((A/N: So this is a new unique turn in the story as I try and put some poetry in it. Reason why I say try is because the formatting was a nightmare. It's 4 o' clock in the morning and I'm cranky as hell, and dealing with the formatting not working to give individual stanzas is the most infuriating thing now. So, if you see a line for the poem, it is not an opening to a new scene, it is just a poor attempt to make a stanza go through. Dear lord it is infuriating.
This will also be different from the others, as it is longer and a continuation of what happens here. Heh I suck at explaining. I would talk more, but it will lead to spoilers. So I shut up now.
Enjoy, and be in a better mood than I am now.))

It had been a wonder of how he was able to sneak in all these miracles. He would take in a few pills or sometimes more each day. His mind playing out like a child's sugar high, euphoria exploited so much that it was going limp. Gamzee's anxiety fled over like tsunamis in his head; a body that would shake as if he was a tree branch. The morphine almost felt like it helped.

Gamzee had done enough for the night, sprawled on the couch sloth-like, with a few sheets of paper laying down on his abdomen. Out of the blue, his old shtick of sloppy poetry and song lyrics got in its whimsy. His old blue guitar he got when he was ten from his old man sitting with its back resting on the couch. The invisible man handed it to him on his tenth birthday and left the next day. There was cake and balloons and all things magical for a rich kid's party until tomorrow rolled in like deplorable amnesia. He decided in a lonely phase to learn after he left, despite it being a bitch to learn all by himself. Yet it was very much worth it in the main run. Learning out to orchestrate decent lyrics, tune a guitar in the best way possible, to even playing to a few people he liked. Gamzee treasured music like it was the one that got him out of the waters. His dad still never present. He scooted up from his sprawl to sit his body up on the arm of the leather couch, the papers shifting with him in an unbalanced movement. He gazed at the poem he wrote down.

I'm left at the isolated edge of the world,

Will in hand, heart to take a drift,

Closing my dim eyes, not a sunshine to abide,

Ain't a speck of things to be there at all.

He moves on to the next paragraph, and a bit of a gulp slid down his throat.

Humane wasteland, forgotten society to mass-sobriety,

Stoning of our dim souls be inept of the shit they speak,

I will never leave of the smiles, laughs, and hugs,

Being the only tug of reality I now seek.

He continued on and sighed, looking at the flourishing content settling upon his eyes. He crossed his legs in a fit of comfort, his vision scattering off to different corners to stare off at.

Remembering you is like a coo in the wind,

An ocean's suffice of its own token coin,

I remember the nights I screamed, I remember the nights I started to dream,

You'd take me upon the stars where the dreams could shoot as a beam,

Our tides were soothed, and the wind was at tune.

I sit on the edge of the world, watching the sunrise getting its unfurl,

Meadows that hide all things true unraveling its flowers,

Waters of true blue mirrored of the sky's paintbrushes, I see it all in blissful rue.

In my Deadman's sobriety, I am far away to be,

Did it all need to be foreseen beneath our dead sea?

He gave the paper a nonchalant nudge away until it then fluttered down on the floor. Mind already in a fuzzy hue. A beckoning worth ignoring. He shuffled to lay down on his side, his arm hanging and hand touching the cold wood, eyes giving a monotonous dread at the pile of paper. The blue guitar neglected from his grip and from his love.

He finally fell asleep after only a few minutes. Sheer nothingness sweeping him off to dreamland. A black vortex opening to him. He woke up stiff, laying on his other side facing away of the table, birds tweeting and singing outside.

He groans grudgingly.

Gamzee crouches into more of a ball, keeping himself at ease as best as possible. Worrying sick isn't something good for his body, he knew it like a science. And he also knew of the new habits wasn't going to get him any slack, he knew it like it was his religion. But it was all good, he thinks, once the worries and stress stop getting its wretchedness on he'd stop and he'd be fine. The marijuana held as a true and precious pedestal. The pills were now something of a side note. The effects would tear him down to the deep end again. But he be damned if he wasn't proclaimed as the almighty master of fixing himself whenever things were better. He was sure of that. The back voice of his mind makes a shrug. Whatever goes continues until the turnout was all clear.

A shrieking alarm sets off in the middle of his daydream. All the way into his living room he could hear it like it was right by his ear. He groans again in his mind just thinking of how far away it was, not wanting to move a single bone.

His body stretched again, limbs dangling off the couch. After several more buzzes he got out of the red leather heaven-seat and raced to his room, glorifying of the new mess. It was early in the morning and he already had a headache. Clenching his temples with one hand, he looked and remembered what the day was.

It had been more than a week since Karkat got hospitalized, he nods to himself. Maybe the coop would finally let him out to see daylight again, they already delayed it enough. A foggy smile broke in, despite the solemn scene. He went back to the living room and sat on the couch, eyeing a piece of poetry lying on the floor.

The eyes see grey, the mind glows blue,

My habits ain't nothing when it comes to you.

For you to look over me, for the raindrops all to ensue,

My cloudy smile still having a hue, to let it all be washed away by you.

Well, aren't I a sappy fuck.

His body couldn't be any stiff. A beep and a buzz out in the distance. The white walls he'd stare at for seemingly hours was giving him so much nausea, that and probably over the days of medication he had. He laid on his rough bed for hours now, everything as placid as a boring river. His abdomen numb.

His eyes stayed open for the entire night, staring off into the dark hallway where doctors pace through the hospital. The day was a drowsy haze. The sunlight shining through his window pane giving him a pounding headache. Karkat's mouth swished of cynicism and the aftertaste was pure anxiety. Itching to be released and awaiting to see Gamzee take a drop by the hospital again, looking worse than the last. Gamzee sounded alright, at least to his faulty standards. It was always nice to see his sharp face almost everyday.

Karkat scratches at his head until running his hand through his hair. Still in hospital wear, and still a fucking wreck.

He had heard doctors talk outside his door of his release, saying if things were all too good to be true he'd be let out today. Just maybe. Karkat looks down at his stomach and still sees the placement of the stab. He still had some time to recover from the injury despite his patience's unreliability, making life like dirt tracks on a long and desolated road.

He held his head up with his slim hand, list of numbers and days trailing off his mind like steam. His elbow leaning on the soft pillow that only made his head sunk. He was off the medication and the needles lodged up his arms were gone. The times he had flinched when they were preparing to stab another needle into him he couldn't recall. The stinging feeling seeping into his flesh and the word 'blood' giving him the strength of a fidgeting fish. It's been a shit week.

He gave up resting his head on his hand and instead sunk down into his bed, feeling the covers stir beneath him. A doctor with rough brown hair and caterpillars for eyebrows walked into the room with a flurry of wind. Check board in hand and glasses hanging down to his chest.

"You'll be let out soon. Hope you have a ride waiting for you."

Karkat only nods as he signs a few things.

Minutes go by as he waits some more, and a bit more after that. The white walls washing over his vision in a bitter light. He closes his eyes and pretends that he was asleep. The sense of vulnerability under his closed eyelids pressuring him to open them up again. Alas, more minutes pour down until Gamzee came back again.

Gamzee's eyes had sunken into his face looking like he hadn't slept in years. His smile radiated his entire face staring into Karkat, wanting to take him home.

The drive to Karkat's place then led for the both of them to go to Gamzee's, keeping everything content and flowing.

"You feelin' better now?" Gamzee asks after a string of silence. His eyes facing the road, not much of a wreck as he was when Karkat got in the hospital.

"After a week of all the drugs that not even an addict would exploit and people checking on me everyday, I think I'm fine getting the fuck out of there." Karkat scoffs and stares back at the road with Gamzee.

"I can only motherfuckin' imagine, brother." His hands loosened on the wheel. His eyes darted to Karkat for only a mid-second, Gamzee's smile was warm. "I'm glad you're out."

Karkat closes his eyes and smiled with pseudo effort. "Only thing on my limited bucket list is to not get stabbed again. I rather not be stuck in a hospital for more than a week." He sighs.

"It's alright now. All is good. I'd feel the same way if I ever got in your motherfuckin' shoes."

Karkat pauses, staring at the grey foggy world in front of the window. "You won't even make it for a day. I can see it right now."

"That's the thing, yo. Better to be cooped up and motherfuckin' safe than - y'know, get stabbed . . . "

"I get it. Stop sympathizing. It's gotta be the most pathetic whimpering I've ever heard from you, Makara."

Gamzee's eyes stayed on the window. "Sorry bro."

"And anyway - what have you been doing while I was in?"

His throat closed in from any sound to spew out trying to hide anything that was wrong. He wondered if he put up everything from sight before he left; he was sure of it. The table scrubbed from any leftover ashes and all the cigs thrown away, poetry lying under the sofa cushions. There was always that paranoid side of his brain that reverses any kind of confident thought to oblivion. He paid attention to the road and nodded. "Nothing much. It's been kind of quiet without you being around, so yeah."

Karkat looks at Gamzee and smirks. "Got off your fucking life for a while now, huh? Why it's so quiet?"

"Nahh. Ain't even the realness of your claim, bro." Gamzee sighs and makes a right on the packed road. "Just without you, no one's around really."

Karkat's smirk turns down and he grunts in approval. "I got that. But do you have anyone else around at all?"

"Not really. They all kind of leave, yeah?"

"Are you talking about the people we knew before? I still see them every once in a while. What happened?" He remembers the time he met Sollux at grade school, his gawky lisp and loud sneakers echoing from a mile away. They met and they were practical rivals against everything. Running the fastest to who knew the most curse words, both getting in trouble at the same pace and reason. Sollux was still around, maybe grew out of his lisp too. But now he worked somewhere around the town for computer maintenance, almost never able to make a visit.

Karkat remembered a girl whom he met at high school and having the most pathetic and fiery crush for her, Terezi Pyrope. She was a new student during the middle of freshmen year and had the poorest eyesight imaginable. Her dragon-headed cane swiping nearby peoples' ankles and feet. An elongated smile saying 'Oops sorry 'bout that' and she goes off her way through the suffocating hallway. Her red-tinted glasses always shining through the fluorescent lights. Karkat noticed her in his afternoon classes as she tripped on his shoe, doing that same dimwitted smile and trying to shake his hand. They hit it off as close friends after that, but never evolved into what Karkat wanted. It was always complicated.

Gamzee straightened his back. "Nah, man. Been forever since I've seen one of them fuckers. Besides - I doubt they'd want a meeting with me." He hums as a pause. "Shit happens, I guess."

Karkat said nothing, as he only nodded.

Gamzee looked over his shoulder to see Karkat aside. "You too?"

"What? Oh, no - after high school everybody just drops off the face of the Earth. Seems that way every single fucking year as a matter of cold hard fact. You meet someone, and then they give you the most bizarre middle finger of the entirety of space and never talk to you anymore. Just happens, I guess." Karkat turned his head to the door window to see speckles of rain sticking onto the clear pane. "Surprisingly I get used to it, being alone and shit like that. I'm fine with it."

Gamzee taps on his leg as his left arm takes the wheel. "I can't take that being alone thing. It gets in your head too much and too motherfuckin' quickly."

"Weren't you always like that though? When we were in high school, you never seemed to be around until you found me. Smiling like an ape and just goddamn begging for some semblance of a hug. Your pot forest circling around you was abhorrent."

Gamzee sounded like he was holding in a chuckle in his throat. It ceased in only seconds. "Ey, it ain't that bad. Not like I do anythin' else, y'know?"

"I guess. If you were just a pothead I'd be alright. But you just got fucking -" He didn't felt that it was right continuing. He thought he already said enough. He felt awkward not able to finish his sentence in the silence.

Gamzee knew. He didn't force anything out of Karkat. He knew and he only sighed in acknowledgement.

And then they were home.

The rain trickled down Karkat's face and he pulled his gray hood up. Gamzee didn't mind the cold drippings tracing through his hair and leaves it be.

The roof darkened of the soggy rainy day ahead of them; the trimmings leaving paths of escaping raindrops. The ground steep of rain at each step they took to the house, mud clinging to the tip of their shoes. Karkat groaned.

The door opened as Gamzee perused through a mess of keys. Gamzee had a hard time picking the right one, much to Karkat's annoyance. His quiet raving making Gamzee's enlightenment of the pattering rain existent.

The warmth invited them in and Gamzee took first seat on the couch. Karkat sat and wiped the cold water off his face with his sleeve and his hood stayed up. With a chuckle, Gamzee shook his head furiously in an attempt to get rid of the shower-like wetness, a part of it was to rile Karkat for the day. He thought it was worth it.

After shaking his head he pressed both palms on his face, flicked strands of wilted hair off his cheeks and smiled at Karkat. "Feel better?"

"I'm alright." He grabs a jacket string and pulls it.

Gamzee scoots closer to Karkat and pulls him into a hug, one arm trapping him, his chin sitting atop his head. He started to nuzzle his nose into his hair although it felt more of a headbutt; his arm wrapped tight as he began to hug him.

This was one of the first hugs Gamzee gave out in a while that felt affectionate. Karkat struggled out of Gamzee's strong arms and he gave up almost at an instant. The two sat there in silence, hugging till one of them popped open.

"So - shit, you're hugging too tight." Karkat said. "Missed me after a week or something?"

"Yeah. Yeah! I did!" Gamzee hugged only a bit tighter. "With you getting stabbed and being in the coop, things got kind of heavy on me." He rubbed his nose on his head in delight again. A bit of a chime coming out his throat.

Karkat lowered his head to his lap. His wound the reminder of that night. Once a scar opened, it would always be there. You either showed it off or hid it away. Karkat didn't want it neither way. Gamzee tipped Karkat's face to his with only his index finger, his lips forming a glower and his eyes resorting to a puppy dog's.

"I said something that I ain't shouldn't have. I get how you're up and sensitive over it - I'm sorry."

"No dumbass, it's fine." Karkat pulled his face away from Gamzee's. "I can tell you missed me as much as an abandoned imp or some shit like that. I get you were upset." He bowed his head again and twiddled with his jacket strings. "It's kind of nice that someone cares."

"What does that mean?" His head tilted a bit to the sentence. His eyes sparked of a new-found astonishment.

"I mean, it's just been a while since anyone's been around for anything. Like we said before. Everyone fell off the Earth to find another bullshit planet, I guess." He didn't laugh at that. He only played with the strings more.

Gamzee gives a so-phony-it's-astonishing scoff. A chuckle mixed with it. He appealingly stares at Karkat's hidden face and makes him look up. Karkat's face was a tad red.

"I get that feeling too. I get it every motherfucking day, really." His face never changed. "Ever since we kinda split apart I been feelin' like utter shit, man. Gonna be flat-out honest to you. I ain't ever seen life's good side whenever you left, and now you're back. It's a literal goddamn miracle that we're here right now." Gamzee looks away to stare with lazy intentions at the wall behind them. "Filled with all the wonders and dreams you can fuckin' imagine brother! Shit - I could seriously go for something good to have a premonition on." His smile grew wide with a landslide. His heart was figurative and his mind crammed of sudden euphoria. A rainbow gliding above him. He slapped a hand on his right shoulder and hummed, Karkat's confused tapping snapping him out of it.

"Okay? You alright or something?"

"Yeah man. Just displaying how I feel right now." He hums again in his throat like a stuffed message bottle. Turning away from the wall and back to Karkat to pet his head like a fluffy cat.

"You were talking about feeling like literal shit? What's with that before you dozed off to fucking dreamland?"

"Oh - yeah -" Gamzee's gaze met with Karkat. "Uh, just I kind of got some blues on me and shit happened. Is life though. Life ain't filled with miracles, but you can make it."

Karkat nods as his locked eyes slipped down to the ground. A piece of paper was sitting, abandoned, right beside his feet.

"So now that you're out, and we're best friends again, I'm pretty motherfuckin' chill to this date." His smile gleamed off his face, not noticing the paper. He slouched down on the couch where he'd be almost lying down, only that Karkat was blocking the way, so he let his feet hung off the cushions.

"Whatever you say, I guess." Karkat thought in pause and looked back at Gamzee.

"You should stay the night here bro."

He shrugs. "I can do that."

Gamzee's eyes lit like a shooting star. The gleam staying on him with a calm radiance. He got up halfway and tugged Karkat's arm for another elongated and affectionate hug.

Karkat accepted; wrapping his loose arms around as Gamzee was strangling. He nuzzled, just a bit, into his chest; not able to realize it completely, but a part of him didn't care.

He guessed that Gamzee needed this; someway, somehow. There was a lot that he needed to unravel.

As Gamzee was hugging the life out of Karkat, he so felt the need to grab a pill, or maybe a smoke, to build up this plethora of happiness. That it'll never go away.