Chapter Text
Your legs are burning. The good kind. The just biked a mile and some change at top clip, and beat the morning traffic home, so maybe you can steal a smooch from Karkat before he leaves kind. Hell yeah, that’s the best kind. You walk the sting in your hams out leisurely as you approach the bike rack outside of your apartment and fill your lungs with a deep breath of mowed-grass- and-sprinkler-dew. This is good. Today is good.
You keep that thought turning over and over in the back of your mind. Things are good right now. You have a cozy two bedroom place you share with your boyfriends. You have a kind of boring and perfectly ordinary job working graveyard shift at a gas station mini mart. You have three regular meals a day, even if sometimes those meals are boxed mac n’ cheese and frozen burritos. It’s a good, if somewhat uninteresting life, free from rooftop beat-downs, creepy puppet dolls, and swords falling out of the fridge.
You are. Reasonably certain at this point that most people do not need to qualify their objective experience of “good” with those statements. You’re doing better though. Gotta ride the ups and downs like a rodeo grand champion. Yippee-ki-you know the drill.
Last couple months were a rough patch. You aren’t going to think about the last couple of months. You aren’t going to think about next month, or even tomorrow. You are going to live in the moment and enjoy being alive (for once). Embrace your moments then let them go. And oh yeah, can’t forget those choice, hot boyfriend lips. Gotta make sure you don’t miss out on those. After making sure your bike lock is secure, you adjust your backpack strap and stroll down the walkway to your apartment building.
Feels alright to take the stairs two at a time, not too much of a stretch after that workout. You find your front door unlocked, and when you step inside you can hear bumping and grumbling from the kitchen. Score, Karkat hasn’t left yet. You shrug your bag off and lower it carefully, toe off your sneakers so your socks can muffle the sound of your footsteps on the hardwood. He doesn’t look up when you swing around into the kitchen. He’s far too occupied with trying to bully the ancient coffee maker into giving up it’s nasty beany treasure, and you’re practically an expert at the art of stealth.
You get right up behind him and pin him against the counter. Set your teeth against the outer edge of his ear before you summon up your best Texan drawl. “Hey there, pretty thang.”
“Hey, yourself.” He goes all soft and melty, leaning back into you to maximize contact area, and tips his head to one side inviting you to continue your attack of nibbles in other places. You’re more than happy to oblige. He’s god damn pretty when he’s eager. Actually he’s pretty all the time, and you like to remind him of this fact as often as humanly possible.
You use as much height as you have over him- which is, you admit, pathetically little- and wrap your arms around him, nudge his chin so he looks at you and lets you give him a good and proper kiss. It’s sloppy because of the angle. Neither of you really mind.
Karkat sighs; bright happiness sings like a gospel choir in your chest. Between jobs and school, you both want for more together time. Maybe if you’re very convincing, you can edge a little bit more out this morning. You rock forward, rub right up against his perfect ass as you deepen the kiss, give him a taste in more ways than one of the sweet cherry temptation that is Dave Strider.
His mouth is soft, and opens to you freely. He still tastes like toothpaste when you push your tongue inside. For a fleeting moment it seems as if you’ve won him; he groans, hand coming ‘round to grip your thigh as he lifts his ass and grinds back against you. Fuck, you’re in a mood because your dainty donger is jumping up like doggy begging for table scraps, oh please, yes master can I have it, I’ve been a good boy.
But then he breaks your kiss and groans again, in a decidedly less sexy way. “Dave I have class.”
“You have a four-point-oh GPA,” you protest, “can’t you take a sick day?”
“I want to keep my grade up, thanks.” He nips your pouting bottom lip. “It’s just two classes today. And Eridan hasn’t got anything at all to do, you’ll find someway to keep entertained until I get back.”
“Princess gets pissy when xe doesn’t get xer beauty sleep,” you point out. Karkat just snorts and pats your cheek.
“So let xer sleep in, it won’t kill either of you.” Then he turns around in your arms and squishes your cheeks until your lips purse out. It screws up your shades. “We’ve got the whole weekend together, I promise we’ll go do something fun.”
“Yeah?” You try to wiggle your eyebrows all suave and sassy but he laughs instead.
“Yes, dork. Now, I gotta finish getting ready.” He kisses your mouth then wiggles to be set free, and you reluctantly let him go. All out of Karkitty time, woe unto you. Still, you linger in the kitchen and watch him finish up his morning routine. Just being near him is comforting. Karkat might be short but he isn’t small, and watching him is like looking at a particularly graceful and slightly fuzzy boulder. He’s gonna be a goddamn bear when he’s older, and that is. Hoo boy. Hot .
He fills his thermos with whatever the coffee maker finally sputtered out and loads it down with cream, then he grabs a mostly cooled bagel from the toaster, scrapes out what’s left in the little container of cream cheese onto it. He plants a kiss on your cheek as he passes you out of the kitchen. You sort of absently drift after him, following at a short distance down the hall, and lurk (sulk) by the door as he grabs his keys and his own backpack off the hook.
“Don’t look at me like a kicked puppy, Strider.” He chides without heat. Kisses you again, on your nose this time, as you mumble a half assed denial, and then he’s shuffling out the door while trying to juggle all his school shit. You are fully prepared to mope as soon as he’s truly gone, but just before you can put that plan into action he pops his head back in.
“Fuck, I almost forgot, the mail guy left a package for you at the office. Slip’s on the table.”
“Really?” You didn’t order anything. Birthday is long past or far in the future depending on what way you’re viewing it from. “What is it?”
Karkat rolls his eyes, “go pick it up and find out.” You lean in and steal a last peck before he can escape, but then he’s gone. At least he left you with a mystery for a distraction.
You consider grabbing the package right away, but after a second thought, you’re really starting to feel that ride home now. And also, you still have a hard on. Be a shame to waste that, so instead you wander your way back to the big master bedroom to see if you can wake sleeping beauty.
Eridan is nearly invisible besides a messy floof of black and purple sticking up from the top of xer blanket cocoon. Xe’s rolled over onto Karkat’s side of the bed. It’s god damn adorable; even in xer sleep xe’s almost as magnetically pulled into Karkles’ orbit as are. You walk over to and sit carefully on the edge of the bed, brush xer hair back until you find and kiss xer temple. Xe’s about as reactive as neon.
“Hey.” You try to tug the comforter back, revealing a little more of xer face. eyebrow, ear, a graceful cheekbone, a strong sweep of jaw. You leave a peck on each spot and nuzzle xer ear. “Heeeey.”
“Hsffgh.” Oh there’s a beautiful baby blue. Xe blinks at you, still mostly sleep blind. “Dave, it’s,” and xe pauses to squint at the alarm clock before giving up entirely, “too fuckin’ early in the mornin’.”
“Late for me. Scoot over, and we can snuggle back to sleep.”
Xe wrinkles xer nose. “No, you have work stank.”
“What?” You try to sniff the collar of your work uniform. “Karkat didn’t say anything.”
“That’s because Kar is a saint among mortals. Now git, go shower.” Xe starts pushing at your hip with what you assume is xer knee. You only resist for a second, but while Eridan could never hope to beat you in a skill based fight, xe’s still got a lot more leverage. So you git. Strike out number two.
A hot shower doesn’t sound half bad though. The eight hour shift on your feet between two bike rides is finally starting to catch up with you. Maybe instead of trying to jump some pretty ass you can have a lazy jerk and a good long nap. That idea is sounding better by the minute.
You still don’t miss a chance to tease Eridan though. You make sure to take a little extra time stripping and wiggling out of your work clothes on your way to the bathroom door. Xe growls kind of low and very sexy when you shimmy your pants down over your ass and bend over to pick them up off the floor. Yeeeah xe gets a good look at what xe just turned down.
You bump the door shut with your hip and drop the dirty clothes into the hamper. The cool tile feels almost luxurious on tired feet as you step across the tiny space to the shower. One nice thing about these apartments is that they never seem to run out of hot water. When you step under the spray it’s like getting hit with a steaming freight train of liquid masseuse.
You let go of the tension in your shoulders with a sigh and roll them back. It’s several long minutes before you do anything else but stand there groaning and turning so that the water can work on different muscle groups. You reach for a bottle of whatever you find first; Karkat’s a classic Oldspice kind of guy, and Eridan has several bottles labeled in who the fuck knows what language. Maybe french. You’re usually the “whatever happens to be on sale in the bargain bin” person. Today it’s White Rain Ocean Breeze, which smells like absolutely no ocean you have ever visited, but it gets you clean and that’s all you care about.
You lather up and rise your hair first. Whoever thought of the repeat part had to be a neat freak, once is more than enough. Once you get going on the rest of your body though, you slow down to take your time. Your skin is still sensitive, almost tingling under the constant assault of heat and pressure. Your groans change tone as you slide fingers over stiffening nipples, trail your touch from you navel through your treasure trail, and down further. Clitzilla is swollen, hard and you gasp when you cup yourself, rutting into your own hand like you’re in heat.
God damn but it’s a good thing the shower is drowning out some of your noises because nevermind Eridan, you’re sure you could wake up the neighbors. Water is only halfway to blame for how wet you are; when you curl your fingers under and press into your cunt, two go in easy. Adding a third is pushing limits, but you wouldn’t be yourself if you weren’t always fucking up your own boundaries, now would you? Still, you start slow. Brace your free hand against the wall and roll your hips up into your palm, hissing pleasure through your teeth as the pressure runs a shock right through your bones.
It didn’t take as long as you thought it would to get use to the changes. You were prepared for the emotional whiplash, chaotic hormone stew, having to adjust to your shift in mass, all the weird, new and strange that would mean you’d have to relearn navigating your world, but. It wasn’t as much becoming a new person, as suddenly recognizing the guy in the mirror as you . Everything disparate finally fitting together whole. An old wound mending over, and what was left wasn’t perfect but it was, all of it, you, yours to do with what you wanted and that. That helped to push the rest of his ghost back into the ground more than anything.
You curl your fingers, pressing up and in, fucking yourself on your own hand. The sound of your breath is trapped in your ears, stuttered panting, interrupted by a gasp or a curse.
“Fuck, fuck, yes m’-” You turn your head, sink your teeth slightly into the meat of your bicep to muffle the sound as your nerve endings buzz. Tension winds and winds, and coils down like a loaded spring, gathering in the muscles of your stomach and thighs. You’re trembling just slightly, chasing that feeling every time you sink down on your own fingers and twist. Come back up pressing into the curve of your palm again, again, again, until you finally chase down that breaking point that’s been hovering just out of reach the last minute or so.
When you do, it pounces you more than the other way around. You almost lose your balance, catch your shoulder and side hard against the tiled wall, but do it without stopping, finger fucking yourself until the crest of your orgasm has died down to a warm hum in all the places it was just a live electric current. You don’t have the energy to finishing washing up properly after that. The most you manage is a bit of pathetic splashing. It’s enough effort to stay upright.
You manage to wobble your way out of the shower and into a dry towel eventually. You don’t bother with dressing at all before you’ve crossed back into the bedroom and thrown yourself into the part of the bed where Eridan isn’t. Xe murmurs a sleepy scolding, then rolls over and tucks xer blanket around you too. You nuzzle up under xer chin as your arms and legs loosey tangle.
All things considered, your life is pretty damn great.
You only halfway surface out of sleep when Eridan finally gets up. Xe indulges you like a spoiled pet with gentle kisses over your lips, chin, and throat before you sink back under. You’re not usually a heavy sleeper, or generally down for long, but by the time you’ve slept off enough of your work shift to actually wake feeling rested xe’s gone. You find a note waiting on the bedside table telling you xe’s popped out for groceries and signed with a perfect lip print in xer favorite lipstick color. You feel a goofy smile tugging at your mouth; xe always worries that you’ll worry.
You take your time getting dressed, but xe still isn’t back by the time you’ve finished, so you decide to put however long you have left to wait to good use. That mystery package has been ignored in the office long enough. You grab the slip and pop on down to go bug your apartment manager.
Carryl is a doll who knows everyone in the complex by name, and also somehow remembers your birthdays. Her wife makes cookies pretty much weekly. That’s part of the reason you opted for this place. Not the cookie thing, although that didn’t hurt. More the doesn’t ask nosy or awkward questions about your living arrangements as long as the rent gets in on the regular thing. There tend to be a lot of people like that here. It’s a nice little community. She smiles when you walk in and says, “oh, I was wondering if he forgot to tell you!”
“Nope,” you smile, “I’m just lazy.”
“Pff, well the box isn’t ticking, so I don’t mind. Here.” She gets up from the desk and disappears through the door to the inner office. When she comes back she’s holding a plain brown box stacked with three cookies. Oatmeal blueberry, score. You thank her as she hands the bundle to you, assure her that you’ll share the treats, and make polite chit chat before she finally shoos back out the door. You nibble a cookie as you amble back to your apartment.
Eridan still isn’t back when you step inside. You set the box down on the long coffee table in front of the couch, then go and grab a plate and a knife from the kitchen: one for the cookies and the other for the box.
The shipping label is weird, it just says care of Strider, not your first name on it. When you score the tape and open it, there’s a smaller, more beat up box inside. It looks like it got repackaged at some point due to the original starting to break down. The second one doesn’t have any labels on it that you can see. There’s also not enough room to fit your fingers between the walls of the two boxes and pull the second one out of the first. You hope whatever is in it isn’t too fragile, and turn the first box over so gravity can do the work for you.
It thumps softly onto the table. You heart slams into your throat and you choke, breath hitching as everything goes tight. His handwriting burns into your retinas like you’re staring straight into the sun and you will it to blind you - please please, make you unsee it.
Your dead name in black sharpie, in his hand writing, your address underneath (how did he get it, you were so careful, so so fucking careful ) the writing on the wall of your heart’s temple. You slap at it in blind animal panic. The box goes sliding, wobbles hesitantly before tipping over the edge, bounces once, twice, and disappears halfway under the sofa. You give it a kick and it’s all the way gone, he’s gone and you can breathe again, even if it’s in shaky fits that leave you dizzy.
He’s gone. He’s been gone for two months, five days, and twenty hours, give or take based on the coroner's best estimation. Karkat was with you. He held your hand so tight it bruised just to keep you grounded. He handled most of the estate, sold everything but the turntables, trashed the rest. You’re sure you didn’t miss anything.
You were there. You were out of your head, but you were there, and he can’t have found you because he’s not going to come for you ever again. You need. You need to get away from this.
You command your legs to move. Stiffly, they do. The signal-to-noise ratio is full of static; it’s filling up your head with white noise. You’re left steering from a tenuous remote connection, but you make it work long enough to propel your body to the second bedroom, the one you all use as an office-slash-rec room, and sink down past the creaking computer chair into some kind of oblivion.