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Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you're pretty sure your human boyfriend is trying to break up with you. Or ghost you, one of the two. You’re not sure which option yet. The last two weeks had been... Uncomfortable, to say the least. You had gotten so used to Dave non-stop babbling shit so mind-numbingly stupid your thinkpan could hardly understand it that now, the eerie quiet of your shared hive is really concerning. It wasn't like this was too abnormal. Sometimes, when he was having a tough day or two, and the bad memories became too much, he needed a bit to himself and you just had to deal with him flash stepping all over the hive and not saying a word to anyone, including you. But usually, those periods would only last a day, and you’d wake up the next morning to him in your arms, asleep. It was fucking nerve-wracking the first few times it happened, but now it wasn’t too big a deal.
You had been able to tell something was off the moment day four hit and you had still seen no sign of him. It wasn’t like you were in the best mood, too, since your adult molt had occurred just a week before all of this. You had plenty of running theories as to why Dave was being so weird and flighty, but the main one was ‘He wants to leave you now.’ You knew that was stupid, but jegus, it was hard to get that nasty thought out of your head.
So when you see Dave, sitting on the bed, his eyes puffy and shades off, you are immediately frozen still. You stare down at him, you are struck by just how fragile he looks. Not in a physical way- Dave might be significantly smaller and thinner than you now, but you know better than to take that to mean he’s weaker than you. Dave is made of lithe muscle, and he’s fucking fast. He’s got a lot of brute strength in that petite form and even now when you had at least a foot on him in height, he still had managed to kick your ass when sparring before. But now, with glaringly obvious tear stains on his face and his lips swollen from gnawing on them and ripping off chapped skin, you feel like you could touch him and he’d shatter like glass. So, taking that into account, you sit next to him gently and place your hand on his thigh- Making sure you place it on him gently so he doesn’t get startled. Dave finally stops staring at the ground and looks up at you.
“So, uh…” Fuck, you forgot how much you love his voice. Hearing him talk again makes you feel butterflies in your stomach. “Any chance we can just move on and pretend this week didn’t happen?”
“Week? Dave, you were avoiding every person, including me, for the last 15 days. That’s not something I can just fucking ignore,” You watch him deflate as you say that, and feel like total shit. Not at what you said- You know you’re right, and he knows you’re right. You just hate seeing him look so sad.
“Fuck, dude, was it really that long? I guess I lost track of time.” And that statement sends fucking shivers down your spine. Dave is the Knight of Time, it takes a whole lot to make him lose track of time for an hour let alone for a whole week.
“...Was it something I did? Because after our last conversation all about agreeing to talk about this kind of shit, I had assumed our next fuck up would be met with a talk, not the avoiding it shit.” You sigh as you finish talking.
“No, it wasn’t you. It’s not your fault, Kat. It’s just been… Difficult, I guess. Lots of weird bad emotions recently,” He’s gritting his teeth, but at least he’s forcing himself to talk about whatever’s bothering him. A few years ago he would have just refused to even acknowledge he was upset. “I guess seeing you go through your whole troll puberty thing reawakened a lot of dormant shit I hadn’t thought about in a while. It’s just, like… You were always so insecure about your height. About your horns. And we shared those kinds of insecurities, and it felt good to know I wasn’t alone in that. But now you’re fucking huge - And it’s not like that’s a bad thing, I’m certainly not gonna complain about having a boyfriend with arms the size of god damn tree trunks and a tentadick as thick as my arm, but it makes me feel… Jealous.” Dave winces when the words slip out of his mouth.
“Oh.” You knew a little about Dave’s gender issue. Humans were pretty much all inherently smaller than trolls, once trolls reached adult size, but Dave had always had a whole host of insecurities about his height. It had meant a lot to him that you were shorter than him. You were the only one besides Terezi who was shorter than him. He was also so worried about characteristics that were supposedly just reserved for female humans- Not that it meant shit to you, trolls were all pansexual and had the same genitals. But fuck, you really feel like the world’s biggest asshole for not figuring out that that was the issue. “Is that what was bothering you? You were jealous of me?”
Almost as soon as you finish he shakes his head. “No, not just that. There’s more, I guess. When you go god tier, it’s supposed to make you your final, idealized self. Get rid of the imperfections. And when I learned about it I really thought it was going to… Fix all that.” He gestures crudely to his chest and crotch. “But it didn’t. And I came out of there the same as usual, with the same feminine voice and the same chest and the same-” He starts tearing up and you grab him and pull him close to you, worries about his fragility be damned. He starts sobbing into your chest, and the pale feelings that bloom in your chest are so overwhelming you want to scream. He sniffles and you notice for the first time that he’s wearing one of your shirts. Back before you were taller than him, when he still had a few inches on you in height, you used to steal his clothes all the time whenever you were upset. Seeing him in your already oversized hoodie that practically goes down to his knees is wildly endearing. You kiss the top of his head.
“It’s okay.” You rub his back in a way that you hope comes off as soothing- You’ve never been the best at emotionally comforting Dave. He has a tough time receiving said comfort as well, which made for a mess whenever something like this came up. “Maybe we could see if Rose or Kanaya could try to alchemize or develop some of the hormone stuff you guys had on Earth.”
Dave barely ever talked about it, but you knew the fact that he had just started testosterone before the game started stung badly. It was like the ultimate cosmic insult- He spent forever trying to get Bro to agree to it, and when he got it he never had any of the real effects from it, as he hadn’t been taking it for long enough. You had sat with him for hours on the meteor watching him try desperately to figure out how to make it. Puberty had really kicked in for him around the beginning of your meteor trip, and it was horrible to see how much he hated the way it changed his body. You didn’t quite get it, but seeing him upset over anything made you want to scream and try your damndest to solve whatever was bothering him. But you just… Couldn’t. He was too stubborn, too prideful to ask his sister to try to help, despite the fact that she had figured out how to get estrogen for June just a year ago. It was costly to make, though, and took a long time to develop.
“I guess. I just feel like it’s too late. I feel like I’m stuck with this body forever. I wanna scream and tear my hair out every time I look down and see tits. It just feels so wrong. He’d be so disappointed in me if he saw me now, crying like a baby. He wanted me to be tough. Said if I was gonna be a boy I needed to be strong and cold and tough. Look where that got me now. Real fucking tough, huh?” He laughs weakly. You know when he says He like that, that Dave’s referring to his Bro, and every time you think about him you feel your blood boil. If he was still alive, you’d kill him yourself. Imagining the torment he put Dave through makes you want to make him suffer ten times more. You don’t ever say that to Dave, though.
Even if he’s made a lot of progress emotionally, he still hasn’t gotten to the point where he can understand that what happened to him wasn’t his fault. That he didn’t deserve that treatment. There are scars all over his body from his Bro slashing him up. When Dave came out to him as trans, he was ‘okay’ with it. But he went much harder on him with fighting. Said that if he wanted to be a boy, he had to learn to act like one. To be tough like one. You had heard him talk about all of it multiple times before, and the thought of it still makes you nauseous. Even more so now that Dave is so little to you. How could anyone want to hurt him?
“Shh. Just take a deep breath.” You parrot that learned phrase back at him. Whenever you’ve had panic attacks or started freaking out he says things like that, and they tend to help. He takes a shuddering breath against your chest and looks up at you. His eyes are so pretty, such a gorgeous bright red framed by thick eyelashes. He smiles weakly at you and you feel your heart stop. God, you love him so much. So, so much. You run your hands through his hair.
“I hated not talking to you. But then it was just… So quiet. I could just hear vague movements from other rooms. And something about hearing nothing but that freaked me out even more, and I felt like I had to keep hiding. I felt like a 12-year-old kid again, like I had to run and escape and if I didn’t I’d get hurt.” He sniffled as he talked and fuck fuck fuck you hate the idea of scaring him as much as Bro scared him. Dave seems to sense how panicked hearing that made you. He might not be able to smell your pheromones the same way you can smell his, but he’s lived with you long enough that he can read you like an open book. “It’s not your fault. I just started spiraling and couldn’t get out of it.” That makes you feel a lot better to hear, in some fucked up way. You feel guilty for being thankful that Dave was doing this to himself, and that it wasn’t your fuck up.
“I don’t understand why you humans care so much about your stupid dimorphism. It just makes no sense.” You speak gently and sigh in frustration. You wish you could understand what it’s like for him. It hurts you that you don’t.
“I know. It’s pretty stupid, huh?” He laughs, sounding genuinely amused, and it feels so good to hear that and see him smiling. He frowns a little after a moment, though, and continues. “It’s difficult to explain. Because I know logistically it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re gods, dude, we make up all the rules. But I always thought my dysphoria,” You remember hearing him talk about dysphoria before and make a mental note to learn more about it, “was a socially based thing. I thought if I didn’t care what other people thought that it wouldn’t bother me anymore. But I’ve come to the realization that it’s a lot more internal than I thought. Because I haven’t been called she or-” Dave pauses, cutting himself off. You know he was gonna say his old name. You’ve only heard it once, and you never wanna hear it again. “Was years ago. But I still look down at my body and see my tits or look at my face and see my soft, girly jaw or my big eyes or my thick lips and think woman . It’s so fucking stupid but the only thing that doesn’t bother me anymore is my vag. I mean, you guys have pussies, so why should mine bother me? Now it’s just the little things that drive me crazy. The way that my voice goes up at the end of sentences, the way it has that slight feminine lilt. The way I get shy and blushy whenever you flirt with me. I just feel like... a lesser man.” You hear that and have to cut him off.
“Dave, that’s not a girly thing. And hell, I think there are plenty of our male friends who have objectively much more feminine voices for you.” You hug him tighter, hoping what you say is helping. “You’re not girly. Your weird human features aren’t feminine. And don’t say you’re a lesser man. You’re not lesser in any aspect. You’re everything to me. If being trans makes you a lesser person, does that also mean Jade or June are lesser women? Does that mean Roxy is a lesser man?” You really hope that you’re not coming off as offensive and that you used the term trans right. It’s still such an alien- Ha, alien- concept to you.
“No, they’re not. But I feel like they all pass so much better than me. Hell, even Roxy looks more masculine!” When he says that you roll your eyes.
“Dave, you and Roxy look almost identical, save for him having curlier hair than you and you being paler, are you kidding? Every masculine trait you see in him is also on you, you just can’t see it yourself because you won’t let yourself.” Dave hears that and freezes. He then bursts into tears, sobbing into your shirt. You start to panic, worried you pushed it too far and hurt his feelings.
“Th-That feels so good to hear. Thank you.” He clings to you like you’re his lifeline. It hurts so bad to see him this upset, but feeling like you helped feels so good. “Maybe I should pull an Egbert and start doing some twin-swap pranks with Roxy. Have you wake up and we switched places. Though I guess you’d probably tell it was him, he’s shit at keeping secrets.” Dave snorts in laughter and that sound makes your heart flutter. He smiles up at you and wipes the tears off his face. “I love you.”
You know he loves you, but he hardly ever says it. It’s difficult for him to express emotions the same way you do, you know that. So every time you hear it it feels like the first time all over again. You know it means he trusts you. He’s been so vulnerable for the last half an hour and it just shows that he trusts you enough to let you see him cry. You lean down and kiss him. “I love you too.”