Chapter Text
-- tabernacularCachinnations [TC] started trolling conquestGenesis [CG]. --
TC:
TC:
TC:
CG: GAMZEE.
CG: IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY.
CG: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING SENDING ME BLANK MESSAGES, IS THIS SOME SORT OF RETARD JOKE?
TC:
CG: I’M SERIOUS I’M THIS CLOSE TO BUSTING A FUCKING RAGE ANEURISM ON YOUR ASS HERE.
TC: karkat
TC:
TC: brother
TC: i need you
You pushed your husktop away from you with tingling hands. You’d been going after Gamzee to get his act together for the last three sweeps, but it was no different from the way you told Sollux when he was being stupid and needed to get off the computer to get some sleep, or told Kanaya to fucking give up on Vriska already.
Okay, so you’d had pale crushes on all of them, but with Ascension looming over your head, there was no way you were about to start a relationship with anyone. Sollux hooked up with Aradia, Kanaya came to her senses and quietly broke it off with spiderbitch, and Gamzee…
Gamzee continued to be a complete disaster that you occasionally yelled at over trollian and lately you thought you’d noticed it working. Alone in your block in the quiet heat of day, you sometimes liked to… liked to think he…
You brought one hand to your face, covering your mouth with your palm and breathing through your nose. You were tempted to bite yourself, just to make sure you were awake. Not that you ever got much sleep. Your sopor has always been too thin to keep the dayterrors away.
He just said he needed you.
Ascension could come any time now.
CG: WHAT’S WRONG?
CG: HEY, KEEP IT TOGETHER AND TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!
CG: WAS IT YOUR SCREENING?
CG: DID THEY DO SOME WEIRD SHIT TO YOU, LIKE CARVE YOU UP WITH HOLY KNIVES OR WHATEVER YOUR CRAZY CLOWN CULTISTS DO FOR SCREENING?
CG: ANSWER ME, FUCKASS!
TC:
TC: could a motherfucker get his request on
TC: for a brother to come and all help out
TC: because i don’t know what is
TC:
TC:
TC: or motherfucking isn’t
TC: any fucking more
What?
What was going on?
Also… did he just invite you to his hive?
You knew where it was, seeing as that idiot knew fuckall about privacy settings until you did a step-by-step ‘how to turn off the location coordinate feature on trollian’, interspaced with as much frustrated swearing you could insert.
You were worried about him. You pitied him. You were sure of that much.
The question was: how much did you pity him?
Between your imminent death via imperially-sanctioned culling, your vivid imagination of his diamondbroken face and your own very sensible fear saying he would kill you himself if he found out about your blood, you had a lot of reasons to stay the fuck away.
What if he was dying, alone and scared in his hive, and that message was the last Alternia would ever see of Gamzee clowntard Makara?
He messaged you for help.
“Shit. Shit fuckinghell shit,” you hissed as you tossed your husktop to your pile and pulled yourself out of your ‘coon. “Karkat Vantas, you are a steaming fresh lusus dung heap of romantic trash. You are a hopeless puddle of combusted diamond that you are also drowning in, that’s how far gone you are. Why don’t you just walk your cullbait ass through the Battleship Condescension too, offering a free pap to anyone you come across while you’re at it?”
You went through your ablutions at a speed that would put an Imperial starship to shame, and stuffed your sylladex with everything you could think of. When you ran out of space, you chucked the rest into a woven fibrous carrying device.
You dug your heaviest sunclothes from your pile and were practically out the door when Crabdad woke up and started screeching an unholy row.
“Dad, I’ll be fine,” you yelled. “I don’t have time to strife you! Get your own fucking roe cubes, they’re only in the goddamned thermal hull!”
You absconded into the sweltering heat before he could initiate strife with you anyway. With goggles firmly set, you fell into a brisk jog along the communal paths between lawnrings. You aimed to be long gone before any of the neighbours woke up and decided they’d like to try out their strifekind on the lone panrotten moron who was right on the edge of their territory.
===/\===
The pink moon had risen and fallen by the time you were anywhere remotely close to the coordinates of Gamzee’s hive. The green moon, a distant, tiny crescent, was already more than half-way through its descent.
“Where the fuck is it?” you growled to yourself. You’d slashed through a forest in a relatively straight line between you and the little purple flag on your husktop, but now your second sickle was starting to lose its edge and your arms felt almost useless. If you ever saw another tree, or bush, or other form of obstructing plant matter, you were going to scream.
Fortunately, there was nothing of that sort where you were looking.
Unfortunately, all you saw between you and where the purpleblood hive should be was grassy, upward sloping ground and a setting green moon in a lightening sky.
“What the hell,” you muttered, trekking your way up. A sharp, unfamiliar scent permeated the air, and a rhythmic, soft crash.
That was your only warning before you saw the ocean.
Vast and dark and more water than you ever wanted to know even existed. Every instinct told you to run away, run inland, away from the ones built stronger faster better than you. This was highblood territory, seadweller turf, the dominion of those who had dominion over you. Get away get away.
You stumbled back from the steep drop, from the foaming water at its base.
You were tiny.
You didn’t belong near this much water, you belonged in grassy places, with shitty lawnrings you only watered so you didn’t look incompetent. Stupid little greenblood to go frolicking in the sun to the fucking ocean. No one would miss you, except maybe Crabdad, but he would go back to the brooding caverns after a few perigees and pick another wriggler.
Along the beach you could see a lopsided hive, whimsical and accented with purple.
It was dangerous, he was a highblood, it would be day soon. There were a million excuses to turn back now. What if he found out that you can pass for olive by the binding light of day but not at night when there are only two of you?
The sun was coming up. You were pretty sure that he pitied you at least a bit, in some bizarre way in his clown head.
The cliff matched the coordinates.
You made your excuses and started climbing down.
===/\===
The hive was unlocked and you decided to be insanely fucking brave and enter without invitation. It smelled musty and stale and unfamiliar. The floor was… cleaner and less cluttered than you would have imagined. In fact, it was too empty, like no one lived here at all.
“Gamzee?” you called as you walked through the hive cautiously. “Gamzee… oh god, don’t be dead. Gamzee?”
You had to scale three floors in the disgustingly large hive before you found anyone. The light of a husktop lit a painted face. On an unfamiliar pile, a troll with elegant, curving horns was stretched long and limp. Any sort of musculature seemed to exist as a sort of afterthought to hold his bones together beneath his skin.
“Gamzee?” you asked.
The troll on the pile shifted, turning his face up. The lines of his throat were so vulnerable you completely forgot what you wanted to say next.
"You motherfucking came for me, brother," he sighed, exhausted and overly grateful. His voice was low, and had this plaintive see-saw to it. You swallowed. "I knew you would."
"Of course I would," you said gruffly, dropping your carrying device and sitting on the floor, an arm’s length away. You lifted a hand, lowered it short of his face to touch the outer edge of the pile. Clown masks and bowling pins, ugh.
"When was the last time you even ate? I mean, fuck, you’re a tower of bones in a troll skin," you said, stealing glances at him and running your fingers over the pile pieces closest to you. “How was your screening? How… how are you? Are you alright? I should—”
One long, bony arm stretched out, and a hand curled into your suncloak.
“You know something? I can’t get my knowing on,” he said apologetically, eyes closed.
His hair was half plastered in his paint. Your hand itched to smooth it away from his face.
You kept your hands on an ugly ass mask like it was a get-out-of-culling-free card.
“Don’t sleep here, you’ll get dayterrors,” you said, almost reflexively. “You’ll get dayterrors down the protein chute so far they’ll perforate your digestion sac. Where’s your ‘coon?”
The hand in your cloak tightened ever so slightly.
“I ain’t got one of those motherfuckers no more,” he murmured.
Your jaw dropped open.
“You're sleeping dry? Are you insane?”
He shifted and made a sad little chirp –sorry sorry don’t be mad notmyfault—.
“I motherfucking went to see them conscriptsisters like you told me, and they said my miracles ain't fit for a proper motherfucking ascending so they were all removing my temptation they said.”
Those crazy, cultist bastards.
You bit your lip to keep from snarling because that would do fuckall for him right now.
"Fine. Okay,” you breathed out slowly. “I’ll go make something to eat. No point starving as well as letting horrorterrors lovingly skullfuck you to sleep.”
His opened his eyes just a crack, his lashes clumped together with paint and crusted tears.
“Aw brother, don’t up and go,” he near-whined. “You just motherfucking got here. We can shoot the wicked breeze or… or I don’t motherfucking know, anything you want.”
You gently extracted your clothes from his cold fingers.
“There’s time for that later,” you promised. “When I don’t look at you and see a starving pan-rotten moron living on half a rust allowance, half of which he uses for greasepaint.”
He curled in on himself, horns digging into his pile. They were a pale yellow, dry and flaking from lack of care.
You absconded.
===/\===
Something was very, very wrong.
Gamzee’s nutrition block had ground wheat powder and cluckbeast eggs and nothing else. You’d looked. This was worse than Sollux nearing the perigee, and you know the lisping wonder spent most of his allowance on computers.
Gamzee was purple. There was no reason for him to not have things.
Your fangs worked over your lips as you mushed the wheat powder and cluckbeast eggs. You came up with these long, flat strips and tossed them in an open boiling cylinder.
Hands snaked around your chest.
“JESUSFUCK!” you yelled, bloodpusher hammering. You didn’t even hear them coming, stupid stupid Karkat. You were reaching for your sickles and—
Gamzee rested his chin on top of your head, right between your horns. If your horns were sharper, a single twitch would gash his throat wide open.
You went very still.
"Hey motherfucker,” he sighed, draping himself over your back and melting as much as a sack of bones could melt. You could feel the points of his hipbones and his ribs and his chin.
“Gamzee,” you managed. You took a breath and tried to think of practical things. You couldn’t presume that this was… you didn’t know shit about highblood culture. For all you knew, you could be a block ornament equivalent, or something vaguely cuddly... Cuddly like a scalemate, not a…
Desist, Karkat. Practical things.
“Important question,” you said, raising a shoulder to nudge him.
“Hmmm?” Gamzee hums against your back and your pan whites out and goes full on retard while you tried to find words for ‘do you pity me’ that didn’t make you want to die of embarrassment.
Instead of course you got a display of Karkat Vantas should not be allowed to talk the fuck ever.
“Why don’t you have any goddamn food? Does it not occur to your clownfucked pan that that is a thing you should maybe consider ordering? Give me your credit number, I’ll order for you.”
Did you just tell a highblood that he wasn’t fit to look after himself oh god you just did.
“I won’t abuse it,” you promised quickly, wishing you could see his face so you had some sort of gauge on his reaction.
He laughed sheepishly into your hair. He was getting greasepaint in your hair. You should be flipping your shit, but you’re not. Not even close.
“Brother, what is mine is yours… except I’ve all gone and forgotten that little number set. Motherfuckers just upped and disappeared from my pan, y’know.”
“Idiot,” you said, raising your hand to blindly slap him across the horns but he kissed your raised palm and all of a sudden you had your hand on his face. You pulled back like you were burned.
"No need to be all shy, my fine brother," Gamzee murmured.
He kissed the tips of your ears.
“What the fuck are you doing,” you hissed, reflexive fear and embarrassment. “Why the—”
"Shhh," Gamzee said and his teeth, long and jagged beneath your ear, were gentle on your skin. “Let’s both motherfucking get our chill on. Best friend.”
You shivered.
"Gamzee," you whispered, not wanting to startle him. He hummed contentedly. “Gamzee, we... this is pale, right?"
“If that is what you be wanting, motherfucker," he agreed amiably, pressing a kiss to the side of your throat. “Then that is what we will motherfucking be.”
The open boiling cylinder started frothing onto the thermal platform like a rabid barkbeast.
“Shit shit shit shit shit!” you hissed and went for the off switch.
He laughed and you had a moirail, you could hardly believe it.
===/\===
Gamzee shifted on the pile next to you. He hadn’t let you out of reach since you’d gone to the nutrition block. He had pressed his face to your side and calmed a little when you smoothed his hair back, but over the last few hours became more and more twitchy.
You found Gamzee’s credit number and punched in a food delivery request, but his account was barred from ordering sopor. You were too low to redirect deliveries from your own account, not that you could actually afford sopor that would do anything for him, so you sat there, biting your lip and glaring at the sopor order form with its little purple notice.
His hand reached for yours and you looked at him. He was trembling. Sweat beaded his forehead and nose.
“What’s wrong?” you asked, too loud. Both of you winced. “What’s wrong?” you repeated, softer.
“Brother, they be coming,” Gamzee said hoarsely. “Them motherfuckers be next to the door, waiting to get their schooling on.”
You looked up sharply, but the opening to his block was empty.
“I can close it,” you told him, making to stand.
“No!” he snarled, throwing his arms around you and hauling you back down to the pile.
“What the fuck, Gamzee.”
“You’ll fall,” he explained, an urgent edge to his voice.
“I’m not going to trip over your pile,” you rolled your eyes even as his concern made you want to purr. “It’s a little dark for me, but I can still see.”
“Not there,” he said, eyes staring at the centre of the block floor. It was perfectly normal, devoid of anything to fall over.
“It’s just floor,” you said and he shivered.
“Din’t use to be so,” he said. “Used to be a great motherfucking hole. And I used to put the poison in to keep it that way, but there ain’t no more of that.”
“Gamzee, trust me. It’s just floor.”
“Well brother,” he said slowly. “You be right, miraculous motherfucker you all being, but it is also being a bridge, and it being a bridge is not a good thing, you getting me?”
“Not really,” you answered.
He shook his head.
“Don’t go, palest brother,” he implored, and you had fuckall in the way of strength on account of spontaneously turning to mush.
“I… sure. Okay,” you said, setting the husktop aside. Your hands were shaking to match him and you curled them in so the nails bit into your palm. You leaned back into the pile.
His eyes never left the space to the door.
“Ain’t so bad now,” he mumbled. “Was worse before you came, brother.”
He took a deep breath, and his exhale was cool against your waist, even through your shirt.
“What happened?” you asked, lightly running fingers over the tip of a horn.
“Motherfuckers came all the way in. They—”
He froze, eyes huge and focusing, unfocusing, still turned towards the door.
“Gamzee?”
He buzzed a warning and drew you closer, snarling at the empty doorway.
“Gamzee, there’s nothing there,” you insisted, even as the highblood resonance of –stay away from us—shook you to your bones.
He tossed his head.
“Brother, all these voices. They keep…”
You touched his hair and he recoiled.
“No. No, no no motherfuck,” he whimpered.
You pulled back, showed him both your open palms, claws pointing up.
“Sorry, look I won’t do it again,” you assured him.
He surged up, all limbs and fire.
“I DON’T WANT—” he shouted, then swayed, confused. “I’m not…”
He gripped you by the shirt and whimpered, a high whine of –lost hurt distress—.
“I can’t hear myself, brother. It hurts,” he gasped. He held you like a life preservation device. “It hurts, it—”
His breath caught and you couldn’t help yourself.
“Are you okay?” you asked tentatively, placing a hand on his shoulder.
He screamed.
“Gamzee? Gamzee! Stay with me, for fuck’s sake, look at me!”
He twisted, pushing you into the pile, displacing pins and clubs and other clown junk.
“NO I—don’t. DON’T MOTHERFUCKING TOUCH US. Brother, brother, Karkat please—”
“Shhhh,” you murmured, clicking deep in your chest.
“DON’T MOTHERFUCKING SHOOSH ME,” he snarled. “Don’t you FUCKING DARE. Pity of the holy motherfucking mirthful messiahs IT HURTS make it STOP!”
“Sh shhh shhhh,” your noisebox just kept going on its own accord. You ran your hand across his brow, down the side of his face, his cheek.
He pulled you into him, almost crushing, then just as quickly pushed you away, raking claws down his sides. His thrashing tossed pile parts everywhere, indiscriminately collecting marks and cuts in his skin. Purple welled from the corner of his mouth and his nose.
You grabbed him by the horns and used your weight to flip him over and hold him down. You were half the spectrum lower, he knocked you clean off him with one arm.
“NO MOTHERFUCKING MORE,” he howled. “I was motherfucking faithful, weren’t I? I ain’t… I said it, I say it, LET THE MESSIAHS HAVE ME IF THEY SO MOTHERFUCKING WISH.”
“Shhhh, Gamzee, Gamzee,” you shooshed, scrambling back to grab him by the horns. “It’s okay, it’s okay shhh. God, what’s going on?”
“I can’t…”
“It’s alright. Just… focus on calming down, okay? And take deep breaths, it should help.”
Gamzee mumbled something into your shirt as you papped his head, his back.
“What?” you asked.
“SHUT UP,” he roared suddenly.
“Gam—”
“I motherfucking said to SHUT THE HELL UP.”
His eyelids flickered when he cried, and behind the translucent purple there was a violent, glowing orange-red.
“Please, please FUCKING… Make it stop good brother please, please, please…”
“I’m sorry,” you said in the same tone as your useless shushing. “I don’t know how, oh god, I’m sorry.”
“How motherfucking dare you. HOW MOTHERFUCKING DARE YOU MOTHER FUCKING APPROACH THIS HERE ALTAR OF THE MIRACULOUS CEREMONIES? Do you even got your understanding on? DO YOU EVEN GOT YOUR UNDER MOTHERFUCKING STANDING OF WHO YOU GOT BEFORE YOU?”
He screamed again, raw and feral. His body twisted and arched like some horror was clawing its way into his chest.
“Gamzee,” you tried, and tried to hold him down so he wouldn’t hurt himself. “I’m here, I’ve got you, there aren’t any—”
His eyes focused on you for a crazed lucid moment.
“Useless motherfucking snowflake,” he hissed. “Blind to the motherfucking MIRACLES OF THE DARK CARNIVAL. I should motherfucking rip your ganderbulbs from where THEY AREN’T BEING OF MUCH MOTHERFUCKING USE NOW ARE THEY?”
“Shoooosh,” you said, horribly conflicted on the endearment and the insults that followed. You were useless though. Useless for any more than papping and mumbling and wishing desperately that whatever was hurting him would stop.
“Hey, listen to me, just me. I can talk all night and all day, I will unleash so much fucking verbiage on your clown ass you could paint the fleet with my word vomit,” you said, low and steady. You had no idea what you were doing.
Gamzee’s screams went to manic laughter.
“Gamzee,” you kept trying to bring him back. “Gamzee, don’t.”
“HAVE ME,” he roared at the ceiling of his respiteblock. “PAIN? THERE IS NO FUCKING PAIN. I HAVE MOTHER FUCKING TRANSCENDED MERE MOTHER FUCKING PAIN!”
He rounded on you, eyes not all the way red, but almost. “Tell me fine, tiny, brother mine. TELL ME ONE MOTHERFUCKING THING.”
Your voice stopped in your throat. He looked through you, head cocked to the side and face contorted into a terrible grin, with your palm still pressed to one cheek. His hands brushed against your jaw, cold, fingers splayed where they went into your hair to cradle your head.
“Do you want to feel the miracles? DO YOU MOTHER FUCKING WANT TO FEEL THE MIRACLES?”
He kissed you on the mouth, deep and unmistakably flush, and you choked on the wrongness of it. His hands in your hair brushed loudly against a horn. You felt hollow in your thorax, like you were stabbing yourself in the bloodpusher only there was nothing there. Your skin crawled, everywhere, where he was touching and where he wasn’t.
You bit down and he pulled back, snarling. You grabbed a great, twisting, beautiful horn and yanked him to the side. He fell, and with your free hand, you papped him right between the eyes.
“Fucking shooosh already,” you hissed. You spared half a second to wipe your mouth and tongue against the back of your sleeve. “Blegh. Shhhh you fucking disaster. I am not above a goddamn black reacharound if punching you in the face is what it takes to calm your fucking tits, but neither of us wants that. Shoosh.”
He opened his mouth, displaying his terrifying eyeteeth and you covered them with your other hand.
“Shooooosh,” you said, papping firmly. “Shhh, Gamzee. Shhh.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, and you rubbed the snarl from his brow and jaw. Half his paint was on you, and you could see patches of grey skin beneath the smudged remainders.
“Shhhhh,” you murmured. “Shhhhhshhhhshh.”
He opened his eyes again, and saw you for real.
“Karkat?” he swallowed. You could barely make the word out.
“Yeah,” you exhaled, relieved and tired and confused. He shuddered and pushed at you weakly.
“Best motherfucking friend,” he rasped, not looking at you. “Precious diamond brother… I… I motherfucking hurt you. I... You should leave before I—”
“Don’t be a fuckass,” you replied shortly, pulling an arm over your waist. You knocked the front of your thinkpan to his. You felt like you were run over by a heard of musclebeasts, and you had been fucking scared and helpless, but he had been more scared.
“Sleep,” you ordered, running a hand down his face to stop him from giving you that look. “Don’t argue, just close your eyes and sleep.”
===/\===
A light tapping on your forehead, a rhythmic drumming that sunk you into the pile, all the way to the floor.
Gamzee? You tried to say. “Gmmmh?”
“Shh, brother,” Gamzee murmured. “Just up and returning the motherfucking favour, is all.”
His hands were over your face, your mouth, your nose, and there was something about a total wreck thinking you were a wreck that made you feel humbled.
You trembled under the long, elegant fingers, looked up at dark eyes and elegant horns. You felt like you were slowly freezing on a green apogee night, where the moon was distant and the hivestem heating went out. You couldn’t go out and fix it, because there were shadows outside that would kill you slowly and sadistically. You would bide and plan from the refuge of the honest cold, and the colder you were the easier it was to slip into a dreamless sleep.
Gamzee’s hand stuttered on your brow and the next thing you know his forehead is pressed against yours, looking into your eyes for something important.
“I can’t see you,” he frowned, and you could feel his brow scrunch together. “You’re green and I can feel it in my pan, you’re all soft and fuzzy, motherfucker.”
His fingers traced your hands, your sides, your shoulders, your face.
“You’re here, ain’t you,” Gamzee said. “So why can’t I motherfucking feel your edges, motherfucker?”
He tilted his head.
“Is edges even a thing you be having, bro?”
You would answer, but staying down and just breathing felt so right.
“Where you at?” Gamzee asked. “WHERE THE MOTHERFUCK YOU AT?”
Holy shit, you were awake now.
“Shhh, the fuck was that?” you asked.
“I’m going to find you,” he promised, and he was looking through you again, like he could see your organs. “I’m going to find you and show you. I can see my purpose now. I FINALLY GOT MY UNDERSTAND ON AS TO WHAT MY MOTHERFUCKING PURPOSE IS.”
His thoratic cage pressed against yours with every breath he took.
“Gamzee, I’m right here,” you said, tried to snap but it came out with no click of teeth in it.
“And my purpose. MY MOTHER FUCKING PURPOSE,” he snarled into your neck. “Is to prepare the way for the blessed ringshow.”
“What?” you asked and you could feel his teeth as his lips pulled away in a grin. He pushed himself up, hand brushing your eyelids. You sank back into the cold, just a little.
“CIRCUS MOTHERFUCKING COME UPON US.”
At first, nothing.
Then rose a whisper, the whisper of sand, a darkening tarp being drawn shut. A congregation ten thousand strong moved into place, silent but for the whisper of their deaths. Cold fingers reached for you in the shadows.
You could see them.
You looked to Gamzee, and his grin was wild and his hair wilder still. There were two of him, one laid on top of the other, like a second skin. The new one that was there all along had paint done up in elaborate, looping patterns. Silver and amethyst adorned his head and arms and hands.
“Your ganderbulbs got their motherfucking SEE on yet?” he asked joyfully. He touched your face.
In the flickering yellow light of the tent, steel so cold it burned was laid against your cheek.
“Now precious motherfucking diamond brother mine, I WILL DRAG YOUR MOTHERFUCKING CORPSE TO THE DARK CARNIVAL.”
The whisper turned to teeth and took you in a rush. Something sick and cloying bubbled from your bones to your face. Your mouth stretched into a manic grin and you laughed and you were crying and above you the prince who held your face laughed and cried too. His tears burned cold on your skin.
An infinity of painted faces and impossible hair and non-existent stares welled up from the walls behind him. It was funny, it was hilarious. The joke cracked all the way into you, shards of ice tracing your bones, a deep sharp pain that made you giggle til you screamed. The prince messiahs, one ragged and one in finery, smiled as they poured poison the same colour as you upon your pan.
You couldn’t breathe from laughing. Or maybe hurting.
“Serve the messiahs, brother,” the prince whispered. His paint was smeared into unrecognizability.
“YOU ARE MOTHER FUCKING DESTINED TO SERVE THE MOTHERFUCKING MESSIAHS,” the prince howled, silvered chains swaying madly to catch the light.
“Do you know who the mother fucking messiahs are, brother love mine?” the prince with the smudged paint and the too big shirt asked. His eyes were half-lidded and beautiful orange-red. His expression was gentle and soft, and barely funny at all but he was because…
“Yes,” you gasped.
“NO!” you screamed.
“Gamzee, Gamzee please,” you begged.
Claws raked down your chest and dug into your arms. Blades in the hands of unfamiliar painted faces knocked along your ribcage, scoring little marks that made you scream and curse and your lover held you down and kissed you wrong, vicious and crushing, sinking his lower teeth into your jaw.
His face blurred in your tears and in the carnival they held fire to your face. You were half blind from the light and the pain, and they are going to break you until there was nothing, nothing left of…
Who?
Teeth sank into your shoulder, pain sharp and cold. Brittle nails hammered into you by grinning cultists, who were painted skulls and black nothing, nothingness—
Your chin and neck were wet, lukewarm with blood.
Your blood.
You gasped and grabbed him by the horns.
There were two worlds, and one was a dark, almost empty block.
The real one. You wanted it to be the real one.
“Fuck,” you spat, and the two princes looked at you. The one with the softer edges to his face had your colour on his lips.
“It’s not real,” you whispered fiercely. You tried to reach up and touch him, but your arm was heavy, hurting. The circus fell back to shadows in the flare of the husktop you brushed against.
“Shhh,” your voice cracked. “Gamzee, can you see? Just us. Shh.”
Your Gamzee with the smudged paint shuddered. The shadow of the other bared his teeth, but said nothing.
“I love you,” you said suddenly, partly because it was what he needed to hear, and mostly because it was true. “I…” you closed your eyes. “Ahh fuck. I should be angry. I am angry. I should be spewing a fucking goddamn ragesnake on your ass. I am hurting in my goddamn aeration sacs. I am hurting in my internal vertical support column. I am hurting in places I don’t even know words for. And you know what? This is the ultimate proof that I am a panfucked moron and that you are the most pitiful piece of shit to ever need fixing: I still love you.”
You opened your eyes and Gamzee was staring down at you blankly.
Just Gamzee. Just one.
“Well, you fucking clowntard,” you said softly. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
He blinked and a purple tear welled up and plopped onto your face. He started shaking as hard as you think you would if you tried to move.
“That,” he started, slowly. “Brother, what…?”
His eyes skipped over your shoulder, which was leaking your blood all over the place. His brows furrowed and you realised belatedly that your blood was all over the place, shit shit fuck.
“This be my doing?” he asked, completely wretched.
“Not your fault,” you said on reflex.
“Then why I got the hornsense that you be scared, motherfucker?”
You swallowed and you could almost see his spirit crumble.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m motherfucking sorry, I really am. I’m sorry. You don’t deserve this, brother, you be small and motherfucking angry and miraculous and I love you so motherfucking much, palest diamond brother. I love you. Listen, I love you and I’m so motherfucking sorry, I…”
“No,” you said. “You fucking don’t do that to me right now. Don’t you dare lose it and flip your shit. I am not going anywhere. I am fine. I just… fuck. Are you blind or something? I… I’m a… not olive. I’m not olive. I’m green but I’m not olive.”
His huge hand came out of nowhere to cover your mouth and nose. You could hear the four-beat of your ‘pusher, loud in your aural canals. You didn’t realise how fast you were breathing until you could feel the movement of air against his skin.
“I got my see on to that, precious brother,” he said and you wanted to scream at him.
“There’s something wrong with my blood!”
“But there ain’t nothing wrong about you,” he said, with simple honesty that made you choke back tears. He looked at you then lowered his eyes.
“Brother, can I get my ask on, if you would be all amenable to letting me fix you?”
And somehow you managed to find the strength in you to wrap your arms around him and say ‘yes, yes of course’.