Work Text:
Karkat stirred, his eyes slitting open to the dark of the bedroom. It took him a groggy moment to realize what was missing- the other half of the bed was conspicuously empty. Blinking now, and pushing himself up to half-sitting, blearily looking around the room. It was close to sunrise now. Dave had been there when Karkat had fallen asleep, at least a few hours earlier. Neither Karkat nor Dave were exactly paragons of a healthy sleep schedule but after mentioning offhandedly several times in conversations that neither of them had slept in handfuls of days, it had prompted combined concerned prodding from Kanaya and Rose and they'd finally agreed to at least attempt to sleep every night. Of course, getting into bed didn't mean they actually managed sleeping, but anyone expecting Karkat "didn't sleep for his entire session" Vantas to sleep nightly and regularly clearly didn't know who the fuck he was. (He had been awake for at least five days before he'd fallen asleep this night.)
And on the meteor Karkat had learned Dave was similar, though he seemed to have more problem with not staying asleep (Karkat had watched him often since they started sharing a sleeping arrangement, tense and sweating in his sleep before bolting awake, obviously shaken and with no desire to go back to sleeping) than Karkat's problem of just not getting to sleep at all in the first place. And since they'd stopped dreaming in the dream bubbles after coming to the new universe and started generating their own dreams "naturally" from their own subconscious, Dave's nightmares had only seemed to increase in frequency.
Anyhow, Dave obviously wasn't anywhere in their bedroom, so he had to be in the other room. This wasn't that unusual. Pushing the blankets off, Karkat crawled out of the bed, adjusting his sleeping t-shirt and boxers. Another part of their pact to "actually go to bed" involved wearing pajamas and not just passing out in his regular clothes whenever and wherever he happened to finally collapse. He rubbed his eyes, trying to dispel his grogginess. Scratching his stomach, he walked over and opened the door. It was weird having an entire house to themselves- but these can-houses they were staying in for now weren't that big anyway. It was only two rooms; a bedroom and a living room/kitchen/all purpose kind of room, both sparsely furnished.
The room was dark, but that wasn't a problem for a troll. His eyes worked fine in the dark. So Karkat was instantly able to locate the shape of Dave hunched on the floor by the couch.
"HEY," Karkat tried to keep his volume at a reasonable level (for him, at least.) Though Dave was surely used to his decibel level by now, he felt it was probably better to try not to startle him or anything.
Dave's head lifted slightly to glance at Karkat as he approached, but settled back down on the floor as Karkat shuffled over to sit down beside him. For a few moments they both just sat, Dave staring at the floor, his face angled ever-so-slightly away from Karkat as to obscure his features, and Karkat alternating between staring at the floor himself and glancing at the side of Dave's face that was visible (sans glasses, the shades clutched in one of Dave's hands balled against the floor.) He was unmoving, but Karkat could see the tension in the set of Dave's shoulders. Finally, Karkat spoke again.
"SO... YOU WEREN'T IN BED." Karkat kicked himself mentally. What a fucking stupid question. Was he not capable of not sounding like a completely fucking dumbass for one goddamn minute? He never knew what the exact thing he was supposed to say was, how he was supposed to act, despite how confident he had acted about his abilities at this kind of thing in the past. (Should he get a chair to sit backwards on here, he wondered? No, that was another stupid goddamn idea.) Dave just turned slightly though, and Karkat could see how unfocused and blank his eyes looked.
"oh" Dave said finally, as if he really had just been alerted to the fact that he hadn't been in bed just now. "wh... uh. yeah." he seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to process Karkat's words. Karkat could practically imagine the loading circles in his distant-looking eyes. "yeah. i guess. i got up. yknow. bad dreams. or whatever." his voice was smaller than usual, almost like when he was just mumbling to himself, and the way he said it sounded like he was only just realizing himself that he had gotten up. Karkat looked back down at the ground again.
"AH." He didn't really know what to say. Karkat chewed at his bottom lip. This blankness wasn't new, he'd seen Dave like this before, but he still worried. And still didn't know what he was supposed to do. Was he supposed to ask Dave to tell him about the nightmares? That sounded like a thing that maybe he was supposed to do, but that felt dumb. He didn't want to talk about his daymares. (Or should he say nightmares? He was unsure which word to use now. The ratio of humans-to-trolls had him and most of the other remaining trolls abandoning their nocturnal sleep cycles in favour of one compatible with humans. For the sake of convenience. But it posed some comfusion on what terminology to use.)
He was silent again for a moment, the invisible "..." hanging in the air between them.
"...YOU OKAY?" Fuck. What kind of dumb question was that? Dave didn't move. Karkat scrubbed a hand over his own face in exasperation with himself. He wished he knew better what to do, what the right thing was that would help and make Dave stop just staring vacantly at the floor with his hands clenched and hunched shoulders tight.
"uh." was Dave's response. "i. dunno. no. i guess." he shifted, and Karkat could see now the almost invisible tremor in Dave's hands. Karkat frowned harder, his eyebrows bunching in concern. He hated feeling like a such fucking useless garbage chute when Dave was like this.
"OKAY." he said. "DO YOU WANT... A HUG OR SOMETHING? IS THAT OKAY?" He didn't know what else to say about it. He didn't know what words he was supposed to offer. At least he could offer this. He asked first, though. He knew sometimes when Dave was in a bad way he didn't want to be touched at all.
Dave seemed to mull over the offer as Karkat watched him carefully, and then he nodded slightly without a word. At the signal, Karkat scooted closed, and gingerly snaked an arm around Dave's shoulders from the side. He felt Dave stiffen initially at the touch, and then gradually relax into it. He leaned into Karkat slowly, until his head was resting against Karkat's chest. Karkat took the glasses from Dave's hand and stretched to set them a few feet away. Then he wrapped his other arm around Dave as well. Dave curled closer, drawing himself into Karkat's arms and half across his lap. Despite Dave being over half a foot taller, he seemed small when Karkat was holding him like this. Pulling him tighter, Karkat pressed his cheek against the top of Dave's head. Both of Daves arms were curled between them and he felt Dave clutching the fabric of his shirt, his face pressed against it as well. Karkat listened to Dave's breath, hearing the way it would occasionally tremble or hitch. He was shaking slightly all over now, as the physical contact seemed to have brought him back to his body somewhat. Karkat smoothed a hand over Dave's back rhythmically.
"HEY," He said finally, patting Dave's shoulder softly. "WHY DON'T WE GET YOU A GLASS OF WATER OR SOMETHING AND THEN GO BACK TO BED?" After a second, Dave nodded against Karkat's chest. Karkat stood up, taking one of Dave's hands and pulling him up as well. As he stood Dave grabbed his sunglasses from the floor and with his head turned away from Karkat, quickly scrubbed a hand over his eyes before sliding his glasses back into place. With his shitty human night vision, he would be basically completely unable to see in this dark with those on but whatever, it's not like they were going far, and Karkat was kind of leading him anyway.
The 'kitchen' portion of the room was barely ten steps away. Karkat led Dave to it. As he poured a glass of water, Dave was leaning against the fridge, his arms crossed, almost looking casual as ever to the untrained eye. But Karkat knew him better than that, and could feel the unease still coming off him in waves, and see the barely-visible shiver in his limbs and the minute differences in his posture and the tightness in the line of his mouth. Walking over now, Karkat pressed the glass into Dave's hands. Dave sipped it obediently and Karkat draped an arm around Dave's waist, standing close. When Dave finished the water, Karkat took his hand again and they made their way back to the bedroom, Karkat leading the way back into bed. He shoved the tousled blankets back as they crawled in, and then with one arm holding Dave, he used the other arm to tug the covers up over them.
After a few minutes of just holding each other, Dave pulled off his glasses and set them on the 'bedside table' that was really an overturned box. He turned back to Karkat, and sighed, rubbing a hand over his face with his eyes shut. Pulling away slightly, he curled into himself a bit.
"m'sorry." He mumbled into his own chest. Karkat ran a hand across Dave's ribs over the ratty white t-shirt he had thrown on as pajamas.
"WHAT? WHAT FOR?" Karkat frowned, eyes studying Dave's face.
"y'know. for this. for being like this." his voice was muffled and he was mumbling, hardly directing the words at Karkat at all.
"DAVE... LOOK, ITS FINE. YOU DON'T NEED TO APOLOGIZE. OR BE EMBARRASSED OR WHATEVER. ITS..." He paused, searching for what he meant to say, "IT'S OKAY." He settled on finally, kind of lamely. He wanted to know how to make Dave understand that this was fine. That he didn't mind taking care of Dave sometimes. That he wanted to help Dave however he could. Really, Karkat had subjected Dave to far more pathetic displays of his emotional instability and though slightly awkward as he always was around obvious displays of any emotion, Dave had been nothing but sympathetic and caring to him then. (Far more that Karkat deserved in his own mind, but that just highlighted how similarly stupid and fucked up they both were, didn't it?) Dave's head turned further towards the mattress, not looking at Karkat. Frowning, Karkat slid his hand up Dave's face, his thumb tracing the line of Dave's jaw up to his cheekbone, brushing the old scar there (a reminder of the past just as much as the bad dreams were, though Dave hadn't mentioned whether this one was from during the game or before it.) He shifted, moving closer to Dave to make up the space from Dave moving away from him. Hands gentle on the sides of Dave's head, he tilted Dave's face back from squished facing into the mattress to face his own. He pressed his forehead against Dave's.
"SERIOUSLY." His voice was as low as he could make it without whispering. "YOU SERIOUSLY DON'T NEED TO APOLOGIZE. I CARE ABOUT YOU, ASSHOLE."
Dave said nothing in reply, but Karkat felt him exhale slowly. Then he shifted, uncurling slightly and stretching his arms out around Karkat. He then tilted his head up and pressed his mouth onto Karkat's for a brief kiss. Surprised at first, Karkat took a beat before kissing him back. The kiss was chaste and soft and ended quickly before Dave shifted again, this time turning over so Karkat was spooning him. Karkat pulled him close, tangling his shorter legs with Dave's longer ones, his arm protectively draped over him, and listened until Dave's breathing slowed. The light from the rising sun of this new world over this old planet slowly bled past the edges of the curtains as it lit up the sky outside, and Karkat watched it gradually illuminate their bedroom as Dave slept curled in his arms.