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“Three years is not such a long time.” It’s said in a manner which is probably supposed to be comforting but instead comes off reproachful. “You would be forgiven for still harbouring caliginous feelings. If there’s anything I can do to help...”
Karkat glances sideways-backwards. Kanaya has her best blankfaced expression on, but he can tell she’s trying not to laugh. Her not-unfounded reputation for an ashen predilection precedes her.
They’re scattered in a miserable impersonation of a phalanx, prepared for The Ship’s arrival. Karkat wasn’t sure how long ago it had taken on an implicit capitalisation and hence added gravitas, but the fact remained that The Ship was arriving and it was probably the most important day in Karkat’s miserable seven-and-a-half sweeps of redundant existence. He insisted on heading up the formation, standing at the front of their gathering as though he could prove to the others that he was still leadership material, even though he had long since stopped trying to fool himself that he was the one in charge. By now they’re all sitting, though. But Karkat cannot let himself be seen to flag.
And naturally he had insisted on “GETTING IN FORMATION YOU HAPHAZARD GROUP OF INCOMPETENT CLUCKBEASTS” at least two hours before The Ship touched down and extended its wretched tendrils of what would no doubt be unmitigated, ceaseless and totally baseless frivolity.
They had been standing there for one hour, thirty-seven minutes and fifteen seconds, not that Karkat had been counting or anything, and there was still no sign of a ship, not even a slowly-growing spot in the distance.
“You know,” Rose starts, and Karkat does know, he knows that tone of voice, and he knows exactly where this sentence is going to lead, and he’s in half a mind to cut her off before she can get any further, but before he has the chance she continues, “I wouldn’t be surprised if his caliginous feelings for John are still manifest, at least in some level of his subconscious.”
So she’s just talking to Kanaya, but she knows full well that Karkat can hear her.
“It’s almost a pity that they’ll never be reciprocated,” Rose continues, “I think they’d make a pretty hot--”
“You can stop any time, y’know,” Dave says. An unlikely white knight. Karkat is nonetheless glad for his intervention. Dave probably doesn’t want to imagine his best friend and that dumb stupid alien kid with the small horns engaging in the very sloppiest of makeouts as much as Karkat doesn’t, although for very different reasons.
One hour, forty minutes and two seconds. Still a while to go. Terezi whispers something to Dave and Karkat does not even turn around to glare in reprobation. He is reminded of how vehemently opposed he had been to interspecies relationships, for a few quite specific reasons.
In fact, he could sum it up pretty neatly in his think pan:
It had started quite innocently. Well, if you could call a caliginous infatuation “innocent”. But it wasn’t really such a big thing, right? He’d just. Fallen hopelessly in hate with a stupid idiot shithead alien from another universe based on an assumed cosmic connection.
It was nothing. Really.
What Karkat had not been prepared for was how his feelings would mutate as he embarked on perhaps the most arduous quest that the game threw unceremoniously in his face: trolling John backwards.
“Trolling John Backwards” sort of sounded like the name of a human romantic film. And just as shitty, too. If this sordid story had been an Alternian romance, Karkat knew exactly what he’d title it:
“In which a mutant-blood troll, exercising his newly-obtained power as a god presiding over another universe, forms a cosmic caliginous connection with a pink monkey from the foreign universe; however after a series of unfortunate mishaps including the unfortunate barrier of a human concept “homosexuality” the heroic mutant is forced to troll the human in reverse-chronolinear order; over which period of time the mutant’s hatred for the human becomes a perverse mockery of friendship; eventually his feelings wax red and the troll is thrown into an incessant torturous cycle of stereotypical but no less painful quadrant vacillation; unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for this budding and wholly unrequited oscillatory romantic attachment all forms of communication between the troll and the human are severed for three years before their inevitable and presumably highly awkward meeting on a meteor in which nothing whatsoever is said of feelings and the troll continues to live in a state of confusion and anger while the human lives a happy life in blissful ignorance of the romantic turmoil of which he is the unwitting author.”
Okay, so the ending was mostly guesswork. But it was educated guesswork nonetheless, informed by experience and a deep and sometimes scarring sense of self-knowledge. The Ship was going to land, and John, Jade and the sprite version of Dave would get off -- no, not get off -- disembark , and they’d all say their perfunctory courteous greetings and have a catch-up session over the events of the last three years and then Karkat would have to tell John about Vriska (oh GOD no) and then everything would just get really depressing and Karkat wasn’t sure he could handle that right now.
They’d be here soon and he was so not ready it was not funny.
Karkat finds himself thinking back to his last contact with John. The letter. The precise moment his feelings (could you even call them feelings?) had ceased their vacillation and settled firmly in the realms of redrom. It was that sentence that did it: “karkat, i deeply regret that i will not be present for these highly touted "TROLL/HUMAN SLOPPY MAKEOUTS", ha ha. maybe in three years, assuming you all aren't totally smooched out by then!!!”
He had memorised it word for word. He still had the letter in his room. Sometimes he read it. Sometimes he thought about burning it.
At any rate there had been a very specific plan for how the troll/human sloppy makeouts were going to work, and for the most part that plan had been realised. The fact remains, however, that Karkat is about to break John’s heart, and in the process, break his own as well.
One hour, forty-nine minutes and forty-six seconds.
Karkat is not ready.
He is vaguely aware that Dave and Terezi have started making out behind him but he ignores it with all the self-control of a good leader. There was a time when he would have reacted to this very public display of obscene affection with an almost zealous tirade of irascibility personified, but now he’s sort of just. Over it. He was foolish to want Terezi -- in any quadrant -- because, simply put, she was too good for him. Karkat was just some loser with ambitions higher than he could ever hope to reach. He was not fit for a relationship with someone like her. And she was so, so much happier than she had ever been. How could he justify ruining that for her?
“Do you want to talk about it, Karkat?” Rose offers. She knows he hasn’t properly vented his emotions in god knows how long, she knows that Gamzee is a pretty sub-par moirail sometimes who takes a lot more than he gives in that relationship and is never around when Karkat needs to talk. She thinks she is doing him a favour.
Probably she would be if Karkat weren’t so on-edge.
“No, Rose. No I really do not want to talk about ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ may be. I just want to stand here for the five minutes twenty seconds remaining until The Ship lands and just get this stupid sentimental reunion bullshit over and done with, thank you very much.”
Rose sighs. “I thought you enjoyed the odd indulgence in sentiment.”
Well. Yeah. It wasn’t really a secret that Karkat’s main domain of expertise was in the world of romance. He had seen every romantic movie worth seeing and of course most of those were sentimental beyond belief. But he was not equipped to deal with humans and their narrow systems of “love” and “friendship”. Not when Rose and Dave would be all over their long-lost friends with platonic hugs and all sorts of feelings -y shit and Karkat would just be standing there like an idiot watching them be all happy while he was dreading informing John of Vriska’s death and/or accidentally informing him of those uh. Feelings. That he had. The ones that were like. Very much flushed and not at all caliginous and just a little bit cosmic. And 100% unrequited.
As Karkat had worked through the timeline, trolling John backwards, he had thought that there was a possibility, unlikely as it was, that his black affections might be returned by John. After all, there was the indisputable fact that John enjoyed being trolled by him. If that wasn’t caliginous in its very nature then Karkat had been living a lie. Which he hadn’t. That was the point of the metaphor. There was the possibility, and for the longest time (approximately three days) Karkat clung to that possibility. Well, to that and to the mental image of John in a filthy wifebeater. Both were good thoughts to occupy his spare time.
Anyway that was completely not the point because Karkat was absolutely definitely certainly beyond such frivolities.
“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?”
Karkat turns around to see that Rose is the only one still there. “What-- where did they-- ?”
“Relax,” she says, “Dave and Terezi went off to lock tongues somewhere less exposed, and Kanaya’s getting us some coffee. You didn’t hear her say so?”
“I zoned out,” Karkat admits with a shrug.
Rose smiles. “Two hours, five minutes, three seconds, in case you were wondering.”
“They’re late!” Karkat says, a little panicked.
“Congratulations on stating the obvious. Now. I’ll ask again. Do you want to talk about it?”
Karkat stands and stares at her. The answer is HELL NO but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need to verbalise that for her to pick up on it.
“Sit down,” Rose says. “Tell me about you and John.”
“Tell you about me and John ? Rose. There is no me and John. There was never a me and John. It’s not a thing that has ever happened nor is ever likely to happen. That’s it. End of story!”
Rose nods slowly. “So you admit that you still have caliginous feelings for him?”
“No, no I fucking do not! Rose. Listen. I pulled all my tricks on John. I used all my good lines. That shit was fucking romantic as hell! And do you know what? Nothing. Not. A. Single. Thing.”
Again, she nods. “I take it then that they are flushed feelings. Have you thought about what you’re going to say to him?”
“I’ve thought about it,” Karkat says vaguely.
Kanaya thankfully chooses this moment to return with a pot of coffee and several cups on a tray. “Oh, they’re not here yet?”
“Apparently Karkat underestimated their arrival time,” Rose says offhandedly, filling up a cup for herself. “Never mind. It’s just prolonging the inevitable.”
But almost as soon as she says that there’s that spot in the distance growing larger gradually, just as Karkat had imagined it. And after a while he can hear the soft machinations of The Ship’s engines, and it brings Dave and Terezi out to the surface, and even Gamzee graces them with his presence. Kanaya gives him a scathing look, but restrains her anger for this occasion and turns to face The Ship.
“Formation,” Karkat says, and he’s trying for his Leader Voice, but it comes out as a whisper, and he supposes he must be nervous, but he’s not sure how better he could prepare himself for the impending meeting. Nonetheless they arrange themselves behind him, and Gamzee gives him a quick pat on the shoulder as some sort of good luck gesture.
The Ship lands.
Karkat tries his best to look imposing and pull himself up to his full height but there is absolutely no changing the fact that everyone is taller than him, and as John, Jade and floaty Dave approach them, they seem pretty vertically blessed too.
And fuck, John is even more fucking gorgeous as fuck in person. “Fuck,” Karkat mutters to himself. John turns sharply away from Rose and Dave and is suddenly beaming a grin and god Karkat just wants to touch him inappropriately because fuck he is so attractive and Kanaya’s right, three years are not long at all and the feelings are most definitely right where he left them.
“Karkat!”
Karkat doesn’t quite register that John has said his name until there are two hands on his upper arms and and face right in front of his and wow that is close does John have stubble ? and suddenly John is kissing him and Karkat isn’t entirely sure WHY this is happening but he doesn’t question it, he just stands there with his arms waving around rapidly at his sides because WHAT THE FUCK .
John pulls away leaving Karkat red in the face and full of questions.
Karkat settles on “WHAT JUST HAPPENED?”
John shrugs. “I promised you Troll/Human sloppy makeouts.”
