Work Text:
Karkat is the one to suggest the two of you meet in person.
It happens after about six perigees of slinging insults back and forth over Trollian, and Karkat is probably more surprised by his suggestion than you are, as he immediately takes it back.
CG: UGH WHY DON'T WE JUST PICK A FIELD AND BEAT EACH OTHER'S FACES IN INSTEAD OF WASTING YOUR PRECIOUS LITTLE THINKPAN SPACE AND MY VALUABLE TIME ON SHITTING OUT VITRIOLIC NONSENSE UNTIL OUR RAGE SPONGES EXPLODE.
TA: are you 2eriiou2?
CG: WAIT
CG: NO
CG: MY EYES MIGHT EXPLODE FROM THE SHEER UGLY THAT IS YOUR FACE
CG: I MIGHT ACTUALLY DIE FROM HEMORRHAGE.
CG: FORGET I SAID ANYTHING.
TA: you don't even know what ii look liike diip2hiit
CG: I DON'T NEED TO SEE YOU TO KNOW YOUR FACE MAKES YOUR LUSUS CRY WITH SHAME.
You decide to let it go; you have no desire to meet Karkat. He doesn't know about your horrendous mutations. If he finds out you have a lisp you'll never hear the end of it. Karkat is a pain in your ass. Besides, the only thing you have in common is ~ATH, which you can barely say you share! Karkat couldn't program the most basic game grub. You need your husktops for that, anyway: there's no need to lay eyes on each other.
Ever.
--
You pupated with two of everything: two sets of horns, two sets of fangs, and two thinkpans, neither of which agree on anything. Half the time you wonder why you didn't block Karkat the first time he spewed a wall of furious gray text at you: the rest of the time you think he's some of the best entertainment you've ever had.
You spend a few hours tending your bees, feed your lusus, and come back to find Karkat has erupted in rage over the last virus you sent him. You skim the capslock, smirking as he puzzles out its purpose (exploding game grubs), bangs out no less than ten messages about how pointless it is (truth: you don't know what you were thinking. It's tame and too simple and you spent way too much time writing it for what it does. Why did you bother? Oh, right, because you're pathetic), comes to the conclusion you sent it to Karkat so he'd kill himself accidentally (Karkat can't program but he understands code well enough: it was unlikely), loses himself in a metaphor (he does that a lot), and degenerates to demanding that you answer him.
CG: YOU DIED IN FRONT OF YOUR COMPUTER, DIDN'T YOU?
CG: LITERALLY CODED YOURSELF TO DEATH. GOOD GOING YOU INCREDIBLE NOODLEBRAINED LUNATIC. YOU PROBABLY FELL ASLEEP, DROOLED ALL OVER YOUR KEYBOARD, AND ELECTROCUTED YOURSELF.
CG: AND NOBODY MOURNED THAT DAY.
TA: ehehe, actually ii wa2 wonderiing how long you could keep talkiing iif nobody an2wered you
TA: ii thiink you are the only troll who could argue hiim2elf iinto a corner and iit2 pretty hiilariiou2
CG: YOU UNBELIEVABLE NOOKWHIFFING GRUBFUCKER, YOU ARE SO FULL OF SHIT IT'S A WONDER IT'S NOT POURING OUT OF YOUR NOSEHOLES AND SEEPING FROM YOUR HEARDUCTS!
CG: THE WASTE POURING FROM YOUR PROTEIN CHUTE IS SO NOXIOUS I HAD TO USE A SHOUTPOLE, AND NOW I AM USING IT AS A PADDLE TO KAYAK THROUGH THE RIVER OF CRAP YOU HAVE BURIED MY HUSKTOP IN. WELL DONE.
TA: plea2e
TA: can you actually read the 2creen through the 2piittle that mu2t coat iit?
TA: you 2pent twenty page2 of rage2nake tryiing two under2tand what a viiru2 a wriiggler could have wriitten doe2
CG: ONLY BECAUSE YOU BASICALLY WROTE SPAGHETTI CODE INSTEAD OF GETTING TO THE FUCKING POINT
You look at your other screen where the virus is still open and ready to be sent to unsuspecting trolls. At a glance you can see that Karkat is right: there's five lines you could condense into one right there, and another two that you could code more efficiently instead of using an if/then statement. You let Karkat carry on as you fix it, sighing at your inadequacy. If Karkat picked up on that mistake, you can only imagine how many coding failures are in this thing! You really suck.
--twinArmageddons wants to send file: grubfucker2.~ath--
--carcinoGeneticist accepted the file transfer--
TA: niice catch kk
TA: thii2 2tupiid thiing 2hould have been under twenty liine2 all along
CG: IT'S NICE TO SEE YOU CAN ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU'RE A SHIT PROGRAMMER.
TA: 2hut up, a2 iif you would have had the fiir2t clue how to wriite thii2
TA: you were probably ju2t 2ayiing 2hiit two pii22 me off and happened two be riight on acciident
CG: YOU JUST CAN'T STAND THE THOUGHT THAT MAYBE I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON'T ABOUT CODING
CG: YOU SHOULD BE THANKING ME AND INSTEAD ALL THAT YOU CAN DO IS SPEW VOLCANIC INSULTS BECAUSE YOU KNOW
CG: I'M
CG: RIGHT!
CG: OH LOOK ANOTHER SHOUT POLE. TWO PADDLES FOR THE SHIT RIVER I HAVE TO ROW THROUGH JUST TO TALK TO YOU.
He keeps on like this for a while and you know you've hit the mark. You take the opportunity to polish the code to perfection and send it to some obnoxious assholes on the GameGrub forums.
When you come back to Trollian Karkat has finally wound himself down to that worried hand-wringing message he sends after two-thirds of your fights. You should keep statistics on this.
CG: YOU'RE IGNORING ME, AREN'T YOU?
CG: WHY DON'T YOU HAVE THE COMMON DECENCY TO JUST BLOCK ME LIKE A NORMAL TROLL INSTEAD OF LEAVING ME IN SUSPENSE?
TA: eheh, have ii ever blocked you?
TA: ii 2hould but 2omehow youre ju2t two 2ad two bother
TA: iit2 okay, we are 2tiill friiends
TA: do you need hug2 two feel better kk?
CG: FUCK YOU VERY MUCH
CG: IF I EVER SEE YOU I WILL MAKE A POINT OF STRANGLING YOU TO DEATH AND HANG YOUR BODY FROM TEREZI'S FREAK TREE HIVE WITH ALL THE STUFFED ANIMALS
CG: THE CHARGE IS BEING A PERPETUAL ASSHOLE
CG: TRIALS NEED NOT APPLY
--carcinoGeneticist [CG] has blocked twinArmageddons [TA]--
--carcinoGeneticist [CG] has unblocked twinArmageddons [TA]--
TA: eheheh can't 2tay away can you
CG: SHUT UP.
--
You're almost five sweeps old when you illegally download a copy of HALLOW: FINAL GRASP and, after a lengthy debate with yourself, send it to Karkat so you can play together. He's the only troll you know who would play an FPS with you, which is the saddest thing to admit, even in your head. You're practically friendless, a complete loser, and you don't know how Karkat puts up with your shit. Wait: on second thought, you're not sure how you put up with his shit either, so that's fine.
It's monsoon season so Karkat's internet connection is fucked up the wazoo: he lives in the suburbs of the hivetower city you occupy. While waiting for his torrent to download, which it does in fits and starts, you spend four days buried to the neck in sopor slime and wondering how a waste of space like yourself was allowed to survive the trials.
The voices you hear are especially loud these days, telling you that you will die and there's nothing you can do to save yourself. You just want to know 'how soon?' You were headed for the culling fields anyway, or, if you were unlucky, you'd be the brain of a ship for the rest of your life. You can't decide which fate you deserve more.
On the fifth day you wake up to your lusus roaring and realize you forgot to feed him. Guilt gets you out of your cocoon and onto the roof; you spend a couple of hours sitting with your lusus afterward, the big dumb lug, but when you doze on his leg while he sits and eats, you decide you might as well feed yourself as long as you're up. You shove some food down your own gullet - you don't pay much attention to what it is, except to make sure it's not moldy - and check on the eternal torrent.
When you see it finished over-day, you bang your head on the corner of the desk because you're embarrassed by how much this brightens your evening. You log into Trollian.
--twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]--
TA: kk
TA: youre never not on trolliian 2o dont pretend youre not there
CG: OH, HAS THE GRAND DOUCHEBAG TROLL DEIGNED TO LOG INTO TROLLIAN AGAIN? HOW NICE.
TA: 2uck iit up kk. ii know you were waiitiing wiith bated breath for my return
TA: ii wa2 bu2y and iit2 not liike your connection wa2 worth 2hiit anyway
CG: WELL PARDON ME FOR NOT BEING HERE AT THE EXACT MOMENT YOU NEEDED MY ATTENTION. I REALIZE THAT IT IS CUSTOMARY FOR ME TO BE AT YOUR BECK AND CALL BUT NEWSFLASH: I ACTUALLY DO SHIT OTHER THAN TALK TO YOU.
CG: IT'S CRAZY, I KNOW. IT MIGHT BE HARD FOR YOU TO COMPREHEND
CG: BUT IT'S TRUE.
CG: ANYWAY I WAS FEEDING MY LUSUS SO HE DIDN'T TRY TO OPEN THE COOLING BLOCK DOOR AGAIN. LAST TIME HE RIPPED IT OFF ITS HINGES.
CG: WHY WAS I CURSED WITH SUCH A SHITTY LUSUS? WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?
TA: at lea2t your2 doe2nt have two 2tay out2iide becau2e he ha2 deadly eyebeam2
CG: KEEPING HIM OUTSIDE MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA.
CG: I GUESS YOU DECIDED TO COMMEMORATE YOUR FIFTH WRIGGLING DAY WITH YOUR FIRST GOOD SUGGESTION.
CG: CONGRATULATIONS, FUCKASS. YOU WERE PUPATED. WELL DONE.
It's your wriggling day? You check the computer: sure enough, Karkat is right. You lost track of time, which isn't that unusual for you, but this is still kind of embarrassing. You're not about to admit to it.
TA: ehehe, thank2 a22hole.
TA: 2o check your download2 already, hallow 2hould be ready two play
CG: YEAH, I NOTICED. I WOULD HAVE SENT YOU A MESSAGE TO LET YOU KNOW THE EXACT MOMENT IT FINISHED, BUT SOMEONE WASN'T LOGGED INTO TROLLIAN AND AROUND DAY THREE I STOPPED CARING.
CG: SO ARE WE PLAYING OR NOT? I'M JUST WAITING ON YOUR OBNOXIOUS SLOW PANSY PASTY ASS.
Yeah, you're kind of excited too.
TA: ju2t let me fiind my headphone2
You argue over Trollian about which mode to play: co-op or versus? You settle on co-op and then argue over campaign or team mode versus other trolls. Finally you use a randomizing program to make a decision, pick campaign, and hook your husktops up.
The game starts up and as you both run your sprites back and forth over the first room of the training space Karkat says, "Are the headphones working? Can you hear me?"
Karkat is the only troll you know who writes in gray text: you're not sure where the tradition of typing in blood color started, but you never particularly cared if anyone knew you were a lowblood so you rolled with it. You're not the only troll that types the way he or she talks, either. Karkat's voice is higher than you guessed it would be, but supposedly he's a few perigees younger than you and neither of your voices have dropped yet. He bites his words out and you can hear his teeth click, but thank god, apparently he doesn't shout all the time after all.
You hesitate to respond, though, because you'd forgotten that he'd hear you talking too.
"Helloooo, this is Blue Team Leader speaking! Can you hear me?"
"When did we dethide you were the leader?" you ask in annoyance then hold your breath.
There is no response for a moment, but Karkat's sprite isn't moving. "Holy shit, you actually have a lisp," Karkat says. "Oh my god. Say your name."
"Fuck you, KK," you snap.
"Tholluckth," Karkat says.
"Thith wath a terrible idea," you snarl, curling your fingers against the keyboard. You want to quit and sign off and block Karkat and never talk to him again but that would feel too much like letting him win at some stupid competition you didn't even think you were having until this moment. "Tho I have a lithp. I gueth you're thtill too much of a wriggler to be mature about it."
Karkat is actually laughing at you and you realize how you can have your revenge.
"Thcrew you," you growl. "Forget it. I'm wiping Hallow off your huthktop and giving it to thome other troll who ithn't a complete athwipe. Goodbye forever, KK, it'th been a real wathte of time."
In the middle of this speech you hear Karkat gasp for breath and when he answers a few seconds later he scoffs, "Yeah, sure! You'll come crawling back, begging for me to speak with you one last time."
"Really?" you drawl. "Who'th the troll that keepth athking if we're thtill friendth every time the thlightetht inthult ith hurled hith way?"
"... What?" Karkat asks after a moment, and the part that hurts worst is that he sounds like he sincerely didn't understand you.
"Bye, KK," you say, and cold-quit the game. You throw off your headphones.
Karkat is already trolling you.
CG: NO, I SERIOUSLY COULDN'T UNDERSTAND YOU.
CG: OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, STUFF YOUR FACE UP YOUR NOOK AND PRETEND THE WORLD DOESN'T EXIST?
CG: YOU HAVE TO ADMIT YOU SOUND PRETTY FUCKING HILARIOUS.
CG: STOP BEING A PUPA AND GET BACK ON THE GAME
You turn off the sound on your computer and minimize Trollian without answering. Maybe you are being immature, but Karkat is one who started it and at the moment you don't give a flying fuck.
You open ~ATH and you code, and code, and code, until you can't see straight and you can't think for the voices pressing in. Then you sleep.
--
You feel bad about letting Karkat get to you. He's just some dumb friendless fuck who can't help himself. He's probably only three sweeps old and lying about his age. You feel some vindictive pleasure when you skim through his cycling rage and regret a day later but when you get to the last few lines you recall that you are a terrible, terrible troll and should be culled immediately.
CG: FINE. I'M SORRY. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?
CG: I SERIOUSLY AM SORRY. I AM CHOKING ON GUILT IN ADDITION TO THIS COMPLETELY SINCERE APOLOGY THAT YOU WILL NO DOUBT MAKE ME REGRET OFFERING.
CG: FUCK WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER.
CG: JUST MESSAGE ME BACK WHEN YOUR HANDS AREN'T OCCUPIED MASSAGING YOUR BONE BULGE.
CG: PLEASE
You sigh.
TA: let me hear you 2ay 2orry two my face and ii'll con2iider talkiing two you agaiin
TA: although your grovelliing ii2 pretty entertaining.
Karkat answers embarrassingly fast:
CG: FINALLY.
CG: I'M STILL WAITING ON YOUR SORRY PANSY PASTY ASS.
CG: GET ON HALLOW ALREADY.
It might be pathetic and you might be a glutton for punishment, but you go ahead and start the game again - Karkat has no argument with versus, or playing on a private map, which is eerie. He's probably just luring you in to laugh at your lisp some more. You take a deep breath when you hear the static of the headphones kicking in.
"Jutht to be clear: I'm humoring you becauthe I'm too nithe for my own good," you start, determined to not be so stupidly sensitive about it this time around.
"Whatever, douchenozzle," Karkat says. His words aren't nearly as sharp. "It's about damn time. I was starting to think that waiting on you wasn't worth it."
"You haven't played it yet?" you ask in surprise.
"You haven't played it yet?" Karkat mocks in a nasally voice. "It's a well-known fact that few fuckasses are more of a fuckass than yours truly, but in a rare moment of guilt-driven clarity I decided to wait on you. I'm sorry you have a retarded speech impediment that made me laugh. Please kick my ass in versus for a while."
"That ith the motht half-athed apology I have ever heard."
"Oops, look at that! All out of apologies for the night. What a fucking shame. Pick a map already."
You do. You then proceed to kill Karkat thirteen times in a row. His curses have never been so therapeutic.
--
You and Karkat have both made suggestions you should meet sometime. You even set up proposed times and neutral places - no sane troll would suggest meeting another troll for the first time in either of their hives, or anyplace that wasn't open enough for a fight, just in case - but it's Karkat that keeps backing out for whatever reason. You don't know what his problem is: he's not the one with the crazy mutations to hide or to mock, but you're not going to pursue it, either. When Karkat thinks you're pestering him for anything, he vaults from annoying to completely impossible. You wish Karkat would get off his high hoofbeast long enough to realize what a complete ass he is when he thinks he has something over somebody else.
Then, two weeks before one of your proposed meet dates, Aradia dies.
To be more accurate, you kill her. You'd like to blame the voices: it certainly felt like they took you over that night. You watched everything transpire in some kind of horrible haze. But you're man enough to know that it's your fault. Apparently you only have the nads to resist their yammering until it really counts.
So of course the one time you wish Karkat would back out of meeting you, he doesn't. You'd back out but Karkat will just keep trolling you and trolling you and you have had it up to the tips of your horns with his crap and you figure, whatever: you'll get this over with. Karkat isn't quite so thick-skulled that he won't understand if you duck out early. What he doesn't know from you he knows from Terezi.
You meet in the lawnring of some poor pupa who was culled last perigee; the remains of his stripped hive will probably be knocked down in a week to make room for the next wriggler.
You get there first. Karkat is late. So you lay back and stare at the pink moon and try to not think of the first time you met Aradia under the same moon. Fuck, you are a pitiful wreck, aren't you? You wish you'd just admitted you were pale for her while you had the chance.
You lose track of time and when you hear a familiar voice say, "Sollux?" you sit up almost lazily. Not a lot is a real threat to you, even here on the outskirts of the suburbs.
Karkat is half-crouched in the shadow of the hive; his yellow irises reflect the light, not mutant red and blue like yours, and he's clutching a thresher as if ready to throw it at your face if you're not who he's expecting. Right: other trolls actually have to worry about things like that. You can't see his horns at all and for a second you figure that must be why he didn't want to meet: his horns were cut off in some unfortunate meetup with older trolls or something.
"Yeah," you say, and you can see Karkat relax a fraction. He doesn't put away his sickle, but he straightens and approaches where you're sitting on the rotting doorstep. When he steps into the light you see he does have horns after all, but they're short and rounded and barely worth calling horns, hiding in the wild thicket that is his hair.
The symbol on his shirt is one you don't remember seeing before, but it's gray just like his text. He takes his blood color anonymity seriously. It would be funny if you were less depressed.
You stand up to meet him and realize he's shorter than you, but stockier. Everyone is thicker than you are. You are a bean pole. You've never really cared.
Karkat's scowling gaze flicks over you, lingering on your horns and glasses, and he finally captchalogues his weapon. His sylladex makes a series of electronic sounds and slams to the ground with a thud and Karkat flinches.
"Let me gueth," you say. "Encryption moduth? It'th too heavy to be practical."
"When did I say, 'oh, Sollux, please, tell me what you think of my sylladex?' When did that escape my protein chute? Wait - it didn't!" Karkat picks up the captchalogued weapon with a grunt and files it away.
"Can you even get to it now?" you can't resist asking, a smirk curling at the edge of your lip. You're not about to admit that you're relieved it's distracted Karkat from saying anything about your mutations, although now that you've seen him too you figure a few jabs at his nubby horns will make him shut up.
Karkat sneers at you. "What does it matter? You could pin me down before I got half a step."
"Point," you concede, not without a stab of guilt for Aradia, who trusted you completely despite how dangerous you could be. "You're not thcared of me, are you?"
"Are the voices planning to blast me into ashes with your psychic eyebeams?" Karkat asks.
Coming from anyone else, that comment would leave you cold. You've already cut yourself on that knife at every possible angle. But Karkat just looks at you, flat-eyed, and your eyes itch. At that moment you realize why Karkat is dangerous to you: he can get under your skin without trying. You think you have every edge of the self-loathing table covered, that you know yourself inside and out, and yet Karkat can still piss you off with a single offhand comment.
Apparently you give a shit what he thinks. Fuck your life.
"Do the world a favor and throw yourthelf off a cliff," you suggest.
"Trust me, one cripple in the immediate circle of friendship disease is enough," Karkat shoots back. "Besides, Vriska doesn't give enough of a shit about me to care what I do, unlike Aradia."
Your spine goes stiff. "Don't talk about AA." You're not ready to discuss that with Karkat, not face to face. You can barely talk about her with Karkat on Trollian.
"I'm not," Karkat says a little too quickly. His face seems to have two settings: angry, and angrier, but now you think maybe that's a shade of freaked out. If Karkat's going to be an even bigger ass in person, you'd rather he be scared of you so you never meet again. "I'm talking about Vriska."
"What about her?" You've spoken to her all of once over Trollian. Terezi warned you recently that she was bad news, but you never needed Terezi to know that was the case. She rubbed you wrong the moment she said 'hi' with eight 'i's.
"Well shut up for a second and I'll tell you!" Karkat hisses.
You put a fist on your hip and wait, staring at him through your glasses as hard as you can.
Karkat clears his throat. "Vriska was probably the voice in your head that told you to kill Aradia. Mind control is a little hobby of hers, and she's a blueblood, and you're already half-crazy - it wouldn't take much to push you over the edge."
Karkat is a lot of things, but he's not a liar. The silence stretches while you digest this and Karkat watches you warily. "Bullthit," you say, just to see how Karkat reacts.
He puts up his empty hands. "It's not my fucking business if you believe me or not. I just figured I'd share. As it is I have to practically run to my load gaper to vomit every time you say something on Trollian it's so fucking sad and pathetic. I'd pity you if the thought of being pale for you didn't make me want to cull myself."
You ignore that last sentence. "Tho who told you thith?"
"I can do basic math."
"Uh-huh." You can do basic math too: "TZ doethn't uthually share that much."
Karkat rolls his eyes. "You can keep right on blaming yourself, Tholluckth. I don't give a flying shit." He half-turns as if to go.
"Wait," you say. "Ith thith why you finally met with me inthtead of cluckbeasthting out like you alwayth do? Tho you could tell me thith in perthon?"
Karkat doesn't move. He stares out into the dark, uncharacteristically silent. "What if I did?" he asks, wary and tense, and he doesn't look at you. "I doubt you could see anything I typed through the wall of mustard yellow tears pouring out of your eyes."
He's checking on you. He's actually met up with you to check and make sure you're okay. You can't decide whether you're offended or furious or touched, and you just stare at him for a long, gobsmacked moment of stupid.
"You are the wortht troll on Alternia," you finally accuse.
"Fuck you too, asshole," Karkat snaps, giving you a flipoff x2 combo. "Let's never do this again. Night." And then he absconds into the darkness before you can shoot back an insult. Something long and white skitters by in the shadows and you realize it's his lusus. You're not sure you would have seen it coming if it had attacked.
"Nithe," you mutter, and gather yourself to fly home.
--
CG: HEY ASSHOLE
CG: ANSWER ME WHEN YOU GET BACK TO YOUR HIVE
CG: OR GO ON A CODING BENDER, WHATEVER SUITS YOUR FUCKING FANCY.
CG: SORRY I OFFENDED YOUR DELICATE TROLL SENSIBILITIES BY TELLING YOU THAT NOT EVERY SHITTY THING THAT HAPPENS TO YOU IS YOUR FAULT.
CG: I KNOW IT'S A SHOCK. YOU'LL GET OVER IT.
CG: YOU KNOW WHAT, DON'T BOTHER TO MESSAGE ME
CG: I COULD GIVE A FUCK IF YOU LIVE OR DIE.
--carcinoGeneticist[CG] ceased trolling twinArmageddons[TA]--
--twinArmageddons[TA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist[CG]--
TA: thank2 diip2hiit
--twinArmageddons[TA] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist[CG]--
--carcinoGeneticist[CG] began trolling twinArmageddons[TA]--
CG: YOU'RE WELCOME, BUTTFACE.
TA: buttface?
CG: SHUT UP.
--fin--