Chapter Text
Two things you discovered today.
One: a type of nut is commonly grown on Traverse that is both edible and delicious to most species. It doesn't grow in the soil of the planet, which is too acidic and at any rate mostly covered with buildings, but in flowerpots and communal roof gardens, usually hidden under other plants because (and you actually didn't believe this part until you saw it with your own eyes) roaming bands of nut thieves are a common occurrence.
And two: every single one of that nut's kernels, when thrown, skews left.
Or maybe Karkat has terrible aim. Either way, you manage to catch in your mouth five kernels in a row, even with Karkat's increasingly angry and sloppy throws.
As your teeth click closed around the last little kernel, Karkat scoffs.
“Five,” you say, relieved that at least this Alternian word doesn't have any weird clicks or hums or interpretive dance parts. You barely screw up the pronunciation at all. “Your turn.”
Karkat acquiesces and opens his mouth. He gets an intense look on his face, and you can already tell he's going to make some hyper-competitive thing out of this. And then he's going to lose anyway because he's too high-strung.
You pick up five nuts from a bowl (and man, for something so tasty, these are some ugly motherfuckers, all weird greenish-brown and wrinkly, like soaked pistachios) and prepare yourself.
You try to recall the word for 'ready' in Alternian, but it eludes you right now.
“Yes?” you ask instead.
“Yes, yes,” Karkat hisses in English, and opens his mouth wide again.
You throw the first kernel. It arches elegantly through the air, narrowly misses the kitchen ceiling, makes it across the table, reaches Karkat—and then bounces off his forehead.
“Come on, dude, what the hell, you had your eyes closed,” you snort.
“No English!” Karkat snaps, and you belatedly realize you indeed lapsed into English.
You sigh and prepare for the next toss. Karkat manages to keep his eyes open for this one, but the kernel hits his cheek instead. The next one almost gets in his mouth, but hits his teeth instead. The last two tries aren't a rousing success either.
“Five zero,” you say. “I win.”
“You throwed bad,” Karkat grumbles.
“Threw,” you correct.
He stares at you.
“Bullshit,” he says, and you silently commend him for intuitively knowing the correct use of that word.
“Threw. You threw it badly. Or you throw badly. It depends on what you were trying to say, but yeah, believe it or not, 'threw' is still a real word. Threw. Man, it sounds weird as fuck. Threw. Threwwwww.” Okay, you've said it too many times, it's lost its meaning.
“You threw bad,” Karkat repeats.
“Threw badly.”
“Threw badly.”
“'You threw badly'.”
“You threw badly,” Karkat repeats again, this time more impatient. “The worst. Your threws are the worst.”
“My throws are the worst,” you correct.
“My throws are the worst.”
“Sure are, dude.”
Karkat scowls.
“No, your,” he says.
“Uh-huh.”
He bares his teeth at you. Then he pulls the bowl of nuts on the table closer and puts an arm around it protectively. He takes a whole handful and stuffs it in his mouth.
“Mine,” he says.
“But I won,” you say, switching back to Alternian. He dislikes it when you stretch the language lessons for too long just so you have an excuse to talk in English.
“Your throws are the worst,” Karkat recites, and stuffs another handful of nuts in his mouth.
*
To your surprise, it actually took very little effort to adapt to Karkat's schedule. Partly because your biological clock was already fucked by the time you got to Traverse. Another part of it might have been that you were already used to staying up all night, turning in long after dawn, and not crawling out of bed until well into the afternoon.
Either way, after Rose left, you really had no reason to stay at the hotel anymore. All it was doing was eating up your money. And if Rose could move in with her platonic mental health aid boyfriend, you could shack up with Karkat just as easily.
But hey, who needs Rose? Not you. You are doing great. Everything's terrific. Karkat's battered old couch is a fucking dream. His tiny cramped apartment is the shit. The whole building's busted ventilation system is not only the bee's knees, but also the stinger part that gets ripped out of the bee's body after it stabs some unlucky bastard.
Yeah...
There's really only one drawback to your move here, and it's that you could be macking on Karkat right at this very moment but you aren't.
He's in reviewer mode, watching some shitty romcom on his husktop and furiously jotting things down on a notepad. Your Alternian might not be that great, but you still try reading through Karkat's site once in a while, with the aid of an online dictionary and a translation app. You know he can churn out truly massive volumes of vitriol towards the movies he reviews, and even if a third of the word count in any single one of his reviews seems to be taken up by scatological metaphors and references to esoteric alien bodily functions, it's still pretty impressive.
You flop down on the couch with your phone. There's Karkat's desk and chair, a wardrobe, a small book case and a recuperacoon, but the couch is the only piece of furniture in the entire apartment that actually doubles as a guest room. You guess it's called something different in Alternian (cushioned ass-parking platform or something), but even in Alternian, you use the fancy word for it, and that word, as far as you are concerned, is couch. From this vantage point, you can see over Karkat's shoulder, and the movie playing on screen doesn't really hold your attention. It's one of those weird ones that seamlessly blend fluffy scenes of domesticity with graphic instances of gore, and they always give you cultural whiplash.
So you end up half-heartedly surfing the net. Traverse has a variety of local sites, usually in multiple languages, but nothing really interests you outside Karkat's site, so you switch over to the spacenet. Your phone takes forever to sync up, and when it does, you're automatically signed into Pesterchum because you forgot to log off when you closed it last time.
To your misfortune, you are noticed.
TT: So, the prodigal son logs on.
TG: yeah shit what are you gonna do now
TG: throw a feast chop up a veal make a parable outta my ass
TT: Ideally I first determine this is really you. It has been over a month since you fell out of contact, after all. Any number of things could have happened in the meantime.
TT: For all I know Dave was devoured by an alien crocodile monster and what I assume to be his replies might be but random button mashes as it lazily chews on his remains.
TT: It can be so terribly hard to tell at times.
TG: seriously bro id rather have the feast
TT: And your mother would rather get to see and talk to her precious babies.
TG: she didnt actually use those words
TT: No. The words she actually used were “preshus babbus”. Read as written.
TG: its like youre TRYING to induce a guilt aneurysm
TG: you want me to admit i vastly overestimated my cheeky dame wrangling skills dont you
TG: man if i had any of those dont you think id rather be over there picking mom up from what i assume is her comically large pile of empty booze bottles
TT: I wouldn't think so, no. Mostly because your sister has very helpfully filled us in on the reason you've been so scarce lately.
TG: yeah i bet shes been helpful
TG: dont have to outrun the bear just have to outrun me
TG: no goddamn loyalty to the guy she shared a womb with
TT: It seems like you are trying to shift the blame. Is that what you're doing, Dave?
TG: what im doing is coming dangerously close to accidentally dropping this phone out a window
TG: and then going down and stomping on it a bit
TG: maybe run a steamroller over it
TG: shit do aliens even have steamrollers
TG: probably not they probably use some bigass dinosaur lookin leviathan to stomp all the streets in place
TG: or maybe like alien saliva
TG: yeah thats it they probably use alien saliva to get the roads all smooth
TG: that sounds like an appropriately alien thing
TT: Dave, please rein in your bizarre xenobigotry-laden ruminations long enough to answer a simple question.
TT: Will you be staying on Traverse?
TG: can i answer that question later
TT: No.
TG: ask the audience
TG: call a friend
TG: 50/50
TG: hit my head and get a convenient bout of amnesia
TT: No.
TG: no to all of them or no just to the last one
TT: It's a simple question. Don't you find it odd you can't answer it?
TG: man no
TG: i dont find it odd because you just sprung it on me outta nowhere
TG: why would you even assume i wanna stay here permanently
TG: that's not a question you need to be asking a guy
TT: Then why can't you answer it with a simple yes or no?
TG: cuz its a stupid question and im gonna log off now
TT: I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave.
TG: wait
TG: hold on just a minute there
TG: HAL WHAT THE FUCK
TG: i thought i was talking to bro
TG: i was having more goddamn hot flashes than a menopausal fire eater
TT: My apologies. However, do keep in mind that at no point did you ask if I was in fact Dirk.
TG: yeah haha how ridiculous of me to assume that the person using bros handle was actually bro and not his sixth grade science project
TT: To be honest, yes, at this point it really is.
TT: How many times has this happened before? You have an atrocious memory, Dave.
TG: yeah
TG: yeah my memorys so awful
TG: in fact
TG: i just completely forgot your question
TG: im sure it wasnt important anyway
TG: say hi to mom for me
-- turntechGodhead [TG] has gone offline! --
Then you do the mature thing and shove the phone between the couch cushions. You're so busy congratulating yourself for your problem-solving skills, that you don't even notice that you're muttering to yourself. Karkat notices, though, because he pauses his movie and turns to look at you.
You grimace a bit—just how much of that did he understand?—but every single word of Alternian you managed to painstakingly squeeze into your head this past month is eluding you at the moment, so you just wave him off.
“Nothing to see here, move along,” you mutter.
Karkat scowls at you, and you half-expect him to snap “no English!”, as is his habit lately (you'd take to yelling “no Alternian!” at him in retribution, but he somehow manages to never break the rules) but instead he gets up and comes towards you.
“Move,” he says, gesturing at you to make room for him. You don't know how he does it, but whenever it comes down to ordering you around, he always seems to know the exact words he needs.
You move over and he drapes himself over half your body, aggressively locking you into a full-body cuddle. You admire his dedication to the ancient art of canoodling, but he's actually pretty heavy (like a lot heavy; like you're not completely sure he isn't rocking an adamantium skeleton heavy), and you are additionally trapped against the couch backrest.
“Karkat--” you begin, but he shushes you and pats your mouth. “Uh, dude...”
He puts his arm back around your torso and nuzzles your neck. He does that weird thing with his mouth, not really kissing, not really biting, that somehow signifies affection for trolls (probably in the same 'hey look, I didn't rip your throat out, that means I really like you' way that all troll affection manifests). It's kind of cute, like a baby chewing on a security blanket. You don't really mind it. It's all part of the special deluxe alien boyfriend package.
He starts purring at one point, which you mind even less, because with him pressed against you like this, it feels like getting a full body massage. You never found cat purring particularly soothing, and cats at least don't sound like a rusty chain-smoking chainsaw trying to yodel, but this is somehow different. Probably alien pheromones or mind control or something. Yeah, that must be it. There's no other explanation.
You sit there for a long time, and you think maybe you drift off at some point, maybe several times, but the purring, as soothing as it is, keeps waking you up. Time dilates into a long formless stretch of warmth and comfort.
This makes it even more jarring when there is a thunderous knock on the door.
Karkat is so startled, he falls off the couch. He looks around, bristling, confused, as if expecting attackers to jump out from behind the furniture. You guess he might have fallen asleep too, or been lulled into the same hazy cuddle-stupor as you. He blinks slowly.
Welp. That didn't last long.
The knock comes again. It's unbearably loud and forceful, and you're thankful that your sword is behind the entrance door when you go to answer.
You open the door and look up. There's a brief moment of confusion as you regard the troll at the door and the troll regards you. For a moment, you both seem equally confused by each other.
Something about the troll's clothing is vaguely familiar to you. You're sure it must be a uniform, though the red shades can't possibly be part of it. As you ponder this, the troll leans in (leans down, more like, because they're at least a head taller than you) and inhales deeply, their nostrils flaring creepily.
But if you thought that part was creepy, it's nothing compared to the wide, toothy grin the troll offers you.
“Terezi?” Karkat says, and when you turn around, he looks gobsmacked.
You think maybe it's a name and not some Alternian word you don't recognize, because in the next moment, the troll turns their grin on Karkat.
“Hello, Karkat,” the troll greets in a gravelly but cheerful voice.