A/N
Karkat wearing crocs is my aesthetic.
This chapter is also quite a bit longer than the last one! Hopefully they'll be this long from now on.
Disclaimer: Once again, I don't own Homestuck or any of these characters. If I did none of them would be dead. Actually nevermind they probably would.
Chapter 2
Your name is Karkat Vantas and this guy you met fifteen minutes ago is standing outside your apartment building and handing you his phone.
"Could I get your number?" He asks, and though his voice is annoying and so are his glasses, you snatch the Android from his hand and in turn give him your iPhone 4 with its cracked screen.
You type in your number and your name, nothing more, and are ready to hand it back, but he's too busy taking a selfie with duck-lips to use as his contact picture. You frown and wait for him to finish.
"If you ever wanna hang out again," he begins, "we normally hang out at either the park or one of our houthes. Jutht give me a ring and I'll tell you where we're meeting."
"Sure," you grumble. You seem to be doing that a lot today. "Will you...uh...be alright getting back?"
"It'th not ath far ath I thought," he says, stuffing his phone in his sweatpants pocket and turning to go back already. "I'm thure I'll be fine, don't worry about it."
"If you're sure," you say, turning to enter the shabby complex behind you.
You enter your third-floor apartment and instantly turn down the hallway to your room. Your dad isn't home; won't be for at least three or four hours. And now you're home alone because you're an antisocial idiot who freaks out over small things like mentions of high-crime rates in the town you moved to so you could literally escape high-crime rates.
You flop down on your bed, checking the time on your phone for no reason. You're not hungry, you're not tired, you don't wanna hang out with your new friends or even your nearly nonexistent old ones. You don't wanna do much of anything but yell at your idiotic father for either using horribly inaccurate websites to read up on this town or just flat-out lying to you. And worst of all, you're betting the latter situation is the truer one.
Eventually you just think "fuck it" and call your dad.
Your dad isn't exactly good with people, or with any living creature ever. Despite his intentness at finding a town with little crime he would probably be voted most likely to stab someone thirty-seven times if anyone ever had vote for something like that. He tries his best with you, he really does, you think/hope. Come to think of it, you're not really sure what his job is or how hr managed to get one so quickly after arriving here.
"Karkat what the fu..." Your dad answers. You of course cut him off before he has the chance to finish his vulgarity.
"You either lied to me or have really shitty internet skills," you nearly catch yourself yelling.
"Wha..."
"Don't play dumb you said this town had low crime rates and I fucking believed you! Well guess what this place doesn't have?"
"Listen I can explai..."
"Nope, there's nothing you can say that'll justify this. I thought we moved here so I could escape what happened in January but I guess I'm in just as much danger as before."
"Kid, would you just stop for a second? I've gotta go or my boss is gonna literally kill me, so hang on for a few hours, alright? I'll explain everything later."
You open your mouth to say something else but he's already ended the call.
Your name is Karkat Vantas and you've just woken up way too quickly to have been having a good dream. Which you weren't.
In a hazy, tired state, you grab your phone and call a number you haven't had a chance or a reason to call yet. It rings for just a bit too long before he picks up.
"You do realith that it'th thix in the morning on a thummer day, right?"
Oh thank god.
"Yeah, sorry," you begin. "I just realized I never heard back from you yesterday and my paranoid ass immediately jumped to the conclusion that you'd been fucking kidnapped or something."
"Well I'm fine, no worrieth," he says, and you can almost hear his smirk. "Call me at a dethent hour, okay? And by dethent I mean like noon."
He hangs up, and the scenes from the nightmare you just woke up from replay in your head, becoming more surreal with each passing second. You realize how stupid of you it was to freak out. Sollux doesn't seem like the kind of person to get kidnapped without putting up a fight.
Actually, he kind of seems more like the type of person who would purposefully get into late-night fights with his next-door neighbors simply because their tree was scratching his window again.
You push the thought from your mind and put a shirt on before lazily walking to the kitchen and getting some breakfast.
The rest of the morning moves at an agonizingly slow pace, so you're really glad when it finally reaches eleven-thirty and you decide it's a good time to contact Sollux. You text him this time.
HEY LISP BREATH YOU AWAKE YET?
It takes him a few (ten) minutes, but he texts back.
hey kk ii wa2 actually ju2t about two call you
What the fuck kind of shitty typing quirk is that? You decide to be nice and not make fun of him for it.
REALLY?
yeah we're playiing viideo game2 at dave'2 place wanna joiin iin?
SURE, WHERE DOES HE LIVE?
hold on, ii'm 2endiing two of my friiend2 two piick you up cuz they have a car and were headiing your way anyway.
text me when 2omeone park2 iin front of your buiildiing and ii'll confiirm wiith them ju2t two be 2afe.
OK.
You shove your phone in the pocket of your dark jeans and slip on a pair of dirty crocs before heading downstairs. There's thankfully no one in the lobby, so your constant glances out the glass doors (one of which is cracked) won't make you look weird or paranoid. However, your phone is too outdated to have any good apps and you're really bored at this point.
ii ju2t got a text they're at your buiildiing now
al2o ii 2hould probably tell you: 1) no they are not datiing 2) ye2 they liike each other 3) no you 2houldn't mentiion iit
If you're going to have to deal with some chick and some dude swooning over each other the entire car ride there, you're going to puke.
To your utter surprise, it's actually two dudes in a shiny pickup truck.
You climb in the back, which is rather cramped because it's filled with horns. Not the musical kind or the animal kind, the really annoying noisy kind. You try not to move, because if you do it will start a chain reaction of honks and you really don't want that.
"You must be, uh, Karkat, right?" The teen in the passenger seat says. He looks Mexican and is sporting a Mohawk and orange-brown eyes. "I'm Tavros, and that's Gamzee."
Gamzee, who's face is painted like a clown and hair is styled like a tumbleweed that just got off a roller-coaster, waves at you with one hand. He looks kind of like he's been smoking something but he drives well enough so you aren't that concerned.
It's really easy to tell that they like each other and really hard to convince yourself that they aren't together. But they're actually really decent people to be around and you're starting to have second thoughts; maybe this town won't be so bad, after all.