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Karkat doesn't even have to look at the stairs anymore. Methodically, and without any kind of examination of motives whatsoever, all of his possessions migrated over the course of that awful first month to the downstairs guest bedroom.
John had decorated the whole room in shades of green because his old house's guest room had been green and green was the color he associated with guest rooms. Karkat was fine with it. Honestly, he felt better there.
Feeling like a guest, unsettled and temporary, suited him just fine. He didn't want to settle. Settling meant acceptance and acceptance meant moving on and moving on just was not a thing that was possible yet.
He kept the television on all day. Something monotonous and boring, like the weather channel or foreign-language news. Something that filled the empty air without making him think.
When Rose came over with Kanaya, the human disappeared upstairs for hours, then slipped out in quiet trips to pile several small boxes in their car. He didn't ask what she'd taken.
Sollux visited, but just being Karkat was exhausting lately, and Sollux left after an hour, so he wasn't sure how successful he'd been. Gamzee came over and Karkat didn't bother. Gamzee stayed anyway.
Days passed, then weeks. Karkat was no longer surprised to see a dazed half-painted troll sitting on his couch in the mornings. When he was tired of cleaning up messes in the kitchen, he ordered in. He got used to the smell of weed on his clothes.
"Where are you even sleeping, you fucking parasite?"
Gamzee turned from the French cooking show to blink at him slowly. One long finger twitched ceiling-ward. Karkat couldn't say he was surprised; he'd thought it without thinking it, known it without asking, but it made a breath trip wetly over his tongue anyway. Gamzee stayed quiet for a moment while he caught his breath,-
"Motherfucking comfy dream platform you got all up in there, friend. I been thinkin' maybe a motherfucker could get a palebro up in there to get his cuddle on, like?"
-then fucking ruined it all over again, worthless, pan-rotted, unstable bulgestain of a moirail, fuck.
He teetered for a moment between no and fine, and when it ended up the latter, he followed meekly as Gamzee tugged him by the wrist over to the corner of the house he hadn't approached in months.
He kept his eyes on the ceiling the whole way up, calling himself every name for pathetic he knew in human and troll as he gasped through his tears. They didn't seem to even gather at the corners of his eyes, just ran at fucking speed down his cheeks like it was a contest to see who could drip off his chin the fastest and be the first to ruin his fucking shirt.
John would have laughed at him the way he always did when Karkat tripped and fell off the deep end into the morass of his own emotionalism: happy and open and loving and teasing and like it wasn't even weird, you can cry Karkat, it's fine, I promise not to mock you too much when the snot runs into your mouth.
Oh, God. Oh, fuck.
The bed didn't smell like John anymore, but it didn't smell like Karkat either. It smelled like pot and dust and unwashed clown. Karkat let Gamzee pull him against his chest and the soothing crooning made the heaving a little easier to breathe through.
Clumsy, well-meaning claws pricked his shoulder as Gamzee petted and hummed, and this shirt was done for, and it wasn't enough, but maybe it would keep him together until he had to brave the fucking stairs again in the morning.
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