Work Text:
You’re sitting in the window again.
It’s your favorite place in the house, day or night. You’re rather proud of yourself, you’ve never once drawn the red blackout curtains across the latticed pane. Not even in the midst of a migraine had you given in and cut off the burning rays of the cruel and uncaring eyeball in the sky.
You’d been fucking tempted though.
Why?
Why was it so important that you keep the view unobstructed at all times? Even as the turmoil constant in your soul spills out of you and invades the world you perceive, the colors, angry, churning, red and green and blue so dark a blue it bruises with but a touch, captured in hidden eyes and a blank face.
It was because of the ducks, of course.
---
“Hey kiddo, mind if I take a look?”
You glance away from your food for a moment, as the wirey beanpole of your br--father? Ferahn had called him that, and you are technically his adopted child, but for some reason the moniker feels off enough that it makes you want to grimace at the taste it leaves in your mouth. Lusus is better, but that’s what you use to make Karkat’s grey turn cherry fucking red mid sputter, and it’s Dave. Really, nothing quite fits, and you hate hard labels anyway. If you were ever locked in a room with someone going hog wild with a label maker armed with nothing but a sharpie you’d vandalize the *fuck* out of that shit without a second thought.
...Anyway. Dave waves a fork, with saucy potato included, in your general direction.
It doesn’t take much effort to discern what, exactly, the eating utensil was meant to be indicating. It’s most certainly your direction, not Karkat’s, who seems determined to avoid snapping about--
“You’re getting your disgusting seasoned meat juices on the table! I just cleaned it!”
Speaking of snaps. That shit splintered right in goddamn two. The determination breaks.
“That’s why we don’t have the good table cloth out right now, remember? Or, you know, ever? It’s not a big deal. I promise I’ll swap that shit out so fast it won’t even disturb the good china a single millimeter the moment their flight lands.” For all his assertion, the fork pointer is withdrawn, and the chunk of gravy covered spud is plopped into a gaping mouth to masticate it.
Eyes cast down, lingering as you quickly flip closed the cover of your sketchbook over the doodle of an exaggeratedly angry fire breathing dragon with nubby, three-striped horns, penciled in through various applications of graphite.
Such a scene wouldn’t be complete without the little mini-horse, stick in mouth, roasting a whole spud on a stick over the largest plume.
You’d already finished eating, of course. Plate pushed aside and knife and fork lay neatly atop it. You wouldn’t allow potential food juices near the pages.
Wordlessly, you nudge it with your elbow, scooting it across the table just enough to make your permissions as crystal clear as you can be without actually saying anything.
Dave, to your relief, actually drops his fork like it fucking bit him, clinking all over fake china, wiping his hands eagerly on a lap-bound napkin before reaching out to pick it up instead of pulling it the rest of the way across the diagonal of this here square table. A path which might have put it in the path of the aforementioned stain.
It’s such a *strange* scenario. You had two options at the Home. Long cafeteria-esque tables with your peers. Or. Snagging a plate and squirreling it away in the garden, or your room. Chaos. Or absolute solitude.
Not this. Your two--*parents*-- sitting opposite each other, with you squished on the end between them. Facing an empty seat.
They sure can ratchet up the chaos too. Throw enough casual sniping across their parallel facets to make up for ten immature children who don’t know how to be any better than mean.
Maybe it isn’t so different after all.
It’s not as if you couldn’t escape upstairs with your plate of ‘tatos if you aren’t feeling the vibe.
You have already done it a few times.
After the first time, when you’d tried to sneak away, Karkat had pulled you aside and told you it was fine to say fuck thier bullshit to their faces. They understood. You didn’t need to hide it.
Dave objected to the wording, but vehemently agreed with the sentiment before launching into a story about not even having a table back in his day and if he was lucky he’d get to sit on the couch with a tv tray. Hey, maybe he should look into those. See if they’ve been patented yet. Folding wooden things you know? Maybe pitch the idea to--names bleed away into static--mass produce--the memory unravels, tugged through fabric too hard, the thread slips free.
You did make an effort to eat at the table after that.
Dave makes appreciative noises as he flips through the pages of your sketchbook. He’s seen most of them before, of course. It’s not as if you bother trying to hide them. But the scrutiny still makes you…
Your face refuses to shift from its resting blank face, but you are grateful neither Karkat or Dave acknowledge the dusting of a flush you can feel creeping under your skin.
“You really like the birds don’t you, kiddo?” You’d half expected him to skip ahead to the most recent shit, just waiting for the teasing to be unleashed on the inspiration for your latest work. Glancing over, he’s flipping back and forth between pages somewhere near the middle of the book, between pages of ducks. And ducks that don’t look like ducks. Ducks that are all white and have no faces and wrong beaks. “Is that why you like the window so much? Gotta admit, it’s got a great view of the pond.”
“Yeah.” Eyes furtively glancing up to meet shaded ones, reflecting your--face. Your. Face.--back at you in that split second before you utterly abandon the action and look away uncomfortably with a shrug.
“I guess being smack dab in the middle of New Houston means there’d be a sore lack of waterfowl since y’know, lack of water bodies for them to foul up. Surely ya got the other birds though? Plenty of feathery as--jerks to be found in the crows and pigeons are a special breed of tenacious. I’m not actually sure how high ducks are on that particular scale--lower than geese that’s for sure, and swans are f--you’ll run for your life if you know what’s good for you--”
“Dave.”
You stare at your hands, clenched where they are folded on the table as Karkat’s gruff, exasperated rasp unfolds in a string of gray.
You wish you’d exercised your right to fuck off at the beginning of everything. You could be sitting in the window, under the red and orange of the setting New Houston sun. Watching the little feathered idiots mill around the water’s edge. Sometimes, as you’re on the verge of sleep…
You think you can hear them. The waves. Smell and taste--
Salt.
“Why don’t you stop with the transparent as fuck scheming over there and just ask if he wants to go to the fucking pond?”
That has your head snapping up so hard it gives you whiplash.
“Karkat!” Your other parent scolds, but when he notices your sudden shift in attention, focus and intent, he swallows whatever tangent he was about to barrel straight down, hands fluttering at a loss before fingers begin to comb through off-white hair.
“Can we?”
The words are torn out of you before you can think twice. Jaw clicking shut immediately after as you duck your head. Watching from beneath the dubious obfuscation that is your bangs and the gray rim of your cap.
“I mean, sure if you want? It’s a public pond. Neighborhood property, all that jazz. “
Remnants of his dinner--and your sketchpad--forgotten, Dave springs up out of his chair, familiar nerves more than apparent in the way he paces along the length of the table.
“Technically I think there’s a closing time in which people can probably call the cops on you for loitering but really it’s all a guideline anyway. Heck you don’t even need to go with me, it’s like. Legit right over the fence line. You could go out there and feed the ducks to your heart’s content and--”
Head suddenly jerks up, “Oh shit, let me check the kitchen to see what’s duck friendly.”
Turning on heel, all it takes is one blink and he’s through the kitchen door, voice drifting back on the power of its own soundwaves as the nervous ramble goes on. While you know they are being spoken, the absence of the physical manifestation of the speaker etches them in red on a screen instead. “I know oldtimer movies used bread but that can’t be good for them--I remember osmosising the information somewhere--some call-out post for canceling feed the birds as a concept or some shit--”
“It’s fine as long as you give them something that has nutrients,” Karkat supplies, calmly--for the definition of calm as it’s applied to a scowling troll currently prodding at roasted and chopped tuberoot with a fork. “Bread’s full of fucking carbohydrates and sugars, while *some people* can subsist on enamel rotting soda and doritos for the rest of their unnatural life, most of the rest of us require something other than junk food. Bread? That’s junk food to them. Multiply one well meaning hiveunit by the fact that it’s a sprawling hivestem of thousands and that’s when you end up screwing them over.”
An off-white head pokes back through, “Oh right. That’s where it was from. Have you been complaining to Jade about the doldrums of suburbia again?”
“GRAPES!” Karkat shouts loudly, clawed fingers curling into fists around his captured utensil and banging down on the table, rattling the plate and nearby drinking glass, “Grapes! Corn! Oats! Peas. Or better yet--birdseed. Things we don’t fucking have.”
“You sure ‘bout that, ‘kat?”
“Of course I fucking am, Dave, I bought the last round of groceries because you wouldn’t know a balanced diet if it jumped you and chewed on your face.”
As the volume rises, you’re almost prepared to bolt. It’s hard to tell sometimes. Is Karkat really angry? Or is he just shouting? So used to typing in all caps that there’s little to no volume regulation going on in there? The key stuck on one setting.
You’re beginning to suspect the latter, but it still makes you jump.
Dave, of course, doesn’t seem to bat an eye, lending credence to your conclusion.
“Right, right. I guess we’ll just have to add it to the list for next time. Dirk?”
Head snapping to attention, you can feel the weight of the shaded gaze on you.
“Do you wanna go anyway? We could probably still get a good private premier viewing done before the sun goes down.”
...needless to say, all plans of escaping back upstairs to recover from the … experience … that is your parental unit’s interactions fly immediately out of your head. Chair legs quietly scraping against linoleum as you all but fling yourself away from the table, cargo in hand and heading for the sink.
“Woah, lil’dude, slow down! I still haven’t finished eating yet!”
You ignore the protest without a word, grabbing your--brand spankin’ new--orange accented tennis shoes that have never seen a game of tennis in their *lives*--and park yourself right next to the door to wait.
You’ve never seen a human inhale food so fast. The remnants of dinner on that fake ass plate vanish like scraps of loose feed tossed on the roof for faceless birds. You think you should feel guilty, even as you shuffle your weight impatiently from foot to foot, listening through the hallway’s wood-lined walls to the sheer glee in Karkat’s voice as he makes sure Dave has a full rack of fully roasted ribbings by the time the--not at all frazzled, even as you spy a dribble of escaped sauce staining the collar of his shirt--adult follows in your footsteps.
Shoes. Door--
Backdoor? Damn it you picked the wrong door.
You think you hear Dave laughing as you take the wooden steps in leaps. The deck is tall, and so are the steps leading down to ground level. A full ass floor’s worth of height between here and the ground. And maybe you misjudge in your haste and you slip, arm shooting out to try in vain to catch the railing you likely should have been holding onto.
For a moment, it doesn’t even phase you. Certain that gravity would run off you like water on a duck’s feathered back, letting your wayward foot settle in midair--
And then it passes. You barely have time to register a panic because a loud “Wooooah there kiddo.” sounds behind you, glistening in bright red, as steady hands flashed to fill the space and snag on cloth and flesh alike. The whiplash sends your head flying forward as your clear forward momentum is halted, hat so askew that it almost falls off, subjecting your eyes to the harshness of the setting sun even as it sets just above the treeline.
But any insidious trace of fear, of falling, known, familiar possibilities of pain and potential death felt viscerally in that moment, is soon nothing but an unpleasant memory. You get righted. Released. Shoulders hunching, embarrassed, as the voice far above you tuts under his breath, keeping up a ramble not necessarily meant for you as he checks to make sure you didn’t, in fact, manage anything in those untowed seconds of free-fall.
You expect a scolding, some vocalization of the admonishment he’d started with the exclamation. A stunt such as that would have earned a reprimand from the Siblings to drive home that such careless behavior was reckless (you know that) and a danger to yourself and those around you (you know that, you just do it anyway.)
But it doesn’t come. The human merely straightens his currently bent spine, fixing the cap on your head while he’s at it, before taking the next two stairs with a hop that was far too effortless to be anything but showing off.
You take the offered hand anyway. Sullenly. Fingers curling with yours and holding steady.
Despite it all, the laughter doesn’t return. Only a distant sigh of expended relief once both sets of feet have settled on the ground.
He doesn’t let go for a good moment. Only when you pull away to run ahead, the awkward ass interaction soon swallowed up into the mists of a past you no longer care about. Stained wood gave way to an (overgrown) cobblestone path. You even go so far as to fumble for the latch on the wooden gate, dry wood of the frame pricking at your fingers, threatening blisters if you’re inattive. Which you are not. You’ve pricked yourself with needles worse than this shit--
The gate creaks open, the usually distant buzz of the summer suckers all up close and personal as you find yourself far closer to what you’ve only seen from a window, three stories up. A paved path, making a gentle curve beyond the boundary of the fence, a tributary of asphalt feeding into a circle that goes round and round and round. Curving and winding beyond your view from the window, shaded and partially concealed by trees. Trees you can now walk under, setting sun dappling against the dark pavement, causing long shadows to grow even more.
You’ve seen people walking that path. A lot of them, surprisingly, despite your newcomer status. So many you couldn’t ever give them colors even if you tried. Families. Kids. Teens whizzing through on bikes, occasionally weaving around oblivious pedestrians at a speed that makes your heart flutter.
But the endless possibilities that being Outside the walls of your Home--Your Home, not The Home, not A Home--pale in comparison to your true target, the interior.
Sunset has well and truly begun. Even if you can’t see the star of the show itself, penned in as the small lake--more of a pond really, you shouldn’t be able to see the other side-- is by the surrounding houses and thoughtfully placed trees, the aftereffects paint the sky with broad, careless strokes, bands of orange and darker blue that ripple with the clouds in the sky. With the evening breeze. Ripples, a reflection mirrored on ever moving water, dotted with--white--brown and green, bobbing along not on feathered wings, but on webbed feet.
The slap of your shoes against the pavement muffles as it shifts from unyielding path to springy grass. Crouching at the water’s edge. Stiff. Quivering. Straining to
Friends. Distant. But there. Alive.
You aren’t al--
They don’t chatter as you half expect. Silent in their directionless bob. Even as one meanders closer to your currently occupied shorebank, you find yourself listening for shrill cries that never come. The background choir that’s been missing your entire life remains silent.
And yet, despite the curl of disappointment, you find yourself entrapped regardless. Being this close as a nearby female--brown with speckled white--floats idle just out of reach. Water rippling out around her even as invisible webs churn the water beneath her.
“Hey. Psst.” Look up and over. You’d barely given Dave a second thought until you spot him standing back up by the path, hands in his jacket pocket. Surreptitiously, he pulls out a small, somewhat crushed piece of bread. A heel really.
“Karkat said that isn’t good for them.” You inform him. “Quite vehemently.”
“Look. I won’t tell him if you won’t. It’s just this once.”
You hum, skeptically, before holding your hand out to accept the offered gift.
Both gifts, in fact.
The bread, and the show to follow when you inevitably rat him out.