Chapter Text
(You can’t touch him, not like that. Not the way you think you might like to.)
You stare up at the ceiling in your dormitory, trying not to throw yourself from your bed, pillow in hand to suffocate your best friend in his sleep. Would it be possible, you wonder, to get away with murder? Could you kill him and not have it trace back to you? The snoring is very obnoxious, but the sleepy honks are even worse.
Maybe you could kill yourself and save everyone else the bother.
Because you know, pulling your pillow up about an ear to try and down the sounds of everyone else breathing out, that you will have to die. If you don’t kill yourself, someone else will have to.
You do this a lot, lie in bed like some nocturnal beast chained to the rails. It would be peaceful, if Gamzee didn’t fucking snore. For once in their miserable existences, everyone’s not running their mouths, and are lost to their dreams, safe in their bubbles. Sort of, anyway, because there’s probably someone with that power lurking in the shadows.
(‘Stick your tongue down his throat,’ you can hear Dave say. ‘Saves everyone else the trouble of killing him.’
The sad thing is; you probably would, if it came down to it. It’s a genetic thing, buried deep under layers of psychological faults and imaginative curses. The need to save people is ingrained in your skin, under it, carved into your bones and staining the marrow with the blood of all those you couldn’t save, all those you killed.
And still you can’t touch him.)
You wonder if maybe you are keeping a vigil; if you are awake, you are keeping everyone else safe. Safe from you, and safe from any dangers that might present themselves. You’re learning; this is a school, that’s what they do. They teach, and you absorb it all, take everything they say and run with it. Like everybody else, like everyone who has been found and herded up and taught to understand, you are beginning to work it out. Now, you can sort of almost maybe control your power. If you can just keep your distance, then you can keep people safe.
There will never be a day where it isn’t a problem. It is, quite literally, in your blood, and even you have been poisoned by it. The poison runs so thick, and so fast that there is nothing you can do to stop it, to find even one drop of blood or spit or sweat that isn’t infected, that doesn’t become a death sentence to any who touch it.
(Once, back when Dave first learnt about it, tagging about after that Harley chick, he’d told you about a film he watched once. He’d been lurking, like Dave was fond of doing, whilst Harley ate her lunch with you. You’d never spoken to Dave before, and he hadn’t seemed to know you existed, which had suited you fine, because Harley likes to complain about him, and you didn’t have a very good impression of him.
But he’d plopped himself down in the seat on Harley’s other side, and he asked what your power was.
When you told him, he said, ‘oh, like the chick from the X-Men.’
You had no idea what that was, and told him so. Harley hadn’t known either, and Dave went off into a rambling explanation that made you both pull faces at each other before he finally said there was a chick that absorbed people’s powers through touch, and one time she was macking on her boyfriend and accidentally killed him.
You vow never to touch him after that, glancing across the hall to where he’s doing something ridiculous with a banana in an attempt to make the resident ice queen smile. She does, and you sigh a little. You don’t stand a chance compared to her.)
In the morning, after turfing Gamzee out of bed and getting breakfast, you head to class. You aren’t really in the mood for it. But of course you aren’t, because why should you be? He’s there, slouched in his seat like he’s not quite awake yet. Probably not, you think, and try to slink past him to go to your seat at the back of the room. Thank God for alphabetisation, you think, but he notices. Of course he notices.
(Sometimes, you think he might even be looking deliberately. That he might even care.)
‘Karkat!’
‘What.’
John grins, hair getting in his eyes and he doesn’t seem to notice. Your own isn’t much better.
‘Just wanted to say hey! We haven’t spoken for a while.’
‘I know,’ you say. There’s a reason for that, you think.
‘I miss talking to you.’
He’s frowning at you – no, no, not frowning. Pouting. The little shit is pouting at you as though you took away his favourite toy, or the cake his dad sent him.
God, you hate him.
Instead of replying, you use the arrival of the teacher as a cover and retreat to your desk. You miss the lesson plan, too busy cleaning up a nosebleed. Dave gives you a look, and you nearly get blood in your mouth for the face you pull back.
(You are Karkat Vantas and you are beginning to think this is all a waste of time.)