One hundred.

It's a really big number, when you think about it. Sure, you can count to it in under a minute if you're quick enough, but have you ever held a hundred things in your hands? You don't think you ever have. One hundred is what you learn in preschool, one hundred becomes your limit for the longest years of the beginning of your life, some unreachable goal in the furthest reaches of your mind, an incapability for your tiny hands. One hundred, the slower you say it, the bigger the number seems.

You're currently looking at one hundred flowers of varying shapes, sizes and colours, and you're starting to feel dizzy.

"Karkat come on it doesn't take that long, just pick some fucking flowers so we can go."

You close your eyes and sigh, blinking them back open and looking along the flowers again, "I have to choose the right ones."

"She's your mom, she won't care if you choose shit ones," Dave reasons, "Look, there, what are those ones?"

"Lillies, man. Fuck off, they're funeral flowers."

Dave groans loudly but you take no notice, he agreed to come with you to find a birthday present for your mother, so he can fucking deal with how long it's taking you to pick some flowers. You look along the colours, wishing they were organised in some way - you want to go for summery colours, warm colours. You lean towards a bouquet that reminds you of a sunset and pick them up. You turn them in your hands, the plastic around them crinkling weirdly against your skin. You're feeling it more than you usually would.

You get this weird sense as Dave pushes your lower back towards the cashier and says "alright, perfect, go pay" - a sense of the air you're breathing being clearer and colder, your clothes against your skin seem more real, the thud of your shoes on the floor as you turn to glare at your friend. You're seeing clearer, everything's sharper and more real. You know this feeling, but you can't place it. It's gone as fast as it comes and you're back to normal, paying for the flowers and thanking the lady behind the desk when she wraps them and boxes them for you without you having to ask.

"Coffee time!" Dave cries out with a sense of a man who has been on a mandatory caffeine-free diet for years and is about to have his first sip of freedom. You roll your eyes and shepherd him towards the most hipster café you can remember being in this part of town, the one that used to be a diner before going under and getting taken over by herbal tea drinking, weed smoking douchebags who run their till system exclusively on their Macbook Pros.

"Alright," You say, sitting down at the table nearest the big open window and waiting for Dave to sit down opposite you, "So I've got flowers, what the fuck else am I meant to get her?"

"I dunno man I don't have a mom," He reminds you casually and you look up to the ceiling, praying to the questionable stain up there that he stops being a dick for five minutes, "You could just like, leave it at the flowers and then bake her a cake or something? Cook her dinner? Actually tidy the fucking house for once?"

You hum, thinking. She'd definitely appreciate all that crap, you suppose... "You just want to go home already, don't you?"

He grins, "You got me, I'm tired. When can we go?"

"You're the one who agreed to come out with me, asshole." You point out before taking a sip of your drink, wincing at the sharpness of it. Dave pushes the pot of sugar packets towards you.

"I just don't get why you're so into getting presents for people," Dave admits, shrugging and cupping his hands around his drink as he turns to look out of the window, "seems like you're getting a bit too obsessed with what she'll think. She'll love whatever you get her man, she's your mom."

"Exactly," You say, continuing when he turns to face you again, "I haven't had this before. Every birthday matters, every holiday matters. She's my mom."

"Oh," He says, letting the word drop from his mouth as his face softens. You glare at him and he cranes his neck to look back out of the window, searching the street outside for any person of remote interest.

You love this café, as shitty as it is. You know it's a little cliché to prefer the small hipster coffee shops to places like Starbucks but it's cheaper, cleaner and the only macbook in sight is the one the cashier is no doubt currently writing his film studies dissertation on. You turn your coffee cup, looking at the small logo with fond regard; small off-black text reading i'Hundred Heaven Café'/i in a thin banner surrounding a sepia tone planet Earth. You close your eyes and breathe in the steam as Dave's leg bumps yours under the table and when you open your eyes that feeling's back, the feeling of everything being real, of being more iaware/i than before. You're aware of the skeleton beneath your skin and muscles, of your eyes becoming dry in the heat rising from your cup. You look up and you can see the light from outside glinting off of Dave's shades, the rise and fall of his throat as he swallows. You can feel your own throat move as you repeat the action yourself, the palms of your hands tightening on the small white mug. You click your back, blinking a couple of times and following Dave's line of sight out of the window. He's looking at a medium sized, chunky black-and-tan dog on the other side of the road; you think it might be a rottweiler. It's sat patiently outside the shop opposite you, waiting for its owner to return. Nobody walking past is paying it any attention. When the owner exits the shop he pats the dog on the head, calling it to follow him. It does. They disappear from view.

"Home after this?" You suggest, nodding to Dave's mug.

"Best idea ever." Dave smiles, turning his attention back to the latte between his hands and you sat infront of him.

-

"Now I'm not saying you're wrong," You begin, opening the door of your house and letting Dave in first, "but you're definitely not fucking right."

"Excuse you, Bruce Willis is a brilliant actor."

"I'm not saying you're wrong on that front, I'm saying they should have stopped making iDie Hard/i movies while they were still igood/i."

"They're all good!" Dave cries out, arms out in pleading as he turns in the hallway. You close the front door, "Every single one is good!"

"No, that's where you're wrong. We're not doing a iDie Hard/i marathon, and that's that." You say, heading upstairs and smiling as you hear Dave sigh and follow you, you make a peace offering, "You can pick any of my movies though!"

Dave makes a pained choking noise and pretends to fall down halfway up the stairs, clearly expecting you to stop and help him, which you do not. You're in your room for a full five minutes trying to clear a space to place your laptop so it's visible before you hear anything, it just happens to be the front door opening, followed by a simple question asked in motherly tones.

"Dave sweetheart, why are you laying on the stairs?"

"Karkat left me here to die," He explains simply, "so I'm accepting my fate."

You hear her lean on the bannister, calling up, "Karkat don't leave Dave here to die!"

"He can die where he wants, I invited him up!" You call back, laughing as Dave appears in your doorway with an embarassed look on his face, "Smooth move, asshole. Pick a movie."

You put on films in the background as you talk. You draw out a card for your mother (which Dave insists on signing, too) and make an envelope to fit it in out of the coloured card you keep in your desk. You make a plan of what you're going to do both this evening once she's gone to bed, and tomorrow morning before she wakes up. You don't have decorations or anything, and when you mention this to Dave he waves you off, telling you he can sort something out. You trust him, though you don't know why he's doing anything to help you out; obviously because he's your friend and your mother loves him, but still... You place the envelope ontop of the flower box and lay back on your bed, swinging your legs up and behind where Dave is sat sketching next to you.

You sigh and lean back against your covers, pulling pillows up behind your head so you can see the laptop screen and watching the film as the sound of the slow, deliberate scratching of pencil on paper fills the room.

"Hey, Karkat?"

You look up at Dave, leaning back with one hand on the other side of your legs as his own dangle over the edge of your bed. He hands you the piece of paper he's been drawing on, watching your face for a reaction. You hold the edge of the paper and turn it over in your hands, sitting up as the image fills your mind. He's drawn you, the troll you, looking just as pissed off as you always did; you're crouching with your sickle, teeth bared and eyes wide and wild as if you're about to pounce on something just out of view and tear it to shreds. He smiles at you, about to turn back towards the film when you put your hand on his shoulder to stop him. You know this is when you should go for it, this would be the perfect moment, but you can't. There are a hundred things you could do right now. You could launch yourself at him and he'd just take you and it would be perfect, but you can't bring yourself to do it. So you hug him instead, pulling him towards you and wrapping your arms around his shoulders. You can feel every muscle moving under his shirt, how his arms tighten around your chest when you thank him. You don't linger too long, calling him a massive loser and shoving his shoulder as you grin at him playfully.

He calls you an over-emotional asshole and you flip him off, taking a sheet of paper from the pile he's got on his lap and fumbling around for a pencil. If he can draw you, you can draw him.