Chapter Text
The dream began on the couch.
Or had it been a memory? Half forgotten memories and conversations he wished he had completely wiped from his mind were littered throughout his sleep. Some were foggy, barely recognizable outside of the small gestures that accented the moment. The rest he could have sworn never happened in the first place. Other’s memories he had even mistaken for his own, the stranger’s dialogue tumbling out of his mouth mindlessly.
The frequency of bubbles that were scattered through the route’s empty expanse only seemed to be getting heavier. It meant that he would stir from sleep needlessly exhausted more often than he had hoped to be.
Had that been the point? Probably not.
Anyway, he had sat on the couch. His old couch, covered in Monster stains and cuts that allowed tufts of cotton to spill from its wounds. It was during a time before the world had ended. Obviously it had been, there was birdsong and sunlight that filtered through the slightly open window.
It was nice, he thought, to live on Earth. To know that there had been stories from lives that were not his own. To exist, mostly, without fear. The heat had pressed under the cracks of the window, sweltering into the apartment in droves. It made his hands sweat, the controller frequently sliding from his grip.
In front of the couch, their seat that had been reliable and sturdy despite its frequent abuse, had been the TV. The thing had been hung crookedly. A fact he didn’t know why he remembered so vividly. Thoughts drifted to when he was younger, how he would tilt his head only slightly to match the lopsided television.
Within the memory (the dream?) all of the littlest things he thought he forgot about his apartment would resurface little by little. The way light hadn’t managed to reach every crevice of the living room, the openness of the space, even the smell incited bouts of unwanted nostalgia.
On the television was one of his brother’s games. A skating game, though one he would never admit he was bad at. Instead of the record breaking combos he would strive to make, he resigned himself to forcing the player character to clip through the railing. He was sure his brother had other games, but he hadn’t had a reason to play anything else.
He must have been nine. Or something equivalent. There hadn’t been a good reason for the thought. Maybe it was how big the controller felt in his hands. How inexperienced he felt sitting in plain sight. Vulnerable. The screen was darkened by his shades, and part of him wondered why he ever wore them in the first place. Though from then to now he had gotten much more accustomed to the darkened tint of the world he lived in. The sunlight that pressed against the window seemed more to him like a spotlight. The living room seemed a lot more empty than it had before.
The lucidity would hit him at the first sound of metal. Metal on metal. One loud clang. A pause. And then another.
When the dreams first began, he thought it had been someone forging a sword. A hammer hitting molten metal, maybe even making a sword that hadn’t been a half plastic piece of shit. But the clatter sounded personal somehow. Heavy. One loud clang. A pause. And then another. After a few more sleepless nights filled with the same memory, he had finally assumed it was fighting. Not him, certainly. He was on the couch making his character fall through the floor. But even still, the noises echoed in his mind. One loud clang. A pause.
It was weird, then, that the sound of silence frightened him more. Despite the forced monotony of his expression, he really hated this part of the dream. Memory. Whatever the fuck it was. There was a strange comfort in the repetition, to know that there had been a body busy behind the rhythmic metal clanging.
When he was younger, he remembers watching a horror movie. It was uneventful—he recalls inserting his disgruntled two cents when the characters did something he disagreed with. But the protagonist had described being watched. He described how your heart gets heavier within your chest, how the hairs at the back of your neck began to stand on end. How your breath hitches. How, more than anything, you just want to move. To run.
On the couch, his breath hitched. He felt goosebumps not just from his neck but the entirety of his body and his heart had practically sunk to his stomach.
But he did not move.
He wanted to stand. To hide in his room, and wait for the noises to start again. But he could not move. He did not ready himself. The only thing he could think to do was stare at the screen, the character now practically lifeless and unmoving on the ground. And although his face had been emotionless, his knuckles shone a pale white against the grip of the controller. Every day, this dream would torment him. And every day, the silence only seemed to approach him. It seemed to get louder. Just one step at a time.
And every day he would wake up. His head would throb and his eyes ached for something more than the half-assed attempts at sleep his body would offer him. And always, for some reason, his mouth was dry.
As per routine, he let himself lay in bed for a few minutes more, staring at the darkened ceiling with the same dead expression he had given his childhood television screen. And when unneeded adrenaline had melted into fatigue and he had the mind to move, he placed his hands on his face, letting his fingers press and slide against the gray circles just under his eyes.
He was tired.
He wished, as a time player, that he would be granted with more mundane abilities. He wasn’t interested in the power of time travel or anything similar. The thought scared him more now than it had when he first indulged in his own self-destructive tendencies. But how convenient it would be to simply know the time instead of being blinded by his own phone. But while Dave was cursed with the gift of time, he would be severely lacking in eye adaptation. So he picked up his phone and squinted as the screen displayed its stocky numbers with an unwanted luminosity.
3:32 PM.
He would be in school around this time. Or skipping class to make sickly beats on his brother’s self made studio. But now, he would lament in bed wondering why he couldn’t ever seem to fix his schedule. Why his eyes would beg him for sleep but his brain begged him for anything else. Why his mouth had been so damn dry.
It took nearly all of his energy to lift the sheets from body. To get up from bed and even move toward the door. When he brushed his fingers against the doorknob, he flinched at how cold it had felt. How long, he just now thought, had it been since he left his room? He stifled a yawn. How long had it been since he really cared?
He practically pushed himself out of the room and dragged his feet across the hall. Perhaps he wasn’t nocturnal, but part of him believed that his eyes had grown accustomed to the frequent dimness of the meteor’s halls. The room next to him had been Rose’s. Then Kanaya’s. Karkat’s. Terezi’s.
How long had it been since he talked to her? Perhaps another mundane ability of use could be his sense of time itself. With each sleepless night, each passing inconsequential day, he seemed to have less of a foothold on the hour. How had she been doing? He wondered when he would start to care again.
And through the hallway, he had seen the outline of the kitchen within the darkness.
Water was what he wanted. His body seemed to know before he had. Through scattered and empty thought, he had barely noticed the dim light that shone onto the scene. It seemed like something out of a painting, if the genre bordered on a contemporary mess. Empty cups littered the table while unclean dish rags hung from the sink. The palette was unbearably dull, being painted with grays and blues. It’d be a shitty painting, but he was incapable of making out any real shapes from the scene.
Once again he rubbed at his eyes, trying his best to stifle his yawn. Part of him believed that he wouldn’t have been getting sleep anyway. It was when his fingers had touched his eyebags with no interference that he realized he left his glasses in his room. He didn’t swallow the frustrated sigh that heaved through his nose.
Within another step, he heard something drop to the floor. He would be embarrassed at how quickly his breath hitched at the sound, how he squared his shoulders and moved his hand toward his hip. As if a weapon had truly been there, waiting to be picked from the hilt and swung in his defense.
He could not clearly make out the layout of the room. The closest exit had been the one through the hallway and he had nothing to defend himself with. Nothing really, his strength depended on the weapons he used rather than any actual physical ability. Physical ability, he would add, that he did not have. Even though he felt this heartbeat within his ears (his heart heavy, his breathing uneven, goosebumps), he let his eyes trace the sound.
It was Karkat.
They stood only feet away from each other. Only a few more steps and Dave would have ran into him. Cradled slovenly in his arms had been human foods—foods that would be better suited for a high school party than real rations. Chips and candy. It overflowed really, stacked upon each other in bulk using his chest as support. He was barely visible in the darkness, though Dave supposed Karkat could see just fine. His eyes glinted slightly in the very dim light that the room allowed him, like that of a stray cat.
He looked just as nervous as one, Karkat’s face slowly paling at the sight of him. There was a moment of silence between the both of them. With each passing second, Dave felt his eyebrows furrow and his shoulders loosen. But Karkat had been just as tense.
“Don’t tell people I live this way,” he said as quietly as he could manage. He could not manage very well, his voice just hinting at speaking volume. But he had still been surprised at how little his voice managed to carry. Dave was almost inclined to be amused, his mouth involuntarily twitching at the sight. Finally, he shrugged.
“I didn’t see you man,” he said. Without a word, Karkat moved out of the kitchen and back into the hallway in which Dave moved through, abandoning the bag of chips that lay lamely on the tiled floor. He had reached the fridge door, but when he clasped his hand around its handle he peered back into the dark hallway. It was eerie, the kitchen’s dim light stopping just short of the entrance. He could no longer see Karkat, but part of him wondered what everyone else had been doing while he spent his time in his room all alone.
“You look like shit,” Rose had said from the table.
“Yeah, thanks,” he replied jadedly.
Rose had been reading one of her tomes, a sentence that made Dave wonder why she hadn’t grown into a typical teenage girl and read stories about boys or horses. He noticed the curious inflection that she attempted to hide in her voice, but would ultimately say nothing. It had just been them in the room, something he did not understand his relief in. The trolls hadn’t been anything more than an acquaintance. And others, history had been far too extensive with.
“My question is why?” She continued nonetheless, placing a pen in the book. A feather quill might have fit her aesthetic a bit more, but once again it was an observation he hadn’t the energy to comment on. While she sat at the table, he sat on the floor using the couch as a backrest. He had to crane his neck to talk to her properly, but resolved to just staring at the blackened TV screen. The scene felt familiar.
“Why what? Do I look like shit?”
“Yes,”
“Genetics, maybe. I’d like to think I kinda got lucky with how I turned out, but I guess not everyone gets the appeal.” His words slurred a bit more than he had intended for them to. Rose was facing him now, a placid expression as she held her head upon the table with a hand. He pinched the bridge of his nose, pressing down the indents of his face with his thumb and forefinger. “Do you know how shitty it is to sleep here, by the way? It’s cold as hell. And I might as well be sleeping on the damn floor—the beds are made of boulders from the fucking stone age.”
“Oh, it’s a sleeping issue,” she said finally, the curiosity finally escaping her tone. She straightened her posture a bit. It made him realize just how different the two of them had been, her refinement and his ineptness. He unthinkingly mimicked her, stooping out of his slouch. “I hadn’t thought it would be this much of a problem for you, considering you slept on a mattress on the floor with cinder blocks as a bed frame during your childhood.”
He paused. “...Yeah, I guess I can’t really argue. It’s still different.”
“Homesick?”
“Hell no,” he interjected quickly. He would never miss the lifestyle he endured for his youth. He fought another yawn. “It’s just that you’re so used to doing one thing that doing a whole other thing becomes way more of a chore than it should be.”
“I suppose it doesn’t help that AM and PM mean two very different things than what we are used to.”
“I doubt it means a damn thing to you. I’d message you at, like, four in the morning a few years back and you’d be in the middle of writing gay wizard porn or something.”
“Wizard porn that you seemed to keep a keen interest in reading very recently. How interesting,” she said. “I wonder if there is a correlation hidden in this scenario somehow.”
Dave hadn’t the energy to think of a retort. “How long has it been since we left?” Dave asked instead. People smarter than him had kept a calendar in their rooms. He had seen one in Rose’s once, when helping her move something to her room. Red strikes marked each day, the occasional notes scribbled neatly on the margins. She thought for a moment, but it hadn’t taken her as much consideration as it would for Dave.
“Three months just about. If it’s around July now.” He could tell that she noted the slight wince he gave, and reminded himself that small gestures shouldn’t be done so freely. “Does it feel longer than that?”
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “It doesn’t really feel like anything.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No.” He attempted to end the statement with a sense of finality. But he couldn’t help himself. “Well, it’s just—the days are kinda melding together now. We gotta spend three years here, y’know.”
“Yes, I do know. If you would recall, I’m the one who told you that.” Rose had her legs crossed, her half interested face allowing a vague smile. The expression, of course, meant she was very interested, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to know that. Or perhaps he had been. It had been difficult to be surrounded by Prospit dreamers for so long, or at least he believed so. They had been obsessed with sincerity, where he and Rose had been taught differently.
“Right.”
“Is it just your body’s confusion with the Trollian sleeping schedule?” She asked. Probably not.
“Yeah, probably.” He shrugged nonetheless, settling a little farther into a casual slouch, his arms resting on the seat of the couch. He laid his head back on the seat. “I mean, I could also just be a normal human being and find the living situation to be straight garbage. Maybe that too.”
“Maybe,” she said. He hadn’t noticed the way her body eased tension, the way she no longer held a definite posture and how her smile had widened only slightly. “If I can be honest with you I—hm.” She stopped herself for just a moment, as if she had considered ending the phrase there. “I was worried.”
“‘Bout what?” He looked over and was met with, not a smile, but a look of vague annoyance. “Oh, me?” She rolled her eyes. Something about the gesture incited nostalgia, despite only having met her in person very recently. It reminded him of conversations they would have during the summertime, when school had been out and Jade and John had been asleep. How they’d banter for hours until the early morning sun would glint through their windows.
She hadn’t been herself as much as she had been. Or maybe, she had. And she was just changing. That thought scared him more.
“Yes, you,” she said. “You’ve made yourself fairly scarce these past couple of months. It’s been a week since we’ve seen each other, I think.”
Dave raised his head to meet Rose’s eyes. When he realized she hadn’t been joking, he straightened himself. “Shit. A week? You’re sure?”
“I am.”
“Shit,” he said again. “My bad. I’m not like avoiding you or anything. Not more than usual anyway.”
“I know that now. You seem less guilty, more generally oblivious.” She shrugged. “I’m not angry. More relieved if anything.” Dave huffed, raising himself to the couch with a hand. He meagerly plopped down on the cushion, the seat much more comfortable than the one in his subconscious.
“Sorry. I mean, I—”
“Oh, Dave,” Kanaya said from a distance. She held neatly folded fabric to her chest. “Good to see you. I hope you are well. I, well. I hate to sound so formal. ‘What’s up?’” She unthinkingly lowered her pitch to match Dave’s natural intonation. He noted the smile Rose gave, how much wider it had been. He gave a stiff wave. She walked closer to Rose, almost naturally standing at her side.
“You have something?” Rose asked, her tone already much more tender.
“Ah, it was the fabric you asked for.” Kanaya lowered the material for Rose to see from her seat. “I was thinking we could use softer material for something so simple, even if it were to be a collaboration. Would that be okay with you?”
“That sounds lovely.” She traced the fabric and seemed delighted to feel just how light the texture had felt. “Sorry, Dave, what were you…?” Dave was nowhere to be found. No longer did he place himself on the couch, or offer his slurred two cents. And no longer did Rose feel relief.
Karkat stood in front of the coffee maker.
Which made Dave wonder if people could healthily drink coffee so late at night. Early in the morning. Late in the morning. Probably not, right?
He woke up at around two in the afternoon this time, and just as much as it had been before, his mouth was dry. So once again, he pushed himself out of bed, pushed the dream that lingered in his thoughts to the back of his mind, and moved his half awake body to the kitchen. And, like last time, he saw Karkat.
“Oh,” Dave said. He looked significantly calmer than their last meeting, his face less pale than it had been. Really, he seemed bemused. Dave was too, so he supposed they had that in common. Karkat gripped the handle of his mug, scalding liquid pouring out of the machine that was frankly terrible at making shitty space coffee. He had dark circles under his eyes too. Or perhaps they had always been there. Their eye contact made Dave’s mouth twitch. He wasn’t sure what Karkat had been staring at. “Hey.”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” He asked, lifting the mug from the machine’s grip and raising it to his mouth. He didn’t need to look at the machine to know his coffee was done, the gesture seemed fluent. Almost routine.
“Uh. Do you?” There was a pause that lingered in the air after his question. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable; as they stared at one another it was almost as if there had been a sense of understanding.
“Well. Bye.” He took another sip of his coffee and moved toward the grim dark hallway.
“Nah, hold on,” he said. They were words he hadn’t meant to say aloud. Or they were words he had no idea he wanted to say in the first place. Karkat gave a disgruntled sigh, rolling eyes to once again meet Dave’s. Which made him realize that he had forgotten his glasses again. “We met twice in a row. That’s, like, fate.” He sidled past Karkat and moved toward the fridge. Water had been plentiful.
“Fate for what.” Although a question, the cynicism that dripped from his tone made it sound like a statement. He wondered if Karkat was able to ever intimidate anybody. He was sure every other member of whatever coalition of people they seemed to be collecting on the meteor had done their fair share. Murder might have been on the table, save for Rose who took out her aggression on the enemies the game granted her. Not for Karkat, though. He couldn’t really picture it. Which might have answered his question.
“I dunno. A beautiful budding relationship?” He answered nonetheless, waving his bottle fancifully in the air before closing the fridge behind him. “Maybe we gotta elope. Or it could be one of those shitty hallmark movies where you’re the begrudging ‘no fun’ chick who hates Christmas and I’m the super hot elf-slash-lumberjack-slash-whatever the fuck dude who teaches her how to lighten up a bit and understand the gift of the holidays.
Like ‘damn you’re hot maybe Christmas ain’t so bad’. Yes obviously Christmas isn’t bad, Jackie, it’s fucking Christmas. Oh shit wait, you like movies like that, don’t you? Now I must look like some amateur jackass since I’ve never seen a Hallmark movie and you’ve prolly seen like a million.”
“Holy shit,” Karkat interrupted. “You spew more flagrant horseshit than I do. And if you didn’t catch the memo—God, that word still makes me violently nauseous—that’s not a compliment. Goodbye.”
He watched Karkat leave this time. He slunked very easily into the dark hallway, taking one last sip of his coffee before retreating into his room. In the few months he had lived on the meteor, he hadn’t seen Karkat very often. Was there a reason for that? Was that how Rose felt? He tried to sip his water, miming the fluid movement Karkat made with his coffee, but forgot to take the bottle cap off.
“Dave!"
“Oh. Hey.” In front of him was Terezi, a hand very casually stuffed in her pocket while she leaned on her cane. He wondered if she copied the gesture from him. She watched him much more than he had ever seen her. Well. She hadn’t watched much of anything, had she? Still, her informal stance gave an air of confidence—something she seemingly never ran out of.
They both stood in what they all dubbed as the living room, though Dave hadn’t been sure why he had left the safety of his own room. Not that it had been any more safe in the bedroom than it had anywhere else. Realistically he understood this, but being enclosed within the walls of the space by himself made him feel safe. Or perhaps another emotion completely. He presumed it to be positive.
“Did you get taller?” He asked after a moment. Terezi snickered at this, proudly and unsubtly straightening her back at the thought. The cane she held seemed more like a staff with the improvement of her posture.
“Surprised you noticed, considering how delightfully oblivious you are,” she said. The inflection was so familiar to him, though it had barely been a distant memory. The words that would light up on his phone seemed to match so perfectly to Terezi’s guileful tone. “You, on the other hand, got shorter. And you smell sleazy! Like a hiveless beggar.”
“I think you should get that nose of yours checked, ‘cause I smell great.” He hoped Terezi would not be able to smell the slight flush that tinted his ears, or the way his eyes instinctively moved to the floor. “All of the best humans smell like this. Probably a cultural difference.”
“Come a little closer, Dave,” she said very simply.
“Hell no, I don’t need you licking me any more than you already have.” He backed away, causing Terezi’s smile to widen. Of course, he had forgotten, when talking to women like Terezi he would be playing something similar to chess. And his hesitancy always gave Terezi the opportunity to take charge of the conversation.
“Oh, don’t be such a pansy,” she teased. Still, red twinged at the sides of his face, but his mouth twitched. She was much more sincere than he had ever been. Her feelings were compelling and complex, and despite what he had first believed, Terezi wanted intelligent conversation. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe he had read her completely wrong. None of it gave proper explanation as to why Dave could only ever give stilted conversation.
“Look, I already got lines of girls trying to mack on me—I’m not gonna let you off the hook just because you’re blind.” Terezi’s loud cackle cut through the air. And he let himself ease only slightly. Still, he would not deny that he missed talking to her. If he had been missing from Rose for a week, it must have been longer for Terezi. He was half inclined to apologize, but something stopped him from doing so.
“It’s been a while,” she said nonetheless, as if she could feel his guilt. He could tell that Terezi hadn’t concerned herself with the overthinking his sister kept herself to; if he had been unwell or angry. It was clear—she had just been happy to know he was back. The idea only made him feel worse.
“Yeah,” he continued, pushing the thought to the back of his mind. “I’m just saddled with the burden of being a damn human. So my schedule’s still what it used to be. Are the beds in your room just as shitty? Cause I swear to God, I’ll wake up at like two with a half broken neck.” Once again, he let the blame slip from his mind to his schedule—as if his nightmares hadn’t been a valid enough excuse.
“Dave, I don’t sleep on ‘beds’ like you do, remember?” She reminded him, pointing the cane at his chest. Involuntarily, he backed away just before the tip of her cane managed to touch him. “Just imagining sleeping in one makes my joints ache. Maybe you should try sleeping in a recuperacoon like the rest of us.”
“Absolutely the fuck not,”
“I heard Rose wanted to try it,”
“I’m sure Rose wants to try a lot of things involving your species. I don’t really see your point,”
“Oh wait—before I comment on how delectably easy to tease you are,” Terezi placed a contemplative finger to her lips, her expression shifting to something more pensive despite the absurdity of the phrase that just left her mouth. “Have you seen Karkat around recently?”
“Karkat?” Yes, he had. Twice now, actually. Both had been chance encounters in the kitchen. He believed that both he and Karkat wished to pretend it hadn’t happened. “Not really.” He said instead. She just hummed at this, evidently dissatisfied with the answer.
“Why are we talking about Karkat?” Vriska asked. She stood just next to Terezi. They seemed to almost compliment each other, Dave noticed. It was no wonder they had spent so much time together, it looked so natural. “I thought we’d be glad to have some peace and quiet.”
“Even you at least find him funny,” Terezi frowned, poking at Vriska’s side.
“Yeah, when it’s necessary! I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but he’s loud! And annoying!” Vriska huffed. “I don’t know why we’re all suddenly so afraid to share our opinions.”
“...Dave?” Terezi asked. And turning her head, she noted that he had been gone. Just as quickly as their conversation had arrived, Dave had left no trace of his presence in front of both Terezi and Vriska. Terezi huffed.
“...Maybe you should have started with where he’s been?”
“Guess so.”
“Okay, uh,” Dave had placed a hand on the counter, watching Karkat stand in the very dim light of the refrigerator. It would have been the third night in a row—his perception of time had worsened, but he could at the very least still count. “Is this, like, your schedule? Am I disrupting some kinda Karkat ritual? Cause if so I can like find a different time to emerge from my cocoon nest. That's what you call them, right, your cocoon nest?”
“I can never tell whether or not you say the shit that tumbles out of your mouth on purpose to piss me off or if you’re genuinely that moronic.” Dave hopped on the counter, letting a hand rest on the leg that bent comfortably on its sleek surface.
“I dunno. If it makes us cool, assume the ladder,” Karkat paused at this, watching Dave’s rigid movements before turning back toward the fridge. The light inside flickered slightly, reminding them both of its apparent age. As it did, Dave noted how the glow accentuated his features. It highlighted the dark circles that colored just under his eyes and the way his eyebrows had consistently creased. His frown.
“What did you want, Dave?”
“Water.” Clumsily, Karkat grabbed a bottle of water from inside. An assortment of things tumbled from the fridge, both human and troll. Soda, water, some leftovers from meals Dave must have skipped over. He grumbled, slamming the bottle of water on the counter and crouched toward the things that fell on the floor. And unthinkingly, Dave hopped from the counter and mirrored Karkat, grabbing the cold soda bottles that seemed seconds from combusting.
When he looked upward, Karkat just seemed confused. Dave had only ever seen anger. Immature and raw anger that made those around him laugh, but that day his eyebrows were furrowed and his lips had been pressed into a thin line. With their eye contact, Dave remembered his glasses. And how he didn’t have them. Again. Nonetheless, he lowered his gaze and grabbed what he could.
“Seriously though, man, what are you doing here?” Dave had asked while he did, placing what he could in the fridge. Some of the food had been alien, insect legs jutting from plates whose food was obscured by bottles of water. He nearly gagged. “It’s nearly four.” He heard Karkat heave a sigh—he could hear the exhaustion coating his voice.
“I didn’t sleep much during the game. Maybe I’m still in that sort of mindset. I don’t know,” he said flatly. And despite the anger he had held over text, Karkat seemed quite mellow in person. Loud, yes, but dull. As if the fire that sparked his frustrations had finally died out. As if it had never been there in the first place. “I could ask you the same question, you know. I won’t, because I don’t really care. But I could.”
“Lucky for you, I don’t really care to answer, so I guess that works both ways.” Karkat placed the rest of the contents of their spill into the fridge. Dave, with his bottle of water, still sat on the floor. He used the kitchen counter as a backrest, allowing his dry mouth reprieve with the drink. With the fridge door closed, Dave was once again soaked in darkness. But without his glasses, it was easier to make out the details of the scene. How there had been subtle hints of purple and green mixed with a color palette he first thought to be dull. How still everything had been, save for the two of them still moving, still awake. How, surprising Dave, Karkat had sat down with him. “Gonna chill out here?”
“I might as well. I drag myself into the kitchen almost every damn day, and suddenly you start showing up consuming maybe the entirety of our fucking water supply.” Karkat balanced an arm on his knee, gesturing as he spoke. There was a second of silence after the statement, Dave using the moment to take another swig. He hadn’t felt the same sort of guilt with Karkat that he had with others. It might have been because of their disconnect. “...How is Terezi?”
And yet, there it was again.
“She’s, uh.” Was she okay? She seemed to be—far better than Dave had been fairing. She almost seemed better than when they had first been talking to each other. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“We haven’t—I haven’t seen her recently,” he admitted.
“Why?” The conversation teetered on that of an interrogation, Karkat’s inflection muddled and forceful.
“It’s my fault. My schedule,” he let himself say. None had been so direct as Karkat had. Asking simple questions while expecting loaded answers. He hadn’t seen a point of avoiding the topic; not with him. “I mean I’m up at four, completely awake, talking to you on the kitchen floor. I should probably talk to her soon, but if I’m gonna be honest, Vriska scares the fuck out of me for some reason. I’m not against spiders or anything, but shit—John’s got scary people coming onto him. I mean; no offense, man. You’re not too scary.”
Karkat opened his mouth, as if he were to say something. Dave had more so been expecting a rant. But all he did was sigh and lean his head against the kitchen counter. “That makes sense,” he said instead. He did not try to hide the misery in his tone. He could not help but feel responsible.
“Sorry,” he thought to say. Karkat looked at him leerily.
“I don’t know what you’re apologizing to me for,” he said. “Terezi’s her own damn person. I don’t have anything to do with it anymore.”
“I ain’t gonna pretend we didn’t have a whole feud about it, man, that shit was embarrassing.” He held the top of the water bottle between two of his fingers, staring at the notes upon the fridge that had been muddled within the darkness. “I scamped you out of a relationship and then literally lost the girl to an arachnophile. Trust me, dude, this shit has been haunting me for months.” Karkat scoffed, letting his back slide a little further to the floor.
“I guess we just didn’t interest her enough,” he said. They sat in silence at that. Karkat had assumedly been in contemplation, but without a light source it was hard to really make out any of his features. Dave did not do the same.
“Maybe you didn’t at the time, but I know I just actually fucked up.” He shrugged. “She was asking about you, y’know.”
“She was?” The hope he had expected to hear in his voice was tainted with regret. “I mean, how long has it been since we first got stuck here?” Dave laughed dryly at this—the first laugh he gave in months.
“Three months apparently.”
“It’s only been three?”
“And yet, it feels like a fucking eternity.” They both sank further in their defeated slouch. He had known that he wasn’t the only one to find the journey to be a chore. He was only surprised to find so much complacency with the notion. Rose had even found joy in the thought, setting a path for herself with someone she clearly loved. Dave couldn’t say the same.
And after a moment, Karkat stood. And he moved toward the dark hallway.
“Same time tomorrow?” Dave asked jokingly.
“Whatever,” he answered.
And he had been there, the same time tomorrow.