Unspoken Attraction (Dave/Karkat)

Karkat jerked and flailed his arms, trying to push Dave away in fear, but the attempts were weak and only left Karkat dizzier than before.

"Alright, that does it." If Karkat was going to act like a bitch, he was going to be treated like one. Even though Karkat was flailing his arms, he wasn't really scratching Dave, so the Strider took advantage of this by shoving the troll over, rolling him onto his belly and straddling him. He scooted forward until he was pinning the terrified troll's shoulders down with his knees, keeping the rest of his weight on his back. One of his hands gripped a handful of Karkat's black mess of hair to keep him still while the other pressed the handkerchief against the base of the troll's horn where the thicker gobs of blood were pouring through.

Yeah, he felt bad about giving the whimpering troll this kind of treatment, but there just didn't seem to be any way around it. It's not like he was going to leave him there to bleed out on the floor and it's not as though he was going to give him a hug and kiss his wound all better.

Survival instinct kicked in immediately at being pinned down with hands on his horns and Karkat went limp. He squeezed his eyes shut as his breathing became shallow and rapid. This was it, he was going to die. His face was pale and he was too light headed to even struggle anymore. He was just laying quietly, waiting for his death to come.

The handkerchief was rubbed around the blood coated horn gently before Dave brought it back more firmly against the key area of injury, his own fingers becoming bloody as well. It was eery how the troll had suddenly gone dead possum on him like that and for a moment, he thought that Karkat might actually have died on him. That is, if it wasn't for the ragged breathing that gave him away.

His hand eased off on its grip of Karkat's hair and he tried to give the troll's scalp soothing strokes, muttering to him like he was attempting to comfort a frantic jack rabbit, "S'alright little dude. I'm not gonna hurt you." God, did he feel cheesy saying that shit, even if he really did mean it.

Karkat's breath hitched when Dave's hand moved to the base and suddenly everything felt like molasses. Dave's words were undiscernable, garbled and horribly mutilated. He'd only felt the reflex once before, when John had playfully grabbed his horn when they were wrestling for the remote. His breathing slowed, evened out as if he were sleeping and all of his muscles went lax, not the limpness of instinct but genuinely limp and lax useless muscles as if he were a full on corpse, his only lifelike sign still being his breathing, but maybe not for long if Dave stayed on his lungs; without tensed muscle protecting the organs, Dave was pressing down on them rather hard.

The sudden change in the troll's muscle restraint didn't go unnoticed and Dave shifted off of the troll's shoulders since Karkat didn't seem to be posing much of a threat anyway and he didn't want to crush his ribcage. He wasn't in need of any more reasons for Bro to beat him black and blue, the blood staining into the carpet was already more than enough, thank you very much.

Dear God, he thought trolls were supposed to be tougher than this. He had never even met a human this fragile. As far as he could tell, paper dolls had a keener sense of survival instincts than this troll did. Why on Earth Alternia would trolls be designed with these nobs on their head that could switch their defenses off? It was like the self destruct button in the middle of the death star; it made no fucking sense.

He dabbed away at the blood until the handkerchief was drenched bright red, wringing it over the small puddle, which he might as well since it was already too late to save it from staining, before bringing it back to the troll's horn.

Karkat drifted closer to unconsciousness but at least the bleeding was slowing down. He was so lightheaded, he just might pass out before Dave was done with his horns, from a combination of blood loss and the reflex caused by his horns.

Meanwhile John hadn't given up on Dave's phone.

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what do you mean fuck? what happened?!
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dave this isn't funny! what's wrong with karkat? why's he bleeding?
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dave! why won't you answer me?! is Karkat okay?!
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From John

Dave ignored the humming of his phone in his pocket because for one: his fingers were too bloody to handle the buttons and two: he had more important things that needed to be taken care of. He tossed the handkerchief onto the puddle before moving off the troll and heaving him over his shoulder, flashstepping into the bathroom with him. Karkat was seated onto the toilet lid and he flashstepped again, returning with the first aid kit.

Karkat slumped back against the back of the toilet, his eyes still closed and his body lacking the strength to hold himself up. His head head rolled back to clink lightly against the porcelain.

He was drifting off a little faster now, barely hanging on to what little thread of consciousness he had left.

Dave placed the kit on the counter next to the sink, standing in front of Karkat, but turned to the side so that he could dig through the kit for more of what he needed. He poured some more rubbing alcohol on a fresh cloth, dabbing it around the affected area and holding it there. As one hand held the cloth still against the troll's horn, his other bloodied hand scrambled around in the case for a band aid big enough to cover such an awkwardly placed wound.

Maybe he could just wrap Karkat's head in gauze and call it good? No, that was a terrible idea, joking needed to be set aside; he had a troll bleeding to death and it was all his fault and he wouldn't even openly admit to almost killing him if anyone ever asked. At long last, his fingers came across a long, wrapped up band aid that would do the trick. He removed the stained cloth from Karkat's horn and tossed it in the garbage under the toilet paper roll so that he could fumble with the band aid's wax paper covering. Hastily peeling it away, he smoothed around the troll's bloodied scalp and applied the band aid firmly over the wound. He held it there for as long as it took, hoping it would at least be able to staunch the blood flow before the troll was completely drained.

The bandaid held, thankfully. Karkat wasn't even aware of anything anymore and he slipped sideways, falling towards the floor in his final sensation before nothingness.

Dave snatched Karkat before he could slam against the side of the tub and, Lord forbid, crack his other horn. He gripped the troll's shoulders and shook him, panicking again even though his face was a mask of calm. Pleasedon'tbedeadpleasedon'tbedeadpleasedon'tbedead. The blonde pressed his ear against the troll's chest, relaxing when he heard his heart, or some organ similar to one, still beating.

This was fantastic. The one thing that Bro had asked him not to do and it was practically the first thing he did when interacting with the troll.

He nudged the troll's head to rest against the top of the toilet, holding it there as he leaned over and got out a disinfectant wipe to rub away the caked up blood all around Karkat's face. Once he got as much as he could get off the troll, he tossed the evidence in the garbage and scooped the troll up into his arms.

In his room, he placed the troll on his bed and hurried back into the kitchen, flicking the burner off. Soup would have to wait until later; he had a crime scene to dispose of.

For the better part of three hours, Dave got out the cleaning supplies he didn't even know they had and cleaned like a madman with OCD. He scrubbed at the blood pool in the carpet until the fabric was worn to a suspiciously white patch in contrast to the rest of the filthy carpeting. The cloths he had used to clean up Karkat were shoved down the garbage disposal after he removed the firecrackers and he put them there once again once that piece of evidence was properly destroyed.

He even washed Karkat's shirt in the bathroom sink after he had grabbed his shoulders and gotten blood on it. The troll was dressed in a new shirt after he looked through his things and even happened upon a creepy white plushie shaped like a monster crab-like creature. All of the bean bags were set up inside Dave's room in the far corner, including the one from the living room and he laid the troll out in the pile. The plushie was tucked under the troll's arm and a blanket was thrown over Karkat's body, sufficiently covering his head so that anyone who glanced over at the pile would think he was fast asleep.

Dave gave the apartment one more look around before going back into the kitchen and reheating the soup, his eyes widening when he saw that it already was almost two. Time flies when you're trying to save your ass.

For once, Bro was home right on time. He walked through the apartment door at 2 and glanced at the empty couch. "You two have fun?" he asked, glancing at Dave in the kitchen. "Good to see you managed not to fuck anything up.

He honestly wasn't surprised the troll went back to sleep, he'd been dead on his feet when Bro made him lay down. He had assumed that Dave did what he told him to so the troll could relocate.

He set his gear down in its place, convinently covering the clean patch in the carpet before he could notice it. He straightened, cracking his back as he did so, and walked to the bathroom.

Suddenly he had flashstepped behind Dave, gripping his shoulders like an iron vice. "Dave" he began in an icy tone. "Why the hell is there a bloody disinfectant wipe in the bathroom trash can."

Dave had been trying to casually stir the soup when he heard the front door open, doing his best not to have an aneurism. He managed to control himself when Bro glanced at him in the kitchen, keeping his eyes set on the stirring the overly soggy noodles. Thirty seconds in and Bro seemed to be oblivious to what really happened. Everything seemed to be going according to p--

The youngest Strider's grip on the wooden spoon he had been stirring with came to a standstill, Bro's grip behind him filling his head with the deafening thud of his gradually racing heart. The wipe. The fucking WIPE. Out of everything he had done, he had missed ONE FUCKING THING and now he was going to be brutally throttled to death over it.

Ok, maybe he could still lie his way out of it. Or just get beaten even harder for lying. No, that wasn't going to happen. How the fuck was he going to explain how Karkat's blood got there? It's not even like he could pretend it was his blood. Looks like it was time to: ABSCOND ABSCOND ABSCOND.

"Go ask Karkat. He was in the bathroom coughing a whole lot. Don't know what about." Dave gently released the wooden spoon, his other hand lowering slowly and flicking the stove off with a soft 'click'. As soon as that hold on his shoulders was free, he was going to flashstep out of that apartment as fast as he fucking could.

"Oh no you don't. I know what you're thinking, you little shit. The second I let go you're gonna abscond. Like hell I'm gonna let you, Unless Karkat somehow became a psychic there's no fucking way he could have found the first-aid kit, and I know he didn't ask for it." Bro growled. "So you've got about five seconds to start talking."

Dave contemplated pleading with Bro, explaining everything and asking for forgiveness because he really hadn't done anything intentionally wrong. All that had really happened was a bit of light teasing that quickly became a disaster zone. He could have said that. But he didn't. Because Bro probably wouldn't believe him when he explained that Karkat had accidentally slammed his horn against the coffee table. Hell, the whole thing sounded like bullshit even when he thought it over in his head. And it's not like he could trust that Karkat wasn't going to stab him in the back if he asked for him to write down what really happened.

"You're going to think I'm lying no matter what I say," Dave protested, jerking one of his shoulders away from Bro.

"At least I'm giving you a chance to explain yourself" Bro snapped. "So start fucking talking before I lay into you without holding back. What the fuck happened"

Dave turned around to face Bro as he readied himself to explain the story, taking a deep breath as it might very well be his last, "Alright, so I went into the living room, saw that Karkat was waking up, asked what he'd like on his pizza, he started dry heaving, I offered to make soup instead, he gave me attitude, so I gave him attitude, then I was just rough housing with him on the futon and he started squirming so much that he fell off and hurt his horn and it was really fucking bloody and he cried, like, a whole fucking LOT."

He took another deep breath, deciding to finish the tale seeing as it couldn't hurt to try and make his case sound less condemning, "But I bandaged his horn, cleaned him and everything else up, and now he's fast asleep in my room." More like unconscious really, but it's not as though Bro needed to know minor details like that.

"You little shit stain, why the fuck would you rough house with someone who was just dry heaving?" Bro snapped, letting go of Dave in disgust. "Do you know why he got an attitude with you now? He's fucking mute. He probably thought you were giving him a hard time."

He walked back to the bathroom and shut the door hard behind him.

Dave hollered back from the kitchen, "YEAH, I FUCKING FIGURED THAT OUT ALREADY. THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW AHEAD OF TIME, BRO." He slumped back against the stove, rubbing his eyes under his shades. Bro was right about the rough housing though, he shouldn't have done that, he knew that, and he fucking hated Bro for pointing out the obvious like that. It was like getting his nose rubbed in his own shit.

His stomach snarled at him from being deprived of food for so long and he got out a spoon from one of the kitchen drawers and began eating straight from the cooking pot, too glum to get out a bowl of his own.

When Bro came out of the bathroom, He brought the first aid kit out with him and went straight into Dave's room. He was in there about five minutes or so before he came back out and put the first aid kit up. "I'm going to sleep." He stated to Dave. "I won't be here in the morning, have to work an early shift, so you'd better take care of him."

He kicked the futon, making it lie flat, before laying down to sleep.

It looked like Dave must have done something right since Bro wasn't strangling him when he came back into the living room. Either that or Bro just had a long day and was too tired for the time being to properly murder him. Of course I'm taking care of him, he thought to himself. It's not like he could take a troll to the hospital or anything if things got worse.

He finished eating the soup, rinsed it out, brushed his teeth, and went to bed fully dressed, holding a grudge against the world since it seemed to hold such a grudge against him. Life was hard and nobody understood.

When Karkat woke up, he immediately went into panic mode. It was light outside; it hadn't been the last he remembered, he wasn't where he remembered being last, and he remembered his blood. He let out a hysterical Keen and thrashed until he upset the beanbag chairs and had his back pressed to the corner, hands on his horns, a large gauze bandage over his wound. He continued to let out terrified clicks and trills.

The strange, alien sounds coming from the troll pulled Dave out of the slumbering fog he had been in and he realized that his glasses had slipped off his face during his sleep. They weren't very far from his face, so he snatched them up and put them back on before looking around for the source of the strange noises. He sat up in his bed and spotted the troll freaked out in the corner, as usual, like a terrified animal brought into a foreign environment. It was kind of creepy for him to wake up and have this be the first thing he saw, especially since the troll was around his age, but acted like he was ten years younger than that.

He twisted from side to side, popping his back, before he addressed the troll, "Ok, what are you so freaked out about now?"

The noises stopped as soon as Karkat caught sight of Dave. He hunched in on himself, trying to make himself look as small and nonthreatening as he could and trying not to let out any of the noises that he now knew Dave disliked.

He didn't want Dave to hurt him again. He didn't want to die.