#I can't stop clinging to your ghost and now it's smothering me!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

corvid-knight · 7 years ago

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Demon Eyes - chapter 22

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13740258/chapters/33262440

Damn, but the next day sucks.

Being low on sleep means you drink coffee until Hal, who's been monitoring your caffeine intake, quietly but firmly takes the cup out of your hands and unplugs the pot. Which is fine, by the time the shikigami cuts you off you're probably not all that far from whatever the dangerous dosage is for coffee; him making you stop isn't what makes it shitty.

The fact that you're so wired on caffeine that your head's buzzing with it, drowning out Karkat's presence more than a little bit, that's shitty. But on another level, you're thankful that he's being blocked out, because that means he can't tell how fucked you are, that he's free to concentrate on whatever solution he might find for this situation.

There's a solution. He'll find something. I'll find something, Dirk or Roxy or D will find something...

You keep telling yourself that, but you can't focus on researching revenants and poltergeists, specters and unquiet spirits and ghosts. You spend pretty much the whole day reading through shit about everything that Bro could be now, and learn...well, nothing.

It could also be said that you spend the day avoiding Karkat, though, and surprisingly, that works well up until the day's almost over. Then you get a hint of intention from him, that he'll be in the kitchen in another few minutes, and instead of getting up and relocating you just stare at the computer screen in front of you and shove your shades up to rub at your eyes.

You feel like you're breaking. Does he know?

I can't do this.

"Can't do what?" The demon's tone's too gentle, as his hands come down on your shoulders. That's as far as he goes, this time, even if on any other occasion he'd wrap his arms around you, lean his chin on your shoulder as he scanned the laptop's screen. Right now, though, he knows that you can't handle that much contact. "Dave—"

"I fucking can't." You cut him off halfway through the word, willing your voice not to break. It doesn't, not on that sentence, but the words come out shaky and too quiet. "I can't do this, man, you don't—it's not just me, he doesn't just want to hurt me, if he can he'll—you know what he can do, you've been in my dreams, before he fucking pretended that he was normal, 'cept to me, if he—he's not going to—"

"Dave."

"I'm gonna—" There. Your voice fails there, finally, you choke on a rising sob and smother it and finish the sentence in your head. Get you killed. I'm gonna get all of you killed.

"Dave," Karkat says, one more time, and even though he doesn't move he's suddenly closer, winding himself around your mind and finding where he fits against you. No one's going to get killed.

"That's—" —worse.

The demon growls deep in his throat at the images he reads from your mind, hands tightening on your shoulders. "He won't lay a hand on you. On any of us." I swear that on my fucking life.

"You can't fucking promise that!" Most of the sentence comes out in a pained wail, and you bite your lip to keep yourself from saying anything else, bowing your head and closing your eyes. You don't— "—know what he's going to be. If he's lich—" —he'll kill you. Worse. Strip your soul from your body, cut you off from your true form and trap you in whatever fucked-up torments he can think of—

"Dave, stop."

And Karkat does something he almost never does: he pushes against your mind, pushes hard, sending streamers of his magic and sparks of pain floating down through your consciousness like drops of blood in water. It hurts, for a second, but the bits of himself that he leaves in you seek out the places filled with the staticky void of anxiety, binding themselves to it and, slowly, filling you with calm that you know won't last.

Even knowing that, you welcome it. It lets you relax against him, even if it doesn't take away the fear.

Karkat slips his arms around your shoulders, leaning in to bury his face in your hair and taking a deep breath. "Better?" he asks after a moment.

"...different." This isn't going to stop him, 'kat.

I know it won't. "If he breaks your mind, he fucking wins." I won't let him win. It's my job to make sure you get through this.

"Scared." That's as much as you can admit, and the parts of your mind that aren't dampened by Karkat's magic are screaming that showing weakness even with a single word will get you killed, that you can't—

The demon growls and wraps himself around your mind again, surrounding you with the promise of protection, the promise of safety, until your breathing slows from panic to calm again. "I know you are. It'd going to be okay, though, I promise...you need to eat, and you need to sleep, though. Everything else, we'll work out later."

Karkat, I can't sleep, if I sleep he'll—

He shushes you before you can get any further, gently working your fingers loose from where you've instinctively latched onto his arm and wrapping his hands around yours. "I'll be with you. If that fucker doesn't leave you alone, I'll wake you up and you can take one of Dirk's pills, okay?"

...okay. "Okay."

"Okay." And he nods, and lets go of you so he can get you something to eat.

Karkat shakes you awake and you taste blood in your mouth from biting down on your lip in an effort not to scream.

"Dave—"

"Shower." The word comes out harsh and rough, like you're forcing it out. You are. "Shower, I need—need to get him off me, out of me, he—let go of me, 'kat, I—"

His hands are gone as soon as you say that, and even though you almost collapse as soon as you push yourself off the bed he doesn't touch you again. Doesn't stop him from hovering, and that's okay, you want him near you, need him near you, if he wasn't here you'd freeze and fall and let yourself die before Bro ever got a chance to do in person what he's just done in spirit—

Karkat tries to work his way into your head and hisses in dismay as you shove him out again. God, you hope he knows this isn't a rejection of him, you'd never reject him—but you're fucking awful right now. Disgusting. Marked.

Guess you're still good for this, Davey, Bro croons in your head, laughter and pleasure filling the memory of his soft voice. It's not the voice that makes you shudder, though; no, the memory of his hands guiding your hips with enough force to bruise does that. Pretty lil' fucker; guess there's a reason that demon stays around, huh?

"Dave, I can't tell what you're thinking, but I know it's bad—"

"Shower. Can't fucking talk now, 'kat, please—"

"Gotcha. C'mon."

You manage not to sob when he pulls your arm over his shoulders, half-carrying you to the bathroom. That level of control lasts until he has to help you get your shirt off because your hands are shaking too badly to handle the buttons; by the time he picks you up and steps into the shower with you, you're just clinging to him, unable to stand or speak or fucking think.

Not thinking is better. Means you can retreat from memories and sensations and knowing shit.

You'd stay gone longer, except Karkat dips into your mind and coaxes you out long enough to swallow the pill he gives you. Once you're out of that frozen blank state, you can't exactly just slip back into it.

Instead, you curl up on top of him, bury your face in his shirt, and let the meds you just took drag you back into unconsciousness.

Bro's still here with you, but you're deeper than him. He can't touch you.

It's making him furious, but for now you're safe.

The constant feeling of panic isn't present the next day. You feel weird, yeah; whatever's in the pill Karkat gave you leaves you a little looped, a little dazed for most of the day, but it's exponentially better than how you spent yesterday on the edge of a panic attack.

The next night, you take one before you try to sleep at all, and the only thing you feel from Bro's ghost is helpless rage. The night after that, you can't sense him at all.

After that, you don't take the pills, and neither do you dream of him.

Apparently, it was option B after all.

Your first birthday surprise is Karkat kissing you awake, purring proudly when you laugh at him and kiss him back. He shakes his head when you try to pull him down next to you, though, drawing away and giving you a sharp-toothed smile.

"D and Rose are going to skin me alive if I keep you here all day," the demon murmurs, leaning in for one more kiss before he slides out of bed. "As much as we'd both like to stay like this, I think it'd be safer to get the fuck up."

The phrase skin me alive almost makes you shiver, but you push that down and get up, just so you can wrap your arms around Karkat and distract him from getting dressed for the day for another few minutes. Even though you don't strictly need the comfort of it, you ask for and receive permission to flip his mind and yours for a moment.

If you could, you'd stay like this for hours. Just stand here and breathe with him, lose yourself in his love for you and yours for him. But D and the others are waiting, so when Karkat gives you a gentle push towards your own body, you go without any kind of an argument.

He dresses you and you dress him, and you steal another kiss before you leave the room.

Hal's in his favored spot on top of the fridge in the kitchen, almost hidden by the fuckton of balloons that're...well, everywhere. You have to stop and stare at this shit; Karkat starts laughing as soon as your bolt of bewildered amazement hits him.

Rose spares you a quick glance and a smile. "Happy birthday, Dave."

"Thanks...who picked out the, uh." Maybe reaching over and snagging one of the balloons—a pink one—isn't the best way to finish your question, but that's what you do anyway, raising your eyebrows at her. "The this?"

"That'd be D," Hal answers helpfully. "He's out with Jake, picking up the cake."

"The what?" Wait, they're getting you a cake?

"And you're supposed to be with Roxy and Dirk," Rose tells the shikigami, frowning up at him.

"Nope."

"Want me to get him down?" Karkat offers.

"Hmm...best not. That might make a mess; we'll let Dirk argue with him." Rose shrugs and starts gathering the balloons into small bunches, tying their strings to the backs of the kitchen chairs. "Or I suppose I could get his override codes from Roxy—"

"Don't you dare!"

"Well, if you won't cooperate." She huffs and crosses her arms, almost immediately uncrossing them again to grab for a balloon. "Damn it!"

"Guys, are we seriously doing cake here?"

The answer is, unsurprisingly, yes. You're seriously doing cake here. A fucking huge cake, in fact, the kind you've seen on the baking shows that John likes to watch for the sole purpose of complaining about.

Your moment of pure holy shit when you see the damn thing has Karkat laughing so hard he ends up clutching at your shoulder to stay upright. D's grinning too, and as soon as he has that fucking cake safely situated on the table he steps over to face you, holding out his arms.

Stepping in to let yourself be embraced is easy. "Holy fuck, D."

"Hey, I missed out on a bunch of your birthdays; 'm sure as hell gonna make this one memorable." He pulls back and wraps an arm around your shoulders, nodding at the cake, at Dirk and Roxy trying to argue Hal down from the fridge, at John adjusting something on the side of the cake and Rose and Jake trying to arrange balloons better. "How'm I doing so far?"

"Dude, it's not even noon and you fuckin' win. You got all my other birthdays beat by a mile and you know it."

"Trust me, he's got more shit planned for later." Dirk glances over at you, grinning as he adjusts his ponytail. "Just wait until—mmph!"

Hal's down off the fridge and wrapped around Dirk before he can finish his sentence, muzzling the other with one hand firmly over his mouth. "Nope, no hints," the shikigami says cheerfully, grimacing as Dirk struggles and licks at his hand. "Dude, ew. What are you, six?"

Predictably, all he gets in response are muffled irritated grunts. And a snort from D.

"Damn, Dave and I are the only adults here, huh? Hal, let go of your brother; Dirk, quit tryin' to fuck up my party. Dave's party. Whatever." As Hal pushes Dirk back onto Roxy and dodges the punch that the former throws at him, D nods decisively. "There we go. Yo, Jake, time check?"

" Ten-twenty."

"Hell yes. Thirteen minutes."

You have to ask. "Until?"

"Until I can legally light the candles on this fucker and force everyone to sing to you." D grins at you, crossing his arms. "Hope you're ready."

D has, apparently, figured out exactly when he needs to get everybody started singing to have it finish at 10:33, right when you actually turn eighteen. Amazingly, everything goes exactly how he's planned it, other than the fact that you're grinning wide enough that it's hard to blow all the candles out.

But you get them all anyway. You don't make a wish, because right up until the moment the flames puff out you don't think you need to. In this moment, there's nothing else you want.

The instant that there's nothing but rising smoke, when the clock on the wall ticks over to 10:33, things go to shit.

Rose and Dirk yelp almost in unison, and Hal makes a staticky noise that you've only heard when he's experiencing technical difficulties. When you look over, you see blood on Rose's face and Dirk clutching at his side with a baffled look, staring at the blood on his fingers.

You don't even know what's happening and your mind is already full of a desperate chant of no, no, please no, no.

Karkat snarls in alarm, even before you feel the sting of teeth sinking into the skin over the old tattoo at the back of your neck. That's not the only flare of pain—there's half a dozen others, old scars ripping themselves open all over your body—but Bro's old lovebite is the one that horrifies you the worst.

"Dave!" the demon yells, and you just shake your head and stumble back from the table, slamming against him and then jerking away. "What the fuck's—"

No! you scream silently at him, and he recoils like you just struck him with a weapon. Maybe you did—your mind's a weapon, you know that, one you never thought you'd hurt him with.

But you need out.

Karkat freezes, Rose and Dirk and D are distracted by their own sudden injuries, Roxy's reciting keycodes to try and get Hal to respond, Jake and John are at Dirk's side. They're not looking at you when you bolt for the back door.

There's no coherent thoughts in your mind, but you know it'll all be safer if you get as far away from the people you care about as possible.

You don't know how you can be this certain, but you know that your Bro is back.

#demon eyes

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