"No."
"Sollux."
"KK."
"Come on!"
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"Because you sthaid stho?" He tries not to lisp. It's hard, but listening to Karkat try to reason with Sollux's stubborn asshattery is twice as much. He's trying to get them back to the island, which is basically a poorhouse, at least since he'd been there last, because there wasn't much electricity or heat. It was four walls, but that's it. Sollux doesn't care to return for other reasons as well. They plague his mind endlessly. "What are you, my lusus?"
"I'm not going to dignify that with a response." Sollux rolls his eyes and walks off, pushing up his sunglasses and grabbing a towel so he can shower. He's been working all day and Karkat was waiting for him as soon as he walked in the door. "We need to go back. We have to!"
"You have exactly two theconds to tell me why I should return to that plaith." His hand is on the door, ready to slam it as soon as the two seconds was up.
"It's all we fucking have! It's the only place we belong on this hilariously primitive planet!"
"Time'th up." He slams the door in Karkat's face, promptly locking it.
Karkat bangs on the door twice. "What are you so afraid of, Sollux?! Huh? What is your goddamn problem!"
Sollux opens the door so fast, it rebounds against the wall, the knob making a dent in it. "I'll tell you why!" He shoves Karkat back with the palm of his hand. "It's because it'th the only plaith we belong! We don't belong on Alternia, which is why we fucking left, and all my friends are dead, tho—"
"Okay, I've had about enough of your self-indulgent I'm-so-oppressed bullshit!" Karkat yells, pushing back with two hands and making Sollux drop the towel. "You're so caught up in the past, you can't even see what the fuck is going on around you! Believe me, I miss her too, and I've never really had a great moirail so I don't really know how that feels, but I got over it just enough to pick myself up and move on!"
"Oh," Sollux says under his breath. He understands everything now. It's all so clear. "I get it." Everything makes sense now. "There'th thomeone elth."
"W-what?" Karkat stammers. "Well—"
"So you're not denying it?" he glowers.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Sollux scoffs. "You've developed red feelings for thomeone elth." He drops his voice an octave. "That'th why you've moved on tho fatht."
"That's ridiculous. She's been dead three years."
"You've already athimilated, too!"
"Shut the fuck up and listen to me!" Karkat gets in his face, a couple inches shorter, but not as thin as Sollux. His irises had turned completely red, revealing his blood color, and revealing just how emotionally compromised he is right now. "I don't have red feelings for anyone right now!" Then he grunted, like he was about to say something and held it back last minute.
"What?" Sollux demands. "What were you going to thay?"
"No, no, forget it! Take your water shower, you spoiled imbecile." He turns away, apparently giving up. One side of Sollux tells him to let Karkat go fuck himself or whoever he has feelings for.
"At leath you have prosthecth!" Sollux snaps. Karkat ignores the comment, sitting on his bed and picking up the free book the hotel supplies every room. "You probably have feelings for a certain jade-blood." At that, Karkat turns to glare. Sollux knows he's hit a nerve. "Yeah, we all thaw how you two looked at each other. Hell, even NP hath red feelingth for you, but you don't even notith because you were tho busy making goo-goo eyes at KN!"
Karkat gets up from his bed quickly, storming back to Sollux. "Don't you fucking talk about her like that. And I do not!"
"Now who's the imbethile?" Sollux crosses his arms. He has the upper hand, he's pretty sure.
"You really want to know, huh?!" Karkat is turning red.
"I'm going to find out anyway, tho why don't you go ahead and—" Wait. "No."
"You asked for it." He bares his teeth and Sollux does the same.
"Fuck."
"That's the idea, asshole."
Black feelings are complicated. There's the hate, which everyone abuses, then there's the rivalry, which everyone ignores. Right now, Karkat only wants to win. Unfortunately, by the end of the night, the entire room is in complete shambles and the neighbors, especially the ones with children, are complaining. By the time Karkat wakes up completely, the sun is up and infiltrating the room. Shit, he forgot to close the blinds when he got back. He untangles himself from the sheets, and from foreign limbs and closes the blinds. He takes one look at Sollux and facepalms. He can't believe he did that. Now things are complicated.
He fumbles over to the bathroom in the dark and closes the door behind him. Turning on the light, he sees that he's covered in red spots. He's never been in a black relationship before, and this is probably what he has to get used to if they want to continue. He leans into his reflection and see that he's gotten himself a shiner and a slightly busted lip, too. He sighs and just steps into the shower, wondering how he's going to explain himself to Kanaya if they get back to the island anytime soon.
Wait, no. "Fuck!" he yells, his voice echoing on the tiles. "This is not how I pictured this morning would go." Good thing he has the day off of work. Unfortunately, Sollux doesn't work today, either. Karkat turns on the shower. "Today is going to suck," he mumbles.
"You okay, KK?" Karkat jumps about five feet.
"Go away!" he yells back.
"Okay, fine. Damn." Sollux pads away.
Karkat lets out a breath of relief and steps into the shower, scrubbing himself of the evidence of last night, most of it yellow, and some of it red, mixing into an organ-churning orange-brown color on the tile floor. He's used to teal. "What do I do now, Terezi?" he whispers, leaning against the clean-ish wall of the very small shower. It's colder that he expected, so he straightens up immediately, muttering curses.
Karkat steps out to a foggy mirror, somewhat happy not to see his own fucking face. He's pretty sure he got everything. He dries off and wraps the towel around his waist, grabbing a dish towel for his hair because he just doesn't give a fuck right now. He opens the door to see Sollux standing there, covered in yellow splotches himself. Karkat nearly shoots right through the ceiling.
"Shit!"
"No need to be like that, geez." Amused, Sollux scoffs lightly, brazenly pushing his naked self past Karkat. "Get out of the way, I'm filthy." He let him pass. The door closes and locks. Like Karkat is going to barge in there. Fat lot of good it did him last night. How the hell is he so chipper? Yes, for Sollux, that is in fact "chipper."
Now the problem is getting him to come back to the island.
He has to make a phone call.
He goes over to the phone, hand hovering over the receiver. Come on, Karkat, grab the phone. He lets his hand drop on it. Cautiously, he wraps his fingers around it and dials the number.
"Y'ello, Miss Red's Diner, how may I serve you?" The woman on the other end is definitely Miss Red, her accent shining through like a searchlight in total darkness. Karkat almost hung up at the sound of her voice. "Hello?"
"Miss Red? It's Karkat."
"Well, hello there, stranger! Long time no see, how's everything?"
"Good, great, listen…"
Kanaya cannot believe how cool the air is in the summer. Summer months are the best, she thinks, because they are the warmest. Nowhere near as hot as Alternia was, but that is why she appreciated the sun all the more. The mainland didn't have nearly as much sun as the island, either.
Nepeta had been more distant than usual lately. Ever since Gamzee left about a week ago, Kanaya has not heard nary more than a purr from the troll. She wonders if Vriska said anything to her. Someone who's also been distant lately was the mother grub. Kanaya wondered if she had eaten something bad and was just sleeping it off, since it was normal for a lusus her age to sleep for weeks at a time, but something about this particular hibernation activity worried her. She should tend to her sooner rather than later. She needs to make sure that the behavior isn't due to a bad batch of genetic material, which no one seems to have taken advantage of yet.
And then, as if queued for this moment, Nepeta comes up to Kanaya with a determined look on her face.
"Nepeta? What happened? Are you alright?" Kanaya asks.
"He's coming back," she says shakily.
Her first instinct was a certain stubby-horned troll that left months ago.
"Vriska said that he might soon, anyway. Nepeta isn't one to spurread rumors, but it's been clawing at me fur a while."
"Oh?"
"Yeah." She fiddles with her claws for a moment before saying, "I'm sorry."
"No, it is alright." She tries to console Nepeta by putting a hand on her shoulder. "We often think about the inevitable truths when faced with these kinds of situations. I sometimes wake up feeling that he might come back today. And if he doesn't, then I think that he will come back tomorrow. I would not worry about him so much." She could also say that about Roxy and Rose, but those are different feelings altogether.
"But Vwiskers said—"
"Never you mind what Vriska says," Kanaya interrupts with a wink. "As her devoted moirail, I know that she sometimes gets involved in things and likes to bring others with her."
"Are you throwing me under the mass transportation vehicle?" Vriska says with a sort of cynical tone, coming up from behind Kanaya.
Kanaya rolls her eyes. "Quite the opposite, actually." Kanaya takes Nepeta's hand. "I am simply helping Nepeta understand you better."
Nepeta slides her hand out. "Vriska, were you lying when you told me about Karkat?" she asks.
"Nope." She saunters towards Kanaya. "As a matter of fact, I have just the thing for you both." Vriska gestures behind herself with her chin. "They're in my ship, the mongrels. Slow as hell. They totally forgot how excruciatingly rocky seafaring vehicles are—HEY!" Kanaya and Nepeta both shove past her, Nepeta actually knocking Vriska over.
Can it really be them? Have they returned? Kanaya keeps running, noting the time of day. To the best of her knowledge, it is about mid-morning, maybe ten or eleven. The earth-date is August first, nineteen-ninety-five. If what Vriska is implying is true, she wants to remember this day.
Both women race down the final hill towards the dock.
There they are.
Karkat.
Limbs pumping, blood pusher pounding, she fades into tunnel vision, knowing the terrain is free from large rocks so she has no chance of falling. He notices her and braces for impact as she throws her arms around him for the first time, perhaps ever.
"Kanaya, you're crushing my lungs," he breathes.
"Oh! My apologies," she says, helping him up. As soon as he straightens himself up, he is then hugged by Nepeta, who purrs in his ear, making him cry out in protest and attempt to shove her away in vain. As soon as she gets off him, Kanaya makes a move of her own.
She punches him right in the face. He stares at her, shocked and about to yell before she beats him to it.
"You left!"
"Well, I—!"
"Shut up! I'm not done!" He complies, and she takes a deep breath. Nepeta uses Sollux as a shield. Kanaya has not been rehearsing the proceeding speech, but it comes out like she had been. "Not a word was spoken or discussed when you left. Not with myself, anyway. I thought you hated the planet, we all had." She looks at Sollux and says, "I will deal with you later." She turns back to Karkat. "What I don't understand is why! Leaving without a trace is what unsatisfied wrigglers do. You are not a wriggler. You are a fully grown adult troll. Fully grown adult trolls do not do something that childish!" She runs her fingers through her hair, feeling her horns coming back in. "What were you thinking? Were you going to consult with me? Do you have any idea what we have been going through here? We had to redelegate every single chore, including the schooling! I even went back to looking after Dave! Maybe it was so sudden that you might not have had time to do so, but even then, you could have at least left word!"
Karkat sits in silence, rubbing his reddening cheek. It's then that she noticed his bloodshot eye and she kneels down in the grass to tend to it, gently taking his face in her hands.
"What in the universe happened to your eye?"
Meenah decided the day that Kanaya told her that Karkat had left for the real world, she would go out swimmin' every mornin' when she woke up, do four laps, and then hunt until lunch. She is becoming a troll of the sun to avoid Cronus, the creep. She did her four laps a while ago and had about three bluefins when she saw Vriska's boat arrive. Usually she didn't pay attention, but today there were extra people onboard. It's only when they stepped out and Kanaya and Nepeta came tearin' down the path when she recognized one of them as Karkat. She saw Kanaya yellin' and thought it best to stay out of the way until the end, listening to every word she said.
That is, until she heard Kanaya ask about his eye. She gets out of the water, dragging the wriggling tuna by their tails and approaches the group. Before she can interact, she hears someone shout, "Tuna!" behind her. She whips around to see Mituna jumping on her, wrangling the fish out of her grip.
"Hey, leggo!" she shouts.
"'Tuna, stop!" Latula yells, catching up.
"Look what I caught, 'Tula!" he states proudly. Meenah slaps her forehead.
"I caught these, ya guppy!" she yells, snatching the fish back.
"I'm sorry, Meen," Latula says apologetically. "He just gets so excited when he sees shiny things."
Meenah scoffs. "Keep him on a shorter leash next time," she spits.
"Meenah!"
"I don't get it," Mituna says.
Meenah decides to ignore the trolls her age and focus on the ones way older. Kanaya said, "Leaving is what unsatisfied wrigglers do." She hauls the oversized fish all the way to the hive. Leaving is what unsatisfied wrigglers do. She drops them off in the kitchen block. Leaving is what unsatisfied wrigglers do.
Meenah trudges all the way to the living block, tosses and turns on the sofa, then retreats to the girls' block. Thankfully, it was empty.
Leaving is what unsatisfied wrigglers do.
"I'm not a wriggler!" she screams out of one of the windows, gripping the sill in frustration. She was unsatisfied when Karkat was gone, then Kanaya's words kept her at bay, but now she's feeling unsatisfied again? Was it because Karkat hadn't noticed or even asked about her well-being yet? Then again, it's not like she knows or not because she hasn't gone and checked.
Was she jealous?
"Not jealous!" She wasn't that petty, was she? Kanaya and Nepeta are both prettier and more badass than Meenah was. No matter how many Bluefin tuna that Meenah caught, it couldn't rival Nepeta's hunting, and no matter how much she grew over the next few years, she'd never be old enough for Karkat. Besides, she likes Kanaya and Nepeta. Kanaya is bassically perfect and Nepeta just has a silly crush. She yells in frustracean again, this time ripping the sill clean off, sending some splinters and breaking some rusted nails. "Dammit!" She replaces the sill carefully, looking around to make sure nobody saw that.
One thing she knows for sure: she's leavin' as soon as she's good and able.