Chapter Text
Your name is Dave Strider.
You’re the baddest MC this side of the meteor and damn do you know it.
You’re also in a perpetual state of boredom lately and it’s been making you fucking itchy.
But you’re not letting the others see that ‘cause you’re kind of the rock around here. Your emotions are yours son, and ain’t nobody gonna take that right away from you. You’ve had years to perfect and patent the Strider Stare and while it probably actually irritates the shit out of most people, it makes you feel a hell of a lot better. Not only do your sensitive eyes appreciate the gesture of always hiding behind sunglasses (even just normal lights really bug them sometimes, damn) but so does your pride. A lot can be said about a person through their eyes. Can’t see them, can’t really see an expression. Fine by you.
The past year has been the most uneventful. Lots of sitting around for something that nobody can actually explain yet. You were just as into this idea as everyone else was, obviously; the scratch was a necessity for survival of not just you, but also your friends. Actually, careening through the Fourth Wall was the fun part, Jade really stepped up to the plate there. Remind yourself never to get on HER bad side ever again.
This has been different though, just a whole lot of nothing much happening. There’s this crazy-tense Hurry Up And Wait mentality amongst a few of your fellow ‘passengers’ and that’s just not your style. You’ve been trying to approach the whole thing pretty casually but now, two years in, you’re starting to feel pretty stir crazy. At least there was the excitement of looking forward to something new and settling yourself into a new living space in the first year – you got to figure out where you wanted to put your personal shit, you know, dig out a little hole for yourself to call home temporarily.
Lost its charm real fast, that.
The only really exciting thing to happen to you in the last year only happened for a couple of weeks at most. And now you don’t even have that anymore, because you’re a fucking dumbass monogamist; probably just threw something pretty awesome into the toilet and flushed the sucker down because you just don’t get the complicated mechanics of alien relationships. You’re entitled to your opinion, duh, but that opinion also just killed the highest possible chance you had for the next few years to get some.
He tried to explain it to you, too, and you know what you did? You remember? You brushed it aside and offered your own stance and forcibly removed yourself from the situation. You put your fucking fingers in your fucking stupid ears and went la la la la and now look where you are.
Eerily alone, most of the time. Also not your style, not anymore.
Solitude used to be pretty okay, actually. You didn’t really mind it so much. Kind of came with the territory and how you were raised, too. Bro liked being alone, you’re pretty sure. But he also liked having you around, mostly so he could try to unexpectedly kick your ass. After awhile, you started to like that part, too.
You got used to being busy and doing important shit with your friends, though, and that sort of weaned you out of wanting to be alone really fucking fast. You’ve seen and done a lot of shit that probably a guy nearing sixteen shouldn’t have seen or done. When you’re alone, especially at night, your brain likes to punk you with it.
He was such a fucking good distraction, too. Especially when he fought you, man, that shit was fucking amazing. You didn’t want to admit it to him at the time, but you’d really needed that kind of action. He’s a good fighter, quick and lean and kind of flexible and okay there goes that mental tangent all over again.
The day he picked that fight with you was the most useful you’d felt in months, maybe more. Sure, you can lay down a few excellent beats and rhymes when the mood hits you the right way in the right place, and sure, you know a thing or two about electronics, enough to patch up little breaks at least temporarily (shit, your methods even worked on alien tech, how versatile would THAT look on a fucking resume) but at the end of the day you always wonder just how fucking insignificant you might be once this whole thing is over. There’s always the deep-rooted paranoia that if you win the session, things’ll go back to the way they were and you’ll regress back to a thirteen year old body with a who-knows-how-fucking-old-by-that-point brain making minimum wage in a coffee shop somewhere because you spend all the years you should’ve been in high school traveling between dimensions at the speed of fucking light and helping some weird dude with a sash make a city out of empty cans for fun, what the actual fuck is your life.
But he… he looked to you as more. To him, you were an opponent, not just some guy. He knew you had a sword, and he knew you were fucking deadly with it even though it was broken. He gave you something you hadn’t felt in so long, that day.
And that was the same day you chose to disregard it. Because you were stupid and the stupid one was you.
He doesn’t talk to you much anymore.
At least he’s given you the space to think shit over, that much you’re grateful for. You aren’t sure if you’ve needed almost a year to hash out all your feelies but he seems intent on avoiding you when he can. There’s been a slow, very gradual change in him that you’ve been keeping your eye on, especially in the last month or two – he sort of always seems like he’s constantly looking over his own shoulder, and the prolonged lack of real sleep is showing on him a lot worse than usual.
You know he still sneaks off sometimes to hang with his friend the vent monster. The first time he did it, the smell was totally gnarly, smelled a little bit like when you get a towel really wet and then bunch it up in a corner for a few days and let it get kind of rank. It was like that, but a little milder. Over time, the more often you saw him after he did it, the smell didn’t bother you as much. The one time you caught him (thanks to the Mayor, dude is so awesome), he didn’t smell at all. You still wonder what’s in there to make it that funky. You wonder, but you’re not sure if you want to actually find out.
Dead Body is always the first thing that comes to mind, and that shit just isn’t funny.
You kinda doubt that if a dead body was involved, Karkat wouldn’t keep going back there. He seems as decidedly not okay with dead bodies as you are.
You still talk sometimes, it’s not like the two of you are cold-shouldering or anything. You don’t have any issues with the guy at all, but you feel a little sheepish sometimes (not that you’d admit it to anyone else, of course) when you think about how you handled everything. You should at least have been a little more understanding about the position that he was in, shit, he probably hated that he had some weird feelings for you and you made them worse by having ZERO fucking restraint and mashing your faces together so many times. It was really because the mashing was actually good, though. No, you hadn’t done much of anything in the past and yeah, absolutely you’re still a fucking virgin and what’s the big deal with that? Who has the time or opportunity when you’re trying to figure your damn Sburb session out? But you know a good damn kisser when you meet one, boatloads of experience or no, and despite his kind of awkward aggression, he was still good at it. Good enough to leave an impression on you, at least.
You’ve had too many months to reflect on how the whole situation makes you feel, and at first you were fine. You agreed not to mess around anymore without involving any of the weird alien quadrant stuff, stuff that you can’t really even begin to understand, but it’s been stupid hard trying to keep your P’s and Q’s in check. You don’t like that he’s practically become a recluse because you don’t know if he’s doing it intentionally or being forced into it by some unseen clown-hand or what. You don’t even see him on his computer anymore, not like the piece of crap even really works right or anything. Maybe the thing finally shit the bed for good.
You even miss the annoying gray capslock, who would’ve thought.
It’s been building up lately, this weird urge to reconcile and maybe try to get back into his good graces because you’re not a quadrant kind of guy but shit, you don’t DISLIKE him, either. Your current company has been all well and good – Terezi is fucking awesome and hilarious and obviously you like Rose a hell of a lot and Kanaya is pretty cool, too, but you’re surrounded by multi-species estrogen, drowning in it, and you need a bro sometimes. Sure, he can be a shit sometimes but his grouchiness is more funny than insulting to you. It’s only when he keeps important shit from everyone, which you called him out on because that’s how you roll, that you start to have a problem. You’re still convinced that you don’t have the full story. You’d been hoping on getting everything out of him gradually but. Well. You both fucked that up by making out every goddamn chance you got, congrats on that.
The day you finally decide to bite the damn bullet and approach him again is the day you catch him dozing off in the pantry.
You know enough about Karkat to know that he doesn’t sleep often, let alone sleep out in the open for no reason. It’s weird positioning, too, like he just sat down against a wall near the shelving units to rest and conked out there, legs outstretched in front of him, a can still in one of his hands. He seems so much calmer when he’s asleep; it’s kind of bizarre to look at. It’s like his face is usually a tightly-curled fist and now, while sleeping, everything is relaxed and at ease.
You approach him and tap one of his feet gently with the tip of your shoe.
He jolts awake immediately like you just popped a fucking balloon next to his ear or something.
His eyes wander desperately for a second, maybe two before they land on you and immediately that relaxed expression pinches right back up again. He glowers up at you and draws himself up to his feet, trying to look casual and NOT embarrassed that he was just caught snoozing in the middle of the canned goods.
“Still not sleeping great, huh?” you ask him, and you’re expecting some kind of fuck-off-and-die reaction in response but to your surprise, he shrugs a little and shifts to move around you.
“I’ll be fine.”
That’s all he offers you before he walks away from you with his can. I’ll be fine, that’s it. NOW you know for a fact that something deeper than just playing around in filth with a weirdo clown for a few hours at a time (just a guesstimate, there) over the course of the day is going on, here.
That’s when you decide to start really following and watching him.
You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into anymore.
- - -
Keeping an eye on Karkat is not as strenuous as you initially thought it might be.
Mostly because he doesn’t fucking do much.
You spend the next four days keeping tabs on his whereabouts and whenever he does his little vent dance, you start to time it. He does it every day save for one – maybe he needs a break or something, you’re not sure, but you get the hunch that it’s emotionally exhausting work trying to babysit someone who is pretty clearly unstable – and each day varies. Completely different times. First day is about ten minutes. Second day is about an hour. Third day, break. Fourth day, three hours jesus christ that was painful. You don’t even really know how you had the patience to sit there for three fucking hours waiting for Karkat’s scrawny ass to come back through the vent, but somehow you made it and as expected, THAT was when he looked the most ragged. Tired, worn down, maybe even a little disheveled. Ready to fall face-first into his recooniebed-whatever and sleep for like three fucking days straight.
But you know for a fact he wouldn’t let himself do that, anyway.
You decide to knock off the secret-agent-stalker routine for a bit just in case he notices and starts getting suspicious or creeped out, but only a day goes by before he VERY unexpectedly contacts you on the computer. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen that name on your screen. You’re really not even into the idea of scoping him out at the moment when he does it – but, of course, the moment his handle appears in a message to you, you’re all fucking ears. Or eyes, as it were.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --
CG: OK@Y LI5TEN.
CG: BE7ORE YOU 5T@RT IN ON ME 7OR THI5 JU5T HOL|) THE 7UCK ON.
CG: MY KEY5 5TILL 4RENT WORKING 5O THI5 I5 THE ONLY W4Y I C4N TYPE EVEN 5OMEWH4T |)ECENTLY WITHOUT MI55ING 4NY GO|)|)4MN LETTER5.
CG: JU5T… |)ONT EVEN GO TO TH4T PL4CE.
CG: THI5 I5 4LRE34|)Y P4IN7UL ENOUGH 5O JU5T KEEP YOUR 7UCKING COMMENT5 TO YOUR5EL7 OK4Y.
TG: absolutely
TG: those ds must be a bitch to type out
CG: THEY 4RE.
CG: JU5T LI5TEN.
CG: I NEE|) 4NY TOOL TH4T YOU MIGHT BE 4BLE TO GET YOUR H4N|)5 ON 454P.
CG: THI5 HU5KTOP I5 PRETTY MUCH |)ONE 7OR 4N|) I NEE|) TO 5WITCH T4CTIC5. I7 I H4VE TO TYPE LIKE THI5 7OR THE RE5T O7 THI5 METEOR TRIP I 4M GOING TO 7UCKING KILL 5OMEBO|)Y.
CG: PROB4BLY MY5EL7 EVEN.
TG: wait you arent asking me to like build you a new computer or anything right because thats a pretty damn tall order
CG: NO 455HOLE I’M NOT 45KING YOU 7OR 4NYTHING EXCEPT TOOL5 I7 YOU C4N 7IN|) 4NY. THI5 I5 5OMETHING I’M GOING TO WORK ON BY MY5EL7.
CG: 4N 4LTERN4TIVE COMMUNIC4TION |)EVICE O7 4 5ORT.
CG: |)ON’T WORRY 4BOUT H4VING TO WORK ON IT BEC4U5E I |)ON’T W4NT YOUR GRUBBY HUM4N 54U54GE 7INGER5 5CREWING EVERYTHING UP.
TG: careful now these sausagey delights definitely fixed your computer for you like three times
TG: almost three times
TG: a valiant attempt was made the third time
CG: YE4H I |)ON’T C4RE. POINT REM4IN5, 5OLO PROJECT, JU5T P455 ME 4NYTHING YOU C4N 7IN|) TH4T MIGHT HELP.
CG: HOW M4NY MORE TIME5 5HOUL|) I 45K OR |)I|) YOU GET 4LL TH4T THI5 TIME.
TG: chilly down im gathering stuff now
TG: bring it to you in ten
CG: 5URE.
CG: ...TH4NK5.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling turntechGodhead [TG] --
But instead of dashing to fulfill his highness’s every curt and rude demand, you kind of just sit there for a second, staring at the screen like a big giant dumbass all fucking shocked and shit that he even bothered to reach out to you after such an extended period of radio silence. He seemed like he was holding his own alright, kind of hard to tell through his gibberish of text, but that’s the impression you got. And he’s apparently keeping himself busy with who the fuck knows what and that’s kind of a comforting sign, too.
Once you manage to pull yourself up out of your seat, you dig around and actually scrounge up a few things – another screwdriver, a needle-nose wrench, and only one alternate attachment to the screwdriver. You’re sure there were others floating around, those things usually come with seven or eight different pointlessly uni-tasking tips and extensions, but hey, you do what you can. The thing you’re calling home these days may be some sort of crazy laboratory or facility, but it’s not a goddamn hardware store.
His timing seems like a weird coincidence, but you can’t complain, really; you’re the one who’s been following the guy around behind his back like some weirdo, you sort of feel like you owe him at LEAST a small favour.
You also can’t deny that there is a part of you, a small part, a part that you aren’t really paying attention to right now that is sort of just annoyingly aching to say more than three fucking words to him again.