Review Responses

Funky Bracelet Chick: aww, thanks for the fave! IWannaDieSmiling: thanks so much! Amaya-nights rain: loll, your comment made me laugh xD Arhu: that's so sweet! I'm happy I'm able to do that! The other reason for writing this fic is to get people to possibly write more! I can't wait to see the day that I find at least ten fics for these two on this site ;3; RobinsArt: I brought the life jackets. I'm not sure if Gamzee's POV will be regular or not. I have this weird thing when I read fics and if the POV changes to (an)other character(s), I get weird for some reason and I don't want to continue to read. i'm seeing if this is a common thing among readers, or if I'm just being a complete retard. thank you! LyssiLuvr: I know Dad has cabinets and cabinets full of icing hehehe. I had to put an Equius reference in there. And thanks so much for reading again! Luci: thank you! :3 BlackRitual: oh shit, I feel very honored! Haha. For me, I loooooove and adore slow-paced romance, like really slow-paced, so sometimes I tend to incorporate that in my writing. However, I'm also just a big ROMANCE FREAK LIKE KARKAT, so there will definitely be some in this fic, just not until wayyyyyyyyyy later. Purring trolls are my headcanon, it's so HNNG. And about the POV thing, it's only going to be minimal. Im not sure if I should make it regular or scarce, because I'm a weirdo and I don't like reading or writing POV switches, but I'm not sure how everyone feels about that subject so I'm just taking it slow and weighing it out. xD thank you for your lovely review! IcyShadowFTW: LOTS OF BLEACH MY FRIEND, LOTS OF MOTHERFUCKING BLEACH. I.Write.Love: -awkwardly hugs back- thank you so much! Nyx: I…ended with a cliffhanger again /headesk

A/N: Please enjoy this chapter! :D Some things are revealed!


"Gamzee, Gamzee, Gamzee," you mutter his name repeatedly under your breath, your eyes glued to the floor of your hallway. His name is…peculiar. It sounds completely foreign on your tongue as you toss it around in your mouth. For some reason it reminds you of the word "gas" and you can't help the burble of laughter that hisses through your teeth. You've never heard anything quite like his name; it makes you want to jot it down on your now official "Ask Rose Later List". She would so definitely know something about it. Did you ever mention how smart she is? Or perhaps you should ask Jade? She usually comes up with strange theories and scenarios, and predictions! You can't forget about those! Man, she was such an awesome girl too. You're lucky to have such righteous friends!

And now, on to the task at hand.

You have a stack of towels folded underneath your left arm, while you hold a shoebox filled with Neosporin, Band-Aids, Aspirin, gauze, cotton balls, peroxide, small raggedy washcloths, and a pair of scissors in the other. You realize you should feel a bit weary walking down the corridor with a bunch of medical supplies, but you know you don't have to worry about your dad catching you—you can already smell him cooking (and baking) up a storm downstairs. Since it's still lunch time, he's probably whipping up something light, and by the smell of it, you're probably going to eat homemade cheeseburgers and Betty Crocker patented cupcakes. You nearly vomit in your mouth.

When you make it to your bedroom, you gently nudge the door open and tip-toe inside, closing it softly behind you.

"Gamzee?" you quietly call out. Wow, it feels so strange to say his name. You actually have a name to call him by instead of just "boy". You wait at the threshold of the doorway, waiting for a response. A muffled "mm" is all you get before you step inside and close the door shut behind you.

The hairs on your arms prickle and stand up on end. It's cold in your room and it smells like blood and something bittersweet and acrid. You'll have to make sure you remind yourself to thoroughly Febreze the shit out of your room.

You're struggling with your supplies; the towels are starting to slip from their neatly folded stack underneath your arm and the box of medical provisions is starting to slip from your grip. You pick up your head and look across the room. Gamzee is still buried in his pile of blankets and pillows; however, now, he's added a few more things into the mix. There are random knick-knacks and objects in his self-made pile. DVD cases and bits of paper are entwined in the blankets, and if you're not mistaken, your digital alarm clock and your laptop charger are in there as well. What the—okay, you understand the blankets and pillows, but the other stuff? Those things don't even make sense! Is he even comfortable like that?

"I brought some stuff to help with your cuts!" you pipe up, hastily closing the distance between you two. You plop down on the floor on your knees, throwing the towels beside you and placing the shoebox in front of you. Gamzee lifts his head from the pile, eyeing you lazily, claws kneading the comforter like a cat. He makes no move to talk to you, nor does he get up, however he is staring at the box of medical supplies as if it's something foreign and strange. You hope he doesn't snap and lash out at you. You don't really know with him; he's quite unpredictable, but you're starting to notice a pattern. Sometimes he's calm like he is now, and sometimes he looks deranged and unbalanced, as if he's an entirely different person. That scares you most of all, but you can't really do anything about it right now. You have to hurry up and tend to his injuries!

You grab a fresh towel and lay it on your lap, and then you flick open the medical kit and get out Peroxide and a bunch of cotton balls. You're not a doctor and you don't really know what you're doing, but you have the basics down. You need to wipe the blood away with the towels, clean the cuts, and patch him up to the best of your ability. You can do this!

"Hey, can ya' maybe sit up a little?" you ask him meekly. You almost let out a laugh when Gamzee cocks an eyebrow at you. He sinks in further into his pile. "Hey! Come on! I need to patch you up dude." He doesn't listen to you. He shifts around in the blankets, causing a DVD case to topple onto his chest. He lets out a small trill of pain, but doesn't do anything more than that.

"Well don't you look cozy," you mumble, furrowing your brow. You sit up straight. "But seriously, Gamzee, I need to clean you up." You muster up your best poker-face look, narrowing your eyes and setting your mouth into a thin, straight line. He peeks out at you from the shelter of his pile, violet-tinged eyes lidded and glazed. If you weren't so anxious to get him treated, you would say that he looked almost kind of endearing like that, all snuggled in his pile of blankets and sharp objects, but you don't have time to think of trivial things like that. While you're just sitting there thinking of the different ways he could possibly position his body to make himself look even more endearing, he's bleeding all over your bedding. In a fit of exasperation, you hold out your hand and leave it hanging there.

Gamzee eyes your appendage cagily, and you're afraid he's not going to listen to you and remain in that pile of his, but he surprises you by letting out a gravelly chuckle, lunging forward with a lazy grin across his face. The blankets fall around him like a flurry of fluff, and the DVDs clatter to the floor and skid underneath your bed. You look at his face, which is streaked with purple and white and bits of green and you wonder how he can smile so easily when it's obvious he's in so much pain.

"Are you going to let me clean your cuts?" you ask him deliberately, palming the towel in your lap. He eyes the towel for a second, and then anchors his eyes back on you, staring at you unblinkingly. His smile widens.

"Sure thing motherfucker, get your help on little bro," he breathes, and he sits up ram-rod straight, his chin tilted upwards and his arms limp at his sides. You're tongue tied. All you can do is stare. He tilts his head. "You gonna' put that fucking miracle towel to work Johnbro? Lay it on me little man."

You stare at him with your mouth open. He raises an eyebrow, smiling a toothy smile. Holy crap, he talks so….so…weird, and so much! You've never heard anyone talk like that before. It's a sort of fast and loose form of speech, yet at the same time it's lazy and sluggish. If hippies and the ghetto managed to marry and become one, you'd bet they'd sound just like Gamzee. So wait, he's a non-human ghetto hippie? That's stupid. You sound ridiculous.

"Okay, I'm just gonna'…towel off the blood first. Is that alright?" you ask tentatively. Gamzee simply nods at you. With a shaky breath, you pluck the towel form your lap and gesture for him to hold out his arms. He holds them aloft, and you grimace. There are scratches and cuts adorning the length of his chalky gray arms, ranging from shallow to deep, and it looks as if his arms had gone through a cheese grater. You hold up the towel, locking your eyes on his.

"This is probably going to sting," you say to him, worrying at your bottom lip. Oh man, you're nervous yourself and you're not even the one in pain here!

"S'all good Johnbro," he slurs, and you watch as his body relaxes and his eyes gloss over, and Jesus Christ, talk about a complete 360. He looks so out of it now that you're starting to think he's going under some kind of epilepsy attack, even though you don't know what epilepsy attacks look like. Or maybe that's some sort of defense mechanism he has going for him? You really don't know.

Gulping, you gently place the towel over his arms and apply minimal amount of pressure, watching as the blood soaks through the white fluffy cotton, and it only takes a half second for him to let out a yelp of pain.

"Ffffuuuuck," he says through a throaty growl, snatching his arms away. He presses them against his chest, a soft hum thrumming from his throat. He snaps his head up and fixes you with a furious glare. "That motherfuckin' HURT."

You almost let out a gasp. You flinch away from him, throwing the soiled towel to the side. Okay, okay, that was really strange, and sort of frightening. Did his voice just fluctuate? You sure hope your Dad didn't hear that- it had been that loud. Gamzee is still fixing you with a heady glare, sharp pointy teeth piercing through his bottom lip. Does he realize he's hurting himself right now?

"Sorry, sorry!" you mutter under your breath, throwing your hands up in front of you. That had been a really stupid idea. Even though towels were soft looking, they were also pretty rough, and you realize he only cried out in pain because the towel must have dragged across his cuts. And even then, the towel wasn't 100 percent effective in getting ALL the blood off. The only way you would be able to do that, and clean him at the same time, was to…take him a bath! Crap, why didn't you think of that before? That would have been so much easier and much more relaxing than dragging a towel over his open wounds.

"You okay?" you ask softly, still maintaining a relatively safe distance away from him. Your body is still on edge and you're waiting for him to do something other than glare and stare at you. You really don't like being on the receiving end of that glower. "I thought up of something better than towels!" You laugh a bit at that, hoping to relieve some of the tension in the room, but it does nothing to alleviate the strained atmosphere. He's still glaring at you.

"Oh, and what the MOTHERFUCK WOULD THAT BE?" he rumbles loudly, looking up at you through wiry bangs.

"Hey, hey, shhh! Keep your voice down," you whisper frantically to him. You're starting to panic now. Gamzee looks terrifyingly feral, maybe even a little pissed, and there's something deep inside you that's telling you he's going to reach out and bite you, or stab you, or pierce you with those wickedly sharp horns of his. He's bitten you before. He could do it again. Your eyes are wide open and you're leaning back on trembling arms—your whole body is shaking. You heave yourself up and quickly tread backwards, accidentally stepping on a DVD case. The loud crack reverberates across the room, ringing shrilly in your ears.

"You're scaring me," you hear yourself say and you fight the urge to smack yourself. Your mouth runs away from you sometimes, as Dave often says, and right now is one of those times. If only you could zipper your mouth shut. You swallow a wad of spit and lick your lips. "Forget what I just said…anyway! I thought maybe we could take you a bath and a shower instead?"

There is silence in the room. All you can hear is Gamzee's erratic breaths and his strained wheezing, and as the seconds tick away, so does the tension. The atmosphere isn't as stifling, and when you look back at Gamzee, he's no longer staring at you. Instead, he's looking down at his injuries, inspecting them. You watch as a gray colored tongue pokes out and licks along the black seam of his lips. Black lipstick is soooo gaudy. Maybe you'll wash that off too.

"Fuck man, what the motherfuck is a shower?"

A wave of relief washes over you. Gamzee's voice isn't elevated, and he seems a little bit calmer. He's no longer glaring at you, which is a good thing. That's always a good thing.

"Shit sounds nice," Gamzee says through a smile. "Showwwwerrrr, haha, fuck, what kind of motherfucking miracle word is that?" And now he's repeating it like he did your name, whispering it fast and slow under his breath in that weird speech-dialect he has. You are left completely dumbfounded. How could he not know what a shower was! Holy crap, can this boy get any stranger.

"You're okay then?" you ask again, a small smile worming across your face. You can't describe how relieved you're feeling right now.

"Fucking fiiiiine," he drawls out, bobbing his head as if he's listening to a beat-heavy song. "Mind helping a motherfucker out?" He gestures to all of himself.

"Oh! Yeah!" you eagerly shake your head. How could you be so rude? You quickly pad your way over to him and halt a foot away, holding out your arms. "Grab on."

His clammy hands wrap around your forearm, and you try not to notice the way his claws brush across your skin, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to feel it. You count to three in your head, and with your efforts combined, you manage to haul him up from the pile of blankets and stand him upright. You take a step back and gawk at him.

Wow.

You knew he was tall, but you didn't realize just how much taller he was than you. It was probably because he had been hunched over all the time. You couldn't blame him. You wouldn't want to hurt yourself by stretching out your wounds either.

You stare up at Gamzee with wide blue eyes, your mouth propped open. You know you're completely gawking by this point, but you don't care. He's just so tall! He's easily a little over six feet, maybe 6"4, and compared to your measly 5"6, he's like a skyscraper. He stands unsteadily next to you, his frame willowy and gawky. He looks down at you and smiles, blinking his eyes lethargically.

"Haha, you're as short as he is," he snorts through his nose, tiredly holding his hand horizontally over your head. He makes a swiping motion over you. "S'not a bad thing though, motherfucker, everything's fucking fine in my book." He then softly pats your head twice, before he lets his hand drop and it resumes its place at his side.

"I'm not that short!" you scoff, stepping around him. You bend down and pick up two towels and the shoebox, putting the peroxide and cotton balls back inside.

"Hey, are you sick?"

"What?" you quip.

"Your skin is all peachy," he drawls listlessly, swaying where he stands. "Never seen shit like that. Fuckin' miracles working all up in this bitch."

"I could say the same thing about you!" you laugh at him, standing by his side. "You want me to help you walk?"

"That'd be fucking nice of you Johnbro, way fuckin' nice," he says. He hobbles towards you and snakes his arm around your neck, and you go stock-still. You didn't think he'd be the first to initiate contact like that, but then again, Gamzee likes to fluctuate. Maybe he's starting to trust you now.

"Where are we going?" he asks slowly. He looks down at you with a passive face.

"To the bathroom," you respond quickly, stepping out the door. He shrugs, most likely because he has absolutely no fucking idea what a bathroom is, and he's about to mimic your actions, but you hover your hand above his chest, sneaking glances down the corridor. You can hear your dad humming a tune downstairs—the coast is clear.

"Okay, we're gonna' go a little fast here," you start to explain. "Sorry in advance." Gamzee merely grunts at you, staring off at the opposite wall of the hallway. "Let's go then!"


You don't know where the fuck you are, but it's hot and steamy and it kind of feels motherfucking nice, and you want to be able to enjoy yourself, because even though your cuts are stinging, your muscles feel lax and limber, but you can't focus. You can't focus because…because what? What were you talking about again? Man, this water feels like a fucking miracle, you know that much. It's kind of just pooling around you, the water dyed the color of your blood, and it's nice and hot and soothing. You look down and find that, woah, where the fuck did your shirt go? And your motherfucking pants? Fuck, you hoped you didn't leave them somewhere like that last time when you were at the beach waiting for your lusus and he found you sitting there in nothing but your undershorts staring off into the ocean. That had been a pretty choice moment. You don't remember if you were embarrassed or not. You promised him you would make sure you knew where your clothing was at all times. Looks like you up and forgot that shit again!

You squint your eyes and stare straight ahead, eyes roving over colored bottles and white foamy bricks. They kind of look like the cleansing bricks you find in ablution traps, and then you realize you're in one! What the fuck! You didn't know this alien planet would have ablution traps here, sweet. Maybe this wasn't such a bad place after all. They could have stranded you somewhere way more fucking horrible than this. You then wonder if this squishy pink species likes pie. If they do, you're going to have to make sure your stash pile is still safe and…stashed. You want to be able to up and bake for everyone right, especially for that little motherfucker, the one who's helping you and shit. He seems like the kind of guy that could go for a nice slice of pie.

In the background, you can hear muffled whimpers of pain, soft and low, and you try to grasp and process them, but your brain is letting everything slip through. Where the motherfuck are those sounds coming from?

You turn your head and find that there's some kind of yellow privacy enclosure bunched up next to you, blocking your view. You raise your hand, mesmerized by the way the water drips from your arm and plops down into the ablution trap. It's so fucking beautiful the way the water ripples and swells around your body. With a flick of your wrist, you swipe the privacy enclosure aside and yours eyes widen, because that boy is sprawled on the fucking floor holding a hand to the side of his face, red liquid teeming between his fingers. His blue ocular sponges are wide and quivering and he looks like he's just seen an ectobeast, and he's staring right at you and you don't know what the fuck happened.

There's something inside you that hisses out a venomous "gutterblood", but you shake the voice away.

Maybe you're feeling just a little too relaxed, because when you try to say his name, all that comes out of your windhole is a few warbles and growls. Haha, fuck, that sounded sort of tight. You try it again, but it only manages to get John (yeah, that's his name) to hunch in on himself. You snap your mouth shut and stare at him.

Fuck, you just know you did something wrong, but you can't remember.


Your name is John Egbert and you're currently bleeding to death on your bathroom floor. Okay, maybe you're exaggerating a bit, but it sure feels like it.


A/N: sooooo, I decided to go ahead and put in a POV switch, but it's not going to be a regular thing I think! Not unless you guys want that, because I for one am not very fond of POV switches for some fucking reason. Or I might just POV-switch when a chapter absolutely needs it, like this one. And plus, it's an excellent way to reveal cryptic messages and/or secrets. :D

Thanks for reading and please leave a review if you can!