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felismiscellaneous · 3 years

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Casonverse Expo

ok so after you see this you Cannot save it. the whole thing about the casonverse is that its solely “oral” and memory based. i cannot write down “rules” to it or anything. this post Will be lost to time and youll just have to deal with that

ok so. we begin. our story. w/ an explanation on how ectobiology has been going on earth c. basically, every once in a while to increase genetic diversity, a babeh between two of the original founders is created randomly, and said founders get to decide if they want to adopt that babeh or not.

now its been a very very long time on earth c and all of these bitches are immortal. yep. every single one. even the non godtiers, they get an immortality boon for winning the game. you know whats also a boon? all of the players getting revived. yep. every single one. because this is my au and i can do what i want.

anyways as i was saying basically at some point a babeh between john and karkat is made and this time theyre like “yeah ok well adopt this one” SO. they be goin there. and the ONE TIME they decide this is the right time the baby is fuckin BROKE. the internal organs of trolls and humans dont mesh very well when the genes are combined in the ectomachine, and this baby is basically just dying very slowly. this baby isssss Casey! well, shes not named that by her parents, but well just call her Casey for now.

john and karkat do their fuckin best to keep this thing alive but her tiny baby body is completely dysfunctional. and doesnt last very long. This is Traumatizing for Everyone Involved. anyways!! a pretty long time after that we have Cason and Jones. they were spawned at the same time. Jones is rose and kanayas horrible ectospawn, and Cason happens to be another equally horrible spawn between john and karkat! they decide to adopt this one, and fortunately it lives. This was Their First Mistake.

but before we get into Cason, lets get into Jones. Jones is,,,, very socially awkward. in fact, she often comes off as creepy to everyone else. this makes her very clingy towards her mothers, who arent That terrible at parenting. theyve got quirks, but theyre good for her. Jones doesnt really have any friends, except this Totally Cool and Not at All Dangerous cult she gets dragged into! this is the second secret shes ever kept from her mothers. the first is that shes the one who keeps bringing snails into the house. Jones likes snails, but shes not good at taking care of them. she just keeps bringing them into the house and feeding them her snack. her snack is rat poison. snails like and digest rat poison safely. snails! she likes them.

ALSO APPARENTLY SHE CAN SEE GHOSTS???? yeah lets get into that. see, Casey becomes a Regular Ghost after she dies. not a dream ghost, just a plain ol ghost. and anyways, shes around the same age as everyone else if not a year older due to Ghost Rules now, and Cason is the only one that seems to be able to see her. and then theres Jones. Jones is absolutely stunning to Casey and yes she falls so hard in dokis. but Jones is trying to ignore the fact that she can see ghosts. it makes her feel like even more of an outcast. ooooo drama! anyways those two have their own background plot going on about fighting eldritch gods or something idk.

LETS GET BACK TO CASON. see. Cason. is The Worst. like, genuinely. ever since he was a kiddo, he was a completely spoiled brat from day one, and spent his childhood Looking Down on People for multiple reasons. for one, hes the son of TWO FUCKING FOUNDERS AND RAISED BY THEM, two he got away with EVERYTHING, and three i think its just in his nature. Cason prides himself in being knowledgeable and better than everyone else, but he is not like Other Egomaniacs((tm.))

Cason doesnt necessarily care about being liked, even if he WAS a great manipulator, or being the best at Everything. he couldnt care less about sports or popularity. all he wants, is Control. just like hes had since day one. This is Terrible for Everyone Involved.

but most terrible for anyone, is Tippie Piyjon. Tippie is terezi and nepetas ectospawn, which, really started it all. now, terezi and nepeta are not horrible people, or even necessarily horrible parents, but theyre just not suited for it. Tippie raised herself on romance novels and the like, especially after being sortve taken in as a goddaughter by karkat almost immediately after she was born. and, because of this, she got to meet Cason very early on. there was hardly ever a day where the two werent around eachother, whether they liked it or not. in school, at their own house, wherever. now, being around Cason of all people all the time, meant you knew exactly how he operated.

and well, Tippie figured that, maybe, if she was just good enough, she could change him. and Cason used that to his full advantage. the two became moirails, which was Fucked Up for Everyone Involved, and grew ever closer. now Cason, being Cason, was Extremely Emotionally Abusive to Tippie. she had to do what he asked, whatever it was, even if it wasnt morally right, she had to stay by his side, she couldnt cry in front of his parents, she had to get good grades so he wouldnt look bad, so many damn things she had to do. even if he never once laid a finger on her, her mental health was, slowly but surely, chiseled down.

every attempt at defying him was met with such coldness, or hed act more warm towards her, so surely she was doing something right and had to keep going. just had to be good enough. hell get better eventually. Cason earns the title of #1 Gaslighter Extraordinare. the only place she found any solace away from him was grubscouts, which she joined on her own terms when she was very young, and at the time was a camp counselor even! this lasted. for so many years.

Cason is nineteen whenever i depict him, and Tippie is seventeen, but very nearly eighteen. eventually, she cant take it anymore, and snaps at him. usually this doesnt last, and he would manage to calm her down eventually, but shes fucking Tired of it. he hasnt changed. not even a bit. well. Cason cant have that, now can he? the first time he lays a hand on her, he slaps her across the face. Big Mistake. though terrified, Tippie lashes out, and claws Casons left eye out, making a terribly deep gash that would leave him permanently blind in that eye whether or not he got treatment.

this scares the SHIT out of her, and Tippie runs off, for the first time, to her mothers. as she cries, she recounts how terrible everythings been and how she didnt mean it and shes sorry and- theres nothing to apologize for. its very clear, that they shouldve stepped in sooner, shouldve noticed something was wrong. meanwhile, Cason crawls home to his own dads, who are rightfully spooked seeing their son with a horrifically bloody face and a gouged eyeball. they only had a second to try and comfort him, before he snapped at them, showing a bit of his true nature to them for the first time, and also, terezi showing up behind him. after a thorough explanation which was mostly just a few stern, if a little tearful words, Casons parents are completely mortified. karkat quickly kicks him out in an act of raw emotion. no chance to grab clothes, or for john to interject, Cason is left outside, alone, and with absolutely no power left. what will he do?

theres also other characters but theyre like babies so they dont have much characterization and also arent very important to the story. but here they are ig:

owen, jade and daves child. hes like, 3. he likes sticks and playing in mud. hes 3 what more do you want from him

siyren, aradia and feferis kiddo. shes like, 6. she likes ballet, arts and crafts, and being snooty

damien, eridan and solluxs kid. hes 10, likes calling people slurs over xbox, and overcompensating since his parents waited so damn long to adopt him after his slimebirth

killer, who named himself, aradia and sollux kid. hes like 11 or something. he likes being edgy and has the same issue as damien. in fact, all but siyren have this issue

toga bitch, who i have currently yet to name, aradia and eridans kid. shes 12. she likes earth rome and chilling in public fountains. a burgundy whose violetkin

wemon wemon, who is also currently unnamed, feferi and eridans kid. hes 13, the oldest. he likes earth lemon demon and horror special effects

carrie, feferi and solluxs kid. shes like 11, likes dance dance revolution and earth 9s

rosie, calliope and roxys bab, whos a baby. jane is also her mom

ben, tippies far future carapacian bf, who likes boring shit like birdwatching and scrapbooking. malewife supreme. a very soft dude, and just wants to help his gf w/ her trauma and join her grubscout troop on earning badges. just a great, if boring guy

notkonyyl, just as unnamed, a notcanadian oliveblood who enjoys going to the gym, frequenting bars, being cool, flirty, and defending her moirail to the death

notkuprum, haha unnamed, is a human, and the moirail to notkonyyl. he likes things like being annoying, flirting with everyone taller than him ((most people)), the nintendo switch, and defending his moirail to the death

#casonverse #long post #very long post #homestuck #tw abuse #tw eye trauma

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feastfic · 4 years

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I rate Homestuck characters by how good they are for holding hands (and whether or not I would hold them):

John: His hands are warm! Very good for holding. He might be a little too enthusiastic about it but its okay he just hasn't had many chances to hold hands.......... 8/10 would hold his hand, but he might be a little too much for some people :')

Rose: She knows what she's doing. Even if she's never held a human hand in her life she absolutely has had a few moments in her childhood where she would kill time by pretending Jaspers was someone (before he died, of course). 7/10 her hands are just a little cold but still very nice to hold :)

Dave: Does it look like he knows what he's doing? No; of course not. He's awkward and flustered the entire time and blowing the situation off as ironic. And that he's too cool for some shit like this. 3/10 your hands are too loose man

Jade: A lot like John!!! Super happy to hold your hand and she really likes holding it!!! She also really likes to sometimes just steal your hand and keep it close to her, or swing it about between you two. 9/10 she gets an extra point because I like doing the hand swingies

Jane: Her hands are just...really powdery. Like not by themselves but she kind of just always has some form of baking ingredient on them and you apparently never catch her at a time when she's washed it off. 6/10 they're nice you just have bad timing every time

Roxy: Super drunk hand holds are all she knows. She probably wouldn't do it for long, either; she'd rather lean against you and pull her hand out of yours after a minute purely because she forgets. 1/10 :(

Dirk: Listen, he's like Dave. But at least he's got grip. He also at least tries to initiate it sometimes. 7/10 he's got the effort

Jake: He's heard of it, he's never seen nor done it. So while its gonna be awkward the first few times, he really gets the hang of it. Like Jade, he likes stealing your hand and rocking his arm with yours. 10/10 some really good hand holding right here

Aradia: Cold. But lasts as long as you want it to. She doesn't understand what's so great about it, when there's other, more intimate ways to show affection, but she does it for you. 5/10 really cold but I appreciate the thought of you first

Tavros: Cries when you hold his hand and he'd probably not let you go for a few minutes. Once you do it the first time he's always the one initiating and it almost always ends up with him pulling you down in his lap. 9/10 really nice, just make sure to tell him this wasn't a one time thing the first time you do it.

Sollux: He doesn't do this stuff. Very anti-touch, this guy. You hold his hand and its out between your fingers ten seconds later. He's so-so about why; he thinks you're too warm and its uncomfortable, but he also just doesn't like being touched without him really being the first to do it. Somewhere between 2-4/10 :(

Karkat: Very flinchy the first few times. Has no idea what you're doing. Once he catches on he'll say he only tolerates it, but after even more time he'll hold your hand without any issues. Also he's incredibly soft. 8/10 :)

Nepeta: She's got the paw pads, which is super nice! She's also got the claws, which...aren't. But she's super happy to hold your hands, sometimes a little too much. And then she accidentally ends up scratching you. 6/10 fun but sharp

Kanaya: This. She's a goddess at this, nobody knows why. She just is. Not only will she hold your hand, she'll stimulate your senses by taking her other hand and crawling her nails up your forearm to give you goosebumps (also to make you become more aware of the fact she's holding your hand.) 100000/10 If she does this you're blessed a thousand years.

Terezi: Licks your hand for shits every time. Other than that she's fairly decent at it. 4/10 pretty average

Vriska: Depends on which hand. Either really cold or just a little. But she gets blue. And I mean totally flushed. You, holding her hand? She feels like she doesn't deserve it. Also she's too awkward to reciprocate. 4/10 also okay; I just wish she wasn't so awkward after a while

Equius: He ends up breaking your hand, and immediately apologizes. Also his hands are normally covered in either oil or sweat. 2/10 The bad outweighs his looking out for you

Gamzee: If he hasn't been making sopor pies he's pretty god damn good at it. If he has, then you've got sticky hands. And he just wouldn't if he were sober. 6/10 he gets credit because he's good but its a dice roll on if you get the sticky or not

Eridan: Cold like Aradia for unexplained reasons, and gets unreasonably flustered. He'll pull his hand away after a few seconds because trust me, he wants to, but he literally never will admit it. And he'll almost certainly use your blood color as an excuse. 3/10 out of the odd chance he might give you a light squeeze before jerking back but aside from that stop sounding like a prick

Feferi: Almost exactly like Jade, but you now get the cool feeling of webbing! Which might make it a little tricky! But neither of you really care, as long as you get it done and enjoy the moment. 11/10 she's super nice for hand holding :)

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skips-is-asleep · 4 years

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fic prompt: while on the meteor, dave tries to convince Karkat that he can cook even tho his cooking knowledge stops at Kraft Macaroni. it's like a cooking show if that cooking show were left unattended for most of its childhood. rose stands by inwardly just fuckin living for this shit as Dave swears to god humans eat this

I almost didn’t do this one but this is my first ever request and also I'm not a fucking quitter so

You hate living here. You hated living here when it was you and a bunch of your friends, and you hated living here when the threat of a murder was around every corner, and you hate living here now that you’re with a couple of strangers that look weird and behave weird and say weird things.

Not that they didn’t say weird things before you started living with them, the two of them had that shit on lock. But now you have to hear it come out of their mouths, and into your brain where you’re forced to visualize some of the things they say.

At first, it was kind of nice? In that new-haircut way, where you’re not confident in it, but you can’t really change it so your only option is to just wear it until it becomes you’re new normal.

You have not reached that point in your new hivemates yet, unfortunately.

You’re not friendly with the humans. Not in the same way you are over text, at least. It’s always been difficult making friends in person, even the friends that you spent your entire life with had to live with a little bit of shunning from you simply because you’re not used to sharing your space with other living beings. It’s weird.

When the Strider human approaches you (and you call him that because you think it’s fucking weird to address someone by just a one-syllable name, and last names are more comfortable than just refusing to address him, not to mention rude) it only spells bad energy. Rancid vibes as he puts it.

You’re curled up on the sofa, in the recreation center, reading the same book you found in a decrypted hallway a few weeks ago. The cover of the book is so smudged and ripped, there’s no cover really, and some of the pages are torn out, but it’s kind of fun imaging what the missing pages had in them. Strider smacks something on the table in front of you and it makes your whole body jolt and hair stand up on end as your claws grip the pages and tear them even more. Great, that’s like a whole six more words you’ll have to make up later.

As you peel the parchment off your fingertips, you finally look up at him. You do your best to look annoyed, but you know you’re just tired. He’s got that look on his face. The one that says--

“Check this shit out.”

Good, god, yeah, that look. The thing he slammed on your table was a box, small, probably less than ten inches tall, and thing, only about an inch wide and deep, and a bright fucking blue with ugly bright yellows to contrast it. The design alone makes your lip turn slightly. “Whatever the fuck you want to bother me with this time, I guarantee I don’t have the patience for it. And I usually have the patience for it.”

“Total lie, but it’s okay, I forgive you, ‘cause this is gonna blow your fucking alien fucking troll mind, dude. This,” And he holds up the box, suddenly you feel as though you’re being sold something and you really really don’t want it. “is a Kraft dinner, and it’s called kraft cause it was crafted by the straight-up amazing ass food gods, not us ‘cause we’re different.”

You don’t want to talk. You feel like talking will encourage him to keep going, but he keeps going regardless as if you aren’t even there.

“I’m under the impression that you don’t know what this is, or even what’s inside of it, so lemme give you the tour.” Strider opens up the box and decaptulouges what appears to be an entire fucking metal basin, cooking surface, and a whole fucking sink. It’s...food. You suppose. Considering you’re not entirely certain what humans classify as ‘dinner’, it does not seem to be the same as what you do.

Strider dumbs the box into the metal basin, and out clatters little hard....let’s be honest here, they’re tubes. Tiny tubes.

“Is--” You start, and try to reach forward to touch the tubes. Strider smacks your hand away with a sharp slap and you hiss and pull back. “Dude, fuck off, I'm doing a bit here. Keep your hands and feet in the ride at all times, you know the drill.”

“What drill! There’s no d--I don’t want to be part of your stupid bit! All you ever do is run around with your little fucking god powers and make shit do other shit and turn shit into other shit and make a mess and who has to clean it up?? Karkat does, Karkat cleans up everything and he never gets a single please, or thank you or anything! And now you want me to watch you eat plastic and pretend it’s food?? I’m not falling for it, especially not this time, you blabbering, annoying fuckhead.”

The noises he makes, which you think are meant to pacify you, sound kind of like a tea kettle that’s only just starting to boil, a soft hiss/shush noise while tapping you on the shoulder. “Just trust me on this one, it’ll all be worth it.”

Fuck it, what else are you gonna do? Count pebbles??

After you seem like you’re going to allow him to continue, Strider fills the basin with water, and puts it on the cooking apparatus, turning the thing on and mumbling while he puts on his weird little show.

“Water’s gettin’ hot and it’s ‘bout to get hotter, fill it to the top, make sure it doesn’t splatter--no that’s fucking stupid, scratch that, reverse, uh, actually fast forward...” There’s his dumb little powers again. Before your very eyes, the water’s boiling. You peak over the top curiously and the little plastic tubes are big, pale and bendy. They peak over the water just a little, not completely submerged. He conveniently opens up his sylladex again and pulls out...a bowl with holes on it??

“You didn’t salt the water, Dave, you’re supposed to salt the water.” You peak over your shoulder and see Lalonde, the other human, in the doorway. She’s leaning her hip against the framing, arms crossed and smiling. How long has she been there. “Whatever, it doesn’t even make it heat up faster, who care.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I’m absolutely not.” He then dumps the pasta out of the basin into the bowl, all the water spilling out into the sink. You’ll admit, now your interest is piqued. The tubes are soft now! Just from cooking in water??

You’ve decided your interest is un-piqued. Even as Lalonde continues to make fun of her human counterpart for not putting human salt rocks into a big pot of water where they would surely sink to the bottom and not add any experience to soft squish tubes. But you don’t say anything, because you’re tired of being made fun of for not understanding human cultures. Mouth shut.

Lalonde scoffs, baffled. “It’s for seasoning, Dave.”

“It’s cheese, Rose, it has all the flavors it needs!”

As they bicker, you see Strider move the tubes from the bowl to the basin again, stove off and he picks out a little white pouch, opens it and dumps it in. You watch with astonishment and disgust. Those tubes looked perfectly suitable!!

The two of them look to you, Rose with surprise but Dave keeps the same face on regardless. Strider has stopped stiring, with the big ol’ spoon he took out as well, which was changing the color of the tubes and making them into this gross mush that looked a lot like the insides of some animals back home. You almost gag, but manage to hold it back just enough. “I know it’s probably weird to you, but I swear it’s good, here gimme a sec.”

“Listen, bro, I'm basically a fucking M and C expert, I use to eat this shit for weeks on end.”

“Yes, and then you’d faint on your keyboard from iron deficiency.”

“That was one time, and it wasn’t even because of that, it was because of something else completely.”

“DUDE WHAT THE FUCK!” You sit up and shout, now kind of angry that Dave ruined perfectly good tubes and was acting like nothing was even weird about it.

You’ll admit you’re curious. So when he starts to pull out a little spoon, and get you some on it, it makes a little squelch noise and you do gag at that, and he holds it up for you to take. You do. And you stare at it for a really really long time. With as much care and precision as you can manage, you take one little tube. out and eat it.

It doesn’t...taste like anything. Not strongly of anything at least. You almost wonder what steps occurred to bring this sort of thing into existence. Not only on earth but here, on the meteor. You don’t say anything, just handing the spoon back to Strider. It’s the most polite way you can think of.

Still, he asks, “it’s good isn’t it?”

#i really hope u like this #i dont write know or care about dave or ross #and i havemt read the meteor part of hs 1 in a long time #cause ya know #sollux isnt in it #please dont tag as ship thank u #idk u can envision whatever u want just dont let me know #karkat vantas #rose lalonde #dave strider

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albapuella · 4 years

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believe in me who believes in you

AO3 Link! Fandom: Homestuck Pairing: Davekat Summary: Meat!Karkat meets Candy!Dave... he is not impressed. Tags: The Homestuck Epilogues, Homestuck 2: Beyond Canon, Earth C (Homestuck), Canonical Character Death, Dialogue Heavy, this is not a bashing fic, Character Study, Ableist Language, one instance of the r slur Author’s Note: More Davekat Thirst Federation indulgence. I'm pretty happy, over all, with how this one came out (and the fine folks at DTF really enjoyed it!), so I've decided to share it with the rest of you. Enjoy!

The figure on the floor is familiar. Too familiar. "Dave?"

No answer.

He creeps closer, as though making any noise at all will cause something terrible to happen. As though anything more terrible could happen. Karkat has seen enough death in his life to recognize it. Dave is too still. Much too still.

It's not until he's close enough to reach out an touch him that Karkat realizes how old Dave looks. Karkat has seen older humans, but it's different when it's Dave. Deep, unhappy lines are deeply etched into his face. Lines he'd never thought he'd ever see there. It looks... it looks wrong.

"What the fuck happened to you?"

No answer. But of course there wouldn't be.

Except there is.

"I got an upgrade."

Karkat's eyes jerk upwards, and he's looking into a metallic face. A horrible, silvery mimicry of Dave's face. He supposes, with an edge of giddy hysteria, that it only makes sense that a robot would have such a blank look, but it makes his insides twist painfully. It's been a long time since he's seen Dave make this particular non-expression. "What?"

"I got an upgrade," Dave? repeats blandly as though he were talking about nothing more interesting than the fact it would rain tomorrow. "Looks like you got an upgrade, too, Karkat. Nice work with the eye. I'd never know you'd lost it."

Karkat has no idea what Dave's talking about, but he sure feels like he's lost it. It being his sanity. "What the fuck?"

Dave only regards him coolly. "Look, I only came back because Aradia wanted to pick up Sollux, and I figured I'd see how corpse me was doing." He makes a bare movement of his fingers in the direction of said corpse. "Ugh. I forgot how uggo I was."

There is so much wrong with these statements, Karkat can't decide which thing to focus on. "Why... I don't understand. Sollux?" He shakes his head. Of course, his pan would latch onto the least important thing. "Why are you so fucking nonchalant about being a god damn corpse, Dave?"

"Because corpse me was a fucking sad sack?" For the first time in this exchange of words which could only laughably be called a conversation, Dave's tone changes to contain an ever so faint hint of disgust. "Obama came through for me one more time and showed me the light. The light being accepting the destiny of being the most me me to ever exist."

Karkat wonders if this Dave is physically capable of smiling. The part about Obama is bizarre considering that Obama died long before Earth C was created, but that isn't the most confusing thing Dave's said. "The most you you? What the fuck does that even mean, Dave?"

Somehow, the expressionless face appears smug. "Going Ultimate, my dude. Being all the me I can be. I am fucking Legion, Karkat. We're all in here. All the dead ones. All the ones who never existed. If you ever wondered to yourself, what makes Dave so Davey, I am it."

Going Ultimate? It sounds important, as though it'd be capitalized and everything; it also sounds like the biggest pile of hoof-beast shit that Karkat's ever heard. "Bullshit."

Robot Dave tilts his head. "That's all you've got to say? Man, Karkat, I've got to say, I'm disappointed. Here I am, anointed by fate, spitting truth, and you come across all uncouth in the face of the facts. There are no take backs. So what if I break hearts? You got the head start there. I've got the universe on a silver platter, so what does it matter what you think? I wasted so much time pinning and whining about what I couldn't have, and now I've got it all. So get on the fucking ball and roll, my troll, 'cause it's me for whom the bell fucking tolls." He makes a sweeping bow.

Karkat sifts through the prettied up bullshit to find the fart nugget of truth. "I broke your heart?"

"Fuck no," Robot Dave denies in the way Dave does when he doesn't want to admit that something hurts. "I was just being retarded." He steps closer to Karkat. "You're not that important."

It's been a long time since Karkat's heard that word from Dave—especially since Dave was the one who finally got Karkat to break that particular habit. The combination of reminding Karkat that he should be pretty sympathetic to people being looked down on just because of how they were born as well as reminding Karkat that, as much as he liked to hide it, he had a soft center that didn't actually like hurting people who didn't deserve it had been enough to get him to stop saying it.

The shock is enough to protect Karkat from the full effects of hearing he's ‘not that important’ coming from his boyfriend's mouth. "You sound like an asshole, and not the fun kind."

"Oh, that's rich coming from you," Robot Dave shoots back, scathing. He uncrosses his arms so he can gesture at Karkat. "You're the loudest fucking asshole there ever was. At least I can chill—you couldn't know chill if it locked you in a refrigerator."

Although Karkat is glad to hear more signs that Robot Dave is not a completely emotionless shell like Robot Aradia had been, it's hard to hear this anger and frustration directed at him. Also, the thing about the refrigerator is a low fucking blow. "Pretending you don't have feelings isn't the same as being chill, Dave," he grits out, trying extremely hard not to prove the robot right and completely lose his fucking shit. "You're not half as good an actor as you think you are. I don't know what the fuck happened here or why you're acting like this, but—"

Robot Dave's hands clench into fists at his sides. "You don't know why?"

Karkat doesn't back up even as his instincts scream at him to. Whatever has happened to make Dave like this, he knows that Dave would never physically hurt him. Honestly, he kind of wishes he would: it might be less painful than this. "How am I supposed to know? Last I knew, you were still human and safely on the—"

"You want to know what you did?" Before he can react, Robot Dave has grabbed his upper arms in a crushing grip, dragging him closer to Robot Dave's face. "YOU LEFT ME! YOU LEFT ME BEHIND! DID YOU EVER FUCKING CARE ABOUT ME?" By this point, Robot Dave is shaking Karkat with a surprising amount of violence. "OR DID YOU HONESTLY THINK I'D BE HAPPIER WITH JADE? BECAUSE I WASN'T! AT ALL! I FUCKING LOVED YOU AND YOU LEFT ME ALONE!"

"Wh-what are-are you talk-ing about?" Karkat knows his eyes are wide and frightened, but he doesn't care about facades right now. This is... This doesn't make any sense at all. And it'd probably be easier to think if his pan wasn't getting banged around the inside of his nugbone. "STOP SHAKING ME, DAMN IT!"

Robot Dave obliges so quickly Karkat almost stumbles as he's released. He steps back, narrowly avoiding Dave's corpse, dizzy. "Fuck me, Dave! What the fuck!" He rubs his arms, surprised they don’t hurt after the rough treatment he’s just received.

"I didn't mean any of that for serious," Robot Dave claims, his voice soft and even again. The tenseness of his shoulders as he recrosses his arms gives him away. "That was ironic anger. I'm not mad about any of that. Jade and me were perfectly happy. You'd know that if you'd come to the wedding."

"Wedding?" Karkat is completely lost now. He's been lost this whole time, but at least then he had some idea of what the major landmarks were. Now, he has no idea at all. His eyes are drawn down to the corpse, down to something shiny on his finger. He's seen enough human movies and attended enough weddings to understand what he's seeing. At least, he understands it's a wedding ring—he doesn't understand anything else.

Until he does. "You're not my Dave." He feels pretty stupid for not realizing this sooner. "This is an alternate timeline, isn't it?"

Robot Dave is silent for several long seconds. "Fuck yeah. Your timeline's all kinds of messed up. Don't know why I didn't notice before. Guess I was kind of distracted." This last is said with a sadness so subtle Karkat wouldn't have heard it if he hadn't been listening for it.

"I noticed," Karkat returns, his temper mollified by the knowledge that this asshole who's been lashing out at him for shit that isn't his fault isn't the same asshole he loves. Except, that isn't quite true, is it? According to Dave, all Daves are Daves. So, Karkat can't help but love this one a little, too.

And, he supposes, if all Daves are Daves, all Karkats are Karkats. Which means he has some responsibility for whatever happened to this robotic mess of a man as well. He walks past Robot Dave, away from the corpse, and sits. He pats the floor beside him. "Sit down. Please."

For a moment, it looks like Robot Dave is going to ignore him. Then a soft sigh as he plunks himself down. "I don't have time for this," he says.

"That's a fucking lie, and we both know it." Karkat does his best to prepare himself—he knows better than anyone just how stupid his other selves can be. "Tell me what happened with your Karkat."

"Nothing."

Karkat waits for more. "Nothing?"

Robot Dave—Dave crosses his arms and turns his head away. "Exactly. Nothing happened. He fucked off when the fucking was good, and I get it: Jane was getting real fucking fascist all of a sudden, and the kismesissitude with Jade wasn't on at all, but he didn't..." he trails off.

Some of this sounds familiar. Things had been... uncomfortable with Jade before she got possessed (uncomfortable in a similar, yet different, way afterwards), and he'd run against Jane for a reason. As much as all that ended up mattering in the end. Still, there had to be more to it than that, right? "He didn't what?"

"He didn't let me come with," Dave says quickly, nearly interrupting Karkat a third time. "We were supposed to be in this shit together, and he fucking bailed on me." He takes a deep breath he definitely doesn't need. "Then it was just me and Jade, and I... I owed it to her, Karkat." A tiny sound that could be a laugh. "At least someone needed me."

Karkat wants to tell Dave he's being ridiculous, that of course he hadn't owed Jade anything except his friendship—never mind a fucking wedding—but he knows better. He honestly does. Jade is his friend, too, and there was a reason he never gave her a solid, unambiguous no to her advances... it's always been easier for Karkat to stand up for others than it ever has for him to stand up for himself. He'd never wanted to get physical with Jade (minus a brief infatuation when she'd let him have it over Trollian during the game), but he'd liked her enough to hate the idea of just turning her away cold.

And he knows that Dave is very much the same. Except he's got baggage, baggage Karkat has tried very hard to understand but still doesn't quite grasp, that would make the prospect even harder. Especially if... especially if Karkat left him to his own stupidly self-destructive devices.

As evidenced by the fact that this version of his best fucking friend in the universe is currently a god damn robot.

"Your me is a moron," he declares.

Dave is already shaking his head, the light catching on his burnished metal skin. "No way, man. Karkat's a fucking mastermind—the whole rebellion would have been totally quashed ages ago if not for him. Fuck, he started it!" As he speaks about his own Karkat, a literal light glows in his eyes, shining through the lenses of his glasses.

"He's practically a legend now," he continues, apparently heedless of the fondness in his voice. "He always talked a big game about how good a leader he'd be if he'd been given half a chance, and now he's out living the dream." When he speaks again, his tone is softer, bitter, and the light dims. "It's one of the things I low key, high key hate him for, you know? Somehow, he has it all together without me, but I'm a sad sack without him. A sad sack tying his star to the yifftrain because I don't know how to say 'on second thought no thank you' to one of my oldest friends." He straightens up slightly. "I mean, that's how it used to be. I could give less than a shit now that I've gone Ultimate."

The back tracking is so awkward and forced, Karkat wonders if Dave actually expects him to believe it. "Right." While Karkat's curious about this rebellion Dave's talking about, he finds it difficult to believe that this Dave's version of him is doing as well as Dave says. Of course, as much as Karkat loves Dave, one thing which cannot be said for him is that he's terribly observant when it comes to the feelings of the people around him.

Also, nothing Dave's said so far has convinced him that he was wrong about his original assessment of this version of himself. Any version of himself idiotic enough to still believe in his leadership prowess after the absolute clusterfuck that was the Game is a complete moron regardless of other factors. "And you never talked to him about this?"

"What was there to talk about?" Dave says stiffly. "He had his life, and I had mine. I mean, I didn't see him much after he left. Even after Jade and I joined the rebellion, we didn't see each other much. Certainly no one on one time in a room together." There's no mistaking the faint echo of regret in the words. "No point in even thinking about it. Which I was doing a great job of doing before I saw you here, making cry baby eyes at my corpse. Just so you know."

"And yet you're still here," Karkat presses.

"I guess I am," Dave agrees. "Fuck, I missed just getting to chill with you. I feel like, maybe, everything wouldn't have gone to absolute dog shit if you'd been around. I mean, you're not m—the Karkat from around here, but all Karkats are basically Karkat, so..." his words grind to a halt, leaving an embarrassed pause.

Despite himself, despite knowing this Dave is talking about a different Karkat, Karkat feels his face heat up. His own Dave has a tendency to put him up on an elevated statue support base; it shouldn't be surprising this Dave does, too. "I think you are wildly over-estimating both of our abilities."

"You think so?" Dave sounds unconvinced. It's amazing how much more, for lack of a better word, lively he's gotten just during the span of this conversation. A far cry from the douche bag Karkat started out talking to.

"I know so," Karkat returns more sharply than he means. "If your Karkat were here, he'd agree with me. We're nobody special without someone who believes in us, Dave." He crosses his arms, suddenly uncomfortable with the expressionless scrutiny. "Fuck, maybe he is a great leader now, I don't fucking know. But if he is, it's only because he has people who believe in him." He looks away. "Dave is the person who believes in me."

"Is that what I did wrong?" Dave asks after a moment. "I didn't believe in him enough?" He sounds incredulous. "I didn't realize this was Peter Fucking Pan, troll edition."

"Pupa Pan."

"What?"

"Peter Pan, troll edition," Karkat explains as he tries to organize his thoughts, "is called Pupa Pan."

"Of course it is." When Karkat turns to look, Dave is shaking his head. "You trolls have got troll versions of nearly fucking everything, don't you?" Not waiting for an answer, he continues, plaintively, "I used to ask myself all the time what I could have done differently, what I should have done. What should I have done that would have made him decide to stay with me. And I came up empty every fucking time."

Karkat wishes this was his Dave, a Dave he could comfort with a touch. Instead, he has to find the right words. He's been told he's fucking good with those. Mostly by Dave. "I don't have an answer for you, either. I don't know why he left like he did. Things must have felt pretty fucking bad for him to think that's what he had to do."

Dave made a hand gesture Karkat chose to interpret as "go on"

"I don't know what you could have done differently—I wasn't there. What I do know is this: however successful he is, he's miserable without you."

Dave tilts his head. "Really?" he asks, his tone full of disbelief and something like hope.

"Yes, really." Karkat sits up. "Just talk to him, Dave. He'll tell you." He reconsiders. "You'll have to drag it out of him by this point if he's gone this long without saying anything himself, but the point is he misses you. I know he does."

Silence stretches between them.

"It's too late." There's a cold finality to the words that sends an unpleasant shiver down Karkat's support column.

"Is he dead, too?" It hadn't occurred to him to consider this possibility, but considering he's currently sitting not too far away from Dave's corpse—

"Nah, he's alive. At least, last I knew, he was."

It's all Karkat can do not to face palm. "Then it's not too fucking late then, is it?"

"Yeah, it really is. I've already cut my ties to this place, to this whole planet, to this whole fucking universe. Divorced Jade common law style and let Karkat go like Elsa. Stick a fork in it and throw it away because it's so done, it's god damn charcoal." He stands in one smooth, mechanically precise motion. "Thanks for the sit and chit, but I'm gonna go see if Aradia's found her stupid boyfriend yet."

Shit. "Wait!" Karkat grabs for and catches Dave's hand. It's cool and there's no give beneath his fingers. "Don't leave like this."

"Like what?" Dave's voice is back to its original blandness, and Karkat feels his heart break a little. "Sometimes, Karkat, you just have to fly away into the sun like a feathery asshole."

"He loves you, fuckface!"

This stops Dave short. "What?"

"He loves you," Karkat repeats. "If he's anything like me, and he is because he literally is me, he's never stopped loving you." He tugs on Dave's hand, doing his best to ignore how wrong it feels in his grip. "Obviously, bad shit went down, and believe me, if I ever see your fucking Karkat, I'm going to punch him right in his stupid face for leaving you in a fucking lurch and letting do this to yourself, but he loves you."

"You see, that's where you're wrong," Dave says, his hand suddenly gripping Karkat's own (and Karkat has a vague idea this should hurt, but he's too focused on what Dave's saying to pay it any mind). "You're smart, Karkat, so I won't waste your time and mine bitching about how, if he really loved me, he wouldn't have fucking bailed on me like he did." His shoulders slump, and the hold on Karkat's hand loosens. "He doesn't need me anymore, if he ever fucking needed me. He's got Meenah to take care of all the 'believing in him' shiz."

"Meenah? You mean Feferi's dancester?" Karkat shakes his head. "Never mind, I don't want to know what convoluted bullshit happened to make that possible." It's time to focus on the matter at hand! "You were with Jade, right?"

Dave lets go of Karkat's hand so he can cross his arms. "Yeah. What about it?"

Why are Daves so stupid? To be fair, Karkats are pretty stupid, too, but at least Karkat's aware of it, which is more than he can say for any iteration of Dave. "Think, idiot. Were you in love with Jade?"

"No." There's no hesitation. "I loved her but I wasn't in love with her."

"Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, your Karkat was in a similar situation? Or maybe he thought you actually did love Jade and didn't want to make you choose? Did that ever occur to you?"

Dave's silence speaks volumes.

"That's what I thought." Karkat blows out a harsh breath. "Does he know you're a robot now?"

"Nah." Dave's head is tilted ground-ward. "I didn't stick around after going Ultimate. Kind of just... left without leaving a calling card or anything. Maybe a dick move now that I'm thinking about it."

"Maybe?" It's Karkat's turn to be incredulous. "Fuck, Dave, how could you do that? Even if you don't give a shit about your Karkat or your Jade, I refuse to believe you'd do that to your Rose."

A rough shrug. "I did though. Rose is better off without me." Another tiny laugh. "Maybe this is what Dirk felt before he did what he did."

Dirk? "And what did he do in this timeline?"

"He killed himself," Dave says flatly.

Karkat feels a surge of pity. He wonders if Dave would be happy to know that Dirk's lived long enough to become a wife-napper in his timeline. Probably not, but it's hard to know: he sometimes thinks his Dave would be happier if Dirk had died instead—at least then he could properly mourn. He doesn't say any of this, naturally. He's not a complete idiot. "I'm sorry," he lies.

"Hung himself in my hour of fucking need," Dave continues as though Karkat hadn't spoken. He runs a hand over his metal hair. "Story of my life in this universe: everyone leaves me when I need them. I'm not a good enough reason for anyone to stick around."

It's not difficult to read between the lines and figure out who else comprises 'everyone' and 'anyone'. Again, Karkat wonders what the fuck this version of him had been thinking. "And you figure it's your turn to not stick around when they need you? Is that it? Revenge?"

"No," Dave says, clearly caught off guard by the questions. "Fuck no. Besides, wouldn't work anyway because no one needs me: not Rose, not Karkat, and not John. Maybe Jade thinks she needs me, but she doesn't need me either."

There's a lot to unpack here, and Karkat doesn't know how much longer Dave is going to listen to him. He doesn't know why he's so bothered by the idea of this idiot leaving without first touching base with the other idiots, but he is. His being here feels... serendipitous.

A stray thought of why is he here floats through his consciousness before being discarded: he's focused on what's happening in front of him. "What if you're wrong, Dave? What if they do need you, like you needed Dirk? Are you really going to abandon them like yesterday's grubloaf?"

"Did it to me first," Dave mutters, petulant. Then he sighs and leans against the wall. "Okay, so I know things aren't going great with everyone... except Rose and Kanaya, I guess. They've always had their shit together. Way better than I ever have. I also absolutely know that Karkat doesn't need me. I might have been in the rebellion, too—better late than fucking never, I guess—but it's not like Karkat actually lets me do anything important. Probably afraid I'd fuck it up, and I can't blame him for that. I fuck up everything I touch—I used to, I mean. I'm Ultimate Dave now, and I'm awesome." The bravado is too little too late, and Dave seems to realize it, too. He kicks awkwardly at the stone floor.

Before Karkat can comment, Dave keeps going, his voice becoming tight with frustration. "But to get back to sad sack me, what was I supposed to do about John and Roxy's failed marriage? What was I supposed to do about the clusterfuck which is Jane's fucking family situation? It's not my fault she shacked up with Jake and Gamzee and inflicts that clown on her kid." His voice carries a note of hysteria now. "Should I have helped John kidnap Tavros that one time? And then there's Jade... You don't think I've given her enough of me by this point, or was I supposed to just stay by her side forever out of a sense of obligation? I mean, fuck, Karkat. That's way too much to lay on me!"

"Don't be an idiot," Karkat says even as his mind reels. So many things are different. They would be, of course, this is an alternate timeline, but it's almost overwhelming to hear them listed out like this all at once. While he wants to ask about Tavros and Gamzee, he doesn't want to break the momentum of the conversation with little, probably unimportant, details. "I'm not here to tell you what you should have done. I don't know what you should have done: believe it or not, Dave, I'm not a fucking seer!" He takes a deep breath to calm himself down. It's hard not to shout, but he's learned over the years that, sometimes, people listen to you more when you're not shouting. "It's not about what you should have done; it's about what you should do."

"And what do you think I should do?" Dave asks, as though Karkat hasn't already made it blisteringly obvious what he thinks Dave ought to do.

Then again, Daves are pretty dumb, and this one is extremely so. "Talk to them, Dave. Tell them how you feel."

"Sounds gay."

For an instant, Karkat is back on the meteor. "You're gay, you asshole."

"Oh, yeah." Dave shifts from one foot to the other. "They're not going to be super stoked to see me like this."

"You think?" Karkat pinches the bridge of his nose. "Of course they're not going to be fucking 'stoked' to see you've done this to yourself, but they love you, Dave. They might be angry with you for leaving like you did, but they'll forgive you. And maybe... maybe you'll be able to forgive them, too. But nothing is going to change unless you actually talk to them."

Dave hmms to himself before shaking his head. "You don't get it, Karkat. Literally? None of that shit even matters. I'm not sad sack me anymore; I'm not tied to this universe. I'm Ult. Dave, and I don't need anyone." He steps away from the wall so he can gesture with over the top grandness, clearly making certain his cape moves with him. "I'm finally free. For the first time in my life, I'm actually who and what I always wanted to be: a chill motherfucker with nothing more important to worry about than whether or not I'm cool. And I don't even have to worry about that, because I'm cool as shit."

He lowers his arms. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter, almost pleading. "For the first time in my life, I actually fucking like myself." 'So don't take that away from me' goes unsaid, but Karkat hears it anyway.

This is just... this is just so sad. This Dave might be saying he likes himself, but nothing is more obvious to Karkat than that he doesn't. Karkat still doesn't really understand what being 'Ultimate' means (and now doesn't feel like the right time to ask), but he understands Dave. Since all Daves are Daves, that means he understands this one, too. And what he understands is this Dave is absolutely fucking miserable and trying to hide it underneath a cool layer of ironic assholery.

Newsflash, Ultimate Dave, Karkat has gotten really good at seeing through that shit!

"Cut the crap, Dave," Karkat says sharply. "I didn't pupate yesterday. Do you honestly expect me to believe that being that," he gestures to Dave's shiny robot body, "and pretending you don't give a shit about anyone or anything actually makes you happy?" Not waiting for the lie Dave's no doubt going to supply him with, he adds, "Didn't you learn anything on the meteor, Dave? You are not and have never been cool."

Karkat starts approaching Dave, who backs away from him. It hurts to see him like this, but it confirms what Karkat already knew. "You were a scared kid like the rest of us, and now you're a scared adult, running away from your problems because you don't know how to fix them. And guess what, Dave: your idiot friends are scared adults, too."

Dave is against the wall again, shaking his head. "No. No, you don't get it at all."

It's a risk, but despite what happened with Dave crushing his hand earlier (which really should have hurt, shouldn't it?), Karkat still refuses to feel intimidated by any Dave. He knows him too well. He reaches out his hand and places it onto a cool, metal shoulder. It's practically vibrating. "I believe in you, Dave. I believe in you, and I know you can do this."

For the longest time, Dave says nothing. The cool shoulder under Karkat's hand gradually stills and warms. Then Dave explodes. Not literally, like the Aradia bot, but in a more figurative way. It feels like an important distinction. He pushes away from the wall, pushing Karkat away, too, leaving Karkat to stumble backwards.

"Oh, fuck off!" There's no expression on Dave's rigid face, which makes the vitriol coming out of his mouth that much more disturbing. "Maybe you're the fucking fairy from Peter Pupa or whatever, but I'm not." He steps closer to Karkat. "I am cool, and I don't need anyone else, and more fucking importantly, no one needs me!"

Karkat licks his lips. A part of him wants to throw Dave's anger back in his face. A part of him wants to shoosh the man child until he calms. Either one seems like a bad idea. "Sounds lonely," he says instead, keeping his voice soft.

Dave jerks back like he's been struck. "It's not," he denies just a hair too quickly. He goes into the familiar nonchalant slouch that Dave goes into when he's feeling cornered. "I told you, Karkat, I'm a whole bunch of Daves—I've got all the friends I could ever want." As if sensing this isn't terribly convincing, he says, "Besides, I'm chillin' with Aradia and not quite dead possessed Jade these days. They're a barrel of fucking laughs."

Of course both timelines have a possessed Jade! Is she possessed by some alternate version of Callie, too? And now Karkat's a little confused, because didn't Dave say he left Jade behind? Is this another Jade from yet another timeline? And why the fuck are Jades so god damn unlucky—she seems to have a fucking talent for being possessed! He shakes his head; he's never been good at timeline bullshit, and he's getting off track.

As for Aradia... It's been a long time since he's thought of her. She'd never been one of his closest friends, for certain, and he remembers that she got disturbing chipper about death after she blew up and came back God Tier. Honestly, he can't imagine traveling around with her like Sollux chose to, or like Dave apparently does.

"So, you don't miss anyone here?" He already knows the answer to this question and wonders if Dave will lie. He decides not to give him the opportunity. "You already admitted you miss your Karkat, so I'm sure there must be other people you miss."

Dave crosses his arms. "I miss aj, too, but I'm not gonna act all broken up about it when I've got this hot new bod, these baller new threads, and, oh yeah, fucking Ultimate Dave powers. I guess the real question is what are you trying to prove with all this mushy shit. What the fuck difference does it make to you whether I miss anyone or not—you don't even belong here."

It has been ages since Karkat's had to deal with a Dave this infuriatingly dense. "You're right: I don't belong here. You know who does belong here, you deliberately obtuse prick? You! You fucking belong here. And I'm gratified to know you at least miss some of the people here as much as you miss fucking apple juice."

"What the fuck ever," Dave says tightly. "I didn't ask for a lecture. I didn't ask for your opinion. In fact, I asked for exactly none of this bullshit, and I'm done. I'm outie." He doesn't move. "I still don't understand why you care so much."

Karkat slowly counts to ten. Then he does it again for good measure. "Dave, I care because, for some ineffable reason, I love you and I want you to be happy."

"What?" Dave sounds startled. "You don't even fucking know me, dude."

"Didn't you tell me you're the most Dave Dave? And aren't all Dave's Dave?" Karkat rolls his eyes. "I love my Dave, and that means I love you, too, moron."

"Oh." Dave looks away. "I guess that makes sense." Then he straightens up and turns his head sharply back in Karkat's direction. "So, what you said before, about, about other Karkat...?"

"What? That he loves you?" Karkat doesn't roll his eyes again, but it's a close thing. "Yes, he loves you. I don't understand why he thought it was a good idea to leave your ass, but any Karkat who's had the misfortune of meeting you gets caught in your fucking thrall. You're so fucking pitiful. And infuriating. And attractive."

"Careful, Karkat, you might give a guy the wrong idea." It sounds so much like Dave's normal banter that it hurts. "I don't know," he says, his voice pensive. "You make it sound like it's gonna be so easy to just step back into everyone's life like nothing happened."

"Of course it isn't going to be easy," Karkat snaps. "But you need to do it: if not for the sake of the people here, for your own." He risks putting a hand on Dave's arm. "Let them love you, Dave."

Dave shakes his head. "Don't bother with the mojo again, man. That shit doesn't work on me: I'm immune thanks to being a bad-ass Ultimate robo Dave and all." Before Karkat can question what the fuck he means by that, Dave puts a cold hand over his own. "But you know what? Fuck it. Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah," Dave sighs. It only sounds a little dramatic. "I'll fucking talk to them. Let them love me or whatever. I guess if it goes bad, I can just fuck off again like I was planning to. I'll have to let Aradia know though; it's only fair."

Karkat feels relief wash over him. He'd been starting to think he'd never get through to this idiot. He pulls his hand away and backs up. "Good." He feels light. "I'm glad you've decided to stop being stubborn asshole about this."

"Being a stubborn asshole is one of the things I do best," Dave said, a smile in his voice if not on his face. "What about you though?" His question is startling for its unexpectedness. "How are you going to..."

The scene seems further away.

"Ah," Dave says. "I get it. Say hi to Dave for me."

Karkat has no time to voice his confusion before everything is gone.

Karkat wakes with a start. The dream is already fading even as his conscious mind tries to gather the remnants together. He remembers... he remembers Dave. But he was a... he was a robot? And dead? He remembers Dave being absolutely infuriating. He remembers he was trying to... trying to get Dave to do something?

He shakes his head and looks at the Dave still sleeping beside him. An urge to wrap Dave up in his arms overcomes him, and he does so as best he can. He's momentarily surprised by the warmth and softness he feels as he presses Dave against his chest. But that's silly: Dave feels like he always does. He's safe and loved and warm and alive.

Dave blinks blearily up at him. "Bad dream?"

Karkat nods, even though he's not entirely certain if the dream he had was bad or not. "I love you."

"Thanks," Dave says, sounding baffled but fond. "Love you, too." He yawns, already snuggling into Karkat's embrace, already going back to sleep.

For a long time, Karkat watches Dave breathe. Then he falls back into a doze, content.

Ultimate Dave looks at the spot where that strange Karkat was for a long while before shrugging to himself. Weirder things have happened in his various lives than alternate timeline ghosts or whatever the fuck just happened here. He picks up his corpse (it doesn't look like he's decayed at all—must be cold as shit in this place) and starts the journey topside. It's time to go home and, maybe, make amends.

#Homestuck #fan fic #davekat #mine

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riverboundao3ff · 4 years

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Riverbound, Chapter 21

Your name is KARKAT VANTAS and you can’t stop thinking of that video John showed you that one time with the human gamer yelling “CAPTAIN! LOOOOOK!” even though this is very much real life and there is a fucking enormous pirate ship barrelling right at you.

You barely have your sickles out before Vriska comes barging out of her cabin in full pirate ensemble, sword strapped to her waist and fangs bared. “Eridan, take the lead with me! Aradia, Terezi, and Karkat follow. Try not to get yourselves killed. Micah, up to the crow’s nest and see what the enemy is doing. Feferi, keep us at full clip in a circle.”

“I’m not a very good captain!” Feferi yelps as she almost snaps the wheel in half.

“Don’t worry about it, the 8rigantine’s been through some serious shit. She can take a rookie at the wheel!”

Micah zaps up to the crow’s nest with the eyepiece and trains it on the enemy ship. Despite your bloodpusher hammering away in your chest cavity, your feet carry you over to Aradia and Terezi, both grinning ear-to-ear like the maniacs they are. Both are amazing fighters, and you are… very small. Small, and not very strong.

If Crabdad could see you right now you know the old guy would shit himself on the spot.

“Why am I here,” you mutter, gripping your sickles for all they’re worth. “Fuck, fuck, fuck--”

“Shouldn’t Feferi be giving the orders?” Eridan mutters to Vriska, scowling.

Vriska sneers back at him. “My ship, my rules. If you don’t like it you can swim back to shore.”

“I’ll throw you overboard first, bitch.”

“Good to see some things never change,” Aradia snickers, but you can’t bring yourself to rib Eridan for his black crush as you watch the other ship pull right up against the 8rigantine.

“What’s it look like?” Terezi asks.

“Big. Probably one-and-a-half times the size of the 8rigantine…” You trail off as you see the hostages on board and do a quick count. “There’s about fifteen lowbloods on board. Most of them are rusts and bronzes. I see one gold.”

“A psionic?”

“Yep.”

“Dibs,” Aradia calls.

“He’s all yours,” you mumble, beginning to regret being hatched.

Well, it’s too late to back out now. Aradia lays out the plank with her telekinesis and sends a massive shockwave across to the other ship before the terrified hostages can so much as try to rally together.

“Aradia! Don’t hurt them!” Micah wails in protest.

“Sorry!”

She doesn’t look very sorry, but Vriska and Eridan are already charging across the plank together with fearsome battle cries, Terezi right behind them with swords drawn and Aradia bringing up the rear. From the crow’s nest, Micah yells something about the violetblood captain being in his cabin.

“Oh, I am so getting grounded for this,” you tell nobody in particular, and then you bound across the plank in four quick strides, ignoring the dark, churning waters below, and fling yourself into the fray.

Some bronzeblood takes a swing at you the second your feet hit the deck, but you can tell her bloodpusher really isn’t in it when she scrambles back as you knick her cheek with one of your blades. You dodge around a pair of unarmed rustbloods, sweep the feet out from underneath another bronze, and end up back-to-back with Terezi.

Not too long ago you would have been losing your mind at the thought of fighting alongside the girl you crushed on for a pretty sizable amount of your miserable existence, but at the moment you kind of want to smack her upside the head for letting Vriska drag you guys into this. “Where’s your crazy-ass moirail?”

“Looking for our target! Micah said he’s in his cabin,” she yells over a rustblood girl’s furious screeches as Terezi is able to deflect every blow.

You swipe at a boy who tries to lunge for your arm. “Well I wish she’d hurry--”

A shockwave knocks your flat on your ass before you can finish that sentence. Your ears ring, and you roll over with a groan to see Aradia and the goldblood psionic circling each other, both crackling with invisible energy.

“Back off! Back!” the psionic shrieks, blasting yellow sparks at Aradia. “He’ll kill us all if we lose the session!”

“Nobody’s dying today,” Aradia tells him calmly.

“What?!”

“Just keep fighting. We’re here to help.”

Some of the other hostages obviously overheard the whole thing, because you see several stop circling a hissing Eridan to turn and stare at her. None of them have even tried to attack him. He uses the opportunity to break free and roundhouse the psionic into the mast, knocking him out cold and sending cracks up the wood.

A nearby zap alerts you to the cavalry’s arrival. “Eridan!”

“He was attacking Aradia-!”

“Micahlookout!”

The mast splinters apart at the base and comes down through the deck, before toppling over towards your alien friend. They teleport out of the way just in time, reappearing to grab the unconscious goldblood and disappearing again.

The bronzeblood boy you’ve been swatting at scrubs furiously at his ganderbulbs. “What the-- did I just-?”

“Yeah, they do that,” you explain.

“I wanna go home.”

“Same.”

The sound of glass breaking has everybody jumping back as Vriska and the violetblood dude come tumbling out of the cabin window, screaming and clawing each other up with no mercy whatsoever. Serket’s metal arm is making progress in tearing a gash in the violetblood’s side, but he’s still way stronger than her and just as angry.

“You fucking bitch! This isn’t how you play the game!” he snarls, kneeing her in the gut so hard you hear something snap.

She spits blue blood into his face. “This isn’t a game anymore.”

He kicks her off him and springs to his feet, only for a blast of energy to carve a perfect hole through the center of his chest before he can so much as cuss her out again. There’s no blood, no bits of flesh dangling down into the gap. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Eridan lower his rifle, brows drawn together in concentration.

You stare in shock as Vriska kicks the still-standing corpse overboard.

The following splash is the only sound to be heard for the next couple of moments. You and Micah make eye contact and stare at each other for a little bit. Eridan and Vriska high-five and start ushering the hostages across the plank to the 8rigantine. Aradia just shrugs and helps a bronze girl with a bad knee to her feet so they can go, guiding Terezi along with her other hand.

“Well, that was quick,” you mumble, making your way over to Micah.

They don’t show any outward signs of distress, but the way their gaze doesn’t focus on anything in particular once you both make it to the other side tells you everything you need to know. You want to throw Serket overboard as well; for fuck’s sake, she knows humans are fragile about these sort of things!

They look over at you. “Guess that’s one way to do it.”

“Yeah.” You look out at the horizon, where a pod of skywhales are surfacing to breathe. “I’ll be honest. This rebellion stuff is way less fun than I thought it was gonna be.”

“Me too. Wanna get out of here once we get the hostages back to shore?”

Oh, fuck yes. “Sure. Can we get some of your weird human food?”

“Ask Dave, my guy. I’m broke as hell.”

“Fine.”

You wait impatiently as Micah helps the others down to the beach once the 8rigantine makes it to shore, but you can’t help but feel a surge of warmth when you see the dawning realization on the former prisoners’ faces when they realize that they’ll be going home. You’re smiling as a few of the younger kids grow brave enough to give Micah hugs, which is understandable given that the alien is very soft and huggable. It’s no surprise to you that they’ve managed to land in somebody’s diamond.

“Nothing like trauma to help bring people together,” they say as you watch the group walk off together towards town. “One of them said that they’re gonna make a group chat and call it ‘Hostage Gang’.”

Everybody gets a good chuckle out of that, and most of the tension leaves as you guys head back to Vriska’s hive. Terezi and Aradia start arguing about what blood caste has the thickest skull bone, with Terezi in favor of seadwellers and Aradia insisting it’s the indigos.

Micah bumps your arm. “Ready to go?”

“Yep.”

“Cool. Lemme grab my backpack.”

They zap away and are back in the span of two seconds, backpack slung over their shoulder. You have to tell yourself not to stare, even if you’re still definitely not used to your weird alien friend’s wacky spacetime powers.

Vriska’s face falls. “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah, I’m gonna bring Karkat to Earth to hang out. I’ll be back soon,” Micah tells her.

“... Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Aw, missing your lusus already?” Eridan taunts, before hightailing it back up the path to Vriska’s hive with a furious pirate girl on his heels. Terezi takes off after them with a shriek of delight, with Feferi begging them not to start a fight and Aradia waving back at you as she pelts sand at the back of Eridan’s head.

“Good god,” you mutter.

“Love those assholes,” Micah says, every word laced with affection. They hold out their hand, and with a lot less caution than you used to, you take it.

In the blink of an eye, the both of you are outside Dave’s apartment building with the sun going down behind the skyscrapers in the west. It’s hot as fuck, even for you, and teleporting never fails to make you a little dizzy.

You look up and down the alleyway. Cool, no other humans around.

Taking a running start, you kick off the dumpster underneath the fire escape and grab on to the last rung of the rusty ladder. You pull yourself up with a grunt and start hiking on up to the top floor, concentrating on the horizon to calm down your tilting vision. A bang of boot against metal lets you know Micah is right behind you.

“Why don’t you just teleport up?” you ask.

“Do you want me to take you up?”

“No. It makes me dizzy.”

“Sorry, dude.” They yank off their hoodie with a huff. “I need the exercise.”

“Don’t let Equius hear you say anything like that. For my wriggling day last sweep he gave me an exercise regime and video-called me to personally ensure that I was doing it. It was fucking terrible. Every time I see a stretching mat my ass clenches up so hard I taste shit.”

“... Do you think he’ll come around?” they ask.

You snort. “Who knows. I like the guy, don’t get me wrong, but… he’s pretty set in his ways about the authority of the Empire and the hemospectrum. If Nepeta can’t get through to him, nobody can.”

“Eridan decided he wants to change. So did Vriska.”

You bite your tongue before you can tell Micah that they unwittingly became the lusus-figure of those two jackasses the second they waltzed into their lives. “Yeah, well. Equius is a whole other hoofbeast, pun intended.”

By the time you reach the top level, your thighs are burning, you’re out of breath, and Micah has to brace themselves on their knees while sucking in air like an upright mechanical cleaning device. The usually pale skin is flushed red, and they’re making absolutely no attempt to cover themselves.

All humans have red blood, dumbass. Get over yourself. “How come you can go for three hours straight on Just Dance but get winded going up a few flights of stairs?”

“Man, shut up. You’re breathing heavy, too,” they wheeze.

“Barely.” You pull out your palmhusk and shoot a quick text to Dave, telling him to check the fire escape. Your palmhusk is barely back inside your sweatpants pocket before the window you and Micah are under slides open.

A messy head of blonde hair pokes out, and your gastric tract does a flip when a smirk lifts up the corners of Dave’s mouth. “Two aliens, chillin’ on my fire escape, five feet apart ‘cause they’re not gay.”

“I regret ever letting you in on the incredible gift that awaits this world that is Vine,” Micah sighs. “All those iconic seven-second videos, all those memes that have yet to define Gen Z as a culture… and some greasy millennial Texas kid gets the first crack at it?”

“Micah. Mickey. Mickaroonie. Gen Z was born at the start of 1995. I was born in 1996. I barely made it, but I made it. Slipped right in there like the intruder through Annie’s window, RIP Michael Jackson. Vine is my birthright, same as yours.”

“It will be your birthright.”

“What the fuck is a Vine?” you demand. Stupid humans and their stupid human culture. You still have difficulty believing that their planet is divided up into thousands of different sectors, each with their own laws and languages and governments. How come they just can’t pick one thing and go with it?

“Hush up and get inside, Karkles, both of you are letting all the cold air out,” Dave drawls, backing away from the window so you and Micah can hop in.

You do so and almost immediately eat shit when you land on a pile of comic books that slip out from underneath your feet. “Fuck!”

“Keep it down, bro, the walls are thin.” Dave chucks an empty juice bottle into the trash can across the room. “Thin as a rin-tin-tin, gotta keep on silencin’, can’t let the haters in from the world that keeps on burnin’--”

“If you shut up we’ll tell you about the rebellion that’s happening on Alternia. Past Alternia, that is,” you offer.

That gets his attention. He turns to you, brows drawing tightly together. “A revolution? On your hellhole of a planet? Isn’t that, I dunno, really frickin’ risky? You’re not in danger, are you?”

“Not in my time period, dummy,” you say, crossing your arms to block out the surge of warmth inside of you that has nothing to do with the Texas heat. He cares about your safety. “It’s like, ten sweeps ago? Fifteen? I dunno, Micah’s the one who’s actually in it.”

“Yeah… I don’t know, either. Alternian measurements of time are confusing. But yeah. Me and a bunch of my friends are gonna overthrow the government,” Micah explains.

“Hell yeah, stick it to the man. But, like, be careful.”

“I will. Time shenanigans are kind of my thing.”

“Can we get food now?” you demand.

“Hell yeah we can.” Dave glances behind him, but there’s nobody there. “Yeah… let’s see, Bro’s not gonna be back until Saturday, so we’re good.”

Micah glances over at the calendar on the wall and frowns. It’s Tuesday. You’re not sure what Tuesday is in relation to Saturday, but they don’t seem happy about it.

The three of you end up sneaking around downtown Houston until you locate a McDonald’s. It’s weird, how much safer you feel on Earth in comparison to Alternia. These aren’t your people, and this isn’t your planet, and yet when a group of teenagers pass under the tree you and Micah hide in while Dave goes inside to order you don’t even flinch. It helps that the sun has gone down and you know that humans can’t see in the dark.

“So…” they say, eyeing you thoughtfully. “Do you want me to leave you guys alone? You know, city lights, fast food, two teenagers sitting together under the stars…”

FUCK. You slap at them with a furious hiss. “No! I-- what, no! Who told you? Was it Sollux? It was fucking Sollux.”

“It wasn’t Sollux. You’re pretty obvious, dude,” they remark.

You scrub your face with your hands. “I… he’s just so great, which is stupid because he pisses me off, and he’s an alien, and it’s just impossible. A-And he’s human-heterosexual!”

“Hey. Look at me.”

You look at them.

They smile at you, and your racing bloodpusher calms as you remember that this person is one of the few you can trust with your life. “No relationship is ever easy. You know this. But what you don’t know is that people always find ways to come together. My moirail is an oliveblood assassin, and she’s easily one of the top three things that’s ever happened to me.”

You can’t help it: you smile a little. “What are the other two things?”

“Rice bowls at Chipotle. Meeting you guys.”

“You’re a sappy fuck,” you tell them, even as you snort into the crook of your elbow.

“I sure am, hotshot. Oh, hey, here’s Dave--”

“--eeeeeEEEEEE here it is! Help me up,” a familiar voice announces. You look over the branch you’re stretched out on and reach down to help Dave up while Micah grabs the bags of food from him. His palm is just as warm and sweaty as yours, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Once everybody is settled in and munching away on shitty, delicious human food you break out the big guns. “Micah has a moirail.”

“Which one is that?”

“They have a girlfriend. Ew, can’t believe I’m resorting to highblood slang.”

That gets his attention. “Oh, real shit? Is she hot?”

“Yes, Dave. She is hot.”

“What’s she like?”

“Kind. Shredded as all hell. Loves sappy romance novels. Lowkey murders people for a living. Gets embarrassed easily. Like, I’ll say something like ‘I’m gonna shooshpap the anxiety right out of your soul, honey-bunches’ and she absolutely loses her goddamn mind--”

You shriek and slam your hands over your ears, trying to not blush and give yourself away. “No, no, noooooooooo, Micah I’m under nine sweeps old please-!”

“I don’t get it! Why is talking about feelings so sexy?” they yell, throwing their hands up while Dave loses his mind. “Damn! I touched my friend’s cheek the other night ‘cause he was messed up about my ribs being broken and he just about exploded.”

“Slut,” you wheeze.

“Your ribs are broken?” Dave stops laughing and starts poking at the other human. “What? Are you okay? How did you even climb this tree?”

“I’m fine now, buddy, Alternian medical tech is pretty great,” they assure him, ruffling his hair as he swats at them.

“Wack. One time I was in the ER ‘cause I needed stitches and the nurse didn’t even numb me up, she just frickin’ went for it. Big-ass needle, big-ass thread, screaming six-year-old, I think I scared the whole McFrickin’ clinic half to death--”

You want to hear everything about Dave’s bravery in the face of a mediculler, but before you can ask for more details a beam of bright light hits Micah right in the face, making them reel back with an arm thrown over their face.

“What are you kids doing up there, huh?” a deep voice calls.

You look down and almost shit yourself.

Underneath the tree are four fully-grown adult males, all big and with guns strapped to their belts (seriously, why the fuck do humans run around with so many weapons on them when they’re so stupid?) and wearing blue uniforms.

Oh, shit. Dave told you to never trust the ones with the blue uniforms.

“We’re eating McDonald’s in a tree, officer,” Micah explains cheerfully.

“Can I ask why?” The one in the front glares up at you. You shrink back into the foliage as much as you can. Dave grabs your hand, squeezing tightly, and you squeeze back.

“Why not?”

“Can I see some I.D?”

“No. We’re not breaking any laws. This is public property.”

You stare in disbelief as Micah pulls out a fry and munches on it without a care in the world. Were they really not afraid? Did humans just… not fear their authority figures?

They can teleport. Of course they’re not afraid, you remind yourself.

“How many of you are up there?” another one asks.

“Three.”

“Are any of you armed?”

“No, sir.”

“Can you come down, please?”

“No, thanks. We’re fine where we are.”

“You guys want a cheeseburger? The lady who took our order gave me an extra,” Dave offers. “It’s got onions, though. Onions are nasty.”

The one farthest to the left says something into his walkie-talkie. Micah grins.

You know that grin. “What are you--”

“Hey, officers! Wanna see something cool?” they yell. “Watch this!”

They push off the branch they’re leaning on and lunge towards you and Dave. You barely have time to yelp before they’re grabbing your arm and zapping you guys out of there.

Delighted peals of laughter fills the whole apartment as you land face-first into Dave’s bed. You spit out a dirty sock that somehow ended up in your mouth and shove them off the end of the mattress, but you’re laughing too. You’ve never seen anything like that.

Dave looks over at you, gorgeous red eyes twinkling behind his shades and a big smile lighting up his respiteblock, and just for a moment, everything is perfect.

#homestuck #riverbound #hiveswap #hiveswap friendsim trolls #pesterquest #Dave strider #Karkat vantas #c21 #the guardian #mspa reader

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rabble-dabble · 4 years

Text

Sweet Somberly Sayings

If you could make Karkat into a poem, you think he'd be a pretty short one. Simple, and yet effectively to the point.

Yelling, grumbling, into my ear,

Concerningly gentle, you can always hear.

Of course, he's not that bad. Honestly, you thought you'd have to coax more out of the guy, more often than not. Over Pesterchum, he almost seemed against every idea you had, whether it was in his interest or not. To be fair, you hadn't known him fairly well after that day, so you suppose it would have always had something to do with the fact that a screen was very capable of hiding what his face gave away.

It's sort of easier to see the fragile lines of his face that way.

And what you have learned, you've put to effective use! He'll go with you to the theaters if you promise to pay. He will not go to any fairs without threatening from Jade, but to get him into a better mood you can win him a stuffed prize he won't admit he's going to take home with him until it's late and you are too tired to make fun of him. The later it is in the day, the more energy he has, but also the greater chance he'll argue no to what you say. If you bring over cupcakes, he won't be as pissed at you for refusing to leave his house.

If you ask him something in a soft, low voice, he has trouble being grumbly against you.

Really, you think you have it all figured out.

Besides, you think what you do is good for him. He needs it! If it was left up to him and Dave, he would never leave his house. They even brought an alchemiter inside, which you thought was absolutely the worst idea ever because none of the food made from it is ever fresh. Shopping had been a near nightmare to get Karkat to do, who decided to whine and be a child about the food you were trying to get for him, who only compromised when you promised you would come over to make it. They were not going to be living off of ramen and Fruit Loops cereal for two months!!

But it was worth it, you think, when you made spaghetti and he pushed an unnamed, empty plate towards you. Dave had absconded to go finish his show, so it left you with an empty seat right next to the fussy troll guy.

You can show me

How gently, and sweetly

You be.

I promise I won't say a thing.

There isn't a downside about a friend like Karkat. His words were hot gushes of thick, bellowing air that cooled down under a trusted cold night's guide. Luckily, you happened to be a wind gushing expert! What he says is usually, rarely, ever an actually hurtful insult. And when it does hurt, you only take it at face value. You have to remind yourself a lot that Karkat isn't fragile, but the thin lines etched into his worried grey face are for a reason. He thinks he's special enough that reality hates him and he deserves to be hurt. You think he's special, he has so much care and good intention in his troll heart that it's almost sad he doesn't seem to get that he deserves to be happy.

It makes you think a lot, too.

Demanding of a world,

Just make the world you and me-

You sometimes don't do something right, or say something in the right way. You say what you're thinking about, or whatever you think you need to be thinking about, but your mouth has lagged behind your brain and you've already thought too far ahead for it to catch up. So it ends up being a mess you make. Sometimes, you hurt your friends by what you say or do. Sometimes, you end up hurting yourself.

-I'll say I'm so very sorry.

It's not like you to feel so sad. You guess it's expected, really, and sometimes it's supposed to happen, but it catches you off guard by how sad you are. And if you think too long, you start believing yourself about all of the bad lines that run in your head like code. As if they were meant to be there, meant to hurt you, and worse, you put them there in the first place. You think your Dad wouldn't approve of all the things you think of, but that just adds to the list that makes you feel worse than when it started. And, sadly, he isn't here to make it stop.

So you don't expect it when, mistakenly, you end up going through a few days alone, and on day three there's a loud barbaric knock at your front door. You don't know who to expect, and it certainly hadn't been an angry Karkat in his pajamas ranting about how you haven't been responding to his messages.

He yells at you until you feel guilty enough to take a shower. When you come back downstairs, he's ignoring your red puffy eyes and shoves leftover chinese into your hands. He sits on your couch with crossed arms, a stern grump face, and bed hair.

You share the noodles with him.

A penny for your time, a penny for your mind,

I only have five cents to spare.

"Shut your flubbering human protein chute, John,

I'm your friend; you don't need to worry about if I care."

He's totally your best friend.

Not that Dave isn't! Or Rose, or Jade! You've known them a lot longer than Karkat, to be fair. And Karkat had just been the annoying troll all your life who you never thought to make friends with until the game. It wasn't until it was so funny at how hard he tried to seem important and demanding of attention that you got he really wasn't the sort of guy to be, well, mean.

But, except Jade, you happened to meet them all in person at the same time. So it was fair game there.

But Karkat feels different, too. With your other friends, it’s jokes and poking fun at each other and dealing with your ridiculous friendship together. With Karkat, it's exactly like that, except he thinks you've somehow tricked him into a friendship. Which, fair, you did, but it's not like he's complaining. Too much.

You feel a type of comfort different from your friends. A sort of feeling akin to a buzz or a fresh breath that you can't quite seem to understand. With them, you could probably have a lot of fun on a sunny warm day, hanging out together. With Karkat, you don't have to do too much except lie in the grass with him quietly, watching the stars, and maybe seek out his hand because the sky had always seemed so big but the stars now made you feel so small. And you guess he could understand that too.

So how do you describe all of the ways he enlightens you? You just don't know! He is a tune that you just cannot sing right, a wordless lullaby that happens to start keeping you up at night. You hum and hum and hum, and he tells you to Shut up with that vibration that only makes you want to sing along with his declaration of fuckass. He seems to be beyond a comparison of simple tunes, because there's a deep wallow in him, but you also know he is gentle and akin to a glass window. Knowingly breakable, but surrounded by the sturdiness of a stubborn wall. He is the feeling you get when you walk and smell nostalgia. He is the cooling sunsetting breeze after a long day of dry humidity. He is the taste of cheap microwaved food cooked just right enough to be good. He is the feeling you get when you find an intruding small critter inside your house and you capture it to let it go. He is-

Light, airy, scary,

Heart pounding at your thought.

Smile and you fill me entirely

Have I come to know, doubtedly,

And I think I see it finally…

You don't understand it.

You think you might be sick. Because, how is it that you get queasy knowing Karkat's at home? How is it possible that, in his presence, you feel as if you suddenly understand nothing at all? Why do you tick and tap at things until you finally see him again? It's making you worried. You don't understand why you suddenly have to be by his side. Except, that's bad too, because there's no suddenly. It's more as a realization. As an oh, the soft click when something is thought of just right. And now, you don't feel the usual brain tugging thoughts of wanting to hang out with your friends. Really, this has turned into a need. You need Karkat, either by your side, or talking to you, or him letting you quietly hold his hand again as you walk in the dark, cloudy night. Your brain can't go a second without knowing how he's feeling, or what he's doing today, or what he wants to do today.

You think he feels the same.

You talk a lot of crap between each other, but something that gets to you is how genuine he can be sometimes. He's somehow figured out that you can get ticked off by something he words right. He complimented your eyes, once or twice, and now you look extra long in the mirror as if you could possibly find the thing he's really looking at. He informed you about a funny face you do when you're surprised, and that surprised you enough to make him laugh at you and point it out. He didn't pull away, during one movie session, when you moved your hand to wrap on his shoulder but brushed against his neck instead and elicited a small gasp that made you think about it for four days.

He does something to you that you don't understand.

Transformation

How come I see you with clarity

How my heart goes abound

Do you know what you do to me

Do I think I know this is

Is this-

Or maybe you do. Or maybe you don't really have to.

Comfort settles in after panic. Your friends, less oblivious than him, notice. You don't know what to tell them, except, obviously, what you think about him. How, all the time, you just cannot deal with the idea of not thinking about him. It's really annoying, actually, almost like a prank he made to mess with you for stealing his snack stash. Or maybe making him watch Armagedom with you. You haven't quite figured it out yet. You don't fully understand why your face flushes so often, or how you start spacing out thinking about him while sitting next to him, or how giving him a hug makes your stomach flip and land a 10, 10, 8.5 on a gymnastics score. Why you curl up in bed at night, thinking of his voice. You had never noticed it giving you shivers before.

But, the funny thing is, you see him getting confused too. He laughed at one of your jokes, once, smiling wide and deeply chuckling before his face contorted into surprise. Sometimes he pulls you into hugs, before trapping you on the couch in an embrace for a startling amount of time, before kicking you out of his house with a grumble. One time, when he ordered for the two of you at some old restaurant, he forgot to get two shakes so you had to pass it back and forth before he groaned and stuck another straw in. He also stole your fries, and made a smirking face at you that you were too distracted for by the time he got around to stealing the rest of your burger too.

You're starting to get used to the idea of thinking about him. Sitting next to him, you find yourself content. Talking to him, you find yourself aghast with a strong yearning. He looks at you with dark, red filling eyes, talks to you with a grumbly, scratchy low toned voice, and makes you flush when he says numbnuts with an endearing tone.

So you don't mind anymore when he goes to hold your hand. Or when he talks into your ear all night long, way past the movie marathon, and decides to stay the night. You don't mind how he looks when you're up and making lunch, and he looks over with keenly interested eyes from the doorway, and you present him with a prepared plate of ham n' mayo. Which, he compliments you by stealing pieces off of your own. You don't find yourself caring all that much, though? You have a bag of Lay chips, original flavor, and also you are more than okay with the idea of sort of doing this forever. That stomach lighting, bubbly smooth hot drink of whatever this is. Because, you're more than okay with it.

Hey, hey, I think you are..

Hey, hey, I think we are..

Hey, hey, I think I am..

Karkat as a poem got complicated. But, you also think you might have the words to explain it all now.

You tell him about the poem idea you had, once. He tells you that you're an idiot, but he's trying to hide his grin from you too. You tackle him into a wrestling match you end up losing, cheating because he tickled you.

He sits on top of you, laughing at your stupidity while holding your arms above your head. You breathlessly breathe out all the ideas you had for his poem, and then his mouth is on yours to give you butterflies.

You kiss him back hard.

You make me feel like love, love, love-

Love, love, love-

You make me feel like love, love, love-

I think I am in love-!

#johnkat #john egbert #karkat vantas #story #homestuck #hs #poem #love poetry #fluff #ahhhhh #temmie told me to post this before going to bed #and i wasnt sure but i really really like it so #here!!#its posted on ao3 too #i made this one sort of aimlessly one day #i just wanted to write about poems #but i didnt wanna write poems #(spoiler i did anyway)#anyways i dunno if yall have noticed but #i like describing things in weird ways??#or maybe theyre normal ways #idk i like attaching ideas and feelings to each other in ways that seem to only make sense within my head #like 'he is the taste of cheap microwaved food cooked just right enough to be good'#how am i supposed to tell you how that translates into a good feeling?#or how i just know how that feels although you might not??#so thats my basis for everything i write including stories and poems #i know every meaning and every word and hope dearly that you will find them #and if not at least find your own #anyways better post this lmao #thanks for reading!!

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heystuckstuck · 5 years

Text

humanstuck au headcanons

aradia is half italian, half black, with olive toned, light brown skin and dark brown eyes. she has long, curly brown hair that she does not brush or comb. she’s tall, about 5’10, and thin, with minimal curves, though she is not stick-thin. she often plays d&d with tavros, vriska and terezi. her closest friends are feferi and tavros, with whom she likes to larp and play videogames. she has an outstanding interest in archaeology and collects dead insect wings. she also dabbles in self-taught taxidermy. she’s odd, but fairly friendly, so she’s well-liked at school and amongst her friends. she lives with both of her parents and is an only child. her cousin damara lived with them through highschool, but the two of them didn’t get along very well. she has a sheepdog named frogger, who she takes on her adventures to potentially haunted places.

tavros is mexican and has hesitant speech with a fairly heavy accent. he’s got tanned skin and dark brown hair styled into a fohawk and brown eyes. he’s got freckles scattered across his face and nose. he’s fairly small, standing at only about 5’6, and his chest is thin with a tiny amount of pudge collecting at his tummy. he also has fairly muscular arms, from after his accident, when he was wheelchair-bound. he, vriska, terezi,and aradia were in a car accident their freshman year, killing his mother and causing his legs to be amputated from the knee down. he has robotic prosthetics gifted to him by the members of his school’s robotics club. he is very interested in disney, particularly peter pan, pokemon, and likes to watch anime. his best friends are aradia and nepeta. he also has a service/emotional support dog, a pomeranian named tinkerbell. he’s also vegetarian.

sollux is half korean, half swedish and has both heterochromia and a lisp. he doesn’t show much of the swedish side at all, with his olive toned skin and black hair, which he keeps fairly shaggy. he doesn’t like to cut it. his twin sister is nepeta, but he doesn’t spend a ton of time with her. his closest friends are karkat and feferi, who he sort of both hates and loves simultaneously. he has bipolar disorder and forgets his medication fairly frequently, despite leaving post-it’s all over the house to help him remember. he likes to play video games and code things and he’s pretty good at it, which is a fact he doesn’t let people forget. he’s tall, 6’0, and very skinny because his diet consists of coffee and cheetos for the most part. he has debilitating migraines and a tendency to have somewhat prophetic dreams, so anytime he has a nightmare, he feels paranoid beyond all belief.

karkat is half indian, half greek, which evens out his skin tone so he’s in between light and dark skinned. his eyes are hazel and he has thick, heavy eyebrows. he actually has a very pleasant looking face, appearing very approachable until he opens his mouth. he has a very grating sense of humor, which tends to hurt people’s feelings, but he doesn’t really mean any of the harsh things he says. he enjoys watching romcoms and helps his girlfriends paint their nails and braid their hair and does so with only a traditional karkat grumble of it being too much effort, not that it’s emasculating. his closest friends are dave and sollux, which he would never admit because he is too busy pretending that he hates their guts. he considers himself the leader of their friend group and so does everyone else, relying on him for begrudging advice and tough love, despite really being a softie underneath it all. he’s fairly tall as well, 6’0, but pretty thick and slightly muscular. he doesn’t work out a ton, just enough to keep himself toned. he is the only other person to join nepeta and equius in their daily gym routine.

nepeta is sollux’s twin sister, so she is also half swedish and half korean. they are fraternal twins and she picked up all of the swedish genes. all of them. so many swedish genes. she’s fairly small in stature, barely scraping 5’4 and has short, honey blonde hair and blue-green eyes and thin lips. she also had a cleft palate when she was younger and has a scar on her upper lip from getting it fixed. she’s very muscular and tough, and extremely strong despite her small size. she has a full six pack. her closest friends are equius and tavros. for the most part, she spends her time with equius working out and arguing and utilizes her time spent with tavros to practice her other hobbies, like larping and d&d. she has a pet cat that she named pounce de leon and she takes her for walks, which she enjoys.

kanaya is armenian and originally from england, and so has an accent. she has short ink-black hair and hazel eyes bordering on the green side. she is very elegant and wears a full face of makeup everyday, with dark lipstick ranging in tone from ruby to emerald to black sometimes. she likes to practice her makeup skills on her friends, including the boys, which, excluding eridan, will not let her. she is a lesbian and is out and fairly proud of her identity. her mother is a fashion designer and kanaya is following fast in her footsteps. she enjoys spending her time gardening and reading erotic vampire romance novels, which she shares with karkat. her closest friends are karkat and vriska, both of whom she fusses over and drives them absolutely crazy. she has a penchant for knitting and gives her friends homemade scarves for christmas every year. it’s a tradition. she’s fairly bottom heavy with curvy hips and a small chest, which brings her great embarrassment. she also has very long legs and is quite tall, standing at about 6’1.

terezi is korean and adopted by her mother’s friend. this friend happens to be the mother of the person she has dubbed her scourge sister, vriska. terezi is slight and made of all angles and bones and stands at 5’7. she wishes she was taller, because she’d be a more threatening presence that way. she has braces, always with bands colored teal and red. she has black hair and dark brown eyes and is so thin because she exists on a diet of sugary snacks and that alone. she’s the captain of the school’s debate team because she refuses to admit defeat. she has an albino ferret called chief deputy pyralspite, which serves as the mascot of the debate team. her best friends are karkat and sollux, who she consistently harasses and refuses to leave alone. her hobbies include mock trials, eating fruit snacks, and searching abandoned buildings with aradia, in the hopes of catching a spook. she thinks it would be fun.

vriska is 6’2 and thin. not quite as thin as terezi but she’s still very angular. she has long blonde hair that she dyes blue at the ends with kool-aid and dresses in baggy flannels and t-shirts that do nothing for her. she’s of swedish descent and looks it, with her extremely pale skin and hair. she’s adopted sisters with terezi and latula and the younger sister of aranea. things get more complicated when you throw in her step brothers, eridan and cronus. her mother married their dad when she was in 7th grade and she’s been spitefully teasing eridan ever since. she’s lanky and awkwardly built and doesn’t have much charm about her but makes up for it by meddling with her friends. she lost and eye and her arm in the car accident she was in freshman year and sometimes she thinks her left arm still itches. it doesn’t cause it no longer exists. her closes at friends are tavros and kanaya, who she likes to mess with. she likes spiders and creepy crawlies and often can be found begrudgingly helping aradia find them.

equius is tall and exceptionally broad at 6’4. he has long hair that he wears down all the time despite his tendency to sweat and really likes horses. he really likes them. he works out daily with or without nepeta, and defends her daily. he’s odd and people find him vaguely off-putting more often than not. he has a weird obsession with gamzee that nepeta insists is a crush. his best friends are nepeta and gamzee, despite his inability to either take it easy or smoke weed. he finds most of his friends to be bothersome but he likes them anyway. he’s native american and has black hair and eyes that are bordering on black as well.

gamzee is a stoner. he’s exceptionally tall, 6’7, and very very thin, despite constantly eating. he’s dark skinned with vitiligo and tends to have a slow reaction time. he’s weird but he’s so nice that everyone likes him except his friends, who sort of hate and love him at the same time. his attempts to learn to ride the unicycle have all ended in failure but he is determined. his best friends are tavros, who raps with him, and karkat, who pretends to be unable to stand him. he has wild messy hair and giant hands. he’s a juggalo and listens to icp and loves them, despite being nonviolent.

eridan is from australia and has a watered down aussie accent that he tries to make as english sounding as possible. he’s on the swim team with feferi and has thick muscles and a broad chest. he’s 6’3 and actually very handsome, with an angular face and a sharp nose. he wears huge glasses and dyes a chunk of the front of his hair blonde, which offsets his attractiveness. his hair is medium brown and his eyes are a bright shade of hazel. he’s half indian, half white and so his skin is deep medium brown and covered with soft freckles that he is embarrassed about. he loves history class and is also on the debate team and is the only person who can even come close to arguing terezi down. he enjoys watching war documentaries and actually appreciates historical musicals (exhibit a: fiddler on the roof). he enjoys all of his friends, despite pretending not to, and he will participate in all of their hobbies with them. he often comes across as pretentious but has been dialed back a lot by the teasing of his friends. his closest friends are feferi and karkat.

feferi is hawaiian. that’s all. just kidding. she has long curly hair and bright brown eyes. she’s in show choir and on the swim team and the class president and nobody knows how she manages to balance all of them. she’s thick and muscular, about 5’10 and bubbly very consistently. she is one of the few who is rarely annoyed by her friends. she enjoys swimming, exploring and actually quite enjoys playing games with her friends. her closest friends are eridan and sollux who don’t get along very often and constantly bicker despite caring for each other a lot

john has pale skin and black hair and the bluest eyes ever. he’s got a lopsided smile that he wears almost all the time, with those goofy too-big teeth. jade is his older half-sister, with whom he shares a father. he enjoys terrible movies and pulling pranks on all of his friends. no one is safe. he’s known for always joking and never really being serious, unless it’s about whatever movie he’s most recently watched. he’s never seen a movie he didn’t like, with the exception of every movie that karkat likes, mostly to irk him. his closest friends are dave and karkat and he spends most of his time with them. he’s the proud owner of a small golden cocker spaniel named casey. he’s 5’11 and fairly trim due to his fast metabolism.

jade is john’s older half-sister. they share the same father, who is white, but her mother is a pacific islander. she was raised by her mother until the age of ten, when she passed away. she then moved in with her dad and half-brother, john. jade has long, dark hair and deep hazel eyes. she’s tall and fit from years of adventuring. she often goes barefoot and has very calloused feet and hands. she enjoys gardening and has a strong love for animals. her closest friends are tavros and feferi. she’s tal, 6’0, taller than john, which bothers him, of course. she was gifted a white german shepherd named bequerel for her thirteenth birthday.

dave is tall, 6’2, lanky and pale with little muscle mass to be found. he’s not albino and has light blonde hair and reddish brown eyes. he spends most of his free time mixing songs that he shows to no one. he explores haunted places with aradia and they share a mutual fondness for dead things. more than anything else, he enjoys giving his friends a hard time. he enjoys swords and takes up boxing his freshman year, which he’s surprisingly good at. he joined the debate team with terezi purely for shits and giggles but ended up enjoying it far more than he expected. he’s the proud owner of a pug dubbed “the mayor of can town” and a white german shepherd named maplehoof, who is beq’s littermate.

rose is shorter than her twin brother, standing at only 5’2. she makes up for her lack of height in sarcastic and analytical spirit however, and patronizes all of her friends to the point that they don’t even know if she likes them or not. she does. she has short blonde hair and a pinched face with thin lips and large eyes. she’s a proud lesbian and is very open about her sexuality. she enjoys reading and actually gardens with jade and kanaya a lot of the time. she’s an enthusiastic knitter, her specialty being sweaters, which she makes for her friends and siblings. she has a sturdy tuxedo cat called jaspers and she likes him but also doesn’t at the same time.

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gamzee-the-capricious-fanfic · 5 years

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Chapter 4

Notes: Nothing really groundbreaking in this chapter lol, just that on average each chapter is 7 to 8 pages and if I put the big shit in this chapter it would be super long. Hope you enjoy it anyway!!

You wake up to someone shaking you quite vigorously. You blink sleepily and mumble.

"'m too tired for this shit motherfucker." You glance over to see it's Karkat.

"Well get over it. It's your fault we ended up going to sleep so late."

"That's harsh bro." You yawn and stretch out on the couch. Karkat is looking at you impatiently.

"You have an hour and a half to get ready so I'd get a move on if I were you."

You nod lazily, all in motherfuckin time. Tavros walks in rubbing his eyes all sleepily. You can't help but to think he is damn cute when sleepy, well to be fair he is damn cute all the time but especially when he is sleepy.

"Mornin T-dog" you manage a lazy ass wave.

"Mornin Gamzee, d-did you uh fall asleep in here?"

"Mhm, bed was just too damn far."

Tavros giggles. "Could of uh, just went to my bed if it uh, would have been easier." He immediately blushes profusely. "U-uh i mean, uhhh. G-gotta go, talk to you later!" He very quickly heads out into the hall, presumably going to the bathroom.

You look at Karkat wide eyed, "uh.. did that.. make any sense to you? He wasn't like, I mean it sounded kind of like maybe…" you trail off. Best not get your hopes up on all that. He was probably just joking.

"God you're such a fucking dumbass."

"How so Karbro?"

"Clearly, Gamzee, Tavros has red feelings for you and we all know how you feel about him. I swear you two idiots would be perfect together if you weren't so fucking stupid."

"Wait.. really? No joke?"

"Oh my god, yes Gamzee, no fucking jokes here." He gestures around wildly, "do you fucking see any jokes dipshit."

Dave walks in. "I dunno dude, I think I see one joke in this room." He's looking at you. You growl a bit under your breath but you stop once you hear Karkat chuckle a bit.

"Bro, are you siding with motherfuckin Strider over me??"

"No, no, it's just, I mean it's kinda funny Gamzee."

"Well I think it's motherfuckin rude."

Dave interjects. "You're literally a clown. A walking joke, literally."

You stand up swiftly, that pisses you off. "Oh? Want me to show you how motherfuckin funny I can be?" You growl threateningly.

"Oh I'm so scared."

You take a step forward but Karkat grabs your arm. "Gamzee. Shower, go." He points towards the door giving you a no nonsense look. You grumble a bit but you do as he says. As you get yourself all cleaned up and ready for the day you can’t help but to think about Tavros. Does he really feel the same feelings as you? I mean Karkat wouldn’t lead you wrong, and he does notice these kinds of things so… Maybe it is true? Should you make a move then? Before you can really consider that much more Karkat comes and shouts at you for taking too long.

"I swear to God if you make me late for our first fucking class Gamzee. I mean fuck do you even know your schedule?"

You give him a sweet lil smile. "Nope. But I know you do.~"

Karkat sighs. "Yeah, you're not wrong. I fucking did your schedule cause I know you're a dumbass. It's the same as mine so just follow me around like a little quackbeast."

You figured as much. "All right Karbro, I'm all up and ready anyway so lead away."

"... You literally don't have your bag dipshit."

"Uh.. aaallrriighhtyy I'm almost ready then." You look embarrassed, of course, the most important thing. You run to the room and grab it real fast then come back to Karkat. "Ok, now I'm motherfuckin ready."

You give him a double thumbs up and a cheesy smile. He rolls his eyes at your antics and mumbles something about associating with idiots. Either way he grabs your hand and pulls you off towards your first class. You walk hand in hand across campus heading for the humanities building or so Karkat called it. All the buildings kind of look the same to you. As you walk you notice a few humans giving you guys weird looks, you wonder why but soon dismiss it as you enter the building. The halls are bustling with trolls you notice, you give Karkat a questioning look.

“There are a lot of classes about human culture here so of course there is going to be a bunch of trolls.” He gives you a look that suggests you should have thought about that. “Anyway most of our classes are here, Earth History, Human psychology, and English. We are going to English 101 right now.”

You sigh dramatically. You get the feeling that it is going to be a very boring day. And it is, once you got through with the humanities building you and Karkat had to walk all the way across campus to the science building to learn about Earth biology and such. Then again you had to walk a ridiculous distance to your final class. Human Health. It seemed to be a waste of a day honestly, each class went over boring “syllabus” shit and you learned nothing.

However, throughout the day there was this uncomfortable atmosphere. Of the trolls attending the university the mid to lowbloods rarely glanced you and Karkat’s way. Unless they sat next to you where they looked very uncomfortable and your attempts to look all friendly like were not appreciated and they just looked more scared. Same with the humans. John, Jade, Rose, and Dave are so chill with you and your friends that you assumed other humans would be ok like that too but turns out that was a big resounding motherfuckin no. The case was very different with the Higher Castes. Blue and up were openly disgusted by both you and Karkat. With Karkat it was more understandable, he’s a mutant and we were taught that mutants shouldn’t exist and yada yada. You never really cared.

You are not sure if they give you looks because you clearly associate with Karkat or if there is another reason. Other than your friends you never really associated to much with other High Bloods despite you being a purple blood of the faith. You were mostly high all the time so you didn’t get out much. But now you can see that your fellow purple blooded motherfuckers are MUCH taller than you and typically built heavier. You never really realized that you were so physically stunted in comparison. That said you still are much taller than most of your friends. Equius is taller than you, so is Feferi. Eridan and Vriska are about your height. And then the rest of your friends are shorter whether by a little or a lot. Nepeta being the shortest of them all yet still as fierce as she is cute.

When you guys finally head back to the dorm building you make sure to keep Karkat close to you. You don’t think anyone will try anything at least while they are under human supervision but you’d rather be safe than sorry, you would never forgive yourself if something happened to Karkat. You almost laugh, first Karkat was worrying over you and now you are doing the same to him. Karkat was oddly silent for the walk. You weren’t adding any commentary yourself but typically Karkat is almost always going on about something. Neither of you guys speak until you enter the room.

“Wow, maybe this is going to be harder than anticipated.”

You glance at Karkat then hum in agreement. “I don’t think you are the only problem Kar.” You gesture to yourself. “I’m pretty sure I got some dirty looks too. Never really realized how short I was compared to others of my blood. Then add up the both of us together, the mutant and the druggy.” You sigh dramatically. You had hoped your dramaticism would lighten the mood but Karkat still looks insecure.

“Look, despite me being all up a short motherfucker I’m still more than strong enough to protect my best bro.” You stick your tongue out at him and flex your arms comedically. It works, Karkat gives a soft chuckle.

“You look ridiculous, please stop I swear to god I am going to throw up at this display of idiocy.”

You laugh and oblige. “Besides, the humans aren’t all happy with violence and all that. Any troll who does shit will be booted from Earth most likely.” Karkat nods and looks a bit better, reassured by your words. “Now how about we get our comfort on on the couch and watch some shitty romcoms.”

“Fuck you they are NOT shitty!” You just laugh.

A few weeks pass relatively uneventfully. The humans started relaxing a bit in the trolls presence and some of the highbloods appear to have gotten bored of giving you and Karkat menacing looks. That doesn’t mean all of them have quite their shit but it is way better and both you and Karkat feel much more relaxed about it. The only interesting thing that has been happening has been you and Dave continuing your fued. If you didn’t know better you would assume he was black flirting with you, but as a human you doubt he would understand the concept. The other three don’t seem to. Well, maybe Rose does, she is pretty smart but appears to have no interest in any of the other romances. So there you are, head in Karkat’s lap on the couch complaining about Dave.

“Ugghhh, Dave is such a motherfucking asshole.” you practically growl each word your frustration quite evident.

“He’s not that bad Gamzee.” Karkat mutters a slight blush on his face.

“Kaaarrrrkkkaaattt, stop defending him! Can’t you see I am suffering? The black feelings in my blood pusher are almost too much for this motherfucker to bear.” you say this very dramatically.

“Well, maybe stop fucking flirting with him and do something more productive. For example, you still haven’t made a move regarding Tavros. Even though I literally told you that he feels the same as you do. I swear everyone is just waiting with bated breath for you two bulge fondlers to just do something already. The tension between you too is almost palpable. If one of you guys don’t say anything we are all going to start frothing at the mouth starved for the sweet sweet release that you two getting together will bring us.”

You blush profusely. “Well it’s not like it is easy to just up and confess to your red crush. What am I supposed to say? What if I fuck it up?? You know I’m not good with words when I am nervous!.”

“Uh, no I am not, for one I don’t think I have ever seen you nervous. You have idiot confidence, which is to say that it’s a lot of confidence because you are stupid as fuck.”

“..Uh.. Point taken? Still, I don’t know, should I take him on a date? What if he thinks it is just a friendly outing?” You groan with frustration, hiding your embarrassed face with your hands.

“Well Gamzee, you don’t know until you try dumbass. Tavros is probably too shy to make a move so it’s kind of on you bud.”

You groan again. And of course Tavros just happens to walk into the dorm room.

“Uh.. Are you alright Gam?”

You stutter and stumble over your words. “I uh, f-fuck, uhhh, just great, fantastic, um, never better! T-totally wasn’t talking about you or anything! Like hah! Why would I be talking about my cute- u-uh I mean cool! Rap buddy. Yeah.” Your face feels like it is on fire.

“Um, o-ok, and uhh, thanks m-maybe? I uhh, j-just remembered that I t-totally forgot that I have a class I need to be at uh, so b-bye!” He rushes out of the dorm room as fast as possible. He doesn’t have his bag. Also It is like 8 o’clock and you know he doesn’t have night classes.

“Well, that was a fucking trainwreck.” Karkat sighs. That is an understatement.

“Uuuuuuuuuugggghhhhhh!” you groan for the damn third time. “I told you I would motherfuckin fuck it up”

“Yeah, I stand corrected. I didn’t realize the full extent of how socially incompetent you two are. Look, how about you just ask him to a movie or something and you know, don’t be an awkward fuckwad. Just act fucking normal and then just make a move, you know, like the classic stretch and arm over his shoulder thing. If he has literally any braincells he is sure to figure out the meaning of that at least. Look, how about we watch some movies and you take fucking notes on how to actually fucking do this shit.” You are 99% sure this is just an excuse to just watch romcoms. But you just roll your eyes with a smile and just go with it.

Even later that night when Tavros finally returns to the room you are on the couch trying to look suave and cool but you are probably failing. “Uh, hey Tavbro, sorry about earlier. Um, sooo by chance would you be down to see a motherfuckin movie or maybe um just chill the fuck out somewhere, get some food or whatever. If you want to.” You look away avoiding eye contact.

“Uh, yeah, that um, sounds like fun. I’d be uh, down to see a movie with you.” In your peripheral vision you can see he is biting his lip. He says the next thing really quickly. “Imeantotallyinafriendwayofcourse!” Your smile falters a bit before you force it back on your face. “..cool, great, yeah, of course..” Your voice sounds a bit strained. Wow this is going badly.

“Well, um, does tomorrow night sound up and good with you?”

“Y-yeah, uh, sounds great.”

“Wicked. Um, anyway I’m just going to uh..” you gesture towards the bedroom. “..sleep and, yeah.” You abruptly stand up and quickly yeet yourself up into your bed and burrow into your blankets with amazing speed. You bury your face into your pillow to hide the shame written all over your face. You really dicked this up huh. After a few minutes Tavros eventually comes into the room and heads to bed. At least you assume that as your face is buried into your pillow at the moment. It takes you a while but eventually you drift off to sleep.

#chapter 4

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hootpoop12 · 5 years

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Ok, Meat route feelings:

Ok, this is...by FAR the superior route just saying. Not. That that is saying much seeing what the candy route was but every time I fall into despair over this I just grit my teeth and think about how parts of meat weren’t terrible pfft

-Lets get the johnrezi out of the way cause that’s kinda my thing. So. Good shit pfft I will admit I was little worried that Calliope and mainly Dirk could have tampered with them a bit but I’m pretty sure for the most part they didn’t? Dirk kinda made John feel weird post coital which kinda pissed me off but other than that. Them feelings 100% legit. These two people genuinely love each other. In both routes John’s thought would ALWAYS drift back to Terezi and Terezi’s only comfort was having John’s body with her after it all. Their romance is both cathartic because they are two MISERABLE people who only have each other to understand their feelings and fucking tragic because in candy all he had was a picture and in meat they had a physical confirmation of their feelings only for it to be voyeur’d and then ripped away by fucking John’s death. If there is more to come- I can only image there is- Terezi and Vriska will hopefully somehow team up and look for a way to revive John. Even If their romance was fleeting like 95% ship in Homestuck their support and care for one another is fucking REAL. It was straight UP the only real thing in Candy and I will fight others who say differently.

-John going back in time to round everyone up felt weird. For the first time they all really felt like children and them all fighting lord english? WOW. Ouch. Especially Dave?? This Dave was the last to go and in the most brutal fucking way?? Kid had to watch Rose and Jade die and still fought pretty well, though. which goes to show Dave is a fucked up dude but when it comes to shit that needs to get done he can hold his own. Thaaaaaats why Adult Dave in both epilogues kinda grated on me a little? Not to fucking say UGH Dave is now more healed and stable this sucks!! I’m more saying there’s a lot of fics that whumpify Dave into a soft boi who too pure for this world and it slightly reminds me of it. That’s probably more of me just being to attached to MY view and headcanons of Dave, though, and maybe I need to let that go a little?

-Davekat finally fucking happened. Ten years is too long of a slow burn for me I’m sorry lmao seriously I sound like Dirk when I say this but I really thought they sac’d up during the meteor and were already in a relationship. Dave’s whole conversation with John on the lilypad.......literally sounded like he was in a relationship with Karkat.......what the hell, honestly...........I’m glad it was on Dave’s own volition rather than’s Dirk’s gross as fuck pushing at least.

-That brings us to Dirk. The man who has been making my stomach church whenever I remember. My feelings about him are...............fucking complicated. I’ve been reblogging and bitching about him being “ruined” or whatever but.......That really is the simplified version of what I’ve been thinking. I think.....He’s been corrupted by his aspect or he’s just taking this heel “must be the new villain” too seriously. Like, I fucking despise it when people go off and say Bro was corrupted by Cal or Gamzee was corrupted by literally anything cause those two are just fucking trash, I’m sorry. I think I’m mostly upset by Dirk more than anything because his WHOLE thing was that he was a controlling dude with the potential to become an atrocious man and that he was starting to really take control of his path and work his way into becoming a better person. His talk with Jane on his sacrificial slab? His talk with Dave on the roof..........His heart aspect had begun to bring all his splinters together for his ultimate self and when the majority of your splinters carry a very sociopathic personality..............Man, there was literally no hope for him ever, huh? Literally none. The theme of working towards a better version of yourself is MEANINGLESS if your name is Dirk Strider. A character who struggles with depression, suicide, and absolute self loathing and his only path is this. Become the monster he was always terrified to become. Like I’m straight up about to cry writing this holy shit. Dirk is one of my favorite characters of all time- my FIRST favorite character when reading the comic- one of my MAIN reasons for reading it because I heard there was a canon gay character and I needed that in that time of my life. What almost hurts just as much as Dirk being a good guy and forcefully having this fate thrust upon him is that Roxy, the person Dirk cared about the most,.........Like............misgendering them. and being incredibly flippant and rude about trans stuff.......I can’t even begin to describe how much it hurt to read the character you looked up so much fucking being terrible about something that means so much to you. I’m agender and it just hurt is all I’m saying. This leads back to the bizarre issue of Dirk also being sexist and using gay in a strangely duragatory way. Like, Dirk grew up not really putting values on labels so for him to be weirdly transphobic does lead back to the ideas of this being a corrupted Dirk or him just playing the role of a villain. I do believe there is still the old Dirk we know in there, however, as even now Dirk states he could NOT hurt Dave. So some hope?

-Jake. I’m pretty sure Hussie fucking hates the dude like holy shit lmao......lmao in the least funniest way..............In both route Jake is jerked around like a plaything, having his personality dampened by the oppressive narrative. The one time we see Jake have repreive from such a shitty fate is when he’s talking to davekat about the election. That was the single moment we saw the curtain fall and the “intelligence” reenter the dude. I know this is like the “fanon” version of Jake. Every single character has fallen to that: whumpified Dave, puppet master dirk, bitchy mean jane, ect but litereally reading about him coming back to himself fucking HURT. Him being made to be obsessed with Dirk was so fucking gross I was cringing the entire time. The last few months I’ve been slowly accepting DirkJake back into my heart and this just fucking SHATTERED that warmth holy shit. Jake’s struggles with non-consensual bullshit is really starting to wear me down I just want him to be happy and RESPECTED.

-Alrighty heavy stuff out of the way I will say this: I read candy first and at the end where Alt!Calliope is speaking to Aradia I had almost no goddamn idea what the fuck she was talking about. I even started to get kinda angry cause Homestuck tends to not take itself TOO seriously? There are some philosopical mind melting shit to read and consider but never too much where it’s incomprehensible to me? So when I finished candy I was like alright. Hussie just wanted to jerk himself off. whatever. Then I read meat and was like. OH. This.......this is actually fantastically interesting I can do this meta bullshit! and despite everything I just said about Dirk..........I fucking MISSED reading in his voice and it caught me off guard SO much which is what I love about Homestuck. There were a lot of tip offs but the one that really stood out to me before finding out was the Jake and Jane makeout. It kept going back to Dirk and I was very surprised by that? Jake sounded like he was over Dirk and yet here he was......unable to stop thinking about it? Shit makes. SO much sense I definitely am gonna reread it to look for other stuff, too. The tug of war via the narrative was incrediably entertaining as well.....Dirk is like a super sensitve incel now (caliborn would be proud) so it was hilarious to see him lose grip of it to Calliope. UGH I’m a little guilty to say it but I’m such a slut for anything Dirk I’m also KINDA looking forward to see where this goes and enjoying him being a villain A LITTLE. I know I sound wish washy but hey sometimes feelings contradict!

#Homestuck #upd8 #Homestuck spoilers #personal #dirk strider #johnrezi

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davekat-sucks · 2 years

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One huge argument against the main davekat argument—that Dave could learn to open up and not hide behind irony around karkat—is that karkat is probably the worst character for someone to “loosen up” around considering how angry he is all the time. Karkat is an angry character in canon. He has a sharp tongue. Jade would be much better to perform the role of getting Dave to be soft and vulnerable than karkat because if someone had issues being vulnerable, why would they open up to karkat, who is known for being antagonistic? The situations where karkat is being gentle with Dave are all very OOC, but on the other hand, Jade doesn’t have those anger issues. Jade wouldn’t be antagonistic.

Terezi and Nepeta would be able to handle Karkat’s anger because they’re trolls and not insecure about their feelings and whatnot. I can just see Dave trying to open up to Karkat about his feelings and Karkat being very awkward, oblivious, and unintentionally hurtful with his words.

People claim that Jade is bitchy, but it's only if her buttons are really pushed that there's so much she has to be this silly happy girl until tolerance starts to wear thin. The same can be applied to John as well when you think about it. The Strilondes are more guarded while Harleyberts gives people the benefit of the doubt and try to find good in others before judging. Which is good for someone like Jade to help Dave to open up and show that it is okay to have this vulnerable moments. She won't think less of him if she sees it. Karkat being gentle really is OOC from the fandom side just to play up the fluff uwu soft sad bois with Davekat. I would have understand it more he does emulate gestures and actions that he has seen in romcoms in hopes that it would work out well with his partner. But would soon realize that even with his extensive knowledge in quadrants and romance from movies, wouldn't really apply in his present life. What works in the books and movies are not easily applied to the real world and it would be something Karkat would have to see and realize about his interest in romance and quadrants. Karkat's obliviousness to Terezi's feelings in Act 5 was also enough to see that subtle hints from Terezi, Karkat doesn't get it and unintentionally says something the opposite of what she expects. His talk with her in Openbound is the closest thing as he gets to really be his honest self and wanting to help the other. But it is because he has seen Terezi getting mixed up with people like Vriska or Gamzee, influencers that harm her mentality and she tries to brush it off as a natural thing because their alien race has to be used to this kind of thing. Karkat wants Terezi to break out of the viscous cycle and let Terezi be healed and take the kindness as it is. I can't imagine it with Dave, even after Dave's bullshit talk with Dirk Post Retcon. Karkat also has admit to dance around responding to Nepeta's feelings. He is aware of it, but hasn't done much to directly confront her. Was it out of fear from Equius' wrath that if he rejects her and Nepeta gets upset, Karkat is gonna get his ass kicked or worse? Does he continue playing up this grouchy dude in order to push her away, but still goes along like roleplaying with her when they talk out of kindness? He is shown to care about Nepeta on his talk with Eridan, but shows a bit of hypocrisy on his end if he can't tell Nepeta that he doesn't share those same red feelings or wish they could still be friends. At best, Karkat's blunt words work only for people that really have gone through and done shit. I can imagine his rant and talk with Eridan to be really heated. Karkat would guilty for not taking action at the time for Muderstuck and is now able to confront his old friend about it properly. He just happen to fail it when Karkat was speaking to PAST Eridan, not current Eridan. So even Karkat's decision of going to the past to tell him he's upset of his friend's future/current actions, while not being able to give details of what Eridan has done for sake of stable time loops and other bullshit. What is stopping Karkat from spilling those out to him at that moment? Friends dying? That he genuinely had though Eridan as a close friend that genocide was the last thing on his mind? Either way, Karkat might be the last person to open up to in sensitive moments.

#Karkat Vantas #Homestuck #Homestuck fandom #Davekat #Dave x Karkat #DavexKarkat #DaveKarkat #DaveKar #KarDave #KatDave #Dave Strider

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paechwrites · 5 years

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more oneshots for @caruleanfox 's au, enjoy!! ʕ•ﻌ•ʔ

Carding her fingers through bleach hair, mussing up the strands but quickly fixing the small mess, Rose threw down a smile at her son, met with a disapproving look to alert Rose for her to stop messing with his hair. She merely responded with a teasing smirk, giving his hair one more tousle before permanently leaving it fixed. Jasper swiped a quick hand over his white hair, just to make sure, before bunching up Rose's skirt in his small hand.

Suddenly, Kanaya came rushing towards her wife and son, rubbing her palms against her skirt then making a quick check that her leather jacket was on properly.

"Oh, I hope we aren't too late," Kanaya fussed, kneeling down momentarily to reaffirm Jasper's bowtie. "We can't afford to be, really, at least not this time."

Rose perked up an eyebrow, untangling her son's grip and taking Jasper's warm hand into hers. "Not to point fingers, but it's mainly you that has time consuming sessions with your makeup."

Kanaya stood tall, brows furrowing questionably. "Whatever are you implying, Rose?"

"You look great, Kan," Rose snickered, tapping her shoulder lightly. "Let's get going, before Karkat starts ranting about how we're an hour late to meeting our dear, new nephew."

Kanaya chuckled heartily, pulling at the edge of the contents of her shirt that hung low below her jacket. "He really does delve quite into his ranting, doesn't he?"

Rose slid a hand over her forearm, making the jadeblood follow her as they began trekking past the threshold of their house.

The hem of Jasper's pants dragged along the fresh grass, staining slightly green as he tightened his grip on his mother's hand, rambling on with questions.

"Are uncle Dave and Karkat getting rid of Maydae now?"

"No, they're not, Jasper." Rose answered simply.

"Then why did they have another one?"

"Because your uncles saw fit to have another child."

"To keep Maydae busy?"

"That's one assumption, I suppose, like a kitten."

"What if May doesn't like them?"

"Then they have to deal."

Jasper piped down after awhile, presumably sated with his questions, until his voice dropped light and airy, almost a little too hard for his parents to hear.

"Is May dying?"

Rose emitted an amused noise, as Kanaya suddenly patted his back.

"She's not dying, Jasper, don't worry," Kanaya assured, her hand perched on his stark white halo of hair. "Your uncles simply just thought it'd be nice to have another little troublemaker frolicking on Earth C, and it's splendid news for you as well, you have a new cousin!"

Jasper crinkled his button nose, tongue poking out between his nubby fangs that weren't pointed enough just yet to slice through meat. "Another Maydae?!"

Rose and Kanaya let out boisterous laughter, his hair getting affectionately ruffled up by Kanaya.

"The more, the merrier, as humans say it." Kanaya chimed, earning the hybrid to shake his head.

"They're both gonna eat all of our flowers in the garden!" Jasper yelled, locking the heels of his shoes into the ground, halting back Rose in the process. He disconnected their hands, beginning to sprint away and back to the house.

"We have to save them, mama!"

"Jasper!" Rose and Kanaya yapped in unison, quickly catching up with their son.

A knock rang throughout the cozy house, an excited three year old looking star gazed at the door and toddling over as quick as she can. She stood on the ends of her toes, reaching with effort for the knob and fumbling a few times, a frustrated scrunch of her face forming on her features. It wasn't until Dave appeared and managed to open the door, that the anticipated guests were at the doorstep and heaving just a tad, Jasper firmly locked in Kanaya's hold.

"Did you guys just do a jog-a-thon before coming over?" Dave mused out loud. Rose huffed lightly, entering the house with her wife still having Jasper tightly in her arms until Dave closed the door.

Rose kneeled down to Maydae's height, a warm smile painting her face. "And how has my wonderful niece been doing with a new addition to the menage?"

Dave shrugged, patting Maydae's head as he passed by. "She's been all up in his face the moment since me and Karkat brought him from the ecto labs."

"Drake is VERY tiny." Maydae piped up, hands folded behind her back. "And also quiet!"

Rose let out a litany of 'oh's, Kanaya flickering her gaze towards Dave in concern.

"I think he's just like that though, he does make a few grunts here and there." Dave stated, relieving Kanaya as she gave a content smile.

"It's just, ah, a bit of surprise and ridiculously concerning to hear Drake isn't as vocal as Maydae," Kanaya pursed her lips. "I mean, he is Karkat's son."

Dave sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, playfully murmuring, "ouch, sis."

"Where is uncle Karkat?" Jasper squeaked out, Dave directing him down the hall past the ripped up toys and abandoned plate of chicken nugget crumbs.

"He has your new lil cousin with him too." Dave said with a smile, interest piquing in Jasper. Out of the blue, Maydae grabbed his hand and dragged him along, taking him aback as he tried to keep up with his hyper cousin.

Barging into the room, greatly startling Karkat who was curled on the bed with a bundle close to his chest, Jasper and Maydae collided into the mattress' side, the youngest of the two haphazardly trying to climb onto the bed with her claws scraping the blankets.

"Dad! Dad! Jasper is here!" Maydae chanted. "Show Drake!"

Karkat shifted his weight unto his palm, pressing it into the mattress as he glimpsed behind himself to see two bleach haired heads poking above the mattress' height. Karkat groaned, sitting up languidly.

"Shhh," he whispered, pressing a finger to his lips. "Drake's sleeping."

Maydae and Jasper stared blankly at him for a moment, both nodding rapidly. Karkat looked beside him, carefully slipping an arm on the underside of a bright red grub, his claws gently caressing his head and much more rough troll skin as he settled him on his lap.

Stretching his body, Karkat hefted Maydae up on to the bed, then reached for Jasper and placed him on the opposite side of Maydae. Both children crowded around him, gazing thoroughly at the new grub who let out tiny sniffles and wriggles.

Jasper stared with surprise bubbling in his chest. He didn't seem anything like Maydae! He wasn't causing no form of havoc, running around and breaking vases, or eating random things he found interesting - Drake simply just laid there and rarely made a noise, the majority of them being soft sounding.

Jasper furrowed his eyebrows, vividly recalling when his oldest cousin was a grub herself; the amount of times she tried chewing on his story books when Rose and Kanaya offered to babysit would be too hard to count on his fingers, including the time when she stole the last freshly baked cookies from the table!

Truthfully, Jasper did care for Maydae, they were family after all and raised closely - but she definitely rather drained his energy to no end, even her friend that she seemed to be so infatuated with got on his nerves, not adding the fact Maydae would follow him like a lost puppy whenever their parents had a get-together.

Drake seemed much calmer, Jasper noted, leaning in more. Karkat formed a tiny grin on his face, nudging Jasper to receive his attention.

"Do you wanna hold him?" Karkat offered, the eldest hybrid jumping in surprise and looking as if he was a young buck caught in the headlights. Jasper shrugged, falling onto his knees as his claws scratched his skin.

"It's very easy, and he isn't heavy at all, here look," Karkat shifted Jasper's arms into a cradling position, cautiously picking back up Drake and slipping him into Jasper's arms.

Jasper turned stiff, not baring much knowledge of what exactly to do with a grub or if he was even holding him properly, but Karkat seemed to approve so he tread on. Once Drake gave a small wriggler, Jasper whipped his head up at Karkat for guidance or advice on what perhaps that could mean, or if Drake should be handed back.

"He does that a lot, don't worry." Karkat reassured, letting slide his daughter's claws digging into his sleeve as she watched them.

Jasper nodded sagely, turning his head back down at his little cousin.

Suddenly, Drake's eyes began fluttering open, burgundy orbs coming into focus and being greeted with Jasper. His mouth thinned into a straight line, averting his eyes back up at Karkat.

Maydae crawled onto Karkat's lap, plopping down there and leaning in close to Jasper and Drake.

Maydae emitted a wondrous sound at the sight of her brother's eyes, while Jasper shifted a little in his spot and slowly and carefully began hovering him towards her.

"May, you take him."

Before the grub could be slipped into Maydae's outstretched arms, Karkat hastily took Drake.

"Ah-ah, not right now," Karkat said, making Maydae pout in reply. "Have you even washed your hands yet?"

Maydae sighed, starting to crawl out of her father's lap and bounding off the bathroom.

As soon as the hybrid left, in came Rose, walking with light steps so as to not disrupt Drake. Rose walked over to Jasper's side, perching a hand on his shoulder as she took a good glance at Drake.

"Kanaya is off chatting with Dave, by the way," Rose uttered, already answering the question that was lurking in the mutant's head. "I couldn't wait any longer to greet my nephew."

She ran a soothing finger down the frame of Drake's chubby face, suddenly pulling her attention away as Jasper tugged at her shirt.

"I held him, mama." he said, quite proudly, making Rose giggle and reel her hand back from his shoulder to place it on his horn.

"Oh, did you?" Rose responded softly, a vigorous nod coming from Jasper. Silence fell upon them, the occasional small chat from Rose and Karkat puncturing the quietness, Jasper's curious sight meandering on the small bundle until he perked up.

"Mama, can I have a brother too like May?"

"Absolutely not."

#gift fic #the interactions in this were v fun to write #writing #praying no obvious mistakes in this lol

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haveyoueverseenoneinnature · 5 years

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You don’t remember falling asleep, but you have must have nodded off to the sway of Eridan’s arms and the steady beat of his bloodpusher, because the next thing you feel is being plopped into something soft and sinking in.

You flex your fingers and toes and sleepily burrow into the warmth. A cool hand and the texture of rings on your arms shocks you into reality, and your eyes fly open as you struggle to assume a defensive stance. Your feet slip in the avalanche of pillows and scarves and you fall sideways back into the pile with a soft thwap.

As you frantically attempt to regain your footing (your exhaustion and fear making it a nigh-hopeless task), your eyes focus on the source of the touch.

Eridan is standing above you, his hands gestured outwards placatingly. His cheeks are dusted and his lips are twitching slightly in the way you’re coming to realize means he’s trying to look suitably embarrassed while trying not to laugh.

Your shoulders drop and a relief tingles throughout your body. This lasts for only a moment before, now fully awake, you realize where you are sitting. A pile. You can feel your face burning red, and you’re caught between the urge to bury it in the pile and to not appear obscene by doing so.

You knew Eridan was pale for you, and that still feels weird to think, but you’d hadn’t thought of, no- had been desperately trying to not think of this.

Eridan was now leaning forwards and playing with the stitches of a pillow, looking very much as though he intended on sitting. On the pile. With you. You can’t help letting out a little squeak.

Eridan’s eyes resume their attention on you quicker than a bullet. You’re struck more than ever by the intensity of his gaze. You feel paralyzed in your spot, like a mouse who has just looked into the hungry eyes of the meowbeast.

He steps back hastily and swallows.

“I thought...wwe wwould-” He murmurs.

You yawn and rub your eyes. It’s taking expotionently more effort to keep them open. A small, shameless part of you wants to curl up on the pile and sleep, day-terrors and decency be damned.

“Oh. Right.” Eridan looks disappointed for a moment, before seeming to come upon a realization that makes his ear-fins perk up. “Right! Kar, you must be exhausted...followw me!”

He holds out his hand, and you take it gingerly. His hands are so much larger than yours, and so much cooler. You’re hyper-aware of every spot where your skin touches, in between rings and air.

He pulls you up gently, his other hand holding your shoulder heavy. Not letting go of your hand, he wraps his other arm around your shoulders.

The two of you walk through the halls of the ship, Eridan shepherding you along in a tight embrace that toes the line between lover and turnkey.

The ship is different from what you would have expected from Eridan, to say the least. You’re far from an expert on ships, considering that up until a few nights ago, you had thought you would be culled before you ever set foot on one. But you had seen pictures of the massive imperial ships of war, and the accompanying, smaller helms owned by individual highblood officers. You have seen pictures of Eridan’s hive, an ancient water-ship that had once carried his ancestor.

Although from differing times in Alternia’s history, what those ships had in common was that they were machines of war. Massive industrial growths of metal and flesh, and, from what you had seen in military-set-shows, cold and clinical inside, with sharp lines and utilitarian features.

You would have thought Eridan, with his, as you describe it, “massive military hard-on”, would have the most obnoxiously austere vessel he could get his webby hands on.

But as the two of you walk through the ship, you are constantly set aback by the softness of it. The walls are a light violet, and although the hallway floors are hard, the main room you had been in earlier was covered in plush carpets that you couldn’t help but sink your hands into. The lightning is soft, the type that makes you feel safe and a bit sleepy. There are posters for movies you love hanging aroundyou, and although you and Eridan are walking too quickly for you to make sure, you're almost positive those marks in the corners are director’s signatures. The thought is exciting enough that if it weren't for Eridan’s iron grip, you’re sure you would have spent hours fanboy-ing over them.

You crane your neck in an attempt to see over Eridan’s arms and dumb cape and nearly trip in the process. He slows and acknowledges the surroundings for the first time.

“You can stop to look at them. If you wwant.” He gestures sheepishly and reluctantly releases his hold on you.

You leap forward to examine the one closest to you, a poster for “In Which a Rust-Blooded Prostitute Delivers Services to A Visiting Indigo-Blood, Who In Turn Develops Red Feelings For Her, Creating a Situation Which Emphasizes Caste-Differences and the Difficulties Caste Disparity Can Present in a Relationship”.

You run your fingers over the glass case, examining the tiny signature until your puffs of breath make it too foggy to see. To your great embarrassment, an excited little trill escapes you.

Eridan makes a sound halfway between a squeak and a gasp, and when you look over, he looks surprised and thrilled. His foot is paused midair, his surprise and elation shocking enough to pause the habitual movement.

You want to melt into the wall, escape through an airlock, and never be seen again as you suffocate in the cold vacuum of space. Honestly, how many embarrassing and borderline-explicit things can you in one night?

‘Tis a question long debated by renowned killosophers, you think. No need, for you have found the answer! Infinity. An infinite amount of embarrassment can be amassed by one Karkat Vantas.

Eridan’s on you before you can process what’s happening. An arm slung around your waist in something half-resembling a hug. A momentary feeling like of being popped like a balloon, before Eridan seems to reluctantly resist his urge to squeeze. A hand rubs your side apologetically, and you instinctively twitch inward, knowing claws are so so close to your vulnerable stomach. You’re being half-carried away at twice your original speed, and Eridan is opening a door before you can think to say anything.

The room is large by your standards, but you adjusted for your rapidly changing frame-of-reference, you guess you’d downgrade it to medium. The walls are made of white stone, and the floor is a mosaic of different colored stones in geometric patterns and bits of the same white stone offset against each other.

You had seen this sort of room before, in movies. You look around the room, and yup. An empty pool, with mirrors on the other wall. A rack of fluffy violet and gold towels and bottles of stuff you’d probably have to run at least blue to recognize.

You try to bolt, but Eridan’s arm stays firm around your waist. Your hands shake and your vision is tunneling in on the empty tub.

You swallow. Your mouth is dry.

“You said that we were going to sleep.” You whisper, barely managing to choke out the words.

Eridan gives you a soft grin, and you know from the gentleness in his eyes that it’s not intentional but you can see his fangs peeking out of his mouth like a threat and. And-

His hand is cold on the small of your back. It’s grounding in the warm, damp room but your mind strays to his impeccably trimmed claws, razor-sharp.

“Wwell, you’re going to take a bath first.” He looks you up and down and affectionately pinches at your shirt. “You’re covered in sugar, and I doubt you’vve taken a bath or shower in the last wweek.”

“Ascension was only a night ago.” You frown. It seems both so long ago and an immediate threat. The night and day had been long, but a deep-seated sense of fear and resignation still courses through you, the fact that you are spared from culling still not fully registered with your brain.

He cocks his head and ruffles your hair. Indulgent. A little condescending, you guess, but you can’t bring yourself to be mad about it. That’s probably for the best, anyway. On a sliding scale of highblood-lowblood (mutant mutant mutant) interactions, condescending is pretty lucky.

@actuallysylveon here we go

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feastfic · 6 years

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How the beta trolls show affection:

Aradia: She can and will get spirits and ghosts to follow wherever you go and rub against you; when she's really craving affection she'll have them guide you to her, where she'll just hug and hold you in her lap. She'd love to give you kisses all over your face, muttering things you might not pick up on, but recognize as affectionate and guided towards you.

Tavros: He wouldn't be the one to directly show you that he wanted affection, but he'd definitely act differently. Especially via mumbling a little more, getting flushed easier by things you say, and rubbing at his metallic legs out of nervousness or anxiety. But oh! When you come to him, he's the sweetest thing! He'd //absolutely// love to let you sit on his lap and mess around with his hair and horns, or sometimes the other way around! It might become a war of back-and-forth compliments between you two, and it might just finish off with a sweet makeout initiated by you, or a simple kiss on the nose by him to catch you off guard and render you trying to say something clever.

Sollux: He's not too strong on affection, but he still acknowledges when he wants it and has taken to noticing when you want to, as well. And he's straightforward; no suggestive behavior, no sly comments to infer it. He just goes up and will hug you from behind, his chin either on your shoulder or head, where he'll proceed to pull you away from whatever you're doing so you can spend time with him instead. When he's nearly desperate for love, he'll slide in pet names for you whenever he can when he's got you close, calling you his "honey" and "bee." He'd kiss along your cheek and jawline, sometimes even your neck; almost anything if it meant he'd be close to you.

Karkat: Oh you'd know. He'd be a little more tensed and hushed around you, sometimes refuse to speak to you, and if you try talking to him he's already got his head turned away. Sometimes he'll flush so hard when you talk to him, the tips of his ears will turn a faint shade of his mutant red blood. But if he agrees to be close to you, he's almost an entirely different troll. He'd be surprisingly quiet, and soft and gentle whenever he holds or hugs you; if you want him to, he'll even tell you things that have happened over a period of time (most of the time he'll recall events from a week's time.) If you're distracted by his voice when he's telling you these tales, he'll try to sneak in a kiss to the cheek or your nose, but most of the time //you're// the one the deliver to him, which will earn you a very red crab-boy.

Nepeta: She'll be a little more clingy to you, and a lot more cat-like. She'd follow you around, mewl and whine, even rub up against your hand or legs, just for the attention. Now, she wouldn't be too demanding on this, but if you'd let it happen she's going to get you to hold her and carry her around. Then, cue the purrs! Eskimo kisses all the time! Nepeta would definitely leave kisses on your nose and ghost over your lips, her tail always either flicking behind her or curled around you. If you come to her, expect a very catty momma, who'll give you one of her coats to wear and wild role-playing stories.

Kanaya: She'll be smooth about it, slipping in sly flirts and sending winks your way. Most of the time when you'd get flushed, she'll take a nice bite from your neck, before kissing at it and murmuring small pet names and casual flirts. Of course, this isn't always what she'll do. If she isn't feeling flirty, and just wants to be close (and if you want her to,) she'll hold you to her chest, humming soft tunes and running her fingers through your hair. Needless to say, her motherly characteristics carry over into how she delivers affection, too; it's most prominent when she gives you a kiss on the cheek and then proceeds to pinch it playfully, saying how adorable you look.

Terezi: Her favorite thing to say to you when she wants your attention is; "H3Y PR3TTY PR3TTY, G1MM3 YOUR V1RG1N1TY! >:]" She'd never seriously mean it, but when she smells your blood rushing to your face she's gonna cackle. Most of the time, she'll be up-front about it, but in her own way. If you're her matesprit, she's always gonna have a cuddle session with you at least twice a week, where she holds your face in your hands and lick you, both to be a tease and to taste your blood beneath the skin. However, if you don't want it, she's gladly respectful of your opinion, and will make sure she doesn't do something you don't like again. If you manage to pluck off her glasses during a sesh, she'll fluster, before calling you "4N 4BSOLUT3 W4LNUT. TH3 WORST K1ND, L1K3 TH3 ON3S NOBODY L1K3S." It's all fun and games, though.

Vriska: She's going to distance herself from you. Not because she doesn't want to see you, but she just doesn't want you getting hurt. What she's really doing is rolling her dice, trying to get a roll that'll grant you great luck. But alas, most of the time she's caught by you, and she turns into an awkward mess, trying to be smooth-talking and slick. Yet when you just tell her to stop, to just be herself, the very first thing she's doing is slamming her lips into yours; a very rough but clearly passionate kiss. And oh lordy, if you're able to play with her hair, she's basically yours. As in; she isn't leaving your side, always having you by her.

Equius: For Equius, it's a very gradual shift in habit. First, he'll simply give you a smile whenever he sees you, which would then turn into very small compliments ("D--> you 100k nice today", etc.,) which would finally come off as him ceasing to work on robots and his machinery. Once you notice and piece together that he's just trying to be affectionate, and when you come up to him about, expect bear hugs from this man. He'll gladly carry you around if you wish, and it wouldn't be any trouble to him in the slightest! He's not much of a kissy kind of guy, but he'll sometimes slip in a few butterfly kisses on your nose or cheek when he has you in one of his STRONG embraces.

Gamzee: He's going to offer you sopor pies; say yes and he's hugging you. Say no, and he'll simply grin, nodding and giving you a; "nIcE, bRo." Since you'd be fairly close if he's seeking your affection, sometimes you and him would be making some wild concoction in the kitchen, which would escalate into a mess of slime decking both of your bodies. Gamzee would absolutely take you into his arms, just to play around and to get whatever got on him stick to you instead. Nonetheless, he'd help you clean off every time and later will do something you want him to, no matter what it is (or as long as it's within reason and doesn't involve you getting hurt.)

Eridan: For him, he always refuses to believe he was ever flushed for you. If you try to talk to him, he'll just turn away and even try to get you to leave, whether it be from a snide comment or just shoving you out. He just believes that one day you'll just find another troll to replace him and then it'd be over. The key with him is a lot of patience; you'd have to wait a fair bit to talk to him after that, which includes a lot of gentle words and articulating his emotions. For Eridan, it's not so much physical affection, as it is an understanding of both of your boundaries and a deep level of trust and respect for each other. What bits of "real" love you two exchange are small, but meaningful; he mostly delivers kisses to your cheek or nose, you execute hugs and small cuddle sessions the majority of the time.

Feferi: She knows when you want her around, and she's always accepting. On the other hand, she almost never actually comes around for her own desire. The princess doesn't want to bother you with something, so a majority of the time she gives you gifts to compensate for her ostensible lack of emotion. One day you'd catch on, and at first she'd be embarrassed and flustered, apologizing how she never went to you. After a long conversation with her, you'd understand where she was coming from, and she'd begin to gain the confidence to do something she was scared to do before. Once she's out of that small shell, she'd deck your face in kisses almost every moment you're around her. There'd be a lot of times where you both fluster, before laughing it off, before you realize that you're happiest around Feferi more than anyone else. She'd return those same realizations to you, which in turn she'd begin giving you bracelets and jewelry she believes you'd like.

#homestuck #hiveswap #aradia megido #tavros nitram #sollux captor #karkat vantas #nepeta leijon #kanaya maryam #terezi pyrope #vriska serket #equius zahhak #gamzee makara #eridan ampora #feferi peixes #fv's imagines #imagines #long post

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