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Two ficlets and a PSA...
1) I was doing a timestamp meme on tumblr and it was supposed to be quick snippets and welp two oneshots, 2.5k total. OKAY THEN WHY NOT.
2) I'm going on vacation! I will have a laptop but probably no connection. We might be here two weeks, I don't know yet, depends on when the parents will get bored and want to come home. But anyway! Fics.
Sequel to Awake at Night, the Dad + Gamzee&Karkat story, morning after:
John has always been proud of his ability to sleep through just about any noise there exists, but scent is another thing entirely.
He wakes when the heavenly smell of sugar-laden pancakes finishes oozing its way through his room. Well, "wakes" is a big word, but he oozes his way back along the trail. He's got a good autopilot.
Thump. Thump. Goddamn stairs. Fwump. Kitchen doors.
"Mnnp'ncakes?"
"Ah, son, good morning."
He can smell honey and about four different kinds of jam and Nutella and who knows what else. He waves vaguely in his father's direction. ... pause. Wait. His father's behind him, in the living room.
The pancakes are in front of him. Target is obvious.
Magical self-cooking pancakes. He must say it out loud because Gamzee snorfles out a seal-like laugh. "Nah bro, no miracles save that of the mixing getting its delirious alchemy on. Ain't no self-twirling mix baton as exists yet."
John flops in the closest empty chair. Too many words. "... Mn. Pancakes."
"Haha, sure thing, bro. Zoom! Make space for this rad motherfucking helicarrier with its hellnasty payload of--"
"Gamzee food plates are not Frisbees."
Oh hey there's Karkat too. Didn't see him sitting... right in front of him. John waves hello somewhat, and then just in case he curls up defensively over and around the plate Gamzee put down in front of him with a disappointed thump.
Mm pancakes.
Those taste a little different. They are still deliriously delicious. Everything is delicious ever since Dad gave up on Batterwitch-stained cheating shortcuts.
Why, everything seems better when eating those! The groove of Karkat's permascowl looks fainter. (Hehe, like that's even possible.) Gamzee looks less creepy.
Also grayer. No wait, that's because he's not all painted up.
Huh.
Pancakes. Mm pancakes.
"This is the seventh time I witness this and I still can't believe it."
Karkat is talking at him. Karkat is not made of pancake. John glower at him and keeps masticating happily.
"You look remarkably like a milkbeast chewing its cud."
"Y'look remarkably like a shaddup."
"Ha! It speaks. Good morning, Egbert. ...John."
"Mornin'. Gimme th'strawberry jam."
... Blink. Blink. Is that a smile on Karkat's face? It must be a muscle spasm. John stares at the jam jar Karkat just pushed into his hand. Like... Amicably. Helpfully even. Maybe it's boobytrapped?
Karkat doesn't say anything else, and Gamzee is humming a tuneless song to himself as he prods at something on the ... food preparation thing. John returns to his breakfast.
He's a bit confused, though. Gamzee's making pancakes. Like the one John just ate? Huh, maybe that's why it's a bit different. He considers it. Okay, no, there's not much to consider, actually. "Can I have another?"
"Sure thing, bro. Hehe, bro."
He munches away. Huh. Karkat looks half-asleep, but not like usual when he's half-asleep and furious about being half-asleep and like he'd kill to have some real sleep, only he can't because he's Karkat and Karkats can't have nice things and so instead he'd kill anyone who made him think about how asleep he'd love to be. More like... Half-asleep. Normal half-asleep.
Gamzee is shaking his skeletal booty in rhythm with the spatula. Ooookaaaay.
"... naturally," his father is saying in the other room. must be on the phone. "... would be delighted if you chose to follow but I understand if... yes, that is a very good point. John, your cousin might stay with us for a little bit, I hope you will not mind ceding your bedroom for a short while. A lady does not sleep on the couch."
Uh. Wha. "Which? Like... Jane or Jade?" Because in this weird new too-normal world of course Jane can't be his grandma, and Jade can't be his ectosib twin mixclone, so legally cousins. He doesn't even pretend to understand the family tree.
"Jane, son." Dad points at the phone. So either she's on the phone or her creepily-like-his-own-dad dad is.
John frowns at his half-eaten pancake. With the random chomped-off bits it almost makes a picture. If he squints maybe he'll see what it reminds him of. "...But she lives next door."
His father chuckles. John's pranking alarm starts beeping in the background. Something is being hidden from him. "So she does! Yes, my apologies, Phil. You are entirely right, I must sort this out with John first. I will call you back."
He puts the phone back in its cradle and walks back into the kitchen. John scrunches his eyebrows at him, chewing warily. (Mm pancake.)
Dad drags in a chair, sits in front of him, only Karkat's already there so they kind of end up almost elbow to elbow.
Karkat doesn't shuffle away. John's pranking alarms start blaring. He has never managed to get Karkat to help him prank anyone else, but his dad is a master. If anyone could, he would. This is pretty worrisome!
And then Gamzee drifts by, wiping his hands on his apron, and stands behind Dad, and grins.
John didn't know his prank'o'meter had a defcon 3 setting. Looks like he's gonna have to wake up all the way after all. Darn.
He can't help but be excited anyway.
+++++++
And a Battlefield Terra thing, Karkat one month before BT.
They didn't tell anyone during training that a frontier warship's living quarters were a permanent orgiastic free for all.
(Or maybe they didn't tell him, on account of it would never be relevant.)
Karkat keeps his eyes trained in front of him as he puts his flightsuit back in his locker. Three lockers down a spectacular pale makeout is in progress. Brown and yellow tears everywhere. (Brown guy's matesprit was -- not that he cares, really he doesn't -- the stupid brown girl that Karkat yelled at to stay in line and instead she broke away to strut her stuff and got her ass culled by one of the creeptastic metal aliens. He doesn't even remember her name. Any of their names. He doesn't.)
He keeps his eyes in front of him while walking down the corridor -- some oh glory be you're alive and I'm also alive let's perpetuate the species is going on in a doorway off to the side, let's hope no one needs emergency decontamination or soon they might have to step over a pail. At least it's flush, reduces the amount of weird stains on the walls for poor PT-cursed bastards to deal with.
He walks by four more pairs -- flush, pale, pale, black -- on his way through the pilots' common room.
(He is not jealous. He's fine with his own hands, they're never panshatteringly retarded. He does not need papped.)
Not even a third of these people were quadranted before they were stationed together. Now he doesn't think he knows more than three people (not that he pays attention) who are currently quadrantless, and all of them are quadrantless because they were recently dumped -- reshuffling happens all the time, and hideous drama with it; he doubts they'll stay quadrantless long. Apparently facing adversity makes bonding easier. Staple of the movie genre, he should have expected it.
It's been three months and no one has really approached him. Which is fine! He has a moirail already and his concupiscent quadrants are a dead end by imperial decree. As for his hatefriends, he still has... Tavros, he supposes. They've never been close and their conversations tend to the lukewarm but... And Nepeta, even though she stupidly still wants something he can't give her, can't, can't, it would get her culled does she get that. And... Equius? Sort of. By proxy.
Hah. Heh. He bets he could count Equius as at least a caliginous one-night-stand, if he pretends that it doesn't creep him out knowing that after some of their spats Equius likely went to fondle himself in the privacy of his personal block. Hah, never mind, better be quadrantless. (It might titillate Equius to think about being pailed by the bloodfreak but he'd never go through with it anyway, not even clandestinely. Neverfuckingmind.)
(He is not fucking lonely.)
And Vriska.
Fuck Vriska.
(He is never going to be that lonely.)
When he passes by the movie block there's an argument in progress, a Teal girl and a Rust guy. The Rust is in his dormitory, and Karkat doesn't know his name and doesn't know he has a kismesis already, a kismesis that's on another ship and they're likely not going to get a visiting grant for drone season but they still cling to the relationship so ferociously. Nope. Totally doesn't know that. He doesn't know the Teal's on the rebound either and is only after the Rust for the shape of his horns anyway. They're both hateflirting with people who aren't even here, it's obvious in the forms their insults take, neither quite hitting the mark, or hitting it too deep, and they keep trying anyway like stubborn brainless morons led around by their bulges. It's a clusterfuck waiting to happen.
He doesn't care, he doesn't care, he doesn't, why doesn't anyone notice and step in?
There's a couple pailing in one of the recuperacoons in his dormitory, of course, but once he's asleep he won't hear them. It's fine. It's just fucking fine, it's -- fuck.
"Duiven, don't you have someone to call before it's daytime on his fucking ship? Hadria, just because he looks like Thalim doesn't mean he's half as good in the sack. Now pipe the fuck down already."
... who was the retard who said that.
Oh. Shit. It's him. He's the one who turned around and went back to the movie block, he's the one everyone in the movie block is staring at. He's the retard.
He's not stepping back down now. He's just -- not. He'd lose too much rep and his place in the group dynamics is wobbly enough as it is. He scowls, stare direct, unafraid, tilts his chin in challenge. Hadria -- the Teal, the Teal -- is at least a full head taller than he is, the Rust -- Duiven -- is built like a brick shithive, he should have been Brown. He can't afford to look like the moron who realizes too late he bit off more than he could chew. He can handle them.
He. He thinks he wants to handle them. Even if he doesn't see it lasting, even if their hate is too shallow, they irritate him sufficiently right now with their stupid pointless squabbling that it could last a little while -- he'd have a place, it would be good. He settled Gamzee's shit anyway, who is a goddamn Indigo, and neither of them is more physically imposing than Equius. He can do this.
The longer they stay stunned quiet and the more he thinks it could work.
"... Are you... coming onto us?" Hadria asks. She sounds like he kicked her in the horns, brainshaken, dazed. She's not even scowling much, just enough to look puzzled. "Is that seriously -- you just--"
"Oh, listen to yourself, the two of you have about a braincell and a half if you add them up. How the fuck you assume this won't end in lukewarm tears and scratches too shallow to even scar is beyond me, but it's probably related to that egregious dearth of thinkspongepower."
Everyone is still watching them. Karkat can't even blame them, it's not as if watching blood dry is more interesting than what's on TV right now. It's still hard to ignore them all with his horns buzzing, his spine tingling from their stares.
Duiven growls, muscles flexing, bunching, threat-displaying his horns. Karkat gives an unimpressed sniff, lifts his chin a bit more in disdain, hey, need help aiming? (It's the only counter that works when his are those useless nubs, and it only works half the time.)
Duiven must not be used to smaller guys refusing to be cowed. He flounders. It's going to work it's going to work now if he just orders them to follow him outside to hash things out they're stunned enough to let him --
"Oh sweet Horrorterrors, Hadria dear, we knew you liked slumming but that's just, ahaha--"
Laughter bursts all around the block. Hadria flushes an ugly green. Duiven takes a step back, lip curled in disgust, hands up as if Karkat was in touching range and he needed to be pushed away.
"Did you just seriously try to shove yourself clubways in with us?"
... There's an us, claimed now, word-fenced. There's an us and there's a you, you-outsider, you-lower-than-me-filth, and used by a Rust it burns.
He stays a little while longer as they laugh, he can't afford to be seen running away, they're going to talk anyway but they'd talk even longer. He stays a little, hands on either side of the doorjamb, letting the laughter and the jeers slide off him (not really but,) and he shakes his head in cold disdain. "Well. Have fun watching this peter out, assholes. I'll be over there having an I told you so party."
He gives a disdainful wave of his hand, and leaves.
He forgets their names. Not that he ever knew them. Not that he ever crushed ashen on anyone here. It's only the concupiscent quadrants that are forbidden to him but who'd want to ash out with any of the brainless fuckmachines the Powers That Be have packed on this sucktastic ruin of a warship for ease of disposal?
You'd have to be a rot-panned moron of the lowest order to hurt over rejection from this cohort. Karkat isn't.
(They limp along for another two weeks, stubbornly clinging to the relationship to prove Karkat wrong. He pretends he doesn't see them sneer when he passes by and outsiders are here. It doesn't sting. He pretends he doesn't see the guilty, vaguely longing glance when they think no one else is looking. It doesn't sting either, it doesn't sting worse.
After that Hadria (who did not remind him of a gangly, slightly less classy, gratingly off-note Terezi) gets herself into a honor duel with Vriska and gets her ass culled, and Vriska totally wouldn't have decided to spare one of Karkat's quadrants so he'd owe her big later on, that is not at all the kind of emotional blackmail she loves to collect, and then Duiven gets himself another spades lover who knew he was the rebound from Hadria but didn't know she was the replacement for that out-of-reach One True Kismesis and is so pissed off when he hears it that he "forgets" to provide backup while in combat.)
(Karkat gets other ashen crushes. It's not a thing that's stopped. He watches from outside and maps interpersonal conflicts and thinks how much smoother this and that could go with just a few words here and there, so long as they were goddamn heeded. He just stops thinking that if he found just the right point of entry...)
(no he doesn't.)
2) I'm going on vacation! I will have a laptop but probably no connection. We might be here two weeks, I don't know yet, depends on when the parents will get bored and want to come home. But anyway! Fics.
Sequel to Awake at Night, the Dad + Gamzee&Karkat story, morning after:
John has always been proud of his ability to sleep through just about any noise there exists, but scent is another thing entirely.
He wakes when the heavenly smell of sugar-laden pancakes finishes oozing its way through his room. Well, "wakes" is a big word, but he oozes his way back along the trail. He's got a good autopilot.
Thump. Thump. Goddamn stairs. Fwump. Kitchen doors.
"Mnnp'ncakes?"
"Ah, son, good morning."
He can smell honey and about four different kinds of jam and Nutella and who knows what else. He waves vaguely in his father's direction. ... pause. Wait. His father's behind him, in the living room.
The pancakes are in front of him. Target is obvious.
Magical self-cooking pancakes. He must say it out loud because Gamzee snorfles out a seal-like laugh. "Nah bro, no miracles save that of the mixing getting its delirious alchemy on. Ain't no self-twirling mix baton as exists yet."
John flops in the closest empty chair. Too many words. "... Mn. Pancakes."
"Haha, sure thing, bro. Zoom! Make space for this rad motherfucking helicarrier with its hellnasty payload of--"
"Gamzee food plates are not Frisbees."
Oh hey there's Karkat too. Didn't see him sitting... right in front of him. John waves hello somewhat, and then just in case he curls up defensively over and around the plate Gamzee put down in front of him with a disappointed thump.
Mm pancakes.
Those taste a little different. They are still deliriously delicious. Everything is delicious ever since Dad gave up on Batterwitch-stained cheating shortcuts.
Why, everything seems better when eating those! The groove of Karkat's permascowl looks fainter. (Hehe, like that's even possible.) Gamzee looks less creepy.
Also grayer. No wait, that's because he's not all painted up.
Huh.
Pancakes. Mm pancakes.
"This is the seventh time I witness this and I still can't believe it."
Karkat is talking at him. Karkat is not made of pancake. John glower at him and keeps masticating happily.
"You look remarkably like a milkbeast chewing its cud."
"Y'look remarkably like a shaddup."
"Ha! It speaks. Good morning, Egbert. ...John."
"Mornin'. Gimme th'strawberry jam."
... Blink. Blink. Is that a smile on Karkat's face? It must be a muscle spasm. John stares at the jam jar Karkat just pushed into his hand. Like... Amicably. Helpfully even. Maybe it's boobytrapped?
Karkat doesn't say anything else, and Gamzee is humming a tuneless song to himself as he prods at something on the ... food preparation thing. John returns to his breakfast.
He's a bit confused, though. Gamzee's making pancakes. Like the one John just ate? Huh, maybe that's why it's a bit different. He considers it. Okay, no, there's not much to consider, actually. "Can I have another?"
"Sure thing, bro. Hehe, bro."
He munches away. Huh. Karkat looks half-asleep, but not like usual when he's half-asleep and furious about being half-asleep and like he'd kill to have some real sleep, only he can't because he's Karkat and Karkats can't have nice things and so instead he'd kill anyone who made him think about how asleep he'd love to be. More like... Half-asleep. Normal half-asleep.
Gamzee is shaking his skeletal booty in rhythm with the spatula. Ooookaaaay.
"... naturally," his father is saying in the other room. must be on the phone. "... would be delighted if you chose to follow but I understand if... yes, that is a very good point. John, your cousin might stay with us for a little bit, I hope you will not mind ceding your bedroom for a short while. A lady does not sleep on the couch."
Uh. Wha. "Which? Like... Jane or Jade?" Because in this weird new too-normal world of course Jane can't be his grandma, and Jade can't be his ectosib twin mixclone, so legally cousins. He doesn't even pretend to understand the family tree.
"Jane, son." Dad points at the phone. So either she's on the phone or her creepily-like-his-own-dad dad is.
John frowns at his half-eaten pancake. With the random chomped-off bits it almost makes a picture. If he squints maybe he'll see what it reminds him of. "...But she lives next door."
His father chuckles. John's pranking alarm starts beeping in the background. Something is being hidden from him. "So she does! Yes, my apologies, Phil. You are entirely right, I must sort this out with John first. I will call you back."
He puts the phone back in its cradle and walks back into the kitchen. John scrunches his eyebrows at him, chewing warily. (Mm pancake.)
Dad drags in a chair, sits in front of him, only Karkat's already there so they kind of end up almost elbow to elbow.
Karkat doesn't shuffle away. John's pranking alarms start blaring. He has never managed to get Karkat to help him prank anyone else, but his dad is a master. If anyone could, he would. This is pretty worrisome!
And then Gamzee drifts by, wiping his hands on his apron, and stands behind Dad, and grins.
John didn't know his prank'o'meter had a defcon 3 setting. Looks like he's gonna have to wake up all the way after all. Darn.
He can't help but be excited anyway.
+++++++
And a Battlefield Terra thing, Karkat one month before BT.
They didn't tell anyone during training that a frontier warship's living quarters were a permanent orgiastic free for all.
(Or maybe they didn't tell him, on account of it would never be relevant.)
Karkat keeps his eyes trained in front of him as he puts his flightsuit back in his locker. Three lockers down a spectacular pale makeout is in progress. Brown and yellow tears everywhere. (Brown guy's matesprit was -- not that he cares, really he doesn't -- the stupid brown girl that Karkat yelled at to stay in line and instead she broke away to strut her stuff and got her ass culled by one of the creeptastic metal aliens. He doesn't even remember her name. Any of their names. He doesn't.)
He keeps his eyes in front of him while walking down the corridor -- some oh glory be you're alive and I'm also alive let's perpetuate the species is going on in a doorway off to the side, let's hope no one needs emergency decontamination or soon they might have to step over a pail. At least it's flush, reduces the amount of weird stains on the walls for poor PT-cursed bastards to deal with.
He walks by four more pairs -- flush, pale, pale, black -- on his way through the pilots' common room.
(He is not jealous. He's fine with his own hands, they're never panshatteringly retarded. He does not need papped.)
Not even a third of these people were quadranted before they were stationed together. Now he doesn't think he knows more than three people (not that he pays attention) who are currently quadrantless, and all of them are quadrantless because they were recently dumped -- reshuffling happens all the time, and hideous drama with it; he doubts they'll stay quadrantless long. Apparently facing adversity makes bonding easier. Staple of the movie genre, he should have expected it.
It's been three months and no one has really approached him. Which is fine! He has a moirail already and his concupiscent quadrants are a dead end by imperial decree. As for his hatefriends, he still has... Tavros, he supposes. They've never been close and their conversations tend to the lukewarm but... And Nepeta, even though she stupidly still wants something he can't give her, can't, can't, it would get her culled does she get that. And... Equius? Sort of. By proxy.
Hah. Heh. He bets he could count Equius as at least a caliginous one-night-stand, if he pretends that it doesn't creep him out knowing that after some of their spats Equius likely went to fondle himself in the privacy of his personal block. Hah, never mind, better be quadrantless. (It might titillate Equius to think about being pailed by the bloodfreak but he'd never go through with it anyway, not even clandestinely. Neverfuckingmind.)
(He is not fucking lonely.)
And Vriska.
Fuck Vriska.
(He is never going to be that lonely.)
When he passes by the movie block there's an argument in progress, a Teal girl and a Rust guy. The Rust is in his dormitory, and Karkat doesn't know his name and doesn't know he has a kismesis already, a kismesis that's on another ship and they're likely not going to get a visiting grant for drone season but they still cling to the relationship so ferociously. Nope. Totally doesn't know that. He doesn't know the Teal's on the rebound either and is only after the Rust for the shape of his horns anyway. They're both hateflirting with people who aren't even here, it's obvious in the forms their insults take, neither quite hitting the mark, or hitting it too deep, and they keep trying anyway like stubborn brainless morons led around by their bulges. It's a clusterfuck waiting to happen.
He doesn't care, he doesn't care, he doesn't, why doesn't anyone notice and step in?
There's a couple pailing in one of the recuperacoons in his dormitory, of course, but once he's asleep he won't hear them. It's fine. It's just fucking fine, it's -- fuck.
"Duiven, don't you have someone to call before it's daytime on his fucking ship? Hadria, just because he looks like Thalim doesn't mean he's half as good in the sack. Now pipe the fuck down already."
... who was the retard who said that.
Oh. Shit. It's him. He's the one who turned around and went back to the movie block, he's the one everyone in the movie block is staring at. He's the retard.
He's not stepping back down now. He's just -- not. He'd lose too much rep and his place in the group dynamics is wobbly enough as it is. He scowls, stare direct, unafraid, tilts his chin in challenge. Hadria -- the Teal, the Teal -- is at least a full head taller than he is, the Rust -- Duiven -- is built like a brick shithive, he should have been Brown. He can't afford to look like the moron who realizes too late he bit off more than he could chew. He can handle them.
He. He thinks he wants to handle them. Even if he doesn't see it lasting, even if their hate is too shallow, they irritate him sufficiently right now with their stupid pointless squabbling that it could last a little while -- he'd have a place, it would be good. He settled Gamzee's shit anyway, who is a goddamn Indigo, and neither of them is more physically imposing than Equius. He can do this.
The longer they stay stunned quiet and the more he thinks it could work.
"... Are you... coming onto us?" Hadria asks. She sounds like he kicked her in the horns, brainshaken, dazed. She's not even scowling much, just enough to look puzzled. "Is that seriously -- you just--"
"Oh, listen to yourself, the two of you have about a braincell and a half if you add them up. How the fuck you assume this won't end in lukewarm tears and scratches too shallow to even scar is beyond me, but it's probably related to that egregious dearth of thinkspongepower."
Everyone is still watching them. Karkat can't even blame them, it's not as if watching blood dry is more interesting than what's on TV right now. It's still hard to ignore them all with his horns buzzing, his spine tingling from their stares.
Duiven growls, muscles flexing, bunching, threat-displaying his horns. Karkat gives an unimpressed sniff, lifts his chin a bit more in disdain, hey, need help aiming? (It's the only counter that works when his are those useless nubs, and it only works half the time.)
Duiven must not be used to smaller guys refusing to be cowed. He flounders. It's going to work it's going to work now if he just orders them to follow him outside to hash things out they're stunned enough to let him --
"Oh sweet Horrorterrors, Hadria dear, we knew you liked slumming but that's just, ahaha--"
Laughter bursts all around the block. Hadria flushes an ugly green. Duiven takes a step back, lip curled in disgust, hands up as if Karkat was in touching range and he needed to be pushed away.
"Did you just seriously try to shove yourself clubways in with us?"
... There's an us, claimed now, word-fenced. There's an us and there's a you, you-outsider, you-lower-than-me-filth, and used by a Rust it burns.
He stays a little while longer as they laugh, he can't afford to be seen running away, they're going to talk anyway but they'd talk even longer. He stays a little, hands on either side of the doorjamb, letting the laughter and the jeers slide off him (not really but,) and he shakes his head in cold disdain. "Well. Have fun watching this peter out, assholes. I'll be over there having an I told you so party."
He gives a disdainful wave of his hand, and leaves.
He forgets their names. Not that he ever knew them. Not that he ever crushed ashen on anyone here. It's only the concupiscent quadrants that are forbidden to him but who'd want to ash out with any of the brainless fuckmachines the Powers That Be have packed on this sucktastic ruin of a warship for ease of disposal?
You'd have to be a rot-panned moron of the lowest order to hurt over rejection from this cohort. Karkat isn't.
(They limp along for another two weeks, stubbornly clinging to the relationship to prove Karkat wrong. He pretends he doesn't see them sneer when he passes by and outsiders are here. It doesn't sting. He pretends he doesn't see the guilty, vaguely longing glance when they think no one else is looking. It doesn't sting either, it doesn't sting worse.
After that Hadria (who did not remind him of a gangly, slightly less classy, gratingly off-note Terezi) gets herself into a honor duel with Vriska and gets her ass culled, and Vriska totally wouldn't have decided to spare one of Karkat's quadrants so he'd owe her big later on, that is not at all the kind of emotional blackmail she loves to collect, and then Duiven gets himself another spades lover who knew he was the rebound from Hadria but didn't know she was the replacement for that out-of-reach One True Kismesis and is so pissed off when he hears it that he "forgets" to provide backup while in combat.)
(Karkat gets other ashen crushes. It's not a thing that's stopped. He watches from outside and maps interpersonal conflicts and thinks how much smoother this and that could go with just a few words here and there, so long as they were goddamn heeded. He just stops thinking that if he found just the right point of entry...)
(no he doesn't.)