Eridan(diamonds)Karkat: Remember when Eridan had a godawful daymare about snapping and murdering everyone, and he went to find Karkat to reassure him that it wouldn't happen?
The pounding on his hive door roused him in the roughest, quickest way possible. Catapulting himself out of his recuperacoon was instinct, the battle roll away from entry points and reflexive one-two motion to grab his sickle and fall into a defensive posture was the work of a half-asleep self-preservation effort. Blood-pusher hammering, Karkat dripped sopor slime onto his floor as he waited.
They'd finally come for him hadn't they, a not-quite-conscious part of his mind screeched. He was going to be culled; there was nothing for it! But why? He'd been so careful, no one knew! Only some Carapacian called Jack – oh.
God. He wasn't back on Alternia, it was just LoPaH. There wasn't anything to fear here except the red rivers that cut through his land itself. But still, if it wasn't the drones or Jack at his door, exiled as the former Dersite was, that didn't leave very many possibilities.
So, after brushing off as much remaining sopor as possible (he would still look very messy, but hey, he did what he could), Karkat dropped the sickle to the floor and made his way to his door. Without a peephole, the best he could do was to crack the thing open just enough see through, and boy was he met with a surprise.
"Eridan?" Karkat croaked, surprised and tired and angry all at once. God, it was maybe two in the afternoon? Eridan, of all people, had interrupted him from the best sleep he'd gotten in weeks? And here he was thinking that highbloods had some notion of manners or something.
"Kar…can I come in? I don't knoww wwho else to talk to." He said in a quiet tone. Man the guy looked pathetic, hair all limp and messy, cloak missing, pupils blown to hell and back with barely controlled fear. Hell, there were even traces of sopor slime on his shoulders! And shit, but Karkat was pretty sure there was a waver in the seadweller's voice that wasn't his shitty lowland coastal accent at play.
God, he couldn't even be mad at the bastard. "Get in here you blubbering goddamn pansy, before you start leaking on the welcome mat." Karkat muttered, throwing the door open before stalking away to get some pillows. "Is this gonna need a pile, or what?"
And fuck him, but didn't Eridan's eyes just light up at that? Why was he always so fucking pale for psychopaths? "Kar, you'd do that fer me?" And with that soft declaration, Karkat scurried away to hide his figurative pale hard-on in literal handfuls of blankets and pillows.
"Now, what the hell was that god-awful sleep-ruining display about?" Karkat growled, more set on maintaining at least the appearance of not being head over heels pale for a fishy bastard than really selling his apathy. Because he did care, you could scour his soul to the core and read the writing on its walls to prove it, for the genocidal fuckhead.
At least this one wanted to be saved…well, apparently wanted to be saved.
"It wwas awwful, Kar. It wwas just this horrible daymare, or somefin." Eridan said, words spilling out like water. Oh god he was even thinking in fish puns. "I just snapped. You knoww howw Fef hasn't…she hasn talked to me since wwe entered the medium. I just, I wwanted her to be red for me so bad, and for so long…wwhen she wwouldn't talk to me, give me a chance. There wasn't anythin left either, wwe wwere all gonna die anywway…"
God, Karkat knew where this was going. And he couldn't stop listening either.
"So I shot 'er." Eridan said, hands shaking in his lap, "I wwas gonna kill evveryone, Kar." And the seadweller squirmed deeper into the pile, nearly obscured by all the pillows in Karkat's house. "But…But Kan…Kan stopped me?"
Karkat couldn't say anything, just kept his gaze pinned to where Eridan's would be, if the fucker would look at him.
"Kan stopped me." He said firmly, then after a long pause, "I'm sorry Kar, I woke you up for nothing."
And Eridan looked up, locked eyes with his mutant-blooded friend. It was the most horrifying moment, when what Karkat had suspected bled into truth. White seeped across Eridan's dark irises, giving him an eerie look.
Purple blood seeped into Eridan's shirt around his navel, and the aquatic troll grimaced at it. Standing, Eridan turned to leave, "Sorry Kar. Go back to bed. I won't bother you again."
Karkat watched him go, cloak shimmering into existence as the deceased troll pulled it from his sylladex. Turning over in his ramshackle pile, Karkat tried to remember if he'd ever felt this pale for Eridan when they both were alive.
He couldn't remember when he'd started feeling this way, to be completely, terrifyingly honest. He just hoped that the ache in his chest of unrequited pale feelings would ease once he was awake and back on the meteor.