Chapter Text
==> BE JADE HARLEY.
"So, mister," you say, tossing your captive firmly on his stupid ass onto the floor of his respiteblock. "Why don't you tell me just why you're being such a fuckass?"
Karkat has spent the entire time you've been dragging him back to your room whining and complaining and trying to drag himself out of your grasp, so fuckass is definitely a warranted word! What a brat! Ugh, he makes you so upset sometimes.
"It was fucking Strider," Karkat snaps, "he decided to go and - and psych me out--"
"He psyched you out? Is that your reasoning behind beating him up? I'm pretty sure he broke something, Karkat! He broke something! You broke Dave!"
Karkat's face flushes deep red, and his eyes narrow, and from somewhere deep in his throat comes a rumbling threat of a growl that's nothing like you've ever heard anything - troll or otherwise - make before. It startles you into falling to the floor. Ow, gosh, your tailbone!!!
You recover quickly, once you realise he's trying to get up and leave, and slide across the floor to grab his wrists. "Fuckass, you are staying right where you fucking are!" He keeps struggling. Time to do the moirail thingy.
"Shoosh!" you yelp as his claws scratch your palm a little. You wrap one of your hands around both of his wrists and use the free hand to smack his cheek, fiercely and furiously and pale-fully. "Fucking darnit, Karkat, pap!"
He hisses at you, but it's not quite so vindictive as that last one. That one was scary.
"Calm down," you say. "Calm down and tell me why in fuck you thought that was a good idea!"
He lowers his eyes to the ground and his wrists go a little limp. "Strider sent me messages about how much Sollux hated him, and I thought - fuck me, Jade, I thought I'd lost them both."
"How could you possibly have lost them both?" You crawl over a little more and lean your head on his shoulder, still keeping a little grip on his hands. "Dave is always going to hate you. Haven't you ever seen him around you? And Sollux still would've pitied you even if he had done the unthinkable and gotten with Dave, hate-wise. Which is again dumb! So basically, you're dumb." You pause, unsure of how to get him to understand the gravity of the situation. "Just...really dumb."
He is staring at you with half-lidded eyes and a thin-lipped frown. "And what if he had? What if they had gotten together, and Sollux spent all his time with Dave like - like I've been doing with him? Oh my fucking god, he's got to hate me. Just thinking about it - if someone did that to me - if someone ignored me like that, someone that I loved - I would not hesitate to disembowel them."
"Would you?"
"Of course! They need to be there for me, and I wasn't there for Sollux when I should've been. Or all this could've been prevented."
A-ha, you think in triumph, we are reaching an epiphany. "So do you feel bad for hurting Dave?"
"No," he says, snappishly. "He was the one who was a dick. Not me."
"But you hurt Sollux."
"Did I?" He suddenly looks so much like a kicked puppy that you kind of feel bad for saying anything at all.
Your phone rings. Ooh, gosh darn, right in the middle of a feelings jam! You hold up a finger and he looks away. You take the opportunity to read the message Nepeta has left you, and have to stifle a big grin. You are being serious in this conversation! Can't just be happy out of nowhere, whoops!
You tap him on the shoulder, retrieving your serious face, and he turns around, the corners of his mouth turned down. "You left him alone. He wanted to be with you like always and you left him alone for Dave."
"I kind of...like Dave," he says, almost mournfully.
"Because he's something new."
"No! Because--"
"Because he's something different," you offer.
He turns his head to give you a vicious glare. "Have you been fucking taking lessons from Lalonde, or what?"
"Shoosh!" you announce, papping his face gently. "Shoosh. But what if I have? Is there something wrong with that, Karkat?"
"It's fucking annoying, that's all," he mutters, finally pulling his wrist out of your grasp and crossing his arms.
"But we're almost to the point where I can ask you to apologise to Dave," you say.
"What? No." He crosses his arms even tighter. Oh boy, does he look grumpy!
"It's important to apologise to people when you do something wrong," you say, putting an arm around his shoulder. "And I didn't even learn that from Rose! I learned that from being alive."
"You didn't even live with people."
"But I talked to them online! And who's to say Bec wasn't people?"
"He was a woofbeast with fucking unlimited teleportation black magic, of course he wasn't fucking people."
You sigh with impatience. "That is not my point and you know it, Karkat Vantas!"
"You want me to apologise when I've done nothing wrong."
This is not going as well as you had hoped. "You did do something wrong, though. How do you think Sollux feels?" You pause again. "How do you think John feels?"
"John?" He looks confused.
"Nepeta messaged me a couple minutes ago saying that John and Dave are together," you say, proud.
"Together, together?"
"Together, together," you confirm. "Also, Dave's wrist is broken."
Karkat looks ashamed. As sad as his ashamed face looks, you've at least made your goal! Maybe you can do this after all.
"John was really sad when he saw the shape Dave was in."
"What did I do to him?" His voice is very quiet.
This is one of the reasons you like Karkat so much - he is so much more delicate than he seems. He is a beautiful specimen of a person and you are so glad to be close to him and you really just want him to be happy, in all of his quadrants. And the fact that his kissing quadrants are both in disarray, that makes you really sad, because kissing quadrants are important, for kissing purposes, and apparently kissing is good or something. Okay, so you don't really get it, but Karkat likes kissing! And he likes being in love with Sollux and he likes being in hate with Dave. And he can't do that when everything sucks. So it's your job, as someone who cares about him, to fix it! Or at least help it along.
But enough of that monologue. You are supposed to be informing Karkat of Dave's injuries.
You rattle off the ones that Nepeta told you (she ranted for a few paragraphs about how cute they were together, and how hard she shipped them, and then ended the message with a quick word about the injuries they were treating, and an invitation to "sign Dave's arm", whatever that meant) and he does not say anything.
"John is upset," you tell him.
"John is a cool guy," he says.
"He is! And you know what? So is Dave. No matter how much you hate him for whatever weird reason."
He makes a noise that is halfway between a scoff and a sigh.
"Don't be so dramatic," you say. "Just apologise to him."
"I don't like him," he says, rather unnecessarily in your opinion.
You scowl at him. "I don't care if he's your least favourite person in the whole gosh damned world! You apologise to people you made unhappy because that's the decent-person thing to do, and that is my last word on it!"
He doesn't say anything, so you stand up. "I'm going to go sign Dave's cast. If you're going to be an ass, that's okay, but be an ass in your room, away from all the people you're making upset!"
"Jade," he calls after you. You are already halfway through his door.
"Good day!" you yell back at him, without even looking back. You're getting particularly good at dramatic exits lately, especially with all of the drama Karkat is mixing up around here.
But storming down the hallway isn't being dramatic. You are really actually that angry! Karkat can be such a dummy sometimes.
You open the door to Dave's room a little more angrily than usual, trying and not succeeding to appear semi-cheerful. John is cuddled up in the covers, stroking Dave's little horns with a kind of tenderness you've never seen from him before; Nepeta is busily drawing what seems to be a shapeless blob with pointy ears on Dave's red-plaster cast; Rose is waiting in the corner with a purple Sharpie, Kanaya with her faintly-glowing arm around Rose's waist. It is a very cute scene! Everyone is very cute. You are so glad that they are your friends.
"Hey," you say, skipping over to Dave's bedside. "Can I have a green Sharpie?"
"I don't think it will show up," Nepeta says despondently. She looks like she is about to say something, and then her eyes go wide.
"What? What's wrong?"
She points.
You turn around.
Karkat stands there at the door, arms crossed.
You hear shuffling in the covers and glance back - John is sitting up, arms outstretched in front of Dave.
"Dude, I can take care of myself," Dave mumbles.
"You're injured," John says. "What do you want, Karkat?"
"Uh," Karkat says, which isn't very explanatory.
"You can either be nice or leave!" you tell him.
He sighs and shuffles his arms a little. He mumbles something.
"You'll have to speak up," Rose says.
"I said, can I have a Sharpie?" Karkat snaps. "I'm going to sign his cast. If that's fucking okay with him."
John giggles.
"What, bulgemunch?" Karkat growls. "I'm just going to fucking sign his cast! What's funny about that?"
You think you get why John's laughing, so you explain. "You're like a teddy bear," you say. "A teddy bear with curse words written all over it, but a teddy bear all the same."
"I am not a fucking stuffed growlbeast. Give me a Sharpie."
"Ask politely!" you singsong.
"Can I please have a Sharpie."
"Only if you promise not to draw dicks all over my cast, dude. That's gay," Dave says.
"Dude, trolls are bi," John says.
"You couldn't possibly understand the intricacies of troll sexuality without having been born a troll, don't kid yourself," Karkat snaps. "Now someone give me a Sharpie."
He signs his name first, in silver, and then he writes that he's sorry. Granted, he writes it on Dave's forehead, and then draws a sloppy human dick on Dave's nose, but at least he did it. You're so proud of him!