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“Don’t wiggle so much, stupid,” Karkat snapped.
The human boy glared up at him from the lab table he was laying on. “Maybe I wouldn’t wiggle if you were a better doctor.” He stared into Karkat’s eyes as the troll boy continued to bandage his arm, then jerked his head to the side, looking away. Karkat thought he looked oddly naked without his shades. It wasn’t the lack of his knight’s hood, or shirt - no, definitely the shades. “Seriously. This is some shitty healthcare right here. Obama would never stand for it.”
“Hey, you want me to get Kanaya and she can lick you better?” Karkat said, sanitizing another section of the wound along Dave’s busted elbow. The bottle of alchemitized alcohol was drawing low; Karkat would need to make more soon. He would barely have enough to finish cleaning the arm before he made it to the shoulder.
“At least she wouldn’t be scared of it.”
“SHUT UP.” Dave’s blood had been shocking at first, not just because the sight of red splattered everywhere made Karkat feel all too much kinship with the human, but because the extent of his injuries - scrapes and wounds all down his left side, the gash splitting his upper arm open, the trail of cuts below his wrist, and his arm hanging off his shoulder like a limp wriggler. Karkat didn’t need reminding of how much it hurt to see Dave like that. He wished he could be so casual about everything. “You’re the best we’ve fucking got.” Dave didn’t answer right away - he had to know it was true. Until Rose and Sollux woke up from that weird-ass magic coma (Terezi’s highly technical diagnosis) the meteor-ship didn’t have any better options.
“I swear, you’re gonna go through all this trouble and then we’ll just stumble through a dream bubble where some magical lifey troll can make it all better like that.” He snaps his fingers on his good hand. “That’s always how it goes, that kind of deus ex machina shit. Probably predetermined.”
“You talk more when you’re scared,” Karkat says. Then he yanks another bandage around, sealing the elbow wound as best he can get it. (Threshecutioner practice and weeks of basic survival training had given him a pretty good understanding of first aid, but he was still no great surgeon.) “We just barely got out of a dream bubble, there’s no way we could risk another one.”
Karkat Vantas works in silence for a little while, fixing more and more of Dave’s arm, until he’s gotten to the long slash down his forearm, readying the needle and thread to stitch the human up yet again. And, for good measure, he applies most of the rest of the alcohol to the cut.
“AH, shit, watch it, Vantas!” He jerked away, moving his whole torso back since he couldn’t pull his arm. “What if you just killed me? Could we try that? Knight of Time, god tier and all? Rose says John got back like his whole chest when he died, I could for sure grow back an arm.”
Karkat shook his head. Losing his life to get back an arm? “Even a troll wouldn’t be that stupid, Dave.”
“Look - you know I’m not gonna die for real, right? We’ve seen this before, that one time. I crawled out of a damn sun. I think I could get over dying here in an episode of Troll ER starring Dr. McDumbass.”
“You lost most of an arm saving your fucking sister from a dream bubble imploding,” Karkat hissed. “If you bleed out ‘cause of that it’s a heroic death for sure.”
“Yeah, but if you kill me it’s too faggy and pointless to be heroic,” Dave said, clenching his teeth through the pain. “I doubt you could even do it right.”
And in a snap Karkat’s dropped the bandages and the needle, and he’s got Dave’s own broken sword hanging over his throat. He holds it there for a few seconds. “No. I am the leader. And we’re not taking a fucking chance.” His breath is warm on Dave’s face. The human’s eyes are wide. Karkat leans in right above Dave’s ear, still brandishing his weapon, and says, “And I’m not losing you, you colossal nook-crawling maggot.”
“Fine.”
Karkat leans back, though he keeps the blade even. “What was that?”
“I said fine. Keep going, Karkat.” Dave closes his eyes.
And the Knight of Blood surveys his friend on the makeshift hospital bed, and he thinks for a moment, he looks so pretty - no, peaceful, he looks fucking peaceful. A second later, he’s back with the needle, threading it through Dave’s warm skin, and then neither of them say anything until the job is done.