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‘Are you going to tell me that this shit’s bad for my motherfuckin’ self?’
‘Uh, no? Why – why would I do that?’
Giving a sigh too frustrated to be exhaustion and too pleasant to be exasperation, Gamzee Makara flopped back amongst the pile that had, over the course of the day, accumulated beneath him. A bony hand flung itself to the side and patted the soft fabric beneath him, clawed fingertip snagging in a fold of cloth. For a second, Tavros Nitram just watched him, eyes tight, before conceding and crossing to the pile and lingering. Gamzee patted the pile again, insistent this time, and Tavros conceded, lowering himself into the pile of stray trophies and one of Karkat’s sweaters.
‘I don’t know,’ Gamzee hummed, and it took Tavros a second to connect the conversation together. ‘Every other motherfucker says it, why should you be any different?’
‘Uh,’ Tavros hedged. ‘Oh. Equius. I’m not, uh. I’m not in a place to tell you what you can and can’t do.’
‘Fuck, bro,’ Gamzee laughed, head thrown back and grin wide. It was a lazy grin, his gums green with sopor and tongue slick with Faygo. When he was like this, Tavros thought, all loose and pliant like a sated purrbeast with a belly full of cream, he was as unthreatening as they came, even with a mouthful of fangs and strength enough to snap him in two. Gamzee was one of four trolls Tavros was genuinely not terrified of at least ninety per cent of the time, which surely said a lot about his mental faculties that he most dangerous land troll was the least intimidating.
‘Why do you do it?’ he asked after a few moments of near-silence. Gamzee breathed kind of loud when he was in a lazy high. He was silent in the manic highs. ‘I mean if – if you don’t mind.’
‘Makes no nevermind, Tavbro,’ the bigger troll grinned, and spread his hands above them as though he was trying to embrace the stars. Maybe that was what he saw. ‘I don’t like the silence,’ he admitted softly, and his voice snagged on the ‘like’, altering the pitch to a territorial mountain purrbeast instead of an over-excited domesticated one, dragged the flow through waters Tavros had never tested, never dared to approach, awkward stilts as much as it was silken poison. ‘There’s too much noise in the silence, all these voices whispering at me, telling me shit no motherfucker should have to hear, you know? I have to – I drown them out, with the pies, and they fill me with motherfucking miracles.’ He paused. ‘No, no they just make it the good kind of quiet. The miracles come later.’
Tavros squinted up at the ceiling, trying to see what Gamzee saw, and saw only harsh lines and harsher shadows. They remained silent for a few moments longer before Gamzee dropped his hands, one at his side, the other landing in the curve of Tavros’s pelvis, wrist against one hip, knuckles against the other.
‘Uh, Gamzee?’
‘Can you feel anything?’ he asked, and his eyes were clear. Bloodshot, and puffy with horrorterror nightmares, but clear. ‘Below the break?’
‘Uh, a little. Just, uh, sensation? Like, I can feel that your hand’s there, but if I – if I couldn’t see it, I wouldn’t know what it was. I’d probably, uh, brush it off as my imagination. Phantom pains, you know?’
The Capricorn nodded sagely, even though the curve of his mouth, teeth pressing soft against the swell of his lip, purple and green and bone-white, spread the secret that he didn’t have a clue.
He turned his hand to rest flat in the cradle of his hips, and pressed harder. Tavros squeaked.
‘Gamzee?’
‘Sensation,’ Gamzee hummed, and rubbed a hand across his eyes, smearing his make-up. He wiped the residue onto Karkat’s sweater. ‘First sign of healing, right?’
‘Uh, I don’t know.’
‘Miracles,’ he continued, as though Tavros hadn’t spoken, but the Taurus was used to that, especially from higher-bloods. ‘Told you.’
They fell silent again, and Gamzee didn’t move his hand. Tavros let him leave it there.