Chapter Text
“Nepeta. Just give me the fucking coffee.”
“Shhh, not yet Karkitty! Today... today is...” She crinkles her brow and waves her sparkly Hello Kitty pen in lopsided air circles over the wrinkled paper. “Hey Karkitty, what’s the date?”
“You’re going to make me late.”
“Kanaya? What’s the date?”
“I believe it is the seventh. Nepeta, I applaud your enthusiasm but I really think you need to finish up sorting the–”
“Ah, the seventh! This one sounds good. Ahem. Cancer: Find what is important to you and hold it close. Connect with someone you haven’t heard from in a while. You can be a little overly emotional at times, but use this to show others that you care. Ehh, blah blah blah.... It gets a little boring. Tonight: Get more exercise.” Silence settles over the counter.
“...Did my horoscope actually fucking tell me to spend precious moments of my rapidly diminishing lifespan hauling my meatsack around in a weak attempt at fitness? Did it just call me fat?”
“Karkitty, it’s not like it can see you–” You interrupt her by flailing your arms in her general direction, causing Nepeta to huff and sink down to her elbows on the scuffed countertop. The kitten whiskers drawn on her cheeks tilt down as she pouts.
“What sad, demented soul in a cubical wrote this piece of blasphemy? I do not get overemotional. I have a fucking heart of steel. But yes, my date with Nora Roberts’ novels is long overdue and as for what is “important” to me; coffee. Coffee is important to me. I am a paying customer and I want my caffeinated swill now.” Your impressive words appear to have little effect on the young woman behind the counter, but she heaves another sigh and swivels around to throw your order together. By now she’s had your preferences memorized, and goes through the motions with the sort of mindless grace and ease you wish you had. She returns with warm cup in hand, emitting a sharper scent of the delicious aroma diffused throughout the little shop.
“It wouldn’t kill mew to open up,” she sniffs, “I mean, mew might act like you’re pushing eighty but you still look like a Millennial. I bet you could have toms fighting to get their claws into mew.”
“Haha. No. This is a conversation I refuse to have in a public place–” “It’s just me and Kan, there’s literally no one else here.” “–with you. I have a shop of my own to run, and I don’t know why I still come to this hole in the wall where the barristas refuse to hand over what is rightfully mine. Gimme.” Nepeta scoots your poison of choice towards you, and the dimples on her tanned cheeks deepen in mirth. Her green apron, riddled with old coffee stains, matches her eyes in the same way that Kanaya’s does. Kanaya’s is spotless, however, and in all the years you’ve been coming here to this so-called “hole in the wall” you’ve never seen her spill once.
Speaking of Kanaya, her voice dryly resonates from your left. “Your patronage is what keeps us in the black, dear. Whatever would become of us without you?”
“Suffer.” You fight with your wallet to cough up your last wad of dollar bills. Victory. “Suffer and die before me.”
“I think we’ll pass! Are you going to be okay going out in that?” Nepeta has a small grin settled on her lips, but both she and Kanaya are eyeing the bruising clouds as the first few raindrops audibly smack against the cracked pavement outside.
Kanaya’s fingers brush your shoulder, and you turn to face green eyes darkened with worry. “We could lend you an umbrella, if you like. I would hate to see you get soaked on your way back.”
“Fuck it. I’ll be fine. The last thing I need right now is to be caught with Nep’s Hello-Kitty monstrosity of a water deflection utensil,” you say with a pointed look at the woman in question. The cat lover sheepishly giggles in reply.
Clutching your holy beverage close, you exit the familiar warmth of the shop and step into drizzling gusts a great deal colder than you were expecting. You knew you shouldn’t have indulged Leijon and her current infatuation with horoscopes. Which are ridiculous practically by definition. If it were anyone else, odds are you would have brushed them off and never returned. But that tiny coffee shop holds pretty much all that is left of your friends from over the years. Kanaya, Aradia, Nepeta, Equius... (Okay maybe not Zahhak. The guy creeps you out). You’ve known them all since highschool, and while most of your companions split off and ollied out with no more than vague promises to call you later, they were the ones who stayed in the decaying shell of a city with you. Kanaya inherited the property and turned it into the hidden gem it is today, armed with only keen aesthetic sense and the Maryam coffee magic that seeps through her family’s veins.
The little bookstore you run is located only a few blocks from here, a fact you suppose you should be grateful for. That doesn’t stop you from hunching over and offering a few choice words at the universe which decided to gift you with this stunning display of shitty timing.
It starts raining harder.
A car passes on your left, and you have to leap to the side to avoid the cascade of grimy water surging over the sidewalk. If anyone asks, that was a manly war cry. Which did not come from you. Nope.
The light dims even more as the sun begins to sink behind already overcast skies. Despite the oncoming spring, the days remain short and chilly for the most part. It is your least favorite time of year (you ignore the fact that you loudly proclaim how you despise whatever season it is year round). The douchewaffles who enjoy this kind of weather must be closeted masochists. You bet Zahhak is enjoying himself.
Rain drips down the collar of your jacket to soak your shirt. The old sneakers you threw on before you embarked on your coffee crusade are filled with yet more water. Your socks are wet. Your jeans are wet. Your hair is sticking all over your face, making it annoyingly hard to see. Rain has now been put back on the Fuck List, after a brief stint of pleasant showers you did not entirely loathe. But this is the last straw and you have no patience to spare for such a shit trumpet of a repeat offender.
You are halfway there.
Coffee is your only true friend in this world. Always here when you need it. Warm. Delicious. Taking little sips in between wind gusts powers you through as you begin marching uphill.
The presence of another pedestrian vaguely registers in the back of your mind as you rest briefly beneath an overhang before crossing the road.
They are already crossing the road when you get there.
They do not make it to the other side.
Headlights. Rain. The scream of rubber on pavement.
Flesh hitting metal. A solid thunk as something passes under the first pair of tires.
Everything stops for just a moment.
There is a sharp turn only a few meters up the street. Everyone takes it too fast. The rain makes it hard to see, but the bright lights stamping violet afterimages into your retinas also reveals the large black monster truck in the middle of the road that they belong to. The driver is nothing more than a amorphous dark mass in the front seat.
They shift. Rev the engine.
“No. Nononono DON’T YOU DARE YOU FUCKER GET BACK HERE–” Your mouth reacts faster than anything else, and the rest of your body violently lurches back into motion.
But you are too slow, too far away to stop them from rolling over the figure on the ground and gunning it down the slicked black street.
You hesitate for a fraction of a second, eyes still on the retreating vehicle, before jerkily stumbling towards the person on the ground. There is a burning sensation on your legs and shoes, and the coffee cup is no longer in your hand.
White. Black. Red all over.
You don’t want to look.
Fuck.
The red converse unsettle you. The red and white baseball shirt tightens the coil of fear knotted in your gut. But it’s the black aviators tangled in mussed white locks that stops your heart cold.
You know them.
It’s that fucking kid.
It’s Dave.
The realization freezes you again. It takes you a moment to notice the movement.
Fingers jerk and curl. His body spasms with every unnatural heave of breath before he arches his back like he’s trying to lift himself off the pavement.
But everything’s wrong.
His spine is bending in all the wrong ways, and somehow his legs are still moving. Color tints your vision in feathered smears around him as red diffuses onto the dark road and trails into the drain.
You fingers are stripping off your coat before you realize it, and you bend down at his side. “Strider? Strider just– just stop moving and listen to me. Can you even hear me? Fuck.” It’s hard to discern what exactly is wrong with him in the dimness, except that everything is messed up in your head.
He doesn’t have a coat. What fucking idiot takes a walk in the rain without a coat?
You wrap your old bomber jacket around him as best you can and reach for your back pocket. There's nothing. Past you was such an optimistic idiot, thinking going out for coffee would be a harmless little excursion and you wouldn't need your phone.
Do you run to one of the nearby shops and hope someone is there? There aren’t any houses for another three blocks or so, and at that point your own place is closer. You don’t want to leave him here by himself, especially not in the road. Aren’t you supposed to not move injured people? But you don’t exactly have a choice.
You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing. You don’t want to hurt him. You don’t want him to die because you fucked up any chance he has left for pulling through this shit. Through the rain you can hear the slight gurgle of his inhale over your own panicked breathing. Okay, hurry up. You slide one arm around his shoulders and another lower on his torso. He’s surprisingly easy to slide onto the drenched grass at the side of the road. When you pull your arms back, fingers come free slick with warm red.
You can’t move any farther away because he’s got a hand fisted in your collar. His eyes are open and his face unreadable.
“Strider, it’s Vantas. Do you recognize me? Strider? ‘M just moving you a little, you got fucked up pretty bad but everything’s going to be fucking dandy in a minute once I get some help, ok? ...Dave– Dave let go I have to go call 911.” His grip is strong for someone who appears to be swing dancing on death’s door. Your brow furrows when your fingers fail to pry his away from your shirt.
“Shhh, shhh. It’s gonna be ok.” You frantically murmur soft shooshing noises, despite the fact that he hasn’t made any sounds besides choked breathing the whole time. He doesn’t relax. Suddenly he tightens his grip and nearly throws you on top of him when he heaves upwards, stretching the neck of your cheap t-shirt to lever himself up.
How the fuck is he doing that. You could feel the out of place vertebrae in his back, twisted and torn out of position. The sound of his sneakers, scrabbling for purchase on wet grass and finding none, joins the soft symphony of sounds you instinctively associate with the dying. But they are moving when they should not. He hauls himself up on shattered bones. Leans in close, near enough that you feel his uneven breath on your neck.
His eyes sort of look red. You tell yourself it’s just a reflection.
They are locked on your own, but seem out of focus and you honestly can’t tell if he even recognizes you.
“Don’t be afraid of me.”
The sound, soft and hoarse, is almost drowned out by the rain. You take him in, the dying boy with blood on his face, holding onto you in the dark like he expects you to try and run away.
Your mouth decides to bypass brain controls. “Fuck that. Karkat Vantas is afraid of jack shit in this world, and that’s something you can take to your grave you insipid asshole.” What the fuck are you saying. That is the biggest shitsmoking lie you’ve ever uttered in your life. “I’m not leaving you here, so you can drill that idea out of your skull and drop it down a well.”
Wrapping the jacket tighter around him, you slide your arms back around him and lean him against your torso. Deep breath. “I’m not leaving you, kiddo,” you whisper, softening your tone.
With gritted teeth you stand up, bringing him with you. He doesn’t make a sound besides a sharp intake of breath. The fact that he isn’t screaming comforts you a bit, until the fear that he’ll just keel over without a word takes hold.
You take a small step forward, and almost cry with relief when he stumbles along with you. He’s surprising light even with you half carrying him. His head hits your shoulder and rests there, but you don’t stop moving.
Even when your muscles are burning and you can barely make out the path in front of you, you never stop walking. Don’t stop. Don’t think.
Just take him home.