You spit a string of profanity at the screen and leap out of your chair so quickly that it tips over backwards. You whirl and kick it angrily, then let loose another wave of curses as your freshly-stubbed toe begins to throb. You are, if anything, more frustrated than you were when you first sat down at your computer station.

The anger drains out of you abruptly, and suddenly you just feel exhausted. You glance over your shoulder belatedly to see if your outburst woke Sollux, but he remains unchanged. His only movements are the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest and the occasional twitch and snarl as he faces whatever it is that fills his uneasy dreams.

You look reluctantly around your block. The sorry state of your hive is being picked out in stark relief by the bright sunlight streaming in through the cracks in the wall. Scorched movie posters flutter in the breeze, barely clinging to the walls. Your Game Grub magazines are scattered all around the room and the former contents of your bookshelf are lying in a jumbled heap on the floor. There's sopor slime sloshed all over your cocoon and slowly drying in puddles on the floor. And, of course, there's red and yellow blood slopped everywhere; it's staining the carpet, smeared on the walls, even splashed on the side of your cocoon.

You heave a reluctant sigh. You can't put it off forever; you suppose you should get started cleaning it up.

As you scrub determinedly at the caked blood on the floor, you wonder how they always manage to keep it so neat in the movies. It's always elegantly done on the silver screen; a graceful, well-orchestrated dance that ends up with the two heroes embracing in a cocoon or on a couch. It's not a knock-down, drag-out mess like what you and Sollux did last night. Nobody ever falls down a flight of stairs in the middle of it. No romcom hero ever wakes up the next morning with a throbbing think pan because he cracked his forehead against his lover's in a clumsy bid to hornlock him. As you survey the damage, you realize that you and Sollux were really kind of woefully terrible at this.

Maybe it's a sign that this wasn't meant to be, you and Sollux. After all, isn't that why you hesitated in the first place? You had reservations about whether or not he's really the one fated to be your matesprit. Out of habit, your eyes flick to your Serendipity poster.

To your immense dismay, it did not escape unscathed. It has been sliced in half by twin laser beams, leaving the bottom portion face-down on your block floor. You swallow. It's hard not to take that as an ill omen.

Then again…the burns have essentially emblazoned a II symbol right across troll John Cusack's face. Your fingers travel unconsciously to your wrist, where his horns left a similar mark on you. He's managed to imprint both you and your all-time favorite romcom hero with his sign. Viewed through that lens, it's exactly the opposite kind of omen.

You snort. He sliced the poster in half and scorched II into it. It's a two-part, II-themed omen that can be read two different ways. "Only you, Captor," you mutter under your breath. Then you yank the poster down and shove it into the trash bag with everything else that got ruined.

The hours drag on as you slowly get your hive back into a livable state. When you finish with your respiteblock, you tackle your living block and finally the ablution block. When you've dumped every last shard of broken mirror down the waste chute, you return to your respiteblock and kneel next to Sollux. He hasn't stirred once this entire time.

You chew on the inside of your cheek as you wonder if you should be concerned. He's been asleep for an awfully long time now. "Sollux," you murmur. "Hey." No response. You touch his upper arm lightly, then poke at him.

He still doesn't respond. Okay, now you are definitely concerned. "Sollux!" You shake his shoulder, but still nothing.

You bite your lip. "Come on, man, what the fuck is this?" You crawl around to the front of him and study his face. He's still breathing. You press your fingers gently against the vein node at the base of his neck and feel for a pulse. His blood pusher is still beating strongly. But he won't wake up.

A creeping sensation of dread has taken root in the depths of your digestion sac. Maybe there's something to Terezi's sopor slime poisoning theory after all. It has crossed your mind more than once over the past several hours that you know little to nothing about how eating sopor works. You know Gamzee does it all the time, but one key piece of information you don't have is how much. For all you know, you gave Sollux a perigee's worth of sopor in one go.

"Okay bro, that's enough," you say with a nervous laugh. "Come on, you're messing with me, right? A little payback for dunking you in the sopor slime last night? Make Karkat freak out a little thinking you have sopor poisoning? Ha ha, well played, you totally got me!" You wait. You swallow anxiously. "Playtime's over, come on bro. You're really starting to worry me here." You prod his shoulder again a few times.

You cannot get a response out of him. You pound your fists on the floor in frustration. "Shit!"

Well, that settles it. You are going to have to talk to Gamzee after all.