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I.
Despite your careful attempt, Gamzee stirs as you shift. He uncurls slivered inches—just enough for you to move—and then winds back in like a cool wave. One of his legs nestles between yours, and you’re on one elbow now, so his arm has bent tight as a flapbeasts’s wing between you. His other arm lies along your back, tucked protectively at the base of your skull. His nose has pushed into the newly opened space at your ribs, cheek pillowed on your forearm and hair tickling you with each breath. You stretch your fingers down and feel those curls. Fuzzy as can be. He mumbles sleepily, nuzzles over your heartbeat, and settles closer still.
You’re all wrapped up in him. Your chest aches. Tonight was for breaking.
Each unlovable speck that makes up Karkat Vantas, being flaunted for all to see. Gamzee likes you like that. He discovers the fractures in your tender places and never releases one single jagged edge until it’s been polished smooth with all his wide-eyed attention. At the end of it all, when he’s done building you back up from the rubble, when you’re pooled and helpless in his arms—this is how he holds you. Like there’s only one thing to protect. Like he dreams that he can fold his treasure deep into his heart if he wants it enough.
You could hate it.
Your fingers dip down. His fingertips are cold silk. As soon as you touch, they curl and snag your hand. He tugs it closer to him and thrums purrs along your ribs.
…Your heart is going to burst if you can’t run away, and you are going to die from love of this troll. Your vision swims, your breath clogs, and you can feel your pulse in your fingers, where they are so loosely knotted with his.
The moment passes, however, and you live. Your throat can only make a silent thrum you wish he could hear, but you’re purring too.
II.
Gamzee puts half his fingers on your lips when you’re just getting to the really good part in your novel. To clarify; you so totally do not mean the pailing scene; it’s not like you’re at all invested in the consummation of hundreds of pages of serendipitous romantic tension and quadrant confusion. That would be ridiculous. You are the grown ass troll in this room, it is you.
A bewildered grown-ass troll. You cut your eyes down to Gamzee. Over the course of this epic love story, your moirail has dripped down your side to sprawl in your lap. His staring is full of incalculable concentration. You’re resting one end of your book on his forehead. Your hand is occupied petting his hair.
Huh. Is that why it took so long to turn the pages?
“Gamzee?” Your lips brush against his fingertips. You shiver.
“So much of you,” Gamzee murmurs, voice hoarse in all the silken quiet. “My tiniest invertebrother, and there’s so much of you. Molecule upon molecule.” His fingers skim along the curve of your bottom lip, soft enough to burn, and don’t retreat.
One by one, he ghosts along the curve of your chin, sweeps under it like he’ll tilt you in for a kiss. Your chin is settled between two fingers, like he’s getting the angle of you, and then he swipes his thumb slowly along that trail, back and forth. Higher, and he finds how your cheekbones are beginning to define the hard planes of your face. His palm fits against them in a pap. He glides again, repeating the whole process and returning to your lips. You let your eyes close. One, two, three, four, and five. Each ghost of his fingertips is a kiss from you, without ever moving an inch.
His skin breathes along your nose, your forehead, your eyebrows, your eyes, the bags under them. Your book lies forgotten in your lap. He sighs “miracles” into your mouth as you kiss him and he traces softly along the shell of one ear. Too many molecules are paying attention, though. You inhale. He touches your earlobe the way you say a sad goodbye to an old friend and you let the book fall to take his horns in your hands. He arches, gasps, grinds his forehead against yours in the first substantial touch you’ve felt in what must be centuries.
You run your palms up and down his horns until his hands tumble back down onto the sofa and he’s just groaning in delight.
“I remembered about being blind,” he whispers. “Sightless to you evermore.” He smiles at you, dazzled by his inexplicable wonders. “Blind to the best bro of the past. I have to get my memorization squared away.”
You flip your book up so you can’t see his face. “Don't you get to meet a new me every night by that abysmal logic?”
“Oh,” Gamzee goes, stumbled. “Bitchtits!”
III.
“What do I even do for you?”
Gamzee blinks. You prickle. He looks confused.
But what do you do for him? This troll puts up with your being an asshole and touches and touches and touches you until if you were to open a vein, you’d probably bleed out his love a long while. You can’t give shit in return. There are no crises in the pile, murderclown’s orders, but the sweeter he touches you, the clumsier your hands feel and the sharper your words get.
You’re not good for anything but fucking up and you just. You just want someone to yell at you. You’ll yell back at them. It’ll be fun.
“You for serious?”
You scowl. “Great! My purpose is to answer stupid questions. My contributions are vast and irreplaceable.”
He grins. “Ain’t that way, brother. You do all kinds for me.” You’re about to tell him where he can shove this opinion, but Gamzee opens his mouth again.
He starts numbering them after fifty, and he can’t keep track of the numbers at all because he’s an idiot, so he’s at 715 when you put a hand over his mouth. He retaliates with hugging. He’s happy enough to stay shut up when you let your hand down, but he still clings like a limpet. “Best friend?”
“I swear if you try to pick up that list—”
“Won’t.” He nuzzles at your neck. “Just gonna make you feel all kinds of loved. You got me good with all this pity, so I’mma flutter your pumpbiscuit right back. Reciprocity.”
You grumble. “There’s nothing to reciprocate.”
“And even with all that gets mentioned, you know the best thing you do?” Gamzee continues, talking right over you because god, your moirail is an ornery bastard; “’s how you let me love you.” Your foot curls nervously against his. His toes flick. “You let me love you until I’m all wrung out and ready for when you burn so pitiful lovestruck and fill me again.”
You hide your face in Gamzee’s neck. That’s so romantic it’s disgusting. You’re glad you’re nowhere near that bad.
“…Best friend?”
“Shoosh.”
“Right on.”
You’re not.
IV.
Gamzee’s kiss can stretch long enough to coax out your smile. Your blush invites him to tug on you, be a little greedier with your space. If you get mesmerized he’ll look away, then slide his gaze back, drape you in it. Your ears will heat up. You’ll know.
Your moirail is a methodical hunter. When he’s in the mood, he’ll have you buzzing out of your skin before he’ll try anything. After you can’t help but shiver and squeak from even the barest touch and your face is burning and you’re fidgeting—when you want to whimper his name, that’s when he’ll make his move.
He saunters in, watching, rumbling out soft, teasing challenges. Your fingers fail you first. Legs are next. He’ll let you stumble back, find something to brace against, but once you’re there, you’re his. You’re done for.
He’s going to pile you.
He has you, so scrap by scrap, you’re laid bare. He might claw the fabric apart from your skin, but he will do it slow, let you listen to the pop of every seam. You’ll squirm in the pile, driven to burrow and fortify from claws, but where could you even worm off to? Worthless, weak—no. Stop.
Karkat…
He finds every delicate place and every forgotten bruise—you don’t even know how to touch him without shaking. Some insignificant part of your body will fascinate him as you cringe and he attacks it with his mouth and palms and purrs until you forget everything past the blur of worship, and then he grows intent again, stutters it until you’re confused about everything but skin on skin and his taste in your mouth and the knowledge that he’s here with you, and you—and you
are
safe now.
You get so close to detonation. “Tighter,” you sob at him, “tighter, please—“ It won’t be enough until he shatters your bones. Your moirail is only skin-tight against his own need. Fingers fold into yours and you need him to hold you together. You can’t be okay, you can’t, you’re burning—and then softly enough that you could almost drink it down:
“Shooosh. Shoosh, brother.”
Pale as the fog in your thinkpan.
When it’s over, and you’re hauled so tight to him, and he’s done covering you in kisses, you will know that you touched him too, until your hands felt raw with how precious your discovery was. You’ll be too tired to care. He’ll get hauled in by handfuls.
All your dreams glow and when you wake up, you won’t be able to look away from how he’ll turn to you and smile his oxygen your lungs.
V.
You have to be attuned to the hitch of Gamzee’s shoulders and the hiccup stutter in his breath. It’s as soundless as your purrs.
“Don’t you touch me,” he’ll gasp when you break his quiet, eyes all wet, indigo-bloody. “Shouldn’t touch me. Unclean thoughts, my brother, most unclean. I will not ruin you—“
Trolls shred to pieces in his daymares and these hands are instruments of destruction each instant he reaches for paint. He dreams that loving you is not enough to stop him from sinking his claws into your throat.
You kiss each tear away. “I already know,” you whisper in his ear. “Calm down, hush. Never ever. You won’t hurt me.” He shakes his head no. You nod your head yes and nuzzle into trembling claws. If he’ll let you, you will squeeze the hitching of his thorax where he’s locked in scared wriggler sobs, and he will clutch you until you can feel his heart drum on yours. “You’ll never hurt me.”
Sometimes he answers, sometimes he prays.
“Pale for you, you wreck,” you murmur. Your throat feels clogged. Your voice creaks. “Your dreams suck.”
You’ve got contingencies. You have mapped out the vents. Come one, come fucking all. Darkness can come looking for him all it wants because if you have to fight every horrorterror for him, you’re ready, you have. He needs to know he is worth that.
Whatever. You can fight by being gentle too. Fuck yes. Just watch you.
You run your fingers through his hair now, urging your love to seep in. His eyes flicker open muzzily. “Sup?” He croaks at you, and like ripples in the water—you shift, he shifts, and he winds up sprawled over you, hugging you inward. He’s already asleep again, and you pet through his hair and hold his hand and croon the melody your heart makes, beating so, so fast.
Your purr is still silent, which is weird and abrasive in the quiet like it always is. You sound it off anyway. Solace will be an explosive cacophony this evening—yawns, joints popping, “what did you just drop on my foot, you wreck, and why is it wet”—and your moirail grinning down sheepishly as life continues on and on.
VI.
“Did that hurt?” Your hand jolts back. He catches it midway.
“No, motherfucker.” Gamzee's smile is faint, but unmistakable. “I can take what you dish out. Try me again.”
He pulls at you. Gentler this time, you promise yourself. You suck in a breath. Your fingers don’t know where to go. I will be so careful. You gnaw your lip.
You reach out.