Chapter Text
The original plan had been for Kankri to pick us up at the airport but something had come up, leaving us stranded for a few hours while we waited for an available taxi to take us to our hotel. Karkat complained and whined virtually the entire time while I put my earbuds back in to ignore him. He was talking more to himself anyway. Once at the hotel, he hopped into the shower in preparation for dinner with his brother later that evening. I joined him in the bathroom to shave by the sink.
“So, what is your brother like anyway?” I called out. “Like, do I need to prepare for a screaming match or do I need to bring headphones to tune him out?”
“He’s pretty conservative like my dad, but not homophobic. At least not to me. He really loves the sound of his own voice. It’s pretty fucking impossible to get him to shut up. And before you ask if I’ve tried something, I guarantee I have. Oh, and he probably won’t like your tattoos. He’s not big on profanity, either.”
“Those are my only two redeeming qualities.”
“I thought you’d consider your dick a good redeeming quality.”
“Oh, yeah. That too.”
He snickered again.
“Don’t worry too much about it. He’s a good guy. Just not super open-minded like he seems to think he is. He’ll ramble most of the night away anyway so just let him talk us to sleep and we’ll be good. Otherwise, he’s an okay guy.”
“And you know nothing about the person he wants us to meet?”
“Not a clue. It’ll probably be some disgustingly flirtatious introduction.”
“I’ll be sure to return the energy then,” I hummed with a grin, laughing when he reached out from behind the shower curtain to swipe at my arm.
“Don’t you dare, ” he hissed.
I took his arm to keep him still, stepping closer and kissing him gently. That seemed to shut him up.
We left an hour earlier than needed so I could rent a car with my fake ID, the nearest rental not being too far from our hotel. Once we had our car for the evening and Karkat was as collected as he could manage, I drove us through the city to meet up with his brother. Though Karkat didn’t say it verbally, I could tell he felt as though it were some kind of imminent doom, a bomb counting down the minutes before he had to face his past again. Not to mention that seeing his brother again was supposed to be the easy part of the trip. So, I held his hand as I drove, letting him squeeze it to let me know that he was alright. I still held on.
Before long, we were by the front door of the restaurant, a little sushi place, waiting for his brother to join us with his mysterious guest. To keep us occupied, we played a game together, making bets on what this person would look like, how they met, and their general view on life.
“You really don’t think it’s gonna be some uptight Christian chick who he met at a sermon?” I laughed. “He sounds like that kind of guy.”
“First of all, you don’t even know what my brother looks like,” he retaliated, hiding his own amusement poorly.
“Fair.”
“Secondly, my brother might be uptight, but he thinks that churches are a fucking cult,” he nudged me gently. “At least the ones here are.”
“They kind of are, aren’t they?”
I was about to make another comment, another guess, until he nudged me a little sharper and looked away from me with widened eyes. I followed his gaze before finally seeing a shorter man in a red turtleneck (well, shorter than me, about the same size as Karkat) approaching us with a man by his side. I pieced it together pretty quickly, especially since this dude looked shockingly similar to my own boyfriend.
“Karkat,” he said as he approached us, smiling ever so slightly. He seemed to be just as nervous as Karkat was. “You’ve grown.”
“Yeah, I’m not seventeen anymore,” he mumbled in response.
The other guy standing beside Kankri looked me up and down, a toothpick between his lips. The way his hair was slicked back and the tightness of his white shirt made him look straight out of Grease . I couldn’t help looking him up and down as well until his eyes moved to Karkat and his gaze turned far too close to admiration for my liking. I frowned subconsciously, moving to casually drape my arm over his shoulders as a sign to fuck off immediately. This gaze shocked me further when Kankri introduced him, his voice small and shy.
“This is my boyfriend, Cronus,” he said, and he finally looked away from Karkat.
“That’s me.”
“Boyfriend?!” Karkat looked ready to burst and I quickly squeezed his shoulder to remind him that we were in public. “What the hell do you mean boyfriend? What happened to being straight, or was that a persona to protect yourself from dad’s wrath and let me deal with that shit on my own, too?”
“Babe,” I hissed softly. “Not here.”
“I apologize, Karkat. I do. But it’s not fair for you to assume that I simply had everything figured out at the time. It isn’t like you have it all figured out even now,” Kankri retaliated, eyebrow raised at his younger brother’s sudden outburst. “Some people come to terms with their sexuality later in life. It’s normal.”
“Does dad know?”
Kankri paused, hesitating for a brief moment even though that was the only answer we actually needed. “No. He doesn’t.”
“That explains a whole fucking lot then,” Karkat muttered, tone laced with bitterness, and I took my arm away.
“Okay,” I quickly got out, tugging on the sleeve of his sweater instead. “How about we all take a moment to shut the fuck up and just go get dinner before someone ends up saying something they regret?”
Karkat huffed in response before turning on his heel and making his way inside first. I followed close behind and I heard Cronus questioning the nature of Karkat’s actions behind me.
Not that half of that wasn’t regretful already. Jesus.
Karkat had completely spaced introducing me to them in turn until after we’d ordered, and I hadn’t even thought to do so, thinking he’d already done so over the phone with Kankri before the trip. When he finally spoke amidst the silence, Karkat groaned, completely spacing it.
“Yeah, sorry. This is Dave. He’s my boyfriend, too.”
“How long have you been together now?”
We both looked to each other for an answer and I grinned when he didn’t remember. I couldn’t blame him, the timeline was messy. I found it more amusing and he even sent me an apologetic glance. I didn’t mind.
“About eight months now,” I answered for him, leaning back and taking a sip of my fruity drink. Again, all thanks to my fake ID. I let Karkat steal sips from it as well. “We work across the street from each other.”
“And where would it be that you work?”
“Tattoo parlor,” I hummed, watching his expression to pinpoint the exact moment he grimaced.
“I suppose that’s why you can get that many for cheap, yes?” There it was. “Do you run the front desk?”
“He’s one of the artists, Kankri,” Karkat answered, shooting him a glare. “He does most of them himself.”
“And you have no issue with tattooing your own body? Permanently? What if you mess up and that’s stuck on you forever?”
“Okay,” I mumbled with a shrug. “I would hope I’m more comfortable tattooing myself than somebody else, honestly. I have a couple of fucked-up tattoos but for starters, I know how to cover them up. Also, tattoos aren’t as permanent as people seem to think they are.”
“It’s expensive to fix.”
“It’s not your fucking body, Kankri. He’s good at his job. I mean, for Christ’s sake, he’s done a few on me and I actually happen to like them. Can you just stop being so judgy for once?”
“You have tattoos? ” By the look of it, one might’ve assumed Kankri had just seen a ghost. “Karkat, those are permanent! ”
“I’m well-fucking-aware, thanks. That’s why I got them.”
I leaned back more, sipping my bright blue drink through my straw as I watched. They, thankfully, kept the volume down a little bit so as not to disturb the people around us. Cronus looked more confused than anything else.
“What would dad think about this?” He ran a hand through his hair. “He’d kill me for letting you do that to yourself.”
“ Dad is not in control of my life! That’s why I moved out!”
“How did this even suddenly come about? I’m all for allowing you to express yourself, Karkat. But in such a way…”
“I’m twenty-fucking-one! I’ve got my own business, my own apartment, my own life, and I live out of the state! Why do you feel like you have to control anything I do? I’m not under anybody’s control, and I’m most certainly not under yours! ”
“When you were eight, you never would have done something like this. You would have stayed home, helped with dad, maybe expressed yourself in a healthy manner.”
“I’m not eight years old anymore! This is plenty healthy! It’s not like I said ‘hey, I’m traumatized, let’s go spend thousands of dollars to cover every inch of myself in ink because that will make me feel better!’ No! I let my boyfriend do a couple of small tattoos on me because I wanted to get to know him and because he offered! My first tattoo was a paw print, not a goddamn middle finger with ‘To Kankri Vantas’ at the top!”
“It might as well have been,” he muttered bitterly and when I looked over, Karkat was fuming. I was about to reach over but before I did, he took a deep breath, closing his eyes to control himself.
“You’re putting me under your idea of ‘pure.’ I’m in my twenties. So are you. Lord knows neither of us are anything close to that kind of ideal.”
“I have pride in what I do and don’t do. Those are my values.”
“So do I. But I want to actually enjoy my life.”
Kankri paused. I didn’t expect such an argument over my tattoos and I actually felt kind of bad for a moment. However, I could tell that the words needed to get out. Karkat was always so pent up about his brother, how he never got the chance to say these things to his face, and here was the opportunity. He took it and now Kankri was finally growing quieter than I think Karkat had ever heard him. Finally, he sighed deeply.
“What other things have you done that I didn’t know about? When did you change?”
“Kankri, I didn’t just change overnight. Dad was so controlling. You didn’t help either. I did things that I probably shouldn’t have since it wasn’t the safest, but what’s done is done.”
“Have you done drugs?”
“Nothing heavy.”
“Had sex?”
“Inappropriate thing to ask in front of your boyfriend and kind of weird to ask in front of mine.” Karkat raised an eyebrow. “Have you not?”
“No…”
“No wonder you’re so tense all the time.”
Cronus couldn’t help but snicker at that and I had to bite back a grin myself. It even looked like Kankri was about to laugh before he caught himself, chewing his lip as he looked down at his lap.
“I just… can’t stop seeing you as my little brother. Needing me to protect you.”
“I’m not little though. I do adult things because I’m an adult, and I have been for a long time now. You can live your life just as easy as I can live mine. Just because I do things that you don’t agree with doesn’t make me a bad person. Or not ‘pure.’ I don’t give a shit about impurity. That’s just a bunch of societal and religious bullshit to shame you for enjoying basic human pleasures. Do what you want, but stop giving me shit when I do what I like. This is exactly why I left home.”
Again, silence. That is until he nudged Cronus to shift out of the booth. They both stood and Kankri grabbed his phone.
“I need to step outside for a few. I’ll return.” Then he left.
Karkat and I looked to Cronus, a simple look that asked how the fuck he managed to enjoy himself with Kankri’s uptight behavior and unnecessary restrictions on basic things. We could both tell that he enjoyed some of those things himself. He just shrugged in response, then made his way to the door to follow Kankri outside.
Karkat let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, took a sip of water, then buried his face in his hands.