you thinking though. Not that you haven't already, jegus knows that guy's been nagging your mind lately.
Yesterday he's barely talked to you, which for someone as wordy as Karkat No Indoor Voice Vantas™ was very unusual.
You kick an empty bottle of faygo around that was, until then, just lying around, one of its sides is as good as crusted with dust.
It has probably been lying here for a while.
It's not like Karkat can't have his quiet moments, you've talked to him often enough at this point to know that his shoutyness is part just for show.
He's trying to keep a distance, you know too damn well how that works, you're not blind.
Be untouchable to keep possible harm at bay.
Yeah, that's definitely a strategy you're more than familiar with, not that you would ever admit that out loud.
That doesn't change that he's got a tendency to overthinking things and be irrationally emotional about it though, you have a short flashback to that one time when you caught him hovering over his laptop screen with the most agitated expression you've seen on him over a movie he's probably seen at least two dozen times already, haha.
That's kind of something you really like about him though.
He's very easy to read.
His emotions are plastered so openly on his face, in his stance, in his voice, in the way he walks.. It gives you a sense of security when you're around him.
You don't have to puzzle around endlessly to figure his mood out.
Yeah, you're kind of a hypocrite for thinking this, but you do prefer people that are straight forward with how they think and feel, even if just subconsciously.
Not to understand anything wrong here, you love Rose and having one or many little wars of sarcastic and ironic word-walls every now and then, but sometimes she's very frustrating to talk to.
When she's not psycho-analyzing any and every stupid thing you say, she's just being smug and you often don't at all know how sincere she's being with some things.
You have a lot of respect for Kanaya to be able to talk to her so much and not get frustrated.
You like John for being such a naive and openhearted goof, being completely unlike Rose in that regard.
He's a total nerd, but man he's got sass to snark back at any bullshit you could throw at him and even though you two often joke around about having this super cheesy bromance and make fun of each other, you still know he sincerely likes you, and you like him sincerely as well.
You miss talking to him regularly.
You hope he's doing well.
(Thank god nobody can hear you should you be mumbling to yourself again, that almost sounded-
..yeah nah stop, stop thinking about it, stop right there.
Hell no.
You're span not gay for Egbert, you've never been and never will be, jesus christ-
Nope too late, the thought has been thought, the train of it has derailed and crashed into a house, so many good thoughts died, their children and wives will mourn these manly thoughts for a lifetime.
Wow you're one cruel mofo, making all those thoughts widows.
Damn.)
You de-captchalogue your just recently alchemized mp3 player and plug your headphones in, blasting rhymes and melodies into your overloaded brain before you start thinking about what Rose might have jabbed at earlier and you do so just before you arrive at your room, where you promptly drop face-first into your bed.
There might be no sun or moon to indicate it, but you know for a fact that it's 8:43pm and you're tired, so you don't even bother getting up again.
Eventually, you fall asleep listening to old Snoop Dogg titles, - you've remixed yourself after managing to alchemize some albums of his - shades pressing awkwardly into your face and all.
You don't really give a fuck.
A noise startles you awake.
You're not entirely sure what noise it was, but it was quiet, as in intentionally quiet, somebody was sneaking around the halls.
Not that it wasn't unusual, seeing as that weird clown troll sometimes shifted in the vents and made all kinds of disturbing noises, but you could differentiate that from this.
You stare into the silent darkness.
It takes you a solid 10 seconds to realize that your mp3 player must have turned off due to lack of battery power, you forgot to charge it yesterday.
Huh.
No wonder that that little noise woke you up.
You silently shift out of your bed and soundlessly open your door a little to peer out into the hallway.
Apparently just in time to see a familiar black sweater disappear behind the corner at the end of the hallway that has all the bedrooms in it.
Oh, right, your room is only one room apart from Karkat's isn't it?
Something tells you that the night is not over yet, it's barely just past 2am. What is Karkat doing at this time, sneaking off like that?
For a few seconds you consider going after him, but then decide that - as much as curiosity kills you - it's none of your business and you'd rather not make him pissed at you for prying, you hate when people do that that to you after all and Karkat respects that so it's only fair if you do the same.
It's absolutely not because you don't want him to think that you're stalking him and being weird.
Definitely not.
Nope.
After closing the door again you're trying to find something to do. You're too awake to go back to sleep, but also too tired to draw another sbahj comic or remix something, that just takes too much actual thinking.
You end up grabbing your camera and snapping some photos of random shit you find in the hallway and community area, which ends up being pillows in dim blue yet also somewhat cool looking lighting and that dusty faygo bottle you kicked around before.
That wasted a solid 28 minutes of your time and you're getting bored again, so you get back to your room, floating this time to not wake anyone up.
It's honestly moments like this where you wish you've had the ability to fly soundlessly sooner, it would certainly have made scavenging the kitchen for snacks at night easier before the game. Not that you ever found any, the kitchen was never a place with food for you, but you guess you still had hope when you were younger.
You arrive in your room 4 minutes later and sit down on your bed again, staring at your mp3 player that's still lying where you've haphazardly thrown it onto the bed before.
Right, you wanted to charge that.
You de-captchalogue your "rhyme juicer", by which you mean your mp3 player charger, only that neither "charger" nor "mp3 charger" nor "mp3 player charger" could go into any of your cards without a hassle- man you really need to clean your sylladex out some time, some shit you don't even use blocks too many cards you could use for other shit.
But that can wait, it's not like you're running out of time, hah.
You yawn and lie back on your bed, since there isn't really anything else you could do as of now and you surprisingly soon slowly drift back into dozing off.
Well, almost at least.
You're startled awake again, you hear footsteps, slowly nearing the sleeping chambers, a lot less careful to not make noise unlike before. Karkat's coming back?
A barely concealed sob.
A door slamming close a bit too harshly.
Oh snap is he crying?
It's almost as if an alarm inside you is going off, this is bad, this is not something that you are okay with.
Your bro's in need.
(Okay wow how about you DON'T think about how horribly nasty that could have sounded like no fucking way.)
You sneak out of your room and soundlessly float over to Karkat's door, but you hesitate.
It's muffled, but you can hear him sobbing.
Something inside of you feels like it's breaking.
You know he's been through some heavy shit, you probably know better than most how it feels to see your friends die because of mistakes you've made, only that Karkat has no way to change any of that now, unlike you.
But you know he tried hard, Kanaya and Terezi have both told you that he's worked so hard to keep everyone together, even if a lot of the others often didn't listen.
You know he cares a lot about his friends, about anyone he can emotionally connect to, really, you've witnessed him get so attached to this one stupid character from one of his movies he ended up flipping his shit when that person almost died.
You don't know what it is that made him break tonight, you don't think you even need to know.
But you've never seen (heard?) him this upset before and you can't just sit there and not do anything about it now that you know.
Hesitantly, you knock.
You can practically hear him flinch, how he sucks in a shaky breath in surprise before he yells at you.
"Fuck off! Not now!"
The crack in his voice makes your heart ache a little.
He's definitely crying, and not very little either.
Carefully, you open the door and peek inside.
The lights are out, his room dark apart from the dim machinery lights steadily drenching every room in a dim blue hue.
His head snaps up in shock as you opened the door, you can see his tinted tears starkly contrasting against his face in the slightly blue light.
"Hey you okay dude- wait fuck are you crying?"
You tried to be subtle about it but shit he looks so much more awfully miserable than you thought.
"oH GOD JUST PISS OFF, IT'S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS"
His shout is almost pathetic with how much his voice cracks, holy shit.
You're not sure how much of it is him being pissed or him crying.
You need to do something, and need to be doing so now. Who knows how hard he's been overthinking things the past hour, you start to regret not going after him, maybe you could have prevented this-
No time to think, you come in and close the door, keeping your voice low and calm in hopes of seeming the least threatening you can, the last thing you want is him clawing out your face in fright or whatever, you're still struggling to figure out how far trolls would go in moments of stress.
"whoah, hey, calm down, it's totally my business when my bro walks off into nowhere at 2am and comes back sobbing and slammin doors after an hour" You retort, yes good, you think you've got your concern across the right amount.
"FUCK NO JUST-"
He half-heartedly throws a pillow your way before he presses his face into his arms again, his hands clawing into his sleeves like his life depends on it and lets out the most pathetic, supressed sob you've probably ever heard.
Dear god just looking at him like this hurts you, the urge to try and make it better was overwhelmingly strong now and you come closer, picking up the pillow on your way and putting it aside on his chair.
"hey lil man, come on,"
The closer you come, the more you can tell how cramped up he is, how hard he's trying to get himself under control.
It reminds you too much of yourself when you were younger, before you've learned to cast stubborn iron over your emotions and let nobody see, ever, how much some stuff can get to you. Crying meant being a pussy, and being a pussy meant getting your ass kicked and getting your ass kicked meant puppet-terror and bruises and cuts for days and that you needed to not show how much a pussy you are. It reminds you of how close you were to breaking in those nights. To just saying fuck this, fuck bro, fuck the world and fuck this life.
There's no way in hell you're going to let Karkat - who has only ever tried his hardest to do what's right, who gets attached to dumb indie movie characters, who laughs over your dumb jokes like he's never heard anything funnier ever before, who probably hates himself more than Kanaya hates Gamzee - you just can't let him drop to that point.
"listen, whatever's on your mind right now - not gonna pressure you to say if you don't want to - but whatever it is, try to forget it. I'm here okay, I'm here."
You sit down next to him, he flinches ever so slightly, but doesn't protest.
Carefully you pull him closer, it's awkard as fuck and you don't know what you're doing but it's some kind of hug you guess, you don't know what to do with your limbs at all but you're making this happen man, you're doing it.
You've come into physical contact with Karkat a couple of times now, but it's always very short, a smack in the head, a short touch to the shoulder to get your attention, an unintended shove.
No matter how many times it's happened though, it's always such a weird moment of "holy shit" to you.
You can't explain it.
It's just.
Weird.
He's warm, warmer than you are, his sweater is soft- no wonder he wears it so much.
His hair lightly brushes your face as he lowers his head onto your lap and holy shit you're having a hard time not reaching out and touching it like a tool because holy heck you barely felt it with how soft it apparently seems to be-
Karkat claws into the fabric of your pants, breaking your embarrassing train of thought, and under a sob mumbles something that sounds an odd lot like "fuck it".
He then lets his emotions flow, and ho-ho-holy Christ that's a lot of sobbing.
It's kind of awkward, you don't know what you're doing and you've got all sorts of questions burning in your mind and you've never been any good at comforting people, you barely ever interacted with anyone face to face at all besides bro before the game, let alone comforted anyone.
Your fingers twitch.
Both out of curiosity and in an attempt to comfort - like you've seen in movies and TV before - you let one of your hands carefully lay down on Karkat's head, slowly combing through his hair holy fuck it's so soft.
He doesn't protest.
Okay, sweet.
So that's a thing that's happening.
Yup.
Aight.
Cool.
You're totally not internally freaking out right now.
Naaaaah.
You've never been this close with someone else before, both physically and emotionally speaking.
You're now kind of just sitting there, an arm full of sobbing, warm, over-emotional, fuzzy alien-boy at your side, combing through his hair with your fingers, waiting for him to calm down.
You expected this to be weird as shit and high-key uncomfortable.
It's... actually not that bad.
It's comfortable even, and he's already slowly calming down, his sobs are beginning to grow less frequent.
His weight on your lap makes you feel somewhat grounded, he doesn't exactly weigh much, even less than what you'd expect from someone as short as him, you guess he's probably relatively skinny under that fluffy sweater.
Actually, you never really see him eat all that much, but right now he feels soft on your legs, almost squishy in a way, he's slowly relaxing, no longer holding back the sobs rolling through him, you feel every single twitching his chest does at each sob-
He's vulnerable. He's being vulnerable around you. He trusts you enough to openly cry literally onto you, to openly show himself be weak. Holy shit that's a lot of trust.
Silently, you stay there, listening to Karkat's slowly decreasing sobs and breathing.
Eventually his crying stops entirely, and he's merely sniffing occasionally.
More silence.
You're afraid to break this moment, it's nice just sitting there like that, enjoying each others company and physical contact and all, but you're aware that eventually it will have to end.
You let it go on as long as you could, which was exactly 43 more minutes, before Karkat shifts and sits upwards again, hugging his legs with his face in his knees.
"Hey um..." Karkat mumbles quietly into the fabric of his pants.
"Sorry for... Yeah um.. "
He claws into his sleeves again, this time more nervous than anything though.
"Th-... Thanks."
His eyes shift to you, the amber scleras darker in the blue-ish light than they normally would be.
"I... Really appreaciate that. Thank you.."
You look at him dumbfoundedly before letting a small smile slip, too taken aback by how genuine he's sounding to worry about keeping your cool too much.
"Anytime dude, it's aight."
You smile at him like an idiot, he puts his chin onto his knees and wipes his eyes with one hand, smiling back at you.
You smile dumbly at each other for several seconds before you're starting to feel kind of weird inside.
You stretch your legs out, after sitting half cross-legged for 68 minutes it made you feel a little stiff, but you mostly just want to break the goofy grin-ceremony you two just somehow objected to as if you wanted to try and summon the smiling demon of awkwardly comfortable serenity and odd tingly feelings.
Karkat shifts as well, lying his head sideways onto his arms now, still looking at you with an expression you could describe as confusion, somewhat curiosity and a sliver of melancholy.
Oh hell no he's thinking things again.
"Hey" you say, softly because it's quiet and speaking out too loudly feels unnecessary and too much.
His thick eyebrows raise a little, the melancholy turning into surprise.
You're once again taken slightly aback by how expressive his face can be, damn.
"Do you.. I dunno, maybe want to watch a movie or something? Or uh, if you want me to leave that's also fine, just askin since, dunno, maybe that could kinda help get your mind off of whatever's bothering you?"
He smiles a little in delight, but now the slight melancholy is back to his features. Man you can read his expressions like a book but you still don't know what he's brewing up in that fuzzy head of his.
"...y-yeah.."
his eyes flicker away from you and back, he's unsure?
You know you certainly are.
Does he mean "yeah please fuck off kay thanks bye" or "yeah let's watch a movie or something"?
You must have made an expression of sorts, because his eyebrows rise upwards and he quickly adds:
"Watching a movie I mean! And fuck you if you're going to just leave like a pale slut or some shit oh god why did I just say that-" he almost squeaked that last part.
You snort and his face turns a good shade or three darker at that, you have no idea what he's on about but his mortified expression is priceless and you can't help but snicker with a smug grin.
"OH SHUT UP."
He punches you in the shoulder for laughing, but there's no actual intent to hurt you behind it so you just keep giggling to yourself.
Karkat groans in an overly dramatic frustration as he takes his weird bug-like laptop out of his sylladex and opens it with maybe a bit more gusto than necessary, but you can see the slightly amused smile curling on his still slightly darkened cheeks.
You end up watching 3 movies and doze off somewhere half-way through the fourth one, an odd wave of content lulling you to sleep, your head on Karkat's who rests his on your shoulder, his messy hair soft and warm against your cheek.
AN:
I recently found that drabble I posted forever ago again and decided I should write a more fluffy companion piece to it, this time from Dave's perspective.
I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you'll enjoy reading it too! :0