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Skaia Sleeps Tonight

Summary:

Here’s the thing, though. They’re called gods, they created the universe – but really they were just a bunch of traumatized, lonely kids. They did their best, they were creative and clever and kind and wise. But there are still a few things on Afterna that aren’t quite perfect, such as, for example, Karkat’s entire life.

His school is a slog, his job is a pit, his friends are all either homeless or turning into zombies, he’s in clubs between the most hopeless couple of losers the world has ever seen, his secret mythic Blood powers are only good for getting him spectacularly injured, there’s a shadowy organization trying to kidnap him, and now he’s falling in diamonds with a pokerfaced hipster showoff human who acts like he’s from another planet.

Chapter Text

Karkat wished he could see the stars. The stars were supposed to be the faces of the gods – it had been years, sweeps, but he could remember every constellation like his own face in the mirror – and he wished he could see them again now, because he needed to give those twinkly fuckers a piece of his mind.

Maybe with pictures, shitty hand-drawn diagrams of how much they all sucked. Maybe some spitting. Definitely swearing.

No luck, though. All he could see up there was the yellow glow of reflected streetlights, on a layer of low clouds. And looking up made him dizzy anyway.

Karkat had lost kind of a lot of blood.

He was not going to be able to reach the fire escape, not like this. He stood on the corner and looked around vaguely, trying to figure out another way in, but it wasn’t a part of town where people left easy ways into their homes. He finally went up to the front door, and stood there for a while, swaying, his horns ringing.

If he was going to get help, this was the only choice. He needed someone who understood this mystical hoofbeastshit. With anyone else, he’d have to spend like two hours explaining why he needed a shower and a change of clothes instead of a hospital. But did he even really need help? It wasn’t like he was dying. And they weren’t chasing him, or he’d lost them. He’d probably lost them. Probably.

“Screw it.” He stabbed a finger at the intercom button, and missed. The door buzzed anyway, unlocked by another button inside and upstairs, and kept buzzing until Karkat managed to grab the handle and pull it open. “Yeah, yeah,” Karkat muttered, “show off some more, crotchflake.” There was an elevator, but it didn’t work. Karkat found the stairs and dragged himself up three flights, along to the seventh apartment on the left.

Dave was leaning against the doorframe. “Welp,” he drawled. “That sure is a whole lot of blood.” He was in pajamas, but his shades were on, and a scabbarded sword dangled by its belt from his left hand. “You got a little, uh.” He gestured vaguely, like he was trying to point out a crumb Karkat had dribbled on his shirt. “Uzi’ed.”

“I got Glocked, dumbass. Do you even know what an Uzi is? Move.” He shouldered past into the apartment, and Dave closed the door behind him.

“Seriously, dude, you’re supposed to carry your blood on the inside, it works better. Are you okay?”

“I’m always okay, Dave,” Karkat said, trying not to wobble. “Half the blood’s theirs, anyway.” Well. Some of it was. “Got the bullets out, wounds all closed. I’ve shown you my regen before. I just need to get cleaned up.”

“Uh huh,” Dave said, sounding skeptical. “Well, bathroom’s that way.” Karkat stumbled over, not bothering whatsoever to avoid the random crap on Dave’s floor. Once it was a glass bottle, which was almost bad, but Dave was suddenly next to him, catching his arm before his foot could roll out from under him.

“Thanks,” Karkat mumbled.

“Always.” Dave helped Karkat through the door, into a space that was in no way big enough for both of them. “Here, I’m gonna take your sickle, okay?” What? No. Karkat fumbled behind his back, and found the sickle still stuck into his waistband. “Hey, easy, I’m not trying to steal it,” Dave said, “it’s just in the way. Just set it on the tank, you’ll be able to reach it from the shower.” Karkat hesitated, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere in this tiny ablution block out of arm’s reach anyway. He pulled the weapon out and set it on the back of the load gaper. Dave’s sword was already leaning in the corner.

“Right, cool. So uh.” Dave had a handful of Karkat’s tattered sweatshirt. “I know this is all so terribly forward, oh la Mister Darcy, but you need a shower like the blazing surface of the sun needs a froyo stand and a swimming pool and if I leave you alone you’ll fall on your ass, so. Stop me if this gets weird, I guess?”

It took a second for Karkat’s fuzzy brain to decipher this babble. Okay, so Dave was doing the stereotypical human what-no-this-isn’t-pale-all-friends-take-care-of-each-other thing. But at least he knew he was doing it, and he was clearing the air. Fine. “If by some arcane magic any tiny piece of this situation somehow ceases to be weird, I promise to implode from shock,” Karkat said. Then, parenthetically,

“Fuck the gods.”

Dave stopped with Karkat’s shirt halfway up to his armpits. He was smirking. “Which gods?”

““I don’t even know,” Karkat said. “Whichever one set me up for this mythological clusterfuckery. Whatever I did wrong in my last life can’t have been bad enough to deserve this. Is there a god of terrible cosmic jokes and being way too amused by me flipping my everloving shit?”

“Yep.”

“That one, then. Fuck my fucking life, Dave.” He held his arms up so Dave could get his sweatshirt off. “You know, I actually used to think my blood thing was lucky? Figured it made me safer. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid me…”

“Dude, don’t beat yourself up. It’s not like you started the fight, right?” He dropped Karkat’s shirt on the floor. It went schplot.

“Hah. No. It was a fucking ambush. I got shot in the lung, Dave. Do you know what it feels like to get shot in the lung?”

“… nope,” Dave said, after a pause, as though he had to think about it. His fingers hovered over the raw pink spot on Karkat’s ribs, not quite touching. Little circle, and thin line across it. “Dunno what it feels like to cut the bullet back out, either.”

“No shit. Nobody does, because that is not a normal thing to experience! Regular people don’t get to know that. Hooray for me, heights of physical trauma inaccessible to mortal trolls are mine to enjoy! Maybe next they can braid my shredded intestines with barbed wire! For science!”

Dave laid his fingertips on Karkat’s cheek. It hit him like a basin of ice water dumped over his head. He stopped talking, his eyes popped open, and, in three attempts, he pulled in a ragged breath. “Hey. Karkat. Stay with me, okay? Stay here.”

“Okay.” Karkat was staring into Dave’s eyes, or at least his sunglasses.

“We got this, dude.”

“Yeah.”

“All right, cool.” He took his hand off Karkat’s face, and Karkat’s brain turned back on. That. That was not covered by a it’s-not-pale-it’s-human-friendship disclaimer. But before Karkat could decide what to do about it, Dave had gotten the rest of Karkat’s horrifying shot-up clothes off him and gently pushed him into the shower.

Gods, the hot water felt good.

After a few seconds Karkat figured he should actually wash instead of standing there, and bent over to pick up the soap. Everything faded to white, his horns were ringing again, and Dave was there, holding him up and getting his pajamas soaked. “Crap. Stay vertical, I got you. Just a sec.” He stepped out, took off what he was wearing – they also went schplot, though this time it was only water. Then Dave was back. “I got you.”

“Sure,” Karkat said. He was distracted, because everything was spinning. He stood there and let Dave wash him, and gradually it occurred to him that Dave’s “I’m just here so you don’t fall down” attitude was so much bullshit. He was tender. He went more gently over every fading scar, as though they still hurt. (They didn’t. After getting so much of his super-blood all over his skin, Karkat was amazed the marks were even still visible.) Dave washed his hair last, and somehow shampoo-covered hands on Karkat’s scalp was the most intimate sensation he’d ever felt.

Shit. Karkat wasn’t this kind of troll. He was a fucking romantic, he wanted a moirail, not a shooshbuddy. If someone had asked Karkat yesterday whether he’d let some guy he’d barely hung out with a few times trip him into a pile, the no would have broken glass and the curses after would have soured grubsauce. He shouldn’t be letting Dave do this, this was so stupid, but Karkat didn’t have enough blood in his brain and Dave’s hands had all the gentle and sweet that his face and words and douchey attitude never had and Karkat needed something stupid right now.

So when Dave was done, and all the shampoo was rinsed out, Karkat quietly asked, “Can I have a hug?” Dave hugged him, tight – arms around his arms, chest against his back, cheek against his hair, with the hot shower pouring down over them both. The drain was running clear at last.

After quite a long time, Dave said, “You’re crashing here, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He reached out and turned off the water, without otherwise moving. Then, after another reluctant pause, he let go. “I think I’ve got clean towels somewhere.”

He didn’t. Or at least, he was gone way too long looking for them. Karkat eventually dumped all the wet clothes in the bottom of the shower, grabbed his sickle, and poked his dripping head out the door. “When you said you had towels I thought you meant you had them, not that you were going to weave them on the spot from, I don’t know, pigeon down and pocket lint.”

“Catch,” Dave said, and tossed something at him. Karkat, still slow, let it bounce off his chest before he caught it. It was a plastic bottle, labeled as apple juice.

“I don’t even like human plant beverages.”

“Stop your blasphemy and drink,” Dave said. “Your blood pressure is crappy over fuck-all, you need fluids and sugar.” That was true enough. Karkat unscrewed the cap, made a face, and took a sip. It didn’t taste as bad as he’d expected, and even that one sip made him feel instantly better. He chugged the rest of the bottle.

When he finished, he opened his eyes to Dave tossing a towel over his head. “Found one, anyway.” He noogied Karkat’s hair dry, until Karkat took the towel away and took fluffy vengeance. Things got a little silly after that, ending with both of them sprawled on the couch and each other, each wearing half of Dave’s spare sleepwear. Dave had the oversized t-shirt, and Karkat had the floppy cotton shorts.

“Feeling better?” Dave asked.

“Yeah,” Karkat admitted. “Which is kind of fucked up, when I think about it. I… I killed two people tonight.” Karkat looked at Dave’s face, wondering how he’d take that. He may have guessed, but…

“Good.”

“What.”

Dave snorted. “Did you think I’d be all clutching my pearls? ‘Mercy me, killing people who were shooting you, how dare you?’ Whatever kept you alive out there is good with me.”

Who the hell could sound so matter of fact? “… have you ever?”

“Yup. Asshole went after my friends. That turned out to be a bad idea.”

Karkat bit his lip, fighting down a rush of emotion that was completely not appropriate to the topic. What kind of violent jackass felt pale at the suggestion that someone would kill for him? But Karkat couldn’t help but notice that even after the goofy towel fight, they both had their weapons within arm’s reach. “Who was it? What happened?”

“Hey,” Dave said, “I appreciate a good game of distract-everyone-from-your-feelings. I play that shit competitively, I’m going for the Olympics. But my combat trauma was a long time ago and yours was tonight, so maybe we can save my story for the second date?”

“Yeah, well,” Karkat said. He sat up a bit, hoping this would be easier to talk about if he wasn’t sprawling. Dave shifted too, but instead of matching him, he laid his head in Karkat’s lap, face up. Listening. Karkat blushed. “I’d just finished work, and I was walking back to campus. This car with its headlights off swerves in front of me, right onto the sidewalk. I turned around and there was another one behind me. A bunch of trolls get out with guns – they were all trolls, no humans. One of them told me to go with them, that they weren’t going to hurt me. ‘We don’t want to hurt you, Karkat.’”

“They knew your name?”

“Yeah, that freaked me out, too. I had a sickle in the back of my pants, under my shirt – I’m not stupid, I know I’m walking home alone at night. I tried to draw it slow, but half of them were behind me. Somebody shouted, ‘He’s armed, he’s armed,’ and one of the guns went off. Then I started moving fast. You haven’t seen me go fast…”

“You haven’t seen me go fast, either,” Dave said, smiling a little.

“Hmph.” Dave didn’t talk much about what he could do – well, neither did Karkat – but it had something to do with Time. “Well, they were surprised. Got the first two before they could aim.” Karkat drew a finger across his throat. “Then I got shot. In the leg. Which sucked because, first, I got shot with a bullet and it really fucking hurt, and second, the super-badass magic blood that’s supposed to be in my veins is now in my sock, where it does jack shit.”

Karkat took a breath. “I… panicked, I guess. Like an idiot. I wasn’t bleeding that fast, I could have just… won, kept going, but I just wanted to get away. Make them stop. I tried to break through the other group, drop them quick so I could run. So of course, they both had guns, my sickle has maybe six inches of reach, I was running right at them – they shot the crap out of me. I don’t even remember how many shots, but I found three more holes in me later. Anyway, I didn’t hit them clean, because fucking ow. Slashed one in the arm, jabbed the other in the head, I think. But I didn’t stick around, I kept running. At least I didn’t get shot in the back. And if they followed me, they didn’t do it soon enough to catch me.”

“They thought they had a plan, and it turned out they had two corpses and some knife wounds,” Dave said. “Think about that the other way – they shot you four times and you kept swinging. I bet they were flipping the fuck out.”

“Yeah, well, they weren’t the only ones. I staggered into some alley and dug the bullets out, and finally noticed I didn’t even know where I was, let alone where I thought I was going. This was the only place I could think of, unless I just walked back to my dorm.”

“And they probably know where that is,” Dave said.

Karkat had not yet thought through the implications of being targeted by a planned ambush. He did that now, along with more breathing than was probably quite necessary.

“Whoa, hey,” Dave said. “Sh.”

“How long were they following me? Why didn’t I notice? Are they gonna go after my friends, or…”

Dave reached up from Karkat’s lap and touched his cheek. “It’s okay, man. They’re scared of being seen and now they’re scared of you, they won’t do anything too flashy.”

“How do you even know that?” Karkat asked, shivering at the touch but still breathing fast.

“They waited until you were out alone late at night,” Dave said, “and they didn’t chase you. Their boss is gonna be pissed, unless you killed him. So maybe they’ll try something. But it won’t be anything public. And if they know enough about Blood to go after you in the first place, they won’t mess with your friends.”

“You think they were after me because I have an Aspect?” Karkat thought about it. “Yeah, probably. Not like I have a family who would pay money to get me back.” Just a lusus who would get killed to get him back, fuck.

“No, shh.” Dave trailed across Karkat’s cheek with three fingers, and Karkat’s brain went mercifully blank. “Whatever they think they can do with a bag of magic blood, they’re gonna figure out pretty quick that it’s their veins getting opened, not yours. I’ll even help you if you want, I’m okay in a strife.”

No shit. Karkat wasn’t anything special at martial arts, he got by on superpowers and temper, but he knew a fighter when he saw one. Dave walked around his apartment like a tiger in a cage. And right now, being in the cage with the tiger was the safest feeling Karkat could imagine… “Y-yeah…”

“Yeah? Dude, you don’t need it, you’ve got these assholes cold, but say the word and I’m there. Whoever looks at you funny gets spiral-cut like grandma’s honey-glazed ham. I slice, I dice, I make Julienne fries.”

“Ugh, don’t sound so happy when you talk about hurting people. Barbarian.” But Karkat was smiling. “Here, you’re doing all the work…” He put a hand to Dave’s cheek, conveniently positioned in his lap. Dave leaned against his hand affectionately, but he didn’t seem to actually be pacified. “Shit, how do you pap a human?”

“Ears ping me pretty good,” Dave said. “Back of the neck. Bottom ribs on the side… nnn…” Karkat was running an experimental finger down the edge of Dave’s left ear. “Mm-hmmm…”

“Seriously, your ears? That’s adorable.” Dave didn’t answer. He was very lightly biting his bottom lip. “Wait, if it’s that different, where did you learn how to pap a troll?”

“Fr’m you…” Dave mumbled, followed by something that was either gibberish or ancient English.

“Bullshit,” Karkat said kindly. “Nobody’s that good the first time except in cheap pornos. There’s a really lucky troll in your backstory somewhere.”

“Well… yeah…”

“Can I take your sunglasses off?” Normally at a time like this Karkat wouldn’t need to ask, but since Dave had left the shades on when he took his pants off, it might be a touchy subject.

“Mm-hm…” Karkat pulled them off gently with his free hand, and set them folded on the arm of the couch. Dave’s eyes were closed underneath. “Does the world end if someone sees your eyes?”

“Did last time,” Dave said, and opened his eyes. They were just normal human eyes, except the ring between the white part and the black part was bright red, an eye color Karkat didn’t remember seeing before on a human. Or on a troll, for that matter, except in the mirror.

“Is this an Aspected thing?” Karkat asked. “Because if anybody walking by can go ‘ooh, red eyes, that kid’s got superpowers,’ then I’m going to need my own pair of pretentious shades.”

“Nah, you and me are just awesome like that,” Dave said. He sounded too coherent, so Karkat tried rubbing the back of his neck. Dave bit his lip again. “Ff, softer?” Karkat lightened up, going for the lightest brush of fingertips he could manage.

“On you, it’s pretty,” Karkat said.

“… sap…”

Karkat was very much not bored. But he was on a mostly-diurnal schedule for school, and it was late enough that the time no longer began with a prime number. He tried to hide the yawn but Dave caught him. “Awright, short stuff, bedtime.” Dave yawned himself, stretching without getting up. “I can crash on the couch if you don’t want company.”

Karkat actually had to think about that for a few seconds, though only because he liked the idea of a guard at the door. “Together?”

“Sure.” Dave rolled to his feet. “Is this your first time sleeping in a bed? Do I get to teach you what spooning is?”

“No and hell no,” Karkat said, standing up less gracefully. “I didn’t actually have a cupe until I was four. And trolls invented spooning. How would that even work in a bed? My whole weight would be on your arm.”

“Does that mean you want to be the little spoon?”

“Not if I’m going to wake up looking at your gangrenous hand after lying on it all night.”

Typically, Dave took that as a yes.

Sleeping dry was not Karkat’s favorite thing, but it was different with Dave’s snuggleplane tucked carefully over his shoulders and Dave himself holding him tight from behind. The weight and touch felt safe and reassuring instead of intrusive and restraining. And Dave kept nuzzling the back of his head.

Halfway to sleep, Karkat remembered something, and chuckled. “Hey, you know what I was worried about a few hours ago? My bulgeknocker boss was yelling at me for talking back to a customer who believed in coffee emergencies. I thought I was gonna get fired.”

Dave said something like nn and shifted a bit. Karkat tried to laugh again, but it sounded sort of flat. “It’s not supposed to be like this,” he mumbled. “I’m supposed to be the incarnation of a primal mythological force.”

“Yeah, me too,” Dave said. Karkat hadn’t even been sure he was still awake. “Never feels that way. It’s okay.”

“Bearers of legendary power aren’t supposed to fuck up this much.”

“We always fucked up, dude. It’ll be okay.”

So they fell asleep, a couple of fuckup kids curled up in a bed. If one of them had a nightmare, it vanished in their touch, it was forgotten by morning.