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This was torture. It was torturous. Though he wasn't much for sleeping anymore, he thought that here and now, maybe? Maybe he would sleep if it meant escaping. The droning voice in his head, big and loud in the way that voices without sound could sometimes be was grating on his nerves but he was simultaneously so fucking bored that he wasn’t even moved to rage. Gamzee’s head lolled back on his shoulders. He ignored entirely the look he knew he was currently receiving from Kurloz. The other Makara continued pontificating upon the unimportant-- well, upon the fucking ridiculously boring-- and Gamzee rolled his eyes up into his head. They un-rolled to meet Damara’s. She had one of those bits of burning stankass paper rolled up between her fingers, and Gamzee’s mouth twitched into an almost smile to see the pinkie of that same hand shoved right up her fucking nose.
He glanced over at Kurloz to see if he was watching and when Gamzee found that he wasn’t, he looked back to Damara, scrunching his nose and crossing his eyes. She grinned at him and he was charmed. At least she knew how to have some fun, unlike this talky fucking talkless mime.
IF YOU GOT SOME SHIT UPON WHICH YOU WISH TO MOTHERFUCKING EXPATIATE, Kurloz said to him without saying anything at all. MY EARS AIN'T ALL WHAT'S MOTHERFUCKING NONFUNCTIONAL AS OTHER PARTS OF ME.
Gamzee made eye contact with Kurloz to the best of his ability given the nauseating way the other troll’s eyes flashed, and murmured, “Shut the fuck up,” before staring sullenly and with stalwart disinterest at the ground. He didn’t need to be listening to be soaking in the information proper. Besides, half the shit Kurloz was saying was too purple by far and didn’t have a whole lot of meaning beyond the kind of praising of his arbitrarily chosen gods he was wont to wax on in times like this. Kurloz did not answer Gamzee directly, but he did stare intently at him, and Gamzee felt an unpleasant tingle between his horns like he might soon get some unwelcome company underneath them.
His own eyes flashed, but once from an already tense orange to near red and without warning he decaptchalogued and swung a club full force for the location in space Kurloz’s head was currently filling up. Kurloz took the blow without flinching, and it was so incredibly unsatisfying.
“We had motherfucking words on this,” Gamzee growled, and Damara gave a hiss of a laugh where she leaned against the wall. She said Gamzee’s name, something rapid fire that he did not catch and then nodded off toward where this dream bled into another one. She started walking without waiting to see him respond, and Kurloz met his eyes evenly, coolly, smiling as serenely as if he hadn’t just been jawed, or like he was waiting for more still. It was almost enough to make Gamzee want to bring out his other club and let himself be taken on the wave of rage that was ebbing in him, ugly as ugly. That would be satisfying, laying Kurloz out on the floor in a heap, but Gamzee wasn’t keen on staying alone with Kurloz unnecessarily, even if it was to try to force some learning about boundaries into his thick, ghostly nug. Gamzee slipped away quick, fast and in a hurry to catch up with Damara instead.
He fell into step with her sooner rather than later, not looking back. She took his club from him, hoisting it up to rest over one shoulder as if she owned it while touching the pinkie of her other hand carefully to her tongue to remove a speck of whatever was in that cigarette from it. Gamzee walked with his head down, his shoulders tight. He spent enough time with people that weren’t him shifting shit around in his head without Kurloz trying to act all high and mighty and making attempts at exerting any kind of influence over him. He was so angry he wanted to cry, he wanted to tear at things, himself, anyone. It was probably good that Damara took the club he had out from him.
“He like when you mad,” she said, white eyes straight ahead, or so Gamzee had to assume. He looked at her sideways, lip curled. He wouldn’t put it past Kurloz, to be honest.
“Man, fuck that mothefucker,” Gamzee answered vehemently, and when Damara looked down at him over the club resting on her shoulder, her chin was tilted up and she was smiling in that way she did when she was about to start saying something fucked up. He didn’t completely understand the words she said when she did speak, but the gist was pretty clear. He wrinkled his nose at her in disgust. She laughed, and it almost made him smile. Her laugh felt important to him, though he wouldn’t ever stop to examine why. Whatever fondness he had for Damara was probably best left unexplored, given what was coming. Given how little time he was given alone in his own fucking head. Given how frequently and thoroughly he was used.
The memory they were in currently was not his, and not one he’d seen before up close. This building was unfamiliar, but the sand wasn’t, the sea wasn’t. Looking out over the fakey fake water made real feelings fill up his guts, and so Gamzee focused instead on the hive sat there on the beach. He wondered if it was a mixed memory? Something that never really was, cooked up from different minds, like where memories of Prospit and Derse bled together, or where sand gave way abruptly to dirt and flora further down. “Where we at?” he asked.
“Kurloz hive,” answered Damara. She took a final drag before dropping her cigarette and ramming her shoulder into the door. It cracked before she hit it again, and the second time it buckled like nothing. What was that door even made of? Did Beforans not believe in reinforced entryways? “I come sometimes. Break things.”
Despite the open door, Damara stepped away to take Gamzee’s club in both hands, shattering the nearest window. “Like that.”
A giggle snuck up and out of him. “Why the fuck you crack out the view plane if the door open?”
“Break things,” Damara replied, and her expression gave him to imagine her rolling her dead eyes. She moved inside through the door and Gamzee followed. He wasn’t scared, thinking of Kurloz following, maybe seeing what they were getting up to. What would he do? He stood there and took it if Gamzee made like he’d fight him, what the hell would Kurloz do over dream breaking and entering? Whatever the answer was, Gamzee clearly did not care, because before he could even take the time to look around and speculate about Kurloz’s life on Beforus as it was reflected in the build of his hive and the contents therein, he had decaptchalogued his other club to knock the entire contents of a display shelf hard against the wall.
Damara had moved to another room already, and Gamzee could hear her grunting with effort. He shattered a lamp with gritted teeth and gave a squawk of a laugh as he tromped through the debris to see the other troll viciously stomping the nonlife out of memories of a number of game grubs that were neatly lined up on the floor. She paused, shoes and ankles all over in obscene looking streaks of color. Her hair was in her face like she’d been putting in some effort, but she didn’t look to be breathing hard. Or at all. There was one mostly intact grub left there and Damara nudged it toward Gamzee with the club she carried, grinning. He bared his teeth in something of a smile and crushed the thing. It popped, splattering bright color, the wetware running through it crinkling like nothing.
The cord it'd been attached to ran up to the wall, connected to what Gamzee assumed was Kurloz's husktop. He didn't think twice before his club came down upon the thing, squishing and splintering the screen before denting the keyboard. Damara swung the other club much too close to him for his comfort, but she was crashing through another lamp and the skeletal figurines displayed just under it beside the computing device he was destroying. Gamzee slammed the husktop over and again until Damara shoved him out of the way and swept everything off the desk and across the floor. He leaped onto the mess, stomping it with both feet with a thin and mostly amused growl, squeezing his eyes shut and jumping up and down to smash it with everything in him. He was panting when he came back to himself, and Damara was gone.
He was working on getting the railing off the staircase with his back planted firmly on the wall and both feet pushing when he heard notes of destruction ringing from somewhere on the second floor. He pushed harder still and was real content with the sudden splintering up until his ass hit the stairs and he went tumbling. He bashed his face on the way down and swore and squawked until he could get to his feet. Damara appeared at the top of the stairs and stared down at him, club rested on her shoulder. He couldn't read the expression on her face, but she thought fondly on him. She thought, as she saw the blood begin to seep from his nose thanks to the too quick introduction of his face to wall, that if she didn't know what she knew of the world, she might think the world of this troll. Looking at him in moments like this, in quiet moments and in moments when he was hurt, it made her feel weird and soft inside.
"Baka," she said, and there was a mirthful lilt to the word. It was her nickname for him, he thought, maybe. She called him that word pretty often, anyway. "Kaidan wa kikendesu."
That, he understood. It was a warning he didn't need, at least not now. 'Stairs are dangerous.' He wiped away the blood on his face, smearing the paint under his aching nose and across his upper lip. He'd fix that later. "Don't I fucking know it."
Damara headed off into one of the upstairs rooms again. Gamzee's ears were ringing some, but he looked around for and collected his club before trudging back up the stairs to see what Damara had been doing rather than pay that any attention. There were papers and things scattered from the room Damara was in, which was probably Kurloz's respiteblock. Gamzee didn't want to be in there at all, so he kept moving, swinging in through the next doorway. This room looked to be a studyblock or something similar, with books and a desk and chairs and things. Gamzee overturned an inkwell near a stack of papers on said desk as he passed it by, pulling books from the shelves idly and letting them fall to the floor before he moved on to tearing posters off the walls. Everything was so neat. Kurloz would probably shit himself to see the disarray Gamzee and Damara left behind. The little clown smiled to himself and heard the tinkling song of breaking glass falling to the ground. He made it a harmony, twirling and connecting his club with the nearest window and then snatching the curtains down too. He pulled the curtains off the other window and then smashed that one too, hearing Damara's answer from the other room. He laughed.
He bounded off to go see her again, and smacked face first into her as soon as he rounded the corner. She was captchaloguing something he didn't quite get a chance to lay eyes on, or else Gamzee figured she would have moved out of the way. Damara called him by that pet name again and tucked the club she'd taken from him under one arm to light up again while he righted himself. "Time to go," she stated. She pushed the club back toward him once he was on his feet and set off down the stairs, trailing smoke behind.
"Why?" he called after her, glowering. This was fun. What reason could they possibly have to leave?
She stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking up at him, and pointed at her nose. "Time witch. Time to go," she replied, adding on something he couldn't keep up with as she headed for the broken down front door. He dragged his feet when he followed her. She did know Time shit, that was kind of her deal. Maybe Kurloz was about to show up and flip out. He wouldn't do shit to Gamzee, probably, but who knew how it would go down between him and Damara. It was interesting to think about, but he also felt kind of like throwing himself on the ground and refusing to move. Not that Damara wouldn't be able to move him if she were so inclined. He didn't think she would, though. He trusted her at least that far.
Sooner than later, the two of them were laid out together high up in a treehive like somewhere Gamzee would have imagined Tavros or Terezi would like. He stopped thinking about them immediately, blanking his mind and stretching out across Damara's lap where she sat on the lounging bench. She was watching something in her language, a memory of a show featuring an heiress dead set on revolutionizing the schoolfeeding system...? Or something. Gamzee wasn't paying a lot of attention, but the sword fights and flowers everywhere were cool. His face throbbed still where he'd banged it, and he sat up, restlessly, just missing spearing Damara in the face with a horn. She pushed his head out of her line of sight while he fumbled with another piece of glass he found in his hand, tossing it onto the floor rudely. As it skittered to a stop near Damara's feet, which were still splashed with colors that didn't belong to her, he turned to sneer in her direction.
"That shit is nasty," he informed her, without getting specific.
"Everything is nasty," she replied, sparing him half a glance. That half a glance turned into a whole glance, and Gamzee's eyebrows drew together as she looked at him. Without much in the way of warning, she reached up and cupped the side of his face. His eyes widened and his face went hot. He'd expected her skin to be really warm, but she didn't have a temperature Gamzee could discern at all. He guessed that was just one of those things about ghosts.
There was no venom in his voice when he asked, "What the fuck you doing?"
"Your face is nasty," Damara replied. Gamzee was taken aback for a moment. He knew he wasn't the best looking troll that existed, but damn. He understood her meaning better after she pressed her thumb in firmly under his eye and he was hit with an aching there. Oh, right. His fall down the stairs might have broken his nose, but it had definitely left him with a black eye, which would be invisible under his paint except for the obvious swelling. It had gotten bad enough that he couldn't keep the eye all the way open, of course his face looked weird. Her face was really close to his, and Gamzee was overwhelmed for a moment with goings on inside him he didn't know quite how to examine. Damara petted over the spot she'd poked with her thumb and then dug it in more firmly than before. Gamzee hissed softly, twitching back the barest hint as she continued watching him, brows drawn down and together like he was even more interesting than the show she'd been watching.
Was this weird? Gamzee couldn't decide if it was weird, but he didn't mind it. That hurt of this was nothing to him, it felt calm, clean, but not dreamy the way it could be when he wasn't home. He didn't feel worried or anxious at all sat on her lap with her hand on his face. Idly, his eyes drifted down to her lips, and he felt like it was so obvious of him that he was overwhelmed for a moment with embarrassment. He shifted his eyes away, and Damara's hand came away from his face as he did. Her other hand came up instead, offering her smoke to him. She said something about it being good for pain. He switched gears quickly, from timid to vexed, and put a hand on her face to push it away from his own. He knew what that shit did, and how cloudy it could make your thoughts. He wanted none of it. She gave a muffled growl under his hand, and parted her legs enough that he fell clear off her lap and onto the floor with a thump.
He sat there and stared at her, frozen in place looking for something to react to as she met his eyes stonily. She went back to watching her show and he relaxed. "Just say no," she told him, voice annoyed. He wanted to fight her on it-- that was basically what he meant when he did what he did, that meant 'no', but he wasn't going to fight her on this. She'd willed her boots and ankles clean at some point since he'd pointed out the game grub mess on them, and he leaned against her knees. They didn't have to talk about it. He didn't want to, and she didn't care. Gamzee watched the show with Damara, curling an arm around her leg.
Damara liked instances like this more than she felt the need to start shit with Gamzee. Anyone else would catch a beating over touching her in a moment of anger, but what had the little clown ever done to anyone? Well, what had he ever done to anyone that she'd never done to anyone? Trolls did shit sometimes. That was just the way of it. The answer was nothing, really. He never did anything to her, anyway, and that was more than could be said about most everyone else she knew. She considered resting her hand on his head between his horns for a long silent moment just to cement that she had no hard feelings, but Gamzee stood abruptly. Damara hoped that he would sit down beside her, but that hope burned away fast as she watched him look around the room like he didn't know where he was.
She sighed, weary to her core as he smiled at her and headed for the exit, walking like he wasn't quite used to the way his limbs worked. "Bye bye, Gamzee," Damara said flatly. His fingers waggled at her, but she pointedly ignored it. Without another word, his feet carried him out the door and off toward things Damara did not know or care about. She drew deeply on her cigarette, eyes unfocused as ennui settled in around her, more familiar than anything she knew. She let her head loll back and blew a smoke ring into the air, thinking thoughts about better things, like her hand settled on his curly head of hair.