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“Egbert, you are the most fucking infuriatingly retarded vertebrate ever to have the goddamn misfortune to walk on two fucking legs. I weep for the state of the world that you were ever fucking allowed to grow from a wiggler and not stomped on and ground up into a brand fucking new color of paint prized throughout the empire for its uniquely fucking shit-like shade. You are literally so stupid that a new word had to be made to describe how stupid you are, and that word is John Egbert.”
“That’s two words!”
You almost have to physically restrain yourself from leaping on his stupid adorable skinny chest and throttling the life out of him. He grins idiotically and pushes his stupid square glasses up his nose with one finger. Stupid stupid stupid. Ugh.
“You dipshit. Let’s try this again. Are your fucking auricular sponge clots ready to receive the data I am about to transmit to you, idiot?”
“I’m ready.” He puts on his serious face, which looks at least twelve times as stupid when he’s wearing his Ghostbusters pajamas since you were both too lazy to get dressed today, or really get out of bed at all except to eat your breakfast of blueberry pop tarts with strawberry jam all over them. He’s sitting with his legs stretched out, and you are sitting in between them somewhere near his knees so you can lunge forward and tear his face off with your teeth if needed. You take a deep breath as you prepare to rework your explanation.
“Okay. Do I need to go over the fucking ancestor shit again? Do you need an itemized list of every fucking one of them with helpful titles, symbols, and blood color, or did you manage to fucking remember at least mine?”
“No, no, I remember! The Signless Sufferer, right?” Fuck him, he remembered. “He had a new blood color, just like yours, and somehow that ties into human blood or something? I’m not very clear on that part.”
“Me either, so for once we’re fucking even there.”
“And he was really nice and wanted everyone to get along, right? So they killed him. Because that’s what you guys do. Uh, and he had a girlfriend or something who wrote down everything he ever said ever and then when he got killed she went crazy.”
“Right. Shit, you got it straightened out quicker than I ever fucking did.”
“Yeah! I think that stuff is really neat. And, you know,” he says, beaming like a kid who just made a fucking graintube picture for his lusus, “I care about everything you say!”
He looks so fucking stupid you have to make a valiant effort for your face not to soften, and you end up looking kind of like you just shat your pajama bottoms. John grins even bigger and grabs you and pulls you up against him, and you spend a minute or fifteen snuggl – allowing him to hold you and maybe smelling his hair just a little. He smells like warm and nice and blue Gushers. You almost fall asleep with your face in his neck and listening to him breathe, but then you remember you’re supposed to be telling him how dumb he is. You squirm your way out of his gangly fucktard arms and huff at him.
“Look, I don’t know why you’re not fucking getting this. I ruined everything forever and six trolls and almost four humans are dead because I’m such a fucknut. I am a shitty fuckup failure and literally the worst troll ever to live. This is indisputable fact.”
His big blue eyes get all watery and for a minute you think he’s going to start fucking crying again, but he manages to control himself. “None of us are dead, though! And, and you said, without the slime and everything some of you would probably have, uh, gone kinda crazy anyway! So none of it is your fault. You just… made the best of a bad situation.” He runs his thumb over one of your nubby-ass horns, and your eyes cross for a minute and you completely lose the fucking thread of conversation. You half-assedly start to shout something, but you really don’t care enough to actually make noise come out of you. Until he takes his hand away, at least.
“Oh fuck you that is a fucking cheap trick and you know it, you piece of shit.”
“It calms you down really good!”
“I’m never fucking calm.”
“That’s not truuuuuuuue.” He starts to reach out again, but you anticipate his bullshit and grab his hand. You glower at him as you kiss his palm and carefully bite each fingertip. He looks embarrassed. What the fuck is there to be embarrassed about? You have done this a million times and much fucking worse things besides and he looks like you just fucking inserted your taste slug into his ear in front of his grandmother. Fortunately you do not give a shit, at least at this moment, and keep kissing his hand. By the time you make your way up his arm and bite his shoulder through his pajamas and push him up against the headboard for some much-fucking-deserved kisses, you have written off today as yet another day during which you will absolutely not get anything fucking done, just like all the other days for about a week and a half now. You’re distracted with kissing his blushing cheeks when he mumbles “I still don’t think you’re a failure” and then the moment is hopelessly ruined when you get all het up again, as that asshole Strider would say.
“This is utter fuckery. I need advice from someone outside this mobius fucking double reacharound of you not listening to what I’m fucking laying on you. Stay here, I’m going to go consult the fucking internet.”
“But,” he whines.
“Oh, god damn you.” The two of you spend a little longer wrapped up in each other’s arms. He likes to listen to your central cardiovascular reservoir beating, and you’re not saying you fucking like his head on your chest or anything but sometimes you oblige him just because he’s letting you stay with him and all. But you do actually have to use the load gaper, so you kiss him on the top of his dumb little head and nibble on his ear and then he lets you go.
You use his weird porcelain load gaper and then go to your husktop, where you left it on the culinary consumption platform. From there you log on to Pesterchum (John, fuck him, convinced you to swap now that you’re on Earth, and you were about to tell him fuck off when he did that stupid fucking hopeful little smile he does) and spend a few minutes glowering at the aggressively, eye-burningly shitty color scheme. It reminds you of Sollux, and that just gets you all kinds of pissed off. You get even more pissed off when you see that the only person currently online is Rose fucking Lalonde. You do not want to deal with that hysterical broad and her snarky horseshit, but you suppose you have no choice. Your mission is vitally important. And it looks like she’s in a Chummy mood, for the first time in fucking recorded history, so there’s that.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --
CG: LALONDE.
TT: Vantas.
CG: ARE YOU FUCKING FREE AT THE MOMENT?
TT: I am not fucking free at the moment. I am, however, free for conversation.
CG: HAR DE FUCKING HAR. AND NOT A SINGLE FUCK WAS GIVEN THAT DAY.
CG: MY SHAME GLOBES ARE ALREADY STARTING TO HEAT WITH THE BURNING FLAME OF A THOUSAND ALTERNIAN NOONS, SO I’D BETTER GET THIS SHIT OVER WITH:
CG: I NEED YOUR HELP.
TT: Oh my goodness.
TT: Let me take a picture of this moment and put it in my scrapbook for posterity.
CG: FUCK YOU.
CG: IF ONLY I COULD REACH THROUGH PESTERCHUM AND SQUEEZE YOUR IMBECILIC LITTLE COCKNOGGIN IN MY MIGHTY FIST OF HATRED.
TT: Could you get to the point? I know that’s quite difficult for you, but I’m a tad busy. When I said I was free for conversation, I didn’t mean I’m waiting on pins and needles for the next message in your ridiculous diatribe.
CG: YOU’RE ON PESTERCHUM, WHAT THE FUCK COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE BUSY WITH?
TT: I’m teaching Kanaya how to sew.
CG: KANAYA ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO SEW. I SHOULD FUCKING KNOW, SHE TRIED TO MAKE ME THE PRETTY GODDAMN PRINCESS OFTEN ENOUGH.
TT: I’m going to try to put that mental image in a mental garbage bag and throw it into the mental incinerator, if you don’t mind.
TT: And she needs to work on her… technique.
TT: She’s becoming quite good at threading the needle.
TT: We may work on her binding next.
CG: WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE.
TT: With all this bodice-ripping shr’ll be a mavrelous seamstress in no time.
CG: WHAT THE FUCK.
TT: In fct I think shm might be them best i’ve ever had fhe pleasure to knowotlkg;,
CG: LALONDE.
CG: LALONDE, YOU DEMENTED FUCKING SAPPHIST, ARE YOU DEAD?
-- tentacleTherapist [TT] is now an idle chum! --
CG: OH GOD, YOU ARE DEAD.
CG: OH GOD.
CG: OH GOD OH FUCK.
CG: FUCK WHAT AM I GOING TO TELL JOHN.
-- tentacleTherapist [TT] is no longer idle! --
TT: Yes, Karkat, I died.
TT: Just a little one, though.
TT: It’s really a miracle I’m still here talking to you.
CG: LALONDE YOU SICK FUCK.
TT: Thank you.
CG: ARE YOU DONE WITH YOUR REVOLTING BUCKET-FILLING NOW, OR SHOULD I LEAVE YOU AND YOUR FUCKING LADY FRIEND ALONE FOR THE REST OF FUCKING ETERNITY?
TT: We’re finished… for now. And she’s not my “fucking lady friend,” she’s my special lady.
CG: LKSAJDFGOAJERIOF
CG: FUCK YOU, AND FUCK YOU, AND FUCK YOU, AND FUCK THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION, AND I CANNOT BELIEVE I THOUGHT TALKING TO YOU WAS AN ACTUAL GOOD IDEA. PAST ME IS THE FUCKING MORON OF THE SWEEP.
CG: I NEED ADVICE ABOUT JOHN.
TT: Oooooh.
TT: Kanaya & I are listening raptly. She says hello, by the way, now that her mouth isn’t full.
CG: WHAT.
CG: WHAT THE FUCK.
CG: ARE YOU MAKING FUN OF ME, LALONDE?
TT: If I were making fun of you, I’m sure I would pick up on it before you ever had the slightest inkling.
CG: THEN WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT SYMBOL?
CG: I KNOW YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT REAL ROMANCE, AND ESPECIALLY NOT ABOUT OUR ANCESTORS.
CG: UNLESS KANAYA TOLD YOU I GUESS.
CG: BUT YOU TWO ARE WAY TOO FUCKING BUSY FUCKING TO ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT ANYTHING.
TT: I know everything there is to know about troll romance, thank you very much.
TT: Kanaya & I have talked quite a bit about it.
CG: STOP FUCKING USING THAT SIGN.
TT: The ampersand?
CG: I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR SHITTY LANGUAGE CALLS IT.
CG: IT’S THE &.
TT: That’s an ampersand. It means ‘and.’
TT: Well, technically.
TT: It’s a ligature of ‘et,’ which is a dead language’s word for ‘and.’
TT: Nowadays it’s used in a phrase to indicate two things which don’t mean the same thing outside the phrase.
CG: FUCK YOU.
CG: THAT’S NOT WHAT IT MEANS.
CG: FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING BORING EXPLICATIONS.
TT: Do explain how cataclysmically wrong I am, then.
CG: YOU WOULDN’T EVEN FUCKING GET IT.
CG: YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT THE ANCESTORS.
TT: Kanaya told me a bit about those, as well. She named them, at least.
TT: What does the ampersand have to do with them?
CG: I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M GOING TO EXPLAIN THIS HUMILIATING SHIT TO YOUR IDIOTIC HUMAN ASS.
CG: MAYBE I’LL PRETEND I’M TALKING TO KANAYA INSTEAD.
CG: MY ANCESTOR, THE SUFFERER, AND NEPETA’S ANCESTOR, THE DISCIPLE, WERE A FUCKING ITEM.
CG: THEY WERE TOO BUSY WITH OTHER SHIT LIKE STAGING A FUCKING REBELLION TO GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE QUADRANTS.
CG: BUT THEY WERE STILL A FUCKING COUPLE.
CG: AS FUCKING ASHAMED AS I AM TO ADMIT ANYTHING INVOLVED WITH ME EVER EVEN TOUCHED THAT DISGUSTING AUTISMAL HAIRBALL MAY SHE FUCKING REST IN PEACE.
CG: THEY INVENTED A NEW SIGN TO COMMUNICATE THAT THEY DID NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE QUADRANTS.
CG: AND THAT SYMBOL IS &.
CG: THE SUFFERER & HIS DISCIPLE.
CG: SO I FUCKING GUESS THAT SHIT GOT SMEARED ALL OVER YOUR AWFUL LITTLE PLANET’S CULTURE TOO.
TT: Well.
TT: That’s quite fascinating, actually. Thank you for the explanation.
CG: FUCK YOU.
TT: I think I’ll keep using it the way I have been already, though.
CG: TH
CG: WH
CG: DO WHATEVER YOU FUCKING WANT, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT. I JUST DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE FUCKING CHICANERY YOU GET UP TO WITH MY BEST FRIEND.
TT: If you insist.
TT: I’ll completely disregard your protests, of course.
TT: Now that we’ve had Romance Lession Number Two for the day, what did you want to ask me about John?
CG: OH.
CG: RIGHT.
CG: THAT.
CG: FUCK.
CG: HE REFUSES TO BELIEVE THAT I’M A SHITTY FUCKUP FAILURE, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I EXPLAIN AND GIVE EXAMPLES AND TELL HIM ABOUT THE SUFFERER BEING MY ANCESTOR SO IT’S IN MY FUCKING GENES.
CG: I KEEP LAYING IT ALL OUT FOR HIM AND HE JUST FUCKING LAUGHS.
CG: IS THERE SOME KIND OF MAGIC ‘MAKE THE SHITWIT LISTEN’ BUTTON I CAN PRESS?
TT: I don’t think that’s factory standard on John’s particular model.
CG: FUCK, LALONDE, IS THERE ANYFUCKINGTHING ELSE ON YOUR MIND ANYMORE?
TT: Forgive me for finding something new I enjoy doing. Frequently and with great vigor and relish.
TT: And yes, that does sound like John.
TT: Have you considered that he might not think you’re a shitty fuckup failure?
TT: The entire time I’ve known John I don’t think he’s ever had feelings that negative towards anyone.
TT: And if he were to pick some lucky person to bathe with the clumsy ichor of his inexperienced hate, it certainly wouldn’t be you.
CG: IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT HE FUCKING THINKS.
CG: MY SHITTY FUCKUP FAILUREHOOD IS A PROVEN FACT.
CG: MY SHITTY FUCKUP FAILUREHOOD IS WHY HALF OF US ARE DEAD.
CG: NONE OF YOU ARE DEAD. JOHN IS A MUCH BETTER LEADER THAN I EVER WAS.
CG: AND HE REFUSES TO BELIEVE IT.
CG: HE JUST SAYS, “HAHA, KARKAT, YOU’RE SO SILLY!” OR “OH KARKAT, DON’T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF!” OR SOMETIMES HE JUST FUCKING HUGS ME OR KISSES ME AND KNOCKS ME WITH THOSE FUCKING HOPBEAST TEETH.
CG: THE OTHER DAY HE STARTED CRYING A LITTLE.
CG: AND THAT JUST MADE ME FEEL LIKE A BIGGER SHITTY FUCKUP FAILURE.
CG: FUCK, ARE YOU EVEN STILL LISTENING?
TT: Yes, raptly. Kanaya told me to let you talk. You have no idea the effort it took to restrain myself from barbed comments.
TT: Although it wasn’t as difficult as it might have been. You’re surprisingly gentle when you talk about him.
CG: IF YOU TELL ANYONE I WILL PERSONALLY COME OVER THERE AND STRANGLE YOU WITH ONE OF YOUR FUCKING SCARVES.
TT: Your adorable secret is safe with us.
CG: ADORABLOODTHIRSTY, YOU INCREDIBLE PIECE OF SHIT.
TT: Of course.
TT: At any rate I’m not sure what advice I can give you on the subject.
TT: I think convincing John that you are a shitty fuckup failure might be an exercise in futility.
TT: I’m surprised you aren’t familiar with those already.
TT: You might try asking him what he thinks of you, though, and then build off of that.
CG: SHIT, I GUESS I’LL TRY THAT THEN. I’M AT MY WIT’S FUCKING END HERE.
CG: THANKS, ASSHOLE.
CG: NOW FUCK OFF.
TT: You too.
-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --
You log off Pesterchum and close the husktop, and instead of getting up you sit there for a minute thinking. It’s a little bit pathetic; when you’re not with John you’re thinking about being with him, even when he’s right there in the other room. Lalonde always says the two of you are fucking cute, and while you’re bellowing at her that she wouldn’t know what cute is if it crawled out from underneath her book of tentacle rape monsters and batted her feet with its tiny paws, somewhere inside you you desperately want to be cute, you want to hold hands with John and walk in the park and take stupid bubble baths with him and give each other bubble beards. You want it more than you can fucking articulate, which is a fucking feat for someone as goddamn articulate as you are. But you can’t, because you still hate yourself. And you don’t deserve him because you’re such a worthless fuck and he can’t even see it, and he’s going to let you drag him down with you and then you’ll really never forgive yourself. Fuck. You had better get back to him before he decides to bake you another cake or something. You hurry right the fuck back into the bedroom, and what you see in there makes you stop. You stop, and you stare. Somebody has to be making this shit up. You are dreaming, because nobody could ever possibly be this ridiculously, idiotically wonderful.
John is still lying in bed in his pajamas, except now he’s tipped forwards and is laying with his head in the ass crater where you were sitting. His glasses are all crooked, and he’s smiling just a little so his teeth barely peek out. He nuzzles his face this way and that, and presses into the sheets and takes a deep breath, and climbs into the bed-divot and curls up there like a fucking cat, smiling like he never got stabbed through the chest by a dimension-jumping carapace dog. He is cute enough for you and him and twenty other people mashed up and distilled into pure disgusting sugar. You can feel your sentiment bladder inflating fit to burst inside your chest. You might have to go to the doctor. You open your mouth even though you don’t trust your voice right now, and it comes out as shitty and wobbly as you expected.
“…John?” He sits up and smiles really big, and almost trips as he jumps off the bed and into your arms. You hold him tight and give him a little kiss on the shoulder, which makes him sigh and get all melty against you. Oh, god, you can feel your inflating sentiment bladder displacing other vital fucking organs. Your bile duct is malfunctioning from the pressure.
“I missed you,” he says.
“I was only gone for like ten minutes,” you mumble into his neck, and carefully do not say that you missed him too. You came within inches of losing each other so often that is not a thing you even want to fucking consider at this juncture. God, how the fuck is he still so warm when he woke up like four hours ago?
“So? That doesn’t matter.” He headbutts you until you lift your head up, so he can give you his big dreamy smile. “Did you find what you were looking for on the internet?”
“Sort of. I found Lalonde, which is like putting your hand through a wood chipper to pick up the gold coins on the other side.”
“She’s not that bad!”
“Not to you. Nobody thinks you’re shit.” He rests his forehead on yours and puts his hands on your shoulders, and this time you can’t see his pajamas so his serious look has the intended fucking effect.
“Nobody thinks you’re shit either,” he chides you gently. “Just you. I wish you would stop.” Your jaw flaps uselessly for a minute.
“Lalonde said you don’t fucking hate anybody, so of course you’d say that,” you croak. “She said I should… ask you what you think of me.” When his face gets plastered with a big dumb grin you suddenly realize that this was a trap all along, she lured you right into the fucking snare and you fell for it like a wiggler. Shit shit shit.
“Weeeeeeeell,” he says. He slides his hands down your back and then up your spine and the back of your neck and through your hair, and you are abruptly a paraplegic and he has to drag you back to bed and settle you in his lap again before he can keep talking. He settles his hands in the small of your back. “I think you’re the nicest person I’ve ever met. Except maybe for Jade. You’re all, rar rar I’m big and scary but you really do care about everybody.” He kisses you on the forehead. “I like that you picked me. I feel really lucky that you thought it was safe and okay to show me that you like me. And I think you’re way too hard on yourself. Nobody blames you for what happened except you. It’s over now, and what’s done is done, right?” He kisses your cheek and smiles right in your face again. “I love you, Karkat. Okay?”
Well.
Shit.
You are pretty sure your sentiment bladder ruptures, and all the noise that you can make is a tiny little “guh” before you start sobbing into his shoulder, shaking in his tight embrace. He strokes your hair and your face and your horns and kisses your head all over, and you think you can hear him going “shooooosh” as you tremble. He rocks back and forth with you in his lap, and it calms you down sooner than you thought it would, until you’re just laying against him like some kind of limp shitty grey fish. Fuck, you shouldn’t have thought that, now your brain is going wwhat do you mean limp and shitty kar are you tryin to make some kind a solefishitation here and your central cardiac reservoir breaks a little again. Just a little, though. John’s still smiling, but he has that weird look like he’s about to kiss you but not. His pajama shoulder is soaked with your disgusting candy-red tears.
“Love you too,” you manage after a minute, and then you snorf so hard you feel a gallon of horrible Karkat snot dripping down your throat. Ew. He makes a cluckbeast noise and wipes your nose with his pajamas, and when he lifts them up you can see his weird human stomach. His adorable human stomach, with the little bump in the middle that has something to do with their bizarre disgusting system of internal gestation and that makes him giggle whenever you lick it. You let him wipe your face off in return for him letting you stroke his tummy, and the two of you renegotiate your positions on the bed so you’re laying down stretched out against each other, your hand up his shirt and his arms around you. You trace little &s on his skin with one claw and hope he doesn’t vegetable-lamb on to what you’re doing; luckily he seems more interested in rubbing his face between your horns with his glasses pushed up on his forehead.
“How do you feel?” he mumbles to you, shoving his face down the side of your head until he’s kissing your ear.
“Much better.” It’s not a lie, this time, even. You do feel much better. John just waves his magic fucking wand and everything is instantly better and you don’t even resent him for it anymore, especially not when he’s using his magic fairy powers on you. All the simmering anger from his blatant refusal to fucking listen to you has been washed away by just a little flattery. You are so fucking easy. You press your head up under his chin and sigh. “But your fucking Slimer pajamas are ruined, that shit never fucking comes out, that’s why we all wear black, idiot.”
“Oh well! I can order some new ones. Maybe I can get ones with my zodiac sign on them, just like yours!” You have a momentary, horrifying image of John with big curling horns taped on his head, floating in midair with the bottoms of his shitty Aries pajamas all tattered. “It’s worth it if you feel better anyway, Karkat! I’m glad I could cheer you up. We’re supposed to be relaxing for a while, not getting all worked up, you know?”
You just let out the loudest, most irritated sigh you can muster, which at the fucking moment is not at all. “Have I told you how fucking weird it is yet to not be in danger of getting completely fucked every moment of every day?”
“Uh huh. A bunch of times. You’ll get used to it, and then we can go to the mall and the amusement park and stuff! Just as soon as you’re, uh, calmed down a little. I don’t want to have to apologize to anybody for you decapitating their lawn ornaments again.”
“That was one fucking incident. And it was looking at me, Egbert. You saw that.”
“Uh huh. I still think it’s good to stay in for a few days.”
“Yeah. So what d’you say we cut the chit-chat, a-hole?” You are absolutely unable to not grin and wiggle your eyebrows like fucking Pyrope. She’s probably laughing maniacally in whatever storage tank of cough syrup she undoubtedly found her way to. John lights up again like a twelfth perigee’s eve beast corpse all wrapped in signal lights, and then you bump foreheads because both of you lean in to kiss at the same time. Eventually you get it right, and kiss soundly for a while. He giggles into your mouth, then does the fucking windy thing or something because when your head stops spinning you’re laying on your back in a completely different spot on the bed and he’s snuggled up on top of you with his chin rested on his folded arms. You suspect your expression is the very essence of what the fuck was that.
“Tell me more about the Sufferer,” he says, his eyes sparkling. His expression makes it a fucking entreaty.
“Fucking really? You want storytime again?”
“Yeah!” God, the things you do for love. You rub your forehead for a minute with an enormous sigh that ruffles John’s hair.
“Alright. Fine. Jesus fuck. So once upon a time, there was this worthless fuckass of a grub no lusus in their right fucking mind would ever pick for their own…”