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You’ve never been fond of blank spaces, but between the four of you, you keep a lot of them. Kanaya doesn’t quite get it, but you’re used to being a mismatched mystery, and besides, Harley and Strider say it gives you a certain kind of “mystique”, and you know they’re only half joking. Double besides, you’re not the only one who’s leaving those parts of your life unwritten in the four-folded paper between you—there’s shit that only you seem to get when Terezi says it, and same goes for whatever Jade and Dave talk about, re: human hell world. In your opinion, that kind of shit is absolutely to be expected. Interspecies relationships are confusing at the best of times, and the four of you came from such wildly different backgrounds (you would STILL like for Harley and Strider to stop referring to Alternia as “hellmurder planet” and “Australia”, respectively. what the fuck even IS an AUSTRALIA?), that it makes living life together rough to navigate, even at the best of times.
But...you’re learning that the four of you have a weird kind of overlap, as you edge around gaps and fill in spaces, little bit by little bit. Harley knows more about having a lusus than any other human you’ve met, even if hers was as high up on the metric fuckshit scale as Feferi’s was, and a minor god besides. Living in some deserted jungle wilderness, with only a weird, snow-colored barkbeast? Yeah, that was pretty fucking trollish, if anyone were to ask you, the current resident expert on all of trollkind. Terezi hadn’t even had a lusus, technically, which was some serious fuckshit in your opinion. She had a guide, sort of, guides for seers, is what she said, and Dave hadn’t even had a lusus or a guardian in a fragmental sense. Hells, he tied with Serket in terms of shit luck, and while he didn’t say much about his “Bro”, you’d learned enough to make you seriously contemplate picking up necromancy just so you could kill the guy yourself.
So you leave the blank spaces blank, and don’t ask Jade about how she survived alone on an island for years, or why she’s so good at gardening and canning. You don’t question the way Dave sometimes still flinches at loud noises or too soft entrances. You don’t make a big deal of it when Terezi gets frustrated over some trivial thing that “everyone ought to know.” Spaces and spaces.
And it...works? Sorta? You give them the spaces that they seem to need (it’s so weird to think that you, with your mutant blood and probably “cull on sight” kill order, had one of the most normal upbringings), and they start filling them in on their own, little by little. It’s...weird. It lends to an odd kind of pale-ish slash flush-ish slash pitch-ish slash ashen-ish slash human romance-ish thing, but. It works? Sorta? Between the four of you, you keep quadrant corners to empty spaces that get written over slowly, in blood and ink and words unspoken.
Jade curls up against you and murmurs about drop shipments that sometimes came late or went astray, or weren’t properly planned out, cases of food that came in spoiled. (you almost walk in on her telling dave a week later, and the horror on his face hurts your heart almost as much as hearing it for the first time. the day after that, dave tells you she’s out in the garden with terezi, before tugging you into a hug and burying his face in your sleep-messy hair.)
Terezi holds off a bit longer, and it worries you for a while, more so when she mentions in a softer voice than you’ve ever heard, that what she’s seen from the three of you made her think that maybe she didn’t have it so bad after all. (she tells the three of you together, her hands laced tight around a warm mug of some colorful tea that jade had made for her, and it’s probably for the best that dave had the opposite side of the round table, because you’re pretty sure that you or jade would’ve flipped it to get to her. dave’s sensible enough to flash step it, and the three of you hold her close, until the softer sounds of heartbreak stop.)
Dave opens up last, and you’re honestly not that surprised at all. Even less surprising is the way he shares in fragments, little bits and pieces of his stories that you recognize as part of a longer conversation he’s having on his own time scale. (for all that you’re not surprised, it still upsets you, and you still find yourself wishing hard that he felt he could say something earlier. he gives you permission, and you and jade and terezi find yourselves piecing together a puzzle that makes up the whole of your human boyfriend. when he breaks down during an argument—shouts everything that the three of you had suspected, but hadn’t known—it hurts, but you’re there, and he’s safe.)
The four of you leave a lot of blank spaces, and Kanaya doesn’t quite understand how this doesn’t somehow mean distance. “Communication,” she tells you, “is absolutely essential to a relationship.”
You look at her, and have to hold in some of your laughter. “Trust me,” you say, turning your teacup in circles (the fancy china she and Rose keep wouldn’t last a day in your home), “we communicate plenty.”
Then the two of you leave it like that, and you go home feeling a certain kind of certain. You’ve got a mind of your own, and the space and time to make it work, as corny as it sounds when you’re the one saying it. You’ve never been fond of the blank spaces, but you’re a knight to your core, as much a knight as Strider is, and if that’s what it takes to protect the ones you love, the ties between them, you’ll find a way to make the blanks all beautiful.