Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"What did we used to put over there, again? There has to have been something..."

One bed up, Jake mumbled something unintelligible into his pillow, and failed to offer any insight. John furrowed his brows, deep in thought.

The empty space at the foot of his bed kept being empty and oddly pointless.

"I mean, we're squeezed like a bunch of sardines in a single-fish cockpit in here, there wouldn't have been just some random space, right?"

"Jus' put a chair in it," Jake advised. John considered it.

"But how would you sit on it, though? And you'd be on the short side of the desk, too; that's kind of weird, isn't it?"

"Mnhffhh. Jooohn..."

John looked up at the slats of Jake's bed, then decided it wasn't the best way to have a conversation. He leaned his upper body out and craned his neck. "Yes?"

"I understand you're all out of sorts," the traitor cousindadclone said. John spluttered. Jake kept going, vaguely grumpy. "And I would love to hash things out with you, such as how to decorate our goshdarned bedroom. But you'll forgive me if I remind you it's eight in the friggin' morning."

John spluttered. "But you were awake!"

"Because you keep tossin' n' turning! Cripes. Please can you go play in the living room?"

Huffing in outrage at this totally unfair attack on his good faith, John got up and left the room.

Bleh. He supposed he should go shower now. Or maybe breakfast first, and then shower.

Or maybe he'd skip the shower today. It wasn't like he had gotten dirty or sweaty since yesterday. He was still grounded; his replacement mech wouldn't be ready for...

For a while. Yeah.

He trudged down the stairs; the living room was empty. Bluh. Breakfast was so boring alone.

He should eat anyway, he supposed. He started cooking.

"Mrow?"

John craned his head. The cat had appeared on the counter, just behind him. Yay, company. "Oh, hey, Mutie. You agree, right, it's not cool to eat alone?"

"Myaoow."

Cruelly bored with him already, Mutie started wandering off. John bribed him to hang out with bacon.

"Yeah, you're not my first choice of company either, you selfish thing."

He wasn't the one who kept track of their food, but while Mutie delicately ate his bacon piece, John went to top off Mutie's and Jaspers' bowls anyway, and then Bec's while he was at it, making sure to rattle the boxes. Maybe it'd make the other two furry nuisances mysteriously appear.

It didn't, and now Mutie was washing his butthole on the counter and paying John zero attention. "Okay, how am I supposed to pretend you're actually listening?" John complained half-heartedly.

Slump. Look at my woe, oozing all over the dinner table in purest teenage tradition. What was he even supposed to do with his day? Karkat would decide once he woke up, but no doubt it would only involve bringing John around as a bodyguard-slash-translating machine. Yesterday had been busy as hell that way, and today would probably be worse on account of now more people would be ready to talk to him.

Jake was wrong, though; John was not out of sorts. It was just weird, was all, to drift through the house alone and pointless while everyone else was out doing their own thing -- and it was boring to know he had nothing to get ready for, not really. He'd been in a space battle two days ago, finally -- just in time to basically be told 'haha! and now you go right back to being grounded indefinitely.'

Yeah. Boredom and pointlessness. That was all.

...That was plenty!

"What do you think, cat? Should I, um, catch up on my reading...? Hah. No. Movie? I haven't watched a movie since Karkat, wow, it's been like two months."

Sitting around passively staring at a screen sounded like a good way for him to end up throwing things and shouting for no reason. Bluuuurgh.

... Training?

JH: broooooooooo can i come and train with you?
BR: Huh. You wake up with a taste for pain today?
JH: i woke up with a taste of if i don't do something i will probably explode.
JH: i am your masochistic whipping boy today. spank me into shape oh my god please. i will beg.
JH: bro?
JH: mr strideeeeeeeeeeer, siiiiiiiiiiiiiiir!! :((((
BR: No. Stop. Cease. Refrain. Desist.
BR: This is the most fucking wrong discussion I have ever had with you and we're barely six lines in.
JH: what did i say?? like it's even a secret you live to torture us!
BR: Yeeeeah, I'm forwarding this convo to Dirk. If he sees your face and starts laughing so hard he needs to curl up in a corner and hide, here's your clue as to why.
JH: okay, it really isn't cool of you not to explain!
BR: If I explain, your pater will somehow find out and hunt me down with murder aforethought.
JH: ...
JH: did it sound like i was coming on to you or
JH: oh my god YOU KNOW I DIDN'T MEAN IT LIKE THAT!!!
JH: you're kind of an asshole, you know!
BR: It's only fitting revenge for the *oh dear lord wrong no stop* you just inflicted on me.
JH: you'd have to be a real perv to take SM jokes as actual come ons, i mean, seriously!
BR: I swear if you make me bite my tongue any harder I will deserve to be nominated for sainthood.
BR: Considering what I'm holding back, that's really impressive.

John spluttered. The cat side-eyed him.

BR: Change of topic. Nothing to do?
BR: Karkat's packages just got here with the mail chopper. Come down to the front door and get them, will you?

Oh thank God. John jumped to his feet and power-walked to the door.

JH: will do!!
JH: why can't you bring them up, though?
BR: Deliveryman's an assturd.
BR: I distract him, you snatch up the shit and run.
JH: pff. sure thing.

When John got to the last landing he wasn't sure if he was very surprised to see Bro standing in the doorway, a shoulder casually pressed against the frame, blocking Jack Noir's way in, in case the man would have wanted to come in for some reason.

There were indeed packages on the front step, but they were between the two men. John wasn't too sure how literally he should take the order to grab them and run.

"Morning, kid. Where's your other half?"

"I dunno, he's probably still in bed," John grumped as he made his way to the door. "--And stop making it sound like we're married, okay, it's a really lame joke, Dave was making it three weeks ago already, you should be ashamed."

Noir was staring at him weird. John frowned back.

"What?"

"Nothing. What are you doing here?"

John shrugged. "Taking Karkat's things up to him? What are you still doing here, do you need a signature on delivery or what?"

"Careful with that mouth, kid," the man drawled, eyes narrowing in lazy threat.

John snorted quietly and leaned out of the door to pick up the packages. One of them was taller than he was, narrow and flat -- not heavy at all, but awkward to juggle with the rest.

"Tell Karkat to bring me any bugs he finds in there, yeah?" Bro said, thumbs tucked negligently in his pockets and still staring at Noir through his shades.

"We scanned for that shit already," Noir replied, annoyed.

"Yeah, for everything except the ones you put in yourself, innit?"

They were barely paying him any attention. John wondered if they'd start fighting the second he left, and then wondered if he really wanted or needed to stop them. They were grown men and professionals, if they wanted to beat each other up on their off time he was sure it wouldn't get to the point where either of them needed a hospital.

He had the feeling it had been brewing for a while, at any rate. If he stayed to cockblock them fighting he'd probably only delay it.

"Okay, well," he said loudly as he juggled the packages around until he had them in a solid grip, "Karkat will find any you guys have missed in a hot minute anyway. I'll just get going then? Bye, have fun, don't break anything--"

"Get the hell out of here," Strider growled tiredly at him. Snorting, John did.

He climbed the stairs two by two, a mess of smaller packages under one arm and the long flat one under the other. He and Karkat had spent an hour yesterday making a list and placing this order; Karkat would want his things straight away, John was sure. Especially since there were some Karkat should be taught how to use before they had to go out and meet people.

John kept going straight instead of turning into the living room, climbed his way up to the Doc and Dad's quarters. Separate quarters.

Previously separate quarters. If he tiptoed while passing Romy Lalonde's bedroom it was totally out of respect for her potential sleepiness and not at all because he wanted to never get visual proof of his dad exiting it.

(No, seriously, them getting together was cute and a great thing to tease them about, but actual confirmation of bedroom shenanigans was major Do Not Want territory.)

At the end of that corridor was his dad's ex-bedroom, now Karkat's, and it was weird as hell that he wasn't even in the same section of the house anymore, that he would open a different front door and everything. Even his windows didn't look in the same direction.

John eyed the palm lock at the door dubiously, and kicked at the bottom lightly as he shuffled things around to free a hand.

"Karkat? Karkat, I've got things for you, you gotta get up now!"

No answer. Huh. He managed to swipe a palm on the lock and -- bingo, his handprint still opened it.

The room was dark, blinds closed tight, though he could still see the emptiness of it. All the pictures on the walls and most of his dad's furniture had been removed, even the bed -- hah, especially the bed -- and it made the room feel strange, unfamiliar. Especially considering what it had been replaced with.

John propped the long box against the wall right by the door and bent over to place the rest on the floor, for lack of end table or chest of drawers to use instead.

Then Karkat erupted from the bathtub in the corner like a B-movie zombie out of his grave, sitting up so fast that red goo splashed out. Wet hands grabbed the sides and he heaved himself up, and John dropped his armful.

Karkat only stopped moving to stare at him when he was already on his feet, a hand still on the tub's edge to brace, bent forward with his shoulders bulging like he was about to pounce.

"... Huhn. Zhann?"

John straightened up in a hurry. "Haha. Yeah. Sorry I startled you, your packages got here and--"

Karkat loosened all over -- shoulders drooping, head bowing with a sigh -- and he stepped out of the tub, dripping slick cockpit goo all over the floor and all down his body.

He'd slept naked.

Karkat coughed up a handful of gross phlegm into his hand like it was nothing, dropped it back into the tub (euurgh) then straightened up, casual, unselfconscious -- nothing like the nerves at the start, showering with all of them. A hand came up to wipe at his eyelids. His hair was glued down but for a few stubborn tufts, licking down his cheeks and neck, horns showing down to the reddest section. Chalk-white scars showed up starkly in the darkened room and --

A bit of a pocket brick wall, John thought, apropos of nothing, and thought it'd be funny if Karkat beefed up even more with age. His shoulders were already...

It'd be...

"You're a girl?"

Karkat blinked slowly at him, eyelids all droopy. "Mnh?"

John started to gesture toward his crotch, where the lack of light had oh god, he hadn't meant to activate the light optimization setting on his glasses.

... Yeah, no, there was pretty obviously nothing much there. Or more like -- not quite like a woman's but --

John tore his eyes away, turned his back on Karkat, his face prickling with sudden, violent heat.

Narrow male hips and strong thighs and a pussy.

"I'm a girl?" Karkat repeated slowly behind him. "Like Zade and Rhoz is girl?" He sounded -- he sounded half-asleep, he sounded relaxed. John had never heard or seen him relaxed. "Big dumb face-ass. You go in my head, see my head things. You know I'm not a girl. You say that why?"

John laughed, wanted to scream a little instead. Karkat gave a little thoughtful hum (still naked, still naked at John's back, why wasn't he getting dressed??) and concluded, "Weirdo."

"Hey!" John protested on automatic. "I'm not--"

He choked on his words. His face still felt hot, his throat.

"I just, um. You've seen what we have, and, uh, you don't have it. Is all. And hey, how about you get cleaned up and dressed and we talk about all the things in those boxes, won't that be awesome, yeah, totally awesome--"

Karkat made a 'can't hear you, speak louder' questioning noise from the attached bathroom. John hadn't even noticed him walking away. Gawghrgh.

"Nah, nothing," John said, and kept staring down the door.

Kept trying not to remember in detail what it was that he had seen, but his mind kept coming back to it, worrying at it. It just... it had been unexpected. Very -- yeah. Very that.

"Zhann."

John flinched around, eyes flicking down Karkat's body fast. Karkat was shirtless, hair wet -- with water, not slime -- but now wearing jeans. John wasn't sure what he felt. No way to get a better look but he -- that was fine, he didn't want... He hadn't wanted to know what Karkat was packing but now he sort of did, damn it! Too much information. But the image wasn't clear and somehow that made it even worse than knowing nothing at all.

"I want my door don't open," Karkat grumbled half-heartedly, and scratched at a little red fleck on his belly. He looked a little more awake, but barely.

But good, too, not angry with life, not exhausted and frustrated and ready to bite. John tilted his head a little, gave an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry I came in. It's just -- hey! I think some of these are your new clothes." He crouched near the boxes, looked at the labels, shook the boxes a little. "Oh, yeah, this one." He handed it out, smiling a little. "Open it?"

Karkat took it from his hand, brow furrowed faintly, and poised his claws and arched an eyebrow at John.

"Yeah, you can wreck it, it's just cardboard. Go for it, dude."

"Mmkay." Karkat's claws popped in and he started tearing methodically at the side of the box. John got back up.

As a sort-of ambassador, Karkat deserved his privacy, now, didn't he. John's father had told him. John probably shouldn't just barge in like he barged in everywhere else in the house.

"I'm sorry I walked in. That was bad of me." He bowed his head, winced. "You were sleeping so well, too, weren't you."

Karkat watched him in silence for a couple of oddly clear seconds, like he was... John wasn't sure. Trying to decipher his expression properly? Trying to figure out if John meant it? Measuring his eyebrow hair? John couldn't say.

"Well is...?"

"Uh. It's another word for good."

"Right. Yes. I know that." A long sigh. "Yes, good sleep."

Good sleep, submerged in cockpit goo. Urgh.

Karkat got the box open finally, made a little approving grunt at the plain black t-shirts the lid unveiled. He dropped the box back on the floor, holding one of them, and put it on. "Good. Yes. I want the red thing, for my..."

He touched the right side of his chest, eyes lowered. John's eyes followed. Oh. Yes. His sign.

The shirt was still pretty tight, brand new. Karkat stuck his hands behind his neck and stretched, cracked his spine with a little grunt. John crouched again. "The pens should be in another box!"

In another minute they were both sitting on the floor and opening boxes. It reminded him of Christmas. It was mostly clothes -- formal stuff and casual, a couple pairs of shoes.

"Oh. Zhann, tell how."

Ah, he'd found the tablet. He was turning it over in his hands to inspect the casing, pads of his fingers delicately brushing against the buttons on the sides. John shuffled a bit closer. "Let's look at your setup... You should probably ask Dirk or Roxy later, but this is supposed to be pretty intuitive."

Karkat's t-shirt still smelled new. Hah, of course it did, John had watched it come out of the box. It was a bit distracting, though.

Or maybe he was smelling the faint chemical tang of that cockpit goo still on Karkat's skin. They'd spent three hours yesterday in the hangar with Cancer, John sitting uselessly on its knee and swinging his legs in the void as Karkat convinced his mech to excrete some of its goo, but special-made, with a different chemical composition. They'd siphoned off a tubful of the thing; thankfully just when John was ready to strain his superior strength to cart most of it up to Karkat's new bedroom, Doctor King had decided they may as well borrow a crane from the mech hangar and use it to lift the barrel to the window.

"So you uh... really slept well, then? Do you feel a little urgh?"

"Mmh?" He looked up from the tablet John was showing him how to turn on, blinked long and slow. "No, no urgh. Uh... Like how chocolate bit is warm, gets all..." He twitched his hand a little. Worst thing was, John thought he understood.

"Melty? Soft?"

"Un. Soft?"

"Yeah, it means both nice to slide your fingers on--" he demonstrated on the leg of his pajama pants -- "and squishy like this."

He tried to squish his thigh, and it didn't work quite as well. He pushed a finger into the side of his stomach instead, made poik, poik noises. Karkat made a weird little noise in the back of his throat.

"Um. Soft is 'not hard'. And 'nice to touch.'"

"Hrff. Why one word for two things. Stupid. Like floor!" He prodded at the wooden planks under him. "Why it mean this and the how high in the house."

"I bet you have words like that too!"

"Well of course." Karkat sniffed, sneaked him a crooked, tiny smirk. "But our words is not stupid."

John chuckled. "I'm sure they are. No but you're really weird today. All --"

Yeah, 'soft' was a good word. Soft-edged. Soft-voiced, words sanded down so the growling anger came out ... he wasn't sure how to describe it, 'gravelly' was a bit too rough still. Maybe 'husky'? Maybe that was what husky sounded like. He should ask Rose.

He should never ask Rose. She would arch her eyebrow at him and ask what it was he was trying to describe and he would never hear the end of it, he just knew it somehow.

"Are you even all the way awake?"

Karkat huffed through his nose, sent him a look that was a little closer to his normal levels of exasperation. "Yes, yes." He rounded his back a little, gazed down at the tablet in his hands, fiddled with the touchscreen. "I like now. Good sleep, good head, no hurt or bad. I'm awake but it's -- it's good. In the ship there's... I have to, grrgh, hrrst, right now, awake, fight, hssch, but here only Zhann come in. It's not bad if I like it," he finished, maybe a touch melancholy.

"Did you guys sleep in dorm rooms?" John asked, crossing his legs at the ankles and leaning in. "Like us, many people inside one room? Was it bad? Or did you mean, you had to get ready for missions?"

Karkat grimaced. "You're bad. We have -- little door, no come in."

"Doors on the slime baths?" John asked, pointing at the tub standing in the corner of the room. (In the other corner was the pile of crap that used to be at the foot of John's bed, but not rebuilt, more like randomly dropped all over that corner of the floor and then not touched again.)

"Yes. It's good, like... Like in a mech?"

John wasn't sure if Karkat meant that it was a snug fit or that it was safe. Probably the second.

Or maybe he just meant they were all adult-sized womb things, like Cancer's cockpit. Gross.

A ping from his glasses distracted him from the topic. Which wasn't bad because he wasn't sure he wanted to know more, anyway.

RM: heyo johnnyboy its ur fave mother in law (jk)
RM: u anywhere near karkat atm?
JH: yes? i'm in his bedroom, actually.
RM: kk cool my source did not fail me ;)
RM: can u tell our esteemed guest id love a quick checkup to get a baseline from his post sleepdrugged state
RM: idk what the chemicals in it do but prty sure they do smth & wd love to know 4 sure
JH: apart from making him all mellow and smiley?
RM: WHOOOaa srsly??
RM: did we slip him alien marijuana or
RM: oh what a tricky young man ur dad will disapprove so hard
JH: pff.
JH: it's not THAT bad, he still gets snarky if i push the dumb too far.
RM: the world has not ended yet!!
RM: now can u relay the question plz, i gotta do other shit 2day
JH: yeah, yeah.
RM: like say, ur dad ;D
JH: OH MY GOD, ROMY LALONDE.
JH: just for that i should grab him and go camping around the island!
RM: hey if i dont get a romantic getaway for cause of things keeping on happening in this job u dont get one either, u feel me
JH: rauuuuurghg. this joke is really not as funny as you dumb butts seem to think it is!!!!
RM: wheres ur sense of humor bub, did it fall down a mineshaft or did u sit on it & its lodged somewhere painful & inaccessible now? brb getting proctologist diploma 2 handle ur buttmad
JH: you know what would make me really happy with you today?
JH: if you could, like, turn down the morning after giggles from boning my dad.
RM: kid, i hate 2 tell u this but this is NOWHERE near the first time i boned ur dad :(
JH: RAUUURGRHGH.

"Zhann. Zhann. What the fuck your head is wrong why."

The way he looked at John... "... Why is your face wrong," John reworded helpfully, though not without a tired groan.

"Yes. Why."

"My face is not wrong!" John stuck out his tongue and glowered, deliberately over the top.

"I have the eye I can look your face, and you no." Karkat snorted disdainfully.

He was seated with his legs splayed, the tablet propped up on his knee. John was sitting in an unfortunate place if he wanted not to have his eyes directed straight to the apex of Karkat's thighs.

He wondered if Doctor Lalonde would tell him what was up with Karkat's crotch arrangement, in preferably technical and boring xenobiology terms.

Probably not, and then she wouldn't even need to tell him off for even asking, he'd tell himself off with a single quelling look. Hell, he was telling himself off now just for wondering.

Karkat made an annoyed clicking noise and growl-grunt-muttered to himself for a sentence or two. "Speak."

"Yeah, yeah, sorry. Uh. Doctor Lalonde wants to look at you? To see what the..." he pointed at the tub of goo, "what that did to you."

A short growl; Karkat's irises flicked huge and then tiny. "It did to me sleep."

"You can say no, if you want," John reminded him, voice gentling a little. "You're an ambassador now, not a prisoner."

Well, not super-officially with the letters from his own government and everything, but. Yeah.

"I think..." Karkat paused, chewed on his lip for a moment, then looked down at the tablet. "I think she need my body thing, when my people come here." Quieter; "When they come prisoner."

"... Yeah, probably."

A brief, deep sigh. Karkat squared his shoulders forcefully; though his eyebrows stayed knit in doubtful worry. "Okay. Tell her okay."

JH: he's waiting for you.

"Come here in your room?" John asked, to make sure. "Or do you want another place?"

Karkat shrugged carelessly and climbed to his feet. John was briefly struck watching his bare feet against the floor. It was funny the way his toes gripped, the claws almost brushing the floor but still cautiously kept back from digging in. Also the way his hips swung for balance --

Okay. Okay, no. He needed to stop thinking about that... that. He bounced up on his feet, bent down to pick up the long box with the folding screen, popped it open. "Oh, cool, it's already put together! Where do you want it?"

Karkat waved toward the bathtub. "So people come in and not see my naked," he groused, sending John a pointed look, more amused than irritated.

"I said sorry already!" John spluttered. "Also you've seen me naked a ton of times before!"

"Maybe I do not want see you naked!" Karkat retorted, a hand flung up. "Maybe my eyes are wurghgh no bad now, because I see your weirdo thing, and now my horn see things like, wall and door and thing because my eyes not and I blam on walls. My eyes like jello headband thing and it's hot on them, makes breakfast red thing and fall down the floor! Aliens," he concluded, like it was a swear word.

John started laughing, because the alternative was to whimper and expire on the spot. The image of Karkat's eyes melting and running in fat globs like they were strawberry jam was especially gross. Much better a thought than the nakedness. Why did it keep coming back up anyway, couldn't the topic just die already?!

A knock at the door had him jumping guiltily. Karkat twitched bodily and then started muttering to himself. Since the rest of his language was pretty much made of hard consonants and clicks, John could be fairly sure he had heard an approximation of the name "Lalonde" somewhere in the middle. It came out pretty funny with his alien accent.

"May I come in?" the Doc called out. Karkat glanced at John, who shrugged and stuck his hands behind his head.

"Your choice, buddy."

Karkat seemed to be rethinking his earlier decision, but he stood and pushed his packages with a foot to one side even as he called out, "Yes!"

Doctor Lalonde opened the door and walked in, a large bag over one arm. John waved, then realized he was still holding the folding screen with his other hand, and stepped to the side to open it and stand it up before the goo bath.

"Good morning, John, Karkat."

"Good morning, Doctor," Karkat dutifully parroted, with that careful air that meant he was paying really close attention to her reaction, and he'd be rectifying his actions as quickly as possible if she frowned even a little bit.

It was something he'd been doing a little less; John figured he hated checks-up exactly that much.

That, or the Doc read as purple-pink. Pff. She did like to wear clothes in those shades, but her eyes were hardly as weird as Rose and Roxy's. (Or Dirk and Dave's, to be honest.)

She put down her doctoring bag on the floor, grumped something about the lack of table. "We should get you one as soon as possible -- actually, do you want a table?"

Karkat blinked. "Table is...? -- Oh. Huhn." A shrug. "Yes?"

He eyed the bag dubiously as she crouched to rummage in it. John watched in silence.

"You need chairs too..."

She paused, looked at John, and he wasn't too sure why. Then she looked at Karkat. "Do you want John to stay here with you?"

Karkat frowned a little. "Hm. I don't know. You do... what?"

"Take blood, and look at your brain waves." She produced a mass of electrode-looking things strung together like a tangle of Christmas lights. Karkat visibly recognized them; he grimaced a little.

"Oh. That."

Lalonde crouched, started looking through her bag, making little dissatisfied noises. "You really do need a table," she muttered under her breath.

John scratched his chin, thinking. They didn't really have a free table floating around the house, but they could get one delivered... Or maybe the hangars would have one, or the hospital...

"I want," Karkat declared, shoulders pulled back, "thing to sit on, Zhann. Sit here not on the floor. Go get sit things."

"Chairs -- and I'm not your errand boy," John said, pouting.

"You are when I say," his alien boy replied with his chin down, horns aimed vaguely at the side of John's skull.

It looked like a pretty subconscious gesture, because the next second he noticed and jerked his chin up, his head back, and looked all... Unsure? Apologetic? Like he wasn't sure if he'd overstepped, John thought.

He didn't want John here during the examination. Okay. John had thought... but Karkat didn't need moral support for a little prickle and an uncomfortable moment with a thing on his head. He was stronger than that. Didn't need his hand held for everything, now did he, it was okay if John didn't...

"Okay, okay. I'll go get your sit things."

He wasn't sure how he felt. A bit disappointed. He should have been proud that Karkat was so determined to do things in a society of aliens without a babysitter, or relieved to gain some space of his own back. He should be those things. Maybe he was a little; still, it did feel like a bit of a rebuke.

Sighing, he started for the door. Karkat followed to close it behind him, paused with his hand on the doorjamb.

"... Zhann -- I. Nh."

His eyes flicked to John's face, down to the floor, back up, eyebrows scrunching up, mouth turning down.

"I'm not angry, buddy." John cracked a smile. "Two chairs? I don't have three hands for three chairs."

"Do three come here," Karkat suggested with a badly repressed smirk.

"--You jerk."

"I'm all the fucking jerk. Go away, Zhann."

"I'm going, I'm going!"

He went. Karkat closed the door behind him.

--

The last meeting of the day ran past eight PM. It might have run longer, but Karkat caught John's urgh, they're just dragging their feet in a friggin' circle now and said that no one thought well on an empty stomach and maybe they could come back with their arguments lined up properly some other day.

Actually he said, very calmly and reasonably, "No food make stupid in the head. We do again later, maybe you have better planned things, I hear good thing," which made it sound like he was telling his interlocutors of the International Committee for Ethics Oversight that they were sounding kinda brainless and-or incompetent right now, but of course John smiled and went "Well, I'm sure not at my best when I'm hungry, let's go feed you!" as confirmation of Karkat's intended meaning, and after a moment of brief confusion everyone's feathers stayed unruffled.

Of course behind the politeness Karkat had totally meant there was no way in hell he would agree to their latest attempt to bargain him down and they had to be either starved to death or bludgeoned to death if they thought he would.

The two of them took their time, and came out of the conference room last, so they wouldn't bump into any official on the way out.

"Urgh. Glad that's done." For today. Another two days before Gamzee came back and -- if all went well -- they had a sudden influx of prisoners and their mechs to handle. (That or funerals. That and funerals. There'd be casualties. On both sides.) John shook himself and looked at Karkat hopefully. "Dinner now?"

Karkat took the headset off his head with that odd, delicate distaste, like he both wanted to fling it off and not break it somehow.

Suddenly it was flatter in John's head, the rolling waves of Karkat's emotional sea on John's shore gone still, gone silent, all his frustration and heavy responsibility and gritty determination.

Karkat folded the headset in two, stuck it in a pocket. "No," he said, even though John still remembered the feeling of hunger in the pitch of his stomach, not quite the same sensation as John's hunger in a way he couldn't define (was it a different feeling because he was an alien, or just because his body wasn't an exact copy of John's body?)

"--Aw, come on, what is there left to do?"

Karkat lifted his tablet, flicked his thumb, turned it for John to see. A paint chat window was open; Rose had drawn, in her favorite shade of purple, a stick figure lying in bed, being visited by an upright stick figure with orange horns and Karkat's sideways sixty-nine symbol on its chest (the backbone line went right through it.)

"What is that?" Karkat asked, tapping at a trio of question marks in the corner.

Sigh. Hospital, then. "It means a question. It's not an order, she's asking you."

"Hm. Good." He flipped the tablet around and sketched a humanoid form in red with horns and a hornless one in John's usual blue, then carefully reproduced the question marks. Click, sent.

"Hey, what's that, you don't need to check if she wants to see me," John said with a little pout. "Of course she wants to see me."

"It's fucking polithness," Karkat replied, rolling his eyes, and started walking down the corridor.

They were in Jack Noir's building -- the federal embassy -- and John knew the place, but not as well as the rest of the island. He ended up following Karkat out; he couldn't remember where the door closest to the hospital was.

Rose's window chimed; just a quick face, with a smile.

When they got there they found her sitting up in her sheets, a mostly empty dinner tray pushed to the side; John's stomach growled, and she rolled her eyes at him and waved her hand at the leftover soup. "Feel free."

"Is it made of grass?" John inquired as he wandered to it and picked up the bowl to sniff. "Pine needles? Pond scum?"

"I think perhaps pond scum. Very organic." But she wasn't looking at John.

John paused with the bowl in hand to watch the two of them. They were staring at each other, and he had no idea what it was about.

"You're not dead," Karkat said eventually. "This is good. I... Like that."

Right. This was the first time they'd seen each other since the fight against Gamzee had almost fucked up her mind. Yeah.

Rose had some kind of electrodes stuck to her temples, under the loose, headband-less hair.

"'I’m glad about that', or 'I'm happy about that'," she corrected by what John was sure was pure spinal reflex. "And thank you."

Karkat moved closer to the bed, though he stopped well before he was in arm's reach. "Why no like?"

Rose shrugged. "Like is for happier things?" She smoothed the sheet over her lap. The last two fingers of her left hand shook a little. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"

Wait, Rose hadn't been the one who asked? Huh.

Karkat shrugged, put his hands in the pockets of his dress pants (at least the fingers, there wasn't space for the whole hands.)

"I want you ask me a thing. What thing you want. You're here in this -- here because my Gamzee do this to you." He shrugged, made himself look up at her. "Ask a thing."

"... Anything I want?"

"... Maybe." He hesitated, then made a slightly exaggerated, cautiously joking, doubtful moue. "You have two hands and two foots now, so not all the things."

Rose cracked a smile, John thought despite herself. "If I cut my foot off, would you tell me all the things?"

Karkat snorted back, shoulders relaxing slightly. "If Gamzee cut your foot off. But don't tell him please, he cut maybe your head."

John chuckled dutifully. Yeah, funny, Karkat's boyfriend being a psycho, what a totally ridiculous and in no way believable thing. Then again considering the kind of society they lived in, that was probably heartthrob material right there.

The jealous grumpy thing really had to stop, though, he was pissing himself off. Gamzee being creepy and terrifying was a totally objective thing, but... Argh.

"Mind if Dirk participates?" Rose was asking Karkat, tugging her tablet out of the sheets.

"--Oh. Dirk, yes. I want ask him later, but now is good."

"Good, because I'm crashing this either way," Dirk said from the door. John had seen him opening it, but hadn't realized how quiet and soft-footed he moved. Karkat twitched, fingers tensing under the cloth of his pants, and John could almost see him deliberating on leaving his hands in his pockets, talking himself into it.

"Hello, Dirk, how are you this fine evening," Rose droned, and nodded at the armchair in the corner. "Now sit the hell down before I tell the nurses on you."

Dirk said nothing as he passed Karkat and John to get to the armchair. John watched him move, and found absolutely nothing amiss. Every single one of his movements was economically elegant, perfectly controlled. Which, yeah, major red flag if you knew Dirk Strider even a tiny little bit.

"How'd you even know we were here?" John asked. "Did Rose snitch or what?"

"I've got the passwords for all the cameras in this building, and I'm bored out of my mind," Dirk replied blandly as he perched on the padded armrest instead of sitting safely on the seat proper.

"Pff." Paranoid.

Then again... John had learned a lot about hypervigilance from the aftermath of Jane's... not-accident. Was this a leftover thing from Gamzee's attack?

At the same time it was almost kind of normal for Dirk, or he wouldn't have admitted to it. Hard to say.

"Won't you two sit down?" Rose said. "If I am to wring info out of Karkat I want him not to be so ready to run out."

Snorting, John dragged a chair closer to her bed and sat; Karkat hovered for another second and needed to check visually with her to confirm it was okay. He stayed farther back, too, perched toward the front of his chair...

Bah, he would relax eventually. John turned back toward Rose, toward Dirk, who he could still mostly see past the foot of her bed.

"How are you doing, guys?" he asked, voice quieting a little, because he'd had reports and internet conversations but that didn't mean the same thing as a personal confirmation.

Also if Dirk lied there was an even chance that Rose would snitch on him.

Dirk and Rose both looked at John, mouths closed, and for a moment he really thought neither of them was going to want to tell him that. Because Karkat was here? Too much pride? Shame? What?

Then Rose lifted her arm, mouth twisted wryly, and let him see plainly the fine tremors in her hand.

"It's been getting a lot better, mind; if things keep progressing at this rate I should be fine in another day or two. Makes handling small, breakable things a bit of an issue, but I'm otherwise okay."

So she wasn't going to be able to pilot yet. Not at the level of control and finesse she needed, at least. And if things lingered...

"Dirk? How about you?"

"Same," he said, arms crossed. John totally believed him, and accordingly made a believing face.

"Shut up, Zhann," Karkat said.

John gasped. "Hey!"

Karkat was looking at him, arms loosely crossed, horns forward, kind of bossy. "Rhoz and Dirk is not go away in their head. Not --" he waved his hand like chasing away a fly. "They don't go wah! when hear a thing or..."

He fell silent, at a bit of a loss.

"You're saying," Rose said, "it could have been a lot worse."

A sober nod. "Yes."

"You're saying, you expected it to be worse."

"'Expected' is?"

"How you think something will be."

"Ah." A pause. Karkat looked down at his hands, fingers linked between his knees. "Yes. Gamzee is... his head thing is break. A someone like me, they break."

John thought about Dave, and felt a little sick.

"Like Dave?" Dirk said, almost neutral apart from the edge he couldn't hide, the banked anger.

Karkat stared at him for a long second, and then sighed. "Dave is not break. Not like how... Hrfn."

"Do you want to use the headsets?" Rose suggested. "It'll be easier."

John was fine with the idea, already reaching up to where his was hanging from his neck, but Karkat snorted. "No. My head and his head are too much close. All day in his head, give me a fucking break."

"Hey!"

Karkat quirked him a faint sideways smirk, little tooth tips showing, and then sobered up. A muscle in Dirk's cheek was slowly rolling back and forth as he tensed and relaxed his jaw.

"I expect if Dave is... like me, with horns," he told Dirk, "he is dead, or make big noise all the time and you can't touch him. But Dad says he's awake sometimes and no noise and he talks?"

Dirk nodded reluctantly. "So in your expert opinion, he's gonna be fine."

Karkat shrugged, hands held open. "In my expert opinion you're a fucking alien and I fucking don't know. But you get better. One like me, don't get better, or maybe for... what's a big, big time, Zhann?"

"A year? It's the time the planet takes to get around the sun."

Karkat nodded, looked back at Rose, eyebrows knit. "A year. Yes. A lot of year. But we don't know because we kill them before. Maybe your head things are different."

John let out a short sigh. Urgh, alien mental health care. "Okay, so... We don't respond the same way as you guys to your psychic shenanigans, but you don't actually know how different it is. I guess it's better than if we were identical that way..."

"How do you see what happened to Jane?" Dirk asked, all restrained. "In regards to that mind-breaking shit."

Karkat looked briefly surprised, one eyebrow up. "Oh. Zhane is... I don't know. From in Zhann's head things it's not... Not break. Not like what Gamzee got." His face darkened a little then, and he looked away, maybe sad, maybe embarrassed. "It's like a thing that says your head doesn't say what to do, the other person head says? Your head doesn't touch -- no, she doesn't touch your head."

"When Karkat says 'she' like that, he actually means they," John muttered to Dirk as an aside, in case he hadn't noticed yet. It threw John for a bit of a loop every time, but Jade grinned a lot about it. "It's not a specific girl."

The look that passed on Karkat's face was so strange it made John blink a bit. He shuffled in his seat some, glowered briefly at John and then looked back to Dirk. "You still hear the bad things all over you but it's like Zhann and me. I can't do Zhann do the thing. I mean -- argh."

"The person doesn't control your sense of self?" Rose suggested. "You still know what you want, and that it's not the same thing the person attacking you wants? But you can't stop your body."

"Yes. That." He hesitated, made a mitigating movement with his hand. "I think maybe a little you don't know, if you're a fucking alien and you have no head people like that, but someone like me know. But with Gamzee..."

John grimaced. "With Gamzee it's pretty hard to still know that what you're thinking is not right. But at the same time he doesn't make you do things?"

"... He can make you kill your own you, if he breaks enough, but you still decide. But it's hard to decide don't die after this bad." Karkat shook himself a little, lifted his chin in that way he thought was appeasing, a peace offering, that John was starting to see like that despite himself. "But not the same thing like Zhane."

"What other powers are there?" Rose asked, casual but for the feverish way her fingers ran over her tablet. John briefly wondered why she wasn't using her glasses, then wondered if Gamzee's attack had sufficiently messed with her brainwaves that the hardware couldn't read her typing thoughts properly anymore. Okay, that was a bit scary. He made a note to ask later.

(Then again Rose didn't need her vision corrected, and apart from the chat, camera and light optimization settings... Maybe she was just enjoying not having to wear glasses for once. Meh.)

"Move things," Karkat said, sober like he knew exactly how important the info was. "Pew like Zhann's gun--"

"My blaster?! You're kidding, right? You've got people who can do that with their minds?!" John stared at him, mouth gaping. "That's so unfair!"

"You're unfair and also dumb. Yes, we have. One in... my fingers and foot fingers and your fingers?"

One in thirty? Urk. Still nothing to sneeze at, if there were a lot of them around.

Karkat sighed. "But small moving, gun things. People who move big things..." He shook his head. "Not here."

"But can they manipulate small things?" Dirk asked, leaning forward in his chair. "Can they move things they can't see?"

"Uh. Small things, yes. Can't see, maybe." Karkat regarded him with unsurprising wryness. "You think armor breaking."

Dirk's eyebrows scrunched down, his nostrils flared oh so slightly. "Of course I think armor breaking. It's kind of hella fucking necessary to know if the Marines' body armor is going to end up being their coffin."

Karkat sighed, raked a hand through his hair.

"You don't think we should have known that sooner? I guess it's not too late, but Jesus, that kind of weakness--"

Karkat actually cut him off, leaned forward, claw tips drawing emphasis waves in the air. "Your armor is a lot not our armor. Your mech is not our mech, your ... inside the things that do thing is not like our things. When they open one, see what it is, they try, if I break this bit, does it stop. Then yes, when they know how, your armor breaks."

His head was angled horns forward once again, and he probably hadn't even noticed, but with a tilt to the side that didn't read to John as coy so much as not-aiming-at-you(-yet). His voice was firm, now, determined, refusing to be cowed by Dirk's tense anger.

"But I think if we want to win and not die we have to win very fast. When after you have the ship and the people who -- who do things with their head prisoner, you can work and think and put in the armor things so they can't break your things with their heads, maybe. If you go with no armor at all four people come in and three die."

Dirk let out a long breath through his nose, reclined pointedly against the back of his seat. The foot John could see was twitching at the ankle. John wasn't sure if that was the anger or the psychic damage.

"Okay. Okay. The Generals in charge still need to know as soon as fucking possible--"

"Yes, that's tomorrow morning." Karkat rolled his eyes at him, but his expression was both wry and maybe a bit apologetic. "Today and the day before is yes, really this is how my prisoner people are kept. I needed the..."

"Leverage," John supplied quietly.

"Yes. I needed it. I have what I want now, I can tell the head power things to Generals. Also there's people who can hear your head things but they can't push you do the things. But aliens are very hard, it's not like speak...ing?"

"Like the headsets?" John asked. "We understand each other pretty well now."

Karkat slanted him a red, heavy-lidded look. "They put other alien in my head before you," he pointed out.

"Oh." Wow, John had almost managed to forget Karkat's stint in the labs. Of course they had tested the telepathic gel. "Oh, right. It didn't work well, did it? You told me that, they didn't... couldn't get a lot from you?"

Bitter pride and exhaustion and pain, Karkat's memory of...

Karkat might be technically as powerless as a human against a psychic attack, but he had still grown up amongst people who were expected to do these things, and who also might have a somewhat different brain setup that allowed for passive resistance to psychic invasion, though. Humans didn't have the trick of it.

"Yeah, but..." John sighed. "They could get to Jane, is the thing."

Karkat grimaced, looked away. "We don't have a lot of people who make people do things like that. They're... very strong. They're -- people know them. Gamzee knows that. He -- he knows that."

He'd find and deal with them, was what Karkat couldn't bring himself to say. What John was pretty sure they all heard anyway.

There was a short moment of silence and then Dirk said, abrupt, "So what is Gamzee planning exactly, anyway?"

Karkat shrugged. "Don't know."

"We're kind of all depending on him here, I'd enjoy a little more information--"

"Dirhk," Karkat said, careful to pronounce it just right and falling barely short of it. "Gamzee does not tell me because I don't like kill people, and he will kill a lot of people."

He was starting to sound annoyed, and John wasn't sure Dirk noticed. Rose certainly did, eyebrows up.

"But how does he plan to survive? How is that even feasible--"

"Hrrst!" Karkat hissed, suddenly glaring. "I don't want sit here and hear you say this is bad, this is also bad, can't do that, I want to know all the fucking things and then say bad about the things! Godfucking hell. Shut your mouth."

John blinked at him long and slow. "Um. Karkat?"

Karkat raked a hand through his hair, gave the base of his left horn a vigorous, annoyed scratch. He glanced at John, sighed, and then looked at Dirk again, more serious, frowning in concentration slightly more than in anger. "You don't like it when you don't know. Good! I don't fucking like it when my Gamzee maybe dies. I don't know, when you ask and ask, I don't oh I know now! like Zhann don't have his glasses and then oh yes it's here on the fucking bed where he put it all the time."

It wasn't a good time to laugh at the way Karkat said 'bed' like it was another dirty word, so John didn't, but it was a near thing.

Rose cleared her throat delicately. "I think tensions are running a little high on all sides."

Yeah, John agreed, and he was a bit wary of an actual explosion, now that Karkat felt free to let his pocket bulldozer bossiness out. If it collided head on with Dirk's thwarted control issues it wasn't gonna be pretty. He got up on his feet, clapped his hands. "Okay! And I think everything that could be useful has been said, and my stomach is trying to eat the rest of me. If you get other questions you can send them to his tablet, or maybe set up another meeting?"

He looked at Rose, who sighed and nodded, and at Dirk who was sulking on his perch not looking at anyone, jaw rolling, and finally at Karkat, who was staring up at John with his arms crossed over his chest, looking half amused and half exasperated. John smiled down all bright and oblivious; Karkat rolled his eyes.

"Wait," Rose said as Karkat grabbed the sides of his chair to pull himself up; he paused in mid-motion, made a humming noise. "Mind powers we might run into are: knowing other people's thoughts, controlling other people's bodies, moving and breaking things, and shooting energy rays? Anything else?"

"Um." Karkat furrowed his brows thoughtfully. "I think. Yes. Maybe one or three people who is not that, but I don't know now."

John's stomach made an unholy noise like a creature from the deep waking famished from its slumber. He looked down at his own stomach. "Whoops."

"Pff." Rose smiled. "Go away, John."

"Yeah, yeah. Coming, Karkat?"

Karkat gave a long, thoughtful look at Dirk, who was still glowering quietly at nothing, and then sighed a little. "Nh."

They walked out of the room. Karkat was silent for a few steps, gazing at the floor, and then sneaked a side-look at John. John smiled back and linked his hands behind his head, and tried not to wish they were wearing the headsets right now.

"You go see Dave now?" Karkat asked him.

John blinked, sobered up a little. He'd gone yesterday, but... "Well, I'm not sure he's awake."

"Then go and look, stupid." Karkat rolled his eyes pointedly, mimed catching a door handle. "Open, look, close, it's done!"

John huffed. "I think if he was awake and wanted to see people, he'd be online." He tapped the side of his glasses.

... Unless his brainwaves being messed up meant he couldn't use his shades, and having to lift his hands for the keyboard was too awkward. Um.

They drifted to a stop at the end of the corridor, and John hesitated. Karkat was still watching him.

"... Do you want to be alone?"

Karkat blinked back at him, arched a thick eyebrow in pointed confusion. "You don't want Dave?"

John frowned a little, opened his mouth, checked the corridor; no nurses. No doubt there were cameras and he wasn't sure those came with mikes, but hey, whatever.

"I just... I don't think Dave would want to see you just yet...? If he was awake, and it's late--"

"You don't want to go," Karkat said, eyebrows knit like John just baffled him, and not always in good ways.

"Of course I want to go, just not when he's still all..." John trailed off.

The idea of seeing Dave half-unconscious, of seeing him -- raving, confused, fighting tremors, John didn't know for sure but... It just. It wasn't comfortable.

He'd made himself do it with Jane, but Jane was his sister. He was supposed to -- it was expected. And if she felt crummy and had a crying jag and needed a hug it'd be fine.

Dave was his best buddy, but if John had to see him on his hospital bed crying or riding a flashback he would probably be sick.

Also Dave would really hate it.

"I don't know how to explain," he said, quieter. "I..."

"You want he say 'come here' first?"

John startled a little, looking up. Karkat was looking at him with a quiet, almost soft expression; John floundered. "Ah. ... Yeah. That'd be -- that'd be better. I mean, I..."

"You don't want you see him all... 'No, no, this is bad, want to help'," Karkat said, and nodded decisively, even though he was now looking away like what he was saying was embarrassing.

Which, um, yeah, maybe a little. John started walking again, and Karkat immediately fell into step with him, like he was in just as much of a hurry to get out now that neither of them was staying. "It's not that I don't want to help him!" John said, waving his hands in the air, as he shouldered the stairwell door open. "It's that right now the only things that would help would be, like, a hug or something. I do not hug Dave! I think we'd both die. I'm serious, it would be horrible, we'd probably explode."

Karkat groaned, the way he did when he didn't want to laugh. "Zhann, shut your mouth, I hear you." He threw him a lopsided smirk, eyes hooded in quiet amusement. "No hug for Dave? I think before you hug everyone."

"Hey, what's that mean, how come you're making it sound slutty?" John protested playfully as he went down the stairs. "I so don't hug everyone."

The alien started counting pointedly on his fingers, taking every finger between the other hand's index and thumb and shaking it under John's nose. "Zade, Zhane, Rhoz, Rokshi, Dad, me--"

"So what! That's not even a lot!"

"That's a ton." A firm nod, a commiserating grimace. "You're fucking slutty."

John spluttered and shoved at his shoulder. Karkat jumped over the last three steps and shoulder-checked him the second John landed after him.

"I'm not slutty!"

"Yes, Zhann, I hear you," Karkat said mock-patiently, and walked out of the clinic building. "I hear you say a big-like-a-mech wrong thing. The wrong thing is a moon of wrong, with a mech on top. You're a hug slut. You're the first hug slut."

There really was only one possible response to that. John wasn't too sure why Karkat jumped like he actually hadn't been expecting it.

"No! Ashrrth--" He devolved into alien swearing as he scuttled sideways like a crab, batting at John's reaching hands all claws out. John was pretty sure he was yelling something akin to Jesus dick don't you dare.

John dared a great many things. He chased Karkat with his arms wide open straight to the other building.

"Aw, come on! You look a little tense! Don't you need a hug! Who better than a specialist!"

"Zhann I will piss on your face when you sleep!"

"Kinky," Roxy said from the door, both eyebrows up and trying not to smile. Karkat discreetly edged closer to her -- not quite like he was thinking of hiding behind her back, but like he thought her presence would quell John. Showed what he knew.

But she looked a bit tired behind the smile. Umm.

"What's up? Did you have dinner already? We were trapped with politicos all day, it was a nightmare, we were about to kill the slowest one and eat him." He glanced at the sky. It was now at least eight-thirty. Still light enough out, but...

"Yeah, just did. I'm going to see Rosie," Roxy added. "Gramps is here and he and Daddyo are... you know."

John tilted his head. "I know?"

"Well it's not like they have any more hard facts than they did the rest of the day or anything, but they've been playing the what-if game and kinda throwing politics everywhere. But like, existential politics." Roxy made a face.

John's face scrunched up pretty much of its own volition. "Oh noooo."

"Yeah, sorry. I mean, I know it's important and all but this is just stressing me out at this point, so I'm totally outie. Good luck!" She patted him on the shoulder and stepped off the front steps.

"But we've been doing that all day!" John glared up at the living room windows, lit and inviting and completely traitorous. Roxy shrugged at him and waved over her shoulder.

"What?" Karkat asked when she was gone and John was still psyching himself up to walk in. "Gramps is?"

"General Harley." John sighed, made himself ask. "Did you want to talk to him?"

Karkat hesitated. "I don't have new thing for him. I have Rhoz thing but... Rhoz says, not me?"

John blinked. "Wow uh, yeah, we've been out for five minutes but it's really not likely that she hasn't told them about your psychic guys already."

"Mm." He shrugged, fingertips in his pockets. "Ask if he has new thing for me?"

"Yeah, sure--" John paused, shoulders slumping. "Uh, if he doesn't have anything new for you, did you want to not see him? Because if we're around them, they'll totally drag us in and--"

"I know," Karkat said, and rolled his eyes, but in a pretty mild way. "I'm not slow. I make you sit with talking people and war again, you kill people with your face things." He made a little tssking noise, like John murdering people with his own glasses would be gauche, so they might as well avoid the situation to be polite. "No people to eat with, then later people?"

"Oh." John brightened.

It wasn't like Karkat still needed a chaperone to eat with people, and John was starting to know really well that feeling nervous and small around Harley and his dad didn't mean Karkat was going to shyly avoid them anymore. Nope, he was going to headbutt the crap out of his awkwardness and his sense of being out of place, and front like a mofo.

He could have told John he'd manage alone and that John could go and hide somewhere already.

JH: hey me and karkat were planning to eat out tonight, is that ok or did you need to see him?
HS: Eat out really? :B
JH: yeah ok, have a picnic on the beach or something. we've been locked in a room all day!!
JH: but he's thinking we should check in with you and dad first.
JH: especially if you've already heard from rose?

A short pause, during which John shuffled from foot to foot, a hand on his glasses, and Karkat watched him and pointedly said nothing.

HS: Just did and yes i would enjoy asking more questions at leisure.

Oh.

JH: oh. :(
HS: Its not like the possibility wasnt presented before especially considering some energy attacks weve weathered with very peculiar signatures but it does mean that some unlikely scenarios have now become a lot more likely.

"Ugh," John said, grimacing at Karkat, and gave the staircase going up a guilty look. Looked like they were going to have to plunge straight back in.

HS: Im going to have to interrupt a lot of people during their dinner.
JH: sorry. :(
JH: should we come up?
HS: I dont know. Your father encourages me strongly to let you boys have an official break for brain health. Which means yes on dinner out and people shouldnt im you through it either but at the same time should i call you back i want you back immediately so stay close okay?

"Alright!"

JH: :D no problem! we'll be right by the end of the path, we could be back in ten minutes if needed.
HS: But at nine fifteen karkat needs to be back if we have any hope to get him to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. Kid has i quote enough sleep debt to fund the whole loan shark industry end quote.
JH: makes sense. i was hoping for the whole evening off but that was kind of maybe a bit too optimistic. this isn't so bad!
HS: At this stage of battle preparations yes rather! Considering hes involved with planning not just piloting john.

Ugh. Yeah. Why couldn't Karkat just be a grunt like him.

HS: Your father is making you sandwiches are you anywhere nearby?
JH: yeah, we're downstairs!

He gave Karkat a thumbs up.

"Success! They'll want to talk to you when we come back, but we can eat on the beach." He grinned, then paused. "Uh, do you want to go... not to the beach? Um. The woods? Rooftop? Somewhere?"

Karkat watched John point around with his arms loosely crossed, and then snorted at him, mouth quirked wryly. "Beach is good."

"Right, you already know there aren't any monsters."

"Monsters not yet," Karkat corrected him, and pushed the door open. "I need small pants, later."

"Oh -- right. Yeah." John watched him climb up to his room. The slacks and dress shoes might be... yeah, not appropriate for the beach. Also kind of awkward to sit on the ground with, even if he didn't dirty the hell out of them, with how they pulled taut on --

JH: we'll need to get changed before we go anywhere, so brb!!!

He crossed through the corner of the living room and up the stairs to the pilots' dorms at a tromping gallop.

Goddamn, he'd managed not to give that a single thought all day. He walked inside his thankfully empty room already tearing his shirt off.

--

Ten minutes later he had an honest-to-God picnic basket swinging from his arm and Karkat at his side and they were walking down the dim path under the trees, and they were alone without anyone throwing heavy political stuff at either one of them.

Or angsty ambushes of bro woe.

They got set up on the sand, each at one end of the towel and the basket between them. The clouds were turning pretty colors, the sun just barely touching the sea. It was so nice and quiet.

In three days people would be waging a battle in space that might well lose them the entire war if they failed.

"You're thinking. Stop that."

John snorted, and grabbed a sandwich right out from under Karkat's reaching claws. "Easy to say, but I bet you're thinking about it too!"

"Of course." Karkat shrugged, and got himself a bacon sandwich. "But I'm good for head things and you're not."

Karkat was especially good at coming up with every possible catastrophic scenario, likelihood irrelevant -- and even the "possible" part was up for debate. John went pff. "Sure thing, buddy."

Sigh. He just wanted to have this one evening where it wasn't happening, where his life was still normal and familiar -- fly his mech like a boss, kick outrageous amounts of butt, come down for relaxation purposes, have fun with his friends and family, banter with his cool alien allypal Karkat ...

Okay so bantering with Karkat hadn't been part of the routine before, but...

He took a bite, chewed halfheartedly, lowered his sandwich to his lap. His dad had made it, it should be pretty tasty. He stared down at it, like he could maybe figure out where the failure was.

"I always knew we were at war, but -- it never seemed, I don't know. Real? The battles were fun and exciting and we were all awesome and we would all keep winning and... Yeah, that was dumb. I knew it wasn't going to be like that forever, it was just a holding pattern, Rose and Jane and everyone kept saying it was weird it was lasting so long, but I didn't -- in my head I knew it but I didn't... feel it?"

When he sneaked him a side look, Karkat was holding his sandwich like it contained a live snake. He grimaced faintly -- not for show or communication, just to himself, and John winced.

"Yeah, I know I was stupid, you don't have to tell me. Rose has been on my butt talking about my avoidance issues for like three centuries. Like her overanalyzing everything ever isn't the exact same dumb thing."

"Zhann," Karkat groaned. "Don't tell me the things in your head, I know the things in your head, I go in your head. If you tell me the things it's--" A short sigh. He turned a little to look at John's face, a bit frowny, but more tired-giving-up than annoyed. "Okay, I think it's... maybe not bad for you. Rhoz is not angry if you tell me your head things?"

John blinked. "Um. No? Why should she?"

"... Zhane?"

"Uh, no. Seriously, I don't--"

"Dad? Dave no, yeah, you said. Zade? Someone?"

John blinked slowly, heels making little hollows in the sand as he tried to guess what Karkat was even getting at. "The only reason anyone would care is if they think you're going to use it to hurt me, but I know you're not. I mean, I'm in your head, I think if you were plotting my downfall I'd notice."

Karkat groaned again, shoulders slumping. "See, if I tell you all my head things like that, Gamzee gets angry."

"...Oh."

Oh.

Well.

"Sorry," John said, and stared down at his sandwich. "I didn't... know that. Probably should have guessed but haha, you know me, I need everything spelled out and--"

"Zhann. Shohn."

John fell silent. Wow. Awkward.

Karkat sounded all quiet and cautious and weird, and John hadn't even been sure he could hear the difference between a Z and a J properly, much less say it, and Karkat wasn't quite there yet and...

"You can keep calling me Zhann. I don't mind. I'm pretty sure I'm not saying Karkat right either."

Karkat let out a rough snort. "You are really, really not." John could kind of hear a smile in his voice now. "But your ears are very bad. Sad fucking thing."

"I could try again," John offered cautiously. "Say your name?"

Karkat scoffed at him, but quietly enough that it could have been a chuckle.

Clack-growl-clack-snap.

"Krr-khht."

"Khhhh-rh," Karkat corrected him patiently. "Kh-th."

"Where are your vowels, bud. Khhrr..."

"No, back your mouth. Back -- more back. Mneh. Now the after part."

Laughing a little, John tried again, spectacularly missed again. He was tempted to say never mind, I can't, haha, silly.

Karkat hadn't had much of a choice about how hard he tried, so John kept trying. He could feel the back of his throat straining, trying to figure out how to approximate the sounds with a body that wasn't set up with all the right organs.

"Krrrrrk--hfft. Haha, no, that was bad. Okay, aspirating doesn't work either--"

"It's not Gamzee and no one else," Karkat said suddenly, startling him. "But it's. Gamzee and... my people? My, my here people. My -- aughssh."

"Close friends? Um. Family -- no, you guys don't have families..." John bit the corner of his lip. Oh, not just his boyfriend who got to hear all about his inner thoughts then. "Is there anyone else like that on your ship?"

Anyone who was closer to Karkat than John was.

Anyone he'd chosen to be closer to than John was. Yeah. There was the rub.

Thoughtful, a little sad, Karkat made a little grunting noise, bit into his sandwich, chewed. "Now, no."

-- Huh.

"... Before, yes?"

Karkat shrugged. Yeah, John bought that one. He bought it like it was on clearance and he was Dave all ready to go with a metaphor about Black Fridays three miles long.

"It's okay if you don't want to tell me," he said, even though he wanted to know like burning. He wanted to know everything, everything he hadn't even asked about Karkat's life because he knew everything about who Karkat was already, and what he'd done was kinda irrelevant and hey, how about I show you everything about my own life and never wonder about yours past the times I trip all over it by accident.

"No but... Maybe. It... goes there, but then a thing happen, so it doesn't -- it stop and doesn't go there."

"Get there," John corrected quietly. "Going is when you start going, getting is when you finish going."

"Yeah," Karkat said casually, avoiding his eyes. "We did not finish. And now it's... not."

"Oh," John breathed. "Did, uh. Can I ask?"

Another shrug, Karkat too busy gazing indifferently at the temple island to glance at John. "Ask. Maybe I tell you, maybe I not tell you. Who fucking knows. You shitfuck alien."

"--Wait, are those my questions?" John asked. "Like you gave Rose?"

Karkat rolled his eyes at him, said something in casual alienese that John was fairly sure would have shocked him and his descendants to the fourteenth generation if he could only understand it.

"Okay, okay." John breathed in, released it slowly. "Did... that person die?"

"No," Karkat replied, so blank-faced John winced before even really hearing the word. "He does a thing for me and his... His boyfriend -- girl boyfriend?"

"Girlfriend."

"--And they see and they take him away."

Oh god. 'Take him away'. It didn't sound like the guy had just gotten reassigned --

Two pairs of horns, an endless scream, tentacles swallowing him alive burrowing under his skin, his organs, his -- (did he still have a body left under there--)

"Why," John whispered, and realized he was hugging his knees.

"Because," Karkat rasped, "he can make things with his head very strong and he don't tell them. Because he knows it's bad if they know. That stupid fuck."

Oh.

Hell.

He'd known, and he'd done ... something anyways. For Karkat and for his girlfriend.

(failed you so sorry)

Oh. So that was what it had been about.

"Did someone tell you that if... If you got down to here and won, they would give him back?"

Karkat turned his head away. John flinched.

"I'm sorry, I'll stop, you don't have to--"

"They don't tell me, I tell me," Karkat rasped out. "I tell me maybe, a planet, just me, that is big, that is good, they say it's good and they can't say 'no, you're red, you're bad, you can't do it' because I have do it. They have to think it's big, it's good, they have to."

He laughed briefly. John clenched his fists.

"I'm fucking stupid."

"Aw man." John grimaced, caught his lip between his teeth. "Aw man, no, you're not, it could have worked--"

Karkat snorted out an incredulous breath of a laugh. "Listen to you. So compromised, holy shit." He shook his head, a hand lifted to halt John's protests. "No, it work bad, he's big head things and I'm nothing, I'm because Gamzee get angry if I get dead. It's not because I can do things, it's because if I dead, Gamzee does things. If I do this planet thing then it's good for them, but they don't want good for me. I'm not dead, in their head it's a lot good and shut up."

"But you did do things," John said, feeling his way through. "You were a pretty good fighter, and you're-- um. Yeah."

Snort. "Oh, yes, I do things now. Big fucking things. My people will have so much happy for me."

Augh. John didn't -- he kind of wanted to, but Karkat wouldn't... "I don't suppose you want a hug right now."

Karkat threw him a sideways glare. "You put your arm on me, I put my teeth on you."

Alright. Sad and angry, but angry more right now. "Okay. Do you want to spar?"

"Spar?"

"Play fight? Like with Mister Strider."

Karkat let out a long sigh, shoulders relaxing. "No." He kicked pointedly at the sand. "This is stupid. I fall, my finger knife gets in you, all your inside body things fall out. Whoops."

John let out a short laugh. "Yeah, that'd be pretty bad. But if you want to spar later, that’d be fine."

He remembered he had a sandwich balanced on his thigh and finished it in a couple of bites, reached for another. The sun was almost all the way out of sight behind the horizon now.

"Maybe," Karkat allowed, and went fishing for a bottle of water.

They ate in companionable silence for another sandwich, watching the horizon. Overhead, Poseidon's shuttle was coming in for a landing, leaving a trail of gold across the purpling sky. Jane would be in bed by the time they came back in.

He still wanted to ask; he wanted to know what that other boy had been like and how they had met and everything. How they'd gotten that close. It would be cruel to push it now, though, to ask for more.

"You know -- if he's in a ship not too far away," John said, and then shut his stupid mouth because oh, great plan, mister unbridled, unfounded optimism -- who was he now, Jake?

"If he's in a ship, and you win my ship, and my ship wins another ship, and my mech shits and it's crispy bacon," Karkat replied cynically, and then sighed. "I think that before. But I can't -- think that a lot. When it's just me who die or not die, it's okay. My life is shit. It's not okay when my ship and your planet maybe die. I have to have more big things in my head now. I can't--" He made a little grasping motion, catching nothing, and let his hand fall on his lap.

"Yeah, I get you," John said, and tried not to sound too wilted.

Karkat sighed. "Eat a bread thing, Zhann."

"Heh. Okay." John ate a bread thing. "They're called sandwiches, by the way. It's when you've got bread and something else and another bit of bread."

Karkat made a weird snorting sound. John peered at him.

"Was that a laugh?"

"No."

"Liar."

"Yes. Eat more sandwich."

"You're trying to get me to shut up, aren't you!"

"Yes," Karkat replied placidly, and picked up his bottle of water.

"What's funny about a sandwich, anyway?"

Karkat sighed, pinched his nose. "You don't shut your mouth before I say, huh? I thought if you say the bread word for people too. I need more word like shit and fuck, shit and fuck is small word that make want to sleep, not big enough--"

"Boring?" John mimed a bored look, sighing, leaning heavily on his hand as his eyes went heavy-lidded. Then he laughed a little, because of course.

Karkat made a short, sharp gesture with the hand that held the bottle, splashing his thigh. "Yes! I have three word, so I can say three-on-three things -- shit fuck hell, fuck shit hell -- not more?! My people laugh me! -- Ergh, water. Shit." A pause, and then an offended glare. "... You see?!"

John didn't bother laughing only a little this time around. "Yeah, we do say sandwich as a sex thing. Heheh."

Karkat wiped water off his leg industriously. "--Oh, I think four word. Slut?"

"Pffff. Yeah, slut is not polite."

Karkat nodded like he was satisfied. "I don't say when Dad or Harlee is here?"

"Oh heck no. They'll probably spank you! That's hit your ass in punishment, and no, it's not a sex thing -- or, um, okay it can maybe be a sex thing sometimes but with them it really wouldn't be, it'd be because you're a bad b-- oh my god someone kill me."

Karkat was staring at him, and smirking for all he was worth. John groaned and buried his face in his hands.

"A bad... b...boyfriend?"

"I hate you so much."

"Hate is?" Karkat asked, unconcerned. John emerged to glare heatedly, leaned toward him, making strangling motions and maybe growling a little.

"Hate is wanting to wring your neck, you jerk."

Sighing through his nose, he sat back down, brows still scrunched down forbiddingly. Karkat's eyebrows were both up; he looked enlightened.

"Hate. Heeyth. Huh. Good word. Yes. I need the word."

"Yes, because you're a jerk."

Karkat made a little noise of unconcerned agreement and went looking for more sandwiches in the depths of the basket.

"... Okay, I don't really hate you," John admitted a few seconds later. Karkat snorted loudly.

"Oh no! I have a big sad now. I will swim in the big water and never come back here. Zhann doesn't hate me, it is a big bad surprise. I break and go die now."

"You're really weird, though," John told him, briefly disgruntled.

They chewed in tandem for a while. The sky was darkening fast now that the sun was down. Karkat's irises had gone tiny, a thin slice of blood in between gold sclera and bottomless pupils. John wondered how well he saw with them.

"... Who do you talk with? You aliens," Karkat asked him, quiet and cautious and stubbornly staring at the horizon.

John squirmed a little. It was so weird to be embarrassed over something as natural as the human need for connection, for warmth.

Heh, maybe the operative word was 'human'...

No, Karkat needed just as much approval and care, John could feel it in him every time they connected, he just...

He was just born in a society that seemed like it was the offspring of a Victorian Miss Manners and a Klingon.

"Friends?" John hazarded. "Family. Uh, your boyfriend or girlfriend, of course."

"Hm."

"I guess a shrink, too. Uh, I mean a psychologist. A doctor who works on the way the mind works. I mean, not the meat part but how thinking happens and why people get bad thoughts and, and bad mind habits and mental trauma and all that. They help you fix your thoughts so you feel better."

Karkat gave him a half-fascinated, half-horrified look. "You don't mean like tell me everything or I hurt you. Or like stop thinking that thought of Empress is bad--"

"--Oh Jesus. No! Someone who helps! A good person! Nice!"

Karkat swatted one of John's flailing hands down. "Okay! Shut up. I know. You're all sluts and talking and help with your head, it's not weird for you." John scowled; Karkat's expression actually softened a little in apology. "Sorry. I don't know the polite word."

"I don't think that there's a polite word for slut. Also slut is a sexual term, and I'm not sure what's sexual about psychology! Well, apart from the cigars and daddy issues, but."

"--Oh. Sex things only?" Karkat frowned his thwarted frown. "What is for not-sex then?"

"Uh... I'm not sure there is one, actually."

Karkat muttered something he was pretty sure was "figures" in alienese. "And family is..."

"My family is Dad and Jane, and also Jade and Jake and Grandpa Harley, but not as close. Um, General Harley, only General is his job, see? It's for, uh. Someone who tells soldiers what to do. In a war. We don't call him that when we're not talking about jobs. You remember how me and Jade were made from bits of two people, and Jane and Jake too?"

"Oh -- yes. It's... big? For aliens. Big thing?"

"Important?" John's voice softened a little. "Yeah. Very important. It's the first important thing we start with."

Karkat mulled it over for a few seconds. "Dave and Rhoz and them is not family, right?"

"No, but they're friends. And we've known each other since we were small, so we're almost that close."

"Hm." Karkat dug a hole with his toes, slipped his foot under the sand, brow furrowed with distant irritation. "Friend. Tell me what is friend in your head? I think I know the word but maybe I don't know the word. Maybe the word is another word or maybe it's a word and another word together or -- like how your bed is flat soft place for sleep and my bed is flat soft place for fuck."

John swallowed a burst of guilty laughter. "Yeah, okay, that's a good point! Language is weird."

"Mm."

"Friends are people you like -- they make you laugh, or they understand you well, or they're -- I dunno, they're nice and you want to spend time with them and do things with them, or even maybe just sit together and not say anything, it depends on the type of friend. Jade and Dave and Rose are all my friends, but we don't do the same things together, like with Jade we have fun and she kinda barks at me if I do stupid stuff, and with Dave we just goof off and have fun and joke around, and if there's something serious we sort of... we talk around it? Because it's weird to tell him very serious things straight on, I dunno. But it's not as weird with Rose or Jade, but Jade doesn't really have the patience to do it for very long if she thinks I'm being stupid."

"... But Rhoz and Zade is the same friend thing," Karkat said, slow like he was having trouble with the idea. "No, Rhoz and Dave -- friend and also friend? Not -- different things?"

John scratched at his chin. "Friends can be very different, I guess? Also you can be friends with your family, but it's not really the same thing. And some friends," he added, remembering what had started Karkat on it, "are pretty shallow -- they only tell each other the funny things, not the big, deep things that hurt, it depends a lot."

"But they don't have a better words," Karkat concluded, grumbling his dissatisfaction. "Hrrsk."

"Who do you talk with?" John returned, gently.

Karkat gave a short shrug. "Gamzee."

Oh. Ouch. "No one else?"

"... A little Nepeta." Karkat shrugged, traced a looping curl in the sand. "She is small and green and she tells me the cockpit thing with her boyfriend."

"Oh, her."

"But not a lot because she wants I'm her boyfriend and I don't want that and it's bad to make her feel big things for me when I say no after."

John blinked. She had a boyfriend (with whom she did kinky mindmeld stuff, even!) but she still had a thing for Karkat? Who was already dating someone else, too. Well, um. Those things happened, he supposed. 'The heart wants what the heart wants' and stuff. "Leading her on? It means encouraging her to feel things for you when you already know you don't want them."

"Yeah. That. And ThRr'zee before when she's my girlfriend but then we stop being girlfriends and she goes away in another ship."

"Huh, you're not gay?"

"Huhn?"

John closed his mouth pointedly and then grinned, trying for innocent. From Karkat's furrowed eyebrows, he missed. "Haha, nothing. And you talk to... no one else."

Karkat shrugged despondently. "As friends, yes. Small talking. In the ship, people don't like I'm red and people who don't care I'm red don't want a problem. I have before friends in the ship but not... I don't talk big things to them, it's weird."

So, just that Nepeta girl, who he had to avoid leading on by sharing too much, because aliens were complete prudes about any hint of affection. Uuuuurgh.

And not John. At any rate. They would find things out about each other either way due to the enforced voyeur thing with the headsets, but it wasn't his to ask about.

"Okay," he said, capitulating. "I don't think I get it very well, but I get it a little." Sigh. He rubbed the back of his neck tiredly, crooked Karkat a side smile, as sincere as he could make it. "I'll stop trying to make you talk."

Karkat stared at him for a couple of seconds, face unreadable apart from the way his eyes had gone narrow in thought.

"Okay," he said with sudden decisiveness, and climbed back up to his feet. John winced a little; Karkat snorted down at him. "You're idiot." He stared down at John, as if trying to impart how meaningful what he was trying to say was. John blinked back, baffled. "If you tell me a thing, I want you know why you tell the thing, not just haha what. And if you don't tell the thing I want you know why too."

"Um?" John blinked up. Karkat thrust a hand in his face, palm up; John took it hesitantly, not even sure that was what he was expecting. (He didn't see what else; hand Karkat his half-chewed sandwich?)

Karkat stared back down, eyes narrowed even thinner, mouth pinched grim in a way that was a little teasing. "And now I put you in the sea," he said, even as he pulled John up onto his feet, and smoothly threw him across his shoulders.

John yelped, started squirming; Karkat wobbled in the sand and almost dumped him head-first in a dune, and then stabilized, a hand gripping John's wrist and another keeping his knee trapped as he stalked determinedly to the closest waves.

"Hey, hey! Not fair! What did I do?! Karkat, I'm very serious, I'll dunk you right back--"

Karkat stomped through the surf and chucked John right in, flipping John over his horned head and sending him spinning like a pancake.

John grabbed his shirt on the way down and dragged him along.

--

DV: ok so to summarize
DV: hes like i think this is a bf territory thing
DV: but im not telling you to stop doing the thing
DV: just not to do the thing if youre not doing the thing deliberately
DV: john
DV: johnnyboy
DV: johnathan
JH: okay! one, not my name, and two even if my name it would not be spelled like that.
DV: john even know what denial is
DV: saint john the negationist
JH: oh my GOD of course you were going to spin bullcrap about it and be about as helpful as udders on a bull! why do i even tell you anything.
DV: rose isnt online and even if jade was she would use even less sarcasm to cover up the truth bombs shes dropping on your face
JH: **WHAT** TRUTH BOMBS, YOU GIGANTIC, IDIOTIC JERK.
JH: he's in ****love**** with gamzee!!!! don't even tell me he was telling me to go ahead and hit on him, what is WRONG with you???
JH: that's gross, and also insulting!
DV: im not doubting his true romansu calm your tits egbutt i mean if he walked into a vat of telepathic gel with the dude and walked out with his head not caved in the other asshole must have been satisfied re: faithfulness and butterflies
DV: it sounds more like he thinks *you* have a crush
DV: im just saying
JH: argh!
JH: yeah, our various and varied misunderstandings on the topic of human friendliness being pretty much the same thing as shameless alien flirting keep being freaking hilarious. ha ha.
JH: sigh. something must have gotten lost in translation.
DV: like?
JH: maybe it was just general advice on how to interact with aliens. i mean, we'll be meeting his friends soon -- like in TWO DAYS soon?? -- and also a lot of people who are not his friends but also aliens, i guess he wants to make sure if i hit on any of them that it'll be deliberate. considering our history i mean.
DV: ...
JH: yeah, must be it.
DV: yeah totally
DV: i can see no other reason
DV: now you must excuse me the nurse is about to tenderly stab me in the butt cheek and put me to bed
DV: btw just in case you're wondering why jade isnt online atm its because shes sitting at my bedside fixing my typos and taking out accidental punctuation so you dont think im roxy
DV: hi john!!!! you HUGE DUMB BUTT.
JH: ... HA HA HA WHAT A HILARIOUS PRANK

-- JH logged out! --

--

"John, you need to wake up," his father had said, at five freaking AM, and John had bypassed the waking up stage to land straight on battle-ready holy shit.

(He'd also knocked his head on Jake's bunk, but Jake was up on patrol, Dirk would be on refuel and maintenance, and Dave's bed was, of course, still empty.)

"Attack?" he'd asked, and his father had shaken his head, but with a worried knit to his brows that said 'not yet'.

"Advance satellites picked up four alien transports."

He didn't need to say much else. They were early. They were ten hours early.

John took the telepathic headband from his father's hands and put it on before he was even dressed.

(battle time oh shit too early/gotta do it anyway/so in over my head/gonna kill everyone I know via sheer incompetence/you gird your fucking loins) was a background chorus neither John nor Karkat nor Karkat/John paid much official attention to.

They spent the next three hours being yelled at. Karkat for not telling people about the psychics sooner, John for not going digging in Karkat's brain for things Karkat hadn't seen fit to share yet.

Karkat yelled back, but under that was a wave of guilt (should have told earlier/but my leverage!/wrong decision??), and worry. There were only three reasons for the attack to happen so early -- either Gamzee had had to change the plan on the fly (well we knew it was risky but oh man), or he'd betrayed them (No), or he had failed and was now dead and the people who'd stopped him were about to put a stop to the rest of them.

Karkat did not approve of that last part, and come to think of it neither did John.

(Dead love/dead friends no) I wish I was in charge not brought out to do tricks of babble and then yay I get to sit at the -- adult table? Do your immature/larvae/young usually not -- okay irrelevant. Wish I was in charge only I know jack shit about your military (or about any tactics for anything wider than a squad fuck gotta learn.)

John casually slid his foot to the side under the table from the end of which they were watching the highers-up shoot ideas at each other. Hass Harley was arguing it up with a trio of dudes on screen who were probably in China or Austria or somewhere like that. You control freak! yeah I know nothing about wider strategy either but it's okay we have Rose and Dirk for that (ok also the General-type people but ehhh) I like small elite-shock troops (small hard fist slipping through your defenses bam in the ribs!!)

you and your elite bullshit! (so unfair) I'd rather train up a bigger group of normal people it'd go the distance/killing jabs only good for when you can close in/risk-reward ratio is insane--

"And John Egbert will be flying escort for Corporal Vantas."

"What?" John and Karkat accidentally chorused, heads jerking up to stare at Harley. They lowered their hands to the table (they'd been resting their chins on them) and frowned. "But Warhammer Two is still nowhere near ready," John said (because Karkat's mouth wouldn't shape the words right) though John's surprise was starting to morph into how??, into oh god please yes I will be so good.

"You'll use Excalibur," Harley said, briefly turning away from the other adults in the room and on the screens.

Oh. (oh man, Dave.)

"It's being prepped with your flight data as we speak," Harley added, tapping the edge of his glasses to signify a message sent.

"What do we need them around during the assault for?" someone asked. "I concede that having one more mech in the air would be a relief, so Warhammer going up makes sense, but I was under the impression that the Cancer biomech was half-dead and wouldn't handle a battle. Why aren't we having Vantas come up later in one of the shuttles?"

"Or having him and his official translator stick close," someone else muttered. John snorted a little. Like they were still so terrified of losing someone else to mind control at this point, with the fate of the planet in the balance, that it'd be less of a net loss to have one of six available mech pilots grounded than to push some random dude who knew nothing of tactical importance at Karkat to pick up translating duties, if they really had to.

(I would fucking bite I would not abide) (I would if I had to/don't want to have to, no no don't touch me no)

(shh no strangers it's okay)

Karkat threw him a sharp look, though it ached underneath. No promises you can't keep.

... can I promise to vet them for you first/weed the assholes out?

... that sounds somewhat potentially acceptable maybe (yes thank you.)

"I want them in the air," Harley said, "for the dang good reason that Vantas here has equipment to plug into the enemy's communication network, if he hasn't been locked out...?"

Karkat shook his head. "No sir. I'm dead for them, so who cares."

"Sloppy," one of the other generals muttered with a disdainful sniff.

Yeah what if we'd gotten your mech working or reverse engineered it, seriously now.

... you guys are pretty tricky I guess but I think you still fucking underestimate how much we outnumber you. Karkat huffed, slid him the mental equivalent of a side-look, though this time the body didn't bother to follow. Also that isn't how mech telepathy-communications work you can't hack it like that! Firewalls mean alien brain in the meld = braindead alien. (... should probably tell Harley I bet someone will want to try it...)

Harley was in a conversation with some highly decorated dude that it might be better not to interrupt, so John shot him a quick message about it. Done!

"All right, that's settled! Vantas, your jobs will be to liaise with Makara, and, if you can, to tag enemy and ally biomechs -- we need to know which is which and I don't think your beau will have had the chance to tie giant kerchiefs to the white hats' upper arms. Egbert, your jobs will be to input Vantas' intel into the tactical map, and to shield and evac him in case anyone gets through the frontlines -- which must dang well be last resort. Neither one of you will be going as a combatant."

John tried not to feel disappointed, felt a bit disappointed anyway, and then thought -- in a battle like that? With so many human troops who had never before fought together, and several factions of aliens? Some of them psychic? Yeah, the chances of them staying safe all battle long were. Kinda not high.

God, if he and Karkat fell, it would be a disaster.

I won't let that happen, he promised grimly.

(we'll hold,) Karkat echoed without even thinking about it. Intel-giving is good/some influence thank fuck...

"Anything else any of you might need Corporal Vantas for?" Harley asked. "No? Very well. Both of you, dismissed. Go get flight-ready."

But they're nowhere near done talking! Karkat protested, even as he stood up.

John gave a philosophical shrug and walked out with a polite nod. Yeah but now they're gonna talk about... um.

What if Gamzee betrayed us, Karkat finished cynically. (betrayed me/hah impossible no) What if I also turn to side with him.

He sighed, raked a hand through his hair, fingers slipping under the jello interface; John knew he was about to take the headset off before Karkat even moved his hand up.

(guess I can see why I cannot know,) was the last morose thought that came through, and then he was slipping it around his neck.

John took off his own headband, slipped it in his pocket. Sigh.

They came to a stop on the doorstep, bracketed by a pair of military men from one of the Generals' retinue, and a pair of Noir's men waiting facing them on the dusty ground between the buildings.

"I see my mech," Karkat told Noir's men, and then turned to look at John, eyes a little narrow, but unsurprised. "You see Dave. Yes?"

"... Yeah."

They'd never really piloted each other's mechs. The machines were all based on a common design, sure, but then much tailored, retooled to fit their individual fighting styles, the weight and swing of their weapons of choices -- and they spent so much time in those cockpits, the only real privacy they ever got...

It was necessary, he knew that, and Dave had to also know that. And it wasn't like they legally owned the things. But John would still feel better if he got to ask for permission.

And hey, maybe some joking around would help put him back in the proper cheerful-ready mindset.

Well, unless Dave took it upon himself to talk crap about him and Karkat again, but a little snark session might do the same thing, so hey.

--

"F-fuggin c'm in, Shon. Close y' m-mouth while you're at-at it--"

John stood in the doorway of Dave's hospital room, mouth open like a moron as his cheerful "hey Dave" died on his tongue.

There were straps holding his friend down, around his chest and hips and tethering his wrists. There were straps that didn't disguise the sudden trembles, the jerks and twitches, the way his hands curled like a dying spider's legs. There was a black eye on Dave's face where he had no doubt smacked himself, maybe fallen out of bed for all John knew.

As John stared, the twitching seemed to get worse, until Dave's back arched briefly off the bed and he landed back with a slight bounce, the straps at his wrists snapping taut when he yanked them up. His face -- John turned on the spot, turned his back and tried to breathe without shrieking.

"'Least close th' fuckin' door," Dave rasped, tone bitter, and John took a neat step backwards into the room and closed the door in front of his face.

He didn't turn around straight away.

He's not screaming himself hoarse or lost in his own head, he remembered Karkat saying, or almost. Could be worse.

Not broken. This was not broken?

"... Fuckin' bitch," Dave mumbled, the sound muffled like he'd turned his face away in the middle, like he couldn't look at John either.

God.

Jade had been here yesterday evening -- "correcting" his "typos," was it? She hadn't told John. Rose and Dirk had to have seen him, or heard -- Dirk had access to all the cameras, there was no way he hadn't seen him, he'd. Why had no one told John? Why had they all let him keep on with his stupid unfounded optimism and his -- his -- shit.

Okay. Space battle in a few hours. He couldn't -- couldn't go up there so unsettled, so that meant he needed to. Crap. Okay. He breathed out as slowly as he could and turned around again, a smile pinned somehow to his face.

"Whew, sorry buddy. Startled me."

It was a little dim in here, blinds rolled almost all the way down, because -- no visor for him today, not even shades, and that meant Dave's eyes were bare; sunlight would hurt. The look he threw John was so cynical -- so flat. Defeated. His lower eyelid on the left kept jumping, and the corner of his mouth.

He wasn't buying the sudden casual tone, of course, but if John kept pretending, Dave would... let it slide. Let it go, let John keep play-acting the world where nothing ever went bad and they always won.

"Nerve damage?" John made himself ask, before something else made it out of his mouth and he lost the courage to bring it back up. "... Brain damage?"

"Docs don't know. Fu-fus-fucked brain activity. Bit like e-epilepsy." Dave flicked his wrist like he was throwing something inconsequential away, was brought to a stop by the restraints before he could complete the gesture. "Physical damage, though, they've got no idea."

"Oh." John rubbed his hands against his thighs, shoved them in his pockets, rocked on his heels. "That, uh. That sucks. Is it -- like, getting any better? Sometimes?"

"Calm is good. Can't get excited," Dave said, deadpan as possible, and John cracked a smile that hurt.

"Oh no, that must be terrible."

"The terrip-th-terr--" He could see Dave give up in the middle of the word, the brief flash of humor dying down into shame. "Yeah."

Cautiously, John stepped closer to the bed. "I'll do my best to keep things calm and boring," he promised solemnly.

Dave slung him a heavy-lidded side-look. Even in the dim light John could see the darker trail of veins in his papery eyelids. "Yippy yay."

"The day is saved," John said, and rocked his weight a little, hands stuffed deep in his pockets, looked down at his feet.

Dave's wrist on white sheets, barred by the padded strap. Trembling faintly.

"I can stay, if you're bored," he made himself offer, blurted out before he could overthink it. "I've got -- stuff to do, but I can take a half-hour, or even an hour, that's fine. Tonight's going to be busy but--"

"Oh baby Jesus no." Dave was shaking his head, and John was even sure it was mostly deliberate. (Mostly. He wasn't looking at John.) "I keep, keep f-falling asleep 'nyway." A pause, a deep breath. His red eyes opened and he looked at John straight on this time. "You're here about my baby, yeah?"

John nodded. "Did. Did they ask you first? I--"

"Mnh. Gramps." A pause, a hissing, angry breath. "Said yes. Better than. Better than rusting. Fuckin' hangar, b-b-being useless." He stared at John, hair a limp, sweaty mess on the pillow. "You-you fucking go and kill them dead, okay, John?"

Such a frustrated, furious, ashamed mess he was -- and then the whole left side of his face jumped and John had to swallow the knot in his throat.

"Yeah. I'll take care of Excal. You'll get her back like new. Maybe a little dinged. I'll treat her pretty much just like I would treat my own!"

He couldn't help but laugh, half surprise and half nerves, from the eyeroll Dave gave him then. "Dude, Warhammer left in pieces. Like. Three pieces."

"... Slightly better than I treat my own!" John corrected, holding an air of eager deference on his face.

"Get the fffuck out b-before I throw my bedpan at your face," Dave said with a snort, and quirked him a faint, lopsided smirk.

"Yessir," John said, and smiled back, and saw himself out.

Walking back down the stairs and past the nurses would ... he pushed open the corridor window right in front of Dave's door and dropped two stories down.

--

"And we're done here. John, you got everything?"

John blinked up at Marcia, who was peering through the open cockpit door. His hands were underneath the seat, fiddling with the seat height -- Marcia and Pablo swore up and down that it was the exact same as what they'd gotten off Warhammer's specs, but the specs must have been wrong.

That or the shape of Dave's ass hollow was throwing him off.

He rested his hand on the side keyboard, checked the way it swung out over his knees -- not like he should need to reprogram Excalibur in midair, after all the adjusting they'd done all afternoon for things like reaction speed and counterbalancing and automated follow-ups, but you never knew. Roxy had had to make her onboard computer into a server just the other day, after all.

"I've got to supervise weapons adjustments," Marcia told him, brown eyes wrinkling in worry at the corners. "You're staying in here?"

"Yeah," John answered, and managed a smile. "Gotta commune with Excal a bit, sweet-talk her, you know, get the mood going..."

"Haha, you're already channeling Dave." Hah. Ouch. "Don't go kissing his girlfriend now, he'll be jealous."

Grinning, she disappeared from view. John let himself wince, and thought longingly of his days helping the mechanics -- but not today. It was fine for the days where nothing was going on but basic maintenance, and they had a well-oiled routine in place for when timelines ran tight; today he would only slow them down.

Seven hours to departure.

Seven hours to get his head in the game. Seven hours to -- damn, but no matter how annoying Karkat found it, no matter how embarrassed John was growing to be about it, there was a reason why his default reaction to bad news was to stop thinking about it.

Stopping thinking about Dave was really, really hard when he was sitting in Dave's mech.

"Ah, I have the right know in my head," Karkat said, unsurprised, from the cockpit hatch. John's head jerked up, his hands briefly clenching on the (thankfully deactivated) controls.

"What are you doing in here?" John spluttered without thought, eyes gone wide as he took him in.

It wasn't even that Karkat was in the hangar -- which was forbidden grounds to him -- because honestly now, who would care again after today?

Karkat wasn't in slacks and a button-up shirt anymore -- or even jeans and a t-shirt. He was encased from fingertips to throat to toes in his old alien flight suit, night-black with the blood red accents, and it changed...

It changed the way he moved, it changed -- his shoulders, the set of his chin, it did things to them even when Karkat just stood there the same way Marcia and the other hangar crew had, holding onto the top of the door and leaning in to see John.

"Food," Karkat replied with a shrug, and handed him a paper bag before swinging himself down. He sat sideways on the jutting edge of the cockpit's sealing door, five inches up from the floor, his back to the doorjamb, one of his heavy combat boots on the drawbridge door and one in the cockpit proper.

Blinking, John opened the bag. Oh. Cold meat cuts and pasta salad. An apple. It was three in the afternoon, and smelling the food made his stomach wake up with a sudden growl.

"Thanks," John said, already digging in.

"I come to tell you, Dad says sleep."

"Mmh." John chewed, swallowed. "Yeah, soon. Why are you wearing that already? If we're not leaving for -- for a while?"

Karkat snorted, ran a possessive hand down his side. "If I put it not on me, the doctor is 'give me one more arm bit, give me one more this, that,' later I put it on with holes."

"Thought they would already have made holes in it," John said, and leaned in to get a better look, keyboard pushed back in its slot to the side and the food container firmly caught between his knees. On the right side of Karkat's chest was drawn his little sideways sixty-nine, and underneath a line of characters that was probably his name in alienese. The sign was picked out on each shoulder too, a red so bright it seemed almost fluorescent in the comparative dimness inside the cockpit, with half the instruments turned off.

"Yes. Before. When it's hot on a body it... makes no more hole?"

"Fixes itself?"

Karkat nodded, arms stretched out to rest his elbows on his knees, hands falling lax at the wrists. "Un."

"With body heat? Cool." Also a bit creepy. He bet it was alive too, somehow. He bet every single piece of technology the aliens had would be alive. Sooo creepy.

Karkat wrapped an arm around his knee, the pad of his thumb gliding thoughtlessly back and forth over the red seam on his inner thigh. John pulled his eyes away, stared down at his pasta salad. Oh, there were egg chunks. He went hunting for them with dogged perseverance.

"You're here why?"

"Uh, I had work to do? To make the mech do what I want. It's set up for -- you know. Not me."

Karkat could hardly have missed the fact that this was not Warhammer. Even dismissing the thing where his boyfriend had left with its remnants in tow, or what Harley had said... Excalibur's white body was threaded in a red almost as bright as Karkat's, and John had never -- it wasn't really his color. Yeah.

He kept shoveling food down his throat, ignored the scrutiny he was under. Karkat looked weird in a flight suit -- too martial, too alien, not even a little bit like a normal part of the background.

It was hard not to stare.

Had it really only been two months? It felt like years. Like Karkat had always been tagging along around the island, massacring the English language and getting baffled and offended at things John would never have looked at twice in his life, like parents and microwaves.

He looked battle-ready, bushy eyebrows and wide mouth set to 'grim determination', shoulders squared -- or maybe that was the cut of the uniform, pulling them back...

"Dave is bad, huhn."

John closed his eyes tight. Breathed through his nose.

"Yeah," he said, voice rougher than he'd meant it to be. "He's -- it's bad." He can't walk, he almost said, can't speak properly, can't control his own face, he can't-- John hadn't even thought to ask if Dave was in pain, too, it had felt horrible enough, but what if?

Fair bet that Dave hated it enough that John had seen him, and definitely wouldn't want Karkat to know the details as well. John swallowed his words, repeated a last, inane "It's bad," and concentrated on methodically stabbing at his pasta with his plastic fork, and stabbing it again until the piled-up wriggles fell off in a mush.

"There's no one else who can do the same thing Gamzee does up there, is there?" he asked, to make sure. "With his head."

A faint wince crossed Karkat's face. "No. Purple-blue like him can do that, not others."

And the main thrust of the whole plan was that no one out-purpled him up there. Okay. Good enough.

"Okay," John said, and started eating again, eyebrows down in concentration. The only ones in danger of that happening to them would be the enemy aliens. Good enough.

... Not good enough, but he wasn't sure how to tell Gamzee to keep it to non-permanent-damage levels of utter terror. How to get the message to Gamzee, how to get him to agree, and after those, how to keep in check the enemies who wouldn't stop being a problem for anything less.

He ate. Karkat waited for him, straddling his doorjamb, seeming for once content to sit and do nothing. His head was tilted back so that dark, messy hair pressed against the edge of the door, sunset horns pointed back, rock-gray throat bare where his high collar gaped...

Soldier on the Eve of Battle, John thought, and tore his eyes away.

He didn't know this Karkat. Cancer's pilot -- great defense, so-so offense, one of the very few aliens to have a solid concept of teamwork -- almost boring, predictable patterns of attack until suddenly he was a cornered wild beast and then you were hanging out in your eviscerated cockpit facing down hard vacuum and his space-black pincers, coming back for another serrated swipe.

If Jade had been five hundred meters farther away, John would have died. He wondered who would have followed Karkat down to Earth then -- Dave? Dirk? Jade herself, maybe? If Karkat had killed him by then, he wasn't sure they would have had as much mercy... How would Dad have reacted? Jane...?

It felt to him like Dave was the first real loss they'd had -- that John had had -- this war. It had felt like that for Jane, too -- infuriated grief, confusion -- and then she'd gotten better, mostly, was still getting better, and John had... 'Nah, it was a close call but everything is fine now!'

He hadn't known Jane's squad of Marines personally, he hadn't known the hundred or so Marines they'd lost here and there whenever an alien managed a long-ranged attack that hit the secondary perimeter. He hadn't known any of the crews kidnapped or evaporated in space before John and his family were old enough, the need pressing enough to graduate them from flight simulators to the real thing.

They'd gotten back none of them, not even in pieces, and never would.

"Zhann."

"--Yeah," John said, head jerking up. His pasta salad was now pasta puree. He hadn't taken a bite in about three minutes.

Karkat's head was craned to look up at him, brows furrowed, tilted up in question. "You're angry to Gamzee?"

"No," John said. "Yes. Maybe." He sighed, secured the container between his knees and raked a hand through his hair. He felt under-dressed in his slacks and half-unbuttoned shirt, a civilian playing at war. "It's war. It happened. I'm more angry at him for being an asshole, or because he was toying with them. I don't -- what he did to Dave, I..."

Capricorn had gone after Echidna. Dave had decided that no, it did not get to reach her. He'd succeeded, too. That was why he'd gotten hurt. The fact that Capricorn was piloted by a lazy, erratic bag of douche in love with John's -- sort of friend... that didn't seem to belong to the same world.

Whether the price was too high, that was for Dave to decide.

"I just don't like him," John said, and didn't even mumble an apology for once. It was hardly a secret at this point, just fact. "I don't know if I'm angry for Dave too. It's war," he repeated, as if to convince himself; "no hard feelings."

Maybe some of John's own victims' friends and lovers would have hard feelings against him.

Well. Then they would have hard feelings, he supposed. John was going to treat them with respect, and then kill them. No mind games, no teasing his targets, he was just going to kill them. The people attached to them could feel whatever they wanted toward him. He would accept it.

"I'm good," he told Karkat.

Karkat snorted, wet and explosive like a horse. "You're a box of shit. A box of shit on a bed of shit, that smells like Zake's foot things and sun making hot on shit."

"That does sound pretty shitty," John said, mouth pursed. Karkat rolled his red eyes, flicked him a side smirk, and then another look, less amused, more inquisitive. John sighed, let his face ease back into a neutral expression.

"Zhann."

"I don't know if I'm supposed to tell you this, buddy. You've got such weird rules for what we get to talk about."

A rueful snort. "We maybe die tonight. Tell me now, so you don't tell me when I'm in your head. Surprise, motherfucker, watch a TV of all the things now! Yes-thank-you Zhann I want this a fuckton."

... Yeah, there was that. John rolled the apple between his palms, pensive. "That's just it. People are going to die."

"Mmh."

"No matter what we do."

"... Mmh."

"And we have to stay back, because the best possible position for the both of us is in the rear, trading intel."

Karkat snorted quietly. "I'm red, now you're fucking red, we stay with your aliens? The fight will go to us." He reclined against the doorjamb, waved his hand, a cynical look on his face. "People out there, they see me with you, get angry like a fish, think hey, a good day to get me dead."

"Angry... like a fish," John repeated, fighting not to smile, and then snickered. "Okay, I believe you. Yeah, it's... I can see that happening. Probably shouldn't look forward to it, we'll help more people by helping coordination than if we wade in and personally punch enemies in the head, anyway -- it's just hard to hang back."

Karkat made a quiet noise of agreement. "I think more hard with you. When I'm small I thinked when I'm big I... rrarhshh," he said, and swiped the air with his hand, all claws out, poking from slits at the end of his gloves. "Then I got my fucking ass kicked up and down the gym," he added -- like he'd heard the sentence from Bro maybe and memorized it wholesale; there was even a bit of Strider's mocking twang in it. "Then I fix in my head. Want to, can't do, shut up, Khrk't. But Zhann, you can fight, and you want, but they say no. It's more hard."

John felt a bit guilty for laughing, imagining a cocky, younger Karkat getting his britches adjusted -- but not too guilty, because Karkat had wanted him to laugh.

"It's got to be hard, too," John said, gentler, "to want to help and ... your body won't work well enough for it, won't do what you want it to. It's got to be frustrating."

Karkat gave a dry little shrug, not looking at John. "It's life. You shit-kissing blue."

"Hey, I'm not -- argh."

Karkat gave him a disbelieving look, and then a faint smirk when John pouted. John's put-upon sigh transformed into a chuckle, despite himself.

"Oh man, we moved all the controls to where I'm used to having them," he exclaimed, and reached up to prod at some toggles over his head, just to make sure, again, that they were in reach. "But it's a fair bet Excal won't react like Warhammer at all. Also everything feels a tiny little bit too far. That's going to be so distracting!"

Karkat shifted around to sit on his haunches, a hand on the edge of the seat beside John's thigh for balance as he looked up. "Hm. When I go in Gamzee's mech..." His face did something weird, like real, somber thoughts and then a put-upon, overdone frustration. "Eugh. It has one legs. I move how?"

"Well it's not like you guys are walking in space," John replied with a snicker, smiling down at him, as he played with the joysticks on both sides of the seat.

"You don't walk in space."

"Ah, but we walk on Earth!" Not that they were technically supposed to operate in Earth's atmosphere much, never mind on the actual ground, but shh. It was good for parade purposes. "In a spaceship, can't you have optional gravity?"

"... I don't know the words," Karkat told him, eyebrows furrowed in faint puzzlement, and unfolded from his crouch, his hand moving to John's armrest. There wasn't a lot of head room; he ended up looming over the pilot's seat. John watched him crane his head to eye the screens and buttons and slides, making faces all the while. "So much a lot of things. Maybe you're stupid because your head is too many cockpit things in it--"

"Hey!" John protested, and pushed at Karkat's booted knee with a tennis-shoe-clad foot. "I'm not stupid, I'm very smart. I bet you couldn't even remember half the buttons," he added, waving at the control panels.

Snorting, Karkat squinted at the controls. John briefly wondered if he should let him, if this was a security breach somehow. (It totally was.) He doubted Karkat would remember them and be able to either hijack a mech or reverse-engineer it from a single glance; piloting took a lot of muscle memory too, and the way the outside of the panels were set up wasn't going to help him unravel their metal technology and everything that happened underneath...

But hey, could be wrong. "Do you know how to pilot from my head?" he asked, curious.

"Hm. I think..." Karkat huffed, and then rotated the right joystick to the side so he could sit on John's right armrest. John shuffled to the left as much as he could in the snug seat, watched with eyes a little wide as Karkat's gloved hand rested on the left joystick, fingers twitching through the start of patterns. "I feel I know, but I don't know," he mused, his back leaning sideways and blocking half of John's view. "I feel my hand goes here, I feel 'oh yes weapon here' but my hand don't know."

Close. His back to John, and John knew-felt all the times he'd left a room sideways rather than offer his blind spot to attacks, with how short his horns were, how if affected his early warning awareness...

John slid his left hand under Karkat's palm, nudged it up a bit with the back of his knuckles to make space. "I should probably not teach you this," he said, and laughed, and it came out oddly choked. "Thumb--" he wriggled it, "--pressing down, now you can move the mech. Index is for--" things he probably shouldn't... shouldn't --

"Oh, for weapon," Karkat said, and crooked his index over John's; John felt the point of his claw tick against the button, and then Karkat took his hand off.

"But if you're ever in a cockpit and you have to pilot it, I'd rather you run away than try to fight," John said, and tried for lightly, and failed.

Karkat craned his neck to glance down at John over his own shoulder. "Weapon their shit face, then run?"

"... Yeah, okay."

Karkat hummed, then said, turned away, pretend-careless, "I don't teach you my mech, you just get in and think I want to run and it run."

"That easy?"

"Pfft. Yes, but -- it's like the headsets, you want to say a thing but you say other thing too and then oh fuck your head's under your knee and you punch in your dick."

John cracked up, flopping against the left armrest so he could laugh properly as he grinned up at his alien bropal. "Oh my god. Tell me you punched yourself in the dick in training."

"... Nnooo," Karkat said, very unconvincingly. "And in the face. Didn't do that. I get in the cockpit I'm like Strider-sir, hello asshole, put your mouth on my foot now you shit people. People all yes Kh'rkt fuck me good please you're very good--"

Yeah, no, John was giggling too hard to even pretend to buy the adoration of people he was pretty sure Karkat was making up entirely. He shoved Karkat in the hip and Karkat skidded. For a second it looked like he was about to land in -- in -- in John's lap -- and then he caught himself, slapped John's closest knee in revenge.

"You're fuckface asshole."

"No, you," John shot back without thought. His face felt hot. Was the sun getting in the hangar? Maybe someone had forgotten a window. Oh. "Hey, it's pretty obvious this isn't a two-person cockpit, huh. You're almost sitting on me, heheh." Heh. Woooow. Super awkward. God, his face wouldn't stop burning. "I mean--"

"Space small?" Karkat asked, and pivoted on one ass cheek so he could look at John, one of his knees digging into John's thigh and kind of -- proving John's point. Kind of that. "When you go in my cockpit, you go in my head, shitfuck," he said, tone more musing than aggressive. "That's small."

Goddamn, the muscles in his thigh were in slightly odd places, but dang if they weren't kind of obvious anyway. Which was a pretty weird thing to notice but the red accent going down the outside of Karkat's hip and -- "Yeah okay point."

Okay. Karkat was even more rabidly territorial than Dirk, where personal space was concerned. He would lean back and step out of John's cockpit any second now.

Any... any second now.

Only he was looking at John, and.

"You are seriously going to slip and fall on my lap, brofriendly, you have like half a butt cheek on the armrest and it's not really made with butts in mind, I mean it's kind of narrow, well not like you have a huge -- um."

Karkat was watching him, and his expression just --

"Karkat?" John choked out. "Why're you staring like that, buddy?" He was looking at John's stupid red gaping face, wasn't he. Did aliens even blush -- had Karkat ever blushed? Right now John couldn't even remember. Maybe Karkat was just wondering about John's weird alien biology--

He brought up a knee and brought up a foot, planted his heel in the tiny edge of free space between John's thigh and the other armrest, across John's -- knees, and the fluorescent-red line along the outside of his leg flexed with it.

When John looked up there was a weird smile on his dark goth lips, floaty and small and -- and John didn't know, weird. A couple of his pointy little teeth peeked through, briefly dug into his lower lip, and then his smile -- widened -- got closer, got closer to John, his smiling (so strange) mouth and his nose with the slightly odd nostrils that John had never noticed, haha, wasn't it funny the shape of them, and John was burning up.

"You talk I fall on you a lot, Zhann," Karkat said, almost lilting with amusement, with teasing, and John made a choked-off sound. "Maybe you want that."

He was never sure afterwards who had leaned in first. There was a hook in his guts pulling him closer and he was -- terrified, electrified, something not quite adrenaline gathering under his ribs and pushing up. The kiss started out too hard and a little off-center and (he was kissing Karkat, what the hell?) didn't feel like release, only made that odd tension worse. He made a noise, nasal, faint; the low, quiet grunt Karkat replied with shivered against his lips.

The tip of a tongue teased at his lips, his teeth (so flat, he knew Karkat was thinking), the roof of his mouth a little, ticklish; John made another noise and forced his hands to open on the armrests before he crushed them. He was kissing back so slow, so -- Karkat would think he was bad at it, so little experience and the last time had been so long ago -- but Karkat was letting him suck on his lower lip, was starting to make a throaty, rolling noise (oh, yes, that's good, keep it up) and, and the point of careful teeth, and their mouths pressing together again, open and breathing too fast into each other's mouths, bodies alive and ready for --

He was pushing Karkat's shoulders to arm's length in the next second -- closing his hands there, didn't want him to, to -- what if he fell, hit his head, and now John's body was cold, Karkat was so warm and present and there was a, a distance now that he -- and -- John didn't want a distance, he wanted to cling to him so much he could have screamed, throat gone tight with tears but he.

Kissing.

It wasn't like aliens didn't know what a kiss was for. It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't.

What was it. What the fuck was it. What the fuck--

"Zhann?" Karkat asked, staring down at his contorted face, baffled and tense suddenly, gloved hands having already snapped closed like manacles on John's wrists, like he could force them off him if John decided to make it a contest of strength.

He didn't want that but he wanted to let go even less. He wanted to cling to Karkat and be as close as he could (oh) -- and if kissing was that then -- if Karkat wanted to do that (he wanted to do that? But. But.) then John -- then -- okay?

Okay. But.

"What was that," he managed, throat dry, mouth tingling with heat, with the littlest breeze. "What -- why...?"

This made no sense. John knew how much Karkat loved Gamzee, knew it from the inside where there was no watching them embrace and touch each other's face and concluding they were brothers.

"You looked at my mouth," Karkat said blankly, and then he -- John's face did something, and Karkat's nostrils flared, his lip curled back to show teeth; he yanked himself backward. John let him go, out of surprise mostly; his horn glanced off the ceiling. "You look at my mouth and my legs and my everywhere and you make shit body joke--"

He devolved into a torrent of alien snarling, hands flying up and around to illustrate his rage. John stayed seated, watching him in stunned-blank shock.

"I didn't mean--"

"You did the mouth thing too!" Karkat yelled back at the top of his voice. "You fucking asshole--"

"Oh my god, don't yell!" John shouted back, hot and dizzy with it. "Don't -- I know I did, I just--"

Incandescent with rage, Karkat slammed both hands on the armrests, hit John's forehead with his, a short, sharp impact that left John -- not hurt, but reeling. He pressed a hand to his forehead, gave Karkat an injured look, but Karkat was still right there in his face, still furious.

"You say I'm wrong and it's not boyfriend things for you, and then you do more boyfriend things, but no it's not, even when you make your mouth to my shitfucking mouth -- do you want me or not?!"

"Not if you're going to leave!" John shouted back, shoving him in the chest. Karkat stumbled back, caught himself on the doorjamb, stared at John all weird -- furious but thinking, like --

... Wait.

... Oh.

Oh man.

Oh fuck.

John thunked back against the backrest, pressed his hands to his face, shoving his glasses up into his hair. Laughed, because seriously, what? What the hell was that?

He didn't want Karkat to leave, he didn't want him to go anywhere, and damn straight he was jealous of Gamzee because Gamzee got to touch Karkat without it being weird and stand as close as he wanted and play with his hair, play with his horns probably even. He didn't know, didn't understand what it was, this need to crawl into Karkat's space and never leave again, if it was the headsets or what but it was right here, it existed under his ribs where no amount of digging would get it out. It was huge and it was too much and he--

Didn't want it to stop.

Only he wanted Karkat to want that too, and Karkat only wanted to go home.

He forced his hands off his face, blinked with sticky eyelashes (oh), looked. Karkat was half-out of the cockpit by now, one foot on the edge, both hands holding on to either pounce or retreat fast, like his body thought it was still a fight, but his face...

"... Zhann," he said, and John swallowed and. He should apologize, for, for freaking out, and then he could listen to Karkat -- he'd confused the guy, led him on, he'd been told again and again he was too much and apparently he hadn't -- hadn't even been aware that Karkat might not be totally, over-sensitively alien (might not be totally wrong) (oh.)

"Karkat, I--"

"Get the fuck down from there, Vantas!" someone snapped from the ground. John let out a frustrated shout.

"Not now, Noir, we're busy!" he yelled, rocking forward to the edge of his seat as Karkat pivoted on one foot to look past the scaffolding, looking as startled as John was.

"Well you can get fucking busy outside of a fucking classified location, what's wrong with you? Vantas, don't make me come get you."

Karkat threw John a look -- eyebrows drawn in, frustration and lingering anger, but already trying to think it through, trying to figure John out and not managing. John looked back, powerless, tried to imagine getting out of here and walking with his face all teary and panicked, blotched red from being kissed, from--

"Okay," he said somehow, "okay, we'll go--"

"Harley needs you yesterday, Vantas, you need to pay attention to your fucking tablet," and Karkat winced and opened his mouth like he wanted to apologize to John, but in the end he didn't say anything, just gave a weird nod and turned to leave.

John burrowed back in the pilot's seat, put his feet on the seat (Dave would bitch) and pressed his face against his knees. He hit the cockpit lock without bothering to look up, to open his eyes; and then, sealed away, instruments turned off, he yelled out all the air in his lungs.

Stupid, shitty, horrible day.

It wasn't even half over.

It wasn't even half over and now he was going to have to fly with Karkat in his head and --

No. He didn't want to think about it anymore. He wasn't going to. He was going to avoid the shit out of this huge, ridiculous clusterfuck and to hell with anyone who would make judgey faces about his goddamn coping mechanisms.

He brought up the wrist with the band that controlled his nanites, went into old subfolders he hadn't used in ages, or ever.

There. Melatonin production. He gave himself a nice dose of hormonal sleepiness, settled himself better into the seat. Set his alarm for one hour before departure. Dad would know where to find him if they needed him early.

Despite his best efforts, he fell asleep imagining Karkat's body curled up (impossibly) in the chair with him.