Be Karkat.
You don't bother to wipe away the tears that are still coming from your eyes.
You don't stop lightly sobbing as you pull out of the parking space in front of your…
Sollux's apartment and don't bother looking back because you don't think you can.
You are going to be fine.
Totally fine.
You have another place to stay.
You are going to be fine.
Everything is going to be fine.
You're just staying with an insane, clown obsessed pot-head who you haven't seen in a year.
What could go wrong?
You and Gamzee are… compatible, last you can remember.
Everything he did and said did not piss you off, that would be absolutely ridiculous.
Everything is going to be fine.
Perfectly fine.
You are going to be happy living with him.
...Right?
It is doesn't hit you until you pull into Gamzee's driveway that it is not going to be okay.
Not at all.
Gamzee's yard…
Is a wreck, to put it lightly.
A total fucking wreck.
The grass looks like a fucking jungle.
You wonder if any one has ever mowed it since Gamzee moved in.
There are plastic flamingos strewn out randomly in the thicket, like obnoxiously pink lions on the hunt for their prey (garden gnomes, presumably.)
One is in the tree.
There are chalk drawings all over his driveway that just look like indecipherable purple scribbles with the occasional barely legible "motherfucker" mixed in.
Is that…
Is that a pair of underwear on the flagpole attached to his house or is that just an extremely small flag?
No, that's underwear.
No.
Oh god.
Oh.
God.
What the hell did you get yourself into?
You are screwed.
Absolutely screwed.
You are going to get in the car and drive away, far, far away and you are never going to come back.
You are going to turn around and crawl back to Sollux on your hands and knees and kiss his feet and agree to be his pet until you can get a job.
You'll even kiss him if he...
Haha, no.
Your pride will never allow that.
You are in this mess up to your ears, and you figure you might as well drown in it now.
Get your death over quickly.
Death by poor decisions.
You halfheartedly try to wipe your tear stained cheeks with the sleeve of your baggy hoodie, but you figure Gamzee won't give a shit, if he even notices at all (you know he won't.)
You stand on the front porch in front of the door, taking a deep breath and contemplating your options once more.
It's either live with Gamzee and mooch off of his shit, or live on the streets and have nothing.
You hate both options.
You hate all of this shit.
It isn't even your usual deep, pure, unfaltering hate either.
You are too broken for that.
You hate it in the way that it just makes you unbelievably sad and the only thing you want to do is cry more but you can't and you won't because you are not weak.
You are not a baby.
You are Karkat fucking Vantas, and you are going through this whether you like it or not.
You raise your hand to knock on the door, but it swings open before your knuckles make contact with the faded, chipped wood.
Suddenly you are caught up in the arms of a giant before you can resist, your face smashed up against Gamzee's chest.
You feel your feet lift off the ground.
You think you hear your spine crack.
He's squeezing the life out of you.
He reeks of weed.
You smell Doritos and Faygo on his breath.
Normally, you would struggle and cuss and punch and kick him and demand to know what his fucking problem was, but…
But strangely, his embrace is welcome at this very moment.
You sob into his smelly, comfortingly soft shirt.
