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==> Be Dave.
Your name is Dave Strider, and currently, your shirtless boyfriend is leaning halfway out of his alien sleeping pod, trying to reach up to kiss you. Everything about the motions feels desperate— the way his hands cup your face, fingers splayed across your cheeks, like you're his lifeline.
(To be honest, this would actually be pretty great if you weren’t so worried about him.)
Karkat seemed like he was fine this morning. He really did. And mostly, he's almost seemed fine since then, except...
He kept spacing out. Eyes unfocusing, little spells that lasted anywhere from a couple of seconds to minutes at a time, just fucking going away and not responding to you at all until he managed to shake it off and come back to you. Every time he just shrugged off your queries about what the fuck was up with him—and you let him; fuck knows you've given him enough weird neurological shit to handle over the years—but.
But the pauses got longer. More frequent. Even when he was fully present, mentally there, he seemed out of it. Not like he was tired, more like he's sick, delirious, feverish beyond the way he's naturally warmer than you are.
Except right now, he's not warmer.
He all but collapsed against you on the couch half an hour ago, and that was when you really started panicking. He wasn't just cool but cold, like he'd—
No. Your mind stutters and almost tips you out of reality for a bit, but Karkat's bone-cold hands are still on your face, his lips against yours. He's too slow, logy and vaguely desperate and not at all in synch with the tick-tock clock in your head, but as long as he's here you can stay sane, scared as you are.
Now, he pulls back from the kiss and sinks into the green slime, up to the bottom of his shoulders, and you instinctively hold onto him even as his weight pulls your arms under into the thick goop.
Fuck. Fuck. He's colder than the sopor.
"I was...s'posed to tell you something," he murmurs, head tilting back. His voice is so, so weak, so tired, like he's—
No.
The panic pulses sharper in your stomach, an almost physical pain. You put your arms around him, tug him a little further out of the slime so you can hold him close against your chest; the shit soaking your shirt will ruin it, stain the white cotton green for good, but who gives a fuck? Who gives a fuck about anything, when you're holding the love of your fucking life in your arms and he is so cold. His breath against your skin, fractionally warmer than the ice of his skin but still too cold, like whatever's taking him away hasn't quite hit his lungs yet.
"I don'—Dave, I can't remember...'m sorry." He takes a slow breath, leans his head against you more. "I can't—it was 'mport'n, Dave—"
His words slur and break up like he's already halfway gone.
"It's okay, babe, it's okay," you say to him. "You can tell me later," you say to him, and kiss the top of his head as he whines oh-so-quietly against your chest. "I won't go anywhere," you say to him.
No response. Nothing.
"Babe?" It's supposed to be a calm fucking query, but fear spikes up your throat and strangles your voice as you let him go. As he slumps against the back of his recupracoon, eyes locking on yours for just a moment before they flicker shut with a sigh.
"Kat." You brush his hair back from his eyes with shaking fingers. There's pressure behind your eyes, hot and wet and full of the knowledge that you're trying to deny, but you can't pay attention to it; this is too important, this is— "Karkat!"
So much fear in your voice that even you can hear it, emotion so strong it's a color, blood red and raw. If he could hear you at all he'd be awake, soothing the terror out of your veins.
He can't hear you.
There's a conclusion to be drawn from this, you know. You played the game, you've seen people slip out of a thousand fucking universes, and right now your mind is replaying all of those fucking deaths, trying to force you into realization if not acceptance.
"Karkat, please—" Your heart's in overdrive mode, beating so fast and hard that you're dizzy, and you reach for Karkat and feel your hand almost freeze on his bare chest, and as he settles deeper into the green slime your chest starts hitching with the first sobs. "Kat, Karkat, please, I—I can't, please, don't—don't fucking leave me, don't leave me here, I c-can't—"
Even as you beg for an answer, you know it's too late to ask him not to go.
After some eternal stretch of time (thirty-eight minutes, fifty-three seconds, all of it spent half-curled against yourself, leaning against the 'coon, one hand stretched out in the slime, reaching for him and unable or afraid to close the distance) you finally pull yourself together, at least enough to get out your phone. Sobs still break harsh from your throat, dimly painful even past the ache in your chest, and all your contacts blur into one bright messy impressionist painting from the goddamn tears in your eyes.
Even half-blinded like this, you can find what you want on autopilot. You aim for the little green mark, but your shaking fingers hit the orange smudge instead, and you can't force yourself to react as it rings.
Once.
Twice.
"Hello, Dave?" Rose's voice rings out from the speakers, calm and mildly curious.
Calm. You don't understand. You don't understand how she can be calm, when the world just snapped in half. When it's in two pieces, before and after, with-him and without-him. You don't know how she's so calm when Karkat's slipped chin-deep into the sopor, when he's still and motionless.
You can't stop looking at him.
"Dave? Are you still there?"
You try to answer, you really do, but all that comes out is a weak, pained cry. Like someone stabbed you in the gut. Stabbed you in the heart, is more like it, only you're still breathing.
"Dave, I need you to talk to me."
There's something other than calm and curiosity in her voice now. You can't remember how to categorize the emotions of others, but the change is what makes you force yourself to speak.
"It's Kat." You make your voice stay almost-steady, as close as you can manage. "He won't wake up—Rose, he's so cold, I—"
You break off, swallow the words down, unthinkingly raise one hand to your mouth and bite down on the side of your palm, stifling any noise you want to make. Anything to stop the cracks trying to race outward from your heart, break you into a thousand thousand pieces. You have to hold yourself together. You have to.
On the other end of the line, Rose is silent for a minute. Maybe less than a minute. Maybe more. You can't focus on time. There's rustling, someone saying something too quietly for Rose's phone to really pick up what it is.
"Dave?" A new voice. " Dave, it's Kanaya. I need you to listen to me and answer just a few questions, all right?"
You nod—stupid, she can't see you, but you can't unclench your teeth long enough to answer.
Thankfully, Kanaya waits a beat, accepts that you're not talking, and continues. "Has he been acting oddly today? Um, spacing out, like he's falling asleep with his eyes open—"
"Yeah. He—he has, yeah."
She says something you can't hear, directed at Rose, then comes back to you. "He's not moving, you said—did you realize he was cold before that happened, or after?"
"...before."
"All right. Rose and I are getting ready to come over. Did you check his pulse?"
No. No you did not, because anyone lying that still won't have a pulse...but because she asked the question, you lean further in and press two fingers gently against the soft spot of his throat, just below the curve of his ear.
Your eyes fill up when you feel something there.
Okay. Okay. Swallow the tears, tell Kanaya.
"Seventeen BPM," you tell her, and you know that's way to slow to be safe for his bloodcaste but there's a beat and you can hold onto that, there's hope and so you can breathe again.
"Wonderful," she says.
"...what?"
"Dave, it's going to be okay."
"But he—"
"I can tell you with a fair level of confidence that Karkat is just going through his adult molt. He'll be unconscious for a few days, but he's safe. He's going to be perfectly okay, I promise you."
You take a deep, shuddery breath. "A molt."
"Troll, um, puberty. It's why he's been so much shorter than you for a while, why he got chubbier the last few perigees. He'll come out looking closer to your age, but several of his systems have to rapidly change in order to accommodate this. Forming the cocoon is the longest part; after that happens he'll be awake within a day."
You focus on Karkat's face, on your fingers still pressed up against his pulse point. "He's. Going to make a cocoon?"
"Yes, Dave. Now, I know he doesn't usually use it, but he needs to be in his recupracoon—"
" Yeah. He is."
"Wonderful. I'll explain fully when Rose and I get there, but there's no cause for alarm. I know he must have given you quite a shock, but this happens to all of us; he'll be fine."
You're still reeling from aforementioned shock, but you have the very clear thought that your sister's girlfriend is going to give you the puberty talk. This is going to be the most godawful awkward thing you've had happen in maybe forever, and you fucking welcome the idea. Preferable to whatever else you were thinking.
"Okay."
"Would you like me to stay on the phone?" Kanaya asks you gently. You look down at Karkat, think about how hard you'd have to listen for the sound of his breathing in the silent room, and answer without even thinking about it.
"Please."
==> Be Karkat.
You feel your mind sinking into a haze, everything shutting down. Thoughts, feelings, senses, organs, one After another. Hearing goes last, and you hear Dave sobbing in panic and anguish, but as much as you want to comfort him you can't pull out of the dim reddish darkness. Waking up is not an option; the quiet dark drags you down until emotion is a vague dream and memory dissolves into dust.
Even as you feel yourself fading, you're not afraid. This slow fall is as natural as breathing; the way you can feel yourself dissolving inside the hard membrane your body's formed is strange but not painful, it's what's meant to happen. It's right.
Your consciousness pulls away from your changing body, you sink further into whatever this red twilight is, and for some unknowable period of time, whatever is left of Karkat Vantas rests.
And then you open your eyes.
It's a fucking mistake. There's immediately too much to process, sensations piling up where there was absolutely nothing before, drawing a panicked whining noise out of you. You hear someone startle—no, not someone, you know who's with you—and the lights click off.
You breathe a sigh of relief, and for a second you get lost in the motion of your rising chest, the sensation of air in your lungs. Then you take another breath, and use it to oh-so-carefully whisper his name.
"Dave?"
Immediately, he's there, a black silhouette against the faint light from the window, familiar and soothing even though you can't see his face in the dark. "Hey, babe," he whispers. Thank gog he does whisper; even that's pushing the limits of what you can handle right now.
You see him move to the chair next to your recupracoon, leaning in to keep looking at you, and the faint memory of him begging you not to leave flickers through your pan.
Oh, fuck.
"I didn't tell you," you whisper, guilt welling up in your chest like bile.
"Kat, babe, it's okay, you were so fuckin' out of it—"
"I fucking heard you, Dave. Don't tell me it's okay, I—I scared you, you thought I was gone because I didn't fucking tell y—"
Your own words fall away in a soft, incoherent noise, ears ringing from the sound of your own voice. The schoolfeeds about this shit didn't warn about how the sensory deprivation of the cocoon sensitizes you to every little stimulus, how raising your voice makes you feel like you're going to shatter into a couple million little pieces.
"You heard me?" Dave asks, gentle and (you think) a little bit afraid.
"Yeah." Careful. Stay quiet. "I couldn't do anything. I couldn't wake up, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." You want to keep saying it, because the days between then and now are too long to let him wait for an apology, but talking too much hurts a little bit and you need to save your words.
It takes him several moments to respond, and when he does it's just, "You shouldn't'a had to hear that, and you almost screech.
"You shouldn't have had to feel it! I fucking knew that was going to happen, I could have given you a fucking head's-up or—or warned you, and I—" Your throat closes up. You're not sure if it's because you're too loud or because of the fucking guilt. Either way, you have to swallow hard a few times, and your last two words come out much quieter. "I didn't."
Dave shifts in his chair; you hear him move even though you've let your eyes close again. "...can I touch you? Is it okay if I touch you?"
You actually have to think about that, assess all the sensations you're still being assaulted with. And— "I...I think so."
His lips brush against your forehead, a cautiously light touch that's still on the very edge of overstimulation. You shudder, rather than pull away.
"Troll puberty ain't your fault, babe," Dave whispers solemnly, and you laugh even though that hurts a bit.
"Oh, gog—who the fuck have you the talk?"
"Kanaya did. She had diagrams, Kat. Saved on her phone. Files. On her phone. It sucked."
He's trying to get you distracted from your guilt, and you love him even more for that. "Diagrams of what?"
"Crysalises. So many chrysalises. Wait, is that it? Chrysa—crysali? What the hell is the plural of crysalis? Fuck it, she had pics and diagrams of cocoons."
You snort. Your neck is beginning to register as sore. “I’ll look it up.”
"Nope. You just went through puberty in four days; she said you needed to sleep in the 'coon for maybe another full day. Then you can come back in the bed with me."
"I want to be with you now," you whine at him, and he laughs and cards his fingers through your sopor-slick hair, slow and gentle enough for the contact to feel nice, to feel amazing.
"You are with me," Dave tells you. "I'm not going anywhere."
You believe him. That's what lets you relax, slip halfway under the slime again, close your eyes and fall back asleep with the knowledge that he's here. That as long as he's with you, you're safe.