Chapter Text
"Circadian rhythms (lasting approximately a day) dominate our lives, most obviously via the sleep–wake cycle. Indeed, almost all vital physiology and metabolism are under circadian control. Driven by cellular ‘clocks’ distributed across the body, these rhythms adjust us to the world by preparing the brain and other tissues to perform very different, often incompatible, functions appropriate to the anticipated day or the anticipated night... the principal circadian pacemaker in mammals is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus. The SCN is necessary for circadian behaviour: its compromise by surgical ablation in animals and by pituitary tumours or vascular disease in humans disrupts daily rhythms... Moreover, the SCN is an autonomous time-keeper, capable of expressing circadian cycles of spontaneous action-potential firing when it is isolated in vivo or ex vivo."
(Hastings et al., 2018)
Your name is DAVE STRIDER and you are a nineteen-year-old PSYCHOLOGY UNDERGRADUATE at a decent but unremarkable AMERICAN UNIVERSITY. You have an interest in SICK BEATS, some of which you are listening to currently as you wait for your LAB SHIFT FROM HELL to end. You also happen to be an IMMORTAL(?) GOD-KING, but you like to ignore that fact.
It is 6:37 PM on a Tuesday evening, which means that you have only twenty three minutes left, and that’s rapidly approaching twenty-two.
Just thirteen more seconds… Ten… Six…
“The fuck do you mean you told me on Sunday?” the research assistant next door shrieks.
You’ve been listening to them losing their shit for the past sixteen minutes (and forty-three seconds). Shockingly, they haven’t lost any steam in that time. If anything, they’re gaining energy.
The walls between your labs are pretty thin, but even so, it’s impressive how well their words carry. You can hear every voice crack and frustrated growl in full stereo, like the world’s angriest ASMR right in your ear canals. You can’t tell their gender—their voice is in that too-high yet too-low zone of ambiguity—but you can tell that Gamzee, whoever that poor fucker is, is getting the ass reaming of a lifetime.
Case in point.
“Are you fucking stupid, Gamzee? In what fucking universe does that count as telling me?”
It’s distracting you from the seriously ill beats flowing from your headphones. They’re the fancy kind that actual music producers use, bought for you courtesy of one passive-aggressive twin sister using the loaded bank account of one Mother Lalonde, for the purpose of convincing you to stop playing your music out loud. Ha. As if.
Right now, you're kicking yourself for not pressuring Rose for a noise-cancelling pair. Maybe you'd even promise to use them at home so long as Rose didn't take that as permission to host noisy lesbian sexcapades. Although at this point, even that doesn't sound so bad compared to—
“NO, FUCKFACE, IT DOES NOT! IT FUCKING DOES NOT!”
“Ughhhh,” you say into your monitor. There’s an essay on the screen that you abandoned an hour and twelve minutes ago for the vastly superior option of fucking around on your phone and humming aimlessly. You’re the last one on shift—there’s another girl who’s supposed to be here, this Japanese exchange student who you pretend doesn't scare you. You’re stuck with her on Tuesdays, and theoretically the two of you share your three hour shifts, but she always peaces out the moment the grad students leave for the day, sending you a genuinely terrifying smile each time. She’s never spoken a word of English to you but you know in your bones that she will gut you if you squeal.
There aren't any more participants today, so you could leave—who the fuck would ever know—but you never do. You figure you owe Rose a little peace and quiet if she decides to spend the evening at your apartment, and doubly so if she invites Kanaya over. You, on the other hand? You're totally down with the spooky, nobody-will-hear-me-scream isolation of the empty lab at night. You can turn the lights off and hover over your office chair like an even twinkier Edward Cullen (wait, could that guy fly? you vaguely remember hearing Rose saying something about flying vampires to Kanaya over the phone), making half-hearted attempts at completing your schoolwork and scrolling through memes on Reddit. At least, you did, until…
“No, just invite them all over, tell them what a good fucking time they’re going to have vomiting in MY bathroom and fucking in MY GODDAMN BED and eating all the food that I FUCKING BOUGHT YESTERDAY—”
Yes, you could go back early, but, c’mon, you’re a Strider. You’re not going to scurry away like a pathetic first-year intern when the big boss starts laying into his employees. Nah. This guy (gal? nonbinary… pal? is that how it goes) is about to get a Strider-style talking-to, a glorious smackdown of incomprehensible proportions, which will end in furious tears on their side and peaceful fucking bliss for you.
You do one last flip in midair just because you can, then float to the door and yank it open. The next lab over is three steps away. You can still hear the RA shouting, although it's muffled by the pale-grained wooden door in front of you. There’s a big heart tacked on it bearing the words “LEIJON RELATIONSHIPS LAB” written in green marker.
Underneath is a slip of paper that reads:
(^・ω・^ ) PLEASE KNOCK LOUDLY AND WAIT. THANK YOU!!! <3 ヾ(≧▽≦*)o
You knock loudly and wait.
There’s an abrupt silence from behind the door. You’re counting to seven seconds when it swings open to reveal one of the shortest dudes you have ever had the pleasure of setting your eyes on. He’s five-two at best, and even that is probably only thanks to the extra boost from the overgrown mop of tangled black hair framing his scowling face. And damn, what a scowl. His eyebrows are thick and furrowed, his dark eyes filled with a rare, burning hatred that you thought existed only in anime tsunderes growing corrupt with power to avenge the slaughter of their magical clans (okay, fine, Bro had Naruto downloaded on his laptop and you might have watched the first few seasons once or six times as a kid). The effect is ruined by his mouth, which is downturned at the corners in a way you think is meant to be intimidating but mostly looks pouty. Oh, and also because the guy barely reaches your shoulders, not to mention he's being absolutely swallowed by a hoodie twice his size. You can’t even see his hands underneath the floppy sleeves.
“Are you the participant?” he snaps. His voice—without the barrier of the wall, you can hear the hoarseness behind it, like he’s been smoking a pack a day (or like he just spent almost half an hour shouting, yep). It’s higher than you’d expect. That, and the height?
Trans guy. Definitely a trans guy. You recognize those awkward just-started-T voice cracks like it was yesterday for you. Or, well. Like it was two years, six months, and seventeen days ago, actually, but you don’t let your freakish time powers fuck with your smooth-as-fuck internal monologue.
“You were supposed to get here at six,” says the RA, and hey, you don’t think you actually answered his question? But he seems to have answered it for you, leaving you acutely aware now that you are entering a potentially amazing comedy of errors right now, and that’s too fucking good to ruin with something as inconsequential as the truth.
“Oops,” you say. You watch the RA visibly lose his shit, then have to stop himself with a hilarious grimace.
“Well, better late than never,” he says, in a tone that clearly says he wishes you hadn’t shown up and that furthermore you had been hit by a car on your way to the lab. It’s perfect. He’s perfect. You want to keep him in a pocket and take him out at parties.
“Your girlfriend left already,” he snaps. Which, right, relationships lab.
“Aw,” you say, "dang.” It comes out distinctly Texan in flavor. You decide that it adds to the hilarity of the situation.
“‘Dang?’” says the RA, face so visibly twisted with disgust that you’re a little worried his eyebrows will get stuck like that. “I just told you your girlfriend left. She wasn’t happy, either. I wouldn’t count on her staying your girlfriend very long.”
“Shit, dude,” you say. “I guess I always knew this was in the cards. I just hope she won’t end up heading back home this Christmas to her small town and meeting a broad-shouldered Christian man who gaslights her into abandoning her sexy heels and profitable but soulless law internship to make him coffee every morning before he goes out to milk the cows.”
“She said she was from Detroit,” says the RA.
“Huh, the more you learn,” you say.
“You don’t even know where—” the RA starts to say, bristling—and wow, he’s waving his hands in front of your face, and there’s a finger jabbing right at your nose, this guy is amazing—
“Sorry!” someone calls from the end of the hall. There’s a bout of loud panting and the squeak of rubber soles on shitty linoleum before some tall guy comes to a skidding halt beside you, red-faced and clearly at the end of a sprint across campus. "This is the relationships lab, right?"
The RA turns his impressive scowl on the newcomer. "Yes?"
“I forgot about the study," the guy says between wheezes. "Please tell me Cheryl isn’t mad at me.”
The RA gives him a long, cool look, then turns toward you with an even colder expression. “Okay,” he says. “Let me get this straight. You—” he says, pointing at the tall guy “—are Cheryl’s boyfriend, the guy who was supposed to be here at six for our relationships study?”
“Yeah,” says the guy. “Is Cheryl still here? She isn’t answering my texts.”
The RA pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay. So that means that you—” he makes a violent gesture in your direction “—are some random-ass shithead who decided to impersonate a participant for— for what? Shits and giggles? Ha ha, you pulled one over a sleep-deprived undergraduate researcher—you’re so talented, you despicable rectal hemorrhage.”
“Uh,” says the tall guy. “Are we going to start the study?”
“No, because your girlfriend left,” says the RA. “And also, she’s probably not going to be your girlfriend for much longer. You would not believe half the shit she’s said to me about your relationship and, honestly, good riddance. She deserves better.”
“Hey—”
“Get out of my sight,” says the RA. “And you!”
He grabs you by the shirt, fast enough that you can't tamp down your startle reflex or the forceful way you intercept his hand with yours. He doesn’t flinch, just yanks you through the doorway, hand and all, then lets the door slam on the baffled face of the soon-to-be single participant outside.
“Woah, bro,” you say. “I’m not saying no, but you’ve got to buy me dinner first.”
“I will not buy you dinner,” snarls the RA. “If anything, you should buy me dinner for this bullshit! What do you even want?”
“Uh.” You can’t believe that, in all the chaos, you’d forgotten your original goal. “I was gonna tell you to tone it down a bit, dude. Gamzee doesn’t deserve that shit. Criticize the idea, not the guy, you know. Positive vibes only.”
“Gamzee—?” The RA stares at you, then says, “Were you eavesdropping on me? That was— That was a very fucking confidential phone call, not that I’d expect a shitstain like you to understand that—”
“Ho-ly shit, man. You’ve got to take a breath before jumping to conclusions.”
“I’m not jumping to conclusions! You basically told me you were listening to my call!”
“Yeah, ‘cause there wasn’t much other option. Your voice rang loud and clear as a commandment of God unto man. It was like, 'Listen up, Dave, no more shalt thou enjoy the chill vibes of that sick mixtape you spent all of last night mixing, nah, we got more important biz to handle now, and that biz is verbally butt-fucking Gamzee so hard that he’s spending the next week in a wheelchair.'"
He looks at you like you’re insane.
“I’m in the next lab over,” you clarify. “The sleep and biochronology lab?”
“Oh,” says the RA after a delay. “You’re an RA?”
“Yeah. Just wanted to give a friendly noise complaint, that’s all.”
“Right, because that really required impersonating a participant—”
“Hey, you assumed first.”
“And you went along with it!”
“Yeah, well, what can I say?” You shrug. “It was funny.”
The RA visibly grinds his teeth for a while. You can feel the conversation slipping through your fingers—the next thing he’s going to say is that you’re free to go, and that he’ll keep it down, and hell, maybe he even will, and then you’ll never have another excuse to see him again.
You extend a hand toward him and blurt, “My name is Dave.”
“Huh?” says short, dark, and handsome.
You wiggle your hand at him. Sensing your intent, he gives it a hesitant shake, then drops it like a piece of particularly disturbing trash—a used condom found on a bathroom floor, maybe.
“Normally, when people introduce themselves, that’s a prompt for civilized folks to introduce themselves back,” you say.
“Fuck you,” he says. “I don’t have to give you my name after you put me through this shit.”
“Aw, no,” you say. “I thought we had a thing going. A rapport. It was great.”
“We had nothing even approximating a ‘thing’ going,” he says. He even does the finger-wiggle quotation marks at the word “thing”.
“Dude, it’s six-forty-six on a weekday and, as far as I can tell, we’re the only ones alive on this entire floor except maybe, like, three or four cockroaches and the rats in the walls. I’ve got fuck-all to do for the next fourteen minutes except kick back and wait out the rest of my shift, and I’m willing to bet you’re in the same situation. So come on, man, lighten up. What’s your name? How’s the day been? How is your, um, romance study going?”
The RA gives you a skeptical look, then sighs. “Karkat,” he says.
“What cat?”
“My name,” he says. “It’s Karkat.”
“Huh,” you say, then, stupidly, “so where’s that from?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know? As far as I can tell, my dad made it up.”
“Right.”
“If you follow that up with ‘Where are you from’, I’m pushing you out the door.”
“I would never,” you say. “Besides, I’m pretty sure I already know. Your accent is Midwestern as fuck, man. It’s the auditory equivalent of tofu and beige.”
“Oh, unlike the piquant undertones of your Southern drawl?”
That actually surprises you. The accent doesn’t usually come out much anymore—you spent long enough in Skaia and then in the Lalondes’ upstate New York mansion to rid you of that particular affectation—but you’ve been told that it makes an appearance when you’re tired or, well. When you’re flirting.
You can’t help it, okay? This guy is adorable.
“Hey, I’ve been told it’s sexy as fuck,” you say, which, goddamnit it, Strider.
“What, by your mother?” Karkat says.
You laugh. That seems to startle the other boy, and he gives you this weird half-suspicious, half-pleased look. The corners of his mouth are threatening to turn up. Hey, look at that—you almost made him smile.
Yeah, you know you’re a desperate manwhore, but clearly Karkat doesn’t, so why not lean in to your urges?
You spend the next twelve minutes and forty seconds exchanging comments about Karkat’s research (assisting the eponymous Leijon herself with a study on touch and avoidant attachment in couples), exactly what was up with Gamzee (a party, apparently, including his entire juggalo(?)-themed rock band and their extremely sexually aggressive groupies), and, oddly enough, the merits of The Notebook, which you mostly remember being hilariously melodramatic from your one viewing with your friends back when you were both thirteen. John had liked it a lot, weirdly enough, but Jade had agreed with you, calling it “Kind of silly, if you think about it!”
(Fuck, you miss them.)
Anyway, Karkat tells you it’s the greatest love story ever with the conviction of the protagonist of one of those schlocky, military-funded Hollywood war blockbusters, loud-voiced and fists clenched at his sides, his thick eyebrows drawn down and his face scrunched up. It makes you like him even more.
“Hey, where are you headed after this?” you ask at seven.
He blinks at you, then checks the time. “Back home, I guess,” he says.
“Cool,” you say. “Wanna head out together?”
“Just to the exit,” he grumbles. “And that’s only because it’s awkward to just kick you out right now when we’re going in the same direction.”
You grin at him as he locks all the doors in the lab and flicks out the lights. Together, you walk down the fluorescent-lit hallway, then up the stairs to the main floor of the Social Sciences Building. The campus Starbucks is dark and quiet and the rest of the building is empty save a couple of students heading in for night classes. When you reach the doors, you end up sticking together out of some mutual, unspoken agreement, chatting about nothing particularly serious: classes you're taking, profs you like and profs you hate, the latest TV shows and movies. He makes fun of you for wearing sunglasses at night. You make fun of him for being two-thirds hoodie.
You're over halfway home and approaching an intersection when he says, “Hey, I’m going to turn here.” He gestures to the left.
“Okay,” you say. “See you later, man.”
“Yeah,” he says stiffly. “Uh. See you later.”
There are three seconds left of the pedestrian light. You give him one last wave (it’s probably dorky as hell, but fuck it, you like this guy), then sprint across the road. When you reach the other side, you turn back to see him kicking at the sidewalk, hands shoved in his pockets, little puffs of mist from his mouth lit in the white headlights of the waiting cars. He doesn’t notice you watching and, after a moment, you turn back, not wanting to look like a creep. You let yourself float just the tiniest bit on your way back home.
*****
You can’t acknowledge to yourself how many hours you lose over the next two days nervously debating how you’re going to approach the cute, shouty RA on Thursday, despite knowing down to the second (and the decisecond, and the centisecond, and the millisecond… it never ends, really—stupid fucking time powers) exactly how long that is, as well as how much you’re adding to it each moment you fall back into considering that last glance at him, haloed in cold white light in a way your memory insists was near-messianic, and you with numb hands at your sides, pining like that Titanic girl on the raft as young Leo DiCaprio goes under the waves.
…Fuck, you can never let Rose know you compared yourself to Kate Winslet.
Anyway, you know enough about memory to know that it’s all lies, and there’s no fucking way the guy was that attractive, and also Jesus Christ, could your brain shut up for one fucking second and let you sleep already?
When your Thursday lab shift arrives, you find yourself sweaty-palmed and decidedly uncool as you head down the stairs to the psych labs. When you finally arrive at your lab, you wait for a moment at the door, listening intently for any sign of Karkat’s signature wrathful voice. You don’t hear anything.
You realize abruptly that there’s no guarantee that he’s on shift at this time. Most people only work a designated six to ten hours at their given labs, you included. Of course it would be asking too much for your shifts to coincide a second time. You spend another moment standing there stupidly, wondering if it would be too much to knock on the Leijon lab door and ask if Karkat is there. You’re saved by the door to your own lab opening as the clock hits three, revealing Aradia. She blinks at you from the entryway.
"Dave?” she says. “Are you meeting with Himari right now? That's a coincidence. I was just leaving.”
“Dope,” you say. You’re a douchebag.
Aradia smiles placidly. You hold the door open for her so that she can leave.
“I haven’t seen you in a while at the main lab,” Aradia says. “Did you switch your shift schedule?”
“Yep. Had a conflict come up,” you say.
“That’s unfortunate,” she says. “The second-year they placed with me isn't as good with the mice as you are. He dropped one just yesterday, actually. I had to spend twenty minutes trying to catch it."
"A fucking shame," you say, shaking your head. Your voice comes out pretty smooth given how tight your throat suddenly feels. "Not everyone can be a mouse whisperer like me. I'm like Walt Disney with my hands all up in those mice brains, making them sing all their sweet little mouse secrets into my ears."
"I'm not so certain about that, but I guess I'll miss your company," says Aradia. There's a part of you that misses her too, now that you're seeing her again for the first time in two weeks. That girl always knew how to deal with your bullshit.
"I'll see you later,” she says.
You wave at her, then head into the dismal depths of your lab.
There aren't any RAs on shift with you today. You open one of the lab's desktops and note grimly that the third RA who usually spends time down here has disappeared entirely from the Google Calendar. There isn't a single participant scheduled during your Thursday shift for the next three months.
You could leave. There's no point in staying. You doubt Himari, the graduate student overseeing the study, will give a shit. Hell, Rose might even be home for once. She might even be home without Kanaya.
You imagine her raised eyebrows. Back early? she'd ask. She'd already given you enough shit when you switched off the food cues study to this one. She hadn't said anything, but you could tell she'd jumped to a conclusion already from the mere fact that your current project features human participants instead of mice. The last thing you need is for her to learn that it's underfunded and three-quarters of the way to being stuffed into the proverbial file drawer.
Yeah, no, you'll stick it out. You open your laptop and turn your thoughts to the human physiology midterm coming up instead of the disappointment you absolutely do not feel at the prospect of not seeing Karkat until Tuesday.
*****
On Tuesday, you arrive to your shift seven minutes early for the first time in the semester. By sheer coincidence, this is precisely when the door to the Leijon lab opens, revealing Karkat in all his scruffy glory. He’s holding a paper coffee cup and wearing a soft-looking grey sweater even larger than last week’s hoodie plus a baggy pair of black jeans.
He goes wide-eyed when he sees you. You don’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed by your hair (appallingly noogied by the wind) or the fact that your instinctive reaction to this unforeseen blessing is to say, “‘Sup, dude, how have the science threesomes been?”
He stares at you for long enough that you start thinking semi-seriously about redoing that entire opening or, at the very least, giving your past self a monumental slap to the mouth. Then, he rolls his eyes. “If you're talking about the interviews, they've been fine,” he says. “And they're foursomes, technically, since I'm just there to keep track of their touches while Dr. Leijon conducts the interview. Also, yes, I’ve been doing well; how are you, asshole? Now, get out of my way. I need to throw this out before the three pm participant comes.”
“Cool,” you says. “Hey, you mind if I come with? My shift doesn’t start until three, and I don’t want to go there because I’m not spending a second around my shift partner more than is strictly needed.”
“Uh, sure,” he says, in a voice that clearly says he’s suspicious. “If you want to come with me to the trash can, go ahead. Free country and all.”
“Trash can hangouts, man. S’why I vote in every election. Gotta protect America’s most fundamental right.”
That gets you a snort, which, derisive as it is, you’re counting as a victory. Aw, yeah, look at you go. You get the guys every single time. Gotta beat these dudes off you with a sword, they’re that desperate for some patented Strider charm.
“When are your shifts?” you ask as you make your way down the hall.
“Why?” is his instant response.
“What, I can’t ask an innocent question out of pure, genuine curiosity?”
“Yeah, because that sounds like something you’d do."
“Hey,” you say. “You don’t know me. Maybe I’m the purest, most genuine guy out there.”
You’re expecting another eye roll and possibly, if you’re looking, a disdainful laugh. Instead, Karkat says, “I mean. Yeah. Fuck, you’re right. Sorry.”
“What?” you say. “I was joking, man. I’m like the opposite of pure and genuine.”
“Fuck you,” says Karkat. “I was giving you the benefit of the doubt for a moment. I mean, it’s not like you’ve been putting on the best first impression, but I really don’t know you. This is the second time I’ve ever talked to you. I was going to apologize for jumping to conclusions already.”
“Nah, jump away, homeslice. You’ve already made the right ones.”
“Well, excuse me for trying to be a good person.”
You blow a raspberry at that. It goes over about as well as you’d expect.
You’re on the way back from your successful trash can quest when Karkat finally says, “Tuesdays and Fridays.”
“Those sure are days,” you agree.
“No, fuckass, I mean that’s when I have shifts. Two to seven on Tuesday, then ten to twelve on Friday.”
“Damn,” you say. “I’m four to seven on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
Karkat makes a face. “Well,” he says, then stops.
“Well?” you prompt.
“I have a class that ends at seven on Thursdays, actually,” he says slowly, as if wondering whether he’s making a mistake. You have to keep yourself from grinning.
It’s even better when he asks, somewhat stiltedly, “We can, um. I mean, it’s not far away from here, and I hate walking back especially considering daylight savings is coming up and that always means the sun sets at four in the fucking afternoon, so—”
“Sure, man, let’s walk back together,” you say.
“Hey, fuck you for interrupting, you don’t know what I was going to say.”
“Oh, my bad, did you not want to walk back together?” you ask. You can’t help the smirk that keeps forming on your face.
“Not anymore,” Karkat snarls. He says it loudly and forcefully enough that his voice cracks dramatically halfway through “anymore”, which is hilarious and leaves him even angrier. You can see a distinctly red tint to his brown skin.
“Aw, I’m hurt,” you say. “Here I was, letting myself be vulnerable and reach out to someone I thought was a fellow homie, a bro in arms, the only man to fill the aching bosom buddy-shaped hole in my heart—”
“Holy fucking shit,” says Karkat.
“—only to be rejected like a guy getting turned down by his high school sweetheart, just holding the ringbox and on his knees, trembling as she tells him that they’re still so young and she just wants to explore her options, because did all those years mean nothing to her, and what about their slow dance at the end of prom when she told him she was going to love him forever to the sweet crooning of—”
Behind you, the lab door crashes open.
You jump a fucking mile into the air. It’s all you can do not to summon your sword.
Damara stands at the threshold, her hands on her hips. “やあ、弱虫、” she says. “遅いです。今来ないなら、容赦を求めて叫ぶほど激しく犯してやる。”
You don’t understand a word of what she says, but there’s something distinctly malicious underlying her tone. Karkat seems to sense it too. He glances at her, then back at you.
“Is this your shift partner?” he asks.
Damara says, “あなたの彼氏も参加できますよ。彼も私に慈悲を乞うだろう。”
“Jesus Christ, okay,” says Karkat. “I’ll see you at seven. Good-fucking-bye.” With that, he punches in the door code to his lab, and enters with a dramatic stomp.
“彼はかわいい、” Damara tells you. “彼との関係が終わったら、彼を私に渡してください。”
“I don’t even need to know what that means to tell you fuck no, lady,” you say. Damara giggles unsettlingly. You barely hold back a flinch as the door closes on the two of you.
The next hour and thirteen minutes are torture. You go back and forth between a painfully dull neuroanatomy reading where every fourth word is an acronym, and your phone. Your phone unfortunately has no new notifications but does luckily contain Candy Crush, which Rose calls “a soulless, Boschian ode to the death of art under capitalism” and which you call “better than listening to Damara snickering as she reads gay hentai on fullscreen”. The moment the last grad student leaves, Damara shoots up and starts chucking her possessions in her tiny canvas backpack.
“このことを誰かに話したら、あなたを殺し、あなたのボーイフレンドと性交します,” she says.
“Understood,” you say. “I’m a master of discretion. They’re not hearing a peep outta me. I keep secrets better than a dead man. Can’t even pry it out of me with a Ouija board and a Catholic priest.”
Damara scoffs. “あなたは話しすぎます、” she says, then leaves with a weirdly threatening flounce. You breathe a sigh of relief. She’s such a tiny girl, and you’re some kind of immortal teenage god-king, but you can’t shake the feeling that she’d win in a one-on-one.
Then, you pound at the wall in front of you.
For a second, you wonder if you’ve miscalculated. Then, something knocks back. Sure, it’s muffled, but it’s very obviously the sound of someone putting knuckle to drywall.
“KARKAT,” you say.
There’s a pause. Through the wall, you hear a quiet, “What do you want?”
“I’M COMING OVER,” you shout.
This time, when he speaks, it’s with the strident tone you’ve grown familiar with. “YOU’RE SO STUPID,” he shouts back.
“DO YOU HAVE A PARTICIPANT?”
“UGHHH,” says Karkat. This is followed by the sound of a door opening down the hall, then loud knocking on the door to your lab. You open it and are rewarded with Karkat’s glorious scowl, big furrowed eyebrows and pouty mouth and all. “Who the fuck tries to talk through a wall?” he says.
“You, apparently,” you say.
Karkat huffs, then makes grabby hands at you. “Give me your fucking phone,” he says.
“Woah,” you say. “Not sure I’m comfortable with that level of intimacy so fast.”
“For Instagram, dumbass,” he says. “I’ll give you my username so you can message me directly instead of screaming like some cortically-lesioned ape at the wall.”
“Oh, my, exchanging handles already,” you say. “My heart is going all doki doki, Karkat-kun.” Your heart actually is fluttering in your chest, an elevated 100 bpm that keeps going up as you fumble for your phone in your pocket, hoping your palms aren’t going to leave sweat on the screen. You unlock it and pass it over to Karkat. The other boy makes a horrified face at the case, which is a masterpiece of yours—three truly shitty jpegs of your phone, two stacked on each other in the top half, both cut off by the gap in the case for your camera, and another stretched monstrously on the bottom half. It’s ugly and pixelated and nonsensical.
Perfect, basically.
“There’s so much wrong with you,” Karkat mumbles, punching in his username with great force. When he passes the phone back to you, you see his profile picture, which is a surprisingly cute drawing of a red crab in a grey beanie. His profile is private so you can’t see his posts, although his bio is disappointingly bland, with only the name of your school and his graduating year attached.
You press follow, and his phone buzzes in his hands. He goes to accept your request, then pauses again once he lands on your account. In that moment, you think back on your posts: your countless ironic selfies, half blurred or lit so badly that you’re little more than a blond smear in aviators, the other half with a thumb or index finger obscuring parts of the photo; the random shots of crumpled homework assignments; the least flattering candids of Rose you could find; the red-eyed pigeons that settle around campus; the random items you like to edit with filters galore until they look more like grainy sleep paralysis demons than plastic bags or Eggo waffles.
You feel your face heating up. Which, shit—abort, abort. The ghoulishly pasty skin passed down to you by your anemic European ancestors hides a blush about as well as a window, which is to say that you turn lobster-red in the drop of a pin when properly motivated.
Which you are not. Because you’re not flustered at all.
Luckily, Karkat only snorts when he sees your profile. “God, I should have expected this inanity,” he says wonderingly, scrolling down to your earlier shots, which just, why.
“Huh,” he says. “Is that your girlfriend?” He shows you a picture of Rose caught mid-blink, a forkful of salad held halfway between her bowl and her open mouth. Thank fuck she's not on Instagram out of some high-minded protest against Meta. She’d kill you if she finds out that you willingly showed this picture to another living being.
“Pfft, no,” you say. “That’s my sister.”
“Hmm,” he says. Then, after another period of scrolling: “Hmmm. You must really like birds.”
“What?”
“Birds, asshole. Small, winged featherbeasts? The things you keep taking pictures of.”
“I don’t,” you say, but then you’re opening your own profile and skimming through your photos. He’s right. Every fourth picture you take is some bird or other, mostly the little brown sparrows that like to settle on the balcony of the apartment you share with Rose, but also pigeons, round songbirds in muted blues and greys, distant birds of prey that are little more than shadows against a blue expanse of sky.
“You’re a really shit photographer,” he says, “except for the birds.”
You shrug. You hadn’t even noticed. Well, not the shit photographer part. Most of the photos on your Instagram are shitty. There’s something you could say about them being ironic, and it being a satire of the typical overcurated Instagram bullshit on every photographer’s account, but really it’s just because you like bad photos. They’re funny.
And you like birds too, apparently.
You remember being six, before the crows hated you, sitting by your open window with a bag of Cheetos, switching between stuffing handfuls into your mouth and setting out neon orange corn puffs on the thin ledge of the windowsill, watching the more daring crows hop forward and back before snatching the snacks like little feathered ninjas. You probably called them that too. You were real stupid back then.
“Hey,” you say. “Wanna hang out? My next participant comes at six. I’ve got nothing to do for an hour.”
“Yeah, fuck it,” says Karkat, pocketing his phone. “I already ran my last participant. I'll look over the transcript later, when I'm bored enough that the only other alternative is gouging my eyes out with Gamzee's bong. Want to watch a movie?”
So the two of you watch La La Land, which is more or less fine but gets Karkat teary at least twice. When the participant arrives, you keep smiling at them as you ask them prodding questions about the quality of their sleep.
Then you’re walking back together, both of you cursing the cold and the dark, bantering effortlessly about Karkat’s hair (a rat’s nest, but a weirdly attractive one), Will Smith (Karkat thinks he’s the hottest man to walk the Earth, which, well, doesn’t spell good things for your chances), Céline Dion (“A national treasure,” Karkat declares, which, like, isn’t she French or something?), and the proper way to prepare tea (Karkat has strong opinions about Starbucks’ “disgusting, white girl excuse for chai”, you think real tea’s gotta be served so sweet it hurts your teeth and so jammed with ice that the the glass rattles every time you pick it up). Then you’re stopping at the intersection where you split ways, and he’s looking at you as if he also wants to find an excuse to keep talking. Part of you wants to say fuck it and ask him to go to a cafe with you or to head to the mall or the nearest park—anywhere at all, as long as he stays with you. Instead, you clear your throat.
“See you on Thursday?” you say.
“Yeah,” he says. “Bye.”
This time, he leaves first. You watch him make his way across the crosswalk like a dog watching its owner leave it at the pound.
When he gets to the other side, he hesitates for a moment, then turns around. You can’t see his eyes from across the street, but you feel your heart swell nonetheless.
You raise your arm at him. He waves back, then turns around, hands stuffed in his pockets, hunched over and staring at the sidewalk.
You spend so long watching him walk away that you miss your chance to cross the road. You're in a good enough mood that you don't even end up jaywalking, either. You just put your hands in your pockets and wait for the pedestrian light to come back on, feeling your heart beat quick and fast in your chest.
*****
Thursday morning sees you tossing half your closet on your bed, baffled at how everything you own is just absolute shit: skinny jeans and stupid graphic tees and sports jackets in flamboyant colours. You’re trying to strike a balance between looking hot but effortlessly so, because there’s nothing less cool than trying too hard. Finally, you grab a pair of slim black jeans, a clean white tee, and an oversized leather biker jacket. You set them aside from the wrinkled heap of clothes on the end of your bed, then fetch a skin-tone binder, the nicer one that you can wear for a full eight hours without getting sore ribs.
You stumble out of your room two hours later, having showered, dried and styled your hair, and equipped yourself in your extremely casual not-a-date-but-didn’t-you-wish-it-was outfit. You’re immediately met by Rose’s unnerving, dead-eyed stare. She’s nursing a cup of black coffee in one of her tiny, delicately painted china cups, but that doesn’t stop her from raising a delicate blond eyebrow at you.
“Who’s the lucky guy or girl?” she asks.
“I’m not talking about this with you,” you decide. “The last thing I need is another round of psychoanalysis with Dr. Lalonde the psychology dropout.”
“Defensive, aren’t we,” your twin muses. She takes a long sip of coffee. It’s 11:27 AM and she’s probably just gotten up. For your part, you’d usually do the same. Rolling out of bed at noon is an every other day kind of deal for you. “I see that you aren’t protesting my assumption.”
“So what,” you grumble.
“Which one is it?” she asks. “You’ll tell me that at least? Surely you trust your dear twin enough for that.”
“You are the last person I’d trust with any personal information,” you say. “News flash, Rose: Freud and Jung were discredited decades ago, and now all they get is two slides each at the start of intro psych where the professor visibly winces every other sentence.”
Rose sniffs. “I wish I could write a case study on you,” she says. “You’re the best proof I’ve ever come across for the validity of Freud’s theories. And don’t think you can distract me. I’ve been lenient all week when you’ve been floating around the apartment whistling and muttering to yourself."
You make a face. "You've been home maybe three times this week, dude."
"Yes, and every time I've seen you, you've been all aflutter in what one might describe in a distinctly smitten fashion. It’s not Damara, is it?”
“Jesus H Christ, Rose, obviously it’s not Damara,” you say.
“But who else do you see on Tuesday evenings?” Rose asks.
“None of your business,” you call, grabbing your bag and making your way to the front door. You hesitate for a moment over your typical cherry red high tops before grabbing a pair of black work boots instead. You’re going to be classy today. Karkat better get his ass in gear; he’s going to be so blown away by your mad wooing skills.
“You should grab a coat,” Rose tells you from the hallway. She’s gotten up and is watching you with a placid expression, still holding her tiny teacup of coffee. How the fuck hasn’t she finished it?
“Nah, I’ll be fine,” you say.
Rose sighs. “Have fun and be safe,” she says. Then, she says, “I’m happy for you, Dave.”
It’s a nice enough statement, but as it is, it’s a reminder too of how strange this whole crush has been for you, of how isolated you’ve been until meeting Karkat. You hold back the instinctive annoyance you feel and smile instead. “Thanks, Rosie Posie.” She huffs as you open the door and make your way out of the apartment.
As always, Rose is right. You really should have worn a coat. You make it to the lab nevertheless, shivering and fumbling your lab’s door code with cold-clumsy fingers. Aradia smiles at you when you enter the RA room, and you grin weakly back, rubbing your palms together in a futile attempt to get some feeling back.
You don't have any participants again, so you hang around the lab playing mobile games and doodling in the margins of your practice memory and learning midterm until 6:27 PM, at which point you force yourself to leave only to end up pacing in circles in the stairwell for twelve minutes. You head to the bathroom afterwards to freshen up. You still have another eleven minutes when you get out, so you lean against the wall by the entrance and chew on gum while idly scrolling through some of the webcomics you follow, pretending not to notice every new person entering the building.
At 6:58 PM, the doors open, and there stands Karkat, hilariously consumed by a massive puffer coat, a grey beanie shoved over his hair. You wave at him and he jumps.
“Fuck,” he says, “I didn’t think you’d be here already.”
“Participant finished early,” you say with a shrug. “Shouldn’t I be saying that to you, man? Didn’t you say your class ended at seven?”
“It ended early,” he says.
“Couldn’t have ended too early,” you say. “How far was your class from here, man? Were you, like, sprinting to get here?”
He does look a little winded, and rosy-cheeked from the cold. He crosses his arms. “Uh, no, fuck you. I was in the building next to this one, obviously, and I walked here at a normal fucking pace because excuse me for being the kind of degenerate who would show up to a social occasion on time.”
“Okay, man,” you say. You get the feeling you’re fucking this up already. “So, no one better to walk you back? No Gamzee the roommate?”
“Fuck no,” he says. “He’s smoking pot from an obnoxious, oversized bong with his brain-damaged stoner bandmates, probably spilling vodka-spiked Faygo all over the floor and the sofa again.”
That sounds like a story, and you make a note to bring it up later. Right now, though, you’re a man on a mission. “So,” you say, “what about the gf?” Then, when he stares at you, you add, “Or the bf, man, I don’t judge.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. You try your best not to panic.
Actually, that’s a lie. You can feel yourself starting to panic. Your palms are sweating in your pockets. Your binder feels crushingly tight and your heart pounds underneath your ribcage.
Finally, he says, “I’m not dating anyone right now. And that’s the most transparently desperate attempt I’ve ever heard to figure out my relationship status.”
“Hey, no, that was a totally innocent question,” you lie. It’s possible this conversation is getting away from you.
“Uh huh,” he says, giving you a look that says I’ve got you figured out. “So, asshat, what about you? Got any, uh, ‘gfs’ or ‘bfs’ lying around?”
“Well, you know me,” you say. “Just tons of chicks of all genders just lying around in wait for me, tripping over themselves to have a shot.”
Karkat scoffs. “Sure,” he says.
“But, uh.” You clear your throat. “Nobody right now.”
That gets you the first smile of the evening from Karkat. “Okay,” he says, like the two of you have arrived at some momentous conclusion. You have no idea what that might be.
Halfway through the walk, you realize that both of you are going slower than usual, trying to draw out the conversation. Karkat’s complaining about Gamzee again, each expletive he unleashes even stranger and better than the last, and you’re nodding along and adding pithy comments which he seems equal parts infuriated and amused by. Then, you’re at the final intersection, watching as the pedestrian light for his crosswalk turns white.
You open your mouth to awkwardly say goodbye, but he beats you to the punch. “Hey,” he says. “Have you had dinner yet?”
You blink. “Uh, no,” you say.
“I haven’t either,” he says nonchalantly. “Do you want to grab something to eat?”
Holy shit. “Fuck yeah,” you say. “McD’s or something?”
He makes a face at you. “No,” he says. “I know somewhere better.”
You follow him across the crosswalk, feeling like you’re stepping into a new world, only instead of being a chessboard fantasy hellhole it’s going to be an hour spent sitting across from Karkat and chewing as obnoxiously as possible while he lavishes effusive praise onto Sandra Bullock.
“You don’t have any dietary restrictions, do you?” he asks.
“Nah,” you say.
“Good,” he says firmly.
“You?” you ask.
“No pork,” he says, which—huh. That’s a religious thing, right? You should probably know this. Usually, when you eat out with Rose and Kanaya, the three of you go to vegetarian places, since Kanaya doesn’t eat meat. You’re not sure if that’s a religious thing—she’s Hindu, you think, but you’re not really sure if she practices. You haven’t exactly been dying to discuss God (gods? you vaguely remember there being more than one in Hinduism) with her. Neither your bro or Rose’s mom ever instilled any fear of God into either of you. The closest thing you have to belief in the divine is your acknowledgement of the powers you and your friends have, and wow, that sounds egotistical as all hell when you think about it like that.
He ends up taking you to a little Japanese place with the best fucking sushi you’ve ever had, not that you’ve had much sushi. You’re Texan, man. You’re more used to the meat you eat spending at least two or three hours in the smoker before it ends up on your plate.
You tell him that, and he nods. “I remember the first time I had sushi,” he muses. “A friend took me to this overpriced conveyer belt sushi place at the mall. I thought she was pranking me when she grabbed this plate of sashimi and told me to eat it.”
“Aw, little Karkles must have lost his shit,” you say.
Karkat scowls. “Uh, why would I? You think I can’t have a restrained reaction to being confused by food?”
“Since when have you been restrained about anything?” you ask.
“Fuck you, I’m amazingly restrained,” says Karkat. “I’m restraining myself from punching you in the face right now.”
“My hero,” you say, pretending to swoon. Then, you swipe a nigiri off his plate. That results in full-on warfare, with the two of you making random grabs at each other’s food, platters of soy sauce, chopsticks, and beverages. Karkat even makes a lunge for your aviators, which you block with perhaps too much force, leaving him hissing between his teeth. You apologize, he tells you to go fuck yourself—situation normal, no need to rewind anything. Look at you go. Accepting the present and past with bombast.
“Why do you even wear them indoors?” he asks.
“Light sensitivity,” you say. “Also, they look cool.”
“They do not,” he grumbles, but doesn’t make any other comments.
You’ve moved from romcoms to favourite books to least favourite books and then back to romcoms, then your respective families (he has a dad and a brother; you only mention your sister and her mom, which he accepts without any questions. Thank fuck for that—you can barely begin to explain Bro to yourself, much less to some boy you’ve known for a week). Somehow, you end up talking about your studies—your supervisor’s work on sleep disorders, his PI's work on couples with different attachment styles and his job keeping count of all the times they touch.
“Why romance? Got a lot of experience there?” you ask. It’s pretty transparent of you, and he blushes in response.
“Well,” he says, then pauses. You’re expecting him to say something derisive, but instead his mouth thins and he sighs.
“Seriously?” you say.
He glares at you. “Oh, spare me the fucking jokes. I’ve heard it a million times already. Yes, I’m studying romantic relationships without ever having been in one myself, as if that’s a fucking requirement in any other field. Does anyone tell you that you aren’t a real sleep researcher because you’re not an insomniac?”
“Okay, firstly,” you say, “you don’t know, I could absolutely be the most insomniac insomniac to ever not sleep. Secondly, that doesn’t change my point, dude. You’re asking these couples all about their lives and counting every time their pinkies so much as brush, but you’re telling me you’ve never gotten all non-platonically snuggled up with another person?”
“Uh, fuck you, what does that have to do with anything?” he says. “Besides, I almost— I mean, I kind of had a thing going in high school, but it just. Um. Didn’t turn out well.” He fixes you with a harsh look. “As if you’ve done much better.”
“Hey, I’ve dated around,” you say, although it’s arguably a generous description of whatever wishy-washy relationship you had with Jade.
Jade. Fuck. It’s been years, hasn’t it? The last time you saw her was when you were sixteen, watching through tear-blurry eyes as she shouted goodbyes to you from the shrinking portal. The portal had turned smaller and smaller until all you'd heard was her voice and John's, overlapping and too distorted to make out the last few words, and your and Rose's answering goodbyes. Then the portal had closed with a muffled hum like television static, separating you forever from your two best friends. You remember turning to Rose and watching her crying too, then reaching out for her, wrapping your arms around your shoulders, and just thinking—
I’ll never see them again.
Karkat raises an eyebrow at your silence. “Didn’t go well?” he asks. There’s a note of sympathy in his voice.
You shrug. “It was a long time ago,” you say. Karkat accepts that with a nod. Fuck, you’ve got to give the guy credit—he’s a lot better at this than you are. This whole conversation’s been a minefield, but, despite all the swearing and angry noises, he hasn’t misstepped even once.
“Nobody since?” Karkat asks.
“Nobody important,” you say, mostly because you don’t want to get into the string of shitty hook-ups that was your freshman year or the year-long dry spell afterward.
Karkat hums. “I guess I was always scared,” he finally says. “The first thing—it, uh. It was with my best friend at the time. The one who took me out for sushi? She was, uh, really weird, actually. But I was the angry Indian kid who kept screaming at the teachers, so it’s not like I had much going for me either.” You watch his long fingers fiddle with his chopsticks. He says, “She was probably the person who knew me best for eight years. I— Fuck. This is kind of embarassing, but I followed her here after high school?"
"Nah, man, I get that," you say. "Full disclosure: I followed my sister to this school. I probably wouldn't have bothered applying to college if she hadn't pushed me to. Actually, I took things a step further."
"You mean your major?" Karkat says.
You nod. "It sounds stupid as fuck, but I figured, like, whatever, I'm in school and there's nothing I'm interested in except, like, music and art, and it's not like I'm good enough to actually do those things full-time, so why not just follow Rose and figure shit out later? I thought I'd probably just switch to something else the next year."
"Except you didn't."
"Nope. And it was Rose who fled to English lit like a little bitch because apparently it was news to her that psychology is a science."
Karkat huffs. "No, that pissed me off too when I was a first-year," he says. "I didn't think it'd be like this."
"Playing touch-voyeur to a bunch of undergrad couples?"
Karkat smiles ruefully. "Sure," he says. "But who the fuck cares. I'll be out of this school in two years, and then I'll be able to focus on counselling psych and helping actual people."
"Lucky you."
"You're planning on staying in research?" he asks.
You shrug. Play it cool. "Who knows, man. I've still got some time to think about it."
"Right. We're still in third year, so. Yeah. That makes sense." Karkat sighs. "Anyway, I was just saying that Terezi picked this college for the pre-law program, and I figured I’d need to come with her if I wanted her to stay interested, not that that lasted beyond the first month of first year.”
“Shit, man. That’s rough.”
“Life is rough.”
“My ex-girlfriend, uh. She was one of my best friends too.”
Karkat looks up at you. His eyes are this rich, dark shade of brown. You’re glad you get to hide behind your shades—you don’t think you’d be able to handle it otherwise.
“Yeah, she, uh.” You look at the tabletop, then back at Karkat. “She was pretty much perfect. I fucked things up, though.”
“Did you hatefuck her roommate?” he asks.
That throws you for a loop. “What?”
“That’s what Terezi did two weeks after telling me it wasn’t going anywhere,” he says.
“Jesus Christ,” you say. “Wait. Are you talking about Gamzee the juggalo?”
“Who the fuck else.”
“I can’t believe you still live with that guy.”
Karkat sighs. “It’s complicated,” he says. “He’s not— He’s not bad, he’s just— Also, he’s fucking rich, so there. I live rent free. His family pays for everything. I’m just the live-in housemaid.”
“Christ,” you say. “Nah, I’d take living with my sister over that.”
“What’s so bad about living with your sister?”
“Walking in on her and her girlfriend going at it in the kitchen,” you say.
Karkat makes a horrified face. “No.”
“Yes,” you say.
He laughs. Fucking score. Mining your trauma to make this boy like you—look at you go.
“If I witnessed Kankri having sex, I would shoot myself,” says Karkat. “My life would be over then and there.” That gets a snort from you.
“Either way,” he finally says. “I fucked up my relationship too. It happens. Terezi still comes by sometimes, you know. We’re friends.”
“I’m really questioning her taste,” you say. “She nopes out on you, but she’s down with the clown?”
“God, she had her reasons,” says Karkat. “I’m not exactly an ideal boyfriend.”
“You can’t be too bad,” you say.
“I’m loud,” says Karkat. “Clingy. And, uh. I’m not exactly the most experienced.”
“Fuck that,” you say. “You’re fun as hell, man. I bet you can swoop up any girl or guy around. Have them emptying their pockets to have a chance to take the Karkat Express to Romance Town. Premium sushi and good conversation. Conducts thorough lit reviews of empirical romance research. Sounds like a catch to me.”
Karkat shakes his head. “No, it’s— It’s hard to get to know me,” he finally says. “I don’t usually let people get close to me. And I’m usually too scared to ask them out even if I think they might like me back.”
“Usually?” you ask. Your voice comes out shakier than you intended. There’s something tense and shivery between the two of you. You might be imagining it, but you think…
“I, uh.” He breaks eye contact with you.
You’re still trying to muster up the courage and just say, like, Hey man, you’re cute, let’s go out, but better, smarter, more romantic—because fuck, Karkat likes romance, that’s been obvious since the first moment you’ve met him, and you can’t just ask him out like some asshole teenage boy trying to get the most convenient girl around to go to prom with him. Besides, the moment is slipping away from you. Karkat is leaning back, clearing his throat.
“Anyway, I’m not exactly the kind of person who attracts a lot of suitors,” he says with a shrug. Lies. These are vicious lies.
You’re adorable, you want to say, but feel the words freeze up in your useless throat.
“The height, and, like, this body in general,” he says, gesturing dismissively at himself.
“Hey, no, that’s not true,” you say. “Short guys are great.”
“Of course you’d think that,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“Woah, bro,” you say, “you callin’ me short?”
“What, you think you aren’t?”
“Let me repeat myself: You are calling me short?”
“And let me repeat myself,” says Karkat, smirking now. “Yes.”
“Wow,” you say. “Here I was, thinking I’d get some solidarity from a fellow trans guy, only to be fucking stabbed in the gut. For shame, man.”
“Wait,” he says. “Hold on. You’re trans?”
“Yep.”
He stares at you for a moment. You find yourself going from cheerful to nervous in a heartbeat. “Wait,” you say. “I might have assumed… if you’re not trans, I’m going to feel stupid as hell.”
“No, obviously I’m trans, asshole. The height and the voice are fucking giveaways. Half the conversations I have usually start with people awkwardly asking for my pronouns.”
That comment surprises you. “Oh, shit, I never asked, did I?” you say. Because you’d assumed he was a guy with a full, reckless confidence that was probably more self-projection than insight (yes, Rose, you can do the psychobabble too, now, not that it ever fucking helps you in the moment). “Did I, um, get it wrong? Not that that would matter, or— It would matter, but that’s on me, dude, not on you. Fuck, I can call you dude, right? I’m not misgendering you or something?”
“Yeah, obviously, I haven’t corrected you, have I?” he says, like it’s ever that simple. Or maybe it is to him. He seems like he’d have the bravery to be able to correct people on the little things—the automatic ways people reach for miss and ma’am, the pronoun slips that you could never bring yourself to point out. The few times you’d been clocked by assholes who took pride in embarrassing you, mostly in your first year of taking T; the deliberate way they would lean on those words: Can I help you, Miss?
“So you are a dude, right?” you check.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Nice,” you say appreciatively. He rolls his eyes at you but seems pleased.
The rest of dinner goes smoothly. You end up paying his bill when he goes to the bathroom, and his ensuing fury is hilarious and also a little concerning. You end up having to apologize to him as he demands your email address so that he can e-transfer the money back.
"You could always get the next meal," you say. It's only when he tenses up that you realize you're assuming there will be a next meal. You want to take it back, but the expression on Karkat's face is... not unpleasant, at least.
"Okay," he says, and puts his phone back in his pocket. Your heart skips a beat.
You stuff your hands in your pockets on the way out. It’s gotten a lot colder since you entered the restaurant. Your breath puffs out in front of you in little white clouds. It’s got to be below freezing, fuck.
“Hey, which direction are you?” Karkat asks.
You point in the rough direction of your place. “Maybe a few blocks down from here,” you say.
“I’ll walk you back,” announces Karkat.
It’s charming in an awkward way. “Aw, swoon,” you say. “What a gentleman.”
“I absolutely fucking am,” says Karkat, which you don’t dispute because, honestly, he’s kind of right. You wonder if you should reach out to take his hand in yours, but end up changing your mind the moment you start to move your left hand from the meagre warmth of your pocket. It’s fucking cold out, man.
You clench your jaw to keep your teeth from chattering. Fuck, this was stupid of you. You shouldn’t have ignored Rose. Rose is always right, that’s literally her thing. Her power. The power of always being obnoxiously, pedantically right.
They’re premonitions, not prophecies, David, Rose would probably say. Whatever. Your name isn’t even David—what the fuck does she know? (Everything, that’s what. Or at least everything important and/or embarrassing about you.)
You think you’re hiding it pretty well until Karkat interrupts you mid-ramble about Rose’s wizard obsession (you’re throwing her under the bus because it turns out you value impressing boys more than safeguarding your twin’s dignity) to say, “Holy shit, I can’t watch this anymore.” To your horror, he starts unzipping his puffer.
“Woah, hey,” you say. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you my jacket, obviously,” he says. He yanks his arms out of the sleeves and then thrusts it at you brusquely.
“Dude, it’s fine,” you say, trying to push the jacket back. You’ve stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.
“It’s obviously not fine, ‘dude’,” says Karkat. What a dork. “Your lips are turning blue!”
Are they? That’s a new one, although it does explain why your face feels so numb. “New fashion statement I’m trying out,” you say.
“Oh my god, asshole, just put the coat on already,” says Karkat.
“You put your own coat back on.”
Karkat lets out a pretty impressive growl (it’s all throaty and shit, like actually 10/10 werewolf impression, would make tween Wattpad readers across the nation swoon), then throws the jacket at your face. You catch it in time, of course, but mostly just hold it like an idiot as he says, “Just do what I say and stop freezing your ass off, shit-for-brains.”
You think about saying no, then decide that two can play this gayer-by-the-second game. You shrug off your leather jacket as gracefully as you can considering you’ve lost sensation in your extremities, then pass it to him. “Guess I won’t be needing this, then.”
He gapes at you, then, to your surprise, meekly takes the biker jacket and pulls it over his black turtleneck. The jacket is meant to be oversized on you. Karkat, despite having a similar enough shoulder span to you (you’re slender for your height, and Karkat’s on the stouter side for his), is at least four inches shorter than you. The result is that the leather jacket ends at mid-thigh for him, and the sleeves cover his hands. It’s really, really cute. Fuck. He looks so good in your clothes.
“Your turn,” he says, and right, you were supposed to put on his jacket. You zip it up and put your hands in its dry, toasty pockets, encountering a ring of keys, a few coins, and a couple of crumpled receipts. It’s oddly intimate to touch items that are still warm from Karkat’s hands.
Karkat stares at you for a moment. You duck-lip dramatically at him. “Am I pretty?” you ask.
“Uh,” he says. When you laugh, he says, “Fuck you,” which notably is not a “no”.
Your walk back is much warmer. When you finally arrive at your high rise, you feel a stab of disappointment.
“So,” you say. “This is me.”
“So it is,” says Karkat, surveying the sleek steel and glass monstrosity of an apartment complex.
You free yourself from Karkat’s jacket, refusing to acknowledge any traitorous feelings about it. Karkat takes it almost absent-mindedly, then hands back your own biker jacket, which is even more devastating. You wish you’d taken a photo. Fuuuuck. That was a potentially once in a lifetime opportunity right there.
“I’ll see you next week?” you say.
“Yeah,” says Karkat. He seems distracted. You figure you’ve outworn your welcome, and that he’s probably eager to head back and warm up.
“Well, bye,” you say. You start to turn when Karkat says, “Wait.”
“Huh?” you say, or try to, because Karkat is standing on his tiptoes and reaching for your shoulders, and the question gets trapped in your throat when Karkat says, “Can I kiss you?”
“Fuck yeah,” you say.
He reaches slowly for your sunglasses and, trying to keep your breathing steady, you let him take them off your face. You blink at the glare of the streetlight nearby, letting yourself adjust.
“Huh,” says Karkat. You meet his gaze. His eyes are warm amber in the orange lamplight.
“Your eyes are red,” he says softly. There’s a hushed, wondering quality of his voice that makes you feel a little shy.
“Now you know,” you say. “The deep, dark, secret third reason I wear shades.”
You’re joking, but Karkat takes it seriously. “You can trust me,” he says. “I won’t tell anyone.”
You raise a hand to his cheek, and kiss him.
It’s been a long time since you’ve done this. It’s even better than you remember. His lips are soft and warm against yours, more than a little clumsy. Right. He’s only done this once, in high school.
You take control of the kiss, let your hands wander to his jaw, the back of his head, and pull him closer as you part your lips a little. He sighs against you like a heroine in a romance novel. It's so fucking cute. Everything about this boy makes you want to scream in the best fucking way.
When the two of you finally separate, you’re shivering from a confusing mixture of cold and desire.
“Hey,” you say.
“Hey,” he says. He’s blushing.
“Oh, damn,” you say. “Wait. This was a date?”
He looks at you with a flat expression. “Yes?”
“Ignore me,” you says. “I’m stupid. Oh my god, I thought I was the one doing the wooing, but you were wooing me this entire time.”
“What are you talking about,” he says.
“Don’t listen to me,” you say. Why the fuck do you run your stupid mouth, Strider. “I enjoyed that. Please tell me I haven’t just blown my chance at getting another date in the past minute.”
“No, if incoherent mumbling was a deal breaker, I would have dropped you within our first conversation,” says Karkat. “I, uh. I enjoyed it too.”
“Good,” you say, and, giddy, lean down to kiss him again. You spend a full minute like that, pressed against the slippery material of his coat, his lips and tongue and mouth the only warmth left in the world. Then, you make the mistake of trying to put your hand back on his face, which makes him flinch and pull back.
“Fuck, your hands are freezing!” he says. You try to apologize, but he shakes his head. “You should go back in. God, I’m so stupid for keeping you here.”
“No,” you say, “that was fucking great. I’m so glad you kept me here.”
He smiles. “I’ll text you,” he says.
“Not if I text you first,” you say, and he flips you off. You’re still snickering to yourself when you fumble your door lock for a full minute before Rose finally takes pity on you and opens it.
The first thing she says to you is, “You’ll have to introduce me to him.”
“Why the fuck do you know that,” you say.
She winks at you. It’s so fucking cheesy. “I had a feeling,” she says. “I’m glad it went through.”
For a moment, you want to curl up on the couch with her and just, like, fuckin' gush about this guy and your stupid little date and your stupid little feelings. Then, the moment's over and Rose is walking back to her room, leaving you standing alone in the entryway with your boots still on. It's whatever. She'd probably make fun of you if you gave her the full rundown, anyway. Better not to give her any more ammunition.
You float back to your room and settle on your bed, idly imagining what Karkat might think of your room, how he might look with his dark hair against your pillowcase. You pull out your phone, contemplating whether you should wait an hour or two for the sake of not seeming desperate, then decide fuck that, seriously—you are desperate, and maybe you’re okay with Karkat knowing as long as he feels the same.
He doesn’t reply to you right away, but you figure he’s probably still walking back home. For lack of anything better to do, you spend a few aimless minutes reading a new chapter in a webcomic, then lie down to stare at the ceiling. You can hear Rose’s voice faintly on the other side of the apartment—she must be calling Kanaya, or maybe chatting with one of her knitting club or fandom friends. You check your phone again. Still no response, but that makes sense. It’s only been five minutes, man.
When you turn to plug your phone in, your gaze snags on the sketches taped on the wall beside your bed. There are three of them stacked at eye-level way above the wall outlet. You remember spending sleepless nights and mornings staring at them, examining the shaky lines of their faces. There hadn’t been any cameras on Skaia, and by then your phones had been three years dead.
You and Jade had been broken up for half a year by then. She’d taken you to lunch and asked, with an admirable bluntness, if you were planning to leave.
“I can’t go back,” she had said, and of course you’d known that. She'd gestured at her weirdly cute dog ears, the ones she’d gained during her whole immortalization process that meant going back home was out of the question for her. She’d liked Skaia too—all three of them had loved it, working together to be the new kings and queens of this fantastical world. You were the only one who couldn’t cope.
“You’ll tell me if you go, right?” she’d said. You hadn’t wanted to look at her, had let your eyes settle somewhere next to her chin.
"There's no way back," you'd said.
"I know Rose has been talking to you about it," she said matter-of-factly. "She's been talking to John and me too. You know what happens when Rose puts her mind to something—it's only a matter of time before it happens." She pushed her glasses up her nose bridge, giving you a piercing look all the while. "I won't be mad, Dave. None of us would be mad. I just want you to tell me."
Then, finally, exhausted by your silence, she’d asked if you could at least draw her a portrait of you. “Rose too,” she’d added. “And draw one of me and John as well! That way we’ll always remember each other no matter what happens.”
You remember that last month before you left, hiding away in small, dark corners of the palace you shared with the three of them, trying your best to outline the shape of her body, her face, the curve of her jaw, her pointed chin, and all the features of her face: her green eyes, the way they crinkled when she smiled, the shape of her lips and the little gap between her front teeth, her loose hair, the thick, tangled, black strands that she was always pushing out of her eyes.
You’ve got one picture of the four of you, the largest and most skillful of the three, which was sketched and inked by a carapacian painter. Another of just John and Jade, the cousins grinning ear to ear as they lean against each other, their heights nearly equal.
The last one is just Jade. She looks out at you from behind the shiny tape you used to laminate the sketch to prevent the graphite from smearing under your touch. She’s not smiling.
Your phone buzzes. You look down.
It’s Karkat.
[turntexx_godhed] CARCINOGENETICIST
YES OF COURSE YOU IDIOT
Jesus Christ. He even shouts when he texts.
[turntexx_godhed] CARCINOGENETICIST
I ALSO HAD A GOOD TIME
EVEN IF YOU WERE TOO FUCKING STUPID TO REALIZE IT WAS OBVIOUSLY A DATE
You roll away from the sketches, thumbs already tapping out a reply.