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Your name is Gamzee Makara and you want to paint with your best friend’s blood.
You used to want to paint with everyone’s blood, back when Lil Cal and Caliborn and Lord English all as one had been up inside your pan and making you think and do and say as you never would have up and thought or did or said if you had been in control of your own motherfucking mental facilities and all.
You still feel guilty about that, and you’ve got your thinking on as that you always up and will. What you did ain’t a thing as can be forgiven easy, no matter what anyone else says about it not being really you. It was your hands what were used to hurt and kill and your mouth what was used to lie and manipulate and your actions what caused a whole hell of a lot of death and strife and misery.
Karkat keeps trying to tell you you ain’t to blame. Used this really bitchtits metaphor about how a puppet can’t up and be blamed for following the pulling of its strings, seeing as how it ain’t the one doing the pulling. You were a puppet for a long damn time, and spiderbitch and Lord English both tugged you in all sorts of unmiraculous directions. You get the point he’s trying to make, but you’re sure it don’t apply in this situation. You done fucked up real bad and you know it.
You’re getting better though. You’re off the sopor and you get mad sometimes, but never in any kinda way that can’t be handled with a few deep breaths or the quick touch of Karkat’s miracle warm hands all soft and nice on your face. You been helping out where you can with building of your new planet and you even managed to make amends with some as you’d hurt before.
You don’t think Nepeta or Equius will ever be real close to you, but thats alright. You know you don’t up and deserve any kind of friendship or kindness from either of them, but you’d made yourself real low and said how sorry you were and they’d said they understood and that was honestly more than you had hoped for.
You’d apologized to Terezi, too, and Jane and. Well, everyone. And most of them had been real cautious and distrustful of you for a long time but you don’t mind none, its good. Helps you make sure you can’t fuck up that bad again. You sleep better, knowing that this time if you snap they’ll put you down before you can do anything real bad. Thats good. You’d much prefer that to the other option.
You don’t ever wanna hurt nobody ever again.
Still, some things had decided to up and linger. Some thoughts as made themselves at home real comfy in your pan and didn’t seem all that inclined to be getting their leave on. You’d figured them to be bits left from when you were thinking yourself some kinda god, at first. Pieces of what Lil Cal had put up in you that got left behind when he’d finally fucked off and gotten out of your goddamn pan. You figured, like what the sopor had done to you, it’d up and fade with time.
It didn’t fade.
You don’t dream dripping rainbows no more. Don’t feel that rage all clawing at you something vicious. What you do is see red. You close your eyes and you see red. You hold your little burning miracle in your arms and you think of the red inside him, all unnatural warm and wonderful. You want to dip your fingers in it,
You don’t wanna hurt Karkat, not at all, not never. You’d rather open your own damn veins than lay a frond to your Moirail. But you want…
You got no motherfucking clue what you want. Its just that the thought keeps finding its way back to you, no matter as many times as you try to smash that shit silent. You’ll be curled up in your pile all safe and content and look down at where your little diamond is laying all protected and happy on your thorax and you’ll find yourself fixating on just how warm he up and is, not just warm but off the spectrum hot, a vicious little burning crimson star and all yours to have and hold, and that thought will lead to wondering if your fingers will sting with the heat of it, dripping and viscous from your claws. If the temperature difference will up and scald you. If you’d have to let it cool first, come down from body temp to room temp before you could get at making murals with your beloved’s miracle color.
And then you’ll realize what you’re thinking and jerk yourself away from those thoughts and try to act like you aint up and losing your shit inside when Karkat looks up at you with those red, red eyes and asks if you’re alright.
You wave him off and say it ain’t nothing and the two of you go back to cuddling all close and intimate and perfect pale, but the thoughts don’t fuck off. He falls asleep in your arms and you carry him to coon, knowing he ain't nowhere near as used to sleeping dry as you and his daymares get him something fierce, and he don’t wake up or stir or grumble even the littlest bit when you strip him real slow and ease him into the sopor because even in sleep he knows its you and he trusts you so damn much and your pusher gets all tight and twisted in your thorax and you gotta take a step back and breathe real harsh for a minute.
It means so much to you, his trust. The faith he has in you when you ain’t done nothing to deserve it. The love he has for you when he could have so much better. He means so much to you and you’d do motherfucking anything for him, you would. You love him so motherfucking much and you, you
You want to take your claws to him, real careful and slow, split the skin of his arm and watch his color swell and spill over. You want to catch it in a jar for safe keeping, want to feel it between your fingers. You want him to let you do that to him, let you cut him and bleed him. You want to taste it, that mutant cherry red, when you have as much as you can without him getting dizzy. Press your palm flat to the open skin till the bleeding stops and then clean the cut with your tongue, hold that liquid fire in your mouth and bandage him up.
You want to pap him and shoosh him and touch him so sweet until he’s purring under you and then you want him to just. Stay that way. To trust you, to know you won’t hurt him so deeply in himself that he don’t even stop purring when you claw at him, that the pain don’t even reach him kus its you as is causing it and you wouldn’t never hurt him even the littlest bit past what was necessary to get at the miracles all flowing through him. You want to kiss the bandages on his wrists and smear red diamonds on the wall of your block, bleed yourself and mix your purple with his red and see what color you would up and make together, paint your signs side by side inside the biggest diamond like a motherfucking wiggler with a crush doodling in a notegrub.
You want to up and stop thinking about this crazy bullshit. You want it get the fuck out of your motherfucking pan. It aint fair to Karkat, aint fair to him at all, these fucked up fantasies that you’ve got all swirling dark and wicked in you. You want it to motherfucking cease and desist and you try to shut yourself up and it don’t fucking work and you hate yourself for it but you want it so motherfucking bad.
You kiss the curve of one adorable, nubby little horn and slip out of his respiteblock and back to the block where your pile is, ease yourself down on the pillows and cushions and shit you’d up and acquired together. You lie on your back and you stare at the ceiling and you try to make it stop but you. You wonder. You get all manner of thoughts up and vying for attention in your pan and you squeeze you eyes closed and you wonder at that beautiful color and the heat its got to it, wonder at the trust that would take, at how motherfucking insanely romantic that would all up and be, him all lying there and letting you and you, you can’t, and he.
You just ficking piled him not even a couple hours ago. You had him already, just a little while ago, you had him and you’re thinking awful, crazy things and you want him again, you all up and ache for that warm little body and those miracle red eyes looking at you so open and vulnerable and trusting and you, you.
You can’t fucking take this.
You reach a hand up into your hair, get a grip right up on the base of a horn and you twist.
Your whole body kinda convulses a little as every bit of you tries to relax all at once and you sigh real shaky and think about that pretty, pretty red.