7
The week blurs past, you go in on Monday to hand in your coursework and then go straight home again to throw up in your bathroom, taking the entire week off despite the fact you're pretty much done vomiting up your stomach lining by Wednesday morning. Dave stays over, sleeps on the couch, orders dinner. It's like being back on the meteor when the girls were too busy for you both.
The next Saturday you wake up in your room, the morning light infiltrating your eyes through your open curtains. You're one hundred percent sure you closed them before going to bed. You're also sure you don't usually have a hot cup of coffee on your bedside table when you wake up, but there it is. You yawn, stretching and clicking every joint in your shoulders and back as you do so and banging your hand on the wall, as is customary. It stops hurting after the fifty-third time.
You drink the coffee as you dress, finishing it just before tying your shoelaces. It's good coffee, better than you make it usually and miles better than your mother makes it. You head downstairs slowly in the jeans-and-black-shirt combination you managed to pull out of your wardrobe. entering the kitchen and placing the empty mug in the sink.
"Mornin'."
You don't even turn around to reply, knowing Dave is sat up on the counter pretending he likes reading the newspaper, despite the fact there are four perfectly good chairs and a table in here. "Morning."
You can almost hear the amusement in his voice when he announces, "We leave in 5."
You turn at that, looking at him - he's dressed and ready to go, black jeans, red hoodie zipped up, shoes on. He's even got his bag there on the counter top with him and his shades on for only the second time since he arrived at yours.
"What?" You ask, unsure of what he's on about - you were planning on going out today, sure, but you didn't tell him you were planning on dragging him to the record store today, it was a surprise...
He looks up from the paper, folding it in half. "We're going to see the guys, you miss any more meetups Sollux is going to skin you alive."
You groan loudly and pointedly, exaggerating a somewhat Shakespearean death as you fall to your knees on the kitchen floor, "iPlease/i don't make me go, I'll do ianything./i"
"No you won't. Go get your phone."
You sigh, dragging yourself up off the floor and back upstairs to get a jacket, your phone and your wallet. Dave is waiting silently and patiently by the door when you return.
The train ride is eerily quiet, the only sound between the two of you is Dave tapping rhythmically along to a song only he can hear. You try and distract yourself, try and figure out why you don't want to go to this meetup. Dave seems distracted too, but by something less trivial and more... you want to say sinister? He has this dark look on his face, in his eyes when he tilts his head low enough for you to see them. He knows something you don't, and that fact alone is making you nervous. Your stomach is churning, your palms are sweaty and your head hurts. Your heart thumps angrily against your chest, seemingly trying to compete with Dave's rhythmic tapping, and you swear you're going to go insane or break down or isomething/i...
But then Dave notices you, sat there with your hands twisting on your lap trying your best to breathe, and he's sat next to you instead of opposite you and he's talking, you can hear him but you want to hit him.
"Hey Karkat, you okay man?" "What's wrong?" "Karkat come on man you feeling okay?" "You gonna be sick?" It's one question after another, and you can barely answer.
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine, just... motion sickness I guess... how long til our stop?"
He looks unconvinced, "Next one."
You nod, he goes back to his original seat.
The station is practically empty and the walk to the park is too long. You need to know why you feel so nervous, you need to get it over with. Dave's glancing at you every few seconds, telling you look a bit pale and asking if you're alright. You say yes, tell him to fuck off. He tells you you're having an early night tonight and you come up with a particularly creative insult involving three sheets of acetate and a blender; and then you're there. The park is right around this corner.
You turn, looking for them. They're not there.
The park is empty.
You look at Dave. He's still walking. You follow him, confused. You look at your phone. It's midday, you've got no missed calls or texts.
iThe park is empty./i
Dave sits down on the bench, leaning his elbows on his knees and waiting for you to join him. You do, sitting next to him a bit too far away to be considered social. He says nothing. You say nothing. You sit and look into the empty park for a full twenty minutes, saying nothing, neither of you looking at your phones or eachother.
You turn to look to the pathway you came from, expecting to see others enter the park any minute now.
You're panicking now, the unease in your stomach knotting it tighter, pulling at your nerves and making you twitchy, every sound could be someone coming to see you. None are. You turn to Dave, still sat, hunched over and staring at the ground, now.
"Dave where is everyone? Why are we the first ones here?"
He shakes his head. You growl, primal and deep. He looks up, surprised at the first troll-like thing you've done since meeting him in this world. You ask him again. He's looking at you, can't ignore you this time.
He sighs, about to talk just as his phone buzzes, he pulls out his phone and clicks a few buttons before reading from the screen, reflected oddly in his shades, "From Sollux, to everybody. Today's meet has been cancelled due to a lack of interest in actually turning up. You're all assholes. See you next weekend or I'll hack and break all of your computers, assuming I can be bothered."
The knot in your stomach unclenches, leaving only the sickness. Part of that lack of interest was you and you know it. You wonder who else has been ditching out.
"Makes sense," Dave says resignedly, "Eridan stopped showing up because of that new girlfriend of his. Rose and Kanaya kept going off by themselves and not talking to anyone else, John wasn't there last week because he couldn't be bothered. Obviously we had an excuse so don't look like that, you walking pity party, come on. You were ill."
iNot the weeks before that, I wasn't/i, you want to say, but you keep quiet, letting him go on and on about Sollux's angry texts over the past week and a half. You can't help feeling guilty.
The two of you go to the café down the street, sitting in and ordering coffee and lunch. Dave's silent, looking out at the other people in the room, couples at tables, businessmen sat alone with laptops, teenagers around your own age sat staring into phones or books. You look out of the window, noticing the darkening sky. Just as you think it looks like it's going to rain, and you turn to voice this thought to Dave, the pitter-patter of water against the glass begins, little droplets collecting and joining, making liquid veins across the window pane. Your breath against the glass begins to show more easily with the drop in temperature.
The people sat outside gather their belongings, moving to the few empty tables left in the dry warmth of the café itself, Dave smiles at a few of them, exchanging glances that roughly translate to "fucking typical" as he shakes his head softly at the rain outside. You never took him for such a people person, sat there in his hoodie and sunglasses when it is raining outside and the darkness of the clouds is causing the streetlights to come on two hours early, even for winter.
Your phone begins buzzing against your leg, snapping you out of your thoughts as you struggle to remove it from your pocket, it's your mother calling. You slide the green phone icon across, greeting her quietly to indicate you're in a place with people.
"Hey mom."
"Karkat sweetie I hope I'm not interrupting anything?" Her voice floats down the phone, so familiar and heartwarming and yet still so strange.
"No, no, just sat in a café with Dave." He flashes you a quick grin and tells you to say hi from him, you flip him off, "He says hi."
She laughs, "Well tell him I say hello right back! I'm staying here one more night, and I'll be home tomorrow afternoon, are you going to be alright?"
"Yeah that's fine, I can manage." You find yourself smiling, and Dave's still grinning at you. You want to hit him.
"See you tomorrow honey, love you!"
"You too, mom. Seeya."
You hang up and look at Dave, a plain "what?" clearly visible in your expression.
"You with your mom, it's adorable."
"Shut the fuck up."
You watch the rain outside, forming puddles in the uneven paths and roads, on the now-abandoned seats outside the small café. You were terrified of her at first, this woman claiming to be your mother, and while your memory when you woke up was that of a human male with a life in this world, you knew something was wrong. You knew this wasn't you. You thought you were crazy, that maybe you were going through some kind of phase where you didn't feel like yourself.
But then you remembered.
You look over to Dave, his face half blocked by those aviators - a much better fit on his face now than they were when he was thirteen. If he raises his eyebrows you can see them, if you catch the slightly mirrored black lenses in the right light you can see his eyes through them.
"Ready to go?" He asks, and you nod, pulling your jacket over yourself and zipping it. You hand Dave the money for your own order and he goes to the counter to pay before you exit, opening the door into the lashing rain.
It soaks you through within minutes; you're walking close together, you with your collar pulled up and Dave with his hood half-shielding his white-blonde hair. His shades are covered in constantly running droplets and he keeps reaching up to wipe them off, as if his sleeve were the least convenient windscreen wiper in history. Your hair is drenched, clinging to your forehead. The rain isn't as cold as it usually is, which makes you think that maybe there's a storm on the way. You wonder if it'll reach you back home.
"Maybe we'll dry off on the train." Dave voices to you, wiping the droplets from his glasses again, "These fucking things I swear"
"Just take them off you dumbass."
"No."
"Nobody gives a shit about your eyes."
"I do."
You scoff, rolling your own near-identically coloured eyes and glaring off towards the station, within sight now.
The train journey is long and silent, you're tired - more tired than you've been in a while and you've got too much to think about once you finally get home. You feel hurt, almost, let down by those not willing to turn up, while guilty for being one of them yourself. It's painful, trying to distinguish those two feelings, you wish you didn't have either of them. You wish you didn't want to be back in that café with Dave instead of on this long, silent journey back home.
When you get home, Dave tells you he's just got a text from his brother and he's needed back tonight. He doesn't say anything else about it and you don't ask; whatever, your figure, you can find some way to occupy your own time until your mother gets back tomorrow.
You chat comfortably in the kitchen until Dave's phone goes off at around 7.
"Hey, yeah just coming out now." He says, to the person you assume is his brother. He hangs up and turns to you, "Aaron's outside in the car, gotta run."
"Who's Aaron?" You ask, confused.
He pauses mid-way through chucking his bag over his shoulder, continuing and not looking up as he speaks, "Bro's friend, no big deal. He's giving me a lift back."
Your stomach turns uncomfortably as you hug him goodbye and walk him out. There's a tall man with slight stubble and browny-black hair stood by a car on the other side of the road, texting. He waves at Dave enthusiastically, glancing at you stood in the doorway. He's attractive. Shit.
You make Dave promise to message you when he gets home, he playfully makes you promise to reply. You fake smiles and happy goodbyes until the car is out of sight, at which point you turn angrily back into your house and slam the door behind you.
You have a feeling it's going to be a long night.
