Chapter Text
The nice thing about being in a cabin in the middle of nowhere is that you are well and truly alone. There are no neighbors to visit you out of the blue, no dormmates to drunkenly burst into your room in the middle of the night by mistake.
Nobody to sneak up on you.
That doesn’t stop you from being on edge, of course. From feeling like you’re being watched.
You covered up the surveillance cameras when you first arrived a few days ago—you started with the doorbell cam, before the cab driver had even had a chance to finish driving off into the night. You check them again each night before you go to bed. Just in case the coverings have fallen off, or you missed one, or an extra one had appeared somewhere during the day when you weren’t paying attention…
It’s not like you’ve got anything better to do. You just need to bide your time for another week or so, then you can ditch your Bro’s shitty “Rentr” cabin that nobody ever rents (Rentrs?) and go hide out at John’s place until you figure out how to tell Bro that yup, college turned out to be just another failure to add to the already long list of failures you’ve got piling up.
At least you’ve still got a little bit of money saved up, you guess. It wasn’t enough to pay for classes, but it should keep you fed through the week.
Your paranoia about the cameras has been soothed (for now), but you’re not quite ready to sleep. You flop out on the creaky old couch in the living room and settle in for another night of fucking around on the internet. As shoddy as everything else in this cabin is, at least the internet connection is solid.
There’s nothing fucking happening, though. The comments section for the latest Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff strip is dead already, a mere four hours after you uploaded it. None of your go-to streamers are currently live. Nobody on your chumroll is online, either.
It’s nearly eleven o’clock on a Monday night, so...it makes sense. But that doesn’t mean you’re happy about it.
After fiddling with your phone for another hour or so, watching the battery slowly deplete, you finally decide to just watch a movie. The extensive selection of VHS tapes stacked on the coffee table isn’t just for show, right? But first, you take a detour into the cabin’s small, cramped (“cozy”) kitchen for some refreshment.
All that’s currently in the ancient fridge is a crusty bottle of Tabasco and the food you brought with you: half a loaf of bread, some sliced cheese and lunch meat, a small jar of mayo, and several bottles of apple juice. It’s...kind of sad, even by your standards. You’ll have to hike into town for more groceries in another day or two.
For now, you just swipe one of the bottles of AJ and pop it open.
As you straighten up and swing the fridge door shut, you think you hear something weird outside, like—like a car pulling up the gravel driveway? But...that can’t be right.
You wait, unmoving, not even breathing—but the night is silent. You decide it must be your paranoia at work again. You take a swig of juice, but there’s an uneasy knot in your stomach now. You creep stealthily back toward the living room, stopping short halfway down the hall when you hear another sound—a voice.
It’s right outside the front door.
“God damn it,” it says, and then—oh fuck. There’s the unmistakable sound of a key turning forcefully in the lock. The door, being shaken back and forth in its frame. Then, all in a mumbled rush, “Middle of fucking nowhere piece of shit asshole rumpus bullshit—”
Oh, you’re so fucked.
Somebody actually fucking Rentrd the place.
You’re so busy full-on panicking that you forget to do something—escape down the hallway to your bedroom, or go open the door for the poor guy, or anything. Instead, you stay frozen in place, right where you are, and when the door swings open—
Oh. Oh shit. The guy—a troll, maybe in his mid-twenties, short and tired-looking—isn’t really what you had expected. You stare at him in silence, and he stares back, and oh god this is so awkward.
“Motherfucker,” he says, breaking the uneasy silence. Somehow, despite the clear exhaustion written on his face, every single syllable overflows with venom. “Double-booked. Are you shitting me?”
He turns away into the night, and pulls out his phone, presumably to call your Bro. Adrenaline courses through you, and everything comes into sharp relief at once. Your paralysis finally ends.
You clear your throat. Your heart hammers in your chest. You can’t let that call happen.
“Nah, man, I’m not staying here,” you say, loudly enough to get his attention. “I’m—I’m just the—fuck. The m-maintenance guy.”
He’s looking you over with extreme doubt, his finger hovering over the call button on his phone’s screen.
“Dave Strider?” you say. You’re hoping he’ll recognize the surname from the Rentr app and connect the dots on his own.
It doesn’t seem likely that he will, though. He’s still just staring at you, his brow deeply furrowed, like he isn’t sure what to believe.
“My Bro owns this place.”
“I’m sure he does,” the guy replies. He stands on the threshold like he’s rooted to the spot. His thumb is still hovering over his phone, but the screen is black now, gone to sleep. For the first time, you notice his baggage sitting on the porch, just behind him. There’s a lot of it.
“Uh, okay,” you say, unsure how to proceed. You wish you weren’t holding an open bottle of AJ in your sweaty hand right now.
His mouth twists to one side. He’s so...expressive. “It’s just—you don’t really look much like a ‘maintenance guy,’ if I’m honest.”
You shrug and say simply, “Nepotism.”
He snorts. “You don’t even look old enough to legally drink.”
“Hey, I’ve been twenty-one for three whole months, dude,” you say, with an air of faux offense. You’re smiling a little in spite of yourself.
Shit. You can’t talk to this guy like—like he’s one of your friends. You’ve gotta be more convincing than this—
But—oh, sweet troll jesus—he actually laughs a little.
And just like that, the tension is broken.
“Help me carry this shit inside, why don’t you,” he says, gesturing toward the small mountain of baggage on the porch. “I’d say you owe it to me for scaring the hell out of me. Thought for a minute I was going to have to sleep in my piece of shit car tonight. It’s cold as globes out here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
You don’t let yourself fully relax, not quite yet, but...it sure seems like you’ve convinced the guy not to call your Bro. Disaster narrowly averted, fuck yes.
Lugging a few bags inside is a pretty small price to pay, considering.
“Yeah, man, sure,” you say. “No problem.”
You take five of the bags, which is just about as much as you can carry at once. Shit’s heavy. He picks up two and follows you.
Luckily the cabin’s got two bedrooms. You really, really hope he doesn’t decide to poke his head into the room you’ve been crashing in—you left the door slightly ajar, but you’re pretty sure the light’s off, at least. It’s...kind of a mess in there.
“So,” he says conversationally, as you walk together across the creaking floorboards of the hall, “were you finishing up some late-night maintenance when I got here? Or are you still on the job?”
You push the door of the second bedroom open with your hip. He flips the light switch on as he enters, probably for your benefit more than his. Freaky troll night vision.
“Oh, uhhh, shit. Nah, dude, I was just ch-changing the light bulb, y’know? In—the kitchen.”
He looks at you expectantly as you set his stuff down next to the bed.
“I...I mean I guess I was just about done.”
He sighs and sheds his big coat, throwing it onto the bed. “Great,” he says. There’s an air of finality to the word, like he’s...dismissing you.
You guess you did just tell him your work here is done.
“I’ll get the rest,” you offer. “Should be able to get it in one trip.”
“Mm.”
There are three more bags, none of them very large. You can easily carry them all in one trip.
You stand out on the porch and look up at the night sky.
It’s past midnight now. It’s cold out—the guy was right about that. You don’t have a car to sleep in. You could call another cab, yeah, like the one that brought you here, but...you’ve got no place to go. Not until John and his dad get back from their trip to Chicago.
Buzzing with nerves, you carry the remaining bags back to the guy’s room.
You realize too late that you probably should’ve knocked before entering, but thankfully he’s still awake and fully dressed. He’s set himself up at the small desk by the window, clacking away rapidly at the keys of a bulky old laptop.
“Well, good night.”
“Yes, all right,” he says absently, too focused on his work to look up at you. “Appreciate the help.”
For some reason, you hesitate before leaving. “I, uh—never got your name.”
His irises are an unusual scarlet red, you realize as your eyes meet for the second time.
There’s a stretched-out moment of utter silence as he considers you, hidden as you are behind your shades.
“Karkat.”
“It was nice meeting you, Karkat.” You slip out of his room, closing the door behind you.
You don’t have much time before he starts to notice all the little signs that you’ve actually been staying here. You need to get your shit packed and get the fuck out as fast as you can—never mind where you’re going to go. You can figure that out later.
You’ve got most of your clothes shoved into your backpack when you hear Karkat’s bedroom door creak open. You wait, holding your breath, as he loudly creaks his way down the hall.
Shit. Your food is still in the fridge. Not to mention you’ve got all kinds of stuff strewn all over the bathroom counter.
What are the odds he doesn’t notice any of it...?
Quietly, you resume stuffing your backpack. If you have to, you can leave through your bedroom window. You don’t want it to come to that—running through the woods at night, in the cold—but if you have to...
“Auugh—holy fuck!”
You jump, startled by the sound of Karkat shouting from the kitchen. He sounds—like he might be in trouble. Maybe serious trouble.
You don’t stop to think about it.
“Dude, are you okay?” you ask as you stumble awkwardly into the kitchen, your momentum carrying you through the hallway just a little too fast. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
“Does it look like I’m okay? What do you mean ‘what’s wrong’? You can see what the issue is here, right?”
Karkat does look like he’s okay, which is a relief, because you didn’t really want to deal with any injuries on top of everything else going on tonight.
The sink, on the other hand, is not doing so hot. One of the knobs has been pulled clean off and is currently residing in Karkat’s angrily clenched fist. Where it should be, a fountain of water is spraying straight up toward the ceiling.
Karkat continues speaking when you don’t answer immediately. “Did you forget to fix something while you were in here stuffing a light bulb up your chute, or whatever ‘maintenance’ it was you were doing?”
“That was not broken when I was in here earlier, dude. What’d you do, strangle it until it popped off?”
“What’s it matter what I did? Just fix it! Isn’t that your job?”
Right. Your “job.” “That’s what I’m here for. Absolutely nothing else. You’re lucky I haven’t left yet. Let me just, uh.”
“Get your tools?” Karkat suggests.
“Yes. Let me get those. Be right back.”
You shuffle out of the kitchen with far less haste than you should, considering water is still spraying everywhere and making a huge mess. You can feel Karkat’s eyes on you as you make your way over to the closet at the other end of the hall. You wish the closet you were going to check wasn’t in clear sight of the kitchen.
You really hope Bro keeps some tools in here. If not, you’re not sure how you’re going to explain why you suddenly seem to have lost all the tools you should theoretically have with you.
There’s not much in the closet. Just a cobweb-covered mop and broom, an old vacuum, and, thankfully, a rusty old toolbox, sitting on the floor collecting dust.
You wipe at some of the grime with your shirt sleeve, then pick it up and carry it into the kitchen. Karkat probably won’t notice that this thing clearly hasn’t been used in years, right?
Karkat makes a disgusted face when you set the toolbox down on the counter next to the sink, but he doesn’t say anything about the state it’s in.
You don’t know the first thing about how to fix this. In place of anything better to do, you fiddle with the second knob on the sink, which seems to make the stream of water die down, at least.
“Probably should’ve done that first,” you mumble, mostly to yourself.
“You think?”
“You didn’t think to do it either, man.”
“I’m not the supposed professional here.”
“Just sayin’.”
You struggle with the latch on the toolbox for a minute. You’re pretty sure you hear Karkat laugh at you, but when you glance over at him he looks back with the same grumpy expression he’s been wearing since you entered the kitchen.
There is an assortment of actual tools inside the toolbox, which is a relief. It would be just your luck to open it and find a bunch of those smuppets your Bro has all around the apartment, or something equally fucking stupid.
You grab one of the wrenches for lack of any better ideas. When staring at it doesn’t immediately fill you with the knowledge of what you should be doing, you look back at the sink.
“Gimme that.” You gesture at the knob in Karkat’s hand. He immediately passes it over to you, and you just kind of...set it back where it’s supposed to be.
You fiddle with it, trying to get it to pop back into place, and there is a split second where it does seem to hook back in.
But then the knob dislodges once again as water starts spraying everywhere for a second time.
“This is ridiculous. I’m calling a plumber.”
“No, I got this. Don’t worry about it, dude. Go chill in the living room or something. Ain’t gotta worry ‘bout a thing. I’ll have this fixed in no time. I just gotta...”
Karkat looks up from his phone. “Shut the water valve off?”
Fuck. You hadn’t even thought about that. How did you turn the water off...? “Heh, maybe we should hire you to do maintenance here instead. Yeah, right, should shut the water off. It’s late, can’t blame a guy for forgetting these things.”
Karkat looks like he absolutely will blame you for “forgetting” to turn the water off, but oh well. It’s not like that was the first thing he’d suggested, either.
“Well, go on then,” Karkat says when you continue to stand there doing nothing. “Turn the damn water off. Did you forget how?”
“Maybe I’ve got performance anxiety, man. Hard to be on my A game when I’ve got you breathing down my neck. Should see how fast I turn the water off when nobody else is here. It’s impressive. You’d totally be impressed if you could see that. Which you can’t. Sorry, I’m normally a lone maintenance guy, fixing knobs and shutting off water all on my own.”
“Yeah, I can see why your ‘Bro’ wouldn’t want to inflict you upon the cabin guests.”
“Ouch. Deserved, but ouch.”
Karkat doesn’t leave the kitchen like you’d hoped he would. He does seem to take pity on you, at least. “Well if you did forget, this questionable website says the shut-off valve is usually under the sink.”
“Good ol’ Google. Where would we be without it?”
You open up the cabinet doors beneath the sink and luckily for you, there is a very obvious switch-looking thing on one of the pipes under there. Score. You turn it and the water from the sink finally shuts off entirely.
That doesn’t fix the problem, but it does make it a little less wet, at least. “Does your questionable website say to mop the floor before attempting to finish fixing the sink? Because I think I should do that before one of us slips on this shit.”
“Do whatever you want,” is what Karkat says, but what he does is go over to the hall closet and retrieve the mop. When he comes back, he shoves his phone at you. “Why don’t you review how to do your job while I take care of this?”
“Yessir.”
The “how-to” article Karkat found is probably decent, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually helpful. The pictures don’t match the style of the sink in the kitchen, for one, so you can’t entirely follow it based on those. The way the article is written also assumes you’ve got some amount of background knowledge on how to DIY, which you do not.
“How often does shit break in here anyway?” Karkat asks while you continue to try and re-attach the knob. “Just my luck I got stuck in a place where nothing works and the maintenance guy is some unqualified jackass.”
“You’re the asshole who’s staying in a place you found on Rentr, dude.”
“I’m not the one who booked it, okay? None of this is my fault.”
“The sink breaking kind of is,” you point out. “Like I know it’s a piece of shit and it probably would have broken on some poor sap eventually, but I’ve never had any issues with it before you showed up.”
“I just turned the knob! That’s what you’re supposed to do. I didn’t ‘strangle’ it or whatever you want to accuse me o— Holy fuck, give me that.” Karkat grabs the wrench you are currently attempting (and failing) to use to re-attach the knob with. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think what you’re doing with that right now is in any way helpful.”
He’s right. “That’s my patented technique, okay? It works every time.”
“And how many times have you repaired this specific sink? I thought you never had any issues with it?”
“It works every time on other sinks. This one just has it out for us.”
Karkat makes a face at you, then takes a deep breath before setting the wrench down. “Here, give me my palmhusk back and I’ll try to walk you through what you actually need to do, since you clearly can’t follow basic instructions.”
“That I don’t need.”
“That you don’t need because you’re a maintenance guy, yeah, I know. It says we need to reinstall the ‘trim ring’ first. What the fuck is a trim ring?”
“Ring lookin’ thing, obviously.” You look around on the counter, hoping that this so-called ‘trim ring’ does indeed look like a ring. “Hah! Here it is. Okay. We got this shit.”
“I’m going to choose to believe that, because the one plumber in town is already closed for the night.”
“And I’m going to pretend that was a sincere vote of confidence from you. Thanks, Karkat, so glad you think I can do this.”
Together, you two figure out what tools will actually assist you in this process. You clean up the knob when you realize that the rust inside of it is what’s making it difficult to re-attach, and things seem to move much more smoothly from there.
The whole process is also a lot easier now that you've got Karkat reading the instructions to you. “Uh, thanks for your help with this, by the way. I’d offer you half my cut but it’s not like my Bro is paying me for this. So.”
“Wait, your brother doesn’t pay you? Why the fuck do you work for him, then?”
“Oh, he uh. He pays me usually,” you lie. “I just owe him some money right now?”
Karkat looks like he doesn’t believe that one bit, but he doesn’t argue, just starts to read the next bit of instructions to you.
You two continue on like that until you finally seem to have fixed the sink. “Moment of truth,” you tell Karkat once you’ve checked and double-checked that the knob is not going to fall off again. You slide back under the sink and turn the valve back on. No water starts spraying out of the knob again, which is a good sign. “Okay, your turn. Turn the knob.”
“Why do I have to turn the knob?”
“Gotta make sure it can withstand you and your beefy muscles, dude.”
“I do not have beefy muscles. Shut the fuck up.” Karkat rolls his eyes at you, but he also turns the knob. You’re honestly a little surprised when water starts coming out of the faucet like it should. “Great, it works. Good job. It only took you...” He pauses to look at his ‘palmhusk’ again. “Three hours to fix the sink.”
“Three hours?” you groan. “Fuck, it’s so late.”
He just sort of shrugs, like he stays up past three in the morning all the time. “I guess so.”
You leave the mop to dry in the kitchen. Karkat follows you down the hall, watching silently as you put the toolbox back in the closet where you found it.
With that done, you turn around to face him, and it’s then that you finally notice how extremely disheveled he is. Both of you had gotten pretty much soaked when the sink first broke—you’ve both long since dried off, but his hair still looks absolutely wild. You think yours might, too.
“The fuck’re you staring at, bulgebreath?”
“Ha. Nothin’.”
There’s a half-second of silence—just enough to set off alarm bells somewhere in the back of your head. It’s time—past time, really—for you to get the hell outta this place. You’ll just have to spend the rest of your grocery money on a motel room, or something.
A really, really shitty motel room. There’s gotta be something out there you can afford, right?
Before you can make a move, though, Karkat says, “Are those all your brother’s movies?”
He seems more awake than ever, in spite of the time. He’s looking with interest at the coffee table, with its tall stacks of VHS tapes. You nod. “Yeah, man.”
You add, completely unnecessarily, “They’re for guests.”
He sort of snorts at you again. It’s—
Like, it’s not what anyone would call a cute sound. But it’s still...pleasant, somehow? Looking at him, you suddenly have to fight off a smile. It just feels...good, you guess, to make this stranger laugh. Sort of. Even if it is at your expense.
“I figured that much, yes. Thank you.”
He moves toward the coffee table to take a closer look. You’re still standing next to the closet. You’re not entirely sure why. You know you ought to get going—the sooner the better.
After inspecting the tapes a moment longer, Karkat declares, “Your brother has shit taste.”
“Tell me about it,” you say, scrubbing one hand over your tired eyes. “Dude’s basically bad taste personified.”
Not for the first time tonight, you suppress a yawn. Could it really hurt all that much to sit and rest, just for a few minutes...?
You let your legs carry you to the soft armchair next to the couch. Karkat’s digging through the tapes now, looking for something in particular, maybe. “Does he happen to have any...”
But he doesn’t finish asking the question. He just glances over at you—are his cheeks slightly flushed?—and shakes his head. “Never mind.”
“What? Porn? Yeah, loads, but not here. Uh—n-no pun intended. Seriously, I didn’t mean loads, like—I just meant he has a lot. You know, back home.”
His face is definitely turning red now. “Why the fuck would I want some stranger’s—ugh. No,” he says. “Romantic comedies.”
“Oh. Might be one or two, man, I dunno.”
“Hmm.” He resumes scanning the titles, head tilted slightly to one side so he can read them. You slouch a little further down in the soft chair. After the scare of Karkat’s arrival at the cabin, and after the whole sink fiasco, the chair is...nice. Comfy.
The next thing you know, you’re being shaken awake by a hand on your shoulder. It’s warm.
“Did you even hear a word I said? Asshole, how long have you been asleep behind those things?” Karkat says, those startling red eyes of his seeming to peer directly at you, right through your shades. You know he can’t actually see through them, but regardless, you can’t hold the eye contact for more than a second.
“Shit, sorry,” you mumble, sitting up straighter. “S-sorry.”
“Whatever,” he says. He withdraws his hand fast, like he only just noticed he was still touching you. “I just thought you might want to head home. It’s almost four.”
“Yeah. Home,” you repeat. Maybe it’s because you were asleep just moments ago, but...there’s something way too vulnerable, you think, in the way you say that word.
The uncomfortable silence that follows wakes you up much more effectively than Karkat shaking your shoulder.
God damn it all. You let yourself fall asleep when you should’ve been planning. Now you’re cornered.
He’s looking at you expectantly. Only one choice left now.
It’s just for tonight.
“Would you, uh, mind if I just—crashed in the other bedroom, actually? I think I might be too tired to—to uh. To drive right now,” you stumble. “It—wouldn’t be responsible.”
“I see.”
You struggle to keep your mouth shut while Karkat deliberates. Did you know driving while tired is worse than driving drunk? you want to ask him, but the slight complication that you are, of course, lying about all this driving business is ultimately what keeps you from rambling on and on and making a fool of yourself.
You just need a few good hours of sleep, and then you can hike into town and find a cheap place to stay. Right?
“Okay,” Karkat says quietly. “Okay.”
You exhale a breath you hadn’t even realized you were holding. “Thanks, man,” you say.
“Yeah, yeah. The bedroom doors have locks, right?”
The bedroom doors do, indeed, have locks. They’re cheap pieces of shit, of course, like everything else in this place—your Bro spared pretty much every expense—but you don’t see any reason to tell him that.
You mumble good night and retreat to the room you’ve been staying in, where your backpack lies open on the floor, half-packed. Several rumpled t-shirts are spilling out. You strip to your boxers and pull on one of the fresher ones, to sleep in.
You’re exhausted, but...now, at four in the morning, lying in your queen-size bed, wrapped in blankets, eyes closed—you just can’t quite manage to go to sleep. You’re worried. About going home. About everything. What if Karkat decides to contact your Bro after all? Are the surveillance cameras still covered up...?
You don’t know how much later it is when you hear Karkat’s thumping footsteps in the hall. Never mind the creaky floorboards—the dude is not stealthy.
You smile to yourself when you hear the sound of his door locking, then unlocking, then locking again.
It never even occurred to you, you now realize, to lock your own bedroom door.
“Too late now,” you mumble into your pillow. It’s cold out there—outside the blankets. “No fuckin’ thanks, ’m good. Aw man, just watch, ’m gonna get murdered in my sleep now that I said that. Just my luck, temporary roommates with a charming murderer. Never suspected.”
There’s a steady, almost rhythmic sound coming from Karkat’s room now. You stop talking to yourself and listen—
clack clack clack
—and it’s then, with the white noise of Karkat’s rapid typing lulling you, like raindrops on the roof, that you finally fall asleep.
The next morning—technically, it’s still morning—you wake up to the sound of Karkat still typing, just as steadily as ever.
Did he sleep at all...? you wonder, glancing blearily at the clock on the wall. Eleven fifteen.
Your stomach grumbles, and you wonder, briefly, how awkward it’d be to run into your troll roommate in the cabin’s kitchen. You decide to just dig around in your backpack for a granola bar instead.
There’s one left, wedged into the bottom of your pack and half crushed into dust by the weight of all your other shit, but it’s better than nothing. You plug your dead phone in to charge while you eat it.
You’ve got several messages waiting, as it turns out. All of them are from John.
-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --
EB: daaave! good morning!
-- turntechGodhead [TG] is an idle chum! --
EB: rise and shine, dave!
EB: sleeping in, huh? about what i'd expect from a lazy college dropout.
EB: (i'm just fucking with you, obviously! in case you couldn't tell! :P)
EB: well, anyway. i'm just going to talk to you even though you're asleep or whatever, so deal with it!
EB: this whole chicago trip has been so fun, dude.
EB: if you had told me years ago that i'd be saying that about a pipe convention, i probably would have laughed in your face!
EB: it's just been really cool to spend some quality time with my dad. he's like a kid in a candy store here, ha ha.
EB: still asleep, huh?
EB: yeah, so here's the thing. i know i said it would be cool if you stayed with us for a little bit, and it still is and all, don't worry about that! but...um...
EB: but we're going to be extending our trip, so...
EB: sorry, but we won't be home for another two weeks. :/
EB: i really hope you can find some place to stay until then!
EB: good luck buddy. if all else fails, at least you can just go home though, right? i mean, you know, it's an option.
EB: ok, well, i'll talk to you later.
EB: bye dave!
-- ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --
The sinking feeling in your belly makes it really fucking difficult to choke down the rest of your shitty granola bar breakfast, but somehow you manage.
You’re so fucked.
The cheapest motel within fifty miles would still wipe out your entire savings in much less than two weeks.
You sit on the edge of the bed and press your palms to your closed eyes, beneath your shades. Your thoughts chase themselves in circles, anxious and unhelpful. You’ve only been awake for ten minutes.
“It’s too early for this shit,” you say to yourself, even though it’s nearly noon. The point stands.
One calm and reasonable thought does occur to you, amid the panic and anxiety. You don’t know how long Karkat plans to stay.
Assuming he’ll be gone in a few days, you could just come right back, couldn’t you? Stay here until the Egberts return home, like you’d originally planned?
You think about the mountain of luggage he’d brought with him. A dude doesn’t pack that much shit for just a few days...does he?
As you’re sitting there on the bed, wondering how best to bring up the subject with him, you realize just how quiet things have gotten. The clack-clack-clack of Karkat’s typing has finally, finally stopped.
You hear the chunk of his bedroom door unlocking, the sound of his thudding footsteps as he makes his way to the bathroom.
The bathroom—where you left all of your shit last night. Toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shampoo. Towel. Probably some underwear and/or socks. Fuckin’ whoops.
The old-ass pipes squeal in complaint as the shower is turned on. You listen to the water run, a terrible sour feeling settling in your stomach. You wonder what Karkat is thinking right about now.
For all you know, he’s already been in contact with your Bro.
The water isn’t running anymore.
There’s an abrupt knock at your bedroom door.
“Jesus fuck,” you breathe. Lost as you were in your paranoid thoughts, you were more startled by that knock than you’d like to admit.
“Dave,” Karkat says from the other side of the door, and wow, it’s weird to hear that guy say your name. “I need some fucking help here, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“Yeah, come in.”
You get a little more than you’d bargained for when Karkat swings your bedroom door open and leans against your doorframe, dripping wet and naked. Well, okay, he’s covered by a towel. But. You know. He’s naked under the towel. You assume.
“Eyes up here, please,” he says, shaking something shiny and metallic in one hand. “This place is falling the fuck apart.”
You get a better look at the mystery object when he tosses it onto the bed for you to see.
It’s the showerhead.
“Wow. Your world-renowned iron grip strikes again,” you say, because, in spite of everything, you’d really like to see if you can make him laugh again. He just rolls his eyes. You do your best not to stare at the bright red grub scars along his sides, or, you know. Any of the rest of him.
“Can you fix it or not?”
“Yeah, totally. Of course. Are you kidding? They don’t call me Fix-It Dave for nothing, dude.”
“They most certainly do not call you that.”
You smile at him. You don’t know what it is about this guy. His grumpiness is just impossible to take seriously.
And it’s nice—to have something else to think about for a little while. Fixing a broken shower sounds downright appealing in comparison to the rest of the trash fire that is your life.
“I’m all over it,” you assure him, and you head for the closet to get the box of tools.