Streetstuck Three: Chock Full of References
It is so hard giving Sollux dignity with that lisp.
In other news, this chapter could easily have been entitled "Moirailing for Dummies: the Goofus and Gallant Approach".
TItle: Romance, East of the River
Fandom: MSPA (Homestuck)
Pairing(s): John/Karkat, Dave/Terezi, Sollux <> Karkat
Rating: M
Warnings: Prostitution, underage drinking.
Summary: John attempts to be a good boyfriend. He is fairly poor at it.
~~~
Sultry, you think, is a good word. You are a Strider, and you know lots of words, many of which are more impressive-sounding synonyms for 'fuck' or coquettish ways to describe your flagrant drug use, in addition to the rough and ready lingo of the mean streets you were born on, but sultry is one of the better ones. Definitely in the top one hundred, describing both the hot-as-hellfire nature of this day and the way your bro-pal trollfriend is currently sprawled across you, her head resting in your lap with milky eyes turned towards a television that she can't even properly see.
"It's hot," she points out, unnecessarily, breathing out the words like a hiss, a prayer, over a commercial for MMM-pop featuring closed captions in English with a smattering of wingdings mixed in for flavor.
"Sultry," you correct in your smoothest voice, trying it out on her; she snorts and shifts on top of you, one arm flopping listlessly over the side of the couch.
"This is not a time for semantics," she warns in her best future-legislacerator tone, the bite of which is muffled by the sopor and heat-sapped lethargy in her voice, each breath labored. She told you once that sopor makes you numb all over, a tingling in the pit of your stomach like its fallen asleep that spreads like a slow burn to your heart, your lungs, your extremities, your mind filled with deep purple fog that insulates and covers, holding you in, dulling the knife-sharp edges of the cruel and unforgiving world. You wouldn't know, being human-- all sopor does is make you sleepy, make you want to curl up and nap forever like a cat grown fat and sleek on fish oil and table scraps, and the oppressive heat of summer is doing that well enough for you already. "Get up and open a window, lazybones."
"Hate to tell you this," you drawl, eyes flicking behind your ever-present glasses to observe the broken air conditioner resting useless in the corner and the blades of the ceiling fan lazily turning, stirring up air tainted with swamp-thick humidity, "but they're all open already." The room smells like smoke, not that you have much of a sense of smell anymore, but you put out your joint half an hour ago, deciding that it was too hot to even get high. What you want now is a beer, ice cold, but the refrigerator is all the way across the apartment, and getting one would require making Terezi move, something that you hesitate to bring up in the middle of Clerk of Court or Habeas Corpses or the so-shitty-it's-not-even-ironic television choice du jour, Troll Judge Judy. Terezi loves them, eats them up like seventy year old blue-haired grandmas watch their soaps, with an almost religious perseverance-- she's been over here every day this week to devour them whole and assimilate their knowledge into her vast mental directory of rulings, since the fuse in her apartment blew out and the television was, as her lusus put it, "Fucking trashed, the goddamn piece of shit."
Not that you're complaining, of course, no matter how much you might gripe at her over it; the truth is you're glad for the company, somewhere in your small and stunted peach pit of a heart. Terezi has a mean streak in her a mile wide, but none of it is for you, the beloved moirail, who she is professedly as pale as the moon for; "But, like, not in a gay way. No homo, Strider." You'd rolled your eyes at her at that declaration, mentally filing homosexuality away as one of the human concepts Terezi will never understand, even if she can cite precedent for all legal rulings since Brownblood vs. The Board of Education.
"I think somebody doth protest too much," you'd told her, having just come off one of the innumerable Shakespeare units at school and testing the shoes of a modern-day bard, street poet for the twenty-first century on for size before ditching it a day later for something far less corny and dated, and the two of you dropped it, relationship kept on as it had been before with faint touches and hints here and there, pointing towards something larger beneath the surface that you will never quite understand either, even if you did grow up surrounded by trolls.
So now here you are on the hottest day so far in June (which also happens to be the first day so far in June) with her comfortable in your lap, shushing you harshly as Judy's theme music twangs in the background. "This is the best part," she whispers as the judge mounts the sentencing podium to a chorus of "All rise for Her Honorable Tyranny!" The twisted old crone, horns hooked back and eyes black as midnight, shuffles her papers and pronounces the same sentence as always-- "Guilty!" as though the troll justice system ever finds anyone anything but. The camera pans to a sweating, bug-eyed young troll, a yellowblood, standing with hands tied on a makeshift gallows, the noose already around his neck.
"Please," he whimpers, and you try to remember what his crime was, having zoned out during the body of the show, the Alternian commercials and Terezi in your lap being the only interesting parts. You can come up with nothing, except maybe he stole from a grocery owned by a higherblood, or punched the son of someone important. It's always stupid shit like that, little infractions that no one but a troll would care about. Take one step out of line and you're dead, is the lesson you had hammered into you all the time growing up-- erroneous, because they can't do shit to you, legally. Completely different jurisdictions, and your own court system will mercilessly prosecute any troll-on-human violence to the fullest extent they can justify.
Nevertheless, most of those offenders walk off with seventy-five-to-life without parole, more than can be said for the whimpering teenager rendered in flickering RGB on your cracked and dirty screen, whose pleas turn into a moan and then a sharp snap that terminates all noise, the microphone picking up nothing but static and the creak of the rope as it swings, propelled by gravity.
"Thrilling," you say dully, all grayscale monotone and lackluster stabs at enthusiasm.
"Isn't it, though?" she breathes, and you click off the TV before things can somehow become worse. It's dark in the room now, the only light streaming in through the crack in the window; the sun is setting as you speak, vibrant orange spilling over your floor and illuminating the contours of her face, catching on the sharp red angles of her cheap plastic sunglasses, the ones you picked out for her after she went blind, too little too late. (And how's that for dramatic fucking irony.) Your own breathing is soft, measured, and you wonder if she knows you're looking, if she can smell it in the sweat clinging to the fabric of your t-shirt-- and if so, if she even cares. "When's your brother getting back?" she asks after what seems like a thousand years, the hand whose fingers aren't threaded through the shag carpeting resting on your forearm, claws brushing against pale pink skin.
"He works until midnight tonight," you tell her, glancing at the Sesame Street clock hanging on the wall above the TV alcove. "Seven hours."
"Plenty of time," she purrs, hand migrating up to your shoulder, your chest, resting just above your heart. This is not, you suspect, how moirails are supposed to act.
But as she leans up and kisses you, sweet sopor residue on her lips like honeyed wine, you can't find the hubris within you to care.
---
Hands in your hair, on your face, holding you tight and pulling you close as hot breath pants into your mouth, the both of you strangely quiet save for the rustle of clothes and the creak of the bed frame beneath you, rusted box springs protesting every small movement-- and, of course, the soft but steady rumbling in his chest, so like a growl, so like a purr, that professes his enjoyment. You haven't initiated it once yet, these last blissful days since you walked off the podium at the local civic center and tossed your cap in the air with half a thousand other lost and scared children with equally bright, confusing futures ahead of them. It's always him, always Karkat, pushing you down against the bed and kissing you like he's trying to suck out your breath and then falling asleep with his head on your chest, rumbling away like someone left his motor running.
They do that, cats. Suck your breath out, that is. Your Nana used to tell you stories from the old country when you were little, of feline familiars that would come in the night and sift out your soul from between your lips, but you never believed them. Still don't, because it's superstitious nonsense, but that's what it reminds you of at six in the evening when you've been awake for two hours, petting his hair between his horns as he slumbers, exhausted from entertaining you, though he needn't try so hard. You're not that hard to please, though if forced to guess, you would hazard to say that he's been trying, working hard to keep his voice down in your presence and put on a play of contentedness, with you and the world-- you rather wish he would stop it, actually. You never notice it when he's awake, and it's only when he sleeps that you can feel the difference, how the tension drains out of strained sinews and tight, corded muscles in his neck and back, relaxing entirely.
These moments you have together are odd, undeniably, though he never refuses to see you, always lets you in when it's one in the afternoon and you've come by to talk or walk down to the trashed and weed-choked public park ("probably radioactive, don't know why the fuck you wanted to come here-- hey, fuckass, pigeons are for eating, not petting!") or make him cup ramen on his hot plate. He never turns you away even if there are deep maroon-tinted bags under his eyes and his hair hangs in tangled shocks over his forehead, skin sallow and limbs listless. On those days you say nothing but pull him back to bed, and the addition of your body warmth always seems to make him lighter.
Dave doesn't know where you're going all this time, why you aren't hanging with him so frequently anymore and have instead left him to the care of his mentally-unstable moirail who somehow managed to graduate with honors and get herself into the state university's law division for this fall. But he has hinted, and you wish you could tell him: No, Dave, the two of you have never had sex. The truth is that you haven't done a damn thing with him in nearly two and a half weeks but kiss, and that's fine with you, really, because what you want is his love and affection, not his cock or his lips wrapped around you, as nice as those things would be. You're fine just getting to know him, watching as some of the stiffness melts out of his demeanor, as piece by piece the act falls away. Someday you'll be able to be with him all the time, the real him, the Karkat that none of his clients ever have a chance to see and know and love.
Beyond anything, you're honored just to be able to know him, no matter who or what he is.
To that end, tonight you have decided to drop in on one of his shows. After he's woken and kissed you good evening, lips fumbling and hesitant with drugging remnants of sleep, and after you've watched him dress with sadness in your heart, scraps of silken cloth drawn over skin you want to stroke with dragging slowness; after this is done you slip your sneakers back on, trail your fingertips down his arm for one last time, a lingering look between you, and slip out, false confidence filling you. Down the steps and to what you now know the performers refer to as "the showroom", where the house lights are just clicking off. You wave offhand to Sollux in his box above the noise, but his attentions are elsewhere, and in a heartbeat the empty stage is illuminated in a disco-rave frenzy of flashing orange and yellow. You press on, a little further, to the place where all the dirty, tarnished souls gravitate, collapsing into a stool that sticks to the seat of your pants when you shift against it.
Strider, who has been cleaning glasses behind the bar, nods at you; for a second you get a flash of red eyes over the tops of his shades, and then the glasses are firmly in place again, his expression empty and stoic. Nevertheless, you are fairly certain that he is watching you. "I just want to see him," you say, your voice low because the music hasn't clicked on yet and it is a luxury you can yet afford. "I don't want him to feel like I'm ashamed, you know? Because he shouldn't. It's not a big deal."
You feel awfully and adult and mature after delivering this little speech, but Strider just watches for a moment more and shakes his head at you, the movement small and understated but condemning as he moves to crack a bottle of the same green concoction you imbibed the first night and pushing a glassful over the counter at you. You accept, feeling still more mature if a bit slighted, because whatever he thinks of you, Dave is a friend of yours and friends of Dave always drink free at establishments the older Strider is employed at. You sip this time, taking it slow, trying not to lose too much of yourself too quickly, and the drink is half gone by the time the music starts and the paying customers begin filing in.
The first act doesn't interest you, really, a double-team of two maroonbloods that the audience offers a few screeches for and about a dollar fifty thrown onto the stage, nothing more. It's still early, and there's a sense that the real entertainment hasn't started yet. The rest of your drink goes, and you politely refuse another, your mind already filled with comforting fuzz as the music lowers sensually. Inquisitive, you glance up at the stage, and you know you won't have to wait long; here is Karkat now, strutting out on stage with fire normally repressed, in his traditional red garb. And now you are caught in a moral conundrum, because the other patrons are whooping and hollering, and you want to show your support-- but would that make you like them, a chauvinist only out for his body?
You are pondering this dilemma when he happens to catch your eye, and you see his expression change. For an instant he is utterly devastated, his confidence shattered, and there is shame written on his face as clear as starlight, cheeks flushing and eyes closing as he moves to embrace the pole. The bottom falls out of your stomach as you watch him, and then note as he dismounts the stage, moments later, unable to look at you as a fat and balding man in a sweat-stained sportscoat grabs him by the elbow and drags him past, towards the stairs. You reach for him as he slips past, but he ignores you, free hand balled to a fist at his side, and you know that you have fucked up, and bad.
Hands shaking, you accept another drink from Strider, downed in one gulp. It is a mystery how you make it home after that, though you have the vague feeling that a lot of sobbing and clinging and Bro's powerful arms around your shoulders heaving you up into the pine-scented passenger seat of his Camero might have had something to do with it.
The next day, as you are sleeping off your hangover, the phone rings, and you are not even allowed to greet your caller before a too-familiar voice snarls, "Never follow me to work again." You fall back asleep with sickness in your soul and the phone screaming its dial tone at you from beside your skull, where you dropped it in despair.
Twenty-four hours pass before you get up the initiative to try again, fielding the long bus ride from your Pleasantville-esque neighborhood to Karkat's slum town with the dull ache of nervousness beating in your breast. You knock on his door once, twice, three times before calling out his name, quietly so as not to disturb anyone else on the floor.
Nothing.
A fourth time you try, and silence meets you, enough that the worry bubbles over into a small sob, your fingers curling against the grain of the door as you contemplate how one action, draped in good intentions, could so destroy the things you'd cherished and had been working for. It feels like poetry, like a metaphor. Like a bad joke.
It is when you slump forward to let your forehead rest despondently against the stubbornly closed portal that long, slim fingers tap your shoulder lightly, begging your attention. You turn to look and find Sollux there, 3D glasses hiding a subtle look of consternation. "John? What're you doing here?" Then he blinks and quickly amends, "I mean, it'th not like you haven't been in and out of here for dayth or anything, but it'th the middle of the afternoon."
"I was looking for Karkat," you tell him, and then laugh humorlessly because fuck, why else would you have dragged yourself all the way down here? "I... I messed up, Sollux. I think badly. Did he say anything about me? You know, the other night?"
Sollux shakes his head, a short, sharp pull that leaves no doubt in your mind that he must be lying. "No. Look, don't worry about it, alright? He'th out right now, that'th all. You could wait for him, but it'll probably be a few hours; don't think it'th worth it."
Your face falls, unconsciously, and your gaze slides down to the floor and Sollux's mismatched shoes, one whitewashed and the other black as tar; "That's okay," you tell him. "I'll wait." You don't think you can do anything else, honestly, but Sollux appears to have different plans, rapping you on the side of the head with his knuckles and gesturing back in the direction of the stairs.
"Well, I wath trying to thugar-coat it for you, but now you're jutht being thilly-- he'th out with the big bothh, okay? And then he hath work, which doethn't leave much time to talk to you. Thorry." Your dejected look must be magnified tenfold, because he points towards the stairwell again and begins towards it, slouching over with hands stuffed deep in the pockets of dress pants as dark as an oil slick, the material shining in the dim light. "You came all the way down here, though, tho come on; I'll buy you a thoda." He grins, all layers of overlapping fangs and teasing mirth-- "Or a grub juith, if you'd prefer."
"Heeeeey!" you whine, suddenly indignant, and jog the first few paces to catch up to him, the sadness and rot in your heart momentarily forgotten. "I'm as much for cultural sensitivity as the next guy, but that's gross, dude. It'd be like me going around chugging cartons of baby blood or something."
"Not putting it patht you," Sollux comments, snorting. "You'll date KK, for a thertain value of "date", tho you clearly have no thtandardth-- and I thay that bathed on thikth yearth of being grathed with hith magnifithent prethenth, not anything elth you might be inclined to judge me for."
Out on the street there is silence that fills with your voices, echoing off crumbling walls and long-empty spaces. You follow Sollux like a lap dog at its master's heels, confused but cheerful, out the back door and down to the water where you wait at the edge of the boardwalk, Sollux going on ahead and waving you after as you hesitate. The pier extends out into the gently moving river, flowing like a half-congealed oil slick white capped with turbulent and poisoned froth around chunks of driftwood haphazardly assembled into a walkway. Sollux makes his way to the very end, where an inexplicable soda machine rests, one of the old RC cola machines but re-purposed for trollish use and furnished with all manner of strange concoctions along the lines of Bridgeworth's Original Goat's Blood Rootbeer and Sopor Soda, which has to be illegal even by troll standards. Sollux dumps a pocketful of change into the slot with a series of empty clinks and hits a button twice, tapping his foot impatiently as the machine whirs and clanks, eventually spitting out neon green cans; one of them is thrown artfully at your head, and you barely catch it, diving like a football cornerback to make the save.
Sollux has already moved himself, shifted to sling his legs over the edge of the boardwalk, kicking into three feet of open air above the swollen river. This boardwalk, you seem to recall, was built high so that docking ships could let off their human cargo with little fuss, in days gone by when yours was a gleaming, glamorous city that anyone could be proud of. Now it languishes in disrepair, the boards cracked and grayed and rotting, hollowed by termites and the passage of time, replete with soda machines and an old automated fortuneteller's box. Sollux watches the city instead of you, the high waves rolling by and lapping at the struts holding you in place above the river, the bustling traffic across and over the opposing shore, buildings still bright and shining posing there, reflecting light of the sun and dreams not yet dead and dying, drawn not from the poisoned well of institutionalized poverty and profiling but the warm and welcoming pool of riches these men, these trolls, will never dare to dream of.
"He wouldn't want me to tell you where he goeth thometimeth," Sollux starts after a moment, after you've uncomfortably gotten down beside him and popped the can on your melon-raspberry-fish sticks soda, taking your honored place a good foot and a half apart, "tho I won't. He wouldn't want me to tell you how he feelth about you either, which ith good becauth I'm thure I don't know the depth of it, but that'th not important, not really. Then again, what I want to tell you ithn't important either."
He sucks in a deep breath and you just nod a fraction, eyes wide as streetlamps in the dark, taking another generous swig of your beverage to excuse not saying anything. In the space between words there is only the gentle hiss and slap of water on wood, of the slight breeze as it shifts and pulls at the corners of your clothes; you have never been one for gods, but these moments feel near to holy, you cannot deny.
"We uthed to thelebrate hith wriggling day every thweep, him and hith luthuth and I. It'th not thomething that motht trollth did or would have done, becauth motht trollth don't give a fuck. What'th another year, really, when a lot of uth have to grow up right out of the gate?
"But Karkat'th luthuth wath different, becauth Karkat'th luthuth wath human. It almotht never happenth that way, you know, but almotht ithn't never, quite, and Karkat wath happy, for awhile. They were poor but every thweep without fail he'd get a cake and at leatht one good prethent, a new romance novel or pocketknife or thuchlike." Sollux's solemn face falls even lower, to a heavy frown. "That changed when hith luthuth... went away. Everything did. He wath of age, on hith own, vulnerable, and by the time hith nektht wriggling day rolled around, well, there wathn't a hell of a lot to thelebrate, anymore."
Then Sollux is quiet, and all that speaks between you is the voice of the wind, soft but insistent, tugging down at the fraying edges of your mind like the reins of a horse, pulling you onto a different, crooked, spiraling path. You swallow thickly past the lump in your throat, greasing the way with the last dregs of your surprisingly refreshing drink, and crumple the can in tense fingers, staring at the cheap and tarnished aluminum in your palms, the blue eyes warped and reflected back at you.
"When is it? His birthday, I mean?" you ask, quietly, with no hint of cultural sensitivity, and out of the corner of your eye and reflected in the rushing water below you can see his smirk, smug as the only tomcat in an alley of queens.
"The twelfth. Why?"
And the thing is, he knows. He knows why, and you know he knows, and he knows you know he knows. There's this strange dance you must go through with trolls, you are beginning to realize, where you never, ever utter the truth of your feelings and cloak everything in shades of deception to hide what you really mean. If you are adept, if you are lucky, you can pull away the veils of bullshit and see the genuine statement hiding inside; Here is how you can fix this.
You refuse to play this game, partially because it is tiring to the nth degree and partially because this man is important to Karkat, and you promised yourself-- no more lies, not to him. Not to him and not to anyone who is an extension of him, a soul of his soul, mated in the river of Heaven and fated to be, born under the same stars. You offer him a grin, instead, all teeth and the prankster's chaos; only one can hold this role, and you are the trickster, it is you.
"Because I'm going to give him the one thing that no one else will."
The look on Sollux's face, slyly beatific in the way that only shady, emotionally closed-off trolls can be, tells you that for once, you have found the right answer.
---
In an effort to conserve money, you no longer take the bus. This has lead to a week and a half of bumming rides off Dave, calling in age-old favors carefully documented on a legal pad courtesy of Terezi ("Gogdamn it, woman, you're supposed to use your Pheonix Wright: Troll Attorney skills for evil, not good!") or winning bets at cards, though you had to call that off when he accused you of pulling out your trick deck. Dave drives you back and forth keeping his head down in your neighborhood ("Not ashamed of them looking, Christ, what do I care if they think I'm a gangbanger, but it's hard to live a fuck the police lifestyle in a place that actually, you know, fucking has police"), to the pawn shop and your Nanna's house out in the Village, hauling televisions (your own) and original Van Gouge knock-offs of cats in every color of the rainbow (hers) to augment the already pretty good salvage from the collision of your father's hammer and Mr. Porksnout (there were no survivors, though shrapnel went everywhere).
The good part is that Dave never asks why. He never looks at you over the tops of his shades with that pitying look that would be awkward if he were really all he pretends to be, staring straight into your soul with those devil's eyes and stripping you, laying you bare. Sometimes you feel like he can see you anyway, every inch of you, flayed skin and breaking bones and curdled, sour marrow, and the sweet song caged in your heart, something they will never take from you-- but those moments never last long, nothing but fleeting, mirrored glances in the car as he trundles you back across the Stone Bridge, the trolls' bridge, back into the East end of town. The fact is that Dave doesn't care, maybe doesn't even know for sure, but if he does then he's still no better a man than you. There's no high horse to fall off of, no upper path to take when you have crawled on your hands and knees down to the bottom and are content to wallow there in the muck and mire, so long as his hand is yours to clasp.
You feel you should tell him, though, when evening is falling on a cloudy night, the sky painted puffy periwinkle blue and wild lilac, the air perfumed with spice and the scent of car exhaust and sex as you roll into the green light district, where the only state of being is go, go, go. "Remember that club we went to on my birthday?" you ask when he queries "Where to?", cheeks flushed only lightly. You practiced this over and over until you felt you had it right, telling yourself that Dave won't judge, that Striders don't make it their business to give a fuck about what happens between someone else's sheets unless their girl (or guy) is involved-- and rarely even then unless they themselves are not. Now the bottom is being eaten away from your stomach again as Dave kicks the ailing automobile up a gear and its battered frame skips and lurches forward, a deathtrap on wheels. "Um. There."
"Cool," Dave says, and that's it. No, "I'll drop in too, say hi to the girls." No lingering looks of condemnation. Just a little shrug, unpronounced, and that word, unaccented. "Cool."
Yes, you think as he drops you off out front, cool as mint patties, cool as ice cream on a hot summer day, cool as the briny air coming off the river not five hundred yards from you. Cool as the silver stars twinkling in their distant sky. Cool as the brass of the doorknob against your sweating palm.
Here goes nothing.
There is two hundred and fifty dollars stuffed in the breast pocket of your father's awful hand-me-down brown houndstooth sports coat and a blue and orange plaid tie around your neck and not a single person with unironic fashion sense in your immediate circle of friends, other than Terezi who solves nearly all clothing-related problems by grabbing whatever is nearest to her at the moment that smells reasonably clean, and who has been known to show up to school in an offensively orange zoot suit from time to time. There is also a very angry, very sexy troll pointedly looking anywhere but at you as you sit at your stained and sticky table, running your fingers through your hair and wondering if you should have thought to lift one of your father's very stylish fedoras as well, though, as Dave would say, you are not going for the 50's wifebeater gentleman look here. Equius comes when you beckon him wordlessly over with the crook of a finger, shrugging a shoulder towards Karkat, and money is exchanged in dim half-darkness, the roll disappearing from your fumbling fingers to his pocket with a distinct lack of panache on your part. By the time Equius is leading your man down from the stage and over to you, the already flagging flowers you brought have wilted in earnest, bulbed heads browned and drooping, but you cannot care much about that. They are not, after all, Karkat's present.
The glare he shoots you is full of bile and the bittersweet of loving betrayal, of hopes dashed open on the rocks of common sense, borne down towards the bottom of the sea by the albatross of harsh reality. Equius leaves you in the front parlor, where moths are lazily but doggedly attacking the flickering ceiling light, the summer air wafting in through the open door and carrying away some of your sweat, some of his shame. You try to follow and guess at his thought processes as he stands with arms crossed over his chest, trembling ever so slightly and trying not to show it-- he is a good actor, but not that much, not when he's angry. You open your mouth to speak and he snarls, vile invective choking him, the noose around his neck. "Stop," he hisses, and your mouth snaps closed again. "Just stop. Don't speak to me. Don't tell me more lies, don't make believe that you fucking care, just like the rest of them. I don't hate them, you know that? But I can goddamn well hate you, because you lied to me. I can't stop you from touching me, you paid for that, but don't ever think that buys you the right to fucking jerk me around like that again."
Now it is you who are shaking, as you gulp down a throatful of your own bile something uncomfortable pricking at the corners of your eyes. "I just came to say happy birthday, Karkat," you tell him, nearly a whisper, and then amend, "Happy wriggling day, I mean. I'll... leave now, if that's what you want. I already gave you your present."
You hover there a moment more, rocking back and forth on your heels as Karkat blinks at you, dumbfounded but suspicious; you watch the gears turn behind his eyes until they widen near-to imperceptibly, pupils dilating just enough to be noticeable. "You... bought me," he rasps, taking a cautious, skittish step towards you again.
"Everyone needs a night off," you tell him, smiling sadly, and then suddenly his lips are on yours, his hands gripping your wrists so tight it hurts and drawing them up to his chest as he sucks the life out of you, cherry-red lipstick smearing over your ghostly pale skin. Then you are groaning into the kiss and his tongue is in your mouth, the clawed fingers of one hand twisting in your hair and pulling you closer as your back hits the wall and then he remembers himself and it is your weight being dragged against him against the dreadful peeling pastel wallpaper and the bass from the music is thump, thump, thumping in time with your heart as thickened blood pumps through you and.
"Wait," you gasp, forcibly wrenching yourself away from him as his other hand moves down to stroke your side and then lower, hooking in your belt loops and pulling only slightly. "Wait, Karkat, this wasn't... honest, this wasn't my intention." You have no words for him, no breath to spare, especially when his mouth is now on your throat, rough, wet tongue swabbing your Adam's apple and swiping the salt from your skin, not biting down or sucking hard enough to leave a mark; that is not the province of his station. "I t-t-told you," you manage to stutter out, words collapsing into a hopeless moan, "I don't... this isn't... you don't have to work tonight, Karkat! Doesn't that make you happy?"
"Yes," he grunts, and then kisses you again, a bit more hesitantly this time, leaving you more room to pull away.
"So what are you doing now?"
"Not working." His hands are up and teasing the hem of your pressed white button-up shirt out of your pants, palms sliding up your chest to feel you, and you don't think you've ever done this before. You've touched him plenty, but the reverse is never true aside from hungry kisses and his arms around you as he sleeps, and this is a new thing, those razor points trailing down barely defined pectorals and abdominal muscles gone tense with nerves. "I want to go out," he adds after a moment filled deliciously with nothing but your unthinking whimpers, "but I'm going to get changed, first." You nod. "In my room." Another nod. "With the door closed." Another nod, and a sympathetic smile. "And you're coming with me."
Your grin disappears and your bobble-head like motions stop so short you think you just gave yourself whiplash. "Please don't," you tell him, voice squeaking like rusty bed springs or the things that hide in the night. "I don't want to be that guy."
"You goddamn idiot," he tells you, and for a second you could swear that there's a hint of fondness, buried in there somewhere. "If you were, I wouldn't be offering to do this."
When you kiss him again, the hysterical, flailing part of your brain thinks that he tastes like honey and possibilities.
---
Karkat looks different in real clothes, different from the normal person you've seen before, different lit by the oily orange glow of streetlights and the alternating neon of a thousand sparking signs. The city is alive around you, alive and stirring, buzzing, but all you can see is him, Karkat in his black t-shirt and shitty beat-up sneakers, no collar around his neck, no borrowed rings on his fingers, no weight of the world on his shoulders. Today is for somebody else's Atlas, today is a problem that cannot be solved, and you slip your hand into his, neither of you leading, as around you the city cools and settles and simmers, never sleeping, never dying.
Nothing need be spoken, now, as magic lights your way and the wind dances around you, carrying you helplessly towards the river, towards the boardwalk, dark water reflecting the clouds and stars. "Trolls came from the sea, you know," he tells you, staring out at the ancestral water as though he'd like to go wading, return himself to the broth that bore him, and his ancestors, since so long ago. "And some of them are so damn haughty about it."
You squeeze his fingers, trying not to stare too conspicuously. "You sound like you think about this a lot."
He sounds morose. "Incessantly."
"I can't help that, I'm afraid."
Golden eyes that shine deep as a cat's meet yours, and then he turns away, back to the choppy water and long forgotten dreams. "Egbert, you don't know the half of what you are."
In other news, this chapter could easily have been entitled "Moirailing for Dummies: the Goofus and Gallant Approach".
TItle: Romance, East of the River
Fandom: MSPA (Homestuck)
Pairing(s): John/Karkat, Dave/Terezi, Sollux <> Karkat
Rating: M
Warnings: Prostitution, underage drinking.
Summary: John attempts to be a good boyfriend. He is fairly poor at it.
~~~
Sultry, you think, is a good word. You are a Strider, and you know lots of words, many of which are more impressive-sounding synonyms for 'fuck' or coquettish ways to describe your flagrant drug use, in addition to the rough and ready lingo of the mean streets you were born on, but sultry is one of the better ones. Definitely in the top one hundred, describing both the hot-as-hellfire nature of this day and the way your bro-pal trollfriend is currently sprawled across you, her head resting in your lap with milky eyes turned towards a television that she can't even properly see.
"It's hot," she points out, unnecessarily, breathing out the words like a hiss, a prayer, over a commercial for MMM-pop featuring closed captions in English with a smattering of wingdings mixed in for flavor.
"Sultry," you correct in your smoothest voice, trying it out on her; she snorts and shifts on top of you, one arm flopping listlessly over the side of the couch.
"This is not a time for semantics," she warns in her best future-legislacerator tone, the bite of which is muffled by the sopor and heat-sapped lethargy in her voice, each breath labored. She told you once that sopor makes you numb all over, a tingling in the pit of your stomach like its fallen asleep that spreads like a slow burn to your heart, your lungs, your extremities, your mind filled with deep purple fog that insulates and covers, holding you in, dulling the knife-sharp edges of the cruel and unforgiving world. You wouldn't know, being human-- all sopor does is make you sleepy, make you want to curl up and nap forever like a cat grown fat and sleek on fish oil and table scraps, and the oppressive heat of summer is doing that well enough for you already. "Get up and open a window, lazybones."
"Hate to tell you this," you drawl, eyes flicking behind your ever-present glasses to observe the broken air conditioner resting useless in the corner and the blades of the ceiling fan lazily turning, stirring up air tainted with swamp-thick humidity, "but they're all open already." The room smells like smoke, not that you have much of a sense of smell anymore, but you put out your joint half an hour ago, deciding that it was too hot to even get high. What you want now is a beer, ice cold, but the refrigerator is all the way across the apartment, and getting one would require making Terezi move, something that you hesitate to bring up in the middle of Clerk of Court or Habeas Corpses or the so-shitty-it's-not-even-ironic television choice du jour, Troll Judge Judy. Terezi loves them, eats them up like seventy year old blue-haired grandmas watch their soaps, with an almost religious perseverance-- she's been over here every day this week to devour them whole and assimilate their knowledge into her vast mental directory of rulings, since the fuse in her apartment blew out and the television was, as her lusus put it, "Fucking trashed, the goddamn piece of shit."
Not that you're complaining, of course, no matter how much you might gripe at her over it; the truth is you're glad for the company, somewhere in your small and stunted peach pit of a heart. Terezi has a mean streak in her a mile wide, but none of it is for you, the beloved moirail, who she is professedly as pale as the moon for; "But, like, not in a gay way. No homo, Strider." You'd rolled your eyes at her at that declaration, mentally filing homosexuality away as one of the human concepts Terezi will never understand, even if she can cite precedent for all legal rulings since Brownblood vs. The Board of Education.
"I think somebody doth protest too much," you'd told her, having just come off one of the innumerable Shakespeare units at school and testing the shoes of a modern-day bard, street poet for the twenty-first century on for size before ditching it a day later for something far less corny and dated, and the two of you dropped it, relationship kept on as it had been before with faint touches and hints here and there, pointing towards something larger beneath the surface that you will never quite understand either, even if you did grow up surrounded by trolls.
So now here you are on the hottest day so far in June (which also happens to be the first day so far in June) with her comfortable in your lap, shushing you harshly as Judy's theme music twangs in the background. "This is the best part," she whispers as the judge mounts the sentencing podium to a chorus of "All rise for Her Honorable Tyranny!" The twisted old crone, horns hooked back and eyes black as midnight, shuffles her papers and pronounces the same sentence as always-- "Guilty!" as though the troll justice system ever finds anyone anything but. The camera pans to a sweating, bug-eyed young troll, a yellowblood, standing with hands tied on a makeshift gallows, the noose already around his neck.
"Please," he whimpers, and you try to remember what his crime was, having zoned out during the body of the show, the Alternian commercials and Terezi in your lap being the only interesting parts. You can come up with nothing, except maybe he stole from a grocery owned by a higherblood, or punched the son of someone important. It's always stupid shit like that, little infractions that no one but a troll would care about. Take one step out of line and you're dead, is the lesson you had hammered into you all the time growing up-- erroneous, because they can't do shit to you, legally. Completely different jurisdictions, and your own court system will mercilessly prosecute any troll-on-human violence to the fullest extent they can justify.
Nevertheless, most of those offenders walk off with seventy-five-to-life without parole, more than can be said for the whimpering teenager rendered in flickering RGB on your cracked and dirty screen, whose pleas turn into a moan and then a sharp snap that terminates all noise, the microphone picking up nothing but static and the creak of the rope as it swings, propelled by gravity.
"Thrilling," you say dully, all grayscale monotone and lackluster stabs at enthusiasm.
"Isn't it, though?" she breathes, and you click off the TV before things can somehow become worse. It's dark in the room now, the only light streaming in through the crack in the window; the sun is setting as you speak, vibrant orange spilling over your floor and illuminating the contours of her face, catching on the sharp red angles of her cheap plastic sunglasses, the ones you picked out for her after she went blind, too little too late. (And how's that for dramatic fucking irony.) Your own breathing is soft, measured, and you wonder if she knows you're looking, if she can smell it in the sweat clinging to the fabric of your t-shirt-- and if so, if she even cares. "When's your brother getting back?" she asks after what seems like a thousand years, the hand whose fingers aren't threaded through the shag carpeting resting on your forearm, claws brushing against pale pink skin.
"He works until midnight tonight," you tell her, glancing at the Sesame Street clock hanging on the wall above the TV alcove. "Seven hours."
"Plenty of time," she purrs, hand migrating up to your shoulder, your chest, resting just above your heart. This is not, you suspect, how moirails are supposed to act.
But as she leans up and kisses you, sweet sopor residue on her lips like honeyed wine, you can't find the hubris within you to care.
---
Hands in your hair, on your face, holding you tight and pulling you close as hot breath pants into your mouth, the both of you strangely quiet save for the rustle of clothes and the creak of the bed frame beneath you, rusted box springs protesting every small movement-- and, of course, the soft but steady rumbling in his chest, so like a growl, so like a purr, that professes his enjoyment. You haven't initiated it once yet, these last blissful days since you walked off the podium at the local civic center and tossed your cap in the air with half a thousand other lost and scared children with equally bright, confusing futures ahead of them. It's always him, always Karkat, pushing you down against the bed and kissing you like he's trying to suck out your breath and then falling asleep with his head on your chest, rumbling away like someone left his motor running.
They do that, cats. Suck your breath out, that is. Your Nana used to tell you stories from the old country when you were little, of feline familiars that would come in the night and sift out your soul from between your lips, but you never believed them. Still don't, because it's superstitious nonsense, but that's what it reminds you of at six in the evening when you've been awake for two hours, petting his hair between his horns as he slumbers, exhausted from entertaining you, though he needn't try so hard. You're not that hard to please, though if forced to guess, you would hazard to say that he's been trying, working hard to keep his voice down in your presence and put on a play of contentedness, with you and the world-- you rather wish he would stop it, actually. You never notice it when he's awake, and it's only when he sleeps that you can feel the difference, how the tension drains out of strained sinews and tight, corded muscles in his neck and back, relaxing entirely.
These moments you have together are odd, undeniably, though he never refuses to see you, always lets you in when it's one in the afternoon and you've come by to talk or walk down to the trashed and weed-choked public park ("probably radioactive, don't know why the fuck you wanted to come here-- hey, fuckass, pigeons are for eating, not petting!") or make him cup ramen on his hot plate. He never turns you away even if there are deep maroon-tinted bags under his eyes and his hair hangs in tangled shocks over his forehead, skin sallow and limbs listless. On those days you say nothing but pull him back to bed, and the addition of your body warmth always seems to make him lighter.
Dave doesn't know where you're going all this time, why you aren't hanging with him so frequently anymore and have instead left him to the care of his mentally-unstable moirail who somehow managed to graduate with honors and get herself into the state university's law division for this fall. But he has hinted, and you wish you could tell him: No, Dave, the two of you have never had sex. The truth is that you haven't done a damn thing with him in nearly two and a half weeks but kiss, and that's fine with you, really, because what you want is his love and affection, not his cock or his lips wrapped around you, as nice as those things would be. You're fine just getting to know him, watching as some of the stiffness melts out of his demeanor, as piece by piece the act falls away. Someday you'll be able to be with him all the time, the real him, the Karkat that none of his clients ever have a chance to see and know and love.
Beyond anything, you're honored just to be able to know him, no matter who or what he is.
To that end, tonight you have decided to drop in on one of his shows. After he's woken and kissed you good evening, lips fumbling and hesitant with drugging remnants of sleep, and after you've watched him dress with sadness in your heart, scraps of silken cloth drawn over skin you want to stroke with dragging slowness; after this is done you slip your sneakers back on, trail your fingertips down his arm for one last time, a lingering look between you, and slip out, false confidence filling you. Down the steps and to what you now know the performers refer to as "the showroom", where the house lights are just clicking off. You wave offhand to Sollux in his box above the noise, but his attentions are elsewhere, and in a heartbeat the empty stage is illuminated in a disco-rave frenzy of flashing orange and yellow. You press on, a little further, to the place where all the dirty, tarnished souls gravitate, collapsing into a stool that sticks to the seat of your pants when you shift against it.
Strider, who has been cleaning glasses behind the bar, nods at you; for a second you get a flash of red eyes over the tops of his shades, and then the glasses are firmly in place again, his expression empty and stoic. Nevertheless, you are fairly certain that he is watching you. "I just want to see him," you say, your voice low because the music hasn't clicked on yet and it is a luxury you can yet afford. "I don't want him to feel like I'm ashamed, you know? Because he shouldn't. It's not a big deal."
You feel awfully and adult and mature after delivering this little speech, but Strider just watches for a moment more and shakes his head at you, the movement small and understated but condemning as he moves to crack a bottle of the same green concoction you imbibed the first night and pushing a glassful over the counter at you. You accept, feeling still more mature if a bit slighted, because whatever he thinks of you, Dave is a friend of yours and friends of Dave always drink free at establishments the older Strider is employed at. You sip this time, taking it slow, trying not to lose too much of yourself too quickly, and the drink is half gone by the time the music starts and the paying customers begin filing in.
The first act doesn't interest you, really, a double-team of two maroonbloods that the audience offers a few screeches for and about a dollar fifty thrown onto the stage, nothing more. It's still early, and there's a sense that the real entertainment hasn't started yet. The rest of your drink goes, and you politely refuse another, your mind already filled with comforting fuzz as the music lowers sensually. Inquisitive, you glance up at the stage, and you know you won't have to wait long; here is Karkat now, strutting out on stage with fire normally repressed, in his traditional red garb. And now you are caught in a moral conundrum, because the other patrons are whooping and hollering, and you want to show your support-- but would that make you like them, a chauvinist only out for his body?
You are pondering this dilemma when he happens to catch your eye, and you see his expression change. For an instant he is utterly devastated, his confidence shattered, and there is shame written on his face as clear as starlight, cheeks flushing and eyes closing as he moves to embrace the pole. The bottom falls out of your stomach as you watch him, and then note as he dismounts the stage, moments later, unable to look at you as a fat and balding man in a sweat-stained sportscoat grabs him by the elbow and drags him past, towards the stairs. You reach for him as he slips past, but he ignores you, free hand balled to a fist at his side, and you know that you have fucked up, and bad.
Hands shaking, you accept another drink from Strider, downed in one gulp. It is a mystery how you make it home after that, though you have the vague feeling that a lot of sobbing and clinging and Bro's powerful arms around your shoulders heaving you up into the pine-scented passenger seat of his Camero might have had something to do with it.
The next day, as you are sleeping off your hangover, the phone rings, and you are not even allowed to greet your caller before a too-familiar voice snarls, "Never follow me to work again." You fall back asleep with sickness in your soul and the phone screaming its dial tone at you from beside your skull, where you dropped it in despair.
Twenty-four hours pass before you get up the initiative to try again, fielding the long bus ride from your Pleasantville-esque neighborhood to Karkat's slum town with the dull ache of nervousness beating in your breast. You knock on his door once, twice, three times before calling out his name, quietly so as not to disturb anyone else on the floor.
Nothing.
A fourth time you try, and silence meets you, enough that the worry bubbles over into a small sob, your fingers curling against the grain of the door as you contemplate how one action, draped in good intentions, could so destroy the things you'd cherished and had been working for. It feels like poetry, like a metaphor. Like a bad joke.
It is when you slump forward to let your forehead rest despondently against the stubbornly closed portal that long, slim fingers tap your shoulder lightly, begging your attention. You turn to look and find Sollux there, 3D glasses hiding a subtle look of consternation. "John? What're you doing here?" Then he blinks and quickly amends, "I mean, it'th not like you haven't been in and out of here for dayth or anything, but it'th the middle of the afternoon."
"I was looking for Karkat," you tell him, and then laugh humorlessly because fuck, why else would you have dragged yourself all the way down here? "I... I messed up, Sollux. I think badly. Did he say anything about me? You know, the other night?"
Sollux shakes his head, a short, sharp pull that leaves no doubt in your mind that he must be lying. "No. Look, don't worry about it, alright? He'th out right now, that'th all. You could wait for him, but it'll probably be a few hours; don't think it'th worth it."
Your face falls, unconsciously, and your gaze slides down to the floor and Sollux's mismatched shoes, one whitewashed and the other black as tar; "That's okay," you tell him. "I'll wait." You don't think you can do anything else, honestly, but Sollux appears to have different plans, rapping you on the side of the head with his knuckles and gesturing back in the direction of the stairs.
"Well, I wath trying to thugar-coat it for you, but now you're jutht being thilly-- he'th out with the big bothh, okay? And then he hath work, which doethn't leave much time to talk to you. Thorry." Your dejected look must be magnified tenfold, because he points towards the stairwell again and begins towards it, slouching over with hands stuffed deep in the pockets of dress pants as dark as an oil slick, the material shining in the dim light. "You came all the way down here, though, tho come on; I'll buy you a thoda." He grins, all layers of overlapping fangs and teasing mirth-- "Or a grub juith, if you'd prefer."
"Heeeeey!" you whine, suddenly indignant, and jog the first few paces to catch up to him, the sadness and rot in your heart momentarily forgotten. "I'm as much for cultural sensitivity as the next guy, but that's gross, dude. It'd be like me going around chugging cartons of baby blood or something."
"Not putting it patht you," Sollux comments, snorting. "You'll date KK, for a thertain value of "date", tho you clearly have no thtandardth-- and I thay that bathed on thikth yearth of being grathed with hith magnifithent prethenth, not anything elth you might be inclined to judge me for."
Out on the street there is silence that fills with your voices, echoing off crumbling walls and long-empty spaces. You follow Sollux like a lap dog at its master's heels, confused but cheerful, out the back door and down to the water where you wait at the edge of the boardwalk, Sollux going on ahead and waving you after as you hesitate. The pier extends out into the gently moving river, flowing like a half-congealed oil slick white capped with turbulent and poisoned froth around chunks of driftwood haphazardly assembled into a walkway. Sollux makes his way to the very end, where an inexplicable soda machine rests, one of the old RC cola machines but re-purposed for trollish use and furnished with all manner of strange concoctions along the lines of Bridgeworth's Original Goat's Blood Rootbeer and Sopor Soda, which has to be illegal even by troll standards. Sollux dumps a pocketful of change into the slot with a series of empty clinks and hits a button twice, tapping his foot impatiently as the machine whirs and clanks, eventually spitting out neon green cans; one of them is thrown artfully at your head, and you barely catch it, diving like a football cornerback to make the save.
Sollux has already moved himself, shifted to sling his legs over the edge of the boardwalk, kicking into three feet of open air above the swollen river. This boardwalk, you seem to recall, was built high so that docking ships could let off their human cargo with little fuss, in days gone by when yours was a gleaming, glamorous city that anyone could be proud of. Now it languishes in disrepair, the boards cracked and grayed and rotting, hollowed by termites and the passage of time, replete with soda machines and an old automated fortuneteller's box. Sollux watches the city instead of you, the high waves rolling by and lapping at the struts holding you in place above the river, the bustling traffic across and over the opposing shore, buildings still bright and shining posing there, reflecting light of the sun and dreams not yet dead and dying, drawn not from the poisoned well of institutionalized poverty and profiling but the warm and welcoming pool of riches these men, these trolls, will never dare to dream of.
"He wouldn't want me to tell you where he goeth thometimeth," Sollux starts after a moment, after you've uncomfortably gotten down beside him and popped the can on your melon-raspberry-fish sticks soda, taking your honored place a good foot and a half apart, "tho I won't. He wouldn't want me to tell you how he feelth about you either, which ith good becauth I'm thure I don't know the depth of it, but that'th not important, not really. Then again, what I want to tell you ithn't important either."
He sucks in a deep breath and you just nod a fraction, eyes wide as streetlamps in the dark, taking another generous swig of your beverage to excuse not saying anything. In the space between words there is only the gentle hiss and slap of water on wood, of the slight breeze as it shifts and pulls at the corners of your clothes; you have never been one for gods, but these moments feel near to holy, you cannot deny.
"We uthed to thelebrate hith wriggling day every thweep, him and hith luthuth and I. It'th not thomething that motht trollth did or would have done, becauth motht trollth don't give a fuck. What'th another year, really, when a lot of uth have to grow up right out of the gate?
"But Karkat'th luthuth wath different, becauth Karkat'th luthuth wath human. It almotht never happenth that way, you know, but almotht ithn't never, quite, and Karkat wath happy, for awhile. They were poor but every thweep without fail he'd get a cake and at leatht one good prethent, a new romance novel or pocketknife or thuchlike." Sollux's solemn face falls even lower, to a heavy frown. "That changed when hith luthuth... went away. Everything did. He wath of age, on hith own, vulnerable, and by the time hith nektht wriggling day rolled around, well, there wathn't a hell of a lot to thelebrate, anymore."
Then Sollux is quiet, and all that speaks between you is the voice of the wind, soft but insistent, tugging down at the fraying edges of your mind like the reins of a horse, pulling you onto a different, crooked, spiraling path. You swallow thickly past the lump in your throat, greasing the way with the last dregs of your surprisingly refreshing drink, and crumple the can in tense fingers, staring at the cheap and tarnished aluminum in your palms, the blue eyes warped and reflected back at you.
"When is it? His birthday, I mean?" you ask, quietly, with no hint of cultural sensitivity, and out of the corner of your eye and reflected in the rushing water below you can see his smirk, smug as the only tomcat in an alley of queens.
"The twelfth. Why?"
And the thing is, he knows. He knows why, and you know he knows, and he knows you know he knows. There's this strange dance you must go through with trolls, you are beginning to realize, where you never, ever utter the truth of your feelings and cloak everything in shades of deception to hide what you really mean. If you are adept, if you are lucky, you can pull away the veils of bullshit and see the genuine statement hiding inside; Here is how you can fix this.
You refuse to play this game, partially because it is tiring to the nth degree and partially because this man is important to Karkat, and you promised yourself-- no more lies, not to him. Not to him and not to anyone who is an extension of him, a soul of his soul, mated in the river of Heaven and fated to be, born under the same stars. You offer him a grin, instead, all teeth and the prankster's chaos; only one can hold this role, and you are the trickster, it is you.
"Because I'm going to give him the one thing that no one else will."
The look on Sollux's face, slyly beatific in the way that only shady, emotionally closed-off trolls can be, tells you that for once, you have found the right answer.
---
In an effort to conserve money, you no longer take the bus. This has lead to a week and a half of bumming rides off Dave, calling in age-old favors carefully documented on a legal pad courtesy of Terezi ("Gogdamn it, woman, you're supposed to use your Pheonix Wright: Troll Attorney skills for evil, not good!") or winning bets at cards, though you had to call that off when he accused you of pulling out your trick deck. Dave drives you back and forth keeping his head down in your neighborhood ("Not ashamed of them looking, Christ, what do I care if they think I'm a gangbanger, but it's hard to live a fuck the police lifestyle in a place that actually, you know, fucking has police"), to the pawn shop and your Nanna's house out in the Village, hauling televisions (your own) and original Van Gouge knock-offs of cats in every color of the rainbow (hers) to augment the already pretty good salvage from the collision of your father's hammer and Mr. Porksnout (there were no survivors, though shrapnel went everywhere).
The good part is that Dave never asks why. He never looks at you over the tops of his shades with that pitying look that would be awkward if he were really all he pretends to be, staring straight into your soul with those devil's eyes and stripping you, laying you bare. Sometimes you feel like he can see you anyway, every inch of you, flayed skin and breaking bones and curdled, sour marrow, and the sweet song caged in your heart, something they will never take from you-- but those moments never last long, nothing but fleeting, mirrored glances in the car as he trundles you back across the Stone Bridge, the trolls' bridge, back into the East end of town. The fact is that Dave doesn't care, maybe doesn't even know for sure, but if he does then he's still no better a man than you. There's no high horse to fall off of, no upper path to take when you have crawled on your hands and knees down to the bottom and are content to wallow there in the muck and mire, so long as his hand is yours to clasp.
You feel you should tell him, though, when evening is falling on a cloudy night, the sky painted puffy periwinkle blue and wild lilac, the air perfumed with spice and the scent of car exhaust and sex as you roll into the green light district, where the only state of being is go, go, go. "Remember that club we went to on my birthday?" you ask when he queries "Where to?", cheeks flushed only lightly. You practiced this over and over until you felt you had it right, telling yourself that Dave won't judge, that Striders don't make it their business to give a fuck about what happens between someone else's sheets unless their girl (or guy) is involved-- and rarely even then unless they themselves are not. Now the bottom is being eaten away from your stomach again as Dave kicks the ailing automobile up a gear and its battered frame skips and lurches forward, a deathtrap on wheels. "Um. There."
"Cool," Dave says, and that's it. No, "I'll drop in too, say hi to the girls." No lingering looks of condemnation. Just a little shrug, unpronounced, and that word, unaccented. "Cool."
Yes, you think as he drops you off out front, cool as mint patties, cool as ice cream on a hot summer day, cool as the briny air coming off the river not five hundred yards from you. Cool as the silver stars twinkling in their distant sky. Cool as the brass of the doorknob against your sweating palm.
Here goes nothing.
There is two hundred and fifty dollars stuffed in the breast pocket of your father's awful hand-me-down brown houndstooth sports coat and a blue and orange plaid tie around your neck and not a single person with unironic fashion sense in your immediate circle of friends, other than Terezi who solves nearly all clothing-related problems by grabbing whatever is nearest to her at the moment that smells reasonably clean, and who has been known to show up to school in an offensively orange zoot suit from time to time. There is also a very angry, very sexy troll pointedly looking anywhere but at you as you sit at your stained and sticky table, running your fingers through your hair and wondering if you should have thought to lift one of your father's very stylish fedoras as well, though, as Dave would say, you are not going for the 50's wifebeater gentleman look here. Equius comes when you beckon him wordlessly over with the crook of a finger, shrugging a shoulder towards Karkat, and money is exchanged in dim half-darkness, the roll disappearing from your fumbling fingers to his pocket with a distinct lack of panache on your part. By the time Equius is leading your man down from the stage and over to you, the already flagging flowers you brought have wilted in earnest, bulbed heads browned and drooping, but you cannot care much about that. They are not, after all, Karkat's present.
The glare he shoots you is full of bile and the bittersweet of loving betrayal, of hopes dashed open on the rocks of common sense, borne down towards the bottom of the sea by the albatross of harsh reality. Equius leaves you in the front parlor, where moths are lazily but doggedly attacking the flickering ceiling light, the summer air wafting in through the open door and carrying away some of your sweat, some of his shame. You try to follow and guess at his thought processes as he stands with arms crossed over his chest, trembling ever so slightly and trying not to show it-- he is a good actor, but not that much, not when he's angry. You open your mouth to speak and he snarls, vile invective choking him, the noose around his neck. "Stop," he hisses, and your mouth snaps closed again. "Just stop. Don't speak to me. Don't tell me more lies, don't make believe that you fucking care, just like the rest of them. I don't hate them, you know that? But I can goddamn well hate you, because you lied to me. I can't stop you from touching me, you paid for that, but don't ever think that buys you the right to fucking jerk me around like that again."
Now it is you who are shaking, as you gulp down a throatful of your own bile something uncomfortable pricking at the corners of your eyes. "I just came to say happy birthday, Karkat," you tell him, nearly a whisper, and then amend, "Happy wriggling day, I mean. I'll... leave now, if that's what you want. I already gave you your present."
You hover there a moment more, rocking back and forth on your heels as Karkat blinks at you, dumbfounded but suspicious; you watch the gears turn behind his eyes until they widen near-to imperceptibly, pupils dilating just enough to be noticeable. "You... bought me," he rasps, taking a cautious, skittish step towards you again.
"Everyone needs a night off," you tell him, smiling sadly, and then suddenly his lips are on yours, his hands gripping your wrists so tight it hurts and drawing them up to his chest as he sucks the life out of you, cherry-red lipstick smearing over your ghostly pale skin. Then you are groaning into the kiss and his tongue is in your mouth, the clawed fingers of one hand twisting in your hair and pulling you closer as your back hits the wall and then he remembers himself and it is your weight being dragged against him against the dreadful peeling pastel wallpaper and the bass from the music is thump, thump, thumping in time with your heart as thickened blood pumps through you and.
"Wait," you gasp, forcibly wrenching yourself away from him as his other hand moves down to stroke your side and then lower, hooking in your belt loops and pulling only slightly. "Wait, Karkat, this wasn't... honest, this wasn't my intention." You have no words for him, no breath to spare, especially when his mouth is now on your throat, rough, wet tongue swabbing your Adam's apple and swiping the salt from your skin, not biting down or sucking hard enough to leave a mark; that is not the province of his station. "I t-t-told you," you manage to stutter out, words collapsing into a hopeless moan, "I don't... this isn't... you don't have to work tonight, Karkat! Doesn't that make you happy?"
"Yes," he grunts, and then kisses you again, a bit more hesitantly this time, leaving you more room to pull away.
"So what are you doing now?"
"Not working." His hands are up and teasing the hem of your pressed white button-up shirt out of your pants, palms sliding up your chest to feel you, and you don't think you've ever done this before. You've touched him plenty, but the reverse is never true aside from hungry kisses and his arms around you as he sleeps, and this is a new thing, those razor points trailing down barely defined pectorals and abdominal muscles gone tense with nerves. "I want to go out," he adds after a moment filled deliciously with nothing but your unthinking whimpers, "but I'm going to get changed, first." You nod. "In my room." Another nod. "With the door closed." Another nod, and a sympathetic smile. "And you're coming with me."
Your grin disappears and your bobble-head like motions stop so short you think you just gave yourself whiplash. "Please don't," you tell him, voice squeaking like rusty bed springs or the things that hide in the night. "I don't want to be that guy."
"You goddamn idiot," he tells you, and for a second you could swear that there's a hint of fondness, buried in there somewhere. "If you were, I wouldn't be offering to do this."
When you kiss him again, the hysterical, flailing part of your brain thinks that he tastes like honey and possibilities.
---
Karkat looks different in real clothes, different from the normal person you've seen before, different lit by the oily orange glow of streetlights and the alternating neon of a thousand sparking signs. The city is alive around you, alive and stirring, buzzing, but all you can see is him, Karkat in his black t-shirt and shitty beat-up sneakers, no collar around his neck, no borrowed rings on his fingers, no weight of the world on his shoulders. Today is for somebody else's Atlas, today is a problem that cannot be solved, and you slip your hand into his, neither of you leading, as around you the city cools and settles and simmers, never sleeping, never dying.
Nothing need be spoken, now, as magic lights your way and the wind dances around you, carrying you helplessly towards the river, towards the boardwalk, dark water reflecting the clouds and stars. "Trolls came from the sea, you know," he tells you, staring out at the ancestral water as though he'd like to go wading, return himself to the broth that bore him, and his ancestors, since so long ago. "And some of them are so damn haughty about it."
You squeeze his fingers, trying not to stare too conspicuously. "You sound like you think about this a lot."
He sounds morose. "Incessantly."
"I can't help that, I'm afraid."
Golden eyes that shine deep as a cat's meet yours, and then he turns away, back to the choppy water and long forgotten dreams. "Egbert, you don't know the half of what you are."